WASHINGTON: US Senator Katie Britt on Sunday defended her Republican rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, as critics and a famous actor piled on with cutting riffs on her remarks.
The 42-year-old Britt was a little-known junior senator from Alabama when Republicans selected her for the traditional role of offering the party’s response to the president’s annual message before Congress.
But the setting she chose — her family kitchen — as well as her sometimes awkward delivery and a misleading effort to link Biden to a sex-trafficking incident that happened long before he took office, have drawn furious pushback.
A sharply satirical take on late-night TV, with superstar Scarlett Johansson as Britt, added fuel to the fire.
The real Britt, in the remarks from her kitchen, sharply denounced Biden’s border policies as “a disgrace,” telling the brutal account of a Mexican woman who, at 12, was sex-trafficked and repeatedly raped.
The strong implication was that the abuse occurred during Biden’s watch.
But when fact-checkers dug into the story it quickly emerged that the sex-trafficking occurred in Mexico, involved no effort to cross the border — and took place while George W. Bush was president.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Britt insisted she had made it clear she was talking about something that happened years before.
In fact, she said, “human trafficking has gone up under President Biden,” adding: “It’s disgusting to try to silence... the story of what it is like to be sex-trafficked.”
Donald Trump, Biden’s virtually certain opponent in November elections, praised Britt’s performance. But even conservative commentators chastised her choice of setting.
“Senator Katie Britt is a very impressive person,” commentator Alyssa Farah Griffin wrote on X, adding, “I do not understand the decision to put her in a *KITCHEN* for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given.”
Britt’s response on Fox: “Republicans care about kitchen-table issues. We are talking about the issues that women care about.”
Rebuttal speeches often spotlight a young, rising star of the opposition party, and Britt’s relative youth provided an obvious contrast to the octogenarian president.
But Johansson’s eery portrayal of Britt on “Saturday Night Live,” a program popular with young viewers, was scathing.
“I’m not just a senator,” she says, “I’m a wife, a mother and the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot.”
As to the sex-trafficking story, Johansson says: “Rest assured, every detail about it is real, except the year, where it took place and who was president when it happened.”
Young Republican senator’s rebuttal to Biden draws bipartisan gibes
https://arab.news/6a3fd
Young Republican senator’s rebuttal to Biden draws bipartisan gibes
- Rebuttal speeches often spotlight a young, rising star of the opposition party, and Britt’s relative youth provided an obvious contrast to the octogenarian president
Trump says he will reopen Alcatraz prison
- Still in the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI
NEW YORK: President Donald Trump says he is directing his government to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on a hard-to-reach California island that has been closed for more than 60 years.
In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday evening, Trump wrote that, “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“That is why, today, I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” he wrote, adding: “The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE.”
The prison — infamously inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it — was known as the “The Rock” and housed some of the nation’s most notorious criminals, including gangster Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly.
It has long been part of the cultural imagination and has been the subject of numerous movies, including “The Rock” starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
Still in the 29 years it was open, 36 men attempted 14 separate escapes, according to the FBI. Nearly all were caught or didn’t survive the attempt.
The fate of three particular inmates — John Anglin, his brother Clarence and Frank Morris — is of some debate and was dramatized in the 1979 film “Escape from Alcatraz” starring Clinton Eastwood.
Alcatraz Island is now a major tourist site that is operate by the National Parks Service and is a designated National Historic Landmark.
The closure of the federal prison in 1963 was attributed to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the agency “will comply with all Presidential Orders.” The spokesperson did not immediately answer questions from The Associated Press regarding the practicality and feasibility of reopening Alcatraz or the agency’s role in the future of the former prison given the National Park Service’s control of the island.
The island serves as a veritable time machine to a bygone era of corrections. The Bureau of Prisons currently has 16 penitentiaries performing the same high-security functions as Alcatraz, including its maximum security facility in Florence, Colorado, and the US penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, which is home to the federal death chamber.
The order comes as Trump has been clashing with the courts as he tries to send accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, without due process. Trump has also directed the opening of a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,to hold up to 30,000 of what he has labeled the “worst criminal aliens.”
The Bureau of Prisons has faced myriad crises in recent years and has been subjected to increased scrutiny after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide at a federal jail in New York City in 2019. An AP investigation uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons. AP reporting has disclosed widespread criminal activity by employees, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including assaults and suicides.
The AP’s investigation also exposed rampant sexual abuse at a federal women’s prison in Dublin, California. Last year, President Joe Biden signed a law strengthening oversight of the agency after AP reporting spotlighted its many flaws.
Russia offers to help resolve India-Pakistan differences over Kashmir
- Risie in tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors escalated after a deadly terror attack on a mountain tourist destination in the Pahalgam area of Kashmir valley on April 22
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to his Pakistani counterpart on Sunday and offered Russia’s help in resolving tensions between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, the Foreign Ministry said.
“Particular attention was paid to the significant rise in tension between New Delhi and Islamabad,” the ministry said in a statement, referring to Lavrov’s conversation with Ishaq Dar, who is also Pakistan’s deputy prime minister.
“It was stressed that Russia is ready to act for a political settlement of the situation resulting from the act of terrorism of April 22 in the Pahalgam area of the Kashmir valley, in the event of a mutual desire on the part of Islamabad and New Delhi,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Lavrov’s conversation with Dar took place two days after he spoke with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and also called for a settlement of differences between the two neighboring countries.
Suspected militants killed at least 26 people in last week’s attack on a mountain tourist destination in the Pahalgam area of the Kashmir valley.
Muslim-majority Kashmir is claimed by both countries and has been the focus of several wars, an insurgency and diplomatic standoffs.
Russia has been India’s largest weapons provider for decades and New Delhi and Moscow have had close ties since Soviet times.
Incoming German interior minister skeptical about ban on far-right AfD
- German lawmakers have been discussing measures to dismiss civil servants who are members of the AfD and limit or halt public funding
BERLIN: Incoming German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt suggested on Sunday it was unlikely the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party would be banned after the spy agency classified it as “extremist” last week.
German lawmakers have been discussing outlawing the party and taking other measures including dismissing civil servants who are members of the AfD and limiting or halting public funding.
But Dobrindt told broadcaster ARD he was doubtful whether the AfD activities identified in the spy agency’s report met the requirements set out for an outright ban.
Guidelines set by the constitutional court say a party must be shown to be working “combatively and aggressively” to implement its goals to be banned.
“I’m skeptical, because the aggressive, combative nature of the party against our democracy must be a defining characteristic. The Constitutional Court was right to set high hurdles for banning a party,” Dobrindt said.
He added that he was “convinced that the AfD does not need to be banned, it needs to be governed away, and we need to talk about the issues that have made the AfD so big.”
Dobrindt, a high-profile member of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU, said his ministry would examine the designation in depth and he would discuss its findings with the spy agency’s top brass in person.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that the future government would work to shrink the AfD.
“What I don’t believe is that a potential ban procedure, which could take years, is the sole instrument to bring the AfD down,” Klingbeil, Germany’s next vice chancellor, said.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel accused outgoing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of using the spy agency as a “secret justice system” to discriminate against the party.
“We are a future governing party; even the machinations of the secret justice system will not be able to prevent that in the long run,” Weidel told the Welt newspaper on Sunday.
South Africa exit from DRC to be completed this month
- The soldiers are part of a regional Southern African Development Community force that deployed to the eastern DRC in December 2023 during a resurgence of the M23 armed movement
JOHANNESBURG: South African troops withdrawing from the conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo have begun assembling in Tanzania and most should return home this month, the defense chief said on Sunday.
Under the phased withdrawal that started on April 29, the troops are to exit the DRC via Rwanda by road before entering Tanzania, Gen. Rudzani Maphwanya said.
From there they will return to South Africa by sea and air by the end of May, he said.
The soldiers are part of a regional Southern African Development Community force that deployed to the eastern DRC in December 2023 during a resurgence of the M23 armed movement.
The M23 now controls swaths of territory in the mineral-rich region.
Thirteen trucks with 57 members of the SADC peacekeeping force had already gathered at an assembly point in Tanzania, Maphwanya told reporters.
The next group was scheduled for withdrawal next week, he said.
“The movement from Tanzania to (South Africa) will be by air for personnel and by sea for cargo,” he said.
SADC decided to end its SAMIDRC mission in mid-March after 17 of its soldiers — most of them South Africans — were killed in M23 offensives in January. They have been stranded there since.
The grouping confirmed last week the start of the withdrawal but gave no details.
On April 30, a separate evacuation began of hundreds of DRC soldiers and police trapped for months in United Nations bases in Goma after the eastern DRC city was taken by M23 rebels, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
SADC defense chiefs had informed the M23 they would “withdraw ... personnel and equipment unconditionally,” Maphwanya said.
No SADC equipment would remain. “SADC is not leaving even a pin in eastern DRC,” he added.
Officials do not comment on the size of the SAMIDRC deployment but the bulk of the troops come from South Africa, which is estimated to have sent at least 1,300 soldiers.
There are also South Africans in the DRC under a separate UN peacekeeping mission.
Calls for evacuation began mounting in South Africa after 14 of the country’s soldiers were killed in the region in January.
Three Malawian troops in the SADC deployment were also killed, while Tanzania said two of its soldiers died in clashes.
The evacuation from the DRC was not a sign of weakness or the abandonment of people caught up in the fighting, Maphwanya said.
“Our withdrawal is a technical move that allows peace and mediation to continue.”
Zelensky says does ‘not believe’ Russian truce pledge
- Citing a military report, he said Russia had carried out more than 200 attacks on Saturday
- “Putin can end the war with a single decision, but he has not shown any willingness so far," adds Czech president
PRAQUE: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday that he did “not believe” Russia would adhere to a three-day truce to coincide with Moscow’s Victory Day celebrations on May 9.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a three-day truce during commemorations for the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, saying it would test Kyiv’s readiness for a long-term ceasefire.
“This is not the first challenge, nor are these the first promises made by Russia to cease fire,” Zelensky said at a news conference with Czech President Petr Pavel.
“We understand who we are dealing with, we do not believe them,” said Zelensky, who arrived in Prague Sunday for a two-day visit accompanied by his wife.
“Today and all these days they are talking about wanting some kind of partial ceasefire, but you should know, for example, that the number of assaults today is the highest in recent months,” Zelensky said.
Citing a military report, he said that Russia had carried out more than 200 attacks on Saturday.
“So there is no faith (in them),” Zelensky said.
In a statement issued later Sunday, Zelensky summarized his meeting with Pavel.
Discussions were underway for a Ukrainian-Czech pilot training school for American F-16 jets, which could not be established in Ukraine “due to current security concerns,” he added.
Zelensky also said there would be a meeting Monday with “Czech defense companies,” with details to be announced later.
Pavel, a former NATO general, said that “Putin can end the war with a single decision, but he has not shown any willingness so far.”
The Czech Republic, a member of the European Union and NATO, has provided Ukraine with substantial humanitarian and military support since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022.
It has received more than half a million war refugees and supplied the Ukrainian army with equipment including tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters.
Prague also steers a European drive to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine, financed largely by NATO allies. “The Czech artillery initiative is working brilliantly,” said Zelensky.
The initiative is designed to make up in part for the EU’s inability to meet its promise to supply one million shells to Ukraine.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and the speakers of both parliament chambers said they would meet Zelensky in Prague on Monday.
