“WASHINGTON (AP) — Further expanding its probe, the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection has issued subpoenas to six additional associates of former President Donald Trump who were closely involved in his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said in a statement Monday that the panel is demanding testimony and documents from former Trump campaign officials and others who participated in a ‘war room’ ahead of the siege and strategized about how to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Thompson said the committee had issued new subpoenas to Bill Stepien, manager of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign; Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign; Angela McCallum, national executive assistant to the campaign; John Eastman, a lawyer who advised the former president; Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump who talked with Trump ahead of the insurrection; and Bernard Kerik, who the committee says paid for hotel rooms that served as command centers ahead of Jan. 6.” Read more at AP News
“Investigators are working to determine the causes of death of the eight people killed Friday in a crowd surge at a Houston music festival. They are reportedly looking at all possibilities, including whether a batch of counterfeit pills possibly laced with fentanyl played a role. The deadly conditions at the event have prompted a growing number of lawsuits on behalf of concertgoers. Travis Scott, the rapper behind the Astroworld Festival who was also performing at the time of the crush, announced he will pay for the funeral costs of the victims and fund mental health support for survivors. Scott, along with concert promoter Live Nation and others involved in the event, are under intense scrutiny over how the tragedy played out.” Read more at CNN
“KENOSHA, Wis. — When Gaige Grosskreutz encountered Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha last year, the city was riven by chaotic unrest after a police shooting. Its streets were filled with demonstrators, law enforcement officials and throngs of armed civilians who traveled there from out of town, including these two young men.
Their paths crossed briefly in August 2020, ending in a moment of bloodshed: Rittenhouse firing a shot into Grosskreutz’s arm, pulverizing his right biceps, inches from where his right hand still clutched a Glock pistol.
Exactly what happened in the moments leading up to that shot was dissected in a Kenosha courtroom Monday as Rittenhouse’s trial entered its second week. The 18-year-old is charged with homicide for fatally shooting two people amid the unrest last year and attempted homicide for injuring Grosskreutz. He has pleaded not guilty.
In his testimony, Grosskreutz acknowledged confronting Rittenhouse with a gun in one hand but denied he ever intended to shoot him. Grosskreutz said that ran counter to his work as a former paramedic and someone who provided medical aid at demonstrations throughout the summer of 2020. But Grosskreutz admitted that he pointed his gun at the teenager, saying Rittenhouse opened fire only once he approached with his gun aimed.
Grosskreutz’s testimony gave jurors a chance to hear from the only survivor of Rittenhouse’s gunfire, a unique vantage point in the polarizing, high-profile case. Prosecutors have depicted Rittenhouse as an aggressive vigilante who escalated the situation, while his attorneys argue that he acted in self-defense and was ‘attacked … in the streets like an animal.’
The dueling narratives played out again Monday as the prosecution and defense questioned Grosskreutz, a 27-year-old from Milwaukee.” Read more at Washington Post
Prosecutor Linda Dunikoski shares evidence during trial at the Glynn County Courthouse, Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, in Brunswick, Ga. Greg McMichael and his son Travis McMichael and a neighbor, William "Roddie" Bryan, are charged with the February 2020 slaying of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.SEAN RAYFORD/ASSOCIATED PRESS “BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Jurors were shown graphic, close-up police photos Monday of the gunshot wounds that killed Ahmaud Arbery, while the first officer to find the 25-year-old Black man bleeding in the road testified he did not try to render medical aid because it would not have been safe.
Three white men are on trial for murder and other crimes in the slaying of Arbery, who was chased and shot Feb. 23, 2020, after he was spotted running in a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.
Glynn County police sergeant Sheila Ramos walked the jury through dozens of crime scene photos she took about an hour after the shooting. Several jurors could be seen squirming as Ramos showed Arbery’s body lying in the street under a bloodstained covering. Other images showed close-up views of the gunshot wounds to his wrist as well as grievous injuries to his chest and underneath one of his arms.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The COP26 climate summit in Scotland has entered its second week. By the summit’s end, participants are hoping to have a ‘Glasgow Agreement’ to solidify international priorities like limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, sticking to net-zero emissions commitments and providing help to countries most vulnerable to the climate crisis. However, major fossil fuel providers like Saudi Arabia, China and Russia may resist adoption of a global warming cap. Meanwhile, former US President Obama spoke at the summit and criticized his successor, Trump, for pulling the US out of the Paris Agreement and setting off ‘four years of active hostility towards climate science.’ He also took aim at the Chinese and Russian Presidents for skipping the COP26 entirely.” Read more at CNN
“Global Covid-19 cases have now surpassed 250 million, just a year and eight months after the World Health Organization put a name to the coronavirus pandemic. Together, the US, India and Brazil account for 40% of reported cases. Globally, about 4 billion people have gotten at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and about 3.1 billion people are fully vaccinated. In the US, Pfizer is expected to seek FDA authorization as soon as this week for a booster shot for people 18 and older. Boosters at a certain point after initial inoculation are already FDA-authorized for several groups, including those 65 and older, immunocompromised people and those with certain living or working conditions.” Read more at CNN
“The Justice Department charged a Russian man with conducting cyberattacks and recovered more than $6 million in ransom.” Read more at New York Times
Makensi Kastl hugging her boyfriend, Thierry Coudassot, after he arrived from Paris.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
“With international travel restrictions lifted, U.S. airports were filled with tears, hugs and balloons.” Read more at New York Times
“Tensions are escalating between Poland and Belarus as a weekslong migrant crisis there comes to a head. Polish officials have repeatedly accused the country’s eastern neighbor of moving migrants toward the Polish border. More and more people have been illegally crossing Poland's border from Belarus in recent weeks -- more than 30,000 since August, according to the Polish Border Guard. Additional military personnel have been deployed to deal with the situation, and another neighbor -- Lithuania -- has also sent troops to the border. European officials have accused Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging people to cross illegally into Poland and other European neighbors in retaliation for recent sanctions by the EU, the US and Britain over Lukashenko’s crackdown on political opposition.” Read more at CNN
“President Biden is trying to showcase sunny economic indicators, but Americans aren't convinced, Axios Capital author Felix Salmon reports.
Why it matters: Between now and midterms — a year from this week — Democrats need to get credit for America's economic strength, or risk massive losses in Congress.
State of play: Economic health is undeniable, both for the country and for households. The economy is expected to grow 5.7% this year.
Almost 6 million jobs were created between January and October. The unemployment rate is just 4.6%. The quit rate, a barometer of workers' optimism, hit a record high 2.9% in August.
Average earnings are up 3.5% this year to $31 per hour.
Stocks hit a new record high every day last week — and yesterday, too — and are up more than 30% year-to-date.
Reality check: 56% of voters think the country is on the wrong track, up from 39% in June, per the Harris Poll.
The Gallup economic confidence index is now at -25, down from positive territory in June.
Between the lines: A White House official says some of the economic pessimism comes from supply-chain issues, which are contributing to the soaring price of cars and other goods.
As the N.Y. Times' Neal Irwin wrote Sunday: ‘[A]fter decades in which the availability of jobs (or lack thereof) drove economic sentiment, inflation now appears to have become the more powerful force.’
What we're watching: The most salient price for most consumers — gas — is up 62% over the past year, to $3.42 per gallon.
The inflation rate, released tomorrow, is expected to come in at an eye-popping 5.8% year-on-year.” Read more at Axios
“Tackling prices | Oil markets are awaiting a possible decision by Biden on whether to release fuel from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce prices after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies rebuffed his call to boost output.” Read more at Bloomberg
“South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, who is halfway through serving a 13½-year sentence for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, is up for parole and could meet with the victim’s parents as part of the process.
June and Barry Steenkamp, the parents of Reeva Steenkamp, were ‘shocked and surprised’ when they were informed of Pistorius’s parole eligibility last month, said Tania Koen, a lawyer for the victim’s family. Pistorius had been up for potential early release since April, she wrote in an email.
Koen declined to comment on what the Steenkamps might say to Pistorius if they meet. June had forgiven Pistorius ‘because of her faith,’ she said and Barry ‘finds it difficult but is ready to start a dialogue.’
Reeva Steenkamp, a model and paralegal, was murdered by Pistorius, one of South Africa’s most famous athletes, a year after he became the first amputee runner to compete in the Olympics at the 2012 London Games. Pistorius, who was nicknamed the ‘Blade Runner’ and competed with blade-shaped prosthetics after becoming a double amputee as a child, has also won six Paralympic gold medals.” Read more at Washington Post
“Saakashvili sent to hospital. Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been transferred to a prison hospital in the Georgian city of Rustavi as he continues a hunger strike. Saakashvili began the extreme action after he was detained following his return to the country in October to support the opposition in local elections. As FP’s Amy Mackinnon reports, Saakashvili’s fate could be ‘the most profound signal yet about where the country is heading,’ amid fears of a democratic backslide.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“A group of scholars and activists are planning to establish a new university dedicated to free speech, alarmed, they said, ‘by the illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s most prestigious universities.’
The university, to be known as the University of Austin, or UATX for short, will have a soft start next summer with ‘Forbidden Courses,’ a noncredit program that its founders say will offer a ‘spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.’
The university then plans to expand to master’s programs and, in several years, to undergraduate courses.
The planned university is a throwback to tradition in many ways. Contrary to the trend among new universities, it will be based on a physical campus in the Austin, Texas, area, and classes will be taught in person, its founding documents say.
The university’s inaugural president, Pano Kanelos, the former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, said in a phone interview on Monday that the concept had begun with conversations he had with a small group of people: Bari Weiss, a journalist who once worked as an Opinion editor for The New York Times; Niall Ferguson, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist; and Joe Lonsdale, a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm.
The discussion spread from there, Dr. Kanelos said, to ‘others with similar concerns.’
The university attracted withering criticism on social media. Many students and faculty members believe that universities should not invite speakers who do not share their values on social issues like racial injustice; their words, they believe, can slide into harassment and hate speech.” Read more at New York Times
Protesters in June in Loudoun County, Va., one of many places where some parents have demonstrated against critical race theory, an academic concept that has become shorthand for various teachings about race.Credit...Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters “Over the past year, critical race theory has gone from arcane legal concept to potent political rallying cry, as Republican legislatures have rushed to introduce bills banning it and other ‘divisive concepts’ in public schools.
The furor over the subject has sown chaotic protests at local school board meetings, and is credited with contributing to last week’s election victory by the Republican Glenn Youngkin, who promised at nearly every campaign stop to ban critical race theory on his first day in office as Virginia’s governor.
To their proponents these bills represent a legitimate effort by parents to use the democratic process to shape education. But the measures have been widely assailed by Democrats (and a few conservatives) as a threat to liberal education and to the teaching of even some of the most basic facts about American history.
In a new report released Monday, the free expression group PEN America emphasizes what it says is another threat they pose: to the free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment.
‘These bills appear designed to chill academic and educational discussions and impose government dictates on teaching and learning,’ the report says. ‘In short: They are educational gag orders.’
‘Taken together,’ it continues, ‘the efforts amount to a sweeping crusade for content- and viewpoint-based state censorship.’
In invoking free speech, PEN is staking its approach on a principle that has lost its luster for some on the left, even while many on the right — including politicians advocating these bills — have invoked it as a mantra.
‘We’re not asking people to fall silent in terms of deliberation over how this racial reckoning is transpiring,’ she said. ‘But the speed of the resort to censorship, without any apparent awareness of the contradictions, is part of the broader erosion of free speech in our society.’
Protesters in Los Alamitos, Calif., in May. A new report from PEN America argues that the more than 50 proposed laws restricting the teaching of critical race theory and other subjects are a threat to free speech.Credit...Etienne Laurent/EPA, via Shutterstock
The impetus behind these laws dates to last September, when President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order banning federal agencies and contractors from conducting diversity trainings that draw on ‘race or sex scapegoating’ or promote ‘divisive concepts,’ such as the claim that ‘the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist.’
That order was rescinded by the Biden administration. But the campaign against critical race theory — an analytical framework originally developed by legal scholars that has been adopted by conservative activists as a catchall term for various teachings about race — has only intensified as it has moved to state legislatures and local school boards.
Since January, according to PEN, legislatures in 24 states have introduced 54 separate bills aimed at restricting teaching and training in K-12 school, higher education and state agencies and institutions, by banning various ‘prohibited’ or ‘divisive’ concepts, mostly relating to race, racism, gender and American history.
Many are framed as protecting sound teaching, free of ‘indoctrination.’ In June, for example, Florida’s state board of education passed new rules banning critical race theory, which stated that instruction on required topics ‘must be factual and objective and may not suppress or distort significant historical events.’
‘We need to be educating people, not trying to indoctrinate them with ideology,’ Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said before the vote.
Governments and school boards have wide leeway in setting curriculums in K-12 public schools, where courts have generally held that teachers do not have the same degree of academic freedom as those in universities. But many of these bills, PEN argues, are written so vaguely that they may chill a broad range of speech.
‘This over-breadth and ambiguity is why they are so alarming,’ Jonathan Friedman, PEN’s director of free of expression and education, said. ‘The truth is, most administrators and general counsels will quickly say, ‘let’s not run afoul of this.’
Erwin Chemerinsky, a First Amendment expert and the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, who previewed the report, agreed. ‘Whenever the government regulates speech, it has to be clear about what’s prohibited and what’s allowed,’ he said. ‘These laws are so vague in their wording that a teacher can’t tell.’
According to PEN, nine bills specifically target critical race theory. Eleven bills explicitly ban lessons based on the 1619 Project, an initiative by The New York Times Magazine exploring the history and continuing legacy of slavery that has been adapted into a classroom curriculum.
So far, by PEN’s count, 11 bills have become law, in nine states, sometimes within days of being introduced. Another 18 are pending from the 2021 legislative session, and six more have already been drafted for consideration for 2022.
Many of the bills, according to PEN, include language that purports to affirm freedom of speech and thought. Ten bills prohibit schools or teachers from ‘compelling’ a person to affirm belief in a ‘divisive concept,’ while eight mandate ‘balanced’ teaching of ‘controversial’ topics. (In Texas, such a law recently led one school official last month to suggest that educators who teach the Holocaust should make sure to have books that offer “opposing” views.)” Read more at New York Times
“Tweet brouhaha | A U.S. Republican congressman tweeted a doctored version of a popular Japanese anime with him attacking Biden and Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Read more here about how the post that Twitter said violated ‘rules about hateful conduct’ but allowed to remain accessible out of public interest has sparked a social media storm.” Read more at Bloomberg
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