Southern California on high earthquake alert, bringing anxiety and preparation – Los Angeles Times
Southern California on high earthquake alert, bringing anxiety and preparation – Los Angeles Times

After the 6.4 magnitude quake hit near Ridgecrest on Thursday, many expected aftershocks that would gradually decrease in strength and frequency. They’d been through it before, in Northridge, Sylmar and Whittier. But when a much larger 7.1 magnitude temblor struck Friday night, the shock quickly gave way to a newfound dread: What’s next?

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-earthquake-alert-southern-california-ridgecrest-prep-fear-20190707-story.html

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Grand jury investigating top GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy for exploiting access to Trump – CBS News
Grand jury investigating top GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy for exploiting access to Trump – CBS News

A federal grand jury in New York is investigating top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, examining whether he used his position as vice chair of President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee to drum up business deals with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and people familiar with the matter.

A wide-ranging subpoena the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn recently sent to Trump’s inaugural committee seeks records relating to 20 individuals and businesses. All have connections to Broidy, his investment and defense contracting firms, and foreign officials he pursued deals with — including the current president of Angola and two politicians in Romania.

Prosecutors appear to be investigating whether Broidy exploited his access to Trump for personal gain and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to offer foreign officials “anything of value” to gain a business advantage. Things of value in this case could have been an invitation to the January 2017 inaugural events or access to Trump.

A statement released to the AP by Broidy’s attorneys said that at no point did Broidy or his global security firm Circinus have a contract or exchange of money with “any Romanian government agency, proxy or agent.” It also said that while Circinus did reach an agreement with Angola in 2016 there was no connection whatsoever to the inauguration or Broidy’s role on the inaugural committee.

“Any implication to the contrary is completely false,” the statement said.

The Brooklyn probe appears to be distinct from an inquiry by Manhattan federal prosecutors into the inaugural committee’s record $107 million fundraising and whether foreigners unlawfully contributed.

It followed a request last year by Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut that the Justice Department investigate whether Broidy “used access to President Trump as a valuable enticement to foreign officials who may be in a position to advance Mr. Broidy’s business interests abroad.”

Brooklyn federal prosecutors and the president’s inaugural committee declined to comment on the grand jury proceedings, which are secret. But two people familiar with the matter told the AP that the committee has already complied with the subpoena, issued in April, and a third said the FBI has interviewed at least one of Broidy’s business associates named in the subpoena.

The people spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Broidy, a 61-year-old Los Angeles businessman, made a fortune in investments before moving into defense contracting and has played prominent roles in GOP fundraising, including as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2006 to 2008 and vice chair of the Trump Victory Committee in 2016.

But there have been problems along the way. In 2009, investigators looked into the New York state pension fund’s decision to invest $250 million with Broidy and found he had plied state officials with nearly $1 million in illegal gifts. Broidy pleaded guilty to a felony but it was later knocked down to a misdemeanor after he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pay back $18 million in management fees.

Another scandal came last year when Broidy stepped down as deputy finance chair of the RNC after reports that he agreed to pay $1.6 million as part of a confidentiality agreement to a former Playboy model with whom he had an affair. That payment was arranged in 2017 by Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen.

In the Brooklyn federal probe, Broidy’s is the first name listed in the grand jury subpoena, followed by his Los Angeles investment firm and four limited liability companies linked to him.

It also sought records related to George Nader, a Broidy associate who served as an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, provided grand jury testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller and was recently jailed on federal child pornography charges.

Several of the names included in the subpoena also appeared in a cache of leaked emails anonymously distributed last year to several news organizations, including the AP. Broidy has contended the emails were hacked from his account, and that several of the documents were altered or forged. His attorneys declined to specify to the AP which emails they believed were doctored.

As provided to the AP, the emails show Broidy invited two Angolan leaders named in the subpoena to Trump’s inaugural, and that the invitation was accompanied by a multimillion-dollar contract for Circinus to provide security services in Angola that Broidy asked be signed ahead of the events.

In a follow-up note to one of the Angolans — then-Defense Minister and current President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço — Broidy discussed a planned visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and in the same correspondence demanded a past-due payment for Circinus’ services.

“Many preparations have been made in advance of your visit,” Broidy wrote in February 2017, “including additional meetings at the Capitol and the Department of Treasury.”

The Angolan Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The grand jury subpoena also included several names associated with Broidy’s work on behalf of Romanian politicians at a time when Broidy’s defense company was seeking a lucrative contract to provide security services to the Romanian government — a deal Broidy’s representatives said never came to fruition.

Those names included Sorin Grindeanu, who at the time was prime minister, and Liviu Dragnea, a former parliamentary leader who began serving a 3½-year prison sentence in May for abuse of power. Both officials also attended inaugural events.

Dragnea became a focus of European Union efforts to bolster the rule of law because of his efforts to remove an anti-corruption prosecutor, Laura Kovesi, who investigated him. According to the emails obtained by the AP, Broidy tried to persuade California Republican Rep. Ed Royce, then the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, not to meet with Kovesi during a planned visit to Bucharest in 2017.

“This meeting will not only cause significant issues within the present government (but) potentially diminish the good will which we wish to achieve amongst the Romanian people,” Broidy wrote to Royce.

The emails show a Circinus lawyer, Matt Britton, resigned in October 2017 after expressing alarm to company executives about corruption concerns related to the firm’s Romanian contract negotiations.

“These are FULL STOP issues in my judgment,” the attorney wrote. “NO MATTER HOW LONG THAT TAKES IT ALL MUST BE DONE IN ADVANCE OF ANY CONTRACT WITH ROMANIA.”

Britton, who did not respond to a request for comment, is not among those named in the subpoena.

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grand-jury-investigating-top-gop-fundraiser-elliott-broidy-for-exploiting-access-to-trump/

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Chief Justice Roberts’ Supreme Court Long Game Is Feared And Loathed – NPR
Chief Justice Roberts’ Supreme Court Long Game Is Feared And Loathed – NPR

Chief Justice John Roberts is positioning the Supreme Court in a way that has both conservatives and liberals complaining and wondering what exactly Roberts is trying to do.

Jabin Botsford/AFP/Getty Images


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Jabin Botsford/AFP/Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts is positioning the Supreme Court in a way that has both conservatives and liberals complaining and wondering what exactly Roberts is trying to do.

Jabin Botsford/AFP/Getty Images

What was he thinking? That is the question many are asking on both sides of the political spectrum.

Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly voted with the Supreme Court’s conservatives this term, except in one, and only one, 5-to-4 decision. Written by Roberts, the ruling blocked the addition of a citizenship question on the 2020 census, leaving an angry President Trump desperately trying to find a way around it.

It also left a lot of speculation about the motives of the chief justice.

For some conservatives, Roberts’ vote in the census case was another original sin, much like his vote in 2012 to uphold key provisions of Obamacare. The chairman of the American Conservative Union has even called for Roberts’ impeachment.

“I’m for impeaching the Chief Justice for lying to all of us about his support of the Constitution,” tweeted ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp. “He’s responsible for Robertscare and now he is angling for vast numbers of illegal residents to help Dems hold Congress.”

Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice, doesn’t go that far, but he said the census decision means that “having a conservative majority on the court is still a dream rather than a reality.”

Yet even Levey concedes that Roberts has been a reliable conservative vote on the court. Indeed, Roberts racked up an 80% rate of agreement with the court’s other conservatives in all opinions, the same percentage as the court’s most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas.

As for liberal, and moderate advocates and activists, they were not exactly out there speaking about the chief justice in glowing terms. While relieved that the census looked — for now — immune to political machinations, they were infuriated by another, and perhaps even more important, Roberts opinion.

Traitor or agenda-driven conservative?

Writing for himself and the court’s four other conservatives, the chief justice slammed the door shut on court challenges to extreme partisan gerrymanders. The decision will allow many state legislatures unfettered discretion to draw congressional and state legislative district lines so as to entrench their own political power.

Because Republicans now control state legislatures in 30 states, versus 18 controlled by Democrats, the decision is a boon to GOP power. (There are 22 states completely controlled by Republicans, and 14 where Democrats have total control).

It isn’t just liberals who have pushed for some court supervision of extreme partisan gerrymandering in an era of computer-driven hyper-partisanship.

“There’s no doubt there’s an agenda here,” said Harvard Law professor Charles Fried, who served for four years in the Reagan administration as Solicitor General, the government’s chief advocate in the Supreme Court.

He and other Republican former officeholders filed a brief on behalf of those challenging extreme partisan gerrymanders. Alluding to Roberts’ famous confirmation hearing comment that the job of a judge is not to bat for one side but to “call balls and strikes,” Fried observes caustically, “This is not balls and strikes. This is a long term, shrewdly played, but persistent program.”

The agenda “is to get the law, whether it’s the courts, or the Constitution, or the legislators” out of regulating “anything to do with elections.”

Fried catalogs Roberts’ decisions in this regard. He wrote the court’s 5-to-4 decision striking down the Voting Rights Act, a law passed and re-enacted repeatedly by large and bipartisan congressional majorities. He wrote or participated in a series of decisions striking down longstanding, as well as newer, limits on campaign contributions, also enacted by Congress, and aimed at limiting the role of big money in politics.

And when the court, by a 5-to-4 vote, upheld independent redistricting commissions established by voter referenda, Roberts wrote the dissent. The decisive fifth vote in that case was Justice Anthony Kennedy, now retired, and Fried worries that the 2015 decision is now in peril, even though Roberts, in the gerrymandering decision, pointed to the commissions as “one way” to take redistricting out of the hands incumbents.

While Fried and others fret about what they see as Roberts’ deviousness, Roberts’ conservative critics are not the least bit appeased. They view him as something of a traitor, mainly for the Obamacare and census decisions.

Levey, of the Committee for Justice, sees Roberts as a man more concerned with his image than the law.

“He often does appear like he’s very focused on his legacy and on being popular rather than on doing what a judge should do,” Levey said, adding that “all the pressure from the mainstream media and the establishment is to move left.”

Motivated by a “Solomonic dogma”?

Others, like Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at Southwest College of Law Houston, have a different view. Though Roberts has been dubbed “the new swing justice,” in the wake of Kennedy’s retirement last year, Blackman thinks that is a misnomer.

He sees Kennedy and retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, as “actually somewhere in the middle,” whereas “Roberts is a solid conservative, but for whatever reason, in certain high-profile cases, he takes these very bizarre paths that no one else in the court goes along with.”

It is true that nobody on the court went along with all of Roberts reasoning in either the census case or the the Obamacare case.

“I think Roberts is motivated by some sort of Solomonic dogma, that in any given case of high note,” Blackman said, “that the correct decision is one where he splits the proverbial baby.”

Of course, chief justices, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative alike, have uniformly believed that they have a particular duty to maintain public confidence in the court as an institution.

For instance, in 2000, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, wrote the opinion upholding a decision he had long reviled, the decision that 34 years earlier required police to warn criminal suspects of their rights.

And, in the 1930s Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes worked hard behind the scenes, on and off the court, to prevent President Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing plan from becoming law. Some historians believe that he was even instrumental in persuading one justice to moderate his views to defuse the threat.

Today, Roberts faces similar threats: a president who openly and repeatedly castigates judges in partisan and even ethnic terms, and Democratic presidential contenders, who think the number of justices on the Supreme Court should be expanded by statute if the Democrats take control of the Senate. They argue that Republicans, by refusing for nearly a year to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, have so stacked the deck that the move is necessary.

As some who know Roberts observe, while this and other such proposals are still in their relative infancy, the chief justice cannot ignore the alarm bells. And he knows that if the court moves too far to the right and too fast, those bells will only ring louder.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/07/08/738930098/fear-and-loathing-at-the-supreme-court-what-is-chief-justice-john-roberts-up-to

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U.K. officials scramble as top diplomat in U.S. blasts Trump in leaked memos – NBC News
U.K. officials scramble as top diplomat in U.S. blasts Trump in leaked memos – NBC News

LONDON — British officials turned on the charm Monday, a day after an embarrassing diplomatic leak threatened to complicate Anglo-U.S. relations at a time when the U.K. needs the White House’s support.

It was revealed on Sunday that Britain’s top diplomat in the U.S. had described President Donald Trump as “inept” and “insecure,” and dismissed his administration as “dysfunctional” and “faction ridden” in a series of cables to London.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is vying to be Britain’s next prime minister, said Ambassador Kim Darroch had expressed his “personal view,” while making clear he did not share the envoy’s opinions.

“I think the U.S. administration is highly effective and we have the warmest of relationships and a partnership based on standing up for shared values,” Hunt told reporters on Monday.

The weekend revelations came as Britain struggles to leave the European Union and in the midst of the ruling Conservative Party’s leadership race. The U.K. hopes to look beyond Brussels for future trade deals and close relations, and many see a U.S. deal as a pillar of a post-E.U. Britain.

Trade Minister Liam Fox who is on a visit to Washington said he would apologize to the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who he is due to meet during his trip.

“Malicious leaks of this nature are unprofessional, unethical and unpatriotic and can actually lead to a damage to that relationship, which can therefore affect our wider security interest,” he told BBC News on Monday.

The British government is investigating who was the source of the leak.

“We believe the leak is unacceptable,” Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman told reporters on Monday.

Despite the countries’ oft-touted special relationship, ties between Washington and Westminster have seen some strains throughout Trump’s presidency. For example, the president has previously criticized May’s handling of Brexit and has praised her likely successor, Boris Johnson.

On Sunday, Trump told reporters that Darroch had not served the U.K. well. “We’re not big fans of that man,” he said as he left his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.

While the memos were critical of Trump, the leak is actually a headache for Britain, according to Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London.

The content of the memos was “not exactly remarkable stuff,” said Eyal.

“The market had already priced these things in” and the criticism was unlikely to change the minds of Trump supporters or critics, he added.

The leak was a thornier issue for Britain, however, as it comes soon after a state visit, weeks before a new government will take office and months ahead of the end of Darroch’s term Washington —raising the question of who should replace him, said Eyal.

Darroch is a veteran diplomat who is into his third year of what is usually a four-year posting.

“There is a feeling [in London] that has existed for a while that the Trump presidency is so unusual, different from that of his predecessors, that only someone with political clout rather than diplomatic clout will do,” he said, cautioning that he thought this was the wrong approach.

From the start of his presidency Trump has called on Britain to appoint a person he trusts as ambassador to Washington, said Eyal.

In 2016, Trump said Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage would do a “great job” as ambassador to the U.S. The pair have met on several occasions, most recently in London during last month’s state visit.

Farage responded to the leaked cables on Monday, saying Darroch was “totally unsuitable” for the job.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Brexit campaigner said he thought that if Conservative Party front-runner Johnson becomes prime minister later this month “Darroch’s time in Washington will draw to a close.”

However, when asked if he would accept the post of ambassador to the U.S. if offered it, Farage told BBC News that he didn’t think he was the “right man for the job.”

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/u-k-officials-scramble-top-diplomat-u-s-blasts-trump-n1027286

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Justice Department Changes Lawyers Working on Census Case – NPR
Justice Department Changes Lawyers Working on Census Case – NPR

The Justice Department says it’s changing the lineup of lawyers involved in the lawsuits over the Trump administration’s push to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census forms.

J. David Ake/AP


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The Justice Department says it’s changing the lineup of lawyers involved in the lawsuits over the Trump administration’s push to get a citizenship question on the 2020 census forms.

J. David Ake/AP

The Justice Department announced a major shakeup Sunday in its team of lawyers involved in the ongoing legal battle over the citizenship question the Trump administration wants to add to the 2020 census forms.

“The Department of Justice is shifting these matters to a new team of Civil Division lawyers going forward,” said DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec in a written statement.

The new team is made up of both career and political appointee attorneys, including lawyers from the Consumer Protection Branch, a DOJ official tells NPR’s Carrie Johnson.

The Justice Department did not provide an explanation for the change or identify on the record which attorneys will no longer be working on the cases related to the census. But more details are expected Monday in court filings.

The move comes as the Trump administration continues its search for a new way to include the question — “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” — on forms for the upcoming national head count after the Supreme Court ruled last month to keep it off for now.

Days after the Supreme Court rejected the administration’s stated reason for adding the question, the Justice Department announced early last week that printing had started for paper census forms that do not include the question.

It looked as if a more than year-long legal battle was winding down. Justice Department attorneys, including U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, had repeatedly emphasized in court the importance of finalizing the 2020 census forms by June 30, so that the paper questionnaires can be printed in time.

But tweets by President Trump signaled that he was determined to continue pushing for the question.

“We are absolutely moving forward, as we must, because of the importance of the answer to this question,” Trump tweeted on July 3.

The president’s comments caught the attention of U.S. District Judge George Hazel, who called for an emergency hearing by phone last week as part of the Maryland-based lawsuits. During the hearing, Hazel asked Joshua Gardner, a career DOJ attorney, to confirm again the administration’s plans after noting that Gardner has indicated just the day before that the administration was moving forward with printing forms without the citizenship question.

“The tweet this morning was the first I had heard of the president’s position on the issue,” said Gardner, who had stepped away from a planned vacation to join the teleconference according to a transcript. “I do not have a deeper understanding of what that means at this juncture other than what the president has tweeted. But, obviously, as you can imagine, I am doing my absolute best to figure out what’s going on.”

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Trump said that his administration has “a couple of avenues” for getting a citizenship question onto the census.

“Our Attorney General is doing a fantastic job, in many ways, and I think he’s got it under control,” Trump said.

In her written statement, Kupec noted that the DOJ attorneys involved in the census cases “have consistently demonstrated the highest professionalism, integrity, and skill inside and outside the courtroom.”

“The Attorney General appreciates that service, thanks them for their work on these important matters, and is confident that the new team will carry on in the same exemplary fashion as the cases progress,” Kupec added.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson contributed reporting.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/07/07/739369416/justice-department-changes-legal-team-behind-census-citizenship-question-case

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Admiral set to become Navy’s top officer retires over inappropriate professional relationship – CNN
Admiral set to become Navy’s top officer retires over inappropriate professional relationship – CNN

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/07/politics/admiral-navy-top-officer-retires/index.html

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Ben Jennings on the leaked Trump cables – cartoon – The Guardian
Ben Jennings on the leaked Trump cables – cartoon – The Guardian


Sun 7 Jul 2019 13.08 EDT

Last modified on Sun 7 Jul 2019 15.42 EDT

Source Article from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2019/jul/07/ben-jennings-on-the-leaked-trump-cables-cartoon

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Trump rails against Fox News for its weekend coverage, says watching it is worse than CNN – Business Insider
Trump rails against Fox News for its weekend coverage, says watching it is worse than CNN – Business Insider

President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed Fox News — his preferred cable news network — for “loading up with Democrats” and for citing the “fake” New York Times in its reporting.

In a series of tweets on Sunday evening, Trump lashed out at the right-wing news outlet for its weekend coverage, saying watching it is “worse than watching low ratings Fake News CNN” or NBC News anchor Brian Williams.

“Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News @CNN, or Lyin’ Brian Williams,” Trump said in a series of angry tweets.

“Like CNN, NBC is also way down in the ratings. But @FoxNews, who failed in getting the very BORING Dem debates, is now loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced @nytimes as a ‘source’ of information.”

He added: @FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!”

It’s unclear what specifically prompted Trump’s response.

In prior tweets on Sunday, Trump railed against the New York Times for its “phony and exaggerated accounts” of disease and overcrowding at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas, located at the frontlines of the US-Mexico border crisis.

The report compiled dozens of interviews by Border Patrol agents and supervisors, as well as detainees, lawyers, lawmakers, and aides who visited the facilities, and referred to the site’s condition as “the stuff of nightmares.”

“We are confident in the accuracy of our reporting on the US Border Patrol’s detention centers,” the Times responded in a tweet.

Members of the Trump administration also defended conditions at the US border after the New York Times published its report on Saturday.

Kenneth Cuccinelli, acting director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, appeared on “ Fox News Sunday” earlier on Sunday and asserted that facilities he visited in El Paso, Texas were being operated safely, but admitted that the facilities were overcrowded.

“It was being run well, it was run safely, and so forth, but once you’re over those capacity points, you encounter problems,” Cuccinelli said.

He also took aim at Congress for not doing more to solve the crisis, despite lawmakers reaching a $4.6 billion agreement last month for humanitarian aid to overwhelmed agencies operating on the southern border after months of political turmoil.

“People in the House come down and complain about them while not helping fix the problem,” Cuccinelli said. “It’s the height of hypocrisy.”

Business Insider has reached out to Fox News for comment.

Source Article from https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-slams-fox-news-in-tweets-2019-7

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ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver’s License Databases – The New York Times
ICE Used Facial Recognition to Mine State Driver’s License Databases – The New York Times

The Georgetown researchers’ documents covered 2014 to 2017, and it was not immediately clear if those states still comply with the ICE requests. Representatives for the states’ motor vehicles departments could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday night.

Matt Bourke, an ICE spokesman, said the agency would not comment on “investigative techniques, tactics or tools” because of “law-enforcement sensitivities.”

But he added: “During the course of an investigation, ICE has the ability to collaborate with external local, federal and international agencies to obtain information that may assist in case completion and subsequent prosecution. This is an established procedure that is consistent with other law enforcement agencies.”

The researchers sent public records requests to each state, searching for documents related to law enforcement’s relationship with state motor vehicles departments. They received varying degrees of responsiveness but discovered the ICE requests in Utah, Washington and Vermont, which have come under fire before for sharing driver’s license information with the agency.

The Seattle Times reported last year that Washington State’s Department of Licensing turned over undocumented immigrants’ driver’s license applications to ICE officials, a practice its governor, Jay Inslee, pledged to stop. And a lawsuit in Vermont filed by an activist group cited documents obtained under public records law that showed that the state Department of Motor Vehicles forwarded names, photos, car registrations and other information on migrant workers to ICE, Vermont Public Radio reported this year.

The relationship between Washington’s Department of Licensing and ICE officials may prove to be particularly interesting to privacy experts because of a law the State Legislature passed in 2012 stipulating that the department could use a facial recognition matching system for driver’s licenses only when authorized by a court order, something ICE did not provide.

Facial recognition technology has faced criticism from experts who point to studies that show that recognition algorithms are more likely to misidentify people of color — and in particular, women of color. At least 25 prominent artificial-intelligence researchers, including experts at Google, Facebook and Microsoft, signed a letter in April calling on Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies because it is biased against women and racial minorities.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/politics/ice-drivers-licenses-facial-recognition.html

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Southern California could see more magnitude 6 earthquakes ‘in the next week,’ as temblors become ‘wake-up … – Fox News
Southern California could see more magnitude 6 earthquakes ‘in the next week,’ as temblors become ‘wake-up … – Fox News
Video

West Coast braces for a potential third earthquake

Officials warn residents that magnitude four and five earthquakes could happen in the coming weeks; Jeff Paul reports from Ridgecrest, California.

After two major earthquakes within days in Southern California, seismologists are warning the area could see additional sizable temblors within the next week.

The 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday was the largest one in Southern California in nearly 20 years and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, the same area of the desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit on Thursday.

No fatalities or major injuries were reported, but the quake left behind cracked and burning buildings, broken roads, obstructed railroad tracks and leaking water and gas lines.

CALIFORNIANS BRACE FOR AFTERSHOCKS AFTER PAIR OF POTENT QUAKES; GOVERNOR CONFIDENT ABOUT FEDERAL COMMITMENT TO ASSIST STATE

In a news conference on Saturday, California Institute of Technology seismologist Egill Hauksson said that Ridgecrest was once known as the “earthquake capital of the world” because it had many small quakes along the fault.

Ron Mikulaco, right, and his nephew, Brad Fernandez, examine a crack caused by an earthquake on Highway 178, Saturday, July 6, 2019, outside of Ridgecrest, Calif.
(​​​​​​​AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Hauksson added that scientists believe the probability of another magnitude 7 over the next week is about 3 percent as of Saturday, but one or two magnitude 6 quakes are expected “in the next week,” FOX11 reported.

Massive earthquake strongest to hit California in 20 years

7.1 magnitude earthquake shakes up California more than any other within the last two decades.

More than 3,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the Searles Valley sequence, according to Lucy Jones, another seismologist at Caltech.

The area could see up to 30,000 aftershocks over the next six months, though many of those will be too small for people to notice.

Jones, a former science adviser at the U.S. Geological Survey, said the new quake on Friday probably ruptured along about 25 miles of fault line and was part of a continuing sequence.

The seismic activity is unlikely to affect fault lines outside of the area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault is far away.

“The sequence is decaying, and the decay rate is on the high side of average. So the probabilities of more aftershocks are dropping,” Jones said on Twitter. ” In the next week, M4s are still certain, a couple of M5s are likely, but larger quakes are looking more improbable.”

NEW 7.1 EARTHQUAKE HITS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA — 1 DAY AFTER LARGEST TEMBLOR IN DECADES

The earthquake on Friday jolted an area from Sacramento to Mexico and prompted the evacuation of the Navy’s largest single land holding, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in the Mojave Desert.

An earthquake-damaged street is seen Saturday, July 6, 2019, in Trona, Calif.
(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated that more than $100 million in economic damage, adding that governments must strengthen alert systems and building codes, and residents should make sure they know how to protect themselves during an earthquake.

“It is a wake-up call for the rest of the state and other parts of the nation, frankly,” he said at a news conference.

7.1 magnitude earthquake impacts Southern California

Damages are being assessed in the aftermath of the 7.1 earthquake. No deaths have been reported at this time; Jeff Paul reports from Ridgecrest, California.

Hauksson said that while the recent quakes have not been on the more famous fault lines across the state, residents still need to be wary of when the next “big one” could strike.

“We’re expecting large earthquakes on all the faults in Southern California,” he told reporters on Saturday. “In particular, (the Ridgecrest) area is quite active and has been since we’ve had good records, since the 1930s.”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP 

With the possibility of aftershocks and temperatures forecast to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit over the next several days, officials were taking precautions.

The California National Guard was sending 200 troops, logistical support, and aircraft, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin said. The Pentagon had been notified, and the entire California Military Department was put on alert, he said. The California Office of Emergency Services also brought in cots, water, and meals and set up cooling centers in the region, Director Mark Ghilarducci said.

Crews in Southern California assessed damage to cracked and burned buildings, broken roads, leaking water and gas lines and other infrastructure Saturday after the largest earthquake the region has seen in nearly 20 years jolted an area from Sacramento to Las Vegas to Mexico.
(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

In Ridgecrest, local fire and police officials said they were initially swamped by calls for medical and ambulance service. But police Chief Jed McLaughlin said there was “nothing but minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, by the grace of God.”

In Trona, a town of about 2,000 people considered the gateway to Death Valley, fire officials said up to 50 structures were damaged. San Bernardino County Supervisor Robert Lovingood said FEMA delivered a tractor-trailer full of bottled water because of damage to water lines. Newsom declared a state of emergency for the county.

Fox News’ Louis Casiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/us/southern-california-earthquake-region-fault-line-natural-disaster

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Border Patrol bigotry is a crisis all its own – New York Post
Border Patrol bigotry is a crisis all its own – New York Post

The discovery of two hate-filled Facebook groups for former and active Border Patrol agents leaves US Customs and Border Patrol with only one choice: It’s time to clean house. And conservatives should be leading the calls for change.

On a Facebook page with 9,500 members called “I’m 10-15” (a reference to the Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody”), members posted racist, sexist and xenophobic comments and memes. They joked about the deaths of migrants and children being carried through the Rio Grande in trash bags.

A member posted a sexually explicit, Photoshopped image of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the caption: “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special, Starring AOC.” One member shared the photo of the drowned bodies of Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-month-old daughter, Valeria, musing whether the picture could been faked and asking: “Have y’all ever seen floaters this clean?”

Similar posts were found on a second Facebook page called “The Real CBP Nation,” including a meme of a border agent with a man against the hood of his car and the caption: “Feelin kinda cute. Might separate some families today.”

The news site ProPublica, which first blew the lid off the secret groups, was able to connect certain participants to Facebook profiles that appeared to belong to real CBP agents. The bigoted, dehumanizing language used by these agents is even more stomach-turning in the face of increased reports of neglect and mistreatment of migrants at the border after a group of lawyers visited a facility in Clint, Texas.

Agents punished lice-infected children for losing a shared comb by forcing them to sleep on the floor without mattresses or blankets, according to The New Yorker. The New York Times reported that “children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met.” The lawyers claimed that children were denied showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes and soap.

The rhetoric on the Facebook pages gives credence to these accounts and ammunition to critics of the Trump administration’s handling of the border crisis. After all, it’s much easier to believe stories of hostile and vindictive agents at the border when agents on Facebook seem to be confirming that they see migrants as less-than-human.

If this is how they speak about the people under their care online, how do they treat them in person?

Top Department of Homeland Security officials condemned the posts and promised to open an investigation into the Facebook group. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost promised that “any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.”

But according to a report by Politico, officials at CBP have known about the Facebook page for years. Indeed, concerned agents reported bad behavior on the group in 2016. A former DHS agent told Politico that CBP staffers would monitor the page to see “what people are talking about.” So if the agency knew, why didn’t it crack down years ago?

If Provost understands how serious the situation is, and how bad this looks for CBP, she won’t just hold an investigation behind closed doors and quietly get rid of a few of the worst offenders. With reports of abuse flooding in and public trust in the professionalism of Border Patrol agents disappearing altogether, the CBP needs to make it clear that bigotry and abuse won’t be tolerated.

Institutions build culture from the top down. Kicking out the bad eggs dense enough to reveal their disdain for migrants online won’t repair a broken institutional culture. If racists who could have a tendency to abuse migrants are slipping through the cracks, the entire system of how agents are vetted needs to be changed. People at the top should be held accountable.

Conservatives, who emphasize the inherent, God-given dignity of every person, should be especially outraged. As should immigration restrictionists, who shouldn’t want their cause to be conflated with racist abuse. It’s possible to be tough-minded on immigration — and humane.

Twitter: @BKERogers

Source Article from https://nypost.com/2019/07/07/border-patrol-bigotry-is-a-crisis-all-its-own/

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Jeffrey Epstein Is Accused of Luring Girls to His Manhattan Mansion and Abusing Them – The New York Times
Jeffrey Epstein Is Accused of Luring Girls to His Manhattan Mansion and Abusing Them – The New York Times

The girls were initially recruited to give him massages. But he frequently escalated the encounters into sex acts, a law enforcement source said, including groping and touching the girls’ genitals. This pattern continued from at least 2002 to 2005, the source said.

Image
In 2008, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in state court and served about a year in a Palm Beach, Fla., jail.CreditPalm Beach Sheriff’s Office, via Associated Press

On Saturday, a neighbor near an East 71st Street home purchased by Mr. Epstein in the mid-1990s, took a photograph, reviewed by The New York Times, that showed F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers using a crow bar to force open the mansion’s tall wooden doors.

The mansion, which runs along East 71st Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, has been called one of the largest townhouses in Manhattan. It contains at least seven floors and covers 21,000 square feet.

A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment on Sunday. A lawyer for Mr. Epstein could not immediately be reached for comment.

Women who said they were victims of Mr. Epstein when they were girls have previously described being assaulted at the Upper East Side residence. One of his accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, said in court documents that Mr. Epstein forced her to have sex with him at the mansion. She settled a separate lawsuit against Mr. Epstein in 2009.

Mr. Epstein had earlier been accused of maintaining a similar arrangement at his mansion in Palm Beach, after the parents of one of Mr. Epstein’s alleged victims approached the police there in 2005. That case ballooned rapidly, according to documents reviewed by the Miami Herald: Officials soon identified at least 36 potential victims.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking.html

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After two quakes shake Southern California, residents wonder: Are we getting close to the Big One? – CNN
After two quakes shake Southern California, residents wonder: Are we getting close to the Big One? – CNN

(CNN)Right after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake rocked Southern California on July 4, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, a lifelong Angeleno, tweeted that it was the longest quake she’d ever felt.

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    CNN’s Sarah Jorgensen, Alexandra Fields and Chris Audick contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/07/us/big-one-california-earthquakes/index.html

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    U.S. Wins Record Fourth World Cup Title – The New York Times
    U.S. Wins Record Fourth World Cup Title – The New York Times

    1’

    That’s not unexpected, but the Dutch will need to be on guard. At the moment even O’Hara and Dunn have pushed into the attack. It’s a sign of confidence if anything.

    Via Rory Smith of The Times, inside the Stade de Lyon:

    It is quite hard to underestimate the scale of the American takeover of Lyon: this morning, certainly, there was no street that did not contain at least one person carrying the Stars and Stripes, or draping it over their shoulders, or wearing it on their pants.

    On the trams streaming out of Lyon toward the stadium, American fans outnumbered the Dutch by some considerable order of magnitude: three to one? Four to one? Five? Given that the Netherlands is, famously, quite a lot closer to France than the United States, and given that the Dutch generally travel in vast quantities, that they should be in such a minority is testament to the pulling power of this United States team.

    In the stadium, Jill Ellis’s players will feel they have home advantage, even on this side of the Atlantic. There is one bank of Dutch fans, in that vibrant orange, but most of the rest of the stands are dominated by Americans. The players were roared from the field when their warm-up session ended; each name was cheered when the starting lineup was read out, and none more so than Megan Rapinoe, the captain, and the standard-bearer for this squad. That says a lot, too, about the team and its fans and the bond between them: her unapologetic activism, her outspokenness, makes her more popular, not less.

    Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/sports/soccer/usa-vs-netherlands-score.html

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    Julie K. Brown: "Quite A Few Powerful And Important" Names Will Come Up In Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Case – RealClearPolitics
    Julie K. Brown: "Quite A Few Powerful And Important" Names Will Come Up In Jeffrey Epstein Sex Trafficking Case – RealClearPolitics

    Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who has done original reporting on details of the alleged sex trafficking crimes of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein for the past several years, joined MSNBC Sunday morning to discuss the evidence against Epstein and the “rogues gallery” of rich, powerful, and famous people who are suspected to have used his services. Epstein was arrested Saturday in New Jersey on sex trafficking charges.


    “I’ve felt a lot of pressure,” Brown said. “Needless to say, these are very powerful people and I think that they’re sweating a little bit, especially today. We don’t know how much, how deep this went, how far-reaching it went in government, but there have been a lot of names that I could see on these message pads [listing clients] on a regular basis as part of the evidence. These message pads where they would call and leave Epstein messages, such as, ‘I’m at this hotel.’ Why do you do that, unless you’re expecting him to send you a girl to visit you at your hotel? So there are probably quite a few important people, powerful people, who are sweating it out right now. We’ll have to wait and see whether Epstein is going to name names.”


    She said Epstein’s relationship with fellow Palm Beach resident Donald Trump was “friendly.” “They went to dinner parties at each other’s houses, Trump was also on his plane. Probably not as much as a lot of other people because, you know, Trump had his own plane. But they had a lot of social relationships. And the other interesting thing is Trump had a modeling agency, and Epstein also had a stake in a modeling agency, which they suspect he used to bring in underage girls from overseas.”


    “There is a comment in one of the court files where Epstein is quoted as saying, ‘I want to set up my modeling agency the same way Trump set up his modeling agency.’ I don’t know what that means, but it is curious he was trying to do something similar to Trump.” Brown said.


    President Trump has commented on the case:


    “I started this story before the #MeToo movement, before the Harvey Weinstein story broke,” she said. “But I think the story and my journalism benefited from the #MeToo movement because we’re at a point in our culture where we’re giving these cases a lot more scrutiny. I also think the reason why this case has touched a lot more nerves than some of the others is that these cases involve vulnerable girls — 13,14,15-year-old girls.”


    “There are a lot of powerful people –men and women, by the way– who take advantage of poor vulnerable women, whether they are underage, or even women who are young and come to this country trying to make a life for themselves, and really it is up to authorities to nail these cases and start to go after them, but it has been spotty,” she also said.


    Full segment via MSNBC:

    Source Article from https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/07/07/julie_k_brown_quite_a_few_powerful_and_important_names_will_come_up_in_jeffrey_epstein_sex_trafficking_case.html

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    No, California won’t get tossed into the ocean by an earthquake — and other myths debunked – CNN
    No, California won’t get tossed into the ocean by an earthquake — and other myths debunked – CNN

    Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/07/us/earthquakes-myths-and-facts-trnd/index.html

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    Sources: Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein arrested in NY on sex charges – AOL
    Sources: Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein arrested in NY on sex charges – AOL

     

    NEW YORK (AP) — Wealthy financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested Saturday in New York on new sex-trafficking charges involving allegations that date to the early 2000s, according to law enforcement officials.

    Epstein, a wealthy hedge fund manager who once counted as friends former President Bill Clinton, Great Britain’s Prince Andrew, and President Donald Trump, was taken into federal custody and is expected to appear Monday in Manhattan federal court, three law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

    One of the officials said Epstein is accused of paying underage girls for massages and molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York.

    The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the pending case.

    A message was sent to Epstein’s defense attorney seeking comment.

    Epstein’s arrest, first reported by The Daily Beast, comes amid renewed scrutiny of a once-secret plea deal that ended a federal investigation against him.

    That deal, which is being challenged in Florida federal court, allowed Epstein, who is now 66, to plead guilty to lesser state charges of soliciting and procuring a person under age 18 for prostitution.

    Averting a possible life sentence, Epstein was instead was sentenced to 13 months in jail. The deal also required he reach financial settlements with dozens of his once-teenage victims and register as a sex offender.

    Epstein’s deal was overseen by former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who is now President Donald Trump’s labor secretary. Acosta has defended the plea deal as appropriate under the circumstances, though the White House said in February that it was “looking into” his handling of the deal.

    President Donald Trump signs an executive order on a revised Cuba policy aimed at stopping the flow of U.S. cash to the country’s military and security services while maintaining diplomatic relations, Friday, June 16, 2017, in Miami. From left are, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Cary Roque, Vice President Mike Pence and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

    President Donald Trump, Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, third from left, Ivanka Trump, the daughter of President Donald Trump, second from right, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, right, tour the Waukesha County Technical College in Pewaukee, Wis., Tuesday, June 13, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)




    U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra of Florida ruled earlier this year that Epstein’s victims should have been consulted under federal law about the deal, and he is now weighing whether to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement, or NPA, that protected Epstein from federal charges.

    It was not immediately clear whether the cases involved the same victims since nearly all have remained anonymous.

    Federal prosecutors recently filed court papers in Florida case contending Epstein’s deal must stand.

    “The past cannot be undone; the government committed itself to the NPA, and the parties have not disputed that Epstein complied with its provisions,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

    They acknowledged, however, that the failure to consult victims “fell short of the government’s dedication to serve victims to the best of its ability” and that prosecutors “should have communicated with the victims in a straightforward and transparent way.”

    The victims in the Florida case have until Monday to respond to the Justice Department’s filing.

    According to court records in Florida, authorities say at least 40 underage girls were brought into Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion for what turned into sexual encounters after female fixers looked for suitable girls locally and in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.

    Some girls were also allegedly brought to Epstein’s homes in New York City, New Mexico and a private Caribbean island, according to court documents.

    Saturday’s arrest also came just days after a federal appeals court in New York ordered the unsealing of nearly 2,000 pages of records in a since-settled defamation case involving Epstein.

    U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse released a statement Saturday calling for Epstein to be held without bail pending trial.

    “This monster received a pathetically soft sentence last time and his victims deserve nothing less than justice,” Sasse, R-Nebraska, said in the statement. “Justice doesn’t depend on the size of your bank account.”

    ___

    Sisak reported from Port St. Lucie, Florida. Associated Press writers Colleen Long, Curt Anderson and Tom Hays contributed to this report.

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    Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/07/07/sources-jeffrey-epstein-arrested-in-ny-on-sex-charges/23764998/

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    How Britain just inched closer to the US on Iran – Washington Examiner
    How Britain just inched closer to the US on Iran – Washington Examiner

    Deploying Royal Marines from its Gibraltar territory at the Mediterranean Sea gateway, Britain on Thursday seized an Iranian oil tanker it says is breaching European Union sanctions against trade with Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime.

    This is proof of Britain’s increasing alignment with America on Iran.

    Britain insists it supports EU efforts to stabilize the Iran nuclear agreement. But London knew full well the fury its seizure would spark in Tehran.

    Upset that its global circumnavigation (transiting the Suez Canal would have been quicker than traveling around the Cape of Good Hope!) to resupply Syria has been busted, Iran is warning that unless the tanker is released, it will seize a British tanker in retaliation. This threat should not be judged idle. Iranian hardliners are desperate to increase pressure on the EU to get it to weaken crippling U.S. sanctions. And they will regard Britain’s action as a pretext to act.

    The British are well aware of this, and their action here cannot be disconnected from its broader strategic environment. With a new prime minister entering office in late July and Iran now overtly breaching the nuclear accord, Britain’s Iran policy is ripe for reconsideration. The fact that Assad has used Iranian oil to enable his massacre of hundreds of thousands of Syrians only consolidates British action under international law.

    But the headline here is that the fragile coalition holding together the Iran nuclear agreement has suffered another blow. Iran is increasingly isolated.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/how-britain-just-inched-closer-to-the-us-on-iran

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    Biden claims Russian election interference wouldn’t have happened on his and Obama’s watch, but it did – Washington Examiner
    Biden claims Russian election interference wouldn’t have happened on his and Obama’s watch, but it did – Washington Examiner

    Joe Biden is at it again.

    The former vice president took another crack at whitewashing the Obama legacy in a CNN interview this week, claiming he and President Obama would not have allowed Russian election interference to happen on their watch. The insane thing about this is: Russian election interference most absolutely happened during the Obama years. Everyone accepts that at this point, and President Trump was one of the last to accept it.

    Does Biden not know this? Is he lying and hoping no one notices? Is he just having a senior moment?

    CNN’s Chris Cuomo kicked things off by noting that President Trump “says he’s gotten NATO to give in more money for their defense because of his tactics.”

    “Oh, come on, man,” Biden scoffed indignantly. “And by the way, the idea that NATO thinks — let me put it this way: If he wins reelection, I promise you, there’ll be no NATO in four years, or five years.”

    Cuomo asked, “You think there’ll be no more NATO if he’s reelected?”

    “No more NATO,” said Biden.

    The 2020 Democratic front-runner then veered off.

    “Look at what’s happening with Putin,” said Biden. “While he — while Putin is trying to undo our elections, he is undoing elections in Europe. Look what’s happening in Hungary. Look what’s happening in Poland.”

    He added, “Look what’s happening. Do you think that would happen on my watch or Barack’s watch? You can’t answer that, but I promise you, it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”

    In what version of reality is Biden living? Russia has been screwing with foreign elections for decades. It is well-documented. It is not new. Political scientists Lucan Ahmad Way and Adam Casey explained last year for the Washington Post’s the Monkey Cage blog:

    Shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia began to interfere in elections of the countries that had been part of the U.S.S.R. Many observers have argued that Russia sought to promote authoritarianism. In fact, its goal wasn’t primarily to undermine democracy but to support pro-Russian candidates. Indeed, in some cases, as in Ukraine in 1994, Russia inadvertently bolstered pluralism by trying to undermine anti-Russian autocrats.

    Russian interference also frequently failed. Despite Russia’s power in the region, only four of 11 cases of interference turned out in Russia’s favor. Only once — in Ukraine in 1994 — is there plausible evidence that Russian intervention was decisive. There, Russian television gave the pro-Russian opposition candidate for Ukraine’s presidency significant media exposure that he would have otherwise lacked.

    Then there are Russia’s post-2014 efforts to disrupt national elections, which Way and Casey call the “second wave”:

    Special counsel Robert Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community have concluded also that Russian interference in the 2016 American presidential election specifically dates back to the Obama administration.

    Biden cannot possibly be this ignorant about what went on during the years he served as vice president. Well, then again, let’s think about this. Though it seems unfathomable that the man who served as second-in-command to President Obama would be so uninformed about Russia’s efforts to upset foreign elections, it is worth remembering that Biden is the same person who sneered in 2012 when GOP nominee Mitt Romney warned that Russia is the U.S.’ greatest geopolitical foe: “These debates have exposed that Gov. Romney and Paul Ryan have a foreign policy right out of the ’80s, a social policy out of the ’50s.”

    Maybe Biden is just that ignorant. Then again, he is also a shameless liar.

    Straight ignorance or an outright falsehood? Perhaps the answer here lies somewhere in the middle.

    Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/biden-claims-russian-election-interference-wouldnt-have-happened-on-his-and-obamas-watch-but-it-did

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    Michelle Obama won’t comment on Biden apology, holds off on any endorsement – ABC News
    Michelle Obama won’t comment on Biden apology, holds off on any endorsement – ABC News

    Six Democratic presidential candidates took the stage at the Essence Festival on Saturday, but it was a former inhabitant of the White House who got a rock star’s welcome — regardless of her tendency to deflect questions on the 2020 election.

    Former first lady Michelle Obama refused to comment on the Kamala Harris-Joe Biden “dust up,” as moderator Gayle King called it, Saturday night, but Obama did reiterate a lot of her opinions surrounding the current political climate with a lot of color and to a lot of applause.

    Biden, President Barack Obama’s vice president, apologized for the first time Saturday for comments he made weeks ago about working with segregationists in Congress during the 1970s.

    Sen. Harris, the only black woman in the Senate, took special exception to Biden’s comments during the first Democratic debate two weeks ago.

    “I’ve been doing this rodeo far too long,” Obama responded to King’s question about the tiff. “And no comment.”

    The former first lady also said her and her husband would not be endorsing any candidate from the crowded field, saying they would support whomever wins the primary.

    “Barack and I are going to support whoever wins the primary, so … our primary focus is letting the primary process play out, because it’s very early,” she said. “I mean, that’s one of the things that we learned in the campaign. It is early; it’s like trying to figure out who’s winning the World Series on the first seven games. I mean that’s where we are right now, it is so early.”

    Barack Obama had previously said he did not intend to endorse his former vice president early. And Biden said he asked the former president not to.

    “I didn’t want it to look like he was putting his thumb on the scale,” the former vice president told “The View” in April.

    While staying mostly out of current politics, Michelle Obama did manage to take a not-so-subtle jab at the man now in the White House.

    “The leader of the free world, with a tweet, can start a war, can crush an economy, can change the future of our children,” she said. “It is a real job which requires deep seriousness and focus.”

    She has criticized President Donald Trump before and said in her recent memoir, “Becoming,” she will never forgive him for the birther controversy he helped to perpetuate in the years prior to his campaign.

    But Michelle Obama spent much of her time on stage at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome discussing voting rates among African Americans and urging those in attendance to get to the polls next year.

    “I fear that sometimes people might have thought that Barack made it look easy, so it must be easy, It’s kind of like, I guess, if the black guy can do it, anybody can do it. And that’s not true,” she said to laughs from the mostly African American crowd.

    She closed with a message of motivation for the crowd.

    “I feel the power in the Superdome right here,” she said. “I feel it. I feel it right now. If each of us does our part and we go out there and we get educated and we register and we get people registered to vote. We can change things.”

    ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michelle-obama-comment-biden-apology-holds-off-endorsement/story?id=64174424

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    Biden says he was wrong in comments about segregationists – USA TODAY
    Biden says he was wrong in comments about segregationists – USA TODAY

    SUMTER, S.C. – Former Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday apologized for recent comments about working with segregationist senators in his early days in the U.S. Senate, saying he understands now his remarks could have been offensive to some.

    “Was I wrong a few weeks ago?” Biden asked a mostly black audience of several hundred in Sumter during the first day of a weekend visit to South Carolina. “Yes, I was. I regret it, and I’m sorry for any of the pain of misconception that caused anybody.”

    Biden’s comments came as he and rival presidential candidate Kamala Harris were set to circle each other while campaigning Sunday in South Carolina, the first Southern state to vote in next year’s primary and a crucial proving ground for candidates seeking support of black Democrats. Biden defended his record on racial issues and reminded voters of his ties to former President Barack Obama, whose popularity in South Carolina remains high.

    The former vice president and the California senator probably will be pressed on their tense debate exchange over race and federally mandated school busing. Though the issue is not at the forefront of the 2020 primary, it could resonate in a state with a complicated history with race and segregation.

    Without naming Harris, Biden on Saturday referenced what he characterized as expected attacks from other campaigns eager to take him on.

    “I’m going to let my record stand for itself and not be distorted or smeared,” Biden said. He recalled his support of Obama’s criminal justice reforms and pointed out areas in which he disagreed, such as the three-strikes policy that led to longer sentences for repeat offenders.

    “I’m flawed and imperfect like everyone else. I’ve made the best decisions that I could at the moment they had to be made,” Biden said. “If the choice is between doing nothing and acting, I’ve chosen to act.”

    Several Harris supporters in the state said her pointed and personal critique of Biden, who opposed busing mandates in the 1970s, struck a chord in South Carolina. Marguerite Willis, a recent Democratic candidate for governor, said that when Harris spoke in last month’s debate about her own experiences being bused as a child, the entire room where Willis was watching the debate grew quiet.

    “Growing up here in South Carolina, that’s meaningful to us,” said Willis, who is white. Schools were segregated when she was a child, and she recalled not meeting a black girl her age until leaving the state for college. “So when she talked about being bused, it was powerful for me and I’m sure it’s powerful for a lot of people here who have experiences of their own.”

    On the subject of busing, Biden told voters: “I don’t believe a child should have to get on a bus to attend a good school. There should be first-rate schools of quality in every neighborhood of this nation, especially in 2019 America.”

    Biden began a scheduled three-stop swing in South Carolina on Saturday, his third campaign visit to the state. Later Saturday, he addressed more than 250 in Orangeburg and planned to make several stops in Charleston on Sunday.

    Biden told Orangeburg voters that President Donald Trump is overtly racist and a divisive president who governs as though “any problem that we have is because of those drug-dealing Mexicans.”

    Harris, who planned appearances Sunday in Florence, Hartsville and Myrtle Beach during her ninth trip to the state, has spent more time in South Carolina than any other state in the early primary landscape.

    The campaign dynamics have shifted and become more personal since the last time Biden and Harris were in South Carolina.

    In the debate, Harris was unrelenting in her criticism of Biden, both his views on busing and his comments about working with segregationist senators.

    Biden told CNN in an interview that aired Friday that he “wasn’t prepared for the person coming at me the way she came at me,” noting that Harris knows him and his son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015.

    State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, who is backing Biden, said he did not believe that the issue would move voters, and that he has heard from some that they felt Harris’ debate attack was “disrespectful.”

    “I think it resonates with younger voters who get all their news off Twitter or Facebook. It’s an echo chamber,” Harpootlian said, adding that he believes the state’s primary voters will be older and heavily African American. “Those are Biden’s guys, his men and women. … They want to know what they’re getting. They don’t want a promise of what’s to come in the future.”

    “She can’t build herself solely on tearing Joe Biden down,” Harpootlian said. “She took that shot. What’s she offering?”

    Harris muddied the debate over busing during a recent campaign swing in Iowa, appearing to tell reporters she now opposes federally mandated busing to address school segregation. Her campaign disputed the notion that she was backtracking from the position she took during the debate, arguing that she supported busing in the 1970s – when Biden opposed it – but believes conditions now make it an issue to be decided by local school districts.

    During an appearance Saturday at Essence Fest in New Orleans, an annual music and cultural conference that is the largest gathering of black women in the country, Harris pledged to fight the segregation that she said lingers today.

    “There’s still mandatory busing that exists today,” Harris said. “Because we had so much flight. … Segregation persists now not necessarily as a function of legislator. … But just because there has been a drawing out of the resources in public schools. That is one of my highest priorities, and we have got to deal with that.”

    The technicalities of those arguments mattered little to J.A. Moore, a South Carolina state representative who is backing Harris and felt a personal connection to her story. Moore said his Aunt Loretta, who called him during the debate, was among an early group of black students to integrate a high school named for Strom Thurmond, a segregationist senator.

    “That resonated with a lot of African Americans,” he said. “African Americans in South Carolina have been marginalized, have dealt with all kinds of discriminatory practices.”

    For Willis, it may just be that Biden’s political time has passed.

    “My view on it is that Joe Biden has had his day,” said Willis. “He’s a good man. I don’t think he’s a racist, personally. But I think that many people can beat Donald Trump and I don’t think we have to have necessarily an old, white guy to do it.”

    State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, a member of South Carolina’s Legislative Black Caucus who will host Biden for a town hall meeting in Charleston on Sunday, said candidates’ past positions matter as voters weigh who is best positioned to defeat Trump.

    Kimpson, who has not endorsed a candidate, said: “It’s one thing for people to get up and talk about what they’re going to do, but one of the barometers for someone espousing what their plans are is to look at what they’ve done in their past.”

    Awaiting Biden’s Sumter speech on Saturday, Sue Catanch – a black woman who has lived in Sumter most of her life – said she supports the former vice president in part because of his proximity to Obama. But Catanch, 73, said she wasn’t concerned about any critique of Biden’s past stances, including on busing, and instead admired what she characterized as Biden’s commitment to stay above the fray.

    “If you tear one another down, it brings the whole Democratic Party down,” Catanch said. “We have got to back whoever the nominee is, and I pray to God that’s Joe.”

    Summers reported from Baltimore. AP National Writer Errin Haines Whack in New Orleans contributed to this report.

    Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/07/biden-apologizes-comments-segregationists/1667501001/

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