Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, led Friday prayers at a mosque in Tehran on Friday for the first time since 2012, trying to rally support among intertwined crises facing his government. On the foreign front, punishing U.S. sanctions have harmed Iran's economy and the Trump administration's killing of Iran's top general brought the U.S. and Tehran to the brink of war. Domestically, Iranians already angry over a hike in fuel prices took to the streets this week to demand justice and accountability for the Revolutionary Guard's downing of a Ukrainian jetliner, killing 176 people, most of them Iranian.
In nationally broadcast comments from inside the Mosalla mosque, Khamenei, 80, said the missiles fired on the Ukrainian jet were a "bitter accident" and defended the Revolutionary Guard, which reports directly to him. "Our enemies were as happy about the plane crash as we were sad," he said. "Happy that they had found something to question the Guard and the armed forces." He called President Trump, who has been encouraging the antigovernment protests, a "clown" who is only pretending to support Iran's people and would just as soon "push a poisonous dagger" into their backs.
Khamenei also addressed the missile strikes on two Iraqi bases hosting U.S. forces, calling the a "slap on the face" to the U.S. "The fact that Iran has the power to give such a slap to a world power shows the hand of God," he said, but pushing the U.S. military out of the Middle East would be the "real punishment" for America's "cowardly" killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, highlighting Soleimani's efficacy in battling the Islamic State. He added that the killing showed America's "terrorist nature."
"Leading Friday prayers in the capital is a symbolically significant act usually reserved for times when Iran's highest authority wishes to deliver an important message," BBC News reports, citing Mehdi Khalaji at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Peter Weber
A man was killed on Saturday night after being hit by a Mardi Gras float in New Orleans.
Police said the victim appeared to fall between two sections of a large tandem float at the Krewe of Endymion. Just days earlier, a 58-year-old woman was run over by a parade float at the Krewe of Nyx. Following the man's death, New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell announced tandem floats, which are several floats connected together and pulled by a tractor, are now banned.
"To be confronted with such tragedy a second time at the height of our Carnival celebrations seems an unimaginable burden to bear," Cantrell said in a statement. "The city and the people of New Orleans will come together, we will grieve together, and we will persevere together." Cantrell also said the city will "be looking at further changes that need to be made to make our routes and our celebrations more safe — but the work starts right now."
Two additional people were injured on Sunday when they fell from a float in the Krewe of Thoth parade. Police said they were both transferred to a trauma center, and are in stable condition. Catherine Garcia
U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson has rejected a request from Roger Stone that she recuse herself from his criminal case.
Stone, a longtime friend and adviser of President Trump, was found guilty of lying to Congress and witness tampering late last year, and on Thursday, was sentenced to 40 months in prison. Stone is asking for a new trial, claiming that a juror was impartial. After the jury reached its verdict, Jackson said the jurors "served with integrity," and Stone's legal team has argued that this shows she is biased, and must recuse herself before a ruling is made on a new trial.
Jackson wrote on Sunday that there is "no factual or legal support for the motion of disqualification," and "the pleading appears to be nothing more than an attempt to use the court's docket to disseminate a statement for public consumption that has the words 'judge' and 'biased' in it." Catherine Garcia
Former Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson announced on Sunday that she is endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
During a surprise appearance at Sanders' rally in Austin, Texas, Williamson said he "has been taking a stand for a very long time. He has been consistent, he has been convicted, he has been committed. And now it's time, I'm here and you're here, because it's time for us to take a stand with Bernie."
She also rejected the idea that Sanders can't defeat President Trump in November. "I'll tell you what's already happened to those who say it cannot happen," Williamson said. "You just tell them this: It already happened. He won Iowa. It already happened, he won New Hampshire. It already happened, he won Nevada." His supporters are "tired of saying pretty please," she added. "We're going to stand up, we're going to show up because we woke up. We're here and we're with Bernie." Williamson, who also endorsed Sanders when he ran for president in 2016, exited the race in early January. Catherine Garcia
The Trump administration appears divided over whether to alter some expiring aspects of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Some White House officials within the Domestic Policy Council, spurred by the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page which has since been called into question, are hoping to overhaul parts of FISA which are soon due to lapse. One change they're proposing, which has actually been pushed for a long time by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, is to eventually notify subjects of national-security surveillance that they had been surveilled.
There will likely be some hurdles, though. The National Security Council, for example, generally advocates for expanded surveillance powers, and some other administration officials reportedly have privately expressed concern that the effort to scale back some of the spying powers may go too far.
President Trump hasn't said anything about the expiring segments of FISA, but he has complained about the law in relation to Page and his campaign. Still, per the Journal, presidents historically have avoided scaling back surveillance powers because they fear they'll be blamed in the event of a terrorist attack. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Tim O'Donnell
If you saw the reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was briefed by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia was trying to aid his Democratic presidential campaign, you might have wondered, why exactly, Moscow was targeting him. After all, President Trump is still apparently the candidate the Kremlin hopes wins, and Sanders and Trump certainly have different ideological stances.
GQ's Julia Ioffe set out to answer that question, and while she reports that some people think Sanders' non-interventionist foreign policy platform is appealing to Moscow, or that he will be easier for Trump to defeat than other more moderate candidates, she also found that it may be more about optics. "The ideal scenario is to maintain schism and uncertainty in the States till the end," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a Russian political scientist who used to advise Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Our candidate is chaos."
Essentially, as described by Ioffe's sources, Moscow is licking its chops over what could be the most extreme U.S. presidential election in quite some time, if not ever, and they want to see the country turn on itself. "All of this infighting, this cannibalism, they create and deepen the crisis of the American system," said Andranik Migranyan, a close friend of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who used to run a Russian government-funded think tank.
Migranyan went on to question — perhaps facetiously — whether the U.S. will still exist after 2025. "Your country is hurtling toward the abyss," he said.
Of course, it's unclear if that's precisely why the Kremlin seems okay with a Sanders victory — and Migranyan denies Russia is actually meddling — but it's not difficult to imagine Moscow would enjoy an even more hotly contested election than in 2016. Read more at GQ. Tim O'Donnell