Joe Rogan apologizes after Spotify backlash over COVID episodes - New York Post

Joe Rogan has apologized and pledged more balance on his controversial podcast after a rush of rock legends quit Spotify and accused him of spreading COVID-19 misinformation.

“If I p—ed you off, I’m sorry,” the outspoken UFC commentator said in a nearly 10-minute video on Instagram late Sunday.

Multiple artists are having their music removed from Spotify after the tech giant declined to remove episodes of “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Getty Images

“I’m not trying to promote misinformation. I’m not trying to be controversial,” he insisted of his record-breaking podcast that feels like “some out-of-control juggernaut that I barely have control of.”

“I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations,” he said of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which “started off is just f–king around with my friends.”

The podcaster addressed the protest over his work that started with “Rockin’ in the Free World” singer Young quitting Spotify, followed by Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren.

“I’m very sorry that they feel that way. I most certainly don’t want that. I’m a Neil Young fan. I’ve always been a Neil Young fan,” he said.

Spotify said it will add content advisories before podcasts discussing COVID-19.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

“And definitely no hard feelings towards Joni Mitchell. I love her too,” he said, praising “Chuck E’s In Love,” realizing later that it was actually by Rickie Lee Jones, whose name he misspelled in his caption.

Rogan addressed an announcement hours earlier by Spotify CEO Daniel Elk that future COVID podcasts on the service would carry content advisories.

“Sure, have that on there. I’m very happy with that,” Rogan said, calling it “very important.”

Still, he justified talking to the two guests who have led to his podcast being accused of “spreading dangerous misinformation,” noting they were “very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people.”

“The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact,” he said.

“Eight months ago, if you said if you get vaccinated you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID — you will be removed from social media … Now, that’s accepted as fact,” he said.

“If you said ‘I don’t think cloth masks work’ you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN.

“If you said, ‘I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab,’ you’d be banned from many social media platforms. Now that’s on the cover of Newsweek,” he said.

Joni Mitchell said she would remove all of her music in Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young.

John Shearer/Invision/AP

Rogan noted that he spoke also to many who have “a different opinion than those men do,” including CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Dr. Michael Osterholm, a member of President Biden’s COVID-19 advisory board.

“Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them,” he insisted.

“I think if there’s anything that I’ve done, that I could do better is have more experts with differing opinions right after I have the controversial ones. I would most certainly be open to doing that,” he said, calling it a “pledge” to his viewers.

Rogan said it was not the first time he’d had to put out fires for Young — saying his last job as a 19-year-old concert security guard had been a show by the Canadian rocker where fans went so wild, they started “raging fires on the lawn” which he was supposed to help put out.

Joe Rogan has apologized and pledged more balance on his podcast.

Carmen Mandato/Getty Images

“I was not about to get beat up for 15 bucks an hour,” he recalled, saying that he drove home singing Young’s now-ironic classic tune “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

“So no hard feelings towards Neil Young,” he repeated, while also thanking Spotify for sticking by him despite “taking so much heat.”

Rogan was reportedly paid more than $100 million by Spotify for exclusive rights to his record-breaking podcast.

“It’s a strange responsibility to have this many viewers and listeners. It’s very strange and it’s nothing that I prepare for, and it’s nothing that I ever anticipated,” he said, thanking the “haters” for making him “reassess” his work.

Adblock test (Why?)

Joe Rogan apologizes after Spotify backlash over COVID episodes - New York Post
Read More

2021 NFL playoffs: What we learned from Bengals' win over Chiefs in AFC Championship Game - NFL.com

27-24 (OT)

2021 · 12-5-0

FULL BOX SCORE

1. The Comeback Kids send Bengals to the Super Bowl. Down 21-3 midway through the second quarter, the Bengals didn't blink. Joe Burrow began to hit his stride, the defense clamped down on Patrick Mahomes, and Cincinnati came flying back to take the lead late in the fourth quarter. Once K.C. forced overtime, Burrow continued to show ice water in his veins, finding Tee Higgins for a big first down to move into field goal range. Five runs later, rookie kicker Evan McPherson sent the Bengals to their first Super Bowl since the 1988 season. Burrow was poised all day, taking just one sack and wiggling out of several others to scramble for big first downs. The second-year QB made the plays late that Mahomes didn't. When K.C. took away his deep shot, Burrow calmly hit crossers and screens for chunk gains. Between Burrow making pinpoint passes and running back Joe Mixon churning out yards, the Bengals' offense was the one moving the ball in the second half with the game on the line. Burrow became just the third QB in NFL history to have multiple game-winning drives in a single postseason in one of his first two career seasons. The other two: Tom Brady in 2001 and Kurt Warner in 1999. Both won the Super Bowl.
2. Chiefs offense picks a bad time to take a nap. Much like Aesop's Hare, K.C. sprinted out to a big lead, scoring touchdowns on its first three possessions to go up, 21-3. The Chiefs' first four possessions went for 84, 75, 72 and 80 yards. After the halftime break, the offense never woke up. Its first five possessions of the third and fourth quarters went for 34 total yards and just two first downs with a Mahomes interception. After looking dazzling early, Mahomes struggled to find open receivers and took four big sacks. The offense going in the tank looked eerily similar to the second-half output in the Week 17 loss in Cincinnati. There was zero rhythm, and early-down runs put K.C. behind the chains. The Chiefs looked like they woke up on the final drive getting it to first-and-goal from the 5-yard-line, but two Mahomes sacks forced a long field goal to force overtime. After winning another coin toss, Mahomes sent an arm-punt towards Tyreek Hill that was intercepted. Mahomes' last play of the season was an INT. The Chiefs will be kicking themselves all offseason for not squashing the upstart Bengals when they had the chance.
3. Bengals secondary shines once again. The Cincinnati defense is unheralded no more. After flying under the radar all season, the Bengals' defense played lights out on a big stage. The secondary was smothering in the second half, not giving Mahomes an inch of daylight to make a play. At times the QB sat in the pocket and sat, and sat and sat and sat. Still, no one came open. That's the type of coverage that Cincy used to suffocate a potent K.C. offense. The Bengals secondary didn't allow a single second-half reception to the star receiver Hill. Making the Chiefs play one-handed like that is something few defenses can accomplish. Safety Jessie Bates tipping a deep shot to Hill for a Vonn Bell interception in overtime exemplified the type of lockdown play the back end sported in critical spots this season. The Bengals dropped eight-plus defenders on a season-high 35% of pass plays, per Next Gen Stats, holding Mahomes to just 7 of 13 for 59 yards, an INT and two sacks on such plays.
4. The Bengals offense is more than just Ja'Marr Chase. With the Chiefs intent on doubling the dynamic rookie, Burrow looked elsewhere early. Higgins again stepped into that void, killing the Chiefs defense over the middle. Higgins went for 108 yards on six catches. When Burrow needed a big play, he often looked Higgins' way, and the receiver delivered. Cincy proved that even if Chase is slowed for stretches and the explosive player is negated, they have the weapons to take advantage of other coverages. Yes, Chase is the most explosive talent, but the Bengals are more than a one-trick offense. Take away those big plays, and Burrow will find another way to move the chains.
5. Not getting points at end of first half dooms Chiefs. On its fourth drive of the game, up 21-10, K.C. drove the ball down the field, 80 yards to the 1-yard-line, with ease. But with zero timeouts left and just five seconds on the clock, Mahomes threw an ill-advised pass to Hill behind the line of scrimmage. Hill was tackled in the field of play to end the half with added points. Even a field goal would have been a big difference for K.C. entering halftime. Instead, the flub gave Cincy life. For as magical as Mahomes played up to that point, the mental error was a brutal mistake. After that play, the offense never seemed to recover.

NFL Research: No team in NFL history had overcome a halftime deficit of 10-plus points to win in multiple games against the same opponent in a single season (including playoffs). The Bengals trailed K.C. by 11 at halftime in Week 17 (won 34-31) and trailed by 11 at halftime of the AFC Championship Game (won 27-24 in OT).

 

Next Gen stat of the game: Joe Burrow was 14 of 19 for 112 yards and two touchdowns on quick passes; 18 of 28, 210 yards, 2 TDs when not under pressure; and 5 of 10, 40 yards, INT when under pressure (sacked once). 

Adblock test (Why?)

2021 NFL playoffs: What we learned from Bengals' win over Chiefs in AFC Championship Game - NFL.com
Read More

Android users warned over trick that lets you read deleted WhatsApp messages - New York Post

Android users are being warned over a trick that lets you read deleted WhatsApp messages that could compromise phone data.

A handful of different apps can be used to retrieve the deleted messages.

But one new app, WAMR, appears to retrieve deleted data from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other platforms.

Due to the encryption on Android devices, WAMR can’t access the messages directly.

Instead, the app uses your notification history to read the messages and create a message backup, according to information from the Google App store.

The WAMR app will detect a deleted message and then show you a notification.

Additional media, including pictures, videos, animated gifs, audio, voice notes, documents, stickers, may also be recovered from messages.

However, the app does note that it is not an official way to recover deleted messages, and warns that it could encounter limitations based on the app where the message data is, or even from the Android operating system.

There is also a privacy risk involved with downloading the app.

Open installing the WAMR app, several permissions must be granted for it to operate on your Android device.

According to some Android users, the WAMR app will detect a deleted message and then show you a notification.

Shutterstock

These permissions could compromise data from other apps on your phone.

Information Security Newspaper reports that internet search history and contact lists are among the data that could be accessed by the WAMR app.

The outlet also reports that despite the potential security risks, the WAMR app has been downloaded more than 10million times.

As of now, the app is only available on the Android marketplace.

Shutterstock

Choosing to download an app like WAMR that could compromise the data and security on your phone is a risk that should be carefully weighed.

WhatsApp has long been lauded for its privacy and encryption.

The app provides a level of privacy with its end-to-end encryption for messages and calls.

According to reports, the WAMR app has been downloaded more than 10 million times.

play.google.com

WhatsApp recently unveiled a new update that allows users to easily contact the company’s support team.

This story originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced here with permission

Adblock test (Why?)

Android users warned over trick that lets you read deleted WhatsApp messages - New York Post
Read More

DR Congo court sentences 51 to death over killing of UN experts - Al Jazeera English

Zaida Catalan, a Swede, and Michael Sharp, an American, were killed as they investigated violence in the Kasai region nearly five years ago.

A military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has sentenced 51 people to death, several in absentia, in a mass trial over the 2017 murder of two United Nations experts in a troubled central region.

Capital punishment is frequently pronounced in murder cases in DRC, but is routinely commuted to life imprisonment since the country declared a moratorium on executions in 2003.

Dozens of people have been on trial for more than four years over the killings that shook diplomats and the aid community, although key questions about the episode remain unanswered.

Zaida Catalan, a Swede, and Michael Sharp, an American, were investigating violence between government forces and an armed group in the central Kasai region in March 2017 when they were stopped along the road by armed men, marched into a field and killed.

Note the verdict in the case of the heinous murder of Zaida Catalán and Michael Sharp. We will study the verdict, and we note that it can be appealed. 🇸🇪 strongly opposes the use of the death penalty in all circumstances without exception.

— Ann Linde (@AnnLinde) January 29, 2022

Their bodies were found in a village on March 28, 2017, 16 days after they went missing. Congolese officials have blamed the killings on the Kamuina Nsapu armed group.

Unrest in the Kasai region had broken out in 2016, triggered by the killing of a local traditional chief.

About 3,400 people were killed, and tens of thousands of people fled their homes, before the conflict fizzled out in mid-2017.

Death penalty

Prosecutors at the military court in Kananga had demanded the death penalty against 51 of the 54 accused, 22 of whom are fugitives and are being tried in absentia.

The charges ranged from “terrorism” and “murder” to “participation in an insurrectional movement” and “the act of a war crime through mutilation”.

According to the official version of events, pro-Kamuina Nsapu armed fighters killed the pair on March 12, 2017, the day they went missing.

But in June 2017, a report handed to the UN Security Council described the killings as a “premeditated setup” in which members of state security may have been involved.

During the trial, prosecutors suggested that the fighters had carried out the murders to take revenge against the UN, which the sect accused of failing to prevent attacks against them by the army.

If so, those who purportedly ordered the act were not identified throughout the marathon proceedings.

Among the main accused was a colonel, Jean de Dieu Mambweni, who prosecutors say colluded with the militiamen, providing them with ammunition. He has denied the charges and his lawyers say the trial is a set-up.

Mambweni was among those originally facing the death penalty, but instead was sentenced to only 10 years in jail for “disobeying orders and failure to assist a person in danger”. His defence team said he would appeal the verdict.

Catalan’s sister, Elisabeth Morseby, said after the verdict that testimony in the case was of dubious reliability given how much time the defendants had spent together in prison and said the conviction of Mambweni was a smokescreen.

“In order for the truth to emerge, all suspects, including those higher up in the hierarchy, need to be questioned, which has not yet been done,” she told Reuters news agency.

Adblock test (Why?)

DR Congo court sentences 51 to death over killing of UN experts - Al Jazeera English
Read More

In North Carolina, a Pitched Battle Over Gerrymanders and Justices - The New York Times

A fight over who is fit to hear a redistricting case highlights what experts say is the growing influence of ideology and money over state supreme courts nationwide.

It is the state that put the hyper in partisan politics, setting the blunt-force standard for battles over voting rights and gerrymanders that are now fracturing states nationwide.

So it is unsurprising that North Carolina’s latest battle, over new political maps that decisively favor Republicans, is unfolding in what has become an increasingly contested and influential battlefield in American governance: the State Supreme Court.

The court meets on Wednesday to consider whether a map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature that gives as many as 11 of 14 seats in the next Congress to Republicans — in a state almost evenly divided politically — violates the State Constitution. Similarly lopsided state legislative maps are also being contested.

But for weeks, both sides of a lawsuit have been waging an extraordinary battle over whether three of the court’s seven justices should even hear the case. Atop that, an influential former chairman of the state Republican Party has suggested that the legislature could impeach some Democratic justices, a move that could remove them from the bench until their fates were decided.

The central issue — whether familial, political or personal relationships have rendered the justices unfit to decide the case — is hardly frivolous. But the subtext is hard to ignore: The Supreme Court has a one-justice Democratic majority that could well invalidate the Republican-drawn maps. Knocking justices off the case could change that calculus.

“I think we’re at the brass-knuckles level of political fighting in this state,” said Michael Bitzer, a scholar of North Carolina politics at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. “It is a microcosm of the partisan polarization that I think we’re all experiencing. It’s just that here, it’s on steroids.”

It also is a reminder that for all the attention on the U.S. Supreme Court this week after Justice Stephen G. Breyer announced his retirement, it is in Supreme Courts in states like North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio that many of the most explosive questions about the condition of American democracy are playing out.

State Supreme Courts have become especially critical forums since the U.S. Supreme Court said in 2019 that partisan gerrymanders were political matters outside its reach.

In North Carolina, the justices seem likely to reject calls for their recusal. The court said last month that individual justices would evaluate charges against themselves unless those justices asked the full court to rule.

But the high stakes reflect what may happen elsewhere — and in some cases, already has. In Ohio, Justice Pat DeWine of the State Supreme Court rebuffed calls last fall to recuse himself from redistricting lawsuits in which his father — Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican — was a defendant. Days later, the state Republican Party urged a Democratic justice, Jennifer Brenner, to recuse herself because she had made redistricting an issue when running for office.

Nationwide, 38 of 50 states elect justices for their highest court rather than appoint them. For decades, those races got scant attention. But a growing partisan split is turning what once were sleepy races for judicial sinecures into frontline battles for ideological dominance of courts with enormous sway over people’s lives.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued 68 opinions in its last term. State Supreme Courts decide more than 10,000 cases every year. Increasingly, businesses and advocacy groups turn to them for rulings on crucial issues — gerrymandering is one, abortion another — where federal courts have been hostile or unavailing.

Campaign spending underscores the trend. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University, concluded that a record $97 million was spent on 76 State Supreme Court races in the most recent election cycle. Well over four in 10 dollars came from political parties and interest groups, including the conservative nonprofit Judicial Crisis Network, which has financed national campaigns backing recent Republican nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Most interest group spending has involved so-called dark money, in which donors’ identities are hidden. Conservative groups spent $18.9 million in the 2019-20 cycle, the report stated, but liberal groups, which spent $14.9 million, are fast catching up.

The money has brought results. In 2019, a $1.3 million barrage of last-minute advertising by the Republican State Leadership Committee was credited with giving the G.O.P.-backed candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Brian Hagedorn, a 6,000-vote victory out of 1.2 million cast.

Liberal groups have not matched that success. But they have outspent conservatives in recent races in Michigan and North Carolina.

“Two things are happening,” said Douglas Keith, a co-author of the Brennan Center report. “There are in-state financial interests that know these courts are really important for their bottom lines, so they’re putting money toward defeating or supporting justices to that end. And there are also national partisan infrastructures that know how important these courts are to any number of high-profile issues, and probably to issues around democracy and elections.”

How important is easy to overlook. It is well known, for example, that President Donald J. Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election were rejected by every court where he filed suit, save one minor ruling. But when Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar and president of the nonpartisan Governance Institute, analyzed individual judges’ votes, he found a different pattern: 27 of the 123 state court judges who heard the cases actually supported Mr. Trump’s arguments.

Twenty-one of the 27 held elected posts on State Supreme Courts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Both Michigan and Wisconsin are among the top five states in spending for Supreme Court races, the Brennan Center study found.

Mr. Keith called that a red flag, signaling the rising influence of money in determining which judges define the rules for political behavior.

North Carolina is another top-five state. Of $10.5 million spent on the state’s Supreme Court races in 2020, $6.2 million was devoted to a single race, for chief justice. Both figures are state records.

The court has become increasingly partisan, largely at the Republican legislature’s behest. Legislators ended public financing for Supreme Court races in 2013, and made elections partisan contests in 2016.

Anita Earls is one of three justices accused of conflict of interest in the redistricting case.Julia Wall/The News & Observer, via Associated Press

But Dallas Woodhouse, a former state Republican Party chair and columnist for the conservative Carolina Journal, said blame for the current tempest lay not with Republicans, but their critics. They kicked off the recusal battle last summer, he said, when the state N.A.A.C.P. sought to force two Republican justices to withdraw from a case challenging two referendums for constitutional amendments.

Mr. Woodhouse crusaded against the demands in his columns, and the Supreme Court left the decision up to the justices, both of whom said this month that they would hear the case.

How U.S. Redistricting Works

---

Card 1 of 8

What is redistricting? It’s the redrawing of the boundaries of congressional and state legislative districts. It happens every 10 years, after the census, to reflect changes in population.

Why is it important this year? With an extremely slim Democratic margin in the House of Representatives, simply redrawing maps in a few key states could determine control of Congress in 2022.

How does it work? The census dictates how many seats in Congress each state will get. Mapmakers then work to ensure that a state’s districts all have roughly the same number of residents, to ensure equal representation in the House.

Who draws the new maps? Each state has its own process. Eleven states leave the mapmaking to an outside panel. But most — 39 states — have state lawmakers draw the new maps for Congress.

If state legislators can draw their own districts, won’t they be biased? Yes. Partisan mapmakers often move district lines — subtly or egregiously — to cluster voters in a way that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.

What is gerrymandering? It refers to the intentional distortion of district maps to give one party an advantage. While all districts must have roughly the same population, mapmakers can make subjective decisions to create a partisan tilt.

Is gerrymandering legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts have no role to play in blocking partisan gerrymanders. However, the court left intact parts of the Voting Rights Act that prohibit racial or ethnic gerrymandering.

Want to know more about redistricting and gerrymandering? Times reporters answer your most pressing questions here.

“The battle is bigger than redistricting,” he said. “The real battle is between a Democratic governor and a pretty durable majority in the General Assembly.” The calls for recusal, he said, “raised this to an unprecedented level.”

Like North Carolina, some 34 other states allow Supreme Court justices to rule on recusal motions aimed at them. Most other states require independent reviews that even then may not be binding. Justices do disqualify themselves, but how frequently is unclear.

In the North Carolina case, one of the plaintiffs in the redistricting suit, a group of North Carolina Democrats, acted first on Dec. 6, asking that a Republican justice, Phil Berger Jr., withdraw from the case. They were later joined by lawyers for Common Cause. Justice Berger is the son of Phil Berger, the president of the State Senate and a defendant in the case whose own Senate district, the plaintiffs said, was among those that had been gerrymandered.

A month later, the defendants — Republican legislators who drew and oversaw the political maps — urged Justice Samuel J. Ervin IV, a Democrat, to recuse himself because he is seeking re-election in November. (Justice Ervin is the grandson of former Senator Sam Ervin, the longtime North Carolina Democrat and steward of Senate hearings on the Watergate scandal.) They argued that Justice Ervin should not hear election-law cases until his race is decided.

The Republican legislators then asked another Democratic justice, Anita Earls, to recuse herself. Justice Earls, the founder and former executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, had battled Republican gerrymanders in North Carolina for years before winning election to the court in 2018. Republicans noted that lawyers from the coalition represent Common Cause in the gerrymander case.

Additionally, they said, Justice Earls’s 2018 campaign received a $199,000 donation that apparently had been channeled through the state Democratic Party from the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, an arm of the national party. The redistricting committee is underwriting the legal expenses of one plaintiff in the case.

The recusal motions were later met by responses arguing that Justices Berger, Earls and Ervin should remain on the case.

The state Code of Judicial Conduct suggests that some of the complaints could carry weight. It says judges should disqualify themselves from matters affecting anyone “within the third degree of relationship,” which would include Justice Berger’s father.

Similarly, the code calls for recusal when judges have “a personal bias” toward a party or previously worked with a lawyer while that lawyer was involved in a case before the court. The current gerrymander suit was filed long after Justice Earls left the social justice coalition, but while there, she worked on challenges to the state’s gerrymanders with a lawyer in the current case, Allison Riggs.

How the recusal demands and the impending hearing play out will be closely watched by Republican lawmakers who would have to redraw the maps should the court invalidate them. Mr. Woodhouse’s reference to impeachment in a recent column led some to wonder whether, given the state’s slash-and-burn partisanship, that could be a fallback tactic to erase the court’s Democratic majority should redrawn maps wind up there again.

Mr. Woodhouse said that was not his intent. But he did not rule out drastic action should the court go further and dictate how the maps should be drawn.

“I think that impeaching judges would be the worst thing for North Carolina,” he said, “other than judicial tyranny.”

Adblock test (Why?)

In North Carolina, a Pitched Battle Over Gerrymanders and Justices - The New York Times
Read More

Bitterness From Supreme Court Fights Hangs Over Coming Nomination - The New York Times

The battles of the recent past will no doubt extend into the coming fight over President Biden’s choice to replace Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

WASHINGTON — It was a testament to the breakdown of the Senate’s judicial confirmation machinery that the first question posed by many this past week regarding an upcoming Supreme Court vacancy was whether Democrats could install a new justice entirely on their own.

The answer is yes, if the party sticks together. And the prospect of President Biden’s eventual nominee receiving only Democratic votes is hardly far-fetched, given the bitter history of recent confirmation fights for the high court.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the last member of the court confirmed by the Senate, did not receive a single Democratic vote. But Republicans held a 53-to-47 advantage and could afford to lose a colleague or two in ramming through her nomination just before the presidential election in 2020.

With their bare-minimum 50-seat majority, Democrats will not have that luxury after Mr. Biden nominates the first Black woman for the court sometime in the next few weeks. Considering the toxic partisan atmosphere surrounding contemporary Supreme Court fights, it is conceivable she could make history not only because of her gender and race, but also as the first person elevated to the court by a tiebreaking vote of the vice president.

It would be a far cry from the simple voice-vote approval of many of her predecessors as recently as the 1960s. Or the 98-to-0 confirmation of Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading judicial conservative, in 1986. Or even the 87-to-9 vote in 1994 for Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a member of the court’s liberal wing, who announced on Thursday that he would step down after nearly three decades.

The decline in consensus Supreme Court confirmations has been precipitous, and the escalation of partisan warfare has been sharp.

Deep bitterness lingers over the Democratic assault on Robert H. Bork in 1987; the routine deployment of filibusters against judicial nominees of both parties beginning during the administration of President George W. Bush; the Republican blockade of Judge Merrick B. Garland in 2016; the tumultuous confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh in 2018; and the hardball Republican move to rush Justice Barrett onto the court two years later.

With the Supreme Court deciding so many of the most polarizing issues of the day — including abortion rights and affirmative action — neither side is willing to cede much ground, and both display their battle scars.

“It is a sad commentary on the nomination process that it has so disintegrated over the years,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of the handful of Republicans considered to be in play as potential backers of Mr. Biden’s pick. “If you look at the incredibly strong vote by which Stephen Breyer was confirmed, you just don’t see it nowadays.”

Democrats would dearly like to avoid a skin-of-the-teeth party-line vote for whomever Mr. Biden puts forward. One of the first calls made by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was to Ms. Collins, promising her whatever material and assistance he could provide to help her evaluate the forthcoming nominee.

Democrats also hope the fact that Mr. Biden’s pick would replace a liberal justice and not tip the ideological balance of the firmly conservative court — and the fact that she will be an African American woman — will deter Republicans from a scorched-earth campaign when their odds of winning are low.

But while Republicans are promising an open-minded review of the nominee, hard feelings over the earlier confirmation clashes, most recently Justice Kavanaugh’s fight against sexual assault allegations, are never far from the surface.

“Whoever the president nominates will be treated fairly and with the dignity and respect someone of his or her caliber deserves, something not afforded to Justice Kavanaugh and other Republican nominees of the past,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a senior Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, said in response to Justice Breyer’s retirement.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, has frequently supported the judicial nominees of Democratic presidents.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Besides Ms. Collins, another Republican who will be the focus of Democratic attention is Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a frequent supporter of judicial nominees of Democratic presidents and the only Republican to oppose Justice Kavanaugh.

Ms. Murkowski is running for re-election this year under a new ranked-choice voting system back home. She is already opposed by a hard-right conservative vigorously backed by former President Donald J. Trump, who is furious at Ms. Murkowski for voting to convict him at his impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Siding with Mr. Biden’s choice for the court could help her attract the Democratic and independent voters she could need to prevail under the new election rules in her state.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has also deferred to Democratic presidents in the past and voted for justices and lower-court judges they put forward.

Last year, Mr. Graham, Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski were the only three Republicans to back Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a front-runner to succeed Justice Breyer, for a seat on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Supporting someone for a circuit court seat is no guarantee of supporting that same person for the Supreme Court. However, backing someone for the high court after opposing that person for a lower court would be harder to reconcile, making it unlikely that any of the 44 Republicans who opposed Judge Jackson would reverse course and support her now. All were well aware at the time that she was a future high court prospect. Three Republicans were absent.

Mr. Biden could also select Judge J. Michelle Childs of Federal District Court in South Carolina, who has been strongly endorsed by Representative James E. Clyburn, a powerful lawmaker from that state and the No. 3 House Democrat. If Mr. Biden nominates Judge Childs, his selection could put pressure on Mr. Graham and South Carolina’s other Republican senator, Tim Scott, to back her.

But home-state allegiance is no guarantee. Senator Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado, opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Colorado native, even though the senator introduced him at his confirmation hearing.

Justice Gorsuch’s case is instructive. Though very conservative, he was the sort of highly experienced, pedigreed and qualified candidate a Republican president could have put forward in the past with the expectation that he would receive a strong show of support in the Senate despite ideological differences.

But since Justice Gorsuch was filling the seat held open by the nearly yearlong blockade of Judge Garland and had been nominated by Mr. Trump, most Democrats balked. Just three voted for his confirmation. Only one, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, remains in the Senate; he was also the sole Democrat to vote for Justice Kavanaugh.

President Biden’s nominee will not shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Another potential nominee with a Senate voting history is Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright of Federal District Court in Minnesota, who was confirmed on a 58-to-36 vote in 2016. Thirteen Republicans voted for her, and five of them remain in the Senate today, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. But a vote for a district court nominee does not equate to a vote to place a person on the highest court.

Even before the nominee is known, it is clear the outcome in the Senate is most likely to be highly partisan, with the candidate receiving a few Republican votes at best — and perhaps none at all. For a country torn apart by partisanship and a court struggling with its image and credibility, that is far from an ideal outcome.

“I really think it would be harmful to the country to have a repeat of what we saw with the last two nominees being so narrowly confirmed,” Ms. Collins said. “I just don’t think that is good for the country, nor the court.”

Adblock test (Why?)

Bitterness From Supreme Court Fights Hangs Over Coming Nomination - The New York Times
Read More

U.S. Blocks $130 Million in Aid for Egypt Over Rights Abuses - The New York Times

The Middle Eastern ally continues to buy billions of dollars worth of military equipment from the United States.

WASHINGTON — Citing human rights concerns, the United States will not give Egypt $130 million in annual security assistance, officials said on Friday, even as the Biden administration continues to approve billions of dollars in military sales to the Middle Eastern ally.

The financial aid was temporarily frozen in the fall as the State Department demanded that Egypt do more to protect the rights of political critics, journalists, women and members of civil society. It was the first time that a secretary of state did not issue a formal national security waiver to provide the aid, and was aimed at pressuring officials in Cairo to release political prisoners and stop persecuting critics.

Since then, Egypt has failed to convince the Biden administration that steps the country has taken were enough to protect human rights — and, in turn, preserve the funding.

“It sends the important message abroad that we will back up our commitment to human rights with action, and gone are the days where dictators receive blank checks from America,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement on Friday.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke by phone with Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry of Egypt on Thursday, but the State Department had not made a final decision on whether to withhold the assistance as of Friday afternoon, said Jalina Porter, a department spokeswoman. But other department officials, who spoke to reporters on condition that they not be named in keeping with department protocols, said Mr. Blinken was expected to divert the funding to other national security priorities — and away from Egypt.

The Egyptian government has not officially responded. President Donald J. Trump also froze military aid to Egypt in 2017, but released it the following year.

Mr. Murphy said the Biden administration had outlined a “list of narrow and wholly achievable human rights conditions” for Egypt to meet to receive the financial assistance before a Jan. 31 deadline. Other officials said the precise requirements were classified but included the overturning of guidelines that had allowed for the unjust detention and harassment of Egyptian and foreign human rights activists.

An annual State Department report on Egypt’s human rights record, released in March, cited numerous examples of abuse by government security forces, including extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture. It also found that free and political speech was inhibited, including by restricting the news media, and that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people were targeted with violence.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Egypt has consistently ranked among the world’s top jailers of journalists since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected in 2014.

Last fall, Mr. el-Sisi announced a new strategy to protect human rights and in the months since has released some political prisoners.

But activists and American officials said it did not go far enough.

In November, five Egyptian activists and politicians, including a former member of Parliament, were sentenced from three to five years in prison on charges of spreading false news and using their social media accounts to undermine national security.

In December, an Egyptian court sentenced three prominent human rights figures to several years in prison, also on charges of spreading false news.

“Of course the Egyptian government is saying things have improved, but the reality on the ground is dark and vicious,” said Gamal Eid, who ran an independent human rights organization in Egypt for 18 years before announcing this month that he would end its operations, citing security threats and police intimidation.

Mr. Eid, who was the executive director of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, is embroiled in a criminal case against a number of nongovernmental organizations, and dozens of their members, that the authorities have accused of receiving foreign funding illegally. He has been banned from travel since 2016, and his assets have been frozen. Two of his team members, a lawyer and a researcher, are in jail.

The blocked funding is just a fraction of an estimated $1.3 billion in aid the United States generally gives Egypt each year. Only a small amount of the assistance is conditioned on the country’s human rights record, under requirements set by Congress, and officials at the State Department said $130 million was the maximum they could withhold in a single fiscal year.

But Egypt has continued to buy billions of dollars worth of military airplanes, ships and other equipment — including $2.5 billion in C-130 cargo jets and radar that was announced this week alone.

The State Department officials described military sales as unrelated to the financial assistance that the United States provides Egypt annually. They also said the military equipment most recently sold to Cairo would further American security interests; the jets, in particular, would replace older planes Egypt had used to distribute humanitarian aid and coronavirus relief supplies.

“Our approach reflects both our values and our interests,” the department said in a statement Friday.

After taking office a year ago, the Biden administration issued a statement promising to put “human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy.” It has since sought to walk a line between enforcing American standards of human rights and alienating strategically located foreign partners who do not adhere to those standards.

Egypt is a key partner with the United States in negotiating peace between Israel and Hamas, and providing stability in the Gaza Strip. But it also was not invited to a meeting of more than 100 countries that President Biden hosted in December to rally the world’s democracies against authoritarian governments.

Amr Magdi, a senior Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the recent military sales showed that the Biden administration was still willing to provide diplomatic and military support to Mr. el-Sisi, despite the abuses.

“That sends a signal to the Egyptian government that they can definitely get what they want with time, and that they don’t really have to meet any concrete benchmarks, and that the release of just a few activists can serve as the fig leaf to the Biden administration and others who want to continue doing business as usual,” Mr. Magdi said.

Lara Jakes reported from Washington and Mona El-Naggar from Cairo.

Adblock test (Why?)

U.S. Blocks $130 Million in Aid for Egypt Over Rights Abuses - The New York Times
Read More

New owners take over Fairway Creamery, promise 'same ice cream, same doughnuts' - Shawnee Mission Post

Fairway Creamery, an ice cream and donut shop at 5938 Mission Road, is now under new management.

Chocolatier Christopher Elbow sold the almost 3-year-old ice cream parlor and doughnut shop to Ali and Stephanie Shirazi, a local couple who previously owned Westside Local and Shiraz in Kansas City, Missouri.

Not only do the couple have experience in the local restaurant scene, they also have a long-standing connection to Elbow.

Ali Shirazi has made Fairway Creamery’s ice cream since it opened in 2019.

Ali also previously made the ice cream at Glacé, another ice cream shop south of the Country Club Plaza founded by Elbow that closed in 2020.

Ali and Stephanie Shirazi, above, are new owners of Fairway Creamery. The Shirazis lived in Fairway for 13 years and owned two restaurants in the Kansas City Crossroads area, Stephanie said. Photo courtesy Stephanie Shirazi.

Before that, Elbow once worked for the Shirazis, opening his first chocolate shop above Shiraz, a now-closed Mediterranean restaurant on Southwest Boulevard.

When Elbow decided to focus on his chocolate business, it made sense to pass the torch to the Shirazis.

“We just had this long relationship and we were just sort of the logical people to take this over,” Stephanie said.

Shonda Warner, owner of California-based Farmacorpia Farms, is also a new co-owner of Fairway Creamery along with the Shirazis.

Stephanie Shirazi said hazelnuts and blueberries from Warner’s farms will be used in future recipes.

Stephanie said she and Ali are also working to revamp the weekend breakfast menu with small changes. And they also want to add some grab-and-go lunch options in the future.

But customers shouldn’t expect too many changes for this local fan favorite, Stephanie said.

“The ice cream will stay the same, the same ice cream maker, same doughnuts,” Stephanie said. “We probably will add a little twist of our own.”

Adblock test (Why?)

New owners take over Fairway Creamery, promise 'same ice cream, same doughnuts' - Shawnee Mission Post
Read More

When Your Office Decides the Pandemic Is Over - The New York Times

Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.

Seething With Pandemic Resentment

I have worked for three years as a legal adviser to the president and founder of a growing company of about 100 people. I am the liberal book nerd in what feels like a sea of Fox News fans, but in the past we have shied away from politics and gotten along well. Even though none of my colleagues was going to end up being my BFF, I admired them for their skills and lack of pretension.

Enter Covid, and I am now seething with resentment toward most people in the office. Mask mandates are gone and were never really enforced. People show up every day with “colds” without questioning whether that cough might be the virus. I have had my boss’s ear, but he is sick of talking about Covid (unlike the rest of us, who love it!), dismisses concerns because the pandemic has “been politicized,” and calls me into meetings with him when he can barely talk through his stuffy nose.

None of our conversations about Covid have gone well. I thought I would retire from this company in five years. Should I stick it out and see how Covid plays out? Right now, my negative feelings toward my colleagues are really leading to some very long days.

— Anonymous

Your resentment is understandable. As we enter the third year of living with Covid-19, it’s hard to not be absolutely furious with the significant number of Americans who have chosen to not vaccinate or wear masks, and otherwise refuse to do the bare minimum to support public health. To work with people who are either actively or passively defiant while managing pandemic fatigue is incredibly trying.

Their actions put you and everyone you come into contact with at risk, no matter how careful you are. But quitting your job isn’t necessarily the solution. There’s no guarantee you will find a workplace where everyone shares your values. And that you’ve been pushed to this point leads me to believe you’re more frustrated with the general state of affairs in the world than your colleagues, however willfully ignorant they seem to be.

If you quit your job for this reason, something else will replace your colleagues as the target of your understandable frustration. If you can afford to quit and it will give you some peace of mind, by all means, treat yourself. But if you can’t, it’s time to develop some coping mechanisms. Can you work from home some or all of the time? Can you enforce boundaries around how you interact with your co-workers? There are no easy answers here. This is part of why the pandemic has been so stressful. Americans are living in two different countries right now, and the border between those countries is impermeable.

---

Permission to Double Dip

I’m the entire human resources department for a global tech start-up. Frankly, the place is a mess, but I love a challenge and I have learned a lot while feeling effective in my position and seeing gratifying results. However, I have no formal H.R. background and have decided to start fixing this with a graduate certificate program in the field. My company has generously offered to compensate me for tuition and other related expenses. Would it be ethical to bill my standard hourly rate — I’m a contractor — for hours spent in class? I feel greedy even considering this, but I have billed in the same way for independent research required for my position.

— Anonymous

If you have chosen to develop a formal H.R. background that was not mandated by your employer and your company has offered to cover the costs of that professional development, than my instinct is that no, you cannot bill your standard hourly rate. I would love to hear what others think.

I would also note that because this is voluntary, tuition reimbursement over $5,250 is generally taxed as income.

Bad Optics

I work for a small company (less than 50 employees). We recently lost a major account and had to lay off three of our staff members, all of whom were people of color.

I know the remaining employees can’t be given details on the decision — and I hope there were many considerations — it’s still bothering me that these three people were chosen. Because we are such a small organization, this really impacts our representation. Our company preaches inclusion and equity, but this seems like a major setback.

I do not think this was done intentionally or with any malice. But there should have been questions along the way to confront any potential unconscious biases. Maybe there were and I am not aware of them. Am I wrong to feel uncomfortable with this?

— Anonymous

It’s important to be aware of unconscious biases and how they can manifest in the workplace. You’re not wrong to feel uncomfortable with this. If nothing else, the optics are absolutely terrible. But there is far more to such situations than just optics. Were these three people the newest employees? Were there performance issues? Were they seen as disposable by managers? Did people use that old canard of “culture fit” to let them go?

You need more information and it is unfortunate that your employer chose not to provide an explanation for why these three people were laid off, given the context. If the occasion presents itself, I would raise your concerns with your manager, not because it will change what has already been done, but so that in the future, the people in charge will be more mindful of how they make such decisions.

Sick of Being Silenced

I have worked for three years at a professional services organization. The work is fulfilling and the pay and benefits are great. However, I am a woman in my 40s; my boss, teammate and a contractor we work with are all men in their 60s who have worked together for years. On many occasions I feel dismissed. I am talked over or cut off; my emails go unread; my ideas are often ignored unless someone else repeats them. Others outside of the team have noticed and mentioned this to me. My boss is a nice man but seems somewhat oblivious when other people are having challenges unless they are explicitly mentioned to him. I have started documenting the behavior and have a time set up to discuss it with him.

Another colleague with similar issues told me she went to H.R. and was given strategies for how to deal with these unpleasant interactions. I am thinking of doing the same. Should I tell my boss? I don’t want him to find out and think I am sneaking around, but I fear telling him would seem like a threat. I was recently promoted, so despite these unpleasantries, it doesn’t seem to be keeping me from advancing. But it also feels disrespectful and is making me less happy overall at work.

— Anonymous

You are not sneaking around to seek counsel from human resources. You are advocating for yourself. That this dynamic is so persistent and visible that your colleagues have raised concerns is ample cause for trying to address the problem. I’m glad to hear you’re able to advance within this organization but it can be incredibly defeating to always feel silenced and spoken over. This is, unfortunately, a fairly common experience in some workplace cultures.

You want to develop some strategies for dealing with this. Explicitly point out this dynamic to your boss, for one. Keep documenting it. When your colleagues talk over you or cut you off, keep talking. Keep talking until they stop talking and start listening. Maintain eye contact. Don’t give the impression that you’ve been defeated. When you can, simply point out what’s happening. “Excuse me, Cliff, but I was speaking.” Or, “Excuse me, Biff, I haven’t finished my thought. Please hold your comments until I finish.” And look for colleagues who can be allies in these situations, who can call out this dynamic for or with you, and create space for you to speak and be heard.

All this said, please know that you are not the problem here. You shouldn’t have to employ any of these strategies. Your older male colleagues should adjust their behavior and learn how to be better communicators who respect the people with whom they are in conversation.

Roxane Gay is the author, most recently, of “Hunger” and a contributing opinion writer. Write to her at workfriend@nytimes.com.

Adblock test (Why?)

When Your Office Decides the Pandemic Is Over - The New York Times
Read More

Man Held for Five Days in Jail Over Mistaken Identity, His Lawyer Says - The New York Times

Leonardo Silva Oliveira, 26, was arrested last week on a warrant out of Palm Beach County for a man with the same name and similar age who was wanted for probation violation charges.

Somewhere, a man named Leonardo Silva Oliveira is on the run from the South Florida law.

Somewhere else in South Florida, another man named Leonardo Silva Oliveira just spent five days in jail because, according to his lawyer, the police saw the same name, a passing resemblance and a birthday less than two weeks from the other man’s.

The first Mr. Oliveira, who was arrested on charges of burglary and grand theft in 2017, is wanted in Palm Beach County on charges of probation violation, according to the Coconut Creek Police Department.

But the second Mr. Oliveira, a 26-year-old cook, was arrested at the restaurant where he works on Jan. 20, accused of being the first Mr. Oliveira. Besides sharing the same name, both men have moderately long dark hair, and the fugitive Mr. Oliveira was born 10 days before the cook.

Scotty Leamon, a spokesman for the Coconut Creek Police Department, said the arrest “was based on the totality” of what his officers had.

He said the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office had contacted his department on Jan. 19, explaining that they had a warrant for Mr. Oliveira, the fugitive, and that he had an address in Coconut Creek, which is west of Fort Lauderdale.

“The license matched, the picture matched, the Social Security number matched,” Mr. Leamon said on Thursday. Mr. Leamon also said that one of his officers took a picture of Mr. Oliveira and sent it to a Palm Beach County deputy who verified that Mr. Oliveira was the man they were looking for.

Mr. Oliveira, the cook, was booked into the Broward County jail in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.

A lawyer for Mr. Oliveira said his client had insisted to the authorities that they had the wrong person. “His pleas to clear this horrendous mistake have gone on deaf ears from everyone in the system,” he said in a statement.

“At some point after Oliveira was booked into the jail, he claimed he was not the individual listed on the warrant,” Carey Codd, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said in a statement on Thursday.

Mr. Oliveira told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which reported his arrest on Wednesday, that the authorities should have realized that he was the wrong person because he is 10 days younger and does not have tattoos. A police report from 2017 said the fugitive Mr. Oliveira had tattoos of buildings on his left arm and one of a clock on the right.

“They checked my arms,” Mr. Oliveira told The Sun Sentinel. “They didn’t see any. But they still took me in.”

His lawyer, Jose Castañeda, said in an interview that “the tattoo was a clear giveaway; the descriptions didn’t match, the date of births didn’t match.” He also said his client had never been arrested before, and that he was hired several days after Mr. Oliveira was taken to jail.

His client was released on Tuesday, when officials found that his fingerprints did not match those of the fugitive. Mr. Castañeda said the experience had been “a nightmare” for his client and his family.

“You can just imagine the joy of when he got out,” he said. “He was so excited.”

Mr. Castañeda said his client was not charged with a crime, just misidentified as the fugitive.

Michael Schutt, another lawyer for Mr. Oliveira, said in a statement that the team was investigating “to identify all culpable parties to this injustice.” He added, “It is critical that all those responsible be held accountable.”

Adblock test (Why?)

Man Held for Five Days in Jail Over Mistaken Identity, His Lawyer Says - The New York Times
Read More

South Korea Indicts Defector From the North Over Leaflets - The New York Times

South Korea banned the spread of leaflets across the border last year. Park Sang-hak, an outspoken activist who defied the ban, was indicted in a first this week.

SEOUL — A North Korean defector has been indicted on charges of breaking a South Korean law banning the spread of propaganda leaflets along the inter-Korean border, prosecutors and lawyers said Friday.

Park Sang-hak is the first person to be indicted under the new law, which critics say puts a policy of engagement with North Korea above human rights and is unconstitutional.

For years, Mr. Park and others like him have launched balloons into North Korea loaded with propaganda leaflets urging North Koreans to rise up against their authoritarian leader, Kim Jong-un. Under the law, which went into effect last March, sending such leaflets was made a crime punishable by a fine or a prison term of up to three years.

Mr. Park defied the ban in April by launching 10 balloons carrying a half million leaflets. The police later raided his office and interrogated him. In July, they formally asked prosecutors to indict Mr. Park under the law, which President Moon Jae-in has vowed to strictly enforce.

Lee Hun, Mr. Park’s lawyer, said on Friday that he received a formal notice from prosecutors that Mr. Park had been indicted on Wednesday on charges of “attempting” to send the leaflets because investigators lacked evidence that the leaflets actually landed in the North.

A remnant from the Cold War, the leaflets have created tensions not only between the two Koreas but also between North Korean human rights activists and Mr. Moon’s government.

North Korea has called the leaflets an “intolerable provocation.” Mr. Moon’s government​ sponsored the new law after accusing activists of provoking the North unnecessarily.

The president’s conservative critics accused him of suppressing freedom of speech ​and aiding Mr. Kim’s totalitarian regime “at​ ​North Korea’s behest​.”

One of Mr. Park’s leaflets, in which he calls Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, a “devil who murdered his elder brother.”Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

“If an evil law is a law, send me to prison!” Mr. Park said on Friday. “Even if they send me to prison, my colleagues will continue to send leaflets​.”

Mr. Lee, the lawyer, said he planned to take the case to the Constitutional Court and ask it to overturn the law.

After Mr. Park launched the leaflets in April, Mr. Kim’s sister and spokeswoman, Kim Yo-jong, called him “dirty human scum” and warned of “consequences.”

About 33,800 North Koreans have fled to South Korea since the 1990s. Mr. Park, who fled in 1999, has stood out for his highly public campaign supporting North Korean human rights, although critics consider him theatrical.

His group, Fighters For Free North Korea, calls the ruling Kim family in Pyongyang womanizers and “dictatorial pigs,” and burns them in effigy during outdoor rallies in South Korea. Its leaflets also call Mr. Kim a “human butcher” who killed his uncle and half brother.

There has been no credible study on how many North Koreans read or react to the propaganda leaflets. Analysts say that leaflets are not as effective as radio broadcasts and flash drives smuggled across the Chinese border. But launching leaflets is perhaps the activists’ most visible campaign tactic.

Mr. Park has often invited media to his balloon-launching ceremonies, where the large hydrogen balloons waft across the world’s most heavily armed border. Once in North Korea, timer devices click, unfastening vinyl bundles. Leaflets, dollar bills, mini-Bibles and USB drives chock-full of content banned in the North fall out of the sky like snowflakes.

Mr. Kim keeps his people under a total information blackout in North Korea, blocking the internet and making sure all radio and TV sets receive his government’s propaganda broadcasts only. The government in Seoul said the balloons endanger people living on both sides of the border.

A leaflet done by Lee Min-bok, another North Korean defector and human rights activist.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

In 2014, the North Korean military fired shells at balloons drifting across the border, but instead hit South Korean villages, prompting the South to return fire.

In a poll taken last May, 51 percent of the respondents in South Korea supported the new ban, while 37 percent said it violated freedom of speech. Among those living close to the border, the support rate was 57 to 60 percent. Cities and provinces near the border have also called for Mr. Park’s punishment.

When North Korea blew up in 2020 a liaison office on its side of the border where officials from both Koreas had worked together, it cited South Korea’s failure to implement an agreement banning leaflets and other propaganda warfare as the impetus. Mr. Moon’s government accelerated its efforts to push the anti-leaflet bill through Parliament after the liaison office was destroyed.

South Korea’s conservative opposition has noted a jarring contrast between Mr. Moon’s crackdown on leaflets and his restrained response when North Korea killed a South Korean fisheries official or when the country likened Mr. Moon to a “parrot” and “mongrel dog” that followed orders from the United States.

“President Moon seems to believe that the only way to keep peace on the Korean Peninsula is to do nothing that will disturb the Kim brother and sister in the North,” said Tae Yong-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who is now an opposition lawmaker in Seoul.

Mr. Park, who is set to go to trial in the coming weeks for violating the leaflet ban, has some harsh critics of his own, many of whom are also North Korean human rights activists.

Mr. Lee at his home in South Korea. He has criticized not only the new law banning propaganda leaflets, but also Mr. Park.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Lee Min-bok, another defector from North Korea, criticized not only the law but also Mr. Park, who he said jeopardized the entire balloon campaign by provoking both governments.

Mr. Lee started sending leaflets in 2006, before Mr. Park, and favored low-key operations that didn’t attract media attention. He launched leaflets that focused on providing news from outside North Korea, rather than criticizing the Kim regime.

“The extremely provocative language in Park Sang-hak’s leaflets has nothing to do with promoting North Korean human rights, but is tailored to please conservatives and provoke progressives in the South,” Mr. Lee said. “He wants to become a hero by going to prison for fighting this law.”

Mr. Park’s legal troubles precede Friday’s indictment. He is also on trial for breaking a law on collecting donations. In August, he was given a suspended eight-month prison term for beating a South Korean TV reporter who showed up at his home for an interview request.

Mr. Park has denied the allegations against him and dismissed his critics as “snakes” and “hypocrites.” He often points to an incident in 2011, when a man was arrested in South Korea on a charge of plotting to assassinate him with a poison needle at North Korea’s request.

“Kim Jong-un wants to kill me, and President Moon wants to send me to prison,” Mr. Park told reporters in May. “But they cannot stop us from telling facts and truth.”

Mr. Lee keeps bunches of leaflets in storage.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Adblock test (Why?)

South Korea Indicts Defector From the North Over Leaflets - The New York Times
Read More