“Not everybody loves you every day, but when you sit and work with both sides, you tend to take body blows from both sides,” Gottheimer said in an interview about his tactics. “If it’s for the good of the country, making progress and doing what’s right for the people we represent, that’s my job.”
Yet the durability of the centrists’ victory remains up for debate. The two-day budget showdown revealed the struggles of such a disparate bloc of Democrats — a mix of fiscal and social conservatives, vulnerable “frontliners” and some who hold deep blue seats — as they seek to maximize their influence.
While Gottheimer and his group celebrate the concession they got on infrastructure, they face a bigger question: whether they expended too much political capital over a calendar fight, when a much bigger debate over the size and scope of the party’s social spending package is yet to come this fall.
Just 24 hours before the vote, no one on the Hill knew how it would end.
Pelosi, not one to respond well to demands from her rank and file, was not in a rush. The Californian was hosting a who’s who of Democratic luminaries at her annual Napa fundraiser over the weekend as members of her leadership team were dispatched to try to reason with the moderates.
But in a private leadership call Sunday afternoon with just Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, it became apparent that the longtime Democratic leadership trio had a problem on their hands.
While Pelosi had been in touch with other centrists in Gottheimer’s group, it had been more than a week since she andthe New Jersey Democrat had had a conversation. During the Sunday leadership call, Hoyer — who had been in close contact with the rebels for many days — suggested it was time for the speaker to directly engage Gottheimer, despite his rabble-rousing reputation that had long alienated many in the caucus.
By Monday night, Pelosi, Hoyer and the rest of her leadership team were engaged in a flurry of negotiations with Gottheimer and the other moderates. Such attention, in many ways, was precisely what the moderates had wanted in the first place.
Those efforts, however, took far longer than everyone expected, with Gottheimer and another senior centrist, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), running into some disagreements within their own ad hoc group about how to end the standoff. While the group had a singular public demand — an immediate vote on the Senate infrastructure bill — several of its members were individually approaching leadership in private with their own wants and requests, complicating the negotiations.
Moderates walked away from the standoff Tuesday declaring victory, with a promise to be included in the drafting of the $3.5 trillion social spending package as well as a date certain for an infrastructure vote. Pelosi and her allies, meanwhile, argue that she has not wavered from her previous strategy.
“A win?” Pelosi responded Tuesday when asked whether Gottheimer had scored a significant victory. “We’re not talking about a win. We’re talking about passing a rule.”
Progressives, who were largely silent amid the moderates’ maneuver in the moment, said afterward that Pelosi had simply reiterated her earlier plans to attempt to pass both massive bills by the end of September. And they said their nearly 100-member caucus would only back the Senate infrastructure deal after passing the broader party-line spending bill.
“I don’t consider them concessions,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said of the demands granted to the centrists.
“The fact that they’re gonna end up supporting what they said they wouldn’t without actually getting what they wanted, I think sets them up for failure in negotiations in the future,” she added.
Unlike House liberals, most of whom align with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, moderates are more scattered across the caucus. Their various wings — the Blue Dogs, the New Democrats and the Problem Solvers — usually spend more time arguing over the semantic differences between the groups than they do joining together to force leadership’s hand.
For instance, the larger New Democrat Coalition fully backed the speaker’s approach while key members of the other two held out.
“I think a lot of this was probably unnecessary. We could have kept the process moving forward, but that’s called legislating,” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a senior member of the New Democrats.
Gottheimer’s allies included mostly members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, though they came together loosely and organized in general by word of mouth amid their frustrations with Pelosi’s dual-track strategy.
Another key moderate, Blue Dog co-leader Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), agreed with them and had been working with leadership behind the scenes. But Murphy didn’t go public until a Monday night op-ed, adding another complication to the already strained negotiations.
Murphy had sent a set of proposals to Democratic leadership and the White House a week earlier. Those included a late-September timeline for the infrastructure bill and certain reassurances for the$3.5 trillionspending package, which the centrists ultimately received.
Yet Murphy said those early ideas were ignored, and she began drafting her op-ed — which called her own party’s strategy “misguided” — shortly after a tense call from President Joe Biden himself on Sunday night, according to people familiar with the discussions.
“I can’t explain why the serious negotiations didn’t happen until the eleventh hour,” Murphy said in an interview Tuesday, after backing the budget on the floor. “I always find that people who wait until the very last minute to do their homework, let’s just say they end up staying up very late.”
Murphy is among several Democrats who hope to see a more involved White House during the next, and likely more intense, round of negotiations on the $3.5 trillion bill.
Biden’s call to Murphy was one of several ways that senior Democrats had discussed to pressure their members to support the budget vote. Another idea was having Gottheimer’s onetime boss former President Bill Clinton make calls, although sources close to the 46-year-old centrist insist that never happened.
One way top Democrats did try to turn the screw was through fundraising, with House Democratic Campaign Chair Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) and his staff issuing veiled warnings about the campaign arm’s financial support if moderates followed through on their threats.
But while Gottheimer had always wanted a deal, he at times found it difficult to lock down all eight other members of his motley group.
Late Monday, Pelosi and Gottheimer had finally come to an agreement on a timeline, setting the date of Sept. 28 to vote on the Senate bill, when another one of the moderates balked. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) insisted the deadline for a vote be moved up a full week, providing distance from when the House would likely vote on the massive social spending deal, according to people familiar with the talks.
As the clock ticked past midnight, the group of negotiators decided to hit pause as it became clear they wouldn’t reach an agreement. But just hours later, Pelosi and Gottheimer resumed talks with an early morning call Tuesday.
Later that morning, Gottheimer’s group was again on the cusp of announcing a deal, only to be held up again at the last minute by members of their own group who demanded stronger language on the timeline. That final change ended up securing all nine votes.
In the end, Gottheimer and Cuellar locked down the votes of every Democrat who signed their letter.
Asked how he and Gottheimer convinced the rest of the moderates, Cuellar — who worked closely with his long-time ally Clyburn — replied: “With a lot of work.”
“We got a date to vote on this, on the 27th. We agreed that we’re going to be voting, same with the Senate Democrats. So I think we got everything,” Cuellar said.
Nicholas Wu and Anthony Adragna contributed to this report.
“Los medios de comunicación ya no son lo de antes”, se queja Germán, un obrero petrolero que al salir de su jornada de trabajo, cerca de las cuatro de la tarde, se sienta a leer todo el periódico del día. Desde la portada hasta la última letra. Y tiene razón.
Los medios tradicionales existen desde hace mucho tiempo, pero desde hace algunos años, la proliferación de plataformas comunicacionales soportadas por Internet ha cambiado la forma de relacionarse con las noticias.
“Con el paso de los años, el público ha desarrollado colectivamente formas de identificar matices ideológicos en la cobertura periodística, y también de distinguir las historias verídicas de las paródicas o satíricas“, escribe Pablo J. Boczkowski, académico argentino especialista en Estudios de Ciencia y Tecnología.
Pero la reciente entrada en escena de plataformas como Google y Facebook hace que“sus procedimientos de selección sean menos conocidos por el público”. Evidentemente… ya no son como antes.
Escepticismo
Una de las dificultades asociadas a la horizontalidad para producir contenidos en las redes sociales es poder identificar las “noticias falsas”.
Boczkowski apunta que, sumado a los “empeños deliberados en distorsionar o desinformar”, los errores no intencionales que ya sabe detectar el público usuario de los medios han reforzado “una postura escéptica entre las audiencias sobre la presunta veracidad de las noticias”.
A manera de reflexión agrega que “las noticias falsas han existido durante tanto tiempo como las verdaderas”.
Citando a Robert Ezra Park, el fundador de la Escuela de Sociología de Chicago, que también ejerció el periodismo, el académico recuerda que él “comprendió que las noticias falsas son un elemento intrínseco de cualquier ecología de la información”.
Trump y la mentira
Para el especialista, uno de los eventos más importantes del periodismo, a propósito de la elección de Donald Trump, fue la proliferación de noticias falsas en las redes.
También es un hecho “sin precedentes” históricos la existencia de una infraestructura de información a gran escala.
“Facebook, por ejemplo, llega cada día a más de mil millones de usuarios”, señala Boczkowski. Eso permite “oír voces antes silenciadas (…) en todo el mundo”.
Pero esa inmensa plataforma horizontal ha hecho posible “que una noticia falsa sobre el papa Francisco respaldando la candidatura de Donald Trump fuera compartida miles de veces”.
Antes de las redes
Para Clodovaldo Hernández, periodista y escritor venezolano, los medios tradicionales ya estaban en tela de juicio incluso sin contar con las tecnologías actuales.
Entrevistado por RT, indicó que, “desde antes de la aparición de las redes sociales, los medios de comunicación habían causado graves daños a la credibilidad de la propia plataforma tradicional (…) Se difundieron grandes mentiras, por ejemplo, para llevar a cabo guerras e invasiones, respaldadas por grandes medios de comunicación”.
Hernández señala que esa falta de credibilidad se acentuó con la irrupción de las redes sociales, “la saturación de informaciones en el llamado ‘tiempo real’, porque en ese espacio puede publicarse cualquier cosa y eso hace más difícil poder discernir”.
Creer o no
Si las personas desconfían tanto de los medios, ¿en quién creen? Pablo Boczkowski revela en su artículo parte de una “investigación en curso sobre el consumo de noticias”.
Los usuarios de las redes atribuyen “un mayor nivel de credibilidad” cuando la noticia es compartida por uno de sus contactos que cuando proviene del propio medio de comunicación.
“Cuando se les pregunta acerca de esta diferencia, los entrevistados dicen que a menudo no confían en los medios de comunicación ya que son inherentemente tendenciosos y, al contrario, su postura hacia sus contactos está basada, por defecto, en la confianza”.
Es fácil mentir
Pedro Lanteri es un experimentado periodista argentino, exdirector de la AM 530, la radio de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. En su opinión muchos medios se valen de las redes para mentir.
“Cuando los medios tradicionales necesitan difundir una noticia falsa primero acuden a las redes, allí generan la noticia falsa, luego la levantan (redactan) a través de una agencia (que toma como fuente un mensaje de Twitter) y después la reproducen como propia”.
Aseguró a RT que muchas veces “las redes generan el clima de credibilidad de una noticia falsa”.
Pero bien utilizadas, puntualiza Lanteri, las redes pueden usarse para desenmascarar la falsedad de una noticia, “todo depende de cómo los usuarios nos apropiamos de las redes”.
Un día bastante agitado en el mundo deportivo y en DIEZ.HN no ha sido la excepción, por ello te presentamos un resumen con las seis noticias más leídas de este viernes.
6. La actualidad de los extranjeros que brillaron en Honduras
5. La lista de jugadores con la que negocia el Barcelona
El técnico español Luis Enrique puso en marcha la maquinaria culé para fichar de cara a la temporada 2016-17 y ya han salido varios nombres a la luz. Uno de ellos es Marquinhos, quien juega para el PSG, pero lleva mucho tiempo en el ojo azulgrana.La nota completa aquí.
4. Reservista del Zaragoza no superó las pruebas en Olimpia
El hondureño Nelman Castellanos decidió dejar las reservas del club español para retornar a Honduras con la ilusión de cumplir su sueño de vestir de blanco, pero este viernes el asistente técnico Nerlin Membreño confirmó que no logró convencer. La explicación completa que dio Membreño.
3. Los estadios más temidos de Centroamérica
El fútbol centroamericano sigue luchando por crecer y destacar, pese a ello hay canchas donde a los visitantes les cuesta mucho salir con un resultado positivo. Acá el listado.
2. Jugadores del Real Madrid en lista de salida
Real Madrid cerró la temporada ganando la Champions League de la mano de Zidane, pero ahora el técnico francés busca armar una plantilla que le permita este año competir además por Liga y Copa del Rey, para ello busca fortalecerse y ya hay una nómina de los que podrían marcharse. Acá la podés revisar completa.
1. El islandés Aaron Gunnarsson sale en defensa de Cristiano
El diario alemán Bild publicó este viernes que el delantero luso no quiso intercambiar camisa con el seleccionado de Islandia y que le habría dicho: “¿Mi camiseta? ¿Y quién eres tú?”, pero el mismo defensor lo desmintió. Acá su aclaración y lo que ocurrió verdaderamente.
“If the Texas congressional maps that have been proposed are adopted, a large portion of my constituency will be in District 34,” Gonzalez said in a statement provided first to POLITICO. “I have received many calls from across South Texas encouraging me to run in this district. If in fact these are the final maps I will very seriously consider running in 34 and continuing my representation of South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley.”
House Republicans, who have identified Gonzalez’s current McAllen-based district astheir top pickup opportunity in Texas, will welcome the news that Democrats are losing the power of incumbency in a tough battleground.
Gonzalez, who was first elected in 2016, said that he has over $2 million in his campaign account to use in a primary for the Vela’s seat. He also said if he changed districts he would “make certain that we have another candidate” that could keep his 15th District in Democratic hands.
Even before the GOP-controlled redistricting began, Gonzalez was likely to have a tough reelection. His current district, which includes McAllen and stretches north toward San Antonio, took a hard swing to the right last year.
Hillary Clinton won the seat by 17 points in 2016; but Joe Biden won it by just 2 points four years later. Meanwhile, Gonzalez saw his victory margin shrink to 3 points in 2020 against a opponent who spent less than $300,000. That candidate, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, is running again this cycle.
All three districts in the Rio Grande Valleysaw a similar rightward shift in 2020 — something the incumbents attributed both to Trump’s surge among Latino men and some progressive Democratic policy proposals and slogans that did not play well along the border.
That made all three a target for GOP mapmakers in redistricting. Thus far, the state Legislature has acted somewhat conservatively, proposingturning Gonzalez’s district into a battleground and giving his neighbor to the west, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, a seat that Biden would have carried by 7 points.
Republicans’ map would turn the Brownsville-based seat held by Vela, who announced his retirement earlier this year, into one that backed Biden by nearly 16 points in 2020.
In a statement to POLITICO, Vela said: “I will endorse Congressman Gonzalez no matter which district he runs in.”
Gonzalez said he chose to run in Vela’s seat because the incumbent is retiring and because Vela absorbed some of his Democratic voters from Hidalgo County.
But Gonzalez has not yet cleared the Democratic primaryfield. He could still face carpetbagging attacks because his hometown of McAllen is in his old district, and he is also more moderate and a member of the Blue Dog Coalition.
FourDemocrats have filed to run for the seat. The most prominent one is Rochelle Garza, a civil rights attorney from Brownsville. But most will probably struggle to match Gonzalez’s war chest.
A trial lawyer by trade, Gonzalez also the ability to self-fund.
New details have emerged in the death of Andrew “AJ” Freund, the 5-year-old allegedly murdered by his parents and buried in a shallow grave last week in a Chicago suburb.
According to a Thursday criminal complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News, AJ’s parents, JoAnn Cunningham, 35, and Andrew Freund Sr., 60, killed the boy by making him stay “in a cold shower for an extended period of time” and “struck” him.
They did this on or about April 15 “knowing said acts would cause the death” of their young son, the complaint states.
Cunningham, who is currently 7 months pregnant, faces charges of murder, aggravated battery, aggravated domestic battery, and failure to report a missing child or child death.
Freund faces the same charges, as well as additional ones for concealing a homicide.
National Security Advisor John Bolton announced that the U.S. is sending the USS Abraham Lincoln Strike Group and a bomber task force to the Middle East. Buzz60, Buzz60
Iran’s president announced on Wednesday that the nation would stop complying with some parts of the nuclear accord it signed with world powers as President Donald Trump’s administration has ratcheted up economic and military pressure on Tehran.
Hassan Rouhani said his country would reduce its compliance with the 2015 deal. The declaration came on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s complete withdrawal from an agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Rouhani said Iran will start keeping excess uranium and “heavy water” from its nuclear program inside the country – as opposed to selling it internationally – in a move that effectively amounts to a partial breach of the deal. He also set a 60-day deadline for new terms to its nuclear accord, absent the U.S., with Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and the European Union or threatened to resume higher uranium enrichment.
“We felt that the nuclear deal needs a surgery and the painkiller pills of the last year have been ineffective,” Rouhani said in a nationally televised address.
“This surgery is for saving the deal, not destroying it.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in Moscow, tweeted: “After a year of patience, Iran stops measures that (the) U.S. has made impossible to continue.” Zarif warned world powers have “a narrowing window to reverse this.”
The announcement came as the White House has appeared to inch closer toward a military confrontation with Iran than at any other time during Trump’s presidency. The Pentagon has redirected aircraft bombers and a carrier strike group to the Middle East after claiming it intercepted intelligence indicating that Iran or its proxies in the region might be preparing attacks on American military troops and facilities.
Last month, Trump designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp, an elite wing of the nation’s military that is also a broad pillar of the state and whose tentacles extend to a large role in economic, political and social affairs, a terrorist organization.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took an unscheduled trip to Iraq on Tuesday where he told reporters that he met with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and briefed Iraqi officials on the “increased threat stream that we had seen” from Iranian forces.
“We talked to them about the importance of Iraq ensuring that it’s able to adequately protect Americans in their country,” Pompeo said.
“I think everyone will look at the Iranian decision and have to make their own assessment about how much increased risk there is,” he added.
There are about 5,000 U.S. troops serving in Iraq. After pulling out of the nuclear deal, the Trump administration has renewed crippling economic sanctions on Iran that have isolated the nation economically and harmed its capacity to export oil.
America’s top diplomat is due to give an address later Wednesday in London where the topic of rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran is likely to come up again. There was no immediate response from the White House to Rouhani’s announcement.
Former President Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated the nuclear deal, sought to block Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons through diplomacy. The Trump administration, by contrast, has not been shy in its preference for a campaign of “maximum pressure” on Iran and has cut off all contact with the regime as its attempts to bring its oil revenues down to zero through increasingly hard-hitting sanctions.
European signatories to the nuclear accord have meanwhile attempted to stay in the nuclear agreement by establishing a financial mechanism, known as INSTEX, intended to help them circumvent U.S. sanctions, but it has yet not been fully implemented.
While the Pentagon and White House officials have insisted they are not seeking a war with Iran, political scientists and Iran-watchers have expressed concern that the Trump administration’s growing, aggressive posture toward Tehran is a reflection of Pompeo’s and National Security Adviser John Bolton’s long-harbored dislike of the country.
“The (nuclear deal) is doing what it was designed to do: preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. As such, the deal is too important to be allowed to die,” the directors of 18 foreign affairs think tanks and research institutes wrote in a joint letter published Wednesday as Iran signaled that the accord’s total collapse is possible.
“I’m deeply worried that the Trump administration is leading us toward an unnecessary war with Iran,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., in a statement late Tuesday.
“Let me make one thing clear: The Trump administration has no legal authority to start a war against Iran without the consent of Congress.”
(CNN) – Investigadores estadounidenses creen que hackers rusos ingresaron al sistema la agencia de noticias estatal de Qatar y plantaron una noticia falsa que contribuyó a una crisis entre los aliados más cercanos en el Golfo Pérsico de Estados Unidos, según funcionarios estadounidenses informados sobre la investigación.
El FBI envió recientemente a un equipo de investigadores a Doha para ayudar al gobierno de Qatar a investigar el presunto incidente de piratería, informaron funcionarios de los gobiernos estadounidense y qatarí.
La inteligencia recopilada por las agencias de seguridad estadounidenses indica que los hackers rusos estaban detrás de la intrusión reportada por el gobierno de Qatar hace dos semanas, dijeron funcionarios estadounidenses. Qatar alberga una de las bases militares estadounidenses más grandes de la región.
La supuesta participación de piratas informáticos rusos intensifica las preocupaciones por parte de las agencias de inteligencia y agencias de la ley de Estados Unidos sobre que Rusia sigue intentando contra aliados estadounidenses algunas de las mismas medidas cibernéticas que —según las agencias de inteligencia — se usaron para inmiscuirse en las elecciones de 2016.
Funcionarios estadounidenses dicen que el objetivo de los rusos parece ser causar divisiones entre EE.UU. y sus aliados. En los últimos meses, presuntas actividades cibernéticas rusas, incluido el uso de noticias falsas, han aparecido en medio de elecciones en Francia, Alemania y otros países.
Aún no está claro si EE.UU. ha rastreado a los hackers en el incidente de Qatar para determinar si tienen vínculos con organizaciones criminales rusas o con los servicios de seguridad rusos culpados por los ciberataques de las elecciones estadounidenses. Un funcionario señaló que basándose en la inteligencia pasada, “no ocurre mucho en ese país sin la bendición del gobierno”.
El FBI y la CIA se negaron a comentar. Una portavoz de la embajada de Qatar en Washington dijo que la investigación está en curso y que sus resultados se publicarán pronto.
El gobierno de Qatar señaló el 23 de mayo que un noticiero de su agencia de noticias de Qatar atribuyó falsas declaraciones al gobernante de la nación que parecían amables con Irán e Israel y en que cuestionaba si el presidente Donald Trump duraría en el cargo.
El ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Qatar, el jeque Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, dijo a CNN que el FBI ha confirmado del ciberataque y la plantación de noticias falsas.
Únase a la Compañía de Teatro Moose Hall para la presentación final de Henry IV como parte del Festival Shakespeare de Inwood en Inwood Park el sábado 1° de agosto a las 7 pm. El festival fue concebido y desarrollado por Ted Minos y sus colaboradores como una manera de llevar teatro y música profesional gratuita a la comunidad del norte de Manhattan.
El espectáculo tendrá lugar en Inwood Park Peninsula en la calle 218 e Indian Road.
Para más información, por favor llame al 212.567.5255 o envíe un correo electrónico a mooselist@moosehallisf.org.
Little Red Riding Hood
Visite la Biblioteca de la calle 125 el miércoles 5 de agosto a las 4 pm para una presentación especial de Little Red Riding Hood.
Presentada por la productora Puppets to Go, esta versión actualizada ofrece un giro totalmente nuevo en el clásico en el que tanto el lobo como caperucita, aprenden algunas lecciones valiosas en el camino a casa de la abuela.
La Biblioteca de la calle 125 está situada en el No. 125 de la calle 224 este.
Para más información, por favor llame al212.534.5050.
Vea la historia de la ciudad en esta exposición de la casa de muñecas.
Casas Stettheimer
Uno de los artefactos más populares del museo, la casa de muñecas de Carrie Walter Stettheimer, está ahora en exhibición en el Museo de la Ciudad de Nueva York. En esta exposición, la obra de Stettheimer entrelaza la moda y el estilo de Nueva York durante la era dorada en miniatura. Stettheimer trabajó en la casa de muñecas de 12 habitaciones por casi dos décadas, creando muchos de los muebles y las decoraciones a mano. Los estilos varían de habitación en habitación, sin embargo, los empapelados, los muebles y los accesorios son todos característicos del período posterior a la Primera Guerra Mundial en Nueva York.
El Museo de la Ciudad de Nueva York se encuentra en el No. 1220 de la Quinta avenida.
Para más información, por favor llame al 212.534.1672o visite www.mcny.org.
El concierto tendrá lugar en el paseo del parque.
Concierto de jazz
Únase al Fideicomiso del Parque Fort Tryon, a Parques NYC y a la familia Michels en el concierto anual conmemorativo de jazz en honor al fallecido concejal Stan Michels, realizado por la empresaria teatral local Marjorie Eliot y su conjunto el sábado 1 de agosto de 1 a 4 pm. Michels representó al norte Manhattan en el Ayuntamiento durante 24 años, de 1978 a 2001. Fue presidente de la Comisión de Protección del Medio Ambiente y defensor de parques, asignando más de $50 millones de dólares para mejoras en los parques de Washington Heights, Inwood y Harlem, incluyendo casi todos los parques infantiles en el distrito. El concierto tendrá lugar en el paseo, al costado del Jardín Heather con vistas al río Hudson.
Para más información, por favor llame al212.795.1388 o envíe un correo electrónico a info@forttryonparktrust.org.
Incredible GoPro footage takes you inside the gunfire-heavy raid that ended drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s six months on the run.
The video, obtained from Mexican authorities, looks as if it’s from an action movie. The camera follows the armed men as they storm the house, unleash grenades and bullets, and search room to room.
The Friday raid was called “Operation Black Swan,” according to the Mexican show “Primero Noticias.” Authorities decided to launch the raid Thursday after they got a tip about where Guzman was sleeping, the show reported.
Seventeen elite unit Mexican Marines launched their assault on the house in the city of Los Mochis at 4:40 a.m., “Primero Noticias” said.
They were met by about one dozen well-armed guards inside who were prepared for a fight, the show said.
The Marines moved from room to room, clearing the house. Upstairs they found two men in one room and found two women on the floor of a bathroom. All were captured, “Primero Noticias” said.
After 15 minutes, the Marines controlled the entire house, according to “Primero Noticias.”
In the end, five guards were killed and two men and two women were detained. One of the women was the same cook Guzman had with him when he was detained a couple years ago, according to “Primero Noticias.”
Eventually the marines determined that the only bedroom on the first floor was Guzman’s and they began pounding on the walls and moving furniture, finding hidden doors, the show said.
His room had a king-sized bed, bags from fashionable clothing stores, bread and cookie wrappers, and medicine including injectable testosterone, syringes, antibiotics and cough syrups, the show said. The two-story house had four bedrooms and five bathrooms. There were flat-screen TVs and Internet connection throughout the house, according to “Primero Noticias.”
The Marines eventually found a hidden passageway behind a mirror, with a handle hidden in the light fixture. The handle opened a secret door, leading down into the escape tunnel, the show explained.
The escape tunnel was fully lit and led to an access door for the city sewage system, “Primero Noticias” said, adding that Guzman had at least a 20-minute head start on the Marines.
The address where Guzman was captured had been monitored for a month, Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez has said. According to Gomez, Guzman and his lieutenant escaped through that drainage system.
“Primero Noticias” said it obtained surveillance footage showing Guzman and his lieutenant emerging from the manhole cover, where they then stole two cars to flee, the show said.
Guzman was finally caught when he and the lieutenant were stopped on a highway by Mexican Federal Police, the show said.
Authorities took them to a motel to wait for reinforcement. The men were then taken to Los Mochis airport and transfered to Mexico City.
Rebecca Blackwell/AP PHOTO
Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is escorted by soldiers and marines to a waiting helicopter, at a federal hangar in Mexico City, Jan. 8, 2016.
Guzman is now back in prison as his lawyers fight his extradition to the U.S.
The drug kingpin escaped from the Altiplano prison near Mexico City on July 11, launching an active manhunt. When guards realized that he was missing from his cell, they found a ventilated tunnel and exit had been constructed in the bathtub inside Guzman’s cell. The tunnel extended for about a mile underground and featured an adapted motorcycle on rails that officials believe was used to transport the tools used to create the tunnel, Monte Alejandro Rubido, the head of the Mexican national security commission, said in July.
Guzman had been sent there after he was arrested in February 2014. He spent more than 10 years on the run after escaping from a different prison in 2001. It’s unclear exactly how he had escaped, but he did receive help from prison guards who were prosecuted and convicted.
Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, was once described by the U.S. Treasury as “the most powerful drug trafficker in the world.” The Sinaloa cartel allegedly uses elaborate tunnels for drug trafficking and has been estimated to be responsible for 25 percent of all illegal drugs that enter the U.S. through Mexico.
The land area burned by fire has declined 25% from 2003-2019 thanks to economic growth.
NASA
The whole world is burning, The New York Times, CNN, and mainstream media outlets around the world have declared in recent days.
The Amazon could soon “self-destruct” reportsThe Times. It would be “a nightmare scenario that could see much of the world’s largest rainforest erased from the earth,” writes Max Fisher who notes, “some scientists who study the Amazon ecosystem call it imminent.”
“If enough [Amazon] rain forest is lost and can’t be restored, the area will become savanna, which doesn’t store as much carbon, meaning a reduction in the planet’s ‘lung capacity,’” reportsThe New York Times.
It’s not just the Amazon, though. Africa, Siberia, and Indonesia are also apparently going up in smoke. ClaimsThe New York Times, “in central Africa, vast stretches of savanna are going up in flame. Arctic regions in Siberia are burning at a historic pace.”
Any reader of the New York Times and other mainstream media outlet would be forgiven for believing that fires globally are on the rise, but they aren’t.
In reality, there was a whopping 25 percent decrease in the area burned from 2003 to 2019, according to NASA.
Between 2003 and 2015, the area burned in Africa declined by an area the size of Texas (700,000 square kilometers or 270,000 square miles.
And against the picture painted by celebrities and the mainstream media that fires around the world are caused by economic growth, the truth is the opposite: the amount of land being burned is declining thanks to development, including urbanization.
That’s because the amount of land being converted into ranches and farms has been going down, not up, and because more of it is being done with machines than with fire.
For the last 35 years, the world has been re-foresting, meaning new tree growth has exceeded deforestation. The area of the Earth covered with forest has increased by an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined.
Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land.
Much of the re-forestation is occurring in deserts and tundra that had been barren, thanks to human-led reforestation initiatives, such as in China and Africa, and because of global warming. Warmer temperatures are what have allowed forests to grow in tundra.
Mainstream journalists botched this story. They should have known about the decline in burning since scientists published a major study in Science in 2015.
And yet mainstream journalists have continued to push the apocalyptic framing in their coverage of fires in Amazon and Africa and attempted to link them to climate change.
Consider how The New York Times misrepresented global fires earlier this week. “Their increase in severity and spread to places where fires were rarely previously seen is raising fears that climate change is exacerbating the danger,” wrote Kendra Pierre-Louis.
But this is wrong. In truth, the climate-fire nexus brings good news: the decline in area burned has offset much of the risk of increased fire from global warming, according to Doug Morton, co-author of the 2015 Science study and a forest scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute.
“When land use intensifies on savannas, fire is used less and less as a tool,” saidNiels Andela of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “As soon as people invest in houses, crops, and livestock, they don’t want these fires close by anymore. The way of doing agriculture changes, the practices change, and fire disappears from the grassland landscape.”
“Climate change has increased fire risk in many regions, but satellite burned area data show that human activity has effectively counterbalanced that climate risk, especially across the global tropics,” Morton said. “We’ve seen a substantial global decline over the satellite record, and the loss of fire has some really important implications for the Earth system.”
“Regions with less fire saw a decrease in carbon monoxide emissions and an improvement in air quality during fire season,” notes NASA. “With less fire, savanna vegetation is increasing—taking up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”
But you wouldn’t know it from the apocalyptic pronouncements of the New York Times, CNN, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rep., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Madonna, Senator Bernie Sanders, French President Emmanuel Macron, Senator Kamala Harris who still spread and have not deleted their wrong photos and information they have spread about the Amazon.
The New York Times‘ Kendra Pierre-Louis even repeats the “lungs of the world” myth in her August 28 story.
Celebrities and the mainstream news media have advanced an apocalyptic narrative of fires in places like the Amazon as violent intrusions on nature. This picture is false.
“Fire had been instrumental for millennia in maintaining healthy savannas, keeping shrubs and trees at bay and eliminating dead vegetation,” says the senior author of a major Science paper about the decline of fires, Jim Randerson of the University of California, Irvine.
In truth, the decline in burning raises new challenges. “For fire-dependent ecosystems like savannas,” Morton said, “the challenge is to balance the need for frequent burning to maintain habitat for large mammals and to maintain biodiversity while protecting people’s property, air quality, and agriculture.”
As for the myth that the Amazon is the “lungs of the Earth” providing “20% of the world’s oxygen,” it appears to have been invented by a Malthusian Cornell University scientist in 1966, according to the George Mason University environmental philosopher, Mark Sagoff.
“In the 1960s, when ‘lungs of the earth’ was the big reason to save the rain forest,” Sagoff told me yesterday, “I got interested in it as a scientific question. I found no evidence that any tropical rainforest contributes to the net oxygen budget of the world.”
Sagoff sent me a 1966 an article by Cornell University scientist LaMont C. Cole in the journal BioScience. In it, Cole claimed that, as a result of burning fossil fuels, “the oxygen content of the atmosphere must start to decrease.”
That claim was incorrect and debunked as early as 1970 by climatologist Wallace S. Broecker writing for Science in June 1970.
“In almost all grocery lists of man’s environmental problems is found an item regarding oxygen supply,” wrote Broeker. “Fortunately for mankind, the supply is not vanishing as some have predicted.”
Broeker wrote his article because the mainstream media had been spreading Cole’s myth. “Hopefully the popular press will bury the bogeyman it created,” Broecker said.
The good news for the news media is that 69% of the public say that trust can be restored. A good start would be for CNN, The New York Times, and other media outlets to correct their inaccurate coverage, and start covering the Amazon and fires issue fairly and accurately.
President Trump announced on Twitter yesterday that Kevin McAleenan will be taking over as acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security following the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen on Sunday.
There’s one problem with this: It’s illegal.
Federal law explicitly excludes the application of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act to this situation. University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck points out that under the law, the acting secretary of DHS should be Claire Grandy, the current undersecretary for management. If Trump is bent on having McAleenan serve, he’d first have to first fire Grandy.
Trump seems to be taking the law as less binding requirement to be followed than pesky regulation to be ignored.
Even setting the legal succession issues aside, there’s no reason to think that Trump will be appointing a new DHS secretary any time soon. After all, more than three months after Jim Mattis resigned, Patrick Shanahan is still the acting defense secretary. And he’s just one of the many acting secretaries with whom Trump has avoided the constitutional requirement for confirmation. That includes his new leads at Interior, the Office of Management and Budget, and the new U.N. ambassador.
In the case of the Justice Department, Trump pulled a similar stunt, making unqualified scam artist Matthew Whitaker his acting attorney general. When Trump finally got around to nominating William Barr, the nominee looked so good by comparison that lawmakers had little choice but to hurry and confirm him, lest a sleazy hot tub salesmen remain in that key post.
Trump is far from the first president to stretch the limits of his powers, but (as the Examiner often said of former President Barack Obama) he stands on the shoulders of giants and is therefore taller than any of them. These questionable successions in his administration show further contempt for Congress, which has already weakened itself by wrongly abdicating its rightful powers on trade, border security, and the continuing war in Yemen, among other things.
Republicans need to wake up, because this is all wrong. If they can’t act out of principle, then they should at least realize that the next president to abuse power in these ways way may not be on their team.
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Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said President Trump deserves credit for breaking the mold of U.S. foreign policy and trying to personally persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to dismantle the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear weapons program because it could yield historic possibilities.
“His boldest move … is likely his personal efforts on the issue of North Korea. President Trump has, in fact, used the past year to place his imprint on a problem spanning more than six decades,” Christie wrote in his profile of Trump for Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2019.
“The President believes that only personal diplomacy can solve this crisis. The President’s supreme confidence in his own ability to persuade others to make a deal is now the basis for American denuclearization policy toward North Korea,” he said.
Trump has attended two summits with Kim in the past year. They met in Singapore in June 2018 and Vietnam in February, with neither ending in an agreement for North Korea to end its nuclear weapons program. Despite that, Christie said Trump’s approach could still work.
“President Trump deserves great credit for daring to try to personally persuade Chairman Kim to join the family of nations. This approach holds the possibility for history–making changes on the Korean Peninsula to make us all safer,” he said.
The grilling amounted to a confirmation-style hearing for an acting official who may only have a few more days left on the job — President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice, William Barr, is poised for Senate confirmation in the near future.
The questions from Democrats were aggressive, particularly on the question of Whitaker’s oversight of the Mueller probe. But the acting AG repeatedly punched back.
“Can you say right now, ‘Mr. President, Bob Mueller is honest and not conflicted’?” asked Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.
“Congressman, I’m not a puppet to repeat what you’re saying,” Whitaker shot back.
Democrats became increasingly agitated at what they saw as Whitaker’s efforts to run out the clock and control the hearing process. Whitaker stunned onlookers when he told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., that his time slot had expired as Nadler asked Whitaker if he’d been “asked to approve any requests or action” for the special counsel.
“Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up, so…” Whitaker replied as gasps ricocheted around the hearing room. “I am here voluntarily. We have agreed to five-minute rounds.”
At one point, he tussled with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, when she pressed on whether he’s appeared before for an oversight hearing. While the answer, eventually, was that he had not, the congresswoman objected when Whitaker would not answer with a requested “yes or no.” When she asked the chairman if her time had been restored, Whitaker replied with a degree of snark, “I don’t know whether your time’s been restored or not.”
“Mr. Attorney General, we’re not joking here, and your humor is not acceptable,” the congresswoman responded.
“I control this time, Mr. Whitaker,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., when Whitaker accused him of challenging his character.
“This is my time. Mr. Whitaker, you don’t run this committee. You don’t run the Congress of the United States, and you don’t run the Judiciary Committee.”
Republicans on Friday backed Whitaker, with ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., calling on the committee to adjourn — although a vote to do so did not pass.
For his part, Collins called the daylong hearing a “dog and pony show.”
The hearing had been teased a day earlier when Nadler threatened to subpoena Whitaker, while the DOJ threatened to boycott the hearing.
Nadler made clear early Thursday that he did not want to have to subpoena Whitaker, but said a “series of troubling events” suggested it would be better for him to be prepared with that authority, just in case he decided not to show up for the hearing.
But Whitaker then warned he would not show up unless lawmakers dropped the threat.
“Consistent with longstanding practice, I remain willing to appear to testify tomorrow, provided that the Chairman assures me that the Committee will not issue a subpoena today or tomorrow and that the Committee will engage in good faith negotiations before taking such a step down the road,” Whitaker wrote to Nadler.
Hours later, Nadler responded that if Whitaker appeared before the panel “prepared to respond to questions from our members, then I assure you there will be no need for the committee to issue a subpoena on or before February 8.”
Whitaker accepted the assurances, as evidenced by his Friday appearance. But Nadler told reporters after the hearing that he was not happy with Whitaker’s answers and said he intends to bring him back for an additional deposition..
“He will come back, because we will use a subpoena if we have to,” he said.
The hearing Friday comes as the Senate is close to confirming Trump’s nominee for attorney general. The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted, along party lines, to advance Barr’s nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.
Esta vez el líder del juego ofensivo fue Zach Randolph, que aportó un doble-doble de 22 puntos, 12 rebotes –10 defensivos–, repartió 4 asistencias y recuperó 3 balones.
Junto a Randolph el español Marc Gasol se mantuvo en su línea de jugador decisivo tanto en el apartado individual como de equipo y consiguió 18 puntos, 6 rebotes -todos defensivos-, y 5 asistencias, además de recuperar un balón y poner un tapón.
Marc jugó 31 minutos, en los que anotó 6 de 11 tiros de campo y estuvo perfecto desde la línea de personal con 6-6, mientras que le ganó el duelo individual al pívot Ryan Hollins, que siguió de titular en el puesto del hombre franquicia de los Kings, DeMarcus Cousins, que se perdió el segundo partido por un virus.
La baja de Cousins se hizo sentir demasiado en el juego interior de los Kings, que nada pudieron hacer ante la superioridad que mostraron Randolph y Marc, además de los reservas el ala-pívot Jon Leuer, que aportó ocho puntos con cinco rebotes, y el pívot Kosta Koufos, que capturó cuatro balones bajo los aros.
Tony Allen reivindicó su condición de gran jugador defensivo al recuperar dos balones, además de ser eficaz en el ataque con 13 puntos tras anotar 5 de 7 tiros de campo y 3 de 7 desde la línea de personal.
Courtney Lee llegó a los 11 tantos y el base Mike Conley anotó 10 puntos y repartió seis asistencias, que lo dejaron como el quinto jugador de los Grizzlies que tuvieron números de dos dígitos.
Como equipo, los Grizzlies lograron un 48 por ciento de acierto en los tiros de campo (38-79) y el 23 de triples (3-13), pero donde estuvo la clave de su triunfo fue en haber forzado nada menos que 23 perdidas de balón a los Kings que convirtieron en 23 tantos.
La victoria dejó a los Grizzlies con marca de 15-2, al mejor de la NBA, medio partido por encima de los Warriors de Golden State (14-2), que también ganaron a domicilio 93-104 a los Pistons de Detroit y consiguieron el noveno triunfo consecutivo, la racha mayor ganadora actualmente en la NBA.
Los Grizzlies consiguieron una ventaja de 21 puntos en el segundo cuarto, que fue todo lo que necesitaron hasta el último, cuando aseguraron la victoria al volver a realizar su mejor defensa y hacer una buena selección en los tiros a canasta.
Rudy Gay, exjugador de los Grizzlies, se convirtió en el líder del ataque de los Kings (9-8) al aportar 20 puntos, cuatro rebotes y tres asistencias.
Mientras que Ben McLemore llegó a los 18 tantos y el ala-pívot reserva Reggie Evans surgió con su mejor actuación en lo que va de temporada tras conseguir un doble-doble de 17 puntos y 20 rebotes, que no fueron suficientes a la hora de impedir la tercera derrota consecutiva que sufrieron los Kings.
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