Chris Hedges's Blog, page 19

U.S. Intelligence Is Intervening in the 2020 Election

President Trump’s ongoing purge of the intelligence community, along with Bernie Sanders’ surge in the Democratic presidential race, has triggered an unprecedented intervention of U.S. intelligence agencies in the U.S. presidential election on factually dubious grounds.

Former CIA director John Brennan sees a “full-blown national security crisis” in President Trump’s latest moves against the intelligence community. Brennan charges, “Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.” But congressional representatives, both Democratic and Republican, who heard a briefing by the intelligence community about the 2020 election earlier this month say the case for Russian interference is “overstated.”

On February 21, it was leaked to the Washington Post that “U.S. officials,” meaning members of the intelligence community, had confidentially briefed Sanders about alleged Russian efforts to help his 2020 presidential campaign.

Special prosecutor Robert Mueller documented how the Russians intervened on Trump’s behalf in 2016, while finding no evidence of criminal conspiracy. Mueller did not investigate the Russians’ efforts on behalf of Sanders, but the Computational Propaganda Research Project at Oxford University did. In a study of social media generated by the Russia-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Oxford analysts found that the IRA initially generated propaganda designed to boost all rivals to Hillary Clinton in 2015. As Trump advanced, they focused almost entirely on motivating Trump supporters and demobilizing black voters. In short, the Russians helped Trump hundreds of thousand times more than they boosted Sanders.

The leak to the Post, on the eve of the Nevada caucuses, gave the opposite impression: that help for Trump and Sanders was somehow comparable. The insinuation could only have been politically motivated.

What’s driving the U.S. intelligence community intervention in presidential politics is not just fear of Trump, but fear of losing control of the presidency. From 1947 to 2017, the CIA and other secret agencies sometimes clashed with presidents, especially Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Carter. But since the end of the Cold War, under Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama, the secret agencies had no such problem.

Under Trump, the intelligence community has seen a vast loss of influence. Trump is contemptuous of the CIA’s daily briefing. As demonstrated by his pressure campaign on Ukraine, his foreign policies are mostly transactional. Trump is not guided by the policy process or even any consistent doctrine, other than advancing his political and business interests. He’s not someone who is interested in doing business with the intelligence community.

The intelligence community fears the rise of Sanders for a different reason. The socialist senator rejects the national security ideology that guided the intelligence community in the Cold War and the war on terror. Sanders’ position is increasingly attractive, especially to young voters, and thus increasingly threatening to the former spy chiefs who yearn for a return to the pre-Trump status quo. A Sanders presidency, like a second term for Trump, would thwart that dream. Sanders is not interested in national security business as usual either.

In the face of Trump’s lawless behavior, and Sanders’ rise, the intelligence community is inserting itself into presidential politics in a way unseen since former CIA director George H.W. Bush occupied the Oval Office. Key to this intervention is the intelligence community’s self-image as a disinterested party in the 2020 election.

Former House Intelligence Committee chair Jane Harman says Trump’s ongoing purge of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is a threat to those who “speak truth to power.” As the pseudonymous former CIA officer “Alex Finley” tweeted Monday, the “‘Deep state’ is actually the group that wants to defend rule of law (and thus gets in the way of those screaming ‘DEEP STATE’ and corrupting for their own gain).”

Self-image, however, is not the same as reality. When it comes to Trump’s corruption, Brennan and Co. have ample evidence to support their case. But the CIA is simply not credible as a “defender of the rule of law.” The Reagan-Bush Iran-contra conspiracy, the Bush-Cheney torture regime, and the Bush-Obama mass surveillance program demonstrate that the law is a malleable thing for intelligence community leaders. A more realistic take on the 2020 election is that the U.S. intelligence community is not a conspiracy but a self-interested political faction that is seeking to defend its power and policy preferences. The national security faction is not large electorally. It benefits from the official secrecy around its activities. It is assisted by generally sympathetic coverage from major news organizations.

The problem for Brennan and Co. is that “national security” has lost its power to mobilize public opinion. On both the right and the left, the pronouncements of the intelligence community no longer command popular assent.

Trump’s acquittal by the Senate in his impeachment trial was one sign. The national security arguments driving the House-passed articles of impeachment were the weakest link in a case that persuaded only one Republican senator to vote for Trump’s removal. Sanders’ success is another sign.

In the era of endless war, Democratic voters have become skeptical of national security claims—from Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, to the notion that torture “works,” to “progress” in Afghanistan, to the supreme importance of Ukraine—because they have so often turned out to be more self-serving than true.

The prospect of a Trump gaining control of the U.S. intelligence community is scary. So is the intervention of the U.S. intelligence community in presidential politics.

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

Trump’s Nuclear Brinkmanship Is an Emergency

If the current state of global affairs reminds you of an over-the-top plot by a white-cat-stroking James Bond villain, you’re not far off. When it comes to nuclear policy, we are closer than ever to a real-life movie disaster.

During his February 4 State of the Union address, President Donald Trump declared that “the Iranian regime must abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons.” He omitted the part where he withdrew the United States from the only existing international treaty with the capability to compel the Iranian regime to do so.

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The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aka the Iran Deal, is the one international treaty that has effectively de-escalated tensions and ensured continued progress in securing Iran’s nonproliferation. It’s vital that the United States reenters the Iran Deal, or it could take ages to repair the damage and restart progress.

That treaty isn’t the only one on the chopping block.

The United States has also withdrawn from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and Russia, a vital arms reduction treaty that was responsible for eliminating over 2,600 intermediate-range missiles, bringing tangible progress in stabilization and disarmament efforts between the two countries.

The most important remaining international arms control treaty to which the United States is still a party, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), is set to expire in February 2021, just a year from now.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly offered to immediately extend New START, without any preconditions. However, the treaty’s future is unclear — Trump may attempt to reach a broader deal involving China, as some of his advisors have suggested, or may trash this treaty as well.

Nuclear weapons make us all less safe. The United States can and must once again lead on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Nothing less than human health and survival is at stake. We all have a vested interest in ensuring nuclear weapons are not used.

Despite that existential risk, the U.S. Defense Department confirmed on February 5 that the Navy has deployed a low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead. Bill Arkin and Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists first disclosed the deployment a week before that.

These warheads lower the threshold for potential nuclear conflict while increasing the chances of a real-life James Bond movie situation, due to human error or miscalculation. These low-yield warheads may be indistinguishable on radar from missiles armed with high-yield bombs, meaning an adversary could respond to such a launch with a full attack, immediately escalating the conflict to full nuclear war.

Proponents of this low-yield nuclear warhead say it is more “usable,” a euphemistic phrase that should send chills down the spines of anyone who can’t afford to escape planetary orbit on a SpaceX rocket.

“Low-yield” nuclear weapons are misleadingly named. At 6.5 kilotons, they are 591 times more powerful than the largest conventional weapon the United States has ever used, the GBU-43/B “Massive Ordnance Air Blast” (MOAB) bomb, and 2,600 times more powerful than the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb.

In fact, the W76-2 “low-yield” nuclear weapon that was deployed on those submarines can have up to 43 percent of the yield of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. That bomb killed between 90,000 and 166,000 people.

According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, we’re at just 100 seconds to midnight, thanks in part to the Trump administration’s reckless, systematic dismantling and undermining of vital international arms control agreements.

We can and must avoid getting any closer to the brink of nuclear war — we’re already dangling too close to the edge. It’s time for the United States to reenter or renegotiate vital arms control treaties like the Iran Deal and extend New START.

The Reason America’s Forever Wars May Actually Never End

There is no significant anti-war movement in America because there’s no war to protest. Let me explain. In February 2003, millions of people took to the streets around the world to protest America’s march to war against Iraq. That mass movement failed. The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had a radical plan for reshaping the Middle East and no protesters, no matter how principled or sensible or determined, were going to stop them in their march of folly. The Iraq War soon joined the Afghan invasion of 2001 as a quagmire and disaster, yet the antiwar movement died down as U.S. leaders worked to isolate Americans from news about the casualties, costs, calamities, and crimes of what was by then called “the war on terror.”

And in that they succeeded. Even though the U.S. now lives in a state of perpetual war, for most Americans it’s a peculiar form of non-war. Most of the time, those overseas conflicts are literally out of sight (and largely out of mind). Meanwhile, whatever administration is in power assures us that our attention isn’t required, nor is our approval asked for, so we carry on with our lives as if no one is being murdered in our name.

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War without dire consequences poses a conundrum. In a representative democracy, waging war should require the people’s informed consent as well as their concerted mobilization. But consent is something that America’s leaders no longer want or need and, with an all-volunteer military, there’s no need to mobilize the rest of us.

Back in 2009, I argued that our military was, in fact, becoming a quasi-foreign legion, detached from the people and ready to be dispatched globally on imperial escapades that meant little to ordinary Americans. That remains true today in a country most of whose citizens have been at pains to divorce themselves and their families from military service — and who can blame them, given the atrocious results of those wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa?

Yet that divorce has come at a considerable cost. It’s left our society in a state of low-grade war fever, while accelerating an everyday version of militarism that Americans now accept as normal. A striking illustration of this: President Trump’s recent State of the Union address, which was filled with bellicose boasts about spending trillions of dollars on wars and weaponry, assassinating foreign leaders, and embracing dubious political figures to mount illegal coups (in this case in Venezuela) in the name of oil and other resources. The response: not opposition or even skepticism from the people’s representatives, but rare rapturous applause by members of both political parties, even as yet more troops were being deployed to the Middle East.

What a Youthful Hobby Has Taught Me About America’s Wars

When I was a kid, I loved to collect American stamps. I had a Minuteman stamp album, and since a stamp and coin dealer was within walking distance of my house, I’d regularly head off on missions to fill the pages of that album with affordable commemorative stamps. I especially liked ones linked to military history. Given the number of wars this country has fought, there were plenty of those to add to my album.

Consider, for instance, the stamps issued after the December 7, 1941, U.S. entry into World War II. Unsurprisingly, for a war that entailed mass mobilization and involved common sacrifice, many of them were meant to highlight the war in progress and what it was all about. So, for example, stamps were issued to remind Americans about subjects like: the countries overrun by Nazi Germany; Chinese resistance to the Japanese occupation of their country; President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (FDR, too, was an avid stamp collector); and, as the tide turned, this country’s momentous victory against the Japanese on the island of Iwo Jima. Other stamps enjoined Americans to “win the war” and work “toward [a] United Nations.” These and similar stamps formed a tiny part of a vast war effort accepted by nearly all Americans as necessary and just. And when the war finally ended in August 1945, Americans rightfully celebrated.

Now, try to bring to mind stamps from America’s wars since then. If you’re old enough, try to recall ones you stuck on envelopes during the Korean War of the 1950s, the Vietnam War of the 1960s, or especially the war on terror of this century. How many of them celebrated momentous U.S. victories? How many hailed allies working in common cause with us? How many commemorated an end to such wars?

I pay close attention to stamps. I still enjoy walking to my local post office and seeing the new commemoratives as they come out. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that, in stamp terms, there’s simply nothing to commemorate in America’s recent wars. Shouldn’t that tell us something?

I’m not saying that there are no stamps whatsoever related to those wars. In 1985, for instance, 32 years after the signing of an armistice not-quite-ever-ending the Korean War, a stamp in honor of its veterans was issued and, in 2003, another for the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington. Several stamps have similarly highlighted Vietnam veterans and Maya Lin’s iconic memorial to them.

But stamps that told us what either of those wars were for or that sought to mobilize Americans in any way? Not a chance. Ditto when it comes to this century’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or to the larger never-ending war on terror. Yes, a 2002 “Heroes USA” stamp featured firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade Center and was meant to provide money for injured first responders; and yes, there’s currently a “Healing PTSD” stamp for sale that raises money for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But as for stamps celebrating decisive victories in Kabul or Baghdad or Tripoli, you know the answer to that one as well as I do; nor, of course, were there any reminding us of the freedoms we were supposedly fighting to uphold in those wars.

In that context, let’s return to that FDR Four Freedoms stamp, which was very popular during World War II. Its message couldn’t have been more succinct. It read: “Freedom of speech and religion, from want and fear.” Of course, World War II was an atrocious war, as all wars are. But what (partially) redeemed it were its ideals, however imperfectly realized in the post-war world.

Still, when’s the last time the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp that so perfectly summed up “why we fight”? There are no such stamps today because our present wars have no higher purpose. It’s that simple.

We’re not supposed to notice that, since we’re not supposed to notice those wars to begin with, not in any visceral way at least. Even stamps like the recent PTSD one (with a 10-cent surcharge that goes to veterans) are an artful dodge. Should we really feel any better donating a few nickels or dimes to help veterans with their physical and mental struggles from wars made more horrendous because they were (and remain) so unnecessary?

Or thought of another way, why is the post office raising money for veterans’ health care? Perhaps because a staggering (and still rising) Pentagon budget only ensures that there will be more war — with more wounded veterans.

Looking Back, Yet Again, to World War II

I never miss the opening ceremonies to the Super Bowl.  As an exercise in pure Americana, they have no equal. This year’s included the usual trappings: a military color guard, an oversized flag, and a flyover by combat jets, including the new F-35 stealth fighter, a trillion-dollar boondoggle of the military-industrial complex. Since 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the National Football League as well as the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, the opening ceremony featured centenarian veterans of that war helping with the pre-game coin toss. It was heartwarming to see those redoubtable vets and recognize their service.

But I can tell when my emotions are being manipulated. Watching them, I knew I was supposed to get warm and fuzzy about military service and maybe feel better about the NFL as well. Yet my respect for them and “the good war” they fought (to use Studs Terkel’s ironic title for his oral history of World War II) didn’t stop me from wanting to shower hot wrath on the leaders who have lied us into so many bad wars since then.

Speaking of warm fuzzies, consider the long opening commercial for the NFL that kicked off this year’s ceremonies. It featured an African-American boy running with a football, dodging various obstacles on a transcontinental journey to the Super Bowl, during which he pauses, reverentially, before a statue of Pat Tillman, the safety for the Arizona Cardinals who famously gave up a multimillion-dollar contract to enlist in the Army after 9/11. Tragically, he was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, a fact the U.S. military attempted to cover up in a conspiracy that went as high as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Even though it was just a commercial, it was right for that young boy to honor Tillman’s memory. But to what end? To make the NFL look patriotic or perhaps to overcome any lingering taint from principled (yet widely misunderstood) take-a-knee protests by players like Colin Kaepernick?

An honest accounting of America’s recent wars by the NFL might reflect on the fact that no other players have ever joined Tillman in giving up millions to enlist in the war effort. In fact, no players from any major league sport, whether baseball, basketball, or hockey, have done so. Not even NASCAR drivers, supposedly the salt of the earth, have, as far as I know, exchanged race cars for Humvees. Why should they? America’s recent wars might as well not exist for them — and, to be honest, for most of us as well.

I’m not calling for major sports stars to be drafted into the military as they were in World War II (though many athletes of that era volunteered first). What I’m suggesting is that, some 18-plus years later, they — like the rest of us — should begin paying real attention to America’s wars and what they’re about. Because that’s the only way, as a nation, we’ll ever come together and put a stop to them.

The answer to our collective apathy is not that war must become bloody awful here in the “homeland” before we finally do something to end it. Instead, it’s to listen to those who have seen the awfulness of war and the atrocious behaviors it enables and rewards.

Consider the words of E.B. Sledge, a Marine who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa in World War II’s Pacific island campaign against the Japanese. Nightmares haunted him for 25 years after the brutal fighting on those islands ended. He described the war he experienced as an exercise in sheer terror with grown men screaming in agony and sobbing in pain, with fighting so sustained that soldiers moved about like zombies, having been in the line of fire for days on end. Exhaustion bred murderous mistakes that too often were dismissed with a mind-numbing euphemism I’ve already succumbed to in this piece: “friendly fire.” And that, mind you, was “the good war.”

So, while saluting those photogenic centenarian vets featured by the NFL, we should also remember those who didn’t come home and those who came home with radically altered lives. Sledge, for instance, recalled a buddy of his, Jim Day, who dreamed of running a horse ranch in California after the war. But as Sledge recounted in a talk in 1994, “At Peleliu, a Japanese machine gun shattered one of Jim’s legs.” All that was left was a stump with blood spurting out of it.

”Later, when Jim came to the First Marine Division reunions (maybe some of you can’t conceive of this), we would have to help him go to the bathroom. His wife had to do that at home. The poor man couldn’t handle it by himself, because of that stump of a leg cut off at the hip. He died a premature death after years of pain and back trouble.”

Sledge and his horrific nightmares, his friend Jim and his crippling injury, those are glimpses of the true face of even the least indefensible of wars (and America’s twenty-first-century versions of the same are, unfortunately, anything but defensible). The question is: why don’t more Americans react with genuine horror when a draft dodger like Donald Trump boasts of all those wonderful weapons this country is buying (and using and selling) that are proudly “Made in the USA”?

No longer should we permit the powerful to obfuscate war, to boast (as George W. Bush did) of “mission accomplished” or of game-changing “surges,” or of “turning corners.”  Such lies serve only to distract us. Instead, Americans need to turn “eyes front” and face the ugly realities of permanent war.

Do that and we may well reinvigorate our democracy. If not, we may well kill what’s left of it.

Mubarak, Egypt’s Long-Serving Autocrat Ousted in Uprising, Dies at 91

CAIRO — Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian leader who was the autocratic face of stability in the Middle East for nearly 30 years before being forced from power in an Arab Spring uprising, died Tuesday, state-run TV announced. He was 91.

Mubarak was a stalwart U.S. ally, a bulwark against Islamic militancy and guardian of Egypt’s peace with Israel. But to the hundreds of thousands of young Egyptians who rallied for 18 days of unprecedented street protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere in 2011, Mubarak was a latter-day pharaoh and a symbol of autocratic misrule.

His overthrow, however, plunged the country into years of chaos and uncertainty, and set up a power struggle between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood group that he had long outlawed. Some two and a half years after Mubarak’s ouster, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi led the military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president and rolled back freedoms gained in the 2011 uprising.

State TV said Mubarak died at a Cairo hospital where he had undergone an unspecified surgery. The report said he had health complications but offered no other details. One of his sons, Alaa, announced over the weekend that the former president was in an intensive care after undergoing surgery.

El-Sissi offered condolences and praised Mubarak’s service during the 1973 war with Israel but made no mention of Mubarak’s almost three-decade rule as president of the most populous Arab state. He announced three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday.

“The Presidency mourns with great sorrow the former President of the Republic, Mr. Mohammed Hosni Mubarak,” he said in a statement. It referred to Mubarak as “one of the leaders and heroes of the glorious October war, as he assumed command of the Air Force during the war that restored dignity and pride to the Arab nation.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed “deep sorrow” over Mubarak’s death. “President Mubarak, a personal friend of mine, was a leader who guided his people to peace and security, to peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Mubarak “spent his life serving his homeland and the issues of righteousness and justice in the world, with the issue of our Palestinian people at the top of them.”

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the United Arab Emirates also released statements offering condolences and mourning Mubarak.

Born in May 1928, Mubarak was vice president on Oct. 6, 1981, when his mentor, President Anwar Sadat, was assassinated by Islamic extremists while reviewing a military parade. Seated next to Sadat, Mubarak escaped with a minor hand injury as gunmen sprayed the reviewing stand with bullets. Eight days later, the brawny former air force commander was sworn in as president, promising continuity and order.

Over the next three decades, as the region was convulsed by one crisis after another, Mubarak was seen as a steady hand and a reliable U.S. partner against Islamic extremism. He sent troops as part of the U.S.-led coalition in the 1990-1991 Gulf war and contributed to efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Within Egypt he presided over slow but steady economic growth and largely kept the country out of armed conflicts after decades of war with Israel. Unlike his predecessors, both Sadat and Egypt’s towering nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mubarak pursued no grand ideology beyond stability and economic development.

Over the years, Mubarak tinkered with reform but shunned major change, presenting himself as Egypt’s sole protection against Islamic militancy and sectarian division. The U.S., particularly under President George W. Bush, pressed for democratic reforms but was wary of alienating a key ally.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo extended condolences and said the U.S. will continue to work with the current government “to develop a better partnership with Egypt.”

Under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood was banned but largely tolerated. All political power, however, was concentrated in the hands of Mubarak and his ruling party, and emergency laws imposed after Sadat’s assassination remained in place for decades. Criticism of the president or the military was forbidden, Islamist and secular dissidents were regularly jailed, and the police were notoriously brutal and corrupt.

Egyptian authorities — both then and now — argue that tough measures are needed to preserve stability in a volatile region. Islamic militants carried out several attacks on police, Christians and foreign tourists throughout Mubarak’s rule, including an attempted assassination of the president himself during a visit to Ethiopia in 1995.

The failure to fulfill repeated promises of change steadily deepened public despair. Those seeking a democratic future were dismayed to see Mubarak making apparent moves to groom his businessman son, Gamal Mubarak, for a dynastic succession.

“At multiple points during Mubarak’s reign, he had the opportunity to reform the Egyptian state,” H.A. Hellyer, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted. “He didn’t.”

The Jan. 25 uprising “didn’t come out of nowhere — it was the result of many years of pent-up anger at how the state was failing the citizenry, save a tiny slice at the top,” he added.

Inspired by the first Arab Spring revolt in Tunisia, protesters took to the streets in January 2011. They harnessed the power of social media to muster tumultuous throngs, unleashing popular anger over the graft and brutality that shadowed Mubarak’s rule.

In the end, with millions massed in Tahrir Square and other city centers, and even marching to the doorstep of Mubarak’s palace, his resignation was announced on Feb. 11, 2011. The generals took power, hoping to preserve what they could of the system he had led.

Though Tunisia’s president fell before him, the ouster of Mubarak was a watershed moment in the history of the region, and gave impetus to uprisings in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.

Over the next two years Egypt held a referendum on an amended constitution, as well as parliamentary and presidential elections. Turnout was high as enthusiastic Egyptians got their first taste of democracy. But the Muslim Brotherhood emerged victorious again and again, raising fears among their opponents that the country would be transformed into an Islamic state.

The struggle came to a head in the summer of 2013, when the military removed President Mohammed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood figure, from power amid mass protests against his divisive rule. The military assumed power and launched an unprecedented crackdown on dissent. El-Sissi was elected president the following year. Rights groups and activists say his rule has proved far more oppressive than Mubarak’s.

“In a lot of ways, Mubarak’s legacy will be mixed,” said Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow in Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Egyptians are taking stock of their abilities to voice their views on the state of their lives, and realizing they were safer doing that in 2010 than in 2020.”

Mubarak was jailed shortly after his overthrow and later relocated to a military hospital as he went on trial in an array of cases. The televised images of Mubarak on a stretcher in a defendant’s cage were in sharp contrast to the portraits of the leader that had hung from billboards during his long rule.

For the man who was long untouchable — even a word of criticism against him in the media was forbidden for much of his rule — prison was a shock. When he was flown from the court to Torah Prison in Cairo in 2011, he cried in protest and refused to get out of the helicopter.

In June 2012, Mubarak and his security chief were sentenced to life in prison for failing to prevent the killing of some 900 protesters during the 18-day uprising. Both appealed the verdict and a higher court later cleared them in 2014.

The following year, Mubarak and his two sons — wealthy businessman Alaa and Mubarak’s one-time heir apparent Gamal — were sentenced to three years in prison on corruption charges during a retrial. The sons were released in 2015 for time served, while Mubarak walked free in 2017. Following his release, he was taken to an apartment in Cairo’s Heliopolis district, where he lived until his death.

Mubarak is survived by his wife, Suzanne, his two sons and four grandchildren.

___

Associated Press writers Isabel DeBre in Cairo and Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed.

Time for Both Major Parties to Own the Immigration Crisis

The Democratic candidates missed the opportunity last week in Nevada—a state with a 30 percent Latino population—to address the root causes of our immigration crisis. They predictably criticized the worst Trump administration immigration policies, such as families separated at the border and chronic uncertainty for undocumented people in the U.S., many of whom arrived decades ago as children. How we treat people at or inside our border certainly deserves attention, but we cannot ignore that many people come to the United States in the first place because our foreign policies—by both Democrats and Republicans—force them to leave their homes in Latin America and elsewhere.

The U.S. displaces its neighbors by displacing their governments. The Obama administration supported the 2009 coup d’état against Honduras’ elected President Manuel Zelaya by U.S.-trained generals. The Obama and then the Trump administrations supported repressive and corrupt governments that followed Zelaya’s ouster, giving a green light to assassinations of dissidents and journalists, government-linked drug trafficking, and spiraling crime. This repression continues to drive tens of thousands to seek asylum in the U.S. each year, regardless of the legal obstacles we erect. More recently, the Trump administration supported last November’s military coup d’état in Bolivia—with little opposition from Democrats—deepening that country’s political crisis.

United States aid and trade policies—often touted as helping our neighbors—also drive people from their homes to our borders. NAFTA opened markets for highly efficient and highly subsidized U.S. farmers by lifting tariffs. Less subsidized Mexican farmers could not compete, and overnight lost their livelihood, forcing many to seek replacement livelihoods in the United States. In Haiti, President Bill Clinton admitted—after he left office—to a “devil’s bargain” on rice tariffs that was “good for some of my farmers in Arkansas,” but destroyed rice farming and generated hunger and malnutrition in Haiti.

The failure of the United States to tackle climate change contributes to a global migration crisis. Catastrophic disasters—growing more frequent and severe —displace more than 20 million people each year. This includes Nicaraguans and Hondurans benefiting from Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States since 1998’s Hurricane Mitch, and hundreds of thousands in Central America’s “Dry Corridor,” now facing their sixth year of drought.

The burden of harmful U.S. foreign policies falls disproportionately on women. In African countries struck by droughts, girls are taken out of school to make the longer walk for their family’s water. Repressive governments we support in Brazil, Honduras, and the Philippines keep women “in their place” with regressive laws, and by committing and permitting attacks against women advocates. Women displaced from their homes and headed to our border face a high risk of sexual assault.

Congress recently demonstrated how bipartisan cooperation can achieve more principled and constructive policies. Last spring, both houses of Congress passed a bill by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) invoking the War Powers Resolution to stop U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen that has displaced 3 million people and killed more than 100,000. President Trump vetoed the bill, but Congress’ War Powers authority, neglected for decades, is now out of the toolbox: on February 13, Senate Republicans and Democrats passed a similar measure to constrain the president’s ability to attack Iran.

The Democratic candidates have moved on to Super Tuesday states, two of which, Texas and California, have 26 million Latinos—more than the total population of any other state. Many Latino voters know from personal and family experience how U.S. policies drive people from their homes. They deserve to know, as do all of us, how candidates will address these root causes of our immigration crisis.

Candidates can start to address the root causes by pledging to respect the choices made by voters in other countries—even if we disagree with them—and ensure that our tax dollars will support economic and social development rather than war.  They can announce trade policies that help farmers farm on both sides of the border, and workers everywhere earn a living wage. They can vow to reduce hurricanes, floods, and drought by putting more solar panels on our roofs and less carbon into our atmosphere. In short, the candidates can show how the United States will help our neighbors live secure, dignified lives in their own communities. Because that is a foreign policy that will ultimately benefit all of us.

This article was produced in partnership by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Brian Concannon is a human rights lawyer and executive director of Project Blueprint. He has worked with people abroad impacted by U.S. policies for 25 years.

William Barr Is Donald Trump’s Hatchet Man

“Where’s my Roy Cohn,” President Trump shouted at his staff at the beginning of 2018. According to The New York Times, he was angry at then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Trump wanted his attorney general to be more like Roy Cohn, his infamous former lawyer and fixer, who had been an aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during McCarthy’s 1950s investigation into communist activity in America.

Cohn died in 1986, and Trump, despite going through multiple personal lawyers, White House Counsels, and even U.S. attorneys general, hasn’t found a similarly loyal aide. Or he didn’t, until William Barr got the job.

When Barr was first named attorney general, he was hailed as a calming presence, an “adult in the room” after the departure of Sessions and the brief tenure of Matthew Whitaker. Barr reassured line prosecutors on an early conference call that he was there to support them and make hard decisions. After all, according to a recent New Yorker profile, Barr had donated more to Jeb Bush’s campaign in 2016 than he did to Trump’s.

Once Trump was elected, however, Barr was supportive. Barr, as CNN reports, had courted Trump’s loyalty since he became president.

Journalist David Rohde explains Barr’s praise for and defense of Trump in his New Yorker profile of Barr:

Barr demonstrated a convert’s enthusiasm, writing op-eds for the Washington Post in which he endorsed Trump’s controversial positions. When Sally Yates, the acting Attorney General, refused to carry out a ban on travellers from predominantly Muslim countries, Barr accused her of ‘obstruction,’ and assailed news coverage of the situation. ‘The left, aided by an onslaught of tendentious media reporting, has engaged in a campaign of histrionics unjustified by the measured steps taken,’ he wrote.

Ever since, Barr has been extremely loyal to Trump. He made public comments minimizing the Mueller investigation, adopting Trump’s insistence that there was “no collusion” with Russia, and claiming, at a congressional hearing, that the Trump campaign had been “spied on,” during the 2016 election.

In 2017, after Jeff Sessions declined Trump’s request to open an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton played a role in arranging a deal to sell uranium to Russia, Barr told The New York Times, “There is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation.” He added, “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility.”

More recently, Barr overruled four career federal prosecutors in his own Justice Department in the sentencing of former Trump campaign aide Roger Stone, who was convicted on all seven counts against him, including witness tampering and lying to investigators. NBC News reported that Barr had intervened in the case, “to reverse a stiff sentencing recommendation of up to nine years in prison that the line prosecutors had filed with the court.”

The conflicts between Barr and the career prosecutors in the Justice Department had been building for a while. Per CNN, “Barr’s decision to overrule the sentencing recommendation from four career federal prosecutors in the Roger Stone case, and their subsequent resignation from the case, led to a rare public display of internal discord from the Justice Department that dominated the news cycle for days.”

Among the previous issues, according to CNN, were “a top-down management style, with the micro-managing Barr notorious for weighing in on matters usually left for less-senior officials, and a focus that broadly appears more centered on matters in Washington — and more specifically things the President cares about.”

“Trump wanted his Roy Cohn,” a person close to Barr told CNN. “What he’s gotten in Barr is someone who is extremely intelligent, not afraid to fight, or fight back and speak his mind.”

Read the full CNN report here, and the New Yorker profile here.

U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Trump Rules Involving Abortions

SEATTLE — In a victory for the Trump administration, a U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld rules that bar taxpayer-funded family-planning clinics from referring women for abortions.

The 7-4 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned decisions issued by judges in Washington, Oregon and California. The court had already allowed the administration’s changes to start taking effect while the government appealed those rulings.

The changes ban taxpayer-funded clinics in the Title X program for low-income women from making abortion referrals, a restriction opponents characterize as a “gag rule.”

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Beginning March 4, the rules will also prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing office space with abortion providers, which critics said would force many Title X providers to find new locations, undergo expensive remodels or shut down — further reducing access to the program.

Title X patients receive affordable birth control, reproductive care and other care through the program, including breast and cervical cancer screenings and HIV testing.

Abortion is a legal medical procedure, but federal laws prohibit the use of Title X or other taxpayer funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman. Under Title X, a 1970 law designed to improve access to family planning services, federal money may not be used in programs “where abortion is a method of family planning.”

Abortion rights supporters and opponents have argued for decades whether counseling a patient about abortion or referring a patient to a different provider for an abortion violates that language. Abortion opponents and religious conservatives say Title X has long been used to indirectly subsidize abortion providers.

“Congress has long prohibited the use of Title X funds in programs where abortion is a method of family planning and the Department of Health and Human Service’s recent rule makes that longstanding prohibition a reality,” U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Mollie Timmons said in a written statement celebrating the 9th Circuit’s ruling. “We look forward to continuing to defend this vital rule against all challenges.”

More than 20 states and several civil rights and health organizations challenged the rules in cases filed in Oregon, Washington and California. Judges in all three states blocked them from taking effect, with Oregon and Washington courts issuing nationwide injunctions. One judge called the new policy “madness” and said it was motivated by “an arrogant assumption that the government is better suited to direct women’s health care than their providers.”

Planned Parenthood, which served 1.6 million of the 4 million patients who received care through Title X, has already left the program in protest, giving up about $60 million a year in federal funding.

Overall, nearly 1,000 clinics have left Title X, according to the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association. Washington and Oregon have abandoned the program entirely. In Vermont, all of the Title X clinics were Planned Parenthood, leaving none there.

In California, the number of patients served by the program has fallen 40 percent under Trump’s rules — and it will fall further once the physical separation requirement takes effect March 4, said Essential Access Health, which administers Title X in California.

The administration’s new rules are a return to the spirit of rules that were adopted in 1988 and subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in the 1991 case Rust v. Sullivan. Under the Clinton administration, those rules were abandoned in favor of a requirement that the clinics provide neutral abortion counseling and referrals upon request.

The 9th Circuit’s majority opinion, by Judge Sandra Ikuta, stressed the Rust decision.

“In light of Supreme Court approval of the 1988 regulations and our broad deference to agencies’ interpretations of the statutes they are charged with implementing, plaintiffs’ legal challenges to the 2019 rule fail,” she wrote.

Further, she said, the so-called gag rule is no such thing: While providers may not make a referral for an abortion, they may discuss abortion with their patients.

The dissent, by Judge Richard Paez, argued that since the Rust decision, Congress had barred the Department of Health and Human Services from imposing rules “that frustrate patients’ ability to access health care.” He called the ruling a throwback to the “paternalism of the past.”

“The majority would return us to an older world, one in which a government bureaucrat could restrict a medical professional from informing a patient of the full range of health care options available to her,” Paez wrote.

He also said the rule violates the requirement that pregnancy counseling be neutral: “It requires a doctor to refer a pregnant patient for prenatal care, even if she does not want to continue the pregnancy, while gagging her doctor from referring her for abortion, even if she has requested specifically such a referral,” he wrote.

The American Medical Association criticized the ruling as “government overreach and interference” that prohibits frank conversations between physicians and their patients.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, insisted in a written statement that “abortion is not ‘family planning.’”

“President Trump’s Protect Life Rule honors … the plain language of the Title X statute by stopping the funneling of Title X taxpayer dollars to the abortion industry, without reducing family planning funding by a dime,” Dannenfelser said.

The Despicable Red-Baiting of Bernie Sanders

The red-baiting of Bernie Sanders sank to a new low during the Democratic debate in Las Vegas last week, courtesy of mega-billionaire Mike Bloomberg. Responding to the Vermont senator’s charge that Bloomberg’s employees were at least partly responsible for his business success, the former Republican New York City mayor replied: “We’re not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it just didn’t work.”

This wasn’t the first time Sanders has been smeared in this fashion. Indeed, as I noted in a Truthdig column posted in May 2016, pundits and politicians affiliated with both major parties attacked Sanders relentlessly the last time he ran for president.

Among Sanders’ earliest and most vicious antagonists was Claire McCaskill, the former Democratic senator from Missouri, who is now one of MSNBC’s deep stable of neoliberal cheerleaders. Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show in June 2015, McCaskill complained, incredulously, that major media outlets were giving Sanders a pass compared to their reporting on Hillary Clinton. “I very rarely read in any coverage of Bernie that he’s a socialist,” McCaskill cracked. Declaring that Clinton was destined to become the party’s nominee, she blasted Sanders for being “too liberal” and “too extreme” to be elected.

By early 2016, as Sanders showed no sign of folding, other Clinton supporters and surrogates joined McCaskill in sounding the alarm at the prospect of a real challenge.

In January 2016, political correspondent Jonathan Martin cataloged the anxieties rippling across the Democratic establishment for The New York Times. “Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not — he’s a socialist,” then-Missouri Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon was quoted as saying. “[A]s far as having him at the top of the ticket, it would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot.”

Martin also included comments from Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who said that a Sanders candidacy “wouldn’t be helpful outside Vermont, Massachusetts, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Ann Arbor,” and from McCaskill, who insinuated, “The Republicans … can’t wait to run an ad with a hammer and sickle.”

True to McCaskill’s prediction, Republican operatives soon joined the jingoistic chorus. In an interview with — wait for it — Bloomberg News reporter Sahil Kapur in April 2016, GOP strategist Ryan Williams asserted that Sanders would be a weak general election candidate because “Bernie Sanders is literally a card-carrying socialist.”

Over the course of the 2020 campaign, this red-baiting has grown even more desperate and unhinged.

Perhaps the leading fearmonger of this election cycle has been MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, whose talk show, “Hardball,” airs five nights a week. In a special late-night panel discussion broadcast after the New Hampshire Democratic debate earlier this month, Matthews implied that if elected, Sanders would destroy democracy and initiate a dictatorship with deadly consequences. “I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed,” he rambled. “I don’t know who Bernie Sanders supports [sic] over these years. I don’t know what he means by socialism.”

Two days later, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, who anchors the network’s Sunday morning and weekday afternoon program “Meet the Press,” upped the ante, approvingly citing an article by right-wing columnist Jonathan Last of The Bulwark that described Sanders’ online supporters — the purportedly menacing “Bernie Bros” — as a “digital brownshirt brigade.”

Not to be outdone by Todd, Matthews exploded on air in an anti-Semitic meltdown following the Nevada caucuses, comparing Sanders’ landslide win to Nazi Germany breaking through the Maginot line — this despite the fact that the Vermont senator’s family was slaughtered in the Holocaust.

Matthews and Todd are by no means alone. In a recent column titled “Bernie’s Angry Bros,” conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens detailed a conversation he had with former California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer about Sanders. “There is so much negative energy; it’s so angry,” said Boxer, a staunch backer of Hillary Clinton in 2016. “You can be angry about the unfairness in the world. But this becomes a personal, deep-seated anger at anyone who doesn’t say exactly what you want to hear.”

Clinton herself could barely contain her disdain for Sanders while promoting a new documentary series on her life set to stream on Hulu in March. “Nobody likes him,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “Nobody wants to work with him.” The implication, once again, was that Sanders is too left-wing to be elected.

Red-baiting did not originate with Sanders, of course. It has a long, inglorious history in the United States that began with the persecution of anarchists in the late 19th century, continued through the Red Scare of the World War I era and came to full flower in the form of McCarthyism during the late 1940s and 1950s.

But while the attacks on Sanders contributed to his defeat in 2016, they proved less effective than the red-baiting of old. In an effort to understand why, I reached out in 2016 to Ellen Schrecker, professor emerita of history at Yeshiva University in New York City. Considered by many the nation’s foremost authority on McCarthyism, Schrecker is the author of numerous essays and books, including her highly praised interpretive monograph, “The Age of McCarthyism” (1994), and more recently, “The Lost Soul of Higher Education” (2010).

Schrecker voted for Sanders in her state’s 2016 primary, and the longstanding socialist is still going strong at age 81, providing expert commentary in the new PBS documentary “McCarthy: Power Feeds on Fear.”

To understand why the attacks on Sanders were less damaging than they might have been, Schrecker said in a phone interview, we must look to Sanders’ base of support: America’s youth. “I think red-baiting is losing its bite, particularly among the young, because they don’t know what communism was, and, as a result, baiting has lost its Cold War sting,” she said.

“The fragmentation of American politics [in the internet era] is also a factor,” she continued. “In the ’50s, we had three TV networks and a few major newspapers. It was easier to marginalize left-wing figures. Now, we have a proliferation of outlets. There are so many other things today people can be made to fear besides being a socialist: terrorism, transgenderism, guns or the lack of them.”

Schrecker added, “Bernie Sanders has made it safe to be a socialist in American politics. That could very well be his most important long-term achievement. He has offered a way of thinking about politics that we haven’t considered in 50 to 60 years. And he’s done so in sync with what people feel at a gut level. The Occupy Movement brought the issue of income inequality to the forefront, and it has stayed there. Sanders has given the issue a public face.”

Public-opinion research appears to bear out her observations. A Pew poll from June 2015 found that 69% of voters under 30 were willing to vote for a socialist presidential candidate, while a Gallup poll released in November 2019 revealed that attitudes toward capitalism have declined dramatically among 18-to-39-year-olds. Socialism is now almost as popular as capitalism among that demographic.

According to FiveThirtyEight, Sanders currently enjoys the highest net favorability ratings of all the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, topping the list at 51%. (His next closest rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., are at 49% and 47% respectively). Contrary to the Bernie Bro narrative, Sanders is actually more popular among minorities than he is with white people, and just as popular among women as he is with men, per a pair of polls from Harvard-Harris Poll and Morning Consult.

None of this means that the moderate and right wings of the party are politically obligated to abandon their efforts to nominate a candidate more to their liking. If the centrists and business interests want to argue against Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, substantial increases in the minimum wage, bringing an end to big money in elections, imposing significantly higher taxes on the super-rich, forgiving student debt and any number of other uplifting Sanders-backed policies, let them have at it in a fair primary fight.

But if Donald Trump is to be unseated in November, the red-baiting of the Democratic frontrunner and the demonizing of his supporters must end — full stop, once and for all.

Los Angeles Honors Kobe, Gianna Bryant With Public Memorial

LOS ANGELES — The Latest on the public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna in downtown Los Angeles (all times local):

11:25 a.m.

WNBA great Diana Taurasi has told the crowd at Kobe Bryant’s public memorial that watching the Lakers star play inspired her.

Bryant, who was known as the “Black Mamba,” nicknamed Taurasi the “White Mamba.”

Taurasi says Bryant had a competitive fire that ran through his veins and a willingness to work hard.

Monday’s memorial for Bryant and his daughter Gianna has drawn a sellout crowd to Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.

The event began with Beyonce singing her hits “XO” and “Halo.” An emotional Jimmy Kimmel told the audience about the many Kobe murals that have appeared around the city since his death last month.

Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, brought tears to people’s eyes as she spoke, giving an intimate portrait of her husband and daughter.

___

11:10 a.m.

Vanessa Bryant has given mourners at a public memorial for Kobe Bryant and their daughter Gianna an intimate portrait of her husband.

She said the world saw Kobe as a celebrity and basketball legend — the Black Mamba — but to her he was her best friend and protector.

Vanessa described him as a loving husband and devoted father with a tender heart who was “the MVP of girl dads.”

He loved to watch romantic movies with them and put them to bed every night.

Vanessa said she and Kobe planned to renew their vows and travel the world together.

They talked about how they looked forward to becoming the “cool grandparents” after their kids have their own children.

Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed last month in a helicopter crash in foggy weather. Vanessa Bryant on Monday sued the company that operated the helicopter.

___

11 a.m.

Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, said at a public memorial that the outpouring of love and support from around the world has uplifted the family in their grief.

She fought back tears Monday as described Gianna as a sweet, thoughtful soul who loved always kissing her mother good morning and goodnight.

Vanessa said Gianna loved swimming, singing along with hit songs, baking cookies and watching “Survivor” and NBA games with her father.

She says the 13-year-old loved basketball so much she even offered the boys’ school team advice.

Vanessa predicted that Gianna could have become “the best player in the WNBA.”

Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed last month in a helicopter crash in foggy weather. Vanessa Bryant on Monday sued the company that operated the helicopter.

___

10:55 a.m.

A host of NBA greats past and present are mourning at the public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.

Jerry West, Phil Jackson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell, Pau Gasol and Steph Curry are among the crowd at Staples Center on Monday.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel introduced Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, who received a standing ovation from the crowd.

An emotional Vanessa thanked the crowd for coming, saying she’s received an outpouring of love.

Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed last month in a helicopter crash in foggy weather while heading to a basketball tournament that Gianna was to play in.

___

10:55 a.m.

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel says at a public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna that the world could be “grateful for the time we had with them.”

An emotional Kimmel said Monday that a positive thing he found to take away from the tragedy was gratitude for the lives of the nine people killed last month in a helicopter crash and “the time we have left with each other.”

Kimmel said sports is unique in that it brings together people from various backgrounds to celebrate something they all love.

Nearly the entire crowd heeded Kimmel’s suggestion that they introduce themselves and shake hands and hug the people next to them. That was followed by a spontaneous chant of “Kobe.”

___

10:45 a.m.

Fans attending the public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna are watching a video of highlights from the 20-year career of the former Los Angeles Lakers star.

Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, could be seen looking up at the big video screens with tears in her eyes.

The memorial began Monday at Staples Center with Beyonce singing her hits “XO” and “Halo.” Late night host Jimmy Kimmel spoke first.

Fans fortunate enough to get tickets to the service filled the arena, where a stage surrounded by thousands of red roses has replaced the basketball court.

Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed last month in a helicopter crash in foggy weather while heading to a basketball tournament that Gianna was to play in.

___

10:30 a.m.

The public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna has begun at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The memorial began Monday with a musical performance by Beyonce, who sang her song “XO.”

Fans fortunate enough to get tickets to the service filled the arena, where a stage surrounded by thousands of red roses has replaced the basketball court.

Bryant, his daughter and seven others were killed last month in a helicopter crash in foggy weather while heading to a basketball tournament that Gianna was to play in.

Bryant’s widow, Vanessa, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the company that operated the helicopter, saying the pilot killed in the crash was negligent and careless. ___

10:30 a.m.

The widow of Kobe Bryant has sued the owner of the helicopter that crashed in fog and killed her husband and her 13-year-old daughter last month.

The wrongful death lawsuit filed by Vanessa Bryant in Los Angeles says the pilot was careless and negligent by flying in cloudy conditions Jan. 26 and should have aborted the flight.

Pilot Ara Zobayan was among the nine people killed in the crash.

The lawsuit was filed as a public memorial service for Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and all the victims was being held at the arena where Bryant played most of his career.

___

10 a.m.

Los Angeles Lakers fans are pulling on commemorative T-shirts they were given of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna at a public memorial for the two, who were killed along with seven others in a helicopter crash last month.

Many fans are violating the cellphone use ban inside Staples Arena on Monday and are taking photos and videos.

It’s somber and people are chatting in whispers and leafing through programs from their seats as songs like Eric Clapton’s “Layla,” the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” play in the minutes before the formal ceremony starts.

The memorial will feature speakers reflecting on Bryant’s impact on basketball and the world, along with music and retrospectives on Bryant’s on-court achievements.

___

9:45 a.m.

Los Angeles Lakers fans are filing into Staples Center to remember Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who were killed along with seven others in a helicopter crash last month.

The arena where Bryant played features a stage surrounded by thousands of red roses below the scoreboard that’s showing images of Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter.

Fans arriving for Monday’s public memorial service are being given a program that only contains photos, a purple KB pin and a T-shirt with photos of the father and daughter.

The concourse is a sea of purple, gold and black clothing.

Dozens of fans took photos with a mural inside Staples Center of Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal after a championship win.

Janel Alexander of Encino said the mural brought back good memories of “a moment in time that was better than today.”

___

8:40 a.m.

While waiting for Kobe Bryant’s memorial services to begin in Los Angeles, Alyssa Shapiro says she was inspired to become a basketball player after watching countless Lakers games with her father, Rick Shapiro.

The family’s love of the game and Bryant’s work in women’s sports prompted her to become a middle school girls’ basketball coach. Her team played the team of Bryant’s daughter Gianna, who died with her father and seven others in a Jan. 26 helicopter crash.

Alyssa Shapiro said before the memorial service Monday for Bryant and his daughter that she watched Bryant cheer for Gianna from the stands.

She held homemade heart-shaped “Kobe” and “Gigi” signs ahead of the memorial service and said she “just wanted to thank him for being such an inspiration to me.”

___

7:30 a.m.

Fans are arriving hours early for the public memorial for Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna that will be held in downtown Los Angeles

Among them is 72-year-old Bob Melendez, who says he has been a Lakers season ticket holder for 40 years.

Melendez says that after seeing Bryant play for many years he couldn’t imagine missing Monday’s memorial at Staples Center.

His friend Tom Ling says he couldn’t believe it when heard of Bryant’s death.

Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26.

The memorial is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Los Angeles time.

___

12: 30 a.m.

Thousands of mourners are expected to gather at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles to say farewell to Kobe and Gianna Bryant.

The basketball superstar and his 13-year-old daughter will be honored in a public memorial at the arena where Bryant played for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Kobe and Gianna Bryant died along with seven others on Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash.

The memorial will feature speakers reflecting on Kobe Bryant’s impact on his sport and the world, along with music and retrospectives on Bryant’s on-court achievements. Bryant became active in film, television and writing after he retired from basketball in 2016.

Bryant’s family, dozens of sports greats and many major figures in Bryant’s public life are expected to attend.

Crackdown on Immigrants Who Use Public Benefits Takes Effect

PHOENIX — Pastor Antonio Velasquez says that before the Trump administration announced a crackdown on immigrants using government social services, people lined up before sunrise outside a state office in a largely Latino Phoenix neighborhood to sign up for food stamps and Medicaid.

No more.

“You had to arrive at 3 in the morning, and it might take you until the end of the day,” he said, pointing behind the office in the Maryvale neighborhood to show how long the lines got.

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But no one lined up one recent weekday morning, and there were just a handful of people inside.

With new rules taking effect Monday that disqualify more people from green cards if they use government benefits, droves of immigrants, including citizens and legal residents, have dropped social services they or their children may be entitled to out of fear they will be kicked out of the U.S., said Velazquez and other advocates.

“This will bring more poverty, more homeless, more illness,” said Velasquez, a well-known leader among Spanish-speaking immigrants in the Phoenix area.

The guidelines that aim to determine whether immigrants seeking legal residency are likely to become a government burden are part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to reduce immigration, particularly among poorer people.

The rules that critics say amount to a “wealth test” were supposed to take effect in October but were delayed by legal challenges that allege the move violates due process under the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court last month cleared the way for the Trump administration to move forward while the legality of the rules are litigated in the courts.

A 5-4 vote Friday by the high court sided with the Trump administration by lifting a last injunction covering just Illinois. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissent, criticizing the administration for quickly turning to the Supreme Court after facing losses in lower courts.

The White House over the weekend expressed gratitude for that final vote, saying it would help “safeguard welfare programs for truly needy Americans, reduce the federal deficit, and re-establish the fundamental legal principle that newcomers to our society should be financially self-reliant and not dependent on the largess of United States taxpayers.”

Federal law already requires those seeking to permanent residency or legal status to prove they will not be a burden to the U.S. — a “public charge,” in government lingo. But the new rules include a wider range of programs that could disqualify them, including using Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers.

“Self-sufficiency is a core American value and has been part of immigration law for centuries,” Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy Homeland Security secretary, said last month. “By requiring those seeking to come or stay in the United States to rely on their own resources, families and communities, we will encourage self-sufficiency, promote immigrant success and protect American taxpayers.”

The chilling effect spreading through immigrant communities recalls how millions of refugees dumped social services during the welfare changes of the 1990s, even though the legislation that prompted the cuts explicitly exempted them.

Nazanin Ash, Washington-based vice president for global policy and advocacy for the nonprofit International Rescue Committee, pointed to research showing some 37 percent of refugees exempted from the Clinton-era changes in welfare benefits dropped food stamps they were entitled to.

Ash said the Trump administration rules would likely cause similar hardships for immigrants who contribute to the American economy.

“To call them a burden on society is factually incorrect,” she said.

The nonprofit Migration Policy Institute in Washington said in an August policy paper that it expects “a significant share” of the nearly 23 million noncitizens and U.S. citizens in immigrant families who use public benefits will drop them.

Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst with the institute, said the guidelines are so complicated that there have even been reports of parents dropping their kids’ free school lunches, which are not affected.

Gelatt noted that the rules apply only to social services used after Monday and do not affect citizens or most green card holders. Refugees vetted by the State Department and other federal agencies before their arrival in the U.S., as well as people who obtain asylum, are not affected.

The guidelines don’t apply to many programs for children and pregnant and postnatal women, including Head Start early childhood education and the Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children.

Nevertheless, Stephanie Santiago, who manages two Phoenix-area clinics for the nonprofit Mountain Park Health Center, said during the last three months of 2019 she suddenly saw scores of immigrants drop those and other benefits.

“People are very scared about the rules,” Santiago said. “The sad thing is that they even drop the services their U.S. citizen kids qualify for. A lot of these kids are going to school sick or their parents are paying out of pocket for services they should get for free.”

Cynthia Aragon, outreach coordinator for the nonprofit Helping Families in Need in Phoenix, said that because of the confusion, she is steering people to private sources of aid, like food banks and church-run clinics.

“I think people will start applying for government services again after it becomes clearer how things are going to work,” Aragon said. “In the meantime, we tell immigrants to look for some of the other resources out there and don’t feel like a victim.”