The Full Belmonte, 8/31/2022
Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests
The filing by the Justice Department paints the clearest picture to date of its efforts to retrieve documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
The Justice Department included a photo of documents seized from former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home in its court filing.Credit...Department of Justice
“WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday.
The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8.
Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks inside Mr. Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.
That was twice the number of classified documents the former president’s lawyers turned over voluntarily while swearing an oath that they had returned all the material demanded by the government.
The investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of government documents began as a relatively straightforward attempt to recover materials that officials with the National Archives had spent much of 2021 trying to retrieve. The filing on Tuesday made clear that prosecutors are now unmistakably focused on the possibility that Mr. Trump and those around him took criminal steps to obstruct their investigation.
Investigators developed evidence that ‘government records were likely concealed and removed’ from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department sent Mr. Trump’s office a subpoena for any remaining documents with classified markings. That led prosecutors to conclude that ‘efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,’ the government filing said.
The filing included one striking visual aid — a photograph of at least five yellow folders recovered from Mr. Trump’s resort and residence marked ‘Top Secret’ and another red one labeled ‘Secret.’
But department officials are not expected to file charges imminently, if they ever do. And the specific contents of the materials the government recovered in the search remain unclear — as does what risk to national security Mr. Trump’s decision to retain the materials posed.
While the filing provided important new information about the timeline of the investigation, much of the information was mentioned, in less detail, in the affidavit used to obtain the warrant, which a federal magistrate judge unsealed last week.
Among the most crucial disclosures were those concerning the actions of Mr. Trump’s legal team and whether they had misled Justice Department officials and the F.B.I.
The Justice Department effort began in May, after the F.B.I. examined 15 boxes of documents the National Archives had previously retrieved from Mar-a-Lago after months of asking Mr. Trump’s representatives to return missing records. The bureau found 184 classified documents in that initial batch.
On May 11, department lawyers obtained a subpoena to retrieve all materials marked as classified that were not turned over by the former president.
On June 3, his team presented F.B.I. agents with 38 additional documents with classified markings, including 17 labeled top secret.
But one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers present during that visit ‘explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained,’ the filing said.
Mr. Trump’s team also provided the department’s national security division with a written statement on behalf of his office by one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers who was serving as the formal ‘custodian’ of the files. While that person’s name has been redacted in government filings, multiple people have identified her as Christina Bobb.
Ms. Bobb’s statement was attached to the department’s filing on Tuesday. In it, the lawyer wrote that ‘based upon the information that has been provided to me,’ there had been a ‘diligent’ search and all documents responsive to the subpoena were being returned.
But law enforcement officials soon developed evidence that statement was untrue.
The F.B.I. ‘uncovered multiple sources of evidence indicating that the response to the May 11 grand jury subpoena was incomplete and that classified documents remained at the premises, notwithstanding the sworn certification made to the government on June 3,’ the Justice Department filing said. ‘In particular, the government developed evidence that a search limited to the storage room would not have uncovered all the classified documents at the premises.’
The Justice Department obtained at least one more subpoena, for security camera footage from inside Mar-a-Lago, and the search warrant affidavit revealed that it had been working with multiple civilian witnesses. The result was the search warrant carried out on Aug. 8.
The filing noted that ‘the F.B.I., in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform,’ a fact that it said ‘calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.’
Since the search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump has claimed he had declassified all of the documents there, and his request for the appointment of an independent arbiter known as a special master to review the trove of materials seized by the F.B.I. centered on a claim that some of the documents were protected by executive privilege. But prosecutors rejected that argument and said Mr. Trump’s lawyers ‘never asserted that the former president had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege.’
Tuesday’s filing, which was released minutes before a midnight deadline imposed by a federal judge, accompanied a sealed list of the documents, many of them highly classified, that Mr. Trump retained at Mar-a-Lago. That inventory, filed earlier in the day, is likely to be far more detailed than the brief list included in the search warrant unsealed at the request of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
The department, inundated by a torrent of misinformation and vitriol unleashed on federal law enforcement officials by Mr. Trump and his supporters, has been using legal filings, rather than social media or public comments, to disclose the evidence and legal reasoning behind its actions. On Monday, prosecutors sought permission to extend the length of their response beyond the limit normally set by the federal court, a request that was quickly granted.
Mr. Trump’s legal team, which has at times been slow to respond to the government’s actions since the search, waited weeks to even file its request for a special master, which was intended to halt the examination of the documents. The delay allowed the government to complete its initial assessment of the material — potentially rendering the request moot.
On Tuesday, the Justice Department argued that a special master was ‘unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests.’
It also argued that the judge lacked jurisdiction over the matter and that Mr. Trump ‘lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to presidential records because those records do not belong to him.’
Over the years, Mr. Trump has frequently taken legal steps simply to delay and disrupt efforts by opponents. If the court in this case were to temporarily block investigators’ access to the evidence taken in the search, it could hinder the separate effort to determine the national security risks posed by his possession of the documents, though it would not affect the assessment of the documents that Mr. Trump turned over in January and June.
The Trump appointee hearing the request, Judge Aileen M. Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, has signaled that she was inclined to appoint a special master but wanted to first hear from the Justice Department.
On Monday, the government said it had set aside materials that could potentially be covered by attorney-client privilege, although Mr. Trump’s lawsuit had raised executive privilege, a different issue. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla.
The department’s decision to use a court filing as a vehicle to provide a more extensive explanation of the government’s actions — and to counter Mr. Trump’s legal claims — evolved over the last few days, and lawyers wrangled over small details until moments before it was filed, according to people familiar with the situation.
Mr. Garland, they said, remains deeply wary of speaking too much, cautioned by the example of James B. Comey, the former director of the F.B.I. whose high-profile pronouncements during investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton were regarded as an egregious violation of departmental policy norms.
But after the Mar-a-Lago search, the department’s senior leaders quickly realized that Mr. Trump would otherwise seize on their silence with distorted claims.
So they have chosen the traditional path, using public filings to make their case — leavening the dense legal passages with explanations aimed at being more accessible to the public, officials said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Garland took another step geared at emphasizing his impartiality and fairness, imposing new restrictions on partisan activity by political appointees at the Justice Department, a policy change that comes before the midterm elections. The new rules prohibit employees who are appointed to serve for the duration of a presidential administration from attending rallies for candidates or fund-raising events, even as passive observers.
Mr. Trump, for his part, has dismissed concerns about the performance of his legal team, and told associates that he will ultimately prevail, just as he ‘won’ by avoiding conviction in his two impeachment trials and in avoiding being charged in the investigation into his ties with Russia conducted by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.
On Tuesday, hours before the government filed its paperwork, Mr. Trump added a member to his legal team to focus on the trouble brewing in Florida, Christopher M. Kise, the state’s former solicitor general and an associate of Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to two people familiar with the situation.” Read more at New York Times
Biden blasts ‘MAGA Republicans,’ ‘sickening’ attacks on FBI
“WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday railed against the ‘MAGA Republicans in Congress’ who have refused to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and now are targeting the FBI as he tried to portray Democrats as the true pro-law enforcement party ahead of the November midterms.
In remarks initially billed as a crime-prevention speech, Biden seized on comments from allies of former President Donald Trump who have called for stripping funding from the FBI since it executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida residence. Biden’s remarks were the first substantive defense he has made of the FBI since the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago, which triggered not just withering criticism of the agency but threats of violence against its employees.
‘It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement and their families, for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,’ Biden said before a crowd of more than 500 at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. ‘I’m opposed to defunding the police; I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.’
It was a notably different tack for Biden, who has steered clear of extensively commenting on any element of the Justice Department’s investigation since federal agents conducted the search at Trump’s estate. Biden also appeared to call out — without naming him — recent comments from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who warned of ‘riots in the streets’ should Trump ultimately face prosecution.
‘The idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens there’ll be blood on the street’?’ Biden said. ‘Where the hell are we?’
The speech Tuesday continued Biden’s aggressive rhetoric against the GOP ahead of the midterms, as Democrats enjoy a slightly brighter political environment buoyed by significant legislative accomplishments and a presidential approval rating that has trended slightly upward. During a political rally in the Washington suburbs last week, Biden likened Republican ideology to ‘semi-fascism.’ He is set to deliver a democracy-focused speech on Thursday in Philadelphia that the White House has said ‘will make clear’ who is fighting for democratic values.” Read more at AP News
Mikhail Gorbachev developed policies he hoped would revive Russia’s sluggish 1980s economy and loosen some civil curbs.
PHOTO: GEORGES DE KEERLE/GETTY IMAGES
Mikhail Gorbachev died at 91.
“The Soviet Union’s eighth and final leader was the architect of ‘perestroika’ and ‘glasnost’—restructuring and openness—domestic policies he hoped would breathe new life into the Communist country’s sluggish 1980s economy, remake the political system and loosen some civil restrictions at a time of warming relations with the West. That led to the unraveling of decades-old Communist regimes across the Eastern bloc, the reunification of Germany and improved ties with the U.S. Gorbachev was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize. Such warm sentiments weren’t felt at home, however, where many blamed him for economic hardship and the loss of the U.S.S.R.’s status as a superpower.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Mikhail Gorbachev, who enabled the Cold War to come to a peaceful end during his astonishing tenure as the leader of the Soviet Union, has died. He was 91.
Coming to power after a dispiriting succession of elderly, hardline Soviet leaders, Gorbachev brought a fresh approach to both internal and international politics. He shook up a nation that had never fulfilled most of its promises to its people and created a seismic shift in international relations, altering a world that been locked in a nuclear stare-down for four decades.
He introduced ‘glasnost’ (openness) and ‘perestroika’ (restructuring) into the Soviet Union, rocking a stagnant and fearful society to its core. Then, he made it clear that the Soviets would not keep the nations of Eastern Europe under their grip, setting off a chain of events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and of communist regimes through the region. Finally, much more awkwardly, he oversaw the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself, as it split into 15 nations.
‘We are now living in a new world,’ he said as he stepped down in December 1991. ‘An end has been put to the Cold War and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes, and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed.’
One can debate, as historians and politicians have in the ensuing decades, how much of the change was Gorbachev’s doing and how much was forced on him by the tide of history, as well as leaders like Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, and President Ronald Reagan. Certainly, the events of the 1980s — including the humiliating defeat in Afghanistan — had already made it harder for any Soviet leader to continue the nation on its existing path.
But there’s no doubt Gorbachev demonstrated a willingness to accept a much-different Soviet society and a much-different world order, even at the cost of his nation’s power and prestige. Unlike his predecessors, Gorbachev did not cling to a failed dream.
‘The selection of Gorbachev was arguably the most revolutionary act in the history of the party since 1917,’ wrote historian Orlando Figes in ‘Revolutionary Russia 1891-1991.’ ‘Had the Politburo known where he would lead the party in the next few years, it would never have allowed him to become its General Secretary.’
Despite their initial mistrust, Reagan and Gorbachev came to be partners in arms control, reversing course on a decades-long arms race. Those international efforts helped Gorbachev’s popularity overseas, at the expense of his reputation back home.
‘I was politically active at a time when my country and the whole world were ripe for colossal changes,’ he wrote in his book What Is At Stake Now in 2020. ‘We took on the challenges. We made mistakes and misjudged some things. Yet, we initiated changes of historic dimensions, and they were peaceful.’
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, in an agricultural region. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a law degree and then launched a career within the Communist Party, rising fast.
He was heavily influenced by Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Josef Stalin and his efforts to bring the party back to the early days of the revolution, under Vladimir Lenin. Nikolai Bukharin, a victim of Stalin’s purges, was another one of his heroes.
Gorbachev also looked to the outside world for ideas. According to Andrew Burstein’s book ‘Democracy’s Muse,’ Gorbachev said during a 1993 visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Virginia ‘that he had returned often, and at critical times, to a college text he had mastered that laid out Jefferson’s political principles.’
The Soviet leadership saw promise in Gorbachev. ‘The party spotted his talent and clutched him in an embrace,’ wrote Victor Sebestyen in Revolution 1989. ‘The party made him — and he was a true believer.’
Sebestyen said Gorbachev had another valuable trait: ‘Often, people who met Gorbachev came away thinking about him whatever they wanted to believe.’
In 1979, he became a nonvoting member of the Politburo; a year later, Gorbachev was a full member.
In March 1985, Gorbachev ascended to the top spot in the Soviet government, general secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee. The nation was badly in need of vigorous leadership, having buried three aged rulers (Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko) in a span of 2 1/2 years. Its military was bogged down in Afghanistan, its populace was impoverished and oppressed, and much of its leadership thoroughly corrupt.
‘The tragedy of the Stalin era and the farce of the Brezhnev period represented for Gorbachev not the failure of ideology, but rather its perversion,’ wrote David Remnick in ‘Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire.’
Gorbachev was 54, a mere pup compared to his wizened comrades on the Politburo.
‘Many political observers,’ wrote Chris Cviic in the 1986 World Book Year Book, ‘saw the ascension of Gorbachev as an indication the Soviet ruling class no longer could stand the tension and uncertainty of having frail, elderly individuals at the top.’
Gorbachev, as Figes wrote, was the first Soviet leader to have no connection to Stalin’s monstrous crimes; in fact, members of Gorbachev’s family had been victims of Stalin’s purges. ‘He sincerely thought that Lenin’s revolution could be made to work through moral and political renewal,’ Figes wrote.
American leaders were intrigued by the new leader with the port-wine birthmark on his head — but skeptical. ‘He will package the Soviet line better for Western consumption,’ Vice President George H.W. Bush told Reagan, according to Sebestyen’s book.
The Warsaw Pact nations were also wary, particularly when he told them he wanted them to stand on their own feet. In April 1986, Gorbachev’s government was defensive and secretive about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, leading many to assume that everything was the same in Moscow.
But change was in motion.
In January 1987, Gorbachev said he wanted history‘s ‘blank spots’ filled in, including an examination of the nation’s bloody past. ‘History must be seen for what it is,’ he told the Central Committee. Truth replaced propaganda.
‘The return of history,’ Remnick wrote, ‘to personal, intellectual and political life was the start of the great reform of the 20th century and, whether Gorbachev liked it or not, the collapse of the last empire on Earth.’
In February 1988, Gorbachev called for an overhaul of the Soviet political system. Contested elections were held in March 1989, another awkward new wrinkle. ‘In place of the Stalinist model of socialism,’ he told his nation, ‘we are coming to a citizens’ society of free people.’
In the name of perestroika and glasnost, the economy was decentralized. ‘Glasnost has begun to tear the veil that concealed incompetence and a lack of initiative,’ wrote Eric Bourne in the 1988 World Book Year Book. Though the KGB was still watching everyone, society began to open up.
Many of Stalin’s victims posthumously had their good names restored, and dissidents regained their rights, including Nobel laureates Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Some of these former dissidents pushed further than Gorbachev and his fellow reformers were ready to go in changing society. ‘Day by day, the people of the Soviet Union were developing minds of their own,’ Remnick wrote.
Internationally, Gorbachev and Reagan were able to establish a productive rapport, hammering out the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a 1987 agreement that eliminated medium-range nuclear weapons. The superpower treaty led to the scrapping of thousands of missiles and warheads, a first.
‘With patience, determination and commitment, we’ve made this impossible vision a reality,’ Reagan said at the signing, which featured the two leaders joking over a Russian proverb. Western doubters became believers.
‘This changed Soviet line was no ruse to disarm us,’ national security adviser Colin Powell recalled later of the negotiations. ‘This man meant what he said.’
On Feb. 15, 1989, the last Soviet troops left Afghanistan, ending a brutal and expensive 10-year occupation.
Meanwhile, the push for change accelerated across the Warsaw Pact nations. On June 12, 1987, by the Berlin Wall, Reagan memorably urged: ‘Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ But at this point, it was more a matter of Gorbachev declining to hold it up.
Speaking to the United Nations in December 1988, Gorbachev disclosed he was cutting the size of the Soviet military and also intended to pull soldiers and tanks out of Eastern Europe. He also spoke of ‘a truly revolutionary upsurge’ within his country. ‘Under the badge of democratization, restructuring has now encompassed politics, the economy, spiritual life, and ideology,’ Gorbachev told the General Assembly. And he praised Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz.
Writing years later in his book, ‘Learning from Experience,’ Shultz said: ‘For my money, the real news was the clear tone in which he announced, without really saying so, that the Cold War was over.’
It soon became evident that Gorbachev meant what he said — he had no intention of propping up any satellite regimes. That only served to embolden opposition leaders like Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia.
Change came fast. First, Hungary opened its border with Austria in May 1989, then Poland held free elections. Rapid-fire change followed in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and, finally, reluctantly and violently, in Romania. As the world watched and marveled, the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989. (Serving the KGB in East Germany, a young Vladimir Putin was dismayed by the turn of events.)
In the span of a few months, the unthinkable had become reality, democracy had started to emerge in Eastern Europe and the Cold War had essentially ended. There was no reason to think Gorbachev was unhappy about these developments; he was subsequently awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize.
‘The common assumption that the West forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus won the Cold War is wrong,’ wrote former ambassador Jack Matlock Jr. in the Washington Post in 2014. ‘The fact is that the Cold War ended by negotiation to the advantage of both sides.’
In his visits to Eastern Europe, Gorbachev had been widely cheered. He hoped these old allies, once they underwent their own reforms, would embrace his nation as a kindred soul. They did not. ‘Gorbachev failed to see,’ wrote Sebestyen, ‘that the demonstrators were hiding behind him as a way of protesting against their own rulers.’
Amid these startling changes, some in the Soviet Union wanted to turn back the clock. Disgruntled Kremlin bigwigs allied themselves with KGB leaders, top generals, old monarchists and other reactionary elements to undermine Gorbachev. Their plotting then took a sinister turn.
On Aug. 18, 1991, citing unspecified health problems for Gorbachev, Vice President Gennady Yanayev and an emergency committee announced they had assumed power. ‘He grew very tired over these years, and he will need some time to get better,’ Yanayev said of Gorbachev.
It soon became apparent that this was a full-blown coup by remnants of the old power structure. Gorbachev was out of sight, under house arrest at his vacation retreat in the Crimea.
The plotters — whose public face was the consistently inebriated Yanayev — hadn’t counted on widespread public anger fueled by the spirit of glasnost. President Boris Yeltsin led the resistance on Gorbachev’s part in Moscow, and supporters flocked to Yeltsin’s side. The people weren’t willing to accept the old ways.
‘It’s terrible. When I heard the news, I fell on the floor,’ the Associated Press quoted a ‘white-haired old woman with weathered hands’ in Moscow.
Within 72 hours, the coup had collapsed. ‘This group wanted to push the people onto a path which would bring our entire nation to a catastrophe,’ Gorbachev said on his return Aug. 22. But that same week, he resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party, effectively severing it from the government after more than 70 years.
That final split further emboldened those in the republics who wished to break from the Soviet Union, and soon it was 1989 all over again within Soviet borders. This time, Gorbachev wasn’t pleased — he tried to stymie independence movements in the Baltics and elsewhere.
By the end of 1991, it was clear there was no holding everything together — one nation split into 15.
‘At least in public, Gorbachev seemed to have no idea of where events would lead,’ Remnick wrote.
He stepped down Dec. 25, 1991. Gorbachev turned over power — and the Soviet ‘nuclear button’ — to Yeltsin, calling Bush to tell him: ‘Mr. President, you can spend Christmas evening in peace.’
Years later, Gorbachev would describe his actions as regrettable but necessary. He had hoped that all Soviet citizens would freely choose the Soviet way of life, and they had not. ‘We were well on the way to a civil war, and I wanted to avoid that,’ he told the BBC in 2016.
As Figes would later write: ‘He was a political Columbus, setting off to find the promised land, only to discover something else.’
Gorbachev became increasingly unpopular, a scapegoat, as Russia continued to evolve under Yeltsin. The loss of empire was disorienting, and the rise of what came to be called ‘bandit capitalism’ demoralizing. The subsequent expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe left Russians feeling humiliated by the West.
In 1996, Gorbachev ran for president against Yeltsin and others across the political spectrum. In the first round of voting, he finished seventh, drawing less than 1 percent. Periodically, he would attempt a comeback; he never got anywhere.
‘Russians felt they had lost not an empire or an ideology, but the very essence of their identity,’ wrote Shaun Walker in ‘The Long Hangover: Putin's New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.’
In the era of the autocratic Putin, Gorbachev was seen as a weakling.
‘In Russia, I am still accused of having ‘given away’ Eastern Europe,’ Gorbachev wrote in 2020. ‘My response to this is: Who did I give it away to? Poland to the Poles, Hungary to the Hungarians, Czechoslovakia to the Czechs and Slovaks!’
Through it all, he remained a visible and widely respected figure in the West, founding the Gorbachev Foundation in 1992.
German filmmaker Wim Wenders used him in his 1993 film Faraway, So Close, and he appeared in a 1997 Pizza Hut ad with his granddaughter, Anastasia. He spoke at Monticello on the 250th anniversary of Jefferson’s birthday. ‘Freedom is the main idea I learned from Jefferson,’ Gorbachev said.
His hefty memoirs were published by Doubleday in 1996, and in February 2004, he shared a Grammy Award with Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren for a spoken-word recording of Peter and the Wolf for children.
Over the years, he received awards in many nations, including the first Ronald Reagan Freedom Award at the former president’s library in California. In 2004, he attended Reagan’s funeral in Washington.
But the West was kinder to him than his own country.
Meeting him briefly in Russia early in his own historic presidency, President Barack Obama found it sad to see how Gorbachev's nation had discarded him.
‘Seventy-eight years old and still robust with the signature red birthmark splashed across his head,’ Obama wrote in ‘A Promised Land,’ ‘he struck me as a strangely tragic figure. Here was a man who'd once been one of the most powerful people on Earth.’
Obama said he had to cut short their conversation to deliver a speech.
‘Although he said he understood," Obama wrote, "I could tell he was disappointed — a reminder for both of us of the fleeting, fickle nature of public life.’” Read more at POLITICO
U.S. stocks dropped for the third straight day as economic data fanned investors’ fears that the Fed would continue raising interest rates aggressively.
“Each of the major indexes declined. The S&P 500 shed 1%, the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite 1.1% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.8%. Meanwhile, U.S. job openings rose to a seasonally adjusted 11.2 million in July, the Labor Department said. And the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, which measures average home prices in major metropolitan areas across the nation, rose 18% in the year that ended in June, down from a 19.9% annual rate the prior month.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Jackson, Miss., Is Out of Running Water After Treatment Plant Pumps Fail
Officials are distributing water cases to capital city’s 150,000 residents; ‘It is going to be a massive undertaking,’ governor says
A flooded area near Pearl River in Ridgeland, Miss., in this screenshot taken from a video on Monday.PHOTO: REUTERS TV/VIA REUTERS
“The city of Jackson, Miss., which has struggled with a crumbling water infrastructure for years, has no reliable running water, authorities said.
Pumps at the main water-treatment plant in the state’s largest city failed Monday, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said at a press conference, leaving the capital with little to no water—and sometimes raw reservoir water—flowing through the pipes.
The poor-quality water and the low water pressure meant it wasn’t safe for people to drink the water or to brush their teeth with it, state officials said. Instead, officials were working to distribute cases of bottled water to the city’s roughly 150,000 residents.
‘It is going to be a massive undertaking,’ Mr. Reeves said. He added that it could take three or four months to repair the plant.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a Democrat, said at a press conference Monday that recent floodwaters had inundated the plant. The facility has released less water to residents in recent days because it was struggling to treat the water.
Flooding affected areas near the Pearl River, including in this northeast Jackson, Miss., neighborhood on Monday.PHOTO: ROGELIO V. SOLIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
‘It is no secret to any of us—we have a very fragile water-treatment facility,’ Mr. Lumumba said.
Mr. Reeves planned to declare a state of emergency over the water crisis, saying the city, which runs the plant, didn’t have enough water to fight fires or flush toilets. The city’s public schools shifted online on Tuesday because of the water shortage.
Mr. Lumumba on Monday declared a water system emergency, and said the shortage is likely to last several days.
Residents and business owners in the predominantly Black city have long complained about the city’s water system, saying they have dealt with water outages and boil-water advisories for years. Since last month, state health authorities had warned residents to boil their water—which may contain bacteria, viruses or parasites—after pumps at the plant began to fail.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Mississippi capital declares a water supply emergency
Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images
“The Mississippi health department declared a water supply emergency for Jackson on Tuesday as the city’s treatment plant failed.” [Vox] Read more at Mississippi Today / Alex Rozier
“Officials warned the capital city’s 150,000 residents not to drink or use tap water without boiling it first. Water is expected to stop flowing through pipes soon; the city and state have begun distributing alternative sources of water.” [Vox] Read more at Washington Post / Bryan Pietsch
“Jackson’s had trouble with its water system for years, due to poorly maintained, ancient infrastructure. That’s led to water with high lead and bacteria content.” [Vox] Read more at Clarion Ledger / Lee O. Sanderlin
“The problem escalated following a 2021 winter storm that burst pipes and led to a shutdown; it grew even worse this summer when damage forced Jackson’s aging main treatment plant to run on backup pumps. Then, the water supply was further contaminated by the nearby Pearl River overflowing last week.” [Vox] Read more at CNN / Amir Vera, Jason Hanna, and Nouran Salahieh
“That means even more Jackson residents than usual cannot shower or brush their teeth without exposure to harmful bacteria, and the city lacks enough water to fight fires. Public schools are closed until the crisis is resolved.” [Vox] Read more at Associated Press / Emily Wagster Pettus and Michael Goldberg
“It’s unclear when Jackson’s water situation will improve; in 2021, Jackson’s mayor said the city needed $2 billion to fix its water infrastructure.” [Vox] Read more at Brookings / Andre M. Perry, Joseph W. Kane, and Carl Romer
NASA to Try Artemis I Moon Launch Again on Saturday
Space agency delayed launch originally scheduled for Monday so engineers could resolve temperature and pressure problems in one of four main rocket engines
NASA is getting ready to launch the Artemis I mission as the space agency again has the moon in its sights. PHOTO: IVY CEBALLO/ZUMA PRESS
“A NASA official said the space agency would again try to launch its towering rocket to the moon on Saturday.
An initial attempt to launch its first Artemis mission on Monday was postponed after engine-related problems emerged on the Space Launch System rocket that is supposed to carry the unmanned Orion spacecraft toward the moon.
Mike Sarafin, who manages Artemis at NASA, said after reviewing data on Monday, teams at NASA decided to try for the launch on Saturday.
NASA also plans to an earlier start of the cooling process that affected Monday’s launch after one of the four main engines didn’t reach the correct temperature range, Mr. Sarafin said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Fox News stars questioned by election tech company in defamation case
Dominion Voting Systems has deposed Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro and others in its $1.6 billion suit to try to prove the network knew wild election claims were false
“Some of the biggest stars on Fox News are being compelled to answer questions about their coverage of the 2020 presidential election as a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from an election technology company that claims its reputation was ruined by the network’s airing of baseless fraud allegations picks up steam.
Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems last week questioned hosts Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, while Sean Hannity and former Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs are scheduled for depositions Tuesday, according to court filings.
They are among the on-air personalities that Dominion says defamed it either by falsely claiming the company conspired to rig the election against Donald Trump or by repeatedly hosting guests who made such claims.
But Dominion has also deposed former and current Fox personnel who never subscribed to such claims — including longtime news anchor Shepard Smith, who left Fox nearly three years ago and now works for CNBC, as well as behind-the-scenes players like producers and bookers — in what appears to be an effort to probe the internal culture and reporting practices of the highest-rated cable news network.
Dominion’s lawyers ‘seem to want to show a pattern of practice of Fox disregarding the facts,’ said a person with knowledge of the deposition process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve a confidential process.” Read more at Washington Post
The U.S. might have its first known fatality from monkeypox.
“A person in Harris County, Texas, who was diagnosed with the virus and had a weak immune system, died, according to state health officials. They are investigating what role monkeypox played in the death. The U.S. had an estimated 18,100 confirp Deal
If true, whistleblower Peiter Zatko’s allegations would demonstrate a breach of merger agreement, Musk’s lawyers say
Elon Musk PHOTO: CARINA JOHANSEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Elon Musk’s lawyers sent a new letter to Twitter Inc., TWTR -1.04%▼ again seeking to terminate his $44 billion agreement to buy the social-media platform, this time citing recent allegations made by whistleblower Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former chief security officer.
Mr. Musk and his lawyers initially sent a letter to Twitter on July 8 seeking to abandon the deal, though Twitter has since challenged the validity of that notice. Last month, Twitter sued Musk over his attempt to walk away from the deal.
In a new letter dated Aug. 29, and made public on Tuesday, Mr. Musk and his lawyers said the allegations in Mr. Zatko’s recent whistleblower complaint, if true, would demonstrate a breach by Twitter of certain provisions of the merger agreement.
Mr. Musk’s lawyers wrote in the letter that the facts supporting the whistleblower complaint were known to Twitter when they agreed to sell the company to Mr. Musk and when Mr. Musk initially sought to abandon the deal in July.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Social-Media Firms Would Have to Consider Children’s Health Under Bill Passed by California Legislature
New regulations opposed by tech industry come after an earlier bill that would have held them liable for harm to minors
Social-media companies opposed the bill, arguing that differing state laws regulating their apps would make compliance difficult.PHOTO: RICHARD DREW/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“California’s Legislature passed a bill Tuesday that would for the first time in the U.S. require the makers of social-media apps such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to consider the physical and mental health of minors when designing their products.
The bill passed in a unanimous, bipartisan vote in the Assembly after doing the same in the state Senate on Monday. Both chambers are dominated by Democrats.
Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t indicated whether he would sign or veto the bill. A spokesman for the Democrat declined to comment.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
U.S. Army Grounds Entire Fleet of Chinook Helicopters
Flights of the workhorse choppers are halted due to engine fires, U.S. officials say
The Army has about 400 Chinook helicopters in its fleet, a U.S. official says. Soldiers approach a Chinook during a training exercise in Pirkkala, Finland, earlier in August.PHOTO: RONI REKOMAA/BLOOMBERG NEWS
“The U.S. Army has grounded its entire fleet of CH-47 Chinook helicopters due to a risk of engine fires, U.S. officials said.
Army officials are aware of a small number of engine fires with the helicopters, and the incidents didn’t result in any injuries or deaths, the U.S. officials said. One of the officials said the fires occurred in recent days.
The U.S. Army Materiel Command grounded the fleet of hundreds of helicopters “out of an abundance of caution,” but officials were looking at more than 70 aircraft that contained a part that is suspected to be connected to the problem, officials said.
The grounding of the Chinook helicopters, a battlefield workhorse since the 1960s, could pose logistical challenges for American soldiers, depending on how long the order lasts.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The expanded child tax credit kept as many as 4 million kids out of poverty. Advocates hope it could return as an end-of-the-year compromise.” Read more at Vox / Rachel Cohen
“Tony Ornato retired from the Secret Service months after explosive testimony named him as a primary witness of former President Donald Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021.” [Vox] Read more at Guardian / Ed Pilkington
Iraqi cleric orders supporters to withdraw after clashes killed dozens
Moqtada al-Sadr's fighters fire their weapons during clashes with the Iraqi security forces near the Green Zone, in Baghdad, Iraq Aug. 30. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Reuters)
“BAGHDAD — Moqtada al-Sadr, a populist Shiite cleric, called on his supporters Tuesday to immediately withdraw from a government district in Baghdad after a day of fierce fighting there killed dozens of people, deepening the political crisis in the country.
The bloodshed erupted Monday after Sadr announced his resignation from politics in a message posted on Twitter. His supporters reacted by storming the presidential palace in the government district known as the Green Zone, which houses ministries as well as foreign missions, including the United States Embassy.
‘I apologize to the Iraqi people,’ Sadr said in a televised speech early Tuesday afternoon. ‘I was hoping for a peaceful demonstration, not with mortars and weapons. I don’t want such revolution,’ he said.
Minutes after his speech ended, groups of men, some carrying rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons, could be seen walking away from the Green Zone.
The violence was the most serious during a summer of unrest in Iraq, which has been without a government for the better part of a year and captive to escalating feuds between political factions, including Sadr’s followers, and rival Shiite groups that are backed by Iran.” Read more at Washington Post
“Pakistan’s unprecedented flooding has killed more than 1,000 people and forced nearly half a million more to evacuate into relief camps. Dangerous flooding has damaged over a million homes, 3,500 kilometers (2,174.8 miles) of roads and 162 bridges, according to officials. Pakistan’s economy was already in crisis and the deluge is expected to create a food shortage.” Read more at Bloomberg
A flooded residential area in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. Photographer: Fida Hussain/AFP
The U.N. launched an emergency appeal for $160 million of flood relief for Pakistan.
“The worst monsoon rains in 30 years have impacted more than 30 million people and killed more than 1,100. The country estimates it needs $1 billion for immediate relief efforts alone. The U.S. said that it would provide $30 million in humanitarian assistance. Islamabad said that it was in talks with Russia over importing wheat to make up for what was washed away.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Ukraine reported heavy fighting as it started a counteroffensive in the region around Kherson, a river port that was one of the first cities to fall to Russian forces at the start of the war. Troops destroyed bridges and ammunition depots and hammered command posts. A US National Security Council spokesman called for a ‘controlled shutdown’ of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is near the clashes and has come under shelling. And for the first time, Pope Francis and the Vatican openly criticized Russia’s invasion, calling it ‘morally unjust.’ Follow the latest.” Read more at Bloomberg
“With the ongoing war isolating Russia further, one country is stepping in to fill the void: China. Chinese cars, televisions and smartphones are replacing German and South Korean imports. The war is speeding up Russia’s tilt to Asia. And by doing so, Russia is upending global trade as it seeks to insulate itself from further disruptions by pivoting to goods from countries that haven’t joined sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.” Read more at Bloomberg
“More than 11 years after Japan's worst nuclear disaster, the town that hosts the disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant finally lifted its evacuation order today, allowing former residents to return home. The town of Futaba, previously deemed off-limits, is the last of 11 districts to lift its evacuation order. On March 11, 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan's east coast, triggering a tsunami that caused a nuclear meltdown at the power plant and a major release of radioactive material. It was the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986 and turned once-bustling communities into ghost towns. More than 300,000 people living near the nuclear plant were forced to evacuate temporarily; thousands more did so voluntarily. Although the town has now reopened, it remains unclear how many people will return -- and how long the town will take to recover.” Read more at CNN
Ecuador fears Galapagos tortoises were hunted and eaten
Image caption, Galapagos giant tortoises are protected but more than a dozen have been hunted in recent years
“Ecuador has launched an investigation into the killing of four Galapagos giant tortoises, which prosecutors fear were hunted and eaten.
Remains of the reptiles were found in a national park on Isabela, the largest island of the Galapagos archipelago.
Killing the endangered animals has been banned since 1933 but more than a dozen have been hunted in the last two years.
Tortoise meat was once considered a delicacy, but those who hunt them now face up to three years in jail.
In September 2021, park rangers found the remains of 15 Sierra Negra giant tortoises on Isabela.
Photos of their empty shells were widely shared on social media and caused outrage in Ecuador - of which the Galapagos Islands are part of - and beyond.
Evidence gathered at the time suggested the 15 had been hunted for their meat.
The recent discovery of remains of four more animals has reignited fears that the practice continues despite the total hunting ban.
Experts will carry out post-mortems on the remains and a unit specialising in environmental crimes is collecting testimonies from national park agents.
Galapagos giant tortoises have a lifespan of more than 100 years and were made famous by Charles Darwin, who pioneered the theory of evolution studying them.
The ship Darwin sailed on, The Beagle, took 30 live tortoises on its long voyage from the Galapagos to Polynesia. Most of them were eaten by the crew.
There are currently about 15,000 of the giant tortoises in the world, compared to 200,000 in the 19th Century.” Read more at BBC
Good morning. Americans under 40 have had to cope with a worse economy than earlier generations. How should it affect the debate over Biden’s debt-relief plan?
Student loan forgiveness advocates outside the White House last week.Shawn Thew/EPA, via Shutterstock
A poorer generation
“If you wanted to find a signature example of somebody who did not need to have his student loans forgiven, you might want to consider me.
I graduated from college in 1994 with about $26,000 of debt (in the equivalent of today’s dollars). I hated repaying it. It was a meaningful amount of money for a young journalist, and writing the checks was a monthly reminder of the frustrations that my parents and I felt over dealing with the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of the financial aid system.
If President Biden’s debt-relief plan had been enacted in the 1990s, I would have qualified, and I would have eagerly signed up. In hindsight, however, it would have been pretty hard to justify forgiving any of my debt. I eventually paid it off, without altering any big life plans. Over time, my income rose, as is the norm for college graduates.
Critics of Biden’s plan have made similar arguments since he announced it last week. Why, they ask, is the federal government giving a bailout to white-collar professionals, especially in today’s highly unequal economy? And how is it fair to people who have already paid off their loans?
These are complex questions, and thoughtful people will disagree about them, as the economist Arindrajit Dube pointed out last week. (My colleague Jim Tankersley writes about the passionate debate among economists here.) But for skeptics of loan forgiveness, I do think it’s worth grappling with the ways that the U.S. economy has changed over the past few decades — since members of Generation X, like me, and baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s.
Not your parents’ economy
For one thing, college debt has increased in recent decades. The average borrower who graduated from a four-year public college emerged with $26,700 in debt in 2020, according to the College Board. That was up 18 percent from the average level in 2000 (again, adjusted for inflation).
But the bigger change is not in these loan amounts. It’s in the broader economic conditions facing young workers. Over the past two decades, the U.S. economy has become much harsher for adults under 40.
This chart shows how incomes have changed for different age groups since the late 1980s. As you can see, a typical 40-year-old today earns only slightly more than a typical 40-year-old three decades ago, while typical seniors have much higher incomes than their parents’ generation did at the same age:
Chart shows median family income, adjusted for inflation. | Source: Federal Reserve
The changes in wealth are even starker. Americans in their 20s, 30s and even 40s are poorer today than younger adults were three decades ago:
Chart shows median net worth, adjusted for inflation. | Source: Federal Reserve
A study by William Gale of the Brookings Institution and three other researchers concluded, ‘As for the millennial generation, their median wealth in 2016 was lower than the wealth of any similarly aged cohort between 1989 and 2007.’
That’s a remarkable — and grim — development, given how much G.D.P., stock prices and home values have grown over the same period. How could this be? One factor is that stocks and homes have risen so much since the 1980s that younger adults can’t buy into those markets as easily as their parents and grandparents could.
Many millennials also had the bad fortune of graduating into an economy weakened by the financial crisis of 2007-9 and the Great Recession that followed. Many companies have not expanded or raised wages much, creating fewer opportunities early in people’s careers.
Gale and his co-authors — Hilary Gelfond, Jason Fichtner and Benjamin Harris — note that millennials are also more racially diverse than earlier generations. People of color, especially Black Americans, have historically accumulated wealth less rapidly than white Americans for a complex mix of reasons. Among those reasons is intentional discrimination from the government during past decades that kept Black families from receiving subsidized mortgages, owning homes and passing down wealth to later generations, which could then build on itself.
Susan Dynarski, a Harvard economist who specializes in education issues and who grew up in a working-class family, was long skeptical about proposals to forgive college debt. She thought that people who had gone to college generally didn’t need government help, given the huge value of a college degree. But the emerging data has changed her mind, as she explains in a Times Opinion essay published this morning.
The people struggling to repay their loans tend to be those who attended a few semesters of classes at a public college or for-profit vocational programs and didn’t graduate, she explains. Often, these borrowers suffered because of funding cuts at community colleges or because of the government’s failure to regulate for-profit programs. And they suffered because of how weak the economy has been for most Americans over the past two decades.
Biden’s debt-relief plan focuses its benefits on these middle-class and lower-income borrowers rather than on white-collar professionals who are doing just fine, as another recent article by Jim Tankersley explained.
The case against
These factors obviously don’t end the debate over Biden’s plan. There are still arguments against it.
The plan will benefit some young professionals who really don’t need help but will gladly accept it, as I would have. The plan will also do nothing for the many Americans who never attended college (although Biden has signed or proposed several other big policies aimed at the working class). There are also thorny questions about whether debt cancellation encourages colleges to keep raising their prices, under the assumption that more debt cancellation may follow in the future (as Megan McArdle of The Washington Post has argued).
Yet before anybody tells millennials to toughen up and follow the same path as previous generations, it’s at least worth remembering that they have never really had that option. Their economic prospects have been worse than those of their parents and grandparents. Biden’s plan won’t erase that reality, but it will narrow the gap for millions of people.” Read at New York Times
British Open champion Cameron Smith joins LIV Golf
Australia’s Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer, will join LIV Golf. (Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)
The LIV Golf Invitational Series announced Tuesday that it was adding Cameron Smith, the world’s second-ranked golfer and this year’s British Open champion, giving the Saudi-backed breakaway league its highest-ranked golfer.
Smith, a 29-year-old Australian, has three wins this season, including the British Open in July and the Players Championship in March. He also has finished in the top 10 in four of his six trips to the Masters — with a tie for third at this year’s tournament — and was 20th at the season-ending Tour Championship, which concluded Sunday.
Joaquin Niemann also will leave the PGA Tour for LIV, giving it another golfer ranked in the top 20. Niemann is ranked 19th in the world and has two career PGA Tour wins, one of them this year at the Genesis Invitational in California. LIV also announced the additions of Harold Varner III (No. 46 in the world), Cameron Tringale (55), Marc Leishman (62) and Anirban Lahiri (92).” Read more at Washington Post
Tomatoes Spill Onto Interstate, Causing Crashes, Quips and Confusion
A crash involving a big-rig truck caused 150,000 tomatoes to scatter across Interstate 80 in Vacaville, Calif. Passing vehicles ground them into a slippery red pulp.
Interstate 80 in Vacaville, Calif., after a big-rig truck crashed and coated eastbound lanes in tomatoes. Credit...CHP SOLANO
“Sometimes in Solano County, Calif., where more than half the land is used for agriculture, residents can smell the earthy odor of tomatoes as big-rig trucks carry the product south to the Bay Area. Those trucks typically hold about 50,000 pounds of tomatoes in a hulking pile of red. A few are occasionally lost over the side thanks to sharp turns or bumps on the road.
But about 5 a.m. on Monday, more than 150,000 tomatoes were scattered across the heavily trafficked Interstate 80 in Vacaville, Calif., after a big rig that had been transporting them collided with a vehicle and swerved, striking another vehicle before driving into the center median, Officer Jason Tyhurst of the California Highway Patrol said.
Fist-size tomatoes covered eastbound lanes of the interstate across a distance of about 200 feet, creating a red mass that seemed to be about ‘two feet deep,’ Officer Tyhurst said. He added that he was not being hyperbolic about the depth.
Soon, drivers on the interstate in the dark of early morning failed to detect the tomatoes and drove over them, essentially creating a gooey concoction of watery tomato juice, oil and dirt. Road conditions became dangerously slick.
‘Those tomato skins, man,’ Officer Tyhurst said. ‘Once they hit the asphalt, it’s like walking on ice.’
One car became stuck on the slippery roadway and then was struck by another vehicle, Officer Tyhurst said. The tomatoes quickly caused a chain reaction of crashes, he added: Another car struck the two vehicles, and then another was sideswiped by yet another swerving car.
Seven cars were involved in the crash. Three people, including the driver of the truck, had minor injuries, and a fourth was hospitalized with a broken leg, Officer Tyhurst said.
The California Highway Patrol closed nearly every lane on both sides of Interstate 80, causing traffic and delays for morning commuters who looked on as cleanup crews with the California Department of Transportation worked to clear the tomatoes.
‘We don’t see that amount of tomatoes fall off a truck and close a highway,’ said Vince Jacala, a spokesman for the department. ‘Like, usually it’s a couple here and there.’
When he saw photos of the tomato-splattered interstate, Mr. Jacala said he thought to himself, ‘Well, that’s going to close the highway for a while.’” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Carl Croneberg, a deaf Swedish immigrant, helped write the first comprehensive dictionary of American Sign Language and coined the term ‘Deaf culture.’ He died at 92.” Read more at New York Times