Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced what he called Russia’s attempt to eliminate “the whole nation” during an appearance Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” saying, “this is genocide.”
Driving the news: The International Criminal Court last month launched an investigation into allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Ukraine.
Zelensky has previously called certain acts of Russian aggression, such as the shelling of a children’s hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol, proof of genocide.
As Ukrainian forces retook the Kyiv region on Saturday, officials and independent photographers have reported bodies of civilians — some with their hands tied behind their backs — strewn in the streets of the city of Bucha.
What they’re saying: Asked if Russia’s actions amount to genocide, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that the U.S. “will look hard and document everything that we see, put it all together, make sure the relevant institutions and organizations looking at this — including the state department — have everything they need to assess what took place in Ukraine, who’s responsible and what it amounts to.”
U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement Sunday that Russia’s attacks on civilians in Ukraine “must be investigated as war crimes,” adding that the U.K. will support any efforts by the ICC to do so, the Guardian reported.
“It is a brutality against civilians. We haven’t seen in — in Europe for decades and it’s horrific and it’s absolutely unacceptable that civilians are targeted and killed, and it just — underlines importance that this war must end and that is president Putin’s responsibility to stop the war,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Sunday on “State of the Union.”
“Is this genocide?” @margbrennan asks Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Indeed. This is genocide,” Zelenskyy says, adding that Ukraine is being “destroyed and exterminated” by Russian forces.
In Bucha outside Kyiv today, I met this amazing Food Fighter! He’s a chef…now on the front lines as medic and helping @WCKitchen bring meals & food to formerly occupied towns. His restaurant in normal times? Cafe Peace!! #ChefsForUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/n1kS7Wh9qp
Breaking: US is expected to help facilitate transfer of tanks from NATO allies to Ukraine, according to senior US officials. The tanks will be Soviet-era T-72 tanks, which Ukrainian military has experience operating and will be delivered “within days, not weeks,” I’m told.
“We found 18 bodies in there. They had been torturing people. Some of them had their ears cut off. Others had teeth pulled out. There were kids like 14, 16 years old, some adults. They just took the bodies away yesterday.” #UkraineRussiaWarhttps://t.co/7UOX3QNk9Q
Former Heisman Trophy winner and candidate for US Senate Herschel Walker (R-GA) speaks to supporters of former President Donald Trump during a rally on March 26, 2022 in Commerce, Georgia.
For years, Herschel Walker has told the same inspiring story: that he graduated in the top 1% of his class at the University of Georgia. He’s told the story, according to a review of his speeches by CNN’s KFile, during motivational speeches over the years and as recently as 2017. The only problem: it’s not true.
Walker, who is a candidate in the Republican primary race for US Senate in Georgia, acknowledged in December that he did not graduate from Georgia after the Atlanta-Journal Constitution first reported that the false claim was listed on his campaign website.
But a CNN KFile review found that Walker himself has been repeating the claim for years. Walker’s comments in 2017, and others made over the years, show the former football star repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials.
“And all of sudden I started going to the library, getting books, standing in front of a mirror reading to myself,” Walker said in a 2017 motivational speech. “So that Herschel that all the kids said was retarded become valedictorian of his class. Graduated University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class.”
Walker also made the claim in another interview in 2017.
“I also was in the top 1% of my graduating class of college,” Walker told Sirius XM radio.
Walker did not graduate from Georgia, where he was a star running back after entering as a prized high school recruit. A profile of Walker from 1982 in the Christian-Science Monitor and an article in The New York Times said he maintained a B average at the school. Walker himself told The Chicago Tribune in 1985 he maintained a 3.0 before his grades dropped. He left to play professional football before graduating and, though having repeatedly said he was returning to obtain his degree, he never received a diploma.
The Walker campaign did not provide proof of Walker’s claims when asked by CNN, but they defended his record as a professional athlete.
Walker is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and is expected to be the Republican nominee to run against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in November.
The claim was removed from his website between December and January, according to screenshots from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
That was not the only claim about Walker’s education that was adjusted on his website at the time. After a review of the revised site, CNN’s KFile found another little-noticed claim was removed that said Walker graduated valedictorian of his high school. The website now says that Walker graduated “top of his class.” The claim still remains on the Heisman Winners page for Walker.
While Walker was a top student at his high school and the president of the Beta Club — he maintained an “A” average to be in the school’s Beta Club — CNN’s KFile found no evidence he was the class valedictorian.
Walker has mentioned in numerous speeches over the years, including in the 2017 speech where he claimed to have graduated in the top 1% of his college class, and in his 2008 autobiography that he was class valedictorian at Johnson County High School. The street where Johnson County High School resides was officially renamed “Herschel Walker Drive” in 2017 in honor of Walker’s football achievements.
“If I’m proud of anything I did in my high school career, it’s what I did in the classroom that I reflect on and relish the most. I did more than just shed the “stupid” label placed on me as a result of my speech impediment. I shed it, erased it, and rewrote it with the titles: Beta Club president and class valedictorian,” wrote Walker in his 2008 “Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.”
CNN’s KFile reviewed Walker’s high school yearbooks and coverage of him in local newspapers at the time.
According to the local newspaper The Wrightsville Headlight, at Walker’s 1980 graduation he was not given the award for the student with the highest GPA in any academic subject. He did tie with another student for a leadership award based on participation in clubs and his GPA, and won numerous awards that year for his football achievements. While Walker was one of the ceremony’s honor graduates, the article does not mention the school naming a valedictorian or a salutatorian.
A 15-year review of local press coverage did not find the school naming a valedictorian until 1994 — when the paper acknowledged the school was naming a valedictorian and salutatorian for the first time in “many years.”
Walker’s campaign did not provide evidence that Walker graduated as his high school’s valedictorian other than pointing to news articles from the early 1980s after he began his career at the University of Georgia making the claim.
“There is not a single voter in Georgia who believes that whether Herschel graduated at the ‘top of his class’ or as Valedictorian 40 years ago has any bearing on his ability to be a great United States Senator,” Mallory Blount, communications director for the campaign, said in a statement.
The campaign also did not provide an explanation for why it removed the claim that Walker was valedictorian from his website. When repeatedly asked if the campaign stood by the since-removed claim from his website, the Walker’s campaign manager Scott Paradise sent the same statement three times in a row which did not address KFile’s questions.
“Multiple reporters wrote about this 40 years ago. If you have a problem with what they wrote, please contact them. If you have a difficult time getting in touch with them, ask yourself why you are asking such a stupid question,” said Paradise to CNN.
Johnson County Schools declined to comment and directed questions to Walker’s campaign when asked if they named a valedictorian that year or if Walker was the top student.
An evolving claim
It’s unclear when Walker began claiming he graduated from Georgia, and press accounts began listing him as returning to get his degree as early as 1983 after he left to join the United States Football League, a rival to the National Football League in the 1980s. Walker joined the New Jersey Generals, which was owned by then-businessman Trump. Over the years, Walker repeatedly told interviewers he had gone back to Georgia during the off-season to take classes. A 1986 article from The Dallas Morning News on his football career states Walker completed his degree in criminal justice and features a quote from Walker talking about his degree.
“Getting a degree is one of the paths you can take on the way to becoming an FBI man,” Walker said. “Of course, my life is not going in that direction right now, but I think police work, especially the FBI, would be my choice if I wasn’t a pro football player.”
Speaking on a YouTube show in 2008, following the release of his book, Walker told the interviewer he went back to get his college degree from University of Georgia
“You know it was said whether I leave or stay in school. It came up that I leave — and what was weird about that is people said, ‘Why would you leave college so early?’ And that’s like guys, ‘I went back to get my degree which is what you’re supposed to do.'”
Press reports from the time of the book’s publication listed Walker’s website for his book and subsequent speaking on mental health as HerschelWalker.net — which also said Walker returned to college and completed his degree.
The claim is brought up in interviews with Walker, on at least two separate occasions — with the host saying he returned to get his degree. In neither instance did Walker correct interviewers.
Is it really news that a Republican running for office lies constantly? I thought that was their standard operating procedure.
.@KFILE also found no evidence for Walker's claim, on his website and in his autobiography, that he was high school valedictorian: https://t.co/AG6taRKinD
When we noticed the claim was changed from "valedictorian" to "top of his class," we looked into the coverage of the graduation. Walker was not the top GPAed student in any subject, according to the now-defunct local paper.https://t.co/uCPQ7rnVnmpic.twitter.com/yZnYsqPFc2
A Chippewa Falls attorney who is a key player in a movement to take the impossible step of decertifying the 2020 election is running for attorney general on a platform of using the office to prosecute doctors who did not administer the anti-parasite drug ivermectin to dying COVID-19 patients and instead gave them other treatments.
Mueller said in an interview she is launching a campaign in order to investigate six Wisconsin hospitals for their doctors’ decisions to not administer ivermectin to COVID-19 patients. She would not disclose the names of the hospitals or reveal details of her allegations.
Mueller said the CDC and FDA are “liars” and that families have called her “begging for help, trying to figure out what to do because their loved ones were in hospitals and the families believed that those loved ones were basically being murdered. And they had the drugs withheld from them.”
“I am running for attorney general because of potential homicides in hospitals, because of vaccines — so-called vaccines,” she said.
Mueller, who said she took ivermectin last year while infected with COVID-19, said she did not consult a doctor or scientist to analyze whether the deaths or illnesses could have been prevented by the drug that doctors and researchers say has not been proven to be effective against the coronavirus. She said a trial would root out the facts of the situation.
Patrick Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Preventive Medicine Residency Program, said doctors who do not prescribe ivermectin to COVID-19 patients are upholding the Hippocratic oath to do no harm to patients by making decisions according to the consensus of available credible medical research.
“We strive to get it right. We do the best job we can to do no harm, and this is an example that would be unthinkable to me to ask a physician to prescribe a medicine that is at best ineffective and at worst harmful,” Remington said.
“There are valid debates about the best ways to treat serious illnesses and science is iterative, that as we go along we learn by experimentation, we learn by carefully conducted research,” he said.
“Ivermectin has undergone that scrutiny from early anecdotal evidence that it might be effective to well-conducted scientific studies that show that not only is it not effective but it can be harmful, and no credible medical organization or professional organization recommends it,” Remington said.
A large clinical trial published Wednesday involving about 3,500 people infected with COVID-19 showed ivermectin did not lower the incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of COVID-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis.
The study compared about 1,300 people in Brazil who received either ivermectin or a placebo. The rest received a different treatment.
Retail prescriptions for ivermectin surged in late 2020 before vaccines were widely available and after a catastrophic surge of COVID-19 cases. In December 2020, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson held a Senate hearing in which physician witnesses touted the drug as a COVID treatment and claimed positive research about ivermectin was being ignored.
Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin physician and one of ivermectin’s most vociferous promoters, testified at Johnson’s hearing that if people took the drug they would not get sick. Eight months later, despite taking ivermectin weekly, Kory came down with COVID-19.
Mueller cites Kory’s opinion in her effort to pursue civil penalties, and if elected, criminal charges against doctors who have refused to prescribe the drug in cases where patients died.
“What I would do if I became attorney general is I would open investigations into those deaths and if the facts were substantiated, I would probably bring charges against the people that were responsible for this,” Mueller said.
She said she is working on a civil lawsuit against multiple health care systems with multiple plaintiffs but declined to disclose details.
In October, Mueller represented the family of a Waukesha County man who was infected with COVID-19 in their pursuit of an order forcing Aurora Health Care officials to honor a prescription for ivermectin written by a doctor not authorized to practice medicine at the Aurora hospital where the man was in a drug-induced coma and breathing with a ventilator.
Asked Supreme Court to invalidate the 2020 election
In November 2020, Mueller asked the state Supreme Court to throw out the results of the presidential election because the use of ballot drop boxes were illegal, in her view.
The court rejected the petition from Mueller but in a recent ruling barred the use of drop boxes in the April 5 and subsequent elections because state law is silent on whether they are allowed. A final ruling is pending.
Mueller said she is running because she has not seen enough interest from the other Republican candidates — former state Rep. Adam Jarchow and Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney — in COVID-19 and election issues. She said Attorney General Josh Kaul, the Democratic incumbent, should investigate doctors’ decisions surrounding COVID-19 infections.
Kaul and Toney declined to comment. Jarchow did not respond to a request for comment.
Several hundred Russian troops reportedly rushed to a special medical facility in Belarus after digging in radioactive soil in a forest near the infamous nuclear plant.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Correspondent-At-Large
SeanGallup
Several hundred Russian soldiers were forced to hastily withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after suffering “acute radiation sickness” from contaminated soil, according to Ukrainian officials.
The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus. The forest is so named because thousands of pine trees turned red during the 1986 nuclear disaster. The area is considered so highly toxic that not even highly specialized Chernobyl workers are allowed to enter the zone.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian agency in charge of the country’s nuclear power stations, said the Russian soldiers had panicked and fled.
“It has been confirmed that the occupiers who seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone set off in two columns towards Ukraine’s border with Belarus. The occupiers announced their intentions to leave the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this morning to the Ukrainian personnel of the station,” the agency said in a statement on Telegram, adding that a small number of Russians still remained at the facility.
The agency said it had also confirmed reports of Russian forces digging trenches in the Red Forest, “the most polluted in the entire exclusion zone.”
“Not surprisingly, the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it showed up very quickly.”
Local reports suggest that seven buses with the zapped troops arrived in Gomel early Thursday. Journalists on the ground have also reported “ghost buses” of dead soldiers being transported from Belarus to Russia under the cover of dark.
U.S. intelligence reported Wednesday that Russian forces began withdrawing from the defunct site. Russia said the withdrawal from Chernobyl was part of a pledge to scale back the invasion. But Ukrainian media says it is actually because the troops were “irradiated” from the contaminated soil.
“Another batch of Russian irradiated terrorists who seized the Chernobyl zone was brought to the Belarusian Radiation Medicine Center in Gomel today,” Yaroslav Yemelianenko, who works for the Public Council at the State Agency of Ukraine for Exclusion Zone Management, posted on Facebook. “There are rules for dealing with this territory.”
The Chernobyl facility fell to Russian control on Feb. 24, the first day of the invasion. Workers were on duty for more than 600 hours before being allowed a shift change. International concern grew immediately when Russian troops moved heavy military hardware through the area, kicking up radioactive dust without any protective equipment. Forest fires in the area also raised concern about environmental contamination.
Digging trenches in the forest—considered the most contaminated area of the site—drew widespread ridicule from Ukrainians who work at the site.
#UPDATE Russian forces have begun to pull out of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power site, a US defense official said Wednesday, a day after Moscow said it would scale back attacks on two key Ukrainian cities https://t.co/apsEuYTsif
"The regular soldiers one of the workers spoke to when they worked alongside them in the facility had not heard about the explosion, he said." Unprotected Russian soldiers disturbed radioactive dust in Chernobyl's 'Red Forest', workers say https://t.co/NZZnF1hhHy
Russian soldiers who seized the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster drove their armoured vehicles without radiation protection through a highly toxic zone called the "Red Forest", kicking up clouds of radioactive dust, workers at the site said. https://t.co/efcDfBORAa
Seven busses packed with Russian soldiers suffering from Acute Radiation Syndrome arrived to #Belarus from the #Ukrainian#Chernobyl exclusion zone. Source: member of public council of state #Ukraine agency of exclusion zone Yaroslav Yemelyanenko via Unian news agency.
The stream of antiwar letters to a St. Petersburg lawmaker has dried up. Some Russians who had criticized the Kremlin have turned into cheerleaders for the war. Those who publicly oppose it have found the word “traitor” scrawled on their apartment door.
Polls and interviews show that many Russians now accept Mr. Putin’s contention that their country is under siege from the West and had no choice but to attack. The war’s opponents are leaving the country or keeping quiet.
Polls released this week by Russia’s most respected independent pollster, Levada, showed Mr. Putin’s approval rating hitting 83 percent, up from 69 percent in January. Eighty-one percent said they supported the war, describing the need to protect Russian speakers as its primary justification.
Please note what state control of the media can do and how it sways the public perceptions. Fox news, Alex Jones, Newsmax, Breitbart and a couple more are doing that in our country. It is all propaganda at all times. If we don’t get a handle on it soon we will be back 100 years in to the past with a country run by corporations and a starving population desperately trying to make it another day with no rights or protections by the government.
The hypocrisy here is painful to see. McConnell has no problem with outright lying and contradicting what he said only a short time ago. He is all about getting, keeping, and increasing the right wing power and control over the Supreme Court. He has admitted that. He said that control of the congress changes frequently back and forth but control of the courts is for decades. He voted for Judge Jackson last year. What has changed? The position she is up for is the top court that right now is approving or disapproving laws based on the outcome they want, not the constitution and legal structure of the US say is correct. Many of the right wingers on the court are getting very old. Thomas was recently in the hospital for an unknown length of time. They don’t want anyone on the court who is not a right wing ideolog.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is putting public and private pressure on Senate Republican colleagues to oppose President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, despite the historic nature of her nomination to be the first Black woman on the court.
McConnell has dug in against Biden’s nominee, arguing the vote isn’t about “race or gender” but about Jackson’s record, which he says is too soft on crime and indicates she’ll likely turn into an activist judge on the bench.
McConnell made an impassioned plea at a recent Senate GOP lunch for his colleagues oppose Biden’s choice, according to senators who attended the meeting.
One Republican senator said McConnell leaned in hard on Jackson’s nomination.
“He sought recognition and said, ‘I just want to thank the members of the Judiciary Committee for the great work they’ve done in exposing this judge’s radical record and in particular her record on child pornography cases are alarmingly extreme,’” the source said, recounting McConnell’s message to the conference.
McConnell talked about Jackson’s record in detail, including her decision to give one offender, Wesley Hawkins, a three-month sentence when federal prosecutors asked for him to be sent to prison for two years.
McConnell said, “I think the Democrats thought this would be an easy process, confirmation but it’s not going to be because she’s a radical nominee and I would hope that every Republican would look seriously at her record, which I think is troubling.”
The message is putting pressure on GOP swing voters such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah) to toe the party line and vote “no.”
Murkowski was present at the meeting where McConnell delivered his comments about the nominee but didn’t say anything. The Alaska Republican who is up for re-election this year and faces a Republican primary challenger also declined to comment about Jackson when asked about it by reporters on Tuesday and Thursday.
Romney says he still has to dig deeper into Jackson’s record before announcing his decision.
He said he “enjoyed” meeting with her Tuesday and said “her dedication to public service and her family are obvious.”
Republican strategists and longtime observers of McConnell’s leadership style say he views a unified Republican vote against Jackson as good politics heading into the midterm election and good for his own standing within the Senate GOP conference, which he plans to lead again in 2023 and 2024.
Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based GOP strategist who has advised McConnell’s past campaigns, said Biden’s nomination of Jackson “fits into the overall the Democrats are soft on crime and criminals and Republicans aren’t.”
“That is going to be a big narrative in this campaign. You’ve already seen that,” he added. “Any time you can throw another piece of evidence on that, I do think it furthers that narrative.”
Republican aides say Jackson’s record in sentencing child pornography offenders will be a tough one for vulnerable Democrats such as Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) to defend on the campaign trail later this year.
The more Republicans that vote this week for Jackson, the more political cover it gives to Democrats on the campaign trail.
So far, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who represents a state that Biden won by nine points, is the only Republican who has said she will vote to confirm Jackson.
Democrats have pushed back against this criticism. The argue that Republicans have taken Jackson’s sentencing decisions in seven child pornography cases out of context by harping on the fact that she handed out prison terms below what federal prosecutors demanded and below the advisory guidelines.
Democrats say that Jackson is one of many federal judges who view the federal advisory guidelines as out of date and in need of updating since they were established in 2003 with the Protect Act because Internet use became more prevalent.
Al Cross, a professor of journalism at the University of Kentucky and a longtime commentator on Kentucky politics, says McConnell likely sees a good opportunity to stand with some of the rising young conservatives in his conference, such as Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), with whom he clashed over their efforts to halt the certification of Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6.
“Once Cruz and the others made this a big issue, it gave McConnell and opportunity to practice some solidarity with his caucus,” he said.
“He’s in a difficult position. He’s got to deal with Trumpers, he’s got to keep the caucus together and any time the caucus can find something to essentially agree on, then that’s probably a good thing for his leadership of the caucus,” he added.
Cross noted that McConnell is known to view “the unity of the caucus as a prime directive.”
“I can’t imagine he really believes her judgment in these child porn cases is a disqualifier to be on the Supreme Court but once its been such an issue in conservative media, then it takes on a life of its own,” he said.
McConnell has come out strongly against Jackson in his public statements, as well.
“She has a particularly curious view about certain kinds of criminal behavior, in this particular case, people who distributed child pornography,” McConnell told Fox News’ Shannon Bream. “She’s a judicial activist. She’s very smart, she’s very capable. She’s going to be exactly what President Biden wants: A very liberal Supreme Court justice.
McConnell dismissed the publicly lobbying of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) who has called on his GOP colleagues to recognize “the historic significance of this nomination” and stressed the importance of Abraham Lincoln’s party, “the grand old party” is “on board.”
“The Democrats want to make this confirmation about race or gender. We don’t look at judges that way,” he said. “Most all Republicans believe in what’s called a strict construction, that is judges who make their very best effort as [late] Justice [Antonin] Scalia put it to follow the law.”
Jennings, the GOP strategist who has advised McConnell, said Jackson’s refusal to express her opinion about adding more justices to the Supreme Court was a big red flag for the leader.
“He’s extremely worried about left-wing, progressive attacks on the institution” of the court, he said. “When she would not take the Ginsburg, Breyer line on keeping the Supreme Court at nine, it was as signal to him that she’s pretty beholden to the liberal allies who have been the very people calling for court packing.”
McConnell in recent days has repeatedly raised his concerns about Jackson’s refusal to take the same public stance as late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer against expanding the court.
Former Heisman Trophy winner and candidate for US Senate Herschel Walker (R-GA) speaks to supporters of former President Donald Trump during a rally on March 26, 2022 in Commerce, Georgia.
