WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to not use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in the wake of setbacks in Ukraine, in a CBS News interview to air on Sunday.
Ukraine's military drove back Russian forces in a lightning rout in the northeast of the country this week, putting Putin under pressure from nationalists at home to regain the initiative.
Putin has warned that Moscow would respond more forcefully if its troops were put under further pressure, raising concerns that he could at some point use unconventional means like small nuclear or chemical weapons
Asked by a "60 Minutes" reporter what he would say to Putin if he was considering using such weapons, Biden said: "Don't. Don't. Don't. It would change the face of war unlike anything since World War Two," in a clip of the interview released by CBS on Saturday.
Biden said the U.S. response would be "consequential," but declined to give detail. Russia "would become more of a pariah in the world than they ever have been," Biden said. "Depending on the extent of what they do will determine what response would occur."
Russian government officials have dismissed Western suggestions that Moscow would use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but it remains a worry for some in the West.
In a speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Putin gave a veiled but unmistakable warning that if the West intervened in what he has called a "special military operation" he could use nuclear weapons in response.
"No matter who tries to stand in our way or ... create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history," he said, according to a Kremlin translation.
Other choices for Putin could involve mobilizing Russia's reserves, who number around 2 million men, and pressuring Europe to strong-arm Ukraine into a truce with Russia, by freezing the region this winter by banning all energy exports.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Leslie Adler)
By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Friday appeared skeptical of claims that an admissions policy adopted for a highly selective Virginia public high school discriminates against Asian Americans in a closely watched challenge brought by a parents group backed by a conservative legal organization.
The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the Fairfax County School Board's appeal of a judge's ruling that Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology's admissions policy was discriminatory and violates the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law.
During the arguments, Erin Wilcox, a lawyer with the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation representing the group called Coalition for TJ, was questioned by the judges on how an admissions policy that facially does not consider race can be discriminatory.
The policy was adopted in 2020 by the school board following concerns about a lack of racial diversity at the school, which is known as "TJ" and often ranks among the best U.S. public high schools.
TJ is a magnet school located in Alexandria with a selective admissions policy that has had chronic underrepresentation of Black and Hispanic students. Aware of this, the board crafted a policy that eliminated a standardized test from TJ's admissions process, capped how many students could come from each of the district's middle schools and guaranteed seats for the top students from each of these schools.
"Racial discrimination by proxy is nothing new," Wilcox told the three-judge 4th Circuit panel.
The case is another front in the U.S. legal battle over school admissions policies involving or affecting the racial composition of campuses.
On its face, the high school's policy is race neutral, unlike race-conscious policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court will review on Oct. 31. That litigation gives the high court a chance to end affirmative action policies used by many colleges and universities to increase racial diversity on campus.
While Black and Hispanic student admissions increased under TJ's new policy, the proportion of Asian American students decreased in the first year from 73% to 54%, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton noted in his February ruling that deemed the admissions rules improper "racial balancing."
Judge Toby Heytens, an appointee of Democratic President Joe Biden, told Wilcox during Thursday's arguments that under that logic "any attempt to increase representation of one group, in your view, by necessity discriminates against another."
Don Verrilli, the former U.S. solicitor general representing the school board, said the "radical" argument advanced by the challengers boiled down to saying that any government effort to increase opportunities for underrepresented groups violates the Constitution.
"It makes no sense to conclude that promoting equal opportunities is a suspect purpose, because it would inappropriately freeze in place the status quo," said Sydney Foster, a U.S. Justice Department lawyer arguing for the Biden administration.
The only member of the panel who appeared sympathetic to the challengers was Judge Allison Jones Rushing, who asked whether attempting to match regional racial demographics with a facially neutral policy was an "impermissible purpose."
Rushing, an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, dissented in a 2-1 ruling 4th Circuit ruling in April granting the school board's request to delay the implementation of Hilton's decision while it appealed.
The Supreme Court in April declined an emergency request to block the policy, though three conservative justices dissented. (This story corrects to clarify description of parents' group in first paragraph)
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)
Since 2020’s presidential election, two rural counties in Michigan and Colorado that initially reported incorrect results have had outsized roles in spreading Donald Trump’s big lie that his second term was stolen by Democrats colluding with one of the country’s biggest computerized voting systems makers.
The mistaken 2020 election results occurred in two out of the more than 8,000 election jurisdictions across America. They were caused by county officials who did not properly set up the election system computers in Michigan and properly use them in Colorado. The errors, which notably were caught and corrected, received scant attention compared to the sensation they sparked in Trump circles where a cadre of self-proclaimed IT experts—and, later, some of the same officials who erred—asserted that the computers had been sabotaged.
What unfolded inside the election departments in Antrim County, Michigan, and Mesa County, Colorado, in pro-Trump circles that misunderstood but exploited the counties’ errors—and then fueled conspiratorial and likely illegal evidence-stealing gambits in other battleground states (such as Georgia)—is a cautionary tale before 2022’s state and federal elections.
The procedural lapses that led to initially wrong vote counts are among the findings in research by the Independent Media Institute’s Voting Booth project. It has co-authored a forthcoming guide about how vote-counting systems work. Duncan Buell, a lifelong computer scientist who has spent the past dozen years analyzing election systems, software, and data, and served as an election official, co-authored the guide. The lapses have recurred in every election cycle Buell has studied.
The revelation that complications surrounding using the newest voting system computers by local officials helped launch false but widely believed stolen-election narratives comes as scores of Trump-mimicking election deniers are running for state and federal office in 2022’s general election, and as Trump is still falsely claiming that he was re-elected in 2020.
Some candidates, such as Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, said on the eve of her August primary that the voting apparatus would be rigged unless she won—which she did. Lake’s claim drew scoffs, but most reporters and voters do not know how election computers are set up, and then detect and compile votes. Nor are they aware of basic operational mistakes that can mar this process.
The mistakes by a handful of local election administrators are rare but were confirmed and described in detail in several government-led investigations. They appear to be an unavoidable part of managing elections, especially as new technology is used in high-pressure contests.
Programming and operational errors that led to incorrect initial vote counts occurred in DeKalb County, Georgia, in 2022’s primaries, in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, in 2019’s general election, and 2018 in South Carolina’s general election, which Buell witnessed as a member of the Richland County election board, where the state capital, Columbia, is located.
Comparable errors occurred using different voting systems, Buell noted, including computers from the country’s two biggest voting system firms, Election Systems and Software (ES&S) and Dominion Voting Systems.
“It is worth noting that all the errors observed in Antrim County, on Dominion equipment, have comparable errors that I have observed since 2010 in analyzing the ES&S data in South Carolina,” he said.
Election law attorneys and policy experts who are alarmed about the escalating threats to election officials by Trump factions since 2020 do not like to talk about the possibility that local officials may struggle with the newest election system computers. They have spent months defending election officials as above-the-fray experts that should be trusted, and pointedly say that it is a false equivalency to compare mistakes that get caught and corrected with intentional lies and stolen election conspiracies.
“I have no doubt in my mind that we would be in the same place had a water main in Fulton County not broken [in an Atlanta voting center], had Antrim County not happened,” said David Becker, founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a non-partisan, non-profit that created a legal defense fund to assist threatened election officials. “These were excuses for the delegitimization of an election that was otherwise much more secure by any measure than anything we’ve ever had, thanks to paper ballots and audits.”
“Trump was using the rhetoric long before any specific instances happened in 2020,” said Ben Ginsburg, a longtime Republican election attorney, speaking at a September 6 briefing with Becker. “And David is exactly right. The system is designed to recognize that things aren’t going to be perfect. That’s why every state has recount proceedings, [vote] contest proceedings, and litigation. So, the notion that there will be mistakes is built into a process.”
Nonetheless, the fact remains that about two-thirds of the 74 million people who voted to re-elect Trump still believe the propaganda juggernaut that the election was illegitimate. In contrast, there are few efforts that explain and contextualize actual errors that occur. Typically, comments by election officials are terse and short-lived news items, acknowledging that mistakes were made and corrected.
Meanwhile, as the 2022 general election nears, many election officials are beefing up security protocols at county offices and operation centers, steps that may make their processes less transparent and invite more conspiratorial accusations.
Setting Up Voting Systems
This article is the start in a series that will explain what happened as actual mistakes occurred and how they become fodder for outsized false claims and disinformation about election results, officials and voting systems.
That some county election managers did not properly set up or use their system’s computers before 2020’s general election is not entirely surprising. Nor is it very surprising that Trump’s allies were poised to follow the former president’s cues and seek to exploit any error or procedural change to buoy their rhetoric.
What must be remembered are the claims of rigging and the concerns about changes to election processes occurred during a pandemic. In the middle of 2020’s presidential primaries, the COVID-19 pandemic arose. Some battleground states that did not postpone their primaries experienced a range of snafus, from poll workers who did not show up to last-minute consolidation of voting sites, creating confusion, congestion and delays for voters and election workers.
By summer, many states responded by encouraging the use of mailed-out ballots, which is a big procedural and logistical change for vetting voters and processing ballots. That abrupt transition came as many locales were using a new generation of election computers for the first time in a presidential election, which is always the highest turnout and most stressful general election to administer.
Introducing any new voting system or balloting option can be confusing for officials and voters. Election officials across the country knew their work would come under a microscope, and they took extra steps to ensure their results would be correct—emphasizing that most of the county would be voting on paper ballots for the first time in many presidential elections. But what is largely unappreciated about the newest generation of voting systems is they contained more individual computerized devices to process ballots than the prior generation of machines.
The new computers could number in the hundreds or thousands depending on the jurisdiction’s population. They include ballot-marking devices, scanners reading ballots, tabulators compiling precinct votes, and a central computer compiling all of the jurisdiction’s results. Each device must be programmed and synced with other computers at polling places and county operation centers.
Getting the correct ballot to voters and configuring the computers that cast or count votes is not simple or trivial—not when jurisdictions have 100s of different ballots. (Ballots vary as local races are added.) Nor are programming mistakes a “minor clerical error [that] turned into a major conspiracy theory,” as an August 26 report by the New York Times characterized Antrim County’s issues. Clerical tasks involve typos, not configuring, syncing, and verifying hundreds of ballot styles, thumb drives, and computers spanning voting sites and county headquarters.
In Antrim County, Michigan, election workers did not check if all of the computers had been properly programmed and synced after some ballots were redesigned at the last minute. As a result, ballot scanners and tabulators did not have the correct list of candidates and wrongly assigned votes. The initial returns incorrectly reported that Joe Biden had won the conservative northern Michigan county.
In Mesa County, Colorado, the back-office election manager did not know how to use a computer that completed the processing of batches of 1,000 ballots to compile countywide results. As political party observers stood by, she double-counted more than 20,000 ballots. The scene was captured by overhead video cameras. She later made the same mistake in April 2021’s municipal election.
These mistakes were caught and corrected. Their details were documented by government investigations that issued several key reports. In Michigan, the first report (March 2021) was prepared by one of the country’s leading voting system analysts for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. The second report was by the state senate’s Republican-led Michigan Senate Oversight Committee (June 2021). In Colorado, Mesa County prosecutors issued a report (May 2022) that described the operational errors and also refuted accusations by pro-Trump IT specialists that claimed the computer system had secretly stolen votes.
What was somewhat surprising after the 2020 election was the emergence of a cadre of publicity-seeking, self-proclaimed, pro-Trump IT specialists who started claiming that the election was stolen at the same time the Trump campaign lost more than 60 state and federal court lawsuits for lack of evidence.
The self-proclaimed election IT experts had virtually no prior experience with analyzing election system computers. Nor were they apparently aware of other post-Election Day safeguards that find and fix vote count errors. Nonetheless, they asserted that they found unexplained signs of fake votes that they attributed to secretive programming by the equipment manufacturer. Their accusations were among the many efforts by Trump and his allies to cast doubt on the election’s outcome before and after the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
But what was unexpected was that some of the county officials tasked with setting up and using these computers—including those who erred—would, months later, blame the mistakes on their computers, or publicly say their election system had been hijacked or were vulnerable to such hacking. In the spring of 2021, these officials began actively colluding with Trump’s conspiracy-minded IT squad.
Viral Lies, Slow Accountability
Of course, other partisan Republicans wanted Trump to win and helped set the stage for putting forth false stolen election claims.
Antrim County’s initial miscount went viral in pro-Trump circles. In early December 2020, a state judge, a former Michigan House Republican minority leader, ordered local election officials to allow outside investigators to analyze the county’s voting system’s computers. A firm hired by Trump’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, copied the system’s hard drives, software and data. (The copies, which the court said were not to be shared, were slowly and selectively leaked. They were widely distributed at an August 2021 forum led by Trump ally Mike Lindell.)
In mid-December 2020, a pro-Trump IT firm, Allied Security Operations Group (ASOG), issued its “forensic audit” report on Antrim County’s computers, which were made by Dominion Voting Systems (whose system was also used in Georgia and Arizona). Its summary said, “We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systematic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generated an enormously high number of ballot errors.”
Matthew DePerno, the Michigan Republican Party’s 2022 nominee for state attorney general, helped produce the ASOG report. (In August 2022, Michigan Attorney General, Dana Nessel, a Democrat seeking re-election, appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the illegal breach of the voting system. The appointment sought to avoid conflict-of-interest accusations.)
In response to ASOG’s report, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, commissioned one of the nation’s foremost election technologists, the University of Michigan’s J. Alex Halderman, to analyze what happened. His March 2021 report said ASOG’s review “contains an extraordinary number of false, inaccurate, or unsubstantiated statements and conclusions,” including repeatedly misreading computer logs that record every operation—from ballot paper jams to votes.
Halderman also described how Antrim election officials had failed to properly set up the system, which, in turn, led computers to assign accurately detected votes on paper ballots to the wrong line—and wrong candidate—in the county’s final results database. “The EMS [election management system] ignored most votes intended for [Joe] Biden, reported all votes intended for Trump as votes for Biden, and reported all votes intended for [Libertarian Jo] Jorgensen as votes for Trump,” his report said. “This pattern lets us almost exactly reproduce the erroneous initial results.”
But Trump’s allies, including his data gurus, ignored Halderman’s report and the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee’s report, issued by Republicans that June. Instead, they seized upon a strategy that they took to other states. Their mindset was to create chaos and doubt, so they went looking for fodder for their claims.
One day after the January 6 insurrection, the Atlanta-based technology firm that Powell hired to copy Antrim County’s voting system went to rural Coffee County, Georgia. There, a pro-Trump election official allowed the systems’ hard drives, software, and data to be copied. The official claimed in an online video that the system could be rigged, which also went viral in Trump circles.
In April 2021, Tina Peters, the Mesa County Clerk, shared unauthorized copies of her county’s election system with Trump’s IT allies. Even though Peters’ back-office election manager mistakenly double-counted votes, which was found and fixed, Peters went on to promote pro-Trump conspiracy theories and seek the GOP nomination for Colorado secretary of state in 2022’s primaries. (A day after she lost the primary, Peters was charged with 10 crimes tied to the data breach.)
Some of the IT specialists involved in these efforts then turned up in Arizona in its state-senate-sponsored post-2020 review led by Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based IT firm. Its CEO, Doug Logan, contributed to ASOG’s report on Antrim County and was among the IT “experts” who went to Coffee County. In Arizona, he repeatedly raised doubts about the presidential election in the state’s most populous county. In September 2021, Logan announced that Biden won, but his team did not provide evidence showing that his IT squad had accurately recounted votes.
The Trump activists spent months claiming the presidential election was stolen. Many became fixtures—along with their false narrative—on pro-Trump media after the election and remain so today. In contrast, the responses by state and county authorities that initially defended their voting systems, and subsequently investigated and rebutted the accusations, drew less coverage.
Notably, the governmental responses cited and explained the procedural errors by county election managers before and after 2020’s Election Day—errors that were exploited and contributed to a disinformation juggernaut. These investigations also laid the groundwork for prosecuting rogue election officials, and possibly their partisan collaborators, for the illegal data breaches.
Mesa County’s Peters, for example, now faces 10 misdemeanor and felony charges. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who Trump lobbied to “find votes” in an infamous telephone call that was recorded, has authorized a “computer trespass investigation” by state police in Coffee County. Michigan is investigating Antrim County’s unauthorized election data breaches.
But behind the stolen election allegations, which continue in Trump circles, and slower-moving criminal accountability, is a troubling trend that recurs in every election cycle. In a handful of counties, local election managers do not properly set up or operate their computers, giving election-deniers a propaganda vehicle.
These mistakes may be the exceptions, not the rule, across America’s 8,000-plus election jurisdictions. However, they are not “minor clerical errors,” as The Times characterized. They are errors at the start, and at the heart, of counting votes.
Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.
Fifty or so migrants sent to the wealthy island of Martha's Vineyard in the northeastern United States as part of a political battle over immigration will be temporarily housed at a military base not far from there, the governor of Massachusetts said Friday.
The migrants, mostly Venezuelans and including children, arrived Wednesday at Martha's Vineyard, a Democratic stronghold and popular vacation spot for the country's political elite.
They had been put on board flights from Texas which the Republican Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, says he chartered.
Despite local mobilization to help the new arrivals, the island is "not equipped to provide sustainable accommodation, and state officials developed a plan to deliver a comprehensive humanitarian response," said a statement from the administration of Governor Charlie Baker.
On Friday, the state authorities offered to move the migrants, on a voluntary basis, to temporary accommodation at the nearby Joint Base Cape Cod.
"Families will not be separated," the statement said, noting that the base had previously served as an emergency shelter and that the migrants would have access to care and legal services.
According to local media, the migrants were on their way to the base by midday Friday.
Some of them had said they had not known they were being sent to an island.
Local Democrat legislator Julian Cyr called for an investigation.
“Whether or not this meets the legal threshold for human trafficking, this meets the moral threshold of human trafficking," he told local television, adding that he hoped the Department of Justice would look into the incident.
Sending migrants to Democratic strongholds has become a political cudgel for the American right as a means of denouncing President Joe Biden's immigration policy, which they say has allowed undocumented migrants to cross the border with Mexico in large numbers.
It is also a way to try to place immigration at the center of the campaign for the mid-term elections in November.
On Thursday morning, two buses carrying migrants arrived near the official residence of Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC, a place chosen on purpose because she is overseeing the explosive issue of immigration for the White House. They had been sent by Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
Watchdogs with a prominent consumer advocacy organization on Thursday sharply criticized the Justice Department's newly announced policy approach to combating corporate crime, calling it inadequate to reverse the decades-long trend of plummeting enforcement that has continued under the Biden administration.
In a speech in New York Thursday attended by prosecutors as well as corporate lawyers, Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco outlined a number of changes the DOJ is moving to implement in an effort to crack down on and deter corporate crime, including incentives for companies to quickly self-report misconduct, stiffer enforcement of existing laws, and a shift away from "multiple, successive non-prosecution or deferred prosecution agreements with the same company."
"We cannot ignore the data showing overall decline in corporate criminal prosecutions over the last decade. We need to do more and move faster," Monaco acknowledged. "So, starting today, we will take steps to empower our prosecutors, to clear impediments in their way, and to expedite our investigations of individuals."
Watchdogs, however, warned that the changes Monaco announced aren't nearly enough in the face of rising and often glaring corporate crime.
"I call chickenshit," tweeted Public Citizen researcher Rick Claypool, invoking a term that James Comey—before he became FBI director—used to describe prosecutors who aggressively pursue slam-dunk cases while avoiding more difficult ones involving powerful actors.
"We need much bolder corporate crime enforcement policy changes than DOJ is proposing," Claypool added, pointing to recent research showing that federal corporate prosecutions have fallen dramatically over the past two decades, cratering under the Trump administration and hitting a record low of just 90 during President Joe Biden's first year in office.
Monaco defended the Biden DOJ's record during her remarks Thursday, citing "convictions of the founder and chief operating officer of Theranos; convictions of JPMorgan traders for commodities manipulation; the conviction of a managing director at Goldman Sachs for bribery; and the first-ever conviction of a pharmaceutical CEO for unlawful distribution of controlled substances."
But watchdogs argue a handful of prominent convictions, while welcome, do little to reverse the overall trend of plunging corporate crime enforcement.
"Today's corporate crime policy announcement is a modest step forward when a great leap is required," Public Citizen president Robert Weissman said in a statement Thursday. "Corporate crime—in the form of illegal pollution, fraud, reckless endangerment of consumers and workers, cartels, systematic rip-offs, and more—remains rampant, but corporate criminal prosecutions are at historically low levels. Public Citizen has demonstrated that federal corporate criminal prosecutions now stand at less than half the average rate of the past quarter century."
"At the same time, the DOJ continues to enter into corporate leniency agreements (deferred and non-prosecution agreements), declining to prosecute corporations in exchange for promises not to break the law in the future," said Weissman. "Virtually unknown 25 years ago, these leniency agreements now resolve roughly a quarter of corporate crime cases."
While Weissman reacted positively to Monaco's vow to "disfavor" such agreements, he argued "that doesn't go nearly far enough" and called for a complete end to "leniency deals for corporate wrongdoers."
"Corporations are the ultimate rational actors: If they know the costs of breaking the law are worth it for expected monetary gain, then they will break the law—irrespective of the societal damage," he said. "We are disappointed to see the department maintain a willingness to enter leniency deals, especially in light of their demonstrated failure to deter future wrongdoing."
“At the end of the day," Weissman added, "prosecutorial commitment is as important as any particular policy. Monaco talked tough about corporate crime today and there's no doubting her sincerity. Now it's up to the department to back it up."
By Andrew MacAskill and Sachin Ravikumar
LONDON (Reuters) - London's police force said the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth will be the biggest security operation it has ever undertaken as prime ministers, presidents and royals come together on Monday to pay their respects to Britain's longest-reigning monarch.
The queen's funeral is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people to London's streets, echoing other important events in Britain's history, including her coronation in 1953, the funeral of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1965 and the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
Stuart Cundy, London's Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner, said the force was preparing for events ranging from terrorism threats to protests and crowd crushes.
He said his force would be deploying the largest ever number of officers on the city's streets and the largest protection operation for world leaders and royals in the police's almost 200 year history, with officers from almost every force in the country deployed.
Among the specialist officers on duty will be divers, dog handlers, police on horses, motorcycle outriders, firearms officers and close protection officers, who will guard leaders and members of the royal family from around the world.
U.S. President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are among the most high-profile guests from overseas who have confirmed they will be attending.
Cundy said the massive policing operation would surpass other major policing events in London, including the 2012 Olympics and the celebrations in June for the queen's Platinum Jubilee, which celebrated her 70 years on the British throne.
To give an idea of the scale of the operation, Cundy said 22 miles (36 km) of barriers had been deployed in central London to help control the crowds.
"There’s absolutely nothing that compares to our policing operation this week, and particularly on Monday for the state funeral," Cundy told Reuters. "This will be the single largest policing operation that the Met police has ever undertaken and I think is every likely to undertake."
PROTESTS
The police operation will be overseen by Mark Rowley, who is in his first week in the job as the head of London's police after rejoining the force having previously served as the national lead for counter-terrorism.
London police have so far made 34 arrests in the run up to the funeral, but none of them were related to protests. There has been criticism that in Scotland police had been overly heavy-handed in dealing with those voicing objection.
"People have the right to protest," Cundy said. "Our response will be proportionate, it will be balanced, and our officers will only be taking action where it is absolutely necessary."
Tim De Meyer, the assistant chief constable of Thames Valley Police, who will be in charge of the policing operation in Windsor where the queen will be taken from London to be buried, said the public will face airport-style screening.
"Our contingency planning considers a whole range of different scenarios which includes everything from terror attacks to criminal activity to crowd surges and crushing," Cundy said.
Two police officers were stabbed in an incident unrelated to the funeral, or terrorism, in central London on Friday which he said brought "into sharp focus, the need for all officers who are on duty, the members of the public, to keep that vigilance".
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Kate Holton; Alison Williams and Frank Jack Daniel)
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -The United States has no plans "at this time" to meet with Russian diplomats next week during the annual United Nations gathering of world leaders, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Friday.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to travel to New York for the high-level U.N. General Assembly meeting. U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are also attending the U.N. gathering.
"We will be having meetings with the Ukrainians. There are no plans at this time to have meetings with the Russians. They have not indicated that they have an interest in diplomacy," Thomas-Greenfield told reporters.
Russia's February invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people feared the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
U.S. President Joe Biden has said he wants Ukraine to defeat Russia and has supplied billions of dollars of arms to Kyiv but U.S. officials do not want a direct confrontation between U.S. and Russian soldiers.
The U.S. president is traditionally the second leader to address the General Assembly, but Biden will this year speak on Wednesday, instead of Tuesday, Thomas-Greenfield said. Biden's appearance has been delayed because he is traveling to London for Queen Elizabeth's funeral on Monday.
Blinken will also now co-chair - with the European Union, the African Union and Spain - a food security summit next week on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly that Biden had been due to host.
When asked if there would be any meetings next week on attempts to salvage the Iran nuclear deal, Thomas-Greenfield said: "At the moment, as far as I know, no meetings are planned."
Talks about reinstating the 2015 deal have been ongoing in Vienna but U.S. officials have acknowledged an agreement in the near future is unlikely.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declined to support a ban on assault weapons Wednesday after the parents of a 10-year-old killed during the mass shooting in Uvalde showed him a photo of their daughter in her casket.
Watch the story below:
'Ted Cruz suggests more money for mental health workers' to family of Uvalde victim as they plea for ban on assault rifles'Ted Cruz suggests more money for mental health workers' to family of Uvalde victim as they
Lexi Rubio was a fourth-grader from Uvalde, Texas, who died along with 20 others in the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. She was laid to rest at the Hillcrest Cemetery in Uvalde on June 11 after a funeral service at the First Baptist Church.
In total, 376 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting.
The parents of Lexi Rubio have pushed for stricter gun laws from Congress following their daughter's death. They discussed the same with Cruz during the meeting but were met with resistance.
"Felix shared our last photo of Lexi - in her child-size casket - as we asked @tedcruz to protect his constituents by supporting a federal ban on assault weapons. He declined. Instead, he said he supports increasing law enforcement presence on school campuses," she tweeted.
On Wednesday, Mata-Rubio and her husband Felix also met with other Republican senators, whom she said treated them more graciously.
“While they obviously, probably don’t support the bill, they just had more questions and were more sympathetic than our meeting with Ted Cruz,” Mata-Rubio told the Tribune. “That was really disheartening because this is our representative.”
Cruz has called for more armed law enforcement on school campuses following the shooting.
Cruz, an unflinching ally of the gun lobby, took more than $300,000 from firearms groups during his 2018 senate re-election campaign. He also voted against the bipartisan gun safety bill passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting.
Later on Thursday, Senate Democrats blocked Cruz's proposed bill that would spend earmark billions of dollars worth of federal COVID-19 education-related funding for school security. The bill proposed doubling the number of school resource officers, hire mental health professionals, and make campus security improvements.
“The only reason my first bill, which would constitute the single most significant school safety legislation in our history, did not pass today is because (U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy) and the Democrats objected without any explanation or rebuttal," Cruz said in a statement. "It isn’t just irresponsible, it also shows contempt for the American people."
The families of the victims and survivors of the massacre have demanded action from Texas leaders on gun reform. More recently, they have requested billboards that take aim at Gov. Greg Abbott and his stance on gun control be erected.
With its lax gun laws, the United States has long experienced more mass shootings than any other industrialized country. Cruz is reportedly weighing another run for president in 2024, when he will also be up for re-election to the senate.
Democrats are increasingly encouraged by the chances of a North Carolina challenger who has mostly stayed off the national radar.
Former state Chief Justice Cheri Beasley has been working to convince voters to send her to Washington, D.C., instead of Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) in what has been a quiet race so far, but Democrats are hoping the national party apparatus takes notice, reported The Daily Beast.
“Every cycle, there’s a big Senate race that is a sleeper," said Morgan Jackson, a veteran Democratic strategist in the state. "There’s no question that the North Carolina race is the sleeper of this cycle."
Budd, a three-term congressman, has run a low-key campaign that has spurred some Republican complaints that he's sleepwalking toward the general election, and that has allowed Beasley to define herself. GOP strategists say Budd needs to improve on his "robotic" performance so far.
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"[It's hard to blame Budd's team for] sitting there thinking they had a chance to win in double digits,” said a Republican strategist who has worked on Senate campaigns in the state. “It’s definitely narrowed. At the end of the day, I’d still bet money that North Carolina ends up going for Budd, but it’ll be by a tighter margin than we would have expected pre-Dobbs.”
Democratic fortunes have improved after the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights and galvanized women voters, and President Joe Biden has enjoyed a string of legislative and policy wins that have greatly improved their chances in November's election -- and North Carolina activists hope the national party invests more resources there.
“They need to do it soon… whatever they’re going to do, they have to do it now,” said Democratic strategist Douglas Wilson. “There’s something going on in North Carolina, that we are on the precipice of flipping, we just need an extra nudge."
On Friday, The New Yorker's Susan Glasser reported that a senior national security official had a dire description of how bad a second Donald Trump term would be if he wins back the presidency in 2024.
"Writing the book, though an exercise in looking back, did offer some strong hints about what another four years of Trump in office might look like," wrote Susan Glasser. "I am thinking in particular of a chilling conversation I had with a former senior national-security official who regularly observed Trump in the Oval Office. The official compared him to the velociraptors in the movie 'Jurassic Park,' horror-movie monsters who proved capable of learning while hunting their prey — a terrifying fact the audience learns when one of the predators chases a child into a kitchen by turning the handle to open the door."
It's fairly easy to predict what Trump would do in office, argued Glasser, because many of his deepest-held convictions were consistent through his first four years. He has consistently signaled he wants to withdraw from NATO, for example — and use the Justice Department to go after political critics.
"In the fall of 2020, he even explicitly demanded that the Justice Department jail Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, weeks before the election," wrote Glasser. "'Where are all the arrests?' he tweeted on October 7th, 2020. We are on notice. He will try this again if given the chance."
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And to help him facilitate all this, Trump has plans to decimate civil service protections to stack the government with yes-men. In particular, he could restore an executive order that classifies most federal employees under a process known as "Schedule F," which allows the president to dismiss them at will — something that violates the intent of civil service reforms stretching back to the 19th century to prevent presidents from trading government jobs for favors.
"The man who finished his Presidency with a total of 30,573 false and misleading claims while in office, according to the Washington Post’s fact-checking project, is not going to suddenly return to power as a truthteller," concluded Glasser. "He will seek vengeance and vindication. He will run the same plays again and again. He will find aides and advisers who will do his bidding, unlike the faithless traitors who surrounded him before. The velociraptor will have learned to open the door."
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WASHINGTON, DC — After he cast a late morning vote on the Senate floor Thursday, Tim Kaine was in his signature satisfied smile – the one he regularly seems incapable of controlling on his noticeably unhurried strolls through the hurried-to-hectic United States Capitol – as he descended into the dregs of the Capitol. Before reaching the trams at the bottom of the landing, where a rotating cast of reporters all but reside, he stopped to field our questions. After answering an election question, the former governor of a formerly purple Virginia went out of his way to defend many members of the GOP from charges they’re all lawless disciples of Trump (“Not everybody who is a Republican is in that camp, but, sadly, an awful lot are”).
In the next question, “DeSantis'' came up as an easy, almost piñata-like example of a broader trend. One mention of the Florida governor’s name was too much, even for the perpetually nice – “Virginia is…” annoyingly, at least half the time… “for Lovers” – and decent former Democratic vice-presidential nominee.
“You know what? Let me just say this about Ron DeSantis,” Kaine told Raw Story as his eyes welled up with tears and his voice quivered with pain. “Somebody who would round up Venezuelans who have fled one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world and then use them for a political stunt has no business ever holding any political office.”
Our southern neighbors – stretching throughout the Americas – have maintained a special place in Kaine’s being since 1980. That’s when he checked out of Harvard Law School for a year to serve as a Jesuit missionary in Honduras. His time there has stuck with him, which was evident as the mild-tempered Democrat sardonically mocked Florida’s governor for his latest naked appeal for clicks and adoration from the far-right wing of the GOP he’s perpetually courting.
“’So let's see, ‘who do I want to use for a political stunt? Why don't I pick on people who have already been abused by a power-mad tyrant?’ And they fled that, and they fell into the hands of another power-mad tyrant,” Kaine said in pained disgust.
When former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez started implementing his nationalistic reimagining of his homeland, a massive migration crisis took root in Venezuela. That steady flow of desperate humans – known to many as the Bolivarian Revolution – has yet to stop. Upwards of four million Venezuelans fled the impoverished nation from 1999 to 2019. Losing roughly 13 percent of their population makes it the worst migration crisis recorded in the Americas to date.
“You think about who Venezuelans are – I mean, this is the second largest humanitarian crisis in the world and the US is the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Venezuelan people, both inside the country and out,” Kaine bemoaned, questioning whether DeSantis has any foreign policy chops.
In Massachusetts, local leaders are also appalled that DeSantis turned people into nakedly partisan pawns.
“It's pathetic. DeSantis is using vulnerable human beings for his own personal political gain,” Sen. Ed. Markey (D-MA) told Raw Story as he rushed through the Capitol Thursday. “But Massachusetts will embrace these families, and we will take care of them.”
Throughout the governor’s first term, DeSantis has gained a reputation through consistently manufacturing and embellishing made-for-Fox NewsMax controversies. Critics across the political spectrum say shipping refugees to an East Coast island – especially after they were reportedly told they were headed to Boston – was a step too far, even for him. Many have questions for the GOP White House-aspirant.
“I was wondering whether there was some kind of kidnapping? Like, what did they tell them to get on the plane?” Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH) wondered to Raw Story as she headed to the Capitol for the House’s last votes of the week.
DeSantis has successfully used the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee to vie for former President Trump’s base and donors, but Kuster predicted this latest ploy will backfire.
“What I'm really proud of is the townspeople stepping up. That's our motto: Democrats care, communities care,” Kuster continued. “It's entirely irresponsible for the Republican governor to approach it that way. But we do care.”
DeSantis’ political stunts are getting old to some of his own party. Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) served as the 89th Speaker of the Florida House Representatives before being sent to Washington in 1998. Just last month, he beat back a primary challenge from the fringe-right as he squeaked out a narrow victory over alt-right, anti-immigrant provocateur Laura Loomer.
When Raw Story asked Webster’s reaction to DeSantis’ move to fly migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, it became clear the former Florida GOP leader is no cheerleader of the state’s current governor.
“I haven’t been following it,” Webster replied when asked about the two planes DeSantis sent to Martha’s vineyard.
“You haven’t seen it?” I ask, surprised, as it was on all the channels.
“No,” the six-term Republican replied deadpan.
Not to be outdone by his potential presidential primary opponent, a day after DeSantis’ move, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent 2 busloads of migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’ Washington residence. More than 100 asylum seekers were abandoned at her home, including children.
While Republican governors work to portray President Joe Biden – and the entire Democratic Party through him – as weak on immigration, many Democrats say it’s all smoke and mirrors. They support secure borders, but, they say, just not inhumane ones.
“We need to solve immigration and security at the border, not play cheap political stunts, and that’s what that is,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) told Raw Story on her way to a Senate vote. “That stuff doesn't help anything.”
As for whether these episodes are a new low for GOP governors?
“There’s always more new lows,” Duckworth replied.
Clicks, likes, and TV play are one thing, critics argue, but human beings are another.
“I think it reflects an utter disregard for the humanity of other people,” Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) told Raw Story as he was about to enter the Capitol. “I understand we have to address the challenges we're facing with people at our borders – there's no question about that – but we need to do it in a way that reflects our values as Americans.”
Echoing Tim Kaine, the four-term congressman also accused DeSantis of being out of touch with America’s most foundational – even sacred – core values.
“We are a country that has long welcomed the oppressed and benefited from immigration throughout our history,” Schneider continued. “We need immigration reform that includes addressing our outdated laws and addressing our border security, but what the governor is doing is using people for his own political purposes in the most deplorable way.”
U.S. House Democrats and a handful of Republicans on Thursday rejected former President Donald Trump's plot to oust civil servants by passing the Preventing a Patronage System Act.
"The civil servants who make up our federal workforce are the engine that keeps our federal government running," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the bill's sponsor. "We rely on their experience and expertise to provide every basic government service—from delivering the mail to helping families in the wake of natural disasters."
"The former president's attempt to remove qualified experts and replace them with political loyalists threatened our national security and our government's ability to function the way the American people expect it to. Expertise, not fealty, must define our civil service," he added.
Connolly, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's government operations panel, and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) introduced H.R. 302 in response to Trump's executive order to establish a new Schedule F category of federal employees who are easier to fire.
Although President Joe Biden rescinded the order, Trump is widely expected to seek office again in 2024, and even if he isn't the next Republican presidential nominee, as Common Dreams has reported, other potential candidates have signaled support for the scheme.
In July, U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced the Public Service Reform Act, which one policy expert said makes clear that "efforts to try to change the civil service aren't just Trump necessarily, and if Republicans take control of Congress following the midterms, this may very well go from idea to specific action."
As Connolly's office previously outlined:
The Preventing a Patronage System Act would secure the civil service and protect federal employees from losing statutory job protections and due process rights. Specifically, the bill would prevent any position in the competitive service from being reclassified to an excepted service schedule created after September 30, 2020. The bill would also limit federal employee reclassifications to the five excepted service schedules in use prior to fiscal year 2021 and would block any reclassifications of federal employees to Schedule F pursuant to the E.O. signed on October 21, 2020.
Government Executive noted Thursday that the 225-204 vote—with three members not voting—came after the bill "passed out of the House as part of the chamber's version of the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act in July, and companion legislation was introduced in the Senate last month."
"The renewed focus on the issue by congressional Democrats comes after reports that conservative activists and ex-Trump administration staffers have plans to immediately revive Schedule F under the next Republican president and have already identified 50,000 employees to threaten with termination," the outlet added. "Trump, who is mulling another run at the White House, also explicitly endorsed the idea during a political rally last month."
Critics have condemned the GOP effort as "authoritarianism 101" and "a fascist takeover of our government." One public policy expert warned this year that "it would be a government of the lawless leading the incompetent."
House Democrats shared similar statements leading up to the vote Thursday.
In a tweet affirming his support for the bill, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) told Americans that "you deserve a government made up of public servants, not political hacks."
Hundreds of foreign royals and leaders are expected to attend the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London on Monday in one of the biggest diplomatic gatherings in decades.
Westminster Abbey has space for around 2,000 people, so only heads of state and one or two guests have reportedly been invited to Britain's first state funeral for six decades.
A handful of countries have meanwhile not been invited to the funeral due to political considerations -- sparking a furious outburst in at least one case.
Here are some of the key guests, and some who did not make the list:
A host of royals from Europe and further afield have confirmed their attendance at the funeral of one of the world's longest-serving monarchs.
Japan's Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako will come, in their first overseas trip since assuming the throne in 2019. It also marks a departure from Japanese tradition which rarely sees the emperor attend funerals.
Europe's royal families are closely related after centuries of mingling their bloodlines, so it will be no surprise to see several monarchs from the continent in the congregation.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Crown Princess Beatrix, Philippe King of the Belgians, King Harald V of Norway and Prince Albert II of Monaco will all attend.
Denmark's Queen Margrethe, who scrapped a series of events marking her 50th jubilee following the death of her third cousin Queen Elizabeth, is also coming.
Spain's King Felipe VI will be there too -- and so will his father, former king Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in disgrace in 2014 and now lives in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates.
US President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden head the diplomatic guest list, after the White House confirmed they would come to the funeral.
Unlike some other leaders who have been asked to come in coaches arranged by the British government, Biden has reportedly been given permission to use his armored presidential limousine, known as The Beast.
French President Emmanuel Macron will also attend, the Elysee said, to show the "unbreakable" bond with Britain and pay respects to the "eternal queen".
He is among the other leaders allowed to use their own transport, British officials said.
Strongmen leaders Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil are also coming.
Despite Britain's Brexit divorce from the European Union, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and European Council head Charles Michel will be present as well.
Other heads of state at the funeral will include presidents Sergio Mattarella of Italy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Isaac Herzog of Israel and Yoon Suk-yeol of Korea.
In a symbolic move to pay tribute to the queen whose 2011 state visit helped heal decades of tensions, Ireland's Taoiseach, prime minister Micheal Martin, will also attend.
Numerous leaders will come from the countries that still counted Elizabeth II as their monarch and from members of the 56-nation Commonwealth.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, whose nations have the British sovereign as their head of state, are all set to come.
From the Commonwealth of mainly former British colonies will come leaders including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama.
Russia and Belarus are among a small group of nations to be excluded from the queen's funeral following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, a British government source said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin -- under a travel ban to the UK because of sanctions -- had already said he would not attend.
But not inviting any Russian representative to the queen's funeral was "particularly blasphemous towards Elizabeth II's memory" and "deeply immoral", the foreign ministry in Moscow said on Thursday.
Military-run Myanmar, a former British colony, and long-time pariah North Korea have also been snubbed, the British source said on condition of anonymity.
© 2022 AFP
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