In Brief: September 30, 2021

House panel subpoenas organizers of Jan. 6 Trump rally

WASHINGTON — A House committee investigating the violent Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection has subpoenaed 11 officials who helped plan rallies in support of former President Donald Trump ahead of the attack, including the massive event on the day of the siege at which the president told his supporters to “fight like hell.”

The announcement follows a first round of subpoenas last week that targeted former White House and administration officials who were in contact with Trump before and during the insurrection.

The committee said in a release Wednesday that the subpoenas are part of the panel’s efforts to collect information from the organizers “and their associated entities on the planning, organization, and funding of those events.” In letters to those who were subpoenaed, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, demanded that the officials provide documents to the panel by Oct. 13 and appear at separate depositions that the committee has scheduled from late October through the beginning of November.

Thompson cites in the letters efforts by representatives of the group Women for America First to organize the rally on Jan. 6 and to collectively communicate with senior White House officials. The subpoenas also mention other events the group planned in the weeks between Trump’s November election defeat and the January attack.

The House committee of nine lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — has ramped up its investigation in recent weeks as it attempts to dissect the origins of the insurrection by Trump’s supporters and find ways to prevent it from ever happening again. The Trump loyalists beat and injured police as they battled their way inside the building, destroyed property and sent lawmakers running for their lives. Repeating Trump’s lies about widespread election fraud, they interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and left those in the U.S. Capitol deeply shaken.

US general: Afghan collapse rooted in 2020 deal with Taliban

WASHINGTON — Senior Pentagon officials said Wednesday the collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces in August could be traced to a 2020 U.S. agreement with the Taliban that promised a complete U.S. troop withdrawal.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee that once the U.S. troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of President Joe Biden’s decision in April to complete a total withdrawal by September, the unraveling of the U.S.-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military — psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

He was referring to a Feb. 29, 2020, agreement that the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the U.S. promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021 and the Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January.

McKenzie said he also had believed “for quite a while” that if the United States reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the Kabul government inevitably would collapse “and that the military would follow.” He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was “the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the U.S. military to conditions inside the Afghan army, “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units.”

From wire sources

Some fear boosters will hurt drive to reach the unvaccinated

NEW YORK — The spread of COVID-19 vaccination requirements across the U.S. hasn’t had the desired effect so far, with the number of Americans getting their first shots plunging in recent weeks. And some experts worry that the move to dispense boosters could just make matters worse.

The fear is that the rollout of booster shots will lead some people to question the effectiveness of the vaccine in the first place.

“Many of my patients are already saying, ‘If we need a third dose, what was the point?’” said Dr. Jason Goldman, a physician in Coral Springs, Florida.

The average daily count of Americans getting a first dose of vaccine has been falling for six weeks, plummeting more than 50% from about 480,000 in early August to under 230,000 by the middle of last week, according to the most recently available federal data.

An estimated 70 million vaccine-eligible Americans have yet to start vaccinations, despite a summer surge in infections, hospitalizations and deaths driven by the delta variant.

Biden can’t budge fellow Dems with big overhaul at stake

WASHINGTON — His government overhaul plans at stake, President Joe Biden appeared unable Wednesday night to swiftly strike agreement with two wavering Democratic senators trying to trim back his potentially historic $3.5 trillion measure that will collapse without their support.

With Republicans solidly opposed and no Democratic votes to spare, Biden canceled a trip to Chicago that was to focus on COVID-19 vaccinations so he could dig in for a full day of intense negotiations ahead of crucial votes. Aides made their way to Capitol Hill for talks, and late in the day supportive House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met with Biden at the White House.

The risks were clear, but so was the potential reward as Biden and his party reach for a giant legislative accomplishment — promising a vast rewrite of the nation’s balance sheet with an ever-slim majority in Congress. His idea is to essentially raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy and use that money to expand government health care, education and other programs — an impact that would be felt in countless American lives.

“We take it one step at a time,” Pelosi, told reporters.

Attention is focused on Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, centrist Democrats. They share a concern that the overall size of Biden’s plan is too big, but have infuriated colleagues by not making any counter-proposals public.

South Dakota lawmakers question Noem’s meeting with daughter

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — South Dakota Republican and Democratic legislators alike said Wednesday that they want more details from Gov. Kristi Noem’s administration about a meeting last year that included the governor, her daughter and state employees overseeing an agency that had moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser.

In response to the report from The Associated Press this week, the Legislature’s Government Operations and Audit Committee will look into the matter when it meets at the end of October, according to the committee chairman, state Sen. Kyle Schoenfish. The Republican governor has dismissed the report as an attack on her family, but lawmakers from within her party said they want answers from her administration about what happened.

Schoenfish, a Republican, said the committee is still working out the details of how it will address the issue. Republicans, who hold supermajorities in the Legislature, will ultimately determine how far-ranging the inquiry is.

The AP reported Monday that Noem last year summoned to her office a state employee who was overseeing her daughter’s appraiser license application just days after the agency moved to deny her the license. After the meeting, Noem’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, was not denied a license, according to the Department of Labor and Regulation. Peters received her certification four months later, on Nov. 25, 2020.

A week after Peters received her license, the state employee who directed the agency was allegedly pressured to retire by Noem’s Cabinet secretary. The state employee, Sherry Bren, eventually received a $200,000 payment from the state to withdraw an age discrimination complaint and leave her job.

At least 100 dead in gang clash at Ecuador jail; 5 beheaded

QUITO, Ecuador — A battle between gangs in a prison in Ecuador’s coastal city of Guayaquil killed at least 100 inmates and injured 52 more in what authorities are calling the worst penitentiary massacre in the country’s history. At least five dead were reported beheaded, officials said Wednesday.

President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency in Ecuador’s prison system, and authorities attributed the bloodshed at the Guayas prison to gangs linked to international drug cartels fighting for control of the lockup.

The prisons bureau said in a tweet that “as of the moment more than 100 dead and 52 injured have been confirmed” in Tuesday’s fighting that involved guns, knives and bombs.

“It is a tragedy … that fighting among bands, criminal groups seeking internal control reaches these levels,” prisons bureau director Bolívar Garzón told radio FMundo.

Ecuador’s department of communication said the president was going to hold a news conference to announce the details of the state of emergency.

Climate activist Nakate seeks immediate action in Glasgow

MILAN — Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate said Wednesday that youth delegates meeting in Milan want to see immediate action from leaders at the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland — not cheap, last-ditch grasps at supporting polluting fuels before getting down to business.

Nakate is among 400 activists invited to Italy’s financial capital for a three-day Youth4Climate meeting that will draft a document for the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, which opens on Oct. 31.

“If leaders and governments are going to talk about net zeroes or cutting emissions, halving emissions by 2030 or 2040 or 2050, that means it has to start now,” Nakate told The Associated Press.

“It doesn’t mean, if we are going to do it by 2030, between now and 2030 let’s open a coal power plant, you know, let’s frack some gas, or let us construct an oil pipeline. That is not the real climate action that we want,” she said. “”If you are to go net zero by 2030, it has to start now.”

Although the activists have traveled to Milan from 180 countries, Nakate said many have the feeling that their suggestions for the closing document that will be published Thursday are not welcome. She said the dynamic was “concerning.”

Study highlights difficulty of stopping antidepressants

A study of British patients with a long history of depression highlights how difficult it can be to stop medication, even for those who feel well enough to try.

Slightly more than half the participants who gradually discontinued their antidepressants relapsed within a year. By contrast, the relapse rate was lower — almost 40% — for those who remained on their usual medication during the study.

Both groups had been taking daily doses of common antidepressants, had recovered from their most recent bout of depression and felt healthy enough to consider stopping the drugs.

Previous research has also shown relapse is common, and an editorial published with the study Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests medication for life may be advised for some patients with several previous bouts.

Counseling and behavior therapy are other options for patients who want to stop antidepressants, and studies show those treatments combined with medication work well for many.