Republica Press

Your Business & Political News Source

REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

World news

Explosive testimony piles pressure on Trump – how likely are criminal charges?

by

In six televised hearings, the House January 6 committee has presented extraordinary testimony about Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election and its culmination, the deadly attack on the US Capitol by a far-right mob.

The committee is made up of seven Democrats and two rebel Republicans, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, who refused to follow their party in bending the knee to Trump.

Set free of bipartisan considerations when the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, withdrew cooperation, the panel has been able to act in a purely prosecutorial manner. It has also worked on how to present its findings, using TV industry expertise to present hearings honed, contained and aimed at convincing the American people Trump should never be president again.

The committee cannot charge Trump with a crime. But the US Department of Justice can, a possibility that has stoked intense speculation in Washington and the world.

Here are the key legal issues at stake:

Can the committee make criminal referrals?

Yes. It has done so in the cases of Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, Trump aides who refused to cooperate. Pleading not guilty to criminal contempt of Congress, Bannon and Navarro face time in prison. The DoJ declined to charge Scavino and Meadows.

Will the committee refer Trump?

The chair, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, has said he does not expect to do so. However, that statement prompted reports of disagreement on the panel and also came before Cheney, the vice-chair, revealed possible attempts to intimidate witnesses.

On Wednesday, CNN asked a committee member, Pete Aguilar of California, if he believed witness tampering had occurred.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I think that that’s something that should be looked at by our committee and potentially by the Department of Justice.”

Asked if a referral had been made, Aguilar said: “I’m not going to talk about the investigative steps we have taken. But what I will say is I think that those statements speak for themselves [as evidence of] … dangerous behavior.”

One of the witness statements which Cheney read on Tuesday was reportedly made by Cassidy Hutchinson, a former close aide to Trump and Meadows who testified for two dramatic hours.

Could the DoJ charge Trump?

The committee has turned up extensive evidence that suggests a case could be made.

Hutchinson appeared to draw Trump closer to strong links with extremist groups which attacked the Capitol, saying she recalled “hearing the word ‘Oath Keeper’ and hearing the word ‘Proud Boys’ closer to the planning of the January 6 rally, when Mr Giuliani would be around” the White House.

Rudy Giuliani was Trump’s personal attorney. Among more than 870 people charged over the Capitol attack, members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been charged with seditious conspiracy.

But to many, one passage in Hutchinson’s testimony seemed to draw Trump the closest yet to demonstrable criminal conduct.

Hutchinson said Trump knew the crowd for his speech near the White House on 6 January 2021 contained armed individuals, some with AR-15 rifles and handguns, but still told his audience to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” to stop certification of election results. Trump told the crowd he would march with them and, according to Secret Service witnesses, was furious to be denied.

Trump tried to grab car’s steering wheel to go to Capitol Hill, former aide testifies – video

David French, senior editor at the Dispatch and the author of Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation, wrote: “Hutchinson’s sworn testimony closes a gap in the criminal case against Trump, and Trump is closer to a credible prosecution than ever before.”

Why?

As French described, Trump’s actions on and around January 6 appear to meet standards for prosecution set in a 1969 supreme court case, Brandenburg v Ohio, which involved a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Then, the court “overturned Brandenburg’s conviction, holding that even speech that threatened violence or disorder was protected by the first amendment unless ‘such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action’”.

French wrote: “Note the elements of intentionality, likelihood and imminence. The imminence element is easiest to satisfy. The mob was right there. It marched to the Capitol right away, even as Trump was speaking. But what about intentionality and likelihood?”

In French’s view, Trump demonstrably summoned the mob, knew it was armed and dangerous, told it to “fight like hell” and tried to march with it. He then inflamed it further with a tweet in which he derided Mike Pence, his vice-president, for not supporting his scheme.

Is the DoJ investigating Trump?

Yes. This week, the New York Times profiled Thomas Windom, “an aggressive if little-known federal prosecutor” who is “pulling together [the] disparate strands” of DoJ Trump investigations.

According to the Times, Windom, 44, is “working under the close supervision of Attorney General Merrick B Garland’s top aides [and] executing the department’s time-tested, if slow-moving, strategy of working from the periphery of the events inward”.

As examples of such work, the paper mentioned a raid on a former DoJ employee’s house and the seizure of a phone belonging to John Eastman, the law professor who cooked up Trump’s scheme to reject electoral college results.

Hutchinson’s testimony also increased the heat on Trump’s closest aides. Punchbowl News noted that though the DoJ declined to charge Meadows for defying the January 6 committee, “following more damning testimony on Meadows’ role in everything leading to the insurrection”, the DoJ could rethink that position.

The DoJ does appear to be closing the net on Trump. Whether it chooses to haul in such a big fish is a very big question indeed.

So will Trump be indicted?

As French wrote, “Criminal charges require both evidence and political will.

“The evidence against Trump continues to mount, both in Washington DC and in Georgia, where there is substantial evidence supporting both federal and state charges for his effort to threaten and intimidate Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to ‘find 12,000 votes’.”

‘The numbers don’t lie’: Georgia officials debunk Donald Trump’s election fraud claim – video

Raffensperger has appeared with other Republican state officials before the January 6 committee, providing damning testimony of his own.

Most observers agree that for the DoJ to indict a former president, and at that a potential presidential candidate in 2024, would set a dangerous precedent, particularly given Trump’s strong and demonstrably violent following on the far right.

But, French wrote, “there is another precedent that is perhaps more grave and more dangerous – deciding that presidents are held to lower standards of criminal behavior than virtually any other American citizen.”

What does Liz Cheney think the DoJ should do?

The Wyoming Republican’s anti-Trump stance seems set to cost her a seat in Congress. Regardless, on Wednesday she tweeted French’s words to the world.

The same day, Cheney went to the Republican holy of holies: the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Describing “a domestic threat that we have never faced before”, the daughter of Dick Cheney, George W Bush’s vice-president, told her party: “To argue that the threat posed by Trump can be ignored is to cast aside the responsibility that every citizen – every one of us – bears to perpetuate the republic.

“We must not do that, and we cannot do that.”

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturned

by

Abortion was already illegal in multiple US states on Saturday, with bans introduced within hours of Roe v Wade being overturned, as cities erupted in protest at the landmark ruling.

It came after the US supreme court on Friday abolished the constitutional right to abortion, more than 50 years after it was established, leaving individual states to decide. It is ultimately expected to lead to abortion bans in about half of the states.

According to a website affiliated with Planned Parenthood, the US sexual healthcare organisation, it remains legal to travel out of state to get an abortion.

Protests break out outside US supreme court after ruling overturns abortion rights – video

Among the first states to outlaw almost all abortions was Utah where, after the ruling, its abortion ban had already come into effect on Friday night.

Utah’s Republican state senator, Daniel McCay, who sponsored the state’s “trigger law”, said it would be wrong for Utah women to seek abortions in neighbouring states but he had no immediate plans to stop them from doing so.

Ohio’s ban on most abortions at the first detectable foetal heartbeat – known as the “heartbeat bill” – also came into effect. The 2019 law has been on hold for nearly three years, but after the supreme court’s announcement on Friday, a federal judge agreed to remove a federal court injunction blocking it hours later.

Alabama quickly stopped abortions as its 2019 state abortion ban took effect – making it a crime to perform an abortion at any state of pregnancy, including for rape and incest victims. The only exception is for the sake of the mother’s health.

Soon after the announcement, Arkansas’s health department told the state’s two abortion providers that abortions were now banned under a law banning all abortions except to protect the mother’s life in a medical emergency.

What state laws could go into effect
What state laws could go into effect?

Facilities were advised that performing an abortion is now a violation of the law, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.

West Virginia’s only abortion clinic stopped performing abortions on Friday. The state has a law that criminalises providing abortions, carrying a three to 10 year prison sentence, but it is unclear how it will proceed on enforcement after the supreme court ruling.

“Roe has never been enough, but in states like West Virginia, it was the only thing protecting abortion access,” said Katie Quinonez, the executive director of Women’s Health Centre of West Virginia.

Now, she said, people from the state seeking abortions would be forced to travel hundreds, or even thousands, of miles to do so and marginalised communities would be worst affected.

In Missouri, the attorney general, Eric Schmitt, said he was acting immediately to enforce a state law banning abortion except in “cases of medical emergency”. It follows a 2019 law that included a trigger provision bringing it into effect after Roe v Wade was overturned.

In some states, including Arizona and Texas, abortion clinics temporarily stopped providing abortions while they assessed the legality of continuing.

Mississippi abortion clinic escort expects ‘suffering and death’ after Roe v Wade overturned – video

Meanwhile, multiple states vowed to protect the right to abortion. In Washington DC, the mayor, Muriel Bowser, responded by declaring it “a pro-choice city”, but warned that as a district, not a state, it was now vulnerable because Congress had oversight of it.

The Democratic governors of California, Washington and Oregon have all vowed to protect abortion rights and help women who travel to the west coast from other states for abortions.

Anticipating an influx of people seeking abortions, they issued a “multi-state commitment” and said they would collaborate to defend patients and medical professionals providing abortions and pledged to “protect against judicial and local law enforcement cooperation with out-of-state investigations, inquiries, and arrests” into abortions in their states.

The Massachusetts Republican governor, Charlie Baker, signed an executive order to protect access to reproductive healthcare.

In North Carolina, its Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, also vowed to protect abortion rights, despite the legislature being controlled by Republicans. In response to the ruling, he put out a fundraising appeal on Friday for assistance in preventing Republicans from getting veto-proof majorities in the state in November.

In New Mexico, where abortion is readily available, the top public prosecutor and Democratic nominee for attorney general, Raúl Torrez, urged politicians to take more action to protect women’s access to abortions, including for those from other states.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

US reels after massacre in fourth-grade classroom leaves 21 dead

by

America is absorbing the shock of another bloody mass shooting, a day after an 18-year-old man wearing body armour and carrying assault rifles entered an elementary school in Texas and gunned to death at least 19 children and two adults.

The attack on Robb elementary school in Uvalde, 85 miles west of San Antonio, was the deadliest gun rampage in an American school in almost a decade. It prompted passionate calls for tougher gun controls led by Joe Biden but matched by equally stringent demands for more armed guards in schools from the gun lobby and Republicans.

The shooting began to unfold at 11.32am on Tuesday when the shooter, who is believed to have posted photographs of what he called “my guns” on Instagram four days previously, opened fire in a classroom of nine- and 10-year-olds. He carried an assault-style weapon and wore a tactical vest in which he is believed to have held large quantities of ammunition.

Map

Chris Olivarez of the Texas department of public safety gave CNN chilling details of what happened. He said the shooter barricaded himself into a classroom where he opened fire on children and two teachers.

All the victims were reported to be from the same classroom, Olivarez said. A Swat team eventually broke into the room, shooting the gunman dead.

More than 200 rounds of ammunition were discovered with the shooter’s body, in 30-round magazines. It emerged on Wednesday that the gunman obtained his weapons legally over a three-day period this month, shortly after his 18th birthday.

He bought two semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles at a federally registered gun dealership on 17 and 20 May, and 375 rounds of ammunition on 18 May.

Earlier, the shooter shot his grandmother at her home in Uvalde. She was in critical condition. The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, said at a press conference on Wednesday that she had called the police before being shot.

Abbott said the shooter posted on Facebook three times before his attack. In the first, posted 30 minutes before going to the school, he said he would shoot his grandmother. The second said, “I shot my grandmother.” And the third, posted about 15 minutes before the attack, said: “I’m going to shoot an elementary school.”

Uvalde is a small town of about 16,000, overwhelmingly Hispanic.

Among the confirmed victims were two adults: Eva Mireles, 44, a bilingual special education teacher who was reportedly killed as she tried to shield her pupils, and the co-teacher Irma Garcia, who had taught at the school for 23 years and had four children of her own. Among the children publicly identified, the youngest was eight. Several were 10.

They included eight-year-old Uziyah Garcia, described by his grandfather as “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known”; Xavier Lopez, 10, who his cousin said was “very bubbly, loved to dance”; and Amerie Jo Garza, who celebrated her 10th birthday two weeks ago.

The shooting left more people dead than any US school shooting since Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in December 2012. The impact was compounded by its timing, just 10 days after another 18-year-old gunman opened fire on grocery shoppers, most of them Black, in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, killing 10.

On Tuesday night, a visibly shaken Biden urged Americans to resist the powerful gun lobby, which he blamed for blocking tougher firearms laws. Flags will be flown at half-mast until sunset on Saturday.

Joe Biden speaks after mass shooting at Texas elementary school – video

“As a nation, we have to ask, ‘When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?’” Biden said. “When in God’s name are we going to do what has to be done? Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” He was “sick and tired of it”, he said, adding: “We have to act.”

But Republican leaders – not least in Texas itself – were just as robust in their calls for more guns in schools. Ted Cruz, the US senator, said just a few hours after the attack the best way to keep kids safe was to have armed officers on campus.

Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, told the rightwing news outlet Newsmax the way to save lives was to have “teachers and other administrators who have gone through training and who are armed”.

Their arguments were belied, however, by the facts of the Uvalde massacre. As the shooter entered the school, two local officers and a school guard opened fire but failed to stop him.

Texas has led the US with a steady stream of initiatives loosening restrictions on firearms ownership. Last year its Republican governor, Abbott, enacted a law that removed almost all restraints on carrying handguns in public – despite the fact Texas has been the scene of several of the most horrifying mass shootings in US history.

On Wednesday Abbott said other than the shooter posting on Facebook three times roughly 30 minutes before his attack, “there was no meaningful forewarning of this crime”. He said he asked the sheriff and mayor, “What is the problem here? And they were straightforward and emphatic. They said we have a mental we have a problem with mental health illness in this community.”

As Abbott’s press conference concluded, Beto O’Rourke approached the stage and told Abbott “you are doing nothing”. O’Rourke, the former presidential candidate who is running against Abbott in November for the gubernatorial seat, could be heard telling Abbott that the shooting was “predictable” because of his inaction and mentioned the 2019 shooting in El Paso where 23 people were killed in a Walmart store.

‘This is on you’: Beto O’Rourke calls out Texas governor for inaction after school shooting – video

“This is on you until you choose to do something,” O’Rourke said.

“Sir, you are out of line,” the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, shouted at O’Rourke in an attempt to get him to leave the auditorium. Last year McLaughlin backed Abbott’s even more rightwing Republican opponent for governor.

Speaking on Wednesday, Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden would travel to Uvalde “in the coming days” to offer what comfort they can to “a community in shock and grief and trauma.

The president and other campaigners for greater gun control face the numbing reality that in the US there are more firearms in circulation than there are people. The pandemic has seen a dramatic uptick in gun sales, and with it a surge in gun deaths.

In the last decade there have been at least 3,500 mass shootings, defined as incidents killing or injuring four or more people, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The rate of deaths of children under 14 has also risen sharply since the pandemic.

There were heartbreaking scenes outside the Uvalde school. Hours after the attack, distraught families were still awaiting word on whether their children had survived, the silence broken repeatedly by screams and wailing.

“My heart is broken today,” said Hal Harrell, the school district superintendent. “We’re a small community, and we’re going to need your prayers to get through this.”

The school was preparing for its final day on Thursday. Themed days had been organised, with children asked to come on Tuesday dressed as “Footloose and Fancy”.

Adolfo Cruz, 69, said he drove to the school after receiving a terrifying call from his daughter. He was waiting for news of his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Eliajha Cruz Torres, and it was the heaviest moment of his life, he said.

In strong international reactions to the shooting, Pope Francis said he was “heartbroken”, adding: “It is time to say ‘enough’ to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons.” Emmanuel Macron said the French people shared Americans’ shock and grief at the “cowardly” shooting.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he was “deeply saddened by the news of the murder of innocent children”.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Rand Paul promises Covid review if Republicans retake Senate in midterms

by

The Kentucky senator Rand Paul promised on Saturday to wage a vigorous review into the origins of the coronavirus if Republicans retake the Senate and he lands a committee chairmanship.

Speaking to supporters at a campaign rally, the senator denounced what he sees as government overreach in response to Covid-19. He applauded a recent judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs.

“Last week I was on an airplane for the first time in two years and didn’t have to wear a mask,” he said, drawing cheers. “And you know what I saw in the airport? I saw at least 97% of the other free individuals not wearing masks.”

Paul has clashed repeatedly with Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease expert, over government policies and the origins of the virus.

Paul, who is seeking a third term, said he was in line to assume a committee chairmanship if the GOP wins Senate control. The Senate has a 50-50 split, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, the tie-breaking vote.

“When we take over in November, I will be chairman of a committee and I will have subpoena power,” Paul said. “And we will get to the bottom of where this virus came from.”

The senator, an ophthalmologist before politics, continued to offer his theory about the origins of the virus.

Fauci to Rand Paul: ‘You do not know what you are talking about’ – video

“If you look at the evidence, overwhelmingly, not 100%, but overwhelmingly the evidence points to this virus being a leak from a lab,” Paul said.

Many US conservatives have accused Chinese scientists of developing Covid-19 in a lab and allowing it to leak.

US intelligence agencies remain divided on the origins of the coronavirus but believe China did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic, according a Biden-ordered review released last summer.

The scientific consensus remains that the virus most likely migrated from animals. So-called “spillover events” occur in nature and there are at least two coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused human epidemics, SARS1 and MERS.

At the Kentucky rally, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, the state’s senior senator, also pointed to Paul’s opportunity to lead a committee. If that occurs, he said, Paul would become chairman of “one of the most important committees in the Senate – in charge of health, education, labor and pensions”.

McConnell was upbeat about Republican prospects in November.

“I’ve never seen a better environment for us than this year,” said McConnell, who is in line to again become majority leader.

The rally featured other prominent Kentucky Republicans, including several considering running for governor in 2023, when Andy Beshear, a Democrat, will seek a second term.

In his speech, Paul railed against socialism, saying it would encroach on individual liberties. The senator was first elected to the Senate in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

‘Kindles the crazies’: Fauci tells Rand Paul his accusations incite death threats – video

“When President Trump said he wanted to ‘Make America Great Again’, I said, ‘Amen,’” Paul said. “But let’s understand what made America great in the first place, and that’s freedom, constitutionally guaranteed liberty.”

Charles Booker is by far the best known Democrats seeking their party’s nomination for Paul’s seat in the 17 May primary. Paul is being challenged by several little-known candidates. A general election campaign between Paul and Booker would be a battle between candidates with starkly different philosophies.

Booker, a Black former state lawmaker, narrowly lost a bid for the Democratic nomination in 2020. He is a progressive who touts Medicare for all, anti-poverty programs, a clean-energy agenda and criminal justice changes.

Paul, a former presidential candidate, has accumulated a massive fundraising advantage.

Kentucky has not elected a Democrat to the US Senate since Wendell Ford in 1992.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

After that disastrous royal tour, is the sun finally setting on the Commonwealth realms? | Moya Lothian-McLean

by

Just how long has the British monarchy been in crisis? This time – after “Megxit”, after Prince Andrew – it was the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s disastrous trip to the Caribbean. What was supposed to be a “charm offensive”, drumming up enthusiasm in the year of the Queen’s platinum jubilee, ended up looking more like a long goodbye, with the headlines spotlighting anti-royal protests, failures to address legacies of slavery, and the news that Jamaica is planning to ditch the Queen as head of state.

It may well be time for the royal family to face up to the fact that the sun is setting on those final remnants of the empire that they once embodied – and not a moment too soon.

For Britons, it can be easy to forget that the Queen’s realm and territories stretch far beyond these isles. Out of the 54 “independent and equal nations” that make up the Commonwealth of Nations, 15 (including the UK) still count the Queen as their head of state. Becoming a republic doesn’t necessitate surrendering membership of the Commonwealth itself – it simply means a symbolic rejection of British rule. And with Barbados finally taking the leap last year, longstanding debates about republicanism have been reignited in the remaining realms.

The issue is just as hotly debated in the likes of Australia (54% of people there would support becoming a republic) as it is in Jamaica, but packing William and Kate off to the Caribbean has inevitably focused minds in that region. Though republican camps in the Caribbean have long cited the impact of colonialism and slavery on the contemporary fortunes of their countries, a new reckoning is afoot, against the backdrop of the global Black Lives Matter movement and renewed conversations about the legacy of empire. Thanks to the attention the royals command, the disintegration of British overseas rule is being documented in real time.

'This is not crown land': William and Kate cancel first Caribbean tour visit due to protests – video
‘This is not crown land’: William and Kate cancel first Caribbean tour visit due to protests – video

The signs weren’t looking good for William and Kate from the outset. The couple’s first official engagement, in Belize, was unceremoniously cancelled after protests from the Q’eqehi Maya people over a land dispute with a charity that William patronises. Heading to Jamaica, they were met with more demonstrations, this time calling on the royals to address the issue of reparations for the several hundred years they directly profited from the slave trade. Government officials backed up the sentiment, with Jamaica’s prime minister, Andrew Holness, informing a solemn William and Kate that the country was “moving on’’ and wanted to be “independent”, seemingly following the example of Barbados. It’s no wonder the royals were gracing Sunday’s front pages in damage-limitation mode, with William offering a half-apology for the tour.

As ever, sometimes opening their mouths only makes things worse: in a speech given in Kingston last week, Prince William expressed “profound sorrow” for the transatlantic slave trade, but people were quick to point out that he stopped short of an apology or acknowledging the monarchy’s direct interests in slavery. At one point in history, enslaved Black Africans arriving in the Caribbean via the Royal African Company were branded with the initials “DY”, marking them as the property of the then Duke of York . Royal profiting from slavery continued apace – the future William IV even personally argued for the continuation of the trade in the House of Lords in 1799, a move that, according tohistorian Brooke Newman, helped “delay” abolition for a few more years but “misjudged the mood of the nation” – and damaged the reputation of the royal family as a result.

For the royals, the trip has been a sharp lesson in how people in the Commonwealth now perceive Britain and its institutions. As the Jamaican dancehall artist Beenie Man put it during an interview with ITV News: “We are just here, controlled by the British, ruled by the British law when you go in the court. It’s all about the Queen … but what are they doing for Jamaica? They’re not doing anything for us.” The Jamaican writer Ashley Rouen Brown summed up the grounds for resentment succinctly: Jamaicans, he wrote, are “currently the only citizens within the Commonwealth realm that require a visa to visit the land of their head of state”. Meanwhile, requests for financial reparations, in recognition of the impact centuries of plunder had on economic prospects, have been met with egregious responses, like David Cameron’s 2015 offer for Britain to finance a £25m prison to hold Jamaican “criminals” in lieu of compensation for slavery.

In Jamaica, republicanism has been part of the political conversation since the 1970s, and there is cross-party support for the move. But now, debate has been replaced by decision. Emancipation is in full swing. It’s no coincidence that it comes as the Queen – who “made the Commonwealth central to her life when she became monarch” – reaches the twilight of her reign. But nor can it be a coincidence that this is all happening after several years of governmental and monarchical misrule in London. The aftermath of the Windrush scandal still leaves a bitter taste. And, albeit on a different scale, it’s worth taking account of some more of Beenie Man’s words: “If Harry was coming, people would react different,” he said. “People are going to meet Harry.” In that sense, the royals really are the authors of their own misfortune.

‘The monarchy is a relic’: Protests in Jamaica over royal visit – video
‘The monarchy is a relic’: Protests in Jamaica over royal visit – video

But with or without the Sussexes, there is an air of historical inevitability to all this. So, what happens next? Ahead of Kate and William’s visit, the Windrush campaigner Patrick Vernon said: “If Jamaica decided it did [want to become a republic], there would be a domino effect on the rest of the English-speaking Caribbean.”

His words may well be prescient. The royal couple flew into the Bahamas, the last leg of their tour, to be greeted by protests on the ground and opposition from the likes of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee. Belize has announced a constitutional review, and late last year leaders including the St Vincent premier were urging fellow Commonwealth realms to attain republican status. The wheels seem firmly set in motion, with the royals’ open-backed Land Rover left spinning in the sand.

This kind of reckoning with reality is long overdue, and, who knows, it may even be a long-term positive for Britain if it helps disabuse our political class of its globe-trotting, Empire 2.0 fantasies. At the very least, now is the time to admit that for many parts of the world, the benefits of sovereign British rule are most heavily felt by the home nation itself. Within our own borders, we may kid ourselves that the monarchy is still a glittering jewel in our crown. But for many people overseas who wish to escape the long shadow of empire and exploitation, the shine has well and truly rubbed off.

This article was amended on 28 March 2022 because in 1799, it was in the House of Lords that the future William IV argued for the continuation of the slave trade, not in the House of Commons as an earlier version said.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

California shooting: four killed, including child, in office building in Orange

by

Four people, including a child, have been killed and a fifth person injured in a shooting at a southern California office building, with the suspected shooter wounded by police.

It happened at around 5.30pm on Wednesday at a two-storey office building in Orange, south of Los Angeles.

Police Lt Jennifer Amat said shots were being fired when officers arrived and police shot the suspect, who was taken to the hospital in unknown condition.

Amat said the victims also included one person who was wounded. Other details were unclear, including a motive for the attack.

“Officers arrived as shots were being fired and located multiple victims at the scene including fatalities. An officer-involved shooting occurred,” said the Facebook post, which was filed shortly after 7 pm. “The situation has been stabilized and there is no threat to the public.”

The Fire Department handled six patients, with two taken to a hospital, dispatch supervisor Sam Ahumada told the Orange County Register.

View Source

Matt Gaetz claims ‘extortion’ amid reported investigation into relationship with teenage girl

by

The prominent Republican congressman Matt Gaetz’s reported relationship with a 17-year-old girl remained under scrutiny on Wednesday, despite his insistence in an appearance on Fox News that the allegation was “verifiably false”.

The Florida politician, a close ally of Donald Trump, claimed during the Tuesday night interview that he was the victim of an extortion plot by a former justice department official, and questioned the motivation behind Tuesday’s original reporting by the New York Times.

Gaetz, 38, claimed his lawyers had been informed that he was the subject of an FBI inquiry “regarding sexual conduct with women” and that the official was attempting to extort $25m from his family “in exchange for a commitment that he could make this investigation go away”.

On Wednesday, David McGee, the former justice department employee named by Gaetz, now a lawyer in Pensacola, Florida, told the Washington Post that the politician’s claims of an extortion plot were “completely false”.

“This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors,” McGee, formerly an attorney in the department’s organized crime taskforce, said.

“I have no connection with that case at all, other than one of a thousand people who have heard the rumors.”

Meanwhile, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Gaetz’s appearance on his show “was one of the weirdest interviews I’ve ever conducted.”

“I don’t think that clarified much,” Carlson told his viewers. “But it certainly showed this is a deeply interesting story, and we will be following it. Don’t quite understand it, but we will bring you more when we find out.”

According to the New York Times, Gaetz was under investigation by the justice department to determine whether he violated federal sex trafficking laws and had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, and whether he paid her to travel with him.

The investigation was launched in the final months of the Trump administration under attorney general William Barr, the newspaper said, and was part of a broader investigation into a Republican party official and political ally in Florida, Joel Greenberg, indicted last summer on charges of sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, including at least one underage girl.

After the Times published its story, Gaetz, who was photographed visiting the Trump White House with Greenberg in 2019, took to Twitter to maintain his innocence and accuse the justice department official of attempting to smear his name. Gaetz said his family was cooperating with federal authorities investigating his extortion claims.

Adding to the intrigue was a story reported by Axios earlier on Tuesday, just hours before the Times published its allegations, that Gaetz told associates he was considering resigning his seat in Congress to take a job with the rightwing media outlet Newsmax.

An FBI spokesperson in Jacksonville, Florida, told the Guardian in a statement Wednesday that the agency “declines to confirm nor deny the existence or status of an investigation” and referred inquiries to the justice department.

The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

View Source

Round in circles – America’s endless gun debate: inside the 2 April Guardian Weekly

by

A grim inevitability hangs over news of another American mass shooting. From the anguish of victims’ families to the intransigence of gun rights supporters, the sense prevails that nothing can, or will, ever change when it comes to US gun laws. It’s a reality writ large since the horrifying 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre, an event so shocking yet one that still failed to break opposition to gun law reform, despite the best efforts of the then-vice president Joe Biden.

Now Biden is in the Oval Office with a fresh mandate and a weakened pro-gun lobby before him. In the light of two recent mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado, Ed Pilkington traces the Groundhog Day nature of America’s gun reform debate. Then, Guardian US gun crime reporters Abené Clayton and Lois Beckett deliver a damning verdict on why everything about America’s national discourse on firearms reform is wrong.

In Britain, politicians of all stripes have long pressed the national flag into service to unite the nation, but its use as a stage prop or on official buildings is increasingly divisive. Tim Adams looks at the ironies of the UK government’s efforts to wrap itself in the flag at a time when Brexit has made the dissolution of the union more likely than ever.

As the Covid pandemic kicked in last year, Germany was held up as a model of civic adherence to lockdown restrictions – yet its insistence on propriety has now seen it fall behind in the mass vaccination drive. As tensions rise, Philip Oltermann reports on a moment of introspection for the EU’s powerhouse state.

While London’s centre remains becalmed by Covid restrictions, trouble is brewing in its suburbs. A radical, government-backed road closure scheme has sought to reclaim side streets for cyclists and pedestrians, shunting motor traffic back on to main arteries. With residents divided about the success of the low-traffic zones, Niamh McIntyre investigates whether they can bring about real change in urban transport habits – or if a raft of upcoming legal challenges will leave them by the wayside.

Finally, how many roads must a man walk down, before you can call him a brand? In Culture, as Bob Dylan nears his 80th birthday, Neil Spencer reflects on how the pop poet from Minnesota bridged the gap between academia and pop, turning his musical career into a world-conquering industry.

Get the magazine delivered to your door

View Source

States lift mask mandates despite Biden’s warnings and rise in Covid cases – live

by

Rashida Kamal and Alvin Chang report:

The Guardian has visualized the proportion of vaccinated population in each state from data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The represented proportions reflect the overall state population. Children are not eligible to be vaccinated, though scientists believe they can spread Covid-19.

Read more:

reports:

Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said. A variety of federal statutes make it illegal to induce someone under 18 to travel over state lines to engage in sex in exchange for money or something of value. The Justice Department regularly prosecutes such cases, and offenders often receive severe sentences.

It was not clear how Mr. Gaetz met the girl, believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing, according to two of the people.

The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration under Attorney General William P. Barr, the two people said. Given Mr. Gaetz’s national profile, senior Justice Department officials in Washington — including some appointed by Mr. Trump — were notified of the investigation, the people said.

The three people said that the examination of Mr. Gaetz, 38, is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges, including sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl.

Mr. Greenberg, who has since resigned his post as tax collector in Seminole County, north of Orlando, visited the White House with Mr. Gaetz in 2019, according to a photograph that Mr. Greenberg posted on Twitter.

No charges have been brought against Mr. Gaetz, and the extent of his criminal exposure is unclear.

Read more from the Times’ Michael S Schmidt and Katie Benner here.

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • The trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin continued in Minneapolis. Witnesses who saw Chauvin keep his knee on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes testified about the events of 25 May. Donald Williams told the court that he called 911 after seeing the violence because “I believed I witnessed a murder.”
  • The Republican governor of Arkansas announced he is lifting the statewide mask mandate. The announcement came a day after Joe Biden urged state and local leaders to maintain or reinstate mask orders, due to the country’s recent uptick in coronavirus cases. “I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” the president said yesterday. “Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.”
  • Biden is set to outline his proposed infrastructure package in a speech in Pittsburgh tomorrow. The president is expected to call for spending more than $3 trillion to improve the nation’s infrastructure systems. Congressional committees are reportedly being briefed on the proposal today.
  • The US and the UK signed on to a statement criticizing the World Health Organization’s report on the origins of coronavirus. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that China had “not been transparent” with the WHO about the early days of its coronavirus outbreak. She urged the WHO to take further steps to better understand the origins of the virus.
  • Biden outlined a series of new actions to address the recent surge in anti-Asian violence across the US. The president said his administration will establish a coronavirus equity task force focused on ending xenophobia against Asian Americans and launch a justice department cross-agency initiative to address anti-Asian violence.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Several states are pointedly ignoring the latest coronavirus warnings and fears voiced by Joe Biden and the government’s public health experts, as they disagree with the White House and amongst themselves.

Earlier today, Arkansas announced it would lift its statewide mask mandate, which has been in place to mitigate the spread of coronavirus, despite the US president pleading with state and local leaders to maintain or reinstate mask mandates as US infections rise again.

But other moves are afoot. The Republican-controlled Arizona senate voted yesterday to rescind its mandatory mask policy, the Associated Press reported.

Alabama governor Kay Ivey intends for her state’s mask mandate to end on 9 April as planned, though she urged people to wear masks as a matter of personal responsibility.

“We have made progress, and we are moving towards personal responsibility and common sense, not endless government mandates,” said Gina Maiola, Ivey’s spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, the Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said he would appeal to his Republican counterpart in neighboring Tennessee, Governor Eric Holcomb, to reconsider his move to drop the Bluegrass state’s mask mandate.

“Kentuckians are going to be more at risk if Tennesseans are not under a mask mandate,” Beshear said.

Infections are currently rising in around 30 US states, compared with 20 states last week.

The Republican governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, announced today that he is lifting the statewide mask mandate.

Hutchinson said recent data on coronavirus case numbers in the state had led him to conclude that the mandate was no longer necessary.

“Please be respectful and mindful that while the mask mandate is lifted, many will continue to wear it and many businesses will continue to require it,” Hutchinson said at a press conference. “We need to honor those decisions.”

The Recount (@therecount)

President Biden yesterday: Masks, please.

Gov. Asa Hutchison (R-AR) today: pic.twitter.com/m20KMNVedE

March 30, 2021

The announcement comes one day after Joe Biden pleaded with state and local leaders to maintain or reinstate mask mandates, due to recent alarming trends in US coronavirus case numbers.

“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” the president said. “Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.”

The president echoed concerns shared by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hours earlier.

“I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Dr Rochelle Walensky said at a briefing from the White House coronavirus response team.

“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared.”

@PressSec says the @WHO COVID-19 origins report “doesn’t lead us to a closer understanding or greater knowledge than six months ago about the origins”, adding that China has “not been transparent, they have not provided underlying data” on the virus. pic.twitter.com/6KRK7112zn

March 30, 2021

She added that the WHO report “doesn’t lead us to any closer of an understanding or greater knowledge than we had six to nine months ago about the origin” of the virus.

Psaki urged the WHO to take further steps to better understand how coronavirus started spreading among humans in late 2019.

“There’s a second stage in this process that we believe should be led by international and independent experts,” Psaki said. “They should have unfettered access to data. They should be able to ask questions of people who are on the ground at this point in time, and that’s a step the WHO could take.”

The US and the UK have sharply criticised a World Health Organization report into the beginnings of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan, implicitly accusing China of “withholding access to complete, original data and samples”.

The statement, also signed by 12 other countries including Australia and Canada, came hard on the heels of an admission on Tuesday by the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, that the investigation was “not extensive enough” and experts had struggled to access raw information during their four-week visit to Wuhan in January.

Tedros also said there should be continued examination of the theory that the virus had escaped from a Wuhan institute of virology laboratory, even though the report deemed it “extremely unlikely” as a source of the pandemic – a theory promoted by some in the Trump administration.

The long-awaited report by experts appointed by the WHO and their Chinese counterparts said the global pandemic probably came to humans from animals.

The statement by the 14 countries, which criticised delays in the investigation, called for timely access for independent experts early in future pandemics, and once again underlined the highly contentious politics around the investigation during which WHO experts gained access to China after months of fraught negotiations.

@JoeBiden’s infrastructure bill.

From @JakeSherman and @bresreports

March 30, 2021

Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech outlining his proposal tomorrow in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The White House has signaled it hopes the package will attract bipartisan support, but Democrats are also making plans to go it alone if Republicans oppose the bill, as is widely expected.

The prosecution’s questioning of witnesses through the second day of the Derek Chauvin murder trial has sought to establish several themes.

One is that police officers did nothing to help George Floyd, despite his growing distress and struggle to breathe as Chauvin kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.

Prosecutors also sought to head off defence claims that Chauvin’s actions were influenced by threats to his and other officers’ safety from an increasingly alarmed crowd of bystanders.

A succession of witnesses described attempts to intervene, and admonitions from the crowd directed at Chauvin and other officers, as intended to help Floyd, not threaten the police.

The fourth witness of the day, a young woman who was identified on the public feed of the trial only by her first name, Alissa, because she was 17 at the time of Floyd’s death, told the court she started to film the incident because she was aware the situation was deteriorating.

“A lot of people looked in distress on the sidewalk. And George [Floyd] looked in distress,” she said. “He looked like he was fighting to breathe.”

Alissa said she appealed to Chauvin to stop when she saw the officer pushing his knee deeper into Floyd’s neck.

“His eyes were starting to roll to the back of his head and he had saliva coming out of his mouth,” she said.

Alissa testified about the content of the phone video she recorded as it was played back to her in bursts. At times the distress in the voice of members of the public can be heard as some demand that the police check Floyd’s pulse.

At one point in her testimony, Alissa paused because she was crying, and said it was difficult to talk about because of the emotional toll of what she witnessed.

“I felt like there wasn’t anything I could do as a bystander. I felt like I was failing him,” she said.

Senator Ben Cardin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate small business committee, applauded Joe Biden for signing the PPP Extension Act into law.

“PPP has supported millions of small businesses through the pandemic, and it is clear that the program must continue to be a lifeline for small businesses and nonprofits,” Cardin said in a statement.

“It is vital that we in Congress continue working in a bipartisan manner to fine-tune PPP in the weeks ahead to make the program more fair and equitable.”

The Paycheck Protection Program was created by the first coronavirus relief package to help small businesses that were forced to close their doors because of the pandemic.

The program has received some criticism for distributing funds to large companies, and the Biden administration has worked to get PPP money to small businesses.

Moments ago, Joe Biden signed a bill extending the deadline to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program, a small business loan program created by the first coronavirus relief package.

The bill also grants the Small Business Administration additional time to process PPP applications.

Biden signed the legislation in the Oval Office, as Vice-President Kamala Harris and SBA administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman looked on.

Joe Biden signs the PPP Extension Act of 2021 into law in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden signs the PPP Extension Act of 2021 into law in the Oval Office. Photograph: Doug Mills/EPA

The president described the bill as “a bipartisan accomplishment,” noting that 90,000 businesses are waiting in line to receive PPP assistance.

He specifically thanked Senators Ben Cardin, Jeanne Shaheen, Marco Rubio and Susan Collins for championing the legislation.

The president did not answer any of the questions shouted by reporters as they were escorted out of the Oval Office.

View Source

Antony Blinken says the US will ‘stand up for human rights everywhere’

by

The United States will speak out about human rights everywhere including in allies and at home, secretary of state Antony Blinken has vowed, turning a page from Donald Trump as he bemoaned deteriorations around the world.

Presenting the state department’s first human rights report under President Joe Biden, the new top US diplomat took some of his most pointed, yet still veiled, swipes at the approach of the Trump administration.

“Some have argued that it’s not worth it for the US to speak up forcefully for human rights – or that we should highlight abuse only in select countries, and only in a way that directly advances our national interests,” Blinken told reporters in clear reference to Trump’s approach.

“But those people miss the point. Standing up for human rights everywhere is in America’s interests,” he said.

“And the Biden-Harris administration will stand against human rights abuses wherever they occur, regardless of whether the perpetrators are adversaries or partners.”

Blinken ordered the return of assessments in the annual report on countries’ records on access to reproductive health, which were removed under the staunchly anti-abortion Trump administration.

Blinken also denounced a commission of his predecessor Mike Pompeo that aimed to redefine the US approach to human rights by giving preference to private property and religious freedom while downplaying reproductive and LGBTQ rights.

During Pompeo’s time in office, the state department was aggressive in opposing references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents.

“There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others,” Blinken said.

In another shift in tone from Trump, Blinken said the United States acknowledged its own challenges, including “systemic racism.”

“That’s what separates our democracy from autocracies: our ability and willingness to confront our own shortcomings out in the open, to pursue that more perfect union.”

Blinken voiced alarm over abuses around the world including in China, again speaking of “genocide” being committed against the Uighur community.

The report estimated that more than one million Uighurs and other members of mostly Muslim communities had been rounded up in internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang and that another two million are subjected to re-education training each day.

“The trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction. We see evidence of that in every region of the world,” Blinken said.

He said the Biden administration was prioritising coordination with allies, pointing to recent joint efforts over Xinjiang, China’s clampdown in Hong Kong and Russia’s alleged poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny.

Blinken also voiced alarm over the Myanmar military’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, attacks on civilians in Syria and a campaign in Ethiopia’s Tigray that he has previously called ethnic cleansing.

The report, written in dry, factual language, did not spare longstanding US allies.

It pointed to allegations of unlawful killings and torture in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, quoting human rights groups that said Egypt is holding between 20,000 and 60,000 people chiefly due to their political beliefs.

Biden earlier declassified US intelligence that found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorised the gruesome killing of US-based writer Jamal Khashoggi.

While the human rights report remained intact under Trump, the previous administration argued that rights were of lesser importance than other concerns with allies such as Saudi Arabia – a major oil producer and purchaser of US weapons that backed Trump’s hawkish line against Iran, whose record was also heavily scrutinized in the report.

The latest report also detailed incidents in India under prime minister Narendra Modi, an increasingly close US ally.

It quoted non-governmental groups as pointing to the use in India of “torture, mistreatment and arbitrary detention to obtain forced or false confessions” and quoted journalists as assessing that “press freedom declined” including through physical harassment of journalists, pressure on owners and frivolous lawsuits.

View Source

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy