Transatlantic controversy surrounds the departure of Britain’s ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, who resigned Wednesday after making candid and unflattering remarks about U.S. President Donald Trump in classified diplomatic cables. His comments were leaked to news media Sunday. Trump later tweeted his displeasure with both Darroch and outgoing British Prime Minister Theresa May. Arash Arabasadi reports.

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The Democratic presidential field continues to shift as one candidate drops out and another joins a crowded group hoping to oust President Donald Trump from office next year. Former Vice President Joe Biden remains the leading contender but finds himself fending off increasingly strong challenges from two senators—Kamala Harris of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. VOA national correspondent Jim Malone has more on the shifting sands of the Democratic race from Washington.
 

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Thailand’s new civilian government will retain the power to arbitrarily detain critics despite the imminent easing of junta-era security controls, prompting warnings from rights groups of enduring “martial law”.

Nearly 2,000 people have been tried in military courts since now-prime minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha seized power in a 2014 coup.

The junta eased a ban on political activities last year in the run-up to national elections and the former army chief phased out dozens of additional junta-enacted orders Tuesday, transferring military cases to civilian courts.

But the government retained over 100 orders — including the right for the military to detain suspects for seven days on national security grounds.

“This is martial law used during an emergency crisis, but we’ve had elections and a new government so why is it still imposed?” said Anon Chalawan, of the legal monitoring group iLaw.

Prayut, who was also officially endorsed by Thailand’s king Wednesday as defence minister, has called his original invoking of junta-era powers as a way of “solving problems”.

But political analyst Titipol Phakdeewanich said the continuing restrictions showed that full democracy remained a distant prospect for Thais.

“I think they know people will be more critical of this government,” he said.

Thailand held elections in March, and Prayut holds a slim majority in the lower house through a coalition of almost 20 parties, which — together with a military-appointed Senate — voted him in as civilian prime minister.

Prayut’s political opponents slammed the process, which included the temporary suspension from parliament of his biggest rival.

Despite questions over his legitimacy, the ex-army chief got down to the nitty gritty of forming a cabinet.

The picks endorsed by the king Wednesday include junta number two Prawit Wongsuwan as deputy prime minister and pro-marijuana Bhumjaithai party leader Anutin Charnvirakul as health minister.

They still need to be sworn in and present policy statements.

The flurry of political activity came after a rash of attacks on pro-democracy activists that remain unsolved.

In late June, activist Sirawith Seritiwat — known for staging anti-junta protests — was put in hospital after being set upon by stick-wielding men.

Police on Wednesday charged eight people for allegedly posting “false information” on Facebook which accused authorities of being behind the attack.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years.

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Wealthy American financier Jeffrey Epstein, charged with sex trafficking in underage girls, is now confined to a cell in a fortress-like concrete tower jail that has been criticized by inmates and lawyers for harsh conditions.

After his arrest on Saturday at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport on arrival from Paris in his private plane, Epstein was likely put in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in lower Manhattan, according to defense lawyers and others familiar with the jail.

“When you have someone that’s allegedly a sexual predator like Jeffrey Epstein, he’ll need to be in protective custody,” Andrew Laufer, a lawyer who has represented MCC inmates in civil lawsuits against prison officials, said in an interview.

Epstein pleaded not guilty in the nearby federal court on Monday to one count of sex trafficking and one count of sex trafficking conspiracy. He will remain in jail at least until a bail hearing on July 15. Federal prosecutors have said he is a flight risk because of his wealth and international ties.

In the past, Epstein, 66, was known for socializing with politicians and royalty, with friends who have included U.S. President Donald Trump, former president Bill Clinton and, according to court papers, Britain’s Prince Andrew. None of those people was mentioned in the indictment and prosecutors declined to comment on anyone said to be associated with Epstein.

US: Once-Secret Jeffrey Epstein Sex Offender Deal Must Stand

Some victims claim the deal, known as a non-prosecution agreement or NPA, should be thrown out at least partially because they were not consulted as required under that law

The indictment said Epstein made young girls perform nude “massages” and other sex acts, and paid some girls to recruit others, from at least 2002 to 2005 at his mansion in New York and estate in Florida.  

Marc Fernich, a lawyer for Epstein, declined to comment on Epstein’s current conditions.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said it does not release information on an inmate’s conditions of confinement for safety and security reasons.

The MCC houses about 800 inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial and have not been convicted. Prominent inmates have included New York Mafia bosses, the fraudster Bernie Madoff and the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Inmates and defense lawyers have complained of rat and cockroach infestations and uncomfortable extremes of heat and cold or problems with the water supply.

The jail’s harshest unit, known colloquially as “10 South”, has been compared unfavorably to the U.S. prison camp Guantanamo Bay. In 2011, rights group Amnesty International said the unit, which has also been used to house people accused of terrorism, flouts “international standards for humane treatment.”

One defense lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous, said that Epstein is likely in “9 South,” a separate special housing unit.

Inmates in protective custody are allowed out of their cell for recreation only one hour a day, according to BOP guidelines and interviews with lawyers.

Laufer and other lawyers said they believed that high-profile defendants such as Epstein enjoyed better protections than most, in part because prison officials are mindful of the embarrassment that harm to a well-known inmate could bring.

If Epstein is moved into a general population unit, he would have access to a shared common space with a television used by other inmates in the unit.

There, however, he would likely be a target for other inmates both because of his wealth and because he is a registered sex offender following his 2008 conviction for soliciting a girl for prostitution in Florida.

“The sex offenders have a hard time,” Jack Donson, a former BOP employee who now works as a federal prison consultant in New York, said in an interview. “He’s definitely going to get ostracized.”

There are fewer activities and diversions for inmates at the MCC compared to some other jails, Donson said.

“It’s pretty confining, pretty boring, not dangerous, but still no picnic,” Donson said. “Especially if you’re a man of wealth: one minute you’re on your yacht or in a helicopter; next minute you’re sitting at a table playing cards with the boys.”

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The Justice Department can’t replace nine lawyers so late in the dispute over whether to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census without explaining why it’s doing so, a judge says.

U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman, who earlier this year ruled against adding the citizenship question, put the brakes on the government’s plan on Tuesday, a day after he was given a three-paragraph notification by the Justice Department along with a prediction that the replacement of lawyers wouldn’t “cause any disruption in this matter.”
 
“Defendants provide no reasons, let alone `satisfactory reasons,’ for the substitution of counsel,” Furman wrote, noting that the most immediate deadline for government lawyers to submit written arguments in the case is only three days away.
 
The judge said local rules for federal courts in New York City require that any attorney requesting to leave a case provide satisfactory reasons for withdrawing. The judge must then decide what impact a lawyer’s withdrawal will have on the timing of court proceedings.
 
He called the Justice Department’s request “patently deficient,” except for two lawyers who have left the department or the civil division which is handling the case.
 
President Donald Trump tweeted about the judge’s decision Tuesday night, questioning whether the attorney change denial was unprecedented.
 
“So now the Obama appointed judge on the Census case (Are you a Citizen of the United States?) won’t let the Justice Department use the lawyers that it wants to use. Could this be a first?” Trump tweeted.
 
The new team came about after a top Justice Department civil attorney who was leading the litigation effort told Attorney General William Barr that multiple people on the team preferred not to continue, Barr told The Associated Press on Monday.
 
The attorney who was leading the team, James Burnham, “indicated it was a logical breaking point since a new decision would be made and the issue going forward would hopefully be separate from the historical debates,” Barr said.
 
Furman’s refusal came in a case that has proceeded on an unusual legal path since numerous states and municipalities across the country challenged the government’s announcement early last year that it intended to add the citizenship question to the census for the first time since 1950.
 
Opponents of the question say it will depress participation by immigrants, lowering the population count in states that tend to vote Democratic and decreasing government funds to those areas because funding levels are based on population counts.
 
At one point, the Justice Department succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to block plans to depose Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Nearly two weeks ago, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the plans to add the census question, saying the administration’s justification for adding the question “seems to have been contrived.”
 
Afterward, the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau began printing census questionnaires without the question and the Department of Justice signaled it would not attempt to continue the legal fight.
 
It reversed itself after Trump promised to keep trying to add the question.
 
The Justice Department then notified judges in three similar legal challenges that it planned to find a new legal path to adding the question to the census.
 
Furman said the urgency to resolve legal claims and the need for efficient judicial proceedings was an important consideration in rejecting a replacement of lawyers.
 
He said the Justice Department had insisted that the speedy resolution of lawsuits against adding the question was “a matter of great private and public importance.”
 
“If anything, that urgency — and the need for efficient judicial proceedings — has only grown since that time,” Furman said.
 
Furman said the government could re-submit its request to replace attorneys only with a sworn statement by each lawyer explaining satisfactory reasons to withdraw so late. He said he’ll require new attorneys to promise personnel changes will not slow the case.
       

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They don’t talk to each other much, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But they’re lately speaking at one another in a way that threatens party unity and underscores broader tensions reshaping the Democrats.

Their power struggle has spilled open in what could be a momentary blip or a foreshadowing of divisions to come.

It started with a rare public rebuke — Pelosi chiding AOC, as she’s called, in a newspaper interview; AOC responding pointedly on Twitter — that’s now challenging the House agenda and rippling into the 2020 presidential campaign. A new test will come this week on a must-pass defense bill that the White House on Tuesday threatened to veto.

At its core, the tension between the most powerful Democrat in the country and one of the party’s newest, most liberal members embodies a debate over how best, in style and substance, to defeat President Donald Trump. And both sides think they’re right.

For allies of the longtime California congresswoman, Pelosi’s off-handed dismissal of Ocasio-Cortez and the three other liberal freshmen House members who opposed a border security package last month was a necessary comeuppance for “the squad” of newcomers who are trying to push the party leftward.

“These people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told The New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following.” In the speaker’s world, they lack what Pelosi often calls “the currency of the realm” — the power to turn their high-volume activism into a coalition of votes to pass legislation or, in their case, to stop it.

Border Bill Exposes Democrats’ Rift Over Limits of Fighting Trump

For Democrats, distrust of President Trump runs so deep that a uniformly popular humanitarian aid bill prompted the party’s deepest and most bitter divisions since January

But for fans of Ocasio-Cortez, including some of the New York congresswoman’s millions of social media followers, Pelosi’s remarks were nothing short of a patronizing slap-back to four women of color who represent the future of the Democratic Party, a stark example of its generational and demographic transition. Their four lonely votes against the bill were a principled stand, with more to come.

The ability to channel the influence of the newcomers into the currency of Congress may determine whether the speaker, six months into her new majority, continues her steady leadership or loses her firm grip — especially with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s expected testimony next week in a high-stakes hearing amid rising calls for Trump’s impeachment.

“There’s an opportunity right now for House Democrats to lead the charge,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of the liberal group Indivisible. In his living room, he said, is a framed 2010 newspaper clipping of Pelosi from her previous tenure as speaker, passing the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. “What we’re looking for is that decade-ago fighter Pelosi was.”

This week the differences could tumble into full view again as the House considers defense legislation that’s often rejected by liberals because of military funding. It’s a must-pass bill that Congress has approved essentially every year since World War II. But with the opportunity to divide Democrats, the White House issued a veto threat saying the funding levels are inadequate. That means Pelosi will be forced to muscle it through without much, if any, Republican support.

Fresh from the border funding fight, Ocasio-Cortez signaled a first salvo Tuesday, telling reporters that progressive lawmakers want to ensure the defense bill prevents Trump from sending any troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Asked about Pelosi’s comments, Ocasio-Cortez said: “It was just kind of puzzling more than anything. It’s just, why? The idea that millions of people we represent matter less or don’t matter is a notion I disagree with.”

Lawmakers visiting border detention facilities over the past week have delivered grave reports of migrant children and families being held in dire conditions. Liberals say the border-funding battle was exactly the kind of fight the House should be waging against the Trump administration, especially after disclosures of border patrol officers joking about the migrants and deriding lawmakers on a private Facebook group.

When White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday mocked the “Major Meow Mashup” and “catfight” between Pelosi and the foursome, several of them fired back.

“Remember that time your boss tore babies from their mothers’ arms and threw them in cages?” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., tweeted at Conway. “Yeah take a seat and keep my name out of your lying mouth.”

Democrats Turn on Trump and Each Other in Debate

Behind the scenes, though, some on Capitol Hill were quietly appreciative of Pelosi’s tough-love approach to Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

Lawmakers and freshmen from more centrist-leaning districts than those of the four, including regions Trump won in 2018, don’t want the House majority to be defined by the liberal flank as they face voters for reelection next year. They prefer the party hew to Pelosi’s center-left approach. In describing the sentiment among those from more centrist districts, a senior congressional aide said Pelosi emerged as a “super-hero.” The aide requested anonymity to describe the private discussions.

While those more moderate views may have helped Democrats win the majority, liberal activists fear they won’t necessarily motivate or energize the party ahead of the 2020 election.

Brian Fallon, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Pelosi’s comments have riled the party’s left flank and activists question why she’s fighting with the newcomers when she should be confronting, if not impeaching, Trump.

“It’s not a good look,” Fallon said. Pelosi’s background runs strong in the liberal community, he said, so “it’s not enough to undo the relationship because she has deep ties, she knows how to count votes and is a bad ass.”

“But there is frustration,” he said.

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Nigeria’s President Muhammadi Buhari will submit his cabinet nominees this week, the senate president said on Wednesday.

The senate must vet and approve the nominees, and it is
scheduled to go into recess until September by the end of the
month.

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A U.S. federal appeals court has ruled President Donald Trump cannot silence critics on his Twitter account, maintaining that blocking them violates the Constitution’s right to free speech.

The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a 3-0 decision Tuesday the First Amendment prohibits Trump from blocking critics from his account, a public platform.

On behalf of the three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote “The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.”

Trump has used his Twitter account, which has more than 60-million followers, to promote his agenda and to attack critics.

The court ruled on a lawsuit filed by Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute on behalf of seven people who were blocked by Trump after criticizing his policies.

Institute director Jameel Jaffer said the ruling “will ensure that people aren’t excluded from these forums simply because of their viewpoints” and added “It will help ensure the integrity and vitality of digital spaces that are increasingly important to our democracy.”

Justice Department spokesman Kelly Laco said the agency is “disappointed with the ruling and is “exploring possible next steps.” He reiterated the administrations’ argument that “Trump’s decision to block users from his personal Twitter account does not violate the First Amendment.”

The decision upheld a May 2018 ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Justice Department said the ruling was “fundamentally misconceived,” arguing Trump used the account in a personal capacity to express his views, and not as a forum for public discussion.

Twitter did not immediately comment on the ruling.

Among those who were blocked from Trump’s account were author Stephen King and model Chrissy Teigen.

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The political action committee for a group founded by former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has reported raising $3.9 million in the past six months.

Abrams founded Fair Fight to support voting rights after narrowly losing to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in November. She accused Kemp of using his previous position as Georgia’s chief election officer to suppress votes in their race, which Kemp has vehemently denied.

The report filed Monday with the state ethics commission shows Fair Fight PAC has raised $4.1 million since its inception and made $3 million in expenditures, leaving $1.1 million in cash on hand. Expenditures include more than $1.2 million given to the group’s nonprofit arm and $100,000 given to abortion rights groups after Georgia’s passage of a restrictive abortion ban.

They also include political contributions to various candidates, payments to consultants, staff salaries and travel expenses.

Many of the contributions came from small donors around the country. The group says that it has had more than 15,000 individual contributions from all 50 states.

The largest contribution was over $1 million from Silicon Valley-based physician and philanthropist Karla Jurvetson. The group banked another $250,000 from the Service Employees International Union, a labor union with 2 million members in service occupations including within the health care industry. 
 
“Fair Fight PAC is grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from across Georgia and around the country,” Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement. “Fair Fight is advocating for voting rights, supporting progressive organizing and advocacy, and keeping the heat on those who suppress the vote.”

She said the group would soon share details for nationwide voter protection programs to mitigate “attempts to suppress the vote of people of color in this critical election cycle.”

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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are teaming up on a plan that would designate climate change as an emergency, and at least one of Sanders’ fellow Democratic presidential candidates is planning to sign on.

The measure to be introduced in the House on Tuesday is designed to highlight Democrats’ focus on global warming and push back against President Donald Trump, who’s declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.
 
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is competing with Sanders for the support of liberal voters in the presidential primary, plans to sign onto the resolution when it’s introduced in the Senate, according to a spokeswoman.

Sanders tells reporters that “strong American leadership” is needed to compel effective worldwide action on climate change.

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The House Judiciary Committee said Tuesday it was preparing subpoenas of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and former attorney general Jeff Sessions as it probes Trump’s alleged obstruction of the Russia investigation.

The Democrat-led committee said it intends to authorize subpoenas of up to 12 current and former administration officials if they don’t readily agree to testify in its investigation.

The officials also include former national security advisor Mike Flynn, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and former White House deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn.

Committee chairman Jerry Nadler said they wanted to question the individuals on Trump’s actions to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian election meddling investigation, as well as about the administration’s policy of separating families who arrive in the country as undocumented immigrants.

The committee wants to question them “as part of our ongoing investigation into obstruction, corruption and abuse of power by the president and his associates,” Nadler said in a statement.

The committee recently interviewed two top sources for Mueller’s investigation, former senior White House officials Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson.

Both provided Mueller significant information supporting his depiction of a number of alleged acts of obstruction by Trump.

But in closed-door interviews with the committee, both refused to answer numerous questions on the same subject, saying the White House had directed them not to reply based on a claim of Executive Branch “confidentiality interests.”

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Uma Valeti slices into a pan-fried chicken cutlet in the kitchen of his startup, Memphis Meats. He sniffs the tender morsel on his fork before taking a bite. He chews slowly, absorbing the taste.

“Our chicken is chicken … you’ve got to taste it to believe it,” Valeti says.

This is no ordinary piece of poultry. No chicken was raised or slaughtered to harvest the meat. It was produced in a laboratory by extracting cells from a chicken and feeding them in a nutrient broth until the cell culture grew into raw meat.

Memphis Meats, based in Emeryville, California, is one of a growing number of startups worldwide that are making cell-based or cultured meat. They want to offer an alternative to traditional meat production that they say is damaging the environment and causing unnecessary harm to animals, but they are far from becoming mainstream and face pushback from livestock producers.

“You are ultimately going to continue the choice of eating meat for many generations to come without putting undue stress on the planet,” said Valeti, a former cardiologist who co-founded Memphis Meats in 2015 after seeing the power of stem cells to treat disease.

The company, which also has produced cell-grown beef and duck, has attracted investments from food giants Cargill and Tyson Foods as well as billionaires Richard Branson and Bill Gates.

A report released in June by consulting firm A.T. Kearney predicts that by 2040, cultured meat will make up 35 percent of meat consumed worldwide, while plant-based alternatives will compose 25 percent.

“The large-scale livestock industry is viewed by many as an unnecessary evil,” the report says. “With the advantages of novel vegan meat replacements and cultured meat over conventionally produced meat, it is only a matter of time before meat replacements capture a substantial market share.”

But first cultured meat must overcome significant challenges, including bringing down the exorbitant cost of production, showing regulators it’s safe and enticing consumers to take a bite.

“We’re a long way off from becoming a commercial reality because there are many hurdles we have to tackle,” said Ricardo San Martin, research director of the alternative meat program at the University of California, Berkeley. “We don’t know if consumers are going to buy this or not.”

As global demand for meat grows, supporters say cell-based protein is more sustainable than traditional meat because it doesn’t require the land, water and crops needed to raise livestock — a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Many consumers would love to eat meat that doesn’t require killing animals, said Brian Spears, who founded a San Francisco startup called New Age Meats that served its cell-based pork sausages to curious foodies at a tasting last September.

“People want meat. They don’t want slaughter,” Spears said. “So we make slaughter-free meat, and we know there’s a massive market for people that want delicious meat that doesn’t require animal slaughter.”

Finless Foods, another startup in Emeryville, is making cultured fish and seafood. It’s produced cell-based versions of salmon, carp and sea bass, and it’s working on bluefin tuna, a popular species that is overfished and contains high levels of mercury. The company has invited guests to sample its cell-based fish cakes.

“The ocean is a very fragile ecosystem, and we are really driving it to the brink of collapse,” CEO Michael Selden said. “By moving human consumption of seafood out of the ocean and onto land and creating it in this cleaner way, we can basically do something that’s better for everybody.”

The emerging industry moved a step closer to market in March when the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration announced plans to jointly oversee the production and labeling of cell-based meat.

Food-safety advocates will be watching to ensure the agencies provide rigorous oversight and protect people from bacterial contamination and other health threats, said Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the nonprofit Center for Food Safety.

“It will be important for the public that this be well regulated,” Hanson said. “Do these really solve the environmental problem? Do they really solve the animal welfare problem? That needs to be part of the review as well.”

If cultured-meat companies use genetically modified cells, they would face even greater scrutiny from consumers and government regulators, Hanson said.

Cell-based meat companies also face resistance from U.S. livestock producers, who have been lobbying states to restrict the “meat” label to food products derived from slaughtered animals and have been raising questions about the safety, cost and environmental effect of cultured meat.

“There’s still many, many unknowns about these cell-based products,” said Eric Mittenthal, vice president for sustainability at the North American Meat Institute. “We really don’t know if it’s something consumers will accept from a taste perspective. We don’t know if it’s going to be affordable.”

Uma Valeti at Memphis Meats said he wants to help educate people about the benefits of cell-based meats and eventually open up its production facility to show people how its meat is made.

The company is focused on reducing the cost of cultured meat and producing larger quantities. A plate of chicken that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars to produce can now be made for less than $100, Valeti said.

Memphis Meats hopes to sell its cell-based meat within the next two years, starting with restaurants, then moving into grocery stores, assuming it passes USDA and FDA inspections.

“We’re actually preserving the choice of eating meat for people,” Valeti said. “Instead of saying, ‘Give up eating meat or eat a meat alternative,’ we’re saying continue eating the meat that you love.”

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