Rory McIlroy confident he can finally win Masters for career grand slam
Rory McIlroy speaks like he finally can win the Masters and win golf’s career grand slam. “I’ve got all the ingredients to make the pie.’’
Progressive Brandon Johnson wins Chicago mayor’s race
CHICAGO — Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and former teachers’ union organizer, was elected mayor of Chicago on Tuesday.
Johnson takes office next month facing challenges to bring together a city divided by race and a view on how best to quell persistent crime, a subject that loomed over the months-long campaign and set him apart from moderate rival Paul Vallas, who has called for swelling the streets with police.
With all but a handful of precincts reporting — but a sizable number of mail ballots left to count — Johnson led Vallas, 51 percent to 49 percent.
“Tonight, Chicago chose hope over fear,” Johnson told supporters in his victory speech Tuesday night at a hotel on the city’s Near South Side. “I ain’t never seen a city silence a dog whistle.”
Johnson’s victory signals a shift to the left from the already progressive governance of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration.
Lightfoot was ousted in the first round of the election, finishing third in a field of nine candidates. Vallas, the only white candidate, came in first in the Feb. 28 election, receiving 33 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson, who is Black, at 22 percent and Lightfoot at 17 percent.
Coming out of the first round of voting ahead, Vallas led most of the polling before the runoff, but Johnson closed fast.
Vallas conceded defeat, but added in a speech to supporters: “It’s clear based on the results tonight that the city is deeply divided.”
The outcome of the Chicago mayor’s race has been closely watched as Democrats across the country try to grapple with messaging over crime. Two years ago in New York, Eric Adams won his party’s nomination and, later, the general election running to the right of his fellow Democrats on criminal justice issues.
Johnson, 47, has already steered his campaign to the Democratic middle after the first round of the campaign, in which he built a progressive base supported by the city’s Democratic Socialist City Council members.
Early in the campaign, videos emerged of a 2020 interview in which Johnson described defunding the police as an “actual, real political goal.” The comments followed him throughout the campaign. He initially pivoted from answering to them and later said he would not defund the police if he were elected but would fund a more “holistic approach to public safety.”
His campaign hammered on Vallas, who voters have long known as a Democrat but who in recent years had aligned himself with conservatives.
In this year’s mayoral contest, Vallas latched on to voters’ concerns about crime. The message resonated even though violent crime numbers are on the decline. Lightfoot acknowledged that it has been difficult to change perceptions, and Vallas exploited that with stark ads addressing violence.
Johnson and Vallas also were embraced by powerful unions, which helped fuel their base but also raised concerns among moderate Democrats about how they would lead. Vallas was endorsed by the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, and Johnson was backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, for which he also worked. The CTU also funded Johnson’s campaign, donating more than $2.5 million to the effort.
“Make no mistake about it: Chicago is a union town,” Johnson said in his victory speech Tuesday night.
Johnson will take office facing a City Council that’s already more independent than the one Lightfoot has worked with for the past four years.
In recent weeks, the City Council has pushed ahead with an effort to name its own committee chairs. It’s a task that the new mayor has always had control of, in part to reward loyal council members who can help carry the mayor’s legislative efforts.
But before he is sworn in next month and confronts the reality of governing, Johnson is already seeking to take his message national.
“Let’s take this bold progressive movement around these United States of America,” he said in his victory speech. “Chicago, we can show the country, we can show the world what’s possible when we stand on our values as one people.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/04/chicago-mayors-race-results-00090504
Jalen Brunson keeps raising his Knicks game
There doesn’t seem to be a ceiling to Jalen Brunson’s burgeoning stardom.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/jalen-brunson-keeps-raising-his-knicks-game/
Trump slams Bragg after pleading not guilty: ‘I never thought anything like this could happen in America’
Former President Trump slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Tuesday from Mar-a-Lago, just hours after pleading not guilty to falsifying business records related to alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign, telling supporters he “never thought anything like this could happen in America.”
Trump was arraigned Tuesday in New York City, after being indicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The judge did not impose a gag order, so Trump was free to make remarks about the case Tuesday night when he returned to Mar-a-Lago.
“I never thought anything like this could happen in America. I never thought it could happen,” Trump said Tuesday night. “The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defending our nation from those who seek to destroy it.”
“From the beginning, the Democrats spied on my campaign–remember that they attacked me with an onslaught of fraudulent investigations Russia, Russia, Russia; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; impeachment hoax number one; impeachment hoax number two; the illegal and unconstitutional raid on Mar-a-Lago right here; the lying to the FISA court; the FBI and DOJ relentlessly pursuing Republicans; the uncontested judicial changes to election laws by not getting approvals from state legislatures,” Trump said.
Trump was referring to the original investigation by the FBI, then Special Counsel Robert Mueller, into whether he and members of his 2016 campaign colluded with Russia to influence the presidential election. After nearly two years, Mueller’s investigation yielded no evidence of criminal conspiracy or coordination by the Trump campaign.
Trump also referred to his impeachments. Trump was the first president in United States history to be impeached and acquitted twice. He also detailed a number of other investigations that clouded his administration.
But Trump, on Tuesday night, slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as a “Soros-backed prosecutor” who “campaigned on the fact that he would get President Trump.”
“A local failed district attorney charging a former President of the United States for the first time in history on a basis that every single pundit and legal analyst said there is no case—there’s no case,” Trump said. “But it’s far worse than that, because he knew there was no case.”
Trump called on Bragg to “resign” after “leaking” details of the indictment to the media before it was unsealed Tuesday.
Trump went on to slam the judge presiding over his case as a “Trump-hating judge,” Bragg’s wife as a “Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.”
The former president and 2024 GOP presidential front-runner’s speech came after his unprecedented arraignment in New York City Tuesday.
The indictment alleged that Trump “repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hid damaging information from the voting public during the 2016 presidential election.”
Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York opted out of charging Trump in 2019 related to the payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. The Federal Election Commission also tossed its investigation into the matter in 2021.
Trump surrendered to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and was arraigned in court Tuesday afternoon after being indicted by a Manhattan grand jury last week.
Bragg is alleging that Trump falsified New York business records in order to “conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
The former president went on to deliver a point-by-point description of each investigation of which he is currently the target.
Trump defended himself against allegations out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation. Smith is investigating Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified records at Mar-a-Lago.
“Our justice system has become lawless,” Trump said. “They’re using it now, in addition to everything else, to win elections.”
Trump took a swipe at Hillary Clinton, who “got rid of 33,000 emails.”
“That was okay,” Trump said.
Trump slammed Smith as a “lunatic special prosecutor.”
The former president also slammed President Biden, who is also under special counsel investigation for his alleged mishandling of classified records, and claimed that the documents he held at Mar-a-Lago were declassified.
“As president, I have the right to declassify documents. If I take them with me, it’s automatic declassify,” Trump said, adding that Biden was vice president, and said he “had absolutely no right to declassify.”
“They like to say that I’m obstructing, which I’m not, because I was working with NARA very nicely until the raid on my home.”
Smith was appointed as special counsel after the FBI, in August, in an unprecedented move, raided Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago in connection with an investigation into classified records the former president allegedly took with him from the White House on Aug. 8, 2022.
Smith is also investigating whether Trump or other officials and entities interfered with the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election, including the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021.
Shifting to New York, Trump slammed New York State Attorney General Letitia James as a “racist in reverse who also campaigned on ‘I will get Trump.’”
James, a Democrat, has been investigating Trump since she took office in January 2019. James brought a lawsuit against Trump in September alleging he and his company misled banks and others about the value of his assets.
Trump also slammed the Georgia grand jury investigating Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state, including his phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump suggested the Republicans “find” enough votes to change the results.
Trump slammed the “local racist Democrat district attorney in Atlanta who is doing everything in their power to indict me over an absolutely perfect phone call, even more perfect than the one I made with the president of Ukraine.”
Trump was referring to his first impeachment—brought after a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he suggested Ukraine should investigate the Biden family’s business deals in Kyiv.
DONALD TRUMP AND STORMY DANIELS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
“I kept saying that is a perfect call—this one was even more perfect,” Trump said, referring to the Georgia call.
“This fake case was brought only to interfere with the upcoming 2024 election and it should be dropped and immediately,” Trump said.
Trump also slammed Hunter Biden and the Biden family, saying had their business dealings and the infamous Hunter Biden laptop been revealed before the 2020 election, the election results “would have been in our favor.”
The charges against Trump come after a years-long investigation opened in 2019 by then-Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. The probe was focused on possible bank, insurance and tax fraud. The case initially involved financial dealings of Trump’s Manhattan properties, including his flagship Fifth Avenue building, Trump Tower, and the valuation of his 213-acre estate Seven Springs in Westchester.
Last year, the investigation led to tax fraud charges against The Trump Organization and its finance chief Allen Weisselberg.
John Gallagher’s Manhattan plan must get through players’ anger
The Manhattan College Jaspers left their welcome baskets at home when new hire John Gallagher was announced as the basketball team’s head coach last Wednesday.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/manhattan-coach-john-gallagher-trying-to-move-past-controversy/
ICC’s Putin Arrest Warrant Based On State Dept-Funded Report That Debunked Itself
ICC’s Putin Arrest Warrant Based On State Dept-Funded Report That Debunked Itself
On March 17, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, introduced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Llova-Belova. The warrant, which accused Putin and Lolva-Belova of conducting the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” across the Russian Federation, inspired a wave of incendiary commentary in the West.
US Sen. Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most aggressive cheerleader in Congress for war with Russia, proclaimed: “The ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin because he has organized the kidnapping of at least 16,000 Ukrainian children from their families and sent them to Russia. It is exactly what Hitler did in World War II.”
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria echoed Graham, declaring the ICC warrant revealed that Putin “is in fact following parts of Hitler’s playbook.”
The ICC prosecutor appeared to have based his arrest warrant on research produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL). Yale HRL’s work was funded and guided by the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.
During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Yale HRL’s executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, claimed his report provided proof that “thousands of children are in a hostage situation.” Invoking the Holocaust, Raymond asserted, “We are dealing with the largest network of children camps seen in the 21st century.”
Yet in an interview with Jeremy Loffredo, the co-author of this report, and in his own paper for Yale HRL, Raymond contradicted many of the bombastic claims he made to the media about child hostages. During a phone conversation with Loffredo, Raymond acknowledged that “a large amount” of the camps his team investigated were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.”
Yale HRL’s report similarly acknowledges that most of the camps it profiled provided free recreational programs for disadvantaged youth whose parents sought “to protect their children from ongoing fighting” and “ensure they had nutritious food of the sort unavailable where they live.” Nearly all of the campers returned home in a timely manner after attending with the consent of their parents, according to the paper. The State Department-funded report further concedes that it found “no documentation of child mistreatment.”
Yale HRL based its research entirely on Maxar satellite data, Telegram postings, and Russian media reports, relying on Google translate to interpret them and at times misrepresented the articles in its citations. The State Department-funded unit conceded that it performed no field research for its paper, stating that it “does not conduct ground-level investigations and therefore did not request access to the camps.”
Unlike the Yale investigators who inspired the ICC’s arrest warrant, Loffredo gained unfettered access to a Russian government camp in Moscow that houses youth from the war-torn Donbas region. Though it is precisely the kind of center that Yale HRL – and by extension, the ICC – have portrayed as a “re-education camp” for Ukrainian child hostages, he found a hotel full of happy campers receiving free classical music lessons in their native Russian language from first-class instructors – a “teddy bear,” as Raymond called it.
At The Donbas Express music camp located just outside of Moscow, youth told Loffredo they were grateful to have found refuge from the Ukrainian army’s years-long campaign of shelling and besiegement of their homeland. By fleeing the war in Donbas, these children had escaped a nightmarish military conflict for which Yale HRL and the ICC have demonstrated little to no concern.
When I, Jeremy Loffredo, visited a youth music camp in Russia in November 2022, I was unaware that the US government would soon exploit altruistic programs such as the one I witnessed to advance political warfare.
At the time, I was in Moscow on assignment for Rebel News, my former employer, to conduct man-on-the-street interviews with average people around the city.
After meeting someone whose wife was influential in the Russian music scene, I was invited 45 miles southwest of Moscow to visit the kind of program that was described by State Department-funded researchers as a “re-education camp.” It was there, at a Soviet-era hotel in the town of Pokrovskoye, that I entered one of the so-called facilities now at the center of the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin.
By the time of my visit, the Russian government had transformed the hotel into a makeshift sleep-away camp for children native to the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The center I visited, dubbed “The Donbas Express,” was focused on providing classical training to children interested in musical arts. Parents who wished to keep their families protected from the conflict back home had enrolled their children in the program.
Read the rest of the full report here…
Tyler Durden
Tue, 04/04/2023 – 21:25
Commentary: Trump loses his showmanship, and the narrative, to the slow churn of justice
The media coverage for Trump, typically fast-paced and omnipresent, had to adjust for his arraignment.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2023-04-04/trump-media-coverage-arraignment
Commentary: Trump loses his showmanship, and the narrative, to the slow churn of justice
The media coverage for Trump, typically fast-paced and omnipresent, had to adjust for his arraignment.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2023-04-04/trump-media-coverage-arraignment
Murders of 4 men near Cancun resort linked to rival drug gangs
The murders of four men found dead near a beachside resort in Cancun Monday are likely linked to drug gang rivalries in the area, officials said Tuesday.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/04/murders-of-4-men-near-cancun-resort-linked-to-drug-gangs/
Marines at Virginia Chick-fil-A break knife in half while stopping attack
Three Marines prevented a potential stabbing at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Virginia, authorities said.
Deputies with the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office were called to the fast-food location in Stafford on Saturday around 1:40 p.m. Witnesses told them that a man was approached by two other people, which soon turned into a dispute.
The two males assaulted the victim and one pulled out a knife, authorities said.
US MILITARY INVESTIGATING DEATH OF CALIFORNIA MARINE FOUND DEAD IN BARRACKS: REPORT
“Three nearby Marines quickly jumped into action and attempted to separate the parties,” the sheriff’s office said in a Tuesday Facebook post. “One of them broke the knife in half to prevent further harm, and the two suspects quickly fled.”
No one was stabbed, but the victim said his phone was stolen.
Authorities searched the area and tracked down the two suspects, ages 17 and 14, at a CVS parking lot where they were arrested. They were taken to the Juvenile Detention Center.
The sheriff’s office credited the Marines with averting a possible deadly outcome.
“Thank you to the hero Marines who stepped up in order to protect the victim. Without you, this altercation could have been a lot worse,” the sheriff’s office said.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/marines-virginia-chick-fil-a-break-knife-half-stopping-attack