The Full Belmonte, 8/13/2022
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“Friday, the House passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate, health, and tax package, ending over a year of negotiations on President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.” [Vox] Read more at Reuters / By David Morgan, Moira Warburton, and Rose Horowitch
“House Democrats advanced the IRA without any GOP support; every Democrat voted for the bill.” [Vox] Read more at The Hill / Mychael Schnell
“The bill pumps over $370 billion into clean energy and climate initiatives; it also allows Medicare to negotiate the cost of some drug costs, among other provisions.” [Vox] Read more at New York Times / Emily Cochrane
“It’s paid for mainly through government savings on health care, raising taxes on corporations, and beefing up IRS enforcement.” [Vox] Read more at Associated Press / Alan Fram
“Democrats say the legislation will help American families by lowering energy and health care costs. Still, analysts say the impact won’t be felt right away.” [Vox] Read more at NPR / Juliana Kim
Climate and Tax Bill Rewrites Embattled Black Farmer Relief Program
To circumvent legal objections, the new law will provide aid to farmers who have faced discrimination, regardless of their race.
“WASHINGTON — A $4 billion program to help Black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers that never got off the ground last year amid legal objections will be replaced with a plan to make relief funds available to farmers who have faced discrimination.
The changes, which are tucked into the climate and tax legislation that is known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, are drawing backlash from the farmers whom the original debt relief program, part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021, was intended to help. The new program is the latest twist in an 18-month stretch that has underscored the challenges facing the Biden administration’s attempts to make racial equity a centerpiece of its economic agenda.
Black farmers have been in limbo for months, not knowing if the debt relief they were promised would be granted. Many invested in new equipment after applying last year for money to help defray their debt. Some received foreclosure notices from the Department of Agriculture this year as the program languished.” Read more at New York Times
“More details are rapidly emerging about the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property this week, including this: It’s suspected that Trump took some of the government’s most secretive information outside the White House.
The Post’s Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Perry Stein and Shane Harris have reported that FBI agents went looking for top-secret nuclear documents thought to be held within Mar-a-Lago for the past year and a half. And then the Wall Street Journal and next The Washington Post reported that an inventory list showed agents recovered 11 sets of classified documents.
Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg News)
Here’s what we know — and, perhaps more importantly, what we don’t know — about all this.
What we know
Trump took official documents out of the White House in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which says needs to be handed over to the government for preservation.
Earlier this year, Trump gave 15 boxes back to the government, including some information marked classified. But the government suspected he had more, and apparently wanted this information back badly enough to search the residence of a former president — the first time in American history. The search warrant they wrote and obtained, first published by the Wall Street Journal, asked for permission to search ‘all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by [the former president] and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored, including all structures or buildings on the estate.’
The nation’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Merrick Garland, personally signed off on the FBI’s request to search Mar-a-Lago. Then the agency presented it to a federal judge, who agreed.
During the search, FBI agents found and took around 20 boxes of items, including photos, handwritten notes and a pardon for Trump ally Roger Stone (a pardon that Trump issued on his way out of office), the Wall Street Journal reported. Some of the information stored at Mar-a-Lago was so secret it’s meant to be reviewed in government-secured facilities, the Journal reported. The Post reported that four sets of documents were marked top secret, the ultimate classification level.
This spring, before the search, the Justice Department went to Mar-a-Lago and told Trump’s lawyers they didn’t think the boxes were secure. Trump lawyers then added a lock. Also, when Trump was in office, his administration was alarmingly casual with top-secret information, former senior officials told The Post.
What we don’t know
What else was in those boxes.
If there were nuclear documents at Mar-a-Lago, what was in them? Was it information about U.S. facilities? Other countries?
We don’t know what, if any, other laws Trump may have broken by taking the information out. Presidents have the authority to declassify whatever they want, but not former presidents.
Whether the Justice Department is planning to file any charges — the Presidential Records Act is rarely enforced — or if it just wanted this information back in its hands. The search warrant raised the question of whether Trump violated laws against hiding or keeping defense-related information.
We don’t know why Trump wanted these documents with him.
It’s still not clear how this is going to play out for Trump politically. Far-right supporters have used this search to criticize or even attack law enforcement. An armed gunman was killed in a shootout after trying to breach an FBI office in Cincinnati on Thursday, and he was a frequent poster in support of Trump on the former president’s social media network. This risks muddying Republicans’ midterm message, which is that it’s Democrats who are weak on crime and Republicans who have law enforcement’s back.” Read more at Washington Post
“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced on Friday that she had filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Merrick Garland as the FBI’s search of the former president’s Florida residence roils Republicans.
Greene’s resolution claims that the attorney general’s ‘personal approval to seek a search warrant for the raid on the home of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, constitutes a blatant attempt to persecute a political opponent.’
The search warrant was approved by a federal judge and was unsealed on Friday after the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys agreed.
The warrant showed that the FBI secured classified materials that were taken to Mar-a-Lago and suggests the former president is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.
Republicans, including Greene, have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of going after Trump for political reasons.” Read more at The Hill
Donald Trump sits a the Resolute Desk on May 1, 2020, in Washington. Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images
“Two mysteries pop out from the reports that, in its search of Mar-a-Lago, the FBI found classified documents about nuclear weapons and signals intelligence. First, precisely what is in these documents? Second, why did Donald Trump pilfer them from the White House when he left office in January?
We may never know the answers. Even if the Justice Department publicly releases the search warrant and an itemized list of the documents it retrieved, items related to national security are likely to be redacted. And as for Trump’s motives, they may be the stuff for psychoanalysts to ascertain.
Still, if, as the New York Times reports, these documents ‘are related to some of the most highly classified programs run by the United States,’ a few guesses can be made.
‘Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons,’ as the Washington Post describes some of the items that FBI agents sought at Mar-a-Lago, could refer to a wide variety of things—from the size of the U.S. arsenal (which many private analysts have calculated) to the nuclear stockpiles of foreign nations (somewhat sensitive) to the design of nuclear weapons, the nature of command-control mechanisms, or ways to neutralize foreign nukes (all of which are highly classified, and justifiably so). As Barack Obama once put it, ‘There’s classified, and there’s classified.’ Documents covering this last group of topics are classified.
Some on Twitter have wondered if Trump might have taken the nuclear codes, but this is not remotely possible. It’s conceivable that he absconded with the ‘biscuit,’ the card containing the launch codes, as a souvenir of his time as commander in chief. Traditionally, a president turns in his card the moment his successor is sworn in, but Trump didn’t attend Joe Biden’s inauguration, so he might have just slipped it in his pocket. Still, if he did pull this stunt, it wouldn’t matter, as the codes are changed when power is transferred. Just past noon on Jan. 20, 2021, Trump’s card, whatever its location, was erased. Nor is there anything on an erased card that a foreign spy or terrorist or anyone else would fine useful, according to a former official who is familiar with the technology.
However, a spy would be very interested in any documents on signals intelligence—which refers to intercepts of foreign communications, the sorts of materials that are considered the ‘crown jewels’ of intelligence collection. Such documents are classified beyond Top Secret. Some are marked SAP, for Special Access Program—documents that only a small number of officials, who are specifically and individually cleared for access to these programs, can see or even know about.
Again, we don’t know—and may never know—precisely what documents Trump took. Are they transcripts of intercepts—conversations that he had with foreign leaders, or that foreign leaders had with their aides or with other foreign leaders? (The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that “information about the ‘President of France’ ” was on the three-page receipt of items taken from the property.) Are they briefing papers on intelligence-gathering sources and methods? Whatever he possessed in this realm, a foreign spy would find such a trove extremely valuable.
A former Trump staffer named Kash Patel has said that Trump declassified a lot of material before leaving office, so his possession of certain documents might not be illegal. He may know something about this. A former intelligence aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, Patel served on Trump’s National Security Council with Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who’d been recruited by Gen. Michael Flynn and who was so extreme in his views that Flynn’s successor, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, fired him. However, in November 2020, after losing the election, Trump appointed Patel acting chief of staff to his newly appointed acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller—and he appointed Cohen-Watnick as undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. More pertinently, earlier in the year, he’d named Cohen-Watnick to chair the Public Interest Declassification Board, which he’d packed with other political allies.
It is not known why Trump took such an interest in the board; most other presidents ignored it and left vacated positions unfilled. Nor is it known how many documents Cohen-Watnick and the others got declassified.
[Read: Who Is the Raid on Mar-a-Lago Really a Win For?]
Whatever Trump’s aims, the attempt was misguided, for several reasons. First, it is illegal to willfully conceal or remove any federal documents, whether or not they are classified. Moreover, anyone found guilty of this crime is subject to a fine and up to three years in prison—and ‘disqualified from holding any office under the United States,’ though some debate whether that particular punishment could be applied to the presidency, qualifications for which are strictly laid out in the Constitution.
Second, a document is not declassified just because the president—or the head of the Public Interest Declassification Board—says it is. It has to go through a formal process, in which the security stamps, tags, or labels are removed. It seems at least some of the documents at Mar-a-Lago did not go through this process; according to the Journal, the FBI removed 11 sets of classified documents, four sets labeled ‘Top Secret,’ one marked ‘Various classified/TS/SCI documents.’
The latter group—whose initials stand for ‘Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information’—probably includes the documents relating to nuclear weapons or signals intelligence. If any of the documents concern atomic weapons design, they can be declassified only by a special panel of the Department of Energy.
It is ironic that so many of his documents are so highly classified. In January 2018, Trump signed a law upgrading the crime of mishandling secret documents from a misdemeanor to a felony. This was clearly a jab at Hillary Clinton, his foe in the 2016 election, who Trump had said should be locked up for her careless handling of classified information as Obama’s secretary of state. (As John Lennon once put it, ‘Instant karma’s gonna get you/ Gonna knock you right on the head.’)
While we’re on the subject, what about Hillary’s email? Of the 30,000 emails that the FBI examined, eight were found to contain Top Secret information. Seven of them were about CIA drone strikes, which had been reported in the newspapers (but were still technically classified). The other one was an account of a telephone conversation with the president of Malawi. (All conversations with foreign leaders are, by definition, Top Secret.) In other words, she revealed nothing remotely about nuclear weapons, signals intelligence, or anything that might have enlightened a foreign spy.” Read more at Slate
“The National Archives and Records Administration issued a statement Friday in an attempt to counter misstatements about former president Barack Obama’s presidential records after several days of misinformation that had been spread by former president Donald Trump and conservative commentators.
Since the FBI search of his Florida home and club this week for classified documents, Trump has asserted in social media posts that Obama ‘kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified’ and that they were ‘taken to Chicago by President Obama.’
In its statement, NARA said that it obtained ‘exclusive legal and physical custody’ of Obama’s records when he left office in 2017. It said that about 30 million pages of unclassified records were transferred to a NARA facility in the Chicago area and that they continue to be maintained ‘exclusively by NARA.’” Read more at Washington Post
Salman Rushdie is attacked onstage in Western New York.
“CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. — Salman Rushdie spent years in hiding after the leadership of Iran called for his death following the publication of his novel ‘The Satanic Verses.’ But in recent years, declaring ‘Oh, I have to live my life,’ he re-entered society, regularly appearing in public around New York City without evident security.
On Friday morning, any sense that threats to his life were a thing of the past was dispelled when an attacker rushed the stage of Chautauqua Institution here in Western New York, where Mr. Rushdie was scheduled to give a talk about the United States as a safe haven for exiled writers. The assailant stabbed Mr. Rushdie, 75, in the abdomen and the neck, the police and witnesses said, straining to continue the attack even as several people held him back.
Local police have reached out to the F.B.I. for help in identifying the suspect’s motives and background, according to a federal law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open investigation.
Ralph Henry Reese, who was onstage with Rushdie to moderate the discussion and received an injury to his face during the attack, was released from a hospital on Friday afternoon. In an emailed statement, he called Rushdie ‘one of the great defenders of freedom of speech and freedom of creative expression,’ then added: ‘The fact that this attack could occur in the United States is indicative of the threats to writers from many governments and from many individuals and organizations.’
Rushdie’s agent, Andrew Wylie, sent an update on his condition shortly before 7 p.m. on Friday, saying Mr. Rushdie was on a ventilator and could not speak. ‘The news is not good,’ he said. ‘Salman will likely lose one eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.’” Read more at New York Times
Author Salman Rushdie is tended to after he was attacked during an onstage event on Friday.
PHOTO: JOSHUA GOODMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ohio Man Was on the F.B.I.’s Radar for Months
Officials said Ricky Shiffer, 42, was killed hours after trying to breach an F.B.I. office. Federal investigators had been looking into his possible involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, two officials said.
“COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man whom the police say they killed hours after he tried to breach the F.B.I.’s Cincinnati office had been on the radar of the federal authorities for months, two law enforcement officials said on Friday.
The officials said federal investigators had been looking into whether the man, Ricky Shiffer, 42, of Columbus, had been involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. They also said the F.B.I. had received a tip about Mr. Shiffer in May that was unrelated to Jan. 6, and agents opened a separate inquiry that included conducting interviews in Florida and Ohio.
The F.B.I. acknowledged in a statement that it had received information about Mr. Shiffer before Thursday, but said that the information ‘did not contain a specific and credible threat.’ The bureau said agents from multiple offices had tried to find and interview him, but had not been successful. A neighbor at an apartment complex in Columbus where Mr. Shiffer lived, who declined to give his name, said federal agents had visited the property a few weeks ago and had asked him questions about Mr. Shiffer, including what time he left home most days and when he returned.” Read more at New York Times
'Kill FBI on sight': Truth Social reveals the final days of the Cincinnati attacker
Will CarlessUSA TODAY
“On Tuesday, the account ‘@rickywshifferjr’ posted a slew of items on Truth Social, the social media site founded by former President Donald Trump.
‘Be ready to open fire tomorrow. Take your weapon to work, have it in the trunk.’
‘Well, I'll be dead-everyone, remember McConnell, Cheney, and Pence are the enemy.’
‘Kill F.B.I. on sight.’
Just one day before the string of posts, FBI agents had conducted a search of Trump's Florida home at Mar-a-Lago.
Less than 48 hours after them, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer was dead.
Shiffer, a 42-year-old from Columbus, arrived at the FBI's Cincinnati field office Thursday morning, police said. He wore body armor, toted a nail gun and an AR-15 rifle, and tried to breach a secure entrance. Then he fled, with police in pursuit, and after a standoff, he was shot and killed.
Even as that police pursuit was beginning, the Ricky Shiffer account issued a new post that read like a farewell: ‘If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I.’
Ricky Shiffer had also been posting to Truth Social prolifically for the week before.
The person behind ‘@rickywshifferjr’ was obsessed with a litany of far-right extremist conspiracy theories: Liberals and Democrats, obsessed with pedophilia. The federal government, poised to confiscate Americans' guns.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed that Shiffer was the holder of the account, which Truth Social disabled without comment after Shiffer was killed. But the posts appear to detail the gunman's exact thought process.
Ricky Shiffer apparently spent nine days total on Truth Social – the last nine days of his life.
And his full posting history, according to a spreadsheet of those posts provided to USA TODAY, offers extraordinary insight into the mind of a domestic terrorist preparing for a violent clash with federal law enforcement.” Read more at USA Today
Detective Expected to Plead Guilty Over Warrant in Breonna Taylor Raid
Kelly Goodlett, who helped apply for a warrant for the fatal raid, would be the first officer convicted in the case.
A memorial to Breonna Taylor at Jefferson Square Park in Louisville, Ky.Credit...Xavier Burrell for The New York Times
“A police detective in Louisville, Ky., is expected to plead guilty to conspiring to mislead a judge in order to obtain a search warrant for Breonna Taylor’s home, a plea that would mark the first conviction of a police officer over the fatal raid more than two years ago.
Federal prosecutors had brought charges against the detective, Kelly Goodlett, and three other officers this month over the nighttime raid in which police officers fatally shot Ms. Taylor, 26, a Black emergency room technician whose death was among several police killings that led to months of protests in 2020.
On Friday, a U.S. magistrate judge set a hearing for Ms. Goodlett to enter a plea on Aug. 22. Ms. Goodlett’s lawyer, Brandon Marshall, told the judge that she would enter a guilty plea at that time, news outlets reported.” Read more at New York Times
FILE - Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore announces his run for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on June 20, 2019, in Montgomery, Ala. A federal jury awarded Republican Moore $8.2 million in damages Friday, Aug. 12, 2022, after finding that a Democratic-aligned super PAC defamed him in an advertisement during the 2017 U.S. Senate race in Alabama. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett, File)
“MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal jury awarded Republican Roy Moore $8.2 million in damages Friday after finding a Democratic-aligned super PAC defamed him in a TV ad recounting sexual misconduct accusations during his failed 2017 U.S. Senate bid in Alabama.
Jurors found the Senate Majority PAC made false and defamatory statements against Moore in one ad that attempted to highlight the accusations against Moore. The verdict, returned by a jury after a brief trial in Anniston, Alabama, was a victory for Moore, who has lost other defamation lawsuits, including one against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
‘We’re very thankful to God for an opportunity to help restore my reputation which was severely damaged by the 2017 election,’ Moore said in a telephone interview.
Ben Stafford, an attorney representing Senate Majority PAC, said in an emailed statement that they believe the ruling would be overturned on appeal.” Read more at AP News
“The leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, said on Friday that the church was under investigation by the Justice Department for sexual abuse and that it would ‘fully and completely cooperate.’
Church leaders said in a statement that multiple branches of the denomination, which includes seminaries and missionary organizations, were under investigation and that the church was continuing to ‘grieve and lament past mistakes.’
In May, leaders of the church published a scathing review that said reports of sexual abuse were suppressed by top church officials for two decades.” Read more at New York Times
“Open House and governor races: A look at Hawaii's primary election
Hawaii residents will head to the polls on Saturday, with contentious Democratic House and governor primaries on the ballot. With a largely tourism-based economy still reeling from the pandemic, a state at the forefront of climate issues like sea levels and some of the highest housing costs in the country, the economy remains a top issue at the minds of voters. With current Governor David Ige term-limited, seven Democrats are vying to become his likely successor. Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz and first district Rep. Ed Case are both up for reelection, though neither face a competitive primary or general election. Hawaii leans strongly Democratic, meaning that once primary elections are settled, those candidates are the likely winners in November against Republican opponents.” Read more at USA Today
“Russia defied growing international pressure to grant United Nations inspectors immediate access to Europe’s largest nuclear plant amid fears of a catastrophe over shelling of the area. Elsewhere in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s forces are alleged to have stolen as much as 200,000 tons of crops from growers. But whatever profit the Kremlin may glean from any ill-gotten grain, it took only one full quarter of war to set Russia’s economy back four years. And while Moscow has sought to push Europe into lifting sanctions by holding its energy hostage, long-term changes to the global supply brought on by Russian aggression are already underway. Mexico, which imports almost all of the natural gas it burns, has laid out a somewhat surprising mission: to become one of the world’s top exporters of the fuel. The country’s physical proximity to booming US reserves positions it well to supply American gas to hungry buyers in Europe and Asia. With US shale in mind, a total of eight liquified natural gas export projects have been proposed south of the border, boasting annual combined capacity of 50.2 million tons. Some of the operations aim to come online as soon as next year.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Ukraine is struggling to pay soldiers as funds from the West are slow to arrive.
Its central bank is printing money for troop salaries and purchases of arms and ammunition, weakening the national currency and pushing up inflation. The situation is raising fears that fragile finances could undermine Kyiv’s ability to sustain its war effort.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON— After four years of President Donald J. Trump’s raging against his intelligence services, posting classified information to Twitter and announcing that he took the word of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia over that of his own spies, perhaps the least surprising thing he did during his final days in office was ship boxes of sensitive material from the White House to his oceanside palace in Florida.
The F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago on Monday was a dramatic coda to years of tumult between Mr. Trump and American intelligence and law enforcement agencies. From Mr. Trump’s frequent rants against a “deep state” bent on undermining his presidency to his cavalier attitude toward highly classified information that he viewed as his personal property and would occasionally use to advance his political agenda, the relationship between the keepers of American secrets and the erratic president they served was the most poisoned of the modern era.
Mr. Trump’s behavior led to such mistrust within intelligence agencies that officials who gave him classified briefings occasionally erred on the side of withholding some sensitive details from him.
It has long been common practice for the C.I.A. not to provide presidents with some of the most sensitive information, such as the names of the agency’s human sources. But Douglas London, who served as a top C.I.A. counterterrorism official during the Trump administration, said that officials were even more cautious about what information they provided Mr. Trump because some saw the president himself as a security risk.
‘We certainly took into account ‘what damage could he do if he blurts this out?’ said Mr. London, who wrote a book about his time in the agency called ‘The Recruiter.’
During an Oval Office meeting with top Russian officials just months into his presidency, Mr. Trump revealed highly classified information about an Islamic State plot that the government of Israel had provided to the United States, which put Israeli sources at risk and angered American intelligence officials. Months later, the C.I.A. decided to pull a highly placed Kremlin agent it had cultivated over years out of Moscow, in part out of concerns that the Trump White House was a leaky ship.
In August 2019, Mr. Trump received a briefing about an explosion at a space launch facility in Iran. He was so taken by a classified satellite photo of the explosion that he wanted to post it on Twitter immediately. Aides pushed back, saying that making the high resolution photo public could give adversaries insight into America’s sophisticated surveillance capabilities.
He posted the photo anyway, adding a message that the United States had no role in the explosion but wished Iran ‘best wishes and good luck’ in discovering what caused it. As he told one American official about his decision: ‘I have declassification authority. I can do anything I want.’
Two years earlier, Mr. Trump used Twitter to defend himself against media reports that he had ended a C.I.A. program to arm Syrian rebels — effectively disclosing a classified program to what were then his more than 33 million Twitter followers.
If there is not one origin story that explains Mr. Trump’s antipathy toward spy agencies, the 2017 American intelligence assessment about the Kremlin’s efforts to sabotage the 2016 presidential election — and Russia’s preference for Mr. Trump — played perhaps the biggest role. Mr. Trump saw the document as an insult, written by his ‘deep state’ enemies to challenge the legitimacy of his election and his presidency.
Mr. Trump’s efforts to undermine the assessment became a motif in the early years of his presidency, culminating in a July 2018 summit in Helsinki with Mr. Putin. During a joint news conference, Mr. Putin denied that Russia had any role in election sabotage, and Mr. Trump came to his defense. ‘They think it’s Russia,’ Mr. Trump said, speaking of American intelligence officials and adding, ‘I don’t see any reason it would be.’
Mr. Trump often took aim at intelligence officials for public statements he thought undermined his foreign policy goals. In January 2019, top officials testified to Congress that the Islamic State remained a persistent threat, that North Korea would still pursue nuclear weapons and that Iran showed no signs of actively trying to build a bomb — essentially contradicting things the president had said publicly. Mr. Trump lashed out, saying on Twitter that ‘The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!’
‘Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!’ he wrote.
Mr. Trump was hardly the first American president to view his own intelligence services as enemy territory. In 1973, Richard M. Nixon fired Richard Helms, his spy chief, after he refused to go along with the Watergate cover-up, and installed James Schlesinger in the job with the mission of bringing the C.I.A. in line.
Speaking with a group of senior analysts on his first day, Mr. Schlesinger made a lewd comment about what the C.I.A. had been doing to Mr. Nixon, and demanded that it stop.” Read more at New York Times
“The Orlando Museum of Art, where the F.B.I. seized 25 paintings attributed to Jean-Michel Basquiat, has canceled three shows and may lose donors.” Read more at New York Times
Fernando Tatis Jr. was suspended on Friday, when the Padres were in Washington to play the Nationals. (Ashley Landis/AP Photo)
“San Diego Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug and was suspended 80 games, a punishment that ends his 2022 season, Major League Baseball announced Friday.
In a statement, the 23-year-old shortstop said he inadvertently treated ringworm with a medication that contained the banned substance Clostebol, and that after initially appealing the ruling, he decided to drop the appeal.
‘I should have used the resources available to me to ensure that no banned substances were in what I took. I failed to do so,’ Tatis said in his statement. ‘I have no excuse for my error, and I would never do anything to cheat or disrespect this game I love.’
Tatis had yet to appear in a game this season because of a wrist injury he suffered in an offseason motorcycle accident. He will be ineligible to play for the Padres should they make the postseason. San Diego is 16 games back of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West, but would own the newly created third NL wild card spot if the season ended Friday.” Read more at Washington Post
Aaron Judge.Desiree Rios/The New York Times
“New York Yankees vs. Boston Red Sox, M.L.B.: Aaron Judge is having the season of his life. Heading into this series with the Red Sox, Judge had 45 home runs. That’s not just the most in the league — it’s also on pace to break the Yankees’ single-season record of 61, set by Roger Maris in 1961. ‘It doesn’t cease to amaze, the season he’s putting together,’ Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said recently.” Read more at New York Times
“WNBA season wraps up and two playoff spots are still up for grabs
All 12 teams will be in action as the 2022 WNBA regular season comes to a close Sunday and there will be some drama as two postseason spots remain up for grabs. The Phoenix Mercury and the New York Liberty (both 15-20) currently hold the seventh and eighth seeds while the Minnesota Lynx and the Atlanta Dream (both 14-21) are one game behind. The Liberty and the Dream will face off in New York Sunday (2 p.m. ET, ESPN3) while the Mercury and the Lynx have tougher matchups. The Mercury will host the No. 2 seeded Chicago Sky (5 p.m. ET, Amazon Prime) and the Lynx have to travel east to play the No. 3 seeded Connecticut Sun (1 p.m. ET, ABC). The 25-10 Las Vegas Aces, led by stars Kelsey Plum and A'Ja Wilson and coached by Becky Hammon, can clinch the WNBA's No. 1 seed with a home win over the Seattle Storm Sunday (3 p.m. ET, ABC) or a loss by the Sky. If the Lynx are unable to make the playoffs, the career of superstar Sylvia Fowles will come to an end as she plans to retire after dominant 15 years in the league.” Read more at USA Today
Silver-Haired and Shameless About Perks: Retirees Take Part-Time Work in the Travel Industry
Spend 15 hours a week loading baggage at the airport or passing out towels at the pool, and you can see Europe for a fraction of the usual cost.
Joey Boyd-Scott, left, and her wife, Maria, both have part-time travel jobs. The ongoing labor shortage is pushing the sector to consider senior citizens for positions that are far from senior.Credit...Beth Coller for The New York Times
“Maria Boyd-Scott turned 60 last month, and she and her wife, Joey Boyd-Scott, 68, celebrated the milestone in style: They flew business class to Amsterdam, staying at a Hilton for two nights, and then headed to France for two nights at the Waldorf Astoria Versailles.
The damage to their wallets? Thanks to their part-time travel jobs, their flights cost $462 total — they paid only the taxes. The Hilton in Amsterdam was $55 a night and the five-star hotel in France was $75 a night. The Boyd-Scotts estimate the trip could have cost upward of $6,000.
The couple are part of a growing class of auxiliary travel workers who are stepping in as airlines and hotels, already struggling with thinned ranks after mass layoffs in 2020, now contend with the great resignation of employees. Many of these new workers are seasoned, silver-haired and shameless about the fact that they’re in it for the perks.” Read more at New York Times