Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak announced a plan to launch so-called Innovation Zones in Nevada to jumpstart the state’s economy by attracting technology firms, Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Wednesday.
The zones would permit companies with large areas of land to form governments carrying the same authority as counties, including the ability to impose taxes, form school districts and courts and provide government services.
The measure to further economic development with the “alternative form of local government” has not yet been introduced in the Legislature.
Sisolak pitched the concept in his State of the State address delivered Jan. 19. The plan would bring in new businesses at the forefront of “groundbreaking technologies” without the use of tax abatements or other publicly funded incentive packages that previously helped Nevada attract companies like Tesla Inc.
Sisolak named Blockchains, LLC as a company that had committed to developing a “smart city” in an area east of Reno after the legislation has passed.
The draft proposal said the traditional local government model is “inadequate alone” to provide the resources to make Nevada a leader in attracting and retaining businesses and fostering economic development in emerging technologies and industries.
The Governor’s Office of Economic Development would oversee applications for the zones, which would be limited to companies working in specific business areas including blockchain, autonomous technology, the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence, wireless, biometrics and renewable resource technology.
Zone requirements would include applicants owning at least 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) of undeveloped, uninhabited land within a single county but separate from any city, town or tax increment area. Companies would have at least $250 million and plans to invest an additional $1 billion in their zones over 10 years.
The zones would initially operate with the oversight of their location counties, but would eventually take over county duties and become independent governmental bodies.
The zones would have three-member supervisor boards with the same powers as county commissioners. The businesses would maintain significant control over board membership.
The governor’s economic development office did not respond to questions about the zones Wednesday.
They each will be fined $5,000 under to a new rule adopted Tuesday that fines members who do not follow new security protocols, including walking through metal detectors into the House chamber.
The new metal detectors were put at the House chamber’s entrances in the wake of the mob that stormed the Capitol.
It’s unclear what specific incidents led to both lawmakers being fined, but the aide told USA TODAY both violated the new rule.
The offices for both Gohmert and Clyde did not immediately respond to inquiries about the incidents that led to the fines.
The rule gives the sergeant-at-arms the authority to fine lawmakers $5,000 for a first offense and $10,000 for a second if the legislators do not complete the security screening to enter the House — including walking through metal detectors.
The $5,000 will be deducted directly from Gohmert’s and Clyde’s salaries.
The rules and fines regarding the metal detectors came after some House Republicans openly defied them, refusing to pass through to get into the House chamber and even arguing with some Capitol Hill Police officers.
They were put into place about a week after the insurrection, a move that drew outrage from many GOP House members who claimed it was an infringement on their Second Amendment rights.
Members of Congress can carry unloaded weapons on the Capitol grounds, but cannot bring them onto the floor.
A research team at Imperial College in London used cell phone location data covering more than 10 million people and publicly available information on the spread of the virus to calculate which age groups were most responsible for the spread of the virus across most of the US.
Children accounted for very little spread, the researchers said, as did older adults. This could mean that opening schools may not contribute to spread if transmission is controlled among younger adults, they said.
“This study provides evidence that the resurgent COVID-19 epidemics in the US in 2020 have been driven by adults aged 20-49, and in particular adults aged 35-49, before and after school reopening,” the team wrote in their report, published in the journal Science.
“Unlike pandemic flu, these adults accounted after school reopening in October, 2020 for an estimated 72.2% of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the US locations considered, whereas less than 5% originated from children aged 0-9 and less than 10% from teens aged 10-19.”
And it might be the adults aged 35 to 49 who are the biggest factor in driving the pandemic, as opposed to younger adults, Oliver Ratmann of the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team and colleagues concluded.
“Prior to the implementation of COVID-19 interventions, contacts concentrated among individuals of similar age, were highest among school-aged children and teens, and also common between children/teens and their parents, and middle-aged adults and the elderly. Since the beginning of the pandemic, these contact patterns have changed substantially,” the team wrote.
“This study indicates that in locations where novel highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 lineages have not yet established, additional interventions among adults aged 20-49, such as mass vaccination with transmission-blocking vaccines, could bring resurgent COVID-19 epidemics under control and avert deaths,” they added.
They estimated that people 35 to 49 accounted for 41% of the new transmissions through mid-August, and adults 20 to 34 were responsible for another 35%. Children and teens accounted for just 6% of spread. People 50 to 64 made up 15% of transmission.
“Over time, the share of age groups among reported deaths has been remarkably constant, suggesting that young adults are unlikely to have been the primary source of resurgent epidemics since summer 2020, and that instead changes in mobility and behavior among the broader group of adults aged 20-49 underlie resurgent COVID-19 in the US in 2020,” the team wrote.
Neighbors say Powell and some of the younger children hadn’t been seen for a week or more.
Powell faces multiple charges, including violent entry or disorderly conduct, obstruction and depredation of government property. She made a brief appearance by video conference before a federal magistrate Friday afternoon, and she was ordered to remain in custody until her next hearing on Tuesday.
Powell turned herself in after learning she was facing criminal charges, her attorney, Michael Engle, told the Associated Press. “She wanted to turn herself in to face these charges and address them head-on,” he said.
Engle said he was reviewing the allegations against Powell and didn’t comment on them.
Until Thursday, the FBI had declined to even call Powell a suspect and offered only a short statement, indicating the agency secured a search warrant for the raid on the house and that they were looking for her.
“We are conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity at that location. We are seeking the whereabouts of Rachel Powell,” the FBI said.
Powell can clearly be seen in videos taking a battering ram to the Capitol during the January 6 assault.
She’s become known as “the bullhorn lady” who seemed to have knowledge of the Capitol building’s floor plan. She was seen on video instructing insurrectionists on where to go.
Powell is of special concern to federal investigators because if she had that knowledge, it could indicate the assault was pre-planned.
But Powell denies it in a piece in The New Yorker magazine.
The FBI had posted pictures of her, seeking the public’s help.
Neighbors were shocked by the raid and the reasons for it.
“It’s crazy. We’re Republican but we’d never do something like that. Biden’s the president right now. Live with it. Get over it,” Teresa Chisholm remarked to CBS Pittsburgh.
The timing might not be a chance occurrence. The entities, LZP, LLC and Independence and Freedom Network, are the subject of a complaint CREW filed with the FEC that is still awaiting resolution. The complaint alleged LZP, LLC, which is a nonprofit limited liability company and a subsidiary of Independence and Freedom Network, acted as a conduit for contributions from unknown donors to pump $270,000 into a super PAC that ran attack ads in an Ohio state legislative race in 2018.
On December 9 last year, the United States Senate confirmed three new commissioners to the FEC, which had lacked the quorum necessary to execute many of its primary duties, including voting on enforcement matters, since early July 2020 when then-Commissioner Caroline Hunter, a Republican, resigned. The three new commissioners — Democrat Shana Broussard and Republicans Sean Cooksey and Allen Dickerson — were sworn in on December 18.
One day before the commissioners were sworn in, Independence and Freedom Network, a “social welfare” nonprofit that has contributed more than $1 million to federal super PACs, began the process of officially winding down its affairs. Six days later, LZP, LLC, filed paperwork with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office dissolving itself. Independence and Freedom Network officially dissolved on New Years Eve.
Whatever the intention of the two entities shutting down, it could have a real impact on how the FEC rules on the complaint against them. In the past, FEC commissioners have cited a nonprofit ceasing its activity as a justification for invoking prosecutorial discretion as they sought to dismiss an enforcement action.
But the FEC does not need to be deterred by the dissolution of the two groups and should still take action on CREW’s complaint. In 2019, the FEC forced a dark money group called Americans for Job Security to register as a political committee and to report its donors and disbursements from previous election cycles despite the group being defunct.
LZP, LLC and Independence and Freedom Network, which were part of a dark money network responsible for at least $36 million in secretly-sourced funds spent in elections since 2011, are not the only politically-active spenders that shut down before 2020 came to an end. At least four other nonprofit limited liability companies known for their politically-charged spending also filed dissolution paperwork with the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office from September to December. Though none of them are known to be targets of campaign finance complaints, all four of the bygone groups have previously been spotlighted by CREW as examples of how anonymous political spending is becoming even more obscured.
The suit filed Wednesday on behalf of Gregory Bombard, of St. Albans, argues that Trooper Jay Riggen violated his rights under both the U.S. and Vermont constitutions.
“Vermonters who want to protest the actions of police through words or gestures have a constitutionally protected right to do so,” ACLU staff attorney Jay Diaz said in a statement. “This abuse of power by a Vermont state trooper is a clear example of just how overpoliced our communities are.”
Vermont State Police spokesman Adam Silverman said it is the department’s practice not to comment on pending litigation.
The suit filed Wednesday in Vermont Superior Court in Montpelier says Riggen stopped Bombard’s vehicle in St. Albans on Feb. 9, 2018, because he believed Bombard had shown him the middle finger. Bombard denied the allegation.
Once the initial stop was concluded, Bombard says he cursed and displayed the middle finger.
Bombard was stopped again and arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct. His car was towed. The charge was eventually dismissed.
Judges said their decision was based on jurisdictional rules in its founding documents and does not imply any attempt to determine statehood or legal borders.
Israel, which is not a member of the court, has rejected its jurisdiction.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in 2019 that there was a “reasonable basis” to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. But she asked the court to determine whether she has territorial jurisdiction before proceeding with the case.
She named both the Israeli Defence Forces and armed Palestinian groups such as Hamas as possible perpetrators.
In a majority ruling published Friday night, the judges said yes.
“The Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine … extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” they said.
The Palestinians, who joined the court in 2015, have long pushed for the case and asked the court to look into Israeli actions during its 2014 war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, as well as Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem.
Palestinians welcome decision, Israel slams ‘political tribunal’
Responding to the ruling, the Palestinian foreign ministry said it was ready to cooperate with the ICC’s prosecutor in the event an investigation was launched.
Nabil Shaath, a senior aide to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed the decision and said it proved the Palestinians were right to go to the ICC. “This is good news, and the next step is to launch an official investigation into Israel’s crimes against our people,” he said
Hussein al-Sheikh, civil affairs minister of the Palestinian Authority, said on Twitter: “The International Criminal Court’s decision to consider Palestine as a member state according to the Treaty of Rome, and that it has jurisdiction to consider issues related to the Palestinian territories and complaints raised by the (PA), is a victory for rights, justice, freedom and moral values in the world.”
Israel, however, dismissed the ruling as a “political tribunal”.
The letter is calling for the filibuster to be removed after Democrats won the House, Senate and presidency for the first time since 2011.
“The results of this election have unlocked the door to change, but another clear obstacle remains: the rules of the United States Senate that allow a partisan minority to block legislation and will prevent the Senate from governing and delivering on the promises they made to voters if they are left in place,” the letter states.
The letter claims the filibuster has been “abused” in recent years and that it has become a “weapon of pure partisan gridlock” and does not contribute to bipartisanship.
The letter highlighted other Senate changes that have been made in recent years, including the filibuster being removed by Republicans for Supreme Court nominations.
“The Republican majority also made use of the budget reconciliation process, first used in 1980, to pass their tax bill with a simple majority. And most recently, they changed the so-called ‘McConnell rule’ to advance President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee just weeks before an election after refusing to advance President Obama’s nominee during the final year of his term,” the letter states.
Democrats were known to use the filibuster as well during former President Trump’s tenure to block legislation, including that regarding Trump’s border wall.
However, the letter says those who supported the filibuster before “now see clearly that it has become something very different in recent years.”
Those who support keeping the filibuster argue that whichever side is in control of the Senate will too easily be able to pass legislation and it will silence the minority.
The International Criminal Court said Friday that its jurisdiction extends to territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, appearing to clear the way for its chief prosecutor to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in 2019 that there was a “reasonable basis” to open a war crimes probe into Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip as well as Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank. But she asked the court determine whether she has territorial jurisdiction before proceeding with the case.
The Palestinians, who joined the court in 2015, have pushed for the case. Israel, which is not a member of the ICC, has said the court has no jurisdiction because the Palestinians do not have statehood and because the borders of any future state are to be decided in peace talks.
The Palestinians have asked the court to look into Israeli actions during its 2014 war against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip, as well as Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem.
The international community widely considers the settlements to be illegal under international law but has done little to pressure Israel to freeze or reverse their growth.
The international tribunal is meant to serve as a court of last resort when countries’ own judicial systems are insufficient to investigate and prosecute war crimes.
Israel’s military has mechanisms to investigate alleged wrongdoing by its troops, and despite criticism that the system is insufficient, experts say it has a good chance of fending off the ICC investigation into its wartime practices.
When it comes to settlements, however, experts say Israel could have a difficult time defending its actions. International law forbids the transfer of a civilian population into occupied territory.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war, territories the Palestinians want for their future state. Some 700,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace.
