Good morning.
The fallout continues from the latest criminal indictment of Donald Trump, this time in Georgia on state racketeering and conspiracy charges over efforts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, responded yesterday to the former president’s false claim that he had “irrefutable” evidence that the election was rigged. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law,” Kemp wrote on Twitter.
Chris Christie, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, immediately endorsed Kemp’s statement. “This is a strong leader telling the truth. Others should try it,” said Christie, who is challenging Trump for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
Polls now put Christie as second to Trump’s 40-point lead in New Hampshire as Ron DeSantis fades in the race.
The 98-page indictment handed down by a Fulton county grand jury on Monday tells perhaps the most comprehensive story to date of one of the most brazen efforts to subvert American democracy, writes the Guardian’s Sam Levine.
What exactly is the Georgia racketeering “Rico” law that prosecutors used to charge Trump and his cohorts? “The basic premise of the Rico charge is that the unlawful enterprise was built and established and maintained for the singular unlawful purpose to overthrow the election and deny Georgians their right to vote,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor.
Thirty unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators are mentioned in the racketeering charge. While Georgia prosecutors charged Trump alongside 18 of his closest confidantes, the racketeering charge also detailed the involvement of 30 unnamed co-conspirators.
Who are the main characters in Trump’s Georgia case? Here’s a detailed breakdown of Trump’s 18 co-defendants, who include the lawyers Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff.
Lahaina’s recovery will be a ‘slow process’, experts say
A long road to recovery lies ahead of Lahaina, the historic former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom that now stands in smoldering ruins after last week’s wildfires.
“Lahaina was one of the few locations in Hawaii that has been truly important throughout every era,” said Kimberly Flook, deputy executive director of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation.
Maui county has released the first names of people killed in last week’s wildfires, as search and rescue efforts continue to recover the bodies of the victims.
One survivors recounted her harrowing escape from the Maui blaze by jumping into the ocean alongside infants, elderly people and burn victims.
In other news …
A police officer in Denver, Colorado, fatally shot a man who was holding a marker pen that the officer mistakenly believed was a knife.
North Korea is claiming that an American soldier who bolted across the heavily armed border was running from “inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination”.
The former NFL star Michael Oher has accused the Tuohy family of deceiving him over the story at the heart of the film The Blind Side, but the Tuohy family say they are victims of a “shakedown”.
Stat of the day: water demand around the world is projected to increase by between 20% and 25% by 2050
Data from the World Resources Institute shows that 25 countries that are home to a quarter of the world’s population are facing extreme water stress. About half the world’s population – 4 billion people – is exposed to extremely high water stress at least one month a year. By 2050, that number could be closer to 60%.
Don’t miss this: how QAnon went mainstream
QAnon, the conspiracy theory-based movement that operates behind beliefs that high-ranking Democrats are engaged in a secret child trafficking ring and a so-called deep state worked to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump, first appeared in 2017 and quickly spread through the far right. Though QAnon began to wane in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration, its ideas – freed from their ridiculous premise – have percolated into the public discourse.
… or this: the creatives transforming rags to riches
Each consumer is buying 60% more clothing than 15 years ago, creating a total of 92m tonnes of textile waste annually. Countries such as Ghana, Pakistan and Chile are becoming overwhelmed with donations of clothing in poor condition that cannot be resold. Entrepreneurs and designers are now collecting textiles destined for landfill and recycling them into new garments and home furnishings.
Climate check: the Great Lakes gets its first windfarm
The Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation is planning to build North America’s first freshwater offshore windfarm several miles off the shore of Cleveland, Ohio. The project could pave the way for a new energy landscape for the US’s Great Lakes communities, a region of about 34 million people that is heavily dependent on fracked natural gas and oil.
Last Thing: visiting every country in the world without boarding a plane
At 34, Torbjørn Pedersen embarked on a 10-year journey, traveling to every country in the world without boarding a plane. During the course of his trek, he was held up at gunpoint multiple times, contracted cerebral malaria and got stuck in Hong Kong for two years during lockdown. “I should have been dead. I should’ve quit even more times,” he said. During his journey, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend on top of Mount Kenya in a snowstorm – and he married her in a ceremony on a beach in Vanuatu in the South Pacific.
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