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      Standing My Ground review: Capitol cop Harry Dunn on January 6 and the Trumpist threat

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      If you think you’ve read everything you need to know about the violent attempt to overthrow the US government on 6 January 2021, this insider’s book by a 6ft 7in African American Capitol police officer will change your mind.Harry Dunn has written a 237-page cri de coeur for himself and for the US. It is a story that is more important than ever when so many crazed Republicans continue to revere the traitor whom the justice department says is directly responsible for this singularly shameful episode in American history.On that terrible day, Dunn and hundreds of his fellow Capitol cops were in hand-to-hand combat with scores of drunken and drug-addled seditionists. The police officers were attacked with everything from metal bike racks to flagpoles and banisters ripped from the stairs of the building.“You could hear the screaming and hollering as the battle raged on,” Dunn writes. “Blood was streaming down officers’ faces. They were yelling, grunting, and trying to force the rioters back. Many of them were blinded and coughing after being doused with pepper spray, bear spray, and even WD-40.”In the years since then, Dunn has beaten back post-traumatic stress disorder with the help of his family, his friends, professional therapists and sympathetic Congress members like Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Raskin took Dunn to lunch after the officer called the congressman’s office to tell him he was the source of an anonymous quote in a story in BuzzFeed which – to Dunn’s delight – Raskin had tweeted out.Since then, Dunn has made dozens of public appearances and written this book, with a single goal: “I want the people responsible for that day, including Trump … to pay a price, just like we paid a price … I will always be standing my ground to make sure our democracy exists. And I’ll ask that you stand with me so that nothing like this ever happens again.”Dunn reserves his greatest anger for those he and his fellow officers risked their lives for in the face of that furious mob. He was “full of rage” when it became clear that “Republicans were walking away from their earlier condemnation of the attack … Congress members … whom I had guarded and protected through State of the Unions [and] inaugurations … had suddenly turned on me. It angered me that loyalty to a single individual could overwhelm otherwise decent people … who had fallen into the darkness and forgotten their oaths of office.”He writes about how the day was particularly traumatic for Black police officers, because they were repeatedly called the N-word, as well as being beaten and sprayed and kicked and pummeled.He compares their treatment by Trump and others to the notorious assault in 1946 of a decorated Black second world war veteran named Isaac Woodard, who was pulled from a Greyhound bus because “the bus driver hadn’t liked the way Woodard asked to use the restroom” outside Augusta, Georgia. Local police officers beat him savagely and “the police chief used his baton to gouge Woodard’s eye sockets until both eyeballs ruptured beyond repair. Woodward was blind from that day forward.”“Now multiply that betrayal by two thousand times,” Dunn writes, “because that’s how many Capitol and Metropolitan police department officers were viciously assaulted by Americans whose democracy we defend every day.”After that, “we were betrayed by our president, many of our elected officials, and thousands of other Americans we had sworn to protect”.Dunn testified before the January 6 House committee and at trials for some of the terrorists who have been convicted for their crimes. Just like Woodard, “we were wearing our uniforms and badges, signifying our service to our nation”. But also just like Woodard, “to them we were throw-away people to be despised, hated and derided … merely because of the color of our skin … January 6 was never about politics. It wasn’t about election fraud. That was an excuse for people to do some shit they had wanted to do in the first place.”Last week’s election results in Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania – like the elections of 2018, 2020 and 2022 – proved once again that a majority of Americans reject the extremist agenda embraced by the Maga movement and its hideous head.Having finally recovered from most of the injuries inflicted on that fateful day in January 2021, Dunn feels he’s “been given a new lease on life, another chance to make a difference and that is what I want to do”. He ends the book with a plea to readers to do exactly what he is trying to do with that second chance: become a tireless foot soldier in the never-ending fight against racism and ignorance and book burning in America.He writes: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
      Standing My Ground is published in the US by Hachette More

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      ‘I don’t think most Americans realize what a coup is’: Edel Rodriguez takes on Trump

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      Did you know Cuba has a Capitol in Havana that closely resembles its American counterpart? Edel Rodriguez does, and that’s one more reason why he, a Cuban American political cartoonist, was so disturbed by what happened in his adopted homeland on January 6.Rodriguez grew up in the shadow of a different sort of insurgency, the revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power in January 1959. He knew what it was like for a people to lose their freedoms under a dictatorship, and he knew the resulting desire to seek liberty, which he and his family did in the Mariel boatlift in 1980. So after 2016, when Donald Trump won the White House, uncomfortable memories from the not-so-distant past began to surface, never more so than on 6 January 2021.Now, Rodriguez has put it all down in a graphic-novel memoir, Worm: A Cuban-American Odyssey.“I don’t think most Americans realize what a coup is, or a coup attempt, how dangerous it is,” he says.In Worm, compelling artwork revisits January 6 and its immediate aftermath, when barbed wire surrounded the US Capitol and the national guard patrolled. Red-and-black images juxtapose Castro’s revolutionary soldiers, fists and rifles raised, with the QAnon Shaman and an American flag at half-staff.Ask Rodriguez which panels he is most proud of and he holds up a pair of two-page spreads. One, at the beginning of the narrative, depicts the Cuban revolution, Castro’s bearded army storming Havana atop tanks, that familiar-looking Capitol in the background. A panel found near the end of the memoir, meanwhile, shows the US Capitol rioters charging the seat of Congress, wearing Maga caps and brandishing multiple flags: American, Confederate, “Back-the-Blue” pro-police. The images are inverses of each other, the crowds marching in opposite directions.“It really does go to what I’m trying to say – two sides of the same coin,” Rodriguez says.“When it was back in 2015, and Trump appeared on the scene, my ears perked up. He would call people ‘scum’. In Cuba, Castro called his enemies ‘scum’. The press was the ‘enemy of the people’. These were the kind of words Castro would use.”Rodriguez’s depictions of Trump are now famous, making the covers of Time and Der Spiegel. The most striking is up for debate. Is it Trump’s face as a melting blob, which MSNBC likened to the Wicked Witch of the West? Trump holding a bloody knife in one hand and the severed head of the Statue of Liberty in the other, inspired by a picture of an Islamic State terrorist? Trump draped in an American flag, giving the Nazi salute?“I think he brought a certain kind of extremism to politics in America,” Rodriguez says. “I felt that it needed to be addressed … I’m just not a fan of extremism of any sort.“The best way to deal with problems,” he says, is to hold democratic elections, and if your candidate doesn’t win, to try again in the next go-round. What he’s seen far too often instead is the authoritarian alternative of “men with guns – communists in Cuba, the Maga crowd in the US, or Isis”.In Worm, Rodriguez examines his first-hand experiences with dictatorship. In cold war Cuba, he lived an hour away from the capital, in the small town of El Gabriel. Although he remembers being far more tuned in to nature there than in the US, he also describes being indoctrinated in school, from the red beret he wore to the Castro personality cult that was instilled by teachers. His parents lived in fear that his father’s entrepreneurial streak might get them in trouble, including neighborhood snoops who put their curiosity to the use of the Communist party.A tip-off alerted Rodriguez’s father to stepped-up scrutiny, accelerating the decision to leave. The Mariel boatlift made things easier in some ways, harder in others, as Rodriguez now explains in Worm, which unfolds memories of tense exit negotiations with authorities; a state of limbo in a tent city; and the miraculous day when a rescue vessel came. For the Rodriguez family, it was a shrimp boat called Nature Boy. Castro released prisoners to join the exodus to America, some of whom packed the boat. It and a convoy of other vessels made it to US shores.As Cubans willingly left their homeland, Castro insulted them with a choice barb, the “worm” of the book’s title.“It’s what they would call us, being underground, taking from the system,” Rodriguez says.In Spanish, it’s gusano, which the author considered for a title.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Of course, gusano has, to me, a much more guttural sound,” he says. “I wanted it to translate for an English-speaking audience.”Decades later – after studying at the Pratt Institute, getting a big break at Time, marrying and raising a family and even going back to Cuba to see family and friends – Rodriguez felt familiar enough with authoritarianism in his birthplace to speak out against it in his new home. That desire increased over the course of Trump’s 2016 campaign and ensuing four years in power. The verbal attack on a Muslim Gold Star family … the Access Hollywood tape … the Muslim ban … it’s all there, and so are Rodriguez’s graphic-art ripostes. He gives Trump a distinctive look: yellow hair, orange skin, no eyes or nose, just a wide-open mouth.Rodriguez has found approval – and backlash. He realized just how big the backlash had grown when he fielded a sympathetic audience question about his safety after giving a lecture in another country with a troubled history.“I was surprised when the man in Germany asked what was going to happen to me when I returned to America,” he says. “I did not think about it, I did not process it. It was sort of like telling a writer or an artist, ‘What’s going to happen to you if you do your work?’ … What else am I going to do with my life?”Noting that “some of my family questioned what I was doing, very close family members, including my mother,” he adds: “I don’t really think about people’s perceptions of my work as a stumbling block that will get me in trouble or go to jail. It’s hard enough being an artist.”Rodriguez will keep making waves with his art, even if it is now tinged with a sense of betrayal and loss, from an American dream that became a nightmare.“I think January 6 really did puncture a lot of what America means to people – not just myself, but many people in the world,” he says. “The US is the place you go to hope and dream. To see the US Congress get attacked, like some country in some other part of the world that has been attacked, like the parliament in Moscow getting attacked in the 1990s – to feel that shock, to see that in the US … I’m very sad, very disappointed.“At the same time, I’m very scared. I don’t think Americans have processed how messed up Trump is, if you consider the same candidate could come back. The most recent polls have him ahead.”
      Worm is published in the US by Metropolitan Books More

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      Phones and iPad of New York mayor Eric Adams were seized by FBI, report says

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      Electronic devices including at least two mobile phones belonging to New York City mayor Eric Adams were seized by the FBI as the agency escalated a corruption investigation into his victorious 2021 campaign, the New York Times reported Friday.It follows an FBI raid earlier this month on the home of Brianna Suggs, Adams’s leading campaign fundraiser, in which agents reportedly confiscated two laptop computers and three cellphones.Previous reports said Adams and his campaign team repeatedly refused regulators’ request to divulge the source of about $300,000 in donations, although it was not clear whether a violation of campaign finance rules was part of the inquiry.According to the Times, FBI agents earlier this week took “at least two cellphones and an iPad” belonging to Adams, days after the 2 November raid on Suggs’s Brooklyn residence.Sources told the newspaper that agents approached Adams in the street and asked his security detail to step away while they entered his vehicle and seized the devices under the authorization of a court-issued warrant.The paper added all the equipment was returned to him “within a matter of days”, noting that the warrant allowed the FBI to copy data contained on the devices.In a statement issued through a spokesperson on Friday afternoon, Adams, a former New York police department captain, said he had been fully cooperative.“As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation, and I will continue to do that,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.”His campaign attorney, Boyd Johnson, said in his own statement: “The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing and continues to cooperate with the investigation.“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly. In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators.”Johnson did not elaborate on who the person was or what they were found to have done.The FBI investigation, the two sources told the Times, is looking into whether Adams’s 2021 campaign “conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers”.The warrant, it said, sought records about donations from Bay Atlantic University, a Washington DC college whose founder is Turkish and is affiliated with a school Adams is said to have visited when he went to Turkey as Brooklyn borough president in 2015.The donations previously reported to be in question came from about 500 different donors, the local New York City news publication the City said.Adams’s campaign counsel, Vito Pitta, said at the time: “The campaign has responded to every notice from [the campaign finance board] as appropriate.”The New York Times said the FBI and the US attorney’s office for the southern district of New York declined comment Friday.Immediately after the raid on the home of Suggs, Adams returned to New York from Washington DC, where he had scheduled meetings with White House and congressional leaders to talk about immigration.He said he did so out of compassion for Suggs, a 25-year-old former intern promoted to be his chief fundraiser.“Although I am mayor, I have not stopped being a man and a human,” he said. More

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      Islamophobia and antisemitism on rise in US amid Israel-Hamas war

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      Islamophobia and antisemitism are seeing sharp increases across the US after war between Israel and Hamas erupted last month.According to a new report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), the Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization received a total of 1,283 requests for help and reports of bias between 7 October and 4 November.Cair, which has called the spike “unprecedented”, revealed that the recent increase in Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment across the US mark a 216% increase over the previous year. In an average 29-day period in 2022, Cair received only 406 complaints.The top reported type of case was first-amendment – or free speech – issues, marking 23.39% of the anti-Arab and Islamophobia reports received by Cair. The organization also said 20.56% of the reports involved targeting employment, and 15.32% consisted of hate crimes. Cair said 9.2% of the anti-Arab and Islamophobia reports revolved around education and bullying.“The Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric that has been used to both justify violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America has contributed to this unprecedented surge in bigotry,” said Cair’s research and advocacy director, Corey Saylor.He added that “American Muslims are facing the largest wave of Islamophobic bias that we have documented” since Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, called for a Muslim travel ban in December 2015.“Political leaders, corporations, media outlets, civic organizations and others all have a role to play in ending this surge in bigotry,” Saylor added.Meanwhile, Jewish communities say they are also facing record-high levels of antisemitism after Israel launched war on Hamas after Hamas’s 7 October attack.On 25 October, the Anti-Defamation League reported a nearly 400% increase in antisemitic incidents reported year over year. From 7 to 23 October, the ADL recorded a total of 312 antisemitic incidents, 190 of which were directly linked to the violence in Israel and Gaza.During the same time last year, the ADL received preliminary reports of 64 incidents, including four that were Israel-related, the advocacy group reported.According to monthly crime statistics released this week by the New York police department (NYPD) and reviewed by the Hill, the city saw a 214% rise in reported hate crimes against Jews in October.In the last month, the NYPD reported a total of 101 reported hate crimes, including 69 that targeted Jews. By comparison, during the same time last year, NYPD reported 45 hate crimes, including 22 that targeted Jews.“It is incumbent on all leaders, from political leaders to CEOs to university presidents, to forcefully and unequivocally condemn antisemitism and terrorism,” said the ADL’s leader, Jonathan Greenblatt. “This isn’t hard. Words matter, and while the war in Gaza escalates, we encourage all those in positions of power to use their platforms to condemn hate and terrorism, wherever it occurs.” More

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      Trump legal team expresses hope classified documents trial will not start in May – as it happened

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      The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story over the coming days.Here’s what else happened today:
      The FBI seized electronic devices belonging to New York City’s Democratic mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into his campaign finances, the New York Times reports.
      Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if he is elected next year.
      Federal judge Aileen Cannon declined a request from Trump to delay his trial over the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, but his lawyers signaled that they are hopeful she will eventually push its start date back.
      Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
      Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
      The New York Times reports that FBI agents seized two phones and an iPad belonging to New York mayor Eric Adams as part of their investigation into the Democrat’s campaign’s finances.Here’s more from the Times:
      F.B.I. agents seized Mayor Eric Adams’s electronic devices early this week in what appeared to be a dramatic escalation of a federal corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
      The agents approached the mayor on the street and asked his security detail to step away, one of the people said. They climbed into his S.U.V. with him and, pursuant to a court-authorized warrant, took his devices, the person said. The devices — at least two cellphones and an iPad — were returned to the mayor within a matter of days, the people said. Law enforcement investigators with a search warrant can make copies of the data on devices after they seize them.
      It was not immediately clear whether the agents referred to the fund-raising investigation when they took the mayor’s devices.
      The surprise seizure of Mr. Adams’s devices was an extraordinary development and appeared to be the first direct instance of the campaign contribution investigation touching the mayor. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, said on Wednesday that he is so strident in urging his staff to “follow the law” that he can be almost “annoying.” He laughed at the notion that he had any potential criminal exposure.
      In an interview with Spanish-language network Univision yesterday, Donald Trump signaled he would be willing to use the FBI and justice department to go after his political rivals in a second presidential term, without getting into specifics.But behind the scenes, the former president has named the names of those he would like to go after, the Washington Post reported earlier this week:
      In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.
      In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.
      To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.
      “It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”
      Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.
      The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.
      Here’s more from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell about what federal judge Aileen Cannon’s decision today in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case tells us about when it may ultimately go to trial:The federal judge overseeing the criminal case charging Donald Trump with retaining classified documents pushed back on Friday several major deadlines for the former president to file pre-trial motions, a move that could have the consequential effect of delaying the start of the trial in Florida.The judge put off until March making the fraught decision about whether to actually delay the trial – currently scheduled for next May – but the new timetable she laid out in a nine-page written order gave little scope for the pre-trial process to finish in time.The order from US district judge Aileen Cannon was positive for Trump, who has made no secret that his overarching legal strategy is to delay beyond the 2024 election in the hopes that winning re-election would allow him to pardon himself or direct the justice department to drop the charges.Trump was indicted this summer with violating the espionage act when he illegally retained classified documents after he left office and conspiring to obstruct the government’s efforts to retrieve them from his Mar-a-Lago club, including defying a grand jury subpoena.But the fact that Trump was charged with retaining national defense information means his case will be tried under the complex rules laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa, which governs how those documents can be used in court.The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports that Donald Trump’s legal team is expressing confidence his trial on charges related to keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort will not start in May, when it is currently scheduled.Earlier today, federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by the former president, turned down a request to delay the trial’s start date, but also moved back some deadlines related to the classified evidence that will be used in the trial, increasing the likelihood the trial will eventually be postponed.Here’s what Turmp’s lawyers had to say about that:Florida’s Republican state representative Michelle Salzman is facing increasing censure calls and outrage after she said “All of them” in response to her Democratic colleague saying, “How many [dead Palestinians] will be enough?”The Guardian’s Erum Salam reports:The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”For further details, click here:Former president George W Bush said to “stay positive” in response to a question on what advice he would give to the world on Veterans Day.
      “Stay positive because if you study world history or US history, we go through cycles of being down and yet Americans ought to realize how blessed we are to live in this country… The images are grim and, yes, there’s violence, but ultimately love overcomes hate,” he told Fox News.
      Following reports of letters containing fentanyl being mailed to multiple state election offices, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger said that he has been informed that there is another suspicious letter in transit.Speaking to CNN, Raffensberger said:
      “We have been informed by the postal officials that there is a letter in transit so that’s a three to five day transit through their system. Obviously they will try to intercept that when it comes through the Atlanta processing facility but it hasn’t arrived to Georgia yet so we don’t know if it will be intercepted. And that’s why we’ve prepared staff at the Fulton county election office if it does actually make it through the system and it arrives.”
      He added that officials are going to make sure that there is Narcan, the overdose reversal drug, available in all election offices that do receive incoming mail and that staff will be trained on how to administer Narcan.Authorities across the country are currently investigation letters sent to several states’ election offices that contained fentanyl.The Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:Law enforcement officials in the US are searching for the people responsible for sending letters with suspicious substances sent to election offices in at least five states, acts some election officials described as “terrorism”.Election offices in Georgia, Nevada, California, Oregon and Washington state all were sent the letters, four of which contained the deadly drug fentanyl, the Associated Press reported. Some of the letters were intercepted before they arrived. The FBI and United States Postal Service are investigating.In Washington, election offices in four counties – Skagit, Spokane, Pierce and King, which includes Seattle – were evacuated as workers counted ballots from Tuesday’s election. Two of the letters tested positive for fentanyl. Steve Hobbs, Washington’s Democratic secretary of state, said the letters were “acts of terrorism to threaten our elections.”For further details, click here:Anti-abortion members of the Ohio General Assembly have responded to the state’s passage of Issue 1 during Tuesday’s election.Condemning the language of the proposal which enshrines abortion rights into the state’s constitution, several dozen anti-abortion state representatives said:
      “Unlike the language of this proposal, we want to be very clear. The vague, intentionally deceptive language of Issue 1 does not clarify the issues of life, parental consent, informed consent, or viability including Partial Birth Abortion, but rather introduces more confusion.
      This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law. We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.
      A spending battle brews once again on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are nervously eyeing 17 November, the day when the federal government’s funding expires. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson will reportedly propose over the weekend a bill to keep the government open, with the money running out at differing dates. There are reasons to think both Democrats and at least some Republicans will oppose this idea, and by this time next week, the government may likely be on the brink of another shutdown. Expect this to be a big developing story in the coming days.Here’s what else is going on today:
      Donald Trump mulled in an interview using the FBI and justice department to retaliate against his enemies, if elected next year.
      Moderate Republicans reportedly don’t think impeaching Joe Biden is worth it, because the president is already unpopular.
      Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke issued strong criticisms of Biden’s handling of the southern border and immigration policy.
      Republican House speaker Mike Johnson is expected to release his short-term government funding proposal over the weekend, setting the chamber up for a vote next week, NBC News reports:The bill’s prospects remain highly uncertain. House Democrats have rejected the “laddered” approach Johnson is reportedly mulling, which would see government funding expire at different times, and the proposal is unlikely to get far in the Senate, where they hold a majority. Meanwhile, conservative Republicans in the House want to use any funding measure as an opportunity to force the government to cut spending, but that may alienate more moderate Republicans and cost the bill support it needs to pass.Nonetheless, expect this to be a big developing story over the weekend and next week, as the 17 November deadline to fund the government draws nearer. More

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      Outrage grows after ‘chilling call for genocide’ by Florida Republican

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      Outrage continues to grow over a public comment made by a Florida state Republican lawmaker calling for all Palestinians to die.The remarks came during a debate in the state legislature about calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, many of whom are children. The assault came after Hamas fighters attacked Israel from Gaza, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostage.In the speech in support of the ceasefire resolution, the Democratic Florida state representative Angie Nixon said: “We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough?”“All of them,” Michelle Salzman called in reply.Nixon acknowledged the interruption and said: “One of my colleagues just said, ‘All of them.’ Wow.”The Florida state house later voted 104-2 to reject Nixon’s resolution.Salzman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair-Florida), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, said in a statement that Salzman’s remarks were a “chilling call for genocide” and a “direct result of decades of dehumanization of the Palestinian people by advocates of Israeli apartheid and their eager enablers in government and the media”.The news comes on the heels of the censure of the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in the US Congress, after Tlaib echoed a popular rallying cry for Palestine that some have called antisemitic but others say is a call for Palestinian civil rights.The censure resolution, which was supported by 22 Democrats, punishes Tlaib for allegedly “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” and “promoting false narratives” about the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.In Florida, calls for Salzman to be censured are being made by those opposed to her comments.“Salzman’s words are incredibly dangerous and dehumanizing to Palestinians here at home and under the Israeli occupation,” the Cair-Florida executive director, Imam Abdullah Jaber, said. “She must face her party’s censure and a public repudiation from all Florida legislators.”Hours before Nixon’s speech, Israel agreed to daily four-hour humanitarian pauses. But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, reportedly rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages.On Thursday, Joe Biden said there was “no possibility” of a ceasefire. More

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      Man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi absorbed conspiracy theories, trial hears

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      The trial of a man accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoning her husband with a hammer has begun, with a defense attorney arguing that her client, David DePape, was caught up in conspiracy theories.Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, was attacked by DePape in the early hours of 28 October last year and hospitalized with a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands. The encounter, which was captured by police body-cam footage, sent shockwaves through the political world just days before last year’s midterm elections.“There’s too much violence … political violence. Too much hatred, too much vitriol,” Joe Biden said shortly after the attack. “Enough is enough is enough.”The defense attorney Jodi Linker said on Thursday in opening statements in court in San Francisco that she would not dispute that DePape attacked the former House speaker’s husband. Instead, she will argue that DePape believed “with every ounce of his body” he was taking action to stop corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors.“This is not a whodunit. But what the government fails to acknowledge is the ‘whydunit’ – and the ‘why’ matters in this case,” Linker said.DePape pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate against the official for performance of their duties. Paul Pelosi is expected to testify next week.The federal prosecutor Laura Vartain Horn told the jurors that DePape started planning the attack in August, and that the evidence and FBI testimony will show he researched his targets online, collecting phone numbers and addresses, even paying for a public records service to find information about Nancy Pelosi and others.During her opening statement, Vartain Horn showed a photo of Paul Pelosi lying in a pool of blood. She also played a call DePape made to a television station repeating conspiracy theories.“The evidence in this case is going show that when the defendant used this hammer to break into the Pelosi’s home he intended to kidnap Nancy Pelosi,” Vartain Horn said, holding a hammer inside a plastic evidence bag.DePape is known to have a history of spreading far-right conspiracy theories, posting rants on a blog and an online forum about aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites. He questioned the results of the 2020 election and echoed the baseless rightwing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims the US government is run by a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles. The websites were taken down shortly after his arrest.If convicted, DePape faces life in prison. He was also charged in state court with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. A state trial has not been scheduled.In the courtroom on Thursday were Christine Pelosi, one of the Pelosis’ daughters, as well as Gypsy Taub, DePape’s ex-girlfriend, and Taub and DePape’s two teenage sons. Taub called DePape’s name softly and blew a kiss, and he smiled and waved in return.A Canadian citizen, DePape moved to the United States more than 20 years ago after falling in love with Taub, a Berkeley pro-nudity activist well-known in the Bay Area, his stepfather, Gene DePape said. In recent years, David DePape had been homeless and struggling with drug abuse and mental illness, Taub told local media.Federal prosecutors say DePape smashed his shoulder through a glass panel on a door in the back of the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights mansion and confronted a sleeping Paul Pelosi, who was wearing boxer shorts and a pajama top.“Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” DePape asked, standing over Paul Pelosi at about 2am holding a hammer and zip ties, according to court records. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington and under the protection of her security detail, which does not extend to family members.Paul Pelosi called 911 and two police officers showed up and witnessed DePape strike Paul Pelosi in the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, court records showed.After his arrest, DePape, 43, allegedly told a San Francisco detective he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage. He said that if she told him the truth, he would let her go, and if she lied, he was going to “break her kneecaps” to show other members of Congress there were “consequences to actions”, according to prosecutors.DePape, who lived in a garage in the Bay Area city of Richmond and had been doing odd carpentry jobs to support himself, allegedly told authorities he had other targets, including a women’s and queer studies professor, the California governor Gavin Newsom, the actor Tom Hanks and Joe Biden’s son Hunter. More

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      US Democratic senator Joe Manchin will not seek re-election in 2024

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      West Virginia’s controversial Democratic US senator Joe Manchin has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2024 and will instead “fight to unite the middle”.The 76-year-old senator, who for years has held an outsized degree of power within the Democratic party and often defied its leadership, appeared in July at an event held by a political group exploring a third-party presidential bid.Manchin’s appearance with the centrist No Labels group fueled speculation that he was considering a run for the presidency, a scenario that alarmed Democrats as it could weaken Joe Biden’s candidacy for another term in the White House.On Thursday afternoon, Manchin put out a statement saying: “After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia. I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate.”He added: “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”No Labels sees Manchin as a potential candidate for its centrist platform. Although No Labels, which has been around since 2010, mostly behind the scenes, has stated it will not field a candidate if their platform does not gain traction or if it appears it would swing the vote in favor of one party, the group has been actively fundraising and is seeking to get on ballots across the country.Maryanne Martini, a spokesperson for No Labels, released a statement praising Manchin as “a longtime ally” but declining to comment on his potential to run for president.“Regarding our No Labels unity presidential ticket, we are gathering input from our members across the country to understand the kind of leaders they would like to see in the White House,” she said. “As we have said from the beginning, we will make a decision by early 2024 about whether we will nominate a unity presidential ticket and who will be on it.”Opinion polls show dissatisfaction with the current leading White House candidates, both the incumbent Biden and the Republican frontrunner Trump.Manchin’s decision to step down will also jeopardise Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate. Republicans hold the governor’s office and the rest of the congressional delegation in a state that Trump won by a wide margin over Biden in 2020. Manchin won his last election with just 49.6% of the vote, 0.3 percentage points ahead of his Republican rival, in 2018.The US senator Steve Daines, the head of Republican senators’ campaign arm, said in a brief statement: “We like our odds in West Virginia.”The state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, has already launched a campaign for his party’s nomination for Senate. Justice was a Democrat when he was first elected governor in 2016, but a year into office he switched parties and went on to cruise to re-election, winning 65% of the vote in 2020. Trump has endorsed Justice.Justice said on Thursday: “Senator Joe Manchin and I have not always agreed on policy and politics, but we’re both lifelong West Virginians who love this state beyond belief, and I respect and thank him for his many years of public service.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionManchin’s departure will raise the stakes for Democrats in several other Senate races including in Republican-leaning Montana and Ohio and highly competitive Pennsylvania and Arizona.Manchin, who took office in 2010, has been a key vote on every major piece of legislation of Biden’s tenure as a moderate representing an increasingly conservative state. His support was critical to the passage of Biden’s sweeping $1tn infrastructure law, one of the president’s key domestic accomplishments.Together with the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who switched her registration to independent from Democrat in December, Manchin has secured major concessions and the scaling back of his party’s legislative goals, winning him applause from conservatives and condemnations from many fellow Democrats.The pair stood together in protecting the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires that 60 of the chamber’s 100 members agree on most legislation, in the face of intense opposition from their own party.Manchin’s defence of the filibuster helped block Democrats’ hopes of passing bills to protect abortion rights after the supreme court last year overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that had established the right nationwide.Republican senators praised Manchin’s commitment to bipartisanship.The Utah senator Mitt Romney, who is also not seeking re-election, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “I will miss this American patriot in the Senate. But our friendship and our commitment to American values will not end.” More