June 2023 News

Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative May 2023 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this. 

 

June 2

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Senate passes debt ceiling bill, sending it to Biden to sign into law
• New York Times, The Calm Man in the Capital: Biden Lets Others Spike the Ball but Notches a Win
• New York Times, The Debt-Limit Deal Suggests Debt Will Keep Growing, Fast, Jim Tankersley
• New York Times, U.S. Job Growth Remains Strong: Live Updates
• Washington Post, Investigation: Georgia probe of Trump broadens to activities in other states, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey
• Politico, DOJ closes Pence classified documents probe  
• New York Times, Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles
• Washington Post, End of Title 42 changes calculus of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border
• Washington Post, By arming Ukraine, Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin’s red lines

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

• New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Has Earned a Little Contempt, Josh Chafetz
• New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Political Nonprofit Groups for Fund-Raising Fraud, David A. Fahrenthold, William K. Rashbaum and Tiff Fehr
• Associated Press, New details of Jeffrey Epstein’s death and the frantic aftermath revealed in records obtained by AP
• New York Times, 8-Year-Old Migrant Who Died in C.B.P. Custody Was Seen by Medical Staff 11 Times
• ew York Times, Man Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Murdering Letter Carrier
• New York Times, Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Cite Landmark Gun Ruling in Bid to Stave Off Charges
• Washington Post, FBI director Chris Wray to face contempt of Congress vote, Comer says
• New York Times, Florida Art Scammer Sentenced to Over 2 Years in Federal Prison

 

2024 U.S. Presidential Race

 

• New York Times, Denouncing ‘Elites’ in Kickoff Speech, DeSantis Vows to ‘Impose Our Will’
• New York Times, In Iowa, DeSantis Signals the Start of a Slugfest With Trump
• The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Why Ron DeSantis’s aims of “destroying leftism” prove he is unfit to be president, Steve Schmidt
• Miami Herald, Watchdog group accuses DeSantis, political committee of breaking campaign-finance law

 

More On U.S. Economy, Default, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

• New York Times, Opinion: The Case of the Disappearing Debt Disaster, Paul Krugman
• New York Times, There is one big part of the debt ceiling deal that Congress isn’t talking about

 

Trump Probes, Pro-Trump Rioters, Election Deniers

• New York Times, Trump Was Taped Discussing Sensitive Document He Had Kept After Leaving Office, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Alan Feuer
• New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess
• New York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case
• New York Times, Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert
• New York Times, Two Oath Keepers Sentenced for Roles in Jan. 6 Seditious Conspiracy
• Politico, Key Mueller witness seeks mercy for Jan. 6 perpetrator — his cousin, Kyle Cheney
• Politico, ‘Deranged leadership’: Oath Keeper who entered Capitol on Jan. 6 turns on Stewart Rhodes
• Politico, Jan. 6 sentences are piling up. Here’s a look at some of the longest handed down
• Washington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok

 

More On Ukraine War

• New York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: Another Early Morning Strike on Kyiv Kills Three
• New York Times, ‘We Have No Days Off’: The Nonstop Work of Ukrainian Air Defenses

 

More Global News, Views, Terrorism, Human Rights

• New York Times, Investors have soured on China’s stocks, renewing fears about the country’s economic recovery
• Washington Post, Iran plans to escalate attacks on U.S. troops in Syria, part of Russian-backed strategy, leaks show
• Washington Post, A rare look inside the notorious Russian jail holding an American journalist
• Washington Post, Two journalists stand trial in Iran for stories that sparked protests

 

 U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• New York Times, Opinion: A Peek Behind the MAGA Curtain, David French
• Washington Post, Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia
• New York Times, Bill Perkins, Defender of His Harlem Constituents, Dies at 74, Sam Roberts
• Washington Post, Report: Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart to resign from Congress

U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

• New York Times, Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules New Abortion Bans Unconstitutional
• Washington Post, Bill Cosby is facing a new sexual assault lawsuit

 

Environment, Transportation, Energy, Space, Disasters, Climate

• New York Times, Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles
• New York Times, Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• Washington Post, Medicare to expand coverage for new class of Alzheimer’s drugs pending FDA approval
• New York Times, Covid Is Coming Back in China; Lockdowns Are Not

 

More On U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports, Culture

• National Press Club, McCarren strengthened Club’s finances, press freedom mission
• Washington Post, Project Veritas sues founder James O’Keefe over his messy departure

 

Top Stories

New York Times, Senate passes debt ceiling bill, sending it to Biden to sign into law, Rachel Siegel, Marianne LeVine, John Wagner and Leigh Ann Caldwell, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). The deal cleared the House on Wednesday night and is now on track take effect by Monday’s deadline for a government default.

The Senate late Thursday night passed a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling and curb federal spending, sending the legislation to President Biden to sign into law in time to avert an unprecedented U.S. government default.

The deal cleared the House on Wednesday night and is now on track to take effect by Monday, when the government would no longer be able to pay all of its bills without borrowing more money. Senators scrambled to vote before the weekend, even as a handful of frustrated lawmakers pushed for votes on amendments that risked slowing the process.

None of the amendments were adopted. But in an effort to alleviate concerns from defense hawks that the debt ceiling bill would restrict Pentagon spending too much, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a joint statement saying the “debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries.”

The Senate vote of 63-36 capped off weeks of talks that moved in fits and starts — and at times dissolved altogether. As the June 5 default deadline ticked closer, negotiators from the White House and the House GOP clashed over government spending, work requirements for federal programs and a slew of other policy differences. The final 99-page bill lost some support from far-right lawmakers and some progressive Democrats. But its final passage marked an end to months of partisan squabbles over raising the debt ceiling — and averted economic catastrophe.

“Our work is far from finished, but this agreement is a critical step forward, and a reminder of what’s possible when we act in the best interests of our country,” President Biden said in a statement after the vote. “I look forward to signing this bill into law as soon as possible and addressing the American people directly tomorrow.”

In the Senate, four Democrats and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted no, while 44 Democrats and Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with them, and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) voted yes. On the GOP side, 17 Republicans voted yes, and 31 voted no. The bill needed 60 votes to pass.

 

New York Times, The Calm Man in the Capital: Biden Lets Others Spike the Ball but Notches a Win, Peter Baker, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden brokered a debt limit deal by following instincts developed through long, hard and sometimes painful experience in Washington.

In the days since he struck a deal to avoid a national default, President Biden has steadfastly refused to boast about what he got as part of the agreement.

“Why would Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote?” he asked reporters at one point, referring to himself in the third person. “You think that’s going to help me get it passed? No. That’s why you guys don’t bargain very well.”

The president calculated that the more he bragged that the deal was a good one for his side, the more he would inflame Republicans on the other side, jeopardizing the chances of pushing the agreement through the narrowly divided House. His reticence stood in striking contrast to his negotiating partner, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has been running all over the Capitol in recent days asserting that the deal was a “historic” victory for fiscal conservatives.

While Mr. Biden knew that would aggravate progressives in his own party, he gambled that he could keep enough of them in line without public chest-beating and figured that it was more important to let Mr. McCarthy claim the win to minimize a revolt on the hard right that could put his speakership in danger. Indeed, in private briefing calls following the agreement, White House officials told Democratic allies that they believed they got a good deal, but urged their surrogates not to say that publicly lest it upset the delicate balance.

The strategy paid off with a strong bipartisan vote by the House on Wednesday night passing the deal, which will suspend the debt ceiling while imposing spending restraints for the next two years. The compromise still must be voted on by Monday in the Senate, where the procedural hurdles are byzantine, but with both majority and minority leaders on board, the chances of passage appeared strong.

The president’s approach to the negotiations — and especially their aftermath — reflects a half-century of bargaining in Washington. When someone has been around the track as long as Mr. Biden has, resisting the temptation to spike the ball and claim victory can be critical to actually securing the victory in the first place. From the start of the clash with Mr. McCarthy’s Republicans, Mr. Biden has followed the instincts he has developed through long, hard and sometimes painful experience.

New York Times, The Debt-Limit Deal Suggests Debt Will Keep Growing, Fast, Jim Tankersley, June 2, 2023. Negotiations to prevent a government default reaffirmed that the big drivers of future deficits are all off the table in a divided Washington.

The bipartisan deal to avert a government default this week featured modest cuts to a relatively small corner of the federal budget. As a curb on the growth of the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt load, it was a minor breakthrough, at best.

It also showed how difficult — perhaps impossible — it could be for lawmakers to agree anytime soon on a major breakthrough to demonstrably reduce the nation’s debt load.

There is no clear economic evidence that current debt levels are dragging on economic growth. Some economists contend that rising debt levels will hurt growth by making it harder for businesses to borrow money; others say spiraling future costs of government borrowing could unleash rapid inflation.

But Washington is back to pretending to care about debt, which is poised to top $50 trillion by the end of the decade even after accounting for newly passed spending cuts.

With that pretense comes the reality that the fundamental drivers of American politics all point toward the United States borrowing more, not less.

The bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, which passed the Senate on Thursday, effectively sets overall discretionary spending levels over that period. The agreement cuts federal spending by $1.5 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by essentially freezing some funding that had been projected to increase next year and then limiting spending to 1 percent growth in 2025.

New York Times, U.S. Job Growth Remains Strong: Live Updates, Sydney Ember, June 2, 2023. The labor market continued to show resilience in May, adding 339,000 jobs, despite efforts by the Federal Reserve to cool the economy, Job growth jumped in May, reaffirming the labor market’s vigor despite a swirl of economic headwinds.

The unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, up from 3.4 percent.

The robust hiring suggests that employers remain eager for workers even in the face of high interest rates and economic uncertainty. Many are still bringing on employees to meet steady consumer demand, especially for services. And rather than lay off workers — which would signal deeper cracks in the labor market — a large swath of companies have been content to limit their head count through attrition.

An open question is whether employers can continue to rebuff economic challenges — and for how long. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates for more than a year to temper the labor market and rein in price increases.

“While overall the jobs market performance has been surprisingly strong, I think the labor market can’t defy the gravity of Fed rate hikes forever,” said Sarah House, an economist at Wells Fargo.

Fed officials have indicated that the jobs report will be an important factor as they decide whether to raise interest rates again. Their next meeting is June 13 and 14.

Looming over the report is the debt ceiling deal, which the Senate passed on Thursday, though economists largely expect the spending caps and cuts to have only marginal impact on the labor market going forward.

Ahead of Friday’s jobs numbers, the S&P is up nearly 10 percent for the year, led by stunning gains for a handful of tech stocks that have been bolstered by enthusiasm over the potential profits artificial intelligence could generate.

However, digging a little deeper shows the average stock in the index has only nudged higher this year, with concern over the health of the economy weighing on the broader market.

• New York Times, U.S. Job Growth Expected to Remain Resilient

 

 

Fani Willis, left, is the district attorney for Atlanta-based Fulton County in Georgia. Her office has been probing since 2021 then-President Trump’s claiming beginning in 2020 of election fraud in Georgia and elsewhere. Trump and his allies have failed to win support for their claims from Georgia’s statewide election officials, who are Republican, or from courts.

Washington Post, Investigation: Georgia probe of Trump broadens to activities in other states, Amy Gardner and Josh Dawsey, June 2, 2023. An Atlanta-area investigation of alleged election interference by former president Donald Trump and his allies has broadened to include activities in Washington, D.C., and several other states, according to two people with knowledge of the probe — a fresh sign that prosecutors may be building a sprawling case under Georgia’s racketeering laws.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) launched an investigation more than two years ago to examine efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his narrow 2020 defeat in Georgia. Along the way, she has signaled publicly that she may use Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute to allege that these efforts amounted to a far-reaching criminal scheme.

In recent days, Willis has sought information related to the Trump campaign hiring two firms to find voter fraud across the United States and then burying their findings when they did not find it, allegations that reach beyond Georgia’s borders, said the two individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the investigation. At least one of the firms has been subpoenaed by Fulton County investigators.

Willis’s investigation is separate from the one at the Department of Justice being led by special counsel Jack Smith, but the two probes have covered some of the same ground. Willis has said she plans to make a charging decision this summer, and she has indicated that such an announcement could come in early August. She has faced stiff criticism from Republicans for investigating the former president, and the ever-widening scope suggests just how ambitious her plans may be.

The state’s RICO statute is among the most expansive in the nation, allowing prosecutors to build racketeering cases around violations of both state and federal laws — and even activities in other states. If Willis does allege a multistate racketeering scheme with Trump at its center, the case could test the bounds of the controversial law and make history in the process. The statute calls for penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

“Georgia’s RICO statute is basically two specified criminal acts that have to be part of a pattern of behavior done with the same intent or to achieve a common result or that have distinguishing characteristics,” said John Malcolm, a former Atlanta-based federal prosecutor who is now a constitutional scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That’s it. It’s very broad. That doesn’t mean it’s appropriate to charge a former president, but that also doesn’t mean she can’t do it or won’t do it.”

Among Willis’s latest areas of scrutiny is the Trump campaign’s expenditure of more than $1 million on two firms to study whether electoral fraud occurred in the 2020 election, the two individuals said. The Post first reported earlier this year that the work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, and the campaign never released the findings because the firms, Simpatico Software Systems and Berkeley Research Group, disputed many of Trump’s theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election.

In recent days, Willis’s office has asked both firms for information — not only about Georgia, but about other states as well. Trump contested the 2020 election result in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Ken Block, the CEO of Simpatico Software Systems, declined to comment on what he has turned over to investigators. A lawyer for the Berkeley Research Group also declined to comment. A spokesman for Willis declined to comment on the investigation. Lawyers for Trump also declined to comment.

It is unclear if Willis will seek indictments of people for alleged actions that occurred outside of Georgia, such as those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. RICO experts say it’s unlikely she will do so. But, these experts said, the law allows Willis to build a sweeping narrative of an alleged pattern of behavior to overturn the 2020 election, with Georgia as just one piece. Evidence and actions from outside the state, such as Trump’s statements from Washington that inspired some of the rioters and parallel efforts to overturn other states’ results, could be presented as additional evidence that helps establish that pattern.

“The Georgia statute is broadly written” to allow the inclusion of violations of federal law as well as some other states’ laws, said Morgan Cloud, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta and expert on the state’s RICO law. “For example, acts to obstruct justice committed in Arizona might be relevant if the goal of the enterprise, of the racketeering activity, was to overturn the 2020 presidential election nationally, as well as in Georgia.”

 

Politico, DOJ closes Pence classified documents probe, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, June 2, 2023. The close of the investigation comes just days before Pence is expected to launch a presidential bid.

The Justice Department has ended an investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents discovered in his home, according to a letter sent by DOJ to Pence’s attorney and obtained Friday by POLITICO.

The letter, dated June 1, arrived just days before Pence is expected to launch a presidential bid. The Justice Department confirmed the authenticity of the letter but declined additional comment.

The department’s decision was first reported by CNN.

The announcement closes a chapter that began in January when Pence tapped an attorney to search his Indiana home for potential classified documents — a decision he made after a similar discovery was made at President Joe Biden’s private residence in Delaware.

Pence’s former vice presidential counsel, Greg Jacob, informed the National Archives that the search uncovered about a dozen records with classified markings in his residence. The Justice Department quickly intervened to take possession of the records, and the FBI would later search Pence’s residence for additional materials.

Immediately after the discovery of the records, Pence quickly indicated his willingness to cooperate with authorities and suggested he was unaware of the presence of the classified documents in his home.

New York Times, Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles, Christopher Flavelle and Jack Healy, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Officials ruled there’s not enough groundwater for projects already approved — a potential glimpse of the challenges facing the West as climate change worsens.

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

The announcement of a groundwater shortage, what the state calls “unmet demand” for water over the next hundred years, means Arizona would no longer give developers in areas of Maricopa County new permits to construct homes that rely on wells for water.

Phoenix and nearby large cities, which must obtain separate permission from state officials for their development plans every 10 to 15 years, would also be denied approval for any homes that rely on groundwater beyond what the state has already authorized.

The decision means cities and developers must look for alternative sources of water to support future development — for example, by trying to buy access to river water from farmers or Native American tribes, many of whom are facing their own shortages. That rush to buy water is likely to rattle the real estate market in Arizona, making homes more expensive and threatening the relatively low housing costs that had made the region a magnet for people from across the country.

Washington Post, End of Title 42 changes calculus of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border, Arelis R. Hernández and Danielle Villasana, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Migrants are struggling to reevaluate and navigate the U.S. immigration system after Title 42 was lifted.

Washington Post, By arming Ukraine, Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin’s red lines, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Despite warnings that arming Ukraine would start a world war, President Biden continues to push Vladimir Putin’s limits — a strategy that brings risk and reward.

President Biden’s decision last month to help Ukraine obtain F-16 fighter jets marked another crossing of a Russian red line that Vladimir Putin has said would transform the war and draw Washington and Moscow into direct conflict.
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Despite the Russian leader’s apocalyptic warnings, the United States has gradually agreed to expand Ukraine’s arsenal with Javelin and Stinger missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers, advanced missile defense systems, drones, helicopters, M1 Abrams tanks and, soon, fourth-generation fighter jets.

A key reason for brushing aside Putin’s threats, U.S. officials say, is a dynamic that has held since the opening days of the war: Russia’s president has not followed through on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine. His bluffing has given U.S. and European leaders some confidence they can continue doing so without severe consequences — but to what extent remains one of the conflict’s most dangerous uncertainties.

 

U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Has Earned a Little Contempt, Josh Chafetz (author of “Congress’s Constitution” and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center), June 2, 2023. Although the Supreme Court has been deciding cases at a glacial pace this term — and that with an almost comically small docket of only 59 merits cases — the justices have found other ways to keep busy.

They have been spinning their ethical lapses (Justice Clarence Thomas), blowing off congressional oversight (Chief Justice John Roberts), giving interviews whining about public criticism (Justice Samuel Alito) and presenting awards to one another (Justice Elena Kagan to Mr. Roberts).

In the cases it has decided, the Supreme Court has gutted an important provision of the Clean Water Act and made it easier for private litigants to mount constitutional challenges to an administrative agency’s structure or existence. Opinions still to come threaten to strike down everything from affirmative action in education to student debt relief to the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Court observers might be tempted to describe all this as a relatively recent development, a function of the court’s 6-to-3 Republican-appointed supermajority. The University of Michigan law professor Leah Litman has called this the “YOLO court” (for “you only live once”), because of the majority’s apparent sense of liberation in pursuing long-held conservative goals. Mark Lemley of Stanford placed the beginning of the “imperial Supreme Court” in 2020.

Mr. Lemley is right to decry the self-aggrandizing nature of the court. But his dating is somewhat off. Judicial self-aggrandizement has been in the works for a lot longer: It has been a hallmark of the John Roberts years.

Over roughly the past 15 years, the justices have seized for themselves more and more of the national governing agenda, overriding other decision makers with startling frequency. And they have done so in language that drips with contempt for other governing institutions and in a way that elevates the judicial role above all others.

The result has been a judicial power grab.

Judges have long portrayed themselves as neutral, apolitical conduits of the law, in contrast to the sordid political branches. This portrayal serves to obscure the institution of the judiciary and to foreground the abstract, disembodied concept of the law. In turn, it serves to empower judges, who present themselves not as one type of political actor but rather as the voice of the majestic principles of the law.

But Mr. Roberts’s judiciary has increasingly taken subtext and made it text. Here are three thematic examples out of many.

Campaign Finance Law; Congressional Oversight; Federal Regulation.

In all of these areas and in plenty more, the justices have seized for themselves an active role in governance. But perhaps even more consequentially, in doing so, they have repeatedly described other political institutions in overwhelmingly derogatory terms while either describing the judiciary in flattering terms or not describing it at all — denying its status as an institution and positioning it as simply a conduit of disembodied law.

This is the ideological foundation for the Roberts-era judicial power grab.

New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Political Nonprofit Groups for Fund-Raising Fraud, David A. Fahrenthold, William K. Rashbaum and Tiff Fehr, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have sought recordings of calls made by two networks of groups that solicited money from donors for a variety of politically tinged causes.

Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing at least 10 political nonprofit groups — including five recently profiled in The New York Times — seeking to determine if the groups defrauded donors, according to two recent subpoenas.

The subpoenas, both signed by the same Manhattan-based federal prosecutor, sought recordings of the fund-raising calls made by two separate networks of political nonprofits that together have raised tens of millions of dollars.

In the last five years, the Justice Department has charged a handful of other political operatives with fraud for running what prosecutors called “scam PACs.” Prosecutors said these groups deceived donors by promising that their money would be used to help politicians — then using it to enrich themselves.

The groups listed in the recent subpoenas have not been charged with any crime, and they have denied wrongdoing in the past. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

One of the two recent subpoenas was signed May 15, according to a copy obtained by The Times. It sought recordings of fund-raising calls from five nonprofits that The Times had profiled a day earlier: the American Police Officers Alliance, the National Police Support Fund, the American Veterans Honor Fund, the Firefighters and EMS Fund and the Veterans Action Network.

The subpoena said that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating allegations of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

These groups are “527s,” named for a section of the tax code and overseen by the Internal Revenue Service. They are supposed to focus primarily on helping candidates for office.

Together, these five groups have raised $89 million since 2014, mostly from small-dollar donors who answered fund-raising robocalls. The largest of the five groups, the American Police Officers Alliance, promised in its calls to “support legislators whose goals are to keep our communities safer,” and to help the families of first responders killed in the line of duty.

But about 90 percent of the money raised was used to pay for more robocalls. Another 3 percent was paid to three political operatives from Wisconsin, who appeared to be the driving force behind all five groups.

New York Times, Investors have soured on China’s stocks, renewing fears about the country’s economic recovery, Vivek Shankar, June 2, 2023. The wager was supposed to be a no-brainer. China was reopening after nearly three years of pandemic lockdowns, and investors expected that its economy, the world’s second-largest, would come roaring back to life. Chinese stocks soared.

But that bet has soured. This week, Chinese stocks that are traded in Hong Kong sank briefly into a bear market, after losing more than 20 percent of their value from a high in January. Stocks on the mainland are also in the red for the year.

The declines reflect a fizzling optimism in the viability of the post-Covid recovery in China, which has long been a driver of global growth. Despite the continuing geopolitical tensions between China and the United States, the economic and business ties between the two countries remain intricately linked.

“All the signals from China are pointing to a bumpy, faltering economic rebound,” said Tina Teng, an analyst with CMC Markets in Auckland, New Zealand.

 

New York Times, 8-Year-Old Migrant Who Died in C.B.P. Custody Was Seen by Medical Staff 11 Times, Eileen Sullivan June 2, 2023 (print ed.). After the findings, the acting head of the agency said it had made changes to its procedures because of the case.

While the investigation is continuing, the initial findings suggest that the child, Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, a Panamanian national, was not provided proper medical care while she was in government custody. On Thursday, the agency’s acting commissioner, Troy Miller, said that “several medical providers involved in this incident have now been prohibited from working in C.B.P. facilities.”

New York Times, Two Oath Keepers Sentenced for Roles in Jan. 6 Seditious Conspiracy, Zach Montague and Alan Feuer, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo each received sentences of less than five years after excoriating the group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes.

Two Oath Keepers militia members convicted of seditious conspiracy were sentenced to several years in prison on Thursday for their roles in a violent plot to disrupt the transfer of presidential power on Jan. 6, 2021.

Sentences for the two members, Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo, were handed down at back-to-back hearings in Federal District Court in Washington. Mr. Minuta, a tattoo artist from New York and Texas, was given a sentence of four and a half years. Mr. Vallejo, a retired military veteran from Arizona, received a term of three years in prison, plus one year in home confinement.

The sentences came one week after the Oath Keepers leader, Stewart Rhodes, received an 18-year prison term for seditious conspiracy in a separate trial. Kelly Meggs, one of Mr. Rhodes’s lieutenants who was found guilty of the same offense, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

In January, Mr. Minuta and Mr. Vallejo were found guilty of seditious conspiracy and other serious felonies at a trial with two other members of the Oath Keepers, Joseph Hackett and David Moerschel. Mr. Hackett and Mr. Moerschel are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday.

Judge Amit P. Mehta, who has presided over the Oath Keepers trials, determined that the sentences for Mr. Minuta and Mr. Vallejo should be increased slightly to reflect crimes considered acts of terrorism.

But the judge said the relatively light sentences, much lower than a few other individuals who were not charged with conspiracy in connection with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, were sufficient given the two men’s minor roles in the organization.

Mr. Vallejo was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but had instead installed himself in a hotel room in Virginia, prosecutors said, where he helped oversee an arsenal of heavy weapons as part of what the Oath Keepers called a “quick reaction force.” At trial last year, a former member of the group, Terry Cummings, testified that the stash of weapons Mr. Vallejo was overseeing was the largest collection of guns he had seen in one place since his time in the miliary.

As the chaos erupted at the Capitol, prosecutors said, Mr. Vallejo sent messages to his fellow Oath Keepers breaching the building, reminding them that his armed force was “outfitted” and to “just say the word” to launch it into action with two trucks he had kept on standby.

One day after the attack, he traveled into Washington to conduct surveillance and “probe the defense line” of law enforcement at the Capitol, prosecutors said.

“Jan. 6 was not enough for him, and that should chill the court,” Louis Manzo, a prosecutor, said on Thursday. “He wanted more.”

At times breaking into tears, Mr. Vallejo told Judge Mehta that his membership in the group had destroyed his life during his twilight years.

“I wish I never associated myself with Stewart Rhodes,” he said.

Mr. Minuta, who was sentenced earlier in the day, also drew a sharp distinction between himself and Mr. Rhodes.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Minuta was among a group of Oath Keepers who were serving as bodyguards on Jan. 6 for Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump. But he and the others answered Mr. Rhodes’s call to descend on the Capitol, racing around law enforcement on golf carts and forming a military-style “stack” while sporting tactical gear.

“I disavow the Oath Keepers as an organization; I was misled and naïve,” Mr. Minuta said. “I’m repulsed by Mr. Rhodes’s lack of remorse.”

Mr. Minuta’s lawyer, William Shipley, called Mr. Rhodes a “parasite” who marketed the group to politically disaffected people while using the Oath Keepers’ activities to generate income. He described Mr. Minuta as a peripheral member with few connections in the group, and a “doctrinaire libertarian” who had gravitated toward Mr. Rhodes’s charismatic personality in a moment of political anxiety and frustration with pandemic lockdowns.

At the hearing, Judge Mehta said Mr. Minuta’s frequent public predictions of a looming civil war, in which he repeatedly expressed a willingness to die fighting, left little doubt that he came to Washington prepared for violence.

“Steeping yourself and cloaking yourself in this tradition of the founders and violent uprising and believing the Second Amendment allows individual citizens to gather up arms to battle their government?” Judge Mehta said. “The law doesn’t permit that.”

New York Times, Man Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Murdering Letter Carrier, Michael Levenson, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). The man, Tony Cushingberry, was upset that the mail was not being delivered to his house because of concerns about a dog on the property, prosecutors said.

A letter carrier named Angela Summers was delivering mail on her usual route when she walked past a house where the Postal Service had recently stopped delivering because of concerns about a dog on the property.

Upset that the mail had been stopped, a resident of that house, Tony Cushingberry, pursued Ms. Summers and fatally shot her on his street in Indianapolis on April 27, 2020, federal prosecutors said.

On Wednesday, Mr. Cushingberry, 24, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for murdering Ms. Summers, 45.

Paul Toms, president of Branch 39 of the National Association of Letter Carriers in Indianapolis, said in an interview on Thursday that the sentence was justified.

“She couldn’t deliver the mail because of the dog and that irritated this young man and he did the unthinkable,” Mr. Toms said.

He noted that Ms. Summers, a union steward who had joined the Postal Service about 15 months before she was killed, had a teenage daughter and had not yet qualified for the union’s life insurance plan.

“The court case has come to a close, but it’s never going to be closed — not for her family or letter carriers,” Mr. Toms said. “She was part of our family.”

According to a criminal complaint, the local post office had sent a letter to Mr. Cushingberry’s house two weeks before the shooting saying that the mail would have to be picked up at the post office because of concerns about a dog on the property. Such letters are not unusual, according to Mr. Toms.

After Ms. Summers was killed, local postal workers organized a memorial ride that drew hundreds of motorcyclists and raised $72,000 for her daughter, Mr. Toms said. Postal workers at the union’s national convention raised another $27,000, he said.

Washington Post, FBI director Chris Wray to face contempt of Congress vote, Comer says, Jacqueline Alemany and Perry Stein, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee said he will seek to hold FBI director Christopher A. Wray in contempt of Congress, rejecting Wray’s offer to allow lawmakers to view an internal bureau document in a secure location instead of handing the document to the committee in response to a subpoena.

Wray, right, spoke by phone Wednesday with Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) about the committee’s demand for a form submitted by a confidential informant containing unsubstantiated allegations about President Biden and his family. Wray also spoke in a separate call with ranking minority member Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.).

FBI officials told Comer this week that Justice Department policy prevents them from giving the document to the committee because it could compromise a confidential source and dissuade others from bringing sensitive information to law enforcement agencies in the future. Wray said he could make a redacted version of the form available for review, but the lawmaker was not satisfied.

New York Times, Florida Art Scammer Sentenced to Over 2 Years in Federal Prison, Livia Albeck-Ripka, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The art dealer, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for laundering money made selling counterfeit art.

A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said.

The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Fla., through which he operated the counterfeit scheme. He was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami to 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, court filings show.

Mr. Bouaziz pleaded guilty in February to one charge of money laundering on the condition that federal prosecutors drop 16 other counts, according to the documents.

Neither Mr. Bouaziz nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Bouaziz, a French and Israeli citizen born in Algeria, was in the United States on a B-2 visitor’s visa. They said the pieces he had represented as authentic works were cheap reproductions he had bought through online auctions. He was charged in June after an investigation that included the serving of search warrants at his galleries, a review of financial records and undercover purchases of what prosecutors had deemed to be fraudulent art.

According to the federal complaint, Mr. Bouaziz conducted his art dealing through three companies: Galerie Danieli, Danieli Fine Art and VIP Rentals L.L.C. The website for Danieli Fine Art advertises a collection from a wide range of notable artists, from Monet and Rodin to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning.

But counterfeit Andy Warhols were what sent Mr. Bouaziz to prison.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

• New York Times, Why the Supreme Court Is Blind to Its Own Corruption, Randall D. Eliason
• New York Times, Sacklers Can Be Shielded From Opioid Liability, Appeals Court Rules
• New York Times, Elizabeth Holmes Reports to Prison to Begin More Than 11-Year Sentence
• New York Times, Virginia Man Is Charged in Fatal Shooting of New Jersey Councilwoman
• New York Times, What to Know as the Tree of Life Massacre Trial Begins, Campbell Robertson
• New York Times, Editorial Board: Who Can Rein In the Supreme Court?

 

More On U.S. Presidential Race

New York Times, Opinion: A Peek Behind the MAGA Curtain, David French, right, June 2, 2023. Every now and then, it’s important to watch Fox News in prime time. No, not because the programs are particularly good or because the hosts tell their audience the truth. Fox is writing Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million check for very good reasons, and it still faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Smartmatic over the channel’s election reporting.

But to watch Fox News is to begin to understand millions of your fellow Americans. And there was no better time to start understanding the 2024 Republican primary contest than Thursday night, during Donald Trump’s town hall in Iowa, hosted by Sean Hannity.

To watch the town hall was to start learning the answer to a key question: After everything, how can Republicans still be so loyal to Trump? But that word, “everything,” is loaded with different meanings in different American communities.

When I look back on the Trump years, I see a dark time of division, corruption and social decay. After all, when he left office, the murder rate was higher, drug overdose deaths had increased, and the abortion rate had gone up for the first time in decades. America was more bitterly divided, and deficits increased each year of his presidency. His early Covid lies helped fuel an immense amount of confusion and almost certainly cost American lives. And his entire sorry term was capped by a violent insurrection fueled by an avalanche of lies.

If you watched the town hall, however, you entered an entirely different world. According to Trump’s narrative, everything he did was good. His first term was a time of economic prosperity, energy independence, fiscal responsibility, a rejuvenated military, a locked-down border and fear and respect from foreign regimes. The only thing that marred his four years was a stolen election and his unjust persecution by the corrupt Democratic Party and its allies in the F.B.I.

In Trumpworld, the Trump past is golden, and the Trump future bright, but the present is a time of misery and darkness. It is President Biden, not Trump, who mishandles classified documents. It is Biden’s family, not Trump’s, that corruptly profits off foreign regimes. Trump would have prevented the Ukraine war. Trump would have withdrawn from Afghanistan more smoothly. As for Biden himself, he’s an object of derision and pity — far too physically and mentally impaired to be president of the United States.

False narratives are often sustained by a few kernels of truth, and so it is in MAGA America. The economy was strong before Covid, and there were fewer southern border crossings each year during Trump’s presidency than during Biden’s. The ISIS caliphate fell. And I don’t know a single Republican who isn’t pleased with Trump’s judicial nominees.

Moreover, not all of Trump’s opponents possess the cleanest of hands. There were, in fact, Department of Justice excesses during its investigation of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia. A special counsel is investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation, and his overseas business dealings are indeed unsavory, even if there is not yet proof of criminal wrongdoing. The withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a chaotic and bloody rout of allied forces. Inflation remains too high.

In short, there is enough truthful criticism of the Biden administration to make it vulnerable to an election loss. And there remains sufficient false Trump administration nostalgia to make Trump the G.O.P. nominee. Put both realities together, and the nation is facing RealClearPolitics polling averages that show Trump to be the overwhelming favorite for the G.O.P. nomination and a slight leader in a potential general election matchup against Biden.

Given these facts — and Thursday night’s peek at MAGA America — my colleague Frank Bruni’s warning to Democrats yesterday was timely and important: Democrats should not hope to face Trump in 2024. Rooting for him isn’t just dangerous; it’s based on misunderstandings. All too many Trump opponents — in both parties — have spent so long building their voluminous cases against him that they’ve forgotten how he looks to the other side. They can’t conceive of a coherent case for his candidacy.

The two most telling moments on Thursday came from Trump’s audience. First, they booed Mike Pence at the very mention of his name. Second, they shouted derisively at Hannity at the mere thought that Trump should perhaps tone down his rhetoric. Both moments emphasized the ferocity of their support for Trump. When you see that public response, you can begin to see his opponents’ dilemma. Given the size of Trump’s base, a winning Republican rival will have to peel away at least some members of audiences like Thursday’s — the very people who see him as a persecuted hero.

That challenge is compounded by every event like Thursday’s town hall, in which a relaxed Trump was “questioned” by a supine host in front of an adoring crowd. Hannity’s performance was quite a contrast to Kaitlan Collins’s pointed challenges to Trump during last month’s CNN town hall. Yet both events advanced Trump’s narrative. CNN’s tough questions reminded MAGA of his alleged persecution. Hannity’s coddling reminded MAGA of Trump’s alleged triumphs. Both ultimately helped Trump deepen his bond with the people who love him the most.

 Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, In Iowa, DeSantis Signals the Start of a Slugfest With Trump
• New York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants
• Washington Post, Opinion: Why fear of change will drive the GOP presidential primary, Paul Waldman
• Washington Post, Biden circle seeks to boost Harris ahead of 2024, starting with debt talks
• Washington Post, Trump campaign braces for Iowa battle as DeSantis team sees an opening
• New York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires

 

More On U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

New York Times, Opinion: The Case of the Disappearing Debt Disaster, Paul Krugman, right, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Just a few days ago it looked as if G.O.P. extremism might set off a global financial crisis. The U.S. debt ceiling — which allows Congress to determine spending and revenue, then refuse to permit borrowing to cover the difference — seemed to give Republicans, who control the House, access to a financial doomsday machine: By refusing to raise the debt limit they could provoke a U.S. default that, given the key role played by U.S. debt in the world financial system, could have been catastrophic.

That doomsday machine, in turn, seemed to give Republicans far more power than a party narrowly controlling one house of Congress should possess. Would they use that power to demolish President Biden’s accomplishments?

In fact, they barely scratched Biden’s paint. And the mystery is why.

Like many — I think most — observers, I didn’t see this coming. In the spring Republicans seemed to be converging on demands for harsh spending cuts, especially to Medicaid. The Biden administration was counting on self-proclaimed centrists and business groups to lean on Republicans to back off; they didn’t. And publicly at least, Biden officials repeatedly rejected all possible end runs around the debt ceiling. Republicans seemed to be in a strong bargaining position.

Yet in the end we got some spending caps that would probably have happened even without the attempt to take the economy hostage, since “discretionary” spending would have had to pass the House in any case. We got an extension of work requirements in the food stamp program for Americans in their 50s, which will cause some loss of coverage — not because they refuse to work, but because they’ll be stymied by extra red tape.

And we got a side agreement to cut $20 billion from the $80 billion in additional funding for the I.R.S. that was included in the Inflation Reduction Act. But that $80 billion was for a decade. In practice, efforts to crack down on wealthy tax evaders will probably be little changed in the next few years, and the I.R.S. will simply come back for more money later.

Overall, the administration made hardly any major concessions; this debt standoff ended up being far less consequential than the debt ceiling crisis of 2011.

So how did Biden, whom right-wingers constantly deride as senile and incompetent despite a series of remarkable legislative achievements, pull this off?

Eventually we may get a blow-by-blow account of how the debt negotiations went down. Until then, it’s worth noting several broader trends in the political environment that probably strengthened Biden’s hand.

 

New York Times, There is one big part of the debt ceiling deal that Congress isn’t talking about, Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The House passed legislation Wednesday night that will raise the nation’s borrowing limit and reduce the federal deficit, the result of lengthy negotiations between House Republicans and the White House.

But the bill is only part of the full deal. A New York Times analysis of public descriptions of the agreement finds that the full deficit savings will be only about two-thirds of what is captured in the bill. That’s because the agreement struck by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden will require Congress to authorize much more spending as part of a second set of bills expected to pass in coming months.

Those future changes, which the White House is calling “agreed-upon adjustments,” and which many observers have called side deals or even gimmicks, would increase federal spending in unconventional ways and then direct that money into the part of the budget that the current bill cuts the deepest.

Instead of a total deficit reduction of $1.5 trillion over a decade, as the Congressional Budget Office has projected, the full package would probably reduce deficits by about $1 trillion, including interest payments, over a decade. That’s a major shift from where Republicans started negotiations — the bill they passed last month would have reduced deficits by $4.8 trillion.

Because the second half of the deal will not come up for a vote right away, lawmakers could change their minds. But negotiators are confident enough in the agreement that they are moving forward with the debt limit bill. That legislation also includes an incentive for Republicans to pass the second part: If they don’t do so by the end of next April, defense spending will be automatically cut, an outcome most of them say they would like to avoid.

Most of the savings in the current legislation come from spending caps on a part of the budget known as nondefense discretionary spending. That category includes programs across the government that Congress must fund each year through legislation, including domestic law enforcement, environmental protection and air traffic control. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the caps would result in lower spending than its “baseline” forecasts — what would otherwise happen if current spending kept pace with inflation.

Washington Post, After debt deal’s approval in House, Senate races to beat default deadline, John Wagner, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). The 99-page legislation brokered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden cleared the House on Wednesday night on a bipartisan vote.

Senate leaders are imploring their colleagues to move quickly to approve a House-passed bill ahead of a Monday deadline that would suspend the debt ceiling, limit federal spending and avert a catastrophic U.S. government default.

The 99-page legislation brokered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden cleared the House on Wednesday night on a 314-117 bipartisan vote. Senators are expected to follow suit, but it remains unclear how quickly they will move.

Both Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), left, have urged their colleagues to act well before Monday, when the nation will no longer be able to pay its bills.

But a handful of senators are angling to add amendments to the legislation that could slow the process. Some have expressed a desire for deeper spending cuts, an increase in defense spending and the removal of a provision that would fast-track a controversial pipeline that would carry natural gas across West Virginia and Virginia.

    Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, There is one big part of the debt ceiling deal that Congress isn’t talking about, Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano
• Washington Post, After debt deal’s approval in House, Senate races to beat default deadline
• New York Times, House Passes Debt Limit Bill in Bipartisan Vote to Avert Default, Catie Edmondson
• New York Times, Analysis: McCarthy Emerges From the Debt Fight With Victories and Wounds, Carl Hulse
• New York Times, Representative Chip Roy of Texas has emerged as the face of the Republican revolt against the debt limit deal
• New York Times, Companies Push Prices Higher, Protecting Profits but Adding to Inflation
• New York Times, Editorial: Pass the Debt Limit Deal. Then Figure Out How to End the Drama
• New York Times, 14th Amendment Questions Linger Despite Debt Limit Deal
• New York Times, House Set to Vote on Debt Limit Bill as G.O.P. Resistance Grows
• New York Times, Debt Limit Bill Heads to Key Committee in First Test of G.O.P. Support, Carl Hulse
• New York Times, New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Would Come From, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport
• Washington Post, Opinion: Biden’s underrated deal-making prowess strikes again, Jennifer Rubin
• New York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy
• The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen
• New York Times, Analysis: In debt-limit negotiations, did President Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much? Peter Baker
• New York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it

 

Trump Probes, Pro-Trump Rioters, Election Deniers

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

New York Times, Trump Was Taped Discussing Sensitive Document He Had Kept After Leaving Office, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Alan Feuer, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors obtained the recording as part of their investigation into former President Trump’s handling of classified documents.

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified material have a recording of Mr. Trump from 2021 discussing a sensitive military document he had kept after leaving the White House, two people briefed on the matter said.

In the recording, Mr. Trump suggested he knew the document was secret and had not declassified it, one person briefed on the matter said.

The existence of the recording could undermine Mr. Trump’s repeated claim that he had already declassified material that remained in his possession after he left office. Prosecutors are scrutinizing whether Mr. Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he took with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material.

The existence of the recording was reported earlier by CNN.

The recording was made during a meeting Mr. Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the people briefed on the matter. The meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers.

Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Mr. Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Mr. Trump’s aides did. One, Margo Martin, routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year.

On the recording, Mr. Trump began railing about his handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as having guarded against Mr. Trump’s striking Iran in the final days of the presidency, according to the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump then began referencing a document that he had with him, saying that it had been compiled by General Milley and was related to attacking Iran, the people briefed on the matter said. Among other comments, he mentioned his classification abilities during the discussion, one person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump can be heard handling paper on the tape, though it is not clear whether it was the document in question.

The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors have amassed under the special counsel, Jack Smith, since he was appointed in November to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.

 

The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act.

New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Investigators are trying to determine if there was an attempt to obstruct them from accessing security footage from near where classified material was stored.

For the past six months, prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith have sought to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House.

More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides sought to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how those documents were stored and who had access to them.

The search for answers on this second issue has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they pose questions to an expanding cast of low-level workers at the compound, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of material in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera that was mounted outside the room.

Two weeks ago, the latest of these employees, an information technology worker named Yuscil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Taveras was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees: Walt Nauta, right, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his valets in the White House, and Carlos Deoliveira, described by one person familiar with the events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.

Phone records show that Mr. Deoliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.

The call also occurred just weeks after Mr. Deoliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. Deoliveira at one point fitted with a lock. The movement of the boxes into the room took place at another key moment: on the day before prosecutors descended on Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyers intended to get him to comply with a demand to return all classified documents.

New York Times, Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, June 1, 2023 (print ed.).  The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted former President Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.

The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”

Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.

The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Krebs enraged Mr. Trump when his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement nine days after the 2020 election attesting to the security of the results. The statement added a sharp rebuke — in boldface type — to the unfounded conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies were spreading about compromised voting machines.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” the statement from Mr. Krebs’s agency read.

Five days later, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Krebs was “terminated” after releasing a “highly inaccurate” statement about the 2020 election.

Mr. Krebs later testified to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that before his firing, he was aware of “skepticism” among Trump allies about his “loyalty to the president.

Politico, Key Mueller witness seeks mercy for Jan. 6 perpetrator — his cousin, Kyle Cheney, June 2, 2023. An important player in one Trump scandal is related to a defendant in another.

A key cooperator in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of former President Donald Trump is pleading for leniency for a convicted Jan. 6 felon: his cousin.

It’s a bizarre only-in-Washington tale. Sam Patten, right, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to acting as an unregistered lobbyist for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, is the cousin of Noah Bacon, a Massachusetts resident found guilty in March by a jury for obstructing Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings. Court documents indicate that Bacon was among the earliest rioters to enter the Capitol and spent 10 minutes on the Senate floor after watching others attack police officers trying to keep them out of the chamber.

“Because of the counts that occasion this moment, Noah is the second felon in our

family and I am the first,” Patten wrote in a two-page letter to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper, who is slated to sentence Bacon on July 27. The letter, dated June 1, was posted to the court docket on Friday morning.

It’s a twist on the typical small-world story of clubby Washington, where lobbyists, congressional staffers, government employees and contractors cross paths in the halls of power — and occasionally in the courthouse. Here, a figure associated with the first major scandal of Trump’s presidency — his ties to Russia — is literally related to a perpetrator associated with his latest: a bid to subvert the transfer of power to President Joe Biden. And Patten said it completely blindsided him.

“Until the news broke about his arrest, I was unaware that Noah was a Trump supporter — in fact I was quite surprised,” he wrote. “We have one uncle who supported Trump, but the rest of our family has always been very liberal … Even though I am more conservative and was convicted in a Trump-related investigation, I voted against Trump twice.”

Patten, who also cooperated with congressional investigations, noted in his letter that he’s one of the only key witnesses charged in connection with Mueller’s probe who wasn’t ultimately pardoned by Trump. Patten pleaded guilty to attempting to help a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch access Trump’s inauguration, part of prosecutors’ review of efforts by foreign interests to seek influence in Trump’s incoming administration. Patten had ties to many of the other pro-Trump figures connected to Mueller’s probe, from Paul Manafort to Steve Bannon to Konstantin Kilimnik.

Patten’s letter was equal parts about his own wild journey through the legal system as it was about his cousin’s. He described his belief in “restorative justice,” which he said he learned amid his own path through the court system.

“In the former Soviet Union, where I spent a substantial amount of time, people distinguish between ‘political’ crimes and anti-social ones. This is probably because of a learned distrust of the state on [meting] out justice,” Patten said. “In America, we do not discriminate. A criminal is a criminal. One reason we have been able to afford this distinction is because people trust judges to demonstrate fairness and, when deserved, mercy.”

Patten’s letter is also not his first in connection with a criminal sentencing. In 2020, Patten was brutally stabbed in Northwest Washington, D.C. by a man now serving a 72-month sentence for the attack.

“When I wrote to his sentencing judge, I stressed my willingness to forgive if the convicted took responsibility for the attack,” he wrote. “Sadly, my assailant did not own his crime … Ownership — or the lack of it — is the first step of the healing process for all sides in the restorative justice equation. Noah does not deny his crimes, and has expressed remorse. As a felon myself for a non-violent offense, I know how difficult life after serving one’s sentence continues to be.”

Patten said that his fall from Washington prominence, which followed his guilty plea, has completely altered the trajectory of his life.

“Today I work as a line cook, a bus driver, and a guest room cleaner while I seek employment closer to my talents that once put me near the top of my profession,” he wrote. “I used to advise national leaders around the world. It is a humbling and potentially devastating brand to bear.”

Politico, ‘Deranged leadership’: Oath Keeper who entered Capitol on Jan. 6 turns on Stewart Rhodes, Kyle Cheney, June 1, 2023. Roberto Minuta, the third Jan. 6 defendant to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, got 4.5 years in prison.

Roberto Minuta, one of more than a dozen Oath Keepers who surged with a mob into the Capitol on Jan. 6, lashed out at the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, on Thursday as he prepared to face sentencing for his conviction on seditious conspiracy.

Minuta said Rhodes was part of a “deranged leadership” that turned the Oath Keepers “into a political ‘rah-rah Trump’ disaster” that duped many of the group’s members into criminal activity.

“I was misled and naive,” Minuta said, shortly before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta sentenced him to 4½ years in prison.

Mehta credited Minuta’s comments and expressions of remorse for his actions but said his efforts to downplay his actions and involvement were belied by his clear violent intentions in the weeks preceding Jan. 6.

“Steeping yourself and cloaking yourself in this tradition of the founders and violent uprising and believing that the Second Amendment allows individual citizens to gather up arms to battle their government?” Mehta said. “The law doesn’t permit that.”

Minuta is the third Jan. 6 defendant sentenced for seditious conspiracy, the gravest charge leveled by prosecutors against about a dozen defendants charged for their role in the Jan. 6 attack.

Mehta sentenced Rhodes last week to 18 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down yet in the 1,000 cases prosecuted stemming from the violent Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Mehta also sentenced Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs to 12 years in prison last week. Their sentencings are the start of the most significant reckoning for the Jan. 6 rioters whom prosecutors have described as the key drivers of the violence and chaos.
Jan. 6 in 180 seconds

The judge described Rhodes as an ongoing danger to the republic who used his Yale Law education and charisma to manipulate supporters and gin up chaos and destruction. Rhodes, he found, was a key driver of the mayhem on Jan. 6, positioning the Oath Keepers to be at the forefront of a potential violent clash to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Minuta’s lawyer, William Shipley, similarly piled on Rhodes, calling him a “parasite” who used the Oath Keepers organization.

Minuta, in his remarks, said his fury at the government was driven in part by the Covid-era destruction of his business and threats he received when he opened his Newburgh, N.Y., tattoo shop in violation of local restrictions. He said that anger fused with claims by Trump and others that the election had been stolen led him to make incendiary comments on social media. He apologized for both his words and his conduct on Jan. 6.

Minuta also said his entry into the Capitol was simply about aiding police, who he claimed had asked for assistance — a proposition Mehta said was belied by Minuta’s words and actions the entire day.

“You weren’t there to help them,” Mehta said. “You may have convinced yourself of that. But there isn’t any shred of evidence that would be consistent with that intent.”

The judge added that the jury found Minuta culpable of acting in concert with other Oath Keepers whose conduct was even graver — and the law makes him culpable for the actions of his co-conspirators.

“Operating with others gives people greater courage, it gives them the ability to do more harm and it gives them the ability to have a far greater impact than they can do on their own,” Mehta said.

But Mehta also sharply diverged from prosecutors, who initially sought a 17-year sentence, and tried to cast Minuta in a similar light as Rhodes. Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards described him as a “dangerous individual to others and his republic” with a “warped sense of patriotism that calls for violence against the government when he disagrees with it.”

 Recent Relevant Headlines

• New York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman
• New York Times, A Georgia prosecutor rebutted former President Trump’s efforts to have her disqualified from investigating him
• New York Times, Supreme Court Takes Up Case on Trump Hotel Records, Adam Liptak
• Washington Post, Trial date set in Trump’s N.Y. criminal case, judge issues contempt warning
• Washington Post, The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump
• Proof, Investigative Commentary on The Trump Trials, Vol. 15: New Indictments Now Expected; NYC Criminal Trial Date Set; a Finding of Sexual Abuse and Defamation, Seth Abramson
• New York Times, Oath Keepers Leader Is Sentenced to 18 Years in Jan. 6 Sedition Case
• Washington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Oaths Broken, Oath Keepers Bowed: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman
• New York Times, Jan. 6 Rioter Who Reclined in Pelosi’s Office Given Sentence of More Than 4 Years
• New York Times, Steve Bannon’s Criminal Trial Is Scheduled for Next May
• Washington Post,  Analysis Fact Checker, The truth about Russia, Trump and the 2016 election, Glenn Kessler
• CT Examiner, Opinion: Durham Follies, Andrew Kreig
• Global Strat View, Analysis: Pro-Trump US Prosecutor loses ‘Russiagate’ Jury Verdicts but PR Battles Loom, Andrew Kreig
• Washington Post, D.C. police officer arrested, accused of leaking info to Proud Boys leader
• Washington Post, Mike Lindell’s $5 million contest winner takes him to federal court
• Emptywheel, Analysis: John Durham Committed the “Crime” of “Inferring” of Which He Accused Rodney Joffe, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler)

 

More Global News, Views, Terrorism, Human Rights 

New York Times, Investors have soured on China’s stocks, renewing fears about the country’s economic recovery, Vivek Shankar, June 2, 2023. The wager was supposed to be a no-brainer. China was reopening after nearly three years of pandemic lockdowns, and investors expected that its economy, the world’s second-largest, would come roaring back to life. Chinese stocks soared.

But that bet has soured. This week, Chinese stocks that are traded in Hong Kong sank briefly into a bear market, after losing more than 20 percent of their value from a high in January. Stocks on the mainland are also in the red for the year.

The declines reflect a fizzling optimism in the viability of the post-Covid recovery in China, which has long been a driver of global growth. Despite the continuing geopolitical tensions between China and the United States, the economic and business ties between the two countries remain intricately linked.

“All the signals from China are pointing to a bumpy, faltering economic rebound,” said Tina Teng, an analyst with CMC Markets in Auckland, New Zealand.

 

New York Times, Opinion: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump, Bret Stephens, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). “The totalitarian phenomenon,” the French philosopher Jean-François Revel once noted, “is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.”

It’s an observation that should help guide our thinking about the re-election this week of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, shown above. And it should serve as a warning about other places — including the Republican Party — where autocratic leaders, seemingly incompetent in many respects, are returning to power through democratic means.

That’s not quite the way Erdogan’s close-but-comfortable victory in Sunday’s runoff over the former civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu is being described in many analyses. The president, they say, has spent 20 years in power tilting every conceivable scale in his favor.

Erdogan has used regulatory means and abused the criminal-justice system to effectively control the news media. He has exercised his presidential power to deliver subsidies, tax cuts, cheap loans and other handouts to favored constituencies. He has sought to criminalize an opposition party on specious grounds of links to terrorist groups. In December, a Turkish court effectively barred Erdogan’s most serious prospective rival, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul, from politics by sentencing him to prison on charges of insulting public officials.

Then, too, Kilicdaroglu was widely seen as a colorless and inept politician, promising a return to a status quo ante that many Turks remember, with no fondness, as a time of regular economic crises and a kind of repressive secularism.

All of this is true, as far as it goes, and it helps underscore the worldwide phenomenon of what Fareed Zakaria aptly calls “free and unfair elections.” But it doesn’t go far enough.

Turkey under Erdogan is in a dreadful state and has been for a long time. Inflation last year hit 85 percent and is still running north of 40 percent, thanks to Erdogan’s insistence on cutting interest rates in the teeth of rising prices. He has used a series of show trials — some based in fact, others pure fantasy — to eviscerate civil freedoms. February’s earthquakes, which took an estimated 50,000 lives and injured twice as many, were badly handled by the government and exposed the corruption of a system that cared more for patronage networks than for well-built buildings.

Under normal political expectations, Erdogan should have paid the political price with a crushing electoral defeat. Not only did he survive, he increased his vote share in some of the towns worst hit by, and most neglected after, the earthquakes. “We love him,” explained a resident quoted in The Economist. “For the call to prayer, for our homes, for our headscarves.”

That last line is telling, and not just because it gets to the importance of Erdogan’s Islamism as the secret of his success. It’s a rebuke to James Carville’s parochially American slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Actually, no: It’s also God, tradition, values, identity, culture and the resentments that go with each. Only a denuded secular imagination fails to notice that there are things people care about more than their paychecks.

 

Washington Post, Iran plans to escalate attacks on U.S. troops in Syria, part of Russian-backed strategy, leaks show, Joby Warrick and Evan Hill, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Iran is arming militants in Syria for a new phase of lethal attacks against U.S. troops in the country, while also working with Russia on a broader strategy to drive Americans from the region, intelligence officials and leaked classified documents say.

Iran and its allies are building and training forces to use more powerful armor-piercing roadside bombs intended specifically to target U.S. military vehicles and kill U.S. personnel, according to classified intelligence reports obtained by The Washington Post. Such attacks would constitute an escalation of Iran’s long-running campaign of using proxy militias to launch rocket and drone strikes on U.S. forces in Syria.

Drone attacks have wounded six U.S. service members and killed a Defense Department contractor, and the new explosive devices could add to the toll of U.S. casualties, risking a wider military confrontation with Iran, current and former intelligence analysts and weapons experts say. The same type of weapon, called an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, was used by pro-Iranian insurgents in lethal attacks against American military convoys during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Officials with Iran’s elite Quds Force unit directed and oversaw testing of one of the explosives, which reportedly sliced through a tank’s armored plating in a trial run conducted in late January in Dumayr, east of Damascus, the Syrian capital, according to one of the intelligence reports. The document, part of the trove of classified materials leaked on the messaging platform Discord, appears to be based on intercepted communications by Syrian and Lebanese militants allied to Iran. One apparent attempt to use such devices against U.S. forces was apparently thwarted in late February when three bombs were seized by U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria, a second document states.

Washington Post, A rare look inside the notorious Russian jail holding an American journalist, Mary Ilyushina, Francesca Ebel and Júlia Ledur, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Lefortovo serves as a pretrial detention center. Still, prisoners can spend years there. Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was at the prison for two years before being convicted on charges of espionage and is now serving 16-year sentence at a penal colony.

Based on descriptions from inmates, lawyers and prison monitors, including letters and sketches, as well as documentaries and photos of Lefortovo, The Post built a portrait of what life is like inside the prison.

Ivan Safronov, a Russian journalist serving a 22-year sentence in Krasnodar for treason, spent over two years in Lefortovo, from 2020 to 2022. In a letter to The Washington Post about his time there, he wrote, “the purpose is to isolate a person, to ‘freeze’ them in order to get confessions from them.”

Lefortovo was built in the late 1800s, during czarist rule, and it lies on the eastern edge of the capital. The yellow-walled, four-story building was built in the shape of the letter K. Former inmates describe a facility designed to instill fear, isolation and despair.

In the corridors outside the cells, all sound is muted by old, worn carpets. “They are not for beauty or for pleasing the eyes of prisoners but so that steps do not break the utter crypt-like silence, one that is oppressive and makes your ears ring,” wrote Valentin Moiseyev, a Russian diplomat who was accused of espionage in 1998 and spent 3½ years in Lefortovo, in his memoir “How I Was a ‘South Korean Spy.’”

During Soviet rule, a KGB wing was added to the compound and was later occupied by its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB). In the early 2000s, Lefortovo was reassigned from the FSB to the Justice Ministry because of the Council of Europe requirement that prohibits investigative bodies from operating prisons.

But in reality, only a door separates the FSB from the prison, according to a state television documentary about the facility.

Safronov recalled that detainees are allowed daily walks on Lefortovo’s roof, confined to restricted exercise yards. Russia’s penitentiary service regulations say the walks last an hour. A central radio system is often turned on to blast music across the compound — another way to ensure the prisoners can’t hear each other, a guard told the documentarian.

After an initial 10-day quarantine, prisoners are transferred to the cells where they are either kept alone or joined by up to two cellmates.

Washington Post, Two journalists stand trial in Iran for stories that sparked protests, Miriam Berger, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Two female Iranian journalists went on trial behind closed doors this week for their reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini, which sparked a popular uprising.

The Kurdish woman, 22, died in custody of Iran’s “morality police” last year after she was detained for an alleged violation of the country’s conservative dress code for women.

Elahe Mohammadi, a reporter with Ham-Mihan newspaper, and Niloofar Hamedi, of Shargh newspaper, brought early attention to the story, which set off widespread protests and a broader movement to end clerical rule.

The journalists, who have spent months in detentions, stand accused of “colluding with hostile powers” — a charge they deny, according to their families, and which could carry a long sentence or the death penalty. The government has not presented any evidence publicly backing up the allegations.

Iran executes three men connected to anti-government protests

Advocates and rights groups say the reporters have little hope of a fair trial or even basic due process under Iran’s notoriously opaque and politicized judicial system. Thousands of demonstrators remain jailed, and at least seven have been executed, in connection to the protest movement.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Pakistan’s Powerful Military Faces New Resistance From Courts
• New York Times, Opinion: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump, Bret Stephens
• New York Times, German Court Convicts Left-Wing Group in Violent Attacks Against Far Right
• New York Times, Sirens and Confusion in Seoul After False Evacuation Alert
• New York Times, Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too
• New York Times, Tara Reade, Who Accused Biden of Assault, Says She Has Moved to Russia
• New York Times, Shocks, Beatings, Mock Executions: Inside Kherson’s Detention Centers, Carlotta Gall
• New York Times, Drone Strikes Target Moscow in First Attack on Capital’s Civilian Areas, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Ivan Nechepurenko, Marc Santora and Victoria Kim
• New York Times, Uganda’s President Signs Punitive Anti-Gay Bill Into Law
• New York Times, A Russian Deserter’s Flight to Norway Presents a Fraught Dilemma

 

More on Ukraine War

New York Times, ‘We Have No Days Off’: The Nonstop Work of Ukrainian Air Defenses, Marc Santora, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Very little from the waves of Russian air attacks has penetrated the patched-together but increasingly sophisticated air defense network. Here’s why.

Find it, target it, shoot it.

The drill is the same for Ukraine’s air defense crews as they work round the clock to combat the relentless barrage of missiles the Russians launch at Kyiv, mostly foiling the most intense bombardment of the capital since the first weeks of the war.

In the month of May alone, Russia bombarded Kyiv 17 times. It has fired hypersonic missiles from MIG-31 fighter jets and attacked with land-based ballistic missiles powerful enough to level an entire apartment block. Russian bombers and ships have fired dozens of long-range cruise missiles, and more than 200 attack drones have featured in blitzes meant to confuse and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.

It presents a constant struggle for Ukrainian defenders. Russian assaults can be unrelenting. They come mostly at night, but sometimes in daytime hours, as they did on Monday.

Even when Ukraine manages to blast missiles from the sky, falling debris can bring death and destruction. Early Thursday, Russia sent a volley of 10 ballistic missiles at Kyiv; Ukrainian officials said they were all shot down but that falling fragments killed three people, including a child, and injured more than a dozen others.

New York Times, U.N. Nuclear Agency Sets New Rules for Plant Near Ukraine’s Front Line, Anushka Patil, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at the Ukrainian facility that has been controlled by Russian forces for more than a year. The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, which Russian forces have controlled for over a year.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday that he had established five basic rules to avoid nuclear catastrophe at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and that he would publicly report any violations.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the I.A.E.A., briefed the U.N. Security Council on the rules, which are largely based on safety principles the agency established a year ago. The requirements are fairly straightforward — the first stipulates that “there should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant.”

Russian forces have controlled the plant — Europe’s largest — for more than a year. The plant is no longer producing electricity for outside use, but Ukrainian workers continue to perform essential functions, including operating critical cooling equipment.

Frontline fighting has repeatedly damaged the facility, disrupted its power supply and contributed to a staffing crisis that is “not sustainable,” Mr. Grossi said on Tuesday.

Mr. Grossi’s promise to report violations comes after months of unsuccessfully trying to establish a security zone around the plant, where the agency has stationed its own monitors. Even as Russia and Ukraine accused each other of causing damage and outages, Mr. Grossi largely avoided placing blame on either country while he sought to negotiate an agreement.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• The I.A.E.A.’s new measures for the Zaporizhzhia plant are meant to avert nuclear catastrophe.
• Blinken is expected to discuss Russia and China with European officials in Sweden.
• Russia has carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Ukrainian health care facilities, the W.H.O. says.
• Drone strikes force Moscow to adapt its Cold War missile shield to modern warfare.
• The drone attacks in Moscow are the latest assault exposing Russia’s vulnerability.

New York Times, Another Early Morning Strike on Kyiv Kills Three, Andrew E. Kramer, Nicole Tung and Victoria Kim, June 1, 2023 (print ed.).  At least one child was among the dead, local officials said. Russia has recently increased the pace and intensity of its strikes on the capital.

Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, yet again in the early hours of Thursday, killing three people, including at least one child. Air raid sirens and loud explosions throughout the city awoke residents worn out by a month of relentless attacks.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on the Telegram messaging app that an additional 16 people were injured by debris from air defense systems shooting down incoming attacks. Ukraine’s general staff headquarters said Kyiv had been attacked by a volley of 10 Iskander ballistic missiles, all of which were shot down.

 The city’s military administration said some of the debris fell on a children’s clinic and an adjacent building. A mother and child were killed trying to get into a shelter at the clinic that was locked, according to emergency workers at the scene who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

City officials opened a criminal investigation into the clinic and the administrators responsible for operating the shelter there, centered on whether the shelter was properly maintained and why it may have been inaccessible, Mr. Klitschko said.

It was yet another night that Kyiv’s 3.6 million residents were jolted out of bed and sent scurrying for cover. The overnight attack early Thursday left very little time for residents to take shelter, with antimissile defenses colliding with missiles just six minutes after the air alarm sounded, the Kyiv military administration said.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Another overnight attack jolts Kyiv residents out of bed.
• Kyiv cancels its Children’s Day events as Ukraine loses another young life.
• A Russian diplomat visits South Africa amid a debate over an arrest warrant for Putin.
• The U.S. promises more aid to Ukraine, including ammunition for drones and artillery.
• A Zelensky adviser suggests that Russia should agree to a buffer zone as a condition of a peace accord.
• The struggle for control of the Arctic looms as Blinken tours NATO’s north.
• Another overnight attack jolts Kyiv residents out of bed.

Relevant Recent Headlines

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

• New York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side
• New York Times, U.N. Nuclear Agency Sets New Rules for Plant Near Ukraine’s Front Line
• New York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side
• New York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent
• Washington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours’
• New York Times, After a Show-Stopping Entrance at the G7, Zelensky Pleads for More Aid
• New York Times, Why Biden Reversed Course on Ukraine’s F-16 Request, David E. Sanger
• New York Times, In a Sharp Reversal, Biden Opens a Path for Ukraine to Get Fighter Jets

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

New York Times, Opinion: A Peek Behind the MAGA Curtain, David French, right, June 2, 2023. Every now and then, it’s important to watch Fox News in prime time. No, not because the programs are particularly good or because the hosts tell their audience the truth. Fox is writing Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million check for very good reasons, and it still faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Smartmatic over the channel’s election reporting.

But to watch Fox News is to begin to understand millions of your fellow Americans. And there was no better time to start understanding the 2024 Republican primary contest than Thursday night, during Donald Trump’s town hall in Iowa, hosted by Sean Hannity.

To watch the town hall was to start learning the answer to a key question: After everything, how can Republicans still be so loyal to Trump? But that word, “everything,” is loaded with different meanings in different American communities.

When I look back on the Trump years, I see a dark time of division, corruption and social decay. After all, when he left office, the murder rate was higher, drug overdose deaths had increased, and the abortion rate had gone up for the first time in decades. America was more bitterly divided, and deficits increased each year of his presidency. His early Covid lies helped fuel an immense amount of confusion and almost certainly cost American lives. And his entire sorry term was capped by a violent insurrection fueled by an avalanche of lies.

If you watched the town hall, however, you entered an entirely different world. According to Trump’s narrative, everything he did was good. His first term was a time of economic prosperity, energy independence, fiscal responsibility, a rejuvenated military, a locked-down border and fear and respect from foreign regimes. The only thing that marred his four years was a stolen election and his unjust persecution by the corrupt Democratic Party and its allies in the F.B.I.

In Trumpworld, the Trump past is golden, and the Trump future bright, but the present is a time of misery and darkness. It is President Biden, not Trump, who mishandles classified documents. It is Biden’s family, not Trump’s, that corruptly profits off foreign regimes. Trump would have prevented the Ukraine war. Trump would have withdrawn from Afghanistan more smoothly. As for Biden himself, he’s an object of derision and pity — far too physically and mentally impaired to be president of the United States.

False narratives are often sustained by a few kernels of truth, and so it is in MAGA America. The economy was strong before Covid, and there were fewer southern border crossings each year during Trump’s presidency than during Biden’s. The ISIS caliphate fell. And I don’t know a single Republican who isn’t pleased with Trump’s judicial nominees.

Moreover, not all of Trump’s opponents possess the cleanest of hands. There were, in fact, Department of Justice excesses during its investigation of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia. A special counsel is investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation, and his overseas business dealings are indeed unsavory, even if there is not yet proof of criminal wrongdoing. The withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a chaotic and bloody rout of allied forces. Inflation remains too high.

In short, there is enough truthful criticism of the Biden administration to make it vulnerable to an election loss. And there remains sufficient false Trump administration nostalgia to make Trump the G.O.P. nominee. Put both realities together, and the nation is facing RealClearPolitics polling averages that show Trump to be the overwhelming favorite for the G.O.P. nomination and a slight leader in a potential general election matchup against Biden.

Given these facts — and Thursday night’s peek at MAGA America — my colleague Frank Bruni’s warning to Democrats yesterday was timely and important: Democrats should not hope to face Trump in 2024. Rooting for him isn’t just dangerous; it’s based on misunderstandings. All too many Trump opponents — in both parties — have spent so long building their voluminous cases against him that they’ve forgotten how he looks to the other side. They can’t conceive of a coherent case for his candidacy.

The two most telling moments on Thursday came from Trump’s audience. First, they booed Mike Pence at the very mention of his name. Second, they shouted derisively at Hannity at the mere thought that Trump should perhaps tone down his rhetoric. Both moments emphasized the ferocity of their support for Trump. When you see that public response, you can begin to see his opponents’ dilemma. Given the size of Trump’s base, a winning Republican rival will have to peel away at least some members of audiences like Thursday’s — the very people who see him as a persecuted hero.

That challenge is compounded by every event like Thursday’s town hall, in which a relaxed Trump was “questioned” by a supine host in front of an adoring crowd. Hannity’s performance was quite a contrast to Kaitlan Collins’s pointed challenges to Trump during last month’s CNN town hall. Yet both events advanced Trump’s narrative. CNN’s tough questions reminded MAGA of his alleged persecution. Hannity’s coddling reminded MAGA of Trump’s alleged triumphs. Both ultimately helped Trump deepen his bond with the people who love him the most.

Washington Post, Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia, Timothy Bella, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the Carter Center announced Tuesday, more than three months after her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, said he was spending his final days in hospice care.

In a news release, the Carter Center (which provided the photo of the couple above) said that Rosalynn Carter, 95, was comfortable and spending time with her 98-year-old husband at home in Plains, Ga.

“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the organization said in a statement.

Carter, who was hailed by the organization as “the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life,” frequently talked about caregiving before, during and after her time with her husband in the White House.

“The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey,” the Carter Center said. “We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

Washington Post, Report: Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart to resign from Congress, Mariana Alfaro, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who was first elected to Congress in 2012, will resign his seat to focus on his wife’s health, according to a published report.

The Salt Lake Tribune was the first to report on Stewart’s potential departure. A congressional official familiar with his plans confirmed the report to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

According to the Tribune, Stewart, 62, could resign as soon as this week, and he will leave office to address the “ongoing health issues” of his wife, Evie. Those medical issues are not publicly known.

Stewart’s departure would reduce the GOP’s already-slim majority in the House — 222 seats to Democrats’ 213. Currently, if Democrats oppose a piece of legislation, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can afford to lose only four votes from his caucus.

Stewart, a retired Air Force pilot, represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Salt Lake City. He and his wife have six children.

Per Utah law, Stewart’s resignation will spark a special election, whose winner will fill the remainder of his term. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) will announce the timeline for the race’s primary and general elections once Stewart officially announces his resignation.

Stewart, who serves on the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, has won handily in the Republican-leaning district since he was first elected in 2012. In 2022, Stewart defeated Democrat Nick Mitchell by more than 25 points. All of Utah’s four House seats, as well as its two Senate seats, are held by Republicans.

New York Times, Bill Perkins, Defender of His Harlem Constituents, Dies at 74, Sam Roberts, May 22, 2023 (print ed.). As a councilman and state senator, he fought for higher wages, health care, gay rights and sought justice for the Central Park Five.

Bill Perkins, right, who for 24 years as a legislator from Harlem championed his community — by, among other things, challenging Donald J. Trump’s aggressive demand for the death penalty when five teenagers, who were later exonerated, were arrested in connection with a rape in Central Park in 1989 — died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

His death was announced by his wife, Pamela Green Perkins. She did not give a cause, but Mr. Perkins had undergone treatment for colon cancer and, according to Richard Fife, a family spokesman, had developed dementia.

Raised with his brothers and a cousin by a single mother, Mr. Perkins was a relentless advocate in the New York City Council and the New York State Senate for raising the minimum wage, protecting children from being poisoned by lead paint in their apartments, instituting health screening programs in municipal hospitals, and protecting the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people.

In 1989, when five Black and Hispanic teenagers were charged with the rape of a white jogger in Central Park, Mr. Perkins (shown in a photo via CBS-TV at left) was among the first Black civic leaders to publicly raise questions about the evidence and to suggest that there had been a rush to judgment. At the time he was president of the tenants’ association of Schomburg Plaza, the Manhattan apartment complex where several of the defendants lived.

Few other public officials or civic leaders, white or Black, questioned the police investigation at the time, particularly since the defendants had confessed.

Mr. Perkins also took on Mr. Trump, then a wealthy real estate developer, who took out full-page advertisements in city newspapers after the attack calling for New York State to adopt the death penalty for murder cases. Mr. Trump did not explicitly call for the death penalty for the five defendants, but he made clear that he was referring to that case.

“This was taking a moment, a very unfortunate and one might say racially tense moment in our city, and fueling a lynch mob,” Mr. Perkins said when Mr. Trump was running for president in 2016.

The defendants, who became known as the Central Park Five, were convicted and imprisoned. But they were exonerated in 2002 after another man confessed to the crime.
“In our darkest hours, when it seemed like the whole world was against us, Bill Perkins bravely stood behind and with us,” one of the defendants, Yusef Salaam, said in a statement after Mr. Perkins’s death. “His bravery and commitment to justice were unwavering, and he is a big reason we were eventually exonerated.”

William Morris Perkins was born on April 18, 1949, in the Bronx to Helen Perkins. He said he never knew his father.

Inspired by his mother’s faith in education, he won scholarships to the Collegiate School in Manhattan and Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1972.

He was a community organizer, a social worker and a tenant leader before running for the City Council. He served there from 1997 to 2006 and again from 2017 to 2021, ultimately rising to deputy majority leader. From 2007 to 2017 he was a state senator, representing Harlem, the Upper West Side and Washington Heights.

Among his major accomplishments was sponsorship of the Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention Act of 2004, which required landlords to ameliorate hazardous paint conditions in their properties.

The Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez wrote of Mr. Perkins, who was a marathoner, “It took the stamina of a long-distance runner to prevail against the city’s powerful landlord lobby, which has resisted stronger lead paint removal laws for decades.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the State Senate majority leader, said in a statement after Mr. Perkins’s death that he “never waited for the right thing to become popular before taking action.”

He had no qualms about challenging Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister known for his anti-white diatribes. And in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when Senator Hillary Clinton of New York was running, he was among the first Black elected officials to endorse Barack Obama.

In 2021, when he was already ailing, he lost a primary to retain his Council seat.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Perkins is survived by his children, Kiva Perkins-Watts, Medjha White, William Perkins, Margaret Perkins, Maximilian Perkins and Rebecca Marimutu; his brothers, Gerry, Richard and Michael; and four grandchildren.

Sam Roberts, an obituaries reporter, was previously The Times’s urban affairs correspondent and is the host of “The New York Times Close Up,” a weekly news and interview program on CUNY-TV. More about Sam Roberts

New York Times, The District Gained Republicans. Could a Liberal Democrat Take It Back? Tracey Tully, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Sue Altman, the leader of a progressive organization in New Jersey, is expected to announce a run for Congress against Rep. Tom Kean Jr.

New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District was redrawn last year specifically to boost the chances of Republicans. It worked.

Now, Democrats are trying to win back the seat. But rather than turn to a centrist who mirrors the conservative ethos of the region, the party appears to be coalescing around a candidate who for four years has been the face of New Jersey’s progressive left: Sue Altman.

Ms. Altman, who leads the state’s liberal-leaning Working Families Alliance and is an ally of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, is expected to announce her candidacy Wednesday morning.

“We’ve trained hard in New Jersey to fight corruption,” Ms. Altman, 41, said in an interview. “And I’m ready to turn these skills toward a bigger, much more urgent fight.” Last year, redistricting shored up the odds of victory for the incumbent party in 11 of New Jersey’s 12 congressional districts. The only incumbent to lose was Tom Malinowski, a two-term Democrat who represented the Seventh Congressional District, which stretches from one side of northern New Jersey to the other and takes in mainly suburban and rural communities.

Tom Kean Jr., a former Republican state lawmaker and namesake of a well-liked governor, defeated Mr. Malinowski in November by 8,691 votes, or roughly three percentage points, to join Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fractious, nine-member majority in Washington.

The seat has been identified as a key target of Democrats hoping to regain control of the House. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran an ad on a highway billboard that yoked Mr. Kean to former President Donald J. Trump, offering a peek at what is likely to be a nationwide strategy next year in races that coincide with the presidential contest.
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With a year and a half before the election, it is likely that additional Democratic challengers to Mr. Kean will emerge. But Ms. Altman’s early entry and name recognition gives her a clear edge in a race that even the state’s Democratic Party chairman, LeRoy J. Jones Jr., acknowledges will be an uphill fight.

“Sue Altman is a formidable candidate — and so far the only candidate,” Mr. Jones said. “Without hearing from anyone else, Sue is in a position to make her case to ultimately be the Democratic nominee.”

It is by some measures a counterintuitive choice. The candidate will be running from the left in a district where registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by 16,000 voters.

Harrison Neely, a top political adviser to Mr. Kean, said Ms. Altman represented the “most divisive and extreme aspects of the fringe of her party.”

Mr. Neely said Mr. Kean’s focus on reducing the cost of living in New Jersey and his efforts to work across the aisle as a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus illustrated his “common-sense solutions to our national challenges.” He said he was confident Mr. Kean would be re-elected.

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U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

New York Times, Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules New Abortion Bans Unconstitutional, Jacey Fortin, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Oklahoma’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday that two laws passed last year that ban most abortions are unconstitutional.

But the ruling does not affect a law passed in 1910 which still prohibits most abortions in the state, unless they are necessary to save the life of the mother.

The laws that were struck down by the court were civil laws that had relied on suits from private citizens to enforce them. Both had made exceptions for cases involving a “medical emergency.”

But the justices took issue with that language in their 6-3 ruling, which suggested that the exceptions were too narrow. They maintained that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy in order to save her life, without specifying the need for a medical emergency.

Why It Matters: Oklahoma is among a number of Republican-led states that moved to ban abortion in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. Legal challenges were quick to follow, and many cases ended up before state supreme courts. Those courts have become critical arbiters in deciding abortion access, and a new political front in the nation’s abortion battles. In some conservative states, courts have decided that their state constitutions protect abortion rights.

The decision also highlighted legal complications around how abortion restrictions and exceptions might be interpreted in cases where a woman’s life is at risk. Doctors in other states with abortion bans said they have struggled to provide care for patients without breaking the law.

Washington Post, Bill Cosby is facing a new sexual assault lawsuit, Manuel Roig-Franzia, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). His accuser, Victoria Valentino, says she gained confidence from E. Jean Carroll’s civil court win against Donald Trump.

A former Playboy centerfold model who says she was drugged and raped more than five decades ago by Bill Cosby has filed a lawsuit against the legendary entertainer under a new California law that temporarily lifts the statute of limitation on civil sexual-assault cases.

The suit, filed Thursday morning by attorneys for Victoria Valentino in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is the first known use of the law in California against Cosby, opening a new front in a years-long and multipronged legal battle against the 85-year-old. Under the law, accusers who allege they were sexually assaulted while they were adults have been granted a one-year window, closing at the end of this year, to seek damages no matter how long ago the alleged crimes took place.

“It’s not about money, it’s about accountability,” Valentino, 80, told The Washington Post in her first interview about the case shortly before the suit was filed. “Rape steals something from you that cannot be repaired or restored.”

In her lawsuit, Valentino says she briefly met Cosby in 1969 while she was an actress and singer. Later, she says, they ran into each other at a Los Angeles restaurant and Cosby came over to say hello after spotting her in tears over the recent drowning death of her 6-year-old son. Later that day he gave her a pill, she says.

“Here! Take this!” she alleges that Cosby told her. “It will make you feel better. It will make us ALL feel better.”

Valentino’s case follows lawsuits filed late last year by six Cosby accusers under a similar law in New York, commonly referred to as a “lookback” provision, that set a one-year window that expired at the end of 2022. Cosby, who has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by at least 60 women, has denied committing sex crimes against anyone.

Valentino’s case goes well beyond accusations against Cosby. As part of the same lawsuit, she is also suing between one and 20 unnamed people, including Cosby’s agents, servants and other employees that she alleges enabled Cosby’s alleged assault. She plans to identify those defendants as she learns their names during the course of discovery related to the lawsuit.

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Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

 

New York Times, Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse, Christopher Flavelle, Jill Cowan and Ivan Penn, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The largest insurer in California said it would stop offering new coverage. It’s part of a broader trend of companies pulling back from dangerous areas.

The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis.

This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state.

Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes.

“Risk has a price,” said Roy Wright, the former official in charge of insurance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and now head of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group. “We’re just now seeing it.”

In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.

And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeowners to smaller private companies that are straining to stay in business — a possible glimpse into California’s future if more big insurers leave.
Growing ‘catastrophe exposure’

State Farm, which insures more homeowners in California than any other company, said it would stop accepting applications for most types of new insurance policies in the state because of “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

The company said that while it recognized the work of California officials to reduce losses from wildfires, it had to stop writing new policies “to improve the company’s financial strength.” A State Farm spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Insurance rates in California jumped after wildfires became more devastating than anyone had anticipated. A series of fires that broke out in 2017, many ignited by sparks from failing utility equipment, exploded in size with the effects of climate change. Some homeowners lost their insurance entirely because insurers refused to cover homes in vulnerable areas.

Michael Soller, a spokesman for the California Department of Insurance, said the agency was working to address the underlying factors that have caused disruption in the insurance industry across the country and around the world, including the biggest one: climate change.

New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy (the director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation), May 30, 2023 (print ed.). After half a century of painstaking restoration under the Clean Water Act, streams and wetlands nationwide are once again at risk of contamination by pollution and outright destruction as a result of a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long interpreted the Clean Water Act as protecting most of the nation’s wetlands from pollution. But now the court has significantly limited the reach of the law, concluding that it precludes the agency from regulating discharges of pollution into wetlands unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water that, using “ordinary parlance,” the court described as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

At least half of the nation’s wetlands could lose protection under this ruling, which provides an even narrower definition of “protected waters” than the Trump administration had sought.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who filed a concurring opinion in the judgment, acknowledged its impact, writing that it would have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state. In March, the Senate joined the House in trying to roll back clean-water regulations established by the Biden administration, even though they were less comprehensive than Clean Water Act protections before President Donald Trump weakened them. (President Biden vetoed the action.) Congress had also long failed to clarify language in the Clean Water Act that caused confusion among judges and put the law in the Supreme Court’s cross hairs.

Now it is up to Congress to defend the vision of the Clean Water Act, which Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, articulated in 1972 in a debate on the Senate floor.

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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

Washington Post, Medicare to expand coverage for new class of Alzheimer’s drugs pending FDA approval, Laurie McGinley and Rachel Roubein, June 2, 2023 (print ed.). Medicare officials announced plans Thursday to broadly cover a new class of Alzheimer’s drugs following an intense lobbying campaign by patient advocates and drugmakers pressing for access to the first medications shown to slow cognitive decline from the disease.

In a statement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal health program for seniors and those with disabilities, said it would cover the costly drugs — a move foreshadowed in previous agency statements — for anyone who was enrolled in the outpatient part of the program who meets the criteria for coverage. The first drug potentially covered by the expanded plan could be granted full approval from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as this summer, a necessary step before Medicare will start paying.

The new policy marks a sharp change from an earlier one, which required patients to be in clinical trials for coverage. The plan would provide coverage to patients whose doctors take part in registries that provide information on how the drugs work.

New York Times, The Most Common Eating Disorder in the U.S. Is Also the Least Understood, Dani Blum, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Binge eating disorder entered the diagnostic manual on mental health conditions 10 years ago. It’s still getting overlooked.

At 2 or 3 a.m., David Tedrow would hide the empty cardboard cereal box, shoving it into the bottom of the trash can or the back of the cupboard, where his wife wouldn’t notice it. Mr. Tedrow was in his 60s and retired, and he often slept until the afternoon so he could stay up late, after everyone else had gone to bed.

During frantic late-night bursts, he would eat an entire box of cereal — Oatmeal Squares, Frosted Mini-Wheats, whatever was around — and then dispose of the evidence. He had eaten compulsively throughout his life, he said, but after months of going through a box of cereal each night, he decided to try to get help.

Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States. Exact numbers vary, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 3 percent of the U.S. population has had binge eating disorder at some point in their lives, more than double the reported numbers for bulimia nervosa and anorexia. Yet, the disorder is under-discussed and underrecognized by both the general public and those in the medical field, partly because many don’t know about the diagnosis or its potential severity.

Often, people will exhibit symptoms for decades before receiving a diagnosis, said Cynthia Bulik, the founding director of the University of North Carolina’s Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders. “For so long, they’ve been told things like ‘Oh, this is just emotional eating’ or ‘You’re out of control’ or ‘It’s because you have no willpower’ or ‘Gluttony’s a sin,’ or whatever these things are that people explain it away, without realizing that they have a treatable condition,” she said.

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

National Press Club Executive Director Bill McCarren strengthened the Club’s financial foundation and bolstered its press freedom efforts. When he wasn’t at the Club, you could find him at the ballpark. Photo: McCarren family

National Press Club, McCarren strengthened Club’s finances, press freedom mission, Daniel Moore, June 1, 2023. When Bill McCarren, below right, founded a startup, U.S. Newswire, in 1986, he moved one floor below a lively social club he saw as a gathering ground for connecting Washington policy-making with the journalists who make the news happen.

He joined his upstairs neighbor, the National Press Club, as a member that year. More than three decades later, he will retire after serving the last 16 years as first the Club’s general manager and then as executive director, a tenure marked by the Club’s increasing financial strength and wider reach on press freedom issues.

The Club will host a farewell for McCarren at 7 p.m. Friday, June 2, in the Reliable Source.

 

McCarren said he was first drawn to the Club as a place where he could build a professional network for U.S. Newswire, where he was CEO.

“I had to have some kind of relationship with the media all across town,” McCarren said while sitting in the Club’s library, as multiple events proceeded in the Club’s 13th-floor gathering spaces. “This was a super-easy place for me to do that.”

He went from taking part in Club activities to running them as its top executive when he was hired as general manager in 2007.

Past presidents said McCarren’s business acumen, combined with his deep understanding of journalism, helped to guide the Club through an economic recession, the rise of social media and disinformation, the gutting of local newsrooms, increasing threats to press freedom and democracy around the world, and, finally, a global pandemic.

The Club was vibrant, with a busy bar and headline-grabbing luncheons when McCarren took the helm. That year, the Club held about 70 luncheon speakers and even hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by video link, said Jerry Zremski, Club president in 2007 and a longtime Washington reporter for The Buffalo News.

But the Club had no cash reserves, carried a high debt, and operated on an unprofitable business model. The Club, forced to take out loans to pay its bills, was “one financial disaster away from being in terribly dire straits,” Zremski said.

The Club board appointed McCarren executive director in 2010. He oversaw a long-term financial overhaul that involved selling artwork and refocusing the Club on higher-margin activities.

He grew the Broadcast Operations Center, bolstered catering operations, smoothed out tax issues, and “made things more efficient and professional on the business side,” said Donna Leinwand Leger, who served as Club president in 2009 and is now president and founder of DC Media Strategies LLC.

“He really got our financial ship in order,” Leinwand Leger said. “Nothing ruffled Bill’s feathers.”

As of the end of May, the Club had about $18 million in cash and investment reserves and no debt, McCarren said. Membership rolls stood at about 2,700 people.

McCarren’s work to build up financial reserves paid dividends in bolstering its position as a leading voice for press freedom.

He positioned the Club to successfully secure the 2016 release of Jason Rezaian, left, the Washington Post journalist held captive in Iran. Rezaian’s case bolstered the Club’s approach in other campaigns, such as the push to free Austin Tice, a journalist held in Syria since 2012, and Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter captured in Russia this year.

“Bill showed such great resolve on press freedom issues, but without his work to stabilize the financial operations, none of the Club’s great work is possible,” said John Hughes, a Bloomberg Law editor who spent a decade on the Club board and was president in 2015.

“Our strengths as journalists are writing and reporting–most of us didn’t go to business school,” Hughes said. “But by the time we ended our Press Club service we knew a lot, thanks to Bill.”

The Club was prepared to confront the final major test of his time as executive director: the COVID-19 pandemic.

McCarren helped to bring people back to the Club as soon as possible with masking and vaccination guidelines that closely followed public health guidelines, said Lisa Matthews, the Club’s president in 2021 and planning editor for The Associated Press.

“We really could not have made it through the pandemic without Bill, in terms of the health issues and the financial considerations we had to work through,” Matthews said. “We were reworking entire budgets and plans that included people’s livelihoods.”

Looking ahead, McCarren said he wanted to see the Club continue to evolve.

It should convene difficult conversations on a sustainable business model for news and how to report on the tenuous state of democracy, he said. The Club should also consider whether to relax some long-standing practices — perhaps adding more grab-and-go food options, allowing less dressy attire, improving its WiFi and technology — to attract a younger generation to the Club, he said.

“These are big issues that I’d like to see the Club figuring out how to use its resources to address,” he said. “I think there’s an awful lot of good we can do.”

Washington Post, Project Veritas sues founder James O’Keefe over his messy departure, Will Sommer, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The right-wing group, known for its undercover videos, also alleges its former chairman lavished donor money on his own expenses.

In February, conservative undercover-video activist James O’Keefe left the nonprofit he founded, Project Veritas, amid a dispute with his board over his spending and treatment of employees.

Then he launched his comeback media tour.

O’Keefe told Donald Trump adviser turned podcaster Stephen K. Bannon that he had been “removed,” and announced on radio host Mark Levin’s show that he had been “ousted.” In an appearance on comedian Russell Brand’s podcast, O’Keefe said he had been “thrown out.” Sometimes, O’Keefe implied he had been fired at the behest of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant and coronavirus vaccine manufacturer that he had targeted in a sting.

All this came as a surprise to the Project Veritas board, according to a lawsuit it filed Wednesday against O’Keefe. Project Veritas insists that its founder remained an employee until barely two weeks ago — even as he set up a rival organization.

New York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn, Kevin Roose, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Leaders from OpenAI, Google Deepmind and other A.I. labs are set to issue a warning that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.

A group of industry leaders is planning to warn on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they are building may one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on par with pandemics and nuclear wars.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads a one-sentence statement expected to be released by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization. The open letter has been signed by more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers working in A.I.

The signatories included top executives from three of the leading A.I. companies: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic.

Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three researchers who won a Turing Award for their pioneering work on neural networks and are often considered “godfathers” of the modern A.I. movement, signed the statement, as did other prominent researchers in the field (The third Turing Award winner, Yann LeCun, who leads Meta’s A.I. research efforts, had not signed as of Tuesday.)

The statement comes at a time of growing concern about the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Recent advancements in so-called large language models — the type of A.I. system used by ChatGPT and other chatbots — have raised fears that A.I. could soon be used at scale to spread misinformation and propaganda, or that it could eliminate millions of white-collar jobs.

Eventually, some believe, A.I. could become powerful enough that it could create societal-scale disruptions within a few years if nothing is done to slow it down, though researchers sometimes stop short of explaining how that would happen.

These fears are shared by numerous industry leaders, putting them in the unusual position of arguing that a technology they are building — and, in many cases, are furiously racing to build faster than their competitors — poses grave risks and should be regulated more tightly.

This month, Mr. Altman, Mr. Hassabis and Mr. Amodei met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about A.I. regulation. In a Senate testimony after the meeting, Mr. Altman warned that the risks of advanced A.I. systems were serious enough to warrant government intervention and called for regulation of A.I. for its potential harms.

Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, said in an interview that the open letter represented a “coming-out” for some industry leaders who had expressed concerns — but only in private — about the risks of the technology they were developing.

“There’s a very common misconception, even in the A.I. community, that there only are a handful of doomers,” Mr. Hendrycks said. “But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things.”

Some skeptics argue that A.I. technology is still too immature to pose an existential threat. When it comes to today’s A.I. systems, they worry more about short-term problems, such as biased and incorrect responses, than longer-term dangers.

But others have argued that A.I. is improving so rapidly that it has already surpassed human-level performance in some areas, and it will soon surpass it in others. They say the technology has showed signs of advanced capabilities and understanding, giving rise to fears that “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., a type of artificial intelligence that can match or exceed human-level performance at a wide variety of tasks, may not be far-off.

In a blog post last week, Mr. Altman and two other OpenAI executives proposed several ways that powerful A.I. systems could be responsibly managed. They called for cooperation among the leading A.I. makers, more technical research into large language models and the formation of an international A.I. safety organization, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which seeks to control the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Altman has also expressed support for rules that would require makers of large, cutting-edge A.I. models to register for a government-issued license.

In March, more than 1,000 technologists and researchers signed another open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of the largest A.I. models, citing concerns about “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds.”

Politico, Fox News, backed by Trump White House lawyer, fights subpoena in leak lawsuit, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The network is trying to protect a source who disclosed details of an FBI probe into a Chinese American scientist.

A former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

New York Times, Racing Regulators Hold Emergency Meeting to Investigate Horse Deaths, Joe Drape, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority called a summit of veterinarians in response to the deaths of 12 horses at Churchill Downs.

Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive of the authority, called the “emergency veterinary summit” in Lexington, Ky., to review necropsies, toxicology reports and veterinarians’ and trainers’ notes on the deaths, seven of which preceded this month’s Kentucky Derby. The deaths have cast a pall over the Triple Crown season, the few weeks each spring when casual sports fans have heightened focus on horse racing.

In addition, the authority has asked a longtime California track superintendent, Dennis Moore, to examine the racing surfaces at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., and offer an independent analysis of the dirt and turf courses’ suitability for racing.

“I have not had a single jockey or trainer tell me that they believe the track is a factor in these fatalities,” Lazarus said. Most of the deaths occurred after horses broke down while racing.

New York Times, James Beard Foundation, Whose Awards Honor Chefs, Is Now Investigating Them, Brett Anderson and Julia Moskin, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The group behind “the Oscars of the food world” created a new process to weed out nominees with problematic pasts. But that process has troubles of its own.

The chef Sam Fore received an ominous voice mail message this month from an unknown number. The caller identified himself as a private investigator working for the James Beard Foundation. Later that day, Ms. Fore found herself on a Zoom call, answering questions from him and another man.

“They said to me, ‘We have an anonymous complaint we have to ask you about,’” she said.

Ms. Fore is a finalist in the James Beard awards, which for nearly three decades have been considered the most prestigious culinary honors in the United States, the so-called “Oscars of the food world.” As the #MeToo movement led to high-profile revelations of misbehavior and workplace abuse in the restaurant world in recent years, the Beard foundation overhauled its processes to make the awards more equitable and diverse, and to ensure that chefs with troubling histories are not honored.

Ms. Fore is among the first subjects of an investigatory process created in 2021 as part of that overhaul. But in many ways she is the kind of chef the retooled awards are meant to recognize more fully. Early indications suggest that the new process is vulnerable to failure in several ways.

While the awards have historically honored mostly white chefs serving European-derived food in expensive urban restaurants — in fact, the other four finalists in the Best Chef: Southeast category with Ms. Fore are white men — her business, Tuk Tuk, is a pop-up that serves cuisine inspired by what she grew up eating in Lexington, Ky., as the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants.

In what she called “an interrogation,” the investigators asked her about social media posts she had made on both private and public accounts. Someone had sent them to the foundation through an anonymous tip line on its website. The men told Ms. Fore that the posts potentially violated the organization’s code of ethics — specifically that they amounted to “targeted harassment” and “bullying.”

They included an Instagram post, she said, that was part of a domestic-violence awareness campaign, and others related to her advocacy for victims of sexual violence, including “vague tweets” about people the posts did not name.

She said she told the investigators: “We’ve been talking for 90 minutes about these tweets, and you don’t know who I’m ‘targeting’ with them. How is that targeted harassment?”

Ms. Fore is still waiting to hear whether she has been disqualified from the awards, which will be given out at a ceremony in Chicago on June 5. But she now believes that what was supposed to be the honor of a lifetime could actually do her more harm than good.

“I realize that my presence is a good look for Beard, but I cooked my way across the country to get to this level,” she said. “Now all I’ve done can be dismissed because someone on the internet called me a bully?”

Started in 1985 to honor the food writer James Beard, the foundation established its chef and restaurant awards in 1991.

The foundation has identified itself more and more closely with chefs and restaurants over the years, riding the rise in popularity of chef culture starting in the 1990s. As the American public became increasingly fascinated by restaurants and the people who run them, the profile of the awards grew, the events became more glamorous, the brand partnerships more lucrative. (According to I.R.S. filings, the foundation’s revenues jumped from $5 million in 2010 to $18 million in 2020.)

To address those problems, the foundation established an ethics committee before the 2022 awards, along with the tip line and the pursuant investigations, to ensure that the awards would not celebrate chefs who failed to meet its standards. (Brett Anderson, who co-wrote this article, was on the restaurant awards committee from 2002 to 2012.)

“The James Beard awards are known as the standard bearers of excellence in the industry. We take that very seriously,” said Clare Reichenbach, the foundation’s chief executive. “We’ve built a process with great intentionality, that we think has rigor, that reflects our values and our mission, and we stand by it.”

But it is unclear whether the foundation is up to the task of vetting the finalists.

By making itself the chief arbiter of restaurant excellence, however, the foundation also made many of the restaurant world’s most pernicious problems — inequality, lack of diversity in leadership, workplace abuse of many kinds — its own.

Relevant Recent Headlines

 

Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

• Washington Post, A Fla. school restricted Amanda Gorman’s book. Here’s what to know
• Washington Post, Just 11 people filed most school book challenges last year
• Washington Post, School librarians face a new penalty in the banned-book wars: Prison
• Washington Post, Project Veritas sues founder James O’Keefe over his messy departure
• New York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn
• New York Times, James Beard Foundation, Whose Awards Honor Chefs, Is Now Investigating Them, Brett Anderson and Julia Moskin
• Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code
• New York Times, Opinion: How the Internet Shrank Musk and DeSantis, Ross Douthat
• Washington Post, Opinion: ‘Succession’ dulled Americans to the poison seeping into their lives, Michele L. Norris
• Washington Post, These Christian home-schoolers were taught that public schools are evil. Then they enrolled their kids
• Politico, EU’s Breton says Twitter ‘can’t hide’ after platform ditches disinformation code

 

June 1

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Senate passes debt ceiling bill, sending it to Biden to sign into law
• New York Times, The Calm Man in the Capital: Biden Lets Others Spike the Ball but Notches a Win
• New York Times, Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles
• Washington Post,  End of Title 42 changes calculus of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border
• Washington Post, By arming Ukraine, Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin’s red lines
• New York Times, Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse
• New York Times, Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules New Abortion Bans Unconstitutional,

 

Trump Probes, Pro-Trump Rioters, Election Deniers

• New York Times, Trump Was Taped Discussing Sensitive Document He Had Kept After Leaving Office, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Alan Feuer
• New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess
• New York Times, Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case
• New York Times, Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert
• Politico, ‘Deranged leadership’: Oath Keeper who entered Capitol on Jan. 6 turns on Stewart Rhodes
• Politico, Jan. 6 sentences are piling up. Here’s a look at some of the longest handed down
• Washington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: Jack Smith’s SECRET WITNESS against Trump finally Revealed, Michael Popok

 

More On Ukraine War

• New York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: Another Early Morning Strike on Kyiv Kills Three
• New York Times, ‘We Have No Days Off’: The Nonstop Work of Ukrainian Air Defenses
• New York Times, U.N. Nuclear Agency Sets New Rules for Plant Near Ukraine’s Front Line
• New York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side
• New York Times, ‘It’s Time’: Ukraine’s Top Commander Says Counteroffensive Is Imminent
• Washington Post, Kyiv readies for counteroffensive as commander vows to ‘take back what’s ours’

 

More Global News, Views, Terrorism, Human Rights

• New York Times, Pakistan’s Powerful Military Faces New Resistance From Courts
• New York Times, Opinion: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump, Bret Stephens
• Washington Post, Iran plans to escalate attacks on U.S. troops in Syria, part of Russian-backed strategy, leaks show
• Washington Post, A rare look inside the notorious Russian jail holding an American journalist
• Washington Post, Two journalists stand trial in Iran for stories that sparked protests
• New York Times, German Court Convicts Left-Wing Group in Violent Attacks Against Far Right
• New York Times, Sirens and Confusion in Seoul After False Evacuation Alert
• New York Times, Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too
• New York Times, Tara Reade, Who Accused Biden of Assault, Says She Has Moved to Russia

 

More On U.S. Economy, Default, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

• New York Times, There is one big part of the debt ceiling deal that Congress isn’t talking about
• Washington Post, After debt deal’s approval in House, Senate races to beat default deadline
• New York Times, House Passes Debt Limit Bill in Bipartisan Vote to Avert Default, Catie Edmondson
• New York Times, Analysis: McCarthy Emerges From the Debt Fight With Victories and Wounds, Carl Hulse
• New York Times, Representative Chip Roy of Texas has emerged as the face of the Republican revolt against the debt limit deal
• New York Times, Companies Push Prices Higher, Protecting Profits but Adding to Inflation

 

More On U.S. Courts, Crime, Immigration

• New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Political Nonprofit Groups for Fund-Raising Fraud, David A. Fahrenthold, William K. Rashbaum and Tiff Fehr
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• Washington Post, FBI director Chris Wray to face contempt of Congress vote, Comer says
• New York Times, Florida Art Scammer Sentenced to Over 2 Years in Federal Prison

 

U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

• Washington Post, Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia
• New York Times, Bill Perkins, Defender of His Harlem Constituents, Dies at 74, Sam Roberts
• Washington Post, Report: Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart to resign from Congress
• Palmer Report, Opinion: House Republican is reportedly about to resign, Bill Palmer
• New York Times, The District Gained Republicans. Could a Liberal Democrat Take It Back?

 

2024 U.S. Presidential Race

 

• New York Times, Denouncing ‘Elites’ in Kickoff Speech, DeSantis Vows to ‘Impose Our Will’
• New York Times, In Iowa, DeSantis Signals the Start of a Slugfest With Trump
• The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Why Ron DeSantis’s aims of “destroying leftism” prove he is unfit to be president, Steve Schmidt
• Miami Herald, Watchdog group accuses DeSantis, political committee of breaking campaign-finance law

U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

• Washington Post, Bill Cosby is facing a new sexual assault lawsuit
• Dead State, Pastor at Christian college arrested for letting his ‘spiritual mentor’ sexually abuse young boys
• New York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim

 

Environment, Transportation, Energy, Space, Disasters, Climate

• New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy
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Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

• Washington Post, Medicare to expand coverage for new class of Alzheimer’s drugs pending FDA approval
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More On U.S. Media, Education, Arts, Sports, Culture

• Washington Post, Project Veritas sues founder James O’Keefe over his messy departure
• New York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn
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Top Stories

New York Times, Senate passes debt ceiling bill, sending it to Biden to sign into law, Rachel Siegel, Marianne LeVine, John Wagner and Leigh Ann Caldwell, June 1, 2023. The deal cleared the House on Wednesday night and is now on track take effect by Monday’s deadline for a government default.

The Senate late Thursday night passed a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling and curb federal spending, sending the legislation to President Biden to sign into law in time to avert an unprecedented U.S. government default.

The deal cleared the House on Wednesday night and is now on track to take effect by Monday, when the government would no longer be able to pay all of its bills without borrowing more money. Senators scrambled to vote before the weekend, even as a handful of frustrated lawmakers pushed for votes on amendments that risked slowing the process.

None of the amendments were adopted. But in an effort to alleviate concerns from defense hawks that the debt ceiling bill would restrict Pentagon spending too much, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a joint statement saying the “debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia, and our other adversaries.”

The Senate vote of 63-36 capped off weeks of talks that moved in fits and starts — and at times dissolved altogether. As the June 5 default deadline ticked closer, negotiators from the White House and the House GOP clashed over government spending, work requirements for federal programs and a slew of other policy differences. The final 99-page bill lost some support from far-right lawmakers and some progressive Democrats. But its final passage marked an end to months of partisan squabbles over raising the debt ceiling — and averted economic catastrophe.

“Our work is far from finished, but this agreement is a critical step forward, and a reminder of what’s possible when we act in the best interests of our country,” President Biden said in a statement after the vote. “I look forward to signing this bill into law as soon as possible and addressing the American people directly tomorrow.”

In the Senate, four Democrats and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted no, while 44 Democrats and Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with them, and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) voted yes. On the GOP side, 17 Republicans voted yes, and 31 voted no. The bill needed 60 votes to pass.

New York Times, The Calm Man in the Capital: Biden Lets Others Spike the Ball but Notches a Win,  Peter Baker, June 1, 2023. President Biden brokered a debt limit deal by following instincts developed through long, hard and sometimes painful experience in Washington.

In the days since he struck a deal to avoid a national default, President Biden has steadfastly refused to boast about what he got as part of the agreement.

“Why would Biden say what a good deal it is before the vote?” he asked reporters at one point, referring to himself in the third person. “You think that’s going to help me get it passed? No. That’s why you guys don’t bargain very well.”

The president calculated that the more he bragged that the deal was a good one for his side, the more he would inflame Republicans on the other side, jeopardizing the chances of pushing the agreement through the narrowly divided House. His reticence stood in striking contrast to his negotiating partner, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has been running all over the Capitol in recent days asserting that the deal was a “historic” victory for fiscal conservatives.

While Mr. Biden knew that would aggravate progressives in his own party, he gambled that he could keep enough of them in line without public chest-beating and figured that it was more important to let Mr. McCarthy claim the win to minimize a revolt on the hard right that could put his speakership in danger. Indeed, in private briefing calls following the agreement, White House officials told Democratic allies that they believed they got a good deal, but urged their surrogates not to say that publicly lest it upset the delicate balance.

The strategy paid off with a strong bipartisan vote by the House on Wednesday night passing the deal, which will suspend the debt ceiling while imposing spending restraints for the next two years. The compromise still must be voted on by Monday in the Senate, where the procedural hurdles are byzantine, but with both majority and minority leaders on board, the chances of passage appeared strong.

The president’s approach to the negotiations — and especially their aftermath — reflects a half-century of bargaining in Washington. When someone has been around the track as long as Mr. Biden has, resisting the temptation to spike the ball and claim victory can be critical to actually securing the victory in the first place. From the start of the clash with Mr. McCarthy’s Republicans, Mr. Biden has followed the instincts he has developed through long, hard and sometimes painful experience.

New York Times, Arizona Limits Construction Around Phoenix as Its Water Supply Dwindles, Christopher Flavelle and Jack Healy, June 1, 2023. Officials ruled there’s not enough groundwater for projects already approved — a potential glimpse of the challenges facing the West as climate change worsens.

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

The announcement of a groundwater shortage, what the state calls “unmet demand” for water over the next hundred years, means Arizona would no longer give developers in areas of Maricopa County new permits to construct homes that rely on wells for water.

Phoenix and nearby large cities, which must obtain separate permission from state officials for their development plans every 10 to 15 years, would also be denied approval for any homes that rely on groundwater beyond what the state has already authorized.

The decision means cities and developers must look for alternative sources of water to support future development — for example, by trying to buy access to river water from farmers or Native American tribes, many of whom are facing their own shortages. That rush to buy water is likely to rattle the real estate market in Arizona, making homes more expensive and threatening the relatively low housing costs that had made the region a magnet for people from across the country.

Washington Post, End of Title 42 changes calculus of migrants at U.S.-Mexico border, Arelis R. Hernández and Danielle Villasana, June 1, 2023. Migrants are struggling to reevaluate and navigate the U.S. immigration system after Title 42 was lifted.

 

Washington Post, After debt deal’s approval in House, Senate races to beat default deadline, John Wagner, June 1, 2023. June 1, 2023. The 99-page legislation brokered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden cleared the House on Wednesday night on a bipartisan vote.

Senate leaders are imploring their colleagues to move quickly to approve a House-passed bill ahead of a Monday deadline that would suspend the debt ceiling, limit federal spending and avert a catastrophic U.S. government default.

The 99-page legislation brokered by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Biden cleared the House on Wednesday night on a 314-117 bipartisan vote. Senators are expected to follow suit, but it remains unclear how quickly they will move.

Both Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), left, have urged their colleagues to act well before Monday, when the nation will no longer be able to pay its bills.

But a handful of senators are angling to add amendments to the legislation that could slow the process. Some have expressed a desire for deeper spending cuts, an increase in defense spending and the removal of a provision that would fast-track a controversial pipeline that would carry natural gas across West Virginia and Virginia.

New York Times, House Passes Debt Limit Bill in Bipartisan Vote to Avert Default, Catie Edmondson, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). A broad coalition pushed through the deal struck by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden, even as lawmakers in both parties signaled displeasure.

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed legislation negotiated by President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy to suspend the debt ceiling and set federal spending limits, as a broad bipartisan coalition lined up to cast a critical vote to pull the nation back from the brink of economic catastrophe.

The bill would defer the federal debt limit for two years — allowing the government to borrow unlimited sums as necessary to pay its obligations — while imposing two years of spending caps and a string of policy changes that Republicans demanded in exchange for allowing the country to avoid a disastrous default. The 314-to-117 vote came days before the nation was set to exhaust its borrowing limit, and days after a marathon set of talks between White House negotiators and top House Republicans yielded a breakthrough agreement.

With both far-right and hard-left lawmakers in revolt over the deal, it fell to a bipartisan coalition powered by Democrats to push the bill over the finish line, throwing their support behind the compromise in an effort to break the fiscal stalemate that had gripped Washington for weeks. On the final vote, 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats backed the measure, while 71 Republicans and 46 Democrats opposed it.

That was a blow to the Republican speaker, whose hard-fought victory on the measure was dampened by the fact that more Democrats ultimately voted for the bill than members of his own party.

The measure nearly collapsed on its way to the House floor, when hard-right Republicans sought to block its consideration, and in a suspenseful scene, Democrats waited several minutes before swooping in to supply their votes for a procedural measure that allowed the plan to move ahead.

The deal would suspend the $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025. It would cut federal spending by $1.5 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by effectively freezing some funding that had been projected to increase next year and then limiting spending to 1 percent growth in 2025, which is considered a cut because it would be at a lower level than inflation. The legislation would also impose stricter work requirements for food stamps, claw back some funding for I.R.S. enforcement and unspent coronavirus relief money, speed the permitting of new energy projects and officially end Mr. Biden’s student loan repayment freeze.

The compromise was structured with the aim of enticing votes from both parties. It allowed Republicans, who refused to raise the debt ceiling and avert a default without conditions, to say that they succeeded in reducing some federal spending — even as funding for the military and veterans’ programs would continue to grow — while allowing Democrats to say they spared most domestic programs from the severe cuts.

New York Times, Analysis: McCarthy Emerges From the Debt Fight With Victories and Wounds, Carl Hulse, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Speaker Kevin McCarthy, above, delivered an agreement that few thought he could but left some of his colleagues feeling betrayed.

When the debt limit fight began, it was widely assumed that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, untested and inexperienced in high-stakes negotiations, would either preside over an economically and politically calamitous government default or lose his hard-won post in a right-wing mutiny after caving to Democrats.

So far, he has managed to avoid both outcomes while claiming some fiscal and policy wins.

With House approval on Wednesday night of the debt limit package he personally negotiated with President Biden, Mr. McCarthy defied expectations and even earned grudging respect from White House officials while defusing the debt limit time bomb he himself planted by insisting on concessions in return for raising the nation’s borrowing limit.

The bar was set low for Mr. McCarthy, known more for politicking and fund-raising than for policymaking, after he struggled mightily to win his post in the first place as House Republicans took control in January.

But in the end, he delivered an agreement that met his goal of cutting spending from current levels. It was not pretty; in fact, it was downright ugly. He managed to do so only with significant help from across the aisle, as Democrats rescued him on a key procedural vote and then provided the support needed for passage. Mr. McCarthy exceeded his goal of winning the support of the majority of his members with 149 backing it, but more Democrats — 165 of them — voted for the bill than members of his own party, an outcome that will fuel Republican criticism that he cut a deal that sold out his own people.

Washington Post, By arming Ukraine, Biden shows growing appetite to cross Putin’s red lines, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe, June 1, 2023. Despite warnings that arming Ukraine would start a world war, President Biden continues to push Vladimir Putin’s limits — a strategy that brings risk and reward.

President Biden’s decision last month to help Ukraine obtain F-16 fighter jets marked another crossing of a Russian red line that Vladimir Putin has said would transform the war and draw Washington and Moscow into direct conflict.
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Despite the Russian leader’s apocalyptic warnings, the United States has gradually agreed to expand Ukraine’s arsenal with Javelin and Stinger missiles, HIMARS rocket launchers, advanced missile defense systems, drones, helicopters, M1 Abrams tanks and, soon, fourth-generation fighter jets.

A key reason for brushing aside Putin’s threats, U.S. officials say, is a dynamic that has held since the opening days of the war: Russia’s president has not followed through on promises to punish the West for providing weapons to Ukraine. His bluffing has given U.S. and European leaders some confidence they can continue doing so without severe consequences — but to what extent remains one of the conflict’s most dangerous uncertainties.

New York Times, Climate Shocks Are Making Parts of America Uninsurable. It Just Got Worse, Christopher Flavelle, Jill Cowan and Ivan Penn, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The largest insurer in California said it would stop offering new coverage. It’s part of a broader trend of companies pulling back from dangerous areas.

The climate crisis is becoming a financial crisis.

This month, the largest homeowner insurance company in California, State Farm, announced that it would stop selling coverage to homeowners. That’s not just in wildfire zones, but everywhere in the state.

Insurance companies, tired of losing money, are raising rates, restricting coverage or pulling out of some areas altogether — making it more expensive for people to live in their homes.

“Risk has a price,” said Roy Wright, the former official in charge of insurance at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and now head of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, a research group. “We’re just now seeing it.”

In parts of eastern Kentucky ravaged by storms last summer, the price of flood insurance is set to quadruple. In Louisiana, the top insurance official says the market is in crisis, and is offering millions of dollars in subsidies to try to draw insurers to the state.

And in much of Florida, homeowners are increasingly struggling to buy storm coverage. Most big insurers have pulled out of the state already, sending homeowners to smaller private companies that are straining to stay in business — a possible glimpse into California’s future if more big insurers leave.
Growing ‘catastrophe exposure’

State Farm, which insures more homeowners in California than any other company, said it would stop accepting applications for most types of new insurance policies in the state because of “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

The company said that while it recognized the work of California officials to reduce losses from wildfires, it had to stop writing new policies “to improve the company’s financial strength.” A State Farm spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Insurance rates in California jumped after wildfires became more devastating than anyone had anticipated. A series of fires that broke out in 2017, many ignited by sparks from failing utility equipment, exploded in size with the effects of climate change. Some homeowners lost their insurance entirely because insurers refused to cover homes in vulnerable areas.

Michael Soller, a spokesman for the California Department of Insurance, said the agency was working to address the underlying factors that have caused disruption in the insurance industry across the country and around the world, including the biggest one: climate change.

New York Times, Oklahoma Supreme Court Rules New Abortion Bans Unconstitutional, Jacey Fortin, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Oklahoma’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday that two laws passed last year that ban most abortions are unconstitutional.

But the ruling does not affect a law passed in 1910 which still prohibits most abortions in the state, unless they are necessary to save the life of the mother.

The laws that were struck down by the court were civil laws that had relied on suits from private citizens to enforce them. Both had made exceptions for cases involving a “medical emergency.”

But the justices took issue with that language in their 6-3 ruling, which suggested that the exceptions were too narrow. They maintained that a woman has a constitutional right to end a pregnancy in order to save her life, without specifying the need for a medical emergency.

Why It Matters: Oklahoma is among a number of Republican-led states that moved to ban abortion in anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. Legal challenges were quick to follow, and many cases ended up before state supreme courts. Those courts have become critical arbiters in deciding abortion access, and a new political front in the nation’s abortion battles. In some conservative states, courts have decided that their state constitutions protect abortion rights.

The decision also highlighted legal complications around how abortion restrictions and exceptions might be interpreted in cases where a woman’s life is at risk. Doctors in other states with abortion bans said they have struggled to provide care for patients without breaking the law.

 

Trump Probes, Pro-Trump Rioters, Election Deniers

 

Justice Department Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, left, and former President Donald Trump, shown in a collage via CNN.

New York Times, Trump Was Taped Discussing Sensitive Document He Had Kept After Leaving Office, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Alan Feuer, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Federal prosecutors obtained the recording as part of their investigation into former President Trump’s handling of classified documents.

Federal prosecutors investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified material have a recording of Mr. Trump from 2021 discussing a sensitive military document he had kept after leaving the White House, two people briefed on the matter said.

In the recording, Mr. Trump suggested he knew the document was secret and had not declassified it, one person briefed on the matter said.

The existence of the recording could undermine Mr. Trump’s repeated claim that he had already declassified material that remained in his possession after he left office. Prosecutors are scrutinizing whether Mr. Trump obstructed efforts by federal officials to retrieve documents he took with him after leaving office and whether he violated laws governing the handling of classified material.

The existence of the recording was reported earlier by CNN.

The recording was made during a meeting Mr. Trump held in July 2021 with people helping his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, write a memoir of his 10 months in the White House, according to the people briefed on the matter. The meeting was held at Mr. Trump’s club at Bedminster, N.J., where he spends summers.

Until now, the focus of the documents investigation has been largely on material Mr. Trump kept with him at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, rather than in New Jersey.

Mr. Meadows did not attend the meeting, but at least two of Mr. Trump’s aides did. One, Margo Martin, routinely taped the interviews he gave for books being written about him that year.

On the recording, Mr. Trump began railing about his handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was described in media accounts at the time as having guarded against Mr. Trump’s striking Iran in the final days of the presidency, according to the people briefed on the matter.

Mr. Trump then began referencing a document that he had with him, saying that it had been compiled by General Milley and was related to attacking Iran, the people briefed on the matter said. Among other comments, he mentioned his classification abilities during the discussion, one person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump can be heard handling paper on the tape, though it is not clear whether it was the document in question.

The Justice Department obtained the recording in recent months, a potentially key piece in a mountain of evidence that prosecutors have amassed under the special counsel, Jack Smith, since he was appointed in November to oversee the federal investigations into Mr. Trump.

 

The warrant authorizing the search of former president Donald Trump’s home said agents were seeking documents possessed in violation of the Espionage Act.

New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case, Alan Feuer, Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Investigators are trying to determine if there was an attempt to obstruct them from accessing security footage from near where classified material was stored.

For the past six months, prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith have sought to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House.

More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides sought to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how those documents were stored and who had access to them.

The search for answers on this second issue has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they pose questions to an expanding cast of low-level workers at the compound, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of material in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera that was mounted outside the room.

Two weeks ago, the latest of these employees, an information technology worker named Yuscil Taveras, appeared before a grand jury in Washington, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Taveras was asked questions about his dealings with two other Trump employees: Walt Nauta, right, a longtime aide to Mr. Trump who served as one of his valets in the White House, and Carlos Deoliveira, described by one person familiar with the events as the head of maintenance at Mar-a-Lago.

Phone records show that Mr. Deoliveira called Mr. Taveras last summer, and prosecutors wanted to know why. The call caught the government’s attention because it was placed shortly after prosecutors issued a subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, demanding the footage from the surveillance camera near the storage room.

The call also occurred just weeks after Mr. Deoliveira helped Mr. Nauta move boxes of documents into the storage room — the same room that Mr. Deoliveira at one point fitted with a lock. The movement of the boxes into the room took place at another key moment: on the day before prosecutors descended on Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Mr. Trump’s lawyers intended to get him to comply with a demand to return all classified documents.

New York Times, Trump White House Aides Subpoenaed in Firing of Election Security Expert, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, June 1, 2023 (print ed.).  The special counsel is scrutinizing the dismissal of Christopher Krebs, who contradicted former President Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.

The special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election has subpoenaed staff members from the Trump White House who may have been involved in firing the government cybersecurity official whose agency judged the election “the most secure in American history,” according to two people briefed on the matter.

The team led by the special counsel, Jack Smith, has been asking witnesses about the events surrounding the firing of Christopher Krebs, who was the Trump administration’s top cybersecurity official during the 2020 election. Mr. Krebs’s assessment that the election was secure was at odds with Mr. Trump’s baseless assertions that it was a “fraud on the American public.”

Mr. Smith’s team is also seeking information about how White House officials, including in the Presidential Personnel Office, approached the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump turned to after his election loss as a way to try to stay in power, people familiar with the questions said.

The investigators appear focused on Mr. Trump’s state of mind around the firing of Mr. Krebs, as well as on establishing a timeline of events leading up to the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021. The latest subpoenas, issued roughly two weeks ago, went to officials in the personnel office, according to the two people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Krebs enraged Mr. Trump when his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, released a statement nine days after the 2020 election attesting to the security of the results. The statement added a sharp rebuke — in boldface type — to the unfounded conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and his allies were spreading about compromised voting machines.

“There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” the statement from Mr. Krebs’s agency read.

Five days later, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Krebs was “terminated” after releasing a “highly inaccurate” statement about the 2020 election.

Mr. Krebs later testified to the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that before his firing, he was aware of “skepticism” among Trump allies about his “loyalty to the president.

Politico, ‘Deranged leadership’: Oath Keeper who entered Capitol on Jan. 6 turns on Stewart Rhodes, Kyle Cheney, June 1, 2023. Roberto Minuta, the third Jan. 6 defendant to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, got 4.5 years in prison.

Roberto Minuta, one of more than a dozen Oath Keepers who surged with a mob into the Capitol on Jan. 6, lashed out at the group’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, on Thursday as he prepared to face sentencing for his conviction on seditious conspiracy.

Minuta said Rhodes was part of a “deranged leadership” that turned the Oath Keepers “into a political ‘rah-rah Trump’ disaster” that duped many of the group’s members into criminal activity.

“I was misled and naive,” Minuta said, shortly before U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta sentenced him to 4½ years in prison.

Mehta credited Minuta’s comments and expressions of remorse for his actions but said his efforts to downplay his actions and involvement were belied by his clear violent intentions in the weeks preceding Jan. 6.

“Steeping yourself and cloaking yourself in this tradition of the founders and violent uprising and believing that the Second Amendment allows individual citizens to gather up arms to battle their government?” Mehta said. “The law doesn’t permit that.”

Minuta is the third Jan. 6 defendant sentenced for seditious conspiracy, the gravest charge leveled by prosecutors against about a dozen defendants charged for their role in the Jan. 6 attack.

Mehta sentenced Rhodes last week to 18 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down yet in the 1,000 cases prosecuted stemming from the violent Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. Mehta also sentenced Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs to 12 years in prison last week. Their sentencings are the start of the most significant reckoning for the Jan. 6 rioters whom prosecutors have described as the key drivers of the violence and chaos.
Jan. 6 in 180 seconds

The judge described Rhodes as an ongoing danger to the republic who used his Yale Law education and charisma to manipulate supporters and gin up chaos and destruction. Rhodes, he found, was a key driver of the mayhem on Jan. 6, positioning the Oath Keepers to be at the forefront of a potential violent clash to prevent the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Minuta’s lawyer, William Shipley, similarly piled on Rhodes, calling him a “parasite” who used the Oath Keepers organization.

Minuta, in his remarks, said his fury at the government was driven in part by the Covid-era destruction of his business and threats he received when he opened his Newburgh, N.Y., tattoo shop in violation of local restrictions. He said that anger fused with claims by Trump and others that the election had been stolen led him to make incendiary comments on social media. He apologized for both his words and his conduct on Jan. 6.

Minuta also said his entry into the Capitol was simply about aiding police, who he claimed had asked for assistance — a proposition Mehta said was belied by Minuta’s words and actions the entire day.

“You weren’t there to help them,” Mehta said. “You may have convinced yourself of that. But there isn’t any shred of evidence that would be consistent with that intent.”

The judge added that the jury found Minuta culpable of acting in concert with other Oath Keepers whose conduct was even graver — and the law makes him culpable for the actions of his co-conspirators.

“Operating with others gives people greater courage, it gives them the ability to do more harm and it gives them the ability to have a far greater impact than they can do on their own,” Mehta said.

But Mehta also sharply diverged from prosecutors, who initially sought a 17-year sentence, and tried to cast Minuta in a similar light as Rhodes. Assistant U.S. Attorney Troy Edwards described him as a “dangerous individual to others and his republic” with a “warped sense of patriotism that calls for violence against the government when he disagrees with it.”

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• Proof, Investigative Commentary on The Trump Trials, Vol. 15: New Indictments Now Expected; NYC Criminal Trial Date Set; a Finding of Sexual Abuse and Defamation, Seth Abramson
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• Washington Post, More Oath Keepers convicted with Rhodes for Jan. 6 attack are sentenced, Spencer S. Hsu
• Emptywheel, Analysis: Oaths Broken, Oath Keepers Bowed: Sentences for 2 more in marquee Jan. 6 conspiracy case, Brandi Buchman
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New York Times, Opinion: Turkey’s Election Is a Warning About Trump, Bret Stephens, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). “The totalitarian phenomenon,” the French philosopher Jean-François Revel once noted, “is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or — much more mysteriously — to submit to it.”

It’s an observation that should help guide our thinking about the re-election this week of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, shown above. And it should serve as a warning about other places — including the Republican Party — where autocratic leaders, seemingly incompetent in many respects, are returning to power through democratic means.

That’s not quite the way Erdogan’s close-but-comfortable victory in Sunday’s runoff over the former civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu is being described in many analyses. The president, they say, has spent 20 years in power tilting every conceivable scale in his favor.

Erdogan has used regulatory means and abused the criminal-justice system to effectively control the news media. He has exercised his presidential power to deliver subsidies, tax cuts, cheap loans and other handouts to favored constituencies. He has sought to criminalize an opposition party on specious grounds of links to terrorist groups. In December, a Turkish court effectively barred Erdogan’s most serious prospective rival, Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of Istanbul, from politics by sentencing him to prison on charges of insulting public officials.

Then, too, Kilicdaroglu was widely seen as a colorless and inept politician, promising a return to a status quo ante that many Turks remember, with no fondness, as a time of regular economic crises and a kind of repressive secularism.

All of this is true, as far as it goes, and it helps underscore the worldwide phenomenon of what Fareed Zakaria aptly calls “free and unfair elections.” But it doesn’t go far enough.

Turkey under Erdogan is in a dreadful state and has been for a long time. Inflation last year hit 85 percent and is still running north of 40 percent, thanks to Erdogan’s insistence on cutting interest rates in the teeth of rising prices. He has used a series of show trials — some based in fact, others pure fantasy — to eviscerate civil freedoms. February’s earthquakes, which took an estimated 50,000 lives and injured twice as many, were badly handled by the government and exposed the corruption of a system that cared more for patronage networks than for well-built buildings.

Under normal political expectations, Erdogan should have paid the political price with a crushing electoral defeat. Not only did he survive, he increased his vote share in some of the towns worst hit by, and most neglected after, the earthquakes. “We love him,” explained a resident quoted in The Economist. “For the call to prayer, for our homes, for our headscarves.”

That last line is telling, and not just because it gets to the importance of Erdogan’s Islamism as the secret of his success. It’s a rebuke to James Carville’s parochially American slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Actually, no: It’s also God, tradition, values, identity, culture and the resentments that go with each. Only a denuded secular imagination fails to notice that there are things people care about more than their paychecks.

Washington Post, Iran plans to escalate attacks on U.S. troops in Syria, part of Russian-backed strategy, leaks show, Joby Warrick and Evan Hill, June 1, 2023. Iran is arming militants in Syria for a new phase of lethal attacks against U.S. troops in the country, while also working with Russia on a broader strategy to drive Americans from the region, intelligence officials and leaked classified documents say.

Iran and its allies are building and training forces to use more powerful armor-piercing roadside bombs intended specifically to target U.S. military vehicles and kill U.S. personnel, according to classified intelligence reports obtained by The Washington Post. Such attacks would constitute an escalation of Iran’s long-running campaign of using proxy militias to launch rocket and drone strikes on U.S. forces in Syria.

Drone attacks have wounded six U.S. service members and killed a Defense Department contractor, and the new explosive devices could add to the toll of U.S. casualties, risking a wider military confrontation with Iran, current and former intelligence analysts and weapons experts say. The same type of weapon, called an explosively formed penetrator, or EFP, was used by pro-Iranian insurgents in lethal attacks against American military convoys during the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Officials with Iran’s elite Quds Force unit directed and oversaw testing of one of the explosives, which reportedly sliced through a tank’s armored plating in a trial run conducted in late January in Dumayr, east of Damascus, the Syrian capital, according to one of the intelligence reports. The document, part of the trove of classified materials leaked on the messaging platform Discord, appears to be based on intercepted communications by Syrian and Lebanese militants allied to Iran. One apparent attempt to use such devices against U.S. forces was apparently thwarted in late February when three bombs were seized by U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria, a second document states.

Washington Post, A rare look inside the notorious Russian jail holding an American journalist, Mary Ilyushina, Francesca Ebel and Júlia Ledur, June 1, 2023. Lefortovo serves as a pretrial detention center. Still, prisoners can spend years there. Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was at the prison for two years before being convicted on charges of espionage and is now serving 16-year sentence at a penal colony.

Based on descriptions from inmates, lawyers and prison monitors, including letters and sketches, as well as documentaries and photos of Lefortovo, The Post built a portrait of what life is like inside the prison.

Ivan Safronov, a Russian journalist serving a 22-year sentence in Krasnodar for treason, spent over two years in Lefortovo, from 2020 to 2022. In a letter to The Washington Post about his time there, he wrote, “the purpose is to isolate a person, to ‘freeze’ them in order to get confessions from them.”

Lefortovo was built in the late 1800s, during czarist rule, and it lies on the eastern edge of the capital. The yellow-walled, four-story building was built in the shape of the letter K. Former inmates describe a facility designed to instill fear, isolation and despair.

In the corridors outside the cells, all sound is muted by old, worn carpets. “They are not for beauty or for pleasing the eyes of prisoners but so that steps do not break the utter crypt-like silence, one that is oppressive and makes your ears ring,” wrote Valentin Moiseyev, a Russian diplomat who was accused of espionage in 1998 and spent 3½ years in Lefortovo, in his memoir “How I Was a ‘South Korean Spy.’”

During Soviet rule, a KGB wing was added to the compound and was later occupied by its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB). In the early 2000s, Lefortovo was reassigned from the FSB to the Justice Ministry because of the Council of Europe requirement that prohibits investigative bodies from operating prisons.

But in reality, only a door separates the FSB from the prison, according to a state television documentary about the facility.

Safronov recalled that detainees are allowed daily walks on Lefortovo’s roof, confined to restricted exercise yards. Russia’s penitentiary service regulations say the walks last an hour. A central radio system is often turned on to blast music across the compound — another way to ensure the prisoners can’t hear each other, a guard told the documentarian.

After an initial 10-day quarantine, prisoners are transferred to the cells where they are either kept alone or joined by up to two cellmates.

Washington Post, Two journalists stand trial in Iran for stories that sparked protests, Miriam Berger, June 1, 2023. Two female Iranian journalists went on trial behind closed doors this week for their reporting on the death of Mahsa Amini, which sparked a popular uprising.

The Kurdish woman, 22, died in custody of Iran’s “morality police” last year after she was detained for an alleged violation of the country’s conservative dress code for women.

Elahe Mohammadi, a reporter with Ham-Mihan newspaper, and Niloofar Hamedi, of Shargh newspaper, brought early attention to the story, which set off widespread protests and a broader movement to end clerical rule.

The journalists, who have spent months in detentions, stand accused of “colluding with hostile powers” — a charge they deny, according to their families, and which could carry a long sentence or the death penalty. The government has not presented any evidence publicly backing up the allegations.

Iran executes three men connected to anti-government protests

Advocates and rights groups say the reporters have little hope of a fair trial or even basic due process under Iran’s notoriously opaque and politicized judicial system. Thousands of demonstrators remain jailed, and at least seven have been executed, in connection to the protest movement.

New York Times, Israel Called Them ‘Precision’ Strikes. But Civilian Homes Were Hit, Too, Raja Abdulrahim, Photographs by Samar Abu Elouf, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Palestinians say that the strikes against Islamic Jihad amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

As the Khoswan family slept, the Israeli military dropped three GBU-39 bombs into their sixth-floor apartment. One of the bombs exploded just outside the parents’ bedroom, leaving the apartment looking as if a tornado had swept through, killing three family members.

But they were not the stated target of the attack earlier this month.

The Israeli military had dropped the bombs into their home to assassinate a commander of the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad who lived in the apartment below.

Jamal Khoswan, a dentist, Mirvat Khoswan, a pharmacist, and their son, a 19-year-old dental student, were killed in the strike as well as the Islamic Jihad commander who lived downstairs, Tareq Izzeldeen, and two of his children, a girl, 11, and a boy, 9.

“Commanders have been targeted before,” Menna Khoswan, 16, said this month at a memorial service for her father at the hospital where he served as chairman of the board. “But to target the commander and those around him, honestly this is something we didn’t expect.”

Israel says that it conducts “precision strikes” aimed at taking out armed groups’ commanders or operation sites, and that it does not target civilians. But the airstrikes are often conducted in heavily populated areas, and many Palestinians in Gaza say they amount to a collective punishment aimed at making them fearful about who their neighbors might be.

Israel also destroys entire residential buildings or towers if it believes an armed group has an office or apartment there, although it usually issues an evacuation warning beforehand.

Menna’s parents and brother were among at least 12 civilians killed by Israeli strikes during five days of fighting between Israel and Islamic Jihad this month, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Israel says that nine civilians were killed in the strikes.

 

Then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, shown in an AFP photo on May 24, 2022.

New York Times, Pakistan’s Powerful Military Faces New Resistance From Courts, Christina Goldbaum and Salman Masood, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Long seen as kowtowing to the military, the judiciary has defied it in recent rulings, signaling an important shift in Pakistan’s political landscape.

For most of Pakistan’s eight-decade history, its courts were largely aligned with the country’s powerful military. They gave three coups a legal stamp of approval, disqualified dozens of politicians who had fallen out of favor with the generals, and turned a blind eye to the disappearances of political dissidents.

But with Pakistan in the grip of a political crisis that has sparked violent protests across the country, the judiciary has openly contradicted the military and emerged as a political force in its own right, analysts say. In recent months, as former Prime Minister Imran Khan has clashed with the military and current civilian government, the courts have issued ruling after ruling that have thwarted what many consider attempts by the military to sideline Mr. Khan from politics.

That defiance was highlighted earlier this month, when shortly after the authorities arrested Mr. Khan in a corruption inquiry, the courts declared his arrest unlawful, ordered his release and granted him bail.

It is a striking shift in Pakistan, where the military has long acted as the country’s ultimate political power broker: Directly ruling for over half of the country’s existence and acting as the veiled power behind civilian governments. And as the courts strike out on their own, they are injecting even more uncertainty into an already volatile political climate.

New York Times, Sirens and Confusion in Seoul After False Evacuation Alert, Choe Sang-Hun, Victoria Kim and Jin Yu Young, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). South Koreans said the alarm, which was set off by a North Korean rocket launch, showed that their country was unprepared for a real emergency.

The emergency siren began wailing at 6:32 a.m. Several minutes later, personal cellphones around Seoul were screeching with a government alert urging residents to “prepare to evacuate,” children and the old and weak first.

For a half an hour on Wednesday morning, confusion and panic swept across this city of 10 million as news spread that North Korea had fired a rocket. Then, the next wave of messages hit: The South’s home ministry issued a notice saying the earlier alert was a “false alarm.”

Anxiety soon turned into anger and exasperation.

“They messed up big time,” said Lee Jae, an office worker in Seoul who woke up to the sirens.

South Koreans, who have grown inured to North Korea’s frequent provocations, were met with a disturbing taste of how their country might respond to a major military attack on Wednesday when their government caused confusion with its public alert system at a time of heightened tension in the region.

New York Times, German Court Convicts Left-Wing Group in Violent Attacks Against Far Right, Christopher F. Schuetze, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). A 28-year-old woman and three accomplices were sentenced to prison for their roles in a series of attacks on people they considered neo-Nazis.

A German court on Wednesday convicted a 28-year-old woman and three accomplices of organizing and carrying out brutal attacks against people they perceived to be neo-Nazis, in what experts have described as an uncommon case of left-wing extremist violence in the country.

The woman, who in accordance with Germany’s strict privacy laws was identified only as Lina E., was sentenced to five years and three months in prison by a court in Dresden, in eastern Germany, according to DPA, a German newswire, and MDR, a regional public broadcaster. Three other members of the group — identified as Lennart A., 28; Jannis R., 37; and Philipp M., 28 — received prison sentences ranging from two years and five months to three years and three months.

The case has been widely watched in Germany, where the authorities have long been accused of failing to prosecute or slow-walking the prosecution of figures tied to right-wing attacks, and especially in the east of the country, where the dominance of far-right groups has long overshadowed a smaller and apparently also violence-prone far-left scene. The trial also forced progressives to consider how far the fight against right-wing extremism should go, experts say.

Nancy Faeser, the country’s interior minister, said in a statement after the sentencing that “in a democratic constitutional state, there must be no room for vigilante justice.” She added, “No objective justifies political violence.”

New York Times, Tara Reade, Who Accused Biden of Assault, Says She Has Moved to Russia, Eduardo Medina, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Years after accusing President Biden of sexual assault, Ms. Reade told a Russian outlet that she had moved in order to feel safe.

Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who accused President Biden of sexual assault as he ran for president in 2020, said on Tuesday that she had moved to Russia and was seeking citizenship there, according to Sputnik, a Russian-government-run news site.

Ms. Reade told Sputnik in a news conference that while her “dream is to live” in both the United States and Russia, she might reside only in Russia because that is where she feels “surrounded by protection and safety.”

In 2019, Ms. Reade, who briefly worked as a staff assistant in Mr. Biden’s Senate office in 1993, accused him of inappropriately touching her. Then in 2020, around the time when he appeared likely to win the Democratic nomination for president, she accused him of sexual assault. Mr. Biden flatly denied her allegations.

In interviews with The New York Times in April 2020, no former Biden staff members could corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation or recall any similar behavior by Mr. Biden toward her or any women. A friend of Ms. Reade’s said that she had told her the details of the allegation at the time.

In May 2020, a high-profile lawyer of the #MeToo era, Douglas H. Wigdor, dropped Ms. Reade as a client as her credibility came under harsh scrutiny after Antioch University disputed her claim of having received a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus.

On Tuesday, Ms. Reade told Sputnik that while her decision to go to Russia “was very difficult,” she believed she would be more safe there.

“As far as like going to another safe haven, I mean, there are many Americans here, and I don’t want to out a bunch of Americans, but there are people here that are coming to Russia,” Ms. Reade said.

She added that “luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating.”

“So we’re lucky,” she said.

Her departure to Russia comes as Moscow and Washington spar over the war in Ukraine, which President Vladimir V. Putin casts as an existential struggle with the West, which backs Kyiv.

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More on Ukraine War

New York Times, U.N. Nuclear Agency Sets New Rules for Plant Near Ukraine’s Front Line, Anushka Patil, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at the Ukrainian facility that has been controlled by Russian forces for more than a year. The guidelines are intended to avert a catastrophe at Europe’s largest nuclear facility, which Russian forces have controlled for over a year.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Tuesday that he had established five basic rules to avoid nuclear catastrophe at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and that he would publicly report any violations.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the I.A.E.A., briefed the U.N. Security Council on the rules, which are largely based on safety principles the agency established a year ago. The requirements are fairly straightforward — the first stipulates that “there should be no attack of any kind from or against the plant.”

Russian forces have controlled the plant — Europe’s largest — for more than a year. The plant is no longer producing electricity for outside use, but Ukrainian workers continue to perform essential functions, including operating critical cooling equipment.

Frontline fighting has repeatedly damaged the facility, disrupted its power supply and contributed to a staffing crisis that is “not sustainable,” Mr. Grossi said on Tuesday.

Mr. Grossi’s promise to report violations comes after months of unsuccessfully trying to establish a security zone around the plant, where the agency has stationed its own monitors. Even as Russia and Ukraine accused each other of causing damage and outages, Mr. Grossi largely avoided placing blame on either country while he sought to negotiate an agreement.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• The I.A.E.A.’s new measures for the Zaporizhzhia plant are meant to avert nuclear catastrophe.
• Blinken is expected to discuss Russia and China with European officials in Sweden.
• Russia has carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Ukrainian health care facilities, the W.H.O. says.
• Drone strikes force Moscow to adapt its Cold War missile shield to modern warfare.
• The drone attacks in Moscow are the latest assault exposing Russia’s vulnerability.

New York Times, Ukraine Live Updates: Another Early Morning Strike on Kyiv Kills Three, Andrew E. Kramer, Nicole Tung and Victoria Kim, June 1, 2023 (print ed.).  At least one child was among the dead, local officials said. Russia has recently increased the pace and intensity of its strikes on the capital.

Russia targeted the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, yet again in the early hours of Thursday, killing three people, including at least one child. Air raid sirens and loud explosions throughout the city awoke residents worn out by a month of relentless attacks.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on the Telegram messaging app that an additional 16 people were injured by debris from air defense systems shooting down incoming attacks. Ukraine’s general staff headquarters said Kyiv had been attacked by a volley of 10 Iskander ballistic missiles, all of which were shot down.

 The city’s military administration said some of the debris fell on a children’s clinic and an adjacent building. A mother and child were killed trying to get into a shelter at the clinic that was locked, according to emergency workers at the scene who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.

City officials opened a criminal investigation into the clinic and the administrators responsible for operating the shelter there, centered on whether the shelter was properly maintained and why it may have been inaccessible, Mr. Klitschko said.

It was yet another night that Kyiv’s 3.6 million residents were jolted out of bed and sent scurrying for cover. The overnight attack early Thursday left very little time for residents to take shelter, with antimissile defenses colliding with missiles just six minutes after the air alarm sounded, the Kyiv military administration said.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Another overnight attack jolts Kyiv residents out of bed.
• Kyiv cancels its Children’s Day events as Ukraine loses another young life.
• A Russian diplomat visits South Africa amid a debate over an arrest warrant for Putin.
• The U.S. promises more aid to Ukraine, including ammunition for drones and artillery.
• A Zelensky adviser suggests that Russia should agree to a buffer zone as a condition of a peace accord.
• The struggle for control of the Arctic looms as Blinken tours NATO’s north.
• Another overnight attack jolts Kyiv residents out of bed.

New York Times, ‘We Have No Days Off’: The Nonstop Work of Ukrainian Air Defenses, Marc Santora, June 1, 2023. Very little from the waves of Russian air attacks has penetrated the patched-together but increasingly sophisticated air defense network. Here’s why.

Find it, target it, shoot it.

The drill is the same for Ukraine’s air defense crews as they work round the clock to combat the relentless barrage of missiles the Russians launch at Kyiv, mostly foiling the most intense bombardment of the capital since the first weeks of the war.

In the month of May alone, Russia bombarded Kyiv 17 times. It has fired hypersonic missiles from MIG-31 fighter jets and attacked with land-based ballistic missiles powerful enough to level an entire apartment block. Russian bombers and ships have fired dozens of long-range cruise missiles, and more than 200 attack drones have featured in blitzes meant to confuse and overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.

It presents a constant struggle for Ukrainian defenders. Russian assaults can be unrelenting. They come mostly at night, but sometimes in daytime hours, as they did on Monday.

Even when Ukraine manages to blast missiles from the sky, falling debris can bring death and destruction. Early Thursday, Russia sent a volley of 10 ballistic missiles at Kyiv; Ukrainian officials said they were all shot down but that falling fragments killed three people, including a child, and injured more than a dozen others.

Relevant Recent Headlines

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia received Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, on Wednesday in Moscow (Photo by Mikhail Klimentyev of Sputnik via Associated Press).

• New York Times, Barely Noting the Ukraine War in Public, Putin Acts Like Time Is on His Side
• New York Times, After a Show-Stopping Entrance at the G7, Zelensky Pleads for More Aid
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• New York Times, In a Sharp Reversal, Biden Opens a Path for Ukraine to Get Fighter Jets

 

 More On U.S. Economy, Debt, Budget, Jobs, Banking, Crypto

 

New York Times, There is one big part of the debt ceiling deal that Congress isn’t talking about, Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano, June 1, 2023 (print ed.).  The House passed legislation Wednesday night that will raise the nation’s borrowing limit and reduce the federal deficit, the result of lengthy negotiations between House Republicans and the White House.

But the bill is only part of the full deal. A New York Times analysis of public descriptions of the agreement finds that the full deficit savings will be only about two-thirds of what is captured in the bill. That’s because the agreement struck by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden will require Congress to authorize much more spending as part of a second set of bills expected to pass in coming months.

Those future changes, which the White House is calling “agreed-upon adjustments,” and which many observers have called side deals or even gimmicks, would increase federal spending in unconventional ways and then direct that money into the part of the budget that the current bill cuts the deepest.

Instead of a total deficit reduction of $1.5 trillion over a decade, as the Congressional Budget Office has projected, the full package would probably reduce deficits by about $1 trillion, including interest payments, over a decade. That’s a major shift from where Republicans started negotiations — the bill they passed last month would have reduced deficits by $4.8 trillion.

Because the second half of the deal will not come up for a vote right away, lawmakers could change their minds. But negotiators are confident enough in the agreement that they are moving forward with the debt limit bill. That legislation also includes an incentive for Republicans to pass the second part: If they don’t do so by the end of next April, defense spending will be automatically cut, an outcome most of them say they would like to avoid.

Most of the savings in the current legislation come from spending caps on a part of the budget known as nondefense discretionary spending. That category includes programs across the government that Congress must fund each year through legislation, including domestic law enforcement, environmental protection and air traffic control. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the caps would result in lower spending than its “baseline” forecasts — what would otherwise happen if current spending kept pace with inflation.

New York Times, Representative Chip Roy of Texas has emerged as the face of the Republican revolt against the debt limit deal, Luke Broadwater, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The Texas Republican, who is the policy director for the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, has become the face of Republican opposition to a compromise forged to avert a federal default.

At the height of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s quest for his post in January, Representative Chip Roy, right, Republican of Texas, darted from meeting to meeting ensuring that hard-line conservatives got what they wanted before agreeing to back the California Republican.

One by one, nearly all of their demands were met in what Mr. Roy would later call a “power-sharing” agreement between Mr. McCarthy and his right flank. The hard right won three seats on the influential House Rules Committee (one went to Mr. Roy); a commitment from Mr. McCarthy that Republicans would never raise the debt ceiling without deep spending cuts; and a rule allowing any one lawmaker to force a vote to oust the speaker should he fail to keep his promises.

Now, Mr. Roy, 50, the policy chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus who has emerged as the hard right’s spending expert, is accusing Mr. McCarthy of having reneged on the deal, and is attempting to exert his leverage again — this time with potentially dire consequences. He and his allies are attempting to shoot down the agreement Mr. McCarthy reached with President Biden to suspend the debt ceiling just days before the country is headed for default.

If not, he said, the House Freedom Caucus might once again have to go toe-to-toe with Mr. McCarthy. Several members have floated the idea of calling for Mr. McCarthy’s removal.

“If we can’t kill it, we’re going to have to regroup and figure out the whole leadership arrangement again,” Mr. Roy said Tuesday on Glenn Beck’s radio show.

That’s a far cry from the position Mr. Roy found himself in only weeks ago, when he worked alongside House G.O.P. leaders to ensure passage of a far more conservative debt-limit bill, which would have lifted the borrowing limit only in exchange for substantial spending cuts. Representative Garret Graves, Republican of Louisiana and an ally of Mr. McCarthy’s, said he gained respect for Mr. Roy working tightly with him on that package.

“I didn’t have an incredibly high opinion of Representative Chip Roy going into it. He’s one of my best friends now,” Mr. Graves said.

Now, Mr. Roy, who is a mix of legislative wonk and speechifying firebrand, has been circulating documents breaking down all the different ways he believes Mr. McCarthy’s 99-page debt limit deal is, in his words, a “betrayal” of conservatives. In an easy-to-digest format, they lay out — step by step — how the agreement Mr. McCarthy reached with Mr. Biden falls short of conservative demands to rein in spending, streamline energy project permitting and impose stringent work requirements for social safety net benefits.

He and his allies view the country’s $31.5 trillion national debt as a greater threat to America than the Treasury Department’s warning that the country could default on certain bills by June 5.

New York Times, 14th Amendment Questions Linger Despite Debt Limit Deal, Alan Rappeport, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). President Biden has been considering ways to challenge the constitutionality of the debt limit to defuse the risk of default.

The agreement President Biden struck with House Republicans to raise the debt limit aims to avert a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt. But the brinkmanship that brought the United States within days of being unable to pay its bills has renewed calls for the Biden administration to stop the debt ceiling from continuing to be a political tool.

After declaring this year that he would not negotiate spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit, Mr. Biden did exactly that. The deal includes spending caps and scales back some of the president’s policy priorities in exchange for suspending the debt limit for two years.

The bill, which the House is expected to bring to a vote on Wednesday, has reopened the door to the debt limit being a perpetual point of leverage that allows the party in the minority — in this case, the Republicans — to use the borrowing cap to extract legislative concessions.

That has raised questions about whether there is a way to preclude another episode like this one — by abolishing the debt ceiling or using the 14th Amendment to render the statutory limit unconstitutional.

Mr. Biden opted against challenging the constitutionality of the debt limit this time around but suggested last week that he had the authority to do so and hinted that he might try to use it in the future.

“My hope and intention is when we resolve this problem, I’d find a rationale to take it to the courts to see whether or not the 14th Amendment is, in fact, something that would be able to stop it,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference in Japan after a gathering of leaders from the Group of 7 nations.

The president said on Sunday that any discussion about whether to invoke the 14th amendment was not imminent. “That’s another day,” he said.

solution to avoiding future debt limit fights because it includes a clause stating that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

Some legal scholars say that clause overrides the statutory borrowing limit, which is set by Congress and can be lifted or suspended only with lawmaker approval.

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• Washington Post, Opinion: Biden’s underrated deal-making prowess strikes again, Jennifer Rubin
• New York Times, Why the Debt Limit Spending Cuts Likely Won’t Shake the Economy
• The American Prospect, Opinion: X-DATE: As Deals Go, This Is One of Them, David Dayen
• New York Times, Analysis: In debt-limit negotiations, did President Biden find the reasonable middle or give away too much? Peter Baker
• New York Times, With a debt limit deal in hand, President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to the task of selling it

 

U.S. Courts, Crime, Guns, Immigration

New York Times, Prosecutors Scrutinize Political Nonprofit Groups for Fund-Raising Fraud, David A. Fahrenthold, William K. Rashbaum and Tiff Fehr, June 1, 2023. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have sought recordings of calls made by two networks of groups that solicited money from donors for a variety of politically tinged causes.

Federal prosecutors are scrutinizing at least 10 political nonprofit groups — including five recently profiled in The New York Times — seeking to determine if the groups defrauded donors, according to two recent subpoenas.

The subpoenas, both signed by the same Manhattan-based federal prosecutor, sought recordings of the fund-raising calls made by two separate networks of political nonprofits that together have raised tens of millions of dollars.

In the last five years, the Justice Department has charged a handful of other political operatives with fraud for running what prosecutors called “scam PACs.” Prosecutors said these groups deceived donors by promising that their money would be used to help politicians — then using it to enrich themselves.

The groups listed in the recent subpoenas have not been charged with any crime, and they have denied wrongdoing in the past. The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

One of the two recent subpoenas was signed May 15, according to a copy obtained by The Times. It sought recordings of fund-raising calls from five nonprofits that The Times had profiled a day earlier: the American Police Officers Alliance, the National Police Support Fund, the American Veterans Honor Fund, the Firefighters and EMS Fund and the Veterans Action Network.

The subpoena said that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating allegations of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

These groups are “527s,” named for a section of the tax code and overseen by the Internal Revenue Service. They are supposed to focus primarily on helping candidates for office.

Together, these five groups have raised $89 million since 2014, mostly from small-dollar donors who answered fund-raising robocalls. The largest of the five groups, the American Police Officers Alliance, promised in its calls to “support legislators whose goals are to keep our communities safer,” and to help the families of first responders killed in the line of duty.

But about 90 percent of the money raised was used to pay for more robocalls. Another 3 percent was paid to three political operatives from Wisconsin, who appeared to be the driving force behind all five groups.

Washington Post, FBI director Chris Wray to face contempt of Congress vote, Comer says, Jacqueline Alemany and Perry Stein, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee said he will seek to hold FBI director Christopher A. Wray in contempt of Congress, rejecting Wray’s offer to allow lawmakers to view an internal bureau document in a secure location instead of handing the document to the committee in response to a subpoena.

Wray, right, spoke by phone Wednesday with Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) about the committee’s demand for a form submitted by a confidential informant containing unsubstantiated allegations about President Biden and his family. Wray also spoke in a separate call with ranking minority member Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.).

FBI officials told Comer this week that Justice Department policy prevents them from giving the document to the committee because it could compromise a confidential source and dissuade others from bringing sensitive information to law enforcement agencies in the future. Wray said he could make a redacted version of the form available for review, but the lawmaker was not satisfied.

New York Times, Florida Art Scammer Sentenced to Over 2 Years in Federal Prison, Livia Albeck-Ripka, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The art dealer, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for laundering money made selling counterfeit art.

A Florida art dealer who promised bargains on works he claimed were originals by master artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring and Henri Matisse has been sentenced to more than two years in federal prison for running a counterfeit scheme, federal officials said.

The man, Daniel Elie Bouaziz, 69, owned several art galleries in Palm Beach County, Fla., through which he operated the counterfeit scheme. He was sentenced on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Miami to 27 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine, court filings show.

Mr. Bouaziz pleaded guilty in February to one charge of money laundering on the condition that federal prosecutors drop 16 other counts, according to the documents.

Neither Mr. Bouaziz nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday evening.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Bouaziz, a French and Israeli citizen born in Algeria, was in the United States on a B-2 visitor’s visa. They said the pieces he had represented as authentic works were cheap reproductions he had bought through online auctions. He was charged in June after an investigation that included the serving of search warrants at his galleries, a review of financial records and undercover purchases of what prosecutors had deemed to be fraudulent art.

According to the federal complaint, Mr. Bouaziz conducted his art dealing through three companies: Galerie Danieli, Danieli Fine Art and VIP Rentals L.L.C. The website for Danieli Fine Art advertises a collection from a wide range of notable artists, from Monet and Rodin to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Willem de Kooning.

But counterfeit Andy Warhols were what sent Mr. Bouaziz to prison.

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U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, left, and his billionaire friend and benefactor Harlan Crow (file photos).

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U.S. Politics, Elections, Governance

Washington Post, Former first lady Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia, Timothy Bella, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the Carter Center announced Tuesday, more than three months after her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, said he was spending his final days in hospice care.

In a news release, the Carter Center (which provided the photo of the couple above) said that Rosalynn Carter, 95, was comfortable and spending time with her 98-year-old husband at home in Plains, Ga.

“She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the organization said in a statement.

Carter, who was hailed by the organization as “the nation’s leading mental health advocate for much of her life,” frequently talked about caregiving before, during and after her time with her husband in the White House.

“The universality of caregiving is clear in our family, and we are experiencing the joy and the challenges of this journey,” the Carter Center said. “We do not expect to comment further and ask for understanding for our family and for everyone across the country serving in a caregiver role.”

Washington Post, Report: Utah GOP Rep. Chris Stewart to resign from Congress, Mariana Alfaro, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), who was first elected to Congress in 2012, will resign his seat to focus on his wife’s health, according to a published report.

The Salt Lake Tribune was the first to report on Stewart’s potential departure. A congressional official familiar with his plans confirmed the report to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity ahead of an official announcement.

According to the Tribune, Stewart, 62, could resign as soon as this week, and he will leave office to address the “ongoing health issues” of his wife, Evie. Those medical issues are not publicly known.

Stewart’s departure would reduce the GOP’s already-slim majority in the House — 222 seats to Democrats’ 213. Currently, if Democrats oppose a piece of legislation, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) can afford to lose only four votes from his caucus.

Stewart, a retired Air Force pilot, represents Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Salt Lake City. He and his wife have six children.

Per Utah law, Stewart’s resignation will spark a special election, whose winner will fill the remainder of his term. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) will announce the timeline for the race’s primary and general elections once Stewart officially announces his resignation.

Stewart, who serves on the Appropriations and Intelligence committees, has won handily in the Republican-leaning district since he was first elected in 2012. In 2022, Stewart defeated Democrat Nick Mitchell by more than 25 points. All of Utah’s four House seats, as well as its two Senate seats, are held by Republicans.

 

 

New York Times, Bill Perkins, Defender of His Harlem Constituents, Dies at 74, Sam Roberts, May 22, 2023 (print ed.). As a councilman and state senator, he fought for higher wages, health care, gay rights and sought justice for the Central Park Five.

Bill Perkins, who for 24 years as a legislator from Harlem championed his community — by, among other things, challenging Donald J. Trump’s aggressive demand for the death penalty when five teenagers, who were later exonerated, were arrested in connection with a rape in Central Park in 1989 — died on Tuesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

His death was announced by his wife, Pamela Green Perkins. She did not give a cause, but Mr. Perkins had undergone treatment for colon cancer and, according to Richard Fife, a family spokesman, had developed dementia.

Raised with his brothers and a cousin by a single mother, Mr. Perkins was a relentless advocate in the New York City Council and the New York State Senate for raising the minimum wage, protecting children from being poisoned by lead paint in their apartments, instituting health screening programs in municipal hospitals, and protecting the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people.

In 1989, when five Black and Hispanic teenagers were charged with the rape of a white jogger in Central Park, Mr. Perkins was among the first Black civic leaders to publicly raise questions about the evidence and to suggest that there had been a rush to judgment. At the time he was president of the tenants’ association of Schomburg Plaza, the Manhattan apartment complex where several of the defendants lived.

Few other public officials or civic leaders, white or Black, questioned the police investigation at the time, particularly since the defendants had confessed.

Mr. Perkins also took on Mr. Trump, then a wealthy real estate developer, who took out full-page advertisements in city newspapers after the attack calling for New York State to adopt the death penalty for murder cases. Mr. Trump did not explicitly call for the death penalty for the five defendants, but he made clear that he was referring to that case.

“This was taking a moment, a very unfortunate and one might say racially tense moment in our city, and fueling a lynch mob,” Mr. Perkins said when Mr. Trump was running for president in 2016.

The defendants, who became known as the Central Park Five, were convicted and imprisoned. But they were exonerated in 2002 after another man confessed to the crime.
“In our darkest hours, when it seemed like the whole world was against us, Bill Perkins bravely stood behind and with us,” one of the defendants, Yusef Salaam, said in a statement after Mr. Perkins’s death. “His bravery and commitment to justice were unwavering, and he is a big reason we were eventually exonerated.”

William Morris Perkins was born on April 18, 1949, in the Bronx to Helen Perkins. He said he never knew his father.

Inspired by his mother’s faith in education, he won scholarships to the Collegiate School in Manhattan and Brown University in Providence, R.I., where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1972.

He was a community organizer, a social worker and a tenant leader before running for the City Council. He served there from 1997 to 2006 and again from 2017 to 2021, ultimately rising to deputy majority leader. From 2007 to 2017 he was a state senator, representing Harlem, the Upper West Side and Washington Heights.

Among his major accomplishments was sponsorship of the Childhood Lead Paint Poisoning Prevention Act of 2004, which required landlords to ameliorate hazardous paint conditions in their properties.

The Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez wrote of Mr. Perkins, who was a marathoner, “It took the stamina of a long-distance runner to prevail against the city’s powerful landlord lobby, which has resisted stronger lead paint removal laws for decades.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the State Senate majority leader, said in a statement after Mr. Perkins’s death that he “never waited for the right thing to become popular before taking action.”

He had no qualms about challenging Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a Nation of Islam minister known for his anti-white diatribes. And in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign, when Senator Hillary Clinton of New York was running, he was among the first Black elected officials to endorse Barack Obama.

In 2021, when he was already ailing, he lost a primary to retain his Council seat.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Perkins is survived by his children, Kiva Perkins-Watts, Medjha White, William Perkins, Margaret Perkins, Maximilian Perkins and Rebecca Marimutu; his brothers, Gerry, Richard and Michael; and four grandchildren.

Sam Roberts, an obituaries reporter, was previously The Times’s urban affairs correspondent and is the host of “The New York Times Close Up,” a weekly news and interview program on CUNY-TV. More about Sam Roberts

New York Times, The District Gained Republicans. Could a Liberal Democrat Take It Back? Tracey Tully, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Sue Altman, the leader of a progressive organization in New Jersey, is expected to announce a run for Congress against Rep. Tom Kean Jr.

New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District was redrawn last year specifically to boost the chances of Republicans. It worked.

Now, Democrats are trying to win back the seat. But rather than turn to a centrist who mirrors the conservative ethos of the region, the party appears to be coalescing around a candidate who for four years has been the face of New Jersey’s progressive left: Sue Altman.

Ms. Altman, who leads the state’s liberal-leaning Working Families Alliance and is an ally of Gov. Philip D. Murphy, is expected to announce her candidacy Wednesday morning.

“We’ve trained hard in New Jersey to fight corruption,” Ms. Altman, 41, said in an interview. “And I’m ready to turn these skills toward a bigger, much more urgent fight.” Last year, redistricting shored up the odds of victory for the incumbent party in 11 of New Jersey’s 12 congressional districts. The only incumbent to lose was Tom Malinowski, a two-term Democrat who represented the Seventh Congressional District, which stretches from one side of northern New Jersey to the other and takes in mainly suburban and rural communities.

Tom Kean Jr., a former Republican state lawmaker and namesake of a well-liked governor, defeated Mr. Malinowski in November by 8,691 votes, or roughly three percentage points, to join Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s fractious, nine-member majority in Washington.

The seat has been identified as a key target of Democrats hoping to regain control of the House. Over Memorial Day weekend, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ran an ad on a highway billboard that yoked Mr. Kean to former President Donald J. Trump, offering a peek at what is likely to be a nationwide strategy next year in races that coincide with the presidential contest.
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With a year and a half before the election, it is likely that additional Democratic challengers to Mr. Kean will emerge. But Ms. Altman’s early entry and name recognition gives her a clear edge in a race that even the state’s Democratic Party chairman, LeRoy J. Jones Jr., acknowledges will be an uphill fight.

“Sue Altman is a formidable candidate — and so far the only candidate,” Mr. Jones said. “Without hearing from anyone else, Sue is in a position to make her case to ultimately be the Democratic nominee.”

It is by some measures a counterintuitive choice. The candidate will be running from the left in a district where registered Republicans now outnumber Democrats by 16,000 voters.

Harrison Neely, a top political adviser to Mr. Kean, said Ms. Altman represented the “most divisive and extreme aspects of the fringe of her party.”

Mr. Neely said Mr. Kean’s focus on reducing the cost of living in New Jersey and his efforts to work across the aisle as a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus illustrated his “common-sense solutions to our national challenges.” He said he was confident Mr. Kean would be re-elected.

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More On U.S. Presidential Race

 

New York Times, In Iowa, DeSantis Signals the Start of a Slugfest With Trump, Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). After absorbing months of attacks from former President Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is beginning to fire back — but carefully.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida came to Iowa for his first trip as a presidential candidate and made plain that he was done being Donald J. Trump’s punching bag.

After absorbing months of attacks from Mr. Trump that went mostly unanswered, Mr. DeSantis has borrowed one of his rival’s favorite lines — “I’m going to counterpunch” — and jabbed back.

He called one of the spending bills that Mr. Trump signed “grotesque” and accused him of increasing the national debt. He said the way Mr. Trump had sided with Disney in Mr. DeSantis’s war with the entertainment giant was “bizarre.” He described Mr. Trump’s criticism of the governor’s handling of Covid as “ridiculous.” And he dared Mr. Trump to take a position on the debt-limit bill pending in Washington.

“Are you leading from the front?” Mr. DeSantis said, almost teasingly. “Or are you waiting for polls to tell you what position to take?”

A tricky balancing act lies ahead for Mr. DeSantis. All of those comments came not onstage in his first campaign speech before hundreds of Republicans at an evangelical church, but during a 15-minute news conference with reporters afterward. He did not mention Mr. Trump by name when he spoke directly to voters in each of his first four Iowa stops, though he has drawn implicit contrasts.

The two-pronged approach reflects the remarkable degree to which his pathway to the nomination depends on his ability to win over — and not alienate — the significant bloc of Republican voters who still like Mr. Trump even if they are willing to consider an alternative.

New York Times, Denouncing ‘Elites’ in Kickoff Speech, DeSantis Vows to ‘Impose Our Will,’ Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas, May 31, 2023 (print ed.).  In Iowa, Ron DeSantis warned supporters of a “malignant ideology” taking hold across the country, described children facing “indoctrination” and vowed to fight for conservative causes.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida kicked off his presidential campaign in Iowa on Tuesday with a sweeping denunciation of the “elites” that he said dominated American institutions, pitching himself as an unrepentant fighter who could reverse a tide of progressivism in boardrooms, the government and the military.

“We must choose a path that will lead to a revival of American greatness,” Mr. DeSantis told supporters at an evangelical church in the suburbs of Des Moines.

In a strident speech, he painted a dark picture of America, saying he would be a salve to a “malignant ideology” that was taking hold across the nation. He described children facing “indoctrination.” He mocked transgender athletes, denounced the “woke Olympics” of diversity programs and reveled in his battle with Disney.

“It is time we impose our will on Washington, D.C.,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And you can’t do any of this if you don’t win.”

The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Why Ron DeSantis’s aims of “destroying leftism” prove he is unfit to be president, Steve Schmidt, May 31, 2023 (8:24 min. video). Steve Schmidt breaks down Ron DeSantis’s comments that he is going to “destroy leftism.” He explains how that makes the Florida Governor unfit to be president and how it proves he is just cosplaying as a lesser version of Donald Trump.

Miami Herald, Watchdog group accuses DeSantis, political committee of breaking campaign-finance law, Mary Ellen Klas, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). A week into his official presidential campaign, Gov. Ron DeSantis and his political committee are being accused of violating federal election law for transferring $86 million from his state-based political committee to a federal super-PAC backing his candidacy.

The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center alleged in a 52-page complaint filed Tuesday with the Federal Elections Commission that the state-based Friends of Ron DeSantis committee transferred the money to the federally-registered Never Back Down, Inc., in violation of the federal campaign contribution limit of $5,000. “The transfer of this colossal sum…is a brazen attempt to circumvent the federal campaign finance rules that are crucial to preventing corruption and establishing transparency about how our federal elections are financed,’’ the complaint states.

New York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants, Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, May 29, 2023 (print ed.). Both Gov. Ron DeSantis, above right, and Senator Tim Scott entered the presidential race last week, with others to follow. For former President Trump, above left, the more the better.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.

The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump’s takeover of the party in 2016.

It’s a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis’s potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.

Washington Post, Opinion: Why fear of change will drive the GOP presidential primary, Paul Waldman, May 30, 2023. “Look, we know our country’s going in the wrong direction,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he announced his presidential bid in a glitch-filled Twitter event last week. “We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.” For the people DeSantis is trying to appeal to, the idea that everything is going wrong in America is indeed something they feel viscerally.

DeSantis might not be brimming with charisma, but he understands something important about our political divide and the GOP electorate’s contribution to it. The divide isn’t about President Biden’s policy choices or this quarter’s gross domestic product numbers. It’s about something much deeper, and grasping this is essential to understanding the coming 2024 contest.

Consider some fascinating recent poll results from the Pew Research Center, which asked people in 19 countries if their nation “will be better off in the future if it sticks with its traditions and way of life,” or if it “will be better off in the future if it is open to changes” regarding its traditions and way of life.

Overall, differences between countries were small. A median 62 percent of respondents said their country will be better off if it is open to changes; in the United States, the figure was 63 percent.

But when they divided the data by ideology, they revealed something striking:

Americans are much more divided on this question than people in other countries, with both sides of the spectrum landing at the extremes. For instance, 60 percent of conservatives in Britain embrace change over tradition, as do 52 percent of Canadian conservatives — fewer than liberals in those countries but still substantial. But only 28 percent of American conservatives agree.

We’re the outlier on the left as well: 91 percent of American liberals favor change over tradition, compared to 73 percent of liberals in Germany and 67 percent in France.

Washington Post, Biden circle seeks to boost Harris ahead of 2024, starting with debt talks, Cleve R. Wootson Jr., May 31, 2023 (print ed.). As Republicans zero in on the vice president, the White House seeks to elevate her, starting with the debt talks.

In an urgent May 16 meeting on the debt ceiling in the Oval Office, Vice President Harris sat between President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), symbolically positioned at the center of the high-stakes talks aimed at staving off a first-ever U.S. default.

Two days later, Harris was on a teleconference with thousands of elected officials and opinion leaders, urging them to ramp up pressure for a deal. “President Biden and I met with our four congressional leaders Tuesday here at the White House. We had a productive conversation,” she reported. “We believe that it occurred in good faith, with all the leaders in that meeting agreeing that America will not default.”

The public staging of those moments, Democratic operatives say, is part of a concerted effort to bolster Harris’s image in the weeks since Biden announced his reelection. Republicans are already zeroing in on Harris with a sometimes morbid message that couples questions about the president’s longevity with doubts about the abilities of the woman who would succeed him.

Washington Post, Trump campaign braces for Iowa battle as DeSantis team sees an opening, Isaac Arnsdorf, Hannah Knowles and Josh Dawsey, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The former president faces well-funded resistance and other headwinds in the GOP’s first nominating contest, even as he pulls ahead in national polls.

Although Trump has taken a commanding lead in national polls and many Republicans are calling him the inevitable nominee, here in Iowa, which will kick off the GOP nominating process next year, a victory is far from assured, according to interviews with local lawmakers, strategists and voters. Already, a slew of prominent Republican voices is challenging Trump and promoting DeSantis. Such support is highly coveted in a caucus that could be decided by a few thousand highly-engaged party activists — record turnout in 2016 was just under 187,000.

Trump and DeSantis will make competing trips to Iowa this week, beginning with DeSantis on Tuesday kicking off his first swing after officially announcing his candidacy last week. Trump will arrive on Wednesday and appear at a breakfast meeting of conservative activists in Urbandale Thursday morning. He will record a Fox News town hall in Clive the same day.

 Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Trump Looks Like He Will Get the 2024 Crowd He Wants
• Washington Post, Opinion: Why fear of change will drive the GOP presidential primary, Paul Waldman
• Washington Post, Biden circle seeks to boost Harris ahead of 2024, starting with debt talks
• Washington Post, Trump campaign braces for Iowa battle as DeSantis team sees an opening
• New York Times, Ron DeSantis Plows Ahead With Campaign Tour After Digital Rollout Misfires
• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Commentary: Are we seeing another Opus Dei power behind a politician? Wayne Madsen
• Washington Post, Nikki Haley let the Confederate flag fly until a massacre at a Black church forced her hand, Michael Kranish
• New York Times, Opinion: Ron DeSantis vs. the ‘Woke Mind Virus,’ Michelle Goldberg
• New York Times, DeSantis Allies’ $200 Million Plan for Beating Donald Trump
• Washington Post, Opinion: Biden’s unemployment rates are historic — and almost worthless for 20
• Washington Post, Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign kickoff on Twitter plagued by technical issues

 

U.S. Abortion, Birth Control, #MeToo

Washington Post, Bill Cosby is facing a new sexual assault lawsuit, Manuel Roig-Franzia, June 1, 2023. His accuser, Victoria Valentino, says she gained confidence from E. Jean Carroll’s civil court win against Donald Trump.

A former Playboy centerfold model who says she was drugged and raped more than five decades ago by Bill Cosby has filed a lawsuit against the legendary entertainer under a new California law that temporarily lifts the statute of limitation on civil sexual-assault cases.

The suit, filed Thursday morning by attorneys for Victoria Valentino in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is the first known use of the law in California against Cosby, opening a new front in a years-long and multipronged legal battle against the 85-year-old. Under the law, accusers who allege they were sexually assaulted while they were adults have been granted a one-year window, closing at the end of this year, to seek damages no matter how long ago the alleged crimes took place.

“It’s not about money, it’s about accountability,” Valentino, 80, told The Washington Post in her first interview about the case shortly before the suit was filed. “Rape steals something from you that cannot be repaired or restored.”

In her lawsuit, Valentino says she briefly met Cosby in 1969 while she was an actress and singer. Later, she says, they ran into each other at a Los Angeles restaurant and Cosby came over to say hello after spotting her in tears over the recent drowning death of her 6-year-old son. Later that day he gave her a pill, she says.

“Here! Take this!” she alleges that Cosby told her. “It will make you feel better. It will make us ALL feel better.”

Valentino’s case follows lawsuits filed late last year by six Cosby accusers under a similar law in New York, commonly referred to as a “lookback” provision, that set a one-year window that expired at the end of 2022. Cosby, who has been accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment by at least 60 women, has denied committing sex crimes against anyone.

Valentino’s case goes well beyond accusations against Cosby. As part of the same lawsuit, she is also suing between one and 20 unnamed people, including Cosby’s agents, servants and other employees that she alleges enabled Cosby’s alleged assault. She plans to identify those defendants as she learns their names during the course of discovery related to the lawsuit.

Relevant Recent Headlines

• New York Times, Indiana Reprimands Doctor Who Provided Abortion to 10-Year-Old Rape Victim
• Washington Post, Nearly 2,000 children abused by Catholic clergy in Illinois, state AG’s probe finds
• Washington Post, South Carolina Senate passes 6-week abortion ban, sends bill to governor
• New York Times, Opinion: You Cannot Hear These 13 Women’s Stories and Believe the Anti-Abortion Narrative, Michelle Goldberg
• Washington Post, Republicans deploy new playbook for abortion bans, citing political backlash
• New York Times, Andrew Tate Thought He Was Above the Law. Romania Proved Him Wrong
• Washington Post, Antiabortion groups push 2024 GOP candidates to embrace national ban
• Washington Post, Appeals court appears likely to restrict access to key abortion pill

 

Climate, Environment, Weather, Energy, Disasters, U.S. Transportation

 

New York Times, Opinion: The Supreme Court Is Crippling Environmental Protections. Where Is Congress? Jim Murphy (the director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation), May 30, 2023 (print ed.). After half a century of painstaking restoration under the Clean Water Act, streams and wetlands nationwide are once again at risk of contamination by pollution and outright destruction as a result of a ruling on Thursday by the Supreme Court.

The Environmental Protection Agency has long interpreted the Clean Water Act as protecting most of the nation’s wetlands from pollution. But now the court has significantly limited the reach of the law, concluding that it precludes the agency from regulating discharges of pollution into wetlands unless they have “a continuous surface connection” to bodies of water that, using “ordinary parlance,” the court described as streams, oceans, rivers and lakes.

At least half of the nation’s wetlands could lose protection under this ruling, which provides an even narrower definition of “protected waters” than the Trump administration had sought.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who filed a concurring opinion in the judgment, acknowledged its impact, writing that it would have “significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.”

It is the latest sign that many decision makers in Washington have lost touch with the increasingly fragile state of the natural systems that provide drinking water, flood protection and critical habitat for people and wildlife in every state. In March, the Senate joined the House in trying to roll back clean-water regulations established by the Biden administration, even though they were less comprehensive than Clean Water Act protections before President Donald Trump weakened them. (President Biden vetoed the action.) Congress had also long failed to clarify language in the Clean Water Act that caused confusion among judges and put the law in the Supreme Court’s cross hairs.

Now it is up to Congress to defend the vision of the Clean Water Act, which Senator Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, articulated in 1972 in a debate on the Senate floor.

 Recent Relevant Headlines

• New York Times, Rice. Half of Humanity Eats It. And Climate Change Is Wrecking It
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• New York Times, You May Have Never Heard of Him, but He’s Remaking the Pollution Fight, Coral Davenport
• New York Times, Ukraine Sees New Virtue in Wind Power: It’s Harder to Destroy”
• New York Times, A Breakthrough Deal to Keep the Colorado River From Going Dry, for Now
• New York Times, Supreme Court Limits E.P.A.’s Power to Address Water Pollution
• New York Times, Heat Wave and Blackout Would Send Half of Phoenix to E.R., Study Says

 

Pandemics, Public Health, Privacy

Washington Post, Medicare to expand coverage for new class of Alzheimer’s drugs pending FDA approval, Laurie McGinley and Rachel Roubein, June 1, 2023. Medicare officials announced plans Thursday to broadly cover a new class of Alzheimer’s drugs following an intense lobbying campaign by patient advocates and drugmakers pressing for access to the first medications shown to slow cognitive decline from the disease.

In a statement, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the federal health program for seniors and those with disabilities, said it would cover the costly drugs — a move foreshadowed in previous agency statements — for anyone who was enrolled in the outpatient part of the program who meets the criteria for coverage. The first drug potentially covered by the expanded plan could be granted full approval from the Food and Drug Administration as soon as this summer, a necessary step before Medicare will start paying.

The new policy marks a sharp change from an earlier one, which required patients to be in clinical trials for coverage. The plan would provide coverage to patients whose doctors take part in registries that provide information on how the drugs work.

New York Times, The Most Common Eating Disorder in the U.S. Is Also the Least Understood, Dani Blum, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). Binge eating disorder entered the diagnostic manual on mental health conditions 10 years ago. It’s still getting overlooked.

At 2 or 3 a.m., David Tedrow would hide the empty cardboard cereal box, shoving it into the bottom of the trash can or the back of the cupboard, where his wife wouldn’t notice it. Mr. Tedrow was in his 60s and retired, and he often slept until the afternoon so he could stay up late, after everyone else had gone to bed.

During frantic late-night bursts, he would eat an entire box of cereal — Oatmeal Squares, Frosted Mini-Wheats, whatever was around — and then dispose of the evidence. He had eaten compulsively throughout his life, he said, but after months of going through a box of cereal each night, he decided to try to get help.

Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States. Exact numbers vary, but according to the National Institute of Mental Health, nearly 3 percent of the U.S. population has had binge eating disorder at some point in their lives, more than double the reported numbers for bulimia nervosa and anorexia. Yet, the disorder is under-discussed and underrecognized by both the general public and those in the medical field, partly because many don’t know about the diagnosis or its potential severity.

Often, people will exhibit symptoms for decades before receiving a diagnosis, said Cynthia Bulik, the founding director of the University of North Carolina’s Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders. “For so long, they’ve been told things like ‘Oh, this is just emotional eating’ or ‘You’re out of control’ or ‘It’s because you have no willpower’ or ‘Gluttony’s a sin,’ or whatever these things are that people explain it away, without realizing that they have a treatable condition,” she said.

Relevant Recent Headlines

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U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Arts, High Tech

Washington Post, Project Veritas sues founder James O’Keefe over his messy departure, Will Sommer, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The right-wing group, known for its undercover videos, also alleges its former chairman lavished donor money on his own expenses.

In February, conservative undercover-video activist James O’Keefe left the nonprofit he founded, Project Veritas, amid a dispute with his board over his spending and treatment of employees.

Then he launched his comeback media tour.

O’Keefe told Donald Trump adviser turned podcaster Stephen K. Bannon that he had been “removed,” and announced on radio host Mark Levin’s show that he had been “ousted.” In an appearance on comedian Russell Brand’s podcast, O’Keefe said he had been “thrown out.” Sometimes, O’Keefe implied he had been fired at the behest of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant and coronavirus vaccine manufacturer that he had targeted in a sting.

All this came as a surprise to the Project Veritas board, according to a lawsuit it filed Wednesday against O’Keefe. Project Veritas insists that its founder remained an employee until barely two weeks ago — even as he set up a rival organization.

New York Times, A.I. Poses ‘Risk of Extinction,’ Industry Leaders Warn, Kevin Roose, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). Leaders from OpenAI, Google Deepmind and other A.I. labs are set to issue a warning that future systems could be as deadly as pandemics and nuclear weapons.

A group of industry leaders is planning to warn on Tuesday that the artificial intelligence technology they are building may one day pose an existential threat to humanity and should be considered a societal risk on par with pandemics and nuclear wars.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads a one-sentence statement expected to be released by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit organization. The open letter has been signed by more than 350 executives, researchers and engineers working in A.I.

The signatories included top executives from three of the leading A.I. companies: Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI; Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind; and Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic.

Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, two of the three researchers who won a Turing Award for their pioneering work on neural networks and are often considered “godfathers” of the modern A.I. movement, signed the statement, as did other prominent researchers in the field (The third Turing Award winner, Yann LeCun, who leads Meta’s A.I. research efforts, had not signed as of Tuesday.)

The statement comes at a time of growing concern about the potential harms of artificial intelligence. Recent advancements in so-called large language models — the type of A.I. system used by ChatGPT and other chatbots — have raised fears that A.I. could soon be used at scale to spread misinformation and propaganda, or that it could eliminate millions of white-collar jobs.

Eventually, some believe, A.I. could become powerful enough that it could create societal-scale disruptions within a few years if nothing is done to slow it down, though researchers sometimes stop short of explaining how that would happen.

These fears are shared by numerous industry leaders, putting them in the unusual position of arguing that a technology they are building — and, in many cases, are furiously racing to build faster than their competitors — poses grave risks and should be regulated more tightly.

This month, Mr. Altman, Mr. Hassabis and Mr. Amodei met with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to talk about A.I. regulation. In a Senate testimony after the meeting, Mr. Altman warned that the risks of advanced A.I. systems were serious enough to warrant government intervention and called for regulation of A.I. for its potential harms.

Dan Hendrycks, the executive director of the Center for AI Safety, said in an interview that the open letter represented a “coming-out” for some industry leaders who had expressed concerns — but only in private — about the risks of the technology they were developing.

“There’s a very common misconception, even in the A.I. community, that there only are a handful of doomers,” Mr. Hendrycks said. “But, in fact, many people privately would express concerns about these things.”

Some skeptics argue that A.I. technology is still too immature to pose an existential threat. When it comes to today’s A.I. systems, they worry more about short-term problems, such as biased and incorrect responses, than longer-term dangers.

But others have argued that A.I. is improving so rapidly that it has already surpassed human-level performance in some areas, and it will soon surpass it in others. They say the technology has showed signs of advanced capabilities and understanding, giving rise to fears that “artificial general intelligence,” or A.G.I., a type of artificial intelligence that can match or exceed human-level performance at a wide variety of tasks, may not be far-off.

In a blog post last week, Mr. Altman and two other OpenAI executives proposed several ways that powerful A.I. systems could be responsibly managed. They called for cooperation among the leading A.I. makers, more technical research into large language models and the formation of an international A.I. safety organization, similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which seeks to control the use of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Altman has also expressed support for rules that would require makers of large, cutting-edge A.I. models to register for a government-issued license.

In March, more than 1,000 technologists and researchers signed another open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of the largest A.I. models, citing concerns about “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds.”

Politico, Fox News, backed by Trump White House lawyer, fights subpoena in leak lawsuit, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The network is trying to protect a source who disclosed details of an FBI probe into a Chinese American scientist.

A former Fox News reporter is fighting in court to scuttle a subpoena demanding that she reveal the source behind a series of stories that aired confidential details of a counterintelligence probe into a Chinese American scientist.

That scientist, Yanping Chen, is suing the FBI for damages, claiming that the leaked information was part of a campaign to damage her after federal prosecutors ended their six-year investigation of her without bringing charges. Chen, who operated a graduate education program based in Arlington, Virginia, also subpoenaed Fox and Catherine Herridge, now of CBS — to force her to disclose the source of several 2017 stories.

Notably, Fox News and Herridge are being represented by Patrick Philbin, a former top lawyer from Donald Trump’s White House. Philbin, who decried media leaks during Trump’s first impeachment trial, appeared in court Tuesday to help Herridge fend off the effort to expose her source.

The FBI initially suspected that Chen had lied on immigration forms about her work on the Chinese space program, and she was the subject of two search warrants and seizures of her devices. But she was informed in 2016 that she would not be charged with any wrongdoing.

Within a year, Herridge was reporting on key aspects of the probe, as well as on the divisions within the government about the decision not to charge Chen. Chen says the reports were followed by a sharp drop in enrollment and funding for her graduate program.

Herridge’s reporting included “snippets of her immigration forms, a summary of an FBI interview with her daughter, and personal photographs of her and her husband,” according to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper.

Chen sued the FBI, DOJ, Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security in 2018 seeking damages, an admission of wrongdoing from the government and prosecutions of any violations of the Privacy Act that may apply to her case. But after dozens of depositions failed to unmask the potential leaker, Chen turned her sights to Fox News and Herridge, which Chen’s attorneys say is a last resort.

The lawsuit has steadily advanced for five years despite generating little attention. Yet it represents the collision of a wide range of Washington interests and issues, carrying implications for how journalists’ First Amendment protections are balanced against the need to prevent leaks of sensitive government information that implicates privacy rights. Cooper noted in court Tuesday that while Congress passed the Privacy Act almost five decades ago, lawmakers have “not seen fit to pass a reporters’ shield law.”

“For better or worse,” the judge added.

Philbin, who works in the Washington office of the firm helmed by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, sought to conduct Tuesday’s proceedings under seal, a nod to the voluminous details about the case that have been redacted from public view and the potential implications for the FBI’s counterintelligence operations. But Cooper declined, at first, to close the hearing to the public, instead urging Philbin to make broader legal arguments without delving into the sensitive details of the case. Cooper later sealed the hearing to permit the parties to delve into the sensitive details of the case.

During the public portion of the hearing, Philbin contended that Chen had failed to pursue all possible leads about the source of the leak before turning to a subpoena for Herridge. Chen’s inquiry centers around the existence of a PowerPoint document that contained details of the FBI’s probe that later wound up on Fox. Philbin said that while Chen narrowed down potential sources of the leak who “possessed” the PowerPoint to a handful of officials, she omitted a much larger number of people who had “access” to the file. That includes a counterintelligence “squad” of eight to 12 people who worked in an office where the PowerPoint was stored on a CD, he said.

Philbin’s comments prompted Justice Department senior litigation counsel Carol Federighi to interject, warning that he appeared to be veering into subjects meant to be kept from public view. Federighi intervened a second time when Philbin began to describe some binders that included pictures similar to information contained in the PowerPoint.

While journalists have won considerable protection in state courts and enjoy near-immunity from subpoenas by prosecutors in federal criminal cases due to DOJ regulations adopted by Attorney General Merrick Garland, Privacy Act lawsuits remain treacherous for members of the press.

In 2008, a judge handling a Privacy Act lawsuit brought by former government scientist Steven Hatfill ordered former USA Today reporter Toni Locy to pay escalating fines of up to $5,000 a day and attorneys’ fees for defying an order to identify her sources for stories about a federal investigation into Hatfill’s potential ties to deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

Locy said she could not recall which sources provided specific information about Hatfill, but a judge rejected that.

While Locy’s appeal of that contempt order was pending, the U.S. government settled with Hatfill for $5.8 million, mooting the contempt fight.

Shortly after the settlement, the Justice Department informed Hatfill’s attorneys that investigators had ultimately concluded that Hatfill was not involved in the anthrax mailings.

Chen’s effort to seek damages comes just three months after the Biden administration shut down a China-focused anti-espionage program, known as the China Initiative, claiming it had created a false perception about Chinese Americans and U.S. residents from China.

Philbin has been a figure of intense interest in recent years for his presence in the White House during the crucial chaotic weeks at the end of Trump’s term, when Trump attempted to subvert the 2020 election and rebuffed calls to calm his supporters for hours as violence raged at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Philbin has interviewed twice with prosecutors now working for special counsel Jack Smith. But he’s also been seen entering the federal courthouse for various civil matters that he and his firm are involved in.

Philbin had a harsh assessment about media leaks during Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial on charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress over allegations that he pressured Ukraine’s president to launch a criminal probe of Joe Biden. At the time, Philbin assailed congressional Democrats for what he said was animus toward Trump, exemplified by leaks from closed-door depositions.

“The testimony that took place was selectively leaked to a compliant media to establish a false narrative about the president. If that sort of conduct had occurred in a real grand jury, that would have been a criminal violation.”

New York Times, Racing Regulators Hold Emergency Meeting to Investigate Horse Deaths, Joe Drape, May 31, 2023 (print ed.). The Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority called a summit of veterinarians in response to the deaths of 12 horses at Churchill Downs.

Lisa Lazarus, the chief executive of the authority, called the “emergency veterinary summit” in Lexington, Ky., to review necropsies, toxicology reports and veterinarians’ and trainers’ notes on the deaths, seven of which preceded this month’s Kentucky Derby. The deaths have cast a pall over the Triple Crown season, the few weeks each spring when casual sports fans have heightened focus on horse racing.

In addition, the authority has asked a longtime California track superintendent, Dennis Moore, to examine the racing surfaces at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., and offer an independent analysis of the dirt and turf courses’ suitability for racing.

“I have not had a single jockey or trainer tell me that they believe the track is a factor in these fatalities,” Lazarus said. Most of the deaths occurred after horses broke down while racing.

New York Times, James Beard Foundation, Whose Awards Honor Chefs, Is Now Investigating Them, Brett Anderson and Julia Moskin, June 1, 2023 (print ed.). The group behind “the Oscars of the food world” created a new process to weed out nominees with problematic pasts. But that process has troubles of its own.

The chef Sam Fore received an ominous voice mail message this month from an unknown number. The caller identified himself as a private investigator working for the James Beard Foundation. Later that day, Ms. Fore found herself on a Zoom call, answering questions from him and another man.

“They said to me, ‘We have an anonymous complaint we have to ask you about,’” she said.

Ms. Fore is a finalist in the James Beard awards, which for nearly three decades have been considered the most prestigious culinary honors in the United States, the so-called “Oscars of the food world.” As the #MeToo movement led to high-profile revelations of misbehavior and workplace abuse in the restaurant world in recent years, the Beard foundation overhauled its processes to make the awards more equitable and diverse, and to ensure that chefs with troubling histories are not honored.

Ms. Fore is among the first subjects of an investigatory process created in 2021 as part of that overhaul. But in many ways she is the kind of chef the retooled awards are meant to recognize more fully. Early indications suggest that the new process is vulnerable to failure in several ways.

While the awards have historically honored mostly white chefs serving European-derived food in expensive urban restaurants — in fact, the other four finalists in the Best Chef: Southeast category with Ms. Fore are white men — her business, Tuk Tuk, is a pop-up that serves cuisine inspired by what she grew up eating in Lexington, Ky., as the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants.

In what she called “an interrogation,” the investigators asked her about social media posts she had made on both private and public accounts. Someone had sent them to the foundation through an anonymous tip line on its website. The men told Ms. Fore that the posts potentially violated the organization’s code of ethics — specifically that they amounted to “targeted harassment” and “bullying.”

They included an Instagram post, she said, that was part of a domestic-violence awareness campaign, and others related to her advocacy for victims of sexual violence, including “vague tweets” about people the posts did not name.

She said she told the investigators: “We’ve been talking for 90 minutes about these tweets, and you don’t know who I’m ‘targeting’ with them. How is that targeted harassment?”

Ms. Fore is still waiting to hear whether she has been disqualified from the awards, which will be given out at a ceremony in Chicago on June 5. But she now believes that what was supposed to be the honor of a lifetime could actually do her more harm than good.

“I realize that my presence is a good look for Beard, but I cooked my way across the country to get to this level,” she said. “Now all I’ve done can be dismissed because someone on the internet called me a bully?”

Started in 1985 to honor the food writer James Beard, the foundation established its chef and restaurant awards in 1991.

The foundation has identified itself more and more closely with chefs and restaurants over the years, riding the rise in popularity of chef culture starting in the 1990s. As the American public became increasingly fascinated by restaurants and the people who run them, the profile of the awards grew, the events became more glamorous, the brand partnerships more lucrative. (According to I.R.S. filings, the foundation’s revenues jumped from $5 million in 2010 to $18 million in 2020.)

To address those problems, the foundation established an ethics committee before the 2022 awards, along with the tip line and the pursuant investigations, to ensure that the awards would not celebrate chefs who failed to meet its standards. (Brett Anderson, who co-wrote this article, was on the restaurant awards committee from 2002 to 2012.)

“The James Beard awards are known as the standard bearers of excellence in the industry. We take that very seriously,” said Clare Reichenbach, the foundation’s chief executive. “We’ve built a process with great intentionality, that we think has rigor, that reflects our values and our mission, and we stand by it.”

But it is unclear whether the foundation is up to the task of vetting the finalists.

By making itself the chief arbiter of restaurant excellence, however, the foundation also made many of the restaurant world’s most pernicious problems — inequality, lack of diversity in leadership, workplace abuse of many kinds — its own.

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Poet Amanda Gorman provided an iconic appeal to youthful idealism by reading her work at the 2021 Inauguration of President Joe Biden (Pool photo by Patrick Semansky of the Associated Press).

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Contact the author Andrew Kreig