Botswana’s government is to appeal a High Court judgement in June which overturned colonial-era laws against gay sex – the first decriminalization of homosexual relations through the courts in Africa.  Botswana’s conservative and religious communities have welcomed the possible repeal of the ruling while the gay community and rights groups have decried the step backwards in gay rights.  Mqondisi Dube reports from Gaborone.

…

A Republican senator blocked a bipartisan bill that would have made sure that a fund providing compensation to 9/11 workers would remain viable until 2090. 

Rand Paul of Kentucky questioned the bill’s 70-year time frame and said any new spending should be offset by corresponding cuts so the U.S. government’s $22 trillion debt does not continue to grow. 

“It has long been my feeling that we need to address our massive debt in the country,” Paul said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “And, therefore, any new spending … should be offset by cutting spending that’s less valuable. We need to at the very least have this debate.”

Presidential hopeful New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had offered the bill for unanimous consent, which would have fast-tracked its approval. 

Under Senate rules, an objection from a single senator can block a measure offered via unanimous consent, which is what Paul did. 

A spokesperson for Paul later told The Hill that Paul “is not blocking anything,” adding that he is “simply seeking to pay for it.”

The bill, which easily passed in the House last month, would extend though 2092 a victims compensation fund, essentially making it permanent. 

More than $7 billion was placed in a fund to compensate firefighters, construction crews, police and other emergency workers who rushed into the debris of the World Trade Center in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 — inhaling dust, smoke, chemicals and other hazardous substances.

Many are suffering from breathing problems, digestive disorders, and lung and other cancers.

The Justice Department has warned that the fund is running out of money because there was no mechanism in Congress to make sure that does not happen before the entire program is set to expire next year.

Benefit payments have been slashed and about 21,000 claims are still awaiting a decision.

Gillibrand said she was “deeply disappointed” by Paul’s action.

“Enough of the political games. Our 9/11 first responders and our entire nation are watching to see if this body actually cares. Do we care about the men and women who answer the call of duty?” she asked in an emotionally charged speech. 

“Thousands of those men and women have died,” she said. Others still have to “face the terrifying reality that they are going to die because of what they did on 9/11 and the months thereafter.”

Gillibrand and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer have asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring up the bill for a vote before Congress goes on its August recess.

…

The Democratic-controlled House voted Wednesday to hold two top Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas related to a decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The House voted 230-198 to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt. The vote, a political blow to the Trump administration, is largely symbolic because the Justice Department is unlikely to prosecute the two men.

The action marks an escalation of Democratic efforts to use their House majority to aggressively investigate the inner workings of the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump abandoned the citizenship question last week after the Supreme Court said the administration’s justification for the question “seems to have been contrived.” Trump directed agencies to try to compile the information using existing databases.

The White House called the vote “ridiculous” and “yet another lawless attempt to harass the president and his administration.”

The Justice and Commerce departments have produced more than 31,000 pages of documents to the House regarding the census issue, and senior officials from both agencies, including Ross, have spoken on the record about the matter, the White House said, adding that Democrats continue to demand documents that the White House contends are subject to executive privilege.  

“House Democrats know they have no legal right to these documents, but their shameful and cynical politics know no bounds,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement. 

Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said the contempt vote was an important step to assert Congress’ constitutional authority to serve as a check on executive power.

“Holding any secretary in criminal contempt of Congress is a serious and sober matter — one that I have done everything in my power to avoid,” Cummings said during House debate. “But in the case of the attorney general and Secretary Ross, they blatantly obstructed our ability to do congressional oversight into the real reason Secretary Ross was trying for the first time in 70 years to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.”

While Ross and other officials have claimed the sole reason they wanted to add the citizenship question was to enforce the Voting Rights Act, “we now know that claim was nothing but a pretext,” Cummings said. “The Supreme Court said that.”

At the direction of Barr and Ross, “the departments of Justice and Commerce have been engaged in a campaign to subvert our laws and the process Congress put in place to maintain the integrity of the census,” Cummings said.

The contempt resolution “is about protecting our democracy, protecting the integrity of this body. It’s bigger than the census,” he said.

Ross called the vote a public relations “stunt” that further demonstrates Democrats’ “unending quest to generate headlines instead of operating in good faith with our department.”

Democrats prefer to “play political games rather than help lead the country” and “have made every attempt to ascribe evil motivations to everyday functions of government,” Ross said.

Ross told the oversight committee that the March 2018 decision to add the question was based on a Justice Department request to help enforce the Voting Rights Act.

Democrats disputed that, citing documents unearthed last month suggesting that a push to draw legislative districts in overtly partisan and racist ways was the real reason the administration wanted to include the question.

Democrats feared that adding the question would reduce participation in immigrant-heavy communities and result in a severe undercount of minority voters. They have pressed for specific documents to determine Ross’ motivation and contend the administration has declined to provide the material despite repeated requests.

“The real issue we should be debating” is why Democrats are afraid to ask how many citizens live in the United States, said Representative James Comer, a Kentucky Republican. Contrary to Democrats’ claims, Ross and other officials have cooperated with the oversight panel and provided thousands of documents, Comer said.

“If the Democrats can’t impeach President Trump, they will instead hold his Cabinet in contempt of Congress,” he said. “This is just another episode in political theater.”

In a letter late Wednesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Barr and Ross asked Democrats to postpone the vote, saying they have shown a “clear record of cooperation” with Congress. The contempt vote “is both unnecessarily undermining” relations between the two branches and “degrading” Congress’ “own institutional integrity,” they wrote.

Trump has pledged to “fight all the subpoenas” issued by Congress and says he won’t work on legislative priorities, such as infrastructure, until Congress halts investigations of his administration. 

…

Congress is heading for a showdown with President Donald Trump after the House voted Wednesday to block his administration from selling billions of dollars in weapons and maintenance support to Saudi Arabia.

Trump, who has sought to forge closer ties with Riyadh, has pledged to veto the resolutions of disapproval that passed the Democratic-led House largely along party lines. Two of the resolutions passed with 238 votes, while a third was approved with 237. Each of the measures garnered just four Republican backers.

The Senate cleared the resolutions last month, but like the House, fell well short of a veto-proof majority. Overturning a president’s veto requires a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate.

Heightened Middle East tensions

Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, accused the Trump administration of circumventing Congress and the law to move ahead with the arms sale. He called the resolutions “extraordinary but necessary” to stop “a phony emergency to override the authority of Congress.”

The votes came against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Middle East, with much of the focus on Iran. Tehran is pushing the limits on its nuclear program after Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal more than a year ago. Iran has inched its uranium production and enrichment over the limits of the accord, trying to put more pressure on Europe to offer it better terms and allow it to sell its crude oil abroad.

The White House has declared stopping the sale would send a signal that the United States doesn’t stand by its partners and allies, particularly at a time when threats against them are increasing.

But opposition among members of Congress to the Trump administration’s alliance with the Saudis has been building, fueled by the high civilian casualties in the Saudi-led war in Yemen — a military campaign the U.S. is assisting — and the killing of U.S.-based columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.

Estimated $8 billion in arms

The arms package, worth an estimated $8 billion, includes thousands of precision-guided munitions, other bombs and ammunition, and aircraft maintenance support for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had cited Iranian aggression when declaring an emergency to approve the weapons sales in May. The Saudis have recently faced a number of attacks from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

“Right now, as I speak, Iran is stretching its tentacles of terror across the Middle East,” said the Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, who pushed for the resolutions to be rejected. “If we allow them to succeed, terrorism will flourish, instability will reign and the security of our allies like Israel will be threatened.”

Bypassing Congress

Critics of the sale also had denounced the White House for bypassing congressional review of the arms sales, which was done by invoking an emergency loophole in the Arms Export Control Act.

Pompeo had informed Congress that he had made the determination “that an emergency exists which requires the immediate sale” of the weapons “in order to deter further the malign influence of the government of Iran throughout the Middle East region.”

The law requires Congress to be notified of potential arms sales, giving the body the opportunity to block the sale. But the law also allows the president to waive that review process by declaring an emergency that requires the sale be made “in the national security interests of the United States.”

Engel said there was no emergency, arguing that two months after Pompeo’s notification not a single weapon has been shipped and many of them haven’t even been built.

“What kind of emergency requires weapons that will be built months and months down the road?” Engel said.

…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to block the sale of the advanced F-35 jet to Turkey means Ankara may look elsewhere to replace its aging air force.

Trump’s veto in response to Turkey’s acquisition of Russian missiles could prompt Ankara to turn to Moscow again.

Trump’s announcement followed the first deliveries of Russia’s S-400 air defense missile system to Turkey. Washington had repeatedly warned Ankara that the S-400’s advanced radar could compromise the F-35 stealth technology, making delivery of the jet impossible.

However, Trump’s decision appears to have taken Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by surprise.

“Tayyip Erdogan really trusted Trump,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “In last month’s G-20 meeting in Japan, they were sitting together and Trump [was] saying it’s easy to do business with this these guys.

“It created the expectation that he will prevent the embargo on the F-35, but Trump gave into strong domestic pressure,” he added.

Vital to military fleet 

Turkey is one of the biggest international buyers of the F-35, with an order of 100 of the expensive planes. The jets were a vital part of the Turkish military’s long-term plan to replace its fleet of F-16s, some of which are decades old.

Further complicating the situation, Turkey’s neighbor and rival, Greece, could acquire the F-35, gaining a decisive military edge.

“Future potential foreign military sales customers include Singapore, Greece, Romania, Spain and Poland,” Vice Admiral Mathias Winter, the head of the Pentagon’s F-35 office, said in testimony to the U.S. Congress.

Athens and Ankara have a series of territorial disputes, and Turkish and Greek jets routinely contest airspace in mock dogfights. For now, both sides are equally matched with F-16s.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar insisted in April that Turkey was prepared for any termination of the F-35 sale.

“We have short-term, medium-term and long-term plans,” Akar said.

Ankara has taken some initial steps to build its own fighter, but many experts dismiss the project as fanciful, based on cost and expertise.

“Probably Turkey will look now to the Chinese- or Russian-produced jet fighters, which would further alienate Turkey to the West and push Turkey to the East. There will be a restructuring of course in the Turkish army if the F-35 is not provided,” Bagci said.

Moscow indicated its openness to selling its latest fighter jet, the Su-57.

“These fifth-generation Russian fighter jets [the Su-57] have outstanding qualities and show promise for export,” Sergey Chemezov, head of Rostec, which manufactures the Su-57, said in a May interview with Turkey’s news agency.

Su-57 buyers sought 

Rostec is urgently looking for buyers of the Su-57 since India pulled out of the project. Moscow initially was able to buy a handful of the expensive planes, although last month it ordered another 76.

However, analysts warn any move by Ankara to further deepen its dependence on Russian weapons would further strain its relations with its NATO partners. NATO has voiced strong concerns about Turkey’s purchase of two batteries of S-400 missiles.

A significant procurement of advanced Russian jets could push Turkey’s NATO’s ties to a breaking point.

“Logically, it’s possible you can buy S-400, you can buy Russian fighter bombers,” Haldun Solmazturk, head of the Ankara-based 21st Century Turkey Institute, said.

“But this would require a fundamental political decision,” he added, “not just the Turkish government, but including Turkish parliament, Turkish public. This would be a national decision similar in 1946 when Turkey opposed the Soviet Union and applied to join NATO in 1949.

“Such a decision would be equally important, equally critical. It would be a junction point in Turkish political, military history,” Solmazturk said.

However, given that Erdogan appears to have been wrong-footed by Trump’s vetoing of F-35s, analysts suggest Ankara is most likely scrambling to form a new strategy.

“We have got to this point by a series of diplomatic accidents, not by intention,” Bagci said. “The Turkish mind is confused. There is no clear mind in the heads of Turkish politicians. Erdogan, his defense and foreign ministers, this trio have to talk now on what to do. There is always the possibility to keep the channels open to Washington to find a solution.

“Otherwise, it’s bye-bye, Washington relations and NATO,” he said. 

…

MEMPHIS, TENN. — A Spanish-language reporter who was recently released from immigration custody said Wednesday that he was held for 15 months in detention centers that were plagued by insects and he had to bathe with cold water from hoses. 
 
During a news conference, Manuel Duran discussed what he called inhumane conditions at immigration detention facilities in Louisiana and Alabama. Duran was released from an Alabama facility on bail last week as immigration courts consider his request for asylum.  
 
The El Salvador native was arrested while covering an April 3, 2018, rally protesting immigration policies in Memphis. Protesters had blocked a street in front of a downtown courthouse on the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.  

Protest-related charges were subsequently dropped, but Duran was picked up by immigration agents and detained after he was released from jail. 
 
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said Duran was taken into custody because he had a pending deportation order from 2007 after failing to appear for a court hearing. Duran has said he did not receive a notice to appear in court with a time and date on it.  

Death threats drove him north
 
Duran has lived in Memphis for years. He ran the Memphis Noticias online news outlet and reported on the effects of U.S. immigration policies on the Hispanic community. Duran’s lawyers have said he came to the United States without permission in 2006 after receiving death threats related to reporting on corruption in El Salvador.  
 
Duran spoke Wednesday from a statement he delivered in Spanish that was later translated into English and read to reporters. Duran questioned his arrest and criticized U.S. policies of arresting immigrants who don’t have permission to be in the country and targeting them for deportation. 
 
“I have seen the cruelty of the mass incarceration of immigrants firsthand and it is unnecessary and inhumane,” Duran said. 
 

Food portions were small in the detention facilities where he was held, Duran said. Facilities were infested by spiders and cockroaches, and for two months detainees at the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama only had water hoses with which to bathe, he said. 
 
“At Etowah, for two weeks, for no reason, the heater was turned on to its full capacity,” Duran said in the translated statement. “This happened during the summer and it was very difficult to sleep.” 
 
Duran also said there were no recreation facilities at Etowah and detainees “were locked up without being able to see the sunlight.” 
 
“This experience has been very difficult for me and my family, psychologically and economically,” Duran said. “I feel that my life has turned 180 degrees and I’m still trying to adapt.” 

Account challenged
 
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox challenged Duran’s assertion about bathing with hoses in a phone interview with The Associated Press. 
 
“If that were true, I would simply ask you, `Does it seem remotely plausible that you would not have heard about it at the time?’ ” Cox said. 
 
Cox said all ICE facilities are subject to regular inspections. The Etowah detention center has repeatedly been found to operate in compliance with ICE’s standards, Cox said. 
 
Cox said outdoor recreation at Etowah takes place within the detention center, but the recreation area has a fenced roof open to the outside. 
 
As Duran returns to life in Memphis, his deportation case continues. Lawyers with the Southern Poverty Law Center who have been working to free Duran are now concentrating on his request for asylum, said Gracie Willis, one of the center’s attorneys.  
 
Lawyers argue that conditions have worsened for journalists in El Salvador and Duran could be in danger if he returns. In granting his release, the Board of Immigration Appeals acknowledged that conditions for reporters have changed for the worse in Duran’s home country since his initial deportation order, Willis said. 
 
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has granted Duran an indefinite stay from deportation as his case is argued.  
 
“His individual case epitomizes the crushing weight of the immigration incarceration system and the toll it takes on individuals, families and communities,” Willis said at the news conference. 

…

Bolivia, which has one of South America’s highest rates of women being killed because of their gender, has declared femicide a national priority and will step up efforts to tackle growing violence, a top government rights official said on Tuesday.

Since January authorities have recorded 73 femicides – the killing of a woman by a man due to her gender – in the highest toll since 2013. The murders amount to one woman killed every two days.

“In terms of the femicide rate, Bolivia is in the top rankings,” said Tania Sanchez, head of the Plurinational Service for Women and Ending Patriarchy at Bolivia’s justice ministry, despite legal protections being in place.

A 2013 law defined femicide as a specific crime and provided tougher sentences for convicted offenders.

“We are not indifferent,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “The national priority is the lives of women, of all ages, and for that reason the president has raised this issue of femicide as the most extreme form (of violence),” Sanchez said.

Emergency Plan

The latest femicide victim was 26-year-old mother Mery Vila, killed last week by her partner who beat her on the head with a hammer.

This week, the government announced a 10-point “emergency plan.”

Worldwide, a third of all women experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives, according to the U.N. In Bolivia, violence against women is driven by entrenched machismo culture, which tends to blame victims and even condones it.

According to a 2016 national government survey, seven of every 10 women in Bolivia said they had suffered some type of violence inflicted by a partner.

Sanchez said the new plan “takes into account prevention, as well as care to victims and punishing violence, macho violence.”

A commission will also look at increasing government spending on gender violence and prevention, and evaluate various initiatives’ success.

“Funding is insufficient. There’s a great need in the regions,” Sanchez said.

Other measures include obligatory training courses for civil servants and public sector employees on gender violence and prevention.

School and university teachers will also receive training about “the psychological, sexual and physical violence” women and girls face.

The commission will also consider if femicide should be regarded as a crime of lesser humanity.

Widespread Gender Violence

Latin America and the Caribbean have the world’s highest rates of femicide, according to the United Nations.

Some 15 other countries in the region have introduced laws against femicide in recent years.

Victims of femicides in Bolivia and across the region often die at the hands of current or former boyfriends and husbands with a history of domestic abuse, experts say.

“We believe that this increase (in femicides) is related to a patriarchal system that appropriates the bodies and lives of women,” said Violeta Dominguez, head of U.N. Women in Bolivia.

Femicide cases in Bolivia often go unpunished, with victims’ families struggling for justice, Sanchez said.

Of 627 cases recorded since 2013, 288 remain open without a conviction, which Sanchez called “alarming.”

Bolivian President Evo Morales posted on Twitter on Monday “It’s time to end impunity, and tackle problems as a society.”

…

An FBI analysis of crudely made pipe bombs mailed to prominently critics of President Donald Trump has concluded they wouldn’t have worked, according to a report made public Tuesday.

The January report on the analysis was filed in Manhattan federal court, where U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff is scheduled to sentence Cesar Sayoc in September after the Florida man pleaded guilty to explosives-related charges in the scary episode weeks before midterm elections last year.

Sayoc, 57, faces a mandatory 10-year prison term and up to life. Sayoc has repeatedly said he never intended to injure anyone, a claim that his lawyers will likely argue was supported by the report.

The FBI said the devices wouldn’t have functioned because of their design, though it couldn’t be determined whether that was from poor design or the intent of the builder.

It said the fuzing system for each device lacked the proper components and assembly to enable it to function as a method of initiation for an explosive.

It also said the devices contained small fragments of broken glass, fragmentation often added to explosives to injure or kill people nearby.

Whether the devices might have exploded became a major focal point of recent hearings when Sayoc asserted that they could not and prosecutors seemed to leave the question open.

Sarah Baumbartel, an assistant federal defender, declined comment, though the issue was likely to be addressed when his lawyers submit written sentencing arguments next week.

In a letter to the judge several months ago, Sayoc wrote: “Under no circumstances my intent was to hurt or harm anyone. The intention was to only intimidate and scare.”

Sayoc admitted sending 16 rudimentary bombs – none of which detonated – to targets including Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joe Biden, several members of Congress, former President Barack Obama and actor Robert De Niro. Devices were also mailed to CNN offices in New York and Atlanta.

The bombs began turning up over a five-day stretch weeks before the midterms. They were mailed to addresses in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, California, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, Georgia.

Sayoc was arrested in late October at a Florida auto parts store. He had been living in a van plastered with Trump stickers and images of Trump opponents with crosshairs over their faces.

…

Country singer Luke Combs was just 6 years old when his mom and grandmother snuck him into his first concert by hiding him in the backseat of their car so he could go see Vince Gill play at a minor league baseball stadium.
 
It came full circle for the singer-songwriter from North Carolina when Gill came out to formally induct Combs, 29, into the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday night in Nashville, Tennessee.
 
Combs, who has taken country music by storm in the last two years with hit after hit off his debut major label record, told reporters backstage before the induction that he actually didn’t get to see Gill finish that performance 23 years ago.
 
“I actually missed my favorite song that night because I started crying because there was thunder in the background, so we ended up leaving early,” Combs said. “I am looking forward to saying hello to him.”
 
Combs sang two of his hits before Gill and ’90s country star Joe Diffie joined several other Opry members on stage for the induction into the country music institution. Gill praised Combs’ top-notch vocals before joking about Combs’ first introduction to his music.
 
“I obviously didn’t ruin him,” Gill said.
 
The Opry induction is just the latest accomplishment for the singer since releasing his double-platinum album, “This One’s For You,” in 2017. It produced five No. 1 country hits, including the four-times platinum “Hurricane” and the three-times platinum “When It Rains It Pours.”
 
That album, and the deluxe reissue, has been No. 1 on Billboard’s country album chart for a total 41 non-consecutive weeks and his follow-up EP “The Prequel,” also has been sitting in the top five of that chart as well for several weeks.

 
Combs had the most popular country album in 2018 and he is currently the leader in country album consumption through the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen Music.
 
“If people remember anything about what I’ve done, and I think I tell it to the crowd a lot too, is that if I can do this, you can do anything,” Combs said. “I am the proof that you can do anything that you set your mind to.”
 
Combs came to Nashville just about five years ago and started posting videos of his songs on social media and tried to shop his songs around on Music Row. In a few short years, he’s picked up new artist awards from both the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association and multiple awards from at the Billboard Music Awards. He was also nominated for the all-genre best new artist category at this year’s Grammy Awards, but lost to Dua Lipa.
 
The bearded and burly singer-songwriter, who wears the same type of fishing shirt every night on stage, said that all the recent success and attention has been a bit of an adjustment.  
 
“The hardest part has definitely been, you know, getting used to the fame part of it,” Combs said. “I’m just not a really flashy-like guy.”
 
All he wanted was to write songs and sing and at the end of the day, that’s what the Opry induction really came down to, he said.
 
“I’ll have the opportunity to continue to share my songs with people for the rest of my life,” he said.

…

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Tuesday sought to build on his appeal to rural voters with the release of a broad plan to revitalize rural America through investments in agriculture, rural economies and infrastructure.
 
“We have to ensure we bring along everyone,” the former vice president said in Manning, an Iowa town of about 1,500 residents. “Doesn’t matter if you live in skyscraper in Manhattan or here in Manning, your child is entitled” to every benefit America has to offer.
 
The plan builds on policies Biden has already released on health care and climate change and expands on a number of policies first introduced in the Obama administration. It sets the ambitious goal of making America’s agriculture industry the first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions, by expanding a program that incentivizes farmers to engage in conservation and by allowing farmers to participate in carbon markets in which companies can essentially pay them to offset their own emissions. The plan pledges to invest in “bio-based manufacturing” to bring jobs back to rural America by using agricultural byproducts in manufacturing.
 
It also includes a $20 billion investment in rural broadband infrastructure, a commitment to prioritize the poorest rural counties for federal investments and a promise to create a federal working group to help rural communities figure out how to apply for federal funds and resources. And it features a raft of policies aimed at bolstering rural health care access, including doubling the funding for community health centers and expanding the use of telehealth services and rural medical residency programs.
 
Biden’s plan is one of a series of rural-focused policy proposals released by 2020 Democratic presidential contenders. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have released policies focused specifically on the agriculture industry, while Klobuchar has also released a proposal to invest in rural infrastructure. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper have all released broader rural-focused plans that, like Biden’s, include planks aimed at an array of rural issues.
 
Biden is aligned with a number of other candidates in pledging to enforce antitrust laws to crack down on agriculture monopolies and bolster small family farms and to negotiate U.S. trade laws to help American farmers. But his plan already has one major backer in former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who called it a “clearly-stated and comprehensive vision” for rural America.
 
Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, remains beloved in the state, and his endorsement would be influential in the state’s caucuses, where Biden needs to make a strong showing if he hopes to have a shot at the nomination. But while he praised Biden’s plan — and hosted an event at his home for the former vice president on Monday night — he stopped short of endorsing Biden outright because he wanted to see more of the candidates’ plans.
 
“I think it’s a good solid plan, however, I think other candidates no doubt will come out with their plans,” he said in an interview. “Hopefully, what comes from all of this is a Democratic Party that is now perceived by people in rural areas and small towns as a party that is once again reengaging with rural folks.”

…

Support for U.S. President Donald Trump increased slightly among Republicans after he lashed out on Twitter over the weekend in a racially charged attack on four minority Democratic congresswomen, a Reuters/Ipsos public opinion poll shows.

The national survey, conducted on Monday and Tuesday after Trump told the lawmakers they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” showed his net approval among members of his Republican Party rose by 5 percentage points to 72%, compared with a similar poll that ran last week.

Trump, who is seeking re-election next year, has lost support, however, with Democrats and independents since the Sunday tweetstorm.

Among independents, about three out of 10 said they approved of Trump, down from four out of 10 a week ago. His net approval – the percentage who approve minus the percentage who disapprove – dropped by 2 points among Democrats in the poll.

Trump’s overall approval remained unchanged over the past week. According to the poll, 41% of the U.S. public said they approved of his performance in office, while 55% disapproved.

The results showed strong Republican backing for Trump as the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a symbolic resolution on Tuesday, largely along party lines, to condemn him for “racist comments” against the four Democratic lawmakers.

All four U.S. representatives – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – are U.S. citizens.

Three were born in the United States.

The public response to Trump’s statements appeared to be a little better for him than in 2017, after the president said there were “very fine people” on both sides of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

In that instance, Trump’s net approval dropped by about 10 points a week after the Charlottesville rally.

This time, while Democrats and some independents may see clear signs of racial intolerance woven throughout Trump’s tweets, Republicans are hearing a different message, said Vincent Hutchings, a political science and African-American studies professor at the University of Michigan.

“To Republicans, Trump is simply saying: ‘Hey, if you don’t like America, you can leave,” Hutchings said. “That is not at all controversial. If you already support Trump, then it’s very easy to interpret his comments that way.”

By criticizing liberal members of the House, Trump is “doing exactly what Republicans want him to do,” Hutchings said. “He’s taking on groups that they oppose.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English and gathered responses from 1,113 adults, including 478 Democrats and 406 Republicans in the United States. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 3 percentage points for the entire group and 5 points for Democrats or Republicans.

…

It took 400,000 people to put Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a half-century ago.

That massive workforce stretched across the U.S. and included engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, pilots, divers, seamstresses, secretaries and more who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve those first lunar footsteps .

Some of them will be taking part in festivities this week to mark the 50th anniversary

A brief look at four:

Amid the sea of white shirts, black ties and pocket protectors inside NASA’s firing room for the liftoff of Apollo 11 sat JoAnn Morgan.

July 16, 1969 was her prime-time debut as the first female launch controller. It wasn’t easy getting there.

Morgan, 78, who began working for NASA in 1958 while in college, typically got the overnight shift before launches. She’d be replaced by a male colleague a few hours before showtime.
 
“The rub came on being there at liftoff,” she recalled.
 
And there was the taunting. She’d get obscene phone calls at her desk at Kennedy Space Center and lewd remarks in the elevator.

The situation was even more strained next door at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The old launch-pad blockhouses there had a single restroom _ for men. So Morgan found herself dashing to a nearby building for a women’s restroom, just as portrayed in “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 hit movie.

“I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it,” Morgan said. “Finally, 99 percent of them accepted that `JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’ “
As Apollo 11 loomed, Morgan’s boss went to the top to get her on liftoff duty. By then, the harassment had pretty much stopped.

While NASA’s countdown clocks ticked toward a 9:32 a.m. launch, Morgan monitored ground instrumentation, everything from fire and lightning detectors to guidance computer data. When the official firing room photo was later taken _ showing Morgan with her left hand raised to her chin _ she was listening to Vice President Spiro Agnew address the team after the launch.

With Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way, her job was done, at least for Apollo 11. Morgan and her husband Larry, a high school band director, slipped away on vacation and watched the July 20 moon landing on a hotel TV. As they toasted the first lunar footsteps, he told her, “Honey, you’re going to be in the history books.”

Morgan went on to become Kennedy’s first female senior executive. Retired since 2003, she splits her time between Florida and Montana, and encourages young women to study engineering.

Tedd Olkowski was on emergency standby for the launch countdown of Apollo 11.

His job was to help Collins _ should the unlikely need arise before liftoff _ escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad.

Armstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment.

NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room.

The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. There was a similar setup under Pad 39B. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned.

Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras.

With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing.
“Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said.

Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago.

“I said, `Mike, I know you don’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago …’ “
You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11.

As Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969.

His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary.

Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection.

After the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap.

Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11’s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific.

Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. He still practices law in Houston at age 76.

“This is, to use the `Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.”

Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11’s moonmen back to Earth.

His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific.

The astronauts needed to be quarantined. Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape.

It may seem silly now, but the possibility of lunar bugs was “a really serious concern” back then, according to Hatleberg, who was 25 at the time and fresh from an underwater demolition team rotation in Vietnam.

Hatleberg was one of four frogmen on the recovery team who jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. The others secured the capsule, then moved upwind in a raft. That’s when Hatleberg moved in, carrying disinfectant.

Covered in a protective garment, Hatleberg momentarily opened Columbia’s hatch to toss in a bag with three of the outfits. Once the astronauts had the gray garments on, they emerged from the capsule one by one onto a waiting raft.

The first spaceman out offered his hand to shake. Hatleberg paused _ shaking hands was not part of the NASA protocol that he’d practiced. He recalled thinking, “I was the last person who could screw the whole thing up.”

Hatleberg shook hands anyway.
 
Once the astronauts were wiped down by Hatleberg with a potent bleach solution, they were lifted into a helicopter and flown to the USS Hornet, where their quarantine mobile home awaited them along with President Richard Nixon.
 
Hatleberg scoured Columbia before it, too, was transported to the aircraft carrier. He cleaned the raft and the flotation collar that had been around the spacecraft, then punctured them and watched them sink with his own decontaminated garment, any moon bugs swallowed by the sea.

“There were so many other people whose jobs were more important than mine,” Hatleberg said. Looking back, he’s still in awe at what the Apollo astronauts accomplished. “They were the ones who risked their lives to take that giant leap for all mankind. They’re the heroes and they always will be _ in my heart.”  
 
Hatleberg _ who at 75 is working again as an engineer in Laurel, Maryland _ said he always thought Aldrin was the first one he helped from the capsule. That is until a year or so ago, he said, when a Hornet curator pulled out old footage and zoomed in on the name tag.

It read Armstrong.

…