Law, Power, and Justice

NEWS NOTES

HAITI: NYT

• Prime Minister Ariel Henry says he will resign as soon as a transitional council was established.  It is unclear when this will happen.
• Blinken said that the US would provide an additional $100 million toward a “United Nations-backed multinational security mission planned to deploy to Haiti.”  He also pledged $33 million in humanitarian aid.
• Henry left Haiti for Kenya in early March to finalize an agreement on a multinational force to help take on the gangs who have taken control of Haiti.  He has been unable to return because gangs have attacked and now control the airport.
• Mr. Henry is in Puerto Rico.
• Haiti and Kenya signed an agreement to deploy 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti.  (Note: There have been objections within Kenya about the deployment of these police officers).
• The unrest in Haiti spiraled upward after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in 2021.  This has now led to widespread gang violence.
• Henry was sworn in as prime minister two weeks after the assassination.
• Gangs have attacked not only the airport, but police stations.  There have been “coordinated assaults” on two prisons.

US: REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: NYT

• Trump’s allies are imposing massive layoffs in the RNC.
• This amounts to “gutting of the party apparatus eight months before the November election…”
• Nikki Haley claimed last week that Trump was going to his the committee as “his piggy bank for his personal court cases.”
• Charlie Kirk who leads the pro-Trump youth organization, Turning Point USA cheered the cuts and said that it was a “bloodbath at the RNC.”

UKRAINE: NYT

• Armed Russian exiles who operate in coordination with Ukraine, crossed into southern Russia and were fighting on the border region.  Also, drone strikes hit a Russian oil refinery and fuel depot.
• The Ukrainians want the Russians to know, as they are voting for the presidency (in a show, sham election) that this war was not over.
• The groups saying they crossed the border are the Free Russian Legion, the Russian Volunteer Corps, and the Siberian Battalion.  Some of the members of the groups including the leader of the Russian Volunteer Corps, hold far-right nationalist views.
• Ukraine also reported drone attacks throughout central Russia, including a “strike on and oil refinery near Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow.”
• Russia is relying on a network of critical arms suppliers and drastically increased its supply of technology from China.

US HOUSE COMMITTEE MEETING (Cable News coverage of Hearing)

Rep Seila Jackson Lee (Texas)

• Republican colleagues are “grasping at straws.”

Rep. Matt Gaetz

• Trying to demonstrate Biden lied to investigators.  (Note: God, what a sleazy fuck he is).  The “senile cooperator” theory you are operating under. 
• (Note: Fox News is covering this hearing live.)