The Four The Merrier
March 30, 2022
Last week, we asked if you thought Ukraine should be accepted into NATO. As promised, here are the results of the survey.
“Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” – Emily Dickinson
The Power Of The Logs
The last U.S. president to publicly get away with destroying evidence was Richard Nixon. The incident involved the infamous 18 1/2 minute erasure in Nixon’s voice-activated tape recording of his June 20, 1972 Oval Office conversation with Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman following the Watergate break-in. Nixon eluded being held to account because he resigned from office and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. At the time, some Nixon supporters said they wished he’d simply burned all the tapes, in defiance of subpoenas issued by the Senate Select Committee investigating the Watergate coverup.
A half-century later there’s another select committee that, in the course of investigating a former president’s actions, has subpoenaed internal White House records. This time, they requested Donald Trump’s phone logs from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but when the committee received them, there was a seven-hour and 37-minute gap, including during the period when the building was being violently assaulted. In other words, there is no official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on January 6, 2021– when the president’s supporters invaded the Capitol, fought with police, inflicted deadly injuries, destroyed government property, and forced lawmakers – including Vice President Mike Pence – to flee for safety.
The records turned over to the select committee by the National Archives show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon – who said on his January 5 podcast that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” – spoke with Trump twice on January 6. The hours-long gap also stands in stark contrast to extensive public reporting about phone conversations Trump had with allies during the attack. The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides, or burner phones. In a statement Monday night, Trump said, “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” (WaPo, $)
Break With Extradition
- Honduras’ Supreme Court has approved the extradition of former President Juan Orlando Hernández to the U.S. to face drug trafficking and weapons charges. A spokesman for the court said Monday the justices had rejected Hernández’s last available appeal.
- His wife, former first lady Ana García, made public a letter in which the former president again asserted his innocence and claimed to be the victim of “revenge and conspiracy.” Garcia and the couple’s two daughters appeared outside the Supreme Court building with dozens of the ex-president’s followers and began to pray. The scene was in sharp contrast with how intensely Hernández was hated by many Hondurans.
- The former president left office in January at the end of his second term; three weeks later, he was arrested at his home at the request of the U.S. government. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have accused Hernández of funding his political rise with profits from drug traffickers in exchange for protecting their shipments. (NPR)
Pick Your Poison
- In an interview on national television, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba warned the government’s negotiators not to eat, drink, or even touch anything as they headed into talks with Russia in Istanbul on Tuesday. The warnings followed allegations that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and two Ukrainian peace negotiators may have been poisoned when they fell ill after meetings in early March.
- An Abramovich associate said the owner of Britain’s Chelsea soccer club, who faces sanctions in Europe over his ties to Russia’s President Putin and has since put his West London club up for sale, has recovered and was “okay,” and is now focused on negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.
- Abramovich was contacted by Ukraine last month to help facilitate peace talks with Moscow, although Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Abramovich was “not an official member of the delegation.” Tuesday’s talks didn’t result in any peace agreement, but Ukrainian negotiators outlined some proposals, and Moscow said it would “drastically reduce” military activity near Kyiv and Chernihiv, a pledge that U.S. officials doubt. (WaPo, $)
Additional World News
- Singapore court upholds death sentence of man with learning disabilities (Guardian)
- Peru’s president survives 2nd impeachment effort in 8 months (NPR)
- London police issue first fines for Downing Street pandemic parties (WaPo, $)
- Pope meets Canada Indigenous groups seeking apology for abuse of children (Guardian)
- The Supply Chain Crisis Is About to Get a Lot Worse (Wired)
- Ukraine Proposes Neutral Status With Guarantees, and Zelensky Seeks More Western Help (WSJ, $)
Making Herstory
- Justice Patricia Guerrero has become the first Latina to sit on California’s Supreme Court. She was joined by her father, sister, husband, and two sons during her swearing-in ceremony Monday. Guerrero moved to California when her parents immigrated to the Imperial Valley region from Mexico.
- She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley before getting her law degree from Stanford Law School in 1997. After graduating, Guerrero was an associate at Latham and Watkins LLP before joining the Southern District of California’s U.S. Attorney’s Office as an assistant U.S. attorney from 2002 to 2003. She returned to Latham and Watkins and was promoted to partner in 2007.
- In 2013, Guerrero was appointed a judgeship in the San Diego Superior Court. In 2017, she was appointed to California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, where she wrote several opinions defending consumer and constitutional rights. Guerrero’s swearing-in is a significant move in California, where nearly 40% of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino. (NPR)
The Four The Merrier
- On Tuesday, just hours after the Food and Drug Administration authorized a second booster dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky issued a statement allowing shots to begin immediately for people ages 50 and older. “Boosters are safe, and people over the age of 50 can now get an additional booster 4 months after their prior dose to increase their protection further,” Walensky said.
- The FDA had already authorized a fourth shot for immunocompromised individuals, and has now cleared a fifth shot, or second booster, for that group. Previously immunocompromised individuals were authorized to receive a three-dose primary series of a vaccine followed by a booster.
- About a third of people ages 50 to 65 have significant underlying conditions that put them at risk of severe Covid. The speed with which the two agencies cleared the additional vaccine doses indicates their concern about the spread of the extremely contagious omicron subvariant, known as BA.2. The subvariant accounts for about 55 % of the new cases in the country. (NBC)
Additional USA News
- South Dakota House committee recommends no AG impeachment (ABC)
- Romney says he hasn’t reached a decision yet on Ketanji Brown Jackson nomination (CNN)
- U.S. immigration agency moves to cut 9.5 million-case backlog and processing delays (CBS)
- Democrats move closer to significantly altering their presidential nominating process (CNN)
- A former congressman and a lobbyist look for work in Kremlin-allied Belarus (Politico)
- Weather news: New Orleans and other major cities at risk for severe storms including tornadoes (CNN)
- California grocery workers vote to authorize strike (NPR)
Reading The Small Prince
- In 1981, renowned photographer Lynn Goldsmith took a picture in her studio of a rising musical star, Prince. After applying purple eyeshadow and lip gloss on him, she posed Prince against a white background to portray him as a “vulnerable human being.” Goldsmith holds the copyright to that iconic black and white photo. In 1984, Goldsmith’s agency licensed the photograph to Vanity Fair magazine for use as an artist reference. Unbeknownst to Goldsmith, that artist was Andy Warhol.
- Vanity Fair had asked Warhol to produce a series of 16 silkscreen prints based on Goldsmith’s photo, which became a cover for an issue of the magazine with attribution to Goldsmith. However, Warhol hadn’t stopped with the image that Vanity Fair commissioned him to create, but instead created fifteen additional works in color that collectively became known as the Prince Series, which Warhol copyrighted. Warhol died in 1987 without Goldsmith knowing what he had done. After Prince died in 2016, Vanity Fair republished one of the Prince Series images in a tribute issue. Goldsmith was shocked when she saw the image for the first time and learned it was part of something now attributed to the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., successor to Warhol’s copyright. Goldsmith sued for violation of her copyright.
- In 2017, the trial judge determined, in part, that the Prince Series works were “transformative” because, while the Goldsmith Photograph portrays Prince as “not a comfortable person” and a “vulnerable human being,” the Prince Series portrays the musician as an “iconic, larger-than-life figure.” The trial judge dismissed Goldsmith’s suit, and she appealed. In 2021, the appellate court determined the trial court had erred in its analysis of the four statutory “fair use” principles, and that the Prince Series images were not something new, but “substantially similar to the Goldsmith Photograph as a matter of law.” The Warhol Foundation petitioned the Supreme Court, and on Monday, SCOTUS said it would step in and referee the dispute over when a work of art becomes “transformative” for purposes of fair use under the Copyright Act, and when it is simply an appropriation of someone else’s creation. What this court ultimately decides should be very interesting. (NBC)
Additional Reads
- Geothermal heat pumps are among the most earth-friendly home energy sources, experts say (WaPo, $)
- FDA advisers to review ALS drug funded by Ice Bucket Challenge (NBC)
- MIT resumes mandate for SAT or ACT scores. Many other colleges have not. (WaPo, $)
- NASA astronaut, Russian cosmonauts prepare to land in Kazakhstan (CNN)
- Nationals, Wizards unveil collaborative cherry blossom jerseys (WaPo, $)
- No more excuses: NASA in line to get funding needed for Artemis plan (Ars Technica)