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Jennifer Lawrence “gives birth to her first child” with her husband Cook Maroni

Jennifer Lawrence is expecting her first child with her husband Cook Maroni, but it seems that not so long ago the couple met for the first time.

Here, DailyMail.com takes a look back at Jennifer’s relationship with her husband, from their early beginnings to their lavish wedding in 2019, and now her first pregnancy.

Baby on the way! Jennifer Lawrence is currently expecting her first child with her husband Cook Maroni

Lawrence was first associated with Cook, director of an art gallery, after being introduced by mutual friends in 2018, and until February 2019, the blonde beauty was spotted wearing an engagement ring.

“Well, he’s just the best man I’ve ever met. It was a very, very easy decision, “she told Entertainment Tonight after accepting his offer.

“He really is and is getting better,” the actress continued.

Lawrence and Cook were married in 2019 at Newport’s Belcourt in Rhode Island, starring Adele and Cameron Diaz.

I’m doing it! Lawrence and Cook were married in 2019 in Belcourt, Newport, Rhode Island, starring Adele, Cameron Diaz and Emma Stone

There were 150 guests at the wedding, including Chris Jenner and her boyfriend Corey Gamble, Amy Schumer, Emma Stone and Ashley Olson.

For her rehearsal dinner, Jennifer and Cook hosted a Rose Island clambeck under a white tent, with Sienna Miller, Joel Madden and Nicole Richie arriving to celebrate.

Jennifer and Cook had their engagement party in New York in mid-May, three months after confirming their engagement.

The star wore a $ 2300 L deeps dress with bare Casadei shoes, adding a Roger Vivier bag and Fred Leighton jewelry.

On the move: Lawrence was spotted walking with her husband in New York in May 2021.

Although neither Jennifer nor Cook spoke publicly about their relationship, insiders exploded about their chemistry, a source told People in 2018: “She smiles like I’ve never seen her do with one of her predecessors. boyfriends ”.

By 2019, insiders say the couple is talking about starting a family.

“They both want children and are discussing starting a family,” a source told ET Online back in 2019.

“Their families really believe they are destined to be; his family loves her family and vice versa, so their parents are excited. Their parents get along so well and everyone is looking forward to big family reunions.

While many of Jennifer’s past romances have been seen around the world, the actress and her husband have enjoyed their romance out of the public eye, making leisurely trips to Europe and being spotted on dinner dates in Cook’s hometown of New . York.

On September 8, 2021, the star’s representative confirmed her pregnancy with People.

Jennifer was first spotted with her baby bump on display on Sept. 8 in photos received exclusively from DailyMail.com.

Kisses: The couple closed their lips at a hockey game in New York in 2018

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Three men plead guilty to conspiracy to attack the US power grid

As part of their plot, each man focused on substations in different regions of the country and how to attack electrical networks with rifles, according to court documents. According to court documents, the three men discussed that a nationwide blackout for an extended period would spread civil unrest, a race war would break out, and the next Great Depression could be triggered.

“People won’t show up for work, the economy could collapse, and potential (white) leaders will have a great opportunity to rise up,” Mr. Cook’s plea agreement says. “One of the topics of the group discussions was the need to create disorder in order to destroy the system, which would make people question the system and create a real revolutionary force against the system.”

In February 2020, the three men met in Columbus for further negotiations about their plot, according to court documents. When they met, Mr. Frost presented Mr. Cook with an AR-47 and, according to court documents, the two men were practicing with a rifle at a shooting range.

Mr. Frost also gave Mr. Cook and Mr. Savall suicide necklaces he filled with fentanyl that were supposed to be swallowed if they were caught by the police, according to court documents.

While in Columbus, Mr. Savall and Mr. Cook bought spray paint and used it to write the phrase “Join the Front” on a swastika flag under a park bridge, according to court documents. The men had more plans to spread propaganda while they were in Ohio, until they were confronted by police during a traffic stop during which Mr. Savall swallowed his suicide necklace but survived, per a plea agreement.

On Wednesday evening, it was not immediately clear why Mr. Savall and Mr. Cook were stopped by the police at the time. A call to federal prosecutors on Wednesday evening was not returned immediately.

In August 2020, the FBI raided the homes of three men. Agents found several firearms, chemicals that could have been used to make an explosive device, and Nazi-themed books and videos, according to court documents.

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Putin spins conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on its way to nuclear weapons

MUNICH. When Ukraine abandoned the huge arsenal of nuclear weapons left on its territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it famously struck a deal with Washington, London and Moscow, exchanging weapons for guarantees of its security and borders.

No wonder the Ukrainian government is wondering what happened to that guarantee.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin is complaining about something else entirely: He is spinning a conspiracy theory—possibly as a pretext to take over the entire country—that Ukraine and the United States are secretly plotting to return nuclear weapons to the country.

Mr. Putin’s arguments took up a third of his speech to the Russian people on Monday, when he made a series of bizarre accusations that “Ukraine intends to build its own nuclear weapons, and this is not just bragging.” Then he built a second case, that the United States is turning its missile defense system into an offensive weapon and plans to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of Ukraine.

Ukraine abandoned the vast arsenal of nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and used fuel from its diluted warheads to power its nuclear power plants. Today, Ukraine doesn’t even have the basic infrastructure to produce nuclear fuel, although Mr. Putin has made the dubious claim that it can quickly find that talent.

For their part, US officials have repeatedly said they have no plans to deploy nuclear weapons in the country — and never have, especially since Ukraine is not a member of NATO.

But that hasn’t stopped Mr. Putin from constructing a hypothetical case that all of this could someday happen, potentially putting Moscow at risk. He followed up on the subject at another press conference on Tuesday, covering a number of conspiracy theories that, taken together, could well create a pretext to take over the entire country.

“If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will change dramatically, especially for us, for Russia,” he said. “We cannot fail to respond to this real danger, especially since, I repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons can help it acquire these weapons in order to create another threat to our country.”

Mr. Putin has, of course, made such arguments before, but usually as a digression rather than as an excuse for urgent action. And this was very different from the tone of Moscow 30 years ago, when Russian nuclear scientists were voluntarily retrained to use their skills for peaceful purposes, and nuclear weapons were removed from Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan at the expense of American taxpayers.

“This is a great tragedy,” said Rose Gottemoeller, who negotiated the new START treaty with Russia and is now a student at Stanford University. “Putin is so wrapped up in his own grievances that he doesn’t remember how we worked together so closely – Americans, Ukrainians and Russians – to ensure that the collapse of the Soviet nuclear arsenal did not lead to the creation of three new nuclear powers.”

In fact, Mr. Putin is now using a key agreement of the era, called the Budapest Memorandum, to bolster his position. The memorandum, signed by Ukraine, the United States, Britain and Russia, sealed the central deal: Ukraine would surrender all of its nuclear arsenal remaining on its territory, and in return the other three countries would guarantee Ukraine’s security and the integrity of its borders. . (Although Ukraine had physical control over the weapons, the right to launch them remained in the hands of the Russians.)

Updated February 23, 2022 7:11 pm ET

However, the memorandum never specified what this security guarantee entailed, nor did it promise military assistance in the event of an attack. But Mr. Putin flagrantly violated that agreement when he annexed Crimea in 2014, and did so again on Monday when he recognized the two breakaway republics, essentially saying they were no longer part of Ukraine.

He said this week that he was outraged that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was talking publicly about revising the memorandum. Mr. Zelenskiy’s complaint, voiced at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, is that a “guarantee” is not at all a guarantee against a nation with Russia’s coercive power.

Mr. Putin argued that if Ukraine doubts the memorandum, it must want to have its own nuclear arsenal.

“We believe that Ukrainian words are addressed to us,” Putin said at a press conference with the Azerbaijani president on Tuesday. “And we heard them. They have broad nuclear competence since Soviet times, a developed nuclear industry, they have schools, everything you need to move quickly.”

Understand how the Ukrainian crisis unfolded

Card 1 of 7Failed diplomatic efforts. That United StatesNATO and Russia were involved in whirlwind of diplomacy prevent the escalation of the conflict. In December, Russia put forward a series of demands, including guarantees that Ukraine would never join NATO. The West rejected these demands and threatened economic repercussions.

Perhaps realizing that he might be exaggerating the threat, Mr. Putin said: “One thing they don’t have is a uranium enrichment program. But this is a technical issue. For Ukraine, this is not an unsolvable problem; it’s easy to solve.”

Of course, other countries have solved this problem, including Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Israel and India. But this is a long, extremely complex process. Iran has been doing this for two decades and, according to Western intelligence estimates, still does not possess nuclear weapons. (A new deal to contain Iran and restart the 2015 nuclear deal is expected to be announced in the coming weeks, and officials say Russia, a party to the original deal, helped negotiate.)

Mr. Putin also complained that Ukraine has “the means to deliver such weapons” and that he is in a safer position here. The old rocket factory, a relic of Soviet times, continues to work – and was at the center of controversy a few years ago about whether his developments fell into the hands of the North Koreans. (Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro O. Poroshenko, denied this.) Mr. Putin acknowledged that Ukraine’s current arsenal is incapable of striking Moscow. But with the help of NATO and the West, he said, “it’s only a matter of time.”

He then turned his ire on Washington itself, relying on the argument that it should withdraw all of its nuclear weapons from Europe—and, of course, from the countries of the former Soviet bloc that joined NATO. He argued that an anti-missile system stationed in Poland and Romania, designed to defend against Iran, could be covertly converted into an offensive system that would threaten Russia.

“In other words, the supposedly defensive US missile defense system is developing and expanding its new offensive capabilities,” Putin said. He did not mention a United States proposal to negotiate a new arms control agreement that would limit the number of facilities on both sides.

Again, he said, “it’s only a matter of time” when Ukraine is accepted into NATO and becomes a launching pad for possible attacks on Russia.

“We clearly understand that under such a scenario, the level of military threats to Russia will increase sharply, by several times,” Putin said. “And I would like to emphasize at this point that the risk of a sudden strike against our country will increase many times over.”

His message seemed clear: The only way for Ukraine not to become a US weapons platform was to take it over or turn control over to a friendly government.

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Joe Tom Isley, gay rights activist, dies at 81

Joe Tom Isley, a gay rights activist and lawyer who worked to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” military policy and whose 2003 wedding was one of the first same-sex unions to be announced in The New York Times, died Feb. 2 . 13 in a hospital in Miami Beach. He was 81 years old.

The cause was complications from a lung disease, Mr Isley’s husband Peter Freiberg said Tuesday.

Mr. Easley, who served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, fought for years to end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule that President Bill Clinton passed in 1993 to allow gays to serve in the military. provided they keep their sexuality a secret. In 2010 President Barack Obama signed the policy.

Mr. Easley was chairman of the Military Legal Advocacy Network, a group that sought to end discrimination against gay military personnel and end the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Joe Tom Isley born September 28, 1940 in Robstown, Texas, to Tom Lee Isley and the former Lady Hampton. He grew up in Truby, Texas during the 1940s and 1950s, when openly gay people were far from common.

In 1966, when he was called to the Vietnam War, Mr. Easley decided to join the Navy, where he served at the intelligence base on Adak Island, Alaska. According to Freiberg, he was told a year later that a friend who offered him sex before he entered the service told the government that he was gay.

According to Mr Freiberg, Mr Isley’s commanding officer told him that he should kick him out because gays are forbidden from serving, but that “because of his exemplary service” he would make sure Mr Isley received an honorable discharge. and veterans benefits. .

A graduate of Texas A&M, Mr. Easley received a law degree from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in public health from Yale University.

According to Freiberg, although he was nearly 38 years old when he came out, he sought to catch up with his gay activism using his skills as a public speaker, teacher, and leader.

After working for three years in Europe for a consumer watchdog that investigated price-fixing by pharmaceutical companies, Mr. Easley moved to Washington, D.C., where his husband says he lived in the late 1970s and early 80s. .

Mr. Easley was initially hired as a tenured law professor at American University. After he retired in 1978, he was appointed assistant dean in addition to his teaching duties. Later, he was a professor at the then Antioch Law School, where he served as an advisor to the LGBT student group.

He also became president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, a gay political organization in the Washington area.

Eventually Mr. Easley left Washington for New York, where he met Mr. Freiberg and continued his human rights work.

From 1983 to 1987 Mr. Easley was chairman of the LGBT group The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Foundation. He then served as president of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

Vic Basil, former executive director of the Campaign for Human Rights, said in an email that Mr. Easley “has made an important contribution to shaping the goal of electing pro-LGBT candidates to Congress.”

On August 24, 2003, less than a year after Daniel Andrew Gross and Steven Goldstein became the first same-sex couple to have an affair. ad about their civil union published in The New York Times, the marriage of Mr Easley and Mr Fryberg at Toronto City Hall was featured on the wedding pages of the newspaper.

Mr. Freiberg, the sole survivor of Mr. Easley, was described in the ad as a freelance writer and editor. Mr. Easley has been described as a lecturer at BAR-BRI Bar Review, a company that prepares future lawyers for the bar exams.

Two years later, Mr. Easley gained national attention when he appeared in front page article in The Times about sponsoring an Iraqi boy who was burned and blind in one eye after stepping on a cluster bomb. Mr. Easley worked for over a year to bring the boy to the United States for treatment.

He made a list of eye surgeons and dermatologists to treat the boy for free.

“People ask me why this boy, why help him when so many others are in a worse situation,” Mr. Easley said in an interview at the time. “I tell them, well, I don’t know about the other boys. But I know about Ayad.

Joe Tom Isley, gay rights activist, dies at 81 Read More »

Justice Department to End Trump-era Initiative to Contain Chinese Threats

ARLINGTON, Virginia. — The Justice Department said Wednesday it is ending controversial Trump-era efforts to combat threats to China’s national security that critics say have unfairly targeted Asian professors.

Senior Justice Department official Matthew G. Olsen said in a speech at George Mason University’s National Security Institute that the agency will instead introduce a broader strategy designed to counter threats from hostile nations that would go beyond China and include countries like Russia. , Iran. and North Korea.

“By grouping the cases under the rubric of China Initiative,” Mr. Olsen said, “we have helped create a harmful perception that the Department has a lower standard for investigating and prosecuting criminal acts related to this country, or that we are somehow We then view people as having racial, ethnic, or familial ties to China in different ways.”

The end of the program means the Justice Department will drop the name “China Initiative” and set a higher bar for prosecuting scientists and researchers who lie to the government about Chinese affiliation.

The move comes a year after civil rights activists, business groups and universities first voiced the Biden administration’s concern that the program was freezing scientific research and fueling anti-Asian sentiment.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland personally called some of those lawyers on Wednesday to brief them on the changes, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity, to reveal details of those calls.

But the end of the initiative does not mean that Beijing no longer poses a major national security threat. The Chinese government continues to use spies, cyberhacking, intellectual property theft, and propaganda to challenge the position of the United States as the preeminent economic and military power in the world, and this activity is getting more acute.

A more “comprehensive approach” addresses the alarming rise in illicit activity from other hostile nations, Mr. Olsen said, reflecting the fact that “there is no threat unique to a single adversary.”

Among the cases brought by the Ministry of Justice are attempts by the governments of China, Iran and Belarus to punish dissidents abroad. He exposed attempts by Russia, China, Malaysia, and Pakistan to use clandestine influence to undermine American political discourse. And he has indicted hackers who ran malicious cyber campaigns on behalf of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

However, Mr. Olsen noted that Beijing’s incursions were more brazen and destructive because they posed a national security threat that “stands alone.”

The China Initiative was established in 2018 to address these dangers by bringing together cases of espionage, theft of trade secrets and cybercrime under a single flag. In some ways, this was a continuation of efforts made under the Bush and Obama administrations.

But civil rights leaders and members of Congress have been outraged by the name “China Initiative,” which they say stoked intolerance and prejudice against Asian Americans at a time when hate crimes against Asians were on the rise.

And the work of the initiative to fight espionage, theft and computer hacking has been overshadowed by prosecutions that have been brought against scientists who did not disclose the fact that they had financial or other ties to Chinese institutions when they applied for federal government grants. The persecution was intended to keep people from hiding foreign affiliations and prompted schools and researchers to introduce stricter disclosure policies.

Certain cases resulted in convictions, including Harvard chemistry professor Charles Lieber in December. But the Justice Department has lost or dropped several such cases, prompting critics to say that all Asian professors working in the United States have been unfairly targeted and obstructed research and academic collaboration.

In one loud failure, the prosecutor’s office dropped the charges against Gang Chenprofessor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, after the Department of Energy said his undisclosed connection to China would not affect his grant application.

Shortly after taking office in October, Mr. Olsen began a three-month review of the China Initiative, which included interviews with the FBI and other intelligence agencies, research agencies, academic institutions, representatives of the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and members of Congress.

His decision to drop the name of the initiative and return China-related national security affairs to the overall mission of the National Security Division reflects these criticisms.

“We have heard concerns from the civil rights community that the China Initiative is fueling a narrative of bigotry and bias,” Mr. Olsen said. “For many, this narrative suggests that the Justice Department treats people of Chinese or Chinese ancestry differently.”

Mr. Olsen said his review found no bias or prejudice in grant fraud cases. “In the course of my review, I have never seen any indication that any decision taken by the Department of Justice was based on bias or prejudice of any kind.”

But he said he shares the concern that these cases and the initiative more broadly have given rise to an impression of biased treatment.

Going forward, the department will use all of its enforcement tools, including civil suits, to fight possible grant fraud. He said the department would spare defendants who appeared to pose a threat to national security from prosecution. He declined to discuss what would happen to pending grant fraud cases.

Some Republicans have criticized the changes, saying they indicate the Biden administration will not effectively counter the Chinese government’s aggression, despite Mr. Olsen’s pledge to continue doing so.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton, Arkansas, said the Biden administration canceled the initiative “because they think it’s racist” but that the Chinese government “turned students and researchers studying in the United States into foreign spies.”

Representative Judy Chu, a California Democrat who is one of several lawmakers who have pushed for the Justice Department to amend the initiative, welcomed the changes. The program, she said, encouraged racial profiling and reinforced the stereotype that Asian Americans were “perpetual strangers” who could not be trusted.

“The Chinese initiative will be remembered not for any success in curbing espionage, but rather for having ruined careers and discouraged many Asian Americans from pursuing careers in STEM fields out of fear that they, too, would be targeted,” said Ms. Ms. Chu in her speech. statement.

“By focusing solely on China, despite constant threats from countries like Iran and Russia, this initiative has presented China as a unique existential threat to the US, which we know has led to more violence,” she said.

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New US sanctions against Russian company behind Nord Stream 2

WASHINGTON. President Biden said Wednesday he would impose economic sanctions on the company behind the new gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, the latest in a series of sanctions that the White House promised would continue if Russia escalated its fighting against Ukraine.

Mr. Biden’s move came after administration officials warned that a full-scale military attack could be imminent. But it also came as a turning point for the president after he lifted sanctions on the gas pipeline, known as Nord Stream 2, last year, despite calls from both Democrats and Republicans to halt the energy project.

“These steps are another part of our initial tranche of sanctions in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine,” Mr. Biden said in a statement Wednesday. “As I have made clear, we will not hesitate to take further steps if Russia continues to escalate.”

Administration officials said Mr. Biden decided it was necessary to move forward on the sanctions after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Tuesday that he would suspend certification of the pipeline in response to Moscow’s order to cross the border into breakaway areas in the country’s east. Ukraine, which the Kremlin recognized as an independent state.

The new sanctions against Gazprom’s subsidiary, a Russian company controlled by the Kremlin, are part of a joint effort by NATO allies to stop what Mr. Biden called “the start of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” “.

On Wednesday, the European Union also announced new sanctions against Russia’s defense minister, President Vladimir V. Putin’s chief of staff, and senior Russians in the media world. On Tuesday, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on two Russian banks and a handful of the country’s elite and made it impossible for Russia to raise funding in Western markets. The administration has said it retains the possibility of even tougher sanctions if Mr. Putin escalates the conflict by trying to seize more territory in Ukraine, or even the entire country.

The White House had not previously imposed sanctions on the company behind the pipeline because it was unclear whether those measures would halt the project, which was already 90 percent complete when Mr. Biden took office, according to Ned Price, White’s spokesman. Houses. State Department.

But on Tuesday, Mr. Scholz gave Mr. Biden an opportunity when he suspended the project’s certification.

“So, working with the Germans,” Mr. Price said, “we have made this an $11 billion prize investment that is now a piece of steel lying at the bottom of the sea.”

Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, called the action against the pipeline part of an attempt to stop the armed conflict.

“What we are trying to do is to prevent a war, to prevent the destruction of the Ukrainian people,” Ms. Psaki said. Speaking of Mr Putin, she said: “We’re going to continue to make it clear that if he continues to escalate, so will we.”

But there was little sign that the initial sanctions imposed this week discouraged Mr. Putin from moving forward in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon issued a grim assessment, saying that 80 percent of the 190,000 Russian troops and separatist forces in or near Ukraine were in combat-ready positions.

The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has caused tensions between Germany and the United States for many years. Germany has long been hesitant to jeopardize its energy trade with Russia; Last month, Mr. Scholz dodged questions about whether he agreed with Mr. Biden’s assertion that the project would be halted if Russia invaded Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Mr. Biden’s move was welcomed by Democrats and Republicans, who throughout the year called for him to quickly punish Russia and stop the pipeline.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz on Wednesday withdrew his objections to 17 of Mr. Biden’s candidates, many of whom were appointed to State Department positions after the president sanctioned the company behind the pipeline.

Mr. Cruz used the Senate process to slow down the pace at which the House could approve Mr. Biden by demanding that the administration impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2.

“Allowing Putin’s Nord Stream 2 to go online would result in multiple cascading and acute security crises for the United States and our European allies for generations to come,” Mr Cruz said.

But Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman said the initial economic punishment was “an important first step, but not far enough.”

“In order to create an effective deterrent, it is necessary to extend tougher sanctions to other financial institutions and introduce export controls,” Mr. Portman said.

Mr. Biden has previously said the pipeline is too advanced to be stopped. “Nord Stream is 99 percent ready,” he said last year. “The idea that something will be said or done to stop it is impossible.” The pipeline was completed last year, but the approval process for the project has stalled.

Duleep Singh, deputy national security adviser, said on Tuesday that shutting down the project would sacrifice “what would be a cash cow for the Russian treasury.”

“It’s not just about money,” Mr. Singh said. “This decision will loosen Russia’s geostrategic chokehold in Europe through its gas supplies, and is a major turning point in the world’s energy independence from Russia.”

The State Department said Wednesday that Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman met with senior European diplomats to coordinate economic sanctions against Russia.

Mr. Price reiterated that the United States is still seeking a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, in which Russia has recognized the independence of two enclaves that are part of Ukraine and sent more Russian troops to those areas. Mr. Putin has amassed troops on three sides of Ukraine, and US officials say a full-scale invasion could happen at any time.

Cathy Edmondson contributed reporting.

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Bob Beckel, liberal operative turned Fox regular, dies at 73

Bob Beckel, who turned a long career as a Democratic politician into an even longer career as a television pundit, mostly for Fox News, where he took on the role of a good-natured full-time liberal with a penchant for saying whatever’s on his mind, died Sunday at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was 73 years old.

His daughter Mackenzie Beckel confirmed the death but said the cause was not known.

As an expert, Mr. Beckel often traded blows with the likes of Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld. But some of his positions – although he defended Barack Obama and called for visa freezes for Muslim and Chinese students – meant that he often had more friends on the right than on the left.

“We got on very well with him. He had the key to my house,” Mr. Hannity said on his show on Monday. Appearing alongside Mr. Hannity, Laura Ingram, another Fox host, called him “an old liberal to fight with.”

But Mr. Beckel has often crossed the line of cultural insensitivity. On the Fox News show The Five, where he hosted, he used racial slurs against the Chinese and repeatedly questioned the loyalty of Muslim Americans. “I am an Islamophobe. That’s right – you can call me whatever you want, ”he said in 2015, after attack in the editorial office of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Fox News fired him in 2015, ostensibly over a dispute over extended sick leave that began with spinal surgery but turned into a stay in rehab after he became addicted to painkillers. The network rehired him in early 2017 with great fanfare — only to fire him again a few months later after a black employee accused him of make a racist remark .

Mr. Beckel denied the allegations, saying he was set up because of his constant criticism of President Donald Trump.

Mr. Beckel rose to national prominence as the outspoken campaign manager for Walter Mondale’s 1984 presidential campaign. By all accounts, he ran a savvy race to help his candidate overcome an ignominious defeat in the New Hampshire primary to Senator Gary Hart of Colorado, in part convincing Mr. Mondale to question the substance of Mr. Hart’s agenda during the debate by uttering the popular catchphrase “Where beef?”

Mr. Mondale announced his candidacy, but Ronald Reagan defeated him in November of that year in one of the most lopsided elections in recent history.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Beckel announced that he was done with campaigns, but not with politics. The following year, he founded a consulting firm advising politicians and corporate clients, and throughout the 1990s served as an expert on cable, network, and local news.

In 2000, he signed with Fox News as a commentator, and in 2011 he joined four other network personalities to launch The Five, an afternoon party loosely modeled after The Look.

The show became popular, dominating its 5:00 pm timeslot and second only to Mr. Hannity among Fox viewers. Many of the show’s fans, including a surprising number of liberals, said they tuned in mainly to see what the always unpredictable Mr. Beckel would do next.

Broad-shouldered and slightly round-shouldered, adorned with bright suspenders and shirt sleeves, Mr. Beckel was as inclined to defend liberal piety as he was to pierce it. He could make a rude gesture to one of his conservative sparring partners or show up just before Christmas dressed as Santa Claus.

“It’s like a Thanksgiving family coming home and arguing about politics, but you know everyone loves each other.” he told The New York Times in 2011.

Robert Gilliland Beckel was born November 15, 1948 in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. His father, Cambridge Graham Beckel, taught at Queens College and later at a high school in Lyme, Connecticut, where the family moved when Robert was in high school. His mother, Ellen (Gilliland) Beckel, was a housewife.

Both of his parents were alcoholics, a fact that Mr. Beckel greatly disgraced but which he freely discussed, especially in light of his own later struggle with substance abuse.

But his father, who moonlighted as a labor organizer and civil rights activist, also passed on a fierce commitment to progressive ideas, a complex legacy that Mr. Beckel explored in his memoir I Should Be Dead: My Life, Surviving Politics. , TV and drug addiction” (2015).

He graduated from Wagner College on Staten Island in 1970 with a degree in political science, where he also played football. From 1971 to 1972 he served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines and in 1977 joined the State Department.

There, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, he worked on the Panama Canal Treaty, SALT II arms control negotiations, and US policy in the Middle East. He left to run ground operations in Texas for Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign, a losing effort that nonetheless allowed him to lead Mr. Mondale’s campaign.

Mr. Beckel has worked extensively as an expert. He did everything the producers asked him to do, whether it was replacing vacationing hosts or participating in election night coverage.

“It’s a way for me to keep my finger on the pulse,” he told The Washington Post in 1991. — I can still gain strength before the campaigns, but I do not need to participate in them. I can go to Iowa and New Hampshire, stand up, and then go to bed.”

He married Leland Ingham, a professional golfer, in 1991; they divorced in 2002. Together with his daughter, he had a son, Alex; his brother Graham; and his sister Peggy Proto.

In November 2000, Mr. Beckel made an attempt to see if voters in Florida could be persuaded to switch their votes from George W. Bush to Al Gore. When The Wall Street Journal reported on his project, Mr. Gore distanced himself from him, and when Mr. Beckel insisted, two partners from his firm left, forcing him to dissolve it.

Mr. Beckel’s demons caused him controversy from time to time. In early 2001, he got drunk in a Maryland bar and flirted with a married woman. Her husband, who was sitting nearby, drew a pistol and aimed it at Mr. Beckel’s head; he pulled the trigger and it misfired.

A year later, he hired a prostitute who then tried to extort money from him; after he refused and it went public, he was fired from the campaign of Alan Blinken, a Democrat (and uncle of Anthony Blinken, secretary of state) who was running for the Senate from Idaho.

Mr. Beckel continued to ride. Along with conservative writer Cal Thomas, he wrote a regular column for USA Today discussing issues such as immigration, the Iraq War, and holiday shopping; They later co-wrote Common Ground: How to Stop the Guerrilla War That’s Destroying America (2008).

But his real love was television.

“I can write a good solid LA Times presidential campaign op-ed and no one will pay a hell of a lot of attention to me,” he said. said Washington Post. “I turn on Crossfire and people seem to think it’s more important.”

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William Kunzel, who pleaded not guilty on death row, dies at 60

“Kuentzel’s new evidence destroys the prosecution’s case,” they wrote“to make it clear that any reasonable juror would likely have reasonable doubt” of Mr. Künzel’s guilt.

The court rejected his request for review without comment. In 2016, when Mr. Künzel appealed to the Supreme Court again, Mr Miz claimed in his own friend from the memo: “This court must allow for review and ensure that the compelling constitutional claims of a man who is most likely in fact innocent are allowed on the merits.”

The court again rejected the petition without comment, effectively depriving Mr. Künzel of his legal options. If he had not died, he would eventually have to be executed.

William Ernest Kuenzel was born on January 11, 1962 in Rockford, Alabama. He was raised by his mother, Barbara Kuenzel, and stepfather, Glenn Kuenzel, whose military service led them to move to various military bases. Billy Kuenzel left school after the eighth grade and took a job as an auto mechanic; He later worked in a cotton mill and construction site.

He had a brief marriage that resulted in his only child, William Jr., who survived him along with three grandchildren, his half-brothers, Kenneth Kuenzel and Steve Dennison, and his half-sisters, Gloria Bean and Janice Talley.

Mr. Kunzel worked on offshore oil platforms in Louisiana, and after returning to Alabama, he was employed in a textile factory near Goodwater, a town near Sylakoga, where he met Mr. Venn.

After his conviction in 1988, Mr. Künzel did not have a lawyer until Brian Stevenson, from Equal Justice Initiativethe labor lawyer asked. David Dretsintake the case in 1993. IN article about the case on news website Vice.com in 2016, Mr Stevenson recalled that Mr Dretsin “was probably the first lawyer we tried to recruit who actually touched me and he put his hand on my arm and said, ‘You know, it’s all right. , I”. I’m going to do it.”

William Kunzel, who pleaded not guilty on death row, dies at 60 Read More »