The Full Belmonte, 4/24/2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday.David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
“Russian missiles struck the port city of Odesa, killing at least eight. Odesa had largely been spared attacks with high civilian casualties.” Read more at New York Times
“The U.S. secretaries of state and defense will visit Kyiv today, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.” Read more at New York Times
“Russian troops resumed attacks on the Mariupol steel plant that is housing the last of Ukrainian resistance there.” Read more at New York Times
“Germany’s former chancellor Gerhard Schröder has become a pariahbecause of his work for Russian-controlled energy companies.” Read more at New York Times
“Former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history and the longest-serving senator from Utah, died Saturday. He was 88.
Hatch served 42 years in the Senate, from 1977 to 2019, including some time as the president pro tempore of the chamber, a ceremonial leadership position typically reserved for senior members. He was known for working across the aisle, and the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., was one of his closest friends.” Read more at USA Today
A court filing on Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in President Donald J. Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times “WASHINGTON — Before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump White House officials and members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus strategized about a plan to direct thousands of angry marchers to the building, according to newly released testimony obtained by the House committee investigating the riot and former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
On a planning call that included Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff; Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer; Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio; and other Freedom Caucus members, the group discussed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, according to one witness’s account.
The idea was endorsed by Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who now leads the Freedom Caucus, according to testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mr. Meadows, and no one on the call spoke out against the idea.
‘I don’t think there’s a participant on the call that had necessarily discouraged the idea,’ Ms. Hutchinson told the committee’s investigators.
The nearly two-mile march from the president’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol, where parts of the crowd became a violent mob, has become a focus of both the House committee and the Justice Department as they investigate who was responsible for the violence.
Mr. Meadows and members of the Freedom Caucus, who were deeply involved in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election, have condemned the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and defended their role in spreading the lie of a stolen election.
Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony and other materials disclosed by the committee in a 248-page court filing on Friday added new details and texture to what is publicly known about the discussions in Mr. Trump’s inner circle and among his allies in the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 assault.
The filing is part of the committee’s effort to seek the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against it by Mr. Meadows. It disclosed testimonythat Mr. Meadows was told that plans to try to overturn the 2020 election using so-called alternate electors were not ‘legally sound’ and that the events of Jan. 6 could turn violent. Even so, he pushed forward with the rally that led to the march on the Capitol, according to the filing.” Read more at New York Times
“Ron DeSantis wanted to punish Disney — but repealing its special status may hurt local taxpayers instead. The governor of Florida signed a bill into law on Friday that revokes Disney World’s “independent special district,” an act of retaliation for the company’s public censure of a law critics called ‘Don’t Say Gay.’ There’s one hitch, though: The repeal could put local governments on the hook for about $1 billion in Disney’s bond debts. And that would mean higher taxes.” Read more at NPR
“A battle is brewing over the CDC’s powers — and the mask decision may just be the tip of the iceberg. A federal judge’s ruling striking down the transportation mask mandate this past week, which the Justice Department is now appealing, came as a startling rebuke to many. The agency has flexed its regulatory powers to issue sweeping orders affecting travel, housing and migration during the pandemic. But recent challenges to its authority are shortsighted, some law experts say, and could hamstring the CDC’s efforts to respond to future pandemics.” Read more at NPR
“BREMERTON, Wash. — Joseph Kennedy, who used to be an assistant coach for a high school football team near Seattle, pointed to the spot on the 50-yard line where he would take a knee and offer prayers after games.
He was wearing a Bremerton Knights jacket and squinting in the drizzling morning rain, and he repeated a promise he had made to God when he became a coach.
‘I will give you the glory after every game, win or lose,’ he said, adding that the setting mattered: ‘It just made sense to do it on the field of battle.’
Coaching was his calling, he said. But after the school board in Bremerton, Wash., told him to stop mixing football and faith on the field, he left the job and sued, with lower courts rejecting his argument that the board had violated his First Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case on Monday, and there is good reason to think that its newly expanded conservative majority will not only rule in Mr. Kennedy’s favor but also make a major statement about the role religion may play in public life. The court’s decision, expected by June, could revise earlier understandings about when prayer is permitted in public schools, the rights of government employees and what counts as pressuring students to participate in religious activities.
The two sides offer starkly different accounts of what happened and what is at stake. To hear Mr. Kennedy tell it, he sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer little different from saying grace before a meal in the school cafeteria. From the school board’s perspective, the public nature of his prayers and his stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not.
The community in Bremerton appeared to be largely sympathetic to Mr. Kennedy, who is gregarious, playful and popular. But the school board’s Supreme Court brief suggested that some residents opposed to prayer on the football field may have hesitated to speak out given the strong feelings the issue has produced.
‘District administrators received threats and hate mail,’ the brief said. ‘Strangers confronted and screamed obscenities at the head coach, who feared for his safety.’
Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents the school board, said, ‘What we’re focused on is the religious freedom of students.’” Read more at New York Times
“Former President Donald Trump visited Ohio on Saturday to rally supporters behind his chosen candidate for the state’s contentious U.S. Senate race.
Trump took the stage shortly before 7 p.m. at the Delaware County Fairgrounds, hours after people first arrived to hear him speak on an unseasonably warm April day. The former president used the appearance to air grievances about his White House successor and criticized Democratic policies on the U.S.-Mexico border, inflation and law enforcement.
Peppered throughout his speech were references to author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance, who Trump is backing in the GOP primary to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman. In his overture about Vance's candidacy – which came nearly an hour into the speech – Trump cast Vance as the best chance to keep the Senate seat in Republican hands.
‘I studied this very closely,’ Trump told the crowd. ‘I like a lot of the other people in the race. I liked them a lot. But we have to pick the one that’s going to win. This guy is tough as hell. He’s going win.’
Trump's decision was a blow to other candidates in the race who spent months clamoring for his support: former state treasurer Josh Mandel, investment banker Mike Gibbons and former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken. Only state Sen. Matt Dolan, who Trump empathically said he would not endorse, did not seek the former president's nod.” Read more at USA Today
“WARSAW — Warsaw’s biggest pediatric hospital has put patients from Ukraine on its waiting list for liver transplants, sometimes ahead of Polish children. Schools in Poland’s capital have had to search for extra teachers to keep up with the influx of new pupils. Public transport has risked buckling under the strain of so many new residents.
Yet, to just about everyone’s surprise, Warsaw has kept working, defying predictions of a breakdown and an angry public backlash. The city, which has welcomed hundreds of thousands of fleeing refugees, has decked itself with Ukrainian flags and banners of support for Poland’s war-ravaged eastern neighbor.
But just as the tsunami of refugees, which increased the capital’s population by nearly 20 percent in just a few weeks, seemed to be receding, Warsaw’s mayor, Rafal Trzaskowski, is now bracing for a possible new influx as Russia’s military pushes to achieve what President Vladimir V. Putin last week vowed would be the ‘full completion’ of his war in Ukraine.
‘Warsaw is at capacity,’ Mr. Trzaskowski, a liberal opponent of Poland’s conservative governing party, Law and Justice, said in an interview. ‘We accepted more than 300,000 people but we cannot accept more. With the escalation by Russia in eastern Ukraine we could have a second wave.’
It looked for a few days as if the rush into Poland was over as Russia’s retreat from Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, encouraged some Ukrainians to risk returning home and others to stay put. For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, on Feb. 24, Poland’s border service announced in April that the number of people arriving from Ukraine had been outnumbered by those crossing the other way.
But that trend, the mayor fears, is unlikely to hold and, if significantly reversed with a new surge of refugees, could push an already strained city beyond its limits.” Read more at New York Times
“Schools are struggling to hire special ed teachers. Hawaii opened its pocketbook. This school year, 48 states reported shortages of special education teachers — an issue so drastic that some states have been forced to rely on teachers without the appropriate licenses to help the highest-need students. So, Hawaii began offering special educators $10,000 more a year, leading to a drop in vacancies. Some say, however, that higher pay is only one piece of the puzzle.” Read more at NPR
Detroit Tigers designated hitter Miguel Cabrera (24) hits a single for his 3,000th career hit in the first inning against the Colorado Rockies at Comerica Park. Photograph: Rick Osentoski/USA Today Sports
“Tigers star Miguel Cabrera delivered the 3,000th hit of his decorated career Saturday, becoming the 33rd major leaguer to reach the mark and the first player from Venezuela to accomplish the feat.
Still an imposing presence at 39, Cabrera made history by grounding an opposite-field single to right through the shift in the first inning of Detroit’s game against Colorado.” Read more at The Guardian