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Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log | Donald Trump

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Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.

The number corresponds to an official White House phone and the call was placed by Donald Trump himself, which means the call should have been recorded in the internal presidential call log that was turned over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.

Trump’s call to Lee was reported at the time, as well as its omission from the call log, by the Washington Post and CBS. But the origin of the call as coming from an official White House phone, which has not been previously reported, raises the prospect of tampering or deletion by Trump White House officials.

It also appears to mark perhaps the most serious violation of the Presidential Records Act – the statute that mandates preservation of White House records pertaining to a president’s official duties – by the Trump White House concerning January 6 records to date.

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump called Lee at 2.26pm on January 6 through the official 202-395-0000 White House number, according to call detail records reviewed by the Guardian and confirmation by the two sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The call was notable as Trump mistakenly dialed Lee thinking it was the number for Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville. Lee passed the phone to Tuberville, who told Trump Mike Pence had just been removed from the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the Capitol.

But Trump’s call to Lee was not recorded in either the presidential daily diary or the presidential call log – a problem because even though entries in the daily diary are discretionary, according to several current and former White House officials, the call log is not.

The presidential daily diary is a retrospective record of the president’s day produced by aides in the Oval Office, who have some sway to determine whether a particular event was significant enough to warrant its inclusion, the officials said.

But the presidential call log, typically generated from data recorded when calls are placed by the White House operators, is supposed to be a comprehensive record of all incoming and outgoing calls involving the president through White House channels, the officials said.

The fact that Trump’s call to Lee was routed through an official White House phone with a 202-395 prefix – either through a landline in the West Wing, the White House residence or a “work” cellphone – means details of that call should have been on the call log.

The only instance where a call might not be reflected on the unclassified presidential call log, the officials said, would be if the call was classified, which would seem to be unlikely in the case of the call to Lee. The absence of Trump’s call to Lee suggests a serious breach in protocol and possible manipulation, the officials said.

It was not immediately clear how a Trump White House official might obfuscate or tamper with the presidential call log, or who might have the authority to make such manipulations.

Trump’s calls on January 6 might not have been recorded in the presidential call log if he used his personal phone or the cellphones of aides, the officials said, and Trump sometimes called people with the cellphone of his then White House deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino.

But multiple current and former White House officials have noted that a copy of the call log – alongside the president’s daily schedule and the presidential line-by-line document – might be provided to Oval Office operations to help compile the presidential daily diary.

That could lead to a situation where records are vulnerable to tampering, since the presidential daily diary and call log needs approval by a senior White House official before they can be sent to the White House office of records management, the officials said.

And by the time of January 6, two former Trump White House officials said, there was scope for political interference in records preservation, with no White House staff secretary formally appointed after Derek Lyons’ departure on 18 December.

The White House Communications Agency has also not been immune to political influence, the select committee revealed last year, when it found evidence the agency produced a letter that was intended to be used to pressure states to decertify Joe Biden’s election win.

Trump’s call to Lee was not the only call missing from an unexplained, seven-hour gap in the presidential call log that day. Trump, for instance, also connected with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy as the Capitol attack unfolded.

The presidential daily diary and presidential call log were turned over to the select committee by the National Archives after the supreme court refused a last-ditch request from Trump to block the release of White House documents to the panel.

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Alex Jones Faces Fines for Not Testifying in Sandy Hook Suit

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The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has subpoenaed Mr. Jones, who echoed Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and is scrutinizing his role in organizing “Stop the Steal” events.

Late Tuesday, Mr. Jones’s lawyers filed an “offer of compromise” in Connecticut, proposing to pay the Sandy Hook plaintiffs a settlement of $120,000 each. “Mr. Jones extends his heartfelt apology for any distress his remarks caused,” they said.

The families swiftly rejected the proposal. “The so-called offer is a transparent and desperate attempt by Alex Jones to escape a public reckoning under oath with his deceitful, profit-driven campaign against the plaintiffs and the memory of their loved ones lost at Sandy Hook,” the families said in their court filing rejecting the offer.

The families in the Texas cases, in which Mr. Jones has been deposed, also say they are eager for their day in court.

“I’m looking forward to staring him down in a courtroom, to remind him of how he threw salt in my wound,” Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah died at Sandy Hook, said in an interview. Mr. Pozner and his nonprofit, the HONR Network, have led efforts to hold Mr. Jones to account for his falsehoods about the shooting. “He’s been hung by his own actions,” Mr. Pozner added.

Chris Mattei, a lawyer on the families’ legal team in Connecticut, would depose Mr. Jones. Mr. Mattei said the lawyers also plan to depose Rob Dew, a top Jones lieutenant, and finish questioning several Infowars representatives. Mr. Jones’s father, David Jones, who bankrolled his son’s business at its founding and is deeply involved in its product sales, has so far evaded a subpoena seeking his deposition, Mr. Mattei said.

Of Mr. Jones’s many maneuvers in the run-up to trial, Mr. Mattei said the most egregious was “his fabrication and concealment of financial records” and failure to produce comprehensive data on traffic to the Infowars website.

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State police won’t comment on audio obtained by AP of investigators grilling state trooper at center of Ronald Greene killing

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In the interview with state trooper Chris Hollingsworth, investigators are skeptical of his account, as they refer to police body camera videos that were later made public and show Hollingsworth and other officers tasing Greene, dragging him out of his car and beating him with a flashlight.

The audio obtained by the AP of what is reportedly a two-hour interview provides the latest details to become public in the investigation. In a story, and edited clips of the audio the AP made public, Hollingsworth reportedly tells investigators, “I was scared. He could have done anything once my hold was broke off him — and that’s why I struck him.”

The case, which has drawn national attention, is under federal investigation and is also being investigated by a committee in the Louisiana House of Representatives.

Greene’s family was told by state police that Greene died in a car crash, but nine body camera and dash-camera videos released last year by the state police — more than two years after Greene’s death — told a different story of what happened on the night of May 10, 2019, near the city of Monroe.

The state police would not comment on the latest audio and told CNN they handed over all evidence they gathered to federal investigators. The Louisiana Governor’s Office and Patrick Scott Wolleson, an attorney for Hollingsworth, did not immediately return a request for comment from CNN. Members of the special legislative committee told CNN that the committee was in the process of subpoenaing the video.

Hollingsworth was set to be fired for violations of his body-worn camera and car camera systems, use of force, performance, lawful orders, and for conduct unbecoming an officer, but he died in a car crash before he could be fired, officials said.

The AP account of the incident says Greene offered no resistance.

In the new audio clips, Hollingsworth can be heard saying, “I wasn’t trying to use deadly force against him, I only wanted to free my arm.”

The investigators interviewing Hollingsworth are skeptical: “According to this video, at least according to us, it doesn’t appear that you ever gave him a chance to get out of the car. You pretty much run up to the window and within a second or two, you tase him. How come?”

Hollingsworth said he “was in fear that he was going to hurt myself” and a colleague. He went on to “I didn’t mean it to be degrading, and, I didn’t know how serious the injuries were.”

Ron Haley, attorney for Greene’s family, told CNN that the family has heard the audio.

“The family has heard the audio through a leak,” Haley told CNN by phone. He said a gag order limits him on what he can say about the case, but added, “I know we cannot rush a federal investigation. But it just seems like the goal line keeps getting pushed back. Now we’re pushing on year three and we still have no indictment.”

According to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Greene’s family, the family was initially told Greene died on impact during the crash. A report from Glenwood Medical Center listed the principal cause of death as cardiac arrest and described an “unspecified injury” to Greene’s head. Post-mortem photos published on the NAACP Baton Rouge Facebook page showed large abrasions to Greene’s skull and bruising on his cheeks.

The troopers involved have maintained that Greene’s death “was caused by crash-related blunt force chest trauma that resulted in a fractured sternum and ruptured aorta,” and have maintained they had to use force to restrain him “for their own personal safety and for the safety of the public,” according to court documents.

A report from the Louisiana State Police Criminal Investigations Division’s investigation into Greene’s in-custody death cited a “struggle” with state troopers.

“A short time later Greene became unresponsive and was transported to Glenwood Medical Center by Pafford Medical Service,” the report said. Greene died on the way to the medical center, according to the LSP report.

Audio from Hollingsworth’s body camera that was released by state police revealed a telephone exchange inside his patrol vehicle after the beating. He begins by saying Greene was drunk.

“And I beat the ever-living f**k out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control and we finally got him in handcuffs when a third man got there and the son of a b*tch was still fighting and we was still wrestling with him trying to hold him down because he was spitting blood everywhere,” Hollingsworth says in the video.

He adds, “and then all of a sudden he just went limp.”

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Biden administration plans to end pandemic border restrictions in May, sources say

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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is finalizing its assessment of the public health authority, known as Title 42, according to CDC spokeswoman Kathleen Conley, and is expected to announce a decision this week on whether to repeal, modify or extend the authority.

The Biden administration has been under mounting pressure from Democrats and immigrant advocates to end the public health authority, which critics say was never justified by science and puts migrants in harm’s way.

Former President Donald Trump invoked the authority at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, a move that was immediately met with skepticism by immigrant advocates, public health experts, and even officials within the administration who believed it to be driven by political motivations. Yet the Biden administration continued to lean on Title 42 despite objections from its allies.

According to US Customs and Border Protection data, there have been 1.7 million migrants sent back to Mexico or their origin country since March 2020.

The handling of the US-Mexico border is a politically precarious issue for President Joe Biden ahead of the midterm elections as Republicans hammer the administration over its immigration agenda. Over the last year, Biden has already grappled with an influx of unaccompanied migrant children and a surge of migrants in Del Rio, Texas, that resulted in thousands of people under a bridge.

If the order is lifted, it is expected to have immediate ramifications. Homeland Security Department officials are preparing for a worst-case scenario of up to 18,000 people trying to cross the border daily, a number sure to overwhelm the already full border facilities.

The Associated Press first reported the administration’s plans.

Three planning scenarios have been devised to trigger what resources might be needed. The first scenario is where current arrest figures are, the second scenario is up to 12,000 people a day, and the third scenario is up to 18,000 people a day, according to a planning document.

“The nature and scope of migration has changed fundamentally,” one DHS official told reporters Tuesday.

The Department of Homeland Security set up a “Southwest Border Coordination Center” to coordinate a response to a potential surge among federal agencies. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas appointed FEMA Region 3’s Regional Administrator, MaryAnn Tierney, in March to head the center.

The end of the Trump-era pandemic restrictions would mean a return to traditional protocols, which might include releasing migrants into the US while they go through their immigration proceedings, detaining migrants, or removing them if they don’t have an asylum claim. Migrants who are released into the US may be enrolled in alternative to detention programs for continued monitoring.

As part of the planning, DHS is also lining up contracts for transportation to move migrants apprehended at the border to intake, setting up additional facilities for processing, and bolstering personnel on the ground. The administration has already started to offer Covid-19 vaccines to migrants encountered at the US southern border.

“This what we do at DHS. We plan for all kinds of contingency events whether they’re high probability or low probability,” another Homeland Security official said.

Tens of thousands of people at US-Mexico border

Between 30,000 to 60,000 people are estimated to be in northern Mexico waiting to cross the southern US border, according to a federal law enforcement official.

Intelligence assessments have found that people are in a “wait and see” mode and trying to determine when they have the best likelihood of entry into the US, the official said, adding that some of the 30,000 to 60,000 people could seek entry within hours if the CDC rule is repealed.

The White House has held interagency meetings about the intelligence and the situation more broadly, the official said.

“The key is whether (migrants) perceive whether they have a higher likelihood to be successful,” the official said.

Border arrests are expected to soon reach 1 million in total, months before the end of the fiscal year, US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Tuesday. Those figures also include repeat crossers.

Among the challenges for officials is the change in demographics arriving to the US southern border. About 40% of migrants taken into custody are coming from countries other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to a Homeland Security official.

“I think it’s important that as we’re dealing with an increased flow right now that we get in front of this as much as we possibly can,” Ortiz said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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Collins says she will back Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme Court

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“In my meetings with Judge Jackson, we discussed in depth several issues that were raised in her hearing,” Collins said. “Sometimes I agreed with her; sometimes I did not. And just as I have disagreed with some of her decisions to date, I have no doubt that, if Judge Jackson is confirmed, I will not agree with every vote that she casts as a Justice. That alone, however, is not disqualifying.”

Senate Republicans spent parts of Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings questioning her about her views on race. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post)

Collins said she was concerned about the increasingly partisan nature of Supreme Court confirmation hearings and that “the process is broken.” In an interview with the New York Times, which first reported the senator’s decision, Collins said a second meeting with Jackson on Tuesday had reassured her that Jackson would not be “bending the law to meet a personal preference.”

“In my view, the role the Constitution clearly assigns to the Senate is to examine the experience, qualifications, and integrity of the nominee,” Collins said Wednesday. “It is not to assess whether a nominee reflects the ideology of an individual Senator or would rule exactly as an individual Senator would want.”

Biden called Collins on Wednesday to personally thank her for her support of Jackson, a person familiar with the conversation said. The president had previously telephoned Collins at least three times since the vacancy opened, underscoring the influential role that the Republican senator would have in the confirmation fight.

Even without any Republican votes, Jackson’s confirmation remains on track for early April, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last week — particularly after Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), a centrist whose vote is critical in the 50-50 Senate, announced that he intended to vote to confirm Jackson.

With all 50 Democrats and independents expected to support Jackson, virtually assuring her confirmation, most of the remaining suspense surrounds how many Republican votes she will pick up. Democrats have expressed hope that Jackson would receive at least some bipartisan support, saying it would be important for the Supreme Court’s integrity for Republicans to back someone with Jackson’s qualifications.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain expressed gratitude Wednesday to Collins “for giving fair, thoughtful consideration to Judge Jackson — and all of the [president’s] judicial nominations,” he tweeted.

Three GOP senators — Collins, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) — voted last year in favor of Jackson’s nomination to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Murkowski and Graham have yet to announce their final decision this time around, although Graham is widely expected to vote against her for the Supreme Court after questioning Jackson aggressively at last week’s hearing.

Another possible Republican vote is Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who opposed Jackson for the circuit court but has said for weeks he is keeping an open mind when it comes to her elevation to the Supreme Court. Romney also met with Jackson on Tuesday and said afterward that they “had a wide-ranging discussion about her experience and qualifications.” However, he told reporters he probably would not announce his decision until the day of Jackson’s confirmation vote.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday formally scheduled a vote on Jackson’s nomination for April 4, triggering a timeline that would put the judge on track to be confirmed as the court’s 116th justice by the end of next week.

As the committee met to consider Jackson’s nomination, Republican senators requested a one-week delay on a vote, which has become a standard parliamentary tactic. That will launch a series of procedural votes on the Senate floor next week culminating in a confirmation vote on Thursday or Friday, as long as enough Democratic senators are healthy and present.



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McCarthy says Cawthorn ‘did not tell the truth’ about orgy, drug claims

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“This is unacceptable,” McCarthy told reporters Wednesday after meeting with Cawthorn, Axios reported. “There’s no evidence to this.”

McCarthy added that Cawthorn “changes what he tells” and “did not tell the truth,” describing his actions as “not becoming of a congressman.”

Cawthorn was seen leaving McCarthy’s office Wednesday morning after a meeting that lasted about half an hour. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) also attended the meeting, according to Politico.

“There’s a lot of different things that can happen. But I just told him he’s lost my trust. He’s going to have to earn it back,” McCarthy told reporters, Politico reported. “I mean, he’s got a lot of members very upset.”

A McCarthy spokesman confirmed the leader’s remarks. Spokespeople for Scalise and Cawthorn did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In an interview last week with the “Warrior Poet Society” podcast, Cawthorn was asked whether the hit television show “House of Cards” was an accurate reflection of life in the nation’s capital. Cawthorn responded by talking about the “sexual perversion that goes on in Washington” and suggested that he had been invited to an “orgy” by an unnamed lawmaker.

“I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 — you know, I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve always looked up to through my life, always paid attention to politics, guys that, you know. Then all of the sudden you get invited to, like, ‘Oh hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes. You should come,’” Cawthorn said in the interview, which was reported Sunday by Business Insider. “And I’m like, ‘What? What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.”

Cawthorn also claimed that he had witnessed unnamed prominent figures in Washington doing cocaine.

“Or the fact that, you know, there’s some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it’s like, this is wild,” he said.

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) reportedly stood up at the meeting and told his colleagues that Cawthorn’s comments did not describe House Republicans as a whole, and that some of his constituents have been asking him about the North Carolina lawmaker’s remarks. A Womack spokesperson confirmed that the congressman addressed Cawthorn’s remarks during Tuesday’s GOP conference meeting.

Some Senate Republicans have expressed frustration about Cawthorn’s comments as well. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called Cawthorn an “embarrassment at times,” while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said the lawmaker has a “lack of judgment” and had “not done much” for his House district, the Daily Beast reported.

On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) questioned why Republican lawmakers had voiced anger over Cawthorn’s comments but not over the federal sex-trafficking investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

“Not sure why Republicans are acting so shocked by Cawthorn’s alleged revelations about their party,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet. “One of their members is being investigated for sex trafficking a minor and they’ve been pretty OK w/ that. They issued more consequences to members who voted to impeach Trump.”

Cawthorn, 26, was elected to Congress in 2020 and represents North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. He has become a star of the pro-Trump right and was among the most fervent supporters of former president Donald Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020.

But his actions and statements have also prompted scrutiny. Earlier this month, Cawthorn was charged for the second time in his home state with driving with a revoked license, an offense that carries a maximum $200 fine or 20 days in jail.

He also faces two speeding citations — one for driving 89 miles per hour in a 65-mile-per-hour zone Oct. 18, and another for driving 87 miles per hour in a 70-mile-per-hour zone on Jan. 8, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol.

House Republican leaders have been criticized by Democrats — and even some members of their own party — for not taking action against Reps. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and other GOP lawmakers who have made threatening or extremist remarks.



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Possible tornado injures 7 in Arkansas as ‘intense tornadoes’ forecast for Southeast

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Seven people were injured, including two critically, when a possible tornado touched down at 4 a.m. in Springdale, a city in northwest Arkansas, Mayor Doug Sprouse said in a Facebook post.

“Many residents have been displaced from their homes and numerous businesses have reported significant damages,” he said. There have been no reported deaths, he noted.

The Springdale Fire Department said the southeastern part of the city sustained “significant damage,” and the Springdale Police Department announced a number of road closures amid reports of downed power lines, trees, and traffic lights.
Video obtained from CNN affiliate KHBS/KHOG shows flattened buildings, roof damage, and yards littered with storm debris. At George Elementary School, the gym was destroyed and the kitchen and cafeteria were severely damaged, the Springdale School District said.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said on Twitter that there were no students inside the school at the time.
The damage stems from a line of storms racing across eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas that will intensify through the day, putting over 50 million people at risk for life-threatening extreme weather.
“Just walk outside and you can tell something in the weather will occur today,” the National Weather Service (NWS) in Jackson, Mississippi, wrote Wednesday morning. The bull’s-eye is on Mississippi for the most extreme storms.

The Storm Prediction Center issued a tornado watch for Wednesday from 5:25 a.m. to 1 p.m. CDT covering parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

A tornado watch was also issued for portions of southwestern Louisiana and far east Texas from 11:10 a.m. until 7 p.m. CDT, and another watch was issued for eastern Arkansas, northeast Louisiana, the Missouri Bootheel, Mississippi and west Tennessee from 12:15 p.m. to 8 p.m. CDT.

The latter tornado watch contains the highest likelihood of multiple tornadoes, with the Storm Prediction Center giving a 90% chance of tornadoes occurring within the area. In addition to tornadoes, “damaging wind gusts are expected to result in widespread wind damage,” the SPC said, with gusts potentially reaching up to 80 mph.

The extreme weather comes in a month that has seen near-record tornado activity in the US. One difference between this week’s storms and last week’s deadly tornado outbreak is how much more widespread the risk area is, how intense the winds will be and the longevity of damaging winds.

Risks of severe storms throughout the day

As the storms move across Arkansas, the risk for severe storms will increase throughout the day.

“There is an increased threat of EF-2 to EF-5 tornadoes and severe thunderstorm wind gusts of 65 knots (75 mph) or greater,” the Weather Prediction Center said Wednesday morning.

EF-2 tornadoes can cause considerable damage, ripping roofs from houses and destroying mobile homes. Meanwhile, an EF-5 tornado will cause incredible damage, usually sweeping homes off their foundation and carrying them considerable distances, according to the NWS.

By midday, changes in the atmospheric conditions near the line of storms will lead to “a rapid increase in storm coverage and intensity,” the Storm Prediction Center said.

A moderate risk –– level 4 of 5 — for severe storms covers the entire state of Mississippi and includes portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee. So, in addition to Jackson, populated cities like Memphis in Tennessee, Baton Rouge in Louisiana and Mobile and Montgomery in Alabama are all in this risk category.

Get ahead of the storm, sign up for weekly updates from CNN meteorologists

The bulk of the most vigorous activity is expected to become severe as it quickly crosses the Mississippi River into Mississippi, western Tennessee and Kentucky, the SPC said.

“We are expecting a long duration severe weather event today with damaging winds even before the storms arrive and destructive winds during the main event,” Logan Poole, a meteorologist with the NWS in Jackson, told CNN.

All across the South, winds are forecast to be strong ahead of the main line of storms which will have even stronger winds. Even before the storms approach, there could be damaging wind gusts of nearly 60 mph out of the south.

High wind warnings are in effect ahead of the line of storms stretching from northwestern Tennessee to the Louisiana Gulf Coast.

“This will certainly be widespread and likely to affect a larger portion of our population,” the NWS in Jackson wrote. “Winds up to 80 mph, in addition to the gradient wind ahead of the line, will pose risks of downed trees and powerlines and result in power outages.

As the line of storm approaches, “Supercells are likely, with strong tornadoes possible,” the SPC said, “as well as particularly damaging outflow surges.”

The storm threat will continue through the evening hours and overnight, with storms hitting places like New Orleans, which is at a severe risk level 3 of 5, just about sunset.

As the storms make their way east across Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, they will begin to lose some of their potency before reaching places like Atlanta in the early morning hours.

A near-record March for tornadoes

As of Wednesday morning, the SPC has tallied at least 187 preliminary reports of tornadoes in March. This is more than 233% of normal and just four shy of the highest March tornado count in recorded history (191 in March 2021), according to CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

On average, March averages about 80 tornadoes across the country.

Though the March record may be broken in a few hours with Wednesday’s storms, another tornado record has been standing far longer. The nat`ion is currently in the midst of its longest stretch without an EF-5 tornado, says Javaheri. “You would have to go back nearly a decade to May 20, 2013, for the last EF-5 in the country.”

Since that time, at least 11,322 tornadoes have touched down in the US, without a single one reaching the EF-5 threshold (200+ mph).

“The streak nearly came to an end in December 2021, amid the historic month that saw over 200 tornado reports,” Javaheri adds. “The December 10 western Kentucky tornado was rated an EF-4, with peak winds estimated around 190 mph, just 10 mph shy of an EF-5 tornado.”

“This is a streak we’ll hope to continue today.”

CNN’s Laura James, Brandon Miller contributed to this report.



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Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton says | Donald Trump

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John Bolton, the former national security adviser, has revealed that he heard Donald Trump use the term “burner phones” several times and that they discussed how the disposable devices were deployed by people as a way of avoiding scrutiny of their calls.

Bolton’s intervention compounds Trump’s difficulties amid a billowing controversy relating to seven hours and 37 minutes that are missing in official call logs. The gap occurs in records made for 6 January last year – the day of the violent insurrection at the US Capitol.

The Washington Post and CBS News disclosed on Tuesday that the House committee investigating the insurrection is looking into a “possible cover-up” of the White House records. Documents originally held by the National Archives and turned over to the committee earlier this year showed a gap in Trump’s phone calls spanning precisely the period when hundreds of his supporters stormed the Capitol building.

The news outlets, which obtained 11 pages of records including Trump’s official daily diary and a call log for the White House switchboard, reported that the House panel has begun an investigation into whether Trump used disposable “burner phones” to sidestep scrutiny.

In a statement to the Post/CBS News, Trump said: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.”

Not true, according to Bolton. In an interview with the Post/CBS News, the former national security adviser said that he recalled Trump “using the term ‘burner phones’ in several discussions and that Trump was aware of its meaning”.

Bolton added that he and Trump had spoken “about how people have used ‘burner phones’ to avoid having their calls scrutinized,” according to Robert Costa, author of the Post/CBS News revelations along with Bob Woodward.

At the heart of the January 6 committee investigation is whether Trump was directly involved in coordinating the breach of security at the Capitol on the day that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was to be certified by Congress. What Trump did, and whom he talked to, as the insurrection was unfolding is central to the inquiry.

The call logs obtained by the committee show that Trump spoke to several close associates on the morning of January 6, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former senior adviser Steve Bannon. His daily diary shows an entry at 11.17 am for a phone call with “an unidentified person”, but after that the records fall silent.

The next phone log is at 6.54pm when Trump asked the White House switchboard to put him through to his communications chief, Dan Scavino.

In those intervening 457 minutes Trump supporters and white supremacist groups had broken through police barricades, forcing vice-president Mike Pence, who was overseeing the certification process, into hiding. A bipartisan Senate report connected seven deaths to the attack with more than 100 law enforcement officers injured.



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Covid-19 News: Booster and Variant Updates

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Credit…China Daily, via Reuters

Jilin, an industrial province in northeastern China, is at the front line of the country’s latest coronavirus outbreak, leaving medical workers and migrant laborers there struggling to cope with restrictions.

Shanghai, which imposed a lockdown to stanch a coronavirus surge, has won more attention in China and abroad in part because it had appeared to be a well-run bastion against infections, and it has a large and vocal-middle class. But statistics of illness and resident accounts suggest that Jilin has been hit harder.

China is trying to follow a restrictive policy, but is now reporting nearly 9,000 cases a day, most of them in people showing no symptoms. More than 2,000 new cases were detected in Jilin on Tuesday, most of them light or asymptomatic, according to China’s National Health Commission.

While the numbers are relatively few compared with those in many countries, especially when it comes to serious illness and death, China’s stringent lockdown and quarantine policies have put a strain on local governments as cases rise and residents require hospital beds, medicine and food deliveries. All 1,150 symptomatic cases in Jilin recorded on Tuesday have been put into medical isolation, according to local health officials.

In recent days, messages have spread on China’s internet describing rural migrant workers in Jilin who have tested positive for the coronavirus and then come under quarantine. Some have complained of lack of medical treatment and economic support. They included laborers who, in a twist of irony, said they had helped build the makeshift hospitals to treat Covid patients there.

“Everyone’s panicking and they don’t know where to go,” said one of the calls for help. “Over 40 have tested positive. Where do we get treatment? Afterward who’s going to set things right with us?”

One infected worker who posted the plea online said in a telephone interview that he had been locked up in the same hospital he had just built as a day laborer, along with dozens of other infected workers. He said he had a fever and sometimes could not get medicine while medical staff members struggled to tend to 300 patients. He said that he was not being paid for his time in quarantine and would miss the spring planting season on his farm.

On Monday, officials in Hebei Province, near Beijing, confirmed that two workers who had traveled to Jilin to help build the Covid hospitals had returned home infected with the coronavirus.

At a news conference on Monday, an official from the Jilin city government — the city is a namesake of the province — acknowledged that workers on a building site for a Covid hospital there had been infected. The official said that the spread had been stopped and “the workers’ rights have been effectively protected and assured.”

Calls to Jilin province government’s press office went unanswered, and an official at the province’s health department said he did not know about the workers’ complaints.

This week, Sun Chunlan, the Chinese vice premier in charge of pandemic measures, visited Jilin. She told officials to stick to the government’s “dynamic zero” goal of minimizing infections.

“Apply rigorous measures to continue getting to grips with every task in pandemic prevention and control,” she said, according to the Jilin government website.

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting and Liu Yi contributed research.

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Republican Susan Collins to back Ketanji Brown Jackson for supreme court – live | US news

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Here’s some more on Joe Biden speaking later about the Covid-19 pandemic. The president is set to announce a new White House initiative to incorporate a “one-stop shop website” designed to give Americans better access to tools and information in fighting coronavirus.

The president will announce that the US is at “a new moment in the pandemic” with lifesaving tools such as improved testing, vaccines and treatments available, and that the website covid.gov will consolidate guidance into a single point of information.

“With a click of a button, people will be able to find where to access all of these tools, as well as receive the latest CDC data on the level of Covid-19 in their community,” a press release about Biden’s announcement states.

“Protecting the American people… now and into the future relies on affordable and accessible tools like vaccines, treatments, tests and high-quality masks. Through efforts like covid.gov and test-to-treat, the Administration continues to take steps to make these tools even more readily available. Now, we need Congress to do its part and continue to fund the Covid-19 response.”

The funding of vaccinations, and the wider government response to the pandemic, has become a bone of contention, even as rates of infection and the number of deaths have tumbled since the peak of the Omicron variant.

In a statement earlier this month, the White House blasted Congress for failing to provide an additional $22.5bn the Biden administration says it needs to continue, among other initiatives, the funding and distribution of vaccines nationwide, and warned of the risk of a new wave of infections.

On Tuesday, the US food and drug administration (FDA) and federal centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) approved a second booster vaccine for Americans over 50, and those with compromised immune systems.

Many health officials are concerned about the fast spread of the BA.2 Omicron sub-variant, which has now become dominant in the US, the New York Times reports.

Here’s more about the FDA approving a second round of booster shots:

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