инструменты
Изменить страну:

How a ‘climate of chaos’ went unchecked at Maryland’s max-security psych hospital

A Washington Post investigation found that officials didn’t act on staff complaints about facility violence, which culminated in a patient brawl, rape and death.
Читать статью полностью на: washingtonpost.com
Nets bench erupts after Cui Yongxi 3-pointer: ‘Everybody was lit’
The unquestioned highlight was seeing little-used Cui Yongxi drill a heat check late 3-pointer — and the bench erupt.
nypost.com
Jets could start ‘totally unraveling’ after awful Bills loss: Troy Aikman
Firing the coach didn't galvanize the Jets to a win Monday night against the Bills.
nypost.com
He handed out socks on the streets. Then ‘Socktober’ took off.
“I thought that one year would be it, but then something happened,” said Brad Montague, who held his first sock drive in 2010. “Socktober began to spread.”
washingtonpost.com
Execution despite doubt over guilt is a perversion of justice
There can be no greater perversion of justice than executing a person when there is serious doubt that he or she committed a crime.
latimes.com
Patrick Roy’s emotional return to Denver: Will ‘always’ have Avalanche in my heart
His No. 33 banner was still there. So were the banners commemorating the championships Roy helped the Avalanche win in 1996 and 2001.
nypost.com
‘Monsters’ star Cooper Koch finally reveals whether he wore a prosthetic in ‘Menendez’ shower scene
Andy Cohen praised the breakout star as “very blessed” on “Watch What Happens Live” Monday.
nypost.com
Dem strategists ratchet up Hitler-Trump comparisons despite concerns about heated rhetoric
Two Democratic commentators recently compared former President Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler despite the multiple attempts to assassinate the former president.
foxnews.com
800+ veterans receive honorable discharges from Pentagon review
An honorable discharge status unlocks access to critical benefits that some veterans may have been missing out on for decades.
cbsnews.com
Fair college admissions require more than banning legacy preferences
California's new law prohibiting legacy admissions is weak tea. What's really needed is a truly equitable education for all students.
latimes.com
Hate cleaning? These 6 strategies will actually get you motivated.
Use the principles behind the science of behavior change to train yourself to do household chores easily.
washingtonpost.com
Delta cancels meal service on hundreds of flights after FDA flags ‘food safety issue’
Food and Drug Administration officials were conducting a routine inspection at the kitchen of Delta’s catering partner when they discovered a “food safety issue” on Friday, the airline said.
nypost.com
Two boys, 12 and 13, run over and killed in separate tragedies with tractor haunted hayrides
Two young boys were run over and killed in separate tragedies with tractor-pulled haunted hayrides this weekend — including one who was trying to scare other Halloween revelers.
nypost.com
Don’t downplay how the Yankees have steamrolled through these playoffs
In winning four of their first five playoff games, the Yankees are simply doing what a good team does — taking advantage of the opportunity in front of them.
nypost.com
Bill Belichick torches Jets ownership over decision to fire Robert Saleh after 5 games
Former New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick torched the New York Jets for the decision to fire Robert Saleh five games into the 2024 seaosn.
foxnews.com
Man survives 67 days at sea but his brother and nephew died
In early August, Mikhail Pichugin reportedly set on a journey to watch whales in the Sea of Okhotsk with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew.
cbsnews.com
Travis Kelce playfully called Taylor Swift’s ‘future husband’ during Yankees-Guardians ALCS game
After a source confirmed to The Post that the pair would attend the game, Kelce and Swift made their way into a suite at Yankee Stadium in the evening.
nypost.com
WATCH: Trump town hall interrupted by medical emergencies in the crowd
Former President Donald Trump's town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, on Monday evening was interrupted twice by medical emergencies.
abcnews.go.com
Disturbing moment knife-wielding 6ft woman is shot dead after repeatedly slashing cop
Sydney Wilson, 33, was fatally shot by Fairfax County officer Peter Liu in the hall of her apartment building in Reston, just outside Washington D.C., on Sept. 16 after cops were called to carry out a welfare check on her, police said.
nypost.com
Harris touts her work on the economy, but what has she actually done for small businesses?
Vice President Kamala Harris has hit the campaign trail with ambitious plans to boost small businesses, but does her record match the rhetoric from her presidential campaign?
foxnews.com
Trump resoundingly endorses Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ahead of Tuesday night Senate debate
Former President Donald Trump is supporting Sen. Ted Cruz's reelection bid as the Texas Republican faces Democratic challenger Rep. Colin Allred in the 2024 election.
foxnews.com
Mauricio Pochettino understands his 'responsibility' with World Cup fast approaching
U.S. men's soccer coach Mauricio Pochettino understands he'll need to work fast if he wants the team to make an impact at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
latimes.com
The Sports Report: Mets even series with Game 2 win over Dodgers
Mets end Dodgers' scoreless streak with six runs in the first two innings and then hang on to even the NLCS.
latimes.com
'Squad' member calls Netanyahu a 'genocidal maniac,' sparking backlash from Israeli ambassador to the UN
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is drawing criticism from an Israeli official for her post on X calling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a "genocidal maniac."
foxnews.com
Harris holds big advantage among early voters, Trump with Election Day voters: poll
Vice President Kamala Harris holds a commanding lead over former President Trump in support from early voters, according to a new NBC News poll released Tuesday.
foxnews.com
Perfume bottle with nerve agent that left UK woman dead contained enough poison to kill thousands
Dawn Sturgess and her partner collapsed after they came into contact with a discarded perfume bottle containing the nerve agent Novichok in the southwest England town of Amesbury.
nypost.com
How Did a Killing at a Sikh Temple Lead to Canada and India Expelling Each Other’s Diplomats?
The two countries expelled each other's top diplomats Monday over an ongoing dispute about the killing of a Sikh activist in Surrey, BC.
time.com
WATCH: Singer takes a tumble during concert
Olivia Rodrigo shocked fans in Melbourne, Australia, after she fell into a hole on the stage. She later posted on social media, saying she was doing fine after the incident.
abcnews.go.com
Biden responds to hurricane survivors' fury over the '$750' FEMA payment and more top headlines
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.
foxnews.com
'I'm confident in DeShaun': UCLA's Martin Jarmond backs coach amid 1-5 start
Despite UCLA football starting 1-5 with one of the worst offenses in the nation, athletic director Martin Jarmond is pleading for fans to be patient.
latimes.com
Time to treat Mark Andrew like a failed fantasy football spin-off
The 2024 version of Mark Andrews is "The Matrix Resurrections" of fantasy football follow-ups.
nypost.com
Democrats have a man problem, and belittling them is only making it worse
Late last week an inconvenient truth for Kamala Harris’ campaign, and the left as a whole, emerged: They have a man problem. Dudes just aren't into her. And the current Veep is losing ground with black male voters — as Trump is increasingly attracting demographics that traditionally leaned Democrat.
nypost.com
The Rise of the MAGA VC
The venture capitalist Shaun Maguire is a particularly prolific poster. And lately, his takes have become almost unavoidable.Maguire manages Sequoia Capital’s stake in Elon Musk’s various companies, including the social network formerly known as Twitter, and he regularly amplifies and excuses Musk’s extreme political opinions. He’s also fond of sharing his own. Over the weekend, he posted a theory that “antifa” is committing mass voter fraud by having ballots sent by the hundreds to vacant houses; Musk signal-boosted Maguire’s concern with the message “Anyone else seeing this sort of thing?” Last week, Maguire advanced the perspective that “DEI was the most effective KGB opp of all time.” To his more than 150,000 followers, the VC has made it clear that he is “prepared to lose friends” over his choice to spit out the metaphorical Kool-Aid that caused him to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.On X, Maguire shows up in the feed alongside other prominent VCs who support Donald Trump—among them, David Sacks of Craft Ventures and Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures. They all express similar opinions in similar ways, and they do so more or less constantly. (Maguire, who did not respond to a request for an interview, posted to X dozens of times this past Saturday alone.) This is an example of, as Paul Krugman recently noted, the “tech bro style in American politics.” It is largely defined by a flat, good-versus-evil worldview. The good? Free speech, which Democrats want to eradicate. The evil? Immigration, which is a plot by Democrats to allow violent criminals into the country and steal the election. San Francisco? A once-great American city purposefully ruined by Democrats. Kamala Harris? Sleepwalking into World War III. Trump? According to Musk, he is “far from being a threat to democracy”—actually, voting for him is “the only way to save it!”A “vibe shift” is under way in Silicon Valley, Michael Gibson, a VC and former vice president of grants at the Thiel Foundation, told me. Eight years ago, the notorious entrepreneur Peter Thiel was the odd man out when he announced his support for Trump. The rest of the Valley appeared to have been horrified by the candidate—particularly by his draconian and racist views on immigration, on which the tech industry relies. This year, J. D. Vance, a Thiel acolyte and former VC himself, is Trump’s running mate. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of the legendary VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, came out in full support of Trump in a podcast episode released just before Joe Biden dropped out of the election. (Last Friday, Axios reported that Horowitz informed Andreessen Horowitz staff members that he and his wife, Felicia, will donate to support Harris “as a result of our friendship” with the candidate. “The Biden Administration,” his note continues, “has been exceptionally destructive on tech policy across the industry, but especially as it relates to Crypto/Blockchain and AI,” mirroring language from the podcast during which he and Andreessen endorsed Trump.)[Read: Silicon Valley got their guy]It’s doubtful that the thoughts of these prominent VCs reflect a broader change in the electorate—tech workers generally support Harris, and barring an unbelievable upset, California will go blue on November 5, as it has for decades. (Though as my colleague Adrienne LaFrance has pointed out, Trump’s vote share in Silicon Valley was 23 percent in 2020—small, but higher than the 20 percent he received in 2016.) And many well-known VCs back Harris, including Rabois’ colleague and Khosla Ventures’ namesake, Vinod Khosla, along with Mark Cuban and the LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. This time around, Thiel has not thrown his weight behind Trump but has instead indicated that he would choose him over Harris if there were a gun to his head.But it is nonetheless significant that a number of influential—and very rich—men are eager to go against the grain. Silicon Valley has historically prided itself on technological supremacy and a belief in social progress: Now many of its loudest and most well-resourced personalities support a candidate who espouses retrograde views across practically every measure of societal progress imaginable. “We are talking about a few people, but I think this also reflects the political economy of the Valley right now,” Margaret O’Mara, an American-history professor at the University of Washington and the author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, told me. “There’s a great deal of money and power and influence concentrated in the hands of a very few people, including these people who are extremely online and have become extremely vocal in support of Trump.” (Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to requests for comment for this article.)If Trump wins, there is a nonzero chance that he would give some of these people major roles in his second administration—Musk is already lobbying for one, with apparent success. If Trump loses, the Harris administration will have highly visible and vehement critics to whom a lot of people listen. Silicon Valley’s main characters are entering the culture war and bringing their enormous fan bases with them.To some extent, this is just business as usual. O’Mara noted that although the tech industry used to claim to be apolitical, it has always had its fair share of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., like every other industry. More than anything else, the industry’s interests have simply followed the money. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan supported defense spending and big contracts with the California tech companies. The result was that “Silicon Valley leaned Republican,” she said. “Silicon Valley started leaning Democratic in the Clinton years, when Clinton and Gore were big proponents of the internet and the growth of the internet industries.”Now many of these venture capitalists are holding on to huge bets on cryptocurrency. They fear—or enjoy suggesting—that Harris is plotting to destroy the industry entirely, a perception she’s trying to combat. Some of them have circulated an unsourced rumor that she would appoint to her Cabinet Gary Gensler, who has pursued strict regulations against the crypto industry as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. (Meanwhile, Trump has promised to save the crypto industry from “living in hell.”) Many in the tech industry worry about Harris’s plans to raise the top capital-gains tax rate. And her support for taxing centimillionaires’ unrealized investment gains has been particularly unpopular. Gibson argued that it would destroy the VC industry completely: “We would see the innovation economy come to a halt.” Even Harris’s supporters in the tech world have pressured the campaign not to pursue the tax; “There’s optimism that this can’t possibly be real,” Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, told The New York Times in August. Also at issue is the labor movement. The tech industry came up during an era of lower regulation and declining union power, O’Mara pointed out. Nonunionized workforces have been essential to many of these companies’ business models, and collective action used to be more rare in their perk-filled offices. Yet during and after the pandemic, contractors and employees of major tech companies expressed dissatisfaction en masse: They wanted more diversity in the workforce, fairer treatment, and protection from the layoffs sweeping the industry. Some of them unionized. The companies faced, as O’Mara put it, “discontent among a group of people who had never been discontented.” The new labor movement has clearly rankled prominent tech figures, Musk among them. He is challenging the nearly century-old legislation behind the National Labor Relations Board, with the goal of having it declared unconstitutional. [Read: Palo Alto’s first tech giant was a horse farm]But business doesn’t explain everything. The American public’s attitude toward the tech industry has curdled since 2016, in large part because of critical reporting—about labor abuses, privacy problems, manipulative algorithms, and the bizarre and upsetting experiences one might have on social platforms at any given time. When I spoke with Gibson, he suggested that declining revenue in the digital-media business may have created some “rivalrous envy” on the part of journalists. (And it’s true that the media industry can and does cite the whims of tech platforms as a source of its financial problems.) “We are being lied to,” Andreessen wrote in his widely read and rueful Techno-Optimist Manifesto last year. “We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology.” This, he suggested, was not just wrongheaded but harmful. Andreessen Horowitz, at one point, launched a media publication with the stated mission of publishing writing that was “unapologetically pro-tech.”Meanwhile, the federal government has pursued antitrust action and bipartisan efforts to regulate social media, while state governments have won huge settlements for workers. This has been a major shock: Silicon Valley was celebrated by previous Democratic administrations and was particularly welcome in both the Obama campaign and White House. Now some tech leaders are being treated like villains—which seems to have led some of them to embrace the label. “These are some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, and they are presenting themselves, in a way, like Trump is,” O’Mara observed. They’re positioning themselves in public based on their grievances and their feeling that they’ve been unjustly targeted and maybe even embarrassingly spurned.Venture capitalists are public figures in a way they didn’t used to be. Many of them were famous founders first, and they have their own brands to maintain. “It’s part of the job to promote yourself,” Lee Edwards, a general partner at Root Ventures, told me. “I think you get in the habit of just tweeting your thoughts.”That might have hurt business not too long ago. In 2016, when Thiel endorsed Trump, Gibson had to worry about losing seats at dinners or speaking slots at events. That’s not the case now, he told me. He pointed to Mark Zuckerberg’s recent efforts to distance himself from Democrats. Although he has had a terrible relationship with Trump in the past—one that reached its nadir when the former president was temporarily banned from Facebook over the inflammatory comments he made during the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021—he has made tentative overtures to the candidate recently. The two have reportedly spoken one-on-one a couple of times this year, and Zuckerberg complimented Trump on his “bad ass” reaction (a fist pump) after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. Zuckerberg hasn’t said how he’ll vote, but it’s a sign of change that he would talk about Trump in these terms at all. “The chill in the air has warmed up,” Gibson said.When I spoke with Kathryn Olmsted, a historian at UC Davis and the author of Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism, she said she’d be interested to hear whether this turned out to be a California story or “a very rich-person” story that happened to be taking place in California. Maybe it wasn’t so much about Silicon Valley or the tech industry as it was about billionaires. From another perspective, it could be a really rich-person story taking place on a social-media platform owned by one of those really rich people. And those people, despite their increasing public vociferousness, might actually be cloistered in their own world—isolated and deluded enough to believe that migrants are somehow a threat to their livelihood and that radical leftists are really going to steal the election. “What I’m seeing from VCs around the country is different from what I’m seeing amongst the Twitter VCs,” Candice Matthews Brackeen, of Lightship Capital, told me. “Some of us live … off of there.” Others I spoke with pointed to an effort called VCs for Kamala, a loose organization with hundreds of signatories on a letter supporting Harris’s candidacy. That group was organized by Leslie Feinzaig, a venture capitalist and registered independent who says she has never before made a political donation.The recent media coverage of Silicon Valley “was creating the impression that the entire industry, that all of venture capital, was going MAGA,” Feinzaig told me. “In my conversations, that was just not the case.” She wanted someone to step up and say that a lot of VCs were supporting Harris and that it wasn’t because they were on the far left. Many of them were registered Republicans, even. They simply had different priorities from the rich, angry guys posting on X. “I’m at the beginning of my career,” she said. “A lot of these guys are at the pinnacle of theirs.” She couldn’t say exactly what had happened to them. “There’s a cynicism at that point that I just don’t share.”
theatlantic.com
Immigrants Are ‘Normal People Forced to Flee Their Countries’
Seventy Miles in the Darién GapFor the September 2024 issue, Caitlin Dickerson reported on the impossible path to America.As a Colombian American, I was deeply moved by “Seventy Miles in the Darién Gap.” Thank you, Caitlin Dickerson, for your courage. I had the deep fortune of migrating to the United States legally with my parents in the 1990s, so I didn’t experience the Darién Gap personally. Recently, I’ve been helping a Colombian refugee who traveled through the Darién Gap. He began to tell me of his experiences there, and I was astounded by his story. He is understandably still processing what he witnessed, and I am letting him go at his own pace. Dickerson’s reporting offered a remarkable window onto a harrowing journey undertaken by the most desperate of people. Thank you for investing in such solid journalistic work. Now I’m going to go hug my dogs and wife.Carlos Enrique GomezUnion City, Calif.As a citizen of the United States and an avid consumer of its news, I’m saddened that most mainstream-media coverage of our immigration woes focuses on controlling our borders and not the underlying reasons people risk, and even lose, their lives in their attempts to immigrate here.For those who only listen to sound bites, the word immigrant conjures frightening notions—outsiders on a quest to thwart our border security and take some of what we consider to be ours. In Donald Trump’s view, they are murderers, criminals, and rapists.Caitlin Dickerson’s article reveals that these are mostly just normal people forced to flee their countries due to conditions beyond their control. I can’t imagine how dire circumstances would have to be for me to leave my home! It’s telling and sad to see that U.S. policy to discourage immigration has had the effect of increasing death rates among those who are already so helpless. Not to mention driving new profits for drug cartels.I hope we can have more coverage centered on the root causes of immigration. After all, U.S. policy created many of the problems that plague countries in Latin America.Peter BrownLyman, MaineI teach high-school English in Columbus, Ohio. Last year, one of my students wrote an essay about his experience traveling through the Darién Gap. It was the first time I had ever heard of it. This student was hardworking and kind, and I was amazed by his story. When he wrote it, he had been in the United States for just over a year. It’s 288 words, with minimal punctuation and no paragraph breaks.He left his home country in South America with his mom and sisters. After passing through the Darién Gap, they spent time in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, before eventually ending up in Ohio.He concluded his essay with this: “It affects me in what? I got a lot of depression and stress and I won’t do something like that again.” I feel lucky to have taught this student, and I appreciate that The Atlantic covered this topic.Chase MontanaColumbus, Ohio‘Lord, Help Us Make America Great Again’In the September 2024 issue, McKay Coppins considered the most revealing moment of a Donald Trump rally.McKay Coppins’s close reading of Trump-rally prayers was unsettling, even frightening. I was concerned less by the apocalyptic fear and strange theology that the prayers mobilized, and more by the unnerving similarity I saw to the rhetoric marshaled against Trump and Republicans by their adversaries.I confess to seeing in Trump’s opponents—and I count myself among them—the same tendency toward exaggeration (Trump is a modern Hitler, Trump is an existential threat to democracy). Conservatives have been quick to argue that many progressives behave with a quasi-religious zeal: Popular slogans echo liturgy; cancel culture exists as a penalty for heresy.I’d like to think that there are differences between Trump and his critics that I’m not discerning. Could The Atlantic do a similar sort of analysis of the weirder expressions by Democrats and progressives?Gary GaffieldFort Myers, Fla.My Mother the RevolutionaryFor the September 2024 issue, Xochitl Gonzalez considered what happens when fomenting socialist revolution conflicts with raising a family.As a mother of young children and a committed socialist organizer, I found that Xochitl Gonzalez’s recent article presented an unrealistic and at times bizarre portrait of the lives of people like me. The bulk of the article is a slippery mix of memory, feeling, and fact—understandable if its purpose was to explore the bitter process of reconciliation between an absent parent and her child, but unsatisfying if it aims to provide an accurate political analysis.What moved me to comment was the strange choice, 6,000 words into an almost-7,000-word essay, to pivot to a discussion of the presidential campaign of Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia, who are running on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Although the author conducted an interview with the candidates, the only remnant of that interaction was a physical description of them (They are—“not that it matters—beautiful”) and a hasty reduction of their political platform (Burn it all down. Start from scratch). What a shame to silence these women and conflate their candidacy with the aberrant personal experiences of the author.Polls show that more and more young adults like me have positive attitudes toward socialism. We see the failures of capitalism all around us, and we are eagerly dedicating ourselves to building a socialist future. Although the article depicts socialist activism as a kind of personal obliteration, a subordination of our individual selves to the menacing whims of “the party,” the reality, in my experience, could not be further from the truth.I proudly support Claudia and Karina, not just because their politics offer the only viable path out of poverty, imperialist wars, and ecological crisis, but also because they are working mothers like me. When they speak about inflation at the grocery store, it is from experience. When they speak about the astronomical cost of child care, it is from experience. When they speak about fighting for a world that truly nurtures our children, it is proof that our identities as mothers are an asset, not a liability, in this struggle.Moira Casados CassidyDenver, Colo.Behind the CoverIn “Washington’s Nightmare,” Tom Nichols revisits the life of George Washington, whose bravery and self-command established an ideal that all future presidents would, with varying degrees of success, attempt to emulate. All, that is, save Donald Trump, a man who shares none of Washington’s qualities and exhibits the kind of base motives that the first president saw as a threat to the republic. For the cover, we turned to Gilbert Stuart’s The Athenaeum Portrait. The unfinished nature of the work suggests the ongoing American experiment, but also the existential danger that a second Trump term poses.— Elizabeth Hart, Art DirectorCorrection“You Think You’re So Heterodox” (October) misstated where Joe Rogan’s home is located. It is west of Austin, not east of Austin.This article appears in the November 2024 print edition with the headline “The Commons.”
theatlantic.com
How to Make Lying Unpopular in Politics
It's time for politicians to take a pro-truth pledge, writes Bill Adair.
time.com
Nebraska is the only state with two abortion measures on the ballot. Confusion is the point.
Petitioners gather signatures for the Protect Our Rights campaign on Saturday, March 9, 2024, in Omaha, Nebraska. Voters in 10 states will weigh in on abortion-rights ballot measures this November, but only Nebraskans will cast ballots on two competing initiatives. Initiative 439 would establish a state constitutional right to abortion up to fetal viability or when necessary to protect the “health or life” of the pregnant patient. Initiative 434, however, would ban abortion in the second and third trimesters, with exceptions for sexual assault, incest, or medical emergencies. “We hear all the time how confusing the two measures are and folks are very afraid of accidentally checking the wrong one,” said Shelley Mann, the executive director of Nebraska Abortion Resources (NEAR), the only statewide abortion fund in Nebraska. Much of the confusion surrounding the competing proposals is intentional, and likely a preview of new tactics in the evolving anti-abortion playbook.  Since May 2023, abortion in Nebraska has been banned past the first trimester, and last fall reproductive choice advocates launched a ballot measure campaign to restore and expand access. Anti-abortion leaders introduced a competing measure four months later. (The proposed anti-abortion ballot measure wouldn’t expand current restrictions, but it would embed existing second- and third-trimester bans into Nebraska’s state constitution. This would make it significantly more difficult for the legislature or courts to roll back those restrictions later.) While collecting signatures, some canvassers from the Protect Women and Children campaign misrepresented themselves as being in favor of expanding abortion access, leading hundreds of Nebraskans to erroneously sign their petition.  Upon realizing their mistake, more than 300 of those voters signed affidavits to have their names removed from the anti-abortion petition, marking the highest number of removal requests in the state’s history. (Over 205,000 people signed the anti-abortion petition in total.)  More recently, Catherine Brooks — a neonatal pediatrician who filed legal objections to block the pro-abortion rights measure from appearing on Nebraska’s ballot — appeared in a TV ad in which she portrayed herself as an advocate for reproductive freedom fighting against government intrusion in medicine.  “As a doctor, I want compassionate, clear, scientific standards of care,” Brooks said in the ad. “As a mom, I want to keep the government out of the relationship between a woman and her physician. Initiative 439 pretends to protect our rights but it does the opposite. It lets government officials interfere in medical decisions and takes care out of the hands of licensed physicians, when women in crisis need them most.” There’s little doubt that Republicans in Nebraska hope to restrict abortion beyond the existing 12-week ban, which was passed shortly after lawmakers narrowly failed to impose a six-week limit. Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Jim Pillen has publicly pledged to continue fighting until abortion is fully banned in his state.  The outcome of these dueling ballot proposals could affect not just those in Nebraska but pregnant people nationwide. Abortion rights activists have been sounding the alarm, warning that if Initiative 434 succeeds in November, anti-abortion leaders will export their winning strategy elsewhere — using the language of reproductive freedom to advance seemingly moderate measures that obscure long-term goals of deeper bans. Nebraska’s 12-week abortion ban is already causing harm The 12-week abortion ban Nebraska lawmakers passed in May 2023 included exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother. As in other states, these exceptions have proved ambiguous for doctors on the ground, and many patients who need abortion care have been unable to get it.  Kim Paseka, a 34-year-old woman based in Lincoln, Nebraska, was one of those patients. Paseka lives with her husband and their 3-year-old son, and though they wanted at least two children, they were unsure about pursuing that in Nebraska after Roe was overturned. “We knew it was probably inevitable that our state government was going to work on banning reproductive health care in some capacity and it definitely gave us pause, like should we move, do we stay and fight? Those were our dinner table conversations,” she told Vox. In the summer of 2023, just after Nebraska lawmakers passed their 12-week ban, Paseka learned she was pregnant again.  Initial blood tests looked fine, but following a routine ultrasound, Paseka was informed that her baby’s heartbeat was slower than expected. In subsequent appointments, the doctors determined the heartbeat was diminishing and that Paseka was carrying a nonviable pregnancy.  Because of the new ban and the fact that Paseka’s life was not immediately threatened, her doctors weren’t comfortable ending the pregnancy. They sent her home with instructions for “expectant management” — meaning to wait until she’d bleed out eventually with a miscarriage.  “I had to go back to the hospital for three more scans, where I had to see the heartbeat weaken further week by week, and during this whole time I’m so nauseous, I’m tired, I’m experiencing all the regular pregnancy symptoms, but I was carrying a nonviable pregnancy,” she said. It took roughly a month for Paseka to finally bleed out the pregnancy at home. “In Nebraska, we have these exceptions, but in my situation it wasn’t assault, it wasn’t incest, and my life wasn’t in immediate danger, so I automatically just lose health care,” she said. “They’re forgetting how detrimental that can be to mental health, that it’s not just about physical endangerment. … I felt like a walking coffin.”  Mann, the executive director of Nebraska’s statewide abortion fund, emphasized that the 12-week ban has had far-reaching consequences that most people underestimate.  “Not only are folks now restricted in how and when they can get the care they need, but it’s additionally problematic that these rules are designed to be confusing and were brought about during a time when confusion was at an all-time high,” she told Vox. “We talk to callers and members of the community all the time who have no idea when and if abortion is even legal here in Nebraska.”There are two remaining abortion clinics in the state, though both only perform abortions part-time, meaning there sometimes are not enough appointments to go around, including for patients traveling in from states with near-total bans like Iowa and South Dakota.“This means that not only are patients who are past the 12-week mark forced to flee the state for care, but even patients under that ban restriction are sometimes having to travel just to get an appointment in a timely manner,” Mann explained. “These patients are going to places like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Denver … this travel is often expensive, inconvenient, and overall an enormous burden on pregnant people.” Anti-abortion leaders plan to push for further restrictions in Nebraska Initiative 434, also known as the Prohibit Abortions After the First Trimester Amendment, sounds almost like a measure to protect abortion access in the first 12 weeks of a pregnancy. The proposal, which is being primarily funded by Nebraska billionaire and US Sen. Pete Ricketts, does not in fact do that. On top of codifying the state’s existing ban on abortion past 12 weeks into Nebraska’s constitution, the measure allows lawmakers to pass further legislative bans on top. Put differently, it strengthens abortion bans but provides no meaningful increase in abortion access.  Marion Miner, the associate director for “pro-life and family policy” at the Nebraska Catholic Conference, emphasized in a video posted over the summer that he does not see Initiative 434 as “an acceptable final resolution” because it does “not protect all unborn children” including those born from sexual assault or incest. “It is an imperfect proposal … an incremental pro-life initiative that takes a small step to protect unborn life without restraining us from doing more,” Miner said, stressing Initiative 434 would “allow for additional protections to be passed in the future.”  Over a century ago, Nebraska lawmakers enacted a law stating that if two conflicting state constitutional ballot measures pass, the measure with the most votes will be adopted. According to Nebraska Secretary of State Bob Evnen, if both Initiative 439 and Initiative 434 pass, it would mark the first time this 1912 law could be used. “It’s possible that one of the proposals could get approved and not be adopted,” Evnen told NPR in May. “It’ll come down to, whichever one receives the most votes is the one that would go into Nebraska’s constitution.” Even the existing 12-week ban, often described by conservatives as a moderate compromise, appears out of step with what Nebraskans want. The ACLU of Nebraska found in late 2022 that 59 percent of respondents opposed lawmakers enacting abortion bans, with opposition in both rural and urban areas and every congressional district. In the more than two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights ballot measures have succeeded in all seven states in which they’ve appeared, including red and purple states like Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Michigan, and Montana. This year, high-profile abortion rights measures are on the ballot in states like Florida, Arizona, and Missouri. Nebraska’s contests, relative to these other states, have received less attention.  “They know public opinion is on our side so they’re doing everything they can to muddy the waters,” said Allie Berry, the manager for the Protect Our Rights campaign, which is leading Nebraska’s ballot measure to expand abortion rights. While Berry feels cautiously optimistic, she understands her opponents are striving to trip up voters. “If they succeed here,” Berry predicts, “they’ll try this in every other state.”
vox.com
Opinion: Kamala’s Talks to Go on Joe Rogan’s Podcast Show Up Campaign Jitters
Vivian Zink/SyfyVice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has opened discussions with Joe Rogan that could see her sit down for an interview with the controversial podcast host who counts an army of impressionable young men among his listeners.Officials from the Democratic nominee’s campaign met with Rogan’s team this week, according to a report by Reuters.Harris’ outreach to Rogan suggests a significant shift in her campaign following a panic of sorts among Democrats who worried her previously light, cautious schedule was scuttling her chances in the election.Read more at The Daily Beast.
thedailybeast.com
How a Monet painting looted in WWII was tracked to US, returned to family heirs
An early pastel of a Normandy beach by impressionist master Claude Monet was reunited with the descendants of its rightful owner after research by the Looted Art Commission in Europe.
foxnews.com
Miscarriages are incredibly common. Abortion bans have made them less safe.
vox.com
Troops blamed for deaths of nurse, girl near Mexico-U.S. border
The shooting deaths, if confirmed, would mark the second time in two weeks that Mexican military forces have killed civilians.
cbsnews.com
WATCH: 2 giant pandas headed from China to the National Zoo in Washington DC
Zookeepers will welcome two giant pandas to their new home in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.
abcnews.go.com
Trump Tears Into Harris Over Her Medical Records—While Refusing to Release His Own
Rebecca Noble/Getty ImagsImpervious as ever to irony, Donald Trump is trying to weaponize his opponent’s medical records against her while staunchly refusing to release his own.In his latest unhinged tirade on Truth Social, the former president posted on Monday that he’s “far healthier than Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden, but especially, Kamala,” adding that he is naturally “far too busy campaigning to take the time” to, you know, prove it.His comments come amid mounting pressure to provide evidence of his physical and mental health, not least after a letter was released on Sunday by Doctors for Harris, a group of pro-Democratic medical professionals, warning “Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.”Read more at The Daily Beast.
thedailybeast.com
Husband of Boston nurse accused of killing their 3 children speaks out: ‘I wasn’t married to a monster’
“I wasn’t married to a monster — I was married to someone who got sick.”
nypost.com
Israel reveals Hezbollah special forces terrorist 'bunker' located under home with weapons, motorcycles
Israel's military has uncovered a bunker it says Hezbollah's special forces unit was using to plan a cross-border attack on Israeli citizens.
foxnews.com
His daughter was murdered. Then she reappeared as an AI chatbot.
Drew Crecente’s daughter was murdered nearly two decades ago. Earlier this month, he discovered that her name and image had been used to create an AI chatbot.
washingtonpost.com
Inside the Hall of Fame case for Francisco Lindor, improving with every signature Mets moment
Is Lindor a Hall of Famer now? He is borderline — but also far from done.
nypost.com
Woman who allegedly killed her toddler, dumped body in trash bin on trial
The trial is underway of a Georgia woman, Leilani Simon, who's accused of killing her 20-month-old son and dumping his body in a trash bin two years ago.
cbsnews.com
From MLS to England and now the USMNT: It’s go time for Aidan Morris
The 22-year-old American started 2024 in the midfield for Columbus. Now he’s playing for Middlesborough and impressing new USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino.
washingtonpost.com
Dodgers not prioritizing victory in Game 2 of the NLCS is a risky strategy
It's clear Dave Roberts didn't view Game 2 of the NLCS as a must-win because it wasn't, but could the Dodgers' pitching strategy come back to bite them?
latimes.com