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Mass Protests Planned If Trump Fires Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein

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If President Donald Trump fires Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or any other officials involved in the Russia investigation, he faces the prospect of hundreds of thousands of activists immediately turning out to protest all over the country.

A coalition of grassroots activists, unions, policy organizations and good governance groups have, for months, been plotting to quickly and forcefully respond to any perceived interference with the investigation. And with Trump increasingly vocal about his displeasure with the inquiry, these organizers say they’re stepping up their efforts.

The coalition, calling its would-be gatherings “Nobody Is Above The Law” protests, released “red lines” that it said the president or his administration would have to cross to trigger the protests. These include firing any of the investigators or their supervisors, pardoning key witnesses or otherwise interfering with the investigation.

Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs at Public Citizen, a government accountability group and one of the leading protest organizers, attributed the coalition’s diverse membership to a growing sense among it members that the threat to the investigation represents a structural challenge to civil society.

“It’s a constitutional crisis and different from anything else we’ve had to react to,” said Gilbert.

Among the coalition’s members are the American Federation of Teachers, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, the Center for American Progress, anti-Trump grassroots group Indivisible and the women’s rights advocacy organization Ultraviolet.

That so much activity has occurred for an event that has yet to actually transpire is indicative of the increasing organization and savvy of the protest movement against the Trump administration.

Gilbert added that people are growing more comfortable with, and accustomed to, protesting in the Trump administration.

“We’re in a new protest culture, that is just part of how we react now,” she said. “You take a stand to show that this issue is huge.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Trump administration officials and allies are planning a coordinated attack on Rosenstein to lay the groundwork for his firing. Rosenstein’s sacking, one official told the Journal, is “a matter of when, not if.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation in 2017, giving Rosenstein oversight of former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s inquiry.

Aaron Bernstein / Reuters

Special counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in June 2017.

The investigation received renewed attention this week after the office of U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York ordered a raid of the office belonging to Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

Also fueling the attention is the arrival of former FBI Director James Comey’s memoir, A Higher Loyalty, which details his interactions with President Trump before being fired by the commander in chief in May 2017. Comey’s interview promoting the book on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Friday morning has received widespread attention.

President Trump attacked the erstwhile FBI director in severaltweets Friday morning.

“James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR,” the president wrote. “Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst ‘botch jobs’ of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”

Stephen Spalding, chief of strategy and external affairs at Common Cause, a good government advocacy group and another leading organizer of the rallies, said the president’s behavior is exacerbating activists’ sense of alarm.

″[Trump is] clearly feeling cornered by events that have taken place this week,” Spaulding said. “We know in the past that when he feels this kind of pressure, he tends to act out.”

With former FBI director James Comey’s memoirs being released, Spaulding added, Trump is “going to feel a lot of pressure.”

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Oregon Man Refuses To Pay Taxes Based On Religious Beliefs About Abortion

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As Americans across the nation scramble to file their tax returns next week, one Oregon man is fighting that requirement in court, claiming his Christian beliefs about abortion bar him from paying his taxes.

Michael Bowman has refused to file a tax return or pay income tax since at least 1999 because he doesn’t want his tax dollars to go toward abortions, The Oregonian reports.

“I’m not a tax protester. I love my country. I have a duty to my country. I have a duty to my conscience,” Bowman told The Oregonian.

Federal law already prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or to save a woman’s life. And courts have previously ruled that the government’s right to collect taxes supersedes individuals’ religious or anti-war objections to paying them.

Still, Bowman has notched one victory. On Wednesday, a federal judge dismissed a tax evasion charge against him, saying that the government had failed to prove that he tried to conceal or mislead officials about his income. Prosecutors claimed the 53-year-old contract engineer from Columbia City had been cashing his work checks and keeping his bank balance low specifically so that tax collectors couldn’t garnish his account.

U.S. District Judge Michael W. Mosman ruled that Bowman’s actions didn’t amount to tax evasion. The charge was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for Oregon can seek a new indictment, The Associated Press reports.

Bowman still faces four counts of willful failure to file tax returns, which are misdemeanors.

A federal grand jury indicted Bowman in February 2017. Between 2002 and 2014, prosecutors said, the Internal Revenue Service had sent him multiple notices that his federal taxes were due. The indictment alleges that Bowman owes the government at least $356,857, including penalties.

Bowman laid out his reasons for not paying income taxes in this video:

In a court document filed this February, he wrote that he is a Christian who has “forged his spiritual identity based on the Holy Bible.” He explained that his refusal to pay taxes stems from his religious beliefs and a desire to “keep a clean conscience, by not funding the death of the innocent.”

“A woman has the right to choose, but apparently, the prosecutor feels I do not have a right to choose,” Bowman wrote.

“Our Nation supports LGBTs, Transgenders & illegal immigrants, but Christians values are ignored; even frowned upon, and destroyed via laws that force us to be party to bad things,” he added.

Bowman’s lawyer and the U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately comment in response to HuffPost’s queries.

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Trump Promised Senator No Federal Crackdown On Legal Weed, But Who Even Knows

President Donald Trump has assured a top Senate Republican that he will allow states to pursue marijuana laws as they see fit, seemingly bringing an end to tense speculation that his administration could be preparing to mount a crackdown on state-legal cannabis operations.

But not everyone is convinced the president will stay true to his word.

In a statement Friday, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) said he and Trump had reached the agreement following the senator’s pledge to block all Justice Department nominees until the president promised not to interfere in Colorado’s legal marijuana industry.

“Late Wednesday, I received a commitment from the President that the Department of Justice’s rescission of the Cole memo will not impact Colorado’s legal marijuana industry,” Gardner said in the statement. “Furthermore, President Trump has assured me that he will support a federalism-based legislative solution to fix this states’ rights issue once and for all.”

In January, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Justice Department had rescinded a series of Obama-era memos that had discouraged federal prosecution of marijuana operations operating in accordance with state law but in violation of federal law, which still considers marijuana a Schedule I substance.

Sessions once said he thought the Ku Klux Klan was “OK until I learned that they smoked pot,” though he later claimed to be joking.

Although the decision didn’t officially amount to an order to change course, it gave federal prosecutors in legal marijuana states the leeway to clamp down on cannabis. The announcement sparked anxiety in the legal weed industry and reportedly led some larger capital firms to walk back previous financial commitments.

Gardner said he is already set to unfreeze some of Trump’s nominees.

Department leaders have “shown in good faith their willingness to provide what I think will be hopefully the protections we sought, and as sort of a good faith gesture on my behalf I’ll be releasing a limited number of nominees,” Gardner told The Associated Press on Friday.

Despite Trump’s pledge, some are warning he could change his mind.

“This is another head-spinning moment,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said in a statement provided to HuffPost. “We should hope for the best, but not take anything for granted. Trump changes his mind constantly, and Republican leadership is still in our way.”

Erik Altieri, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said Sessions’ hiring did not reflect Trump’s promise to protect state’s rights.

“We applaud this commitment from President Trump, who promised during his campaign to take a federalist approach with regard to marijuana policy,” Altieri said in a statement. “That campaign promise was not reflected by Trump’s appointment of longtime marijuana prohibitionist Jeff Sessions to the position of Attorney General or any of the actions that Sessions has taken since becoming the nation’s top law enforcement officer.”

The New York Daily News reported Friday that the Justice Department had not been consulted before Trump made his phone call.

Matt Ferner contributed to this report.

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The Problem With Facebook Is No One Can Agree On A Metaphor

Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg heard a lot of different visions of his giant company from lawmakers this week.

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In 1873, Union Pacific completed the final tracks linking the two halves of the transcontinental railway by bridging the Missouri River between Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. The mega-project inaugurated a new industrial era in the United States that transformed the nature not just of work and life, but also of time and space.

Soon a new phrase would be used to describe the locations of workplaces, people, goods and entire cities. They were either “on-line” or “off-line,” the line being the railway itself. Either you were connected (or traveling on that connecting line) or you weren’t. This distinction had consequences.

Online, which lost its hyphen sometime before AOL launched, now refers to our connection to the internet and its millions of active websites. Our phones are almost always connected to the internet, but we tend to consider ourselves online when we are actively engaging on a website, usually some kind of social media platform.

The problem of Facebook, the most popular such platform in the U.S., is in part a problem of metaphors. This much was made clear during Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hearings on the Hill earlier this week. Lawmakers seemed to operate from very different conceptions of the social media giant. Is Facebook a publisher? wondered Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska). Is Facebook a “self-regulated superstructure for political discourse”? mused Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.). “If I buy a Ford and it doesn’t work well and I don���t like it, I can buy a Chevy,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in a line of inquiry that went to the heart of the Facebook question. “If I’m upset with Facebook, what’s the equivalent product that I can go sign up for?”

Last fall, New York Magazine’s Max Read listed various proposed comparisons for Facebook that he’d come across: “a state, the E.U., the Catholic Church, Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets.” More metaphors have bloomed in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook is like a record company. Facebook is like a fashion designer.

How can we begin to work on the question of what to do with Facebook if we can’t even agree on what Facebook looks like?

But perhaps the answer is as plain as the ground beneath Facebook’s sixth U.S. data center, which is currently under construction just outside Omaha. The center will open in 2023, exactly 150 years after the transcontinental railroad was completed nearby.

Maybe history has handed us the right metaphor: Facebook is like the railroads.

Oxford Science Archive/Print Collector/Getty Images

Union Pacific extended the railroad system across the country, linking the East and West coasts.

In a sense, it’s hardly a metaphor at all. The internet and the railroads share the same physical space, as Ingrid Burrington explained in an article for The Atlantic in 2015 and David A. Banks explored in a scholarly journal article published the same year. Railroad right-of-ways have been used by every communication medium from telegraph wires to telephone lines to fiber optic cables. Now, digital platform corporations build their data centers on these same lines.

The late Sen. Ted Stevens was right: The internet is best thought of as “a series of tubes” (not “a big truck”). Just like the railroads before them, platform companies like Facebook and Google are pieces of infrastructure, albeit a new type of infrastructure. They connect people and transform society, politics, the nature of time and space itself. And like the railroads and phone companies before them, they can be regulated or broken up ― whether they provide a physical service or not.

This is important to acknowledge now as discussions about regulation move forward in Washington following the revelations about Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that harvested data from approximately 87 million Facebook users. Facebook, like Google, like Amazon, is a thing, or more precisely a concatenation of things. These digital platforms are not unearthly beasts that exist apart from the real world. They are real-world entities that possess corporeal form. What their owners do with them and what their users do on them are real actions that have real consequences. Just look at the past four years if you have any doubts.

Notions that the internet is separate from real life have existed since the dawn of the web. While comedians like Dave Chappelle mine this sentiment for jokes, the real beneficiaries of this idea are the corporate executives who run the giant online platforms currently eluding regulation. If people believe that online life is distinct from what we now call real life, that digital capitalism is somehow less real than the industrial capitalism on which it is quite literally founded, then the impression will settle in that online companies can’t be regulated in the way offline companies are regulated. How can you write an agency rule about a phantom? How can you pass a bill about a cloud?

Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images

The inside of a Facebook data center in Forest City, North Carolina. The newest such center will open in 2023 outside Omaha, Nebraska.

Yet it’s quite clear that what happens online matters in offline life. Nearly 80 percent of Americans have a Facebook account. Political campaigns are spending an increasing amount on digital advertising. Social movements, including neo-Nazis, are organized on digital platforms. Those platforms have also become the best distribution tool for disinformation and propaganda, as they favor individual emotional expression over reasoned discussion. People have funerals for their online friends in massive multiplayer online game universes. And, of course, the president of the United States occasionally threatens nuclear holocaust on Twitter.

Much of this activity, however, doesn’t need to be regulated. Americans can still vote out their president in the next election if they don’t like his rage tweets about cable news stories. Congress doesn’t need to regulate anyone’s speech.

But Congress could regulate the business side of the digital platform economy. Or force the platform giants to shrink to a size at which no individual platform could alter society with the tweak of an algorithm. That’s being debatedin policy circlesright now and could soon be debated by congressional lawmakers.

Therein lies the value of the railroad metaphor. It zeroes in on the thingness of Facebook, sidestepping the free speech issues that so consumed many of the politicians questioning Zuckerberg in the capital this week. Congress can intervene for the same reason it intervened to regulate the railroads more than a century ago: Power over infrastructure is political power.

Railroads were the engine of 19th-century industrial capitalism, and as they became economic monopolies, their market power translated into political power. Controlling the lines that people and business rode on, railroads could pick winners and losers by setting rates to benefit friends or cripple individual businesses. John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil monopoly colluded with the railroads to privilege his product over others. Railroad companies worked to take over the political apparatus of state governments and the national government by handing out free rail passes to their preferred political party, installing railroad allies in office, shortchanging states by evading taxes and, of course, directly trading stocks, gifts and cash for public goods.

The concentrated private political influence of monopoly violated the long-standing American democratic spirit of one man-one vote. As corporations built nationwide networks of infrastructure that held power over governments, monopoly mattered even more. This is what the muckraking journalist Henry D. Lloyd wrote in 1881, when he argued that the “railroad problem ... may indicate whether the American democracy, like all the democratic experiments which have preceded it, is to become extinct because the people had not wit enough or virtue enough to make the common good supreme.”

That “railroad problem” was that the railroads themselves were captive to an even bigger monster, Standard Oil, which used its massive market position to crush competitors by forcing the railroads to raise rates on other oil producers. This then altered the economic and political life of states subject to Standard Oil’s decision.

Congress began to take action against the “railroad problem” in 1890 when it enacted the landmark Sherman Antitrust Act. The law’s author, Sen. John Sherman (R-Ohio), decried the power of monopolistic railroads on the floor of Congress. “If we will not endure a king as a political power,” he said, “we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life.” It was clear to Sherman that economic power was political power. His law was later used to break up Standard Oil under the administration of President Teddy Roosevelt.

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Sen. John Sherman (R-Ohio) was the principal author of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which gave the federal government tools to break up corporate monopolies.

Today, digital platform behemoths like Facebook and Google are the major private designers of American life. They make decisions that affect the flow of information and pick political winners and losers with little democratic input. News organizations find themselves at the whim of algorithms determined by digital platforms, the campaigns of future lawmakers who would oversee digital platforms are dependent upon them to reach voters, and meanwhile, those platforms spend tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to influence politics to their benefit.

Once again, this is market power translating to political power. Some lawmakers see this clearly, as evidenced by their questioning of Zuckerberg.

“Do you think you have a moral responsibility to run a platform that protects our democracy?” Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) asked.

Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) stated outright that Facebook operates as a monopoly just like Standard Oil and Ma Bell, the nickname for the telephone giant that began as Bell Telephone and ended as AT&T. Those corporations either colluded with and abused infrastructure monopolies to their benefit (Standard Oil) or were infrastructure monopolies themselves (Ma Bell).

“These companies were started by entrepreneurs and their companies grew and eventually became detached from everyday Americans,” Flores said. “And then what happens is policymakers had to step in and re-establish the balance between those folks and everyday Americans.”

The congressman then veered into aggrieved irrelevancies about a constituent whose “conservative postings” were supposedly being “banned or stopped,” but for a moment Flores had been saying something useful and insightful. He was talking straightforwardly about Facebook as a thing, a thing with power that needed to be handled as such. “I mean,” he said, “we’ve seen it before.”

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President Trump Expected To Give Remarks On Syria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to deliver remarks on Friday evening about Syria, the New York Times reported, citing an administration official.

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Iran and Trump are creating a nightmare scenario for Israel

Global Power

Syria strikes spotlight Israel's nightmare: an entrenched Iran

Israel has struck inside Syria more than 100 times since 2012.

by Paul Goldman and F. Brinley Bruton / Apr.09.2018 / 2:28 PM ET / Updated Apr.09.2018 / 6:50 PM ET

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TEL AVIV — The missile strikes targeting a Syrian air base on Monday highlight the nightmare scenario Israel is facing: arch-enemy Iran entrenching to the east.

Russia blamed Israel for the pre-dawn strike in Homs province. Two U.S. officials later confirmed to NBC News that Israel fired the missiles after informing Washington. Israel did not comment on the strikes, which a London-based monitoring group says killed 14 people, including Iranians.

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Missile strikes hit Syria overnight; Pentagon denies involvement

02:52

Although Israel rarely provides details or takes responsibility for such attacks, its military acknowledges that it has struck inside Syria more than 100 times since 2012. Most targets have been suspected weapons' convoys destined for Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has been engaged in battles alongside Syrian government forces.

Iran is a sponsor of Hezbollah and also backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody 34-day war in 2006. More than 1,000 Lebanese — mostly civilians — were killed; 158 Israelis, 119 of them soldiers, also died. Many Israeli experts are convinced that the country's next war will be against Hezbollah, which is part of Lebanon's coalition government.

Assad is thought to be close to crushing the seven-year rebellion in his country thanks to Russia, as well as to Iran and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump appears determined to get out of Syria, having argued with his military advisers only last week that he prefers to bring U.S. troops home in months, not years.

Yossi Mekelberg, head of international relations at London’s Regent's University, says that the Israeli government fears "the Iranians are getting too close."

Trump’s isolationist impulses also concern Israel profoundly.

“I think that the worry in Israel as in many other places … is Trump’s unpredictability," Mekelberg said.

If the U.S. is not deeply involved in the Middle East, “Israel will find itself more and more feeling the need to act in Syria" to thwart the threat from Iran, according to Mekelberg. "Israel really does not want to act in Syria."

Underscoring the threat from the north, a senior cleric in Iran last week claimed that Hezbollah has weapons that could destroy the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv. Referring to the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said Friday that the Lebanese group’s rockets had turned both cities into “ghost towns.”

And now Hezbollah was much more powerful, Khatami said.

“If you want Haifa and Tel Aviv to be razed to the ground, you can try your chance once again,” the firebrand cleric warned Israel.

Related

Their love was born in heady days of protest. Syria's civil war destroyed it.

Giora Eiland, the former head of the Israeli National Security Council, blamed decisions made during President Barack Obama’s time in the White House for the situation unfolding in Syria.

“The biggest American mistake was not made in the past year, but it was made in the beginning of the uprising in Syria back in 2011,” he said.

At that time there were only two parties in Syria, Eiland said: Assad's beleaguered government and a pro-democracy movement.

“Assad was quite lonely” and Western intervention could have made a big difference to those trying to oust him, he added.

Any advantage Syria’s rebels might have had was lost after Russia’s September 2015 decision to support Assad militarily, Eiland said.

On Sunday, Trump condemned what he described as a "mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria," laying the blame at the feet of Russia's Vladimir Putin, Assad and Iran.

Dozens killed in Syria in suspected chemical attack

01:36

The Israeli missile strikes on Monday also followed a spike in cross-border firing earlier this year. On Feb. 10, the Israeli military shot down an Iranian drone launched from Syria into Israeli airspace.

In response, Israel launched a "large-scale attack" on at least a dozen Iranian targets in Syria, marking an escalation in tensions along the country's northern border. One of these targets was the same base hit early Monday.

Paul Goldman reported from Tel Aviv, and F. Brinley Bruton from London.

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Bono’s charity apologizes for bullying and harassment

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Bono's anti-poverty charity apologizes for bullying and harassment

by Alex Johnson / Mar.12.2018 / 3:55 AM ET

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ONE, the anti-poverty charity co-founded by Bono of U2 and Bobby Shriver of the Kennedy political dynasty, has apologized for what it described as several years of bullying at its South African office.

The charity issued the apology as The Mail on Sunday, a British tabloid, was preparing to report that employees at the charity's Johannesburg office claimed to have been "subjected to a 'toxic' culture of bullying and abuse."

ONE said it couldn't corroborate some of the claims in the article, including comments attributed to a married employee whom The Mail on Sunday quoted as saying she felt pressured to have sex with a member of the Tanzanian Parliament. But in a statement dated Friday, it said its own investigation had uncovered evidence of "unprofessional conduct" at the Johannesburg office from late 2011 to 2015.

ONE charity co-founders Bobby Shriver, left, and Bono at an appearance in London in 2006.AP

"Staff were called names, and some said their manager put them to work on domestic tasks in her home," said Gayle Smith, the charity's chief executive. She described the behavior as "bullying and belittling of staff."

Smith said the investigation found that the charity's management failed to adequately address the behavior or to properly inform its board of directors, who include former British Prime Minister David Cameron; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook; Tom Freston, a co-founder of MTV and former president of Viacom; former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers; and Republican former Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

"We do not discount any allegation — we investigate them and will continue to do so should others arise," Smith said.

The Mail on Sunday reported that Bono had personally apologized, quoting him as telling the newspaper: "I hate bullying, can't stand it. The poorest people in the poorest places being bullied by their circumstance is the reason we set up ONE."

Bono apology after ‘serious and multiple’ bullying claims at charity https://t.co/oflAbkNWPw

— Press Association (@PA) March 11, 2018

NBC News hasn't verified elements of The Mail on Sunday article beyond what ONE confirmed in its statement. Smith said the charity would share the results of its investigation with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, a government watchdog agency.

Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, and Shriver founded ONE in 2004 to "end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa." Shriver is the son of the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver and a nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and the late U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In addition to Johannesburg, ONE has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Ottawa and Abuja, Nigeria. None of those offices was implicated in the Mail on Sunday report or the charity's statement.

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Anti-apartheid stalwart Winnie Madikizela-Mandela dies

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South African anti-apartheid stalwart Winnie Mandela dies at 81

During Nelson Mandela's 27-year incarceration, his wife at the time campaigned for his release and for the rights of her black countrymen.

by Rachel Elbaum and Reuters / Apr.02.2018 / 2:30 PM ET / Updated Apr.02.2018 / 3:23 PM ET

Nelson Mandela and his then-wife Winnie raise their fists and salute cheering crowds upon his release from prison on Feb. 11, 1990.Alexander Joe / AFP - Getty Images file

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South Africa's Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, an anti-apartheid stalwart and the wife of Nelson Mandela when he was imprisoned on Robben Island, died on Monday, the Mandela family said in a statement. She was 81.

She died in Johannesburg after a long illness, for which she had been in and out of the hospital since the start of the year.

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Winnie Mandela dies at the age of 81

01:18

"She succumbed peacefully in the early hours of Monday afternoon surrounded by her family and loved ones," the family said.

"The Mandela family are deeply grateful for the gift of her life and even as our hearts break at her passing, we urge all those who loved her to celebrate this most remarkable woman."

During Nelson Mandela's 27-year incarceration in his fight against apartheid, Madikizela-Mandela campaigned for his release and for the rights of black South Africans, undergoing detention, banishment and arrest herself.

"She dedicated most of her adult life to the cause of the people, and for this was known far and wide as the Mother of the Nation," the family's statement added.

The ruling but beleaguered African National Congress, which has ruled South Africa since Nelson Mandela won the historic 1994 election that overturned racist all-white rule, paid tribute to Madikizela-Mandela.

It is with great sadness to announce the passing of Cde Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela today, 02 April 2018. A struggle icon has fallen. #RIPMamaWinniepic.twitter.com/xIJKDDVOkQ

— ANC Parliament (@ANCParliament) April 2, 2018

Just a day before she died, Madikizela-Mandela had celebrated Easter in Soweto, Bishop Gary Rivas told reporters gathered at the Netcare Milpark Hospital.

“An icon, a giant was laid to rest," he said. "We thank god for her life."

But while she was hailed as the mother of the "new" South Africa by some, Madikizela-Mandela's legacy as an anti-apartheid heroine was tarnished by her actions after Nelson Mandela was released.

Her uncompromising methods and refusal to forgive contrasted sharply with the reconciliation espoused by her husband as he worked to forge a stable, pluralistic democracy from the racial division and oppression of apartheid.

South African anti-apartheid stalwart Winnie Mandela dies at 81

01:15

The contradiction helped kill their marriage and destroyed the esteem in which she was held by many South Africans, although the firebrand activist retained the support of radical black nationalists to the end.

In her twilight years, Madikizela-Mandela had frequent run-ins with authority that further undermined her reputation as a fighter against the white-minority regime that ran Africa's most advanced economy from 1948 to 1994.

The end of apartheid marked the start of a string of legal and political troubles that, accompanied by tales of her glamorous living, kept her in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

"I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything."

"I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything."

Blamed for the killing of activist Stompie Seipei, who was found near her Soweto home with his throat cut, she was convicted in 1991 of kidnapping and assaulting the 14-year-old because he was suspected of being an informer.

Her six-year jail term was reduced on appeal to a fine.

She and Mandela separated in 1992 and her reputation slipped further when he fired her from his cabinet in 1995 after allegations of corruption. The couple divorced a year later, after which she adopted the surname Madikizela-Mandela.

Appearing at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up to unearth atrocities committed by both sides in the anti-apartheid struggle, Madikizela-Mandela refused to show remorse for abductions and murders carried out in her name.

Only after pleading from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the anguished TRC chairman, did she admit grudgingly that "things went horribly wrong."

Four years later, she was back in court, facing fraud and theft charges in relation to an elaborate bank loan scheme.

Strikingly attractive and with a steely air — her given name, Nomzamo, means "one who strives" — the 22-year-old Winnie caught the eye of Mandela at a Soweto bus-stop in 1957, starting a whirlwind romance that led to their marriage a year later.

FROM DEC. 5, 2013: Nelson Mandela, former South African president, dies

05:02

But with husband and wife pouring their energies into the fight against apartheid, the relationship struggled before being torn apart after six years when Mandela was arrested and sentenced to life in prison.

Madikizela-Mandela later described her marriage as a sham and the birth of their two daughters, Zindzi and Zenani, as "quite coincidental" to her one true love — the struggle against white rule.

"I was married to the ANC. It was the best marriage I ever had," she often said.

Graca Machel, who became South Africa's first lady when she married Nelson Mandela in 1998, paid tribute to her predecessor in the years afterward.

Nelson Mandela died in 2013 and made no mention of Madikizela-Mandela in his will.

Madikizela-Mandela revealed her contempt in 2010 for the deal her ex-husband struck with South Africa's white minority nearly two decades before.

In a London newspaper interview, she attacked Mandela, saying he had gone soft in prison and sold out the black cause.

"Mandela did go to prison and he went in there as a burning young revolutionary. But look what came out," she said. "Mandela let us down. He agreed to a bad deal for the blacks."

She also dismissed Tutu, post-apartheid South Africa's moral fulcrum, as a "cretin" and criticized his attempts at national healing as a "religious circus."

"I am not sorry. I will never be sorry," she said. "I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything."

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Flights grounded at U.S. base crucial to anti-terror fight

Global Power

Flights grounded at U.S. military base in Africa crucial to anti-terror fight

The Djibouti government has put a temporary hold on U.S. military flights.

by Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains / Apr.05.2018 / 3:49 PM ET

A Marine Corps AV-8 HarrierBen Margot / AP file

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The government of Djibouti grounded all U.S. military flights Wednesday at a base crucial to the U.S. fight against terror in Yemen and Somalia after mishaps with two aircraft in as many days, according to three U.S. defense officials.

Both aircraft were participating in Alligator Dagger, an annual amphibious exercise in the region. The U.S. military announced Thursday that it has now cancelled the remainder of the exercise.

On Tuesday, a U.S. Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier jet crashed as it was taking off at the African nation's Ambouli International Airport. The pilot ejected and is in stable condition at Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. Naval Expeditionary Base there.

On Wednesday, a CH-53 helicopter suffered structural damage during a landing in Arta Beach. No one was injured, according to Cmdr. Bill Urban, spokesperson for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

A U.S. Marine CH-53 helicopter dislodges U.S. and Philippine marines during a live-fire exercise called Phiblex 2013 in the northern Philippines on Oct. 16, 2012.Bullit Marquez / AP file

The U.S. has about 4,000 troops stationed at Camp Lemonnier, which serves as a base for U.S. operations against jihadis in Somalia and Yemen. Djibouti is on the Horn of Africa across the Gulf of Aden from southwestern Yemen.

During this flight suspension U.S. military aircraft cannot operate from either the commercial airport or from the U.S. military base.

The officials could not say how long the aircraft would be grounded or what impact it is having on U.S. military operations in the region.

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Ruling party, backing gay rights, wins Costa Rican presidency

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Ruling party wins Costa Rican presidency with support for gay rights

"We ... want to move Costa Rica forward," winning candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada said after voting.

Apr.02.2018 / 3:22 AM ET / Updated Apr.02.2018 / 3:21 AM ET / Source: Reuters

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SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Center-left candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada decisively defeated a conservative Protestant singer in Costa Rica's presidential runoff election on Sunday by promising to defend gay rights, handing a major victory to the ruling party.

Carlos Alvarado Quesada, 38, a fiction writer, had 61 percent of the vote with results in from 91 percent of polling stations. His rival, Fabricio Alvarado Munoz, 43, a former TV journalist, had 39 percent.

Alvarado Quesada, who will be the youngest president in Costa Rica's modern history, used the campaign to appeal to the progressive streak in a country known for pacifism and ecological stewardship.

Supporters of presidential candidate Carlos Alvarado Quesada of the ruling Citizen Action Party cheer after polls closed Sunday in San Jose, the capital.Arnulfo Franco / AP

The election exposed deep divisions in Costa Rica, a Central American tourist destination known for its laid-back beach culture and pristine rainforests but whose rural communities remain socially conservative.

It could also reflect the mood elsewhere in Latin America, where several countries that have backed same-sex unions are holding elections in 2018.

At a polling place in the western Pavas neighborhood of San Jose, the capital, Alvarado Quesada, until recently a minister in the outgoing government also known for his student rock band, voted and spoke briefly to supporters.

"Costa Rica is an amazing country, and we want to not only preserve its great democracy, its peaceful nature, its respect for the environment and human rights, but we also want to move Costa Rica forward," Alvarado Quesada said.

Related

Latin American human rights court urges same-sex marriage legalization

Shortly after he cast his vote at a school in the capital, Alvarado Munoz pledged to lead a government free of bias, a possible sign that he sensed that his hard-line stance was turning off centrist voters.

The two men took opposing positions on a January decision by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an influential regional body based in San Jose.

Fabricio, as supporters refer to Alvarado Munoz, called the ruling an affront to sovereignty. Threatening to remove the country from the court's jurisdiction, he shot from the margins to win the first round of voting in February.

Alvaro Quesada, by contrast, backed the court's ruling. In the campaign's final debate, he called his opponent's comments homophobic.

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Woman who dodged Auschwitz roundup dies after anti-Semitic stabbing in Paris

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Anti-Semitic murder of elderly woman triggers calls for Paris protests

Mirielle Knoll escaped a notorious WWII roundup of Paris Jews, in which police herded some 13,000 people into a stadium and shipped them to Auschwitz.

by Associated Press / Mar.27.2018 / 3:08 PM ET / Updated Mar.27.2018 / 3:14 PM ET

Flowers are left for murder victim Mireille Knoll on the fence surrounding her Paris apartment building on Tuesday.Lionel Bonaventure / AFP - Getty Images

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PARIS — French leaders and activists called for people to take to the streets and protest against racism Tuesday, after prosecutors filed preliminary charges of murder with anti-Semitic motives in the death of an elderly Jewish woman.

Mireille Knoll, 85, was killed Friday in her apartment, which was then set on fire, according to a French judicial official.

Related

Anti-Semitism accusations engulf Britain's opposition leader

Two men have been jailed in the case, according to the official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media. They were handed preliminary charges of robbery, damaging property, and murder with anti-Semitic motives, he said.

Francis Kalifat, president of the Jewish group CRIF, said Knoll was stabbed 11 times.

Knoll reportedly escaped a notorious World War II roundup of Paris Jews, in which police herded some 13,000 people — including more than 4,000 children — into a stadium and shipped them to the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi German-occupied Poland. Fewer than 100 survived.

Mireille Knollvia Union of French Jewish Students/EPA

Then aged 9, Knoll fled with her mother to Portugal, returning to France only after the end of the war.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo called on "all Parisians" to join a silent march Wednesday in memory of Knoll. Politicians across the political spectrum pledged to attend.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that Knoll's death was a "horrific crime," and reaffirmed his "absolute determination to fight against anti-Semitism."

The CRIF compared the killing to that ofSarah Halimi, 65, who was beaten and thrown from her balcony last April. That murder was reclassified as anti-Semitic last month, and the suspect is in a psychiatric hospital.

France's government presented a plan this month to fight racism and anti-Semitism, focusing on social media and prevention in schools. It also wants to change French law to force internet platforms to detect and remove illegal content.

A photo of Mireille Knoll is surrounded by hearts pasted on her apartment's door.Christophe Ena / AP

An annual national count of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and anti-Christian acts — most of which involve threats — dipped in 2017 compared with the year before. However, anti-Semitic violence increased by 26 percent, and criminal damage to Jewish places of worship and burial by 22 percent.

France is not the only European country to face an outcry over anti-Semitism in recent days.

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has faced protests amid accusations that anti-Semitism is rife within his Labour Party.

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British PM accuses Labour leader of ‘mansplaining’

World

Prime Minister Theresa May accuses Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of 'mansplaining'

by Elizabeth Chuck / Mar.07.2018 / 10:37 PM ET / Updated Mar.07.2018 / 10:56 PM ET

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons in London on March 7, 2018.PRU / via AFP - Getty Images

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Britain's Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has got some 'splaining to do.

That's according to British Prime Minister Theresa May, who on Wednesday accused Corbyn of "mansplaining" International Women's Day to her.

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PM May calls out opposition leader for 'mansplaining' in U.K. parliament

01:32

The two clashed during a weekly question-and-answer session in the House of Commons, when Corbyn attacked May for meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia — a nation notorious for suppressing women's rights — a day before the annual worldwide commemoration of the women's rights movement.

“Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, a chance to both celebrate on how far we’ve come on equality for women," Corbyn said, “but also to reflect on how far we still have to go, not just in this country but around the world.”

Related: Women in Saudi Arabia make gains but overall rights remain an issue

Without missing a beat, May replied: “Well, first of all, can I thank the right honorable gentleman for telling me that it is International Women’s Day tomorrow? I think that’s what’s called 'mansplaining.'”

The quip drew laughter from the chamber. But May wasn't done yet: She later tweeted the official Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word to Corbyn.

"To mansplain — verb informal — explaining (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising," she wrote.

.@jeremycorbyn: 'to mansplain - verb informal - explaining (something) to someone, typically a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronising.' #PMQs#IWD2018pic.twitter.com/dZQuPByChF

— Theresa May (@theresa_may) March 7, 2018

"Mansplaining," when a man explains something to a woman that she already knows, has gained popularity in the vernacular as a result of the #MeToo movement, which has put a spotlight on the gender inequality and sexual harassment that women face.

International Women's Day has been held annually on March 8 for more than a century and celebrates the achievements of women while also calling for gender parity around the world.

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Pope says ‘defenseless’ being killed in Gaza violence

World

Pope Francis, in Easter address, says 'defenseless' being killed in Gaza violence

Francis called for peace after 15 Palestinians were killed on the Israeli-Gaza border.

by Reuters / Apr.01.2018 / 11:43 AM ET

Pope Francis meets crowds after Easter Sunday mass at Vatican City.ALESSANDRO DI MEO / EPA

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VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis, in his Easter address on Sunday, called for peace in the Holy Land two days after 15 Palestinians were killed on the Israeli-Gaza border, saying the conflict there "does not spare the defenseless".

The pope made his appeal in his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica to tens of thousands of people in the flower-bedecked square below where he earlier celebrated a Mass.

He also appealed for an end to the "carnage" in Syria, calling for humanitarian aid to be allowed to enter, and for peace in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Pope Francis calls for peace around the world in Easter message

01:11

Francis appeared to refer directly to the Gaza violence last Friday, calling for "reconciliation for the Holy Land, also experiencing in these days the wounds of ongoing conflict that do not spare the defenseless."

Israel's defense minister has rejected calls for an inquiry into the killings by the military during a Palestinian demonstration that turned violent at the Gaza-Israel border.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Federica Mogherini, the European Union's foreign policy chief, and other leaders have called for an independent investigation into the bloodshed.

The Pope also begged for peace for "the entire world, beginning with the beloved and long-suffering land of Syria, whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war."

"This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course ... " he said.

Related

Pope Francis in Easter Vigil baptizes Nigerian migrant called hero

He spoke a day after the Syrian army command said it had regained most of the towns and villages in eastern Ghouta. Tens of thousands of people have now evacuated once-bustling towns in the suburbs east of the capital, which had nearly 2 million people before the start of the conflict and were major commercial and industrial hubs.

Francis, celebrating his sixth Easter as Roman Catholic leader since his election in 2013, urged his listeners to work for an end to the "so many acts of injustice" in the world.

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Wreckage of famed U.S. World War II carrier discovered

World

Wreckage of famed World War II USS Lexington aircraft carrier found off coast of Australia

Mar.06.2018 / 7:58 PM ET / Updated Mar.07.2018 / 12:08 AM ET / Source: Associated Press

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BANGKOK — A piece of prized World War II U.S. naval history, the wreckage of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, which was sunk by the Japanese in a crucial sea battle, has been discovered by an expedition funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The expedition team announced that the wreckage of the Lexington, crippled by the enemy and then scuttled on May 8, 1942, in the Battle of the Coral Sea, was found Sunday on the seabed in waters about 2 miles deep, more than 500 miles off Australia’s east coast.

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Newly discovered U.S. WWII wreck filmed by underwater drone

00:57

“To pay tribute to the USS Lexington and the brave men that served on her is an honor,” Allen said on his web page. “As Americans, all of us owe a debt of gratitude to everyone who served and who continue to serve our country for their courage, persistence and sacrifice.”

The battle helped stop a Japanese advance that could have cut off Australia and New Guinea from Allied sea supply routes and crippled two Japanese carriers, leading to a more conclusive U.S. victory at sea a month later at the Battle of Midway.

Wreckage from the USS Lexington, a U.S. aircraft carrier which sank during World War II, was found on March 4, 2018 in the Coral Sea.Courtesy Paul G. Allen / via AFP - Getty Images

The sea battle is also famous for being the first in which the opposing ships did not come in sight of each other, carrying out their attacks with carrier-launched aircraft.

Allen’s teams have made several previous important shipwreck discoveries, including three other U.S. Navy vessels, an Italian destroyer, and the Japanese battleship Musashi.

The ship that found the Lexington, the Research Vessel Petral, has equipment capable of diving to 6,000 meters (about three and a half miles). It was deployed in early 2017 in the Philippine Sea before moving to the Coral Sea off the Australian Coast.

A gun turret on the USS Lexington, found on March 4, 2018 in the Coral Sea.Courtesy Paul G. Allen / via AFP - Getty Images

The Lexington, which had been affectionately dubbed “Lady Lex,” was badly damaged by bombs and torpedoes, but the order to abandon ship was given only after a secondary explosion set off an uncontrollable fire. Some 216 crew members lost their lives, but 2,770 others were safely evacuated before its sister ship, the destroyer USS Phelps, fired torpedoes to send it to the bottom of the ocean. Allen said on his Twitter account that the ship went down with 35 planes, 11 of which had been found so far by his expedition.

Allen has said he undertakes such ventures in part to honor his father, who served in World War II, by finding and preserving the artifacts of that conflict.

News of the discovery evoked another father-son relationship, as the current commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet offered his congratulations on Twitter.

“As the son of a survivor of the USS Lexington, I offer my congratulations to @PaulGAllen and the expedition crew of Research Vessel (R/V) Petrel for locating the ‘Lady Lex,’ sunk nearly 76 years ago at the Battle of the Coral Sea,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. said. “We honor the valor and sacrifice of the Lady Lex’s Sailors — all those Americans who fought in #WorldWarII — by continuing to secure the freedoms they won for all of us.”

More wreckage from the USS Lexington.Courtesy Paul G. Allen / via AFP - Getty Images

Harris linked the history to current U.S. interests in the Pacific, where China in recent years has begun to challenge traditional American naval hegemony, aggressively staking maritime territorial claims in waters also claimed by other nations, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. U.S. Navy aircraft carriers are strong symbols of America’s force projection, and one this week is making a friendly visit to Vietnam, the first since the Vietnam War ended more than four decades ago with a Communist victory.

“Alongside our allies, friends and partners, bound together by shared values, the United States is committed to maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, which has brought security and economic prosperity to all who live in this critical region,” said Harris, currently visiting Australia.

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Dead man balking: Court rejects Romanian man’s claim that he is alive

World

Dead man balking: Court rejects Romanian man's claim that he is, in fact, alive

by Associated Press / Mar.16.2018 / 9:23 PM ET / Updated Mar.16.2018 / 10:05 PM ET

Constantin Reliu poses for a portrait at his home on March 16, 2018 in the eastern town of Barlad.Adrian Arnautu / AFP - Getty Images

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BUCHAREST, Romania — Constantin Reliu learned in January that he was dead.

After more than 20 years of working as a cook in Turkey, the 63-year-old returned home to Romania to discover that his wife had had him officially registered as dead.

He has since been living a legalistic nightmare of trying to prove to authorities that he is, in fact, alive. He faced a major setback Thursday when a court in the northeastern city of Vaslui refused to overturn his death certificate because his request was filed "too late."

Constantin Reliu poses for a portrait at his home on March 16, 2018 in the eastern town of Barlad.Adrian Arnautu / AFP - Getty Images

The decision, the court said, is final.

"I am a living ghost," Reliu told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday from his home in Barlad, northeastern Romania.

"I am officially dead, although I'm alive," he said. "I have no income and because I am listed as dead, I can't do anything."

During the interview, Reliu was deeply emotional, starting off by saying "I think I am going to cry" and going on to voice rage and a desire for revenge against his wife, who now lives in Italy.

"I am not sure whether I am divorced or not," he said. "I am not sure whether she is married to someone else or not. Nobody will tell me."

Reliu explained that he first went to work in Turkey in 1992 and returned in 1995 to the first big shock of his marriage — his wife's infidelity. In 1999, he decided to return to Turkey for good.

The AP was not able to locate his wife to hear her side of the story.

Last December Turkish authorities detained him over expired papers and in January deported him to Romania.

Upon landing at Bucharest airport, he was informed by border officials that he had been officially declared dead and underwent six hours of questioning and tests.

They measured the distance between his eyes to see if it corresponded to an old passport photograph; they asked him questions about his home town, such as where the town hall was; they checked his fingerprints.

"They decided that it was me!" he said.

But authorities in Barlad were less convinced. He spent weeks trying to persuade them to issue him papers so that he officially "existed," he said. When that failed, he asked them to overturn the ruling on his death certificate, issued in 2016, which also ended in failure Thursday on procedural grounds.

Reliu said he would like to file a fresh lawsuit but has no money and suffers from diabetes, which makes everything more difficult.

He also said he has been banned for life from returning to Turkey but would like to write to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to appeal the decision.

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Jake Tapper Mocks Trump’s Lame Name For James Comey

https://ift.tt/2EI9CHY

Donald Trump’s name-calling is getting so tired that his insults are already being recycled. So “Lying James Comey” for his ousted FBI director doesn’t quite cut it, a disappointed Jake Tapper quipped Thursday on CNN.

“I think there’s a consensus on the panel that ‘Lyin’ Comey’ isn’t really up to snuff. People are not impressed with that nickname, Mr. President,” Tapper said on “The Lead,” “so you might want to get back to the drawing board on that.”

Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

The Republican National Committee has launched the website lyincomey.com to attack the former FBI director amid startling revelations from his memoir, A Higher Calling: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, about Trump. The Washington Post has already reported that Trump was obsessed with the “golden showers” allegation in Christopher’s Steele’s dossier about him and was ready to use FBI resources to disprove it for the sake of first lady Melania Trump, according to Comey.

The president is actually “pretty good” at coining negative sobriquets, conceded Tapper, who cited “Little Marco,” “Low-Energy Jeb” and “Crooked Hillary.” But Trump has already used “Lyin’ Ted” for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and “Lyin’ Hillary” for his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. Trump and his backers need to “come up with something else” for Comey, Tapper suggested, tongue in cheek.

Trump has also disarmed the sting of calling someone a liar, Tapper noted. By The Washington Post’s count, as of March 1, Trump has made 2,436 false or misleading statements, said the CNN host. So for him to call Comey a liar has about as much punch as “insulting Comey for having an unusual hairstyle,” said Tapper.

Tapper’s panelist Nia Malika Henderson, CNN’s senior political reporter, predicted a White House meltdown over Comey’s book. She said it could be another “Fire and Fury fury,” referring to journalist Michael’s Wolff’s book revealing the chaos of the Trump administration earlier this year. The White House was then “caught flat-footed,” without a “coordinated response” to the book, she said. But Trump was quickly back to name-calling, referring to his former chief strategist and a source for the book, Steve Bannon, as “Sloppy Steve.”

Check out the rest of what Tapper had to say about Trump’s latest troubles in the video above.

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Origin soruce : Jake Tapper Mocks Trump’s Lame Name For James Comey

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Tim Federle Reveals Cover Of His New Book For Young Readers

Justin Patterson

Author Tim Federle's trilogy of middle-grade novels follow a gay teen's coming-of-age on Broadway.

1k

Author Tim Federle has captured the hearts of young Broadway fans nationwide by setting a 13-year-old’s journey toward self-acceptance in New York City’s theater world.

HuffPost got an exclusive first look at the cover of Nate Expectations, the third ― and, for now, final ― book in the beloved series about budding thespian Nate Foster. In the follow-up to 2013′s Better Nate Than Ever and 2014′s Five, Six, Seven, Nate!, Nate is reminded that there’s more to life than sequins and the spotlight.

Rex Bonomelli, whose designs have graced books by Stephen King and James Patterson, created the cover art. When Nate Expectations hits retailers in September, the new printings of Better Nate Than Ever and Five, Six, Seven, Nate! will receive Bonomelli-designed covers, too.

Rex Bonomelli

Federle's new middle-grade novel, Nate Expectations, is due out Sept. 18.

Nate Expectations finds Nate returning to his Pennsylvania hometown after his Broadway debut draws more jeers than cheers. This unexpected change of plans (and location) doesn’t dampen Nate’s spirit or his wise-beyond-his-years wit, however, and he finds creative ways to put his theatrical chops to use in his suburban high school.

The teen has matured in other ways, too. Federle told HuffPost that his first two books about Nate aimed to capture “that period when you’ve not fully arrived at a ‘gay’ identity,” and that Nate Expectations sees its main character confidently identifying as gay.

Federle, himself a former Broadway performer, said he never anticipated Nate’s story would become a trilogy. But glowingreviews of the first two novels, praise from “Hamilton” composer Lin-Manuel Miranda and a slew of new readers convinced him otherwise.

“I got to thinking, Broadway itself is kind of a three-step process: hoping you’ll get there, getting there, and then, you know, dealing with life when the show closes or gets crappy reviews,” he said. “So it felt fitting to tell one more Nate story.”

Rex Bonomelli

The new printings of Better Nate Than Ever and Five, Six, Seven, Nate! will receive covers designed by Rex Bonomelli to reflect their appeal to all ages.

The trilogy is intended for middle-grade readers between the ages of 8 and 12, but Federle said he’s been surprised at how adults have responded to the series. (Miranda’s praise, in particular, made him feel “like a 13-year-old theater kid all over again.”)

In the five years since the release of Better Nate Than Ever, Federle has expanded his literary oeuvre considerably. The 37-year-old scribe’s list of works now includes three cocktail recipe books, the 2016 young adult novel The Great American Whatever, and a self-help book called Life is Like a Musical: How to Live, Love, and Lead Like a Star. He has lent his talents to the stage and screen, too, co-writing the libretto of the 2016 Broadway musical adaptation of “Tuck Everlasting,” and the screenplay for 2017’s “Ferdinand,” which nabbed a Golden Globe nomination for Best Animated Feature.

Federle said he “feels incredibly lucky just to write anything for a living, period,” but named the Nate trilogy as the work he’s most proud of to date.

“I didn’t realize at the time of the second book’s release that I’d written the first-ever middle school kiss between two boys,” he said. “If I’d read characters like that when I was a kid myself, it would have saved me a lot of grief. And self-doubt.”

Nate Expectationshits shelves Sept. 18.

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BooksBroadwayTim Federle

Reference source : Tim Federle Reveals Cover Of His New Book For Young Readers