Author: CNN

Washington
CNN
 — 

The US has intelligence that the Chinese government is considering providing Russia with drones and ammunition for use in the war in Ukraine, three sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.

It does not appear that Beijing has made a final decision yet, the sources said, but negotiations between Russia and China about the price and scope of the equipment are ongoing.

Since invading Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly requested drones and ammunition from China, the sources familiar with the intelligence said, and Chinese leadership has been actively debating over the last several months whether or not to send the lethal aid, the sources added.

US intelligence officials have collected information in recent weeks, however, that suggests China is now leaning towards providing the equipment. The US and its allies last week began publicly warning about China’s potential military support to Russia in an effort to deter Beijing from moving ahead with it and crossing a point of no return in terms of being seen as a pariah on the world stage, US officials said.

US officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen suggesting the recent shift in China’s posture, but senior officials have been concerned enough that they have been actively sharing the intelligence with allies and partners over the last week.

The National Security Council and State Department declined to comment and CNN has asked the Chinese and Russian embassies in Washington for comment.

Asked on Friday about the potential sale of lethal equipment to Russia, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in a daily briefing that “China has always taken a prudent and responsible approach to military exports and does not provide any arms sales to conflict areas or belligerents.”

The provision of drones and ammunition – which would likely be for small arms like handheld weaponry rather than larger artillery, the sources said – would mark a significant escalation of China’s support for Russia, which to date has been largely limited to Chinese companies providing non-lethal equipment like helmets, flak jackets, and satellite imagery to Russian forces.

It would also provide a potentially significant boost to Russian capabilities at a critical moment. Russian fighters are running so low on ammunition that Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, on Wednesday published photos of several dozen dead Wagner fighters and publicly blamed their deaths on the Russian Ministry of Defense’s inability to supply them with enough ammunition.

The German publication Der Spiegel first reported that China may provide attack drones to Russia.

“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on last weekend.

Blinken’s Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, responded to the US’ allegations earlier this week, saying that China’s position on Ukraine “can be simply put as promoting peace talks.”

“China will continue to firmly stand on the side of dialogue and peace and play a constructive part in easing the situation,” he said. China also proposed a “peace plan” for the Ukraine war on Friday that US officials remain highly skeptical of.

Russia has purchased hundreds of weapons-capable drones from Iran in recent months but is burning through them quickly with repeated attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian areas.

To date, Beijing has been hesitant about providing lethal equipment that might be traced back to China because of the risk of international blowback, and Beijing still wants the provision of any equipment to Russia to be deniable and ideally non-attributable, the sources said.

That is why much of the non-lethal support that has gone to Russia’s military to date has been small and done through Chinese companies. As CNN previously reported, the Biden administration has confronted Beijing directly about that military assistance to ascertain how complicit the central government has been.

But the lines between public and private entities in China are negligible, the sources said, and US intelligence suggests that Beijing has been using the companies for plausible deniability.

The US has also begun seeing “disturbing trend lines” in China’s support for the Russian military, officials said.

Wang visited Russia this week and Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in the coming months.

Editor’s Note: Kirsten Powers is a CNN senior political analyst and New York Times bestselling author whose most recent book is “Saving Grace: Speak Your Truth, Stay Centered and Learn to Coexist with People Who Drive You Nuts.” She writes the newsletter “Things That Matter.” Follow her on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook @KirstenPowers. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
 — 

In his new book, “It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism,” Bernie Sanders chooses the moniker “uber-capitalist” to describe our current economic system — one that feels perfectly designed to enrich a tiny few while making life miserable for nearly everyone else.

Other terms work just as well, whether it’s “hyper-capitalism” or “late-stage capitalism,” to describe capitalism untethered to morality or decency. Whatever you call it, it’s not working, except for the super-rich, who Sanders aptly labels oligarchs.

Some people would say that capitalism is immoral, no matter what form it takes. But that doesn’t seem to be Sanders’ argument. Rather than making the case for a Democratic socialist government, Sanders appears to want a reform of American capitalism and to see the country embrace a kind of New Deal liberalism.

Sanders has said over the years that he sees Scandinavia’s generous social safety nets as a model of the kind of system he supports. In his book, he emphasizes an inspiration closer to home: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — in particular, FDR’s insight that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”

Any person who is living paycheck to paycheck, working to the point of exhaustion just to survive and stay on top of their debt surely recognizes this statement is true. How “free” is a person really if all they do is work?

How “free” is someone who lives with a debilitating health condition because they can’t afford the medication or health care that could cure them? How “free” is a person who starts adulthood weighted down with a mind-bending amount of debt incurred just to get the education they need to get a job?

Many Americans are essentially indentured servants to an overclass that continues to amass wealth and power, while failing to pass on their largesse to their employees. Between 1978 and 2018, CEO pay skyrocketed by more than 900%, while worker pay grew by just under 12%, according to a report by the Economic Policy Institute.

These chronically underpaid employees are also often treated as objects by their employers. According to an investigation by The New York Times, “Eight of the 10 largest private U.S. employers track the productivity metrics of individual workers, many in real time.” Workers complained that “their jobs are relentless, that they don’t have control — and in some cases, that they don’t even have enough time to use the bathroom.”

This is not freedom.

Americans work so much and are so bereft of free time that The New York Times suggested in a series on New Year’s tips that you might increase your happiness if you scheduled eight-minute phone calls with friends and loved ones, and mutually promised to not go over the allotted time.

The craziest part is that it doesn’t actually sound crazy, at least to an American. Much of what we consider normal here — such as “hustle and grind” culture or working around the clock for employers who would fire us without a second thought — is baffling to our peers in many industrialized countries who prioritize their mental and physical health and don’t suffer from a late-stage capitalist productivity fetish.

Major companies in the United States don’t just mistreat their workers; they lack even a modicum of decency when it comes to their responsibility to consumers and the society in which they live. Today, we are a country where pharmaceutical companies making record profits and paying their executives obscene amounts of money price gouge on drugs that Americans need to survive. Sanders has rightly blasted Moderna’s plans to quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine, which was developed in partnership with the government. (Moderna later announced its vaccines would remain free.)

Most people can’t even afford a home mortgage while a subsection of society is plunking down cash for their new domicile. The share of buyers purchasing a home for the first time is at a 41-year low, while wealthy buyers are able to pay cash.

“Only the wealthy are essentially buying homes,” Lawrence Yun, chief economist at National Association of Realtors, told The Washington Post. “If this trend was to continue, that means something fundamentally is wrong with society.”

But we don’t need this trend to continue to know our society is off the rails. The results are in. This system is not just unjust, it is deadly: The US has earned the unwelcome distinction of having the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rate among wealthy countries.

Whether one agrees with the myriad solutions Sanders lays out in his book to stop the scourge of uber-capitalism, there is no question that he has accurately framed the problem as being about freedom. The Vermont senator has been nothing short of prophetic in warning against the dire consequences of a culture that prizes productivity above all else and coddles and venerates the super-rich.

Perhaps most of all, Sanders has powerfully articulated — both in his campaigns and his latest book — the profound lack of decency and utter immorality of the current American economic system. Now it’s up to all of us to decide what to do about it.

CNN
 — 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are creating a bipartisan task force to determine a process to boot members off committees going forward, a source familiar told CNN.

McCarthy is taking the lead in creating it and Jeffries has agreed to name members to it. The list of members who have been tapped for the task force are: GOP Reps. Tom Cole, Nancy Mace, David Joyce and Ken Buck, and Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern, Veronica Escobar, Nikema Williams and Derek Kilmer.

This task force came out of a deal between Mace and McCarthy, in order to get Mace on board to support in booting Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar off of the House Foreign Affairs committee.

Earlier this month, Mace announced she had worked on a deal with congressional leadership to ensure there would be due process going forward on House committee removals.

“Working to protect the Constitution and due process has been a cornerstone of my work in Congress. Speaker Kevin McCarthy made his commitment today that I will lead the effort to amend the House Rules to provide due process and prevent the politicizing of committee removals in the future,” Mace said in a statement at the time.

In early February, the Republican-led House of Representatives voted along party lines to remove Omar from the committee. House Republicans argued Omar should not serve on the panel in light of past statements she had made related to Israel that in some cases had been criticized by members of both parties as antisemitic.

Democrats criticized the push to oust Omar, arguing it amounted to an act of political revenge and that the Minnesota Democrat had been held accountable for her past remarks.

Prior to the vote, however, some Republican members had expressed reluctance to the push to oust Omar from the powerful committee.

The Washington Post was first to report the news about the task force.

The move by Republicans to oust Omar came after Democrats previously removed Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar from committee assignments in 2021 when they controlled the House.

The House approved a resolution to censure and strip Gosar of committee assignments, after the Arizona Republican posted a photoshopped amime video to social media showing him appearing to kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.

The House voted to remove Greene from her committee assignments following the discovery of incendiary and violent past statements.

McCarthy had vowed that if Republicans won back the House majority, he would strip Reps. Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and Omar of committee assignments, arguing that Democrats had created a “new standard” following Gosar and Greene’s oustings.

Following through on his promise, McCarthy denied seats on the House Intelligence Committee to Swalwell and Schiff, the former chairman of the panel.

Gosar and Greene have since been given committee assignments in the new Congress since Republicans won back control of the House.

CNN
 — 

Justice Samuel Alito of the US Supreme Court asked this week what may be, to millions of average internet users, the most relatable question to come out of a pair of high-stakes oral arguments about the future of social media.

“Would Google collapse, and the internet be destroyed,” Alito asked a Google attorney on Tuesday, “if YouTube and therefore Google were potentially liable” for the content its users posted?

Alito’s question aimed to cut through the jargon and theatrics of a nearly three-hour debate over whether YouTube can be sued for algorithmically recommending videos created by the terrorist group ISIS.

His question sought to explore what might really happen in a world where the Court rolls back a 27-year-old liability shield, allowing tech platforms to be sued over how they host and display videos, forum posts, and other user-generated content. The Google case, as well as a related case argued the next day involving Twitter, are viewed as pivotal because the outcome could have ramifications for websites large and small — and, as Justice Brett Kavanaugh observed, “the digital economy, with all sorts of effects on workers and consumers, retirement plans and what have you.”

The litigation could have vast implications for everything from online restaurant reviews to likes and retweets to the coding of new applications.

Though the justices this week seemed broadly hesitant to overturn or significantly narrow those legal protections, the possibility remains that the Court may limit immunity for websites in ways that could reshape what users see in their apps and browsers — or, in Google’s words, “upend the internet.”

Passed in 1996, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act sought to foster the growth of the early internet. Faced with a technological revolution it wanted to nurture, Congress created a special form of legal immunity for websites so they could develop uninhibited by lawsuits that might suffocate the ecosystem before it had a chance to flourish. In the time since, companies ranging from AOL to Twitter have invoked Section 230 to nip user-content lawsuits in the bud, arguing, usually successfully, that they are not responsible for the content their users create.

For decades, courts have interpreted Section 230 to give broad protections to websites. The legislation’s original authors have repeatedly said their intent was to give websites the benefit of the doubt and to encourage innovation in content moderation.

But as large online platforms have become more central to the country’s political and economic affairs, policymakers have come to doubt whether that shield is still worth keeping intact, at least in its current form. Democrats say the law has given websites a free pass to overlook hate speech and misinformation; Republicans say it lets them suppress right-wing viewpoints. The Supreme Court isn’t the only one reviewing Section 230; Congress and the White House have also proposed changes to the law, though legislation to update Section 230 has consistently stalled.

Understanding how the internet may work differently without Section 230 — or if the law is significantly narrowed — starts with one, simple concept: Shrinking the liability shield means exposing websites and internet users to more lawsuits.

Virtually all of the potential consequences for the internet, both good and bad, flow from that single idea. How many suits should websites and their users have to face?

For skeptics of the tech industry, and critics of social media platforms, more lawsuits would imply more opportunities to hold tech companies accountable. As in the Google and Twitter cases, websites might see more allegations that they aided and abetted terrorism because they hosted terrorist content. But it wouldn’t end there, according to Chief Justice John Roberts.

“I suspect there would be many, many times more defamation suits, discrimination suits… infliction of emotional distress, antitrust actions,” Roberts said Tuesday, ticking off a list of possible claims that might be brought.

Roberts’ remark underscores the enormous role Section 230 has played in deflecting litigation from the tech industry — or, as its opponents might say, shielding it from proper oversight. Allowing the courts to scrutinize the tech industry more would bring it in line with other industries, some have argued.

“The massive social media industry has grown up largely shielded from the courts and the normal development of a body of law. It is highly irregular for a global industry that wields staggering influence to be protected from judicial inquiry,” wrote the Anti-Defamation League in a Supreme Court brief.

For a moment, Justice Elena Kagan seemed to agree on Tuesday.

“Every other industry has to internalize the costs of its conduct,” she said. “Why is it that the tech industry gets a pass? A little bit unclear.”

Exactly how the internet may change if the Supreme Court rules against the tech industry depends heavily on the specifics of that hypothetical ruling, and how expansive or narrowly tailored it is.

But in general, exposing online platforms to greater liability creates incentives for those sites to avoid being sued, which is how you would get potentially dramatic changes to the basic look and feel of the internet, according to the tech industry, digital rights groups and legal scholars of Section 230.

Websites would face a terrible choice in that scenario, they have argued. One option would be to preemptively remove any and all content that anyone, anywhere could even remotely allege is objectionable, no matter how minor — reducing the range of allowed speech on social media.

Another option would be to stop moderating content altogether, to avoid claims that a site knew or should have known that a piece of objectionable material was on its platform. Not moderating, and thus not knowing about libelous content, was enough to insulate the online portal CompuServe from liability in an important 1991 case that helped give rise to Section 230.

The sheer volume of lawsuits could crush website owners or internet users that can’t afford to fight court battles on multiple fronts, leading to the kind of business ripple effects Kavanaugh raised. That could include personal blogs with comment sections, or e-commerce sites that host product reviews. And the surviving websites would alter their behavior to avoid suffering the same fate.

Without a specific scenario to consider, it’s hard to grasp how all this would play out in practice. Helpfully, multiple online platforms have described to the Court ways in which they might change their operations.

Wikipedia has not explicitly said it could go under. But in a Supreme Court brief, it said it owes its existence to Section 230 and could be forced to compromise on its non-profit educational mission if it became liable for the writings of its millions of volunteer editors.

If websites became liable for their automated recommendations, it could affect newsfeed-style content ranking, automated friend and post suggestions, search auto-complete and other methods by which websites display information to users, other companies have said.

In that interpretation of the law, Craigslist said in a Supreme Court brief it could be forced to stop letting users browse by geographic region or by categories such as “bikes,” “boats” or “books,” instead having to provide an “undifferentiated morass of information.”

If Yelp could be sued by anyone who felt a user restaurant review was misleading, it argued, it would be incentivized to stop presenting the most helpful recommendations and could even be helpless in the face of platform manipulation; business owners acting in bad faith could flood the site with fraudulent reviews in an effort to boost themselves, but at the cost of Yelp’s utility to users.

And Microsoft has said that if Section 230 no longer protects algorithms, it would jeopardize its ability to suggest new job openings to users of LinkedIn, or to connect software developers to interesting and useful software projects on the online code repository GitHub.

Liability could also extend to individual internet users. A Supreme Court ruling restricting immunity for recommendations could mean any decision to like, upvote, retweet or share content could be identified as a “recommendation” and trigger a viable lawsuit, Reddit and a number of volunteer Reddit moderators wrote in a brief.

That potential nightmare scenario was affirmed in Tuesday’s oral argument, when Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Eric Schnapper, an attorney going up against Google, to explore the implications of his legal theory. Schnapper represented the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, an American student killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris; the Gonzalez family has alleged that Google should be held liable under a US antiterrorism law for its YouTube recommendations of ISIS content.

“If you go on Twitter, and you’re using Twitter, and you retweet, or you ‘like’ or you say ‘check this out,’” Barrett said, “on your theory, I’m not protected by Section 230.”

“That’s content you’ve created,” Schnapper agreed.

The sweeping, seemingly unbounded theory of liability advanced by Schnapper seemed to make many justices, particularly the Court’s conservatives, nervous.

Both liberals and conservatives on the Court struggled to identify a limiting principle that could allow the Court to ratchet back the scope of Section 230 without also raising legal risks for innocuous internet use.

Kagan told Schnapper that even if she didn’t necessarily buy his opponent Google’s “‘sky is falling’ stuff… boy, there is a lot of uncertainty about going the way you would have us go, in part, just because of the difficulty of drawing lines in this area.”

CNN
 — 

There’s always a handful of “American Idol” contestants who make the bold choice of auditioning with a song by one of the judges, and this season is no different.

In an exclusive clip from this Sunday’s upcoming episode shared with CNN, contestant Caroline Kole lights up the room by auditioning with one of Katy Perry’s most iconic songs – “Firework,” the hit single off her 2010 album “Teenage Dream.”

“I think it’s a song that you all know and if you do, feel free to sing along,” Kole told judges Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie.

While Kole performed Perry’s popular empowerment anthem, Perry took Kole up on her offer. As Kole strummed her acoustic guitar and belted the chorus, Perry harmonized with Kole, turning the audition into an impromptu duet.

“That’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened in my entire life,” Kole said as soon as the song was over. Flashing a huge smile, Perry appeared to appreciate the compliment.

Last year, Perry took the opportunity to state for the record what the correct lyrics to “Firework” are after Bryan sang the words incorrectly during an “Idol” episode.

“It’s not ‘up, up, up,’” Perry emphatically told Bryan before looking into the camera and saying, “it’s ‘awe, awe, awe,’ everybody. Get it right!”

“Firework” spent four weeks at No. 1 when it was released in 2010. The pop superstar is one of the most streamed artists in history and has had 35 songs chart on Billboard’s Top 100.

Catch “Idol” this Sunday on ABC at 8pm in the viewer’s time zone to see if Kole made it through to the next round.

CNN
 — 

After weeks of testimony, a South Carolina court finally heard Thursday from Alex Murdaugh, who is facing two counts of murder in the deaths of his wife and son.

The disgraced former attorney pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and two weapons charges in the killings of his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh, on June 7, 2021, at the family’s home in Islandton.

Prosecutors accuse Murdaugh of killing his wife and son to distract from an array of alleged financial crimes, in which he separately faces another 99 charges, and rested their case last week.

The defense has painted Murdaugh as a loving father and husband being wrongfully accused after what it says has been a poorly handled investigation. Here are some of the key moments from his first day of testimony:

Murdaugh admitted for the first time publicly that he lied to investigators about his whereabouts on the night in June 2021, when the killings of his wife and son took place.

The former lawyer acknowledged his voice is heard in a video that appeared to be filmed at the dog kennels where the bodies of his wife and son were found. Prosecutors have used the video to put Murdaugh at the scene of the killings, contradicting his repeated statements to law enforcement that he had not been there that night.

Numerous witnesses had testified his voice is in the background of the video recorded by Paul at 8:44 p.m. June 7, 2021.

“Mr. Murdaugh, is that you on the kennel video at 8:44 p.m. on June 7,” defense attorney Jim Griffin asked, “the night Maggie and Paul were murdered?”

“It is,” Murdaugh said.

CNN reporter notes interesting defense tactic in Alex Murdaugh murder trial

Murdaugh said he lied about being at the kennels earlier that evening because of “paranoid thinking” stemming from his drug addiction.

“I did lie to them,” he said, blaming his addiction to opiate painkillers.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he added. “I don’t think I was capable of reason, and I lied about being down there, and I’m so sorry that I did.”

Still, Murdaugh was emphatic in his denial that he shot and killed his wife and son, insisting in response to Griffin’s questions, “I didn’t shoot my wife or my son, anytime, ever.”

Murdaugh testified that on the night his son and wife were killed, he stepped out of his house after dinner to attend to the dogs in the kennels, after which he went back inside his house and laid down on a couch.

Afterward, he decided to go visit his mother, an Alzheimer’s disease patient, in nearby Almeda, he said.

Murdaugh said his wife “wasn’t planning to go with me that night,” adding, “Maggie didn’t really like to visit my mom.”

Murdaugh told the court that on his way back from his mother’s house, he tried to call his wife twice, but she did not answer. He said he also left her a text. However, he said he did not find her non-response unusual, because she was with Paul and because of sometimes-spotty cell service.

Murdaugh admitted Thursday to stealing from his law firm and his clients, which ultimately led to his resignation from the firm, then known as PMPED and since renamed Parker Law Group.

“I admit, candidly, in all of these cases, Mr. Waters, that I took money that was not mine, and I shouldn’t have done it,” Murdaugh said in response to prosecutor Creighton Waters during the prosecution’s cross-examination.

“I hate the fact that I did it. I’m embarrassed by it. I’m embarrassed for my son,” he said.

“I’m embarrassed for my family, and I don’t dispute that I did it,” he continued.

Murdaugh became visibly upset after his defense attorney asked him if he had a good time with his son Paul on the day prior to his killing.

“You could not be around Paul-Paul (Paul Murdaugh) – you could not be around him and not have a good time,” said Alex Murdaugh, who broke down crying.

“Were you close to Paul?” defense attorney Griffin asked.

Still crying, Murdaugh replied, “You couldn’t be any closer” than he was with Paul and his other surviving son, Buster.

Murdaugh broke down in tears on Thursday as he described seeing the bodies of his wife and son at the family’s dog kennels the night they were killed.

Upon returning to the house in Islandton after visiting his mother, Murdaugh said, Margaret and Paul weren’t there – and he assumed they still were at the kennels, so he went back there.

“What’d you see?” Griffin asked him.

“I saw what y’all have seen pictures of,” he told his defense attorney, crying and taking a pause before saying it was “so bad.”

Murdaugh recalled calling 911 and “trying to tend” to Paul and Maggie, going back and forth between them while on the phone. Paul’s injuries were particularly bad, Murdaugh said, and he recalled trying to check his son’s body for a pulse and trying to turn him over.

“I don’t know why I tried to turn him over,” an emotional Murdaugh said. “I mean, my boy’s laying face down. He’s done the way he’s done. His head was the way his head was. I could see his brain laying on the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do.”

Murdaugh’s lawyer asked him, “Did you get, on your shirt, high-velocity blood spatter from being within the distance of shooting of Maggie or Paul?

Murdaugh said, “There’s no way I had high-velocity blood spatter on me.”

“I have seen reports that said that,” he added. “I was nowhere near Paul and Maggie when they got shot.”

Murdaugh rebutted earlier testimony about data collected from his cell phone, which showed he searched Google for a restaurant in Edisto Beach , and read a group text message soon after finding the bodies.

Any of those actions were “unintentional,” he said, adding he was trying to call his brothers and a family friend.

“I’m not trying to call those people. I’m not doing a Google search for any Whaley’s restaurant and I’m certainly not reading any text,” he said.

“I can promise you I wasn’t reading any text messages,” Murdaugh said when asked about the group text message.

Murdaugh testified he believes his addiction stemmed from surgery he got for an old college football injury. He said he needed a few surgeries, and he started getting addicted to hydrocodone around 2004 before moving on to oxycodone around 2008.

“My addiction is to opiate painkillers, specifically oxycodone, OxyContin,” he said. “It just escalates. It escalates.”

Murdaugh said he went to a detox facility three times, and he’s been drug-free for “535 days – and I’m very proud of that.”

Murdaugh explained how in September 2021, two months after the killings, he decided to ask a man who he was initially intending to get pills from to instead shoot him.

When asked if that drug transaction actually happened, Murdaugh said he didn’t know because after withdrawal symptoms started, Murdaugh said he changed his plan.

“Not to get the pills from him anymore, and instead I asked him to shoot me,” Murdaugh said when asked to clarify what that meant.

“I meant for him to shoot me so I would be gone,” Murdaugh testified.

Murdaugh was shot in the head on a roadway on September 4, 2021, but survived. That same month, he turned himself in after admitting he asked a former client to kill him during a fake car breakdown so Murdaugh’s oldest son, Buster, could get an insurance payout, police said.

CNN
 — 

Last year was a wreck for Carvana, the online used-car seller known for its tall glass “car vending machines.” In 2022, the company sold fewer cars than it had the year before — the first time that’s happened in nine years — and the company’s losses grew as the used car market soured.

Overall, Carvana’s losses ballooned to $806 million, or $7.61 per class A share of stock, compared to $89 million in the last quarter of 2021. For the full year, the company lost $1.6 billion compared to a loss of $135 million in 2021.

Carvana is the second largest used-car retailer in America after CarMax by a wide margin.

Auto industry supply chain problems that decreased the supply of new cars led to dramatic increases in the price of Carvana’s product, used cars. Many of thoe issues have begun to resolve in the new car market and, consequently, used car prices have recently started to come down. Rapidly rising interest rates just added to the problem, meaning Carvana had a harder time selling cars, the company said in its fourth quarter earnings announcement.

Accustomed to sales growth, Carvana was simply unprepared for the market drop it encountered, the company said.

The number of cars Carvana sold in the fourth quarter last year dropped 23% from a year earlier to about 87,000 while overall revenue declined 24%.

For the full year, Carvana sold 3% fewer vehicles while revenue, at $13.6 billion, increased 6%. Carvana has been aggressively reducing its inventories, the company said, cutting the number of vehicles held in inventory by 27% in the fourth quarter.

“This last year has been a massive change in priorities for the company. The world changed on us very, very quickly,” said chief executive Ernie Garcia III in an earnings call, “and we shifted our priorities very, very quickly. And undoubtedly, that’s been a difficult transition. But I think there’s no doubt that it’s leading to a more efficient company.”

The results of that efficiency, he said, would show up “in the not too distant future” as used car sales rebound.

Company executives said they have worked to reduce their expenses related to selling cars, in particular reducing advertising spending. As the numbers of cars sold has dropped, though, the reductions haven’t yet been visible in per-vehicle profits, they said. As the company works toward profitability, Chief Financial Officer Mark Jenkins said, the company had $3.9 billion in cash, available real estate and other liquid assets available to draw on.

CNN
 — 

The United States is prepared to support Ukraine for the long haul in the war against Russia and is confident Kyiv will prevail, senior Biden administration officials told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at a unique CNN town hall marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

“Russia has already lost this war,” Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during the town hall Thursday night.

Both Sullivan and Samantha Power, administrator of the US Agency for International Development, took questions at the town hall from Americans and Ukrainians Thursday, on topics ranging from how the US will keep arming Ukraine to an assessment of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions and the role China may play in the conflict.

The US officials praised the resilience of the Ukrainian people as they were questioned by Ukrainians including a 14-year-old girl and a soldier serving on the front lines of the war in the country’s military.

Here are the top takeaways from the town hall on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion:

US officials have signaled that the war is likely to drag on for months still, with no real end in sight.

But Sullivan argued that one year into the conflict, Ukraine has already stopped Russia from accomplishing its main objective of taking over the capital of Kyiv.

“Russia’s aims in this war were to wipe Ukraine off the map, to take the capital and to eliminate Ukraine, to absorb it into Russia,” Sullivan said. “They failed at doing that and they are in no position to be able to do that as we go forward.”

Putin’s aims as the war has dragged on was another topic that was raised at the town hall. Sullivan was asked about the risk that Putin could turn to nuclear weapons, and he said that the US had seen no change in Russia’s nuclear posture.

“Sitting here today, we do not see movements in Russia’s nuclear forces that lead us to believe that something fundamentally has changed from how things have been over the course of the past year,” Sullivan said.

During the town hall, Sullivan touted the latest US security assistance that the Biden administration has authorized to Ukraine – a $2 billion package of weapons that’s expected to be officially announced on Friday as the war hits the 1-year mark.

The $2 billion package includes new funding for contracts including HIMARS rockets, 155-millimeter artillery ammunition, drones, counter-drone equipment, mine-clearing equipment and secure communications equipment.

Sullivan was asked by a Ukrainian soldier named Yegor, currently serving on the front lines, whether the US would be able to increase production of ammunition and other weapons to Ukraine, such as 155-millimeter artillery shells and HIMARS.

“One of the things that we are working hard at – at President Biden’s direction – is to increase the production of all of these types of ammunition,” Sullivan said. “This is not something we can do with the snap of a finger, but it’s something that we are putting immense effort and resources into.”

Sullivan told Zakaria that the US has provided Ukraine with the assistance it needs for each phase of the war since it began one year ago.

But he also acknowledged that the Ukrainians have often asked for more than the US is willing to give – though in many cases the Biden administration has eventually transferred weapons it had initially resisted sending.

Sullivan reiterated the Biden administration’s position Thursday evening that it’s not currently providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, saying the fighter jets “are not the key capability” Ukraine needs for a counteroffensive against Russian forces.

Still, Sullivan noted that the F-16s came up during Biden’s trip earlier this week when he spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is pushing for F-16s.

“F-16s are not a question for the short-term fight. F-16s are a question for the long-term defense of Ukraine and that’s a conversation that President Biden and President Zelensky had,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan noted that there is flexibility in the US position on weapons, as the administration weighs the risks of escalation with Ukraine’s security needs throughout the war. Biden agreed to provide Abrams tanks to Ukraine – which the US has argued aren’t as relevant as German Leopard tanks – because Germany wanted the US to provide tanks before it was willing to do so itself, he said.

Zakaria asked Sullivan for his first reaction Thursday evening to a 12-point plan Beijing released calling for the end of hostilities in Ukraine and pitching itself as a mediator between Moscow and Kyiv.

“Well my first reaction to it is they could stop at point one, which is respect the sovereignty of all nations,” Sullivan said. “This war could end tomorrow if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine and withdrew its forces. Ukraine wasn’t attacking Russia, NATO wasn’t attacking Russia, the United States wasn’t attacking Russia. This was a war of choice waged by Putin.”

The same week Beijing released its 12-point plan, US officials have warned that China could be preparing to provide lethal military aid to Russia. Sullivan said Thursday night that such a move has not been ruled out yet.

Still, Sullivan argued that the idea that the two countries are becoming “unbreakable allies” is disproven because China has taken a careful stance toward Russia’s war, noting they abstained instead of voting with Moscow on a recent United Nations resolution.

“They have tried to pitch themselves as somehow not standing fully in Russia’s camp when it comes to the war in Ukraine,” Sullivan said.

Both Sullivan and Power brushed aside criticism from some of Biden’s Republican critics that the billions of dollars the US is spending in Ukraine would be better spent at home.

Many Republicans, including some 2024 hopefuls, have argued aid to Ukraine should be scaled back or cut off as the war stretches on. With Republicans in control of the House, passing additional funding packages for Ukraine is expected to be a tougher lift this year.

Sullivan argued that the US can afford to spend money on problems at home as well as abroad.

“I would say to those senators, yes, let’s do these things at home. But are you saying that American is incapable of also helping to serve as a powerful force of good in the world?” Sullivan said.

“I think there’s a pessimism in this argument that these senators are making. President Biden has an optimistic view, which is that we can do it, and we should do it, and we are doing it.”

Power argued that US support for Ukraine is actually one of the rare issues where there is strong bipartisanship in today’s Washington, when she was asked by a Ukrainian mother about the commonality between the citizens of the two countries.

“The reflection, I think, of how much commonality Americans do feel with Ukrainians is the flow of support that has been sustained over the course of this last year,” Power said. “It is the bipartisanship in a town that isn’t famous for it anymore, but Ukraine has been not only a galvanizing issue, but a uniting issue for our own country.”

Lera, a 14-year-old Ukrainian girl, asked Power whether she could rely on American to feel safe in her country. Power responded that the US was committed to making Ukrainians feel as safe as possible despite the war.

“We have your backs, we stand with you, not just here on the battle front but in trying to help you feel as much safety as you can when one man and his wicked vision has tried to take that away,” Power said.

Power acknowledged the long road ahead for Ukraine to rebuild the country when the war ends. Some estimates have totaled the damage to date at $130 billion, she noted.

“This is going to be a mammoth undertaking,” she said.

Power said that USAID and international financial institutions have worked to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure and help get private industry to return to peaceful parts of Ukraine.

But she added that major projects are still ahead, and that the Biden administration and other allies are focused on making sure the money that’s dedicated to reconstruction is well spent.

“The other thing we want to do now is, with an eye to those big-ticket items, most of which will only happen when there’s a negotiated peace,” Power said.

“But we have to make sure resources are going to be well spent,” she added. “When you have those huge investments, which go well beyond what is being provided right now, that’s when of course you want to make sure that you have the safeguards in place so that all outside investors and donors can know and say to their citizens that this is money that’s going to be well spent.”

Power said that to this point, the Biden administration has not seen evidence that US assistance was being misused.

“Again, the key is not resting on anybody’s good will or virtue,” she said. “It’s checks and balances, the rule of law, the integrity of officials.”

CNN
 — 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping his word to radicals who put him in power and rewarding those who can keep him there, paving a smooth start to his tenure that may, however, be storing up trouble down the road.

The California Republican handed hard-right House members with plum committee assignments, dumped several high-profile Democrats from key panels to please the conservative media universe, launched investigations into the “weaponization” of government against Republicans like former President Donald Trump and gave a pass to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address or suggested “national divorce” between red and blue states. He’s refused to demand the resignation of New York Rep. George Santos, a serial fabulist, who might be an embarrassment but whose seat remains critical to the GOP’s tiny majority.

This week, in his most stunning move yet, McCarthy is giving Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to security footage of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection. The move may fuel Carlson’s false claims and conspiracies about a heinous attack on American democracy. The Fox primetime star has in the past baselessly claimed people working for the FBI orchestrated the invasion of Congress.

McCarthy is currying favor with a past critic and supremely powerful media host he’d love to get on his side as he tries to rule his conference and court the conservative base. He’s already used the effort in fundraising appeals. And his move may also help whitewash Trump’s culpability for the insurrection, weeks after the ex-president played a role in helping him win the speakership.

After appeasing demands from GOP holdouts and finally securing the speakership on the 15th roll call vote last month, McCarthy’s opponents argue that he’s now cravenly paying back the most extreme members of the most radical GOP conference in modern American history. But perhaps, he’s also purchasing goodwill among his members that could give him more maneuvering room when he needs votes later in the year over critically important issues like raising the government’s borrowing limit, agreeing on a budget and sending more military aid to Ukraine.

Yet there’s little in McCarthy’s past as a Republican leader that suggests he has such political dexterity. And the most riotous members of the House GOP seem highly unlikely to accept McCarthy’s concessions and fall in line. Nor does the uncompromising ideology of some of the political and media influencers he’s courting suggest they’d be content to cede power to him.

And as McCarthy parries accusations that he’s acting from naked political motivations, he’s adopting superficially principled justifications that mock his critics. He told The New York Times he handed over the security tapes because he had “promised” to do so. The speaker gave such an undertaking to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a GOP source told CNN’s Melanie Zanona, in his quest to secure the gavel, but the apparent deal did not specify that Carlson should get the footage. McCarthy suggested to the Times he was also acting in the interests of transparency. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Except, he’s not giving them to the American people so anyone can see them, or releasing them to all media, at least yet. The speaker is specifically offering access to a conservative TV host who has made no secret of his agenda. Had he wanted to create that ray of sunshine, McCarthy could have posted them online, tasked congressional committees to examine them or invited other media outlets to also view them.

The credibility of Fox News – Carlson’s television home and the apparent destiny of the tapes – has, meanwhile, taken a hit following revelations from text messages and emails in a court filing this week that some of Fox’s biggest stars and executives privately dismissed Trump’s lies about voter fraud after the 2020 election but allowed them to dominate its airwaves. Just as McCarthy is apparently unwilling to challenge the power of conservative media, Fox appeared unwilling to alienate a conservative audience that wanted to believe Trump won. CNN has reached out to Fox News and Carlson with questions about how the security footage will be handled but had not received a response as of Thursday evening.

McCarthy also tried to cast his stance on Santos, who lied about large portions of his biography and career resume, as a democratic one.

“The voters of his district have elected him,” McCarthy said of the freshman in January, suggesting that to demand the resignation of the New York Republican would be an affront to democracy – even though it appears voters had no idea of the truth about Santos when they sent him to Washington. McCarthy has since hinted that his position could change if the House Ethics Committee “finds something” against Santos, who won a district that Biden carried in 2020 and that could be tough for the GOP to hold.

McCarthy’s stances have led to criticism and enraged Democrats, who say his release of the footage to Carlson could endanger the security of the Capitol. But in America’s bitter political climate, appealing to activist political bases is often the first consideration – especially in the radicalized Republican Party of the Trump era. In the modern GOP, earning the anger of the media is an essential element of appealing to grassroots voters and often seems a major motivation of top party figures.

Previous Republican speakers like John Boehner and Paul Ryan tried to manage their radical right-wing conferences while staying faithful to the institutional responsibilities of their leadership position. It was a balancing act that eventually doomed their tenures. McCarthy appears to be taking the opposite tack, throwing his lot in completely with the extremists who have outsized influence due to the far-smaller-than-expected House majority the GOP managed to win in the 2022 midterms.

But his accommodation of his conference might only work in the short term.

In a sign of growing trouble, a border security bill that McCarthy had hoped to pass early in the new Congress is still in limbo after moderates voiced fierce opposition to a three-page draft drawn up by conservative Rep. Chip Roy from Texas. The dispute underscores the fatal flaw in the GOP majority between right-wingers keen to appeal to the base and moderates who won seats in states like New York and California, where they could face difficult reelection bids in 2024.

CNN also reported this week on bitter splits between factions of the GOP on the question of more aid for Ukraine. McCarthy has tried to finesse this divide by saying he favors support for the Kyiv government but is also against a “blank check” for President Volodymyr Zelensky – in a nod to lawmakers like Gaetz and Greene who oppose multi-billion dollar US aid packages. The speaker’s position is allowing him to avoid alienating either faction so far, but it will come under fierce pressure when massive requests for arms and ammunition for Ukraine arrive on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy also appears to be navigating into a perilous position on a looming showdown with Biden over the need to raise the government’s borrowing authority, or the debt ceiling, later this year. If the authority is not granted by Congress, the US could default on its obligations, shredding its credit rating and throwing the American and global economies into turmoil. But McCarthy is standing with the most radical members of his conference who are demanding huge spending cuts, which Biden has refused to accept, in order to lift the debt ceiling.

The California Republican may end up with a fateful choice between backing the lawmakers who elected him speaker and crashing the economy, since, if he tried to grant Biden such authority by using some Democratic votes, it’s possible he’d be toppled.

CNN
 — 

Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood mogul already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, was sentenced in Los Angeles Thursday to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.

Prior to the sentence, Weinstein spoke in court and continued to deny any wrongdoing, calling the case a “setup.”

“I maintain that I’m innocent. I never raped or sexually assaulted Jane Doe 1. I never knew this woman, and the fact is she doesn’t know me. This is about money,” he said.

“Please don’t sentence me to life in prison,” he added. “I don’t deserve it.”

His attorneys asked the judge for a sentence concurrent with his ongoing 23-year sentence, saying he was a 70-year-old man in bad health.

Jane Doe 1, the model and actress whose testimony formed the crux of the convictions, also told the judge how the assault had changed her.

“Before that night I was a very happy and confident woman. I valued myself and the relationship I had with God. I was excited about my future,” she said. “Everything changed after the defendant brutally assaulted me.

“I thought I did something wrong because he chose me that night. I thought I did something wrong for him to do that to me. I soon became invisible to myself and to the world. I lost my identity. I was heartbroken, empty and alone.”

Weinstein, 70, was convicted in December on charges of rape, sexual penetration by a foreign object and forcible oral copulation after Jane Doe 1 testified he assaulted her in a Beverly Hills hotel room in February 2013.

Weinstein was also acquitted of one charge, and the jury could not come to a unanimous decision on three other charges, including one related to Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Four counts connected to an unnamed woman who did not testify were also dropped during the trial.

The sentencing was the second for Weinstein on sexual assault charges since reporting by The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 revealed his alleged history of sexual abuse, harassment and secret settlements as he used his influence as a Hollywood power broker to take advantage of young women.

At the time, Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and helped produce movies such as “Pulp Fiction,” “Clerks” and “Shakespeare in Love.” The revelations led to a wave of women speaking publicly about the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and harassment in what became known as the #MeToo movement.

The disgraced movie producer is several years into a 23-year prison sentence issued in New York in 2020 after he was found guilty of first-degree criminal sexual act and a third-degree rape. He has appealed the conviction.

Like in the New York trial, prosecutors in the Los Angeles trial said Weinstein was a powerful figure in Hollywood who used his influence to lure women into private meetings, assault them and then silence any accusations.

The trial featured emotional testimony from Weinstein’s accusers – a model, a dancer, a massage therapist and Siebel Newsom – all of whom were asked to recount the details of their allegations against him, provide details of meetings with the producer from years ago, and explain their reactions to the alleged assaults.

Jane Doe 1, whose testimony was tied to the convictions, said that Weinstein came to her hotel room and tried to rape her.

“I wanted to die. It was disgusting. It was humiliating, miserable. I didn’t fight,” she testified in court. “I remember how he was looking in the mirror and he was telling me to look at him. I wish this never happened to me.”

In all, eight women testified they were assaulted during the trial. Four women testified about their alleged assaults, and four other women testified as “prior bad acts” witnesses, meaning their testimony wasn’t directly connected to a charge but could be considered as prosecutors tried to show Weinstein had a pattern in his behavior.

Weinstein had pleaded not guilty, and his defense attorneys maintained the allegations were fabricated or occurred consensually as part of a “transactional relationship” with the movie producer.

“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” defense attorney Alan Jackson said. “And it’s important we make that distinction in this courtroom.”

After convicting him, the jury deadlocked on aggravating factors that could have increased his sentence.

In a statement after Thursday’s sentencing, an attorney representing Siebel Newsom and Ashley Matthau, who both testified at the trial, praised the sentence and their decision to testify.

“Their testimony gave them the power to reclaim their voices, both for themselves and on behalf of the many other women who were abused by Harvey Weinstein,” attorney Elizabeth Fegan said. “It can’t erase the trauma they’ve endured, but it can serve as a catalyst for change and provide hope to other survivors.”

Weinstein maintained his innocence in a statement released by his publicist on Thursday.

“It is incredible to be convicted for a crime I wasn’t even present for,” he said in the statement, adding that he was never with her. “I never raped or assaulted anyone.”