Making The Electoral Count Count: Congress Must Reach A Consensus On Election Reform
Making The Electoral Count Count: Congress Must Reach A Consensus On Election Reform https://digitalalaskanews.com/making-the-electoral-count-count-congress-must-reach-a-consensus-on-election-reform/
Democracy-preserving changes to the outdated 1887 Electoral Count Act, passed at a time when legislators couldn’t imagine a situation like the shameful events that led up to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, must be approved by Congress. The question now is whether that will be the version passed last week by the House, the version introduced in the Senate, or something in between.
There’s no doubt that the House version is more robust. It lays out five specific categories of reasons why an objection to a state’s electors might be raised by Congress and would require at least a third of each chamber to support the raising of such an objection, plus a majority vote to substantiate it; the Senate version would only require a fifth of members to raise an objection.
FILE – Vice President Mike Pence stands to officiate with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as a joint session of the House and Senate convenes to count the Electoral College votes cast in November’s election, at the Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Yet these are details, and both versions substantially tighten up what are currently far too permissive standards for both Congress and state governments to interfere with elections. On the most significant and fundamental points, such as eliminating the ability for state legislatures to throw out slates simply by declaring an election to be “failed,” the House and Senate are in lockstep, and they must now work together to get these important shifts over the finish line.
The House’s rush to pass a version that the bipartisan group of legislators hashing it out in the Senate don’t seem particularly enthused about certainly hasn’t helped, but the bill’s trajectory is far from derailed. Sen. Susan Collins, one of the lead negotiators, reiterated her commitment to getting some form of the bill finalized while keeping the 11 GOP senators currently signed on. That’s vital, given that 60 votes are the threshold to accomplish almost anything in the Senate.
If the price is slightly watering down the stricter tenets of the House-passed bill, so be it. Without concrete action soon, the entire democratic electoral process that put these policymakers in office and imbues them with power on behalf of the public is in jeopardy. Do whatever is necessary to protect the will of the people.
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How The US Can Beat China And Russia In New Energy Tech
How The US Can Beat China And Russia In New Energy Tech https://digitalalaskanews.com/how-the-us-can-beat-china-and-russia-in-new-energy-tech/
America’s energy innovation engine has been a well-oiled machine for nearly 50 years. We’re on the verge of building what could be the greatest energy technologies we’ve ever seen, but you know the saying—it’s hard to find good help.
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funded demonstration projects authorized in the Energy Act signed by President Donald Trump in 2020. It was the biggest US Department of Energy project since the Manhattan project.
The IIJA included $27 billion for grid infrastructure and $21.5 billion for a new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). If done right, this investment may be our key to beating China and Russia in the race for next-generation energy technologies.
Staffing Needs
Historically, DOE has been a giant nuclear defense and science R&D agency. It has focused on building and maintaining nuclear weapons, power plants for subs and carriers, not to mention the Human Genome Project, giant particle colliders, and other world-altering innovations like quantum computing. It owns and operates the 17 National Laboratories, building and running cutting-edge science infrastructure.
The Department, however, has little experience with specific ready-for-first-deployment commercial energy technology. In an August report, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General raised similar concerns outlining risk areas such as insufficient staffing, circumvention of project controls, insufficient project oversight, and inadequate internal and recipient-level controls DOE’s team has brilliant minds and policy expertise.
But even in the applied offices, they are staffed with early-stage technology R&D funding experts, not people with experience building commercial-scale energy facilities.
The agency’s Loan Programs Office, created in 2005 to bridge new technologies with available capital, has had some incredible wins—including Tesla—but also some high-profile losses. Some projects failed simply because the right people weren’t in place to assist with the selection process. The current office has brought in leaders with deep industry experience to fill gaps and get things done.
Policy Needs
Congressional oversight to ensure these programs succeed is obvious, but there are three internal policy changes DOE could implement.
First, DOE needs to immediately hire both political and career employees with experience delivering power plants and other energy facilities on time and on budget.
That means senior energy engineers, private sector technology investment leaders, former employees of large utilities or equipment manufacturers, plant developers, corporate capital allocators, and fund investors who have depth in building commercial projects.
David Crane, former chief executive officer of NRG who was recently nominated to be Under Secretary for Infrastructure at DOE, indicates this goal is on the right track.
Second, the Department needs to use peer-review advisory boards for each technology class. For example, the Office of Nuclear Energy, when creating the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, assembled a blue-ribbon advisory committee of commercial nuclear experts along with investors, ensuring applicants with the best chance of commercial success were selected.
This peer review process has been used successfully by DOE’s Office of Science to review funding opportunity proposals for decades and should be looked at for all the new OCED selections.
Finally, the new OCED must have strong, defined coordination with the existing applied energy offices. These offices should provide perspective on which technologies are ready for demonstration, while OCED can focus on successful implementation—and getting the money out the door. Vice versa, learnings from OCED can feed into new R&D efforts at the applied energy offices.
Big-Picture Goals
Earthshots, the Department’s big-picture goal concept, is an organizing principle initiated with SunShot in the Obama Administration and continued as the Energy Storage Grand Challenge in the Trump administration.
It can be a useful mechanism for coordinating activity all the way from basic science to the applied programs through to the major demonstrations. We know that investing wisely in innovation pays off.
Major advances in new energy technology, from the lithium-ion battery to nuclear energy to renewables, had serious government support in their early stages—even the fracking revolution that caused the gas boom started with a total of $10 billion in research and development plus tax incentives.
There are many parts of our energy and industrial systems where we don’t yet have the cheaper, cleaner alternatives needed to build the systems of the future. But this demonstration program with accompanying incentives can help get us there.
Staffed with private industry, construction, and operations experience, we’ll be on the way to renewed American energy independence, and the next generation of technologies that could solve both the near-term global energy and geopolitical crises and longer-term emissions challenges.
If not, we’ll squander this opportunity to significantly accelerate American energy technology.
This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.
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Author Information
Paul Dabbar served as the Department of Energy’s fourth under secretary for Science and Energy.
Rich Powell is CEO of ClearPath, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that develops and advances policies that accelerate breakthrough innovations to reduce emissions in the energy and industrial sectors.
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Sterling Crumbles To All-Time Nadir Euro At 20-Year Low
Sterling Crumbles To All-Time Nadir, Euro At 20-Year Low https://digitalalaskanews.com/sterling-crumbles-to-all-time-nadir-euro-at-20-year-low/
Woman holds British pound banknotes in this illustration taken May 30, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/
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LONDON, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Sterling crashed to a record low on Monday as traders scampered for the exits on mounting concern that the new government’s economic plan will stretch Britain’s finances to the limit.
The British pound’s searing drop helped the safe-haven U.S. dollar to a new two-decade peak against a basket of major peers, while the euro hit a fresh two-decade low against the greenback.
In Japan, authorities reiterated that they stood ready to respond to speculative currency moves, after they intervened last week to bolster the yen for the first time since 1998.
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But it was sterling’s precipitous fall that grabbed traders’ attention. It slumped as much as 4.9% to an all-time nadir of $1.0327 , before stabilising around $1.0699 in early London trade — still down 1.5% on the day.
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That followed a 3.6% drop on Friday, when new finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled historic tax cuts funded by the biggest increase in borrowing since 1972. Kwarteng on Sunday dismissed the freefall in the pound, saying his strategy was to focus more on longer-term growth and not short-term market reaction.
Sterling also tumbled 1.3% against the euro, having hit its lowest since September 2020 at 92.60 pence .
Kit Juckes, head of currency strategy Societe Generale in London, said markets had a tendency to overshoot but noted two points on sterling’s slide.
“One is the loss of confidence in UK fiscal policy and that won’t help sterling,” he said. “The second is that the mini budget has allowed sterling to be the short of choice against the dollar.”
The euro also touched a fresh 20-year trough at $0.9528 , as the pound’s slide rippled across markets.
Sunday’s election in Italy, in which a rightist bloc looked set for a solid majority, was also in focus.
The dollar built on its recovery against the yen following last week’s currency intervention by Japanese authorities.
It firmed 0.3% to 143.76 yen , heading back toward Thursday’s 24-year peak of 145.90. It tumbled to around 140.31 that same day after Japan conducted yen-buying intervention for the first time since 1998.
The dollar index – whose basket includes sterling, the euro and the yen – reached 114.58 for the first time since May 2002 before easing to 113.16, just a touch firmer on the day.
“The dollar strength was in large part because of the heavy selling of the sterling,” said Saktiandi Supaat, regional head of FX research and strategy at Maybank.
“It’s more of a risk-off sort of thing,” Supaat added. “Global recession fears have actually intensified and widened quite broadly.”
The risk-sensitive Australian dollar briefly slumped to $0.64845, its lowest since May 2020, and the Canadian dollar reached a fresh trough at C$1.3638 per greenback, its weakest since July 2020.
China’s offshore yuan slid to a new low of 7.1728 per dollar, its weakest since May 2020. Onshore, the yuan also touched a 28-month trough of 7.1690.
The fresh lows came even as the central bank said it will reinstate foreign exchange risk reserves for some forwards contracts, a move that would make betting against the yuan more expensive and slow the pace of its recent depreciation.
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Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; additional reporting by Kevin Buckland and Rae Wee; editing by
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Protests Erupt In Russia's Dagestan Region Over Putin's Mobilization Orders
Protests Erupt In Russia's Dagestan Region Over Putin's Mobilization Orders https://digitalalaskanews.com/protests-erupt-in-russias-dagestan-region-over-putins-mobilization-orders/
(CNN)Heated protests have broken out in some ethnic minority regions in Russia against Vladimir Putin’s mobilization orders, with activist groups and Ukrainian officials saying these minorities are being disproportionately targeted for conscription in the war.
Several videos posted to social media, which CNN geo-located to the predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan, show women in the capital Makhachkala pleading with police outside a theater.
“Why are you taking our children? Who attacked who? It’s Russia that attacked Ukraine,” they can be heard saying in the video. Groups of women then begin chanting “No war,” as the police officer walks away.
In other confrontations in the city, police can be seen pushing back against the protesters, with people being violently detained by police while others flee on foot.
The independent Russian monitoring group OVD-Info reported that several arrests were made, including that of a local journalist who was reporting on the day’s protests.
Makhachkala Mayor Salman Dadayev called for calm Sunday, urging people not to “succumb to the provocations of persons engaged in anti-state activities.”
“I urge you not to commit illegal acts, each of which will be assessed by the law enforcement agencies for legal consequences,” said Dadayev, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
In another video, filmed in the town of Endirei in Dagestan, a police officer is seen shooting his rifle into the air in an apparent attempt to disperse a crowd of protesters.
The protests come after Putin declared last Wednesday that 300,000 reservists would be drafted under an immediate “partial mobilization,” in a bid to reinforce his faltering invasion of Ukraine.
Though Russian authorities have said it would only affect Russians with previous military experience, the decree itself gives much broader terms, sowing fear among Russians of a wider draft in the future — and the implications for ethnic minorities.
“Since mobilization started, we are actually seeing a much greater push to get people from those (ethnic minority) republics to go to war,” said Anton Barbashin, the editorial director at Riddle Russia, an online journal on Russian affairs.
“Mobilization there seems to be in much greater disarray — people are being grabbed from universities,” told CNN. “It’s already starting to make people question the policy, like in Dagestan.”
In Russian-occupied Crimea, the mobilization order has prompted Tatar men — members of an indigenous ethnic group — to flee, said Ukraine’s presidential representative to Crimea.
“On the territory of the occupied Crimea, Russia focuses on the Crimean Tatars during the course of mobilization,” said Representative Tamila Tasheva on Ukraine’s Parliament TV Sunday. “Currently, thousands of Crimean Tatars, including their families, are leaving Crimea through the territory of Russia mostly for Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan.”
Former Mongolian President Elbergdorj Tsakhia also urged Putin to end the war on Friday, saying Mongol citizens in Russia were being forced to fight.
“I know, since the start of this bloody war, ethnic minorities who live in Russia suffered the most. The Buryat Mongols, Tuva Mongols and Kalmyk Mongols have suffered a lot,” he said. “They have been used as nothing more than cannon fodder.”
Anti-mobilization protests have spread across the country, with more than 2,350 people arrested since the announcement, according to OVD-Info.
At a protest in the far eastern city of Yakutsk on Sunday, a crowd of women chanted, “Give back our grandfathers!” Some residents in Sakha Republic, where Yakutsk is the capital, have been conscripted “by mistake” despite not being eligible for mobilization, illustrating the chaotic roll-out of Putin’s order.
And Crimea isn’t the only place facing an exodus; military-age men across Russia are choosing to flee rather than risk being conscripted. Video footage shows long lines of traffic at land border crossings into several neighboring countries, and surging airfares and sold out flights in recent days.
Four of the five EU countries bordering Russia have banned entry for Russians on tourist visas, while queues to cross land borders out of Russia to the former Soviet countries Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia were reportedly taking more than 24 hours to cross.
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Tropical Storm Ian's Uncertain Path Has All Of Florida Preparing For A Major Hurricane
Tropical Storm Ian's Uncertain Path Has All Of Florida Preparing For A Major Hurricane https://digitalalaskanews.com/tropical-storm-ians-uncertain-path-has-all-of-florida-preparing-for-a-major-hurricane/
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(CNN)Its exact path still uncertain, Tropical Storm Ian strengthened Sunday night as it churned in the Caribbean, threatening to arrive in Florida as a hurricane packing powerful winds and dangerous storm surge.
Even as the storm grows stronger — with sustained winds now at 65 mph — there remains “higher than usual” uncertainty over its track and intensity, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is forecast to become a hurricane Monday and strengthen to a major hurricane of Category 3 or higher by Tuesday, the center said.
lan is forecast to grow to hurricane strength when it nears western Cuba Monday morning, potentially reaching Category 2 strength when it makes landfall. “Life-threatening” storm surge and hurricane-force winds are expected, the center said. “Efforts to protect life and property should be rushed to completion,” forecasters added.
The storm is expected to produce “heavy rainfall, flash flooding, and possible mudslides” in areas of higher terrain, particularly over Jamaica and Cuba.
Models project different scenarios about where it could make landfall in Florida, and how strong it could be by midweek. As of Sunday, meteorologists predicted the storm will peak at Category 4 strength over the eastern Gulf of Mexico, then weaken before reaching Florida.
Regardless of lan’s exact track and intensity, Floridians are being asked to prepare as they face the risk of dangerous storm surge, strong winds, and heavy rainfall along the west coast and the Florida Panhandle, the hurricane center said.
With flash and urban flooding possible across the Florida Keys and the Florida Peninsula through the middle of the week, a tropical storm warning was issued for the lower Florida Keys from Seven Mile Bridge southward to Key West.
Governor activates national guards, cities brace for potential hurricane
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis activated the National Guard Sunday morning, saying though the path of the storm is still uncertain, the impacts will be broadly felt throughout the state. State and federal disaster declarations were made over the weekend.
One model is projecting Ian to make landfall in the Tampa Bay region while another model is projecting landfall into the Panhandle, DeSantis said.
“Everyone in Florida is going to feel the impacts of the storm,” director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, told CNN Sunday.
A major concern is how quickly the storm can intensify, stressed Jason Dunion, director of NOAA’s hurricane research field program.
“The storm can increase in speed 35 miles per hour in one day,” Dunion said. “You can go from a tropical storm to a Category 1, or Category 1 to a Category 3 in just that 24-hour period. That makes it especially important for folks to pay attention to this storm the next couple of days.”
As the storm approaches, Floridians are being asked to stock up on supplies like radios, water, canned food and medication for at least seven days, and familiarize themselves with evacuation routes.
Residents in Tampa and other areas were seen lining up for sandbags as they prepared for the storm Sunday.
Filling up bags of sand alongside other community members in Orange County, Jose Lugo told CNN affiliate WFTV he knows what can happen if the worst hits.
“It’s better to be prepared than sorry later,” Lugo said. “I was in Puerto Rico visiting my parents a couple days before Fiona hit. I was helping them out, and now I’m here helping myself and everybody else.”
Cities and counties throughout the state are also preparing.
Officials in Tallahassee, the state’s capital, are working to remove debris and make sure the city’s power lines and stormwater systems are clear. “We’re doing everything we can on the front end of the storm to prepare and secure our infrastructure,” Tallahassee Mayor John Dailey said.
St. Petersburg Mayor Kenneth Welch said his city on Florida’s Gulf Coast is in a vulnerable position. “Even a tropical storm can knock our power grid down for an extended amount of time. We’re educating to be prepared and to plan,” Welch told CNN.
No matter what strength the storm hits the state, Florida is preparing for a dangerous storm surge, Guthrie said, which is when the force of a hurricane or storm pushes ocean water onshore.
“We could see a situation of a Category 4 storm surge and Category 1 or 2 landfall,” Guthrie said.
Officials in Cape Coral, a city in southwest Florida known for its many canals, were particularly concerned about storm surge and winds.
“Right now, of course we are like many other cities, we’re preparing for the worst; hoping for the best,” Cape Coral mayor John Gunter told CNN.
In Hillsborough County, Ian’s approach left the school district with “no choice” but to close all schools as campuses transform into storm shelters, according to Hillsborough County Public Schools.
Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach issued a mandatory evacuation order Saturday and canceled classes Monday due to the approaching storm.
Preparations were also underway in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp ordered the activation of the State Operations Center on Monday “to prepare for any potential impact from Tropical Storm Ian later in the week.”
“Though models suggest it will weaken before making landfall on Thursday, and its ultimate route is still undetermined, Ian could result in severe weather damage for large parts of Georgia,” said a news release from the governor’s office.
Floridians must not let their guards down as Ian approaches, experts say
Dunion said ocean temperatures are currently extremely warm, including at great depths below the surface, and this means “a lot of fuel to energize the storms.”
“You can get a storm to rapidly intensify pretty quickly and a lot of our models are suggesting we will indeed see that rapid intensification over the next couple of days,” Dunion said.
Ken Graham, assistant administrator for weather services at NOAA, told CNN rainfall is a leading cause of fatalities in strong tropical systems.
“When you close your eyes and think of a hurricane, you think about the wind, but it is the water that really is hurting people and that is what we really need to talk about. And it is increasing with climate change,” Graham said.
Even the storm hits as a Category 2, it can still produce significant storm surge, Graham said. “You can actually have more people impacted by a storm when it expands like that. So people can’t let their guard down, despite the category,” he added.
“So many people judge the current storm with what they have experienced in the past and the reality is every storm is completely different,” Graham said.
CNN’s Robert Shackelford, Melissa Alonso, Caitlin Kaiser, Michelle Watson contributed to this report.
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LinkedIn Ran Social Experiments On 20 Million Users Over Five Years
LinkedIn Ran Social Experiments On 20 Million Users Over Five Years https://digitalalaskanews.com/linkedin-ran-social-experiments-on-20-million-users-over-five-years/
A study that looked back at those tests found that relatively weak social connections were more helpful in finding jobs than stronger social ties.
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Researchers examined changes that LinkedIn had made to its “People You May Know” algorithm to test what sociologists call the “strength of weak ties.”Credit…Sundry Photography/Alamy
By Natasha Singer
Natasha Singer, a business reporter at The New York Times, teaches a tech accountability journalism course at The Times’s summer program for high school students.
Published Sept. 24, 2022Updated Sept. 25, 2022
LinkedIn ran experiments on more than 20 million users over five years that, while intended to improve how the platform worked for members, could have affected some people’s livelihoods, according to a new study.
In experiments conducted around the world from 2015 to 2019, Linkedin randomly varied the proportion of weak and strong contacts suggested by its “People You May Know” algorithm — the company’s automated system for recommending new connections to its users. Researchers at LinkedIn, M.I.T., Stanford and Harvard Business School later analyzed aggregate data from the tests in a study published this month in the journal Science.
LinkedIn’s algorithmic experiments may come as a surprise to millions of people because the company did not inform users that the tests were underway.
Tech giants like LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, routinely run large-scale experiments in which they try out different versions of app features, web designs and algorithms on different people. The longstanding practice, called A/B testing, is intended to improve consumers’ experiences and keep them engaged, which helps the companies make money through premium membership fees or advertising. Users often have no idea that companies are running the tests on them. (The New York Times uses such tests to assess the wording of headlines and to make decisions about the products and features the company releases.)
But the changes made by LinkedIn are indicative of how such tweaks to widely used algorithms can become social engineering experiments with potentially life-altering consequences for many people. Experts who study the societal impacts of computing said conducting long, large-scale experiments on people that could affect their job prospects, in ways that are invisible to them, raised questions about industry transparency and research oversight.
“The findings suggest that some users had better access to job opportunities or a meaningful difference in access to job opportunities,” said Michael Zimmer, an associate professor of computer science and the director of the Center for Data, Ethics and Society at Marquette University. “These are the kind of long-term consequences that need to be contemplated when we think of the ethics of engaging in this kind of big data research.”
The study in Science tested an influential theory in sociology called “the strength of weak ties,” which maintains that people are more likely to gain employment and other opportunities through arms-length acquaintances than through close friends.
The researchers analyzed how LinkedIn’s algorithmic changes had affected users’ job mobility. They found that relatively weak social ties on LinkedIn proved twice as effective in securing employment as stronger social ties.
In a statement, Linkedin said during the study it had “acted consistently with” the company’s user agreement, privacy policy and member settings. The privacy policy notes that LinkedIn uses members’ personal data for research purposes. The statement added that the company used the latest, “non-invasive” social science techniques to answer important research questions “without any experimentation on members.”
LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, did not directly answer a question about how the company had considered the potential long-term consequences of its experiments on users’ employment and economic status. But the company said the research had not disproportionately advantaged some users.
The goal of the research was to “help people at scale,” said Karthik Rajkumar, an applied research scientist at LinkedIn who was one of the study’s co-authors. “No one was put at a disadvantage to find a job.”
Sinan Aral, a management and data science professor at M.I.T. who was the lead author of the study, said LinkedIn’s experiments were an effort to ensure that users had equal access to employment opportunities.
“To do an experiment on 20 million people and to then roll out a better algorithm for everyone’s jobs prospects as a result of the knowledge that you learn from that is what they are trying to do,” Professor Aral said, “rather than anointing some people to have social mobility and others to not.” (Professor Aral has conducted data analysis for The New York Times, and he received a research fellowship grant from Microsoft in 2010.)
Experiments on users by big internet companies have a checkered history. Eight years ago, a Facebook study describing how the social network had quietly manipulated what posts appeared in users’ News Feeds in order to analyze the spread of negative and positive emotions on its platform was published. The weeklong experiment, conducted on 689,003 users, quickly generated a backlash.
The Facebook study, whose authors included a researcher at the company and a professor at Cornell, contended that people had implicitly consented to the emotion manipulation experiment when they had signed up for Facebook. “All users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook,” the study said, “constituting informed consent for this research.”
Critics disagreed, with some assailing Facebook for having invaded people’s privacy while exploiting their moods and causing them emotional distress. Others maintained that the project had used an academic co-author to lend credibility to problematic corporate research practices.
Cornell later said its internal ethics board had not been required to review the project because Facebook had independently conducted the study and the professor, who had helped design the research, had not directly engaged in experiments on human subjects.
Image
Whether most LinkedIn members understand that they could be subject to experiments that may affect their job opportunities is unknown.Credit…Linkedin
The LinkedIn professional networking experiments were different in intent, scope and scale. They were designed by Linkedin as part of the company’s continuing efforts to improve the relevance of its “People You May Know” algorithm, which suggests new connections to members.
The algorithm analyzes data like members’ employment history, job titles and ties to other users. Then it tries to gauge the likelihood that a LinkedIn member will send a friend invite to a suggested new connection as well as the likelihood of that new connection accepting the invite.
For the experiments, LinkedIn adjusted its algorithm to randomly vary the prevalence of strong and weak ties that the system recommended. The first wave of tests, conducted in 2015, “had over four million experimental subjects,” the study reported. The second wave of tests, conducted in 2019, involved more than 16 million people.
During the tests, people who clicked on the “People You May Know” tool and looked at recommendations were assigned to different algorithmic paths. Some of those “treatment variants,” as the study called them, caused LinkedIn users to form more connections to people with whom they had only weak social ties. Other tweaks caused people to form fewer connections with weak ties.
Whether most LinkedIn members understand that they could be subject to experiments that may affect their job opportunities is unknown.
LinkedIn’s privacy policy says the company may “use the personal data available to us” to research “workplace trends, such as jobs availability and skills needed for these jobs.” Its policy for outside researchers seeking to analyze company data clearly states that those researchers will not be able to “experiment or perform tests on our members.”
But neither policy explicitly informs consumers that LinkedIn itself may experiment or perform tests on its members.
In a statement, LinkedIn said, “We are transparent with our members through our research section of our user agreement.”
In an editorial statement, Science said, “It was our understanding, and that of the reviewers, that the experiments undertaken by LinkedIn operated under the guidelines of their user agreements.”
After the first wave of algorithmic testing, researchers at LinkedIn and M.I.T. hit upon the idea of analyzing the outcomes from those experiments to test the theory of the strength of weak ties. Although the decades-old theory had become a cornerstone of social science, it had not been rigorously proved in a large-scale prospective trial that randomly assigned people to social connections of different strengths.
The outside researchers analyzed aggregate data from LinkedIn. The study reported that people who received more recommendations for moderately weak contacts generally applied for and accepted more jobs — results that dovetailed with the weak-tie theory.
In fact, relatively weak contacts — that is, people with whom LinkedIn members shared only 10 mutual connections — proved much more productive for job hunting than stronger contacts with whom users shared more than 20 mutual connections, the study said.
A year after connecting on LinkedIn, people who had received more recommendations for moderately weak-tie contacts were twice as likely to land jobs at the companies where those acquaintances worked compared with other users who...
From Yale To Jail: Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes' Path KESQ
From Yale To Jail: Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes' Path – KESQ https://digitalalaskanews.com/from-yale-to-jail-oath-keepers-founder-stewart-rhodes-path-kesq/
By JACQUES BILLEAUD and LINDSAY WHITEHURST
Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Long before he assembled one of the largest far-right anti-government militia groups in U.S. history, before his Oath Keepers stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Stewart Rhodes was a promising Yale Law School graduate.
He secured a clerkship on the Arizona Supreme Court, in part thanks to his unusual life story: a stint as an Army paratrooper cut short by a training accident, followed by marriage, college and an Ivy League law degree.
The clerkship was one more rung up from a hardscrabble beginning. But rather than fitting in, Rhodes came across as angry and aggrieved.
He railed to colleagues about how the Patriot Act, which gave the government greater surveillance powers after the Sept. 11 attacks, would erase civil liberties. He referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as a fascist for supporting the Bush administration’s use of “enemy combatant” status to indefinitely detain prisoners.
“He saw this titanic struggle between people like him who wanted individual liberty and the government that would try to take away that liberty,” said Matt Parry, who worked with Rhodes as a clerk for Arizona Supreme Court Justice Mike Ryan.
Rhodes alienated his moderate Republican boss and eventually left the steppingstone job. Since then he has ordered his life around a thirst for greatness and deep distrust of government.
He turned to forming a group rooted in anti-government sentiment, and his message resonated. He gained followers as he went down an increasingly extremist path that would lead to armed standoffs, including with federal authorities at Nevada’s Bundy Ranch. It culminated last year, prosecutors say, with Rhodes engineering a plot to violently stop Democrat Joe Biden from becoming president.
Rhodes, 57, will be back in court Tuesday, but not as a lawyer. He and four others tied to the Oath Keepers are being tried on charges of seditious conspiracy, the most serious criminal allegation leveled by the Justice Department in its far-reaching prosecution of rioters who attacked the Capitol.
Rhodes, Jessica Watkins, Thomas Caldwell, Kenneth Harrelson and Kelly Meggs are the first Jan. 6 defendants to stand trial under a rarely used, Civil War-era law against attempting to overthrow the government or, in this case, block the transfer of presidential power.
The trial will put a spotlight on the secretive group Rhodes founded in 2009 that has grown to include thousands of claimed members and loosely organized chapters across the country, according to Rachel Carroll Rivas, interim deputy director of research with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project.
For Rhodes, it will be a position at odds with the role of greatness that he has long envisioned for himself, said his estranged wife, Tasha Adams.
“He was going to achieve something amazing,” Adams said. “He didn’t know what it was, but he was going to achieve something incredible and earth shattering.”
Rhodes was born in Fresno, California. He shuttled between there and Nevada, sometimes living with his mother and other times with grandparents who were migrant farm workers, part of a multicultural extended family that included Mexican and Filipino relatives. His mother was a minister who had her own radio show in Las Vegas and went by the name Dusty Buckle, Adams said.
Rhodes joined the Army fresh out of high school and served nearly three years before he was honorably discharged in January 1986 after breaking his back in a parachuting accident.
He recovered and was working as a valet in Las Vegas when he met Adams in 1991. He was 25, she was 18.
He had a sense of adventure that was attractive to a young woman brought up in a middle-class, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints family. A few months after the couple started dating, Rhodes accidentally dropped a gun and shot out his eye. He now wears an eye patch.
Adams’ family had set aside money for her to go to college, but after their wedding Rhodes decided he should be the first to attend school. He told her she would need to quit her job teaching ballroom and country dancing and instead support them both by working full time as a stripper so he could focus on doing an excellent job in school, according to Adams. They married, but she found stripping degrading and it clashed with her conservative Mormon upbringing, she said.
“Every night the drive was just so bad. I would just throw up every single night before I went in, it was just so awful,” Adams said. Rhodes would pressure her to go further, increase her exposure or contact with men to make more money, she said. “It was never enough … I felt like I had given up my soul.”
She quit when she got pregnant with their first child, and the couple moved back in with her family. They worried about her but didn’t want to push too far for fear of losing her altogether. By then, Rhodes was the center of her orbit.
Rhodes’ lawyer declined to make him available for an interview and Rhodes declined to answer a list of questions sent by The Associated Press.
After finishing college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Rhodes went to work in Washington as a staffer for Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican congressman, and later attended Yale, with stints in between as an artist and sculptor. Paul did not respond to a request for comment.
Rhodes’ college transcripts earned him entry to several top schools, Adams said. While at Yale, Adams took care of their growing family in a small apartment while he distinguished himself with an award for a paper arguing that the George W. Bush administration’s use of enemy combatant status to hold people suspected of supporting terrorism indefinitely without charge was unconstitutional.
After the Arizona clerkship, the family bounced to Montana and back to Nevada, where he worked on Paul’s presidential campaign in 2008. That’s when Rhodes also began to formulate his idea of starting the Oath Keepers. He put a short video and blog post on Blogspot and “it went viral overnight,” Adams said. Rhodes was interviewed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, but also more mainstream media figures such as Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly.
He formally launched the Oath Keepers in Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19, 2009, where the first shot in the American Revolution was fired.
“We know that if a day should come in this country when a full-blown dictatorship would come or tyranny, from the left or from the right, we know that it can only happen if those men, our brothers in arms, go along and comply with unconstitutional, unlawful orders,” Rhodes said in his Lexington speech, which didn’t garner any news coverage.
The group’s stated goal was to get past and present members of the military, first responders and police officers to honor the promise they made to defend the Constitution against enemies. The Oath Keepers issued a list of orders that its members wouldn’t obey, such as disarming citizens, carrying out warrantless searches and detaining Americans as enemy combatants in violation of their right to jury trials.
Rhodes was a compelling speaker and especially in the early years framed the group as “just a pro-Constitution group made up of patriots,” said Sam Jackson, author of the book “Oath Keepers” about the group.
With that benign-sounding framing and his political connections, Rhodes harnessed the growing power of social media to fuel the Oath Keepers’ growth during the presidency of Barack Obama. Membership rolls leaked last year included some 38,000 names, though many people on the list have said they are no longer members or were never active participants. One expert last year estimated membership to be a few thousand.
The internal dialogue was much darker and more violent about what members perceived as imminent threats, especially to the Second Amendment, and the idea that members should be prepared to fight back and recruit their neighbors to fight back, too.
“Time and time again, Oath Keepers lays the groundwork for individuals to decide for themselves, violent or otherwise criminal activity is warranted,” said Jackson, an assistant professor at the University at Albany.
A membership fee was a requirement to access the website, where people could join discussion forums, read Rhodes’ writing and hear pitches to join militaristic trainings. Members willing to go armed to a standoff numbered in the low dozens, though, said Jason Van Tatenhove, a former spokesman for the group.
Showdowns with the government began in 2011 in the small western Arizona desert town of Quartzsite, where local government was in turmoil as officials feuded among themselves, the police chief was accused of misconduct and several police employees had been suspended. A couple years later, Rhodes started calling on members to form “community preparedness teams,” which included military-style training.
The Oath Keepers also showed up at a watershed event in anti-government circles: the standoff with federal agents at Nevada’s Bundy Ranch in 2014. Later that year, members stationed themselves along rooftops in Ferguson, Missouri, armed with AR-15-style weapons, to protect businesses from rioting after a grand jury declined to charge a police officer in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The following year Oath Keepers guarded a southern Oregon gold mine whose mining claim owners were in a dispute with the government. Still, Rhodes was never arrested.
As the Oath Keepers escalated their public profile and confrontations with the government, Rhodes was leaving behind some of those he once championed. Jennifer Esposito hired him as her lawyer after the group’s early outing in Quartzsite, but he missed a hearing in her case because he was at the Bundy Ra...
False Claims Threats Fuel Poll Worker Sign-Ups For Midterms
False Claims, Threats Fuel Poll Worker Sign-Ups For Midterms https://digitalalaskanews.com/false-claims-threats-fuel-poll-worker-sign-ups-for-midterms/
Amanda Rouser poses for a photo in front of a recruiting desk for new poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on Sept. 14, 2022, in Atlanta. Rouser was motivated to serve as a poll worker for the first time during the upcoming midterm election by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia poll worker after the 2020 presidential election. (AP Photo/Sudhin Thanawala)
ATLANTA (AP) — Outraged by false allegations of fraud against a Georgia elections employee in 2020, Amanda Rouser made a vow as she listened to the woman testify before Congress in June about the racist threats and harassment she faced.
“I said that day to myself, ‘I’m going to go work in the polls, and I’m going to see what they’re going to do to me,’” Rouser, who like the targeted employee is Black, recalled after stopping by a recruiting station for poll workers at Atlanta City Hall on a recent afternoon. “Try me, because I’m not scared of people.”
About 40 miles north a day later, claims of fraud also brought Carolyn Barnes to a recruiting event for prospective poll workers, but with a different motivation.
“I believe that we had a fraudulent election in 2020 because of the mail-in ballots, the advanced voting,” Barnes, 52, said after applying to work the polls for the first time in Forsyth County. “I truly believe that the more we flood the system with honest people who are trying to help out, it will straighten it out.”
Barnes, who declined to give her party affiliation, said she wants to use her position as a poll worker to share her observations about “the gaps” in election security and “where stuff could happen afterwards.”
Nearly two years after the last presidential election, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines. Numerous reviews in the battleground states where former President Donald Trump disputed his loss to President Joe Biden have affirmed the results, courts have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies, and even Trump’s own Department of Justice concluded the results were accurate.
Nevertheless, the false claims about the the 2020 presidential contest by the former president and his supporters are spurring new interest in working the polls in Georgia and elsewhere for the upcoming midterm elections, according to interviews with election officials, experts and prospective poll workers.
Like Rouser, some aim to shore up a critical part of their state’s election system amid the lies and misinformation about voting and ballot-counting. But the false claims and conspiracy theories also have taken hold among a wide swath of conservative voters, propelling some to sign up to help administer elections for the first time.
The possibility they will play a crucial role at polling places is a new worry this election cycle, said Sean Morales-Doyle, an election security expert at The Brennan Center for Justice.
“I think it’s a problem that there may be people who are running our elections that buy into those conspiracy theories and so are approaching their role as fighting back against rampant fraud,” he said.
But he also cautioned that there are numerous safeguards to prevent a single poll worker from disrupting voting or trying to manipulate the results.
The Associated Press talked to roughly two dozen prospective poll workers in September during three recruiting events in two Georgia counties — Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and where more than 70 percent of voters cast a ballot for Biden, and Forsyth County north of Atlanta, where support for Trump topped 65 percent.
About half said the 2020 election was a factor in their decision to try to become a poll worker.
“We don’t want Donald Trump bullying people,” said Priscilla Ficklin, a Democrat, while taking an application at Atlanta City Hall to be a Fulton County poll worker. “I’m going to stand up for the people who are afraid.”
Carlette Dryden said she showed up to vote in Forsyth County in 2020 only to be told that she had already cast a mail-in ballot. She said elections officials let her cast a ballot later, but she suspects someone fraudulently voted in her name and believes her experience reflects broader problems with the vote across the country.
Still, she said her role was not to police voters or root out fraud.
“What I’m signing up to do is to help others that are coming through here that may need assistance or questions answered,” she said.
Georgia was a focus of Trump’s attempts to undo his 2020 election defeat to Biden. He pressured the state’s Republican secretary of state in a January 2021 phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn Biden’s victory in the state and seized on surveillance footage to accuse the Black elections worker, Wandrea Moss, and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of pulling out suitcases of fraudulent votes in Fulton County. The allegation was quickly knocked down, but still spread widely through conservative media.
Moss told the House Jan. 6 committee that she received death threats and racist messages.
At a farmer’s market in the politically mixed suburb of Alpharetta north of Atlanta, Deborah Eves said she was concerned about being harassed for working at a voting site but still felt compelled to sign up.
A substitute teacher and Democrat, Eves visited a recruiting booth set up by Fulton County officials next to stands selling single origin coffee, honey and empanadas.
“I feel like our government is ‘we the people, and ’we the people’ need to step up and do things like poll working so that we can show that nobody’s cheating, nobody’s trying to do the wrong thing here,” she said.
Allison Saunders, who worked at a voting site for the first time during the state’s May primary, said she believes Moss and Freeman were targeted because they are Black. Saunders, a Democrat, was visiting the farmer’s market with her son.
“More people that look like me need to step up and do our part,” said Saunders, who is white. “I think it’s more important to do your civic duty than to be afraid.”
Threats after the 2020 election contributed to an exodus of full-time elections officials around the country. Recruiters say they have not seen a similar drop in people who have previously done poll work — temporary jobs open to local residents during election season. But some larger counties around the country have reported that they are struggling to fill those positions.
Working the polls has long been viewed as an apolitical civic duty. For first-time workers, it generally involves setting up voting machines, greeting voters, checking that they are registered and answering questions about the voting process.
Elections staff in the U.S. generally do not vet the political views of prospective poll workers deeply, although most states have requirements that seek to have a mix of Democratic and Republican poll workers at each voting location.
Forsyth County’s elections director, Mandi Smith, said she was not worried about having people who believe the last presidential election was fraudulent serve as poll workers. The county provides training that emphasizes the positions are nonpartisan and that workers must follow certain rules.
“It’s a very team-driven process, as well, in the sense that there are multiple poll workers there and you are generally not working alone,” she said.
Ginger Aldrich, who attended the county’s recruiting event, said she knows people who believe the last election was stolen from Trump. Their views made her curious about what she described as the “mysterious” aspects of the voting process, such as where ballots go after they leave the voting site.
“There’s going to be some people that are unscrupulous, and they are going to spend all this time figuring out how to beat the system,” said Aldrich, who is retired.
While she believes there is fraud in elections, she said she was willing to use her experience as a poll worker to try to convince people that there were no problems in her county with the midterm elections.
___
Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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Florida Warned To be Ready As Ian Expected To Rapidly Intensify Live
Florida Warned To ‘be Ready’ As Ian Expected To Rapidly Intensify – Live https://digitalalaskanews.com/florida-warned-to-be-ready-as-ian-expected-to-rapidly-intensify-live/
Central Florida stores struggle to keep water on shelves ahead of Tropical Storm Ian
Floridians have been warned to “be ready” for a potential hurricane this week, as Tropical Storm Ian continues to strengthen while charting a path towards the Sunshine State.
The National Hurricane Center forecasts that by mid-week, Ian will have reached Florida as a major hurricane.
The Florida governor said that he “appreciates the quick action” from President Joe Biden who granted the state’s request to issue a federal emergency declaration. “We appreciate it, we’re thankful,” he said at Sunday morning’s press conference.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Cuba have suspended classes in Pinar del Rio province and said they will begin evacuations today. Tropical Storm Ian is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane before reaching the western part of the island on its way to Florida.
As Florida prepares for the incoming weather event, Canada is starting to assess the damage and begin recovery efforts after being hammered by post-tropical cyclone Fiona on Saturday. It has also mobilised its army for rescue and assessment of the damage.
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Maggie Habermans New Book On Donald Trump: Trump Ran For President Because nobody Knows His rich Friends New Book Reveals
Maggie Haberman’s New Book On Donald Trump: Trump Ran For President Because ‘nobody Knows’ His ‘rich Friends’, New Book Reveals https://digitalalaskanews.com/maggie-habermans-new-book-on-donald-trump-trump-ran-for-president-because-nobody-knows-his-rich-friends-new-book-reveals/
Donald Trump suggested that the reason he wanted to be president was because “nobody knows” his “rich friends,” according to an adapted excerpt from Maggie Haberman’s new book.
The New York Times journalist sat down with Mr Trump three times for her upcoming book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, which chronicles his path from New York businessman to president.
In one candid moment, detailed in an excerpt published in The Atlantic on Sunday, Mr Trump appeared to admit that it was his desire for fame that ultimately led him to enter the White House race.
“The question I get asked more than any other question: ‘If you had it to do again, would you have done it?’” Mr Trump told her about running.
“The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”
Ms Haberman goes on to note that the former president’s first thought about his role in office was to be “a vehicle for fame”.
“Yet there it was: Reflecting on the meaning of having been president of the United States, his first impulse was not to mention public service, or what he felt he’d accomplished, only that it appeared to be a vehicle for fame, and that many experiences were only worth having if someone else envied them,” she wrote.
The journalist adds that though the “candid admission” was “jarring”, it was “ultimately unsurprising”.
When she later questioned Mr Trump about what he liked about being president, she said he answered: “‘Getting things done,’ and listed a few accomplishments.”
In the wide-ranging excerpt, Mr Trump also makes derogatory comments about his fellow Republicans including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who he branded “fat” and “whiny” and Senator Mitch McConnell who he slammed as a “a piece of s**”.
But, in perhaps the biggest bombshell from the book excerpt, Ms Haberman reveals how Mr Trump denied taking documents from the White House when he left.
“He demurred when I asked if he had taken any documents of note upon departing the White House—’nothing of great urgency, no,’ he said,” she writes.
Mr Trump then proceeded to contradict himself by mentioning letters sent by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un which he had taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.
When Ms Haberman asked if he was able to take the letter with him, she says Mr Trump seemed to register his surprise and backpedaled, claiming the documents were in the National Archives.
“No, I think that’s in the archives, but … Most of it is in the archives, but the Kim Jong-un letters … We have incredible things,” he told her.
This was later revealed to be false.
In February, The Washington Post revealed that the so-called “love letters” from Kim were among “multiple boxes” of White House records seized from Mar-a-Lago by the National Archives.
Fast forward to September and a criminal investigation is now under way into the former president’s unlawful retention of government secrets.
The probe comes after federal agents executed a search warrant on his Palm Beach home in August and seized 27 boxes including 11 containing classified information.
Some of the information was of the highest possible top secret classification, meaning it should never have left the custody of the government.
In the book excerpt, Ms Haberman writes that Mr Trump also hinted that he had remained in contact with the North Korean leader even after leaving the White House.
When asked whether he still had a relationship with other world leaders, she says he insisted that he was not in contact with Russia’s Vladimir Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.
But when asked about Kim, he replied: “‘Well, I don’t want to say exactly, but …’ before trailing off.”
Ms Haberman said she later learned that Mr Trump had been telling people around Mar-a-Lago that the two men were still in contact
Confidence Man will be released on October 4.
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British Pound Plummets To Record Low Against The Dollar
British Pound Plummets To Record Low Against The Dollar https://digitalalaskanews.com/british-pound-plummets-to-record-low-against-the-dollar/
(CNN Business)The British pound fell to a new record low against the US dollar of $1.035 on Monday, plummeting more than 4%.
The slide came as trading opened in Asia and Australia on Monday, extending a 2.6% dive from Friday — and spurring predictions the pound could plunge to parity with the US dollar in the coming months.
The unprecedented currency slump follows British Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s announcement on Friday that the United Kingdom would impose the biggest tax cuts in 50 years at the same time as boosting spending.
The new tax-slashing fiscal measures, which include scrapping plans for rising corporation tax and slashing the cap on bankers’ bonuses, have been criticized as “trickle-down economics” by the opposition Labour party and even lambasted by members of the Chancellor’s own Conservative party.
Former Tory chancellor Lord Ken Clarke criticized the tax cuts on Sunday, saying it could lead to the collapse of the pound.
“I’m afraid that’s the kind of thing that’s usually tried in Latin American countries without success,” Clarke said in an interview with BBC radio.
The pound has been hammered by a string of weak economic data, but also the steep ascent of the US dollar, a safe haven investment that sees inflows in times of uncertainty.
The euro also hit a 20-year low of 0.964 per dollar.
But the economic outlook in the UK means the pound is suffering more than most, in the face of a disastrous energy crunch and the highest inflation among G7 nations.
The previous record low for the British pound against the US dollar was 37 years ago on February 25, 1985, when 1 pound was worth $1.054.
“Should there be any escalation to the war in Ukraine…we would see further sharp downside in the Pound as well as the Euro,” said Clifford Bennett, chief economist at ACY Securities, an Australian brokerage firm.
“One should not underestimate the crisis that is all of Europe at the moment and the Pound is more vulnerable than most,” he said.
Asian markets and currencies crack
The soaring US dollar also sent major Asian currencies tumbling on Monday.
China’s yuan slid 0.5% on the onshore market to the lowest level in more than 28 months. The offshore yuan fell 0.4%.
The rapid declines prompted the People’s Bank of China to impose a risk reserve requirement of 20% on banks’ foreign exchange forward sales to clients, starting Wednesday. The move would make it more costly for traders to buy foreign currencies via derivatives, which might slow the pace of the yuan’s declines.
Elsewhere in the region, the Japanese yen dropped 0.6% against the dollar to 144. Last Thursday, the Japanese central bank intervened in the currency market for the first time since 1998 to prop up the yen. The yen rebounded slightly following the intervention, but soon resumed the slide.
The Korean won also plunged 1.6% on Monday versus the greenback, falling below the 1,420 level for the first time since 2009.
Stock markets in the region were in a turmoil on Monday, after US stocks sold off on Friday as recession fears grow.
South Korea’s Kospi (KOSPI) declined 2.7%, Japan’s Nikkei 225 (N225) dropped 2.4%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.4%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index (SHCOMP) dipped 0.1%.
“Risk sentiments have been dealt a major blow by the Fed’s latest policy action and guidance,” said DBS analysts in a research report on Monday.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday approved a third consecutive 75-basis-point hike in an aggressive move to tackle white-hot inflation that has been plaguing the US economy.
Even without the Fed action, Europe is looking at a recession due to the war in Ukraine, and China is looking at “a substantially weak growth dynamic” because of a variety of domestic factors, the DBS analysts said.
“Add on top of that a sharp decline in US dollar liquidity and sharply higher US interest rates, the world economic outlook looks particularly precarious,” they added.
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Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale
Georgia Voting Equipment Breach At Center Of Tangled Tale https://digitalalaskanews.com/georgia-voting-equipment-breach-at-center-of-tangled-tale-3/
This Jan. 7, 2021, image taken from Coffee County, Georgia, security video, appears to show Cathy Latham (center, long turquoise top), introducing members of a computer forensic team to local election officials. Latham was the county Republican Party chairwoman at the time. The computer forensics team was at the county elections office in Douglas, Georgia, to make copies of voting equipment in an effort that documents show was arranged by attorney Sidney Powell and others allied with then-President Donald Trump.
Coffee County, Georgia, via AP
ATLANTA — The tale of breached voting equipment in one of the country’s most important political battleground states involves a bail bondsman, a prominent attorney tied to former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and a cast of characters from a rural county that rarely draws notice from outsiders.
How they all came together and what it could mean for the security of voting in the upcoming midterm elections are questions tangled up in a lawsuit and state investigations that have prompted calls to ditch the machines altogether.
Details of the unauthorized access of sensitive voting equipment in Coffee County, Georgia, became public last month when documents and emails revealed the involvement of high-profile Trump supporters. That’s also when it caught the attention of an Atlanta-based prosecutor who is leading a separate investigation of Trump’s efforts to undo his loss in the state.
Since then, revelations about what happened in the county of 43,000 people have raised questions about whether the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia have been compromised.
The public disclosure of the breach began with a rambling phone call from an Atlanta-area bail bondsman to the head of an election security advocacy group involved in a long-running lawsuit targeting the state’s voting machines.
This Jan. 7, 2021, image taken from Coffee County, Georgia, security video, Cathy Latham, right, appears to take a selfie with a member of a computer forensics team inside the local elections office.
Coffee County, Georgia, via AP
According to a recording filed in court earlier this year, the bail bondsman said he’d chartered a jet and was with a computer forensics team at the Coffee County elections office when they “imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment.”
That happened on Jan. 7, 2021, a day after the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and two days after a runoff election in which Democrats swept both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats.
The trip to Coffee County, about 200 miles south of Atlanta, to copy data and software from elections equipment was directed by attorney Sidney Powell and other Trump allies, according to deposition testimony and documents produced in response to subpoenas.
Later that month, security camera footage shows, two men who have participated in efforts to question the results of the 2020 election in several states spent days going in and out of the Coffee County elections office.
The footage also shows local election and Republican Party officials welcoming the visitors and allowing them access to the election equipment. The video seems to contradict statements some of the officials made about their apparent involvement.
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The new information has made Coffee County, where Trump won nearly 70% of the vote two years ago, a focal point of concerns over the security of voting machines. While there is no evidence of widespread problems with voting equipment in 2020, some Trump supporters have spread false information about machines and the election outcome.
Election security experts and activists fear state election officials haven’t acted fast enough in the face of what they see as a real threat.
The copying of the software and its availability for download means potential bad actors could build exact copies of the Dominion system to test different types of attacks, said University of California, Berkeley computer scientist Philip Stark, an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the voting machines lawsuit.
“This is like bank robbers having an exact replica of the vault that they’re trying to break into,” he said.
Stark said the risks could be minimized by using hand-marked paper ballots and rigorous audits. Dominion says its equipment remains secure.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, the group that sued over the state’s voting machines, said the state has been slow to investigate. She was on the receiving end of the phone call from the bail bondsman.
The state, she said, has been “repeatedly looking the other way when faced with flashing red lights of serious voting system security problems.”
State officials say they’re confident the election system is safe. All Coffee County election equipment that wasn’t already replaced will be swapped out before early voting begins next month, the secretary of state’s office said Friday.
State officials also noted they were deluged by false claims after the 2020 election.
“In retrospect, you can say, well what about this, this and this,” said Gabriel Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “In real time, no, there was no reason to think that.”
In late January 2021, a few weeks after the computer forensics team visited, security video shows a secretary of state’s office investigator arriving at the Coffee County elections office. He and the elections supervisor walk into the room that houses the election management system server. Seconds later, Jeff Lenberg, who has been identified by Michigan authorities as being part of an effort to gain access to voting machines there, is seen walking out of that room.
Asked whether Lenberg’s presence in the room with sensitive election equipment raised concerns for the investigator, secretary of state’s office spokesperson Mike Hassinger said the investigator was looking into an unrelated matter and didn’t know who Lenberg was.
Security video also showed another man, Doug Logan, at the office in mid-January. Logan founded a company called Cyber Ninjas, which led a discredited review of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona. In May 2021, Coffee County’s new elections supervisor raised concerns with the secretary of state’s office after finding Logan’s business card by a computer. The election supervisor’s concerns were referred to an investigator, but he testified that no one ever contacted him.
Hassinger said the secretary of state’s office responds to allegations when they are raised but that “information about unauthorized access to Coffee County’s election equipment has been kept hidden” by local officials and others.
Much of what is known was uncovered through documents, security camera video and depositions produced in response to subpoenas in the lawsuit filed by individual voters and the election security advocacy group. The suit alleges Georgia’s touchscreen voting machines are not secure and seeks to force the state to use hand-marked paper ballots instead.
The recently produced evidence of a breach wasn’t the first sign of problems in Coffee County, which caused headaches for state election officials in the hectic weeks following the 2020 election. It’s likely that turmoil helped open the door for Trump’s allies.
In early December 2020, the county elections board declined to certify the results of a machine recount requested by Trump, saying the election system had produced inaccurate results. A video posted online days later showed the former county elections supervisor saying the elections software could be manipulated; as she spoke, the password to the county election management system server was visible on a note stuck to her computer.
At the end of December, Cathy Latham, the Coffee County Republican Party chair who also was a fake elector for Trump, appeared at a state legislative committee hearing and made further claims that the voting machines were unreliable.
Within days of that hearing, Latham said, she was contacted by Scott Hall, the bail bondsman, who had been a Republican observer during an election recount. Latham testified in a deposition that Hall asked her to connect him with the Coffee County elections supervisor (who later was accused of falsifying timesheets and forced to resign).
A few days later, on Jan. 7, Hall met with a computer forensics team from data solutions firm SullivanStrickler at the Coffee County elections office. The team copied the data and software on the election management system server and other voting system components, a company executive said in a deposition. The company said it believed its clients had the necessary permission.
Invoices show the data firm billed Powell $26,000 for the day’s work.
“Everything went smoothly yesterday with the Coffee County collection,” the firm’s chief operating officer wrote to Powell in an email. “Everyone involved was extremely helpful.”
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'Fighting Fit': Trial To Show Oath Keepers' Road To Jan. 6
'Fighting Fit': Trial To Show Oath Keepers' Road To Jan. 6 https://digitalalaskanews.com/fighting-fit-trial-to-show-oath-keepers-road-to-jan-6-3/
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, center, speaks during a rally June 25, 2017, outside the White House in Washington. Hundreds of pages of court documents in the case against Rhodes and four co-defendants, whose trial opens with jury selection Tuesday, in Washington’s federal court, paint a picture of a group so determined to overturn Biden’s election that some members were prepared to lose their lives to do so.
Susan Walsh ~ Associated Press, file
The voting was over and almost all ballots were counted. News outlets on Nov. 7, 2020, had called the presidential race for Joe Biden. But the leader of the Oath Keepers extremist group was just beginning to fight.
Convinced the White House had been stolen from Donald Trump, Stewart Rhodes exhorted his followers to action.
“We must now … refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol,” Rhodes declared.
Authorities allege Rhodes and his band of extremists would spend the next several weeks after Election Day, Nov. 3, amassing weapons, organizing paramilitary training and readying armed teams with a singular goal: stopping Biden from becoming president.
Their plot would come to a head on Jan. 6, 2021, prosecutors say, when Oath Keepers in battle gear were captured on camera shouldering their way through the crowd of Trump supporters and storming the Capitol in military-style stack formation.
Members of the Oath Keepers stand on the East Front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. The trial of the founder of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, and four associates charged with seditious conspiracy in the attack on the U.S. Capitol is set to begin this week.
Manuel Balce Ceneta ~ Associated Press, file
Court documents in the case against Rhodes and four co-defendants — whose trial opens Tuesday with jury selection in Washington’s federal court — paint a picture of a group so determined to overturn Biden’s victory that some members were prepared to lose their lives to do so.
It’s the biggest test for the Justice Department’s efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the Capitol attack. Rioters temporarily halted the certification of Biden’s victory by sheer force, pummeling police officers in hand-to-hand fighting as they rammed their way into the building, forcing Congress to adjourn as lawmakers and staff hid from the mob.
Despite nearly 900 arrests and hundreds of convictions in the riot, Rhodes and four Oath Keeper associates — Kelly Meggs, Jessica Watkins, Kenneth Harrelson and Thomas Caldwell — are the first to stand trial on the rare and difficult-to-prove charge of seditious conspiracy.
The Oath Keepers accuse prosecutors of twisting their words and insist there was never any plan to attack the Capitol. They say they were in Washington to provide security at events for figures such as Trump ally Roger Stone before Trump’s big outdoor rally near the White House on Jan. 6. Their preparations, training, gear and weapons were to protect themselves against potential violence from left-wing antifa activists or to be ready if Trump invoked the Insurrection Act to call up a militia.
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Rhodes’ lawyers have signaled their defense will focus on his belief that Trump would take that action. But Trump never did, so Rhodes went home, his lawyers have said.
On Nov. 9, 2020, less than a week after the election, Rhodes held a conference call and rallied the Oath Keepers to go to Washington and fight. He expressed hope that antifa (anti-fascist) activists would start clashes because that would give Trump the “reason and rationale for dropping the Insurrection Act.”
“You’ve got to go there and you’ve got to make sure that he knows that you are willing to die to fight for this country,” Rhodes told his people, according to a transcript filed in court.
By December, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers had set their sights on Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, prosecutors say.
On Dec. 23, he published an open letter on the Oath Keepers website declaring that “tens of thousands of patriot Americans, both veterans and nonveterans” would be in Washington. He warned they might have to “take to arms in defense of our God given liberty.”
As 2021 approached, Rhodes spent $7,000 on two night-vision devices and a weapon sight and sent them to someone outside Washington, authorities say. Over several days in early January, he would spend an additional $15,500 on guns, magazines, mounts, sights and other equipment, according to court documents.
Rhodes had instructed Oath Keepers to be ready, if asked, to secure the White House perimeter and “use lethal force if necessary” against anyone, including the National Guard, who might try to remove Trump from the White House, according to court documents.
On Jan. 5, Meggs and the Florida Oath Keepers brought gun boxes, rifle cases and suitcases filled with ammunition to the Virginia hotel where the “quick reaction force” teams would be on standby, according to prosecutors. A team from Arizona brought weapons, ammunition, and supplies to last 30 days, according to court papers. A team from North Carolina had rifles in a vehicle parked in the hotel lot, prosecutors have said.
At the Capitol, the Oath Keepers formed two teams, military “stacks,” prosecutors say.
Some members of the first stack headed toward the House in search of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., but couldn’t find her, according to court documents. Members of the second stack confronted officers inside the Capitol Rotunda, prosecutors allege.
Rhodes isn’t accused of going inside the Capitol but was seen huddled with members outside after the riot. Rhodes and others then walked to the nearby Phoenix Park Hotel, prosecutors say.
In a private suite there, Rhodes called someone on the phone with an urgent message for Trump, according to an Oath Keeper who says he witnessed it. Rhodes repeatedly urged the person on the phone to tell Trump to call upon militia groups to fight to keep the president in power, court papers say. The person denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly to Trump.
“I just want to fight,” Rhodes said after hanging up, according to court papers. Authorities have not disclosed the name of the person they believe Rhodes was speaking to on the call.
That night, Rhodes and other Oath Keepers went to dinner in Virginia. In messages over the course of the evening, they indicated their fight was far from over.
“Patriots entering their own Capitol to send a message to the traitors is NOTHING compared to what’s coming,” Rhodes wrote.
Rhodes returned to Texas after the Jan. 6 attack and remained free for a year before his arrest in January 2022.
In interviews before he was jailed, he sought to distance himself from Oath Keepers who went inside the Capitol, saying that was a mistake. He also continued to push the lie the election was stolen and said the Jan. 6 investigation was politically motivated.
For full coverage of the Capitol riot, go to https://apnews.com/hub/capitol-siege
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Who Will Run For President If Biden Bows Out? Here
Who Will Run For President If Biden Bows Out? Here https://digitalalaskanews.com/who-will-run-for-president-if-biden-bows-out-here/
Also, only three of them appear to be top contenders — Vice-President Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Read More
Washington: US President Joe Biden’s statement this week that it “remains to be seen” if he’ll run for re-election and his low approval ratings among the American people that voted him in 2020 has prompted Democrats to think if they should have a different candidate in the White House in 2024 irrespective of whether Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis emerge as the Republican candidate.
Democrats want a strong candidate who is a fighter and yet young.
According to the list drawn up by Democratic funders and Democratic Party hardliners privately, there seem to be seven Democrats fit to run for the White House in 2024. But only three of them appear to be top contenders — Vice-President Kamala Harris, Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Elizabeth Warren.
If Biden doesn’t run again, a number of Democrats are expected to wade into the Presidential waters. But even Harris isn’t seen as a definitive leading contender in such a situation, Democrats acknowledge privately.
“There’s not one clear candidate and there’s not a rising star,” said one top Democratic donor.
But a section of Democrats and funders believe that Kamala Harris, who lost to Biden in the primaries and who was picked by him to be his running mate, has the President’s ears and trust to take his Build Back Better (BBB) initiatives forward. Others feel she is not strong enough to take on the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Republicans like Trump or Ron DeSantis.
Here’s who is generating the most talk and the most confidence, says the Hill in a special report based on the new approval ratings of the incumbent President Joe Biden which appears to be sliding again. Though his legislative successes and EO on abortion rights propped him up from last September’s ratings that saw a historic low for an incumbent president at 33 per cent. The November midterms could be a game changer for both parties ahead of 2024.
Kamala Harris
While Harris, 57, has seen her own approval ratings fall at times during an up-and-down tenure as vice president, she remains the top non-Biden possibility for 2024. Strategists say it would be difficult to convince Black women – who helped catapult Biden to the White House – to vote for anyone else as the party’s torch-bearer.
And as one strategist pointed out:
“No one is going to win the nomination without winning in the South. She has settled into the role. She has also made women’s rights one of her issues out on the trail, an issue that can only help her political prospects with the Democratic base as the Supreme Court decision overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion rights continues to reverberate.”
Pete Buttigieg
Just last month, Buttigieg, 40, the Transportation Secretary appeared in the swing states of Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada and Ohio. Buttigieg’s stature with voters could have taken a beating with the railway strike earlier this month but after Biden’s late-hour intervention, it never amounted, solidifying his standing with Democratic voters. And he has a young face at 40 years. But he’s not a top contender.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
The two Biden administration fixtures are the top two non-Biden Democrats on our list, says the Hill. At a recent event she highlighted her role in the Abortions rights fight. “The only reason Michigan continues to be pro-choice state is because of my veto and my lawsuit,” she said, according to CNN. The remarks refer to a lawsuit Whitmer filed to prevent a Michigan abortion ban from happening.
Gov. Gavin Newsom
At a time when Democrats have been craving for a leader who would get in the faces of Republicans, Newsom, the California governor, appears to do the battle, capable of taking it right into the MAGA Republicans camp. He’s tough as Ron DeSantis, the latter has however taken a beating with his planeload exports of illegal immigrants seeking asylum to blue state Michigan’s Martha’s Vineyard. They were relocated to New York.
Newsom, 54, made headlines in July when he took the fight directly to Ron DeSantis (R), running an ad in the Sunshine State blasting the Florida governor and the conservative culture there.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
The one-time presidential hopeful has made it clear she has one race on her mind in 2024: her own re-election to the Senate. She doesn’t appear keen on the 2024 presidential run, except saving her seat in Massachusetts against the powerful campaign of MAGA Republicans.
Warren, 73, has continued to be a top advocate on Capitol Hill for issues important to Democrats including climate change, abortion rights and gun safety. Again she is old, she will be 75 in 2024. Nevertheless a top contender given her experience.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
It’s tough for some Democrats to see the senator from Vermont launching another presidential campaign. After all, he is 81 years old and – if elected – would be nearing 90 by the end of his term. But Sanders has become such a staple of the Democratic Party since his first White House bid in 2016 that it’s hard to rule out a run. And if he did compete, he’d definitely have support.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.)
Almost no one in the Democratic Party has had the meteoric rise of “AOC”, as she’s known. And while most strategist’s doubt that the congresswoman from New York will run for president just yet, her name is constantly bandied about when Democrats complain that their bench is weak.
She turns 35 a month before the 2024 election. She’s a young face which electors want but may yet lack the experience for the high office.
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Rep. Nancy Mace Who Voted Against Impeaching Trump Says There's 'a Lot Of Pressure' On Republicans To Impeach Biden: 'I Think That Is Something That Some Folks Are Considering'
Rep. Nancy Mace, Who Voted Against Impeaching Trump, Says There's 'a Lot Of Pressure' On Republicans To Impeach Biden: 'I Think That Is Something That Some Folks Are Considering' https://digitalalaskanews.com/rep-nancy-mace-who-voted-against-impeaching-trump-says-theres-a-lot-of-pressure-on-republicans-to-impeach-biden-i-think-that-is-something-that-some-folks-are-consideringx/
Rep. Nancy Mace says there’s “a lot of pressure” on Republicans to impeach President Biden.
On NBC’s Meet The Press, Mace said impeachment is being considered by some in the GOP.
She told host Chuck Todd that if the party chooses to hold a vote, she believes it will be divisive.
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Rep. Nancy Mace says there’s pressure on Republicans to vote to impeach President Biden if the party wins the midterms and gains control of the House.
Mace was on NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday, speaking with host Chuck Todd who asked: “Do you expect an impeachment vote against President Biden if Republicans take over the House?”
The South Carolina congresswoman answered, “there’s a lot of pressure on Republicans to have that vote, to put that legislation forward. I think that is something that some folks are considering.”
To which Todd responded, simply: “Wow.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger said a GOP-majority Congress might try to impeach the president every week. Kinzinger was referring to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made impeaching Biden part of her official platform.
Last year, several Republicans filed impeachment articles criticizing Biden’s withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, his immigration policies, and his administration’s eviction moratorium.
When asked by Todd how she would vote if impeachment was on the floor, Mace said she would look at the evidence and vote constitutionally.
“I will not vote for impeachment of any president if I feel that due process has been stripped away for anyone,” she told Todd.
Mace said if the party chooses to hold this vote, she believes it will be divisive. “Which is why I pushed back on it personally when I hear folks saying they’re going to file articles of impeachment in the House,” she said.
While Mace voted against impeaching former President Donald Trump, she was critical of his role on January 6, telling CNN that Trump’s “entire legacy was wiped out” in the aftermath of the Capitol riots.
Before January 6, Mace was a supporter of Trump’s and even worked for his campaign in 2016.
During the interview with NBC, Todd asked the congresswoman if she would back Trump’s presidential bid in 2024.
“I’m going to support whomever Republicans nominate in ’24,” she said.
Representatives for Mace did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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Secretary Antony J. Blinken Interview With 60 Minutes On CBS With Scott Pelley
Secretary Antony J. Blinken Interview With 60 Minutes On CBS With Scott Pelley https://digitalalaskanews.com/secretary-antony-j-blinken-interview-with-60-minutes-on-cbs-with-scott-pelley/
Note: As-aired
QUESTION: How concerned should Americans be about the prospect of nuclear war?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Scott, we’ve heard a lot of irresponsible rhetoric coming out of Vladmir Putin, but we’re focused on making sure that we’re all acting responsibly, especially when it comes to this kind of loose rhetoric. We’ve been very clear with the Russians publicly and as well as privately to stop the loose talk about nuclear weapons.
QUESTION: Privately, the United States has been in communication with the Kremlin about these threats of nuclear war?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Yes, it’s very important that Moscow hear from us and know from us that the consequences would be horrific, and we’ve made that very clear.
QUESTION: You called the nuclear talk loose talk, but isn’t Vladimir Putin telling us what he’s going to do if he is backed any further into a corner?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Vladimir Putin has a clear way out of the war he started, and that’s to end it. If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.
QUESTION: Is there anyone in the Kremlin who can tell Vladimir Putin, “No,” if he decides to launch a battlefield nuclear weapon?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: They have a chain of command – whether it works or not, to be seen – but I think what you’re pointing to is a larger challenge, and that is the Achilles Heel of autocracies anywhere, there is usually not anyone who has the capacity or the will to speak truth to power. And part of the reason I think Russia has gotten itself into the mess that it’s in is because there is no one in the system to effectively tell Putin he is doing the wrong thing.
QUESTION: In our interview last week, President Biden told us that he had a message for Vladimir Putin on the use of nuclear weapons.
President Joe Biden, last week: Don’t, Don’t, Don’t.
QUESTION: He went on to say the U.S. response would be “consequential.” What did he mean by that?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I’m not going to get into what the consequences would be. Any use of nuclear weapons would have catastrophic effects for, of course, the country using them, but for many others as well.
QUESTION: If you can’t give us specifics about a U.S. response, can you tell us that the administration has a plan?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: We do.
QUESTION: Is it a plan that would prevent World War III?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: President Biden has been determined that as we are doing everything we can to help the Ukrainians to defend themselves, as we’re doing everything we can to rally other countries to put pressure on Russia, we’re also determined that this war not expand, not get broader.
QUESTION: As we were speaking to Secretary Blinken, news broke that a U.N. investigative commission had found evidence of rape and torture of children in Russian-occupied Ukraine.
The panel goes on to say, “Based on the evidence gathered by the Commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine.” What does justice look like for Ukraine?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Justice looks like accountability – accountability for those who perpetrated these war crimes, these atrocities, as well as for those who ordered them. And it’s one of the reasons, Scott, why we’re doing everything we can to support those who are trying to compile the evidence and to investigate and, ultimately, to prosecute those responsible.
QUESTION: To prosecute – you believe there should be war crime trials?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I was in Ukraine a couple of weeks ago. One of the places I visited was a city called Irpin. And I saw residential buildings – building block after building block – totally bombed out. This was the totally indiscriminate use of force. Wherever the Russian tide recedes, what’s left in its wake is very clear evidence of atrocities and war crimes.
QUESTION: Atrocities were laid before the U.N Security Council last Thursday, drawing from the Russian foreign minister a dubious defense.
When Sergey Lavrov says that the atrocities have been staged and it is Russia that is the victim, Tony Blinken is sitting there thinking what?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: This is Alice in Wonderland. It’s the world upside down. Up is down, white is black, truth is false. But here’s the thing, Scott: All of these words, all of these words, ring totally hollow to every member on the Security Council so this spewing of words is not having an effect. On the contrary, I think it just shows the total disconnect between Russia and virtually the entirety of the rest of the world.
QUESTION: At the moment we spoke to the secretary, Russia was hurrying through what it calls “elections” to force these areas of Ukraine’s occupied east and south into the Russian Federation.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: These so-called elections are a sham, period. They go in. They put in puppet governments, local governments. And then they proceed with a vote, which they’ll manipulate in any event in order to try to declare the territory Russian territory. It is not. It will never be recognized as such. And the Ukrainians have every right to take it back.
QUESTION: Blinken came to our interview after meeting China’s foreign minister. China has been raising pressure on the democratic island of Taiwan which, in our conversation last week, President Biden pledged to defend with force.
Scott Pelley, last week: So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. Forces, U.S. men and women would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?
President Joe Biden, last week: Yes.
But official U.S. policy is, and has been for decades, to remain ambiguous about defending the island.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: China has acted increasingly aggressively when it comes to Taiwan. That poses a threat to peace and stability in the entire region.
QUESTION: The Chinese foreign minister must have asked you to explain the President’s remarks.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, we had a conversation about our different approaches to Taiwan, and I reiterated what the President has said and what he’s said clearly and consistently: our continued adherence to the “One China” policy; our determination that the differences be resolved peacefully; our insistence that peace and stability be maintained in the Taiwan Straits; and our deep concern that China was taking actions to try to change that status quo. That’s what the issue is.
QUESTION: Blinken warns that turbulence in the Taiwan Strait would wash around the world.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Taiwan itself, were anything to happen, it is where virtually all the semiconductors are made. One of the reasons we’re now investing so heavily in our own capacity to produce semiconductors here in the United States – we design them, but the actual production is done in a handful of places, and Taiwan produces most of them. If that’s disrupted, the effects that that would have on the global economy could be devastating.
QUESTION: Last week on 60 Minutes, the president of Iran told Lesley Stahl he would consider re-entering the deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The Trump administration had canceled it. Blinken doubts that Iran is serious.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: Iran has continued to try to add extraneous issues to the negotiation that we’re simply not going to say yes to. We will not accept a bad deal. The response that they’ve given to the last proposals put forward by our European partners have been a very significant step backwards. And so, I don’t see any prospects in the very near term to– to bring this to a conclusion.
QUESTION: Antony Blinken is 60. One of his grandparents was born in Ukraine, his stepfather survived the Holocaust. And his father was a U.S. ambassador. Blinken has spent 30 years in foreign policy for Democrats mostly in the Senate and the White House. That’s him in the back of the room during the strike on Osama Bin Laden. His philosophy on American diplomacy is robust engagement with what he calls, humility and confidence.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: If we don’t engage, if we’re not leading, then one of two things: either someone else is and probably not in a way that’s going to advance our interests and values, or no one is, and then you tend to have chaos. You get a vacuum that’s filled by bad things before it’s filled with good things. Because the world does not organize itself. There’s not a single big problem that’s affecting the lives of our citizens that we can effectively solve alone. Whether it’s climate, whether it’s COVID, whether it’s the effect of all of these emerging technologies on our lives, we have to be working with others to try to shape all of this in a way that’s actually going to make our people, as well as other people, a little bit more secure, a little bit more prosperous, a little bit more full of opportunity.
QUESTION: Given January 6th, given the fabricated controversy over the election results, do you find that countries around the world are worried about the stability of the United States?
SECRETARY BLINKEN: It’s no secret that we have challenges within our own democracy. They’re playing out before the entire world. We don’t sweep them under the rug, even when it’s painful. So I’m able to say to other countries that bring these up: Yes, we’ve got our problems, but we’re confronting them. We’re dealing with them. You might do the same thing.
QUESTION: Your father was U.S. ambassador to Hungary. And as we sit here on Friday afternoon, he passed away last night. And I wonder why you decided to keep such a busy schedule the day after that tragedy in your family.
SECRETARY BLINKEN: My dad was 96 years old. He was in so many ways my role model. He built a remarkable business, one of the leading investment banks in this country over many years, He led a life of dignity, of decency, of mo...
Tropical Storm Ian To Strengthen Storm Watch Issued For Florida Keys
Tropical Storm Ian To Strengthen, Storm Watch Issued For Florida Keys https://digitalalaskanews.com/tropical-storm-ian-to-strengthen-storm-watch-issued-for-florida-keys/
Tropical Storm Ian was strengthening Sunday night, and it is forecast to intensify more rapidly Monday and Tuesday — possibly into a high-end Category 4 storm as early as midweek this week.
State of play: Tropical Storm Ian was some 390 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba at 11pm ET, and its maximum sustained winds had strengthened to 65 mph, up from 45 mph Sunday afternoon, according to the National Hurricane Center. It was moving to the northwest at 13 mph.
A tropical storm warning has been issued for the lower Florida Keys and a tropical storm watch has been issued for the west coast of Florida.
The big picture: President Biden declared a federal state of emergency for multiple Florida counties on Saturday night, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared a state of emergency for the entire state.
What to watch: In its 11pm update, the National Hurricane Center said Ian was expected to become a hurricane Monday and a “major hurricane” on Tuesday before hitting western Cuba.
The National Hurricane Center forecast two to four inches of rainfall from the Florida Keys into the southern and central Florida Peninsula from Monday through Wednesday morning.
Threat level: Studies show an increase in the occurrence of rapid intensification due to human-caused climate change.
The western Caribbean Sea is a powder keg for hurricanes right now, with high ocean heat content and weak upper-level winds.
Tropical Storm Ian’s latest projected track, issued at 11pm ET Sunday by the National Hurricane Center. Image: NOAA
What they’re saying: Even if the west coast of Florida doesn’t sustain a direct hit from Ian, “it doesn’t take an onshore or direct hit from a hurricane to pile up the water,” acting NHC director Jamie Rhome said in a Sunday briefing.
He urged Florida residents to find out if they’re in a likely evacuation zone at FloridaDisaster.org in case evacuations are ordered.
What’s next: The key questions facing forecasters, public officials and tens of millions of residents along the Gulf Coast are where the storm will head once it becomes a hurricane, and how strong it will be once it gets there.
The computer models have been diverging, with some showing a landfall in northwestern Florida or perhaps southeastern Alabama. Others show a hit much farther east, closer to Tampa.
Forecast trends since Friday have nudged the most likely track of the center of Ian to the west, closer to the Panhandle region of Florida.
While the likelihood of significant impacts in South Florida has decreased, it has not entirely disappeared, and the Hurricane Center is urging all Floridians to prepare for storm impacts.
Context: Human-caused climate change is altering the characteristics of nature’s most powerful storms.
For example, sea level rise from melting ice sheets makes a hurricane’s storm surge more harmful.
This story has been updated with the storm’s strengthening and the latest estimates of when the storm is expected to become a hurricane.
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Giorgia Meloni: Italy's Far Right On Course To Win Election
Giorgia Meloni: Italy's Far Right On Course To Win Election https://digitalalaskanews.com/giorgia-meloni-italys-far-right-on-course-to-win-election/
By Paul Kirby
BBC News, Rome
Image source, Reuters
Image caption,
Ms Meloni said Italians had sent a clear message calling for a right-wing government
Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni has claimed victory in Italy’s election, and is on course to become the country’s first female prime minister.
Ms Meloni is widely expected to form Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two.
That will alarm much of Europe as Italy is the EU’s third-biggest economy.
However, speaking after the vote, Ms Meloni said her Brothers of Italy party would “govern for everyone” and would not betray people’s trust.
“Italians have sent a clear message in favour of a right-wing government led by Brothers of Italy,” she told reporters in Rome.
She is predicted to win up to 26% of the vote, based on provisional results, ahead of her closest rival Enrico Letta from the centre left.
Ms Meloni’s right-wing alliance – which also includes Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and former PM Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia – now looks to have control of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, with a projected 42.2% of the Senate vote.
But the decision on who becomes Italy’s next leader is up to the president, not Giorgia Meloni, and that will take time.
Although she has worked hard to soften her image, emphasising her support for Ukraine and diluting anti-EU rhetoric, she leads a party rooted in a post-war movement that rose out of dictator Benito Mussolini’s fascists.
Earlier this year she outlined her priorities in a raucous speech to Spain’s far-right Vox party: “Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology… no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration… no to big international finance… no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!”
Projections put the centre-left alliance well behind with 26% and Democratic Party figure Debora Serracchiani said it was a sad evening for Italy. The right “has the majority in parliament, but not in the country”, she insisted.
The left failed to form a viable challenge with other parties, after Italy’s 18-month national unity government collapsed in July, and officials were downbeat even before the vote. The Five Star Movement under Giuseppe Conte is on course for third place but despite having several centre-left policies does not see eye to eye with Enrico Letta.
Turnout was dramatically low – 63.82% by the time polls closed – said Italy’s interior ministry, almost 10 points down on 2018. Voting levels were especially poor in southern regions including Sicily.
Italy is a founding father of the European Union and a member of Nato, and Ms Meloni’s rhetoric on the EU places her close to Hungary’s nationalist leader Viktor Orban.
Her allies have both had close ties with Russia. Mr Berlusconi, 85, claimed last week that Vladimir Putin was pushed into invading Ukraine while Mr Salvini has called into question Western sanctions on Moscow.
Ms Meloni wants to revisit Italian reforms agreed with the EU in return for almost €200bn (£178bn) in post-Covid recovery grants and loans, arguing that the energy crisis has changed the situation.
Image source, Reuters
Image caption,
There was little cause for joy at Enrico Letta’s Democratic Party headquarters on Sunday night
The Hungarian prime minister’s long-serving political director, Balazs Orban, was quick to congratulate Italy’s right-wing parties: “We need more than ever friends who share a common vision and approach to Europe’s challenges.”
In France, Jordan Bardella of the far-right National Rally said Italian voters had given European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen a lesson in humility, She had earlier said Europe had “the tools” to respond if Italy went in a “difficult direction”.
However, Prof Gianluca Passarrelli of Rome’s Sapienza University told the BBC he thought she would avoid rocking the boat on Europe and focus on other policies: “I think we will see more restrictions on civil rights and policies on LGBT and immigrants.”
Mr Salvini will be hoping to return to the interior ministry to halt migrant boats crossing from Libya.
This election marks a one-third reduction in the size of the two houses, and that appears to have benefited the winning parties.
A Rai TV exit poll suggested the three parties would hold 227-257 seats in the revamped 400-seat Chamber and 111-131 seats out of a total of 200 seats in the Senate. Mr Salvini said the right had a clear advantage in both houses.
The same Rai poll also reveals just how dominant the Meloni-led coalition is likely to be, The centre left would hold a mere 78-98 seats in the Chamber and 33-53 in the Senate.
More on Italy’s election
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Sterling Collapses As Investors Fly Into Dollars https://digitalalaskanews.com/sterling-collapses-as-investors-fly-into-dollars/
British Pound Sterling and U.S. Dollar notes are seen in this June 22, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration
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Sterling hits record low; risk of BOE response
Euro down 1%; Aussie, kiwi, yuan hit multi year lows
S&P 500 futures drop 0.6%
SYDNEY, Sept 26 (Reuters) – Sterling slumped to a record low on Monday, prompting speculation of an emergency response from the Bank of England, as confidence evaporated in Britain’s plan to borrow its way out of trouble, with spooked investors piling in to U.S. dollars.
Broadening worry that high interest rates will hurt growth hit Asia’s currencies and equities too, with exporters from Japanese carmakers to Australian miners hit hard.
The pound plunged nearly 5% at one point to $1.0327, breaking below 1985 lows. Moves were exacerbated by thinner liquidity in the Asia session, but even after stumbling back to $1.05 the currency is still down some 7% in just two sessions.
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“You’ve got to buy the dollar as a risk off-trade. There is nowhere else to go,” said Rabobank strategist Michael Every in Singapore.
“The BOE are going to have to step in today, surely, at which point everyone’s going to end up with massively higher mortgage rates to try and stabilise sterling.”
The collapse sent the dollar higher broadly and it hit multi-year peaks on the Aussie, kiwi and yuan and a new 20-year top of $0.9528 per euro .
In stocks, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was down 1% to a two-year low. It is heading for a monthly loss of 11%, the largest since March 2020. Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) fell 2.2%.
S&P 500 futures fell 0.5%.
Last week, stocks and bonds crumbled after the United States and half a dozen other countries raised rates and projected pain ahead. Japan intervened in currency trade to support the yen. Investors lost confidence in Britain’s economic management.
The Nasdaq (.IXIC) lost more than 5% for the second week running. The S&P 500 (.SPX) fell 4.8%.
Gilts suffered their heaviest selling in three decades on Friday and on Monday the pound made a 37-year low at $1.0765 as investors reckon planned tax cuts will stretch government finances to the limit.
Sterling is down 11% this quarter.
Five-year gilt yields rose 94 basis points last week, by far the biggest weekly jump recorded in Refinitiv data stretching back to the mid 1980s. Treasuries tanked as well last week, with two-year yields up 35 bps to 4.2140% and benchmark 10-year yields up 25 bps to 3.6970%.
The euro wobbled to a two-decade low at $0.9660 as risks rise of war escalating in Ukraine, before steadying at $0.9686.
In Italy, a right-wing alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party was on course for a clear majority in the next parliament, as expected. Some took heart from a middling performance by eurosceptics The League.
“I expect relatively little impact considering that the League, the party with the least pro-European stance, seems to have come out weak,” said Giuseppe Sersale, fund manager and strategist at Anthilia in Milan.
Oil and gold steadied after drops against the rising dollar last week. Gold hit a more-than two-year low on Friday and bought $1,643 an ounce on Monday. Brent crude futures sat at $86.29.
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Additional reporting by Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Sam Holmes
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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TribFest Recap: Liz Cheney Chooses To Go Out The Hard Way
TribFest Recap: Liz Cheney Chooses To Go Out The Hard Way https://digitalalaskanews.com/tribfest-recap-liz-cheney-chooses-to-go-out-the-hard-way/
Scion of power learns the limits of 21st century politics
By Mike Clark-Madison,
U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming (courtesy Texas Tribune Festival)
Liz Cheney has, or had, a political career because her father had one, but she didn’t get elected to office until she was nearly 50, and that was just six years ago.
Now that she’s been rejected by the new leaders of her Grand Old Party, and defeated in her home-state primary by a MAGAmuffin, she might go back to her prior three-decade career as a diplomat, international lawyer, and State Department official (she didn’t even live in Wyoming until 2012). No matter what Donald Trump and his minions and cultists think of her, she’s neither a failure nor a martyr, and their ability to hurt her going forward is really rather limited.
What has hurt her, at least as a politician, is not her low opinion or expectations of Apesh*t but her dashed expectations that her fellow GOP leaders would have a spine and stand for what she thinks her party has always been about. Conservative things! Like having faith in the system that allocates power within the American state, and accepting that its preservation is more important than any one person’s prerogatives within it.
The Cheneys – Liz, but also her father and her mother, the former chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities under Reagan – are masters of the dark arts precisely because they believe in the system as designed, one where two nobodies from southern Wyoming can climb all the way to the top, get one kid started off as a fit dynastic scion, and also protect the other one when her sexuality became other people’s business. They are eagles (that is to say, noble-looking but ravenous predators) and Trump is a lizard, even if, as Liz acknowledged in her Texas Tribune Festival closing keynote interview with Evan Smith on Saturday, Sept. 24, she’d voted for his legislative priorities 93% of the time. “But you can’t even begin to have those debates about tax policy and military spending,” she said, “if you let the republic unravel.”
Dick Cheney cut an ad in her Wyoming race that “was supposed to just be him saying, ‘I voted for my daughter Liz and I hope you will too.’ But then he decided he had a few other things he wanted to say. He’s a student of history” – for real; he dropped out of the PhD program at Wisconsin, which his wife Lynne completed – “and obviously he’s served at the highest levels of our government, facing some of the most significant challenges we’ve faced as a nation. And to hear him say [as he did in the ad] that there’s never been an individual who has posed a greater threat to the republic … people should realize what that means.”
The Jan. 6 select committee of which Cheney is vice chair has its next televised hearing (not its last, she told Smith, contradicting an earlier TribFest appearance by her colleague Rep. Jaime Raskin, D-Md.) on Sept. 28, which is likely to involve the contents of “significant document production from the U.S. Secret Service.” The now-notorious texts are gone, but there are other paper trails, she hinted, that (after she got Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to personally demand them from his underlings) the Secret Service finally coughed up, only in response to a subpoena. That fact “is very troubling,” she conceded.
So far, as compelling as the Jan. 6 hearings have been, they still haven’t uncovered confirmation that Trump knew specifically about what the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and other Nazi scum were planning to do at the Capitol, although she told Smith she was surprised at “how sophisticated the plan was and how involved he was personally and directly.” While the committee can make criminal referrals as well as propose legislation, it’s probably not going to be the sole mechanism through which Cheney can do “whatever it takes” to keep Trump away from the White House. That might include running for president herself, she allowed, without getting more specific; she didn’t sound particularly convinced a campaign of her own would get the job done, but “I need to do whatever I can do to make sure our politics rights itself.”
More immediately, we can expect Liz Cheney to bring the heat on behalf of whomever, including the Democrats, can take out the MAGA trash in the next election. “There are many people around this country who are making claims that they know not to be true,” she said, including her Wyoming opponent Harriet Hagedorn, “and I don’t think anybody should vote for any of them. … The independent voters and moderate Dems and Republicans around the country want sanity, and they want responsibility. They want to know that their elected officials are competent and serious people. They need to realize how much power people like [Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan will have under a Republican majority, and that would not be good for the country.”
She has no more faith in the invertebrate GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who she noted will be second in the federal line of succession should he become speaker. “Somebody who’s going to be that close to the presidency needs to be somebody who’s faithful to our Constitution. …People need to consider what it means that the Republicans don’t want Jan. 6 investigated. There have been several moments when the GOP could have done the true and right and honorable thing” after the 2020 election chaos, “and it did not. We have to have leaders who understand that this isn’t a game.”
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Sept. 23, 2022
KEYWORDS FOR THIS POST
Texas Tribune Festival 2022, TribFest, Liz Cheney, Evan Smith, January 6, Dick Cheney, Kevin McCarthy, Donald Trump
Stateside at the Paramount
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1 Killed In Midtown Shooting Along Street With Popular Nightlife
1 Killed In Midtown Shooting Along Street With Popular Nightlife https://digitalalaskanews.com/1-killed-in-midtown-shooting-along-street-with-popular-nightlife/
1 killed in midtown shooting along street with popular nightlife
THIS IS KCRA 3 NEWS THAT BY A MAN IS DEAD AFTER AN OVERNIGHT SHOOTING OUTSIDE OF A POPULAR ROW OF RESTAURANTS AND BARS IN MIDTOWN SACRAMENTO. THE 911 CALLS CAME IN AT AROUND ONE IN THE MORNING AFTER SHOTS WERE FIRED AND A VICTIM WAS DOWN AT THE SCENE. WE NOW KNOW THAT VICTIM DIED AND THE SUSPECT HAS NOT BEEN FOUND. THIS ALL HAPPENED ON JAY AND 28TH. THAT’S WHERE KCRA 3’S ERIN HEFT JOINS US LIVE. AARON, THIS AREA AND ITS NIGHTLIFE ARE GENERALLY CONSIDERED SAFE RIGHT? YEAH, ABSOLUTELY. THIS AREA VERY CORE JAIL. EVEN WHEN CROWDS GET YOU KNOW, HERE, IT’S NOT ANYTHING BUT TAME. I SPOKE TO NEIGHBORS AND BUSINESS OWNERS ALIKE. THEY SAY DURING THE DAY HERE IT’S VERY QUIET AND EVEN AT NIGHT WHEN THERE IS RUCKUS, PEOPLE ARE VERY CORDIAL. BUT LAST NIGHT’S VIOLENCE THEY FIND SHOCKING. THE SCENE LASTING ALL NIGHT INTO THE LATE MORNING. I HEARD THIS RAY OF LIGHT AND D.A. GETS YOU KNOW, SPRAY OF MORE BULLETS. I KNEW WHAT IT WAS. AUTOMATICALLY CLOSING ROADS AS HOMICIDE INVESTIGATORS AND SACRAMENTO POLICE SECURED EVIDENCE OF A HOLE LEFT IN A CAR WINDOW BY A STRAY BULLET AND RESTAURANT PATIO IS LEFT WITH DRINKS. SACRAMENTO POLICE TOLD KCRA AROUND ONE IN THE MORNING THERE WAS A FIGHT IN AND NEAR THE RESTAURANT BAR WEST. IT ESCALATED AND TWO MEN GRABBED GUNS AND BEGAN SHOOTING AT ONE ANOTHER. ONE OF THOSE MEN DIED AND THE OTHER GOT AWAY. WE’RE TIRED OF THE GUN VIOLENCE IN OUR CITY. QUITE HONESTLY, IN ALL PARTS OF OUR CITY, AND NOT JUST DOWNTOWN. NOW, THIS MORNING, THIS USUALLY BUSY BRUNCH BLOCK WAS DOOR SHUT. NOW IT’S GETTING OUT OF HAND. I HOPE YOU KNOW, I HOPE THAT THE CITY GETS A HOLD OF THIS. AND, YOU KNOW, IT’S IT’S BAD FOR BUSINESS. YOU KNOW, IT’S BAD FOR THE PEOPLE THAT LIVE IN DOWNTOWN. ANTHONY TAFOYA STOPPED BY TO CATCH THE RAIDERS GAME. HE WAS TURNED AWAY AND AFTER HEARING OF THE SHOOTING, HE’S WORRIED FOR HIS LITTLE SISTER. SHE LIVES DOWN THE BLOCK. SCARY TO JUST THINK THAT IF SHE’S HERE, YOU KNOW, AND THAT HAPPENED, YOU KNOW, I WAS LITERALLY FREAKED OUT. BUT MANY PEOPLE WE SPOKE TO WEREN’T SURPRISED. THERE’S SIRENS GOING ON AND THE SHOOTING IS GOING ON. IT’S KIND OF A VIOLENT PLAYING, VIOLENT PLANET WE LIVE ON RIGHT NOW. AND SACRAMENTO IS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT. I HOPE THEY CATCH IT. I REALLY DO. THEY DON’T NEED THAT KIND OF STUFF AROUND HERE. IT’S BAD ENOUGH THAT THEY DO. WILLIE HARRIS HAS LIVED HERE SINCE 1986, SO I’VE SEEN IT GO FROM GOOD TO TOTALLY JUST OUT OF CONTROL NOW. HIS KIDS WANT HIM TO MOVE. IT’S A LITTLE SCARY TO THINK OF, TO HAPPEN. CLARISSA KATO’S, OWNER OF 927 SALON, SHE’S BEEN HERE A YEAR AND SHE SAYS GENERALLY IT’S A VERY NON-THREATENING AREA. AND NOW SHE’S NOT EXCITED TO HAVE TO ADDRESS WITH CLIENTS THIS SHOOTING THAT HAPPENED ON HER BLOCK. I WILL BE ON GUARD BECAUSE EVERYONE’S GOING TO HEAR THE STORY. IT IS GOING TO THEY’RE GOING TO ASK QUESTIONS. MATT RUSSELL STROLLS HIS KIDS DOWN THE BLOCK ALL THE TIME. WALKING ON J STREET IS THE ONE THAT WE CAN GET THROUGH, AND IT’S, YOU KNOW, IT’S IT’S ACTUALLY THE NICEST ROUTE OF ANY OF THE FREEWAY UNDERPASSES TO GO IN. BUT NOW ANOTHER VIOLENT CRIME THAT MANY HOPE DOESN’T TAINT THE AREA. YES, SACRAMENTO POLICE SAY THAT OFFICERS ARRIVED ON SCENE IN LESS THAN 3 MINUTES. THEY ALSO SAID THAT THEY HAVE SIGNIFICANT VIDEO EVIDENCE AND VERY COOPERATIVE WITNESSES. THE INVESTIGATION RIGHT NOW IS UNDERWAY IN SACRAMENTO, ERIN HEFT, KCRA 3 NEWS. AARON, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THAT UPDATE. ANOTHER DEADLY SHOOTING HAPPENED IN THE SAME AREA OF THE SHOOTING THAT HAPPENED THIS MORNING. THAT SHOOTING HAPPENED BACK IN JANUARY. TAKE OUT YOUR PHONE AND OPEN UP THE CAMERA APP. IF YOU SCAN THIS QR CODE ON YOUR SCREEN, IT WILL TAKE YOU TO OUR WEBSITE WHERE WE HAVE A MAP OF THE SHOOTINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN SACRAMENTO AND IN STOCKTON. WE DO UPDATE THAT MAP WEEKLY. YOU CAN FIND THAT ON OUR WEBSITE
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1 killed in midtown shooting along street with popular nightlife
One person is dead following an early Sunday morning shooting on a row of popular restaurants and bars in Sacramento, authorities said. Detectives believe at least two people fired guns during a fight. The shooting happened just before 1 a.m. near the intersection of 28th and J streets, the Sacramento Police Department said in a release. Officers found a man with gunshot wounds near the intersection and immediately started life-saving efforts. He died near James Marshall Park, which is near the intersection, according to authorities. Detectives have learned that a disagreement started at Barwest Midtown. Authorities told KCRA 3 that the victim went to a car to get a gun and then began shooting at the suspect. “We understand the worry, downtown is a generally safe area,” said Sgt. Zach Eaton, spokesperson for the Sacramento Police Department. “We have had a couple of instances this year where we’ve had some bad shootings and some tragic shootings in our downtown. However, if you take a step back and look at the overall of what’s been going on downtown it’s generally a safe area to be in we have a lot of resources down there.” Sacramento police have yet to release information on the suspect or victim as they continue to investigate. No arrests have been made.Detectives did find two separate caliber casings at the scene, authorities told KCRA 3.Community reacts to shootingMany in midtown on Sunday afternoon hope the violent crime doesn’t taint the area.”It’s getting out of hand I hope the city, you know gets a hold of it, you know it’s bad for business it’s bad for the people who live in downtown,” Anthony Tafoia told KCRA 3 he’s worried about his little sister who lives down the block. “It’s scary to just think that if she’s here and that happened I would literally freak out.”The usually busy brunch spot was shuttered close after the shooting.”We certainly understand the concern of community members who go downtown and do not feel safe, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that they feel safe when they go downtown and enjoy the incredible entertainment district we have in our city,” Eaton said.The Sacramento Police Department encourages any witnesses with information regarding this investigation to contact the dispatch center at 916-808-5471 or Sacramento Valley Crime Stoppers at 916-443-HELP (4357). Callers can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward up to $1,000. Anonymous tips can also be submitted using the free “P3 Tips” smartphone app. One other deadly shooting has happened in the immediate area of where this shooting happened Sunday morning, according to data compiled by KCRA 3. That shooting happened back in January. This is a developing story, stay with KCRA 3 for the latest.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. —
One person is dead following an early Sunday morning shooting on a row of popular restaurants and bars in Sacramento, authorities said. Detectives believe at least two people fired guns during a fight.
The shooting happened just before 1 a.m. near the intersection of 28th and J streets, the Sacramento Police Department said in a release.
Officers found a man with gunshot wounds near the intersection and immediately started life-saving efforts. He died near James Marshall Park, which is near the intersection, according to authorities.
Detectives have learned that a disagreement started at Barwest Midtown. Authorities told KCRA 3 that the victim went to a car to get a gun and then began shooting at the suspect.
“We understand the worry, downtown is a generally safe area,” said Sgt. Zach Eaton, spokesperson for the Sacramento Police Department. “We have had a couple of instances this year where we’ve had some bad shootings and some tragic shootings in our downtown. However, if you take a step back and look at the overall of what’s been going on downtown it’s generally a safe area to be in we have a lot of resources down there.”
Sacramento police have yet to release information on the suspect or victim as they continue to investigate. No arrests have been made.
Detectives did find two separate caliber casings at the scene, authorities told KCRA 3.
Community reacts to shooting
Many in midtown on Sunday afternoon hope the violent crime doesn’t taint the area.
“It’s getting out of hand I hope the city, you know gets a hold of it, you know it’s bad for business it’s bad for the people who live in downtown,” Anthony Tafoia told KCRA 3 he’s worried about his little sister who lives down the block. “It’s scary to just think that if she’s here and that happened I would literally freak out.”
The usually busy brunch spot was shuttered close after the shooting.
“We certainly understand the concern of community members who go downtown and do not feel safe, and we’re doing everything in our power to make sure that they feel safe when they go downtown and enjoy the incredible entertainment district we have in our city,” Eaton said.
The Sacramento Police Department encourages any witnesses with information regarding this investigation to contact the dispatch center at 916-808-5471 or Sacramento Valley Crime Stoppers at 916-443-HELP (4357). Callers can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward up to $1,000. Anonymous tips can also be submitted using the free “P3 Tips” smartphone app.
One other deadly shooting has happened in the immediate area of where this shooting happened Sunday morning, according to data compiled by KCRA 3. That shooting happened back in January.
This is a developing story, stay with KCRA 3 for the latest.
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Lara Trump Calls President Biden 'the Anchor Around The Neck' Of The Democratic Party
Lara Trump Calls President Biden 'the Anchor Around The Neck' Of The Democratic Party https://digitalalaskanews.com/lara-trump-calls-president-biden-the-anchor-around-the-neck-of-the-democratic-party/
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Fox News contributor Lara Trump called President Biden an anchor around the Democratic Party’s neck during “The Big Sunday Show.”
Trump and the other co-hosts discussed Biden’s impact on the upcoming midterm elections amid his low approval numbers. Trump said Biden is weighing down the Democratic Party in competitive races around the country, and hence, Democrat candidates are distancing themselves from him.
“President Biden says he hasn’t decided if he’ll run for re-election in 2024. Voters say they don’t want him,” Trump said. “In a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, more than half of Americans want someone else to be the presidential nominee.”
She continued, “Democratic candidates are getting the message: they’re distancing themselves from the president and even attacking him.”
JEN PSAKI SAYS DEMOCRATS KNOW ‘THEY WILL LOSE’ IF MIDTERMS ARE A REFERENDUM ON PRESIDENT BIDEN
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrive at Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington from a weekend trip to Rehoboth Beach, Del., Sunday, July 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
The show then played a clip of Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke criticizing Biden for not caring enough about the state.
“Candidate Biden didn’t spend a dime or day in the Rio Grande Valley or really anywhere in Texas, for that matter, once we got down in the homestretch of the general election,” O’Rourke told a crowd at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. “You got to be locking eyeballs with the people that you want to fight for and serve and whose votes that you want to win.”
Trump also highlighted comments from former White House press secretary Jenn Psaki, who said Sunday that if the election is a referendum on her former boss, Democrats will lose.
“I mean guys, they know that Joe Biden is basically the anchor around the neck of the Democrat Party,” Trump said.
She added that she does not think the American people truly believe Biden will run for re-election in 2024.
CRIME TRUMPS ABORTION IN VOTER CONCERNS, GIVING GOP LARGEST LEAD ON ISSUE IN MORE THAN 30 YEARS: POLL
Lara Trump said President Biden’s low approval numbers are hurting his party. (Fox News)
Alicia Acuna, Fox News senior correspondent, noted that O’Rourke turning on Biden is a sign of the times since Biden’s popularity is declining and Democrats are abandoning him.
“Remember that day when it became evident that it was going to be Joe Biden and all of the candidates one by one just started dropping and throwing in their support. Man, how things have changed,” Acuna said. “We’re also seeing so many of the candidates out there right now in these swing states who are also really struggling when they’re asked, ‘do you want the president to come out and campaign for you?'”
First Lady Jill Biden reportedly believes President Biden has been managed with “kid gloves,” according to Politico. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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A Fox News poll shows inflation as the number one concern for voters going into the midterm elections.
The Fox News national survey shows 78% of voters say inflation caused them financial hardship, up three points since July and up 11 since December. Some 34% describe it as “a serious hardship,” up from earlier this summer (30% in July).
Fox News’ Dana Blanton contributed to this report.
Joe Silverstein is a production assistant for Fox News Digital.
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Alaska National Weather Service Wraps Up Summer Report Gives Upcoming Forecast
Alaska National Weather Service Wraps Up Summer Report, Gives Upcoming Forecast https://digitalalaskanews.com/alaska-national-weather-service-wraps-up-summer-report-gives-upcoming-forecast/
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Sunday’s atomospheric river event. (Photo courtesy of NWSJuneau Facebook)
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – Alaska National Weather Service detailed a summer weather report and said what Juneau can expect this first week of fall.
Nathan Compton, a meteorologist with the Alaska National Weather Service, said what Juneau can expect starting Sunday.
“We’re looking at an atmospheric event coming in Sunday night going into Monday. The bulk of the rain is looking to be towards the Monday to Monday night area. We’re looking at a grand total four-day event. It’s going to start down in the southern Panhandle Saturday and kind of move its way up into the Juneau area come Sunday.”
Compton gave an update on the atmospheric event Sunday evening, saying the expectation of 6-7 inches of rain went down to 3-4.
“It is starting to rain here in Juneau. It is starting to move over the Juneau area. As of right now, we are looking at somewhat trending down in terms of rain because we’re looking at the plume of moisture. It’s somewhat wavering going back and forth as it hits the Juneau area going forward. So we’ll be seeing periods of heavy rain and then we’ll kind of hit a lull and then go back to periods of heavy rain. And it’s just going to be looking like that over the next couple of days through Wednesday. We’re looking at three to four inches of rain in the Juneau area now.”
Compton said what to expect after Wednesday.
“After Wednesday we’re going to be seeing somewhat of a lull period before there’s going to be a new system that moves in towards the end of the week. At this point, it’s not looking as strong but we probably will see a good deal of rain.”
Compton also summarized this summer’s weather trends as compared to previous years.
“So this summer was a little bit of a warm one when it comes to temperatures. Towards the beginning of the official summer period, it was much warmer than usual. We broke two records in late June to early July period, and then it kind of trended downward for more of a normal summer until just towards the ends and the August period where we bumped up a little bit about normal. As for precipitation, we were running just about normal to what’s usual for the Juneau area. We were trending upwards in terms of precipitation towards the end, but overall we’re almost exactly where normal is for Juneau.”
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Lori Moylan, Public Policy Manager for Meta, talks social media safety
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – On Friday, Lori Moylan joined Dano on Capital Chat to talk about Internet safety for youth.
Simply Three closes out Juneau Jazz and Classics Festival
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – Simply Three closed Juneau Jazz and Classics Festival Saturday evening.
Indian taco medical fundraiser for T&H Vice President Delbert Kadake
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – Tomorrow, Tlingit & Haida is hosting a medical fundraiser in support of T&H’s Vice President Delbert Kadake, and his family.
Juneau Rotary Club’s Brewfest returns in full swing
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – The 10th annual Brewfest returned to Juneau after being restricted for the last two years due to the pandemic.
9th annual Juneau EV & e-bike round-up
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President Biden approves Major Disaster Declaration for western Alaska
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced today that federal disaster assistance has been made available to the state of Alaska to supplement state, tribal, and local recovery efforts in the areas affected by the historic storm.
Totem pole, screens by Wayne Price to be unveiled Oct. 1 at Twin Lakes
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – A healing totem and Native screens are set to be revealed at Twin Lakes next week.
Update: Juneau man arrested after incident at TMHS
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – On Sept. 23, at approximately 1:30 p.m., JPD received a report from Thunder Mountain High School staff that a male was banging on windows at the school, trying to get inside.
AKPIRG, 907 Initiative groups file additional documents in Dunleavy complaint
Anchorage, Alaska (KINY) – The Alaska Public Interest Research Group and the 907 Initiative have filed supplemental evidence in their Alaska Public Offices Commission complaint against Gov. Mike Dunleavy, the Dunleavy for Governor campaign, the Republican Governors Association, A Stronger Alaska, Strategic Synergies, and Brett Huber.
JPD: One in custody after man is reported trying to break into TMHS
Juneau, Alaska (KINY) – Juneau police took a male into custody after he allegedly tried to break into Thunder Mountain High School on Friday.
Rep. Peltola introduces her first bill in House of Representatives
Washington, DC (KINY) – Representative Mary Sattler Peltola this week introduced her first piece of legislation, the Food Security for all Veterans Act.
Rep. Eastman remains on ballot but could be disqualified after election
Juneau, Alaska (Alaska Beacon) – The Alaska Constitution’s “disloyalty clause” will be tested in a Dec. 12 trial.
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Ian Could Undergo Rapid Intensification Beginning Tonight
Ian Could Undergo Rapid Intensification Beginning Tonight https://digitalalaskanews.com/ian-could-undergo-rapid-intensification-beginning-tonight/
The WDSU weather team is keeping tabs on the entire Atlantic Basin, but is now focusing on Tropical Storm Ian.The models slowly trended west the past couple of days, but the past few updates have kept the forecast cone stationary. That’s good for us, meaning the storm is still expected to track well east of Louisiana. We’re still watching this storm closely, and it’s a good idea for you to check back in, too. If the storm keeps on its current projected path, that would mean we end up with nice weather, but with breezy to windy conditions! Let’s get into the details of where Ian might be going. Tropical Storm Ian is expected to start rapidly strengthening tonight. Right now, Ian is about 160 miles south of Grand Cayman and 430 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba. It has winds of 60 mph and is moving NW at 12 mph, while the minimum central pressure has dropped from 1003 mb to 991 mb. That’s a HUGE drop, and notes the storm is strengthening fast.This means Ian could strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane overnight tonight.Ian will then likely become a Category 2 hurricane early Tuesday morning after passing Grand Cayman. A hurricane warning is issued on the island.From there, it will continue to strengthen and could be a Category 3 major hurricane by Tuesday afternoon, after possibly making landfall in far western Cuba. Hurricane warnings are in place in for the Cuban provinces of Isla Juventud, Pinar del Rio. and Artemisa.Beyond its Cuba crossing, it will strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane in the Gulf overnight Tuesday or early Wednesday morning . As of the 7pm update, max sustained winds of 130 mph are still forecast. Ian will weaken to a Category 3 major hurricane through Wednesday afternoon, as it tracks well off of the Florida west coast. On Thursday morning, Ian is forecast to continue to weaken to a category 2 as it moves closer to the Gulf Coast due to an increase in wind shear, but it’s possible a storm of this strength could overcome the stronger wind field and maintain its intensity. Regardless of its strength, Ian should slow down and its wind field will likely be widening, so significant wind and storm surge impacts to Florida are likely.The official forecast cone from the National Hurricane Center still encompasses areas near Gulf Shores, AL, to Fort Myers, FL.Remember, the center of the hurricane could make landfall anywhere within the cone, so the entire coast within that area needs to be prepping for a possible landfall. There are also differences in the speed of the storm which will affect where it will make landfall in the U.S. If it moves faster, it’s likelier to make landfall near Tampa, and that landfall will likely occur around Wednesday night. It it makes landfall in the Panhandle, it could be a weaker hurricane and landfall will be closer to Friday morning. There were slow trends to the west over the past two days, but as previously mentioned, forecast data has begun to converge this morning. At this point, it’s still a good idea to keep on checking in on the latest data and discussion here at wdsu.com and on our regular newscast throughout the day. However, it is still far enough east that we aren’t expecting impacts beyond a breeze to windy conditions picking up. There is only a 5% probability of sustained tropical storm force winds here.Besides that system, we’re watching the entire Atlantic Basin where now only Gaston .Stay with WDSU for the latest.
NEW ORLEANS —
The WDSU weather team is keeping tabs on the entire Atlantic Basin, but is now focusing on Tropical Storm Ian.
The models slowly trended west the past couple of days, but the past few updates have kept the forecast cone stationary. That’s good for us, meaning the storm is still expected to track well east of Louisiana. We’re still watching this storm closely, and it’s a good idea for you to check back in, too.
If the storm keeps on its current projected path, that would mean we end up with nice weather, but with breezy to windy conditions! Let’s get into the details of where Ian might be going.
Tropical Storm Ian is expected to start rapidly strengthening tonight. Right now, Ian is about 160 miles south of Grand Cayman and 430 miles southeast of the western tip of Cuba. It has winds of 60 mph and is moving NW at 12 mph, while the minimum central pressure has dropped from 1003 mb to 991 mb. That’s a HUGE drop, and notes the storm is strengthening fast.
This means Ian could strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane overnight tonight.
Ian will then likely become a Category 2 hurricane early Tuesday morning after passing Grand Cayman. A hurricane warning is issued on the island.
From there, it will continue to strengthen and could be a Category 3 major hurricane by Tuesday afternoon, after possibly making landfall in far western Cuba. Hurricane warnings are in place in for the Cuban provinces of Isla Juventud, Pinar del Rio. and Artemisa.
Beyond its Cuba crossing, it will strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane in the Gulf overnight Tuesday or early Wednesday morning . As of the 7pm update, max sustained winds of 130 mph are still forecast.
Ian will weaken to a Category 3 major hurricane through Wednesday afternoon, as it tracks well off of the Florida west coast. On Thursday morning, Ian is forecast to continue to weaken to a category 2 as it moves closer to the Gulf Coast due to an increase in wind shear, but it’s possible a storm of this strength could overcome the stronger wind field and maintain its intensity. Regardless of its strength, Ian should slow down and its wind field will likely be widening, so significant wind and storm surge impacts to Florida are likely.
The official forecast cone from the National Hurricane Center still encompasses areas near Gulf Shores, AL, to Fort Myers, FL.
Remember, the center of the hurricane could make landfall anywhere within the cone, so the entire coast within that area needs to be prepping for a possible landfall.
There are also differences in the speed of the storm which will affect where it will make landfall in the U.S. If it moves faster, it’s likelier to make landfall near Tampa, and that landfall will likely occur around Wednesday night. It it makes landfall in the Panhandle, it could be a weaker hurricane and landfall will be closer to Friday morning.
There were slow trends to the west over the past two days, but as previously mentioned, forecast data has begun to converge this morning. At this point, it’s still a good idea to keep on checking in on the latest data and discussion here at wdsu.com and on our regular newscast throughout the day. However, it is still far enough east that we aren’t expecting impacts beyond a breeze to windy conditions picking up. There is only a 5% probability of sustained tropical storm force winds here.
Besides that system, we’re watching the entire Atlantic Basin where now only Gaston .
Stay with WDSU for the latest.
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Nikkei Kospi Fall 2%; Asia-Pacific Markets Drop As Negative Sentiment Remains
Nikkei, Kospi Fall 2%; Asia-Pacific Markets Drop As Negative Sentiment Remains https://digitalalaskanews.com/nikkei-kospi-fall-2-asia-pacific-markets-drop-as-negative-sentiment-remains/
The Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), operated by Japan Exchange Group Inc. (JPX), in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares in the Asia-Pacific fell sharply on Monday as negative sentiment continues to weigh in on markets.
The Nikkei 225 in Japan dropped 2.19% in early trade, and the Topix slipped 2%. South Korea’s Kospi lost 2.3% and the Kosdaq shed 2.97%.
In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 declined 1.94%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 1.19% lower.
The Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee is scheduled to meet later this week, and China is expected to release data on factory activity at the end of the week.
Onewo, a subsidiary of property developer China Vanke, is set to debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange this week as well.
Asian currencies weaken against the greenback
The Japanese yen lost ground against the U.S. dollar in Asia’s morning trade, changing hands at 143.60.
The offshore Chinese yuan weakened to 7.1475 per dollar.
South Korea’s won was at its weakest levels since 2009, trading at 1,423 against the greenback.
Australia’s dollar, meanwhile, strengthened slightly to $0.6532.
— Abigail Ng
Stocks prepare to test their lows in the final week of trading for September
Heading into the final week of trading for September, the Dow and S&P 500 are each down about 6% for the month, while the Nasdaq has lost 8%.
Both the Dow and S&P are now sitting 1.2% and 1.6%, respectively, above their lows from mid-June. The Nasdaq is 2.9% above its low.
— Tanaya Macheel
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The Sunday Minefield – September 25, 2022 https://digitalalaskanews.com/the-sunday-minefield-september-25-2022/
Fall is definitely in the air. The November 8 general election is just over six weeks away. The big political news this week is a judge ruled that Representative David Eastman (R – Wasilla) may be ineligible to hold public office based on an anti-communism clause from the Alaska Constitution that likely violates the First Amendment. The price of Alaska North Slope Crude continues to fall, causing concern of an unfunded deficit. And several politicos are on the move.
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Eastman Obsession
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The anti-David Eastman crowd is alive and well. They were unable to defeat him in 2020 when Mat-Su Borough Assembly member Jesse Sumner unsuccessfully challenged Eastman in the Republican primary. This time they have gone to the courts. Randall Kowalke, a former Assembly member who lost to Senator Mike Shower (R -Wasilla) in the 2018 Republican primary, filed a lawsuit claiming Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers violates the Alaska Constitution. Article 7, Section 4 of the Alaska Constitution includes a disloyalty clause.
The provision was an anti-communist measure as the Alaska Constitution was drafted in the 1950s during the Red Scare. This week a judge ruled that Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers, who were involved in the January 6 insurrection, likely violates the constitutional provision. Eastman’s name will remain on the ballot for the November election. But he still has to have a trial, which is scheduled for December. Should Eastman win in November – which is likely – the judge directed the Division of Elections to not certify the election until the trial has concluded. If Eastman loses, the second place finisher will take his spot.
This provision almost certainly violates the First Amendment principal of free association. Even attorney Libby Bakalar, who is no fan of Eastman, acknowledges this. But Kowalke and his ilk don’t care about the First Amendment. They want Eastman gone. They can’t do it at the ballot box so they have gone to the courts instead. I not a fan of David Eastman’s politics or tactics. But we live in a representative democracy and Eastman continues to get elected by his constituents. The precedent this could set is dangerous for democracy. Not that long ago the ACLU would have defended Eastman here. It’s too bad they have abandoned their founding principals.
Whole EASTMAN CASE 101 here: pic.twitter.com/sJlketMd99
— One Hot Mess AK (@libbybakalar) September 24, 2022
What the primary results tell us about the general
The following is an excerpt from this week’s edition of the Alaska Political Report. You can click here for more information about the Political Report. A subscription is $1,299/year per organization. Discounted pricing is available for non-profits and government entities. We are providing extensive election coverage this year in addition to our session coverage. If you have any questions or would like to subscribe, please email [email protected]
Elections are decided by people who show up to vote and by those disenfranchised enough to stay home – or under Alaska’s new election system – to select one candidate in a race rather than completing a ranked ballot.
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During the Nov. 8 general election, the electorate will look very different than it did for the August 16 primary election. Yet a district-by-district and precinct level review of turnout reveals a number of interesting trends.
Urban Alaska carried Mary Peltola to victory
When Congresswoman Mary Peltola (D – AK) was a member of the Alaska Legislature – with the exception of an initial loss during her first run for office against then-incumbent Ivan M. Ivan – the closest race she ever had was in 1998 when she won her seat with more than 72 percent of the vote.
In the race for U.S. House, Peltola received 63.5 percent of the vote from her home district in the primary – a significant majority and better than her overall performance statewide of 36.8 percent. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R – AK) performed 10.5 percentage points better than Peltola in House District 38, earning 74 percent of the vote. Further, Peltola was five percentage points more popular in Downtown Juneau — where she received 68.3 percent of the vote — than she was in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, where she lives. Peltola also performed extremely well in Downtown Anchorage, winning 60.3 percent of first place votes. The surge of support in highly populated urban areas, rather than in rural communities, propelled Peltola to victory.
Overall, statewide turnout was 32.2 percent. In rural districts, however, turnout was dramatically lower, ranging between 16.9 percent on the North Slope to 22.5 percent in Norton Sound.
Will this trend of low rural voter turnout remain the same in November? Or will these voters be motivated to do their part to keep the first Alaska Native member of Congress in that seat? If there is an uptick in rural turnout, which seems likely, candidates in other statewide and legislative elections could benefit
Highest voter turnout at the precinct level*
Klukwan (55.4% – 41/74)
Stuckagain Heights (43.2% – 189/437)
West Anchorage (42.6% – 787/1,847)
Lynn Canal (42.1% – 582/1,384)
Goldstream (41.8% – 648/1,550)
* the voter turnout figure here is imperfect because the Division of Elections does not break down absentee, early, and questioned ballots by district, meaning the above ranking only accounts for in-person voting on Election Day.
Palin significantly outpaced Begich in House districts won
Republican Nick Begich III narrowly won the majority of first place votes in just three House districts: Ketchikan and both Eagle River districts, each by a narrow margin with the overall first place vote count split nearly equally among the three candidates. Republican Sarah Palin won ten House districts; Peltola led the pack by winning a total of 27 House districts. In a head-to-head comparison of how Begich and Palin performed against one another in each House district, though, the two were in a dead heat, 20-20.
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Will Republicans embrace a “rank the red” strategy in a race where the two Republicans are almost exclusively cutting one another down?
Who can outpace Dunleavy in a third round: Gara or Walker?
In exactly the same number of House districts where Peltola won a majority of votes – 27 out of 40 – Democrat Les Gara and Independent Bill Walker together received more support than GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy. One major question in this race is which of the two challengers will emerge in second place and to what degree Gara voters rank Walker second and vice versa.
When ranked-choice voting is a factor in the general election, it is likely that this race will carry into a third round of ranking before any candidate reaches a majority: Dunleavy received 40.4 percent of the vote in the primary, only 1.9 percentage points more than Kelly Tshibaka and far short of moving from a plurality to a majority until second-place votes are counted. The ultimate question for voters who want to replace Dunleavy: Is the Democratic or Independent ticket more capable of pulling ahead on the final third-round ballot? In the primary election, Gara outperformed Walker significantly in Anchorage; Walker’s strongest support on the other hand was in Coastal Alaska and in rural communities.
Another significant factor in this race is who Republican Charlie Pierce and Wasilla Republican Rep. Christopher Kurka voters will support in the general election. They received 10.44% of the combined primary vote. Will these Republicans who do not approve of Dunleavy’s performance not fill out a ballot at all? How will single-issue pro-life voters adjust to the adjusted field of gubernatorial tickets?
It’s clearly Lisa Murkowski’s race to lose
Any way you look at the U.S. Senate race, it’s clearly Lisa Murkowski’s to lose. Take House District 38 for example: with 74 percent of the vote, Murkowski is more popular than anyone in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, including Mary Peltola (63.5 percent) and Bethel Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman (67.9 percent).
Republican Kelly Tshibaka won a majority of support in 12 out of 40 House districts, with strong performances on the Kenai, Eagle River and the Mat-Su, and parts of Fairbanks. She even topped 60 percent in the Wasilla districts represented by Reps. David Eastman and Cathy Tilton. However, Murkowski dominated in rural communities, Coastal Alaska, and Anchorage.
Other Happenings
The price of ANS crude has steadily been falling since June. If the average price for the fiscal year drops below $87 per barrel, the state will face an unfunded deficit. The PFD this year cost over $2 billion. No matter what, our elected officials always take us to the fiscal edge.
Jeremy Price is leaving his position as chair at the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission to take a public relations job for HF Sinclair, a refinery located in Washington state. He is moving to Washington with his family for the job. Before being appointed to AOGCC by Governor Mike Dunleavy (R – Alaska), he served as Dunleavy’s deputy chief of staff.
Dr. Bob Onders, the administrator for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, resigned from his position this wee...
Dems Say Ditch Biden; GOP Split On Trump https://digitalalaskanews.com/dems-say-ditch-biden-gop-split-on-trump/
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Updated: September 25, 2022 @ 6:53 pm
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This combination of pictures shows President Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden during the final presidential debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 22, 2020. Will 2024 be a repeat? Brendan Smialowski and Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images/TNS
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