Active-duty marine charged in fatal stabbing of pregnant wife

An active-duty marine has been charged with second-degree murder after allegedly stabbing his pregnant wife to death on an interstate highway in Hawaii. 

Hawaii News Now reported Friday that police arrested Bryant Tejada-Castillo in the fatal stabbing of 27-year-old Dana Alotaibi, a Virginia resident. His bail was set at $1 million. 

Alotaibi’s mother, Natalia Cespedes, told the news outlet that Tejada-Castillo was abusing her daughter, who repeatedly asked military officials for help. Cespedes said if Alotaibi received the help, she would still be alive. 

Friends of Alotaibi told Hawaii News Now that Alotaibi and Tejada-Castillo were married for three years but recently separated. They said she was 13 weeks pregnant with her current boyfriend. 

Alotaibi posted a video on YouTube in January in which she describes that her husband had verbally and physically abused her and put his hands on her at least 30 times. She said each time she reported the abuse to his superiors in the military, they did not do anything.

She said Tejada-Castillo has choked her to the point of losing consciousness “four or five times.” 

Cespedes said Alotaibi was able to get a no-contact order against her husband, but she is upset that no one did more. She said she will travel from Virginia to Honolulu on Saturday to bring her daughter home. 

“I feel like nobody wants to help, nobody wants to say nothing,” she said. “Probably if I go there, they will help.” 

An arrest log from the Honolulu Police Department states that Tejada-Castillo was arrested on Wednesday evening and is 29 years old. 

The Honolulu Police Department and Marines did not immediately return requests for comment from The Hill.

Source: TEST FEED1

Suspect charged in connection to attack against GOP Rep Lee Zeldin

Prosecutors announced Saturday that they had charged a suspect for allegedly attacking Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York, during a campaign event earlier this week.

Fairport, N.Y. resident David Jakubonis, 43, has been charged with assaulting a member of Congress using a dangerous weapon while Zeldin held a campaign event in Perinton, N.Y. on Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of New York announced.

He appeared before a magistrate judge on Saturday afternoon and a detention hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday morning. 

It was not immediately clear if Jakubonis had an attorney representing him at the announcement of the charges. 

Prosecutors allege that Jakubonis grabbed Zeldin’s arm while the Republican gubernatorial candidate was speaking and had a keychain with several sharp points extended in Zeldin’s direction. 

Jakubonis was detained after he “pulled Congressman Zeldin down onto the bed of the trailer, stating several times during the assault, ‘you’re done,’” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s press release.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said in a press release on Thursday that Jakubonis had been charged with attempted assault in the second degree but had been arraigned and later released on his own recognizance. 

Zeldin released a statement Saturday slamming state officials for releasing the attacker on cashless bail and praising federal authorities for charging Jakubonis.

“I’m thankful that federal authorities came in to do what New York State’s broken pro-criminal justice system could not – uphold the rule of law,” Zeldin’s statement said. “The state must start prioritizing the safety of law-abiding New Yorkers over criminals. Cashless bail must be repealed and judges should have discretion to set cash bail on far more offenses.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Trump slams 'RINO coward' Bowers for testifying in Jan. 6 hearing

Former President Trump called Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) a “RINO coward,” using the acronym for “Republican in name only,” and reiterated his support for his endorsed candidate who is vying for a state Senate seat against Bowers.

“Rusty Bowers is a RINO coward who participated against the Republican Party in the totally partisan unselect committee of political thugs and hacks the other day and disgraced himself, and he disgraced the state of Arizona,” Trump said during a rally held in the Grand Canyon State for several of his endorsees. 

“David Farnsworth is going to do a fantastic job. And importantly, I have to say, you have so many advantages. That would be the guy I’d most like to run against ‘cause this guy’s bad news,” Trump added, referring to Bowers’s opponent for the Arizona state Senate’s 10th legislative district, who the former president has endorsed.

Bowers gave testimony before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot last month in which he disagreed with Trump’s claims that Bowers told him that Trump had won the state of Arizona in 2020 and that the election had been rigged.

“Anywhere, anyone, anytime has said that I said that the election was rigged, that would not be true,” Bowers said as he testified before the committee in June.

The Arizona House Speaker also told the panel that Rudy Giuliani had told him that Trump’s allies did not have specific evidence showing that election fraud had been committed during the last presidential election.

“And I don’t know if that was a gaffe or maybe he didn’t think through what he said, but both myself and others in my group … both remember that specifically, and afterwards we kind of laughed about it,” Bowers said.

The Arizona GOP executive committee earlier this week voted to censure Bowers. 

“The @AZGOP Executive Committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight— he is no longer a Republican in good standing & we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary. Full press release from AZGOP coming soon,” Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, tweeted this week.

While Trump was stumping for his endorsed Arizona candidates, including gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) on Friday, former Vice President Pence was stumping for his endorsed candidate in the governors’ race, Karrin Taylor Robson (R) the same day.

According to NBC News, Bowers attended a campaign event for Robson on Friday.

Source: TEST FEED1

Man with missing wife pleads guilty to casting her ballot for Trump in 2020

A man who was tried in connection to his wife’s disappearance pleaded guilty Thursday to submitting a fraudulent ballot on her behalf for President Trump during the 2020 election.

Barry Morphew told law enforcement he figured “all these other guys are cheating” and that his wife Suzanne would have voted for Trump anyway, according to an affidavit acquired by KKTV Colorado.

The defendant was arrested in May 2021, but was already in police custody because of his suspected role in his wife Suzanne Morphew’s disappearance.

Morphew was offered a plea deal allowing charges of attempting to influence a public servant and elections offense, to be dropped if he plead guilty to the forgery charge. Now he faces a year of supervised probation for the charge.

The murder case against Barry Morphew was “dismissed without prejudice” after Suzanne Morphew’s body was unable to be located, according to the case file.

Barry Morphew was not pronounced not guilty, meaning that the case could be refiled if new evidence is found, including his wife’s body.

Suzanne Morphew disappeared in May 2020 and still has not been recovered.

However, law enforcement said last year that they believed themselves to be “close to discovering the victim’s body.”

“The People were hopeful that the search for, and the discovery of, the victim’s body would be concluded well before trial, but weather has complicated the efforts,” the prosecution claimed according to KKTV.

Source: TEST FEED1

Al Gore: America must address ‘democracy crisis’ to solve climate crisis

Former Vice President Al Gore said fixing issues with American democracy is necessary to properly address climate change. 

Gore told NBC News’s Chuck Todd in an interview that will air on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that public sentiment on climate issues is changing in favor of supporting urgent action, but a “broken” democracy is preventing progress from happening. 

“In order to solve the climate crisis, we’re going to have to pay attention to the democracy crisis,” he said. 

Gore said Congress cannot pass climate legislation for the same reason it is unable to pass legislation to ban assault rifles.

He said the Senate’s filibuster, which requires most legislation to receive 60 votes to advance, should be eliminated and that “big money” plays too influential a role in politics. 

With the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans 50-50, Democrats would need at least 10 Republican votes to pass most bills.

Democrats have attempted to use reconciliation, a process in the Senate that allows legislation on budget issues to move forward by a simple majority, but they have struggled to pass major climate legislation in that manner during the Biden administration. 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has on multiple occasions come out against the climate spending measures that congressional Democrats have put forward, declaring his opposition last week to including climate provisions in a reconciliation bill before Labor Day.

Gore said President Biden is attempting to have the United States serve as a leader to the world on climate change, but he realistically has a “49-51 Senate on everything related to climate” and a “razor-thin majority” in the House. 

After Manchin announced his opposition to the including spending to fight climate change in the reconciliation package, Biden vowed to take executive action on climate change. He is reportedly considering declaring a national climate emergency, which would grant him additional power on the issue, but he has not yet done so. 

Gore said the public needs to elect more “pro-climate” senators and representatives from both parties to enact more pro-climate policies. 

“We do have the solutions. And I think these extreme events that are getting steadily worse and more severe are really beginning to change minds,” he said. “We have to have unity as a nation to come together and stop making this a political football. It shouldn’t be a partisan issue.” 

He said renewable energy from wind and solar is now more affordable than electricity from fossil fuels in almost the entire world. 

Gore said Biden has reversed some of the “terrible policies” of former President Trump but needs congressional action to take the “bold steps” that are needed on the climate. He said the president can and should still take steps like switching the U.S. Postal Service’s new fleet to electric vehicles and no longer approving any additional fossil-fuel development on federal lands.

Source: TEST FEED1

YQK is coming — time to get ‘quantum-safe’

Most of us remember Y2K, the panic that consumed the final years of the last millennium. The whole world feared that, when the clocks flipped from 1999 to 2000, the digital systems that governed our lives would crash, with cataclysmic results. Of course, a true meltdown was avoided, thanks to the collective action of software engineers around the world, and the decisive action of Congress, which devoted $3.4 billion to upgrade code and “Y2K proof” critical government and industry systems. 

Crisis was averted 22 years ago — but now we have to dodge another one.

Call it “YQK” — except this time, the “Q” stands for “quantum.”

Quantum computing is an incredible, nascent technology that relies not on binary code — the now-familiar 0s and 1s — but on the properties of subatomic particles, like entanglement, for computational power. Quantum computers have computational properties that could soon solve complex problems that current computers can’t, which will revolutionize fields from materials and drug discovery, to finance.

But exponential computing power also means that, in the wrong hands, quantum systems could brute force their way through even our strongest digital walls. Right now, most encryption is similar to a very big combination lock. If our current computers wanted to break through, they’d have to try every possible combination, a task that might take them a century. Future quantum computers, however, could solve such a combination in days — maybe even hours.

So, what might YQK — a quantum computing catastrophe — look like in practice?

Imagine that the algorithms that protect corporate and government data are compromised. Financial markets are adversely impacted. Energy grids and defense networks are disrupted. There is a mass wave of identity theft.

Here, however, is the good news: It’s entirely preventable, with technologies that we already have, including cutting-edge techniques like lattice-based cryptography (protocols based on extremely hard, historically unsolvable math problems) and fully homomorphic encryption (which enables someone to work with encrypted data while it’s still encrypted).

In Washington, conversations and activities are underway on how we can deploy these nets of protection to avert YQK. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently announced protocol standards involving these technologies, including the CRYSTALS-Kyber public-key cryptography protocol, which was amongst the final four protocols developed by IBM scientists and collaborators. When adopted, they will safeguard various computing systems from quantum hacking. 

Congress can help ensure that these tools are scaled across industry and government before it is too late.

Organizations of all stripes need immediately to start implementing these protocols — especially those holding sensitive data, like government agencies. It’s true that quantum systems won’t be able to break current encryption for many years. But “black hat” hackers aren’t waiting. They’re already harvesting encrypted data. At the moment, those numbers are scrambled. But once quantum technology matures, they can be unscrambled in moments. It’s like a criminal who steals a safe today, knowing he’ll be handed the combination in a few short years.

Federal agencies can prevent this “harvest-now, hack-later” problem by updating their encryption protocols. But that’s a little easier said than done. It will take time, dedicated personnel, and — most of all — a government-wide strategy. It will likely never happen if various federal agencies are left to haphazardly adopt quantum-safe technologies in their own ways, at their own speeds.

This month the House passed a bill that grasps this reality: the bipartisan Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act. Among other measures, it calls on the director of the Office of Management and Budget to survey executive-branch systems, determine which ones are most vulnerable to a quantum hack, and prioritize their migration to post-quantum cryptography. This, the bill says, must be done within the year, along with an estimate of how much it will cost. It also calls for regular updates about how federal agencies are uptaking quantum safety standards. If we want to avert a YQK, the Senate should send this bill to President Biden’s desk as soon as possible.

My hope is that, in the end, YQK will be like Y2K — a manageable event. But that didn’t happen by accident back then, and it won’t happen without a lot of hard work this time around either. Many of the world’s top engineers and software companies poured resources into making sure Y2K didn’t happen. We must do the same today.

The biggest difference? Since we don’t have a nice round number like “2000” as a finish line, we should assume that time is of the utmost essence. When it comes to adopting quantum-safe protocols, tomorrow is better than next week, and today is best of all.

Dario Gil is senior vice president and director of research at IBM.

Source: TEST FEED1

Sunday shows preview: Jan. 6 panel holds last hearing until September; Biden tests positive for COVID-19

The last in a series of summer hearings held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and President Biden’s COVID-19 diagnosis are expected to dominate this week’s Sunday shows circuit.

The House panel held its latest hearing on Thursday, making the case that former President Trump took no action for hours as a mob of his supporters ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. 

The panel accused the former president of dereliction of duty as it examined the 187 minutes that took place between when Trump finished his remarks at the “Stop the Steal” rally that day until and when he issued a tweet telling his supporters to go home in the late afternoon. 

The committee relied on portions of taped depositions it aired for the public, including from officials like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and in-person testimony from Trump White House officials Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger.

Matthews criticized the tweets that Trump issued during the Jan 6. riot, including one criticizing former Vice President Pence’s refusal to reject the Electoral College vote. She likened the post to “pouring gasoline on the fire and making it much worse.” 

“The tweet looked to me like the opposite of what we really needed at that moment, which was a deescalation, and that’s why I had said earlier that it looked like fuel being poured on the fire,” Pottinger concurred during the hearing.

Also included in the committee’s Thursday hearing were outtakes of Trump’s video messages released during and after the Jan. 6 riot, including one in which he pushed back against some of the language condemning the rioters.

“’But this election is now over. Congress has certified the results’ — I don’t want to say the election’s over, I just want to say Congress has certified the results without saying the election’s over, OK?” Trump said in an outtake.

“’And to those who broke the law, you will pay. You do not represent our movement, you do not represent our country, and if you broke the law’ — can’t say that, I’m not gonna, I already said you will pay,” he said in a portion of another outtake.

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the committee, said that the panel would resume holding more hearings in September given new evidence it received and new witnesses it was hearing from.

Members of the committee will appear on several Sunday shows, including Cheney, who will appear on CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox News Sunday.” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) will appear on ABC’s “This Week” while Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) appears on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

President Biden is recovering from COVID-19 after the White House announced on Thursday that he had tested positive. 

The White House said that the president, who is 79 years old, was experiencing “very mild symptoms,” noting that he was fully vaccinated and had both booster shots.

Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician, said in an update on Saturday that the president had likely caught the BA.5 variant and noted that his symptoms included body aches, a sort throat, a loose cough and runny nose. O’Connor also noted that Biden has been taking the antiviral Paxlovid. 

Speaking to “CBS Saturday Morning,” top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said that Biden continued to improve and was working remotely.

“And so as we’ve said before, given the fact that he’s been vaccinated, doubly boosted and is receiving Paxlovid, a drug that clearly goes a long way to preventing progression of disease, we fully expect that he’s going to be doing very well,” Fauci said.

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha is slated to appear on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and  “Fox News Sunday.” 

Below is the full list of guests scheduled to appear on this week’s Sunday talk shows:

ABC’s “This Week” — Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.); Gov. Larry Hogan (R-Md.); former Vice President Al Gore; White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha.

NBC’s “Meet the Press” — Gore; Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.); Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

CBS’s “Face the Nation” — Jha; Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.); Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo; Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova; Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.

CNN’s “State of the Union” — Hogan; Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.); Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“Fox News Sunday” — Cheney; Jha.

Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures” — former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson; Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.); House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.); Kari Lake, Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate (R)

Source: TEST FEED1

Resurrecting Trump: Reason and anti-reason in American politics

Even today, even after so much accumulated evidence of Donald J. Trump’s incapacity and malfeasance, millions of Americans regard his presidency as exemplary. This cannot be explained in terms of any inherent liabilities of American politics. What’s needed is a consideration of the cultural context from which this dissembling president was extracted.

Trump supporters — rich and poor, educated and uneducated — include people who seek above all to “fit in.” These are the ones who love to chant in chorus and to embrace the reassuring but reductionist messaging of political simplification.

Americans who take history and science seriously are right to worry.

One may draw limited — but still-fair — comparisons to 1930s Germany. Then, as now, the virulent formulas beneath the simplifications were no longer merely expressed sotto voce, as residual “whisperings of the irrational.” Though Trump-era politics were never openly murderous, those at the summits of political power relied upon blaming “the usual suspects” — that is, on mercilessly exploiting the most fragile and vulnerable scapegoats.

The United States was never “becoming Nazi Germany” — but this should hardly be taken as a comfort. It’s not an all-or-nothing comparison. While there are clear differences between then and now, there are also some very disturbing resemblances, even imitation.

Decline may occur not as a “bolt from the blue,” but more-or-less indecipherably, in increments. With Trump preparing for another run at the White House and a solid majority of Republicans behind him, we Americans are clearly stumbling backwards.

Friedrich Nietzsche coined an aptly specific term for the paradoxical fusion of privilege with philistinism: Bildungsphilister. An English translation: “educated Philistine.” Everywhere one looks in the United States today, one finds capable professionals who have been more-or-less well trained, but never truly educated.

Bildungsphilister is a term that sheds useful light on Trump’s ongoing support among so many of America’s presumptively well-educated and well-to-do.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Trump several-times commented: “I love the poorly-educated,” but — in the end — a substantial fraction of his support came from the not-so-poorly-educated. Here, recalling German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers’ indictment regarding “whisperings of the irrational,” one should be reminded of Third Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ remark that “Intellect rots the brain.”

Truth is always exculpatory. It may be uncomfortable, upsetting, even bewildering — but it remains the truth nonetheless. The phrases “I love the poorly educated” and “Intellect rots the brain” essentially mean the same thing — and they may have disturbingly similar consequences.

Many American citizens remain willing to abide a former president who not only avoids reading, but who simultaneously belittles history, science and learning. What does this mean about their capacity to understand and sustain a national democracy?

What’s likely to happen when there exists so little public uneasiness over obvious illiteracy and ignorance in a national leader? We may recall that in regard to negotiating successfully with North Korea, President Trump preferred “attitude” over preparation. During the commemoration of American servicemen in WWI, he had to ask his aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” More disturbingly, he had to be schooled in basic geopolitics by Vladimir Putin.

How many Americans meaningfully object to a president who has clearly never read the U.S. Constitution? And what should we expect from someone who swears to “uphold, protect and defend” a document he hasn’t read? Shouldn’t “We the people…” be troubled?

How has the United States managed to arrive at such a dismal place? What have been the failures of American education, most notably in our vaunted universities?

Even if we should no longer plausibly expect in the White House anyone resembling Plato’s enlightened decision-maker, ought we not still be entitled to someone who manages to read and think seriously?

In the United States, almost no one takes erudition seriously — and in the political sector, it’s most often a liability; instead, all are measured by one utterly inappropriate standard: We are what we buy.

Nietzsche warned: “One should never seek the ‘higher man’ at the marketplace.”

But that’s precisely where Trump reveled.

A proudly visceral segment of American society championed Trump. They still follow him faithfully because the wider American society was allowed to become an intellectual desert.

Louis René Beres, Ph.D. Princeton, is emeritus professor of international law at Purdue University. He is the author of 12 books and several hundred articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His newest book is “Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018)

Source: TEST FEED1

WSJ editorial board: ‘Trump utterly failed’ his Jan. 6 trial

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The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board criticized former President Trump for refusing to take action on Jan. 6, 2021, as a mob of Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol, saying in an editorial published Friday that his vice president passed his “Jan. 6 trial” while Trump “utterly failed his.”

“Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused. He didn’t call the military to send help. He didn’t call [then-Vice President Mike Pence] to check on the safety of his loyal VP. Instead he fed the mob’s anger and let the riot play out,” the editorial board wrote.

“Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his,” the editorial board added.

The Journal’s editorial came one day after the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot held its final summer hearing, which focused on the 187 minutes between Trump finishing his remarks at his “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6 and a tweet he sent in the late afternoon telling his supporters to go home.

Using footage of taped depositions from officials like former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and in-person testimony from Trump White House officials Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, the committee accused the former president of dereliction of duty as they described how for hours he did nothing to stop the violence that ensued that day.

“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home,” committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said during the hearing. “He chose not to act.” 

The Journal’s editorial board made clear that it did not agree with the committee on all fronts of its investigation — arguing it “lacks political balance” and was “trying to make a criminal case that might be hard to prove and might tear the country apart.”

However, the editorial board also acknowledged that “the facts it is laying out in hearings are sobering” as it condemned Trump’s inaction on the day of the riot. 

The editorial comes as The New York Post’s editorial board also offered strong words against the former president in its own editorial on Friday.

“It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again,” the Post editorial said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Congressional Black Caucus requests meeting with president of Sesame Place amid controversy

The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting to meet with the head of the “Sesame Street”-themed amusement park, Sesame Place, after a video that showed a costumed character ignoring two young Black girls went viral. 

“Sesame Street is one of the nation’s highest-rated TV shows that, at one time, more than 95 percent of all American Preschoolers watched,” the caucus said in a release Saturday. “So, naturally, Sesame Place should be where all children can go to have fun and celebrate. Sadly, that has not been the case.” 

The mother of the two girls posted the video on Instagram earlier this week, showing the character “Rosita” giving high-fives as they walk in a parade but appearing to wave off the two girls. 

The mother wrote that the character then hugged a white girl immediately thereafter. The video has received more than 880,000 views as of Saturday afternoon. 

The caucus, led by its chairwoman, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), said it wants to meet with Park President and General Manager Cathy Valeriano to discuss changes, plans of action and training that the park plans to implement. The statement recognizes that Sesame Place has issued a formal apology but states that the caucus is requesting a meeting given the “gravity of the situation and lack of responsibility at all levels.” 

The caucus said that it represents 80 million Americans overall and 17 million Black Americans, and “Sesame Street” plays an “integral” role for many of the children its members represent. 

“The show reaches young children in all demographics, with a particular impact on economically disadvantaged children, and families of color should know they will be welcomed at any institution that carries the Sesame Street name,” the statement reads. 

Sesame Place did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.

Source: TEST FEED1