After a breast cancer diagnosis, here are 10 important things you should do, experts say

Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O'Neal floated a controversial idea on a way to drive up WNBA viewership and increase players' salaries.

Luigi Belvedere has been sentenced to almost 19 years in jail for international drug trafficking but has been on the run since December 2020.

Mike Solana, a Peter Thiel protégé, has made his Pirate Wires newsletter a must-read among the anti-woke investor class—and a window into what the most powerful people in tech really think.

Common Sense Media also reviews “Conclave” and “Lego Marvel Avengers: Mission Demolition.”

Art moving, involving security escorts and heist-like intricacy, is where manual labor meets the sublime.

Many museums charge admission fees. But there are almost always ways around them.

The prevalence of positive illusions is one of the most well-established findings in psychology. Most people have an exaggerated view of their own abilities and expect that more good things—and fewer bad things—will happen to them than is likely.Despite being unrealistic, such beliefs have benefits: Overly positive people are happier, cope better with adversity, and think they have more control over their life. Believing that things are a little better than they actually are may be necessary for robust mental health.In a similar way, many citizens hold overly positive, but possibly necessary, beliefs about their country. A sense of national pride can foster community and bring people together, and it’s often a sign of a thriving democracy. In the United States, one source of patriotism is American exceptionalism—the idea that the U.S. is a unique, and uniquely superior, nation. With its origin as a democracy in a world of kingdoms and its emphasis on freedom and opportunity, this narrative goes, the American system is out of the ordinary.Among the young, that belief is rapidly dying. Since 1976, a large nationally representative survey has asked U.S. high-school seniors, 17 and 18 years old, whether they agree that “Despite its many faults, our system of doing things is still the best in the world”: a fairly succinct summary of American exceptionalism. In the early 1980s, 67 percent of high-school seniors agreed that the U.S. system was the best. By 2022, only 27 percent did. Thus, only one out of four American teens now agrees that their country is exceptional.[Read: 20-somethings are in trouble]The decline appears to be mostly untethered to national events. Belief in American exceptionalism went down during the Great Recession of the late 2000s, and also during the economically prosperous years of the 2010s. It declined when the U.S. was at war and also when it was at peace. It declined as income inequality grew rapidly, from 1980 to 2000, and also as inequality moderated after 2000.Support for the idea is now particularly unpopular among liberal teens. As recently as the late 1990s, a majority had agreed that the U.S. system was the best. By 2021–22, that had shrunk to 14 percent—only one out of seven. (Belief in American exceptionalism has declined among conservative teens as well, but much less so: 47 percent of conservative teens believed in the idea in 2021–22.)Even the belief that the founding of the United States was a positive development seems to be on the way out: A recent poll conducted by the Democracy Fund asked Americans if the Founders are “better described as villains” or “as heroes.” Four out of 10 Gen Zers chose “villains,” compared with only one in 10 Boomers. If your country’s Founders are the bad guys instead of the good guys, it becomes much harder to believe that its system is the best in the world—or even worth defending. (Ideas about America are hardly the only beliefs that have bent toward pessimism among American youth in the past two decades. In early 2002, for instance, 23 percent of high-school seniors agreed with the statement “When I think about all the terrible things that have been happening, it is hard for me to hold out much hope for the world.” In early 2019, 40 percent agreed.)Dour views of the nation’s status and possibilities may shape its future. Gen Z may be disillusioned, but it is not, by and large, nihilistic: Today’s young adults are also more interested in taking action than previous generations. From 2014 to 2021–22, an increasing number of high-school seniors agreed that protesting and voting could have “a major impact on how things are run in this country.” Voter turnout among young adults has been higher among Gen Z than previous generations at the same age, and political protests appear to have become more frequent in the eight or so years since Gen Z arrived on college campuses.That, of course, could yield positive changes. One of the most important American ideals, arguably, is that the American project is unfinished, and that society can be made better, generation by generation. Throughout U.S. history, discontent and even righteous anger have often been important correctives to overly broad or unthinking sentiments about the country’s goodness, which, when unchallenged, can perpetuate injustices.But many of Gen Z’s members seem convinced that radical change is necessary—to the model of government, to the economy, to the culture. In a 2020 poll I analyzed for my book Generations, three out of four American Gen Zers—more than any other generation—agreed that “significant changes” were needed to the government’s “fundamental design and structure.” Nearly two-thirds believed that America was not “a fair society,” again a higher rate than older adults. In a 2018 Gallup poll, more 18-to-29-year-olds had a positive view of socialism (51 percent) than of capitalism (45 percent). Some of the ideals, and idealism, that were commonly accepted in previous generations seem to have a looser hold over young adults today.Why has Gen Z turned so definitively toward disillusionment and away from seeing their country as superior?One reason may be their mental health: Twice as many teens and young adults are depressed than in the early 2010s. This is a tragedy—and it’s likely to have wide-reaching effects. Depression isn’t just about emotions; it’s also about cognition. By definition, depressed people see the world in a more negative light. They are less likely to see the positive, including in their country. Increases in depression are larger among liberals, consistent with the larger decline in their belief in American exceptionalism.Changes in news consumption may also play a part. When newspapers were read on paper, all of the news—positive and negative—was printed together. Now negative news is king. Negative articles are almost twice as likely to be shared on social media as positive articles. Social-media algorithms push angry and divisive content. With Gen Z getting most of its information online, it is viewing the country through a negatively skewed funhouse mirror.A third reason may lie in the shifts in high-school American-history curricula. Some—typically liberal—states now spend more time than they once did on the more deplorable facts of the nation’s history, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the massacre of Native Americans, and the Founders’ ownership of slaves. That coverage lays out facts students need to know, but, especially if these events are emphasized more than the country’s more noble endeavors, it may also undermine feelings of national pride.[Read: Are Gen Z men and women really drifting apart?]Finally, Gen Z’s facility with social media may itself be coloring the generation’s views. Gen Z has learned that making a problem look as big and awful as possible is a highly effective way of getting traction on social media. Many problems are often portrayed as profound and systemic, fixable only by fundamental rethinks and institutional purges. It makes everything seem worse than it is.My worry, as a social psychologist who has studied all of the living American generations, is that these various forces—and the pessimism they have generated —could move Gen Z to change systems that are not necessarily broken. That’s especially relevant as this generation comes of age and rises toward political power. Despite the common perception that the system is “rigged” and young people will never attain the wealth Boomers did, for instance, the Federal Reserve of St. Louis recently found that Millennial and Gen Z young adults actually have 25 percent more wealth than Boomers did at the same age. Inflation-adjusted median incomes for American young adults are at all-time highs, and poverty rates for children and younger adults are lower than they were in the early 2000s. The social-media-driven negativity machine may have prevented Gen Z—and all of us—from seeing the good news.Just as the positive views we have about our individual selves may be exaggerated, the idea that the United States is uniquely superior is also, at least in part, an overly optimistic illusion we tell ourselves as a country. But like our positive self-illusions, patriotism also has its benefits, including a more satisfied citizenry and more political stability. With Gen Z unconvinced of the country’s exceptionalism and willing to take action, the U.S. may, in the coming decades, witness an era of extraordinary political change.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden was once an odd fit for Washington — a square peg in a round building. But it is in an ambitious and welcoming phase.

Guests don’t need the extra financial pressure of buying an outfit they may wear just once.

Forget ghosts and ghouls — Halloween can get really scary if you have to make an urgent trip to the dentist's office.

Rep. Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., campaign slammed his opponent John Mannion in the competitive House race of running on an "anti-cop, pro-Hamas" ballot.

As ICC prosecutor Karim Khan sought charges against Hamas leaders and Israeli PM Netanyahu, he faced allegations of sexual misconduct.

Pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan recalled why he decided to speak at the Republican National Convention and support former President Donald Trump in an interview on Wednesday.

The "All My Life" hitmaker, 32, is currently being held at Broward County Jail in Florida without bond.

Hollywood actor Danny Trejo recounted his experience as a Mexican Dodgers fan growing up in Los Angeles and the impact of Fernando Valenzuela.

Maine residents whose sense of safety was shattered last year by the deadliest mass shooting in the state's history planned to mark the day Friday in ways big and small, including a planned memorial service.

Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.

Former Trump lawyer John Eastman. The fight over who will become the next president is unlikely to end on Election Day if Vice President Kamala Harris prevails in the upcoming election.  We know this because of former President Donald Trump’s behavior after he lost the 2020 election. Trump didn’t just incite an insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021; he and his fellow Republicans filed a wave of lawsuits seeking to skew the election results. And, with the help of some of the most unscrupulous lawyers in the country, Trump devised a fantastical scheme to replace legitimate members of the Electoral College with his own loyalists. Yet, while more shenanigans are almost certainly inevitable if Trump comes up short in November, the legal landscape in 2024 is less favorable to these kinds of dirty tricks than it was in 2020. The biggest reason for that is that lawyers thrive on novelty, while courts are supposed to follow previous precedents when deciding new cases. In 2020, the world was suffering from the unusual calamity of the pandemic, which raised all sorts of legal questions that courts had not confronted before. That gave judges who were inclined to rule in Trump’s favor —Republicans control the federal judiciary — more leeway to place a thumb on the scale favoring the Republican Party and to do so without being accused of violating a clear precedent to the contrary. In 2024, by contrast, large swaths of Americans are no longer cowering in their homes, fearful that a trip to the polls could infect them with Covid-19. Both the law and the nature of the two parties’ coalitions have shifted in ways that make it harder for Republicans to toy with who is able to cast a ballot. That’s not to say anyone should expect Harris to simply be able to walk into the White House, even if she wins fair and square. If Harris prevails, Trump lawsuits seeking to overturn her victory are all but inevitable, as could be attempts to repeat the January 6 insurrection. Indeed, some of this legal maneuvering has already begun. On Wednesday evening, for example, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the Republican Party’s claim that certain voters who cast mailed-in ballots improperly should effectively be disenfranchised, rather than being given another opportunity to vote on Election Day. It is probably inevitable that this case will be appealed to the US Supreme Court. If the highest Court embraces the GOP’s argument, that could potentially flip the result of an extraordinarily close election to Trump — but only if the winner of the presidential election all comes down to Pennsylvania, and the Pennsylvania race is very close. It is difficult to predict in advance how many ballots will be impacted by this case, which is known as Genser v. Butler County Board of Elections, during the 2024 cycle, but we’re probably only talking about enough votes to increase Harris’s vote count by maybe a few thousand. Overall, moreover — even taking into account the Genser case — Trump’s lawyers have less to work with this year than they did four years ago. Novel legal issues breed bad law The worst place to be, if you are a lawyer, is arguing a truly novel case before a hostile panel of judges. Democrats already got a taste of this nightmare earlier this year. There’s never been a viable presidential candidate who incited an insurrection. Nor has there been one who, while previously serving as president, committed very serious crimes while in office. These unique facts produced unprecedented court proceedings, including a Colorado Supreme Court decision holding Trump ineligible for the presidency because of his role in the insurrection and a criminal prosecution of a former president. The Republican-controlled Supreme Court, however, seized upon these unique cases to hand down two extraordinarily pro-Trump decisions: one that effectively neutralized the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionist presidents for the duration of the 2024 election, and another that gave Donald Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for crimes he committed using the power of the presidency. The only good thing that can be said about these decisions is that they are in the past. Trump’s criminality did raise novel legal questions, but those questions have now been resolved. It’s hard to see how Trump’s lawyers could leverage the fact that he incited an insurrection in 2020 to challenge the result of the 2024 election, or to change how that election is conducted any more than he already has. The pandemic is over. That’s bad news for Trump’s legal team. The 2020 election itself raised a host of novel legal questions, but those questions largely emerged from the highly unusual circumstances created by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, many voters understandably did not wish to vote in an indoor polling place where they could potentially catch the coronavirus from a fellow citizen. So state and federal officials altered election procedures in many states to make it easier to cast ballots by mail. In Wisconsin, for example, a federal judge ruled that certain mailed ballots that arrived after Election Day should still be counted — the state was struggling to process an unprecedented number of requests for such ballots, and many were not mailed until very close to that state’s April 2020 judicial election. In South Carolina, another judge temporarily blocked a state law requiring absentee voters to have another person sign their ballot as a witness. In Pennsylvania, the state supreme court ruled that many ballots received up to three days after the November election would be counted. Significantly, however, all three of these decisions received a chilly reception from a Republican Supreme Court. In the Wisconsin case, the Republican justices ordered the state to toss out ballots that were not postmarked by Election Day — even though many ballots had no postmark at all. In the South Carolina case, the Supreme Court reinstated the state law.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision, meanwhile, wound up surviving contact with the US Supreme Court, but probably only due to an accident of timing. The case reached the Court during the interregnum between Democratic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and Republican Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation, and the eight remaining justices split 4-4 on whether to toss out the contested Pennsylvania ballots.  Ultimately, the Court dismissed the case as moot, in large part because Biden won the state by a large enough margin that it wouldn’t have mattered if these ballots were thrown in the trash. But the fact that Biden’s margin of victory was enough to overcome this lawsuit does not mean that the democratic process would have played out fairly if the election had been closer. Had Pennsylvania been close enough that the fate of these contested ballots would have decided it, the Republican justices could have easily made up a reason to hand the election to Trump — the Court’s right flank even had a legal argument ready to go, and the novelty of the legal issues presented by the pandemic would have left Biden without any clear precedent he could use to criticize such a ruling. In any event, few, if any, of the novel legal questions that arose out of the pandemic are still an issue in 2024. And even if Republicans do succeed in having many mailed ballots tossed out, they are unlikely to gain as much of an advantage from such a decision as they would have in 2020. One reason Republican lawyers targeted vote-by-mail rules in 2020 was that Democrats were far more likely to vote by mail than Republicans — an MIT report on the 2020 election found that “[s]ixty percent of Democrats, compared to 32 percent of Republicans, reported voting by mail.” So Trump’s lawyers knew they could potentially change the election result by maximizing the number of mailed ballots that got tossed out. This year, by contrast, early data suggests that Republicans are less reluctant to vote absentee than they were in 2020. And more Democrats in states that offer both in-person and mail-in voting are expected to vote in person because there’s no longer a pandemic forcing them to remain at home.  To be sure, Republicans apparently still believe they can gain an advantage by making it harder to vote by mail. Why would the GOP have asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to disqualify many voters who cast a mailed ballot in the Genser case, after all, unless Republicans believed that Democrats still have an edge among people who vote by mail? But this edge is likely to be smaller than it was in 2020. More broadly, beyond the insurrection-related issues that the Republican justices already resolved in Trump’s favor, Trump’s lawyers have yet to identify similarly novel legal questions that could give the courts sweeping authority to reshape how the 2024 election is conducted. That doesn’t mean that the courts will behave themselves, especially if the 2024 election is close, but it does give Trump’s legal team less material to work with than they had in 2020. Low-propensity voters increasingly favor Republicans For most of the 2000s, the battle lines in the voting rights wars were pretty clearly defined: Republicans tended to support legislation that made it marginally more difficult to vote, while Democrats fought in both court and in state and federal legislatures to make it easier to cast a ballot. As recently as 2021, for example, Georgia Republicans reacted to Biden’s 2020 victory in that state by tightening down the state’s voter ID law, limiting the use of drop boxes to collect ballots, banning volunteers from giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote, and paving the way for a MAGA takeover of the state’s board of elections. Democrats almost universally opposed this Georgia law. Similarly, on the US Supreme Court, Republican justices have consistently voted to uphold restrictive election laws and to dismantle laws like the federal Voting Rights Act, which are intended to hinder these kinds of restrictions.  For the moment, at least, neither party appears to be backing away from its historic position on voting rights. But it is less clear than it was, say, 15 years ago, that these kinds of restrictions benefit Republicans. It’s possible that, to the extent that they matter at all, some of these laws might give a slight boost to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. One reason why it is now less clear that these sorts of laws harm Democrats is that we have more data than we did a dozen years ago. In the 2010s, for example, voting rights advocates and even many journalists and academics warned that strict voter ID laws (which require voters to show photo ID at the polls in order to vote) could significantly diminish Democratic turnout. Election forecaster Nate Silver, for example, predicted that a strict voter ID law in Pennsylvania “would reduce President Obama’s margin against Mitt Romney by a net of 1.2 percentage points” in the 2012 election. More recent studies, however, suggest that voter ID is a wash. A 2019 paper, for example, found that “the laws have no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation.” Even if these laws do work as intended, it’s no longer clear that Republicans benefit from marginal restrictions on the franchise — whether that restriction is a voter ID law or something similar like limits on early voting or voting by mail.  Since Trump arrived on the scene, however, Democrats have made gains among high-propensity voting demographics such as highly educated voters and suburbanites. Trump, meanwhile, has made inroads with many of the same groups that were once believed to be discouraged from voting by laws like voter ID.  Republicans, in other words, now have less incentive to pass laws or push lawsuits that will make it harder to vote on the margins, and if they do use these tactics, they could come to regret it. At the very least, it is now far from clear that Republicans can skew elections by placing small but significant legal hurdles between voters and the polls. Congress fixed an incomprehensible election law Until recently, the process Congress used to count and certify the Electoral College’s votes for a new president was governed by the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law signed by then-President Grover Cleveland. If you enjoy pain, you can read the full text of this law here. I can assure you that it is so labyrinthian it might have been drafted by a minotaur. After Trump’s failed insurrection in 2020, however, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers enacted a new law governing the vote-counting process, which reads more like a modern-day statute. That takes away Trump’s legal team’s ability to hunt for ambiguous passages in the old law and claim that they require Trump to be placed back in the White House. Admittedly, one of the most glaring problems with the old law is unlikely to be an issue in 2024. The old law stated that the vice president shall preside over the congressional session where electoral votes are counted but did not specify the vice president’s specific duties. In 2020, Trump and his lawyers tried to claim that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to effectively toss out many of Biden’s electoral votes and install Trump as the winner. The new law, by contrast, clarifies that the vice president’s duties are almost entirely “ministerial in nature.”  In any event, Kamala Harris is currently both the sitting vice president and the Democratic nominee for the presidency, so the likelihood that she would toss out some of her own electoral votes is vanishingly small. But the new law clarifies that a future vice president cannot use the counting process to change the result of an election. That clarification — and the others — should give Trump’s lawyers less to work with if they want to try to overthrow the result of the 2024 election.

Four astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a nearly eight-month space station stay extended by Boeing’s capsule trouble and Hurricane Milton.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke to Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Thursday about Democrats worried about Vice President Kamala Harris ahead of the election.

Republican National Convention attendees hold signs that read “Mass Deportation Now!” on the third day of the gathering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 17, 2024. | Alex Wong / Getty Images This spring, an eye-opening poll from Axios suggested what once seemed unthinkable: Four in 10 Democrats were open to the idea of the US government deporting undocumented immigrants en masse. Though that share of support might seem high, other polls conducted since have found something similar, suggesting Americans at large are open to harsher, more Trumpian immigration policies. And yet, as attention-grabbing as some of the headlines on support for mass deportations have been (and as Donald Trump and his allies continue to talk about his plans for such), those polls may not accurately capture the mood of the American electorate. Support for a policy of mass deportation, while superficially high, rests on two related complications: substantial confusion among voters about what it might actually entail, as well as a generalized desire to do something — anything — on immigration, which polls frequently report to be among Americans’ top issues. That disconnect is because standalone polls and headlines do very little to capture the complexity of many Americans’ feelings about immigration, which often include simultaneous, and apparently contradictory, support for more immigrant-friendly policies alongside draconian ones. The real answer, more specific polling by firms like Pew Research Center suggests, lies somewhere in the middle: A good share of voters, it seems, are fine with increasing deportations. Some might even want the kind of operation Trump is floating. But many also want exceptions and protections for specific groups of immigrants who have been living in the US for a while, or have other ties to the country. Taking a deeper look at polling on immigration Back in August, the Pew Research Center dug into the question of mass deportations by asking registered voters their opinions on immigration levels, the value of immigrants, and what kind of exceptions they might endorse to allow undocumented immigrants to remain in the US. The results were messy, but showed two distinct things. First, support for “mass deportations of immigrants living in the country illegally” received majority support: 56 percent of registered voters “strongly or somewhat” favored such a proposal. That majority of voters included, unsurprisingly, 88 percent of Trump voters; it also included about 3 in 10 supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris. The August findings align with Pew’s earlier research, conducted in January 2024, which found a majority of Americans think “increasing deportations” of people who are living in the US illegally would improve the US immigration system and reduce southern border crossings. Republican respondents in that survey were essentially uniform in supporting such a policy; Democrats were divided, with similar shares (about 30 percent) saying deportations would make things better or worse. At the same time, both of Pew’s surveys found Americans were also supportive of more friendly policies for undocumented immigrants, like a pathway to citizenship. The August report notes that about 6 in 10 registered voters say that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to “stay in the country legally, if certain requirements are met.” And a similar share, 58 percent, favored “allowing undocumented immigrants to legally work and stay in the country if they are married to a US citizen.” Sahana Mukherjee, one of the Pew Research Center analysts behind the August deep-dive on “mass deportations,” told me that as many as 40 percent of registered voters who support mass deportations also support a policy that would allow undocumented spouses of US citizens to remain in the country.  That share varies based on which candidate these voters support: About a third of Trump supporters who back mass deportations support such a plan, while about 60 percent of Harris supporters who back mass deportations do. But this group of voters with overlapping priorities suggests that when taking the temperature of the public, being open to mass deportations isn’t the same as supporting a specific policy. Support changes when you get into the details of who could be affected. Similarly, Mukherjee said, about 40 percent of registered voters who support mass deportations — one-third of the Trump supporters who do so, and two-thirds among the same pool of Harris supporters — also endorse the idea of undocumented immigrants being allowed to remain in the US “if certain conditions are met.” Other high-quality polls second these nuanced, seemingly contradictory feelings: A September Ipsos poll found 54 percent of American adults supported a mass deportation plan, while, at the same time, 68 percent would also support a “pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children.” Similar dynamics hold true among Hispanic and Latino respondents, with a twist: While about 4 in 10 Latinos in the two most recent high-quality polls of these voters backed some kind of deportation program, a much higher share also supported some kind of pathway to citizenship.  A New York Times-Siena poll of Hispanics from October, for example, found 67 percent of Hispanics backed a pathway to citizenship for “all undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States” while 45 percent supported deporting immigrants living illegally in the US. A poll from NBC/Telemundo in September showed similar levels of support for deportations, while 87 percent of Hispanics backed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought as children to the US, and 91 percent supported that pathway for undocumented spouses. Making sense of these policy nuances So why do voters hold seemingly conflicting views on immigration? Pro-immigrant advocates argue that there isn’t a contradiction here — those competing numbers instead represent people who don’t understand exactly what “mass deportation” means or what a deportation program would look like in practice.  Americans might not understand that deportations of all undocumented immigrants would include deportations of DACA recipients and longtime neighbors or friends who have been living normally and are bedrocks of local communities, advocates and researchers say — rather than only recent arrivals, or those few migrants who commit violent crimes yet get outsize media and political attention, who they may view differently. Mukherjee said there’s also a degree of nuance that issue and horserace polls might not be picking up, since they aren’t necessarily equipped to ask in-depth questions. “We asked about one requirement specifically in the survey, which is looking at if you’re married to a US citizen, but it remains to be seen whether there are other requirements that people are also thinking about,” Mukherjee said. “What we hear about in everyday discourse, in the media, is if you have a child who is US born, or if you yourself came as a child. We didn’t get into this in the survey, but it’s possible these are some of the requirements people were thinking about, and perhaps that could be influencing that share of people who support both.” At the same time, when it comes to complex policy options, and especially to immigration policy, Americans can be idiosyncratic in their opinions. Surveys that don’t specify what “mass deportation” means may also be tracking inflated support for the kind of hardline stance the Trump/Vance campaign is offering, Steven Kull, the director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, told me. “Questions that are just like, ‘do you favor or oppose mass deportation’ I think are very limited in their value, because you don’t know what it means,” Kull said. “All people know is ‘deport a large number of people.’ And 1,000 people is a lot of people. Ten thousand is a lot of people. It’s not clear that it’s 11 million — that the policy is to deport 11 million — and that it would entail a massive operation, and all that has to be clear to really understand what public opinion is on the issue.” Kull’s team instead has run surveys of national samples and groups of swing-state voters that provide additional information and arguments in favor and against either mass deportations or pathways to citizenship. The result, again, is complex, but support for mass deportations falls when presented against the option for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants provided they meet specific requirements. “There is some appeal to the idea [of mass deportation] — let’s be clear about that. But it’s not that people have it all crystallized in their mind,” Kull said. How is this playing out on the campaign trail? Immigration reform advocates and some Democratic strategists are doing their best to highlight that nuance when advising Democrats on how to respond to Trump’s escalating rhetoric around immigration and immigrants. They urge Democrats to be clear about just who would get caught up in a broad mass deportation scheme — and to contrast that with a more “balanced” Democratic approach to immigration and the border. In a private memo prepared for national Democratic campaigns looking to address Trump’s mass deportation position and shared with Vox, strategists argue that this polling picture presents Democrats with a narrow path to repudiate the Trump approach while acknowledging the real concerns some voters have with recent waves on migration in the Biden years. “We have more than enough reason to believe that voters, when asked their opinion on deportations, take it to mean the deportation of people who have recently crossed the border, as well as known criminal elements,” the strategists advise. They highlight Trump running mate JD Vance’s October debate statement explaining this deportation scheme (emphasis original to the memo): “So we’ve got 20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country. What do we do with them? I think the first thing that we do is we start with the criminal migrants. About a million of those people have committed some form of crime in addition to crossing the border illegally. I think you start with deportations on those folks.” “The Vance position as stated here is likely popular,” the strategists explain. “That is why Harris and Democrats cannot allow him to frame his position in that way, especially when we know their actual plans call for the deportation of all undocumented immigrants (including spouses and Dreamers).” Complex feelings on immigration and potential deportation programs offer Democrats an opportunity to stake out more moderate ground when discussing immigration policy — and to prevent immigration opponents from defining the terms of the debate over policy. They’re also an important reminder that it can be perilous to trust top-line numbers and polling results without digging into the details, or presenting voters with more options to begin with. Recent polls all show a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment, yes, but they also show that there is room for pro-immigrant candidates to shape the national debate and make a vocal case for Americans and immigrants.

The outcome of the upcoming presidential election could affect the number of insured Americans and the cost of coverage for tens of millions of people

Operatives from each side see both paths to victory and potential pitfalls.

Half the country sees Donald Trump as a fascist in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, amplifying concerns recently raised by Kamala Harris and past Trump administration members.

"The Joe Rogan Experience" boasts approximately 15.7 million Spotify followers.

Former football star Johnny Manziel told Fox News Digital his agent was in contact with the Kansas City Chiefs and that they were his 'floor' on draft night.

People mourn over the body of a victim at a hospital in northern Gaza Strip, on October 7, 2024. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and dozens of others injured in an Israeli raid. | Abdul Rahman Salama/Xinhua via Getty Images Genocide is often referred to as the “crime of crimes,” a designation developed after the Holocaust and reserved for a very specific form of mass atrocity that deserves the highest condemnation. It should be unthinkable that Israel, home to the descendants of many Holocaust survivors, would perpetrate such a crime, and yet it has been accused — by human rights groups, academics, and even South Africa — of committing genocide in Gaza.  Those accusations aren’t new. They became more widespread shortly after Israel responded to the October 7, 2023, attack by Gaza-based militant and political group Hamas with a bombing and ground campaign that left more than 5,000 dead in the first weeks of fighting. But in the year since the war in Gaza began, the question is whether the evidence supporting these claims has grown. Last October, my Vox colleague Sigal Samuel and I interviewed scholars about how to think through those allegations of genocide. At that time, some were willing to definitively call what was happening in Gaza a genocide. But most were hesitant, citing the high threshold required to establish genocide under international law. Several said “crimes against humanity” or “war crimes,” which hold equal weight under international law, had likely been committed, but withheld judgment on genocide. The debate has evolved since then, along with conditions on the ground in Gaza, which is in ruins. The Palestinian death toll now exceeds 40,000. A Refugees International report published in September found evidence of a “severe hunger crisis in Gaza and found consistent indications that famine-like conditions occurred in northern areas during the first half of 2024,” in part due to Israel’s obstruction of aid deliveries.  South Africa has brought its case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has issued preliminary rulings ordering Israel to improve access to humanitarian aid in Gaza and to halt its operation in Rafah, the enclave’s southernmost city. Israel has also tightened its grip on occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. And there is no end to the fighting in sight: Long-feared regional war has now come to Lebanon, and ceasefire negotiations have repeatedly stalled.  In light of those developments, I went back to the scholars we cited and spoke to last fall to see if their thinking about allegations of genocide against Israel had changed over the last year. Of the five who responded, most of them were now more confident the legal requirements for genocide had been met. If an official determination of genocide by the ICJ follows, that could have critical legal and political consequences.  Here’s what the scholars had to say.  How genocide is defined First, some background: There are different ways to conceptualize genocide, but the ICJ is concerned only with its legal definition under the Genocide Convention, the international treaty criminalizing genocide that went into effect in 1951 and has been ratified by 153 countries, including Israel and its closest ally, the US.  The ICJ is the judicial branch of the United Nations and handles disputes between nations, typically involving resources and borders, though it has heard genocide cases in the past. It is distinct from the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes individuals accused of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity; that’s where arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders have been sought. A nation must bring genocide charges against another at the ICJ, providing evidence that the state itself (not just certain individuals) committed genocide. The accusing nation can also petition for provisional measures before a final ruling, including an interim court order to stop the violence, though the ICJ has no means of actually enforcing such rulings. For the court to have jurisdiction, both parties generally have to be signatories of the Genocide Convention. They will then make their case to the court through written briefs and oral arguments. A final ruling often takes years. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”: Killing members of the group Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Those five physical acts can be measured, but it turns out “intent to destroy” is incredibly difficult to prove — and that has been the sticking point in the debate over whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, where the physical component of the crime is already demonstrably satisfied given the overwhelming number of Palestinian civilian casualties. Intent has been central to nearly every other debate over genocide as well, and the high bar for proving intent has made international court findings of genocide rare.  Only three genocides have been officially recognized under the definition of the term in the Genocide Convention and led to trials in international criminal tribunals: one against Cham Muslim and ethnic Vietnamese people perpetrated by Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia in the 1970s, the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the 1995 Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia. (The Holocaust occurred before the adoption of the 1948 Convention.)  UN investigations found the mass killings of the Yazidis by ISIS in Iraq and of the Rohingya in Myanmar constituted genocide. Though the US called the killing of the Masalit and other ethnic groups in the Sudanese region of Darfur between 2003 and 2005 “genocide,” a UN investigation ruled it was not. That may have caused the conflict to extend longer than it would have if a finding of genocide had been made, and gave the Sudanese government diplomatic cover to continue its campaign, despite widespread international condemnation.  Is Israel committing genocide? One of the first scholars to say Israel was committing genocide was Raz Segal, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, who called it a “textbook case” in Jewish Currents just days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s attack, he told me he wished he had been wrong.  “I fully stand behind my description of Israel’s attack on Gaza as a ‘textbook case of genocide’ because we’re still actually seeing, nearly a year into this genocidal assault, explicit and unashamed statements of intent to destroy,” he said. “The way that intent is expressed here is absolutely unprecedented.” He said public statements by people with command authority in Israel — including state leaders, Cabinet ministers, and senior army officers — have repeatedly demonstrated genocidal intent that has been realized in the scale of the violence and destruction in Gaza. Other scholars I spoke to pointed to statements from Israeli officials last October, cited in the ICJ’s January preliminary ruling:  Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for a “complete siege” on Gaza and stated “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,” apparently in reference to Hamas.  Israeli President Isaac Herzog said it was “an entire nation out there that is responsible” for Hamas’s attack on Israel in reference to Palestinians.  And Israel Katz, former Israeli minister of energy and infrastructure, vowed “no electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck” would enter Gaza until Hamas returned its Israeli hostages, suggesting Palestinians would face collective punishment. Several other scholars who Vox spoke with last fall, at that point reluctant to say Israel was committing genocide as defined by the Genocide Convention, now appear to agree with Segal. “Any early hesitation I had about applying the ‘genocide’ label to the Israeli attack on Gaza has dissipated over the past year of human slaughter and the obliteration of homes, infrastructure, and communities,” said Adam Jones, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia who has written a textbook on genocide. “There is plenty of this demonization and dehumanization on the other side as well, but whatever peace constituency existed in Israel seems to have vanished, and there is a growing consensus for genocidal war, mass population transfer, and long-term eradication of Palestinian culture and identity.” Among other things, Jones noted Israeli leadership’s recent plans to expel the entire remaining civilian population of northern Gaza and turn the territory into a military zone where no aid would be allowed as influencing his thinking on the issue. There is no indication of whether civilians would ever be allowed to return. This could be taken as an example of the kind of “state or organizational plan or policy” necessary to prove genocidal intent, he said. Though the plan, if it has been implemented, has not yet been seen to completion, it can still serve as evidence of intent. Ernesto Verdeja, a professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, said it could be “called a genocide, even in a narrow legal sense, for several months now” given the accumulation of Israeli attacks clearly and consistently targeting the civilian population in Gaza. A major tipping point for Verdeja and many other human rights experts was Israel’s ground offensive in Rafah in May. The Israeli military had been pushing civilians increasingly into the southern city, which connects Gaza and Egypt, telling them it was a safe zone while it pursued Hamas to the north. But by August, an estimated 44 percent of all buildings in Rafah had been damaged or destroyed in heavy bombing. Israeli forces took over and shut down the Rafah border crossing, limiting the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. They killed civilians camping in tents in a humanitarian zone. When the ICJ ordered Israel to stop its offensive in Rafah, Israeli officials condemned the ruling and said it was open to interpretation, despite the fact that many human rights lawyers argued it was unambiguous. The assault on Rafah continued.  “I wouldn’t say [Rafah was] necessarily the defining moment, but I think it’s indicative of a broader pattern where we see a genocidal campaign really crystallizing,” Verdeja said. Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College, Dublin, said, overall, the above incidents and others mean “South Africa has an ever-expanding repository of evidence that it can put before the [ICJ] as further evidence of genocidal intent,” which includes evidence suggesting Israel “has not meaningfully sought to comply” with the ICJ’s orders so far.  Some scholars still disagree. Dov Waxman, a professor of political science and Israel studies and the director of the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, wrote last year in response to Segal’s piece in Jewish Currents that accusing Israel of genocide required “stretching the concept too far, emptying it of any meaning.” Waxman has since qualified his stance, but still believes “Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip — though too often brutal, inhumane, and indiscriminate — do not meet the international legal criteria of the crime of genocide.” He told me that he “can understand why many regard those actions as genocidal” given the extent of the death and destruction in Gaza and the “bellicose and extreme rhetoric of some Israeli officials, including senior government ministers, can be characterized as potentially genocidal because of the way Palestinians are dehumanized.”  But he still finds evidence of the requisite “intent to destroy” lacking. He said “a few horrendous public statements” made by Israeli politicians serve as only “quite limited and weak” support.   “Based on my understanding of the motives behind the Israeli government’s actions, I do not think there is an intent to commit genocide,” Waxman said.  Of the scholars we cited in our previous story, he was the only one who responded to my request for new comment who still did not think Israel’s actions qualify as genocide. Does it matter if the ICJ calls it genocide? The question is how much calling Israel’s incursion in Gaza genocide will make any practical difference. It will not reverse the death and destruction. The ICJ has no means of stopping the Israeli government even if the court eventually finds it guilty of genocide. That ruling may be years away, and the ICJ’s rulings against other countries have been previously ignored.  But the word “genocide” carries a certain weight in the public consciousness.  “I do think it is really important, simply because of the symbolic status of genocide,” Verdeja said. “To be guilty of genocide is, at least in public discourse and also in terms of just global politics, something that’s such a strong condemnation that it really signals the barbarity of the Israeli state’s policy.” Such condemnation could lead to significant political changes: Should the ICJ find Israel did commit genocide, that could limit the degree to which the US and its allies can continue to support Israel, Verdeja added.  At the same time, it’s unclear how the ICJ will rule. And even if it does not issue a finding of genocide, that does not preclude the international community from taking action to stop what’s unfolding in Gaza, Segal said.  “I don’t think we have to sit on our hands and wait for these institutes to tell us yes or no genocide when we all see genocide in front of our eyes,” Segal said. “The process of radical change in the system has already begun. Israel is very isolated today in the world, and the US is also isolated.”

Barron Trump might not be appearing on the campaign trail with his father Donald Trump, but the 18-year-old has an unofficial role: podcast adviser.

Nearly 30 million Americans have voted early. Despite mixed signals from Donald Trump, the GOP is showing gains with early voting in Orange County.

California safety regulators have cited the Central Valley nursery owned by Republican Rep. John Duarte and his family for several safety violations during the years that the incumbent congressman was in charge of the business, records show.

Some Dodgers fans happen to have the names of the Bronx Bombers coming to town. But fandom outweighs allegiance to a name.

Coach Jim Harbaugh sometimes shares expressions that have his Chargers raising eyebrows and seeking explanations, but his words of wisdom change perspectives.

Director Mark Cousins brings the master back from the dead for a poetic documentary essay.

Avoid the predictable traffic backlog on your way to root for your team, plan your trip to Dodger Stadium, Crypto.com arena and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum.

Matthew Stafford looks like his old/young self as his four touchdown passes lead the Rams to second win in a row, this one over the Minnesota Vikings.

The Republicans charge the California Air Resources Board with 'a failure to provide complete transparency' about consumer costs stemming from new environmental policies under discussion.

Let me challenge all y’all Dodgers fans: make Los Angeles more like your team. This year’s success is a culmination of various winning strategies that L.A. can adopt — and everyone can have a role.

Everything you need to know about the Chargers facing the New Orleans Saints at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, including start time, TV channel and betting odds.

Former Dodger All-Star Steve Garvey recalls the team's victory over the New York Yankees in 1981, but his bid for U.S. Senate against Rep. Adam Schiff won't end as happily.

SoCal Edison announced plans to restore electricity to more than two dozen homes on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Scores are still without electricity.

California officials insist that pesticide air samples remained within healthy limits. However, environmentalists say the state is downplaying the risk.

A defense of Nazis shows that vulgar language is the least of our worries. There’s just one F-bomb that should rattle us all right now and it’s being used by those who know Trump best: Fascism.

Would the Rams still consider trading star receiver Cooper Kupp after their big win over the Minnesota Vikings? The trade deadline is Nov. 5.

Why did Justin Timberlake postpone his tour? Why can't P-22 get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? And what's up with that yellow powder?

JB Smoove's ideal Sunday involves jet skiing to Catalina Island, hiking at Fryman Canyon and drinking an 'Herb Your Enthusiasm' cocktail at his favorite eatery.

The neighborhood helped reinvent Southern California. Now with energy from a new generation of Asian American creatives, it's reinventing itself.

“Evergreen” is her most intimate work yet, both sonically and emotionally, created in the wake of a profound personal loss.

The actor is wistful about the final season of the HBO dramedy that he co-stars in with Bridget Everett, but he's 'just living in gratitude that it aired at all.'