Palm Desert

AOC lowers expectations on Medicare for All, admitting Sanders 'can't wave a magic wand' to pass it

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that if Bernie Sanders were elected president, he still might not be able to get Medicare for All, his signature health plan, passed in Congress.

Trump budget zeroes out funding for Stars and Stripes, the military's newspaper

The Trump administration pulled funding in its 2021 budget for Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military news organization that has published a daily newspaper continuously since World War II for troops stationed around the world.

Chinese president says he took early action against COVID-19

The disclosure came after Chinese leadership was criticized for slow and muted reaction to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Coronavirus Has Chinese Banks Cleaning and Trying to Quarantine (or Destroy) Dirty Money

Yes, it has come down to this.

Hong Kong's Disneyland is letting the government use some of its land to quarantine people and stop the coronavirus spreading

Hong Kong is looking for secure and remote sites to quarantine people that may have the coronavirus in a bid to stop it spreading further.

Rebuffed by UK, U.S. pitches 'big tent' for Huawei rivals in Europe

The United States is seeking to rally European support for competitors to Huawei Technologies following disappointment in Washington over Britain's decision to use 5G equipment made by the Chinese company. U.S. officials at a global security conference in Germany this week urged governments and business leaders to build an ecosystem of "industry champions" that can provide alternatives to Huawei, the world's biggest maker of mobile networking equipment. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Reuters on Friday there was no credible evidence that Huawei was a threat to U.S. security.

Is that Harriet Tubman on a bank debit card, throwing a Wakanda salute?

A new debit card by the largest black-owned bank in the U.S. drew criticism and expressions of disbelief for its image of the famed abolitionist making a gesture similar to one in "Black Panther."

Questions over fate of Saudi crew in Yemen jet crash

The fate of the crew of a Saudi warplane that crashed in Yemen remained uncertain Sunday after Iran-linked Huthi rebels claimed to have shot down the aircraft. The Riyadh-led military coalition fighting the rebels said the two officers ejected from the plane before it crashed in northern Al-Jawf province Friday but that the rebels opened fire at them "in violation of international humanitarian law". "The joint forces command of the Coalition holds the terrorist Huthi militia responsible for the lives and wellbeing of the Tornado air crew," the coalition said in a statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency late Saturday.

Knives come out for Bloomberg as billionaire former mayor rises in the polls

Democratic candidates and President Trump took fresh aim this week at the former New York City mayor who has staked his personal fortune on winning the White House.

William Barr: how the attorney general became Trump's enabler-in-chief

Barr’s brazen intervention in the case of the president’s crony Roger Stone is the latest grave disappointment to those who thought he might rein in his boss’s excessesLawyers who have filled political appointee positions in the Trump administration have been pursued by doubts about their qualifications or caliber.In 2018, a justice department staffer was made acting attorney general, the department’s top job.Last week, the president installed a young friend of his aide Stephen Miller atop a pyramid of 2,500 lawyers as general counsel in the Department of Homeland Security.But there is one Trump appointee whose preparedness has never been questioned. William Barr, 69 and a veteran of 40 years in Washington, was confirmed one year ago as attorney general, a position with broad influence over the administration of justice and broad sway over public faith placed in it.“Barr is particularly effective,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute and veteran of the George W Bush administration, “because he’s one of the very few exceptions among Trump appointees – someone who is both qualified to do the job and has sufficient experience to know how to do it well.“Sadly, he has decided to be an enabler.”At the end of a historically turbulent week for the justice department with unknown implications for the country, that combination in Barr – power plus a knack for wielding it – has provoked intense alarm in Washington and far beyond.The fear is that Barr’s competence has flipped from virtue to vice owing to a quality that he appears to lack or have lost: judgment in the face of an untethered president.> Trump’s actions reflect his belief that he really has, as he said, an absolute right to intervene anywhere> > Paul RosenzweigBarr was once seen as a potential check on Trump’s overt desire to take command of the justice department, deploying its investigators and prosecutors at his whim and his will. But this week, critics warn, the attorney general has been revealed as an eager accomplice in eroding norms meant to insulate the criminal justice system from political interference, threatening the bedrock principle of equality before the law.“We fought a revolution against kingly prerogative,” said Rosenzweig. “At its most extreme, Trump’s actions post-impeachment in the last week reflect his belief that he really has, as he said, an absolute right to intervene anywhere in the executive branch. And there’s a word for that.“People with absolute rights are kings.”Trump has never been coy about his intentions. On Friday morning, he fed the sense of alarm when he insisted that he has “the legal right” to intervene in criminal cases.But the developments of the past week have changed the public understanding of just how aligned Barr is with the president, and just how extensive his cooperation has been.Those developments included Barr’s intervention in a case involving Trump’s friend Roger Stone, prompting the withdrawal of four career prosecutors; the resignation from government of a prominent former US attorney previously sidelined by Barr; and the issuance of a rare public warning by a federal judge about the independence of the courts.“Bill Barr has turned the job of attorney general and the political appointee layer at the top of the justice department on its head,” said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under Bill Clinton.“In past administrations of both political parties, the function of the political appointees at the justice department has been to insulate the rest of the department from political pressure. And Bill Barr instead has become the conduit for that political pressure.” ‘Shrewd, careful and full of it’Barr has not been untouched by the turbulence of the last week. Reported threats of additional resignations drove him on Thursday to grant a TV interview in which he complained that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” and vowed: “I’m not going to be bullied or influenced by anybody.”A Trump spokesperson said the president’s feelings were not hurt. Barr was said to have warned the White House of what he was going to say.The interview was met with outrage and eye-rolls among critics who saw a wide divergence between what Barr said and everything else he has been doing.“I think Bill Barr is shrewd, deliberate, smart, calculating, careful, and full of it,” tweeted the former US attorney Preet Bharara.The real Barr, critics say, has a 12-month track record as a spearhead for Trump’s attack on justice, beginning with public lies about the report of special counsel Robert Mueller and running through his intervention in the case of Roger Stone.In a prominent early incident among many in which Barr’s loyalty to the president seemed to critics to exceed his loyalty to the nation, Barr called a press conference last April and offered a misleading preview of Mueller’s report. He omitted the report’s detailed description of potential obstruction of justice by Trump and falsely claimed the White House had cooperated fully.In May, Barr assigned a US attorney to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation, an obsession of Trump’s. In July, Barr traveled to London to ask intelligence officials there for help with the investigation. He made a similar trip to Italy in September.Recently, Barr announced the creation of an “intake process” for information gathered by Rudy Giuliani about investigations tied to Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. On Friday, the New York Times reported that Barr had assigned outside prosecutors to review the prosecution of the former national security adviser Michael Flynn and other defendants tied personally to Trump.In August, Barr declined to recuse himself from a justice department review of a whistleblower complaint charging Trump with soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 election, despite his being named in the report. The review found no wrongdoing by the president, who survived impeachment over the matter.> This kind of direct, presidential interference in specific ongoing criminal prosecutions is extraordinary> > Neil KinkopfBut no previous action by Barr provoked such a crisis as his intervention this week in the Stone case.In that episode, Barr directed the US attorney’s office in the District of Columbia, which handles many prominent cases with a nexus to the federal government, to revisit its recommendation of seven to nine years in prison for Stone, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and witness tampering among other felonies.It was unclear whether Barr issued his direction before or after a Trump tweet blasting the case as “a horrible and very unfair situation” and a “miscarriage of justice”. In any event, the US attorney, a hand-picked Barr ally, entered a new recommendation for a lighter sentence and the four career prosecutors who signed the original recommendation withdrew from the case in apparent protest.“I do think it is something of a break-the-glass moment because of how overt it is,” said Harry Sandick, a former assistant US attorney in the southern district of New York who helped draft a letter published by the New York City bar association on Wednesday calling for an “immediate investigation”.Kinkopf said: “This is a really significant break. This kind of direct, presidential interference in specific ongoing criminal prosecutions is extraordinary. Even for this president and this attorney general.”Barr’s intervention in the Stone case came after he orchestrated a replacement of the head of the prosecutor’s office in Washington, Jessie Liu, under murky circumstances. Liu had been tapped for a Treasury post and was replaced in the US attorney’s office by Timothy Shea, a Barr loyalist. Then, this week, Trump withdrew Liu’s nomination – and she resigned from government.“One wonders whether other tweets could lead to people being charged, to people seeking harsher sentences,” said Sandick. “We watch with concern over the possibility that the US attorney in Washington DC was replaced because of her unwillingness perhaps to charge [former FBI official] Andrew McCabe, or James Comey, or others.”A further Trump attack this week on the judge in the Paul Manafort and Stone cases, as well as the DC prosecutors, prompted a rare rebuke on Thursday from the chief US judge in the District of Columbia, Beryl A Howell.“The judges of this court base their sentencing decisions on careful consideration of the actual record in the case before them; the applicable sentencing guidelines and statutory factors; the submissions of the parties, the Probation Office and victims; and their own judgment and experience,” Howell said.“Public criticism or pressure is not a factor.” ‘Immense suffering, wreckage and misery’Barr grew up in New York City, graduated from George Washington University law school, served in the Reagan administration and was attorney general under George HW Bush, establishing a record as a hardliner on gang violence and immigration and advocating for pardons in the Iran-Contra affair.He is a devout Catholic, describing in a speech in October at the University of Notre Dame how the American experiment depends on the advance of “Judeo-Christian moral standards” and attacking “militant secularists” whose “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order has brought with it immense suffering, wreckage and misery”.Barr’s long career in public life led some justice department veterans to welcome his nomination as attorney general in late 2018, given concerns about who else Trump might pick.> There was some hope that he would be an attorney general in the traditional model … he has been a grave disappointment> > Paul Rosenzweig“Initially there was some hope that he would be an attorney general in the traditional model,” said Rosenzweig. “And I confess that myself, I thought that would be the case and I thought it would be a pretty traditional appointment.“And he has been a grave disappointment.”But there were also warnings about Barr, particularly attached to a memo he submitted to the department arguing that Mueller’s investigation of Trump for alleged obstruction of justice was “fatally misconceived”.Kinkopf was among those who warned that Barr’s view of executive power was dangerously expansive, telling the Guardian it “comes very close to putting the president above the law”.But there was room to believe at the time that Barr’s theories would remain theories, Kinkopf says now.“Even among people who have advocated that theory of presidential power,” he said, “there are very longstanding norms in the justice department and the White House about respecting the independence of the justice department.”Barr has not vindicated his supporters, Kinkopf said.“His theory is that the constitution allows for this, but good-faith service in the office of president and the office of attorney general maintains the credibility and the apolitical nature of law enforcement. That had long been the norm regardless of one’s view of presidential power.“Barr has completely obliterated that.”

Just Ask This Russian Submarine: The Cuban Missile Crisis Nearly Ended The World

It was a closer call than you think.

The coronavirus could cripple China's economy for longer than Wall Street wants to believe

China's economy can't snap back from the coronavirus as fast as it did after SARS because it's growing more slowly and the banking system is a mess.

Assistant principal accused of raping student avoids jail

An assistant principal charged with raping a 16-year-old student in Missouri has avoided jail time by accepting an Alford plea, which allows her to assert innocence while acknowledging the evidence proves her guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Classmates rally, help release woman from immigration detention

Meidy Guzman’s release means returning to school, and possibly graduating with her classmates, while also seeking asylum and battling possible deportation.

Experts weigh in on how coronavirus may, or may not, run rampant in US in coming months

The coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, has infected more than 60,000, killed over 1,300 and terrified millions. In the United States, residents wait with bated breath as new cases of infected Americans arise. Also worth noting is that more than 7,000 patients diagnosed with the virus have recovered, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.On Thursday, the 15th U.S. case of coronavirus was confirmed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) after a patient returned from China to Texas earlier this week."The patient is among a group of people under a federal quarantine order at JBSA-Lackland in Texas because of their recent return to the U.S. on a State Department-chartered flight that arrived on February 7, 2020," the CDC wrote in a press release. Flower shop owner Iris Leung wears her protective face mask as she delivers flowers with masks to customers on Valentine's Day in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. COVID-19 viral illness has sickened tens of thousands of people in China since December. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) Experts such as Elizabeth McGowan, however, have reason to believe the outbreak that has inflicted so many in Mainland China won't strike with the same impacts in the U.S.McGowan, who serves as director of Penn State University's Center of Infectious Disease Dynamics, said the size of cities where infections are confirmed and quarantine efforts will determine the stateside spread."I think in the U.S. it will be about locality," McGowan told AccuWeather in an interview. "I don't think it would be about culture or social behavior. I think it's going to be about whether it comes into smaller communities or bigger communities," she continued."Wuhan is a very large city [in China], with over 11 million people, so anytime you have large amounts of people in shared space you just have [a] greater risk for a greater sized outbreak. I think more than cultural differences and our behaviors between countries, it will be about where does it end up and whether we are able to successfully isolate those individuals."Two known cases of person-to-person transmission have been recorded in the U.S. so far -- one in California and one in Illinois, according to CNN.Experts have continually stressed the importance of proper preventative practices this flu season, particularly with the threat of COVID-19. McGowan, however, pushed the importance of using proper products that ensure the best protection. An employee wearing a protective face mask waits for customers at a shop in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. COVID-19 viral illness has sickened tens of thousands of people in China since December. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) "We should be washing our hands with soap and doing it effectively. If you can not use soap, you can use those hand gel, alcohol-based disinfectants," she advised. "Those need to have a percentage of alcohol that's 60 percent or greater, so you need to be careful to make sure you get the right ones, check the label, and you need to make sure you rub in for 20 seconds or so before they're effective."Along with covering mouths and staying away from people while sick, McGowan added that it's important for people who feel any symptoms coming on to stay home. Hong Kong University professor John Nicholls recently stressed similar preventative measures in email exchanges with AccuWeather."​Apart from hand washing (soap is just as good as those alcohol gels) and masks, an important aspect is social distancing -- if people have symptoms stay away from other people," he said in an email on Feb. 13. "If you check the local Hong Kong media today, this was not followed by a guy who was ill but still went to work and subsequently appeared to infect other people."In a leaked private conference call with investment bankers last week, Nicholls expanded on those beliefs and described the different sanitary standards practiced in different regions. People wear protective face masks on a street in the rain in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. COVID-19 viral illness has sickened tens of thousands of people in China since December. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) "With SARS, once it was discovered that the virus was spread through the fecal-oral route, there was much less emphasis on the masks and far more emphasis on disinfection and washing hands," he said. "Hong Kong has far more cleanliness [than China] and they are very aware of social hygiene and other countries will be more aware of the social hygiene [than China]. So, in those countries, you should see less outbreaks and spreading. A couple days ago the fecal-oral route of transmission was confirmed in Shenzhen ... But in other countries the sanitation systems tends to [be] closed. My personal view is that this will be a bad cold and it will all be over by May."Nicholls seemed to soften on his certainty that COVID-19 would be nullified by May in subsequent emails to AccuWeather, but McGowan expressed similar sentiments about the effect warming weather would have on the virus and the impact it would have in countries such as the U.S.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP"Coronaviruses are a lot like flu and cold viruses, they're transmitted in respiratory droplets when people cough and sneeze," she said. "What that means is that for their transmission to work they have to hang in the air often for enough time before they can be inhaled into someone's lungs, and we know that weather affects that. The reason cold viruses and flu viruses like coronavirus can have seasonality is because they hang in the air longer when conditions are dry and cold."Conversely, in warmer spring and summer months, McGowan explained that higher levels of humidity cause those droplets to drop to the ground quicker, lessening the capacity for viruses to spread since the droplets spend less time in the environment. Customers wearing protective face masks looks at snacks at a shop in Hong Kong, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. COVID-19 viral illness has sickened tens of thousands of people in China since December. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu) In major countries located in the Southern Hemisphere, such as Australia and New Zealand, COVID-19 could become a bigger issue in the future as major populations enter the winter months. There, McGowan said, the opposite impact on spread could occur in the coming months.One factor that could bear watching in Northern Hemisphere areas, where spring is a little more than one month away, would be if temperatures and humidity don't rise as high as some experts may think. Strange and unexpected weather factors like that could cause the virus to further mutate, although McGowan added that communities that have already been stricken by the virus are much less likely to be impacted again."We have some coronaviruses that have just become common cold viruses and they sort of continue to circulate in human populations," McGowan said. "So, there's a possibility that that could happen with this sort of virus. These viruses are always evolving and changing all the time, so that's yet to be seen. For areas where there has been a lot of infection, that virus is unlikely to reinvade that community."Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

Coronavirus panic could be the endangered pangolin's new threat

Bill Zeigler, a top researcher at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, shared his concerns.

U.S., China, Russia making world more dangerous: German president

Germany's president took an indirect swipe at U.S. President Trump on Friday in accusing Washington, China and Russia of stoking global mistrust and insecurity with a "great powers" competition" that could threaten a new nuclear arms race.

Trump is getting medieval with the states

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) "must understand that National Security far exceeds politics," President Trump tweeted Thursday before immediately attempting to justify his suspension of a security program for his own political ends: "New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment [sic], start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes. Build relationships, but don't bring Fredo!"The president here is "expanding his abuse of power to blackmailing U.S. states," accused Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who was among Trump's impeachment prosecutors. "In this case, he's holding New York state hostage to try to stop investigations into his prior tax fraud."It's not clear whether the lawsuits Trump referenced were those concerning him personally or New York State's suit over its exclusion from the "trusted traveler program." Either way, Trump, I'm certain, wouldn't see his tweet as blackmail. He referenced The Godfather, but the framework of his expectations for New York's cooperation seems a little older. Feudal, even. Trump's vision for federal-state interactions looks an awful lot like vassalage.Western Europe in the Middle Ages organized many power relationships through the vassalage system. The details varied by time, place, and looming threat, but the basic idea was a pledged, transactional relationship between a monarch and lesser lords. The king granted his vassals authority over portions of his land and promised to provide them assurances of security. The vassals in turn would supply knights and men for their liege's army and swear to him their allegiance, or fealty.Trump's ideas about honor and order in society are clearly medieval, as I've argued previously. Like our forebears of a millennia ago, he weighs the gravity of offenses more by the stature of the offender than the nature of the offense. As he ranks at the very top of the social hierarchy, it is all but impossible for Trump to conceive of himself as doing wrong. Allegations of his own corruption, I suspect, sincerely don't make much sense to him: Because of who he is, what he does must be right.Seeing the states as vassals fits with that perspective quite comfortably. If Trump is king and commander-in-chief of the military, then governors, with their smaller territorial responsibility and National Guard forces, must be his vassals. Read his tweet about Cuomo in this light and it all makes sense: It's a breach of the vassal's fealty to sue the king or refuse him the tribute (in this case, driver records that could be used for immigration enforcement) he wants for his security agenda. "Uncooperative" vassals are intolerable. If there are vassals in breach of their vassalage, it can't be blackmail for the king to require them to abide by their pledge. He is but maintaining the right order of society, as he was chosen by God to do."I am born in a rank which recognizes no superior but God, to whom alone I am responsible for my actions; but they are so pure and honorable that I voluntarily and cheerfully render an account of them to the whole world," said Richard the Lionheart in 1193 when he was tried by the Holy Roman emperor. Richard's protests of his innocence have an eloquence Trump lacks, but the self-certain indignation is recognizable.The trouble is Trump is not a king; it is not 1193; and to most of us — with more modern, liberal conceptions of societal order — Trump's behavior toward New York is suspect at best. That perception is reinforced by our national mythos of popular sovereignty, which survives despite two centuries of evolution of federal (and especially executive) power as well as its uncomfortable entanglement with antebellum proposals for compromise over slavery.Our constitutional federalism — in concept, if no longer in practice — explicitly inverts the power structure of the medieval system: In feudalism, power flows from God to the king to his vassals to the populace. In the United States, power is supposed to belong to the people, and we for our convenience delegate some powers to the states, which in turn delegate some powers to the federal government. "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," affirms the Ninth Amendment, and the Tenth adds: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Power in America is supposed to flow up, not down.It usually doesn't, of course. Movements of popular protest across the political spectrum share the complaint that those in power persistently subvert the will of the people. And federal innovations in quietly coercing state behavior with financial incentives and penalties have transformed our system into something much closer to vassalage than we might like to admit. (New York University law professors Richard A. Epstein and Mario Loyola even echo medieval language in describing this arrangement at The Atlantic: "[States'] only viable option is to accept on bended knee the sovereign's offer to return their money back, in exchange for their obedience.")In that sense, maybe Trump is not so much a man out of his time. Maybe his monarchical dictates to New York are less a historical anachronism than an unusually indiscreet exercise of the United States' increasingly feudal federalism.Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com The sidelining of Elizabeth Warren 6 books Erik Larson keeps returning to Everyone would fall for a Trump deepfake

Hitler's Submarines Almost Launched A Missile Attack On America

In March, the Allies intercepted a message from German Admiral Godt dispatching seven Type IX long-range submarines to “attack targets in American coastal zone” as part of an attack group awesomely codenamed Seewolf.

Israeli army: Hamas hackers tried to 'seduce' soldiers

The Israeli military on Sunday said it has thwarted an attempt by the Hamas militant group to hack soldiers' phones by posing as young, attractive women on social media, striking up friendships and persuading them into downloading malware. Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the phones of dozens of soldiers had been infected in recent months, although he said the army detected the scam early on and prevented any major secrets from reaching the Islamic militant group. Conricus said this was the third attempt by Hamas to target male soldiers through fake social media accounts, most recently in July 2018.

Young adults support Bernie Sanders because they want to benefit from 'boomer socialism' that older Americans already enjoy

Young adults and other newcomers to the American economy are pushing to widen the reach of government benefits to include them as well.

Man who left puppy to drown in cage sentenced to 1 year for animal cruelty

The 36-year-old New Jersey man left the puppy in a cage along the rising tide of Sandy Hook Bay after a fight with his ex-girlfriend.

Merkel succession contender calls her out over slow EU revamp

A leading contender to succeed German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday criticised her for taking too long to respond to a French push to strengthen the EU after Brexit. "I would like to apologise for the German government," Armin Laschet said, casting himself as strongly pro-EU as the race to find a new leader for Merkel's centre-right CDU party heats up. Macron has long called for an overhaul to the European Union in response to Britain's departure from the bloc, including deeper integration in financial and defence matters, and has repeatedly urged Berlin to champion the reforms with him.

Australian soldiers caring for rescued koalas

The soldiers fed 28 rescued koalas and helped build climbing structures for them in their new home.

This college was accredited by a DeVos-sanctioned group. We couldn’t find evidence of students or faculty.

At present, Reagan National University apparently has no students or faculty. Yet it was accredited -- by a group saved by the Education Department.

Barr Just Cost the Justice Department Its Prized Public-Corruption Fighter

The impact of Attorney General William Barr’s intervention in the Roger Stone sentencing won’t just be felt in the cases concerning President Donald Trump’s allies, current and former Justice Department officials warn. It’s cost the Justice Department one of its top public-corruption prosecutors at a time when public corruption is looking like a growth industry. That attorney is Jonathan Kravis. Kravis is the deputy chief of the fraud and public corruption section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, putting corruption within the federal government under his purview. Or he was until Tuesday, when Kravis resigned. The last straw for Kravis, who was part of Robert Mueller’s team that convicted Roger Stone of charges including lying to Congress, was the Justice Department overruling him on the recommended length of Stone’s prison sentence. Unlike his three outraged fellow prosecutors, Kravis didn’t just quit the Stone case, he quit the Justice Department.“It’s troubling and heartbreaking to see someone as talented and dedicated as Jonathan was known to be leaving under these circumstances,” said a federal prosecutor who requested anonymity during a precarious moment for the Justice Department. “His loss is all the greater given his focus on prosecuting fraud and corruption, at a time when both crimes appear to be on the march.” Before joining Robert Mueller’s team investigating Russian election interference and its connections to Trumpworld, Kravis, who had also served in the Justice Department’s public-integrity section, scored several anti-corruption victories against high-profile targets. In 2016, he helped convict former Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Chaka Fattah on a host of charges including bribery, wire fraud and racketeering. A year earlier, he helped prosecute three aides to Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign for effectively bribing an Iowa state senator to endorse Paul ahead of the Iowa caucus. “He was probably one of the best public integrity prosecutors this country has,” a former colleague, Glenn Kirschner, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell after the Stone prosecutors quit. Kravis did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Just as important as Kravis himself is the position that he held. The public-corruption section within the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has widespread prosecutorial authority over the federal government, as well as election activities. “In this administration, it along with SDNY [the Southern District of New York] are the two most important venues for public corruption prosecutions. It’s a significant loss to that office,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. And it comes at a time when there is no shortage of public-corruption targets. Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former Justice Department public-integrity line prosecutor, pointed to the president’s conflicts of interests deriving from the retention of his business empire as an early signal of toleration for brazen public graft. “There’s corruption at the federal government at a level we’ve perhaps never seen before,” Bookbinder said. “Somebody like Kravis resigning under the circumstances he did, and the entire team on the Stone prosecution withdrawing, is pretty clearly a protest that these line prosecutors believe DOJ was interfering for political reasons.” The Justice Department has spent all week denying the allegation. Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said Kravis’ departure was “bad for the nation,” but considered its broader importance to be what it augurs for the independence of the Justice Department. “In light of Barr’s change in the sentence recommendation for Stone, after Trump voiced his displeasure, this norm can no longer be assumed,” Gillers said. “That reality will discourage not only lawyers now working at DOJ from remaining, but also discourage good applicants who do not want to join a Department where their decisions may be subject to political interference.” “When someone like Jonathan Kravis leaves the office,” said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, “that means he will be replaced by someone hired by the new U.S. attorney, Timothy Shea, whose conduct today does not instill a lot of confidence in his integrity, in contrast to Jonathan Kravis, whose conduct is consistent with the best traditions of the independence of the Department of Justice.” (Shea is a former Barr aide whom Barr recently installed as acting U.S. attorney for D.C.)CREW’s Bookbinder added that losing respected public-corruption prosecutors poses a unique challenge. Their high-profile, politically powerful targets frequently argue in court that the prosecutors themselves are corrupt. “You really need people with expertise and credibility who can come in and do those cases and not have anyone question what their agenda is,” Bookbinder said.Bill Barr Is the Most Dangerous Man in AmericaBut instead, said Joshua Geltzer, a former Justice Department national-security official, “you’re seeing more people leave who dislike Trump and more [loyalists] coming in. Trump brought such a politicized, polarized vision about who runs the executive branch that his effect on those leaving and entering the federal workforce is more dramatic than previous presidents.” After Senate Republicans saved Trump from impeachment, the president and his allies accelerated their efforts at making Main Justice an adjunct of the White House. In addition to the Stone sentencing reversal, Barr is now undercutting Mueller’s guilty plea from former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, for lying to the FBI. Former acting attorney general Sally Yates, whom Trump fired after she warned that Flynn was a counterintelligence liability, wrote in The Washington Post on Friday that the president was using the Justice Department for “retribution or camouflage.”“The president has made it clear that his insistence on loyalty includes loyalty from the institutions that administer criminal justice, including DOJ and the FBI,” said NYU’s Gellers. “You might say without exaggeration that Trump wants personal loyalty from the rule of law itself.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Remember When Iran Took Out Saddam Hussein's Navy In One Day—With American-Made Jets?

One of the most intense air battles since World War II.

How Bloomberg's philanthropy may have secured his political influence

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is gaining some traction in the Democratic primary, despite his late entry. Part of the reason he's been able to do that, The New York Times reports after reviewing years of campaign and nonprofit tax filings, may be because he spent years building influence by donating hefty funds to certain causes.Per the Times, some — though not all — of Bloomberg's philanthropic endeavors appear to have secured the allegiance of powerful institutions, as well as leaders within the Democratic Party. The Times is clear that no one interviewed for the story described anything akin to threats or coercion, but Bloomberg's financial influence did speak for itself in some cases. "They aren't going to criticize him in his 2020 run because they don't want to jeopardize receiving financial support from him in the future," said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the good-government group Common Cause.In 2015, the Times reports, researchers at the Center for American Progress turned in a report on anti-Muslim bias in the U.S., which included about 4,000 words on New York City police surveillance of Muslim communities. Bloomberg, because he was the city's mayor, was mentioned a handful of times. But when the report was published, the chapter was gone. A spokeswoman for the policy group said the chapter was removed for editorial reasons, but Yasmine Taeb, the author of the report, said there was fear about how it would be perceived by Bloomberg. An email reviewed by the Times also shows at least one official wrote that there would be a "strong reaction from Bloomberg world if we release the report as written," and three people with direct knowledge of the situation reportedly confirmed Bloomberg was a factor in the decision. Read more at The New York Times.More stories from theweek.com The sidelining of Elizabeth Warren 6 books Erik Larson keeps returning to Trump is getting medieval with the states

Hawaii announces its coronavirus tests from the CDC were faulty, and it points to a major gap in treating and stopping the spread of the virus

News of faulty testing kits has led to heightened concerns about the effectiveness of using the kits to stop the spread of disease.

As sea levels rise, Venice fights to stay above the waterline

A 17-year project to build underwater floodgates in the city has been mired in delays and corruption.

India women facing sedition charges over school play get bail

Two women held for two weeks by Indian police on sedition charges over a school play which allegedly criticised a contentious citizenship law have been granted bail, officials said Sunday. Teacher Fareeda Begum, 50, and parent Nazbunnisa, 36, were arrested on January 30 for helping the children stage the play at Shaheen Public School in Karnataka state. The play depicted a worried family talking about how they feared the government would ask millions of Muslims to prove their nationality or be expelled from India.

CBS News and Congressional Black Caucus Institute to co-host debate

The debate will take place in South Carolina on February 25. The Democratic National Committee announced details for the first four early-voting state presidential primary debates.

Mississippi gave $2M in welfare money to wrestler's group

DiBiase is the father of a man recently indicted on charges of embezzling federal welfare money from the state. Ted DiBiase Sr. himself hasn't been indicted. The Clarion Ledger reported that DiBiase's Heart of David Ministries had a contract with the Mississippi Department of Human Services for a subgrant of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families funds.

Pete Buttigieg 'won't take lectures' from Rush Limbaugh or any Trump supporter

* Radio host doubts Americans ready for gay candidate * Democrat ‘saddened for what Republican party has become’Pete Buttigieg is “not going to be lectured on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh or anybody who supports Donald J Trump as the moral as well as political leader of the United States”, the Democratic presidential contender said on Sunday.Limbaugh, a conservative talk radio host controversially honoured by Trump, caused controversy this week when he questioned whether Americans were ready to vote for a gay candidate for president.Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Buttigieg added: “America has moved on and we should have politics of belonging that welcomes everybody. That’s what the American people are for. And I am saddened for what the Republican party has become if they embrace that kind of homophobic rhetoric.”During his State of the Union address earlier this month, Trump gave Limbaugh the nation’s top civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In liberal circles, the decision met with widespread criticism.Limbaugh, 69, who recently revealed he has advanced lung cancer, subsequently said on his radio show that if Buttigieg made the debates later this year, Americans would see a “37-year-old gay guy kissing his husband on stage, next to Mr Man, Donald Trump”.Voters, he said, would conclude that “despite all the great wokeness and despite all the great ground that’s been covered, that America’s still not ready to elect a ‘gay guy kissing his husband on the debate stage’ president”.Some Democratic voters, he added, might decide they should “get a gay guy kissing his husband on stage, ram it down Trump’s throat and beat him in the general election. Really? Having fun envisioning that.”Buttigieg – who is 38 – was initially cautious in response but the remarks were condemned by senior members of both political parties.Former vice-president Joe Biden, competing for the Democratic nomination, called Limbaugh’s comments “part of the depravity of this administration”.Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican senator and key Trump ally, said Limbaugh had made “a miscalculation as to where the country is at”.Asked if Limbaugh should retain the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Graham said: “Well, my God. Free speech still exists.”Trump also distanced himself from the remarks by his supporter and sometime onstage companion, telling a podcast host that though some Americans wouldn’t vote for a gay president, “I wouldn’t be among that group, to be honest with you.”Buttigieg told Fox News Sunday that when he came out during a mayoral re-election campaign, he received more support than he did in his first race.He also responded to Limbaugh’s remarks on CNN’s State of the Union.“I love my husband,” he said, of Chasten Buttigieg, who he married in 2018 and who like any politician’s spouse regularly appears onstage at campaign events.“I’m faithful to my husband. Onstage we usually just go for the hug. But I love him very much and I’m not going to take lectures on family values from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.”

AOC lowers expectations on Medicare for All, admitting Sen. Sanders 'can't wave a magic wand' to pass it

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Thursday that if Bernie Sanders was elected president, he still might not be able to get Medicare for All, his signature health plan, passed in Congress.

Fact: Disobeying Gun Laws Is An American Tradition

It goes back to before 1776.

Why Xi's 'defensive' coronavirus speech could backfire

Chinese state media published an internal speech delivered by President Xi Jinping on Saturday in which he describes taking action on the coronavirus outbreak as early as Jan. 7.In the speech, which was given Feb. 3, Xi said he had "issued demands about the efforts to prevent and control" the virus during a meeting of the Communist Party's highest council, the Politburo Standing Committee, last month, and that he personally authorized the lockdown of the epicenter, Wuhan, beginning on Jan. 23. "I have at every moment monitored the spread of the epidemic and progress in efforts to curtail it," he said.Publishing the speech is viewed as an attempt to show Xi has been involved from the start since he's been criticized for remaining in the shadows. "The overall tone of the speech of appears to be defensive," Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, told The New York Times. "He wants to change the narrative, which until this point has been very unfavorable to the top leadership."But some analysts think it could backfire and lead to even more criticism about how the government kept the public in the dark for too long. "It seems like he's trying to indicate that 'we weren't asleep at the wheel,'" Jude Blanchette, the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Times. "But it comes off like 'we knew this was a problem, but we weren't sounding the alarm.'" Read more at The New York Times.More stories from theweek.com The sidelining of Elizabeth Warren 6 books Erik Larson keeps returning to Trump is getting medieval with the states

The massive screen on Samsung's new Galaxy S20 Ultra phone is so big it would have been considered a tablet less than a decade ago

The new Galaxy S20 Ultra from Samsung has a screen that's just 0.1mm shy of Google's Nexus 7 tablet from 2013, which had a 7-inch screen.

Truck spilling cement on roadway causes 'violent crash,' killing 2

A driver traveling northbound drove over the wet mortar, jumped the median and hit a car going southbound, police said.

Germany wants another crack at a EU mission in the Strait of Hormuz

Berlin last summer rejected a request to join a U.S.-led naval protection mission for fear of getting tangled up in shooting war between the United States and Iran.

Israel says Hamas used 'attractive' women in thwarted cyberattack

Israel's military said on Sunday it had thwarted an attempted malware attack by Hamas that sought to gain access to soldiers' mobile phones by using seductive pictures of young women. The phones of a few dozen soldiers were affected, but the military "does not assess that there has been a substantial breach of information", said Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, an army spokesman. Conricus said this was the third attempted malware attack by Hamas in less than four years, but that the latest effort indicated the Islamist group, which controls the Gaza Strip, had improved their capacity to wage cyber-warfare.

Why Joe Biden needs ‘a political miracle’ to stay in the race to face Trump

Barack Obama’s vice-president is floundering in the Democratic primary, losing key support as vital votes loomLarry Sabato is an analyst, author and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. His students are currently embedded in various presidential campaigns. Two were working for Joe Biden in Iowa. Before caucus day, they texted Sabato to say they expected to lose badly.Sabato asked why. The answer: “No energy at all.”And so it proved. Biden, who was Barack Obama’s righthand man for eight years and long the Democrats’ national frontrunner to take on Donald Trump, trailed in fourth. A week later, he fled New Hampshire before the votes were even counted, to escape the public humiliation of finishing fifth.Now, in the words of one commentator, Biden “needs a miracle” to stay in the race. A man whose candidacy a year ago seemed to be predicated on his appeal to the white working class is depending on African American voters to rescue him from the oft-quoted maxim that all political lives end in failure. What went wrong?“I’ve watched Joe Biden since he was first elected [to the Senate] in 1972,” Sabato said. “He was full of energy and joking around and had a big personality but I don’t think anyone has associated the word ‘vision’ with Joe Biden. Democrats are looking for a vision; Biden’s vision is to go back to Obama’s policies. I understand it, but it doesn’t get you standing up and cheering.”The 77-year-old’s debate performances have failed to inspire and his rallies have drawn small crowds. His rally in Des Moines on the eve of the Iowa caucuses was in a more compact venue than Pete Buttigieg’s across the city and, while delivering a heartfelt critique of Trump, offered fewer policy specifics and generated less electricity.Sabato added: “People are charged up and incensed about Trump. But if you’re standing there talking and they go to sleep, it doesn’t suggest you’re the best one to beat Trump. People keep saying he’s lost a step or two but this is the same Joe Biden I remember from the 1970s. He’s a meanderer. Some speakers get you fired up but Joe’s not that.”> In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept> > Moe VelaThere is a distinct whiff of déja vu. Biden’s first run for president fell apart in 1987 when he quoted British politician Neil Kinnock but forgot to credit him, prompting charges of plagiarism. His second attempt went off the rails in 2007 when he described Obama as “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”. (His third-place finish in his home state, Delaware, remains his best performance in a primary.)The 2020 effort was meant to be different story with Biden, who served with distinction as Obama’s vice-president, cast as the antidote to Trump and restorer of normalcy. But he was poleaxed by Senator Kamala Harris of California in the first Democratic debate in June, when she challenged his past views on desegregated school busing.He fared little better in a debate in September when, asked about what responsibility Americans have to repair the legacy of slavery, he gave a rambling answer that included “make sure you have the record player on at night, make sure that kids hear words, a kid coming from a very poor school, a very poor background, will hear 4 million words fewer spoken by the time we get there.”Debates came and went. Trump’s attacks on Biden’s son, Hunter, over his business dealings in Ukraine generated media scrutiny, both fair and unfair, that in some minds may have planted seeds of doubt. In Iowa it was clear the Obama magic, which swept the caucuses in 2008, had not rubbed off on his running mate. The blame seemed to lie with both an underwhelming candidate and a poorly organised campaign.Moe Vela, who was director of administration and senior adviser to Biden at the White House, said: “In Iowa I saw one of the most inferior ground games in politics. I have never seen anything so inept. He’s not being served properly by his campaign.”Vela, now an LGBTQ and Latino activist and board director at TransparentBusiness, added: “He had been the front runner for so long that I think the campaign staff became complacent. You got a sense they were so busy talking about electability and pitting him against Trump they forgot they have to deal with these 15 people first. You could see this rude awakening in Iowa as the night was slipping away.”In New Hampshire, where Biden called a student a “lying dog faced pony soldier”, he fared even worse. A comeback win in Nevada looks unlikely, setting up a potential last stand in South Carolina, the first contest in a state with a significant African American population – a constituency where he has consistently polled strongly. (Biden has been at pains to point out that 99% of the African American population have not yet had a say.)But even this advantage appears to have been eroded by Senator Bernie Sanders and billionaire Tom Steyer. Then comes Super Tuesday, where another billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, has spent nearly $350m on ads focused on the 16 states and territories that vote, eating into Biden’s support among moderates and African Americans. Several black members of Congress and city mayors have endorsed Bloomberg despite the discriminatory “stop-and-frisk” policy he supported as mayor of New York.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC), said: “Biden has lost half the black support that he had. It’s bled off and is now largely with Mike Bloomberg. Some of it has gone to Bernie Sanders, a little bit maybe to Elizabeth Warren, none of it to Pete Buttigieg. So he’s sitting there holding 22, 23% of the black vote now. Mike Bloomberg is behind them at what, 21?“Clearly whatever the decision-making process was that led them to run the first leg of this race the way they have has cost him dearly. They have to make up a lot of ground in a very short period of time. When you swing into Super Tuesday, you’ve got to have bankroll.” ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’Is there still time to turn it around? Yes, but it will be an uphill struggle. Since 1972, no candidate from either party has finished below second in both Iowa and New Hampshire and won the nomination.Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who was an adviser to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, said: “For him to recover from this would be a political miracle unlike anything we’ve seen in modern presidential politics. I don’t think it’s impossible but it’s unlikely and would fly in the face of all our knowledge of political history.”Biden’s main pitch had been that in this moment of national emergency, he was the steady hand best placed to prevent Trump winning a second term. To centrists, he would be less of a gamble than progressives Sanders or Warren. But after the heavy losses in Iowa and New Hampshire, he is caught in his own electability trap.Shrum, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said: “The centrepiece of the campaign was, ‘I’m going to beat Trump like a drum’. The public said, ‘If you’re saying you’re a winner, you’d better win’.”“Al Gore had this line: elections are not a reward for past performance. I think they are always about the future, not just the past. In Democratic primaries, you’ve got to have a future offer to people, no matter how dissatisfied they are with the Republican incumbent. Joe Biden has a lot of policies on his website but that’s not what comes over on the debate stage.”> There’s still to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back> > Coby OwensIn a small but telling measure of a campaign in a downward spiral, Biden’s press team did not respond to multiple phone and email requests from the Guardian seeking comment. The Trump, Bloomberg and other campaigns are generally far more responsive.Shrum added: “I suspect they have many pressures and I have nothing but sympathy for the candidate and the people around him. It’s hard to start at the top of the mountain and end up in the valley.”Biden’s struggles have dismayed supporters in his home state, where he remains immensely popular. Coby Owens, a local civil rights activist whose family has known Biden for years, and who is still trying to decide between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, said: “There are a lot of people who are shocked and concerned about it and want to know what’s going on.“They have been hearing the message that he’s the most electable so they thought he was going to cruise through the first two states, which are predominantly white. There’s still a lot of room left for him to recover but if he’s not willing to restructure his campaign, I don’t think he can bounce back.” ‘Telltale signs’Biden has frequently referenced his partnership with Obama but America’s first black president has remained notably silent.Obama reportedly discouraged Biden from running in 2016 because he believed Hillary Clinton had a better chance of winning. This time, rumour has it that he nudged Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, to make a late bid because again he was dubious about Biden’s viability (Patrick dropped out after a poor showing in New Hampshire).Steele, the ex-RNC chairman and former lieutenant-governor of Maryland, commented: “The telltale signs were there: the lack of interest that Barack had in the Biden campaign, the fact that the word on the street was that Deval Patrick was in the race was because Obama encouraged him to get in the race. Why would you do that with your vice-president already in the game?”While cautious about writing Biden off just yet, Steele added: “For me, just watching the Biden campaign, I get the sense that he’s kind of walked through it. I think he’s going through the paces of it. I’m not convinced at this stage that he really wants it any more. I don’t think you take the front runner status that he’s held for over a year, anchored by 50% of the black vote in a party where that is a very important and huge demographic edge, and just leave it on the table.“I’ve never seen a candidate do that the way it’s been done. Maybe there’s a little bit of hubris and you assume that you’ve got the weight to throw around to win this thing. But then again, at the same time, I think at a certain point the gas is out of the tank and you just sleepwalk your way through it.”

‘I Think People Will Starve.’ Experts Are Worried About the Hundreds of Thousands Who Could Lose Food Stamps Come April

Kate Maehr’s job is about to get a lot harder. Maehr runs a food bank that’s part of a network distributing nearly 200,000 meals around…

Battle of the Bulge: Hitler Sets One Last Trap

Part one of a two-part series detailing one of the last big battles of World War II.