Politics

Prince Andrew isn’t hiding from the Department of Justice, a source close to the Prince told me on Friday — and Geoffrey Berman, US attorney for the Southern District of New York, isn’t telling the truth. Who to believe, the prince or the prosecutor? Andrew has kept his head below the parapet since discussing his connections to Jeffrey Epstein in a disastrous BBC interview last November. But Berman has been a voluble and public presence. Three times in the last six months, Berman has accused Andrew and his lawyers of refusing to co-operate with the Department of Justice’s request that he make a witness statement. Andrew and his team have said nothing — until now.

Are you ready for the second blame wave? As the country braces itself for an inevitable repeat surge in COVID-19 infections, we’re told red-state governors 'opened too soon'. The next outbreak, we can be sure, will be something to do with the fact the President decided to resume his political rallies, approximately two weeks from now. What nobody says is that individual or social behavior is the cause. It can’t possibly be the thousands of people closely together marching down city streets yelling and chanting, some with masks, some not. The guidelines fell completely by the wayside for the Democrats and much of network cable news. In the middle of May, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser extended her lockdown order through to the June 8.

Dolphins returned to the canals of Venice during the COVID-19 lockdown, and neoconservatives are returning to the Democratic party. Bill Kristol and his colleagues at the Bulwark support Joe Biden for president, even though an anti-Trump Republican of sorts briefly jumped into the race. Michigan congressman Justin Amash earned the esteem of the Kristol crew when he collaborated with Democrats to impeach Donald Trump last year. But the Bulwark feared that if Amash was on the ballot as the Libertarian party’s presidential nominee, he’d take votes away from Biden.

Crime-ridden Baltimore finally dodged a bullet this week. The bullet, in this case, was former mayor Sheila Dixon, who nearly became mayor again, despite resigning from office a decade ago when a jury found her guilty of misdemeanor embezzlement. Perhaps this loss can undo the curse of the Baltimore mayor’s office.Considering the string of scandals plaguing recent mayors, curse may not be a strong enough word. Decide for yourself: 2010: Mayor Dixon, who assumed office in 2007 after Mayor Martin O’Malley was elected Maryland governor, resigns after soliciting gift cards from a wealthy developer that were intended for poor children but were used on shopping sprees while she was city council president. City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake assumes the office.

SeattleAh, Seattle, that environmentally obsessed city where all is decorous, the sidewalks immaculately swept, the parks rigorously trimmed, proverbial for its snow-capped mountains and sparkling lakes, and now, too, for its riotous Capitol Hill residential neighborhood where free spirits roam with their feral dogs and semi-automatic weapons. Their little community survives — even flourishes — by handing out free stuff like gas masks from the back of trucks, eating lentils cooked over an open fire, and sustaining each other’s morale by peak-decibel showings of the racially-themed movie 13th. Apparently they’re in it for the long haul.

I was in my hotel room in London when the second wave of riots in Ferguson broke out. The clashes began on November 24, 2014 after a grand jury decided, rightly, not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown, a black man who, according to black eyewitnesses, was shot to death by Wilson after charging at him. As a filmmaker who often travels to hotspots around the world to document the absurdity of the human condition, I wrestled with whether I should cut short my London trip, fly directly to the St Louis suburb and risk myself and my crew by documenting the chaos breaking out there. Arriving in Ferguson, I witnessed heart-wrenching scenes of an American city in flames.

One of the largest obstacles standing in the way of Donald Trump’s re-election is his weakness in every big city in America. Some cities produce such large vote advantages for the Democrats that a Republican simply can’t make up those votes across the rest of the state. That disadvantage is a write off in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago because Trump is guaranteed to lose the deep blue states those cities are in. It will matter, however, in nine battleground states that will decide who wins the 2020 election. Specifically, in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the vote totals in the big cities and counties could make it nearly impossible to win those states in the suburban and rural areas.

After weeks of state-mandated lockdown, thousands of preventable nursing home deaths and days of angry protests and looting, New York officially reopened today, all thanks to the so-called leadership of its Mayor and Governor. With the economy in tatters, store-fronts boarded up or broken and citizens in the street demanding justice, Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo speak with one voice as they say to New Yorkers: you're welcome. 'New York City’s restart begins today,' tweeted Mayor de Blasio. 'It’s been a long road to get here. New Yorkers have earned it day by day.' 'New Yorkers bent the curve by being smart,' said Gov. Cuomo at his daily press briefing. 'We’re celebrating. We’re back. We’re reopening. We’re excited. Our mojo’s back.

Thanks to the nature of digital media, the last 10 days can be seen in entirely different ways. On one feed rioters turn urban centers into scenes from a Purge movie, indiscriminately attacking people and property, advancing the cause of racial justice by burning down immigrant-run businesses and murdering a retired black police captain. On another feed, it is the cops who are running amok. Festooned with tactical gear and high-tech weaponry (or old-fashioned clubs), the police appear to attack people indiscriminately — from old men to young women out buying groceries to homeless guys in wheelchairs — apparently for the crime of being in their way.

The revolution is eating itself at the New York Times. After the Times ran Sen. Tom Cotton’s call for using the National Guard to quell riots, a riot broke out in the Times’s News department. Although a poll earlier this week found that 63 percent of Democrats ‘strongly’ or ‘somewhat’ supported Cotton’s suggestion, the woke warriors at the Times were truly triggered. On Thursday, some 800 staffers broke the terms of their contracts and publicly denounced their employer. Most demonstrated their fearless individuality by retweeting the same sentence: ‘This article endangers Black @nytimes staff.’There’s no mob without a lynching.