Airbnb Fined for Violating the US Embargo on Cuba

 January 3, 2022

Photo: Ernesto Verdecia

Por El Toque

HAVANA TIMES – The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced that Airbnb Payments, owned by Airbnb, agreed to remit $91,172.29 “to settle its possible civil liability for apparent violations of the sanctions against Cuba.”

The note from the agency belonging to the US Treasury Department reports that “this activity included payments related to guests traveling for reasons outside of the authorized categories of OFAC, as well as failing to keep certain mandatory records associated with transactions related to Cuba.”

The 12 categories of authorized trips to Cuba are: family visits; Official business of the United States government, foreign governments, and certain intergovernmental organizations; journalistic activity; professional research and professional meetings; educational activities; religious activities; public performances, clinics, workshops, athletic and other competitions and exhibitions; support for the Cuban people; humanitarian projects; activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes; export, import or transmission of information or informational materials; and certain authorized export transactions.

At the urging of OFAC, Airbnb conducted a review based on a sample of transactions by stays (accommodation of travelers by Airbnb ‘hosts’) and ‘experiences’ (traveler activities provided by Airbnb hosts) in Cuba. This control showed that between September 28, 2015, and March 1, 2020, Airbnb processed payments related to 3,464 transactions of stays in Cuba by Airbnb guests who traveled for reasons outside the authorized categories.

The average transaction amount for each stay was $139.52. Airbnb also processed payments related to 3,076 transactions for Experiences in which Airbnb Payments did not keep records in accordance with OFAC regulations. The average transaction amount processed for each Experience was $78.40.

Airbnb stated that it took steps to correct its enforcement deficiencies and, as part of its agreement with OFAC, implement additional commitments designed to minimize the risk of a similar violation in the future. These include:

– An IP blocking regime to consider problems related to allowing people located in Cuba to act as hosts on the Airbnb, Inc. platform, at the same time as preventing these people from conducting transactions as guests on the platform;

– The compilation of information on the country of residence and the payment instrument, in order to determine whether the users are nationals or residents of Cuba;

– A review of Hosts in Cuba to ensure that no Hosts are officials of the Cuban government or members of the Communist Party, and also perform manual checks to ensure that there are no publications associated with the Cuba Restricted List;

– Require Guests who book a Stay or Experience to complete a certification before completing the process; and

– Require that users who include a property in Cuba as a Host on the Airbnb, Inc. platform certify that they are independent entrepreneurs.

Background

Airbnb has been enabled in Cuba since April 2015. In just hours, nearly a thousand ads from landlords across the country appeared, most of them in Havana.

Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s former deputy national security adviser and political analyst, commented on Twitter that the OFAC fine involves “denying US citizens the ability to directly bring income to Cubans and build connections between our people.”

Rhodes pointed to the contradiction in the fact that “allowing more US citizens to travel to Cuba was a policy that many members of Biden’s team helped design in 2015.”

In November 2020, it became known that OFAC was investigating Airbnb activities in Cuba to review compliance with the US sanctions against the island.

“Depending on OFAC’s assessment of its Cuba review, we could be subject to potentially significant civil monetary penalties and litigation, and our brand and reputation could be adversely affected,” the company said at the time.

Airbnb in Cuba in figures*

$40 million paid to Cuban people to share their home, between 2015 and 2017

33 nights is the average number of nights that Cuban hosts share their space per year

$164 is the average amount paid per reservation to a Cuban host

The average age of Cuban hosts is 43.

$2,700 is the average annual payment for a Cuban host

58% of Cuban Airbnb hosts are women

*Figures from 2019

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

CALIFORNIA

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez to Resign, Assume Union Leadership Role

NBC 7
Lorena Gonzalez

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Monday announced she is resigning her 80th District seat for a leadership position at the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO.

The San Diego Democrat's last day representing the district — which encompasses the southern part of San Diego and most of Chula Vista and National City — will be Wednesday.

Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, announced on Twitter Saturday that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. NBC 7's Catherine Garcia reports.

In a statement to her Assembly colleagues during Monday's floor session, Gonzalez said she looks forward to continuing her efforts in organized labor after eight years with the 80th District. She said will be preparing to lead the 2.1 million-member state labor federation as its executive secretary-treasurer in July 2022.

"As a legislator and as a labor leader, my top priority has been to create opportunities that lead to more jobs, better jobs and better lives for working people," Gonzalez said. "It's been an honor to serve the people of San Diego County and the entire state as a lawmaker who tried to accomplish the most amount of good for the most amount of people."

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Los Angeles, said her passion and work ethic would be missed in Sacramento.

"Lorena can be depended upon to stick to her commitments and to be absolutely forthright in expressing her values," Rendon tweeted. "Her devotion to the working people of California is unmatched.

"She stood as a lightning rod on many issues, and I admired how she weathered the storms," he said. "Asm. Gonzalez has very understandable personal and professional reasons to make this change at this time, and I hope her colleagues and constituents will all join me in supporting her as she does so. We will miss her."

Gonzalez had a productive tenure in the Assembly, including passing legislation intended to secure sick leave for the state's workers, overtime for farm workers, protecting janitorial staff from sexual assault and providing basic labor protections to professional cheerleaders.

Perla Hernandez, a San Jose Burger King worker and leader in the Fight for $15 and a Union, released a statement on the assemblywoman.

"Throughout her career, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez has been a champion for California's fast-food workers, standing with us in our historic fight for $15 and a union and standing up to big corporations who try to silence us," she wrote.

"As working people across California seize our power and demand a seat at the table, Assemblywoman Gonzalez is the right person at the right time to build a worker-powered movement to secure racial and economic justice for every Californian."

In 2019, Gonzalez passed AB 5, a law intended to protect workers against misclassification and wage theft, and one that has drawn particular ire from right wing-leaning organizations since it went into law.

In 2021, she passed legislation to ensure employers in California can be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison for engaging in intentional wage theft, and authored the nation's first law establishing worker protections against Amazon's warehouse production quotas.

Additionally, Gonzalez became the first Latina to chair the Assembly Appropriations Committee and oversaw the deliberations of 14 suspense files since 2016. She was the longest serving chair of that committee. Gonzalez also served as chairwoman of the California Latino Legislative Caucus in 2019-

"We've done a lot. But, the most direct way we can truly improve the lives of Californians is to empower them at work," Gonzalez said. "No law is ever as powerful as a union contract. It's in that spirit that I'm continuing my service to strengthen the labor movement in our Golden State."

Gonzalez announced in August that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which her husband, San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chairman Nathan Fletcher, described as stage 0, but was "also aggressive and hormone positive" and required "aggressive treatment" because her mother developed breast cancer at age 44 and died at age 62.

In September, Lorena Gonzalez announced she had returned home after undergoing a bilateral mastectomy and there is "no cancer left."

Gonzalez at the time described herself as "exhausted and sore" and "hopeful." She tweeted that she was "eternally grateful to the world's best husband /caretaker who hasn't left my side,"

Another factor in her decision may have been the recent redistricting, which has placed Gonzalez into the 79th Assembly District with freshman legislator Dr. Akilah Weber, D-La Mesa, who took the office in a special election in April. Gonzalez has also served eight years in the Assembly. Legislators in that body are legally restricted to 12 years over a lifetime.

In November, conservative group Reform California filed an ethics complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission demanding an immediate investigation and enforcement actions be taken against Gonzalez following a Politico story with "employment negotiations" between her and the California Labor Federation.

"While she should have been serving only the interest of her constituents, Lorena Gonzalez has broken all ethical norms by negotiating a sweetheart employment opportunity with a powerful special interest group while doing their bidding in the Assembly," said Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California.

Prior to being elected to the Assembly, Gonzalez was a labor leader, attorney and organizer, serving as the first woman and first person of color to be elected CEO and secretary-treasurer for the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, AFL-CIO.

In Gonzalez' former district, former San Diego City Council President Georgette Gomez has announced her campaign for Assembly.

"We're facing incredible challenges and it's more important than ever to elect leaders we can count on to put working people first, not special interests," Gomez said.

"I'm running to make a real difference for families struggling with healthcare, childcare, and skyrocketing housing costs, as well as build on Assemblywoman Gonzalez's remarkable legacy.

"From expanding affordable housing to taking on corporate polluters to protect our health and climate, my life's work has been fighting for a better San Diego for all and that's what I'll fight for in the state assembly," she said.

Copyright CNS - City News Service

The US Should Act With Humanity In The Assange Case: AMLO


Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. | Photo: Twitter/ @SomersetBean

Published 3 January 2022

The Mexican President urged Biden to respect the fundamental rights of the Australian activist, whom is accused of publishing the U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

On Monday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) revealed that he asked former U.S. President Donald Trump to exempt WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in late 2020 when Trump had the authority to do so because he was about to leave office.

"Trump never considered nor answered my request," AMLO condemned and urged President Joe Biden’s administration to respect the fundamental rights of the Australian activist, whom the U.S. accuses of 18 charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of the U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"Assange live is in danger since he suffers from psychological problems that stem from the constant isolation he suffers in U.K. Belmarsh high-security prison. Therefore, It would be a sign of solidarity and fraternity to allow him to receive asylum in our country," AMLO insisted.

He recalled that the right to asylum is part of Mexico’s foreign policy and that the Australian journalist meets the requirements since he does not pose any danger to Mexico or the United States.


In 2012, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London to avoid being extradited to the U.S. or Sweden, which unfoundedly accused him of rape. In April 2019, however, British police arrested him because President Lenin Moreno withdrew his political refugee status.

Ever since, Assange has been held in the Belmarsh prison, where he waits for the result of his lawyers’ appeal to the London High Court of Justice decision to extradite him.

“Assange is a very resistant and intelligent man, who dared to denounce what everyone had been silent about for years. In other country and time, he will be considered a hero,” U.K. Labour Party’s former leader Jeremy Corbyn.



Mexican president renews asylum offer for Assange
CGTN

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Monday reiterated the asylum offer he made for Julian Assange a year ago, and said he had written a letter to former U.S. President Donald Trump recommending that the WikiLeaks founder be pardoned.

Mexico did not receive a reply to the letter, Lopez Obrador told a government news conference.

"It would be a sign of solidarity, of fraternity to allow him asylum in the country that Assange decides to live in, including Mexico," Lopez Obrador said.

(With input from Reuters)

This Is How Venezuela Celebrates the 'Holy Innocents Day'



"Holy Innocents Day" party in Venezuela, Dec. 28, 2021. | Photo: teleSUR

The "Feast of the Crazy," the "Las Zaragozas Dance," the "Crazy of the Candle," and the "Turns of Saint Benito" are some of elaborate expressions of Venezuelan folklore.

On Dec. 28, Latin American peoples commemorate the "Holy Innocents Day," which recalls that baby Jesus escaped the massacre of children ordered by Herod I, the King of Judea.

Venezuelans celebrate these holidays by making jokes amid artistic expressions that melt symbols from various cultures.

In Sanare town, in the state of Lara, people say prayers and dance “Las Zaragozas,” while musical groups play songs in Tamunangue rythm. In the procession, the characters wear multicolored masks and costumes.

In the states of Merida, Trujillo, and Portuguesa, Venezuelans commemorate the "Feast of the Crazy." There, after the end of the Mass in honor of the Holy Innocents, people dress in cut-in-pieces costumes and cover their faces with masks.



The video shows people performing the dance of the Zaragozas during the feast of the Three Kings in January.

The state of Falcon performs the "Crazy of the Candle," a party in which participants wear women's dresses to dance through the streets.

The state of Merida celebrates the "Turns of Saint Benito," a performance in which people dance around a stick of ribbons to pay for the promises and favors received during the year. Musicians with local guitars ("el cuatro") and violins animate the procession in honor of the Black saint.

In Vargas state, the Naiguata town is famous for celebrating “the Government of Women,” a party in which women dress as men.

Jose A. Kast Resigns From Chilean Republican Party Presidency

José Antonio Kast resigned from the presidency of the Republican Party: “The time has come for a new leadership to assume the leadership of the party” | Photo: Twitter @imminent_news

Published 3 January 2022 

The representative of the extreme right is close to the positions of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former U.S. President Donald Trump and advocates digging a ditch on the border to prevent the passage of migrants.

Former far-right candidate to the Palacio de La Moneda, José Antonio Kast, resigned from the presidency of the Republican Party after his defeat in the December 19 elections in Chile, it was reported here today.

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Kast, defender of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), suffered a resounding defeat in the recently held elections, where the standard-bearer of the left, Gabriel Boric, surpassed him with almost 12 advantage points.

“I will not continue as party president and I resign to leave the decision on my replacement in the hands of the board, the political commission and the general council,” Kast wrote in a letter addressed to the members of his party.



However, Kast left the door open for a third candidacy for the presidency by announcing his intention to carry out a territorial offensive in sectors where, he said, “the left has a predominance.”

The representative of the extreme right is close to the positions of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former U.S. President Donald Trump, and advocates digging a ditch on the border to prevent the passage of migrants.

He also favors the pardon of prisoners for crimes against humanity, defends the proposal to detain people in areas other than prisons, and supports militarization in the so-called southern larger area, where the Mapuche people live.

ATF joins investigation into New Year’s Day fire which destroyed Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee

DJK Freeman
WSWS.ORG

A Planned Parenthood clinic in Knoxville, Tennessee, which provided abortion services, was declared a total loss after fire destroyed the building in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

Firefighters were alerted to heavy smoke coming from the building at 6:40 a.m. on January 1. By the time fire crews arrived at the site, flames were coming through the roof, and most of the building was engulfed. The facility, which offers health care to workers in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the city, had been closed and undergoing renovations since December 7. No injuries from the fire were reported.

Knoxville Planned Parenthood clinic on fire (Source: Twitter/@cole_sull)

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. However, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) immediately joined local authorities in the investigation of the incident due to the politically charged atmosphere around the issues of abortion and women’s health services throughout the nation.

Later this year the Supreme Court of the United States could overturn the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade by upholding a Mississippi law blocking abortions after 15 weeks. Last year saw more anti-abortion regulations passed by state legislatures than at any point since abortion was legalized by the 1973 landmark decision. Should the ruling be overturned, a wave of legislation effectively banning abortion is expected to follow or go into immediate effect in states throughout the country.

In 2020, Tennessee passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. The “fetal heartbeat bill” would have banned abortions after six weeks, before many women even suspect they are pregnant. Though the law was blocked by a judicial ruling less than one hour after it was signed by Republican Governor Bill Lee, far-right members of the legislature and fascistic extremists with ties to the January 6 coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol continued the attack on workers’ access to abortion in Tennessee.

The New Year’s Day fire occurred just under a year after shots were fired by a masked gunman into the front doors of the clinic on January 22, 2021, the 48th anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. While no one was charged with the attack, suspicions were raised about the involvement of members of the Patriot Church in neighboring Loudon County whose pastor has ties to right-wing extremists in Tennessee and throughout the US.

The pastor of Patriot Church, Ken Peters, is the founder of The Church at Planned Parenthood (TCAPP) which he started in Spokane, Washington, in 2018. TCAPP targets Planned Parenthood clinics throughout the country at which to hold their monthly “services.” During these events, participants crowd the sidewalks and entrances to clinics, singing, praying and shouting at patients and passersby. Peters has been known to use his megaphone at these demonstrations to brag about the number of congregants who carry guns to the gatherings and to tantalize his followers with scripture-based calls to violence.

In comments to a local TV news station about the New Year’s Day fire at the Knoxville clinic, Peters remarked: “Christians would never participate in any sort of destruction of property, or looting, or rioting.” This is ironic coming from a pastor who flew on a private jet to Washington D.C. on the eve of January 6 to speak at a rally that resulted in the storming of the Capitol by fascistic groups intent on overthrowing the Constitution.

He was also instrumental in shutting down Knox County Schools for a day and disrupting schools for a week after a federal judge imposed a mask mandate in the district to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In September, Peters encouraged parents to defy the judge’s ruling by having their children refuse to wear masks in school. The district cancelled classes in order to prepare for the onslaught of anti-mandate reaction and the subsequent safety issues posed by unmasked students in classrooms. Throughout the week, the pastor rallied families and sympathizers to converge at school entrances with signs disparaging those who abided by the law and wore masks, further hampering efforts to continue instruction despite scores of teachers, school staff and students being absent due to a back-to-school surge of the pandemic.

Amid the accelerating economic and social crisis spurred on by COVID-19 pandemic, the aim of these far-right extremist attacks on the services provided by Planned Parenthood and the employment of public safety measures during the pandemic, administered by the entire political establishment, is to divide the working class and waylay the growing class struggle into reactionary attacks on the most exploited layers of workers.

The World Socialist WebSite called attention to this tactic of the ruling elites on December2: “The far-right political forces being mobilized to destroy the right to abortion are the same forces that have played a leading role in demanding the ending of all restrictions on the COVID-19 pandemic and which came close to establishing a fascist dictatorship with the coup attempt of January 6.”

The Democrats, culpable for the 826,000 Americans dead from COVID-19 and a dramatic erosion of democratic rights and living standards, have enabled the far-reaching attacks on the health and well-being of the working class while cloaking themselves in the mantle of civility and bipartisanship.

The fight to uphold the right to abortion is a class question; it requires a politically independent movement of the working class. The ruling elite and its representatives have made clear their determination to subordinate the health and rights of workers to Wall Street and ever-skyrocketing profits. The working class must respond through a mass movement, coordinated on a global scale, aimed at the overturn of the capitalist system which bears responsibility for these social crimes.

‘It Sends the Wrong Message’: Inside the GOP Civil War Over the Jan. 6 ‘Martyrs’

FIGHT FOR THE HEART OF THE PARTY

Some local GOP chapters are hosting Jan. 6 anniversary events that valorize the Capitol attackers as “patriots” or “political prisoners”—enraging the party’s remaining moderates.

Kelly Weill
Reporter
Published Jan. 03, 2022 

Credit: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Cobb County, Georgia’s Republican party will gather for a candlelight vigil—not to condemn the attack, but to recognize “J6 Patriots held in DC prison.”

The event will feature a speech by the founder of “Women for America First,” the group that secured permits for the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the deadly riot. And the Cobb County event will begin with a livestreamed Donald Trump speech, in which the former president is expected to double down on his lies about winning the 2020 election.

The local Republican party’s event is among more than a dozen Jan. 6 anniversary events that valorize the Capitol attackers as “patriots,” “political prisoners,” or “martyrs.”

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“It sends the wrong message,” Jason Shepherd, the former chair of the Cobb County GOP told The Daily Beast. “It goes to the heart of what the Republican party's having to deal with, and that is: do we believe in the core values of the party, the principles of the party that are in our platform, or are we simply following one person?”


The Jan. 6 commemorative events come amid a national reckoning over the riot, which saw thousands of Trump supporters march on the Capitol, many breaking into the building following a speech in which Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election to have been stolen. In the attack’s immediate aftermath, Republican leaders issued loud condemnations of the riot, even rebuking Trump for his role in stoking the attack, leading to speculation that the former president had finally lost his grasp on the GOP.

But Republicans soon adopted a more forgiving stance on the Capitol attack, said Brian Hughes, cofounder and associate director of American University’s Polarization and Extremism and Research Innovation Lab.

“There has been an evolution,” Hughes told The Daily Beast. “The attack has been metabolized by the far rightwing media, such that the initial disavows that were seen as the necessary response have been able to evolve into this talking point of ‘political prisoners’ being because of their beliefs.”

Some of that messaging has been taken up by elected officials, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene whose newly redistricted constituency includes parts of Cobb County. In November, Greene and fellow Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert visited what Greene called the “patriot wing” of the D.C. jail, where some alleged Capitol rioters are being held pre-trial. Greene later described the defendants as “political prisoners of war.”

“One of the things I noticed in the purge has been a lot of the new people who came in after the 2020 election getting rid of the Trump supporters who joined in 2016.”

The sloganeering has also been promoted by fringe groups like “Look Ahead America" (LAA), which has organized past demonstrations at the D.C. jail, and is responsible for most of the planned Jan. 6 anniversary “vigils.”

LAA is the work of Matt Braynard, who worked on Trump’s first presidential campaign for five months before getting fired. Braynard previously made headlines for a September rally in defense of Capitol rioters. The event received little buy-in from Trump’s inner circles, and received paltry turnout. Undeterred, Braynard and LAA are advertising 16 anniversary events on Jan. 6, ranging from a “vigil” outside the D.C. jail, to demonstrations in seven states, the Daily Dot previously reported.

Many of those events take place outside courthouses or in parks. Another Jan. 6 event, organized by a far-right political candidate, calls for a “patriot martyr vigil” outside the Orange County, California FBI office.

The event’s organizer, Nick Taurus, is an outspoken fan of the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, and is currently running a longshot campaign to unseat Democratic Rep. Katie Porter in California. Taurus is a longtime participant in physical clashes with the left. This summer, two weeks after announcing his candidacy, he uploaded a video montage of himself ripping up a Black Lives Matter sign and repeatedly punching a man who was on the ground. The montage is set against an audio clip of Barry Goldwater proclaiming that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Other footage from the rally at which Taurus ripped the Black Lives Matter sign shows him punching and kicking people, and chanting “fuck that bitch” about Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed by police in 2020.

Shepherd, the former Cobb County GOP chair, linked the events to a rightward shift he observed in his party last year. (Shepherd resigned in October, after the Cobb County GOP moved to censure Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Trump foe. Shepherd objected, arguing that the censure was outside the group’s powers, and that it jeopardized the local party’s standing as a neutral voice within Republican politics.)

Trump’s loss inspired a wave of newly energized supporters to join the Cobb County GOP, to the chagrin of some older members, he said.

“One of the things I noticed in the purge has been a lot of the new people who came in after the 2020 election getting rid of the Trump supporters who joined in 2016,” Shepherd said. “That’s where the sort-of civil war comes.”

The Cobb County GOP has rejected accusations that its anniversary event “glorified” the Capitol attack.


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“The intent of the Cobb GOP January 6th Candlelight Prayer Vigil is to acknowledge Americans who lost their lives and to pray for those who have been denied justice,” the group said in a statement, referring to Capitol rioters awaiting trial.

But the statement hardly condemned the attack, only noting that “to those who have cast quick judgement concerning this event, under no uncertain terms are we condoning any form of violence nor the glorification of what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. This miscarriage of justice should concern ALL AMERICANS. It’s unfortunate that so many have issues with prayer. Everyone should be concerned when our Constitutional rights are being abused.”

Hughes, the American University researcher, said Republican talking points around Jan. 6 have always been contradictory.

Upcoming anniversary events are both “a celebration and a disavowal at the same time,” Hughes said. “These recognitions that come from the far right are going to be contradictory, and they’re going to be incoherent in some cases, but that’s not an impediment to the project. It’s actually central to the project.

“It’s very important that, on one hand, these rallies and commemorations continue to provide this ideological cover, that Jan. 6 was actually about ‘preserving democracy,’ which has to do with the lie that the election was ‘stolen.’ But then at the same time, there is this kind of avowal of violence that goes along with it.”

Some old-guard Georgia Republicans took issue with the Cobb County GOP’s Jan. 6 event, which was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sam Olens, Georgia’s former Republican Attorney General, tweeted about the event, writing that “I yearn for the return of the Isakson / Coverdell Georgia Republican Party.”

Isakson, a former U.S. senator from Cobb County, was a moderate Republican who died last month: “someone who was able to build bridges, who could work with both Donald Trump and across the aisle with Senate Democrats,” Shepherd recalled.

Isakson’s memorial services will also be held on Jan. 6.

Elizabeth Holmes Tried and Failed to Use MeToo To Save Herself

HAIL MARY

As a survivor and advocate, her “coercive control” defense—which included exploiting her college rape—offended me to the core.


Susan Crumiller
Published Jan. 03, 2022

OPINION
NurPhoto

Theranos! It sounds like a cross between a Greek god and a Marvel villain, representing hubris, deception and manipulation. The company’s avatar was Elizabeth Holmes, one of the most fascinating figures of our times with her turtlenecks, gigantic eyes and weird-ass voice who was found guilty on four of 11 criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy, with the jury hanging on three others.

Holmes’s lies were so outrageous that the spectacle would be almost comical in retrospect, if not for the real people whose lives were affected by the bogus test results she touted. Fake blood tests, on fake equipment, with fake results for people from a business built on fake partnerships and fake projections.

And if not for the fact that she used her identity as a woman in a male-dominated tech world to try and convince people to believe her at every step of the way.

Her mostly failed Hail Mary defense was the wild revelation that her ex and former co-exec, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, had been abusing her while secretly pulling the strings during the years of alleged fraud, grift, and glossy magazine profiles.

Thank god the jury didn’t fall for all of her bullshit.

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It’s easy in hindsight to mock her investors, all of the idiot men who threw money at her, many of them not thinking—shall we say—with their brains. But idiot men throw money at other men all the time, too. Holmes is a master manipulator and her femininity didn’t give her any special advantage, it just gave her different tools.

She brought new tools to her trial, too, as her bombshell “coercive control” defense took direct aim at the #MeToo movement’s biggest weakness: That no one actually believes women all the time, since women are, in fact, people and people lie and dissemble. Emmett Till’s accuser comes to mind.

Nonetheless, the prosecution fought valiantly to extricate the abuse claims from the fraud claims. “Your verdict does not validate her claims of abuse,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Schenk told the jury, adding, “You do not need to decide whether that abuse happened.” Meanwhile, Holmes’s attorneys didn’t even mention the coercive control defense in their closing statements. Perhaps they felt they had achieved what they had set out to simply by muddying the waters.


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Of course, women don’t often lie about domestic and sexual abuse. Discrimination litigators like myself fight the unwinnable “he said/ she said” battle every single day. For every abuser that is outed, you’ll find decades of public accusations. Survivors have been disbelieved, mocked, ridiculed, blamed, and ignored for all of human history. To this day, when survivors come forward, they know to expect an onslaught of backlash. It’s one of the scariest things a person can do, because in reality, many people’s attitudes have not caught up with the lip service given in well-crafted publicist statements.

But “Believing Women” has become a performative thing people do publicly, an homage they pay to equality, like Mother’s Day tributes. The problem with these tributes is that they are often false.

When people pretend to believe all women, what most of them are really saying is, “we have to say that we believe them, even though privately we obviously don’t.”

With her defense, Holmes attempted to capitalize upon this societal ambivalence. By all appearances, she seems to be a lying sociopath whose words should have zero weight. But the lengthy history of acceptance of violence against women makes it feel extremely difficult to accuse a woman of lying about domestic abuse. It feels like giving comfort to the enemy.

The problem with this attitude is it is silencing. When Tara Reade accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, I asked a number of female colleagues—fellow anti-discrimination attorneys—whether they would state publicly with me that they didn’t believe Reade. Nobody would do it, although many had expressed just this sentiment in private.

I don’t blame them for their predicament, or the feeling that MeToo has become some sort of zero-sum game. Feminists and sex-abuse activists feel like it’s us against the world, and there must be no cracks in the façade. Institutions coalesce around abusers as a matter of routine. Survivors often effectively suffer more punishment than their abusers do.

But ultimately, the zero-sum game is dehumanizing to women. It gives cover to private disbelief, and gives skeptics more cover—not less—to think that women are liars, and our accusations should be disregarded. It turns people into hypocrites.

It pretends that Elizabeth Holmes is somehow representative or indicative of all women, as opposed to an incredibly fascinating, history-making outlier. It’s counterproductive. The worst thing we can do for women is to pretend that this verdict is somehow a referendum on women, on “girlbosses”, on anything other than one unsuccessful criminal. Holmes is no more representative of women than Bernie Madoff is of men.

I’ll admit that there’s something satisfying about seeing a woman in the swindle game. There are plenty of jokes to be made about how adding a woman to the ranks of dudebros on the make is a form of progress. And it’s true, in a way: There is so much sexism in tech, and what Holmes did is, while obviously not laudatory, certainly awe-inspiring. That is until you remember the victims—not the investors who couldn’t be bothered to do their homework but the consumers of her dubious product, who suffered real consequences.

But the cynical #MeToo ploy prevented me from rooting for her. As an attorney, I admire her defense strategy. But as a survivor and advocate, her “coercive control” defense—which included exploiting her college rape by making it into grist for her origin story—offends me to the core. It adds to the unfair skepticism that survivors already face.

For the sake of #MeToo, I’m glad she didn’t get away with all of it.

Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers wants to use $700 million in state funds for a border wall

By Alisa Reznick

Published: Monday, January 3, 2022 - 

Alisa Reznick/KJZZ

A section of border wall built by the Trump administration can be seen near the border crossing in Sasabe, Arizona.

An Arizona state senator wants to appropriate $700 million in state funds to pay for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The proposal came in a bill from Sen. Wendy Rogers of northern Arizona, one of more than two dozen she introduced ahead of the new legislative session this month. 

The Trump administration erected a 30-foot steel bollard wall across just over 450 miles of borderland, some 230 miles of which was in Arizona, according to an estimate provided by Customs and Border Protection in January 2021. 

Roger’s bill is the latest attempt to build a border wall at the state level. In January 2020, a bill sponsored by then-State House Majority Leader Warren Petersen could have cleared permit barriers standing in the way of privately-funded barriers, but it narrowly failed in the House. 

State Bill 1032, the measure introduced by Rogers for this coming legislative session, would put a chunk of the state’s nearly $13 billion 2022 budget toward the construction and maintenance of a "physical border fence." She didn’t respond to questions about where it would take place or how the cost could be justified. 

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would begin construction to fix gaps and other issues in the wall built by the Trump administration. 

IVANKA AND DONALD TRUMP JR. WOULD RATHER NOT DISCUSS THE TRUMP ORGANIZATION’S MANY ALLEGED CRIMES

The duo are trying to dodge a subpoena from the New York Attorney General’s office.


BY BESS LEVIN

JANUARY 3, 2022

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivers remarks before a ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Trump International Hotel October 26, 2016 in Washington, DC. The hotel, built inside the historic Old Post Office, has 263 luxry rooms, including the 6,300-square-foot 'Trump Townhouse' at $100,000 a night, with a five-night minimum. The Trump Organization was granted a 60-year lease to the historic building by the federal government before the billionaire New York real estate mogul announced his intent to run for president.

BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES.

As you’ve probably heard by now, prosecutors in various states have taken a keen interest in Donald Trump. In New York, for example, there are a number of investigations into the ex-president’s business and its financial practices, including ones being conducted by the Westchester district attorney, the Manhattan district attorney, and the New York attorney general. In the case of the Manhattan D.A.’s office, the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, were charged with a cornucopia of felonies in July, which is obviously no good, very bad news for the family business. (Both the Trump Organization and Weisselberg have pleaded not guilty.) But that’s not the only probe undoubtedly keeping Team Trump up at night. For instance, last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed Donald Trump for his testimony as part of a civil fraud investigation—which he naturally responded to by suing her—and now James has demanded a word with the ex-president’s eldest children. And they’re not happy about it!

The Associated Press reports that James’s office confirmed on Monday that it has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, seeking testimony and documents as part of a multiyear civil probe of matters including “the valuation of properties owned or controlled” by Trump and his company. Before she became a senior White House adviser, Ivanka Trump served as an executive at the Trump Organization. After Trump was elected in 2016, both Don Jr. and Eric Trump took over the day-to-day running of the company. James’s investigation appears to deal with matters predating Trump’s time in the White House, i.e. when both children in question were Trump Organization employees.

In response to the subpoenas, because they are nothing if not chips off the old block, Ivanka and Don Jr. have refused to comply; ABC News reports that the duo will shortly be filing motions to quash the orders. A document filed jointly by James’s office and an attorney for the Trump Organization noted that the Trump kids will now be named as respondents in the A.G.’s ongoing inquiry, according to the outlet. In a statement, James’s office told ABC News, “As her investigation into financial dealing of the Trump Organization continues, Attorney General James is seeking interviews under oath of Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Ivanka Trump. Despite numerous attempts to delay our investigation by the Trump Organization, we are confident that our questions will be answered and the truth will be uncovered because no one is above the law.”

Both James and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating whether the Trump Organization broke the law by inflating the value of its properties to attract lenders, while deflating them to minimize its tax bills. For example, when the Trump Organization was listing its assets for potential lenders in 2012, it said an office building it owns at 40 Wall Street was worth $527 million; a few months later, it told property tax officials the building was worth $16.7 million. In 2019, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told Congress that in his experience, Trump “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.” This past November, The Washington Post reported that the D.A.’s office had convened a second long-term grand jury to hear fresh evidence about the Trump Organization’s “financial practices” and would potentially vote on levying new charges. (It was the first grand jury, which met last spring, that returned the felony indictments against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg.) The new grand jury will meet three days a week over six months, sources told the Post at the time; according to one person familiar with the matter, staffers in the D.A.’s office have been working closely with James’s office.

While it’s not clear what the outcome for Ivanka and Donny-boy will be re: dodging the subpoenas, history is certainly not on their side. In 2020, James’s office subpoenaed Eric Trump, who initially refused to comply, before agreeing to sit for questioning in the fall. In October, a judge ordered their father to be deposed in a case accusing his security guards of assaulting protesters. As for the Trump family’s history of sitting for depositions, that hasn‘t gone so well either. In 2007, after Trump sued biographer Tim O’Brien for penning an unflattering but accurate portrait, O’Brien’s lawyers caught Trump in dozens of his own lies during a deposition, and in 2009, a judge dismissed the case altogether. In December 2020 and February 2021, Ivanka Trump and Don Jr., respectively, were deposed under oath by D.C.’s attorney general, and it certainly seems as though they lied about their involvement in their father’s inauguration.

Neither lawyers for the Trumps nor the Trump Organization responded to the AP’s requests for comment. In suing James, lawyers for the ex-president claimed the A.G. had violated his constitutional rights in a “thinly-veiled effort to publicly malign Trump and his associates.”