Trump hits back at Fox and Lincoln Project after brutal ad gets under his skin

Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News
Thu, September 8, 2022

Former President Donald Trump hit back at Fox News and the Lincoln Project after the #NeverTrump group got under his skin with an ad that aired at his golf resort in New Jersey.

Deriding the GOP group as “sleaze,” Trump vowed to sue Fox for approving the ads for broadcast.

“The (Lincoln Project) should not be allowed to “false advertise,” and Fox News should not allow it to happen,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “See you all in Court!!!”

Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson wasted little time chortling about Trump’s hissy fit.

“Oh, Donald. I’ve got a 10am ET meeting, but I’ll be back to scourge you in a bit,“ Wilson tweeted.

“Trump’s threat to sue the Lincoln Project today is like Trump himself; impotent, flabby, and pathetic,” Wilson added in an interview with Mediaite.

Trump was apparently rattled by the ad, entitled Sucker. It accuses the former president of fleecing his loyal supporters to line his own pockets.

The hard-hitting piece warns Trump’s MAGA backers that he is less interested in winning back the White House than in “propping up his failing business empire” with hundreds of millions in donations.

“It was a sucker’s game all along,” the ad intones. “And you know who the sucker is? It’s you.”

Trump claimed that Fox has turned against him, citing its decision to run the ad. He blames former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a GOP rival and member of the Fox News board.

“The Paul Ryun run Fox only has high standards for “Trump” ads, but not for anyone else,” Trump wrote, misspelling Ryan’s name.

It’s not the first time the Lincoln Project has succeeded in rattling Trump or his family.

In another recent ad, the group of Republican media gurus warned Trump that someone inside his inner circle, or perhaps even a relative, must’ve tipped off the feds about the top-secret documents he stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Someone who you trusted betrayed you,” the ad states. “Now you’re the first president to have his home raided by the FBI.”

Lincoln Project doubles down goading 

Donald Trump after fiery response to his 

lawsuit threat

Io Dodds

Fri, September 9, 2022 

The Lincoln Project has doubled down on its fiery response to a lawsuit threat from Donald Trump, mocking the former president as a "cuck".

The pugnacious anti-Trump fundraising group had previously dared Mr Trump to make good on his promise to sue over its latest campaign advert, which accused him of funneling campaign money into his own pockets and referred to his supporters as "suckers".

Mr Trump blasted the Project on his personal social network Truth Social early on Thursday morning, calling them "perverts and lowlifes" and claiming he would sue them for "false advertising".

After no more details were forthcoming, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson said on Friday: "Donald Trump hasn’t 'truthed' for 20 hours. Cuck."

Since then Mr Trump has posted several more "truths", but none concerning the advert.

The Lincoln Project was founded by current and former Republicans who opposed Mr Trump's re-election campaign, and has become well-known for picking personal fights with the mercurial real estate tycoon.

"Cuck", literally short for "cuckold", is a crude sexual insult with origins in far right online communities, which broke into the mainstream in 2015 during Mr Trump's initial campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

The term – and its variant "cuckservative" – was gleefully embraced by Breitbart News under its then executive chairman Steve Bannon, who later joined Mr Trump's team and reportedly applied the word to his White House colleague Jared Kushner.

In his previous message to Mr Trump on Thursday morning, Mr Wilson said: “Go for it, b****! Come at me. I can’t wait. We’re delighted by the thought...

"You won't do it, because you are, in fact, as I said previously, completely impotent. Just ask [Mr Trump's wife] Melania."

Mr Trump's "perverts" accusation may have been a reference to Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver, who was accused of sending unsolicited sexual messages to numerous young men. Mr Weaver apologised for "inappropriate" behaviour and resigned from the Project.

Analysis by USA Today has found that Mr Trump frequently threatens lawsuits but rarely follows through when the threat concerns defamation against him.

Donald Trump Threatens To Sue Fox News Over Ad That Calls His Supporters 'Suckers'

David Moye  Thu, September 8, 2022

Donald Trump threatened Fox News on Thursday, and it wasn’t with a good time.

The former president announced on his reportedly financially challengedTruth Social platform that he is considering suing the news network for false advertising after an insulting ad created by The Lincoln Project aired on Fox News in one local market — where Trump owns a golf course. The ad was not bought through Fox News and did not air nationally.

The ad is titled “Sucker,” and it basically explains to MAGA Republicans why they are suckers for believing basically anything Trump tells them:

“Dear MAGA, we have some bad news. No, not that he lost. Not that your little coup attempt failed and its planners and the attackers are going to jail. No. The really bad news is why Trump told you he lost. Why he set it up way before the 2020 election. It wasn’t voter fraud but it was fraud.

“Trump told you the election was stolen ripped you off, to sucker you, to take your hard-earned money and shovel it into his pockets. He spent it on himself not to take back the White House.

“It was the biggest scam in political history. Every dollar you sent him paid to keep his shady business empire and lavish lifestyle going. It was a sucker game all along. And you know who the sucker is? You.”

The ad copy may address “MAGA Republicans,” but The Lincoln Project intentionally targets Trump, purchasing local ad time on Fox News in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the former president spends the warmer winter months, according to Mediaite.

The commercial was designed specifically to piss off Trump, and it apparently succeeded based on the rant he unleashed Wednesday morning on Truth Social:

“The Perverts and Lowlifes of the Lincoln Project are back on, where else, Fox News. I thought they ran away to the asylum after their last catastrophic campaign, with charges made against them that were big time sleaze, and me getting many millions more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016. The Paul Ryun run Fox only has high standards for “Trump” ads, but not for anyone else. The Perverts should not be allowed to “false advertise,” and Fox News should not allow it to happen. See you all in Court!!!”

Donald Trump threatened to sue Fox News for broadcasting an ad that was critical of him. (Photo: Truth Social)

Donald Trump threatened to sue Fox News for broadcasting an ad that was critical of him. (Photo: Truth Social)

It should be noted that Trump notoriously threatens lawsuits but rarely files them ― probably because the discovery process could force him to answer embarrassing questions under oath.

That and the First Amendment protections of political speech are probably why  Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist, didn’t seem too worried about the threat.

“In 2020, The Lincoln Project took up a long-term free lease in Trump’s brain. His threat to sue the Lincoln Project today is like Trump himself; impotent, flabby, and pathetic,” he told Mediaite.

Wilson said he was “delighted” by the chance of a lawsuit and released a Twitter video in which he bluntly told Trump to “go for it.”

“Go for it. Go for it, bitch. Come at me. I can’t wait,” he taunted. “Do it. Do it. I double dog dare you.”

Looks like Twitter users appreciated the ad more than Trump.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Bannon Indictment Reveals Damning Texts on ‘Build the Wall’ Scheme
WHO IS GOING TO PAY FOR THE WALL? 

THE SUCKERS BORN EVERY MINUTE

Jose Pagliery
Thu, September 8, 2022 

CAITLIN OCHS

Manhattan prosecutors got ahold of text messages in which right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon laid out exactly how he and his pals were going to siphon off donor funds to quietly enrich themselves with a GoFundMe that promised to build Trump's Mexico border wall, according to an indictment made public on Thursday.

"[No] deals I don’t approve; and I pay [Brian Kolfage] so what’s to worry,” Bannon texted an associate on Jan. 15, 2019, according to the indictment.

The next week, Bannon texted that associate with concerns about how his anti-immigrant non-profit, Citizens of the American Republic, was going to be repaid. Later that month, he ordered that associate “we need wire of cash to [CAP.]"

The incriminating messages, which show how Bannon played a key role in the scheme to dupe xenophobic donors, were laid out in a grand jury indictment that was unsealed in Manhattan criminal court.

Bannon turned himself in Thursday morning to the Manhattan district attorney's office. He now faces two counts of money laundering, two counts of criminal conspiracy, and one charge for "scheme to defraud."

Local prosecutors are attempting to nail him for crimes that former President Donald Trump had already pardoned. However, that presidential Get Out of Jail card only applied to a previous federal case that had to be dropped. The DA operates at a state level and doesn’t have to abide by that pardon.

Bannon must turn over his passport and is scheduled to be arraigned at 2:30 p.m., according to a source familiar with the case. That person said the DA’s case is being handled by two prosecutors in the office’s economic crimes bureau: assistant district attorneys Daniel Passeser and Michael Frantel.

The U.S. Constitution guarantees that a person cannot be prosecuted twice for the same crime, a concept known as “double jeopardy.” However, New Yorkers fed up with rampant corruption during the Trump administration sought to create a loophole of sorts in 2019, allowing the state to pursue criminal charges on a local level that weren’t being addressed at the federal one.

The Manhattan DA’s office has taken the same approach with other Trump World associates. Last year, it brought a criminal cyberstalking case against another person who’d previously received a Trump pardon: Ken Kurson, a former newspaper editor who’s close with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Earlier this year, Kurson took a plea deal for unlawfully spying on his ex-wife.

Bannon's case stems from his role in a sketchy GoFundMe that misused money to construct a privately-funded wall between the United States and Mexico, fulfilling a 2016 Trump campaign promise when the federal government was slow to do so.

He teamed up with a wounded Iraq War veteran, Brian Kolfage, and together they collecting money from what the Department of Justice described as "hundreds of thousands" of donors for a project dubbed "We Build the Wall." While Kolfage promised he would “not take a penny in salary" and Bannon described it as “a volunteer organization,” federal investigators later found that they siphoned off tons of money for personal use.

Kolfage, who is accused in the indictment of paying himself more than $350,000, pleaded guilty in April. But Bannon's case never got that far. He was accused of using a nonprofit to reroute more than $1 million and arrested while hanging out on a Chinese billionaire's yacht off the coast of Connecticut. But then Trump pardoned him during his last weeks in office—a big favor to his former White House chief political strategist.

The nonprofit he used to reroute those donations, the so-called "economic nationalist" group named Citizens of the American Republic, was recently targeted by the Internal Revenue Service. In August, the IRS stripped the nonprofit of tax-exempt status.

Bannon indicted on money laundering, conspiracy charges in border wall fundraising scheme

Caitlin Dickson

·Reporter

Thu, September 8, 2022 

Former Donald Trump aide Steve Bannon was indicted in New York on state charges for his alleged role in a fundraising scheme to build a private border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bannon, who surrendered to authorities on Thursday morning, pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment in Manhattan. He was released without bail.

According to an indictment, which was unsealed ahead of his initial court appearance, Bannon is being charged with multiple crimes, including conspiracy and money laundering, based on his work with We Build the Wall, a nonprofit that raised $25 million dollars through an online crowdfunding campaign to fund construction of a wall along the southern border.

Bannon faces a maximum sentence of between five and 15 years, if convicted on the most serious charge. We Build the Wall was also charged in the indictment.

“The simple truth is that it is a crime to profit off the backs of donors by making false pretenses,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a press conference on Thursday, where he announced the charges alongside New York Attorney General Letitia James. “We are here to say today in once voice, in Manhattan and in New York, you will be held accountable for defrauding donors.”

Steve Bannon arrives for court in New York on Thursday. (Alex Kent/AFP via Getty Images)

The Washington Post was first to report that Bannon, who was convicted in Washington, D.C., federal court last month of criminal contempt of Congress, had been indicted on state charges Tuesday night. The new state charges were expected to mirror those in a federal indictment from 2020 that alleged that Bannon and other associates defrauded We Build the Wall donors.

Bannon pleaded not guilty to federal fraud charges in that earlier case, before receiving a last-minute pardon from Trump on his way out of the White House.

But presidential pardons only apply to federal charges and do not preclude prosecutions at the state level. Shortly after Trump pardoned Bannon, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office began investigating his alleged involvement in the border wall scheme.

“There cannot be one set of rules for everyday Americans and another set of rules for the wealthy and powerful,” James said Thursday.

James said that Bannon “stands out as an example of this blatant inequality,” accusing the former Trump aide of using his “influence and connections to cheat everyday Americans” and then evade accountability by obtaining a presidential pardon.

Bannon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News Thursday, but in a statement published by several news outlets Tuesday night, he accused District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, of pursuing “phony charges against me 60 days before the midterm election,” suggesting that he was targeted because his podcast is popular among Trump supporters. The state’s probe into Bannon’s involvement in the crowdfunding scheme initially began under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr.

“The SDNY did the exact same thing in August 2020 to try to take me out of the election,” Bannon said.

Leaders of We Build the Wall discuss plans for future barrier construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, May 30, 2019, in Sunland Park, N.M. (Cedar Attanasio/AP)

Bannon’s arraignment in Manhattan state court comes just over two years after federal authorities arrested him on a luxury yacht off the coast of Connecticut. Federal prosecutors in New York’s southern district had charged Bannon — along with We Build the Wall founders Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea — with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In a 24-page federal indictment, prosecutors outlined a cynical scheme in which Bannon and the others allegedly sought to capitalize on Trump supporters’ desire to fund a border wall — a core tenet of Trump’s 2016 campaign — in order to enrich themselves. Despite promising donors that 100 percent of the money raised would go toward building a wall on the southern border, Bannon and the others were accused of siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions to the campaign for their personal use.

While on the campaign trail in 2016, Trump frequently stoked anti-immigrant sentiments with his pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it. But once in office, Trump found that neither Mexico nor Congress would agree to foot the bill for his project.

Kolfage, a disabled Air Force veteran who’d previously helmed a collection of now defunct right-wing websites that trafficked in conspiracy theories and fake news, first created the GoFundMe campaign that would become We Build the Wall in the winter of 2018, after a stalemate over Trump’s demands for billions in federal funding for a border wall caused a government shutdown. The goal of the original campaign was to raise $1 billion, which Kolfage promised would be given entirely to the government for the purpose of constructing Trump’s border wall.

Though the campaign quickly went viral, receiving more than $13 million from over 213,000 people within roughly a week of its launch, it eventually became clear that neither the $1 billion goal nor the plan to give the funds directly to the federal government would be feasible.

Bannon allegedly got involved to help create We Build the Wall, Inc. after GoFundMe informed Kolfage that he would need to identify a legitimate nonprofit to which he could transfer the funds he’d raised for the wall campaign, or the money would have to be refunded to the donors.

Kolfage remained the face of the campaign, and messaging and donor outreach efforts centered on the promise — made on the organization’s website, in fundraising emails, and in media appearances — that he would “not take a penny of compensation,” ensuring that all of the money raised would go to funding border wall construction.

“Instead of pennies,” Bragg said, Kolfage “received more than $250,000 in a salary funded by donations, at least $140,000 of which we allege was laundered by Steve Bannon.”

Bragg called Bannon “the architect of a scheme” to secretly divert donated funds to Kolfage through a separate nonprofit, citing text messages referenced in the state indictment as evidence of this fraud.

According to the indictment, We Build the Wall “raised money from donors throughout the United States, including several hundred from New York County, based on the false representation that none of the money donated to WeBuildTheWall,Inc. would be used to pay” Kolfage’s salary.

Kolfage, who was not charged by New York prosecutors, is identified in the indictment as “Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1.” He did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo News.

The We Build the Wall campaign ultimately raised $25 million and amassed an advisory board of high-profile Trump supporters and associates, including Blackwater USA founder Erik Prince and Kris Kobach, the aggressively anti-immigrant former Kansas secretary of state. Back in 2019, Yahoo News reported that the group had skirted local and federal regulations, and used intimidation and threats to quickly construct its first section of border wall on private property in Sunland Park, N.M., near El Paso.

Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist during the 2016 campaign and then worked in the White House for several months, was the only one to receive a presidential pardon for the alleged scheme. Earlier this year, Kolfage and Badolato pleaded guilty to fraud charges in federal court. Shea’s case ended in a mistrial in June.

Bannon is separately facing hefty fines and potential jail time for failing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was indicted by a federal grand jury last fall on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for a deposition and provide documents at the committee’s request, and a jury in Washington, D.C., found him guilty of both counts in July. Bannon has said he intends to appeal the conviction.

Trump Spouts More Electric Car Misinformation At Recent Rally

Steven Loveday -   Electrek

Donald Trump Presents The Lordstown Endurance At The White House

FAKE CAR FROM EV COMPANY THAT WENT BROKE

Trump has made it clear recently that he's not too happy with Tesla's Elon Musk, and he suddenly no longer supports EVs.

If you haven't watched or listened to former President Donald Trump's recent rally speech in Pennsylvania, you may want to carve out some time, or not. Trump spent a great deal of time, once again, lying to his base about a number of topics and issues, though the only part we care to address is his claims about electric cars.

Fortunately, journalist Aaron Rupar took to Twitter to share a number of important clips from the speech, so we don't have to watch or listen to the whole thing. If you're interested in getting a decent dose of all Trump's wild words, click on the tweets below to check out the full thread.

Essentially, Aaron was listening to the speech and tweeting out key moments with commentary. He covers Trumpism in general, the FBI, Barron Trump, Hillary Clinton, dictatorships, Russia, Bill Barr, the China virus, and the list goes on and on and on. Perhaps you'll find the thread entertaining, or perhaps it will get you all worked up.

At any rate, let's hone in here on Trump's rant about EVs. He starts by touting how good things were when he was in office. He talks about gas costs being $1.87 per gallon. However, he made this claim a few times in the past, and fact-checkers quickly ruled that it was false.

Trump goes on to say his administration wasn't talking about going to all-electric cars. However, he showed them off at The White House and raved about them during his presidency. He also had Tesla CEO Elon Musk on one of his special advisory boards, though Musk left after Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord.

Trump says EVs are "twice as expensive," and they only get like “38 miles per gallon.” Electric cars and SUVs will definitely cost you more than similar gas-powered cars, but not twice as much, and they'll also save you money on fuel and maintenance. We honestly have no idea where 38 mpg came from, but there's no EV with that fuel economy. In fact, EV efficiency isn't measured in miles per gallon, since there's no gallon of electricity.

Read These Related Stories For Background:
Tesla's Elon Musk Talks Future Trump Presidency And Trump's Lies

Trump & Biden Seem To Agree On One Thing: Both Support Electric Cars

The speech moves to a story about a friend of Trump's who used his EV to travel from Kentucky to Washington DC. Trump said his friend complained about the road trip taking way too long due to the car's range and the time it took to charge. This could very well be true, and it has a whole lot to do with the lack of charging infrastructure in the US.

Thankfully, the current administration is aware of the problem with charging infrastructure and it's already working to fix it. Now that Trump has been made aware of the concerns, he could also work to help Americans by fixing it, especially if he were to get voted back into The White House.

Sadly, based on how he seems to feel about EVs, it's more likely that Trump will work to have them eliminated. In the speech, he actually does say we need to get rid of electric vehicles.

Source: Aaron Rupar (Twitter) 

CNN Correspondent Uses Last Day At Network To Send Message On Trump

Ben Blanchet Fri, September 2, 2022 

CNN White House correspondent John Harwood spent his last hours at the network declaring there is truth to the “threat to democracy” President Joe Biden outlined in his primetime speech on Thursday.

Harwood, who has been the White House correspondent with the network since February 2021, tweeted that Friday would be his last day.

He reportedly knew last month that Friday would be his last day despite two years remaining in his contract at the network, a source close to the departure told Press Watch’s Dan Froomkin.

The announcement came less than two hours after Harwood said the core point of Biden’s speech targeting “MAGA Republicans” is “true.”

“Now, that’s something that’s not easy for us – as journalists – to say. We’re brought up to believe there’s two different political parties with different points of view and we don’t take sides in honest disagreements between them,” Harwood said.

“But that’s not what we’re talking about. These are not honest disagreements,” he said.

You can watch Harwood’s remarks, including his take that the GOP is “led by a dishonest demagogue,” below.

A CNN spokesperson, in a statement, told The Hollywood Reporter that they wish him the best and appreciate his work covering the White House. It’s unclear what caused Harwood’s departure on Friday.

Harwood’s departure comes less than a month after “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter left the network.

The departure appeared to be due to a strategy by CNN’s new chairman and CEO Chris Licht and Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav to muffle politically “confrontational” content at the network, the Associated Press reported.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

COLONIALISM IN THE CLOSET

Search for missing Native artifacts led to the discovery of bodies stored in ‘the most inhumane way possible’

Graham Lee Brewer

Sun, September 4, 2022 

Last winter, University of North Dakota English professor Crystal Alberts started searching for a missing pipe, a headdress and moccasins once on display at the school’s library, heading deep into the recesses of the nearly 140-year-old campus.

The collection was removed from the library in 1988, after students questioned whether the university should be showcasing objects of religious significance to Native Americans. Alberts, a colleague and her assistant searched in back rooms and storage closets, opening unmarked cardboard boxes.

Inside one of them, Alberts spotted the pipe. The assistant reached for it, she said.

“Don’t touch it,” Alberts recalls saying.

Image: Crystal Alberts (Grant McMillan)

She called Laine Lyons, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians who works for the UND Alumni Association and Foundation, and asked for help.

Lyons met with Alberts to offer advice on how to respectfully handle the items, watching as Alberts and her colleagues opened box after box. Lyons said she now feels naive thinking back on it, but she never expected what they found: more than 70 samples of human remains, many of them in boxes with no identifying information.

“The best way I can describe how we have found things is in the most inhumane way possible,” Lyons said. “Just completely disregarded that these were once people.”

She said it sunk in: Her university had failed to treat Native American remains with dignity and repatriate them to tribes, as required by federal law.

“In that moment,” she said, “we were another institution that didn’t do the right thing.”

Image: Laine Lyons (UND Alumni Association)

As soon as the bodies were discovered, UND President Andrew Armacost said administrators reached out to tribes — at first a half-dozen and now 13 — to start the process of returning the remains and more than 100 religious objects.

“What we’ve done as a university is terrible, and I will continue to apologize for it,” Armacost said in a Wednesday news conference, where he vowed to see every item and ancestor found to be returned to the proper tribal nation.

But that process will likely prove daunting and could take years — and in some cases, may be impossible because of the dearth of information, Lyons said.

“I have fears that maybe we won’t be able to identify people or maybe we won’t be able to place them back where they should be placed,” she said.

Since the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) in 1990, federal law has required institutions that receive federal funding to catalog their collections with the National Parks Service and work toward returning them to the tribal nations they were taken from. But the University of North Dakota has no entries in the federal inventory, even though its administrators acknowledge it has possessed Indigenous artifacts since its inception in 1883.

The discovery at UND is illustrative of a wider, systemic problem that has plagued Indigenous communities for centuries. Despite the decades-old law, more than 100,000 are still housed in institutions across the country. The action and apology by North Dakota administrators points to a national reckoning as tribal nations are increasing pressure on public universities, museums and even libraries to comply with the law and catalog and return the Native American ancestors and cultural items in their possession.

“We are heartbroken by the deeply insensitive treatment of these indigenous ancestral remains and artifacts and extend our deepest apologies to the sovereign tribal nations in North Dakota and beyond,” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said in a statement. “This dark chapter, while extremely hurtful, also presents an opportunity to enhance our understanding and respect for indigenous cultures and to become a model for the nation by conducting this process with the utmost deference to the wishes, customs and traditions of tribal nations.”

Image: Andrew Armacost (Shawna Schill / UND)

Armacost said he and his colleagues decided to honor the requests of tribal officials not to announce the discovery until a consensus could be built on how to handle the remains, and until Indigenous faculty, staff and students could be made aware of the situation in a respectful way.

Tribal officials and Indigenous archivists said that UND leaders should be commended for how they’ve responded, praising Armacost’s willingness to consult tribes immediately after the discovery and publicly apologize for the university’s failings. But they also called for accountability.

“It is always extremely traumatic and hurtful when our ancestors remains have been disturbed and misplaced,” Mark Fox, chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation, said in a statement to NBC News.  “We will be monitoring this matter closely to ensure that our ancestor’s remains are repatriated as quickly and as respectfully as possible under the circumstances.”

Many universities and museums have NAGPRA officers on staff who inventory Indigenous remains and cultural items, affiliate them with their tribes of origin, and eventually return them. However, UND does not have its own NAGPRA office. The university has appointed a committee to review the findings, and Armacost told NBC News that hiring staff to facilitate NAGPRA cases is under consideration.

Dianne Derosiers, a historic preservation officer for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a tribal nation in North Dakota, said she wants to know who is responsible for unceremoniously locking away the human remains in university storage. “I’d like answers to that question,” she said.

Armacost said that finding out who is accountable will be part of the university’s investigation.

Lyons said she hopes UND’s discovery will be a wake-up call to other institutions that are dragging their feet when it comes to compliance with NAGPRA.

“Look at what you have, look at your past,” she said. “And if you know something, you need to say it and not hide it and not pass it off and wait for someone else to do it. You need to confront that right away.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

A North Carolina school baptized more than 100 kids without parental permission or attendance: 'Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes?'

Yelena Dzhanova

Sat, September 3, 2022 

• Northwood Temple Academy baptized more than 100 kids without their parents' permission or presence.

• Parents told Northwood Principal Renee McLamb that they were upset that they had missed the ceremony.

• "My daughter calls me from the school and says, 'Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,'" one parent said.

A North Carolina school baptized more than 100 students without asking permission from their parents, The Fayetteville Observer reported on Friday.

When parents learned that their children had been baptized at the Northwood Temple Academy, they were upset.

"My daughter calls me from the school and says, 'Mama, can you bring me some dry clothes? I got baptized today,'" one parent told the Observer. "I said, 'WHAT?'"

That parent told the Observer that she learned her 11-year-old daughter had been baptized while she was at work on a conference call.

A few students had actually been scheduled to be baptized, Northwood Principal Renee McLamb told the Observer. But then the rest of the students felt moved to join in on the ceremony, McLamb said, adding that she didn't intend for the event to be a secret from parents.

"Truly, the Lord began to move this morning and we were so excited about what the Lord was doing. Several students had given their lives to the Lord during Spiritual Emphasis Week and they were scheduled to be baptized this morning," she said in an email to the Observer. "But the Spirit of the Lord moved and the invitation to accept the Lord and be baptized was given and the students just began to respond to the presence of the Lord."

Multiple parents complained to McLamb.

"In hindsight, we would do it differently and give the students an opportunity to contact their parents and ask permission to be baptized," the principal wrote in an email to the Observer. "We were not expecting such an overwhelming response to the message that was spoken, but as a mother I certainly can empathize with why some parents were upset."

Some parents said they were upset that they missed their child's baptism, a religious ceremony that's usually celebrated with a family gathering to witness the event.

Another parent said the school's baptism felt like it "undid the baptism that had already taken place at their church."

"This is what I think they should have done," the parent of the 11-year-old told the Observer. "They should have corralled the kids in the back of the church, another room — somewhere — and said, 'We understand your desire to get this done. We'd love for your families to be here and present with you."

"Or invitations even," she added.

Read the original article on Insider

Nigeria to pay $496 million to settle claims over steel plants

By Felix Onuah

ABUJA, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Nigeria has agreed to pay $496 million to settle a multi-billion dollar claim from Global Steel Holdings Ltd following the termination of a contract to upgrade the country's steel plants, the presidency said on Saturday.

Global Steel, which is linked to India's Mittal family, had between 2004-7 acquired rights to Nigeria's entire state steel industry via five major concessions and share purchase contracts. The deal also included access to Nigeria's iron ore reserves and the central railway network.

But in 2008, the government of the late Umaru Yar'Adua terminated the contracts. Global Steel sought arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce, Court of Arbitration in Paris the same year.

Between 2011 and 2020, Global Steel and the Nigerian government made several attempts to settle but failed.

Nigeria's Attorney General and Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami, who led the negotiations, said the government had managed to get a 91% haircut on the original claims of $5.258 billion.

"I pay tribute to President (Muhammadu) Buhari for his dedication to resolving this problem and wrestling back a crown jewel of our national industrialisation plans rather than leaving the endeavour to the future administration to deal with," he said. (Reporting by Felix Onuah Editing by Ros Russell)

GRANDE GUIGNOL CULTURE

'Mosaic of pain': 17 atrocities reported in the news a day in Mexico, study finds


Search for Debanhi Escobar, an 18-year-old law student who has been missing since April 9, continues in Escobedo

Fri, September 2, 2022

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - An average of 17 atrocities were reported in news outlets in Mexico each day during the first six months of 2022, up 18% from the same period last year, according to a report by non-governmental organization Causa en Comun.

In Mexico, where some newspapers and TV are dedicated to "nota roja" crime reporting, decades of violence has left over 100,000 missing and recently driven efforts to restructure the country's security forces.

The NGO, which defined atrocities as the intentional use of force to severely abuse, maim, kill or provoke terror, counted 5,463 victims from 3,123 events reported in 2,657 news articles.

"This work points to an accumulation of stories that present a mosaic of pain and cruelty, hidden behind crime statistics," the organization said in a statement.

"The purpose of our study is to rescue our capacity to be moved by the accumulation of horrors."

Though the study was not exhaustive, it underlined the severity and number of atrocities recorded every day in Mexico.

In the first half of 2022, the study found the number of reports of torture doubled to 856, while those of murdering women using "extreme cruelty" rose 87% to 410.

Media reports of "high-impact" violence by criminal groups against authorities or large crowds meanwhile rose 756%, from 25 to 214.

Although the problem of organized crime dominates public debate, the study noted that a large part of the violence was perpetrated by individuals, families and communities.

Beyond police work, the problem of violence requires sociological and specialized psychological work on a national scale, it said.

The group published its report the same day as Mexico's lower house of Congress debated a controversial bill to bring the civilian-led national guard under army control, which critics say would militarize law and order.

Reports of violence increased in every state in Mexico, but were concentrated in the Pacific coastal state Baja California, where they nearly tripled, as well as in the central states of Guanajuato and Michoacan.

Atrocities reported in news outlets across Mexico: https://graphics.reuters.com/MEXICO-CRIME/dwpkrxdqgvm/chart.png

(Reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by William Mallard)