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HuffPostJimmy Kimmel Mocks Rep. Matt Gaetz's 'Not Suspicious' Pardon Request
"You know you haven't done anything wrong when you check in with the president to ask for a pardon in case you happen to get accused of a sex crime."
- The New York Times
A Novel Effort to See How Poverty Affects Young Brains
New monthly payments in the pandemic relief package have the potential to lift millions of American children out of poverty. Some scientists believe the payments could change children’s lives even more fundamentally — via their brains. It is well established that growing up in poverty correlates with disparities in educational achievement, health and employment. But an emerging branch of neuroscience asks how poverty affects the developing brain. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Over the past 15 years, dozens of studies have found that children raised in meager circumstances have subtle brain differences compared with children from families of higher means. On average, the surface area of the brain’s outer layer of cells is smaller, especially in areas relating to language and impulse control, as is the volume of a structure called the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory. These differences do not reflect inherited or inborn traits, research suggests, but rather the circumstances in which the children grew up. Researchers have speculated that specific aspects of poverty — subpar nutrition, elevated stress levels, low-quality education — might influence brain and cognitive development. But almost all the work to date is correlational. And although those factors may be at play to various degrees for different families, poverty is their common root. A continuing study called Baby’s First Years, started in 2018, aims to determine whether reducing poverty can itself promote healthy brain development. “None of us thinks income is the only answer,” said Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and pediatrician at Columbia University who is co-leading the work. “But with Baby’s First Years, we are moving past correlation to test whether reducing poverty directly causes changes in children’s cognitive, emotional and brain development.” Noble and her collaborators are examining the effects of giving poor families cash payments in amounts that wound up being comparable to those the Biden administration will distribute as part of an expanded child tax credit. The researchers randomly assigned 1,000 mothers with newborns living in poverty in New York City, New Orleans, the Twin Cities metro region and Omaha, Nebraska, to receive a debit card every month holding either $20 or $333 that the families could use as they wished. (The Biden plan will provide $300 monthly per child up to age 6, and $250 for children 6-17.) The study tracks cognitive development and brain activity in children over several years using a noninvasive tool called mobile EEG, which measures brain wave patterns using a wearable cap of 20 electrodes. The study also tracks the mothers’ financial and employment status, maternal health measures such as stress hormone levels, and child care use. In qualitative interviews, the researchers probe how the money affects the family, and with the mothers’ consent, they follow how they spend it. The study aimed to collect brain activity data from children at age 1 and age 3 in home visits, and researchers managed to obtain the first set of data for around two-thirds of the children before the pandemic struck. Because home visits are still untenable, they extended the study to age 4 and will be collecting the second set of brain data next year instead of this year. The pandemic, as well as the two stimulus payments most Americans received this past year, undoubtedly affected participating families in different ways, as will this year’s stimulus checks and the new monthly payments. But because the study is randomized, the researchers nonetheless expect to be able to assess the impact of the cash gift, Noble said. Baby’s First Years is seen as an audacious effort to prove, through a randomized trial, a causal link between poverty reduction and brain development. “It is definitely one of the first, if not the first” study in this developing field to have direct policy implications, said Martha Farah, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society who studies poverty and the brain. Farah concedes, however, that social scientists and policymakers often discount the relevance of brain data. “Are there actionable insights we get by bringing neuroscience to bear, or are people just being snowed by pretty brain images and impressive-sounding words from neuroscience? It’s an important question,” she said. Skeptics abound. James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago who studies inequality and social mobility, said he did not see “even a hint that a policy would come out of it, other than to say, yes, there’s an imprint of a better economic life.” “And it still remains a question what the actual mechanism is” through which giving parents cash helps children’s brains, he said, adding that targeting such a mechanism directly might be both cheaper and more effective. Samuel Hammond, director of poverty and welfare policy at the Niskanen Center, who worked on a child allowance proposal by Sen. Mitt Romney, agrees that tracking the source of any observed cognitive benefits is tricky. “I have trouble disentangling the interventions that actually help the most,” he said. For example, policy experts debate whether certain child care programs directly benefit a child’s brain or simply free up her caregiver to get a job and increase the family’s income, he said. Yet that is exactly why providing disadvantaged families with cash might be the most potent way to test the link to brain development, Noble said. “It’s quite possible that the particular pathways to children’s outcomes differ across families,” she said. “So by empowering families to use the money as they see fit, it doesn’t presuppose a particular pathway or mechanism that leads to differences in child development.” Neuroscience has a track record for transforming societal thinking and influencing policy. Research showing that the brain continues to mature past adolescence and into a person’s mid-20s has reshaped policies relating to juvenile justice. In another example, research on brain and cognitive development in children who grew up in Romanian orphanages from the mid-1960s into the 1990s changed policy on institutionalization and foster care, in Romania and worldwide, said Charles Nelson, a neuroscientist at Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital who co-led that work. Those studies demonstrated that deprivation and neglect diminish IQ and hinder psychological development in children who remain institutionalized past age 2, and that institutionalization profoundly affects brain development, dampening electrical activity and reducing brain size. But that work also underscores how consumers of research, policymakers among them, are prone to give more weight to brain data than to other findings, as other studies show. When Nelson presents these findings to government or development agency officials, “I think they find it the strongest ammunition to implement policy changes,” he said. “It is a very powerful visual, more so than if we said, well, they have lower IQs, or their attachment isn’t as strong.” (He is an adviser for Baby’s First Years.) The vividness of such data is not necessarily bad, Noble said. “If we find differences and the brain data make those differences more compelling to stakeholders, then that’s important to include,” she said. Moreover, brain data provides valuable information in its own right, particularly in infants and young children, for whom behavioral tests of cognition are often inaccurate or impossible to conduct, she said. Brain differences also tend to be detectable earlier than behavioral ones, she said. The field may simply be too young to clock its contributions to policy, Farah said. But increasing understanding of how specific brain circuits are affected by poverty, along with better tools for gauging such circuits, may yield science-based interventions that get taken up at a policy level, she said. Meanwhile, Baby’s First Years hopes to address a broader question that is already relevant at the policy level: whether cash aid to parents helps their children’s brains develop in a way that helps them for a lifetime. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
- PureWow
Our Favorite Reese Witherspoon Flick Is the #6 Movie on Netflix
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- Elle
22 Period Dramas to Fill the ‘Bridgerton’ Void
For when you can’t get enough of those longing glances, suppressed trauma, and absolutely avoidable problems. Did you watch all of Bridgerton in approximately two sittings and obsess over the fact that Julie Andrews was narrating this very steamy regency tale?
- People
Zoo Miami Welcomes Two Giraffes Born 3 Days Apart: 'The Baby Boom Continues'
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- National Review
Iran Has a Reason to Be Happy with Biden
As the Biden administration launched indirect talks in Vienna on Tuesday with the hopes of reviving the disastrous Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal, a spokesman for the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism preemptively declared victory. “We find this position realistic and promising,” regime flack Ali Rabiei said of the expectation that President Biden would agree to lift crippling sanctions. “It could be the start of correcting the bad process that had taken diplomacy to a dead end.” The “bad process” refers to the maximum-pressure campaign during which the Trump administration actually took seriously Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its destabilizing influence in the region. Trump imposed punishing sanctions on Iran and took out the chief architect of its terrorism strategy, Qasem Soleimani. And he rightly withdrew from the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (or “JCPOA”), in 2018. While no immediate breakthrough is expected this week, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who led the Iranian delegation, called Tuesday’s discussions constructive and announced that “expert level” talks will continue on Friday. It’s no surprise that the regime is so giddy. The mere existence of these discussions has demonstrated the Biden administration’s interest in diplomatic theater to obscure its movement toward Tehran’s negotiating position. On February 7, Biden was asked during an interview with CBS if he would lift sanctions to get Iran back to the table. He responded simply: “No.” He also indicated that Iran would have to stop enriching uranium first. But the cracks had started to show in the lead-up to Vienna. Last Friday, the U.S. special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, told PBS NewsHour, “the United States knows that, in order to get back into compliance, it’s going to have to lift those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal that was reached with Iran and the other countries involved in the nuclear deal.” On Monday, ahead of the talks, State Department spokesperson Ned Price dodged a question on sanctions relief. “I will leave it to the negotiators to detail positions,” he said, effectively leaving the possibility open. The Wall Street Journal quoted a senior administration official that same day, explaining that the Iranians have asked for “an initial gesture that would pave the way to those talks,” such as sanctions relief. He added, “It was their idea, and we went along.” To be clear, there’s no guarantee that the U.S. ends up offering sanctions relief as a direct result of the Vienna talks, though that’s where things seem to be going. Either way, the talks indicate that the Biden administration would like to shift the debate from whether it should reenter a bad deal to how it can do so as an intermediate step toward a “follow-on agreement” that addresses other aspects of Iran’s behavior. The deal that the Obama team negotiated was fundamentally flawed if the goal was to restrain Iran. It enabled hundreds of billions of dollars to flow to Iran up front, while allowing the regime to continue work on ballistic missiles and to maintain a “civilian” nuclear program. In a frenzy to get Iran to agree to restrictions on uranium enrichment, negotiators did not address Iran’s sponsorship of international terrorism. And yet, a sunset clause allowed restrictions on enriching uranium to start to phase out over ten to 15 years. Even if Iran were to have followed the agreement to the letter, it would still have been allowed to become a more potent conventional threat and carry out terrorism while maintaining the long-term option of becoming a nuclear power. Of course, it has repeatedly violated the deal anyway, maintaining a nuclear archive the whole time. More recently, in February, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had produced uranium metal at one of its nuclear plants. Even modest steps to lift the Trump-era sanctions will all but sabotage any hopes of getting Iran to make any sort of concessions on the myriad of issues that the Obama deal failed to address. Any form of sanctions relief will be a lifeline to the regime, which had been hamstrung by the maximum-pressure campaign. In the weeks leading up to Vienna, top Biden officials have clearly signaled that such concessions are in the offing. Additionally, they are repeating one of the core mistakes made by Obama’s national-security team. That is, out of a desperation to sign a deal that they could claim dealt with the nuclear issue, the Obama administration looked the other way when it came to Iran’s malign behavior around the world and jumped at every chance to grease the wheels of negotiations. Similarly, under Biden, U.S. officials reportedly held discussions with South Korea about unfreezing Iranian assets tied up by oil sanctions there. They’ve declined to oppose a potential $5 billion IMF loan to the country, and have apparently turned a blind eye to Iranian oil sales to Chinese firms that would violate sanctions. All the while, the administration has telegraphed that it will do very little to apply pressure to Iranian proxies, and that it’s even reducing the U.S. military footprint in the Gulf region. Unlike the Trump administration, the Biden team has failed to link Iran’s regional activity with its nuclear problem. It has already removed the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, and the sanctions on the chopping block are reportedly terrorism-related. From the start, the administration has promised to seek a “longer and stronger” deal to address these matters after both sides return to full compliance with the JCPOA. The trouble is that once the U.S. implements sanctions relief, Tehran will have no incentive to negotiate an additional agreement. The Biden administration will have squandered hard-won leverage with nothing to show for it. The only way this strategy makes sense is if it is by design. It’s no secret that Obama officials envisioned a realignment in the Middle East away from traditional alliances with Israel and Arab Gulf states toward a region in which Iran is more influential. And there is reason to believe that the Biden administration, which includes many of the same officials, shares a similar mentality. Concessions that make Iran more economically powerful are consistent with this vision. Either way, it is clear that when Washington and Tehran eventually sit down for direct talks, the latter will have the upper hand, undermining U.S. regional allies and making it easier for Iran to achieve its nuclear ambitions and threaten the world.
- NextShark
Asian 7-Eleven Employee Punched in Possible Hate Crime in NYC
The New York Police Department is now investigating the attack on a 27-year-old 7-Eleven employee over the weekend as a possible hate crime. On April 3, just before 6 a.m., an unidentified man entered the convenience store’s branch at the corner of 8th Avenue and West 39th Street and punched the victim in the face, according to ABC7 New York. Officers returned to the 7-Eleven Sunday night when other employees claimed that the same suspect came back and "stared them down before eventually leaving," according to CBS New York.
- Reuters
Brazil detects first case of South African variant as COVID-19 deaths soar
Brazil has recorded its first confirmed case of the highly contagious coronavirus variant discovered in South Africa, a fresh danger sign for a country already ravaged by the world's highest daily death toll fueled by a widespread local variant. Further analysis confirmed it as the first known local case of the variant widely circulating in South Africa and elsewhere. Scientists fear a showdown between the South African variant and the already rampant Brazilian variant, known as P.1, both of which are more contagious and possibly more deadly than the original version of the coronavirus and have led to accelerated COVID-19 surges.
- The Week
Training officer testifies Chauvin was taught to avoid putting pressure on a suspect's neck
Lt. Johnny Mercil, the Minneapolis Police Department's use-of-force instructor, testified on Tuesday at former Officer Derek Chauvin's trial that when officers are taught ways to restrain aggressive suspects, they are shown how to place their knee on a back or shoulder and told to "stay away from the neck when possible." Chauvin, 45, is facing murder and manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed Black man who died on May 25, 2020, while being arrested in Minneapolis on suspicion of using a fake $20 bill. A bystander recorded Chauvin with his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes, and Floyd is heard in the video saying he cannot breathe. Chauvin's defense attorney, Eric Nelson, has argued in court that Chauvin was doing "exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career." Records submitted to the court on Tuesday show that in 2016, Chauvin took a 40-hour course on how to de-escalate situations involving people in crisis, and in 2018 underwent training in the use of force. Mercil said officers who attended that training were told they needed to use the least amount of force required to get a suspect to cooperate. Jody Stiger, a Los Angeles Police Department sergeant, also testified on Tuesday as a prosecution use-of-force expert. Stiger said when Floyd was resisting efforts to get him into a squad car, officers were justified in using force, but once he was on the ground and no longer resisting, officers "should have slowed down or stopped their force as well." After watching video of Floyd's arrest, Stiger said his "opinion was that the force was excessive." Several members of the Minneapolis Police Department, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, echoed this sentiment during earlier testimony. On Monday, Arradondo testified that Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for nine minutes "absolutely" violated department policy, adding, "This is not what we teach." More stories from theweek.comThe Matt Gaetz allegations show how QAnon corrupts its followers5 scathingly funny cartoons about MLB vs. the GOPTexas investigating 3 reports of abuse at federal facility for migrant teens, governor says
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Eleven killed as Myanmar protesters fight troops with hunting rifles, firebombs - media
Initially, six truckloads of troops were deployed to quell the protesters in the town of Taze, the Myanmar Now and Irrawaddy news outlets said. When the protesters fought back with guns, knives and firebombs, five more truckloads of troop reinforcements were brought in. Fighting continued into Thursday morning and at least 11 protesters were killed and about 20 wounded, the media said.
- Reuters
African Union drops plans to buy COVID vaccines from India's SSI, pivots to J&J
The African Union has dropped plans to secure COVID-19 vaccines from the Serum Institute of India for African nations and is exploring options with Johnson & Johnson, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday. The institute will still supply the AstraZeneca vaccine to Africa through the COVAX vaccine-sharing facility, John Nkengasong told reporters, but the African Union would seek additional supplies from Johnson & Johnson.
- The Daily Beast
Ex-Trump Official Was Finally Punished Under the Hatch Act. Who’s Next?
Drew AngererFor years, flagrant violations of the Hatch Act were rivaled only by “Infrastructure Week” as the grimmest running joke of the Trump administration. But nearly three months after President Donald Trump left office, a former administration official has been formally disciplined for exploiting their position for political purposes—and more could be on the way.Lynne Patton, a longtime Trump Organization fixture and former event planner, ran afoul of the Hatch Act on multiple occasions during her tenure as public liaison director for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but openly dismissed any chance of facing discipline for violating the law.“Just retweeted this amazing tweet from both of my Twitter accounts—professional and personal,” Patton wrote in a 2019 Facebook post after sharing a meme from a conservative account. “It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be. Either way, I honestly don’t care anymore.”On Tuesday, however, Patton was finally disciplined for violating the ethics law, accepting a settlement from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel that included a $1,000 fine and a four-year ban from serving in the federal government. Patton was also required to admit that she had knowingly violated the law when she recruited residents of public housing to appear in a video championing Trump at the Republican National Convention last year.Normally, such violations were shrugged off by Trump officials as bureaucratic “oopsies.” But with the election of President Joe Biden, the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board—the government agency tasked with adjudicating cases of potential Hatch Act violations, which sat without a board quorum for the entirety of Trump’s time in office—are beginning to chip at the vast backlog of complaints from the Trump era.Ex-Trump Official Lynne Patton Violated Hatch Act With Deceptive RNC Vids: OSCThe Office of Special Counsel would not confirm the existence of pending investigations, but said that it is slightly constrained by the timing of complaints that were filed with the Merit Systems Protection Board.“In order for OSC to file a complaint with the Merit Systems Protection Board, OSC would have had to file the complaint while the subject was still a federal employee,” Zachary Kurz, a spokesperson for the Office of Special Counsel, told The Daily Beast. “Otherwise MSPB no longer has jurisdiction.”But the enormous number of extant complaints submitted to the board—which now number in the thousands—mean that some Trumpworld figures are nervous that they may actually face consequences for violating the Hatch Act.“Let me put it this way: people are going to wish they’d never tweeted,” texted one person close to the White House.“Even in an administration marked by a callous disregard for ethics laws, Lynne Patton stood out,” Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the ethics watchdog organization that initially filed the complaint against Patton. “What made her behavior particularly egregious was that she not only used her position for political purposes, she misled and exploited public housing residents for political gain, showing little regard for the people she was supposed to be helping and the ethics rules she was supposed to be following.”Patton’s actions were far from an outlier in the Trump administration, where senior officials developed a years-long pattern of violating the Hatch Act, mostly with impunity. The Republican National Convention alone presented a tsunami of potential violations of the law, from former acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf hosting a naturalization ceremony during primetime to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s decision to address the RNC from Jerusalem to the location of its closing night on the White House lawn.In October 2020 alone, CREW found that 16 Trump officials had violated the Hatch Act an astonishing 60 times, including first daughter/senior adviser Ivanka Trump, son-in-law/senior adviser Jared Kushner, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, trade honcho Peter Navarro, and communications director Alyssa Farah—but the administration’s seniormost officials were openly contemptuous of the law, which forbids using a government position or government resources for political purposes.“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares—they expect that Donald Trump is going to promote Republican values and they would expect that Barack Obama, when he was in office, that he would do the same for Democrats,” former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows—a onetime stickler for the Hatch Act—told Politico in August, calling concerns by ethics experts “a lot of hoopla.”Or, as former White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said shortly before the Office of Special Counsel determined that she should have been removed from government service for her repeated violations of the Hatch Act: “Blah, blah, blah… Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
- BBC
Khloe Kardashian: Pressure and ridicule over image 'too much to bear'
Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian explains why she tried to get an unfiltered photo taken off the web.
- INSIDER
China warns US and its allies not to boycott Beijing Games, politicize the Olympics
Chinese officials warned that Washington would face a "robust Chinese response" if the US boycotts next year's Winter Olympics in Beijing.
- BBC
Myanmar: Celebrity model arrested amid coup crackdown
Paing Takhon has millions of fans and had openly posted against the military coup
- The Telegraph
Britain forced to accept dismissal of Myanmar ambassador who defied military coup
Britain will acknowledge the dismissal of Myanmar's ambassador to London after he was locked out of the embassy for condemning the military coup against Aung San Suu Kyi, despite deploring the move. Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, this morning condemned the "bullying actions of the Myanmar military regime" after ambassador Kyaw Zwar Minn was kicked out of the country's Mayfair diplomatic mission on Wednesday evening. "I pay tribute to Kyaw Zwar Minn for his courage. The UK continues to call for an end to the coup and the appalling violence, and a swift restoration of democracy," he said. But the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said it would be obliged to accept the move after it received formal diplomatic notification of Kyaw Zwar Minn's dismissal from the Myanmar authorities. "We made clear in our communications with the Myanmar authorities last night that the UK must recieve formal notification of the termination of the Ambassador's position through the appropriate diplomatic channels," an FCDO spokesman said. "That has since been received and we therefore must accept the decision taken by the Myanmar Government regarding Kyaw Zwar Minn's position." Kyaw Zwar Minn is a former colonel in the Myanmar military who had served as ambassador since 2014. He publicly broke with the military authorities in Myanmar last month when he issued a statement condemning the February 1 coup and calling for Aung Sann Suu Kyi's release. He also met with Mr Raab who publicly praised his bravery for taking such a stand.
- The Daily Beast
Donald Trump Likes Kim Jong Un and Kyle Rittenhouse More Than Matt Gaetz
GettyThanks to Matt Gaetz and his sad, creepy sex life, we finally know just how vile a person in Donald Trump’s orbit has to be before even Donald Trump thinks it’s not worth defending them.Abroad, Trump called Kim Jong Un his friend, defended Vladimir Putin (“There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”), and shrugged off Mohammed bin Salman’s murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi (“The world is a very dangerous place!”). Three years after Eddie Gallagher was convicted of posing with the body of an Iraqi he’d just killed and long after the Navy SEAL had been credibly accused by fellow soldiers of a litany of war crimes, he was photographed with Melania and Donald.At home, Trump stood behind Kyle Rittenhouse after he shot and killed two people at a Black Lives Matter protest. He called the Charlottesville white supremacists “very fine people” after one of them ran his car through counterprotesters and murdered Heather Heyer. He said of the crazed conspiracists of QAnon, “I’ve heard these are people that love our country” and claimed that the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were “hugging and kissing the police and the guards. You know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out.” He stood by Bible-waving Senate candidate Roy Moore after women came out and said he’d creeped on them when they were in their teens. By Jason Miller, after his ex, fellow Trump staffer A.J. Delgado, said in court papers that he’d slipped an abortion bill into another woman’s smoothie. By Mike Flynn, who twice pleaded guilty, and Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, whose sentences he commuted after they were found guilty. Hell, he pardoned Republican congressmen Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter, and Steve Stockman as a reward for those crooks’ loyal support.The Party of Pervy Projection Hits a New Low With Matt GaetzAll of this begs the question of why won’t Trump won’t really defend 38-year-old congressman Matt Gaetz, who’s spent years auditioning for a role as a spare Trump child, even offering to quit Congress to join Trump’s impeachment defense and flying to Wyoming to lead a rally against Liz Cheney after the House’s third-ranking Republican voted to impeach him.A week into the scandal, and after Gaetz had already tried to drag Tucker Carlson into his mess in a truly bizarre interview that suggested a flailing man aware of the tight corner his own actions had put him in, Trump offered a limp two-sentence statement, denying a New York Times report that Gaetz had asked him for a pardon and saying "it must all be remembered that he has totally denied the accusations against him."That’s it. Trump offered a more convincing defense of Kim Jong Un than of Matt Gaetz. He called Paul Manafort, of all people, “a good person.”The accusations around Gaetz, by the way, involved paying for (or having his friend Joel Greenberg pay for) sex with underage women. That’s apparently part of an investigation that started with Attorney General Bill Barr, the hatchet man Trump finally turned on and who reportedly avoided being in the same room with Gaetz even as the president still had him on speed dial. And Gaetz hasn’t “totally denied” the accusations, but has made a point of saying, while denying he slept with underage women, that he likes to pay for things for women. Gaetz told Jonathan Swan, “I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I’ve dated. You know, I’ve paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I’ve been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not.”The allegations against Gaetz are damning, and so is Gaetz’s voting record in light of those allegations. In 2017, Gaetz was the only member of Congress to vote against a law fighting human trafficking. Something he is now possibly going to be charged with. While in the Florida statehouse Gaetz was one of two people who voted against a law trying to crack down on “revenge porn.”In his piece in the Washington Examiner Gaetz wrote, “You’ll see more “drip, drip, drip” of leaks into the media from the corrupt Justice Department and others. When you do, ask yourself why. They aren’t coming for me—they are coming for you. I’m just in the way.” This makes it sound like Gaetz doesn’t think all the information about him is out yet. And during his disastrous Tucker Carlson interview Gaetz said there were no pictures of him “with child prostitutes,” something that no one had alleged and that is a strange thing to just bring up, out of nowhere.Matt Gaetz Is the Model GOP Representative: A Creep No One’s Surprised AboutThe Times is reporting that the federal investigations are to whether Gaetz violated sex trafficking laws. The three sources who talked to the Times said the case was connected to the prosecution of Gaetz ally Joel Greenberg.So why isn’t Trump or anyone in Trumpworld defending Matt Gaetz? A former campaign aide told Politico that "anyone that has ever spent 10 minutes with the guy would realize he's an unserious person." Wait, what? Trump is a reality television host who paid off a pornographic actress during his 2016 presidential campaign and who suggested injecting bleach might work for curing COVID. Not being a serious person is actually a qualification for being a member of Trumpworld.Of course, loyalty is a one-way street so far as Trump is concerned, but given how he’s rewarded his worshippers until now, something smells rotten in the state of Palm Beach. It seems impossible that being out of office has somehow affected the way Trump feels about the wealthy connected Florida congressman Matt Gaetz and it seems equally impossible that the weight of the charges has somehow changed Trump’s feelings about Gaetz. You’ll remember that Trump said “I just wish her well, frankly,” of accused child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, who is alleged to have hundreds of victims. So it’s odd that Gaetz is the only alleged sex trafficker who Trump doesn’t wish well.Maybe if Matt Gaetz were a fascist dictator, Donald Trump would be nicer to him?Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
- Associated Press
Defrocked US priest revered in East Timor accused of abuse
A list of names was posted on the Rev. Richard Daschbach’s bedroom door. Daschbach was idolized in the remote enclave of East Timor where he lived, largely for his role in helping save lives during the tiny nation’s bloody struggle for independence.
- The Telegraph
Coronavirus latest news: Italy and Spain stop AstraZeneca for under-60s as Europe splits over jab
UK 'secretly sent 700,000 AstraZeneca vaccines to Australia' Keep taking AstraZeneca vaccine, say family of first named blood clot victim Britain will achieve herd immunity on Monday Drinkers urged to take cash to the pub to beat indoor payments rules Subscribe to The Telegraph for a month-long free trial Italy and Spain have stopped the use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab in the under-60s, as Europe splits in its approach to handling the vaccine rollout. The countries made the decision due to concerns over links to unusual blood clotting. The EU's medicines regulator says this should be listed as a very rare side effect. Belgium is restricting the jab to those aged 56 and above, France recommends it be given only to those aged 55 or over, and in Germany it is recommended for those over 60. However, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has insisted the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is safe for all ages. "All three vaccines that are in use in the UK are safe and they're safe at all ages, but there's a preference for the under-30s, if they want to have the Pfizer or Moderna jab, then they can," he said. Follow the latest updates below.
- The Week
Georgia's GOP lieutenant governor says Rudy Giuliani's false voter fraud claims triggered voting restrictions
Rudy Giuliani's false claims of election fraud weren't enough to overturn the presidential election, but they did motivate Republican lawmakers in Georgia to pass a law that restricts voting rights, the state's Republican lieutenant governor said. Under the new election law, signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last month, it's harder for voters to request and drop off absentee ballots; ballot drop boxes are limited; voters can't be approached and handed food or water while they wait in line to cast their ballots; and the secretary of state is no longer chairman or a voting member of the Georgia State Election Board. During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) said the restrictions are "the fallout from the 10 weeks of misinformation that flew in from former President Donald Trump. I went back over the weekend to really look at where this really started to gain momentum in the legislature, and it was when Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple of committee rooms and spent hours spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across, you know, hours of testimony." Joe Biden won Georgia, a fact that was affirmed during three different ballot counts in the state. Giuliani still tried to get Georgia to overturn the election results, appearing before state lawmakers to spread multiple falsehoods, including that thousands of dead people voted. He also claimed, without any evidence, that the voting machines were "like Swiss cheese. You can invade them. You can get in them. You can change the vote." He is now the subject of a $1.3 billion defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. More stories from theweek.comThe Matt Gaetz allegations show how QAnon corrupts its followers5 scathingly funny cartoons about MLB vs. the GOPTexas investigating 3 reports of abuse at federal facility for migrant teens, governor says