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Melting Arctic ice could reroute international shipping sector: study
While a warming climate could spell disaster for countless snow-loving species, an ice-free Arctic artery could also offer critical trade alternatives to the Russian-controlled Northern Sea Route, a new study has found.
Climate models indicate that parts of the Arctic Ocean that were once blanketed in ice year-round are now warming so rapidly that they will likely be iceless for months on end in as soon as two decades, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This dramatic transformation will lead to the endangerment of species that thrive in sub-zero temperatures, the researchers acknowledged.
Yet these conditions will also increase the Arctic’s navigability so much that by 2065, new trade routes could be populating international waters — not only curbing the shipping industry’s carbon footprint, but also loosening Russia’s control over trade in the Arctic, according to the study.
“There’s no scenario in which melting ice in the Arctic is good news,” lead author Amanda Lynch, a professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University.
“But the unfortunate reality is that the ice is already retreating, these routes are opening up, and we need to start thinking critically about the legal, environmental and geopolitical implications,” Lynch added.
Lynch and her colleagues worked to model four navigation scenarios based on different potential outcomes of global efforts to stymie climate change in the coming years, according to the study.
Their projections determined that unless world leaders constrain warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the next 43 years, climate change will likely open new maritime routes through international waters by the middle of the century.
Such changes could have significant implications for both world trade and global politics, according to co-author Charles Norchi, director of the Center for Oceans and Coastal Law at Maine Law and a visiting scholar at Brown.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed in 1982, increased the authority of Arctic coastal states over primary shipping routes, Norchi said in a statement.
Through a specific clause in the convention — called Article 234 — these countries gained the ability to regulate the route’s maritime traffic, so long as the region remains covered in ice for most of the year, according to Norchi. This provision was supposed to ensure “the prevention, reduction and control of marine pollution from vessels,” he explained, citing the article.
Yet Norchi attested that for decades, Russia has used Article 234 for its own economic and geopolitical interests. Russian law requires all vessels that travel through the Northern Sea Route to be piloted by Russians, and they also must provide advance notice of their plans and pay tolls, he said.
Up against such heavy regulation, major shipping companies often choose to bypass the route and instead use the much longer — but cheaper and easier — trade routes through the Suez and Panama canals, according to Norchi.
If the ice near Russia’s northern coast continues to melt, so too will the country’s grasp on shipping in the Arctic, Norchi explained. While Moscow will continue to invoke Article 234, it will face opposition from the international community, he added.
“Not only that, but with melting ice, shipping will move out of Russian territorial waters and into international waters,” Norchi said. “If that happens, Russia can’t do much, because the outcome is driven by climate change and shipping economics.”
Because Arctic routes are about 30 to 50 percent shorter than Suez and Panama canal trips — reducing travel time by about 14 to 20 days — shipping companies could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by about 24 percent, according to Lynch.
These new arteries could also offer alternatives if a ship blocks an important shipping route for an extended period, Lynch added, referring to a March 2021 incident when a vessel was stuck in the Suez Canal for six days.
“Diversifying trade routes — especially considering new routes that can’t be blocked, because they’re not canals — gives the global shipping infrastructure a lot more resiliency,” Lynch said.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Biden’s dangerous equivocation on Ukraine
“We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia,” President Biden said at the end of May, but one day later, he announced exactly that: The U.S. will provide Ukraine with high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), which have a range of about 50 miles. These are the rockets Biden’s earlier comments were thought to preclude, and they’re powerful enough that striking into Russia is entirely possible. Ukraine reportedly “assured” the White House that this won’t happen, but who could be surprised if it did?
This episode is typical of the Biden administration’s equivocation about U.S. military intervention in Ukraine. It’s a dangerous habit, one risking escalation with Russia that we must avoid.
On the rhetorical front, the administration has held its position from the beginning: The United States will not go to war with Russia in Ukraine. Biden has “been very clear about one thing,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in early March, “which is, we’re not going to put the United States in direct conflict with Russia.” That means no U.S.-enforced no-fly zone, Blinken said, and no “American planes flying against Russian planes or our soldiers on the ground in Ukraine,” because “direct war with Russia, a nuclear power” is “clearly not in our interest. What we’re trying to do is end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one.”
In the months since his remarks, U.S. policy indeed has avoided all those options. Washington rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s pleas for a NATO no-fly zone, and neither U.S. planes nor troops have fought in Ukrainian territory. But the qualification of “direct” — as in, “direct conflict” — increasingly is becoming strained.
In early May, senior U.S. military officials leaked to The New York Times information revealing that American intelligence support helped Ukraine to kill Russian generals and sink a Russian flagship, the Moskva, a humiliating loss. “The United States has focused on providing the location and other details about the Russian military’s mobile headquarters,” the Times reported, as well as “real-time battlefield intelligence” on “anticipated Russian troop movements.” This comes in addition to billions of dollars in military aid, with heavier weaponry, now including the HIMARS and training in how to use them.
A subsequent statement from the State Department dubbed Ukraine a “key regional strategic partner” and detailed the millions of munitions and vehicles the U.S. has provided to Ukraine since 2014, as well as the joint military exercises U.S. and Ukrainian forces conduct together.
In his announcement about the rockets, Biden reiterated two of Blinken’s “red lines” the U.S. won’t cross from March: “We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia,” he said. “So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces.”
That’s all true. But it’s not difficult to imagine Russia drawing different red lines, adopting a different definition of war — something broader, something that includes, say, the United States helping to kill top Russian brass and strike important Russian targets, particularly if that comes to include strikes within Russian territory. That’s not difficult to imagine because it is surely what the United States would do if the roles were reversed. If Moscow aided another nation in killing American generals, sinking an American warship, and bombing American soil, undoubtedly, we would consider ourselves at war.
The president said his administration “currently see[s] no indication that Russia has intent to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” More generally, his decision to ramp up U.S. military backing for Ukraine presumably means he expects U.S. deterrence to hold. And perhaps that expectation will prove correct, since Moscow knows as well as Washington the apocalyptic potential of an open U.S.-Russia war. But continuing to escalate U.S. involvement with confidence that Russia won’t respond in kind is an incredibly perilous chance to take.
Biden is right to delineate what the United States will and will not do for Ukraine in pursuit of a diplomatic resolution to Russia’s aggression. He’s right to forswear direct engagement in conventional battle with Russia, particularly given the nuclear arsenals involved. But U.S. military support for Ukraine is far closer to direct conflict with Russia than the administration’s messaging suggests, and that ambiguity puts U.S. security in a perilous spot.
Rhetoric rejecting direct war with Russia is a good start, but we are naïve if we suppose Moscow will go by words rather than deeds.
Bonnie Kristian is a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities. A columnist at Christianity Today, she is the author of “Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community” (2022). Follow her on Twitter @bonniekristian.
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Kinzinger shares threat to family
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) on Sunday shared a death threat his family received over his participation in the House select committee’s investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Kinzinger took to Twitter to share the letter that was mailed to his home and addressed to his wife, Sofia Boza-Holman.
The letter threatened harm to the Illinois Republican as well as his wife and child.
He warned of the possibility of “violence in the future” but told ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos that he isn’t worried about the threats to him.
“I’m not worried personally. … It threatens to execute me as well as my wife and 5-month-old child,” he said.
“I’ve never seen or had anything like that. It was sent from the local area. I don’t worry, but now that I have a wife and kids it’s a little different. There are people that — there’s violence in the future, I’m going to tell you. And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”
Kinzinger, who along with Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) is one of two Republicans who serve on the Jan. 6 select committee, also alluded to his belief that the Republican National Committee is encouraging threats against lawmakers.
“The Darkness is spreading courtesy of cowardly leaders fearful of truth,” he said in his tweet linking to the letter.
Kinzinger, who is not running for reelection, also told Stephanopoulos that he was very concerned about the 2024 elections. “Wake up, America. Wake up, Republicans, because this is not going to be good for you if you think it is,” Kinzinger said.
His comments came just days before the Jan. 6 panel is set to hold its fourth hearing that will focus on former President Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials in the aftermath of the 2020 election results.
The Washington Post reported that election administrators in at least 17 states received threats of violence in the months after the Jan. 6 attack as a direct result of comments from Trump.
Kinzinger shared the death threat a day before Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens (R) posted a controversial video urging his supporters to go “RINO hunting” and renewed the conversation around violence and threat against elected representatives. Greitens has been criticized for alluding to hunting humans in the video.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that while she “didn’t want to go into the threats” she received, it was “concerning” that Kinzinger and his family were threatened.
“But it’s very concerning that Adam and his wife and his little baby were threatened. I saw the threat. It was a written threat,” she added.
The Hill has reached out to Kinzinger for comment.
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Harris makes surprise visit to African American history museum to mark Juneteenth
Vice President Harris made an unannounced visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Monday to meet with a group of children to mark Juneteenth.
Harris, who was greeted with a round of applause from the surprised room, spoke about the need to celebrate the principle of freedom on Juneteenth, the federal holiday marking the end of slavery in the United States.
“Happy Juneteenth, young leaders!” Harris said. “Today is a day to celebrate the principle of freedom. And think about it in terms of the context of history, knowing that Black people in America were not free for 400 years of slavery, but then at the end of slavery — right? — when that declaration happened, when the Emancipation Proclamation happened, that America had to really think about defining freedom.”
“Is freedom given to us or are we born with freedom?” the vice president continued. “I would argue it is our God-given right to have freedom. It is your birthright to have freedom, and during slavery, freedom was taken. And so, we’re not going to celebrate being given back what God gave us anyway. And that’s important to remember.”
Harris is the nation’s first Black vice president, as well as the first woman to hold the office.
She was joined by her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who called the museum his “favorite place” in Washington, D.C. The two walked around the room to visit with the children in attendance.
The White House’s public schedule was light on Monday with the observance of Juneteenth. President Biden was spending the day in Rehoboth Beach, Del., with family before returning to Washington.
Biden signed legislation last year making Juneteenth a federal holiday. The holiday marks the day in 1865 when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, learned that they were free.
Biden released a statement on Sunday describing the day as one of “profound weight and power” and emphasized his administration’s commitment to advancing equity and racial justice in the United States.
“This is a day to celebrate, to educate, and to act,” Biden said. “As we mark Juneteenth, my Administration will continue our efforts to root out inequity from our country and institutions and ensure true liberty and justice for all.”
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Women and sports: 50 years after Title IX, is the playing field level?
When 18-year-old American tennis star Coco Gauff became the youngest Grand Slam finalist in women’s tennis since Maria Sharapova in 2004, I cheered. When she lost to Poland’s Iga Swiatek at the French Open this month, I cheered again.
Women have come a long way in sports. But it has taken grit, determination and enormous patience for women and girls to be truly valued and to find their equal footing with men.
This week we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the landmark legislation that gave women athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports and federally funded educational institutions. It was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Nixon on June 23, 1972.
50 years later, there is a lot to celebrate.
Banning sex discrimination at federally funded schools opened the way for women and girls. Since Title IX’s passage, female participation in high school sports has grown by 1057 percent and in college sports by 614 percent.
In 1972 there were just over 300,000 women and girls playing high school and college sports in the United States, and female athletes received only 2 percent of college athletic budgets and barely a single scholarship. Title IX prompted more women to seek educational advancement.
That one piece of groundbreaking legislation also paved the way for women in professional sports and representation in the Olympics. In 1972 only 90 women joined the U.S. Olympic team. By 2016 American women dominated Olympic sports from gymnastics and basketball to swimming.
In her book “Strong Like A Woman,” Fox Sports journalist Laken Litman chronicles the inspirational stories of 100 female athletes who revolutionized their sports and paved the way for future generations of young girls and women.
I asked Litman what Title IX means to her as a female sportswriter. “Growing up I had the opportunity to play sports, in part because of Title IX, and that led to my career covering sports,” she said.
One of the women profiled in Litman’s book is legendary basketball coach Pat Summitt, who won eight NCAA championships.
Summitt, who died in 2016, seemed larger than life to many of us — a hero for women and girls. But her story is a reminder of what it was like in the early days as told in a forthcoming book by New York Times bestselling author Andrew Maraniss entitled, “Inaugural Ballers: The True Story of the First U.S. Women’s Olympics Basketball Team.”
Interviewed by the Tennessean newspaper, Maraniss reveals that Summitt told him about sleeping in a sleeping bag on the opposing team’s floor because they couldn’t afford a hotel. “They were supposed to sew their jersey numbers on their own uniforms, but she didn’t know how to sew so she put her number on with a paper clip or a safety pin or whatever she could find.” Maraniss told the paper.
A half-century later, there are still signs of inequality in women’s sports. Cases have been brought by women athletes in the NCAA, for example, where there remain disparities between men’s and women’s events in terms of resources, uneven workout and training facilities, spending, pay and conditions for play.
Investigations like one by USA Today found that some colleges inflate their numbers of women athletes by padding the rosters on existing teams instead of creating new teams.
When it comes to women and sports, the obvious question is: Do audiences care as much about women’s’ sports as they do about men’s sports? My answer is that people would probably be more interested in women’s sports if the media covered them more.
A 30-year study by the Nieman Journalism Lab released last year found a systemic problem with media ignoring women’s sports. “Our analysis shows men’s sports are the appetizer, the main course, and the dessert, and if there’s any mention of women’s sports it comes across as begrudging ‘eat your vegetables’ without the kind of bells and whistles and excitement with which they describe men’s sports and athletes.” As Litman reminded me. “I’m often the only woman in the press box or covering a sport.”
Title IX paved the way. But the next 50 years must be about renewed advancement and determined progress on the field and courts, and in the media.
Tara D. Sonenshine is the Edward R. Murrow Professor of Practice in public diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
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Bureaucrats don’t belong In the doctor’s office — that’s why prior authorization has to go
In recent years, there has been a growing trend on the part of Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans to require prior authorization for a wide range of medical services. Though a physician or other medical provider has already prescribed a course of care for the patient, insurers all too often exercise a veto over the doctor’s prescribed treatment, leading to harmful delays in care.
Prior authorization is a practice that requires patients and their health care providers to request pre-approval from their insurer before providing certain health care services. A denial from the insurer often means that the service will not be covered or that the insurer will require a patient to try a different medication or service before agreeing to cover the originally requested service. Even in cases where a denial is eventually reversed on appeal, the delay in care can allow time for a patient’s condition to worsen, such as a cancer spreading to other parts of the body.
An April 2022 report from the HHS Office of Inspector General investigating Medicare Advantage plans found widespread patterns of improper use of prior authorization to deny or delay coverage for services that met Medicare coverage requirements. In an analysis of a random sample of 250 prior authorization denials from 2019, the Inspector General determined that 13 percent of the prior authorization denials were improperly denied, delaying, or altogether preventing medically necessary care for patients. A previous OIG review from 2018 found that Medicare Advantage organizations ultimately overturned 75 percent of their own denials under appeal.
Prior authorization is one of the leading administrative burdens in medicine today. A physician survey by the American Medical Association found that 88 percent of physicians described the burden of dealing with prior authorization as “high” or “extremely high”, and over 90 percent report that the process results in delayed access to necessary care for their patients. Over a third of the physicians in the survey reported that prior authorization requirements had led to a serious adverse event for a patient in their care.
The AMA survey also found that the average practice completes 41 prior authorization requests per physician a week, taking up almost two business days of staff time per week. Overall, 91 percent of physicians believe that prior authorization has a negative impact on patient clinical outcomes. This is one of the top concerns I constantly hear from my fellow physicians who worry about the impact that this has on their ability to provide timely and appropriate medical care.
The Reducing Medically Unnecessary Delays in Care Act, which is modeled after a law I wrote as a state senator, would reform the practice of prior authorization in Medicare and Medicare Advantage by requiring that all preauthorizations and adverse determinations be made by a licensed physician who is board-certified in the specialty relevant to the health care service in question. At their core, these determinations are medical decisions, and they should be made by those with the appropriate medical training and expertise.
After four years of medical school plus three to five years serving in a residency to gain experience in their chosen specialty before earning their medical license, physicians are well-equipped to make judgments of medical necessity. That’s the reason patients go to them for medical care. Yet administrators who have no medical training and may not have sufficient understanding of the appropriate standards of care for a patient’s condition often delay or deny medically necessary care by second-guessing and overriding the medical judgment of the physician who is actually treating the patient.
The doctor-patient relationship is vital to the practice of medicine, but the current practice of prior authorization puts a bureaucrat in the middle of the doctor’s office. Physicians are forced to jump through hours of unnecessary and arbitrary paperwork simply to prove to third-party administrators that a procedure is medically necessary.
We need to remove the red tape and let doctors do what they do best — treating patients and saving lives.
Congressman Mark Green is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.
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Grenell to speak in Iowa amid Trump VP speculation
Former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell is heading to Iowa amid early speculation that he could be a prospective running mate for former President Trump in a potential 2024 White House bid.
Grenell is slated to address the Westside Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, on Wednesday and the Dallas County GOP on Thursday. In a tweet, Grenell said that he’ll be speaking about “Donald Trump’s America First strategy.”
The appearances are likely to stir further speculation that Grenell may be angling for the role of Trump’s running mate in 2024 should the former president mount another campaign for the White House.
Iowa is the first state to hold its presidential nominating contests, and prospective presidential contenders tend to flock there months, or even years, before making their ambitions public.
Grenell, who isn’t seen as a possible presidential candidate himself, has a lengthy history of working for Trump. He served as the former president’s ambassador to Germany for two years, as well as the acting director of national intelligence and as a special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations.
Grenell has also stayed active in Republican politics since leaving the Trump administration. He campaigned for Nevada Republican Senate nominee Adam Laxalt days before the state’s June 14 primary.
Perhaps most important to Trump: Grenell has echoed the former president’s false claim that widespread voter fraud robbed him of a second term in the White House in 2020.
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Facebook removes Greitens 'RINO hunting' video
Facebook on Monday removed a video from Missouri Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens in which he holds a shotgun and urges supporters to “get a RINO hunting permit.”
A spokesperson for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said the video showing Greitens breaking into a house with a gun in hand was removed “for violating our policies prohibiting violence and incitement.”
Greitens hit back with a Facebook post accusing the tech giant of censoring him, similar to accusations a number of Republicans have made against social media platforms.
“Facebook CENSORED our new ad calling out the weak RINOs. When I get to the US Senate, we are taking on Big Tech,” he wrote.
In the 38-second video, also posted to Twitter, Greitens touts his background as a Navy SEAL and says he is going “RINO hunting,” using the acronym for “Republican in name only.” He’s surrounded by men in U.S. armed forces uniforms who break into a seemingly empty house with their guns pointed.
Twitter did not remove the video, but added a notice on the tweet that said: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”
Twitter will also limit engagement with the post. Users will be able to quote tweet the post, meaning they’re able to post it with a comment, but will not be able to like, reply to or retweet it.
Greitens resigned as Missouri governor in 2018 amid allegations that he sexually assaulted and blackmailed his hairstylist. Greitens insisted the interactions were consensual, but a state legislative investigation deemed the allegations of abuse credible.
Republicans sounded alarms when he announced he would be running to succeed retiring Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), especially after ex-wife earlier this year accused him of abusing her and their children while they were married.
The Greitens campaign denied the allegations from his ex-wife.
A poll from The Hill and Emerson College released earlier this month found Greitens leading the field of GOP gubernatorial candidates in Missouri with 26 percent support heading into the Aug. 2 primary election.
–Updated at 1:59 p.m.
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The challenge of prosecuting Trump
We are living in a worrisome time, in case you didn’t know. I met a woman in the fitness center of my Paris hotel the other day. She said she was from Texas. I asked her who would be her next governor. “Frankly,” she said, “I am worried. I might even move to France.”
I am worried too, about our foreign policy and domestic economy. But, as a lawyer, I find that my worries focus on the rule of law. I was trained as a prosecutor believing that justice would be vindicated without fear or favor. I thought that the Jan. 6 committee’s revelations would make former President Trump’s indictment inevitable, even with a timid attorney general like Merrick Garland.
Six in 10 Americans, according to new polling, think Trump should be indicted for his role in the Jan 6 melee. Still, nothing happens.
I thought the story about Trump’s admission that he lost the election, told by former
Trump aide Alyssa Farah, might persuade some influential Republican to repudiate the “Big Lie.” Apparently not.
The evidence, masterfully captured and presented by the Jan. 6 committee, elicited that Trump was advised it would be illegal for Vice President Pence to reject the certified vote from the swing states, and throw the election to the House of Representatives. Yet, Trump and his claque pushed this vacant theory, pressuring Pence for months to do just that.
And, the Georgia case, the famous “find me 11,780 votes” telephone conversation between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, has apparently been lost in the shuffle. Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman may well be right that Trump has “zero” defenses to the felony of trying to steal Georgia’s 16 electoral votes on Jan. 2, 2021. The attempted theft is on tape. You don’t need much more evidence to indict.
The wheels of justice are said to move slowly, but here they are moving at a snail’s pace. Weeks are becoming months; months, years. The clock is ticking while the Georgia grand jury dithers with witnesses.
Delay always redounds to the benefit of a high-profile defendant in a criminal case. Memories grow dim. Witnesses disappear. The jury wonders what took the prosecutor so long if there was really something to be excited about. And then, there is the factor that the public may just be bored with it all.
A famous prosecutor once said that the “secret of effective advocacy” is to get on the right side. But a great lawyer cannot be afraid to lose. The Department of Justice is reportedly afraid of the political unrest that might flow from a Trump indictment or a possible Trump acquittal. That’s the risk Attorney General Garland must take to vindicate the rule of law and preserve our democracy. While he says he will follow the law and the facts, Garland seems to be guided by neither. Trump’s participation in the Jan. 6 conspiracy seems easy to prove in a court of law, particularly before a D.C. jury.
The problem is the banana republic argument. We are not a country that indicts its former rulers. If Trump beats the rap, as he did in New York, it will be because no one has the fortitude to take him on. And, if this is so, we truly are a banana republic.
J. Michael Luttig, the former federal judge who George W. Bush thought was too conservative for the Supreme Court, phrased the issue so eloquently when he pleaded for an American renewal of the two-party system:
“America is in peril. …The settlement of this war over our democracy is necessary to the settlement of any war that will ever come to America, whether from her shores or to her shores. Though disinclined for the moment, as a political matter of fact only the party that instigated this war over our democracy can bring an end to that war.”
I take his warning very seriously, as must we all. But lots of luck. A coming together is not likely to occur any time soon.
Trump’s comeuppance, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) observed on Feb. 13, 2021, is left to the prosecutors and the courts. “We have a criminal justice system in this country,” he said, “And former presidents are not immune from being accountable ….”
Most Republicans don’t seem particularly upset by an assault on our Constitution and our democracy. Instead, the GOP is bordering on lunacy in its pursuit of raw power.
There is something rotten in the state of Texas — and the madness could readily metastasize. Consider the far-right platform planks just approved by the Texas Republican Party, rejecting, among other things, “the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election.”
No wonder the Texas woman I met in the fitness center is worried. Trump complains that the Jan. 6 committee has denied him due process, the right of confrontation of witnesses and to tell his side of the story. In some sense, he is right. Garland should indict him. So should Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor who is also weighing a racketeering case. The Constitution would then guarantee him a lot of due process.
James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
Source: TEST FEED1