Darrell Brooks Jr., center, is escorted out of the courtroom after making his initial appearance, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021 in Waukesha County Court in Waukesha, Wis. Prosecutors in Wisconsin have charged Brooks with intentional homicide in the deaths of at least five people who were killed when an SUV was driven into a Christmas parade. Mark Hoffman–Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel/AP
“An 8-year-old boy became the sixth person to die Tuesday as a result of a man driving his SUV into a suburban Milwaukee Christmas parade, with a criminal complaint alleging that the suspect in the case steered side-to-side with the intent of striking marchers and spectators.
Darrell Brooks Jr., 39, was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence if convicted. He rocked back and forth in his seat and cried throughout his court hearing on Tuesday, his attorney’s arm on his back, as the charges against him were detailed. His bail was set at $5 million, and a preliminary hearing was scheduled for Jan. 14.
‘The nature of this offense is shocking,’ said Waukesha Court Commissioner Kevin Costello.
Additional charges related to the sixth death and the more than 60 people injured will be coming later this week or next, said Waukesha County District Attorney Susan Opper. The criminal complaint said 62 people were injured, up from the 48 previously announced by police.
Brooks is accused of speeding away from police and entering the Waukesha Christmas parade on Sunday night, refusing to stop even as an officer banged on the hood of his SUV. Another officer fired three shots into the vehicle, but it did not stop.
Five people ranging in age from 52 to 81 were pronounced dead within hours. Jackson Sparks, 8, was the first of many injured children to have died. He was walking in the parade with his 12-year-old brother Tucker, who was injured in the crash and was being discharged from the hospital, according to his GoFundMe page.” Read more at Time
“A jury awarded more than $26 million in damages yesterday after finding the White nationalists who organized and participated in a violent 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, liable on a state conspiracy claim and other claims. But the jury in the federal civil trial said it could not reach a verdict on two federal conspiracy claims. The violence during the Unite the Right rally turned the Virginia city into another battleground in America's culture wars and highlighted growing polarization. It was also an event that empowered White supremacists to demonstrate their beliefs in public rather than just online.” Read more at CNN
“The House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection issued five new subpoenas yesterday targeting right-wing extremist groups that were involved in the attack, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Dozens of members of both groups have been charged in the attack on the US Capitol. The panel also subpoenaed Robert Patrick Lewis, chairman of 1st Amendment Praetorian, a group that the committee says provided security at ‘multiple rallies leading up to January 6.’ Several dozen subpoenas have already been issued as part of the investigation, with mixed success. Investigators say they've spoken to more than 200 witnesses, but some key players in former President Donald Trump's orbit have stonewalled the probe and refused to testify.” Read more at CNN
“A key group of Republican attorneys general that donated $150,000 to co-sponsor the 6 January rally where Donald Trump pushed his false claims of election fraud before the Capitol attack could draw scrutiny from a House committee investigating the events on or in the lead-up to the riot.
The group – a part of the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) called the Rule of Law Defense Fund – has attracted strong criticism from watchdogs and ex-prosecutors even as Raga looks forward to next year’s midterm elections and many of its members are fighting on numerous fronts against Joe Biden’s agenda.
The controversy around Raga appears to be yet another way that Trump and his supporters have increased their grip on more mainstream elements of the Republican party, and involved them in efforts to further their agenda.” Read more at The Guardian
“A teenager acquitted of murdering two men and wounding another last year during racially based protests in Wisconsin reportedly visited Donald Trump at his Florida resort, with the former president describing Kyle Rittenhouse as ‘really a nice young man’.
Trump revealed the visit in an interview with the TV show host Sean Hannity that aired on Fox News on Tuesday night. It was accompanied by a photograph of the pair together at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, where the former president lives.
Rittenhouse, 18, and Trump were smiling and flashing thumbs-up signs at the camera, both wearing suits.
Rittenhouse, who was found not guilty on all charges by a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last Friday, ‘wanted to know if he could come over and say hello because he was a fan’, Trump told Hannity, as reported by Raw Story.” Read more at The Guardian
“A jury in Ohio ruled yesterday that three major pharmaceutical chains bore responsibility for the opioid epidemic in two Ohio counties. The civil case, brought in federal court against CVS, Walmart and Walgreens, marks the first time pharmacies have been found responsible in the nationwide epidemic. "It is a precedent-setting case," said Mark Lanier, the lead trial attorney for counties. Damages are set to be adjudicated in the spring. Lanier said that each county would be seeking over $1 billion in damages.” Read more at CNN
“A Kansas City man who was jailed for more than 40 years for three murders was released from prison on Tuesday after a judge ruled that he was wrongfully convicted in 1979.
Kevin Strickland, 62, has always maintained that he was home watching television and had nothing to do with the killings, which happened when he was 18 years old.
He learned of the decision to free him when the news scrolled across the television screen as he was watching a soap opera in prison. He said fellow inmates began screaming.
‘I’m not necessarily angry. It’s a lot. I think I’ve created emotions that you all don’t know about just yet,’ he told reporters as he left the Western Missouri correctional center in Cameron.” Read more at The Guardian
“President Biden is seeking to get federal vaccine rules for employers reinstated. The Justice Department filed an emergency motion arguing another court’s postponement of the administration’s mandate was unjustified. State and federal data broadly show unvaccinated people are primarily driving new Covid-19 cases.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Elizabeth Holmes took the witness stand. ‘We thought this was a really big idea,’ Holmes testified in her criminal-fraud trial, referring to Theranos’s attempts to remove human error from steps involved in the blood-testing process that included automation.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Dozens of prominent political scientists and other scholars of democracy rang the alarm bell in an open letter Sunday, writing in support of the Freedom to Vote Act — which stalled in the Senate following a predictable Republican filibuster — and warning of dire consequences if Congress doesn’t address Republicans’ attacks on democracy.
‘Republican state legislatures in Georgia, Florida, Texas, and across the country have enacted partisan laws intended to make it harder for Democrats to win elections,’ the scholars wrote. ‘Most alarmingly, these laws have forged legal pathways for partisan politicians to overturn state election results if they are dissatisfied with the outcome.’
Without the Freedom to Vote Act, the letter says, America is at risk of losing its free and fair elections, and also being subject to ‘an extended period of minority rule,’ which in turn would decrease the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of the majority. ‘This would have grave consequences not only for our democracy, but for political order, economic prosperity, and the national security of the United States as well,’ the letter states.
The letter takes specific aim at the Senate filibuster, and certain Democrats’ continued support for it despite it being the sole roadblock for democracy reform: ‘To lose our democracy but preserve the filibuster in its current form — in which a minority can block popular legislation without even having to hold the floor — would be a short-sighted mistake of historic proportions,’ it states.
Notably, the plea for reform comes as one international think tank has categorized the United States as a ‘backsliding’ democracy.” Read more at Talking Points Memo
“The FBI is knocking at the doors of Trumpy conspiracy theorists and election officials suspected of stealing or leaking sensitive election data to further those theories.
Mesa County, COLORADO Clerk Tina Peters’ home was raided by FBI agents last week. That was part of a months-long investigation into an unauthorized person that was allowed to attend an in-person software update, after which a major QAnon influencer published sensitive election machine data and video from the software update. Also raided: Sherronna Bishop, a prominent Peters ally and former campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
We’ve been on this story for months, as Franchise readers will know, and we have the latest here.
Also, this week: The Washington Post reports that the FBI is investigating a breach of county government data in Lake County, OHIO.” Read more at Talking Points Memo
“The ACLU and other groups have sued over ALABAMA’s redistricting maps, arguing that Black voters have been ‘cracked’ and ‘packed’ (that is, crammed into a single congressional district when two majority Black districts would better represent Alabama’s population).
PENNSYLVANIA Gov. Tom Wolf (D) has already vetoed one package of voting changes from legislature Republicans, and now state House Republicans are back with another attempt.
The GEORGIA House Redistricting Committee has advanced a map, along party lines, that would add a Republican seat to the state’s U.S. congressional delegation at the expense of Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA), while also putting some Democratic areas in Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) heavily conservative district. Expect lawsuits.
Nearly 50,000 ballots sent to WASHINGTON, DC voters ahead of the 2020 election were returned as undeliverable — 11.4% of all ballots mailed.
Postmaster General LOUIS DEJOY wasn’t a Trump appointee, but he was appointed during the Trump administration by the USPS board of governors. And at the end of the day, DeJoy still has a job because of the support of Ron Bloom, the Democratic chair of the board. But Bloom will soon be out of the job, putting DeJoy’s own future in question.” Read more at Talking Points Memo
Politico: Say goodbye to swing districts. Lawmakers are drawing easy wins in dozens of states.
“New York City may soon allow more than 800,000 noncitizens to vote in municipal elections.” Read more at New York Times
Arizona Republic: 'Results were meaningless': Analysts say they cannot validate or replicate Cyber Ninjas' hand count of votes
“Trump’s baseless voter-fraud claims are testing Republican candidates.
Former President Donald Trump’s yearlong campaign falsely claiming he won the 2020 election and demanding redress is turning voter fraud into a litmus test for Republicans seeking office ahead of next year’s midterms. Some have refused to concede defeats from 2020 or have tailored their campaign messages to echo Trump’s assertions of victory to avoid a backlash from his supporters. Others have sidestepped many of the former president’s election-fraud claims without disavowing the man himself. Across the country, some election administrators have been harassed and subject to intimidation for refusing to publicly question the security of vote counting, and a wave of longtime professional staff have left their jobs under such pressure. The Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the last presidential election, and a bipartisan consortium of election officials declared the 2020 race the most secure U.S. election in history. Still, the drumbeat of GOP fraud claims appears to among the handful of factors contributing to eroding confidence in the nation’s election systems.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The U.S. and several other countries will tap their national oil reserves. The coordinated effort with China, India, Japan, the U.K. and South Korea aims to bring down gasoline prices—which are up 61% from a year ago—that have become a big contributor to inflation, Biden administration officials said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Biden’s Fed picks leave open questions on Wall Street regulation.
The president’s decision to reappoint Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chairman and elevate governor Lael Brainard signals continuity on monetary policy but leaves open questions on the direction the central bank will take in regulating the financial sector. During Powell’s nearly four years as head of the Fed, the central bank has revamped big-bank stress tests, including eliminating pass-fail grades, tailored its rules for U.S. lenders based on their size and simplified key postcrisis regulations such as the Volcker rule prohibition on proprietary trading. The extent to which the Fed will spend the next several years tightening regulatory policy—after easing rules under Trump-appointed officials—will depend on whom Biden picks to succeed Randal Quarles, the departing central-bank governor who served as its regulatory point man until last month.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — NASA launched a spacecraft Tuesday night on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.
The DART spacecraft, short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test, lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in a $330 million project with echoes of the Bruce Willis movie ‘Armageddon.’
If all goes well, the boxy, 1,200-pound (540-kilogram) craft will slam head-on into Dimorphos, an asteroid 525 feet (160 meters) across, at 15,000 mph (24,139 kph) next September.
‘This isn’t going to destroy the asteroid. It’s just going to give it a small nudge,’ said mission official Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which is managing the project.
Dimorphos orbits a much larger asteroid called Didymos. The pair are no danger to Earth but offer scientists a better way to measure the effectiveness of a collision than a single asteroid flying through space.” Read more at AP News
“Jurors in the trial of the three white men charged with the murder of Ahmaud Arbery will continue to deliberate Wednesday. How the nearly all-white panel of jurors decides on a verdict could ultimately hinge on how they view Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery, who was Black, and was the only defendant to testify. They will decide if McMichael, his father, Gregory, and William ‘Roddie’ Bryan are guilty of murder and other crimes in 25-year-old Arbery's death on Feb. 23, 2020. The McMichaels' attorneys say the father and son were trying to detain Arbery for police because they believed he was responsible for burglarizing a neighbor's home and that Travis shot him in self-defense during a struggle over his shotgun. ‘If the jury thinks that (Travis) McMichael was justified in using deadly force, then I don't think they'll convict his father either, or for that matter the other defendant,’ Timothy Floyd, a law professor at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, told USA TODAY.” Read more at USA Today
“President Joe Biden on Wednesday will nominate Shalanda Young to serve as budget director, months after his initial choice, Neera Tanden, was forced to withdraw her nomination over objections by Congress, according to a source. Young, who has served as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget since she was confirmed as Biden's pick for deputy budget director in March, would become the first Black woman to hold the position. As budget director, Young would permanently lead the powerful executive office and play an outsized role in overseeing Biden's economic agenda, including working with federal agencies to oversee the implementation of the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and potentially the president's more sweeping social and climate spending bill should it survive the Senate.” Read more at USA Today
“Brian Laundrie, the subject of a massive manhunt after his fiancee Gabrielle ‘Gabby’ Petito was found dead in September, died by suicide, his family's attorney said.” Read more at USA Today
“In a new book, former Trump adviser Scott Atlas blames Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci for ‘headline-dominating debacles’ about quack cures for Covid-19 – but omits to mention the chief proponent of snake-oil treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and disinfectant, was the US president he loyally served.
Atlas, a radiologist, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, California, specializing in health care policy. He became a special adviser to Donald Trump in August 2020, five months into the pandemic, but resigned less than four months later after a controversial spell in the role.
His book, A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop Covid from Destroying America, will be published on 7 December. Its publisher is Bombardier Books, an imprint of PostHill Press, a conservative outlet that will also publish a memoir by Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s fourth press secretary.” Read more at The Guardian
“Samsung plans to build a roughly $17 billion chip-making plant in Taylor, Texas. The company is doubling down on its presence in the state, where it already has a footprint, marking the latest announcement in a year of historic spending for the semiconductor industry.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A Netflix employee who publicly criticized Dave Chappelle has resigned. Before the streaming giant briefly suspended her, software engineer Terra Field had posted a viral thread on Twitter about the comedian’s controversial special, which she said ‘attacks the trans community, and the very validity of transness.’ Field and a former colleague at Netflix who had filed a labor complaint dropped that effort, with a lawyer representing them saying they were able to resolve their differences with the company.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“BERLIN — After two months of talks, German parties on Wednesday were set to announce a new government which will see Olaf Scholz, from the center-left Social Democrats, take over from Chancellor Angela Merkel after her 16 years in power.
The Social Democrats and two other parties that made gains in Germany’s September elections. the climate conscious Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats, were scheduled to give a joint press conference at 3 p.m. Berlin time, following a final round of negotiations.
The deal will mark a shift to the left for Germany after more than a decade and a half in power for Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, which will now head into opposition. But few expect drastic departures in policy from a government under Scholz, who served as finance minister in Merkel’s outgoing cabinet.” Read more at Washington Post
“The United Arab Emirates’ de facto ruler heads to Turkey today on the highest level visit in years. It’s a welcome distraction for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he surveys the wreckage of his unorthodox economic policy.
The Turkish lira is suffering its longest losing streak in 20 years, prompting the central bank to say the currency’s slide was “completely detached from economic fundamentals.”
Erdogan’s detractors would say that’s a good way to describe the president himself.
A self-styled ‘enemy of interest rates,’ Erdogan clings to the belief that high borrowing costs are the cause of inflation rather than a brake, and has evoked Islamic teachings prohibiting usury to justify his stance. He’s betting on lower rates to turbo-boost growth and revive his flagging popularity ahead of 2023 elections.
But his defense of a policy that defies mainstream economics propelled the lira into free-fall yesterday. Central bank veterans and Erdogan’s political rivals warn that inflation — already running at 20% — is bound to spiral higher.
While credit-fueled growth before elections has worked for Erdogan in the past, the accumulating impact of that policy, plus the damage wrought by the pandemic, means the potential social costs are much higher this time.
Yes, improved relations with the UAE could unlock billions of dollars in trade and investment for Turkey. But that’s a longer term prospect.
Runaway food inflation and skyrocketing rents are squeezing those at the bottom right now — including Erdogan’s traditional base.
Polling groups say the latest tumult will push undecided voters into the hands of the opposition, even to the point of no return for Erdogan’s AK Party.” — Sylvia Westall Read more at Bloomberg
“First woman | Sweden approved its first female prime minister today, 100 years after women in the country known for its egalitarian foundations were first able to exercise full voting rights. Magdalena Andersson, who has been finance minister since 2014, won a narrow vote in parliament following a last-minute deal with the ex-communist Left Party.” Read more at Bloomberg
“$25 million — Roughly the award that a federal jury in Virginia granted victims of violence related to a series of white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville in August 2017, when far-right groups gathered in the city for a tumultuous weekend that left dozens injured and one person dead.
26 — The number of UPS’s top 30 retail shippers that have started doing holiday deals earlier than usual, according to a company executive. Earlier buying, more in-store shopping and extra capacity are helping to ease shipping carriers’ loads ahead of the holiday season—which might see smoother deliveries than some had predicted.
18% — The drop in the Turkish lira Tuesday before easing slightly. The nation’s currency crisis threatens to push the inflation rate, currently at around 20%, even higher, analysts say. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent the lira spiraling further downward when he stood by his view Monday that higher interest rates don’t rein in inflation and only damp economic growth.
1 — The number of turkeys each customer is allowed to purchase at Winn-Dixie supermarkets this year. Two U.S. grocery chains are limiting the number of Thanksgiving staples customers can buy, as holiday demand meets supply-chain issues. Rival supermarket operator Publix has limited customers from purchasing no more than two individual items of Thanksgiving ingredients.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Lives Lived: In 2005, Maj. Ian Fishback blew the whistle on his former battalion, the 82nd Airborne Division, for abusing prisoners in Iraq. Fishback died at 42.” Read more at New York Times
“The PGA Tour announced to its membership Monday significant increases coming to its prize money and payout structures for the new year.
The financial details were explained to PGA Tour players in a memo sent to them by commissioner Jay Monahan and first reported by the Associated Press and Golfweek followed by multiple other media outlets. The increases include bumps in purses, bonuses and FedEx Cup allotment.
Total tournament prize money next year will jump from $367 million to $427 million, according to the memo. The first two FedEx Cup postseason stops, the FedEx St. Jude Invitational and BMW Championship, will offer $15 million purses, up from the $9.5 million available at this year’s Northern Trust and BMW Championship. Three ‘player-run’ events—the Genesis Invitational (hosted by Tiger Woods), Arnold Palmer Invitational and Memorial (hosted by Jack Nicklaus)—are seeing nearly a $3 million increase in their overall purse to $12 million per tournament. Also boasting a $12 million purse will be the Dell Technologies WGC-Match Play. The average purse on tour will be raised more than $1 million from last year’s figures.” Read more Golf Digest