“federal law makes it a crime to engage “in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof.” Someone who violates this statute faces a fine and up to 10 years in prison.
It’s also worth noting that this law makes it a crime to incite such a rebellion, and violators “shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.” Thus, to the extent that a government official was complicit in Wednesday’s riot, they could potentially be stripped of their office.
Second, the law prohibits a “seditious conspiracy” to “overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States” or to “by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” Participants in such a conspiracy could face up to 20 years in prison.
Third, federal law provides that “whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States … by force or violence” may face up to 20 years in prison, and may also be stripped of their ability to be employed by the federal government for up to five years.”
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“another statute makes it a crime to conspire “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Thus, to the extent that members of Congress were exercising a “privilege” secured to them by the Constitution while they were disrupted by rioters, those rioters could potentially face criminal charges.”
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“Members of the pro-Trump insurrection may have also violated several federal statutes intended to protect the peace.”
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“Other criminal laws seek to protect the lives and safety of federal officials. Anyone who attempts to kill a member of Congress, for example, faces life in prison. And anyone who assaults a member of Congress may face 10 years in prison if they do so with a dangerous weapon or if “personal injury results.”
Even a relatively minor assault against a federal lawmaker can be punished by a year in prison.
Additionally, the law prohibits a conspiracy to “prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States.” As the purpose of the pro-Trump insurrection appears to be to prevent President-elect Biden from holding the office of president, this statute could apply to members of that insurrection.
Violators of this law face up to six years in prison.”
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“Other federal laws make it a crime to damage, rob, or unlawfully occupy federal property.”
“the “electoral commission” plan backed by Cruz and 10 of his colleagues is nonsense. For one, the commission they demand has no precedent in the modern era and no realistic prospects of being convened. What’s more, the statement is predicated on a series of spurious claims by Cruz and his colleagues that echo similar — and equally baseless — election fraud rhetoric to that heard repeatedly from Trump.
Election Day — November 3, 2020 — is now 60 days in the past. In that time, Trump and his Republican allies have filed and lost at least 60 election-related lawsuits at all levels of the state and federal court systems alleging voter fraud and other improprieties — and they have failed to prove their case at every turn.
Recounts in battleground states like Georgia and Wisconsin — both won by Biden — have turned up no evidence of large-scale fraud or irregularities that could have affected the results of the election. And in all 50 states and Washington, DC, the election results have been carefully reviewed by state officials and certified as accurate.
In short, 60 days of intense scrutiny have turned up exactly zero reasons to believe the letter’s false claim that “the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election” are worrying — and there’s no reason to believe that an “electoral commission” would turn up a different result.
That there have been allegations of fraud as never before is true, but as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed out on Sunday, these have been misleading efforts led by Trump, and bolstered by his allies, like Cruz, to overturn the election’s rightful results.
Cruz and his allies cite the results of this effort in their statement Saturday that widespread belief in the existence of voter fraud — a sort of warped “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” argument — necessitates the creation of an election commission.
“Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged’,” the group said Saturday. “That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).”
That’s an accurate reporting of the poll’s results — but it does conveniently leave out the likely reason for that widespread belief.
In reality, the Republican base has been inundated with evidence-free voter fraud rhetoric from every corner of the right-wing universe — from Trump’s Twitter feed to Fox News to stump speeches by Republican senators — almost nonstop since Trump’s election defeat. There’s a direct line between Cruz’s rhetoric and the problem he diagnoses: As Hayes put it on Twitter, “They’ve spent months lying to people, telling them the election was stolen and now turn around and cite the fact that many people believe them as evidence!””
“Audio from the full 62-minute call was published by the Post Sunday, including an exchange where Trump threatens Raffensperger and Germany with imminent legal consequences should they fail to overturn the already certified results.
“That’s a criminal offense,” Trump tells Raffensperger and Germany on the call, apparently in reference to Raffensperger not reporting made-up instances of election fraud. “And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”
Trump also raised a number of conspiracy theories resembling those promoted by onetime Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who was cut loose by the Trump campaign’s legal team as her election fraud allegations became increasingly outlandish.”
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“Trump aired a version of the Dominion conspiracy during his Saturday call.
“Now, do you think it’s possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County?” Trump asked Germany on the call. “Because that’s what the rumor is. And also that Dominion took out machines. That Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that’s illegal, right?”
As Germany affirmed on the call, none of Trump’s allegations are true.
Despite the Trump legal team’s move to disavow Powell, Trump has reportedly remained enamored with her theories. According to a New York Times report from December, he briefly considered naming Powell as special counsel to investigate his baseless claims of voter fraud, though he was ultimately talked down by aides.”
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“Though Sunday’s Washington Post scoop provides arguably the starkest example of Trump’s long-running attempts to subvert democracy in order to remain in power — not to mention a more than passing resemblance to President Richard Nixon’s presidency-ending tapes — it is by no means the only time Trump has mounted an effort of this sort since losing reelection.
In at least three other battleground states that he lost to Biden — Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — Trump has directly reached out to lawmakers and other officials to urge them to help him overturn the election results in their states, potentially awarding him an unelected second term in office.”
“On Sunday, the Washington Post published a recording of an extraordinary phone call between President Donald Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the outgoing president urged Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” enough votes to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Over the course of the call, which took place on Saturday, Trump raised several baseless claims that some of the ballots cast in the state of Georgia are “corrupt,” as well as evidence-free claims that some unidentified person is “shredding ballots” in the state. Trump claims that Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel, Ryan Germany, are taking a “big risk” — suggesting that Raffensperger and Germany are engaged in criminal conduct themselves by covering up these imagined election crimes. And then Trump drops this bombshell:
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes, so if Raffensperger were to somehow “find” 11,780 votes, Trump would take the lead in that state. Raffensperger, to his credit, repeatedly rebuffed Trump.”
“Army Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair, just gave an honest yet brutal assessment of America’s decades-long war in Afghanistan.
Asked at a Washington, DC, think tank virtual event about the planned drawdown to 2,500 US troops in the country by January 15, President Donald Trump’s top military adviser tried to assure the audience that the US had somewhat completed its mission.
“We went to Afghanistan … to ensure that Afghanistan never again became a platform for terrorists to strike the United States,” he told the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon on Wednesday morning. “We believe that now after 20 years — two decades of consistent effort there — we’ve achieved a modicum of success.”
Let those last four words — “a modicum of success” — sink in for a moment. That’s Trump’s top military adviser saying out loud that after two decades of war, tens of thousands of Americans and Afghans killed, and more than a trillion dollars spent, the US can only boast of “a modicum of success” for its efforts there.
Milley’s remark is certainly more accurate than the rosy assessments top US officials offered the public as the war raged. Year after year after year, presidents and top generals insisted America’s effort to support Afghan government forces against the Taliban had “turned a corner” and that success was on the horizon.
But now, as US forces draw down from the country, Milley has made one thing painfully clear: The US never turned that corner. Instead, the US and its Afghan partners in Kabul made only modest gains over the past two decades.”
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“the US hasn’t suffered a terrorist attack on the homeland planned in Afghanistan since 9/11, and America helped set up a friendly government in Kabul, a capital city that in recent years has been safer than in the past. But the Taliban holds more ground in the country than when the war started, and danger remains for the insurgents to overrun the government in Kabul if and when US troops fully depart.
Milley acknowledged as much. “We have been in a condition of strategic stalemate where the government of Afghanistan was never going to militarily defeat the Taliban,” he continued, “and the Taliban, as long as we were supporting the government of Afghanistan, is never going to military defeat the regime.””
“Last month, Australia released the Brereton report, the result of a four-year inquiry into war crimes committed by the nation’s elite Special Air Services while fighting in Afghanistan.
Among the report’s shocking allegations was that soldiers were involved in the murder of 39 Afghan civilians, none of which occurred during battle. Senior commanders allegedly prompted junior officers to kill prisoners in a process called “blooding,” and weapons were planted on the dead captives to justify their executions.”
“More than 200,000 Indian farmers and their supporters have occupied the streets of New Delhi for days in protest against three new agriculture reform laws, blocking major highways into the capital city and vowing to remain camped there until the laws are repealed.
The legislation, enacted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in late September, aims to deregulate India’s agricultural industry in a move the government says will both provide farmers with more autonomy over choosing prices and make the agricultural sector more efficient.
Under the new policies, farmers will now sell goods and make contracts with independent buyers outside of government-sanctioned marketplaces, which have long served as the primary locations for farmers to do business. Modi and members of his party believe these reforms will help India modernize and improve its farming industry, which will mean greater freedom and prosperity for farmers.
But the protesting farmers aren’t convinced.”
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“Agriculture plays a crucial role in the Indian economy, as nearly 60 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people depend on farming for their livelihoods. But farming is also incredibly unproductive, as the sector accounts for only about 15 percent of India’s GDP.
By allowing farmers to sell to whomever they want, the government hopes to attract private business to agriculture, which will benefit some farmers.”
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“The problem, Dhume explained, is that there are simply too many farmers in India. He and others have argued that the country should make a similar transition away from farming to manufacturing, like China did.
But so far, India has not been able to generate the kind of manufacturing growth needed to support millions of farmers in their transition to new work. Manufacturing accounted for only about 17 percent of India’s GDP in 2020.
As Dhume said, “If the economy were creating jobs, then there wouldn’t be as much anxiety. In India, because job creation has been so weak, the thought of losing the guarantee is unsettling for farmers.””
“In letters to 11 whistleblowers on Wednesday night, the US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) — an investigative and prosecutorial government body — revealed that it had found “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing” at the USAGM, which oversees four media organizations: Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
With help from the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which represents more than 20 current and former staffers at the USAGM, 11 whistleblowers sent specific complaints to the OSC over the last few months.
They included allegations that USAGM leadership “repeatedly violated the Voice of America (VOA) firewall” and “engaged in gross mismanagement and abuse of authority.” Further, the whistleblowers claimed leadership “pressured career staff to illegally repurpose … congressionally appropriated funds and programs without notifying Congress.”
On Wednesday evening, the OSC replied to these and other allegations, noting that what the whistleblowers alleged seemed to be true.
“OSC has found a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing based on the information you submitted in support of your allegations,” wrote Karen Tanenbaum, an attorney with OSC’s Retaliation and Disclosure Unit.
However, OSC gives any offending agency — in this case, UASGM — 60 days to conduct its own probe and respond to the complaints. It’s not until that investigation ends that OSC makes a final determination.”
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22045713/ai-artificial-intelligence-deepmind-protein-folding
“At the beginning of the pandemic, there were understandably few tests available for detecting coronavirus infections. But the federal government made the situation much worse by screwing up the development and deployment of testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention botched its own COVID-19 test while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) blocked the development of alternatives by private companies and universities. Months later, the United States still does not have enough tests.
The good news is that the FDA has since approved more than a couple hundred COVID-19 tests. But these tests are not available on the scale needed to stem the tide of infections by enabling Americans to test themselves, warn friends and family if they test positive, and then voluntarily isolate themselves to prevent the further transmission of the disease.”
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“Operation Warp Speed was successful at scaling up vaccine production in part because the federal government issued around $18 billion in contracts to their makers. Had the government similarly prioritized COVID-19 testing, the country would not now be piddling around with just 1.5 million tests per day. The Trump administration contracted in late August with Abbott Laboratories to purchase 150 million of its point-of-care BinaxNOW COVID-19 tests for $750 million. The tests, which take about 15 minutes to provide a result, began shipping to state public health agencies at the end of September.
That’s a start, but much more testing needs to be done. Instead of using tests primarily to diagnose COVID-19 cases, they should be used as part of disease surveillance approach in which every American can test themselves frequently.”