Heads of Churches in Jerusalem condemn vandalism by Israeli settlers on a cemetery

A worker of the church inspects a vandalized tombstone at the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery in Jerusalem (Reuters Photo)

JERUSALEM, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (WAFA) – The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in occupied Jerusalem condemned in a statement today the recent desecration by Israeli settlers of more than 30 gravestones at the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion on New Year’s Day.

“The choice of these specific targets signals to us that the perpetrators of these criminal deeds were clearly motivated by religious bigotry and hatred of Christians,” the statement read.

The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches described the attack as a terror act, and called on the concerned authorities to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law, including those laws pertaining to hate crimes.

The statement added, “These acts cannot be seen as isolated incidents, but a clear and systematic attempt to bring about exclusivity in favor of one side, and a fierce attack on historical Status Quo enshrined in our beloved Holy Land”.

The statement urged the religious and political leaders across the region to condemn and combat these acts of vandalism and to promote safety and religious tolerance.

Jewish extremists appear to vandalize Christian graves in Jerusalem’s Old City

Christian sites in Israel have been frequent targets of vandals roundly determined to be Jews

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A priest shows a gravestone allegedly vandalized by Jewish men in the Christian cemetery on Mount Zion, in the Old City of Jerusalem, January 4, 2023. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)

By Andrew LapinJanuary 4, 2023

(JTA) – A pair of what appeared to be Jews were captured on camera vandalizing dozens of Christian graves in Jerusalem’s historic Old City on Jan. 1, drawing condemnation from church officials and the United Kingdom.

The video shows the vandals making a beeline for a large masonry cross inside the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery, which was established in 1848 and is managed by an organization affiliated with the Anglican Church. After toppling the cross, the vandals, who appear to be young men and can be seen wearing kippahs and tzitzit typically worn by haredi Orthodox Jews, moved on to damage other tombstones.

Coming just days after the swearing-in of a new right-wing government whose critics say could embolden Jewish extremists, the vandalism extends a pattern of attacks on Christian sites in Israel. Vandals have targeted other cemeteries as well as churches and monasteries several times over the last decade. The church and the United Kingdom condemned the incident; the Israeli police have said it will investigate.

Church leaders in the country have long maintained that Israeli settlers and other Jewish extremist groups are trying to drive them out of the Old City, which the Israeli far right believes should exclusively be under Jewish control. They say some extremist Jewish groups have spat on Christians as well. Many Christians in the Jerusalem area are Palestinian, although the people buried in the cemetery include British Christians who were influential in pre-state Palestine. 

Last year, Israel’s high court ruled in favor of a right-wing Israeli group that had used shell companies to purchase three Old City buildings that had belonged to the Greek Orthodox church. The group, Ateret Cohanim, seeks to turn non-Jewish properties in Jerusalem into Jewish-owned ones; the church had sued them after the sales were made in 2004.

President Abbas: We will take all appropriate legal measures to respond to Israeli government's actions

RAMALLAH, Thursday, January 5, 2023 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas said tonight that the leadership "will continue to take all legal measures that international legitimacy allows us in order to take all necessary and appropriate steps" to respond to the Israeli government's actions, including the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Speaking at the beginning of the meeting of the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah, he said, "We will discuss all these issues, whether with regard to the Israeli government or with regard to the US government, because it is not a secret and there is nothing to hide, that he who stands behind this Israeli policy is the American administration".

The President continued: "I confirm that the storming [of Al-Aqsa Mosque] is the beginning of the implementation of the Netanyahu government’s policy, which we categorically reject. We have heard a lot of rejection of it [the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque] in various countries of the world, and we have also heard rejection inside Israel. This is because many segments of Israeli society reject this policy, not out of love for us, but in defense of the State of Israel and its future."

"After Minister Bin-Gvir’s storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, we went to the UN Security Council, and hours from now the Security Council session will start to discuss this issue", he added. "We hope that whoever used to give us a veto will not do so, especially since most countries of the world have condemned Minister Bin-Gvir’s act. He had said that he would storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and indeed he did, and this is a phenomenon that we will talk about. We cannot be silent about it at all."

President Abbas added that "there are meetings of the International Action Committee that have begun its work and preparations for international action. At the same time, we will take action at the local and regional levels with regard to responding to the program presented by the new Netanyahu government, a program that cannot be tolerated at all."

"A few months from now, there will be another event, which was approved by the United Nations regarding the commemoration of the Nakba, and this is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the Nakba is commemorated after it was denied by Israel, America and Western countries for a period of time," added the President.

He stressed: "We will also go to the International Court of Justice to determine the nature of the occupation. It took a long time and effort for this law to pass, and for it to go from the UN General Assembly to the ICJ. The issue is now before the court, and we hope that it will speed up the decision-making. We had been under great pressure to reverse this step, but we will not give up our rights."

M.N

Has your career gotten snagged by a noncompete clause? 

Biden’s FTC wants to ban them.

BYMICHELLE CHAPMAN AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 5, 2023 

FTC Chair Lina Khan.

The Federal Trade Commission is proposing a new rule that would prevent employers from imposing noncompete clauses for workers that prohibit them from joining a competitor, typically for a period of time, after they leave the company.

The proposed rule released Thursday follows an executive order signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 targeting what he labeled anticompetitive practices in tech, health care and other parts of the economy. The order included a call for banning or limiting noncompete agreements to help boost wages.

The FTC proposal is based on a preliminary finding that noncompete clauses quash competition in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. Section 5 bans unfair methods of competition.

“Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand,” Chair Lina M. Khan said in a prepared statement.

The proposed rule would make it illegal for an employer to enter into or attempt to enter into a noncompete with a worker; maintain a noncompete with a worker; or represent to a worker, under certain circumstances, that the worker is subject to a noncompete.

It would apply to independent contractors and anyone who works for an company, whether paid or unpaid. It would also require employers to rescind existing noncompete clauses and actively inform workers that they are no longer in effect.


The proposed rule would generally not apply to other types of employment restrictions, like non-disclosure agreements, but other types of employment restrictions could be subject to the rule if they are so broad that they function as noncompete clauses.

The agency estimates that the new proposed rule could boost wages by nearly $300 billion a year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans.

The Burn-It-All-Down Republican Caucus

Credit...Mark Peterson for The New York Times

By Charles M. Blow
Opinion Columnist

Jan. 4, 2023

Republicans keep reaping what they’ve sown.

The party’s thoroughly embarrassing inability to choose a speaker of the House after multiple attempts is a crisis of its own creation. Since at least the Barack Obama years, the Republican Party has seen a strengthening of its right flanks, one whose mission was not to produce policy but to prevent progress, one whose tactic was destruction rather than diplomacy.

You could see the beginnings of the current iteration of this political extremism when John McCain picked the woefully unqualified Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. She wasn’t highbrow, but she was headstrong. She was the anti-Obama.

During her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008, she said that she had learned that if “you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But, she continued, “here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Palin exposed a dangerous reality about the Republican base: that it was starving for disruption and spectacle, that it would cheer for anyone who annoyed liberals, that performance was far more important than competence.

Like a virus evolving variants, the Palin fervor channeled itself into the Tea Party movement, which evolved into the Freedom Caucus and manifested among voters as Trumpism.

The party establishment chose to ignore those on the fringe, figuring that the energy they generated could be beneficial, and any damage they did could be mitigated. In any event, they were only a fraction of the members and could always be outvoted.

The problem was that their influence and profiles continued to grow. They learned a lesson born during the Palin years: Spectacle produced fame, which produced power, which produced influence and possibly control.

They began to exert that power. The Freedom Caucus essentially forced the Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, to resign in 2015 because its members felt he wasn’t forceful enough against Obama. Representative Peter King reportedly said, “To me, this is a victory for the crazies.”

But those “crazies” were far from finished. They refused to support Kevin McCarthy for the speakership then because he was Boehner’s No. 2 and because Republicans were fuming that he slipped and told the truth about the Benghazi investigation: that it was a political witch hunt designed to hurt Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.

Some of that old disdain for McCarthy has no doubt lingered and is being manifested in this week’s failed votes to make him speaker.

Donald Trump became Exhibit A for the synergy of fame, power and influence the Republican base craves when he broke through the establishment firewall in 2016 and gave his supporters what they wanted: an unbridled political anarchist, an unapologetic white nationalist.

During the Trump era, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the party became rock stars among the base, even if they were jokes among their colleagues. Their success has made the term “fringe” a poor way to describe them. In many ways, they are the Republican Party.

All the while, too few mainstream Republicans objected to their antics and offenses. Paul Ryan, who became speaker in 2015 when the Freedom Caucus made it clear that its members wouldn’t support McCarthy, knew Trump was a problem but said little to push back against him until Ryan left office.

As Tim Alberta reported in Politico Magazine in 2019, Ryan made the conscious decision when he was speaker not to “scold” Trump but to “help the institutions survive,” to “build up the country’s antibodies” and put “the guardrails up.” He wanted, he said, “to drive the car down the middle of the road” without letting it “go off into the ditch.”

Ryan, like many other mainstream Republicans, thought that by biting his tongue, putting his head down, and doing his best to work with Trump and do his job, he was protecting the country.

But that silence read as acceptance, not only of Trump but also of the burn-it-all-down members of the party in Congress. Now, that group has grown strong enough to prevent a House speaker from being elected on the first ballot for the first time in 100 years.

And they are getting precisely what they want: more headlines, more airtime, more spectacle and therefore more power.

They aren’t interested in governing, but rather in teasing the growing urge among the Republican base to throw a wrench in the gears.

More on the race for House speaker

Opinion | Michelle Goldberg
Leopards Eat Kevin McCarthy’s Face
Jan. 4, 2023

Opinion | Spencer Bokat-Lindell
What Will Republicans Do With Their House Majority?
Jan. 4, 2023

Charles M. Blow joined The Times in 1994 and became an Opinion columnist in 2008. He is also a television commentator and writes often about politics, social justice and vulnerable communities. @CharlesMBlow • Facebook

 POLITICAL COMMENTARY

The Political Profile of McCarthy’s Detractors Most from uncompetitive districts

A Commentary By Kyle Kondik

Thursday, January 05, 2023

Most from uncompetitive districts; recent primary results helped build the anti-McCarthy coalition

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

-- This article is being published following the adjournment of the House on the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 4 after the body failed to elect a speaker on 6 roll call votes held Tuesday and Wednesday. The House was scheduled to return at 8 p.m. eastern on Wednesday.

-- The 21 Republicans who did not vote for Kevin McCarthy on every roll call generally, but not exclusively, come from uncompetitive districts. They almost all appear to have at least some connection to the House Freedom Caucus, the group of hardline conservatives.

-- Some recent choices by GOP electorates helped strengthen what would become this anti-McCarthy coalition.

-- The longer this goes on, the more need there may be for a creative solution, like we saw in Pennsylvania’s state House speaker election on Tuesday.

Profiling the McCarthy opposition

The U.S. House of Representatives did something on Tuesday that it had not done in a century -- go to a second ballot for speaker. Then it went to a third, without resolution. Votes 4, 5, and 6 happened on Wednesday, with almost exactly the same results as those held on Tuesday. No clear resolution is in sight as of this writing.

The vast majority of the Republican conference dutifully supported House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R, CA-20) on all of the votes, but 19 of the 222 Republicans voted against McCarthy each time. With the House at a 222-212 Republican majority -- there is a single vacant Democratic seat, VA-4 -- McCarthy needs 218 votes to win, assuming that everyone votes and votes for a speaker candidate by name (as opposed to voting “present”). A 20th Republican defected on the final vote held on Tuesday, Rep. Byron Donalds (R, FL-19). The only change on Wednesday was that Rep. Victoria Spartz (R, IN-5) voted “present” on votes 4, 5, and 6. That reduced the winning threshold from 218, to 217, but it also removed a vote from the McCarthy column. Very subtly, the McCarthy position was weakening -- he started with 203 votes on the first 2 votes, fell to 202 on the third, and then 201 on the fourth, fifth, and sixth. It may be worth noting that McCarthy received more votes in 2021 (209), when Republicans were in the minority, than what he got on any of the votes so far.

The anti-McCarthy forces do not really have a clear alternative. The non-McCarthy votes were splintered on the first roll call. They then went to Rep. Jim Jordan (R, OH-4), who himself backs McCarthy, on votes 2 and 3. The insurgents then backed Donalds, the Tuesday vote-switcher, on votes 4, 5, and 6.

The entire Democratic caucus, with 212 votes, backed House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY-8) on all 6 votes. Though much of the attention was on the Republican side, the Democratic unity was also notable: in each post-2010 vote, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA-11) always had at least a few detractors.

How this gets resolved remains a mystery, but while we wait, we thought we’d take a closer look at the 21 Republicans who did not back McCarthy on all of the votes.

Table 1 lists them alphabetically -- just like the roll call to which our eyeballs have been glued over the past couple of days -- and notes when they were first elected, Donald Trump’s margin in their districts in the 2020 presidential election, and their own electoral performance in 2022.

Table 1: Electoral profile of Republicans who did not support McCarthy on all votes

Notes: All voted for someone other than Kevin McCarthy on all 6 speaker votes conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the exception of Rep. Byron Donalds (R, FL-19), who supported McCarthy on the first 2 ballots but not on subsequent votes, and Rep. Victoria Spartz (R, IN-5), who backed McCarthy on the first 3 ballots but voted present on subsequent votes. *The “their 2022 margin” column shows how much these Republicans won by in November 2022 over the person who finished in second place in their districts. In all but one instance, the second-place finisher was a Democrat; Rep. Matt Rosendale’s (R, MT-2) nearest rival in a 3-way race was an independent. 

Sources: Biographical Directory of the United States Congressand Crystal Ball research for when members were first elected; Daily Kos Elections for 2020 presidential results by district; Associated Press, Decision Desk HQ, and official state sources for 2022 district results. 

Nearly all of those who did not support McCarthy on every roll call are either members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline Republicans, or are politically adjacent to the Freedom Caucus. The House Freedom Fund, which is associated with the Freedom Caucus, supported some of the new members-elect who voted against McCarthy. The exact membership of the Freedom Caucus is a little hazy, as the group does not have an official public roster, but in going through these individuals, we found Freedom Caucus membership or connections for almost all of them. Spartz appears to be the single exception, although she has been supported by the Club for Growth, an outside conservative group that has often served as an anti-establishment force within the GOP political universe.

Many are newer to the House, and some of the more veteran members were part of previous protests against McCarthy. For instance, Reps. Andy Biggs (R, AZ-5), Paul Gosar (R, AZ-9), and Scott Perry (R, PA-10) backed Jordan for speaker as a protest vote in the 2019 speaker election won by Pelosi. They are among the 21 non-McCarthy voters now.

All of those who did not consistently vote for McCarthy were elected to districts that voted for Donald Trump for president in 2020, as well, although Trump’s performance in these districts varied widely, and a handful of them are on the fringe of the competitive House battlefield.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R, CO-3), who has quickly become one of the biggest rabble-rousers in the House, only very narrowly won reelection in 2022 in her Trump +8 district that covers much of western Colorado. She really sticks out as the biggest 2022 electoral underperformer on this list. Joe Biden, or whoever the Democratic nominee is, may not carry her district in 2024 -- it usually has a mild but stubborn Republican lean -- but Democrats would like to give Boebert another tough race after her close call last year.

The others who won districts that Trump only carried by single digits are House Freedom Caucus Chairman Perry, who represents a Republican-leaning but arguably blue-trending Harrisburg-based district and has had competitive elections in recent years, particularly in 2018; Rep.-elect[^] Anna Paulina Luna (R, FL-13), who won by 8 points in a gerrymandered, more Republican version of the seat that former Rep. Charlie Crist (D) left behind to run what became an uncompetitive challenge to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) last year; Rep.-elect Eli Crane (R, AZ-2), who defeated former Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D) last year after Arizona’s independent redistricting commission made his sprawling northern Arizona district markedly more Republican; and Bob Good (R, VA-5), whose district includes Charlottesville and the University of Virginia -- but also much of the redder Southside region -- won a competitive election in 2020 before winning more easily in 2022.

Many of these other Republicans are in extremely red districts that are uncompetitive in general elections.

There are a number of choices made by GOP voters in this group of districts in recent years that have now made McCarthy’s life harder. What follows is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the changes in all of these districts. But note the political trajectory in these handful we mention, where harder-line Republicans won out over other Republicans who profile less as troublemakers in a speaker vote:

-- Good unseated now-former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R) in a 2020 convention. Riggleman has since left the Republican Party. Though Riggleman was a member of the Freedom Caucus during his time in Congress, he was not as ideological and socially conservative as his successor has been.

-- Rep. Mary Miller (R, IL-15) defeated now-former Rep. Rodney Davis (R, IL-13) in a member vs. member primary last year. Davis is a mainstream Republican who was friendly with leadership; Miller is much more of a renegade.

-- Boebert ran to the right of former Rep. Scott Tipton (R) in a shocking primary upset in 2020.

-- Rep.-elect Andy Ogles (R, TN-5), who last year won a gerrymandered version of a seat that was previously much more Democratic and centered on Nashville, defeated, among others, former state House Speaker Beth Harwell (R), who we suspect would have been friendlier to House leadership.

-- Rep.-elect Keith Self (R, TX-3) appeared headed to a primary runoff with now-former Rep. Van Taylor (R) last year, but Taylor bowed out immediately after the first round of voting, admitting to infidelity. Taylor, who tried to position himself closer to the center in a somewhat competitive 2020 general election, got 49% in the first round, almost enough to avoid the runoff. Republican mapmakers shored up this northern Dallas-area suburban/exurban seat in redistricting.

While the votes are not directly comparable to this one, Riggleman, Davis, Tipton, and Taylor all voted for McCarthy in the 2019 speaker vote (it’s fair to note that some of those who are not backing McCarthy now nonetheless backed McCarthy in that previous vote). And McCarthy would probably still be in trouble even if some of these districts had made different choices in recent years. But we thought it was worth pointing out how the changing composition of the Republican conference’s membership helped bring us to this point, where a GOP House leader has thus far proven unable to unify his conference in a speaker vote.

So the House’s business of choosing a speaker is unfinished as of this writing (following House adjournment on Wednesday afternoon). The longer this drags on, the more potential there may be for a creative solution.

We saw a couple such instances in the states yesterday.

In Ohio, Democrats -- deep in the minority -- ended up helping deny the state’s House GOP from picking its preferred candidate for speaker (Democrats and some Republicans backed a different Republican instead).

More interestingly, Pennsylvania Democrats and some Republicans came together yesterday to elect a Democrat (who says he will govern as an independent) as speaker in the narrowly-divided chamber. Democrats won a 102-101 majority in November, but 3 vacancies in Democratic-won districts gave Republicans a nominal 101-99 edge to start the session.

The likeliest outcome here is that the Republicans eventually figure this out and elect a speaker with just Republican votes. But we must reiterate that we are in essentially uncharted history here, at least in modern times.

Endnote

[^]Because members have not been sworn in yet, which happens after a speaker is chosen, technically everyone elected to the House is a “Rep.-elect” as opposed to a “Rep.” right now. For clarity’s sake, we are referring to members who were elected prior to November 2022 as “Rep.” and members elected in November as “Rep.-elect.” But we wanted to note this distinction. It is a wild time. If you’re curious about the state of the House right now, and some of these distinctions in this limbo, speakerless period, we recommend following congressional procedure expert Matt Glassman on Twitter.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

See Other Political Commentary.

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate

Justin Amash: Kevin McCarthy Is a 'Compulsive Liar' Who 'Cares Only About Power'

The former Libertarian congressman was in the Capitol Wednesday drumming up a Hail Mary quest to become speaker of the House.

MATT WELCH |

1.5.2023

REASON.COM



(Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom)


As the House of Representatives Wednesday erupted in the kind of chaotic energy one normally associates with far-flung parliaments during Question Time, there was a familiar face sitting with a wry smile next to his old friend Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.): The former five-term congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Justin Amash.

Amash, who was elected each time as a Republican but then during his last term disaffiliated from the GOP and eventually became the first sitting Libertarian in congressional history, was not there just to watch it all burn down—he is offering himself up as perhaps the unlikeliest candidate for speaker of the House in an already unlikely 118th session of Congress.

"I think I'm a great compromise candidate, so why not do it?" Amash said last night on a taping of The Fifth Column podcast, which I co-host along with Kmele Foster and Michael Moynihan. "I'm a former member. I know what's going on. I know what the problems are in Washington. I understand why the House doesn't function properly. So I think it makes sense to put my name out there.

Amash throughout his tenure and into his post-congressional career has been almost monomaniacally focused on the increasingly dysfunctional process for producing legislation on Capitol Hill. It has been his main topic of conversation in Reason interviews, in constituent town halls, with me at LibertyCon in October, with Robby Soave yesterday morning on Rising, and again last night on the podcast.

"I've never been shy about the fact that I'd like to be speaker of the House," he said. "That's not like something that's just popped up now…. I've always said the one position I really would like to have is speaker of the House. And the reason I'd like to have it is because I think I would do a good job, and I would do a good job precisely because I want to go and do what the speaker of the House is supposed to do: Open up the process. I get a thrill from that."

He continued: "Other people get a thrill from going and getting their substantive legislation passed…which is very difficult these days, by the way, because it's all top down, so you have to hope the speaker is going to put it on the floor. I get a thrill from having our government work the way it was intended under our constitutional system. It makes me excited because I love this country, I love liberty, I love our constitutional system, I think we have the best country on the face of the earth. I think we have an amazing Constitution, and it is a real shame that we don't use it."

Amash, who as the co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus challenged the leadership bids of former GOP speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, had unflattering things to say about leading speaker candidate Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.).

"I served with him for a decade, and I saw what he is. He's not a trustworthy person," Amash said. "He's the most creature-of-Washington politician you can have. Like, Boehner was an institutionalist—for all of his faults, Boehner had some, you know, romanticized vision of Washington. Now, he wasn't great at it, he made a lot of mistakes. I had lots of fights with Boehner, I tried to oust Boehner from the speakership. But when it comes down to it, Boehner at least had some vision of Washington as a place where ideas go to get discussed and debated and you produce some product…. Paul Ryan was a policy guy. Now, he didn't really get his policies to the finish line, but he cared about policy. McCarthy, on the other hand, cares only about power. That's it. He's not interested in policies, he doesn't know much about policy. If you asked Kevin McCarthy about a piece of legislation, he would not really know much about it. He's not that guy, he doesn't care, he's not an intellectually curious person. I don't think he's that bright, honestly. I mean, no offense to him, but he's not a particularly bright person."

As of early Thursday afternoon, McCarthy had lost a seventh bid to become speaker. Amash suggested that the 20 consistent holdouts, some of whom are his friends, have a specific personality issue with the Californian—they don't trust him even a little bit.

"He's just a guy who's about power first, and he'll do whatever it takes to maintain power," he said. "And that's why the 20 members don't trust him. It's why I don't trust him, because they know what he is and they know what he'll do. He'll betray them to the extent that he's made any promises to them, he'll betray them the first chance he gets, and then lie about it. He has no problem doing that. He's a compulsive liar. Always has been."

Judge: Tennessee must release consultant COVID response docs

By JONATHAN MATTISE

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee answers a question while taking part in a panel discussion during a Republican Governors Association conference on Nov. 15, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. On Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, a Tennessee judge ordered Lee’s administration to release consultant reports that recommend how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic — documents the state argued should remain secret under public records law.

 (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)



NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee judge has ordered Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to release consultant reports that recommend how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic — documents the state argued should remain secret under public records law.

Davidson County Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal on Tuesday ruled in favor of FW Publishing and journalist Stephen Elliott, who had requested documents assembled by consulting company McKinsey and Company for the Republican governor’s team. FW Publishing is the parent company of the Nashville Scene, Nashville Post and other Tennessee publications. McKinsey charged the state $3.8 million for its work.

The series of records requests, some dating back to 2020, resulted in denials and later releases of certain documents. Ultimately, the state withheld six documents and redacted parts of others, claiming they fell under a “deliberative process” privilege. The lawsuit was filed in January 2022.

The exemption — under which officials deem that certain documents can remain secret if they are part of their decision-making process — isn’t in state law or rules. In this week’s ruling, the judge wrote that it exists in common law and has been used to prevent public disclosure of protected documents in legal discovery, but said it “has yet to be decided” whether the privilege applies as an exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act.

Lee’s office and the attorney general’s office did not immediately return requests for comment regarding the ruling.

Paul McAdoo, an attorney representing FW Publishing in the case through the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, argued that the deliberative process privilege isn’t an exception to Tennessee public records law. McAdoo has represented The Associated Press and other media organizations in court in Tennessee.

“While we continue to believe that the common law deliberative process privilege should not be recognized by courts in Tennessee, we are pleased with the Court’s finding that the McKinsey records would not be covered by such a privilege and must be disclosed,” McAdoo said. “The release of this information is important to providing Tennesseans with a more complete understanding of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The documents that the state refused to produce include: one identifying key strategic issues to be addressed; two “scenario planning” documents; an “economic scenario planning” document; a file about issues and strategies for institutions under the Tennessee Higher Education Commission; and a document outlining “potential bold moves to combat COVID-19,” the judge wrote.

The judge ordered the records be made public, saying they were one-way communications from McKinsey to the Lee administration’s COVID-focused Unified Command Group, or UCG, and “do not reflect the content of discussions between McKinsey and the UCG, deliberations had, or specific advice given.”

The judge also dismissed the state’s argument that Elliott and FW Publishing lacked legal standing in the lawsuit because attorneys for the state contended that neither plaintiffs provided sufficient proof they are a “citizen” of Tennessee. Under Tennessee law, state public records requests can be limited to “any citizen of Tennessee,” though state agencies vary on whether they enforce the provision. In case filings, Elliott said he is a Nashville resident, and FW Publishing has indicated it’s a Tennessee company that principally does business in Nashville.

The judge noted there are no “cases determining the test for citizenship” under the state’s public records law, but the statute does mandate that courts interpret the law as broadly as possible “to give the fullest possible public access to public records.”

A similar lawsuit had challenged the state’s withholding of the government efficiency report assembled by McKinsey. The state ultimately provided the requested report, resolving that case.

Gov. Lee’s office regularly cites deliberative process to exclude certain documents when producing records requested by The Associated Press, often when it comes to communications of members of his team.

Lee, who came into office as a first-time politician, vowed to make government more transparent when he took over the top elected office in 2019.

However, the governor has not yet followed through on a promise to overhaul Tennessee’s public records and open meeting laws that he initially promised during his transition.

___

Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville contributed to this report.

Massachusetts

‘Period poverty’ addressed during 

Gov. Maura Healey- Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll tour

Preinaugural events highlight community service

Jan. 4, 2023 – Incoming Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll visit Lowell High, where students, staff and volunteers are stuffing 1,000 confidence packs of personal hygiene products for students in need. From left, Healey greets Lowell High seniors Annamaria Mbuyu, Ann Kirsten Tweneh and Beatrice Nji. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

By MELANIE GILBERT | mgilbert@lowellsun.com |
 January 4, 2023

LOWELL — It wasn’t a rock concert, but the energy felt electric when incoming Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll entered the cafeteria of Lowell High School Wednesday afternoon.

It was their last stop on “Team Up Massachusetts,” a community service-oriented tour that included LHS’s Catie’s Closet.

The crowd surged forward and enveloped the pair, phones were held aloft to snap photos, while others stood on tables and chairs to get a better look at the incoming leadership to Beacon Hill. Healey and Driscoll, who will be sworn in on Thursday, will serve as the nation’s first all-female governor and lieutenant governor duo.

After greeting local and state-level dignitaries, staff and students, Healey and Driscoll got to work, grabbing reusable shopping bags and filling them with personal-care products stocked high on a long row of tables.

“This week was about community service around this great state,” Healey said. “There’s a lot of need — food, housing, clothing — and Kim and I recognize that, and we want to be ready to deliver for people, especially those who are struggling right now.”

Catie’s Closet, a place where the clothing and hygiene needs of unhoused students or those facing other economic hardships can be met at the school they attend, was selected to represent the incoming administration’s focus on making the commonwealth more affordable, bringing communities together and giving back to those in need.

“It’s great to be in a place that is helping students, particularly students in a Gateway City,” Driscoll said. “As the mayor of Salem, I know how (important it is) to get what you need in school. Schools are more than just a place that’s educating kids — we’re thinking about the whole child and that’s what this project symbolizes to us.”

The 1,000 bags included typical items such as shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrushes, but they also have what Catie’s Closet founder Anne-Marie Sousa called items to address “period poverty.”

“The number of days of school that females miss due to not having the money to purchase products for their periods is unacceptable,” she said. “Our main mission is to keep kids in school and reduce absenteeism, so this became a sub-project for us. Young women at LHS can pick out clothing and period supplies for free.”

Sousa is the mother to Catie Bisson, a 2008 LHS graduate who died in 2010 after a lengthy battle with Loeys-Dietz syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects connective tissue. Bisson was 20, but had already envisioned a place where students would get their needs met. Her family founded the first Catie’s Closet in an unused room at LHS in 2010.

The Dracut-based nonprofit now has spaces in 120 schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

“This is very overwhelming to be honest with you,” Sousa said, with teary eyes as she watched at least 100 volunteers assemble bags. “The governor-elect was presented with some options, and we were one that she chose. To bring that kind of awareness to what we do — it’s humbling. It’s more special that I can even say.”

LHS freshmen and Student Council members Sireiyutta Yam and Shyleen Mtiziwa were some of the student volunteers tying greeting tags to completed bags. Yam came to Lowell from Siem Reap, Cambodia, three years ago; Mtiziwa is newly arrived from Zimbabwe.

“I am so new — I came to this country four months ago,” Mtiziwa said. “People are so nice. When I saw the invitation to volunteer, I thought, ‘I want to do something. I want to help people.’”

Healey said that was the community-service aspect she was looking for when putting together the five-city tour that also visited Springfield, Worcester, Taunton and South Yarmouth.

“While campaigning, I really enjoyed seeing young people take the initiative out there in their community leading on all sorts of projects and endeavors,” Healey said. “It’s sad that Catie is no longer with us, but her initiative — and her family’s initiative — starting something like this to help other young people, is really beautiful, and that’s what brings us here today.”

   

JAN 7 ORTHODOX XMAS

'Keep Hypocrisy to Yourself,' Says Ukraine Official After Putin Orders Christmas Truce

Russia "must leave the occupied territories—only then will it have a 'temporary truce," said a Ukrainian presidential adviser who called the Russian church's statement "a cynical trap and an element of propaganda."

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin attend an Orthodox Easter mass led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on April 24, 2022 in Russia's capital city.
(Photo: Getty Images)

JESSICA CORBETT
Jan 05, 2023

Under pressure from a key religious leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday announced a 36-hour cease-fire for the war on Ukraine launched last February—a move swiftly criticized by an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Putin's decision came after the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) said that "I, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, call on all parties involved in the internecine conflict to establish a Christmas cease-fire from 12:00 pm Moscow time on January 6 to 12:00 am on January 7 so that Orthodox people could attend church services on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day."

The Russian president said in a statement that "taking into account the appeal of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, I instruct the minister of defense of the Russian Federation to introduce from 12:00 January 6, 2023 until 24:00 January 7, 2023, a cease-fire along the entire line of contact between the parties in Ukraine."

"Based on the fact that a large number of citizens professing Orthodoxy live in the combat areas," Putin continued, "we call on the Ukrainian side to declare a cease-fire and give them the opportunity to attend services on Christmas Eve, as well as on the Day of the Nativity of Christ."

As Bloombergreported:

For Putin, the offer is "a play at generosity for the public," Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik political consultant, wrote in Telegram. She noted that after Ukrainian missile strikes on January 1 killed scores of Russian troops in occupied territory, "he certainly doesn't want something like that to happen on Christmas."

Russia's Ministry of Defense said Monday that Ukrainian rockets killed 63 soldiers in Russian-occupied Donetsk. The ministry also confirmed Thursday that troops have been instructed to observe the temporary cease-fire ordered by Putin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, responded to the developments Thursday by blasting both the ROC—known for its leader's close relationship with the Kremlin—and the Russian Federation (RF) cease-fire.

"ROC is not an authority for global Orthodoxy and acts as a 'war propagandist,'" Podolyak tweeted. "ROC called for the genocide of Ukrainians, incited mass murder, and insists on even greater militarization of RF. Thus, ROC's statement about [a] 'Christmas truce' is a cynical trap and an element of propaganda."

After the Kremlin's decision, Podolyak added: "First. Ukraine doesn't attack foreign territory and doesn't kill civilians. As RF does. Ukraine destroys only members of the occupation army on its territory... Second. RF must leave the occupied territories—only then will it have a 'temporary truce.' Keep hypocrisy to yourself."

Ukrainian citizens and soldiers who spoke with CNNexpressed skepticism that Putin's directive will actually halt fighting.

"They shell us every day, people die in Kherson every day. And this temporary measure won't change anything," Pavlo Skotarenko, a resident of the Ukrainian region where at least four people were killed Thursday, told the network by phone. "Their soldiers here on the ground will continue to fire mortars. The provocations will happen for sure."

From the beginning of the invasion through Monday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights "recorded 17,994 civilian casualties in Ukraine: 6,919 killed and 11,075 injured." However, the office "believes that the actual figures are considerably higher."

Skotarenko said that "the only positive thing from this possible cease-fire is that our guys may have a day or two for rest and reset."

Russia's planned cease-fire did not seem to signal a step toward ending the war. The Kremlin said in a statement that during a Thursday phone call, Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan "discussed the situation around Ukraine. Russia laid an emphasis on the destructive role of Western countries who have been pumping the Kyiv regime with weapons and military hardware as well as providing it with operational information and assigning targets to it."

In response to Erdogan's willingness to mediate, the Kremlin added that "Putin reiterated that Russia is open to a serious dialogue, given authorities in Kyiv meet demands that have been repeatedly put forward, with due account taken of the new territorial realities," a reference to regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia.



Zelenskyy also spoke with Erdogan on Thursday. The Ukrainian president said that the two leaders "discussed security cooperation of our countries, nuclear safety issues, in particular the situation at [Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant]. There should be no invaders there. We also talked about the exchange of prisoners of war with Turkish mediation [and] the development of the grain agreement. We appreciate Turkey's willingness to take part in the implementation of our peace formula."

The developments Thursday came after over 1,000 faith leaders in the United States—including Bishop William J. Barber II, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dr. Cornel West, Rev. Liz Theoharis, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, and Sikh leader Valarie Kaur—signed a statement calling for Christmas truce inspired by World War I, shortly before the holiday celebrated by many around the world on December 25.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


JESSICA CORBETT is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Study: Two-thirds of glaciers on track to disappear by 2100

By SETH BORENSTEIN

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Chunks of ice float on Mendenhall Lake in front of the Mendenhall Glacier on Monday, May 30, 2022, in Juneau, Alaska. A study of all of the world's 215,000 glaciers published on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, finds even if with the unlikely minimum warming of only a few tenths of a degrees more, the world will lose nearly half its glaciers by the end of the century. With the warming we're now on track to get, the world will lose two-thirds of its glaciers and overall glacier mass will drop by one-third while sea level rises 4.5 inches just from melting glaciers. (AP Photo/Becky Bohrer)

The world’s glaciers are shrinking and disappearing faster than scientists thought, with two-thirds of them projected to melt out of existence by the end of the century at current climate change trends, according to a new study.

But if the world can limit future warming to just a few more tenths of a degree and fulfill international goals — technically possible but unlikely according to many scientists — then slightly less than half the globe’s glaciers will disappear, said the same study. Mostly small but well-known glaciers are marching to extinction, study authors said.

In an also unlikely worst-case scenario of several degrees of warming, 83% of the world’s glaciers would likely disappear by the year 2100, study authors said.

The study in Thursday’s journal Science examined all of the globe’s 215,000 land-based glaciers -- not counting those on ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica -- in a more comprehensive way than past studies. Scientists then used computer simulations to calculate, using different levels of warming, how many glaciers would disappear, how many trillions of tons of ice would melt, and how much it would contribute to sea level rise.

The world is now on track for a 2.7-degree Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature rise since pre-industrial times, which by the year 2100 means losing 32% of the world’s glacier mass, or 48.5 trillion metric tons of ice as well as 68% of the glaciers disappearing. That would increase sea level rise by 4.5 inches (115 millimeters) in addition to seas already getting larger from melting ice sheets and warmer water, said study lead author David Rounce.

“No matter what, we’re going to lose a lot of the glaciers,” Rounce, a glaciologist and engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said. “But we have the ability to make a difference by limiting how many glaciers we lose.”

“For many small glaciers it is too late,” said study co-author Regine Hock, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Oslo in Norway. “However, globally our results clearly show that every degree of global temperature matters to keep as much ice as possible locked up in the glaciers.”

Projected ice loss by 2100 ranges from 38.7 trillion metric tons to 64.4 trillion tons, depending on how much the globe warms and how much coal, oil and gas is burned, according to the study.

The study calculates that all that melting ice will add anywhere from 3.5 inches (90 millimeters) in the best case to 6.5 inches (166 millimeters) in the worst case to the world’s sea level, 4% to 14% more than previous projections.

That 4.5 inches of sea level rise from glaciers would mean more than 10 million people around the world — and more than 100,000 people in the United States — would be living below the high tide line, who otherwise would be above it, said sea level rise researcher Ben Strauss, CEO of Climate Central. Twentieth-century sea level rise from climate change added about 4 inches to the surge from 2012 Superstorm Sandy costing about $8 billion in damage just in itself, he said.

Scientists say future sea level rise will be driven more by melting ice sheets than glaciers.

But the loss of glaciers is about more than rising seas. It means shrinking water supplies for a big chunk of the world’s population, more risk from flood events from melting glaciers and about losing historic ice-covered spots from Alaska to the Alps to even near Mount Everest’s base camp, several scientists told The Associated Press.

“For places like the Alps or Iceland... glaciers are part of what makes these landscapes so special,” said National Snow and Ice Data Center Director Mark Serreze, who wasn’t part of the study but praised it. “As they lose their ice in a sense they also lose their soul.”

Hock pointed to Vernagtferner glacier in the Austrian Alps, which is one of the best-studied glaciers in the world, but said “the glacier will be gone.”

The Columbia Glacier in Alaska had 216 billion tons of ice in 2015, but with just a few more tenths of a degree of warming, Rounce calculated it will be half that size. If there’s 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, an unlikely worst-case scenario, it will lose two-thirds of its mass, he said.

“It’s definitely a hard one to look at and not drop your jaw at,” Rounce said.

Glaciers are crucial to people’s lives in much of the world, said National Snow and Ice Center Deputy Lead Scientist Twila Moon, who wasn’t part of the study.

“Glaciers provide drinking water, agricultural water, hydropower, and other services that support billions (yes, billions!) of people,” Moon said in an email.

Moon said the study “represents significant advances in projecting how the world’s glaciers may change over the next 80 years due to human-created climate change.”

That’s because the study includes factors in glacier changes that previous studies didn’t and is more detailed, said Ruth Mottram and Martin Stendel, climate scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute who weren’t part of the research.

This new study better factors in how the glaciers’ ice melts not just from warmer air, but water both below and at the edges of glaciers and how debris can slow melt, Stendel and Mottram said. Previous studies concentrated on large glaciers and made regional estimates instead of calculations for each individual glacier.

In most cases, the estimated loss figures Rounce’s team came up with are slightly more dire than earlier estimates.

If the world can somehow limit warming to the global goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times -- the world is already at 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) -- Earth will likely lose 26% of total glacial mass by the end of the century, which is 38.7 trillion metric tons of ice melting. Previous best estimates had that level of warming melting translating to only 18% of total mass loss.

“I have worked on glaciers in the Alps and Norway which are really rapidly disappearing,” Mottram said in an email. “It’s kind of devastating to see.”

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