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Zelensky meets with IOC president in Kyiv

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in Ukraine’s capital on Sunday as the Russian invasion in the former Soviet Union country rages on.

The two spoke about how Russia’s invasion has impacted Ukraine’s sports infrastructure as well as the IOC’s continual recommendation that Belarusian and Russian athletes not be allowed to participate in sporting events and its provision of new aid to Ukraine and its athletes, according to press releases from both Zelensky’s office and the committee.  

“It cannot be allowed that a terrorist state uses sports to promote its political interests and propaganda. I am grateful to Mr. President for his unwavering position regarding the suspension of Russian and Belarusian athletes from official competitions under the auspices of the International Olympic Committee,” Zelensky said, according to a press release from the office of the president of Ukraine. 

“While Russia is trying to destroy the Ukrainian people and conquer other European countries, its representatives have no place in the world’s sports community,” he added.

Zelensky noted that hundreds of facilities had been demolished during the Russian invasion, leaving athletes without a place to train. The international conflict has also prompted athletes to join the war effort, resulting in the deaths of 89 coaches and athletes and the detention of 13 others by Russia.

“We want to show solidarity in particular with the Ukrainian Olympic Community, and to demonstrate to the athletes and coaches that they are not alone and that we stand by their side,” Bach said to Zelensky during their meeting, according to a press release from the IOC.

The IOC is also tripling aid it is providing for Ukrainian athletes, which will now amount to $7.5 million. 

During Bach’s visit to the country, he also met with Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Guttsait and Sergii Bubka, the president of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and roughly 100 members of Ukraine’s Olympic team. 

The development comes as Russia’s invasion in Ukraine continues more than 100 days after Moscow began the conflict. Russia has been unsuccessful in capturing Kyiv, but it has made inroads in eastern Ukraine, claiming that it now controls all of the Luhansk region. 

“In the conditions of the multiple superiority of the [R]ussian occupying forces in artillery, aviation, [multiple launch rocket system], ammunition and personnel, the continuation of the defense of the city would lead to fatal consequences. In order to preserve the lives of Ukrainian defenders, a decision was made to withdraw,” the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a post on Facebook on Sunday of its decision to pull out ofthe last Ukrainian stronghold in the region.

“We will be back and we will definitely win!” the post later added. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Updating education data systems is critical to COVID recovery

It has been two years since schools across the United States closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and though schools have reopened, we are seeing the effects of these disruptions climax. With teachers choosing to leave the classroom in record numbers, students falling behind, and opportunity gaps widening, it is time we acknowledge that education in America must change. 

To tackle the root of these issues, our ability to gather and analyze data is critical for designing interventions and systems to change course and improve outcomes for all students. 

Utilizing educational data alone, however, is not enough — we need robust health data, workforce data and countless other metrics if we want to address the most complex questions impacting our students both now and in the future. Unfortunately, the complexity, age and often siloed nature of our data systems make establishing and maintaining connected data systems a challenging task — a challenge that must be addressed if we hope to mitigate the full impact of the pandemic and be prepared for future disruptions.

Many state agencies structure and collect data independently of one another, making compiling and analyzing data across agencies and time difficult. In education, this often means that a student’s data is fragmented by education level — early childhood, K-12, and postsecondary education. This makes it difficult to explore, for example, how a student’s third grade reading level impacts postsecondary degree attainment since it requires student-level data from multiple agencies over a significant period of time.

Investing in the creation and maintenance of state longitudinal data systems (SLDS) helps solve this problem by connecting multiple data systems, allowing data to be compiled across agencies and time. These systems equip policymakers with the necessary information to develop interventions, improve existing systems, and drive equitable outcomes that can inform future policy and practice. 

The value of leveraging cross-sector data has been seen in Florida, where researchers used population-level data to examine how prenatal exposure to toxic waste sites impacts later academic achievement, finding that children living within two miles of uncleaned toxic waste sites generally demonstrated lower student achievement scores and were 23 percent more likely to have a cognitive disability, 42 percent more likely to be suspended from school, and 45 percent more likely to repeat one or more grade levels. In Kentucky, the statewide longitudinal data system has been used to align career and technical education (CTE) pathways to state and regional workforce projections. As seen in these states, SLDS give policymakers, state leaders and communities critical information they previously may not have identified, leading to data-driven policy changes that can best serve students.

A decade ago, while serving as the Virginia Deputy Secretary of Education, I helped develop and support the launch of the state’s own longitudinal data system. Since then, Virginia’s SLDS has been used to improve various student and workforce outcomes, including matching postsecondary degrees to unemployment wage records, which allows for the calculation of more accurate wage outcomes for graduates. Since my time in Virginia, the political appetite for these systems had largely fallen to the wayside — until recently.

An influx of federal relief dollars has created a historic opportunity for state leaders to modernize their data systems and ensure they are positioned to address the long-term challenges of the pandemic. Without these systems in place, our educational institutions are stuck trying to solve novel, highly complex problems without a clear understanding of who or what is being impacted. Some states are leading the charge, with Texas allocating $15 million for strategic education and workforce data infrastructure systems, and Missouri allocating $4.3 million of its ESSER funding towards developing a new longitudinal data system.

For nearly 20 years, federal dollars have been leveraged to establish and support SLDS across the country, but there is room for improvement. As our nation grappled with the ongoing impact of the recession in 2008, a $230 million investment through competitive federal grants helped anchor our recovery efforts. Since then, SLDS grant funding has been sporadic, with few states being awarded multiple grants and only 26 states receiving funding in 2019. We must move away from competitive grants and establish sustainable federal funding streams to support the modernization and maintenance of these data systems in every state.

This is why The Hunt Institute, in partnership with the North Carolina Office of the Governor and the North Carolina Government Data Analytics Center and with the support of the Gates Foundation and John M. Belk Endowment, has created space for statewide, data contributing agencies to come together to identify opportunities to strengthen the state’s longitudinal data system through the creation of the Informed Decision-Making Collaborative (IDMC). North Carolina has seen progress in its SLDS efforts — the state recently established the North Carolina Longitudinal Data System Governance Board and appointed an executive director, both of which are important steps toward establishing a statewide research agenda.

Connecting data systems will give us the ability to identify problems and linkages we did not previously see. To avoid a return to the pre-pandemic “normal,” we must take this once-in-a-lifetime event as an opportunity to reimagine, realign and expand our data systems. Only then can we systematically eliminate inequities, close gaps and recover stronger.

Javaid Siddiqi, Ph.D., is president & CEO of The Hunt Institute. 

Source: TEST FEED1

July 4: America takes stock

Fireworks. Firearms. Parades. Polarization.

America the beautiful is experiencing a schizophrenic July 4 this year. We just celebrated Juneteenth National Independence Day commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Americans, and now we approach another Independence Day — July 4, when we honor our independence from Britain and the founding of our democracy.

But in the background of both celebrations is conflict and conversation over what kind of America we seek to be and become. The mood is somewhat dour, as reflected in the latest Pew research, which highlights the lack of trust Americans have in their government.

Conflict dominates the news cycle, with the Jan. 6 hearings, residual COVID-19, gun violence, abortion debates and climate concerns, not to mention a war in Ukraine and record levels of inflation.

But one thing is true. Conflict has always been part of the American story.

Recall the period in the run-up to the Declaration of Independence. The colonies were in an ugly state of conflict with England. We wanted to absolve ourselves of all allegiance to the British Crown. There had been bitter disputes over taxation and representation, religious freedom and sovereignty.

From the moment of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we argued over its meaning. Year after year, anniversary after anniversary, we debated loudly.

At times the conflict over America was searing. When Frederick Douglass gave his emotional keynote address on July 5, 1852, he mourned the state of our nation. He asked, “What is the Slave to the Fourth of July?” Douglass spoke of our nation’s cruelty as it was turning 76 years old:

“The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine”

It was a bitter rebuke. 

But remember that in the same speech, Douglass spoke admiringly of the genius of American institutions and the importance of debate, saying that “every American citizen has a right to form an opinion of the Constitution, and to propagate that opinion, and to use all honorable means to make his opinion the prevailing one. Without this fight, the liberty of an American citizen would be as insecure as that of a Frenchman.”

The point is that throughout our 246-year history, we have questioned our progress as a nation and endured conflict, military and political. We have struggled with our identity many times.

What seems different about today is the climate of conflict in America and how that conflict is manifesting itself.

Conflict is endemic to society. In training other nations about democracy, experts know that one must allow for the give and take of debate and dissent that is part of the good kind of conflict.  

We encourage citizens to engage in civic discussion, campaigning, voting and governing. We stress the rule of law, freedom of information, freedom of religion, individual and human rights as ingredients to make a more perfect union — a participatory democracy with shared values and interests. We teach dialogue and listening, and respect for the history of the other.

The tipping point to avoid, we explain to other nations, is violence. Once conflict becomes violent, you have reached a difficult phase, and it will take hard work to repair and rebuild — to fill in the cracks and fissures that eat away at the fabric of a civil society. Human beings often forget their habits of democracy and those habits must be re-learned.

And after intense conflict, there will be historic reckonings, accountability, truth commissions, justice and mercy. It is a hard road to travel.

What we have learned about international conflict is that violence often starts with small outbreaks and then boils up and spreads. We see that happening in American cities and towns.

What is worth knowing about conflict, even violent conflict, is that nothing is irreversible. Human beings are capable of change. Conflicts can be resolved.

These polarizing times, seemingly intractable in nature, could be followed by a period of reconciliation. Political discourse and debate could become nonviolent — as natural as the parades and parties that filled the streets of Philadelphia the week of July 4, 1776, when citizens read the Declaration of Independence aloud and fireworks, not gunfire, lit up the skies.

One must remain hopeful even in seemingly dark days. As my grandmother used to say, “Walk on the sunny side of the street.”

Tara D. Sonenshine served as executive vice president of the United States Institute of Peace and currently teaches public diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Source: TEST FEED1

Juan Williams: Justices lied before Roe v. Wade died

Here is a question for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). 

Which one of you is lying? 

Collins says Kavanaugh “misled” her when as a nominee he told her he was a “don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge,” on abortion rights. 

But what about Collins? 

Is she playing liar’s poker? 

Can anyone believe she didn’t know all of President Trump’s nominees, including Kavanaugh, had strong backing from fierce opponents of abortion rights? 

When he ran for president, Trump said openly, “I am putting pro-life justices on the court.” 

Trump is the only president to appear in-person at the March for Life, the premier anti-abortion rally. He declared himself the strongest opponent of abortion ever in the White House. He even accused Democrats of being willing to “execute a baby after birth.”  

Is it possible Collins missed all this?  

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is in the same trap. 

Is he telling the truth when he now claims he “trusted” Justice Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh when they testified they saw abortion rights as “settled” law? 

Now Manchin says he is “deeply disappointed” that both justices voted to end constitutional protection for abortion and “alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans.” 

Collins, who voted for Gorsuch as well as Kavanaugh, projects more anger than Manchin. As a Republican, she calls out Kavanaugh’s vote to end abortion rights as “not conservative,” and a “radical jolt” that will result in “political chaos, anger and further loss of confidence in our government.” 

That’s the truth. 

But Collins and Manchin are far from the truth if they are asking Americans to let them off the hook for their roles in creating a rampaging, far-right majority on the Supreme Court that just trampled on almost 50 years of abortion rights.  

How can it be true that Collins and Manchin did not notice years of Republicans in the Senate and White House kowtowing to far-right extremists in promoting judges to the federal bench based on their opposition to abortion rights? 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is not buying the excuses coming from Collins and Manchin. 

Calling out the “Trumpian Supreme Court,” Pelosi is pointing to “radical Republicans” engaging in a longstanding “crusade to criminalize health freedom” by overturning Roe. 

Pelosi saw the years of right-wing legal groups vetting judicial candidates based on their political ideology. 

She saw the rise of evangelicals as a political force as they called abortion “murder” and pressured Republican presidents, as well as Republicans in the Senate, to agree to their religious dictates. 

Senate Republicans refused to even have a hearing for Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, for nearly a year in 2016. And who could miss it when they rushed through Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, in a matter of weeks in late 2020? 

A clear majority of Americans have consistently backed abortion rights in opinion polls. In a June Fox News poll, 60 percent said the high court should let Roe v. Wade’s guarantee of abortion rights stand. 

Collins and Manchin can now see the truth in the polls and the obvious uproar over the ruling.  

People are marching in front of the Supreme Court. There is cold fear among women at the rush of Republican-majority legislatures to outlaw abortion and potentially arrest doctors and anyone else who helps a woman terminate a pregnancy 

But all the lies remain a threat to public trust.  

Lies told by Supreme Court justices — even if they are demeaned as “politicians in robes” — are protected from consequence by lifetime appointments. 

As the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal noted last week, even while defending the justices, these “claims of deceit are especially unfortunate because they suggest that the court is no different from the political branches.”  

It is “damaging to the Court’s credibility, whether the majority leans to the left or the right.” 

“They lied,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) during a recent appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’   

“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue…rulings that undermine the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans…there must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and the hostile takeover of our democratic institutions.” 

Ocasio-Cortez wants to “seriously consider” the impeachment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the justices who are being accused of lying to the Senate to get on the high court. 

Impeachment is unlikely. 

But what about senators who played along with the lies? 

They will eventually have to answer to voters. 

In the short term, two liberal Democratic senators from Massachusetts, Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, want to move past the lies by expanding the number of justices to dilute what Markey calls the “illegitimate and far-right majority on the Supreme Court.” 

Other ideas include term limits for justices and random lottery drawings to assign judges from lower federal courts to sit on the Supreme Court for only one term. 

This instability is the price the nation is paying for a tragic game of liar’s poker. 

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel. 

Source: TEST FEED1

The five most damaging allegations against Trump from the Jan. 6 hearings — so far

The House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 has dominated the news agenda during the past month, holding six public hearings.

The panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans critical of Trump — Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.)— has laid out a compelling case against the former president.

By the panel’s account, Trump knew his claims of election fraud were bogus, recklessly encouraged the Jan 6. rioters and endangered his own vice president as members of a mob marching on the Capitol called for Mike Pence’s hanging.

Whether the panel will make a criminal referral of Trump to the Department of Justice has not been settled. And there are still more hearings to go.

Here are five of the most damaging details leveled against Trump during the proceedings so far. 

Ivanka Trump accepted there was no widespread election fraud

The first Jan. 6 hearing was carried in primetime on June 9 and drew an audience of around 20 million people.

There was plenty of dramatic testimony from the hearing room but the most telling detail — and the one with the most lasting impact — came from a video interview with Ivanka Trump.

The president’s elder daughter said that she accepted the view of then-Attorney General Bill Barr that there was no evidence that fraud altered the outcome of the 2020 election.

“It affected my perspective,” Ivanka Trump said on the video, referring to Barr’s assessment. “I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying.”

Others in Trump’s circle have derided his spurious claims of election fraud but his own daughter doing so packed a unique emotional force.

The following day, the former president fired back, insisting that “Ivanka Trump was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results.”

His post, on his Truth Social network, added: “She had long since checked out and was, in my opinion, only trying to be respectful to Bill Barr and his position as Attorney General (he sucked!).”

As is often the case with the former president, the ferocity of the response seemed to betray an awareness that he’d taken a hit.

Trump allegedly knew the Jan. 6 crowd had weapons — and wanted to join them at the Capitol anyways

Cassidy Hutchinson, a 26-year-old former aide to former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, caused a sensation when she testified to a hastily convened meeting of the committee on June 28.

Hutchinson related all kinds of unflattering details regarding Trump’s behavior around Jan. 6.

Controversy raged for days over her testimony. 

She said she was told a story of Trump lunging for the steering wheel of his vehicle and tussling with a Secret Service agent after being informed he could not go to the Capitol after his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.

The secret service agent involved and the driver of the vehicle are reported to be willing to testify that Trump did not make such a lunge and that no-one was assaulted. 

But on Friday, CNN reported that two Secret Service agents confirmed they had heard accounts similar to Hutchinson’s.

In any event, the more substantively damning part of Hutchinson’s testimony concerned Trump’s knowledge that many of the people in the Jan. 6 crowd were carrying weapons.

Hutchinson, who was backstage at the Ellipse rally, said she heard Trump “say something to the effect of, ‘I don’t f-ing care that they have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me…They can march to the Capitol from here.’”

Trump again took to Truth Social to insist that he “didn’t want or request that we make room for people with guns to watch my speech,” adding, “Who would ever want that?”

But if Hutchinson’s testimony is accurate — and she says she heard the remarks first-hand — it suggests the then-president was acutely aware of the possibility for violence at the Capitol just before he told the crowd at the Ellipse that they should “fight like hell.”

That raises the stakes politically and could even elevate the chance of criminal prosecution.

Trump’s own campaign manager balked at fraud claims and was proud to be on ‘Team Normal’

The panel’s second hearing, held on June 13, made the case that Trump must have known his claims of election fraud were bogus, given how many people within his own inner circle were telling him this.

The hearing rendered an unflattering portrait of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as Trump’s personal lawyer.

Trump campaign general counsel Matt Morgan recalled how “law firms were not comfortable making the arguments that Rudy Giuliani was making publicly” because of the dearth of evidence to back them up.

White House lawyer Eric Herschmann said he thought that the overall thrust of the arguments put forth by Giuliani and other Trump backers such as attorney Sidney Powell was “nuts.” 

A memorable phrase from Trump 2020 campaign manager Bill Stepien best summed up the schisms that were developing in the then-president’s orbit.

“I didn’t mind being characterized as being part of ‘Team Normal’, as reporters kinda started to do around that point in time,” Stepien said in a video deposition. 

Stepien said he hoped that he had earned “a good reputation for being honest and professional” over many years in Republican political consultancy.

“I didn’t think what was happening was necessarily honest or professional at that point in time,” he added.

The ‘Election Defense Fund’ that didn’t exist

The second hearing also focused on the Trump campaign’s fundraising efforts in the immediate aftermath of the election.

“The ‘Big Lie’ was also a big rip-off,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) contended.

Lofgren cited the barrage of fundraising emails Team Trump sent to supporters between Election Day and Jan. 6. On some days, more than 20 such emails were blasted out.

Many encouraged the recipients to contribute to an “Election Defense Fund,” the suggestion being that the money would be used to push Trump’s claims of fraud in court.

One problem: the Election Defense Fund didn’t exist. 

“I don’t believe there is actually a fund called the ‘Election Defense Fund,’” the former digital director for the Trump campaign, Gary Coby, acknowledged.

The non-existent fund was, at best, a marketing ruse.

It was also an effective one. Between the election and early December 2020, the joint fundraising efforts of Trump and the Republican National Committee raised about $207 million.

Much of the money seemed to go to Trump’s main post-election political action committee, Save America PAC.

According to the panel, this PAC in turn “made millions of dollars of contributions to pro-Trump organizations.” 

Trump reportedly thought Mike Pence deserved to hang

One of many shocking occurrences on Jan. 6 was the call from some in the crowd to hang Pence, who resisted urgings from Trump and his allies to help overturn the election.

Trump had sought both publicity and privately to ratchet up the pressure on Pence, including in his speech at the Ellipse.

According to Hutchinson’s testimony, the then-president was blithely unconcerned with Pence’s fate even after serious violence broke out.

Hutchinson recounted witnessing a conversation between Meadows and White House counsel Pat Cipollone soon after the two had been in Trump’s presence.

Cipollone, she said, urged more direct action to quell the violence because “they are literally calling for the vice president to be f-ing hung.”

Meadows, according to Hutchinson, said “something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Cassidy Hutchinson testimony prompts reassessment of Trump legal culpability

The Jan. 6 committee’s accumulating evidence against former President Trump, including testimony from White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, has strengthened a potential criminal case against him and chipped away at his most likely defense arguments, legal experts say.

Hutchinson, a former special assistant to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as the president, offered explosive testimony Tuesday, filling in gaps about officials’ concerns over Trump’s speech and determination to get to the Capitol that day – and how the former president pushed ahead on both fronts.

It’s far from clear that the Justice Department is considering any criminal charges against Trump, even as its Jan. 6 investigation gets closer and closer to those in his orbit. One of the biggest hurdles is that most prosecution pathways against Trump require proving he acted with corrupt intent, an element the select committee has focused on proving in its own investigation.

Experts say Hutchinson’s testimony fleshed out the grounds for a possible case against Trump by supplying details about the president’s mindset around Jan. 6 and raised important questions for follow up by prosecutors.

“Assuming her evidence is corroborated, I’d say that it does add significantly to his criminal exposure almost across the board because it shows a particular state of mind that would be evidence the prosecution could submit to a jury for a number of different types of offenses,” Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, told The Hill.

Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who also served in the independent counsel’s office for the Iran-Contra scandal, said the panel has supplied key evidence about the warnings Trump received on Jan. 6 and in the days leading up to it.

“What has been emerging during the course of the select committee’s hearings has the makings of a powerful, multi-prong criminal case against Trump,” Bromwich said. “This includes evidence that he was aware of the substantial risks posed by his armed supporters, and his desire to further inflame them by personally traveling to the Capitol.”

Hutchinson said White House counsel Pat Cipollone told her a few days before the attack he was worried if Trump marched to the Capitol it could appear he was trying to incite a riot, obstruct justice, or defraud the electoral count. 

“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Hutchinson said, relaying Cipollone’s message to her that morning. “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.” 

He and others in the White House counsel’s office had also raised concerns about the language used in Trump’s prepared speech for the morning of the sixth. 

“In my conversations with Mr. [Eric] Herschmann, he had relayed that we would be foolish to include language that had been included at the President’s request,” she said, which repeatedly would use the word “fight” and urged marching to the Capitol. 

“Both Mr. Herschmann and White House counsel’s office were urging the speechwriters to not include that language for legal concerns, and also for the optics of what it could portray the president wanting to do that day.” 

Hutchinson also revealed that Trump knew many in the crowd that day were armed, but apparently was unconcerned, and still encouraged them to march to the Capitol.

She said Trump had asked for security to remove the magnetometers, or mags for short, because they were interfering with his crowd size, even though White House officials knew, as early as 10 a.m. on Jan. 6, that Trump supporters had knives, guns, bear spray, body armor and spears attached to the ends of flagpoles.  

“They’re not here to hurt me,” Trump said according to Hutchinson’s testimony.

“‘Take the effing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the effing mags away,’” she said, relaying Trump’s comments. 

Catherine Ross, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University Law School, called it “an astounding statement.”

That’s “implying they’re here to hurt somebody else and that’s fine with me,” she said.

“That also goes to whether he can be indicted for incitement because one of the things that the government would have to show to prosecute incitement is an understanding that violence was likely to follow imminently,” Ross said. 

“So when you have a mob of people carrying weapons and wearing body armor, that’s a pretty good indicator.”

Many say the whole revelation is key.

“What the Hutchinson testimony put in stark relief was not only Trump’s awareness of the threat of physical violence by the mob and the criminal liability attached to it before his speech, but also his desire to let the mob be armed and to encourage them to march with him to the Capitol,” Bradley Moss, a national security law expert, told The Hill. 

“This filled in factual gaps with respect to intent and the overt act necessary for potential conspiracy charges. Our jails are filled with people convicted of conspiracy crimes for doing less.”

Goodman says it’s significant evidence even though Trump ultimately never made the trip, blocked by Secret Service officials who determined the unscheduled movement too dangerous amid law enforcement radio traffic the Capitol’s security had been breached. 

“Even though he himself does not end up going, he definitely tells the crowd that he is going to go. So they are led to believe that he is with them and that’s actually what the White House appeared to have been concerned about, which is that he would be strongly encouraging them in such a way that things would be dangerous. And he’d be strongly encouraging them in a way in which it would appear to be an attempt to obstruct Congress,” Goodman said.

“I think his speech itself doesn’t help him by any stretch and if anything adds an additional data point of incriminating evidence.”

Goodman said the episode also raises other possible charges to bring against Trump, including a statute for “aiding and abetting any other federal crimes.”

“All we need to think about is any of the rioters who were armed or used weapons in the attack on the Capital, the evidence presented at the most recent hearing does directly implicate Trump in aiding and abetting,” he said.

The committee’s public hearings have also raised new questions that could help guide law enforcement and congressional investigators. The panel subpoenaed Cipollone following Hutchinson’s testimony, which revealed that he had issued grave warnings about the legal dangers of Trump’s involvement in Jan. 6.

Lawmakers are hoping Cipollone could provide information that might shed light on just how much involvement or foreknowledge the White House had in regards to the Capitol attack.

But even if he continues to resist calls for public testimony – DOJ may be able to secure his cooperation. 

Hutchinson also revealed that Trump ordered Meadows to contact Michael Flynn and Roger Stone on Jan. 5 as the two were organizing the president’s supporters, but it’s unclear exactly what was discussed. Both reportedly have ties to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, right-wing groups whose leaders are separately facing charges of seditious conspiracy related to the Jan. 6 attack. 

Her accounts of how Meadows and Cipollone responded to the growing threat to the Capitol underscored how important both White House aides would be to prosecutors who might seek to build a case against Trump.

Daniel Zelenko, a former federal prosecutor, said the committee has been strategic at addressing certain questions that need to be answered before the DOJ can decide whether or not to bring a case against the former president. But he says the department can’t make a charging decision without seeing all of the committee’s evidence or trying to question key figures like Cipollone and Meadows.

“I do think the committee has been very effective in laying out a case from start to finish about the objects of a potential conspiracy to overturn an election and then the steps that were taken to achieve that goal,” Zelenko said. “The committee has done a really impressive job at lining up effective witnesses who come across as credible under oath even though they haven’t been subject to any cross examination. I think that they’re far from done, and there are more senior White House staffers that have not agreed to testify.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Zelensky vows to return to fight Russia in Lysychansk after withdrawal

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed on Sunday that Ukrainian forces would regroup and return to fight Russian troops in Lysychansk after withdrawing from the city over the weekend.

In his nightly address on Sunday, Zelensky added that the latest supply of modern weapons coming from the West would aid them greatly. 

“And if the command of our army withdraws people from certain points of the front where the enemy has the greatest fire superiority, in particular this applies to Lysychansk, it means only one thing: we will return thanks to our tactics, thanks to the increase in the supply of modern weapons,” Zelensky said in his address.

Russian armed forces took control of the city in the eastern Luhansk region as its latest victory in its assault on Ukraine’s east, having seized the neighboring Sievierdonetsk the prior week. The cities were central sites of the war in the Donbas region that began when Russia initially invaded in 2014.

Ukraine has said that it is losing 100 to 200 soldiers a day amid efforts to fend off Russia’s invasion, while Russia’s death toll is also believed to be high.

Zelensky added that Ukraine will not give up in this fight.

“Let them really evaluate what they got over this time and how much they paid for it. Because their current reports will turn into dust just as the previous ones,” Zelensky said. “We are gradually moving forward — in the Kharkiv region, in the Kherson region and at sea: Zmiinyi is a good example of this. There will be a day when we will say the same about Donbas.” 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, has killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than 8.4 million Ukrainians.

Source: TEST FEED1

Booker challenges Americans to give up added sugar with him this summer

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is encouraging Americans to join him in giving up added sugar throughout the summer. 

“I have been running now for almost seven months straight, but my weight has been going up and down because you can’t outrun a bag of Oreos, you can’t outrun a late night pint of vegan ice cream,” he said in a video posted to Twitter on Sunday.

“And so I am challenging myself and I want to challenge you to have you want to join me on this experiment,” Booker said. “Life is too short not to try new things.” 

“I want to see what it does to my body and I know what it’s going to do to the scale,” he added.

On the signup page for his challenge, Booker argues that the U.S. is getting poorer by using tax dollars to make sugary and processed foods cheaper than healthier options, noting that unhealthy foods lead to higher health care costs. 

“Stunningly, so many of the foods we eat every day are full of added and ultra-processed sugar, including ketchup, mustard, salad dressings, pasta sauces, drinks, breakfast cereals, breads, chips, dips and so so much more,” it says.

Source: TEST FEED1

Graham visits Turkey, says he will 'do all in my power' to close F-16s sale

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) returned from a visit to Turkey over the weekend saying he will do everything in his power to close a sale of F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.

President Biden signalled his support for the weaponry sale to Turkey in a statement on Thursday, expressing optimism that Congress will pass this measure. 

Biden had met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the day prior, but shut down the notion that the proposed deal was a “quid pro quo” for Turkey supporting Finland and Sweden’s applications to join the NATO military alliance.

In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Graham said he had a “productive trip” to the country.

“While we have had a problematic relationship at times, it is imperative Turkey and the US take steps to strengthen the ties between our two nations,” Graham wrote on Twitter.

“I will do all in my power to support the Biden Administration’s decision to sell F-16s to the Turkish Air Force,” Graham added in the thread. 

“These fighter jets, in the hands of our NATO allies, will create a sense of stability and provide capability to the Turkish military that is most definitely in America’s national security interests.” 

There had been broad speculation since Turkey raised objections to Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership bids that the U.S. would need to offer concessions in order to convince Turkey to back down.

Still, Biden and other administration officials disputed the notion there was a connection between plans for any jet sales and Turkey’s decision to drop its objections earlier this week.  

“There was no quid pro quo with that. It’s just, we should sell,” Biden told reporters on Thursday. “I need congressional approval to be able to do that, and I think we can get that.” 

Source: TEST FEED1