Trump received 'undisclosed preferential treatment' on a $170 million loan from Deutsche Bank for his DC hotel, House Oversight Committee says

John Haltiwanger

Fri, October 8, 2021

The north entrance of the Trump International in Washington, DC. Mark Tenally/AP

• Deutsche Bank gave Trump "undisclosed preferential treatment" on a $170 million loan for his DC hotel, the House Oversight Committee said.

• The German bank allowed Trump to delay making principal payments on the loan, the committee said.

• "Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was President," the committee said.

Former President Donald Trump "received undisclosed preferential treatment" on a $170 million loan from the German financial institution Deutsche Bank on his Washington, DC, hotel that he "personally guaranteed," the House Oversight Committee said on Friday.

The committee's findings are based on documents obtained from the General Services Administration (GSA), a sprawling agency that helps keep the federal government running.

The documents show Deutsche Bank in 2018 provided Trump a "significant financial benefit" by permitting him to delay making principal payments on the loan for a six-year period, the committee said in a statement.

"Without this deferral, the hotel may have needed to pay tens of millions of additional dollars to Deutsche Bank at a time when it was already facing steep losses. Mr. Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was President," the committee said.

The statement also said that while Trump was president the Trump International Hotel received more than $3.7 million from foreign governments between 2017 to 2020, which raises "concerns about possible violations of the Constitution's Foreign Emoluments Clause."

Trump in financial disclosures reported over $150 million in income from the hotel.

But the hotel lost over $70 million between 2016 to 2020, the committee said, "leading the former President's holding company to inject at least $24 million to aid the struggling hotel."

The committee said that Trump "grossly exaggerated" the financial status of the hotel with "misleading" disclosures, and seemingly hid "potential conflicts of interest stemming not just from his ownership of this failing business but also from his roles as the hotel's lender and the guarantor of its third-party loans."

The Trump hotel in the nation's capital is located in the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion, and the GSA manages the lease. The House Oversight Committee said the GSA failed to comply with its investigation into the hotel during the Trump era, but "finally" produced a "subset of requested documents" in July.

Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney and subcommittee on government operations chairman Gerald Connolly sent a letter to the GSA requesting additional information.

"The documents provided by GSA raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump's lease with GSA and the agency's ability to manage the former President's conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant," the letter stated.

Collectively, the documents show "that far from being a successful investment, the Trump Hotel was a failing business saddled by debt that required bailouts from President Trump's other businesses," the letter went on to say.

Daniel Hunter, a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank, in a statement to Insider said, "The Committee's letter makes several inaccurate statements regarding Deutsche Bank and its loan agreement."

In response, a House Oversight spokesperson told Insider, "The Committee's letter merely highlighted what was written in audited financial statements that the Trump Organization provided to the federal government and certified as 'correct, accurate and complete.'"

"For example, on December 28, 2016, Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg submitted a copy of the Trump Hotel's audited financial statements certifying them to be correct," the spokesperson added. "The statement indicated that no principal payments were required 'until August 12, 2018.' The certified 2017 financial statement included the same information. The 2018 financial statement, however, stated that principal payments were not due 'until maturity,' which will be in 2024."

The spokesperson went on to say that if Trump believes "these financial statements are inaccurate, the Trump Organization has a duty to correct the certified statements it previously submitted" to the GSA.

Representatives for Trump and the GSA did not immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Trump's refusal to divest himself from his business empire while president raised myriad conflict of interest concerns. The former president broke from his predecessors by not placing his assets in a blind trust, and scoffed at calls to distance himself from his businesses.

In 2019, Trump called the emoluments clause "phony" as legal experts accused him of violating it.

The foreign emoluments clause is enshrined in Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8 of the US Constitution. The provision prohibits public officials from receiving gifts or cash from foreign governments without congressional approval.

It states: "No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

A New York Times review of Trump's tax returns released last year showed he earned $73 million in revenue from the Trump Organization's interests in foreign countries across the first half of his single-term presidency alone.

Additionally, there's a domestic emoluments clause that bars the president from receiving money from the US government other than an annual salary.

It states: "The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them."

In September 2020, The Washington Post reported that Trump's properties raked in $1.1 million in tax dollars from the Secret Service since he entered the White House.

Donald Trump’s endorsements are the latest example of his misogyny
Eric Garcia
Fri, October 8, 2021

Trump Rally (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Donald Trump may no longer be president, but for much of the GOP, especially those who wrongly believe the 2020 election was stolen from him, his endorsement essentially clears a GOP field. But his vanity means that he often endorses whoever heaps praise upon him in the most pathetic or obsequious ways, without considering whether the candidate is actually electable.

That impulse can cause headaches for Republicans and those close to him. The Associated Press reported that Trump has failed to properly vet Republican candidates with sordid histories with women that often include allegations of abuse. This includes former football player Herschel Walker, who Trump urged to run for Senate for months and froze out other likely more electable Georgia Republicans, and the AP revealed allegations that he threatened to kill his wife. Similarly, as his former press secretary, Stephanie Grisham has conducted her book tour, she has alleged that Max Miller, who worked in the administration with him, abused her even after she confided in Trump about it. Miller denies the claims and has filed a libel lawsuit against Grisham.

The slew of candidates with allegations of being abusive or generally terrible towards women prompted one Trump donor to tell the AP: “There is no vetting process – at least not on policy and electability.” But another theory might be that Trump hasn’t refrained from endorsing them because as a man who has consistently shown disdain for women who challenge him, misogyny is not a disqualifying factor.


During the first Republican primary debate, one of the first questions Megyn Kelly asked him was about his history of misogynistic comments, including “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals”. But rather than backing down from it, Trump retaliated by calling her a “bimbo” and said Kelly “had blood coming out of her eyes. Or blood coming out of her wherever.” Such crude comments would have in the past disqualified Republican politicians (indeed, Todd Akin, the former Republican Missouri Senate candidate who talked about “legitimate rape” and sunk his campaign was a political cautionary tale; he died this week ). But Trump faced no consequences; he still spouts nonsense on Fox News, while Kelly is no longer on the network.

Trump’s history of misogyny doesn’t need explaining, but he found that he would face no consequences for his poor treatment of women. He said Barack Obama “schlonged” Hillary Clinton, whom he called a “nasty woman”, and bragged about sexually assaulting women, infamously declaring on a leaked Access Hollywood tape, “when you’re a star, they let you do it”. After perfunctory Republican outrage, the party rallied around Trump and he won the presidency.

Similarly, he’s defended both friend and foe when they faced sexual assault allegations. When Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when they were younger, he not only supported Kavanaugh steadfastly (which helped the judge get confirmed), he mocked her at a rally with glee. If anything, Kavanaugh facing allegations likely made Trump more sympathetic to him because it reminded him of how multiple women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct of varying degrees.

Even when his opponent Joe Biden faced allegations of sexual assault, instead of using them to bludgeon Sleepy Joe, he empathised with Biden by saying “I’ve had many false accusations made” and that “And maybe it is a false accusation. Frankly, I hope it is for his sake.” For Trump, the impulse is to always side with men because he sees this as the way men should behave and to hold it against them is tantamount to criticising a man for what he considers normal conduct.

But not every candidate is a former reality television show host who was broadcast into people’s homes while he was cosplaying as a billionaire blowhard. Even after Trump’s election, Republican and Democratic men alike, from Roy Moore to Al Franken, have faced consequences for inappropriate behaviour that stems from male entitlement. If someone doesn’t have that wide name recognition, they won’t shake the allegations as easily as Trump did.

That may be the reason why Republicans are fretting that they might lose otherwise winnable races in Pennsylvania’s open Senate race – where Trump has backed Sean Parnell, whose wife requested restraining orders during their divorce – and in Georgia, where Republicans have a legitimate chance to beat Sen Raphael Warnock with a Republican candidate who doesn’t have a litany of allegations against him like Walker. Republicans’ unconditional loyalty to Trump now risks their otherwise winnable races.

But for Trump, loyalty to him precedes any other trait. In fact, if a Trump ally is accused of sexual misconduct, it’s an opportunity for the former president to declare a case of fake news. For Trump and the party he now dominates, dominance and a distaste for “political correctness” makes a candidate worthy of a MAGA endorsement.

Jim Acosta to Andrew Yang: What the Hell Were You Doing on ‘Tucker Carlson’?

Laura Bradley
Sat, October 9, 2021

CNN

Andrew Yang might be pitching himself as the guy to head up a new, more “inclusive” third party, but Jim Acosta had some questions about the entrepreneur-turned-politician’s methods during a CNN interview on Saturday afternoon. Specifically, he asked Yang to answer for his decision to appear on Tucker Carlson Today.

“Tucker Carlson... I mean, let’s just say he’s a bad person,” Acosta told Yang. “And he represents so much of what is wrong in television news these days. You know this all too well; he spouts off white nationalist talking points. So why would you even go on his show?”

During his appearance on Carlson’s daytime show, Yang discussed leaving the Democratic party to chart a new path—and Carlson responded by praising the Unabomber (admittedly a “bad person”) for his “smart analysis, I think, of the way systems work.”

“His argument is that large organizations over time morph into purely self-preservation projects,” Carlson continued. “A big system in the end protects itself and that’s kind of all it does.”

This prompted Acosta’s second question for Yang on Saturday: “Why didn’t you go after [Carlson] when he’s citing the Unabomber and just talking about crazy stuff?”

Yang’s response? He’s working to “take the temperature of the country down” by reaching across that proverbial aisle to meet folks “where they are.”

“As you know, Tucker commands a massive audience, and if you wanted to try and build a unifying popular movement that does call attention to the fact that our system’s not working, really, for anyone, you have to, again, reach out,” Yang continued.

“And that’s what I was doing on that show. I mean, the goal is to have Republicans who are discontent to channel their discontent in a positive way. And right now, in my view, it’s not going in a positive direction. I’d like to help change that.”

QAnon’s Deadly Price

LONG READ

Kevin T. Dugan
Sat, October 9, 2021

ROLLING STONE

q-anon-surfer-murder - Credit: Illustration by Brian Stauffer for Rolling Stone

The sun had only just risen over Rosarito, Mexico, on August 9th when a neighbor told Roberto Salinas Ramirez about the blood spattered across the dry creek outside his small pink home. Ramirez, 47, lives on a farm next to fields of tomatoes and lettuce, in full view of the mesa-colored Cerro el Coronel, the area’s largest mountain. It’s a quiet place, removed from the tourists who go to the oceanside restaurants and strip clubs in nearby Tijuana. Ramirez hadn’t heard anything the night before, but the neighbor looked shaken. So he went out with his son’s dog, a white mutt named Kobe, to investigate.

Ramirez unlatched the fence — four strands of barbed wire wrapped around wooden stakes — and first saw the blood over a patch of dried-out brush and rocks. There was more on the bushes farther in, so he went deeper, but didn’t find anything. “My eyes were set over there,” he tells me as we walk along the brush, pointing to the northern swoop of the creek. “I figured I would see a big body.” He didn’t see anyone on first inspection, but soon, Kobe was barking at something about 65 feet in. “Maybe I was nervous, but I couldn’t figure out if I saw two feet or three. So I got a little closer, and I realized it was two little children,” he says.

There they were, Kaleo, two, and Roxy, 10 months, hidden under the leaves of a willow shrub, their small, pale bodies lying on their sides, backs together, naked save for diapers.

This is the wreckage that Santa Barbara, California, surf instructor Matthew Taylor Coleman, the father of these two children, admitted to leaving behind in one of the most inexplicable and gruesome crimes in recent memory. Coleman, 40, was a staple of his community, an evangelical Christian who ran a surfing school and tutored Spanish, the kind of person who was known to comfort those who’d lost their own children. But when he was arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border just hours after the bodies were found, another side of him emerged. According to a federal criminal complaint, Coleman told an FBI agent he’d recently been “enlightened” by QAnon — the satanic panic that helped fuel the January 6th insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. His children, he said, had “serpent DNA” they’d inherited from his wife, and he was “saving the world from monsters.”

Coleman has since pleaded not guilty to two counts of foreign first-degree murder, setting up the deaths of these two children — and the basis for Coleman’s beliefs — to the scrutiny of prosecutors and internet conspiracy theorists alike. Already, online trolls have sought to undermine the story about Coleman’s history as a false flag, a planted piece of fake news by the powers that be to discredit a movement. But deeper concerns lay ahead. A third of Americans had once been open to believing that cabals of devil-worshipping elites, aided by “deep state” government officials, steal children and kill them for their blood, the basis of QAnon’s belief system — that has some eerie similarities to the crimes Coleman stands accused of.

Now, looming over Coleman’s prosecution is a bigger question of QAnon’s place in the American political order. Has the U.S. populace drifted so far from reality that QAnon is just another ideology, and Coleman was a true Q believer fully in command of his faculties? Or would only the criminally insane believe in the conspiracy so deeply that they’d act on it?

There should be a word for cities like Santa Barbara, these good-vibes enclaves with all the trappings of wealth — high art, second homes, a sense of outdoorsyness — but removed from the industries that created it. “The American Riviera” appears on the city’s tourist literature, and its outskirts are miles of beaches where surfers wade for hours and plovers peck for food in the sand. About two hours up the coast from LAX, Santa Barbara residents boast that the city of just more than 91,000 people is a welcoming community where everyone knows everyone, and it just so happens that Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and Prince Harry and Megan Markle live one town over. But it’s also a place with a dark undercurrent. The Ku Klux Klan burned crosses to keep Black residents out of white parts of town in the 1950s, and a restaurant called Sambo’s — which had displayed racist cartoon characters as decorations — only agreed to change its name last year. In 2014, a self-described incel killed six people and injured 14 more after online men’s rights groups radicalized his frustration over being single into a murderous rage.

Coleman in 2016

Coleman was born here in 1981. He’s the first biological child of John, owner of a carpet-cleaning business, and Lori, a potter; Michael, his older brother by about two years, was adopted. Known as Matty, Coleman had light shaggy hair and a wide smile that revealed a slight overbite — a trait inherited from his father. By most outside appearances, he had an idyllic childhood, with a home that was a regular spot for neighborhood kids to play Nintendo or climb up the treehouse out back. When they got older, they’d attempt ollies off a homemade skateboard ramp. “He always was popular, but he didn’t act like it. He acted very — I don’t know, the opposite of arrogant, he was humble,” a childhood friend, Adrian, tells me. (Like most people in this story, Adrian didn’t want his full name used, out of concern of social reprisal.) Adrian looked up to him as a role model, and recounted how, when they were seven or eight, Coleman helped him when he got stuck climbing the rickety ladder into the treehouse: “He wasn’t just making fun of me because I was stuck. He was like, ‘Oh, no, I can’t have Adrian be scared. Can’t have him be in danger.’ ”

Coleman’s biography, up until this August, is one that sticks out only for being so unremarkable. He surfed, he liked dirt bikes, he made friends with girls easily. He was sensitive; he told a friend he’d witnessed an act of animal abuse as a boy, and it had affected him deeply. At one point in his early teens, he seemed to push boundaries further than some other kids his age. Coleman was with another boy who tried to corner a girl in a room, in what the girl said was an act of “sexual harassment,” according to a friend told directly about the incident. While the source says the other boy was expelled, Coleman got off with writing an apology letter. When he got to high school, though, his interest in Christianity grew more intense, and he would routinely carry around a Bible in which he’d scribble in the margins. Not one of more than a dozen people who knew him during the next three decades could recall any violent or disturbing incidents. In his high school yearbook, his parents bought an ad. There are two pictures of him, one as a boy holding a stuffed monkey, the other nearer to graduation, with gelled hair and iced tips. “Matt, your name means Gift of God,” the ad reads. “We thank God for the gift of you.”

While Coleman grew up religious, Adrian recalled little, if any, Christian iconography in the house. (When I visited the home in September, there was a cross and a small poster with the word faith on it hanging in the living room, near pictures of Matt and Michael. John, their father, declined to comment.) Still, Matt’s faith seems to have become the central axis of his life. He went to an evangelical college in San Diego, where he surfed and went on missionary trips to Spain and Mexico. As he got older, he hopped from church to church, mentoring local kids in the Bible or helping with homework. “I always viewed him as just wanting to care for the kids. He just loved people and wanted to help people,” says Shoreline Community Church assistant pastor Jon Harris, who knew him for about eight years.

Even though friends recall him wanting a family and children back when he was a kid, it wasn’t until January 8th, 2017, that 36-year-old Coleman married Abby Droogsma, a Texas woman five years his junior, who he met through a church group. “It seemed fast,” Harris remembers of their courtship. “He desired it and wanted it. He was stoked to be with her.” Her social media shows she was into CrossFit and Christianity, a proud aunt to her siblings’ newborns, and for a few months, wrapped up in a multilevel marketing company that sold weight-loss powders and promises to get people out of debt. In one 2013 post about what she desired in a future husband, her interests were broad: “food (Mexican), music, alcohol,” the list starts. “Must hate the sin and love the sinner :)”

Soon after marrying, they rented a small blue ranch house off a cul-de-sac near Hendry’s Beach, a popular Santa Barbara surfing site. When I visited, a piece of wood covered a window, and another renter, who lived in the garage, refused to talk. In 2019, their son, Kaleo, was born. To the neighbors, Abby was warmer, quicker to chat, known to bring banana bread or trade gardening tips. After Roxy was born in late 2020, Abby would take the two kids out for walks and stop at a neighbor’s garden to play with the statues of flamingos, seals, raccoons, and other woodland creatures. “Every time she walked by with her kids, she would stop and talk, either coming or going,” says Richard, a neighbor across the street. As the adults chatted, the kids would play with the menagerie of animal statues on his front lawn and eat loquats, an apricot-like fruit, from his garden. “She was a good mom to those kids. She really watched over them, took care of them,” he says.

Whatever strains that may have come out during the pandemic weren’t clear to outside observers. Coleman’s surfing school, Lovewater — where Abby also sometimes worked — appeared to be doing better than ever. “He was the go-to person to do any kind of surf lessons in Santa Barbara County,” says Jethro Acosta, owner of the local dive shop Blue-water Hunter, who last saw Coleman just a few days before the killings. “I’m sure he was busy. And of course, after the whole Covid thing, he was probably triple-busy, because every parent is like, ‘What am I going to do with my kids? Oh, let’s call Matt.’ ”

There’s no formula for a filicide, no algorithm that leads a father to stab his children to death. QAnon, the Illuminati, lizard people — there are millions who believe theories like these and don’t commit crimes. By the time Coleman is said to have abducted and killed his children, nearly a year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic, these ideas were part of his world. Abby, for one, followed anti-vaxxer groups on Facebook that post lies about the danger of vaccines. A close member of her family spread the “Plandemic” video, which falsely claims the coronavirus outbreak was a political conspiracy, and stories claiming that “Satan has found a home in Dem party leadership.”

It was just after dawn on August 9th, 2021, when Roberto Salinas Ramirez found the bodies of Roxy and Kaleo near his home in Rosarito, Mexico. His son’s dog was barking at something several yards out: “I realized it was two little children.”

 - Credit: Kevin Dugan

Coleman’s own posts look ominous in retrospect, using language borrowed from Q-Anon’s “Great Awakening” — the idea that Donald Trump would make mass arrests of child abusers and usher in a new era — to describe the birth of his daughter last year. “While waiting for her to come, I kept feeling this sense that she was going to be born at a very pivotal time in history, and that she would represent a dawn, or even awakening, to years of great blessing for our family and nation,” he wrote in an Instagram post since taken down. For Coleman, these darker undercurrents that had apparently taken ahold of him weren’t visible in his day-to-day life. Friends have tried to reconcile the person they thought they knew with the man on the nightly news, and still come up short, relying on half-remembered stories to make sense of the senseless. For his part, Coleman remains in federal custody, and his lawyer didn’t respond to questions sent by Rolling Stone.

Still, Coleman is a case study in how enmeshed QAnon has become into the fabric of American life during the pandemic — and how it can be more insidious than other kinds of conspiracies. “QAnon is really interesting because it serves as a master conspiracy-theory belief into which lots of other beliefs can feed,” says Philip Corlett, an associate professor at Yale University’s Department of Psychology, and an expert on paranoia and conspiracy theories. The conspiracy’s adherents easily incorporate related theories, like the anti-Semitic belief that elites are secretly lizard people from space, or that 9/11 was an inside job, because of how wide-ranging they are, he says. It’s also spurred a growing number of murders. Earlier this year, one Kentucky woman allegedly killed a man who was giving her legal advice, after believing he had joined forces with the government in a custody battle; in 2020, a Q-obsessed Staten Island man was charged with killing a reputed Gambino-family crime boss to reportedly “save the American way of life.” And in a case that more closely resembles Coleman’s, one California mother admitted to drowning her three children because she felt powerless to stop them from being sex-trafficking victims.

Part of what has made QAnon and other all-encompassing conspiracies so hard to pin down is that elements of them have long been widespread. “Calling something a delusion versus a conspiracy theory is a normative claim,” Corlett says. “You can find people who have as many weird beliefs as patients with schizophrenia, and who endorse them with a similar degree of conviction, but it’s very rare to find a person who is deeply into conspiracy theories who is as distressed by them as patients with schizophrenia.”

In Santa Barbara, where evangelical Christians make up a small but influential minority, QAnon has been spreading among the faithful. “It’s everywhere,” Pastor Harris says. But it’s not just a local phenomenon. QAnon has had a hold on white evangelical communities, in part because of its apocalyptic message, and the focus on Trump as a messianic figure who will usher in a new era, says Dr. Jason A. Springs, a professor of religion at the University of Notre Dame. “QAnon is a conspiracy theory that really is, in its contours, tailor-made to attract certain tendencies in white evangelicalism,” he says. He also believes the marriage between the Christian right and Republican politics — particularly the grievances about the shrinking white, Christian population — made it propulsive in the past few years: “The fact that the QAnon conspiracy theories and white evangelicalism are infused with Republicanism, the fact that Donald Trump is a Republican president — and he is so extremely brash and tries to fight against political norms of propriety — it just ramps up the attraction.”

In the wake of the killings, there has been a sense of reckoning, with pastors at some of the more conservative churches coming out in force against QAnon. “It’s a betrayal of God’s goodness, and God’s hope, and God’s hope for families,” Pastor Tommy Schneider of the Calvary Chapel Santa Barbara said in a sermon after Coleman was arrested.

But attitudes toward these conspiracy theories — maybe because they are so endemic among evangelicals — were sometimes equivocal. “I’ve talked with people about conspiracy theories and things like that, but whether it’s a conspiracy theory or not, it’s ultimately what somebody wants to believe, or believes to be true,” Harris said. “I have friends that are conspiracy theorists of the military jets that fly over with the chemtrails. That’s true to them. Whether that’s true to me, it’s neither here nor there.”

Ramirez has since erected a memorial. 

- Credit: Kevin Dugan

Coleman awaits trial at an undisclosed federal prison in Southern California. As of publication, his only public statements since his arrest have been rote answers to a judge, affirming procedural questions about understanding the charges against him, entering his plea. While he has reportedly undergone a psychiatric exam, it’s not clear if he will use insanity as a defense. If he does, it would be a significant challenge for his legal team, says Heather Cucolo, co-owner and partner at Mental Disability Law and Policy Associates, and a New York Law School professor. Standing in the way is the Insanity Defense Reform Act, a Reagan-era law that restricted a federal insanity defense to those with “severe” mental illness, after a jury found John Hinckley Jr. not guilty of attempting to assassinate the president by reason of insanity. “The purpose was to make it significantly more difficult to get a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity,” Cucolo says.

The set of allegations in the court documents “makes you think about the kind of classic mentally ill parent who kills their child,” says Dr. Ziv Cohen, a forensic psychologist who has focused on conspiracy theories. “But it’s also possible he does not have a severe mental illness, and he just became so wrapped up in conspiratorial thinking that he appeared like a psychotic person, but he wasn’t. He was really just wrapped up in conspiratorial beliefs and acted on that.”

Working against Coleman is an apparent admission in the federal complaint. “They asked him straight out, ‘Did you know what you did was wrong?’ He said yes,” Cucolo says. “It would seem that the cards are stacked against him.”

Even with his admission, however, there are still outstanding questions about what actually happened on the Mexican ranch that night. Ramirez, the man who found the bodies, says he called 911 around 7:30 that morning, and told authorities that he’d found two American children — he knew because they were so blond. Roxy and Kaleo had bruising on their faces, he says, and each had a single stab wound in their backs about “this size” — making a circle with his forefinger and thumb — the diameter of a bloody stake he found nearby, torn from the barbed-wire fence.

Official reports from Mexican and U.S. officials not only contradict each other, but also Ramirez’s account. According to the attorney general of Baja California in Mexico, Roxy was stabbed 12 times in the chest, while Kaleo was stabbed 17 times. The FBI doesn’t enumerate the stab wounds, but says that Coleman admitted to “using a spear-fishing gun, piercing [Roxy] in the heart.” The complaint is also unclear on whether Coleman used the same method to kill his son, but says that he “described that he had to move the spear around [to kill Kaleo], thereby cutting his hand in the process.” Ramirez also believes they were naked when they were killed, and says he was told later by Mexican authorities that the clothes didn’t have blood on them — contradicting the FBI complaint saying that Coleman admitted to throwing away “bloody clothes.”

It’s also unclear what happened the night of the alleged abduction. According to the complaint, after Coleman took the two kids in his Mercedes Sprinter van on August 7th, Abby called 911 to say she was concerned he’d left for an unknown destination without a car seat for their youngest, and wasn’t answering texts — but said that she wasn’t worried about their safety. (In another apparent contradiction, a surveillance still from the hotel where they stayed shows Coleman holding a car seat that appears to be too small for Kaleo.) Neighbors tell me they didn’t hear any fighting or anything else unusual that night, and Abby said as much during the call with police. The next day, she followed up with the Santa Barbara Police Department and an officer came to her home, where they used the Find My iPhone app to locate his last known location — a mall in Rosarito, Mexico. The SBPD won’t release the recording of the 911 call, or even the time or location of the calls, citing the ongoing investigation. The DOJ refused to answer questions about the case. Abby, for her part, didn’t return a request for comment. Her family has since raised more than $113,000 in a GoFundMe drive.

After the news about Coleman’s arrest first broke, many of the largest right-wing news outlets have opted not to cover the case, or downplayed Coleman’s belief in QAnon. While the conspiracy’s die-hards tend to incorporate contravening facts as proof of their beliefs, the blackout is also a missed opportunity for a larger reevaluation of the QAnon movement. “So long as Trumpism is there to fuel it, and there are people benefiting from this politically and religiously, I don’t think we’re close to the end,” Springs says. “Insofar as white evangelicals hope to deal with this, they need to come to terms with some of the tendencies that have made this affinity and connection between evangelicalism and the QAnon conspiracy so fruitful.”

Ramirez says he couldn’t sleep for two weeks after he found the bodies. He’s since put up crosses in the ground where he found Roxy and Kaleo, their names written in black marker, and is finally able to sleep. He’s planning on laying cement over the area to create a permanent memorial, in case the family ever wants to see the site, though only reporters and authorities have visited.

“It was the saddest day of my life,” he says of finding the children’s bodies. “That bastard. Why didn’t he just leave them with me? I would have taken them. Even if they were just naked, I would have taken them, without anything.”

Let's talk about sex, habibi!

Throughout the Middle East, sex education is slowly becoming less of a taboo. On social media, millions are daring to ask everything about "it."

Nour Emad is a trained doula who is soon to launch the first sex education

 school in the Middle East

Traditionally, in most Middle Eastern countries, "it" is expected to happen on the wedding night for the first time.

"But for most women, this is also the first time they are naked in front of anyone and the first time they see a penis in real life," Nour Emam, who runs Arab-English sex education courses, told DW.

One doesn't have to be a psychologist to see that this could be more conducive to disaster than to romance and intimacy. 

For this reason, one of Emad's online courses is aimed at women who are about to get married. "We kind of walk them through the bodies and genitals and encourage them to talk to their partners before they tie the knot," Emam explained.

She believes it is crucial to address the expectations of both partners. "For years and years, young girls are told that sex is something dirty, so they are scared and possibly not ready for penetration on their wedding night," Emam said. But "on the other hand, many men can't wait to live out all their teenage porn fantasies now that they are finally allowed to have sex."

However, instead of encountering well-staged porn stars, men (mostly) face normal women. "We've heard a lot of stories of men shaming women on the wedding night for the way they look," Emam told DW and explained that "pink vulvas have become some sort of ideal. But I tell the women, how can you expect to be like brown-skinned, but under your belly button, it's pink?"

The Arab-English content is hugely popular on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook

It would seem that Emam's courses and online answers have hit a nerve: In her closed online courses, she has taught around 2,000 women about menstrual health, vaginism or sexually transmitted diseases, and her social media channels have garnered some 1.4 million followers within a year: on Facebook with around 18,000 followers, Instagram with 308,000 followers and TikTok  with 1.1 million followers.

Sex education frowned upon

Public sex education has up to now been extremely limited in the majority of Middle Eastern countries.

In Egypt, health professionals and population specialists have opposed comprehensive education about sexuality since the 1990s. They argue that anything containing the word "sexual" should be described in more culturally acceptable terms, like "reproductive health" or "human development."

In addition, many Egyptian families believe to this day that sex education is synonymous with promiscuity and that by providing information to children, educators are teaching them how to indulge in sex before marriage.

Confidence is sexy — a claim by This is Mother Being

One particularly negative aspect of this high level of sexual illiteracy is that sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS are still taboo subjects, despite rising numbers of these illnesses.

"Egypt's response to the symptoms of a sexually uneducated community has failed miserably," Habiba Abdelaal, fellow of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and an expert on sexual and gender-based violence in Egypt, told DW.

Safe spaces for sex education

Egypt's Nour Emad is not the only one campaigning for sexual literacy in the Arab world.

Another popular  Instagram page is "Niswa" (Arabic for "women"), which was founded by Zainab Alradhi from Saudi Arabia. It has around 60,000 followers.

A pan-Arab women initiative is "Mauj" (Arabic for "waves"), which is run by women from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This site by and for Arab women with around 65,000 followers focuses on sexual and reproductive wellness.

Another site with Arabic-language content on sexual health and well-being is Love Matters Arabic, which has a following of around 80,000.

Deemah Salem, a gynecologist in Dubai, is also working to educate Arab women about sex. "I've made it a mission to debunk myths about women's health because some can lead to harmful practices," she told the online news outlet Arab News. Her Instagram channel has almost 18,000 followers.

As the first Arab country to do so, Tunisia launched a pilot program on sex education in late 2019. In collaboration with the UN Population Fund and the Arab Institute for Human Rights, public schools there have since included sex education in their curriculums.

"Establishing sex education programs does not require reinventing the wheel," Abdelaal told DW.

However, although she sees and appreciates that there are many successful small-scale private initiatives addressing sexual literacy, she believes a more profound, public approach is needed: "Schools need supportive policies, appropriate content, trained staff and engaged parents and communities to tackle sexual illiteracy."

INTERSECTIONALITY

Lashana Lynch on making history as 007

in No Time to Die

PUBLISHED A DAY AGO
ASSOCIATED PRESS


She is the first Black woman to play a 00 agent in the six decades of James Bond movies.



Lashana Lynch was in stunt training when she found out she was going to play a 00 agent in the James Bond film No Time to Die.

Lynch had already been cast by director Cary Joji Fukunaga and the producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. But who she was to play had remained a mystery to her. She was doing her best to prep for an undetermined but apparently butt-kicking role.

“Nothing made sense. I’m plunged into stunts and they’re teaching me everything under the sun,” Lynch said in an interview. “And I’m like: Why are you teaching me this? What does it mean?”

Instead, Lynch just heard bits and pieces as she went. It felt, she says, like a TV series that carefully reveals a little each episode. Only when she was in the midst of summersaulting and firing fake guns did the full reveal come. Lynch would be the first Black woman to play a 00 agent in the six decades of James Bond movies.

Not only that, Lynch’s character, Nomi, takes the codename 007, with Daniel Craig’s James Bond AWOL and out of the British Secret Service.

“Auditioning for a mysterious film and a mysterious character turned into a possible Bond film and mysterious character,” Lynch recalls. “That turned into definite Bond film and the possibility of someone entering and creating a really beautiful storm.”

No Time to Die, which opened in US theatres on Friday, is Craig’s fifth and final performance as the super spy. But the film, perhaps more than any previous Bond movie, derives much of its punch from its women. That includes Léa Seydoux, as Bond’s most lasting romance and a character with her own complicated history, and Ana de Armas, in a brief but action-packed appearance.

Lynch’s role, though, is a landmark in the franchise. With that history has come a brighter spotlight than ever before on the 33-year-old British Jamaican actor, who played a single-mother fighter pilot in Captain Marvel. Lynch has been widely celebrated for expanding the historically homogenous world of Bond in a role that — like others who have brought wider representation to decades-old franchises — has also brought online hostility. When news first leaked in 2019 that Lynch would be 007, her Instagram lit up with racist and misogynistic comments.

“I was reminded of the institution that I was walking into and the world that doesn’t support people like me, necessarily,” Lynch says. “Once I got through that initial reaction, I plunged straight into work. I turned that energy into stunts, into filming, into spending time with family and also reevaluating how I use my phone. I now put them in cupboards. I take two-hour breaks.”

“It’s something that should always be brought up,” she adds of the response. “Young people need to hear it.”

Lynch first caught Broccoli’s attention in Debbie Tucker Green’s Ear for Eye, a play at the Royal Court that Broccoli produced. Lynch was part of a largely Black ensemble that give individual testimonies of bias they experience in their lives.

“I was just blown away by her,” says Broccoli, who also produced an upcoming film adaptation of Ear for Eye, co-starring Lynch, premiering Oct. 16 at the London Film Festival. “She’s an extraordinary, beautiful, talented actor. She seemed an obvious choice for Nomi, the 00 character. I think she’s a big star.”

Before Craig took over Bond, Lynch says, she had had little relationship to the Bond films. But being invited to audition, she says, made her feel she was maybe entering the franchise at the right time.

“As a Black Londoner, I didn’t have the opportunity to be able to connect to James Bond in a way that made sense,” says Lynch. “Now, Daniel Craig entering the franchise and making him raw and dark and dangerous — I questioned his trauma for the first time — it really got me intrigued about how the new characters in the franchise respond to him.”

In No Time to Die, Bond eventually returns to the service where he’s surprised to learn his trademark number has been taken. What follows between him and Nomi is part rivalry, part partnership. Nomi asserts herself, with proud confidence and moments of uncertainty. Bond adapts to her. To Lynch, she’s most proud of how Nomi’s strength doesn’t also come with vulnerability.

“Like a lot of us, it’s always a front. It’s a front just to be in the world,” Lynch says of Nomi’s posture. “I want there to be a really natural, realistic and easy influence on our young people in that when talking about ‘strong Black women,’ we don’t just assume that their strength fell out of the sky and landed in their brain.”

US Postal Service hit with lawsuit over DeJoy's plan to slow delivery of first-class mail

Charles Davis
Fri, October 8, 2021

United States Postal Service workers load mail into delivery trucks 

outside a post office in Royal Oak, Michigan. 

REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

The lawsuit demands public hearings be held on proposed changes at USPS.

Beginning this month, USPS began slowing the delivery of first-class mail.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have signed on to a lawsuit.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have signed on to a lawsuit that accuses the US Postal Service of pursuing "significant and nationwide changes" without proper consultation, CBS News reported Friday.

Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, USPS has abandoned its commitment to delivering first-class mail in three days or less.

Beginning October 1, such mail can now take up to five days to be delivered, part of what DeJoy bills as a 10-year plan to cut costs. The change will delay an estimated 39% of first-class mail and periodicals.

In their complaint, the attorneys general for Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and other Democratic-led states argue that DeJoy's plan should not have been adopted without first requesting the opinion of the Postal Regulatory Commission, an advisory body that would hold public hearings. The commission has previously expressed concern over the proposal to delay mail delivery.

Without such a consultative process, USPS is violating federal statute, the attorneys general argue, and diminishing "the Postal Service's transparency and accountability."

In January, 21 attorneys general issued a joint statement arguing that DeJoy's proposed changes would harm rural communities and, in particular, threaten the timely delivery of mail-in ballots.

WHITE PURITY PATROL

Virginia School Board ‘Wokeness Checker’ Wants Toni Morrison Banned for ‘Porn’


Zoe Richards
Fri, October 8, 2021

Facebook/Victoria Manning

A school board member who runs a “wokeness checker” snitch site has pressed a Virginia school district to purge six books from its shelves, alleging that the books—including a seminal Toni Morrison novel—are rife with “pornographic” content.

In an email sent to Virginia Beach City Public Schools Superintendent Aaron Spence earlier this week, at-large school board member Victoria Manning said that another board member, Laura Hughes, joined her in demanding four books be removed from circulation or use in the district’s curriculum “due to their pornographic nature.”

“It has been brought to my attention by some parents that there are some disturbing books in our district that are available to students,” Manning wrote on Oct. 5. “I would like to ask that you pull these books from shelves and also block any electronic access by students to getting these books IMMEDIATELY.”

Manning demanded that staff involved in approving the books be disciplined. Spence replied that four of the books that were not a part of district curriculum had been removed, pending a review.

Far-Right Group Wants to Ban Kids From Reading Books on Male Seahorses, Galileo, and MLK

The list of “disturbing” titles included Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

According to Spence, Manning had also separately requested the review of two other books, Beyond Magenta and Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook.

The review, first reported by The Virginian-Pilot, comes weeks after another Virginia district, Fairfax County Public Schools, pulled two books attacked by Manning from high school libraries after complaints at a school board meeting about sexually explicit and “homoerotic” content.

The emails were made available through a public records request and later obtained by The Daily Beast.

Manning said in her Oct. 5 email, that she had “skimmed” through Lawn Boy, and alleged that the graphic novel Gender Queer depicted people performing oral sex and discussing masturbation “and many other things that I don’t feel comfortable mentioning.”

Both Lawn Boy and Gender Queer were recognized by the American Library Association as texts with “special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.”

After reeling off other complaints about the books, she took aim at A Lesson Before Dying, which addresses racism and racial identity in 1940s Louisiana, and was approved for use in 11th grade curriculum. It needed to be booted because it included a scene of a “couple getting undressed,” and moving on from there, she wrote.

Although Manning admitted she had not read The Bluest Eye or confirmed its contents “firsthand,” she said she was convinced by the accounts of others that the text was unfit for 12th graders.

“I have not been able to get a copy of this book in my hands but I should be able to get a copy by tomorrow to confirm what is in it,” Manning wrote at the time.

After quoting one line she had heard that made references to sexual desire, Manning said: “I’ve been told there is much more and although I have not confirmed this firsthand but I believe this should be removed from our curriculum and shelves immediately pending review.”

Morrison’s text is a frequent target of book banning, and routinely appears on the ALA’s list of the most challenged books because it was “considered sexually explicit and depicts child sex abuse.”

Spence told The Daily Beast on Friday that the outrage over the books was unwarranted.

Concerns from parents are supposed to be turned over to the superintendent to resolve, Spence said, but he noted that he had not seen complaints from parents about the texts and he was not aware of a challenge to the books at a district-level since he became superintendent in 2014.

“I’ve only heard through these board members,” he said, adding that the books were neither widely available nor frequently checked out.

“We had one copy of Lawn Boy and it has never been checked out,” he said. He had also looked into copies of Gender Queer and located a copy of the book in three high school libraries. There are 11 high schools in the district, according to the district’s website.

“It had only been checked out one time in one of the schools,” he said. “So this isn’t a rampant issue.”

In a series of emails to the board, Spence said that four of the books challenged by the women had been brought to the school board’s attention and were removed from student circulation last month for review, as part of its policy when a book is challenged.

He said that the book Gender Queer had “been permanently removed from our shelves,” while staff were directed to use the district’s formal review process to decide the fate of the other books, a process which involves a committee reading the book and convening to discuss concerns over its obscenities, age appropriateness, and academic freedom.

Books that landed in the district’s libraries and that were included in curriculum were “vetted carefully” by library media specialists who also consulted recommendations from national professional organizations and were expected to follow guidelines outlined in the school district’s policies on selection of media and teaching materials, Spence said.

He cautioned that “wholesale decisions based on the positions of some stakeholders do not necessarily represent the thinking of all or serve the best interests of our students as a whole.”

Manning fired back in an email on Oct. 7, that after finally acquiring a copy of The Bluest Eye, she was disgusted within the first few pages. She said she was disturbed by the review process for the books, alleging that making the material available to children “could be against the law.”

“What one person finds offensive, others may not,” Spence wrote back. “That’s why we have this process.”

On a personal website linked from her school board campaign Facebook page, Manning writes that she had been “made aware” by conservative media outlets, including The Daily Wire, to be “on the lookout for sexually explicit materials in our schools.”

The website includes a page, entitled “Wokeness Checker,” where Manning declares that “Wokeness and Critical Race Theory (CRT) practices are becoming embedded in our nation's schools, including here in Virginia Beach.”

The page provides a link for visitors to submit documents related to CRT in Virginia Beach schools.

Declining to comment about Manning specifically, Spence told The Daily Beast that he has witnessed a clear, politically motivated effort to “conflate” even unrelated topics with critical race theory.

“It would be great if those conversations were a little more civil and evidence-based,” he said.

Manning also represents herself as a kind of whistleblower on classroom discussions about race, posting videos on Rumble, including one where she said was “disgusted and appalled” after reading The Racial Healing Handbook, which she claimed had been read by a group of teachers in Virginia Beach last year as part of a monthly book study.

In March, she made an appearance on “Fox and Friends,” accusing teachers of disguising critical race theory in classrooms under notions of equity and “culturally responsive practices.”

“Our students and our teachers are being taught that our country is innately racist, and students and teachers are being pitted against one another based on their skin color,” she said at the time.


Hughes and Manning did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Friday but Manning shared a lengthy statement on Facebook slamming The Virginian-Pilot’s story which she said “makes it seem like I’m a book burner.”

“The VA Pilot published a one-sided article about me regarding the pornographic and sexually explicit books with pedophilia that I exposed,” she wrote. “I just don’t want our children exposed to this sick pornography.”

The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) included A Lesson Before Dying and The Bluest Eye on its list of the Top Ten Banned Books that Changed the Face of Black History.

In a letter to a school board in Alabama that was weighing a similar decision to ban the book last year, the NCAC defended the text. “Precluding students from reading literature with sexual references and language that some find objectionable would deprive them of exposure to vast amounts of important material,” NCAC executive editor Joan Bertin and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression president Chris Finan wrote. They cited as examples, the Bible and works by Shakespeare, in addition to texts written by celebrated American authors John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

In 2009, Gaines’ book was also awarded the ALA’s distinction of “Outstanding Books for the College Bound and Lifelong Learners.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrats ask Biden to release memo detailing his power to cancel student loan debt



Chelsey Cox, USA TODAY
Fri, October 8, 2021

WASHINGTON — Eighteen members of Congress, led by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., signed a letter Friday addressed to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona urging the release of a memo on the administration's authority over student loan debt cancellation.

"Decades ago, Congress voted to authorize the executive branch to cancel federal student loans. Federal student debt can be canceled with the 'flick of your pen.' This authority is already being put to use, as it is currently being used to cancel the interest owed on all federally-held student loans," the members wrote.

The Education Department has already forgiven debt for a select group of borrowers — including 1,800 victims of for-profit college fraud and borrowers with disabilities. The administration also introduced a sweeping overhaul of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and extended a pause on loan repayments until the end of January 2022 amid the pandemic.


But Democrats in Congress argue Biden can eliminate student loan debt with an executive order. Not doing so, they say, will perpetuate racial and economic inequality.

Student loan debt affects Black borrowers disproportionately compared to white, Asian and Latino borrowers. Black borrowers also earn less over time and are less likely to pay off their debt and most likely to fall behind on payments.

"With a single signature, you can improve the economy, create new jobs, transform the lives of 45 million Americans, narrow the racial wealth gap, and maintain the trust of voters," the members wrote.

Months ago, progressives pushed for forgiveness on at least $50,000 for borrowers, but the letter released Friday calls for total student loan debt cancellation.

"Now it is time for you to honor your campaign pledge and use this authority to cancel all student debt," the letter states.

Biden pledged to cancel $10,000 in debt for all borrowers during the 2020 presidential campaign. And earlier this year, he asked the Justice and Education Departments to produce a memo on the president's authority to cancel student loan debt. Neither department has released findings.

According to the letter, members of the House and Senate say Biden is authorized to broadly cancel debt through section 432(a) of the Higher Education Act, which says the Secretary of Education can "enforce, pay, compromise, waive, or release any right" to collect on federal loans.

In 2019, Omar, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., introduced the Student Debt Cancellation Act to cancel all public and private student loan debt.

Nearly 44 million Americans owe about $1.7 trillion in student loans, according to Federal Reserve data.

Reach out to Chelsey Cox on Twitter at @therealco.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: House Democrats send letter to Biden administration on student loans