A 19-year-old man charged in the death of his father who was pulled from a Duxbury pond told police he was “baptizing” his dad a the pond to exorcise his demons, prosecutors said.
Jake Callahan is facing a murder charge in the death of his father, 57-year-old Scott Callahan, who was found dead Monday in Island Creek Pond at Crooker Memorial Park.
During Jack Callahan’s arraignment in Plymouth District Court, prosecutors said the defendant told police he went to Boston to get his father, who was at a bar.
Both sides acknowledged today that Scott Callahan had a long history of substance abuse, and suffered from the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury. Jack Callahan said his mother did not want her intoxicated ex-husband at the family home that night, so an Uber dropped the pair off at Island Creek Pond around midnight, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the defendant told police his father hit him several times at the pond and that is when the younger Callahan decided to “baptize” his father.
“(Jack Callahan) believed he was baptizing his father. He described holding him on his back like a baby, that he continually dunked the father’s head in the water four to eight times,” Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham said. “He did so until his father was no longer struggling and floating.”
Scott Callahan was found in the water a short time later, about 50 feet away from the shore of the pond. He was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center-Plymouth, where he was pronounced dead.
In court, the defense attorney said Jack Callahan had recently returned from Colorado to live with his mother for medical care.
Jack Callahan’s defense attorney requested a psychological valuation at Bridgewater State Hospital, but the judge denied the request.
“He was banging his head on the floor and the police had to put their boot under his head to kind of soften the blow. I did talk with him myself. I do believe he poses a risk of danger to himself,” said attorney Kevin Reddington.
Jack Callahan was ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing.
Less than three months before the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condo complex in Surfside, Fla., the president of the condominium association warned in a letter that the damage in the building had “gotten significantly worse” since it was highlighted in a 2018 inspection.
The letter was written to residents by Jean Wodnicki, president of the association’s board of directors, explaining why a list of extensive construction projects were worth a $15 million special assessment that residents were being asked to pay.
Along with the 2018 inspection, which warned of “major structural damage,” the letter, a copy of which The New York Times obtained, adds to a growing body of evidence that engineers had raised alarms about serious flaws in the building months and even years before the catastrophic building failure, which killed 11 people and left 150 unaccounted for.
Ms. Wodnicki could not immediately be reached for comment.
That 2018 inspection warned that concrete damage would “multiply exponentially” in the coming years, Ms. Wodnicki wrote in the letter, which was first reported by USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. The engineer who prepared that initial report, Frank Morabito, carried out “a much more detailed survey of the property” and found signs that this acceleration was indeed already happening. “When you can visually see the concrete spalling (cracking), that means that the rebar holding it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface,” Ms. Wodnicki wrote.
The record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest is pushing people’s bodies to the limit — sending more than 800 people to the hospital for possible heat-related illness in recent days.
There’s no question about it, scientists and health experts say: This is the result of climate change, and the future only holds more of the same.
“The record-shattering extreme heat we’re experiencing is just the latest example of our climate crisis and how it’s impacting human health now,” Jeff Duchin, a health officer for Public Health in Seattle and King County, Washington, said in a statement. “Climate change is a health emergency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is literally a matter of life and death.”
Washington state hospitals reported 676 emergency department visits for suspected heat-related illness since Friday, with 81 leading to inpatient admission, according to Cory Portner, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Health.
That’s a staggeringly high health toll. Between 2000 and 2018, summer heat-related hospitalizations in Washington only twice surpassed 51, according to state data.
At least 43 emergency visits for heat illness occurred in Portland and surrounding Multnomah County between Friday and Sunday.
“Normally we would expect about 1 or 2 visits for heat illness in the same time period, and it is not unusual for the County to have zero visits for heat illness on a typical summer day,” Kate Yeiser, a spokesperson for Multnomah County, told BuzzFeed News in an email.
Moreover, the county’s Emergency Medical Services department received over 400 calls during that time. “We can’t say exactly how many calls were related to heat but that number is unheard of for our county,” Yeiser said.
Extreme heat is deadly, killing more than 11,000 people across the US since 1979. Everyone is at risk of heat exhaustion or the more serious condition of heatstroke, which could result in a high fever, nausea or vomiting, and even a loss of consciousness.
Certain groups of people, such as babies and kids, pregnant people, and the elderly, are more vulnerable to heat stress because their bodies aren’t efficient at regulating their internal temperatures. Others have a higher heat exposure because of their jobs or because they don’t have access to air conditioning, such as families with low incomes or people without stable housing.
This part of the country also isn’t prepared for this kind of punishing heat. Take Seattle, where only 44% of homes have air conditioning because of the city’s historically moderate temperatures, making it one of the least air-conditioned cities in the country, according to the Seattle Times.
The skyrocketing emergency calls and hospital visits in the Pacific Northwest have coincided with additional impacts to the region. Highways and streets have cracked and buckled from the heat, closing roads and impacting traffic. Even flights have been impacted. Restaurants have closed down. There has been a shortage of air conditioners and fans. Hundreds upon hundreds of people have sought refuge in air-conditioned libraries, malls, movie theaters, and other officially designated “cooling centers.”
The punishingly hot temperatures driving these impacts have shattered all-time high records day after day.
The Portland Airport officially hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, June 28, setting a new all-time record high in the city, according to a tweet published by the Portland division of the National Weather Service. This beat the previous record of 112 degrees set the previous day.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The U.S.’s top general in Afghanistan on Tuesday gave a sobering assessment of the country’s deteriorating security situation as America winds down its so-called “forever war.”
Gen. Austin S. Miller said the rapid loss of districts around the country to the Taliban — several with significant strategic value — is worrisome. He also cautioned that the militias deployed to help the beleaguered national security forces could lead the country into civil war.
Miller told a small group of reporters in the Afghan capital that for now he has the weapons and the capability to aid Afghanistan’s National Defense and Security Forces.
“What I don’t want to do is speculate what that (support) looks like in the future,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in meetings at the White House last week with President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah — the Afghan official tasked with making peace with the Taliban — President Joe Biden said the U.S. was committed to humanitarian and security assistance to Afghanistan.
But the president also said that keeping U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan defied a peace deal the Trump administration negotiated with the Taliban and that wasn’t a risk he was prepared to take.
“Given the timeline set by the prior administration, that if we did not withdraw our troops, U.S. men and women would be facing fire from on the ground and that was not something as the commander in chief, that he felt was acceptable,” Psaki said.
Washington signed a peace deal with the Taliban in February 2020. It laid out the promise of a U.S. withdrawal and commitments by the Taliban to ensure Afghanistan does not harbor militants that can attack the United States. The details of those commitments have never been made public.
The Taliban have accused Washington of breaking the agreement, which called for all troops to be out by May 1, the date the final withdrawal began. U.S. officials have said the Taliban have made some progress, but it’s not clear whether the insurgent group has kept its end of the deal.
The insurgent group issued orders to commanders against allowing foreign fighters among their ranks, but evidence continues to surface that non-Afghans are on the battlefield.
Still, Miller was insistent that only a political solution will bring peace to the war-tortured nation.
“It is a political settlement that brings peace to Afghanistan. And it’s not just the last 20 years. It’s really the last 42 years,” he said.
Miller was referring to not only the U.S. war but that of Russia’s 10-year occupation that ended in 1989. That conflict was followed by a brutal civil war fought by some of the same Afghan leaders deploying militias against the Taliban. The civil war gave rise to the Taliban, who took power in 1996.
American officials have said the entire pullout of U.S. troops will most likely be completed by July 4. But Miller refused to give any date or time frame, referring only to the Sept. 11 timeline given by Biden in April when he announced the withdrawal of the remaining 2,500-3,500 American troops.
Meanwhile, Taliban fighters have been over-running districts in rapid succession, many of them in the north of the country, which is dominated by Afghanistan’s minorities. The north is also the traditional stronghold of many former mujahedeen leaders who have been a dominant force in Afghanistan since driving the Taliban from power in 2001 together with the U.S.-led coalition.
Several of the districts are on key roads and one is on the border with northern Tajikistan. The Taliban have issued statements saying hundreds of Afghan security forces have surrendered, most of them going to their homes after being recorded on video receiving transportation money from the Taliban.
Miller said there are multiple reasons for the collapse of these districts, including troop fatigue and surrender, psychological defeat and military defeat. But he said the escalating violence puts the country at risk of falling into a deadly civil war.
Going forward, the Afghan defense forces must focus on consolidating their strengths and establishing strategic areas and protecting them, Miller said. Losing districts to the Taliban that allows them to sever transportation and communication links threatens provincial capitals.
“As we start talking about how does this all end, the way it must end for the Afghan people is something that revolves around a political solution,” he said. “I’ve also said that if you don’t reduce the violence, that political solution becomes more and more difficult.”
Miller refused to say where the U.S. and its NATO allies were in the withdrawal process.
He said his time as the head of the U.S.’s military mission in Afghanistan was coming to an end, without giving a date, though the press briefing had the feeling of a farewell.
Miller wouldn’t speculate on the legacy of America’s longest war, saying it will be for history to decide.
“The future will tell the rest of the story,” he said. “What we will have to do is make an honest assessment of what went well and what didn’t go so well over the years as we work forward.”
___
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.
But now, more than six months following his departure from government, Barr is trying to do some image damage control.
In interviews with journalist Jonathan Karl for a book excerpted in the Atlantic, Barr details how his final break with Trump finally came after he went public with claims undermining Trump’s last-ditch effort to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told an Associated Press reporter on December 1.
Barr told Karl that comment prompted an angry Trump to summon him into a meeting in which the president unloaded on him, saying things like “how the fuck could you do this to me?” and “you must hate Trump.”
Barr indicates that not only was he not intimidated by Trump’s outburst, but he fired back, comparing the Rudy Giuliani-led effort to overturn the results to a circus.
“You know, you only have five weeks, Mr. President, after an election to make legal challenges,” Barr told Trump, according to Karl. “This would have taken a crackerjack team with a really coherent and disciplined strategy. Instead, you have a clown show. No self-respecting lawyer is going anywhere near it. It’s just a joke. That’s why you are where you are.”
Barr ended up leaving the Department of Justice days before the January 6 insurrection. The new account of the weeks leading up to his resignation has led some to describe him as a “patriot.” But that’s going way too far even when Barr’s account is read in the most charitable light.
Barr was eager to spread Trump’s election conspiracy theories right until the bitter end
While Karl’s portrayal of Barr isn’t flattering, the book excerpt doesn’t get into how Barr spent the run-up to the 2020 election serving more as an arm of Trump’s campaign than he did as an independent arbiter of the rule of law. Barr was happy to amplify Trump’s lies about mail voting and voting fraud up to the point where it was clear to all but the most fanatical Trump supporters that he had lost the election.
Consider, for instance, the disastrous interview Barr did with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on September 2, when he couldn’t produce any evidence of mail voting fraud and resorted to saying its general existence is a “matter of logic.” Or his DOJ’s decision a few weeks later to issue a factually incorrect press release announcing an investigation into alleged mail voting irregularities in Pennsylvania — an announcement that violated DOJ’s policies. Or Barr’s move three days after the election to authorize investigations into “substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities,” even though there was no evidence of such irregularities.
In his interviews with Karl, Barr portrayed his decision to authorize fraud investigations despite a lack of evidence as a strategy he used to make sure he would be able to tell Trump that his conspiracy theories were baseless when the time came.
“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr said to Karl. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”
That might sound reasonable enough on its face. But as Greg Sargent highlighted for the Washington Post, it’s not normal for the DOJ, which is ostensibly supposed to operate with a modicum of independence from the executive branch, to pursue investigations based on “bullshit” conspiracy theories favored by the president. But Barr spent years turning the DOJ into something akin to the president’s personal law firm.
Barr’s comments about authorizing election fraud investigations aren’t the only thing he tries to whitewash during his interviews with Karl. He also explains away his fawning resignation statement as a gambit to calm down political tensions. (Barr wrote of Trump: “Your record is all the more historic because you accomplished it in the face of relentless, implacable resistance,” adding that the president “had been met by a partisan onslaught against you in which no tactic, no matter how abusive and deceitful, was out of bounds.”)
“To defuse the tension, Barr had written an effusive resignation letter, which he handed to the president when he got to the Oval Office,” Karl wrote.
But, as Jonathan Chait notes for New York magazine, “if Barr had decided Trump was dangerous and undemocratic” — and his comments to Karl suggest he had already reached that conclusion weeks earlier — then “why would he continue to claim publicly that the true danger was Trump’s opponents?”
Barr and Mitch McConnell come across as cynical political operators
It’s not even clear to what extent — if at all — Barr’s break with Trump was motivated by a desire to protect American democracy. Instead, Karl’s piece makes it seem as though Barr and then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell were primarily interested in helping Republicans win special elections in January for two US Senate seats.
Karl writes that McConnell had been urging Barr throughout November to speak out against Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theories, because those theories were complicating the argument Republicans wanted to make about how maintaining the Senate majority was important as a check on Biden’s power. But McConnell was reluctant to speak out himself for fear that if he did so, an embittered Trump would sabotage the Republican candidates.
From Karl’s story:
“Look, we need the president in Georgia,” McConnell told Barr, “and so we cannot be frontally attacking him right now. But you’re in a better position to inject some reality into this situation. You are really the only one who can do it.”
“I understand that,” Barr said. “And I’m going to do it at the appropriate time.”
On another call, McConnell again pleaded with Barr to come out and shoot down the talk of widespread fraud.
“Bill, I look around, and you are the only person who can do it,” McConnell told him.
So while it’s good that Barr ultimately stood up to Trump, it’s worth keeping in mind how abnormal it is for the US attorney general to be scheming with the Senate leader on ways to ensure their political party retains power.
Of course, by the end of the Trump administration, that sort of norm-shattering behavior had become par for the course, and Barr worked as hard as anyone to pervert the DOJ into an arm of the president’s reelection campaign. Only when it became clear that Trump lost did he think twice. Even then, he appears to have been motivated more by cynical political concerns than he was by doing right by American democracy.
Despite Barr’s devotion to him and the key work he did fending off the Mueller investigation, Trump predictably responded to the Atlantic story with a statement attacking Barr as a “RINO” and a “disappointment in every sense of the word.” As always, anything short of complete and unflinching loyalty isn’t enough for Trump.
The shocking collapse of a 12-storey building in the Miami area last week has raised questions as to the role played by the climate crisis, and whether the severe vulnerability of south Florida to the rising seas may lead to the destabilization of further buildings in the future.
The exact cause of the disaster that befell the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside on Thursday has yet to be fully determined, although a 2018 engineering report on the structure warned of “significant cracks and breaks in the concrete” and that design flaws and deteriorating waterproofing could cause “exponential damage” via the expansion of these cracks.
At the time of the building’s sudden collapse, repairs on its roof were taking place but the restoration of concrete had not started on the 40-year-old condo. A total of 10 people are confirmed dead due to the crumpled building, with 151 people unaccounted for.
The disaster has highlighted the precarious situation of building and maintaining high-rise apartments in an area under increasing pressure from sea-level rise. Experts say that while the role of the rising seas in this collapse is still unclear, the integrity of buildings will be threatened by the advance of salty water that pushes up from below to weaken foundations.
“When this building was designed 40 years ago the materials used would not have been as strong against salt water intrusion, which has the potential to corrode the concrete and steel of the foundations,” said Zhong-Ren Peng, professor and director of the University of Florida’s International Center for Adaptation Planning and Design. “Cracks in the concrete allows more sea water to get in, which causes further reactions and the spreading of cracks. If you don’t take care of it, that can cause a structure failure.”
The geography of the area can also prove challenging for construction.
Champlain Towers South was built near the coast of what is a narrow barrier island flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Biscayne Bay on the other. Such barrier islands naturally shift position over time due to the pounding ocean, requiring a certain amount of engineering to keep them fixed in place.
Most of south Florida is just a few feet above sea level at a time when the region is experiencing a rapid increase in sea level, due to the human-caused climate crisis. Compounding this problem, the region sits upon limestone, a porous rock that allows rising seawater to bubble up from below.
This scenario means that Miami residents have become used to flooded car garages and water seeping up from drains on to roads, even on sunny days. The city is planning to build a major new sea wall to keep the ocean at bay but there is no simple defense against water rising from underfoot, placing the foundations of buildings at risk of being gnawed away by seawater.
The land beneath Champlain Towers South is also, unusually for eastern Florida, subsiding, according to a study released last year that found the condo was subsiding into the ground at a rate of around 2mm a year throughout the 1990s. Shimon Wdowinski, a professor with Florida International University’s Institute of Environment who conducted the research, said he was “shocked” to see the building collapse and didn’t immediately connect it to his study.
“It’s common that we see buildings with minor damage from subsidence, but not really this,” he said. “Things can go from stable and move slowly for a long period of time before suddenly accelerating to the point of collapse. It’s not a linear process.”
Peng said that building code upgrades in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 hurricane that crunched into Miami-Dade county in 1992, have made new structures more resilient against major storms.
“But older buildings are still at risk and in any case the new building codes may need to be re-examined because they don’t address the issue of sea-level rise,” he said. “I think, at the very least, all new development should be required to come up with a study on the sea-level rise impact before building is done.”
The challenge for Miami, however, will continue to escalate.
The region abuts seas that are about 8in higher than they were a century ago and this pace will quicken – with another 17in of sea level expected by 2040. Depending on the melting of the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, south Florida could be assailed by a foot of extra sea level a decade in the second half of this century, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami.
“It’s going to be an enormous to impossible job everywhere to deal with that,” Wanless said. “The sea level rise is accelerating and will do so more dramatically than most people anticipate.
“Every sandy barrier island, every low-lying coast, from Miami to Mumbai, will become inundated and difficult to maintain functional infrastructure. You can put valves in sewers and put in sea walls but the problem is the water will keep coming up through the limestone. You’re not going to stop this.”
Fox News correspondent Steve Harrigan joins ‘Your World’ with the details
The president of the Champlain South Towers condo association, in an April letter, wrote that damage to the garage had gotten significantly worse since a 2018 inspection and that the concrete deterioration of the building was “accelerating,” according to reports Monday.
At least 11 people have died and more than 150 are still missing after the Miami condo partially collapsed early Thursday in Surfside, Florida. Rescue workers continue to search for survivors in the rubble.
In the April 9 letter, the Surfside condo board president, Jean Wodnicki, wrote how the building was in desperate need of repairs, and she urged residents to pay millions of dollars in assessments needed to fix structural problems.
Workers search the rubble at the Champlain Towers South Condo, Monday, June 28, 2021, in Surfside, Fla. Many people were still unaccounted for after Thursday’s fatal collapse. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
“A lot of this work could have been done or planned for in years gone by. But this is where we are now,” Wodnicki said, according to the Wall Street Journal.
She noted that in fall 2018, engineering firm Morabito Consultants was hired to inspect the building, reports said. The engineering report pointed out flaws of the building ahead of work that would be needed for the building to meet 40-year recertification in 2021, documents showed.
The report found that the pool deck’s waterproofing had failed and was not sloped to drain water. It also pointed to “abundant cracking” in concrete columns and beams.
“Failure to replace the waterproofing in the near future will cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially,” the report stated.
About a month after the report, former Surfside building official Rosendo “Ross” Prieto told the association, in a meeting, that the building was in “very good shape.”
“The response was very positive from everyone in the room,” Prieto wrote in the email, which local officials provided to reporters. “All the main concerns over their forty-year recertification process were addressed.”
But in April, Wodnicki told Champlain South Tower residents that the initial inspection was not enough to determine the full scale of structural issues to the building.
“It is impossible to know the extent of the damage to the underlying rebar until the concrete is opened up. Oftentimes the damage is more extensive than can be determined by inspection of the surface,” Wodnicki wrote.
“When you can visually see the concrete spalling (cracking), that means that the rebar holding it together is rusting and deteriorating beneath the surface,” she continued. “The concrete deterioration is accelerating. The roof situation got much worse, so extensive roof repairs had to be incorporated.”
The firm’s 2018 report noted that some repairs were needed “in the near future,” according to Brett Marcy, the representative for Morabito Consultants.
Donna DiMaggio Berger, an attorney for the condo association, told the WSJ Sunday that the 2018 engineer’s report didn’t raise any alarms.
“Concrete spalling, rebar deterioration –these are not unusual events when you have buildings exposed to corrosive conditions,” Berger said.
The letter’s purpose was to explain the worthiness of construction projects for the building ahead of a meeting on a proposed special assessment of $15 million to be paid by residents, according to the paper.
Trump has cheered on the Maricopa County audit and continued to advance baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud as Republicans from other states he lost have made pilgrimages to Phoenix to review the idea of exporting the concept. But Arizona Republicans who pay close attention to the state’s changing demographics say the audit isn’t a political winner.
“It’s a failure. It’s a joke,” said Sean Noble, a top GOP operative in the state, advising Republicans elsewhere to “avoid it. The election is long over, time to look forward.”
Noble said public opinion surrounding the audit is just too baked in to change, even though the firm that conducted the effort, Cyber Ninjas, hasn’t finished its work. On Friday, Cyber Ninjas announced its team had finished photographing and recounting the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots.
The final report is widely expected to make claims about election fraud, reflecting the politics of Cyber Ninja’s founder — he appeared in a conspiracy theorist’s documentary film rife with falsehoods, according to Arizona press reports.
By 49-46 percent, Arizona voters are opposed to the audit, which puts the result within the poll’s margin of error. But the survey of 600 likely voters found that the intensity of opposition to the audit exceeded the intensity of support, with those strongly opposed to it outnumbering those strongly in favor by 5 percentage points. And while Democrats and Republicans broke along familiar partisan lines, independent voters upon whom the state pivots in close elections opposed the audit by 18 percentage points.
“As bloody red meat for the MAGA Republican base, the audit is manna from heaven, but the problem is that Arizona is not a red state any more. It’s a swing state,” said Fernand Amandi, who conducted the survey. “The audit may be serving two interests: firing up the MAGA base but giving Democrats the opportunity to make the case to Arizona voters to stick with them.”
If a candidate supports the audit, the poll shows, Arizona voters would be less likely to support that politician by a margin of 9 percentage points.
Arizonaopposition to the audit grew wider — with 51 percent against it and 44 percent in favor — when respondents were informed about the partisan nature of the effort: it’s being conducted by a firm with no experience in the field, and election experts, Democratic officials and Republican members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors oppose the recount. Those opponents have pointed out that the voting machines have already been checked by an accredited firm and that the election results were validated by a previous audit.
The new polling numbers are similar to a May poll from Arizona-based High Ground Inc., which tends to survey for Republicans, that found 55 percent opposed the audit and 41 percent supported it. That survey also found that, by an 11-point margin, Arizona voters would be less likely to support a candidate who backed the audit.
In Amandi’s poll, Biden’s favorability rating is almost equally divided, with 49 percent holding positive views of him and 48 percent with a negative view. Trump is in negative territory, with 46 percent holding a favorable opinion and 51 percent a negative opinion of him.
California officials have added Florida and four other states to a list of places where state-funded travel is banned over laws that purportedly discriminate against LGBTQ individuals.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, announced Monday that Arkansas, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia had joined Alabama, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas on the no-go list, which was first created in 2016.
“When states discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans, California law requires our office to take action,” Bonta said in a statement. “These new additions to the state-funded travel restrictions list are about exactly that … Rather than focusing on solving real issues, some politicians think it’s in their best interest to demonize trans youth and block life-saving care.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta added Florida to a list of states that discriminate against LGBTQ Americans.AP
“Make no mistake,” Bonta added. “We’re in the midst of an unprecedented wave of bigotry and discrimination in this country — and the State of California is not going to support it.”
Bonta’s office cited laws enacted in Arkansas, Florida, Montana and West Virginia that bar transgender females from participating in girls’ school sports. North Dakota made the list due to a law that permits certain publicly funded student organizations to prevent LGBT students from joining without losing funding.
The California AG’s office also cited two other Arkansas laws. One allows medical providers to deny care to LGBTQ people if they have a “conscientious objection” to doing so, while the other prohibits gender-confirming treatments or surgery for transgender youths. The latter law was passed by the state legislature earlier this year, overriding the veto of Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The new state travel bans go into effect July 1 for Florida and Montana, July 8 for West Virginia, July 29 for Arkansas, and Aug. 1 for North Dakota.
California’s law has exemptions for some trips, such as travel needed to enforce state law and to honor contracts signed before the states were added to the list. Travel to conferences or out-of-state training are examples of trips that can be blocked.
It’s unclear what effect California’s travel ban will have. Bonta did not have information about how many state agencies have stopped sending state employees to the states on the list or the financial impact of California’s travel ban on those states.
Barack Obama has accused Donald Trump of violating a “core tenet” of democracy by refusing to concede the presidential election and making up a “whole bunch of hooey”.
The former president said his successor’s unfounded “big lie” claims about 2020 had helped fuel anti-democratic measures such as voter suppression and warned that if action was not taken now, “we are going to see a further delegitimizing of our democracy”.
Making the comments in a fundraising call for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, his first virtual fundraiser since last year’s election, he said: “What we saw was my successor, the former president, violate that core tenet that you count the votes and then declare a winner – and fabricate and make up a whole bunch of hooey.”
What’s the context? Since last year’s election, Georgia, Arizona, Florida and Iowa have signed new voting restrictions into law and state legislatures in Pennsylvania and Texas are attempting to. These states will be key battlegrounds in the 2022 midterms.
Obama also said he believed there would be a new vote on the voting rights bill in the Senate after it was blocked last week by Republicans.
Republicans have also spoken out against Trump recently – including William Barr, his former attorney general, who said the former president’s claims were always “bullshit” and Senator Mitt Romney who compared his claims of a stolen election to tv wrestling (entertaining but “not real”).
Portland is bracing for temperatures of 115F as the Pacific north-west ‘heat dome’ breaks records
A girl cools off in the Salmon Street springs fountain in Portland on Monday. Photograph: Kathryn Elsesser/AFP/Getty Images
Portland is braced for temperatures of 115F (46C) and Seattle for 110F (43C) after the cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend caused by an extended “heat dome” over the Pacific north-west.
Light rail, street cars and summer school buses were shut down in Portland because of the heat, which was straining the city’s power grid. Meanwhile, in nearby Eugene, the US track and field trials were stopped on Sunday and the stadium evacuated.
Experts warned that the heatwave was a preview of the future as the climate crisis dramatically changes the world’s weather patterns.
It is likely to be “one of the most extreme and prolonged heatwaves in the recorded history of the inland north-west”, the National Weather Service has said,and will make the region “increasingly vulnerable to wildfires”.
Why is the Pacific north-west facing record temperatures? And what is a heat dome? Hallie Golden explains.
Trump is in financial and political danger as his company faces possible criminal charges
Donald Trump tosses a hat into the air at his first post-presidency rally in Wellington, Ohio, on Saturday. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Donald Trump could face a potentially devastating political and financial hit as state prosecutors decide whether to file criminal charges against the Trump Organization this week.
Prosecutors in New York could soon bring an indictment against his family business tied to taxation of lucrative perks that it gave to top executives – such as use of cars, apartments and school tuition.
What would it mean for Trump? While the former president is not expected to be personally charged, it could bankrupt his company by damaging relationships with banks and business partners, writes David Smith, the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief. It could also get in the way of a political comeback.
In other news …
A memorial for those killed at Champlain Towers in Surfside, Miami. Photograph: Larry Marano/REX/Shutterstock
The Miami condo collapse has prompted questions over the role of the climate crisisand whether south Florida’s vulnerability to rising seas could lead to the destabilization of more buildings. The cause of the collapse of the 12-storey building last week is not yet known, but a 2018 engineering report warned of “significant cracks and beaks in the concrete” and design flaws and deteriorating waterproofing. Eleven people have been confirmed dead and 150 people are still unaccounted for.
A staggering 400,000 lives in Brazil could have been saved if the country had enforced stricter social distancing measures and started a vaccination programme earlier, an eminent epidemiologist has said. Pedro Hallal, a professor at the Federal University of Pelotas, said these policies would have prevented 80% of Brazil’s half a million Covid deaths.
A federal judge has dismissed lawsuits brought against Facebook by the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states and districts in a considerable blow to attempts to rein in big tech. They sued Facebook in December, accusing the company of abusing its market power in social networking. But on Monday the US district judge James Boasberg ruled the lawsuits “legally insufficient”.
Stat of the day: the US needs to plant 31.4m more trees – about a 10% increase of today’s tree cover – to combat shade disparity
As much of the American west endures a record-breaking heatwave, the first nationwide tally of trees, the Tree Equity Score, has found that neighborhoods where the majority of residents are people of color have 33% less tree canopy on average than majority white neighborhoods. Cities identified to benefit most from tree equity include Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and San Jose.
Don’t miss this: Fighting for LGBTQ+ rights in the pandemic
Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard. But as Pride parades in San Francisco, Brighton and New York are cancelled, there is hope that they will return, writes Lizzy Davies. “You can’t cancel Pride. The pride lives in all of our hearts,” says Fred Lopez, the executive director of San Francisco Pride.
… or this: Experts warn plan to build a city in California grasslands could go up in flames
Tejon Ranch Company wants to build 20,000 homes an hour’s drive north of Los Angeles in what Maanvi Singh describes as “one of the last remaining pieces of the truly wild, wild west”. The developers say it would help the housing crisis, but scientists and climate activists fear it could put people in danger.
Last Thing: Picasso and Mondrian stolen in 7 minutes recovered nearly a decade later
A detail of the 1939 female bust by Pablo Picasso. Photograph: AP
They were stripped from their frames at the National Art Gallery in Athens in 2012 in a heist that lasted just seven minutes. But nearly a decade later, the two paintings by the 20th-century masters Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian have been recovered. A statement issued last night said police had the two works – a cubist female bust that Picasso donated to Greece in 1949 and a 1905 oil painting of a windmill by Mondrian – but did not include information on their condition or any arrests.
Sign up
First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.
Donald Trump says his attorney general was “not being a man.”
The AG was “very weak and very sad,” Trump says. In fact, he was a “disaster.”
Trump wasn’t talking about Bill Barr, who just triggered his wrath with an interview about the lack of election fraud. He was speaking in 2018 about Barr’s predecessor, Jeff Sessions.
That he has unloaded on two consecutive officials who ran the Justice Department raises this question: If they were so terrible, horrible, and awful, why did the 45th president appoint them in the first place?
Barr joins a growing list of high-powered people who fell from grace in Trump World, some because they stood up to the president and some because they turned on him first.
These include former lieutenants like Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson and Omarosa, who get whacked only occasionally. They include John Bolton, who has been repeatedly denounced by Trump (whose DOJ sued over the former national security adviser’s book, a case that has now been dropped). And they include Michael Cohen, who went to prison, wrote a trash-Trump book, and is now a regular cable critic.
But AGs are different. They have a responsibility not to play politics as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. That’s why Trump actually campaigned against Sessions’ bid to regain his old Senate seat—because Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe—and why he is castigating Barr for insisting there was no widespread election fraud to be found.
In a lengthy statement, Trump called Barr a “RINO” who “failed to investigate election fraud…It’s people in authority like Bill Barr that allow the crazed Radical Left to succeed… He came in with a semi-bang and went out with a whimper.”
But Trump put Barr in that position of authority, and besides, why is it Republican in Name Only to say a federal investigation hasn’t found anything? Is there a Republican—and Democratic—way to run DOJ?
Barr, to be clear, has his own motives (and his own book deal). As ABC’s Jonathan Karl writes in his forthcoming book “Betrayal,” Barr is telling his story because he is “widely seen as a Trump lackey who politicized the Justice Department” and wants to change that image.
In an Atlantic excerpt, Barr says Mitch McConnell twice asked him to challenge the president’s claims of election fraud because “you are really the only one who can do it.” The majority leader said he and his colleagues couldn’t frontally criticize Trump because they needed him to win the two Senate seats in Georgia.
And so it was that Barr invited an AP reporter to lunch and dropped his bombshell that Justice had found no widespread fraud. Barr told Karl that “my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”
Then came the confrontation at the White House, when Trump demanded to know if Barr had made the comments to the wire service and Barr said he had.
“How the f— could you do this to me? Why did you say it?”
“Because it’s true,” Barr said.
The red-faced president shot back: “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump.”
That, naturally, was not Trump’s attitude when Barr minimized the findings in Robert Mueller’s report, or moved to drop charges against Michael Flynn, or intervened in the Roger Stone sentencing. Barr was terrific then, because he and Trump were on the same page. Now, according to Trump, “Bill Barr was a disappointment in every sense of the word.”
It’s worth noting that Trump was also unhappy with Barr’s successor, acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, in his few weeks on the job. Emails obtained by the New York Times show Trump pressuring Rosen to investigate fraud claims rejected in recent lawsuits, plus a wacky theory that people in Italy were using satellite technology to alter American voting machines.
Rosen said in an email: “Asked if I would reconsider, I flatly refused, said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses’, and reaffirmed yet again that I will not talk to Giuliani about any of this.” Trump considered replacing Rosen with yet another department official as the clock ticked toward Jan. 20.
All this might just be grist for historians, and for authors hoping to crack the best-seller lists, except that Trump constantly talks about the election being stolen from him. He did it again at an Ohio rally over the weekend. So there is a Republican divide between those who want to relitigate 2020 and those who want to move on as the midterms approach.
Barr, who ran DOJ for George H.W. Bush with little controversy, does not want to be the fall guy here. And the result is that Trump has added him to the litany of former aides who he believes betrayed him.
SURFSIDE, Fla. – Haunted by the recent tragedy in Surfside, some residents of ocean-side apartments in South Florida have been searching for information about the structural integrity of their condominiums. The residents of a Collins Avenue building with prior warnings in Miami Beach said they are horrified about what they found.
The fear started after Champlain Towers South, at 8777 Collins Ave., turned into the epicenter of heartbreak and grief on Thursday morning. Some of the residents of the Champlain Towers North and East decided to evacuate.
On Monday, several residents at Maison Grande Condominium, an 18-story building with 502 units, said they are worried about the safety of the 1971 building at 6039 Collins Ave., in Miami Beach. They have photographs showing corroded steel and concrete spalling.
Records show there have been five inspections that determined the building is an “unsafe structure.” The building envelope is among the list of concerns. There were also warnings that the two-story parking garage and pool deck “have reached the end of their useful life and require repair, replacement,” or “a combination thereof.”
On Nov. 19, 2020, a city official wrote, “Structure with evidence of spalling concrete. Need to submit a report signed and sealed by [an] engineer to evaluate the structure together with methods of repairs.” Near an entrance, there is a Dec. 28, 2020 red “unsafe structure” violation notice.
Residents of Collins Avenue buildings worry about maintenance issues
On Wednesday, people trusted Champlain Towers South was safe enough to sleep in. The 12-story northern section of the L-shaped building collapsed shortly before 2 a.m. Thursday. Residents of neighboring buildings said they woke up to loud noise. Some said their windows shook and there was a large white cloud of dust.
Fire Rescue personnel moved to evacuate trapped survivors who waited in their balconies for their turn to climb into a cherry picker. Survivors said it was an agonizingly slow process. An army of rescuers wearing hard hats moved in. Dogs started sniffing the scattered ruins. Experts from as far as Israel and Argentina arrived.
Search-and-rescue teams continued to tunnel through a compact mountain of pancaked concrete in hope of finding survivors Monday. They have been taking turns to search day and night while facing sporadic rain and spontaneous fires. Crews are using a crane to carefully remove hazardous metal and concrete. Authorities have a warehouse where they are keeping items recovered.
The death toll rose, as more than 150 people were unaccounted for. And as the world wondered how this could be possible in Florida, where hurricanes have forced officials to increase structural standards, a troublesome 2018 report surfaced. It shows engineers had reported there was structural damage at Champlain Towers South. Property owners were preparing to contribute their part in more than $9 million in projects.
Officials said the 1981 building was in the process of recertification, which is required every 40 years and involves scrutinizing every part of the residential property. Survivors filed a lawsuit against Champlain Towers South Condominium Association alleging there was negligence when a lack of maintenance led to the deterioration that they allege caused the collapse.
“It’s sad. And people ask me, ‘Where are you going to go? Where are you going to be?’ Well, for sure I am not getting a condo on the beach. That’s done,” said Steve Rosenthal, a survivor from Unit 705 who filed a lawsuit against the Champlain Towers South association.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said it’s going to take time to find out with certainty what exactly caused the tragedy. Engineers with The National Institute of Standards and Technology are collecting preliminary information to make a recommendation about whether or not a federal probe into the cause of the collapse is needed.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the findings of the NIST probe and other investigations could allow federal and state lawmakers to make changes to prevent a future tragedy. As countless unanswered questions lingered, the Miami-Dade Police Department was slowly releasing the identities and ages of the victims.
Stacie Dawn Fang, 54, died on Thursday on her way to the Aventura hospital after crews pulled her out of the rubble. Her 15-year-old son survived after he managed to get the attention of a neighbor who was near the rubble. Crews also recovered the body of Antonio Lozano, 83.
On Friday, crews found the bodies of Lozano’s wife, Gladys Lozano, 79, and Manuel “Manny” LaFont, 54. On Saturday, crews found the bodies of Luis Bermudez, 26, Ana Ortiz, 46, Marcus Guara, 52, and Leon Oliwkowicz, 80. On Sunday, crews found the body of Christina Beatriz Elvira Oliwkowicz, 74. On Monday, crews found Frank Kleinman, 55, and Michael Altman, 50.
U.S. troops based at an oil field in northeastern Syria came under rocket attack Monday, one day after U.S. jets launched airstrikes on facilities used by Iranian-backed militias in the Iraq-Syria border region.
There are no injuries and damage is being assessed. “We will provide updates when we have more information,” Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Colonel Wayne Marotto tweeted Monday afternoon.
U.S. forces used artillery to return fire at the positions from which the rockets were launched.
It was not immediately clear the specific source of the attacks against U.S. forces in Syria.
The rocket attack comes after U.S. airstrikes against facilities used by Iranian-backed militias..
The U.S. “Defensive precision airstrikes” targeted facilities used by militia groups like Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS), according to the Defense Department.
The facilities targeted by the U.S. are engaged in unmanned aerial vehicle or drone attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq, the Defense Department said in a statement.
A U.S. official said the locations that were hit included the site from which the drones took off, recovered and were controlled.
The official also said there have been “at least five” drone attacks by Iranian-backed militias against bases in Iraq where U.S. troops, contractors or other personnel are located.
President Biden and members of his Cabinet on Monday cited Article II of the constitution that allows the president to take action to defend U.S. personnel as the authority for conducting the strikes.
“And I directed last night’s airstrikes targeting sites used by the Iranian-backed militia groups responsible for recent attacks on the US personnel in Iraq, and I had that authority under Article 2,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “And even those up on the Hill who are reluctant to acknowledge that have acknowledged that’s the case.”
The decision to strike comes as Congress debates whether to reign in presidential war power authority and whether to repeal both the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations of Use of Military Force in Iraq.
The House voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF in Iraq earlier this month, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to debate repealing both authorizations.
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia — who has led the effort to repeal the AUMFs — told reporters earlier this month that although the House bill didn’t include the 1991 authorization, the House and Senate could meet in conference to craft acceptable legislation.
SURFSIDE, Fla.—The president of the Champlain South Towers condo association told residents in April their building was in desperate disrepair and urged them to pay the $15 million in assessments needed to fix structural problems, in a letter reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The condo board president, Jean Wodnicki wrote that the concrete damage to the building would “multiply exponentially over the years, and indeed the observable damage such as in the garage has gotten significantly worse over the years.”
The purpose of the letter, dated April 9, 2021, was to explain to residents the worthiness of the construction projects for the 40-year-old building ahead of the following week’s meeting about a proposed special assessment of $15 million to be paid by residents.
Florida buildings are required to be recertified for electrical and structural safety after 40 years, and the building had begun that process.
SURFSIDE, Fla. — Pet owners who survived last week’s condo-tower collapse are desperate to find their animal buddies still missing in the rubble.
“I am alone — I have nobody,’’ said Susana Alvarez, who left behind her beloved cat Mia as she ran to safety from her apartment in Champlain Towers South Condo near Miami Beach before the building collapsed Thursday.
“I thought we were being bombed,’’ Alvarez, 62, told The Post on Monday. “If I hadn’t been so scared, in hindsight, I would have gone back in to get her, but I was terrified.”
The cat owner and another resident said the building only allowed therapy pets. Alvarez said her 4-year-old, 10-pound, gray-striped feline was registered as an emotional-support animal.
It is unclear how many Champlain residents had pets. But a local animal organization said it is offering help to any owners, as worried Facebook users also urged people to share their tales on social media and let authorities know if their nonhuman friends are missing.
Officials report the death toll of the Champlain Towers South has reached at least 11 people. AP
“It will be terrible for people who lost everything to lose their pets, too,” said Yolanda Berkowitz of the Friends of Miami Animals Foundation to The Post.
In addition to noting Alvarez’s lost cat, Berkowitz said a black and white feline named Coco is missing.
Coco is another cat that has gone missing after the building collapse.
“There are a number of families we know who have not been reunited with their pets and we are working to identify others,” Berkowitz added in an e-mail.
“Any persons displaced by this tragedy in need of boarding, medical assistance, or anything else their pet may need during this time can contact us at info@fomapets.org for assistance.
“Miami-Dade Animal Services is also on stand-by with resources at the ready to serve our community’s pets and their owners,” she said.
Berkowitz told The Post that for now, the search-and-rescue operation is focused on finding human survivors and stabilizing the location and keeping first-responders safe.
“They are not going to be airlifting dogs and cats when there are people that may be alive under the debris,” Berkowitz said.
“If you have any updates or requests or advice to those who want to help please share them.’’
Alvarez is missing her four-year old cat, a registered emotional-support animal.Susana Alvarez
Another user said she had spoken to an “animal advocate on location’’ who was advised by the local police department to tell people, “If you are a resident at the towers and have a pet left behind please it is recommended you reach out directly to the Family Center.
“Pet owners must register their pets as missing in order for rescue efforts to take in all details in order to better assist you,’’ the person wrote.
In addition to the missing cats, a dog named Edgar also is among the pets unaccounted for, according to another post.
The pooch belonged to the family of Angela Gonzalez, a mom who pulled herself and her teenage daughter from the rubble after the pair plunged four floors in the tower’s collapse.
“With a broken pelvis, Angie found and pulled her 16 daughter from the rubble, the family dog did not make it and Edgar, her husband is still missing,’’ a family friend wrote.
A guinea pig also was apparently lost in the rubble along with her female owner and the woman’s husband.
Nicole Langsfeld, the small creature’s owner, and her husband, Luis Sadovnic, were missing.
Langsfeld’s relatives had gone to the scene of the tragedy Sunday and called her name, desperately hoping she might hear them.
The reporter added in another tweet, “Nicole had a puppy, Zoe, and a guinea pig. Luckily, her pup was with her brother that day and is safe and unharmed. The family doesn’t know where her guinea pig is.”
Meanwhile, Alvarez said she plans to get as near to the building as she can and call for her beloved Mia in the hopes that “she can jump out of the rubble.”
“Mia was my companion at home. I used to talk to her. … She slept with me every night,” the heartbroken pet owner said.
“My cat is terrified of her own shadow. … If the smoke didn’t kill her, I would say she is under my bed terrified right now.”
Alvarez added, “I go every day to the command center to talk about her with as many people as possible so people don’t forget that she’s there, to keep her conversation going.
“I understand the magnitude of what has happened. My mother’s best friend’s body is in there. I understand how people feel, they want their loved ones found.”
But “I got very emotional on Saturday when the whole building was covered with smoke,” Alvarez said. “If [Mia] has to die, let it be smoke and not hunger.”
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
The Pacific Northwest reached triple-digit temperatures Monday, setting record highs amid a days-long heatwave, according to the National Weather Service.
A new record was set at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport when temperatures reached 106 degrees, which broke the 104-degree mark that was set on Sunday. It was the hottest temperature recorded in the city since at least 1945, the Seattle Times reported.
Monday’s heat marks the third consecutive day of 100-plus degrees. Two weather stations in Washington state – Dallesport and the Sol Duc River – reached 188 degrees, the NWS said. The readings were preliminary and had not yet been certified. Relief is expected Wednesday when temperatures are expected to dip to the 80s in Seattle.
The temperatures were unheard of in a region better known for rain, and where June has historically been referred to as “Juneuary” for its cool drizzle. Seattle’s average high temperature in June is around 70 degrees, and fewer than half of the city’s residents have air conditioning, according to U.S. Census data.
The heat forced schools and businesses to close to protect workers and guests, including some places like outdoor pools and ice cream shops where people seek relief from the heat. COVID-19 testing sites and mobile vaccination units were out of service as well.
People walk as the sun shines behind the Space Needle, Monday in Seattle. Seattle and other cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
The Seattle Parks Department closed one indoor community pool after the air inside became too hot — leaving Stanlie James, who relocated from Arizona three weeks ago, to search for somewhere else to cool off. She doesn’t have AC at her condo, she said.
“Part of the reason I moved here was not only to be near my daughter, but also to come in the summer to have relief from Arizona heat,” James said. “And I seem to have brought it with me. So I’m not real thrilled.”
Portland, Ore., hit 115 degrees Monday, which set a new record high for the third day in a row, the Oregonian reported. The new record was recorded at Portland International Airport around 4 p.m.
Portland General Electric said about 3,000 customers were without electricity in the greater Portland area Sunday afternoon. Puget Sound Energy reported 3,400 customers down in the greater Seattle area.
In Albany, Ore., 70 miles south of Portland, the pavement reached 171 degrees around 3 p.m. according to a tweet retweeted by the Weather Service. Salem also saw a record high – hitting 112 degrees, the warmest temperature since the city began keeping records in 1890, the newspaper said.
In Eugene, the U.S. track and field trials were halted Sunday afternoon and fans were asked to evacuate the stadium due to extreme heat. The National Weather Service said it hit 110 degrees Eugene, breaking the all-time record of 108 degrees.
This is a widget area - If you go to "Appearance" in your WP-Admin you can change the content of this box in "Widgets", or you can remove this box completely under "Theme Options"
