Russia"s top prosecutor criticizes mass mobilisation, telling Putin to his face that more than 9,000 were illegally sent to fight in Ukraine

Igor Krasnov told Putin there were "more than 9,000 citizens who were illegally mobilized" when Russia sent conscripts into Ukraine late last year. Russian President Vladimir Putin (l) and Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, January 31, 2023.Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP Russia's prosecutor general told Putin more than 9,000 mobilized troops were called up illegally. In a face-to-face meeting, he said their health was why many shouldn't have been sent to fight in Ukraine. Reports last year said Russia had called up students, elderly people, and those with health issues. In a sitdown meeting with Russia's president, the country's prosecutor general said that thousands of troops who were mobilized to fight in Ukraine last year were conscripted illegally.Igor Krasnov told Russian President Vladimir Putin that almost 9,000 reservists were mobilized illegally, according to a transcript of their conversation released by the Kremlin on Tuesday. He said that many of them should not have been sent in the first place because of ill health, and were later returned to Russia.Krasnov also said there had been issues with paying the troops.In his conversation with Putin, Krasnov said that the mobilization "revealed a lot of significant problems."In September, Russia announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 troops, which it said was completed in October. This came after major battlefield setbacks for Russian forces, which had expected a quick victory following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.Putin said in December that 150,000 of those troops had been sent to serve in Ukraine, with the rest still in training in Russia.The military call up resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of young Russians leaving the country by plane and over its land borders in the weeks that proceeded it.Putin admitted last September that Russia had made "mistakes" in its mobilization, after reports that students, people without combat experience, the elderly, and those with health issues were among those who had been called up to fight, when only reservists were supposed to have been drafted.Krasnov told Putin that Russia had been forced to "reconsider approaches to the organization of military registration," and had created databases of available military personnel.Widespread issues related to Russia's mass mobilization have long been reported, including a lack of training and equipment. Some soldiers were drafted, trained, sent to Ukraine, killed, and returned home in body bags within a month of the announcement — a rapid timeline that would be unheard of in a Western army.Experts and defectors also say that Russian generals used the troops like cannon fodder.In the transcript of the conversation released by the Kremlin, Putin praised Krasnov's work, and asked him to keep monitoring the "rights" of mobilized Russians. This comes as Russia is expected to announce another round of mobilizations, though the numbers are unclear.Ukraine and its allies say they expect a fresh Russian offensive in the spring, with Ukrainian intelligence warning earlier this month that Russia plans to mobilize 500,000 additional troops.NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that Russia is preparing to mobilize more than 200,000 troops, while the UK ministry of defense said in December that Putin had been presented with plans to expand Russia's military by around 30%, to 1.5 million active personnel.The release of the transcript between Putin and Krasnov is likely an effort by the Kremlin to reduce concerns in Russia that any future mobilizations will be as ill-prepared as the last one.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discusing why he is not persuaded by Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s defense; responses to his letter to Sheryl Sandberg; other reader feedback and his comments. Q3 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Why I’m Not Persuaded By Facebook’s Defense 1) In yesterday’s e-mail, I shared Facebook’s (FB) defense to the […] Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discusing why he is not persuaded by Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB)’s defense; responses to his letter to Sheryl Sandberg; other reader feedback and his comments. if (typeof jQuery == 'undefined') { document.write(''); } .first{clear:both;margin-left:0}.one-third{width:31.034482758621%;float:left;margin-left:3.448275862069%}.two-thirds{width:65.51724137931%;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element input{border:0;border-radius:0;padding:8px}form.ebook-styles .af-element{width:220px;float:left}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer{width:115px;float:left;margin-left: 6px;}form.ebook-styles .af-element.buttonContainer input.submit{width:115px;padding:10px 6px 8px;text-transform:uppercase;border-radius:0;border:0;font-size:15px}form.ebook-styles .af-body.af-standards input.submit{width:115px}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy{width:100%;font-size:12px;margin:10px auto 0}form.ebook-styles .af-element.privacyPolicy p{font-size:11px;margin-bottom:0}form.ebook-styles .af-body input.text{height:40px;padding:2px 10px !important} form.ebook-styles .error, form.ebook-styles #error { color:#d00; } form.ebook-styles .formfields h1, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-logo, form.ebook-styles .formfields #mg-footer { display: none; } form.ebook-styles .formfields { font-size: 12px; } form.ebook-styles .formfields p { margin: 4px 0; } Get The Full Series in PDF Get the entire 10-part series on Charlie Munger in PDF. Save it to your desktop, read it on your tablet, or email to your colleagues. (function($) {window.fnames = new Array(); window.ftypes = new Array();fnames[0]='EMAIL';ftypes[0]='email';}(jQuery));var $mcj = jQuery.noConflict(true); Q3 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Why I'm Not Persuaded By Facebook's Defense 1) In yesterday's e-mail, I shared Facebook's (FB) defense to the latest charges of bad behavior by whistleblower and former employee Frances Haugen, as articulated by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as a friend who knows the company well. My take: I'm not buying what they're selling... Zuckerberg's post is laughably bad. In the face of Haugen's compelling testimony and her release of thousands of pages of damning internal company documents – which has led to overwhelming, bipartisan criticism – Zuckerberg's 16-paragraph, 1,316-word post doesn't once acknowledge any problem, much less any contrition, much less any indication that he and his company might need to do even a few things differently. His tone deafness is matched only by his arrogance. My friend, on the other hand, at least acknowledges that "there is a huge problem," but says, "I disagree Facebook is blind to it." (Quick correction: I misquoted him yesterday here: "This extends to idiots on Facebook's board as well by the way." Here's what he wrote: "I have no opinion on FB's board – I was referring to board members at other companies who try to tell the CEO how to run a company when they have no idea what is really happening. That is why a board's role is to hire and fire the CEO, not to run the company.") In most of his response, however, he criticizes Haugen, saying that she: ... had no direct reports, never met a senior executive at Facebook, started with extreme bias, and then only found/extracted information that confirmed it. She never worked in the areas she is "so knowledgeable about" – like teens – so has no idea what Facebook is trying to do... ... she is basically as knowledgeable as a tabloid – at best. It's like the janitor telling Zuckerberg how to run Facebook... She's an idiot looking for five minutes of fame. Industry veterans are cringing. I couldn't disagree more. First, Haugen was hardly the "janitor." She's a Harvard Business School graduate with more than 10 years of experience in the social media sector, nearly two years of which was at Facebook (from 2019 to 2021 – see her LinkedIn profile) – plenty of time to see what was going on. As for the argument that she wasn't a C-suite executive and therefore wasn't in the loop for high-level decisions, I'd argue the opposite... She was perfectly positioned to be a whistleblower both because of the group she was in – the Civic Integrity unit, which was responsible for preventing the spread of election misinformation and addressing other bad behavior – as well as her level: as a Product Manager, she was senior enough to see what was really happening, but not so high up that she wouldn't know the details. Moreover, Haugen's testimony, to both 60 Minutes and Congress, was compelling. I've been watching 60 Minutes since I was a kid in the 1970s, and she was one of the most impressive people I've ever seen on the show. And my opinion is widely shared: Senators on both sides of the aisle praised her, as did Mike Isaac of the New York Times, who wrote: We're moving into hour three of Ms. Haugen's testimony and she hasn't shown any signs of flagging. Confident, poised, and accurate, for my money she is one of the most impressive critics of Facebook I've seen appear on Capitol Hill. Lastly, Haugen's testimony is corroborated by: a) thousands of pages of internal company documents she copied... b) the long, sordid history of Zuckerberg and Facebook, dating back to the very founding of this company (for more on this, read this shocking article: How Facebook Was Founded) – also, note that my friend wrote that Haugen "said nothing we all didn't already know"... and c) many other former company insiders. For example, here's an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times by Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook data scientist: I Designed Algorithms at Facebook. Here's How to Regulate Them. Excerpt: Washington was entranced Tuesday by the revelations from Frances Haugen, the Facebook product manager-turned-whistle-blower. But time and again, the public has seen high-profile congressional hearings into the company followed by inaction. For those of us who work at the intersection of technology and policy, there's little cause for optimism that Washington will turn this latest outrage into legislative action. Even more damning are the comments of Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and a former head of security at Facebook: Brazen Is the Order of the Day at Facebook. Excerpt: I think the overall theme of the leaked documents and the Wall Street Journal series is that since 2016 Facebook has built teams of hundreds of data scientists, social scientists and investigators to study the negative effects of the company's products. Unfortunately, it looks like the motivational structure around how products are built, measured and adjusted has not changed to account for the evidence that some Facebook products can have a negative impact on users' well-being, leading to a restive group of employees who are willing to leak or quit when the problems they work on aren't appropriately addressed. I agree with Stamos' recommendation: I think Zuckerberg is going to need to step down as CEO if these problems are going to be solved. Having a company led by the founder has a lot of benefits, but one of the big problems is that it makes it close to impossible to significantly change the corporate culture. It's not just Zuckerberg; the top ranks of Facebook are full of people who have been there for a dozen years. They were part of making key decisions and supporting key cultural touchstones that might have been appropriate when Facebook was a scrappy upstart but that must be abandoned as a global juggernaut. It is really hard for individuals to recognize when it is time to change their minds, and I think it would be better if the people setting the goals for the company were changed for this new era of the company, starting with Zuckerberg. With new leadership, you could see the company adopting safety countermetrics on the same level as engagement and satisfaction metrics, and building a product management culture where product teams are not only celebrated for their success in the marketplace but held accountable for the downstream effects of their decisions. Zuckerberg is, of course, never going to step down voluntarily, and given that he controls 58% of the voting shares, how could he ever be removed? Here's how: the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") – which, thanks to Haugen, is now investigating Facebook for misleading investors – could force him out. I don't think it's likely – but it's not impossible. I think there's a 25% chance that Zuckerberg is no longer CEO within two years... Responses To My Letter To Sheryl Sandberg 2) I received huge amounts of feedback in response to my open letter to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Below is some of it, with my responses in some cases... "Instead of lambasting Sheryl and Mark (unfairly in my eyes), you should have sent your letter to Congress. Congress (and then the courts) has full responsibility for regulating our communication systems. All best (& I love reading your newsletter – I really do & enjoy pics also)." – Paul B. My reply: Thanks for your feedback, Paul. In fact, I sent my letter to a dozen members I know in the House and Senate, one of whom replied: "Wow, wow, wow. Thanks for sharing. I hope it is read." Another replied: "A powerfully written letter. I agree with every word of it, although I doubt that Facebook will find the wisdom to follow your advice. I am going to sign up for your newsletter "I agree with your assessment of Facebook (and your letter to Sheryl Sandberg), but your recommendation for them to rehire Haugen will never happen. She is considered a traitor by Facebook and they will never rehire a traitor. Based on Zuckerberg's reply, I'm skeptical that they are willing to address and fix the issues until the government force them to do so." – Sid My reply: I agree. "I'm so glad you compared them to the Sacklers. I hope this wakes them up." – Alex B. [But another reader disagreed...] "Good email but would recommend not equating people with Sacklers in the future unless they are literally killing people by knowingly promoting something dangerous (like Oxycontin). To me, the Sacklers fall into a group of historical miscreants that can only be used narrowly for an analogy – otherwise, it's overkill and can dilute from your point. Sandberg may read your email and dismiss it, saying to herself, 'We are not the Sacklers.' You could also substitute Hitler for the Sacklers and you can see my point. I'd only use Hitler as an analogy for a leader who is mass killing people, like Pol Pot. My two cents. Always enjoy your daily email!" – Bruce Z. My reply: Hi Bruce, to be clear, I didn't say they currently are equivalent to the Sacklers, but rather they "are on a trajectory to have legacies that rival the Sacklers." To understand why I say this, read the following articles: Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar Sri Lanka: Facebook apologizes for role in 2018 anti-Muslim riots Hate Speech on Facebook Is Pushing Ethiopia Dangerously Close to a Genocide NGO: Facebook approved ads inciting violence in N Ireland Bangladesh: Fake news on Facebook fuels communal violence When Social Media Fuels Gang Violence Civil rights leaders condemn Zuckerberg, Facebook for fueling racial hatred and violence Domestic violence and Facebook: harassment takes new forms in the social media age "I really do not understand what the fuss is about. If I hear or see something on radio or TV that I find to be dangerous or offensive I turn the channel. Nobody is forced to use Facebook or Instagram, or Snapchat or any of the other social media platforms. Just delete the apps. If you don't want your children to use them, then delete them from their phones. Take some personal or parental responsibility. I truly do not want someone else deciding what I can listen to or watch. Let me decide." – T. H. My reply: Hi T.H., in a perfect, rational world, I'd agree with you. But in the real, messy world, I can't. "I have found it very hard to get anyone who works at Facebook to engage openly about anything at the company, even in a social/casual off the record context. I can't think of another company whose employees are so unwilling to speak off the record. It makes me wonder if they really know deep down how bad what they are doing is." – B.B. "Thank you Whitney for sharing a BIG story of our time. I agree with some of the defensive remarks – the issue of 'bad actors,' misinformation, and hate speech on social media is not unique to FB, but FB is certainly guilty of providing a platform that has allowed all of the above to be promoted on its platform. "It took the World Jewish Congress five years of complaining to FB to finally get them via Sheryl Sandberg to put in more strict algorithms regarding Holocaust denial and misinformation on FB – five years of effort! Now, FB users are directed to factual information when they make up falsehoods about it. But this only pertains to the U.S. and U.K., so the fight continues with FB to get them to implement this in Arabic and other languages and countries. This is incredibly frustrating and hurtful. "Why are the Mullahs in Iran permitted to use Twitter (TWTR) to spread Islamist and hate speech, for example? So as much as I dislike government interference into business practices, I do see a necessity given the extent of damage being done. "Thanks for all you do to share carefully researched information that provide opportunities to empower our lives." – Andrea L. "I spent 15 years in the Valley, much of it in the same orbits as the leadership at Facebook (I'm being vague purposefully). I actually can't say for sure they are well-intentioned." – Matty G. "Thanks Whitney on behalf of the multitudes who have truly mixed feelings about Facebook. We're thrilled about the connections we relish with wonderful people, but deplore the damage it has done to our society and body politic." – Andrew S. "I'm on board with [your] evaluation and solution 100%. Let's hope they both have the courage to right the ship. The country that I love and have fought for is losing its grip. Let's show some respect. Thank you very much." – Ken J., former Ranger "Zuck and the rest knew what they were doing. They were complicit in all of it in order to rake in ad revenue. Wall Street Capitalism only measures 'good' in terms of money. I think you are right: they will do a PR apology tour and that's all." – Grant P. "Isn't Zuck a bit too narcissistic to care? The company was born in betrayal. Ironic that such a complete asocial person is in charge of the way we socialize in this country. I think he'll do anything he can get away with and is too arrogant to think there will be consequences." – Leigh S. "Hello Whitney... I am one of those folks who believes when someone does something good, it should be recognized. You and I are very different in our perspectives about most subjects. I read your letter to Facebook just a few minutes ago. "Your letter to the COO was simply and completely what they needed to hear. Although I still have a FB account, I have not actively used FB in over three years. It seemed the vitriol just got worse and worse, regardless of the subject matter, but especially politically. I decided I would not be a part of that, as it can consume you, if you allow it to take up your time. You have to realize that every person has a viewpoint, and it is not likely you will be successful in changing someone's mind, although it does happen on an infrequent basis. "I commend you for reaching out to them, as I am sure others will do. I have a concern that the size of this organization will make government intervention likely. I am not a fan of big government, big brother, as it were, but this situation, if they do not turn it around on their own, government may be the only answer. All the best." – Larry F. "You said everything I was thinking, but ever so much better. I will hope the letter is taken to heart and sweeping changes made so FB can continue to be the great business that it COULD be but has failed so badly to be." – Stacey G "I think you nailed it, my friend! Well, reasoned and direct, to the point, your letter will hopefully bring the FB team and Ms. Haugen together again to make a better, stronger company that serves our social interactions in an honest and forthright manner." – Chuck M. "After reading Zuckerberg's lengthy response I am more convinced that he and the FB team know exactly what they are doing and the harm they are causing. A CEO that wants to be regulated rather than taking the necessary steps to clean up their business strategies is only creating cover for themselves. Unfortunately FB is not only damaging to young girls but to our society as a whole. Through their technology and algorithms they easily manipulate the masses of uniformed customers to be persuaded in any direction they chose. Unfortunately this is like leading blind sheep to slaughter. Yes FB needs to be regulated but not in a way Zuckerberg would approve of. He knows Congress isn't capable of passing any type of regulation to make FB clean up its act and this gives him plenty of cover to continue their unethical business practices." – David L. Other Reader Feedback 3) Lastly, here is one reader's response to Zuckerberg's post: Here are some questions that came to mind when I read Zuckerberg's message: He wrote: Many of the claims don't make any sense. My reply: Which ones don't make any sense? And which ones do make sense? He wrote: If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place? My reply: Because you need to do the research to maximize 'engagement.' This is clearly consistent with profit maximization. He wrote: If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, then why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space – even ones larger than us? My reply: Is this demonstrably true? What companies in your space are larger? He wrote: If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting on what we're doing? My reply: What is this "industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting?" Where can I learn more about these standards? If FB transparency standard is so high, then where are the reports of your research? He wrote: And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, then why are we seeing polarization increase in the U.S. while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy use of social media around the world? My reply: Which countries are not becoming more polarized? Excluding authoritarian regimes, are there any? Just saying things doesn't make them true – though if we've learned anything in recent years, it's that saying things over and over again can convince large numbers of people that they are true. Prime examples – claiming rampant election irregularities when none exist; vaccines are the government's plots to control the population; pizza-gate. – Randy J. Thank you, as always, to my readers for sharing their insightful and provocative thoughts! Best regards, Whitney P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com. P.P.S. My colleague Enrique Abeyta is looking to hire a junior analyst to help him launch his upcoming newsletter, Empire Elite Crypto, later this fall. If you geek out on cryptos and enjoy writing, we'd like to hear from you. Send us your résumé and a one-page write-up of your favorite crypto investment idea right here. Updated on Oct 7, 2021, 2:11 pm (function() { var sc = document.createElement("script"); sc.type = "text/javascript"; sc.async = true;sc.src = "//mixi.media/data/js/95481.js"; sc.charset = "utf-8";var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(sc, s); }()); window._F20 = window._F20 || []; _F20.push({container: 'F20WidgetContainer', placement: '', count: 3}); _F20.push({finish: true});.....»»

Victor Davis Hanson: The March Madness Of The President Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com, Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs... Another couple of weeks, another bout of madness from Joe Biden and his team. Of recent Biden delusions, consider: Biden went off in one of his impromptu Corn Pop, or “beat-up-Trump-behind-the-bleachers” fables. These often slurred and nearly unintelligible tales characteristically virtue signal Biden’s own victimhood and “courage.”  They are interspersed with his bizarre propensity for eerie female contact. So we see or hear of his long record of blowing into the ears and hair, or squeezing the necks of young girls. He hugs, for far too long, mature women. He can call out among a crowd an anonymous attractive teen stranger. Or, recently he relates an incoherent but quasi-sexual vignette.  So Joe recalled his patient days in his usual off-topic “no lie/not kidding/no joke” manner (i.e., tip offs that he’s lying). He told us that a noble nurse once would “come in and do things that I don’t think you learn in medical school—in nursing school.” The president got a nervous laugh from the apparent quasi-pornographic reference (but then again Joe is excused because he is a “feminist”), before he detailed her technique:   She’d whisper in my ear.  I didn’t—couldn’t understand her, but she’d whisper, and she’d lean down. She’d actually breathe on me to make sure that I was—there was a connection, a human connection. A woman leaning over to blow into a prone man’s ear certainly constitutes a “human connection.” Yet all of Joe’s fables have different Homeric-style retellings. Two years ago he claimed that the same nurse in question actually blew into his nostrils. What a strange air-pressure technique that must have entailed for a person recovering from brain surgery. But perhaps it was consistent with biblical references to God blowing the spirit of life into the nose of man. About a week later, referencing that hospital stay, Biden added that doctors “had to take the top of my head off a couple times, see if I had a brain”—a reference that did not reassure the nation he is not enfeebled.  No one in the media had much of a reaction because Joe Biden’s political utility and near senility serve as exemptions for his often sexist, racist, and creepy riffs.  Instead, the media wrote off the nurse breathing into good ol’ Joe’s orifices as belonging to the same weird genre that a while back gave us inner-city kids stroking the golden hairs on Joe’s tan legs, or the shower revelations of Ashley Biden’s diary, or his “you ain’t’ black,” “put y’all back in chains,” and “junkie” sorts of racial condescension (e.g., “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man. That’s like saying you, before you got on this program, you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think? Huh? Are you a junkie?”).  Joe also blustered to a crowd during Black History Month, “I may be a white boy, but I’m not stupid.”  The crowd laughed at the idea that the jester Biden believes white people are usually stupid, but that he, Joe, the exception to his race, is not stupid, despite being white. At least Biden finally referenced himself as “boy.” Usually he has used that racial putdown for prominent blacks like Maryland Governor Wes Moore or a senior White House advisor Cedric Richmond. The February-March madness of Joe was not through. Sometimes, his venom renders him disgustedly comic, as when he took the occasion of mass American deaths from fentanyl on his watch, to chuckle that the carnage was at least worse under Trump (an abject lie):  ‘I should digress, probably. I’ve read, she [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene], she was very specific recently, saying that a mom, a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl, that, that I killed her sons. Well, the interesting thing is that fentanyl they took came during the last administration.’ Followed by the Biden laugh. Apparently, 100,000 dead at least deserves from Joe a “Trump did it” chuckle. Joe, for the third time in two years, tripped and nearly fell ascending the ramp of Air Force One. At some point even his supporters will concede that when octogenarians repeatedly stumble and fall, if not put under careful watch or provided a walker, it is only a matter of time until they break a hip and become bedridden. In another replay, once again Biden finished his remarks, turned around to exit—and had no idea where he was going to go or whose invisible hand he was supposed to shake. Amid all this, Biden more or less stuck to his now tired rhetorical themes.  One is the serial denunciation of the MAGA Republicans. Usually, he trashes them as semi-fascists or un-American, often in the context of his “unity speeches.” After calling for reconciliation, bipartisanship, and unity, Joe then usually tightens his face, grimaces, and starts yelling about the MAGA dregs and chumps.  If Biden is really angry, he adds the intensive adjective “Ultra” for the MAGAites. He gets particularly incensed when referencing the one percent who “don’t pay their fair share” (the one percent pays over 40 percent of all income tax revenues). Biden is oblivious that the entire Biden clan is under popular suspicion of not reporting all of the millions of dollars in quid pro quos leveraging they raked in from foreign governments without registering as their agents. Note that his entire team, when stung by charges of incompetency or illegality, usually follows Joe’s tactic of “Trump did it.” So when Pete Buttigieg was criticized for ignoring the East Palestine rail wreck and reminded of his past serial transportation failures, junkets, and incoherent systemic racism charges, he retreated to blaming Trump for the derailment.  Buttigieg falsely claimed that Trump’s past lifting of particular electric railcar brake regulations caused the wheel bearing failure in East Palestine, a lie that even members of his department could not stomach. Two, Joe creates elaborate fables. In the past two weeks, he returned to his civil rights lie that he was a campus activist agitating for racial justice. At least he did not add his usual fillips of being arrested or standing up to apartheid police in South Africa. In Biden’s world, he brags he has reduced inflation. Yet when he entered office in January 2021, the annualized inflation rate was 1.7 percent. Two years later in January 2023 inflation went up to 6.4 percent, after hitting a high in June 2022 of 9.1 percent—6.4 percentage points higher than when he took office. In mid-March we will learn of the February 2023 annualized rate, but it is expected to climb back to more than 8 percent.  If anyone compares the current price of eggs, or rent, or diesel fuel, or a natural gas heating bill or building materials to their respective costs when Biden entered office, then he would know Biden’s inflation is cumulative and has nearly destroyed the affordability of shelter, food, and fuel—the stuff of life. He mentioned lowering heating and cooling costs of American homes through his climate change advocacy. In truth, on average electric rates shot up over 10 percent last year. Natural gas and fuel went even higher to over 25 percent in a single year.  Biden talks about his low unemployment rate of 3.4 percent. But it is almost identical to what the Trump Administration achieved—without Biden’s high interest rates and acute inflation—in the months before the massive COVID lockdowns.  Moreover, current low employment is largely a reflection of reduced labor participation—due to early retirements, exits during the pandemic, fear of COVID, long COVID, the zoom culture, and most importantly the Biden continuance of massive COVID-era subsidies that discourage employment. The labor participation rate has hit near historic lows under Biden, lower than the pre-COVID rate under Trump.  It was not until last month that the Biden economy finally achieved the level of total employed Americans who had been working in January 2020 on the eve of the Covid lockdowns.  As far as interest rates for 30-year fixed mortgages, they were 2.9 percent when Biden took office. Now they are currently over 7 percent.  In sum, Biden repeats the same patterns of deception: crash the economy as evidenced by many of its major indicators, then when a data point reveals a slight and likely temporary monthly recovery, he brags he “reduced” inflation, interest, or unemployment. We also heard during the same week from Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who was shredded during his testimony to the Senate. He argued that the vastly disproportionate FBI response to violence against abortion centers versus attacks on pro-life groups was only due to the differences between light and dark—literally: abortion centers are attacked during daytime; in contrast, pro-life shelters are attacked during night.  Apparently his Justice Department and the FBI shut down at sunset and reawaken at dawn—as if either most violent crime does not occur at night or there is nothing to be done about it when it does.  Garland further embarrassed himself when he could not explain the disproportionate use of force in arresting or detaining conservative suspects versus the virtual exemptions given prominent left-wing suspects.  Most embarrassingly, when asked why he did not charge mobs that swarmed the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices to influence their decisions—a federal felony—he lamely claimed there were federals protecting the residences. In Garland’s world, some criminals committing felonies are completely exempt if law enforcement prevents further violent manifestations of their criminal behavior. So illegally swarm a Supreme Court justice’s residence to influence a court decision, but then stop short of escalating further by the sight of law enforcement—and, presto, you never committed a crime in the first place.  Garland finished off his recent nonsense by repeating the lie that five police officers were killed due to the January 6 protests. In fact, none were. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes after the protests were over. The other four committed suicide weeks or even months later and no one has connected their self-induced deaths with any act of the protestors.  About the same time, a beleaguered Pete Buttigieg went off on riffs about Tucker Carlson, who, he implied, lacked the grassroots, working-man fides of Buttigieg. He claimed that for all the criticism he has endured, he believes that he will be remembered for posterity for his fight against “climate change”—although he did not point to any concrete result in reducing carbon emissions due to his singular policies.  In fact, Buttigieg will be known but for other characteristics: He repeatedly emphasizes his identity politics gay stature both to note his supposedly pathbreaking courage and to claim victimhood when attacked. He sees transportation through the lens of race and so chases the unicorn of white privilege, whether concerning past freeway routes or the makeup of current construction crews (falsely charging that white men are overrepresented on them). Under his tenure as Transportation Secretary, the country experienced dangerous supply interruptions, ossified ports, and harbor-bound trains robbed in Wild West fashion.  Buttigieg’s diversity mandates either did nothing to ameliorate, or actually led to, a series of near-miss airline crashes, the complete shutdown of the airline industry due to computer glitches and weather, the implosion for a week of Southwest Airlines, the East Palestine derailment disaster, and labor interruptions. In all these cases he either was on leave or a junket, wrote them off as Trump’s fault, or contextualized them as no big deal.  Delusional Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas has declared the border closed and the nation secure, even as 100,000 Americans per year have died from overdoses of fentanyl shipped with impunity across the open border by Mexican cartels. When upwards of 7 million aliens flow across the border illegally since Biden took office, it is written off as Trump’s fault.  Finally, last week there were several interviews with FBI Director Christopher Wray. He could not explain why his agency goes full military mode to arrest a father and husband for protesting at an abortion clinic while having no clue who has been attacking pro-life shelters.  In Wray’s mind, the performance art sweep into Mar-a-Lago, which he claims was not a “raid,” was no different from having Biden’s lawyers quietly conduct their own “investigations” of Biden’s improper removal of classified documents (improper with an asterisk, since no vice president has the president’s legal authority to declassify whatever he wishes).  Wray could not explain why the FBI sat on the Biden trove until the midterm election was over and then only acted to further search Biden residences when its own asymmetrical protocols came under fire.  Add up the last few weeks, and we learned that Christopher Wray’s FBI is doing splendidly in its even enforcement of the law. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is absolutely disinterested and treats all sides equally. Alejandro Mayorkas has closed the border and we are now “secure.” Pete Buttigieg is building a legacy for the ages as a climate change crusader. And an eloquent and dynamic Joe Biden has compiled an impressive legislative record on his way to a great presidency—with the energy, we are told by Dr. Jill Biden, that is more impressive than any 30-year-old’s. Tyler Durden Mon, 03/13/2023 - 21:20.....»»

Luongo: The War For The Dollar Is Already Over, Part II: The Fly Or The Windshield? Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog, Live images flashing by Like windshields towards a fly Frozen in that fatal climb But the wheels of time, just pass you by -RUSH, “Between the Wheels” In part I of this series I told you the war over the US dollar was over because the bane of domestic monetary policy, Eurodollar futures, lost the battle with SOFR, the new standard for pricing dollars. The ignominious end of the Eurodollar system is a study in the evolution of markets, as a new system replaces an old one. Old systems don’t die overnight. We don’t flip a switch and wake up in a new reality, unless we are protagonists in a Philip K. Dick novel. More than a decade ago I looked at the responses to President Obama cutting Iran out of the SWIFT system as the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system. The goal was to take Iran out of the global oil markets by shutting Iran out from the dominant dollar payment system. Out of necessity Iran opened up trade with its major export partners, most notably India, in something other than dollars. India and Iran started up a ‘goods for oil’ trade, or as Bloomberg called it at the time, “Junk for Oil.” The stick of sanctions created a new market for pricing Iranian oil and a way around the monopoly of US dollar oil trading. India, struggling with massive current account deficits because of their high energy import bill, welcomed the trade as a way to lessen the pressure on the rupee. Iran needed goods. They worked out some barter trade and the first shallow cuts into the petrodollar system were made. Turkey eventually joined the fray, seeing the opportunity to act as a middle man by accepting gold into its banks from Iran’s customers and settling up with Iran in dollars or whatever. Turkey was the first country to make gold a 100% reserve asset in defiance of Basel I capital rules to facilitate this trade. Turkey’s gold ‘reserves’ skyrocketed because of this. More than 10 years later we’re now looking at the lynchpin of the petrodollar, Saudi Arabia, seriously considering taking other currencies for their oil. The petrodollar was never going to die overnight, it was always going to die as the cost of doing business in dollars rose to make using other currencies a better path to buying/selling oil. Every time the US went to the sanctions well to coerce conformity, the more “star systems slipped through its fingers,” to quote Princess Leia. While we joke today about never ‘going full retard,’ this is just another way of saying that you should never threaten to nuke someone either. Trump went sanctions nuclear on Iran in 2018. He failed. “Biden” and Davos went nuclear on Russia in 2022, going further than even Trump. And they failed even harder. All they did was raise the cost of using dollars in the minds of the dollar’s best customers. When the cost/benefit framework flips, behavior changes accordingly. In the world of money, since we don’t have anything close to resembling real capital markets, rather politicized ones, policy is the thing that alters that cost/benefit structure the most. This means while analyzing the market reaction to day-to-day data the listening to the tea-leaf reading by commentators becomes an exercise in chasing your tail through a wilderness of rhetorical mirrors if you don’t include policy changes. So, with that in mind we have to analyze structural changes to markets from a policy perspective to see what the future really looks like. It’s not that the markets don’t have a say in the matter, it’s that if you analyze the policy through the lens of capital flowing to where it is treated best, then the future outcome is pretty predictable if there isn’t a competing policy put in place to redirect that capital flow later. In this sense, financial analysis in politicized markets is better described by court politics than spreadsheet output cells. People want oil. They will buy it regardless of what Davos or “Biden” or anyone else says about this. Until you replace oil itself, no amount of policy changes will fundamentally change the market for oil unless you destroy the supply chain supporting the oil industry. And analyzing oil supply and demand fundamentals in this case is a fool’s errand when malign actors are materially affecting the supply and demand for oil and are incentivized to ‘game the statistics.’ It’s not that these numbers are worthless, it’s more that they should be discounted heavily until policy changes are assessed. Diminishing Returns of Socialism In the end all markets respond predictably to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. If you don’t believe that, then you are a Malthusian and publicly admitting you are a moron with the inability to accept outcomes you cannot personally perceive. I put the “Peak Oil” folks in this category. And you know who you are. I put Climate Change believers in this category as well. Yes, by the transitive property of rhetorical mathematics, I just called them all morons. The Davos solution to their problems of overpromising the deliverables of socialism financed through the dollar is to default on those promises through global monetary inflation using war with Russia and China as the cover and Climate Change as the reason why it’s necessary. This is to save themselves and secure totalitarian control for their posterity into the next cycle of history. But history will prove them wrong. Because, in the end, you can’t fight a flowing river any more than you can alter the mass of human behavior with respect to their preferences. If they want to drive a car, eat a steak, live in a house, own a gun or have a child, they will. You can delay it or make it more expensive but that expense is a double-edged sword, because as Margaret Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” (OPM) Think of the Eurodollar system as the ultimate expression of OPM, which is a homophone for ‘hopium.’ If you really want to change their behavior, you have to give them more carrot than stick. This appraoch worked for decades to guide us towards their more perfect technocratic dystopian unions as long as money got progressively cheaper during the dollar reserve standard. This system broke in 2008 and by 2011 forced the world, through a compliant Federal Reserve, into birthing the Coordinated Central Bank Standard, where all the major central banks would take turns inflating a deflating credit system. But back to Diminishing Marginal Utility. The law simply states that the acquisition of the next unit of a thing, any thing (water, money, food, credit dollars, etc.), is worth less to a person than the previous unit. We act to alleviate our perceived need to hedge against future uncertainty. So, in hurricane season, we Floridians stock up on bottled water, propane, toilet paper, preserved food, etc. Price is supposed to tell us when to stop stocking up and really assess what’s important to us. I’ll leave my rant about ‘anti-gouging’ laws on the cutting room floor. It is this verity about human action in the face of both scarcity and abundance that creates the Newtonian ‘opposite reaction’ to rising/falling costs. It is what always squashes the fears of Malthusian thinking against the windshield of history. So, while you can bully people into acting against their preferred outcomes for a while by raising the costs of disobedience to be greater than the marginal return of defiance, eventually a reversal of that cost/benefit framework takes place. For the Fed and the domestic banking interests, the best way to get to their preferred end, a domestically-driven cost structure to the US dollar, it meant offering the market gradually a better alternative to the old system or Eurodollars. SOFR is a collateralized rate, delivered to the market by the market for dollars. It’s a fundamentally superior interest rate product than LIBOR, which is a number picked out of thin air by 18 banks of dubious character and even more dubious motivations. Eurodollar futures are set based on LIBOR and because of LIBOR being written previously into every old debt and debt derivative instrument out there, LIBOR was the tail wagging the monetary policy dog. The five-year roll out of SOFR was done to introduce the better system and phase it in allowing the market to come to the ‘right’ conclusion that it is superior. If SOFR wasn’t a superior product to LIBOR no matter how much the Fed tried to force it onto the market, the market would have rejected it. Eurodollar futures would have remained a vibrant and liquid market up to the last day and call the Fed’s bluff. But SOFR was a superior product, gradually weaning the markets off LIBOR. Now there is still a whole lotta LIBOR-indexed debt out there and a lot of people are holding out hope this is all just a bad dream, but it’s not. There has been an uptick in loans switching to the Federal Reserve’s recommended Secured Overnight Financing Rate (Sofr) from Libor so far this year, but “a huge volume” still needs to transition, he said. Of the loans, many of which are held by CLOs, that still need to remediate, about 55% risk falling back to the prime rate, which is 7.75%, compared to around 4.5% for Sofr, if they do not find a transition path before the deadline, according to KKR. That difference could hurt borrowers with lots of debt and lower credit ratings, like CCC or B-, as their chances of downgrades rise, and it also puts lenders, such as CLOs that are measured by how many CCCs and defaults are in their vehicles, in a difficult spot, said Reback. “That is a significant risk for the loan market,” she said. Caught between the Scylla (a 25 bps spread over LIBOR) and Charybdis of prime, 3.50% over that, the outcome is inevitable. Anyone holding out is likely hoping for a last-minute policy change to help them out. If I had to guess those holdouts are at Blackrock trying to blackmail the Fed like they blackmailed the Bank of England last summer over UK pension obligations. I don’t know that the situation is analogous but it certainly smells that way. The BRICS and the Golden Path I had Vince Lanci on the podcast recently to discuss this very thing, how to replace an old system with a new one gradually. He’d been thinking about remonetizing gold, spurred on by a Twitter Spaces we did where we discussed gold redeemable Treasuries, or as Vince put it, “throw gold out onto the yield curve.” Listen to the podcast as we go over this idea in detail. Like the fall of the petro- and euro- dollar, the re-monetization of gold cannot happen overnight. Instead something like that has to happen over time. Again, using more carrot than stick is the better, more sustainable path. The markets are screaming for a solution to the current mess — wanting less debt, even less leveraged debt, fewer wars, more decentralization — but everyone also doesn’t want to be reduced to Bartertown and all that that implies. So, the best way to achieve that is to signal to the market that this exactly what you want. It starts with policy. In the case of the Fed it starts with being wholly unapologetic of the political consequences of aggressively tight monetary policy. FOMC Chair Jay “Baller” Powell gave us that this week testifying before the Senate Banking Committee. Powell reiterated his ‘higher rates for longer’ mantra. But, unlike in the past, the markets are now actually listening to him. There are still holdouts, trying to undermine the Fed, but I’ll leave the ECB and BoJ out of the discussion for now. The bond markets are grudgingly accepting this but the yield curve on US Treasury debt is still stubbornly inverted. But more significantly, Powell told Sen. Cynthia Lummis the Fed flat-out does not consider the fiscal situation on Capitol Hill in making monetary policy. (H/T Jim Bianco). 1/2 Interesting passage from Powell's testimony today: pic.twitter.com/SuKSba2oJW — Jim Bianco biancoresearch.eth (@biancoresearch) March 8, 2023 Read that passage carefully and you’ll see this FOMC Chair isn’t above telling Congress their business. You may not believe Powell but we know there are ways of getting out of this fiscal and monetary mess if we commit to doing it, rather than pouring gasoline on the socialist fire that the “Biden” Administration just did with their budget proposal. Moreover, what’s unspoken by Powell and others in the position to support him is what’s lurking on the other side of the International North South Transport Corridor (INSTC), a growing international framework for trade wholly outside the control or threats of the western political establishment and their slap-happy sanction monkeys we call heads of state. Powell can see the de-dollarization writing on the wall and he knows now is the time to slow down that trend and find a way to make the dollar more trustworthy. But, again, he can only deal with one side of that equation — the monetary policy side. The Fiscal and regulatory side are still firmly controlled by, frankly, shitbag commies; old, terrified colonial interests in Europe and the northeast US who see their time passing and refuse to accept it with grace. People who would rather burn the world to the ground than let it fall into the hands of those they consider ‘the help.’ But ‘the help’ are no longer helpless in the face of a big bully US dollar. They have a plan and they are executing it. That plan clearly involves the return of gold as the asset to balance the trade books to rebuild global trust and if the US and Europe don’t stop acting like entitled, spoiled children on the world stage, they will drop the gradualism and one day we will wake up in a different reality. This was Powell’s real message to Congress this week. It is the clear geopolitical imperative staring us all in the face. But if we don’t start down it now voluntarily, the superior monetary system will eventually outcompete and capital will flow to where it is treated best. This is the future policy choice we have to make our peace with. Because if we don’t I’m reminded of an old, bad joke I first heard as a teenager. “What’s the last thing that goes through a fly’s head before it hits the windshield of your car?” “It’s ass.” “We can move from boom to bust From dreams to a bowl of dust. We can fall from rockets red glare Down to — “Brother can you spare…” Another war — another wasteland — and another lost generation…” — RUSH, “Between the Wheels” Join my Patreon if you don’t like windshields Tyler Durden Fri, 03/10/2023 - 17:00.....»»

The death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police's Scorpion unit has renewed scrutiny on other elite "street crime" squads around the country. People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHow elite police units, like the Memphis Scorpion squad that killed Tyre Nichols, commit the crimes they're created to stopThey went by different names.Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The "Death Squad." The Place-Based Investigations Unit.Scorpion.But the specialized "street crime" squads, created in police departments around the country in response to rising rates of homicide and drug- and gun-related crimes, share a pattern of abuse.The outgrowth of decades of popular policing theories that advocate concentrating attention on high-crime areas, "street crime" squads in practice tend to focus on drugs, guns, or gangs – typically in lower-income neighborhoods with fewer white residents. Their aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017."They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.The proliferation of these "street crime" squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis's Scorpion unit were charged earlier this year with beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death in what should have been a routine traffic stop."What we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct," Ben Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, which is suing the city, wrote in an open letter to the city of Memphis last month. "The 'why' of Tyre Nichols's death is found in this policing culture itself."Insider's review of nearly two dozen units established to target neighborhoods police viewed as high-crime zones found repeated complaints of abuse, discrimination, criminal violence, and corruption. Oftentimes, these units have been disbanded after egregious incidents, including the use of deadly force, only to be reconstituted months or years later under a different name when  they become politically popular again. Specialized units have been connected to some of the most high-profile and flagrant cases of police brutality of the last 30 years, including the killings of Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner."There are umpteen examples of this turning into a nightmare. These elite units are going off the rails," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has written extensively about police militarization. "It happens so often that you have to conclude this is a flawed model."A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit On the evening of January 7, members of the Memphis police department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for what they alleged was reckless driving. It was dark. A group of officers, screaming obscenities, yanked him from his car and forced him to lay on the ground. One member of the unit used pepper spray, hitting Nichols and some of the other officers. Nichols broke free and ran down a nearby street."I hope they stomp his ass," one of the pepper-sprayed officers, who stayed behind at the scene of the stop, is heard saying on body-camera footage.About eight minutes later, officers found Nichols a half-mile away. Officers shook him, sprayed him with pepper spray, and kicked him in the head, footage released by the city shows. As Nichols staggered, moaning incoherently, some officers held him upright while others punched him in the head.After several minutes, officers handcuffed Nichols and leaned him against a car. In the roughly 20 minutes before he was loaded into an ambulance, Nichols was mostly silent and motionless.Nichols, who family members described as a free spirit skateboarder and photographer with his mom's name tattooed on his arm, died three days later. State police investigators said he died from injuries sustained during the "use-of-force incident with officers." Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentMemphis launched Scorpion in fall 2021, with four teams of 10 officers each directed to focus on violent crime. Memphis clocked more than 300 murders that year and 290 in 2020, far more than in the years before the pandemic. Only a few months after forming Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already boasting that the unit was helping turn the tide."Since its inception last October through January 23, 2022, the Scorpion Unit has had a total of 566 arrests — 390 of them felony arrests," he said. "They have seized over $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons."Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis disbanded the unit in the wake of Nichols' homicide.The contours of Nichols's death resonate with New Yorkers who recall the era of stop-and-frisk, with Atlantans who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit, with Baltimore residents scarred by the abuses of the Gun Trace Task Force – and with residents of dozens of other major cities that have established elite, aggressive units dedicated to targeting specific neighborhoods where police believe crime proliferates.An elite squad's mistakes led to Breonna Taylor's deathLouisville, Kentucky's Place-Based Investigations unit was supposed to help police eliminate some of the most persistent violent crime in the city. Tasked with going after drugs and guns, the unit, founded in 2019, was disbanded fewer than six months later after a botched police raid killed 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor.The unit's very first mission was targeting suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles from Taylor's home. But the scope of its investigation rapidly broadened to include Taylor, who police erroneously suspected of holding drugs on behalf of her ex-boyfriend. Plainclothes officers, acting on false information from the Place-Based Investigations Unit, broke into Taylor's home with a battering ram, failing to knock and announce their presence as their warrant required. Inside, Taylor's boyfriend, who later told police he thought an intruder was trying to break in, shot one officer in the thigh. Police opened fire on the couple, killing Taylor.Later, in a plea agreement, one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit would admit that she and other officers based the justification for the warrant to search Taylor's home not on evidence, but on a "gut belief." Taylor's death helped spur the swell of nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020.The story behind the creation of the Place-Based Investigations Unit shows how well-intentioned academic researchers and ties to other police officers can help such squads proliferate around the country, Kraska, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisThe Louisville department had consulted with Tamara Herold, a former Cincinnati police officer turned University of Nevada Las Vegas criminologist, about a study that seemed to show that focusing an increased police presence on geographic areas with high levels of crime could lead to sustained crime reductions. Two years after Taylor's death, nine other cities had adopted the model, the Washington Post reported. Herold, who has said Taylor's death was a "horrific tragedy" but is "not a defining feature of this initiative," is still pitching it to police departments. "Hot-spots policing can be very effective. Cops count. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect," Herold told the Police 1 podcast last month, acknowledging that if done poorly, the model can "strain police-community relationships." Herold did not respond to a request for comment.Memphis's Scorpion unit emerged a few years after a regional anti-crime group consulted with former New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly on a strategy for tackling gang violence. Kelly is the architect of some of New York's most controversial policing strategies, including the creation of anti-crime units, and is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk.Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly then worked, recommended Memphis increase staffing levels in specialized units to fight street crime. By 2019, according to the Marshall Project, the city had done so.The New York Police Department directed officers to aggressively target suspicious activity in neighborhoods they viewed as high-crime areas. Here, officers frisk and arrest men in Harlem in 1995.Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Davis, who took the reins of the Memphis PD in 2021, previously led the force in Durham, North Carolina. Before that, she rose through the ranks in Atlanta, including a stint leading a unit of the so-called Red Dogs, an Atlanta street-crime squad that was disbanded in the face of abuse allegations and lawsuits.Elite police units are magnets for scandal Virtually every big city has had an elite unit that's been broken up after leaders concluded that it went too far. Atlanta public safety commissioner George Napper created the Red Dog unit in 1987, at a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine use. Its name comes from a football play, but was later claimed to be an acronym for "Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia." An article in the Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the team would descend on reports of drug activity, make arrests, and seize drugs and cash."When the squad sweeps an area, anyone moving, especially young, black males, is told to hit the ground, hands behind his head, face down," the newspaper said. "Police officials admit the squad does little to reduce the flow of drugs into the city or the demand for them, but Mr. Napper said even what little the squad can do is important."Two decades later, though, the concerns about the unit's methods and effectiveness that had been raised from the start came to a head. The unit was abolished in 2011 after a raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, whose patrons and employees filed lawsuits claiming that police illegally detained them and used homophobic slurs while they lay handcuffed on the barroom floor. The city ended up paying more than $1 million in settlements.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisDecades before Atlanta ended its elite unit operations, Detroit scrapped its "Stress" anti-robbery squad in the 1970s after its members shot dozens of rounds into an apartment where off-duty Wayne County deputies were playing poker, killing two. Chicago disbanded its Special Operations Section in 2007 amid a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Prosecutors ultimately charged 13 of its members with breaking into homes to rob residents and conducting illegal traffic stops to shake down drivers. Eleven pleaded guilty and two went to prison, including one who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer he believed was collaborating with the federal investigation.   The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.More recently, in Baltimore, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were charged in 2017 and convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, stealing cash and filing bogus overtime claims. And in 2021, Springfield, Massachusetts responded to a Justice Department report about abuses by its narcotics bureau by shifting the team's focus to firearms.Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effectiveMany police leaders and criminologists say specialized units do work that other officers can't. Uniformed officers conducting patrols or responding to 911 calls don't have the time or tools to surveil gangs and gather information on the flow of drugs and guns, they say, and it takes dedicated officers to take criminal networks down.Tyre Nichols's death is far from the only instance where what should have been a routine traffic stop turned violent. In May 2020, Atlanta police threatened college student Messiah Young with a handgun before arresting Young and his passenger. The officers were fired. This photo is a still pulled from body camera footage.Associated PressThe units can also be politically popular. "Police departments say these units are created in response to community demand for specialized policing," said Jorge Camacho, a former New York prosecutor now with Yale Law School.The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.Meanwhile, police chiefs contend they are essential to fighting crime."It works. They make a lot of good cases, a lot of good arrests. Put a lot of bad people away to help solve the issue," Florida's Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who previously led the Orlando Police Department, told CNN last year.Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. New York Mayor Eric Adams reintroduced the city's controversial street crime units last year. Here, Adams points to a chart of gun violence he said shows his policies are working.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe popularity of these units among some elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement can sometimes shield them from scrutiny, allowing abusive practices and corruption to fester. Police leaders had been receiving complaints about the Gun Trace Task Force for years before it was disbanded in 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported, including a 2015 tip from a local reporter that the task force's leader, Wayne Jenkins, was robbing people. Until his arrest on racketeering charges in 2017, Jenkins was widely considered "a rising talent," the Sun wrote, "with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods."There's not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad. In interviews with Insider, experts suggested that a confluence of mission overreach, militarized training, inadequate supervision, racism, and other factors could be to blame.Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August 10, 2016U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights DivisionA recent report from the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank, castigated U.S. police academies' "paramilitary approach" to training for prompting police officers to view community members "as the enemy." Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said lowering the ratio of officers to supervisors within elite units could begin to address some of their issues."When you have these young, aggressive, proactive cops all together, with no controls, what do you think is going to happen?" Alpert said. "These units need more supervision, more control."Camacho said that part of the problem is that when all police have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."You have a bunch of officers with a mandate to look at homicide," he said, prompting them to be "hyper-vigilant." "They view anything as an indicator of violent crime," he added, "and respond accordingly.""There is no hunting like the hunting of man"Even after decades of elite units being shut down over abuses, cities have continually found ways to resurrect them. In New York, one notorious police unit has twice been disbanded only to come back from the dead.The cyclical saga of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how even after egregious incidents, such squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even as their mission and tactics remain the same.Established in 1971, by the late 1990s, the NYPD's Street Crime Unit was "known as the commandos" of the department, "an elite squad of nearly 400 officers," a New York Times reporter wrote in 1999, "dispatched into menacing neighborhoods each night to chase down rapists, muggers and dangerous fugitives, and above all, to get illegal guns off the streets."They wore t-shirts with a Hemingway quote: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."Former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, shown here leaving a press conference after a federal judge ruled the department's use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, later consulted on the formation of Memphis's Scorpion squad.Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesThe unit made up less than 2% of the force but seized 40% of the illegal guns confiscated by the NYPD. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani preached a "broken windows" policing doctrine that advocated zero tolerance toward even minor offenses.In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot."I wish I could bottle their enthusiasm and make everyone take a drink of it," then-NYPD commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Daily News in 1998. But on February 4, 1999, four members of the Street Crime Unit fired 41 bullets at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo while he was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, after the officers said he reached into his pocket as if to draw a firearm. Diallo was unarmed and reaching for his wallet, multiple investigations into his killing later found. The officers were acquitted of criminal charges and temporarily reassigned to desk duty.The police killing sparked a maelstrom of accusations that the Street Crime Unit's pervasive violence, particularly against poor, Black and brown New Yorkers, had gone ignored for years. Investigation of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department's Narcotics Bureau. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. July 8, 2020United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of MassachusettsUproar over Diallo's death — and a class-action lawsuit challenging the department's use of stop-and-frisks, which plaintiffs said was a form of illegal racial profiling — forced the NYPD to disband the Street Crime Unit in 2002.In spirit, though, the Street Crime Unit continued. Many of its officers were absorbed into new plainclothes units, called anti-crime units, that were charged with the same mission of preventing violent crime. And their tactics spread: NYPD officers made more stop-and-frisks in the early 2000s than they had in the 1990s, a second class-action lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged. The ranks of anti-crime units grew to nearly 600 officers by 2020.  "The problem on a most basic, fundamental level is that the leadership of most departments does not want to deal with the Constitution," New York civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, told Insider.The purpose of stopping so many New Yorkers for patdowns was explicitly racial, then-state senator Eric Adams testified in federal court in 2013. An analysis by The Intercept found that plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, were responsible for or involved in 31% of police shootings since 2000, despite composing only 2% of the police force. The anti-crime units were involved in notorious police killings, including the fatal 2018 shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man, in Brooklyn; the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell; and, in 2014, the death by suffocation of Eric Garner, whose last words, "I can't breathe," have become an emblem of protests against police brutality.  Amid the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, another police commissioner decided to shut down the units. The NYPD "can move away from brute force," then-commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time.But less than two years later, now-Mayor Adams brought back the controversial squads, this time rebranded Neighborhood Safety Teams, amid a panic over rising crime rates and a deadly attack in 2022 on two police officers. A member of Chicago's Special Operations Squad making an arrest in 2005, two years before the unit was broken up amid allegations of corruption.Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty ImagesAdams promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But he also said the squads were necessary in order to disrupt "the flow of guns in our cities."Their early record has not been promising. Most of the arrests made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams have nothing to do with guns, City & State reported. The most frequent type of arrest their officers have made is for possession of a fake ID.Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies New York is far from the only place where notorious squads have been disbanded and reformed. The New Haven Police Department dissolved its Street Interdiction Squad in 2007 amid a theft and bribery scandal, then reconstituted it two years later. Miami resurrected its Street Narcotics Unit under a new moniker, but was forced to dissolve it in 2013 under fire from the Department of Justice, which partially blamed it for a spate of police shootings. Experts say cities that stand up street crimes units risk replacing one kind of violence with another. Such units bring "a new level of aggression and threat to the community," said Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Atlanta's Red Dog unit. After Atlanta shut the unit down, the city also created a new specialist team to take its place: the APEX unit. (In 2021, the unit was rebranded as the Titan unit.) "From people in the community, the only change when the APEX unit came out was they changed their uniforms," said Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment at the hands of the Scorpion unit. Maurice Chalmers-Stokes, 19, told Memphis media that he was thrown into a fence last fall by a group of officers, including one of the cops accused of killing Nichols. He is suing the city, and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that police say they found on him in that interaction.NPR reported that four of the five officers charged in Nichols's death, who had two to six years of experience, had been disciplined by the Memphis police. One of the officers, Demetrius Haley, was disciplined in 2021 for not reporting an incident where a colleague — who resigned — yanked a woman from a car and dislocated her shoulder.Haley was also named in a 2016 lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who said that Haley was one of the corrections officers who abused him at a Shelby County jail. The case was dismissed. Moore, who worked on the New York City stop-and-frisk case, said part of the issue with elite units is that some of them are stretched too thin. But he said no matter how many supervisors are on the job, street-crime teams often do what politicians and policymakers want them to do."Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied," he said. "They want them to go out and be aggressive."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police's Scorpion unit has renewed scrutiny on other elite "street crime" squads around the country. People gather to protest against the police killing of Tyre Nichols at Times Square in New York on January 28, 2023.Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesHow elite police units, like the Memphis Scorpion squad that killed Tyre Nichols, commit the crimes they're created to stopThey went by different names.Red Dog. CRASH. The Gun Trace Task Force. Street Crime Unit. The Special Operations Section. The "Death Squad." The Place-Based Investigations Unit.Scorpion.But the specialized "street crime" squads, created in police departments around the country in response to rising rates of homicide and drug- and gun-related crimes, share a pattern of abuse.The outgrowth of decades of popular policing theories that advocate concentrating attention on high-crime areas, "street crime" squads in practice tend to focus on drugs, guns, or gangs – typically in lower-income neighborhoods with fewer white residents. Their aggressive tactics are so notorious – and so similar – that in many cities they're known as "jump-out boys" for the way officers spill out of their cars to accost people during stops. In Chicago, such units have contributed to residents seeing the police as "an occupying force" that make some neighborhoods feel like "an open-air prison," the Department of Justice found in 2017."They patrol our streets like they are the dog catchers and we are the dogs," one Chicago resident told investigators.The proliferation of these "street crime" squads is under renewed scrutiny after five members of Memphis's Scorpion unit were charged earlier this year with beating 29-year-old Tyre Nichols to death in what should have been a routine traffic stop."What we've seen this month in Memphis and for many years in many places, is that the behavior of these units can morph into 'wolf pack' misconduct," Ben Crump, an attorney for Nichols' family, which is suing the city, wrote in an open letter to the city of Memphis last month. "The 'why' of Tyre Nichols's death is found in this policing culture itself."Insider's review of nearly two dozen units established to target neighborhoods police viewed as high-crime zones found repeated complaints of abuse, discrimination, criminal violence, and corruption. Oftentimes, these units have been disbanded after egregious incidents, including the use of deadly force, only to be reconstituted months or years later under a different name when  they become politically popular again. Specialized units have been connected to some of the most high-profile and flagrant cases of police brutality of the last 30 years, including the killings of Breonna Taylor, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, and Eric Garner."There are umpteen examples of this turning into a nightmare. These elite units are going off the rails," said Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who has written extensively about police militarization. "It happens so often that you have to conclude this is a flawed model."A woman leaves a flower during a vigil on the day of the release of a video showing the Memphis police beating of Tyre Nichols.Brian Snyder/ReutersTyre Nichols and the Memphis Scorpion unit On the evening of January 7, members of the Memphis police department stopped Tyre Nichols in the middle of a six-lane road on the outskirts of the city for what they alleged was reckless driving. It was dark. A group of officers, screaming obscenities, yanked him from his car and forced him to lay on the ground. One member of the unit used pepper spray, hitting Nichols and some of the other officers. Nichols broke free and ran down a nearby street."I hope they stomp his ass," one of the pepper-sprayed officers, who stayed behind at the scene of the stop, is heard saying on body-camera footage.About eight minutes later, officers found Nichols a half-mile away. Officers shook him, sprayed him with pepper spray, and kicked him in the head, footage released by the city shows. As Nichols staggered, moaning incoherently, some officers held him upright while others punched him in the head.After several minutes, officers handcuffed Nichols and leaned him against a car. In the roughly 20 minutes before he was loaded into an ambulance, Nichols was mostly silent and motionless.Nichols, who family members described as a free spirit skateboarder and photographer with his mom's name tattooed on his arm, died three days later. State police investigators said he died from injuries sustained during the "use-of-force incident with officers." Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Dean, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin., and Desmond Mills Jr. are now facing murder charges.Memphis Police DepartmentMemphis launched Scorpion in fall 2021, with four teams of 10 officers each directed to focus on violent crime. Memphis clocked more than 300 murders that year and 290 in 2020, far more than in the years before the pandemic. Only a few months after forming Scorpion, Mayor Jim Strickland was already boasting that the unit was helping turn the tide."Since its inception last October through January 23, 2022, the Scorpion Unit has had a total of 566 arrests — 390 of them felony arrests," he said. "They have seized over $103,000 in cash, 270 vehicles, and 253 weapons."Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis disbanded the unit in the wake of Nichols' homicide.The contours of Nichols's death resonate with New Yorkers who recall the era of stop-and-frisk, with Atlantans who remember the heyday of the Red Dog unit, with Baltimore residents scarred by the abuses of the Gun Trace Task Force – and with residents of dozens of other major cities that have established elite, aggressive units dedicated to targeting specific neighborhoods where police believe crime proliferates.An elite squad's mistakes led to Breonna Taylor's deathLouisville, Kentucky's Place-Based Investigations unit was supposed to help police eliminate some of the most persistent violent crime in the city. Tasked with going after drugs and guns, the unit, founded in 2019, was disbanded fewer than six months later after a botched police raid killed 26-year-old emergency medical technician Breonna Taylor.The unit's very first mission was targeting suspected drug dealing on Elliott Avenue, miles from Taylor's home. But the scope of its investigation rapidly broadened to include Taylor, who police erroneously suspected of holding drugs on behalf of her ex-boyfriend. Plainclothes officers, acting on false information from the Place-Based Investigations Unit, broke into Taylor's home with a battering ram, failing to knock and announce their presence as their warrant required. Inside, Taylor's boyfriend, who later told police he thought an intruder was trying to break in, shot one officer in the thigh. Police opened fire on the couple, killing Taylor.Later, in a plea agreement, one of the members of the Place-Based Investigations unit would admit that she and other officers based the justification for the warrant to search Taylor's home not on evidence, but on a "gut belief." Taylor's death helped spur the swell of nationwide protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020.The story behind the creation of the Place-Based Investigations Unit shows how well-intentioned academic researchers and ties to other police officers can help such squads proliferate around the country, Kraska, the Eastern Kentucky University professor, said.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisThe Louisville department had consulted with Tamara Herold, a former Cincinnati police officer turned University of Nevada Las Vegas criminologist, about a study that seemed to show that focusing an increased police presence on geographic areas with high levels of crime could lead to sustained crime reductions. Two years after Taylor's death, nine other cities had adopted the model, the Washington Post reported. Herold, who has said Taylor's death was a "horrific tragedy" but is "not a defining feature of this initiative," is still pitching it to police departments. "Hot-spots policing can be very effective. Cops count. When police are present, we can have a significant deterrent effect," Herold told the Police 1 podcast last month, acknowledging that if done poorly, the model can "strain police-community relationships." Herold did not respond to a request for comment.Memphis's Scorpion unit emerged a few years after a regional anti-crime group consulted with former New York City Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly on a strategy for tackling gang violence. Kelly is the architect of some of New York's most controversial policing strategies, including the creation of anti-crime units, and is a vocal advocate for stop-and-frisk.Reports from the private investigations firm K2 Intelligence, where Kelly then worked, recommended Memphis increase staffing levels in specialized units to fight street crime. By 2019, according to the Marshall Project, the city had done so.The New York Police Department directed officers to aggressively target suspicious activity in neighborhoods they viewed as high-crime areas. Here, officers frisk and arrest men in Harlem in 1995.Jon Naso/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesMemphis police chief Davis also has prior experience with special street crime units. Davis, who took the reins of the Memphis PD in 2021, previously led the force in Durham, North Carolina. Before that, she rose through the ranks in Atlanta, including a stint leading a unit of the so-called Red Dogs, an Atlanta street-crime squad that was disbanded in the face of abuse allegations and lawsuits.Elite police units are magnets for scandal Virtually every big city has had an elite unit that's been broken up after leaders concluded that it went too far. Atlanta public safety commissioner George Napper created the Red Dog unit in 1987, at a time when Atlanta was dealing with a surge in crack cocaine use. Its name comes from a football play, but was later claimed to be an acronym for "Run Every Drug Dealer Out of Georgia." An article in the Atlanta Constitution from its first year describes how the team would descend on reports of drug activity, make arrests, and seize drugs and cash."When the squad sweeps an area, anyone moving, especially young, black males, is told to hit the ground, hands behind his head, face down," the newspaper said. "Police officials admit the squad does little to reduce the flow of drugs into the city or the demand for them, but Mr. Napper said even what little the squad can do is important."Two decades later, though, the concerns about the unit's methods and effectiveness that had been raised from the start came to a head. The unit was abolished in 2011 after a raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, whose patrons and employees filed lawsuits claiming that police illegally detained them and used homophobic slurs while they lay handcuffed on the barroom floor. The city ended up paying more than $1 million in settlements.Investigation of the Chicago Police Department. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office Northern District of Illinois. January 13, 2017United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office Northern District of IllinoisDecades before Atlanta ended its elite unit operations, Detroit scrapped its "Stress" anti-robbery squad in the 1970s after its members shot dozens of rounds into an apartment where off-duty Wayne County deputies were playing poker, killing two. Chicago disbanded its Special Operations Section in 2007 amid a wide-ranging corruption scandal. Prosecutors ultimately charged 13 of its members with breaking into homes to rob residents and conducting illegal traffic stops to shake down drivers. Eleven pleaded guilty and two went to prison, including one who admitted to ordering a hit on a fellow officer he believed was collaborating with the federal investigation.   The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.More recently, in Baltimore, all eight members of the Gun Trace Task Force were charged in 2017 and convicted of crimes including robbing drug dealers, stealing cash and filing bogus overtime claims. And in 2021, Springfield, Massachusetts responded to a Justice Department report about abuses by its narcotics bureau by shifting the team's focus to firearms.Police chiefs say elite teams are popular and effectiveMany police leaders and criminologists say specialized units do work that other officers can't. Uniformed officers conducting patrols or responding to 911 calls don't have the time or tools to surveil gangs and gather information on the flow of drugs and guns, they say, and it takes dedicated officers to take criminal networks down.Tyre Nichols's death is far from the only instance where what should have been a routine traffic stop turned violent. In May 2020, Atlanta police threatened college student Messiah Young with a handgun before arresting Young and his passenger. The officers were fired. This photo is a still pulled from body camera footage.Associated PressThe units can also be politically popular. "Police departments say these units are created in response to community demand for specialized policing," said Jorge Camacho, a former New York prosecutor now with Yale Law School.The Los Angeles Police Department's robbery-focused Special Investigations Section was embroiled in so many shootouts that it was branded the "death squad." And its CRASH team was broken up in 2000 after a member — who had been caught stealing cocaine from the evidence locker and replacing it with Bisquick pancake mix — flipped on his colleagues in what became known as the Rampart scandal.Meanwhile, police chiefs contend they are essential to fighting crime."It works. They make a lot of good cases, a lot of good arrests. Put a lot of bad people away to help solve the issue," Florida's Orange County Sheriff John W. Mina, who previously led the Orlando Police Department, told CNN last year.Street crime squads are popular among politicians who say only aggressive policing will reduce violent crime. New York Mayor Eric Adams reintroduced the city's controversial street crime units last year. Here, Adams points to a chart of gun violence he said shows his policies are working.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe popularity of these units among some elected officials, criminologists, and law enforcement can sometimes shield them from scrutiny, allowing abusive practices and corruption to fester. Police leaders had been receiving complaints about the Gun Trace Task Force for years before it was disbanded in 2017, The Baltimore Sun reported, including a 2015 tip from a local reporter that the task force's leader, Wayne Jenkins, was robbing people. Until his arrest on racketeering charges in 2017, Jenkins was widely considered "a rising talent," the Sun wrote, "with an uncanny knack for delivering the goods."There's not a clear explanation for why so many elite units go bad. In interviews with Insider, experts suggested that a confluence of mission overreach, militarized training, inadequate supervision, racism, and other factors could be to blame.Investigation of the Baltimore City Police Department. U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. August 10, 2016U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights DivisionA recent report from the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank, castigated U.S. police academies' "paramilitary approach" to training for prompting police officers to view community members "as the enemy." Geoff Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina, said lowering the ratio of officers to supervisors within elite units could begin to address some of their issues."When you have these young, aggressive, proactive cops all together, with no controls, what do you think is going to happen?" Alpert said. "These units need more supervision, more control."Camacho said that part of the problem is that when all police have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."You have a bunch of officers with a mandate to look at homicide," he said, prompting them to be "hyper-vigilant." "They view anything as an indicator of violent crime," he added, "and respond accordingly.""There is no hunting like the hunting of man"Even after decades of elite units being shut down over abuses, cities have continually found ways to resurrect them. In New York, one notorious police unit has twice been disbanded only to come back from the dead.The cyclical saga of the Street Crime Unit is a prime example of how even after egregious incidents, such squads are often reconstituted under a different name, even as their mission and tactics remain the same.Established in 1971, by the late 1990s, the NYPD's Street Crime Unit was "known as the commandos" of the department, "an elite squad of nearly 400 officers," a New York Times reporter wrote in 1999, "dispatched into menacing neighborhoods each night to chase down rapists, muggers and dangerous fugitives, and above all, to get illegal guns off the streets."They wore t-shirts with a Hemingway quote: "Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."Former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, shown here leaving a press conference after a federal judge ruled the department's use of stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, later consulted on the formation of Memphis's Scorpion squad.Andrew Burton/Getty ImagesThe unit made up less than 2% of the force but seized 40% of the illegal guns confiscated by the NYPD. In the late 1990s, the Street Crime Unit tripled in size, amid a panic over a rising number of homicides. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani preached a "broken windows" policing doctrine that advocated zero tolerance toward even minor offenses.In a city grappling with violent crime, authorities touted the Street Crime Unit as a bright spot."I wish I could bottle their enthusiasm and make everyone take a drink of it," then-NYPD commissioner Howard Safir told the New York Daily News in 1998. But on February 4, 1999, four members of the Street Crime Unit fired 41 bullets at 23-year-old Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo while he was standing in the vestibule of his Bronx apartment building, after the officers said he reached into his pocket as if to draw a firearm. Diallo was unarmed and reaching for his wallet, multiple investigations into his killing later found. The officers were acquitted of criminal charges and temporarily reassigned to desk duty.The police killing sparked a maelstrom of accusations that the Street Crime Unit's pervasive violence, particularly against poor, Black and brown New Yorkers, had gone ignored for years. Investigation of the Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department's Narcotics Bureau. United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney's Office District of Massachusetts. July 8, 2020United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and United States Attorney’s Office District of MassachusettsUproar over Diallo's death — and a class-action lawsuit challenging the department's use of stop-and-frisks, which plaintiffs said was a form of illegal racial profiling — forced the NYPD to disband the Street Crime Unit in 2002.In spirit, though, the Street Crime Unit continued. Many of its officers were absorbed into new plainclothes units, called anti-crime units, that were charged with the same mission of preventing violent crime. And their tactics spread: NYPD officers made more stop-and-frisks in the early 2000s than they had in the 1990s, a second class-action lawsuit, filed in 2008, alleged. The ranks of anti-crime units grew to nearly 600 officers by 2020.  "The problem on a most basic, fundamental level is that the leadership of most departments does not want to deal with the Constitution," New York civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, who sued the city over stop-and-frisk, told Insider.The purpose of stopping so many New Yorkers for patdowns was explicitly racial, then-state senator Eric Adams testified in federal court in 2013. An analysis by The Intercept found that plainclothes officers, including members of the anti-crime units, were responsible for or involved in 31% of police shootings since 2000, despite composing only 2% of the police force. The anti-crime units were involved in notorious police killings, including the fatal 2018 shooting of Saheed Vassell, a mentally ill man, in Brooklyn; the fatal 2006 shooting of Sean Bell; and, in 2014, the death by suffocation of Eric Garner, whose last words, "I can't breathe," have become an emblem of protests against police brutality.  Amid the racial justice protests in the summer of 2020, another police commissioner decided to shut down the units. The NYPD "can move away from brute force," then-commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time.But less than two years later, now-Mayor Adams brought back the controversial squads, this time rebranded Neighborhood Safety Teams, amid a panic over rising crime rates and a deadly attack in 2022 on two police officers. A member of Chicago's Special Operations Squad making an arrest in 2005, two years before the unit was broken up amid allegations of corruption.Ralf-Finn Hestoft/Corbis via Getty ImagesAdams promised not to repeat the mistakes of the past. But he also said the squads were necessary in order to disrupt "the flow of guns in our cities."Their early record has not been promising. Most of the arrests made by the Neighborhood Safety Teams have nothing to do with guns, City & State reported. The most frequent type of arrest their officers have made is for possession of a fake ID.Elite police squads get rebranded after controversies New York is far from the only place where notorious squads have been disbanded and reformed. The New Haven Police Department dissolved its Street Interdiction Squad in 2007 amid a theft and bribery scandal, then reconstituted it two years later. Miami resurrected its Street Narcotics Unit under a new moniker, but was forced to dissolve it in 2013 under fire from the Department of Justice, which partially blamed it for a spate of police shootings. Experts say cities that stand up street crimes units risk replacing one kind of violence with another. Such units bring "a new level of aggression and threat to the community," said Maurice Hobson, a professor at Georgia State University who has written a book about Atlanta's Red Dog unit. After Atlanta shut the unit down, the city also created a new specialist team to take its place: the APEX unit. (In 2021, the unit was rebranded as the Titan unit.) "From people in the community, the only change when the APEX unit came out was they changed their uniforms," said Tiffany Roberts, the policy director for the Southern Center for Human Rights. The death of Tyre Nichols has prompted others to come forward with claims of mistreatment at the hands of the Scorpion unit. Maurice Chalmers-Stokes, 19, told Memphis media that he was thrown into a fence last fall by a group of officers, including one of the cops accused of killing Nichols. He is suing the city, and fighting charges for possessing a stolen gun that police say they found on him in that interaction.NPR reported that four of the five officers charged in Nichols's death, who had two to six years of experience, had been disciplined by the Memphis police. One of the officers, Demetrius Haley, was disciplined in 2021 for not reporting an incident where a colleague — who resigned — yanked a woman from a car and dislocated her shoulder.Haley was also named in a 2016 lawsuit filed by a plaintiff who said that Haley was one of the corrections officers who abused him at a Shelby County jail. The case was dismissed. Moore, who worked on the New York City stop-and-frisk case, said part of the issue with elite units is that some of them are stretched too thin. But he said no matter how many supervisors are on the job, street-crime teams often do what politicians and policymakers want them to do."Leadership does not want these officers to have their hands tied," he said. "They want them to go out and be aggressive."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

How The "Unvaccinated" Got It Right Authored by Robin Koerner via The Brownstone Institute, Scott Adams is the creator of the famous cartoon strip, Dilbert. It is a strip whose brilliance derives from close observation and understanding of human behavior. Some time ago, Scott turned those skills to commenting insightfully and with notable intellectual humility on the politics and culture of our country. Like many other commentators, and based on his own analysis of evidence available to him, he opted to take the Covid “vaccine.” Recently, however, he posted a video on the topic that has been circulating on social media. It was a mea culpa in which he declared, “The unvaccinated were the winners,” and, to his great credit, “I want to find out how so many of [my viewers] got the right answer about the “vaccine” and I didn’t.”  “Winners” was perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek: he seemingly means that the “unvaccinated” do not have to worry about the long-term consequences of having the “vaccine” in their bodies since enough data concerning the lack of safety of the “vaccines” have now appeared to demonstrate that, on the balance of risks, the choice not to be “vaccinated” has been vindicated for individuals without comorbidities. What follows is a personal response to Scott, which explains how consideration of the information that was available at the time led one person – me – to decline the “vaccine.” It is not meant to imply that all who accepted the “vaccine” made the wrong decision or, indeed, that everyone who declined it did so for good reasons.  Some people have said that the “vaccine” was created in a hurry. That may or may not be true. Much of the research for mRNA “vaccines” had already been done over many years, and corona-viruses as a class are well understood so it was at least feasible that only a small fraction of the “vaccine” development had been hurried. The much more important point was that the “vaccine” was rolled out without long-term testing. Therefore one of two conditions applied. Either no claim could be made with confidence about the long-term safety of the “vaccine” or there was some amazing scientific argument for a once-in-a-lifetime theoretical certainty concerning the long-term safety of this “vaccine.” The latter would be so extraordinary that it might (for all I know) even be a first in the history of medicine. If that were the case, it would have been all that was being talked about by the scientists; it was not. Therefore, the more obvious, first state of affairs, obtained: nothing could be claimed with confidence about the long-term safety of the “vaccine.” Given, then, that the long-term safety of the “vaccine” was a theoretical crapshoot, the unquantifiable long-term risk of taking it could only be justified by an extremely high certain risk of not taking it. Accordingly, a moral and scientific argument could only be made for its use by those at high risk of severe illness if exposed to COVID. Even the very earliest data immediately showed that I (and the overwhelming majority of the population) was not in the group. The continued insistence on rolling out the “vaccine” to the entire population when the data revealed that those with no comorbidities were at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID was therefore immoral and ascientific on its face. The argument that reduced transmission from the non-vulnerable to the vulnerable as a result of mass “vaccination” could only stand if the long-term safety of the “vaccine” had been established, which it had not. Given the lack of proof of long-term safety, the mass-“vaccination” policy was clearly putting at risk young or healthy lives to save old and unhealthy ones. The policy makers did not even acknowledge this, express any concern about the grave responsibility they were taking on for knowingly putting people at risk, or indicate how they had weighed the risks before reaching their policy positions. Altogether, this was a very strong reason not to trust the policy or the people setting it. At the very least, if the gamble with people’s health and lives represented by the coercive “vaccination” policy had been taken following an adequate cost-benefit benefit, that decision would have been a tough judgment call. Any honest presentation of it would have involved the equivocal language of risk-balancing and the public availability of information about how the risks were weighed and the decision was made. In fact, the language of policy-makers was dishonestly unequivocal and the advice they offered suggested no risk whatsoever of taking the “vaccine.” This advice was simply false (or if you prefer, misleading,) on the evidence of the time inasmuch as it was unqualified. Data that did not support COVID policies were actively and massively suppressed. This raised the bar of sufficient evidence for certainty that the “vaccine” was safe and efficacious. Per the foregoing, the bar was not met.  Simple analyses of even the early available data showed that the establishment was prepared to do much more harm in terms of human rights and spending public resources to prevent a COVID death than any other kind of death. Why this disproportionality? An explanation of this overreaction was required. The kindest guess as to what was driving it was “good-old, honest panic.” But if a policy is being driven by panic, then the bar for going along with it moves up even higher. A less kind guess is that there were undeclared reasons for the policy, in which case, obviously, the “vaccine” could not be trusted.  Fear had clearly generated a health panic and a moral panic, or mass formation psychosis. That brought into play many very strong cognitive biases and natural human tendencies against rationality and proportionality. Evidence of those biases was everywhere; it included the severing of close kin and kith relationships, the ill-treatment of people by others who used to be perfectly decent, the willingness of parents to cause developmental harm to their children, calls for large-scale rights violations that were made by large numbers of citizens of previously free countries without any apparent concern for the horrific implications of those calls, and the straight-faced, even anxious, compliance with policies that should have warranted responses of laughter from psychologically healthy individuals (even if they had been necessary or just helpful). In the grip of such panic or mass formation psychosis the evidential bar for extreme claims (such as the safety and moral necessity of injecting oneself with a form of gene therapy that has not undergone long-term testing) rises yet further. The companies responsible for manufacturing and ultimately profiting from the “vaccination” were given legal immunity. Why would a government do that if it really believed that the “vaccine” was safe and wanted to instill confidence in it? And why would I put something in my body that the government has decided can harm me without my having any legal redress? If the “vaccine”-sceptical were wrong, there would still have been two good reasons not to suppress their data or views. First, we are a liberal democracy that values free speech as a fundamental right and second, their data and arguments could be shown to be fallacious. The fact that the powers-that-be decided to violate our fundamental values and suppress discussion invites the question of “Why?” That was not satisfactorily answered beyond, “It’s easier for them to impose their mandates in a world where people do not dissent:” but that is an argument against compliance, rather than for it. Suppressing information a priori suggests that the information has persuasive force. I distrust anyone who distrusts me to determine which information and arguments are good and which are bad when it is my health that is at stake – especially when the people who are promoting censorship are hypocritically acting against their declared beliefs in informed consent and bodily autonomy. The PCR test was held up as the “gold standard” diagnostic test for COVID. A moment’s reading about how the PCR test works indicates that it is no such thing. Its use for diagnostic purposes is more of an art than a science, to put it kindly. Kary Mullis, who in 1993 won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing the PCR technique risked his career to say as much when people tried to use it as a diagnostic test for HIV to justify a mass program of pushing experimental anti-retroviral drugs on early AIDS patients, which ultimately killed tens of thousands of people. This raises the question, “How do the people who are generating the data that we saw on the news every night and were being used to justify the mass “vaccination” policy handle the uncertainty around PCR-based diagnoses?” If you don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question, your bar for taking the risk of “vaccination” should once again go up. (On a personal note, to get the answer before making my decision about whether to undergo “vaccination,” I sent exactly this question, via a friend, to an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins. That epidemiologist, who was personally involved in generating the up-to-date data on the spread of pandemic globally, replied merely that s/he works with the data s/he’s given and does not question its accuracy or means of generation. In other words, the pandemic response was largely based on data generated by processes that were not understood or even questioned by the generators of that data.)  To generalize the last point, a supposedly conclusive claim by someone who demonstrably cannot justify their claim should be discounted. In the case of the COVID pandemic, almost all people who acted as if the “vaccine” was safe and effective had no physical or informational evidence for the claims of safety and efficacy beyond the supposed authority of other people who made them. This includes many medical professionals – a problem that was being raised by some of their number (who, in many cases, were censored on social media and even lost their jobs or licenses). Anyone could read the CDC infographics on mRNA “vaccines” and, without being a scientist, generate obvious “But what if..?” questions that could be asked of experts to check for themselves whether the pushers of the “vaccines” would personally vouch for their safety. For example, the CDC put out an infographic that stated the following. “How does the vaccine work? The mRNA in the vaccine teaches your cells how to make copies of the spike protein. If you are exposed to the real virus later, your body will recognize it and know how to fight it off. After the mRNA delivers the instructions, your cells break it down and get rid of it.” All right. Here are some obvious questions to ask, then. “What happens if the instructions delivered to cells to generate the spike protein are not eliminated from the body as intended? How can we be sure that such a situation will never arise?” If someone cannot answer those questions, and he is in a position of political or medical authority, then he shows himself to be willing to push potentially harmful policies without considering the risks involved. Given all of the above, a serious person at least had to keep an eye out for published safety and efficacy data as the pandemic proceeded. Pfizer’s Six-month Safety and Efficacy Study was notable. The very large number of its authors was remarkable and their summary claim was that the tested vaccine was effective and safe. The data in the paper showed more deaths per head in the “vaccinated” group than “unvaccinated” group. While this difference does not statistically establish that the shot is dangerous or ineffective, the generated data were clearly compatible with (let us put it kindly) the incomplete safety of the “vaccine” – at odds with the front-page summary. (It’s almost as if even professional scientists and clinicians exhibit bias and motivated reasoning when their work becomes politicized.) At the very least, a lay reader could see that the “summary findings” stretched, or at least showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about, the data – especially given what was at stake and the awesome responsibility of getting someone to put something untested inside their body. As time went on, it became very clear that some of the informational claims that had been made to convince people to get “vaccinated,” especially by politicians and media commentators, were false. If those policies had been genuinely justified by the previously claimed “facts,” then determination of the falsity of those “facts” should have resulted in a change in policy or, at the very least, expressions of clarification and regret by people who had previously made those incorrect but pivotal claims. Basic moral and scientific standards demand that individuals put clearly on the record the requisite corrections and retractions of statements that might influence decisions that affect health. If they don’t, they should not be trusted – especially given the huge potential consequences of their informational errors for an increasingly “vaccinated” population. That, however, never happened. If the “vaccine”-pushers had acted in good faith, then in the wake of the publication of new data throughout the pandemic, we would have been hearing (and perhaps even accepting) multiple mea culpas. We heard no such thing from political officials, revealing an almost across-the-board lack of integrity, moral seriousness, or concern with accuracy. The consequently necessary discounting of the claims previously made by officials left no trustworthy case on the pro-lockdown, pro-“vaccine” side at all. To offer some examples of statements that were proven false by data but not explicitly walked back: “You’re not going to get COVID if you get these vaccinations… We are in a pandemic of the unvaccinated.” – Joe Biden; “The vaccines are safe. I promise you…” – Joe Biden; “The vaccines are safe and effective.” – Anthony Fauci. “Our data from the CDC suggest that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, do not get sick – and it’s not just in the clinical trials but it’s also in real world data.” – Dr. Rochelle Walensky. “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in… in serious condition and many on ventilators.” – Justice Sotomayer (during a case to determine legality of Federal “vaccine” mandates)… … and so on and so on. The last one is particularly interesting because it was made by a judge in a Supreme Court case to determine the legality of the federal mandates. Subsequently, the aforementioned Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC, who had previously made a false statement about the efficacy of the “vaccine,” confirmed under questioning that the number of children in hospital was only 3,500 – not 100,000. To make more strongly the point about prior claims and policies’ being contradicted by subsequent findings but not, as a result, being reversed, the same Dr. Walensky, head of the CDC, said, “the overwhelming number of deaths – over 75% – occurred in people that had at least four comorbidities. So really these were people who were unwell to begin with.” That statement so completely undermined the entire justification for the policies of mass-“vaccination” and lockdowns that any intellectually honest person who supported them would at that point have to reassess their position. Whereas the average Joe might well have missed that piece of information from the CDC, it was the government’s own information so the presidential Joe (and his agents) certainly could not have missed it. Where was the sea change in policy to match the sea change in our understanding of the risks associated with COVID, and therefore the cost-benefit balance of the untested (long-term) “vaccine” vs. the risk associated with being infected with COVID? It never came. Clearly, neither the policy positions nor their supposed factual basis could be trusted. What was the new science that explained why, for the first time in history, a “vaccine” would be more effective than natural exposure and consequent immunity? Why the urgency to get a person who has had COVID and now has some immunity to get “vaccinated” after the fact? The overall political and cultural context in which the entire discourse on “vaccination” was being conducted was such that the evidential bar for the safety and efficacy of the “vaccine” was raised yet further while our ability to determine whether that bar had been met was reduced. Any conversation with an “unvaccinated” person (and as an educator and teacher, I was involved in very many), always involved the “unvaccinated” person being put into a defensive posture of having to justify himself to the “vaccine”-supporter as if his position was de facto more harmful than the contrary one. In such a context, accurate determination of facts is almost impossible: moral judgment always inhibits objective empirical analysis. When dispassionate discussion of an issue is impossible because judgment has saturated discourse, drawing conclusions of sufficient accuracy and with sufficient certainty to promote rights violations and the coercion of medical treatment, is next to impossible. Regarding analytics (and Scott’s point about “our” heuristics beating “their” analytics), precision is not accuracy. Indeed, in contexts of great uncertainty and complexity, precision is negatively correlated with accuracy. (A more precise claim is less likely to be correct.) Much of the COVID panic began with modeling. Modeling is dangerous inasmuch as it puts numbers on things; numbers are precise; and precision gives an illusion of accuracy – but under great uncertainty and complexity, model outputs are dominated by the uncertainties on the input variables that have very wide (and unknown) ranges and the multiple assumptions that themselves warrant only low confidence. Therefore, any claimed precision of a model’s output is bogus and the apparent accuracy is only and entirely that – apparent.  We saw the same thing with HIV in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Models at that time determined that up to one-third of the heterosexual population could contract HIV. Oprah Winfrey offered that statistic on one of her shows, alarming a nation. The first industry to know that this was absurdly wide of the mark was the insurance industry when all of the bankruptcies that they were expecting on account of payouts on life insurance policies did not happen. When the reality did not match the outputs of their models, they knew that the assumptions on which those models were based were false – and that the pattern of the disease was very different from what had been declared. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, the falseness of those assumptions could have been determined at the time. Of relevance to us today, however, is the fact that those models helped to create an entire AIDS industry, which pushed experimental antiretroviral drugs on people with HIV no doubt in the sincere belief that the drugs might help them. Those drugs killed hundreds of thousands of people.  (By the way, the man who announced the “discovery” of HIV from the White House – not in a peer-reviewed journal – and then pioneered the huge and deadly reaction to it was the very same Anthony Fauci who has been gracing our television screens over the last few years.) An honest approach to data on COVID and policy development would have driven the urgent development of a system to collect accurate data on COVID infections and the outcomes of COVID patients. Instead, the powers that be did the very opposite, making policy decisions that knowingly reduced the accuracy of collected data in a way that would serve their political purposes. Specifically, they 1) stopped distinguishing between dying of COVID and dying with COVID and 2) incentivized medical institutions to identify deaths as caused by COVID when there was no clinical data to support that conclusion. (This also happened during the aforementioned HIV panic three decades ago.) The dishonesty of the pro-“vaccine” side was revealed by the repeated changes of official definitions of clinical terms like “vaccine” whose (scientific) definitions have been fixed for generations (as they must be if science is to do its work accurately: definitions of scientific terms can change, but only when our understanding of their referents changes). Why was the government changing the meanings of words rather than simply telling the truth using the same words they had been using from the beginning? Their actions in this regard were entirely disingenuous and anti-science. The evidential bar moves up again and our ability to trust the evidence slides down.  In his video (which I mentioned at the top of this article), Scott Adams asked, “How could I have determined that the data that [“vaccine”-sceptics] sent me was the good data?” He did not have to. Those of us who got it right or “won” (to use his word) needed only to accept the data of those who were pushing the “vaccination” mandates. Since they had the greatest interest in the data pointing their way, we could put an upper bound of confidence in their claims by testing those claims against their own data. For someone without comorbidities, that upper bound was still too low to take the risk of “vaccination” given the very low risk of severe harm from contracting COVID-19. In this relation, it is also worth mentioning that under the right contextual conditions, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Those conditions definitely applied in the pandemic: there was a massive incentive for all of the outlets who were pushing the “vaccine” to provide sufficient evidence to support their unequivocal claims for the vaccine and lockdown policies and to denigrate, as they did, those who disagreed. They simply did not provide that evidence, obviously because it did not exist. Given that they would have provided it if it had existed, the lack of evidence presented was evidence of its absence. For all of the above reasons, I moved from initially considering enrolling in a vaccine trial to doing some open-minded due diligence to becoming COVID-“vaccine”-sceptical. I generally believe in never saying “never” so I was waiting until such time as the questions and issues raised above were answered and resolved. Then, I would be potentially willing to get “vaccinated,” at least in principle. Fortunately, not subjecting oneself to a treatment leaves one with the option to do so in the future. (Since the reverse is not the case, by the way, the option value of “not acting yet” weighs somewhat in favor of the cautious approach.) However, I remember the day when my decision not to take the “vaccine” became a firm one. A conclusive point brought me to deciding that I would not be taking the “vaccine” under prevailing conditions. A few days later, I told my mother on a phone call, “They will have to strap me to a table.”  Whatever the risks associated with a COVID infection on the one hand, and the “vaccine” on the other, the “vaccination” policy enabled massive human rights violations. Those who were “vaccinated” were happy to see the “unvaccinated” have basic freedoms removed (the freedom to speak freely, work, travel, be with loved ones at important moments such as births, deaths, funerals etc.) because their status as “vaccinated” allowed them to accept back as privileges-for-the-“vaccinated” the rights that had been removed from everyone else. Indeed, many people grudgingly admitted that they got “vaccinated” for that very reason, e.g. to keep their job or go out with their friends. For me, that would have been to be complicit in the destruction, by precedent and participation, of the most basic rights on which our peaceful society depends. People have died to secure those rights for me and my compatriots. As a teenager, my Austrian grandfather fled to England from Vienna and promptly joined Churchill’s army to defeat Hitler. Hitler was the man who murdered his father, my great-grandfather, in Dachau for being a Jew. The camps began as a way to quarantine the Jews who were regarded as vectors of disease that had to have their rights removed for the protection of the wider population. In 2020, all I had to do in defense of such rights was to put up with limited travel and being barred from my favorite restaurants, etc., for a few months.  Even if I were some weird statistical outlier such that COVID might hospitalize me despite my age and good health, then so be it: if it were going to take me, I would not let it take my principles and rights in the meanwhile. And what if I were wrong? What if the massive abrogation of rights that was the response of governments around the world to a pandemic with a tiny fatality rate among those who were not “unwell to begin with” (to use the expression of the Director of the CDC) was not going to end in a few months?  What if it were going to go on forever? In that case, the risk to my life from COVID would be nothing next to the risk to all of our lives as we take to the streets in the last, desperate hope of wresting back the most basic freedoms of all from a State that has long forgotten that it legitimately exists only to protect them and, instead, sees them now as inconvenient obstacles to be worked around or even destroyed. Tyler Durden Mon, 02/06/2023 - 00:00.....»»

Nikki Haley rose from running the accounts at her family's clothing boutique to becoming the ambassador to the UN. Nikki Haley speaks to guests at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting on November 19, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Scott Olson/Getty Images Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is planning to run for president in 2024. That would pit her against former President Donald Trump, whom she previously said she'd back. The GOP star served six terms in state office before becoming the ambassador to the UN. Nikki Haley plans to announce a 2024 presidential run on February 15, a spokesperson confirmed to Insider.Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) speaks during a campaign event for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin (L) (R-VA) July 14, 2021 in McLean, Virginia. Youngkin is running against former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.Win McNamee/Getty ImageFormer South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley plans to run for president in 2024 and is set to announce her bid on February 15 in Charleston, reported The Post and Courier.Her communications director told Insider's Cheryl Teh on Tuesday evening that The Post and Courier's reporting is "accurate."Haley's coming announcement would make her the second Republican to declare their bid for the White House, after former President Donald Trump announced his run in November.It would also come after Haley said in 2021 that she would back Trump again and wouldn't challenge her former boss in a 2024 race.But Haley has been hinting at a presidential run in recent weeks, saying she could potentially be America's new leader while speaking in a January interview on Fox News."Yes, we need to go in a new direction," Haley said. "And can I be that leader? Yes. I think I can be that leader."On the other hand, Trump has said "it would be very disloyal" if Haley, who served as the US ambassador to the UN under him, ran against him.A representative for Haley did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment for this story.Haley started her career in commerce and accounting before she moved into politics.Rep. Nikki Haley with her family after winning the GOP vote in the gubernatorial primary for South Carolina, on Tuesday, June 8, 2010.Rich Glickstein/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesHaley was born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa in 1972 in Bamberg, South Carolina, to two immigrants from Punjab, India.Her father, a professor at Punjab Agricultural University, and her mother, who earned a law degree in India, moved to South Carolina in 1969, where they both had extensive teaching careers at local institutions.Haley's mother also started a gift and clothing boutique, Exotica International, in 1979, per South Carolina daily The Times and Democrat. When she was 13, Haley started helping with accounting at Exotica, and later returned to the company as chief financial officer after she graduated from Clemson University, per the Seattle Times. From 1998 to 2004, Haley was named as a board member of the chambers of commerce in Orangeburg County and Lexington, as well as the president of the National Association of Women Business Owners.Haley is married to National Guardsman Michael Haley, who served as an officer in Afghanistan. They have a daughter, Rena, and a son, Nalin.In 2004, she was elected to South Carolina's House of Representatives, where she served three terms.Nikki Haley as South Carolina State Representative for the state's 87th district in 2009.Tim Dominick/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesHaley came in second in the primaries when she initially ran for South Carolina's House of Representatives in 2004, but won in a runoff after her incumbent opponent, Larry Koon, couldn't secure a majority. She ran uncontested in the general election afterward.During her first term, Haley was elected as the chair of the freshman caucus and later became majority whip in the state's general assembly.Serving three terms in total, she pushed to lower taxes and education reform, according to her voting history.Haley made history as South Carolina's first female governor in 2011.South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, surrounded by three former governors, some family members of the slain nine and many legislators, signs the bill to remove the Confederate flag.Tim Dominick/The State/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)Haley was elected the governor of South Carolina in 2010 with endorsements from former presidential candidate Sen. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.At 32, she was the youngest governor in the country when she took office in January 2011, and made history as South Carolina's first female governor. She was also the state's first Asian-American governor, and would go on to serve three terms in total.As governor, Haley pledged to crack down on illegal immigration in South Carolina, signing a bill that required police to check the immigration status of anyone they stop and suspect of being in the US illegally.She also signed a state law in 2016 banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.Haley made national headlines in 2015 after she visibly choked up in her response to the Charleston shooting, in which nine African Americans at a Bible study were shot dead by a white supremacist.The then-governor called for the confederate flag to be removed from state capitol grounds."This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state," she said at the time, signing a law to remove the battle flag shortly after.As the Black Lives Matter movement grew in 2015, Haley also spoke out against what she said was a "shameful" image problem with minority voters in the GOP. "The problem for our party is that our approach often appears cold and unwelcoming to minorities," she said.Haley later was criticized for saying in 2019 that the confederate flag was seen in South Carolina as a symbol of "service, sacrifice, and heritage," and that the Charleston shooter had hijacked its meaning. She tweeted at the time that her comment had been mischaracterized.She was appointed as the US ambassador to the United Nations by Trump in 2016.Nikki Haley, Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN during a Security Council Meeting.Luiz Rampelotto/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesIn January 2017, then-President Donald Trump nominated Haley to become the US ambassador to the United Nations. CNN reported that Haley had originally been considered for Secretary of State, but that she declined Trump's offer, telling him he could "find someone better."As the ambassador to the UN, Haley kept in line with Trump's pro-Israel stance, backing his bid to withhold food aid to Palestine in 2018 and warning other countries not to condemn his decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.She was also tough on North Korea and Russia, playing a vocal role in UN sanctions against Kim Jong Un's regime and later accusing Moscow of covering up violations of those sanctions.Haley stepped down as ambassador four weeks before the 2018 November midterms, surprising some White House officials, CNN reported.However, Trump said Haley had informed him six months earlier of her intention to "take a break" and resign. He praised Haley in his remarks, saying she "has been very special to me" and lauding her as "somebody that gets it."Haley's political relationship with Trump has historically been tumultuous at best.US President Donald Trump announces that he has accepted the resignation of Nikki Haley as US Ambassador to the United Nations, in the Oval Office on October 9, 2018 in Washington, DC. President Trump said that Haley will leave her post by the end of the year.Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesHaley's history with Trump, however, has not been so smooth.When she endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in 2016 against then-GOP frontrunner Trump for the White House, he tweeted that the people of South Carolina were "embarrassed" by her."Bless your heart," she tweeted in response.Haley slammed Trump at a Rubio campaign event, saying she would "not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK.""That is not a part of our party, that's not who we want as president, we will not allow that in our country," she said then.When Rubio dropped out of the race, Haley voiced support for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. After  Trump later won the GOP nomination, she said she would vote for him, but that she was "not a fan."While she initially criticized Trump's 2015 proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, calling it "unconstitutional" and "just wrong," Haley in 2017 defended his decision to block travelers from six Muslim-majority countries for 90 days, saying it wasn't an outright Muslim ban."What the president is doing, everybody needs to realize that what he's doing is saying: 'Let's take a step back. Let's temporarily pause,'" she said.After the January 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol, Haley said she felt Trump had "let us down.""He went down a path he shouldn't have, and we shouldn't have followed him, and we shouldn't have listened to him. And we can't let that ever happen again," she told Politico.In particular, she vehemently disapproved of how Trump failed to protect his former vice president, Mike Pence, telling Politico she was "so triggered" by his words against Pence that she had to turn off her TV."When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement," said, per the outlet.A month after the riots, Haley wrote in an opinion article for the Wall Street Journal that she believed Trump's policies made the US "stronger, safer, and more prosperous," but that she still judged him for his actions after the election.Meanwhile, Trump has appeared less perturbed by rumors of Haley's 2024 run than he has by the looming threat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' bid. DeSantis has not declared his run yet, but he has hinted that he might.Trump said Haley had called him to discuss her potential run, and said she "should do it," per CNN."I talked to her for a little while, I said: 'Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,'" he said.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Johnstone: Let's Nuke The World Over Who Governs Crimea Authored by Caitlin Johnstone, Critics of the US empire have spent months compiling mountains of evidence showing that the empire knowingly provoked the war in Ukraine. Supporters of the US empire have spent months posting dog memes and accusing strangers of being paid by Putin. It’s clear who’s in the right. So does everyone else in the world get a vote on whether their lives should be risked in an offensive to control who governs Crimea? Or will the Biden administration just be making that call on behalf of all living creatures? It’s so crazy how the fate of everyone alive and everyone who could potentially be born in the future is riding on the way two governments choose to navigate a conflict in Ukraine, just because those two governments have most of the world’s nuclear weapons. It’s like two people in a bar getting into a brawl that kills everyone in their city. Nobody else in the world gets a vote on the decisions being made that could kill everyone alive and end humanity forever; just a few people within those two governments and their militaries. ❖ The US empire is telling Moscow “I’m the craziest motherfucker around, I’ll keep ramping up the brinkmanship looking you right in the eye and daring you to use nukes,” while telling the rest of the world “I am the voice of sanity that you should all look to for leadership.” One of the empire’s faces is the virtuous upholder of freedom and democracy, while the other face puts on an intimidating show of viciousness like a prisoner biting off someone’s cheek in the prison yard. At least one of those faces is necessarily lying. ❖ Literally the only reason mainstream westerners are fine with the US empire’s nuclear brinkmanship with Russia is because most don’t understand it, and those who do understand it don’t think very hard about it. They avoid contemplating what nuclear war is and what it would mean. Whenever I touch on this subject I get a bunch of replies like “Yeehaw! That’s right bitch, we’re standing up to Putin!” They’re not approaching the subject with anything like the gravity they would if they understood what’s happening and had seriously thought about what could be. They don’t understand how horrifyingly dangerous it is that the empire is considering backing a Crimea offensive, and they haven’t sincerely contemplated what it would be like for every living creature to die horribly and for no one else to ever be born again for all of time. Whatever position you have on this whole conflict, you should be approaching the possibility of nuclear annihilation with the most profound solemnity imaginable, because it is without exaggeration the single worst thing that could possibly happen. Take it seriously, or be silent. ❖ If a nuclear war between Russia and NATO erupts, the answer to the question “Was it worth it?” will be a decisive “No.” Not just for people like me, but for everyone, no matter how sympathetic they are to the western power structure and no matter how much they hate Russia. If their answer isn’t “no” immediately, it will be their answer in a matter of hours. If people don’t immediately understand the horror that’s been unleashed upon our world and how nothing could possibly have been worth it, they will understand it in short order. ❖ The term Mutually Assured Destruction was first coined by Hudson Institute’s Donald Brennan in 1962, but he used it ironically, spelling out the acronym “MAD” in order to argue that it’s insane to hold weapons that can cause armageddon. These games of nuclear chicken are insane. The argument for nukes is that the threat of their use wards off the large-scale conventional wars we saw in WWI and WWII, but that only works if the fear of their use deters conventional attacks. The US empire is getting more and more brazen with its proxy warfare against Russia. It used to be undisputed conventional wisdom that hot warfare against Russia must be avoided at all costs because they’re a nuclear superpower. Now the idea of backing full-scale offensives to carve off pieces of the Russian Federation is gaining widespread mainstream traction. This disintegrates the uneasy stability that MAD is theoretically supposed to create, because MAD assumes the other side won’t be crazy enough to launch conventional offensives against a nuclear superpower due to fear of rapidly spiraling escalation into full-scale nuclear war. If you’ve got two people pointing pistols at each other, an exchange of gunfire might be avoided for fear of retaliation. But if one of the gunmen breaks the standoff by walking toward the other holding a knife in his other hand, odds are the other guy pulls the trigger. ❖ I hate it when I get people saying “I hope we do nuke ourselves off the map, we’re horrible.” It’s not okay for a few idiots to be playing games with every life on this planet. Just because you’re unhappy with life here doesn’t mean all the innocents around the world are, doesn’t mean the animals are, the bugs, the trees. Your disaffected feelings are not a valid reason not to fight this thing tooth and claw. Keep your omnicidal ideations to yourself. ❖ Westerners frame the idea of nations like Russia and China “attacking their neighbors” as though that’s somehow less moral than the US attacking nations on the other side of the planet who cannot possibly pose any threat to US national security. At least Russia can make an argument that its invasion of Ukraine was in its national security interests due to US/NATO militarization there, and China could make similar arguments if it ever attacks Taiwan. US wars are done solely to defend US planetary domination, not the US. ❖ Liberals are all about examining privilege except when it comes to western privilege. Then they’re more than happy to blow up everything and everyone for their belief in their inherent ideological superiority and their right to rule over every single country on earth. ❖ Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp are no longer designating the neo-Nazi Azov Regiment as a “dangerous organization.” To be clear, nothing has actually changed about the Azov Regiment. It’s still the same people with the same ideology. All that changed is the Official Narrative. For years and years, up until just last year, the mass media had no problem acknowledging that Ukraine has a Nazi problem and calling Azov neo-Nazis what they are. All that changed is we moved into an information ecosystem of aggressive war propaganda. No amount of PR rebranding will magically transform Azov neo-Nazis into wholesome moderates. You can change Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC, but it’s still the same stuff in the bucket. *  *  * My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal, or buying an issue of my monthly zine. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Tyler Durden Mon, 01/23/2023 - 02:00.....»»

2022 Greatest Hits: The Most Popular Articles Of The Past Year And A Look Ahead One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2021, we said that the year would be a very tough act to follow as "the sheer breadth of narratives, stories, surprises, plot twists and unexpected developments" made 2021 the most memorable year yet in our brief history, and that it would be an extremely tough act to follow. And yet despite the exceedingly high bar for 2022, not only did the year not disappoint but between the constant news barrage, the regime shifts, narrative volatility, market rollercoasters, oh and the world being on the verge of a nuclear Armageddon for much of the year, the past year was the most action, excitement, and news (including fake news)-packed yet. Where does one even start? While covid - which was the story of 2020 - finally faded away from the front page and the constant barrage of fearmongering coverage (with recent revelations courtesy of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" showing just how extensively said newsflow was crafted, orchestrated and -y es - censored by the government, while a sudden U-turn by China in its Covid Zero policy prompting a top Chinese research to admit that the "fatality rate from the omicron variant of the virus is in line with the flu"), and the story of 2021 was the scourge of soaring inflation (which contrary to macrotourist predictions that it would prove "transitory" just kept rising, and rising, and rising, until it hit levels not seen since the Volcker galloping inflation days of the 1980s)... ... then the big market story of 2022 was the coordinated central bank crusade to put the inflation genie back into the bottle and to contain soaring prices (which were no longer transitory, especially after Putin launched his "special military operation" in Ukraine which we will discuss shortly)... ... even if it meant crushing the housing market... ... sparking a global recession, or as Goldman calls it a "broad-based but necessary slowdown in global growth"... ... and leaving millions out of work (the BLS still pretends hundreds of thousands of workers are being added to payrolls even though as we all know - as does the Philadelphia Fed - that is a lie, and the real employment number has not changed since March)... ... not to mention triggering the worst bear market in both stocks and bonds since the global financial crisis. Yes, less than a year after the S&P hit a record just above 4800 in January of this year, both global stock and bond markets have cratered, and in a profound shock to an entire generation of "traders" who have never lived through a hiking cycle and rising inflation, for the first time since 2008 no central banks are riding to the market's rescue. Meanwhile, with a drop of more than 20% in 2022 translating into a record $18 trillion wipeout, the MSCI All-Country World Index is on track for its worst performance since the 2008 crisis, amid the Fed's relentless rate hiking campaign. Add bond market losses - because in 2022 everything was sold - and you get a staggering $36 trillion in value vaporized, which in absolute terms is nearly double the damage from the Lehman failure and the global financial crisis. None of this should come as a surprise: the staggering liquidity injections that started in 2020, continued throughout 2021 and extended into the first half of 2022 before gently reversing as QT finally returned; the final tally is that after $3 trillion in emergency liquidity injections in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic to "stabilize the world", the Fed injected another $2 trillion in the subsequent period, most of which in 2021, a year where economists were "puzzled" why inflation was soaring (this, of course, excludes the tens of trillions of monetary stimulus injected by other central banks as well as the boundless fiscal stimulus that was greenlighted with the launch of helicopter money). And then, when a modest $500 billion in Fed balance sheet liquidity was withdrawn... everything crashed. This reminds us of something we said two years ago: "it's almost as if the world's richest asset owners requested the covid pandemic." Well, last year we got confirmation for this rhetorical statement, when we calculated that in the 18 months after the covid pandemic hit, the richest 1% of US society saw their net worth increase by over $30 trillion, which in turn officially made the US into a banana republic where the middle 60% of US households by income - a measure economists use as a definition of the middle class - saw their combined assets drop from 26.7% to 26.6% of national wealth, the lowest in Federal Reserve data, while for the first time the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%. Yes, for the first time ever, the 1% owned more wealth than the entire US middle class, a definition traditionally reserve for kleptocracies and despotic African banana republics. But as the Fed finally ended QE and started draining its balance sheet in 2022, the party ended with a thud, and this tremendous wealth accumulation by the top 1% went into reverse: indeed, just the 500 richest billionaires saw their fortunes collapse by $1.4 trillion with names such as Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Masa Son and Larry Page and Sergey Brin all losing more than a third (in some cases much more) of their net worth. This also reminds us of something else we said a year ago: "this continued can-kicking by the establishment - all of which was made possible by the covid pandemic and lockdowns which served as an all too convenient scapegoat for the unprecedented response that served to propel risk assets (and fiat alternatives such as gold and bitcoin) to all time highs - has come with a price... and an increasingly higher price in fact. As even Bank of America CIO Michael Hartnett admits, Fed's response to the the pandemic "worsened inequality" as the value of financial assets - Wall Street -  relative to economy - Main Street - hit all-time high of 6.3x." In other words, for all its faults, 2022 was a year in which inequality finally reversed - if only a little - and as Michael Hartnett said in one of his final Flow Shows, "Main St finally outperformed Wall St significantly in 2022" as the value of financial assets relative to the economy slumped from 6.3x to 5.4x. Sadly, we doubt that this will cheer anyone up - be it workers - who have seen their real, inflation-adjusted earnings decline for a record 20 consecutive months (or virtually all of Joe BIden's presidency)... ... or investors who have seen crushing losses across all industries, with the exception of the one sector we have been pounding-the-table-on bullish on since the summer of 2020: energy (with our favorite stock, Exxon, blowing away the competition with its nearly triple digit return YTD). There is some good news for jittery bulls looking ahead at 2023: statistics show that two consecutive down years are rare for major equity markets — the S&P 500 index has fallen for two straight years on just four occasions since 1928, and they usually marked market crashes or social cataclysms -  the Great Depression, World War II, the 1970s oil crisis and the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The scary thing though, is that when they do occur, drops in the second year tend to be deeper than in the first. And with Joe Biden at the helm, betting on a second great depression may be prudent. Even if that sounds hyperbolic, when it comes to markets the big question for 2023 is simple: have markets bottomed or is there much more room to fall, in other words, are we facing a hard or soft landing. And speaking of Joe Biden at the helm, another glaring risk factor for 2023 is - of course- nuclear war. Because while the great inflation fight and Biden bear market were the defining features of 2022 from an economic and capital markets standpoint, the biggest event in terms of geopolitical and social importance was the war between Russia and Ukraine. While one could write - pardon the pun - the modern day equivalent of "war and peace" on the causes behind the war in Ukraine, for the sake of brevity we will merely note that a conflict that had been simmering for years if not decades... ... finally got its proverbial spark in February when - encouraged by NATO to join the military alliance in an act that Russia had repeatedly warned would be casus belli against Ukraine - Putin ordered a "special military operation" against Ukraine, sending Russian troops to invade the country because, as he subsequently explained, "if Russia did not do this now, it itself would be invaded by neighboring NATO countries a few years later." And speaking of what else Putin said in the lead up to the Ukraine war, the following snapshots reveal much of the Russian leader's thinking about the biggest geopolitical conflict since World War II. And while the geopolitical implications of the war are staggering and long-reaching, the single most important consequence to the world, and especially Europe, is the threat of persistent energy shortages over the coming years as Russian energy output has been sanctioned and curtailed for the foreseeable future... ... in the process sending energy prices in Europe and elsewhere soaring, and pushing inflation sharply higher. Which is especially ironic, because the same central banks we showed above that are hiking rates like crazy in hopes of containing inflation are doing precisely nothing to address the elephant in the room, namely that inflation is not demand-driven (which the Fed can control by adjusting the price of money) but entirely on the supply-side. And since the Fed can't print oil or gas, all that central banks are doing is executing Vladimir Putin's indirect bidding and pushing the world into a global recession if not all out depression as they hope to crush enough energy demand to lower prices in a world where energy supply is also much lower. What they forget is that this will lead to tens of millions of unemployed people, and while that is not a major issue yet, something tells us that the coming mass layoffs - both in the US and around the globe - and not just in tech but across all industries, will be the story of 2023. One final thing worth mentioning in the context of the Ukraine war is what it means strategically for the future of the world, and here we would argue that some of the best analysis belong to former NY Fed repo guru, Zoltan Pozsar whose periodic dispatches throughout 2022 (all of which are available to professional subscribers), and whose year-end report on the fate of Bretton Woods III, the petrodollar, the petroyuan and petrogold, are all must-read for anyone who hopes to be ahead of the curve in today's rapidly changing world. Away from Inflation and the Ukraine war, the next most important topic in the past year, were the revelations from the Twitter Files, exposed by the social medial company's new owner, Elon Musk, who paid $44 billion so that the world can finally see first hand just how little free speech there really is in the so-called land of the free and the home of the First Amendment, and how countless three-lettered, deep-state alphabet agencies - and the military-industrial complex - will do anything and everything to control both the official discourse and the unofficial narrative to keep their preferred puppets in the White House, and keep those they disapprove of - censored and/or locked up, both literally and metaphorically... or simply designate them "conspiracy theorists." None other than Matt Taibbi wrote the best summary of what the Twitter Files revealed, namely America's stealthy conversion into a crypto-fascist state where some unelected government bureaucrat tells corporations what to do: This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we spent much of this week learning about other agencies and organizations that can now also be discredited thanks to these files. A group of us spent the last weeks reading thousands of documents. For me a lot of that time was spent learning how Twitter functioned, specifically its relationships with government. How weird is modern-day America? Not long ago, CIA veterans tell me, the information above the “tearline” of a U.S. government intelligence cable would include the station of origin and any other CIA offices copied on the report. I spent much of today looking at exactly similar documents, seemingly written by the same people, except the “offices” copied at the top of their reports weren’t other agency stations, but Twitter’s Silicon Valley colleagues: Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, even Wikipedia. It turns out these are the new principal intelligence outposts of the American empire. A subplot is these companies seem not to have had much choice in being made key parts of a global surveillance and information control apparatus, although evidence suggests their Quislingian executives were mostly all thrilled to be absorbed. Details on those “Other Government Agencies” soon, probably tomorrow. One happy-ish thought at month’s end: Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one? I can’t have been the only person to have struggled psychologically during this time. This is why these Twitter files have been such a balm. This is the reality they stole from us! It’s repulsive, horrifying, and dystopian, a gruesome history of a world run by anti-people, but I’ll take it any day over the vile and insulting facsimile of truth they’ve been selling. Personally, once I saw that these lurid files could be used as a road map back to something like reality — I wasn’t sure until this week — I relaxed for the first time in probably seven or eight years. Well said Matt, and we say this as one of the first media outlets that was dubbed "conspiracy theorists" by the authorities, long before everyone else joined the club. Oh yes, we've been there: we were suspended for half a year on Twitter for telling the truth about Covid, and then we lost most of our advertisers after the Atlantic Council's weaponized "fact-checkers" put us on every ad agency's black list while anonymous CIA sources at the AP slandered us for being "Kremlin puppets" - which reminds us: for those with the means, desire and willingness to support us, please do so by becoming a premium member: we are now almost entirely reader-funded so your financial assistance will be instrumental to ensure our continued survival into 2023 and beyond. The bottom line, at least for us, is that the past three years have been a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which resembles the dystopia of 1984 more and more each day, and we have since taken measures. Two years ago, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn't our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us for good. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the censorship bandwagon rolls out much more aggressively in the coming year. Meanwhile, for all those lamenting the relentless coverage of politics in a financial blog, why finance appears to have taken a secondary role, and why the political "narrative" has taken a dominant role for financial analysts, the past three years showed conclusively why that is the case: in a world where markets gyrated, and "rotated" from value stocks to growth and vice versa, purely on speculation of how big the next stimulus out of Washington will be, now that any future big stimulus plans are off the table until at least 2024 thanks to a divided Congress, and the Fed is still planning on hiking until it finally crushing inflation, we would like to remind readers of one of our favorite charts: every financial crisis is the result of Fed tightening, and something always breaks. Which brings us to the simplest forecast about the coming year: 2023 will be the year when something finally breaks. As for more nuanced predictions about the future, as the past three years so vividly showed, when it comes to actual surprises and all true "black swans", it won't be what anyone had expected. And so while many themes, both in the political and financial realm, did get some accelerated closure, dramatic changes in 2022 persisted and new sources of global shocks emerged, and will continue to manifest themselves in often violent and unexpected ways - from the ongoing record polarization in the US political arena, to "populist" upheavals around the developed world, to the gradual transition to a global Universal Basic (i.e., socialized) Income regime, to China deciding that the US is finally weak enough and the time has come to invade Taiwan. As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website - which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from either Putin or the KGB either, sorry CIA) and has never spent one dollar on marketing - a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine. Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we - and others who do not comply with the established narrative - have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from "dangerous, fake information." It's also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website. In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech to only accelerate in the coming year - Elon Musk's Twitter Files revelations notwithstanding, especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2022 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch with a ten foot pole, both out of fear of repercussions and because the MSM has now become a PR agency for either a political party or some unelected, deep state bureaucrat, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an information vacuum (in less than a decade, Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter will seem like one of the century's biggest bargains) and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which established media outlets refuse to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory "fake news" condemnation. We are grateful that our readers - who hit a new record high in 2022 - have realized that it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn't "fake news." * * * And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, almost 14-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year. In 20th spot with just over 510,000 views, was one of the seminal market strategy reports of 2022 by the man who has become the most prescient and accurate voice on Wall Street, former NY Fed repo guru Zoltan Pozsar, whose periodic pieces previewing the post-war world - one where Bretton Woods III makes a stunning comeback, where the petrodollar dies, and is replaced by the Petroyuan - have become must-read staple fare for Wall Street professionals. In "Wall Street Stunned By Zoltan Pozsar's Latest Prediction Of What Comes Next", Zoltan offered his first post-Ukraine war glimpse of the coming "Bretton Woods III" world, "a new monetary order centered around commodity-based currencies in the East that will likely weaken the Eurodollar system and also contribute to inflationary forces in the West." Subsequent events, including the growing proximity of Russia, China and various other non-G7 nations, coupled with stubborn inflation, have gone a long way to proving Zoltan's thesis. The only thing that's missing is the overhaul of the world reserve currency. In 19th spot, some 526,000 learned that amid the relentless crackdown against free speech by a regime which Elon Musk's Twitter Files have definitively revealed is borderline fascist (as in real fascism, not that clownish farce which antifa thugs pretend to crusade against) Zero Hedge was among the first websites to be targeted by the CIA when that deep state mouthpiece, the Associated Press, said that "intelligence officials accused a conservative financial news website [Zero Hedge] with a significant American readership of amplifying Kremlin propaganda." As we explained in "Now We've Done It: We Pissed Off The CIA" - the 19th most viewed article of 2022 - we have done no such thing but as the AP also revealed, the real motive behind the hit piece is that "Zero Hedge has been sharply critical of Biden and posted stories about allegations of wrongdoing by his son Hunter." Of course, only a few weeks later we would learn that reports of wrongdoing by "his son Hunter" as unveiled in the infamously censored laptop story fiasco, were indeed accurate (despite dozens of "former intel officials" saying it is Russian disinfo) but since only "Kremlin propaganda" sites dare to attack Joe Biden while the MSM keeps deathly silent, nobody in the so-called "free press" bothered to mention it. Incidentally, since the CIA did a full background check on us and republishing some pro-Russian blogs was the best they could find, we are confident that  On the other hand, since being designated a pro-Russian operation meant that we have been blacklisted by most advertisers, we are increasingly reliant on you, dear readers (and not Vladimir Putin) for support, and we would be extremely grateful to everyone who can sign up for our premium product to support us into 2023 and onward. In 18th spot, and suitably right below our little tete-a-tete with the CIA, was the disclosure of a huge trove of corruption Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell." In April, with over 568,000 page views, readers learned that "450GB Of 'Deleted' Hunter Biden Laptop Material To Be Released Within Weeks." The ultimate result was the long overdue confirmation by the mainstream press (NYT and WaPo) that the Biden notebook was indeed real (again, despite dozens of "former intel officials" saying it is Russian disinfo) but since the state-corporatist apparatus had already achieved its goal, and suppressed and censored the original NYPost reporting just ahead of the 2020 presidential election and Biden had been elected president, few cared (just a few months later, thanks to Elon Musk and the Twitter files would we learn just how deep the censorship hole went, and that it involved not only the US government, the Democratic Party, the FBI, but also the biggest tech and media companies, all working together to censor anything that they found politically unpalatable). Yes, 2022 was also a midterm year, and with more than 617,000 views, was our snapshot of what happened on Nov 8 when in a carbon copy of 2020 it initially seemed like Republicans would sweep Congress as we described in the 17th most popular article of 2022, "Election Night Results: FL "Catastrophic" For Dems, Vance Takes OH, Fetterman Tops Oz"... but it was not meant to be and as the mail-in votes crawled in days and weeks later, the GOP lead not only fizzled (despite a jarring loss among Florida Hispanics), but in the end Democrats kept the Senate. Ultimately the result was anticlimatic, and with Congress divided for the next two years, governance will be secondary to what the Fed will do, which in our humble view, will be the big story of 2023. For all the political, market and central bank trials and tribulations of 2022, one could make the argument that the biggest story of the past year was Elon Musk's whimsical takeover of twitter, which started off amicably enough as laid out in the 16th most popular article of 2022 (with more than 627,000 page views) "Buffett Says "Musk Is Winning...It's America" As TWTR Board Ponders Poison Pill", then turned ugly and hostile, transitioned into a case of buyer's remorse with Musk suing to back out of the deal only to find out he can't, and culminated with the release of the shocking Twitter Files, Musk's stunning expose of the dirt and secrets of how the world's most popular news outlet had effectively become a subsidiary not only of the Democratic party but also of the FBI, CIA and various other deep state alphabet agencies, validating once again countless "conspiracy theories" and confirming once and for all that any outlet that still dares to oppose the official party line is the biggest enemy of the deep state. And speaking of the deep state, we had a glaring reminder in September why one should be very careful when crossing the US secret police FBI when pro-Trump celeb pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell was intercepted by the Feds during a hunting trip and had his cell phone seized as described in "FBI Tracks Down Mike Lindell On Hunting Trip, Surrounds His Car And Seizes Cell Phone". That this happened to one of the most vocal critics of the 2020 election just two months before the midterms, was surely a coincidence, as over 625,000 readers obviously concluded. 2022 was not a good year for markets, and certainly wasn't good for retail investors whose torrid gains from the meme stock mania of 2021 melted down almost as fast as the Fed hiked rates (very fast). But not everyone was a loser, and one story stood out: that of 20-year-old student Jake Freeman (who together with his uncle) bought up a substantial, 6.2% stake in soon-to-be-broke retailer Bed Bath and Beyond, and piggybacking on the antics of one Ryan Cohen, quietly cashed out after making a massive $110 million by piggybacking on one of the most vicious short/gamma squeezes in recent history. The "Surreal Story Of A 20-Year-Old Student Who Acquired 6% Of Bed Bath & Beyond, And Made $110 Million In 3 Weeks" was the 14th most read article of 2022. The 13th most read story of 2022 with over 668,000 reads was the bizarre interlude involving superstar-trader and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, and his bizarre attack by a "right wing" progressive as described in "Paul Pelosi Undergoing Brain Surgery Following 'Brutal' Attack; Suspect Identified." While authorities have struggled to craft a narrative that the attacker, nudist transient David Depape of Berkeley, was a pro-Trumper and the attack was politically motivated, the evidence has indicated that he suffered from serious mental illness and drug addiction and lacked any coherent political ideology; some have even claimed that there was a sexual relationship between him and Pelosi, a theory that could be easily disproven if only the police would release the bodycam footage from the moment of the arrest. Unfortunately, San Fran PD has vowed to keep it confidential. Depape's trial is set to be 2023's business, so expect more fireworks. 2022 was also a year in which Europeans realized how brutally expensive electricity can be when the biggest commodity, nat gas and oil supplier to Europe, Russia, is suddenly cut off. And judging by the 668,500 people who read "How In The Name Of God": Shocked Europeans Post Astronomical Energy Bills As 'Terrifying Winter' Approaches" and made it into the 12th most popular article of the year, the staggering number were also news to our audience: indeed, the fact that Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland, and was charged nearly €10,000 for just over two months of energy usage, was shocking to everyone. To be sure, there were countless other such stories out of Europe and with the Russia-Ukraine war unlikely to end any time soon, Europe's commodity hyperinflation will only continue. Adding insult to injury, Europe is on a fast track to a brutal recession, but the ECB remains stuck in tightening mode, perhaps because it somehow believes that higher rates will ease energy supplies. Alas that won't happen and instead the big question for 2023 will be whether Europe is merely hit with a recession or if instead the ECB's actions escalates the local malaise into a full-blown depression. Earlier we said that one of the most prophetic voices on Wall Street in 2022 (and prior) was that of Zoltan Pozsar, who laid out his theory of a Bretton Woods III regime in the days immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Well, just one month later we saw the first tentative steps toward just such a paradigm shift when in April the Russian central bank offered to buy gold from domestic commercial banks at a fixed price of 5000 rubles per gram; by doing so the Bank of Russia both linked the ruble to gold and, since gold trades in US dollars, set a floor price for the ruble in terms of the US dollar. We described this in "A Paradigm Shift Western Media Hasn't Grasped Yet" - Russian Ruble Relaunched, Linked To Gold & Commodities", an article red 670,000 times making it the 11th most popular of the year. This concept of "petrogold" was also the subject of extensive discussion by Pozsar who dedicated one of his most recent widely-read notes to the topic; if indeed we are witnessing the transition to a Bretton Woods 3 regime, 2023 will see a lot of fireworks in the monetary system as the dollar's reserve status is challenged by eastern commodity producers. The 10th most popular article of 2022, with 686K views was a reminder of just how much "the settled science" can change: as described in "You Murderous Hypocrites": Outrage Ensues After The Atlantic Suggests 'Amnesty' For Pandemic Authoritarians, many were shocked when after pushing for economy-crushing lockdowns, seeking to block children from going to school (and stunting their development), and even calling for the incarceration or worse of mask, vaccine and booster holdouts, the liberal left - realizing that it was completely wrong about everything to do with covid, a virus with a 99% survival rate - suddenly and politely was hoping to "declare a pandemic amnesty." Brown Professor Emily Oster - a huge lockdown proponent, who now pleads from mercy from the once-shunned - wrote "we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID. Let’s acknowledge that we made complicated choices in the face of deep uncertainty, and then try to work together to build back and move forward." The response from those who lost their small business, wealth, or worse, a family member (who died alone or from complications from the experimental gene therapy known as "vaccines" and "boosters") was clear and unanimous; as for those seeking preemptive pardons from the coming tribunals, their plea was clear: “We didn't know! We were just following orders."  And from one covid post we segue into another, only this time the focus is not on the disease but rather the consequences of mandatory vaccines: over 730K readers were shocked in February when a former finance professional discovered a surge in "excess mortality", or unexplained deaths among otherwise healthy young adults, yet not linked directly to covid (thus leaving vaccines as the possible cause of death), as we showed in "Long Funeral Homes, Short Life Insurers? Ex-Blackrock Fund Manager Discovers Disturbing Trends In Mortality." This wasn't the first time we had heart of a surge in excess mortality: a month earlier it was the CEO of insurance company OneAmerica to observe that the death rate for those aged 18-64 had soared by 40% over pre-pandemic levels (this was another post that received a lot of clicks). While the science is clearly not settled here - on either covid or the vaccines - the emerging trend is ominous: at this rate the excess deaths associated with covid (and its vaccines) will soon surpass the deaths directly linked to covid. And anyone who dares to bring this up will be branded a racist, a white supremacists, or a fascist, or all three. One of the defining features of 2022 was the record surge in the price of food. And while much of this inflation could be attributed to the trillions in helicopter money injected over the past three years, as well as the snarled supply chains due to the war in Ukraine, a mystery emerged when one after another US food processing plant mysteriously burned down. And with almost 800,000 page views, a majority of our readers wanted to know why "Another US Food Processing Plant Erupts In Flames", making it the 8th most read post of the year. While so far no crime has been alleged, the fact that over 100 "accidental fires" (as listed here) have taken place across America's food facilities since the start of 2021, impairing the US supply chain, remains one of the biggest mysteries of the year. While some will argue that runaway inflation was the event of 2022, we will counter that the defining moment was the war between Ukraine and Russia, which broke out in February after what the Kremlin said was a long-running NATO attempt to corner Russia (by pushing Ukraine to seek membership in the military alliance), forcing it to either launch an invasion now, or wait several years and be invaded by all the neighboring NATO countries. Still, many were shocked when Putin ultimately gave the order to launch the "special military operations", as most had Russia to merely posture. But it was not meant to be and nearly 840K readers followed the world-changing events on February 2 when "Putin Orders "Special Military Operation" In Ukraine's Breakaway Regions." The war continues to this day with no prospects of peace or even a ceasefire. And from one geopolitical hotspot we go to another, namely China and Taiwan, which many expect will be the next major military theater at some time in the near future when Beijing finally invades the "Republic of China" and officially brings it back into the fold. Thing here got extra hot in early August when Democrat Nancy Pelosi decided to make an unexpected trip to the semiconductor-heavy island, sparking an unprecedented diplomatic escalation, with many speculating that China could simply fire at Nancy's unsanctioned airplane. In the end, however, as nearly 950,000 found out, the situation fizzled as "China Summoned US Ambassador Overnight, Says Washington "Must Pay The Price"." Since then Pelosi's political career has officially ended, and while China has not yet invaded Taiwan, it is only a matter of time before it does. While Covid may have been a 2021 story, that was also the year when nobody was allowed to talk about the Chinese pandemic. Things changed in 2022 when liberal censorship finally crashed under its own weight, and long overdue discussions of Covid became mainstream. nowhere more so than on Twitter where Elon Musk fired all those responsible for silencing the debate over the past three years, and of course, the show of the always outspoken Joe Rogan, where mRNA inventor Robert Malone, gave a fascinating interview to Joe Rogan which aired on New Year's Eve 2022 and which took the world by storm in the first days of the new year. It certainly made over 908,000 readers click on "COVID, Ivermectin, And 'Mass Formation Psychosis': Dr. Robert Malone Gives Blistering Interview To Joe Rogan." The doctor, who had been suspended by both LInkedIn and Twitter, for the crime of promoting "vaccine hesitancy" argued that if the risks of vaccines are not discussed, informed consent is not possible. As Malone concluded "Informed consent is not only not happening, it's being actively blocked." Luckily, now that Elon Musk has made it possible to discuss covid - and so much more - on twitter without fears of immediate suspension, there is again hope that not only is informed consent once again possible, but that the wheels of true justice are starting to steamroll liberal censorship. A tragic and bizarre interlude took place in early July when "Former Japanese PM Abe Shot Dead During Speech, "Frustrated" Assassin Arrested", a shocking development which captured the attention of some 927,000 readers.  While some expected the assassination to be a Archduke Ferdinand moment, coming at a time of soaring inflation around the globe and potentially catalyzing grassroots anger at the ruling class, the episode remained isolated as it did not have political motives and instead the killer, Yamagami, said that he killed the former PM in relation to a grudge he held against the Unification Church, to which Abe and his family had political ties, over his mother's bankruptcy in 2002. That's the good news. The bad news is that with the fabric of society close to tearing across most developed nations, it is only a matter of time before we do get a real Archduke 2.0 moment. Just days after Rogan's interview with Malone (see above), another covid-linked "surprise" emerged when Projected Veritas leaked military documents hidden on a classified system showing how EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018, seeking funding to conduct illegal gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. But while US infatuation with creating viral bioweapons is hardly new (instead it merely outsourced it to biolabs in China), one of the discoveries revealed in "Ivermectin 'Works Throughout All Phases' Of COVID According To Leaked Military Documents" - the third most popular post of 2022 with 929K page views, is that the infamous "horse paste" Ivermectin was defined by Darpa as a "curative" which works throughout all phases of the illness because it both inhibits viral replication and modulates the immune response. Of course, had that been made public, it would have prevented Pfizer and Moderna from making tens of billions in revenue from selling mRNA-based therapies (not vaccines) whose potentially deadly side effects we are only now learning about (as the 9th most popular post of 2022 noted above confirms). The fake news apparatus was busy spinning in overtime this past year (and every other year), and not only when it comes to covid, inflation, unemployment, the recession, but also - or rather especially - the Ukraine fog of propaganda war. A striking example was the explosion of both pipelines connecting Russia to Europe, Nord Stream I and II, which quickly escalated into a fingerpointing exercise of accusations, with Europe blaming Putin for blowing up the pipelines (even though said pipelines exclusively benefit the Kremlin which spent billions building them in the recent past), while the Kremlin said it was the US' fault. This we learned in "EU Chief Calls Nord Stream Attack "Sabotage", Warns Of "Strongest Possible Response", which was also the 2nd most read article of the year with just over 1,050,000 page views. In the end, there was no "response" at all. Why? Because as it emerged just two months later in that most deep state of outlets, the Washington Post, "Evidence In Nord Stream Sabotage Doesn't Point To Russia." In other words, it points to the US, just as professor Jeffrey Sachs dared to suggest on Bloomberg, leading to shock and awe at the pro-Biden media outlet. The lesson here, inasmuch as there is one, is that the perpetrators of every false flag operation always emerge - it may take time, but the outcome is inevitable, and "shockingly", the culprit almost always is one particular nation... Finally, the most read article of 2022 with nearly 1.1 million page views, was "White House Says Russian Forces 20 Miles Outside Ukraine's Capital." It cemented that as least as far as ZH readers were concerned, the biggest event of the year was the war in Ukraine, an event which has set in motion forces which will redefine the layout of the world over the next century (and, if Zoltan Pozsar is right, will lead to the demise of the US dollar as a reserve currency and culminate with China surpassing the US as the world's biggest superpower). Incidentally, while Russian forces may have been 20 miles outside of Kiev, they were repelled and even though the war could have ended nearly a year ago and the world would have returned to some semblance of normalcy, it was not meant to be, and the war still goes on with little hope that it will end any time soon. And with all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2023, and the next decade? We don't know: as frequent and not so frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don't try, despite repeat baseless allegations that we constantly predict the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the "smartest people in the room" who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2022 (when the entire world realized just how clueless the Fed had been when it called the most crushing and persistent inflation in two generations "transitory"), which destroyed the reputation of central banks, of economists, of conventional media and the professional "polling" and "strategist" class forever, not to mention all those "scientists" who made a mockery of both the scientific method and the "expert class" with their catastrophically bungled response to the covid pandemic. We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it. We do know, however, that with central banks now desperate to contain inflation and undo 13 years of central bank mistakes - after all it is the trillions and trillions in monetary stimulus, the helicopter money, the MMT, and the endless deficit funding by central banks that made the current runaway inflation possible, the current attempt to do something impossible and stuff 13 years of toothpaste back into the tube, will be a catastrophic failure. We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will eventually be revealed as fully naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone's guess. But, as we have promised - and delivered - every year for the past 14, we will be there to document every aspect of it. Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2023, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2022 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day - usually with a cynical smile (and with the CIA clearly on our ass now) - helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken economic, political and financial system. Tyler Durden Sat, 12/31/2022 - 11:05.....»»

Cancel Culture's War On History, Heritage, & The Freedom To Think For Yourself Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute, “All the time - such is the tragi-comedy of our situation - we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible… In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” - C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man There will come a time in the not-so-distant future when the very act of thinking for ourselves is not just outlawed but unthinkable. We are being shunted down the road to that dystopian future right now, propelled along by politically correct forces that, while they may have started out with the best of intentions, have fallen prey to the authoritarian siren song of the Nanny State, which has promised to save the populace from evils that only a select few are wise enough to recognize as such. As a result, we are being infantilized ad nauseum, dictated to incessantly, and forcefully insulated from “dangerous” sights and sounds and ideas that we are supposedly too fragile, too vulnerable, too susceptible, or too ignorant to be exposed to without protection from the so-called elite. Having concluded that “we the people” cannot be trusted to think for ourselves, the powers-that-be have taken it upon themselves to re-order our world into one in which they do the thinking for us, and all we have to do is fall is line. Those who do not fall in line with this government-sanctioned group think—who resist, who dare to think for themselves, who dare to adopt views that are different, or possibly wrong or hateful—are branded as extremists, belligerents, and deplorables, and shunned, censored and silenced. The fallout is as one would expect. Cancel culture - political correctness amped up on steroids, the self-righteousness of a narcissistic age, and a mass-marketed pseudo-morality that is little more than fascism disguised as tolerance - has shifted us into an Age of Intolerance, policed by techno-censors, social media bullies, and government watchdogs. Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint. In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom (of religion, speech, assembly, press, redress, privacy, bodily integrity, etc.) but only when it favors the views and positions they support. The latest victim of this rigid re-ordering of the world into one in which vestiges of past mistakes are scrubbed from existence comes from the New York Department of Education, which has ordered schools to stop using Native American references in mascots, team names and logos by the end of the current school year or face penalties including a loss of state aid. Citing concerns about racism and a need to comply with the state’s Dignity for All Students Act, which requires schools to create environments free of harassment or discrimination, New York officials are telling communities—many of which are named after Native American tribes—that longstanding cultural associations with their towns’ Indian namesakes are offensive and shameful. More than 100 schools in 60 school districts across New York State have nicknames or mascots that reference Native Americans. The cost to divest their communities of such branded names and images will be significant. One school district estimates that the cost to remove its Indians imagery from the gym floor alone will be upwards of $60,000. This drive to sanitize New York schools of “offensive” Native American logos and imagery comes on the heels of iconoclastic campaigns to rid the country of anything and anyone that may offend modern-day sensibilities. Monuments have been torn down, schools and streets have been renamed, and the names of benefactors stripped from prominent signage in the quest for a more enlightened age. These are not new tactics. Since the days of the Byzantine Empire, when “Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of all Christian images on the grounds that they represented idolatry and were heretical,” political movements have resorted to destroying monuments, statues and imagery of the day as a visual means of exerting their power and vanquishing their enemies. We have been caught in this intolerant, self-righteous, destructive, mob-driven cycle of book-burning, statue-toppling, history-erasing iconoclasm ever since. As art critic Alexander Adams explains: “Iconoclasm is an activity evenly distributed between both left and right of the political spectrum, mainly at the extreme ends… The intolerant ideology, which refuses to accept the co-existence of alternative views, takes the stance that…the ideals within the art are no longer utterable or supportable: they are actually injurious and dangerous to the vulnerable… The political activist reserves to himself the right to retrospectively edit our history for his satisfaction by removing monuments, those fixtures of civic life, embedded in the memories of generations… Iconoclasm is an expression of domination and a demonstration of willingness to act—illegally and unethically—to impose the will of one group over an entire population. It asserts control over all aspects of society… The campaigner argues that public art, accumulated piecemeal over 1,000 years of history, must reflect our society and values today—even if that means altering or erasing stories of the values our past society expressed via its monuments, or suppressing evidence of how we arrived at our current situation… The iconoclast believes that it is only the values of today that count—that it is only her values that count. She takes it upon herself to correct history through monstrous acts of egotism. That correction, when it involves destruction, permanently alters the cultural legacy. It shrinks the breadth of human experience available to the generations which follow ours.” In such a world, there can be no debate, no journey to understanding, no chance to learn from one’s mistakes or even make mistakes that are uniquely your own; there is only obedience and compliance to the government, its corporate overlords and the prevailing mob mindset. Censorship, cancel culture, political correctness, woke-ism, hate speech, intolerance: whatever label you assign to this overzealous drive to sanitize the culture of anything that might be deemed offensive or disturbing or challenging, be assured they are sign posts on a one-way road to graver dangers marked by “suppression, persecution, expulsion and the massacring of people.” Whether those smashing monuments and erasing history are doing so for noble purposes or more diabolical reasons, the end results are the same: criminalization, confiscation, imprisonment, exile and genocide. “Look at mobs which gather to smash monuments,” says Adams. “These monuments may be the statues of deposed dictators who terrorized populations, causing untold death and suffering. They may be monuments to fallen soldiers who died defending causes that are no longer fashionable. The mob’s anger is the same. The viciousness and triumphant celebrations are the same. Only the causes differ in seriousness, topicality and justification.” Adams continues: “The Civil War statue destroyers think they are assaulting the posterity of slave owners, but they themselves are in the grip of ideological fervor. They are unaware that they are running a biological code, hardwired in their brains by evolution and activated by political extremists. The activists of today heedlessly erase history they haven’t yet learned to read. They act as the hammer that extremists use to deface the cathedrals and museums our ancestors built.” What’s different about this present age, however, is the use of technology to censor, silence, delete, label as “hateful,” demonize and destroy those whose viewpoints run counter to the cultural elite. “In the last few years,” writes Nina Powers for Art Review, “what is understood to be contentious has become increasingly broadly defined… The range of what counts as acceptable gets smaller and smaller… [W]e thus find ourselves… in the midst of a new culture war in which the freedom to think, feel and express ourselves comes at the risk of economic impoverishment, social ostracism and mob justice.” Where this leads is the stuff of dystopian nightmares: societies that value conformity and group-think over individuality; a populace so adept at self-censorship and compliance that they are capable only of obeying the government’s dictates without the ability to parse out whether those dictates should be obeyed; and a language limited to government-speak. This is what happens when the voices of the majority are allowed to eliminate those in the minority, and it is exactly why James Madison, the author of the Bill of Rights, fought for a First Amendment that protected the “minority” against the majority, ensuring that even in the face of overwhelming pressure, a minority of one—even one who espouses distasteful viewpoints—would still have the right to speak freely, pray freely, assemble freely, challenge the government freely, and broadcast his views in the press freely. Freedom for those in the unpopular minority constitutes the ultimate tolerance in a free society. The alternative, as depicted in Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem, is a world in which individuality and the ability to think for oneself independent of the government and the populace are eradicated, where even the word “I” has been eliminated from the vocabulary, replaced by the collective “we.” As Anthem’s narrator Equality 7-2521 explains, “It is a sin to think words no others think and to put them down upon a paper no others are to see. . . . And well we know that there is no transgression blacker than to do or think alone.” As I make clear in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are not merely losing the ability to think critically for ourselves and, in turn, to govern our inner and outer worlds, we are also in danger of losing the right to do so. The government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers is just the beginning. Tyler Durden Thu, 11/24/2022 - 23:50.....»»

Futures Slide On China Covid Curb Concerns; Disney Jumps After Chapek Fired After opening modestly in the green, US equity futures have drifted steadily lower all session and were last trading near their Monday lows as concerns that China may tighten Covid curbs after China reported its first Covid-related death in almost six months and a city near Beijing rumored to be a test case for dropping all curbs enforced a slew of restrictions all weighed on growth in the world’s second-largest economy, as well as the ongoing carnage in the crypto space. At 7:30am ET, S&P futures were down 0.5% to 3,953 while Nasdaq 100 futures slumped 0.9% to session lows, below 11,600. The dollar stormed higher as investors sought shelter in the dollar; 10Y yields rose to 3.83%, while bitcoin traded around $16,000 after dumping over the weekend. Oil dipped but rebounded from session lows on concern of a weakening demand outlook from China and following a $10 price target cut to $100 for Q4 2022 from Goldman overnight. US-listed Chinese stocks including Alibaba, Baidu and JD.com fell in US premarket trading after China saw its first Covid-related death in almost six months, sparking concern that Beijing could see a return of heightened restrictions on schools, restaurants and shops amid a continuing outbreak in the capital. Worsening outbreaks across the nation are stoking concerns that authorities may again resort to harsh restrictions. A city near Beijing that was rumored to be a test case for the ending of virus restrictions has suspended schools, locked down universities and asked residents to stay at home for five days. Elsewhere in premarket moves, Walt Disney shares soared 8% after the firm fired embattled CEO Bob Iger and brought back former leader Bob Iger as chief executive officer, a surprise capitulation by the board after a string of disappointing results. Cryptocurrency-related stocks declined after the price of Bitcoin retreated amid worries over contagion from the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire. Shares in Riot Blockchain -4.5%, Marathon Digital  -3.1%, Coinbase -4.6%. Squarespace shares gained 2.2% after being upgraded to overweight from neutral at Piper Sandler, which identifies the website- building and hosting company as having the lowest risk to its 2023 numbers among e-commerce stocks. "Markets got their hopes up that the Chinese government might loosen its Covid policy, but despite the slowing economy, there is little chance of that," said Joachim Klement, head of strategy, accounting and sustainability at Liberum Capital. “This is going to be bad for commodity-related stocks as well as luxury companies and other exporters to China.” However, others like Morgan Stanley, remain hopeful and expect that China will end Covid zero in a few months; in its base case the bank sees China reopening by April as shown below. "Financial markets have caught a cold amid worries that mounting Covid cases in China and a fresh tightening of restrictions will send a fresh shiver through manufacturing output and push down demand for raw materials," said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. As Bloomberg notes, trading will be slow this week, with the US market closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday and open for a half day on Friday. Meanwhile, Goldman strategists warned that the bear market had more room to run and that stocks were likely to see more declines and lower valuations in 2023. "The conditions that are typically consistent with an equity trough have not yet been reached,” strategists including Peter Oppenheimer and Sharon Bell wrote in a note on Monday. They said that a peak in interest rates and lower valuations reflecting recession are necessary before any sustained stock-market recovery can happen. After a sharp rally fueled by signs of cooling inflation, US stocks were subdued last week as Federal Reserve officials indicated they need to see a meaningful slowdown in prices before reducing the pace of their interest rate increases. The big event for the market this week comes Wednesday, when the central bank releases minutes from its latest policy meeting, possibly providing clues on when it will shift to less-aggressive rate hikes. In Europe, the Stoxx 50 index fell 0.5%, with the IBEX outperforming peers, adding 0.4%, while FTSE MIB lags, dropping 1%. Miners, tech and chemicals are the worst-performing sectors. Here are the notable European movers: Virgin Money UK shares rose as much 16%, the most in two years, after the British lender announced an extension of its share buyback program and reported earnings that analysts said could prompt upgrades in profit forecasts. Ipsen rose as much as 4.5%, to the highest since April, after JPMorgan said the stock may get a boost from clinical trial data on its Onivyde and elafibranor drugs in 2023. Rheinmetall shares jumped as much as 3.7% after Deutsche Bank upgraded the defense and automotive company to buy from hold and Berenberg raised its PT on the stock. Diploma shares gained as much as 3.3% after the seals and components distributor reported full-year revenue that beat analyst estimates. Next and Boohoo fell after they were both downgraded to hold from buy at Panmure. The broker cited inventory challenges for UK apparel retailers more broadly as demand has fallen in the UK clothing market since early October. Next fell as much as 1.9% while Boohoo dropped 7%; M&S and Asos also fell. Shares in Vallourec dropped as much as 13% in Paris trading after the steel and alloy tubing group announced third- quarter results that fell short of analyst expectations. Shares in IT services firm Bechtle fell as much as 5.4% after Exane downgraded the stock to neutral, citing concern about how margins will be affected by wage inflation and cost increases. SGS shares fell as much as 3.6%. The testing and inspection firm was cut to underweight from neutral at JPMorgan, with the broker saying shares look “mispriced.” Earlier in the session, Asian stocks also declined, with Hong Kong leading losses, as investors assessed the outlook for China’s reopening while continuing to monitor the Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index dropped as much as 1.2%. Chinese technology stocks were the biggest drags on the gauge, also driving the Hang Seng Index down almost 2%, after fresh reports of Covid deaths and lockdowns in China. Malaysian shares pared losses as a deadline for party leaders to name a prime minister was extended after Saturday’s election produced the country’s first-ever hung parliament. Benchmarks across Asia Pacific also fell, while the dollar strengthened, as Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Susan Collins reiterated the likelihood of large US interest-rate hikes, with the outlook for inflation still uncertain. US stocks had risen recently on hopes for a slower pace of tightening. “After the recent good US consumer and producer price inflation reports, it was easy to conclude that there are much better times ahead in the asset markets,” said Gary Dugan, chief executive officer at the Global CIO Office in a note. “It just won’t be that easy.” Asian stocks had been rebounding as well, gaining as much as 15% from a trough in October, helped also by hopes for reduced restrictions in China. The advance started to falter last week amid lingering doubts over China’s reopening and US rate policy India’s major stock indexes posted their biggest decline in more than a month, tracking weaker global markets and as shares of Reliance Industries and index-heavy software makers slipped.   The S&P BSE Sensex closed 0.8% lower at 61,144.84 in Mumbai, while the NSE Nifty 50 Index eased by an equal measure. Both indexes posted their biggest single-day slump since Oct. 11, with the Sensex now trading 1.3% off its recent peak. Global stocks fell amid concern that China may tighten Covid curbs after a string of reported deaths. Worsening outbreaks across the nation are stoking concerns that authorities may again resort to harsh restrictions.  All but two of the 19 sector sub-gauges compiled by BSE Ltd. traded lower, led by information technology companies. In FX, the dollar gained as fears of a return to stricter Covid containment measures in China boosted demand for havens. The Bloomberg dollar spot index rises 0.7%. CHF and CAD are the strongest performers in G-10 FX, SEK and JPY underperform. The yen plunged by more than 1% dropping as low as 142 per dollar. The Japanese currency held up well throughout most of the Asian session, but began a steep slide shortly before European session began. The euro fell by as much as 1% versus the dollar, the biggest slide this month, to touch $1.0226.  The Australian dollar and Swedish krona were also among the worst performers It’s not unusual for implied volatility to trail realized in the currency market, especially at times when key risk events like central bank policy meetings are far ahead on the calendar. When it comes to the euro-dollar pair, options are underpriced across the curve, with striking moves on the one- and six-month tenors New Zealand dollar short-dated FX option volatility advanced as pricing for a 75- basis-point hike in the official cash rate holds at 60%, two days out from the decision In rates, Treasuries were mixed with the belly of the curve underperforming, cheapening 2s5s30s fly by 3.2bp on the day. Wider losses were seen across gilts where the front-end underperforms.  Treasury yields were cheaper by 0.5bp across belly and richer by 1.5bp across long-end of the curve, flattening 5s30s spread by 1.5bp on the day -- reaching as low as -10.9bp and tightest since Nov. 7. The US 10-year yields around 3.825% and slightly richer on the day;  gilts lag by additional 1.5bp in the sector. US session focus includes double auction event for 2- and 5-year notes while Daly is expected to speak in the afternoon.  The gilts curve bear-flattens with 2s10s narrowing 2.3bps, while the Bund curve bear-steepens. Peripheral spreads are mixed to Germany; Italy widens, Spain and Portugal tighten. In commodities, WTI and Brent are lower by around USD 0.50/bbl or 0.50% on the session, but have lifted from earlier lows and as such are some way from Friday's base. The crude complex was weighed by China's COVID controls, with a stronger US dollar also impacting and adding to the broader complex's woes. Goldman Sachs cut its Q4 Brent oil outlook by USD 10/bbl to $100/bbl due to China COVID concerns, while it sees elevated oil flows from China ahead of EU curbs and a price cap; $ forecasts Brent to recovery to USD 110/bbl in 2023, expects oil demand to increase at an above trend rate of circa. 1.6mln BPD in 2023. Spot gold/silver are unable to glean any haven-related upside in wake of the USDs strength, with the yellow metal over $10/oz below the USD 1751/oz 10-DMA despite briefly surpassing the figure overnight; base metals similar dented. Cryptocurrency prices struggled in the ongoing crisis sparked by the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s once powerful FTX empire. Crypto-exposed stocks fell. It's a quiet start to the holiday-shortened week, with just the October Chicago Fed national activity index due at 830am. We get earnings from Zoom; On the Fed speaker slate, Fed's Daly talks on price stability. Market Snapshot S&P 500 futures down 0.6% to 3,950.25 STOXX Europe 600 down 0.2% to 432.60 MXAP down 1.2% to 150.77 MXAPJ down 1.4% to 487.13 Nikkei up 0.2% to 27,944.79 Topix up 0.3% to 1,972.57 Hang Seng Index down 1.9% to 17,655.91 Shanghai Composite down 0.4% to 3,085.04 Sensex down 0.9% to 61,121.88 Australia S&P/ASX 200 down 0.2% to 7,139.25 Kospi down 1.0% to 2,419.50 German 10Y yield up 1% to 2.03% Euro down 0.9% to $1.0230 Brent Futures down 0.7% to $86.97/bbl Gold spot down 0.6% to $1,739.61 U.S. Dollar Index up 0.86% to 107.85 Top Overnight News from Bloomberg Asset managers are turning ever more bearish on the dollar amid bets that the Federal Reserve may be approaching the peak of its interest-rate hike cycle Investors are slowly coming to terms with the sheer size of the UK government’s borrowing needs over the next few years and it doesn’t look pretty The PBOC net drained 2b yuan ($421m) via its open-market operations on Monday for the first time since Nov. 9, as a selloff in government and corporate bonds eased China’s financial regulators have asked banks to stabilize lending to property developers and construction firms, the latest effort by policymakers to turn around the real-estate crisis and bolster economic growth More than two years of growth-squelching policies sent international investors fleeing China. It’s taken all of two weeks to lure them back Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt crypto empire owes its 50 biggest unsecured creditors a total of $3.1 billion, new court papers show, with a pair of customers owed more than $200 million each A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of Newsquawk Asia-Pac stocks began the week mostly lower amid headwinds from China after several areas announced fresh virus restrictions including lockdowns and the country also reported its first COVID-19 deaths in about six months. ASX 200 was constrained by underperformance in the mining-related sectors amid a decline in commodity prices and with BHP shares pressured amid reports its chairman is considering retiring next year. Nikkei 225 lacked direction amid further political tremors in the Kishida government after Internal Affairs Minister Terada resigned due to involvement in a funding scandal and was the third cabinet member to step down in under a month. KOSPI declined amid geopolitical concerns after North Korea's recent missile launches and with sentiment subdued as data for the first 20 days of November showed exports fell 16.7% Y/Y and imports fell 5.5% Y/Y. Hang Seng and Shanghai Comp suffered losses due to the worsening COVID situation in the mainland, while the Hong Kong benchmark was the worst hit with the special administrative region said to be near to cutting non-emergency services at public hospitals amid a surge in COVID cases and its Chief Executive Lee also tested positive for COVID-19. Furthermore, the PBoC maintained its key lending rates with the 1-Year and 5-Year LPR kept at 3.65% and 4.30%, respectively, although this was widely expected. Top Asian News China reported 2,365 (prev. 2,267) new coronavirus cases in the mainland on November 20th, 24,730 (prev. 22,168) new asymptomatic cases and 2 COVID deaths, which follows its first COVID-related death in six months on Saturday. Beijing’s Chaoyang district urged residents to remain at home on Monday as cases continue to rise, according to Reuters. It was also reported that the Baiyun district in China's Guangzhou imposed a 5-day lockdown from November 21st-25th and China's Shijiazhuang city is to conduct mass coronavirus testing in certain areas. Beijing City has tightened testing requirements for travellers entering Beijing, according to an official; will now require 3 PCR tests in 3 days upon arrival, via Reuters. Hong Kong is near to cutting non-emergency services at public hospitals again amid a surge in COVID cases, according to SCMP. It was also reported that Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee tested positive for COVID-19. Taiwan’s representative at APEC Morris Chang said he had a very happy interaction with Chinese President Xi during a brief meeting, according to Reuters. US VP Harris met with Chinese President Xi briefly at APEC and she noted to Xi that they must maintain open lines of communication to responsibly manage the competition between their countries, according to a White House official. Furthermore, Harris said that the US does not seek conflict or confrontation and welcomes competition, while she added that her Asia trip signifies the significance of the relationship between the US and its allies and partners in the region, according to Reuters. US House GOP leader McCarthy said he will form a select committee on China if he is elected as House Speaker, according to Reuters. Germany plans to tighten disclosure rules for companies exposed to China and plans to assess company disclosures to decide whether they should conduct stress tests on China risks, according to a draft document cited by Reuters. APEC leaders’ declaration affirmed the commitment to promote strong, balanced, secure sustainable and inclusive growth and stated that they are determined to uphold and further strengthen the rules-based multilateral trading system, while they welcomed progress this year in advancing the free-trade area of the Asia-Pacific. Furthermore, APEC is determined to achieve a post-COVID economic recovery and recognised that more intensive efforts are needed to address challenges such as rising inflation, food security, climate change and natural disasters, according to Reuters. Japanese PM Kishida accepted the resignation of Internal Affairs Minister Terada in order to prioritise parliamentary debate and which follows the latter’s involvement in funding scandals, while it was later reported that Japan appointed former Foreign Minister Matsumoto as the new Internal Affairs Minister, according to Reuters. European bourses are pressured across the board, Euro Stoxx 50 -0.6%, as China's COVID crackdowns weighs on sentiment in an otherwise limited European morning. Sectors feature a defensive bias with those most sensitive to renewed COVID controls posting modest underperformance. Stateside, futures are similarly pressured, ES -0.6%, given the above headwinds with the US docket slim today at the start of a holiday shortened week. Goldman Sachs equity strategy: bear market is not over, continue to think near-term path is likely to be volatile and down before reaching a final trough in 2023, via Reuters. Top European News ECB's Lane says (when questioned on the increment of upcoming hikes) "what matters is the level we're going to arrive at. The exact allocation across different meetings is a secondary issue", via ECB. Does not think December is going to be the last rate hike, "The logic of a pause for the ECB: we’re not at that point". UK PM Sunak will be urged by businesses on Monday to seek better EU relations and will face pressure from businesses to soften the impact of Brexit such as by opening doors to more immigration to fill holes in the nation's labour market, according to FT. UK was reportedly considering Swiss-style ties with the EU and the government believes that EU relations are thawing which could lead to 'frictionless' trade, according to The Times. However, UK Health Minister Barclay said he did not recognise a report that the government wants to shift to a Swiss-style relationship with the EU, according to Reuters. FX Dollar benefits from short squeeze amidst latest bout of China-related risk aversion, DXY eyes 108.000 from 106.890 low. Yen sinks alongside Yuan, towards 142.00 after breach of 100 DMA near 141.00. Euro loses 1.0300+ status as Buck bounces and overshadows hawkish-leaning ECB commentary and firm rebound in EGB yields. Aussie undermined by deteriorating Chinese COVID situation, but Kiwi holds up better in hope of hawkish RBNZ hike on Wednesday; AUD/USD hovers on 0.6600 handle, NZD/USD hangs above 0.6100. Sterling loses Fib support just over 1.1800 after failing to breach round number above convincingly. Fixed Income Despite pronounced action earlier on, core fixed benchmarks are in relative proximity to the unchanged mark with Bunds just 20 ticks lower overall. Bunds were bid on a surprising MM domestic PPI decrease; however, ECB's Lane then pushed the complex back down before the latest Beijing, China updates saw that downside dissipate to leave the benchmark only modestly softer. Stateside, USTs have been directionally in-fitting though magnitudes slightly more contained ahead of a holiday-thinned weak and with two lots of supply due later. Commodities Crude benchmarks are weighed on by China's COVID controls, with a stronger USD also impacting and adding to the broader complex's woes. Specifically, WTI and Brent are lower by around USD 0.50/bbl or 0.50% on the session, but have lifted from earlier lows and as such are some way from Friday's base. BP (BP/ LN) - Stopped production at its Rotterdam Refinery (400k BPD), been taken "completely and safely out of operation". Follows reports via Bloomberg on Friday of a serious incident re. a steam outage, via BP. Subsequently, workers will not assist in restarting operations at the Rotterdam refinery (400k BPD) unless their wage demands are met, via Union. A large explosion reportedly hit Russia’s Gazprom pipeline amid suspicions of sabotage related to Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the Daily Mail. Kuwait’s oil revenues for FY21/22 rose 84.5% Y/Y to KWD 16.33bln, according to the Finance Ministry. US VP Harris said the US will use its APEC host year to set new ambitious sustainability goals and she proposed setting a new aggregate target for reducing carbon emissions from the power sector in APEC, while she also proposed to set a goal for reducing methane emissions and said the US will introduce a new initiative on a just energy transition, according to a White House official cited by Reuters. UN climate agency published a new COP27 cover decision draft deal text and approved a proposal covering funding arrangements loss and damage from climate change suffered by vulnerable countries. However, it was also reported that EU climate policy chief Timmermans said the deal is not enough of a step forward and that the mitigation programme agreement allows some parties to hide from their commitments, while he added that too many parties are not ready to make more progress, according to Reuters. Goldman Sachs cut its Q4 Brent oil outlook by USD 10/bbl to USD 100/bbl due to China COVID concerns, while it sees elevated oil flows from China ahead of EU curbs and a price cap; UBS forecasts Brent to recovery to USD 110/bbl in 2023, expects oil demand to increase at an above trend rate of circa. 1.6mln BPD in 2023. Russia is now the largest fertiliser supplier to India for the first time as it provides discounts, according to Reuters sources. China's NDRC is to lower retail prices of gasoline and diesel by CNY 175/tonne and CNY 165/tonnes respectively as of November 22nd. Spot gold/silver are unable to glean any haven-related upside in wake of the USDs strength, with the yellow metal over USD 10/oz below the USD 1751/oz 10-DMA despite briefly surpassing the figure overnight; base metals similar dented. Geopolitics IAEA said powerful explosions shook the area of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Saturday evening and Sunday morning with more than a dozen blasts heard within a short period during the morning. It was also reported that Ukraine’s Energoatom said Russia's military shelled the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Sunday morning and that there were at least 12 hits on the plant’s infrastructure facilities, while Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine fired shells at power lines supplying the nuclear power plant, according to Reuters and TASS. US Defense Secretary Austin said Russia is carrying out atrocities in Ukraine and said that ‘these aren’t just lapses’, while he added that China, like Russia, is seeking a world where ‘might makes right’. Austin said autocrats like Russian President Putin are watching the Ukraine conflict and could seek nuclear weapons, while he added autocrats could conclude obtaining ‘nuclear weapons would give them a hunting licence of their own’, according to Reuters. UK PM Sunak told Ukrainian President Zelensky that the UK will provide a GBP 50mln air defence package to Ukraine which will include 125 anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter Iranian-supplied drones, according to Reuters. Russian President Putin spokesperson says there is no discussion in the Kremlin of a fresh wave of military mobilisation, via Reuters. German Defence Ministry spokesperson says air policing is being discussed with Poland, via Reuters. US Event Calendar 08:30: Oct. Chicago Fed Nat Activity Index, est. -0.03, prior 0.10 Central Bank speakers 13:00: Fed’s Daly Talks on Price Stability A more detailed look at global markets courtesy of DB's Jim Reid This morning my new credit strategy team and I have just published our 2023 credit outlook. Our view on the terminal rate for 2023 credit spreads and peak level 2024 defaults hasn’t changed much since we last updated our spread targets in April, when we became the first bank to warn of a tough 2023 US recession. In this outlook, we slightly increase our targets and see YE ‘23 spreads for EUR and USD IG hitting 245bps and 235bps, and EUR and USD HY hitting 930bps and 860bps, respectively. This is a widening from current levels of +53bps, +100bps, +400bps and +410bps, respectively. Our full-year total return forecasts for EU IG is 1.6%, USD IG -0.2%, USD HY -3.3% and EUR HY -4.4%. A lack of near-term maturities will limit 2023 defaults, but our models highlight that leverage is 2x more important than maturity walls at explaining historical default patterns. We forecast YE'23 defaults in USD HY of 4.5%, USD Loans of 5.6%, EUR HY of 2.2%, and EUR Loans of 3.7%. But by 2H’24, we forecast peak defaults in USD HY of 9%, USD Loans of 11.3%, EUR HY of 4.3% and EUR loans of 7.1%. Indeed loans worry us more than high-yield bonds in 2023. We see USD loans returning -10.8% over FY'23 as defaults rise and CLO demand is impaired from future downgrades. In the near-term, European credit should continue to outperform US credit, as event risk in the region falls with spreads still wide to the US. Our bearishness gathers momentum later in 2023. Indeed, the major 2023 theme will be the likely US recession in H2. Whether this happens and how severe it is will make or break 2023. In some ways we feel that this has been a pretty easy US cycle to predict as it's been an old fashioned boom-and-bust cycle. Half the 66 economists who forecast the US economy on Bloomberg now predict at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth for 2023 (albeit mildly negative). Has there ever been such a large number predicting a recession from a starting point of not being in one? The worry we would have is that economists’ models seldom predict a recession. So if they now do, that speaks volumes. The risk is that if and when it arrives, it creates systemic risk from somewhere in the over-levered / illiquid financial system. Something normally breaks when the Fed hikes. So the main driver of 2023 view is the combination of still relatively high rates, a tough US recession, and what crisis that might subsequently trigger. If we’re wrong on the US recession call, or if it is mild and without systemic risk, then we will be wrong on our forecasts. We suspect most readers will hope we are. See the full report here. Hopefully this new report won't distract you from the World Cup. I've drawn Argentina and Poland in the office sweepstake which will distract me from England's likely stressful journey through the tournament, however long it lasts. The start of the World Cup coincides with Thanksgiving week so it will be the usual compressed few days of activity. The FOMC minutes (Wednesday) and the ECB's account of their last meeting (Thursday) will be the key macro events. Focus will likely be on their thinking about the terminal rate (both) and QT plans (ECB), with both now more likely to hike 50bps than 75bps in December. We will also see global flash PMIs on Wednesday. Other data will include an array of business activity indicators, including durable goods orders in the US. Indeed, Wednesday is a US data dump ahead of Thanksgiving and we will also see the final UoM consumer confidence data which includes the inflation expectations revision which is important. Claims also comes a day early. The Fed speakers last week helped prompt a big flattening of the US curve as they generally hinted towards a terminal rate of above 5%. As such before we see the FOMC minutes, tomorrow sees three Fed speakers who might add to the debate. They are all hawks (Mester, George and Bullard) though and have all spoken since the FOMC so the market should know their biases. Over the weekend, the Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic (non-voter) opined that he believes that the Fed can slow the pace of rate hikes and feels that the Fed's target policy rate need not rise more than 1 percentage point to tackle inflation and help ensure a soft landing. Boston Fed Collins also spoke but kept all options open. Lastly, with only around 20 S&P 500 firms left to report earnings this season, this week's results line-up will be tech-heavy and feature a number of large Chinese firms. These include Baidu (Tuesday), Xiaomi (Wednesday) and Meituan (Friday). In the US, we will hear from Zoom today and Analog Devices, Autodesk and HP tomorrow. Risk aversion has resurfaced across Asian equity markets this morning with fresh China COVID-19 fears after the nation witnessed its first Covid-related death in 6 months on Saturday with two more following on Sunday, sparking concerns that Beijing would reimpose strict Covid curbs even as they consider longer-term reopenings. As I type, the Hang Seng (-2.09%) is the largest underperformer with the Shanghai Composite (-0.81%), the CSI (-1.30%) and the KOSPI (-1.11%) all slipping. Elsewhere, the Nikkei (+0.02%) has been wavering between gains and losses. In overnight trading, stock futures in the DMs are pointing to a weak start with contracts on the S&P 500 (-0.29%), NASDAQ 100 (-0.24%) and the DAX (-0.37%) trading in the red. Meanwhile, yields on the 2 and 10yr USTs are -2.5bps and -4.1bps lower, respectively, with the curve now at -72.6bps, a fresh four decade low. Coming back to China, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) left its benchmark lending rates unchanged for the third straight month, maintaining its one-year loan prime rate (LPR) at 3.65%, while the five-year LPR (a reference for mortgages) was kept intact at 4.30%. With the authorities recently extending more support to property developers, the possibility of additional easing seems less likely from the central bank. In energy markets, oil prices are continuing their recent decline amid China demand concerns. Brent crude futures are down -1.02% at $86.73/bbl with WTI (-1.09%) just below $80/bbl. Reviewing last week now, US yields and equities sold off while European counterparts rallied, though the moves in equities in particular were small despite another week filled with macro news. Starting on rates, Fed Vice Chair Brainard kept to the company line in outlining a likely step down to +50bp hikes starting in December, but, unlike her colleagues, did not explicitly tie the slower pace with a higher terminal rate. Regional Fed Presidents were happy to take up that mantle, however, with St. Louis Fed President Bullard continuing to lead the vanguard. Indeed, Bullard noted that policy rates may even need to get as high as 7% to fight inflation, from just under 4% today. The Taylor Rule was invoked in that speech. That sent 2yr Treasury yields +19.2bps higher on the week (+7.2bps Friday). 10yr yields lagged, climbing +1.3bps (+5.9bps Friday), which drove the 2s10s curve to its most inverted of the cycle, ending the week at -70.6bps. While curves also flattened on this side of the Atlantic, Bunds and Gilts outperformed, where 10yr Bunds fell -14.6bps (-0.6bps Friday) and Gilts were -11.9bps (+3.7bps Friday) lower. Despite continued tech layoffs, fears of a material escalation in the war after the missiles landed in Poland (for which tensions were quickly eased), and tighter expected Fed policy, equities were subdued but resilient. Indeed, the S&P 500, which fell -0.69% over the week (+0.48% Friday), had its first weekly performance that did not exceed +1% in either direction since early August, while the STOXX 600 climbed +0.25% given the move lower in European discount rates. For a truly muted performance, we highlight the Dow Jones, which was -0.01% lower (+0.59% Friday). While aggregate indices put in a lacklustre shift, regional indices in Europe outperformed, with the DAX up +1.46% (+1.16% Friday) and the CAC +0.76% (+1.04% higher), and certain sectors underperformed in the US where the Nasdaq fell -1.57% (+0.01% Friday) and the Russell 2000 was -1.75% lower (+0.58% Friday). Elsewhere, Brent crude oil pulled back -8.72% (-2.41% Friday), which was its worst weekly return since early August, coincidentally also the last week that the S&P 500 had an absolute value return below 1%. Tyler Durden Mon, 11/21/2022 - 07:57.....»»

Trump announced that he's running for president in 2024. Insider previously spoke with Cruz, Rubio, and others who had front-row seats to his rise. Donald Trump defeated 16 Republicans en route to winning the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. History books would be written very differently had that not happened.Marianne Ayala/InsiderThe most famous escalator ride in American political history was almost an elevator ride. Donald Trump's operatives couldn't decide whether to send him down the escalator to announce his presidential candidacy or have him take the elevator instead. They landed on the escalator, and that moment would set in motion a 13-month ride that would ultimately ensconce him atop the GOP as its 2016 standard-bearer.On Tuesday, Trump officially announced his 2024 presidential bid, marking the start of yet another race in his storied political career. Seventeen Republicans aspired to be president of the United States during the 2016 election cycle, one of the most unorthodox and unconventional the country had ever seen. Only one emerged from the pileup — Trump — who would learn he was the nominee on the Trump Tower elevator he almost descended on back on announcement day.During those tumultuous months from June 2015 to July 2016, the Republican Party establishment's reluctant journey to accepting a reality-TV celebrity as their presidential nominee laid bare deep ideological and cultural divisions within their ranks. Traditional Republicans found themselves outflanked by an insurgent former lifelong Democrat whose impulses and approach conflicted with their own. But by the time of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland five years ago this week, running from July 18 through the 21st, Republicans who did not support Trump fell in line.In interviews with nearly two dozen people — including several 2016 Republican candidates, party officials, and both GOP and Democratic campaign operatives — Insider collected never-before-reported recollections from Trump's hostile takeover of the GOP. The story that follows covers the Trump Tower escalator ride that was mocked from all directions and yet started everything; the Trump official behind renting a crowd for the big campaign announcement speech; and Melania Trump's plagiarism of Michelle Obama's Democratic National Convention speech eight years earlier.These 2016 insiders also described how the Trump team prepared for the first GOP debate in Cleveland by hanging with a member of Aerosmith and how his campaign polled Ivanka Trump as a vice-presidential candidate amid the RNC's last-minute gambit to dump Trump.The human drama of the Republican primary campaign has been all but forgotten, replaced by what came after: Trump versus Hillary, Russian hackings, WikiLeaks, and the infamous "Access Hollywood" tape — and the four ensuing wild years that roiled the nation and the world.But for any of that to happen, Trump must first become the leader of the GOP. What you are about to read is the oral history of that story.Chapter 1: The escalatorFor 29 years before his fateful escalator ride, Trump toyed with the idea of running for president. This time he was serious. Aides carefully planned and scripted the event and his remarks; Trump improvised.Corey Lewandowski, Trump campaign manager: We had a number of variables which we had to factor in, which was either come down the elevators in the back of the room and have him walk out through a blue curtain and onto the stage, or come down into the lobby, come down that now famous escalator ride, and then go up onto the stage. But what our goal was, was making him look as presidential from the very onset, which means the American flag behind him, the stage was exactly how we wanted it, with a podium, with the same type of microphone that presidents traditionally use.The most famous escalator ride in US political history.Christopher Gregory/Getty ImagesDonald McGahn, Trump campaign counsel: I was at the top. He went down. And I remember seeing the crowd go nuts.Adrienne Elrod, Hillary for America director of strategic communications: We all kind of stopped what we were doing and chuckled at the fact that this is happening. And we all kind of said, "Yeah, he's going to be in the race for about six weeks. He'll use this to make some more money and grow the Trump brand and try to launch a new television show."Sarah Isgur, deputy campaign manager for Carly Fiorina: What a weird thing for the advance team to think was OK — like him standing on this escalator.Tim Miller, communications director for Jeb Bush: I thought it was a ridiculous show.Corey Lewandowski: We had people who were on the periphery of the campaign and thought they were campaign strategists who wanted to have elephants and monkeys and donkeys running through Trump Tower.Donald McGahn: There was a lot of building security checking each other's credentials, because we had different levels of credentials. It took them a while to realize there was a hierarchy of credentials. There were security guards telling other security guards to move.Corey Lewandowski: There were five different sets of credentials and all-access to media and volunteers. They all had the wrong date printed on it. They all said June 16, 2016. So we had to send this poor woman by the name of Joy out to Brooklyn at, like, 3 o'clock in the morning to get these reprinted, because we knew that if it wasn't perfect we'd be chastised.Josh Schwerin, Hillary for America national spokesman: He was not a serious person at that point. There had been debate of will-he-won't-he for a really long time. It didn't seem like a serious thing.Sarah Isgur: I remember thinking: "Man, I'm surprised he couldn't even get people there. That seems insane."Amanda Carpenter, communications director for Ted Cruz: It seemed strange. I was watching the coverage of "Oh, did they pay people to show up? Who were these people?"Corey Lewandowski: That's a Michael Cohen special. Michael Cohen decided that he was going to go hire one of his buddies and pay his buddy without getting any campaign approval. You know, $50 for every person to come in, to stand in Trump Tower.I literally spent the entire day of Trump's announcement screaming at TV executives. Tim MillerMichael Cohen, Trump personal attorney: Trump hired David Schwartz to coordinate the campaign launch, which he did professionally. Any allegation of payments to actors is an absolute lie that was promoted by Corey Lewandowski.David Schwartz, partner at Gotham Government Relations: We were hired to put that entire event together. That event was really our brainchild: The most famous escalator ride in the history of politics was that one. Bottom line is, we had thousands of people there, and then the press accused us of hiring thousands of actors. Based on the fee that I got, that would not have been a good business decision on anyone's part. The reality is we hired 50 people, some of whom were part-time actors I found out later on. But we hired 50 people to help coordinate an event that brought in thousands of people. There were people at the door that couldn't get in. That night, all of the sudden, I got accused of hiring thousands of actors.Tim Miller: So Trump is going to speak, and Sean Hannity was going to give Trump Jeb's slot that night, because they announced the same day. So I'm standing outside Bed Bath & Beyond in Miami, shouting at Hannity, like, "What the F is your problem?" F this and F that. "How can you give this guy our slot?" Then I remember going in to shop and coming out and yelling at some other anchors. I literally spent the entire day of Trump's announcement screaming at TV executives.Corey Lewandowski: He did not deliver one word of the speech as it was written. We provided the speech to every media outlet and said, "Remarks as prepared by Donald Trump for his announcement speech." There were some media outlets that actually just printed them verbatim. Probably had egg on their face afterward. Because as we know, Donald Trump went on to speak extemporaneously for 45 minutes and talk about some of the individuals coming across the border that were never in the original speech. And I assume some are good people.Trump promised to make America great again and vowed to take on the growing might of China in a speech launching his run for the presidency in 2016. He made his way to the stage as Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" played.Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty ImagesAmanda Carpenter: I was, like, "OK, well, at least he's talking about mostly our type of issues. People will realize he's a clown. And then this whole thing will melt like cotton candy. And we'll be back to maybe a Jeb, Rubio, Cruz race."Lindsey Graham, GOP senator and 2016 presidential candidate: I thought his announcement was pretty extreme. I thought the rhetoric around his announcement and some of his policy positions would make it almost disqualifying.Chapter 2: Early disastersA month after his campaign announcement, at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, Trump attacked Sen. John McCain. The Arizona senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. "He's not a war hero," Trump told the moderator Frank Luntz. "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured." It proved to be the first of a series of moments early on when it looked like Trump's campaign was over before it had even really begun.Marco Rubio, GOP senator and 2016 presidential candidate: Look, everybody — every traditional observer of politics — thought his campaign was dead when he said the things he said about John McCain.GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona in the US Capitol in July 2015, days after Trump said the Vietnam POW was "not a war hero."Andrew Harnik/AP PhotoCorey Lewandowski: We had a whole day planned in Iowa that day. I remember it very vividly. I waited for Mr. Trump to walk off the stage, and I said, "I'd like to speak to you." He said, "I was pretty good, right?" I said, "Sir, could I speak to you over here for a second, please?" We went into a locker room, which is where the referees or umpires, depending on the sport, would get dressed in that gymnasium. And I said: "Sir, by all accounts, John McCain is a war hero. You need to apologize." He said, "Yeah, no apologies."Marco Rubio: That was a pretty early sign that the dynamics of American politics have changed. Part of it is just the way the public now consumes political news. It's very different than 20 years ago. It's covered more like entertainment or sports, and less like public policy. It was a perfect forum for a candidate with a message and the experience that he had.I called my wife just as we were getting onto the plane. I said, 'Hey, baby, I'm coming home.' She said, 'Oh, the day is over?' I said, 'No, no — the campaign is over.' She said, 'What do you mean?' I said: 'It's over. We're done.' Corey Lewandowski, Trump campaign managerCorey Lewandowski: I called my wife just as we were getting onto the plane. I said, "Hey, baby, I'm coming home." She said, "Oh, the day is over?" I said, "No, no — the campaign is over." She said, "What do you mean?" I said: "It's over. We're done."We flew from Iowa back to New Jersey, and this guy Dave picked us up in the car and we drove over to Mr. Trump's home. As we walked in the door, Mrs. Trump was waiting for us. She said: "You're right. John McCain isn't a war hero. What he has done for the veterans has been shameful." In the meantime, I'd been getting phone calls from every major political pundit and conservative talk-show host except Rush Limbaugh. They were all telling me that Donald Trump had to apologize — that his race was over if he didn't apologize immediately.Michael Cohen: Melania played a very limited role during the campaign not believing Donald would actually win. However, when directly asked for her opinion on a matter by Donald, she offered it readily.Chapter 3: The DebatesOn August 6, inside Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, 10 Republican presidential candidates took part in the first debate. Trump was a neophyte to debates, and his team was more interested in hanging out with the Aerosmith lead guitarist Joe Perry than prepping, auguring the alchemy of entertainment and politics that would define the Trump era. If Trump was a made-for-television candidate, he benefited from the unconventional nature of that cycle's nearly dozen debates, spanning from August 2015 to March 2016.Corey Lewandowski: We had a little bit of downtime before we went over to the arena. We landed the plane in Cleveland, and we got a phone call from Don McGahn, who was then our general counsel. "Hey, Aerosmith is close by. Do you mind if they bring their tour bus over and party with us for a little while?" We said, "100% — bring Aerosmith over!"Donald McGahn: Close, but that's a little off.Corey Lewandowski: So we sat there with Aerosmith about an hour before the debate, swapping stories of Aerosmith as opposed to doing debate prep.Steven Tyler of Aerosmith listens from the audience during the first official 2016 Republican presidential debate in Cleveland.Brian Snyder/ReutersDonald McGahn: It wasn't the whole band. It was Joe Perry. He was intrigued by the emerging Trump phenomenon. Remember, this was before there were any primary debates, and it was all new to everyone. Stuff that would be from Mars on any other campaign was perfectly normal for the Trump campaign.By this point, Trump was getting ready for the debate, so Joe had to wait a little bit. On the way out the door, Trump says something about "rock stars have all the ladies," which apparently Perry got mad at, because he's been married for decades and takes all that stuff pretty seriously. After the debate, if you watch the film, Joe goes up on stage and finds Trump and proceeds to tell him that he's married and he doesn't sleep around.The subtext is that Steven Tyler already had tickets to the debate through some other wing of Trump Org. Joe didn't want to be upstaged — wanted to meet with Trump rather than just go to the debate. Apparently, there's a whole internal Aerosmith thing among the political persuasion of the band.After the first debate, the prime-time contests took on a familiar pattern, with Trump becoming their draw and center of gravity.Marco Rubio: The first time I got on the debate stage, there were, like, 100 people on stage. So it was a very unique race, because you had so many different people running.Rand Paul, GOP senator and 2016 presidential candidate: I blame as much as anything the media. The media organizes the debates.Sarah Isgur: It wasn't a debate. You were debating yourself. How could you use your time as effectively, and where can you jump in on a question that wasn't to you?The top-polling 2016 Republican presidential candidates in August 2015 at their first official debate in Cleveland. From left: Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Trump, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and John Kasich.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesCorey Lewandowski: Let me just remind you, Trump had never been on the debate stage. And he was going up against a Princeton-educated debate champion in Ted Cruz, and career politicians and executives who've done this their entire life. So we spent time talking to Mr. Trump about some of the possible questions that would come up. We wrote one-liners on every candidate, just so he would have a quick retort if he wanted that.Rand Paul: It's hard to have much exchange when you don't get much time. It's unfair the way the debates are set up. They really make it impossible for the underdog to have much of a chance.Lindsey Graham: I never got on the big stage. That's frustrating. I was never able to poll well enough.Sean Spicer, chief strategist and communications director for the Republican National Committee: You're sitting there and watching Trump say, "Yeah, I don't know." And you think, "OK, that would have been a death knell for anybody else. It would have been, like, 'Boom — you're out.'"Josh Hawley, GOP candidate for Missouri attorney general: The one debate I remember, he starts by attacking Rand Paul. "I don't know why Rand Paul is even on the stage." I remember thinking, "I can't believe he's saying this stuff out loud." You can understand why people are watching the debates. Because you wonder, "Well, what's gonna happen next?"Rick Gates, deputy Trump campaign chairman: Donald Trump had this amazing ability to size people up — a "Little Marco" — in literally a one- or two-word phrase that so encapsulated who they were that people said: "This guy is absolutely right. He's telling us the truth." So it was almost impossible to compete with Donald Trump in that regard.Corey Lewandowski: Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face. And we just kept punching people in the face.Tim Miller: If you're designing a candidate to do a poor job of being the one to go head-to-head with Trump, it would be Jeb. He was an easy punching bag because of his family. He's not an alpha type on a debate stage.—NTA by Mic (@NavigatingTrump) March 4, 2016Josh Schwerin: The most memorable debate experience? I was on the road, and it was the one where Trump and Rubio got into an argument about hand size, which I then had to brief President Clinton on. Which was one of the more awkward moments in my life, I would say. We were in Louisiana. He didn't at first believe me that this was the topic of a debate. I had to show him the CNN headline. I tried to not add any commentary and just let him read it for himself. Because it was not the most comfortable conversation to have with the former president of the United States. He was amused, but also really aghast that this is what they had devolved to.The evening after the Cleveland debate, with exhaustion setting in, Trump ignited another controversy when he phoned into "CNN Tonight" with Don Lemon and said that the Fox debate moderator Megyn Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever." Kelly had aggressively questioned Trump about his past comments about women, and his post-debate commentary would only further solidify the narrative that Trump had a problem with sexism.Sean Spicer: I think she thought that was going to be the gotcha moment.Corey Lewandowski: I remember getting a phone call that Friday night. I was in my apartment in New York at, like, 9 o'clock — we were supposed to be traveling to South Carolina the next day — from a guy by the name of Erick Erickson. And he says, "I just listened to the interview, and I've got teenage daughters and a wife, and Donald Trump is no longer invited to my event, because it was such an egregious thing to do."I didn't even know what the hell he was talking about. I said, "What happened?" I call Mr. Trump, and he says: "Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I said something." I again tell him it was one of these things where his campaign was over. And he just doubled down on it. He powered through it. And once again, 48 hours later, we were into a new news cycle.At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, the candidates faced off in another marathon debate, during which Trump attacked Rand Paul's height and Carly Fiorina blasted Trump for mocking her appearance in an interview with Rolling Stone a few days before the debate. ("Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!") "I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said," Fiorina would say that night to raucous applause.Sarah Isgur: We were landing — this was back when not every airplane had WiFi. And so I was landing and getting WiFi back, and that's when I saw it. And, I mean, she knew immediately that was the best opportunity we'd ever had. Like the thing sucking up all the oxygen just gave us an oxygen mask.Tim Miller: Carly did a good job.Sarah Isgur: Trump realized the mistake he had made. That's why he never touched her again.Chapter 4: Republicans cannibalize themselvesIn the months-long lead-up to February's Iowa caucuses, the massive Republican field continued to jockey for position, and Trump continued to suck most of the oxygen out of the room and vacuum up earned media. By the end of 2015, the oxygen deprivation had winnowed the field by five candidates. The candidates who remained were trapped in something like a prisoner's dilemma in which they turned fire on everyone else but Trump. Meanwhile, the former celebrated neurosurgeon Ben Carson began to gain traction among social conservatives nationwide, particularly in Iowa. During a rally in Fort Dodge, Trump went after his future Cabinet appointee, reenacting Carson's teenage tribulations — ridiculous mock knife fight, anyone? — purely for laughs. Trump's team planned it on the plane, and it led to an awkward exchange in the motorcade afterward.—Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) November 13, 2015Corey Lewandowski: Mr. Trump says to Mark, the head of the Secret Service detail: "Hey, Mark. How did we do?" And Mark says, "Very good, sir!" And Mr. Trump says, "Do you have any advice?" And Mark says, "Just one, sir."I'm like, "You gotta be shitting me. This guy has been on the job a hot second and he's already giving the candidate advice? He's the fucking Secret Service guy!" And Mark, who's a great guy and I have enormous respect for, says: "Sir, please don't have anybody come up on the stage and stab you. We have to shoot them!"Then Trump goes, "Oh, Mark — the guy was 80."And Mark goes: "No, don't. Please. Here is my only advice. Please don't ask anyone to come up on the stage." And I said: "OK, like, I agree with you, head of Secret Service detail protection, let's not have anyone come up on the stage."February 2016 opened with Ted Cruz mounting a surprise win in Iowa and Trump complaining that the election was rigged.Newt Gingrich, former House speaker and 2012 GOP presidential candidate: Trump could never perform a classic Iowa campaign. First of all, it's not who he is. It's inconceivable he was going to go to small towns three times. But how could you create a replacement campaign? I called him one afternoon and said: "What you have to do is get on Facebook every day. People have to feel that you're in their living room or their kitchen every day. Then the familiarity will lead them to decide." I must have said that to him in October. And at Christmas, we were at my wife's sister-in-law's. He calls and says: "This is Donald. We just finished taping 58 Facebook videos."Sean Spicer: I had breakfast one morning with Corey. He was very clear that the expectations were that Trump needed to win Iowa. He was going all in, doing anything he could.Corey Lewandowski: Cruz's campaign was so focused, they put all their eggs in the Iowa basket. Then at the very end of the night of the Iowa caucus, they sent out a mass distribution that said, "Ben Carson is getting out of the race — vote for Ted Cruz." We believe that those votes went from Dr. Carson to Ted Cruz, and that is ultimately what led Donald Trump to finish second in the Iowa caucus.Marco Rubio: It was obvious he was doing it differently than everybody else was.Corey Lewandowski: There was a brief period of time where Marco Rubio started to go after Donald Trump and attack him. And you actually saw a movement in the polls, but what did Marco's team do? They started hearing from their donors, and their donors said: "This is beneath you. You should not be talking about the size of Mr. Trump's hands. This is not becoming of a presidential candidate."Marco Rubio: He has a real understanding of the media ecosystem and what feeds it—what it is the media wants to report on and getting narratives across. And that was probably underappreciated when everybody was kind of running traditional political campaigns and he was running a 21st-century, modern version of what we have. And it worked.The ensuing four weeks — starting with the Iowa caucuses at the beginning of February 2016 — saw the remaining Republican challengers cannibalize each other instead of Trump. Taking out the top guy after the Iowa caucuses, Ted Cruz, was too lofty a goal for Chris Christie in early 2016. So the straggling two-term governor of New Jersey settled on taking out the first-term senator from Florida, portraying Rubio as too green to be president. Meanwhile, Trump aides worried their candidate's obsession over not coming in first in Iowa could spell the end of his campaign.Mike DuHaime, senior strategist to Chris Christie: So it was on the plane ride back from Iowa to New Hampshire, it was really the governor himself and basically said: "This is what we have to do. Now is the time to take on Marco."Corey Lewandowski: I called the grown children — Don, Eric, and Ivanka — told them what was happening, brought Mr. Trump in, and, over a meal of McDonald's in the back room of our Manchester office, told him that if he wants to continue to bitch about the results in Iowa and not lay out his vision for what he wanted to achieve for America to the people in New Hampshire, this race was over. It was a very candid conversation; it was just he and I in the room. He listened intently. You walked out of that room. He went to a town-hall meeting with CNN that afternoon and Manchester. He came and ran a positive message.Then he went to a shift change at the Manchester police department, where he talked about supporting the men and women in law enforcement. And we campaigned in New Hampshire on Thursday and Friday, on Saturday, on Sunday, and on Monday. And on Tuesday, Donald Trump won the state of New Hampshire by 17 points, with 35%, in the 17-way primary. It was a complete blowout, the biggest blowout in the primary's history.With the field on the verge of collapsing, the GOP establishment's favorite son, Jeb Bush, sensed opportunity — albeit briefly. They pinned their hopes on the candidate's mother, the former first lady.Tim Miller: There was a small window where we felt, like, "Mrs. Bush is coming up, somebody is going to take some momentum here out of New Hampshire." That's not Cruz or Trump. It'll either be us or a Kasich or Rubio. We thought maybe we can kind of channel this and have a McCain-like 2008 sort of bump.Our internal numbers were going up a little bit right around the time when Mrs. Bush came to visit us. And it was just lovely, and she's just so charming and wonderful and aligned and blunt. And I remember briefing her for — she was interviewing with Norah O'Donnell. I was pretty clear, and I asked her what she was going to say if she was asked about them. I asked her her thoughts about Cruz and Trump, and she gave her very candid negative assessments of both of them. After each sort of rant she went on, she then looked at me and said, "But I'm not going to say that."Former first lady Barbara Bush introduces her son Jeb Bush at a town-hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, in February 2016.Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesCorey Lewandowski: We could attack Jeb for being a fake rich guy. Because he wasn't as rich as Trump. And then we could attack him for being a career politician. And then we can attack him for being low energy. He became an easy target for us because he had never had a tough battle.Christie dropped out after Trump won New Hampshire. Meanwhile, Bush's campaign never got going. He suffered perhaps most from a viral video after he told a New Hampshire audience on February 4, 2016, to "please clap."Tim Miller: The "please clap" thing is Ashley Parker's fault. I never will forgive her for that. She was the one who tweeted it out first and made everybody go back and find it and make it seem cringe.It was like a totally normal human response to an awkward audience moment that he was trying to let it go ahead. And then it got turned around on the internet to seem like he's begging people to clap for him. Like: 'Please clap for me, please clap for me. I'm so sad. I'm in last place.' Such is life. Tim MillerAshley Parker, reporter at The New York Times: I made it the kicker of my story. Once I tweeted it out, it just took on a totally unexpected life of its own.Tim Miller: It was like a totally normal human response to an awkward audience moment that he was trying to let it go ahead. And then it got turned around on the internet to seem like he's begging people to clap for him. Like: "Please clap for me, please clap for me. I'm so sad. I'm in last place." Such is life.Ashley Parker: It was sort of a poignant moment and a telling moment, in certain ways, but I think some of this got lost in the meme. It was also a lighthearted moment.All told, 12 Republican candidates started out in February. By the time Super Tuesday rolled around, on March 1, 2016, the field stood at five. Amid the South Carolina primary, holed up at a Hilton Garden Inn, the Bush campaign compiled speeches for dropping out and forging deeper into other states' nominating contests. Surrounded by the Bush family, the New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, and staffers, the son and brother of two former presidents dropped out of the race. He was the 2016 campaign's original front-runner with a nearly $100 million war chest.Rob Portman, GOP senator from Ohio: The Republican primary was a surprise for people because most of us thought Jeb Bush came into it with the most mainstream Republican support.Tim Miller: There were a couple of folks around Jeb who wanted him to keep going, and he called us back in and said: "You know, this is, I can't, can't do it. I can't move forward. So we have to, you know, we have to do this." He was all business. And he looked at me and says, "I've got it." And we went over the speech, you know, just like we would have with any other speech. He was wistful, obviously, and a little sad, but very businesslike. Like, this happened, he gave it his all, and he recognized staying in was only going to make things more likely at that point for Trump.Discarded lawn signs for Jeb Bush and Ben Carson lie on the ground outside a polling station in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 20, 2016.Joshua Roberts/ReutersMarco Rubio: Generally I was happy when people dropped out, because that meant, you know, one less candidate out there and a pool of voters that were now available to go after. Unfortunately for me, they didn't drop out soon enough.Chapter 5: Trump takes control: Super Tuesday, Indiana's decisive primaryIn March, as the contest narrowed, Trump went on a tear on Super Tuesday, winning Virginia, Vermont, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Alabama, setting up a battle royal between Trump, Cruz, and Kasich in Indiana's May primary.Rick Gates: By March, clearly he was the front-runner, and he was gaining delegates. But at the same time, you could see the party apparatus starting to work against him.Lindsey Graham: I endorsed Ted Cruz. I ran out of people to endorse. I was sort of the Dr. Kevorkian of endorsing. Everybody I endorsed politically died.Amanda Carpenter: It was essentially coming down to a Cruz-Trump race, and Kasich was refusing to get out. People like John Boehner and others were signaling that they weren't going to help Cruz and consolidate the field. They were just saying, "Well, we'll just nominate Trump and let him lose."Tim Miller: Jeb endorsed Cruz pretty quickly after he dropped out. Gave Marco Florida all to himself. I went to work for a super PAC that spent millions of dollars attacking Trump in Florida. Like, what more did you want from us?Mike DuHaime: Mitt Romney was potentially the most influential endorsement during that cycle. He was the previous nominee, and he had this massive fundraising network. So the thought was that if Mitt endorsed somebody, that person could become the one who could coalesce people. He never did.Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican presidential nominee: There's really no reason for me to add to that story.Tim Miller: There's an alternate history where Trump gets treated like a joke from the start. There's another alternate history where all of the campaigns attack him and treat him seriously from the start and he never really takes off. We'll never know. I do think that in both of those alternative histories, he could've gotten killed in the crib.A London pub set up cardboard cutouts of the faces of Ted Cruz, Trump, and Marco Rubio in March 2016 as part of an informal survey for customers to log which they disliked the most.Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty ImagesIn the early spring of 2016, the Trump campaign began to make some changes atop its organizational chart, hiring Paul Manafort, the veteran delegate wrangler of RNC conventions who'd turned into a jet-setting shadowy political operative for foreign autocrats.Rick Gates: Paul Manafort was brought in at the end of March. Trump had been advised to meet with Paul because Paul knew how to deal with conventions. The media had been reporting that the Republican convention was going to be contested. So you needed somebody to understand the nuances of how a contested convention works.The first call he made was to Jim Baker, the broker of the last contested convention. We had a secret meeting with Baker at the Jones Day law firm, our lawyer at the time. He and Trump had a fantastic meeting. Baker was as smooth as he typically is, and Trump was very interested in Baker's experience.The second call, which I thought was interesting, was to Dick Cheney. Cheney had agreed to support Trump, but he wanted to do it from behind the scenes. He wanted to be helpful for the party and support the nominee, but clearly he was not comfortable yet to move all into Trump's camp, given his relationship with the Bush family.Another interesting call was to Marco Rubio. Paul got Marco on the phone, and Rubio said he would look at how Trump was going to run his campaign, and, at the appropriate time, he might be willing to support him. Paul hung up and started smirking. I said, "What's going on?" He goes, "Marco used to be my driver at the 1996 Republican convention."At a hastily arranged event in Indianapolis, in a last-stand effort ahead of Indiana's decisive primary and following Trump's big wins in five East Coast states, Ted Cruz announced that Carly Fiorina would be his running mate if he emerged from the GOP primary with his party's nomination. It was an odd, awkward event that featured a botched handshake between the two.Sarah Isgur: The most important thought was, who can actually beat Trump at this point? He was underperforming with women. Cruz wasn't women's favorite candidate either. So if women in the middle of the Republican Party were up for grabs, maybe Carly could help with that.Jeff Roe, campaign manager for Ted Cruz: They had a really good rapport, and it was a man-bites-dog publicity event. So we thought it would be newsworthy, and that's how it came together.Adrienne Elrod: By that point, we realized it was over, and we started planning for the general election.Amanda Carpenter: I like Carly and respect her a lot, but it was just a play. You just tried to signal that we would be serious about things: "Look, we would bring a woman onto the ticket." I mean, it was kind of a last-ditch attempt.Nothing fancy to explain there: We fumbled for a moment, and it makes for an amusing video after the fact. Ted CruzJeff Roe: What's funny is we practiced the handshake.Sarah Isgur: Oh, my God. My memory is that not only did they practice the handshake, we made them practice the handshake. They balked at us and said that we were idiots for making them practice. They did it in a way teenagers will do something, like rolling their eyes. And then to have them do the most awkward, whatever that was, in the world.Jeff Roe: It's always awkward when candidates do the victory wave. We freaking practiced it, and they still screwed it up.Ted Cruz: Nothing fancy to explain there: We fumbled for a moment, and it makes for an amusing video after the fact.Jeff Roe: They really liked each other, legitimately liked each other. So it was what it was, a guy running for president who announced his VP before he got the nomination. It's going to be a little funky. If we could get conservatives to unite against Trump, then this could be a thing. It wasn't, "Oh, isn't this kind of funny?" We did not treat it as being funny.Lindsey Graham: I think it had slipped away by then.Days later, during an event on May 2, Fiorina fell through the stage while campaigning with Cruz.Sarah Isgur: I was doing something on my phone. They were, like, "Carly just fell!"Jeff Roe: I think she stepped off the thing. It's better from the camera angle than it was in real life. But the camera angle looks bad.Sarah Isgur: I was, like, "Oh, my God."One of the most pivotal endorsements during the final days of the GOP nominating contest was still up for grabs. On April 29, 2016, in a radio interview in Indianapolis, Gov. Mike Pence, himself running for reelection, endorsed Cruz to appease his socially conservative base. But Pence also threaded the needle with kind words about Trump. "I'm not against anybody, but I will be voting for Ted Cruz in the Republican primary," Pence said in an interview with WIBC's Greg Garrison. Trump won despite Pence's endorsement.Rick Gates: That night we set up a rally inside Trump Tower for Trump to kind of do his victory party. But we didn't say anything about being the presumptive nominee. We didn't take any liberties. We just stayed in our lane, and we knew at some point Cruz is going to have to drop out. We didn't know he was going to drop out that night.Jeff Roe: We stayed in a hotel. I cannot remember the name of the hotel, and, unbelievably, there was a dog show there. So we stayed up there the whole weekend, and we made our decision with these dogs barking next to us the whole damn time.Ted Cruz: When I was giving my speech and I said the words "We're suspending the campaign," a woman in the crowd let out a wail. It was piercing. I almost broke down. I finished the speech, and one of the things I'm still frustrated to this day is that I wanted to stay out there and thank the hundreds of volunteers who were there that night who were grieving. And I couldn't. I couldn't hold back the tears. There was an army of TV cameras there, and I'll be damned if I was going to let the media turn Lyin' Ted into Cryin' Ted. I had to leave the room because I simply couldn't hold back. I'm grateful that Heidi spent probably an hour just hugging everyone and saying thank you. I wish I had the strength to do that. I didn't. But Heidi did it for us. That piercing cry from the woman in the crowd. I'll never forget.Rick Gates: We found out that Cruz had dropped out after Trump had gone through the hallway to the elevator. It was Melania and Trump and myself and Paul in the elevator. And it was just utter silence. Paul turned to Trump and said, "Do you now know that you're one of two people who is going to be the next president of the United States?"Sarah Isgur: I was listening to the "Hamilton" soundtrack just over and over and over on the bus with my headphones on with the senior Cruz team and Cruz and Heidi and Carly. I wish I had had a better mood, attitude, whatever you want to call it. But you just worked your heart out and lost, and now you don't have time off. You're just back doing it for someone else. I say all that because when he lost, I was in sort of a historical, pensive mood. I remember wondering who had run against Hitler in Germany and thinking those people deserve more credit in history. Because you can know what the threat is and you can give everything you've got and still lose.Mike DuHaime: There were too many people who wanted to beat Trump but didn't have the courage to get behind any one person, because they didn't want to offend either us or Jeb or Marco or Cruz. So it was just too little too late.Ultimately, Pence, despite not endorsing Trump, became Trump's pick for the vice-presidential nomination — because of "divine intervention."Trump walks with Mike Pence on stage during a July 2016 campaign event in New York to announce Pence as Trump's running mate.Evan Vucci/AP photoRick Gates: Unbeknownst to Trump, we polled Ivanka to understand where she was. We didn't think that he was necessarily seriously going to move forward with it. But Paul thought we got to at least test it, because you never know, everything else about this race has been different. So why not? Let's look at this, you know, in totality. She had pretty good name recognition for that part. But at the end of the day, even she knew that she was not wanting to be the candidate. And so we moved on very quickly.Trump wanted to bring on somebody that was his friend, that he could work with as vice president, that he was able to communicate with very easily. And so this idea of Chris Christie and Newt Gingrich kind of being among the front-runners was absolutely accurate. But in the background we were looking at people like Mike Pence, Joni Ernst, and Bob Corker who might bring some significant role or resource to the campaign in order to help Trump win.So they came up with a short list very early on, and we reached out to the candidates individually. One of the first candidates was Mike Pence. He was the first VP candidate we met with at Bedminster. I was put in charge of vetting for Pence along with the lawyer A.B. Culvahouse. I staffed that meeting. This is the first time that Trump was physically meeting Mike Pence. And I think it's humorous in the sense that up to this point, Trump thought that Pence was not doing well in his governor's race. Trump felt like if he wasn't winning the governorship of Indiana, how in the world would he be able to help Trump as a vice-presidential candidate?And I say to this day, it was just divine intervention on how everything worked out for the first time they had met. Pence was ultimately selected. And we had a scenario where we met at Bedminster for the first time, Pence and his wife, Karen, and daughter Charlotte were there. And it was Trump and myself in the room. And Trump immediately started the meeting looking at Pence's daughter, Charlotte, and saying, "Charlotte, you know, your dad supported Ted Cruz in Indiana, not me." And it broke the ice and it was great. And to Mike's credit, he said, "Yes, Mr. Trump — uh — that was my fault." And it immediately just kind of got them into a position of really getting to know each other. And the visit was not without its challenges, because they are two very different people.Chapter 6: The RNC, July 2016Their presidential dreams crushed, a handful of Trump's 2016 rivals had by this point quit fighting and pledged allegiance to the seemingly inevitable nominee. But there were holdouts, like Rubio, Cruz, and Graham, who were still refusing to bend the knee. The climax came in Cleveland.Marco Rubio: I didn't go to the convention because I was running for reelection. I had announced late, so I needed every day I could spare in Florida.Tim Miller: I ended up not going to Cleveland. I drove to Richmond and got blackout drunk with my friend.Melania Trump at the end of her speech on the opening day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016.Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesRick Gates: On the first night of the convention, Melania did a fantastic job in the speech. And then about an hour and a half later, we start getting calls about the speech and about how it may have had information in it from a speech that Michelle Obama gave. And then, obviously, people started digging into the two speeches, and then they started comparing it.My wife calls me about an hour later, I think just a little after midnight, and says, "You're being blamed for it." And I was in a complete state of shock, because none of us had seen the speech until just before she gave the speech. And the way that the process worked, it was fed into a system run by the RNC where they would typically check for grammatical mistakes, but they never checked for content — obviously a correction that was made after that night. But at that point, nobody had thought to check Melania's speech because she had taken the team of speechwriters and done it. And what we found out after the fact was that there was an individual who had been guided by the speech firm that had given ideas and previous examples of speeches, and the speechwriter that helped him a lot, he was not political in nature and so, from what we now know, taken some of those aspects of the speech and included it, unbeknownst to Melania. And I don't think it was a deliberate intent, but obviously it created such a stir.Entering the convention, candidates who vociferously opposed Trump during the primary had to decide how to handle the convention optics. Former candidates such as Fiorina took a different tack than former candidates such as Cruz.Sarah Isgur: Carly couldn't endorse Trump and she couldn't not endorse him. I think that the phrase that was used was "You don't show up to someone's birthday party and talk about what a son of a bitch they are."Amanda Carpenter: I was working for CNN, and I had an inkling that Cruz was going to do something. I thought, another good, last-ditch attempt to try to at least signal opposition to what was going to happen.Rick Gates: We had negotiated with Cruz that he would be able to speak but that he would need to come out and say he was endorsing Donald Trump, which up until that moment he hadn't committed to. We asked for a copy of the speech in advance, but he didn't give it to us. We felt Cruz was going to renege on his commitment, which you naturally would assume.There was a lot of jockeying at the last minute. Jared and I were at the hotel with Trump in his suite. We're on the phone with Paul, who was over at the convention center. Nobody wanted Cruz to speak except for Paul, who thought it would be a disaster if he didn't, since we had committed to it. But Trump refused to allow him to speak, and so we were working out how we were going to tell Cruz this.Ted Cruz: The purpose of the speech was to lay out a path that I hoped then-candidate Trump would follow. A path to unifying conservatives. A path to honoring the promises that we had been making to the American people. What I said in the speech is vote for candidates who you trust to defend freedom and to defend the Constitution. And that is very much what I hoped Donald Trump would do. At the time I didn't know if he would or not. There were reasons to have concerns. I did have concerns.Amanda Carpenter: It was all pretty high-level, high-stakes theatrics going on — on everyone's part.Rick Gates: So we go over to the convention center in the motorcade. We have Trump in a holding room, and he's watching the proceedings on TV. He asked me where the rest of the family is. We had a family box, which we called the VIP box, in the corner of the convention center, looking directly onto the stage. Trump said: "'We'll check it out. Let's go."So we walk through the halls, and everybody's shouting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" He's building momentum. I'm thinking, this is way early for him to come down into this area, before Pence comes out to speak. And then he just kind of moseys out of the room right around the corner, because the stairs lead down into the box. He gets into the stairwell, and he turns to me and says, "Watch this."Ted Cruz: I didn't know it was coming. I had no idea. It didn't occur to me that that would be the campaign's reaction. Given that, for any nominee, the objective typically is to unify the party and win in November.Amanda Carpenter: I just remember how loud the boos were. And how I was worried for Heidi, watching her just kind of whisked out.Ted Cruz: If you look at what I said in the speech, the words were virtually identical to what Ted Kennedy said about Jimmy Carter and to what Ronald Reagan said about Gerald Ford. Neither one of them, at their respective conventions, endorsed the nominee. And the reason I know it was identical is I had both of those speeches in front of me when I was writing it and very deliberately used the same language.Amanda Carpenter: I didn't think anybody was in real danger, but just watching everything that happened at Trump rallies and the violence outside the convention, it was uncomfortable.Sean Spicer: Trump owned the moment. He gets stuff in a way that I don't think people appreciate in terms of — what's the right word? — pageantry. It's like showbiz, in the sense that he knows how to make a presentation.Trump's takeover of the GOP would culminate in a dark, authoritarian speech that would presage much of his reign over the country and, years later still, his party. "I alone can fix it," he infamously claimed.Rick Gates: Trump was very involved in writing the speech. We had created a framework for it. But as with every speech, he put his words to it, he put his rhythm, his content, to a large extent. It was a speech that I think resonated with a lot of people at that time. It was one that showed the issues with America, the problems that we were having, based on, in his view, failed leadership, across not just Democratic administrations but Republicans too. He felt very particular about immigration, about China, about making sure that America could be the best country it could be. And he had a different idea of how to do that. And so in laying that out in the speech — and it was a long speech, longer than we had anticipated, but it needed to show Americans — not just Republicans, but all Americans — what was wrong and how we could potentially fix it. And so it kind of codified both those dark moments of where you feel like there's no hope or optimism to feeling very optimistic by the end. And you could sense that he poured everything he had into that speech.The balloon drop after Trump formally accepted the GOP's 2016 presidential nomination in Cleveland. He'd go on to defeat the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, that November and serve a single term as president of the United States.Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesLindsey Graham: I thought it was a pretty good speech. But I never thought he could win. I really didn't. I thought we would lose big. So what the hell do I know?Rick Gates: I'll never forget it, because he was also involved in the actual walk out and how he was going to do it. And just the way that the optics were very important for him. And it was going to either create a momentum booster, which is exactly what you want out of a convention, because at the end of the day, a convention is an event where you get to control the entire script, you don't have a bunch of people criticizing you or weighing down on it, you can certainly try, but at the end of the day, the majority of Americans are seeing exactly what you put on prime time. That 7-to-10-p.m. slot is the most important time of any convention, Republican or Democrat. And so with Trump that night, giving that speech, if he did it, it ultimately gave us a 10-point boost.Donald McGahn: The thing I remember the most are the number of people who still opposed Trump at that point and who were not at all enthusiastic about him. But then after he won, they were the first people in line saying, "I was with you the whole time, and I should get a job." That's the biggest thing I remember about the convention: the lack of honest support Trump was getting, even then.Rick Gates: When we first started planning the convention, it turns out that the RNC had hired a production team, that part of their team had been involved in "The Apprentice." So Trump, he has a style of getting to know everybody who works under him. At the convention, during the walk-through, Trump saw a director he knew, and they connected right away. This individual had a sense of what Trump would like, and he presented an overall plan. Trump loved it. We had to change a few things along the way at Trump's request, but this idea that you create the optic of somebody coming out in this kind of silhouette way through the middle doors — it was almost like a rock concert more than a convention, and people reacted that way. I'll never forget people texting me and emailing me, like, "I've never seen a walk out like that, not ever."Sarah Isgur: By that point, not only has Trump taken over the Republican Party, but the Democratic Party has responded to him as well. So he has had a huge effect on the Democratic Party. Think of it like evolution. There's this thing called Red Queen theory, where parasites actually affect the evolution of their hosts. The two will keep evolving to get advantage over one another. So it really matters what advantage the parasite gets next time, because that's how the host is going to evolve next time.John Cornyn, GOP senator from Texas: Every day was a surprise. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Kherson Civilians Evacuated Amid Ukraine Assault As Putin Declares Martial Law For 4 Territories Russian President Vladimir Putin has authorized martial law for the four recently annexed territories of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia. This in effect gives emergency and extraordinary powers to the heads of these regions, with the Associated Press noting that "additional emergency powers" have also been given to "the heads of all regions of Russia" - though it's unclear precisely what this means. The announcement comes the day after the Russian army said it is preparing to evacuate civilians from Kherson, which was the first Ukrainian city to fall to the invasion in February. "The entire administration is already moving today," Moscow-installed regional head Vladimir Saldo confirmed on Tuesday. This evacuation order is being widely seen as an admission that the Ukrainian counteroffensive threatening occupied Kherson is gaining rapid momentum, so the Russians could be preparing a massive "scorched earth" bombardment in response. Reports estimate that Russian front lines have been beaten back some 20 to 30 kilometers in the last few weeks alone, and Russian commanders are alarmed they could be backed up against the Dnieper River that bisects Ukraine. Via EPA/EFE: Russian soldiers patrolling near the Dnieper river near Kherson, which has seen heavy fighting of late. The Ukrainian government has rejected the martial law declaration as a "pseudo-legalization of looting of Ukrainians' property" and has long urged its citizens to not comply with Russian occupied administration directives. Russian state media has explained of Putin's new order that the four territories "already had martial law in place when they became parts of Russia," based on the president's Wednesday statements. "So, the decision provides the legal basis for it to remain in place under Russian sovereignty, he said during a meeting of the National Security Council." Further state sources detail, "The document signed by Putin introduces martial law starting midnight on Thursday. It also orders various parts of the Russian government to submit corresponding action plans within three days." The additional powers given to regional administrations within Russia appear to be in response to the fact that border regions, especially Belgorod and Kursk of the last several days, have been coming under increased cross-border missile and artillery fire from Ukraine. RT notes additionally of Putin's legal decree:  These include the Crimean Republic, the city of Sevastopol, as well as Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov Regions. This is a special regime that gives officials additional authority to ensure security and rapid reaction to any emergencies. All of this is another iterative step toward Moscow declaring full war on Ukraine, after last month's 'partial mobilization' and calling up of hundreds of thousands of reservists. Source: CNN/Institute for the Study of War One Moscow-based international war correspondent is predicting a "special" military operation is about to happen to "save face after recent defeats" in the east and south:  “[Martial law] will mean more restrictions on the movement of people. It will mean the military and local administrations will have the right to do what they want – in terms of [deciding] how people move around or restricting them from gathering. “Political parties gathering and activities will be banned, and civilian or semi-civilian factories will be asked to reorient their production lines to help the military.” In “annexed” areas, Vall said there is likely to be a “total mobilisation instead of partial mobilisation, which has taken place in the Russian Federation.” He added: “Russians [had been] expecting something special to be done to save face after the recent defeats on the battlefront.” Ukrainian officials have meanwhile accused Moscow of stoking "hysteria" with its mass evacuation of the about 60,000 residents which still remain in Kherson. Power plants across Ukraine have continued coming under attack, with the latest strike Wednesday being against Ukraine's Vinnytsya region. At the start of the week President Zelensky said one-third of the country's power stations have been attacked... Video shows yesterday attack on power plant in #Kyiv. Second missile was shot down or self-destructed.#RussiaIsATerroristState pic.twitter.com/TPVMjWDEK2 — Conflict Monitor (@MonitorConflict) October 19, 2022 CNN has cited a mass emergency text notification that locals received: "Dear residents," the message began. "Evacuate immediately. There will be shelling of residential areas by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. There will be buses from 7:00, from Rechport [River port] to the Left Bank." The coming major fight for Kherson marks the first instance of the invasion that it's Ukrainian forces besieging a large city, and that Russian forces are having to defend, setting up the possibility of pro-Russian civilians getting caught in the crossfire and under major Ukrainian shelling of its own (former) city. General Sergei Surovikin On Tuesday new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Gen. Sergei Surovikin, spoke to the press about the "special operation" in Ukraine for the first time, admitting that the situation in Kherson has become "very difficult" and that tough decisions will have to be made. "The Russian army will above all ensure the safe evacuation of the population" of Kherson, Surovikin told Rossiya 24. "The enemy is not abandoning its attempts to attack Russian troop positions." Tyler Durden Wed, 10/19/2022 - 10:45.....»»

Donald Trump and his business are tangled in at least a dozen significant federal and local investigations and lawsuits. Here's the latest on all of them. Former President Donald Trump addresses the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, DC, on July 26, 2022.Drew Angerer/Getty Images Trump and his businesses are tangled in at least a dozen significant investigations and lawsuits. Under inquiry are Trump's alleged mishandling of sensitive documents, efforts to overturn the US election and possible financial wrongdoing. Check back here for updates on Trump's legal troubles, and for details on what's coming next. It's hard to keep track of Donald Trump's very busy legal docket. The former president is the subject of at least four major investigations into wrongdoing relating to his handling of White House documents, the election, the insurrection, and his finances — probes based in Florida, Fulton County, Georgia; Washington, D.C., and New York.Trump's business also remains under indictment in Manhattan for an alleged payroll tax-dodge scheme. On top of all that, Trump is fighting or bringing a grab-bag of important lawsuits that could financially cripple his international real estate and golf resort empire.Keep up to date on the latest of Trump's legal travails, both criminal and civil, with this guide to the ever-evolving Trump docket.Indictments Trump with his former CFO Allen Weisselberg at Trump Tower in 2017.Evan Vucci/APThe Trump Organization Payroll Case The Parties: The Manhattan DA is prosecuting The Trump Organization. The Issues: Trump's real estate and golf resort business is accused of giving its executives pricey perks and benefits that were never reported as income to taxing authorities.The company's co-defendant, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty to the 15-year, payroll tax-dodge scheme.As part of his August 18, 2022 plea deal, Weisselberg agreed to serve 5 months in jail and pay back $2 million in back taxes and penalties.What's next: Weisselberg also agreed to testify for the prosecution if lawyers for the Trump Organization fight the indictment at trial; an October 24 trial date has been set.Weisselberg would describe to jurors a tax-dodge scheme in which company executives, himself included, received some pay in off-the-books compensation that included free apartments, cars, and tuition reimbursement. But Weisselberg is hardly the ideal prosecution witness. He still works for Trump Org as a special advisor, and Trump's side is hoping to turn his testimony to its advantage.The Trump Organization could face steep fines if convicted of conspiring in the scheme by omitting the compensation from federal, state, and city tax documents and by failing to withhold and pay taxes on that compensation.Criminal InvestigationsFulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta, on Jan. 4, 2022.AP Photo/Ben Gray, FileThe Fulton County election interference probeThe parties: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump, and his Republican associates The issues: Willis is investigating whether Trump and his associates tried to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Her probe has expanded to also include investigating an alleged scheme to send a fake slate of electors to Georgia's state Capitol in an attempt to overturn the elections.She's notified Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal attorney, that he's a target in the investigation. Giuliani testified for six hours under court order on August 17.What's next: A federal appeals court temporarily halted on Sunday a court order for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to testify before the Fulton County special grand jury on Tuesday, August 23.Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesThe Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 electionThe parties: Federal investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the role Trump and his allies played in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.The issues: The Justice Department is facing pressure to prosecute following a string of congressional hearings that connected the former president to the violence of January 6, 2021, and to efforts to prevent the peaceful handoff of power.In a series of eight hearings, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol described Trump's conduct in criminal terms and pointed to an April court decision in which a federal judge said the former president likely committed crimes in his effort to hold onto power. In that ruling, Judge David Carter called Trump's scheme a "coup in search of a legal theory."Prosecutors have asked witnesses directly about Trump's involvement in the effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and are likely to issue more subpoenas and search warrants in the weeks ahead.In June, federal investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who advanced Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.On the same day, federal agents seized the phone of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped advise Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election. A top prosecutor in the Justice Department's inquiry, Thomas Windom, revealed in late July that investigators had obtained a se cord warrant allowing a search of Eastman's phone. Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the panel, lost her primary bid for reelection on August 16. What's next:  The Justice Department has remained largely silent about how and whether it would consider charges against Trump, but in July, prosecutors asked witnesses directly about the former president's involvement in the attempt to reverse his electoral defeat. FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, with a search warrant.Darren SamuelsohnThe Justice Department investigation into the handling of classified documentsThe parties: The FBI searched Trump's estate in South Florida, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8 as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of government records, including classified documents. Trump and his lawyers alleged prosecutorial misconduct and condemned the search as politically motivated.The issues: Early in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents — including some marked as classified and "top secret" — to the National Archives. But federal investigators scrutinizing the former president's handling of records reportedly grew suspicious that Trump or people close to him still retained some key records. The FBI seized about a dozen boxes of additional documents during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, in a search that immediately demonstrated how Trump's handling of records from his administration remains an area of legal jeopardy.What's next: A federal judge in South Florida granted Trump's request for an outside arbiter — known as a special master — to review the more than 11,000 documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, including about 100 records marked as classified. Judge Aileen Cannon halted the review of those records as part of the Justice Department's criminal inquiry but said intelligence agencies could continue assessing the potential national security risk raised by Trump's hoarding of government records at his West Palm Beach estate. In response, the Justice Department said that bifurcation was unworkable and that Cannon's order had effectively paused the national security assessment.The Justice Department asked Cannon to exclude the 100 classified documents from the special master review. If she declines to do so by September 15, the Justice Department signaled that it would go to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.Lawsuits against TrumpThe front page of the lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James accusing former President Donald Trump, his family and his business of a decade of padding his net worth to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks.Jon Elswick/APThe NY AG's civil filing against the Trump family and Trump OrganizationThe parties: New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump, his family and the Trump Organization.The issues: James says she has uncovered a decade-long pattern of financial wrongdoing at Trump's multi-billion-dollar hotel and golf resort empire.She alleges Trump falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans, and low-balled his properties' worth for tax breaks. Trump has derided the AG's efforts as a politically motivated witch hunt.The 220-page lawsuit arose from a three year investigation and makes multiple, corporation-crippling demands that would eventually be decided by a Manhattan judge.The demands include that the company pay back $250 million Trump allegedly pocketed by misleading banks about his worth. It further requests that Trump and his three eldest children — Donald Trump, Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump, who have all served as Trump Organization executives — be permanently barred from running a company in New York state.Th suit also demands that for the next five years, an independent receiver be put in place to monitor the company's finances and that Donald Trump be personally barred from purchasing property in New York or borrowing from a New York-registered bank over those same five years.Perhaps most extremely, it asks the judge to pull the Trump Organization's New York papers of incorporation. That's the charter that lets Trump draw revenue from his New York properties, including the lucrative commercial rents at his Manhattan skyscrapers. These hamstringing demands, if ordered by a judge, would run Trump's corporate headquarters out of New York. Trump would also be barred from selling, buying, collecting rent from or borrowing against any property in New York, potentially putting the Trump Organization out of business entirely. What's next:  Barring a settlement, next comes an "eye-glazing" litigation slog — legal filings, courtroom arguments, decisions and appeals — that could go on for two years before a trial can decide if anything material actually happens to the Trumps and the family business. But in announcing her office's lawsuit, the AG also revealed that she has referred her findings of alleged financial and tax fraud to federal prosecutors in New York and to the Internal Revenue Service.Either of those referrals could more quickly result in federal criminal charges and a bill for millions of dollars in back taxes and penalties.Supporters of then-President Donald Trump protest inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DCBrent Stirton/Getty ImagesLawsuits alleging 'incitement' on January 6The Parties: House Democrats and two Capitol police officers accused Trump of inciting the violent mob on January 6.The Issues: Trump's lawyers have argued that his time as president grants him immunity that shields him from civil liability in connection with his January 6 address at the Ellipse, where he urged supporters to "fight like hell."A federal judge rejected Trump's bid to dismiss the civil lawsuits, ruling that his rhetoric on January 6 was "akin to telling an excited mob that corn-dealers starve the poor in front of the corn-dealer's home."Judge Amit Mehta said Trump later displayed a tacit agreement with the mob minutes after rioters breached the Capitol when he sent a tweet admonishing then-Vice President Mike Pence for lacking the "courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country."What's Next: Trump has appealed Mehta's ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and requested an oral argument. In a late July court filing, Trump's lawyers said the immunity afforded to the former president cannot be "undercut if the presidential act in question is unpopular among the judiciary."Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on October 18, 2021 in New York City.James Devaney/GC ImagesGalicia v. TrumpThe Parties: Lead plaintiff Efrain Galicia and four other protesters of Mexican heritage have sued Trump, his security personnel, and his 2016 campaign in New York.The issues: They say Donald Trump sicced his security guards on their peaceful, legal protest outside Trump Tower in 2015. The plaintiffs had been demonstrating with parody "Make America Racist Again" campaign signs to protest Trump's speech announcing his first campaign for president, during which he accused Mexican immigrants of being "rapists" and drug dealers. Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen said in a deposition that Trump directly ordered security to "get rid of" the protesters; Trump said in his own deposition that he didn't even know a protest was going on until the next day. His security guards have said in depositions that they were responding to aggression by the protesters.What's next: Trial is set for jury selection on October 31 in NY Supreme Court in the Bronx.Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll is pictured in New York in 2020.Seth Wenig/APE. Jean Carroll v. TrumpThe Parties: Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation in federal court in Manhattan in June 2019.The Issues: Carroll's lawsuit alleges Trump defamed her after she publicly accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-90s.Trump responded to Carroll's allegation by saying it was untrue and that she was "not my type." Trump also denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo to the contrary.What's next: Arrangements for the sharing of evidence are ongoing behind the scenes, including for the possible collection of Trump's DNA.Carroll has said she wants to compare Trump's DNA with unidentified male DNA on a dress she wore during the alleged rape. The trial is tentatively set for Feb. 6, 2023; Carroll has said she would never settle the case.Carroll's lawyers say they are also getting ready to additionally sue Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Although Carroll's allegations are more than 30 years old, a New York law that takes effect on November 24 — the Adult Survivors Act — gives sex assault victims a one-year window to file civil cases regardless of when the incident occurred, so long as they were 18 or older at the time.  Donald Trump, right, sits with his children, from left, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump during a groundbreaking ceremony for the Trump International Hotel on July 23, 2014, in Washington.Evan Vucci/APThe 'multi-level marketing' pyramid scheme caseThe Parties: Lead plaintiff Catherine McKoy and three others sued Trump, his business, and his three eldest children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, in 2018 in federal court in Manhattan.The Issues: Donald Trump is accused of promoting a scam multi-level marketing scheme on "The Celebrity Apprentice." The lawsuit alleges Trump pocketed $8.8 million from the scheme — but that they lost thousands of dollars. Trump's side has complained that the lawsuit is a politically motivated attack. What's Next: The parties say in court filings that they are working to meet an August 31 deadline for the completion of depositions. Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, testifies before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill February 27, 2019 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMichael Cohen's 'imprisonment' caseThe Parties: Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen sued Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and more than a dozen federal prison officials and employees, in federal court in Manhattan in 2021.The Issues: The president's former personal attorney is seeking $20 million in damages relating to the time he spent in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump's dealings in Congress. Cohen says in his suit that he had been moved to home confinement for three months in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic, but was then vindictively thrown into solitary confinement when he refused to stop speaking to the press and writing a tell-all book about his former boss. A judge ordered him released after 16 days.What's Next: A decision is pending on defense motions to dismiss the case.Singer Eddy Grant performs in concert in honor of Nelson Mandela in Hyde Park, London June 27, 2008.Andrew Winning/ReutersThe Electric Avenue copyright caseThe Parties: Eddy Grant, the composer/performer behind the 80s disco-reggae mega-hit "Electric Avenue," sued Donald Trump and his campaign in federal court in Manhattan in 2020.The Issues: Grant is seeking $300,000 compensation for copyright infringement. His suit says that Trump made unauthorized use of the 1983 dance floor staple during the 2020 campaign. About 40 seconds of the song played in the background of a Biden-bashing animation that Trump posted to his Twitter account. The animation was viewed 13 million times before being taken down a month later. Trump has countered that the animation was political satire and so exempt from copyright infringement claims. He's also said that the campaign merely reposted the animation and have no idea where it came from.What's Next: There was an August 21 deposition completion deadline for both sides — including for Trump and Grant. Pretrial motions are not due to be filed until October.Mary Trump speaks to Katie Phang on MSNBC on June 17, 2022.MSNBCMary Trump v. Donald TrumpThe Parties: The former president's niece sued him and his siblings in 2020 in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.The Issues: Mary Trump alleges that she was cheated out of at least $10 million in a 2001 court settlement over the estate of her late father, Fred Trump, Sr. Mary Trump alleges she only learned by helping with a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article that she'd been defrauded by her Uncle Donald, her aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, and the late Robert Trump, whose estate is named as a defendant.The Times' 18-month investigation "revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges," the Pulitzer Committee said in praising the piece. Lawyers for the Trumps have countered that it's far too late for Mary Trump to sue over a 2001 settlement that she had knowingly participated in.What's next: The defendants' motion to dismiss, including on statute of limitations grounds, is still pending.Lawsuits brought by Trump Donald Trump v. Mary Trump The Parties: The former president counter-sued his niece Mary Trump — and the New York Times — in 2021 in New York state Supreme Court in Dutchess County.The Issues: Mary Trump, the Times and three of its reporters  "maliciously conspired" against him, Trump alleges, by collaborating with the Times on its expose of and breaching the confidentiality of the family's 2001 settlement of the estate of Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump, Sr. What's Next: Mary Trump's motion to dismiss is pending in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, where the case has since been transferred to.Hillary Clinton.Photo by: Mike Smith/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesDonald Trump v. Hillary ClintonThe Parties: Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and prominent Democrats including former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a federal court in southern Florida in March, 2022.The Issues:  Trump alleged in this unusual use of federal racketeering statutes that Clinton and her campaign staff conspired to harm his 2016 run for president by promoting a "contrived Trump-Russia link." The defendants succeeded in getting the massive lawsuit dismissed in September; a federal judge in Florida said the suit was structurally flawed and called it "a two-hundred-page political manifesto" in which Trump detailed "his grievances against those that have opposed him."What's Next: Trump's side has promised to appeal the dismissal.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Democrats have been feeling more confident about their midterm prospects, but they have a polling deficit on immigration that's now leading the news cycle. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to supporters at a campaign stop on the Keep Florida Free Tour at the Horsepower Ranch in Geneva. DeSantis faces former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for the general election for Florida Governor in November.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Polling shows voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on immigration and border security. DeSantis' political stunt in Martha's Vineyard rocketed the issues to front-page news ahead of the midterms. Republicans welcome the change of topic from abortion and Trump.  When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated flights sending migrants and asylum seekers from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, many observers saw a stunt aimed at raising the Republican's political profile ahead of a potential 2024 White House run. But according to GOP operatives, the move also gave Republicans running for Congress the opportunity to home in on illegal immigration and border security, topics they've clamored to put at the center of this fall's midterm elections.DeSantis' timing is ideal for Republicans and allows the governor to continue casting himself as a national GOP leader that others in the party will follow.Since August, Democrats have been feeling more optimistic about their forthcoming chances in the November midterms thanks to legislative wins in Congress, decreasing gas prices, and the threat of a GOP push for a nationwide abortion ban. They've also been able to keep the spotlight on former President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly teased a 2024 White House run, is the subject of an FBI investigation over classified documents, and faces a $250 million fraud lawsuit. Last week, however, DeSantis threw a wrench into the political conversation by taking a page out of Trump's 2016 campaign playbook. The flights carrying migrants injected immigration into the national discussion, forcing the White House to respond. While DeSantis' actions face a legal challenge and were viewed by critics as a cruel stunt that misled vulnerable people, congressional Republicans openly welcomed that DeSantis highlighted the issue.Republicans would prefer to keep voters focused on issues where they poll well, including on economic issues, crime, immigration, and border security."Democrats are desperately trying to make abortion, Trump, and 2024 the issue," Saul Anuzis, managing partner of Coast to Coast Strategies, LLC, a political consulting firm, told Insider. "The challenge is that the other issues are real and affect folks daily.""The polling is on the Republican's side," Anuzis added. "They just have to stay on message and not get distracted."Republicans already knew they held an advantage on these issues even before the Martha's Vineyard controversy. Since March 2021, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect Republicans in US House races, has sent 357 emails about "Biden's Border Crisis" to reporters. But DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard flights brought renewed interest to the matter, said a Republican familiar with House races who asked not to be named in order to speak candidly. "It's brought a lot of attention to the border crisis that had been lost," the person said. To top it all off, Republicans are closely watching trends that show Democrats are seeing a decline in support from Hispanic voters. Given all this, there's really no downside to DeSantis stirring the pot on immigration, former Trump White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told Insider in an email. "People who think our border policy is a disaster support what he did — and all states should, in fact, bear the brunt of current immigration policy," Mulvaney said. "People who like the policy as is hate DeSantis anyway," he added. But there's been one notable exception among prominent Republicans. Trump's son-in-law and former White House advisor, Jared Kushner, criticized DeSantis' move this week, telling Fox News he was "very troubled" that "human beings" are "being used as political pawns." Kushner's remarks offer further evidence that Trump sees DeSantis' attention-grabbing stunt as a threat to his potential 2024 re-election bid. Local resident Rosemarie Aguero distributes pizzas to a group of Venezuelan Migrants from the back of her pickup truck across from the Migrant Resource Center on September 19, 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. The City of San Antonio Migrant Resource Center is the origin place of two planeloads of mostly Venezuelan migrants who were sent via Florida to Martha's Vineyard by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty ImagesRepublicans play up illegal immigration issueCongressional Republicans have welcomed the shift in the national conversation to immigration and border security. The topics could stay in the headlines for weeks if DeSantis follows through on comments he has made publicly about sending migrants to President Joe Biden's home state of Delaware. The governor's actions allowed Republicans to highlight that 2 million people have been caught entering the US illegally this fiscal year. Republicans also criticized Vice President Kamala Harris' comments in a September 11 NBC Meet the Press interview, in which she said the border was "secure." Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who worked under Trump, said he'd encouraged Republicans in Congress to go to the border so that it would receive more media coverage. But DeSantis and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas' actions moving migrants "worked" to finally draw attention to the issue, he said. "No one would cover this issue until he did it," Sean Spicer, who now hosts the Spicer & Co. political talk show on Newsmax, said of DeSantis. "On my show, we cover it almost nightly." Republicans in Congress have pushed the matter further.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he agreed with DeSantis' actions and used his floor speech to blast Democrats over illegal immigration. The National Republican Senatorial Committee this week tied record-high border apprehensions to the policies of Biden and Sen. John Kelly of Arizona, a Democrat they're trying to unseat in November. Republicans such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida also are dropping charges of hypocrisy. They've accused liberal cities of being supportive of permissive immigration policies while not facing the same humanitarian and national security struggles as border towns, which provide aid to thousands of migrants arriving monthly.They've pointed to comments from Democratic officials who've said cities are overwhelmed after Abbott and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey bused migrants to New York and Washington, DC."For so many folks on the left, sanctuary cities and welcoming illegal immigrants is a bumper sticker," Spicer said. "They have no idea the reality of it."The party frequently accuses Biden of not doing enough to help. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has responded that if governors "truly care about border security" they should have encouraged GOP senators to vote in favor of Biden's request for Homeland Security funding.DeSantis has publicly urged Biden to reinstitute a Trump-era policy that forced asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are pending, and told Republicans to run on immigration during a rally in Wisconsin on Sunday.That appears to be the plan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's GOP agenda published Wednesday, called the "Commitment to America," prominently proposed stricter immigration measures including a requirement to show legal residency in order to work. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, held a press conference Monday highlighting an NBC News poll that included findings about voters gravitating toward Republicans on the topic of immigration and border security.DeSantis is up for reelection in Florida and it's not yet clear what effect his Martha's Vineyard actions will have on his campaign. On Wednesday, Democratic gubernatorial challenger Charlie Crist accused DeSantis of trying to "draw attention away" from Florida's 15-week abortion ban, which doesn't include exemptions for rape or incest. "His inhumanity is now comparable to his inhumanity and lack of respect for women," Crist said. As for the future of the White House, DeSantis's migrant trafficking lawsuit would be unlikely to do any lasting damage to the party or DeSantis' suspected presidential ambitions because 2024 is still very far off, predicted Jeff Grappone, a GOP strategist at political consulting firm Rokk Solutions. "We're not even to the opening gate of the 2024 race yet," Grappone told Insider. "When the universe of candidates is known, we'll have a better sense of how particular issues will impact Republican fortunes in 2024."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Conscripts and students will not be called up and will affect only those with combat experience, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a ceremony to receive credentials from foreign ambassadors to Russia at the Alexander Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow on September 20, 2022.Photo by PAVEL BEDNYAKOV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced the partial mobilization of his country's reservists. According to Russian officials, 300,000 reservists will be drafted immediately. Putin said the move is meant to "defend the motherland" and protect Russia's sovereignty. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for the "partial mobilization" of the country's military reservists, in a move that is likely to escalate Moscow's ongoing war with Ukraine.In a televised address on Wednesday morning, Putin said the mobilization would begin immediately and that those called up would be granted the same status as regulars in the armed forces.The mobilization will see 300,000 reservists drafted, The Washington Post reported, citing officials. Conscripts and students will not be called up and will affect only those with combat experience, according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.In his speech, Putin reiterated that the goal of Russia's invasion of Ukraine was the liberation of the Donbas region. Per the BBC, the Russian leader also accused the West of trying to blackmail Russia and vowed to "use all resources we have to defend our people.""The territorial integrity of our motherland, our independence, and freedom will be secured, I repeat with all the means we have," Putin said, per the outlet."Those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the prevailing winds can turn in their direction," he added, the BBC reported.Pro-Russian separatist officials in four occupied regions in eastern and southern Ukraine announced on Tuesday that they would hold referendums on joining Russia within the next few days. Ukrainian officials in response slammed the referendum as a "sham" and said it won't change anything. "Russia has been and remains an aggressor illegally occupying parts of Ukrainian land. Ukraine has every right to liberate its territories and will keep liberating them whatever Russia has to say," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in response. Ukraine's defense ministry said: "Ruscist reconstructionists in the occupied territories never tire of repeating the Nazi referendum on the Anschluss of Austria. They are expecting 1938 results. Instead, they will get Hitler's 1945 outcome."Western officials on Tuesday expressed similar sentiments. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the referendums are a "further escalation in Putin's war" and said they carry no legitimacy. And Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that the votes are "meant to distract from the difficult state that the Russian military currently finds itself in right now," adding that the US won't recognize the outcome of any vote. The referendums come after several weeks of Ukrainian advances along the war's eastern and southern fronts — including a punishing counteroffensive in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region, which has seen the liberation of thousands of square miles of territory previously under the occupation of Russian troops. In the face of major battlefield defeats, Putin's military continues to face a tremendous personnel shortage. A senior US defense official said on Monday that Russia is struggling to find volunteers to fight in Ukraine because significant casualties and poor battlefield performance have led to refusals to go into combat. Even the notorious Wagner Group — private mercenaries with close Kremlin ties who have been fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine for months — is experiencing its own staffing problems. The official said Wagner has tried recruiting prisoners to take up arms in Ukraine in exchange for their freedom, but many are refusing the offer. Britain's defense ministry highlighted these shortcomings in a recent intelligence assessment, noting that Wagner's issues and shortened training courses at Russian military academies indicate that the "impact of Russia's manpower challenge has become increasingly severe." Some Russia watchers have expressed concerns that the annexation of captured Ukrainian territories by Moscow would be exploited by the Kremlin as a means of escalating the war and solving the Russian military's manpower issues. Retired US Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a former defense attaché to Russia and senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, recently told Insider that if the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk asked for accession into Russia and were accepted, then it would mean — in the eyes of the Kremlin — that "the fighting that is currently going on in Ukraine will suddenly be 'in Russia.'"Ryan warned that this could have a number of immediate implications. "For one, Putin could solve his military-manpower problem because now all the conscripts (35+% of the force) can be used — since it's no longer a war abroad," Ryan said."A second development will be that the red lines against fighting on Russian territory will be suddenly crossed," Ryan added. "NATO weapons will be fighting and shooting inside Russia. And most importantly, the Russian state will be under direct attack. And as we know, that is a trigger for using nuclear weapons."Western officials have consistently warned that the use of nuclear weapons by Russia cannot be ruled out, particularly if Putin feels pushed into a corner. That said, some Russia experts are still skeptical that Moscow would use weapons of mass destruction given the potential consequences — including a possible direct confrontation with NATO. Multiple members of the military alliance, which is comprised of 30 countries, are nuclear powers. "I don't think that Putin would use tactical nukes in this situation — even if he's losing, even if he lost everything in Ukraine," Robert Orttung, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University, told Insider last week. Orttung said that using such a weapon would "take the war to the next level" and that the Russian president would be "too afraid of what the response would be."Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Europe's Economy And Living Standards Are Plummeting Via Oriental Review, The ill-considered sanctions against Russia have exposed the most acute problems of Europe which is rapidly losing its economic power. A tremendous amount of businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy. A flood of migrants from Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine requires more and more budget spending. Funds are also being used to support the Kiev regime. As a result, Europe’s economies are deteriorating and living standards are plummeting. Enterprises are on the verge of closing In Britain 60% of enterprises are on the verge of closing due to higher electricity prices. This is reported by the analytical group Make UK, representing the interests of British industry. 13% of British factories have reduced working hours and 7% are temporarily closing down. Electricity bills have risen by more than 100% compared to last year. In Germany, according to the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, the number of firms and individuals went bankrupt in August alone rose 26% compared to the same period last year. The figure was significantly higher than German analysts had forecast. According to experts, during the autumn the number of bankruptcies will only increase. This is connected with the increase of the cost of production processes, in particular with the rise in prices for energy. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged that many Germans have faced with rising prices for fuel and food. Most countries in Europe were in a similar situation. But the authorities are sacrificing the quality of people’s lives in order to continue to exert pressure on Russia. The crisis is just ahead At the same time, many experts believe the stopping of Nord Stream will cause Europe’s worst energy crisis in decades. Manuela Schwesig, state premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Markus Söder, state premier of Bavaria, visit a site that will feed an existing pipeline network with liquefied natural gas in Lubmin, Germany, on August 30, 2022 This circumstance has already caused a sharp rise of prices of energy resources on the European market. As a result, energy bills of European households have increased. According to Goldman Sachs’ analysts, its cumulative cost will peak in early 2023, increasing by 2 trillion euros. It has also led to a record depreciation of the European currency over the past 20 years. The increased cost of gas, heat and electricity has an adverse effect on the living standard of the people. But an even more dangerous problem is the falling liquidity of European products produced at the new cost of energy. European products are becoming uncompetitive on the world market: their price is much higher because of the cost of electricity and gas. Attempts by EU leaders to introduce a price cap on energy from Russia have completely failed. “Europe reaps what it sows” European countries are themselves to blame for the problems they face this coming winter because of reduced gas supplies from Russia, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. According to him, “Europe reaps what it sows”, while Turkey “has no problems with gas supplies”. The crisis in Europe is a result of political mistake. On one hand, sanctions against Russia, are favorable only to the U.S. And on the other, the imposition of the post-hydrocarbon economy on Europeans has shown its insolvency. As a result, energy prices in Asia and Latin America today are much lower. And so are the wages of production workers. In other words, European products are totally uncompetitive. And we see a decrease in the liquidity of those products on the market. As a consequence, the European economy begins to plunge into recession. In particular, Christian Sewing, Director General of Deutsche Bank, said on September 7 that Germany is no longer able to avoid recession. Already at the moment it is buying significantly less raw materials from major suppliers such as Brazil, Argentina and the U.S. The Economist Intelligence Unit, a British think tank, predicts that GDP growth in 2023 will be: 5.3% in China, 5.1% in India, 1.2% in the United States, 0.3% in France, 0.3% in Brazil. And it will be negative in a number of countries: minus 0.6% in the UK, minus 1% in Germany, and minus 1.3% in Italy. Poverty is coming The next logical consequence will be mass production closures and rising unemployment. European technology companies are already reducing the number of high-paying engineering positions. In September, German wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa announced its intention to reduce the number of employees to 1,500 people. In turn, rising unemployment will cause a drop in living standards and an additional burden on government budgets, as the fight against poverty requires additional social spending. European economies survive through stimulus. But this exacerbates inflation. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, “You can’t help everyone, so we in the West will be a bit poorer because of the high inflation, the high energy costs”. Migrants are ruinous to the budget Meanwhile, the energy crisis and production problems have been exacerbated by migration policies that require additional budgetary injections into the social sphere. Migrant influx into European countries over the past two decades has been less than 1 million people a year. But already last year, 1.3 million people entered the countries, and this year, there were already 1.8 million people. We must take into account the fact that some immigrants enter Europe illegally and are not registered. They are primarily residents of Somalia, Nigeria, Gambia, Iran, Pakistan, Mali, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria. Moreover, more than 10 million people left Ukraine since the end of February. Of these, at least 6 million people remain in European countries, while 3.7 million have already received refugee status. The average cost per such migrant is 7,000 euros per year. Even without Ukrainians, Germany alone spends 25 to 55 billion euros annually on refugee aid. The European economy could afford these enormous expenditures before the energy crisis. But now the situation is such that expenditures are only increasing while revenues are falling. Following the catastrophic electricity and heating bills, Europe’s population is facing mass unemployment, followed by a decline in social support from the state. These processes inevitably lead to an overall decline in living standards. Tyler Durden Tue, 09/20/2022 - 05:00.....»»

Donald Trump and his business are tangled in at least a dozen significant federal and local investigations and lawsuits. Here's the latest on all of them. Former President Donald Trump addresses the America First Agenda Summit in Washington, DC, on July 26, 2022.Drew Angerer/Getty Images Trump and his businesses are tangled in at least a dozen significant investigations and lawsuits. They include probes into election, insurrection, and financial wrongdoing in Georgia, DC, and New York. Check back here for updates on Trump's legal troubles, and what's next. It's hard to keep track of Donald Trump's very busy legal docket. The former president is the subject of at least three major investigations into wrongdoing relating to the election, the insurrection, and his finances — probes based in Fulton County, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; and New York.Trump's business remains under indictment in Manhattan for an alleged payroll tax-dodge scheme. On top of all that, Trump is fighting or bringing a grab-bag of important lawsuits. Keep up to date on the latest of Trump's legal travails, both criminal and civil, with this guide to the ever-evolving Trump docket.Indictments Trump with his former CFO Allen Weisselberg at Trump Tower in 2017.Evan Vucci/APThe Trump Organization Payroll Case The Parties: The Manhattan DA is prosecuting The Trump Organization. The Issues: Trump's real estate and golf resort business is accused of giving its executives pricey perks and benefits that were never reported as income to taxing authorities.The company's co-defendant, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, has pleaded guilty to the 15-year, payroll tax-dodge scheme.As part of his August 18, 2022 plea deal, Weisselberg agreed to serve 5 months in jail and pay back $2 million in back taxes and penalties.What's next: Weisselberg also agreed to testify for the prosecution if lawyers for the Trump Organization fight the indictment at trial; an October 24 trial date has been set.Weisselberg would describe to jurors a tax-dodge scheme in which company executives, himself included, received some pay in off-the-books compensation that included free apartments, cars, and tuition reimbursement.The Trump Organization could face steep fines if convicted of conspiring in the scheme by omitting the compensation from federal, state, and city tax documents and by failing to withhold and pay taxes on that compensation.Criminal InvestigationsFulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta, on Jan. 4, 2022.AP Photo/Ben Gray, FileThe Fulton County election interference probeThe parties: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump, and his Republican associates The issues: Willis is investigating whether Trump and his associates tried to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Her probe has expanded to also include investigating an alleged scheme to send a fake slate of electors to Georgia's state Capitol in an attempt to overturn the elections.She's notified Rudy Giuliani, Trump's former personal attorney, that he's a target in the investigation. Giuliani testified for six hours under court order on August 17.What's next: A federal appeals court temporarily halted on Sunday a court order for Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to testify before the Fulton County special grand jury on Tuesday, August 23.Pro-Trump protesters gather in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC.Jon Cherry/Getty ImagesThe Justice Department investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 electionThe parties: Federal investigators are increasingly scrutinizing the role Trump and his allies played in the effort to overturn the 2020 election.The issues: The Justice Department is facing pressure to prosecute following a string of congressional hearings that connected the former president to the violence of January 6, 2021, and to efforts to prevent the peaceful handoff of power.In a series of eight hearings, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol described Trump's conduct in criminal terms and pointed to an April court decision in which a federal judge said the former president likely committed crimes in his effort to hold onto power. In that ruling, Judge David Carter called Trump's scheme a "coup in search of a legal theory."Prosecutors have asked witnesses directly about Trump's involvement in the effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 election and are likely to issue more subpoenas and search warrants in the weeks ahead.In June, federal investigators searched the home of Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who advanced Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.On the same day, federal agents seized the phone of John Eastman, a lawyer who helped advise Trump on how to overturn the 2020 election. A top prosecutor in the Justice Department's inquiry, Thomas Windom, revealed in late July that investigators had obtained a se cord warrant allowing a search of Eastman's phone. Rep. Liz Cheney, the top Republican on the panel, lost her primary bid for reelection on August 16. What's next:  The Justice Department has remained largely silent about how and whether it would consider charges against Trump, but in July, prosecutors asked witnesses directly about the former president's involvement in the attempt to reverse his electoral defeat. FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, with a search warrant.Darren SamuelsohnThe Justice Department investigation into the handling of classified documentsThe parties: The FBI searched Trump's estate in South Florida, Mar-a-Lago, on August 8 as part of an investigation into the possible mishandling of government records, including classified documents. Trump and his lawyers alleged prosecutorial misconduct and condemned the search as politically motivated.The issues: Early in 2022, Trump turned over 15 boxes of documents — including some marked as classified and "top secret" — to the National Archives. But federal investigators scrutinizing the former president's handling of records reportedly grew suspicious that Trump or people close to him still retained some key records. The FBI seized about a dozen boxes of additional documents during the raid of Mar-a-Lago, in a search that immediately demonstrated how Trump's handling of records from his administration remains an area of legal jeopardy.What's next: The Justice Department is under a deadline of Thursday, August 25, to submit proposed redactions of the Trump Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit to US magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart. He said during an August 18 public hearing he's inclined to side with media organizations to make public some portion of the document laying out the DOJ's rationale for seeking a search warrant against Trump. Civil InvestigationsNew York Attorney General Letitia James speaks on June 6, 2022, in New York.Mary Altaffer/APThe NY AG's Trump Organization probeThe parties: New York Attorney General Letitia James has been investigating Trump, his family and the Trump Organization for three years. The issues: James says she has uncovered a decade-long pattern of financial wrongdoing at Trump's multi-billion-dollar hotel and golf resort empire.She alleges Trump misstated the value of his properties on annual financial statements and other official documents used to secure hundreds of millions of dollars in bank loans and tax breaks. Trump has called the probe a politically motivated witch hunt.What's next: Court-ordered depositions of Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr., were delayed by the death of family matriarch Ivana Trump. But their depositions finally wrapped on August 10, when Donald Trump testified before investigators in James' Manhattan offices. He pleaded the Fifth more than 440 times. The contentious, massive probe — involving more than 5 million pages of documents — appears close to filing a several-hundred-page lawsuit that could seek to put the Trump Organization out of business entirely. Lawsuits against TrumpSupporters of then-President Donald Trump protest inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DCBrent Stirton/Getty ImagesLawsuits alleging 'incitement' on January 6The Parties: House Democrats and two Capitol police officers accused Trump of inciting the violent mob on January 6.The Issues: Trump's lawyers have argued that his time as president grants him immunity that shields him from civil liability in connection with his January 6 address at the Ellipse, where he urged supporters to "fight like hell."A federal judge rejected Trump's bid to dismiss the civil lawsuits, ruling that his rhetoric on January 6 was "akin to telling an excited mob that corn-dealers starve the poor in front of the corn-dealer's home."Judge Amit Mehta said Trump later displayed a tacit agreement with the mob minutes after rioters breached the Capitol when he sent a tweet admonishing then-Vice President Mike Pence for lacking the "courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country."What's Next: Trump has appealed Mehta's ruling to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and requested an oral argument. In a late July court filing, Trump's lawyers said the immunity afforded to the former president cannot be "undercut if the presidential act in question is unpopular among the judiciary."Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on October 18, 2021 in New York City.James Devaney/GC ImagesGalicia v. TrumpThe Parties: Lead plaintiff Efrain Galicia and four other protesters of Mexican heritage have sued Trump, his security personnel, and his 2016 campaign in New York.The issues: They say Donald Trump sicced his security guards on their peaceful, legal protest outside Trump Tower in 2015. The plaintiffs had been demonstrating with parody "Make America Racist Again" campaign signs to protest Trump's speech announcing his first campaign for president, during which he accused Mexican immigrants of being "rapists" and drug dealers. Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen said in a deposition that Trump directly ordered security to "get rid of" the protesters; Trump said in his own deposition that he didn't even know a protest was going on until the next day. His security guards have said in depositions that they were responding to aggression by the protesters.What's next: Trial is set for jury selection on September 6 in NY Supreme Court in the Bronx.Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll is pictured in New York in 2020.Seth Wenig/APE. Jean Carroll v. TrumpThe Parties: Advice columnist E. Jean Carroll sued Trump for defamation in federal court in Manhattan in June 2019.The Issues: Carroll's lawsuit alleges Trump defamed her after she publicly accused him of raping her in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room in Manhattan in the mid-90s.Trump responded to Carroll's allegation by saying it was untrue and that she was "not my type." Trump also denied ever meeting Carroll, despite a photo to the contrary.What's next: Arrangements for the sharing of evidence are ongoing behind the scenes, including for the possible collection of Trump's DNA.Carroll has said she wants to compare Trump's DNA with unidentified male DNA on a dress she wore during the alleged rape. The trial is tentatively set for Feb. 6, 2023; Carroll has said she would never settle the case.Donald Trump Jr, Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump during the filming of the live final tv episode of The Celebrity Apprentice on May 16 2010 in New York City.Bill Tompkins/Getty ImagesThe 'multi-level marketing' pyramid scheme caseThe Parties: Lead plaintiff Catherine McKoy and three others sued Trump, his business, and his three eldest children, Donald Trump, Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, in 2018 in federal court in Manhattan.The Issues: Donald Trump is accused of promoting a scam multi-level marketing scheme on "The Celebrity Apprentice." The lawsuit alleges Trump pocketed $8.8 million from the scheme — but that they lost thousands of dollars. Trump's side has complained that the lawsuit is a politically motivated attack. What's Next: The parties say in court filings that they are working to meet an August 31 deadline for the completion of depositions. Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, testifies before the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill February 27, 2019 in Washington, DC.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMichael Cohen's 'imprisonment' caseThe Parties: Trump fixer-turned-critic Michael Cohen sued Donald Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr, and more than a dozen federal prison officials and employees, in federal court in Manhattan in 2021.The Issues: The president's former personal attorney is seeking $20 million in damages relating to the time he spent in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress about Trump's dealings in Congress. Cohen says in his suit that he had been moved to home confinement for three months in the spring of 2020 due to the pandemic, but was then vindictively thrown into solitary confinement when he refused to stop speaking to the press and writing a tell-all book about his former boss. A judge ordered him released after 16 days.What's Next: Oral arguments on pending defense motions to dismiss were set for August 2. Singer Eddy Grant performs in concert in honor of Nelson Mandela in Hyde Park, London June 27, 2008.Andrew Winning/ReutersThe Electric Avenue copyright caseThe Parties: Eddy Grant, the composer/performer behind the 80s disco-reggae mega-hit "Electric Avenue," sued Donald Trump and his campaign in federal court in Manhattan in 2020.The Issues: Grant is seeking $300,000 compensation for copyright infringement. His suit says that Trump made unauthorized use of the 1983 dance floor staple during the 2020 campaign. About 40 seconds of the song played in the background of a Biden-bashing animation that Trump posted to his Twitter account. The animation was viewed 13 million times before being taken down a month later. Trump has countered that the animation was political satire and so exempt from copyright infringement claims. He's also said that the campaign merely reposted the animation and have no idea where it came from.What's Next: There is an August 21 deposition completion deadline for both sides. Pretrial motions are not due to be filed until October.Mary Trump speaks to Katie Phang on MSNBC on June 17, 2022.MSNBCMary Trump v. Donald TrumpThe Parties: The former president's niece sued him and his siblings in 2020 in the state Supreme Court in Manhattan.The Issues: Mary Trump alleges that she was cheated out of at least $10 million in a 2001 court settlement over the estate of her late father, Fred Trump, Sr. Mary Trump alleges she only learned by helping with a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article that she'd been defrauded by her Uncle Donald, her aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, and the late Robert Trump, whose estate is named as a defendant.The Times' 18-month investigation "revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges," the Pulitzer Committee said in praising the piece. Lawyers for the Trumps have countered that it's far too late for Mary Trump to sue over a 2001 settlement that she had knowingly participated in.What's next: The defendants' motion to dismiss, including on statute of limitations grounds, is still pending.Lawsuits brought by Trump Donald Trump v. Mary Trump The Parties: The former president counter-sued his niece Mary Trump — and the New York Times — in 2021 in New York state Supreme Court in Dutchess County.The Issues: Mary Trump, the Times and three of its reporters  "maliciously conspired" against him, Trump alleges, by collaborating with the Times on its expose of and breaching the confidentiality of the family's 2001 settlement of the estate of Mary Trump's father, Fred Trump, Sr. What's Next: Mary Trump's motion to dismiss is pending in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, where the case has since been transferred to.Hillary Clinton.Photo by: Mike Smith/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesDonald Trump v. Hillary ClintonThe Parties: Trump has sued Hillary Clinton, her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and prominent Democrats including former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in a federal court in southern Florida in March, 2022.The Issues:  Trump alleges in this unusual use of federal racketeering statutes that Clinton and her campaign staff conspired to harm his 2016 run for president by promoting a "contrived Trump-Russia link." The defendants are trying to get the massive lawsuit dismissed on statute of limitation grounds, to which Trump's side counters that the "conspiracy" wasn't fully disclosed until the 2019 report on the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation.What's Next: Trump's side is asking that a tentative May, 2023 trial date be pushed back to November of 2023.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Johnstone: The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com, The president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodymyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife. Now, I know what you’re thinking: how is Zelensky making time for a Vogue photoshoot amidst his busy schedule of PR appearances for other major western institutions? I mean this is after all the same Volodymyr Zelensky who has been so busy making video appearances for the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum and probably the Bilderberg group as well, and having meetings with celebrities like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Bono and the Edge from U2. It’s as busy a PR tour as he could possibly have without having a discussion about the strategic importance of long-range artillery with Elmo on Sesame Street. Oh yeah, and also isn’t there like a war or something happening in Ukraine? You’d think he’d probably be somewhat busy with that too. wartime vogue photo shoots. very serious. let’s keep sending ukraine weekly billion dollar aid packages to protect “democracy.” don’t question it. pic.twitter.com/MXVaW16K0y — Logan Hall (@loganclarkhall) July 26, 2022 Call me crazy, but I’m beginning to suspect that there might be a concerted effort to manipulate the way we think about the war in Ukraine. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say it’s the most aggressively perception-managed war we’ve ever experienced. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February we have not only been smashed with mass media propaganda unlike anything we’ve ever seen while Russian media are purged from the airwaves, we’re also seeing the new media element of unprecedented amounts of online censorship, algorithm-boosted propaganda, and social media trolling. So we’ve literally never seen this much overall effort put into manipulating the way the public thinks about a war. Which makes sense, given that it’s a profoundly dangerous proxy war which stands to benefit ordinary people in no way, shape or form. I mean, can you imagine if people were allowed to just think their own thoughts about their government’s economic warfare against Russia which is hurting them financially and pushing millions toward starvation with the full awareness and approval of the US government? Or if Americans were allowed to wonder if the billions they are pouring into this proxy conflict could be better spent at home? Or if people started objecting to a needless conflict for geostrategic domination threatening their lives and the lives of everyone they know with the risk of nuclear annihilation? Can’t have that. Massive amount of ukrainian soldiers dying every day, Zelensky : lets have a vogue shooting pic.twitter.com/BrNPYKZYR6 — Levi (@Levi_godman) July 26, 2022 There is a night-and-day difference between wanting to tell people the truth about something and wanting to manipulate their perception of something. There are times when true facts can be used to influence people’s perception one way or the other, but if your agenda is to manipulate perception rather than tell the truth you will necessarily be forced to rely on lies, half-truths, distortion, and lies by omission wherever the truth doesn’t serve that agenda. If they were telling us the truth about this war, they wouldn’t be censoring Russian media. They wouldn’t be censoring online voices who disagree with the official narratives about Ukraine. They wouldn’t be continually blasting us in the face with mass media perception management, and they sure as hell wouldn’t be putting Ukraine’s celebrity-in-chief on the cover of Vogue magazine. We are being manipulated, and we are being deceived. And we are being manipulated and deceived because our perceiving clearly on our own would go against the interests of the empire. They are lying to us because the interests of the people and the interests of the empire are, as usual, squarely at odds. *  *  * My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley. Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2 Tyler Durden Fri, 07/29/2022 - 02:00.....»»