The Full Belmonte, 6/25/2023
June 25, 2023
Good morning. We’re covering the latest news from Russia, Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial and a Kylie Minogue single.
Wagner mercenaries leaving Rostov-on-Don, Russia, yesterday.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Back from the brink
“Vladimir Putin has apparently survived the boldest challenge to his 23-year autocratic rule in Russia.
The Russian mercenaries who appeared to be mounting a coup attempt stopped their advance on Moscow, and Putin’s government announced that their leader — Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, a private military company — would flee to Belarus in exchange for amnesty. The Wagner troops who participated in the uprising would also receive amnesty, and other Wagner troops would be given the option of joining the Russian military or demobilizing, a Kremlin spokesman said.
The deal defused a crisis that seemed to verge on civil war over the past two days, and it appeared to be a major short-term victory for Putin. Notably, many Russian political leaders both in Moscow and in regional governments had proclaimed their loyalty to him since Prigozhin intensified his criticism of the Ukraine invasion this weekend and went so far as to take over a Russian military headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don. His troops advanced hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around, as this map shows:
By New York Times staff
Prigozhin’s actions were a shocking rebellion — and the absence of punishment for him seemed to be a potential sign of weakness for Putin. He evidently lacks the military strength or political consensus to arrest somebody who started an armed mutiny against him.
The Wall Street Journal described this weekend’s events as the gravest threat to Putin’s rule since he took over in 2000. Prigozhin ‘openly says what a lot of other people are thinking,’ Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who has served in the U.S. government, told The Journal.
The Economist magazine wrote: ‘Putin has shown he can no longer maintain order among his warlords. He has been greatly weakened by the challenge — and in his world weakness tends to lead to further instability.’
And my colleague Peter Baker wrote that the uprising ‘suggested that Mr. Putin’s hold on power is more tenuous than at any time since he took office more than two decades ago.’ Another Times story simply said, ‘Russians on Sunday confronted a changed country.’” [New York Times]
Bridge collapse: Parts of train carrying hazardous materials fall into Yellowstone River
Matthew Brown
Associated Press
“COLUMBUS, Mont. — A bridge that crosses Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed early Saturday morning, causing portions of a freight train carrying hazardous materials to plunge into the flooded river below, officials said.
The train cars were carrying asphalt and sulfur, said David Stamey, Stillwater County's chief of emergency services.
Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger. An Associated Press reporter witnessed a yellow liquid pouring out of tank cars.
However, Stamey said there was no immediate danger for the crews working at the site, and the hazardous material was being diluted by the swollen river.
The train crew was safe and no injuries were reported after the bridge collapse, according to a statement from Andy Garland, spokesman for the Montana Rail Link….
The cause of the collapse is under investigation, he said.
The site is in a sparsely populated area in the Yellowstone River Valley. It about 110 miles northeast of Yellowstone National Park.
The Montana Disaster Emergency Services has been notified. Federal Railroad Administrators officials were at the scene.
The river was swollen with recent heavy rains although it is unclear whether that contributed to the bridge collapse.
Kelly Hitchcock of the Columbus Water Users shut off the flow of river water into an irrigation ditch downstream from the collapsed bridge to prevent contents from the tank cars from reaching nearby farmland.
Hitchcock said the Stillwater County Sheriff's Office called the group Saturday morning to warn it about the collapse.
The Yellowstone saw record flooding in 2022 that caused extensive damage to Yellowstone National Park and adjacent towns in Montana.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that sulfur is a common element used as a fertilizer as well as an insecticide, fungicide and rodenticide.” [USA Today]
House G.O.P. Uses Spending Bills to Pick Partisan Policy Fights
Republicans are tucking dozens of policy mandates into government funding bills, in an effort to use their majority to force politically charged votes.
Reporting from Capitol Hill
June 23, 2023
“American military installations would be explicitly banned from having drag queen story hours for children.
Women would have less access to mail-ordered abortion medication.
The congressional office in charge of diversity and inclusion would be shuttered, and federal agencies would be barred from promoting critical race theory.
House Republicans have begun loading up government spending bills with partisan policy mandates aimed at amplifying political battles on social issues, setting up clashes with the Democratic-controlled Senate to go along with the funding disputes already looming that could result in a government shutdown this fall.
The two chambers already were on a collision course on dollars and cents, with Republicans, bowing to their hard-right members, insisting on lower funding levels than the two parties agreed to in a bipartisan deal to suspend the debt limit. Now, in another nod to the demands of the far right, Republicans on the Appropriations Committee are using the spending bills to pick fights on a litany of policy issues that appeal to their base….” Read more at New York Times
'A vital role:' Donald Trump endorses the idea of national abortion restrictions
David Jackson
USA TODAY
“WASHINGTON - Before an adoring crowd of religious conservatives, Donald Trump marked the one-year anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade by adopting new language and endorsing the idea of national abortion restrictions.
Trump, who has previously discussed abortion as more of a state issue, told the cheering members of the Faith and Freedom Coalition ‘I will fight for you like no president ever’ on the abortion issue.
He did not endorse any specific anti-abortion legislation or time limits in his nearly 90-minute speech to members of the coalition in D.C. but did say ‘there of course remains a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.’
The former president and front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination also attacked prosecutors who have indicted him, threatened China, and avoided talking about an armed insurrection in Russia.
Some campaign opponents, including his former vice president Mike Pence, have questioned Trump's commitment to fighting abortion, noting that the former president has blamed the issue for Republican defeats in last year's congressional elections.
Democrats welcomed Trump's endorsement of federal abortion legislation. They agreed that the issue hurt GOP candidates last year and will hurt them again in 2024.
In a statement, the Democratic National Committee said Trump is changing his abortion views under pressure from other Republican candidates, and they all ‘won’t rest until every woman in this country is stripped of their reproductive freedom.’….” Read more at USA Today
THE WEEK AHEAD
What to Watch For
“Guatemala and Greece hold elections today.
The Supreme Court will issue rulings on Tuesday and likely other days this week. Major opinions are expected on college admissions, student loans and other issues.
Walt Nauta, the aide charged alongside Trump in his classified documents case, will be arraigned on Tuesday.
The Screen Actors Guild could go on strike if no deal is reached by midnight Friday.
The Tour de France, cycling’s premier annual race, begins on Saturday.” [New York Times]
Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings
Questions about a widely cited paper are the latest to be raised about methods used in behavioral research.
June 24, 2023
“Over the past two decades, dozens of behavioral scientists have risen to prominence pointing out the power of small interventions to improve well-being.
The scientists said they had found that automatically enrolling people in organ donor programs would lead to higher rates of donation, and that moving healthy foods like fruit closer to the front of a buffet line would result in healthier eating.
Many of these findings have attracted skepticism as other scholars showed that their effects were smaller than initially claimed, or that they had little impact at all. But in recent days, the field may have sustained its most serious blow yet: accusations that a prominent behavioral scientist fabricated results in multiple studies, including at least one purporting to show how to elicit honest behavior.
The scholar, Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, has been a co-author of dozens of papers in peer-reviewed journals on such topics as how rituals like silently counting to 10 before deciding what to eat can increase the likelihood of choosing healthier food, and how networking can make professionals feel dirty….” Read more at New York Times
”Lives Lived: H. Lee Sarokin, a federal judge in Newark, freed the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter from prison, overturning a murder conviction that the judge said had been based on “an appeal to racism rather than reason.” Sarokin died at 94.” [New York Times]