The Full Belmonte, 5/21/2022
“Investors are bracing for a recession. The S&P 500 tumbled into bear-market territory, or 20% down from a recent high, before ending the day near flat. It’s been decades since stocks have fallen for such a prolonged period. Investors see the recent market selloff, poor results from retailers and potential consequences of further interest-rate increases as signs the U.S. economy might be headed for a contraction. China’s Covid-19 lockdowns could push U.S. inflation even higher, while continuing supply-chain disruptions have led companies to cut orders.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, attends the swearing-in ceremony for Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the White House on Oct. 26, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
“Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, the conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pressed Arizona lawmakers after the 2020 election to set aside Joe Biden’s popular-vote victory and choose ‘a clean slate of Electors,’ according to emails obtained by The Washington Post.
The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear.
Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to ‘stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.’ She told the lawmakers that the responsibility to choose electors was ‘yours and yours alone’ and said they had ‘power to fight back against fraud.’
Thomas sent the messages via an online platform designed to make it easy to send prewritten form emails to multiple elected officials, according to a review of the emails, obtained under the state’s public-records law.
The messages show that Thomas, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, was more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been previously reported. In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters.
Thomas’s actions also underline concerns about potential conflicts of interest that her husband has already faced — and may face in the future — in deciding cases related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Those questions intensified in March, when The Post and CBS News obtained text messages that Thomas sent in late 2020 to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pressing him to help reverse the election.
The emails were sent to Russell ‘Rusty’ Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who was first elected to the chamber in 2018 and served on the House Elections Committee during the 2020 session.
‘Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,’ read the Nov. 9 email. ‘… [P]lease take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.’” Read more at Washington Post
Pipes at the Gasum plant in Imatra, Finland. Photograph: Vesa Moilanen/Lehtikuva/AFP/Getty Images
“Russia has halted providing natural gas to neighbouring Finland, which has angered Moscow by applying for Nato membership, after the Nordic country refused to pay supplier Gazprom in roubles.
Gazprom Export has demanded that European countries pay for Russian gas supplies in roubles because of sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but Finland refuses to do so.” Read more at The Guardian
Ukrainian Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said his country would fight until it regains all lost land, including Crimea.
PHOTO: MANU BRABO FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Ukraine will fight until all Russian forces are expelled, its military intelligence chief said. Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov said in an interview that his country aims to reclaim all of the territory Russia has captured, including the areas effectively seized by Moscow in 2014. With peace talks stalled, the remarks signal a more ambitious objective that would require launching an offensive operation into the Crimean peninsula and other areas.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Mitch McConnell sees the latest Ukraine aid package as a personal victory. The Republican Senate minority leader has been pushing back on the isolationist stance championed by former President Donald Trump and other members of their party, citing a bipartisan 86-11 vote to approve $40 billion in new aid to Ukraine. Overseas, European leaders have been less successful in persuading Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban to change his mind on a proposed Russian oil embargo whose approval he has held up.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Rudy Giuliani on June 21, 2021, in New York City.
“(CNN)Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's onetime personal attorney and a lead architect of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, on Friday met with the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, two sources told CNN.
Giuliani's original deposition with the committee had been postponed after the former New York City mayor asked to record the interview, with both audio and video. At the time, Giuliani's attorney Robert Costello said the committee rejected that request.
Despite Giuliani backing out of the original deposition, the two sides continued to negotiate an appearance, which led to a virtual appearance Friday that lasted for more than nine hours, sources said.
Costello declined to comment Friday. A spokesperson for the select committee also declined to comment on Giuliani's deposition.” Read more at CNN
“A lack of manufacturers aggravated the baby formula shortage. (Some parents are sharing breast milk, which has risks.)” Read more at New York Times
“The Pennsylvania Senate Republican primary is almost certainly headed for a recount after the Associated Press said on Friday that it could not project a winner because the margins were too tight.
Television personality and heart surgeon Mehmet Oz, endorsed by former president Donald Trump, led former hedge fund CEO David McCormick by 1,079 votes with 98 percent of precincts reporting, probably triggering an automatic recount because the margin is less than a half-percent of the votes.
Unless McCormick concedes by noon on Wednesday, the Pennsylvania State Department will officially order a recount that must begin no later than June 1 and be completed by noon on June 7, with the results probably released the next day.
Each county must recount the ballots using a different method than was originally used, which could be by hand or a different kind of device, said Grace Griffaton, a spokeswoman for the State Department in an email. The candidates and a lawyer may observe the recount, she said.” Read more at Washington Post
Donald Trump is shown on screen speaking via a videolink at the CPAC conference in Budapest, Hungary, on Friday. Photograph: Szilárd Koszticsák/EPA
“A notorious Hungarian racist who has called Jews ‘stinking excrement’, referred to Roma as ‘animals’ and used racial epithets to describe Black people, was a featured speaker at a major gathering of US Republicans in Budapest.
Zsolt Bayer took the stage at the second day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Hungary, a convention that also featured speeches from Donald Trump, Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The last featured speaker of the conference was Jack Posobiec, a far-right US blogger who has used antisemitic symbols and promoted the fabricated ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory smearing prominent Democrats as pedophiles.” Read more at The Guardian
“A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration from lifting a pandemic-related health order whose scheduled expiration on Monday would have thrown open the doors of the United States to asylum seekers at the border for the first time in more than two years.
The ruling means further delays for thousands of people waiting for a chance to seek refuge in the United States, but it averts a potential crisis on the border by giving the administration more time to roll out its plan to handle the large numbers that are expected. Department of Homeland Security officials have said they were preparing for as many as 18,000 migrants a day, compared with 8,000 currently, if the order were lifted.” Read more at New York Times
“Two decades before he was Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano warned in a master’s thesis that the United States was vulnerable to a left-wing ‘Hitlerian Putsch’ that would begin with the dismantling of the U.S. military and end with the destruction of the country’s democracy.
The thesis, written in 2001 when Mastriano was a major at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, is highly unusual for its doomsaying and often fearful point of view, and its prediction that only the U.S. military could save the country from the depredations of the country’s morally debauched civilian leaders. The paper is posted on an official Defense Department website and lists Mastriano as the author at a time when he said he received a master’s degree from the school.
In it, Mastriano adopts the point of view of a colonel who is living in 2018 — some 17 years in the future — and has taken refuge in an ‘isolated cavern’ in the George Washington National Forest. The military’s collapse, in his telling, allowed a left-wing leader obsessed with ‘political correctness’ and backed militarily by the United Nations and the European Union to rise to power in a struggle that led to the deaths of millions of Americans.” Read more at Washington Post
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will no longer be able to receive communion in her hometown of San Francisco after the local archdiocese said her vow to make abortion legal crossed a line the Catholic church could not ignore.
In an announcement that he also tweeted out, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone notified Pelosi that her staunch support of abortion and her refusal to personally explain her position to him forced his hand.” Read more at USA Today
"Researchers are still trying to figure out what’s causing a hepatitis outbreak in children. The mysterious series of at least 400 cases world-wide may be caused by stomach bugs, Covid-19, a normally harmless virus—or something else entirely, scientists say. Common causes, including the viruses that generate hepatitis A, B, C, D and E infections, aren’t to blame, and researchers have ruled out any effects from Covid-19 vaccines.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The IRS hasn't determined how some of the richest Americans’ tax data was leaked. A year after ProPublica published confidential incomes, payments and tax strategies of ultra-wealthy individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, frustrated federal officials are still waiting for answers on the source of the breach. Government employees with official access to tax records who disclose them can face felony prosecution.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“SpaceX paid a former flight attendant at the company $250,000 after founder and CEO Elon Musk allegedly exposed himself to her and propositioned her for sex.” [Vox] Read more at Insider / Rich McHugh
“Anthony Albanese and his opposition Labor Party were poised on Saturday to end nine years of conservative government in Australia, according to the country’s national broadcaster, defeating the coalition led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison with a campaign promising ‘renewal not revolution.’
A handful of races were still too close to call, but early results showed Labor winning more than 70 seats of the 76 needed to form a government. Alliances with independent and minor-party victors would give it a majority if it does not reach 76 seats by itself.
The likely Labor victory would be only its fourth at the polls since World War II. After a race that became a referendum on Mr. Morrison and his combative style — in the final days he acknowledged that he could be ‘a bit of a bulldozer’ and promised to change — the results pointed to exhaustion with the incumbent more than enthusiasm for the challenger.
Polls taken just before Election Day showed that neither candidate had approval ratings over 50 percent. But in the end, Mr. Albanese, who has spent his entire career in Labor Party politics, including 23 years in Parliament, managed to persuade voters that it was time for Labor and its promise of ‘a better future.’
Political analysts said the conservative Liberal-National coalition faltered in large part because the prime minister had lost the public’s trust as he defended a government pulled to the right by members who refused to seriously tackle problems like climate change, integrity in government and sexual harassment in politics.
Instead of Mr. Morrison’s blustery style — leading a government that passed little memorable legislation but successfully managed the early months of the pandemic — Mr. Albanese promised to be more collaborative, sharing the spotlight and the decision-making.” Read more at New York Times
“KHARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — A celebrated Ukrainian medic recorded her time in Mariupol on a data card no bigger than a thumbnail, smuggled out to the world in a tampon. Now she is in Russian hands, at a time when Mariupol itself is on the verge of falling.
Yuliia Paievska is known in Ukraine as Taira, a moniker from the nickname she chose in the World of Warcraft video game. Using a body camera, she recorded 256 gigabytes of her team’s frantic efforts over two weeks to bring people back from the brink of death. She got the harrowing clips to an Associated Press team, the last international journalistsin the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, one of whom fled with it in a tampon.
Russian soldiers captured Taira and her driver the next day, March 16, one of many forced disappearances in areas of Ukraine now held by Russia. Russia has portrayed Taira as working for the nationalist Azov Battalion, in line with Moscow’s narrative that it is attempting to ‘denazify’ Ukraine. But the AP found no such evidence, and friends and colleagues said she had no links to Azov.” Read more at AP News
“SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — On a recent nighttime visit to a drugstore, a double-masked Kim Jong Un lamented the slow delivery of medicine. Separately, the North Korean leader’s lieutenants have quarantined hundreds of thousands of suspected COVID-19 patients and urged people with mild symptoms to take willow leaf or honeysuckle tea.
Despite what the North’s propaganda is describing as an all-out effort, the fear is palpable among citizens, according to defectors in South Korea with contacts in the North, and some outside observers worry the outbreak may get much worse, with much of an impoverished, unvaccinated population left without enough hospital care and struggling to afford even simple medicine.” Read more at AP News
“A judge ruled the Argentine government is guilty in the massacre of over 400 Indigenous people nearly a century ago, ordering reparations for the communities in a landmark trial decision Friday.” [Vox] Read more at BBC
“An American Bar Association panel that accredits law schools issued a proposal Friday to make standardized tests optional for admission, a move that would follow a trend seen in undergraduate admissions offices and give schools more flexibility in how they select law students. Any final approval of the policy change would likely be many months away—at the earliest, affecting students who enroll in the fall of 2023.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon, Kyle Mooney and Aidy Bryant are leaving ‘Saturday Night Live,’ a source familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly tells USA TODAY.
Each comedian has been a fixture on the long-running NBC sketch show, which broadcasts live and features celebrity hosts, for several years. Davidson, 28, started on ‘SNL’ in 2014 as one of its youngest cast members; McKinnon in 2012; Mooney in 2013 and Bryant in 2012.
‘SNL’ airs its Season 47 finale Saturday. NBC declined to comment.” Read more at USA Today
The goalie Igor Shesterkin is a major part of the Rangers’ success this season.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
“Carolina Hurricanes vs. New York Rangers, N.H.L. playoffs: The Rangers are hot. Down 3-1 in the last round, they beat the Penguins three games in a row to win the series.” Game 3 is 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Sunday on ESPN Read more at New York Times
