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"The indictment charges twelve Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," Deputy Rod Rosenstein announced at a press conference at the Department of Justice on Friday afternoon. (Photo: C-SPAN)
This is a breaking story... Check back for possible updates...
Just two days before a scheduled summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that will take place in Finland, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday the indictments of a dozen Russian military officers for hacking--the latest charges stemming directly from the probe of Special Counselor Robert Mueller into foreign interference of U.S. elections.
"The indictment charges twelve Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," Rosenstein announced at a press conference at the Department of Justice just after 12:00 PM eastern.
Striking in the indictment is the stated finding that key sources of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton--both DC Leaks and the hacker persona known as Guccifer 2.0--were both the creation and under the control of the GRU, the Russian government's cladenstine intelligence service.
\u201cIn light of the charges against 12 GRU officers announced by Rod Rosenstein, @realDonaldTrump should cancel his meeting with Putin, who ordered the attack on the US. @POTUS shouldn't meet Putin until he accepts responsibility. And Trump should definitely not meet him alone. https://t.co/bP71DdGOHB\u201d— Ted Lieu (@Ted Lieu) 1531500322
\u201cMueller gets an A+ for the timing of these indictments, right before Trump is to meet with Mueller. \n\nWondering whether Trump will have the courage to challenge Putin & say Putin is full of it when he denies that his government had any role in the hacks during the 2016 campaign. https://t.co/mwmuIxzApS\u201d— Steven Greenhouse (@Steven Greenhouse) 1531499841
According to a statement put out by the DOJ, the indictment includes 11 criminal counts:
Read the full official indictment here.
Watch the Rosenstein press conference:
\u201cDeputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces the indictment of 12 Russian military officers "for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election\u201d https://t.co/kr52fbY9AO https://t.co/foKb74BAhs\u201d— CNN Politics (@CNN Politics) 1531498832
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This is a breaking story... Check back for possible updates...
Just two days before a scheduled summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that will take place in Finland, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday the indictments of a dozen Russian military officers for hacking--the latest charges stemming directly from the probe of Special Counselor Robert Mueller into foreign interference of U.S. elections.
"The indictment charges twelve Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," Rosenstein announced at a press conference at the Department of Justice just after 12:00 PM eastern.
Striking in the indictment is the stated finding that key sources of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton--both DC Leaks and the hacker persona known as Guccifer 2.0--were both the creation and under the control of the GRU, the Russian government's cladenstine intelligence service.
\u201cIn light of the charges against 12 GRU officers announced by Rod Rosenstein, @realDonaldTrump should cancel his meeting with Putin, who ordered the attack on the US. @POTUS shouldn't meet Putin until he accepts responsibility. And Trump should definitely not meet him alone. https://t.co/bP71DdGOHB\u201d— Ted Lieu (@Ted Lieu) 1531500322
\u201cMueller gets an A+ for the timing of these indictments, right before Trump is to meet with Mueller. \n\nWondering whether Trump will have the courage to challenge Putin & say Putin is full of it when he denies that his government had any role in the hacks during the 2016 campaign. https://t.co/mwmuIxzApS\u201d— Steven Greenhouse (@Steven Greenhouse) 1531499841
According to a statement put out by the DOJ, the indictment includes 11 criminal counts:
Read the full official indictment here.
Watch the Rosenstein press conference:
\u201cDeputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces the indictment of 12 Russian military officers "for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election\u201d https://t.co/kr52fbY9AO https://t.co/foKb74BAhs\u201d— CNN Politics (@CNN Politics) 1531498832
This is a breaking story... Check back for possible updates...
Just two days before a scheduled summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin that will take place in Finland, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday the indictments of a dozen Russian military officers for hacking--the latest charges stemming directly from the probe of Special Counselor Robert Mueller into foreign interference of U.S. elections.
"The indictment charges twelve Russian military officers by name for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," Rosenstein announced at a press conference at the Department of Justice just after 12:00 PM eastern.
Striking in the indictment is the stated finding that key sources of leaked information from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton--both DC Leaks and the hacker persona known as Guccifer 2.0--were both the creation and under the control of the GRU, the Russian government's cladenstine intelligence service.
\u201cIn light of the charges against 12 GRU officers announced by Rod Rosenstein, @realDonaldTrump should cancel his meeting with Putin, who ordered the attack on the US. @POTUS shouldn't meet Putin until he accepts responsibility. And Trump should definitely not meet him alone. https://t.co/bP71DdGOHB\u201d— Ted Lieu (@Ted Lieu) 1531500322
\u201cMueller gets an A+ for the timing of these indictments, right before Trump is to meet with Mueller. \n\nWondering whether Trump will have the courage to challenge Putin & say Putin is full of it when he denies that his government had any role in the hacks during the 2016 campaign. https://t.co/mwmuIxzApS\u201d— Steven Greenhouse (@Steven Greenhouse) 1531499841
According to a statement put out by the DOJ, the indictment includes 11 criminal counts:
Read the full official indictment here.
Watch the Rosenstein press conference:
\u201cDeputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announces the indictment of 12 Russian military officers "for conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election\u201d https://t.co/kr52fbY9AO https://t.co/foKb74BAhs\u201d— CNN Politics (@CNN Politics) 1531498832
"This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler.
Although US President Donald Trump's administration likes to boast that he puts "American workers first," several news reports published on Monday document the president's attacks on the rights of working people and labor unions.
As longtime labor reporter Steven Greenhouse explained in The Guardian, Trump throughout his second term has "taken dozens of actions that hurt workers, often by cutting their pay or making their jobs more dangerous."
Among other things, Greenhouse cited Trump's decision to halt a regulation intended to protect coal miners from lung disease, as well as his decision to strip a million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights.
Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, told Greenhouse that Trump's actions amount to a "big betrayal" of his promises to look out for US workers during the 2024 presidential campaign.
"His attacks on unions are coming fast and furious," she said. "He talks a good game of being for working people, but he's doing the absolute opposite. This is a government that is by, and for, the CEOs and billionaires."
Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, similarly told Greenhouse that Trump has been "absolutely, brazenly anti-worker," and she cited him ripping away an increase in the minimum wage for federal contractors that had been enacted by former President Joe Biden as a prime example.
"The minimum wage is incredibly popular," she said. "He just took away the minimum wage from hundreds of thousands of workers. That blew my mind."
NPR published its own Labor Day report that zeroed in on how the president is "decimating" federal employee unions by issuing March and August executive orders stripping them of the power to collectively bargain for better working conditions.
So far, nine federal agencies have canceled their union contracts as a result of the orders, which are based on a provision in federal law that gives the president the power to terminate collective bargaining at agencies that are primarily involved with national security.
The Trump administration has embraced a maximalist interpretation of this power and has demanded the end of collective bargaining at departments that aren't primarily known as national security agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Weather Service.
However, Trump's attacks on organized labor haven't completely intimidated government workers from joining unions. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Trump administration's cuts to the National Park Service earlier this year inspired hundreds of workers at the California-based Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon national parks to unionize.
Although labor organizers had been trying unsuccessfully for years to get park workers to sign on, that changed when the Trump administration took a hatchet to parks' budgets and enacted mass layoffs.
"More than 97% of employees at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks who cast ballots voted to unionize, with results certified last week," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "More than 600 staffers—including interpretive park rangers, biologists, firefighters, and fee collectors—are now represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees."
Even so, many workers who succeed in forming unions may no longer get their grievances heard given the state of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
As documented by Timothy Noah in The New Republic, the NLRB is now "hanging by a thread" in the wake of a court ruling that declared the board's structure to be unconstitutional because it barred the president from being able to fire NLRB administrative judges at will.
"The ruling doesn't shut down the NLRB entirely because it applies only to cases in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, where the 5th Circuit has jurisdiction," Noah explained. "But Jennifer Abruzzo, who was President Joe Biden's NLRB general counsel, told me that the decision will 'open the floodgates for employers to forum-shop and seek to get injunctions' in those three states."
Noah noted that this lawsuit was brought in part by SpaceX owner and one-time Trump ally Elon Musk, and he accused the Trump NLRB of waging a "half-hearted" fight against Musk's attack on workers' rights.
Thanks to Trump and Musk's actions, Noah concluded, American oligarchs "can toast the NLRB's imminent destruction."
"The Constitution gives this authority to the states and Congress, not you!" said the head of Democracy Defenders Fund, threatening a lawsuit.
US President Donald Trump continued his "authoritarian takeover of our election system" over the weekend, threatening an executive order requiring every voter to present identification, which experts swiftly denounced as clearly "unconstitutional."
"Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform late Saturday. "I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!! Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military. USE PAPER BALLOTS ONLY!!!"
Less than two weeks ago, Trump declared on the platform that "I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we're at it, Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES." He claimed, without evidence, that voting by mail leads to "MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD," and promised to take executive action ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Those posts came as battles over his March executive order (EO), "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections," are playing out in federal court. The measure was largely blocked by multiple district judges, but the president is appealing.
Trump's voter ID post provoked a new threat of legal action to stop his unconstitutional attacks on the nation's election system.
"Go ahead, make my day Mr. Trump," said Norm Eisen, who co-founded Democracy Defenders Fund and served as White House special counsel for ethics and government reform during the Obama administration.
"We at Democracy Defenders Fund immediately sued you and got an injunction on your first voting EO," he noted. "We will do the same here if you try it again. The Constitution gives this authority to the states and Congress, not you!"
In addition to pointing out that Trump is "an absentee voter himself," Democracy Docket explained Sunday that "the US Constitution gives the states the primary authority to regulate elections, while empowering Congress to 'at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.' The Framers never considered authorizing the president to oversee elections."
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures: "Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls. The remaining 14 states and Washington, DC use other methods to verify the identity of voters."
Those laws already prevent Americans from participating in elections, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
"Overly burdensome photo ID requirements block millions of eligible American citizens from voting," the center's voter ID webpage says. "As many as 11% of eligible voters do not have the kind of ID that is required by states with strict ID requirements, and that percentage is even higher among seniors, minorities, people with disabilities, low-income voters, and students."
The resolution is "a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide," said the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Israel's actions in Gaza "meet the legal definition of genocide," an overwhelming majority of the world's leading scholars on the subject said on Monday.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has passed a three-page resolution that outlines a wide range of Israeli actions that it says constitute genocide, including deliberate attacks against civilians, starvation, deprivation of humanitarian aid, sexual violence, and forced displacement of the population.
In addition to the actions of the Israeli military, the resolution also references statements by high-level Israeli government officials as proof of genocidal intent.
Specifically, the resolution cites "Israeli governmental leaders, war cabinet ministers, and senior army officers" who "have made explicit statements of 'intent to destroy,' characterizing Palestinians in Gaza as a whole as enemies and 'human animals' and stating the intention of inflicting 'maximum damage' on Gaza, 'flattening Gaza,' and turning Gaza into 'hell.'"
The scholars also note Israeli officials' support for a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to expel all Palestinians from Gaza, which they contend "amounts to ethnic cleansing."
The resolution, which passed with the support of 86% of IAGS members who voted on it, concludes by calling on the Israeli government to stop all genocidal actions in Gaza; comply with the provisional measures orders issued earlier this year by the International Court of Justice; and "support a process of repair and transitional justice that will afford democracy, freedom, dignity, and security for all people of Gaza."
Melanie O'Brien, president of IAGS and professor of international law at the University of Western Australia, told The Guardian that the scholars' resolution is "a definitive statement from experts in the field of genocide studies that what is going on on the ground in Gaza is genocide."
The IAGS resolution comes just a little more than a week after the United Nations-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Initiative (IPC) declared a famine in Gaza that it warned was projected to get even worse in the coming weeks.
"Between mid-August and the end of September 2025, conditions are expected to further worsen with famine projected to expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis," the IPC stated. "Nearly a third of the population (641,000 people) are expected to face catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5), while those in emergency (IPC Phase 4) will likely rise to 1.14 million (58%). Acute malnutrition is projected to continue worsening rapidly."
The Gaza Health Ministry currently estimates that more than 330 people in Gaza, including over 120 children, have so far died from severe hunger as a result of the Israeli blockade that has for months prevented the delivery of humanitarian aid.
