While Florida Was Getting Slammed By Hurricane Ian, A Frustrated Amazon Driver Was Out Delivering 172 Packages

Evie B.
Mon, October 3, 2022


Hurricane Ian swept through southwestern Florida last week, and while many were evacuating, boarding up their homes, or hunkering down as they prepared for the arrival of a category 4 hurricane, one Amazon worker was forced to deliver packages.

In a series of TikTok videos, the driver, who goes by the name @abnormalpoet, shared his frustrations with his job and customers who choose to order from the website while in the middle of a natural disaster.

“I hate all of y’all right now,” hollered the vexed delivery man. “Y’all knew this hurricane was coming and you still ordered sh**? I’ve gotta go to 172 of y’all today!”

@abnormalpoet #amazon #hurricane #why #ihateithere ♬ original sound – AB Poet ✍🏽

abnormalpoet’s 15 seconds of aggravation has already amassed the content creator over 300k views and 50k+ likes on TikTok. The numbers continue to rise as TikTok users flooded his comment section with empathy.

“Take it easy bro. Packages can be delayed,” said one concerned follower.

“No dude, that’s on Amazon. You should be getting paid to say home,” said another.

One follower alleges that Amazon did not allow her to cancel her order despite the weather conditions.

“I called Amazon to try to delay my package (I ordered before I knew about the storm) and they told me they couldn’t,” she said.

@abnormalpoet Help Me Please !!! #HausLabsFoundation #amazon #hurricane #florida ♬ original sound – AB Poet ✍🏽

Some commenters couldn’t help but to find the humor in the situation, however.

“In my defense I ordered before the hurricane got real,” said one TikTok user.

“Sorry bestie my dog needed a rain jacket,” another TikTok follower joked.

“Please keep my wife’s package dry jk stay dry and safe brother,” teased another.

Fortunately, abnormalpoet was a good sport and while Florida suffered the catastrophic storm, he was out delivering packages to numerous homes. This was no easy task to complete but the determined driver was able to get it done.

@abnormalpoet Replying to @edpool15 amazon hurricane #amazon #hurrricaneian #florida #wafflehouse ♬ Wake Me Up – Acoustic – Aloe Blacc

According to the Amazon employee, he was made to work due to his location. When asked why he was still being asked to work, abnormalpoet said, “Because it’s technically not near my area we still had to go even though I mess [sp?] dodging debris.”

One of his followers, allegedly an Amazon worker at the Ft. Myers location, left a comment saying that her location was shutdown for at least the next few days.

On Wednesday, Sept. 29th, Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida as a ruinous Category 4 storm, causing more than 2 million homes to go without power in the state. The storm reached maximum sustained winds of nearly 150 mph and neighborhoods along Florida’s west coast, along with other areas had issued mandatory curfews.

The aftermath of the storm is devastating. Homes and businesses were destroyed, and people lost all of their belongings, as they were forced to evacuate. As seen on Newsweek, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno declared the death toll to be in the hundreds so far.

Since hammering Florida, the storm continued its path through other parts of the United States and has been lessened to a Category 1. Hurricane Ian has already made its way through South Carolina, causing more chaos along the shore, where it made landfall south of Georgetown on Friday afternoon.

Amazon stated that they have over 8,000 employees in Tampa and areas nearby. They claimed their concern and priority is the safety of those employees and as a result has closed over 80 facilities along the path of the storm. The company is set to provide help to employees affected, along with pay for their scheduled shifts.

Interior Dept. to require body cams for law enforcement

U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks during a ceremony commemorating the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., Sunday, Sept. 11, 2022. (AP Photo/Barry Reeger) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
1
MICHAEL BALSAMO
Mon, October 3, 2022 

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Interior Department on Monday launched a set of new policies that would require thousands of law enforcement officers to wear body cameras, ensures the release of footage in some critical incidents and restricts the use of so-called no-knock warrants.

The announcement comes after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland launched a task force last year aimed at further building trust between law enforcement and the public. It also follows an executive order from President Joe Biden that focused on federal law enforcement agencies and required them to review and revise policies on use of force.

The policies apply to the thousands of law enforcement officers who work for the Interior Department, in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service. The agency has about 3,100 permanent law enforcement officers.

While some federal agencies have already started launching body camera programs – including some park rangers, park police officers and Fish and Wildlife officers – the federal government has lagged behind many local police departments whose officers have been using body cameras for years.

One of the new policies specifically requires all Interior Department law enforcement officers who are patrolling or engaging with the public to carry body-worn cameras and sets out the department’s intent to expedite the public release of video after an incident that results in serious injury or death.

Under the policy, officers or agents are required to activate the body-worn cameras “at the earliest possible opportunity of an interaction and should capture as much of the event as possible, starting with the decision to engage an individual or vehicle.” The camera should remain running until the event is over, the policy states.

The policy says the Interior Department “will strive to expedite the public release” of footage after incidents that involve “serious bodily injury or death in order to promote transparency and accountability.”

The Interior Department’s law enforcement arms have faced scrutiny in recent years, particularly the U.S. Park Police who were faulted in an inspector general’s report after officers used smoke grenades and pepper balls to clear racial justice protesters from an area in front of the White House in 2020. The agency also faced scrutiny over its lack of cameras after two U.S. Park Police officers fatally shot an unarmed motorist in northern Virginia in November 2017.

Another of the policies restricts the use of “no-knock” warrants, which allow law enforcement agents to enter a home without announcing their presence. A no-knock warrant, as its name implies, is an order from a judge that allows police to enter a home without prior notification to the residents, such as ringing a doorbell or banging on the door. In most cases, the law requires that officers must knock and announce themselves before entering a private home to execute a search warrant.

The updated policy – similar to the policy implemented by the Justice Department for its officers last year – follows the March 2020 death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by police in her home during a no-knock warrant and whose death led to months of mass protests over racial injustice in policing and the treatment of Black people in the United States.

The policy curtails the use of no-knock entries to instances where announcing the presence of federal officers “would create an imminent threat of physical violence to the agent and/or another person,” the Interior Department said. It also requires agents to first obtain approval from supervisors and a federal prosecutor before seeking a no-knock warrant.

The new policies also provide additional guidance on use of force incidents, laying out that its policy would meet or exceed the policies set out by the Justice Department. It also requires the law enforcement agencies to collect and report data about the number of use of force incidents and reiterates a ban on carotid restraints and chokeholds, except when deadly force has been authorized.

“Every single day across the country, the Interior Department’s law enforcement officers risk their lives to safeguard our communities, public lands and waters, and critical resources,” said Deputy Secretary Tommy Beaudreau. “In reforming policing practices, the Department is helping strengthen the unique connection that law enforcement officers have with the communities that they serve and move the nation forward towards community-focused law enforcement.”

ALASKA
Geologist whose 2013 discovery 'revolutionized' North Slope oil exploration lays plans to drill again this winter

Alex DeMarban,
Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Sun, October 2, 2022

Oct. 2—Bill Armstrong

The risk-taking geologist who discovered a giant Alaska oil field in 2013 that companies had long overlooked is taking another stab at exploration drilling on the North Slope, this time on federal land west of existing development.

Bill Armstrong, owner of Colorado-based North Slope Energy, in August filed a plan with state environmental regulators, spelling out his intention to drill two wells into a prospect known as West Castle.

The site is located in the northeastern section of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, more than 50 miles southwest of the village of Nuiqsut.

Armstrong said the prospect's characteristics look similar to the giant Pikka oil field that he discovered on state land nearly a decade ago, and similar to ConocoPhillips' huge Willow prospect, found after the company followed in the footsteps of Armstrong's discovery.

Oil from Pikka and Willow, if the fields are developed, is expected to significantly boost Alaska oil production and revenues. The federal government is currently weighing approval of the Willow prospect. As for Pikka, two major oil companies announced this summer that they would commit $2.6 billion to begin developing it.

Armstrong said in an interview on Thursday there is no guarantee that West Castle, located southwest of Pikka and Willow, also holds a colossal cache of oil.

"We know what we're looking for and we know it looks like Pikka and Willow, but at the end of day, these are wildcat wells," he said, referring to drilling outside existing fields. "Even though the likelihood is better than just a random wildcat, it's still a wildcat, so it's not a sure thing."

At West Castle, Armstrong will target the Nanushuk geologic formation, the same formation containing the oil at Pikka and Willow.

Previous explorers had not expected the Nanushuk formation would contain such massive amounts of oil, until Armstrong's discovery, said Dave Houseknecht, senior research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

But explorers are now targeting that formation, which has become the hottest conventional onshore prospect in the world, Houseknecht said.

[Alaska congressional delegation pushes for quick approval of big North Slope drilling project]

That geologic formation has yielded multiple discoveries and "revolutionized everyone's perspective of oil potential in Alaska," Houseknecht said.

At West Castle, Armstrong will have limited data to rely on, Houseknecht said. The federal government drilled a test well there decades ago, the only well in the vicinity.

But there is three-dimensional seismic data showing underground features, and Armstrong knows how to read it, Houseknecht said.

"It's certainly a bold move, one that looks promising," Houseknecht said.

West Castle drilling prospects

Houseknecht said there are many other oil prospects in the Nanushuk formation across the North Slope, based on seismic data.

The formation presents an unusual opportunity for oil companies because most big prospects today exist offshore, and in deep water, Houseknecht said. Also, the crude oil in the Nanushuk is known as "light" and "sweet," requiring limited processing compared to other types of oil, he said.

"It's the oil everyone wants unless you are making tar, so it's kind of the best you can wish for," Houseknecht said.

Mark Myers, former head of the U.S. Geological Survey under President George W. Bush, said Armstrong is skilled at "geological detective work" and has a track record indicating he'll be successful at West Castle.

[Oil falls below $80 a barrel en route to biggest run of weekly losses this year]

But while seismic data can bear the fingerprints of a large pool of oil, it's possible that oil previously trapped there dissipated to other areas. And that's just one of the challenges facing explorers, he said.

"You don't know (what's there) until you drill it," said Myers, a former senior staff geologist for Arco Alaska, which later became part of ConocoPhillips.

Drilling could take place this upcoming winter, according to Armstrong's plan.

But Armstrong said in an interview it's possible the drilling may need to be pushed until next winter.

There are no permanent roads nearby to help access the project, making logistics difficult, though the state and North Slope Borough in 2020 took a preliminary look at a road concept in the area.

Instead, the plan calls for access using 100 miles of ice and snow roads that support drilling rigs in winter.

Despite the challenges, Armstrong said it's a good time to drill.

Oil prices are strong and the trans-Alaska pipeline has the capacity to transport a lot more oil. And, he said, oil will be important globally for decades to come, even as electric vehicle use grows.

"I'm for an all-of-the-above strategy when it comes to energy, whether it's solar or wind, and now they're talking about hydrogen, and there's nuclear," he said. "The world is energy starved."

KANATA

'Reconciliation Starts with You' promotes tolerance among non-Indigenous

Related video: Survivors share their stories on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Friday was the 2nd annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day Canadians honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families, and communities. It is also a day people wear orange shirts to represent Every Child Matters, started by Phyllis Webstad, a residential school survivor.

Events are held all over Canada to honour these movements and events, including here in Lethbridge.

Cindy Rendall, founder of Untethered Heart Counselling, held her workshop “Reconciliation Starts with You” Friday at the Interfaith Food Bank, aiming to educate those in the community interested in what reconciliation means, what to do as a non-Indigenous person, and discuss the impacts of systemic racism. The safe and open environment facilitated discussions on the topic, helping with the education about what truth and reconciliation truly is.

“It’s a workshop for non-Indigenous people to look at the truth of what brings us to what today is. Not only the past and present with Indigenous people, but also our role as white settlers in this country,” said Rendall. “It is sponsored by the City of Lethbridge and Reconciliation Lethbridge, last year they asked me to put this together and because it was successful, we are doing it again.”

Working through multiple methods of teaching, Rendall uses her skills as a registered social worker, and her Master’s in Clinical Practice, to help facilitate a learning environment for all those that attend.

“There are two sides to it. We need to know the history of Indigenous peoples, understanding the impacts of colonization,” said Rendall. “Then we also need to be able to look at our truths as white people, and the privileges that we hold. How does systemic racism really benefit us? And we kind of have to look at that ugly truth, because sometimes we like to think we are nice, but we don’t want to look at our racist tendencies, or we might even be unaware of the things we are upholding towards that.”

Not looking to wag a finger or use shame as a platform, Rendall instead uses open discussion and educational videos to help encourage learning and keep an open mind about understanding the topic.

“This is the first step on a journey that will come to learning,” said Rendall. “This will continue with self-reflection and looking inwards. Also looking at what differences people can make in terms of policies towards Indigenous people. How we speak up and be an ally.”

With a successful presentation last year, the workshop comes with the 2nd anniversary of Truth and Reconciliation, looking to continue the messages it started with.

“We have a nice mix of community members and an increasing interest in this workshop,” said Rendall. “I have been contacted by agencies that weren’t able to be here today, interested in offering this to their staff. It is encouraging to see people make a difference in our community.”

Ryan Clarke, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lethbridge Herald

 

Provinces, territories face calls to make Day for Truth and Reconciliation a holiday

As Canada marks the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, provinces and territories face a push to recognize it as a statutory holiday.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Friday

New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have declared Sept. 30 a statutory holiday along with the federal government.

Murray Sinclair, the former head of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, pointed out at a national event in Ottawa that many governments quickly moved to recognize the death of the queen, and he urged the same courtesy for residential school survivors.

“This is not a radical concept, to pause and to reflect. You do so for other days and occurrences throughout your life quite routinely," he said, highlighting Remembrance Day on Nov. 11.

In B.C., the First Nations Leadership Council said it was deeply concerned that the province had not designated Sept. 30 a statutory holiday.

Regional Chief Terry Teegee of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations said nearly three years after the provincial government adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the failure to designate Sept. 30 as a statutory holiday “is a grave impediment” to the reconciliation process.

“One day out of the year dedicated to honouring survivors and sitting with their stories is not too much to ask. If the province of British Columbia is genuinely committed to reconciliation, they must prioritize public commemoration of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a vital part of our society’s reconciliation process,” Teegee said in a statement.

B.C.'s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation said in a statement that the province is talking with Indigenous people about what the day will look like in the future.

Related video: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation messages and meanings honoured across Canada   Duration 3:07    View on Watch

"We are focused on working with Indigenous leadership and communities to mark September 30th in the manner that is consistent with how they would like to see they day marked in years to come," the ministry said.

Sinclair said the day was envisioned to be “a day of intention, reflection and discussion.”

“For Canadians to take a day out of their lives to lend their ears and their hearts to survivors, listen to them and to resolve to do better in the next 364 days that follow until the next national day," he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a crowd in Niagara Falls, Ont., on Friday that truth and reconciliation aren’t just things of the past.

“It is a day to remember, to grieve and take another step along healing. But it is also a day for non-Indigenous people to recognize that you should not have to carry this burden alone,” he told the crowd.

“How many times do Indigenous Peoples have to tell their stories of trauma, of loss, of pain, of grief, until we absorb those stories and make them our own? Because they, too, are the story of Canada, and therefore, they, too, are the story of each of us.”

In Yukon, NDP Leader Kate White said the party will be tabling a private member's bill to make the day a statutory holiday in the territory.

Quebec Liberal Leader Dominique Anglade said Sept. 30 should be a statutory holiday, but Premier François Legault has said Quebecer needs more "productivity," not another day off.

— With files from Stephanie Taylor in Ottawa.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2022.

Ashley Joannou, The Canadian Press

Canadians reflect about residential schools on Truth and Reconciliation Day


With drumming and singing, at powwows and public ceremonies, communities across the country marked the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation on Friday.

Friday

The federal statutory holiday, also known as Orange Shirt Day, was established last year to remember children who died while being forced to attend residential schools, as well as those who survived, and the families and communities still affected by lasting trauma.

Grass dancer Nathan Rice, wearing a colourful beaded vest and a feather headdress, said he experienced a sense of hope when he looked out on the thousands of people wearing orange as he performed at a Songhees Nation powwow at Victoria's Royal Athletic Park.

"It's a good step in the right direction," said Rice, 29, who was thinking about his grandfather who attended residential school at Kuper Island, off southern Vancouver Island.

"It's definitely a hard thought for sure, but it definitely gives me strength," he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined representatives of various First Nations and dozens of people in orange for a sunrise ceremony in Niagara Falls, Ont. He stood silently as the ceremony took place and spoke with survivors afterwards.

Later in the morning, Trudeau addressed an event to mark the day.

"This is a day for Indigenous Peoples. Today to recognize that yes, you are still here, you are still strong, and you are an indissociable part of the present and the future we build every day as a country," he told the crowd.

"It is a day to remember, to grieve, to take another step along healing. But it is also a day for non-Indigenous peoples to recognize that you should not have to carry this burden alone."

The speeches and events occur even as the grim work that helped inspire the day continues.

In Mission, B.C., where Orange Shirt Day finds its origins, work began in September to search for graves with ground-penetrating radar at the former St. Mary’s Indian Residential School. The City of Mission said in a statement the efforts would continue as long as dry weather allows.

It was at another Mission school, St. Joseph Mission Residential School, where student Phyllis Webstad had an orange shirt, a gift from her grandmother, taken away when she attended the school in the 1970s.

Webstad's story led to the foundation of Orange Shirt Day, which would become the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

It was established as a federal statutory holiday last year following the discovery of suspected unmarked burial sites at former residential schools.

Webstad was at the Niagara Falls event and said she had a realization while looking at a picture of her family in 2018.

"I realized that for the first time in five generations, children in my family, my grandchildren, are being raised by their mother and their father. (My) granny, (my) mum, me and my son didn't have that because of residential school," she said, surrounded by over a dozen members of her family and extended family.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said in an interview that the day was about residential school survivors and the children who never returned.

"It's their day, especially those who suffered in those institutions and survived and then I also feel that it's for all the little ones who died in those institutions and didn't make it home," she said.

"It's also a time to reflect. It's a time to learn about Canada's true history."

Back in Victoria, a city hall official estimated up to 10,000 people attended the powwow.

“To the survivors, we’re here to support you in any way we can,” said Songhees Nation Chief Ron Sam. “I raise my hands to each and every one of you for coming here.”

B.C. Indigenous Relations Minister Murray Rankin, holding a deer skin drum made by a residential school survivor, said his heart was full as he looked at how many people had gathered.

Related video: Survivors share their stories on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Duration 2:30 View on Watch

“Thank you,” he said. “Be patient with us as we take this journey of reconciliation together.”

Earlier, at Centennial Square in Victoria, hundreds stood silently, some wiping tears, as residential school survivor Eddy Charlie said he needed to share awful truths.

Charlie, from the Cowichan Valley about 45 kilometres north of Victoria, said he was barely five years old when he arrived at a residential school, and years away from his family turned him and others into “perfect hate machines.”

The more he told his story of pain and trauma, the easier it became to heal, he said.

“That is my hope for victory on Orange Shirt Day,” Charlie said.

In Winnipeg, thousands shouted “Every child matters" as they marched to the RBC Convention Centre.

Minegoziibe Anishinabe Chief Derek Nepinak told the crowd that there can’t be reconciliation without truth, and the sites of former schools and sanatoriums must be searched for graves.

“Canada has to make those investments to help us find our lost ones because there are so many of them out there. Once we can identify that, then we can start talking about the true history of what Canada’s built upon — the tears and heartbreak of our people,” he said.

Brandyn Nabess attended the Winnipeg event with his wife and son. His grandmother was forced to attend a residential school as a child, but he says she hid this from her children. He says he was glad to see this changing.

“It’s awesome that they’re finally talking about it. With us, we didn’t acknowledge it, we didn’t talk about it in school whatsoever.”

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon — the first Indigenous person to hold the post — welcomed nearly 100 schoolchildren and staff to Rideau Hall in Ottawa, where she spoke to them about reconciliation.

Simon told the children she grew up speaking Inuktitut. "I still speak my language every day," she said, adding she doesn't want to forget it.

Simon, who is 75, said at her age she’s learning a new language, French, and told the kids it would be good if they could a learn an Indigenous word every day. She then went on to teach them an Inuktitut word that means to never give up.

In Toronto, a group drummed and sang Indigenous songs as a woman in traditional attire danced at a gathering at the city's downtown Nathan Phillips Square.

Kevin Myran, an organizer of the drummers' team, said his grandmother was a residential school survivor and told him horrific stories.

Myran said one day isn’t enough to commemorate the historical losses suffered by Indigenous Peoples.

“It is something (that) needs to be spoken about every day. It is something that needs to be spoken about at schools, this is something that needs to be in history books, and talk about what happened,” he said.

Hundreds gathered in downtown Halifax to mark the day and hear from Acadia First Nation Chief Deborah Robinson and Mi’kmaw elder Alan Knockwood.

Knockwood told the crowd at the city’s Grand Parade that as the community comes together to reflect on Canada’s legacy of colonialism, the children lost in the residential school system are "here in our hearts and they are with us here."

He led a prayer in English and in Mi’kmaw.

"My language is still alive but residential school survivors like myself have a difficult time speaking it because it was beaten out of me."

Many of Nova Scotia’s planned events were postponed due to the damage from post-tropical storm Fiona.

Canada's residential school system, funded by the federal government and run by Catholic churches, was established in the 1800s. It removed roughly 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families. The last school closed in 1997.

Many children were sexually, physically or psychologically abused in the system designed to get the "Indian" out of the child.

In Yellowknife, Shutoatine or Mountain Dene Elder Paul Andrew, a residential school survivor who was formerly chief of Tulita, N.W.T., spoke of late friends with whom he attended the residential school in Inuvik, and the experience of parents "who had their children taken away.“

"I also think about these little ones here,” he said, referring to Indigenous children in the crowd.

“They deserve better. That’s what resiliency is all about. It is people singing their songs, talking about praying in the mornings, it is talking about our language, our culture, our history and teaching the young ones.”

The future of Indigenous children was also on the mind of Webstad at Niagara Falls. She said her children and grandchildren brought her hope and helped her believe that the future is bright.

"The other night I heard my eldest grandson sing for the first time. I almost cried when I heard that," said Webstad, suppressing emotion.

"So, we are getting back our culture."

— With files from Jessica Smith in Niagara Falls, Ont., Stephanie Taylor in Ottawa, Lyndsay Armstrong in Halifax, Sharif Hassan in Toronto, Brittany Hobson in Winnipeg and Emily Blake in Yellowknife.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2022.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press

Advocates argue for full decriminalization of sex work in Canada as landmark hearing begins

Desmond Brown - 

A coalition of sex workers and advocacy groups began presenting arguments on Monday in a landmark Superior Court hearing that they hope will lead to the full decriminalization of sex work in Canada.

Over the next five days, the groups will make their case in a downtown Toronto courtroom that sex workers are being harmed and exploited, and that they are not protected under the current laws.

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that three criminal prohibitions on prostitution were unconstitutional because they caused harm to sex workers and contravened sex workers' rights to liberty and security.

The groups argue that instead of recognizing sex workers' rights and well-being by decriminalizing sex work, the federal government created a set of criminal laws called the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) that reproduce those same harms.

"PCEPA criminalizes communicating to sell sexual services in public, communicating to purchase sexual services in any context, facilitating or receiving a benefit related to the purchase of someone else's sexual services, and advertising sexual services," the coalition argues.

"Sex workers are criminalized, stigmatized and discriminated against under PCEPA," the groups say.

The coalition argues that many sex workers are:
Forced into isolation.
Exposed to the risk of eviction and unable to access safe indoor workplaces.
Prevented from meaningfully communicating with clients to access information related to their health, safety, and ability to refuse or consent to sex.



Monica Forrester, an outreach co-ordinator at Maggie's Sex Work Action Project and a plaintiff in the case.© CBC

Monica Forrester, an outreach co-ordinator at Maggie's Sex Work Action Project and a plaintiff in the case, says sex workers constantly face "dangers" in their work and in their personal lives.

"I can speak from my own experiences that these laws just enforce the criminalization," Forrester told CBC Toronto.

"When seeking safety … it's just overlooked, sex workers are not believed, we're not considered priority when it comes to violent situations.


"So, we need laws that are decriminalized and that sex workers to work with lawmakers and the government to keep people safe," Forrester added.

Sex Workers' Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton is one of 25 plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

SWAP's executive director Jelena Vermilion was among a group of protesters who gathered outside the court in Toronto while the hearing was underway.

Vermilion says the laws currently that criminalize the sale of sexual services make it unsafe for people who are in the sex industry to do their work, negotiate condom use with a client or to negotiate what sexual acts are going to occur during an appointment.

"In order to do so you have to communicate about sexual services, and that's a crime," Vermilion said.

"Similarly, we have situations where people who work indoors out of their apartments are put at risk of eviction because the law is erroneously criminal and therefore landlords who are unscrupulous use this .. in order to say illegal acts are occurring in the unit [and] evict them.

"It causes a vulnerability for sex workers who work out of their homes who are unable to remain in their homes simply because of this law, which is unconstitutional," she added.



Jelena Vermilion, the executive director of Sex Workers' Action Program (SWAP) Hamilton, was among a group of protesters who gathered outside the court in Toronto.© CBC

Vermilion says parliament has the ability to change laws immediately, but has chosen not to.

"There's also the possibility of a federal member bringing forth a member's bill proposing the decriminalization of the sex trade and nobody has had the courage to do so, so sex workers are taking the government to court to fight for their rights," she said.

Jenn Clamen, the Montreal-based national coordinator for Canadian Alliance of Sex Work Law Reform, says the government should table a bill for total decriminalization.

"They could remove sex work from the Criminal Code and start to think about other mechanisms beyond the Criminal Code that can actually help to protect sex workers," Clamen said.

"They could also rely on laws of general application to actually address violence that sex workers are experiencing because the sex work laws don't protect sex workers from that violence they're experiencing."



Jenn Clamen, the Montreal-based national coordinator for the Canadian Alliance of Sex Work Law Reform, says the government submit a bill for total decriminalization of sex work.© CBC

Clamen says sex workers are part of the community and when communities and societies decide that certain people aren't deserving of rights or don't belong "because they're doing something that might be morally apprehensible to one person, that's a problem."

"But it's a problem for everybody. Sex workers are everywhere and people are accessing sex workers everywhere for services and it should be important when we have a group of people who are being denied their human rights, that should be important to everybody," Clamen added.

Illegal fishing fleets generate $10 billion in annual sales

Ian Urbina, The Outlaw Ocean Project

·Contributor

Mon, October 3, 2022 

The Thunder. (Simon Arger/Selase Kove-Seyram/Sea Shepherd)

If you look at the taxonomy of crime that plays out offshore, it’s both diverse and acute. And yet illegal fishing sits at the top of that hierarchy. It’s a global business estimated at $10 billion in annual sales, and one that is thriving, as improved technology has enabled fishing vessels to plunder the oceans with greater efficiency.

The Thunder flourished in this context. Interpol had issued a Purple Notice on the ship, the equivalent of adding it to a most wanted list, a designation given to only four other ships in the world up to that time. The vessel had collected over $76 million from the illicit sales of seafood in the past decade, more than any other ship, according to Interpol estimates.

Listen and subscribe to "The Outlaw Ocean" podcast.

Banned since 2006 from fishing in the Antarctic, the Thunder had been spotted there repeatedly in the years that followed. In 2015, that’s where the environmental organization Sea Shepherd found it. Speaking through a translator, Peter Hammarstedt, captain of the Bob Barker, warned that the Thunder was banned from fishing in those waters and would be stopped.

It was the beginning of an extraordinary chase and the subject of the second episode of “The Outlaw Ocean” podcast, from CBC Podcasts and the L.A. Times. Listen to it here:

Episode 2: The Dark Fleet • The Outlaw Ocean (spotify.com)

For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles spanning two seas and three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by Sea Shepherd, trailed behind the trawler, with the three captains close enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships maneuvered through an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm, faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.

As chronicled by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization whose reporter was on board the Bob Barker, the chase ended with a distress call from the Thunder. “We’re sinking,” the Thunder’s captain pleaded over the radio. The ships operated by Sea Shepherd rescued the crew and tried gathering evidence of its crimes before the ship sank to the bottom of the ocean.

The Thunder sinking in 2005. (Simon Arger/Selase Kove-Seyram/Sea Shepherd)

Taken to the nearest port officials in São Tomé and Príncipe, the Thunder’s senior crew members were arrested. Three officers were charged with a variety of counts, including pollution, negligence and forgery. But losing the ship — and the evidence that went down with it, including the fish in the hold, onboard computers, various records and fishing equipment — makes prosecution more difficult, Interpol and Sea Shepherd officials acknowledged.

The second episode of “The Outlaw Ocean” podcast also focuses on another notorious case related to illegal fishing that happened on the seas off the coast of North Korea, where battered wooden “ghost boats” drifted through the Sea of Japan for months, their only cargo the corpses of starved North Korean fishermen whose bodies had been reduced to skeletons.

A ghost boat in Korean waters in 2019. (Fábio Nascimento)

For years the grisly phenomenon mystified Japanese police, whose best guess was that climate change pushed the squid population farther from North Korea, driving the country’s desperate fishermen to dangerous distances from shore, where they became stranded and died from exposure.

But an investigation conducted by the Outlaw Ocean Project, based on satellite data, revealed what marine researchers now say is a more likely explanation: that China was sending a previously invisible armada of industrial boats to illegally fish in North Korean waters, violently displacing smaller North Korean boats and spearheading a decline in once-abundant squid stocks of more than 70%.

Illegal Chinese fishing boats in Korean waters in 2019. (Fábio Nascimento)

The Chinese vessels — nearly 800 in 2019 — were there in violation of U.N. sanctions that forbid foreign fishing in North Korean waters. The sanctions, imposed in 2017 in response to the country’s nuclear tests, were intended to punish North Korea by not allowing it to sell fishing rights in its waters in exchange for valuable foreign currency.

The episode surfaces what experts have called the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by a single industrial fleet operating in another nation’s water.

(Ian Urbina is the director of the Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on environmental and human rights concerns at sea globally.)

Ancient footprints show prehistoric humans had bunions
Joe Pinkstone - 

prehistoric footprint© Provided by The Telegraph

Ancient footprints found in mud reveal prehistoric humans had bunions caused by not wearing any shoes, scientists have found.

Human footprints, as well as myriad animal imprints, have been found at Formby in the north-west, on the Irish Sea coast, as well as other sites on Britain’s coastline.

The collection at Formy ranges from around 9,000 to 1,000 years ago and one of the new findings is that of an adolescent male who lived around 8,500 years ago.

An immaculately preserved footprint revealed he had a protrusion on the outside of his foot, next to his little toe.

“It’s a tailor’s bunion,” Dr Alison Burns from the University of Manchester, told the BBC.

“They were habitually barefoot, so when they sat down, the little toe would have rubbed on the ground.”

Dr Burns led a study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, which looked at how these snapshots of history reveal Britain's changing landscape over millennia.

Shrinking habitat

Before 6,000 years ago, the country was home to a vast range of species including lynx, aurochs, beavers, wolves, roe deer, red deer and boar, all found in the records at Formby.

But the study found that around 5,500 years ago the diverse number of species was supplanted by a more sanitised population list, consisting of just humans, dogs and a smattering of red deer.

The transition more than five millennia ago occurred at the same time that Doggerland in the North Sea was being submerged below surging sea levels, and the British population was mastering farming.

“After 5,500 years, human footprints dominate the Neolithic period and later beds, alongside a striking fall in large mammal species richness,” the scientists write in their paper.

The researchers say the loss of diversity is possibly a result of a shrinking habitat following sea level rise, increased agriculture and human overhunting.

“The Formby record suggests that the decline in native large herbivores may have begun much earlier in the Holocene than previously thought,” the scientists add.

MURDOCH PRESS TAKES ON TRUMP
Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Says Trump 'Courts Potential Violence' with Anti-McConnell Rhetoric

Virginia Chamlee
Mon, October 3, 2022 

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on July 19, 2021 in New York City
James Devaney/GC Images Donald Trump

While Donald Trump is no stranger to name-calling, his rhetoric of late has grown increasingly violent — and it could lead some of his supporters to hurting someone, argues the Wall Street Journal in a new editorial.

The editorial comes after the former president, 76, took to his social media platform Truth Social to slam Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for "approving" Democrat-led bills.

"Is McConnell approving all of these Trillions of Dollars worth of Democrat sponsored Bills, without even the slightest bit of negotiation, because he hates Donald J. Trump, and he knows I am strongly opposed to them, or is he doing it because he believes in the Fake and Highly Destructive Green New Deal, and is willing to take the Country down with him?" Trump wrote in his post.


RELATED: Trump-McConnell Feud Escalates as Former President Calls for Minority Leader to Be Replaced 'Immediately'

Mitch McConnell; Donald Trump

Oliver Contreras/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Mitch McConnell (left), Donald Trump

Then the former president got personal, again attacking the senator's wife (who served as Transportation Secretary under Trump) Elaine Chao, and writing that McConnell had a "death wish."

"He has a DEATH WISH," Trump wrote of McConnell. "Must immediately seek help and advise from his China loving wife, Coco Chow!"

The Journal's editorial board described Trump's post as "reckless," writing: "We live in a polarized political age when rabid partisans don't need provocation to resort to violence."

The editorial continued: "The 'death wish' rhetoric is ugly even by Mr. Trump's standards and deserves to be condemned. Mr. Trump's apologists claim he merely meant Mr. McConnell has a political death wish, but that isn't what he wrote. It's all too easy to imagine some fanatic taking Mr. Trump seriously and literally, and attempting to kill Mr. McConnell."

Trump has directed his ire at McConnell — the Republicans' longest-serving leader in history — and Chao in the past, calling the senator "a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want," in August, and arguing that "A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!"

"Why do Republican Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard-working Republican candidates for the United States Senate?" Trump wrote on his social media platform Saturday. "This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!"

RELATED: Trump Insults His Former Transportation Sec. Elaine Chao and Her Husband, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell

But Trump has also been accused of inciting violence in the past, with some of his supporters often taking his threats literally.

During a presidential debate in October 2020, Trump not only refused to denounce white supremacists, but he implored the Proud Boys, a far-right fringe group associated with violence, to "stand back and stand by" — a message some said seemed to be an endorsement.

After the president's comment, the group — which is designated as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center — immediately celebrated.

"YES SIR, PROUD BOYS STANDING BY," the group posted to its Parler account, a conservative social media app.

An hour later, the group posted its black-and-yellow logo with the words "STAND BY" plastered around its crest.

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Later, just one week before he was set to leave office after losing both the electoral and popular votes, Trump spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally near the U.S. Capitol, imploring his supporters to "fight like Hell" to ensure the results were overturned in his favor.

Within hours, a large group of his supporters breached the Capitol building in what would become a deadly scene as they beat police officers and forced the evacuation of even Trump's own vice president. In the end, the results were not overturned for Trump, and more than 900 people were arrested.

Even after leaving office, Trump has continued to share often inflammatory rhetoric, such as when he slammed the FBI for executing a search warrant at his Palm Beach home. Shortly after, one of his supporters (reportedly a prolific poster on Trump's Truth Social) died in a shootout after trying to breach an FBI building in Ohio.

"If you don't hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I." the man wrote on Truth Social before his death.

They Legitimized the Myth of a Stolen Election -- and Reaped the Rewards

Steve Eder, David D. Kirkpatrick and Mike McIntire
Mon, October 3, 2022 

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington on June 10, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times)

Five days after the attack on the Capitol last year, House Republicans braced for a backlash.

Two-thirds of them — 139 in all — had been voting on Jan. 6, 2021, to dispute the Electoral College count that would seal Donald Trump’s defeat as rioters determined to keep the president in power stormed the chamber. Now lawmakers warned during a conference call that unless Republicans demanded accountability, voters would punish them for inflaming the mob.

“I want to know if we are going to look at how we got here, internally, within our own party and hold people responsible,” said Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, according to a recording of the call.

When another member implored the party to unite behind a “clarifying message” that Trump had lost, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, emphatically agreed: “We have to.”

More than 20 months later, the opposite has happened. The votes to reject the election results have become a badge of honor within the party, in some cases even a requirement for advancement, as doubts about the election have come to define what it means to be a Trump Republican.

The most far-reaching of Trump’s ploys to overturn his defeat, the objections to the Electoral College results by so many House Republicans did more than any lawsuit, speech or rally to engrave in party orthodoxy the myth of a stolen election. Their actions that day legitimized Trump’s refusal to concede, gave new life to his claims of conspiracy and fraud and lent institutional weight to doubts about the central ritual of American democracy.

Yet the riot engulfing the Capitol so overshadowed the debate inside that the scrutiny of that day has overlooked how Congress reached that historic vote. A reconstruction by The New York Times revealed more than simple rubber-stamp loyalty to a larger-than-life leader. Instead, the orchestration of the House objections was a story of shrewd salesmanship and calculated double-talk.

While most House Republicans had amplified Trump’s claims about the election in the aftermath of his loss, only the right flank of the caucus continued to loudly echo Trump’s fraud allegations in the days before Jan. 6, the Times found. More Republican lawmakers appeared to seek a way to placate Trump and his supporters without formally endorsing his extraordinary allegations. In formal statements justifying their votes, about three-quarters relied on the arguments of a low-profile Louisiana congressman, Rep. Mike Johnson, the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.

On the eve of the Jan. 6 votes, he presented colleagues with what he called a “third option.” He faulted the way some states had changed voting procedures during the pandemic, saying it was unconstitutional, without supporting the outlandish claims of Trump’s most vocal supporters. His Republican critics called it a Trojan horse that allowed lawmakers to vote with the president while hiding behind a more defensible case.

Even lawmakers who had been among the noisiest “stop the steal” firebrands took refuge in Johnson’s narrow and lawyerly claims, although his nuanced argument was lost on the mob storming the Capitol, and over time it was the vision of the rioters — that a Democratic conspiracy had defrauded America — that prevailed in many Republican circles.

That has made objecting politically profitable. Republican partisans have rewarded objectors with grassroots support, paths to higher office and campaign money. And almost all the objectors seeking reelection are now poised to return to Congress next year, when Republicans are expected to hold a majority in the House.

Objectors are set to fill the Republican leadership posts and head most of the committees. All eight Republicans in the House seeking higher office voted against the Electoral College tally, while a dozen Republican lawmakers who broke with Trump have either lost primaries or chosen to retire.

Playing to Trump loyalists, many across the party have made a slogan of “election integrity” — a “dog whistle” perpetuating the erroneous belief that Trump’s victory was stolen, as one dissenting Republican put it in a party meeting. More than a third of the objectors joined a new Election Integrity Caucus, which advocates stricter voter requirements and has featured speakers who supported Trump’s efforts to fight his loss.

All the Republicans who objected say they were following an example set by Democrats who objected to Electoral College results in 1968, 2000, 2004 and 2016. In each case, Republicans accused Democrats of damaging democracy and “thwarting the will of the people,” although only small numbers of Democrats joined those objections, which all came after the losing Democratic presidential candidates had conceded.

But several Republican lawmakers argued that the scale of their vote to object would do more to encourage legislators of either party to mimic the tactic — potentially upending the peaceful transfer of executive power if an aggrieved party controls Congress.

“It is a horrible precedent,” said Rep. Tom Rice, a five-term Republican representing conservative Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who was the only objector to express any regrets and lost a primary this summer.

Some continue to recast their objections. Legislators in Democratic-leaning territory who once thundered about defending the republic now insist they meant only a legalistic protest against certain COVID-19 rule changes — like Rep. Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor in heavily Democratic New York, who railed in a Jan. 6 floor speech about his outrage over “confirmed, evidence-filled issues” in the 2020 vote.

But many have moved the other way, more fully embracing Trump’s claims than they did in the aftermath of the riot.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a former mixed martial arts fighter, experienced the center of the maelstrom. He broke off the leg of a wooden stand as a weapon to help defend the floor of the House, then watched from a few feet away as a Capitol Police officer shot and killed one of the assailants.

Amid the wreckage of the violence, the congressman justified his objection by hewing closely to Johnson’s lawyerly nuance. But now, as the favored candidate for a Senate seat in Oklahoma, Mullin is more categorical.

Was Trump “cheated out of the election?” a moderator asked in a recent televised debate.

Mullin replied, “Absolutely.”

The House vote to formalize presidential election results is customarily ceremonial. But in 2021 Trump changed that, demanding that House Republicans reject the results from several states.

On the eve of the vote, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, then chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, called an unusual meeting in the congressional auditorium. Her goal was to convince her fellow Republicans that the Constitution gave Congress no role in deciding presidential elections, and in the days before the meeting, she also distributed a 21-page summary of court rulings that found no evidence of meaningful fraud.

Others, however, reminded colleagues that their constituents overwhelmingly believed Trump had won in a landslide. “Don’t anybody fool themselves into thinking you are going to be able to make a constitutional argument at your Lincoln Day dinners,” said Rep. Larry Bucshon of Indiana, according to the recording.

Johnson offered a third way: Object based on what he called “constitutional infirmity.”

The Constitution stipulates that state legislatures set election rules. Yet some state officials, without asking their legislatures, loosened restrictions on mail-in or early voting to deal with the pandemic. That was unconstitutional and grounds to reject the election results from those states, Johnson argued.

Many legal experts sympathetic to his argument say Congress does not have authority to rule on the constitutionality of a state’s election procedures, especially after voters have cast ballots. What’s more, the total number of ballots affected by pandemic rule changes would not have undone the results in Pennsylvania and other contested states.

Even so, in December 2020, the Texas attorney general filed a long-shot appeal citing an array of unproven claims of fraud and other irregularities and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the Pennsylvania results on similar constitutional grounds.

Johnson drafted a supporting brief that focused on the constitutional argument. As chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a caucus that disseminates conservative policy research, he pushed its nearly 160 members to sign the brief.

The lawyer for the House Republican leadership told Johnson that his arguments were unconstitutional, according to three people involved in the conversations.

Nonetheless, Johnson filed the brief on Dec. 10 with 105 lawmakers as co-signers, and within a day he had added 20 more — including McCarthy.

“It was a fig-leaf intellectual argument,” said Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., who voted to impeach the president and then lost a primary this summer.

“But that was what a lot of the objectors who were trying to make a plausible argument were hanging their hat on,” he added.

In the weeks before Jan. 6, most objectors had publicly sympathized with Trump’s allegations of conspiracy and fraud. Yet when it came time to stake out an official justification for their votes, about three-quarters relied on Johnson’s argument, including 35 who signed a statement that he had written and read aloud at the previous day’s meeting.

Mullin, who is running in Oklahoma for Senate, had called Biden “illegitimate,” posted more than a dozen messages on Twitter stoking stolen-election suspicions and, during a Fox News appearance, made spurious claims about impossibly large numbers of Democrats voting in Arizona and unreliable voting machines in Michigan.

During a telephone town hall meeting with 6,700 constituents on Jan. 4, he said Democratic control of Congress would make overturning the election results “highly unlikely” but insisted “this fight is worth fighting — that’s why we have decided we are going to contest the electoral votes.”

Yet by Jan. 6, Mullin complained only of pandemic-related rule changes.

Hours after his close-up view of the assault at the Capitol, Mullin threw his political weight behind the attackers’ cause by voting against the Electoral College results.

Small donors never abandoned the objectors’ cause.

Trump’s political committees raised more than a quarter-billion dollars in political donations on the pretext of contesting the election, and he has funneled $5,000 contributions to about 100 Republican congressional incumbents, most of them objectors.

In a sign of how central objectors have become to the right, they make up virtually all the incumbents backed this year by the advocacy group Club for Growth, a titan of conservative campaign money. The group has reported spending more than $17 million directly backing objectors and a similar sum attacking their opponents.

In Oklahoma, Mullin stood out from the pack of Republican Senate candidates by introducing a bill to officially expunge Trump’s second impeachment. It faulted the Democratic impeachment leaders for failing to note the “unusual voting patterns” and “voting anomalies of the 2020 presidential election,” or to understand why Republicans doubted that Trump had “not won reelection.” The resolution, co-sponsored by over 30 lawmakers, did not advance, but it curried favor with the former president. In July, Trump officially endorsed Mullin.

Mullin, who owns a ranch, spent a Saturday that same month campaigning among his fellow cattlemen at their annual conference in Norman, Oklahoma.

The campaign gave out fliers declaring that “no one in Congress has worked harder to SAVE AMERICA” and proclaiming Mullin “TRUMP-TOUGH.” At the top of a checklist of priorities was the party’s new refrain: “Secure our elections.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Video shows ‘steady stream’ leaving Trump rally after just 15 minutes

Shweta Sharma - 

SEI127720712.jpg© REUTERSm

Donald Trump supporters reportedly started leaving the venue in large numbers just 15 minutes into his speech at a rally in Michigan on Saturday night.

The former president held another campaign-style rally at a community college gymnasium in Warren, Michigan and spoke for about 102 minutes in total, as he repeated unproven allegations that the 2020 election was stolen and endorsed several Republican candidates for the upcoming midterms.

Trump comments on Hurricane Ian after silence on devastating storm

View on Watch

A reporter who was live-tweeting from the Macomb College Sports & Expo Center suggested the crowd was far from the arena’s full capacity of 6,600. One picture purportedly taken 10 minutes before the end of the rally showed sparsely populated seating towards the rear of the venue.

Attendees began leaving the venue after only 15 minutes as Mr Trump launched into a list of his familiar grievances, Detroit Free Press reporter Paul Egan said in a tweet.

“There’s also been a steady stream of attendees heading for the exits since about the 15-minute mark of this now hour-long and ongoing speech. Former president Trump said a few words about the #MIGOP candidates and launched into familiar grievances #TrumpRally,” he said.

A video shared by him purported to show a stream of people, some dressed in red, making for the exit door as others were seen cheering and clapping.

Mr Trump travelled to Michigan for the second time in six months to rouse his base ahead of the midterm elections, for an event where he was supposed to endorse Tudor Dixon for governor, Matt DePerno for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state.

However, his speech only briefly discussed the candidates before Mr Trump veered off into a rant slamming Democrats and the FBI’s search of his Florida residence while characterising himself as a politician persecuted by his rivals.

At one point he reportedly lashed out at the Democrats as “cruel and vindictive left-wing tyrants” and “sinister” as he called on his supporters to vote for Republicans.

“These are dangerous people who are willing to burn every American institution to the ground,” he said.

In the most notable part of his speech, he offered a shout-out to the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas for continuing to parrot his lies about the 2020 election in an interview with the House January 6 select committee.

“As we talk about and think of the rigged and stolen election of 2020 – the presidential election, rigged and stolen – I would like to thank a great woman named Ginni Thomas. Do you know Ginni Thomas? Great woman,” he said.

Trump added: “She says that she still believes the 2020 election was stolen... She didn’t say, ‘Uh well, I’d like not to get involved, of course it was a wonderful election’... She didn’t wilt under pressure like so many others that are weak people and stupid people, because once they wilt, they end up being a witness for a long time.”

He also addressed Hurricane Ian for the first time since one of the most powerful storms wreaked devastation across the state of Florida, killing more than 80 people.

Mr Trump said he wanted to send “profound sympathy and our immense support to everyone back in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas who are struck by this brutal wrath of the hurricane”.

“Not a good hurricane. This was a big one,” he said, adding that he wanted to “say hello to everybody” in the affected area.

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'Shaken' law professors revolt as hyper-partisan SCOTUS rulings 'upend constitutional principles'

AlterNet - 
By Alex Henderson

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in 2007© provided by AlterNet

For generations, the U.S. Supreme Court expanded or upheld civil liberties, from freedom of the press in New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) to access to contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972) to gay rights in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) to interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia (1967). But when the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling was handed down on June 24 and Roe v. Wade was overturned after 49 years, the High Court’s radical-right majority demonstrated that it had no problem rejecting precedent and rolling back civil liberties.

Moreover, Justice Clarence Thomas, in Dobbs, recommended that the High Court also “reconsider” Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell. Civil libertarians fear that with socially conservative justices having attacked abortion rights, everything from gay rights to contraception is also in danger.

Over the years, there has been much discussion in law schools of the role the Court has played in expanding rights, but now that the Court is rolling rights back, how are law schools responding? Journalist Mark Joseph Stern tackles that subject in an article published by Slate on October 2.

READ MORE: The Supreme Court’s 'crisis of legitimacy' is going from bad to worse: report

“The problem, it’s worth emphasizing, is not that the Supreme Court is issuing decisions with which left-leaning professors disagree,” Stern explains. “It’s that the Court seems to be reaching many of these conclusions in defiance of centuries of standards, rejecting precedent and moderation in favor of aggressive, partisan-tinged motivated reasoning. Plenty of progressive professors have long viewed the Court with skepticism, and many professors, right- and left-leaning, have criticized the reasoning behind certain opinions for decades. But it’s only in recent years — with the manipulation of the justice selection process combined with clear, results-oriented cynicism in decisions — that the problem has seemed so acute that they feel it affects their ability to teach constitutional law.”

According to Tiffany Jeffers, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., becoming distrustful of the Supreme Court is a new experience for many law professors — who, she says, have gone through their “own personal grieving period” in 2022.

Jeffers told Slate, “It’s hard to think about your own profession — the things you were taught, the things you believed in — abruptly coming to an end in rapid succession. It’s hard to ask a law professor to dismantle all the training they had. It’s a difficult, emotional, psychological transformation process. It’s not easy to upend your life’s work and not trust the Supreme Court.”

Stern notes that Jolynn Childers Dellinger, who teaches at Duke Law School in Durham, North Carolina, “intends to overhaul her classes to accommodate the new decisions” coming from the High Court.

READ MORE: Clarence Thomas calls on court to undo rulings on same-sex relationships and contraception: 'We have a duty to correct the error'

Dellinger told Slate, “I have always perceived of the law as a tool for justice, and my faith that the law is being used toward that end has definitely been shaken by this Supreme Court. It is honestly hard to know what to say to students entering this profession at this time as we witness the Supreme Court upending constitutional principles…. (and) stripping an entire class of people of fundamental rights without so much as a minimal effort to acknowledge the consequent harms.”

Stern cites “legal realists” as a type of law professor who believes that the Supreme Court has been overly politicized and expect the justices to act accordingly. Steve Sanders, who teaches at Maurer School of Law, considers them overly cynical — although Sanders is vehemently critical of the Dobbs decision, which he criticizes as “screamingly, unapologetically activist.”

Sanders told Slate, “I have generally, up until now, resisted the cynicism of the ‘new legal realists’ that the Supreme Court isn’t a court, it’s just a policy council. I want my students to believe that legal argumentation, precedent, facts, and doctrine matter…. (But) it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that major constitutional decisions are almost purely about politics.”

READ MORE: Experts warn Supreme Court supporting this 'dangerous' GOP legal theory could destroy US democracy