Thousands of sensitive documents lay nearby as Trump was spinning the Village People in Mar-a-Lago’s not so private clubAt a certain point in an average evening at Mar-a-Lago, the lights go down and the volume goes up, as the proprietor and former president of the United States turns DJ for the night.A member of the Mar-a-Lago private club said that following a period of withdrawal after his election defeat, Donald Trump has in recent months assumed the role of social ringmaster, deciding to bring a disco vibe to the Palm Beach resort after dark. Continue reading...
Anti-Trump January 6 committee member warns of likely aggressive tactics if GOP retakes House in midtermsRepublicans will try to impeach Joe Biden every week if they retake the House in November, a rare anti-Trump Republican congressman predicted.Remembering repeated attempts to defund the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said: “That’s going to look like child’s play in terms of what Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to demand of Kevin McCarthy. Continue reading...
by Andrew Witherspoon, Chris Michael and Richard Lusc on (#63TTX)
The ex-president’s Florida estate has a history of security breaches, from US military plans viewed in front of paying guests to a makeshift ‘situation room’Long before FBI agents found highly classified documents close to public areas of Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort that Donald Trump calls home, a number of other eyebrow-raising incidents have heightened concerns over the property’s security.They range from a Chinese national carrying multiple mobile phones and computer malware making it through a Secret Service checkpoint, to a fake heiress breezing in for photographs with the former president, to diners looking over Trump’s shoulder at a laptop displaying top secret information about North Korean missile launches. Continue reading...
A Baltimore judge ordered the release of Adnan Syed after overturning his conviction for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee. The case was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.Ruling that the state violated its legal obligation to share exculpatory evidence with Syed’s defense, the circuit court judge, Melissa Phinn, ordered Syed placed on home detention with GPS monitoring.Syed’s first trial, in December 1999, ended in mistrial. At his second trial, in February 2000, he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Now 41, he has spent more than 20 years behind bars. He has always maintained his innocence.
Syed was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999A Baltimore judge on Monday ordered the release of Adnan Syed after overturning his conviction for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee – a case chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.Ruling that the state violated its legal obligation to share exculpatory evidence with Syed’s defense, the circuit court judge, Melissa Phinn, ordered Syed placed on home detention with GPS monitoring. Phinn also gave the state 30 days to decide whether to seek a new trial or dismiss the case. Continue reading...
Sherri Papini’s case gained national attention when she went missing for weeks but was found staying with an ex-boyfriendSherri Papini, the California woman who admitted to faking her own kidnapping in 2016, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.Papini’s case grabbed national attention when she went missing for several weeks, prompting a frantic search and widespread media coverage. She eventually reappeared with an elaborate story of being abducted by two “Hispanic women”, chained to a pole for three weeks, beaten and branded before being released by the side of a highway. Continue reading...
Despite legitimate anger at US-inspired initiatives like the failed European Super League, the creeping influence of America in football need not be universally badNew Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly raised the hackles of some of English football’s most annoying people last week when he suggested that the Premier League could learn from America and consider introducing an All-Star-style game to boost TV revenue. “US investment into English football is a clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game,” thundered Gary Neville on Twitter, in an emblematic reaction. “They just don’t get it and think differently.”In response many have pointed out that pundits like Neville owe their very livelihood to the Americanization of English football: without the influence of America’s example, the whole shebang of the modern Premier League – as a business structured around massive TV deals, as an endlessly mediatized spectacle, as a hegemonic cultural form – would not exist. Suggestions like Boehly’s are directed at furthering the commercialization of English football; this is not “thinking differently”, but the very essence of the sport as it has developed over the last three decades. Continue reading...
American lawyer whose 1998 Starr report led to the impeachment of Bill ClintonKenneth Starr, who has died aged 76 after complications from surgery, was the independent prosecutor whose investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s investment in a real-estate project called Whitewater began in somewhat pious partisanship and descended into prurience. It led to President Clinton’s impeachment for perjury based on his lying about his relationship with a White House aide, Monica Lewinsky.The Clinton impeachment was an American watershed. Following the OJ Simpson trial of the mid-1990s, it established scandal as the fuel that powered television news, but more importantly it pointed the way to use congressional investigation in order to disrupt a presidency, a tactic followed repeatedly against the Barack Obama administration, including six House investigations, lasting more than two years, of the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, over the assault on the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Continue reading...
Melanie Tait grew up in the imposing shadow of the much-loved and much-mocked landmark in the NSW town of Robertson. Now the family is selling upThe call came at dinner-time on a Monday night. As it happened, crispy roast potatoes were part of my dinner – as they frequently are. The excessive consumption of potatoes in my life is part of my heritage.“Well, you’re no longer the Big Potato Heiress,” my mother said down the line. “The sale settled today.” Continue reading...
TheUS president, Joe Biden, and his wife, Jill, had to wait ratherthan being ushered immediately to their seats on their arrival atWestminster Abbey for the Queen's funeral. In order not to disruptthe finely tuned choreography, the first couple stood inside theentrance as a procession of George and Victoria Cross holders wentahead of them in the nave of the abbey. Biden had been given adispensation to make his journey to the abbey in 'the Beast', aheavily armoured limousine used by US presidents for securityreasons, rather than be bussed to the abbey with the other heads ofstate and government
Ex-president’s team insists it is a royalty-free tune but to many it is nearly identical to the extremist conspiracy group’s adopted songDonald Trump made one of his highest-profile embraces to date of the extremist conspiracy group QAnon at a political rally in Ohio on Saturday, making the apparently deliberate choice to play music that is virtually indistinguishable from the cult organization’s adopted anthem.Dozens of the former president’s supporters in Youngstown engaged in raised-arm salutes as Trump delivered a fiery address to the background of a song his team insisted was a royalty-free tune from the internet, but to many ears it was nearly identical to the 2020 instrumental track Wwg1wga. Continue reading...
Bill aims to guarantee that ‘Congress can’t overturn an election result’Two members of the US congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack have revealed details of a bill proposing to block any other attempt to coerce the House and the Senate “to steal a presidential election”.On Sunday, House members Liz Cheney and Zoe Lofgren wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal outlining reforms to the Electoral Count Act that they said would ensure “Congress can’t overturn an election result”, which is what those who staged the Capitol attack in early 2021 wanted. Continue reading...
by Laurence H Tribe and Phillip Allen Lacovara on (#63SZD)
Why is a young, ideologically-driven judge with a lifetime appointment to the bench allowed to ignore legal precedents?Judge Aileen Cannon’s two rulings in the Mar-a-Lago affair offer a master class in illustrating how a young and ideologically-driven judge can badly bungle important issues of law and public policy and distort the proper role of courts in protecting state secrets and supervising criminal investigations. The Justice Department, wisely, is appealing.The catalogue of errors and abuses is too long for a single column, so we touch only on the low points.Laurence H Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law SchoolPhillip Allen Lacovara was deputy solicitor general of the United States, counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor, and President of the District of Columbia Bar Continue reading...
Navy veteran exchanged for Bashir Noorzai, who had been held in US since 2005 on drugs chargesThe Taliban have freed an American engineer in exchange for an Afghan tribal leader linked to the group whom the US had held on drugs charges since 2005.Mark Frerichs was exchanged at Kabul airport for Bashir Noorzai, the acting Taliban foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, told a news conference in the Afghan capital. Continue reading...
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield attack deal that could lead to sale of the ice-cream in occupied West BankThe founders of Ben and Jerry’s have accused the UK consumer giant Unilever of violating a 22-year-old agreement that could lead to the sale of the ice-cream in the occupied West Bank.Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who founded the company in Vermont in 1978 with a mission to “advance human rights and dignity”, said they could no longer “sit idly by” after Unilever sold its interest in the ice-cream to an Israeli licence holder. Continue reading...
Assumptions have been dramatically overturned. To really help Ukraine, a clearer picture of the war’s dynamic is vitalUkraine’s recent stunning success in liberating a huge swathe of its territory from Russian occupation directly contradicted months of consensus opinion by commentators and experts who predicted that the war had settled into an indefinite stalemate. Public perception of the conflict, as well as important policy decisions, are swayed by such assumptions. At this stage we must ask: why do experts keep overestimating Russian strength and underestimating Ukraine’s military capabilities, and how can they avoid doing so again?One obvious point is that western states have gradually increased supplies of powerful and sophisticated weapons, and Ukraine’s forces have convincingly demonstrated they can use them to powerful effect on the battlefield. But this is only part of the story.Orysia Lutsevych is head of Chatham House’s Ukraine Forum Continue reading...
The public mourning for the Queen has been a PR triumph for the royal family. But this shouldn’t disguise the need for reformTen days of mourning for the death of Queen Elizabeth II reached their climax at Westminster Abbey today, with a tear in the eye of the nation and hundreds of world leaders in attendance. They came to honour not power or achievement but a ceremony of nationhood in one person. They have witnessed an extraordinary week of recent British history, a week in which nothing else was allowed to happen.Modern monarchy has always been based on the orchestration of emotion. The stage-management of the Queen’s funeral has barely broken step. The fusion of a family’s grief with the passing of a national figurehead has been elevated by ritual, yet diluted with informality. The media management has seemed effortless. Royals in uniform have never been offstage, always against the backdrop of a sombre, smiling, adoring crowd. The scene has been underscored, hour after hour, by a never-ending queue; the nation as Greek chorus to the events. The queue to Westminster Hall, with its relentless vox pops, could have been almost rehearsed. And even as “the reign” comes to an end, continuity is rammed home with cries of “long live the King”.Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...
A conservative movement to rewrite the US constitution is gaining momentum – potentially plunging the US into a vast legal unknownIn a recent primetime address, President Joe Biden spoke about “the soul of the nation” – calling out rightwing forces for their numerous efforts to undermine, if not overthrow, our democracy. Biden’s speech was prescient, in more ways than one. In addition to many Republicans promoting the “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen and working to fill elected offices with people ready to subvert the will of the people, there is a conservative movement underway to radically rewrite the US constitution.The right has already packed the supreme court and is reaping the rewards, with decisions from Dobbs to Bruen that radically reinterpret the constitution in defiance of precedent and sound legal reasoning. But factions of the right are not satisfied to wait for the court to reinterpret the constitution. Instead, they have set their sights on literally rewriting our foundational document.Russ Feingold served nearly two decades in the United States Senate and is president of the American Constitution Society Continue reading...
King Charles III, the royal family and world leaders are attending the state funeral of Elizabeth II in London. Plus, the teens who identified two new scorpion speciesGood morning.The royal family and the world are saying a “last farewell” to Queen Elizabeth II during a state funeral at Westminster Abbey today attended by a 2,000-strong congregation including world leaders.When did Joe Biden arrive in the UK? He landed in London yesterday. The US president then went to Westminster Hall yesterday evening to pay his respects to the late Queen, attending the lying-in-state with the first lady, Jill Biden, before an official state reception hosted by the King at Buckingham Palace.Who else will attend the funeral? Hundreds of foreign royals and heads of state were expected to attend the funeral, in one of the biggest diplomatic gatherings in decades. About 500 heads of state and foreign dignitaries were expected. Also attending Britain’s first state funeral for six decades were the Queen’s family, courtiers, public figures and UK politicians.What does the document show? It shows the lengths to which the Proud Boys go to prepare for potentially violent encounters and then to cover their tracks – something prosecutors have stressed but that has never been seen in the group’s own words. It exposes the militaristic structure and language the Proud Boys have adopted, and their aspiration to become the frontline vigilante force in a Trump-led America. Continue reading...
If Giorgia Meloni comes to power at the head of a far-right coalition, the economic and social outcomes could be terribleEarlier this month, Alessio Di Giulio, a Florentine councillor with rightwing populist party the League, posted a 17-second video that, to my mind, marks the nadir of what has been one of the most grotesque Italian election campaigns in recent memory. In the clip, Di Giulio strolls through the historic centre of the Tuscan capital when he comes across a woman who appears to be of Roma origin. Stopping in his tracks, the candidate leans into the camera and implores his audience to “vote the League to never see her again”, a phrase he repeats three times for rhetorical effect.Most Italians were appalled, and the video went viral. Which was, of course, Di Giulio’s hope all along. You can see it from the smile on his face. He was surely aware, when he uploaded his clip, that there was no chance of voters in his left-leaning constituency shifting their support. His gesture was purely performative, a tacit reminder to political sympathisers across the nation that if Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy wins this week’s election, as expected, people like him will soon have an opportunity to shape the policy agenda.Jamie Mackay is a writer and translator based in Florence Continue reading...
Jimmy Garoppolo looked like he was on his way out of San Francisco earlier this year. Now he will be leading his team once againThere’s an old saying in NFL circles: “If you have two quarterbacks, you actually have none.” Well, tell that to the San Francisco 49ers, who have learned the value of keeping two qualified starters. While the 49ers were criticized for handing backup quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo a guaranteed one-year deal in the offseason rather than trading him for whatever they could get, the move may have saved their season after Trey Lance went down with a broken ankle on Sunday.The extent of Lance’s injury was not known when the team put Garoppolo – previously labeled “the world’s most expensive backup” by some of the snarkier members of the media – on the field against the Seattle Seahawks in the first quarter. As per usual, it was an efficient but not flashy performance from Garoppolo, who had both a passing and rushing touchdown while throwing for 154 yards without a single pick. The 49ers defeated the Seahawks 27-7, notching their first win of the season while handing Seattle their first loss. Continue reading...
Kingston Group hit with lawsuit from former members that alleges unpaid labor, sexual abuse and human traffickingTen former members of a Utah-based polygamist sect known as the Kingston Group are pursuing punitive damages against the organization after they say it subjected them to years of unpaid labor, sexual violence and human trafficking.In a lawsuit filed earlier this month, the sect’s ex-members allege: “It is largely through … illegal marriage practices that the [Kingston Group] is able to unlawfully make girls and their children religious martyrs and traffic them for sexual and labor purposes.” Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#63SJJ)
Philosophy professor says treating Republican’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as a political stunt risks diminishing its ‘moral seriousness’Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s decision to move unwitting migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last week has been compared to a “mini-ethnic cleansing with genocidal precedence” by a philosopher who has closely studied dehumanization and its role in genocide and the Holocaust.“Of course this is not genocide, but it is somewhat reminiscent of awful things that have happened in the past. As soon as you start treating human beings as undesirable problems to dump on others, you are in very dangerous territory,” said David Livingstone Smith, a professor of philosophy at the University of New England. Continue reading...
President says coronavirus is still a problem but that circumstances are changing and ‘everybody seems to be in pretty good shape’Joe Biden has said “the pandemic is over” in an interview broadcast on Sunday, though he admitted “we still have a problem with Covid”, as the US continues to grapple with coronavirus infections that kill hundreds of Americans a day.The president told CBS’s 60 Minutes: “We still have a problem with Covid. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing.” Continue reading...
The United States president says US forces would defend Taiwan if it was invaded by China. Joe Biden's statement comes despite the US government policy of not having an official position on whether the military would defend Taiwan. Biden's statement also comes after the US's decision not to send forces to Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia
Ebrahim Raisi says he sees no ‘changes in reality’ from Trump administration as hopes to revive nuclear talks dampenIran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, has ruled out a meeting with Joe Biden on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) this week, saying he saw no “changes in reality” from the Trump administration.Raisi underlined the firm position of his government and dampened hopes that a week of summitry at UNGA in New York might yield any progress in negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal. Washington has rejected the latest Iranian bargaining positive as “not constructive”, and most observers believe there will be no breakthroughs at least until after the US congressional elections in November. Continue reading...
Republican governors made ‘false promises to migrants in order to induce them to travel’, lawyers sayAttorneys representing Venezuelan asylum-seekers flown thousands of miles to an affluent holiday island in Massachusetts at the behest of Republican governors have formally requested authorities open a criminal investigation, claiming the victims were “induced to board airplanes and cross state lines under false pretences”.Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a Boston-based group representing 30 of the 48 people flown from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday, said: “Individuals, working in concert with state officials, including the Florida governor, made numerous false promises [to the migrants] – including of work opportunities, schooling for their children, and immigration assistance – in order to induce them to travel.” Continue reading...
Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez won by unanimous decision the last fight of his trilogy against Gennady Golovkin in Las Vegas. He remains the undisputed super-middleweight champion. The two boxers fought in 2017 and 2018 for a draw and a Canelo victory, both very controversial results. This time, the Mexican's domination over the first half of the fight was enough to ensure a clean victory, despite a painful hand that is going to require surgery. At 40 years old, GGG also isn't planning on retiring just yet, saying 'I still have this fire burning inside of me. I have this passion for boxing'
Law provides for councils to represent workers, but opponents claim menu prices will increase and restaurants will closeThe fast-food industry is seeking to overturn one of the most significant labor wins in recent American history by trying to scrap a new law in California that will establish an industry council for the sector on wage standards and other regulations, including safety.The Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, AB 257, was signed into law by the California governor, Gavin Newsom, on 5 September in what is seen as a huge fillip to a US labor movement seeking to capitalize on a wave of unionization drives. Continue reading...
Strengthen sanctions and support the Ukraine military, of course. But the west needs to get its own messages across with an ideological offensiveThe Ukrainians have (again) done what nobody believed they could. They have (again) defeated the supposedly mighty Russia on the battlefield, shown up the underlying incompetence and moral rot of the Putin system. It took them just six days to take back whole swaths of territory in north-eastern Ukraine that it took Russia six months to conquer. The Russian military, political and propaganda elites are all blaming each other: rifts that usually rumble under the surface are now visible to all. Putin looks shaken.Now it’s time for us to act as well. Not just by increasing help to Ukraine on the battlefield (which is paramount), but also by advancing along the other fronts in this conflict: energy, information, finance and diplomacy. Continue reading...
Huge bloc of women expected to turn out in November midterms to protect abortion rights – could it alter the election outcome?Sonya Koenig is scared. A 19-year-old student from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Koenig often stays up until 2am thinking. Sometimes she paces up and down the hall, or speaks to her roommate about nightmare scenarios in which she ends up pregnant and in need of an abortion.“Being in college, I hear stories all the time of women getting drugged at parties, or just walking down the street, and something unfortunate can happen,” says Koenig, a freshman at Michigan State University. “A guy can walk away, but [these abortion bans] mean the woman has to choose: ‘Do I want to give this baby up … or raise this child with no help from anybody?’ That’s a really hard decision.” Continue reading...
It’s a time-honored tradition, but as the US midterms loom, many Republican candidates are ducking out of televised debatesThe vast collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington contain two brown wooden chairs. Their backs have labels explaining that they were used by John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon in “the first face-to-face discussion between presidential candidates” at the CBS television studio in Chicago in 1960.In short, the first televised presidential debate. And where America led, the rest of the world followed, copying the model of gladiatorial political combat as the ultimate format to help voters make up their minds. Continue reading...
Aileen Cannon, who Trump nominated in 2020, granted his wish over the Mar-a-Lago search – a maverick decision that is the thin end of the wedgeIn the first televised presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in 2020, the sitting president was asked why voters should re-elect him to the White House. He gave a relatively obscure answer – it was all about the judges, he said.By the end of his first term in office, Trump bragged, he would have smashed all records for the number of his appointments to the federal bench. “I’ll have approximately 300 federal judges.” Continue reading...
State funeral will be attended by almost 100 presidents and heads of governmentJoe Biden and his wife Jill arrived in the UK on Saturday to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, who the US president has described as “more than a monarch” and a woman who “defined an era”.The Queen’s state funeral on Monday is to be attended by almost 100 presidents and heads of government, and the Bidens were traveling without any former US presidents. Continue reading...
About 50 mainly Venezuelan migrants including a baby deposited unannounced at Naval Observatory in WashingtonAbout 50 migrants, including a one-month-old baby, have been sent in a bus from Texas to the Washington DC residence of Vice-President Kamala Harris, in the latest move by Republican-led states to transfer migrants unannounced across the country.The bus let off the migrants, who are believed to be mostly Venezuelan, outside the Naval Observatory, the traditional home of US vice-presidents, on Saturday morning. Continue reading...
Prosecutors in Baltimore say they lack confidence in ‘integrity of the conviction’ for strangling ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 1999A court hearing has been set for Monday in Baltimore to consider a request from prosecutors to vacate the 2000 murder conviction of Adnan Syed, whose case was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial.Baltimore circuit judge Melissa Phinn scheduled the hearing for 2pm ET, the Baltimore Sun reported. Continue reading...
There’s fun to be had imagining the ex-PM, frustrated at being away from the spotlightGrief experts have explained that the emotion that has surprised a lot of people, me included, over the death of someone aged 96 whom we never met, is real and defined as “parasocial”.Professor Michael Cholbi of Edinburgh University, told the journal Nature that some people cope with parasocial grief by adopting some qualities of the departed person. Others pointed out that this grief wears off pretty soon compared with the regular, unremitting kind. Personally, I have taken comfort in what might be called parasocial joy: the near-simultaneous disappearance from public life of another person I never met: Boris Johnson.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk Continue reading...
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