Biden will seek to close Guantanamo prison
They experienced school shooting as freshmen, and now pandemic
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will seek to close the prison on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay following a review process, resuming a project begun under the Obama administration, the White House said Friday.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was the “intention” of the Biden administration to close the detention facility, something President Barack Obama pledged to do within a year shortly after he took office in January 2009.
Psaki gave no timeline, saying the formal review would be “robust” and would require the participation of officials from the Department of Defense, the Justice Department and other agencies who have not yet been appointed under the new administration.
“There are many players from different agencies who need to be part of this policy discussion about the steps forward,” Psaki said.
Obama ran into domestic political opposition when he sought to close the detention center, a notorious symbol of the U.S. fight against terrorism. Biden might have more leeway now that there are only 40 prisoners left and Guantanamo draws much less public attention, though his announcement did draw some immediate criticism.
The U.S. opened the detention center in January 2002 to hold people suspected of ties to al-Qaida and the Taliban. It became a source of international criticism over the mistreatment of prisoners and the prolonged imprisonment of people without charge.
The announcement of a closure plan was not unexpected. Biden had said as a candidate he supported closing the detention center. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said so as well in written testimony for his Senate confirmation.
“Guantanamo has provided us the capability to conduct law of war detention in order to keep our enemies off the battlefield, but I believe it is time for the detention facility at Guantanamo to close,” Austin said.
The 40 remaining prisoners at Guantanamo include five who were previously cleared for release through an intensive review process created under Obama as part of the effort to close the detention center.
Activists in Kenosha, Wis., are calling on the judge in Kyle Rittenhouse’s homicides case to resign after he wouldn’t jail the teenager and raise his bail Thursday.
The group had planned a demonstration outside the Kenosha County Courthouse on Friday, the kind of action Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder noted will not have any influence on how he handles the case.
“Yesterday’s hearing sent a clear message to violent white supremacists: come to Kenosha to kill protesters, and you’ll be supported by the police and the court system,” Erica Ness, an organizer with Leaders of Kenosha, said in a news release.
“Meanwhile, Black and brown folks are having their doors kicked in and are dragged back to jail for the smallest infractions against their bond.”
Jonathan Jarmon, an organizer with the Wisconsin Working Families Party, added, “Too many politicians who campaigned for the Black vote in Wisconsin are staying silent when it matters most. It’s past time Wisconsin lawmakers took bold action to stamp out white supremacy and prevent our biased court systems from targeting Black and brown folks.”
Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with killing two people and wounding a third with a rifle he carried on the night of Aug. 25 during protests over the wounding of Jacob Blake by a police officer two days earlier.
His case immediately became a conservative cause celébrè, and thousands of people donated to a legal defense fund and collectively put up his $2 million bail in November.
Rittenhouse’s family had moved from their home in Antioch, Illiinois, and his lawyers have made it clear they were staying in an “undisclosed location,” citing death threats.
But prosecutors recently said that because Rittenhouse has not provided that address, he’s in violation of a requirement that he update his address within 48 hours of any change.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – They were baptized by gunfire their freshman year, bonded as they spent hours hiding under desks, inextricably linked by tragedy. For the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Class of 2021, high school would never be about Friday night football and innocent first kisses.
Seventeen students and staff were killed in the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting. As the Parkland students struggled to define high school apart from tragedy, their senior year has been punctuated by the coronavirus pandemic, upending their lives once again.
The majority are isolated at home on a computer, their hard-fought routines altered and their support systems splintered.
The shooting catapulted some students into the spotlight as they rallied for gun control and landed on the cover of Time magazine. But that was just a sliver of the experience of those in this largely affluent, palm tree-studded suburb. In the shadows, many struggle at times to manage daily life.
Their only full year at Stoneman Douglas was as sophomores – a time tinged with triggers from fire alarms and fireworks. Many students felt retraumatized every time they walked by the cordoned-off freshman building, the site of the shooting.
Abby Price’s best friend, Alyssa Alhadeff, was killed that day.
“I struggled every morning to wake up and go to the school where I lost so many friends,” the 17-year-old said. “I struggled to find a purpose of just doing simple tasks in life without my best friend by my side.”
The two were inseparable, like sisters, playing on the same soccer team and even sharing a birthday. They would dream about what high school would bring while listening to the Miley Cyrus song “The Climb.”
Price’s family moved to North Carolina for her junior year, hoping for a fresh start. She was terrified of a new school and forging new friendships. But there was also a sense that her life was no longer just her own, that she would be creating new memories and chasing her dreams for Alyssa – for both of them.
Then the pandemic hit, forcing Price into virtual school and making it difficult to connect with the friends she finally made.
“I started to lose myself again,” Price said.
Like millions of students across the country, proms and pep rallies were forgotten in the wake of the pandemic, depriving Price and the Parkland seniors yet again of traditional rites of passage and a typical high school experience.
Even graduation remains in limbo as closure to their high school years bookended by tragedies.
“At the very most, we’re going to have a digital graduation,” senior Ryan Servaites
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said. “And that’s going to be the ceremonious end to four years of trauma.”
Servaites, who hid under a chair in the auditorium for two hours while texting “I love you” to his parents, has found healing in activism. He joined the student-led March For Our Lives, registered first-time voters in various states and now works on gun-reform policy. He sounds assured and self-confident in his passion for enacting change, but it has been a process.
“I was trying to be an activist whereas inside I wasn’t very OK with myself,” Servaites said. “I’ve learned to cope. I’ve learned to come to terms with what I’ve gone through.”
Samara Barrack struggled to connect with friends after the shooting, saying some classmates changed as they coped with the tragedy in different ways.
“I saw people that were like, ‘I just need to get high’ or ‘I just need to paint,’ ” she said. “Neither of those
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Barrack was on the cheerleading squad, but the pandemic canceled most events, making it hard to bond over practice and games. Her closest friends go to other schools, but she still longs for senior-year traditions.
“Even if I’m not best friends with those people, it’s an experience,” said Barrack, who instead focused on a parttime job and a new start at the University of Central Florida, where she’s enrolled this summer.
Many of the students view college as a sorely needed do-over.
Most Stoneman Douglas graduates go to college, and before the shooting, Aria Siccone never questioned that she would, too.
“People say college experience is the best time in their life, and I wish I could do that. But at the same time, I know I wouldn’t be able to handle it,” said Siccone, 17, who avoids malls, movie theaters and other public places. Sometimes she’s jealous of friends who have had happy times at other schools. The former honors student fears a nagging voice that says she can’t be successful without college.
“It’s scary to think about because going to college is the normal path, and I just want to have the normal path,” she said.
On the brink of their next step, many of the students are finding the balance between mourning a tragedy and moving forward, for themselves and those who died.
“As children, we are supposed to be the innocent ones; we are supposed to be untouchable,” Servaites, 18, said. “Now we’re at this point where we can’t get that childhood we deserve, and as a result, we’re angry, we’re upset, and we’re just trying to do something about it.”
Price isn’t sure what her future will bring. Wherever she goes, her purpose will be Alyssa. Perhaps that’s why she feels drawn back to Florida.
“I find it impossible to figure out what I want to do with my life since school was never my main focus these past four years,” she said. “I most definitely want to go to school in Florida, and see where life takes me.”
The Lincoln Project, a pugnacious campaign by conservative strategists known for its broadsides against former President Donald Trump, was plunged into disarray on Friday. Steve Schmidt, its most senior leader, resigned amid controversies over a cofounder’s sexual advances to young men and accusations of profiteering.
Schmidt, also a co-founder, announced his departure from the board in starkly personal terms, revealing how his colleague’s inappropriate behavior prompted reflection on his own experience as a teenage victim of sexual abuse by a scouting camp medic.
“I am incandescently angry about it. I am angry because I know the damage that he caused to me, and I know the journey that lies ahead for every young man that trusted, feared and was abused by John Weaver,” Schmidt said. He added he was stepping away so the Lincoln Project could appoint a woman to his leadership role.
The organization’s downward spiral marks a sharp reversal of fortune for the effort, which gained prominence in the 2020 presidential campaign for its viral ads crafted to taunt and provoke Trump. It was founded by media-savvy campaign veterans: Schmidt, who had worked for President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain before leaving the GOP in 2018; Weaver, an adviser to McCain and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich; Rick Wilson, a Republican ad maker; and George Conway, a conservative attorney and the husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.
“Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics,” the founders wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 2019 announcing the group’s formation.
The group’s troubles began last month, when allegations surfaced on social media, and the American Conservative and Forensic News reported that Weaver had made sexual advances to men through private online messages, often using his prominent political stature to dangle potential jobs. The New York Times later found 21 men who said Weaver had sent them unsolicited suggestive messages; one was 14 years old at the time.
Weaver, who went on medical leave from the group last summer, issued a statement on Jan. 14 to the news outlet Axios that acknowledged “inappropriate messages and conversations.”
“The truth is that I’m gay. And I have a wife and two kids that I love. My inability to reconcile those two truths has led to this agonizing place,” he said.
Lincoln Project members sought to distance themselves from Weaver, saying in a statement they were “shocked and sickened” by Weaver’s actions.
“Like so many, we have been betrayed and deceived by John Weaver,” the group said.
The Associated Press reported this past week that the group’s leadership was informed last June that Weaver was the subject of at least 10 allegations of harassment, including two cases involving Project Lincoln employees.
The Lincoln Project’s implosion has been cheered by Trump loyalists, who were frequent targets of the group’s withering ads and Twitter presence. Even some Trump critics said the downfall was deserved.
“It’s been obvious for some time, if you look at the tactics and the fundraising strategy, that they were all about raising money and it was clear, also, all about paying themselves,” said Rob Stutzman, an anti-Trump Republican strategist based in Sacramento. “Add to that a level of scandal that apparently they wanted to try to mitigate instead of solve to keep the money train going, and you get this colossal train wreck.”
The project raked in nearly $90 million during the 2020 campaign cycle.
“We hope that helps build momentum for a political solution to the conflict in Yemen.”
Stephane Dujarric
U.N. spokesman
UNITED NATIONS – The United States announced Friday it is revoking the designation of Yemen’s Houthi rebels as a terrorist group effective Tuesday, a reversal by the Biden administration welcomed by the United Nations and humanitarian groups who feared former President Donald Trump’s actions would impede aid deliveries to the conflict-torn country facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called President Joe Biden’s decision to rescind the designation “a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.”
Blinken said the new U.S. administration listened to warnings from the United Nations, humanitarian groups, bipartisan members of Congress and others “that the designations could have a devastating impact on Yemenis’ access to basic commodities like food and fuel.”
Yemen imports 90% of its food, nearly all purchased through commercial channels, and U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned last month that the U.S. designation of the Houthis already had companies pulling back from dealing with the Yemenis and would likely lead to “a large-scale famine on a scale that we have not seen for nearly 40 years.”
Blinken’s announcement followed a phone conversation Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, where Yemen was one of the issues they discussed.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the move “extremely positive.”
“We hope that helps build momentum for a political solution to the conflict in Yemen,” Dujarric said. “I think the reversal of the designation, the naming of the (U.S.) special envoy (for Yemen), and the clear, clear language from the top of the administration, from President Biden himself, expressing his strong support for the U.N.-led mediation process … are very, very welcome indeed.”
In 2014, the rebel Houthis overran the capital, Sanaa, and much of Yemen’s north, driving the government into exile.
A U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year to try and restore the internationally recognized government, but years of U.N. efforts to get both sides to agree to a cease-fire and start peace negotiations have not succeeded.
The conflict has been disastrous for Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, killing more than 112,000 people, creating a humanitarian disaster, and wrecking infrastructure from roads and hospitals to water and electricity networks.
The State Department confirmed last week that Biden was moving to revoke the designation, a day after the president announced an end to offensive support to Saudi Arabia’s campaign against the Houthis.
The U.S. announcement came on the day that four United Nations agencies said more than 2 million Yemeni children under the age of 5 are expected to endure acute malnutrition in 2021 and urged an end to the conflict.
On Wednesday, the U.N. envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, met in Riyadh with the Saudi defense minister and other senior Saudi officials as well as the new U.S. special envoy for Yemen, Tim Lenderking, to discuss the latest developments in the country “and ways to resume the political process.”
Blinken said by revoking the terrorist designations against the Houthis, “we hope the Yemeni parties can also focus on engaging in dialogue.”
He stressed that Houthi leaders remain under U.S. sanctions.