Russia probe memo wrongly withheld under Barr, court rules


FILE - Attorney General William Barr appears before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 9, 2019. The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memorandum Barr cited in publicly announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not committed obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation. That's the ruling by a federal appeals court Friday. 

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

MEG KINNARD
Fri, August 19, 2022 at 10:38 AM·3 min read

The Justice Department under Attorney General William Barr improperly withheld portions of an internal memo Barr cited in announcing that then-President Donald Trump had not obstructed justice in the Russia investigation, a federal appeals panel said Friday.

The department had argued that the 2019 memo represented private deliberations of its lawyers before any decision was formalized, and was thus exempt from disclosure. A federal judge previously disagreed, ordering the Justice Department to provide it to a government transparency group that had sued for it.

At issue in the case is a March 24, 2019, memorandum from the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and another senior department official that was prepared for Barr to evaluate whether evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation could support prosecution of the president for obstruction of justice.

Barr has said he looked to that opinion in concluding that Trump did not illegally obstruct the Russia probe, which was an investigation of whether his campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the 2016 election.

A year later, a federal judge sharply rebuked Barr’s handling of Mueller's report, saying Barr had made “misleading public statements” to spin the investigation’s findings in favor of Trump and had shown a “lack of candor.”

Friday's appeals court decision said the internal Justice Department memo noted that “Mueller had declined to accuse President Trump of obstructing justice but also had declined to exonerate him.” The internal memo said “the Report’s failure to take a definitive position could be read to imply an accusation against President Trump” if released to the public, the court wrote.

The Justice Department turned over other documents to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington as part of the group’s lawsuit, but declined to give it the memo. Government lawyers said they were entitled under public records law to withhold the memo because it reflected internal deliberations before any formal decision had been reached on what Mueller’s evidence showed.

Sitting presidents are generally protected from criminal charges on grounds it would undermine their ability to perform the office's constitutional duties. The Justice Department, like Mueller, “took as a given that the Constitution would bar the prosecution of a sitting President,” the appeals court wrote, which meant the decision that Trump wouldn't be charged had already been made and couldn't be shielded from public release.

Had Justice Department officials made clear to the court that the memo related to Barr's decision on making a public statement about the report, the appellate panel wrote, rulings in the case might have been different.

“Because the Department did not tie the memorandum to deliberations about the relevant decision, the Department failed to justify its reliance on the deliberative-process privilege,” wrote the panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Appellate judges also noted that their ruling was “narrow,” saying that it should not be interpreted to “call into question any of our precedents permitting agencies to withhold draft documents related to public messaging."

Attorneys for the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to an email message seeking comment. The department can appeal the ruling to the full appeals court.

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

I Taught My 4th Grade Class About White Privilege And Their Response Was Eye-Opening


Justin Mazzola
Sat, August 20, 2022 

One of the author's students taking the Louisiana Literacy Test from the 1960s. 

(Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Take a look at a photo of the 46 U.S. presidents. What do you notice?

When I’d ask my students this at the beginning of each school year, someone always said they look old. Another would point out that most of them aren’t smiling, and I’ll never forget the boy who said matter-of-factly that a lot of them are not handsome.

Students would also realize they’re all men, and, except for President Barack Obama, they’re all white. I’d then ask the natural follow-up questions: Why do you think that is and how do you think it’s affected our country? After discussing with a partner, they’d suggest that only white men were allowed to vote (previously true), while another would theorize the elected leaders made laws that favored white men (mostly true, specifically the wealthy). Like our presidents, almost every student in my class was white.

To be clear, this is not critical race theory, despite what many conservatives will have you believe. They argue that teaching kids about race sows segregation and shame, even if the history lesson involves events long before they were born. Some critics go so far as to claim we live in a colorblind society where racism no longer exists, citing Oprah and Obama as proof everyone has a fair shot at success. Many of those critics also have children who are likely to adopt their views, unless professional educators teach them to think for themselves.

I was one of those kids, a Xennial growing up lower-middle class in a small New Hampshire city with my parents and younger brother. In 1990, the state was 98% white. In my high school graduating class of 264, only three students were nonwhite. Needless to say, I was not exposed to meaningful discussions about race. Instead, my family was indoctrinated by Rush Limbaugh, whose radio show provided a soundtrack for our home. My Republican father criticized affirmative action because it gave minority groups an unfair advantage in a country where, he claimed, everyone has an equal opportunity “as long as they work hard.” My mother, a French immigrant, adopted his views by osmosis. I did too, and held on to them throughout my 20s, until one professor changed everything.

While obtaining my master’s degree in education in 2009, I was required to take a course called “Language, Power and Democracy.” The monthlong class explored white privilege and America’s ongoing racial divide, and was taught mostly through documentaries and discussions. Redlining and Reconstruction were just some of the topics covered. My belief that class outweighed race in determining opportunities began to erode. After a month of evidence-based lectures and thoughtful conversations with my racially diverse classmates, I began to see America’s institutional racism.

Upon graduating, I taught at an independent school in San Francisco for nearly a decade. Autonomy over the curriculum allowed me to incorporate current events and marginalized voices into developmentally appropriate fourth grade content. Drawing inspiration from my graduate course, as well as authors Howard Zinn and James Loewen, I provided various perspectives while teaching social studies.

Each October, my students reviewed what they learned in third grade about Christopher Columbus. Then I would read “Encounter” to provide them with a different point of view. The children’s book is told through the eyes of a young Taino boy recounting the Italian explorer’s arrival, and the ensuing enslavement and brutality he unleashed on the native people. My students were simultaneously fascinated and shocked, leading most to write essays about why Columbus Day should no longer be celebrated.

During our World War II unit, students questioned a U.S. propaganda video, then analyzed photos of Japanese Americans being forcibly removed from the West Coast and images from the camps where they were incarcerated. They asked how Japanese Americans could be imprisoned based on their ethnicity, and why German Americans were spared the same treatment. This is not critical race theory, but students certainly raised critical questions about race in American history.

Artistic representations of various constitutional amendments created by students in the author's class. (Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Artistic representations of various constitutional amendments created by students in the author's class. (Photo: Courtesy of Justin Mazzola)

Students learned about the Greensboro Four, Bloody Sunday and the Birmingham Children’s March during our study of the civil rights movement. They empathized with Ruby Bridges and drew inspiration from the Little Rock Nine. They compared old photos of segregated Black and white schools, wondering how anyone could claim they were “separate, but equal.” Students even tackled the Louisiana literacy test, which was given to would-be Black voters in the 1960s. Every student failed. The ensuing conversation led them to draw parallels between past and present, comparing literacy tests and poll taxes to current voter-ID laws and the disenfranchisement of people convicted of felonies in certain states.

The unit’s summative assessment was an essay in which students responded to this prompt: Did the civil rights movement lead to equality for African Americans? They then defended their position during a class debate, and were given the choice to switch sides if they were swayed by an opposing argument. Perhaps Congress would be more effective, and popular, if its members approached debates with the open mind of a 10-year-old.

As disinformation and “alternative facts” divide our country, teaching children how to think for themselves has never been more crucial — even if their conclusions run counter to their parents’ beliefs. Showing kids America’s complete history allows them to see how fear and greed can draw our leaders down dark paths, and how those choices impact people and the planet. If we ignore these missteps to instead focus solely on American exceptionalism, we face future generations of nationalistic leaders preying on voters’ ignorance and xenophobia.

Whitewashing American history lessons parallels Holocaust denialism, and poses a similar threat to the threads of our union. Pushing historical negationism to perpetuate the antiquated goal of a colorblind society only silences the continued macro- and microaggressions and injustices that people of color have endured since our nation’s founding. Kids can handle the truths of history — even if their parents can’t — and benefit from the lesson that criticizing their country doesn’t mean they don’t still love it.

Occasionally, I hear from parents who thank me for teaching their kids America’s history through various lenses. In a recent email, a father wrote that I taught his daughter “history is not black and white, but a wide range of grays, [which] sets a valuable perspective for life and learning.”

This mindset enabled their family to have a nuanced discussion about Afghanistan last year. “It allowed us … to feel OK that we don’t have clear winners and losers, or right and wrong,” he wrote.

Another former student recently said her biggest takeaway was realizing how mistakes by past American leaders helped shape current systemic inequities. Learning about the concept of privilege isn’t about blaming students for actions in the past, she said, but more about understanding how hundreds of years of history have contributed to modern society.

Our nation’s best chance at progress is for professional teachers to shed light on its complicated past while empowering students to formulate their own fact-based opinions ― and politicians shouldn’t be standing in the way. Teaching our youth all of America’s triumphs and failures will empower them as adults to strive toward a more perfect union. A few of those kids may even end up with their photos alongside our past presidents. And if they ascend to leadership, they’ll be far more prepared than their predecessors to ensure our country is working for everyone.

Justin Mazzola incorporated diversity and social justice into his curriculum for nearly a decade before leaving the classroom to seek new challenges. He now works as a freelance writer focusing on creative nonfiction and children’s books. He holds degrees in education and journalism, and is proud of his years serving the country with AmeriCorps. He lives in San Francisco. You can read more of his work at www.justinmazzola.com.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo spoke at a 'Moonies'-affiliated event, despite Japan controversy


Alia Shoaib
Sat, August 20, 2022 

Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich.

John Raoux/AP, Allison Joyce/Getty Images, AP

Trump and Pompeo were US politicians who appeared at a Unification Church-affiliated event in Seoul.


The Japanese government is currently examining its ties to the group following the assassination of Shinzo Abe.


The group has been described as a cult by former members and has ties to right-wing politicians.

Former President Donald Trump and ex-CIA chief Mike Pompeo spoke at an event affiliated with the Unification Church in Seoul, South Korea.

The Unification Church, formed in South Korea in the 1950s by self-declared messiah Sun Myung Moon, is known to have deep-rooted ties with conservative politicians worldwide. Its followers are often colloquially referred to as "Moonies."

Former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke in person at a conference affiliated with the church in Seoul on August 12 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the death of Sun Myung Moon.

Pompeo and Gingrich's speeches spoke about the value of religious freedom and the dangers of communism – a view they share with the church.

The controversial religious organization – formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – has been in the spotlight following the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The assassin told police that he was motivated by anger towards Abe and his links to the church. It is widely described as a cult by former members.

Former President Donald Trump recorded a video message played during the meeting, per Japanese outlet NTV News 24. During his speech, Trump said that Abe was a "good friend and a great man" and praised Reverend Moon's widow Hak Ja Han, who now heads up the church.

Other billed speakers included former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former US ambassadors and generals.

According to Dr. Steven Hassan, an expert on cults and a former Moonie, the ties between right-wing politicians and the church are due to a shared hatred of communism and the group's vast wealth and influence.

The Moon empire has been estimated to be worth billions of dollars and includes ownership of the conservative newspaper The Washington Times.

"It doesn't shock me that Pompeo, the former head of the CIA and the State Department, spoke for them. I'm sure he got a lot of money. I'm sure Trump got a lot of money," Hassan told Insider, speculating about their speaker's fees. "I'm sure they don't believe Moon was the Messiah."

Rev. Moon and his wife perform a Blessing at New York City's 

Madison Square Garden on July 1, 1982.Bettmann/Getty Images

Former President George H.W. Bush donated his speaking fee after being scrutinized for appearing at a church-sponsored event in the 1990s, which was around $80,000, according to The Washington Post.

Representatives for Trump, Pompeo, and Gingrich did not respond to Insider's queries about why they appeared at the conference and what compensation they received.

Hassan describes the church as a "dangerous, destructive cult," citing allegations and lawsuits by former members claiming they were brainwashed. The church has denied the allegations and says members joined of their own free will.

The group gained notoriety for hosting mass weddings, and the church currently claims to have hundreds of thousands of members worldwide.

The Moonies-affiliated Network organizing last week's Seoul conference, the Universal Peace Federation, did not respond to Insider's request for comment.
Shinzo Abe's assassination shines a light on Japan's ruling party's links to the church

Trump virtually spoke at one of their events last year, and other GOP politicians have appeared at their events for decades). This conference comes when the church is facing a reckoning in Japan.

Tetsuya Yamagami, Abe's assassin, told police that he believed his mother's donations to the church had caused her to become bankrupt and had ruined their family.

A candlelight vigil to pay tribute to the late former prime minister of Japan Shinzo Abe.

Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images

He blamed Abe for promoting the group, whose family had ties to the church and just last year delivered a speech at an event affiliated with them.

The church confirmed that Yamagami's mother was a member of its Japanese branch but declined to comment on her donations.

In response to Abe's killing, Japan's ruling party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), began re-examining its longstanding ties to the church. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has reshuffled the cabinet to remove ministers associated with it.

Japanese media have been actively shining a light on the LDP's relationship with the church, and the church has responded by accusing coverage of being biased.

Hassan told Insider that the Japanese government's moves to re-examine its ties with the group are positive but queries why US politicians are not doing the same.

"It's an authoritarian cult. There's behavior, information, thought, and emotional control. And there are a lot of people born into the Moonies from these mass weddings that are now exiting and talking about it. And it's horrible."

The Classified-Files Scandal Is the Most Trumpy Scandal of All

Quinta Jurecic - The Atlantic

The iron law of scandals involving Donald Trump is that they will always be stupid, and there will always be more of them. Trump scandals—the Russia investigation; Trump’s first impeachment, over his efforts to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the insurrection on January 6—have something else in common: All these catastrophes result from Trump’s refusal to divorce the office of the presidency and the good of the country from his personal desires.


© James Devaney / GC Images / Getty; The Atlantic

Now Trump’s apparent squirreling away of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and his outrage over the Justice Department’s investigation of that conduct, speaks once more to his vision of his own absolute authority—even after he has departed the presidency. It’s a vision that places Trump himself, rather than the Constitution and the rule of law, as the one true source of legitimate political power.

A great deal remains unclear about the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago—among other things, why and how the material arrived at the estate in the first place instead of remaining in the custody of the National Archives, where it belonged. Reporting, though, suggests that Trump may have understood those documents—material that, under the Presidential Records Act, belongs to the American people—to be his own, to do whatever he liked with. “It’s not theirs; it’s mine,” Trump reportedly told several advisers about the misplaced documents. One “Trump adviser” told The Washington Post that “the former president’s reluctance to relinquish the records stems from his belief that many items created during his term … are now his personal property.” Another adviser to the former president said to the Post, “He didn’t give them the documents because he didn’t want to.”

[Graeme Wood: Not even the president can declassify nuclear secrets]

This childlike logic reflects Trump’s long-running inability to distinguish between the individual president and the institutional presidency, a structure that existed before him and that persists even after he unwillingly departed the White House. In his view, he is the presidency (which … is not what legal scholars typically mean when they talk about the “unitary executive.”) The same logic surfaces in the bizarre arguments made by Trump’s defenders that Trump somehow declassified all the sensitive documents held at Mar-a-Lago before he left office. Under the Constitution, the president does have broad authority over the classification system. But as experts have noted, it makes little sense to imagine a president declassifying information without communicating that decision across the executive branch so that everyone else would know to treat the material in question as no longer classified—unless, that is, you understand presidential power not as an institution of government, but as the projection of a single person’s all-powerful consciousness onto the world.

The approach of separating the presidency from the individual president evolved for a good reason: The vision of the man inextricable from the office he holds tips quickly into monarchy. Again and again during his presidency, Trump did his best to transform executive power into a resource from which to extract personal benefit. He likewise sought to use that power to extend his own time in office—either by seeking damaging information to harm the political chances of an opponent, as in the Ukraine scandal that led to his first impeachment, or by attempting to overturn an election outright on January 6. That tendency to collapse the institutional presidency into a reflection of his own desires often took the form of clashes between Trump and federal law enforcement, as officials tried with varying success to resist Trump’s efforts to turn the Justice Department and the FBI into a Praetorian Guard tasked with going after the president’s political enemies and protecting his friends.

The idea that law enforcement cannot and should not be the tool of the leader’s individual whims is central to the divide between the president and the institutional presidency, and therefore to the idea of “rule of law.” The concept’s roots trace back to the origins of liberal political theory: As John Locke wrote, governmental power “ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws, that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the limits of the law, and the rulers, too, kept within their due bounds.” Authority, in this view, stems not from the person of the ruler but from the broader structure of law and the consent of the people.

In his terse public comments about the Mar-a-Lago search, Attorney General Merrick Garland has emphasized this understanding of law and power, which runs so counter to Trump’s. “Faithful adherence to the rule of law is the bedrock principle of the Justice Department and of our democracy,” Garland said in his August 11 press conference announcing that the department would move to unseal the warrant for Trump’s estate. “Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly, without fear or favor.”

Trump, obviously, disagrees with this characterization. In posts on his social-media platform, Truth Social, he has returned to familiar tropes, calling the search warrant and related investigation a “hoax,” a “scam,” and a “witch hunt.” During his presidency, attacks such as these on the Russia investigation followed naturally from his own understanding of absolute presidential power. After all, if the president’s authority is total and unbound by law, then how can the DOJ investigate him? As Trump liked to say during his time in office, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

[David Frum: Stuck with Trump]

The additional twist of the Mar-a-Lago scandal, though, is that Trump is now implicitly claiming that total authority even out of office. If, before, Trump was furious that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could investigate him even when he was the president, now he is outraged that the DOJ would investigate him even though he is Trump. Supporters of Trump incensed by the search of Mar-a-Lago, Adam Serwer writes, “simply believe that Trump should not be subject to the law at all.”

Following the Mar-a-Lago search, Trump’s Republican supporters in Congress have called to “defund the FBI.” Meanwhile, the former president’s aggressive denunciation of the agency and the Justice Department has coincided with a flood of threats against law enforcement, including the magistrate judge who approved the Mar-a-Lago warrant. A bulletin from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security announced that, following the Mar-a-Lago search, the agencies “have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.” Last week, a man attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati; recent posts on Truth Social under the name of the attacker, Ricky Shiffer, had called for people to “get whatever you need to be ready for combat” following the FBI’s arrival at Mar-a-Lago. On Monday, prosecutors brought a case against another man, Adam Bies, who had posted threats against federal agents days after the search of Trump’s estate.

Such threats reveal the disturbing logic behind the GOP calls to defund the agency. The goal is not to critique law-enforcement overreach, but rather, as Zeeshan Aleem argues in MSNBC, to make the bureau “completely subordinate to the authoritarian political project.” And this project is authoritarian, because it locates total power in one person—even, it seems, when he has been voted out of office. This vision of Trump’s authority sets up a parallel structure of political legitimacy that competes with the Constitution.

This is the logic of insurrection. “HEY FEDS,” Bies apparently wrote on the social-media platform Gab two days after the Mar-a-Lago search. “We the people cannot WAIT to water the trees of liberty with your blood.” Meanwhile, Representative Bennie Thompson—the chair of the House committee investigating the insurrection—warned that such apocalyptic comments “are frighteningly similar to those we saw in the run-up to the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.”

After all, if power flows not from structures of law and consent but from the will of a single person, then the measure of whether violence is justified and legitimate no longer turns on whether force is channeled through the proper processes of state authority. Rather, it boils down to a single question: Is that violence wielded on behalf of Trump? Or against him?

Newly unsealed documents from the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago put Trump in even worse legal peril, experts say

Tom Porter

Fri, August 19, 2022 

Trump supporters waved flags outside a legal hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida, on August 18, 2022, which considered the unsealing of documents from the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

• New legal documents were unsealed Thursday by a federal judge in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid.

• They show new details about the possible crimes the FBI was investigating with the search.

• They hinted at ways of prosecuting Trump that do not rest on whether documents he kept are classified.

Former President Donald Trump has offered a shifting array of defenses in response to the August 8 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which uncovered a trove of secret documents.

Among them is the claim that he declassified all of the documents while in office under the president's sweeping powers over national secrets.

But procedural documents unsealed Thursday by federal judge Bruce Reinhart, including the cover sheet of the warrant used in the search, revealed that this defense may not be as effective as Trump hoped, legal experts say.

One implication of the new information is that even if Trump is right about the documents being declassified, he still could have broken the law, Lawrence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law scholar, tweeted.

Prior to Thursday, the only information about the laws agents believed Trump may have broken came from the warrant itself, which was unsealed last Friday.

It listed broad federal statutes Trump may have violated, including the Espionage Act. More specific information was found in Thursday's documents.

They showed that the FBI believes that Trump may be guilty of the willful retention of national defense information, concealment or removal of government records, and obstruction of federal investigation.

Bradley P. Moss, a national security attorney, told Insider that the new documents "clarify but ultimately do not change much" of what we previously knew.

A striking detail, he said, is that the FBI believes Trump has obstructed its probe.

"Clearly, the FBI currently believes Mr. Trump not only took properly marked classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, but he kept them and resisted turning them over when confronted by the government," Moss said.

The FBI could theoretically use a charge of obstruction to pursue Trump, he said, even if the information does turn out to have been declassified.

Moss did suggest, though, that it is unlikely that prosecutors would choose to make that case, even if they technically could.

"I have no reason to suspect the government would pursue a charge if they concluded there was sufficient evidence the records were in fact declassified, as Trump keeps claiming," he said. "Even if the Espionage Act charge falls through, the government could pursue an obstruction charge.

"It is unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility, they would do so on its own. After all, our jails are filled with people who were caught up in charges lesser than the original aim of what law enforcement was investigating."

The affidavit underpinning the warrant would likely detail the grounds the FBI used in pursuing the warrant.

Reinhart said Thursday that he is leaning toward releasing the affidavit in a redacted form, because it contains sensitive information relating to the ongoing investigation. This could come as soon as August 25, the date of the next hearing.

Insider contacted Trump's office for comment.

His attorney, Alina Habba, in an interview on Newsmax, pushed back on the charges described in the sheet, saying Trump had cooperated with investigators and again said that he declassified the information.

Several figures from the Trump administration have described that claim as implausible or even "a lie."

US Military families' housing benefits lag as rents explode






yRep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., center, walks down the steps with other members of the House during an event on steps of the House of Representatives on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. Basic allowance for housing is like an “algorithm that needs updating on a regular basis,” said Strickland, whose district includes the massive Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, where many military families struggle to find affordable homes. Her proposal is part of the national defense bill that passed the House in July and is awaiting Senate approval. 

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)More

R.J. RICO
Sat, August 20, 2022 

Associated Press (AP) — When Kristin Martin found out her husband was being transferred to Naval Base San Diego, securing housing for their family of five quickly took over her life.

On-base housing wasn’t an option — the waitlist for a four-bedroom home in the neighborhoods they qualified for was 14 to 16 months.

Neither were the military-only hotels near base where new arrivals can pay low rates as they get their bearings — those were full, too.

So Martin, whose husband is a lieutenant, cast a wide net across San Diego and started applying for rental homes, all sight unseen.

“I was waking up and the first thing I was doing was looking at properties,” Martin said. “I was looking at it mid-day, before I went to bed. I had alerts set. It became a full-time job.”

More than 30 rental applications later and hundreds of dollars in application fees down the drain, the Martins finally found a home.

But there were caveats. They’d have to start paying rent a month before they actually moved. And, at $4,200 per month, their rent was nearly $700 more than the monthly basic allowance for housing, known as the BAH, that her husband receives.

“We’ll probably be here two or three years, so that could be $20,000 that we’re paying out of pocket above BAH just for rent,” Martin said last month.

“It’s affecting us personally but then I think about how we were a junior enlisted family at one point. I cannot imagine the struggles (they) are going through.”

Housing has long been a major benefit for service members, a subsidy to salaries that trail the private sector. But amid record-breaking spikes in rent, the Department of Defense has neglected its commitment to help military families find affordable places to live, service members and housing activists say.

That’s forced many to settle for substandard homes, deal with extremely long commutes or pay thousands out of pocket they hadn’t budgeted for.

“We have families coming to us that are on exorbitantly lengthy waiting lists and sitting in homes that they can’t afford, like an Airbnb rental, or they’re at a hotel or camping in tents or living in RVs,” said Kate Needham, a veteran who co-founded the nonprofit Armed Forces Housing Advocates in May 2021.

“I don’t think civilians really understand — they might think we’re living in free housing and just having a great time, making lots of money. And that’s not the case at all.”

Reports of the housing squeeze that military families are feeling has alarmed members of Congress who are pushing legislation that would force the Department of Defense to rethink how it handles housing.

A common complaint is that with rents soaring nationwide, housing allowances, which vary by rank and are recalculated annually, haven’t kept pace with rental markets, even though they're supposed to cover 95% of rental costs for the approximately two-thirds of active-duty personnel who live off base.

According to a data analysis by The Associated Press of five of the most populous military bases in the U.S., housing allowances across all ranks have risen an average of 18.7% since January 2018. In that span, according to real estate company Zillow, rents have skyrocketed 43.9% in those markets: Carlsbad, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; El Paso, Texas; Killeen, Texas, and Tacoma, Washington.

And because of how tough off-base markets are, on-base housing has become a hot commodity, with many bases having long waitlists.

Needham argues the discrepancy between military housing allowances and the current market should alarm officials who are already struggling to recruit the next generation.

“If you can’t afford your job, why the hell would you stay in the job?” Needham said.

The Department of Defense did not comment on whether housing issues have become a retention concern. But defense officials said military housing offices monitor markets and offer tools to help families find “suitable, affordable housing, whether on or off-base.”

“The Department of Defense is committed to ensuring that service members and their families have access to affordable, quality housing within a reasonable commute of their assigned duty station,” it said.

At MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, housing allowances used to be in line with the local market. In January 2020, a senior airman without dependents received a monthly housing stipend of $1,560, compared to the typical Tampa-area rent price of $1,457, according to Zillow. But since then rent prices have exploded to $2,118 per month on average in July, while a senior airman’s housing allowance is currently $1,647.

With such a discrepancy and those living off-base facing notoriously long commutes, it’s no wonder that nearly all of MacDill’s 572 homes are full.

Tampa real estate agent Renee Thompson said it’s common for service members to rent homes that are an hour’s drive away from base.

“No homes in today’s market will even come close to the service member’s BAH,” said Thompson, who served in the Army. “It’s really disheartening.”

Frustrated by what she called the Defense Department’s lack of transparency into housing allowance calculations, U.S. Rep. Marilyn Strickland, D-Wash., has introduced a measure that would give the department one year to reexamine its process and report on how accurate the current system is.

BAH is like an “algorithm that needs updating on a regular basis,” said Strickland, whose district includes the massive Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, where many military families struggle to find affordable homes.

“The vast majority of people live off post, so this is incredibly urgent,” she said.

As threats of far-right violence rise, New Hampshire Free Staters shared list of 'woke' churches


Haven Orecchio-Egresitz,Kenneth Niemeyer
Fri, August 19, 2022

A New Hampshire church urged worshippers to wash their hands amid a Covid outbreak.

AP Photo/Charles Krupa

A New Hampshire libertarian group tweeted a list of churches, classifying them by how "woke" they are.


Being LGBTQ-friendly, COVID-cautious, or having a Ukraine flag displayed is considered "woke."


The list was posted amid a spike in far-right threats of violence.

The Free State Project — a New Hampshire-based libertarian movement — tweeted a list of Christian churches in the state, identifying those that are considered "woke."

The list, which was published on a wiki called "LibertyWins.org," largely measures "wokeness" by whether the church is LGBTQ-friendly, has advocated for racial or social justice, or had implemented COVID precautions.

It was distributed by The Free State Twitter account, which has over 80,000 followers.

The list on "LibertyWins.org" titled "Christianity in New Hampshire," doesn't detail the intention of the list, but some critics on Twitter are calling the "wokeness" classification a "racist dog whistle" and worry that it will prompt attacks on the places of worship.

State Democratic Rep. Lucy Weber has previously protested against The Free State Project and described them as anti-LGBTQ. Weber told Insider that she didn't want to speculate about the group's motivations for compiling the list, but found it "distasteful."

"It's not an issue I have a lot to say on except that they've gotten the right to say it," Weber told Insider. "They're not government actors, so I find it distasteful, but I'm allowed to have my opinions too."

There are nearly 900 churches named, and they are identified by their location and denomination.




In a column called "wokeness" there are notes.

While displaying a Pride flag, or requiring masks was a sure-fire way to land churches on the list, there were other reasons cited for the classification.

An Episcopal church made its way on the woke list by donating to the NAACP. Another displayed a Ukraine flag on its website. A third included a blurb on its website about how they are located on "unceded native American land."

Eight Episcopal churches on the list were included for either supporting the LGBTQ. community on their websites or for generally being LGBTQ affirming churches. The Episcopal Church is generally more accepting of the LGBTQ community, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the former Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, was the first openly gay priest to become a bishop of a major Christian denomination.

A representative for the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire told Insider in a statement that the church was aware of the list.

"The Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire supports gay marriage, as do Episcopal bishops and churches across the nation, as does The Episcopal Church as a governing body," the statement read. "We are all seeking to be disciples of our savior Jesus Christ."

Founded by Jason Sorens, the Free State Project is a movement that since the early 2000s has encouraged the migration of "liberty activists" to New Hampshire, where they hope to live in a libertarian limited-government utopia.

The group's website explicitly says it is not tied to "any political party or organization," though many of its members who do run or serve in political office are registered as Republicans.

The Free State Project didn't return Insider's messages for comment.

At a recent protest against the movement, Weber told The Keene Sentinel that the group may preach freedom, but that liberty doesn't extend to people in the LGBTQ community. Members of the group, she said, have pushed to make it harder to register to vote and want to restrict abortions.

"They go, 'we're for liberty, we're for freedom.' Who isn't?" Weber told the Sentinel in July. "Their freedom is only for people who are just like them and they don't seem to have a concept of the public good."

Extremist threats of violence are at a high

The Free State Project says on its website — in bold — that "it does not welcome anyone who promotes violence, racial hatred, or bigotry" and in 2013 it kicked out infamous neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell after he wrote about killing government agents and violently overthrowing the government.

And while the group says it doesn't welcome those who promote violence, the list, which singles out places of worship due to ideology, was shared on Twitter as threats of extremist far-right violence are at a high.

References to "civil war" doubled on online extremist platforms in the week following the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Insider previously reported.

Extremists have taken to both niche social media platforms and mainstream sites like TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube to preach pro-Trump violence.

Antisemitic threats against the Jewish Florida judge who signed the search warrant became so specific and credible that his temple canceled Shabbat services.

Judge Bruce Reinhart and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been subjected to "an enormous amount of threats and vitriol online," Alex Friedfeld, who monitors online extremism for the Anti Defamation League's Center On Extremism, told Insider.

A History of Libertarian Utopianism | Libertarianism.org

https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/history-libertarian-utopiani…

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FRIDAY; TIME FOR ANOTHER PALESTINIAN FUNERAL

Palestinian killed during Israeli raid in occupied West Bank






Mourners read versus of Quran and take the last look at the body of Salah Sawafta, 58 during his funeral at a mosque, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Friday, Aug. 19, 2022. Israeli forces shot and killed Sawafta during an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank on Friday, according to his brother, who said he was walking home when a bullet struck him in the head as Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian youths. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)More

JELAL HASSAN
Fri, August 19, 2022 

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A 58-year-old Palestinian man was shot and killed outside a bakery during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank early on Friday.

His family and the Palestinian Health Ministry said he was shot by Israeli troops. The military said he may have been struck by gunfire from Palestinian militants during clashes that broke out during the raid, but a Palestinian eyewitness said there were no militants in the immediate area.

In a separate development, Israel approved an additional 1,500 work permits for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, less than two weeks after the territory's militant Hamas rulers sat out the latest round of violence there.

Salah Sawafta, 58, was shot in the head as he was returning home from dawn prayers in the West Bank town of Tubas, according to his brother, Jehad.


“There were clashes with youths in the area and Salah was shot by a sniper in the head after he bought a bag of bread from a grocery store,” he said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said he died after being brought to a local hospital in critical condition.

Surveillance video from outside the bakery shows Sawafta falling to the ground as another man leans out from the doorway and looks down the street. Neither Israeli troops nor Palestinian militants can be seen in the video.

Zakreya Abu Dollah, the bakery owner, said he was surprised to see Israeli soldiers and a sniper taking up positions on the road outside his shop just before the shooting. He said there were no Palestinian gunmen or stone-throwers in the immediate area.

The Israeli military said its troops went to arrest Palestinians suspected of taking part in or planning attacks. Palestinians hurled firebombs and opened fire at the soldiers, who shot back, the military said, adding that “a hit was identified,” without elaborating. The military said it was still investigating the incident.

Israeli forces carry out near-daily raids in the West Bank, including in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, which often ignite violent confrontations with stone-throwing Palestinians or gunmen.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war, territories the Palestinians want for a future state. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, and the Islamic militant group Hamas seized power from the Palestinian Authority two years later.

Since then, Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and several smaller battles, and Israel and Egypt have imposed a crippling blockade on the territory. Israel says the blockade is needed to keep Hamas from re-arming, while critics view it as a form of collective punishment of Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinian residents.

Israel has taken steps to ease the blockade over the past year as part of understandings with Hamas aimed at preserving calm, including issuing thousands of permits for Palestinian laborers from Gaza to work inside Israel. The latest increase brings the total number of permits to 15,500.

That likely factored into Hamas' decision to stay out of the most recent fighting, which began when Israel launched a wave of airstrikes against what it said was an imminent threat from Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed group in Gaza.

An Egyptian-brokered cease-fire ended three days of heavy fighting in which Israel carried out waves of airstrikes against what it said were militant targets and Islamic Jihad fired some 1,100 rockets at Israel. The fighting killed at least 49 Palestinians, including 17 children, as well as more than a dozen militants. No Israelis were killed or seriously wounded.

Japan asks its youth to drink more alcohol, launches campaign

Japan has launched a campaign to promote alcohol-drinking among young people as it faces the sobering reality of a population crisis.

India Today Web Desk 

New Delhi

August 20, 2022

Female customers toast with beer at a restaurant in

 Tokyo, Japan, August 29, 2017.

 Picture taken on August 29, 2017.

 (Reuters photo)

HIGHLIGHTS

Japan has asked its young adults to drink more alcohol

Campaign “Sake Viva!” has been launched by Japan's National Tax Agency

It urges youngsters to come up with ideas that might help increase demand for alcoholic drinks

Amid the decline in the revenue collections, Japan has asked its young adults to drink more alcohol. It is an attempt by the government to boost the economy and to overcome a sobering population crisis exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.

The National Tax Agency (NTA) has announced a national business contest called “Sake Viva!” to promote alcohol-drinking in its younger population.

The campaign urges youngsters to come up with business ideas that might help increase demand for Japanese alcoholic drinks, including sake, shochu, awamori, beer, whisky and wine.

The Japanese tax agency has described it a plan that contributes to revitalising the liquor industry and solving problems.

The campaign “Sake Viva!” invites people aged between 20 and 39 to submit innovative ideas for reviving the appeal of alcoholic beverages.

As reported by the Independent, people can submit new proposals for products and designs compatible with the new ways of living and different tastes that have emerged following a slew of lockdowns and Covid restrictions in the last two years.

According to the contest’s page, there is no entry fee to enroll for the competition, which also asks people to suggest new sales methods that use artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and geographical indications (a sign used on products to specify their geographical origin) to improve brand value.

Finalists in the competition will be selected by September 27, which will be followed by another round in October. The results of this unique project are expected to be announced on November 10 in Tokyo.

According to NTA, data shows that Japanese were drinking less in 2020, after the country was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic as compared to the year 1995. In 1995, people were consuming 100 litres (22 gallons) of alcohol and now, alcohol drinking is down to 75 litres (16 gallons).

Japan is holding an open competition to figure out how to get people to buy more alcohol. Residents are not happy about it.

Matthew Loh
Fri, August 19, 2022 

A young man wearing a kimono swigs from a bottle of champagne as he celebrates after attending a Coming of Age ceremony at Yokohama Arena on January 10, 2022 in Yokohama, Japan.

Carl Court/Getty Images

Japan recently announced a competition for ideas on how to get people to buy more alcohol.


The campaign has been criticized heavily online for promoting unhealthy habits.


Three Japanese residents told Insider they felt it would lead to long-term problems in society.

Japan's recent campaign urging people to drink up has sparked an outcry online, with citizens criticizing it as a short-sighted plan that encourages unhealthy habits for the sake of a bump in alcohol taxes.

The "Sake Viva!" campaign, run by Japan's National Tax Agency, is holding an open competition for young people to submit ideas on how to boost the sales of alcohol consumption — and thereby liquor tax revenues.

It's aimed at reviving the country's alcohol industry, which has suffered because of the country's aging population and lifestyle changes from the COVID-19 pandemic, its website said.

But so far, the campaign isn't off to a great start. As of Friday evening Tokyo time, the hashtag #SakeViva had been populated by dozens of posts, many of them in Japanese, bashing the campaign.

"Staying away from alcohol is a good thing. Do you want to go that far to take the liquor tax?" one user tweeted.

"Even if tax revenues rise a little, our medical expenses will explode," wrote Mikiko Kaneko, a freelance writer who goes by the Twitter handle @fukuuchi_ayano.

Kaneko, a 48-year-old freelance writer in Niigata city, told Insider she previously struggled with alcoholism but quit drinking for a second time in February. She said she started drinking heavily when she was younger partially because alcohol is often framed positively in Japan. She bashed the practice as "cultural brainwashing."

"In Japan, commercials for sake are usually played and you can buy alcohol freely at any time, so most people actually don't think of alcohol as a bad thing," she said.

"I think Sake Viva has made it clear that Japan is far behind in terms of awareness of alcohol among developed countries," she said.

Kazuma, another Japanese citizen who voiced his concern online, told Insider sake is especially popular among his peers because it's cheap. A 16-ounce can of sake containing 9% alcohol will retail in Japan for about $1.35, said the 28-year-old radiographer, who uses the handle @yanabuchiyanabu.

"I think it's impossible to justify the campaign," the Kyushu resident said. "If alcohol tax sales have declined, then the state should revise the tax rate and tax those who consume more alcohol to prevent alcohol dependence. I think this campaign will create a lot of diseases."

Manabu Ozawa, a basic medical sciences professor at a national university in Tokyo in his mid-40s, said it was "unbelievable" that a national government agency would spend money to promote something detrimental to its citizens' health.

"You can imagine how stupid it would be if the National Tax Agency were to launch a campaign to encourage young people to smoke cigarettes because cigarette tax revenues have fallen," he told Insider.

The National Tax Agency told The Japan Times it's promoting alcohol sales because fewer young people are drinking due to COVID-19 and a shrinking population. It described the initiative as a business promotion and said that "in no way is it encouraging people to drink excessively." The National Tax Agency did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

This isn't the first time Japan has launched a pro-drinking campaign. In 2017, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry encouraged office workers to leave work early on the last Friday of every month, in a bid to relieve Japan's overworked employees. One of its suggested activities in lieu of working that day was "getting the gang together for some relaxed night drinking," according to Japan Today. The campaign failed to take off, getting only 11% of employees to leave the office early, the outlet reported.