AFP

The government calls Stewart Rhodes the “general” of a traitorous violent insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021; his lawyers say he led a “peacekeeping force” in the riot at the US Capitol.

And his former wife called him a narcissistic “sociopath” who mythologizes his own future as “the next George Washington.”

Rhodes, 56, was at the center Monday of the first US sedition trial in decades, accused with other members of this Oath Keepers militia group of plotting the armed attack on the US Congress to block Joe Biden from becoming president.

Prosecutors say that as the leader of the Oath Keepers, the eye-patch-wearing Yale law graduate spearheaded the attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-president Donald Trump, stockpiling weapons nearby for an armed insurrection.

In an indictment, the Justice Department detailed encrypted chats in which Rhodes urged Oath Keeper members to prepare for a revolution after Trump was defeated by Biden in the November 2020 election.

“We aren’t getting through this without civil war,” he told them.

If Biden became president, he said, “It will be a bloody and desperate fight… That can’t be avoided.”

– From Yale Law to conspiracies –

Rhodes has spent years preparing to do battle with a government he views as increasingly repressive. 

He grew up in the southwest US, and joined the army after finishing high school.

But he was discharged early due to an injury in a parachuting exercise.

His former wife Tasha Adams Rhodes, with whom he had six children, says they met as he was working as a parking valet and she was teaching dance in Las Vegas.

He was also working as a firearms instructor — and lost one eye when he dropped a gun and it fired, hitting him.

In 1998 he graduated from a local university and was accepted at Yale University Law School, one of the country’s most elite institutions.

After Yale he set up a law practice in Montana, where he developed the idea for the Oath Keepers in 2009, on the premise that the federal government was increasingly encroaching on citizens’ rights including restricting gun ownership.

Followers must be willing to fight the government, he would say.

– Mainstreaming fringe ideas –

Blogging online about politics and the alleged threat of the American left, Rhodes struck a nerve among many white men with military and police backgrounds, recruiting thousands to the group.

“He showed a talent for giving fringe ideas more mainstream appeal,” wrote Mike Giglio in an Atlantic profile of Rhodes.

As the group grew, Rhodes mobilized armed, combat-suited Oath Keepers for security at Republican rallies and during social disturbances, like the riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after police shot a Black man.

“The Oath Keepers are basically a peacekeeping force,” Rhodes’ attorney Phillip Linder told the federal district court in Washington Monday. “They make themselves available to help keep peace in the streets.”

– ‘Extremely patriotic’ – 

But government prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler Monday said that text messages and recorded conversations show Rhodes planned the January 6 actions and organized his followers around them.

He depicted Rhodes outside the Capitol during the riot, constantly on his phone texting orders to his followers.

He was “like a general in the battlefield,” said Nestler. The Oath Keepers launched their fight to break through police lines into the Capitol after Rhodes texted them: “The patriots are taking matters into their own hands.”

Linder, Rhodes’ attorney, says that the government has exaggerated and taken out of context many of Rhodes’ text messages to portray his client as plotting to overthrow the government.

“Stewart Rhodes meant no harm to the capitol that day. Stewart Rhodes did not have any violent intent that day,” said Linder.

“Rhodes is extremely patriotic.. he is a constitutional expert,” he added.

A dearth of data in many countries on the race and ethnicity of people arrested or killed by police presents a major barrier to tackling systemic racism, UN investigators warned Monday.

Speaking before the United Nations Human Rights Council, a group of experts appointed after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white US police officer insisted it was vital to make systemic racism around the world “visible”.

There is a “crucial need to collect, analyse, use and publish data, disaggregated by race or ethnic origin”, Yvonne Mokgoro, a former South African judge who heads the UN’s so-called Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in the context of Law Enforcement.

The team of three independent investigators were presenting their first report to the rights council since it appointed them last year, with a broad mandate to investigate racism by police worldwide.

Mokgoro said it was clear “racial profiling, excessive use of force, and other violations of international human rights law, during and after interactions with law enforcement officials and the criminal justice system, continue to be reported throughout the world”.

But, she warned, this “largely does not show in official statistics”.

– Must ‘become visible’ –

Mokgoro acknowledged that more data alone would not resolve “longstanding racism”.

But she said it was “an essential first step to highlight the magnitude of systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent and its manifestations in law enforcement and criminal justice”.

“It is essential that systemic racism, including its structural and institutional dimensions, become visible.”

In the United States for instance, where the killing of Floyd, a 46-year-old unarmed black man, in Minneapolis in May 2020, sparked mass protests, there is no centralised system to collect such statistics across more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

But some NGOs and media organisations scramble to gather the data to get an overview.

Collette Flanagan, who founded Mothers Against Police Brutality after her black son Clinton Allen was killed by police in Dallas, Texas in 2013, told the council his case was emblematic of “the current crisis in policing in the United States”.

She said a black person was “2.5 times more likely to be shot” to death by police in the United States.

Her son was unarmed, yet the white officer who shot him seven times “perceived my son as a threat”, she said.

“This officer escaped all criminal and civil accountability for killing my son.”

– ‘Dismantle racial discrimination’ –

The United States is not the only country facing this problem. 

Presenting a separate report Monday, acting UN rights chief Nada Al-Nashif provided updates on seven cases highlighted by her office last year of police-related fatalities, including Floyd’s, but also cases from Brazil, Britain, Colombia and France.

She said none of the cases had “yet been brought to a full conclusion, with those families still seeking truth, justice and guarantees of non-repetition”.

She highlighted some positive examples of efforts in various countries to act against systemic racism, but warned they largely “remain insufficient”.

US Ambassador Michele Taylor welcomed the report, and that it acknowledged “the progress, continued efforts and dedication to this issue in the United States”.

“We will continue our efforts to dismantle racial discrimination in law enforcement against people of African descent.”

The conservative-dominated US Supreme Court, after delivering landmark rulings on abortion, guns and the environment, began a new term on Monday packed with more controversial cases.

First up on the docket for the nation’s highest court was a dispute involving the authority of the federal government to regulate wetlands under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

Among those asking questions during oral arguments was Ketanji Brown Jackson, 52, who was named to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden and is the first African-American woman to sit on the court.

The justices are seated in terms of seniority and Jackson, who replaced 84-year-old Stephen Breyer, one of the three liberals on the nine-member panel, was seated at the far left of Chief Justice John Roberts, who sits in the middle.

For the first time since the start of the Covid pandemic, members of the public were allowed to attend oral arguments and metal barricades set up last year ahead of the court’s contentious decision on abortion have been taken down.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down the 1973 ruling guaranteeing a constitutional right to abortion, expanded public carry rights for gun owners and curbed the powers of the government agency responsible for environmental protection.

The court kicked off the latest term with a closely watched case involving the Environmental Protection Agency — Sackett vs EPA.

The dispute involves a couple, Michael and Chantell Sackett, who were stopped by the EPA in 2007 from building a home near Priest Lake in Idaho because the property abuts federally protected wetlands.

The EPA said the Sacketts needed a permit but they are arguing that the Clean Water Act applies only to “traditional navigable waters” and they should be allowed to proceed.  

Environmentalists warned that a ruling in their favor would be a severe setback to anti-pollution protections enshrined in the 1972 Clean Water Act.

Anti-discrimination laws, voting rights and immigration are also on the docket of the court, where conservatives — three of whom were nominated by former president Donald Trump — wield a solid 6-3 majority.

David Cole, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said the last term “saw the court aggressively exercising its newfound conservative power to upend long established precedents.”

“This term, the court appears ready to do so again,” Cole said. “The court is not likely to act modestly or at least is not inclined to act modestly.”

– ‘Far-reaching consequences for democracy’ –

The court is to hear arguments on the use of race in deciding who gets to attend Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

Harvard and UNC, like many other US institutions of higher education, use race as a factor in trying to ensure a diverse student body and to make up for a legacy of racial discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics.

The court has ruled previously in favor of affirmative action but it has long been in the cross-hairs of the right and its opponents believe the current court will be receptive to their arguments.

Another closely watched case, which will be heard by the court on Tuesday, involves the seven congressional districts in the southern state of Alabama and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which aims to prevent discrimination against African Americans at the polls.

The civil rights legislation allows for the creation of Black-dominated districts to ensure they have representation in Congress.

But it is illegal to restrict their voting power by concentrating Black voters in a single district or by splitting them into multiple districts.

A congressional map drawn up by the Republican-dominated Alabama state legislature provides for only a single Black-majority district although they make up about 25 percent of the population of the state.

Another case before the court would give state legislatures more power to regulate federal elections and could have “far-reaching consequences for democracy,” said Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU’s voting rights project.

The case could change how federal elections are conducted and give state legislatures “broad unchecked power over federal elections,” said Sophia Lin Lakin of the ACLU’s voting rights project.

The Supreme Court will also revisit an issue from several years ago, when it ruled in favor of a cake-maker who cited his Christian beliefs in refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

The ruling in that case was narrow, however, and the court is being asked this time to decide whether a graphic designer who declines to build wedding websites for gay couples is violating anti-discrimination laws.

“Bros,” billed as the first gay rom-com from a major Hollywood studio, flopped at the box office because straight people “just didn’t show up,” its creator Billy Eichner said.

Heavily marketed by Universal Pictures and costing $22 million to produce, the movie received mostly glowing reviews but took less than $5 million at North American theaters on its opening weekend. 

Despite opening in more than 3,000 theaters, it ranked only in fourth place at the domestic box office overall, behind Paramount’s mid-budget horror “Smile,” and two other films which debuted earlier last month.

“That’s just the world we live in, unfortunately. Even with glowing reviews… straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros,” Eichner, who co-wrote and stars in the film, tweeted Sunday.

“And that’s disappointing but it is what it is.”

The movie follows Bobby, a successful New York-based podcaster who insists he is content being single even as his friends couple up, before his life is changed by an encounter with an equally commitment-phobic lawyer.

Made with an entire cast of openly LGBTQ actors, it features several sex scenes, including one with four men engaged in group sex, and is rated R for “restricted.”

At its world premiere at the Toronto film festival last month, Eichner told AFP it was “absurd and infuriating” that it had taken so long for a major Hollywood studio to release a film like “Bros.”

“There should be tons of these movies by now. But still, I’m very grateful that Universal finally decided that it was time,” he said.

Director Nicholas Stoller said he hoped the film would prevail at the box office in order to show “the studios that there is a big audience for this kind of story, and not just an LGBTQ audience, but a straight audience.”

That now seems less certain, although box office analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research noted that the film’s first weekend figures represented “a fair opening by mainstream romantic comedy standards,” as the once wildly popular genre has been “under pressure for a number of years.”

“There are no norms for gay film stories because there have been so few of them. Those few that came before generally featured funny gay shtick,” he wrote.

In a series of tweets, Eichner said he had attended a “Bros” screening in liberal Los Angeles where the audience response was “truly magical,” but said an unnamed theater chain had threatened to not show the film’s trailer “because of the gay content.”

“Everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo should go see BROS tonight! You will have a blast!” he added.

“And it is special and uniquely powerful to see this particular story on a big screen, esp for queer folks who don’t get this opportunity often.”

President Joe Biden flew to Puerto Rico on Monday to inspect storm damage, saying in a veiled jab at his predecessor Donald Trump that the territory had not “been taken very good care of” during a crippling series of past hurricanes.

The president and First Lady Jill Biden — who on Wednesday will also visit the devastation caused by deadly Hurricane Ian in Florida — were headed to Ponce, on the south coast of Puerto Rico, pounded by Hurricane Fiona last month.

“He’s going to the hardest hit area of Puerto Rico and it is an area that presidents have not gone to before and I think that shows the president’s and the first lady’s commitment,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said aboard Air Force One.

It’s “an area where people have lost almost everything.”

Ahead of the trip, the White House announced $60 million to strengthen storm defenses, including flood barricades and warning systems.

More than two weeks after Hurricane Fiona ended, thousands of people remain without power. Officials said at least seven percent of customers are still without electricity and five percent without water. 

The visit is part of a message from the Biden administration that the government is taking responsibility, in contrast to Trump, who publicly fought with the island’s leadership and suggested in 2018 that the death tolls from hurricanes were manipulated to make him look “bad.”

During a visit to Puerto Rico in 2017 after the especially destructive Hurricane Maria, Trump took flack for an event where he tossed rolls of paper kitchen towels into a crowd of local people whose lives had been turned upside down by flooding and damage.

“I’m heading to Puerto Rico because they haven’t been taken very good care of,” Biden said on departure from the White House. “They’ve been trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane. I want to see the state of affairs today and make sure we push everything we can.”

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that mayors on the island she had spoken to “finally feel like this administration cares for them.”

– Test of leadership –

The annual hurricanes often cut a ruinous path from the Caribbean up over Puerto Rico and Cuba or the Bahamas before hitting Florida.

Florida officials said the latest death count from Hurricane Ian was now at least 58, with another four deaths were recorded in North Carolina.

In Puerto Rico, 25 deaths have been linked to Hurricane Fiona, according to the island’s public health department, which is still investigating how 12 of the fatalities occurred.

The entire US territory lost power and about one million people were left temporarily without drinking water, when Fiona — then a Category 1 storm — hammered the island in mid-September. Biden quickly declared a state of emergency, freeing up federal funds and expertise.

Island residents, all US citizens but without statehood, have complained of being overlooked by Washington after previous disasters, including the hit from twin hurricanes, Irma and Maria, in 2017.

US authorities — federal, state and local — are often judged by the effectiveness of their response to such disasters.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast, critics castigated then-president George W. Bush after photos showed him surveying damage while flying high overhead.