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Karl Rove: Trump legal problems dampening Republican 'enthusiasm' ahead of midterms

Former White House chief of staff Karl Rove on Monday said former President Trump’s mounting legal problems “dampens the Republican enthusiasm” ahead of the midterm elections, estimating that Democrats are gaining ground in polls amid investigations into the GOP leader’s business and political practices.

Rove, who served in the George W. Bush administration, told Fox News that for the last two weeks the political conversation has centered on the FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate rather than on high inflation and economic uncertainty under President Biden’s watch.

“The more we talk about that and the less we talk about the problems that we face as a country here and now, the better off the Democrats are,” Rove said. “It raises their enthusiasm, dampens the Republican enthusiasm.”

The FBI raided Trump’s Florida estate on Aug. 9 in connection to classified documents he allegedly took after leaving the White House.

The Department of Justice is investigating Trump for potentially violating the Espionage Act because the documents, possibly containing information on nuclear weapons, were supposed to be turned over to the National Archives.

While the GOP rallied around Trump after the unprecedented search of a former president’s home, the raid added to ongoing probes into the former president over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and a New York investigation into his business and tax dealings.

A Politico-Morning Consult poll released last week showed Democrats are leading Republicans by four percentage points on a generic congressional ballot ahead of the November midterm elections.

Republicans had been favored to win the House and possibly overtake the Senate earlier this year when Biden struggled to contain the political fallout and high inflation rates.

Democrats appear to be gaining steam after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion, igniting protests, and passing crucial legislation in Congress, such as a major tax and spending bill and expanded health care benefits for veterans.

Still, nearly three-quarters of voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction, showing a wide disconnect between Americans and elected officials in both parties.

Rove on Monday said the renewed attention on Trump’s legal battles is distracting from what he said is the failure of Democrats to manage the nation.

“Ironically enough, the more we see Biden on the campaign trail, the more it’s going to remind people of the challenges that they think the country faces,” he said. “But that’s not where we’ve been for the last couple weeks.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Gun rights group asks judge to block NY gun ban in Times Square, other 'sensitive' places

A Second Amendment advocacy group on Tuesday asked a federal judge to block a New York state law that bans the carry of firearms in certain “sensitive locations” such as stadiums, hospitals and Manhattan’s Times Square.

The request was part of a lawsuit brought by the Gun Owners of America against a New York law enacted this summer in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court decision expanding the Second Amendment.

The justices’ 6-3 decision in late June found the Constitution generally protects the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. At the same time, the court said guns could be restricted in certain “sensitive locations,” but left that term largely undefined.

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on July 1 signed a law that criminalizes the concealed carry of guns in airports, houses of worship, Times Square and other sensitive places, prompting a swift legal challenge.

Gun Owners of America is one of several plaintiffs who are urging a federal judge in Syracuse to block the New York law before it takes effect on Sept. 1.

During a hearing in the case on Tuesday, a lawyer for the gun rights group told U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby that the Supreme Court meant for the “sensitive location” exception to apply only to a “narrow group of places.”

“You know, government building, schools. But it’s not all of these places. Like, Times Square — it can’t be a sensitive place,” attorney Stephen Stamboulieh said. “It could be that Times Square is sensitive at certain times. But not all the time.”

Defending the law was James Thompson, a lawyer with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, who argued that New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act is “deeply rooted in American history.”

He said the Supreme Court’s recent June decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen recognized that “protecting people from guns in vulnerable places” is “presumptively lawful.”

A ruling on the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction against the New York law is expected soon in the case, Antonyuk v. Bruen.

Source: TEST FEED1

White House to announce student loan cancellation, payment pause extension Wednesday

The White House is expected to announce a plan to cancel a chunk of student loan debt on Wednesday, in addition to an extension of the existing payment pause, three sources with knowledge of the situation told The Hill. 

Sources said President Biden’s intended measure will include $10,000 in loan forgiveness for borrowers who make less than $125,000 annually, as well as another payment freeze for roughly four months. 

The $10,000 figure would be the largest forgiveness of federal student loans to date.

The move comes just a week ahead of the self-imposed Aug. 31 deadline. The timing has left millions of Americans waiting for guidance from the Department of Education on whether student loan payments that have been deferred since the start of the pandemic would resume next month.

Source: TEST FEED1

Florida man sentenced to five years in prison in Gaetz extortion plot

A Florida man was sentenced to 63 months in prison on Monday for his involvement in a plot to extort Don Gaetz, the father of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida).

Stephen Alford, a 63-year-old developer, pleaded guilty in November to scheming to extort $25 million for Don Gaetz, who was previously a state Senate president in Florida.

Prosecutors had been seeking between 11 and 14 years in prison, however the Judge for the Northern District of Florida, Casey Rodgers, said that request was incorrectly based on guidelines for stealing the money, rather than attempting to steal it.

“Intended loss does not fall within the bounds of reasonable interpretation for the term loss,” wrote Rodgers, Northwest Florida Daily News reported.

Alford’s plot would have seen him receive millions from Don Gaetz in exchange for promises of presidential pardon for Matt Gaetz, for any potential crimes from the FBI probe into sex trafficking allegations against the lawmaker.

An indictment filed last August charged Alford with wire fraud and attempting to prevent the seizure of an electronic device.

According to the indictment, Alford allegedly took part in a complex scheme called “Project Homecoming,” in which the Fort Walton Beach man claimed that his “‘team had been assured by the President’ that he will ‘strongly consider’ a ‘Presidential Pardon’ or ‘instruct the Department of Justice to terminate any and all investigations involving’” an individual, identified in reports as Gaetz.

Federal prosecutors noted that the money gathered from the alleged extortion scheme was meant to be used to help rescue Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007.

Matt Gaetz touted the federal charges against Alford and blasted the alleged scheme on Twitter at the time, asserting, “I’ve been proven right. They tried to extort me on a pile of lies.”

Alford has a history of fraud and has attempted to extort other wealthy individuals in the past. He is being jailed for the third time in 16 years for his latest swindling efforts.

The Hill has reached out to Matt Gaetz and Alford’s lawyer for further comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

These companies want to help Americans pay off their student debt

More than 43 million Americans hold federal student loan debt and now some companies are stepping up to help ease the burden of repayment. 

Student loan debt is the second-highest consumer debt category after mortgages, totaling $1.7 trillion. It’s become a huge burden for millions of Americans, with borrowers taking about 20 years to pay off their student loans.  

At least 30 companies have recognized that struggle and offer financial assistance to employees to repay their student loans.  

FlexJobs, a career advancement service, identified 30 remote-friendly companies that offer student loan repayment assistance, ranging from Google to Peloton.  

Abbott, Aetna, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Live Nation, SoFi-Social Finance and others offer eligible employees financial help in paying back student loans. 

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. 

Assistance comes in a variety of forms, with some companies giving monthly payments to those currently repaying their debt while others provide yearly contributions that can be applied to student loans. FlexJobs says payments can range anywhere from $50 to thousands of dollars but usually have a maximum lifetime benefit that also depends on if an employee is full-time or part-time. 

Google announced it was launching a student loan repayment program for employees beginning in 2021. The company said it will match up to $2,500 per year so employees could put their earnings toward purchasing a new home, starting a family or investing in retirement savings.  

At PwC, employees can access the student loan paydown benefit that gives up to $1,200 a year towards student loan payments. Borrowers must enroll in direct payments, allowing PwC to send payments on their behalf. The company will pay $100 a month for up to six years or until an employee is promoted. 

According to FlexJobs, only about 8 percent of companies offered some form of a student loan repayment benefit in 2019. 

Since 2020, most student loan borrowers have not had to make any payments towards their loans due to a COVID-19 moratorium on payments and interest. Millions of borrowers are hoping President Biden will hold steadfast to his campaign promise of canceling at least $10,000 of federal student loan debt per borrower, a decision that could be announced soon. 

Since taking office, the Biden administration has canceled $32 billion in student loan debt for more than 1.6 million borrowers, mostly for students who were defrauded or misled by their schools or through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PLSF) program.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Children enduring drought in Africa are ‘one disease away from catastrophe:’ UNICEF

Children in two vast regions of Africa could die in devastating numbers due to the compounding effects of malnutrition and water-borne illnesses, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) warned on Tuesday.

The children at particular risk are those who live in the Horn of Africa — Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia — and several countries in the semi-arid Sahel region, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, according to the agency.

UNICEF issued the warning in conjunction with the first day of World Water Week — organized annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute — which began on the same morning.

“History shows that when high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children combine with deadly outbreaks of diseases like cholera or diarrhea, child mortality rises dramatically – and tragically,” UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

“When water either isn’t available or is unsafe, the risks to children multiply exponentially,” Russell continued. “Across the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, millions of children are just one disease away from catastrophe.”

More than 2.8 million children across these two regions are already enduring acute malnutrition, meaning that they are up to 11 times greater risk of dying from water-borne illnesses than their well-nourished peers, according to UNICEF.

The number of people impacted by drought in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia who lack reliable access to safe water surged from 9.5 million in February to 16.2 million in July, the agency reported.

Most inhabitants of the Horn of Africa depend on water delivered by vendors, via trucks or or donkey carts, the agency said. In those areas worst affected by drought, water is now no longer affordable.

Twenty-three counties in Kenya alone have seen significant price hikes, including a 400-percent jump in one county and a 260 percent rise in another, in comparison to January 2021 prices, UNICEF reported.

In Ethiopia, the cost of water in June doubled in one regional state and rose by 50 percent in another, compared to the onset of the drought in October 2021.

Average water prices in Somalia, meanwhile, surged by 85 percent, 55 percent and 75 percent in three administrative regions, relative to prices in January of this year, according to UNICEF.

Outbreaks of acute watery diarrhea have been reported in nearly all drought-affected districts of Somalia, with 8,200 cases logged between January and June — more than double the number during the same period last year, the agency said.

Almost two-thirds of the cases involve children under the age of five, according to UNICEF.

The Sahel region is also in dire straits. Water availability dropped by more than 40 percent in the past 20 years due to the combined effects of climate change and conflict, the agency said.

In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, 40 million children are facing high to extremely high levels of water vulnerability. More children die in the Sahel due to unsafe water and sanitation conditions than in any other part of the world, UNICEF reported, citing data from the World Health Organization.

Just last year, West and Central Africa suffered the region’s worst cholera outbreak in the past six years, with 5,610 cases and 170 deaths occurring in the Central Sahel.

“Imagine having to choose between buying bread or buying water for a hungry, thirsty child who is already sick, or between watching your child suffer from extreme thirst or letting them drink contaminated water that can cause killer diseases,” Russell said.

“Families across drought-impacted regions are being forced into impossible choices,” she added.

Source: TEST FEED1

The CDC is broken and apologies can’t fix it

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is getting credit for a mea culpa for saying what seems obvious: “For 75 years, the CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” 

This is a classic act of contrition theater, in which Walensky avoids taking any responsibility for the agency’s failure to understand the threat the nation faced or the CDC’s unfounded “guidance” regarding how to slow the spread of COVID, measures that the agency now acknowledges are flawed.

It is not a small issue that CDC personnel undermined respected scientists outside of government who quarreled with mask mandates, social distancing, shutting schools, closing businesses, and promoting universal vaccination with serums whose known risks to some were downplayed. All this while dismissing Americans who doubted that the CDC had a monopoly on “the science.”

In truth, the CDC did a great deal of damage to public faith in science and enormous damage to public trust in government writ large. The more consequential cost, of course, is what epidemiologists know as excess death — those whose lives were lost following government guidance on how to save their lives.

Walensky’s apology came as a prelude to the release of an internal review of the CDC’s management that she ordered in April in response to growing criticism including the threat of a congressionally mandated investigating commission.

For the review, she turned to someone she characterized as an “outside” senior federal official, James Macrae, a 30-year veteran of the Department of Health and Human Services bureaucracy. Incredibly, the other members of the four-person review were Walensky’s three deputy administrators. Their remit was a comprehensive evaluation of the agency’s “structure, systems and processes,” all to be done in four weeks.

With no private sector input, the report appears very much a product of Washington — interesting findings that will hold off critics but are unlikely to regenerate trust in the agency. For instance, the report finds that CDC scientists are too focused on producing papers for peer-reviewed journals rather than practical research. In the future, Dr. Walensky says, CDC researchers will be evaluated on whether they “produce data for action,” not “data for publication.”

Not surprisingly, Walensky’s review finds the CDC underfunded, the excuse for its remarkable inability to ever provide a real-time statistical profile of the pandemic. (The agency cannot yet tell with certainty current COVID-related rates of infection, hospitalization or death.) Yet, Congress has appropriated huge sums for “data modernization” since 2012. In the last three budgets alone, the CDC has received $1.4 billion to improve its information systems and create a forecasting competency.

Oddly, Walensky has insisted that the idea for the review was her own and not the White House’s. Perhaps she realizes that some of the erosion in public trust involves her readiness to do dirty work for the president. It took the Supreme Court to tell the CDC it could not suspend evictions to enforce quarantines. And it was Walensky who took suggestions from the head of a national teachers’ union when developing guidance on school closings. Shutting schools increased the incidence of childhood mental illness and unnecessarily disrupted family life throughout the country.

Acknowledging failure and offering apologies won’t work to recapture public trust. The CDC’s inability to detect COVID’s presence early on and its failures to deliver a workable containment strategy are not new problems. The agency failed similarly in the HIV-AIDS epidemic and the CDC is already behind in controlling monkeypox. 

The real problem at the CDC is that it long ago forgot its principal job is preventing epidemics of communicable disease. Today’s CDC has programs, studies or other resources to prevent diabetes, heart disease, colorectal cancer, drug abuse, gun violence, obesity, loneliness among the elderly, the consumption of junk food by truckers, and dozens of other social problems that politicians and public health experts refer to as “epidemics” and for which the tools of managing real epidemics won’t work.

To hold the public’s trust again, Walensky should ask Congress to cut the CDC down to size, restoring its focus on preventing communicable diseases. Many of the agency’s other efforts can be sent to other government agencies, many within the National Institutes of Health, for primary responsibility. Without such a drastic move, no apology, however sincere, will save the agency.     

Carl Schramm is a university professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and a member of the COVID Commission Planning Group, a national COVID coalition founded by Schmidt Futures, the Skoll Foundation, Stand Together and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Source: TEST FEED1

Leahy said he didn’t have to ‘act frightened’ in Batman scene with Heath Ledger

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said on Tuesday that he did not need to “act frightened” during his scene in “The Dark Knight” with actor Heath Ledger’s Joker. 

Leahy told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day” that the fear came naturally to him during his scene in the 2008 Batman movie, in which the Joker holds a knife to his face. 

“The director said, ‘Act frightened.’ I said, ‘Act?’ He scared the heck out of me,” Leahy said. 

Leahy, who is retiring from the Senate after a 48-year career in the chamber, is a longtime fan of the superhero Batman and has made cameo appearances in multiple Batman movies over the past 25 years. 

Leahy said he has “really enjoyed” his appearances in the films. He also incorporated one edition of a Batman comic book in his argument in favor of banning the export of land mines.

He said he gives all money that he has received for his appearances to a children’s library in Montpelier, Vt., because he had his first library card there when he was four years old. 

“It all revolves around that,” he said. 

“But I got to tell you, it’s a lot more fun than a late-night session in the Senate,” Leahy added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Life expectancy drops by almost 2 years

Overall life expectancy in the United States dropped by 1.8 years from 2019 to 2020, new data show. 

The declines affected all 50 states and Washington, D.C., according to a New National Vital Statistics report, and ranged from as little as 0.2 years in some states to as many as 3 years in others. 

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and its Division of Vital Statistics attributed the dips to the COVID-19 pandemic and an increase in drug overdose deaths. 

The drop is the largest year-to-year change in more than 75 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said last year. 

New York state experienced the biggest decrease, dropping 3 years, and D.C. was a close runner-up at 2.7 years. 

Twelve other states saw declines of 2 years or more, including southern border states Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, as well as Louisiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Alabama, Kentucky, Michigan and South Carolina.

Hawaii saw a decline of just 0.2 years. Oregon, Washington, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire also saw decreases of 1 year or less.

As of these 2020 changes, Hawaii has the highest life expectancy at birth, at 80.7 years, while Mississippi has the lowest, at 71.9 years.

The difference in life expectancy at birth between the sexes was averaged at 5.7 years, with females leading males in all 50 states and D.C.

The highest male-female difference was recorded in D.C., at 7 years, while the lowest difference was noted in Utah, at 3.9 years.

The CDC recorded 528,891 more deaths in 2020 than the year prior. COVID-19 was the noted cause in 350,831 deaths, or 10.4 percent of the 2020 total, according to the report. 

This contributed to a 16.8 percent increase to the age-adjusted death rate for the U.S., the largest such jump in annual mortality data on record, according to the CDC.

Source: TEST FEED1

How thinking too hard could make you tired: study

After a long day of work, you may feel like you could use a nap. Although your body might not be tired, your brain might feel like it could use some rest. Neuroscientists are curious about why thinking a lot or doing difficult cognitive tasks can make you tired, and how that all plays out in the brain. 

In a study published in Current Biology, researchers report results of an experiment where they measured specific signaling molecules in the brain in two groups of people. One group was given harder tasks that would lead to more cognitive work (high demand cognitive control tasks), and another was given easier tasks (low demand cognitive control tasks). While the groups were working on their tasks, the scientists measured glutamate levels. Glutamate is an amino acid that acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain. 

In total, there were 39 paid participants in the study who were split into the two groups. Each group had to complete tasks over a six-hour period, with multiple breaks. This experimental setup builds off a previous study by some of the same researchers where they examined how cognitive work may affect choice impulsivity. 

In this study, one group had to look at letters or numbers that flashed onto a screen and determine whether they were red or green, or uppercase or lowercase and other similar characteristics. The other group was given similar but easier tasks. The researchers monitored any metabolites, which are products of cell activity, in the brain using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. 

The team found a correlation between glutamate levels and cognitive fatigue among study participants. They think that fatigue comes from exerting additional cognitive effort and underlying that is the metabolism in the cells in the brain that leads to a build up of glutamate. 

This study doesn’t prove this hypothesis, but it does provide some suggestion that glutamate could be related to cognitive fatigue. The why and how it’s related would need further more in-depth studies. This is partly also because the sample size of the study is small and the correlation found in the data may not indicate causation. “We’re still far from the point where we can say that working hard mentally causes a toxic buildup of glutamate in the brain,” says Antonius Weihler, who is a computational psychiatrist at the GHU Paris Psychiatry and Neurosciences and first author on the study, to Science. 

Glutamate might be one clue to figuring out how and why thinking harder makes us tired, and it might not be clear yet why it’s related to cognitive fatigue. Sebastian Musslick, a neuroscientist at Brown University who was not involved with the study and spoke to Science, thinks that it’s not likely that glutamate or other metabolic waste products are key factors responsible for cognitive fatigue. Instead, he thinks that the uptick in glutamate could serve a purpose such as providing a status update regarding physical needs like for food, water and sleep, according to Science.

Source: TEST FEED1