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    Ex-aide to New York governors charged with being agent of Chinese government

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    A former New York state government official who worked for the former governor Andrew Cuomo and current governor, Kathy Hochul, was charged on Tuesday with acting as an undisclosed agent of the Chinese government, federal prosecutors revealed in a sprawling indictment.Linda Sun, who held numerous posts in New York state government before rising to the rank of deputy chief of staff for Hochul, was arrested on Tuesday morning along with her husband, Chris Hu, at their $3.5m home on Long Island.Prosecutors said Sun, at the request of Chinese officials, blocked representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to the governor’s office, shaped New York governmental messaging to align with the priorities of the Chinese government and attempted to facilitate a trip to China for a high-level politician in New York, the indictment said. Hu is charged with money-laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and misuse of means of identification.In return, she and her husband received benefits including help for Hu’s China-based business activities and undisclosed tickets to performances by visiting Chinese orchestra and ballet groups, the indictment says. A Chinese government official’s personal chef prepared “Nanjing-style salted ducks” that were delivered to Sun’s parents’ home, it adds.The couple then laundered the financial proceeds, using them to buy their property in Manhasset, a condominium in Hawaii for $1.9m and luxury cars including a 2024 Ferrari, the indictment says.“As alleged, while appearing to serve the people of New York as deputy chief of staff within the … state executive chamber, the defendant and her husband actually worked to further the interests of the Chinese government and the” country’s communist party, US attorney Breon Peace said. “The illicit scheme enriched the defendant’s family to the tune of millions of dollars.”A lawyer for Sun, Seth DuCharme, did not immediately return an email seeking comment. Sun and Hu were expected to make an initial court appearance on Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Brooklyn said.The indictment outlines a series of exchanges Sun had with officials in the Chinese consulate in New York in January 2021, when Cuomo was still governor and Hochul was lieutenant governor. Neither leader is named in the document, but they are instead referred to as “Politician-1” and “Politician-2.”After Chinese officials requested a lunar new year video from the governor, Sun said Hochul could probably do it and asked for “talking points of things you want her to mention”.“Mostly holiday wishes and hope for friendship and cooperation / Nothing too political,” an official told her, according to the indictment.Sun later told a different official that she had argued with Hochul’s speechwriter over the draft because the speechwriter insisted on mentioning the “Uyghur situation” in China. She promised that she would not let that happen, and the final speech did not mention the Muslim ethnic minority, according to the indictment.The FBI searched the couple’s $3.5m home in Manhasset in late July but declined to release details at the time.Sun worked in state government for about 15 years, holding jobs in Cuomo’s administration and eventually becoming Hochul’s deputy chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. In November 2022, Sun took a job at the New York labor department as deputy commissioner for strategic business development, but she left that job months later in March 2023, the profile said.In a statement, a spokesperson for Hochul’s office said the administration fired Sun after “discovering evidence of misconduct”.“This individual was hired by the executive chamber more than a decade ago. We terminated her employment in March 2023 after discovering evidence of misconduct, immediately reported her actions to law enforcement and have assisted law enforcement throughout this process,” the statement reads.A spokesperson for Cuomo did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.Sun and Hu live in a gated community on Long Island called Stone Hill. The couple bought the house in 2021 but placed it in a trust earlier this year, records show. More

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      George Santos expected to plead guilty in fraud case on Monday – reports

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      The disgraced former New York Republican congressman George Santos is expected to plead guilty on Monday in a deal with prosecutors on charges that he defrauded his campaign during his 2022 midterm elections, according to multiple reports.Hints of a plea agreement came on Friday ahead of Santos’s federal criminal trial, which was set to start early next month. Prosecutors and defense attorneys suddenly scheduled a hearing without explicitly saying why.Multiple donors to Santos’s previous election campaign told Talking Points Memo that they had been informed that a plea deal would be announced on Monday. TPM was the first outlet to report on alleged fraud by Santos involving the diversion of campaign funds for personal spending.Santos’s attorney, Joe Murray, and the US attorney for the eastern district of New York, the federal prosecuting body with jurisdiction over the case, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.The former Republican congressman, a political unknown who flipped a key New York Democratic district stronghold in 2022, drew headlines after it was revealed that much of his résumé had been elaborately fabricated.Despite this, Republican leadership in the House spent months standing by him. He was finally expelled in December 2023, less than a year after being sworn in to Congress. The Democrat Tom Suozzi won the special election to fill the vacated seat.Santos, 36, a first-generation Brazilian American, had run as a member of a “new generation of Republican leadership” and as the “full embodiment of the American dream”.He falsely claimed to have graduated from a New York college, worked at a major New York bank and run a pet rescue charity, and that his family owned a portfolio of 13 properties and that his mother had been at the World Trade Center when it was attacked by hijackers on 11 September 2001.The holes in Santos’s story soon came to wide attention and he was ultimately indicted on 23 charges that included allegations of lying to Congress and spending campaign funds on luxuries including trips to casinos, Ferragamo shoes, Botox treatments and OnlyFans payments. He had pleaded not guilty and seemed to revel in proclaiming his innocence to a scrum of reporters outside court.A scathing House ethics committee report on Santos’s conduct said he “was frequently in debt, had an abysmal credit score, and relied on an ever-growing wallet of high-interest credit cards to fund his luxury spending habits” and had “made over $240,000 cash withdrawals for unknown purposes”.After leaving Congress, Santos began a sideline career as a Cameo performer, posting greetings to paying customers. It was success, at least briefly, with Santos earning more than he had as a US congressman.He also attempted a congressional comeback, this time as an independent candidate, but that effort quickly fizzled.If a plea deal emerges next week, it will follow a similar agreement with Santos’s campaign fundraiser, Sam Miele, who pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges last year, and that of his former campaign treasurer Nancy Marks. More

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      Exonerated Central Park Five councillor to speak at Democratic convention – report

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      Yusef Salaam, a New York City councillor who was wrongly jailed for a notorious rape in the city’s Central Park, has reportedly been invited to address next week’s Democratic national convention in Chicago in a move that could highlight Donald Trump’s key role in the case and history of racially charged rhetoric.Salaam was one of the “Central Park Five”, a group of Black and Hispanic teenagers who were convicted of attacking and raping Trisha Meili, a 28-year-old investment banker, while she was jogging in April 1989.He could be joined at the convention by other members of the group, according to Semafor, which broke the story but said Salaam’s appearance had yet to be confirmed.Salaam served seven years but was later exonerated and released along with the other four after a convicted serial rapist and murderer, Matias Reyes, admitted to the crime, a confession confirmed by DNA evidence.The case became a major cause célèbre, largely due to an intervention by Trump, then an up-and-coming property magnate, who took out full-page adverts in four New York papers calling for the return of the death penalty at a time when the crime had captured media attention.The five defendants, who were all minors, had already been arrested, paraded in public and had their names and addresses published when Trump took out the advert.In a style that was to become familiar in his social media posts of a later era, the advert – carrying Trump’s signature – blared in block capitals: “Bring back the death penalty and bring back our police!”Trump, who did not specifically call for the execution of the five defendants, wrote: “I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyse or understand them, I am looking to punish them.”In a 2016 interview with the Guardian, Salaam said Trump’s high-profile intervention had been a major factor in the teens’ wrongful convictions.“He was the fire starter,” Salaam said. “Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty.”Trump has declined to apologise for his perceived role in the wrongful convictions. After the men were awarded $41m in damages in a civil case in 2014, Trump wrote an article for the New York Daily News calling the award “the heist of the century”.He took a similarly hard line while he was president, telling journalists at the White House in 2019 that “you have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”He added: “If you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case, so we’ll leave it at that.”His comments were triggered by the release of a four-part Netflix dramatisation of the case, When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay, which Kamala Harris – then a Democratic senator and presidential hopeful, and now vice-president and Trump’s opponent in the forthcoming presidential election – urged him to watch.Salaam won election as a Democrat representing New York’s Harlem district in November last year.Months before, Salaam trolled Trump after the former president was indicted by a Manhattan court on 34 felony charges – on which he was subsequently convicted – for document falsification relating to the payment of hush money to an adult film actor.“For those asking about my statement on the indictment of Donald Trump – who never said sorry for calling for my execution – here it is: Karma,” Salaam posted on X, then known as Twitter, in February 2023.Salaam’s proposed convention appearance follows attempts by Trump to focus on Harris’s racial identity. Two weeks ago, Trump falsely told the National Association of Black Journalists that the vice-president, who has mixed heritage, had only recently identified as Black after previously emphasising her Indian ethnicity.It also comes after the Republican nominee has been making efforts to woo Black voters. Mike Tyson, the former world heavyweight boxing champion and a prominent Trump supporter, told Semafor that the Central Park Five case played to an image of the former president as racist among Black celebrities.“The only thing they can say is that he’s a racist. Central Park Five,” he said. “Other than that, they can’t bring up anything else.” More

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      Judge rules against Robert F Kennedy Jr in fight to be on New York’s ballot

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      A judge ruled Monday that independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr falsely claimed a New York residence on nominating petitions, invalidating the documents he needs to appear on the ballot in the state.The ruling from Justice Christina Ryba after a short trial in state court is expected to be appealed. If upheld, it could open the door to challenges in other states where Kennedy used the address in New York City’s northern suburbs to gather signatures.The lawsuit backed by a Democrat-aligned political action committee claims Kennedy’s state nominating petition falsely listed a residence in well-to-do Katonah, while he actually has lived in the Los Angeles area since 2014, when he married Curb Your Enthusiasm actor Cheryl Hines.Kennedy argued during the trial that he has lifelong ties to New York and intends move back.During the trial, which ran for less than four days, Kennedy maintained that he began living in New York when he was 10 and that he currently rents a room in a friend’s home in Katonah, about 40 miles (65km) north of midtown Manhattan. However, Kennedy testified that he has only slept in that room once due to his constant campaign travel.The 70-year-old candidate testified that his move to California a decade ago was so he could be with his wife, and that he always planned to return to New York, where he is registered to vote.Barbara Moss, who rents the room to Kennedy, testified that he pays her $500 a month. But she acknowledged there is no written lease and that Kennedy’s first payment was not made until after the New York Post published a story casting doubt on Kennedy’s claim that he lived at that address.The judge also heard from a longtime friend of Kennedy’s, who said the candidate had regularly been an overnight guest at his own Westchester home from 2014 through 2017 but was not a tenant there as Kennedy had claimed.Attorneys representing several New York voters grilled Kennedy in often heated exchanges as they sought to make their case, pointing to government documents including a federal statement of candidacy with a California address, and even a social media video in which Kennedy talks about training ravens at his Los Angeles home.Kennedy has the potential to do better than any independent presidential candidate in decades thanks to his famous name and a loyal base. Democratic and Republican strategists have expressed concerns that he could affect their candidate’s chances.Kennedy’s campaign has said he has enough signatures to qualify in a majority of states, but his ballot drive has faced challenges and lawsuits in several, including North Carolina and New Jersey.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClear Choice, a Super Pac, filed the New York suit on behalf of several voters in the state.Kennedy told reporters last week that getting knocked off the ballot in New York could lead to lawsuits in other states where his campaign listed the same address.After the trial ended Thursday, Kennedy argued that people who signed his petitions deserve a chance to vote for him.“Those Americans want to see me on the ballot. They want to have a choice,” he said. More

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      Republicans are on the offensive, and ‘Tampon Tim’ Walz is to the rescue | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Watch out world, Republicans are on the offensive. Still smarting from being called “weird”, it looks like a bunch of GOP strategists got in a room this week to workshop devastating nicknames for Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz. After combining their dozen or so braincells, they came up with a winner: Tampon Tim. The name has been trending on social media as people on the right desperately try to make #TamponTim stick.Apart from the fact that it alliterates, what prompted this moniker? Well, in 2023 Walz signed a wide-ranging Minnesota education bill that, along with a number of other provisions, mandated public schools offer free menstruation products in their bathrooms.To anyone with an ounce of common sense, this sounds like a great thing to do. Tampons are expensive! And “period poverty” – the inability to afford menstruation supplies – is a serious problem in the US. According to a 2021 study commissioned by Thinx, a period product company, 38% of US teenage students who menstruate said that they “often or sometimes cannot do their best schoolwork due to lack of access to period products”. A 2019 edition of the same study also found that more 84% of students in the US have either missed class time or know someone who missed class time because they did not have access to period products.For a long time, period poverty was an overlooked problem; in recent years, however, there has been a wave of legislating to address it. According to the Alliance for Period Supplies, 28 states and Washington DC have passed legislation to help students have free access to period products while in school. So, while the bill Walz signed was commendable, it wasn’t radical in any way – it was part of a nationwide trend to combat a serious problem.I’ve got to hand it to the Republicans, it’s quite difficult to turn “implemented a mainstream policy making kids’ lives easier and helping them stay in school” into something negative, but it seems they are always happy to try. Predictably the right has been using the bill as a way to attack, not just Walz, but trans people.“As a woman there is no greater threat to a woman’s health than leaders … who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools. Those are radical policies Tim Walz supports,” a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt,told Fox News on Tuesday.The actual legislation, I should be clear, does not explicitly state that tampons should be put in men’s bathrooms. It says that free menstrual products “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades four to 12”. But the very idea that a policy might be inclusive and help trans students seems to drive Republicans up the wall.The “Tampon Tim” attacks aren’t just born out of a hatred of trans people, they also reflect the Republicans’ disdain for women. There are memes with Walz’s head on a tampon and showing him menstruating into his jeans – all of which are meant to convey the idea that Walz is feminine. Which, to many men on the right, seems to be the most insulting thing you can call a man. Last week, for example, the Fox News host Jesse Watters wondered why any self-respecting man would vote for a woman. “[T]o be a man and then vote for a woman just because she’s a woman is either childish – that person has mommy issues – or they are just trying to be accepted by other women,” Watters said. “I heard the scientists say the other day that when a man votes for a woman, he actually transitions into a woman.” Ah yes, that is exactly what the scientists say.While Republicans may be having fun with their silly nickname, I’m not sure it’s going to help them in the polls. If anything, it will help Walz. As Hillary Clinton posted on Twitter: “How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools.”Republicans’ juvenile tampon jokes also reinforce how Walz represents a very different model of masculinity than the one Trump and JD Vance embody. In 1999, for example, when Walz was a high school teacher and football coach in rural Minnesota, he helped students create the school’s first Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA). Walz has said he thought it was important for him to be the adviser to the GSA because “it really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married.” He wanted to show, in other words, that masculinity didn’t have to be toxic, that a real man had empathy.All of this to say: thanks for the nickname, guys! Rather than being the insult they think it is, Tampon Tim is a compliment. One that reinforces the fact that the GOP is suffering from a severe case of Toxic Schmuck Syndrome.New York’s oldest person said her secret to longevity is staying single“That’s why I am living … because I didn’t get married,” Louise Jean Signore, 112, told reporters this week. “I’d rather be single. When you are married, you have a lot of trouble.” The fact that Signore doesn’t drink or smoke probably also has something to do with it.Outcry on social media prompts new IUD insertion guidelinesWho says that complaining online is a waste of time? After TikTok users recently shared their painful experiences with getting intrauterine devices inserted, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued updated guidance on how doctors should share options for pain management with their patients. This is one small step towards taking women’s pain more seriously.Bulgaria’s parliament bans LGBTQ+ ‘propaganda’This mirrors regressive legislation passed in Russia and Hungary in recent years.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe gender police consistently target female athletes of colour“More women from the Global South or developing countries are affected by sex testing in sports,” the executive director of a sports advocacy organization told the AP in the wake of the Imane Khelif “controversy”. The AP further notes: “International sporting federations don’t tend to promote an understanding of diversity in sex and gender identity and that gender tests have often targeted female athletes of color who don’t conform to typically Western, white ideals of femininity.”Israel minister says starvation of millions in Gaza might be ‘justified and moral’While extremist Israeli leaders are fantasizing about starving 2 million people to death and defending rape, Harris has said she doesn’t support an Israel arms embargo. It is becoming clear that, just like Joe Biden, Harris has no red line when it comes to Palestinian suffering.Women in China spread secret, female-only languageNushu, sometimes called “script of tears”, is a secret language that goes back centuries in China.A political candidate who told voters not to be ‘weak and gay’ lost her raceValentina Gomez, the Missouri Republican who released homophobic campaign videos, lost her bid to become secretary of state by an embarrassing margin.The week in pawtriarchyBehind their prickly demeanor, cats are big softies. New research suggests cats will grieve after the death of fellow pets. They’ll even grieve dogs. Cats, it would appear, have more empathy than the average Republican politician. More

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      Chinese American man convicted in US of spying on dissidents for China

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      A Chinese American scholar was convicted on Tuesday in the US on charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on dissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government.A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city.Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the ministry of state security, Wang lived a double life for more than a decade.“The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” assistant US attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.”Wang was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. Faced with up to 10 years in prison, he pleaded not guilty.Wang’s attorneys did not immediately return a request for comment.Wang came to New York in 1994 to teach after doing so at a Chinese university. He later became a US citizen.He helped found the Queens-based Hu Yaobang Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist party in the 1980s.According to prosecutors, Wang composed emails – styled as “diaries” – that recounted conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.One message was about events commemorating the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, prosecutors said. Other emails talked about people planning demonstrations during various visits that Xi Jinping, Chinese president, made to the US.Instead of sending the emails and creating a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officers could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.In other, encrypted messages, Wang relayed details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans to meet with a prominent Hong Kong dissident while the latter was in the US, according to an indictment.During a series of FBI interviews between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the ministry of state security, but he later acknowledged on videotape that the intelligence agency asked him to gather information on democracy advocates and that he sometimes did, FBI agents testified.But, they said, he claimed he did not provide anything really valuable, just information already in the public domain.Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” the defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry.“He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym. He recorded his conversation with Wang at the latter’s house in Connecticut.“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a bit later. The agent said he did not recall.Wang told agents his “diaries” were advertisements for the foundation’s meetings or write-ups that he was publishing in newspapers, according to testimony. He also suggested to the undercover agent that publishing them would be a way to deflect any suspicion from US authorities.Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that when Wang found out in 2019 that investigators would search his phone for any contacts in the Chinese government, he paused for a minute.“And then he said: ‘Do anything. I don’t care,’” Igo recalled. More

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      New York appeals court denies Trump bid to end gag order in hush-money case

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      A New York appeals court on Thursday denied Donald Trump’s bid to end a gag order in his hush-money criminal case, rejecting the former US president’s argument that his May conviction “constitutes a change in circumstances” that warrants lifting the restrictions.A five-judge panel in the state’s mid-level appellate court ruled that the trial judge, Juan Merchan, was correct in extending parts of the gag order until Trump is sentenced, writing that “the fair administration of justice necessarily includes sentencing”.Merchan imposed the gag order in March, a few weeks before the trial started, after prosecutors raised concerns about Trump’s habit of attacking people involved in his cases. During the trial, he held Trump in contempt of court and fined him $10,000 for violations, and threatened to jail him if he did it again.The judge lifted some restrictions in June, freeing Trump to comment about witnesses and jurors but keeping trial prosecutors, court staffers and their families – including his own daughter – off limits until he is sentenced.Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, was originally scheduled to be sentenced on 11 July, but Merchan postponed it until 18 September.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has asked to set aside his 34 felony convictions after the US supreme court ruled presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts taken as executive. Trump’s legal team has not argued that his acts were official in the case, but that certain evidence should not have been admitted because it related to presidential acts. The court ruling also said that evidence couldn’t be used if it constituted an official act, even if the crimes alleged are not themselves official.Prosecutors have argued the ruling does not affect the convictions in this case. “All of the evidence that he complains of either concerned wholly unofficial conduct, or, at most, official conduct for which any presumption of immunity has been rebutted,” prosecutors wrote.In his legal case pertaining to illegally keeping classified documents, US district judge Aileen Cannon in Florida dismissed the charges because she found the appointment of Jack Smith as special counsel was unconstitutional, an idea raised in a concurring opinion by the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas. More

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      Theodore Roosevelt’s pocket watch recovered after being stolen in 1987

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      Theodore Roosevelt’s pocket watch has been recovered after being stolen nearly four decades ago from a museum exhibit about the former president.The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that it had managed to get back the historic watch in a news release published on Thursday.In the release, FBI agent Robert Giczy said that the bureau worked closely with the National Park Service to set the stage for “the repatriation of the watch”, which he called a “historic treasure … for future generations to enjoy”.Roosevelt’s younger sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, and her husband, Douglas Robinson Jr, gave him the pocket watch in question.Giczy said the watch is “fairly pedestrian”, having been made with an “inexpensive” silver case.But the highly sentimental gift gives it a historic value. It accompanied Roosevelt during the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1898, where he acted as a battle commander prior to his presidency.Roosevelt also took the watch on trips across the world during his presidency from 1901 to 1909.“It has traveled thousands of miles over the last 126 years, or about 4bn seconds,” Jonathan Parker, the superintendent of the museum at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt’s home, said to CBS News.“The value to its family, the value to our country, because it belongs to the nation, it is a priceless presidential timepiece.”Sagamore Hill in Cove Neck, New York, inherited Roosevelt’s watch after he died in 1919. The museum there loaned out the watch in 1971 to the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York, as part of an exhibit.But the watch was then stolen from that museum on 21 July 1987. Earlier investigations led by the FBI and local police failed to uncover the significant artifact.More than three decades later, in 2023, the watch turned up again – all the way in Florida.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEdwin Bailey, owner of Blackwell Auctions in Clearwater, Florida, received the watch, the New York Times reported, citing an interview with the Buffalo News.Bailey, who has never publicly shared who gave it to him, ultimately decided not to sell the watch after discovering through independent research that it belonged to Roosevelt.Bailey instead contacted the Sagamore Hill and Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, both of which confirmed the pocket watch’s authenticity.With the watch now back in hand, officials plan to display it at the Old Orchard museum that is affiliated with the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, according to the Times. More

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      Jamaal Bowman’s primary defeat leaves progressives angry at role of Aipac

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      Progressive groups reacted with disappointment and anger over Jamaal Bowman’s decisive primary loss to a moderate Democrat in New York’s 16th district, calling for the party to cut ties with pro-Israel lobbying groups they blame for the result.In a letter to the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, more than a dozen progressive organizations said they had “dire concerns” over the party’s continued association with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), “the future of the Democratic Party, the future of our multiracial democracy, and the future of our planet”.Aipac and its affiliates plan to spend $100m across the election cycle, and Bowman’s defeat marks their most significant victory to date. Looking ahead, they have already set their sights set on the Missouri congresswoman Cori Bush, who will face Wesley Bell in her August primary. United Democracy Project, a Super Pac affiliated with Aipac, has already spent nearly $1.9m promoting Bell’s candidacy.The signatories of the letter included the Center for Popular Democracy Action, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, New York Communities for Change and New York City Democratic Socialists of America.In the letter, they said that in the run-up to the vote, UDP had flooded the Westchester county–northern Bronx district with nearly $20m in mailers and ads “funded largely by Republican billionaires, to drown out Jamaal Bowman’s message of humanity, dignity, and a thriving future for all”.The result, they said, had been to unseat a a candidate that Jeffries had personally endorsed, who retains “a deep well of support among the Black and brown communities in the district”, and to replace him with “a conservative politician with a history of racist remarks and governance”.Bowman, a Black former middle school principal who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, lost to challenger George Latimer by a wide margin of 58% to 42% of the vote. The race was called within an hour of polls closing.Bowman had been supported on the campaign trail by heavyweight party progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who called the race “one of the most important in the modern history of America”.Sanders said in a statement after Bowman’s loss that it was “an outrage and an insult to democracy that we maintain a corrupt campaign finance system which allows billionaire-funded Super Pacs to buy elections.”“Aipac and other Super Pacs spent over $23 million to defeat Bowman. He spent $3 million. That is a spending gap which is virtually impossible to overcome,” he said, adding: “It is not a coincidence that with our corrupt campaign finance system we also have a rigged economy that allows the very rich to get much richer while many working people are falling further behind. Big Money buys politicians who will do their bidding, and the results are clear.”Progressives, like Sanders, attempted to characterize the race as an example of big-money influence in politics after pro-Israel groups and a number of wealthy residents of the New York suburban parts of the district weighed in with their checkbooks.Bush underscored that Latimer’s victory represented a clear threat to the progressive movement, saying in a statement: “These same extremists are coming to St Louis. They are bankrolling a faux-progressive, former Republican campaign operative to buy our deep blue Democratic seat. But let me be clear: St Louis will not be silenced or sold out.”The progressive groups said that Aipac had “turned the NY16 race into the most expensive Democratic primary in history, waging an unacceptable assault on our democracy, our communities, and our shared future” and called on Jeffries to take action against “destructive actions in your own backyard”.Jeffries, along with most of the House Democratic leadership team, has received Aipac’s endorsement, and the progressive groups demanded that he reject the pro-Israel lobby group’s financial support to protest against Bowman’s defeat.Protect Our Power said in a statement that Bowman’s defeat was a “loss for young people and anyone who cares about our continued movement toward justice, peace, and building a multiracial democracy”.The progressive group blamed “Aipac and the Maga billionaires who recruited and paid for George Latimer’s campaign from start to finish” for the defeat, and vowed “to tell Aipac they have no business creating division in our democracy”.In a separate letter of protest, Jewish Voice for Peace Action said it was “saddened” by the results that had unseated a congressman who “has been one of the few members of Congress committed to defending Palestinian human rights”.“Today is a sad day for American democracy,” said JVP’s political director, Beth Miller. “To protect progressive candidates moving forward it is essential that Democrats reject Aipac,” she added.Bob Herbst, a member of the group and a constituent of NY-16, called Aipac’s multimillion-dollar spend in the district “a dangerous interference in our democracy”.The race had been viewed as a crucial test of Democratic party unity over an issue that threatens to separate traditionally Democratic-voting Jewish Americans from the party in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people, and a nine-month Israeli counter-offensive that has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and driven hundreds of thousands more to the point of starvation.Bowman claimed that the results would show “fucking Aipac the power of the motherfucking South Bronx”, though the Aipac campaign focused primarily on Bowman’s weaknesses overall and not specifically or solely his stance on Israel. One UDP attack ad against Bowman specifically called out his votes against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the debt ceiling agreement, accusing the representative of failing his constituents.“Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda and refuses to compromise, even with President Biden,” the ad’s narrator says. “Jamaal Bowman has his own agenda, and it’s hurting New York.”Nonetheless, Aipac is using Latimer’s victory to claim that Bowman’s stance on Israel is why he lost.“This race presented a clear choice – between George Latimer, who reflects the views of the Democratic mainstream in his congressional district and across the country, and his opponent, who aligns with the extremist, anti-Israel fringe,” an Aipac spokesperson, Marshall Wittmann, told Axios.Bowman was no stranger to scandals while in office. In December 2023, he became the 27th House member in history to be censured after pulling a fire alarm on his way to vote on a stopgap spending bill. He was also linked to problematic blogposts that pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The posts, which Bowman said were from more than a decade ago, were unearthed by the Daily Beast earlier this year and the former representative has since said he regrets them.Bowman’s opponent, Latimer, offered a more measured approach in a district with a large number of Jewish voters.After Latimer accepted his win on Tuesday night, he told supporters: “We have to fight to make sure that we do not vilify each other, that we remember that we’re all Americans, and that our common future is bound together.”Joanie Greve contributed reporting More