Tuesday on The Hustings
MAY 25, 2021 -- GEORGE FLOYD IS KILLED BY MINNEAPOLIS POLICE OFFICER DEREK CHAUVIN, 2020
Sign up for the Braver Angels National Coliseum Debate, Voting in America, held 8 p.m. EDT Tuesday on Zoom. See the link to register for the debate at the end of this page. The Hustings posts a home page debate preview on the issue between David Amaya in the left column, and Bryan Williams in the right column.
Blinken Travels to Israel to Help Palestinians, Not Hamas, in Gaza – Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Israel to “rally international support to aid Gaza” following the 11-day Israel-Hamas war and foster its fragile cease-fire, the AP reports. More than 250 people were killed in the conflict, most of them Palestinians and many of them children. Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem to discuss humanitarian and reconstruction aid to Palestinians while keeping aid out of militant rulers who control Gaza. Palestinians are calling on the U.S. to stop military aid to Israel.
Note: Issues between Israel and Palestinians in the region sound a familiar note, though both international support and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party have backed away from hard-core support for the Israeli government.
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Infrastructure Negotiations Near Collapse – Republicans have given up on negotiations with the White House on its $1.7-trillion infrastructure plan, even after last weekend’s $600-billion price cut, multiple news outlets reported Monday night. The general consensus appears to have it that the Biden Administration and Senate Republicans will not reach a consensus by the White House’s provisional Memorial Day Weekend deadline. Meanwhile, progressive Democrats are urging Biden to move ahead without the GOP, which would mean using reconciliation and getting Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, to come along for the ride.
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Justice Department Releases Key Portion of Barr Memo – The U.S. Department of Justice Monday released a key portion of an internal document from 2019 that help let then-President Trump off the hook for obstruction of justice in regard to the Mueller Report’s findings. The Justice Department also signaled when releasing the portion of the memo that it would fight U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s efforts to make the entire document public, The Washington Post reports.
The memo addressed to then Attorney Gen. William Barr by then Office of Legal Counsel head Steven A. Engel, and then senior department official Edward O’Callaghan, offered a presumption that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, even if he were not president. Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the investigation, had offered evidence of obstruction in his report, but concluded it was not up to him to determine whether the president should be charged.
Discussions within the DOJ led to Engel and O’Callaghan’s conclusion that Trump had not broken the law. Judge Jackson’s memo on her opinion called Barr “disingenuous” when he concluded the Mueller Report exonerated Trump.
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Moderna Vaccine Approved for Adolescents – Drug maker Moderna says trials show its COVID-19 vaccine works safely in adolescents, The Wall Street Journal reports. The U.S. and other countries are scheduled to start administering the vaccine in early June to 12-17 year-olds.
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CyberNinjas’ Audit Seen as Compromising Voting Machines – Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, says the state has lost control of voting machines in Maricopa County as an audit of November 2020 presidential election votes led by CyberNinjas plods on. The voting machines, leased by Dominion Voting Systems for $6.1 million, should not be used in the future, Hobbs wrote in a letter to Maricopa County’s 4-1 GOP board of supervisors. The county “lost control” of the machines, and Hobbs does not know what was done to them.
The state legislature forced the county to hire CyberNinjas, a Florida company with no previous election audit experience, to lead an audit conducted by several companies.
“I have grave concerns about the security and integrity of these machines,” Hobbs wrote. A spokesman for the board of supervisors, Fields Moseley, told the AP that county attorneys are reviewing Hobbs’ letters to advise the board how to respond.
Note: Several other counties across the nation are looking at similar vote audits of last November’s election, the AP says, including Georgia’s Fulton County, a post-election audit of a statehouse race in Windham, New Hampshire, (home of former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski) and rural Cheboygan County in northern Michigan, which, like the Arizona audit, is connected with CyberNinjas’ chief Doug Logan. Although courts have struck down myriad post-November efforts in support of the former president’s claim the election was stolen from him, these calls for audits – “what are they afraid of discovering?” – virtually guarantee that Donald Trump controls the Republican Party up to next year’s midterms.
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Amazon Expands – Amazon.com is near a deal to acquire the Hollywood studio MGM for $9 billion, including debt, The Wall Street Journal reports. The purchase of MGM, which was founded in the silent movie era, would give the retail giant a streaming asset, the Journal says. It will be Amazon’s largest acquisition since Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, and comes on the heels of the merger of AT&T’s media assets, including CNN and HBO, with Discovery Inc.
Note: Remember in the ‘00s when we worried that Amazon, which Jeff Bezos founded to sell books, would put bookstores out of business?
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Braver Angels National Coliseum Debate, Voting in America – The debate is scheduled for 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, Tuesday, May 25 on Zoom. Audience members are encouraged to participate as debaters or in the Q&A sessions. After the debate, The Hustings will post audience comments and opinions in the left and right columns at https://thehustings.news. Go to https://www.braverangels.org for more information, or register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/national-debate-voting-in-america-registration-154335111473
– Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods