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CNN
8 takeaways from the January 6 hearings day 3
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection on Thursday detailed how … Donald Trump tried to pressure his vice president to join in his scheme to overturn the presidential election – and how Mike Pence’s refusal put his life in danger as rioters called for his hanging on January 6, 2021.
Two witnesses testified at Thursday’s hearing who advised Pence that he did not have the authority to subvert the election, former Pence attorney Greg Jacob and retired Republican judge J. Michael Luttig.
The committee walked through how conservative Trump attorney John Eastman put forward a legal theory that Pence could unilaterally block certification of the election – a theory that was roundly rejected by Trump’s White House attorneys and Pence’s team but nevertheless embraced by the former President.
Here are the key takeaways from the committee’s third hearing this month:
- Trump was told Eastman’s plan was illegal – but tried it anyway…
- The panel tied the Mike Pence pressure campaign to January 6 violence…
- The danger to Pence was real as the mob got about 40 feet from the vice president…
- Eastman wouldn’t take no for an answer on overturning the election…
- Eastman emailed Giuliani about receiving a presidential pardon after January 6…
- […] The committee cast Pence as the hero… But … it was impossible to ignore the fact that the former vice president was not in the room.
- Luttig turns parts of the hearing into a lengthy constitutional seminar…
- American democracy is on the line…
Politico
The Jan. 6 select committee makes a criminal referral — its own way
The Jan. 6 select committee made its most forceful case Thursday that Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election was more than an affront to the democratic process — it was a crime.
For all the panel’s public quibbling over whether to vote on referring Trump to the Justice Department for a possible criminal case, members did it their own way. They used Thursday’s public hearing to present what they see as some of their most compelling evidence and thereby mount a case, with Attorney General Merrick Garland watching, that Trump broke the law in his effort to make former Vice President Mike Pence single-handedly overturn the election.
“It was clear that the president was upset with the vice president not agreeing to do something that was clearly illegal, and so he wanted to put as much pressure on Mike Pence as he could,” committee chair Bennie Thompson told reporters Thursday.
Tensions escalate as DOJ renews request for Jan. 6 panel transcripts
The Justice Department on Thursday revealed a deepening rift with the Jan. 6 House select committee, accusing the panel of a “failure” to share its 1,000 witness transcripts.
Department officials say those documents would aid the prosecution of people who breached the Capitol, including leaders of the Proud Boys.
“The Select Committee’s failure to grant the Department access to these transcripts complicates the Department’s ability to investigate and prosecute those who engaged in criminal conduct in relation to the January 6 attack on the Capitol,” the department wrote in a letter Wednesday, signed by Criminal Division chief Kenneth Polite Jr. and National Security Division head Matthew Olsen, as well as the U.S. attorney for D.C., Matthew Graves.
Los Angeles Times
Trump’s pressure campaign on Pence is focus of third hearing on Jan. 6 insurrection
[…] Trump knew asking Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn the 2020 presidential election was illegal but pressured him to do it anyway, the House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, argued at its Thursday hearing, where it also made the case that Trump put Pence’s life in danger during the Capitol insurrection.
The committee outlined a multi-week effort by Trump and California attorney John Eastman that included private meetings and tweets aimed at pressuring Pence to help keep Trump in office. Eastman’s theory was that Pence could either reject electoral votes outright or could suspend the proceedings and declare a 10-day recess in which state legislatures would be ordered to reexamine election results. Neither plan is allowed under the Constitution’s 12th Amendment or the Electoral Count Act of 1887, witnesses testified at the hearing.
“This is constitutional mischief,” retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, who advised Pence about what authority he had on Jan. 6, told the committee. “I believe that if Vice President Pence had obeyed the orders from his president and the president of the United States of America... that declaration of Donald Trump as the next president would have plunged America into what I believe would have been tantamount to a revolution within a constitutional crisis in America.”
Huff Post
Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Election Theft Scheme That Nearly Got Mike Pence Killed
Donald Trump’s last-gasp scheme to overturn democracy and remain in power put his own vice president’s life in grave peril, as Trump’s social media attack on Mike Pence further enflamed the mob that had already breached the U.S. Capitol, the House Jan. 6 committee detailed in a hearing Thursday that included the revelation that the pro-Trump Proud Boys group was prepared to murder Pence on that day. […]
The committee revealed evidence from the Department of Justice’s investigation into the Proud Boys extremist group that a witness has sworn that “they would have killed Mike Pence if given the chance.”
Committee member Peter Aguilar, a California Democrat, showed a video illustrating how close the pro-Trump attackers got to Pence, his staff and his family as the Secret Service hustled them to safety. “Approximately 40 feet. That’s all there was,” Aguilar said. “Forty feet between the vice president and the mob.”
ABC News
Photo shows Vice President Mike Pence, family in hiding on Jan. 6
A new photo obtained exclusively by ABC News shows then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family in hiding after rioters broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and he was evacuated from the Senate floor. […]
Taken just minutes after the mob had breached the Capitol and as Pence and his family were evacuated from chamber by his Secret Service detail, the photo shows Karen Pence hurriedly closing the curtains in the room, as her daughter looks on with fear.
According to a source who was in the room, the second lady could see rioters outside the Capitol, so she closed the curtains, worried that the attackers would see her and her family.
The photo was taken after the mob had already breached the Capitol, some of them chanting "Hang Mike Pence."
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump-Raffensperger call was just one stunning event that day
Jan. 2, 2021, may long be remembered as the day Donald Trump asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find the 11,780 votes he needed to beat Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. That phone call prompted a criminal investigation that some legal observers say puts Trump at “substantial risk of possible state charges.”
But, in retrospect, the Raffensperger call was just one of several stunning developments that day. In Georgia and in Washington, Trump’s campaign to overturn the election was taking dramatic turns.
Trump was trying to enlist a new ally for his last-ditch effort: Vice President Mike Pence. The legal rationale came from John Eastman, the law professor who had told Georgia lawmakers in December that they could ignore the official results and decide the presidential election themselves. […]
His argument hinged on the dubious claim that seven states had submitted “dual slates” of presidential electors to Congress — including the slate Georgia Republicans approved in secret on Dec. 14 without any legal authority.
The New York Times
Trump Lawyer Cited ‘Heated Fight’ Among Justices Over Election Suits
A lawyer advising … Donald J. Trump claimed in an email after Election Day 2020 to have insight into a “heated fight” among the Supreme Court justices over whether to hear arguments about the president’s efforts to overturn his defeat at the polls, two people briefed on the email said.
The lawyer, John Eastman, made the statement in a Dec. 24, 2020, exchange with a pro-Trump lawyer and Trump campaign officials over whether to file legal papers that they hoped might prompt four justices to agree to hear an election case from Wisconsin.
“So the odds are not based on the legal merits but an assessment of the justices’ spines, and I understand that there is a heated fight underway,” Mr. Eastman wrote, according to the people briefed on the contents of the email. Referring to the process by which at least four justices are needed to take up a case, he added, “For those willing to do their duty, we should help them by giving them a Wisconsin cert petition to add into the mix.”
The pro-Trump lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, replied that the “odds of action before Jan. 6 will become more favorable if the justices start to fear that there will be ‘wild’ chaos on Jan. 6 unless they rule by then, either way.”
Axios
Jan. 6 panel to seek testimony from Ginni Thomas
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack plans to seek testimony from conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the panel’s chair said Thursday. […]
Thomas told the Daily Caller she would agree to an interview. “I can’t wait to clear up misconceptions. I look forward to talking to them," she said. […]
Thomas played an active role in pushing then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to take measures to help overturn the 2020 election results, according to texts obtained by the Washington Post and CBS News. […]
Emails obtained by the panel reveal correspondence between Thomas and legal scholar John Eastman, a central figure in former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
AP News
Election deniers quiet on fraud claims after primary wins
Nevada Republican Jim Marchant insisted there hadn’t been a legitimate election in his state in more than a decade. All of Nevada’s election winners since 2006, he said on a recent podcast, were “installed by the deep-state cabal.” But when Marchant won the Republican nomination for Nevada secretary of state this week, he immediately celebrated the victory as legitimate. […]
Such inconsistency has become a hallmark of election deniers in Republican primary contests across the U.S. in this year’s midterms. Dozens of GOP candidates who sought … Donald Trump’s backing … have spent months parroting his baseless claims of 2020 election fraud but then declared victory without raising such concerns in their own elections.
Amid such seeming hypocrisy, many Republican candidates are still vowing to pursue a series of election reforms that could make it more difficult to vote — particularly for those who traditionally support Democrats — in the name of election integrity.
NPR News
American democracy is more vulnerable now than on Jan. 6, Schiff says amid hearings
American democracy is more vulnerable today than it was on January 6 because the "big lie" that Donald Trump won the 2020 election has spread, according to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Schiff also said the House Jan. 6 committee investigation into the connection between Trump's voter fraud conspiracy claims and the insurrection on the Capitol would be valuable for the public.
"I think there are still many tens of millions of Americans with an open mind about the events of January 6, and even people who think they know what happened are open to learning more, and that's what we hope to reach," he said.
Detroit Free Press
Judge orders GOP candidate Ryan Kelley to surrender his guns, over his objections
Republican candidate for governor Ryan Kelley will have to surrender his guns while awaiting trial on misdemeanor criminal charges related to the U.S. Capitol riot, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather made the ruling over objections from Kelley's attorney that Kelley needs to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense during campaign appearances around the state. […]
Kelley, who according to a new Free Press poll is the current front-runner among five Republican candidates for governor, is charged with entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly and disruptive conduct, knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence against a person or property, and willfully injuring property, according to a criminal complaint… in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Atlantic
Steve Bannon is still scheming. And he’s still a threat to democracy.
[…] How, specifically, does Bannon propose that his audience use its agency? By taking back their government from the ground up—as election inspectors, as school-board members, and, most practically of all, as precinct-committee members. Bannon may be the country’s biggest exponent of the “precinct strategy,” first developed by the Republican lawyer Dan Schultz, which encourages interested citizens to sign up for the grunt work of elections, because it can lead to the big stuff, like helping decide who oversees them. War Room regularly features citizen activists who have figured out how to work the system. After each segment, Bannon asks: “How can people get to you? How do they find out more about what you’re doing?” And they provide Twitter and Gettr handles, websites, on occasion even a cellphone number.
Why do you do that? I once asked him.
“It’s a force multiplier,” he answered.
Right right right.
This is the Democratic Party’s nightmare scenario, the hobgoblin that visits at 4 a.m.: The infrastructure of civil servants on the state level, which barely held the United States together in the aftermath of the 2020 election, comes entirely undone through democratic means. As it is, the Republicans are poised in the 2022 midterms to take back the House in a potential rout, a prospect that fills Bannon with inexpressible glee, and for which he seems to take partial credit. He’s hoping for a 60-, 70-, 80-seat loss for the Democrats—something that will set the party back for generations.
UPI
Watergate at 50: System worked in ousting Nixon, but lack of reform led to Trump
Fifty years ago Friday, police arrested five men at the Watergate office building, uncovering a political scandal the likes of which haven't been seen until the fallout of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
While the two events stemmed from a sitting president's desire to remain in power, the outcomes couldn't have been much more different. In 1972, the Watergate arrests spawned multiple congressional and FBI investigations and led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. […]
"We all just took for granted that the system worked," [Melissa Graves, author of Nixon's FBI: Hoover, Watergate, and a Bureau in Crisis] said. "We had a president engaged in wrongdoing and now he's no longer president."
But because Nixon "in a lot of ways gave up," no reforms were put in place in the 1970s to ensure another Watergate didn't happen -- or how to handle it if one did -- she added.
Bolts
Oakland’s Sheriff Is Ousted After a Long Tenure Leading Deadly Jail
Voters in Alameda County, the East Bay county that’s home to Oakland, have decisively fired their sheriff. Gregory Ahern conceded on Wednesday to challenger Yesenia Sanchez, a sheriff’s commander who ran on promises to reform the department.
Ahern has been sheriff since 2006, but he never once faced an opponent in any of his four prior elections. During Ahern’s long tenure, his county jail drew condemnation for its dangerous conditions. Santa Rita was the deadliest lockup in Northern California; a KTVU investigation found that 58 people have died there since 2014. A lawsuit alleging neglect of incarcerated people with mental health needs led to a massive settlement that will require the department to overhaul its treatment and suicide prevention practices.
In the first contested election he ever faced, on June 7, Ahern only received 31 percent of the vote. Sanchez received 53 percent, and clinched the win without needing to go through a November runoff.
Sanchez’s win is a stark reminder of how often local officials with immense power over the lives of their constituents, especially people of color and the poor and mentally ill, stay in power year after year regardless of their popularity, with no one stepping forth to challenge them.
Bloomberg
Macron Says Ukraine Will Decide Political Conditions for Peace
French President Emmanuel Macron offered his strongest support for Ukraine yet after comments on the need to communicate with Russia sparked a backlash.
“Ukraine will decide when the conditions are met to build peace, and what these political conditions are,” Macron said on Thursday, during an official visit to Kyiv with Germany’s Olaf Scholz and Italy’s Mario Draghi.
A French diplomat traveling with the president said all territory conquered by Russia, including Crimea, should be restored to Ukraine. An adviser to Macron has previously said that the occupation of Crimea was illegal, therefore Russian troops had to withdraw from that area to comply with international law.
Deutsche Welle
Ukraine: Mariupol 'horrors' suggest international law violations, says UN
The death and destruction across the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol will scar generations to come, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said on Thursday.
In an update to the UN Human Rights Council, she said the extent and intensity of fighting, as well as the number of civilian deaths "strongly suggest that serious violations of international … law have occurred."
The UNHCR, which did not have access to the city, verified at least 1,300 civilians died in the city — including 70 children. Bachelet noted, however, that "the actual death toll of hostilities on civilians is likely thousands higher." Ukrainian officials have estimated that 22,000 people were killed in the siege.
The Kyiv Independent
Ukrainian counterattacks exploit Russia’s focus but are stymied by lack of weapons
[…] Just a tenth of western weapons delivered so far and artillery ammo a persistent problem, Ukrainians need to get military aid much faster if they are to fully capitalize on these opportunities.
“We’re trying to conduct counterattacks in the directions where Russia hasn’t concentrated its forces and resources,” Taras Chmut, head of the Come Back Alive foundation, and former marine told the Kyiv Independent. “All these operations are on a tactical level that doesn’t change the operational situation on the front.” […]
“Russian progress around Sievierdonetsk results largely from the fact that Moscow has concentrated forces, equipment, and materiel drawn from all other axes on this one objective,” Mason Clark, senior analyst and Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War told the Kyiv Independent.
Euronews / AFP
Russian secret agent unmasked trying to inflitrate war crimes court, Netherlands says
The Dutch secret service revealed details of an operation they carried out to stop a Russian spy from getting inside the International Criminal Court in The Hague — where alleged war crimes in Ukraine are being investigated.
"The AIVD (Dutch secret service) prevented a Russian intelligence officer from gaining access as a trainee to the International Criminal Court (ICC)," the agency said in a statement, adding that the individual was working for the Russian military intelligence agency GRU.
Identified by the AIVD as Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, 36, the man was using an extensive Brazilian cover identity to travel from Brazil to the Netherlands, the Dutch secret service said, adding that this kind of deep background story, with documentation, can take years to develop.
Reuters
U.S. Senate passes bill to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits
A major bill expanding health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic military burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan passed the U.S. Senate on Thursday, as senators praised their bipartisan work on one of the few issues they can find common ground.
The bill eases and expands access to health services and disability benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxic smoke from the U.S. military's use of burn pits on foreign bases until the mid-2010s. […]
The issue is personal for President Joe Biden, who believes his late son Beau's fatal brain cancer could have been caused by such a pit from when he served in Iraq.
The Daily Beast
Herschel Walker, Critic of Absentee Dads, Has Yet ANOTHER Secret Son—and a Daughter
A day after The Daily Beast broke the news that Herschel Walker had a secret 10-year-old son he fathered out of wedlock, the football star-turned-politician confirmed late Wednesday night that he has yet another son with a different woman that the public doesn’t know about—as well as a daughter that he had in college. […]
The second of Walker’s previously undisclosed sons was born to a woman living in Texas and is now 13 years old. Walker’s other son is 10, and Christian Walker, who has played a major role in Herschel’s political efforts and public persona, is 22.
In Christian’s case, Walker has played an extremely active role in his life. In the case of Walker’s 10-year-old, the football star seems to have played very little role. In this latest case with his 13-year-old son, Walker seems to have been present on at least two occasions, according to social media photos. But it’s unclear how active he’s been beyond that.
The Guardian
How millions of lives can be saved if the US acts now on climate
The rapidly shrinking window of opportunity for the US to pass significant climate legislation will have mortal, as well as political, stakes. Millions of lives around the world will be saved, or lost, depending on whether America manages to propel itself towards a future without planet-heating emissions.
For the first time, researchers have calculated exactly how many people the US could save by acting on the climate crisis. A total of 7.4 million lives around the world will be saved over this century if the US manages to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050, according to the analysis.
The financial savings would be enormous, too, with a net zero America able to save the world $3.7tn in costs to adapt to the rising heat. As the world’s second largest polluter of greenhouse gases, the US and its political vagaries will in large part decide how many people in faraway countries will be subjected to deadly heat, as well as endure punishing storms, floods, drought and other consequences of the climate emergency.
The Washington Post
A string of climate disasters strike before summer even starts
In eastern Montana and Wyoming, massive flooding has destroyed bridges, swept away homes, and forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 visitors from Yellowstone National Park. Half a million households in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley lost power earlier this week after violent thunderstorms swept through. And a record-setting heat wave pushed temperatures into the triple digits from Nebraska to South Carolina, leaving more than 100 million Americans under heat warnings and killing at least 2,000 cattle in Kansas.
The official first day of summer has not even arrived and already the country is overheated, waterlogged and suffering. Extreme weather is here early, testing the nation’s readiness and proving, once again, that overlapping climate disasters are now becoming more frequent and upending Americans’ lives.
“Summer has become the danger season where you see these kinds of events happening earlier, more frequently, and co-occurring,” said Rachel Licker, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group. “It just shows you how vulnerable our infrastructure is and that this is just going to get increasingly problematic.”
Missoulian
Gianforte heads back to MT; Biden issues disaster declaration
Gov. Greg Gianforte's office said he will be back in the state by Thursday night, returning from an international trip amid historic flooding in Montana.
Gianforte's return comes as President Joe Biden on Thursday issued a disaster declaration for the state of Montana, making federal funding available in response to damage caused by widespread flooding in Carbon, Park and Stillwater counties.
Gianforte was out of the country as heavy rainfall and higher-than-normal snowpack generated record flooding in southern Montana beginning Sunday…
The governor's office has declined to say where the governor was during the past week, but spokesperson Travis Hall said in an email Tuesday that Gianforte and his wife, Susan, left the country Saturday.
Mongabay
Coal mining threatens Ethiopia’s ancient coffee forest
Sitting high in the hills of southwestern Ethiopia, the thick green forest of Yayu is a haven of biodiversity where Nuradin Aliyi, a third-generation wild-coffee farmer, has lived his whole life intertwined with nature.
“I know every tree in the forest by name,” says the 62-year-old, who lives in the district, or woreda, of Yayu in the Oromia region. Like most of the 12,600 households in the district, Nuradin depends on the forest for survival. He harvests wild coffee beans from the forest and plants them on 4 hectares (10 acres) of farmland, harvesting some 6,000 kilograms per hectare, or about 5,400 pounds per acre, of coffee yearly. […]
But in recent years, increasing interest in what lies underneath the forest threatens to overturn this way of life. Around the turn of the century, a massive coal deposit was found in the area, generating huge interest from the government and mining companies.
El País
Fisherman admits to killing UK journalist and indigenous expert in Amazon rainforest
One of the two fishermen arrested in connection with the disappearance of British journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira, 41, has confessed to participating in the murder and has led investigators to the place where the remains were buried, according to the head of the Federal Police in Amazonas, Eduardo Fontes, who gave a news conference on Wednesday night in Manaus. The remains will be analyzed to confirm their identities. The trail of the pair and their boat was lost on June 5 in one of the most isolated areas of the Brazilian Amazon.
Phillips, a contributor for The Guardian, and Pereira, a longtime advocate for indigenous rights, went missing in Javari Valley, home to the largest concentration of uncontacted indigenous people in the world. It is also an area plagued by hunters, poachers, drug traffickers, illegal loggers and miners. Phillips and Pereira disappeared while returning from a guard post manned by indigenous people in a remote part of the jungle where Phillips was interviewing locals for a book.
The suspects in the deaths are two brothers, Oseney and Amarildo da Costa, both 41 years old.
Mother Jones
Scientists Race to Create Wheat That Can Withstand Global Warming
[…] Our food system is not ready for the climate crisis.
Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Sonora are focused on developing wheat varieties which can better cope with drought, rising temperatures and excessive rainfall. In other words, wheat that can thrive under the extreme and unpredictable weather conditions farmers are experiencing globally due to the rapidly warming planet.
“We’re trying to stay ahead of climate change and give farmers everything,” said breeder Leo Crespo as he inspected new varieties planted last winter in meticulously divided micro-plots. Some are lofty and green with open leaves, while others are dry and stumpy. […]
But it’s a complicated, never-ending race against time, as global heating drives climate disasters and the emergence of new, adapted or more aggressive pathogens.
The Texas Tribune
From Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the path to eternal rest is a 1-mile drive down Fort Clark Road to Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery.
On Thursday, Layla Salazar became the final victim of the Robb Elementary School massacre to make that trip. She was 11 years old.
Since the May 24 school shooting, 20 families have taken turns burying their dead. An unremitting pattern of overlapping visitations and services has laid bare the currents of grief coursing through this small town. Nine of the dead children and two of their teachers passed through Sacred Heart on their way to the cemetery now dappled with fresh mounds of dirt.
One last victim, Uziyah Garcia, remains to be buried in his hometown of San Angelo, where the 10-year-old spent his last spring break learning football pass patterns from his grandfather.
The Buffalo News
Relatives of victims pack courtroom as accused Tops killer appears in federal court
Three rows filled with relatives of Tops supermarket shooting victims watched accused murderer Payton Gendron appear in a crowded federal courtroom on hate crime charges that could result in the death penalty if he is convicted.
Several glared at him. Some cried. […]
Zeneta Everhart, whose son was was shot and survived the May 14 attack, said she felt anger and disgust as she saw Gendron led into the courtroom Thursday.
"It's hard being in a courtroom with a terrorist – seeing the man who tried to kill my son," she told reporters after the court appearance. But she felt it was important to be there.
The Dallas Morning News
The original Juneteenth order forcing Texas to release slaves is on display at Fair Park
On June 19, 1865, Union Army General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with a document outlining official orders from the federal government announcing that enslaved people were free.
The military orders began the enforcement in Texas of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had been signed two years prior. And the orders are the foundation of Juneteenth, a federal holiday that commemorates the day freedmen in Texas finally learned of their emancipation, and represents the end of slavery after the Civil War.
News spread to about 250,000 enslaved people in the state, according to Kaitlyn Price, registrar for the Dallas Historical Society, which owns the only known original printed copy of the orders, on display through the summer in the Hall of Heroes at the Hall of State in Fair Park.
Ars Technica
As US crawls out of baby formula crisis, troubled plant floods, shuts down again
As the US struggles to recover from a dire infant formula shortage, the Abbott formula plant at the center of the crisis has again shut down—this time due to flooding from heavy rain on Monday.
The plant in Sturgis, Michigan, is the largest formula factory in the US and is operated by Abbott, one of the largest formula manufacturers in the county. The facility had previously shut down in February, driving a nationwide shortage of infant and specialty formulas to a critical point, but had managed to reopen on June 4.
The February closure occurred as the Food and Drug Administration investigated severe bacterial infections in four infants, two of whom died. All of the infants had consumed formula from the plant, and FDA investigators found that the same kind of bacteria infecting the infants—Cronobacter sakazakii—was also lurking in multiple areas of the plant. Although data was limited on each of the infants' cases, at least one container of formula from the plant tested positive for the strain of Cronobacter sakazakii infecting one of the infants.