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Aggregating and archiving news from both sides of the aisle.

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Home Depot is acquiring specialty distributor SRS for $18.25 billion in huge bet on growing pro sales

Preview: Home Depot is making the largest acquisition in its history as its sales growth stagnates.

Baltimore disaster may be the largest-ever marine insurance payout, Lloyd's boss says

Preview: The head of Lloyd's of London said the insurance industry would nonetheless be able to handle the hefty claims.

Walgreens tops quarterly revenue estimates, but narrows profit outlook in 'challenging' economy

Preview: Walgreens posted a steep net loss for the quarter as it recorded a hefty goodwill impairment charge related to its primary-care provider VillageMD.

Ahead of sentencing, SBF team argues for 5-6 years in jail because FTX customers will get money back

Preview: Sam Bankman-Fried's defense team is trying to convince the judge for a lighter sentence because FTX customers will likely be made whole.

Yellen warns China's surplus of solar panels, EVs could be dumped on global markets

Preview: Janet Yellen said she will confront her Chinese counterparts about their solar, EV trade practices in an upcoming visit to China.

Ron Insana's new firm aims to bring AI-powered trade ideas to individual investors

Preview: The firm, called iFi AI, launches Wednesday and will use AI models to help generate projected returns for stocks over various time periods.

UnitedHealth Group has paid more than $3 billion to providers following cyberattack

Preview: UnitedHealth Group has paid out more than $3.3 billion to providers impacted by Change Healthcare cyberattack

Sam Bankman-Fried FTX fraud victim tells judge: 'My whole life has been destroyed'

Preview: More than four months after he was convicted on seven charges by a New York jury, Sam Bankman-Fried is set to learn how long he'll spend behind bars.

How much money Americans in their 50s have in their 401(k)s

Preview: Retirement is in view for Americans in their 50s. However, many have less saved than they may want. A retirement expert's tips to get on track.

Baltimore port bridge collapse: Global ocean carriers put U.S. companies on hook for urgent cargo pickup

Preview: Ocean container vessel giants including CMA CGM and COSCO are declaring force majeure due to Baltimore port bridge accident, leaving shippers on hook for cargo.

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Here are the 20 specific Fox broadcasts and tweets Dominion says were defamatory

Preview: • Fox-Dominion trial delay 'is not unusual,' judge says • Fox News' defamation battle isn't stopping Trump's election lies

Judge in Fox News-Dominion defamation trial: 'The parties have resolved their case'

Preview: The judge just announced in court that a settlement has been reached in the historic defamation case between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems.

'Difficult to say with a straight face': Tapper reacts to Fox News' statement on settlement

Preview: A settlement has been reached in Dominion Voting Systems' defamation case against Fox News, the judge for the case announced. The network will pay more than $787 million to Dominion, a lawyer for the company said.

Millions in the US could face massive consequences unless McCarthy can navigate out of a debt trap he set for Biden

Preview: • DeSantis goes to Washington, a place he once despised, looking for support to take on Trump • Opinion: For the GOP to win, it must ditch Trump • Chris Christie mulling 2024 White House bid • Analysis: The fire next time has begun burning in Tennessee

White homeowner accused of shooting a Black teen who rang his doorbell turns himself in to face criminal charges

Preview: • 'A major part of Ralph died': Aunt of teen shot after ringing wrong doorbell speaks • 20-year-old woman shot after friend turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say

Newly released video shows scene of Jeremy Renner's snowplow accident

Preview: Newly released body camera footage shows firefighters and sheriff's deputies rushing to help actor Jeremy Renner after a near-fatal snowplow accident in January. The "Avengers" actor broke more than 30 bones and suffered other severe injuries. CNN's Chloe Melas has more.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis spent the Covid-19 lockdown together

Preview: It's sourdough bread and handstands for Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Toddler crawls through White House fence, prompts Secret Service response

Preview: A tiny intruder infiltrated White House grounds Tuesday, prompting a swift response from the US Secret Service.

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BREAKING: Felony Arrest Warrant Issued For Biden Official Sam Brinton For Another Alleged Theft, Report Says

Preview: An arrest warrant has been issued for controversial Biden administration official Sam Brinton in connection with a second alleged theft at an airport in Las Vegas. Brinton, who works for the Department of Energy, was already placed on leave after he allegedly stole a woman’s luggage at Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) International Airport late last month. ...

Satanic Temple Display Near Nativity Scene, Jewish Menorah In Illinois State Capitol Building

Preview: Inside the Illinois State Capitol sits a display of several religious exhibits for the holiday season, which includes a Jewish menorah, the Christian nativity scene, and the “Serpent of Genesis” from the Satanic Temple, as reported by local radio media. Consisting of a leather-bound copy of astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’ “De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium” — which ...

Twitter’s Underhanded Actions Targeting ‘Libs Of TikTok’ Revealed In New ‘Twitter Files’ Release

Preview: The latest release of the “Twitter Files” Thursday evening revealed that leftists at the highest level of the company, who have all since been fired or been forced to resign, targeted one of the most popular right-wing accounts on the platform with repeated suspensions despite the fact that they secretly admitted that she did not ...

Twitter Releases Documents Showing It Took Secret Actions Against Conservatives

Preview: The second installment of the so-called “Twitter Files” was released Thursday evening after the company turned over documents to a journalist who then started to publish the findings on the platform. Musk released internal company communications through journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday about the company’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ...

Famed ‘TikTok Surgeon’ Faces Intense Backlash From Transgender Community After Allegedly Maimed Patient Goes Viral

Preview: The transgender community has turned on a once revered surgeon specializing in sex change surgeries after a patient posted graphic photos of an allegedly botched operation. Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, a Miami-based surgeon specializing in double mastectomy surgeries for transgender-identifying patients, has been heavily criticized for performing the elective surgery on minors. She has also earned ...

Video Emerges Of Brittney Griner Being Swapped For Russian Terrorist; Critics Instantly Notice Problem

Preview: Video emerged Thursday afternoon of Brittney Griner being swapped on a runway for convicted Russian terrorist Viktor Bout after Democrat President Joe Biden agreed to the trade. The video showed Griner, who is wearing a red jacket, walking across the tarmac with three men while Bout walked toward her with a man standing next to ...

Potential Iowa Serial Killer Still Shrouded In Mystery After Police Excavation Turns Up Empty

Preview: After a woman claimed to be the daughter of a serial killer in a recent interview, a search of the supposed location of buried remains has turned up nothing. Federal, state, and local authorities did not find any evidence or remains after scouring the earth for several days in Thurman, Iowa, a small town just ...

FedEx Driver Admits To Strangling 7-Year-Old Girl After Hitting Her With Van

Preview: A FedEx contract driver strangled a 7-year-old girl after hitting her with his van in Texas late last month, according to arrest warrant documents. Tanner Horner, a 31-year-old from Fort Worth, has been arrested and charged with capital murder of a person under 10 years old and aggravated kidnapping in the death of Athena Strand, ...

Disabled Vet Congressman Torches Colleague For Putting American Flag In Trash Can

Preview: Disabled veteran Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL) took issue with fellow Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) over the way she chose to transport her American flag while she was moving from one office to another. Mast, who lost both legs and his left index finger in 2010 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED) while ...

Top Democrat Senator Blasts Biden Over Releasing Terrorist For Griner: ‘Deeply Disturbing Decision’

Preview: Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, slammed President Joe Biden Thursday for releasing notorious terrorist Viktor Bout in exchange for Brittney Griner. Griner, who has a criminal record in the U.S. stemming from a domestic violence incident several years ago, was arrested in Russia back in February on drug charges, ...

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Dem special election blowout in ALABAMA!

Preview: Dem special election blowout in ALABAMA! (Top headline, 1st story, link) Related stories: MAGA loses again... Underscores abortion threat... ANOTHER house seat flips... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

MAGA loses again...

Preview: MAGA loses again... (Top headline, 2nd story, link) Related stories: Dem special election blowout in ALABAMA! Underscores abortion threat... ANOTHER house seat flips...

Underscores abortion threat...

Preview: Underscores abortion threat... (Top headline, 3rd story, link) Related stories: Dem special election blowout in ALABAMA! MAGA loses again... ANOTHER house seat flips...

ANOTHER house seat flips...

Preview: ANOTHER house seat flips... (Top headline, 4th story, link) Related stories: Dem special election blowout in ALABAMA! MAGA loses again... Underscores abortion threat... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

FALSE WITNESS?

Preview: FALSE WITNESS? (Main headline, 1st story, link) Related stories: THE DON ATTACKS JUDGE'S DAUGHTER 'CRIMINAL CONTEMPT' THREAT

THE DON ATTACKS JUDGE'S DAUGHTER

Preview: THE DON ATTACKS JUDGE'S DAUGHTER (Main headline, 2nd story, link) Related stories: FALSE WITNESS? 'CRIMINAL CONTEMPT' THREAT

'CRIMINAL CONTEMPT' THREAT

Preview: 'CRIMINAL CONTEMPT' THREAT (Main headline, 3rd story, link) Related stories: FALSE WITNESS? THE DON ATTACKS JUDGE'S DAUGHTER Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

Trump's Bibles and the evolution of his messianic message...

Preview: Trump's Bibles and the evolution of his messianic message... (First column, 1st story, link)

KING CHARLES CALLS FOR MORE KINDNESS IN TIME OF NEED...

Preview: KING CHARLES CALLS FOR MORE KINDNESS IN TIME OF NEED... (First column, 2nd story, link) Related stories: Kate cancer video spawns fresh conspiracies... Markle online trolls activated...

Kate cancer video spawns fresh conspiracies...

Preview: Kate cancer video spawns fresh conspiracies... (First column, 3rd story, link) Related stories: KING CHARLES CALLS FOR MORE KINDNESS IN TIME OF NEED... Markle online trolls activated... Drudge Report Feed needs your support!   Become a Patron

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Jane Goodall to celebrate 90th birthday with talks on urgency of environmental action

Preview: Dr. Jane Goodall, a renowned British primatologist and conservationist, is approaching her 90th birthday and plans to celebrate with a series of environmental talks.

Two injured after US Army exercises end in helicopter crash at Fort Carson in Colorado

Preview: An AH-64 helicopter with the 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division crashed Wednesday evening during training at Fort Carson in Colorado, leaving two injured.

Mexico president says Baltimore bridge collapse shows migrants 'do not deserve to be treated as they are'

Preview: Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador says the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore shows migrants should be treated better.

Man sentenced to 11 months in prison for threatening phone calls to Pelosi and Mayorkas

Preview: A California man who left threatening voicemails to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been sentenced to 11 months in prison

Experts address biggest question of Baltimore bridge collapse and more top headlines

Preview: Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox.

Idaho murders: Kohberger defense reaching out to potential jurors with 'survey' before judge banned contact

Preview: Bryan Kohberger's defense team is crying foul after a judge ordered both sides in the Idaho student murders case to stay away from potential jurors in Latah.

Could protective barriers have prevented Baltimore bridge collapse?

Preview: The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore did not appear to have any protective barriers in place before it was struck early Tuesday, raising serious questions.

Freeloading migrant influencer mocks US taxpayers who 'work like slaves' while waving cash in latest videos

Preview: "Migrant influencer" Leonel Moreno appeared to mock people who work for a living in a series of new videos posted to Instagram — after his TikTok shut down.

Dave Portnoy raises 'about $240,000' for family of fallen NYPD officer Jonathan Diller

Preview: Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy said on social media that he raised over $200,000 for the family of New York Police Department officer Jonathan Diller, who was killed Monday night.

Illegal migrant in Alabama charged with rape of 'mentally incapacitated' teen: report

Preview: A man who was arrested and charged by Alabama police for allegedly raping a "mentally incapacitated" teen was in the country illegally.

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Baltimore bridge collapse: Divers find two bodies in submerged truck - BBC.com

Preview: Baltimore bridge collapse: Divers find two bodies in submerged truck  BBC.com Baltimore Key Bridge collapse live updates: 2 bodies recovered as NTSB to interview cargo ship pilots today  Yahoo! Voices Visualizing the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse  CNN Baltimore disaster may be the largest-ever marine insurance payout, Lloyd's boss says  CNBC Baltimore Key Bridge collapse: What we know about the missing construction workers; 2 recovered  WPVI-TV

Ukraine war live updates: Putin says NATO won't be attacked but F-16s will; Kyiv claims Russia knew terror attack was coming - CNBC

Preview: Ukraine war live updates: Putin says NATO won't be attacked but F-16s will; Kyiv claims Russia knew terror attack was coming  CNBC Russia-Ukraine war live: Poland and Ukraine hold talks on farm imports dispute  The Guardian Russia strikes Ukraine's Kharkiv with aerial bombs for the first time since 2022  The Associated Press Putin Vows to Blast the West's F-16s Out of the Sky in Ukraine  The Daily Beast Putin Issues F-16 Warning  Newsweek

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney end legal dispute - NPR

Preview: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Disney end legal dispute  NPR Disney and DeSantis have settled their yearslong dispute  CNN Disney v. DeSantis, Baltimore bridge collapse, Trump, Covenant shooting, March Madness: Daily Briefing  USA TODAY Disney, Florida Gov. DeSantis-backed board reach settlement in lawsuit  Fox Business Disney, Florida settle lawsuits over control of district  Miami Herald

Why abuse of the Insurrection Act worries legal experts and how they'd change it - NPR

Preview: Why abuse of the Insurrection Act worries legal experts and how they'd change it  NPR Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term  The Washington Post Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes will spend 18 years in prison, longest sentence yet  NPR When LA Erupted In Anger: A Look Back At The Rodney King Riots  NPR History comes back to bite us  Daily Kos

The NBC Staff Revolt Against Ronna McDaniel Shows How Power Has Shifted - POLITICO - POLITICO

Preview: The NBC Staff Revolt Against Ronna McDaniel Shows How Power Has Shifted - POLITICO  POLITICO NBC offered Ronna McDaniel a better contract to appear on MSNBC  The Washington Post NBC News staff reportedly fear Republican backlash after Ronna McDaniel firing: 'Angry GOP sources'  Fox News Stephen Colbert Recaps the Ronna McDaniel Drama at NBC  The New York Times NBC’s Ronna McDaniel disaster is dragging Comcast into the political firestorm  CNN

Former correctional officer at women's prison in California sentenced for sexually abusing inmates - NBC News

Preview: Former correctional officer at women's prison in California sentenced for sexually abusing inmates  NBC NewsView Full Coverage on Google News

4 dead, suspect arrested in 'senseless' violence in Rockford, Illinois, officials say - NBC News

Preview: 4 dead, suspect arrested in 'senseless' violence in Rockford, Illinois, officials say  NBC News At least 4 killed during stabbing rampage in Rockford, Illinois  The Washington Post 4 dead, 7 injured in stabbing rampage in Rockford, Illinois, residential area, authorities say  CNN Rockford stabbing attack suspect Christian Soto charged after 4 killed, 7 injured in Winnebago County  WLS-TV Victim's ages: New information released in Rockford's stabbing spree  Rockford Register Star

Obama, Clinton assist as Biden seeks to unify Democrats - USA TODAY

Preview: Obama, Clinton assist as Biden seeks to unify Democrats  USA TODAY Three presidents and one mission: Beat Trump  CNN NYC Gridlock Alert: Heavy traffic in Midtown as President Biden, 3 former presidents visit the city  WABC-TV Election 2024 latest news: Biden poised to raise $25 million at fundraiser with Obama, Clinton  The Washington Post Three Presidents With a Complex Past Team Up to Defeat Trump  The Wall Street Journal

Forget Kennedy Democrats. Here Comes the 2024 Kennedy Voter. - POLITICO

Preview: Forget Kennedy Democrats. Here Comes the 2024 Kennedy Voter.  POLITICO Biden and Trump know Kennedy’s VP choice is a game changer  The Hill Opinion | RFK Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, has what he needs: Money  The Washington Post Where RFK Jr. Goes From Here  The Atlantic Trump Attacks R.F.K. Jr., a Third-Party Wild Card  The New York Times

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman dies at 82 - CNN

Preview: Former Sen. Joe Lieberman dies at 82  CNNView Full Coverage on Google News

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Defend our public lands

Preview: Our public lands are not mere commodities; they are invaluable assets that define our national character and sustain our collective well-being.

Breyer predicts Supreme Court will see 'more and more and more' abortion-related cases

Preview: Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer predicted Wednesday that the high court will see a jump in abortion-related cases in the future. Breyer told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the “harmful” decision in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade — ending the federal right to abortion access — would not reduce the number of abortion-related cases brought before...

America's toxic politics are having an unholy effect on religion 

Preview: Turning the faithful of whatever faith into distinct groups of rival fans is a prescription for disaster.

Will the Supreme Court give Trump the absolute immunity he claims to have? 

Preview: For Donald Trump, hyperbole has turned into a legal claim.

Chris Christie closes door to No Labels bid

Preview: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) will not be seeking a third-party bid for the White House, he announced Wednesday night, shutting down speculation. Christie had been toying with a possible third-party run for the White House as some suggested he run on a unity ticket put forward by No Labels. He previously said...

Want to bring microchip fabs back to the US? Exempt them from environmental review

Preview: What chases high-tech manufacturing abroad is not the lack of government subsidies, but excessive regulation and taxation.

Russia understands power, not peace

Preview: History has shown that the Russian Federation violates every ceasefire it enters, and submits only to brute force.

Is Biden listening to any of his military or intelligence advisers?

Preview: There is a pattern to the series of bad decisions coming from President Joe Biden’s Oval Office that are increasingly putting the nation’s security at heightened risk.

Morning Report — Biden courts donors; Trump seeks legal cash

Preview: Follow the money: The 2024 general election financing season is in full swing. President Biden and former President Trump, who have clinched enough delegates to win their parties’ nominations for November’s election, are raking in cash. But the two candidates’ approaches to fundraising — and the messages they’re sending as they court donors — could...

Fears grow over Comstock Act, Justices Thomas, Alito

Preview: Abortion rights supporters are sounding the alarm that conservative Supreme Court justices want to use a long-dormant law to enforce a nationwide abortion ban.   Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito repeatedly invoked the Comstock Act during oral arguments Tuesday in a case about the constitutionality of the Biden administration's efforts to expand access to...

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Animal Shelter Pleads For Help Fostering Dogs After Truck Crashes Into Building

Preview: “It quite literally boils down to the safety of our animals,” said West Virginia’s Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association.

Mark Hamill Debuts Hilarious List Of Donald Trump’s ‘Best Words’

Preview: The “Star Wars” actor has been keeping track.

Seth Meyers Predicts Donald Trump's Next Merch Move And It's Filthy

Preview: The "Late Night" comedian used toilet humor for his latest dig at the former president.

Chris Hayes Turns Jeffrey Clark Lawyer's TV Fear Into Brutal Reality

Preview: The MSNBC host teased the former Trump DOJ official's attorney for name-dropping the network during a disbarment hearing.

Jimmy Fallon Throws Shade At Trump And Sons With Eclipse Reminder

Preview: Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump were the butt of the "Tonight Show" host's gag.

Paul Ryan Has A Stark Prediction For Down-Ballot Republicans On Donald Trump

Preview: The former House GOP speaker pinpointed a Trump weak spot that could cost Republicans large.

Laura Ingraham's Latest Media Attack Gets Thrown Right Back At Her

Preview: The Fox News host's on-air claim doesn't quite go as expected.

NBC News Correspondent Hits Lara Trump With Blunt Family Question

Preview: Garrett Haake asked the daughter-in-law of former President Donald Trump about Republicans' thoughts on her family's "takeover" of the party.

Trump Biographer Busts Trump's Biggest Myth About Himself Wide Open

Preview: Tim O'Brien issued some harsh truths about the former president.

Critics Cook Sean Hannity Over His 'Insane Nonsense' Beef With Biden

Preview: The Fox News host sounded the alarm to viewers with a wild claim about what the president wants from their homes.

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It’s time to buy the next leg of the AI story. Think global, says Citi, offering these stock picks.

Preview: Citigroup analysts are greenlighting the next round of AI stock buying, but say look beyond U.S. shores.

GDP in fourth-quarter raised to 3.4% due to stronger consumer spending

Preview: The final reading of U.S. growth in the 2023 fourth quarter was raised to a 3.4% annual pace, reflecting a surprisingly resilient U.S. economy.

Jobless claims fall slightly to 210,000 and underscore strong labor market

Preview: The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits last week fell slightly to 210,000 and continued to hover at very low levels in a sign of strength for the economy.

Palantir’s ‘egregiously rich valuation’ draws downgrade to sell

Preview: Monness Crespi Hardt analyst cuts AI technology company’s rating to bring it ‘back to reality’

Oil prices bounce higher, on track for solid quarterly gains

Preview: Oil futures rose Thursday, on track for solid quarterly gains.

Walgreens books a $5.8 billion charge, sees challenging retail environment

Preview: Profit beat expectations by the widest margin in at least five years, but the stock fell as the full-year outlook was lowered.

Tesla has had a ‘nightmare’ first quarter amid weak China demand, says this longtime bull

Preview: Wedbush’s Dan Ives trims his stock-price target to $300 from $315 after a “perfect storm” of issues.

My wife and I owe $450,000 on a $1.2 million house with a 3.5% mortgage rate. Our payments will soon increase. Should we pay it off or invest in stocks?

Preview: “We are in our late 60s, in good health and we have a second home worth $900,000 that is fully paid for.”

A new product allows 5x leveraged bets on the Magnificent Seven. Traders should be wary.

Preview: Investors can now make turbocharged bets on or against the Magnificent Seven group of stocks due to the launch of an exchange-traded product offering five times leverage on the hot megacap technology sector. Of course, that doesn’t mean they should.

Novocure’s stock surges after positive results in brain-cancer trial

Preview: Novocure Ltd.’s stock soared 15% Wednesday after the company announced positive results from a late-stage trial of a medtech device to treat patients with lung cancer that has spread to their brains.

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Lara Trump as co-chair is the least of the RNC's red flags

Preview: Lara Trump says that the Republican National Committee is moving past questions about the 2020 election — except it's asking candidates whether it was stolen.

The MAGA world's spiraling bridge conspiracies highlight an incredibly dark reality 

Preview: On Tuesday a containership plowed into Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge. Biden pledged help. Alex Jones, MTG and Nancy Mace spread black flag conspiracies.

Judge recommends disbarment for architect of Trump’s election plot

Preview: Those hoping for accountability for the architects of Donald Trump's anti-election scheme have reason to applaud the disbarment case against John Eastman.

More and more Americans are feeling unhappy. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Preview: For the first time since Gallup launched its World Happiness Report, the U.S. "fell out of the top twenty happiest countries," writes Sen. Chris Murphy.

RFK Jr.'s surprising VP strategy

Preview: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s pick of Nicole Shanahan for his vice presidential running mate signals he's prioritizing funding over broadening his appeal.

Joe Lieberman, former U.S. senator and vice presidential nominee, dies at 82

Preview: Joe Lieberman, who served as a centrist U.S. senator from Connecticut and was the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, has died at age 82.

Justices Thomas and Alito sent a clear message to conservatives. Dems must respond.

Preview: While the court is likely to protect abortion medication mifepristone, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas made clear their interest in the Comstock Act.

Utah women's basketball team had racist slurs yelled at them in Idaho

Preview: The Utah women's basketball team said they were subjected to repeated racist harassment while staying in Idaho for an NCAA women's basketball tournament.

Extreme Texas immigration law stays paused, but SCOTUS may have the last word

Preview: Last week, the Supreme Court let Texas’ extreme immigration law take effect.

George Conway: Lying, intimidating, bullying. That's Trump at his worst, and that's Trump always

Preview: Less than 24 hours after getting hit with a partial gag order in the New York criminal case involving his alleged falsification of business records, former President Donald Trump repeatedly lashed out at one person who's not covered by the ruling — the judge. The Morning Joe panel discusses.

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A complete guide to futures betting in sports: Odds, strategy and more

Preview: Check out this all-encompassing guide on futures betting, covering everything from odds to strategies and everything in between!

50 Cent reacts to ex Daphne Joy being named as an alleged sex worker in Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs lawsuit

Preview: The OnlyFans model dated the "In Da Club" rapper in 2011, and they welcomed son Sire the following year.

‘Cash Me Outside’ girl Bhad Bhabie drops $6K on 21st birthday dinner after giving birth to first baby

Preview: Since the rapper welcomed her and boyfriend Le Vaughn's daughter earlier this month, she has kept the little one's face hidden on social media.

Illegal immigrant charged with raping ‘mentally incapacitated’ 14-year-old girl in Alabama

Preview: Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville called it proof President Biden “is aiding and abetting these monsters.”

The Islanders’ decision not to sell at the 2022 deadline only looks worse with this playoff fizzle

Preview: If this Islanders season ends on April 17, the pathway there will have begun 24 months ago.

‘Crazed’ Kathie Lee Gifford was worried about raising ‘spoiled brats’ in Hollywood

Preview: The former "Today" show anchor, 70, shares daughter Cassidy, 30, and son Cody, 34, with late husband Frank Gifford.

Gambling scandal involving Shohei Ohtani’s ex-interpreter won’t be a Dodgers distraction: Mookie Betts

Preview: "We're just focused on business, taking care of business and that's all we keep first."

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How Boeing Favored Speed Over Quality for the 737 Max

Preview: Problems have plagued the manufacturer even after two fatal crashes, and many current and former employees blame its focus on making planes more quickly.

4 Takeaways About Boeing’s Quality Problems

Preview: The company’s issues date back years, employees said, and were compounded by the pandemic, when it lost thousands of experienced workers.

The Five Minutes That Brought Down the Francis Scott Key Bridge

Preview: When a massive cargo ship lost power in Baltimore, crews scrambled to control the ship and to evacuate the bridge lying ahead. But it was too late.

Baltimore’s Key Bridge Was Hit By a Ship in 1980

Preview: That year, a cargo vessel moving at about the same speed as the Dali hit the structure after losing control. But such ships were smaller then.

Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack

Preview: The factors behind the failure to prevent a terrorist attack include a distrust of foreign intelligence, a focus on Ukraine and a distracting political crackdown at home.

How Crystal Clanton, Clarence Thomas’s ‘Nearly Adopted Daughter,’ Became His Clerk

Preview: Justice Clarence Thomas gave Crystal Clanton a home and a job after she left a conservative youth organization in controversy. Then the justice picked her for one of the most coveted positions in the legal world.

Like My Book Title? Thanks, I Borrowed It.

Preview: Literary allusions are everywhere. What are they good for?

What We Know About Palestinians Detained in Israel

Preview: Since Oct. 7, Israel has detained thousands of Palestinians suspected of militant activity. Rights groups allege that Israel has abused some detainees or held them without charges.

For Young Offenders in Maine, Justice Varies With Geography

Preview: Maine has tried to send fewer teenagers to prison, emphasizing rehabilitation programs instead. But the rural north of the state shows the effort has played out unevenly.

Top Stories
The Outdated Tests Far Too Many Schools Still Use to Judge a Kid’s Ability

Preview: The damage done can be difficult to reverse.

Which Chemical Element Has Atomic Number 4?

Preview: Test your wits on the Slate Quiz for March 28, 2024.

No, Truth Social Isn’t a Cash Cow for Donald Trump. Here’s Why.

Preview: We’re in what is essentially a political meme-stock situation.

What Is Going On With Diddy?

Preview: Where is he? Why were his homes raided by Homeland Security? Here’s what we know.

What Everyone Is Getting Wrong About the Baltimore Bridge Collapse

Preview: It might seem like maritime disasters with giant ships are multiplying. They're not.

You Don’t Really Need to Avoid the 737 Max When You Travel. Here’s How to Do It Anyway.

Preview: This is unnecessary, but let's humor your mortal fear.

The Anti-Abortion Endgame That Erin Hawley Admitted to the Supreme Court

Preview: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson zeroed in on this admission.

Every Time I Try to Have Sex I Set Off a Bizarre Chain of Events

Preview: It can come across as random... but it isn’t.

Top Stories
Today in Supreme Court History: March 28, 1955

Preview: 3/28/1955: Williamson v. Lee Optical decided.

FDA Aims To Stifle Medical Innovation Again

Preview: After botching COVID test approvals, the Food and Drug Administration wants power over thousands of other tests.

Brickbat: There's Something Fishy Going On

Preview: In London, England, the Greenwich council has ordered an award-winning fish and chips shop to remove a patriotic mural. The mural outside the Golden Chippy features an anthropomorphic fish holding a Union Jack flag and reaching into a bag of french fries (chips, as the Brits call them) and a slogan saying "A Great British…

Thursday Open Thread

Preview: What's on your mind?

Most Americans Aren't Buying Biden's Misleading Narrative That the Economy Is Getting Better

Preview: The question of how best to measure inflation has no single and straightforward answer, but most people know that the president's economic claims aren't true.

The Obscure Protectionist Law That Will Slow Clean-up of the Baltimore Bridge Disaster

Preview: The best time to repeal the Foreign Dredge Act was before the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed. The next best time to repeal it is right now.

The Immigrant Workers Who Died on the Baltimore Bridge Were Hardworking Heroes

Preview: The Key Bridge collapse highlighted the valuable contributions of immigrant workers, many of whom take on foreseeable—and, in this case, unforeseeable—risks.

If Ronna McDaniel Is Beyond the Pale, NBC May Have Trouble Presenting 'Diverse Viewpoints'

Preview: The former RNC chair's concession that Biden won "fair and square" did not save her from internal outrage at her support for Trump's stolen-election fantasy.

Fifth Circuit Rules Against Texas SB 4 Immigration Law

Preview: In the process, the court also rejected Texas's argument that illegal migration and drug smuggling qualify as "invasion."

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Race for the White House

Preview: See who's running

Trump's indictments

Preview: All four cases explained

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'Couldn't believe it': Floridians emerge from Idalia's destruction with hopes to recover

Preview: After Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Wednesday, Florida communities are emerging to see its destruction with hopes and plans to recover.

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ISIS-K, the group linked to Moscow’s terror attack, explained

Preview: People lay flowers at Crocus City Hall in Moscow, the concert hall where a terror attack killed at least 140 people on March 22. | Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images ISIS-K has become a global terror threat while the world has been distracted. The Islamic State — the notorious group known for building a brutal regime in Iraq and Syria — has claimed responsibility for Friday’s terror attack at a Moscow concert venue that killed at least 139 people. ISIS released graphic footage via its media apparatus, claiming that it was their gunmen who left more than 100 people injured at the Crocus City concert hall. And it likely is the case, despite Russia’s attempts to tie the incident to Ukraine. US intelligence officials linked the terror group’s outpost in the historical Khorasan region — which encompasses parts of Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — to the attack. Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged that Islamic radicals perpetrated the attack, but the Kremlin has still tried to link Ukraine to the incident. “We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it,” Putin said in a video address Monday. ISIS has always been somewhat rhizomatic, with offshoots connected to the main entity in Iraq and Syria. For years, ISIS welcomed the emergence of affiliate groups that might have more local or regional goals, like ISIS-K and ISIS-West Africa, as long as they pledged allegiance to the caliphate ISIS had declared. But after ISIS suffered a major territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria five years ago, ISIS-K has since solidified its distinct political grievances, which center around its battle for power with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And because of its location in a fairly lawless region, the group can recruit and train without significant interference. For ISIS-K and the larger group, attacking Russia is a logical outgrowth of ISIS’s territorial defeat, since Russia supports the Assad regime in Syria and helped it regain control of the land ISIS briefly held. ISIS-K also has grievances with Russia because of its 1979-1989 war in Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s slaughter of Chechen Muslims in its war there. While it seems like ISIS-K holds some degree of responsibility, just how much the organization was involved in Friday’s attack is a lot less clear, according to Riccardo Valle, the director of research at the Khorasan Diary, which provides analysis on non-state and militant actors in the region. “There are several hints, some stronger, some weaker, that could suggest the involvement of the Islamic State of Khorasan branch in the implementation of the attack,” Valle told Vox, “from providing financial support or logistic support, operational support, or could be also more limited involvement,” like using its Russian- and Tajik-language propaganda to encourage local ISIS cells in Russia to attack. There’s a lot of noise around ISIS-K, and whether the Moscow attack means ISIS is “back” — meaning it has the ability to carry out attacks in Western countries and hold territory the way it did a decade ago. While it’s difficult to say what ISIS-K or the core group might do next, recent events show that the threat of extremism isn’t gone. What we know about ISIS and its affiliates now ISIS is an extremist group that follows a fundamentalist version of Sunni Islam and grew out of Al Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate following the US invasion there in 2003. It gained prominence, though, in 2014 when it captured large swaths of Iraq and Syria. That was central to the group’s primary goal: to establish a global caliphate — traditionally understood as an Islamic political and religious state like the one that existed following the death of the prophet Muhammad, but which ISIS interpreted in a much more violent and repressive manner, especially when it came to women and religious minorities. The nature of ISIS has always been somewhat diffuse; it has historically claimed attacks or groups, like a splinter faction of Boko Haram in northwestern Africa, often referred to as ISWAP, that pledges its allegiance to the broader organization, even encouraging lone wolf actors to increase its reach. “It’s much more about ‘taking the fight to our enemies,’ rather than focused on particularly the nuances of Islamic theology,” Daniel Byman, senior fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Vox. And that broad ideology incorporates political motivations as well as religious ones. So although according to ISIS the US, Israel, Europe, Iran, and Russia are all “idolators,” or enemies based on religious affiliation, they’re also political adversaries. In other words, ISIS is predominantly interested in creating that global caliphate over which it maintains territorial, ideological, and political control. Enter: ISIS-K. The group was founded in 2014 or 2015 (around the same time as the core ISIS group rose to prominence) as something of an offshoot of the original group. It was also founded in opposition to the Taliban and made the case for a global caliphate, not a national emirate like the Taliban wanted — particularly, the control of the entire Khorasan region. The historical Khorasan region is important to Islam, and particularly Islamic jihadist and messianic tradition because of a teaching attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which claims that Muslims will fight non-believers in the region at the end of the world. ISIS-K has been fighting the Taliban since 2015 — a tension that really ramped up following the fall of Afghanistan’s elected government in August 2021 after the US withdrew. It has repeatedly attacked ethnic Hazara in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime — both as a repudiation of the minority group’s Shia ideology, but also to prove the Taliban’s poor handle on security in the country and its lack of willingness to protect minorities. The Taliban is also, according to ISIS-K, “just the natural successors to the Afghan Islamic Republic, and hence they are basically [allies] of all regional countries and of the United States [who are] all united to fight the Islamic State in Afghanistan and globally,” Valle said. But, again, given the group’s global focus, their conflict doesn’t stop with the Taliban. Russia became another natural target, for example. That’s in part because the core ISIS group sees the country as responsible for its destruction, due to Russia and Iran’s role in propping up the Assad regime in Syria, especially as it regained control of ISIS’s former caliphate. (It doesn’t help that both the Assad regime and Iranian government are Shia.) How to understand the ISIS threat now What is clear, according to the experts Vox spoke to, is that ISIS is still well coordinated and capable of causing harm across the region. Take the latest attack in Russia, which was pulled off in Moscow amid a war: “All that points to some significant training,” said Colin Clarke, an analyst at the Soufan Center. “This wasn’t an example of an incident where some [random] radicalized Central Asians living in Russia were sitting around on their phones, imbibing ISIS propaganda, and they decided to launch an attack of their own.” We don’t know exactly what the directives for last Friday’s attack might have looked like or how much the core group is instructing affiliates — so we might never know the breakdown of how exactly it happened. Russia has released photos of the alleged attackers, but the exact order of operations and planning is unlikely to come out any time soon, both because of the nature of Russian propaganda and the groups themselves. More broadly: It’s difficult to tell how connected ISIS-K and other affiliates are to the core ISIS group, and to what extent the affiliates take direction from the core and coordinate with each other to carry out attacks. “These groups are basically fluid, they are not armies, they are not states,” Valle said. “So they move in a fluid manner. So we cannot [distinguish] from one to the other so sharply; sometimes people work with different entities and networks.” But in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan where ISIS-K trains and operates, there’s very little ability for the Taliban — let alone the international community — to monitor or threaten the group. “Afghanistan has been a free-for-all” since the US withdrawal in 2021, Clarke said. “The US probably still has decent signals intelligence … but probably almost no human intelligence. And that’s gonna lead to some blind spots naturally. And so I think we don’t know a lot about what’s been going on in Afghanistan, clearly.” Though Western intelligence services adapted to the ISIS threat in the mid-2010s, Clarke noted that the world’s attention had turned away from those kinds of terror threats. “Now, it’s all about great power competition, China, artificial intelligence, all these other things,” he said. “There’s a certain sense of terrorism fatigue, after 20 years of the global war on terrorism, people don’t want to think about it. They don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to prepare for it.” But ISIS, and ISIS-K in particular, haven’t stopped training and planning just because the Western world stopped paying attention. The group’s bold and well-coordinated attack in Moscow, as well as the ISIS-K attack in Iran in January, indicate that at least some affiliates possess the capabilities, funding, and motivation to inflict significant casualties and serious damage on their perceived enemies. And though the threat is diminished compared to the height of ISIS’s power in the mid-2010s, the overall terror threat is “in absolute terms, I would say it’s pretty high,” Valle said. Specifically, there is “risk that something similar or to a lesser extent — still dangerous — can happen also in Europe, and this is because in the last months of 2023 and the first months of 2024, several cells and local networks of militants were dismantled in Europe, in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and the UK.” Indeed, both Italian and French authorities ramped up security following the attacks in Moscow. Both countries have major cultural events upcoming — Holy Week celebrations in Italy and the Summer Olympics in Paris. ISIS-K has a pattern of attacking large cultural events, including mosques during prayers in Afghanistan and a memorial service for assassinated Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in Iran earlier this year. But it’s important to note that European counterterror services are much more capable of detecting these kinds of threats than they were a decade ago. And US intelligence knew about the Iran and Moscow attacks before they happened, warning both countries of the threats. None of that is to say that a terror attack on a Western country is impossible, but the US and Europe are better equipped for one than a decade ago.

AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning.

Preview: Paige Vickers/Vox; Getty Images The energy needed to support data storage is expected to double by 2026. You can do something to stop it. In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. The IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022 — and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan. We live in the digital age, where many of the processes that guide our lives are hidden from us inside computer code. We are watched by machines behind the scenes that bill us when we cross toll bridges, guide us across the internet, and deliver us music we didn’t even know we wanted. All of this takes material to build and run — plastics, metals, wiring, water — and all of that comes with costs. Those costs require trade-offs. None of these trade-offs is as important as in energy. As the world heats up toward increasingly dangerous temperatures, we need to conserve as much energy as we can get to lower the amount of climate-heating gases we put into the air. That’s why the IEA’s numbers are so important, and why we need to demand more transparency and greener AI going forward. And it’s why right now we need to be conscientious consumers of new technologies, understanding that every bit of data we use, save, or generate has a real-world cost. One of the areas with the fastest-growing demand for energy is the form of machine learning called generative AI, which requires a lot of energy for training and a lot of energy for producing answers to queries. Training a large language model like OpenAI’s GPT-3, for example, uses nearly 1,300 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity, the annual consumption of about 130 US homes. According to the IEA, a single Google search takes 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while a ChatGPT request takes 2.9 watt-hours. (An incandescent light bulb draws an average of 60 watt-hours of juice.) If ChatGPT were integrated into the 9 billion searches done each day, the IEA says, the electricity demand would increase by 10 terawatt=hours a year — the amount consumed by about 1.5 million European Union residents. I recently spoke with Sasha Luccioni, lead climate researcher at an AI company called Hugging Face, which provides an open-source online platform for the machine learning community that supports the collaborative, ethical use of artificial intelligence. Luccioni has researched AI for more than a decade, and she understands how data storage and machine learning contribute to climate change and energy consumption — and are set to contribute even more in the future. I asked her what any of us can do to be better consumers of this ravenous technology. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Brian Calvert AI seems to be everywhere. I’ve been in meetings where people joke that our machine overlords might be listening. What exactly is artificial intelligence? Why is it getting so much attention? And why should we worry about it right now — not in some distant future? Sasha Luccioni Artificial intelligence has actually been around as a field since the ’50s, and it’s gone through various “AI winters” and “AI summers.” Every time some new technique or approach gets developed, people get very excited about it, and then, inevitably, it ends up disappointing people, triggering an AI winter. We’re going through a bit of an AI summer when it comes to generative AI. We should definitely stay critical and reflect upon whether or not we should be using AI, or generative AI specifically, in applications where it wasn’t used before. Brian Calvert What do we know about the energy costs of this hot AI summer? Sasha Luccioni It’s really hard to say. With an appliance, you plug it into your socket and you know what energy grid it’s using and roughly how much energy it’s using. But with AI, it’s distributed. When you’re doing a Google Maps query, or you’re talking to ChatGPT, you don’t really know where the process is running. And there’s really no transparency with regard to AI deployment. From my own research, what I’ve found is that switching from a nongenerative, good old-fashioned quote-unquote AI approach to a generative one can use 30 to 40 times more energy for the exact same task. So, it’s adding up, and we’re definitely seeing the big-picture repercussions. Brian Calvert So, in material terms, we’ve got a lot of data, we’re storing a lot of data, we’ve got language models, we’ve got models that need to learn, and that takes energy and chips. What kind of things need to be built to support all this, and what are the environmental real-world impacts that this adds to our society? Sasha Luccioni Static data storage [like thumb drives] doesn’t, relatively speaking, consume that much energy. But the thing is that nowadays, we’re storing more and more data. You can search your Google Drive at any moment. So, connected storage — storage that’s connected to the internet — does consume more energy, compared to nonconnected storage. Training AI models consumes energy. Essentially you’re taking whatever data you want to train your model on and running it through your model like thousands of times. It’s going to be something like a thousand chips running for a thousand hours. Every generation of GPUs — the specialized chips for training AI models — tends to consume more energy than the previous generation. They’re more powerful, but they’re also more energy intensive. And people are using more and more of them because they want to train bigger and bigger AI models. It’s kind of this vicious circle. When you deploy AI models, you have to have them always on. ChatGPT is never off. Brian Calvert Then, of course, there’s also a cooling process. We’ve all felt our phones heat up, or had to move off the couch with our laptops — which are never truly on our laps for long. Servers at data centers also heat up. Can you explain a little bit how they are cooled down? Sasha Luccioni With a GPU, or with any kind of data center, the more intensely it runs, the more heat it’s going to emit. And so in order to cool those data centers down, there’s different kinds of techniques. Sometimes it’s air cooling, but majoritarily, it’s essentially circulating water. And so as these data centers get more and more dense, they also need more cooling, and so that uses more and more water. Brian Calvert We have an AI summer, and we have some excitement and some hype. But we also have the possibility of things scaling up quite a bit. How might AI data centers be different from the data centers that we already live with? What challenges will that present from an ecological or environmental perspective going forward? Sasha Luccioni Data centers need a lot of energy to run, especially the hyperscale ones that AI tends to run on. And they need to have reliable sources of energy. So, often they’re built in places where you have nonrenewable energy sources, like natural gas-generated energy or coal-generated energy, where you flip a switch and the energy is there. It’s harder to do that with solar or wind, because there’s often weather factors and things like that. And so what we’ve seen is that the big data centers are built in places where the grid is relatively carbon intensive. Brian Calvert What kinds of practices and policies should we be considering to either slow AI down or green it up? Sasha Luccioni I think that we should be providing information so that people can make choices, at a minimum. Eventually being able to choose a model, for example, that is more energy efficient, if that’s something that people care about, or that was trained on noncopyrighted data. Something I’m working on now is kind of an Energy Star rating for AI models. Maybe some people don’t care, but other people will choose a more efficient model. Brian Calvert What should I think about before upgrading my data plan? Or why should I hold off on asking AI to solve my kid’s math homework? What should any of us consider before getting more gadgetry or getting more involved with a learned machine? Sasha Luccioni In France, they have this term, “digital sobriety.” Digital sobriety could be part of the actions that people can take as 21st-century consumers and users of this technology. I’m definitely not against having a smartphone or using AI, but asking yourself, “Do I need this new gadget?” “Do I really need to use ChatGPT for generating recipes?” “Do I need to be able to talk to my fridge or can I just, you know, open the door and look inside?” Things like that, right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it with generative AI.

The slow death of Twitter is measured in disasters like the Baltimore bridge collapse

Preview: Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after being struck by a cargo ship on March 26. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone. Line up a few years’ worth of tragedies and disasters, and the online conversations about them will reveal their patterns. The same conspiracy-theory-peddling personalities who spammed X with posts claiming that Tuesday’s Baltimore bridge collapse was a deliberate attack have also called mass shootings “false flag” events and denied basic facts about the Covid-19 pandemic. A Florida Republican running for Congress blamed “DEI” for the bridge collapse as racist comments about immigration and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott circulated among the far right. These comments echo Trump in 2019, who called Baltimore a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” and, in 2015, blamed President Obama for the unrest in the city. As conspiracy theorists compete for attention in the wake of a tragedy, others seek engagement through dubious expertise, juicy speculation, or stolen video clips. The boundary between conspiracy theory and engagement bait is permeable; unfounded and provoking posts often outpace the trickle of verified information that follows any sort of major breaking news event. Then, the conspiracy theories become content, and a lot of people marvel and express outrage that they exist. Then they kind of forget about the raging river of Bad Internet until the next national tragedy. I’ve seen it so many times. I became a breaking news reporter in 2012, which means that in internet years, I have the experience of an almost ancient entity. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key bridge into the Patapsco River, though, felt a little different from most of these moments for me, for two reasons. First, it was happening after a few big shifts in what the internet even is, as Twitter, once a go-to space for following breaking news events, became an Elon Musk-owned factory for verified accounts with bad ideas, while generative AI tools have superpowered grifters wanting to make plausible text and visual fabrications. And second, I live in Baltimore. People I know commute on that bridge, which forms part of the city’s Beltway. Some of the workers who fell, now presumed dead, lived in a neighborhood across the park from me. The local cost of global misinformation On Tuesday evening, I called Lisa Snowden, the editor-in-chief of the Baltimore Beat — the city’s Black-owned alt-weekly — and an influential presence in Baltimore’s still pretty active X community. I wanted to talk about how following breaking news online has changed over time. Snowden was up during the early morning hours when the bridge collapsed. Baltimore’s X presence is small enough that journalists like her generally know who the other journalists are working in the city, especially those reporting on Baltimore itself. Almost as soon as news broke about the bridge, though, she saw accounts she’d never heard of before speaking with authority about what had happened, sharing unsourced video, and speculating about the cause. Over the next several hours, the misinformation and racism about Baltimore snowballed on X. For Snowden, this felt a bit like an invasion into a community that had so far survived the slow death of what was once Twitter by simply staying out of the spotlight. “Baltimore Twitter, it’s usually not as bad,” Snowden said. She sticks to the people she follows. “But today I noticed that was pretty much impossible. It got extremely racist. And I was seeing other folks in Baltimore also being like, ‘This might be what sends me finally off this app.’” Here are some of the tweets that got attention in the hours after the collapse: Paul Szypula, a MAGA influencer with more than 100,000 followers on X, tweeted “Synergy Marine Group [the company that owned the ship in question] promotes DEI in their company. Did anti-white business practices cause this disaster?” alongside a screenshot of a page on the company’s website that discussed the existence of a diversity and inclusion policy. That tweet got more than 600,000 views. Another far-right influencer speculated that there was some connection between the collapse and, I guess, Barack Obama? I don’t know. The tweet got 5 million views as of mid-day Wednesday. Being online during a tragic event is full of consequential nonsense like this, ideas and conspiracy theories that are inane enough to fall into the fog of Poe’s Law and yet harmful to actual people and painful to see in particular when it’s your community being turned into views. Sure, there are best practices you can follow to try to contribute to a better information ecosystem in these moments. Those practices matter. But for Snowden, the main thing she can do as her newsroom gets to work reporting on the impact of this disaster on the community here is to let time march on. “In a couple days, this terrible racist mob, or whatever it is, is going to be onto something else,” Snowden said. “ Baltimore ... people are still going to need things. Everybody’s still going to be working. So I’m just kind of waiting it out,” she said “But it does hurt.” A version of this story was published in the Vox Technology newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

Is Biden on track for defeat? The debate, explained

Preview: Ian Maule/Getty Images Should we take current polls seriously? Or are there good reasons to expect a Biden comeback? Is Joe Biden in deep reelection trouble, or is there good reason to think he’s headed for a comeback? The question has divided the political world for months. The case that Biden’s on track for defeat is pretty simple: He’s trailed Trump in a large majority of the national and swing state polls conducted since last September. That means it’s been six months with very little good polling news for Biden. If you take the polls seriously, he’s in trouble — and those who fear Trump’s return to power should be very worried indeed. The case for a Biden comeback, on the other hand, goes something like this: It’s still too early for the polls to tell us much, but there are a lot of reasons we might logically expect Biden to do better. After all, the economy has improved. Trump is headed to trial. Biden has a fundraising advantage. Democrats have been doing rather well in special elections, and they exceeded expectations in the 2022 midterms. And eventually, the general election will bring focus from the media and campaigns on a binary choice between Trump and Biden — which means more focus on Trump’s extremism and scandals. That all sounds convincing enough. But the Biden skeptics fire back: Aren’t you just coming up with excuses to explain away the unpleasant reality the polls are clearly showing? Aren’t you just reasoning backward from your belief that Biden should be winning — and ignoring the best evidence, which states that things look pretty dire for him? The case that Biden is in deep trouble Win McNamee/Getty Images President Joe Biden departs the White House March 22, 2024 in Washington, DC. Start with Biden’s low approval: According to FiveThirtyEight’s poll average, Biden has been deeply unpopular since late 2021 — his average approval rating has been in the high 30s or low 40s since then. Since the State of the Union address, Biden’s number has slightly improved — from 38.1 percent on March 7 to 39.3 percent as of March 27, per FiveThirtyEight. But that’s still a very bad approval rating. At this point in Trump’s term, his approval was about 45 percent — more than 5 points better. And, of course, he lost. Trump has led most national polls: An approval rating can’t tell you everything in a two-way race because your opponent may be deeply unpopular too. But the head-to-head poll numbers haven’t been comforting for Biden lately either, since they’ve shown Trump ahead for the past six months. (Biden very recently rose to about a tie in the Economist’s polling average, while Trump still leads by just over 1 point in RealClearPolitics’s average.) Trump leads most swing state polls: Of course, the presidency is decided by the Electoral College, not a national vote. And swing state polling for Biden has been very bad. In Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, Trump has led in every poll tracked by FiveThirtyEight since November, often by sizable margins. If he loses the three states above, Biden would need Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win. Trump has led in most — but not all — polls in all three states in recent months. Other bad signs: Besides the polls, the skeptics believe there are other reasons to doubt whether Biden will be able to pull it off. Age: Voters have regularly said in polls that Biden’s age is a problem for them. Inflation: It has slowed recently, but voters still may resent hikes in prices and then interest rates that have occurred while Biden was president (even though much of the inflation was caused by factors out of Biden’s control, and he doesn’t directly control interest rates either). International comparisons: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are all extremely unpopular right now (even more so than Biden), suggesting it could just be a rough time to be an incumbent leader in a Western democracy. The case for Joe Biden being the Comeback Kid Win McNamee/Getty Images U.S. President Joe Biden departs the White House on March 19, 2024 in Washington, DC. Start with skepticism about early polls: With so much of the fear that Biden is doomed based on his bad polling, it’s worth noting that the election is still about seven months away. Polling from late March 2016 showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump by 11 points. Clearly things can change by quite a lot before election day. Instead of early polls, look at recent election results: In 2022, Democrats performed well in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The party held on to the Senate, and the House didn’t see the typical midterm blowout (the “red wave” many predicted) but instead a very close contest Republicans only narrowly won. Democrats have also done quite well in special elections over the past year. Now, don’t get too carried away with this. Democrats’ coalition is now heavily skewed toward college-educated high-engagement voters who are more likely to turn out in off-year elections. Skeptics argue that such an advantage will surely drop in a higher-turnout presidential year, when infrequent voters are more likely to show up. There’s another interesting wrinkle here. Because polls show Biden struggling badly among less-engaged voters, the topline results that he’s losing are effectively based on pollsters’ assumptions about how likely those less-engaged voters are to turn out. Are those assumptions solid? We won’t know until election day. Upcoming campaign and media dynamics may help Biden: Biden comeback believers contend that three main factors will likely help the president in the coming months. An improving economy: Voters have been negative about the economy for years, but their perceptions have improved somewhat in recent months. It’s true that that hasn’t seemed to helped Biden’s poll standing much yet, but perhaps it will take some time to sink in. Trump may become a felon: Trump’s indictments don’t seem to have hurt him up to this point, but polls have regularly shown many voters say they will reconsider supporting him if he’s actually convicted of a crime. His first criminal trial, in the New York hush money case, is set to begin April 15. More attention on Trump and Republicans’ extremism: As the election approaches, a well-funded Democratic campaign and outside group apparatus will spend heavily to remind voters about the threat Trump poses to American democracy and the threat the GOP poses to abortion rights — both issues that helped Democrats triumph in key 2022 races. The mainstream media will increasingly frame the choice before voters as “Trump vs. Biden” as well. Perhaps many of the disgruntled Democrats and tuned-out independents who currently say they won’t vote for Biden will eventually choose the lesser of two evils once Trump’s awfulness is hammered home to them. Can we already see the comeback in polls? Perhaps the strongest point made by the Biden skeptics is that the polls have been quite consistent for quite some time. Sure, they say, you can tell yourself that Biden will bounce back at some point — but those polls keep not budging, so when will it happen? Indeed, I wrote about Biden’s bad polls last April, last September, and last November, and evidence for any comeback in that time has been scant. But some now say we’re seeing our first signs in polls that the comeback is underway. As mentioned, Biden is currently tied with Trump in the Economist’s polling average — in recent months, he’s generally been down by 2 to 3 points. Polls released this week have shown some improvement for him in swing states and nationally, pointing toward a race that’s about tied, not one where Trump has a clear edge. Again, don’t get carried away. It’s too early to say whether this will prove to be a durable trend. But it’s worth keeping in mind that even when Trump has been polling best, the race hasn’t looked like a total blowout. Trump has had, on average, small single-digit leads both nationally and in key swing states. That’s the sort of lead that no candidate can really take for granted. The election was quite close in 2016 and 2020 — so close that any confident prediction about who would win was, in retrospect, overconfident. Given the repeat candidates, it’s reasonable to expect another close election this time around. This story appeared originally in Today, Explained, Vox’s flagship daily newsletter. Sign up here for future editions.

Yes, even most temperate landscapes in the US can and will burn

Preview: Photo by Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images Wildfire risk is increasing everywhere, especially in the East and South. Here’s a major reason why. Lucas Aguayo Araos/Anadolu via Getty Images Smoke rises over the forest during a wildfire in Viña del Mar, Chile, on February 3, 2024. Last month, a heat wave persisted for days in the Chilean coastal city of Viña del Mar. The landscape, already affected by an El Niño-supercharged drought, was baked dry. So, when wildfires sparked, they ripped through densely populated and mountainous terrain. In just a few days, the fires — the deadliest in Chile’s history — burned 71,000 acres and killed at least 134 people. Devastating wildfires like these are becoming increasingly common. Climate change is partly to blame — while research has found that both El Niño and climate change have contributed to intense wildfires in Chile in recent years, scientists disagree whether climate change had a statistically significant impact on these particular February fires. But the Chilean fires also underscore another ominous dynamic: Grasses, shrubs, and trees that humans have introduced to new ecosystems are increasing wildfire occurrence and frequency. In central Chile over five decades, timber companies have converted natural forests to homogenous, sprawling plantations of nonnative eucalyptus and Monterey pine that grow rapidly in the country’s Mediterranean climate. These trees contain an oily resin that makes them especially flammable but coupled with hotter and drier conditions due to climate change, they can be explosive, says Dave McWethy, an assistant professor at Montana State University. Our relationship with such nonnative species is fraught. We enable the spread of nonnatives by purposely transporting species to landscapes that haven’t previously existed with them. Take English ivy, a popular choice for stabilizing soil as an ornamental plant. Or the Norway maple, which was introduced to the East Coast of the US in 1756, quickly becoming popular for the shade it provided. In the process, such nonnatives can displace local ecologies and native species, disrupt agriculture, or transmit disease. Once a critter or a plant is introduced, either accidentally or purposefully, it can spread rapidly and outpace efforts to catch them at checkpoints or, as is the case for Florida’s state-sponsored “rodeos” for species like pythons, kill them. A report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimates that the approximately 3,500 geographically invasive plants and animals worldwide cost the global economy $423 billion annually. Climate change is also shuffling the ecological deck: As Vox has reported, ecologists expect climate change to create “range-shifting” or “climate-tracking” species that move to survive hotter temperatures. Perhaps some of those species will be more fire-prone. “Fires in places that are not used to fires are going to become much worse because of invasive species,” said Anibal Pauchard, co-author of the IPBES report and a professor at the University of Concepción and director of the Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity in Chile. Such trends are causing wildfires to burn in unexpected places in the US as well. Last summer, for example, a wildfire — fueled by guinea grass, molasses grass, and buffel grass — killed at least 101 people in Maui. According to research published in the journal PNAS, eight species of nonnative grasses are increasing fire occurrence by between 27 and 230 percent in the US. This means, due in part to the spread of nonnative species, millions of people in the US will be affected by more frequent wildfires and the unhealthy smoke they produce. As the research shows, invasive grasses are altering historic fire activity and behavior in a variety of locations across the US. This includes those living in the arid West (especially the Great Basin and the Southwest) but also those in more humid parts of the country, particularly people living near eastern temperate deciduous forests, which cover the eastern US, and pine savannah ecoregions from central South Carolina to central Florida. Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images A firefighter helps battle a brush fire in the Meadowlands near Metlife Stadium in Carlstadt, New Jersey, in 2012. Fire departments struggled to bring under control one of many brush fires that broke out in New Jersey and New York that year. Such brush fires are increasing common in the Eastern US as the climate continues to change. The nonnative grasses driving wildfire risk in the US While no one factor causes a big fire to happen on its own, nonnative grasses have played a more important role in recent decades — especially in low-elevation regions without much fire historically, said Seth Munson, an ecologist with the Southwest Biological Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. The annual invasive grass cheatgrass, known for its hairy tops, is found in an estimated 50-70 million acres nationwide, mostly in the Great Basin states. Lands with at least 15 percent cheatgrass are twice as likely to burn as those with a low abundance of the grass, and four times more likely to burn multiple times, according to researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Idaho, and University of Colorado. According to the latest data, eight of the largest fires on record in the Great Basin have happened since 2010. That includes Nevada’s Martin Fire, which burned over 435,000 acres in 2018 and destroyed large swaths of grazing pastures for cattle and habitat of the federally protected sage grouse. Another invasive grass, cogongrass flourishes across Florida and the Gulf States, infiltrating traditional pine woodlands. These landscapes are already burning, with harsh human consequences. Wildfires in northwest Florida in recent years have scorched homes, prompted the evacuation of over a thousand people, and cost millions of dollars. The largest wildfire in Texas state history, only recently contained, damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes, killing at least two people and thousands of cows. Hundreds of wildfires in Louisiana last summer also resulted in two deaths. Buffelgrass is taking root all over Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, and red brome is spreading in the Mojave and other deserts. Highly flammable tamarisk shrubs have taken root in thick stands near streams in the western US, and eucalyptus — one of the primary invasive trees blamed for worsening Chile’s recent wildfires as well as fires in Portugal — increases wildfire risk in California. What can be done? Limiting the introduction of nonnative plants, when possible, addresses the problem at its root. But many invasive species already have a foothold somewhere nearby. In that case, early detection of invasive species, by satellite imagery or by people on the ground, is the best way to stop invasives with a variety of removal techniques, be that herbicide or something else, in an attempt to keep them somewhat contained. Federal agencies across the country, like the one Munson works for, as well as states, tribes, nonprofits, and others, are already monitoring for the movement of invasive species on the landscape and attempting to manage them as they inevitably spread. Work is also underway to help native plants reestablish faster after fires, giving them a chance against invasives angling for the same open space. You can do your part by finding out which nonnative plants exist in your area, especially those that increase wildfire risk. And if you’re looking to spruce up your home’s landscaping, don’t plant them; consider a native alternative instead.

How Sam Bankman-Fried’s possible sentence stacks up against the century’s biggest fraudsters

Preview: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried arrives for a bail hearing at Manhattan Federal Court on August 11, 2023, in New York City. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images SBF vs. Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Allen Stanford, and Jeffrey Skilling. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the defunct crypto exchange FTX who was convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges last year, will be sentenced Thursday in New York court. Prosecutors are seeking a 40- to 50-year sentence for his role in defrauding investors of billions of dollars. Yes, billions. That sentence would still be well below the maximum statutory sentence of 115 years, but his attorneys are arguing that it should be no longer than six-and-a-half years and that he also should not be ordered to pay any restitution or forfeit any assets. His trio of co-conspirators Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh — all members of SBF’s inner circle and executives at FTX or Alameda Research (its sister hedge fund also co-founded by Bankman-Fried) — cooperated with prosecutors to testify against Bankman-Fried at trial. They may face minimal, if any, prison time. The judge in the case, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, is likely to consider a few factors in determining Bankman-Fried’s sentence, including his age, the scale of the losses, and the government’s interest in deterring him and anyone else from committing similar crimes. That last point is a big one, said Jennifer Taub, a professor at Western New England University School of Law focusing on white-collar crime. “The white, wealthy, and well-connected tend to wiggle their way out of facing the criminal consequences for their predatory behavior,” she said. “It’s high time that we actually hold white-collar criminals accountable.” While Bankman-Fried’s lawyers have sought to downplay the harm caused by the scheme that led to FTX and Alameda’s downfall, prosecutors have likened his crimes to that of Bernie Madoff, the infamous Wall Street financier who orchestrated history’s largest Ponzi scheme. “No scheme to defraud since Madoff can be compared to this one in terms of its size, scope, and amount of loss,” prosecutors argued in court filings. So how does SBF’s possible sentence likely stack up against other big fraud cases this century? Let’s take a look. But first, a recap of what went down with FTX SBF’s fall from grace was excruciatingly abrupt. As my colleague Sean Illing wrote, “Before he was charged, SBF was widely seen as a benevolent genius, some kind of digital-era Robin Hood, who was going to make obscene amounts of money and then give it all away to worthy causes.” (Disclosure: In August 2022, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project was canceled.) To back up: In 2019, Bankman-Fried founded FTX, at one point the third largest crypto exchange, and rode a crypto boom for a few years. Through the next few years, he went around espousing a particular version of effective altruism — a utilitarian movement that describes itself as “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible” — that entailed earning as much as possible to purportedly give away as much as possible. He also grew his political influence, becoming one of President Joe Biden’s biggest donors in 2020. But in 2022, a balance sheet for Alameda was leaked that implied his whole crypto empire was built on double-dipping. Without getting too in the weeds, essentially the balance sheet showed that Alameda had large holdings of FTX’s proprietary digital currency FTT, which had questionable value at a time when crypto prices were spiraling downward. If those digital tokens’ value plummeted, FTX’s financial solvency would be severely in doubt. Investors withdrew their holdings in FTT in large numbers, revealing an $8 billion gap in what FTX could pay out and what it owed customers. It then became apparent that FTX had transferred customer funds to Alameda and that the two firms were far more entangled than Bankman-Fried had previously disclosed or that was allowed under their terms of service. Both FTX and Alameda declared bankruptcy that fall. Prosecutors alleged that Bankman-Fried’s failure to disclose the transfers, FTX’s relationship with Alameda, FTX’s exposure to Alameda’s risky FTT holdings, and the use of commingled funds to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations” was in fact fraud. In November, after a much-watched trial filled with jarring testimony — including from SBF himself — he was convicted of all seven criminal counts against him. Those included two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Now, he’s facing potentially decades in prison. The factors that could influence his sentencing Bankman-Fried is only 32 years old, which means he would likely still be alive (and able to commit another crime) by the time he gets out of prison if the sentence is on the shorter end of the spectrum. He’s proved to have “gone up to the line over and over again,” as Kaplan said when revoking his bail ahead of trial, accusing him of trying to influence key witnesses. But he also has a lot of life left to live, this is his first offense, and his lawyers cite his neurodiversity and charity work as potential mitigating factors, which may make the court more lenient. Kaplan is “going to have to figure out whether he thinks there is an opportunity for this guy to be rehabilitated,” Taub said. “I think it’s a big deal, even though you’re trying to deter him from hurting other people, you’re trying to deter other young crypto people.” Prosecutors argue that the losses in the case are enormous, conservatively estimated at $8 billion for FTX customers, $1.7 billion for FTX investors, and $1.3 billion for Alameda lenders. Those total customer losses represent the amount by which their account balances exceeded the amount of assets that FTX had available to disburse to them when it went bankrupt in November 2022. However, Ellen Podgor, a professor at Stetson University focused on white-collar crime, said that the fact that Bankman-Fried’s fraud could cause such harm represented a regulatory failure and that the sentence sought by prosecutors is therefore too high. “The thing that bothers me the most about this case is that if [Bankman-Fried] had been caught earlier, the fraud would not be as great and the sentence lower,” she said. “I question whether a fraud that goes on for a longer period of time, because it was not stopped by a government agency, should place the defendant in receiving a higher sentence.” And Bankman-Fried’s lawyers say that the customer losses should actually be calculated as “zero.” The Financial Times reported that customers are slated to receive up to two-fifths more than the value of their holdings on the day FTX went bankrupt due in part to the recent crypto surge. However, prosecutors argue that any potential recovery of funds after FTX filed for bankruptcy shouldn’t be considered in the sentencing decision. In other fraud cases, the government was able to recover a large portion of victims’ funds — in large part because of the justice system. In Madoff’s case, victims have been repaid 91 percent of their losses and there are ongoing efforts to make them whole; he still received what was a life sentence and died in prison. “The question is whether Judge Kaplan is going to consider the fact that the victims will are going to receive all their money back,” Taub said. “Will that affect the sentencing? I don’t think it’s going to be persuasive.” How SBF compares to this century’s biggest convicted fraudsters Bernie Madoff Prosecutors argue that the scale of Bankman-Fried’s fraud has no recent parallel but Madoff’s. Madoff orchestrated the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, with losses totaling $64.8 billion. He was convicted in 2008 after confessing to his two sons who reported him to law enforcement, and sentenced to 150 years in prison. He was once a respected name on Wall Street who embraced computing innovations in trading. But he lured in, at first, friends and acquaintances from Manhattan and Long Island to invest in his fund and later, large institutional investors, universities, and major charities. He used funds from new investors to pay “returns” to existing ones, and he did so undetected for decades. He promised steady returns, rather than big payouts. And that’s what he appeared to deliver through a recession in the early ’90s, the dot-com bust in the late ’90s, and after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The global financial crisis in 2008, however, brought about his undoing. Institutional investors withdrew hundreds of millions from his fund and he didn’t have enough new investors to pay them out. He died at age 82 in 2021 from kidney disease in a prison hospital. He was denied early release when he was given 18 months to live. At that point, he had served 11 years of his sentence. Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth Holmes may not have been sentenced for nearly as long as Madoff, but the downfall of her failed blood testing company Theranos is just as notorious. Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford University. She claimed that the company had developed technology that could perform a wide range of blood tests by collecting blood through just a finger prick. She signed on to a partnership with Walgreens to bring the technology to their stores. At one point, Theranos was valued at $9 billion, making Holmes, given her 50 percent stake in the company, one of only a few female billionaires in Silicon Valley. She was on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, and Inc. She drew in investors including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and Oracle executive chairman and founder Larry Ellison, as well as credentialed board members including former US Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. But the device, known as the Edison, never worked as described, as was uncovered by a Wall Street Journal investigation. In November 2022, she was convicted of four counts of defrauding investors and later sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison. However, her sentence has since been quietly reduced by about two years for good behavior. Allen Stanford Allen Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison in 2012 for orchestrating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme through his financial firm, Stanford Financial Group. Once a billionaire who managed $50 billion in customer funds, he sold fraudulent certificates of deposit — which allows consumers to deposit funds for a specific period of time and at an interest rate usually higher than normal savings accounts — from his offshore bank in Antigua to some 50,000 investors. Many of them were retirees seeking safe investments. He used the proceeds to subsidize a lavish lifestyle in Antigua, whose economy suffered in the wake of his prosecution given that he had become its largest employer. As of 2019, his victims had not been able to recover nearly as much of their funds as Madoff’s. Jeffrey Skilling Jeffrey Skilling was the CEO of Enron Corporation, once one of the largest energy companies worldwide, during its collapse in 2001 in what became one of the most infamous cases of corporate fraud in history. Enron’s downfall came about when it came to light that the company had covered up major debts and losses through complex accounting techniques and entities that were not reported on its balance sheets. This inflated Enron’s perceived financial health and therefore its stock price. Skilling had a hand in promoting these accounting practices and became a symbol of Enron’s corporate greed. The stock price dropped after the revelations, causing investors to incur billions in losses, and the company filed for bankruptcy in December 2001. Thousands of employees lost their jobs. It led to the passage of a landmark federal law in 2002 aimed at improving corporate governance and financial reporting standards. In 2006, Skilling was convicted of 19 criminal counts including fraud, conspiracy, and insider trading. Though several other executives were also prosecuted, he received one of the longest sentences: 24 years in prison. However, he only ended up serving 12 after demonstrating good behavior; after his release, he went to work for an energy startup, Veld Applied Analytics, which is developing tools to monitor oil and gas assets.

There’s a shadow fleet sneaking Russian oil around the world. It’s an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

Preview: The oil tanker Nobel waiting to transfer crude oil from Russia, on March 5, 2023, near Ceuta, Spain. | Antonio Sempere/Europa Press via Getty Images The world’s next big maritime catastrophe could involve sanctions-dodging rustbuckets. On March 2, just as it was rounding the northern tip of Denmark, an oil tanker called the Andromeda Star collided with another ship. Thankfully, the 700,000-barrel capacity Andromeda Star was empty at the time, as it was making its way to Russia to pick up oil for export. If it had been on its way back, its cargo hold full of crude, a little-noticed maritime incident might have become a much bigger story, one that connects to both the ongoing war in Ukraine and the world’s unbroken dependence on oil. The Andromeda Star is part of what has been called the “shadow fleet” transporting Russian oil to world markets. This fleet emerged in response to the international sanctions slapped on Russia’s oil industry in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to reduce the profits from its most valuable international commodity. The commodities trading company Trafigura has estimated the size of the fleet at around 600 ships, though some estimates are much higher. The shadow fleet is of growing concern not only because of the revenue that these oil shipments bring to Moscow, which fuels its more than two-year-old war, but because of the nature of the ships themselves. “They tend to be older, they may also be less well maintained, they are run by less experienced crews, and they carry less insurance than they should,” Erik Broekhuizen, head of tanker research at Poten & Partners, an oil and gas consulting firm, told Vox. The 15-year-old Andromeda Star was a relative spring chicken by shadow fleet standards. “The lifespan of a ship is typically 20- to 25-year range, but most reputable ship owners typically sell ships around 15 years,” said Broekhuizen. “In a normal market, they’d then be recycled.” But the shadow fleet has created a booming market for old tankers, including many that are over 20 years old. The average age of tankers departing the Russian Baltic Sea port of Kaliningrad is now close to 30 years old. That makes it more likely that the ships have fallen into poor conditions and makes them more prone to accidents. Another shadowy aspect of Russia’s new fleet: Often no one is quite sure who the ships belong to. The Andromeda Star’s owner is not listed on public databases. It is managed by Margao Marine Solutions, a “one-person company” based in Goa, India, which did not return an email from Vox seeking comment. And as with many shadow fleet ships, it’s not clear what if any insurance it was carrying. As this week’s disaster in Baltimore — where a Singapore-flagged cargo ship caused the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge — showed, the question of liability and responsibility can be messy even in maritime accidents involving one of the world’s largest and most reputable shipping companies. The nightmare scenario many governments are now contemplating is that one of these shadily owned tankers could be involved in a major oil spill and there would be no one — or at least no one authorities can track down — liable for the clean-up. “There is an ecological disaster waiting to happen. That’s just the reality,” David O’Sullivan, the European Union’s sanctions envoy, told Vox during a meeting with reporters in Washington last week. “This is something the international community needs to worry about.” Unfortunately, given the often murky multinational structure of the shipping world, it’s also something that the international community has few good options to address. The Russian oil compromise The emergence of the shadow fleet is one result of the dueling prerogatives of the international sanctions response to Russia’s war in Ukraine: One, cut the money flowing to Russia’s government and military; two, avoid major disruptions to a world economy that still relies hugely on the flow of oil. Shortly after the invasion in 2022, the US banned imports of Russian oil, which the US already wasn’t buying much of. But the EU has also slashed its purchases of Russian oil, which is a lot more significant: Before the war, the bloc accounted for about 45 percent of Russia’s oil exports. Now, it’s about 5 percent. Initially, the EU had planned to also enact a ban on European companies trading and shipping Russian oil, in order to prevent other countries from buying it, but the US government was concerned about the effect this would have on global oil prices. (A similar dynamic has emerged in recent weeks with reports that the US has pressured Ukraine to dial back its aerial attacks on Russia’s oil refineries, which are also having an impact on global prices by reducing supply.) According to one analysis from just after the invasion, disrupting Russia’s seaborne exports with the kind of strict sanctions that, for instance, the US has applied to Iran in the past, could have pushed global oil prices to over $200 a barrel, more than twice their current level. So, a workaround was found. A coalition of Western countries including the EU and the G7 implemented a “price cap” which allowed Russian oil sold below $60 a barrel — about $20 below the current market price — to use Western shipping infrastructure and insurance. The goal, as the US Treasury Department defined it, is to “limit Kremlin profits while maintaining stable energy markets.” To some extent, this system has worked. Russia’s oil exports, by volume, are back to where they were before the war. New customers in China, India, and Turkey have made up for the loss of the European market. (Thanks to some creative accounting, some oil has even reportedly found its way into the US military’s supply chain.) Russia’s oil revenues, though, have declined significantly. A recent analysis by the American Enterprise Institute estimated that the discounts may have cost Russia around $50 billion in lost revenue in 2022 and 2023. That’s almost a quarter of what Russia has spent on its military operations in Ukraine according to a recent US estimate. The thing is, experts say only a small fraction of Russia’s oil exports — maybe 20-30 percent, Broekhuizen estimates — are complying with the price cap. Russian oil is currently trading around $72 a barrel, which is below global averages but above the cap. This is where the shadow fleet comes in. These types of shadily registered ships meant specifically to skirt oil sanctions aren’t new, said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has written extensively on the fleet, but the involvement of the world’s second-largest oil exporter was a game changer. ​​”This was a strategy that was initiated long before Ukraine for other sanctioned countries,” Braw told Vox. “North Korea has been conducting a shadow economy using vessels that don’t officially exist for years. Venezuela and Iran have as well. But Russia’s involvement was a sort of quantum leap that brought this economy out of the shadows.” Trouble at sea “For the first time in many decades, safety at sea is becoming worse, not better, and it’s really because of the shadow fleet,” Jan Stockbruegger, a political scientist specializing in maritime security at the University of Copenhagen, told Vox. The Andromeda Star incident was far from the first or the most troubling incident involving shadow tankers. The most dramatic and deadly took place in May of last year, when the Pablo, a 26-year-old tanker, exploded in Malaysian waters, killing three crew. Thankfully, the Pablo had already offloaded its cargo in China, but with no apparent insurance and no reachable owner, the wreckage of the ship remained stranded until Malaysian authorities finally towed it to a scrapyard. As documented in a recent Atlantic Council report, shadow fleet ships have had to be rescued in the Bay of Gibraltar, have run aground near the Chinese port of Qingdao, and have drifted for days after losing power in Indonesia. Last August, when an Indian seafarer disappeared from the tanker where he was working, transporting Russian oil to India and Turkey, his family complained they couldn’t get basic information about his disappearance from the ship’s Dubai-based manager. In a confluence of two geopolitical crises, a Panama-flagged, India-affiliated ship carrying oil from Russia was attacked by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea in January. The Houthis have vowed not to attack Russian or Chinese ships as part of their ongoing campaign to disrupt trade between countries linked to Israel, but in this case may have been thrown off by the fact that the ship had a UK owner until a few months prior. Troubling as all these incidents are, they pale in comparison to what would happen if one of these ships, most of which carry insurance that, as the Financial Times has put it, would be “impossible to claim against,” was involved in a major oil spill. A combination of the country where the spill takes place and an international organization known as the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds, which reimburses victims of oil spills when the damage exceeds what the shipowner or insurer is able or willing to pay, could be left with responsibility for the mess. Other factors compound the risks. Last September, Bloomberg reported that two aging shadow fleet tankers had carried out a risky ship-to-ship oil transfer off the coast of Greece, having turned off their transponders to conceal their location. The majority of the ships transporting oil through the Danish Strait, a narrow and often tricky waterway as the Andromeda Star learned, have been refusing to take on the specialized Danish navigators that often assist ships making the journey. Often these ships refuse any contact with Danish authorities, a break from what was common practice pre-war. Russia has been keen to increase the use of its Northern Sea Route through the Arctic to China, including authorizing shipments by tankers that don’t have the reinforced “ice-class” hulls normally required for the trip. Even in summer, in the era of global warming, Arctic ice can be unpredictable, and using these thin-hulled tankers only increases the risk of accidents that could devastate a vulnerable ecology. Out of the shadows What can be done to crack down on the shadow fleet? “We are trying to shut off the supply of these tankers to make it more difficult for people to sell end-of-life tankers to the Russians,” said O’Sullivan, the EU sanctions envoy. “We’re also trying to be tougher in the enforcement of the documentation which needs to go with [these sales.]” In February, the US slapped sanctions on Sovcomflot, Russia’s largest shipping company and a leading operator of oil tankers, which prompted India to halt oil shipments from the company. But many of Sovcomflot’s tankers have already been transferred to offshore companies. Dubai, famed for its political neutrality and lack of income taxes, has been a particularly popular location for these companies. The US has also been sanctioning these companies and individual companies for violating the price cap. The US government has also been ramping up pressure on the countries where these ships are registered, which are responsible for ensuring safety and maintenance standards on the vessels that fly their flag. As a result, Russia’s oil fleet has been shifting away from popular flag countries like Liberia and the Marshall Islands. The number of ships flying the flag of the West African nation of Gabon, on the other hand, has surged dramatically since the beginning of this year. (The ill-fated Pablo was among the shadow fleet tankers flying the Gabon flag.) Mongolia, more than 400 miles from the nearest ocean, has also become a popular flag of convenience. The Financial Times also reported last fall that the EU was considering plans under which Denmark, which controls the straits at the entrance to the Baltic Sea through which 60 percent of Russia’s oil exports pass, could be given the task of inspecting or even blocking ships that were not found to be carrying recognized insurance. “The most practical step would be for coastal states to essentially assess every vessel planning to sail through their waters,” said the Atlantic Council’s Braw. “It would be extreme and very time-consuming.” It could also prompt retaliation or legal challenge from Russia. The plan has not yet been implemented, though the incident with the Andromeda Star may give it some new momentum. Stockbruegger suggests that another strategy would be to make it more appealing for officially registered and insured global shippers to participate in the Russian oil trade, under the price cap. But given the risks involved and the arcane nature of sanctions laws, which could leave them exposed to legal difficulties, “It would take a lot of convincing for these companies.” Assuming that countries like India and China won’t stop buying discounted oil — and given that the US doesn’t actually want them to, particularly heading into an election year — the continued existence of the shadow fleet in some form may be inevitable, even as these ships bounce around from flag to flag and owner to owner and port to port. A world that is rapidly dividing politically, even as it remains economically interconnected, has created some murky backwaters, including one that a fleet of mysteriously owned, aging rustbuckets has rushed in to fill. For now, Russian oil continues to course through the world’s economies, just as Russia’s adversaries intended. Hopefully, it will stay out of the world’s oceans.

We’re long overdue for an Asian lead on The Bachelor franchise

Preview: Jenn Tran, the franchise’s first Asian American lead, will helm the next season. | Disney Jenn Tran, a physician assistant student from Miami, has been named the new Bachelorette. Editor’s note, March 27, 5 pm ET: Jenn Tran has been named the first Asian American Bachelorette in the franchise’s 22-year history. For the first time in years, The Bachelor franchise had not one, not two, but multiple contestants of Asian descent who were prominent contenders. Historically, there have been a handful of Asian participants who have made it to later rounds in the show. But in most seasons, there are few — if any — Asian contestants across both The Bachelor and Bachelorette. Those who are cast are often eliminated early, sidelined as supporting characters, or reduced to meek stereotypes. Tammy Ly, a fan favorite from the 24th season, has spoken about how she felt “alienated” by the franchise and treated as a secondary character because she didn’t fit a white ideal of beauty. The Bachelor franchise has long been critiqued for its overwhelmingly white casting, storylines that amplify discriminatory tropes, and high-profile contestants who’ve made racist statements. In recent seasons, the show has attempted to address these disparities — with mixed results. Notably, ABC cast its first Black Bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, in 2017, and it has sought to diversify its contestant pool in the years since. As Rachel Lindsay and other contestants have emphasized, however, the changes to casting alone haven’t been sufficient to combat systemic issues the franchise suffers from, onscreen and behind the scenes. The most recent season, its 28th, revealed how The Bachelor still struggles with many of these problems even as it took some small steps forward. In showcasing a diverse group of Asian women, the show introduced new perspectives on everything from growing up in an immigrant household to cultural family traditions, viewpoints that haven’t been highlighted much on its platform. It still fell short, however, in grappling with the discrimination that its contestants of color face and confronting conversations about the need to explicitly call out racism. Five women of Asian descent stayed late into the current season as both popular contenders and villains. Notably, a few of these women — Rachel Nance, an ICU nurse from Hawaii, of Filipino and African American descent; and Jenn Tran, a physician assistant student from Florida, of Vietnamese descent — were among the final six contestants, a development that makes it more likely that one of them could get picked as the lead for a following season. (Typically, the show selects its next star based on the women or men who don’t “win” from the prior season.) Featuring more Asian contestants on the show — and highlighting them — has not only helped dispel stereotypes, but also enabled portrayals that were more multidimensional and human. Having an Asian lead — a long overdue first for both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette — would bring even more representation to the reality TV giant, expand the universe of stories that it tells, and provide new visibility to members of a group that have long been underrepresented in media. Telling people’s stories counters stereotypes and humanizes them The Bachelor franchise’s history of quickly dropping candidates of color, including Asian contestants, is so well-known it has spurred satirical spinoffs like WongFu Production’s “Asian Bachelorette,” in which nearly all the contestants are of Asian descent. In past seasons, there were usually one or two Asian contestants, though few advanced to later episodes, with Catherine Giudici, Ivan Hall, Caila Quinn, Ethan Kang, and Serena Pitt among the handful of exceptions. Additionally, if they aren’t eliminated early, contestants of color typically get less screen time than white contestants. And when they have appeared, some of their storylines have exacerbated old tropes, including ideas of Asian women as docile or hypersexual. In season 24 of The Bachelor, for example, Marylynn Sienna is effectively used by a white woman named Victoria Larson to advance her storyline. Larson arbitrarily accuses Marylynn of being “toxic,” forcing her to defend herself in the face of a bully. In Season 10 of The Bachelor, a Cambodian American woman named Channy Choch debuted on the show by inviting the lead to have sex with her in Cambodian, later noting that he needed to catch “Cambodian fever.” By putting real time and investment into Asian contestants’ storylines, this season has delivered more nuanced depictions of their experiences and the chance to see more humanized narratives. Rachel’s hometown date with Bachelor Joey Graziadei, a milestone that takes place near the end of the season when the lead meets a contestant’s family, was a vibrant glimpse of how Filipino and Hawaiian culture have shaped her. Prior to the visit, Rachel informs Joey that he should touch her mother’s hand to his forehead when they meet, a gesture known as “Mano po,” which conveys respect. And during the date, Rachel’s family warmly receives him with a roast pig in the backyard and schools him on a Filipino courtship tradition. @bachelornationabc Joey with the Mano Po ♬ original sound - The Bachelor Rachel has also discussed her upbringing in Hawaii as a mixed-race person, offering a perspective that’s rarely been highlighted on the show, and emphasizing how her family has blended different cultures. “Growing up as a mixed girl in Hawaii, there wasn’t many people who looked like me on TV,” she said in a People interview. “I’m very honored that moving forward, girls can say, ‘Hey, if Rachel can do that, I can do that. If Rachel can speak her truth, I can speak her truth.’” Another moving moment this season centered on Jenn and her description of the trauma she experienced growing up in a dysfunctional household. In one scene, Jenn spoke candidly about the conflict in her immigrant family, prompting what she’s said has been an outpouring from fans who have similar backgrounds. While on a one-on-one date with Joey, Jenn described how her parents often had volatile fights when she was a kid and how her relationship with her father has deteriorated in the years since as a result. “I wanna acknowledge the comments and DMs I’ve been getting from people who say that they can relate to my story and I just want to say that I’m so sorry you can relate,” Jenn said in a TikTok post. “It felt so nice to hear another Viet woman go through the same generational trauma that I went through,” one of the top commenters on the post wrote. @jenntranx Toxic relationships is something i really want to talk about bc often times we dont know we’re in one bc it creeps up on you but i want everyone to know theyre deserving of love and to not let history repeat itself #toxic #toxicrelationship #emotionalabuse #abuse #relationships #relationshipadvice ♬ original sound - Jenn Tran Both Nance and Tran also received “hot seats,” or special interviews, in the recent “Women Tell All” episode, often a sign ABC is considering them as potential leads. Nance was known on the show for her level-headed energy, commitment to her career, and “slow burn” relationship with Joey, while Tran’s bubbly personality, openness to adventure, and a playful connection were her signature. Both women, who were eliminated in recent weeks, were charismatic contenders and would be compelling future stars. Being able to see an array of Asian women depicted this season was significant as well because it highlighted a wide spectrum of personalities. In addition to Rachel and Jenn, who were portrayed more prominently as frontrunners focused on vying for Joey’s affections, Katelyn DeBacker, a radiochemist from New Mexico of Vietnamese descent, was seen as bringing her quirk and humor to the show, and Madina Alam, a therapist of Bangladeshi descent, was synonymous with her thoughtful and considerate responses to the bizarre drama swirling around her. Lea Cayanan, an account manager from Hawaii who is of Filipino descent, also received what is known in Bachelor parlance as a “villain edit,” in a way barrier-breaking in itself. After dueling with fellow contestant Maria Georgas — a white executive assistant from Ontario, Canada — Lea became associated with causing drama and coming off as a “mean girl.” While her actions were far from laudable, it was interesting to see an Asian woman embrace the role of the villain after years of other portrayals as submissive sidekicks. That said, when you distill that storyline to its essence, she was still used to draw a contrast with a white counterpart, a problematic plot point of its own. It’s uncommon to see Asian women depicted in pop culture in a way that’s more complicated and messy, NPR’s Deepa Shivaram previously wrote about Devi, the protagonist of the Netflix show Never Have I Ever. Harleen Singh, director of the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, emphasized that representation and the breaking of stereotypes require the chance for people to be their full selves and not just an ideal that’s been set out for them. “It’s ... [the ability] to just be human beings who have errors, who have wants, who are contradictory. Pardon my French, but to f*** up as much as anybody else,” Singh previously told NPR. Contestants have also forced discussions about racism Asian contestants have also used their platforms to force conversations about racism that would otherwise be left poorly addressed by a franchise ill-equipped to confront them. One of the early examples of this was tied to a mistake that The Bachelor’s social media accounts made in January, when it tagged the wrong Asian person in an Instagram post. In a photo of Jenn kissing Joey, The Bachelor account instead tagged Lea. That mistake then sparked a discussion about how Asian people have been confused for one another in different settings, including the workplace, and how dehumanizing those errors can be. In response to the mix-up, Jenn posted a TikTok video sharing an experience of how a nurse she worked with wasn’t able to tell her apart from another Asian staff member, despite having known each other for a year. “The issue at hand is not that you can’t tell me apart from different Asians, it’s the fact that you don’t care,” Jenn said in the video. @jenntranx This is why Asian representation on TV is so important. The lack of exposure directly correlates to the ignorance. I’m not saying everyone is guilty of cultural ignorance but it is disheartening to see how many news articles about me have used pictures of other Asian women who clearly do not look like me. Let’s continue to take accountability, learn from others and lead with love always #culturalignorance #diversity #asianamerican #asian #culture #vietnamese ♬ original sound - Jenn Tran It’s a problem that’s so commonplace that designer Linh-Yen Hoang has released a pithy pin that simply reads, “Wrong Asian.” And while people often brush off such actions as honest mistakes, they essentially suggest that Asian people are interchangeable, reaffirming tropes that Asian people are a monolithic group devoid of individuality. “Whether the person acted without malice, the effect is the same: It erases my body of work for someone else’s, simply because their ancestors were born on the same continent as mine,” Washington Post reporter Michelle Ye Hee Lee wrote in 2019. “It tells me that my place in journalism — and that of the other Asian reporter they confused me for — is dispensable, interchangeable and indistinguishable.” Jenn’s and Lea’s perspectives were ultimately invaluable in having a deeper conversation about this mishap and in drawing attention to a widespread issue that some may write off as trivial. “Until we have a world stage and a media platform that is representative of the world we come from and the communities that make it up, I think we will always have a ways to go,” Lea stated in her response. During the “Women Tell All” episode, Rachel also spoke about racism she’s faced from viewers of the show, revealing that people have bombarded her with messages calling her the “N-word” and “jungle Asian.” Many of these attacks came after Rachel was chosen to move forward as one of the final three contestants instead of Maria, who has accrued a large fanbase. Rachel’s comments have renewed attention to the racism within the Bachelor fandom and the harassment that contestants of color, in particular, have faced. That conversation showed, too, how much work the show still needs to do to protect its contestants and to thoughtfully handle the subject. Rather than specifically addressing the racism that Rachel experienced, for instance, host Jesse Palmer quickly pivoted to asking the rest of the cast if they had received “hateful” comments in a follow-up to her remarks. In doing so, he glossed over the specific racism she was experiencing and sought to broaden the focus to more general harassment that the cast of women has faced. “It is part of my Asian culture to remain quiet, always be respectful, and apologize first. No more,” Rachel wrote in an Instagram post. “It is time that we speak up. To all my minorities... speak up and speak loud.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rachel Nance (@rachelmariean) Whether it’s offering viewers a window into their personalities and upbringings, or vocally condemning enduring racism in the franchise, the contestants of this season have brought new voices to a tired show. Leads on the show, in particular, also send a message about who has agency in these relationships, and who’s deserving of this chance to find love. Casting Rachel or Jenn as the next Bachelorette would be a huge opportunity to keep these conversations going — and reframe that narrative.

Chicago’s inhumane migrant evictions are a symptom of a bigger problem

Preview: Venezuelan migrants, Lenin Diaz, 11, left, Maria Inojosa, 43, and Diaz’s mother Euglimar Ramos, 30, walk outside a shelter on December 19, 2023, in Chicago. | Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images They point to much deeper holes in US immigration policy. Chicago’s decision to move forward with a controversial migrant eviction proposal is underscoring ongoing gaps in immigration policy that continue to exist across the country — and the inhumane quick fixes that are being used in the meantime. Earlier this month, Chicago began evicting migrants from homeless shelters after Mayor Brandon Johnson instituted a policy stating that people must leave these centers after 60 days. The goal, Johnson has said, is to incentivize migrants to find permanent housing and to free up space in these shelters, which have become overwhelmed past their breaking points in recent months. Migrants can apply for extensions if they have an extenuating circumstance, or if they are in the process of moving to permanent housing. Those who don’t have housing lined up can also return to the city’s migrant “landing zone,” a center established to process new migrants, and reapply for a shelter spot. Advocates and progressive lawmakers have criticized the policy for being inhumane. As newcomers to the US, many migrants don’t have existing funds for housing and are waiting on work permits. Those who don’t have families or other social networks in the US are often struggling to find a place to stay as well as a way to remain afloat financially. “New arrivals may be offered the opportunity to go to the landing zone, but many will likely end up living on the streets and parks near the shelter they were displaced from,” the Progressive Caucus of the Chicago City Council wrote in a recent statement. Chicago’s response points to challenges affecting a number of cities — including New York — as they’ve grappled with an influx of thousands of migrants, many of whom have been bussed or flown there from the southern border by Republican governors like Texas’s Greg Abbott. It also highlights holes in federal immigration policy when it comes to both funding and migrant resettlement that leave local leaders grasping for a temporary patch. “We have literally built an entire infrastructure for an international crisis that Congress hasn’t figured out,” Johnson said in January, regarding the construction of new shelters. Chicago’s policy, briefly explained Johnson first announced this policy last November as the city tried to stem the growing number of migrants arriving there, navigate concerns from existing residents, and assist the migrants who had already arrived. As of late March, there were 10,555 migrants living in the city’s 23 homeless shelters, a decrease from earlier in the year. Since 2022, Chicago has seen a large jump of more than 37,000 migrants arriving in the city, a notable uptick relative to recent years. Following the surge in migrant arrivals in August 2022, Chicago began setting up emergency shelters in order to accommodate this increase, dubbing itself “the welcoming city.” As a sanctuary city, it’s committed to providing services for migrants regardless of immigration status, and it’s pledged not to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deport people. The investments the city has made in the months since include setting up numerous shelters in parks, schools, and hotels; establishing a “landing zone” center where migrants can go when they initially arrive; and providing social services and a caseworker for each new arrival. In total, this effort cost Chicago at least $138 million in 2023, and it’s expected to cost at least another $150 million this year. “The City’s goal is to provide short-term emergency shelter to new arrivals as they are connected to resources including public benefits,” a Chicago mayor’s office spokesperson, told Vox via email. But as this month’s changes make evident, Chicago and other cities weren’t really prepared for the long term. The city’s policies — and residents’ reactions — to the incoming migrants have also changed as more people have arrived. At first, city officials emphasized Chicago’s welcoming history, but as the number of migrant arrivals grew in 2023, and shelters and services became overwhelmed, local leaders both sounded the alarm for federal support and introduced proposals like evictions. Under the new shelter policy, migrants who have been in a shelter for 60 days must leave or reapply for a spot. Several exemptions also exist for families with school-age children, pregnant people, and those who are ill, buying the majority of migrants staying in these shelters more time. In the initial two days of evictions, eight single migrants were forced to leave, while roughly 2,000 could be required to do so by the end of April. A chief concern regarding such policies is that they effectively leave migrants with nowhere to go. The city has urged migrants to apply for state rental assistance so they can find permanent housing, but it’s not guaranteed that they will qualify or that they’ll receive it in time. Similarly, it could take awhile for any applications for work permits to be approved, and only a fraction of the newcomers in Chicago likely qualify for such approvals. “It really stresses me out. What am I going to do? Where am I going to go?” Daniel Vizcaino, a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker with an April move-out date, told NBC News. The implementation of this policy has already been delayed multiple times because of outcry from city council members and others, as well as freezing cold weather in the city. “We need an end to this policy, as it doesn’t solve our challenges, it merely exacerbates and displaces them,” Alderman Andre Vasquez has written in a letter. Other policies that Chicago has put in place include coordinating transportation for migrants to other destinations if they have a family member or secondary place to go. Chicago’s not alone in struggling to find long-term solutions for large influxes of migrants it initially welcomed. New York City also saw a surge of migrant arrivals over the last year, and spent an estimated $1.45 billion in the fiscal year of 2023 to provide shelter and support. This past January, New York City also began its own wave of evictions of migrant families, capping their stays in shelters at 60 days. And in mid-March, it announced that it was limiting single adult migrants to 30-day stays in the city’s shelters. These crises are due to deeper problems in the US immigration system Right now, cities are moving from one short-term solution to the next. Regional leaders, including Chicago Mayor Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have stressed that the current situation is not sustainable for them and that they’re in desperate need of more federal funding, as well as policy changes on issues like work permits. The federal government has provided millions in grants to both Chicago and New York, but those funds aren’t seen as sufficient to help address the scope of the problem. Similarly, the White House has streamlined applications for some work permits, but those changes are likely only a fraction of what is needed. According to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute (a think tank that’s opposed Trump’s immigration policies in the past), it can take months for migrants to get a work permit depending on their immigration status. While those with parole status or temporary protective status (TPS) can try to apply for a work permit right away, asylum seekers must wait for their asylum applications to be approved before they can even start that process. And application processes for these permits can be complicated for newcomers as they navigate language barriers and bureaucratic documents. Larger changes to the work permit system are one of the more substantive solutions that regional leaders have also urged, but they’d likely require more federal action. Beyond responses to the immediate crisis, public officials, including Johnson, note that more immigration reforms are needed from Congress in order to build a better system for resettling migrants. As Vox’s Abdallah Fayyad has written, the US has established an effective federal policy for resettling refugees that helps place people across the country and provides access to social services. No comparable system currently exists for asylum seekers, leaving cities and states who are receiving these arrivals to develop ad hoc policies on their own. The prospect of approving such reforms, however, seems like a long shot as lawmakers have struggled to coalesce on even the most limited immigration proposals.

The Baltimore bridge collapse and its potential consequences, explained

Preview: Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images From search efforts to how a ship can knock down a bridge, here’s what you need to know. The shocking collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge after it was hit by a cargo ship early Tuesday morning has the region reeling. Thus far, two people who were working on the bridge have been rescued and six are presumed dead by their employer, Brawner Builders, given the temperature of the water and the time that has passed since the accident, the Associated Press reported Tuesday evening. Sonar, robots, and human divers were among the resources deployed in the Coast Guard’s search, which ended some 18 hours after the collapse. The focus, now, is on the recovery of remains. “This is an unthinkable tragedy,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said at a press conference on Tuesday morning. The collapse of the bridge will also affect transportation in the region — and potentially global trade. Used by 31,000 vehicles each day, the Key Bridge is a central conduit for traffic in the area. The incident also comes as the global shipping industry is facing several other challenges, including a record-breaking drought in Panama and Houthi strikes on ships in the Red Sea. Due to closures at the Port of Baltimore — one of the busiest in the country, especially for foreign cargo — logistics and shipping companies will likely need to reroute more key deliveries. Authorities have acknowledged these concerns — and the challenges they pose — but emphasized that they’re secondary to the human lives affected. Why did the Baltimore bridge collapse? What happened with the ship? The incident took place around 1:30 am ET Tuesday when a large cargo ship called the Dali abruptly lost power and collided with a support column on the Key Bridge, a 1.6-mile structure that stretches across the Patapsco River. After the ship — which holds a volume of 95,000 gross tons — hit the column, video shows parts of the four-lane bridge crumbling rapidly and collapsing into the water. BREAKING: Ship collides with Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing it to collapse pic.twitter.com/OcOrSjOCRn — BNO News (@BNONews) March 26, 2024 Shortly before the collision, the crew of the ship, which is owned by a Singaporean company called Grace Ocean, reported that they had lost control of the vessel and issued a “mayday” call. Dali was originally headed from Baltimore to Colombo, Sri Lanka, on behalf of Maersk, the major Danish shipping and logistics company. As experts told USA Today, the bridge failure was so catastrophic because the ship took out a support column — a key component that kept it structurally sound — while going at a high speed. “Any bridge would have been in serious danger from a collision like this,” Nii Attoh-Okine, the chair of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Maryland, said. For now, it’s not clear what caused the ship to lose power, though the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is conducting an investigation. (Last June, an inspection in Chile found the Dali had some propulsion issues, but a standard US Coast Guard inspection later in the year found no problems.) Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, said that agency investigators had boarded the ship overnight to collect data and will begin interviewing crew members Wednesday. Authorities have also concluded that there’s no evidence this was an intentional incident or terrorist attack. “Everything so far indicates that this was a terrible accident. At this time we have no other indication,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday afternoon in a press conference. What do we know about casualties from the Francis Key Bridge collapse? When the collapse happened, a group of eight construction workers were filling in potholes on the bridge. Two of those workers have been rescued, including one who was in stable condition and one who was hospitalized. The remains of the six other workers have not yet been found. They include people from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, several outlets report. The identities of the workers have prompted some to question the risks they faced. The tragedy, though, could have been far worse: thousands of vehicles cross the bridge each day on average. But immediately after the ship’s “mayday” call — and before it collided with the bridge — government officials were able to shut down additional vehicle traffic, preventing cars and passengers from being harmed. (Vehicles can be seen falling into the river in videos, but authorities said these were the parked cars of construction workers.) “These people are heroes. They saved lives last night,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at a press conference about the ship’s crew. Are bridges safe? Has a cargo ship crashed into a bridge before? Yes, bridges are safe — but not as safe as they could be. In the 1970s, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) adopted the National Bridge Inspection Standards regulations, after a horrible 1967 accident in West Virginia where the Silver Bridge collapsed and killed 46 people. The accident ushered in a new era of bridge safety at the national level. In 2022, the FHWA updated its standards to incorporate recent technological advancements. But not all bridges are created equally. One in three bridges in the US are in need of repair or replacement, according to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association. Maintenance helps bridges be able to withstand stressors such as natural disasters, for instance. The FHWA classifies bridges into three ratings: good, fair, and poor. Those with poor ratings are prioritized for repairs first. To be clear, Key Bridge was structurally sound with a fair rating. It’s just not designed to absorb the shock of an incredibly large and heavy cargo ship ramming into it, engineers say. (As the Guardian’s Oliver Milman points out, current bridge code doesn’t account for today’s supersized cargo ships, some of which are far bigger than the Dali.) Nonetheless, the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency responsible for investigating transportation accidents, will be looking deeper into the safety of the bridge. “Part of our investigation will be how this bridge was constructed,” said Homendy during a NTSB press briefing Tuesday. She stressed it will take time, referencing the investigation for the 2022 Fern Hollow Bridge collapse in Pennsylvania, which took two years to fully complete. When it comes to the cargo ships: It is not uncommon for a ship to lose power as the Dali did Tuesday, according to attorney Matt Shaffer, who handles maritime law cases, and without power, a ship of that size can cause extensive damage. But cargo ships bumping into a bridge and causing it to collapse isn’t common. Since 1960, it’s happened just 35 times worldwide. As of 2015, a total of 342 people have died from bridge failures caused by ships. To put that in perspective, more than 40,000 people in the US died in a car accident in 2020, according to some estimates. How important is the Francis Scott Key Bridge, and what’s next for it? The Francis Scott Key Bridge — named after the poet who wrote the lyrics to what became the national anthem — not only connects commuters from one part of the harbor to another, it plays an important industrial role. It’s one of three major crossways for the Baltimore Harbor. In 2023, more than 12.4 million passenger and commercial vehicles crossed the bridge, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority. Bloomberg News reported that it transports $28 billion in goods annually — with nearly 4,900 trucks crossing daily. The bridge and its almost nine miles worth of approaches serve as a final link in I-695. From there, the interstate connects the city’s port to I-95, the major highway along the East Coast. Construction of the bridge started in 1972 and was completed March 1977. It cost $60.3 million at the time to build. The bridge is mostly made of lightweight concrete, according to a November 2021 report by the US Federal Highway Administration. Lightweight concrete, the report notes, isn’t typically used for bridge construction, but it “can be used as a durable and cost-effective material for bridges.” Bridges are a feat of engineering — and are rightfully expensive. A $60 million project in the 1970s would cost far more to execute today, especially given increased scrutiny for speed and safety (and inflation). Rebuilding the bridge will likely cost “several billion dollars,” Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute, told Bloomberg. Biden, during the press conference Tuesday afternoon, said that it is his “intention” that the federal government will pay for reconstructing the bridge. “And I expect Congress to support my effort,” he added. Even with federal money, it could take months, if not years, to rebuild, disrupting both commercial and commuter traffic in the region. What does this mean for the shipping industry? The search and rescue operations have shut down the port of Baltimore, which has become an increasingly important shipping hub for the eastern US. The port is the 17th largest in the nation based on the amount of cargo that goes through the port, and it handles the largest amount of transportation cargo — cars and trucks, but also coal, farm equipment, and construction machinery, the New York Times reported. Kevin Doell, Maersk’s North American media representative, told Vox that the Dali was carrying a “wide variety of cargo” from a number of different customers, but did not elaborate. The broader economic impact will likely be limited — already, nearby ports like one in Virginia are talking about supporting temporary diversions. But the terminal’s closure could have regional effects, and it is another setback for the global shipping industry in an already difficult year. Maersk, the company that owns the Dali, said in January that it would no longer send its vessels through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait near Yemen, where Houthi forces have targeted ships since November in response to the Israeli war in Gaza. Because of the risk of damage, injury, and kidnapping, some global shipping companies have opted to take the longer shipping route around the Horn of Africa, which can add as much as two weeks to a voyage and comes with attendant fuel and salary costs for the companies. The Panama Canal, another global commercial transit hub, is also causing issues for the industry. A massive drought in Panama has severely limited the number of ships that can use the canal, slowing transit times and increasing costs. Though the Baltimore port has played an increasing role in trade, it’s too soon to see what the commercial fallout will be. Other ports can absorb the container ships Baltimore would take — companies have the option to send their cargo to ports throughout the East Coast, including in New York and Virginia, industry executives told the Times. But the damage will most likely be felt in the auto industry, given that Baltimore is the country’s largest auto importer. General Motors and Ford were already re-routing their vehicles and auto parts to Brunswick, Georgia, as of Tuesday; that could mean some supply chain delays, but any disruptions are expected to be minimal, according to a statement from GM. Some companies may opt to send their goods to West Coast ports and then ship them east, rather than risk bottlenecks as eastern ports reorient their operations, Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen told Bloomberg. That was already going on prior to the accident, as 45,000 dockworkers with the International Longshoremen’s Association on the East and Gulf Coasts were threatening to strike should the union not reach a fair contract with ports and shipping companies by October 1. Update, March 27, 11:05 am ET: This story, originally published March 26, has been updated twice with further developments.

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Preview: LOS ANGELES, CA — Upon learning of Diddy's extensive experience fostering relationships with child actors, Nickelodeon Studios has named the rapper as its new President.

10 Changes Trump Made In The 'God Bless The USA' Bible

Preview: The entire world is still abuzz with former President Donald Trump's announcement of the release of his new "God Bless the USA" Bible, but people have wondered what sets this new edition of the Bible apart from all others before it.

Buttigieg Praises Cargo Ship For Helping Dismantle Racism In American Roads

Preview: BALTIMORE, MD — As crews continued to deal with the aftermath of the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg praised the cargo ship Dali for helping dismantle racism in American roads.

Top Stories
Nickelodeon Announces Dan Schneider Has Been Chemically Castrated With Slime

Preview: LOS ANGELES—Saying the channel would do everything in its power to make up for the writer and producer’s years of toxic, abusive behavior, Nickelodeon announced Thursday that Dan Schneider had been chemically castrated with slime. “While in his powerful position at Nickelodeon, Mr. Schneider harassed child stars and… Read more...

Taco Bell Introduces New Burrito That Will Do Its Best To Satisfy Hunger, But There Are No Guarantees In This Crazy World

Preview: IRVINE, CA—Rolling out the new menu item in a national ad campaign, Taco Bell introduced a limited-time burrito Thursday that will reportedly do its best to satisfy people’s hunger, but there are no guarantees in this crazy world. “Though we’ve done everything in our power to create a burrito that will assuage our… Read more...

Abandoning Wife And Kids To Visit McDonald’s In Every Foreign Country Not As Satisfying As Man Expected

Preview: YICHANG, CHINA—Feeling an unfamiliar tinge of emptiness midway through his 117-nation excursion, Indiana resident Larry Hough reported Wednesday that abandoning his family back in Fort Wayne in order to visit a McDonald’s in every foreign country was not as satisfying an endeavor as he had imagined. “Huh, is it… Read more...

What Reddit Users Can Expect Now That The Company Is Public

Preview: The social media site Reddit successfully launched an IPO last week that raised $748 million. The Onion examines what Reddit users can expect now that the company has gone public. Read more...

NFL Approves Major Changes To Kickoff Rules

Preview: The NFL completely overhauled its kickoff rules, taking elements used in the XFL in an effort to make the play a more integral part of the game and decrease the number of touchbacks to keep the ball in play. What do you think? Read more...

Secretary Of Education Fired After Throwing Chair At Nation

Preview: WASHINGTON—Having acknowledged that his behavior was completely uncalled for no matter how rude the U.S. populace had acted, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was fired Wednesday after he reportedly threw a chair at the nation. “Unfortunately, Secretary Cardona got into an argument with the nation yesterday that… Read more...

Baltimore’s Key Bridge Collapses

Preview: The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed yesterday after a 948-foot cargo ship struck it departing the port, causing the governor to declare a state of emergency. What do you think? Read more...

But Dog Likes Fighting For Money

Preview: CHICAGO—Pleading with animal rescue authorities as they wrestled him into the back of a van, local pit bull mix Pistol stated Wednesday that he likes fighting for money. “But I’m so good at it—please!” said Pistol, who reportedly panicked as he caught one last glimpse of the beloved dog-fighting compound he called… Read more...

Grandmother Spends Entire Day Peeling Single Potato

Preview: DANVILLE, KY—Determined to complete the task though her progress was slowed by the root vegetable continually slipping from her arthritic grasp, local grandmother Dolores Wheeler reportedly spent all of Wednesday peeling a single potato. “We really want to help her, but anytime one of us goes in there, she shoos us… Read more...