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Post Politics Now: Congress Returns With A Friday Shutdown Deadline Looming https://digitalarizonanews.com/post-politics-now-congress-returns-with-a-friday-shutdown-deadline-looming/ Today, the Senate returns to Washington with plans to take a key procedural vote on a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open beyond Friday. Much of the immediate drama centers on whether to retain an energy permitting provision proposed by Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) that is drawing opposition from both sides of the aisle. The broader legislation, released Monday night, also includes a major new round of emergency aid to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia. At the White House, President Biden plans to deliver remarks focused on “lowering health care costs and protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security,” according to an advisory. The speech had been scheduled for delivery in Florida, as part of a trip that was canceled because of the approaching Hurricane Ian. Your daily dashboard Noon Eastern time: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell brief reporters. Watch live here. 1:15 p.m. Eastern: Biden delivers remarks on Medicare and Social Security at the White House. Watch live here. 3 p.m. Eastern: The Senate convenes to consider a stopgap funding measure. Watch live here. Got a question about politics? Submit it here. After 3 p.m. weekdays, return to this space and we’ll address what’s on the mind of readers. Analysis: Races for state Supreme Courts to influence abortion laws Return to menu Governors and attorneys general races are getting increased attention as the battle over abortion access returns to the states. But there’s another type of often-overshadowed contest that could have major implications for abortion rights: state Supreme Court justices. Writing in The Health 202, The Post’s Rachel Roubein says that states where party control hangs in the balance during November’s elections include Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois. Per Rachel: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights supporters have turned to state courts to attempt to halt newly implemented abortion bans. The legal arguments vary, but many are hinged on the assertion that provisions in the state’s constitution should protect the right to access an abortion. Some have already wound up in front of the state Supreme Court; others could at a later date. State Supreme Court races typically fly under the radar, but they can affect everything from redistricting to school funding to gun control. You can read the full analysis here. Noted: Sanders won’t say if Biden should run again, doesn’t rule out running himself Return to menu Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wouldn’t say Tuesday whether he thinks President Biden should seek another term in 2024 and didn’t rule out another White House bid himself. Sanders, appearing on “CBS Mornings,” resisted repeated attempts to get him to say what his personal view is on whether Biden should run in 2024. “Well, that’s his decision,” Sanders said. “Joe is a friend of mine, and I think against enormous opposition, he has tried to do some very, very good things. He will make that decision himself.” The latest: Bipartisan group of lawmakers seeks executive action on investments in China Return to menu A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Sens. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) is urging the White House to take executive action that could require U.S. companies and investors to notify the government before making certain investments in countries such as China and Russia that are seen as adversaries. In a letter to President Biden, signed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and others, the lawmakers say the action is needed while they regroup to try to pass legislation that would “prevent the offshoring of critical production capacity and intellectual property to our foreign adversaries.” On our radar: Senate Electoral Count Act bill faces critical test Return to menu A Senate bill to strengthen the Electoral Count Act, the 19th century law that governs Congress’s role in certifying presidential election results, will be considered by the Senate Rules Committee on Tuesday afternoon, the final step for the bill before it heads to the floor for a vote. Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell say that all signs point to a major bipartisan victory on an issue that has divided the country since President Donald Trump exploited loopholes in the law in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Analysis: Sinema, McConnell and the upside-down politics of Arizona Return to menu When Blake Masters was campaigning for the Republican Senate nomination in Arizona, he called for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to be ousted as Republican leader in the Senate. “I’ll tell Mitch this to his face,” Master said during a June primary debate. “He’s not bad at everything. He’s good at judges. He’s good at blocking Democrats. You know what he’s not good at? Legislating.” Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell write that when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) appeared with McConnell on Monday at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center barely six weeks before the midterm elections, she was full of praise for him. And McConnell returned the favor, calling her the “most effective first-term senator” he has seen since joining the Senate in 1985. On our radar: White House offers preview of policies to be unveiled at hunger conference Return to menu The White House will convene a national conference on dietary health and food security Wednesday, for the first time in over 50 years, to launch a national campaign that seeks to tackle high obesity rates and end persistent hunger in the United States by 2030. The Post’s Andrew Jeong reports that in a 44-page summary of its dietary policies to be unveiled at the conference, the Biden administration pledged to make healthful food more affordable and accessible and to invest in expanding physical-activity options and enhancing research on food and nutrition. On our radar: Oath Keepers sedition trial could reveal new info about Jan. 6 plotting Return to menu Jury selection is scheduled to start Tuesday in a trial on charges of seditious conspiracy for five members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes. U.S. prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Rhodes’s call for an armed “civil war” to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6, 2021, was literal — and criminal. The Post’s Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Tom Jackman write that Rhodes’s trial could reveal new information about the quest to subvert the 2020 presidential election results, as prosecutors continue to probe Trump’s conduct and that of his inner circle. Analysis: The false claim that Senate Republicans ‘plan to end Social Security and Medicare’ Return to menu When an election campaign enters its final weeks, year after year, both political parties rely on familiar themes to attack their opponents. For Republicans, it’s crime and immigration. For Democrats, it’s Social Security and Medicare. In a tweet this weekend, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wrote: “Republicans plan to end Social Security and Medicare if they take back the Senate.” Murray, who has been in the Senate since 1993, is running against Republican Tiffany Smiley. Writing in The Fact Checker, The Post’s Glenn Kessler says that Murray’s tweet is a succinct example of what we called “Mediscare” attacks — an effort to warn seniors that Republicans will take away their hard-earned benefits. Per Glenn: Obituary: Jim Florio, former New Jersey congressman and governor, dies at 85 Return to menu Jim Florio, a New Jersey Democrat who spent 15 years in the U.S. House of Representatives before he became his state’s governor in 1990, pushing through one of the strongest gun-control laws in the country but also an unprecedented tax hike that drove him from office after a single term, died Sunday at a hospital in Mount Holly, N.J. He was 85. His daughter, Catherine Florio Pipas, confirmed his death but did not cite a cause, The Post’s Emily Langer writes. Per Emily: Mr. Florio grew up in Brooklyn, the son of an Italian American shipyard painter, and brought to the political arena the same intensity that he had shown as an amateur boxer. He had once entered the ring with an opponent who broke Mr. Florio’s left cheekbone, permanently crushing that side of his face. “I don’t start fights,” Mr. Florio told the New York Times of his later bouts in politics, “but I don’t walk away from them.” You can read the full obituary here. Read More Here

Canadians Think The Call Came From Inside The White House: Jan. 6 Hearings To Resume https://digitalarizonanews.com/canadians-think-the-call-came-from-inside-the-white-house-jan-6-hearings-to-resume/ WASHINGTON — A new poll suggests one in three Canadians have been keeping close tabs on the Jan. 6 hearings in the United States — and that nearly three in four blame Donald Trump for the riots. WASHINGTON — A new poll suggests one in three Canadians have been keeping close tabs on the Jan. 6 hearings in the United States — and that nearly three in four blame Donald Trump for the riots.  Leger’s online poll, conducted in August for the Association for Canadian Studies, found 37 per cent of respondents in Canada and 44 per cent in the U.S. were watching the hearings closely.  Just over half the American respondents, 54 per cent, said the former president is responsible for the Capitol Hill riots, compared with 72 per cent in Canada.  The select committee investigating Jan. 6 is set to hold its next hearing Wednesday, likely the last before the midterms in November. The poll, which surveyed 1,509 respondents in Canada and 1,002 in the U.S. shortly after the hearing in July, does not carry a margin of error because online surveys are not based on random samples.  A final report on the committee’s findings is expected before the end of the year, but it’s unclear if it will be released before election day Nov. 8.  The level of Canadian interest in the hearings is likely more to do with a persistent fascination with Trump and his ever-evolving legacy than anything else, said association president and CEO Jack Jedwab.  The former president “has left a lingering bad feeling for most Canadians,” who were by and large not supportive of his presidency or its impact on Canada-U.S. relations, Jedwab said. “Trump is seen as someone who soured relations between the two countries and as the object of considerable mistrust.” The poll, which was conducted before Pierre Poilievre claimed the leadership of the Conservative party, also broke down the Canadian participants by party affiliation.  Maxime Bernier’s hard-right People’s Party of Canada was the only party where a majority — 57 per cent — said they want to see Trump run for president again in 2024, with 25 per cent opposed and 18 per cent refusing to say.  Among Conservatives, 28 per cent said they would support Trump for the nomination, compared with 64 per cent who disagreed. Opposition to a Trump candidacy ran close to 90 per cent among Liberal, NDP and Green Party supporters, and reached 95 per cent among backers of the Bloc Québécois.  Ever since the hearings began in June, the committee — led by Mississippi Democrat Rep. Bennie Thompson and Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney — has unspooled a narrative tying the riots to the Trump White House.  That link got a boost Sunday when former committee staffer Denver Riggleman told “60 Minutes” of a phone call on Jan. 6 between one of the rioters and someone in the White House.  “You get a real ‘Aha’ moment when you see that the White House switchboard had connected to a rioter’s phone while it’s happening,” Riggleman said. The identity of who was on the phone in the White House remains a mystery, he added. “The American people need to know that there are link connections that need to be explored more.”  Committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin acknowledged that evidence Sunday, calling it just one of many clear links between the White House and the people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.  “We’re interested in telling the big story, which is this was an organized, premeditated, deliberate hit against the vice-president and the Congress to overthrow the 2020 presidential election,” Raskin told “Meet the Press.”  “What we’re going to do on Wednesday is fill in those details that have come to the attention of the committee over the last five or six weeks.”  The committee could also spell out what, if anything, it has learned from former Republican speaker Newt Gingrich and his role in promoting the defeated president’s persistent claims of election fraud.  Thompson wrote to Gingrich earlier this month about evidence that he said shows Gingrich “was involved in various other aspects of the scheme to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power,” including after Jan. 6.  The riots, which grew out of a sprawling protest among Trump supporters on the very day Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s election win, provided a dramatic and deadly exclamation point for the most turbulent presidency in modern history.  And the hearings, having exploded the notion that the chaos was simply a protest that got out of hand, have proven an unlikely summer blockbuster, thanks to the help of former ABC News president James Goldston. The committee heard how Pence averted a constitutional crisis by ignoring Trump’s demands to reject the election results, and remained on the congressional grounds even as protesters cried out for his violent ouster.  Members listened to former White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s account of a chaotic meeting of Trump’s fringe advisers, who were desperate for a way to keep the president in power, the night before. That meeting included a draft executive order that would have made Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell a special counsel with the power to order the U.S. military to seize voting machines from across the country.  After the meeting dissolved into frustration, the president issued his fateful late-night tweet luring supporters to D.C.: “Will be wild,” he wrote. And Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, told the committee how the president urged the Secret Service to stop screening protesters for weapons, saying, “They’re not here to hurt me.” And she described hearing of an infuriated Trump lunging for the steering wheel of his SUV when members of his Secret Service detail refused to take him to the Capitol.  This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2022. James McCarten, The Canadian Press Read More Here

U.S. Congress To Press Ahead On Stopgap Government Funding Bill | Politics https://digitalarizonanews.com/u-s-congress-to-press-ahead-on-stopgap-government-funding-bill-politics/ The U.S. Senate will take an initial vote on a stopgap spending measure on Tuesday to keep federal agencies running past the end of this week, while Congress continues to negotiate bills to fund the government through the next fiscal year. President Joe Biden’s Democrats control both chambers of Congress and are expected to avoid an embarrassing partial government shutdown just six weeks before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake. The bill would set $12.3 billion in new funding to help Ukraine turn back Russia’s invasion, House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLaura said in a statement. This includes new military and economic assistance. In addition, the measure authorizes Biden to direct the drawdown of up to $3.7 billion for the transfer to Ukraine of excess weapons from U.S. stocks. In early September, Biden requested $11.7 billion in military and economic aid. Congress has resorted to this kind of last-minute temporary spending bill in 43 out of the past 46 years due to its failure to approve full-year appropriations in time for the Oct. 1 start of a fiscal year, according to a government study. A Tuesday evening Senate procedural vote is designed to speed action once Democrats and Republicans put the finishing touches on legislation. MANCHIN’S PERMITTING BILL A BARRIER The first vote’s outcome was unclear because of a fight over an add-on by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a key swing vote who pressed to include an unrelated measure to speed up the government’s permitting process for energy projects. The proposed legislation includes permitting reform provisions and directs $250 million from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act to “improve and accelerate reviews for designated projects.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his fellow Republicans to vote against the temporary funding bill because of the Manchin provision, Politico reported. A McConnell aide had no immediate comment. Some Democrats and environmentalists also are opposed, fearing it would spark more development of fossil fuel projects at a time when the effects of climate change from carbon emissions are accelerating. Republicans have been angry at Manchin since he helped Democrats pass a bill this summer addressing climate change and lowering some healthcare costs. SPENDING BILL STILL EXPECTED TO PASS Even if Tuesday’s procedural vote fails, House and Senate leaders are expected to switch gears to promptly pass the spending bill by their Friday midnight deadline. That is when government agencies run out of money with Saturday’s start of a new fiscal year. Also included is a five-year renewal of Food and Drug Administration user fees being collected from drug and medical device companies to review their products and determine whether they are safe and effective, the bill summary showed. The law authorizing the collection of fees expires on Friday. The last time Congress allowed funding to lapse was in December 2018, when Democrats balked at paying for then-President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. Following a record, 35-day impasse, Trump found ways to partially circumvent Congress, but the wall never was completed. (This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Read More Here

Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall In Western Cuba As A Category 3 Storm, Threatening A Path Of Destruction As It Churns Toward Florida | CNN https://digitalarizonanews.com/hurricane-ian-makes-landfall-in-western-cuba-as-a-category-3-storm-threatening-a-path-of-destruction-as-it-churns-toward-florida-cnn/ Editor’s Note: Affected by the storm? Use CNN’s lite site for low bandwidth. You also can text or WhatsApp your Ian stories to CNN +1 347-322-0415. CNN  —  Rapidly intensifying Hurricane Ian made landfall in western Cuba early Tuesday morning while on its trek toward Florida, where residents in some coastal areas are already evacuating. The hurricane, packing maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, made landfall just southwest of the town of La Coloma in the Pinar del Rio Province of Cuba at 4:30 a.m., the National Hurricane Center said. The region is enduring significant wind and storm surge, which could raise water levels by as much as 14 feet above normal tide levels along the coast of Cuba the hurricane center said. The storm is expected to move north-northwest and across the island, leaving devastating wind damage in its path, according to the center. It is expected to emerge over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico and continue churning toward Florida, passing west of the Florida Keys late Tuesday, and approaching the west coast of Florida late Wednesday into Thursday. The hurricane is expected to bring life-threatening storm surge along much of Florida’s west coast by mid-week, as well as hurricane-force winds. While its exact path remains uncertain, projections show the Tampa area could get its first direct hit from a hurricane since 1921, and impacts on the area could be devastating. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters People walk and cycle through the rain ahead of Ian’s arrival in Coloma, Cuba, on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images A Cuban family transport personal belongings to a safe place in the Fanguito neighborhood in Havana. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images A man carries a sack with food in Batabano, Mayabeque province, Cuba, on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP People wait in lines to fuel their vehicles at a Costco Wholesale store in preparation for Ian’s arrival in Orlando, Florida. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images A family carries a dog to a safe place in Batabano, Cuba, on September 26. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Mike Lang/USA Today Network Ryan Copenhaver, manager of Siesta T’s in Sarasota, Florida, installs hurricane panels over the store’s windows on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters Farmer Cito Braga puts plastic on a window of his home ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Ian in Coloma, Cuba, on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian NOAA/NASA This satellite image, taken Monday at 1 p.m. ET, shows Hurricane Ian near Cuba, right. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Imagaes A man helps pull small boats out of Havana Bay in Cuba on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Gregg Newton/AFP via Getty Images Shelves are empty in a supermarket’s water aisle in Kissimmee, Florida, on Monday. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via ZUMA Press Wire Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, Florida, references a map that indicates where storm surges would impact the county. During a news conference, she urged anyone living in those areas to evacuate. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian John Raoux/AP People in Orlando fill sandbags Monday to help protect their homes from flooding. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Andrew West/USA Today Network Sarah Peterson fills sandbags in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, on Saturday, September 24. Photos: Bracing for Hurricane Ian Andrew West/USA Today Network Besnik Bushati fills gas containers at a gas station in Naples, Florida, on Saturday. The station had only premium gas that morning. “This is something that we haven’t seen in our lifetime … So we definitely need to take it seriously,” said Meteorologist Rick Davis of the National Weather Service’s Tampa office. A hurricane warning is in place from Bonita Beach to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay, according to the latest advisory from the hurricane center. This means “hurricane conditions are expected somewhere within the warning area, in this case, within 24 to 36 hours,” the center said. Additionally, a tropical storm warning was issued for the Middle Florida Keys and portions of the state’s east and west coasts. A tropical storm watch was issued for the southeast coast from Deerfield Beach north to Jupiter Inlet, the hurricane center said. The hurricane’s menacing approach to Florida triggered preparations across the state as officials announced school closures and flight cancellations, and the military began moving ships and aircraft. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned of power outages as well as possible evacuations and fuel shortages, telling people to “make preparations now.” All along Florida’s west coast, officials are urging residents to get out of harm’s way instead of staying to protect their property. “This is nothing to mess around with. If you can leave, just leave now,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said Monday. Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and emergency shelters were opened. “When we issued that mandatory evacuation, what that means is if you don’t and you call for help, we’re not coming because we’re not going to put our people in harm’s way and put them in peril because you didn’t listen to what we told you to do,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. Evacuation orders also went into effect for low-lying areas of Charlotte County as well as the counties of Sarasota, Hernando and Manatee. Floridians should expect more evacuations Tuesday for counties north of the bay, inland and some south of the bay, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. With tropical storm conditions possibly beginning Tuesday night, officials are concerned about Ian’s storm surge – a rise in water level caused by a strong storm’s wind pushing seawater onshore. A storm surge warning is effect for the Anclote River southward to Flamingo and Tampa Bay, where the inundation of water could reach 10 feet. The Tampa Bay region is particularly vulnerable to storm surge and could see catastrophic damage from flooding – even if the area doesn’t get a direct hit from the hurricane. Tampa Electric said it may have to proactively shut down power in the southern tip of downtown early Wednesday in an effort to “avoid serious damage to the underground equipment from saltwater storm surge, which will significantly shorten restoration time after the storm.” Tampa Bay International Airport will suspend operations at 5 p.m. Tuesday, DeSantis said Monday. The Port of Tampa Bay is also planning to suspend operations at 8 a.m. Tuesday, the governor said. Around the state, residents were waiting in long lines Monday to fill bags of sand or pick up bottled water in preparation for the storm’s arrival. Resident Khadijah Jones told CNN she was in line for three hours Monday to get free sandbags in Tampa, uncertain if her home will flood. “Just doing the basics … securing loose materials in the yard, sandbags in low areas, and getting items to prep for no power,” she said. As the storm approaches a slew of closures and cancellations have been announced. The HCA Florida Pasadena Hospital in St. Petersburg announced it has suspended services and transferred patients. Colleges and universities across the state – like Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach and University of South Florida in Tampa – are taking steps to prepare, including campus evacuations or a shift to online classes. On the K-12 level, Hillsborough County Schools said it had “no choice” but to cancel classes as campuses become storm shelters. And surrounding counties, including Citrus, Pasco, Manatee and Hernando have also announced closures this week. Disney World announced some temporary resort closures from Wednesday through Friday due to the weather conditions. At least three cruise lines also began rerouting passengers due to the hurricane. In an effort to ease congestion on the roadways for those leaving evacuation zones, the Florida Department of Transportation will likely authorize emergency shoulder use, which allows drivers to use shoulders at slower speeds, Guthrie, the state emergency management director, said. As residents are urged to leave, officials are staging people and equipment to quickly respond when recovery begins. With widespread power outages likely, Florida Power and Light announced it activated its emergency response plan, mobilizing 13,000 personnel. The company will work to restore power “as long as it’s safe to do so,” the release said, including using smart grid technology to remotely restore power to customers where possible. Resources from outside the state are also pouring in, Guthrie said. The Florida National Guard activated 5,000 Florida soldiers and 2,000 additional soldiers from Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, DeSantis announced Monday. President Joe Biden on Saturday approved a disaster declaration for Ian. “The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population,” the White House said in a news release. US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra decl...

An Agnostic Teaches Us About Jesus – Baptist News Global https://digitalarizonanews.com/an-agnostic-teaches-us-about-jesus-baptist-news-global/ Nearly a decade ago, I had a pleasant surprise. I received an email from a friend I had not seen or heard from since the late 1960s. Charles lived two doors down from us, and we spent many hours playing together, along with his younger brother. Our experience together did not include church or school because his family was Catholic, and he went to Catholic school. It was out of the blue when I received his email. How that happened is a long story for another time. We talked on the phone and caught up on a lot. He still lived in Colorado, where we grew up, and I was glad to hear about his siblings. Over the next few years, Charles’ wife died, and he did volunteer work in Africa for several years with the Peace Corps. We kept in touch occasionally. Terry Austin One of the more interesting things I discovered was that he was no longer a Catholic. In fact, he now identifies as an agnostic. We talked about it, but I was confident it wasn’t my job to bring him back to the Christian fold. Four years ago, during election season, Charles called to inform me that he would be in Dallas for a few weeks and wanted to get together. He was coming to work for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Texas senator. He was shocked when he parked in front of my house to see a yard sign supporting Beto. He knew my father as a Baptist preacher, so he assumed I was an evangelical Christian, which was not a good thing in his mind. Charles already was on his way out of the church when his son announced that he was gay. After his siblings, who are now evangelical Christians, condemned his son, Charles made the final break. Who can blame him? Before he saw my yard sign, Charles had been hesitant to tell me this part of the story. We had a great visit. It was good for him to see that I’m not an ogre even though I’m still a believer in Jesus, and it was good for me to see that he’s not an ogre even though he’s not so sure about God at all. During his time in Africa, he became very interested in the refugee issue around the world. He set off on a project and asked for my help. We are putting together a book to help evangelical pastors (of all people) understand how they can/should help refugees. He also is working to raise funds to give the book away free to thousands of pastors. Charles has a fascinating life, and I’m enjoying living it with him vicariously. Oh yeah, since I saw him last, he decided there was no reason to stay in Colorado, and Trump had so disgusted him that he sold his house, bought a new one in Portugal, and is now living there as a citizen. “The truly sad thing is that Christian preachers need to be convinced to care about refugees.” Here’s the amazing thing: An agnostic has established a massive goal of convincing Christian preachers of the need to care about refugees. That’s a wagon I’m glad to jump on. The truly sad thing is that Christian preachers need to be convinced to care about refugees. Think about that. Those who call themselves “Christians” because their God is known as “Christ” struggle with how to relate to refugees. Did they totally miss the story and words of Jesus? In the early years of his life, Jesus was a refugee in a foreign country, Egypt. How many times did he tell us that he lived his life for the poor and outcast? It is also obvious that Jesus expects the same from us. Many Christians understand this, and my friend’s task is not to send a book to every pastor. He plans to single out the evangelical pastors, the ones who have been clear about what they think of refugees. I’m aware that evangelical pastors have not issued a statement as to their beliefs about refugees, but is there any doubt? I got stuck in a traffic jam yesterday, Sunday, as a church down the road was dismissing its third or fourth (who can keep track) service this weekend, and the streets were flooded with joyful evangelicals who had just done their thing. This church, with more than 20,000 attendees each weekend, is led by a man who was on Trump’s council of supporting pastors, or whatever they called it. I would be shocked if fewer than 90% of those on the street yesterday were not Republican supporters of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. We know what Abbot thinks about refugees. He and his Florida buddy and their Arizona cousin are grabbing up refugees off the streets and shipping them to liberal areas of the country. The motive seems to be that once they have scary refugees on their streets, those people will be just as disgusted and want them booted out or locked up. However, they are making the same mistake we all make at times. The mistake is to think our own shortcomings are not so bad because anyone who had our experience would feel the same way. “Walk a mile in my shoes, and you’ll hate these people also,” is what they believe. “It seems that states with the strongest ‘right to life’ policies are the first in line when it comes to using people as pawns for their political purposes.” Two things stand out about the recent experience of governors sweeping up refugees off the streets and shipping them to liberal parts of the country. It seems that states with the strongest “right to life” policies are the first in line when it comes to using people as pawns for their political purposes. As I think about it, it might just be a continuation of the same political thinking. Do you really believe these strident pro-life politicians care that much about children? Probably not. They simply found a way to manipulate the unborn to gain political support. Just as they have been manipulating the unborn, now they are manipulating the already born. Both exemplify little regard for the right to life. The second thing of note is the response of the communities that were surprised when a busload of refugees suddenly showed up in their neighborhood. They didn’t panic. They didn’t hurl blame at the government. They didn’t stuff the children in cages and put handcuffs on the adults. They went to work doing the things Jesus told us to do. They fed and clothed them, set about the task of finding shelter and sustainable work, and located resource people like attorneys and medical people. Our book project is back on target now that Charles is settled in Portugal. He knows lots of people and clearly understands the refugees’ needs, which keeps him busy with that part of the project. He also has taken on the task of finding the money people to bring his dream to life and make this project happen. He has much to do, but I probably have the most difficult job. My assignment is to find a way to convince evangelical preachers to listen to Jesus. I suspect I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Terry Austin says from his first day of life he was taught to love the church. He has lived out that passion in various ways as a pastor, church consultant, author and critic. He is currently a full-time writer and book publisher and actively engaged with house churches. Related articles: Religious groups step up as DeSantis and Abbott make immigrants pawns for publicity DeSantis and Abbott working hard to see who can be more cruel to immigrants, faith leaders contend Evangelical leaders descend on Capitol to advocate for immigration reform now Read More Here

U.S. Congress To Press Ahead On Stopgap Government Funding Bill https://digitalarizonanews.com/u-s-congress-to-press-ahead-on-stopgap-government-funding-bill/ The U.S. Capitol Building is lit at sunset in Washington, U.S., December 20, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate will take an initial vote on a stopgap spending measure on Tuesday to keep federal agencies running past the end of this week, while Congress continues to negotiate bills to fund the government through the next fiscal year. President Joe Biden’s Democrats control both chambers of Congress and are expected to avoid an embarrassing partial government shutdown just six weeks before the Nov. 8 midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake. The bill also includes more than$7 billion in funding to help Ukraine turn back Russia’s invasion, according to a summary released Tuesday morning. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com In early September, Biden requested $11.7 billion in military and economic aid. Congress has resorted to this kind of last-minute temporary spending bill in 43 out of the past 46 years due to its failure to approve full-year appropriations in time for the Oct. 1 start of a fiscal year, according to a government study. A Tuesday evening Senate procedural vote is designed to speed action once Democrats and Republicans put the finishing touches on legislation. MANCHIN’S PERMITTING BILL A BARRIER The first vote’s outcome was unclear because of a fight over an add-on by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a key swing vote whopressed to include an unrelated measure to speed up the government’s permitting process for energy projects. The proposed legislation includes permitting reform provisions and directs $250 million from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act to “improve and accelerate reviews for designated projects.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell urged his fellow Republicans to vote against the temporary funding bill because of the Manchin provision, Politico reported. A McConnell aide had no immediate comment. Some Democrats and environmentalists also are opposed, fearing it would spark more development of fossil fuel projects at a time when the effects of climate change from carbon emissions are accelerating. Republicans have been angry at Manchin since he helped Democrats pass a bill this summer addressing climate change and lowering some healthcare costs. SPENDING BILL STILL EXPECTED TO PASS Even if Tuesday’s procedural vote fails, House and Senate leaders are expected to switch gears to promptly pass the spending bill by their Friday midnight deadline. That is when government agencies run out of money with Saturday’s start of a new fiscal year. Also included is a five-year renewal of Food and Drug Administration user fees being collected from drug and medical device companies to review their products and determine whether they are safe and effective, the bill summary showed. The law authorizing the collection of fees expires on Friday. The last time Congress allowed funding to lapse was in December 2018, when Democrats balked at paying for then-President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall. Following a record, 35-day impasse, Trump found ways to partially circumvent Congress, but the wall never was completed. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Scott Malone and Josie Kao Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

Factbox: Eight US Senate Races To Watch In November’s Midterm Elections https://digitalarizonanews.com/factbox-eight-us-senate-races-to-watch-in-novembers-midterm-elections/ Control of the US Senate is at stake in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, as Republicans need to pick up only one seat to win control of the 100-seat chamber, which would allow them to block much of President Joe Biden’s agenda. The chamber is currently split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, who are able to control the agenda thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote. Democrats hope to expand their margin. Here are eight races that could determine the outcome. Nevada Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina to serve in the Senate, is defending her seat against state Attorney General Adam Laxalt, a Republican who spearheaded his party’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory there in the 2020 election. Cortez Masto has been emphasizing abortion rights, while Laxalt has sought to harness voter concerns about rising prices – a pattern playing out in other states as well. In a state where 30 percent of the population is Latino, analysts are closely watching whether these voters will continue to drift toward Republicans or whether Democrats can reverse this trend. Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and husband of former US Representative Gabby Giffords, is facing Republican Blake Masters, a Republican backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel. The state is a former Republican stronghold where Democrats have made surprise gains in recent elections – Biden won the state by 0.3 percent in 2020. Masters has sought to distance himself from controversial comments suggesting Social Security should be privatized. He also recently deleted portions of his campaign website where he advocated for a total abortion ban. Masters’ struggles have led Republicans to pull funding and analysts have shifted their predictions for the race in Kelly’s favor. Georgia In what is expected to be a close race, freshman Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is up against Herschel Walker, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Walker is a former college football star who has been hampered by a series of scandals, including allegations of domestic violence and allegedly lying about how many children he has fathered. Warnock, who serves as pastor at the Atlanta church once led by Martin Luther King, Jr., won a surprise victory in a special election in early 2021, giving Democrats control of the US Senate. Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson is running against Democrat Mandela Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor. Johnson’s false statements about COVID-19 vaccines and Biden’s 2020 election victory could make him vulnerable, but he has pulled off surprise victories in past elections. Republicans argue Barnes is too radical for the state, pointing to his past support for progressive policies like Medicare for All and a 2018 photo in which he is holding a shirt that reads “Abolish ICE,” an immigration enforcement agency. Pennsylvania Republican Mehmet Oz, a former brain surgeon and TV host, is competing with John Fetterman, the Democratic lieutenant governor, for Pennsylvania’s open seat. Fetterman has portrayed Oz as elitist and an interloper, criticizing his attempts to connect with the state’s working class as ham-handed. In particular, a video released by the Oz campaign where he mispronounced the name of a local grocery chain while shopping for a “crudite” platter garnered criticism online. Oz has also faced accusations of carpetbagging as a longtime New Jersey resident. Fetterman, by contrast, emphasizes his blue-collar background and campaigns in shorts and a hoodie. He faces questions about his health, as he has made few public appearances in person since suffering a stroke in May. New Hampshire Republicans nominated Don Bolduc, a retired US Army general who promoted Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen, to run against incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan. Bolduc has attempted to appeal to centrist voters since his primary win, disavowing election fraud claims and saying abortion should be decided by the states. Analysts think Hassan has the advantage, given Bolduc’s hard-right statements. North Carolina Republican US House Representative Ted Budd faces former state Supreme Court judge Cheri Beasley for an open US Senate seat in a relatively low-key race that has not drawn as much national attention. Budd, a gun store owner, has emphasized bread-and-butter concerns like inflation to appeal to moderate voters, but he has also backed a national ban on abortions after 15 weeks and has appeared at several rallies with Trump. Beasley has said she would not be afraid to break with her party to appeal to centrists. North Carolina has been politically competitive for more than a decade, but Republicans have won most statewide contests and analysts give Budd the edge. Ohio Trump-endorsed, Thiel-backed J.D. Vance, author of the hardscrabble memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” should hold the advantage against Democratic US House Representative Tim Ryan in a state that has trended Republican over the past decade. But Vance’s more controversial opinions – that he did not care what happened in Ukraine, claiming the Biden administration was purposely flooding the Midwest with fetanyl – have made the race more competitive than expected. Ryan has emphasized his blue-collar background and distanced himself from party’s liberal wing. National groups have been pouring in money, and the topic of abortion is front and center since the state’s Republican legislature banned all abortions after six weeks. Read more: US: Republicans spend millions on TV ads for midterms, but why doesn’t Trump? Factbox: Oath Keepers facing seditious conspiracy trial in Jan. 6 Capitol attack Republicans want to flip the US House — and they’re outspending Democrats to do it Read More Here

Okeechobee County, Parts Of Treasure Coast Back In Hurricane Ian's Cone Of Uncertainty https://digitalarizonanews.com/okeechobee-county-parts-of-treasure-coast-back-in-hurricane-ians-cone-of-uncertainty/ Video above: The latest tropical forecast from WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologists. Parts of Okeechobee County and the Treasure Coast are back in the cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Ian as of Tuesday morning. All of our area is under tropical storm warnings and watches as Hurricane Ian rapidly intensifies while moving toward the state.Weather | Radar | Hurricanes | Traffic | uLocal | Facebook | Twitter | InstagramGov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida in preparation for the storm. WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologists forecast South Florida will begin to see the effects of Ian with severe weather risks Tuesday and Wednesday. WPBF 25 News has declared both days First Warning Weather Days. Some schools have canceled classes.Informational: 2022 WPBF 25 First Warning Weather Hurricane Survival GuideThis comes as another disturbance churns in the Atlantic. Outlook: As of 5 a.m. Tuesday, Ian is 5 miles south of Pinar Del Rio, Cuba. The storm has maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and is moving north at 12 mph.The storm’s cone of uncertainty moved to the east, including Okeechobee County and parts of the Treasure Coast. Related Coverage: Utility companies, water management districts prepare for possible stormThe storm is expected to turn to the northeast and move over the Florida Keys Tuesday and approach the west coast of Florida Wednesday. Up to 8 inches of rain is likely in the Keys.Tampa Bay could see about 10 feet of storm surge, the NHC forecast. The deepest water will occur to the immediate coast near the right of the hurricane’s center.Central and western Florida could see up to 16 inches of rain, with the rest of the peninsula seeing about 8 inches. Tornadoes are possible across the Florida peninsula late Monday night and Tuesday. South Florida is under a threat for severe storms Tuesday and Wednesday. Video Below: State leaders urge everyone in Florida to prepare for possible storm impactsWatches and Warnings: A hurricane warning is in effect for: Cuban provinces of Isla de Juventud, Pinar del Rio, and Artemisa Bonita Beach to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay Dry TortugasA hurricane watch is in effect for:North of Anclote River to the Suwannee River A tropical storm warning is in effect for:Cuban provinces of La Habana, Mayabeque, and MatanzasLower Florida Keys from Seven Mile Bridge westward to Key WestFlamingo to Bonita BeachSuwanee River to the Anclote RiverVolusia/Brevard County Line south to Jupiter InletLake Okeechobee A tropical storm watch is in effect for: North of the Suwannee River to Indian PassAltamaha Sound to Volusia/Brevard County lineDeerfield Beach to Jupiter InletA storm surge warning is in effect for:Anclote River southward to FlamingoTampa BayA storm surge watch is in effect for…The Florida Keys from the Card Sound Bridge westward to Key WestDry TortugasFlorida BayAucilla River to Anclote RiverAltamaha Sound to Flagler/Volusia County LineSaint Johns RiverFor full descriptions of what the watches and warnings mean, watch the video below.WPBF 25 Storm Shorts: Terms you need to know WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologist Glenn Glazer discussed the possibility of a tropical system hitting Florida in late September in the WPBF 2022 Hurricane Season Forecast.Video below: WPBF 25 News 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season ForecastStay updated on the latest weather updates with the WPBF 25 News app. You can download it here. Video above: The latest tropical forecast from WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologists. Parts of Okeechobee County and the Treasure Coast are back in the cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Ian as of Tuesday morning. All of our area is under tropical storm warnings and watches as Hurricane Ian rapidly intensifies while moving toward the state. Weather | Radar | Hurricanes | Traffic | uLocal | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the entire state of Florida in preparation for the storm. WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologists forecast South Florida will begin to see the effects of Ian with severe weather risks Tuesday and Wednesday. WPBF 25 News has declared both days First Warning Weather Days. Some schools have canceled classes. Informational: 2022 WPBF 25 First Warning Weather Hurricane Survival Guide This comes as another disturbance churns in the Atlantic. Outlook: As of 5 a.m. Tuesday, Ian is 5 miles south of Pinar Del Rio, Cuba. The storm has maximum sustained winds of 125 mph and is moving north at 12 mph. The storm’s cone of uncertainty moved to the east, including Okeechobee County and parts of the Treasure Coast. Related Coverage: Utility companies, water management districts prepare for possible storm The storm is expected to turn to the northeast and move over the Florida Keys Tuesday and approach the west coast of Florida Wednesday. Up to 8 inches of rain is likely in the Keys. Tampa Bay could see about 10 feet of storm surge, the NHC forecast. The deepest water will occur to the immediate coast near the right of the hurricane’s center. Central and western Florida could see up to 16 inches of rain, with the rest of the peninsula seeing about 8 inches. Tornadoes are possible across the Florida peninsula late Monday night and Tuesday. South Florida is under a threat for severe storms Tuesday and Wednesday. Video Below: State leaders urge everyone in Florida to prepare for possible storm impacts Watches and Warnings: A hurricane warning is in effect for: Cuban provinces of Isla de Juventud, Pinar del Rio, and Artemisa Bonita Beach to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay Dry Tortugas A hurricane watch is in effect for: North of Anclote River to the Suwannee River A tropical storm warning is in effect for: Cuban provinces of La Habana, Mayabeque, and Matanzas Lower Florida Keys from Seven Mile Bridge westward to Key West Flamingo to Bonita Beach Suwanee River to the Anclote River Volusia/Brevard County Line south to Jupiter Inlet Lake Okeechobee A tropical storm watch is in effect for: North of the Suwannee River to Indian Pass Altamaha Sound to Volusia/Brevard County line Deerfield Beach to Jupiter Inlet A storm surge warning is in effect for: Anclote River southward to Flamingo Tampa Bay A storm surge watch is in effect for… The Florida Keys from the Card Sound Bridge westward to Key West Dry Tortugas Florida Bay Aucilla River to Anclote River Altamaha Sound to Flagler/Volusia County Line Saint Johns River For full descriptions of what the watches and warnings mean, watch the video below. WPBF 25 Storm Shorts: Terms you need to know WPBF 25 First Warning Weather meteorologist Glenn Glazer discussed the possibility of a tropical system hitting Florida in late September in the WPBF 2022 Hurricane Season Forecast. Video below: WPBF 25 News 2022 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast Stay updated on the latest weather updates with the WPBF 25 News app. You can download it here. Read More Here

Stocks Making The Biggest Moves Premarket: Keurig Dr Pepper, CSX, Li Auto And More https://digitalarizonanews.com/stocks-making-the-biggest-moves-premarket-keurig-dr-pepper-csx-li-auto-and-more/ Check out the companies making headlines before the bell: Keurig Dr Pepper — The consumer stock fell 1.5% premarket after Goldman Sachs downgraded the stock to neutral from a buy rating. The Wall Street firm said it sees increased risk to Keurig’s margins as commodity inflation, especially related to coffee, remains elevated. related investing news Lucid Group — Shares of the electric vehicle player jumped 2.7% in premarket trading after Cantor Fitzgerald initiated coverage with an overweight rating. The firm said Lucid’s luxury and premium vehicles provide greater efficiency, longer range, faster charging and more space relative to its peers. Norfolk Southern, CSX — Shares of the railroad companies declined more than 1% each after UBS downgraded the duo, citing a deteriorating macro backdrop. The Wall Street firm said it will be hard for Norfolk and CSX to achieve the consensus 25% volume growth going forward. Li Auto — Shares of the Chinese EV maker edged up 0.5% premarket, even after the company cut its third-quarter delivery guidance by 2,500 vehicles or 9%. The company said the downward revision was due to supply chain constraints. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft — Big Tech names Amazon, Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft all traded at least 1% higher premarket, a possible rebound from Monday’s sell-off. Treasury yields retreated Tuesday morning after the multi-year highs hit in the previous session put pressure on tech names. Read More Here

Here Is Today https://digitalarizonanews.com/here-is-today-9/ Tucson folks should be prepared for high temperatures. Temperatures are projected to be a steamy day today with temperatures reaching a high of 98, though luckily it will feel much cooler at 82. Today’s forecasted low temperature is 74 degrees. The area will see gentle winds today, with forecast showing winds from Southeast, clocking in at 13 mph. This report is created automatically with weather data provided by TownNews.com. Keep an eye on tucson.com for forecast information and severe weather updates. Local Weather Get the daily forecast and severe weather alerts in your inbox! Tucson folks should be prepared for high temperatures. Temperatures are projected to be a scorcher today with temperatures reaching a high of … Lightning can travel through plumbing, so don’t shower or wash hands or dishes during a thunderstorm. That’s what the CDC advises. This evening’s outlook for Tucson: Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially early. Low 72F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.… Tucson’s evening forecast: Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph. Hot temperatures are p… This evening in Tucson: Mostly clear. Low 72F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Hot temperatures are predicted tomorrow. Temperatures are projected t… The forecast is showing a hot day in Tucson. Temperatures are projected to be a quite steamy high of 95. Today has the makings of a perfect da… This evening in Tucson: A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Mostly clear. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Sunday, Tucson folk… Millions around the world suffered through long heat waves and deadly flash floods. But this isn’t a freak summer: It’s occurring much more often. Hot temperatures are predicted today. Temperatures are projected to be a scorcher today with temperatures reaching a high of 94, though luckil… Hot temperatures are predicted today. Temperatures are projected to be a scorcher today with temperatures reaching a high of 99, though luckil… Read More Here

Putin May Formally Annex Ukrainian Territories On Friday | First Thing https://digitalarizonanews.com/putin-may-formally-annex-ukrainian-territories-on-friday-first-thing/ Good morning. Vladimir Putin is scheduled to address both houses of Russian parliament on Friday 30 September, and may use the address to formally announce the accession of Russian occupied territories of Ukraine into Russia, the British Ministry of Defence has said in its latest intelligence update: “There is a realistic possibility that Putin will use his address to formally announce the accession of the occupied regions of Ukraine to the Russian Federation. The referendums currently under way within these territories are scheduled to conclude on 27 September” Russia’s leaders almost certainly hope that any accession announcement will be seen as a vindication of the “special military operation” and will consolidate patriotic support for the conflict. Meanwhile, Sweden’s Maritime Authority said it had issued a warning of two leaks on the Russian-owned Nord Stream 1 pipeline in Swedish and Danish waters, shortly after an unprecedented leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 project was discovered. What else is happening? Japan has summoned Russia’s ambassador in Tokyo after a Japanese diplomat was blindfolded and physically restrained during an interrogation in Vladivostok. Why are so many men trying to leave Russia? Since Putin announced Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war last Wednesday, some men were scrambling to find a way to leave Russia, spurred by reports that some conscripts were being sent directly to the frontlines without training. Some Russians have paid £25,000 for seats on private planes. Meadows was central to hundreds of texts about overturning 2020 election, book says Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows turned text messages over to the January 6 committee. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, was at the center of hundreds of incoming messages about ways to aid Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, according to texts he turned over to the House January 6 select committee that have been published in a new book. The texts included previously unreported messages, including a group chat with Trump administration cabinet officials and plans to object to Joe Biden’s election certification on January 6 by Republican members of Congress and one former US attorney, as well as other Trump allies. The book, The Breach, was obtained by the Guardian before its scheduled publication on Tuesday. Written by the former Republican congressman and senior adviser to the investigation, Denver Riggleman, the work has already become controversial after being condemned by the panel as “unauthorized”. Didn’t we already know about the texts? Though most of the texts sent to and from Meadows that Riggleman includes have been public for months, the book offers new insight and fills some gaps about how all three branches of government were seemingly involved in strategizing ways to obstruct the congressional certification on January 6. Nasa successfully crashes spacecraft into asteroid in planetary defense test Scientists react as Nasa successfully crashes spacecraft into an asteroid. Photograph: Reuters/Nasa A multimillion-dollar spacecraft collided head-on with an asteroid the size of a football stadium yesterday in an unprecedented test of Nasa’s capacity to defend Earth from a doomsday scenario. Nasa’s craft successfully crashed into the asteroid Dimorphos 6.8m miles from Earth. The mission, known as Dart (double asteroid redirection test), marked humanity’s first attempt at moving another celestial body, with the goal of seeing if a large asteroid hurtling toward our planet could be successfully diverted. The spacecraft collided with the asteroid at 15,000mph at 7.14pm EDT. Livestreamed video showed the asteroid’s rubble-strewn surface looming into focus before the spacecraft hit and cheers erupted in the mission control room. Teams of Nasa and Johns Hopkins University scientists hugged each other as Dart’s successful impact with Dimorphos was confirmed. Shortly after impact, Lori Glaze, Nasa’s planetary science division director, declared it a “new era of humankind”. Haven’t I seen this story before? Kind of. A relatively similar strategy involving a nuclear missile rather than an unmanned spacecraft failed during a significant moment in the plot of Morgan Freeman’s fictional 1998 planetary disaster film Deep Impact. In other news … Ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson has gone missing on Manaslu mountain in Nepal. Photograph: Facebook/Hilaree Nelson Renowned US ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson has gone missing on Nepal’s Manaslu mountain, on the same day that an avalanche killed a Nepali climber on the same peak, officials said. Nelson was skiing down Manaslu after having successfully summited the world’s eighth-highest mountain with her partner. Putin signed a decree yesterday granting Russian citizenship to the US whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden, 39, a former US intelligence contractor, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the US after leaking secret files, published by the Guardian. The Republican congressmen Louie Gohmert and Paul Gosar adopted such extreme, conspiracy-tinged positions a colleague thought they “may have had serious cognitive issues”. Riggleman, the former congressman, reports his impression in a new book. A state funeral for Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has been held in Tokyo amid public anger over the cost of the ceremony and revelations over his party’s ties to a controversial religious group. More than 4,000 guests, including the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, paid their respects yesterday. Stat of the day: John Cena sets ‘herculean’ record for most wishes granted to children US pro-wrestler John Cena fulfilled 650 wishes through a not-for-profit organisation that helps children who are gravely sick or dying. Photograph: NBC/Getty Images After vanquishing seemingly countless foes in the ring as well as on the screen, the US pro-wrestler and actor John Cena has notched one more mark on his body count. He has set the new record for the most wishes granted through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the not-for-profit that helps fulfil the wishes of children who are gravely sick or dying. Cena achieved the record after granting 650 wishes to kids between the ages of two and 18 whose families contacted Make-A-Wish, said Guinness officials, who verified the tally on 19 July. Don’t miss this: Why does America sell 138,000 pumpkin spice things? Increasingly unlikely products now offer pumpkin spice options. Illustration: Rita Liu/The Guardian Pumpkin spice season, which officially began the last Tuesday of August when Starbucks released its fall drinks menu, is not the same as fall. It’s more about the idea of fall, writes Aimee Levitt. It’s such a lovely idea that other coffee shops and grocery stores, in a quest to beat Starbucks at its own game, have started rolling out their pumpkin spice products. Increasingly unlikely and downright gross products now offer pumpkin spice options, including bone broth protein, deodorant and poppers. There’s nothing that can’t be pumpkined. We crunch the numbers on the taste that became an industry … or this: Survivors have their say in 2017 Vegas shooting series People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gunfire is heard on October 1 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: David Becker/Getty Images The creators of 11 Minutes, a new documentary miniseries streaming on Paramount Plus about the devastating 2017 attack on country musical festival attendees, want to break one harrowing day out of the numbing stream of bad news. The film-makers decided to do this by giving survivors the opportunity to take control of their narrative. “If you’re touched, if one of your loved ones is affected by this, it never goes away,” director Jeff Zimbalist tells the Guardian. “But the news moves on, people go to the next headline. So, how do you continue to engage people? You tell it through the archive, through the journeys of people with unexpected stories.” Climate check: The most urgent climate stories of our time In the past year, we published almost 4,000 articles on the climate crisis, read by more than 65 million people, not to mention podcasts, live events and masterclasses. Illustration: Guardian Design This year will be remembered as a watershed year for the escalating climate crisis. Dozens of countries have been hit by extreme weather so far in 2022. Millions have been driven from their homes by flood, fire or drought, while food and energy shortages are becoming acute in many regions. Increasingly, extreme weather events are being caused by climate breakdown. The Guardian’s global team of environment reporters have covered the events – and their impact – around the world, around the clock. Here are some of the most urgent climate stories of our time. Last Thing: Feral pigs torment residents in New Zealand capital New Zealand’s feral pig population descended from pigs brought out on colonial ships in the late 1700s. Photograph: Geoff Marshall/Alamy Marauding feral pigs have blighted a central suburb in New Zealand’s capital, killing kid goats at an urban farm, intimidating dogs and turning up in residents’ gardens. It was difficult to put precise numbers on how many pigs were running wild in the area, but “there has clearly been an upsurge”, said Richard MacLean, the council’s spokesperson. “People tend to think of Wellington city as this pristine place where you couldn’t possibly have pigs or goats,” Maclean said, but the wild animals were hindering the council’s efforts to regenerate native bush and bring back birdlife. Sign up First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you...

Prosecuting Boss Trump: Build A RICO Case Against His Entire Criminal Empire https://digitalarizonanews.com/prosecuting-boss-trump-build-a-rico-case-against-his-entire-criminal-empire/ Even folks who support Donald Trump might agree that the former president is a con artist, a master gaslighter and a shrewd racketeer. As I argue in my book “Criminology on Trump,” the Houdini of white-collar crime and founder and CEO of the Trump Organization has effectively operated a criminal enterprise, beginning in 1980. He did so for the next 36 years before being elected president in November 2016. Throughout his presidency and afterward, Trump continued running, and even expanding, his criminal enterprise.    Trump’s lifetime as an outlaw and a racketeer may finally be coming to an end after more than four decades of eluding the criminal law. He is currently encircled by at least six or seven significant civil or criminal investigations.. Most legal scholars or former U.S. prosecutors will likely approach these white-collar, corporate and state crimes evidently committed by Trump and his associates as disparate and unrelated litigating conflicts.  I would contend, however, that when Trump’s fraudulent behavior is seen through the lenses of racketeering and the vantage point of a criminal enterprise, all his offenses or violations, whether civil or criminal, could be legally brought together and prosecuted under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.  Just as Trump and his allies could be prosecuted for sedition, obstruction of justice and election racketeering, in a classic “hub and spoke” multi-pronged criminal conspiracy, the illegal activities at issue in each of these individual investigations or lawsuits can be viewed over time as spokes of the same criminal enterprise.   Trump is an outlaw, and I mean that literally. He habitually breaks laws of all kinds while remaining a free person. Trump is also a special type of outlaw, because he has no moral compass and no loyalty to anyone besides himself. In fact, he thinks and acts as an authentic sociopath.    Trump is not an outlaw out of negligence, incompetence or ignorance of the illegalities of the marketplace, the civil and criminal laws or the Constitution of the United States. Quite the contrary. Trump knows the subtle differences between what is lawfully right and what is unlawfully wrong. Even more important, Trump is an expert on criminal intent — and the lack thereof.  Trump is not an outlaw out of negligence, incompetence or ignorance. He understands the subtle differences between legal and illegal — and he’s an expert on criminal intent. Moreover, Trump knows all about plausible deniability and has nurtured the idea that throughout his activities he was allegedly following or deferring to other people, such as lawyers, accountants, appraisers, etc. He also appreciates that the legal system is fluid in both theory and practice and is subject to valuation and interpretation. Finally, Trump understands that the administration of justice is malleable and subject to a high degree of internal and external discretionary power.  As a racketeer or mobster, Trump has always intermingled his legitimate affairs of business with the illegitimate affairs of organized crime. As he told a panel at the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles in 2004, shortly after he signed his first contract to do “The Apprentice,” he had been reluctant to sign on with the reality TV show because of all the mobsters that frequent his place of work: “I [didn’t] want to have cameras all over my office, dealing with contractors, politicians, mobsters and everyone else I have to deal with in my business.” More than a decade later as a presidential candidate, in one of his moments of public candor, he responded to a question about his friends in organized crime, “Winners team up with mobsters, losers don’t.” Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course. Days after Donald Trump became the president-elect in 2016, without any admission of wrongdoing, he settled three civil lawsuits against the defunct Trump University for $25 million, two from California and one from New York, which had been folded into one class-action lawsuit.  One year after the Trump University settlement was approved by the court overseeing the Southern District of New York, Trump was ordered by the New York Supreme Court in November 2019 to pay “$2 million in damages for improperly using charitable assets to intervene in the 2016 presidential primaries and further his own political interests.” That award was part of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its directors — Trump himself and his three adult children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric. As part of that settlement, the Trump Foundation was shut down and the funds that were illegally misused had to be restored. The foundation and its directors agreed to multiple stipulations in order to resolve the remaining claims in the lawsuit. Among these, Trump admitted to personally misusing funds at the Trump Foundation, and his adult children were subject to mandatory training requirements. Finally, if the Trump Organization tried to start a new charity, Trump agreed to restrictions on future charitable services and to ongoing reporting to the attorney general’s office.  Flash forward from there to the 220-page complaint in the fraud lawsuit filed by James against Trump and those same three adult children last week in state Supreme Court.  Trump is accused of padding his net worth by some $2 billion, and James is seeking at least $250 million in damages, the estimated value derived from the alleged fraud between 2010 and 2021.  Compared to $250 million, the Trump University and Trump Foundation fraud lawsuits now seem like chump change — especially because the resolution of this lawsuit may well mean the demise of the Trump Organization. Among other sanctions, James wants the Trump Organization to be placed under a stewardship and not to engage in any commercial real estate acquisitions for five years. She is also asking the court to ban Trump, Donald, Jr., Ivanka and Eric from ever again running a company based in New York. When we recently learned that James’ office had “rebuffed an offer” from Trump’s attorneys to settle this civil lawsuit, I wanted to know — and still want to know — how much Trump was willing to pay (or do) to make the case go away, especially knowing that losing the case could mean the end of his family business.   I still want to know how much Trump was willing to pay Letitia James to make the case go away, knowing it could mean the end of his family business. At her news conference last Wednesday, James explained that the investigation not only “revealed that Donald Trump engaged in years of illegal conduct to inflate his worth, to deceive banks and the people of the great state of New York,” but also uncovered evidence of potential criminal violations, including insurance, bank and tax fraud. James has shared her findings with both the IRS and the Southern District, where these cases could be pursued as criminal rather than civil matters. Meanwhile, from the big-picture criminological perspective, we also know the Justice Department has been investigating the fraudulent Save America PAC — Trump’s main fund-raising vehicle since he lost the 2020 election — which promotes baseless assertions about election fraud, and also played a role in trying to overturn the election and instigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. There are also the ongoing DOJ criminal investigations into Trump’s seditious conspiracy and obstruction of justice related to the fake electors scheme and failed coup that followed the 2020 election, as well as the stolen or “borrowed” classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago this summer.  As I opined in the Miami Herald last Wednesday, “When it comes to prosecuting Trump, it’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when'” the various lawsuits will materialize, and specifically what crimes he will be prosecuted for. After all, the racketeer in chief has literally engaged in decades of lawlessness and hundreds of potential violations spanning the years before, during and after his presidency. I hedged my answers to these questions:  Unless the DOJ finds a way to combine the crimes of seditious conspiracy and obstruction of justice pertaining to Jan. 6 and the crimes of espionage and obstruction of justice pertaining to Mar-a-Lago into one complicated case — highly unlikely, if not impossible — then look for the Justice Department to either prosecute its classified-documents case in the spring of 2023 or its seditious conspiracy case in the winter of 2024. Before the June and July select committee hearings on Jan. 6, and the subsequent scandal that emerged surrounding the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago, I was concerned that Trump would once again most likely escape criminal prosecution. But once it became obvious that the DOJ almost certainly could not refrain from prosecuting the former president for his obvious crimes, secondary concerns kicked in.  I suspect we may see a hierarchy of discretionary prosecutions established, where the DOJ chooses to settle for one prosecution amid the myriad of possibilities, allowing Trump to escape accountability for most of his crimes. Even worse, there’s the possibility that Trump would cut a deal to avoid any criminal trials and imprisonment.    This takes us back full circle to my unlikely proposition: The RICO statutes could and should be used as a means of bringing all the related civil and criminal charges from the various legal jurisdictions together, with the goal of prosecuting Donald Trump as a crime boss and his organization as a criminal enterprise.   Read More Here

America’s Democracy, Voting Rights And Other Freedoms Remain Under Assault https://digitalarizonanews.com/americas-democracy-voting-rights-and-other-freedoms-remain-under-assault/ In the 1960s, there was a phrase that said “tell it like it is.” It meant don’t beat around the bush. Just say what you mean. The speech President Joe Biden gave earlier this month certainly did that. In his speech, President Biden said, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” The past several years have proven this. America’s democracy, voting rights and other freedoms are constantly assaulted. Biden came out and stated the obvious: “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law.” Just look at the results of the 2020 election to see this is also true. Biden did say a majority of Republicans don’t adhere to this extremist ideology. Joe Biden’s comments about elections were both chilling and accurate: “Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to the election: they win or they were cheated, that’s where the MAGA Republicans are today.” This shows how extreme the MAGA supporters view the electoral process. Instead of putting two candidates together and letting the people decide, they believe they’re entitled to win and if they don’t, there’s fraud. What does this say to our children? If they lose a ballgame, it was fixed? If they lose a school contest, it was rigged? This sick and disturbing belief has no place in America. A recent poll showed the American people share Biden’s concern for our freedom. That poll showed democracy and its survival topping the list. For once, getting a job or how much something cost wasn’t the most important issue. Looking at the last two years; it’s easy to see why people believe this. What is now at stake is nothing less than America’s democracy. Failing to overturn the 2020 election, Trump and his minions are now trying to do the same for 2024. Since secretaries of state run elections, they want to put as many election-denying people in that office as possible. To that end, Trump supporters have formed what they call America First Secretary of State Coalition. The group’s objective is “to install Trump backers who rejected the 2020 presidential results as top state election officials.” Election deniers are democracy deniers. They refuse to accept the will of the people. Putting them in office means you could cast your vote and it wouldn’t matter. They could refuse to certify that state’s election and prevent the winner from getting the electoral votes. They’d give them to Trump or whoever was running. If enough election deniers get in the SOS office, they could tip the balance of votes. They’d do what they accuse everyone else of; stealing the election “If they win the general election, we’ve got real problems on our hands,” said former New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. “This is an effort to replace the people who oversee these races — to change the rules to make the results come out the way they want them to.” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said it was important for Republican secretaries of state, in particular, to talk about the 2020 election. In these races for secretary of state, four of them are in states Trump disputed in 2020: Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. In Michigan, Kristina Karamo is that election denier. As an election challenger, she falsely claimed there were voting irregularities at the TCF Center in Detroit in 2020. Now she wants to be secretary of state and oversee the whole election. In 2020, many Republicans voted for Joe Biden. They didn’t support everything he espoused, but they believed it was more important to put country over party. Today, and in 2024, that courage will be needed again. For it is written, the only thing needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. Let all of us — Republicans, Independents and Democrats — do something. Let us all vote to preserve, protect and defend our America. Southgate resident Allan Bieniek has appeared in several publications, including The New York Times and the Harvard International Review. Allan Bieniek Read More Here

Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes' Path: From Yale To Jail https://digitalarizonanews.com/oath-keepers-founder-stewart-rhodes-path-from-yale-to-jail/ 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. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison upon conviction. 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 ...

Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall In Cuba- Follow Live https://digitalarizonanews.com/hurricane-ian-makes-landfall-in-cuba-follow-live/ Central Florida stores struggle to keep water on shelves ahead of Tropical Storm Ian Heavy rain and strong winds are lashing western Cuba after Hurricane Ian made landfall on Tuesday. Earlier in the day Ian strengthened into a category 3 storm, before making landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio province. According to the US National Hurricane Center, the island’s west coast could see as much as 14 feet (4.3 metres) of storm surge. Authorities in Cuba have evacuated 50,000 people, set up at least 55 shelters and rushed in emergency personnel. According to the National Hurricane Center Ian won’t linger over Cuba but will slow down over the Gulf of Mexico, growing wider and stronger, “which will have the potential to produce significant wind and storm surge impacts along the west coast of Florida”. Meanwhile, mandatory evacuations are also underway in parts of Florida amid warnings of life-threatening conditions from the potentially category 4 storm in the coming days. There is a risk of flash flooding, strong winds, storm surge of up to 10 feet, and possible isolated tornadoes along Florida’s Gulf Coast with impacts beginning up to 36 hours before the peak. Registration is a free and easy way to support our truly independent journalism By registering, you will also enjoy limited access to Premium articles, exclusive newsletters, commenting, and virtual events with our leading journalists Email Please enter a valid email Please enter a valid email Password Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number First name Please enter your first name Special characters aren’t allowed Please enter a name between 1 and 40 characters Last name Please enter your last name Special characters aren’t allowed Please enter a name between 1 and 40 characters You must be over 18 years old to register You must be over 18 years old to register Year of birth I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent.  Read our Privacy notice You can opt-out at any time by signing in to your account to manage your preferences. Each email has a link to unsubscribe. Already have an account? sign in Registration is a free and easy way to support our truly independent journalism By registering, you will also enjoy limited access to Premium articles, exclusive newsletters, commenting, and virtual events with our leading journalists Email Please enter a valid email Please enter a valid email Password Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number First name Please enter your first name Special characters aren’t allowed Please enter a name between 1 and 40 characters Last name Please enter your last name Special characters aren’t allowed Please enter a name between 1 and 40 characters You must be over 18 years old to register You must be over 18 years old to register Year of birth I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent.  Read our Privacy notice You can opt-out at any time by signing in to your account to manage your preferences. Each email has a link to unsubscribe. Already have an account? sign in Read More Here

AP News Summary At 5:16 A.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-516-a-m-edt/ Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Cuba en route to Florida HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Ian has made landfall in western Cuba, lashing the island with rain and winds as it barreled north toward the Florida coast. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says that Ian hit Cuba early Tuesday as a Category 3 storm as it continued to strengthen, with sustained winds of 125 mph. Authorities in Cuba evacuated more than 50,000 people in Pinar del Rio province, the country’s main tobacco-growing region, ahead of Ian’s arrival, which was expected to bring flooding and heavy rainfall. The government also set up dozens of shelters in the island. The hurricane is expected to strike Florida as early as Wednesday, possibly as a Category 4 storm. Putin’s call-up fuels Russians’ anger, protests and violence TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Five days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in Ukraine, the move has triggered outraged protests across Russia, a fearful exodus of men of fighting age from the country, and acts of violence. There have been demonstrations — not just in the usual places like Moscow and St. Petersburg — but also in the remote far north province of Yakutia and in the poor, southern region of Dagestan. A gunman opened fire in an enlistment office in a Siberian city and gravely wounded the military commandant. One analyst says Putin is risking a lot because of the mobilization and is losing some support. Preordained vote to wrap up in Russia-held areas of Ukraine KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The final day of voting is taking place in Russian-held regions of Ukraine. Moscow is expected to use the referendum results as a pretext for the annexation of the areas, while the vote is rejected as sham by Kyiv and its Western allies. In the five-day voting, residents are asked whether they want their regions to become part of Russia. It has been anything but free or fair, as tens of thousands of residents had already fled the regions amid the war, and images shared by those who remained showed armed Russian troops going door-to-door to pressure Ukrainians into voting. Japan’s former leader Abe honored at divisive state funeral TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s hawkish former leader Shinzo Abe was honored by a rare and divisive state funeral that was full of militaristic presentation like soldiers carrying his ashes in a box brought by his widow and praise of his nine-year premiership. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said the publicly financed ceremony was a deserved honor for Japan’s longest-serving modern political leader, but it has deeply split public opinion. The event attended by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino and other foreign and Japanese dignitaries. Kishida eulogized Abe as having a clear vision for economic growth and development and promoting the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” as a counter to China’s rise. Bam! NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft has rammed an asteroid in an unprecedented test to see if a potentially menacing space rock could be knocked off course. The galactic grand slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles away Monday. The Dart spacecraft plowed into the small space rock at 14,000 mph. Scientists say the impact should have carved out a crater and hurled streams of rocks and dirt into space. Most importantly, though, scientists are hoping the collision altered the asteroid’s orbit. NASA won’t know how much the spacecraft nudged the asteroid for a couple of months. Jury to be picked for Oath Keeper boss’ Jan. 6 sedition case Jury selection is expected to get underway Tuesday in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates are charged with seditious conspiracy. Stewart Rhodes and the others are the first Jan. 6 defendants charged with the the rare Civil War-era offense to stand trial. Authorities allege there was a serious, weekslong plot to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Pound stabilizes but turmoil continues for UK economy LONDON (AP) — The British pound has stabilized in Asian trading after plunging to a record low, as the Bank of England and the British government try to soothe markets nervous about a volatile U.K. economy. The instability is having real-world impacts, with several British mortgage lenders withdrawing deals amid concern that interest rates may soon rise sharply. The pound was trading at around $1.08 on Tuesday morning. On Monday it plunged to $1.0373, the lowest since the decimalization of the currency in 1971, on concerns that tax cuts announced Friday by Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng would swell government debt and fuel further inflation. but some analysts warned that was “too little, too late.” At UN, a fleeting opportunity to tell their nations’ stories UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Pakistan’s new prime minister stepped onto the U.N. podium to spin a tale of floods and climate change. Shahbaz Sharif began: “As I stand here today to tell the story of my country …” At its core, that was what every world leader was here to do during the past week. One after another, they took the fleeting opportunity to craft a story about their nation and the world. They hoped the tales would make others sit up and listen. Some did it better than others. Vietnam imposes curfew, evacuations ahead of Typhoon Noru HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has imposed a curfew and evacuated over 800,000 people as a powerful typhoon that had flooded villages and left at least eight dead in the Philippines aimed for the country’s central region. National television VTV says people living near the coast where Typhoon Noru is expected to slam early Wednesday had been ordered to take shelter. Schools were closed and public events canceled. In Da Nang and Quang Nam provinces, a curfew will be in effect starting Tuesday evening. It forbids people from venturing out except those on official duty. Flights at five regional airports were canceled and train service halted until the typhoon passes. The weather agency says Noru is packing maximum sustained winds of 111 miles per hour. As Cantonese language wanes, efforts grow to preserve it SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Three decades ago, finding opportunities to learn the Cantonese language in San Francisco wasn’t hard. But today in the city that’s drawn Cantonese speakers from South China for over 150 years, there is fear that political and social upheaval are gradually diminishing the language. The Chinese government’s push for wider use of Mandarin, which is already the national language, along with the country’s changing migration patterns have contributed to an undeniable shift away from Cantonese. It’s a change that has reverberated from East to West. From the U.S. to the U.K. and beyond, there is worry that Cantonese won’t survive in some families for another generation. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read More Here

A Grand Jury In Georgia Is Expected To Hear From Ex-Trump Official Meadows https://digitalarizonanews.com/a-grand-jury-in-georgia-is-expected-to-hear-from-ex-trump-official-meadows/ A grand jury in Georgia is expected to hear from ex-Trump official Meadows Audio will be available later today. Former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is set to testify Tuesday before a grand jury in Fulton County regarding efforts to try to overturn the state’s 2020 election. Read More Here

Harvey: Andy Borowitz Takes Aim At Demise Of Intellectual Curiosity In US Politics https://digitalarizonanews.com/harvey-andy-borowitz-takes-aim-at-demise-of-intellectual-curiosity-in-us-politics/ Janice Harvey  |  Correspondent I read a lot, which is not a big surprise, since I’m a retired English teacher and a writer. Over the past several years, my stack of bedside books has included novels I’m still chewing through, but my taste has gravitated to political tomes. There’s a glut of this genre available. Since Donald Trump rode the escalator in 2015, every Tom, Dick and Kellyanne has written about the man who would be king — if kings could become kings just by thinking about it. Among the “bombshells” and tell-alls are books by Mary L. Trump, Bob Woodward, Jamie Raskin and Alexandra Petri; they have kept me outraged, entertained and terrified. However, the latest political hardcover by New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz is something altogether different, and worth every penny. If one isn’t familiar with Borowitz, he’s managed to wrestle away from The Onion its standing as the most outrageous and funniest in satire with his news column, “The Borowitz Report.” Borowitz uses his skills to skewer and expose politicians with hilarious headlines and articles that are just nutty enough to be true, but in “Profiles in Ignorance,” Borowitz displays a talent for writing that only briefly surfaces in his New Yorker work. “Profiles in Ignorance — How America’s Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber” is funny because it’s true — and nutty. For anyone paying attention, a candidate’s intellectual curiosity and knowledge have taken a back seat to glossy veneer for the last 50 years. Trump isn’t the first dopey C- student to come into power, and Borowitz has the receipts to prove it. He breaks down the deterioration of intellect among our leaders into three stages: Ridicule, Acceptance and Celebration. I read Stage One on a plane to Florida, the day after Governor Ron DeSantis decided to pull his most disgusting political stunt to date: human trafficking as a “gotcha.” Borowitz saved me from asking the pilot to turn the plane around. What’s remarkable about the book is its historical accuracy: Borowitz simply reminds us just how dumb our elected leaders have been, and how diligently their handlers have worked to hide their idiocy. Starting with Ronald Reagan, Borowitz reveals just much varnish it took to cover up what wasn’t there. According to the author, The Great Communicator “refused to even utter the word AIDS until 1985, after thousands of Americans had perished,” but who learned from this? Not Trump, who treated COVID-19 with the same urgency. The gaffes from the Gipper are priceless, but Borowitz is an equal-opportunity historian of sorts. He pulls back the curtain on Democrats as well as Republicans. Mike Dukakis’s wonky response to Bernard Shaw’s question regarding the death penalty and the infamous tank ride rang the death knell to his presidential campaign as surely as the Willie Horton debacle. Dukakis might have been “book smart” but he sure was a lousy candidate. Borowitz marvels over the Democrats’ penchant for running “eggheads” like Adlai Stevenson II, men with all the appeal of dry toast. Former Vice President Dan Quayle might wear the Golden Dunce Cap. The man who picked a fight with sitcom character Murphy Brown and added an “e” to potato was and likely remains as dumb as a post. Said one of his professors: “I looked into those blue eyes, and I might as well have been looking out the window.” It should be noted that former Vice President Mike Pence called Dan Quayle for advice regarding the certification of votes on January 6. This perhaps says everything one might care to know about Mike Pence. No book highlighting ignorance could be complete without mention of the heroine of the half-baked, former beauty pageant queen-turned-VP candidate Sarah Palin, the female version of the straw-headed Quayle. Her catastrophic interview with Katie Couric — where she revealed that she couldn’t name a single newspaper she reads regularly — made “SNL’s” Tina Fey an icon. The self-proclaimed hockey mom who attended six colleges in six years paved the way for Lauren Boebert, the U.S. representative from Colorado with a rap sheet and a high school GED, earned in 2020. Even Borowitz can’t make this stuff up. I came away from the book thankful that we’ve survived as a democracy this long, but also wary of our ability to hold onto what we have, given the public’s acceptance of stupidity as an asset. Embracing dumb got us Donald Trump. Wrapping our arms around blind anger fueled by lies will only lead to further erosion of democracy. This book would be banned, shredded and burned by the MAGA crowd, before it was ever cracked open. I’m pretty sure Sarah Palin didn’t order a copy from Amazon; perhaps she can borrow the CliffsNotes from Lauren Boebert. Read More Here

Shirley J. Stout Obituary (2022) The Rock Island Dispatch Argus https://digitalarizonanews.com/shirley-j-stout-obituary-2022-the-rock-island-dispatch-argus/ Shirley J. Stout August 30, 1934-September 24, 2022 SILVIS-Shirley J. Stout, 88, of Silvis, IL, passed away peacefully Saturday, September 24, 2022, at New Perspective in Silvis, IL. Per her wishes, cremation rites will be accorded. Memorial services will be held Thursday, September 29, 2022, at Wendt Funeral Home, Moline, IL, at 4:00 pm with a one-hour visitation prior to the service. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorials be made to Compassus Hospice, 4101 John Deere Rd., Ste 1, Moline, IL. Shirley Beardslee was born August 30, 1934, in Greenville, MI, to Lewis D. and Catherine (Hansen)Beardslee. On April 21, 1956, she married Richard D. Stout in Greenville, MI. She attended Ferris State College prior to her marriage. She loved going to Michigan State football games with Richard, going to their condo in Muskegon, MI, and attending her grandchildren’s sporting events. Survivors include daughters; Debra Stout of Greenville, MI, Pam (Dave) King of East Moline, IL, and Sheila (John) Burden of Tucson, AZ; a brother-in-law and sister-in-law, James (Nan Anderson) Stout of Chicago, IL; sister-in-law, Joan (John) Ingersoll of Sahuarita, AZ; grandchildren, Nick King, Katie (Howard) Davis, Allison (Steve) Henry, Jacob Burden, and Spencer Burden; great-grandchildren, Braedon King, Howard Davis III, Kingslee Davis, Cameron Henry, and a special friend Keith Yuskis. The family would like to thank the staff at New Perspective and Compassus Hospice for their exceptional care. Family and friends are invited to share memories and express online condolences at wendtfuneralhome.com. Published by The Rock Island Dispatch Argus on Sep. 27, 2022. 34465541-95D0-45B0-BEEB-B9E0361A315A To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store. Read More Here

World Stocks Edge Above Nov 2020 Lows, Sterling Recovers Some Ground https://digitalarizonanews.com/world-stocks-edge-above-nov-2020-lows-sterling-recovers-some-ground/ Pound and U.S. dollar banknotes are seen in this illustration taken January 6, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Dollar eases from 20-year highs reached Monday German 10-year bond yields hit near 11-year highs Oil rallies from Monday’s nine-month lows LONDON/HONG KONG, Sept 27 (Reuters) – World stocks picked up from 21-month lows on Tuesday and sterling rallied after hitting record lows versus the dollar a day earlier on UK plans for tax cuts, as market slides ran out of steam. U.S. S&P futures bounced 0.94% after Wall Street fell deeper into a bear market on Monday, benchmark 10-year Treasury yields dipped from the previous session’s 12-year high and the dollar eased from 20-year highs on a basket of currencies. Markets remain nervous, however, after U.S. Federal Reserve officials on Monday said their priority remained controlling domestic inflation. read more Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com “U.S. rate expectations have increased fairly significantly,” said Andrew Hardy, investment manager at Momentum Global Investment Management, though he added that “there’s a huge amount of bearishness already priced into markets”. Markets are pricing in a 76% probability of a further 75 basis point move at the next Federal Reserve meeting in November. Central bank speakers on Tuesday include Fed chair Jerome Powell and ECB president Christine Lagarde. The MSCI world equity index (.MIWD00000PUS) rose 0.29% after hitting its lowest since Nov 2020 on Monday. European stocks gained more than 1% and Britain’s FTSE (.FTSE) rose 0.6%. Sterling collapsed to a record low $1.0327 on Monday as the government tax cut plans announced on Friday came on top of huge energy subsidies. The British currency recovered 4.6% from that low to $1.0801 on Tuesday. After the pound’s plunge, the Bank of England said it would not hesitate to change interest rates and was monitoring markets “very closely”. read more Bank of England Chief Economist Huw Pill will speak on a panel at 1100 GMT. A lack of confidence in the government’s strategy and its funding also hammered gilts on Friday and again on Monday. The yield on five-year gilts rose as much as 100 basis points in two trading days, though it slipped off the highs on Tuesday. “(It) is definitely something that’s unfolding…probably we’re only at a certain initial stage of seeing how the market digests that kind of information,” said Yuting Shao, macro strategist at State Street Global Markets. “Of course the tax cut plan itself was really aimed to stimulate growth, reduce household burdens, but it does raise the question of what the implications are in terms of the monetary policies.” Spillover from Britain kept other assets on edge. Bond selling in Japan pushed yields up to the Bank of Japan’s ceiling and prompted more unscheduled buying from the central bank in response. The German 10-year bond yield briefly hit a new nearly 11-year high of 2.142%. Ten-year U.S. bond yields dropped 3.2 bps after reaching a high on Monday of 3.933%. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) hit a fresh two-year low before bouncing 0.5%. Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) was up 0.5%. The dollar index eased 0.13% to 113.72, after touching 114.58 on Monday, its strongest since May 2002. The European single currency was up 0.24% on the day at $0.9629 after hitting a 20-year low a day ago. Oil rose more than 1% after plunging to nine-month lows a day earlier, amid indications that producer alliance OPEC+ may enact output cuts to avoid a further collapse in prices. U.S. crude gained 1.4% to $77.70 a barrel. Brent crude rose 1.27% to $85.20 per barrel. Gold , which hit a 2-1/2 year low on Monday, rose 0.8% to $1,634 an ounce. Bitcoin broke above $20,000 for the first time in about a week, as cryptocurrencies bounced, along with other risk-sensitive assets. read more Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Xie Yu; Editing by Edmund Klamann, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Raissa Kasolowsky Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

Excessive Heat Warning Issued September 27 At 1:04AM MST Until September 27 At 11:00PM MST By NWS Phoenix AZ – KYMA https://digitalarizonanews.com/excessive-heat-warning-issued-september-27-at-104am-mst-until-september-27-at-1100pm-mst-by-nws-phoenix-az-kyma/ * WHAT…Dangerously hot conditions. Afternoon temperatures 103 to 106. * WHERE…Southwest corner of Imperial County, Western Imperial County and Imperial Valley. * WHEN…Until 11 PM MST this evening. * IMPACTS…High Heat Risk. Overexposure can cause heat cramps and heat exhaustion to develop and, without intervention, can lead to heat stroke. An Excessive Heat Warning means that a period of very hot temperatures, even by local standards, will occur. Actions should be taken to lessen the impact of the extreme heat. Stay indoors and seek air-conditioned buildings. Drink water, more than usual, and avoid dehydrating alcoholic, sugary, or caffeinated drinks. Dress for the heat – lightweight and light- colored clothing. Eat small meals and eat more often. Monitor those with a higher vulnerability to heat, including small children. Check in on family, friends, and neighbors, especially the elderly. If engaging in outdoor activity, take longer and more frequent breaks and avoid the hottest parts of the day. Never leave kids or pets unattended in cars. Public cooling shelters are available in some areas. Consult county officials for more details, which may include guidance for proper social distancing measures. Recognize the signs and symptoms of heat-related illness. Early signs include thirst and muscle cramps. Heat exhaustion may include: cool, moist, pale skin; headache; dizziness; weakness or exhaustion; nausea. The most serious illness is heat stroke, which may include: vomiting; confusion; throbbing headache; decreased alertness or loss of consciousness; high body temperature (above 105F); hot, dry skin; rapid, weak pulse; rapid, shallow breathing; seizures. Heat stroke can be DEADLY. Treat as an emergency and call 9 1 1. Continue to monitor NWS forecasts, broadcast outlets, and local government for updates. Read More…

Trump’s Assault On Elite Colleges Isn’t All Wrong https://digitalarizonanews.com/trumps-assault-on-elite-colleges-isnt-all-wrong/ To some extent, elite colleges are simply collateral damage in the culture war. Indeed, the thrust of Vance’s speech is about the need to break through the indoctrination of the liberal intelligentsia — via what he calls “red pilling,” a reference to The Matrix — where the “fundamental corruption” at the root of the system, as Vance put it, can’t be unseen once seen. “So much of what drives truth and knowledge, as we understand it in this country,” Vance said, “is fundamentally determined by, supported by and reinforced by the universities in this country.” But that’s not the whole story. Another line of attack is about access. It’s about who gets to be part of the elite, and whether America has gotten a fair return on the massive investment that it has made in elite colleges. For, difficult as this might be for liberals to hear, almost everything Trump said to the crowd Bobby Knight had warmed up was true. “I’ve gotten increasingly incensed at the inequality in American higher ed,” another critic of the private college tax exemption told NPR’s Scott Simon in 2015. “There’s a handful of schools that just have too much money. You just have to walk through the Yale campus to see what money will buy you, which is a country club, right?” Simon’s guest explained that endowments weren’t inherently bad — they could transform underfunded schools. “It’s one thing if a school has an endowment of $500 million that they are stretching a million different ways to meet the needs of its students, to say that as a society, we should allow them to escape taxes so they can spend their money on education,” he said. “But that logic does not hold when you’ve got $35 billion in the bank, as Harvard does.” (Today it’s $53 billion.) “I think they have to stand up and say, at the very least, ‘We do not deserve to have tax-exempt status for our endowments.’” Sound like Trump? Simon’s guest was Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling journalist, podcaster and public intellectual. For generations, elite colleges have been given a pass in accounting for what they’ve done in exchange for the massive benefits that they have received. The bill has come due. Soon, elite colleges are going to have to answer two simple questions. Why are they exempt from taxes? And what has America gotten in return? Anyone searching for an answer to the first question in the historical record will be sorely disappointed. Law professor John Colombo traces the exemption to a 1601 English law deeming “schools of learning” charitable in nature. In colonial America, colleges were generally spared from taxes because of their religious ties. Most — including Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and William & Mary — were chartered with the aim of training ministers. When Congress imposed the first federal income tax in 1894, it maintained the exemption for religious and educational institutions without any debate. Today, almost every state has a law or constitutional provision exempting colleges and universities from state, property and income taxes. Many so-called “need-blind” colleges also benefit from an antitrust exemption, which allows them to collaborate on how they determine student need and, hence, financial aid. That exemption, which is set to expire at the end of this month, is the subject of a lawsuit based, in part, on the apparent contradiction between claiming not to consider financial need while giving preference to the children of donors, faculty members and graduates of the college. It’s easy enough to imagine why the tax exemption wouldn’t have been a source of controversy in the 1890s. Endowments were small potatoes. For most of its history, Yale, like its peer institutions, invested its modest holdings conservatively, chastened by an early toe-stubbing, when their leadership invested nearly the entire endowment in a bank run by former university treasurer and cotton gin-inventor, Eli Whitney. The bank promptly went bankrupt, costing Yale over 90 percent of its $23,000 endowment and plunging New Haven into depression. After that, it was pretty much all belt and suspenders. In 1980, Yale still had more than half its money in stocks, bonds and cash. Then, David Swensen, a veteran of Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers, took over the university’s portfolio and changed the game. The so-called “Yale model” emphasized diversification. Within 20 years, only 10 percent of Yale’s endowment was invested in U.S. marketable securities. Their holdings included hedge funds, real estate and even timber. Yale’s competitors naturally followed suit. It may surprise you to know that Harvard’s portfolio includes 10,000 acres of California vineyard. Over time, elite college management companies began to look more and more like Wall Street firms. Trump’s claim about private equity managers is entirely accurate. In 2014, Yale paid nearly half a billion dollars in management and performance fees, about triple what it spent on financial aid. While it’s not officially part of the Yale model, elite colleges also started to get quite aggressive about avoiding taxes. The “Paradise Papers” — a 2017 data breach at the international law firm Appleby that led to the leak of some 13.4 million electronic documents — exposed many elite universities for parking cash in offshore tax havens to cheat Uncle Sam. The results have been stunning. In 1980, before Swensen got started, Yale’s endowment was worth $674 million. Last year, it was valued at $42.3 billion — representing a gain of approximately 6,275 percent. During the two years of the pandemic, Harvard’s endowment grew by approximately 30 percent. If it sustains the rate of growth it has maintained for the past several decades, Harvard’s endowment will top $1 trillion shortly after the turn of the century. If Harvard were a nation, its cash reserves would rank forty-second, just behind Romania, but ahead of Kuwait. Princeton has endowment assets of roughly $4.6 million per student. As the attorney-economist Bob Litan put it to me last year — before joining the legal team in the class action against the “need-blind” colleges — these endowments are “mind-fuckingly large.” And it’s in significant part thanks to the generous support of the American taxpayer. University of California-Merced professor Charlie Eaton estimates that the tax break costs more than $20 billion per year. To put that into perspective, that revenue would cover between half and two-thirds of what the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the cost of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan to be, and about twice as much as the estimated cost of making community college free. So what has America gotten in return? Not an engine of class mobility. Elite colleges promote precious few kids out of poverty. Just 2 percent of Princeton students come from families in the lowest income quintile. In their groundbreaking study of the relationship between college and intergenerational mobility, Raj Chetty and John Friedman’s team ranked colleges by “mobility rate,” which they defined as the product of access — the percentage of students admitted from the bottom quintile — and success — the percentage of students from the bottom who made it to the top. Among colleges with more than 5,000 students, eight of the top 12 ranked schools are part of the CUNY system, the City University of New York. All but one is a public university. MIT topped the “Ivy-Plus” colleges (which Chetty and Friedman define as the eight Ivy League schools plus MIT, Duke, Stanford, and the University of Chicago). It came in 1,288th. Elite colleges are, rather, an engine of class stratification. The number of rich children they admit dwarfs the number of poor. At Harvard, for example, more students come from families making over $500,000 per year than under $40,000. (By contrast, at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the CUNY college where I teach, the median family income is $41,900. Overall, 60 percent of CUNY’s 270,000 students come from families earning less than $30,000 per year.) When one looks at the Chetty-Friedman data through the lens of preventing downward mobility, a very different picture emerges. Roughly speaking, for every poor kid Princeton promotes out of poverty, it keeps 40 rich kids rich. Moreover, these colleges act as gatekeepers to super-elite jobs that set the national agenda. As Northwestern University’s Lauren Rivera describes, attending an Ivy-Plus college is a prerequisite for landing a job at a top-tier investment bank or management consulting firm. This helps send their graduates into the stratosphere of wealth. Ten years after graduation, about 23 percent of Princeton graduates will be among the country’s wealthiest 1 percent — about 64 times as many as at my college. Recognizing the power of elite degrees, many affluent, predominantly white parents flee cities for wealthy suburbs once they have children. They’re chasing access to lacrosse teams, science programs and the sort of “distinguishing excellences” that elite colleges arbitrarily choose to value, and which affluent suburbs are uniquely able to afford. Many of those who don’t move to fancy suburbs will send their children to a so-called independent school, where annual tuition approaches $60,000. Again, elite colleges drive the train by grossly favoring private school graduates in admissions. As Caitlin Flanagan reported last year in the Atlantic, while less than 2 percent of high school students attend an independent school, their graduates comprise more than a quarter of Princeton, Brown and Dartmouth’s entering classes. To the extent that elite colleges acknowledge these gross inequities, the story they tell is that they’re reproducing the underlying conditions in American society. Elite colleges look the way they do, they say, because America loo...

Freedom Caucus Poised To Pull Its Hardest McCarthy Punch https://digitalarizonanews.com/freedom-caucus-poised-to-pull-its-hardest-mccarthy-punch/ “I hope … we’re not going to mount a challenge,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) said in an interview. “This is the most organized we’ve ever been. So why would we change it?” The group does plan to push for modifications that would empower them in a future Republican majority, including the power to force a speaker eviction vote — what’s known as the “motion to vacate the chair.” And there’s still time to change their minds on a direct McCarthy challenge. Even so, should a Freedom Caucus lawmaker jump into the speaker race, some say the roughly 35-member group isn’t expected to rally behind whoever emerges — underscoring McCarthy’s strength within the conference. One big reason for the shift is that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), perhaps the group’s most powerful figure, is now among McCarthy’s closest allies. Once a rival who harnessed his sway with the conference’s right flank to challenge the Californian for minority leader in 2018, now Jordan is quick to say he’s excited for a McCarthy speakership. Some Freedom Caucus members privately see Jordan as the only member whose clout could rally the entire group behind a McCarthy opponent. Other conservatives, when asked about the Freedom Caucus’ disinterest in directly taking on McCarthy, simply pointed to a GOP unified behind him. “I don’t think there’s anything newsworthy there,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), a Jordan ally. “I often say it appears to me that Kevin has surpassing support among [the] conference to be speaker.” The burgeoning Freedom Caucus position on a 2023 speakership vote is trickling down to likely future members. A House GOP candidate who met with the group’s lawmakers earlier this year summarized the Freedom Caucus recommendation as: Vote your conscience. If you support McCarthy, go ahead. If you don’t, that’s also fine. This GOP candidate, sharing candid views on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise at the Freedom Caucus’ choose-your-own-adventure approach to the speakership vote. Of course, the biggest caveat in conference dynamics remains the size of the GOP majority after the midterms. Until House Republicans see how many seats they pick up in November, it’s difficult to definitively predict how they’ll see McCarthy. A smaller-than-expected gain — and particularly a shocking failure to take the House — would cause a firestorm over who was to blame. And McCarthy, at the top of the leadership food chain, would take the brunt of the finger-pointing. “A lot depends on the actual numbers,” said Freedom Caucus member Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.). “There are some people who prefer a different candidate, [but] they haven’t really focused on or coalesced around anybody.” Griffith said the group also recognizes that McCarthy has listened and shown more goodwill to the Freedom Caucus than any GOP leader since it launched in 2015. Should McCarthy stop hearing the group out, Griffith added, “that could change things.” Notably, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) declined to address the topic when asked about challenging McCarthy. The occasionally tumultuous relationship between the minority leader and the MAGA firebrand has appeared to steady in recent months; last week, she attended McCarthy’s GOP agenda rollout in Pennsylvania and sat happily behind his shoulder on stage. The Freedom Caucus’ coolness to a McCarthy challenger doesn’t mean they’re lacking demands. Some in the group are even fully sidestepping questions about their support next year as they push for the conference to vote on a rules package before any leadership elections are held. That plan was first reported by the Washington Examiner, which also revealed other concessions the group is seeking: ending earmarks; diversifying the GOP steering committee typically stocked with leadership allies; and enacting a “majority of the majority” rule that states no legislation should come up without majority support within the conference. Perhaps the key tenet of any Freedom Caucus-approved House rulebook is restoring the motion to vacate the chair — the very procedural maneuver used to oust one of McCarthy’s predecessors. When asked about directly challenging McCarthy, Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) pivoted to that list. “I can’t speak to any of that,” Perry said of the leadership outlook, noting that the “Freedom Caucus is going to be a part of that. But … we’re really focused on the rules package right now. And likely anybody that we would support for anybody in any position in leadership, we’re going to want to discuss that in-depth and in a meaningful way.” Reps. Bob Good (R-Va.) and David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) copied their group’s chair in redirecting questions about a McCarthy challenge to their focus on the next Congress’ rules package. “There’s almost a maturity that’s come from the Freedom Caucus saying: Our job is to legislate,” said Schweikert. Leadership, meanwhile, hasn’t tipped its hat on the rules matter. Reps. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) asked McCarthy about it during last week’s GOP conference meeting, according to a person familiar with the back-and-forth, and McCarthy responded that members should focus on getting through the runup to the midterms. And Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) publicly echoed that message when asked about the Freedom Caucus’ rules push. “You see this every two years. There is always a robust discussion about what the rules should be. Again, we can’t put the cart before the horse — we have to win a majority to have that ability to have that discussion,” Scalise told reporters last week. “We are well aware of some of the things they’ve proposed.” That circumspect reply is especially valuable given Freedom Caucus members haven’t decided whether the motion to vacate the chair would be a deal-breaker to their support for leadership contenders. Should the group vote as a unit, it could force a close speakership election past the first ballot or even deadlock the contest outright. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Texas) said there’s “definitely some red lines — especially vacating the chair. That is a red line.” But she declined to say if the group would mount a bid against McCarthy, responding that “we’ll see.” While Boebert has publicly criticized McCarthy at various times, even suggesting Donald Trump should be speaker in the past, she has privately expressed more allegiance to the California Republican behind closed doors, according to two Republicans familiar with her remarks. Good called the power to force a speakership eviction “a really important part of that rules package” but also avoided any rigid insistence. “If everything else that I outlined was agreed to — again, I don’t think we want to come and say: ‘oh, these are absolute,’” Good said. “These are not scripture.” Read More Here

AP News Summary At 4:33 A.m. EDT https://digitalarizonanews.com/ap-news-summary-at-433-a-m-edt/ Hurricane Ian lashes Cuba as Cat 3 storm, aims at Florida HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Ian has officially grown into a major hurricane as it barrels toward Cuba on a track to hit Florida’s west coast. The National Hurricane Center defines a major hurricane as a Category 3 storm or higher, meaning maximum sustained winds of at least 111 mph. As of 2:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Hurricane Ian had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph. Tampa and St. Petersburg are among the most likely targets for their first direct hit by a major hurricane in a century. Ian was forecast to move quickly over Cuba’s western tip. Then it will turn northward and slow down over warm Gulf of Mexico waters, and could hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 4 hurricane. Putin’s call-up fuels Russians’ anger, protests and violence TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Five days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists to fight in Ukraine, the move has triggered outraged protests across Russia, a fearful exodus of men of fighting age from the country, and acts of violence. There have been demonstrations — not just in the usual places like Moscow and St. Petersburg — but also in the remote far north province of Yakutia and in the poor, southern region of Dagestan. A gunman opened fire in an enlistment office in a Siberian city and gravely wounded the military commandant. One analyst says Putin is risking a lot because of the mobilization and is losing some support. Japan’s former leader Abe honored at divisive state funeral TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s hawkish former leader Shinzo Abe was honored by a rare and divisive state funeral that was full of militaristic presentation like soldiers carrying his ashes in a box brought by his widow and praise of his nine-year premiership. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said the publicly financed ceremony was a deserved honor for Japan’s longest-serving modern political leader, but it has deeply split public opinion. The event attended by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Japan’s Crown Prince Akishino and other foreign and Japanese dignitaries. Kishida eulogized Abe as having a clear vision for economic growth and development and promoting the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” as a counter to China’s rise. Jury to be picked for Oath Keeper boss’ Jan. 6 sedition case Jury selection is expected to get underway Tuesday in one of the most serious cases to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The founder of the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group and four associates are charged with seditious conspiracy. Stewart Rhodes and the others are the first Jan. 6 defendants charged with the the rare Civil War-era offense to stand trial. Authorities allege there was a serious, weekslong plot to violently stop the transfer of presidential power from election-denier Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Bam! NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft has rammed an asteroid in an unprecedented test to see if a potentially menacing space rock could be knocked off course. The galactic grand slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles away Monday. The Dart spacecraft plowed into the small space rock at 14,000 mph. Scientists say the impact should have carved out a crater and hurled streams of rocks and dirt into space. Most importantly, though, scientists are hoping the collision altered the asteroid’s orbit. NASA won’t know how much the spacecraft nudged the asteroid for a couple of months. Pound stabilizes but turmoil continues for UK economy LONDON (AP) — The British pound has stabilized in Asian trading after plunging to a record low, as the Bank of England and the British government try to soothe markets nervous about a volatile U.K. economy. The instability is having real-world impacts, with several British mortgage lenders withdrawing deals amid concern that interest rates may soon rise sharply. The pound was trading at around $1.08 on Tuesday morning. On Monday it plunged to $1.0373, the lowest since the decimalization of the currency in 1971, on concerns that tax cuts announced Friday by Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng would swell government debt and fuel further inflation. but some analysts warned that was “too little, too late.” At UN, a fleeting opportunity to tell their nations’ stories UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Pakistan’s new prime minister stepped onto the U.N. podium to spin a tale of floods and climate change. Shahbaz Sharif began: “As I stand here today to tell the story of my country …” At its core, that was what every world leader was here to do during the past week. One after another, they took the fleeting opportunity to craft a story about their nation and the world. They hoped the tales would make others sit up and listen. Some did it better than others. Vietnam imposes curfew, evacuations ahead of Typhoon Noru HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Vietnam has imposed a curfew and evacuated over 800,000 people as a powerful typhoon that had flooded villages and left at least eight dead in the Philippines aimed for the country’s central region. National television VTV says people living near the coast where Typhoon Noru is expected to slam early Wednesday had been ordered to take shelter. Schools were closed and public events canceled. In Da Nang and Quang Nam provinces, a curfew will be in effect starting Tuesday evening. It forbids people from venturing out except those on official duty. Flights at five regional airports were canceled and train service halted until the typhoon passes. The weather agency says Noru is packing maximum sustained winds of 111 miles per hour. As Cantonese language wanes, efforts grow to preserve it SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Three decades ago, finding opportunities to learn the Cantonese language in San Francisco wasn’t hard. But today in the city that’s drawn Cantonese speakers from South China for over 150 years, there is fear that political and social upheaval are gradually diminishing the language. The Chinese government’s push for wider use of Mandarin, which is already the national language, along with the country’s changing migration patterns have contributed to an undeniable shift away from Cantonese. It’s a change that has reverberated from East to West. From the U.S. to the U.K. and beyond, there is worry that Cantonese won’t survive in some families for another generation. Teen interest in long-lasting birth control soars after Roe Experts say the U.S. Supreme Court’s June ruling overturning Roe v. Wade appears to be sending more teens to their doctors in search of birth control, including long-acting reversible forms like intrauterine devices and implants. Waits for appointments are growing in some areas, Planned Parenthood is getting a flood of questions and doctors report demand even among teens who aren’t sexually active. Some patients are especially fearful because some of the new abortion laws don’t include exceptions for sexual assault. Dr. Peggy Stager said dedicated spots for insertion of the Nexplanon implant are consistently filled at her Ohio practice and requests for contraceptive refills have increased 30% to 40% since the Court’s June ruling. Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read More Here

Hurricane Ian Becomes Major Category 3 Storm As It Hits Cuba, With Florida https://digitalarizonanews.com/hurricane-ian-becomes-major-category-3-storm-as-it-hits-cuba-with-florida/ Hurricane Ian’s outer bands start to lash South Florida Hurricane Ian’s outer bands start to lash South Florida 03:29 Ian intensified into a major hurricane packing sustained winds of around 115 mph early Tuesday morning just before hitting western Cuba. The powerful Category 3 storm was expected to continue strengthening as it passed over the island on a track for the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, with Florida’s west coast in its path later this week.  Mandatory evacuations were ordered Monday in low-lying areas surrounding Tampa Bay, and officials asked others in the area to voluntarily evacuate, knowing it could take some time to move hundreds of thousands of people out of Ian’s path. Cuba’s national Institute of Meteorology said the storm had made landfall early Tuesday morning. “Ian is already over Cuban territory,” a meteorologist from the institute told the nation in a special broadcast on Cuban state television. “The outer wall of the storm is on the coast of the province of Pinar del Rio.” NEXT Weather forecast for Monday 9/26/22 11PM 04:20 Ian was forecast to become an even stronger Category 4 storm, with top winds of 140 mph, before striking Florida as early as Wednesday. Tampa and St. Petersburg appeared to be among the most likely targets for their first direct hit by a major hurricane in a century. Even if Ian doesn’t hit the area directly, it could still feel the effects of the storm, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned. “You’re still looking at really significant amount of rain, you’re looking at a lot of wind, you’re looking at a lot of storm surge, and so, yes, follow that track, but don’t think because that eye may or may not be in your area that you’re not going to see impacts,” DeSantis said during a Monday afternoon press conference. “You’re going to see significant impacts.” The governor said the state had suspended tolls around the Tampa Bay area and mobilized 5,000 National Guard troops, with another 2,000 on standby in neighboring states. More than 27,000 power restoration personnel were put on standby to help after the storm, DeSantis said. Men board windows as they prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Ian in Indian Shores, 25 miles West of Tampa, Florida on September 26, 2022. RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP/Getty “Please treat this storm seriously. It’s the real deal. This is not a drill,” Hillsborough County Emergency Management Director Timothy Dudley said at a Monday news conference on storm preparations in Tampa, where some mandatory evacuations were ordered. As many as 300,000 people may be evacuated from low-lying areas in Hillsborough County alone, Administrator Bonnie Wise said at a news conference. Schools and other locations were opened as shelters. In Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, officials issued evacuation orders that start taking effect Monday evening. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said no one would be forced to leave, but they would remain at their risk. “What it means is, we’re not going to come help you. If you don’t do it, you’re on your own,” Gualtieri said. “For all practical purposes, get out. Right now. Everybody needs to go.”   The evacuation zone is all along Tampa Bay and the rivers that feed it, encompassing MacDill Air Force Base and well-known neighborhoods such as parts of Hyde Park, Davis Islands and Ybor City. The eye of Hurricane Ian is seen churning toward western Cuba in a satellite image provided by the National Hurricane Center, taken at 2:26 a.m. Eastern, September 27, 2022. NOAA/National Weather Service As of 2:30 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday morning, Ian was moving north-northwest at 13 mph and was located only about 35 miles south of Cuba’s southwestern shores, according to the National Hurricane Center. Its maximum sustained winds had increased to 115 mph.  Authorities in Cuba were evacuating 50,000 people in Pinar del Rio province, sent in medical and emergency personnel, and took steps to protect food and other crops in warehouses, according to state media. “Cuba is expecting extreme hurricane-force winds, also life-threatening storm surge and heavy rainfall,” U.S. National Hurricane Center senior specialist Daniel Brown told The Associated Press. The hurricane center predicted areas of Cuba’s western coast could see as much as 14 feet of storm surge Monday night or early Tuesday. A mna helps pull small boats out of Havana Bay in Havana, Cuba, September 26, 2022, as western Cuba was expected to bear the brunt of Hurricane Ian. YAMIL LAGE/AFP/Getty In Havana, fishermen were taking their boats out of the water along the famous Malecon, the seaside boardwalk, and city workers were unclogging storm drains ahead of the expected rain. In Havana’s El Fanguito, a poor neighborhood near the Almendares River, residents were packing up what they could to leave their homes, many of which show damage from previous storms. “I hope we escape this one because it would be the end of us. We already have so little,” health worker Abel Rodrigues, 54, said. In the Tampa Bay area, a storm surge of up to 10 feet of ocean water and 10 inches of rain, with as much as 15 inches in isolated areas. That’s enough water to inundate low-lying coastal communities. Florida residents were getting ready, lining up for hours in Tampa to collect sandbags and clearing store shelves of bottled water. This graphic depicts the forecast storm surge inundation values, as of 11 p.m. Eastern, Sept. 26, 2022, representing the peak height the water could reach above normally dry ground somewhere within the specified areas when Hurricane Ian hits Florida. NOAA/National Weather Service Nervous anticipation led to long lines for gas, packed grocery stores and empty shelves, CBS News correspondent Omar Villafranca reports from Clearwater, Florida.   “We are going to get these sandbags in front of the garage, the garage door, the front door… and pray we’re good,” Gabriel Alley, who moved to Clearwater from California, told CBS News. Ian’s impending arrival also prompted NASA to haul its Artemis 1 rocket off its launch pad and back to the protection of the agency’s Vehicle Assembly Building, likely ending any chance of launching the unpiloted moonshot before November. Hurricane Ian strengthens as Florida begins evacuations 03:16 “A lot of people on the Florida Peninsula and into the Florida Panhandle are at risk and need to be ready to take action quickly,” said Rick Knabb, a hurricane specialist with The Weather Channel, “and the slow motion that we expect from Ian means we could have wind, storm surge and rain-induced flooding.” DeSantis has declared a state of emergency throughout Florida and urged residents to prepare for the storm to lash large swaths of the state with heavy rains, high winds and rising seas. “We’re going to keep monitoring the track of this storm. But it really is important to stress the degree of uncertainty that still exists,” DeSantis said at a news conference Sunday, cautioning that “even if you’re not necessarily right in the eye of the path of the storm, there’s going to be pretty broad impacts throughout the state.” Hurricane Ian is seen in a satellite image at 3 p.m. ET on Sept. 26, 2022. NOAA Flash and urban flooding is possible in the Florida Keys and Florida Peninsula through midweek, and then heavy rainfall was possible for north Florida, the Florida Panhandle and the southeast United States later this week. The hurricane center has advised Floridians to have hurricane plans in place and monitor updates of the storm’s evolving path. President Biden also declared an emergency, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance to protect lives and property. The president postponed a scheduled Tuesday trip to Florida because of the storm. In: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Atlantic Hurricane Season National Weather Service Hurricane Ian Severe Weather Florida Hurricane Thanks for reading CBS NEWS. Create your free account or log in for more features. Please enter email address to continue Please enter valid email address to continue Read More Here

White House: New Rule Will Show https://digitalarizonanews.com/white-house-new-rule-will-show/ President Joe Biden walks to the Oval Office with National Economic Council director Brian Deese, left, after speaking about a tentative railway labor agreement in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) By SEUNG MIN KIM and DAVID KOENIG Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will announce a new initiative Monday that would eventually allow consumers to see a more complete price on airline tickets — including baggage and change fees — before they buy, as the White House continues to search for ways to lower costs for Americans amid persistently high inflation. The White House says the proposed rule from the Transportation Department will prevent airlines from hiding the “true cost” of airline tickets, which would help consumers save money up front and encourage more competition among airlines to offer better fares. The requirement will apply not only to airlines directly but also to third-party search sites such as Kayak and Expedia. Airlines made nearly $5.3 billion in baggage fees and nearly $700 million on cancellation and change fees last year, according to Transportation Department figures. Airlines charge a variety of other fees for extra legroom and other perks that are not tracked by the government. The proposed rule seeks to target a typical situation faced by consumers where a ticket price is listed on an airline or search website, but with information often listed elsewhere about any additional airline fees, such as for checking or carrying on a bag, getting a guaranteed seat next to your child or changing or canceling a flight — fees that vary widely by airline and could quickly tack on up to hundreds of dollars more to a price of a ticket after the initial purchase. Under the proposal, all that fee information would be made available upfront when the quoted airfare is first displayed. The fare information would be required for all commercial flights to, within, and from the United States. The proposal dates back to the Obama administration and was scrapped in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump after airlines complained that it was unnecessary and would incur significant costs. It must now go through a 60-day comment period before final approval. The proposed rule comes as tension grows between the Biden administration and the airlines, with each blaming the other for an increase in canceled and delayed flights this summer. The Transportation Department also began posting information to help consumers learn what each airline provides when flights are canceled or delayed for reasons within the airline’s control. That prompted several airlines to update policies around finding a new flight and covering hotel and meal expenses for stranded travelers. Biden was scheduled to make the announcement on Monday afternoon at a meeting of the White House Competition Council, established last year as a way for his administration to find cost-saving measures for consumers. It will be the third meeting of the group, chaired by National Economic Council director Brian Deese. At the meeting, Biden plans to push other federal agencies to take similar cost-saving actions, particularly by increasing transparency on hidden fees that can balloon the true cost of goods and services. Read More Here

Stock Futures Rise More Than 1% After S&P 500, Dow Close At Lowest Levels Since 2020 https://digitalarizonanews.com/stock-futures-rise-more-than-1-after-sp-500-dow-close-at-lowest-levels-since-2020/ Stock futures were higher on Tuesday morning after the market started the week by continuing its dramatic September decline. S&P 500 futures gained 1.42% and Nasdaq 100 futures rose 1.6%. Those tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 379 points, or 1.27%. The move in futures comes after five straight days of losses for stocks, with the S&P 500 Monday closing at its lowest level of 2022. The Dow dropped more than 300 points on Monday, putting it in a bear market after falling more than 20% below its record high. Technical indicators show that the selling has been historic. According to Bespoke Investment Group, the 10-day advance decline line for the S&P 500 has hit a record low, meaning market breadth is at its worst level in at least 32 years. The latest round of selling appears to have several catalysts, including an aggressive Federal Reserve and surging interest rates, which in turn have roiled currency markets. On Monday, the British pound slid to a record low against the dollar, unnerving investors on both sides of the Atlantic. “Typically, US investors wouldn’t care too much about something like this, and especially more recently. And so this to me says that now there is this fear that is gripping investors a lot more than it did before. That in turn will lead to a capitulation moment where we really are at a bottom,” said Max Gokhman, CIO at AlphaTrAI. On Tuesday, investors will get several new pieces of economic data, including September consumer confidence, August durable goods orders and July home prices. Wall Street has grown increasingly concerned that the Fed’s six-month-long inflation fight will push the economy into a recession. Fed’s Mester says it is better to act ‘aggressively’ against high inflation U.S. inflation is “unacceptably high” and uncertainties make monetary policy decisions “not trivial,” said Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester in prepared remarks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “When there is uncertainty, it can be better for policymakers to act more aggressively,” she said. “Aggressive and pre-emptive action can prevent the worst-case outcomes from actually coming about.” She said she will be “very cautious” when assessing inflation data. “I will need to see several months of declines in the month-over-month readings,” she said. “Wishful thinking cannot be a substitute for compelling evidence.” –Jihye Lee CNBC Pro: Analysts like Nvidia once again, with Citi giving it almost 100% upside Analysts are once again starting to get bullish on Nvidia, after the semiconductor giant lost favor amid geopolitical tensions and a slowdown in the chip sector. Citi and JPMorgan both said last week that solid demand in PC gaming, as well as cloud adoption in data centers, were set to be tailwinds for Nvidia. So how much upside did they each give Nvidia shares? CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here. — Weizhen Tan Oil, U.S. dollar diverge For the first half of 2022, the price of oil and the U.S. dollar both rose sharply. However, that has changed in recent weeks, with notable moves for both on Monday. The Dollar Index rose as high as 114.527 on Monday, hitting its highest level since 2002. Meanwhile, futures for West Texas Intermediate crude fell 2.58% to $76.08 per barrel. That is the U.S. benchmark’s lowest settle since Jan. 3, meaning nearly all of oil’s year to day gains have been erased. — Jesse Pound, Christopher Hayes Futures open flat Stock futures opened flat at 6 p.m. in New York, with futures for the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 changed by less than 0.1%. — Jesse Pound S&P 500 hits new low for the year The S&P 500 close at 3,655.04 on Monday, its worst mark since Dec. 14, 2020. The broad market average did avoid breaking its intraday low for the year, but could test that level again on Tuesday. Here are some other key stats about Monday’s session: The S&P 500 fell 1.03% and notched its first five-day losing streak since July. Ten of 11 Sectors were negative in today’s session, led to the downside by Real Estate, down -2.63%.  Consumer Staples finished marginally higher. The Dow fell -1.11% for its worst close since Nov. 12, 2020. The Nasdaq Composite fell 0.60% and is more than 33% below its record high. SPDR S&P 500 (SPY) traded 91.9M shares, above its 30-day average volume of 77.8M shares. — Jesse Pound, Christopher Hayes Read More Here

Analysis | The False Claim That Senate Republicans ‘plan To End Social Security And Medicare’ https://digitalarizonanews.com/analysis-the-false-claim-that-senate-republicans-plan-to-end-social-security-and-medicare/ “Republicans plan to end Social Security and Medicare if they take back the Senate.” — Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), in a tweet, Sept. 25 When an election campaign enters its final weeks, year after year, both political parties rely on familiar themes to attack their opponents. For Republicans, it’s crime and immigration. For Democrats, it’s Social Security and Medicare. Murray, who has been in the Senate since 1993, is running against Republican Tiffany Smiley. Murray’s tweet is a succinct example of what we called “Mediscare” attacks — an effort to warn seniors that Republicans will take away their hard-earned benefits. Indeed, the rest of the tweet stated: “Washington seniors who have spent their lives paying into these programs deserve better — and I’ll keep fighting to make sure they get it.” Don’t worry, seniors: There is no such plan. When Social Security was established in 1935, most Republican lawmakers supported it — but more Republicans than Democrats opposed it. When Medicare was created in 1965, slightly more Republicans opposed the new program than supported it, in contrast to the broad support among Democrats. Decades later, Democrats have never let Republicans forget this history. In campaign attacks, Democrats often conjure up nonexistent plans by Republicans to terminate or somehow undermine the programs. This tactic has certainly given us material to fact-check. In 2014, for instance, House Democrats falsely accused then-congressional candidate Martha McSally of wanting to “privatize” Social Security, even though a more modest version of the idea by President George W. Bush years before could not even get a committee vote when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. And in the 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden falsely claimed that President Donald Trump had a “plan” to deplete Social Security so benefits would run out in three years. In that same campaign, Biden accused Trump of wanting to “slash Medicare benefits.” Not so. In fact, back in 2011, then-Vice President Biden accused House Republicans of proposing a plan “eliminating Medicare in the next 10 years.” That wasn’t true, either. Now comes the latest iteration of this campaign attack. But it’s just as empty as the previous ones. The main source of this accusation is a document issued by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which helps elect Republicans to the Senate. In February, Scott released a 60-page “11-point plan to rescue America” that offered 128 proposals. Buried on Page 38, in a section on government restructuring, was one sentence: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” “Sunset” is inside-the-Beltway lingo. The Congressional Research Service offers this definition: “The sunset concept provides for programs and agencies to terminate automatically on a periodic basis unless explicitly renewed by law.” In theory, then, even a venerable program such as Social Security or Medicare would have to prove its worth all over again every five years, though neither was specifically mentioned. Scott’s plan was almost immediately rejected by most Senate Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was especially harsh. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half of the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years,” McConnell told reporters March 1. “That will not be part of a Republican Senate majority agenda.” (Scott also proposed requiring every American to pay some kind of tax, an idea that quickly found its way into Democratic attacks.) Scott’s write-up offered few details and had no proposed legislative language. He consistently has insisted that the document represented “Rick Scott’s policy ideas. It’s nobody else’s policy ideas.” Indeed, the plan was issued by Scott’s own campaign committee, not any GOP or Senate committee, including the NRSC. Scott has also denied he wanted to end Social Security and Medicare. During an interview with Fox News on March 27, Scott was asked whether his plan could “potentially sunset programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.” He dismissed that as “Democratic talking points” and said his proposal was intended to focus attention on how to deal with potential funding shortfalls in the future. “No one that I know of wants to sunset Medicare or Social Security, but what we’re doing is we don’t even talk about it. Medicare goes bankrupt in four years. Social Security goes bankrupt in 12 years,” Scott said. “I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.” (It’s beyond the scope of this fact check, but Scott’s “bankrupt” language is exaggerated. Payments would continue but at reduced levels, according to the annual reports issued by the administrators of the programs’ trust funds. As we have noted before, Medicare’s Part A fund has, since 1970, been on the brink of going “broke” — but always manages to stay afloat.) Over the summer, another Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, floated the idea of funding Social Security and Medicare through the annual budget. Right now, the spending is automatically disbursed because the programs grant benefits to anyone who meets the qualification of having paid into the system. Johnson argued that keeping spending on “automatic pilot” was threatening to make the programs go “bankrupt.” A Johnson spokesperson said Johnson was not trying to eliminate the programs but instead wanted to impose “fiscal discipline” to ensure that they “remain solvent.” When asked about Johnson’s idea, a McConnell spokesman pointed to the senator’s previous rejection of the Scott plan. Finally. Murray’s staff cited as evidence for the tweet GOP support for a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which in theory might require reductions in spending in Social Security and Medicare. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in January told Fox that “if Republicans take charge of the United States Senate [in 2022], I will do everything in my power to make sure we have a vote on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.” Such a vote would only be for political messaging. Graham acknowledged that it would be difficult to get 67 votes in the Senate, let alone a two-thirds majority in the House — which even if successful would still require ratification by three-fourths (38) of the states. In a statement to the Fact Checker, the Murray campaign said: “One of Tiffany Smiley’s biggest champions is Rick Scott, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee and wrote its agenda which proposes gutting Social Security and Medicare. If Republicans like Smiley disagree, they should call on Rick Scott to be removed as Chair or stop taking money from the NRSC, which she has refused to do. We are absolutely going to make sure Tiffany Smiley is held accountable for how the official Senate Republican campaign agenda would harm Washington seniors.” Murray tweeted that if Senate Republicans win control of the Senate, they plan to end Social Security and Medicare. But as evidence, her staff can only point to statements by a pair of Senate Republicans that have earned little support among their colleagues. The presumptive Senate Republican leader explicitly rejected the idea. Moreover, in both cases, the senators insisted that they were not trying to eliminate the programs but instead bolster their financial underpinnings. Whether such actions would reduce benefits is open to debate, but it’s not the same as ending the programs. Murray would have been on more solid ground if she had cited Scott or Johnson by name and described their proposals, as Biden has done in campaign speeches. Instead, she condemns the whole caucus. This is yet another example in which Democrats strain to conjure up a nonexistent GOP plan regarding Social Security and Medicare. Murray earns Four Pinocchios. Send us facts to check by filling out this form Sign up for the Fact Checker weekly newsletter Read More Here

TDE President Punch Says Good Music Trumps Marketing & Promotion Amid Online Rap Drama  https://digitalarizonanews.com/tde-president-punch-says-good-music-trumps-marketing-promotion-amid-online-rap-drama/ Punch shared his thoughts on artists using marketing and promo to go viral rather than ensuring fans rate their music. Top Dawg Entertainment boss Punch shared a message for artists who emphasise going viral while forgetting to focus on making good music.  Punch’s remarks come after weeks of online drama within the Hip Hop community. Cardi B, who in August claimed other celebrities use her as a marketing plan, spent hours going back and forth on Twitter with Akbar V on Monday (Sept. 26).   The subtweets began after Akbar V appeared to downplay the success of Cardi B’s GloRilla collab “Tomorrow 2.” Cardi responded, and the pair traded shots throughout the day, with their respective fanbases becoming involved. As reported by AllHipHop.com, the exchange became very heated.   Meanwhile, Nicki Minaj was embroiled in her own social media drama recently. Her dispute with a blogger accusing her of taking cocaine resulted in the rapper filing a lawsuit. Nicki also took a series of subliminal shots at “entitled duds” after dropping her “Super Freaky Girl (Queen Mix)” this month.  According to Punch, to ensure longevity as an artist, fans need to be talking about the quality of the music.   “In my experience… you can have all the marketing and promotion in the world, but if ppl aren’t saying your music is good it doesn’t matter much.”  While Punch acknowledged artists “absolutely need” marketing and promotion, “the actual music is the most important.”  ## ## ## Read More Here

Elizabeth Ann Hayek Obituary (2022) The Pantagraph https://digitalarizonanews.com/elizabeth-ann-hayek-obituary-2022-the-pantagraph/ Elizabeth Ann Hayek Jan. 8, 1943 – Sept. 19, 2022 QUEEN CREEK, Arizona – Elizabeth Ann Hayek, 79, passed peacefully on September 19, 2022, in Queen Creek, AZ. Liz was born on January 8, 1943, in Chicago, IL, to John and Elizabeth (O’Kane) Connolly. She married James E. Hayek on August 28, 1964, and they were blessed to celebrate 58 wonderful years together. A beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and dear friend, Liz leaves behind a tremendous legacy and a portrait of love, dedication, compassion, and faith. She bravely fought through illnesses and injuries to squeeze every ounce of enjoyment out of the time she blessed the Earth. Left to carry on her many traditions and passions in life are her husband, Jim, Sr.; two daughters: Mary Blankenship (Eric) of Bloomington, IL, and Melissa Reid of Queen Creek, AZ; and four sons: Jim, Jr. (Debbie) of Phoenix, AZ, John (Laura) of Austin, TX, Jason (Kim) of Scottsdale, AZ, and Jay of Champaign, IL. Liz cherished the time spent with her 12 grandchildren: Paige and Brett Blankenship, Spenser and Bryson Reid, and Jacob, Ben, JJ, Samuel, James, Elizabeth, Carter, and Arden Hayek. She spent countless hours at their concerts, recitals, sporting events, and parties. Her grandchildren will forever remember all the holidays and special occasions shared with their grandma. She is also survived by her dear nieces: Noreen Merrick, her sons: Brad and Danny, and Mary Johnson; a special cousin, Patsy Clark; and god-daughter, Lisa Macali (Jeremy). Liz adored her husband and family most of all, as well as the priceless moments they made and enjoyed together. Liz had a tremendous talent and great gift as a caretaker. Throughout her life, she was extremely proud of her personal connection and work with children. In addition to raising her own children and helping nurture her grandchildren, Liz cared for many kids in her home throughout the years. She loved them like her own and developed deep relationships with them and their parents, many of whom she kept in contact with long after they grew up. Liz never met a stranger and developed special friendships with almost everyone she came in contact with, including the many nurses, doctors, and aides who took great care of her over the years. Elizabeth’s funeral service will be held October 8, 2022 at St. Patrick Catholic Church of Merna, 1001 N. Towanda Barnes Rd., Bloomington, IL. Visitation will begin at 9:00 a.m. A Catholic Funeral Mass will be at 10:00 a.m. followed by a reception at the church. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the National Kidney Foundation, the American Cancer Society or to St. Patrick Church of Merna. Condolences and memories may be left online for the family at gilbertmemorialpark.com. Published by The Pantagraph on Sep. 27, 2022. 34465541-95D0-45B0-BEEB-B9E0361A315A To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store. Read More…