MORMONISM IS A CULT

Members of polygamous group arraigned in court on child sex abuse charges

By TERRY TANG and SAM METZ

P

yesterday

Family and followers of polygamous sect leader Samuel Bateman gather around as he calls from police custody following his arrest in Colorado City, Ariz., Sept. 13, 2022. Prosecutors have widened their case against the leader of a small polygamous group that resides near the Utah-Arizona border, adding child pornography charges and detailing Bateman's sexual encounters with children he took as wives in new charges filed earlier in May 2023. (Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — Members of a small polygamous group accused of child sex abuse of underage girls whom the group’s leader claimed as brides were arraigned in federal court on Friday.

Sam Bateman and the three women followers, who are each represented by different attorneys, entered not guilty pleas in a downtown Phoenix courtroom. They also waived having the charges read to them. None of them spoke.

All four were arrested last year and charged with kidnapping and impeding a federal investigation. Prosecutors earlier this month expanded the group’s charges.

Now 11 members of Bateman’s group face 51 felony counts for transporting children across state lines to facilitate sexual activity, recording it, destroying evidence and witness tampering.

Two women, including one with a baby in a carrier, sat in the gallery. They declined to give their names but said they were there to support all four defendants.

The group’s appearance in court is the latest development in a sprawling federal investigation spanning at least five states that became public last fall after authorities raided Bateman’s compound in Colorado City, Arizona. The site was long home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known by its acronym FLDS.

Colorado City and Hildale — an adjoining town across the Utah border — have changed dramatically since the group’s prophet, Warren Jeffs, was arrested more than a decade ago. But the case against Bateman serves as a reminder that its legacy remains and continues to evolve.

In court filings, investigators have alleged that Bateman, 47, persuaded followers to break off from the FLDS Church, convincing them that he was a prophet who succeeded Jeffs and was “doing ‘Uncle Warren’s’ will.”

Bateman has been accused of taking at least 20 wives, including many minors as young as 8 and 9 years old. But charges have mostly pertained to the decision by him and his adult followers to take the minors across state lines — including at one point breaking them out of Arizona foster care — and impeding the investigation.

A call to one of Bateman’s lawyers seeking comment was not returned Thursday.

The FLDS, from which Bateman originated, is itself a breakaway sect of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church. Polygamy is a legacy of the early teachings of the mainstream church, but it abandoned the practice in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it.

An indictment published earlier in May says Bateman traveled extensively between Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nebraska and allegedly had sex with the minor girls on a regular basis. It also charges Bateman with recording some of the sexual activity, alleging some images may have been transmitted across state lines via electronic devices.

Relying on journals, day planners and text messages, it says Bateman initiated sexual encounters with groups of followers in hotel rooms, including one that began with a religious rite-inspired “washing of the feet.” A girl, who the indictment describes as 9 or 10 years old, called the sexual encounters “definitely terrifying.”

The indictment also claims several male and female followers denied the allegations of abuse, including of their own children, when interviewed by the Arizona Department of Child Safety.

Bateman was arrested last year and remains in federal custody pending his trial, which is scheduled for March 5, 2024. He previously pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges accusing him of kidnapping, child abuse and tampering with evidence.

___

Metz reported from Salt Lake City.

Rare James M. Cain story ‘Blackmail’ published for first time

By HILLEL ITALIE

yesterday

NEW YORK (AP) — The characters are pure noir: Pat, a “dark, heavily handsome thick-shouldered” young man; Myra, a “cheesecakey” woman whose “thick blonde hair” fell “off her bare head to brilliant brassy effect.”

And they talk the way crime fiction characters used to talk, as crafted by James M. Cain, in a short story rarely seen until now.

“Hello there,” she said.

“Hiya.”

“You looking for someone?”

“Sure am.

For Johnsie.”

“He just now left.

“In the taxi?”

“For the concert. He likes egghead music.”

Cain’s “Blackmail” is featured in the new issue of Strand Magazine, a quarterly which has unearthed obscure works by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson and many others. Written over the latter part of his life and left unpublished, “Blackmail” tells of a blind Korean War veteran known as Johnsie; Pat, the former comrade who now employs him; and Myra, a woman from the past with some hard-boiled ideas about money, and love.

“Here, Cain serves up vintage noir — complete with gritty dialogue, a damaged war hero, and a young femme fatale who thinks she’s a lot harder than she really is — only to then turn the tale on its head in the very final scene,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli wrote in a brief introduction.

The themes in “Blackmail” of betrayal, violence, rough sexuality — and blackmail — echo such Cain classics as “Double Indemnity” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice.” Paul Skenazy, a professor emeritus of at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has written books on Cain and Raymond Chandler among others, called the story minor, but compelling.

“‘Blackmail’ is the perfect title for a James M. Cain story,” Skenazy said. “Cain really had few other subjects: forbidden desire, the violence it leads to, the secrets we hide from ourselves and others, the price we pay to hide who we are and what we’ve done.”

“These are all wounded figures,” he added: “a man blinded in Korea, his friend whom he rescued, a mysterious woman from the past who enters their lives looking to make a quick buck.”

Cain, who died in 1977 at 85, is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s greatest crime fiction writers and would describe his work as having “some quality of the opening of a forbidden box.” Born in Baltimore in 1892, he wrote for years for The American Mercury and other magazines and newspapers before he published his first fiction, in his mid-30s. Starting with his million-selling debut novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” he was a prolific fiction writer and screenplay writer in the 1930s and 1940s, and saw “Double Indemnity,” “Mildred Pierce” and other of his books adapted into classic Hollywood movies.

By the 1950s, his popularity was in decline and his style was seen as outdated. Cain had lived in Los Angeles over the previous two decades, but returned to Maryland and quit such longtime vices as drinking and smoking. Skenazy noted that “Blackmail,” set in Washington, D.C., has a more forgiving view of human nature than in his earlier work.

“In Cain’s best work,” he said, ”no one is exempt from Cain’s irony and life’s brutality. Here, the exemptions abound. Those exemptions don’t make for his best writing but do provide a more generous, sentimental, even humane ending than we generally expect from Cain.”

NON UNION RIGHT TO WORK STATE
Hyundai and LG announce $4.3 billion plant in Georgia to build batteries for electric vehicles

By JEFF AMY

today

 Chung Eui-sun, center left, executive chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, shakes hands with Georgia Gob. Brian Kemp as dignitaries join in for the official groundbreaking ing for the Hyundai Meta Plant, Oct. 25, 2022, in Ellabell, Ga. Hyundai and LG Energy Systems say they will build a $4.3 billion electric battery plant in Georgia. The factory would be on the site of the new electric vehicle assembly plant that Hyundai Motor Group is building near Savannah. The companies will split the investment, starting production as early as late 2025. 

(Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning News via AP, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution announced Thursday they will build a $4.3 billion electric battery plant as part of Hyundai’s new electric vehicle assembly plant in southeast Georgia.

The companies will split the investment, starting production as soon as late 2025.

Hyundai Motor Co. CEO Jaehoon Chang said in a statement that the battery plant would “create a strong foundation to lead the global EV transition,” explaining the company wants to speed up efforts to produce electrified Hyundai and Kia vehicles in North America.

“Hyundai Motor Group is focusing on its electrification efforts to secure a leadership position in the global auto industry,” Chang said.

The South Korean automaker said in 2022 it would invest $5.5 billion to assemble electric vehicles and batteries in Ellabell, just west of Savannah. The site is supposed to have 8,100 employees and is slated to begin producing vehicles in 2025.

Garrison Douglas, a spokesperson for Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, said the 3,000-job battery plant would be part of the 8,100 overall jobs and the $4.3 billion investment would be part of the previously announced $5.5 billion total.

The Hyundai/LG plant is supposed to be able to supply batteries for 300,000 electric vehicles per year, which is the initial projected production of the adjoining vehicle assembly plant. Hyundai has said the Georgia plant could later expand to build 500,000 vehicles annually.

“This is exactly what we envisioned when Georgia landed the Hyundai Metaplant in May of last year, and this project is the latest milestone in Georgia’s path to becoming the EV capital of the nation,” Kemp said in a statement.

In addition to the assembly and battery plants, auto parts suppliers have pledged to invest more than $2 billion and hire 4,800 people in the region around the Hyundai site.

The announcements are part of an electric vehicle and battery land rush across the United States. Under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, EVs must be assembled in North America, and a certain percentage of their battery parts and minerals must come from North America or a U.S. free trade partner to qualify for a full $7,500 EV tax credit.

Currently, no Hyundai or Kia vehicles are eligible for the tax credit unless they are leased. Hyundai opposed having foreign-made vehicles excluded, in part because it’s building American factories. Kemp has supported that position, but Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff says Hyundai should wait until it is producing vehicles domestically, using American-made batteries.

“As soon as those vehicles are produced in Georgia, they can be eligible for the credits through the incentives in the IRA,” Ossoff told reporters in an online news conference Friday morning. “These manufacturing incentives are attracting and accelerating billions of dollars of investments in jobs and advanced energy and electric vehicle production capacity here in the state of Georgia.”

LG said this would be its seventh battery plant in operation or under construction in the U.S., saying it was concentrating efforts to expand production in the country, in one example of how federal incentives are luring manufacturers.

This is the second huge electric battery plant that Hyundai is partnering to build in Georgia. Hyundai and SK On, a unit of South Korea’s SK Group, announced in December they would jointly invest $4 billion to $5 billion to build a new plant northwest of Atlanta that would supply electric batteries for Hyundai and Kia electric vehicles assembled in the U.S. That plant, in Cartersville, is planned to begin production in 2025 and employ a projected 3,500 people.

Hyundai will need batteries for more than just vehicles made in Ellabell. The company is already assembling electric vehicles at its plant in Montgomery, Alabama, and announced in April it would start assembling its electric Kia EV9 large SUV at the Kia plant in West Point, Georgia.

Partnering with LG and SK also will diversify Hyundai’s supplier base, giving the automaker more than one battery manufacturer from which to buy.

Because the battery plant is part of the overall Hyundai complex, Douglas said no additional incentives would be offered.

The state of Georgia and local governments already have pledged $1.8 billion in tax breaks and other incentives. It’s the largest subsidy package a U.S. state has ever promised an automotive plant, according to Greg LeRoy, executive director Good Jobs First, a group skeptical of subsidies to private companies.

How busy will Atlantic hurricane season be? Depends on who wins unusual battle of climatic titans

By SETH BORENSTEIN

yesterday

 Homes are flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, Aug. 30, 2021, in Jean Lafitte, La. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday, May 25, 2023, announced its forecast for the 2023 hurricane season.

 (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

Two clashing climatic behemoths, one natural and one with human fingerprints, will square off this summer to determine how quiet or chaotic the Atlantic hurricane season will be.

An El Nino is brewing and the natural weather event dramatically dampens hurricane activity. But at the same time record ocean heat is bubbling up in the Atlantic, partly stoked by human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas, and it provides boosts of fuel for storms.

Many forecasters aren’t sure which weather titan will prevail because the scenario hasn’t happened before on this scale. Most of them are expecting a near-draw — something about average. And that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, saying there’s a 40% chance of a near-normal season, 30% chance of an above-average season (more storms than usual) and a 30% chance of a below-normal season.

The federal agency Thursday announced its forecast of 12 to 17 named storms, five to nine becoming hurricanes and one to four powering into major hurricanes with winds greater than 110 mph. Normal is 14 named storms, with seven becoming hurricanes and three of them major hurricanes.

“It’s definitely kind of a rare setup for this year. That’s why our probabilities are not 60% or 70%,” NOAA lead hurricane seasonal forecaster Matthew Rosencrans said at a Thursday news conference. “There’s a lot of uncertainty this year.”

No matter how many storms brew, forecasters and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell reminded U.S. coastal residents from Texas to New England and people in the Caribbean and Central America that it only takes one hurricane to be a catastrophe if it hits you.

“That’s really what it boils down to is: Which is going to win or do they just cancel each other out and you end up with a near-normal season?” said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. “I respect them both.”

NATURE IN REVOLT
Killer whales damage boats in Spanish, Portuguese waters in puzzling new behavior

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A pod of killer whales repeatedly rammed a yacht in the Strait of Gibraltar this week, damaging it enough to require Spanish rescuers to come to the aid of its four crew members.

It was the latest episode in a perplexing trend in the behavior of orcas populating the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula that has left researchers searching for a cause.

Spain’s Maritime Rescue service said that killer whales repeatedly ran into the Mustique, a 20-meter (65-foot) vessel sailing under a U.K. flag, late on Wednesday, rendering its rudder inoperative and cracking its hull. Spanish rescuers needed to pump out seawater before towing her to safety.

The alert reached the Spanish service via their British counterparts, who had relayed on the distress call, the Spanish service said. A helicopter and a rescue boat were deployed to help the damaged boat to dock in Barbate.

This was the 24th such incident registered by the service this year. The service didn’t provide data from last year.

But the Atlantic Orca Working Group, a team of Spanish and Portuguese marine life researchers who study killer whales near the Iberia Peninsula, says that these incidents were first reported three years ago. In 2020, the group registered 52 such events, some of which resulted in damaged rudders. That increased to 197 in 2021 and to 207 in 2022.

The killer whales seem to be targeting boats in a wide arc covering the western coast of the Iberia Peninsula, from the waters near the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain’s northwestern Galicia.

According to the group, these killer whales are a small group of about 35 whales that spend most of the year near the Iberian coast in pursuit of red tuna. The so-called Iberian orcas average from five to 6½ meters (16-21 feet) in length, compared to the orcas of Antarctica which can reach nine meters (29½ feet).

There have been no reports of attacks against swimmers. The interactions on boats seem to stop once the vessel becomes immobilized.

Biologist Alfredo López, of the University of Aveiro and member of the research group, said that the incidents are rare — and enticingly odd.

“In none of the cases that we have been able to see on video have we witnessed any behavior that could be considered aggressive,” López told The Associated Press by phone on Friday. “They appear calm, nothing at all like when they are on the hunt.”

López said that while the cause of the behavioral turn is unknown, his group has identified 15 individual whales that are involved in the incidents. He said that 13 are young whales, which could support the hypothesis that they are playing, while two are adults, which could support a competing theory that the behavior is the result of some traumatic event with a boat.

In either case, he said the whales are showing once again that they are social animals.

“Orcs are animals with their own culture,” he said. “They transmit information to one another.”

3 healthy kittens born to mountain lion tracked by biologists in wilderness near Los Angeles

May 25, 2023

In this photograph provided by the National Park Service, a female mountain lion kitten is shown in Simi Hills, northwest of Los Angeles, Thursday May 18, 2023. National Park Service (NPS) biologists announced mountain lion P-77 recently gave birth to three female kittens in the Simi Hills, in the Santa Monica and Santa Susana Mountain ranges. (National Park Service via AP)



In this photograph provided by the National Park Service, two female mountain lion kittens are seen near a rock in Simi Hills, northwest of Los Angeles, Thursday May 18, 2023.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A mountain lion studied by biologists in wilderness areas near Los Angeles has given birth to three healthy kittens, the National Park Service said Thursday.

The three females estimated to be a month old were found May 18 nestled in a patch of poison oak in the Simi Hills area about 40 miles (65 km) northwest of downtown LA, the park service said in a statement.

They were born to a 5-year-old cougar dubbed P-77 that has been tracked since November 2019. Scientists are calling the babies P-113, P-114 and P-115.

The father isn’t immediately known. Biologists aren’t currently following any male cougars in P-77′s habitat, so they suspect the father might have come from nearby mountains and then went back.

P-77 makes her home in an area between the 101 and 118 freeways overlapping the Santa Monica and Santa Susana mountain ranges.

It’s the third mountain lion litter found in the Simi Hills in recent years. P-62 gave birth in 2018 and P-67 delivered a litter in 2020, officials said.

The park service has been studying mountain lions since 2002 in and around the Santa Monica Mountains to determine how they survive in a fragmented and urbanized environment.

SACRIFICED FOR MODI'S EGO

Three cheetah cubs die in India amid sweltering heat wave

By ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL

yesterday

 Two cheetahs are seen inside a quarantine section before being relocated to India at a reserve near Bella Bella, South Africa, Sunday, Sept. 4, 2022. Three cheetah cubs, born to a big cat brought to India from Africa last year, died in May, 2023. Their mother was among the 20 that India flew in from Namibia and South Africa, as a part of an ambitious and hotly contested plan to reintroduce them to Indian grasslands. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)


NEW DELHI (AP) — Three cheetah cubs born to a big cat that was brought to India from Africa last year died in central India’s Kuno National Park in the past week, forest officials said, as a heat wave in the region sent temperatures soaring.

The cubs were the first to be born in India in more than seven decades. Once widespread in India, cheetahs became extinct in 1952 from hunting and habitat loss. Their mother was among the 20 cheetahs that India flew in from Namibia and South Africa as part of an ambitious and hotly contested plan to reintroduce the world’s fastest land animal to the South Asian country.

The first cub died on Tuesday, prompting veterinarians in the national park in Madhya Pradesh state to closely monitor the mother and her three remaining cubs. The cubs appeared weak on Thursday afternoon — a day when temperatures spiked to 47 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) — and authorities intervened to help the cats.

They were “weak, underweight and highly dehydrated” and two of them later died, forest officials said in a statement Thursday.

The last surviving cub is being treated in a critical care facility.

Officials didn’t say what caused the deaths but a scorching heat wave in India is believed to have weakened the cubs. The survival rate of cheetah cubs both in the wild and captivity is low, according to experts.

The cats were introduced with much fanfare and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said the cats would catalyze efforts to conserve India’s neglected grasslands. But of the 20 adult cheetahs imported to India, three — two females and a male — have died.

Fewer than 7,000 adult cheetahs remain in the wild globally, and they now inhabit less than 9% of their original range. Shrinking habitat, due to the increasing human population and climate change, is a huge threat.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CHEETAH 

Flight cancelations, strikes raise fears of new summer travel chaos in Europe

By KELVIN CHAN and DANICA KIRKA

AP

yesterday

 Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport in London, which handles British Airways flights, stands virtually empty of passengers as staff standby to help during a British Airways pilots' strike. British Airways cancelled dozens of flights on Friday, May 26, 2023, due to computer problems, disrupting the plans of thousands of travelers at the start of a busy holiday weekend.

 (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

LONDON (AP) — British Airways canceled dozens of flights Friday, blaming computer problems for disrupting plans for thousands of passengers at the start of a busy holiday weekend — a rocky kickoff to the summer travel season in Europe.

The technical glitches and strikes by airport staff across Europe are stirring concerns about a repeat of last summer’s post-pandemic air travel chaos that unleashed delays, cancellations and mountains of lost luggage from London to Sweden to Amsterdam.

Most of the 42 affected flights in London were on short-haul routes to and from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport. Computer issues on Thursday caused planes and crew to be out of position Friday, which was expected to be the busiest day for U.K. air travel since before the coronavirus pandemic.

Other flights were delayed, with some passengers unable to check in online. Travel is expected to be especially busy over the next few days as a three-day weekend coincides with the start of a weeklong holiday for most schools in Britain.

“We’re aware of a technical issue, which we have been working hard to fix,” British Airways said on its website.

The industry is gearing up for a busy summer season and hoping to avoid a repeat of the disorder last year, when airports and airlines struggled to keep up with demand that came roaring back after pandemic restrictions eased.

“While some disruptions can be expected, there is a clear expectation that the ramping-up issues faced at some key hub airports in 2022 will have been resolved,” the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, said this month.

“To meet strong demand, airlines are planning schedules based on the capacity that airports, border control, ground handlers, and air navigation service providers have declared. Over the next months, all industry players now need to deliver,” the airline industry group said.

IATA warned that strikes, including by airport staff such as air traffic controllers, are “cause for concern,” particularly in places like France. Labor action by French workers battling the government over pension reforms has resulted in as many as 30% of flights canceled at Paris’ second busiest airport, Orly, on some days.

In Britain, Heathrow security guards launched a three-day strike Thursday over pay after walking off their jobs over busy periods earlier this year, including Easter.


The strikes have been an issue, but “mitigation measures that have been implemented has meant that in the vast majority of cases, people have been able to travel from the U.K. as expected, and we expect the same to be the case over the summer months,” said Julia Lo Bue-Said, CEO of Advantage Travel Partnership, which represents about 350 U.K. travel agents.

“The industry is made of many moving parts and navigating some of the issues outside of our control at exceptionally busy periods does put increased pressure on the entire ecosystem,” she said.

Presidential hopeful DeSantis inspires push to make book bans easier in Republican-controlled states

By ANDREW DeMILLO, ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE and NICHOLAS RICCARDI

AP

yesterday

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) — As he vies for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is touting a series of measures he has pushed that have led to an upswing in banned or restricted books — not just in Florida schools but in an increasing number of other conservative states.

Florida last year became the first in a wave of red states to enact laws making it easier for parents to challenge books in school libraries they deem to be pornographic, deal improperly with racial issues or in other ways be inappropriate for students.

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Books ensnared in the Florida regulations include explicit graphic novels about growing up LGBTQ+, a children’s book based on a true story of two male penguins raising a chick in a zoo and “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison that includes descriptions of child sexual abuse. Certain books covering racial themes also have been pulled from library shelves, sometimes temporarily, as school administrators try to assess what material is allowed under the new rules.

The day before DeSantis entered the presidential race earlier this week, a K-8 school in Miami-Dade County put the poem “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman on a restricted list for elementary students after a parent complained. The reasons for the objection to the poem, which Gorman read during President Joe Biden’s inauguration, were not clear. The book version remains available to the middle school students, but Gorman criticized the decision to restrict it for younger grades, saying it robbed “children of the chance to find their voices in literature.”

While efforts to ban books or censor education material have come up sporadically over the years, critics and supporters credit DeSantis with inspiring a new wave of legislation in other conservative states to regulate the books available in schools — and sometimes even in public libraries. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

EveryLibrary, a national political action committee, said it’s tracking at least 121 different proposals introduced in state legislatures this year targeting libraries, librarians, educators and access to materials. The group said 39 of those proposals would allow for criminal prosecution.

“He really is blazing a trail,” said Tiffany Justice, the Florida-based co-founder of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty, whose members have filed challenges to books in libraries in several states. “What Ron DeSantis does that I think is effective is he uses all the levers of power to make long-term change happen.”

“Other governors,” Justice said, “are paying attention and following suit.”
A
In Arkansas, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law, set to take effect this summer, that could impose criminal penalties on librarians who knowingly provide “harmful” materials to minors. The law also would establish a process for the public to challenge materials and ask they be relocated to a section minors can’t access.

“It’s a perverse world when we’re talking about trying to criminalize librarians,” said Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock, which is expected to sue over Arkansas’ law.

In Indiana, school libraries will be required by July 1 to publicly post a list of books they offer and provide a complaint process for community members under a law Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed this month. In Texas, a bill creating new standards for banning books from schools that the government considers too explicit has been sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

In Oklahoma, the state school board has approved new rules that prohibit “pornographic materials and sexualized content” in school libraries and allow parents to submit formal complaints. The rules still must be approved by Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt. On Friday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill that includes removing all books depicting sex acts, except religious texts, from school libraries.

DeSantis insists books aren’t actually being “banned” in his state’s schools, preferring to call the forced removal of some books “curation choices that are consistent with state standards.”

“There has not been a single book banned in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said during a live appearance on Twitter Wednesday when he announced his campaign. He later said “our mantra in Florida is education, not indoctrination.”

Librarians, free speech advocates and some parents and educators say the push is driven by a small, conservative minority that happens to have outsized clout in Republican primaries, like the one DeSantis is now competing in.

“This is all part of his plan to run for president, and he believes his vilification of books and what’s happening in public schools is his path to the presidency,” said Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s main teachers union.

Kasey Meehan, who directs the Freedom to Read program at the writers’ organization PEN America, said that, when books are targeted in Florida, they later become the subject of complaints filed by parents in other states.

“It’s something that continues to cause alarm for individuals who are advocating for the freedom to read or for a diversity of knowledge, ideas and books to be available to students across the country,” Meehan said.

PEN earlier this month sued the Escambia school district in Florida over the removal of 10 books, including “The Bluest Eye” and “Lucky,” a bestselling memoir by Alice Sebold about her rape when she was 18 years old.

There have been challenges to books in schools for decades — “The Bluest Eye” has been targeted in various states for years, long before DeSantis became governor. But the restrictions accelerated in Florida after DeSantis signed bills last year barring discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms, a ban that has since expanded through 12th grade. He also created a mechanism for parents to challenge books in school libraries and has targeted how race is taught in Florida schools.

Many teachers and districts complain that the laws’ standards are so vague they don’t know what books might place them in legal jeopardy.

Michael Woods, a special education teacher in Palm Beach County, said new rules compelling him to catalog books in his classroom led him to empty a small library he set up where students could choose to read something that interested them. Now those volumes are stored in a box he’s stashed in his closet for fear of getting in trouble.

“That kind of positive connection to reading is no longer there,” he said.

The individual challenges to books might be coming from a fairly narrow segment of the population, according to PEN and the American Library Association, which track requests to pull books. The library association said 40% of all requests challenged 100 or more books at a time.

Raegan Miller of Florida Freedom to Read, a group fighting the book restrictions, said she has talked about education issues with fellow parents of all political persuasions for years, and no one has ever complained about inappropriate material in their children’s schools. She contends the issue has been ginned up by a small group of conservative activists.

“Do you really think we are all just happily dropping our kids off at Marxist indoctrination and pornography?” Miller said. “You only hear this stuff at school board meetings.”

Moms for Liberty, which boasts 285 chapters, has a strong presence at school board meetings in the state and nationwide. It also has successfully backed several candidates for school board.

Justice, the group’s co-founder, notes the books are still available in public libraries and through booksellers. The question, she said, is whether it’s appropriate for taxpayer-funded schools to provide them to children.

Some books don’t belong in certain settings, she said: “A seminary library would have different books than a medical school library.”

It’s the local, elected officials, she added, who should determine what’s appropriate.

“That’s representative government,” Justice said.

___

Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Arleigh Rodgers in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 
Cardinal blasts vendettas, ‘plots against me’ in Vatican financial trial

By NICOLE WINFIELD

AP

yesterday

Cardinal Angelo Becciu attends the consistory inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, on Aug. 27, 2022. A Vatican cardinal on trial in the Holy See’s big financial trial voiced bitterness Friday, May 26, 2023 that the judges refused to compel prosecutors to turn over all their evidence, saying he cannot properly defend himself from “the nightmare of these accusations.” Cardinal Angelo Becciu spoke out in court after Judge Giuseppe Pignatone rejected his lawyers’ latest appeal for access to the material. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, File)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican cardinal on trial in the Holy See’s big financial crimes case complained Friday that he can’t properly defend himself from “the nightmare of these accusations” because prosecutors have withheld key evidence from the defense.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu spoke out in court after Judge Giuseppe Pignatone rejected his lawyers’ latest appeal for access to the material. In a decree read aloud Friday, Pignatone sided with prosecutors who have argued that the redacted interrogation transcripts and WhatsApp chats are now part of another investigation and must remain secret.

Becciu, who was once one of the most influential Vatican cardinals and a close aide to Pope Francis, said he maintained his faith in the Vatican tribunal but was “bitter” and “perplexed” by the judge’s decision.

“The defense has been demeaned — it cannot fully exercise the right of defense if it doesn’t have all the material,” he told the court.

Becciu is on trial along with nine other people in a sprawling case that is focused on the Vatican’s 350 million-euro investment in a London property but also includes charges of embezzlement surrounding Becciu’s donation of Vatican funds to a charity run by his brother. Becciu has denied wrongdoing, as have the other defendants.

From the start, defense lawyers have complained that the Vatican City State’s legal code has deprived their clients of basic rights afforded defendants in modern countries. Even Pope Francis’ role in the case — he modified the law four times in favor of prosecutors during the investigation — has been cited by defense lawyers as evidence that defendants can’t get a fair trial in an absolute monarchy where the pope wields supreme legislative, executive and judicial power.

Pignatone has routinely ruled against them and allowed the trial to go ahead.

The material prosecutors have withheld includes the full transcript of the interrogations of a key prosecution witness, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, as well as a series of 126 WhatsApp chats about him. Perlasca was the Vatican official most intimately involved in the London property deal and had been a key suspect early on in the investigation. But he turned into the prosecution’s star witness in August 2020 when he changed his story and turned on Becciu, his former boss.

The chats were entered into evidence last November, after Perlasca revealed in court under questioning that he began cooperating with prosecutors after he received threats and advice from a woman, Francesca Chaouqui, who herself had a known ax to grind against the cardinal.

The suggestion that Chaouqui may have coached Perlasca to turn on Becciu to seek revenge against him threw into question the integrity of the investigation.

The WhatsApp chats were texts exchanged between Chaouqui and a Perlasca family friend. Becciu’s lawyers wanted access to them because they believed they could help show that Perlasca was manipulated into fabricating claims against the cardinal.

Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi entered the 126 texts into evidence, but redacted 119 of them. Pignatone agreed Friday that they would remain redacted, reasoning that prosecutors have the “unquestionable” right to keep secret evidence during an ongoing investigation.

Becciu voiced exasperation that he was on trial “suffering for three years, under the nightmare of these accusations” while Perlasca, Chaouqui and the family friend were free. Not only had they “plotted against me,” he said, but had implicated the pope in their vendetta by helping persuade him to fire Becciu and put him on trial.

“You cannot use the Holy Father to carry out such a malicious plan of revenge,” Becciu said.