Civil rights notable James Meredith turns 90 urges people to press onward

JACKSON, Miss. — James Meredith knew he was putting his life in danger in the 1960s by pursuing what he believes was his divine mission: conquering white supremacy in the deeply, and often violently, segregated state of Mississippi.

A half-century later, the civil rights leader is still talking about his mission from God. In recent weeks, he made several appearances around his home state, urging people to obey the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule in order to reduce crime. On his 90th birthday on Sunday, Meredith said older generations should lead the way.

“Old folks not only can control it — it’s their job to control it,” Meredith told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday after an event honoring him at the Mississippi Capitol.

Meredith is a civil rights icon who has long resisted that label because he believes it sets issues such as voting rights and equal access to education apart from other human rights.

During the event, Meredith fell while trying to stand and speak. He leaned on an unsecured lectern, and it crashed forward with Meredith on top. People nearby scrambled to return him to a wheelchair.

Meredith suffered no visible injuries. An ambulance crew checked him later, and then Meredith went to his home in Jackson to have a birthday celebration with his family. His wife, Judy Alsobrooks Meredith, said Monday that he was spending time with grandchildren and showing no signs of pain.

In October 1962, federal marshals escorted Meredith as he enrolled as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi, while white people rioted on the Oxford campus. Mississippi’s governor at the time, Ross Barnett, had stirred mobs into a frenzy by declaring that Ole Miss would not be integrated under his watch.

Meredith was a 29-year-old Air Force veteran who had already taken classes at one of Mississippi’s historically Black colleges, Jackson State. NAACP attorneys represented him as he obtained a federal court order to enter the state’s flagship public university. After a largely solitary existence at Ole Miss, Meredith graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

After graduating, Meredith set out to promote Black voter registration and show that a Black man could walk through Mississippi without fear. In June 1966, a white man with a shotgun wounded Meredith on the second day of a march from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. With Meredith hospitalized, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and other civil rights leaders continued the march, often followed by long lines of activists and local people.

Less than three weeks after he was shot, Meredith had recovered enough to join the final stretch of what became known as the March Against Fear. It ended at the state Capitol, where an estimated 15,000 people gathered for Mississippi’s largest civil rights rally.

This year, Meredith had planned to walk 200 miles in Mississippi to spread his anti-crime message — roughly the same distance as the March Against Fear. Instead, he made a series of appearances in recent weeks, often using a rolling walker, a wheelchair or a golf cart.

On Sunday, Meredith rode in a golf cart for the final quarter-mile from Jackson City Hall to the Mississippi Capitol, led by a high school marching band and accompanied by dozens of people on foot. A racially diverse group of about 200 people sought shade under magnolia and oak trees while listening to songs, speeches and a child’s poem praising Meredith.

Flonzie Brown-Wright, a longtime Mississippi civil rights activist who participated in the 1966 March Against Fear, said she believes Meredith is a genius at creating strategies for social change.

“He is a very smart man, endowed with a lot of old-fashioned wisdom. He has been able to use that for the greater good of his people,” Brown-Wright said Sunday. “I love him like a big brother.”

In the decades since Meredith integrated Ole Miss, the university has erected a statue of him on campus and has held several events to honor him and his legacy.

John Meredith said Sunday that his father had a profound effect on higher education, but the March Against Fear had a greater impact on him as a son because it demonstrated the importance of elections.

“The silent gift of voting is the ability to help shape the laws under which you live. It is the beauty and the curse of America,” said John Meredith, the current city council president in Huntsville, Alabama. “Participation in voting yields inclusion, diversity and opportunity. Failure to vote results in the loss of freedom … and government oppression.”

At the Capitol birthday celebration, Iyanu B. Carson, a 5th grade student from Jackson, read her poem titled “90 Years of History,” saying she aspires to be like Meredith.

“You made the choice to use your voice, you were strong and made them believe you belonged,” Iyanu said. “Today we celebrate history, and Mr. Meredith, history is you! We’re proud of your accomplishments and all that you have been through.”

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Hollywood mogul acknowledges gifts to Netanyahu may have been excessive

JERUSALEM — A billionaire Hollywood mogul took the stand for a second day on Monday in Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial, acknowledging that the long list of champagne, cigars and jewelry he systematically gave to the Israeli prime minister may have been excessive.

Arnon Milchan, whose production credits include “Pretty Woman,” “12 Years a Slave,” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” is a key witness in one of three cases brought against Netanyahu. Prosecutors are trying to prove that Netanyahu committed fraud and breach of trust.

Milchan, 78, has been testifying by videoconference from Brighton, England, which is near where he is based.

Prosecutors hope his testimony, which began Sunday and is expected to last some two weeks, will provide details about the abundance of gifts given to Netanyahu and his wife. The gifts, the prosecutors maintain, led to favors from Netanyahu that advanced Milchan’s interests.

Netanyahu’s lawyers have said Milchan’s gifts were friendly gestures.

In his first day of testimony, Milchan described a friendship that included some gifts to the Netanyahus that turned into regular requests and “transformed into a routine.”

He said the routine became so frequent that he and the Netanyahus developed code words for the gifts. Cigars were known as “leaves,” champagne was known as “roses,” and luxury dress shirts were nicknamed “dwarves.”

He said he had instructed his aides to give the Netanyahus “whatever they want” and was assured by the prime minister that there was nothing illegal going on.

On Monday, Milchan said the gifts didn’t affect his friendship with the Netanyahus until a police investigation was opened and at which point, he said he realized the gifts were “excessive.”

Asked whether he had ever refused a request for gifts, Milchan said: “Not that I remember.”

Milchan also again stressed that he considered the Netanyahus friends, but recounted that he told police he felt uncomfortable that his gifts were not reciprocated.

According to the indictment against Netanyahu, Milchan gave Netanyahu and his wife a “supply line” of lavish gifts valued at nearly $200,000.

The indictment accuses Netanyahu of using his influential perch to assist Milchan to secure a U.S. visa extension by drawing on his diplomatic contacts, including former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

Prosecutors also accuse Netanyahu of working to push legislation that would have granted Milchan millions in tax breaks.

Milchan testified Monday that he had turned to Netanyahu and others for help about the visa extension. He said Kerry called him one day and met with him at a hotel. Describing Kerry as a good friend, he said he was told Kerry could not help.

The prosecution and defense lawyers have been questioning Milchan in a hotel conference room in Brighton. While no journalists are allowed there, Netanyahu’s wife Sara, on a private visit to Britain, sat in for a second straight day.

Prosecutors have demanded that Sara Netanyahu not make eye contact with Milchan, fearing she could sway the witness.

The testimony is being aired in a Jerusalem courtroom for judges and other lawyers — who can also ask questions of Milchan — and for journalists and other attendees to watch.

Netanyahu, who has attended some of the hearings during his trial, was at the courtroom both on Sunday and Monday. Milchan, who is not charged in the case, greeted him in Hebrew over the two-way video broacdcast, using Netanyahu’s nickname: “Shalom, Bibi!”

Milchan is testifying in one of three cases being brought against Netanyahu. The other two, which include charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, accuse Netanyahu of exchanging regulatory favors with powerful media moguls for more positive coverage.

Netanyahu denies wrongdoing, claiming he is the victim of a witch hunt orchestrated by a liberal media and a biased justice system.

Netanyahu’s legal woes have dogged him politically, putting his fitness to rule while on trial at the center of a political crisis that sent Israelis to the polls five times in under four years.

They also have fueled accusations by critics that Netanyahu is pushing a contentious government plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary as a way to escape the charges. Netanyahu denies those accusations.

The trial, which began in 2020 and has still not heard from Netanyahu himself, has featured more than 40 prosecution witnesses, including some of Netanyahu’s closest former confidants who turned against the premier.

Witness accounts have shed light not only on the three cases against Netanyahu but also revealed sensational details about his character and his family’s reputation for living off the largesse of taxpayers and wealthy supporters.

Milchan’s aide, Hadas Klein, testified last year that the Netanyahu family “loves gifts.”

The idea of a plea bargain has repeatedly surfaced, but prosecutors for now appear determined to see the trial through, despite reports last week that the judges warned them that the more serious crime of bribery will be hard to prove.

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Putin tells rebellious Russian fighters to swear allegiance or leave for Belarus

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered mercenary troops who participated in the short-lived weekend rebellion to either swear allegiance to their country or leave for Belarus.

In evening remarks from the Kremlin, his first since a short address to the nation on Saturday, Putin presented part of the short-term resolution for the stunning turn of weekend events that upended the front in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On Friday, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group’s mercenary fighters, declared war against Russia’s military leadership and turned his troops toward Moscow. The advance was halted on Saturday after a peace deal brokered by Belarus’ president.

Putin’s remarks attributed the fault of the rebellion to Prigozhin, and he said the mercenaries could sign a contract with the Russian military, return to their families or go to Belarus.

“Wagner Group soldiers are also patriots, loyal to the state, they have proven this in combat,” Putin said, arguing that any rebellion attempt would have been unsuccessful. “They were used blindly, forced to turn on their comrades with whom they fought shoulder to shoulder.”

Putin also paid tribute to Russian air force pilots who he confirmed had been killed in the insurrection. Wagner forces previously claimed to have shot down several aircraft in its bid to secure territory.

In a Telegram message earlier on Monday, Prigozhin insisted that his actions over the weekend were not an effort to oust Putin as Russia’s leader.

“Our decision to turn back was driven by two factors,” Prigozhin said. “One, that we did not want Russian blood to flow. The second factor was that we went to demonstrate our protest, and not to overthrow the government of the country.”

On Friday, Prigozhin, who has tussled with Russian leaders on multiple fronts throughout the country’s invasion of Ukraine, ordered thousands of his mercenary troops to march toward capturing Moscow. They quickly secured several strategic bases south of Moscow, including the city of Rostov-on-Don, but stopped because of the deal that Belarus brokered.

Prigozhin said on Monday the deal would helpthe Wagner Group continue its operations, which reach not only into Russia’s war efforts in Ukraine, but also to several African countries. His precise whereabouts remain unknown.

The Biden administration has repeatedly stated that the U.S. had nothing to do with the Russian crisis, labeling it as an internal conflict.

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New York officials remember Richard Ravitch the state's top crisis solver for half a century

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York’s top leaders mourned the passing of longtime problem-solver Richard Ravitch, who died Sunday less than two weeks before his 90^th birthday.

“He was never elected to anything, yet he had arguably the most impactful and consequential role in state and city government over the past 50 years,” Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said in an interview with POLITICO, pointing to Ravitch’s time saving New York City from the financial crisis in the 1970s, running the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and spending 18 months as lieutenant governor.

“It really is quite a remarkable legacy.”

With a background in real estate, Ravitch had been appointed to various federal, state and local government entities since the 1960s.

His first prominent role came when newly-elected Gov. Hugh Carey asked him to head the massive Urban Development Corp. in 1975, soon after major banks told Carey they would no longer lend it money.

Ravitch managed to save the authority and keep it solvent. And within a few months, he played a major role bringing stakeholders together as New York City officials scrambled to save their own government from bankruptcy.

At the end of the decade, Carey appointed Ravitch to save yet another struggling state agency – this time, the MTA.

“He is the father of the modern MTA,” authority CEO Janno Lieber said at an unrelated press conference Monday morning. “When I was a kid and the subway system was as bad as it has ever been, Ravitch stepped up … and convinced us that it was possible to bring New York’s most iconic public facility back to life and make it great.”

(Not everybody was a fan of his tenure there – he proved himself “incompetent and incapable of running government,” Hyatt Grand Central developer Donald Trump once said of Ravitch, who refused to have the MTA pay for a private subway entrance for the hotel.)

Ravitch spent the following decades bouncing around a number of prominent roles. He organized a 1984 Olympics bid by New York City, led Major League Baseball’s labor negotiations in the 1990s and chaired a congressional commission on housing issues in 2000.

He finished third in the 1989 Democratic New York City mayoral primary, the closest he ever came to winning elected office.

He was eventually appointed to a top state post. But this was a job he would later dub “the most useless experience of [his] life.”

After ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation elevated Lt. David Paterson to the governorship, Paterson was left without a lieutenant governor. Leadership fights in the state Senate a year into Paterson’s tenure led to an intractable 31-31 gridlock in the chamber.

Nothing in the state constitution details any process for replacing a lieutenant governor, and the assumption for decades had been the job should remain vacant until the next election.

But in an attempt to find a tie-breaking Senate vote and end the Senate’s gridlock, Paterson decided to see what the courts would say if he went ahead and appointed one.

The courts ultimately concluded he had the authority to pick a replacement lieutenant governor, and Paterson turned to the most unimpeachable figure he could find.

“I thought that he was exactly the right type of person. I didn’t think the Republicans would see this as political chicanery,” Paterson recounted Monday.

He noted that even while the GOP was criticizing him over the process, “They said at the same time that the appointee was to them an outstanding appointment.” Ravitch would go on to “serve well,” Paterson said.

But Ravitch never settled into the role, usually one of the most powerless in state government. In his 2014 memoir, he described the lieutenant governor’s cavernous office space in the Capitol: “The rooms came to seem like a metaphor of the job I held; elaborate and empty.”

Eight months into his tenure, Ravitch’s falling out with Paterson was complete when he released a budget plan that competed with the governor’s at a time the state faced a major financial pinch.

Paterson was already on his way at the door at that point, with Democrats circling around then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as their next gubernatorial nominee, and any chance he would play a major role in shaping the administration ended.

But he never faded from the political scene or shied away from sharing his thoughts on newer issues.

“He became a good friend and advisor of mine,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a press conference on Monday. “We had lunch together not that long ago. He told me all the things I need to do, as he always would.”

DiNapoli said Ravitch “adopted” him as “one of his special projects, to mentor me and share the wisdom of his experience.”

“I was definitely on his speed dial list. And the thing about Dick is he was relentless when he was on an issue or a topic; he would call pretty much anytime day or night if he was hot on something. Either gently suggesting what I should do, or more aggressively demanding what I should do, and would not take no for an answer very easily.”

While governors and politicians were similarly on Ravitch’s call list, DiNapoli said, he always took the time to meet with “an aspiring City Council candidate, or an Assembly candidate … He made you feel that being involved in public service was an honorable calling.”

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Crypto mystery: New tax rules are MIA

The crypto world has been bracing for a tax crackdown from the Treasury Department for more than a year-and-a-half, ever since Congress approved new rules aimed at making it easier for the IRS to determine how much money people make trading virtual currencies.

Since then: silence.

Though the IRS considers crypto a major source of tax avoidance, not even a first draft of the regulations needed to fill in the details of the new transaction-reporting requirements has been released by the administration.

Adding to the mystery is that the rules appear to have been written, having been blessed months ago by the White House budget office — which, until recently, was one of the last bureaucratic steps in the process of issuing regulations.

In the meantime, the start date for the rules has been put off indefinitely.

That has perplexed many, from members of Congress to lawyers like Lisa Zarlenga, a cryptocurrency tax expert at Steptoe.

“This is the single easiest thing they can do to improve compliance, and they’re not doing it,” said Zarlenga, a former Treasury tax official.

“I’ve been scratching my head.”

The IRS’s tortoise-like pace contrasts with the aggressive campaign to clamp down on crypto being waged by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has sued to force industry giants Coinbase and Binance to follow its regulations.

The delay also comes amid a high-profile push by the administration to reduce the estimated $500 billion in taxes that go uncollected every year, a big reason why Democrats pushed through a one-time $80 billion cash infusion for the IRS.

The tax agency had been asking lawmakers for the new crypto rules for years, saying it needed more power to root out tax avoidance by people trading digital assets.

During the debt-limit negotiations, President Joe Biden complained that Republicans wouldn’t agree to a second crackdown dealing with so-called wash sales that would prevent crypto holders from using paper losses to erase their tax bills.

In a statement, Treasury spokesperson Kristin Lynch said: “Treasury is working diligently to finalize these important and complicated regulations.”

She did not respond to questions about the reasons for the delay or when the rules might be released

The still-gestating regulations could be controversial for the agency, reviving a contentious fight like the one seen in Congress when it first approved the rules.

At the time, in 2021, lawmakers were deeply divided, even within each party, over what corners of the digital asset world should be subject to the requirements. Odd bedfellows like Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sen. Cynthia Lummus (R-Wyo.) said the rules went too far.

Lawmakers wanted the $28 billion the crackdown was projected to raise to help defray the cost of an infrastructure spending bill.

Congress left many of the details to be sorted out by Treasury, and those with a stake in the issue are now anxious to see whether the rules apply not only to obvious targets like Coinbase but also things like decentralized exchanges, people who make “cold wallets” and miners.

The IRS already requires people to report crypto transactions on their annual returns. And to underscore that point, the agency began requiring people to say on their filings whether they owned virtual currencies at any point in the year (in 2021, 2.3 million filers answered “yes”).

But the agency does not have an easy way to determine whether what the taxpayer reports on a return is true or complete, having to resort to audits and John Doe summonses to exchanges for the information. It’s such a big problem that experts have trouble even estimating how much in crypto-related taxes go uncollected.

That’s where the rules approved by Congress come in. They require brokers to report to the IRS, as well as their customers, how much they saw in gross proceeds from selling digital assets.

The idea is to not only provide the IRS with independent data about transactions. If people know someone else is reporting to the IRS, they are less likely to omit the information from their returns.

That’s been part of Washington’s tax-collection playbook for more than 30 years, with lawmakers repeatedly expanding such “third-party reporting” to an ever-widening circle of payments. The IRS now collects more than 50 “informational” returns detailing how much people are paid at their jobs and how much they made selling stock and how much interest they paid on their mortgage.

Advocates say expanding those requirements to crypto would not only improve tax collections. It would also make it easier for people holding digital assets to do their taxes, especially if they are frequent traders because they won’t have to track each individual sale.

The rules were supposed to take effect in January, but the administration announced late last year they would be delayed.

The rules were OK’d by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in February, which had been one of the final steps in issuing regulations. The administration recently announced OIRA will no longer review tax regulations.

Even once the rules are released, they’ll only be the initial draft — the administration still must take public comment on them before finalizing the requirements. Some experts predict the agency won’t make them effective in the middle of a tax year because that would cause too many headaches, which means the start date could be a long way off.

Critics complain that amounts to a windfall for the crypto world.

At a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen when the rules might be released.

“The SEC has proved they’re not afraid of the crypto bros, I know you’re not afraid of the crypto bros, I hope the IRS is not afraid of them — when are we going to see these regulations?” asked Sherman, ranking member of the panel’s subcommittee on capital markets.

Said Yellen: “We’ll get back to you on that shortly.”

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Civil rights notable James Meredith falls at event marking his 90th birthday

JACKSON, Miss. — Civil rights icon James Meredith fell outside the Mississippi Capitol on Sunday at an event marking his 90th birthday, but he suffered no visible injuries and was resting comfortably at home later.

Meredith leaned onto an unsecured portable lectern as he stood to speak to about 200 people. The lectern toppled forward, and he fell on top of it. Those around him quickly scrambled to stand Meredith up upright, and they helped him back into the wheelchair he had been using. People also gave him ice packs and cold water as the temperature hovered at about 95 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meredith remained at the event until it ended about 45 minutes later. An ambulance crew checked him afterward, and Meredith then left in a sport utility vehicle with friends and family.

His wife, Judy Alsobrooks Meredith, said in a text message to The Associated Press hours later that he was at home with family.

“He’s enjoying his birthday cake now,” she said. “He’s tougher than anybody I’ve ever known.”

Meredith was already an Air Force veteran in 1962 when he became the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, after winning a federal court order. White mobs rioted on the Oxford campus as federal marshals protected Meredith.

In 1966, Meredith set out to promote Black voting rights and to prove that a Black man could walk through Mississippi without fear. On the second day of his planned walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, a white man with a shotgun shot and wounded Meredith on a highway.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement continued Meredith’s march in his absence, and Meredith recovered enough to join them for the final stretch. About 15,000 people rallied outside the Mississippi Capitol on June 26, 1966.

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Chris Christie responding to quips about his weight tells Trump to 'look in the mirror'

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Sunday mocked Donald Trump, his fellow Republican presidential candidate, for Trump’s recent quips about his weight.

“Oh, like he’s some Adonis?” he said to host Howard Kurtz on Fox News’ “Media Buzz,” saying that his longtime struggles with his weight have nothing to do with whether he is qualified to be president.

Calling Trump “a bully on the schoolyard,” Christie added: “Here’s my message to him: I don’t care what he says about me, and I don’t care what he thinks about me, and he should take a look in the mirror every once in a while — maybe he’d drop the weight thing off of his list of criticisms.”

Christie, who continues to take direct aim at the former president as he tries to gain steam in the GOP race, reiterated many of the criticisms of Trump he has been making in his recent speeches, including at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, where he was booed Friday for his remarks.

Given that Trump remains the Republican frontrunner, Kurtz asked Christie whether all his attacks on Trump were futile because the Republican Party he is seeking to lead in 2024 doesn’t really exist anymore .

“I don’t think so,” Christie said. “I think the things that I’m talking about in our campaign, about doing big things again, about being a leader on the world stage, about reforming our educational system to give urban kids a chance to be able to really achieve and accomplish everything that their God-given potential has, those are future issues — those are future issues, not past ones.”

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