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  • Exclusive: Senior US general ordered Twitter announcement of drone strike on al Qaeda leader that may have instead killed civilian | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: Senior US general ordered Twitter announcement of drone strike on al Qaeda leader that may have instead killed civilian | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The senior general in charge of US forces in the Middle East ordered that his command announce on Twitter that a senior al Qaeda leader had been targeted by an American drone strike in Syria earlier this month – despite not yet having confirmation of who was actually killed in the strike, according to multiple defense officials.

    Nearly three weeks later, US Central Command still does not know whether a civilian died instead, officials said. CENTCOM did not open a review of the incident, officially known as a civilian-casualty credibility assessment report, until May 15 – twelve days after the strike. That review is ongoing.

    One defense official with direct knowledge of the situation told CNN that some of CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla’s subordinates urged him to hold off on the tweet until there was more clarity on who was actually killed.

    Two other officials denied that, and said they were not aware of any staffers voicing consternation or disagreement with the announcement.

    Either way, the statement ultimately posted to Twitter from the official CENTCOM Twitter account did not identify the supposed senior al Qaeda leader, raising more questions about what had occurred.

    “At 11:42 am local Syrian time on 3 May, US Central Command Forces conducted a unilateral strike in Northwest Syria targeting a senior Al Qaeda leader,” the tweet read. “We will provide more information as operational details become available.”

    The tweet has not been taken down and CENTCOM has not tweeted about the strike again.

    The episode raises questions about how thoroughly CENTCOM has implemented the military’s civilian harm mitigation policy – a process for preventing, mitigating and responding to civilian casualties caused by US military operations.

    The policy was developed in 2022 after a botched US drone strike in Kabul killed 10 civilians in August 2021.

    Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is “absolutely” confident in the Defense Department’s civilian harm mitigation efforts.

    “In terms of CENTCOM’s strike, as you know, they conducted that strike on the third of May. They are investigating the allegations of civilian casualties,” Ryder said at a Pentagon news briefing. “So, you know, I think our record speaks for itself in terms of how seriously we take these. Very few countries around the world do that. The secretary has complete confidence that we will continue to abide by the policies that we put into place.”

    CENTCOM acknowledged last week following a Washington Post report questioning the strike that the operation may have resulted in a civilian casualty and said in a statement that it was “investigating” the incident. The civilian casualty review was not launched until a week after the Post began presenting information to CENTCOM suggesting that the strike had killed a civilian.

    CENTCOM still has not opened a formal investigation into the strike, known as a 15-6 investigation, defense officials told CNN. The officials said the civilian casualty review first needs to determine that a noncombatant was indeed killed in the strike. Then, a commander needs to decide that there are other unanswered questions remaining about the operation that require a more thorough investigation. A 15-6 investigation was launched less than a week after the errant Kabul strike.

    Defense officials told CNN that in the immediate aftermath of the strike, Kurilla and his staff had high confidence that they had killed the senior al-Qaeda leader, though they declined to say why they were so convinced. But they also knew it would likely take a few days to confirm the person’s identity definitively. The US has no military footprint in northwest Syria, an area still recovering from the effects of a devastating earthquake.

    But as the days passed, CENTCOM still could not determine the identity of who they had killed. Some defense officials considered that a red flag, they told CNN.

    By May 8, CENTCOM still had not confirmed the person’s identity, and began receiving information from the Washington Post that raised questions about whether a civilian had been killed, defense officials said. The Post’s information led CENTCOM to open a review into the strike, and whether it had killed a civilian, on May 15.

    There is still some disagreement within the administration about the identity of the person killed, defense officials told CNN. Some intelligence officials continue to believe that the target of the strike was a member of al-Qaeda, even if he wasn’t a senior leader. But there is a growing belief inside the Pentagon that the man – identified by his family as Loutfi Hassan Mesto, a 56-year-old father of ten – was a farmer with no ties to terrorism.

    Mesto’s family told CNN that he had been out grazing his sheep when he was killed. Loutfi never left his village during the Syrian uprisings and did not support any political faction, his brother said.

    Mohamed Sajee, a distant relative living in Qurqaniya, also told CNN that Loutfi was never known to be in favor or against the Syrian regime.

    “It’s impossible that he was with al Qaeda, he doesn’t even have a beard,” he said.

    The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, told CNN they arrived on the scene of the strike after being contacted on their local emergency number.

    “The team noticed only one crater caused by the missile, which was next to the man’s body,” the White Helmets said, also confirming that the man had been grazing his sheep.

    “When the team arrived, his wife, neighbors, and other people were at the location,” the group added.

    The White Helmets tweeted on May 3 that they had recovered the body of Mesto, who they described as “a civilian aged 60” who was killed in a missile strike while grazing sheep. CENTCOM was aware of the White Helmets’ tweet, officials said, but the group’s information was not considered solid enough yet to open a review.

    The May 3 incident bears a stunning similarity to another CENTCOM operation: a US drone strike in Kabul during the closing days of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which killed 10 Afghan civilians, including 7 children. The Pentagon initially claimed it had eliminated an ISIS-K threat and defended the operation for weeks, with Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley going as far as to call it a “righteous” strike in a Pentagon briefing two days later.

    A suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport three days earlier, which killed 13 US service members, had added pressure on CENTCOM to act against any potential threats, and officials believed at the time that another attack was imminent.

    Austin ultimately decided no one would be punished over the botched operation, even as he instructed Central Command and Special Operations Command to improve policies and procedures to prevent civilian harm more effectively.

    Austin committed to adjusting Defense Department policies to better protect civilians, even establishing a civilian protection center of excellence in 2022.

    “Leaders in this department should be held to account for high standards of conduct and leadership,” Austin said at the time.

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  • US received intel from European ally that Ukrainian military was planning attack on Nord Stream pipelines, officials say | CNN Politics

    US received intel from European ally that Ukrainian military was planning attack on Nord Stream pipelines, officials say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US received intelligence from a European ally last year that the Ukrainian military was planning an attack on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines three months before they were hit, three US officials told CNN.

    The attack on the pipelines last September has been condemned by US officials and Western allies alike as a sabotage on critical infrastructure. It is currently being investigated by other European nations.

    The intelligence assessment was first disclosed by The Washington Post, which obtained the document from a trove of classified documents allegedly leaked on the social media platform Discord by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira.

    CNN has not seen the document but the three officials confirmed the US was told about the Ukrainian plans.

    According to the Washington Post, the intelligence cited a source in Ukraine which said Western allies “had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage” for almost a year. The intelligence said that those who may have been responsible were reporting directly to Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, “who was put in charge so that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation,” the Post reported.

    But, the intelligence also said that Ukraine’s military operation was “put on hold.”

    CNN has reached out to the Ukrainian government for comment.

    White House National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby declined to address the reporting directly on Tuesday.

    “I think you know there are three countries conducting an investigation of the Nord Stream sabotage — and we called it sabotage at the moment — Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. Those investigations are ongoing and again the last thing that we’re going to want to do from this podium is get ahead of those investigations,” Kirby said.

    The news comes less than a year after leaks caused by underwater explosions were discovered in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which funnel gas from Russia into the European Union and run under the Baltic Sea. The pipelines were controversial before the war in Ukraine began, stoking concerns about European dependence on Russian gas.

    Neither of the pipelines were actively transporting gas to Europe at the time of the leaks, though they still held gas under pressure.

    Sweden was the first to sound the alarm on the leak; Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson later said that it was “likely a deliberate action” but “not an attack against Sweden.”

    Other European leaders such as the Danish prime minister and energy minister, and Norway’s minister of petroleum and energy, also concluded the leaks were a result of sabotage.

    Ukraine denied any responsibility for the leaks at the time, with the top adviser to Zelensky referring to the idea as an “amusing conspiracy” theory.

    “Although I enjoy collecting amusing conspiracy theories about [the Ukrainian] government, I have to say: [Ukraine] has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about ‘pro-[Ukraine] sabotage groups,’” Mykhailo Podolyak said on Twitter.

    The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Ukrainian officials sought to keep Zelensky out of the loop on the Nord Stream planning in order to give him “a plausible way to deny involvement in an audacious attack on civilian infrastructure” that could impact relationships with countries supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

    And while the intelligence said that Ukraine’s plan was paused, the Post’s report said that the details emerging from Germany’s investigation of the attack “line up with the earlier plot.”

    The intelligence the US received from a European ally last year said six Ukrainian special operations forces service members intended to use fake identities to rent a boat and destroy or damage the pipelines on the Baltic Sea floor by using a “submersible vehicle,” the Post said.

    Details that German officials are piecing together say that six individuals who were “skilled divers” used fake passports and embarked from Germany on a sailing yacht, then planted explosives on the pipelines, according to the Post.

    The details between the two plans differ in some regards, the Post said, and the CIA “initially questioned the credibility of the information.” Nevertheless, sources previously told CNN that the US had warned several European allies over the summer that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines could be attacked.

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  • Putin’s ruthless power play may not preclude a revival of Ukraine grain deal | CNN Politics

    Putin’s ruthless power play may not preclude a revival of Ukraine grain deal | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Russian President Vladimir Putin just reminded the world that he has the capacity to apply pain far beyond the excruciating torment he’s inflicting on Ukraine.

    Russia’s suspension of a deal allowing the export of Ukrainian grain from a region fabled as the world’s bread basket threatens to cause severe food shortages in Africa and send prices spiraling in supermarkets in the developed world. In the United States, it represents a political risk for President Joe Biden, who is embarking on a reelection campaign and can hardly afford a rebound of the high inflation that hounded US consumers at its peak last year.

    Russia’s decision looked at first sight like a face-saving reprisal for an attack claimed by Ukraine on a bridge linking the annexed Crimean peninsula to the Russian mainland. The bridge was a vanity project for Putin and the apparent assault represented another humiliation for the Russian leader in a war that has gone badly wrong.

    The Black Sea grain deal, agreed last year and brokered by Turkey and the United Nations, was a rare diplomatic ray of light during a war that has shattered Russia’s relations with the US and its allies and has had global reverberations.

    By refusing to renew it, Putin appears again to be seeking to impose a cost on the West, in return for the sanctions strangling the Russian economy. He may reason that a food inflation crisis might help splinter political support in NATO nations for the prolonged and expensive effort to save Ukraine. And grain shortages afflicting innocent people in the developing world could exacerbate international pressure for a negotiated end to a war that has turned into a disaster for Russia.

    The United States and other Western powers reacted to Russia’s announcement that the deal had been “terminated” with outrage, mirroring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s warning that Putin was trying to “weaponize hunger.”

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Russia was trying to use food as a tool in its war on Ukraine, adding that the tactic would make “food harder to come by in places that desperately need it and have prices rise … The bottom line is, it’s unconscionable. It should not happen.”

    Singling Russia out as a moral transgressor might be understandable given the horror it has visited on Ukraine and may rally fury over Putin’s move in the West and the developing world. But humanitarian arguments won’t sway a Russian president who launched an unprovoked onslaught on a sovereign neighbor and is accused of presiding over brutal war crimes.

    Still, Russia’s rhetoric after canceling the deal and the reactions from key players elsewhere in Eurasia suggest that the agreement may not be quite as terminated as the Kremlin claims. There’s a chance Putin sees a grain showdown as a way to improve his dire position.

    In a clear sign of diplomatic maneuvering, Russia justified its cancellation of the agreement by saying that it was not getting its share of the benefits. noting that it had faced obstacles with its own food exports. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hinted, however, that Moscow might allow the return of exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports once its objectives were achieved.

    But UN Secretary General António Guterres underscored how difficult it might be to return to the deal with a categorical repudiation of Russia’s points in a letter to Putin, arguing that under the agreement, the Russian grain trade had reached high export volumes and fertilizer markets were nearing full recovery with the return of Russian produce. Guterres said that he’d sent Russia proposals to keep the grain deal alive but that he was “deeply disappointed” that his efforts went unheeded.

    The UN chief’s comments reinforced a view that, for now, Russia sees a point of leverage in refusing to renew the Black Sea grain deal. The decision comes against a complicated geopolitical backdrop following last week’s NATO summit at which G7, nations pledged to offer Ukraine the means of its self-defense for years to come.

    It may also represent the latest chess move in a shady double game of great power geopolitics being waged by a pair of Machiavellian autocrats — Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who are due to meet in August.

    Erdogan won prestige and the gratitude of his fellow NATO leaders and developing nations for brokering the original grain deal. But he has angered Russia in recent days, despite keeping open channels with Putin during the war. It’s conceivable the Russian leader could be sending a shot across the bows of his Turkish partner by canceling out his achievement.

    Russia was infuriated last week when Turkey sent a group of captured Ukrainian military commanders back to Zelensky despite a previous agreement they would not go home until after the war. Erdogan also risked his relationship with Putin by dropping opposition to Sweden’s entry into NATO, a move that significantly weakened Russia’s strategic position in Europe.

    But it was noticeable that Erdogan, who has a reputation for cannily playing his cards to enhance his own and Turkey’s influence, referred to Putin as his “friend” on Monday and suggested that the Russian leader might want to keep the “humanitarian bridge” of grain exports open.

    If he could somehow engineer a return to the deal, Erdogan could again bolster his place at the hinge of Eurasian great power politics. He’d also boost his goal of emerging as a leader among developing world nations and do a favor for Western leaders fearing an inflationary spike.

    Michael Kimmage, who served on the policy planning staff at the State Department between 2014 and 2016 and is now a professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, argues that Turkey is in a unique position, since it possesses considerable leverage inside NATO but also has robust relationships with both Ukraine and Russia.

    “I think it’s very possible that even before the Putin-Erdogan meeting there could be a resumption of the grain deal because that keeps Russia to a degree in the good graces of the international community,” Kimmage said.

    Reviving the grain deal would show that Russia, in its isolation, retains some Turkish support, Kimmage added, but the episode also demonstrates to the rest of the world that “when Russia wants, it can turn off the grain deal and be an enormous pain in the neck in the Black Sea.”

    First video of damage to Crimean bridge surfaces after reported strike

    While the war in Ukraine has consumed Russia’s foreign policy, Moscow has also made intense efforts to carve out its own influence in Africa and elsewhere in opposition to the United States. So it may risk damaging its own priorities by triggering widespread food shortages, especially since much of Ukraine’s grain is used in World Food Programs to alleviate famine in Africa.

    While the White House is fueling a sense of moral outrage over Russia’s move, it quickly dismissed another potential response – an attempt to bust a Russian blockade in the Black Sea.

    “That’s not an option that’s being actively pursued,” John Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council, said Monday in a comment that was in line with Biden’s goal of avoiding any direct NATO clash with Russia, a nuclear superpower.

    While the end of the grain deal would cause significant global hardship, its worst effects may be weeks away – so there could be time for diplomacy to work.

    Nicolay Gorbachov, the President of the Ukrainian Grain Association, told Isa Soares on CNN International on Monday that exports by road, rail and river could mitigate the most damaging effects of the collapse of the deal for two or three weeks, even if such transportation methods lacked the volume of shipborne cargoes.

    But he also warned that ultimately, if Ukraine could not export its grain – “all of us, in developed countries, in developing countries, will face food inflation.”

    “In my opinion, the international community, the developed countries have to find the leverage to move grain from Ukraine to the world market,” he said.

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  • Exclusive: McConnell details GOP efforts to not ‘screw this up’ in 2024 Senate battle | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: McConnell details GOP efforts to not ‘screw this up’ in 2024 Senate battle | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell should be brimming with confidence.

    Republicans are in the driver’s seat to take the Senate majority: with 23 seats held by Democrats, compared to just 11 for Republicans. There are likely just two GOP incumbents whose seats Democrats may try to flip – and both are in Republican terrain – while three Democrats hail from states that former President Donald Trump easily won in 2020.

    The Kentucky Republican just scored a prized recruit in West Virginia and expects two other top candidates to jump into races in Montana and Pennsylvania. And after tangling last cycle with Florida Sen. Rick Scott, his last chairman of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, he is now in line over strategy and tactics with the committee’s new chairman, Montana Sen. Steve Daines.

    But in an exclusive interview with CNN, McConnell made clear he knows full well that things can quickly go south. So he’s been working behind the scenes for months to find his preferred candidates in key races – including during his recent recovery from a concussion and a broken rib – in an attempt to prevent a repeat of 2022: When a highly favorable GOP landscape turned into a Republican collapse at the polls and a 51-49 Senate Democratic majority.

    “No, no – I’m not,” McConnell said with a chuckle when asked if he were confident they’d take back the majority next year. “I just spent 10 minutes explaining to you how we could screw this up, and we’re working very hard to not let that happen. Let’s put it that way.”

    In the interview, McConnell gave his most revealing assessment in months of the field forming in the battle for the Senate. He said that his main focus for now is on flipping four states: Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He said Republicans are still assessing two swing states with Democratic incumbents: Wisconsin, where the GOP is searching for a top-tier candidate, and Nevada, where he expects to likely wait until after next year’s primary to decide whether to invest resources there.

    And in what is emerging as the most complicated state of the cycle – Arizona – McConnell said there’s a “high likelihood” that Republican leaders would wait and see first who wins the GOP primary next year before deciding whether to engage there at all. Plus he doesn’t see any chance that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema – who became an independent and left the Democratic Party last December but is still weighing a reelection bid – will join his conference.

    “I think that decision was made when she ended up continuing to caucus with the Democrats,” McConnell said when asked if trying to get Sinema to flip to the GOP was a live discussion. “We would love to have had her, but we didn’t land her.”

    While he knows the presidential race could scramble the map, he believes a potential Trump nomination could bolster Republican chances in three key Senate battlegrounds. But above all else, McConnell is making clear that his outside group, the Senate Leadership Fund, along with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, are prepared to take a much heavier hand in contested Republican primaries than the past cycle, a move that could escalate their intraparty feuding but one the GOP leader sees as essential to avoiding the pitfalls from 2022.

    “We don’t have an ideological litmus test,” McConnell said flatly. “We want to win in November.”

    “We’ll be involved in any primary where that seems to be necessary to get a high-quality candidate, and we’ll be involved in every general election where we have a legitimate shot of winning – regardless of the philosophy of the nominee,” the Kentucky Republican said.

    But McConnell and Republican leaders are treading carefully in deciding which primary races to engage in, since trying to tip the scales could generate backlash from the conservative base and help far-right candidates – something GOP leaders learned in past election cycles, like the tea party wave of 2010.

    In the 2022 cycle, Republicans also seemed to have the wind in their sails. With inflation running rampant and President Joe Biden’s poll numbers taking a nosedive, Republicans had several paths to the majority.

    But Democratic incumbents hung onto their seats as they campaigned on issues like abortion rights and took advantage of Trump’s late emergence on the campaign trail, while several GOP candidates who won messy primaries turned out to be weak general-election candidates. McConnell’s allies worked in the Missouri and Alabama primaries to defeat GOP candidates they viewed as problematic but largely steered clear of a number of other contested primaries.

    Part of the issue: Trump hand-selected candidates in key races, bolstering their chances in primaries even though they were vulnerable in general elections.

    “In other places where we did not get involved in the primaries it was because we were convinced we could not prevail, and would spend a lot of money that we would need later,” McConnell said, reflecting on 2022.

    Plus, in the last cycle, Scott’s NRSC made the strategic decision to steer clear of primaries, arguing they would let the voters choose their candidates without a heavy hand from Washington. (Scott and his allies later blamed McConnell for hurting their candidates by not embracing an election-year agenda.)

    This time around, the Daines-led NRSC is heavily involved in candidate recruiting and vetting and has already signaled its support for certain GOP candidates in Indiana and West Virginia, aligning its efforts with McConnell’s.

    “I think it’s important to go into this cycle understanding once again how hard it is to beat the incumbents, no incumbent lost last year,” McConnell told CNN on Friday. “Having said that, if you were looking for a good map, this is a good map.”

    But he later added: “We do have the possibility of screwing this up and that gets back to candidate recruitment. I think that we lost Georgia, Arizona and New Hampshire because we didn’t have competitive candidates (last cycle). And Steve Daines and I are in exactly the same place – that starts with candidate quality.”

    McConnell, who has faced incessant attacks from Trump after he blamed the former president for being “practically and morally responsible” for the 2021 Capitol attack, is not publicly letting on any concerns about the possibility that Trump could be on the top of the GOP ticket again.

    As Daines has already backed Trump for president, McConnell didn’t answer directly when asked if he’d be comfortable with him as the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

    “Look, I’m going to support the nominee of our party for president, no matter who that may be,” he said.

    McConnell believes that Trump at the top of the ticket could help in some key states with Senate races.

    “Whether you are a Trump fan or a Trump opponent, I can’t imagine Trump if he’s the nominee not doing well in West Virginia, Montana and Ohio,” McConnell said.

    Left unmentioned: Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania, all of which Trump lost in 2020 but are key parts of the Senate map in 2024.

    “I didn’t mention Wisconsin; I think clearly you’d have to have an outstanding candidate. And I think there are some other places where with the right candidate, we might be able to compete – in Nevada, Arizona,” McConnell said. “But as of right now the day that you and I are talking, I think we know that we are going to compete in four places heavily, and that would be, Montana, West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

    Yet each of those have their own challenges for the GOP.

    Then-Republican Senatorial candidate David McCormick and his wife Dina Powell McCormick heads to vote at his polling location on the campus of Chatham University on May 17, 2022 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

    In Pennsylvania, McConnell and the NRSC have their eyes on David McCormick, the hedge fund executive who barely lost his primary last cycle to Mehmet Oz, the Trump-backed TV doctor who later fell short in the general election to Democrat John Fetterman.

    While McCormick is widely expected to run for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, he could face a complicated primary if the controversial candidate, Doug Mastriano, runs as well. Mastriano, who won the Trump endorsement in the 2022 gubernatorial primary and later lost by double digits in the fall, is weighing a run for Senate. But McConnell and the NRSC are expected to go all-out for McCormick, whom the GOP leader called a “high-quality candidate.”

    Asked if he were concerned about a potential Mastriano bid, McConnell said: “I think everybody is entitled to run. I’m confident the vast majority of people who met Dave McCormick are going to be fine with him.”

    While the GOP field in Ohio to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is expected to be crowded and has yet to fully form, top Republicans are signaling they’d be comfortable with several of them as their nominee. But that’s not necessarily the case in Montana or West Virginia.

    In Montana, Rep. Matt Rosendale, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus who lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018, is considering another run against him in 2024, though Rosendale posted a low fundraising number last quarter. But Senate GOP leaders are looking at some other prospective candidates, including state attorney general Austin Knudsen and, in particular, businessman Tim Sheehy, whom McConnell met with in recent weeks.

    Asked if he were concerned about a Rosendale candidacy, McConnell said: “Yeah, I don’t have anything further to say about Montana. We’re going to compete in Montana and win in November.”

    And in West Virginia, McConnell and top Republicans landed Gov. Jim Justice in the battle for the seat occupied by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has yet to decide whether to run again. But Justice is already facing a primary challenge against Rep. Alex Mooney, who is backed by the political arm of the anti-tax group, the Club for Growth.

    McConnell didn’t express any concerns about Mooney’s candidacy but said that they wouldn’t hesitate to help Justice.

    “What we do know about West Virginia is it’s very, very red, and we have an extremely popular incumbent governor who’s announced for the Senate. And we’re going to go all out to win it,” McConnell said.

    Former Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on March 4 in National Harbor, Maryland.

    McConnell pointedly declined to discuss any concerns about other controversial candidates who may emerge this cycle, including Kari Lake, who is weighing a US Senate run in Arizona after losing her bid for governor last year and then later claimed the election was stolen. Blake Masters, who lost his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, is also among the candidates considering another run.

    Asked about Lake and other prospective GOP candidates who deny the 2020 election results, McConnell wouldn’t weigh in directly.

    “What I care about in November is winning and having an ‘R’ by your name, and I think it is way too early to start assessing various candidacies that may or may not materialize,” McConnell said.

    McConnell also indicated they may want to until after the primary to decide if Nevada is worth pouring their money into, even as GOP sources say that national Republicans are recruiting military veteran Sam Brown, who fell short in the Senate GOP primary last cycle.

    The GOP leader is signaling he has little concern about the races of two GOP incumbents – Scott in Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, even as Cruz is facing a Democratic recruit, Rep. Colin Allred who is poised to raise big sums of money.

    “Both of them are very skilled,” McConnell said of Cruz and Scott, characterizing Democratic efforts to beat them as “really long shots.” Democrats, he argued, “don’t have much hope there. I don’t think they have any opportunities for offense” in 2024, he said.

    How long the 81-year-old McConnell – the longest-serving Senate party leader in history – plans to keep his job is a lingering question as well, especially in the aftermath of his recent fall that sent him to the hospital for concussion treatment. After Scott failed to knock him off from his post after the 2022 midterms, McConnell said, “I’m not going anywhere.” And he told CNN last fall that he would “certainly” complete his term, which ends in January 2027.

    Asked on Friday if he still plans to serve his full term or run for leader again, McConnell let out a laugh and didn’t want to engage on it.

    “I thought this was not an interview about my future,” he said. “I thought it was an interview about the 2024 Senate elections.”

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  • Out of the spotlight, Mark Meadows wields quiet political power amid Trump legal woes | CNN Politics

    Out of the spotlight, Mark Meadows wields quiet political power amid Trump legal woes | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    In January, as Kevin McCarthy fought to win the House speakership through 15 rounds of grinding votes and late-night sessions at the Capitol, a few blocks away a group of right-wing holdouts huddled with a familiar but surprising source – former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    A founding member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Meadows spent years in the House agitating against GOP leadership, trying to move his party increasingly to the right. Now, Meadows was counseling a new batch of Republican rebels, advising them on specific demands to make and gaming out how McCarthy would react to their maneuvering, according to multiple GOP lawmakers who were part of the planning sessions.

    The group was so taken by Meadows, at one point they considered nominating him for speaker. Meadows ultimately rejected the suggestion, telling lawmakers he preferred to operate behind the scenes.

    “We talked to him about being speaker. We asked would he mind if we put his name up,” Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the McCarthy holdouts, confirmed to CNN. “That’s not something he thought he could win. His best use is doing what he does now. He can freelance and offer advice.”

    Sources tell CNN that in recent weeks Meadows has also been advising right-wing lawmakers on negotiations over the nation’s debt ceiling, where McCarthy’s right-flank may try to stand in the way of any concessions made in a compromise with President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.

    The former chief’s hands-on role in both the debt fight and the speaker’s battle – details of which have not been previously reported – underscores how Meadows has managed to stay politically relevant even as he covertly navigates potential criminal exposure for his role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

    Meadows is viewed as a critical first-hand witness to the investigations of both special counsel Jack Smith and Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. He’s been ordered to testify before the grand jury in both investigations, and to provide documents to the special counsel after a judge rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    The special counsel’s criminal investigation into January 6 and Trump’s mishandling of classified documents appear to be barreling toward a conclusion. There’s been a flurry of grand jury activity, as anticipation builds for any sign that Meadows is cooperating.

    It is unclear whether Meadows has responded to the special counsel’s requests or appeared in front of that grand jury in Washington. In front of the grand jury in Georgia, Meadows declined to answer questions, one of the grand jurors revealed in February.

    While Meadows has faded from the public spotlight, interviews with more than a dozen Republican lawmakers and aides, Trump allies and political activists in Meadows’ home state of North Carolina show how he has quietly worked to shape conservative policy and wield influence with MAGA-aligned lawmakers — even as his relationship with Trump remains fraught.

    Meadows has maintained a lucrative perch in the conservative world as a senior partner at the Conservative Partnership Institute, the pro-Trump think tank that pays him more than $500,000 and has seen its revenues soar to $45 million since Meadows joined in 2021, according to the group’s tax filings.

    Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Meadows’ closest confidants when they served in Congress together, said he still considers Meadows one of his “best friends” and talks to him “at least” once a week. But when it comes to legal matters, Jordan said: “We make a point not to talk about that.”

    A spokesman for Meadows declined to make him available for an interview and declined comment for this story.

    A source close to Trump’s legal team said Trump’s lawyers have had no contact with Meadows and his team and are in the dark on what Meadows is doing in the investigation, fueling speculation about whether Meadows is cooperating with the special counsel’s probe – or if Meadows himself is a target of the investigation.

    The silence from Meadows has irked lawyers representing other defendants aligned with Trump who have been more open, according to several sources familiar with the Trump-aligned legal teams. In particular, they point to a $900,000 payment Trump’s Save America political action committee paid to the firm representing Meadows, McGuireWoods, at the end of last year.

    “We’ve all heard the same rumors,” one Trump adviser told CNN. “No one really knows what he’s doing though.”

    The Justice Department decided not to charge Meadows with a crime for refusing to testify before the House January 6 committee. In its final report last year, the January 6 House select committee said that Meadows appeared to be one of several participants in a criminal conspiracy as part of Trump’s attempt to delay and overturn the results of the 2020 election. The report paints Meadows as an integral part of that effort, as documented by the more than 2,000 text messages Meadows turned over to the committee before he stopped cooperating.

    Meadows was also the key point of contact for dozens of people trying to get through to the president as the attack was unfolding, and the special counsel’s investigation has been trying to comb over many of those interactions.

    A lawyer for Meadows declined to comment.

    Despite silence on the legal front, Meadows remains in touch with members of Trump’s inner circle on political matters. He was actively involved in securing Trump’s endorsement in 2021 for now-US Sen. Ted Budd ahead of what was a contentious Republican primary in North Carolina. While less-and-less frequently since Trump left office, Meadows has been known to attend fundraisers and events at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he also helped organize a donor retreat for CPI last year.

    “[Meadows] still checks in,” said the Trump adviser, who has spoken to the former chief of staff in recent months. The adviser stressed that Meadows had not indicated any desire to join the Trump campaign team. “He still wants to talk about the politics.”

    Allies say Meadows – who fashioned himself as a savvy political operator during his time in Congress and the White House – is motivated by a desire to help steer the direction of the country. But some people who worked closely with him are more skeptical, and think Meadows is driven by a desire for power.

    “He is all about getting information so he can be seen as important to donors, other members, the media,” said a senior GOP source close to Trump world, who used to work for a Freedom Caucus member. “People don’t trust him.”

    One source close to Meadows suggested that he has not expressed interest in running for office again, but could be open to a job in a future Trump administration – an idea a source close to the former president scoffed at, hinting that Meadows’ direct relationship with the former president had run its course.

    “I think he enjoys what he’s doing,” Jordan said of Meadows’ current gig. But the Ohio Republican added: “I’m sure he misses certain aspects of the job as well. You know how involved Mark was.”

    After leaving the White House in 2021, Meadows joined CPI, a “MAGA”-centric advocacy group headquartered just blocks from the Capitol that has become a clubhouse for conservative lawmakers, staffers and activists.

    Members of the Freedom Caucus hold their weekly meetings at CPI. During the speaker’s race, CPI was home to some consequential strategy sessions involving Meadows.

    Meadows shakes hands with attendees after a forum on House and GOP conference rules for the 118th Congress at FreedomWorks, a conservative and libertarian advocacy group, in Washington, D.C., on Monday, November 14, 2022.

    Sources who attended those meetings say Meadows pushed for concessions like the ability for a single lawmaker to force a vote on ousting the sitting speaker, which McCarthy ultimately agreed to after initially calling it a red line.

    Meadows also encouraged them to push for a committee on the “weaponization” of the federal government, which Jordan now helms as chair of the Judiciary Committee.

    Five months later, some of those same Republicans say they are once again turning to Meadows as they ramp up for a brawl over the debt limit. Meadows has been encouraging the far-right flank of the House caucus to stick together in insisting on spending cuts and other demands in exchange for lifting the nation’s borrowing limit.

    “You’re talking about one of the founding members of the Freedom Caucus,” Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican, said of Meadows.

    “He obviously wants it to continue to be successful. I think it has been. And so I think his role at CPI is to make sure that occurs,” Donalds said, adding that he had not personally spoken to Meadows about the debt limit debate.

    When Meadows is in town, he will occasionally pop into Freedom Caucus meetings at CPI or huddle with members of the group beforehand. Norman said Meadows also recently helped him with a fundraiser in North Carolina. And Meadows is also known to dial up members frequently to talk shop.

    “He called me today and he said that he wanted me to convey to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that he really appreciated her working with me and others on the stock bill,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, a staunch Trump ally, said earlier this month of legislation to restrict lawmakers from trading stocks.

    Aside from outreach to lawmakers, Meadows and CPI have also helped congressional offices find and train conservative staffers, particularly when it comes to conducting oversight, multiple sources familiar with the group’s work told CNN. That issue has been a top priority for the right now that Republicans are in the majority, and it’s also an area of expertise for Meadows, who was previously the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

    “Mark’s in the middle of all that,” Jordan said.

    Meadows has helped usher in a groundswell of fundraising for CPI over the past two years and has been personally involved in a lot of the organizing fundraisers and courting donors, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    According to the non-profit’s tax filings, CPI’s revenues jumped from $7 million in 2020 to more than $45 million in 2021, the year Meadows was brought in as a senior partner to help run the organization with former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who founded CPI in 2017. DeMint was previously ousted from the Heritage Foundation amid tensions with the board.

    Among the donations to CPI: $1 million from Trump’s Save America PAC in 2021.

    Sources familiar with CPI described Meadows as the working head of the advocacy group, which has spent millions of dollars purchasing several buildings just steps from the Capitol over the past two years. The goal, sources say, is to create a community for Trump-aligned “MAGA” conservatives.

    “[CPI] wants Trump conservatives to have a home in Washington,” one source familiar with the organization said, adding that the buildings would be used for a variety of purposes, including for retreats and staff trainings. “Establishment Democrats and the Mitch McConnells have that and it keeps them here. [CPI] wants to keep [Trump Republicans] here.”

    The buildings, purchased under limited liability corporations affiliated with CPI, are just down the street from the group’s current headquarters, blocks from the Capitol. Among the new real estate acquisitions, which were first reported by Grid News, are two storefronts on Pennsylvania Avenue surrounding a Heritage Foundation office, including the space of the old Capitol Lounge bar popular with congressional staffers of both parties.

    There’s even a television studio at CPI so members can do cable TV interviews from the space – Jordan recently did an interview with Fox News from the studio, where he talked about Republican-led investigations into the Biden administration.

    “There’s a real demand for what (CPI) provides to members. A lot of members like to go over there. I just wish I could get over there more,” said Donalds.

    CPI did not respond to requests for comment.

    Yet even as Meadows maintains close connections in Washington through his perch at CPI, the same can’t be said when it comes to the congressional district he once represented.

    Meadows greets supporters in front of senior aide Cassidy Hutchinson during a presidential campaign rally for President Trump in Pennsylvania, on October 31, 2020.

    In North Carolina’s 11th district, conservative political activists say the once-beloved local congressman has lost his luster and made enemies after he waded into both the primary to replace him and the contentious 2022 Republican Senate primary, where Budd defeated former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker.

    “I used to joke it was Jesus and then Mark Meadows in the 11th. He was just a couple rungs below Jesus in western North Carolina. He would arrive and it was like Elvis,” said one Republican activist, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the political environment there. “Now I think he’s just kind of a non-factor if you were to talk to anyone in western North Carolina.”

    Meadows has also decamped from his former congressional district to a home in South Carolina, where he splits his time along with his work in Washington, DC, according to sources.

    After the 2020 election, Meadows got into hot water over his voter registration in North Carolina. The state investigated Meadows over registering to vote at a mobile home in Macon County where he had allegedly never lived or even visited, though the state’s Justice Department said in December there wasn’t sufficient evidence to pursue charges.

    Meadows is now registered to vote in South Carolina, a county election official confirmed to CNN.

    “He disconnected his 828 (area code) number,” the activist said. “Lots of us who had Mark Meadows on speed dial, that was just cut off, boom.”

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  • Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship | CNN Business

    Twitter’s own lawyers refute Elon Musk’s claim that the ‘Twitter Files’ exposed US government censorship | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    For months, Twitter owner Elon Musk and his allies have amplified baseless claims that the US government illegally coerced Twitter into censoring a 2020 New York Post article about Hunter Biden. The foundation for those claims rests on the so-called “Twitter Files,” a series of reports by a set of handpicked journalists who, at Musk’s discretion, were given selective access to historical company archives.

    Now, though, Twitter’s own lawyers are disputing those claims in a case involving former President Donald Trump — forcefully rejecting any suggestion that the Twitter Files show what Musk and many Republicans assert they contain.

    In a court filing last week, Twitter’s attorneys contested one of the most central allegations to emerge from the Twitter Files: that regular communications between the FBI and Twitter ahead of the 2020 election amounted to government coercion to censor content or, worse, that Twitter had become an actual arm of the US government.

    In tweets last year, Musk alleged that the communications showed a clear breach of the US constitution.

    “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” he said of a screenshot purportedly showing Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 asking Twitter to review several tweets it suggested were violations of the company’s terms. Some of the tweets in question included nonconsensual nude images that violated Twitter’s policies.

    In another push to promote misleading allegations of government malfeasance stemming from the Twitter Files, Musk also claimed that the “government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public.”

    Legal experts have said the claim of a constitutional violation is weak because the First Amendment binds the government, not political campaigns, and Trump was president at the time, not Biden. The Twitter Files also show the Trump administration made its own requests for removal of Twitter content. And the payments to Twitter have also been identified as routine reimbursements for responding to subpoenas and investigations, not payments for content moderation decisions.

    “Nothing in the new materials shows any governmental actor compelling or even discussing any content-moderation action with respect to Trump” and others participating in the suit, Twitter argued.

    The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”

    “Instead,” the filing continued, the communications “show that the [FBI] issued general updates about their efforts to combat foreign interference in the 2020 election.”

    The evidence outlined by Twitter’s lawyers is consistent with public statements by former Twitter employees and the FBI, along with prior CNN analysis of the Twitter Files.

    Altogether, the filing by Musk’s own corporate lawyers represents a step-by-step refutation of some of the most explosive claims to come out of the Twitter Files and that in some cases have been promoted by Musk himself.

    Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Even as the filing undercuts Musk’s effort to portray the Twitter Files as a smoking gun, the filing may still work to his benefit because, if successful, it may save Twitter from a costly re-litigation of its handling of Trump’s account and others.

    The communications in question, some of which also came out in a deposition of an FBI agent in a separate case, were invoked last year as part of a bid to revive litigation over Twitter’s banning of Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. The lawsuit had been dismissed last summer, after the federal judge overseeing the case said there was no evidence of a First Amendment violation.

    Musk’s release of company files has given lawyers for Trump and other plaintiffs in the case another shot. If the court decides the new evidence is enough to suspend the prior judgment, the lawyers for Trump and others said in May, then they might decide to file a fresh amended complaint.

    But Twitter argued last week that the judge should not allow the case to be reopened because nothing in the Twitter Files supports the already dismissed claim of federal coercion.

    Even the FBI’s flagging of specific problematic tweets were merely suggestions that they might violate Twitter’s terms of service, not a request that they be removed or an implication of retribution if Twitter failed to take the tweets down, Twitter’s lawyers said.

    Citing another case, Twitter wrote: “The FBI’s ‘flags’ cannot amount to coercion because there was ‘no intimation that Twitter would suffer adverse consequences if it refused.’”

    Twitter also objected to the claim, amplified by Musk, that Twitter was paid to censor conservative speech when it sought reimbursement for complying with government requests for user data.

    “The reimbursements were not for responding to requests to remove any accounts or content and thus are wholly irrelevant to Plaintiffs’ joint-action theory,” Twitter wrote.

    It added: “The new materials demonstrate only that Twitter exercised its statutory right—provided to all private actors—to seek reimbursement for time spent processing a government official’s legal requests for information under the Stored Communications Act. The payments therefore do not concern content moderation at all—let alone specific requests to take down content.”

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  • Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

    Russian-speaking cyber gang claims credit for hack of BBC and British Airways employee data | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A group of Russian-speaking cyber criminals has claimed credit for a sweeping hack that has compromised employee data at the BBC and British Airways and left US and UK cybersecurity officials scrambling to respond.

    The hackers, known as the CLOP ransomware gang, say they have “information on hundreds of companies.” They’ve given victims until June 14 to discuss a ransom before they start publishing data from companies they claim to have hacked, according to a dark web posting seen by CNN.

    The extortion threat adds urgency to an already high-stakes security incident that has forced responses from tech firms, corporations and government agencies from the US to Canada and the UK.

    The compromise of employee data at the BBC and British Airways came via a breach of a human resources firm, Zellis, that both organizations use.

    “We are aware of a data breach at our third-party supplier, Zellis, and are working closely with them as they urgently investigate the extent of the breach,” a BBC spokesperson told CNN Wednesday. The spokesperson declined to comment on the hackers’ extortion threat.

    A British Airways spokesperson said the company had “notified those colleagues whose personal information has been compromised to provide support and advice.”

    The hackers — a well-known group whose favored malware emerged in 2019 — last week began exploiting a new flaw in a widely used file-transfer software known as MOVEit, appearing to target as many exposed organizations as they could. The opportunistic nature of the hack left a broad swath of organizations vulnerable to extortion.

    Numerous US state government agencies use the MOVEit software, but it’s unclear how many agencies, if any, have been compromised.

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has ordered all federal civilian agencies to update the MOVEit software in light of the hack. No federal agencies have been confirmed as victims, a CISA spokesperson told CNN.

    Together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, CISA also released advice on dealing with the CLOP hack. Progress, the US firm that owns the MoveIT software, has also urged victims to update their software packages and has issued security advice.

    CISA Executive Director for Cybersecurity Eric Goldstein said in a statement: “CISA remains in close contact with Progress Software and our partners at the FBI to understand prevalence within federal agencies and critical infrastructure.”

    But the effort to respond to the cyber attack is very much ongoing.

    The CLOP hackers are “overwhelmed with the number of victims,” according to Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at Mandiant Consulting, a Google-owned firm that has investigated the hack. “Instead of directly reaching out to victims over email or telephone calls like in prior campaigns, they are asking victims to reach out to them via email,” he said on LinkedIn Tuesday night.

    Allan Liska, a ransomware expert at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, also told CNN: “Unfortunately, the sensitive nature of the data often stored on MOVEit servers means there will likely be real consequences stemming from the [data theft] but it will be months before we understand the full fallout from this attack.”

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  • The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why. | CNN Politics

    The Tennessee expulsions reveal the core divide in US politics. Here’s why. | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Rarely have the tectonic plates of American politics collided as visibly and explosively as they did earlier this month in Tennessee.

    The procession of predominantly middle-aged or older White Republicans who rose almost two weeks ago in the Tennessee House of Representatives to castigate, and then expel, two young Black Democrats crystallized the overlapping generational and racial confrontation that underpins the competition between the political parties.

    The Republican vote to expel those Black Democratic representatives, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, encapsulated in a single moment the struggle for control over America’s direction between the nation’s increasingly diverse younger generations and its mostly White older cohorts. While kids of color now comprise just over half of all Americans younger than 18, Whites still constitute about three-fourths of the nation’s seniors, according to Census data analyzed by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings Metro.

    That stark division – what Frey terms “the cultural generation gap” and I’ve called the competition between “the brown and the gray” – has become a central fault line in the nation’s politics. Particularly in the Donald Trump era, the Republican coalition has grown increasingly reliant on older Whites, while younger people of color are evolving into a critical component of the Democratic voting base.

    The priorities and values of these two giant cohorts often clash most explosively in red states across the South and Southwest, like Tennessee, where Republicans now control state government. In those states, Republicans are moving aggressively to lock into law the policy preferences of their older, predominantly White and largely non-urban and Christian electoral coalition. That agenda often collides directly with the views of younger generations on issues including abortion, LGBTQ rights, limits on classroom discussion of race, gender and sexual orientation, book bans, and gun control.

    Across the red states, the conditions are coalescing for years of escalating conflict between these divergent generations. From one direction, the Republicans controlling these states are applying increasingly hardball tactics to advance their policy agenda and entrench their electoral advantage. That strategy includes severe gerrymanders that dilute the influence of urban areas where younger voters often congregate, laws that create obstacles to registering and voting, and extreme legislative maneuvers such as the vote to expel Pearson and Jones. What Republicans in Tennessee and other red states “are trying to do is minimize the voices – minimize the sound, minimize the protest, and continue to oppress folks who do not agree,” says Antonio Arellano, vice president for communications at NextGen America, a group that organizes young people for liberal causes.

    From the other direction, the youngest Millennials and first representatives of Generation Z moving into elected office are throwing themselves more forcefully against these GOP fortifications – just as Jones and Pearson have done. These young, elected officials have been shaped by the past decade of heightened public protests, many of them led by young people, particularly around gun safety, climate change, and racial equity. And more of them are bringing that ethos of direct action into the political arena – as Jones and Pearson did by leading a gun control protest on the floor of the Tennessee legislature. “This generation of politicians have been socialized through the crucible of Black Lives Matter and the [Donald] Trump era and political polarization,” says Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta who studies race and politics. “So it’s not surprising that they are usually going to be confrontational.”

    In the red states, this rising wave of urgency and militancy among younger progressives is crashing headlong into the fortifications Republicans are erecting to solidify their control. Even with the ardor evident from Jones, Pearson and their supporters in Tennessee, most observers agree it will be very difficult any time soon for “the brown” to loosen the grip of “the gray” over political power in almost any of the red states. “In the short term there isn’t a risk” to the GOP’s hold on the red states, said Gillespie, “which is why you see these legislators flexing their power in the way they are.” And that could be a recipe for more tension in those places as the diverse younger generations constitute a growing share of the workforce and tax base, yet find their preferences systematically denied in the decisions of their state governments.

    Like many analysts, Melissa Deckman, chief executive officer of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, predicts that “what we saw in Tennessee was the first salvo” of escalating conflict as older white conservatives, especially in the red states, resist the demands for greater influence from the emerging younger generations. “An overwhelmingly White conservative legislature taking this remarkable and drastic step of expelling the two young African-Americans,” she says, “is a taste of what we are going to see in the future driven by those demographic changes.”

    Those demographic changes are rooted in the generational transition rumbling through American life. Though the tipping point has drawn little attention, Frey has calculated that a majority of the nation’s population has now been born after 1980. And those younger generations are kaleidoscopically more diverse than their older counterparts.

    The change is most visible on race. Because the US essentially shut off immigration between 1924 and 1965, nearly three-fourths of baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) are White, as are more than three-fourths of the remaining seniors from the older generations before them, according to Frey’s figures. By contrast, Frey has calculated, people of color comprise well over two-fifths of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996), just under half of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) and slightly more than half the youngest generation born since 2012. That youngest generation (sometimes called Generation Alpha) will be the first in American history in which racial “minorities” constitute the majority.

    The transition extends to other dimensions of personal identity. The Public Religion Research Institute has calculated that while just 17% of Americans aged 65 or older and 20% of those aged 50-64 do not identify with any organized religion, the share of those “seculars” rises to 32% among those aged 30-49 and 38% among adults 18-29. In turn, while White Christians constitute about half of all adults aged 50-64 and three-fifths of seniors, they comprise only about one-third of those aged 30-49 and only one-fourth of the youngest adults.

    Gender identity and sexual orientation follow the same tracks. Gallup has found that while less than 3% of baby boomers and only 4% of Generation X (born 1965-1980) identify as LGBTQ, that figure jumps to nearly 11% among Millennials and fully 21% among Generation Z. In all these ways, says Deckman, who is writing a book on Gen Z, “you have a younger group of Americans who are more diverse, less religious, care passionately about the rights of marginalized groups, and are watching rights taken away that they thought would always be there.”

    Though the pace and intensity varies, these changes are affecting all corners of the country. Even in states where the GOP has consistently controlled most state offices such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina, the share of adults younger than 45 who are unaffiliated with any religion now equals or exceeds the share who are White Christians, according to detailed results PRRI provided to CNN. By contrast, in those states’ over-45 population, White Christians are at least twice, and often three times, as large a share of the population as seculars.

    Frey has found that in every state the youth population 18 and younger is now more racially diverse than the senior population 65 and older. From 2010 to 2020, in fact, every state except Utah and North Dakota (as well as Washington, DC) saw a decline in their total population of White kids younger than 18. Kids of color now comprise a majority of the youth population in 14 states and at least 40% in another dozen, Frey has found.

    States on that list include many of the places where Republicans have been most forcefully imposing a staunchly conservative social agenda. Kids of color already represent about half or more of the youth population in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona and about two-fifths or more in several others, including Tennessee, Alabama and Arkansas. In many of those states the share of seniors who are White is at least 20 percentage points higher than the share of young people.

    A similarly large “cultural generation gap” is also evident in many blue states, including Nevada, California, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota. The difference is that in states where Democrats are in control, the diverse younger generations are, however imperfectly, included in the political coalition setting state policy. Political analysts in both parties – from Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson to Democratic strategist Terrance Woodbury – point out that Democrats have their own problems with younger voters, who have never been enthusiastic about President Joe Biden, and are expressing disappointment that the party hasn’t made more progress on issues they care about. But in blue states the direction of policy on most key social issues, such as abortion, gun control and LGBTQ rights, aligns with the dominant views among younger generations. And in most blue states, Democrats have prioritized increasing youth turnout and, in many cases, reformed state election laws to ease registration and voting.

    But in the red states, younger voters, especially younger voters of color, are largely excluded from the ruling Republican coalitions, which revolve preponderantly around Whites, especially those who are older, Christian, non-college and non-urban. In 2022, for instance, 80% of younger non-white voters (aged 45 or less) voted against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, 65% voted against GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas, and 55% opposed Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, according to exit poll results provided by Edison Research. Yet all three men won decisive reelections, in large part because each carried about seven-in-ten or more of Whites older than 45.

    In some ways, the generational tug of war between the brown and the gray symbolized by the Tennessee expulsions represents the classic collision between an irresistible force and an immovable object. In this case, the irresistible force is the growth in the electorate of the diverse younger generations. In 2020, for the first time, Millennials and Generation Z constituted as large a share of eligible voters nationwide as did the Baby Boom and its elders – though those older generations, because they turned out at much higher rates, still represented a larger percentage of actual voters. In 2024, Frey has projected, Millennials and Gen Z will comprise a significantly larger share of eligible voters than the boomers and their elders – enough that they will likely equal them as a share of actual voters. Already in several states, kids of color comprise a majority of those who turn 18 each year and become eligible to vote; Frey projects that will be true for the nation overall by 2024.

    The immovable object is the GOP control over the red states. That’s partly because of the changes in electoral rules Republicans have imposed that create obstacles to registration or voting, but also because of their dominance among older Whites and their inroads into culturally conservative Latino voters in some of these states, particularly Texas and Florida.

    Another challenge for Democrats is that youth turnout is often lowest in red states. Though youth turnout also lagged in some blue states including New York and Rhode Island, in an analysis released earlier this month the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University found that red states comprised all nine states where the smallest share of eligible adults aged 18-29 cast a ballot; Tennessee ranked the lowest of the states for which CIRCLE has data. Red states also have erected many of the most overt obstacles to youth participation. Eight Republican-controlled states, including Tennessee, Texas and recently Idaho, have sent a clearly discouraging signal to young voters by declaring that student IDs cannot be used as identification under state voter ID laws. A Texas Republican state legislator this year has proposed banning polling places on college campuses.

    Abby Kiesa, CIRCLE’s deputy director, says that in both blue and red states, laws and social customs act in reinforcing ways to either promote or discourage youth voting. “The infrastructure and the state laws” in states that encourage youth voting like Michigan, Oregon and Colorado “create a stronger culture of engagement,” she said. “Because more people are voting, it is more of a norm, people are talking about it more, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” In states with pronounced barriers to voting, she notes, an opposite cycle of disengagement can take hold.

    The unlikelihood of overcoming the GOP’s red state electoral defenses in the near term will probably encourage more younger progressives to emphasize public protests, like the raucous rally for gun control that began the Tennessee confrontation, predicts Nse Ufot, who formerly led the New Georgia Project launched by Stacey Abrams.

    “The young people in Tennessee … went to their legislators and said enough, and they had accountable, accessible leaders who heard what their demands were and took it to their colleagues and their colleagues didn’t like it,” says Ufot, who has now founded the New South Super PAC, designed to elect progressive candidates in the 11 states of the old confederacy.

    Ufot uses a striking analogy to express her expectation of how this struggle will unfold in the coming years across the red states. Her mother, she explained, ran a shelter for battered women, and even as a young girl, she came to recognize “that the most dangerous time for victims of abuse is when they are preparing to leave, when they have made up their minds that they are done and they are making their exits. That when we see their abusers escalate to crazy tactics.”

    Ufot sees the Tennessee expulsions, like the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Trump’s broader effort to overturn the 2020 result, as evidence that those “who are afraid of what a diverse, reflective, democracy looks like” will likewise turn to more extreme responses as the challenge to their position grows more acute. But she also sees the movement that erupted around Pearson and Jones as a preview of how younger generations may resist that offensive. “Instead of responding with resignation like people who have come before them, [the two expelled representatives] have chosen to do something about it,” she said. “And that’s what happens when you are forged in the fire of protest and are accountable to the people [you represent].”

    As the Republicans now running the red states race to the right, and younger generations lean harder on direct protest, more forging fires across this contested terrain appear inevitable.

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  • ‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics

    ‘Peril to our democracy’: Chilling lines from the judge who sentenced the Oath Keepers’ leader | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Judge Amit Mehta on Thursday handed down an 18-year prison sentence for the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that ended with the violent attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    Before announcing the sentence, however, Mehta, a nominee of former President Barack Obama, delivered a chilling address to Rhodes about the impact of his seditious conspiracy crimes on American democracy.

    The federal judges in Washington, DC, who work just blocks from the US Capitol, have served as a conscience of democracy since January 6. They have rejected defenses that downplay the seriousness of the Capitol attack, spoken out about future dangers to the peaceful transfer of power and – while they have criticized former President Donald Trump – reminded defendants they are responsible for their actions.

    Here are some of the powerful lines from the judge on Thursday:

    “I dare say, Mr. Rhodes – and I never have said this to anyone I have sentenced – you pose an ongoing threat and peril to our democracy and the fabric of this country,” Mehta said.

    “I dare say we all now hold our collective breaths when an election is approaching. Will we have another January 6 again? That remains to be seen.”

    The judge, refuting claims Rhodes made during a 20-minute rant earlier in the day, added: “You are not a political prisoner, Mr. Rhodes. That is not why you are here. It is not because of your beliefs. It is not because Joe Biden is the president right now.”

    The sentence is the first handed down in over a decade for seditious conspiracy and Mehta said he wanted to explain the offense to the public. He did not mince words.

    “A seditious conspiracy, when you take those two concepts and put it together, is among the most serious crimes an American can commit. It is an offense against the government to use force. It is an offense against the people of our country,” the judge said.

    “It is a series of acts in which you and others committed to use force, including potentially with weapons, against the government of the United States as it transitioned from one president to another. And what was the motive? You didn’t like the new guy.”

    “Let me be clear about one thing to you, Mr. Rhodes, and anybody who else that is listening. In this country we don’t paint with a broad brush, and shame on you if you do. Just because somebody supports the former president, it doesn’t mean they are a White supremacist, a White nationalist. It just means they voted for the other guy.”

    “What we absolutely cannot have is a group of citizens who – because they did not like the outcome of an election, who did not believe the law was followed as it should be – foment revolution.”

    Mehta echoed these warnings later Thursday, when addressing a second Oath Keepers defendant, Kelly Meggs.

    “You don’t take to the streets with rifles,” he said. “You don’t hope that the president invokes the insurrection act so you can start a war in the streets… You don’t rush into the US Capitol with the hope to stop the electoral vote count.”

    “It is astonishing to me how average Americans somehow transformed into criminals in the weeks before and on January 6,” the judge said.

    Mehta said Rhodes, 58, has expressed no remorse and continues to be a threat.

    “It would be one thing, Mr. Rhodes, if after January 6 you had looked at what happened that day and said … that was not a good day for our democracy. But you celebrated it, you thought it was a good thing,” the judge said.

    “Even as you have been incarcerated you have continued to allude to violence as an acceptable means to address grievances.”

    “Nothing has changed, Mr. Rhodes, nothing has changed. And the reality is as you sit here today and as we heard you speak, the moment you are released you will be prepared to take up arms against our government. And not because you are a political prisoner, not because of the 2020 election, because you think this is a valid way to address grievances.”

    “American democracy doesn’t work, Mr. Rhodes, if when you think the Constitution has not been complied with it puts you in a bad place, because from what I’m hearing, when you think you are in a bad place, the rest of us are too. We are all the objects of your plans to – and your willingness to – engage in violence.”

    Mehta granted a Justice Department request to enhance the potential sentence against Rhodes, ruling that his actions amounted to domestic terrorism.

    “He was the one giving the orders,” Mehta said. “He was the one organizing the teams that day. He was the reason they were in fact in Washington, DC. Oath Keepers wouldn’t have been there but for Stewart Rhodes, I don’t think anyone contends otherwise. He was the one who gave the order to go, and they went.”

    During the sentencing hearing of Meggs, who was also convicted of seditious conspiracy, the judge again pegged Rhodes as the ringleader.

    “It is in part because of Mr. Rhodes, frankly, that Mr. Meggs is sitting here today.”

    On Wednesday, several police officers and congressional staffers who were at the Capitol on January 6 testified about their experiences, injuries and the aftermath. Mehta said their bravery and actions are also an important legacy of the attack, as officers put their bodies on the line.

    “The other enduring legacy is what we saw yesterday,” the judge said. “It is the heroism of police officers and those working in Congress … to protect democracy as we know it. That is what they are doing.”

    Before he was sentenced, Rhodes addressed the court for 20 minutes about the charges against him, repeating falsehoods about 2020 election fraud, claiming he was a political prisoner and expressing his desire to continue fighting.

    “It’s not simply a conspiracy theory or a false narrative about fraud. It’s about the Constitution,” Rhodes said, later shouting: “I am not able to drop that under my oath. I am not able to ignore the Constitution.”

    The judge had none of that, and compared Rhodes’ comments to the heroism of police officers and others protecting the Capitol: “We want to talk about keeping oaths? There is nobody more emblematic of keeping their oaths, Mr. Rhodes.”

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  • Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics

    Prosecutors say they plan to bring felony charges against man arrested with weapons in Obama’s DC neighborhood | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Federal prosecutors on Thursday said they plan to file felony charges against the man who was arrested last week with firearms in former President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood and accused of threatening several politicians.

    Taylor Taranto, who had an open warrant for his arrest related to charges stemming from his involvement in the US Capitol riot, was arrested last week after claiming on an internet livestream the day before that he had a detonator.

    Taranto has been in police custody since his arrest, and during a hearing Thursday to determine whether he’ll continue to be detained pending his trial for the riot charges, federal prosecutors said they plan to add federal felony charges to the case.

    The prosecutors did not say when exactly they would bring the additional charges. Taranto is currently only facing four misdemeanor charges related to his conduct on January 6, 2021.

    Taranto will continue to remain in custody pending a decision on his detention, federal magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Thursday.

    Faruqui said he is currently in contact with pretrial services in Washington state, where Taranto is believed to have lived recently, to see if Taranto could be supervised by a third-party custodian instead of being held in detention. Pretrial services informed the judge it could take up to a week to evaluate the case.

    Taranto is set to have another detention hearing next Wednesday.

    On Wednesday, prosecutors provided fresh details on Taranto’s online activity before his arrest and threats he made toward prominent politics in recent weeks.

    The government said in a detention memo that Taranto made threats against House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. Earlier in June, Taranto and several others entered an elementary school near Raskin’s home, with Taranto live-streaming the group “walking around the school, entering the gymnasium, and using a projector to display a film related to January 6,” according to the filing.

    Taranto stated that he specifically chose the elementary school due to its proximity to Raskin’s home and that he is targeting Raskin because “he’s one of the guys that hates January 6 people, or more like Trump supporters, and it’s kind of like sending a shockwave through him because I did nothing wrong and he’s probably freaking out and saying s*** like, ‘Well he’s stalking me,’” the filing said.

    “Taranto further comments, ‘I didn’t tell anyone where he lives ‘cause I want him all to myself,’ and ‘That was Piney Branch Elementary School in Maryland…right next to where Rep. Raskin and his wife live,’” the memo said.

    On June 28, according to prosecutors, Taranto made “ominous comments” on video referencing McCarthy, saying: “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”

    After seeing those “threatening comments,” law enforcement tried to locate Taranto but weren’t successful, prosecutors said.

    The following day, on June 29, “former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed was the address of Former President Barack Obama on the social media platform Truth Social,” prosecutors wrote in their memo. “Taranto used his own Truth Social account to re-post the address. On Telegram, Taranto then stated, ‘We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.’”

    “Shortly thereafter, Taranto again began live-streaming from his van on his YouTube channel. This time, Taranto was driving through the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington D.C.,” prosecutors said.

    Prosecutors said Taranto parked his van and began walking around the neighborhood and that because of the “restricted nature of the residential area where Taranto was walking, United States Secret Service uniformed officers began monitoring Taranto almost immediately as soon as he began walking around and filming.”

    Secret Service agents approached Taranto, prompting him to flee, according to the filing, but he was apprehended and arrested.

    The government told the judge that among the items found in Taranto’s van were a “Smith and Wesson M&P Shield” and a “Ceska 9mm CZ Scorpion E3.” They also found “hundreds of rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition, a steering wheel lock, and a machete,” as well as signs, a mattress and other indications Taranto was living in the van.

    This story has been updated with additional details Thursday.

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  • Inside the backchannel communications keeping Donald Trump in the loop on Republican investigations | CNN Politics

    Inside the backchannel communications keeping Donald Trump in the loop on Republican investigations | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump continues to wield enormous power on Capitol Hill as House Republicans seek to curry favor with the former president, pursuing his fixations through their investigations and routinely updating him and his closest advisers on their progress.

    A number of top House GOP lawmakers have disclosed in recent days their efforts to keep the former president informed on the pace and substance of their investigations. Lines of communication appear to go both ways. Not only are Trump, his aides and close allies regularly apprised of Republicans’ committee work, they also at times exert influence over it, multiple people familiar with the talks tell CNN.

    The constant, and sometimes direct, communication between Trump and the committees has emerged as a crucial method for Trump to shape Republicans’ priorities in their newly-won House majority. It also underscores the extraordinary sway an ex-president still holds over his party’s lawmakers and the deference many still afford him.

    That dynamic has been on full display over the past week, as top House Republicans attempted to intervene in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation of hush money payments Trump allegedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. That’s led to an acrimonious back and forth between three powerful Republican committee chairs and Bragg over what, if any, jurisdiction Congress has over the DA’s work.

    House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, the third-ranking House Republican, has become a key point person for Trump on Hill investigations. The New York Republican talks to Trump roughly once a week, and often more, frequently briefing him on the House committees’ work, three sources familiar with their conversations tell CNN. Trump often calls her as well, the sources said.

    Stefanik and Trump spoke several times last week alone, where she walked him through the GOP’s plans for an aggressive response to Bragg.

    GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who serves on the House Oversight Committee, which is conducting a number of investigations into President Joe Biden, also speaks to Trump on a frequent basis. Both she and Stefanik have endorsed Trump’s 2024 presidential bid and are said to be interested in serving as his running mate.

    “I keep him up on everything that we’re doing,” Greene told CNN. “He seems very plugged in at all times. Sometimes I’m shocked at how he knows all these things. I’m like, ‘How do you know all this stuff?’”

    Multiple sources tell CNN that Trump and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan speak regularly but declined to divulge whether those conversations included Jordan’s investigative efforts. 

    “Conversations among concerned parties about issues facing the country are not news and regular order in Congress,” Jordan’s spokesperson Russell Dye said in a statement to CNN.

    Trump, meanwhile, has been regularly briefed on the work of House Oversight Chairman James Comer, but the Kentucky Republican said the two have not spoken since the 2020 presidential election.

    “I haven’t talked to Trump since he was President” Comer told CNN. “Now, I talk to former people that used to work for Trump every now and then. But not about Trump.”

    A source close to Comer added he communicates with “a variety of outside groups, associations and interested parties about the Oversight Committee’s work.”

    At his rally in Waco, Texas on Saturday, Trump publicly thanked Comer and Jordan, saying Comer “has become a great star.”

    The decision of what to investigate also underscores the extent to which Republican-led committees are willing to act as a shield for the embattled former president, as well as attempt to inflict damage on Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

    That includes launching a probe into the House Select Committee that investigated January 6, investigating GOP allegations of Biden family influence peddling, and dropping investigations into foreign spending at Trump-owned properties.

    Trump’s influence on House Republicans has been particularly telling in the way they have gone after Bragg in recent days.

    After Trump on March 18 suggested his arrest was imminent, two days later, Jordan, Comer and Bryan Steil, chair of House Administration Committee, sent a letter to Bragg calling for him to sit down for a transcribed interview with their panels — a move that multiple sources familiar with the letter said was prompted by Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s public condemnation of Bragg’s case.

    The request came after Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina sent a letter to Jordan last month asking him to investigate Bragg’s “egregious abuse of power,” The New York Times first reported and CNN confirmed.

    When Trump isn’t communicating directly with House Republicans himself, he is often doing so through a few top advisers, including those on his payroll and former aides who are still loyal to him, sources tell CNN.

    Boris Epshteyn, a self-described in-house counsel and senior adviser for Trump who is helping coordinate the former president’s legal strategy, has been at the center of the communications, four people familiar with the talks tell CNN.   

    Epshteyn frequently interacts with committee staff, counsel to the chairmen, members of the committee and aides to House leadership, sources said. Epshteyn’s role in the discussions range from being briefed on their work to the pace of the investigations. 

    Brian Jack, a former Trump administration official who joined McCarthy’s team in 2021 to lead his political operation, has also served as a crucial communicator between Trumpworld and the Speaker’s office, multiple source familiar his role said. Jack, who remains an adviser to McCarthy, recently began working on Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign.

    Jack is less involved in communications with the committees themselves, the sources said, but given his role in both McCarthy’s and Trump’s orbit, he’s often the go-to for advice on how to strategize efforts between the Hill and Trump’s team.

    Multiple sources familiar with the backchanneling say much of the talks are less about putting pressure on the committees – as members already know how to maximize their defense of Trump – and more about ensuring Trump’s team is on the same page as congressional Republicans.

    “Trump doesn’t have to tell House GOP committees to investigate, they already are doing investigations that play into Trump’s base and issues: Big Tech censorship, border, Hunter Biden’s business deals, and weaponization of the federal government,” a senior House GOP aide told CNN.

    A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

    Members on key investigative committees also keep in regular contact with Trump-aligned grassroots groups about investigations. Some of those groups have grown frustrated in recent weeks with how the House panels are conducting their work, including the time it took to hire individuals and get the investigative work started, multiple sources familiar with the matter said.

    GOP Rep. Dan Bishop, who serves on the weaponization subpanel, told CNN, “We’ve heard from outside groups a fair amount about ideas and recommendations.”

    Heritage Foundation president Dr. Kevin Roberts said in a statement to CNN, “Conservatives have high expectations for these committees to begin the process of de-weaponizing the federal government because the very fabric of our society is at stake.”

    A number of these Trump-affiliated groups have urged the GOP-led committees to move more aggressively against Biden.

    “We can’t have two years of hearings and then a report,” President of Judicial Watch Tom Fitton told CNN, referring to the pressure his group has placed on Congress to act immediately on the abuses of power that he sees happening, including “censoring Americans and trying to jail those who are perceived as political opponents.”

    Fitton said he has appreciated how House Republicans have updated the public on an “ongoing basis as opposed to just sitting on material” and added “if they don’t seem to be going in the right direction, there will be some pushback.”

    A number of other Trump-affiliated groups have urged GOP-led committees to move more aggressively against Biden. That includes the Conservative Partnership Institute, run by former GOP Sen. Jim DeMint and now home to Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and the Center for Renewing America, run by Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought.

    Staffers close to Jordan are in regular communication with outside groups, and to assuage the tensions that have arisen at times, they have explained that investigations take time to build, according to multiple sources familiar with the communications.

    “I’ve been raising holy hell because this weaponization committee has been structured to fail from Day One,” said Mike Davis, a former top aide to Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley and founder of the Article III Project, which advocates for “constitutionalist judges.”

    “We’ve known since November that we were going to have these committees,” said Davis. “And they’re just now starting to get their act together.”

    Davis added that he has spoken at length with many of the outside groups about their concerns – though he has recently praised Jordan for calling on Bragg to testify, calling it “a step in the right direction” and even tweeted a number of times in support of Jordan.

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  • Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

    Trump again refuses to concede 2020 election while taking questions from New Hampshire GOP primary voters | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, once again refused to concede that he lost the 2020 election and repeated false claims about it being stolen at a CNN town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday.

    Taking questions from GOP primary voters at the town hall moderated by “CNN This Morning” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Trump remained defiant about the 2020 election as well as the myriad investigations into him – making clear that he’s sticking to the script he’s delivered over the past two years on conservative media.

    The town hall at Saint Anselm College – his first appearance on CNN since 2016 – came as unprecedented legal clouds hang over him as he seeks to become only the second commander in chief ever elected to two nonconsecutive terms. New Hampshire, home to the first-in-the-nation GOP primary, is also home to many swing voters and is a state he lost in both 2016 and 2020 after winning the primaries.

    The audience of Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the GOP primary cheered Trump throughout the evening, including when he attacked Tuesday’s jury verdict that found he sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump mocked Carroll on Wednesday while downplaying the significance of the $5 million the jury awarded her for battery and defamation.

    The former president said he would pardon “a large portion” of the rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and even pulled out a printout of his own tweets from that day in an attempt to deflect blame as Collins pressed him on why he waited three hours before telling the rioters to leave the Capitol.

    “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said Wednesday night.

    When Collins pressed Trump on the Manhattan federal jury finding Trump sexually abused Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996, Trump suggested it was helping his poll numbers.

    When asked if the jury’s decision would deter women from voting for him, the former president said, “No, I don’t think so.”

    Trump insulted Carroll, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and even Collins when she pressed him on a question about why he hadn’t returned classified documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

    “It’s very simple – you’re a nasty person, I’ll tell you,” Trump said on stage.

    Trump also took questions from New Hampshire voters on the economy and policy issues, such as abortion. The former president, who solidified the conservative majority on the Supreme Court that struck down Roe v. Wade, repeatedly declined to say whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if he won a second term.

    Trump suggested Republicans should refuse to raise the debt limit if the White House does not agree to spending cuts.

    “I say to the Republicans out there – congressmen, senators – if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default, and I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave, will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen, but it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors,” Trump said.

    When Collins asked him to clarify whether the US should default if the White House doesn’t agree to cuts, Trump said, “We might as well do it now than do it later.”

    Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Trump also faces potential legal peril in both Washington, DC – where a special counsel is leading a pair of investigations – and in Georgia, where the Fulton County district attorney plans to announce charges this summer from the investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

    Still, the twice-impeached former president has repeatedly said that any charges will not stop him from running for president, dismissing all of the investigations as politically motivated witch hunts. That’s a view many GOP voters share, according to recent surveys. Nearly 70% of Republican primary voters in a recent NBC News poll said investigations into the former president “are politically motivated” and that “no other candidate is like him, we must support him.”

    Trump was pressed on the investigation into his handling of classified documents and why he didn’t return all of the documents in his possession after receiving a subpoena. He responded by pointing out the classified documents found at the homes of others – including President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. But they both returned the documents once they discovered they had them in their possession.

    The FBI obtained a search warrant and retrieved more than 100 classified documents from Trump’s Florida resort in August 2022, which came after he had received a subpoena to return documents in June 2022 and after his attorney had asserted that all classified material in his possession had been returned.

    Asked during the town hall whether he showed the classified documents to anyone at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said, “Not really.”

    The former president would not say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to win the war during Wednesday’s town hall, instead saying that he wants the war to end.

    “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing. I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” he said.

    When asked again whether or not the former president wants Ukraine to win, Trump did not answer directly, but instead claimed that he would be able to end the war in 24 hours.

    “Russians and Ukrainians, I want them to stop dying,” Trump said. “And I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

    Trump said he thinks that “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin made a mistake” by invading Ukraine, but he stopped short of saying that Putin is a war criminal.

    That’s something that “should be discussed later,” Trump said.

    “If you say he’s a war criminal, it’s going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to make this thing stopped,” he said.

    While a handful of rivals have entered the Republican presidential primary – and Trump’s biggest potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has not yet officially launched a bid – Trump has maintained a healthy lead in early GOP primary polling. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Trump unprompted when asked who they would like to see the party nominate in 2024, compared with 20% naming DeSantis, and 2% or less naming any other candidate.

    Trump’s participation in the town hall was indicative of a broader campaign strategy to try to expand his appeal beyond conservative media viewers, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported earlier Wednesday. He’s surrounded himself with a more organized team and has been making smaller retail politics stops while scaling back larger rallies – signs of a more traditional campaign than his 2016 and 2020 operations. He lost that 2020 race by about 7 million votes, although he continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him – claims he stuck to on Wednesday night.

    There have been warning signs for the GOP that the obsession with the 2020 election isn’t palatable beyond the base. Many of Trump’s handpicked candidates who embraced his election lies in swing states lost in last year’s midterm elections. And his advisers acknowledge he still has work to do to engage with Republican voters outside of his loyal base of supporters, multiple sources told CNN.

    But that didn’t mean Trump was ready to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election. And if he becomes the GOP nominee in 2024, Trump said Wednesday he would not commit to accepting the results regardless of the outcome, saying that he would do so if he believes “it’s an honest election.”

    “If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.

    This story has been updated with additional details from the town hall.

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  • Biden and Sunak meet amid a turning point in the Russia-Ukraine war | CNN Politics

    Biden and Sunak meet amid a turning point in the Russia-Ukraine war | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    When United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited the White House on Thursday, he hoped a shared perspective on Ukraine and a new push for economic partnership could reinforce what has been a steady, if rather business-like, working relationship.

    For President Joe Biden and his team, a relatively low-key prime minister whose term has outlasted a wilting head of lettuce – unlike his predecessor’s – is reason enough for celebration.

    “There is no issue of global importance, none, that our nations are not leading together and where we’re not sharing our common values to make things better,” Biden said at the start of a news conference, during which the leaders unveiled a new economic partnership that stopped short of a free trade agreement.

    Stability in 10 Downing Street has allowed for better coordination on Ukraine, according to officials, and helped resolve a festering dispute over Northern Ireland trade rules. Sunak’s pragmatic approach in some ways mirrors Biden’s, even if they hold opposing ideological outlooks.

    That made Thursday’s meeting in the Oval Office – Sunak’s first since taking office – a key moment for the men as they look to deepen their relationship.

    As the meeting got underway, Biden thanked Sunak for his partnership on Ukraine, and hailed the relationship between their two countries.

    “You know Prime Minister Churchill and Roosevelt met here a little over 70 years ago and they asserted that the strength of the partnership between Great Britain and the United States was strength of the free world. I still think there’s truth to that assertion,” Biden said.

    The talks come at a turning point in the Russia-Ukraine war, following the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam and ahead of a widely expected counteroffensive meant to retake territory. The White House said Ukraine would be “top of mind” in Thursday’s meeting.

    In his news conference, Biden said he was confident that Congress would continue providing support for Ukraine, despite a divide among Republicans.

    “The fact of the matter is that I believe we’ll have the funding necessary to support Ukraine as long as it takes,” Biden said. “I believe that we’re going to get that support, it will be real.”

    As he began his visit in Washington, Sunak said Wednesday it is “too early” to determine what caused the destruction of the dam in southern Ukraine’s Kherson region.

    “Our military and security services are currently investigating it. But if it is intentional, it would represent an unprecedented level of barbarism,” he told Sky News in Washington.

    The US and UK have been the leading contributors of military aid to Ukraine, and are coordinating on providing F-16 fighter jets to reinforce long-term deterrence against Russia.

    At the same time, Sunak is coming into the meeting with major economic priorities, including a push for closer investment links and more resilient supply chains.

    He’s also expected to deliver a pitch on making Britain a world leader on developing and regulating artificial intelligence – an area that a British official said was “very much on the prime minister’s mind” and that Biden’s aides are also watching closely. Because of Britain’s exit from the EU, the country has been left out of talks with the US and Europe on the emerging technology. Sunak, who studied in Silicon Valley and views tech as a key issue, is proposing a summit meeting in the fall to discuss AI.

    Biden said he was looking at “watermarks on everything that has to do with, produced by AI,” and acknowledged the technology’s potential for both good but also “great damage.”

    Ahead of the visit, Sunak cast his economic objectives as directly linked to the security agenda.

    “The UK and US have always worked in lockstep to protect our people and uphold our way of life. As the challenges and threats we face change, we need to build an alliance that also protects our economies,” he said. “Just as interoperability between our militaries has given us a battlefield advantage over our adversaries, greater economic interoperability will give us a crucial edge in the decades ahead.”

    Not on the agenda, according to US and UK officials, is a new bilateral trade deal, which had been discussed under former President Donald Trump but now remains on ice.

    The broad agenda reflects the typically extensive list of issues between the two nations, whose partnership is nearly always described by their leaders as a “special relationship.” Indeed, officials in London and Washington both describe the bond between Biden and Sunak as warm and friendly, as would be expected between the leaders of two countries so closely aligned.

    When Biden met Sunak in San Diego earlier this year, he made reference to the condo the Stanford MBA graduate maintains in California.

    “That’s why I’m being very nice to you, maybe you can invite me to your home,” Biden said, perhaps unknowingly raising what has been a controversial issue for the prime minister.

    Still, there are undeniable differences between the two men, not least on issues of government economic intervention and the complicated exit of Britain from the European Union.

    Few see Biden and Sunak developing a transatlantic friendship akin to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, or Barack Obama and David Cameron (who called each other “bro”).

    While the two men have encountered each other several times over the past year, including last month at the Group of 7 summit in Japan, it will be Sunak’s first time at the White House for formal talks since he assumed the premiership in October.

    Sunak traveled to San Diego in March for a three-way defense summit and met with Biden in Belfast during the president’s visit to Northern Ireland in April. Yet that meeting was only a brief chat over tea; Biden spent most of his visit to Ireland exploring his ancestral roots.

    There is little question the two men hold very different political ideologies, even if they share a pragmatic, low-drama style – at least compared with their predecessors.

    Some members of Sunak’s government have openly criticized Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, calling green subsidies included in the package protectionist and warning they would harm American allies. And Sunak has voiced a more limited view of government’s role in the economy, akin to his ideological predecessor Thatcher.

    Biden’s intense interest in resolving a long-festering dispute in Northern Ireland over trade rules has also caused tension. He said after visiting the island in April his trip was intended “to make sure the Brits didn’t screw around” with the region’s peace structure – a comment that only intensified views among unionists of his pro-Irish allegiances.

    There are also generational differences; at 43, Sunak is the youngest leader in the G7 club of industrial democracies while Biden is the oldest at 80.

    Still, Sunak has acted as a stabilizing force at 10 Downing Street after a tumultuous period that saw three prime ministers take the job over the course of two months.

    Biden and his aides made little attempt to disguise their frustrations with Boris Johnson, a top Brexit proponent. His successor, Liz Truss, was barely in office long enough for Biden to form a full opinion.

    By comparison, Sunak has sought to resolve some of the sticky issues that felled his predecessors. He did strike an agreement with the European Union on trade rules in Northern Ireland, though the deal wasn’t enough to bring unionists back to a power sharing government

    And he has been a staunch proponent of economic and military support for Ukraine, most recently in a pledge to help train Ukrainian pilots on western fighter jets.

    One area of discussion likely to arise will be NATO’s next secretary general. Sunak has been lobbying for the British defense secretary Ben Wallace, but other candidates are also thought to be under consideration. The job is typically reserved for a European but would require Biden’s sign-off.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

    Pentagon watchdog finds some Western weaponry sent to Ukraine was stolen before being recovered last year | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.

    The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.

    But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.

    According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”

    “The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.

    The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.

    But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.

    Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

    CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.

    “We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

    US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.

    The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”

    Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.

    In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.

    That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.

    And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”

    The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.

    The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.

    The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.

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  • FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

    FDA requires medical devices be secured against cyberattacks | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The Food and Drug Administration will now require medical devices meet specific cybersecurity guidelines after years of concerns that a growing number of internet-connected products used by hospitals and healthcare providers could be hit by hacks and ransomware attacks.

    Under FDA guidance issued this week, all new medical device applicants must now submit a plan on how to “monitor, identify, and address” cybersecurity issues, as well as create a process that provides “reasonable assurance” that the device in question is protected. Applicants will also need to make security updates and patches available on a regular schedule and in critical situations, and provide the FDA with “a software bill of materials,” including any open-source or other software their devices use.

    The new security requirements came into effect as part of the sweeping $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill signed by President Joe Biden in December. As part of the new law, the FDA must also update its medical device cybersecurity guidance at least every two years.

    A 2022 report released by the FBI cited research finding 53% of digital medical devices and other internet-connected products in hospitals had known critical vulnerabilities. The report listed a number of medical devices that are susceptible to cyber attacks, including insulin pumps, intracardiac defibrillators, mobile cardiac telemetry and pacemakers.

    “Malign actors who compromise these devices can direct them to give inaccurate readings, administer drug overdoses, or otherwise endanger patient health,” according to the FBI report.

    In 2021, a group of researchers investigating software used in medical devices and machinery used in other industries found over a dozen vulnerabilities that, if exploited by a hacker, could cause critical equipment such as patient monitors to crash.

    The FDA has faced criticisms over the years for not doing enough.

    A 2018 report from the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General said the FDA was not adequately protecting devices from getting hacked.

    “FDA had plans and processes for addressing certain medical device problems in the postmarket phase, but its plans and processes were deficient for addressing medical device cybersecurity compromises,” the report said.

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  • Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

    Exclusive: National security officials tell special counsel Trump was repeatedly warned he did not have the authority to seize voting machines | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Former top national security officials have testified to a federal grand jury that they repeatedly told former President Donald Trump and his allies that the government didn’t have the authority to seize voting machines after the 2020 election, CNN has learned.

    Chad Wolf, the former acting Homeland Security secretary, and his former deputy Ken Cuccinelli were asked about discussions inside the administration around DHS seizing voting machines when they appeared before the grand jury earlier this year, according to three people familiar with the proceedings. Cuccinelli testified that he “made clear at all times” that DHS did not have the authority to take such a step, one of the sources said.

    Trump’s former national security adviser Robert O’Brien, in a closed-door interview with federal prosecutors earlier this year, also recounted conversations about seizing voting machines after the 2020 election, including during a heated Oval Office meeting that Trump participated in, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    Details about the secret grand jury testimony and O’Brien’s interview, neither of which have been previously reported, illustrate how special counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutors are looking at the various ways Trump tried to overturn his electoral loss despite some of his top officials advising him against the ideas.

    Now some of those same officials, including Wolf, Cuccinelli and O’Brien, as well as others who have so far refused to testify, may have to return to the grand jury in Washington, DC, to provide additional testimony after a series of pivotal court rulings that were revealed in recent weeks rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

    Cuccinelli was spotted going back into the grand jury on Tuesday, April 4.

    Without that privilege shield, former officials must answer questions about their interactions and conversations with the former president, including what he was told about the lack of evidence for election fraud and the legal remedies he could pursue.

    That line of questioning goes to the heart of Smith’s challenge in any criminal case he might bring – to prove that Trump and his allies pursued their efforts despite knowing their fraud claims were false or their gambits weren’t lawful. To bring any potential criminal charges, prosecutors would have to overcome Trump’s public claim that he believed then and now that fraud really did cost him the election.

    “There’s lots of ways you can show that. But certainly one of them is if they were told by people who knew what they were talking about, that that there was no basis to take the actions,” said Adav Noti, an election law attorney who previously served in the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC, and at the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office.

    “I would not want to be a defense lawyer trying to argue, ‘Well, yes, my client was told that, but he never really believed it,’” Noti said.

    Inside the Trump White House after the 2020 election, the push to seize voting machines eventually led to executive orders being drafted in mid-December of that year, directing the military and DHS to carry out the task despite Wolf and Cuccinelli telling Trump and his allies their agency did not have the authority to do so.

    Those orders, which cited debunked claims about voting system irregularities in Michigan and Georgia, were presented to Trump by his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and then-lawyer Sidney Powell during a now-infamous Oval Office meeting on December 18.

    Smith’s team has asked witnesses about that meeting in front of the grand jury and during closed-door interviews, multiple sources told CNN. Among them was O’Brien, who told the January 6 House select committee that he was patched into the December 18 meeting by phone after it had already devolved into a screaming match between Flynn, Powell and White House lawyers, according to a transcript of O’Brien’s deposition that was released by the panel.

    O’Brien told the committee that at some point someone asked him if there was evidence of election fraud or foreign interference in the voting machines. “And I said, ‘No, we’ve looked into that and there’s no evidence of it,” O’Brien said he responded. “I was told we didn’t have any evidence of any voter machine fraud in the 2020 election.”

    When asked about that meeting by federal prosecutors working for Smith, O’Brien reiterated that he made clear there was no evidence of foreign interference affecting voting machines, according to the source familiar with the matter.

    O’Brien met with prosecutors earlier this year after receiving a subpoena from Smith’s team and is among the Trump officials who could be called back to discuss conversations with Trump under the judge’s recent decision on executive privilege.

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who personally told allies of the former president that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud that would justify taking extreme steps like seizing voting machines, must also testify, the judge decided.

    A spokesperson for Ratcliffe did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. Wolf declined to comment.

    Cuccinelli acknowledged to the January 6 committee last year that, after the election, he was asked several times by Trump’s then-attorney Rudy Giuliani, and on at least one occasion by Trump himself, if DHS had authority to seize voting machines. Wolf told the committee he was repeatedly asked the same question by then White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

    Giuliani, who was subpoenaed by the Justice Department before Smith took over the investigation, previously acknowledged to the January 6 committee that he participated in that December 18 Oval Office meeting and other conversations about having DHS and the military seize voting machines.

    Giuliani told congressional investigators that he and his team “tried many different ways to see if we could get the machines seized,” including options involving DHS, according to the transcript of his committee interview. Giuliani also acknowledged taking part in conversations – even before the Dec. 18 Oval Office meeting – where the idea of using the military to seize voting machines was raised.

    “I can remember the issue of the military coming up much earlier and constantly saying, ‘Will you forget about it, please? Just shut up. You want to go to jail? Just shut up. We’re not using the military,’” he added.

    Robert Costello, an attorney for Giuliani, told CNN that Giuliani has not received a subpoena from Smith. Costello said that in early November, Giuliani was subpoenaed by the DC US Attorney seeking documents and testimony. Costello says he told the Justice Department Giuliani couldn’t comply with the given deadlines because they were in the middle of disciplinary proceedings at the time. That was the last time Giuliani heard from DOJ, says Costello.

    “I haven’t heard a word since November 2022,” Costello told CNN on March 30.

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  • Jessica Watkins: Oath Keepers member and Army veteran sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for January 6 | CNN Politics

    Jessica Watkins: Oath Keepers member and Army veteran sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for January 6 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Jessica Watkins, an Army veteran and member of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced Friday to 8.5 years in prison for participating in a plot to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election culminating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Judge Amit Mehta said Watkins’ efforts at the Capitol were “aggressive” and said she did not have immediate remorse, even though she has since apologized.

    “Your role that day was more aggressive, more assaultive, more purposeful than perhaps others’. And you led others to fulfill your purposes,” Mehta said. “And there was not in the immediate aftermath any sense of shame or contrition, just the opposite. Your comments were celebratory and lacked a real sense of the gravity of that day and your role in it.”

    At trial, prosecutors showed evidence that Watkins founded and led a small militia in Ohio and mobilized her group in coordination with the Oath Keepers to Washington, DC, on January 6. Watkins and her counterparts ultimately marched in tactical gear to the Capitol and encouraged other rioters to push past police outside the Senate chamber.

    “I was just another idiot running around the hallway,” Watkins told the court before the sentence was handed down Friday. “But idiots are responsible, and today you are going to hold this idiot responsible.”

    Two of Watkins’ codefendants, Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, were sentenced Thursday to 18 and 12 years in prison, respectively, for seditious conspiracy.

    Unlike Rhodes and Meggs, Watkins was acquitted of the top charge of seditious conspiracy, but convicted of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding – which carries the same 20-year maximum prison sentence as seditious conspiracy – as well as other felony charges.

    “Nobody would suggest you are Stewart Rhodes, and I don’t think you are Kelly Meggs,” Mehta told Watkins on Friday. “But your role in those events is more than that of just a foot soldier. I think you can appreciate that.”

    Watkins, who is transgender, gave emotional testimony during the trial about struggling with her identity in the Army while the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was still in effect, and about being dragged into the underbelly of conspiracy theories around the 2020 presidential election.

    She tearfully reiterated to the judge on Friday that she was “very fearful and paranoid” at that time, and that while “for a long time I was in denial of my own culpability,” she now “can see my actions for what they were – they were wrong and I am sorry.”

    “I understand now that my presence in and around the Capitol that day probably inspired those individuals to a degree,” Watkins said. “They saw us there and that probably fired them up. Oath Keepers are here, and they were patting us on the back.”

    She continued: “How many people went in because of us? We’re responsible for that.”

    Prosecutor Alexandra Hughes disagreed, telling Mehta that Watkins was not remorseful.

    Hughes quoted a January phone call from jail, in which Watkins allegedly said of officers at the Capitol “boo hoo the poor little police officers, got a little PTSD, waaaa, I had to stand there and hold a door open for people waaaaaa.”

    “It is perhaps an unsurprising fact of human nature that those who are subjected to injustice occasionally bring injustice on others,” Hughes said. “We do not dispute what she has been through, but what she did on that day has deep and devastating – devastating – effects on individuals who showed up to work that day and never did anything to Jessica Watkins.”

    Before handing down the sentence, Mehta addressed Watkins’ traumatic history directly, saying that “I think you would not have a human … who heard your testimony and would not have been moved.”

    “Your story itself shows a great deal of courage and resilience,” Mehta said. “You have overcome a lot, and you are to be held out as someone who can actually be a role model for other people in that journey. And I say that at a time when people who are trans in our country are so often vilified and used for political purposes.”

    The judge added: “It makes it all the more hard for me to understand the lack of empathy for those who suffered that day.”

    Surveillance footage shows Kenneth Harrelson in the hallway of the Comfort Inn in Arlington, Virginia, on January 7, 2021.

    Kenneth Harrelson, an Oath Keeper from Florida who chanted “treason” inside the Capitol on January 6, was also sentenced Friday to four years in prison for his role in the sprawling conspiracy.

    Prosecutors alleged that Harrelson was appointed the “ground team leader” of the Oath Keepers on January 6, stockpiled weapons at a so-called quick reaction force just outside Washington, DC, and moved through the Capitol chanting “treason.”

    In an address to the judge before he was sentenced, Harrelson said that he has “no gripes against the government, then or now” and merely “got in the wrong car at the wrong time and went to the wrong place with the wrong people.”

    “I didn’t have a clue,” Harrelson said. “It’s not to say I didn’t have signs or warnings that I should have paid attention to, but it just didn’t register.”

    He continued, at times sobbing and supporting his body with a lectern inside the well of the court: “I don’t know why. I have destroyed my life and I am fully responsible.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Two very different points of view on nuclear energy in the US | CNN Politics

    Two very different points of view on nuclear energy in the US | CNN Politics

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



    CNN
     — 

    Two distinct and unrelated stories this week convinced me it was a good moment to look at nuclear power in the US.

    Those developments, which might give anyone pause about the future of nuclear power, are counteracted by other headlines.

    The opening of a new nuclear plant in Georgia, for example, will bring carbon emission-free energy at exactly the time worldwide temperature records drive home the reality of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

    Germany made the decision to decommission all of its nuclear plants after disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima. The last nuclear reactor there was taken offline earlier this year, a decision some might have regretted after Germany’s access to Russian natural gas was threatened by the war in Ukraine.

    Next door, France is the worldwide nuclear leader. Most of its electricity is generated by nuclear power.

    Russia, while it has been ostracized from the world economy in almost every way since its invasion of Ukraine, remains a major player in nuclear power. It enriches and sells uranium through its state-controlled nuclear energy company, Rosatom, which builds and operates plants around the world, according to a March report from CNN’s Clare Sebastian that explains why the West has largely left Russia’s nuclear power industry alone.

    But it is China that is moving the quickest toward nuclear power production, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

    As of 2022, about 18% of US electricity is generated by nuclear power, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Most large US nuclear reactors are old – averaging 40 years or more.

    In addition to the Georgia reactor coming online, a new reactor began operating in Tennessee in 2016. But otherwise, the US nuclear power portfolio is old, and much of it is in need of improvement.

    For an idea of the money and corruption that can revolve around energy production, look at the sentencing last week of Ohio’s former House Speaker Larry Householder to 20 years in prison for his involvement in a bribery scheme meant to get the utility company FirstEnergy Corp. a billion-dollar taxpayer bailout for two nuclear plants.

    The bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 included a $6 billion program to provide grants to nuclear reactor owners or operators and stave off closing them.

    More than a dozen reactors have closed early in the US over the past decade, according to the Department of Energy. At least one reactor, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, will be kept open after a more than $1 billion grant.

    Nuclear power – and how aggressively the US and other countries should be pursuing it – is a topic that splits scientists as well.

    I talked to one nuclear expert who said the US should be slow and methodical about nuclear power and another who argued there are multiple, public misperceptions about nuclear power that should be corrected.

    The more circumspect voice is Rodney Ewing, a Stanford University professor and expert on nuclear waste who was chairman of a federal review of nuclear waste procedures. I was put in touch with him by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which aims to “reduce man-made threats to our existence.”

    Despite his decades spent focused on nuclear issues, he said something I found remarkable:

    “I don’t have yet, although I’ve tried for years, a well-formed position for or against nuclear energy,” Ewing said.

    “Too often in the enthusiasm for nuclear energy, a carbon-free source of energy – and in the present situation of the issue of climate change, really a very important existential crisis – it’s easy to say, well, we’ll solve the problems later.”

    He said the issues with nuclear energy – from the potential for disaster to the issue of how to store nuclear waste – should be compared with the potential for renewable alternatives like solar and wind energy.

    The University of Illinois energy professor, David Ruzic – who has a lively YouTube channel, “Illinois EnergyProf,” with multiple videos meant to dispel concerns about nuclear energy – has a much more positive view of nuclear energy’s future.

    Illinois, by the way, generates more nuclear power than any other state. Lawmakers there recently voted to lift a moratorium on new reactor construction that was in place until the federal government can develop a technology for disposing of nuclear waste. That new policy must still be signed by the state’s governor.

    Ruzic argues nuclear waste takes up such little space it should simply be encased in yards of solid concrete and kept at the site of nuclear reactors. The concrete, he argued, can be repaired every 70 years or so as it degrades.

    “Over the 60 years we’ve been doing this commercially, we have learned so much about how to do it extremely safely and very well,” Ruzic said, arguing that the new plant in Georgia would not be affected by an earthquake and tidal wave in the way that Fukushima was, because the new reactor in Georgia is cooled by air in case of an emergency.

    He argued that even in Fukushima, it’s important to note that there were no deaths associated with the radiation due to the failure of the plant, although many thousands were evacuated.

    Any concern you can find to raise about nuclear power, Ruzic has a ready answer. He said no one should worry about the radioactive water Japan plans to release into the ocean from Fukushima because there is a level of radioactivity in everything already.

    “You are adding something trivial and inconsequential, which will be diluted even more,” Ruzic said.

    Even the Russia-Ukraine standoff over the Zaporizhzhia plant does not concern Ruzic; the biggest threat he sees, assuming it is not targeted by bunker-busting bombs, is that the plant ceases making electricity – not that it could turn into another Chernobyl.

    “It’s really unfortunate that it’s in the middle of a war zone. But it’s also really unfortunate that chemical plants or coal plants or other plants are in the middle of a war zone as well,” he argued.

    Both professors brought up the push toward small, modular nuclear technology for which there are numerous companies speculating there will be a major market. That market could grow exponentially if the government decides to put a tax on carbon emissions to account for the harm they cause.

    Ewing argued there is not a clear US national energy strategy, and that means numerous state and federal agencies and private companies are searching, often at odds with each other, for something new. The expense and difficulty of developing nuclear technology will be a roadblock. The new Georgia plant took more than a decade to build and came in over budget.

    Ruzic said that after the initial capital expenditure, the relative low cost of fuel for nuclear plants makes them a good, long-term investment.

    When I came back to Ewing about his comment that he has no clear preference for or against nuclear energy, he said the broad question overlooks too much.

    “The nuclear landscape is, from a technical and social point of view, complicated enough that broad general positions really don’t serve us very well,” he said.

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  • US troops restricted to American base in Niger | CNN Politics

    US troops restricted to American base in Niger | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US troops in Niger have been restricted to the American military base in Agadez, Niger, as the Biden administration works to restore democratically-elected President Mohamed Bazoum to power.

    A US military official said the approximately 1,000 troops were “retrograded” back to the base last week, shortly after Bazoum was seized by members of the presidential guard on Wednesday.

    The US has not yet formally decided if the situation constitutes a coup – a designation that would require the US to cut foreign and military assistance to the Nigerien government, which could have serious consequences for the fight against terrorism and stability in the region. There is no timeframe in which the US is required to make a coup designation.

    “We’re working really, really hard to see if we can turn this around,” said a senior State Department official on Monday. “Since the situation is not yet set and concrete, we think we should try and take that opportunity.”

    On Thursday, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley spoke with his counterpart in Niger.

    “The two leaders discussed the safety of Americans and the developing situation in Niger,” Col. Dave Butler said in a statement Monday.

    US officials continue to stress that the situation is incredibly fluid, and that their focus is on diplomatic efforts, along with regional partners, to restore democratic rule in Niger.

    The US overall force posture in the country has not changed, as that would require a separate policy decision. But the Pentagon is engaging in “strategic patience as we monitor the situation and see how it resolves itself,” the military official said.

    The US has had troops in Niger for around a decade, mostly advising and training Nigerien forces on counterterrorism efforts.

    The senior State Department official said Monday that the situation on the ground is relatively calm.

    “There’s really no unrest in the city or the country. It’s really all focused on the president’s residence,” where Bazoum is detained, the official said.

    The US continues to perceive the takeover as stemming from an internal domestic dispute between Bazoum and the head of the presidential guard, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani, who was appointed by the previous president and believed he was going to be dismissed.

    In the days since, Nigerien forces have come out in support of the putschists, though the senior State Department official said that “in subsequent conversations with some key military leaders, they’ve told us that they did not object to what was taking place because they couldn’t figure out how to get the presidential guard to stand down without risk to the life of the President and his family, because the presidential guard had surrounded the president’s residence.”

    The official said it does not appear that Tiani has been able to build consensus among the military on his actions, and that his decision to name himself as president “might have been a surprise to some of the other military leaders in country.”

    “We don’t have an understanding that he is wildly popular,” the official said.

    There are still no indications that groups like Wagner have played any role in the takeover or subsequent protests, but “of course, it is our expectation – you’ve already seen (Wagner founder and financier Yevgeny) Prigozhin speak – that they’ll try and take advantage of it,” the official said.

    “I think the coup leaders will try and take advantage of the anti-French sentiment in the region,” they added.

    While there have been public protests that appear to support the military takeover, the official said that the US believes the public would prefer a democratic government.

    “It’s our expectation that generally speaking, the public would prefer to have their democratically-elected government and not suffer these consequences. But they may not feel free to speak about it,” the official said.

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  • Microsoft is giving out free cybersecurity tools after an alleged Chinese hack | CNN Business

    Microsoft is giving out free cybersecurity tools after an alleged Chinese hack | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Microsoft is offering free cybersecurity tools to some government and commercial customers following criticism of the tech giant’s handling of a major alleged Chinese hack that compromised US government email accounts.

    Starting in September, Microsoft cloud computing customers won’t have to pay extra money to get access to critical data to help them spot cyberattacks, Microsoft said Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Microsoft’s policy change.

    The move comes after cybersecurity officials privately expressed frustration that Microsoft had not done enough to detect the alleged Chinese cyber-espionage campaign, according to US officials. The campaign hit two-dozen organizations and became public last week. The State Department says it detected the cyber activity in June and reported it to Microsoft.

    The email accounts of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and State Department officials were breached in the activity, CNN has reported.

    One of the victims of the hack was a human rights organization that could not detect the activity because they were not paying for a premium software license, according to US cybersecurity firm Volexity, which works with the human rights organization.

    Logs, or computer files that gather artifacts about a hack, are critical to understanding and thwarting cyberattacks, according to experts. Until now, Microsoft’s business model has involved charging customers extra for access to these logs. With customers worldwide and more data than most other firms in the security industry, Microsoft’s decision could have a broad impact on the security posture of its customers, analysts said.

    The free tools announced on Wednesday “will enable incident response teams, regardless of license level, to conduct more complete investigations,” Sean Koessel, a vice president at Volexity, told CNN.

    “We can’t help but feel this change is long overdue,” Koessel told CNN, adding that some of his past investigations into hacks of customers have been frustrated by a lack of data.

    The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — part of the Department of Homeland Security — said its own investigations into hacks over the years had also been hindered by the lack of “critical data” that costs extra for Microsoft customers to access.

    CISA Director Jen Easterly applauded Microsoft’s decision and said her agency had been working with Microsoft on the issue for over a year.

    “We will continue to work with all technology manufacturers, including Microsoft, to identify ways to further enhance visibility into their products for all customers,” Easterly said.

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