The Full Belmonte, 10/6/2022
Former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“A new court filing has revealed new details about what the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence during its search this summer. Among the items seized were clemency requests, health care documents, IRS forms and paperwork that appears to be related to the 2020 election, according to a Justice Department list made public this week. The collection also included apparent communications about Trump's various business connections. Full details of the documents aren't available, but taken together, experts say the list offers a glimpse into a handful of the thousands of documents Trump was keeping at his Florida resort after his presidency.” Read more at CNN
“Gas prices in the US are starting to rise again and some industry analysts say more increases are likely on the way. Prices increased nearly 3 cents a gallon in AAA's daily reading on Wednesday to an average of $3.83 a gallon -- the biggest one-day hike in nearly four months. This comes after OPEC+ said Wednesday it will slash oil production by about 2 million barrels a day. The Biden administration criticized the decision by the group of major oil producers, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, calling it ‘shortsighted’ and saying that it will hurt low- and middle-income countries already struggling with elevated energy prices the most.” Read more at CNN
“Covid-19 boosters could prevent about 90,000 US deaths this winter, but only if more people get the shots, a new analysis suggests. The study, published Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund, said if booster vaccinations continue at their current pace, the nation could see a peak of more than 1,000 Covid-19 deaths per day this winter. On average, there are now more than 400 daily Covid-19 deaths in the US, data shows. About two-thirds of the US population is fully vaccinated with at least their initial series, according to the CDC. But only about a third of the population has received a booster dose.” Read more at CNN
Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Biden in Fort Myers, Fla., yesterday.Doug Mills/The New York Times
“Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis toured hurricane-ravaged Florida, flashing only occasional signs of their political rivalry.” Read more at New York Times
After Mar-a-Lago Search, Talk of ‘Civil War’ Is Flaring Online
By Ken Bensinger and Sheera Frenkel
Oct. 5, 2022
“Soon after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.
Posts on Twitter that mentioned ‘civil war’ had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours as Mr. Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.
Posts mentioning ‘civil war’ jumped again a few weeks later, after President Biden branded Mr. Trump and ‘MAGA Republicans’ a threat to ‘the very foundations of our republic’ in a speech on democracy in Philadelphia.
Now experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.” Read more at New York Times
Christian Walker, Warrior for the Right, Now Battles His Father
Before his Twitter posts upended the Georgia senate race, Herschel Walker’s son already had a large social media presence reveling in contradictions.
By Clyde McGrady and Kellen Browning
Oct. 6, 2022, 3:00 a.m. ET
“Soon after Herschel Walker, the former football star, announced he would run for U.S. Senate in Georgia as a Republican, his son Christian appeared with him at an event at Mar-a-Lago, and grinned when his father greeted him with a kiss on the head. ‘Had the honor of introducing my dad,’ he tweeted, ‘then got to hug a future senator. Perfect night.’
The moment seemed a logical convergence of Christian Walker’s personal and public lives: the young man was already emerging as a conservative social media star who took delight in provoking the left, and defending Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.
Yet, after that night, he fell largely silent about his father’s campaign. That changed in spectacular fashion Monday night after news broke that in 2009, Herschel Walker, a staunch opponent of abortion rights, paid for his then-girlfriend to have an abortion, according to a report from the Daily Beast.
‘You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,’ Christian Walker wrote of his father on Twitter.
Feuding among family can be a source of embarrassment for any political campaign. But what unfolded in Georgia this week was extraordinary for the level of indignation so forcefully and publicly aimed at a candidate by his child at such a crucial campaign moment.
Now, Christian Walker, 23, is at the center of a drama that could upend one of the most competitive races in the country.
The elder Mr. Walker called the abortion report a “flat-out lie,” while conservative news media and Republicans, eager to regain control of the narrowly split Senate, rallied to his side. The Walker campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
The spectacle has also put a fresh spotlight on how Christian Walker arrived at his political views, some, he now says, directly connected to his father and his own tumultuous family life.
Christian Walker, though, has been his own right-wing warrior for several years. He built a large social media presence, and revels in his seeming contradictions. He is a young Black man who called the George Floyd protests “terrorist attacks.” He is attracted to men but does not identify as “gay,” while calling L.G.B.T.Q. activists a “rainbow cult” and mocking Pride Month. He delights in antagonizing the left through short video rants on social media, often while holding an iced coffee and wearing an impish grin.” Read more at New York Times
‘Defund the S.E.C.’ Becomes a Rallying Cry on Trump’s Social Media Site
The nation’s top securities regulator has been investigating the Trump SPAC deal for a year. Some small investors are upset.
Oct. 5, 2022
“The Securities and Exchange Commission is corrupt. The S.E.C. is politically motivated. Defund the S.E.C.
Some shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp. have had it with the commission, the nation’s top securities cop, and they are airing their views loudly. Last October, the blank check company agreed to merge with Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, the Twitter-like social media platform backed by former President Donald J. Trump. Within weeks, the S.E.C. announced an investigation. One year later, the deal still hasn’t closed.
People claiming to be angsty shareholders have taken to posting the social media equivalent of hate mail on Truth Social, attacking the S.E.C. and calling its investigation a political move. The hashtag #DWACtheSEC, a reference to Digital World’s stock symbol and a play for some on the word ‘whack,’ is trending. There are calls to ‘defund the S.E.C.’ Shareholders are preparing to petition the commission to end the ‘garbage’ inquiry and approve the deal. There is even a call to pray for Digital World on a weekly video show on Rumble, a right-wing streaming media site that is a business partner of Trump Media.
It’s shareholder activism — with a Make America Great Again spin.
‘There is no reason to prevent the merger from taking place, except to stop Trump from getting a voice to the people,’ said Scott Lewczak, a Digital World shareholder.” Read more at New York Times
How a Christian Cellphone Company Became a Rising Force in Texas Politics
Patriot Mobile, based in a battleground suburb, is spending money to promote conservative views on race and gender in schools. It has its sights on bigger political targets.
Oct. 5, 2022
“GRAPEVINE, Texas — Ahead of what would usually be a sleepy spring school board election, a mass of fliers appeared on doorsteps in the Fort Worth suburbs, warning of rampant ‘wokeness’ and ‘sexually explicit books’ in schools, and urging changes in leadership.
The fliers were part of a broad effort to shift the ideological direction of school boards in a politically crucial corner of Texas, made possible by a campaign infusion of more than $420,000 from an unlikely source: a local cellphone provider whose mission, it says, is communicating conservative Christian values.
All 11 candidates backed by the company, Patriot Mobile, won their races across four school districts, including the one in Grapevine, Texas, a conservative town where the company is based and where highly rated schools are the main draw for families. In August, the board approved new policies limiting support for transgender students, clamping down on books deemed inappropriate and putting in place new rules that made it possible to be elected to the school board even without a majority of votes.
The entry of a Texas cellphone company into the national tug of war over schools is part of a far more sweeping battle over the future of Texas being waged in the suburbs north of Dallas and Fort Worth.” Read more at New York Times
In Rebuke to West, OPEC and Russia Aim to Raise Oil Prices With Big Supply Cut
By Stanley Reed
Reporting from London.
Oct. 5, 2022
“Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed on Wednesday to their first large production cut in more than two years in a bid to raise prices, countering efforts by the United States and Europe to choke off the enormous revenue that Moscow reaps from the sale of crude.
President Biden and European leaders have urged more oil production to ease gasoline prices and punish Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine. Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, has been accused of using energy as a weapon against countries opposing its invasion of Ukraine, and the optics of the decision could not be missed.
The White House was not happy. ‘The president is disappointed by the shortsighted decision by OPEC Plus to cut production quotas while the global economy is dealing with the continued negative impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,’ Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said in a statement.
The cut of two million barrels a day represents about 2 percent of global oil production.
By reducing output, OPEC Plus was also seeking to make a statement to energy markets about the group’s cohesion during the Ukraine war and its willingness to act quickly to defend prices, analysts say.” Read more at New York Times
More than 30 killed in childcare center attack: Thai police
“BANGKOK — More than 30 people, primarily children, were killed Thursday when a gunman opened fire in a childcare center in northeastern Thailand, authorities said.
Police Maj. Gen. Achayon Kraithong said the shooting occurred early in the afternoon in the center in the town of Nongbua Lamphu.
He said the attacker killed 30 people before taking his own life. He had no more details.
A spokesperson for a regional public affairs office said 26 deaths have been confirmed so far — 23 children, two teachers and one police officer.
According to Thai media reports, the gunman also used knives in the attack and then fled the building.
Photographs showed at least two bodies on the floor of the center covered in white sheets.
Several media outlets identified the assailant as a former police lieutenant colonel from the region but there was no immediate official confirmation.
The Daily News newspaper reported that after fleeing the scene of the attack the assailant returned to his home and killed himself along with his wife and child.” Read more at USA Today
U.S. Believes Ukrainians Were Behind an Assassination in Russia
American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it.
By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, Adam Entous and Michael Schwirtz
Oct. 5, 2022
“WASHINGTON — United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, an element of a covert campaign that U.S. officials fear could widen the conflict.
The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said. American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted. Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said.
The closely held assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not been previously reported, was shared within the U.S. government last week. Ukraine denied involvement in the killing immediately after the attack, and senior officials repeated those denials when asked about the American intelligence assessment.
While Russia has not retaliated in a specific way for the assassination, the United States is concerned that such attacks — while high in symbolic value — have little direct impact on the battlefield and could provoke Moscow to carry out its own strikes against senior Ukrainian officials. American officials have been frustrated with Ukraine’s lack of transparency about its military and covert plans, especially on Russian soil.” Read more at New York Times
“Missile attacks | Russian missiles hit residential buildings, killing at least two people, in the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, about 52 km (32 miles) from the namesake atomic plant, the local governor said. Ukraine called for sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry after President Vladimir Putin formally ordered his government to take ownership of the plant, located in a region he annexed. Ukraine continued its counteroffensive.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Teenage school girls are joining the surge in women-led protests in Iran over its Islamic dress code after the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest by the so-called morality police. In video clips that have gone viral on social media but can’t be verified by Bloomberg, the girls have their backs to the camera and hair uncovered as they sing slogans including the most widely used refrain ‘women, life, freedom.’” Read more at Bloomberg
Women remove their headscarves at a protest on Sept. 21 in Tehran. Source: Salampix/Abaca/Zuma Press
“Blacklist evasion | Chinese technology giant Huawei may have found a path around a US government ban on buying American semiconductors and other critical technologies by cooperating with a company that has ordered chip-making equipment from foreign suppliers. As our exclusive report shows, this could enable Huawei to sidestep Washington’s efforts to choke off the flow of chips to a company it views as a military and economic threat.” Read more at Bloomberg
Satellite image of the Pengxinwei IC Manufacturing chip plant taken in March showing construction progress. Photographer: Maxar Technologies/Bloomberg
“Out of step | Since the European Union’s inception, its path has been determined by Germany and France acting in lockstep. But that unity of purpose is showing signs of wearing thin, with Berlin and Paris at loggerheads on issues from nuclear power and pipeline infrastructure to a European defense project and Germany’s 200 billion-euro plan to cushion the blow of the energy crisis.” Read more at Bloomberg
Dramatic rescues as boats sink off Greece
“Two boats carrying migrants have sunk in separate incidents in Greek waters, leaving 17 people dead. The coast guard said 16 of the bodies were young African women, while one was a young man. They had been recovered near the eastern island of Lesbos after a dinghy carrying about 40 people sank. Hundreds of miles to the west, locals pulled survivors to safety up steep cliffs by rope as others were buffeted by waves as they waited their turn on tiny areas of rock at the bottom.” See video of the rescue Read more at USA Today
This screen grab from a video made available on Oct. 6, 2022 by the Hellenic Coast Guard, shows the rescue of migrants from a shipwreck off the island of Cythera, south of the Peloponnese peninsula. There was no official toll yet from a second sinking south of the peninsula.HANDOUT, HELLENIC COAST GUARD/AFP via Get
Good morning. We look at Italy, the largest country in western Europe to elect a far-right government in decades.
Giorgia Meloni in Rome last week.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times
The politics of grievance
“Italy, the world’s eighth-largest economy, elected a far-right government last week, with Giorgia Meloni as the likely next prime minister. It’s part of a trend: Her victory came shortly after Swedish elections that led to a far-right party becoming the second-largest in Parliament there.
To help you understand why Meloni won and what may lie ahead, I spoke with Jason Horowitz, The Times’s Rome bureau chief.
David: What was the main reason for Meloni’s victory?
Jason: The real secret to Meloni’s appeal was not any particular policy or vision. In Italy, every election is a change election, and being the candidate of the protest vote is a powerful thing. Meloni was that. The other major candidates had all been part of Mario Draghi’s national unity government. She stayed in the opposition and vacuumed up the protest vote. She won with about 26 percent.
Meloni’s appeal is also based heavily on grievance — the grievance of workers left behind by the globalization of which she is ideologically suspicious.
David: How would you compare Meloni with Donald Trump?
Jason: Despite her past admiration of Trump, and her closeness to the Republican Party — she has spoken at CPAC — she is different. Whereas Trump was the scion of a real-estate mogul, Meloni grew up in the leftist working-class neighborhood of Garbatella — and made it as a right-wing post-Fascist youth activist. She has a rough Roman accent, which could be compared to an old Brooklyn accent. And as a woman she had to overcome a lot. It all screams tough.
David: Meloni’s agenda also seems different from Trump’s. She has proposed specific economic policies to help the working class, right?
Jason: Her party’s main proposals are deep tax cuts, including for lower earners. On top of that, she wants to increase pension payouts and cut taxes for working mothers. She talks about increasing the low birthrate as a way to talk about Italians being proud again — being patriots who prosper and multiply. To help them multiply, she believes the government needs to help.
Still, Meloni’s platform is not anti-rich. She won the working-class vote — and also the rich vote. She is in a coalition with Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister, who has been talking about tax cuts for 30 years, and other allies of businessmen from northern Italy. In all, Meloni’s proposals would blow a big hole in the budget.
David: Meaning that she has not also proposed spending cuts?
Jason: She has targeted one big economic benefit for cuts — ‘reddito di cittadinanza,’ or citizenship income. It is a welfare benefit, enacted a few years ago, that pays hundreds of euros a month to people who don’t work. It has proved enormously popular in Italy’s disadvantaged southern regions, but its critics, including Meloni, see it as a handout that promotes laziness and crime.
Her opposition to the benefit probably cost her votes in the south. By contrast, the Five Star Movement, another anti-establishment party that seemed to be fading, defended the benefit and did well in the south.
David: In Italy, the foreign-born share of the population has surged over the past couple of decades. Was that subject part of Meloni’s message?
Source: United Nations
Jason: Even though there has not been an uptick in migrant arrivals of late, immigration is now a talking point of the Italian right. Meloni has talked about replacement of native Italians by illegal migrants. She has talked about invasion. I heard her tell workers that international bankers are driving mass migration to weaken their rights by replacing them with cheap migrant labor.
Immigration has been in the populist ether here since 2014 or so, when Italy had a wave of illegal migration land on its shores. Italy’s center-left leader at the time appealed to the European Union for help and didn’t get it. So it could be argued that Brussels had a hand in creating the populist wave that it so fears.
The left has failed to come up with a response on the issue, and even the more moderate or liberal governments in France and Spain are emphasizing enforcement. Left-wing parties are in a tough position, in which they can’t give up on integration, because it is central to their values. But emphasizing it may hurt their electoral chances.
David: How much reason is there to worry that Meloni might govern in an anti-democratic way and trample on human rights?
Jason: There is a feeling that even if she wanted to go the way of Viktor Orban in Hungary, she could not because Italy is so integrated into the European Union, and so dependent on hundreds of billions of euros in funds. She has also been a consistent voice for democratic elections. (The Times’s Steven Erlanger explains the E.U.’s fears.)
People are concerned about gay rights and perhaps abortion rights. She is against gay marriage and opposes adoption by gay couples, arguing that only a married man and woman can give a child its best shot. She herself is an unwed mother with a longtime boyfriend and says she should not be allowed to adopt either.
On abortion, Meloni has told me she believes abortion should remain safe, accessible and legal, but she wants to increase prevention. That has raised concerns that Meloni would make it more difficult to have abortions in a country where it can already be hard, because so many doctors contentiously object to it.” Read more at New York Times
Australia Aims to Cut Its High Rate of Species Extinctions to Zero
The country plans to focus on 110 endangered species and 20 habitats, but experts said the initiative was only a start.
By Yan Zhuang
Oct. 5, 2022
“CANBERRA, Australia — Australia has laid out a conservation plan aimed at preventing the extinction of any more of its plants and animals, an ambitious target for a country that has lost species at one of the highest rates in the world.
The government announcement on Tuesday followed years of extreme weather events like wildfires and heat waves that have threatened the nation’s unique species, as well as a sweeping new five-year survey that found its environment and wildlife were facing even greater threats than previously acknowledged, driven by climate change.
‘Our current approach has not been working,’ the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, said in a statement announcing the plan. ‘These are the strongest targets we’ve ever seen,’ she added.
The 10-year plan includes a commitment by the center-left Labor government to conserve 30 percent of the nation’s landmass, bringing Australia in line with dozens of other nations, including the United States, that have signed on to the same goal. About 22 percent of Australia’s landmass is currently protected, the report said, and increasing that figure to 30 percent would mean an increase of 61 million hectares, or more than 235,000 square miles.” Read more at New York Times
Lawsuit settled, film may resume after Alec Baldwin shooting
By ANDREW DALTON
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — The family of a cinematographer shot and killed by Alec Baldwin on the set of the film ‘Rust’ has agreed to settle a lawsuit against the actor and the movie’s producers, and producers aim to restart the project in January despite unresolved workplace safety sanctions.
‘We have reached a settlement, subject to court approval, for our wrongful death case against the producers of Rust including Alec Baldwin,’ said a statement Wednesday from Matthew Hutchins, widower of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with their 9-year-old son Andros. ‘As part of that settlement, our case will be dismissed. The filming of Rust, which I will now executive produce, will resume with all the original principal players on board, in January 2023.’
The agreement is a rare piece of positive news for Baldwin, who has had a turbulent year since the Oct. 21 shooting. The actor, who was also a producer on the film, was pointing a gun at Hutchins when it went off, killing her and wounding the director, Joel Souza. They had been inside a small church during setup for filming a scene.” Read more at AP News
Rescuers flock together to save 275 parrots stranded by Ian
By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN
“PINE ISLAND, Fla. (AP) — Will Peratino and his partner Lauren Stepp would not leave their Pine Island compound, even as authorities pleaded with residents to abandon their homes because of damaged roads, including a collapsed bridge that prevented deliveries of food, gas and other life-sustaining supplies.
But the couple could not leave without their two lemurs and flock of birds — 275 parrots, including some of the world’s rarest.
So a rescue mission — dubbed ‘Operation Noah’s Ark’ — was launched Tuesday to catch, cage and ferry the birds off the island, as a condition to persuade Peratino and Stepp to leave the island.
‘We would not abandon them. I would never leave them. Never,’ said Stepp, as volunteers worked on collecting the flock from dozens of coops at the Malama Manu Sanctuary. ‘If they cannot be fed or watered, they will die. And I can’t live with that.’
‘Malama’ is the Hawaiian word for protect, ‘manu’ means bird.
The birds have been relying on food donated by wildlife officials since Hurricane Ian hit, but the supply of fruit, peanuts and other edibles would soon be hard to come by because of the downed bridge and the scarcity of gasoline on the island.
Hurricane Ian battered Southwest Florida a week ago with 150 mph gusts, making some roads impassable and islands inaccessible. Wind-driven rains and ocean surges brought dangerous flooding.” Read more at AP News