A missile was fired Monday at “one of Odesa’s infrastructure facilities,” said Maksym Marchenko, head of the Odesa region military administration.
“Unfortunately, there are dead and wounded,” he said.
Separately, the Ukrainian military’s Command South reported, “Another missile strike in the Odesa region. There were hits to the city infrastructure. In particular, one of the religious buildings was damaged. Information about the victims is being clarified.”
A journalist in Odesa told CNN an Orthodox church had been hit near the civilian airport.
Cruise missiles were launched against Odesa’s airport at the weekend, putting its runway out of action.
The press center of the Ukrainian military in the south has told CNN one person was killed in a missile strike that hit Odesa late Monday.
Natalia Humenuk, the press center director, said the missile hit a residential building, killing a 15-year-old boy. A child was also injured and was taken to hospital.
A jury on Monday found former New York City police officer Thomas Webster guilty on six charges, including assaulting a police officer, in the first federal assault case stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Webster’s trial marks the fourth time a jury has heard a Jan. 6 defendant’s case, with all four cases resulting in convictions on all charges.
Webster was found guilty of assaulting D.C. Metropolitan Police Department officer Noah Rathbun, who testified at the trial — as did Webster himself, who often spoke directly to the jury and called Rathbun as a “rogue cop.”
According to testimony and video of the riot, Webster pushed through a crowd toward bike racks that were acting as a police perimeter. Clad in a bulletproof vest and waving a Marine Corps flag, he arrived at the front of the crowd, yelling, “commie mother——-” at the officers, before zeroing in on Rathbun and yelling, “take your s— off!”
“That’s what people say when they want to fight,” Rathbun said during his three-hour testimony. “It’s very common.”
Webster swung a metal flagpole in a downward motion twice before breaking apart the bike racks. As Rathbun backed away, Webster ran toward him and tackled him, then pulled at his gas mask. Rathbun began to choke on his chin strap as Webster pulled at the mask, Rathbun testified.
Video shows that Rathbun hit Webster’s face while trying to push him away, which became a cornerstone of Webster’s defense. Webster, who claimed that Rathbun had provoked the fight, said that he pulled at Rathbun’s mask as a form of self-defense.
“I felt like I was the cop and he was the protester,” Webster said on the stand.
U.S. attorneys said that Webster clearly should have known he was not allowed on Capitol grounds, pointing to the snow fencing, the bike racks that formed a police barrier, and the Metro Police’s riot gear, flash bangs and tear gas. He also should have known, they said, through his 20 years as a New York City police officer.
“Thomas Webster and Officer Rathbun both swore oaths to protect the country. But only one of them actually fulfilled that oath on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol,” a U.S. attorney said. “And that was Officer Rathbun.”
The defense said they wanted the jury to see the “whole truth.”
“When are acts of police misconduct acceptable?” defense attorney James Monroe said. Referring to the flagpole, Monroe said, “Sometimes, a flagpole is all it is. It’s all it was.”
Webster was convicted of assaulting, resisting or impeding an officer using a dangerous weapon; civil disorder; entering and remaining in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; engaging in physical violence in restricted grounds with a dangerous weapon; and engaging in an act of physical violence on Capitol grounds.
Sentencing is set for Sept. 2. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Webster does not have to be held in custody prior to sentencing.
The seating of the Georgia grand jury comes as a criminal inquiry in Manhattan has come to an apparent standstill. Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is said to be concerned about the strength of the New York case, which focuses on whether Mr. Trump exaggerated the value of assets in annual financial statements. People close to the investigation have told The New York Times that the inquiry may lose steam if other witnesses do not step up to cooperate.
In the Georgia case, a group of legal experts, in an analysis published last year by the Brookings Institution, wrote that the call to Mr. Raffensperger, and other postelection moves by Mr. Trump, put the former president at “substantial risk” of criminal charges in Georgia, including racketeering, election fraud solicitation, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.
The investigation is also likely to look at Trump allies who inserted themselves into election administration matters in Georgia, including Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani; Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina; and Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff. The investigation is within the purview of the Fulton County district attorney because many of the actions in question took place in or involved phone calls to officials in Fulton County, which includes the State Capitol building in downtown Atlanta and numerous government offices.
In addition to the call with Mr. Raffensperger, Mr. Trump has publicly described how he called Gov. Brian Kemp after the election and asked him to call a special election to “get to the bottom” of “a big election-integrity problem in Georgia.” Mr. Trump also called Chris Carr, the state attorney general, asking him not to oppose a lawsuit challenging the election results in Georgia and other states, and Mr. Raffensperger’s chief investigator, asking her to find “dishonesty” in the election.
Kyiv said Monday that its drones sank two Russian patrol boats near the Black Sea’s Snake Island where Ukrainian soldiers rebuffed Moscow’s demands to surrender at the start of its invasion.
“Two Russian Raptor boats were destroyed at dawn today near Snake Island,” Ukraine’s defense ministry said in a statement distributed on social media.
The defense ministry also released grainy black-and-white aerial footage showing an explosion on a small military vessel.
A vessel claimed to be a Russian Raptor boat is destroyed with use of Ukrainian, Turkish-supplied Bayraktar drone, near Snake Island, Ukraine in this screen grab obtained from a social media video on May 2, 2022.
UKRAINIAN NAVAL FORCES
“The Bayraktars are working,” Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, was cited as saying in the statement, referring to Turkish-made military drones.
Raptor patrol boats can carry up to three crew and 20 personnel. They are usually equipped with machine guns and used in reconnaissance or landing operations.
Snake Island became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance after a radio exchange went viral in which Ukrainian soldiers rebuffed demands from crew of a Russian warship to surrender.
The Russian ship involved, the Moskva, sank in the Black Sea in mid-April following what Moscow said was an explosion on board. Ukraine said it had hit the warship with missiles.
The reported drone strikes come more than two weeks after the Ukrainian military said that it had badly damaged one of Russia’s most essential warships with a missile strike off Ukraine’s battered southern coast.
Meanwhile, a long-awaited effort to evacuate people from a steel plant in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has begun, the International Committee on the Red Cross (ICRC) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.
The operation to bring people out of the sprawling Azovstal steel plant was being done by the ICRC with the United Nations and in coordination with Ukrainian and Russian officials, an ICRC spokesperson told CBS News. Zelenskyy tweeted that the “1st group of about 100 people is already heading to the controlled area,” and said Ukrainian officials are “working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant.”
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s post-presidency enters a new phase this month as voters across the U.S. begin weighing the candidates he elevated to pursue a vision of a Republican Party steeped in hardline populism, culture wars and denial of his loss in the 2020 campaign.
In nearly every case, Trump has endorsed only those who embrace his false claims of election fraud and excuse the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection he inspired last year.
“The month of May is going to be a critical window into where we are,” said Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic defending incumbent GOP governors in Georgia, Ohio and Idaho against Trump-backed challengers this month. “I’m just concerned that there are some people trying to tear the party apart or burn it down.”
Few states may be a higher priority for Trump than Georgia, where early voting begins on Monday ahead of the May 24 primary. He’s taken a particularly active role in the governor’s race there, recruiting a former U.S. senator to take on the incumbent Republican for failing to go along with his election lie. For similar reasons, Trump is also aiming to unseat the Republican secretary of state, who he unsuccessfully pressured to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
While the primary season will play out deep into the summer, the first batch of races could set the tone for the year. If Republican voters in the early states rally behind the Trump-backed candidates, the former president’s kingmaker status would be validated, likely enhancing his power as he considers another bid for the presidency. High-profile setbacks, however, could dent his stature and give stronger footing to those who hope to advance an alternate vision for the GOP.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz predicted a strong month of May for Trump and his allies.
“The voices in Washington that want him to fade into obscurity or to be silenced are engaged in their own form of wishful thinking,” Cruz said in an interview. “That’s not going to happen. Nor should he.”
As Republicans grapple with Trump, Democrats are confronting their own set of revealing primaries.
Candidates representing the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings are yanking the party in opposing directions while offering conflicting messages about how to overcome their acute political shortcomings, Biden’s weak standing chief among them. History suggests that Democrats, as the party that controls Washington, may be headed for big losses in November no matter which direction they go.
But as Democrats engage in passionate debates over policies, Republicans are waging deeply personal and expensive attacks against each other that are designed, above all, to win over Trump and his strongest supporters.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who leads the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate, described the month of May as a brutal sorting period likely to be dominated by Republican infighting instead of the policy solutions or contrasts with Democrats he’d like to see.
“The primaries too often become sort of character assassinations,” Scott said in an interview. “That’s what has happened.”
He added, “Hopefully, people come together.”
No race may be messier than the Republican primary election for Georgia’s governor. Trump has spent months attacking Republican incumbents Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He blames both men for not working hard enough to overturn his narrow loss in the 2020 presidential election.
The results in Georgia were certified after a trio of recounts, including one partially done by hand. They all affirmed Biden’s victory.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a frequent Trump critic who is not running for reelection, described Trump’s decision to back former Sen. David Perdue against Kemp an “embarrassing” waste of time that could undermine the GOP’s broader goals this fall.
Duncan predicted Trump would ultimately win some races and lose others this month, but he was especially optimistic about Kemp’s chances to beat back Trump’s challenge.
“If a sitting governor is able to defeat that whole Donald Trump notion by a huge amount — and others down the ticket — I think we’re gonna send a message that it’s gonna take more than a Donald Trump endorsement to call yourself a Republican,” he said.
For now, however, Trump is unquestionably the nation’s most powerful Republican as even those who find themselves on opposite sides of the former president are careful to note their loyalty to him. Cruz, who is backing opponents of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in Ohio and Pennsylvania, downplayed any disagreement with him in an interview. Cruz noted he made his picks long before Trump did.
“For the four years he was president, Donald Trump had no stronger ally in the Senate than me,” Cruz said.
Six months before the general election, the Republican candidates in key primaries have already spent mountains of campaign cash attacking each other as Democrats largely save their resources — and sharpest attacks — for the November.
With early voting already underway in Ohio, a half-dozen Republican candidates in the state’s high-profile Senate primary and their allied outside groups have spent more than $66 million this year combined on television advertising as of last week, according to Democratic officials tracking ad spending. The vast majority of the ads were Republican-on-Republican attacks.
Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland real estate developer and investment banker, spent $15 million alone on television advertising as of last week. That includes an advertising campaign attacking Vance highlighting his past description of Trump as “an idiot.”
The pro-Vance super PAC known as Protect Ohio Values, meanwhile, has spent $10 million on the primary so far, including a recent barrage of attack ads casting Cruz-backed candidate Josh Mandel as “another failed career politician squish.”
On the other side, the leading Senate Democratic hopeful, Rep. Tim Ryan, has spent less than $3 million so far in positive television ads promoting his own push to protect Ohio manufacturing jobs from China.
The spending disparities in high-profile Senate primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina were equally stunning.
In Pennsylvania, where Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick are locked in a fierce fight for the GOP nomination, the candidates and allied outside groups have spent more than $48 million on television advertising so far. Democrats spent just over $10 million.
And in North Carolina, Republican forces have spent more than $15 million on a divisive primary pitting Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd against former Gov. Pat McCrory. Democrats, who have united behind former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, spent just over $2 million.
Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who leads the effort for Democrats to keep the Senate majority, said Republicans are essentially creating the Democrats’ general election ads for them. He described the intensity of the Republican infighting in several states as “toxic for the character of the Republican candidates.”
“They’re trying to compete to see who is the Trumpiest of the Trumpsters,” Peters said. “They’re not talking about issues that people care about.”
At the same time, Peters acknowledged his own party’s challenges, particularly Biden’s low popularity. He said it would be up to every individual candidate to decide whether to invite the Democratic president to campaign on their behalf.
“I think the president can be helpful,” Peters said of Biden. But “this is about the candidates. They’re running to represent their state in the United States Senate. And they have to rise and fall by who they are as individuals.”
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Authorities in Alabama announced Monday morning an arrest warrant has been issued for corrections official Vicky White after she left a detention center with suspected killer Casey Cole White on Friday. Investigators say the two aren’t related, and Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton said authorities are investigating whether Vicky White was a willing participant in the escape.
Casey White, 38, had been jailed on a capital murder charge in the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville. He is 6 feet, 9 inches tall, weighs approximately 260 pounds and has brown hair and hazel eyes, according to authorities.
“Casey White … is an extremely dangerous person, and we need to get him located and get him off the street,” Singleton told reporters during a Monday morning press conference.
Casey Cole White and Vicky White are seen in a photo combination.
Casey White was already serving a prison sentence for attempted murder and burglary and was set to go to trial next month for the stabbing death of a 58-year-old woman, a charge in which he would face the death penalty if convicted.
At a news conference Friday, Singleton said Vicky White, the 56-year-old assistant director of corrections, was armed when she left the jail with Casey White and headed to the courthouse for what she said was a mental health evaluation for the inmate. She was alone with him, which the sheriff said violated department policy.
The vehicle carrying the two when they left the detention center was found at a nearby shopping center parking lot, according to the sheriff’s office.
Singleton said Monday that newly discovered surveillance video showing the vehicle at a stoplight minutes after leaving the jail led investigators to believe that they went directly to the parking lot without stopping at the courthouse. Singleton also said no mental health evaluation for the inmate was scheduled.
Friday was supposed to be Vicky White’s last day at work before retiring, Singleton said. She sold her home about a month ago and talked about going to the beach, the sheriff said.
“Everybody thought she was going to retire,” Singleton said. “You know, nobody saw this coming.”
The sheriff said authorities didn’t know where the two might be. “If we knew where they were at, we would be there and not here,” Singleton said.
The U.S. Marshals Service said Sunday it is offering up to $10,000 for information leading authorities to finding the two.
“We consider both of them dangerous and in all probability both of them are armed,” U.S. Marshal Marty Keely said at the Monday press conference.
A first group of civilians trapped for weeks inside the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol was expected to reach a Ukrainian-held city on Monday, as authorities planned more evacuations and survivors told of horrific conditions inside the plant.
Hundreds of people remain trapped in underground bunkers and tunnels beneath the sprawling industrial site – the last stronghold of resistance to Russia’s siege of the devastated southern port city – which Russian forces resumed shelling overnight.
“The situation has become a sign of a real humanitarian catastrophe,” Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said about 100 civilians should arrive in the city of Zaporizhzhia on Monday.
“For the first time in all the days of the war, this vitally needed green corridor has started working,” Zelenskiy said overnight. Some evacuees were initially taken to a village held by Moscow-backed separatists, but were expected to be allowed to continue to Ukrainian-held territory if they wanted.
The head of the Donetsk military administration said more evacuations under a UN/Red Cross plan were due to begin on Monday morning, with one Russian news report putting the number of civilians still in the plant at more than 500.
One evacuee, Natalia Usmanova, 37, said after leaving the steelworks that she became hysterical whenever the bunker started to shake. “I was so worried it would cave in – I had terrible fear,” she told Reuters, recalling widespread terror and a lack of oxygen underground.
Some who were not sheltering in the steelworks also managed to flee without assistance. Anastasiia Dembytska said she took advantage of the brief evacuation ceasefire to leave with her daughter, nephew and dog.
She said she had to cross countless checkpoints to reach Zaporizhzhia, waiting 18 hours outside before being allowed to pass. Another woman arrived in a funeral van saying she left Mariupol earlier and had been hiding in a basement in a nearby village.
Mother and daughter Dina (right) and Natasha arrive in Zaporizhzhia using their own vehicle. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images
A UN spokesperson, Saviano Abreu, said civilians arriving in Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles (230km) north-west of Mariupol, would get immediate support, including psychological services. A Médecins Sans Frontières team was already in place.
There were no apparent plans to pull out the remaining Ukrainian forces still holed up in the plant, however, thought to number up to 2,000 and include members of the Azov regiment, the national guard, marines, border guards and other units.
One of the steelworks’ defenders, Denys Shlega, commander of the 12th Operational Brigade of Ukraine’s national guard, said Russian forces resumed shelling the plant on Sunday evening as soon as the civilians were evacuated.
Shlega said several hundred civilians remained trapped alongside nearly 500 wounded soldiers and “numerous” dead bodies. “Several dozen small children are still in the bunkers underneath the plant,” he said. Sviatoslav Palamar of the Azov regiment called for wounded fighters to be evacuated too.
Mariupol is a key Russian target because its capture would deprive Ukraine of a vital port, open up a land corridor to Crimea, which Moscow seized from Ukraine in 2014, and free up troops for what has become the main focus of the invasion: achieving full control of the eastern Donbas region.
Ukraine’s military command said on Monday Russia had redeployed several battalions from Mariupol to the heavily bombarded town of Popasna in the Luhansk province of Donbas, with the towns of Rubizhne, Sievierodonetsk, Slovyansk and Barvinkove also coming under heavy attack.
“I don’t even want to speak about what’s happening to the people living in Popasna, Rubizhne and Novotoshkivske right now,” said the Luhansk regional governor, Serhiy Gaidai. “These cities simply don’t exist any more. They have completely destroyed them.”
Zelenskiy’s office said on Monday at least three people were killed and another three, including a child, were wounded in Luhansk over the last 24 hours, with another four wounded in shelling in neighbouring Donetsk. Another two died in Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, further west.
Western officials say Russia is advancing slowly in its eastern offensive and has captured some villages, but is inflicting heavy civilian casualties through indiscriminate bombing. Ukrainian forces are fighting village-by-village and have retaken ground in places.
“Everyone understands that we must hold the line here,” Lt Yevgen Samoylov of the 81st Brigade told Agence France-Presse as his unit rotated out of the frontline near the town of Sviatohirsk. “We cannot let the enemy move closer. We try to hold it with all our force.”
The UK defence ministry said more than a quarter of the 120 “battalion tactical groups” – about 65% of Moscow’s total combat strength – deployed in Ukraine may now be “combat ineffective” due to personnel and equipment losses. “It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces,” it said.
Ukraine’s defence ministry said its drones had destroyed two small Russian Raptor patrol boats in the Black Sea, while the governor of the Russian region of Belgorod reported two explosions in the early hours, the latest in a string of fires and blasts in recent weeks at ammunition stores and fuel depots in the area.
Sunday’s mayoral debate began with a leader of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles being forcibly removed from the auditorium by multiple campus police officers just before cameras started rolling and ended with the candidates sharing their favorite locations to visit in the city.
During the intervening 90 minutes, five of the leading candidates for Los Angeles mayor traded arguments and accusations over how to address crime, homelessness, climate change and other issues. At times, they appeared almost as frustrated as the voters of Los Angeles.
Rep. Karen Bass, City Councilman Joe Buscaino, real estate developer Rick Caruso, City Atty. Mike Feuer, and Councilman Kevin de León all argued at different points that the city is facing a crisis. Caruso sought to pin the blame on the other four.
“The tragedy down at City Hall — the lack of humanity, the lack of compassion for the way people are living — is literally 10 minutes from the offices of everyone to the left of me,” he said. “And for some reason you’ve been driving the other way, not driving into that problem.”
The four other candidates onstage objected strongly to that message. Bass also issued a warning to the other candidates, saying they should be mindful about their messages about the city’s problems.
“If you lead a campaign that says the city is going to hell in a handbasket and everything is awful in Los Angeles, then that just builds on the despair and the fear,” she said.
The debate, which was held at Cal State L.A. and aired on ABC 7, was hosted by the university’s Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs and the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles.
Unlike a forum held the previous day, it went without live disruption from the activist groups that have dogged the major candidates in recent months. But there were protests preceding it and activists were forcibly removed from the audience minutes before the debate was set to begin.
Black Lives Matter-L.A. leader Melina Abdullah, a professor at Cal State Los Angeles, was forcibly removed by police officers from the mayoral debate on the campus.
Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles leader Melina Abdullah — a professor at Cal State L.A. and former chair of the school’s Pan-African studies department — said she was carried out of the room by police officers for being at the ticketed event without a ticket. Videos shared on Twitter showed multiple police officers dragging Abdullah outside the auditorium.
Debates should be public, “especially at a public university,” Abdullah said via text, noting that students, faculty and the public weren’t allowed inside “a near-empty theater.”
Admittance to the campus auditorium had been closely restricted, and several candidates not invited to participate — including Gina Viola, Alex Gruenenfelder, Craig Greiwe and Ramit Varma — protested outside before the debate.
In many ways, Sunday’s event felt like a retread of the last debate to feature these five candidates, with criticism once again trained on Caruso, which in turn enabled him to receive extra debate time to respond and make his case.
Caruso, as he did in March, issued broad-brush attacks on the other four candidates, all of them elected officials, tying them to homelessness, rising crime and other ills. The candidates, in turn, defended the idea of public service and accused Caruso of trashing their profession.
“I don’t spend time disparaging people in office,” said Caruso — known for developing properties such as the Grove and the Americana at Brand, as well as his several years on the Department of Water and Power board and as president of the civilian Police Commission. “What I disparage is elected officials that don’t produce results.”
The four other candidates sharply pushed back on that argument, saying they have in fact produced results. Bass described her work in freeing up billions of dollars in federal relief during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Feuer, in turn, touted his work in cracking down on the proliferation of firearms and working to ensure that children with preexisting conditions obtain health insurance. Caruso, he said, “chose to build glitzy malls. I chose to fight for seniors and kids and families.”
Buscaino and De León highlighted their work on air quality and the environment, and described their efforts to move people off the sidewalks and under a roof. De León has opened “tiny-home” villages and other interim housing in his Eastside district, while Buscaino has done the same in neighborhoods near the port.
“Rick, you say you support local elected officials who get the job done, who are results-driven,” Buscaino said. “Well, I’m your candidate.”
Polling conducted about a month ago showed Bass and Caruso in a dead heat well ahead of the rest of the pack, with 24% of likely voters backing Caruso and 23% supporting Bass.
De León, who had 6% support in the poll, was a distant third. Buscaino and Feuer polled even further behind at 1% and 2%, respectively. The debate offered all three men another opportunity to try to distinguish themselves with voters and possibly break out from the pack with just a little over a month to go before the June 7 primary.
De León’s debate rhetoric was particularly sharp: At one point he lashed out at Caruso, calling him a “consummate insider” who has been a politician all along.
During another memorable moment, the councilman — who is the son of a Guatemalan immigrant and was the only Latino onstage — responded entirely in Spanish to a question about street vending.
“I’m running for mayor because I’m tired of seeing people like my mother left behind, an immigrant woman with a third-grade education who cared for us by caring for the very wealthy,” De León said at another point.
Sunday’s debate became especially heated when the candidates were asked about the “broken windows” theory of policing — the idea that police officers should enforce minor crimes in a neighborhood to prevent more serious crimes from taking hold.
De León argued that Caruso, while serving on the Board of Police Commissioners, used that approach to criminalize homelessness.
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“They put you in jail because you were poor or you were drug addicted,” De León said. “They never dealt with housing, they never built housing … and that’s why we have such a big, giant epicenter of homelessness in the city of L.A. They criminalized the homeless using the broken windows theory.”
“It’s a grotesque lie, and you know that, Kevin,” Caruso shot back. “And it’s shameful to say things like that about the good work of the men and women at LAPD —”
De León interrupted: “I don’t besmirch the members of the LAPD —”
“Yes, you just did,” Caruso said, adding: “You’re criticizing the men and women of LAPD who brought crime down 30%.”
Buscaino attempted to break in to offer his view, but ABC 7 anchor Marc Brown, the moderator, cut him short.
“Nobody’s speaking out of turn,” he said.
Toward the end of the debate, Feuer said the city was on the verge of having its mayoral race outcome decided by money, rather than merit or values.
“Imagine Mr. Caruso as a candidate without the money. Would that be a viable candidacy?” Feuer asked.
Campaign finance disclosures show that Caruso has spent more than $23 million since entering the race in early February — an unprecedented sum that is more than four times what the other candidates have spent combined. Caruso has poured $22.5 million of his own money into his mayoral bid.
When the debate wrapped up, the five candidates were also asked to name their favorite places to visit in Los Angeles. Caruso and Bass said the beach; Buscaino mentioned the Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro; and De León cited a state park in Chinatown. Feuer chose both City Hall and the Venice boardwalk.
“Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” Biden said last week. “They keep moving, and the costs, the threats to America and the world, keep rising. We can’t let this happen.”
JERUSALEM, May 2 (Reuters) – Israel lambasted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday for claiming that Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins, saying it was an “unforgivable” falsehood that debased the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
In a signal of sharply deteriorating relations with Moscow, the Israeli foreign ministry summoned the Russian ambassador and demanded an apology.
“Such lies are intended to accuse the Jews themselves of the most horrific crimes in history that were committed against them,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement.
“The use of the Holocaust of the Jewish people for political purposes must stop immediately,” he added.
Lavrov made the assertion on Italian television on Sunday when he was asked why Russia said it needed to “denazify” Ukraine if the country’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, was himself Jewish.
“When they say ‘What sort of nazification is this if we are Jews’, well I think that Hitler also had Jewish origins, so it means nothing,” Lavrov told Rete 4 channel, speaking through an Italian interpreter.
“For a long time now we’ve been hearing the wise Jewish people say that the biggest anti-Semites are the Jews themselves,” he added.
Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, said the Russian minister’s remarks were “an insult and a severe blow to the victims of the real Nazism”.
Speaking on Kan radio, Dayan said Lavrov was spreading “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory with no basis in fact”.
The identity of one of Hitler’s grandfathers is not known but there has been some speculation, never backed up by any evidence, that he might have been a Jew.
There was no immediate response for comment from the Russian embassy to Israel or from Lavrov in Moscow.
Kyiv condemned Lavrov’s words, saying his “heinous remarks” were offensive to Zelenskiy, to Israel, Ukraine and Jews.
“More broadly, they demonstrate that today’s Russia is full of hatred towards other nations,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.
Israeli Foreign Ministry Yair Lapid, whose grandfather died in the Holocaust, said that accusing Jews of being anti-Semites was “the basest level of racism”. He also dismissed Lavrov’s assertion that pro-Nazi elements held sway over the Ukrainian government and military.
“The Ukrainians aren’t Nazis. Only the Nazis were Nazis and only they dealt with the systematic destruction of the Jewish people,” Lapid told the YNet news website.
A German government spokesperson said the idea Hitler had Jewish heritage was “absurd” propaganda. read more
Israel has expressed repeated support for Ukraine following the Russian invasion in February. But wary of straining relations with Russia, a powerbroker in neighbouring Syria, it initially avoided direct criticism of Moscow and has not enforced formal sanctions on Russian oligarchs.
However, relations have grown more strained, with Lapid last month accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine.
However, the Ukrainian president has also run into flak in Israel by looking to draw analogies between the conflict in his country and World War Two. In an address to the Israeli parliament in March, Zelenskiy compared the Russian offensive in Ukraine to Nazi Germany’s plan to murder all Jews within its reach during World War Two. read more
Yad Vashem called his comments “irresponsible,” saying they trivialised the historical facts of the Holocaust.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump ’s post-presidency enters a new phase this month as voters across the U.S. begin weighing the candidates he elevated to pursue a vision of a Republican Party steeped in hard-line populism, culture wars and denial of his loss in the 2020 campaign.
The first test comes on Tuesday when voters in Ohio choose between the Trump-backed JD Vance for an open U.S. Senate seat and several other contenders who spent months clamoring for the former president’s support. In the following weeks, elections in Nebraska, Pennsylvania and North Carolina will also serve as a referendum on Trump’s ability to shape the future of the GOP.
In nearly every case, Trump has endorsed only those who embrace his false claims of election fraud and excuse the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection he inspired last year.
“The month of May is going to be a critical window into where we are,” said Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a Trump critic defending incumbent GOP governors in Georgia, Ohio and Idaho against Trump-backed challengers this month. “I’m just concerned that there are some people trying to tear the party apart or burn it down.”
Few states may be a higher priority for Trump than Georgia, where early voting begins on Monday ahead of the May 24 primary. He’s taken a particularly active role in the governor’s race there, recruiting a former U.S. senator to take on the incumbent Republican for failing to go along with his election lie. For similar reasons, Trump is also aiming to unseat the Republican secretary of state, who he unsuccessfully pressured to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
While the primary season will play out deep into the summer, the first batch of races could set the tone for the year. If Republican voters in the early states rally behind the Trump-backed candidates, the former president’s kingmaker status would be validated, likely enhancing his power as he considers another bid for the presidency. High-profile setbacks, however, could dent his stature and give stronger footing to those who hope to advance an alternate vision for the GOP.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz predicted a strong month of May for Trump and his allies.
“The voices in Washington that want him to fade into obscurity or to be silenced are engaged in their own form of wishful thinking,” Cruz said in an interview. “That’s not going to happen. Nor should he.”
As Republicans grapple with Trump, Democrats are confronting their own set of revealing primaries.
Candidates representing the Democrats’ moderate and progressive wings are yanking the party in opposing directions while offering conflicting messages about how to overcome their acute political shortcomings, Biden’s weak standing chief among them. History suggests that Democrats, as the party that controls Washington, may be headed for big losses in November no matter which direction they go.
But as Democrats engage in passionate debates over policies, Republicans are waging deeply personal and expensive attacks against each other that are designed, above all, to win over Trump and his strongest supporters.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who leads the GOP’s effort to retake the Senate, described the month of May as a brutal sorting period likely to be dominated by Republican infighting instead of the policy solutions or contrasts with Democrats he’d like to see.
“The primaries too often become sort of character assassinations,” Scott said in an interview. “That’s what has happened.”
He added, “Hopefully, people come together.”
No race may be messier than the Republican primary election for Georgia’s governor. Trump has spent months attacking Republican incumbents Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He blames both men for not working hard enough to overturn his narrow loss in 2020 presidential election.
The results in Georgia were certified after a trio of recounts, including one partially done by hand. They all affirmed Biden’s victory.
Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.
Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a frequent Trump critic who is not running for reelection, described Trump’s decision to back former Sen. David Perdue against Kemp an “embarrassing” waste of time that could undermine the GOP’s broader goals this fall.
Duncan predicted Trump would ultimately win some races and lose others this month, but he was especially optimistic about Kemp’s chances to beat back Trump’s challenge.
“If a sitting governor is able to defeat that whole Donald Trump notion by a huge amount — and others down the ticket — I think we’re gonna send a message that it’s gonna take more than a Donald Trump endorsement to call yourself a Republican,” he said.
For now, however, Trump is unquestionably the nation’s most powerful Republican as even those who find themselves on opposite sides of the former president are careful to note their loyalty to him. Cruz, who is backing opponents of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates in Ohio and Pennsylvania, downplayed any disagreement with him in an interview. Cruz noted he made his picks long before Trump did.
“For the four years he was president, Donald Trump had no stronger ally in the Senate than me,” Cruz said.
Six months before the general election, the Republican candidates in key primaries have already spent mountains of campaign cash attacking against each other as Democrats largely save their resources — and sharpest attacks — for the November.
With early voting already underway in Ohio, a half-dozen Republican candidates in the state’s high-profile Senate primary and their allied outside groups have spent more than $66 million this year combined on television advertising as of last week, according to Democratic officials tracking ad spending. The vast majority of the ads were Republican-on-Republican attacks.
Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland real estate developer and investment banker, spent $15 million alone on television advertising as of last week. That includes an advertising campaign attacking Vance highlighting his past description of Trump as “an idiot.”
The pro-Vance super PAC known as Protect Ohio Values, meanwhile, has spent $10 million on the primary so far, including a recent barrage of attack ads casting Cruz-backed candidate Josh Mandel as “another failed career politician squish.”
On the other side, the leading Senate Democratic hopeful, Rep. Tim Ryan, has spent less than $3 million so far in positive television ads promoting his own push to protect Ohio manufacturing jobs from China.
The spending disparities in high-profile Senate primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina were equally stunning.
In the Pennsylvania, where Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund executive David McCormick are locked in a fierce fight for the GOP nomination, the candidates and allied outside groups have spent more than $48 million on television advertising so far. Democrats spent just over $10 million.
And in North Carolina, Republican forces have spent more than $15 million on a divisive primary pitting Trump-backed Rep. Ted Budd against former Gov. Pat McCrory. Democrats, who have united behind former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, spent just over $2 million.
Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, who leads the effort for Democrats to keep the Senate majority, said Republicans are essentially creating the Democrats’ general election ads for them. He described the intensity of the Republican infighting in several states as “toxic for the character of the Republican candidates.”
“They’re trying to compete to see who is the Trumpiest of the Trumpsters,” Peters said. “They’re not talking about issues that people care about.”
At the same time, Peters acknowledged their own party’s challenges, particularly Biden’s low popularity. He said it would be up to every individual candidate to decide whether to invite the Democratic president to campaign on their behalf.
“I think the president can be helpful,” Peters said of Biden. But “this is about the candidates. They’re running to represent their state in the United States Senate. And they have to rise and fall by who they are as individuals.”
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