1. That we all survive (my # 1 wish)
2. That you stop chanting USA USA at every international sporting event
3. Find a sense of humor
4. Learn to love each other again
5. Stop being so obnoxious when visiting other countries
6. Learn to be humble
7. Stop watching Fox News
8. Get out of your partisan bubbles and get to know the "other"
9. Do something for someone else, not just for yourself
10. Become a Snowflake, each one unique and special
And don't get TOO wasted tonight.
We document evidence that firms systematically increase specialized, locally targeted advertising following the firm being taken to trial in that given location - precisely following initiation of the suit. In particular, we use legal actions brought against publicly traded firms over the 20-year sample period that progress to trial between 1995 and 2014. In terms of magnitude, the increase is sizable: targeted local advertising increases by 23% following the suit. They focus their advertisement spikes specifically toward jury trials, and in fact specifically toward the most likely jury pool. In addition, along with advertising expenditures, firms significantly increase their charitable contributions targeted toward litigated locations following being sued there. Lastly, we document that these advertising spikes are associated with verdicts, increasing the probability of a favorable outcome.
Firms are significantly more likely to initiate advertising in cities (in which it had previously advertised zero), directly following lawsuit – with the probability of advertising initiation increasing by 25%. This results in firms shifting their advertising share significantly to sued locations following suits; both relative to the firm’s total advertising spend, and relative to the total amount spent in that DMA (Designated Market Area) by all other firms.To concretize this, assume we find that Walmart is sued in Akron, OH in 2001. We see a large spike in Walmart’s advertising in Akron directly following the suit. We see no abnormal movement in Walmart’s advertising policy or spending leading up to the suit. Additionally, Walmart does not increase advertising following the suit in Toledo, OH (a similar sized market with similar growth rates leading up to 2001). Moreover, Target shows no abnormal move in the same sued-location, Akron, OH, at the exact same time that Walmart is ramping up advertising (so it has nothing to do with a general location-time effect).
We find in this paper general evidence across time, location, and firms, of corporations engaging in this “influencing of the verdict,” behavior. While we focus primarily on advertising, this could certainly take the form of other channels. To explore this further, we collect micro-level data on the charitable contributions of firms’ charitable arms at the zip code level. We find, analogous to advertising expenditures, that firms significantly increase their charitable contributions to a DMA directly following being sued there.
The federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., on Friday ruled that former President Donald Trump is not immune from lawsuits brought by Capitol police officers regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
The order, released on the docket Friday, stated that the former president failed to demonstrate that he was entitled to “absolute presidential immunity from certain civil damages claims against him.”
The judges rejected his argument that his alleged actions “constituted speech on matters of public concern” and that his speech was “invariably an official function."
“The salient question in Blassingame, we explained, was instead whether President Trump’s alleged actions reasonably could be understood as official functions of the presidency, in which case official-act immunity would attach, or, alternatively, whether they reasonably could be understood only as re-election activity, in which case it would not."The judges added that, after closer review, the claim simply “bears no inherent connection to the essential distinction between official and unofficial acts.”
Opinion | 2024 resolution: Save democracy
Second, forget about “Why doesn’t the media … ?” Understand that for-profit media outlets are not in the business of making informed citizens. They are in the moneymaking business, which they think entails hyping horse-race politics and stoking fear of bad things (such as the recession that did not happen). You can write letters to the editor and send concise, polite emails to the culprit to call out whataboutism and false balance.
Better yet, look for and help amplify the instances in which print, cable and online media shed their habit of normalizing four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump and level with voters about the authoritarian threat.
Broaden the pro-democracy coalition. Unless the entire pro-democracy movement cooperates to defeat the MAGA movement and its likely nominee, Trump and his cronies will shred our democracy and change the fabric of American life. They are planning what can only be described as a White Christian dictatorship in which they use the military, Justice Department and executive fiat to punish enemies and ferret out dissent.
Now is no time to be picky about anti-MAGA allies. This person might have once supported the Iraq War; that person’s fantasizing about a magical Democratic nominee might drive you up the wall. None of that matters now. Once our democracy is secured, Americans can return to arguing about issues whose importance fades in the face of a dire threat to American democracy.During the fight to vanquish the MAGA threat, you’ll have to tolerate differences in tactics and policy with other democracy defenders. Bringing everyone into the big tent for democracy and the rule of law is the singular challenge for 2024.
Opinion | States were cooperating on election integrity.Then GOP officials quit.Since 2022, nine states where Republican officials administer elections have quit a nonprofit, nonpartisan consortium that helps keep voter rolls up to date through interstate data exchange. They did so amid pressure from former president Donald Trump, who claimed in March that the consortium “pumps the rolls” for Democrats. Consequently, voter rolls in those states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — are less accurate, and it’s becoming harder to detect the small number of people who improperly vote in multiple states. Indeed, as 2024 begins, these same election officials find themselves spending taxpayer dollars to re-create the very tools that the system they abandoned had provided.Formed in 2012, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) grew to include 33 states and D.C. It identified 12.5 million people who moved to a different state from the ones in which they were registered to vote as well as almost 600,000 deceased voters still on the rolls. The database worked excellently, before fringe blogs started calling it part of a plot funded by George Soros to boost Democratic registration. ERIC, whose operating costs are paid entirely by member states, received some seed funding from Pew Charitable Trusts, which previously received support from a foundation backed by Mr. Soros, but he has never been directly involved.
Some GOP secretaries of state who pulled out of ERIC had publicly defended it quite recently. In February, Iowa’s Paul Pate called it “a godsend” and Ohio’s Frank LaRose described it as “one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have.” Both announced on March 17 that their states would withdraw.
Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting ‘Liberal’ Teachings of JesusAn evangelical leader is warning that conservative Christians are now rejecting the teachings of Jesus as “liberal talking points.”
Russell Moore, former top official for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who is now the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, said during an interview aired on NPR’s All Things Considered this week that Christianity is in a “crisis” due to the current state of right-wing politics.
Moore has found himself at odds with other evangelical leaders due to his frequent criticism of former President Donald Trump. He resigned his position with the SBC in 2021 following friction over his views on Trump and a sex abuse crisis among Southern Baptist clergy.
In his NPR interview, Moore suggested that Trump had transformed the political landscape in the U.S. to the point where some Christian conservatives are openly denouncing a central doctrine of their religion as being too “weak” and “liberal” for their liking.
“Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching—‘turn the other cheek’—[and] to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’” Moore said.
“When the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ’ ... The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak,” he added. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis.”
During an interview on conservative network Real America's Voice in January, Trump lashed out at certain evangelical leaders that he said displayed a “great disloyalty” by being reluctant to back his 2024 presidential run.
“That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump complained. “There's nobody that did more for the movement than I have. And that includes the movement of evangelicals and Christians and the movement very much of ‘right to life.’”
They’re Paid Billions to Root Out Child Laborin the U.S. Why Do They Fail?
Private auditors have failed to detect migrant children working for U.S. suppliers of Oreos, Gerber baby snacks, McDonald’s milk and many other productsOne morning in 2019, an auditor arrived at a meatpacking plant in rural Minnesota. He was there on behalf of the national drugstore chain Walgreens to ensure that the factory, which made the company’s house brand of beef jerky, was safe and free of labor abuses.
He ran through a checklist of hundreds of possible problems, like locked emergency exits, sexual harassment and child labor. By the afternoon, he had concluded that the factory had no major violations. It could keep making jerky, and Walgreens customers could shop with a clear conscience.
When night fell, another 150 workers showed up at the plant. Among them were migrant children who had come to the United States by themselves looking for work. Children as young as 15 were operating heavy machinery capable of amputating fingers and crushing bones.
Migrant children would work at the Monogram Meat Snacks plant in Chandler, Minn., for almost four more years, until the Department of Labor visited this spring and found such severe child labor violations that it temporarily banned the shipment of any more jerky.
In the past two decades, private audits have become the solution to a host of public relations headaches for corporations.
In a series of articles this year, The Times has revealed that migrant children, who have been coming to America in record numbers, are working dangerous jobs in every state, in violation of labor laws.
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — They recognized the TV repairman.
The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger.
The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned.
Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. “Nastya,” he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. “I’ve seen worse under occupation.”
Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war.
Glad to see we didn't lose any "bits" over the Holidays:
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken headed to Mexico City on Wednesday to discuss a surge in illegal immigration as thousands of migrants trek through southern Mexico in a mass movement toward the United States.
Mr. Blinken will meet with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a time when border crossings have hit record numbers. There have been days this month when the Border Patrol encountered more than 10,000 people at the southern border.
Republicans have stepped up their attacks on Mr. Biden over the border numbers, a potential [actual, not potential] vulnerability for the president as he seeks re-election next year.
An appeals court on Tuesday reversed a conviction that led to the resignation last year of former congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), ruling that he was not tried in the right venue on charges of lying to federal agents about illegal campaign contributions from a foreign billionaire.The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said that Fortenberry’s trial in Los Angeles “took place in a state where no charged crime was committed, and before a jury drawn from the vicinage of the federal agencies that investigated the defendant.”
“The Constitution does not permit this,” the decision said. “Fortenberry’s convictions are reversed so that he may be retried, if at all, in a proper venue.”
Days after denouncing an unverified report casting innuendo about his sexuality and accusing him of being a frequent participant at sex parties hosted by producer and music mogul Sean Combs, popularly known as Diddy, televangelist T.D. Jakes called his accusers “liars” on Sunday and noted that even “if everything was true, all I got to do is repent sincerely from my heart.”
Jakes, who leads The Potter's House megachurch in Dallas, Texas, directly addressed his congregation for the first time on Christmas Eve and urged them not to worry about him because “I’m good.”
“Would y'all please do me a favor and stop worrying about me and give God some praise and honor and glory? I can feel you. … I am fine. I'm good. I'm good. I'm the man for the job. I'm good,” Jakes declared in a public livestream of his Christmas Eve service on YouTube which has since been made private.
“I can feel you. I can feel you. Relax ... We’re not gonna let the devil take over our service. No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna give God some praise and some honor and some glory, for this is the day that the Lord has made, we shall rejoice and be glad in it,” he insisted. “I'm not going to let the rain stop me. I’m not going to let the weather stop me. And I'm sure not going to let the liars stop me.
“The worst that could happen, if everything was true, all I got to do is repent sincerely, from my heart. There's enough power in the blood to cover all kinds of sin. I don't care what it is, the blood would fix it. But I ain't got to repent about this,” Jakes declared.
Donald Trump Warns Americans of Undercover Spies Being Sent by the FBI to persecute Christians.On Thursday night, the former president posted a video to his Truth Social account with the caption “Stopping the Persecution of Christians!” His post says the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) have adopted an anti-Christian bias and are sending agents to churches as part of that alleged “bigotry.”
“Under crooked Joe Biden, Christians and Americans of faith are being persecuted like nothing this nation has ever seen before,” Trump said in the video.
He went on: “Catholics, in particular, are being targeted and evangelicals are surely on the watch list as well. Over the past three years, the Biden administration has sent SWAT teams to arrest pro-life activists. The FBI has been caught profiling devout Catholics as possible domestic terrorists and planning to send undercover spies into Catholic churches, just like in the old days of the Soviet Union.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) joined the growing chorus of GOP critics of Colorado’s ruling disqualifying former President Trump from the state’s primary ballot, arguing “radical leftism” has “infiltrated” every institution in the U.S.
Asked on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo for his view on the Colorado ruling, Johnson said, “Well, radical leftism has infiltrated every institution in this country, our courts, our education system, government agencies. It’s a real problem.”
The Colorado Supreme Court handed down a bombshell ruling last week saying Trump engaged in an insurrection through his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualified anyone from serving in the House or Senate, or as a presidential elector, if they had betrayed their oath of fealty to United States and joined the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Whether Section Three accomplishes anything more remains unclear as a matter of history and ambiguous as a matter of constitutional text. Section Three does not expressly (1) apply to future rebellions or insurrections, (2) apply to persons elected as President of the United States, (3) apply to persons seeking to qualify as a candidate for the Presidency, or (4) indicate whether the enforcement of Section Three requires the passage of enabling legislation.
Prior drafts of Section Three included versions that expressly named the office of the President of the United States, expressly banned presidential candidates from qualifying as a candidate, and expressly applied to both past and future rebellions. Congress omitted all of this language from the final version of Section Three. This final language led the best lawyer in the House to assume that the text did not include the office of the President. Although a single member disagreed, their exchange went unreported in the press, leaving open the possibility that less sophisticated members of the public might also read the text as excluding the office of the President. The exclusion would not have been "absurd" since the Electors Clause ensured that only properly constructed slates of electors could vote for the President.
Key framers and ratifiers also expressly insisted that Section Three would not be self-executing. As Thaddeus Stevens explained, Section Three “will not execute itself,” and at least some participants in the ratifying assemblies expressly agreed (no one claimed otherwise). As far as future rebellions were concerned, the historical record reveals both framers and ratifiers dividing over the text’s possible application to future insurrections. In sum, the historical record supports Lyman Trumbull’s explanation of the original understanding and scope of Section Three: The provision was “intended to put some sort of stigma, some sort of odium upon the leaders of this rebellion, and no other way is left to do it but by some provision of this kind.” Whether the public understood the ambiguous text as allowing for anything more remains historically unclear.
No work to date has presented a systematic investigation of the framing and ratification history of Section Three. As a result scholars (and judges) have been working in the historical dark, insufficiently informed about how the draft developed over months of debate, uninformed of the constitutional precedents against which the final draft would be understood, and without any understanding whatsoever of how ratifiers engaged the proposed text.
For example, since some prior drafts of Section Three expressly limited the provision to the “late rebellion,” [the American Civil War] some scholars claim that the absence of such language in the final draft means Section Three applies to future rebellions. What has gone unrecognized, or undiscussed, is that there were multiple prior drafts of Section Three. Some of these drafts expressly declared that the provision would apply to future rebellions. The final draft, however omits any such reference, rendering the text ambiguous in regard to its application to future rebellions or insurrections.
Beyond setting the stage, the Introduction makes three claims about the conceptual triangle of the rule of law, judicial authority and legitimacy. The first is that all three are essentially contested and interpretive concepts in the sense of Walter B. Gallie and Ronald Dworkin. In their expositions, the contested and interpretative nature of such concepts is nothing to be ‘solved’, rather the formulation of different conceptions and contestation about them are central functions of such concepts. The interpretive and essentially contested nature points us to the relevant ‘actors’ and to conflicts and trade-offs between contested competencies. Thus the second point is that arguments about the rule of law and judicial legitimacy are often a means of questioning or securing the authority of a particular actor or institution in relation to other actors and institutions. The final point is that transposing concepts from the domestic to the supranational is a constructive endeavor because it entails creating new conceptions and substituting old ones as well as legitimizing new authorities and delegitimizing old ones. Thus, this special issue also cautions against discourses that ultimately are more about legitimation than about legitimacy and more about new ways of ruling than the rule of law.
The Supreme Court’s Big Trump Test Is HereAmerica is experiencing a creeping sense of déjà vu. Twenty-three years ago, a bare majority of the justices halted a recount in Florida, effectively handing the presidency to George W. Bush. The specter of Bush v. Gore, the case that stands as a marker of how not to resolve searing political disputes. On Friday, the court turned down Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request for fast-track review of Donald Trump’s claim that former presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for their conduct while in office. But that critical question will almost certainly return to the Supreme Court soon: The D.C. federal appeals court is hearing the case on Jan. 9 and will probably rule shortly thereafter.The point is not that getting the underlying legal questions “right” is irrelevant. But when the stakes are this high and the legal questions are novel, the justices have a duty to hand down decisions that resonate across the political spectrum — or at least that avoid inciting violence in the streets. That’s not subverting the rule of law; it’s preserving it.
A universe in which the court somehow splits the difference — for example, keeping Mr. Trump on the ballot while refusing to endorse (if not affirmatively repudiating) his conduct and spurning his kinglike claim to total immunity — could go a long way toward reducing the temperature of the coming election cycle. Such an outcome could also help restore at least some of the court’s credibility.
Ukrainian forces are suffering from a shortage of artillery shells on the front line, prompting some units to cancel planned assaults, soldiers said this week, and stoking fears over how long Kyiv’s troops will be able to hold their ground against continuing Russian attacks.“The guys are tired — very tired,” a member of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade said. “They are still motivated — many people understand that they have no other choice.”
“But you can’t win a war only on motivation,” he continued. “You should have some kind of a numerical advantage, and with the weapons and weapons systems, it only gets worse and worse. How long can we last? It’s hard to say, but it can’t be long. Everyone understands this.”
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine had the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal on its territory. When Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on removing these weapons from Ukraine appeared to break down in September 1993, the U.S. government engaged in a trilateral process with Ukraine and Russia. The result was the Trilateral Statement, signed in January 1994, under which Ukraine agreed to transfer the nuclear warheads to Russia for elimination. In return, Ukraine received security assurances from the United States, Russia and Britain; compensation for the economic value of the highly-enriched uranium in the warheads (which could be blended down and converted into fuel for nuclear reactors); and assistance from the United States in dismantling the missiles, missile silos, bombers and nuclear infrastructure on its territory.
Americans are sleepwalking into a dictatorship.Why aren’t they more afraid?
Worldview: A second Trump presidency could spell the disintegration of the Nato alliance, and would have far-reaching consequences for the wars in Ukraine and the Middle EastTrump leads all other Republican candidates by double-digit figures in opinion polls. “Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president,” Robert Kagan, a prominent neo-conservative commentator, predicted in the Washington Post. “When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favour… There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day.”
The sense of alarm is shared in Paris and London. “Is American democracy entering its last year?” Piotr Smolar, Le Monde’s Washington correspondent, asked rhetorically.“There is no point in pretending that a man who believes that any election he loses is rigged, that the judicial system is rotten and corrupt, and that his political enemies belong in jail, is a believer in democracy,” Edward Luce wrote in the Financial Times.
It is one of the mysteries of the American soul that, as David Remnick writes in the New Yorker, “Tens of millions of Americans seem undeterred by the prospect of absolutism, cruelty and corruption on the horizon.”
The majority of respondents to a YouGov poll in August, and four out of five Republicans, believe the Biden administration has manipulated the justice system to undermine Trump. They would find it perfectly logical for Trump to appoint special prosecutors to pursue his enemies.
Rodent tears contain social chemosignals with diverse effects, including blocking male aggression. Human tears also contain a chemosignal that lowers male testosterone, but its behavioral significance was unclear. Because reduced testosterone is associated with reduced aggression, we tested the hypothesis that human tears act like rodent tears to block male aggression. Using a standard behavioral paradigm, we found that sniffing emotional tears with no odor percept reduced human male aggression by 43.7%. To probe the peripheral brain substrates of this effect, we applied tears to 62 human olfactory receptors in vitro. We identified 4 receptors that responded in a dose-dependent manner to this stimulus. Finally, to probe the central brain substrates of this effect, we repeated the experiment concurrent with functional brain imaging. We found that sniffing tears increased functional connectivity between the neural substrates of olfaction and aggression, reducing overall levels of neural activity in the latter.
We conducted a long-term screen for women who can cry with ease, ultimately identifying 6 regular donor women. First, we harvested emotional tears from human female donors (6 regular donor women, age range 22 to 25 years) using methods previously described. Donors completed .... specific questionnaires with each donation, on questions such as .... the nature of emotions during donation. Because tears that trickled down the cheek and into the collection device may have collected skin-bound signaling molecules not originating from tear fluid, as a control substance, we trickled saline down the cheeks of the very same donors and collected it in a similar manner. .... To obtain tears, the donor women watched sad film clips in isolation and used a mirror to place a vial and capture the tears trickling down their cheeks. A typical donation used in this study contained approximately 1.6 ml of tears.
Colorado Secretary Of State ‘Extremely Concerned’About Pro-Trump ViolenceColorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold received 64 death threats and more than 900 threats of abuse within three weeks of the case being filed to keep Trump off the state ballot“I’ve been concerned about violence and threats of violence since Donald Trump incited the insurrection,” Griswold, who has been Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state since 2019, said in an interview. “I’ve received hundreds if not thousands of threats at this point.”Jena Griswold - she gets lots of threats by thugs
“I did not file this case. I’m part of this case because I’m the secretary of state,” Griswold said. “Within three weeks of it being filed, I received 64 death threats and over 900 non-lethal threats of abuse. I stopped counting after that.”
“So yes, I’m extremely concerned,” she added. “It just underlines that Donald Trump is a major threat to American democracy, elections and stability. He uses threats and intimidation against his political opponents. When he doesn’t win elections, he tries to steal them. He is a dangerous leader for this country.”
The Supreme Court declined to take up whether President Trump can be prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, punting for now the question on the limits of presidential immunity as the former president seeks to toss the case.
The refusal, which had no noted dissents, comes as an appeals court weighs a motion from Trump to dismiss the case; he argues he has absolute presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s gambit to skip over an intermediate appeals court and bring the issue directly before the Supreme Court was aimed at keeping the schedule of the trial — the first of Trump’s four criminal proceedings — on track.
ANNALS OF AUTOCRACYOpinion | How the battle for democracy will be fought — and wonFor more than a decade and a half, autocracy has been steadily advancing around the globe. Dictators routinely arrest their foes, including those demanding basic rights such as freedom of expression. But they have modernized their methods, taking control of the internet and using it to broadcast disinformation while censoring the truth. They have forced independent media to close and aimed surveillance at social media and the people who use it. They have created firewalls and imposed internet shutdowns. Freedom House found in its latest annual survey of political rights and civil liberties that democracy has been in decline for 17 years — and one of the biggest drivers has been attacks on freedom of expression.But there are ways to confront the forces of authoritarianism, especially on the information battlefield, where the future of democracy may be decided for millions of people. The stakes are enormous: Will open societies thrive and grow, or will more of the globe fall under the sway of dictatorships such as the one in China, where information manipulation is the norm and surveillance technology watches over everyone, all the time?[In response to the Iranian dictatorship shutting down the internet in sensitive areas in rebellion during a period of social unrest] a little-known channel helped millions of Iranians stay in the know. A nongovernmental organization in Los Angeles, NetFreedom Pioneers, had created a method to bypass the internet entirely and broadcast files — text, audio or video — from commercial satellites to anyone with a receiver dish. It is called Toosheh, or Knapsack. The group collected photos and news reports from social media platforms and elsewhere, uploaded them to a satellite and then down to homes in blacked-out Iran. The news was easily shareable on a flash drive.Toosheh, founded by an Iranian émigré, brought fresh and uncensored information into a censored country, offering a ray of hope in the struggle between forces of dictatorship and democracy.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) tried to compel a Seattle hospital to hand over information about gender-affirming treatment Texas youths may have received across state lines, according to court filings, signaling an escalation of his office’s attempts to crack down on Texans’ ability to access such health care.
The Seattle Children’s Hospital requested a Texas judge nullify, or at least rein in, Paxton’s demands, arguing that his office lacks the jurisdiction over the Washington state hospital. In filings this month, the hospital said Paxton’s queries — made under the guise of an investigation by the AG’s consumer protection division — were “sham requests.”
