Sonic boom heard in Paris and suburbs caused by fighter jet breaking sound barrier

A loud blast heard throughout Paris on Wednesday briefly caused panic as edgy residents feared a bombing five days after a terrorist attack outside the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The noise was caused by a sonic boom as a military jet broke the speed of sound, police said. Pierre Duclos, who was in a café around the corner from the site of the attack on Friday when the explosion-like noise was heard, said: “Everyone looked at each other and a few people got up and went outside. For a while, we thought another terrorist attack was coming and we were all shocked. Some people asked the café owner to close and lock the door. I was here on Friday and frankly I was really worried again today.

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Trump Planned to Go Feral on Biden. Now His Allies Want to Call Animal Control

Since he first sought the Oval Office, President Donald Trump has relished in the idea that he is the “chaos president.” During his first debate with former Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday night, he distilled his past five years in the political spotlight into the most highly concentrated dose of chaos of his presidency.Trump, backed into an electoral corner with more than 200,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic and an economy in shambles as a result, lashed out in every direction on the debate stage at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. It was a petulant performance of personal and political grievance stunning even by Trumpian standards.According to advisers close to the president, the act was not purely impulsive, but strategic—born out of a strategy that sought to confuse and confound Biden with the ultimate goal of getting the former vice president to stumble and lose his train of thought.But in the aftermath of the carnage, even some of the president’s own boosters couldn’t help but concede that he had spent an hour and a half acting like a feral animal.“I think on the Trump side, it was too hot,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who had done debate prep with Trump leading up to Tuesday, said on ABC. “Listen, you come in and decide you want to be aggressive and that was the right thing, to be aggressive. But that was too hot.”Reached for comment late Tuesday night, Ed Rollins, a veteran GOP strategist who fronts the pro-Trump group Great America PAC, simply responded, “Wow. I have seen nothing like this ever. Don’t want to comment any further.” Asked if the president did a good job or not, Rollins would only reply, “No comment.”The president, famously intransigent about traditional debate preparation and visibly antsy behind the lectern, barely allowed a single sentence before trampling over the speaker, whether it was spoken by Biden or from beleaguered moderator Chris Wallace, who appeared nearly incapable of halting the president’s trampling of the debate format. When Trump did speak, the utterances bounced between the incendiary to outright assaults on the American political system. He closed out by saying he believed the Supreme Court would intervene in the election (on ballot-related issues) and urged his supporters to go into polling locations in thinly veiled intimidation tactics.Trump Says He’s ‘Counting’ on Supreme Court to Decide ElectionBiden, whose weeks of preparation were clearly modeled on at least some version of the president’s burn-it-all-down debate strategy, had multiple canned rejoinders to Wallace’s attempts to corral Trump’s tirades—he employed some version of “he doesn’t know how to do that” multiple times when Trump was asked to allow him to finish his remarks. But in the words of CNN reporter Dana Bash moments after the debate’s conclusion, Biden could not extricate himself—much less elevate—the “shitshow.”Beyond the supposed format of the debate, with two minutes of uninterrupted (dare to dream) remarks followed by open discussion, the minimal standards of adult behavior in the Trump era were thrown out of the window almost from its outset.As Biden discussed the death of his eldest son, Beau, an Iraq War veteran who died from brain cancer in 2015, Trump interrupted to harangue Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s younger son, attacking him for his past addiction issues.“Hunter got thrown out of the military, dishonorably discharged,” Trump said, incorrectly, as Biden and Wallace both appeared stunned that the president made his son’s struggles with substance abuse a topic of debate.“My son, like a lot of people, had a drug problem,” Biden responded. “He’s overtaken it, he’s fixed it… and I’m proud of him.”Biden, clearly operating under no false assumption that Trump would obey the rules of the debate, of decorum, or of human decency, often responded to Trump’s interruptions with his trademark “this guy’s such a clown” grin. But as the night wore on, and as Trump’s attacks on Biden’s mental fitness and his family increased in both frequency and savagery, his smile became a grimace, and finally a scowl.“Would you shut up, man?” Biden said at one point. In the debate’s second hour, his eyes shut in clear frustration, Biden fumed that “it’s hard to get any word in with this clown—sorry, this person.” During a spat about racial biases in policing, he turned to Trump and declared him a “racist.”In the Trump administration’s fourth year, it is universally acknowledged that the president will always be himself—he knows no other speed than breakneck, no other mode but attack. But in the midst of the melee, some moments of grievance managed to shock even the most jaded Trump observers.At one point, the president refused to condemn white supremacists, instead calling on Proud Boys—a violent ultranationalist club for hipster racists that takes their name from a cut song from Disney’s Aladdin—to “stand back and stand by” for civil unrest. That moment was almost immediately turned into a rallying cry by the group, which has begun policing Trump campaign events and has vowed to “monitor” polling places on election day. Later in the debate, he appeared to confuse Hillary Clinton’s famous “superpredators” quote with something that Biden had said.During an exchange about the pandemic, Trump interrupted his own rant with a mini-rant gleaned from Fox News about Biden misidentifying his alma mater.“You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don’t ever use the word ‘smart’ with me,” Trump said. “Because you know what, there’s nothing smart about you, Joe.”As a moderator—working solo due to coronavirus restrictions—Wallace had all the influence of a windsock in such situations.Despite the vast gap between his and Biden’s effective speaking time, Trump avoided directly answering many of the questions, including two that are generally not difficult for American presidents: “Will you condemn white supremacists?” and “Will you accept the results of the election?”“I guess I’m debating you and not him,” Trump said after his first of many tangles with Wallace about interrupting Biden, “but that’s OK.”“Do you realize you're both speaking at the same time?” Wallace said weakly in the debate’s first half-hour. When the debate’s second section, devoted to discussing the coronavirus pandemic, began, Wallace pleaded with the candidates to “try to be serious.”Trump’s entourage, at least, did not see the issue as particularly serious. Despite urgings from the Cleveland Clinic, which advised the Commission on Presidential Debates on health guidance to avoid spreading the coronavirus, that all attendees observe social distancing rules and wear facial coverings due to coronavirus restrictions, more than half of Trump’s guests, including all four of his adult children, did not wear facial coverings.Across Trumpworld and the president’s re-election effort, however, the evening’s shouting and the belligerent cross-talking was, in large part, precisely the point. According to two sources familiar with the president’s preparations, it has long been Trump’s stated intention to try to knock Biden off his game by flooding the debate with personal and family jabs, subject change, and indignant-sounding interruptions. Part of the president’s thinking, the sources said, was to attempt to get the former veep to start faltering on live national TV, thus reinforcing Team Trump’s narrative of a doddering, “sleepy” Democratic opponent.For the most part, it didn’t seem to work on Tuesday night. Some Trump advisers and confidants cheering on the president as the debate aired resorted to making the Fox News host and moderator the primary object of derision, instead of Barack Obama’s vice president.“Wallace is Trump’s real adversary. Biden is a mumbling footnote,” Rudy Giuliani, a Trump attorney and lead Biden antagonist who the president brought along to Cleveland Tuesday, messaged The Daily Beast as he watched the debate. “Look how aggressive Wallace is with Trump. And he’s beating Wallace, Biden’s kind of disappearing. Trump is in command of both and Wallace is more effective than Biden.”John McLaughlin, a top pollster for Trump, also seemed eager to work the refs and make the Fox News Sunday host the villain, saying shortly after the debate ended that the “president dominated. Wallace was [the] loser. Biden got away with calling the President a liar and clown and Wallace asked Trump about taxes but never asked Biden about Hunter and family corruption.”The Trump campaign, apparently so confident of the president’s victory in Tuesday night’s debate that the debate itself was irrelevant to that conclusion, blasted an email to Trump supporters forty minutes before the debate began lauding the president’s performance.“I showed the American People that I will ALWAYS fight to put America First no matter what,” the Trump-signed email read.Still, not every Trump ally and operative was pleased with how the leader of the free world handled himself, arguing that the president was too grumpy, to the detriment of his strategy to humiliate or trip-up his liberal opponent.“They both yelled too much and were too angry,” one Republican close to the Trump campaign told The Daily Beast shortly before midnight. “Biden’s entire theory of the case and pitch to voters is his calmness and a return to normalcy and I think he undermined that pitch with this performance. On the other hand, while Biden was clearly struggling throughout, every time he began to fumble the football, Trump would throw him a lifeline and interrupt him before the fumble was completed. It wasn’t a debate that either side should be proud of.”Near the end of the televised event, Trump implied ominously that the violence and tumult in American streets, and the deep divisions in the nation, that were discussed at the debate were just a sample of what was to come on and after Election Day.“This is not going to end well,” Trump vowed. “This is not going to end well.”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.

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Trump is literally a crying baby in Biden's post-debate ad

It can be hard to distill a political message down to its memorable essence. In a post-debate ad released Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's campaign found two words to capture the ugly chaos of Tuesday night's presidential debate: "Had enough?" The ad also features a crying emoji superimposed on President Trump's face as he argues and badgers moderator Chris Wallace, and the sound of a baby crying.> Had enough? pic.twitter.com/4W5OSoRzXI> > — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020Biden also slipped in his most memorable line from the night, "Will you shut up, man?" — which his campaign has already made into T-shirts and face masks.More stories from theweek.com 3 reasons the stakes for the NBA Finals are extra high GOP Sen. Tim Scott calls for Trump to correct his Proud Boys comments: 'If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak' Trump pummels Biden — and America

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Singapore Airlines is turning a parked A380 superjumbo jet into a restaurant to cater to a travel-hungry population

Singapore Airlines' fleet of Airbus A380s is now turning into a tourist attraction as the pandemic has rendered the long-range jets obsolete.

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Mitch McConnell ‘refusing to debate his election rival if there is a female moderator’

‘He continues to resist allowing women to host debates,’ said McConnell’s opponent in the Kentucky Senate race

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'It was painful. And triggering': Why Ibram X. Kendi, psychologists say debate could be traumatizing

Viewers and mental health experts likened the spectacle to a dysfunctional family or an abusive relationship.

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Up to 50,000 airline workers could lose their job tonight if Congress doesn't approve more aid

“Hundreds of thousands of airline workers are facing financial ruin through no fault of our own. How will we take care of our families without a paycheck and health insurance?” said one airline worker.

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The Proud Boys are celebrating Trump's 'stand back and stand by' debate shout-out

President Trump appeared to agree to moderator Chris Wallace's challenge at Tuesday night's presidential debate to "condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence at a number of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland." But when it came down to it, he either chickened out or choked, instead telling the Proud Boys white nationalist group to "stand back and stand by." By most accounts, the Proud Boys were thrilled.> (Uhuru is a common Proud Boys chant )> > — Christopher Mathias (@letsgomathias) September 30, 2020> The Proud Boys are now sharing the group's logo with the president's words emblazoned like a slogan. pic.twitter.com/T3tp286YRa> > — Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) September 30, 2020Getting orders from Trump is a long-held "fantasy" for the group, Megan Squire, who tracks online extremism at Elon University, told NBC News. "To say Proud Boys are energized by this is an understatement," she explained. "They were pro-Trump before this shout-out, and they are absolutely over the moon now. Their fantasy is to fight antifa in his defense, and he apparently just asked them to do just that."> Trump told the Proud Boys to "stand by" and it looks like they were watching pic.twitter.com/adkewY7ETR> > — nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) September 30, 2020If the Proud Boys were ecstatic, critics of far-right extremism were not.> "Stand back and stand by" is not a condemnation, it's a call to be ready. In a nation wracked by unrest, that was one of the most irresponsible and reprehensible statements I've ever seen from a president. The Proud Boys are a violent vigilante militia. https://t.co/vrt3CUjFEw> > — David French (@DavidAFrench) September 30, 2020The Anti-Defamation League calls the Proud Boys a violent, nationalistic, Islamophobic, and misogynistic hate group, and its president, Jonathan Greenblatt, asked whether Trump's Proud Boy comment "was an answer or an admission," adding that the president "owes America an apology or an explanation. Now." Biden pointed to the gleeful reaction from the Proud Boys and tweeted simply: "This. This is Donald Trump's America."More stories from theweek.com 3 reasons the stakes for the NBA Finals are extra high GOP Sen. Tim Scott calls for Trump to correct his Proud Boys comments: 'If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak' Trump pummels Biden — and America

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Joe Biden tweets joke mocking 'earpiece' and 'drug' allegations with photo of headphones and ice cream

"I’ve got my earpiece and performance enhancers ready," Biden wrote on Twitter with a photo of tangled earbuds and a pint of ice cream.

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Top US infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci calls some of Fox News' primetime coverage of the coronavirus pandemic 'outlandish'

Fauci said that with some reporters, "anything that I would say they'll distort a bit," adding, "I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that."

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'Basically nobody' turned off the 1st presidential debate while it was in progress

Viewers apparently couldn't peel their eyes away from the first presidential debate Tuesday night.Despite widespread criticism of the chaos that unfolded on stage, the final 15 minutes actually rated slightly higher than the opening 15 minutes, and audiences fell just 2 percent from the 9:30 p.m. ET peak by the time it all wrapped up, Nielsen data shows. So, even if they were disappointed with what they witnessed, it seems like those who tuned in were prepared to finish what they started and stay engaged with the national political moment. > Debate rating and share by quarter-hour:> > 9:00 - 42.5/68 > 9:15 - 43.4/68 > 9:30 - 43.7/69 > 9:45 - 43.5/68 > 10:00 - 42.9/68 > 10:15 - 42.2/67 > 10:30 - 42.9/69> > -- Michael Mulvihill (@mulvihill79) September 30, 2020Overall, though, Tuesday's ratings across the major networks dropped significantly from 2016's first presidential debate. > The early TV ratings for the debate last night are down BIG.> > A total of only 29 million viewers across ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS.> > The viewership on broadcast was nearly 43 million in 2016 for the first debate.> > Brutal numbers. Have people lost interest? (Source: TVLine)> > -- David Hookstead (@dhookstead) September 30, 2020More stories from theweek.com 3 reasons the stakes for the NBA Finals are extra high GOP Sen. Tim Scott calls for Trump to correct his Proud Boys comments: 'If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak' Trump pummels Biden — and America

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Donald Glover reveals he's struggled with his sexuality: 'I never felt completely safe'

"Most of my college years were me being like, 'I don't know what I like,'" the "Atlanta" creator said in a new interview with Michaela Coel.

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Governor endorsements adds more fuel to Georgia Senate race

A pair of new high-profile endorsements are adding fuel to an already contentious special election for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.

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GOP loses bid to suspend Wisconsin absentee ballot ruling

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LA police 'ambush': Deonte Lee Murray charged with attempted murder

Deonte Lee Murray is accused of shooting two officers in their car, an attack that was caught on video.

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Democrats postpone House vote on COVID-19 stimulus bill to give more time for negotiations

The pared-down version of the legislation passed by House Democrats in May will likely pass the House, but will face opposition in the GOP-led Senate.

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'Miracle on the Hudson' pilot Sully Sullenberger said he'll only fly with airlines that block the middle seat during the pandemic

The pilot who famously landed a damaged plane on the Hudson shared his thoughts on airline safety amid coronavirus.

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Space Force Now Has an Official Uniform

The U.S. Space Force members will wear the Operational Camouflage Pattern as the official service duty uniform.

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Florida martial arts school billed taxpayers over $350,000 for ‘ghost’ kids, state says

Funded by public grants, the United Martial Arts Academy in Homestead offered an array of self-defense training, including the “Tiny Tigers” and “Little Dragon” courses for kids.

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A creepy presidential debate ad shows a deepfake of Putin telling Americans they're ruining their own democracy

In an ad campaign from non-profit RepresentUs, deepfakes of Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin warn Americans that they're ruining their own democracy.

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Pakistan army says Indian fire kills soldier, boy in Kashmir

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Comey Claims He Only Learned Details of Russia Investigation Abuses from IG Report after Leaving FBI

Former FBI director James Comey claimed on Wednesday that he learned of various details related to the FBI's investigation in to collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign from the DOJ Inspector General report on FISA abuse, years after Comey had left his former agency.Comey headed the FBI from 2013 until May 2017, when he was fired by President Trump. During Comey's tenure, agents carried out the Crossfire Hurricane probe, investigating allegations that the Trump-campaign had ties to Russian intelligence. Many of those allegations were compiled in the so-called Steele dossier, whose primary source, Igor Danchenko, was revealed last week to be a suspected Russian spy.The DOJ Inspector General report, released in December 2019, detailed "significant" errors and omissions in FBI agents' applications to surveil former Trump-campaign adviser Carter Page. That report also cast doubt on the veracity of some allegations in the Steele dossier.On Wednesday, Comey appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify regarding questions on the Crossfire Hurricane probe."Before the Inspector General's report on the dossier…did you know that the information that was reported by [Inspector General Michael] Horowitz that should have raised questions about the reliability of the Steele dossier?" Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) asked."I learned a lot about the Steele material and the sub-source interviews from the Horowitz report that I didn't know before then," Comey replied.Earlier in the Wednesday hearing, Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), asked Comey if he was aware that the FBI interviewed Danchenko in January 2017."I don't remember anything about interviews with [Danchenko]," Comey said.Comey has previously said he learned many of the details of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation from what has been publicly reported. The former director stated in December 2019, following the release of the IG report, that he "didn’t know the particulars of the investigation" while he head of the FBI."As a director sitting on top of an organization with 38,000 people, you can’t run an investigation that’s seven layers below you," Comey told Fox News at the time. Attorney General William Barr criticized Comey's statement several days later, saying "One of the problems with what happened was precisely that they pulled the investigation up to the executive floors."During Wednesday's hearing, Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah), a proponent of reforms to federal surveillance practices, criticized Comey for appearing to know little about the Crossfire Hurricane probe."Mr. Comey, with all due respect, you don't seem to know anything about an investigation that you ran," Lee said.

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'What is Google Fiber?': Everything you need to know about Google's high-speed internet service

Google Fiber is a high-speed internet service that Google is currently deploying in 18 cities across the US. Here's what you need to know about it.

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Pelosi warns Democrats the election may be decided by the House — where the GOP holds an edge

If the Electoral College is tied, each state delegation gets a single vote. Republicans currently control 26

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‘Fox & Friends’ Hosts Look On in Horror as Rudy Giuliani Blurts Out Biden Dementia Conspiracy Theory

Everyone knows that live television isn’t easy. Anything can go wrong—from a faulty connection, a verbal slip-up, or, as was the case on Tuesday morning’s Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani bellowing insane conspiracy theories at the nation with no obvious way to stop him.It’s always a risk to allow Giuliani to share his wildly unpredictable stream of consciousness live. The man who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001 has long since been reduced to sharing the latest Trumpist conspiracy theories on any cable news channel that has the budget to cover any possible subsequent defamation lawsuits.This time, his F&F hosts looked on with visible horror in their eyes as Giuliani shared his completely baseless belief that Joe Biden is suffering from dementia. If you have the time, it’s worth watching the clip at least three times so you can see each of the hosts panicking in their own unique way as the former New York City mayor rambles on and on.> On Fox & Friends, Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden "has dementia. There's no doubt about it. I've talked to doctors. ... The president's quite right to say maybe he's taken adderall." The hosts get visibly uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/2Ma7DKNBpS> > — Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 29, 2020With a mischievous cackle, Giuliani began: “The man [Biden] has dementia. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve talked to doctors. I’ve had them look at a hundred different tapes of his five years ago and today.” Trying his very best to shut Giuliani down, host Steve Doocy interjected that Biden’s team has said the Democrat has no serious medical problems.Giuliani then made an extraordinary noise at Doocy that can best be typed as “Oowughawughawugh,” before continuing: “He can’t recite the Pledge of Allegiance and he’s fine? He was in the Senate for 160 years? I mean, he can’t do the prologue to the... to the... con... to the... uh... Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence, any of them.”Getting louder and increasingly excited about his armchair diagnosis, Giuliani went on: “He can’t do NUMBERS. Wow, are the numbers screwed up. He actually displays symptoms that two gerontologists told me are classic symptoms of middle level dementia.” Doocy and co-host Ainsley Earhardt both responded to that claim by softly saying, “Right.” The third host, Brian Kilmeade, can just be seen blinking rapidly.Fox News Lobotomizes Its ‘Brain Room,’ Cuts Fact-Based JournalismNevertheless, Giuliani persisted. “That’s when [Biden] does that ‘I pledge allegiance to the United States... uh... uh... um... I think,’ he’s done that twice,” said the ex mayor. “That’s a classic symptom in the DSM-V, it’s the fifth symptom, of dementia, he’s got eight of the 10.”Then, seemingly remembering that he was on the show to talk about tonight’s presidential debate, he went on: “Look, that isn’t the debate. He can get through it. I think the president is quite right to say maybe he’s taken Adderall or some kind of attention deficit disorder thing.”As Giuliani began pulling prescription medicine brands out of the air, Doocy had finally had enough and told him firmly, “None of us are doctors, that is your opinion.” Giuliani fought back, saying it was actually the opinion of some very professional-sounding doctors that he knows.But the game was up. Kilmeade, in his first verbal interjection of the entire exchange, said with exasperation, “We can stay away from that.” Earhardt then moved on to pick Giuliani’s brain on the Supreme Court.This particular line of attack is one that Giuliani—whose work as President Trump’s lawyer and top dirt-digger on Hunter and Joe Biden kicked off a chain of events that got his client impeached last year—has enthusiastically embraced as one of his primary functions now for Team Trump.Shortly before midnight on Monday night, Giuliani started texting The Daily Beast to say that Trump did “great” in recent White House debate prep (for which the president said on Sunday that Giuliani and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie took part), and to rail against Biden as a “senile,” “broken down old crook” who’s supposedly suffering from “dementia” and needs “ADD drugs” to get through the Tuesday debate. The Trump attorney also claimed that someone had told him how stupid Biden was in law school.Giuliani also mentioned late Monday evening that he’d be flying with Trump on Air Force One on Tuesday and would be at the Cleveland debate. Asked about what kinds of questions he peppered the president with during the prep, the former New York City mayor replied, “It really doesn’t work like that with him. It’s much more of a discussion rather than a rehearsal. Plus you are dealing with a very smart, very alert human being, not a senile old man.”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.

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Charges still uncertain for Trump aide Parscale. It may depend on what his wife decides.

Two days after police seized 10 guns and hospitalized demoted former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale following a confrontation with police at his waterfront home in Fort Lauderdale, it remained unclear if the analytics guru will face any criminal charges.

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Hezbollah leaders tell French president to change approach

The leader of the militant Hezbollah group said Tuesday they still welcome the French initiative to help Lebanon out of its crisis, but said Paris has to change its approach in dealing with local factions and not blame everyone for the failure of forming a new Cabinet. French President Emmanuel Macron has been pressing Lebanese politicians to form a Cabinet made up of non-partisan specialists that can work on enacting urgent reforms to extract Lebanon from a devastating economic and financial crisis. Prime Minister-designate Mustapha Adib resigned Saturday during a political impasse that came amid Lebanon’s worst economic and financial crisis in decades — made worse by a massive explosion in Beirut in early August that killed and wounded many and caused widespread damage.

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Lindsey Graham on Spreading Potential Russian Disinformation: It Doesn’t Matter If It’s True

Former Hillary Clinton aides, ex-intelligence officials and Senate Democrats are accusing Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe of laundering Russian disinformation before an election after Ratcliffe suggested Clinton attempted to manufacture a scandal about Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of President Trump.On Tuesday, Ratcliffe, a loyalist whom Trump placed atop U.S. intelligence in the spring, sent Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) a letter claiming that in late July 2016, U.S. intelligence acquired “insight” into a Russian intelligence analysis. That analysis, Ratcliffe summarized in his letter, claimed that Clinton had a plan to attack Trump by tying him to the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee. Trump, in late July 2016, had publicly called for Russia to purloin Clinton’s emails. And both U.S. intelligence and former special counsel Robert Mueller have since attributed that hack to Russia.None of the subsequent Trump-Russia investigations have verified the claims Ratcliffe published, although top House intelligence-committee Republican Devin Nunes of California has insisted baselessly that Clinton and not Trump colluded with Russia.Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence community “does not know the accuracy of this allegation or to the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.” Though he subsequently insisted that his letter was not itself a disinformation campaign by Russian officials, his move to send the letter, and Graham’s decision to release it, was roundly criticized.“DNI Ratcliffe should be ashamed of his blatant politicization of his position,” said Nick Shapiro, the former CIA deputy chief of staff to John Brennan, who was CIA director in 2016 and whose notes are cited in Ratcliffe’s summary.Trump’s Pick for Intelligence Chief Follows a Slew of QAnon AccountsGraham, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the phone Tuesday evening, said he did not know whether the information presented by Ratcliffe was true and said he was not concerned with releasing the uncorroborated allegations to the public even with the presidential election just 35 days away."There are allegations from the CIA that the Clinton campaign was involved in Russia. I don't know if that is true,” Graham said. “It's not about whether it is true. It's about whether the FBI took [the allegations] seriously. That's the question. I supported the Mueller investigation. I don’t get why you wouldn’t look with the same suspicion with both campaigns. The point is what did they [the FBI] do with the information?"Graham’s post-facto rationalization was just the latest illustration of how uniformly invested Trump allies have become in the narrative that Russian involvement in U.S. politics is either overstated or deliberately fabricated as a means of delegitimizing the president. Now that belief has been adopted at the senior most level of U.S. intelligence, something Democrats and former intelligence officials greeted with alarm.“It's all straight-up Russian disinfo,” said Jesse Lehrich, the foreign-policy spokesperson for the 2016 Clinton campaign.Since the 2016 presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials have paid particularly close attention to the ways in which Russia uses disinformation to sow chaos among Americans. As early as March of 2019, officials in the intelligence apparatus and within the national security community have tracked how Moscow uses proxies, including journalists and Russia-friendly politicians, to propagate conspiracy theories about Biden, his son Hunter, and their dealings in Ukraine.Several internal reports warned of the efforts of Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian parliamentarian, to dig up dirt on the Bidens. Derkach worked closely with Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to do so, and his talking points showed up in Giuliani’s cable appearances on Fox News and One America News throughout 2019 and 2020. Last month, the Treasury Department listed Derkach as a “Russian agent” and for his attempts to meddle in the 2020 election.Despite several warnings from the intelligence communities that Russia is actively trying to denigrate the Biden campaign and interfere in the 2020 election, Democrats now say that Graham and Ratcliffe have themselves engaged in proliferating Russian propaganda. Indeed, both the substance and the timing of the Ratcliffe summary, coming hours before the first presidential debate, drew the ire of former Clinton aides, intelligence veterans and the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee for politicizing intelligence.“It’s very disturbing to me that 35 days before an election, the director of national intelligence would release unverified Russian rumint,” or rumors-intelligence, said Sen. Mark Warner, the panel’s top Democrat. Politico reported that the Senate intelligence committee, on a bipartisan basis, rejected the allegation Ratcliffe published as false. “I’m very, very proud of the bipartisan work of the intelligence committee [over] three and a half years and five volumes, and that work speaks for itself,” Warner told reporters on Tuesday.Mueller Defends Russia Investigation After Top Aide’s Criticism in Tell-All BookWarner’s Democratic colleague on the panel, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, said Ratcliffe was abusing his power “exactly as I feared he would” shortly before November’s election.“His politicization of intelligence, including through selective releases to political allies, damages the country and undermines the intelligence community he purports to lead,” Wyden said in a Tuesday statement. “Ratcliffe is even willing to rely on unverified Russian information to try to concoct a political scandal, a shocking abdication of his responsibilities to the country.”Ratcliffe’s summary comes two days after Maria Bartiromo reported for Fox News that it was unlikely a Justice Department prosecutor scrutinizing the intelligence agencies’ origins of the Trump-Russia probe was unlikely to bring charges before the election. Attorney General William Barr claimed earlier this month that bringing charges prior to the election was a possibility, despite the long-standing policy of the Department to not announce charges so close to Election Day. Ratcliffe’s statement suggested that Barr concurred with the decision to release the summary, saying Barr “has advised that the disclosure of this information will not interfere with ongoing Department of Justice investigations.”The office of the Director of National Intelligence did not clarify Barr’s role in the Tuesday release of the summary.A former senior intelligence official stopped short of claiming Ratcliffe was laundering Russian disinformation, claiming a lack of familiarity with the underlying intelligence.“This should be taken with an entire shaker of salt unless the actual documents are released,” the ex-intelligence official said. “The selective release of information is getting rather obvious. Fits right in the pattern in the Flynn case, where they are releasing every document that suggests that an individual agent had a concern.”Representatives for the director of national intelligence did not respond when asked if they would release the material undergirding Ratcliffe’s summary.Ratcliffe’s summary alleged that then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed President Obama and others on both the alleged Russian intelligence and a claim that Clinton had approved a plan to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference from Russian security forces.” That interference remains the assessment of U.S. intelligence.Ratcliffe cited Brennan’s “handwritten notes” as the basis for that heretofore unknown assessment. Clinton’s alleged approval came, per Ratcliffe, on July 26, 2016, the day she accepted the Democratic presidential nomination—an assertion her former campaign staffers found preposterous.“Hillary would never sign-off on manufacturing a scandal the way the alleged Russian intel, as summarized in Brennan's notes, indicate,” said Lehrich, the former Clinton campaign spokesperson. “For one thing, she would've been incensed that anyone would think she needed to cheat to beat Donald Trump.”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.

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Veteran GOP strategist predicts Trump's debate performance will suffer thanks to tax bombshell

GOP political consultant Mike Murphy predicts President Trump will be distracted at tonight's debate as a result of reports on his taxes.

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CDC study on COVID-19 in kids bolsters case for elementary school reopening

The study adds nuance to prior findings that the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, increases with age.

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Portland protesters clash with police, officers arrest 24

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Veteran facing border wall scam charges with Steve Bannon: ‘Not a penny’ was taken

When ‘Build the Wall’ amputee veteran Brian Kolfage was arrested, officers forbade use of prosthetic legs, now he plans to sue

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Indian rape victim dies weeks after assault, hundreds protest at hospital

A woman from the lowest rung of India's caste system died on Tuesday weeks after authorities said she was raped by a group of men, triggering protests in New Delhi with hundreds gathering at the hospital where her body lay. Every 15 minutes on average, a woman in India is reported raped, according to 2018 government data released this year. The 19-year-old victim, belonging to the Dalit community, was attacked and raped Sept. 14 at a field near her home in Hathras district, 100 km (62-mile) from Delhi, authorities said.

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Debate offers Trump chance to yank stubbornly stable 2020 race his way

Presidential candidates to face off for first time in Cleveland and for Biden no news would be good newsAfter months of anticipation, Donald Trump and election rival Joe Biden were scheduled to meet on a debate stage for the first time in Cleveland on Tuesday night, in what could be Trump’s last best chance to turn the presidential race his way and win re-election.Suffering from weeks of negative revelations in the news and terrible poll numbers, Trump needs a big score at the first presidential debate to shift the national conversation away from the sputtering economy, the coronavirus pandemic and his staggering tax avoidance, analysts say.Those factors could see a performance by Trump that is even more aggressive than usual.“Trump will go after Biden hard, to deflect attention away from his own troubles, including the reports on his tax evasion and business failures,” said Brad Bannon, a Washington-based Democratic strategist. “Much of Biden’s support is based on his calm demeanor, which contrasts well with the president’s erratic personality.“So, it’s important for Biden to respond to Trump without losing his cool, and smile while he surgically cuts the president down to size.”Advisers to Biden, meanwhile, say that a great debate result for the Democratic candidate would be for not much to happen at all. The challenge as they see it is for Biden to appear steady and draw a contrast with Trump – and to resist being drawn into a mudfight.Biden himself appears to recognize the dangers of meeting Trump on his preferred turf of insult and mockery.“I hope I don’t get baited into a brawl with this guy, because that’s the only place he’s comfortable,” Biden told donors at a fundraiser in Delaware earlier this month. “This is a guy who is absolutely tasteless. Completely tasteless. So pointing it out doesn’t do much.”The presidential election on 3 November is only 35 days away, and early in-person voting is under way already, while about 10m mail-in ballots have been sent out across the country – a record brought about by the coronavirus crisis.The conventional wisdom about presidential debates is that they do not move the race much – except when they do. Former vice-president Al Gore was dinged for sighing through his first debate in 2000 with George W Bush. An underprepared outing by Barack Obama against Mitt Romney in their first debate of 2012 breathed new life into the challenger’s campaign.But the stakes around the first debate of the 2020 cycle may be unique. The race has proven historically stable throughout the year, according to polling analysts, and big campaign moments including the national conventions and Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as a running mate do not appear to have moved the needle.For weeks, the Trump campaign has been touting the debate as the moment that would at last alter the race, regaling donors with a fantasy of a quick-witted Trump running circles around a somnolent Biden.Trump went so far at the weekend as to demand a “drug test” before the debate of Biden, whom Trump has baselessly accused of taking “performance enhancing drugs”.Biden laughed off the suggestion, but his campaign issued a lacerating response.“Vice-President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words,” a Biden spokeswoman told Politico. “If the president thinks his best case is made in urine, he can have at it.”Biden and Trump are scheduled to participate in three debates total. The 90-minute opener in the series will be held at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and be moderated by the Fox News host Chris Wallace, who has proven in the past to be a tough interviewer of the president.On Monday, Wallace said he hoped to be “as invisible as possible” onstage. “If I’ve done my job right, at the end of the night, people will say, ‘That was a great debate, who was the moderator?’” Wallace told Fox.Wallace has picked six subjects for the night: the candidates’ records in office; the supreme court; Covid-19; the economy; “race and violence in our cities”; and the integrity of the election.But a bombshell New York Times report at the weekend showing that Trump paid zero federal taxes in 10 of the last 15 years, and that Trump has hundreds of millions in mysterious debt coming due, could be one of many topics that upend the planned proceedings.Biden is expected to highlight how much of Trump’s wealth was inherited, and to draw a contrast between Scranton, Pennsylvania, where Biden grew up, and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the site of Trump’s most famous golden tower.Biden might also underscore the dangers of a president who denies climate change by pointing to the ongoing wildfire crisis in the west. Facing new sexual assault allegations himself, Trump could seek to revive allegations against Biden.Trump has already signaled that Biden’s family is fair game, with sustained attacks on his son Hunter Biden, whose relationships in Ukraine Republicans tried to use to muddle the impeachment inquiry.But Trump appears to need more political mileage out of the debate than the brief bump that a few sharply delivered attacks might deliver.More than winning an argument, strategists say, the debates are about making an impression on viewers that could nudge a crucial few into one camp or the other.“Trump needs a Biden collapse,” the Republican political consultant Mike Murphy, a frequent Trump critic, said on his podcast. “Because Trump needs something to happen on the 29th that gives him the whole month to work with.”

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Portland police seize shields, arrest 24 before march; one officer hospitalized

At least 24 people were arrested when police broke up a planned march, then declared an unlawful assembly when protesters reorganized.

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Turkey Sends ISIS Warlord to Azerbaijan to Face Off Against Putin’s Armenian Allies

ISTANBUL, Turkey—On Sunday afternoon, a video depicting a large convoy of Islamist Syrian rebel fighters yelling enthusiastically as they drove off to war circulated widely on Arabic social media. Fighters in the packed trucks, driving quickly past the group of children filming with their phones, could be heard yelling “Allahu Akbar!” and, “Our leader, 'til the end of time, is our master, Muhammad!”However, what shocked those watching the video weren’t the shouts of the Syrian fighters but rather those of the children filming, who yelled back at the soldiers in a language unfamiliar to most Syrians following their country’s nine-year war. “That’s not Kurdish, right?” said one user in an online group where the video emerged. “If they were Kurds, you think they’d be cheering them on?” responded another with a laugh out loud emoji.Over the next several hours, rumors swirled that the video was shot in Azerbaijan, a small Turkic-speaking nation lodged between Iran and Russia, and that the Syrian rebel fighters had been sent there to prop up the Azeri government in its war against neighboring Armenia that had begun that day. According to high-ranking Syrian rebel sources that spoke to The Daily Beast, these rumors are true. The fighters that appeared in the circulated video were part of a group of 1,000 Syrian rebel soldiers sent in two batches from Turkey on September 22 and 24.“500 Hamza Brigade fighters were flown last Tuesday from southern Turkey to the Azeri airbase at Sumqayit [30 kilometers north of the Azeri capital of Baku]”, according to a source within the Syrian National Army (SNA) rebel outfit who requested anonymity. “Two days later, on Thursday, another 500 fighters from the Sultan Murad brigades rebel faction were similarly flown out to Azerbaijan.”These claims were echoed by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Syrian opposition body that monitors human rights violations in the country. SOHR sources suggest more batches of Syrian rebel fighters are preparing to be deployed to Azerbaijan.The Hamza and Sultan Murad brigades are known within Syrian rebel circles as factions that enjoy especially close relations with Turkey, the last remaining patron of the Syrian opposition. Sayf Balud, commander of the Hamza brigades, however, is also known for his checkered past, in particular, as a former commander within the radical jihadist group ISIS.An ethnic Syrian Turkman from the town of Biza’a in Aleppo city’s northern countryside, Balud originally joined the Abu Bakr Sadiq brigades, a moderate rebel faction near his hometown that received widespread support from Gulf states in the early years of the conflict. However, coming from a small, relatively unknown family, Balud failed to climb the ranks of Syria’s rebel movement as quickly as he would have liked, and as others from more prominent backgrounds regularly did. By early 2013, Balud had joined ISIS, whose ranks were staffed mostly by foreigners who couldn't have cared less about the social status of their Syrian recruits.In July 2013, Balud appeared in an ISIS propaganda video shot in the border town of Tal Abyad after the group successfully captured the city from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). In the video, Sayf appears next to an Egyptian foreign fighter addressing a room full of two dozen captured YPG soldiers, who were assembled before an ISIS camera crew to officially repent for having joined an armed faction that ISIS’ leadership described as being “at war with God.”Over the next several years, Balud’s star continued to rise, as the commander attained a level of status within ISIS that would have been unattainable in other rebel groups. Despite the large-scale defeat of ISIS across northern Syria at the hands of the YPG in 2016 and 2017, the cunning commander was able to leverage his history of fighting against Kurds to re-invent himself as a valuable client for another foreign patron: Turkey.By January 2018, when Turkish backed rebel forces launched “Operation Olive Branch” to take over the Kurdish canton of Afrin located in Syria’s uppermost northwest corner, Balud regularly appeared in the group’s propaganda videos as the official commander of the newly formed Hamza brigades. His status as an ethnic Turkman, a small minority within Syria whose likeness to their Turkish kinsmen across the border has pushed Ankara to grant many coveted privileges such as Turkish citizenship and sensitive leadership positions, further endeared Balud to his new patrons.According to SNA sources, Syrian rebel units now being sent to Azerbaijan by Turkey are almost exclusively led by ethnic Syrian Turkmen. “Sayf Balud is a Turkman. The Sultan Murad brigade’s commander, Fahim Aissa, is a Syrian Turkman, like Balud. Turkey only trusts factions led by Syrian Turkman to carry out these missions. These are sensitive for Turkey politically, and they don’t trust Syrian Arabs to lead them.”Turkey’s intervention in Azerbaijan is indeed sensitive. After a four-year lull in fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, fighting between the two countries erupted anew on Sunday in fighting that killed two-dozen fighters.Historically the Nagorno-Karabakh region has been internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. But in 1991 Armenian factions within the region declared themselves independent. Three years of war over the disputed territory ended in 1994 with a Russian brokered ceasefire. The newly declared Nagorno-Karabakh republic was soon occupied by Armenia, which has since maintained de facto control of the area. With the exception of four days of fighting in April 2016, Sunday’s clashes were the first major instance of renewed combat between both countries over the status of the area. Both sides accuse the other of having initiated the fighting on Sunday.Clashes continue, with dozens more casualties reported. Fighting alongside the Azeri regular forces were 1,000 Syrian rebel fighters, among them former jihadists led by ex-ISIS commander Sayf Balud. All About the OilTurkey's move to send Syrian rebels to face-off against Armenia, a longtime rival of Turkey, is just the latest in a long string of neo-Ottoman foreign adventures undertaken by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over the last 6 months. Ankara has deployed both its armed forces and Syrian proxies to crack down on Kurdish PKK and YPG forces in northern Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan throughout 2020.Turkey has also intervened in western Libya and waters throughout the eastern Mediterranean where its navy has threatened NATO allies France and Greece in an attempt to strongarm both countries and lay claim to gas reserves located within Greece's maritime borders.In Azerbaijan, Turkey is looking to demonstrate loyalty and prop up an oil-rich regime with which it has maintained close military ties since the 1994 ceasefire. Since 2005, they have launched numerous lucrative oil and gas initiatives including a pipeline that exports 1.2 million barrels of Azeri oil per day to the European Union (EU), earning Turkey upwards of $200 million in annual transit fees. In 2006, this cooperation expanded following the launch of the South Caucasus natural gas pipeline that annually exports 8.8 billion cubic meters of much needed Azeri gas to the Turkish market, a net importer of energy.In 2011, Turkey began work on an expansive natural gas production network called the Trans Anatolian Pipeline, which is projected to export 31 billion cubic meters of Azeri gas to the EU by 2026. Turkish shareholders, who own a 30 percent stake in the project, stand to make huge profits.Turkey’s push to transform Azerbaijan into a lucrative oil and gas export hub is also motivated by Ankara’s desire to come out from under Russia’s shadow. Turkey depends on Russia for 40 percent of its fossil fuels, a reliance that has forced Ankara to treat Russia as a friendly nation despite the fact that the two countries share almost no common interests.The “Southern Gas Corridor,” a term referring to the various pipelines emerging out of Azerbaijan, has been heavily cheered on by the EU, which also wants to break its dependence on Russian gas. No surprise then that Russia is on the other side in the ongoing dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.Nagorno-Karabakh is now the third theater where Russia and Turkey find themselves supporting opposite sides in an active Middle East conflict zone. In Syria, Russian support for dictator Bashar al-Assad and Turkey’s support for the country’s rebels such as Sayf Bulad and others led to direct conflict between both countries’ armies earlier this year, resulting in the death of dozens of Turkish soldiers. In Libya, the situation is reversed, with Turkey supporting Libya’s government and Russia supporting Khalifa Haftar, a renegade general and rebel leader who has sought to seize control of Libya’s lucrative oil sector and capture the capital of Tripoli.In both conflicts, Sayf Bulad and the Hamza brigades have proven extremely useful to Turkey. Thousands of the group’s fighters, including Sayf Bulad, were deployed to Libya last summer to help repel a major assault launched by Russian-backed Khalifa Haftar and in the bargain reclaim territory previously captured by the general. The Turkish backed authority in Tripoli is now safely guarded against external threats, while Turkish companies are set to gain lucrative contracts in Libya’s oil and gas and reconstruction sectors.Within this context of great power struggles, Syria's rebels, once idealistic and seeking to liberate their country from dictator Bashar al-Assad, have found themselves reduced to pawns compelled to serve as mercenaries and shock troops used by Turkey to advance its foreign policy in a world where Ankara finds itself increasingly isolated. In doing so, they find themselves led by and mixed with fighters from the most vicious jihadist group the world has ever seen.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.

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California governor signs law requiring trans inmates to be housed by gender identity

The law requires inmates to be asked how they identify, then they must be housed accordingly. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday that will require California prisons to house transgender inmates according to their gender identity. The law requires officers to privately ask inmates if they identify as transgender, nonbinary or intersex.

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White nationalist from Charlottesville rally nicknamed ‘Crying Nazi’ is charged with threatening to rape a woman

Christopher Cantwell sent a series of threatening text messages in bid to uncover information about leader of a far-right group

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A 3-Michelin star restaurant in Napa has burned down in California's latest wildfire

The Restaurant at Meadowood was engulfed by Napa Valley's Glass Fire on Monday morning and couldn't be saved.

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In Vilnius, Macron meets exiled Belarus opposition leader

Tsikhanouskaya said Macron promised her to help negotiate with the Belarus authorities and secure the release of the political prisoners. "He promised us to do everything to help with negotiations, (during) this political crisis in our country ... and he will do everything to help to release all the political prisoners", Tsikhanouskaya told reporters in English after the meeting in Vilnius.

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Barrett Lamented ‘Very Brutal’ Confirmation Process in 2019 Speech, Blamed ‘Dangerous’ Drift toward Judicial ‘Policymaking’

Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick to replace Justice Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, warned in a private discussion at Notre Dame last year that the judicial nomination process “has gotten very brutal” due to “a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role.”Footage of the event, which went public Tuesday, shows Barrett and Amul Thapar, a federal appeals judge for the Sixth Circuit who is also on President Trump’s shortlist for the Supreme Court, discussing their backgrounds and judicial philosophy in a far-ranging conversation.Barrett, already the topic of heavy scrutiny for her family’s involvement in a charismatic Christian group, spoke candidly on the topic of judicial confirmations — referencing comments made by Ginsburg after Justice Kavanaugh’s 2018 hearing, of which the late justice said “the way it was, was right. The way it is, is wrong."“Part of that is because people have a fundamental misunderstanding of the judicial role,” Barrett explained. “If you think that the judge who is going to be confirmed to a court of appeals or to the Supreme Court is going to be imposing his or her policy preferences on you, then it leads to kind of this all in — 'we have to take this person down if we think we're going to disagree with the policy preferences.’”During Barrett's 2017 confirmation hearing for the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a line of questioning from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) was widely publicized and condemned in conservative circles for its suggestion of anti-religious animus.“Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that, you know, dogma and law are two different things? And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma,” Feinstein said at the time. “The law is totally different, and I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”Speaking Saturday after Trump officially announced her nomination, Barrett stated that she had “no illusions that the road ahead of me will be easy, for the short term or the long haul,” and said that she would strive to earn the Senate’s support. She also offered a glimpse of her judicial philosophy, echoing the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom she clerked for. “His judicial philosophy is mine too: A judge must apply the law as written," she stated.In her April 2019 discussion at Notre Dame, Barrett spoke at length about her originalist background, and gave insights into how she strives to be impartial in rulings.“I try to put myself in the shoes of the party that I'm going to rule against. And so as I'm writing the opinion, or as I'm trying to decide how I'm going to vote at conference, I imagine that it was my daughter, or me, or my husband that was in that situation, and think, ‘could I still reach the same result?’” she revealed. “. . . Could I respect the reasoning? And am I really doing it in a way that smokes out any kind of policy impulse that I have to go the other way?”While Barrett warned that “judges are humans and they're fallible,” she stated that “everybody has to come up with mechanisms . . . to try to guard against you imposing your policy views on the law.”“Justice Scalia used to say, and it's right — and in my almost two years on the bench, I've already had this happen — if you don't write decisions that you disagree with — the results, Not the reasoning — if you don't reach results that you don't like, you're not a very good judge, you're doing something wrong,” she continued. “Because you shouldn't like the result in every case you decide.”Barrett said that the trend towards politicizing judicial appointments stemmed from a number of different sources.“I think it's really a feature of judges cultivating in some instances, this perception of the judicial role, of the public's perception of this as the judicial role,” she said. “It's not the judicial role, and it's very dangerous. It's dangerous because for our courts to function and fulfill their role in society and to function well people have to respect them. And if everyone thinks that courts are just policymaking arms, then they're not going to be respected, right? It's become a very toxic situation.”

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Brooklyn voters report getting ballot return envelopes with the wrong name and address. The error could invalidate their vote.

"This is not my ballot, we have this random lady's ballot — it's like they messed this up in a big way," Victoria Edel told THE CITY.

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Details of how the grand jury didn't indict any officers for Breonna Taylor's death are being made public after a juror broke ranks and attacked the Kentucky AG

The juror accused AG Daniel Cameron of misrepresenting proceedings, and said they were given no option to indict over Breonna Taylor's death.

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China's UK envoy warns Britain to avoid lectures over human rights

China's ambassador to London has told Britain that it will suffer "setbacks" in its relationship with Beijing if it continues to raise issues about human rights. The warning came after a junior Foreign Office minister took Beijing to task at a Chinese embassy function on Monday, held to mark the 71st anniversary of the People's Republic. In his remarks, James Duddridge said that while Britain wanted to retain good relations with China, it was also concerned about Beijing's erosion of democracy in Hong Kong and its treatment of the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang. Mr Duddridge’s comments drew a cool response from Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador, who is understood to have replied pointedly that as Hong Kong was no longer under British rule, Beijing was not obliged to listen to British concerns. Mr Liu added that China's policies in Xinjiang, where the government has been accused of putting up to two million people into "re-education" camps, were designed to combat terrorism. Unless Britain and China observed a policy of "non-interference" in each other's internal politics, he continued, their relationship "would suffer setbacks or even retrogression." Mr Liu, 64, who has been China's envoy to London since 2010, is one of a new generation of Chinese diplomats who have eschewed the low profile traditionally favoured by their predecessors. Earlier this year, he hinted that some Chinese companies might pull out of Britain after the government reversed its decision to allow telecoms giant Huawei a key role in the 5G network. Last year, he also criticised the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, over his support for pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong, saying the protests were "a matter about breaking laws". His robust reply to Mr Duddridge's comments, which were made during an online gathering of guests, will be seen as a further indication of how relations between London and Beijing have cooled. Traditionally, routine diplomatic functions are not seen as forums where political differences are aired. Other Chinese ambassadors have already taken up a much more aggressive tack than Mr Liu, developing what become known as "wolf-warrior" diplomacy - a new, assertive dialogue to remind the world that China is now a superpower. Named after a Chinese film in which Beijing's troops defeat US enemies in Africa and Asia, the "wolf warrior" tactic was pioneered by Zhao Lijian, until last year China's envoy to Pakistan. In July last year, he got in a vicious Twitter spat with Susan Rice, a former advisor to Barack Obama, about China's treatment of Uighur Muslims, in which he suggested America improve its own record on race relations. It culminated in Ms Rice urging the Chinese government to recall him to Beijing.

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Alicia Silverstone defends her 9-year-old son’s long hair

"We would never impose any social ideas about what hair on a boy or girl should look like," the actor wrote.

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Opinion: Trump's reality distortion machine is in overdrive for his debate with Biden

The Trump team, like the president himself, is working aggressively to make voters disbelieve what they see and hear from Joe Biden at the first debate.

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Fauci says Florida lifting restrictions on bars and restaurants is 'very concerning'

Dr. Anthony Fauci is calling for the United States to "double down" on public health measures amid the COVID-19 pandemic and expressing concern over Florida letting bars and restaurants fully reopen.Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke to Good Morning America on Monday after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced last week he would be lifting restrictions on bars and restaurants and allowing them to operate at 100 percent capacity."That is very concerning to me," Fauci told GMA. "We have always said that ... that is something we really need to be careful about, because when you're dealing with community spread, and you have the kind of congregate setting where people get together, particularly without masks, you're really asking for trouble."Fauci went on to say that "now's the time" to "double down" on "common sense" public health measures, while the U.S. is reporting an average of about 40,000 COVID-19 cases every day. Fauci had previously stressed the need to get the daily number of cases in the U.S. down to 10,000 a day by September."We're not in a good place with regard to what I had said back then," Fauci said on Monday. "There are states that are starting to show [an] uptick in cases, and even some increase in hospitalizations in some states. And, I hope not, but we very well might start seeing increases in deaths." > FULL INTERVIEW: https://t.co/RBF8en28xI> > -- Good Morning America (@GMA) September 28, 2020More stories from theweek.com Trump literally can't afford to lose the election Trump avoids tax return questions as he brings yet another truck to the White House The bigger truth revealed by Trump's taxes

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Catholic voters can't ignore abortion or Kamala Harris' religious bigotry in 2020 election

As Pope Francis has said, 'The right to life is the first among human rights.' So why make American Catholics feel like they shouldn't vote for life?

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Tow company sold vehicles of Texas military members while they were on duty, feds say

One of the service members was at basic training when his car was towed, officials say.

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Worldwide grief: Death toll from coronavirus tops 1 million

Joginder Chaudhary was his parents’ greatest pride, raised with the little they earned farming a half-acre plot in central India to become the first doctor from their village. After the virus killed the 27-year-old Chaudhary in late July, his mother wept inconsolably. With her son gone, Premlata Chaudhary said, how could she go on living?

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Amy Coney Barrett: Trump nominates conservative favourite for Supreme Court

The nomination of a conservative judge paves the way for a bitter Senate fight as an election looms.

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Scientists create a microscopic robot that ‘walks’

The scientists behind a microscopic "walking" robot hope their tech could one day be used against cancer.

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Biden can beat (and infuriate) Trump by being the adult on the presidential debate stage

Joe Biden’s campaign is based around being calm, rational and a healer. He shouldn't try to call more names or be more pugnacious than Donald Trump.

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Governor seeks review of police protest response in Oregon

Criticism of the law enforcement response to a protest in Portland, Oregon, late Saturday into early Sunday prompted Gov. Kate Brown to ask authorities to review “any alleged incidents” involving their officers. “Journalists and law enforcement officers have difficult jobs to do during these demonstrations, but I do still believe that we can protect free speech and keep the peace,” Brown tweeted.

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