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Here are the Russian oil executives who have died in the past nine months

The death of a top Russian oil executive this week is the latest in a string of oil executives in the country who have reportedly died from suicide or in accidents this year. 

Russian media outlets reported that Ravil Maganov, the chairman of the board of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, died on Thursday after falling out of a window at a hospital where he was being treated. TASS, the state-run news agency, reported that an unnamed law enforcement source said Maganov committed suicide. 

Maganov was being treated at the hospital after having a heart attack and was taking antidepressants, TASS reported. 

Lukoil is one of the few companies that have publicly criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling for an end to the conflict in March. More than half a dozen other oil executives have died this year under unclear circumstances. 

Here are the Russian oil executives who have died mysteriously in the past nine months: 

Leonid Shulman 

Leonid Shulman, a top executive for the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom, was found dead of a reported suicide in a cottage in the village of Leninsky on January 30. 

Russian media reported that a suicide note was found at the scene. The note reportedly said that Shulman had unbearable pain in a broken leg. 

Alexander Tyulakov 

Alexander Tyulakov, another top executive for Gazprom, was found dead in the same village almost a month later in a garage. An independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported that his death appeared to be a suicide. 

He was also reportedly seen badly beaten on the night before his death. 

Novaya Gazeta reported that Leninsky is considered an exclusive estate for top Gazprom executives. 

Mikhail Watford 

Ukraine-born oligarch Mikhail Watford, who became a billionaire through the oil and gas industry, was found dead three days after Tyulakov at his home in England. Local British officers reportedly said at the time that they considered his death to be unexplained but not suspicious. 

Vladislav Avayev 

Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, one of the largest banks in Russia, which has ties to the energy industry, was found dead in his apartment in Moscow along with his wife and daughter on April 18. 

Police reportedly found a pistol in Avayev’s hands, leading them to consider the incident a case of murder-suicide. 

Sergei Protosenya 

A similar incident occurred one day after Avayev’s death when Sergei Protosenya, a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a Russian natural gas firm, was found hung while his wife and daughter were found stabbed to death, according to Radio Free Europe, a U.S. government-funded media outlet. 

They were found at a villa in Spain. Police were investigating the death as a murder-suicide, but Protosenya’s son rejected the theory, saying that his father was not a killer and would never hurt his family, the British tabloid The Daily Mirror reported. 

Alexander Subbotin 

Former top Lukoil executive Alexander Subbotin was found dead in May in the basement of a house near Moscow. TASS reported that Subbotin lost consciousness as a result of a heart attack, and police opened a criminal investigation into his death. 

Yury Voronov 

Yury Voronov, the head of a transport and logistics company that holds contracts with Gazprom for the Arctic region, was found dead in a swimming pool at his home in July. 

He was found with a gunshot wound to the head, and a pistol was found nearby, according to local media. Some shell casings were found at the bottom of the pool. 

His wife reportedly told police that Voronov began abusing alcohol in the two weeks leading up to his death, and he had lost a lot of money during that time in disagreements with contractors.

Source: TEST FEED1

Two inspectors from international nuclear agency to remain at Ukrainian nuclear plant

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will keep two inspectors at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi announced on Friday.

“We are establishing a permanent presence on site, this time with two of our experts, which will be continuing the work,” Grossi said at a press conference.

A team of IAEA inspectors visited the nuclear plant earlier this week amid ongoing concerns of a potential nuclear accident. 

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhya plant early on in their invasion of Ukraine, but the plant is still operated by Ukrainian technicians. Located in southeastern Ukraine on the frontline of the war, the nuclear power plant has faced numerous shellings, which Russia and Ukraine have blamed on one another.

The plant lost connection to its last remaining main external power line on Friday evening and was utilizing a reserve line, according to an IAEA press release. This same power line was also temporarily disconnected on Aug. 25. The plant’s three other such power lines were lost earlier in the conflict. 

One of the Zaporizhzhya plant’s two operating reactors was also disconnected, the IAEA said. The other unit is still “operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid.” 

“The difference between having the IAEA at the site and not having us there is like day and night,” Grossi said in the press release. “I remain gravely concerned about the situation at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant – this hasn’t changed – but the continued presence of the IAEA will be of paramount importance in helping to stabilise the situation.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The era of Millennial elections could mark the end of binary voting

We are about to witness a political turning of the tide. After three decades in power, the era of baby boomer politics is coming to an end, and millennials are set to become the new largest bloc of voters.

The differences between millennials and their predecessors on social issues and climate change have long been fodder for commentators and pundits. But perhaps even more consequential will be the reforms the next generation makes to the bedrock institution of our country: our elections.

Each new generation has shifted the way America conducts its elections. Baby boomers, who came of age in an era marked by the Civil Rights Movement and the proliferation of primary elections, successfully lowered the voting age to 18. Generation X subsequently piggybacked off the anti-establishment strains of the boomers and pushed for campaign finance reform and term limits, albeit with mixed success. 

Now the millennials will have an opportunity to make their mark.

With previous generations doing much of the heavy lifting on who can vote, the next major shift may come in the form of how we vote. While some next-gen reforms, like online voting, just aren’t ready for widespread adoption, two election reforms are poised to make a substantial impact in the near future: blanket primaries and instant-runoff elections.

Blanket primaries, also known as “jungle primaries,” place all candidates on one primary ballot — regardless of party affiliation — and ask voters to select from among them. The top candidates then move on to the general election. Blanket primaries won’t eliminate our country’s partisan animosity, but they may help reduce the influence of hyper-partisan base voters and open the primary process to millions of unaffiliated voters. With that in mind, a number of states have implemented blanket primaries in recent years, and more could be on the way with states like Wisconsin and Nevada considering the idea.

Meanwhile, instant-runoff elections, often referred to as “ranked-choice voting,” ask voters to rank candidates by personal preference. Vote counters then use these rankings to conduct an immediate runoff election until one candidate wins with majority support. Instant-runoff elections eliminate the “spoiler effect” and allow voters to support their favorite candidate, without fear of “throwing away their vote.” This, in turn, encourages candidates to run positive campaigns in which they must make the case to voters for why they should be ranked at the top of their ballots. Maine first employed instant runoffs in 2018, and a number of localities have started using them as well. Alaska recently passed a similar reform and will use instant-runoff elections in conjunction with blanket primaries starting this year.

Blanket primaries and instant runoffs are intended to shake up our calcified two-party system and provide an opportunity for consensus candidates to emerge. Perhaps it’s no surprise that millennials, who are far less attached to the two major parties, are the most open to these reforms. Look no further than last year’s instant-runoff primary election in New York City. While every age group showed strong support for instant runoffs, voters younger than age 40 were the most enthusiastic, with 86 percent expressing a desire to continue ranking candidates in future elections.

All of this implies that millennials are unlikely to be swayed by arguments that we are better off with the “binary choices” of the existing two-party system.

As baby boomers age out of the political system, millennials are looking to reshape our country, from work to family to civic life. Reforming our elections, with blanket primaries and instant runoffs, may be among the most consequential changes brought by the next generation. Only time will tell.

Matthew Germer is a resident elections fellow at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank. You can follow him on Twitter at @mattgermer.

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Over 14,000 strollers recalled after reported amputation of child’s fingertip

More than 14,000 strollers were recalled on Thursday after a child’s fingertip was amputated, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

UPPAbaby recalled its All-Terrain RIDGE Jogging Strollers, citing openings in the stroller’s brakes that can cut or sever a child’s fingertip if it gets caught while the stroller is in use. 

Customers who bought strollers manufactured between July 2021 and August 2022 can contact the company to receive free replacement brake discs.

“Our top priority at UPPAbaby is the safety of children,” the company said in a press release. “We conduct extensive testing to ensure UPPAbaby products meet all global industry and regulatory standards.”

Based on the report UPPAbaby received, the company said it believes the injury was “likely due to consumer misuse.”

Source: TEST FEED1

The pending collapse of the United States of Political Correctness

As one of the great Chico Marxist quotes of all time asks: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” Every day it seems that more of our political leaders are asking — maybe ordering — Americans to ignore the wrongs they plainly see, in favor of narratives that are built on false and self-destructive ideology.

As Americans try to cope with exponentially diminishing security, supplies, affordable energy, savings accounts, job prospects, career-creating and career-relevant education, and even many of their liberties, those who are in charge insist, “Nothing to see here; move along.” We’re supposed to trust the nanny-state. 

Why would these politicians purposely ignore actual — and fixable — catastrophes that could negatively impact their own somewhat privileged lives and the welfare of their children if left unchecked? Biased minds are spot-welded to questionable ideology, anger, hate, hubris, and the inability to acknowledge that one is wrong.

Let’s look at four examples of quality of life-destroying issues that some who worship at the altar of political correctness had a hand in either creating or denying, or both. 

The first is the energy supply crisis spreading around the world — as in, energy that makes human life sustainable.

While those pushing green and renewable energy solutions can deny it all they want, the truth is that fossil fuels remain the giver and protector of human life and civilization. Eliminating fossil fuels is tantamount to signing a death warrant for millions of people the world over. 

Two voices, among many, have spoken out on this subject but, because of who they are, the green energy zealots — and their media and celebrity enablers — doubled down on their denial of any energy emergency that threatens others’ quality of life.   

The first person who comes to mind was Donald Trump. Yes, alert the authorities: If Trump said it, no matter how accurate his warning as president may have been, many on the left will deny it, smear it and destroy it.

But, four years ago, during a speech at the United Nations, Trump warned that unreliable green and renewable energy sources would threaten the actual energy needs of Germany and Europe. The German delegation literally laughed in his face.

They’re not laughing anymore. With natural gas supplies from Russia essentially cut off because of the war in Ukraine, Europe is facing energy shortages and a potential crisis this coming winter.  

The next notable person I recall speaking out on the issue was Elon Musk, who recently said that “civilization will crumble” unless we continue using oil and gas in the short term. Earlier this week, he tweeted: “Countries should be increasing nuclear power generation! It is insane from a national security standpoint & bad for the environment to shut them down.”

The green energy-pushing leftists can hate on Trump and Musk all they want, but that doesn’t make their warnings false. We can see for ourselves the energy crisis unfolding across Europe, which could reach our own shores. And then what? 

Next, let’s consider the war zones that some of our cities have become. Not familiar with that story? I’m not surprised. Thousands of lives are being lost each year to urban violence. Why isn’t this a national emergency? Well, political correctness dictates that we can’t talk about those lost lives because many are the result of gang violence or turf wars between young men. Sometimes innocent children or women are caught in the crossfire.

Ironically — and quite brazenly, since some at the newspaper favored earlier calls to “defund the police,” which voters opted not to do — the Minneapolis Star Tribune recently published an editorial titled, “Curbing violent crime is an all-hands job.” An excerpt said: “Crime, particularly violent crime, is at near-record highs in larger cities in Minnesota, with emboldened criminals feeling freer than ever to wield even the deadliest weapons without regard for the law or human life.”

No kidding. That’s what happens when you demoralize the police, and some cities are experiencing difficulty replacing those who quit. That’s happening not just in Minneapolis but in cities elsewhere in the United States, and some cities have prosecutors who don’t want to prosecute certain crimes.

From the epidemic of violence, let’s switch to the epidemic of obesity in America. Oh, wait — we can’t talk about that, either. Political correctness dictates that to address such an issue would be “fat shaming.” And yet, obesity is an epidemic that is contributing to the loss of tens of thousands of lives each year.

We see it, we know the grief it causes, but we’re told not to “believe our lying eyes.” It is much more politically expedient for some to normalize obesity and allow people to suffer from chronic illnesses or even die instead of addressing a health crisis that continues to get worse.

And the topic of health brings us to the COVID-19 pandemic. Millions of deaths worldwide were attributed to the virus, but we still don’t know definitively how SARS-CoV-2 originated in Wuhan, China. Shouldn’t our political leaders try to get to the bottom of this? And if they don’t care to find conclusive evidence, why not?

These four issues alone are harming people worldwide. And yet, many of those who control the government, media, academia, science, medicine and entertainment either refuse to acknowledge it, or worse, seek to punish anyone who dares to question their politically correct policies.  

If we don’t address the catastrophes we are witnessing with our own eyes, we risk the collapse of the infrastructure and rule of law that sustains society. The clock is ticking and the alarm signaling a point of no return is about to shriek.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

Source: TEST FEED1

Violent threats against lawmakers have Congress on edge

Rep. G.K. Butterfield was proud to be in Congress. Some years ago, the veteran Democrat installed a vanity message on his congressional license plate, broadcasting the district he represents: North Carolina 1.

Those days are over.

In recent years, the number of menacing threats against sitting members of Congress has ballooned, forcing the Capitol Police to launch thousands of investigations; prompting a flood of new funding for lawmaker security back home and in Washington; and impelling lawmakers to take remarkable precautions to ensure they don’t become the next target of political violence. 

For Butterfield, that meant taking steps to become more anonymous when he’s out in public.

“I’ve taken the congressional license tags off of my car, because I don’t want to be identified publicly. It was right after Jan. 6,” Butterfield said before the House left Washington for the long summer recess.

“I used to be proud to display the plate, had No. 1 on my plate for the 1st District — North Carolina 1,” he continued. “Used to be a time when people would pull up beside me at the stoplight and give me the thumbs up. But now it’s different.”

The source of the concern is not merely anecdotal. Over the past half-decade, the number of threat investigations launched by the U.S. Capitol Police has skyrocketed, from 3,939 in 2017 to 9,625 in 2021 — a spike of almost 150 percent, according to numbers provided by the department.

As members of Congress head into a long Labor Day weekend of parades, barbecues and other district events — a holiday marking the unofficial launch of the final leg of public campaigning ahead of November’s midterm elections — they seem to be keenly leery of what they might encounter. 

“The threat level has been elevated,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the select committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, said Friday. “There has been a coarsening of discourse, and a perceived relaxation in inhibitions people would have about attacking public officials.”

Raskin spoke Friday while flanked by a security detail matching those assigned to each member of the Jan. 6 investigative panel.

The spike in lawmaker threats has coincided with increasingly personal and bitter attack lines stemming from the Trump era, with Democrats maintaining that the blame falls squarely on the former president and his fiery rhetoric against perceived political enemies.

“We hear — you’ve heard it — more and more talk about violence as an acceptable political tool in this country. It’s not. It can never be an acceptable tool,” President Biden said Thursday night in Philadelphia, where he castigated Trump and those who do not condemn violence as “a threat to democracy.”

“We can’t be pro-insurrectionist and pro-American. They’re incompatible,” Biden added.

Trump’s supporters have rushed to his defense, saying accusations that the former president encourages violence are merely political attacks designed to hurt his chances of returning to the White House in 2024.

Attacks aimed at members of Congress have targeted Republicans as well, they note, including recently when Rep. Lee Zeldin (R) was assaulted on stage while speaking at a campaign stop in New York for his gubernatorial bid.

Zeldin escaped largely unscathed, though other attacks have gone much farther. In 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot on a baseball field during a GOP practice in northern Virginia, sending him to the hospital with critical injuries.

In another more recent incident, an armed man was arrested near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home in the middle of the night in June after making death threats. In that case, Republicans accused Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) of encouraging the situation when he warned Kavanaugh, in 2020, that the justice would “pay the price” if he rolled back abortion rights. 

“Rhetoric that incites violence toward any elected or appointed member of the three branches of our constitutional government is dangerous and condemnable,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, said after the June incident.

Lawmakers who are critical of Trump remain among those most frequently targeted for violence. The long and diverse list includes Republicans who voted for an infrastructure bill he opposed; Democrats who managed the former president’s impeachments; Republicans who supported his ouster after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack; and most recently the nine House lawmakers on the select committee investigating the 2021 riot, all of whom have round-the-clock security details.

Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Republicans critical of Trump are particularly prominent targets because they’re viewed to be disloyal in the eyes of the MAGA faithful. 

“People who show that there’s a way to be a conservative and not be part of the MAGA faction are in the targets because that’s the most threatening group,” Kleinfeld said. “You see that in every country where you start having this kind of factional violence is that, what’s called ‘in-group moderates’ — who might not be moderate in their policy beliefs, but who don’t believe in violence — are the first to be targeted.”

After five years of steady threat increases on Capitol Hill, it’s unclear if 2022 will continue the trend. The Capitol Police reported opening “roughly 1,820 cases” between Jan. 1 and March 24 — on pace to top 8,000 incidents for the year, which would be well below the figure for both 2020 and 2021. But the department is now withholding the release of incremental figures and instead will provide annual numbers at the end of each year. The change, a spokesperson said, is designed to curb “confusion” surrounding the statistics.

The figures represent incidents of both “concerning comments and direct threats,” a determination guided by the Supreme Court, which has defined threats to be “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”

Some incidents are more clear-cut than others. 

In July, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 select committee, released a compilation of profanely violent threats made by phone to his office. This week, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who served as one of the managers of Trump’s second impeachment, released a similar audio message from a man threatening to come to Swalwell’s office with a gun for the purpose of assassinating him. And a number of other lawmakers have comparable stories, even if they haven’t released the threats publicly. 

“There’s an escalation,” said Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). “We have some new interns and they’re shocked [at] the level of animosity that people talk about when they call us — the level of hatred and threats. They were absolutely stunned, and I said, ‘No, that’s what we live with. And it’s getting worse.’” 

In July, the House Sergeant at Arms announced new funding designed to protect lawmakers from the enhanced threats: $10,000 to install alarms and other systems to bolster the security of their homes.  

One House Democrat, who spoke anonymously so as not to become a greater target, said that’s not all: Local law enforcers also monitor the family house. 

“We have a police car that comes once in the morning, and once at night,” the lawmaker said. “It’s just not a time when everyone feels safe.”

Rebecca Beitsch contributed.

Source: TEST FEED1

Water crisis in Jackson, Miss., raises concerns about environmental racism

As tens of thousands of residents of Jackson, Miss., remain without clean water, some advocates say the situation stems from years of environmental racism.

More than 80 percent of Jackson residents are Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. On Monday, those residents saw their main water treatment facility fail in the wake of flooding, leaving them without clean water for drinking, bathing or cooking.

“While the recent flooding has been a contributor to where we are today, this is not the first time this issue has come about, where the city of Jackson is without water and unable to function,” Vangela Wade, president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice, told The Hill. “Over the last 50 years, you could say that this has been brewing because of the lack of investment in the city’s infrastructure by primarily state leadership.”

The latest water issues come after the last two years saw the city’s water system fail an Environmental Protection Agency inspection — which found the drinking water had the potential to host harmful bacteria or parasites — and the bursting and freezing of pipes during a winter storm last year left residents without water for nearly a month.

But advocates say the crisis has been decades in the making. Jackson first became a majority-Black city in the years following integration. The white population fell from 52 percent to 43 percent through the 1980s, with another 35,000 leaving the city over the course of the 1990s, according to The Jackson Free Press.

This population loss has reduced the city’s tax base and left it with far less money for basic resources, and the city’s water infrastructure has felt the strain before, most recently in March 2021, when Jackson imposed a boil-water advisory. 

“We have a really aged system that the city’s annual budget, the revenue that the city brings in, is insufficient to meet that need,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D) said at the time.

Speaking to ABC News Wednesday, Lumumba said the latest water crisis “is due to decades, decades and decades, of possibly 30 years or more of deferred maintenance, a lack of capital improvements made to the system, a lack of a human capital, a workforce plan that accounted for the challenges that our water treatment facility suffers from.”

While the city tried to fight the loss of water by handing out free bottled water to residents earlier this week, they quickly ran out. Now, some of that responsibility has fallen to local community organizations. 

For years, the anti-violence prevention program Operation Good has been delivering water to residents across the city. Gino, who is the founder of the organization and asked not to have his last name published, said his group began handing out water back in 2015.

“This is nothing new for us,” said Gino, adding that the group prioritizes taking care of the elderly and disabled first, following up with children and those living in poverty. More recently, he added, they’ve been bringing water pallets to different schools that contacted Operation Good in desperate need of providing for their students.

Gino said he doesn’t normally use terms like “environmental racism” but added he knows “surrounding cities that are majority white that don’t have infrastructure problems like Jackson.”

“Jackson’s infrastructure problems are horrendous,” he said. “For us to be the capital city of the state of Mississippi, it does not receive the attention, financing and things of that nature that it should.” 

Gino said children in the city are exposed to raw sewage so often, they’ve become immune to it: it’s in their bathing water, it’s in their cooking water, it’s in their drinking water. And through it all, residents have still received water bills.

“It always felt like it was a ‘Jackson problem,’ not a Mississippi problem,” Gino said. “It was a Black-people problem, not a majority-of-the-state problem.”

Civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis coined the term “environmental racism” in the 1980s in response to the decision to site a landfill for hazardous chemical waste in a predominantly Black North Carolina town. Sociologist Robert Bullard later defined the concept as “any policy, practice or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (where intended or unintended) individuals, groups or communities based on race.”

Although there have been cases dubbed examples of environmental racism that involve active wrongdoing, advocates say it can also apply in situations where issues affecting nonwhite communities are simply considered less urgent or more acceptable.

”What it means is that communities of color, particularly in this case, Black communities, are considered sacrifice communities, so that they aren’t receiving the same attention as their white counterparts because they’re not deemed to be important,” Adrienne Hollis, vice president for environmental justice, health, and community revitalization at the National Wildlife Federation, told The Hill.

In addition to neglected infrastructure, she said, this can mean the location of high-pollution facilities in poor or minority neighborhoods and areas where residents “aren’t provided the opportunity to improve their economic situation.”

The Jackson crisis is part of “the conversations about how Black communities are deprioritized when it comes to ensuring that there’s infrastructure planning, ensuring there is resiliency built within the communities,” said Abre’ Conner, director of environmental and climate justice at the NAACP. “[Jackson] is just a failure of individuals who have the power to ensure that the infrastructure is there [to] actually acting on it and ensure that a predominantly Black community actually has water and other infrastructure that is needed when there is a disaster that actually hits.”

This week, #jxnwatercrisis and #jacksonwatercrisis trended on Twitter as residents posted photos of discolored water. President Biden declared the crisis an emergency, freeing up federal resources to help the state’s response.

But the city’s Democratic leaders and state Republican leadership have frequently sparred over where responsibility lies for fixing the capital’s water infrastructure. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann (R) said in response to the 2021 crisis that “the prime mover needs to be the city itself.”

Gino remains frustrated with local leaders, saying history has shown money has not gone to those who really need it.

“Officials … see this city drowning, but instead of reaching in with a helping hand, they dodge it because we’re dealing with Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “But the people of Jackson don’t give a damn about Republicans or Democrats, they’re all the same to the people of Jackson because they’re not doing [anything]. Forget about the politics and think about the people.” 

A long-term solution, according to Conner of the NAACP, would involve resiliency planning that accounts for decades of neglect in communities like Jackson. 

“That is part of planning for a climate crisis,” she said. “And so if the infrastructure is not there, and you do have those impacts of the climate crisis that are now coming to the hilt, then Black communities are now going to feel that impact.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Texas governor says rape victims can prevent pregnancy by taking Plan B

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said rape victims in the state can prevent pregnancies by using emergency contraception pills such as Plan B, The Dallas Morning News reported Friday.

In Texas, abortions are banned and do not include exceptions for rape or incest.

Late last month, a so-called “trigger law” went into effect following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade earlier this year. The trigger law makes it a felony to perform an abortion in the state with narrow exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is at risk.

“We want to support those victims, but also those victims can access health care immediately, as well as to report it,” Abbott told The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV’s “Lone Star Politics” in a segment obtained by the Morning News that will air on Sunday. 

“By accessing health care immediately, they can get the Plan B pill that can prevent a pregnancy from occurring in the first place,” he added. 

Plan B is an oral contraceptive that is taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex or a “contraceptive accident” to prevent pregnancy, according to the product’s website. The pill prevents an egg from being released from the ovary to prohibit fertilization.

The Republican governor also told “Lone Star Politics” that reporting a rape to law enforcement “will ensure that the rapist will be arrested and prosecuted.”

However, very few rape cases result in an arrest. While there were 13,327 reported rapes in Texas in 2020, there were only 1,828 arrests for rape, according to the state’s department of public safety.

Abbott’s Democratic opponent Beto O’Rourke responded to the governor’s statement on Twitter on Friday night, saying “We are going to end Greg Abbott’s career on November 8 and the women of Texas are going to lead the way.”

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Jan. 6 committee drops subpoena for RNC fundraising data: reports

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is dropping its subpoena of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the software vendor Salesforce for information related to fundraising emails the party sent ahead of the attack, multiple media outlets reported. 

The Washington Post first reported on Friday that counsel for the RNC and Salesforce were notified this week that the committee is withdrawing the subpoena, deeming the information not necessary anymore at this stage of the investigation. 

“Given the current stage of its investigation, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has determined that it no longer has a need to pursue the specific information requested in the February 23, 2022 subpoena that it issued to Salesforce,” Douglas Letter, the House general counsel, wrote in an email to the RNC and Salesforce, according to the Post. 

Salesforce owns the platform that the RNC uses to fundraise. 

The House committee subpoenaed Salesforce for information related to RNC fundraising efforts in February, saying the committee and the Trump campaign solicited donations with unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by massive voter fraud. A Jan. 6 committee spokesperson said in March that the committee wanted to investigate the impact of false messages in the weeks leading up to the Capitol attack and where donations were directed.

The RNC filed a lawsuit to quash the subpoena in March, saying that it violated the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and did not “advance a legislative purpose.” A federal judge rejected the lawsuit in May, saying that it did not violate the RNC’s constitutional rights and that the select committee’s interest in obtaining the information outweighed any burden placed on the RNC. 

But an appeals court temporarily blocked the committee from obtaining the records later that month while the RNC challenged the subpoena. 

The decision comes as the select committee is expected to resume its public hearings on the insurrection later this month following a break. 

The select committee and RNC did not immediately return requests from The Hill for comment. A spokesperson for Salesforce declined to comment.

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Trump hits back at 'weak and pathetic RINO' Barr after comments defending DOJ

Former President Trump criticized his former Attorney General William Barr on Friday, calling him a “weak and pathetic RINO” after Barr defended the Justice Department (DOJ) in its search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents.

“Bill Barr had ‘no guts,’ and got ‘no glory,’ Trump said on his Truth Social platform. “He was a weak and pathetic RINO, who was so afraid of being Impeached that he became a captive to the Radical Left Democrats.”

The former attorney general told Fox News on Friday that the DOJ likely has “pretty good evidence” to have gone this far into its investigation of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Barr also said he could not think of a “legitimate reason” for Trump to have removed classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago residence.

The FBI executed a search warrant of Trump’s Florida home in early August, recovering dozens of what the Justice Department says are classified documents. 

Newly unsealed documents on Friday also revealed that the FBI found 43 empty folders with classified banners and 28 empty folders labeled “return to staff secretary/military aide.” The records were unsealed on Friday by a judge that is reviewing the former president’s request to have a third-party special master review the evidence obtained.

In his social media post, the former president also repeated accusations that Barr did not sufficiently fight for “election integrity.”

Trump has consistently made claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Barr was among several federal and state officials that said there was no substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud following President Biden’s 2020 win.

“Barr never fought the way he should have for Election Integrity, and so much else,” Trump added in his Truth Social post. “He started off OK as A.G., but faded fast – Didn’t have courage or stamina. People like that will never Make America Great Again!”

Source: TEST FEED1