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Pompeo, who led Trump’s State Department mission, leaves with questionable legacy

Pompeo, who led Trump's State Department mission, leaves with questionable legacy

In Europe, Mr. Pompeo is credited with helping to strengthen NATO as a bulwark against Russia, including through increased military spending. Alexander R. Vershbow, a former NATO Assistant Secretary General who was also a former US Ambassador to Russia and South Korea and Assistant Secretary of Defense, said Pompeo helped protect NATO from “Mr. Trump’s contempt for allies and intimidation. tactical.”

Mr Pompeo also deployed shuttle diplomacy to warm relations between Israel and states in the Middle East and North Africa under the Abraham Accords, the administration’s signing of foreign policy. But these peace pacts were largely negotiated by Jared Kushner, senior adviser and son-in-law of the president.

Mr. Pompeo has firmly supported Israel by defying internationally recognized standards, such as moving the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and declaring Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the legitimacy of the West Bank settlements. As an evangelical Christian – a group that constitutes a key conservative political constituency – Mr Pompeo has at times formulated actions against Iran in religious terms related to Israel and Bible prophecy.

The Abraham Accords were part of a push to isolate Iran with sanctions and military threats that began after Mr. Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran in May 2018, just weeks after Mr. Pompeo joined the State Department after serving as the Director of the CIA.

Over the next two years, he repeatedly criticized the efforts of other world powers to keep the 2015 nuclear deal intact. Mr Pompeo was visibly boosted by jousting with Iranian officials on Twitter: “You know you are on the side of the angels when this happens ” tweeted Tuesday, months after Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, called him the “Hate Secretary. “

Mr. Pompeo was among Mr. Trump’s advisers who pushed for military strikes against Iran, which the president resisted in June 2019 but allowed in January 2020 to kill a senior Iranian general who was in Iraq. Yet Mr Pompeo toppled in November, among a group of senior officials – including Vice President Mike Pence; Christopher C. Miller, Acting Secretary of Defense; and General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – who responded to the president’s request for strike options against Iran by warning that it could easily escalate into a larger conflict over the course of of the final weeks of Mr. Trump’s presidency.

Mr. Pompeo described himself as a follower of “realism, restraint and respect” – an approach advocated by his longtime funder Charles G. Koch, a billionaire conservative whose donor network has given more. campaign contributions to Mr. Pompeo than to any other candidate for Congress in the country in four legislative elections from 2010 to 2016.

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Josh Hawley, who led the Senate’s efforts to overturn the election results, is targeted by a super PAC.

Josh Hawley, who led the Senate's efforts to overturn the election results, is targeted by a super PAC.

Former staff members of Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who lost her 2018 re-election to Senator Josh Hawley, launched a super PAC to defeat Mr Hawley the next time he runs for office – as part of a broad backlash against him for leading the effort last week to overturn the presidential election results.

“Senators swear an oath to the Constitution and loyalty to this country, not aiding and encouraging a coup attempt against the two,” super PAC said first announcement, released Friday, said. The band is called Just Oust Seditious Hacks, a backronym for JOSH.

Mr Hawley, who represents Missouri and is seen as someone who wants to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, was the first senator to agree to join members of the House in challenging the election results when Congress met to formalize them on January 6.

Because such challenges require the support of at least one Senator to be considered by members of Congress, his action has guaranteed the disruption of what is normally a ceremonial process – a disruption during which supporters of the president Trump violently stormed the Capitol. His move prompted an immediate reaction from fellow Republicans, and anger escalated after the attack on Capitol Hill, with some lawmakers calling for the resignation of Mr Hawley and Simon & Schuster canceling plans to publish his delivered.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who joined Mr Hawley in opposing the results, also faced a backlash, including the resignation of his communications director this week. But while Mr Cruz filed his objection to the results in Arizona early in the proceedings, Mr Hawley drew particular anger for opposing the results in Pennsylvania hours later after the attack on the Capitol.

“Josh Hawley is confident that his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and deny Joe Biden the presidency – even after helping fuel the U.S. Capitol riots – will make him president in 2024,” the new super PAC said in a statement. . “He’s betting that the same far-right nationalist crowds who have backed Donald Trump will put him in the White House to continue Trump’s work. JOSH PAC will be waging an ongoing campaign to stop it now. “

Mr Hawley’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The super PAC, news of which was first reported by Politico, is part of a long tradition of efforts to fund electoral challenges in response to a specific vote or action by a lawmaker. These efforts are not always successful, even when they involve large sums of money.

For example, a crowd-funded campaign in 2018 raised $ 3.7 million for the Democrat who would be appointed to challenge Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine in response to her support for Judge Brett M’s confirmation Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The candidate ended up being Sara Gideon, who gave Ms Collins her most serious challenge in years, but ultimately lost by more than eight percentage points.

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Trump and Aides led to family separation at border, documents say

Trump and Aides led to family separation at border, documents say

WASHINGTON – President Trump and senior White House aides have vigorously pushed the hardening policy that has led migrant families to be separated on the border with Mexico, a senior Justice Department official says in a new report of the inspector general of the department, and other internal documents.

In the report, officially released on Thursday, Gene Hamilton, a senior justice official, said the policy was implemented after complaints from the president and other White House people involved in implementing the program. Immigration of the President.

“The attorney general was aware of the White House’s desires for further action related to tackling illegal immigration,” Hamilton said in the report in response to questions about the origins of the program, in which the ministry began to prosecute adult migrants who arrived at the border with children.

Mr. Hamilton said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions “saw the need for swift action” from Mr. Trump and that after a White House meeting on April 3, 2018, Mr. Sessions ” directed that I write a memo that establishes a zero tolerance approach to border immigration law enforcement.

In a statement released Thursday after the Inspector General’s report, Rod J. Rosenstein, the former deputy attorney general involved in politics, expressed deep regret over the zero tolerance policy and the role it played in its implementation.

“Since leaving the ministry, I have often wondered what we should have done differently, and no problem has dominated my thinking more than the zero tolerance immigration policy,” he said. . “It was a failed policy that should never have been proposed or implemented. I wish we had all done better.

Notes obtained by The New York Times of two meetings – one between federal prosecutors along the Southwestern border and Mr. Sessions, and the other with Mr. Rosenstein – also indicate that law enforcement were pushing the separation policy in response to pressure from the president.

In a May 11, 2018 meeting with Mr. Sessions, the attorney general told prosecutors, “We have to take children,” according to the notes. Moments later, he described Mr. Trump as “very intense, very focused” on the matter, according to a person taking notes at the meeting.

Another person who attended the same meeting wrote of the same part of the conversation involving Mr. Trump: “INTENSE: sue everyone.”

Mr Trump has repeatedly tried to evade responsibility for his administration’s family separation policy by wrongly blaming Democrats and former President Barack Obama. But the Inspector General’s report and other documents directly implicate the Trump White House.

On May 14, just days after Mr. Sessions met with his prosecutors, Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration policy in the White House, emailed Mr. Hamilton noting a newspaper article indicating that American lawyers sometimes refused to do so. prosecute migrants who crossed the border illegally, in part because migrants were crossing with young children. Mr. Hamilton replied, “This article is a big deal.”

Eight days later, on May 22, Rosenstein met again with US lawyers who deal with border issues to insist that they prosecute any cases of illegal crossings referred to them by the border patrol. He dismissed concerns from at least one prosecutor that children under 5 would be separated from their parents if adults were prosecuted.

“If they refer, then go on. THE AGE OF THE CHILD DOESN’T MATTER, ”Rosenstein said, according to notes from one person at the meeting, who wrote in all caps.

Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement: “Those who have planned and executed the zero tolerance policy will have to live with the knowledge that their cruelty and cowardice are responsible for the scars these children will bear for the rest of their lives. They must be held accountable for the fundamental human rights violations they have committed. “

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Congressional sergeants-at-arms are faced with questions about the security failures that led to the assault on Capitol Hill.

Congressional sergeants-at-arms face intense scrutiny after siege

Senate and House Sergeants-at-Arms Michael C. First occupation since the War of 1812.

Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sund told the Washington Post that they refused to comply with his requests to put the National Guard on hold ahead of the Congressional Electoral College certification, which supporters of Trump ultimately disrupted, as they were too concerned about the “Optics” of such a move.

The jobs forced the two to balance an array of often conflicting forces, according to interviews with former colleagues, law enforcement experts and former sergeants-at-arms. Attempts to reach Mr. Stenger and Mr. Irving were unsuccessful.

Both positions derive their power directly from legislators. The Senate elects its sergeant-at-arms and the president of the chamber chooses this chamber. Mr. Stenger, who worked for the Senate, and Mr. Irving, his House counterpart, skillfully attempted to satisfy the 535 lawmakers who often had competing demands that made even mundane decisions like replacing window locks with delicate issues, according to interviews.

But the accusations by Mr Sund, who had reported to the two men, sparked criticism that Mr Stenger and Mr Irving had placed the policy on the safety of lawmakers, staff and journalists assembled for the count. electoral college vote.

Terrance W. Gainer, who previously served as both Capitol Police Chief and Senate Sergeant-at-Arms, said emergencies at Capitol Hill typically exposed issues with the chain of command that had worsened for periods of time. calmer. He said that during the 2013 Washington Navy Yard shooting and the 2011 East Coast earthquake, security officials on Capitol Hill had differing views on how to respond, which complicated their response.

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How a series of failures led to the attack on the Capitol.

Inside a deadly siege: how a series of failures led to a dark day on the Capitol

The chaos caused by the Capitol siege last week revealed that the relevant law enforcement agencies did not have a coordinated plan to defend against an attack – particularly an attack specifically targeting powerful elected officials – despite warnings for decades. years on the growing threat of national terrorism.

Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police had rejected offers days earlier for additional National Guard assistance beyond a relatively small contingent to provide traffic control, so no additional troops were made. ‘had been put on hold. It took them a little over four hours to arrive.

These were just two failures in a dizzying list that day and the run-up to the attack – which culminated in the first occupation of the United States Capitol since British troops torched the building during the War of 1812 But death and destruction this time was brought on by Americans, rallying behind the inflammatory language of an American president, who refused to accept the will of the more than 81 million other Americans who had rejected him. .

A full calculation will take months, if not years, and many lawmakers have called for an official commission to investigate.

President Trump’s call at a rally that day for the crowd to march on the nearby Capitol was surely a spark that helped spark the deadly riots that left five people dead – including a police officer and a woman who stormed the building – injured dozens more and damaged the country’s reputation for peaceful transfers of power. But the fire tinder had been rallying for months, with every tweet the election had been stolen, every refusal by Republican lawmakers to recognize Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the next president, every dog ​​whistle that emboldened white supremacist groups. hit violently.

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Inside a deadly siege: how a series of failures led to a dark day on the Capitol

Inside a deadly siege: how a series of failures led to a dark day on the Capitol

With the police in the lead, guns drawn, the group stumbled into chaos, Crow said. Some police rushed to barricade other doors to block the crowds. Others pinned rioters to the ground to allow lawmakers to pass.

Due to efforts to limit the number of people in the chamber, several lawmakers and assistants took refuge in their offices, scattered around the complex. Some were not contacted by the police, even though they were barricaded inside.

Many members of the House remained in a safe place, where they could have been exposed to someone with coronavirus, the attending physician’s office said on Sunday.

Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester, Democrat of Delaware, urged a handful of Republicans to wear masks, to no avail. Representatives Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, and Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, regularly updated the room, as lawmakers called their families and checked their staff.

On the side of the Capitol Senate, the rioters have come dangerously close to the lawmakers. As they approached, a quick-witted Capitol policeman pushed one of them, then backed away, and the crowd chased him. The officer’s maneuver helped push crowds away from a Senate entrance several yards away, according to a video taken by Igor Bobic, a reporter for HuffPost.

In a safe, undisclosed location, South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham yelled at Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael C. Stenger, demanding a plan and ordering him to eliminate the rioters, according to a person in the room. Mr Stenger was circling around, the person said, inspiring no confidence that he was in control. He has since resigned, as has Chef Sund. Across the Capitol, urgent voices sizzled over police radios, giving details of the ongoing siege.

“There was certainly a higher sense of urgency” over police radio traffic as rioters violated the east side of the Capitol, said Ashan M. Benedict, head of the Washington field office of the Office of the United Nations. alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives, who worked with Capitol Police at the nearby Republican Party headquarters, where a homemade bomb was found.

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New Guardians of the Galaxy are led by the U.S. military

New Guardians of the Galaxy are led by the U.S. military

The United States Space Force, the new branch of the US military, created to protect the country’s galactic interests, has given its members an official name: Guardians.

The new name came after a year-long selection process drawing on hundreds of submissions from the general public and research from space professionals. The name of the Guardians dates back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, “Guardians of the High Frontier”. Space Force said on Twitter.

Overseen by the Air Force, the US Space Force was created to protect US interests in outer space. In 2018, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to create a sixth branch of the military to monitor commercial traffic and debris, initiatives that he said would be “great not just in terms of jobs and everything, but also for the psyche of our country. “

“On behalf of your Commander-in-Chief, allow me to urge each of you Guardians to keep pushing,” Vice President Mike Pence said in remarks prepared on Friday, the Space Force’s first anniversary.

“Continue to advance the vision and mission of the United States Space Force, which is to ensure that America remains as dominant in space and from space as we are on land, at sea and in the air. tunes, ”he added.

The force’s creation was the subject of much criticism and received little initial support in the Pentagon. Some lawmakers and aerospace experts have said there is a need for a space force, citing concerns about China, Russia and anti-satellite weapons. Critics of the Air Force said the branch would never make space its top priority.

Many laughed at the name announcement, a step towards officializing the order, with jokes about the Marvel superhero film “Guardians of the Galaxy”.

The Space Force also unveiled its new utility uniforms in January, causing confusion on social media as users took to the camouflage uniform which inspired jokes on “Star Wars”.

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James D. Wolfensohn, who led the World Bank for 10 years, dies at 86

James D. Wolfensohn, who led the World Bank for 10 years, dies at 86

James D. Wolfensohn, who led the World Bank for 10 years, dies at age 86 He was a force on Wall Street before taking the reins of the bank in 1995 and then proceeded to shake it up. He did the same at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. By Robert D. Hershey Jr.