The Full Belmonte, 5/6/2022
Moskva in the Mediterranean Sea in 2015. Photo: Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP
“The U.S. shared intelligence with Ukraine that helped its forces target and sink the Moskva — the crown jewel of Russia's Black Sea fleet — in a missile strike last month, NBC News first reported.
Why it matters: U.S. officials are now taking credit for providing Ukraine with real-time, decisive battlefield intelligence — a sea change that shows the Biden administration is easing limitations on how far the U.S. will go to help defeat Russia.” Read more at Axios
Smoke rises from the Azovstal steel plant yesterday in Mariupol, Ukraine.
“The battle for Mariupol's Azovstal steel plant is creating a dire situation for civilians as the fierce combat continues. Many people are in urgent need of medical help and food, according to a UN spokesperson. Rescue operations are planned for today with the help of aid organizations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. However, a Ukrainian commander inside the plant claimed Russians had broken their pledge to allow civilians to leave through the evacuation corridors. The Kremlin, on the other hand, denies that its troops are preventing civilians from leaving. The UN said it's unclear how many people remain in the plant, while Ukrainian authorities put the number in the hundreds.” Read more at CNN
“Law enforcement officials are bracing for potential violence in Washington, DC, and nationwide in wake of the leaked draft Supreme Court majority opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade. The US Capitol Police issued an alert yesterday that warned about far-right calls for violence against a religious group planning an upcoming protest in support of abortion rights at the court. In preparation, teams began installing an 8-foot-tall, non-scalable fence around parts of the Supreme Court building Wednesday and set up concrete barriers last night blocking the street in front of the court. Multiple sources told CNN the recent developments may also embolden violent extremists to engage in attacks or other criminal activity targeting abortion clinic staff, patients or clinic facilities.” Read more at CNN
A mass cremation for Covid victims in New Delhi last year.Atul Loke for The New York Times
“The pandemic’s true toll: nearly 15 million excess deaths — including 4.7 million in India, nearly 10 times its official total.” Read more at New York Times
“The FDA has announced that it is putting strict limits on the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine. Specifically, the vaccine will be limited to people 18 and older for whom other vaccines aren't appropriate or accessible. It will also only be administered to those who opt for J&J because they wouldn't otherwise get vaccinated. The FDA said in a statement that the change is being made because of the risk of a rare and dangerous clotting condition called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) after receiving the vaccine. The new warning comes as the US will likely exceed 1 million coronavirus deaths in the coming weeks, the latest data shows.” Read more at CNN
“Wildfires and straight-line winds that have ravaged New Mexico for a month have created a major disaster, President Joe Biden declared, unlocking critical federal aid as the state continues to battle the largest wildfire burning in the United States. The move makes federal money available for temporary housing and home repairs, loans to cover property losses and other programs to help residents and business owners recover, the declaration states. The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire -- the biggest US fire this year and the second-largest in New Mexico in at least 30 years -- had torched more than 165,000 acres by Thursday, destroyed dozens of homes and could soon threaten 15,000 more, officials have said. Some 300,000 acres have burned this year alone in New Mexico -- more than the past two full years combined, according to a CNN analysis.” Read more at CNN
“First up: the Senate is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that could codify the right to abortion into national law. The choice to move the Women's Health Protection Act of 2022 quickly comes after the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion suggesting the justices were considering a ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that established the right to an abortion. If passed, the bill would supersede legislation passed by states to severely restrict or completely ban the procedure. As of now, Democrats do not have the votes to pass the bill into law. Polls show most Americans support abortion rights, and Democrats hope the debate becomes the driving issue in the midterm elections. Such a vote would allow them to contrast themselves to Senate Republicans, most of whom are anti-abortion.” Read more at USA Today
“Karine Jean-Pierre will take over as President Biden’s next White House press secretary within weeks, replacing Jen Psaki who is set to leave the administration, the White House announced Thursday.
Jean-Pierre, who has served as Psaki’s top deputy since the start of the administration, will immediately become the public face of the Biden White House and the first Black person to hold the high-profile job of delivering the president’s daily message and fielding questions from an often skeptical press corps.
She will assume the top spokesperson role at time when the president faces economic and political headwinds, six months before midterm elections where Democrats face an uphill battle. If Republicans retake the House, as many in both parties expect, Jean-Pierre could face numerous questions about GOP investigations into sensitive topics, although the White House counsel’s office is bringing in another communications expert, Ian Sams, to handle such inquiries.” Read more at Washington Post
“As president, Trump proposed launching missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs and cartels, his defense secretary writes in a memoir.” Read more at New York Times
“The White House hosted labor organizers who have unionized workplaces at Amazon, Starbucks and elsewhere.” Read more at New York Times
“Texas plans to challenge a Supreme Court ruling requiring public schools to educate undocumented immigrants.” Read more at New York Times
“Amber Heard accused Johnny Depp, her ex-husband, of sexual assault, seeking to counter Depp’s testimony that she had been the aggressor.” Read more at New York Times
“Abortion clinics are already preparing to shift people and resources away from red states, in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Axios' Oriana Gonzalez and Torey Van Oot report.
Blue states — including California, Oregon, Minnesota, Marylandand Massachusetts — are taking steps to prepare for a potential influx in patients seeking abortion care if Roe falls.
Many abortion providers ‘are planning to move or travel to places where they will be able to continue to care for patients,’ Alhambra Frarey, an OB-GYN in Pennsylvania and a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement.
That means there's likely going to be a ‘saturation’ of abortion providers in urban areas, particularly in blue states, said Iman Alsaden, medical director of Planned Parenthood of Great Plains, which covers Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.
‘We have been preparing preemptively for this decision for a long time,’ said Sarah Traxler, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood North Central States, which covers Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. She is an abortion provider in St. Paul.
Traxler is working to ‘make sure that we have space available for patients coming from all over.’
Her organization is also preparing to assist with travel and childcare.
How it works: 13 states have passed ‘trigger’ laws that would immediately outlaw abortion if and when Roe v. Wade is overturned.
Providers who try to keep operating in those states could face criminal penalties. And more states will likely pass additional restrictions once the court rules.” Read more at Axios
“Troves of data that tech companies have spent decades accumulating could put them in the middle of prosecutions if the Supreme Court eliminates federal guarantees of abortion rights, Axios' Ina Fried writes in her weekly "Signal Boost" column.
Why it matters: If the leaked draft becomes law, court orders could arrive at tech firms seeking info about people searching for emergency contraception, or seen near a suspected abortion clinic.
The big picture: Mass data collection and the potential for greater state surveillance has been a growing, if largely abstract concern. But the seemingly imminent end to guaranteed legal access to abortion spotlights a specific risk such data can pose right now.
Tech companies generally say they will protect user data, but also comply with data demands required by local laws.
What we're hearing: Tech companies are loath to talk on the record about how they might handle legal requests in post-Roe v. Wade abortion cases. But lawyers and other executives are having these discussions.
How it works:
Bulk vs. individual: Law enforcement requests could seek data for a specific person ... or all people who were near a particular clinic ... or all out-of-state residents near a particular clinic.
Lawful order vs. buying data: There are no rules requiring law enforcement to obtain a court order for data they can purchase, and there's a lot of very personal information being sold by data brokers.
Medical data: In addition to non-medical information such as location, shopping and search data, medical records themselves could be targeted. And those records are far more digitized than before Roe.
What we're watching: It's not just people who have abortions who may find themselves the subject of investigations.
Anyone who is pregnant and has a miscarriage might find prosecutors seeking their internet search or other data to determine whether a provider delivered illegal services.
As states have sought to criminalize gender-affirming health care, data requests could be used against parents researching health options for their kids.
What you can do: Experts say it may be time to rethink period-tracking apps and to rely more on incognito mode in browsers, turning off location tracking and understanding your options for data deletion.
The Digital Defense Fund has a detailed set of recommendations here.” Read more at Axios
“In many ways, the American debate on abortion is unique to the particularities of American politics. No other country has the exact same constitutional assemblage of life-tenured Supreme Court justices and empowered state legislatures. No other country has an institution quite like the U.S. Senate, where a bulwark of Republican lawmakers elected by a minority of the country has dictated the fate of major national policy — in part, by selecting said justices — for the better part of two decades. And no other country has the same gap between a public that broadly supports a woman’s right to an abortion and a motivated, organized ideological right-wing movement that has worked for decades in the halls of power to curtail it.
The release this week of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, as set down in the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, has put all those particularities back into focus. If the decision gets pushed through by a Supreme Court’s conservative majority, it would almost immediately see over a dozen Republican-controlled statesimplement laws banning or restricting abortion. Rights advocates fear the new precedent would only be the start of a greater domestic unwinding of civil liberties, including that of same-sex marriage.
A wave of abortion restrictions in the United States would largely buck the worldwide trend. In the last 28 years, over 30 countries have expanded national abortion access, while only three countries — Nicaragua, Poland and El Salvador — have pushed through new national restrictions. Unintended pregnancies are at a 30-year low around the world, while abortion rates are rising in both countries where access is legalized as well as in those where abortion is restricted, according to a recent study co-led by the World Health Organization.
Even in deeply Catholic Latin America, where wholesale abortion bansremain in place in a few countries, pro-abortion campaigners have lodged major recent victories. In February, Colombia’s constitutional court voted to decriminalize abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. That followed a similar ruling last September by Mexico’s Supreme Court. ‘Never again will a woman or a person with the capacity to carry a child be criminally prosecuted,’ Justice Luis Maria Aguilar of the Mexican court said after the ruling. ‘Today the threat of imprisonment and stigma that weigh on people who freely decide to terminate their pregnancy are banished.’
Advocates fear regression in the United States would give momentum to illiberal forces elsewhere. ‘It is an awful precedent for the coming years for the region and the world,’ Catalina Martínez Coral, Latin America and Caribbean director for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which helped litigate the abortion case in Colombia’s high court, said to the Associated Press.
‘While moves to decriminalize and legalize abortion in places like Argentina, Ireland, Mexico and Colombia in the last few years have been a huge win for the global community,’ Agnès Callamard, secretary general of human rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement, ‘there are grim signs that the United States is out of step with the progress that the rest of the world is making in protecting sexual and reproductive rights.’
Nabeeha Kazi Hutchins, head of PAI, an international reproductive rights group, added in a statement that the ‘decision would bolster the anti-abortion movement around the world, derail the progress toward universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights and violate the agency, autonomy and aspirations of communities across the United States.’
As Max Fisher noted in the New York Times, there’s a correlation between governments restricting women’s rights and presiding over the broader erosion of democracy. ‘Curbs on women’s rights tend to accelerate in backsliding democracies, a category that includes the United States, according to virtually every independent metric and watchdog,’ he wrotelast year. ‘In more degraded democracies, the effect is more extreme. Around the globe, the rise of right-wing populism has been followed by extraordinary reductions in women’s rights, according to a 2019 report by Freedom House.’
Though some conservative politicians in other Western countries cheered the news of the looming Supreme Court decision, many others warned that this moment was a reminder that hard-won rights cannot be taken for granted. ‘We have seen, with the reported imminent overturning of Roe v Wade in the United States, that rights, once secured, must continue to be fought and advocated for,’ said Róisín Shortall, a member of Parliament in Ireland, which repealed its abortion ban in 2018. ‘We do not want to see a similar diminution in the reproductive rights of Irish women coming in by stealth.’
‘Every women in Canada has a right to a safe and legal abortion,’ tweeted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. ‘We’ll never back down from protecting and promoting women’s rights in Canada and around the world.’
In Spain, lawmakers from far-right opposition party Vox called for similar antiabortion action from their country’s constitutional court. Their rivals in government aren’t about to budge. ‘We need to continue to protect sexual and reproductive rights, in the U.S. and around the world,’ said Yolanda Díaz, Spain’s second deputy prime minister.” Read more at Washington Post
“English anger | Boris Johnson suffered a backlash as voters punished his Conservative Party in local elections across England. Local party leaders singled out the prime minister’s integrity as an issue that contributed to the losses, even if they weren’t as bad as some forecasts. Counting continues today.” Read more at Bloomberg
“France’s parliamentary race. French President Emmanuel Macron has changed the name of his La République en Marche party to Renaissance ahead of parliamentary elections, as he seeks to avoid a split government for his second term. The rebrand comes as a left-wing coalition of Greens, Socialists, and Communists headed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise party attempt to beat both Macron’s party and the far-right National Rally in the June contest.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Sanctions shift | The European Union has proposed a revision to its planned Russia oil sanctions ban to give Hungary and Slovakia until the end of 2024 to comply, Alberto Nardelli reports, with the Czech Republic granted an exemption until June of that year. All other EU states would phase out imports by the end of this year.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The U.S. warned Russian oligarchs there’s ‘no hiding place’ for their assets after seizing a $325 million megayacht in Fiji that it claims belongs to billionaire Suleiman Kerimov.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Israel said Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett after a heated public disagreement over comments by Russia’s foreign minister suggesting Adolf Hitler was Jewish.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Lives Lived: Marcus Leatherdale captured downtown Manhattan in the AIDS-darkened 1980s, photographing Andy Warhol, Madonna and others. Leatherdale died at 69.” Read more at New York Times
“LOS ANGELES (AP) — The man who tackled comedian Dave Chappelle during a performance at the Hollywood Bowl will not be charged with any felonies, the district attorney’s office said Thursday.
Isaiah Lee, 23, was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, police said, after rushing the stage toward the end of Chappelle’s set in the last of a four-night stint at the outdoor amphitheater as part of the ‘Netflix Is a Joke’ festival.
He was carrying a replica handgun with a large blade that folded out of it similar to a pocket knife, according to a photo released by police.” Read more at AP News
“NEW YORK (AP) — Elvis Costello, Patti Smith and Mavis Staples will be among the dignitaries expected in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this weekend for the opening of the Bob Dylan Center, the museum and archive celebrating the Nobel laureate’s work.
Dylan himself won’t be among them, unless he surprises everyone.
The center’s subject and namesake has an open invitation to come anytime, although his absence seems perfectly in character, said Steven Jenkins, the center’s director. Oddly, Dylan was just in Tulsa three weeks ago for a date on his concert tour, sandwiched in between Oklahoma City and Little Rock. He didn’t ask for a look around.
‘I don’t want to put words in his mouth,’ Jenkins said. ‘I can only guess at his reasoning. Maybe he would find it embarrassing.’
It’s certainly unusual for a living figure — Dylan is due to turn 81 on May 24 — to have a museum devoted to him, but such is the shadow he has cast over popular music since his emergence in the early 1960s. He’s still working, performing onstage in a show devoted primarily to his most recent material.” Read more at AP News
