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Column: Recalling a ’90s Ukraine on the verge of hard-won independence

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Column: Recalling a ’90s Ukraine on the verge of hard-won independence

Thirty-two years in the past, I noticed one thing in Odessa, Ukraine, that also fascinates me.

We had been at a well-liked park on the Black Sea. An extended line of Ukrainians — perhaps 50 — had been at a sales space the place T-shirts, snacks and newspapers had been being bought. Individuals had been there for the newspapers.

Even again then, this was a outstanding sight. Individuals weren’t lining up for newspapers three many years in the past and positively aren’t nowadays.

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Ukrainians had been grabbing up newspapers as a result of their parliament had simply — on July 16, 1990 — declared the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union.

They couldn’t learn sufficient about it. This was their July 4, 1776.

However there have been no fireworks. No high-fives. Not even a lot discuss. It was eerily quiet. Individuals sat at picnic tables, on benches or on the grass immersed in a paper. Their faces confirmed confusion and concern.

You could possibly see them pondering: “Now what?” “How does this have an effect on me?” “What’s going to the Russians do?”

It took some time, however they started to get a solution 24 years later when Russia “annexed” — seized — Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

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The total reply got here final Thursday when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a brutish assault on Ukraine by land, sea and air.

In Odessa, individuals awoke to exploding missiles. Russian troops and tanks moved north from the Crimea. Within the Black Sea, the place our cruise ship had sailed placidly in 1990, international business vessels reported being hit by bombs and missiles.

It reminds us of the distinction a nationwide chief could make. In 1990, Russia was led by a pleasant reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev. Now, it’s being dangerously steered astray by a Soviet throwback bully.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and emergence of democracies in Jap Europe was an thrilling time within the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s — particularly for American political consultants and activists who had been drawn to the wrestle for democratization.

One such political junkie was Sean Garrett, a 24-year-old press aide for Gov. Pete Wilson.

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Garrett’s start mom was a Lithuanian immigrant and he’d all the time been interested by his roots. So in 1992 he wrangled a job serving to the pro-democracy facet in Lithuania’s second free election.

“Everybody within the governor’s workplace thought I used to be insane,” Garrett, now 54, recalled final week.

Garrett grew to become an immediate celeb in Lithuania.

“Not solely was I from America, I used to be from California,” he instructed me later. “For them, California meant the final word dream — Hollywood, seashores ….

“The simplest strategy to get fun was to inform them that California now had issues, and that Californians didn’t like California a lot anymore. They’d simply begin laughing. They couldn’t grasp it. They had been chilly, hungry, out of labor, out of gasoline.”

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Garrett continuously urged democracy advocates to maintain their message easy. In the future he supplied an instance. At a rock live performance, he instantly was requested to handle the 5,000 younger individuals there.

“I walked out,” he recalled, “and mentioned, ‘I’ve acquired one query for the way forward for Lithuania: Would you like Lenin, or would you like Levi’s?

“They went nuts. ‘Levi’s. Levi’s.’”

4 years later, Garrett labored in Ukraine serving to individuals regulate to a free market economic system.

However for many of his profession, he has been a public relations marketing consultant for Bay Space tech corporations.

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“Lots of people who’ve solely been to Western Europe nonetheless consider Jap Europe as a Soviet bloc,” Garrett says. “Should you’ve been to Paris or Munich, you’ve been to Ukraine. It’s very European.”

In 1996, three prime Wilson strategists had been employed covertly to assist Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin win reelection. His picture was within the dumpster. However being Individuals, they couldn’t be seen working with the Kremlin chief. So, they secretly dealt along with his influential 36-year-old daughter.

Yeltsin beat a hard-core communist.

“You’re coping with the oligarchs in Russia,” lead strategist George Gorton later recalled. “It may be horrifying. … I used to be very completely satisfied to get out in a single piece.”

Earlier than he ran Arnold Schwarzenegger’s profitable 2003 recall marketing campaign that toppled Gov. Grey Davis, marketing consultant Mike Murphy labored for capitalist causes in Romania and Georgia.

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In Romania, he scrounged up cash for a newspaper backing the opposition so it may bribe a nightwatchman to acquire a railroad automobile stuffed with newsprint. The federal government was blocking the paper’s entry to it.

In Georgia, he suggested pro-democracy candidates working in opposition to a Russian-backed get together.

“Western consultants depend on mass communication, persuasion and organizing,” he says. “Russians simply inform the top of the railroad to name in everybody for emergency work on election day to allow them to’t vote. We put up a unfavorable TV advert in Georgia, they usually simply turned off the ability. Fairly slick.”

As for Putin, “on the finish of this he’ll be a pariah,” Murphy says. “Putin could win a couple of navy battles, however he’s going right into a quagmire. He’s delusional.”

For one, Russia’s economic system is barely half the scale of California’s.

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State price range nerds in Sacramento are attempting to evaluate what monetary impact the warfare and sanctions can have on California.

“It received’t quantity to a hill of beans for the fifth-largest economic system on the planet,” says finance division spokesman H.D. Palmer.

“Each Ukraine and Russia are comparatively small buying and selling companions. Russia constitutes 0.3% of California’s whole exports and 0.5% of imports.”

It’s a given gasoline costs will rise.

Murphy’s proper: Putin will rating short-term navy wins, however in the long term he’ll be branded a loser — a power-mad thug who brutalized a neighbor and threw his personal nation beneath the avtobus.

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Odessans will love studying about it of their newspaper.

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Appeals court rules Texas has right to build razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration: 'Huge win'

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Appeals court rules Texas has right to build razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration: 'Huge win'

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that Texas has the right to build a razor wire border wall to deter illegal immigration into the Lone Star State. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the ruling on X, saying President Biden was “wrong to cut our razor wire.” 

“We continue adding more razor wire border barrier,” the Republican leader wrote. 

Wednesday’s 2-1 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clears the way for Texas to pursue a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of trespassing without having to remove the fencing.

TRUMP SAYS MEXICO WILL STOP FLOW OF MIGRANTS AFTER SPEAKING WITH MEXICAN PRESIDENT FOLLOWING TARIFF THREATS

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It also reversed a federal judge’s November 2023 refusal to grant a preliminary injunction to Texas as the state resisted federal efforts to remove fencing along the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, Texas.

U.S. Border Patrol agents cut an opening through razor wire after immigrant families crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, Sept. 27, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee during the president-elect’s first term, wrote for Wednesday’s majority that Texas was trying only to safeguard its own property, not “regulate” U.S. Border Patrol, and was likely to succeed in its trespass claims.

LIBERAL NANTUCKET REELS FROM MIGRANT CRIME WAVE AS BIDEN SPENDS THANKSGIVING IN RICH FRIEND’S MANSION

Duncan said the federal government waived its sovereign immunity and rejected its concerns that a ruling by Texas would impede the enforcement of immigration law and undermine the government’s relationship with Mexico.

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TEXAS BORDER RAZOR WIRE

A Venezuelan immigrant asks Texas National Guard troops to let his family pass through razor wire after they crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas, Sept. 27, 2023. (John Moore/Getty Images)

He said the public interest “supports clear protections for property rights from government intrusion and control” and ensuring that federal immigration law enforcement does not “unnecessarily intrude into the rights of countless property owners.”

Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton called the ruling a “huge win for Texas.” 

“The Biden Administration has been enjoined from damaging, destroying, or otherwise interfering with Texas’s border fencing,” Paxton wrote in a post on X. “We sued immediately when the federal government was observed destroying fences to let illegal aliens enter, and we’ve fought every step of the way for Texas sovereignty and security.”

Texas border

Migrants attempt to cross the southern border in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, in February. (David Peinado/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The White House has been locked in legal battles with Texas and other states that have tried to deter illegal immigration. 

In May, the full 5th Circuit heard arguments in a separate case between Texas and the White House over whether the state can keep a 1,000-foot floating barrier on the Rio Grande.

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The appeals court is also reviewing a judge’s order blocking a Texas law that would allow state officials to arrest, prosecute and order the removal of people in the country illegally.

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Rep. Katie Porter obtains temporary restraining order against ex-boyfriend on harassment allegations

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Rep. Katie Porter obtains temporary restraining order against ex-boyfriend on harassment allegations

U.S. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) secured a temporary restraining order Tuesday against a former boyfriend, saying in dozens of pages of court filings that he had bombarded her, as well as her family and colleagues, with hundreds of messages that she described as “persistent abuse and harassment.”

Porter, 50, alleged in a filing with Orange County Superior Court that her ex-boyfriend Julian Willis, 55, was contacting her and her family with such frequency that she had a “significant fear” for her “personal safety and emotional well-being.”

Judge Stephen T. Hicklin signed a restraining order Tuesday barring Willis from communicating with Porter and her children until a mid-December court hearing. He also barred Willis from communicating about Porter with her current and former colleagues.

In the court filing, Porter said that Willis had been hospitalized twice since late 2022 on involuntary psychiatric holds and had a history of abusing prescription painkillers and other drugs.

She said in a statement to The Times that Willis’ mental health and struggles with addiction seemed to have gotten worse since she asked him in August to move out of her Irvine home. She said she sought the court order after his threats to her family and colleagues “escalated in both their frequency and intensity.”

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“I sincerely hope he gets the help he needs,” Porter said.

Willis declined to comment. He will have an opportunity to file a legal response to the temporary restraining order and challenge Porter’s allegations.

Porter is leaving the House of Representatives in January after losing in California’s U.S. Senate primary in March. She has been discussed as a front-runner in the 2026 governor’s race in California after Gov. Gavin Newsom is termed out, but has not said whether she will launch a campaign.

The 53-page court filing, first reported by Politico, included 22 pages of emails, text messages and other communications among Porter, family members and colleagues who had received messages from Willis, as well as messages that Willis sent to Porter’s attorney and to her political mentor Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

The filing also included messages between herself and Willis’ siblings as they discussed trying to help him during his psychiatric holds and while he was staying in a sober-living facility.

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Porter said that since she ordered Willis to move out, he had sent her more than 1,000 text messages and emails, including texting her 82 times in one 24-hour period in September, and 55 times on Nov. 12 before she blocked his number.

Porter said in the filing that her ex-boyfriend had “already contacted at least three reporters to disseminate false and damaging information” about her and her children, which she said “poses a serious risk to [her] career and personal reputation.”

The filing includes an email that Porter said Willis sent to her attorney late Monday, in which Willis said he had visited Porter’s son at college in Iowa and told him that he would “bring the hammer down on Katie and smash her and her life into a million pieces.”

Another screenshot shows Willis telling Porter’s attorney that he would file a complaint about Porter, who has children ages 12 and 16, with child protective services.

One of Porter’s congressional staff members received a text message from Willis saying he would “punish the f—” out of him if he did not agree to “cooperate” with a New York Times reporter and Willis’ attorneys, according to a screenshot included in the court document.

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Willis previously made the news in 2021, when he was arrested after a fight that broke out at a Porter town hall at a park in Irvine.

Times staff writer Christopher Goffard contributed to this report.

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Homan taking death threats against him ‘more seriously’ after Trump officials targeted with violent threats

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Homan taking death threats against him ‘more seriously’ after Trump officials targeted with violent threats

Incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan reacted to news of death threats against Trump nominees on Wednesday and said he now takes the death threats he has previously received seriously. 

“I have not taken this serious up to this point,” Homan told Fox News anchor Gillian Turner on “The Story” on Wednesday, referring to previous death threats made against him and his family. 

“Now that I know what’s happened in the last 24 hours. I will take it a little more serious. But look, I’ve been dealing with this. When I was the ICE director in the first administration, I had numerous death threats. I had a security detail with me all the time. Even after I retired, death threats continued and even after I retired as the ICE Director. I had U.S. Marshals protection for a long time to protect me and my family.”

Homan explained that what “doesn’t help” the situation is the “negative press” around Trump. 

HARRIS NEVER LED TRUMP, INTERNAL POLLS SHOWED — BUT DNC OFFICIALS WERE KEPT IN THE DARK

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President Elect Donald Trump, left, and new appointed Tom Homan, right (Getty)

“I’m not in the cabinet, but, you know, I’ve read numerous hit pieces. I mean, you know, I’m a racist and, you know, I’m the father of family separation, all this other stuff. So the hate media doesn’t help at all because there are some nuts out there. They’ll take advantage. So that doesn’t help.”

Homan’s comments come shortly after Fox News Digital first reported that nearly a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees and other appointees tapped for the incoming administration were targeted Tuesday night with “violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” prompting a “swift” law enforcement response.

ARMED FELON ARRESTED FOR THREATENING TO KILL TRUMP ATTENDED RALLY WEEKS AFTER BUTLER ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

Donald Trump in a blue suit and red tie pumps his fist in the air and looks up

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives to speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The “attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’” according to Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

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“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” she told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “In response, law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action.” 

Sources told Fox News Digital that John Ratcliffe, the nominee to be CIA director, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the nominee for UN ambassador, were among those targeted. Brooke Rollins, who Trump has tapped to be secretary of agriculture, and Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to be EPA administrator, separately revealed they were also targeted. 

Threats were also made against Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former Trump attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz’s family. 

Trump holds fist

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024.  Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)

Homan told Fox News that he is “not going to be intimidated by these people” and “I’m not going to let them silence me.”

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“What I’ve learned today I’ll start taking a little more serious.”

Homan added that he believes “we need to have a strong response once we find out is behind all this.”

“It’s illegal to threaten someone’s life. And we need to follow through with that.”

The threats on Tuesday night came mere months after Trump survived two assassination attempts.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report

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