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carolinehayter

Cuomo faces most serious allegation yet as aide says governor groped her | Andrew Cuomo... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...w-cuomo-aide-sexual-misconduct

Pandemic Politics US Culture Policy

shared by carolinehayter on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • An aide to Andrew Cuomo says the New York governor groped her in the governor’s residence, marking the most serious allegation among those made by a series of women against the embattled Democrat, according to a report published in a newspaper Wednesday.
  • reported that the woman, who was not identified, was alone with Cuomo when he closed the door, reached under her shirt and fondled her. The newspaper’s reporting is based on an unidentified source with direct knowledge of the woman’s accusation.
  • The three-term governor faces harassment allegations from five other women
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • “The governor’s sexual harassment, which Charlotte Bennett reported, was buried by his aides and never properly investigated,” Katz’s statement said. “Because of their enablement, another young woman was left in harm’s way.”
  • The woman whose account was reported by the Times Union also indicated that Cuomo had touched her and made flirtatious comments on multiple occasions.
  • In it, he denied ever touching a woman inappropriately. The aide subsequently became emotional, and told a female supervisor who approached her about her encounters with the governor. At least one supervisor reported the allegation to an attorney in the governor’s office Monday, the newspaper reported.
  • The state attorney general, Letitia James, has put together an investigative team to probe Cuomo’s workplace conduct. The governor has called on lawmakers and the public to await the results of that investigation. Federal investigators are also scrutinizing how his administration handled data concerning Covid-19 outbreaks at nursing homes.
  • Cuomo has repeatedly maintained he won’t resign.
  • The Republican assembly member Mike Lawler on Twitter called Cuomo “a sexual predator” who should be charged.
anonymous

Vaccine Eligibility In Many States Expanding To Include All Adults : Coronavirus Updat... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...9-vaccine-eligible-by-april-15

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Nearly half of U.S. states will have opened COVID-19 vaccinations to all adults by April 15, officials said Friday, putting them weeks ahead of the May 1 deadline that President Biden announced earlier this month.
  • Jeff Zients, Biden's COVID-19 czar, said that 46 states and Washington, D.C., have announced plans to expand eligibility to all adults by May 1. Officials at the White House COVID-19 Response Team briefing noted an uptick in confirmed cases and hospitalizations, and urged the public to stay vigilant even as the country's vaccination rollout picks up speed.
  • A growing number of Americans will be able to sign up sooner rather than later, as dozens of states have moved to accelerate their timelines. Fourteen states have already opened eligibility to all adults or are set to do so in the next week, with another 12 set to follow by April 15.
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  • In the Northeast, where case counts are on the rise, adults will be able to register for appointments starting April 1 in Connecticut and April 2 in New Hampshire. On the opposite coast, California announced Thursday that adults ages 50 and older will be eligible for appointments starting April 1, with individuals 16 and older to follow on April 15.Other states are moving to make more groups eligible ahead of schedule, based on age or underlying conditions.
  • More states will join that list in the coming days. Starting March 29, for example, eligibility will expand to all adults in places like North Dakota, Louisiana, Ohio and Texas. Minnesota and Indiana will similarly expand access before the end of the month.
  • Alaska became the first state to make vaccinations available to all adults over the age of 16 earlier this month, followed by Mississippi. Several others have since followed suit, including Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia.
  • New Jersey's governor said on Friday that people ages 55 and older, individuals over the age of 16 with intellectual and developmental disabilities, higher education employees and other essential workers will qualify starting April 5. Floridians ages 40 and older will be eligible beginning March 29, officials announced Thursday.
  • According to a map released by the White House COVID-19 Response Team on Friday, four states have yet to confirm plans to expand eligibility ahead of the May 1 deadline: New York, Wyoming, Arkansas and South Carolina, where officials have said they are not on track to hit that threshold until May 3.
  • Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the briefing that the country has seen an uptick in case counts and hospital admissions, with the most recent 7-day averages showing about 57,000 cases and 4,700 hospitalizations per day, and hospitalizations hovering around 1,000.
  • Noting the trajectory with concern, she implored listeners to "take this moment very seriously" and continue following public health guidance.
  • Friday's announcement comes a day after Biden declared a new goal of getting 200 million shots in arms by his 100th day in office, or the end of April. Federal officials said the country hit his initial target of 100 million doses last Friday, which was his 58th day in office.
  • The U.S. is administering 2.5 million shots a day at its current pace, Zients said, adding that vaccine makers are "setting and hitting targets." Some 27 million doses went to states, tribes and territories this week.
  • Johnson & Johnson has accelerated production of its single-shot vaccine and is on track to deliver 11 million doses next week. Zients expressed confidence that it will, and, in doing so, meet its goal of 20 million doses for the month of March.
lmunch

Gregg Jarrett: Open Cuomo criminal investigation - latest accusation suggests more than... - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...n-sexual-assault-gregg-jarrett

cuomo US culture

shared by lmunch on 12 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • If it is true that Gov. Andrew Cuomo reached under the blouse of a female employee and groped her without consent it would constitute a crime under New York law. Unwanted sexual contact falls under the broad category of sexual assault. 
  • The appalling complaint by a sixth accuser, as reported by the Albany Times Union, suggests not only a pattern of sexual harassment by the governor but a level of offensive conduct that appears to have crossed the legal line into felonious behavior.   
  • Yet, another of Cuomo’s accusers, 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, has said he used the exact same ploy on her. Through her attorney, she issued a statement saying the governor asked her to come to his office in the Capitol one weekend to help him with his cellphone. Once alone, she claims that he questioned her about her sex life and propositioned her.   
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The accounts of a half a dozen accusers who have bravely stepped forward paint a vivid picture of a governor as a sexual predator who exploited his power to prey on women. His despicable response is to blame the victims – it’s their fault for "misinterpreting it as unwanted flirtation." Cuomo claimed he was just "being playful." At one point, he even blamed his father, as if learned behavior somehow makes it OK. Assaulting a woman is no more permissible because someone else did it.   
  • Allegations, of course, are not proof of guilt. The governor is entitled to the due process that he now demands, even though he never afforded it to anyone else. When issues of sexual harassment or assault were raised against others, he promptly pronounced them guilty without due process. For example, Cuomo called the accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh presumptively true, all but calling him a rapist. By his own standard, the governor should presume himself guilty.   
leilamulveny

The National Guard's Role, Origins Explained - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-origins-explained-11610139895

national guard wsj history politics

shared by leilamulveny on 09 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times.
  • Last year, in June, roughly 3,300 National Guard troops from 10 states deployed to Washington, D.C., during racial-justice protests. The National Guard dates back to before the declaration of U.S. independence, and its troops have deployed to locations as far flung as Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the Mexican border.
  • The National Guard was conceived at first as a citizen force to protect families and towns from hostile attacks, and its mission has since grown to encompass domestic emergencies, overseas combat missions, counternarcotics operations, and other duties.
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  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times.
  • Excluding the District of Columbia force, each National Guard group is under the control of its respective state or territorial governor. The D.C. National Guard operates under federal control at all times
  • National Guard units can be ordered into federal service, in which case control of the mobilized units passes from the respective governors to the president
  • tate governors can call branches of the National Guard into action during local or statewide emergencies, including natural disasters and civil disturbances. The president can activate the National Guard for participation in federal missions in the U.S. and abroad.
  • “homeland defense activities”
  • Presidents Trump, Obama and Bush deployed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
  • ore than 250,000 people from the National Guard served in the U.S. wars in Afghanistan or Iraq
  • The National Guard has long participated in disaster-relief operations such as those following hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and its troops provided security at airports around the country after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Javier E

The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis's Vaccine Turnabout - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ron-desantis-covid.html

Florida vaccine pandemic policy effects politics us history

shared by Javier E on 23 Jul 23 - No Cached
  • While Florida was an early leader in the share of over-65 residents who were vaccinated, it had fallen to the middle of the pack by the end of July 2021. When it came to younger residents, Florida lagged behind the national average in every age group.
  • That left the state particularly vulnerable when the Delta variant hit that month. Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis. With less than 7 percent of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14 percent of deaths between the start of July and the end of October.
  • Of the 23,000 Floridians who died, 9,000 were younger than 65. Despite the governor’s insistence at the time that “our entire vulnerable population has basically been vaccinated,” a vast majority of the 23,000 were either unvaccinated or had not yet completed the two-dose regimen.
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  • A high vaccination rate was especially important in Florida, which trails only Maine in the share of residents 65 and older. By the end of July, Florida had vaccinated about 60 percent of adults, just shy of the national average
  • Had it reached a vaccination rate of 74 percent — the average for five New England states at the time — it could have prevented more than 16,000 deaths and more than 61,000 hospitalizations that summer, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet.
  • in Florida, unlike the nation as a whole — and states like New York and California that Mr. DeSantis likes to single out — most people who died from Covid died after vaccines became available to all adults, not before.
  • Mr. DeSantis and his aides have said that his opposition was to mandates, not to the vaccinations themselves. They say the governor only questioned the efficacy of the shots once it became evident that they did not necessarily prevent infection — which prompted him to criticize experts and the federal government.
  • The governor had early success in following his instincts. In 2020, the state supplied its nearly 4,000 long-term care homes with Covid tests and isolated Covid patients, avoiding New York’s mistake of releasing Covid patients from hospitals to nursing homes where they infected others. Florida’s death rate in the pandemic’s first year, adjusted for age, was lower than all but 10 other states’.
  • Florida was also one of only four states to require schools to hold in-person classes in the fall of 2020, a move that Mr. DeSantis has said defied the nation’s public health experts
  • In fact, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a federal infectious disease expert on former President Donald J. Trump’s task force, said repeatedly that summer and fall that schools could open safely with the right precautions. Nonetheless, facing strong opposition from teachers’ unions, nearly three-fourths of the nation’s 100 largest school districts offered only remote learning that fall.
  • At the same time, though, the governor was embracing more extreme views, including those of Dr. Scott W. Atla
  • Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya argued that people who were not at risk of severe consequences should not face Covid restrictions. If they were infected, they would develop natural immunity, which would eventually build up in the population and cause the virus to fade away, they said.
  • Many public health experts were alarmed by this strategy, which was articulated in a document known as the Great Barrington Declaration. They said it would be impossible to ring-fence the vulnerable, or even to clearly communicate to the public who they were. Besides older Americans, as many as 41 million younger adults were considered to be at high risk of severe disease if infected because of underlying medical conditions like obesity.
  • Dr. Atlas, however, argued that the virus was not dangerous to an overwhelming majority of Americans. Both he and Dr. Bhattacharya said the Covid death rate for everyone under 70 was very low. Dr. Atlas claimed that children had “virtually zero” risk of death.
  • As of this summer, more than 345,000 Americans under 70 have died of the virus, and more than 3.5 million have been hospitalized
  • The disease has killed nearly 2,300 children and adolescents, and nearly 200,000 have been hospitalized.
  • Mr. DeSantis gave him a platform at a series of public events in Florida at the end of the summer of 2020. He would go on to echo Dr. Atlas’s views, sometimes in modified form, throughout the pandemic.
  • Mr. DeSantis subsequently promoted the shots in 27 counties. Florida offered the vaccine to everyone 65 and older, an eligibility system simpler than an early one recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and adopted by many states, that prioritized essential workers and those over 75.
  • But his enthusiasm for shots waned fast, tracking the growing hostility toward them among the party’s conservative activists. In late February, when Mr. DeSantis hosted a gathering of such activists for the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, he boasted that Florida was an “oasis of freedom” in a nation led by misguided health authorities.
  • By the time all adults became eligible for the vaccines in April of that year, Mr. DeSantis was rarely promoting them.
  • “Some are choosing not to take it, which is fine,” he said in March, at a 100-minute public event on Covid in which he did not once urge people to get vaccinated. In dozens of appearances on Fox News in the first half of 2021, he was carefully neutral about shots, except for those over 65.
  • “Younger people are just simply at very little risk for this,”
  • A few months later, he told Fox News that he had concluded early on that Covid “was something that was risky for elderly people,” but that it posed minimal risks for people “who were in reasonably good health, who were, say, under 50.”
  • The data-driven governor also turned away from Covid case data.
  • In May 2021, Florida closed its 27 state-run testing centers. The next month, on orders from the governor’s office, the Health Department halted daily reports on infections and deaths, switching to weekly reports that drew less attention.
  • Both polls and political events showed that Republicans were not as excited as Democrats about the shots. At an Alabama political rally that August, Mr. Trump recommended the vaccine — and was booed. When a reporter asked Mr. DeSantis later that year if he had gotten a booster shot, he responded that he had gotten “the normal shot.”
  • After the highly contagious Delta variant began spreading in Florida that summer, Mr. DeSantis insisted that his approach had worked. Younger adults were driving the surge but “they’re not getting really sick from it or anything,” he said, adding: “They will develop immunity as a result of those infections.”
  • But they were getting sick. And vaccinations, which Mr. DeSantis suddenly began recommending again in late July, took weeks to confer protection
  • With hospitalizations rising, he began a campaign to offer monoclonal antibody treatments — a triage response to the pandemic’s frightening resurgence.
  • The drug cost vastly more than shots and required more medical staff to administer. Within about six weeks, the state had administered more than 90,000 treatments and probably kept 5,000 people out of the hospital, Dr. Rivkees said.
  • Mr. DeSantis accused the media in early August of “lying” about Covid patients’ flooding hospitals. Two weeks later, Mary C. Mayhew, head of the Florida Hospital Association, said: “There can be no question that many Florida hospitals are stretched to their absolute limits.”
  • “Our patients are younger and sicker,” Mr. Smith wrote. Of 17 patients on ventilators in intensive care on Aug. 13, 2021, more than half were younger than 55. Only one was vaccinated.
  • “People say that the decision about vaccination is a personal one and it doesn’t affect anyone else,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Tell that to the kids who lost their mom.”
  • When shots became available last year for children under 5, Florida did not preorder them because, Mr. DeSantis said, he did not consider them “appropriate.” Florida’s vaccination rates are well below the national average for children under 5. The state also trails in booster shots.
  • After Dr. Ladapo issued misleading claims about the risks of Covid shots for young men, the heads of the C.D.C. and the Food and Drug Administration sent a scathing four-page rebuttal. Such misinformation “puts people at risk of death or serious illness,” they said.
  • While the pandemic waned, leaving more than 80,000 Floridians and 1.13 million Americans dead, the governor continued to push policies that kept him at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine and anti-mandate conversation. A new state law, signed by Mr. DeSantis in May, bans government agencies, businesses and schools from requiring Covid testing, vaccination or mask wearing.
  • “Everything involving Covid — I think there needs to be major, major accountability,” he said in Iowa this month. “Because if there’s not, if you don’t have a reckoning, they are going to do it again.”
lilyrashkind

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin describes attempts to phone gunman during school massacre -... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ayor-interview-school-shooting

US politics

shared by lilyrashkind on 02 Jun 22 - No Cached
  • In an interview with The Washington Post, McLaughlin (R) said he rushed to Hillcrest Funeral Home about 15 minutes after “the first call” reporting that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos had crashed his pickup truck nearby. He found himself standing near an official he identified only as “the negotiator,” while frightened parents gathered outside the school and police waited well over an hour to storm the classroom.
  • He said he doesn’t believe the negotiator was aware there were children calling 911 and asking police to save them while the gunman was in the classroom. The mayor said he was not aware of those calls, nor did he hear shots fired from inside the school, across the street.
  • In the recent Texas primary for governor, he opted not to endorse the Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott, labeling him a “fraud” over his approach to the border and immigration. And he has appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” multiple times to lambaste the Border Patrol’s release of migrants into the streets of Uvalde and lament that he cannot get a call back from the state’s two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
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  • McLaughlin said he has not been in touch with Pete Arredondo, the embattled head of the Uvalde school district’s police department, who served as the incident commander during the shooting and has been criticized for not sending officers in sooner.Arredondo has not spoken publicly about the incident, telling CNN on Wednesday that he would do so after more time has passed and the victims of the massacre are buried.
  • Last week, Abbott said he was “misled” by law enforcement authorities about the series of events that took place.
  • “Why should any of us be afraid of expanding background checks? There’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t have anything to hide,” said McLaughlin, who has also long pushed to build a psychiatric hospital in Uvalde.
  • During the interview on Wednesday, however, McLaughlin took a much more conciliatory tone, urging compromise between Republicans and Democrats to find a set of laws that “work for everyone.”
  • “The briefing that the governor and the lieutenant governor and everybody else in that room [had] ... was given by the DPS, not local law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.“They’ve had three press conferences,” he added. “In all three press conferences, something has changed.”
  • In his letter to Patrick, who presides over the Senate, and House Speaker Dade Phelan (R), Abbott asked that both chambers form committees to explore five issues: school safety; mental health; social media; police training; and firearm safety.“As leaders, we must come together at this time to provide solutions to protect all Texans,” Abbott said in his letter.
  • Abbott also announced new instructions for the Texas School Safety Center, a research center focused on campus safety and security that is statutorily responsible for auditing schools for safety processes and establishing best practices.
  • According to a letter Abbott sent to education officials, the governor said the San Marcos-based safety center should start conducting “random intruder detection audits,” designed to find weaknesses in campus security systems.
  • McLaughlin said he could not imagine the school returning to normal operations.“I hope we tear it down to the ground,” he said. “I would never expect a teacher, a student, anyone to go walk back in that building.”
ethanmoser

Ex-Basque governor hopes to lead Spain's Socialist Party | Fox News - 0 views

www.foxnews.com/...ead-spain-socialist-party.html

basque spain instability resurgance

shared by ethanmoser on 16 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Ex-Basque governor hopes to lead Spain's Socialist Party
  • a former governor for the Basque region of Spain, says he will run in the Socialists' leadership primary and hopes to lead the party to a national resurgence.
  • Spain has been in a state of political instability since two elections in a six-month span left Rajoy as prime minister but short of a majority and in need of alliances. The Socialists, one of the country's major political groups, are also in disarray after two disappointing election defeats.
nataliedepaulo1

Governors face uncertainty in the Trump era - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...ump-era-state-solutions-235371

shared by nataliedepaulo1 on 25 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Governors face uncertainty in the Trump era
  • But it was Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson who may have best encapsulated the governors’ view of the entertainer-turned-President. “I don’t agree with his style, but he’s shaking it up,” he said.
  • Some issues saw more of a partisan division. Trump’s plans to rapidly ramp up the deportation of undocumented immigrants, including those who had committed only minor crimes, alarmed Democrats but won plaudits from Republicans.
anonymous

Hackers accessed a private email account Pence used for official business as Indiana go... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...l-business-as-indiana-governor

hackers private email US politics

shared by anonymous on 03 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • s Hackers accessed a private email account Pence used for official business as Indiana governor
  • Vice President Pence used a private email account that was later compromised while he served as governor of Indiana, his office confirmed Thursday. The existence of the account was first reported by the Indy Star, which obtained copies of Pence's emails through a Freedom of Information request. The paper reported that Pence used the account to conduct government business, including corresponding about potentially sensitive issues. In one exchange, Pence communicated with his chief of staff and his top homeland security adviser, who conveyed an update about terror-related FBI arrests in the state. However, the information in those emails was reported widely in the media at the time.
  • According to an aide, additional security measures were taken to protect Pence's accounts after he was chosen as Trump's vice president. Emails in both accounts were preserved and are expected to be managed according to Indiana's public records laws, the aide added.
grayton downing

Chris Christie-Susana Martinez: Is This Your 2016 Republican Ticket? - David A. Graham ... - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...281360

chris republican politics US

shared by grayton downing on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • three years, one long and bitterly contested GOP primary, and a running-mate-selection process away, but it's fun to speculate. Plus there's already some evidence of their chemistry between Chris Christie and Susana Martinez.
  • “I love his authenticity, I love who he is,” she told the New York Times. “I will support Governor Christie in anything he decides to do in life.”
  • Christie spent the final weeks of the race trying to run up his margin of victory in order to reinforce his case for a 2016 presidential run. Martinez's job was to show up in heavily Hispanic areas like Union City and help turn out the Latino vote.
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  • They're young (for politicians), moderate, blue-state Republicans who have worked with Democratic legislators on some issues (while clashing on others). They're both former prosecutors, too. Whether that makes Martinez good vice-presidential material is a somewhat different question.
  • New Mexico press hasn't failed to notice Martinez's rising star. In fact, the Democrats with whom the governor has supposedly had such a good working relationship unloaded to the Santa Fe New Mexican in a piece Sunday. Their message: She's not the reasonable, pragmatic, moderate figure you might imagine. Now where have we heard that before?
katyshannon

Texas Court Tosses Criminal Case Against Former Gov. Perry - ABC News - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...rick-perry-2nd-felony-37160574

texas court criminal case former gov perry abc news politics US history

shared by katyshannon on 25 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The felony prosecution of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry ended Wednesday when the state's highest criminal court dismissed an abuse-of-power indictment that the Republican says hampered his short-lived 2016 presidential bid.
  • The 6-2 decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which is dominated by elected Republican judges, frees Perry from a long-running criminal case that blemished the exit of one of the most powerful Texas governors in history and hung over his second failed run for the White House.
  • A grand jury in liberal Austin had indicted Perry in 2014 for vetoing funding for a public corruption unit that Republicans have long accused of wielding a partisan ax. The unit worked under Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, an elected Democrat. Perry wanted her to resign after she was convicted of drunken driving.
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  • Perry was accused of using his veto power to threaten a public official and overstepping his authority, but the judges ruled that courts can't undermine the veto power of a governor.
  • "Come at the king, you best not miss," Republican Judge David Newell wrote in his concurring opinion, quoting a popular line from the HBO series "The Wire."
  • Perry has been campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz since becoming the first major GOP candidate to drop out of the race last year.
  • "I've always known the actions I took were not only lawful and legal, they were right," said Perry, who spoke at the headquarters of an influential Texas conservative think tank, which has previously christened its balcony overlooking downtown as the "Gov. Rick Perry Liberty Balcony."
  • The court said veto power can't be restricted by the courts and the prosecution of a veto "violates separations of powers." A lower appeals court had dismissed the other charge, coercion by a public servant, in July.
  • Perry had rebuked the charges as a partisan attack from the start, calling it a "political witch hunt," but the dismissal brought accusations of Republican judges doing a favor for a party stalwart.
  • Texans for Public Justice, a left-leaning watchdog group that filed the original criminal complaint that led to the indictment, said Perry was handed a "gift" based on his stature.
  • Even a Republican judge who dissented in the ruling said the decision could leave the public with an uneasy perception that the system went out of its way to clear a famous politician with deep connections.
  • Perry, the longest-serving governor in Texas history, made just one court appearance in the case and was defiant from the start — he went out for ice cream after turning himself in for booking at an Austin jail, and smiled wide for his mug shot.
  • Legal scholars across the political spectrum raised objections about the case. Still, the Republican judge overseeing it repeatedly refused to throw it out on constitutional grounds, prompting Perry's appeals.
  • Michael McCrum, the special prosecutor who secured Perry's indictment, maintained that the matter was built on evidence — not politics — and deserved to go to trial. He can appeal, but that would be a lengthy process. Combined, the original charges carried a potential maximum of 109 years in prison.
  • Perry had formally announced he was running for president in June, hoping to convince GOP primary voters he deserved another chance after his 2012 bid was undone by a series of public gaffes. But his second campaign lasted barely three months, and he dropped out of the race in September.
  • The former governor spent more than $2 million on top defense lawyers. His latest White House campaign raised barely half that much in its first month, and Perry blamed the indictment for his sluggish fundraising. But polls showed he was badly trailing despite visits to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He was the first candidate to leave a GOP field jammed with 17 presidential hopefuls at the time.
sarahbalick

Yemen: ISIS says it killed governor, 6 bodyguards - CNN.com - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

yemen governor killed bombing

shared by sarahbalick on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • he governor of the major Yemeni city of Aden and six bodyguards were killed in a car bombing Sunday -- an attack ISIS said it committed.
  • ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, according to a statement attributed to the group circulated on social media.
  • Aden became Yemen's de-facto capital after Houthi rebels ousted President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi from the capital, Sanaa, in March.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Al Qaeda already controls of much of southern Yemen. But the rival terror group ISIS has been trying to gain more territory and influence in the country.
  • A Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing Houthi-held areas since March, trying to support Yemeni government fighters.
  • And civilians have suffered tremendously in the impoverished nation, which has turned into a haven for Islamic terrorists.
Javier E

Washington Governor Jay Inslee Is Running for President - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...579217

climate change governor politics

shared by Javier E on 02 Jan 19 - No Cached
  • OLYMPIA, Wash.—What if a meteor were hurtling toward the Earth, about to kill millions and reshape life on the planet as we know it?
  • And what if the president, instead of doing anything to help, made it worse in just about every way, and called it a hoax (and any solutions a scam) instead of the very real, very clear disaster taking shape?And what if all the Democrats running to beat him in the next election went on and on about how concerned they were and how it’s our most pressing problem—but none had ever done much more than talk about the problem, and for the most part only started doing that in just the past few years?
  • That’s where Jay Inslee thinks America is when it comes to climate change. And that’s why he’s going to run for president.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • When it comes to climate change, there now appears to be “an appetite for someone who has credibility and a long track record and, most importantly, a vision statement. It’s changed to show an opening in a Democratic primary, I believe.”
  • as the 2018 midterm campaigns came to an end, he read through searing international and federal climate-change assessments, took a trip to view the wildfire damage in California, and thought through the larger moment for the country—and he shifted.
  • Inslee is the only one who has actually run a government that has made climate-change policy central. He points to the towns in Washington that have become solar-cell farms, among other accomplishments.
  • Even more so, he wants to talk about the risk to American opportunity. “We have two existential threats right now: one is to our natural systems, and one is to our economic systems,
  • Inslee would propose a mix of government investments and incentives to spur other investment, restrictions on power plants and emissions, and programs to promote R&D and job growth. An endless number of jobs can be created in the climate arena, Inslee says. It’s the way to make a real dent in income inequality and have the Democratic Party bring tangible solutions to communities in rural America that have been left behind.
  • He was elected governor in 2012 and has, without much national notice, pursued arguably the most progressive and greenest agenda in the country, with fields of solar panels, fleets of electric buses, and massive job growth to show for it. And years before anyone was tweeting about the “Green New Deal,” Inslee wrote a climate-change book while he was in Congress: Apollo’s Fire, a 2007 blueprint for how much economic and entrepreneurial opportunity there is in saving the planet.
  • He plans to focus on the threat that climate change poses to the environment and national security—the mega-storms and fires causing millions in damages, the weather changes that will cause mass migrations, the droughts that will devastate farmers in America and around the world.
  • Among the qualities that 500 Iowa caucus-goers said they were looking for in a candidate, “someone who will reestablish America’s leadership in the fight against climate change” scored highest.
  • Inslee’s answer to that anticipated attack is “the other Washington”: the experiment in progressive governance that he’s led for the past six years that’s cut against the conventional wisdom of economics. On his watch, the state has boosted health care, increased access to early-childhood education and college, raised the minimum wage, expanded paid family leave, invested in infrastructure, and established in-state net neutrality, all while leading the country in job growth, overall personal-income growth, and GDP.
Javier E

Ohio Governor On Why He Ordered Early, Tough Coronavirus Lockdowns - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...onavirus-lockdowns-11585501200

ohio governor pandemic policy

shared by Javier E on 30 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Over the last three weeks, Mr. DeWine, a Republican, has issued a series of closures—often before harder-hit states and well ahead of the majority of his fellow governors, including many Republicans
  • On Thursday, the economic impact of those decisions began to come into focus, as the state reported 187,780 new jobless claims, the second-highest in the country and almost half the number of claims for all of last year.
  • So far, those figures aren’t leading to second thoughts. In fact, the state says it is making progress on stemming the tide of Covid-19 infections.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • “We’ve got this monster down on the mat and we’re trying to keep him down. We can’t let up too soon or he’s coming at us,” Mr. DeWine said.
  • the clampdown on economic activity has already reduced the expected impact on the state’s health system by 50% to 75%. Ohio currently has 1,137 confirmed cases, 276 hospitalizations and 19 deaths. For now, these numbers are lower than numbers from the neighboring states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
  • In one of his daily public news briefings last week and a subsequent interview, he said the economy and people’s health aren’t mutually exclusive considerations.
  • “You’ve got to take care of people first,” he said. “If people are dying at a high rate and hospitals are overflowing, that’s not going to do anything for your economy.”
nrashkind

Rhode Island coronavirus: State is looking for New Yorkers to slow the spread of the vi... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by nrashkind on 29 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Rhode Island's governor said Friday that law enforcement officers will stop cars and knock on doors in coastal communities to identify people who've been to New York state, joining other states in restricting the movements of out-of-state visitors to slow the spread of coronavirus.
  • Police began monitoring highways at noon Friday and may pull over individuals with New York state license plates to ask the same questions, particularly on the base of the Newport Bridge, Raimondo said.
  • "I feel bad that New York is getting such a bad rap sheet when it's really all over the place, you know, it shouldn't be that way, but unfortunately right now we have a lot of cases," Koppie told WPRI. She said she was planning to return home the same day.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • All individuals who have traveled to New York have already been ordered to self-quarantine for 14 days. These added measures will make sure law enforcement identifies individuals who should be following the self-quarantine order, said the governor, a Democrat.
  • New York is coronavirus epicenter in the US, with more than 52,300 cases and at least 728 deaths as of Saturday, according to CNN's state-by-state count.
  • Rhode Island has more than 239 cases with two deaths as of Saturday.
  • "I've got my hands full here with responding to this crisis and I'm not going to second guess or criticize what other governors are doing or not doing," Edwards said.
  • Earlier in the week, DeSantis said he would expand his executive order mandating a 14-day self-isolation period for travelers coming to Florida from airports in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
  • The governor said he would have to look at what it would take to shut the border.
  • In New Mexico, Gov. Lujan Grisham on Friday ordered that everyone traveling by air into New Mexico self-quarantine for 14 days immediately upon arrival. Under the state's emergency order, people will only be allowed to leave quarantine for medical care
  • In Kansas, the government said any travelers from Colorado and Louisiana must self-quarantine when they arrive in the state.
  • Kansas has already placed self-quarantine requirements on travelers from Florida, Washington, California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
Javier E

The Trailer: The resistance to stay-at-home orders rises from the right - The Washingto... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...5e970f46602ff10d49ae5b2a

right-wing resistance pandemic response politics

shared by Javier E on 17 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • Uncertainty and fear over the economic impact of stay-at-home orders is fueling a sort of culture war between conservatives, whose political strength now comes from rural America, right now less affected by the virus, and liberals, whose urban strongholds have been most affected by it.
  • “I feel that most of America feels the way that we do right now,” said Garrett Soldano, the founder of the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine Facebook group, on a Wednesday live stream for its 350,000 members. “Keeping healthy people at home is tyranny.” (According to polling, the vast majority of Americans remain nervous about reopening businesses if there is a threat of spreading infection.)
  • Resistance to the stay-at-home orders has grown fastest in Michigan, for two reasons: Whitmer has issued especially strict limits on movement and commerce, and she is increasingly being discussed as a running mate for Joe Biden
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  • One week ago, the governor restricted in-person shopping at outdoor supply stores, the use of motorboats for recreation, and most recreational travel inside the state. The state had absorbed some of the highest infection numbers and the highest job-loss numbers; all of a sudden, it had the toughest regulations on how residents could behave.
  • In multiple segments this week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested Whitmer's “authoritarian” orders were designed to help her in the veepstakes. During an online “Women for Trump” event, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, who previously ran the party in Michigan, claimed that Whitmer had “turned this crisis into a platform to run for vice president.” At Wednesday's protest, conservatives who spoke took as given that Whitmer was angling for a bigger job and that it would backfire.
  • Whitmer's approval rating actually had surged since the start of the pandemic, with two-thirds of Michiganders approving of how she was doing her job, though no poll had been released since she ordered the new restrictions. North Carolina's Roy Cooper and Ohio's Mike DeWine, a Democrat and a Republican, had also seen big boosts to their personal popularity, right before facing protests outside their offices this week
  • “We’re to the point where the state is restricting every move we make,” said Ashley Smith, a co-founder of ReOpenNC and a participant in this week's protest in Raleigh
  • “We need to consider how we’ve behaved in every other viral outbreak. These decisions have been based on models, not actual data.”
  • uncertainty over the White House's plans, from an abandoned idea to waive restrictions by Easter to a confusing set of business advisory groups, has led to greater uncertainty about when it would be safe to work and shop again. That uncertainty has mobilized conservatives and Republicans in the states. Like the tea party protests of 2009, the “reopen” protests were heavily touted on conservative radio and Fox News, which helped fuel turnout, which then became part of the story.
  • “They want to keep us away from churches and synagogues. They want to make sure we don't go back to work,” Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro said on Wednesday. “What happened in Lansing today, God bless them: It's going to happen all over the country.
  • “It's really similar to the DNA of the tea party movement,” Brandon said. “No one I know is saying this is a sham, that the virus is fake. But I do hear small-business owners say, hey, I was forced to shut down, but my business doesn't even require me to get close to customers. And the whole idea that you can have ‘essential’ and ‘nonessential’ businesses is funny to me. Every business is essential, or else it wouldn’t exist.”
  • And while states have begun putting together plans to reopen businesses, some Republican elected officials have also started freelancing, asking whether places with few or no reports of the coronavirus could return to normal.
  • “It may be that when people go back to work that they wear a mask and gloves for some period of time, to limit the spread of disease,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said yesterday.
  • The protests have been less measured. On his Wednesday live stream, Soldano talked to one quarantine skeptic who warned that the restrictions on Michigan's housing supply and gardening stores were in sync with Agenda21, a U.N. plan for sustainable development that for years has been seen on the right as a plot to restrict freedom
  • Soldano suggested that if restrictions lifted, protesters could enter “phase two” of their plan, holding rallies and campaigning to “strip not only the Michigan governor, but other governors, of the right to do this again.” There was even a push to recall Whitmer, which would require more than 1 million valid signatures collected over 60 days.
  • the multitude of Trump campaign flags, signs and merchandise led to Whitmer criticizing the rally, as a distraction from the issue it was designed to highlight: when to reopen Michigan.
  • “It wasn’t really about the stay-at-home order at all,” Whitmer said on MSNBC on Wednesday night. “It was essentially a political rally, a political statement that flies in the face of all of the science." 
Javier E

Gretchen Whitmer Isn't Backing Down - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...whitmer-michigan-protests.html

michigan response pandemic politics crisis policy

shared by Javier E on 19 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • the gathering, like similar ones held in the electoral battleground states of Ohio, Minnesota and North Carolina, was also the clearest sign yet of a simmering ideological movement on the right resisting government mandates over the virus.
  • The protests at state capitals in recent days had the feel of early Tea Party rallies in 2009, with far-right conservatives taking a lead role and more cautious elected Republicans keeping their distance.
  • In a survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, very conservative Americans were twice as likely as others to worry that businesses would reopen too slowly.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • very conservative voters are more likely to allude to a sense of outrage over having their public conduct restricted, rather than caution about the economic implications of the shutdown.
  • Republican lawmakers in Michigan, who had backed an earlier, less restrictive executive order, blasted the governor. They moved to strip Ms. Whitmer’s power to declare a state of emergency under a 1945 law.
  • “Here’s my message today: OUR Governor IS DESTROYING OUR HEALTH BY KILLING OUR LIVELIHOODS!” the State Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, tweeted this month.
  • ew other states outside the northeast have been as hard hit by the virus as Michigan, which recorded 2,226 deaths as of Friday, and where the intersection of race, presidential politics and Ms. Whitmer’s vice-presidential prospects have turned the perennial battleground into a political tinderbox.
  • the images of nearly all-white protesters demanding the governor relax restrictions while hoisting Trump signs and Confederate battle flags, as the virus disproportionately impacts Michigan’s black residents, will only further cleave the state.
  • Less noticed is another flash point. A number of white Michiganders — many of them affluent but some firmly in the middle-class — have summer homes “up north,” as the sprawling upper tier of the state’s lower peninsula is called. Ms. Whitmer’s order that people not travel between their residences — meant to protect rural towns and rural hospitals from being overwhelmed with the virus — has particularly inflamed those state residents eager to get to their cottages.
katherineharron

Why Joe Biden's endorsement wave matters - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 09 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Since his resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, Biden has snagged over 40 endorsements from members of Congress and governors. On Monday, Sen. Cory Booker offered his support, a day after Biden's campaign announced that he secured the backing of another former rival of his in the Democratic presidential race, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
  • There have been 14 party primaries without an incumbent running since 1980. The leader in endorsements from members of Congress and governors this long after the Iowa caucuses have won 11 out of 14 of them (79%). This success rate undersells Biden because the people winning in endorsements who went on to lose were trailing in the national polls.
  • Since his resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, Biden has snagged over 40 endorsements from members of Congress and governors. On Monday, Sen. Cory Booker offered his support, a day after Biden's campaign announced that he secured the backing of another former rival of his in the Democratic presidential race, California Sen. Kamala Harris. No candidate has lost when ahead in the national polls and endorsements at this point, as Biden is right now. There have been 14 party primaries without an incumbent running since 1980. The leader in endorsements from members of Congress and governors this long after the Iowa caucuses have won 11 out of 14 of them (79%). This success rate undersells Biden because the people winning in endorsements who went on to lose were trailing in the national polls.
katherineharron

Fact check: Trump makes false claims about governors not wanting tests, and repeats err... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 23 Apr 20 - No Cached
  • "Ultimately, we're doing more testing, I think, than probably any of the governors even want," Trump said, suggesting that his administration was leading the way on coronavirus testing. Trump later said that "not everybody believes as strongly as some people on testing." And suggesting that calls for more testing are some sort of partisan plot, he claimed that "some people want (us) to do testing because they think it's impossible for us to fulfill that goal."
  • Trump is off the mark. There have been bipartisan calls from governors and medical professionals for the Trump administration to ramp up testing and give states the supplies they need to get it done. There is no evidence that calls for more tests are some sort of anti-Trump plot; nonpartisan public health experts have said it's critical for the government to significantly increase the level of testing as part of any plan to end social distancing and lift economic restrictions.
  • During Wednesday's press briefing, Trump repeated a false claim he's made numerous times about the travel restrictions imposed on China due to the coronavirus.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Trump's comments are misleading because he did not "close our country to China." On February 2, the United States began implementing travel restrictions that denied entry to foreign nationals who had visited China within 14 days of arrival in the United States. But the travel restrictions contain exemptions for US citizens who had visited China, which makes Trump's characterization that there was a "ban" misleading.
  • "As you know, Brian Kemp, governor of Georgia, I worked very hard for his election, he beat their superstar, he beat the superstar of their party. I think you can say I helped a lot," Trump said, "Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey they all went in, they campaigned for him very, very hard and he lost."
  • Michelle Obama did not campaign for either of Kemp's opponents. Kemp beat Republican Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a man, in the primary and Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams, a woman, in the general election.
  • Trump's description of the Chinatown visit has changed repeatedly. At previous briefings, Trump claimed Pelosi was "holding a street fair" in Chinatown -- and that, during her visit, she called for a "Chinatown parade," "parties in Chinatown," and a "march" against his travel restrictions on China.
  • Pelosi did not hold a rally or a street fair, and she did not call for a parade, parties or a march. Rather, amid concerns about rising anti-Chinese bigotry, she walked around Chinatown, visited businesses and a temple, ate at a dim sum restaurant and spoke to reporters to urge people to "come to Chinatown."
anonymous

Liberal governors team up to fight climate change | TheHill - 0 views

thehill.com/...on-new-york-team-up-on-climate

climate change US crisis trump

shared by anonymous on 02 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Liberal governors team up to fight climate change
  • © Getty Images Three liberal states are teaming up to fight climate change in response to President Trump withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement.
  • If the President is going to be AWOL in this profoundly important human endeavor, then California and other states will step up.
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