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      Blue states are rolling back mask rules – but experts warn it’s too soon

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      Blue states are rolling back mask rules – but experts warn it’s too soonThe lifting of mandates is coming at a time when the CDC says a vast majority of the country is still seeing high Covid transmission Several US states, many of them governed by Democrats, began rolling back mask mandates this week, a move public health experts warn could set back progress battling Covid.On Wednesday, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York and Rhode Island joined California, Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon in lifting mask mandates for some public places.The wave of relaxations comes after months of private meetings among state leaders and political focus groups after the November elections, according to reports. “Now, it’s time to give people their lives back,” Sean Maloney, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tweeted in support of New York suspending its indoor mask-or-vaccine mandate.Covid-era Americans are using public transit less and having more car crashes Read moreYet the lifting of rules has not been universally applauded and is coming at a time when the vast majority of the country (99%) is still seeing high transmission of the virus, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Public polls show consistent support for mask mandates and other precautions, and experts say the time to relax precautions is not here yet – and acting prematurely could prolong this wave.“In my view, it’s too soon. I feel like we’re anticipating too much,” said Justin Lessler, a professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. “We’re being too confident that things are going to keep going the direction that they have been going.”The CDC’s director Rochelle Walensky also recently said that “now is not the moment” to drop masks in public, although the agency is reportedly weighing changes to its guidance on masks.While Covid cases have dropped from Omicron’s record-shattering peak, the US still has an average of more than 230,000 cases each day – similar to the height of last winter’s wave – and more than 2,300 people are dying from Covid each day, according to the CDC. While hospitalizations are beginning to fall, 80% of hospitals are still under “high or extreme stress”.Treatments, including antivirals and monoclonal antibodies, that keep Covid from progressing to serious illness and death are still in short supply throughout the country. Children under the age of 5 are not yet eligible for vaccines, while less than a quarter of kids ages five to 11 are fully vaccinated.“We have hundreds of thousands of people dying, we have millions who’ve been hospitalized and we have an unknown number who have long Covid and who will get long Covid as we roll back what little mitigation we have,” said Julia Raifman, assistant professor at Boston University School of Public Health and creator of the Covid-19 US state policy database.“Saying things are normal undercuts us in getting more people vaccinated and in helping people wear masks, because transmission actually remains quite high,” Raifman said. “The best way to help people think things are more normal is to reduce the amount of virus with the mitigation measures that we have.”The failure to set measures on when to drop or reinstate precautions “starts from the top”, including the CDC and the White House, Raifman said. “The whole of the pandemic response is being mismanaged, and only better leadership can help us come together to better address it.”Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, says the US is leaving the “full blown” phase of the pandemic. In September, he said controlling the pandemic meant having fewer than 10,000 cases a day.“This is not a declaration of victory as much as an acknowledgment that we can responsibly live with this thing,” said the New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, who is also a key leader of the National Governors Association. Governors have reportedly urged Biden to “move away from the pandemic”.Many states – including Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Oregon, New Jersey and Rhode Island – are also set to lift school mask mandates. California is considering changes to the rules on school masks, while Illinois and New York will keep theirs for now. The governor of Pennsylvania lifted the school mask rule last month.Teachers’ unions have joined health experts in calling for science-based recommendations in order to keep educators and students safe, and to keep the virus from forcing further school closures caused by worker shortages.“I worry about taking off measures just because cases are trending down,” Lessler said. “At least some of the rate of decrease has to do with what little we’re doing to try to control transmission, and by stopping these measures – both directly and in the message it sends about the risk of the virus – you slow that down-trend.”A new variant could also emerge and change the situation yet again, he said. “We’ve time and time again been surprised by new variants.”Lifting measures too early and slowing the decrease in cases can result in “a lot of unnecessary cases and deaths that you might have avoided simply by waiting a few weeks”, Lessler said.“And if we change what we’re doing substantially, we may not get there, or it may take us longer to get there than anticipated.”TopicsCoronavirusOmicron variantDemocratsUS politicsCaliforniaNew YorkOregonnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganism

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      Interview‘Food is doing more injustice than mass incarceration’: New York mayor Eric Adams on veganismEd Pilkington in New York Adams appears to have had some personal success with a vegan diet after a health scare, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?One morning in March 2016, before Eric Adams burst onto the national stage as the charismatic new mayor of New York City, he had a very rude awakening.The then Brooklyn borough president was startled to find that he could barely see the alarm clock that was sounding his morning call. His bedroom looked shrouded in mist.“I thought it was just sleep in my eyes and my eyes adjusting to the light,” Adams says. “But the cloudiness didn’t change. Something wrong was going on here.”He leapt out of bed only for the horror to intensify. Through the fog he could see that his right eye was bloodshot. His left eye was totally blind.“I had a piercing pain in my stomach which didn’t leave. I guess everything was breaking down all at once.”Adams is no stranger to fear. As he lays out in his book, Healthy At Last, he experienced plenty of it over more than two decades as an NYPD officer, patrolling the streets at night, raiding drug dens, investigating homicides, investigating the dark side of urban American life.This was different. This was the start of a journey into his physical dark side and the ugly truths he found there. He was quickly delivered a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Doctors told him that his condition and the multiple pills he would now be forced to swallow every day would define him for the rest of his life.American politics thrives on personal narratives of overcoming adversity, and Eric Adams is no exception. He didn’t accept the medical advice. He kept on searching until, with the help of scientists at the Cleveland Clinic, he discovered a way to beat his ailment with a radical whole-food plant-based diet.Now 61, Adams is reveling in his new stature as New York’s second Black (after David Dinkins in the 1990s) and first (almost) vegan mayor. Since he started in the post on 1 January he has been ubiquitous, popping up all over the city brandishing his trademark swagger. “When a mayor has swagger, the city has swagger,” is his mantra.There are many aspects of Adams’ first month in office that beg attention. He likes to present himself as the future of the Democratic party, a “radically practical” politician who is tough on both police brutality and crime, who gives working-class New Yorkers what they need and want while being scathingly dismissive of the progressive left.The stance clearly resonates with many New Yorkers who narrowly gave him victory in the Democratic primaries in July and with it the keys to Gracie Mansion. But Adams has had a troubled start, some of it self-inflicted.He tried to put his brother Bernard into a $210,000 job as his top bodyguard (the city’s conflict of interests board whittled that down to a $1 salary as an adviser). He appointed as head of public safety Philip Banks, who in 2015 came under federal investigation as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a major NYPD corruption scandal.Adams doesn’t want to talk about all that. Before he sits down for an interview with the Guardian, his press team stipulates that he will answer no questions about politics – he will only talk about his journey back from ill-health and his exuberant championship of a plant-based diet, as laid out in his book. Even here Adams is placing himself in choppy waters. A few days after the Guardian interview, he incensed groups helping those impacted by the opioid crisis by likening excessive cheese consumption to heroin addiction.Then Politico came out with a report that quoted several people claiming to have seen Adams regularly dining out on fish. The story inevitably spawned the Twitter handle #FishGate, and forced Adams to put out a statement saying “I am perfectly imperfect, and have occasionally eaten fish.”Adams clearly needs to get his story straight. Is he a strict vegan who only ever eats plant-based foods? (No.) Is he a pescatarian? (Maybe.) Is he someone who was given the scare of his life by contracting a devastating disease and drastically changed his life as a result?At least that last one is a definite yes. After Adams received his diabetes diagnosis, he began asking himself difficult questions about his lifestyle. He started reflecting on all those years of NYPD night shifts and the terrible diet that entailed.There were the inevitable McDonald’s drive-throughs and Wendy’s shakes and burgers. He became a connoisseur of the dollar menu, the double cheeseburger, coffee and fried chicken at KFC. It took its toll – by the time of the blindness episode he had such a stunningly elevated blood sugar level that his doctor said it could have put him in a coma.And then Adams dug deeper. Looking further into the root causes of his condition, he thought about the soul food that he had grown up with in New York and that his mother Dorothy and forebears had consumed in rural Alabama. He thought about the sugared buttered rolls, the chitterlings (pigs’ intestines), pigs’ feet and ears, fried chicken, ham hocks, fried steak and catfish.He thought how delicious. And how deadly. So much of it smothered in sugar, high in cholesterol and saturated fats, contributing to the epidemic of modern American diseases – diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart conditions.And then he thought, picking up on a debate that has been happening in African American communities for many years, this is not soul food, this is survival food, slavery food. “This was the diet our slave masters gave to us hundreds of years ago,” Adams writes. “We adopted a diet born from slavery and made it our own.”I asked Adams to elaborate upon the idea that the modern diet of millions of Americans today, in 2022, has its roots in the scraps of food tossed at slaves from the master’s table. All these years later, he replied, the long tail of slavery is still killing African Americans through morbid ill health.“Sometimes we think of being enslaved and we think about physical restraints,” he said. “Our hands and feet are in shackles. And we don’t acknowledge that the term ‘enslaved’ also applies to something you can’t free yourself of – and that’s what bad food is.”He goes on: “We have to free ourselves of it mentally. Sometimes physical restraint is easier to free yourself from than emotional restraint.”It’s striking that at a time when the enduring injury of slavery is increasingly being studied and debated, whether in terms of racial inequality or the injustices of the criminal justice system and mass incarceration, the same unbroken link to enslavement is rarely drawn when it comes to American food.“Food is doing more of an injustice than mass incarceration,” he says. “They are both bad, but the number of lives we are losing from bad food are X times the number lost to mass incarceration.”That’s a bold statement, given that there are about 670,000 Black people currently behind bars in the US. Yet Black Americans are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than white Americans, and that more than five million of them are assailed with the illness today.Certainly, he has witnessed the impact of food-related ill-health within his own family. He describes how diabetes was so rampant among his relatives that they even had a pet word for it – “sugar”. His aunt Betty died of sugar aged 57 – one year older than Adams was when he was struck with temporary blindness.No matter how prevalent disease has been among his community, it must have been a tall order trying to persuade people accustomed to soul and fast food to follow him into the strictly vegan, no-oil, non-processed, plant-based and whole food diet he has adopted. Among the recipes offered in his book are quinoa and tempeh stir-fry, chia oats with berries, and sweet potato and flaxseed smoothies. Try selling that to someone accustomed to St Louis ribs, hush puppies and oxtail.Adams said there have been times when friends would accuse him of elitism, turning his back on the traditional foods of his community and going all “white” on them. “There is a lot of pushback,” he told me.“Remember, when you talk about what a person is eating you are also talking about the emotions attached to what they are eating. When you talk about not eating soul food, people tend to believe that you are too good for it. ‘My grandmother was raised on this’, they’ll say.”So how does he go about trying to get beyond such resistance? “I give them the history. I make the connections. Sometimes people just need to connect the dots. When you start showing them the origins of fried chicken, the origins of chitterlings and pigs’ feet, of all the other food that were the scraps and waste from the slave master’s table, that hits folks and they begin to think differently about it.”It is ironic that his book, with its recipes and self-help bullet points, is focused very much on the individual. But out in East New York or in Brownsville, where Adams was born, and other low-income areas of the city, African Americans have scant chance of eating healthily even if they wanted to, given the food deserts they live in.Isn’t it the case that in neighborhoods where fast-food restaurants and delis stocked with sugary fatty products are the only outlets, a more systemic – rather than individualist – approach is needed?Yes, he says. “What I’m hoping to do, it’s almost like the Marines taking control of the beach. If I plant this seed in the minds of people while we are transforming these communities to have access to healthy food, then we will go from ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have access to it’, to ‘Hey, this is what Eric was talking about’.”I ask him what he means. “Imagine you see something on the shelf like quinoa and couscous, and you have no idea why you would want to eat those meals. But if you are given information before you walk into the supermarket then you might try this healthy meal next time round.”That’s all very well, but how are the food deserts in low-income African American neighbourhoods ever going to get access to the kinds of whole-grain, plant-based foods that Adams espouses? There is no shortage of guidance that Adams could draw on from other parts of the country where Black communities have long experimented with community gardens and vegan hot lunches in schools.When he was Brooklyn borough president he initiated “meatless Mondays” in local public schools, and campaigned to have all processed meat removed from school meals. Now that he’s mayor, he is expanding his push for healthy food. This week he introduced “vegan Fridays” for all New York public schools – a reform to the quality of school food that Adams still stands by despite his difficulties with #FishGate.Will there be more coming, and if so how will he use his new power to make lasting change? “How do I do it?” Adams says. “I look at where as government we are feeding people and I change that. We feed 1.1 million New Yorkers every day at school, people in hospitals, correction facilities, senior centres. How about giving them all healthy food?”It’s early days for the Adams administration, too early to make firm assessments. So far there are no signs of detailed plans emerging for actually carrying out such a food revolution.It leaves a question mark hanging over his undoubtedly powerful and positive mission to change what we eat. In his own life, the results of the transformation are dramatic and unanswerable, fish or no fish. He shed 35lbs, kicked diabetes, and now exudes glowing good health.He appears to have had some personal success, but can he replicate it among all New Yorkers?TopicsEric AdamsNew YorkUS politicsVegan food and drinkVeganismFoodinterviewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Biden on crime: ‘The answer is not to defund the police’ – live

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      Key events

      Show

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

      3.28pm EST

      15:28

      Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

      1.48pm EST

      13:48

      ‘The answer is not to defund the police’ – Biden

      1.39pm EST

      13:39

      Joe Biden considering executive order to implement police reform – White House

      12.30pm EST

      12:30

      Today so far

      12.18pm EST

      12:18

      Russia plans staged attack to justify invasion of Ukraine – reports

      10.40am EST

      10:40

      Isis leader detonated bomb to avoid US capture, Biden says

      Live feed

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      4.37pm EST

      16:37

      The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, became similarly defensive earlier today when a reporter pressed for more details about the deaths of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and his family members.
      Joe Biden said that Qurayshi detonated a bomb to avoid capture by the US troops who carried out a special forces raid last night, and the explosion killed the Islamic State leader and several of his family members.
      NPR reporter Ayesha Rascoe asked Psaki whether the White House would present evidence to substantiate Biden’s claims that a suicide bomb killed Qurayshi and his family.
      “Obviously, these events just happened overnight. And so, I’m going to let the Department of Defense do a final assessment, which I’m certain they will provide additional detail on once it’s finalized,” Psaki said.
      Rascoe continued to press the issue, telling Psaki, “The US has not always been straightforward about what happens with civilians. And, I mean, that is a fact.”
      The US military initially described a Kabul drone attack carried out last year as a “righteous strike,” but Pentagon leaders were later forced to admit that the attack had actually killed 10 civilians and no Islamic State combatants.
      “The president made clear from the beginning, at every point in this process, that doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties was his priority and his preference,” Psaki said.
      “Given these events just happened less than 24 hours ago, we’re going to give [the Pentagon] time to make a final assessment. And they’ll provide every detail they can.”

      4.14pm EST

      16:14

      The State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, clashed with a reporter at his press briefing after the journalist demanded evidence to substantiate US claims of Russia’s plans to stage an attack to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
      “You’ve made an allegation that they might do that. Have they actually done it?” AP reporter Matt Lee asked Price.
      “What we know, Matt, is what I just said, that they have engaged in this activity,” Price said. “We told you a few weeks ago that we have information indicating Russia also has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine. So that, Matt, to your question is an action that Russia has already taken.”

      The Hill
      (@thehill)
      Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. […] This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”Must-watch exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/RPIPb2zwf5

      February 3, 2022

      Lee pointed out that the administration has not presented evidence to support the allegation of a planned false-flag operation either, and he pressed for concrete proof of Russia’s schemes in Ukraine.
      Specifically on the allegation of a planned fake video to justify an invasion, Lee said, “This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”
      Pointing to his decades of experience covering US foreign policy, Lee noted that the Pentagon has previously made wrong assertions about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the potential of Kabul falling to the Taliban.
      Price became defensive, telling Lee, “If you doubt the credibility of the US government, of the British government, of other governments and want to, you know, find solace in information that the Russians are putting out, that is for you to do.”

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Russia plans ‘very graphic’ fake video as pretext for Ukraine invasion, US claims

      The Guardian’s Julian Borger and Shaun Walker report:
      US officials claim they have evidence of a Russian plan to make a “very graphic” fake video of a Ukrainian attack as a pretext for an invasion.
      The alleged plot would involve using corpses, footage of blown-up buildings, fake Ukrainian military hardware, Turkish-made drones and actors playing the part of Russian-speaking mourners.
      “We don’t know definitively that this is the route they are going to take, but we know that this is an option under consideration,” the deputy national security adviser, Jonathan Finer, told MSNBC, adding that the video “would involve actors playing mourners for people who are killed in an event that they would have created themselves”.
      Finer added: “That would involve the deployment of corpses to represent bodies purportedly killed, of people purportedly killed in an incident like this.”
      The Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said the video would have purported to show a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory or Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine and would be “very graphic”. He added that the US believed that the plan had the backing of the Kremlin.
      “Our experience is that very little of this nature is not approved at the highest levels of the Russian government,” Kirby said.

      3.28pm EST

      15:28

      Trump Israel ambassador spills beans on embarrassing meeting

      Martin Pengelly

      Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal. More

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      After decrying Republican election rigging, Democrats embrace it in New York

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      After decrying Republican election rigging, Democrats embrace it in New York Democrats propose new redistricting maps that would give the party three additional seats in CongressNew York Democrats are plowing ahead with an aggressive effort to rig the state’s electoral maps to give the party as many as three additional seats in Congress, a move that comes as the party has denounced similar Republican-led efforts in other states as anti-democratic.Democrats currently have a 19-8 advantage in New York’s delegation to the US House of Representatives. Their proposed districts, unveiled on Sunday, would give them up to three additional seats, increasing their advantage to 22-4. (There is one fewer seat overall in New York because of population shifts.)The plan puts Democrats in an awkward political position. “Democrats have given up any high ground they had over Republicans on gerrymandering,” Pat Kiernan, the popular local news anchor, tweeted on Sunday. “These maps are the most brazen and outrageous attempt at rigging the election to keep Nancy Pelosi as speaker,” Nick Langworthy, the chairman of the state Republican party, said in a statement. “What they’re doing is textbook, filthy, partisan gerrymandering.”Over the last few months, Democrats in Congress have led efforts calling for an end to excessive partisan gerrymandering – an effort that failed last month when Republicans filibustered a sweeping voting rights bill. They’ve watched as Republican legislatures across the US have carved up district lines to their advantage to help the GOP as they try to take control of the US House later this year. But New York is one of the few places where Democrats have complete control of the process and a chance to gain Democratic seats. Nationally, Republicans have complete control over the drawing of 187 districts and Democrats have control over just 75. More than a third of the districts Democrats will draw are in New York. Here’s how they’re doing it in one of them.@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Regular.woff2) 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format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-SemiboldItalic.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:600;font-style:italic}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:”Guardian Headline Full”;src:url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://interactive.guim.co.uk/fonts/garnett/GHGuardianHeadline-BoldItalic.ttf) 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      Sheldon Silver, top New York lawmaker sentenced for corruption, dies aged 77

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      Sheldon Silver, top New York lawmaker sentenced for corruption, dies aged 77Democrat spent two decades as speaker of state assembly before conviction over real-estate dealings Sheldon Silver, one of the most powerful figures in New York state government for two decades before his conviction on corruption charges, has died in federal custody. He was 77.Silver, who served as the speaker of the New York state assembly, died on Monday, the federal Bureau of Prisons said, adding that the official cause of death would be determined by the medical examiner. Silver’s supporters had said he was in failing health from multiple medical conditions. The Manhattan Democrat, who told a judge he prayed he would not die in prison, was serving a more than six-year sentence for using his clout in state government to benefit real estate developers, who rewarded Silver by referring lucrative business to his law firm.Silver’s conviction ended a nearly four-decade career in the assembly. He first won a seat representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1976, and became assembly speaker in 1994, a powerful position that made him one of Albany’s “three men in a room” negotiating annual budgets and major legislation with the governor and state senate leader.In all, Silver served as speaker during the tenure of five New York governors, from Mario Cuomo to Andrew Cuomo.He became known as an inscrutable and stubborn negotiator, blocking proposals so often he was sometimes called “Dr No”. He helped scuttle the former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s plan to locate a football stadium on Manhattan’s West Side. And he took the brunt of the blame for the collapse in 2008 of Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan for Manhattan, which would have charged electronic tolls for driving through the borough’s most highly trafficked neighborhoods.“He was a fighter for his constituents and his work to rebuild lower Manhattan after the terrible events of 9/11 will never be forgotten,“ said the current assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, in a statement. “For years he was the lone voice in the room pushing back against many regressive policies that would have harmed so many New Yorkers, and he presided over landmark laws to improve the lives of our most vulnerable residents.”Silver was the youngest of four children of Russian immigrants. His father ran a wholesale hardware store. As an adult, he and his wife had four children and lived in a lower Manhattan apartment blocks from his first home.An Orthodox Jew, Silver was known to observe Sabbath even during the marathon negotiation sessions that preceded annual budget deadlines and the end of legislative sessions.Over time, he became a symbol of Albany’s much-maligned opaque style of governance and, ultimately, a target of federal prosecutors.Prosecutors accused Silver of trading his influence for money. In one instance, they argued that Silver persuaded a physician to refer asbestos cancer patients to his law firm so it could seek multimillion-dollar settlements from personal injury lawsuits, a secret arrangement that allowed him to collect about $3m in referral fees. In return, prosecutors said he directed hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grants to a research center run by the doctor.His original 2015 conviction was tossed out by an appeals court after a US supreme court ruling that narrowed the definition of a corrupt act. He was convicted again at a second trial in 2018 tailored slightly to conform to the high court ruling.But an appeals court ultimately threw out the conviction related to the asbestos cancer patients. Prosecutors decided not to retry him on that charge. In the part of his conviction that stuck, a court found that he had supported legislation that benefited real estate developers who were referring tax business to a law firm that employed him.Silver begged for mercy ahead of his sentencing in a letter to the judge.“I pray I will not die in prison,” Silver wrote, saying he was “broken-hearted” that he damaged the trust people have in government.The Associated Press contributed reportingTopicsNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      New York attorney general alleges Trump firm misled banks and tax officials

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      New York attorney general alleges Trump firm misled banks and tax officialsCourt filing says investigators are seeking to question Donald Trump and his two eldest children The New York attorney general’s office has told a court that its investigators have uncovered evidence that Donald Trump’s company used “fraudulent or misleading” asset valuations to get loans and tax benefits.The court filing late on Tuesday said state authorities had not yet decided whether to bring a civil lawsuit in connection with the allegations, but that investigators needed to question Trump and his two eldest children as part of their inquiries.The former US president and his lawyers say the investigation is politically motivated.In the court documents, the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, gave its most detailed accounting yet of its investigation into allegations that Trump’s company repeatedly misstated the value of assets to get favourable loan terms or reduce its tax burden.Using personal financial statements from 2004 to 2020 that were filed by Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars, the attorney general’s office said the Trump Organization overstated the value of land donations made in New York and California on paperwork submitted to the IRS to justify several million dollars in tax deductions.New York attorney general subpoenas Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump – reportRead moreThe company misreported the size of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse, saying it was nearly three times its actual size – a difference in value of about $200m (£147m), James’s office alleged, citing deposition testimony from Trump’s longtime financial chief Allen Weisselberg, who was charged last year with tax fraud in a parallel criminal investigation.Valuations of Trump golf clubs in Westchester county, New York and Scotland were inflated, the attorney general’s office says, with the Trump Organization claiming that multiple, ultimately nonexistent mansions worth millions of dollars had been built on the family’s family estate. The company also claimed that there were $150,000 initiation fees into Trump’s Westchester golf course that were never collected.Citing this new additional evidence that Trump and the Trump Organization made fraudulent and misleading asset valuations to boost their appearance to potential lenders and investors, James’ office detailed its findings in a court motion seeking to force Trump, his daughter Ivanka Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr to comply with subpoenas seeking their testimony.Messages seeking comment were left with lawyers for the Trumps.Trump’s legal team has sought to block the subpoenas, calling them “an unprecedented and unconstitutional manoeuvre”. They say James is improperly attempting to obtain testimony that could then be used in the parallel criminal investigation, being overseen by the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg.Trump sued James in federal court last month, seeking to put an end to her investigation. In the suit, his lawyers claimed the attorney general, a Democrat, had violated the Republican’s constitutional rights in a “thinly veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates”.In the past, the Republican ex-president has decried James’s and Bragg’s investigations as part of a “witch-hunt”.In a statement late on Tuesday, James’s office said it had not decided whether the evidence outlined in the court papers merited legal action, but the investigation should proceed unimpeded.How Trump’s $50m golf club became $1.4m when it came time to pay taxRead more“For more than two years, the Trump Organization has used delay tactics and litigation in an attempt to thwart a legitimate investigation into its financial dealings,” James said.“No one in this country can pick and choose if and how the law applies to them. We will not be deterred in our efforts to continue this investigation and ensure that no one is above the law.”Although James’s civil investigation is separate from the criminal investigation, her office has been involved in both, sending several lawyers to work side by side with prosecutors from the Manhattan DA’s office.One judge has previously sided with James on other matters relating to the investigation, including making another Trump son, the Trump Organization executive Eric Trump, testify after his lawyers abruptly cancelled a scheduled deposition.Last year, the Manhattan district attorney brought tax fraud charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg. Weisselberg pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he and the company evaded taxes on lucrative fringe benefits paid to executives.Both investigations are at least partly related to allegations made in news reports and by Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen that Trump had a history of misrepresenting the value of assets. Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsDonald TrumpUS taxationNew YorkUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      New York man charged with threatening to kill Donald Trump

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      New York man charged with threatening to kill Donald TrumpThomas Welnicki expressed interest in killing then president in interview with Capitol police in July 2020, complaint says A New York man upset with what he perceived as Donald Trump’s threat to democracy was criminally charged on Monday with threatening to kill the former president, who he once referred to as Hitler.Congressman Jim Jordan refuses to cooperate with 6 January committeeRead moreAccording to an unsealed complaint, Thomas Welnicki, 72, from Rockaway Beach, expressed interest in killing the then president in an interview with US Capitol police in July 2020 and in several calls to the Secret Service the following year.Welnicki was charged with threatening to kill, kidnap and inflict bodily harm on Trump.“Mr Welnicki intended no harm to anyone,” said his lawyer, Deirdre von Dornum, attorney-in-charge of the federal defender’s office in Brooklyn.“He was expressing how distraught he was at what he saw as the threats to our democracy posed by former President Trump.”Lawyers and spokesmen for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.Trump was identified as “Individual-1” in the complaint, which was filed in Brooklyn federal court. A footnote said “Individual-1” was president from 20 January 2017 to 20 January 2021.Welnicki allegedly told Capitol police that if Trump lost the 2020 election and refused to leave office, he would “acquire weapons” and “take him down”.According to the complaint, in one voicemail left with the Secret Service, Welnicki said he would “do anything I can to take out” Trump.“Oh yeah, that’s a threat to come and arrest me,” he was quoted as saying. “I will do anything I can to take out [Trump] and his 12 monkeys … if I had the opportunity to do it in Manhattan, that would be awesome … tomorrow [Trump] will be in Georgia, maybe I will.”The complaint said the “12 monkeys” were unnamed members of Congress who Welnicki believed supported Trump. It also said Welnicki believed there would be a $350,000 reward for killing Trump.According to the complaint, the voicemail was recorded “on or about” 4 January 2021.Trump spoke in Georgia on 4 January, in support of two Republican senators in run-off elections and to advance his lie about electoral fraud in his defeat by Joe Biden.Two days later, on 6 January, Trump told supporters in Washington to “fight like hell” to overturn the election. Five people died in the ensuing attack on the US Capitol. More than 100 police officers were hurt.The complaint said Welnicki’s threats continued in the autumn of 2021, when he likened Trump to Adolf Hitler and referred to Trump’s children.On 2 December 2021, he allegedly told the Secret Service: “The new civil war could break out and taking up arms against the government is justified when ballots don’t matter.”Trump was given the codename “Mogul” by the Secret Service – and was the subject of security scares.In June 2016, for example, a British man was arrested at a rally in Las Vegas after trying to steal a police officer’s gun. The man told police his aim had been to kill Trump, then a candidate for president.In March 2017, an intruder who said he hoped to speak to Trump breached the White House walls via the US treasury.TopicsDonald TrumpUS politicsNew YorknewsReuse this content More