How Congress Could Upend the Election

Republicans in Nevada received good news on Friday when it was announced that they have significantly closed the voter registration gap in the Silver State.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court shot down a second attempt to remove the requirement for mail-in ballots to feature a handwritten date.

The wife of a U.S. pastor killed on a missionary trip with his family has been arrested. A close friend of the victim says the pastor “genuinely cared about those less privileged."

HBO's Bill Maher expressed his frustration with President Biden over his "garbage" comment about Trump supporters, suggesting it could impact the election.

Three of the key figures at the COP16 meeting in Cali, Colombia. From left to right: David Cooper, CBD’s deputy executive secretary; Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s environmental minister and COP16 president; and Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of CBD. | Mike Muzurakis/Earth Negotiations Bulletin/IISD CALI, Colombia — In the face of extreme and accelerating wildlife declines, government officials from nearly every country have agreed to a groundbreaking new deal meant to funnel more money and other resources into conservation, especially in poor regions of the world. If it works, the deal — finalized Saturday morning at a United Nations biodiversity meeting known as COP16 — could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, or perhaps more than $1 billion, per year, to protect the environment. The deal is designed to draw money from a new and somewhat unusual source: companies that create and sell products, such as drugs and cosmetics, using the DNA of wild organisms. Today a large number of databases store this sort of genetic data — extracted from plants, animals, and microbes all over the world — and make it available for anyone to use, including companies. Corporations in a range of industries use this genetic data, known as digital sequence information (DSI), to find and create commercial products. Moderna, for example, used hundreds of genetic sequences from different respiratory viruses to swiftly produce its Covid-19 vaccine. Moderna has generated more than $30 billion in sales from the vaccine. “It is absolutely, 100 percent clear that companies benefit from biodiversity,” Amber Scholz, a scientist at Leibniz Institute DSMZ, a German research organization, told Vox.  This new plan is meant to share some of those benefits, including profits, with nature. It states that large companies and other organizations in sectors that rely on DNA sequences — such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, and food supplements — should put a portion of their profits or revenue into a fund called the Cali fund. According to the plan, that portion is either 1 percent of profit or 0.1 percent of revenue, though it leaves some wiggle room and remains open to review. This approach draws heavily from research by the London School of Economics. The new Cali fund, operated by the UN, will go toward conserving biodiversity — the plants and animals from which all that genetic information stems. It will dish out the money to countries based on things like how much wildlife they have and how much genetic data they are producing. At least half of the money is meant to support Indigenous people and local communities, especially in low-income parts of the world, according to the plan. The exact formula for how money will be divvied up will be decided later. “It is a global opportunity for businesses who are benefiting from nature to be able to quickly and easily put some money where it’s genuinely going to make a difference in nature conservation,” William Lockhart, a UK government official who co-led negotiations for the new plan, told Vox on Friday. Remarkably, the new plan is the only international tool to fund conservation nearly entirely with money from the private sector, Lockhart said. “It will change the lives of people,” Flora Mokgohloa, a negotiator with the government of South Africa, told Vox Friday, referring to how the plan could fund local communities who harbor biodiversity. In some ways this new plan is meant to correct longstanding power imbalances, said Siva Thambisetty, an associate professor of intellectual property law at the London School of Economics. Many of the world’s hotspots of biodiversity are in developing nations, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, yet many of the companies that profit from that biodiversity are based in wealthy countries. “This is about correcting an injustice,” Thambisetty said. “A number of biodiverse countries have been alienated from the value of their resources.”  “It’s a big deal,” she said of the plan, when it was in draft form. There are still many unknowns, including how much money this mechanism might ultimately generate and how enforceable it will be. The deal was reached in the final hours of COP16, a meeting of roughly 180 world governments that are members of a global environmental treaty called the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). While that treaty is legally binding, this new plan — which is a “decision” in treaty parlance — is not. So unless countries enshrine the decision in their own legislation, it will be difficult to enforce. (Some countries already have legislation to regulate access to their genetic data. It’s still not clear how these national laws will work alongside the new global approach.) What’s more is that the US, the world’s largest economy, is one of two nations that’s not a member of the CBD treaty. The other is the Vatican. That means American companies may have even less of an incentive to follow this new plan and pay the fee for using DNA extracted from wild organisms.  Some advocates for lower-income countries are unhappy with the plan, saying it doesn’t do enough to remedy the problem of what they call biopiracy. That’s when companies commercialize biodiversity, including DNA, and fail to share the benefits that stem from those resources — including profits — with the communities who safeguard them. The plan undermines a country’s ability to control who gets to use its genetic resources, said Nithin Ramakrishnan, a senior researcher at Third World Network, a group that advocates for human rights and benefit sharing. “You’re just creating a voluntary fund that promotes biopiracy,” he said. Nonetheless, this decision — which resulted from hours of negotiations, often over single words — still has a lot of power, experts told Vox. Many companies, and especially those with international operations, will likely pay the fee, or a portion of it, they said, even if they’re based in the US. That’s because they operate in regions, such as the European Union, where this new plan will likely be honored. “The big companies are pretty engaged here,” Scholz, who is based in Germany, said. “They have a significant reputational risk.” Basecamp Research, a London-based startup that claims to manage the world’s largest database of non-human genetic sequences, wasn’t worried about a potential fee. “We are quite comfortable and willing to contribute,” Bupe Mwambingu, the company’s biodiversity partnerships manager, said. “It is going to go toward conserving biodiversity, which is the resource that we are tapping into for our business.” (It’s not clear whether Basecamp Research would be obligated to pay the fee under this new plan.) Early reactions from the pharmaceutical industry suggest it’s not thrilled. On Saturday morning, David Reddy, director general of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said in a statement that the new plan does “not get the balance right” between the benefits it could generate and the potential “costs to society and science.” “Any new system should not introduce further conditions on how scientists access such data and add to a complex web of regulation, taxation and other obligations for the whole R&D ecosystem — including on academia and biotech companies,” he said. Share feedback on this story Comments or questions on this story? Reach out to the author, Benji Jones, here. Even under a best-case scenario, money is unlikely to flow into the Cali fund for several years, Scholz said. And there won’t be a lot of it — certainly nothing close to the $700 billion a year needed to thwart biodiversity loss. But aside from the money it could generate, this new plan signals something important: Companies and scientists in wealthy regions should share the benefits they derive from nature. Even if it was harvested from digital DNA. Want to go deeper? Check out our explainer about digital sequence information and how it’s used.

A one-time Democrat living in Israel says he proudly cast his ballot for former President Trump in a swing state — and says he is far from alone.

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An elite Chicago private school where a bullied student committed suicide has a history of harassment and antisemitism, according to parents and new details in an ongoing lawsuit. 

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Washington went from long-snapper Camaron Cheeseman, now studying to be a dentist, to future Hall of Fame linebacker Bobby Wagner.

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Day of the Dead, or Dia de Los Muertos, is a celebration that honors the dead. Many of the traditions honoring the holiday come from Latin America, but these days, those who celebrate don't have to leave the United States to mark the holiday.

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This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.You know America’s most controversial appliance when you hear it: The leaf blower is loud, it’s messy, and it’s a hazard to the environment. But Ian Bogost recently argued that we’re thinking about leaf blowers all wrong: “Excessive use of blowers, not the tools themselves, should be taken as the villain here,” he wrote. A full ban on the appliance is impossible as long as yards are part of American life, so limiting its use would be the best path forward.Today’s newsletter explores the appliances we’ve relied on for decades, and those that claim to usher in new ways of living—with varied success.On Our AppliancesA Defense of the Leaf BlowerBy Ian BogostReassessing America’s most hated applianceRead the article.A $700 Kitchen Tool That’s Meant to Be Seen, Not UsedBy Ellen CushingKitchenAid’s newest stand mixer seems like a great appliance—for people who don’t actually bake.Read the article.The Microwave Makes No SenseBy Jacob SweetEvery kitchen appliance is getting smart—except one.Read the article.Still Curious? Your TV is too good for you: 4K resolution is a sham, Ian Bogost argues. KitchenAid did it right 87 years ago: Modern appliances are rarely built to last. They could learn something from the KitchenAid stand mixer, Anna Kramer argues. Other Diversions The silliest, sexiest show of the year Why you might need an adventure Why are baseball players always eating? P.S. Courtesy of John Ambrose I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. John Ambrose, 72, wrote that he took this photo “looking due west from my front door in Glastonbury, CT. The sky kept changing and went from an orange to a deep pink.” I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. If you’d like to share, reply to this email with a photo and a short description so we can share your wonder with fellow readers in a future edition of this newsletter or on our website. Please include your name (initials are okay), age, and location. By doing so, you agree that The Atlantic has permission to publish your photo and publicly attribute the response to you, including your first name and last initial, age, and/or location that you share with your submission.— Isabel

On December 14, 2016, President-elect Donald Trump crammed a handful of America’s most recognizable moguls into a conference room on the 25th floor of his Manhattan headquarters. The group included Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk, and Apple’s Tim Cook. Despite having just won the most powerful position on the planet, Trump assumed a sycophantic pose.“There’s nobody like you in the world!” Trump exclaimed. “In the world!”He wanted them to know: “I’m here to help you folks do well.”At that early date, Trump was a somewhat unknown quantity, at least as far as these billionaires were concerned. They couldn’t be sure if he was actually aligned with their interests, given his support of tariffs, hostility toward immigration, and fulminations against globalism. Besides, it was an especially inflamed moment in American politics, and the executives had reason to fear that their workforces, not to mention their customers, might furiously protest an intimate working relationship with Trump. So after the meeting adjourned, Trump’s offer of an alliance was left dangling.If Trump prevails on November 5, a version of the partnership he hinted at eight years ago will finally emerge, and in a far more robust form than he could have ever imagined at the time. That’s because many of the wealthiest Americans have reached the cold conclusion that the opportunities presented by Trump outweigh whatever social opprobrium might follow an embrace.There’s a word for this type of cozy arrangement: oligarchy. The term conjures the corrupt illiberal system that governs Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But like fascism or democracy, the concept varies from country to country, a product of its native political culture and sources of wealth.The Trumpist oligarchy that is taking shape is far different from the post-Soviet strain. What makes it distinct is that Trump is entering into a partnership with the most powerful technologists in the world. But the core problem of oligarchy is the same. The symbiotic relationship between a corrupt leader and a business elite always entails the trading of favors. The regime does the bidding of the billionaires and, in turn, the billionaires do the bidding of the regime. Power grows ever more concentrated as the owners and the corrupt leaders conspire to protect their mutual hold on it. In short order, this arrangement has the potential to deliver a double blow to the American system: It could undermine capitalism and erode democracy all at once.Perhaps it will soon be possible to look back on the first Trump term with nostalgia. Back in those days, there was rampant corruption, but it was relatively small-time. Jared Kushner and the Trump kids traded on the family name. In the mix were old friends of the president like Tom Barrack, who allegedly attempted to parlay his presidential friendship to win clients in the Middle East. Supplicants usually ingratiated themselves with Trump by buying units in his buildings and hosting events at his resorts. When the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute wanted the administration’s help, it spent more than $700,000 on an event at a Trump golf resort. In a second term, that brand of blatant transactionalism will reappear, and likely get much worse, because it’s now clear that there are no consequences for engaging in it.[Read: What Elon Musk really wants]The biggest difference between Trump I and Trump II is that he would return to office at a uniquely perilous moment in the history of American government. Never before has the state been such a lucrative profit center for private business. And not since the Gilded Age has it been so vulnerable to corrupt manipulation.In part, this is because of a bipartisan shift in ideology. Over the past decade, both political parties have come to embrace what’s called “industrial policy.” That is, to varying degrees, Republicans and Democrats agree that the government should play the role of investment bank, spending billions to subsidize sectors of the economy vital to the national interest—and to protect those domestic firms from foreign competition with tariffs.At the same time, the federal government has become a massive consumer of technology, in the form of cloud computing and artificial intelligence and rockets, that it can’t efficiently produce itself. From 2019 to 2022, according to a study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the Pentagon and intelligence community spent at least $53 billion on contracts with Big Technology firms.All that government spending comes at a time when the bureaucracy that oversees such expenditures is especially precarious. Over the summer, the Supreme Court issued a decision gutting the power of federal agencies. Trump would likely strike another grievous blow against it, extending his power to fire civil servants to purge a tier of experts, lawyers, and clerks hired to be neutral arbiters of the national interest so that he can replace them with his cronies.Without that accountability, the vast sums the government spends can be more easily funneled to favorite firms; regulation can be more easily manipulated to punish rivals of those firms. Those billionaires with access to the government will have something close to unchallenged control of the economy’s commanding heights.None of this would exactly resemble Putin’s oligarchy, which largely consists of old chums from the KGB and his childhood friends from St. Petersburg. Russia is an aristocracy of apparatchiks, whose primary goal is to protect ill-gotten wealth amassed during the country’s chaotic transition from communism, a mission that has required brutality and suppression.But Trump’s and Putin’s oligarchs share one important similarity. The Big Tech billionaires attracted to Trump would hope to protect their monopolies by providing essential services that make them indispensable to the government and the nation. This indispensability will also—so the theory goes—insulate them from antitrust enforcement. It’s far harder to make the case for breaking up a monopoly when that monopoly supplies the Pentagon with communications technologies and runs cloud-computing services for intelligence agencies.[Read: Jeff Bezos is blaming the victim]But there’s a distinct twist to the aims of the Big Tech oligarchs: They don’t simply want to insulate themselves from regulators and courts. Ultimately, they want to exploit their relationship with the government in order to supplant it. They want to be the ones who gain control of programs and systems that were once the purview of the state. Their alliance with Trump is, at bottom, a power grab.Take space exploration. Musk and Bezos don’t just want the government to subsidize their rockets and supply the funds that will further grow their aerospace firms. They want to become the architects of human life in the heavens, to design celestial colonies, to shape the future of space. Then there are the tech billionaires promoting cryptocurrency. They don’t simply want to remove regulatory restraints on the industry. In their vision, their companies will replace the U.S. Treasury. And some of these businesses hope to fend off the regulation of artificial intelligence, so that they can exert more invisible control over the flow of information and commerce.The central activity of an oligarchical system is the mutual scratching of backs. The head of state helps spread the lucre, but also collects a fee for his services. In Russia and Ukraine, presidents received actual monetary fees in the form of kickbacks. Oligarchs laundered money on their behalf, shifting cash into offshore accounts and buying them ornate villas. In essence, oligarchs serve as errand boys. If they own media, then they use their outlets to subtly make the case for their patron; they hire editors more inclined to spout the party line and to steer coverage in a preferred direction.It’s hard to imagine transplanting Russian oligarchy to these shores, given the American rule of law and the higher standards of American capitalism. But it’s possible to glimpse how the CEOs have begun to play the game—the way Musk has used X to relentlessly extol Trump, or how Bezos canceled The Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and hired an alumnus of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to serve as publisher.Every oligarchical system writes its own informal rules, arriving at its own set of furtive understandings. In contrast to Putin, Trump is aligning with genuinely creative entrepreneurs. Yet that doesn’t make the American model better—just uniquely dangerous. Trump’s transactionalism will be tethered to people driven by greed, but also by messianic fervor, and the result will be like nothing you’ve ever seen.

National security requires the top independent, top flight Presidential advisors that Donald Trump has shown he will not abide.

Mario Cantone — who has played Anthony Marentino in the "Sex and the City" franchise for 24 years — is grateful to have a steady job late in his career.

When churches burn across Canada, do they make a sound? The answer, sadly, seems to be no.

A shark bit a 61-year-old surfer in the waters near Waiehu Beach Park in Hawaii on Friday morning and severed his leg, Maui County officials said.

Iran's regime warned of its capacity to build a nuclear weapon and threatened to change its policies on using one this weekend.

The wife of a U.S. pastor killed on a missionary trip with his family has been arrested. A close friend of the victim says the pastor “genuinely cared about those less privileged."

Use the Underdog Fantasy promo code NYPNEWS for up to $1,000 in bonus cash from a 50% deposit match offer ahead of Saturday's slate.

Immigration is ranked as one of the top issues for voters in the 2024 presidential election. Since spring 2022, New York City has taken in more than 200,000 asylum seekers, primarily families with children. For those kids, the journey can be arduous. One Brooklyn teen came up with a plan to ease their journey with a ball and a field.

"Just looking down any street, or any corner, there’s going to be piles of trash, and they’re going to stay there for days, because it seems like trashmen aren’t picking it up for whatever reason,” said a Flatbush native.

“What’s discipline got to do with winning?”

“When I saw John, I thought, why not be a positive role model to this kid as he’s growing up?” said Craig Hodges, a garbage truck driver.

So far, 205 bodies have been recovered after the floods in Spain. Volunteers are helping clean up thick mud that is covering streets and businesses.

It's not just the presidency that will be decided on Election Day. Voters will also decide which party controls the Senate. Right now, Democrats hold a one-seat edge, but the party is defending 23 seats. The seat most at-risk is that of Montana Democrat Jon Tester, who is facing a stiff challenge from Republican Tim Sheehy. Here's what to know about the race.

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both campaigning in battleground states as the 2024 presidential election approaches. Both will head south today, with Harris holding events in Georgia and North Carolina and Trump holding events in Virginia and North Carolina.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Ed O'Keefe and CBS News Congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane have covered some of the biggest stories of this election cycle. Now, with just three days before Election Day, both give their opinions on the state of the race.

Rescue operations are continuing in Spain after flash flooding killed over 200 people. Meanwhile, the 2024 race for the presidential election is coming to a close. All that and all that matters in today's Eye Opener.

At 37, Lise Davidsen is among the most in-demand sopranos in the world, and she’s only just stepping into the roles that will define her career.

Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia allow voters to track the status of their ballot. Find out how to check yours.

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Tanner McGrath is taking host SMU over Pitt and favored Minnesota over host Illinois in Saturday's college football action.

It's the second game in this year's Commander-in-Chief's Trophy series.

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As New York City's longest-serving tour guide, Joyce Gold has become a local celebrity -- more widely recognized than the stars in the Big Apple.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict.

Lemm now avoids the Big Apple because of criminal justice reforms.

The college football world will be treated to a fascinating matchup on Saturday, as No. 3 Penn State hosts No. 4 Ohio State in a Big Ten battle with epic implications. 

Enrollment in Affordable Care Act health plans has grown every year of the Biden administration, leading to record low numbers of people who are uninsured.