The Full Belmonte, 6/12/2022
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of people rallied on the National Mall and across the United States on Saturday in a renewed push for gun control measures after recent deadly mass shootings from Uvalde, Texas, to Buffalo, New York, that activists say should compel Congress to act.
‘Enough is enough,’ District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser told the second March for Our Lives rally in her city. ‘I speak as a mayor, a mom, and I speak for millions of Americans and America’s mayors who are demanding that Congress do its job. And its job is to protect us, to protect our children from gun violence.’
Speaker after speaker in Washington called on senators, who are seen as a major impediment to legislation, to act or face being voted out of office, especially given the shock to the nation’s conscience after 19 children and two teachers were killed May 24 at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
‘If our government can’t do anything to stop 19 kids from being killed and slaughtered in their own school, and decapitated, it’s time to change who is in government,’ said David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting that killed 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.” Read more at AP News
Three of the men who were arrested after being found in the back of a U Haul van near a Pride event in Coeur d'Alene. Photograph: KXLY/Reuters
“Authorities have said they arrested 31 members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front near an Idaho Pride event after they were found packed into the back of a U-Haul truck with riot gear.
The men were standing inside the truck wearing khakis, navy blue shirts and beige hats with white balaclavas covering their faces when Coeur d’Alene police stopped the U-Haul and began arresting them on the side of the road on Saturday.
‘They came to riot downtown,’ Coeur d’Alene police chief Lee White said at a news conference.
All 31 were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanour, White said. The men were going through the booking process on Saturday afternoon and were scheduled to be arraigned on Monday, he said.
Based on evidence collected and documents, authorities found that the group was planning to riot in several areas of downtown, not just the park, White said.
Police found riot gear, one smoke grenade, shin guards and shields inside the van, White said. They wore arm patches and logos on their hats that identified them as members of Patriot Front, he said.
Police learned about the U-Haul from a tipster, who reported that ‘it looked like a little army was loading up into the vehicle’ in the parking lot of a hotel, White said. Officials spotted the truck soon after and pulled it over, he said.
Videos of the arrest posted on social media show the men kneeling on the grass with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
‘Reclaim America’ was written on the back of one shirt.
Police led the men, one by one, to the front of patrol cars, took off their masks and then brought them to a police van.
Those arrested came from at least 11 states, including Washington, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Illinois, Wyoming, Virginia, and Arkansas, White said.
Only one was from Idaho, he said.
The truck was stopped near where the North Idaho Pride Alliance was holding the Coeur d’Alene Pride in the Park event. Police had stepped up their presence in the area during the event.
‘It appears these people did not come here to engage in peaceful events,’ Kootenai county sheriff Bob Norris told a Coeur d’Alene Press reporter.
Patriot Front is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as ‘a white nationalist hate group’ that formed after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
‘Patriot Front focuses on theatrical rhetoric and activism that can be easily distributed as propaganda for its chapters across the country,’ the center said of the group.
The group’s manifesto calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the United States, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.” Read more at The Guardian
News crews near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in Chevy Chase, Md., on Wednesday. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
“This week's late-night threat at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's suburban Maryland home reflects heightened danger for all judges, AP reports.
A proposal being considered in Congress would provide additional security measures for the justices. Another would offer more privacy and protection for all federal judges.
Round-the-clock security given to the justices after the leak of the draft abortion opinion may well have averted a tragedy.
Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was charged with attempted murder after taking a taxi to Kavanaugh's home around 1 a.m. Wednesday.
Court documents say he was carrying a Glock 17 pistol, a knife, pepper spray, zip ties, a hammer, a crow, bar duct tape — and hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles, apparently for stealth.
Zoom out: The situation had much in common with incidents that ended with the shooting death of a former judge in Wisconsin last week, and the killing in 2020 of the son of a federal judge at their home in New Jersey.
Security has been stepped up for the justices in recent years.
What's next: Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will take up a bill — which has bipartisan support, and has passed the Senate — to expand protection to justices' immediate families.” Read more at Axios
“NEW YORK (AP) — Promised: New footage. New testimony. New and damning revelations designed to eliminate all doubt. Hired to package it all for the airwaves: A former network news president. The time slot: 8 p.m. on the East Coast, once a plum spot for the most significant television programming in the land.
Presented in prime time and carefully calibrated for a TV-viewing audience (itself increasingly an anachronism), the debut of the Jan. 6 hearings was, in essence, a summer rerun. Designed as a riveting legislative docudrama about an event that most of the country saw live 18 months ago, it tried mightily to break new narrative ground in a nation of short attention spans and endless distractions.
But did it? Can it? Even with gripping, violent video and the integrity of American democracy potentially at stake, can a shiny, weeks-long production that prosecutes with yesterday’s news — news that has been watched, processed and argued over ad nauseam — punch through the static and make a difference today?” Read more at AP News
Halftime graphic during the committee's 9 p.m. ET break on Thursday. Screenshot: NBC News
“20 million people watched the first House Jan. 6 committee hearing on television in prime time on Thursday, Axios' Sara Fischer writes from Nielsen ratings.
Why it matters: More people tuned into the hearing than the first day of former President Trump's first impeachment trial in November 2019 (13 million), or the first day of his second impeachment trial in February 2021 (11 million).
ABC drew the largest audience by far, with 5.2 million viewers from 8 to 10 p.m., followed by NBC (3.7 million), MSNBC (4.3 million), CBS (3.5 million), CNN (2.6 million) and Fox Business Network (223,000).
Fox News Channel didn't air the hearing and instead stuck with shows by Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
That drew 3.1 million viewers — about normal for the time period —and a clear indication that a notable portion of the country wasn't interested in the hearings.
Zoom out: Political hearings became a point of fascination in the Trump years.
James Comey's testimony in June 2017 drew 19.5 million viewers. Brett Kavanaugh's hearing in September 2018 drew 20 million.
What's next: Several networks, including ABC and NBC, plan live coverage of Hearing 2, beginning Monday at 10 a.m. ET.” Read more at Axios
The Southern Baptist Convention leaders released a secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse. Photograph: Holly Meyer/AP
“America’s largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination is being roiled by a sexual abuse scandal that casts a harsh light on one of the most politically powerful religious groups in the country as well as renewing a focus on its racist past.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a collection of loosely affiliated member churches, boasting just under 15 million members, and is dominated by white members, who are usually deeply socially conservative. The convention has often been a powerful tool for rightwing organizing in recent years, especially on issues around abortion.
But the SBC is now so mired in scandal that one recent former top official said it faced a “Southern Baptist apocalypse”.
The issue at hand is the release by the SBC of a 205-page document naming hundreds of Baptist leaders and members accused or found guilty of sexual abuse of children. The list, which includes 700 entries on cases between 2000 and 2019, was released after a bombshell third-party investigation by Guidepost Solutions said the convention’s leaders in its executive committee failed the public and its community by mishandling sexual abuse cases and mistreating victims and survivors.
SBC leaders Rolland Slade and Willie McLaurin issued a statement saying the list ‘reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought about by sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us.’
The initial report was released after a seven-month investigation that revealed 380 leaders and volunteers in the SBC have faced public accusations of sexual abuse. It said that the SBC’s general counsel and spokesman had kept their own private list of abusive ministers and that leaders of SBC’s executive committee had focused for decades on trying to protect the SBC from liability for abuse in local churches.” Read more at The Guardian
“Midway through the 2022 primary season, many Democratic lawmakers and party officials are venting their frustrations with President Biden’s struggle to advance the bulk of his agenda, doubting his ability to rescue the party from a predicted midterm trouncing and increasingly viewing him as an anchor that should be cut loose in 2024.
As the challenges facing the nation mount and fatigued base voters show low enthusiasm, Democrats in union meetings, the back rooms of Capitol Hill and party gatherings from coast to coast are quietly worrying about Mr. Biden’s leadership, his age and his capability to take the fight to former President Donald J. Trump a second time.
Interviews with nearly 50 Democratic officials, from county leaders to members of Congress, as well as with disappointed voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020, reveal a party alarmed about Republicans’ rising strength and extraordinarily pessimistic about an immediate path forward.” Read more at New York Times
“For the second time this spring, a New York City institution is facing a backlash over a conservative Jewish conference, long in the planning, because of one of its featured speakers: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
In May, the Museum of Jewish Heritage backed out of a tentative rental agreement to host the event. Now, Chelsea Piers, a recreation complex with a large event space at its Manhattan location and which agreed to host the conference this weekend, is being widely criticized by elected officials and activist groups who say that Mr. DeSantis should not speak at a site that has played an important role in New York’s L.G.B.T.Q. history.
Earlier this year, Mr. DeSantis signed legislation that prohibited classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation for some age groups in Florida schools, known by opponents as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.’
The event, the Jewish Leadership Conference, was organized by the Tikvah Fund, a conservative Jewish organization, which said it invited Mr. DeSantis to deliver a speech about the vibrancy of Jewish life in Florida.
But when the Museum of Jewish Heritage learned of Mr. DeSantis’s participation, its leadership pulled out of the event, telling Tikvah that the legislation was not in line with its values of inclusivity.
Tikvah then arranged to hold the conference at Chelsea Piers, and publicly accused the museum of engaging in cancel culture in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece. Officials at the sports complex were not aware of the dispute with the museum before that essay was published on May 5, a spokesman said.
Now, facing the threat of protests and boycotts, the recreation complex finds itself at the center of a pitched dispute that touches on issues of identity, inclusivity, religion and free speech. And it has left Chelsea Piers in a quandary that is in many ways emblematic of the tense — and intensely political — national conversation around whether people with views that some consider abhorrent or dangerous should be given a platform.
“The bottom line is Chelsea Piers is providing a venue to propagate hate toward the L.G.B.T.Q. community and that is unacceptable on many levels, including that it is Pride and that it is in Chelsea, the heart of the community,” said State Senator Brad Hoylman, the Manhattan Democrat who represents the area. He has helped lead calls for Chelsea Piers to cancel the event, which will also feature speeches by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ron Dermer, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States.” Read more at New York Times
“PARIS (AP) — French voters are choosing lawmakers in a parliamentary election Sunday as President Emmanuel Macron seeks to secure his majority while under growing threat from a leftist coalition.
More than 6,000 candidates, ranging in age from 18 to 92, are running for 577 seats in the National Assembly in the first round of the election. Those who receive the most votes will advance to the decisive second round on June 19.
While candidates have sought to address consumer concerns about inflation, which was a key campaign issue, voter enthusiasm has been generally low. That was reflected in Sunday’s early turnout figures, which showed just 18% of France’s 48.7 million voters had cast ballots by noon.
Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who hopes the election may vault him to the prime minister’s post, was among only a trickle of voters as he cast his ballot in a diverse neighborhood of Marseille, a southern port city.” Read more at AP News
Mahnaz Safi and Safi Rauf at JFK Airport. Photo courtesy Safi Rauf
“An Afghan American freed in April after being detained by the Taliban used his connections to help secure the release this week of another American — a woman held in northern Afghanistan, Axios national security reporter Zachary Basu has learned.
Why it matters: The State Department, which has yet to recognize the Taliban government, didn't engage in negotiations to free 33-year-old Mahnaz Safi.
Her U.S. family reached out to Safi Rauf, co-founder of Human First Coalition, after reading Axios' account of his own months-long detention in Taliban custody.
Rauf, a former Afghan refugee and U.S. Navy reservist who helped evacuate thousands of at-risk Afghans during the fall of Kabul, arrived at JFK Airport with Safi on Thursday.
What's next: Hostage-taking is one of the top issues that has prevented the U.S. from recognizing the Taliban as Afghanistan's legitimate government — as well as attacks on women's rights and providing safe haven to terrorist organizations.
Rauf plans to continue his work providing humanitarian aid and helping evacuate at-risk civilians in Afghanistan. But he has urged the U.S. government to engage in diplomacy with the Taliban — like the two parties did to secure his freedom.” Read more at Axios
“VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly behind the scenes to save lives. A new book, citing recently opened Vatican archives, suggests the lives the Vatican worked hardest to save were Jews who had converted to Catholicism or were children of Catholic-Jewish ‘mixed marriages.’
Documents attesting to frantic searches for baptismal certificates, lists of names of converts handed over by the Vatican to the German ambassador and heartfelt pleas from Catholics for the pope to find relatives of Jewish descent are contained in David Kertzer’s ‘The Pope at War,’ being published Tuesday in the United States.
The book follows on the heels of Kertzer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘The Pope and Mussolini,’ about Pius’ predecessor, Pius XI. It uses the millions of recently released documents from the Vatican archives as well as the state archives of Italy, France, Germany, the U.S., and Britain to craft a history of World War II through the prism of the Pius XII papacy and its extensive diplomatic network with both Axis and Allied nations.
The 484-page book, and its nearly 100 pages of endnotes, portrays a timid pontiff who wasn’t driven by antisemitism, but rather a conviction that Vatican neutrality was the best and only way to protect the interests of the Catholic Church as the war raged on.
Kertzer, a professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown University, suggests Pius’ primary motivation was fear: fear for the church and Catholics in German-occupied territories if, as he believed until the very end, the Axis won; and fear of atheist Communism spreading across Christian Europe if the Axis lost.
To assuage that fear, Kertzer writes, Pius charted a paralyzingly cautious course to avoid conflict at all costs with the Nazis. Direct orders went to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano not to write about German atrocities — and to ensure seamless cooperation with the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in the Vatican’s backyard.
That meant never saying a word in public to explicitly denounce SS massacres, even when Jews were being rounded up right outside the Vatican walls, as they were on Oct. 16, 1943, and put on trains bound for Auschwitz.
Kertzer concludes that Pius was no “Hitler’s Pope” — the provocative title of the last Pius-era blockbuster by John Cornwell. But neither was he the champion of Jews that Pius’ supporters contend.” Read more at AP News
“ST. ALBANS, England (AP) — Former Masters champion Charl Schwartzel banked $4.75 million on Saturday by winning the richest tournament in golf history, while the event’s Saudi backers faced renewed backlash after a 9/11 victims’ group called for American players to withdraw from the rebel series.
Schwartzel held on for a one-shot victory at the inaugural LIV Golf event outside London to secure the $4 million prize for the individual victory — along with another $750,000 from his share of the $3 million purse earned by his four-man Stinger team for topping the team rankings.
Schwartzel collected more prize money from winning the three-day, 54-hole event than he had from the last four years combined. Not that it could match the sense of sporting achievement that he felt after his win at Augusta National in 2011.
‘Money is one thing but there you’re playing for prestige, history,’ he said. ‘Winning a major will always top anything you do.’
This hefty pay check has come at a cost to Schwartzel’s career status, having resigned his membership of the PGA Tour to play on the unsanctioned series without a waiver.
‘Never in my wildest dreams did I think we could play for that much money in golf,’ Schwartzel, who had not won a PGA or European tour event since 2016, told the crowd.
Pressed in the news conference, he dismissed criticism of the windfall coming from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
‘Where the money comes from is not something ... that I’ve ever looked at playing in my 20 years career,’ the South African said. ‘I think if I start digging everywhere where we played, you could find fault in anything.’
Fellow South African Hennie Du Plessis, who was selected for Stinger by team captain Louis Oosthuizen in the draft, earned $2.875 million by finishing second at Centurion Club, located between Hemel Hempstead and St. Albans.
Schwartzel entered the final day with a three-shot lead and did just enough to hold off Du Plessis despite finishing with a 2-over 72 for a 7-under total of 203.
It is the first of eight events in the first year of LIV Golf, which began against the backdrop of the PGA Tour banning players who signed up. The European tour has yet to comment on any sanctions for players who jumped to the series without its approval.
Twenty players have now defected from the PGA Tour, with Patrick Reed the latest former Masters champion confirmed on Saturday as signing up to LIV Golf as the final round was being completed.
However, the lucrative rewards for joining the Public Investment Fund-backed series have not been enough to entice any players ranked in the world’s top 10.
Reed, who has won almost $37 million in a decade on the PGA Tour, is ranked 36th. The 31-year-old American’s only major win was the 2018 Masters.
Having appeared at three Ryder Cups, where he has been one of the brashest characters on the American team, Reed’s decision could see him ineligible for selection in the future.
Reed said he would make his debut on the second stop of the LIV Golf series in Portland, Oregon, on June 30-July 2.” Read more at AP News
“The ‘Riders Up’ call has been given. "New York, New York" has been sung. And the 154th running of the Belmont Stakes is now in the books.
Mo Donegal won the 2022 Belmont Stakes, the oldest and longest Triple Crown race, in front of about 46,000 people on a 73-degree, cloudy Saturday in Elmont, New York. Mo Donegal entered the eight-horse field as the frontrunner with 5-2 odds, followed by We the People (4-1) and Rich Strike (4-1).
The closer rallied as the field rounded the turn and took charge down the stretch, rolling to an impressive victory over the filly Nest, as trainer Todd Pletcher swept the top two spots. The Uncle Mo colt, ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr., was able to get to the front quickly and win by three lengths, covering the 1½-mile distance in 2:28.28.” Read more at USA Today
“A man went to rescue a kitten on a Louisiana backroad — then 12 more came bounding out of the grass.” Read more at NPR