Border fence construction continues up a mountain in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Lukeville, Ariz., on Jan. 7, 2020.
Credit: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post/Getty
Contractors working for the Trump administration are blowing apart a mountain on protected lands in southern Arizona to make way for the president’s border wall. The blasting is happening on the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a tract of Sonoran Desert wilderness long celebrated as one of the nation’s great ecological treasures, that holds profound spiritual significance to multiple Native American groups.
In a statement to The Intercept, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the blasting began this week and will continue through the end of the month. “The construction contractor has begun controlled blasting, in preparation for new border wall system construction, within the Roosevelt Reservation at Monument Mountain in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector,” the statement said, referring to an area also known as Monument Hill. “The controlled blasting is targeted and will continue intermittently for the rest of the month.”
The […]
The era of Donald Trump unleashed an onslaught of candidates in the 2018 midterm elections who court hate and extremism. A number of candidates with open white supremacist, nativist, anti-LGBT or antigovernment ties won seats in the U.S. House and Senate last election.
Matt Gaetz
Florida | House
Won with 67.1%
Matt Gaetz was elected to his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He previously served in the Florida state House of Representatives. Gaetz invited Chuck Johnson, a white nationalist “Trump Troll,” to Trump’s State of the Union address in January 2018. Johnson is a Holocaust denier who developed WeSearchr, a payment platform for racist “alt-right” crowdfunding.
Clay Higgins
Louisiana | House
Won with 55.7%
Clay Higgins was elected to his second term in the U.S House of Representatives. In 2017, Higgins attended an event hosted by the antigovernment extremist group Oath Keepers whose founder […]
Trumper Jan P. Meister and Representative Adam Schiff
Schiff Threatened… A man in Arizona has been accused by federal authorities of threatening to kill Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
Court records show that Jan Peter Meister, a 52-year-old registered sex offender, told investigators he drunkenly left the threatening voicemail at Schiff’s Washington, D.C. office after watching Fox News and googling the congressman’s phone number.
“I’m gonna fucking blow your brains out you fucking piece of shit,” Meister allegedly said in part of the obscenity-filled voicemail.
A spokesman in Schiff’s office declined to comment when I reached out over the weekend. Meister’s attorney, Brad Roach, didn’t return a call seeking comment on Monday.
KEY DETAIL: Originally, court documents only named the victim as “Congressman A.S.,” using initials instead of the full name. But in a court filing on Friday, Meister’s attorney included a summary of an interview his client had with federal investigators. That summary revealed the victim was Schiff.
From the court filing:
Agents explained that the call was […]
Switzerland on Sunday voted strongly in favour of a new law against homophobia in a referendum, against opposition from the populist rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP).
Incomplete results showed 60.5 percent voted in favour of widening existing laws against discrimination of incitement to hatred on ethnic or religious grounds to include sexual orientation.
“This is a historic day,” Mathias Reynard, a lawmaker from the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland who initiated the reform, told Swiss channel RTS 1.
“It gives a signal which is magnificent for everyone and for anyone who has been a victim of discrimination,” he said.
With results in from 23 out of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, the preliminary figures showed that the highest approval rate was in Geneva with 76.3 percent and that the rural cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden, Schwyz and Uri had voted against.
The change was passed by the Swiss parliament in 2018 but critics, who believe it will end up censoring free speech, had forced a referendum on the issue.
Eric Bertinat, an SVP local lawmaker in Geneva, told AFP before the vote that he believed the law was “part […]
The antarctic at 64.9*F
In a rattling new development, a research station in Antarctica registered the highest temperature ever recorded on the icy continent: 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit.
Argentina’s Esperanza Base on the northern edge of Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula marked the high (18.3 Celsius) on Thursday. The previous record was 63.5 degrees on March 24, 2015.
The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization is organizing a panel of experts to verify the finding. But a WMO statement noted: “Everything we have seen thus far indicates a likely legitimate record.”
WMO | OMM
✔@WMO
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
