Pritzker Will Do What It Takes to Keep Both DeSantis and Trump Out of the White House
Laura Davison and Shruti Date Singh – February 23, 2023
Pritzker Will Do What It Takes to Keep Both DeSantis and Trump Out of the White House
(Bloomberg) — Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said he’s willing to spend what it takes in the next election to help President Joe Biden keep his job — and keep Republicans like Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump out of the White House.
“It’s very important to me that we elect a Democratic president and that we make sure to keep DeSantis, Trump and the retrograde views that they carry out of the White House,” Pritzker, a longtime Democratic donor, said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg News in Chicago. “I’ll continue to support Democrats in the best way I can to help them get elected.”
Pritzker, 58, is a member of one of the world’s wealthiest families, with a net worth of $3.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The Democrat has been in the middle of recent spats with DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, and is a long-running nemesis of Citadel founder and GOP mega-donor Ken Griffin, who has said he’d back a DeSantis bid for president in 2024.
DeSantis, who visited Illinois this week, has criticized Chicago’s crime under Pritzker’s watch. Pritzker shot back, saying that DeSantis is trying to lower public education standards by banning the teaching of racial history.
Pritzker also said Griffin moved his financial empire headquarters to Miami from Chicago last year out of “embarrassment” after spending $50 million trying to defeat him in the gubernatorial race by backing Richard Irvin, the mayor of Aurora, Illinois.
“That person lost badly in the Republican primary,” Pritzker said in an interview Thursday with Bloomberg TV.
National Attention
Trading barbs with prominent Republicans sets up Pritzker for national political attention.
Pritzker, who was re-elected as Illinois governor in 2022, said he has been approached about potentially running for president, but declined to give any details about those discussions. He said he’s happy as governor, intends to serve the rest of his term and will back Biden this cycle.
Still, he’s raised his national profile by visiting New Hampshire and Florida, and has taken stances on expanding abortion access and banning assault weapons, stoking speculation that he has lofty ambitions beyond the Illinois statehouse in Springfield.
Regardless, the billionaire’s wealth promises to play a role in the 2024 race.
He poured more than $300 million of his own money into his two successful bids for governor. He spent about $51 million for a failed campaign to change Illinois’s flat income-tax structure to one that increases taxes on the rich.
Outside of Illinois, Pritzker and his wife have donated more than $39 million since 2011, according to campaign finance disclosures. Topping the list of recipients is Priorities USA Action, the super-PAC that’s supported Democratic presidential nominees since it was launched in 2011.
The Pritzkers have also given $2 million to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 general election campaign and $1.4 million to back Biden in 2020.
Donna St. George, Katherine Reynolds Lewis and Lindsey Bever, The Washington Post – February 17, 2023
When Sophie Nystuen created a website for teens who had experienced trauma, her idea was to give them space to write about the hurt they couldn’t share. The Brookline, Mass., 16-year-old received posts about drug use and suicide. But a majority wrote about sexual violence.
“Every time I’ve tried, my throat feels like it’s closing, my lungs forget how to breathe,” wrote one anonymous poster. “I was sexually assaulted.”
These expressions of inner crisis are just a glint of the startling data reported by federal researchers this week. Nearly 1 in 3 high school girls said they had considered suicide, a 60 percent rise in the past decade. Nearly 15 percent had been forced to have sex. About 6 in 10 girls were so persistently sad or hopeless they stopped regular activities.
The new report represents nothing short of a crisis in American girlhood. The findings have ramifications for a generation of young women who have endured an extraordinary level of sadness and sexual violence – and present uncharted territory for the health advocates, teachers, counselors and parents who are trying to help them.
The data comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from a nationally representative sample of students in public and private high schools. “America’s teen girls are engulfed in a growing wave of sadness, violence and trauma,” the CDC said.
“It’s alarming,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Thursday of the report. “But as a father of a 16-year-old and 19-year-old, I hear about it. It’s real. I think students know what’s going on. I think sometimes the adults are just now realizing how serious it is.”
But high school girls are speaking out, too, about stresses that started before the pandemic – growing up in a social media culture, with impossible beauty standards, online hate, academic pressure, economic difficulties, self doubt and sexual violence. The isolation and upheaval of covid made it tougher still.
When Caroline Zuba started cutting her arms in ninth grade, she felt trapped: by conflict at home, by the school work that felt increasingly meaningless, by the image her friends and teachers had of a bubbly, studious girl. Cutting replaced the emotional pain with a physical pain.
She confided in a trusted teacher, who brought in the school counselors and her mother. But Zuba’s depression worsened and, at age 15, she attempted suicide. That sparked the first of a series of hospitalizations over the summer and subsequent school year.
Now a 17-year-old junior at a public high school in Potomac, Md., Zuba relies on therapy, medication, exercise and coping strategies. She started a mental health club at her high school to support classmates also struggling with depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
At the lowest point of her depression, she said, she kept many secrets from her friends, parents and teachers because she felt stuck in her role: a cheerful high achiever who had it all together.
“My mom’s like my best friend and there’s no way she would have ever expected it,” Zuba said. “Teens are really good at hiding it, which is really sad.”
While the teen mental health crisis was clear before the CDC report, the stark findings have jolted parents and the wider public.
“These are not normal numbers,” said Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy. “When you grow up with this, I think the risk is thinking, ‘Well, this is just how it is.'”
The reasons girls are in crisis are likely complex, and may vary by race, ethnicity, class and culture. Harvard psychologist Richard Weissbourd points out that “girls are more likely to respond to pain in the world by internalizing conflict and stress and fear, and boys are more likely to translate those feelings into anger and aggression,” masking their depression.
Weissbourd added that girls also are socialized not to be aggressive and that in a male-dominated culture girls can be gaslit into thinking there is something wrong with them when problems or conflicts arise. “They can be prone to blaming themselves,” he said.
Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of the book “iGen,” said that increases in most measures of poor mental health in the past decade were more pronounced for girls than boys.
She said part of the problem is that digital media has displaced the face-to-face time teens once had with friends, and that teens often don’t get enough sleep. Adding to those influences are the hours teens spend scrolling social media. For girls, she said, this often means “comparing your body and your life to others and feeling that you come up wanting.”
That’s not to say everything that people do on smartphones is problematic, Twenge said. “It’s just social media in general and internet use show the strongest correlations with depression,” she said.
Ben Handrich, a school counselor at South Salem High School in Salem, Ore., said teen girls often feel that “people are watching them – that no matter what they do, there’s this invisible audience judging their movements, their actions, the way they smile, the way they eat.”
Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and author of “The Emotional Lives of Teenagers,” said it’s important to note that the CDC data was collected in the fall of 2021, a time when many teens were anxious about returning to in-person school and wearing masks.
“Teenagers were miserable,” Damour said. “It absolutely confirms what we were looking at clinically at that time. We don’t know what the next wave of data will tell us.”
Damour noted that the CDC findings are distressing because today’s teens, in many ways, are in better physical health and more risk-averse than most previous generations.
“We’re raising the best-behaved generation of teenagers on record,” said Damour. “They drive with seat belts, they smoke less, they have less sex, they wear helmets. They do all these things that we did not do.”
And yet they are in crisis.
Many girls across the country describe teen cultures of casual slut-shaming, of peers greeting girls with sexist slurs such as “whore” or “ho,” based on what they wear or how they look.
In Los Angeles, Elida Mejia Elias says it’s a no-win situation. “If you’re skinny, they judge you for being skinny and if you’re fat, they judge you for being fat,” explains the 18-year-old, a senior.
In ninth grade, a friend of Mejia Elias’s sent a naked picture of herself to a boy she was dating, at his urging, and he spread it around to his friends. “Everyone was talking bad about her. They were calling her names, like ‘ho,'” said Mejia Elias. “That affected her mental health. She needed to get therapy.”
In Maryland, at her Bethesda public high school, 14-year old Tulip Kaya said that girls in her friend group hear whistles or “gross comments” about their breasts and are texted unsolicited penis pictures by boys at school. “If there’s anything slightly unique about you, you’re not going to have a fun time, and you will be targeted,” she said.
Social media can be overwhelming. “On Snapchat and TikTok, you see all these pretty girls with tiny waists and a big bottom. I know I’m only 14, but it makes me feel like there’s something wrong with myself,” Kaya said. “When I start to feel like that, I will delete the app for a little while.”
Girls interviewed by The Post expressed uncertainty and self-doubt over everything from what to wear, what to post or comment on social media, what it meant if someone wasn’t following them back on a social platform, and even in daily interactions. When in-person school resumed, during the fall of 2021 for many, routine encounters and moments felt weird after a year or more of separation from peers.
“Sometimes I don’t want to wear shorts because I don’t have the body type I had in middle school,” said Leilah Villegas, of Eastvale, Calif., who ran track before the pandemic. Now in 10th grade, she’s started running again but her changed body brings pangs of self-consciousness.
Aanika Arjumand, 16, from Gaithersburg, Md., who sits on her county’s Domestic Violence Coordinating Council, said she was not surprised by the increases in sexual violence.
“We deal with a lot of cases on like teen dating violence and kind of informing schools about teen dating violence because the health curriculum right now basically does not cover abuse or sexual violence as much as it should,” she said.
School itself can sometimes be physically unsafe, as happened with Harker, a 13-year old in Savannah, Ga., who spoke on the condition that her full name not be used because of the sensitivity of the issue.
At school, she received unwanted attention from a boy in sixth grade. He would whisper in her ears and grab her shoulders. Once, he seized her across her chest and did not release her until she screamed. A teacher was nearby, but she said the boy went unpunished and remained in her classes. The teen has resorted to learning at home.
“They didn’t believe me even though there were witnesses,” she said. “A boy in school can get away with something, but if I do one mess-up, I get called out for it.
At the Bronx High School of Science in New York, 17-year-old Najiha Uddin talks about a White beauty standard perpetuated in mainstream and social media, which she says girls of color can’t possibly meet. She and others describe status-oriented peers and media messages about shoes, clothes, styles and experiences that outstrip their families’ means.
For Montanna Norman, 18, a senior at a private high school in Washington during the fall of 2021, the killing of unarmed Black men by police was foremost in her mind after the murder of George Floyd. At the time she was the co-leader of her school’s Black Student Union. “The toll that that took on my mental health was a lot,” she said.
Some of her friends have contemplated, or attempted, suicide, Norman said. “You wish you could do more to help,” she said.
Garvey Mortley, a 14-year old in Bethesda, Md., who is Black, said she has been teased because of her hair and still feels microaggressions. “Racism can be a stressor for depression or a cause of depression because of the bullying that happens, not just Black kids but Asian kids and Hispanic kids who feel they are unwanted,” she said.
Students who are LGBTQ face some of the highest rates of depressive symptoms and sexual violence, including rape. In 2021, nearly 1 in 4 reported an attempt to take their life.
Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter, a student activist in Virginia, pointed out that high school is a time when many LGBTQ students are still figuring out who they are and solidifying their identity. “Even if you have an accepting environment around you, you are aware that there are millions of people who don’t want you to exist,” she said.
Some of the most alarming data collected by the CDC involved the rise in suicidal thoughts among teen girls – 24 percent of teen girls have made a plan for suicide while 13 percent have attempted it, almost twice the rate for boys.
Rich and Trinna Walker, from New Albany, Ind., searched for a therapist for their 13-year-old daughter Ella but struggled to find one in the overloaded mental health-care system during the pandemic. Once Ella finally started treatment, however, her demeanor seemed to improve, they said.
“I really felt like she was doing so much better,” Trinna Walker said. Ella had been asking her dad how she could earn extra money to buy a birthday gift for her sister. She told her mom she wanted doughnuts for breakfast.
“Then we woke up to a nightmare the next morning,” Trinna said.
Ella died by suicide on Jan. 22, 2022. Her parents said they wish someone would have alerted them to the warning signs. Unknown to them, Ella was being bullied, and she was devastated by a breakup, they said.
Now the couple is urging teens to speak up when their peers are in trouble. “It was like a bomb going off,” Rich Walker said. “It’s like it mortally wounded my wife and me and Ella’s two older sisters, and then it reverberated outwardly to her friends.”
Many of the girls interviewed for this story asked that adults listen to and believe girls, and stop dismissing their concerns as drama. “Adults don’t get all the pressure that teenage girls have to deal with, from appearance to the way they act to how smart they are, to the things they do,” said Villegas, the Eastvale 10th-grader. “It can be very overwhelming.”
Asma Tibta, a 10th-grader in Fairfax County, Va., said she is “close friends” with her mother, but doesn’t talk about mental health at home. “I haven’t told her too much. And I don’t plan to.”
In Savannah, Harker took a break from playing Roblox with her friend to be interviewed. Before heading back to the game, she had one request: “I want adults to believe young girls.”
The Washington Post’s Serena Marshall contributed to this report.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Ron DeSantis requested the medical records of trans students who sought care at Florida’s public universities. Now students are planning a statewide walkout.
Annalise Mabe – February 16, 2023
Students at the University of South Florida gather to protest the request.Justin Blanco
Ron DeSantis told all public universities in Florida to hand over the medical records of trans students who sought care.
Insider has confirmed six of the 12 universities have complied with the request.
Now, college students across the state are planning a walkout to protest the governor’s request.
DeSantis asked to see the records of any student who has experienced gender dysphoria in the past five years. In addition, he wants their ages and the dates they received gender-affirming care. The deadline to submit those records was February 10.
Insider has confirmed that University of Florida, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, Florida A&M University, Florida International University, and the University of North Florida have complied with the request, but has yet to hear back from the rest.
Students at these universities are now planning rallies for next week along with the statewide walkout on February 23. Ben Braver, a junior at the University of South Florida and the outreach officer for the school’s College Democrats chapter, is leading the initiative, known as the Stand for Freedom Florida Walkout.
“Hate is spread when it’s innocuous, when it seems silly, and when it seems like taking a stand is an overreaction,” Braver told Insider. “We, just like any generation, need to stand for the civil rights that have already been fought for, the ones that have been won, and those which are at stake right now.”
Andy Pham, a senior and long-standing member of the University of South Florida’s Trans+ Student Union, said he sees the state’s move as a direct attack on trans rights.
“They want to legislate us out of existence,” Pham said. “That starts with attacking our healthcare, attacking our right to exist in public spaces, attempting surveillance — all of that.”
In January, 20 students at the University of South Florida held a rally protesting DeSantis’ request. They then started an online petition asking the school’s administration not to submit the medical records. The petition received over 2,600 signatures, but officials at the school said they plan to send over the records anyway. Insider hasn’t been able to confirm whether the University of South Florida sent over the data.
“As a state university, USF has an obligation to be responsive to requests from our elected officials,” the university said in a statement, according to WUSF. “However, the university will not provide information that identifies an individual patient or violates patient privacy laws.”
Among those signing on to support the walkout are the Dream Defenders, Florida College Democrats, state lawmaker Anna Eskamani, and 26-year-old Congressman Maxwell Frost.
“The governor’s abusing his power,” Frost told Insider. “He’s targeting folks that disagree with him — people who might not see eye to eye with him, marginalized communities.”
When Insider asked why the state has requested the health data of transgender college students, the state’s deputy press secretary referred to DeSantis’ second inaugural address, in which the governor stated: “We are committed to fully understanding the amount of public funding that is going toward such nonacademic pursuits to best assess how to get our colleges and universities refocused on education and truth.”
The American Civil Liberties Union reports that during this legislative session, Florida lawmakers have introduced 85 bills restricting gender-affirming healthcare, up from 43 bills last year.
Eskamani said DeSantis should prepare for student backlash.
“When students see the visual representation of their peers around them standing up and walking out, they’re going to get plugged in and help us fight back,” she said. “That will happen.”
DeSantis’ attempt to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion is doomed to fail | Opinion
Ben Wright – February 12, 2023
I’ve had a front row seat for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attempts to overhaul Florida’s university system. My eldest son is currently a junior at New College of Florida which is ground-zero in this struggle. He didn’t choose New College because of some liberal ideology; he was excited about small class sizes, accessible professors, and its designation as an honors college. New College has been a great experience. Now, the rug is being pulled out from under him. His tiny school is the first test in a state-wide experiment that is coming to a campus near you.
It’s almost guaranteed DeSantis is running for president. By claiming that Florida’s universities and colleges are filled with radically liberal professors that are indoctrinating our students, the governor has discovered a way to energize his Republican base and present himself as a champion for conservatives. Are independent voters in Arizona and Pennsylvania going to lose sleep over the reshuffling of Florida’s colleges? Probably not. He has found an issue where he can win the hearts of Republicans without alienating the independent voters that he needs to win the presidency.
The governor is targeting many aspects of higher education, but his main line of attack is focused on eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs from state colleges and universities. Ironically, under DeSantis, the Board of Governors insisted that universities adopt these DEI programs just a few years ago.
DeSantis’ government overreach may be an important building block in his run for the presidency, but it will do long-lasting harm to Florida’s institutions of higher learning. Florida’s universities spend time, money, and resources to attract talented students and faculty … and they have been successful. There are many jokes about our weird and wonderful Florida, but our higher education system has garnered well-deserved respect in recent years.
Universities in other states are now poised to start poaching these talented folks with promises of true academic freedom. Florida will lose talented professors and students through attrition and find it more difficult to attract quality replacements. The governor’s decision to use these schools as pawns in his political games will cause long-term damage to the institutions and the degrees they issue.
In the real world, corporate America has overwhelmingly adopted diversity, equity, and inclusion. All the Fortune 100 companies have made a public commitment to DEI. Why? Because the young, talented workers they want to attract are demanding it. Employees now expect their employer to promote the values they hold. Why did Disney come out against DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law? Because Disney employees around the country wouldn’t stand for anything less. The unemployment rate is unprecedentedly low … it’s hard to attract top talent. Millennials and Gen-Z are driving the workforce now and they expect DEI to be a priority.
The changes at New College of Florida are just the opening gambit in a much larger plan. DeSantis’ attempt to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion is doomed to fail. It’s akin to closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted. In the meantime, his political ploy will do lasting harm to our state universities and colleges … and undermine the competitiveness of our college graduates.
Tallahassee resident Ben Wright is a third generation Floridian and former captain in the U.S. Air Force. He graduated from Indian River State College, the University of Florida, and Regis University in Colorado with an M.B.A. He works for a Fortune 500 company and his oldest son attends New College of Florida.
The Republican Distraction Farm Is Failing Because They’re Employing Less Talented Grievance-Farmers
Jack Holmes – February 10, 2023
Republican Grievance-Farmers Lose Green ThumbsPool – Getty Images
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Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, gave a rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this week that suggested Republicans have learned precious few lessons from their dramatic underperformance in the midterms. Biden’s speech was a full-throated appeal to everyday Americans on populist economic grounds—one that actually echoed some of Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the 2016 campaign. Sanders brought the now-standard routine about The Woke Mob “that can’t even tell you what a woman is,” and that is ushering in a world where “children are taught to hate one another on account of their race.” She referred to “C.R.T.” as if everyone listening would know that stands for Critical Race Theory (and that it is inherently evil). Sanders did outline a plan to raise starting salaries for Arkansas teachers, which is welcome in an era in which the American right increasingly seeks to paint educators as rogue agents of Woke determined to brainwash your kids.
The latter is the kind of stuff that cost them seats in the midterms. It hits squarely with people who are up-to-date on their Fox News folklore, fluent in the language of culture-war apocalypto. But for most people, it’s probably pretty weird. They mostly like their kids’ teachers, who are usually trying to do the best job they can in sometimes challenging circumstances. For years, the Democratic Party was the one considered out of touch, if only because of the alienating way that some liberals talked about the issues. But that’s now the Republican Party’s stock-in-trade. The right’s rising star—at least in the view of media-politico types—is the governor of Florida, Ronald DeSantis, who has replaced his pandemic anti-interventionist crusade (which at least dealt with a major issue of public concern) with campaigns against Woke Corporations and in favor of the government’s prerogative to police what teachers teach in schools. It’s gotten fewer national headlines that he, too, has sought to raise salaries, but that nugget is competing with news that teachers have been told to remove or cover up books out of fear they could face criminal charges for their content.
Maybe DeSantis is reluctant to talk about other parts of his record because, as the political press finally turns to it, we’re fully realizing how committed he once was to changing Social Security and Medicare. (We’ve also seen how touchy Republicans get when you talk about this since Biden brought it up at the State of the Union. Even a talk-radio host interviewing Ron Johnson was explicitly trying to brand this stuff as “reforms” not “cuts.”) The president pointed out that some Republicans—including chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Lizard-American Rick Scott—have called for sunsetting all federal legislation after five years. This would by definition include Medicare and Social Security.
Time will tell if Ronald DeSantis is the kind of right-winger who can still thread the needle.SOPA Images – Getty Images
Maybe they would be renewed as-is, but that’s quite a bet to make, particularly when you examine the record of the hospital chain Scott once ran. DeSantis, though, used to be even more forthright. He supported privatizing aspects of both programs in his 2012 congressional campaign, CNN found, and once in Congress he supported Paul Ryan’s agenda on “entitlements.” (They are earned benefits.) All this is based on the combined notions that these programs are fiscally unsustainable and raising taxes is a kind of supreme evil. None of this is new: George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security. Ronald Reagan launched his political career with this stuff. Maybe DeSantis is an example of how how you can get away with this kind of policy record, considering he’s extremely popular in the old folks’ Mecca of Florida. Or maybe we in the press have just done a godawful job.
Republicans lose votes when people get a good look at their proposals on these issues, so maybe it’s no wonder they’re now permanently engaged in culture-war food fights. Except that also seems to have lost its luster outside The Base. Trump at least had a canny ear for the more transcendent gripes, particularly in 2016. His would-be successors are less talented grievance farmers, and some absolute loony toons have joined their ranks in Congress. It’s not a change so much as it’s become more obvious than it was that Republicans have no plans to address problems in normal people’s lives. They’re getting so high on their own supply that they can no longer even explain some of these bedrocks of their politics. The Louisville Courier-Journal‘s Joe Sonka asked Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers for his definition of “woke” on Friday and he replied, “Woke? That is the definition to me that is a describing of a mentality or a culture that certain individuals have about how things are progressing through society.” Hey man, maybe carve out some time to think about this or just admit that it’s become a hollow vehicle for reactionary rage.
New Jersey student ends her life after months of bullying, video of school hallway beating circulates online
Sarah Rumpf – February 9, 2023
This story may contains details that are disturbing. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
A 14-year-old girl from New Jersey ended her life after a disturbing video of girls viciously beating her up in the high school’s hallway circulated online. Now, her distraught father is promising to remember her legacy by bringing awareness of a broken school system he says overlooked extensive school bullying.
Adriana Kuch, a student at Central Regional High School, was found dead on Feb. 3 at her home two days after the shocking video surfaced.
Adriana Kuch is remembered as “a beautiful girl who was happy, funny, stubborn, and strong.”
The disturbing video shows Adriana and her boyfriend walking down the hallway of the local public high school when a student walks up and starts walloping her in the face with a water bottle. Adriana falls to the ground, where she is repeatedly kicked and punched by a group of students. Cheering is heard from the student who took the shocking video.
About 30 seconds into the attack, two school workers interrupted the ambush.
Following the attack on Feb.1, Adriana sustained severe bruising on her legs and face. Michael Kush, Adriana’s father, was shocked after hearing about the bullying incident. He told Fox News Digital that he took his 14-year-old teen to the local police station to file a report about the incident. The Berkeley Township Police Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The father also said his daughter showed him videos of people taunting her and threatening her on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat following the attack. Adriana reportedly faced months of bullying from fellow classmates at the local high school.
Adriana Kuch’s face was bloodied and bruised following an ambush that occurred in the school’s hallways on Feb. 1.Adriana’s Kuch’s bruised legs after she was bullied at the local high school.
Despite reaching out to school faculty, Michael shared that, “no action was taken by anyone,” following the incident. Just two days later, family members found Adriana deceased in her New Jersey home.
Michael shared with Fox News Digital that he is taking legal action against the school.
“I’m livid,” Michael shared with Fox News Digital. “I blame the girls and the school and the cops. I want everyone to know what happened to her, I want justice, as much attention, so they can’t ignore it.”
Michael shared that he believes his daughter would be alive if the school and police had taken immediate action.
“If the school contacted the police, filed a report, and conducted an investigation, these videos could have been discovered immediately.” Michael shared.
On Feb. 5, Central Regional High School sent out a note to the student body sharing the “tragic passing” of a district student. The school also provided information on available counseling and crisis professionals, stating “please know that you are never alone in the world and there is always support during bad times to help change things for the better.”
Central Regional High School did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital.
Adriana Kush’s father is seeking justice after
However, Michael shared that Adriana is not the first student at Central Regional High School who has faced extensive physical abuse and cyberbullying on school grounds. On his public Facebook page, Michael shared videos from other parents whose children have faced bullying without school administration stepping in.
“The more I continue to see, the more I want to fight for all kids against schools like this.” Michael said. “Complete incompetence from top to bottom.”
As of Thursday evening, three students who were involved in the video incident were charged with third-degree felony assault and a fourth with disorderly conduct. All four students involved in the attack have been expelled from the local high school.
Scientists Discover Molten Layer of Rock Beneath Earth’s Crust
Kevin Hurler – February 8, 2023
The layer of molten rock corresponds with the upper mantle, also known as the asthenosphere.
Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are a result of the movement of large swaths of Earth’s crust, but while the theory of plate tectonics has been widely accepted as a fundamental law of geology, there are still things to be discovered. New research from the University of Texas Austin points to the presence of a partly molten layer of rock underneath Earth’s surface that could provide some explanation for how the plates move like they do.
The layer is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) below Earth’s surface, and while scientists have found patches of melt at this depth previously, new research published in Nature Geosciences indicates that molten rock could be more widespread. Through analysis of seismic data, a team led by Junlin Hua identified that the molten layer—which belongs to the upper part of the mantle, called the asthenosphere—probably has little to no bearing on how Earth’s tectonic plates move over the mantle.
“When we think about something melting, we intuitively think that the melt must play a big role in the material’s viscosity,” said lead author Hua, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Texas Jackson School of Geosciences, in a press release. “But what we found is that even where the melt fraction is quite high, its effect on mantle flow is very minor.”
The mechanism that helps fuel the motion of Earth’s tectonic plates is one of the great mysteries of geology. Hua and his colleagues’ research suggests that convection currents in the mantle could be the cause. While the interior of Earth is mainly solid, the mantle can be thought of as an incredibly viscous liquid, that shifts and flows over long periods of time.
“We can’t rule out that locally melt doesn’t matter,” said Thorsten Becker, a co-author on the paper and a professor of geology at University of Texas Austin, in the release. “But I think it drives us to see these observations of melt as a marker of what’s going on in the Earth, and not necessarily an active contribution to anything.”
For a planet that is 4.5 billion years old, Earth is still full of surprises.
Quantum breakthrough could revolutionize computing
Pallab Ghosh – Science correspondent – February 8, 2023
Twenty years ago Winfried Hensinger was told by other scientists that developing a powerful quantum computer was impossible. Now he has made the system behind him that he believes will prove them wrong
Scientists have come a step closer to making multi-tasking ‘quantum’ computers, far more powerful than even today’s most advanced supercomputers.
Quantum computers make use of the weird qualities of sub-atomic particles.
So-called quantum particles can be in two places at the same time and also strangely connected even though they are millions of miles apart.
A Sussex University team transferred quantum information between computer chips at record speeds and accuracy.
The researchers connected two chips together and sent record amounts of quantum information at unprecedented speeds and reliability
Computer scientists have been trying to make an effective quantum computer for more than 20 years. Firms such as Google, IBM and Microsoft have developed simple machines. But, according to Prof Winfried Hensinger, who led the research at Sussex University, the new development paves the way for systems that can solve complex real world problems that the best computers we have today are incapable of.
“Right now we have quantum computers with very simple microchips,” he said. “What we have achieved here is the ability to realise extremely powerful quantum computers capable of solving some of the most important problems for industries and society.”
Rolls-Royce is investing in quantum computing research to see if it can speed up the design process for their aircraft engines
Currently, computers solve problems in a simple linear way, one calculation at a time.
In the quantum realm, particles can be in two places at the same time and researchers want to harness this property to develop computers that can do multiple calculations all at the same time.
Quantum particles can also be millions of miles apart and be strangely connected, mirroring each other’s actions instantaneously. Again, that could also be used to develop much more powerful computers.
The quantum computer chips have to be set up in a clean room an put into a vacuum container as even the slightest contamination can reduce its performance
One stumbling block has been the need to transfer quantum information between chips quickly and reliably: the information degrades, and errors are introduced.
But Prof Hensinger’s team has made a breakthrough, published in the journal Nature Communications, which may have overcome that obstacle.
The team developed a system able to transport information from one chip to another with a reliability of 99.999993% at record speeds. That, say the researchers, shows that in principle chips could be slotted together to make a more powerful quantum computer.
The research team can see individual atoms floating above their chips as the test out their quantum computer
Prof Michael Cuthbert, who is the director of the newly established National Quantum Computing Centre in Didcot, Oxfordshire and is independent of the Sussex research group described the development as a “really important enabling step”. But he said that more work was needed to develop practical systems.
“To build the type of quantum computer you need in the future, you start off by connecting chips that are the size of your thumbnail until you get something the size of a dinner plate. The Sussex group has shown you can have the stability and speed for that step.
“But then you need a mechanism to connect these dinner plates together to scale up a machine, potentially as large as a football pitch, in order to carry out realistic and useful computations, and the technology for communications for that scale is not yet available.”
Quantum computers harness two weird properties of particles at the very small scale – they can be in two places at the same time and be strangely connected even though they are millions of miles apart.
PhD student Sahra Kulmiya, who carried out the Sussex experiment, says that the team are ready for the challenge to take the technology to the next level.
“It is not just solely a physics problem anymore,” she told BBC News.
“It is an engineering problem, a computer science problem and also a mathematical problem.
“It is really difficult to say how close we are to the realisation of quantum computing, but I’m optimistic in how it can become relevant to us in our everyday lives.”
One of the UK’s leading engineering firms, Rolls Royce, is also optimistic about the technology. It is working with the Sussex researchers to develop machines that could help them design even better jet engines.
Powerful supercomputers are used to model the flow of air in simulations to test out new designs of aircraft engines.
Transforming engineering
A quantum computer could in principle track the airflow with even greater accuracy, and do so really quickly, according to Prof Leigh Lapworth, who is leading the development of quantum computing for Rolls-Royce.
“Quantum computers would be able to do calculations that we can’t currently do and others that would take many months or years. The potential of doing those in days would just transform our design systems and lead to even better engines.”
The technology could potentially also be used to design drugs more quickly by accurately simulating their chemical reactions, a calculation too difficult for current supercomputers. They could also provide even more accurate systems to forecast weather and project the impact of climate change.
Prof Hensinger said he first had the idea of developing a quantum computer more than 20 years ago.
“People rolled their eyes and said: ‘it’s impossible’.”
“And when people tell me something can’t be done, I just love to try. So I have spent the past 20 years removing the barriers one by one to a point where one can now really build a practical quantum computer.”
Black ‘1870’ pins worn by Congress members for State of the Union have deep significance
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus wore black pins with the number “1870” on them, which marks the year of the first known police killing of an unarmed and free Black person in the U.S.
Marquise Francis, National Reporter – February 7, 2023
An “1870” pin to be worn by members of the Congressional Black Caucus and others at the State of the Union address. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos courtesy of the office of Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Jabin Botsford/Washington Post via Getty Images)
At President Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday in which he addressed the country’s top issues before Congress, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other Democrats made a bold statement of their own — albeit a silent one.
Many of them wore black pins with the number “1870” on them, which marks the year of the first known police killing of an unarmed and free Black person that occurred in the U.S. The pins are a call for action on reforming the institution of policing that has killed thousands of Black people in the 153 years since.
“I’m tired of moments of silence. I’m tired of periods of mourning,” New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, a Democrat who came up with the idea to create the pins, told Yahoo News ahead of the speech. “I wanted to highlight that police killings of unarmed Black citizens have been in the news since 1870, and yet significant action has yet to be taken.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman at an event at the Capitol to demand that Congress renew an assault weapons ban, July 12, 2016. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for MoveOn.org)
On March 31, 1870, 26-year-old Henry Truman, a Black man, was shot and killed by Philadelphia Officer John Whiteside after being accused of shoplifting from a grocery store.
Whiteside had allegedly chased Truman into an alley when at some point Truman turned to ask what he had done wrong, and the officer fatally shot him, according to an account in the Philadelphia Inquirer the following day. At trial, Whiteside claimed he had been ambushed by a crowd while he chased Truman. Whiteside was later convicted of manslaughter. That same year the country adopted the 15th Amendment, which granted Black men the right to vote.
Over a century and a half since Truman’s killing, a steady stream of Black people have been killed by law enforcement, including 1,353 since 2017, according to data from Statista, a digital insights company. In fact, Black Americans are three times as likely to be killed by police as white people are, and they account for 1 in 4 police killings despite making up just 13% of the country’s population.
Many of the parents, siblings and children of Black people killed by police over the last decade were invited to Tuesday’s address as guests of members of the Congressional Black Caucus. The guest list included the families of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old who was gunned down by Cleveland police in 2014 on a playground; Amir Locke, the 22-year-old fatally shot by Minneapolis police in a predawn, no-knock raid last year; Tyre Nichols, the 29-year-old fatally beaten by Memphis police during a traffic stop early last month; and a dozen other families who have lost loved ones.
“I hope today that we can get Congress to see that we need to pass this bill because this should never happen,” Nichols’s mother, RowVaughn Wells, said Tuesday afternoon at a press conference with the Congressional Black Caucus. “I don’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
RowVaughn Wells, mother of Tyre Nichols, who died after being beaten by Memphis police officers, speaks with reporters on Tuesday about police reform. (Cliff Owen/AP)
In contrast, several Republicans chose to honor members of law enforcement as their guests, including Rep. Mike Garcia of California, who brought Tania Owen, a retired detective and widow of a Los Angeles County sheriff’s sergeant who was shot and killed by a suspect when he answered a burglary-in-progress call in 2016. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon hosted police officers from their respective districts.
The invitations came after several other Republicans last week, during National Gun Violence Survivors Week, were photographed wearing AR-15 pins, which were passed out by Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia on the House floor. Clyde claimed the pins were “to remind people of the Second Amendment of the Constitution and how important it is in preserving our liberties.”
Many police reform advocates have argued that the systemic issues tied to policing transcend even racial lines, highlighting the fact that the five main officers involved in the brutal beating of Nichols were also Black.
“Blackness doesn’t shield you from all of the forces that make police violence possible,” James Forman Jr., a Yale law school professor and expert on race and law enforcement, told the New York Times. “What are the theories of policing and styles of policing, the training that police receive? All of those dynamics that propel violence and brutality are more powerful than the race of the officer.”
Karundi Williams, CEO of Re:power, an organization that trains Black people to become political leaders, told NBC News that addressing the core issues is the only way to prevent more killings.
“When we have moments of racial injustice that is thrust in the national spotlight, there is an uptick of outrage, and people take to the streets,” Williams said. “But then the media tends to move on to other things, and that consciousness decreases. But we never really got underneath the problem.”
Protesters in Oakland, Calif., on Jan. 29 to protest the police killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
In 2022 alone, police killed 1,192 people, more than any year in the past decade, according to a new report released last week by the nonprofit Mapping Police Violence. Black people accounted for more than 300 of those killings. The report also claimed that many of these killings could have been avoided by changing law enforcement’s approach to such encounters, such as sending mental health providers to certain 911 calls.
But substantial police reform has continued to lag.
The 2021 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which was put forth following the murder of 46-year-old Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, seeks to end excessive force, qualified immunity and racial bias in policing and to combat police misconduct. The bill passed the House of Representatives twice in the previous Congress, but has continued to fail in the Senate.
“With the support of families of victims, civil rights groups, and law enforcement, I signed an executive order for all federal officers banning chokeholds, restricting no-knock warrants, and other key elements of the George Floyd Act,” Biden said in his State of the Union speech. “Let’s commit ourselves to make the words of Tyre’s mother come true, something good must come from this.”
Following the recent police killing of Nichols, members of the Black Caucus are cautiously optimistic that change will soon come.
“This unfortunately reignites the fervor and the necessity and the urgency,” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee for Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, recently told Yahoo News. “With 18,000 police communities, there has to be a federal law that addresses the training and the relationship between police. We have to restart.”
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the Oval Office last week. (Susan Walsh/AP)
An info card attached to the black pin given to members of the Black Caucus expresses the frustration of numerous police killings from Truman to Nichols.
“153 years later, nothing has changed,” the note reads in part. “We are tired of mourning and demand change.”
Is ‘Quiet Thriving’ the New Workplace Trend We Should All Be Channeling?
Fiona Ward – February 6, 2023
If quiet quitting was your workplace buzzword for 2022, then maybe this year’s more optimistic trend—quiet thriving—might just be the positive outlook you need.
By the end of last year, it seemed we were all quiet quitting something, be it our relationships or our jobs. That is, doing the bare minimum in a situation that you don’t believe is serving you or rewarding you in the way you feel you deserve. But while it’s a tempting thought to mentally check out of your job, it can actually have a pretty negative effect on your mood and may even make you feel even more unfulfilled at work. So, introducing the antithesis to quiet quitting: quiet thriving.
Coined by psychotherapist Lelsey Alderman in an article for The Washington Post, the term quiet thriving means actively making changes to your work day in order to shift your mental state and help you feel more engaged in your job.
As neuroscientist and success coach Laura Ellera tells Glamour UK, it isn’t really in our nature to do the bare minimum at work. “Let’s be honest, it’s not always possible to just up and quit our jobs when they are causing us distress, even though we might want to,” she says. “We can choose to settle into just getting by and practicing quiet quitting, but this in the long run will not be best for your mental health.”
It’s the idea of staying in a job you’re fundamentally unhappy in.
She continues, “We are built to thrive as human beings—we are naturally inquisitive and even if we say we’re happy just doing the bare minimum until something better comes along, deep down we feel that lack of purpose. We notice the clock ticking as our careers seem to drift by us. We are nagged by that feeling that there’s got to be more to life than this.
“Even if you could leave that role, you may not find the fulfillment you crave if you haven’t worked on yourself first. No job alone will give us that deep down satisfaction that we all desire. We want to make a difference. We need to be appreciated. There is a drive to reach our full potential, whether we care to admit it to ourselves or not. So quiet quitting, while it may feel like sticking two up to the establishment, is actually doing the same right back at you.”
For Ellera, quiet thriving allows us to take back control of our well-being at work—and it involves two elements: “The mental switch that we need to work through in order to see our career from a different, more positive angle, and the physical actions we take in order to shape the reality of the role into one that makes us excited to go to work again.”
Here’s how you can try quiet thriving for yourself….
Take back control.
“A great place to start is to think about which parts of your job frustrate you and which parts light you up,” says Ellera. “Really get clear on the different aspects of your role and what they mean to you. Then take the parts that frustrate you and ask yourself honestly, Which parts of this do I have control over? Which parts do I have some influence over? And which parts are completely out of my control?
“If you believe your boss is an overbearing fool, you have no control over how they behave, but you do have control over how you react to their behavior. So go through each of the points (good and bad) and mark ‘control,’ ‘influence,’ or ‘no control’. It’s then down to you to take the parts that light you up and you have control over, and to work out a plan to incorporate more of that into your every day.”
Ellera suggests, “Look at the parts that frustrate you but you have control over, and work out how you can get less of that in your day. Once you’ve worked on these, go onto the things that you have influence over and do the same. Then consciously agree to let go of the things you have no control over. But know that even with these, you always have control over how you choose to react to them. And it is a choice.”
Learn to soothe your nervous system.
“When we get stressed, we lose full access to parts of our brain, as the body is focusing on more imminent threats (previously the hungry lion, now the looming deadline or the angry looking boss heading your way). When our body is in this threat mode, we also lose the ability to communicate properly and build connections with others, both of which are imperative for our workplace success and mental well-being,“ Ellera says.
“So to step out of this threat mode, we need to learn to soothe our nervous system, and we can do this by starting to become more aware of how our body is feeling in the moment. Are you breathing deeply, are your shoulders and jaw relaxed, are you feeling calm? Or are you taking short breaths in the top of your chest, feeling like you’re about to explode?
“Set a reminder on your phone to repeat every hour, and when it goes off, just take notice,” she instructs. “Become aware of what’s happening internally. Allow yourself the grace of taking three long, deep breaths in, exhaling each as slowly as you can through pursed lips, imagining you’re breathing out through a straw. This allows your nervous system to calm and means that your body can function fully and your brain can work optimally—because you can’t thrive in your job if your body is stuck in threat mode.”
It takes a lot of energy for our body to function properly, and a lot of the time, we are taking more out of it than we are replenishing. This means we end up in an energy deficit; that’s when we feel sluggish, sleepy or downright exhausted.
“One thing that can help us to feel rejuvenated is to connect with people who make us feel safe,” says Ellera. “People who feel good to be around. This is when we can co-regulate our nervous systems—we move into step with other people’s breathing and heart-rate rhythm when we are relaxed with them. This can give us more energy and motivation in our workday. The key to this is making sure these relationships are built with growth in mind, so not hanging around with the group that spend their time complaining about work or their boss.
“You also need to be able to trust that person,” she says, ”because although the best thing for your nervous system is another human being, the worst thing for your nervous system is also another human being if they make you feel unsafe in any way shape or form. So connecting with your colleagues has greater benefits than just feeling good. It can actually help to regulate your entire body, give you more energy, and therefore allow you to thrive in your career.”
Have a break.
According to Ellera, there’s no harm in taking time to reset—it may even help with your productivity (depending on what you do, of course).
“We were not built to concentrate for 12 hours straight a day,” she says. “Studies have found that we can only really concentrate on a task for around an hour at a time before our brain starts to wander. So as you push on throughout the day, you’re actually getting less and less efficient at your work and are more and more likely to make mistakes. So take a break.”
One tactic Ellera suggests: “Split the day up into chunks where you can, and make sure you get up, move, and have a break. I get my clients to use the Pomodoro technique, where they set a timer (I use 25 minute intervals) and focus solely on one task at a time; when the timer goes off, they can either reset it and continue for another 25 minutes if it’s going well, or get up and have a break. This will make you so much more productive and helps you to get more done in your day. The breaks allow your brain to rest and your concentration to reset. And if you add a mini reward for getting that task done, such as a five-minute walk outside, or a coffee from the office cafe, your body will anticipate the reward and hit you with a shot of dopamine, the feel good hormone, making you more likely to do it again.”
Most offices have eight-hour workdays—how many of those hours are we really supposed to be working? We asked a productivity expert, a psychologist, a labor journalist, and a boss.
Prioritize your health and sleep.
“If you’re struggling with finding the love for your work, this isn’t going to be improved by crawling into the office late, tired, and with a hangover,” says Ellera. “Our mental health depends on our brain health, and when we don’t look after our brain, this is when everything seems to get harder.
“And this makes appreciating your role and working toward a better career path more difficult if you’re feeling generally rubbish.” she points out. “So ensure you’re starting your working day from the best place possible. Your brain thrives when it is nourished with the right nutrients, hydrated with water and rested with seven to nine hours of sleep. All the stuff that is common sense, but often not common practice. So take stock of where your health is right now. Because that has a direct impact on your brain health. And that has a direct impact on how you are going to be showing up at work and in your life in general.”
Be proactive.
While not every role out there has the wiggle room to change dramatically, there are always more ways to mold the role than we believe, according to Ellera.
“Since you’ve already highlighted the things that light you up over the things that drain you, it’s now up to you to shape your role into something that works for both you and your employer. It’s much more beneficial for an employer to have happy, motivated employees than it is to rigidly stick to a job description without taking into account the human doing the role. And businesses are becoming more open to this way of thinking,” Ellera says.
“Whilst taking a sledgehammer to your role and changing it completely might not go down so well, highlighting areas of opportunity to your boss, and explaining why and how they could work for you and the company, can help you to take back control of your career. Becoming known as the go-to for the area you thrive in will not only make you happier in your role, but also makes you a valued member of the team and increases your potential in the company.”
