Digital Arizona News

Truss Says Nord Stream Gas Pipeline Damage ‘clearly Sabotage’ https://digitalarizonanews.com/truss-says-nord-stream-gas-pipeline-damage-clearly-sabotage/ Liz Truss has said a series of explosions that severely damaged Russia’s undersea Nord Stream gas pipelines were an act of sabotage. In a joint report delivered to the United Nations last week, the Danish and Swedish governments have claimed that the leaks in the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which can carry gas to Germany, were caused by blasts equivalent to the power of “several hundred kilograms of explosive”. The UK prime minister was updated on developments in the situation unfolding in the Baltic Sea as she engaged in talks with her Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, in Downing Street on Saturday. Suspicions have been rising in western capitals that the explosions on the pipelines were attacks carried out by Russia as a means of intensifying pressure in western governments over energy supplies. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has dismissed any such claims and said in a speech on Friday that “Anglo Saxons” were responsible. Calling the explosions a “terror attack”, Putin said the blasts were an attempt to “destroy the European energy infrastructure”. However, the US state department has called Putin’s comments “preposterous” and an act of “Russian disinformation”. Following the meeting between Truss and Frederiksen, a No 10 spokesperson said the leaders had stressed the importance of staying “united against Russia’s despicable action in Ukraine”. The spokesperson confirmed that the prime minister and her Danish counterpart had agreed that the incidents were “clearly an act of sabotage”, with Truss offering the UK’s support for the ongoing investigation. While neither leader sought to attribute responsibility for the incident, speaking to reporters outside No 10, Frederiksen said: “One of the reasons why I’m here today is because of the situation in the Baltic Sea, with Nord Stream 1 and 2. “I was able to give some details about what has happened in Denmark, or just outside Denmark. Of course, it has been very important for me to underline that the Danish authorities have said that this is not an accident. “This is sabotage and it is critical infrastructure. So of course, this is a very serious situation.” Neither of the Nord Stream pipelines is in operation although both still contain gas. Nord Stream 1 has not transported any gas since late August, when Russia closed it down for maintenance; Nord Stream 2 was halted after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Read More Here

NEW REPORT: Trump Lawyer Chris Kise Pushing For ‘Off-Ramp’ In Mar-A-Lago Probe – Rest Of Team Trump Attacking Him – MsnNOW https://digitalarizonanews.com/new-report-trump-lawyer-chris-kise-pushing-for-off-ramp-in-mar-a-lago-probe-rest-of-team-trump-attacking-him-msnnow/ NEW REPORT: Trump Lawyer Chris Kise Pushing For ‘Off-Ramp’ In Mar-a-Lago Probe – Rest Of Team Trump Attacking Him  msnNOW Read More Here

Trump Escalates Attacks On McConnell With ‘DEATH WISH’ Post https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-escalates-attacks-on-mcconnell-with-death-wish-post/ Former president Donald Trump is facing blowback for an inflammatory online message attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that many viewed as a threat. “He has a DEATH WISH,” Trump posted late Friday on his Truth Social platform, criticizing McConnell for agreeing to a deal to fund the government through December. He also disparaged McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trump’s transportation secretary and was born in Taiwan, in racist terms, calling her “his China loving wife, Coco Chow!” The post marked a further escalation in an increasingly strained relationship between the two Republican leaders. Trump has repeatedly impugned McConnell’s negotiating positions and called on GOP senators to replace him as their leader. They often had a tense working relationship during Trump’s presidency and fell out in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump refused to concede and tried to overturn the results, and the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. A Trump spokesman said it was “absurd” to interpret the post as a threat or call for violence, suggesting the reference to a death wish was “political” rather than literal. “Mitch McConnell is killing the Republican Party through weakness and cowardice,” spokesman Taylor Budowich said. “He obviously has a political death wish for himself and Republican Party, but President Trump and the America First champions in Congress will save the Republican Party and our nation.” Incendiary statements from Trump have repeatedly inspired his supporters to turn to violence. Jan. 6 rioters, in the moment and in court proceedings, have said they believed they were acting on Trump’s wishes. Lawmakers of both parties have faced increasing threats after crossing Trump. More recently, following Trump’s attacks on the FBI in response to a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago resort, a gunman tried to breach the bureau’s Cincinnati office while posting about it on Truth Social. He was later killed by police. “He knows exactly what he’s doing, and his recklessness knows no bounds,” prominent Republican lawyer Robert Kelner wrote on Twitter, responding to Trump’s latest post about McConnell. “Despicable.” Chao resigned from Trump’s Cabinet shortly after the Jan. 6 attack, saying the assault “deeply troubled me in a way I simply cannot set aside.” McConnell, in a speech after the following month’s impeachment trial, condemned Trump as “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” though he did not vote to convict. In this year’s primaries, McConnell tried unsuccessfully to recruit moderate Republican governors such as Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Larry Hogan of Maryland and Doug Ducey of Arizona to run for the Senate. McConnell’s allies intervened in some races to oppose pro-Trump candidates, such as Eric Greitens in Missouri and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, but did not weigh in against Trump-endorsed candidates such as Blake Masters in Arizona and Herschel Walker in Georgia. McConnell has publicly lamented that some of the party’s nominees are making it harder to win back the chamber, though he has lately expressed more confidence in their chances. Read More Here

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Joins Supreme Court Ahead Of Full Docket Including Cases About Race, Voting, And The Environment https://digitalarizonanews.com/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-joins-supreme-court-ahead-of-full-docket-including-cases-about-race-voting-and-the-environment/ Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was welcomed to the Supreme Court by her new colleagues on Friday, days before the Supreme Court begins a new term.  President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris attended the investiture ceremony on Friday. “Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has already brought uncompromising integrity, a strong moral compass, and courage to the Supreme Court,” Biden tweeted. “This is a day for all Americans to be proud.” “She’s going to be a wonderful justice, has a delightful family, and I’m really looking forward to working with her,” Chief Justice John Roberts said at a judicial conference in September. Jackson will be the first-ever Black woman to ever serve on the bench, replacing Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired in June. Jackson is the first Justice appointed by President Biden to take the bench, and will sit alongside three former President Donald Trump appointees—Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett—making for a very divided court of six conservatives and three liberals.  “It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to be selected to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. But we’ve made it,” Jackson said in a speech following her Senate confirmation in April. “We’ve made it. All of us.” The first case on the docket will be about the Clean Water Act, the primary law regulating water pollution; SCOTUS will determine what is protected under the Clean Water Act. The outcome could “gut our ability to protect wetlands and other waters. It’s a threat to the clean water our communities depend on for drinking, swimming, fishing and other uses,” according to Jon Devine, director of federal water policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. This term, the Supreme Court is also expected to hear major cases regarding affirmative action, voting, free speech and gay rights. Last session, SCOTUS made a number of landmark rulings, perhaps none more divisive than the overturning of Roe v. Wade; according to the latest Gallup poll, 58% of U.S. adults, a record high, said they disapprove of the job the Supreme Court is doing, and a growing number of Americans distrust the nation’s high court. Read More Here

Trump Once Told His Biracial Ex-Girlfriend That Her Intelligence Came 'from Her Dad, The White Side,' Book Claims https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-once-told-his-biracial-ex-girlfriend-that-her-intelligence-came-from-her-dad-the-white-side-book-claims/ Trump told his biracial ex-girlfriend that she gets her intelligence from her “white side.” The comments were made to model Kara Young after meeting her parents, according to a new book. The former president laughed at his comments while Young rebuffed the remark.  Loading Something is loading. Former President Donald Trump once told his girlfriend, who is biracial, that she gets her intelligence from her white father, according to a book. The new book “Confidence Man The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America” by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman detailed Trump’s past relationship with model Kara Young, Rolling Stone reported. Young and Trump dated in the late 1990s and frequented movie premieres and other social events in New York City.  After Trump met Young’s mother, who is Black, and father, he made a joke insinuating that her looks come from her mother, but her intellect comes “from her dad, the white side,” the outlet reported, citing the book.  Per the book, Trump laughed at his joke, but Young did not appreciate his comments, according to the report.  Trump has continuously come under fire for remarks on race during his presidency, from publicly slamming the Black Lives Matter movement, touting a birther conspiracy against former President Barack Obama, and his comments after the Charlottesville protests.  Young opened up about another experience in 2017 where she said Trump was shocked that Tennis juggernauts Serena and Venus Williams were able to attract a diverse crowd to the US Open, Rolling Stone reported.  The book also recounts another incident during a reception at the White House when Trump mistook a racially diverse group of congressional aides as waiters in 2017.  “Why don’t you get” the food,” Trump asked the group, who was part of Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s staff. Ex-White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus corrected Trump’s remarks and got the actual waitstaff.  Read More Here

Cal Thomas: Meloni Baloney About Italy's New Leader https://digitalarizonanews.com/cal-thomas-meloni-baloney-about-italys-new-leader/ FILE PHOTO: Leader of Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni speaks at the party’s election night headquarters, in Rome, Italy September 26, 2022. REUTERS / Guglielmo Mangiapane Italy has elected its first female prime minister. Normally that would be cause for celebration by those who promote diversity, but press reaction in Europe and the United States is treating Giorgia Meloni as the second coming of Italian dictator and Adolf Hitler ally, Benito Mussolini. Cal Thomas Commentary Tribune graphic The leftist press labels those whose policies they oppose as “right wing,” “extremist” and in Meloni’s case, a woman with “fascist” associations and political roots. A Washington Post editorial calls her a “firebrand ethno-nationalist” whose party “arose from the ashes of post-World War II Italian fascism.” Having already smeared her, the Post then contradicts itself, writing: “In fact, it would be a stretch to regard Ms. Meloni … as a fascist.” Meloni’s political positions are opposed to the secular progressive agenda. She is passionately pro-life, opposes the LGBTQ political agenda, and wants to restrict immigration. Market Realist News says: “Much like many far-right politicians in the U.S., Meloni has utilized her Christian views to serve as a backbone of her politics.” And secular progressives don’t do the same? Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which she co-founded in 2012, and which CNN.com repeatedly described as “far right,” so you get their drift, evolved from a neo-fascist movement, a movement begun decades ago. Meloni says her views are not those of that older organization. For the left, one can evolve in their direction, but never the opposite. It is always best to hear someone speak for themselves without the filtration of a hostile media. Three years ago, Meloni spoke before The World Congress of Families in Verona. She began with self-deprecating humor: “I’ve just arrived … I was doing the ironing. Then I found 10 minutes to come and talk politics with you.” Meloni said of the stereotypes associated with the family organization: “They said all sorts of things about this congress. They said we want to go back to the past. That we’re losers. That we’re embarrassing. That we’re un-enlightened. They said it’s scandalous for people to defend the natural family founded on marriage, to want to increase the birth rate, to want to place the correct value on human life, to support freedom in education and to say no to gender ideology.” The same has been said by critics of conservatives and their organizations in the U.S., but her platform is in tune with many Americans. Like Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, she is not shy about firing back at her critics, some of whom were protesting outside the venue: “I say the losers are those who have nothing better to do than come here and insult us.” She has proposed free nursery schools for mothers who work outside the home. She describes Europe’s low birth rate (much of it thanks to liberal abortion policies) as “the biggest problem facing Europe.” Not energy? Not Russia’s war against Ukraine? Nope. “If we do not address this,” she says, “everything else is pointless.” Meloni also has a searing response to critics who claim she wants to return Italy to the Middle Ages: “The Middle Ages was also the time of the cathedrals and the abbeys, the founding of the comuni (small Italian administrative units), the universities, the parliament, the epoch of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Saint Francis, Saint Benedict. People who don’t know where Matera is, let’s not expect them to read history books.” How about this zinger: “I believe in a society where every choice has consequences and you accept responsibility for them. I reject a society where every desire becomes a right.” That once was considered normal and admirable in America and in Europe. You can understand why secular progressives hate her and fear her message. Perhaps she will soon visit the U.S. and put some backbone into the Republican Party. This Cal Thomas commentary is his opinion. He can be reached at cthomas@wctrib.com. Commentary logo Tribune graphic Read More Here

Fox’s Jeanine Pirro Is Back In Hot Seat In $1.6 Billion Election Defamation Case https://digitalarizonanews.com/foxs-jeanine-pirro-is-back-in-hot-seat-in-1-6-billion-election-defamation-case/ Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, shown here addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2017, has been placed at the center of a $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential elections. MIKE THEILER / AFP via Getty Images Dominion Voting Systems is putting Fox News star “Judge Jeanine” Pirro back on the legal hot seat in its clash with the network in a $1.6 billion defamation suit over baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections, NPR has learned. In documents filed Thursday in a Delaware courthouse, the voting tech company explicitly identified Pirro, a former Westchester County district attorney and New York state judge, as central to its case. Its filings argue that by questioning Pirro, Dominion can meet the key legal threshold of proving Fox showed “actual malice” when it broadcast false claims the firm sought to throw the race to Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump. The case is at a pre-trial phase of the litigation, where both sides are able to obtain testimony and documentary evidence from key figures in a process called “discovery.” “Discovery has revealed that…Fox News host Jeanine Pirro help[ed] spread the verifiably false yet devastating lies against Dominion,” the company’s lawyers wrote in the legal documents. Earlier this month, NPR revealed that a Fox producer had warned colleagues in an email against putting Pirro on the air in the days after the election, saying she was pulling conspiracy theories from extremist conspiracy-minded websites to justify Trump’s lies. That was just one example of the vast cache of documents and testimony that Dominion has acquired. Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell made false allegations on Pirro’s show Now, Dominion is pointing to a November 14, 2020 segment in which Pirro invited on Trump’s campaign attorney, Sidney Powell, to make unsubstantiated claims that were disputed at the time and swiftly discredited. “She not only allowed Ms. Powell to air such nonsense, not only amplified it on her Justice with Judge Jeanine program,” Dominion’s attorneys wrote, “[but] Ms. Pirro’s conduct and role in the spread of this disinformation lies at the heart of Dominion’s claims.” Pirro is not named as a defendant in Dominion’s suit against Fox and its parent company, Fox Corp. Powell and others are being sued by Dominion separately. Powell alleged, among other claims, that computer codes were overwritten to manipulate Dominion software and that statistical and mathematical evidence showed votes were flipped from Trump to Biden. Those claims and others she made were false. Pirro did read Dominion’s denials on the air. Five days after the segment, the Dominion motion notes, Powell appeared at the Republican National Committee headquarters with Trump campaign attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, where they held a press conference at which they made nearly identical allegations. In the filings, Dominion’s attorneys write they had been asking for all relevant communications from Fox for months but that the network produced several directly relevant texts from Pirro just 13 hours before her deposition in late August. The attorneys said that meant they are only now able to question Pirro directly about the exchanges and are formally asking the presiding judge, Eric M. Davis of the Delaware Superior Court, to compel Pirro to sit for an additional deposition, under oath. Fox has argued the false claims were inherently newsworthy Fox News declined comment, as did its lead outside trial attorney, Dan Webb, through a network spokeswoman. In an earlier interview with NPR, Webb said that Fox News was merely covering inherently newsworthy claims by inherently newsworthy people – meaning a sitting president and his campaign lawyers and advisers contesting a presidential election. That newsworthiness, he argued, exists regardless of the accuracy or fairness of the claims. Fox’s fortunes looked shaky after the November 2020 elections because its research team made Fox the first network to project that Biden would win the key swing state of Arizona. That call enraged Trump, his campaign, and his followers. Dominion’s attorneys have argued that Fox knowingly or recklessly allowed its stars to make sweeping and false claims that the firm committed election fraud to regain the loyalty of its core audiences because it had started to bleed viewers to smaller right-wing competitors, particularly Newsmax and OAN, after the Arizona call. Dominion seeks employment contracts of Fox News executive and stars Court filings reviewed by NPR also show that Dominion is seeking to force Fox News to turn over the full employment contracts of 13 top network executives, including Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace, Fox’s president and executive editor. Others named include Bill Sammon, a top Washington editor, who retired under duress after the election projection of Arizona for Biden; Irena Briganti, the network’s top publicity executive, and other senior producers and news executives. (Dominion’s motion was filed publicly, then removed and re-filed with all names redacted; NPR reviewed the first version of the motion before it was pulled from public view. The contracts would be sealed from public view.) In response, Fox’s attorneys wrote that “none [of the executives] have made any allegedly defamatory comments, appeared on any allegedly defamatory programs, or produced any allegedly defamatory shows.” “[Fox] maintains that this order is contrary to law, prejudicial to [Fox] and not proportional to the needs of this case,” Fox attorneys wrote. Dominion is presumably looking to examine how the executives’ compensation and bonuses are constructed, given those sharp ratings drops in late 2020. Dominion still has pending defamation suits against both smaller networks, Giuliani, Powell, and pillow entrepreneur Mike Lindell, an avid pro-Trump propagator of unfounded conspiracies about the election. The judge has set a deadline in mid-October for all discovery and depositions to conclude, with a few exceptions that could drag into November. Trump and Pirro have a tight bond. When she was briefly banished from the air in 2019 over anti-Muslim remarks, the then-president publicly called for her return. In 2020, she attended his bellicose Election Night address refusing to accept the results. Her weekend show did not air on Nov. 7, 2020, just after the elections, but the program resurfaced a week later, with the segment featuring Powell, and she repeatedly advanced Trump’s cause in the weeks and months that followed. In January, Pirro was elevated to become a full host of The Five, Fox’s popular weekday evening political chat show. She was not alone at Fox in promoting such claims of election fraud. A star-studded roster of current and former Fox News hosts have been deposed in the case, including Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. The network announced former Fox Business host Lou Dobbs was leaving Fox the day after another election technology company, Smartmatic, announced its own $2.1 billion defamation suit over similarly spurious claims. (That suit is pending.) Dobbs sat for a deposition as well. In addition to those of the Fox News executives, Dominion has petitioned to receive the employment contracts for Bartiromo, Carlson, Dobbs, Hannity and Pirro. Pirro was originally a named defendant in the Smartmatic defamation suit. She was dismissed from that suit. But she remains at the heart of the Dominion drama, which has a trial date of next April. Maddy Lauria contributed to this report. Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. Read More Here

Speeding Driver Caused North Phoenix Crash That Seriously Injured Teen, Police Say https://digitalarizonanews.com/speeding-driver-caused-north-phoenix-crash-that-seriously-injured-teen-police-say/ Published October 1, 2022 9:05AM Teen hurt in north Phoenix crash caused by speeding driver, police say A suspect fleeing from Phoenix police officers reportedly injured a teen in a car crash near Tatum and Thunderbird Road on Friday. PHOENIX – A speeding driver fleeing from police has been blamed for causing a crash in north Phoenix that sent a teenage boy to the hospital. Police first tried to pull over the suspect on Sept. 30 for reportedly speeding near a school zone. But instead of stopping, officers say the suspect went through a school yard. Moments later, that driver collided with a car near Tatum Boulevard and Thunderbird Road. SkyFOX video showed one of the cars slammed through a wall and the other on a sidewalk. The teen, who was a passenger in the car that was hit, was seriously injured but is expected to be okay. The suspect driver was arrested. No names were released. More Arizona headlines Driver killed in Phoenix after truck loses control, slams into median 2 Phoenix teens injured in shootings not far from each other, police say Phoenix canal murders: Bryan Patrick Miller accused of killing 2 women; trial begins Oct. 3 Read More…

Supreme Court To Grapple With Race, Elections In New Term As Battle Over Abortion Lingers https://digitalarizonanews.com/supreme-court-to-grapple-with-race-elections-in-new-term-as-battle-over-abortion-lingers/ Affirmative action and two major election cases are on the docket – along with a raging debate over just how far the high court’s conservative majority will go. The court’s recent decisions were celebrated on the right but polls show public confidence tanked. Race will be a major theme this term with challenges over affirmative action and minority voting. Another element to watch: How Justice Jackson’s arrival changes the high court. WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will grapple with race, LGBTQ rights and election rules in a fraught new term that begins Monday, even as the justices and the nation wrestle with the fallout from the decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade. With affirmative action on the docket, along with immigration and a case about whether businesses may deny services for same-sex weddings, the high court isn’t shying from opportunities to leave a mark once again on America’s economy, culture and politics. But as the nine justices take their seats Monday, the consequences of the previous term remain at the forefront of public awareness. The decision to wipe away the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe in 1973 has upended midterm election campaigns, sparked a dizzying series of changes to state abortion laws and added to a sense that the court’s 6-3 conservative majority is just getting started. “There’s no reason to think this coming term or any term in the foreseeable future will be any different,” said Irv Gornstein, a law professor and executive director of Georgetown University’s Supreme Court Institute. “On things that matter most, get ready for a lot of 6-3s.” Recap: Supreme Court ends historic term with shift to the right on abortion, guns Race: Supreme Court’s affirmative action cases could affect hiring, employment Roe: Roberts tried to persuade rest of Supreme Court to keep Roe v. Wade in place Many of the court’s biggest decisions in June – such as to expand access to guns and further blur the line separating church and state – cleaved the six Republican-nominated justices from the three-member liberal bloc, escalating a debate over the court’s fidelity to precedent and whether some of the vote splits have as much to do with the ideology of individual justices as with strict adherence to legal principles. A few of the justices themselves weighed in on that debate over the summer. Chief Justice John Roberts defended the court, arguing that critics shouldn’t question its legitimacy just because they disagree with an opinion. Associate Justice Elena Kagan appeared to contradict that assessment, warning that the court risks weakening its stature if the public views its work as political.  Though many of the court’s most controversial decisions last term were celebrated on the right, polls show public confidence took a hit. Four in 10 Americans said they approved of the Supreme Court in a recent Marquette Law School poll. That was a 26-percentage point slide from two years ago. Among the major cases this term: a free speech challenge to Colorado’s anti-discrimination law from a website developer who wants to deny her services for same-sex marriages because of her religious objections. President Joe Biden’s administration, meanwhile, is fending off a lawsuit from Texas and Louisiana over how much discretion the federal government has to prioritize certain immigrants for deportation. ‘The court should overrule it’ Just beyond the debate over the court’s legitimacy is a question about some of the justices’ commitment to precedent. Was the decision to overturn Roe a one-off, the result of the deeply personal and decadeslong battle over Roe? Or was it the first step in a long march to overturn numerous cases and systematically reshape constitutional law along more conservative lines?  The Supreme Court rarely overturns its decisions. The principle of stare decisis – the adherence to prior rulings – gives stability to the law. But “rarely” doesn’t mean “never.” “Litigants are much more aggressively inviting the court to reconsider and rewrite established precedent,” said David Cole, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, who regularly argues before the Supreme Court. “They see what the court did last term and they’re asking for more.” LGBTQ: Supreme Court to decide if businesses may decline same-sex weddings Guns: Will the Supreme Court wade into bump stock debate? Too late: Time is running out to block voting restrictions ahead of midterms Among the precedents most at risk is a 2003 ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger, that allowed universities to consider the race of applicants as one factor in admissions. Many colleges consider race to achieve diversity. But an anti-affirmative action group sued Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, asserting that that consideration discriminates against Asian American and other students. In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the group is asking for Grutter to be overruled, arguing the 5-4 decision was “wrong the day it was decided” and has “spawned significant negative consequences.” Harvard counters that Grutter was “resoundingly correct” and that admitting students “from all over the world who bring different backgrounds” is crucial to its mission.   The affirmative action cases could have sweeping implications not only for college admissions but also for the private sector. Several of the nation’s best-known companies – including Apple, General Electric, Google and Starbucks – are backing the schools. Precedent may also be in jeopardy in a major election case, Moore v. Harper. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are asking the high court to rule that state legislatures have the power to change voting rules without oversight from state courts. The so-called independent state legislature theory is grounded in a clause in the Constitution that delegates responsibility for federal elections to state legislatures with oversight by Congress. That theory, opponents say, is tough to square with a 2015 decision in which a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court upheld a commission that draws Arizona’s congressional districts – in other words, an entity that is not part of the state Legislature. The North Carolina lawmakers say a commission is different from a state court.  But if the Supreme Court ultimately decides the Arizona case is relevant, the lawmakers have a solution, which they raise in a footnote: “The court should overrule it.” Race takes center stage  Abortion was the dominant theme in the term that ended in June. This time, it is race that ties together many of the most significant questions before the high court. The 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause is central to the affirmative action litigation. It’s also key to another lawsuit dealing with elections.  In Merrill v. Milligan, scheduled for oral argument Tuesday, Alabama is defending a congressional redistricting map that includes one majority African American district out of seven, even though Black residents make up more than one quarter of the state’s population. A federal court in Birmingham in January said the state appeared to have given Black voters “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice” and ruled that the map probably violated the Voting Rights Act.  Explainer: How the Supreme Court is influencing the midterm elections Barrett: How Justice Barrett is wielding influence on the Supreme Court Federalist Society: Overturning Roe a triumph of long push by conservative legal movement Alabama counters that its map is substantially similar to the one the state has used for years. To draw what plaintiffs want – a map that includes two African American majority districts – would require officials to elevate race above every other factor mapmakers are supposed to consider in the redistricting process, the state says.  The decision could significantly change how much weight states give to race as they decide how neighborhoods are divvied up into congressional districts.  In another series of cases, the Supreme Court must decide whether a 1978 law intended to stop the forced removal of Native American children from their tribes violates the equal protection of rights. One of the law’s provisions requires preference be given to Native American families when a Native American child is placed for adoption. Non-Native families who sought to adopt Native American children say the law violates the Constitution because it gives a preference to one race over others. The Biden administration counters that the classification isn’t racial but rather is based on the fact that tribes are separate and sovereign.  “There are hundreds of adoptions that take place involving this law,” Lisa Blatt, a veteran Supreme Court litigator who argued a similar case before the court in 2013, said at a Georgetown Law School event. “It is of an enormous amount of importance to people who adopt children or want to give up their children for adoption.” New justice, different court?   Another dynamic to watch: How the court’s new associate justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, changes the nation’s highest bench.  Jackson joined the court in June and has already taken part in a handful of emergency cases. But her first oral argument will coincide with the start of the term. And soon she’ll be writing opinions along with her colleagues. That will offer insight into a jurist who avoided hemming herself into any particular judicial philosophy during her confirmation hearings.  Because she was nominated by Biden and replaced retired Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who was also nominated by a Democrat, her arrival isn’t expected to change outcomes in major cases.  But Jackson may exert influence in more subtle...

Russia's Ukraine Invasion Is Backdrop To Election In Latvia https://digitalarizonanews.com/russias-ukraine-invasion-is-backdrop-to-election-in-latvia/ VILNIUS, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Latvians were voting on Saturday in a parliamentary election, with opinion polls predicting that Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins’s centre-right New Unity party will win the most votes, enabling him to continue his coalition with the conservative National Alliance. A victory for Karins could widen a growing rift between the Latvian majority and Latvia’s Russian-speaking minority over their place in society following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “I’m ready to continue being the prime minister, if that’s what the people say,” Karins told reporters in Riga on Saturday. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Polls close at 8 p.m. (1700 GMT), with an exit poll released immediately afterwards. Results were expected by midnight (2100 GMT). The first Latvian head of government to survive a full four-year term, surveys show Karins benefitting from driving the country’s hawkish stance against Russia amid widespread national anger over the invasion of Ukraine. The election campaign was dominated by questions of national identity and security concerns, while urgent issues including soaring energy costs and high inflation were largely pushed aside. Election campaign poster depicting parliament member candidates from different political parties are seen in Jelgava, Latvia September 28, 2022. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins Karins told Reuters on Tuesday he believes the war in Ukraine has consolidated his NATO and European Union nation of 1.9 million. He said that if re-elected, he would integrate the Russian minority – a quarter of population – by having the country educate its children in the Latvian language. “We’re putting all of our focus on the youth, to make sure that regardless of what language is spoken at home, that the child grows up with all of the advantages of knowing our language, knowing our culture”, he said. Before Moscow invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, tens of thousands of Russian speakers in Latvia used to gather every May 9 around a monument in Riga to commemorate the Soviet victory against Nazi Germany in World War Two. Their gatherings were banned after the invasion and the 84-metre (275-foot) structure in the centre of the capital was demolished on orders from the government – which is dominated by ethnic Latvians and would prefer to bury the memories of the country being part of the former Soviet Union up to 1991. Popular TV broadcasts from Russia have been banned and the state language board has proposed renaming a central Riga street commemorating Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. Karins’ government has put forward plans to switch all education to Latvian and to swiftly phase out instruction in Russian. The social democrat Harmony party, traditionally backed by Latvia’s Russian-speaking minority, received 19.8% of votes in the 2018 elections and became the largest opposition party in parliament. However, the latest opinion polls showed 7.3% support for Harmony. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius and Janis Laizans in Riga Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Frances Kerry Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

Sign Up For Scottsdale’s Jingle Hike To Santa https://digitalarizonanews.com/sign-up-for-scottsdales-jingle-hike-to-santa/ Put on your best holiday outfit, grab the children and head to Pinnacle Peak Park for a morning for festivities and cheer on Saturday, Dec. 10. Participants will receive a special bell at check in that will jingle all the way to Santa, who will be waiting for hikers at the Grandview Overlook. Make sure the children bring their “wish list” for the Jolly Old Guy and don’t forget to pack a camera. There will be coffee, coco and Christmas treats for all to enjoy at the trailhead. Interactive storytelling, crafts and professional face painting will be available. Participants have three time slots to choose from: 9 a.m., 10 a.m., and 11 a.m. Space is limited to 120 people per time slot. Registration begins Monday, Oct. 17, at Recreation.ScottsdaleAZ.gov. Read More Here

Elon Musk Unveils Prototype Of Tesla’s Humanoid Robot Optimus, Says It Will Cost Less Than A Car https://digitalarizonanews.com/elon-musk-unveils-prototype-of-teslas-humanoid-robot-optimus-says-it-will-cost-less-than-a-car/ Elon Musk unveiled a prototype of Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, part of an effort to shape perception of the company as more than just a car maker. The Tesla CEO said the robot is expected to cost less than a car. Photo: Tesla Updated Oct. 1, 2022 10:46 am ET Elon Musk showed off a new humanoid robot Friday at a Tesla artificial-intelligence event, part of the chief executive’s effort to shape public perception of the company as more than an electric-vehicle maker. Mr. Musk first laid out the vision for the robot, called Optimus, a little more than a year ago at Tesla’s first-ever AI day. At the time, a dancer in a costume appeared onstage. This time, Mr. Musk presented a prototype at the gathering that unfolded late Friday in Palo Alto, Calif. Read More Here

Shying From Trump, Ex-Maine Gov. Paul LePage Seeks Job Back https://digitalarizonanews.com/shying-from-trump-ex-maine-gov-paul-lepage-seeks-job-back-2/ YARMOUTH, Maine (AP) — When then-Maine Gov. Paul LePage endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, he credited himself as a prototype for the insurgent presidential candidate. “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we are one of the same cloth,” said LePage, whose two terms in office were punctuated by brash behavior and frequently offensive comments. Now, as LePage is running for a third term after a brief retirement to Florida, he rarely talks about Trump in public, and his advisers say LePage’s hiatus from politics changed him. He’s eager to show he’s smoothed over some of his own rough edges, though flashes of his fiery personality broke through recently at an event at a riverfront boatyard in Yarmouth, where he pledged to take on Democratic “elitists.” “I came from the streets. I was a fighter all my life,” LePage told workers. “I had to scrimp and save to eat and survive. I am a fighter.” As LePage seeks to unseat Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and become the longest-serving governor in Maine history, he is banking on an approach familiar to other Republican candidates in liberal- and moderate-leaning states who are trying not to alienate swing voters they would need to win a general election. LePage’s efforts at putting distancing from Trump are particularly notable given LePage once invited comparisons to Trump — and made them himself. FILE -Former Maine Gov. Paul LePage campaigns for President Donald Trump in Saco, Maine, in this Sept. 17, 2020 file photo. LePage, who moved to Florida after his second term, has returned to Maine to challenge Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Robert F. Bukaty FILE – Maine Gov. Janet Mills speaks at a news conference in this April 28, 2020, file photo in Augusta, Maine. Mills, who is seeking a second term, is being challenged by Republican Paul LePage, a former two-term governor. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Robert F. Bukaty PreviousNext Democrats aren’t going to let voters forget LePage’s tumultuous time in office, when he occasionally acted and sounded a lot like Trump. LePage attracted national headlines when he told the Portland chapter of the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” made racist remarks about drug dealers who impregnate “white” girls and accused a lawmaker of screwing over state taxpayers “without providing Vaseline.” His critics point to a recent campaign event in which LePage threatened to “deck” a Democratic staffer who got too close to him — an incident, they say, that illustrates LePage hasn’t changed at all. The race is shaping up to be among a dozen or so competitive contests for governor this election year. The way in which the campaign plays out with voters weary of political ugliness may be a harbinger for Trump’s White House aspirations in 2024. LePage and Mills’ adversarial relationship goes back years. Mills, a 74-year-old moderate and the first woman elected governor of Maine, is a former two-term attorney general whose stint as the state’s top prosecutor coincided with LePage’s time as governor. The two clashed publicly, with Mills declining to represent LePage’s administration on some matters, forcing LePage to seek outside counsel to represent his interests in litigation. Her supporters portray her as a steady leader whose cautious COVID-19 policies helped guide the state through the worst pandemic in a century, with fewer coronavirus deaths per capita than most others. She expanded Medicaid — something LePage had blocked — and presided over the largest budget surplus in Maine history, which allowed the state to send $850 relief checks to most residents. Raised in poverty and homeless for a time as a boy, LePage, 73, is an unabashed conservative whose past controversies often overshadowed his political achievements, such as lowering the tax burden, shrinking welfare rolls, overhauling the pension system and paying back millions of dollars of hospital debt. He attacked Mills’ executive orders during the pandemic, including mandatory vaccines for health care workers, calling it a “reign of terror.” He’s called for a parental bill of rights in education, claimed Mill has allowed crime and drugs to proliferate and accused her of budgetary gimmicks that will cause problems in the future. He has promised to try again to eliminate the state’s income tax. When LePage left office in 2019, prevented from seeking a third consecutive term by the Maine Constitution, he declared he was decamping for Florida, where the taxes were lower, and leaving politics behind. He didn’t stay away long. Soon, he was headed back to Maine for what supporters described as “LePage 2.0.” LePage’s senior adviser Brent Littlefield said LePage was astounded when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and that LePage fears the country is in danger of tearing itself apart. LePage issued a statement amid the violence supporting law enforcement and telling those involved in the riot “to leave and go home.” LePage served as Trump’s honorary state chairman and once sought a job in his administration, but he now won’t say whether he would vote for Trump for president if Trump runs again in 2024. Despite any private misgivings, however, LePage hasn’t condemned Trump. He declined an Associated Press interview request. The former governor made no reference to Trump while touring Yankee Marina & Boatyard, even though Trump remains popular in rural Maine, where he twice won an electoral vote while losing the statewide vote. Boatyard president Deborah Delp said LePage is needed at a time when her workers are suffering from high inflation and worried about the future. She said she can “handle some rough language” from LePage if he puts the economy on track. “Politicians are politicians. And he’s not a politician. He’s a businessman. He says what he thinks,” Delp said. Maria Testa, a Democrat from Portland, disagrees. “He’s bombastic and has a cruel temper. He’s such a big no for me,” Testa said. While campaigning, LePage largely tries to steer clear of Trump’s lies of a rigged 2020 election. LePage acknowledges that Biden is president but declines to address whether he thinks the election was legitimate. LePage also avoids the issue of abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. Mills has pledged to fight to ensure women continue to have a right to a legal abortion in Maine. A third candidate for governor, independent Sam Hunkler, isn’t expected to play much of a role in the race, unlike deep-pocketed independent Eliot Cutler, who did in 2010 and 2014, when LePage won each election without a majority. Maine’s ranked-choice voting system won’t be a factor. It is used in federal congressional races but not in the governor’s contest because it runs afoul of the Maine Constitution. Betsy Martin, a retired health care administrator from Biddeford, said residents are feeling drained by the corrosive partisanship in a rural state with a tradition of moderate politics and independent voters. Some are tuning out altogether, she said. “They’re exhausted. They’re extremely fatigued. We’re worn out,” she said. ___ Follow David Sharp on Twitter @David_Sharp_AP ___ Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Read More Here

Burkina Faso Coup: Gunshots In Capital And Roads Blocked https://digitalarizonanews.com/burkina-faso-coup-gunshots-in-capital-and-roads-blocked/ By Natasha Booty BBC News Image source, Radio Télévision du Burkina Image caption, World powers have criticised the soldiers behind the coup (pictured) Gunshots have been heard in Burkina Faso’s capital city Ouagadougou and helicopters are circling overhead, a day after junior army officers said they were seizing power in a coup. Witnesses say troops have blocked main roads around the city and shops that had opened earlier are now shut. Friday’s apparent takeover had been announced on national TV after negotiations reportedly failed. This was the second time this year that the country’s army had seized power. On both occasions the coup leaders said they had to step in because national security was so dire. Burkina Faso controls as little as 60% of its territory, experts say, and Islamist violence is worsening. Since 2020 more than a million people have been displaced in the country due to the violence. The African Union has demanded the return of constitutional order by July 2023 at the latest, agreeing with the regional group Ecowas that the ousting of leader Lt Col Paul-Henri Damiba was “unconstitutional”. Ecowas earlier said it was “inappropriate” for army rebels to seize power when the country was working towards civilian rule. Flanked by rebel soldiers in fatigues and black facemasks, an army captain announced on national TV on Friday evening that they were kicking out Lt Col Damiba, dissolving the government and suspending the constitution. Ibrahim Traoré said Lt Col Damiba’s inability to deal with an Islamist insurgency was to blame. “Our people have suffered enough, and are still suffering”, he said. He also announced that borders were closed indefinitely, a nightly curfew was now in place from 21:00 to 05:00, and all political activities were suspended. “Faced with the deteriorating situation, we tried several times to get Damiba to refocus the transition on the security question,” said the statement signed by Col Traoré. “Damiba’s actions gradually convinced us that his ambitions were diverting away from what we set out to do. We decided this day to remove Damiba,” it said. Little is known about Col Traoré, the 34-year-old soldier whose statement effectively declared himself the interim leader of Burkina Faso. But in Friday’s announcement came the promise that the “driving forces of the nation” would in time be brought together to appoint a new civilian or military president and a new “transitional charter”. Since the takeover there has been no word on the whereabouts of the ousted leader. Lt Col Damiba’s junta overthrew an elected government in January citing a failure to halt Islamist attacks, and he himself told citizens “we have more than what it takes to win this war.” But his administration has also not been able to quell the jihadist violence. Analysts told the BBC recently that Islamist insurgents were encroaching on territory, and military leaders had failed in their attempts to bring the military under a single unit of command. On Monday, 11 soldiers were killed when they were escorting a convoy of civilian vehicles in Djibo in the north of the country. Earlier on Friday, Lt Col Damiba urged the population to remain calm after heavy gunfire was heard in parts of the capital. A spokesman for the ousted government, Lionel Bilgo, told AFP news agency on Friday that the “crisis” was in essence an army pay dispute, and that Lt Col Damiba was taking part in negotiations. But since Friday evening Lt Col Damiba’s whereabouts are unknown. France is a traditional ally, but French diplomatic sources have told RFI radio that Lt Col Damiba is not with them nor is he under their protection. France has also denied that its army had anything to do with deposing the junta leader, saying it was forced to respond to online rumours blaming them. The African Union meanwhile has urged the military to “immediately and totally refrain from any acts of violence or threats to the civilian population, civil liberties, human rights”. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) earlier condemned the move too, stating it “reaffirms its unreserved opposition to any taking or maintaining of the power by unconstitutional means”. The United States said it was “deeply concerned” by events in Burkina Faso and encouraged its citizens to limit movements in the country. France issued a similar warning to its more than 4,000 citizens living in the capital city Ouagadougou. “We call for a return to calm and restraint by all actors,” a US State Department spokesperson said. Image source, Reuters Image caption, Lt Col Damiba urged the population to remain calm after heavy gunfire was heard in parts of the capital on Friday In January, Lt Col Damiba ousted President Roch Kaboré, saying that he had failed to deal with growing militant Islamist violence. But many citizens do not feel any safer and there have been protests in different parts of the country this week. On Friday afternoon, some protesters took to the capital’s streets calling for the removal of Lt Col Damiba. The Islamist insurgency broke out in Burkina Faso in 2015, leaving thousands dead and forcing an estimated two million people from their homes. The country has experienced eight successful coups since independence in 1960. Read More Here

DOJ Asks To Speed Up Appeal To End Trump's Special Master Review, Resume Mar-A-Lago Probe 'Without Restraints' https://digitalarizonanews.com/doj-asks-to-speed-up-appeal-to-end-trumps-special-master-review-resume-mar-a-lago-probe-without-restraints/ Former U.S. President Donald Trump was seen golfing on Sept. 13, 2022. Federal prosecutors filed a photo of documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago in early August 2022. (Photo of Trump by Win McNamee/Getty Images; photo of Mar-a-Lago documents via a federal court filing.) The Department of Justice asked to fast-track an appeal challenging the order appointing a special master to review thousands of files seized from Mar-a-Lago, emphasizing that they want to resume their criminal investigation involving former President Donald Trump “without restraints.” “Based on the district court’s orders thus far, the government is barred from accessing all of the materials except those with classification markings recovered in August pursuant to a lawful search warrant and it may continue to be barred from doing so until mid-December or later,” the government noted in a 15-page motion filed on Friday evening. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals already allowed the government to resume using the more than 100 documents with classification markings that they seized from Mar-a-Lago for their ongoing Espionage Act investigation. The appellate order blocked part of an injunction from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee. However, investigators still cannot access the more than 11,000 other documents — totaling more than 200,000 pages — without classification markings because the government narrowly tailored their request for a stay. “To be sure, the government sought a partial stay of the district court’s September 5 order only as it pertained to records bearing classification markings because those aspects of the order caused the most serious and immediate harm to the government and the public,” the filing noted. “And the motions panel agreed that the injunction against the government’s review and use of those records for criminal investigative purposes ‘risks imposing real and significant harm on the United States and the public.’” Still, the Justice Department emphasized that the remaining constraints still impede their investigation. “Even if not to the same degree, such harms persist with respect to the district court’s injunction against the government’s review and use of thousands of remaining documents and other materials that were recovered pursuant to a court-authorized search and may constitute evidence of crimes,” the motion states. “The government is thus unable to examine records that were commingled with materials bearing classification markings, including records that may shed light on, for example, how the materials bearing classification markings were transferred to Plaintiff’s residence, how they were stored, and who may have accessed them.” These limitations, the government says, have hindered their investigation into possible obstruction of justice and concealment and removal of government records. “In short, an expedited schedule for briefing and argument may enable the government, if it is successful in this appeal, to more quickly resume its full investigation without restraints on its review and use of evidence seized pursuant to a lawful search warrant,” the motion states. In making their request, the Justice Department pointedly cited Judge Cannon’s “sua sponte” rulings favoring Trump — that is to say, orders that neither party formally requested. Cannon recently extended deadlines further delaying the completion of the review and overruled Senior U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie’s order that Trump’s lawyers lodge any disputes over the authenticity of the seized documents on the public record. The order, made by Trump’s pick for special master, would have forced the former president to prove suggestions he made on Fox News that the FBI may have planted the documents. Legal experts have noted that it’s rare for a district judge to micromanage the work of an appointed special master. “I believe that the Department of Justice has had just about enough of the farce that Judge Canon has created, having read her order essentially overruling the special master’s theory on virtually every point,” opined former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner, now a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich P.C. “And they have decided that rather than live through the annoyance of going through the special master proceedings, they’re going to seek to have the curtain brought down on it by the 11th Circuit long before Judge Cannon can issue her next destructive order.” The government makes a point to note that, if the special master review is allowed to proceed, Trump’s legal team will be able to challenge any of Dearie’s determinations at every turn. “Absent such resolution by this Court, the special master proceedings could result in prolonged litigation, including through seriatim appeals to the district court from reports and recommendations and other rulings issued by the special master,” the motion states. The government’s proposed schedule would see the appeal fully briefed by Nov. 11 and requests the “first available calendar” date for arguments after that point. Read the motion, below: Have a tip we should know? [email protected] Read More Here

Trump Staffer https://digitalarizonanews.com/trump-staffer/ October 01, 2022 10:31 AM While the presidential transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden was seemingly chaotic from the public’s standpoint, things inside the walls of the White House were equally hectic as Trump aides sought to create headaches for their successors, according to a new book. At one point during the final days of the Trump administration, an employee of then-Director of the Presidential Personnel Office John McEntee broke a White House air conditioning unit by stuffing several photos of Hunter Biden into it, according to the book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America by Maggie Haberman. The anecdote is one of several stories reported by Haberman as she offered a glimpse into the nature of the White House under Trump’s rule. TRUMP THREATENED TO ACCESS REPORTER’S PHONE RECORDS TO FIND LEAKERS: BOOK Members of Biden’s team were also frustrated by Trump aides’ behavior, according to Haberman, as they were delayed in getting information from the Pentagon as they were settling into their positions, among other setbacks. “I told them to fix it,” then-chief of staff Mark Meadows told Ron Klain, who replaced Meadows in the Biden administration, at the time. But nothing ever happened, Haberman wrote. At other times, Meadows outright denied requests from Biden’s team that he disagreed with. When aides asked for access to a computer system so they could begin planning Biden’s budget, Meadows refused, telling them they “can’t expect us to endorse your spending plans,” according to the book. Haberman’s book has already garnered national headlines for its snippets detailing Trump’s rise from a businessman to the president. Trump has repeatedly rejected Haberman’s reporting, releasing a statement in response to Confidence Man that she “knows nothing about me.” CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER “Here we go again! Another Fake book is out, this one, supposedly very boring and stale, by self appointed head case, Failing (unfunded liability!) New York Times writer, Maggie Hagerman,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday. “In it she tells many made up stories, with zero fact checking or confirmation by anyone who would know, like me. Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America is scheduled to be released on Tuesday. Read More Here

Helicopter Makes Emergency Landing In Mesa Neighborhood https://digitalarizonanews.com/helicopter-makes-emergency-landing-in-mesa-neighborhood/ Fortunately, no one was injured after the small aircraft suffered an unknown issue and was forced to land at a Mesa intersection. MESA, Ariz — A helicopter was forced to land at a Mesa intersection Saturday morning after an unknown mechanical problem, officials with the Mesa Fire Department said. Around 5:50 in the morning, the Bell 47 helicopter made an emergency landing at 8th Avenue & South Sirine. Officials say that the pilot was able to land safely with only minor damage to the aircraft. Fortunately, no injuries were reported from the pilot, or anyone on the ground. Download the 12News app for the latest local breaking news straight to your phone. Right now, the details of the mechanical problem that forced the landing are unclear. Mesa Fire and Police were on the scene until the helicopter could be safely removed, officials said. This is a developing story. Stay with 12News for more updates. More ways to get 12News  On your phone: Download the 12News app for the latest local breaking news straight to your phone.   On your streaming device: Download 12News+ to your streaming device   The free 12News+ app from 12News lets users stream live events — including daily newscasts like “Today in AZ” and “12 News” and our daily lifestyle program, “Arizona Midday”—on Roku and Amazon Fire TV.   12News+ showcases live video throughout the day for breaking news, local news, weather and even an occasional moment of Zen showcasing breathtaking sights from across Arizona.  On social media: Find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.  Up to Speed Catch up on the latest news and stories on our 12 News YouTube playlist here. Read More Here

This Massachusetts City Is A Parents’ Dream Come True, Studies Say https://digitalarizonanews.com/this-massachusetts-city-is-a-parents-dream-come-true-studies-say/ 10/01/2022 10:00 a.m. One Massachusetts town ranked high on the list of safest cities for kids to trick or treat. Photo Credit: Unsplash/Conner Baker Two new studies found that one Massachusetts city may be one of the best in the country for parents. It was ranked the most family-friendly and one of the safest for kids.  Where is this mecca for moms? It’s nestled along the Charles River in a little community known as Cambridge.  OpenDoor recently studied which cities were best to raise a family. That meant evaluating schools and family amenities like parks, playgrounds, parks, swimming pools, community centers, and more.  Cambridge topped the list for its small-town feel and family-friendly appeal. Cliffside Park, NJ, Arlington, VA, Chandler, AZ, and Tracy, CA, rounded out the top five. Click here to see the full list.  Another study found that Cambridge is also one of the safest cities for kids to go trick-or-treating. With Halloween approaching, the Chamber of Commerce looked at where parents won’t be spooked when ghouls and goblins roam the streets and put Cambridge in second place. This was determined off data about pedestrian crashes, property crime, the number of registered sex offenders, and the amount of police per 100,000 citizens. Researchers said Cambridge’s low number of pedestrian-involved car crashes and sex offenders boosted it up the list.  Click here to see what other cities are on it.  Click here to follow Daily Voice Worcester and receive free news updates. Read More Here

Girls Girls Girls: Jessie Reyez, Wannabe, UPSAHL https://digitalarizonanews.com/girls-girls-girls-jessie-reyez-wannabe-upsahl/ 11/06 Jessie Reyez at Fillmore Read More Jessie Reyez Toronto based singer and songwriter Jessie Reyez is playing the Amsterdam Bar & Hall in St Paul on Nov 9th. Her sophomore EP Being Human in Public is out now on FMLY / Island. …. 11/06/2022 Sunday Jessie Reyez at Fillmore livenation.com Multi-Platinum, multiple award-winning, celebrated truth speaking, multi-hyphenate – recording artist, songwriter, and electric live performer Jessie Reyez is on tour in support of her sophomore album YESSIE (FMLY / Island Records). The tour stops in at the Fillmore in Minneapolis on Nov 6th. Tour Dates Oct 13th – Miami, FL – The Oasis Oct 15th – New Orleans, LA – House of Blues Oct 16th – Houston, TX – House of Blues Oct 18th – Austin, TX – Emo’s Oct 19th – Dallas, TX – House of Blues Oct 20th – San Antonio, TX – Aztec Theatre Oct 23rd – Phoenix, AZ – The Van Buren Oct 24th – Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium Oct 25th – San Diego, CA – SOMA Oct 27th – San Francisco, CA – The Masonic Oct 28th – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater Oct 30th – Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre Oct 31st – Vancouver, BC – The Orpheum Nov 2nd – Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot Nov 3rd – Denver, CO – Summit Nov 6th – Minneapolis, MN – The Fillmore Nov 8th – Chicago, IL – House of Blues Nov 11th – Detroit, MI – The Fillmore Nov 13th – Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore Nov 14th – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore Nov 16th – Charlotte, NC – Underground Nov 17th – Orlando, FL – House of Blues Nov 19th – Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle Nov 20th – Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl Nov 22nd – Boston, MA – House of Blues Nov 26th – Montreal, QC – MTELUS Nov 28th – Toronto, ON – HISTORY Dec 2nd – New Haven, CT – Toad’s Place Dec 4th – New York, NY – Hammerstein Ballroom 16 Jan – Oslo, Norway – Rockefeller 17 Jan – Copenhagen, Denmark – Amager Bio 19 Jan – Berlin, Germany – Metropol 20 Jan – Cologne, Germany – Live Music Hall 22 Jan – Paris, France – Le Trianon 23 Jan – Amsterdam, Netherlands – Melkweg Max 25 Jan – Antwerp, Belgium – Trix 26 Jan – Zurich, Switzerland – Komplex 28 Jan – Birmingham, UK – O2 Institute 1 29 Jan – Manchester, UK – Manchester Academy Jan 31 – London, UK – O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire 11/15 Wannabe: A Spice Girls Tribute at Turf Club Read More Spice Girls Everybody’s favorite best-selling Girl Power 90s female group, Spice Girls, recently re-released Spiceworld and The Greatest Hits on vinyl via UMe/Virgin EMI. This would have been the perfect gift and … 11/15/2022 Tuesday Wannabe: A Spice Girls Tribute at Turf Club first-avenue.com Can’t see Spice Girls live? How about the next best thing: Wannabe. Toronto’s Wannabe has it all: spicy personalities, British accents, and platform shoes… and, of course, Girl Power! See it for yourself at the Turf Club on November 15th. Expect to hear all the hits, including “Wannabe”, “Stop”, “Spice Up Your Life” and “Too Much”. Tour dates: Oct 1 Avon Theatre Stratford, ON Oct 6 Thu Place des Arts Greater Sudbury, ON Oct 7 Fri SOO Blaster Sault Ste. Marie, ON Oct 8 Sat NV Music Hall Thunder Bay, ON Oct 12 Wed Park Theatre Winnipeg, MB Oct 13 Thu The 40 Brandon, MB Oct 14 Fri Casino Regina Regina, SK Oct 15 Sat Capitol Music Club Saskatoon, SK Oct 18 Tue Yates Memorial Centre Lethbridge, AB Oct 19 Wed Melissa’s Missteak Banff, AB Oct 20 Thu The Rec Room Calgary, AB Oct 21 Fri Bo’s Bar & Stage Red Deer, AB Oct 22 Sat Blackjacks Roadhouse Nisku, AB Oct 25 Tue Spiritbar Nelson, BC Oct 26 Wed Status Nightclub Vernon Vernon, BC Oct 28 Fri Upstairs Cabaret Ltd Victoria, BC Oct 29 Sat The Queen’s Nanaimo, BC Oct 29 Sat The Queen’s Nanaimo, BC Oct 30 Sun Sid Williams Theatre Courtenay, BC Oct 31 Mon Hollywood Theatre Vancouver, BC Nov 2 Wed Supernova Seattle Seattle, WA Nov 3 Thu Bossanova Ballroom Portland, OR Nov 5 Sat Catalyst @ 8:30pm Santa Cruz, CA Nov 6 Palm Springs Gay Pride 2022 , CA Nov 6 Sun Whisky A Go Go West Hollywood, CA Nov 7 Mon Cornerstone Craft Beer Berkeley, CA Nov 8 Tue Virginia Street Brewhouse Reno, NV Nov 10 Thu Metro Music Hall Salt Lake City, UT Nov 12 Sat Globe Hall Denver, CO Nov 13 Sun Waiting Room Lounge Omaha, NE Nov 15 Tue Turf Club St Paul, MN Nov 17 Thu Magic Bag Ferndale, MI Nov 18 Fri Rec Room Buffalo, NY Nov 19 Sat Hard Rock Cafe Pittsburgh, PA Nov 20 Sun Beachland Ballroom Cleveland, OH Dec 2 Fri Impact Fuel Room Libertyville, IL Dec 3 Sat Danenberger Family Vineyards New Berlin, IL 10/11 UPSAHL with KiNG MALA at Fine Line Read More Dua Lipa Warner Bros. Recording artist Dua Lipa is burning white hot after appearing on SNL and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She’ll be stopping by the Armory in Minneapolis on Sunday in support of her self-debut record. … 10/11/2022 Tuesday UPSAHL with KiNG MALA at Fine Line first-avenue.com Pop trailblazer UPSAHL is on a headlining tour in support of her new EP Sagittarius season. She previewed the single “Antsy” and explained, “Antsy is a song for anyone who feels like they want to make a change in their life, but don’t know how to. It’s that moment when you realize you’ve had enough of whatever bad sh** has been going on and you need to switch it up and start fresh. It could literally be anything from relationships to health to the internet to school to work, etc. Whatever it is that makes you antsy, we’ve all been there.” Upsahl has already sold out some dates, thanks to the fact that she wrote some catchy songs for Dua Lipa (GRAMMY Award-winning “Good in Bed”) and Madison Beer (“BOYS**T” and “Happy Endings”). All these songs went to Top 10 at Alt Radio. Expect to hear her viral buzz song “Can You Hear Me Now” and “Drugs” (which has over 2 million views). KiNG MALA to open. Tour dates: 9/29: Santa Ana, CA – Constellation Room 9/30: San Diego, CA – House of Blues (Voodoo Room) 10/1: Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar 10/3: Dallas, TX – The Studio at the Factory 10/4: Houston, TX – White Oak 10/5: Austin, TX – Antone’s 10/7: Atlanta, GA – Vinyl at Center Stage 10/8: Nashville, TN – The End 10/10: Chicago, IL – Subterranean 10/11: Minneapolis, MN – Fine Line 10/13: Denver, CO – Marquis Theater 10/14: Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court 10/16: Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s 10/17: Vancouver, BC – Fortune Sound Club 10/18: Portland, OR – Hawthorne Theatre 10/21: Sacramento, CA – Goldfield 10/22: Los Angeles, CA – The Roxy 11/2: Footscray, Australia – Hotel Westwood 11/4: Darlinghurst, Australia – Oxford Art Factory 11/8: Netherlands, Amsterdam – Bitterzoet 11/10: Cologne, Germany – Club Volta 11/11: Berlin, Germany – Lido 11/13: Milan, Italy – Biko Club 11/14: Zürich, Switzerland -Papiersaal 11/15: Paris, France – La Boule Noire 11/18: Manchester, United Kingdom – The Deaf Institute 11/19: Glasgow, United Kingdom – King Tut’s 11/20: Leeds, United Kingdom – The Wardrobe 11/21: Bristol, United Kingdom – Thekla 11/23: Birmingham, United Kingdom – O2 Institute 3 11/24: London, United Kingdom – London Heaven If your band is coming to the Minneapolis/St Paul area, please email details to vu@weheartmusic.com with a good lead time. Thank you. Read More…

Florida, Carolinas Count The Cost Of Hurricane Ian https://digitalarizonanews.com/florida-carolinas-count-the-cost-of-hurricane-ian/ FORT MYERS, Fla./CHARLESTON, S.C., Oct 1 (Reuters) – Florida, North and South Carolina faced a massive clean-up on Saturday from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian, after one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S. mainland caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and killed more than 20 people. New images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that several beach cottages and a motel building that lined the shores of Florida’s Sanibel Island were wiped away by Ian’s storm surge. Even though most homes were still standing, they appeared to have roof damage, the images showed. Ian, now a post-tropical cyclone, was weakening but still forecast to bring treacherous conditions to parts of the Carolinas, Virginia and West Virginia into Saturday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com “Major to record river flooding will continue across central Florida through next week. Limited flash, urban and small stream flooding is possible across the central Appalachians and the southern Mid-Atlantic this weekend, with minor river flooding expected over the coastal Carolinas,” it said. The storm struck Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday, turning beach towns into disaster areas. On Friday, it pummeled waterfront Georgetown, north of the historic city of Charleston in South Carolina, with wind speeds of 85 mph (140 kph). Roads were flooded and blocked by trees while a number of piers were damaged. Around 1.7 million homes and businesses were without power in the Carolinas and Florida at 8:00 a.m. ET (1200 GMT) on Saturday, according to tracking website PowerOutage.us. Both the number of casualties and repair costs remain unclear, but the extent of the damage was becoming apparent as Florida entered its third day after Ian first hit. There have been reports of at least 21 deaths, Kevin Guthrie, director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, said on Friday morning, stressing that some of those remained unconfirmed. Some 10,000 people were unaccounted for, he said, but many of them were likely in shelters or without power. “Those older homes that just aren’t as strong built, they got washed into the sea,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “If you are hunkering down in that, that is something that I think would be very difficult to be survivable.” Meanwhile, insurers braced for a hit of between $28 billion and $47 billion, in what could be the costliest Florida storm since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, according to U.S. property data and analytics company CoreLogic. U.S. President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration, making federal resources available to counties impacted by the storm. “We’re just beginning to see the scale of that destruction. It’s likely to rank among the worst … in the nation’s history,” he said. Biden also declared an emergency in North Carolina on Saturday. ‘DEVASTATING’ A roofed dock ripped from its property lies in intercoastal waters after Hurricane Ian made landfall near Pawleys Island, South Carolina, U.S., October 1, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake The Florida city of Fort Myers, close to where the eye of the storm first came ashore, absorbed a major blow, with numerous houses destroyed. Offshore, Sanibel Island, a popular destination for vacationers and retirees, was cut off when a causeway was rendered impassable. Hundreds of Fort Myers residents lined up at a Home Depot store on Friday on the east side of the city, hoping to purchase gas cans, generators, bottled water and other supplies. The line stretched as long as a football field. Rita Chambers, a 70-year-old retiree who was born in Jamaica and has lived in Fort Myers since 1998, said Ian was unlike any storm she had ever seen. “And I’ve been in hurricanes since I was a child!” said Chambers, who moved to New York as a teenager. At a mobile home park on San Carlos Island in Fort Myers Beach, trailers had been pushed together by the wind and water. A boat lay on its side at a local marina, where another boat had come to rest in a tree. Hundreds of miles north in Georgetown, residents were also trying to put their lives back together. With a population of about 10,000, the town is a tourist destination known for its oak tree-lined streets and more than 50 sites on the National Registry of Historic Places. It was heavily damaged by Hurricane Hugo in 1989. A city-commissioned report released in November 2020 found that about 90% of all residential properties were vulnerable to storm surge flooding. Len Cappe, 68, a retired property manager who moved to Charleston two years ago, said Ian was the first big storm he has encountered. “It’s the wind, it rattles you,” Cappe said. “It’s blowing furiously.” Read more: Maps-Hurricane Ian batters the Gulf Coast Drone video shows boats washed ashore in Hurricane Ian’s wake A Florida town rebuilt after one hurricane endures another Hurricane hunter says Ian’s eyewall flight was ‘worst I’ve ever been on’ How hurricanes cause dangerous, destructive storm surges Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Reporting by Brad Brooks in Fort Myers and Jonathan Drake in Charleston Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Kanishka Singh and Juby Babu Writing by Costas Pitas Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Daniel Wallis and Frances Kerry Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Read More Here

Arizona Real Estate Stats And Trends For 2023 https://digitalarizonanews.com/arizona-real-estate-stats-and-trends-for-2023/ ARIZONA – Arizona real estate prices are rising, with home prices in Phoenix, Tucson, Chandler, and Gilbert up 11.6% and rents in Tucson up 4.4%, respectively. The 18-year cycle has been in place for 200 years. With the demand for Arizona real estate continuing to increase, the state is poised to experience a second housing boom. Phoenix home prices are up 11.6% compared to last year If you’re looking to buy a home in Phoenix, you’ll be glad to hear that prices have jumped nearly 16% over the past year. This increase is largely due to a shortage of homes on the market, but the market also sees a significant lack of inventory. With rising interest rates, more buyers are entering the real estate market. According to a recent RE/MAX National Housing Report, Phoenix is leading the U.S. in new listings and home sales. In the month of June, Phoenix recorded the most home sales compared to June last year. Median sales prices reached $460,000 and are expected to rise to $475K by mid-May. Home prices in Phoenix have been rising steadily in recent years and may lead the way to national recovery. The city’s low cost of living, a stable climate, and large and diversified workforce have led to one of the nation’s fastest-rising housing markets. As a result, Phoenix’s home prices are now back to where they were in 2006, just twenty percent below their previous peaks. While home sales have slowed down due to the pandemic, demand has remained high. This increased demand has resulted in more renters than ever before, and rents will rise as a result. However, rising interest rates may affect home prices in the future. Chandler home prices are up 4.4% compared to last year Chandler’s number of homes on the market is nearly three times higher than it was a year ago. But prices are falling more quickly than expected. According to the Cromford Report, a leading market analyst in the Phoenix area, it would take three and a half months to sell the current inventory of homes. The increase in home values in Chandler, Arizona, is a result of increasing demand for housing, which often results from an increasing population. The population of Chandler, Arizona, increased by 1.6% in one year. However, several factors contributed to the increase in home prices in Chandler. In July 2022, there were 1,247 active home listings in Chandler, AZ. These homes were selling for a median price of $550,950. The average home in Chandler, AZ, was on the market for 38 days. The median listing price for a one-bedroom property in Chandler, AZ, was $294 per square foot. Chandler is one of the most popular cities in Arizona, with many parks, art galleries, and restaurants. The city’s central location makes accessing major freeways and top technology employers easy. Rents in Tucson are up 4.4% compared to last year Despite the recent spike in Tucson rents, they remain low compared to other large cities. Currently, a two-bedroom apartment in Tucson costs $1,383 per month, which is a little higher than the national average of $1,306 a month. But Tucson’s rent increase is still lower than the rate in some comparable cities, such as Seattle and Miami, where rents have increased by as much as 27 percent. Several factors are driving the increase in Tucson rents. First, the city is experiencing a housing shortage. Apartment buildings in Tucson are not as plentiful as they once were. Another factor is the proliferation of short-term rentals in Tucson, which some residents claim is a form of price-gouging. In addition, Arizona state law prohibits landlords from setting a rent limit on a rental unit, so it may be difficult to find a low-rent apartment. Second, Tucson is home to many high-tech companies. Forbes ranks Tucson 107th in the nation regarding business. It is home to six Fortune 500 companies and several emerging technology companies. The city has a UA Tech Park at The Bridges, which could accommodate over three million square feet of biotechnology, mixed-use, and residential development. Some of the city’s top employers include the University of Arizona, Raytheon Missile Systems, U.S. Border Patrol, Wal-Mart Stores, and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. The local economy is doing well, despite the soaring price of real estate. According to the Tucson Association of Realtors, the median price of a single-family home in Tucson is $385,000, up 17.9% from last year. The real estate market is a great opportunity for those looking to invest in real estate that is far from major cities. Read More Here

Erickson: Are Biden’s 1988 Brain Aneurysms Affecting Him Today? https://digitalarizonanews.com/erickson-are-bidens-1988-brain-aneurysms-affecting-him-today/ Erick Erickson Standing at the podium as part of a White House forum on food and hunger, President Joe Biden began working through the list of people to thank. He made it bipartisan. He thanked several Republicans and got to his friend Jackie. “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” Biden asked. Jackie is Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana who died over a month ago in a car crash. There is no good way to consider what happened. Biden knew Walorski died. He mentioned it over a month ago. He is about to sign legislation, with her family present, to rename a VA hospital in her honor. His press secretary said the deceased congresswoman is “top of mind” for Biden because he knew he would be spending time with her family later in the week. If she really was top of mind, shouldn’t he have known she could not be present at the event? We should consider the options. First, his advance staff failed to prepare him. Prior to the president taking the stage, the event showed a brief video reflecting on Walorski’s life. An advance team should, in every case, brief their leader on everything happening at an event, including those events that happened right before he goes on stage. Second, perhaps they briefed him but failed to remind him that the congresswoman died. Whether it is the first reason or the second reason, the president’s staff has let him down again. We know that Chief of Staff Ron Klain has had a hard time navigating relationships in Congress, often undermining the president’s agenda. We also know that Biden has been bullied by his staff into taking policy positions that directly contradict the president’s own instincts. The student loan bailout is just one example, and it is the most recent example that will haunt the Democrats’ midterm cycle. It is not out of bounds to consider that Biden has a highly ideological progressive staff that is very long on opinions and short on competence. Of course, there is a third option. What if the team did tell Biden, did brief him, did do everything right, and Biden forgot that quickly? That would be the most troubling because it would be a sign the president’s age is getting the better of him. Perhaps Biden cannot get his staff to set policy based on his instincts because he cannot operate at the level necessary to have his will, as president, implemented by his team. They, in turn, are taking advantage of his infirmities. When former President Donald Trump served in the office, videographers caught him very, very carefully walking down a ramp at West Point. “Trump’s Halting Walk Down Ramp Raises New Health Questions,” the New York Times headline blared. The subheading was, “The president also appeared to have trouble raising a glass of water to his mouth during a speech at West Point a day before he turned 74, the oldest a president has been in his first term.” At CNN, its regulator regurgitator of stale conventional wisdom, Chris Cillizza, wrote a piece with the headline, “Why the Donald Trump-West Point ramp story actually matters.” Among the reasons Cillizza said it mattered was: “He is the oldest person ever elected to a first term in the White House,” and “Trump’s medical past is a total mystery.” Biden is now the oldest President ever and his health is no mystery. He had two brain aneurysms, both of which required surgery. Now, he’s calling out to dead congresswomen on stage who happen to be, in his press secretary’s telling, “top of mind” — just not top of mind enough to know she’s dead. “Trump tries to explain his slow and unsteady walk down a ramp at West Point,” read the headline of Phil Rucker’s story about Trump’s ramp walk in The Washington Post. He said, “Elements of Trump’s explanation strained credulity.” Does the Biden administration’s explanation for Biden not strain credulity? Of course it does. But note the relative lack of media coverage. If only Biden had delicately walked down a ramp instead of searching for a dead woman in a crowd, maybe the media would ask the tough questions. To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. Newsletter Join thousands already receiving our daily newsletter. Read More Here

Shying From Trump, Ex-Maine Gov. Paul LePage Seeks Job Back https://digitalarizonanews.com/shying-from-trump-ex-maine-gov-paul-lepage-seeks-job-back/ FILE – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is welcomed to the stage by Maine Gov. Paul LePage at campaign stop in Portland, Maine, in this March 3, 2016 file photo. LePage, who moved to Florida after his second term, has returned to Maine to challenge Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) The Associated Press By DAVID SHARP, Associated Press YARMOUTH, Maine (AP) — When then-Maine Gov. Paul LePage endorsed Donald Trump in 2016, he credited himself as a prototype for the insurgent presidential candidate. “I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we are one of the same cloth,” said LePage, whose two terms in office were punctuated by brash behavior and frequently offensive comments. Now, as LePage is running for a third term after a brief retirement to Florida, he rarely talks about Trump in public, and his advisers say LePage’s hiatus from politics changed him. He’s eager to show he’s smoothed over some of his own rough edges, though flashes of his fiery personality broke through recently at an event at a riverfront boatyard in Yarmouth, where he pledged to take on Democratic “elitists.” “I came from the streets. I was a fighter all my life,” LePage told workers. “I had to scrimp and save to eat and survive. I am a fighter.” Political Cartoons As LePage seeks to unseat Democratic Gov. Janet Mills and become the longest-serving governor in Maine history, he is banking on an approach familiar to other Republican candidates in liberal- and moderate-leaning states who are trying not to alienate swing voters they would need to win a general election. LePage’s efforts at putting distancing from Trump are particularly notable given LePage once invited comparisons to Trump — and made them himself. Democrats aren’t going to let voters forget LePage’s tumultuous time in office, when he occasionally acted and sounded a lot like Trump. LePage attracted national headlines when he told the Portland chapter of the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” made racist remarks about drug dealers who impregnate “white” girls and accused a lawmaker of screwing over state taxpayers “without providing Vaseline.” His critics point to a recent campaign event in which LePage threatened to “deck” a Democratic staffer who got too close to him — an incident, they say, that illustrates LePage hasn’t changed at all. The race is shaping up to be among a dozen or so competitive contests for governor this election year. The way in which the campaign plays out with voters weary of political ugliness may be a harbinger for Trump’s White House aspirations in 2024. LePage and Mills’ adversarial relationship goes back years. Mills, a 74-year-old moderate and the first woman elected governor of Maine, is a former two-term attorney general whose stint as the state’s top prosecutor coincided with LePage’s time as governor. The two clashed publicly, with Mills declining to represent LePage’s administration on some matters, forcing LePage to seek outside counsel to represent his interests in litigation. Her supporters portray her as a steady leader whose cautious COVID-19 policies helped guide the state through the worst pandemic in a century, with fewer coronavirus deaths per capita than most others. She expanded Medicaid — something LePage had blocked — and presided over the largest budget surplus in Maine history, which allowed the state to send $850 relief checks to most residents. Raised in poverty and homeless for a time as a boy, LePage, 73, is an unabashed conservative whose past controversies often overshadowed his political achievements, such as lowering the tax burden, shrinking welfare rolls, overhauling the pension system and paying back millions of dollars of hospital debt. He attacked Mills’ executive orders during the pandemic, including mandatory vaccines for health care workers, calling it a “reign of terror.” He’s called for a parental bill of rights in education, claimed Mill has allowed crime and drugs to proliferate and accused her of budgetary gimmicks that will cause problems in the future. He has promised to try again to eliminate the state’s income tax. When LePage left office in 2019, prevented from seeking a third consecutive term by the Maine Constitution, he declared he was decamping for Florida, where the taxes were lower, and leaving politics behind. He didn’t stay away long. Soon, he was headed back to Maine for what supporters described as “LePage 2.0.” LePage’s senior adviser Brent Littlefield said LePage was astounded when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and that LePage fears the country is in danger of tearing itself apart. LePage issued a statement amid the violence supporting law enforcement and telling those involved in the riot “to leave and go home.” LePage served as Trump’s honorary state chairman and once sought a job in his administration, but he now won’t say whether he would vote for Trump for president if Trump runs again in 2024. Despite any private misgivings, however, LePage hasn’t condemned Trump. He declined an Associated Press interview request. The former governor made no reference to Trump while touring Yankee Marina & Boatyard, even though Trump remains popular in rural Maine, where he twice won an electoral vote while losing the statewide vote. Boatyard president Deborah Delp said LePage is needed at a time when her workers are suffering from high inflation and worried about the future. She said she can “handle some rough language” from LePage if he puts the economy on track. “Politicians are politicians. And he’s not a politician. He’s a businessman. He says what he thinks,” Delp said. Maria Testa, a Democrat from Portland, disagrees. “He’s bombastic and has a cruel temper. He’s such a big no for me,” Testa said. While campaigning, LePage largely tries to steer clear of Trump’s lies of a rigged 2020 election. LePage acknowledges that Biden is president but declines to address whether he thinks the election was legitimate. LePage also avoids the issue of abortion after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. Mills has pledged to fight to ensure women continue to have a right to a legal abortion in Maine. A third candidate for governor, independent Sam Hunkler, isn’t expected to play much of a role in the race, unlike deep-pocketed independent Eliot Cutler, who did in 2010 and 2014, when LePage won each election without a majority. Maine’s ranked-choice voting system won’t be a factor. It is used in federal congressional races but not in the governor’s contest because it runs afoul of the Maine Constitution. Betsy Martin, a retired health care administrator from Biddeford, said residents are feeling drained by the corrosive partisanship in a rural state with a tradition of moderate politics and independent voters. Some are tuning out altogether, she said. “They’re exhausted. They’re extremely fatigued. We’re worn out,” she said. ___ Follow David Sharp on Twitter @David_Sharp_AP ___ Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Read More Here

US Domestic News Roundup: Trump Is Accused Of Stonewalling Rape Accuser To Avoid Oct. 19 Deposition; Biden: Destruction From Hurricane Ian Likely To Be Among The Worst In U.S. History And More | Law-Order https://digitalarizonanews.com/us-domestic-news-roundup-trump-is-accused-of-stonewalling-rape-accuser-to-avoid-oct-19-deposition-biden-destruction-from-hurricane-ian-likely-to-be-among-the-worst-in-u-s-history-and-more-law-o/ Following is a summary of current US domestic news briefs. Trump is accused of stonewalling rape accuser to avoid Oct. 19 deposition The writer suing Donald Trump for defamation after he denied having raped her in the mid-1990s accused the former U.S. president of stonewalling and trying to avoid a scheduled deposition as he tries to delay the case indefinitely. In a letter filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, a lawyer for E. Jean Carroll also said Trump was “mistaken” in arguing that the lawsuit should be dismissed altogether because the U.S. government, and not he, was the proper defendant. U.S. House passes crucial stopgap government funding bill, avoiding partial shutdown A bill funding the federal government through Dec. 16 passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, avoiding an embarrassing partial shutdown less than six weeks before the midterm elections when control of Congress is at stake. With government funding for federal agencies due to expire at midnight, House lawmakers sent the legislation on to the White House, where President Joe Biden signed the measure into law. Two thirds of U.S. adults don’t plan on getting COVID boosters soon – poll Around two-thirds of adults in the United States do not plan to get updated COVID-19 booster shots soon, according to a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a health policy nonprofit organization. Only a third of adults polled said they either already received the updated shots or plan to get the booster as soon as possible, the poll found. Florida, Carolinas count the cost of Hurricane Ian Florida, North and South Carolina faced a massive clean-up on Saturday from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Ian, after one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S. mainland caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and killed more than 20 people. New images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that several beach cottages and a motel building that lined the shores of Florida’s Sanibel Island were wiped away by Ian’s storm surge. Even though most homes were still standing, they appeared to have roof damage, the images showed. Biden: Destruction from Hurricane Ian likely to be among the worst in U.S. history President Joe Biden on Friday said the destruction in Florida from Hurricane Ian is likely to be among the worst in U.S. history and he has directed every possible action be taken to save lives. “We’re just beginning to see the scale of that destruction. It’s likely to rank among the worst … in the nation’s history,” Biden told reporters. Meta board approves personal security to outgoing executive Sheryl Sandberg Meta Platforms Inc said on Friday its board had approved providing personal security services to former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, citing “continuing threats to her safety”. The company, however, did not elaborate on the threats that Sandberg, one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley, faces. It expects to continue to pay for security services at her residences and during her personal travel from Oct. 1 till June 30 next year. U.S. Justice Dept seeks expedited ruling in Trump special master case The U.S. Justice Department on Friday moved to expedite its appeal of an order appointing a special master to review records the FBI seized from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate. In a court filing late on Friday, the Justice Department said its inability to access the non-classified documents is still hampering significant aspects of its investigation on the retention of government records at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. U.S. House Democrat says party leaders derailing stock-trading bill A vulnerable Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives accused her party’s leaders on Friday of undermining efforts to move forward before the Nov. 8 midterm elections on a bill to restrict members of Congress and other government officials from trading in stocks. “This moment marks a failure of House leadership — and it’s yet another example of why I believe that the Democratic Party needs new leaders in the halls of Capitol Hill,” Representative Abigail Spanberger said in a blistering statement. U.S. sailor found not guilty of fire that destroyed ship A U.S. Navy sailor was found not guilty on Friday of starting a fire that destroyed the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard in San Diego in 2020. Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays was acquitted of charges of arson and the willful hazarding of a ship, Commander Sean Robertson, a spokesman for the U.S. 3rd Fleet, said in a statement. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Jackson, embarking on first term, says her appointment inspires pride among Americans Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said on Friday that her appointment as the first Black woman to serve on the court has inspired pride among Americans she has encountered She hears arguments for the first time as the Supreme Court opens its new term on Monday and the conservative-dominated judicial body has shown an increasing willingness to exert its power on a range of issues. (With inputs from agencies.) Read More Here

Fear Of 'off The Rails' Trump Forced Aides To 'soften' Bad News During Strategy Sessions: Former White House Insider https://digitalarizonanews.com/fear-of-off-the-rails-trump-forced-aides-to-soften-bad-news-during-strategy-sessions-former-white-house-insider/ Responding to an excerpt from Maggie Haberman’s “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America,” a former senior White House aide under Trump stated that reporting that Jared Kushner inflated Trump’s poll numbers to his face during the 2020 presidential election inin an effort to quell his tantrums sounds about right. As Rolling Stone reports, Trump’s son-in-law was skeptical of polling that showed his father-in-law losing to Joe Biden, and tried to soften the blow when giving updates. The Rolling Stone report states Haberman wrote, “Kushner, who oversaw reelection strategy from his post as a White House senior adviser, advised a …campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, to inflate Trump’s standing in surveys that would be shown to the candidate by adding percentage points to his position in the horse race.” Asawin Suebsaeng of Rolling Stone adds, “…’the “ostensible reason’ for this was Kushner and others’ contention that polling firms ‘always missed Trump voters.’ However, to various Trump 2020 officials, it was obvious that the ‘real reason’ for Kushner’s advice to Fabrizio was to ‘avoid upsetting Trump.'” IN RELATED NEWS: The door to remove Judge Aileen Cannon from the Trump case is now ‘wide open’: former prosecutor Asked about Haberman’s claim, a former Trump aide said it was highly likely that Kushner was trying to avoid Trump’s wrath based on the president’s general demeanor during the 2020 campaign. “There is no doubt in my mind that that was the reason,” they explained. “There were discussions among other members of the Trump campaign about hiding or softening bad news like that, if only so that fewer [strategy] meetings [with Trump] would go off the rails because he was pissed off about people saying he was losing to Biden.” The report adds, “At the time, a variety of Trump’s closest confidants were similarly happy to indulge the then-president’s claims that the public polling had to be rigged against him, and the delusion that there was simply no way he could be trailing his Democratic foe. For instance, Haberman writes, Fox News host and frequent Trump adviser Sean Hannity ‘told Trump aides he did not trust the polling he was seeing and would commission his own.'” You can read more here. Read More Here

Former Trump Commerce Department Official And Turning Point USA Ex-Employee Sentenced To 5.5 Years In Prison For Child Pornography Possession https://digitalarizonanews.com/former-trump-commerce-department-official-and-turning-point-usa-ex-employee-sentenced-to-5-5-years-in-prison-for-child-pornography-possession/ A former US Department of Commerce official pleaded guilty to a federal child pornography charge. Adam Hageman, 26, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison. Prior to working for the Commerce Department in the Trump administration, he had a job with Turning Point USA. Loading Something is loading. A former Commerce Department official in the Trump administration has been sentenced to 5-and-a-half years in prison after pleading guilty to a federal charge of receiving child pornography. Adam Hageman, 26, was arrested in November 2020 after Homeland Security executed a search warrant of his home in Washington, DC. During the search, he voluntarily unlocked his cell phone and provided access to an image vault containing child pornography to Homeland Security officials, according to a pre-trial detention memo. The vault contained at least 33 videos that appeared to contain sexually explicit depictions of children, the memo said. In the memo, prosecutors accused Hageman of encouraging people in an online group to rape children and soliciting group members to share child pornography. According to an affidavit by a Homeland Security special agent, which was filed in November 2020, Hageman indicated that his preference was children aged 12 to 16 and said that the youngest person he had sex with was 15 years old. Hageman pleaded guilty to a charge of receiving child pornography last Thursday. US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 66 months in prison. After his release, he will be on parole for five years. Hageman will also have to register as a sex offender. Before working for the Commerce Department, Politico reported that Hageman was an administrator for Turning Point USA — the far-right conservative nonprofit organization. Hageman ‘s attorney, the US Department of Commerce, and Turning Point USA did not immediately respond to Insider’s requests for comment. Read More Here

Ukrainian Forces Encircle Russian Troops In Lyman, A Day After Annexation Claims https://digitalarizonanews.com/ukrainian-forces-encircle-russian-troops-in-lyman-a-day-after-annexation-claims/ KYIV — Less than 24 hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin proudly proclaimed the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, thousands of his troops now appear to be trapped there. Ukrainian forces have surrounded Lyman, a key transport hub in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, Serhiy Cherevaty, a spokesman for Ukraine’s armed forces, told The Washington Post on Saturday. The counterattack will come as an embarrassment to Moscow, a day after claiming swaths of eastern Ukraine as its own, in the face of widespread international condemnation. Ukrainian forces advanced on the city overnight even as Russia put on a grand ceremony and a pop concert in Moscow’s Red Square celebrating the annexation. Cherevaty said Ukrainian troops had recaptured four villages near Lyman in addition to encircling the city, which is a key supply hub on the western edge of Ukraine’s Donbas region. The pro-Kremlin separatist leader of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, acknowledged Friday that the city was “semi-encircled,” describing Kyiv’s advances as “very unpleasant news,” which threatened to “overshadow” the annexation celebrations. Unverified social media video footage posted by the head of the Ukrainian president’s office appeared to show Ukrainian troops carrying out celebrations of their own, raising the blue and yellow flag near the outskirts of the city on Saturday. Meanwhile one pro-Kremlin Telegram channel with close ties to the Wagner mercenary group reported that Ukraine had captured five villages in recent days near Lyman and Russian troops there were “now completely surrounded.” It added that it had been impossible to withdraw troops from the city “because of Putin’s upcoming address yesterday” and that “unprecedented” measures were now underway to aid their release. Thousands of Russian troops are in the city, according to Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai, who said “almost all the ways of leaving and transporting ammunition to Russians,” were blocked. The Washington Post could not independently verify his claims. He added bluntly that trapped Russian troops had three options: to try to escape, surrender or risk being killed. The city, home to more than 20,000 people in the Donetsk region before the war, is one of the four territories Russia illegally claimed to absorb this week. A victory would mark Ukraine’s most significant success in the Donbas region since Russia concentrated the bulk of its forces there in the spring. Haidai added the nearby city of Kreminna to the east of Lyman, in the Luhansk region, would be Ukraine’s next military target. Overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky told the nation that troops were making “substantial results” in the east and named Lyman as a key example, thanking fighters there. “These are steps that mean a lot to us,” he added in a nightly address. Ukrainian military spokesman Cherevaty told The Post earlier this week that “almost all logistical routes” to the Lyman area were under Ukrainian control. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said in its Friday night update that Russian forces were continuing to withdraw from positions around the city. In an earlier briefing, it also assessed that Ukrainian had likely “cut critical ground lines of communication” in the area. Despite the patriotic pageantry during Friday’s grand treaty signing ceremony that claimed to annex parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions into Russia, Putin is facing criticism at home for his military mobilization, with thousands of people scrambling to borders and fleeing to avoid being called-up in the war. He has also faced criticism for losing ground in northern Ukraine. Oleg Tsarov, a Ukrainian separatist leader, noted on Twitter that the situation in Lyman is “a bad backdrop,” for the annexation celebrations. The loss of Lyman will also likely reinforce the idea that the annexations may not mirror the reality on the ground, with only a tenuous military hold over them, as Russian forces do not fully control any of the four regions. Nonetheless, Putin made clear in his scathing speech on Friday that he intended for the annexed land to “forever” be part of Russia. He has previously said that any attack on annexed territories would be viewed as an attack on Russia and threatened to “use all the means at our disposal” to defend them — upping the ante of possible nuclear weapon use. On Friday, he made as an ominous reference to the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, calling it a “precedent” for use of the devastating weapons. Meanwhile in Ukraine, an adviser to President Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, likened the encirclement of Lyman to the surrounding of the city of Ilovaisk in Donetsk by Russian forces in 2014. Then, “our guys agreed to surrender without weapons. But Russia broke its word. The column was shot,” he wrote on Twitter. The situation today had been reversed with Russian forces having “to ask for an exit from Lyman,” he added. War in Ukraine: What you need to know The latest: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees Friday to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine, following staged referendums that were widely denounced as illegal. Follow our live updates here. The response: The Biden administration on Friday announced a new round of sanctions on Russia, in response to the annexations, targeting government officials and family members, Russian and Belarusian military officials and defense procurement networks. President Volodymyr Zelensky also said Friday that Ukraine is applying for “accelerated ascension” into NATO, in an apparent answer to the annexations. In Russia: Putin declared a military mobilization on Sept. 21 to call up as many as 300,000 reservists in a dramatic bid to reverse setbacks in his war on Ukraine. The announcement led to an exodus of more than 180,000 people, mostly men who were subject to service, and renewed protests and other acts of defiance against the war. The fight: Ukraine mounted a successful counteroffensive that forced a major Russian retreat in the northeastern Kharkiv region in early September, as troops fled cities and villages they had occupied since the early days of the war and abandoned large amounts of military equipment. Photos: Washington Post photographers have been on the ground from the beginning of the war — here’s some of their most powerful work. How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating. Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video. Read More Here

Supreme Court's Top Cases For New Term, New Justice Jackson https://digitalarizonanews.com/supreme-courts-top-cases-for-new-term-new-justice-jackson/ The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday, hearing arguments for the first time after a summer break and with new Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Already the court has said it will decide cases on a range of major issues including affirmative action, voting rights and the rights of LGBTQ people. The justices will add more cases to their docket in coming months. A look at some of the cases the court has already agreed to hear. The justices are expected to decide each of the cases before taking a summer break at the end of June: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION In cases from Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, the court could end any consideration of race in college admissions. If this seems familiar, it’s because the high court has been asked repeatedly over the past 20 years to end affirmative action in higher education. In previous cases from Michigan and Texas, the court reaffirmed the validity of considering college applicants’ race among many factors. But this court is more conservative than those were. ___ VOTING RIGHTS The court could further reduce protections for minority voters in its third major consideration in 10 years of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which was enacted to combat enduring racial discrimination in voting. The case the justices are hearing involves Alabama, where just one of the state’s seven congressional districts has a Black majority. That’s even though 27% of the state’s residents are Black. A three-judge panel that included two appointees of President Donald Trump agreed that the state should have to create a second district with a Black majority, but the Supreme Court stopped any changes and said it would hear the case. A ruling for the state could wipe away all but the most obvious cases of intentional discrimination on the basis of race. ___ ELECTIONS Republicans are asking the justices to embrace a novel legal concept that would limit state courts’ oversight of elections for Congress. North Carolina’s top court threw out the state’s congressional map that gave Republicans a lopsided advantage in a closely divided state and eventually came up with a map that basically evenly divided the state’s 14 congressional districts between Democrats and Republicans. The state GOP argues that state courts have no role to play in congressional elections, including redistricting, because the U.S. Constitution gives that power to state legislatures alone. Four conservative justices have expressed varying levels of openness to the “independent state legislature” theory. ___ CLEAN WATER This is yet another case in which the court is being asked to discard an earlier ruling and loosen the regulation of property under the nation’s chief law to combat water pollution. The case involves an Idaho couple who won an earlier high court round in their bid to build a house on property near a lake without getting a permit under the Clean Water Act. The outcome could change the rules for millions of acres of property that contain wetlands. ___ IMMIGRATION The Biden administration is back at the Supreme Court to argue for a change in immigration policy from the Trump administration. It’s is appealing a ruling against a Biden policy prioritizing deportation of people in the country illegally who pose the greatest public safety risk. Last term, the justices by a 5-4 vote paved the way for the administration to end the Trump policy that required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their court hearing. In July, also by a 5-4 vote, the high court refused to allow the administration to implement policy guidance for deportations. A Trump-era policy favored deporting people in the country illegally regardless of criminal history or community ties. ___ LGBTQ RIGHTS A new clash involving religion, free speech and the rights of LGBTQ people will also be before the justices. The case involves Colorado graphic and website designer Lorie Smith who wants to expand her business and offer wedding website services. She says her Christian beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website, however, and that puts her in conflict with a Colorado anti-discrimination law. The case is a new chance for the justices to confront issues the court skirted five years ago in a case about a baker objected to making cakes for same-sex weddings. The court has grown more conservative since that time. ___ NATIVE AMERICAN ADOPTION In November, the court will review a federal law that gives Native Americans preference in adoptions of Native children. The case presents the most significant legal challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act since its 1978 passage. The law has long been championed by Native American leaders as a means of preserving their families and culture. A federal appeals court in April upheld the law and Congress’ authority to enact it. But the judges also found some of the law’s provisions unconstitutional, including preferences for placing Native American children with Native adoptive families and in Native foster homes. ___ BACON LAW BACKLASH Also on the menu for the justices: a California animal rights law. The case stems from a 2018 ballot measure where California voters barred the sale of pork in the state if the pig it came from or the pig’s mother was raised in confined conditions preventing them from laying down or turning around. Two agricultural associations challenging the law say almost no farms satisfy those conditions. They say the “massive costs of complying” with the law will “fall almost exclusively on out-of-state farmers” and that the costs will be passed on to consumers nationwide. ___ ART WORLD The court’s resolution of a dispute involving pieces by artist Andy Warhol could have big consequences in the art world and beyond. If the Warhol side loses a copyright dispute involving an image Warhol made of the musician Prince, other artworks could be in peril, lawyers say. But the other side says if Warhol wins, it would be a license for other artists to blatantly copy. ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Read More Here

‘Our Entire Community Is Wiped Out’: Low-Income Americans Likely To Be Hit Hardest By Hurricane Ian https://digitalarizonanews.com/our-entire-community-is-wiped-out-low-income-americans-likely-to-be-hit-hardest-by-hurricane-ian/ For Connie Irvin, 82, and her partner, Cheryl Lange, the cost of Hurricane Ian’s devastating tear across Florida was clear. “Our entire community is wiped out,” said Irvin. The pair lost their mobile home on Sanibel Island off the state’s west coast and are now homeless, staying in a motel inland about 35 miles away near Naples, Florida, that currently has no electricity. “It’s been very difficult. I now know what it’s like to be homeless and not have simple things like bathroom availability. We are lucky in that we are alive. There are a lot of people on Sanibel and down in Fort Myers that have lost their lives, and where I’m staying there are a lot of homeless people now,” Irvin added. The damage Ian has inflicted on Florida has been immense. The monster storm made landfall near the state in the Fort Myers/Naples area, then traversed up and across to the eastern part of the state, grazing the St Augustine and Jacksonville area before regaining hurricane strength and heading toward South Carolina. At least 21 deaths have now been confirmed in Florida, with that number expected to rise as emergency crews continue to respond to affected areas, and the extent of the damage is still being assessed, with an anticipated years-long recovery ahead. For Irvin and Lange that recovery looks hard – as it is for many low-income Floridians, who are often hit hardest by the terrible losses that natural disasters can wreak. They had no insurance because of its high cost, as both rely on social security for their income. Irvin still does carpentry work for extra money, although she is not sure if her tools made it through the hurricane. They managed to evacuate with their dog, Charley, and a few belongings onTuesday evening before the storm hit, and they spent the night a few miles inland in a parking garage to ride out the tempest. Because of power outages, businesses that are open accept only cash and maintaining contact with loved ones has been difficult. Irvin and Lange are retired teachers, and Irvin served in the coast guard for more than nine years. They are hoping to be able to return to where their home was soon so they can salvage what they can. But the only bridge to Sanibel Island was destroyed in the hurricane, making rescues difficult and the barrier island accessible only by boat or helicopter. “The enormity of it didn’t hit me until today,” Irvin said. “All we can do is salvage some things like photo albums.” Many others are in the same dire straits. Dwayne Parks of Lakeland, Florida, and his girlfriend experienced significant damage from the hurricane to their home, with flooding through the house of about a foot of water and damage to their roof. They are now trying to secure a loan in order to cover the $500 deductible their insurance requires before they are able to file a claim, and they are still without power. “We weren’t prepared, we didn’t think it was going to hit here,” said Parks. “We had to ride it out. It tore everything off on the roof, flooded the house. This house is her pride and joy – she’s devastated.” Family members pleaded on social media for help in getting in contact with loved ones they couldn’t reach in areas with power outages. Heather Marie lives in California and has struggled to connect with her elderly father, Jesse Forthun, in St James, Florida. She lost contact with him as his house was flooding and he lost power and cellphone service. He has medical problems, and she is trying to get him to California. “I’m not sure of the details about anything. There was supposed to be a crew going to check him this morning, but I’ve heard nothing,” she said. “It’s so hard for me to do anything from California. It’s been horrific. He’s there all alone.” GoFundMe campaigns are being started on behalf of people who have lost their homes, apartments, cars and nearly all their personal belongings. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has launched a website for individuals to apply for disaster assistance, and the Small Business Administration has launched a website for businesses, homeowners, renters and non-profits in approved Florida counties to apply for individual assistance. Fema has also requested people wanting to volunteer to do so through VolunteerFlorida.org and not to self-deploy to affected areas. Read More Here

4 Must-See Equestrian Properties For Sale In Arizona – AZ Big Media https://digitalarizonanews.com/4-must-see-equestrian-properties-for-sale-in-arizona-az-big-media/ Just in time for the 11th annual Bentley Scottsdale Polo Championships — Nov. 5, 2022 —  Russ Lyon Sotheby’s International Realty showcases some of Arizona’s most opulent equestrian properties for sale. As one of the event’s signature sponsors, Russ Lyon Sotheby’s has provided an insider view of four luxury equestrian properties in Arizona, echoing the glitz, glamour and tradition of the Bentley Polo Championships. READ ALSO: Arabian National Breeder Finals returns to Scottsdale READ ALSO: Ranking Arizona: Top 10 shopping centers 2020 E. Bethany Home Road Listed at $6.5 M., this luxurious, custom architectural masterpiece features a gated entrance leading to an estate with a 4.75 acres lot. The 1950’s estate offers 10 full bathrooms, nine bedrooms and luxurious amenities including: a balcony, breakfast bar, security system, three fireplaces and guest house. Plus, it’s equipped with a 14-stall custom barn, six irrigated pastures, two barn apartments, barn office, five covered turnouts, 300’ X 150’ arena, vet lab, tack rooms and more. 1980 N. Equine Road Boasting more than three acres of horse property with stunning mountain views, the $2,197M property listing has an equestrian facility with a covered arena, three fully staffed barns, a round pen, a hot walker, turnouts and even offers direct access to the National Forest trail system for endless riding. Its custom architectural 5,206-square-feet living space reflects a traditional Arizona ranch layout, with a grand entrance, five bedrooms, five full bathrooms and one partial bathroom — and a garage that rooms more than five cars. 12750 E. Redington Road This opulent Tucson equestrian estate, located in the heart of the Tanque Verde Valley, is less than half a mile from Sir Paul and Linda McCartney’s home — listed at $1,995M. Situated on 7.3 acres, equestrians are welcomed to a large hall accompanied by a round pen with a hot walker hook-up, turn-out stalls, wash access and private riding trails throughout La Cebadilla Estates, with direct Tanque Verde wash access to the Coronado National Forest. The privately-gated, 13,672 square-foot estate features scenic views, seven bedrooms, eight full bathrooms,  an oversized three-plus car garage and a workshop attached to the main home. Other amenities include a library, state-of-the-art security system, resort-like pool and spa, an in-home theatre, two-bedroom guest house, show barn with living quarters and a detached six-car “carriage house.” 3155 West Elephant Head Road Listed at $6,495M — close to Tubac — this 160-acre horse and cattle ranch is adjacent to its accompanying 6,000-acre state cattle grazing lease. The ranch property features multiple amenities, including two residences suitable for owners or families situated on the headquarters parcel and four homes suitable for guests or crew. Collectively, the location offers 12 full bathrooms, guest facilities, horse property, irrigated pastures and breathtaking views of Elephant Head Butte and the Santa Cruz River. The original adobe barn and views of Elephant Head Butte are visible in some of the John Wayne and period westerns. Read More Here