One of Germany's biggest energy firms has said it is preparing to buy Russian gas using a payment system that critics say will undermine EU sanctions.

Uniper says it will pay in euros which will be converted into roubles, meeting a Kremlin demand for all transactions to be made in the Russian currency.

Other European energy firms are reportedly preparing to do the same amid concerns about supply cuts.

Uniper said it had no choice but said it was still abiding by EU sanctions.

"We consider a payment conversion compliant with sanctions law and the Russian decree to be possible," a spokesman told the BBC.

"For our company and for Germany as a whole, it is not possible to do without Russian gas in the short term; this would have dramatic consequences for our economy."

Germany's biggest energy supplier RWE declined to comment on how it would pay for Russian gas.

In late March, Russia said "unfriendly countries" would have to start paying for its oil and gas in roubles to prop up its currency after Western allies froze billions of dollars it held in foreign currencies overseas.

Under the decree, European importers must pay euros or dollars into an account at Gazprombank, the Swiss-based trading arm of Gazprom, and then convert this into roubles in a second account in Russia.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper on Friday recommended three men to the White House to fill an upcoming vacancy on Colorado's seven-member federal trial court.

The candidates are U.S. Magistrate Judges S. Kato Crews and Gordon P. Gallagher, as well as Sundeep K. "Rob" Addy, an attorney in private practice. Whomever the Biden administration nominates will succeed U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martínez, an appointee of Barack Obama who is taking a form of semi-retirement known as senior status.

Although presidents appoint federal judges, senators exert significant influence over the process, more so with trial court vacancies. Prior to this latest round of candidates, Bennet and Hickenlooper have contributed to the nomination of three district court candidates and the appointment of one, Judge Regina M. Rodriguez.

The other two nominees, Charlotte N. Sweeney and Nina Y. Wang, have not yet received Senate confirmation. Sweeney, a workers' rights attorney, has been waiting since August for a vote, the longest of any of Biden's nominees. Wang, a magistrate judge who Biden nominated in January, still has not received a hearing before the Senate's judiciary committee.

Florida authorities arrested a Black man while he was staying in a homeless shelter and charged him with voting illegally in a case tied to Republicans’ drive to root out election fraud.

But Kelvin Bolton’s arrest raises questions about the rollout of Amendment 4, passed by Florida voters in 2018 to restore voting rights to Floridians with felony convictions.

The case is one of the first of its kind since Florida ended the Jim Crow-era voting policy that disproportionately affected Black citizens. Bolton’s arrest shows how the constitutional amendment now is being weaponized against poor people who may not realize they are committing a crime.

When law enforcement found 55-year-old Bolton at the homeless shelter and arrested him for illegal voting, according to court records and as first reported by Fresh Take Florida at the University of Florida, he was on early release from jail but still serving two-and-a-half years for theft and simple battery.

Bolton, who is currently being held in the Alachua County jail on $30,000 bail, is one of 10 people recently charged in the Gainesville, Florida, area with third-degree felonies for illegal voting. Eight of the 10 are Black men.

They all registered to vote while in jail or mailed ballots from jail, but had unpaid fines and fees from prior felony convictions that barred them from voting under a 2019 law, according to the state attorney’s office. Each is facing a potential five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Bolton currently owes $7,018 in unpaid court fines and fees, including $1,500 in attorney and indigent appearance fees, according to an analysis of court records.

Fewer still understand why former President Donald Trump and Republicans persist in their long-disproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Much less why they are obsessed about making the 2024 race a referendum on the "stolen" election of 2020, which even they know was not stolen.

January 6 was never about a stolen election or even about actual voting fraud. It was always and only about an election that Trump lost fair and square, under legislatively promulgated election rules in a handful of swing states that he and other Republicans contend were unlawfully changed by state election officials and state courts to expand the right and opportunity to vote, largely in response to the Covid pandemic.

The Republicans' mystifying claim to this day that Trump did, or would have, received more votes than Joe Biden in 2020 were it not for actual voting fraud, is but the shiny object that Republicans have tauntingly and disingenuously dangled before the American public for almost a year and a half now to distract attention from their far more ambitious objective.

That objective is not somehow to rescind the 2020 election, as they would have us believe. That's constitutionally impossible. Trump's and the Republicans' far more ambitious objective is to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020 and to overturn the 2024 election if Trump or his anointed successor loses again in the next quadrennial contest.

Circuit Court

Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Judge Sarah A. L. Merriam has served as a U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Connecticut since 2021. Judge Merriam previously served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the District of Connecticut from 2015 to 2021. She served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender for the District of Connecticut from 2007 to 2015. Judge Merriam worked on political campaigns in Connecticut from 2006 to 2007. She was an associate at the Connecticut-based law firm Cowdery, Ecker & Murphy from 2003 to 2006. Judge Merriam served as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Meskill on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2002 to 2003 and for Judge Alvin Thompson on the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut from 2000 to 2002. Judge Merriam received her LL.M from Duke Law School in 2018, her J.D. from Yale Law School in 2000, and her B.A. from Georgetown University in 1993.

Lara E. Montecalvo: Nominee for the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Lara E. Montecalvo is the Public Defender of Rhode Island, a role she has held since 2020. Ms. Montecalvo previously served as an assistant public defender in the Rhode Island Public Defender’s Office from 2004 to 2020. She held several roles in that office, including as Chief of the Appellate Division from 2014 to 2020, an appellate attorney from 2010 to 2014, and a trial attorney from 2004 to 2010. Ms. Montecalvo was a trial attorney in the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice from 2000 to 2004. Ms. Montecalvo received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Boston College Law School in 2000 and her B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1996.

District Court

Judge Elizabeth Hanes: Nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia
Judge Elizabeth Hanes has served as a U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia since 2020. From 2016 to 2020, Judge Hanes was a civil litigator at Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C. in Newport News, Virginia. From 2009 to 2016, she was an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Eastern District of Virginia. Judge Hanes served as a law clerk for Judge Robert B. King on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2008 to 2009 and for Judge Joseph R. Goodwin on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia from 2007 to 2008. Judge Hanes received her J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of Richmond School of Law in 2007, and her B.A., cum laude, from the University of Richmond in 2000.

Anne M. Nardacci: Nominee for the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York
Anne M. Nardacci is a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP in Albany, New York, where she has worked since 2005. Prior to being elevated to partner in 2020, Ms. Nardacci was a counsel from 2012 to 2020 and an associate from 2005 to 2012. From 2002 to 2005, Ms. Nardacci was an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Ms. Nardacci received her J.D., cum laude, from Cornell Law School in 2002 and her B.A., magna cum laude, from Georgetown University in 1998.

Ana C. Reyes: Nominee for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia
Ana C. Reyes is a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 2001. Prior to being elevated to partner in 2009, Ms. Reyes was an associate from 2001 to 2009. Ms. Reyes served as a law clerk for Judge Amalya Kearse on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 2000 to 2001. Ms. Reyes received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2000, her Masters in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies, with honors, in 2014, and her B.S., summa cum laude, from Transylvania University in 1996.

Texas’ Busing of Migrants to D.C. Isn’t Having Abbott’s Intended Effect Yet
The plan, meant to rattle President Biden, fits into his strategy for addressing record numbers of border crossings. The migrants said they were grateful for the chartered bus ride.


WASHINGTON — Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas devised a plan this month to rattle the Biden administration by busing migrants from the southwest border to the nation’s capital during a period of record crossings.

So far, though, the plan has not resulted in the chaos that Mr. Abbott predicted.

“I would like to say thank you to the governor of Texas,” Chadrack Mboyo-Bola, 26, said on Thursday morning, after he and 13 other migrants stepped off one of the chartered buses that had provided a 33-hour ride paid for by the State of Texas. Blocks from the U.S. Capitol, they were greeted by volunteers who would help them reach their desired destinations around the country to await their day in immigration court.

Three days earlier, Mr. Mboyo-Bola and his family had crossed into the United States from Mexico along the border in Central Texas after an eight-week journey from Brazil. After spending a day in Border Patrol custody in Eagle Pass, Texas, they and about 20 other new immigrants accepted an offer to board a Washington-bound bus in nearby Del Rio.

Mr. Abbott says his goal is to draw attention to what he and other Republicans describe as the failed immigration policies of President Biden during a period of record crossings along the southwest border.

“The decision and the action to bus people from border communities was to alleviate the strain that’s put on the local communities along the border,” the governor said at a news conference on Thursday. “I’m going to take the border to President Biden.”

Mr. Abbott’s plan, however, happens to fit into the Biden administration’s strategy for responding to the surge in migrant crossings, which officials anticipate will increase sharply once a public health rule imposed during the coronavirus pandemic is lifted at the end of May. The Biden plan includes working with state and local governments and nonprofits to provide support, assistance and transportation to move migrants out of border communities and toward their final destinations in a humane and orderly way.

“In a way, it’s actually perfect,” said Bilal Askaryar, a spokesman for Welcome With Dignity, a collective of about 100 local and national groups that help migrants. “Unintentionally, Governor Abbott sent them to one of the best places in the nation to welcome people.”