What Happened Today: December 23, 2022
Trump is to blame; Massacre in Bucha, Ukraine; Disney flops
The Big Story
Late Thursday evening, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol released its final report. The main conclusion: “The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed.” The committee blames Trump for summoning his supporters to Washington, D.C., and fomenting a “large, angry crowd ready for instructions.” The report—nearly 850 pages long based on more than 1,000 witness interviews and 1 million pages of documents—doesn’t contain much news, but there were some revelations. The report released text messages from Hope Hicks, an aide to the president. Sent as events were unfolding, she wrote, “We all look like domestic terrorists now.” Later, when Trump tweeted during the attack that Mike Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done,” Hicks texted, “Attacking the VP? Wtf is wrong with him?” The authors also estimated that Trump and his aides were involved in some 200 acts of “public or private outreach, pressure or condemnation” between the presidential election and Jan. 6 directed at state-level officials who might be able to change the election results.
The final report comes just days after the committee—in an unprecedented move—referred Trump to the Justice Department on four charges: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make false statements, and incitement of an insurrection. Whether or not to prosecute the former president is a decision left to Attorney General Merrick Garland, as the committee has no actual legal power; Garland has already assigned a special investigator to look into Trump’s involvement. Adding more bad news to the early days of the Trump 2024 campaign, the Trump family business was convicted earlier this month for criminal tax fraud. As far as his re-election hopes are concerned, the final report from the committee also issued recommendations to use the 14th Amendment to ban Trump from future office on the grounds that he’s an “insurrectionist.”
Trump’s response to the findings? He took to Truth Social on Thursday and wrote: “The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in D.C., show the ‘Peacefully and Patrioticly’ [sic] words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT?”
In the Back Pages: Hanukkah in Ukraine
The Rest
→ It’s going to be a white Christmas for much of the nation after Winter Storm Elliott passes through. The storm, which the National Weather Service is calling a “once in a generation” event, is entering the Northeast today as it strengthens rapidly, a phenomenon called a “bomb cyclone,” which occurs when the internal pressure of a storm drops more than 24 millibars in 24 hours. Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has declared a state of emergency for the entire state, effective today, with the expectation of heavy snow in the West, heavy rain in the East, massive winds, and huge temperature drops. The storm has already caused deaths across the country, and massive waves on the Great Lakes are predicted to cause coastal flooding.
→ Photo of the Day:
A pro-life advocate in Birmingham, England, was arrested for “failing to comply with a Public Space Protection Order” after she was “praying silently” near an abortion clinic. The order, which went active Sept. 7, covers a small area around the clinic and is meant to prevent pro-life protests from disturbing women entering and exiting. The order bans “protesting, namely engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means.” Other buffer-zone bills have been passed to limit substance abuse and other “anti-social” activities. Members of the United Kingdom’s parliament have proposed a bill that would take the pro-life protestor penalties to the next level: Those who try to influence someone’s decision to have an abortion may be slapped with six months in jail for a first offense.
→ A new investigation into the murder of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha this March has been released by The New York Times. The report, which is the result of an eight-month visual investigation by reporters, concluded that the murderers were members of the Russian paratroopers division, the 234th Air Assault Regiment. The Times even found the names of the soldiers involved, as well as their commander, Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov. The report used phone records and radio transmissions to help identify the perpetrators, and it alleges that in many cases, the Russian soldiers used the cell phones of their victims to make calls home to their families in Russia. The report also identified three dozen victims who were killed along Yablunska street, where the primary massacre is said to have occurred. Separate news from Frontline and the AP on the murders, released in November, places the blame with a different regiment, the 76th Guards Airborne Assault Division, and its commanders Maj. Gen. Sergei Chubarykin and Col. Gen. Alexander Chaiko. What the two different accounts do agree on is that the killings were deliberate and systematic, intended to root out locals who the military groups determined were working against the Russian invasion.
Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/video/russia-ukraine-bucha-massacre-takeaways.html & https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/russian-soldiers-cleansing-operation-bucha-ukraine/
→ Video of the Day I:
NASA’s robot geologist is fulfilling its mission on Mars. The Perseverance rover dropped off its first sample of Mars’ terra in a titanium tube on Wednesday. The tube will sit in the “Three Forks” sample depot, waiting for the Perseverance to drop off nine more just like it over the next two months, making it the first sample depot for humans on another planet. Eventually, as shown in the video above, the samples of Mars dust will be loaded onto a mini-rocket that will blast into orbit to dock with a larger vehicle, which will send them to Earth for analysis. The rover already has 17 other samples stored inside, but if something goes wrong and it can’t deliver them, the drop-site tubes will be a backup so NASA won’t miss its chance to learn a little bit more about Elon Musk’s future home.
→ Number of the Day: 37 million
That’s the number of people that the Chinese government estimates are being infected with the novel coronavirus per day as it rips through a nation that has—until now—used all possible measures to prevent its spread. It’s unclear how the government is calculating the number, given that it closed down the country’s nationalized PCR testing sites this month, but if accurate, the spread dwarfs anything the world has yet seen from the virus.
→ Video of the Day II:
Back in July, a British tourist in the mountains between Kyrgyzstan and China filmed this incredible video of an avalanche, which he only narrowly avoided at the last minute by ducking behind a rock. Just before the snow and ice hits his position, the fellow observes, “Oh god, oh dear god.” Turns out the man, Harry Shimmin, and his group of 9 other explorers, narrowly missed certain death, as they had planned to walk directly in the path of the avalanche just a little later that day.
→ Disney stock is inching toward its 1974 record for poor performance, dropping 44.6% this year after seeing some disappointing film openings—including the very expensive Avatar sequel—and losing $1.5 billion on its streaming service, Disney+. One investor is demanding that the company turn over records related to its decision to oppose Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” education bill in Florida; the investor contends that quarreling with DeSantis cost the company and shareholders by imperiling the special agreement Disney has had with the state since 1967 regarding its massive theme park in Orlando. In response to Disney’s objection to the law, DeSantis dissolved the special Reedy Creek Improvement District, the district where Walt Disney World Resort received various tax benefits from the state. The culture war might be costing Disney in other ways, too: Some customers felt that two of its major flops this year, Lightyear and Strange World, were overly focused on LGBT issues. “The problem is nobody wants to go to the cinema, because they’ve been told that COVID is extremely dangerous,” Tony Chambers, Disney’s global head of theatrical distribution, told The Wall Street Journal. “Although cinemas are open, the appetite for going to them isn’t really there.” Whatever the reason, famed Disney CEO Bob Iger is back in the leadership chair after his replacement, Bob Chapek, was let go. Iger was a vocal critic of DeSantis’ bill.
→ The White House is getting a permanent pandemic team. The recent omnibus spending bill included a provision for the creation of a White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, with up to 25 staff. The director of the office would be appointed by the president and also have a seat on the Domestic Policy Council and National Security Council. A similar team was created in 2016 by the Obama administration, through the NSC, called the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense, but in May 2018, President Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton, disbanded the unit, although many members remained in the government in similar positions. Well, going forward it looks as if Congress is going to provide the resources for something permanent; it wants to see a report within the first year on preparedness for future outbreaks.
Read More: https://www.statnews.com/2022/12/22/pandemic-response-gets-a-permanent-home-at-the-white-house/
→ Chart of the Day:
Banking behemoth Goldman Sachs is planning to lay off up to 4,000 employees and slash bonuses by 40%, and this chart shows why. Although in some ways the company has been doing extremely well, it has expanded its operations at twice the rate of its peers over the past two years and is heavily reliant on its investment banking and trading divisions for revenue. As Goldman continues to move toward more stable income flows, the company is trying to run as lean as it can. But investors shouldn’t be too worried—somehow the legendary company always seems to find the wind.
→ Last Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill to prevent government devices from using the TikTok app, over fears that users’ personal data could make its way to the Chinese government. On Thursday, an internal investigation by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, revealed that those fears were justified. The investigation found that while a group of ByteDance employees were investigating leaks from the company to journalists, they accessed the information of two American reporters and people connected to those reporters. The company fired the four employees in question and has been working furiously to convince U.S. regulators that its app is safe for Americans to use and that their data will be protected. ByteDance has moved all U.S. user data to a cloud storage system operated by American company Oracle, hoping that would show its commitment to protecting the data from the Chinese government. But senators on both sides of the aisle are not buying it. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said in a statement, “The company is desperate to tamp down growing bipartisan concerns about how it enables the Chinese Communist Party to use—and potentially weaponize—the data of American citizens.”
→ Thread of the Day:
This very helpful thread has curated 10 web services you probably weren’t aware of but will certainly make use of, including the charmingly named Hemingway app to help your syntax; MyFridgeFood, which helps make meals out of your stragglers; and PDF Drive, which purports to give you access to 80 million books for free!
→ On that note, we at The Scroll thank you for a wonderful year of engagement and curiosity, and wish you a very Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. We’ll see you with more news and some fun new features in 2023. Stay warm. Stay curious.
TODAY IN TABLET:
The European Genizah by Simcha Emanuel
Thousands of Hebrew manuscript fragments were discovered in Central Europe, where they had been used by Christians to bind books
The Recipe for a Sweet New Year by Tanya Mozias Slavin
As Russian Jews, our family always celebrated Novy God—and we always did it by baking my favorite cake
SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.
Hanukkah in Ukraine
Day Five, lighting candles in Kyiv
By Edward Serota
Edward Serotta is the director of Centropa, a Vienna-based Jewish historical institute, and the producer of the podcast series “A Ukrainian Jewish Century.”
The subfreezing cold wave gripping Kyiv eased up a bit today, and for a short while, electricity was back on in much of the city. But by 4 p.m., as darkness descended, the lights were out again and generators cranked back up, and I was halfway to the Great Choral Synagogue without a flashlight.
This was the only functioning synagogue in Kyiv during the Cold War decades, and in a interview in 2004, Peter Rabtsevich told me:
In the first years after the war, people would come here for the High Holidays. They would fill the street completely and thousands more would stand on Shchekavytska Street, filling it for blocks. They would install loudspeakers, which wasn’t exactly kosher, but they did it anyway, and because so many people were coming, the authorities had the loudspeakers turned off. People came anyway, even though I’m sure most of them didn’t know how to pray. They wanted to remember their loved ones, to commemorate the dead, and to remember that they were Jews.
I recounted this interview while sitting in the synagogue’s office with 64-year-old Evgeny Ziskind, the vice chairman of the synagogue’s community who has worked there since 1993.
Evgeny smiled. “This man was talking about the 1940s?”
I said he was.
“Well, it was still like that in the 1980s, when I first started coming here. My friends and I did the same. Just stood outside. And this synagogue was the only Jewish place in Kyiv. Not just the only synagogue—the only Jewish place. There were no community centers, no schools, no Hesed center, no Israeli embassy.”
These were the years when a great many Jews still lived in Kyiv. Evgeny remembers that at least 30% of his class was Jewish. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became an independent country, and soon after, Rabbi Yaakov Bleich arrived from New York and began ministering from this synagogue. Chabad rabbis also arrived.
Throughout the 1990s, with an ongoing economic crisis, tens of thousands of Jews left Ukraine. Many also fled from Belarus, Russia, and other former republics. They departed for Israel, North America, and Germany. “I would guess 80% of my circle of friends left in those years,” Evgeny said.
“And now, since this war?”
Evgeny closed his eyes and shook his head. “A lot more.”
Like many grand synagogues, the Great Choral Synagogue has a small but heatable sanctuary for daily minyans, and as a generator hummed along outside, 15 men gathered inside as Rabbi David Goldich lit the menorah for the fifth night of Hanukkah.
Evgeny showed me a jaw-dropping video, which had been made the week before in Kyiv. A rabbi had a Torah prepared in Israel and sent to Kyiv to be used for conducting services for Jewish soldiers in the Ukrainian army.
It is a tradition that the very last letter of a new Torah is written in by the congregation that will use it, and in this case, Rabbi Goldich did the honors at an official ceremony, a military band performing an extended drum roll behind him.
During the 15-minute walk from my hotel to the synagogue, I passed by several darkened coffee bars, pubs, an Indian restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, and bookshop. How sad, I thought: They must be closed, victims of Ukraine’s flailing economy. But as I walked back to the hotel an hour later, I saw all of them had come to life, many lit with candles. Something about that Festival of Lights, perhaps.
I did a double take in one café. Sitting near me was a student charging his phone; he was wearing a black hoodie with “Live without fear” emblazoned on the back.
I think he knows what he’s talking about.
Love this newsletter, it's the only one I actually seek out