18,000 cows killed in explosion, fire at Texas dairy farm may be largest cattle killing ever
Rick Jervis, USA TODAY – April 12, 2023
The fire spread quickly through the holding pens, where thousands of dairy cows crowded together waiting to be milked, trapped in deadly confines.
After subduing the fire at the west Texas dairy farm Monday evening, officials were stunned at the scale of livestock death left behind: 18,000 head of cattle perished in the fire at the South Fork Dairy farm near Dimmitt, Texas – or nearly three times the number of cattle led to slaughter each day across the U.S.
A dairy farm worker rescued from inside the structure was taken to an area hospital and was in critical but stable condition as of Tuesday. There were no other human casualties.
“It’s mind-boggling,” Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone said of the number of bovine deaths. “I don’t think it’s ever happened before around here. It’s a real tragedy.”
The Castro County Sheriff’s Office was among several agencies to respond to a fire and explosion at a dairy farm near Dimmitt on Monday.
It was the biggest single-incident death of cattle in the country since the Animal Welfare Institute, a Washington-based animal advocacy group, began tracking barn and farm fires in 2013.
That easily surpassed the previous high: a 2020 fire at an upstate New York dairy farm that consumed around 400 cows, said Allie Granger, a policy associate at the institute.
“This is the deadliest fire involving cattle we know of,” she said of the Texas incident. “In the past, we have seen fires involving several hundred cows at a time, but nothing anything near this level of mortality.”
Where was the Texas cattle fire?
Castro County, where the fire occurred, is open prairie land dotted with dairy farms and cattle ranches, about 70 miles southwest of Amarillo.
Pictures posted on social media by bystanders showed the large plume of black smoke lifting from the farm fire, as well as charred cows that were saved from the structure.
What caused the dairy farm explosion?
A malfunction in a piece of equipment at the South Fork Dairy farm may have caused an explosion that led to the fire, said County Judge Mandy Gfeller, the county’s top executive. Texas fire officials are still investigating the exact cause, she said.
Malone, the mayor, said he wasn’t aware of any previous fires reported at the facility. He said the dairy had opened in the area just over three years ago and employed between 50 to 60 people.
The owners of South Fork Dairy couldn’t be reached for comment.
How many cows were killed in the dairy fire?
Most of the perished animals – a mix of Holstein and Jersey cows – were in a large holding pen before being milked, she said. The 18,000 cows represented about 90% of the farm’s total herd.
With each cow valued roughly at around $2,000, the company’s losses in livestock could stretch into the tens of millions of dollars, Gfeller said. That doesn’t include equipment and structure loss.
“You’re looking at a devastating loss,” she said. “My heart goes out to each person involved in that operation.”
How did the Texas dairy compare with the rest of the country?
Cattle stranded in a flooded pasture in La Grange, Texas, after Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The storm drowned thousands of cattle in southeast Texas.
Texas ranks fourth nationally in milk production, home to 319 Grade A dairies with an estimated 625,000 cows producing almost 16.5 billion pounds of milk a year, according to the Texas Association of Dairymen, a trade group.
And Castro County is the second-highest producing county in Texas, with 15 dairies producing 148,000 pounds of milk a month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Even by Texas standards, South Fork Dairy was a behemoth. Its 18,000 cattle made it nearly 10 times larger than the average dairy herd in Texas.
It’s not the first time large numbers of Texas cattle have died, but rarely do so many perish from a single fire. A blizzard in December 2015killed off around 20,000 cattle across the Texas panhandle, according to the Texas Association of Dairymen.
And Hurricane Harvey in 2017 drowned thousands more in Southeast Texas, leading to $93 million in livestock losses across the state, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
What happens next?
Now, state and dairy officials are turning to the massive, messy task of cleaning up 18,000 charred cow carcasses. On its website, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality lists several rules for onsite burial of carcasses, including burying the animal at least 50 feet from the nearest well and recording GPS coordinates of the site. Nowhere does it mention mass graves, however.
TCEQ and the AgriLife Extension Service are teaming up to assist in the clean up effort, officials said.
Malone, Dimmitt’s mayor, said he’s taken emergency management courses that teach how to dispose of animal carcasses after a disaster, just not at this scale.
“How do you dispose of 18,000 carcasses?” he said. “That’s something you just don’t run into very much.”
Americans Are Dying Younger—But Where You Live Makes a Big Difference
Jeremy Ney – April 12, 2023
US-SHOOTING-SCHOOL
Alexander Reddy, who’s friend’s little sister is Hallie Scruggs, pays respects at a makeshift memorial for victims by the Covenant School building at the Covenant Presbyterian Church following a shooting, in Nashville, Tennessee, March 28, 2023. – A heavily armed former student killed three young children and three staff in what appeared to be a carefully planned attack at a private elementary school in Nashville on March 27, before being shot dead by police. Credit – BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI-AFP
The average U.S. life expectancy has hit its worst decline in 100 years and America’s standing is dismal among peer nations. But the average obscures a more complex story. The United States is facing the greatest divide in life expectancy across regions in the last 40 years. Research from American Inequality found that Americans born in certain areas of Mississippi and Florida may die 20 years younger than their peers born in parts of Colorado and California.
The decline is not occurring equally throughout the country. In the land of opportunity, millions of people are not even given a fair shot at life.
America is facing 20 year gap in life expectancy across the countryCredit to Jeremy Ney @ AmericanInequality
America is unique among wealthy countries when it comes to how young people die, and the trend is only getting worse. From 2019 to 2020, U.S. life expectancy declined by almost 2 years according to the Center Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the worst two-year decline since 1921-1923. When Covid hit, America experienced a larger decline in life expectancy than any other wealthy country. Life expectancy in America is now 76 years.
What is driving the differences in who lives and who dies in America? The answer is wealth, demographics, and location.
State policies tremendously influence life expectancy. Income support, medicaid expansion, stronger gun control, drug overdose prevention, and safe abortion access are among the drivers of regional divides in life expectancy. Overdoses kill more than 100,000 people each year. Guns kill more people than cars do. But digging into communities shed light on the country’s biggest issues.
More from TIME
Wealthier Americans live longer
Income is a major driver of higher life expectancies. In the wealthiest regions like Aspen, Colorado and Santa Clara, California, median household incomes reach the hundreds of thousands of dollars and Americans live to 87 on average, the highest in the country. But in poorer regions like or Owsley County, Kentucky or Union County, Florida, the median household income is $35,000 and life expectancy floats around 67 on average, the lowest in the country.
Our research has found a painfully high correlation between household income and life expectancy.
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Poverty in America is not about income alone. Low-income communities, regardless of the state, are more likely to struggle with access to affordable healthcare; they are more likely to live near toxic sites and develop lung cancer; they are more likely to live in food deserts and wrestle with illnesses like heart disease and obesity; and they are more likely to die younger from drug overdoses.
Adequately addressing inequality in life expectancy requires looking across factors and working to improve these challenges for communities.
Black communities die younger
Thomas McGuire, professor of health economics at Harvard Medical School, explained, “In terms of health, there’s approximately a five-year penalty for being African-American compared to being a White male.”
Pemiscot County, Missouri represents this gap most clearly as it has one of the lowest Black life expectancies in America. In Pemiscot, Black residents die at 64 on average, effectively meaning that they will work until they die. 1 in 4 residents in Pemiscot is Black. Pemiscot has one public hospital that almost closed in 2013 and it’s one of the poorest counties in Missouri.
State policies make a big difference
States in the Deep South have lower life expectancies than states north of the Mason-Dixon line. These five factors may be the reasons why the residents of some states live far longer.
1. Expanding the EITC and CTC: More money means more time alive, and certain programs which put cash directly into low-income homes have improved life expectancy. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) federally have been some of America’s most successful poverty alleviation programs, but 11 states have enacted their own CTC programs and 31 states have implemented their own EITC programs, putting more cash into the most needy homes. Residents in states that have adopted both the EITC and CTC tend to live 2 years longer than states which have implemented neither. This may even be more cost effective at increasing life expectancy than many other policies. These programs are designed to support children, too.
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2. Medicaid Expansion: States that expanded Medicaid saved more than 200 lives per every 100,000 people and decreased the risk of premature death by roughly 50% for older adults who gained coverage. As Nobel-Prize wining economist Paul Krugman explained, “Some of the poorest states in America, with the lowest life expectancy, are still refusing to expand Medicaid even though the federal government would cover the bulk of the cost.” Such individuals in turn are therefore at the mercy of policies that differ state to state.
3. Gun Control: Stronger gun control measures in states also improve life expectancy. The South, which has some of the most lenient gun control measures, lost 5.7 million years of life expectancy in the period 2009-2018 from firearm related deaths. Conversely, Northeastern states, which tend to have much stronger gun control measures like background checks and secure storage laws, had one-fifth the loss in life expectancy. Guns are now the #1 killer of children in America and 1 in 25 American 5-year olds now won’t live to see 40, largely due to guns. If we stopped these deaths, it would effectively add 3 years of life to every 5-year old in the South.
4. Drug Overdose Prevention: States that introduced policies to prevent drug overdose deaths saw life expectancies increase by 11%. The CDC estimates that half of all the unintentional deaths last year that took people’s lives too early were attributed to drug overdoses. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Naloxone to be sold over the counter at pharmacies, which could help close the state-by-state gap. In the meantime, McDowell County, West Virginia has one of the lowest life expectancies in the country and has the highest rate of opioid overdoses in the country.
5. Abortion Access: Lastly, while the data has not fully revealed the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson, this decision may drive further divides in life expectancy for Southern states that have in turn limited abortion access. Arkansas has a maternal mortality rate that is 50% higher than the national average. In Mississippi, it is 75x more dangerous for women to carry a pregnancy to term than to have an abortion due to poor healthcare. Mississippi has the lowest life expectancy in America at 71. Causing more women to carry a pregnancy to term may increase deaths of mothers in their 20s-40s.
The 20-year gap in life expectancy across regions tells story of America. The divide is deeply interwoven with healthcare, housing, race, gender, location, education, and more. But improving life expectancy across regions in possible and it starts with state legislatures. States can learn from each other about what has worked best and implement new policies with proven effectiveness. Data will be the driving force for finding patterns of inequality and leading change-makers towards solutions that engender equality.
The Trump Team’s Startling Questions for E. Jean Carroll Jurors
Jose Pagliery – April 12, 2023
Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
Are you on Truth Social? What cable news network do you watch? Have you ever used the hashtag #BelieveAllWomen when discussing sexual assault?
With just weeks to go before E. Jean Carroll’s rape trial against Donald Trump in New York, lawyers on both sides are figuring out what questions to ask prospective jurors. And while some questions are the run-of-the-mill kind used to screen biased jurors, a fair share highlight the bizarre nature of the case involving the country’s most divisive politician.
The federal trial is set to begin April 25 in Lower Manhattan, where the magazine columnist seeks to prove that the former president raped her in a changing room inside the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s. Due to Trump’s delay games and refusal to test his DNA against the black coat dress she wore that day—which has been tested at a crime lab—jurors will mostly have to decide on competing recollections of what happened that day.
As such, the stakes are high for weeding out MAGA types and Trump haters. And the questions they plan to ask at jury selection indicate as much, half a dozen legal scholars told The Daily Beast.
One of Trump’s proposed questions stands out: “Do you think that the #metoo movement has gone too far?”
“He’s trying to poison the well a little bit and plant seeds in the jurors’ minds. He’s warming them up before he even talks to them,” noted Aviva Orenstein, a law school professor at Indiana University Bloomington.
However, Orenstein noted that unlike New York state courts, judges in federal court normally screen jurors with lawyers’ suggested questions—and no self-respecting judge would ask a leading question like that.
“I’d ask, ‘What is your opinion of #metoo?’” she said.
Both sides’ proposed lists include several questions on a person’s feelings about alleged sexual assault, and scoring open-minded jurors who haven’t already labeled Trump a scumbag will be difficult. At trial, Carroll’s lawyers are hoping to convince jurors that Trump’s abundant history of misogynist comments paint the picture of a serial sexual predator protected by his entitlement and wealth.
In that sense, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has already tilted the trial in Carroll’s favor by allowing jurors—if they somehow haven’t already—to watch the leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape where Trump infamously said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it… you can do anything… grab ’em by the pussy.”
Trump’s lawyers also want to engage in what several legal scholars noted was a blatant litmus test for people’s politics: dredging up the debacle that was the Senate’s contentious confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court pick in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh. After he underwent a surface-level FBI background check, it was journalists who documented Kavanaugh’s long history of alleged sexual misconduct—including one episode in high school, where a prep school student recalled him drunkenly pinning her down in a bed while covering up her mouth so she couldn’t scream.
At Carroll’s trial later this month, Trump’s lawyers want to ask: “Are you familiar with the allegations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before he was confirmed to the Court?”
Attorneys trying to assess people’s biases regularly draw from examples in movies and widely followed news stories—but this one carries a particular undertone that smacks of a MAGA loyalty test, noted Andrea D. Lyon, a longtime public defender who’s tried 138 cases in court.
“These are the kinds of questions you can’t get to ask. Judges won’t let you, because you’re bringing in a case that has nothing to do with a trial… there’s a huge backstory. And my guess is, it’s to identify people who just hate Trump, and also take a look and see if ‘grab ‘em by the pussy’ people stick together,” said Lyon, a law professor at Indiana’s Valparaiso University.
There is something that attorneys for both Trump and Carroll are itching to know: where these New Yorkers hang out online. Carroll’s team is keen to identify anyone who joined Trump when he got booted off Twitter and launched his own social media network—a relatively small batch that was estimated at 513,000 active daily users last year.
“Is there anyone who uses or has used the social media platform Truth Social?” Carroll’s lawyers have proposed asking.
“Most of them probably don’t know what Truth Social is. Obviously, if they use it, it tells you a lot about who they are. It’s Trump’s platform,” noted Bennett L. Gershman, a law professor at Pace University in New York City.
Meanwhile, Trump’s team wants prospective jurors to list every social platform they’re on. But they stopped short of asking for potential candidates’ usernames, which could be seen as an offensive intrusion of privacy.
Carroll’s lawyers seem intent on using the jury selection process to point out how Trump is also under criminal investigation, with proposed questions probing people’s familiarity with the Manhattan District Attorney’s criminal case against him for faking business records to hide his hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels and the Justice Department’s investigation into his hoarding of classified documents at his Florida oceanside estate of Mar-a-Lago.
Just this week, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina cited that first case and the widespread press coverage of Trump’s criminal arraignment in Manhattan criminal court as a reason to delay the trial—something that Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, starkly resisted in a letter to the judge on Wednesday.
Carroll’s lawyers are trying to screen the crazies who still parrot Trump’s unfounded claims that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden unfairly.
“Is there anyone who believes the results of the 2020 Presidential Election are illegitimate?” her lawyers hope to ask.
Gershman doubts that the federal judge will allow it, though.
“This one is unique to our time. We haven’t had a presidential election where there are elements about whether the results are legitimate or not. But this is a question that the judge might not allow, because it’s getting into politics… and partisan politics has nothing to do with this trial,” he said.
But he stressed that it’s a question worth asking—along with a person’s views about alleged sexual assault.
“I’d like to know how they feel about those kinds of issues that are prevalent today to get a sense of whether I’m dealing with someone who’s intelligent and somewhat progressive or in the Dark Ages,” Gershman said.
‘Get here now!’; 911 calls from panicked employees inside Louisville bank released – Oh my God, there’s an active shooter there.
Jorge L. Ortiz, John Bacon and Andrew Wolfson – April 12, 2023
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A frantic call from an Old National Bank employee and a much calmer one from a co-worker hiding in a closet provided Louisville police the first indications of the carnage caused by a gunman’s attack, according to audio of 911 calls released Wednesday.
The shooter’s mother tried to prevent the mayhem, reaching out to police and saying her son “currently has a gun and is heading toward” the bank, but it was too late.
Together, the 911 calls and the body camera video released Tuesday fill out details of the chaotic scene surrounding Monday’s assault and the police officers’ heroic response.
Five people were killed and eight injured by a bank worker identified as Connor Sturgeon, who police said was armed with an AR-15 rifle. Authorities said officers arrived at the scene three minutes after being dispatched, likely saving lives.
“Oh my God, there’s an active shooter there,” says a panicked woman identified as the first 911 caller. “I just watched it on a Teams meeting. … We were having a board meeting with our commercial (lending) team.”
An initial picture of the harrowing Monday morning scene develops as the operator asks the woman for the bank’s address, where specifically the shooting was taking place and what the assailant looked like.
As more calls start to come in, the operator excuses himself and tells her, “We have them (police officers) going that way. … We do have everybody responding. We’re getting them out there.’’
One of the callers says she’s calling from inside a closet in the building as numerous gunshots are heard in the background. She gives a description of the shooting and says she knows the perpetrator: “He works with us.”
Another call came from a woman who says her son was heading toward the bank with a gun, saying his roommate had called expressing concern. She identifies herself as Sturgeon’s mother.
“He apparently left a note,’’ she says. “I don’t know what to do, I need your help. He’s never hurt anyone. He’s a really good kid. Please don’t punish him.’’
The woman says her son is an employee at the bank, is not violent and has never owned a gun. She asks if she should go to the bank and the responder advises her against it, saying officers were already at the scene and it was not a safe location.
Louisville police release body camera footage from mass shooting at bank
Latest developments:
►Funeral services will be held Friday for Elliott, a senior vice president at the bank whom Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear described as a good friend who helped him launch his law career.
►The killer left a note behind and told at least one person he was suicidal, U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey said.
A mother’s anguished 911 call
The gunman’s mother appears torn in a 911 call, wanting to protect her son but also warn police about what he might do. She tells the operator her son doesn’t own a gun but may be headed toward the bank with one.
Sturgeon’s mother says she’s shaking and doesn’t know where her son could have gotten a weapon.
“We don’t even own guns,” she says, providing a description of her son – white, 6-foot-4 inches tall.
She asks whether she should go to the bank and the operator warns her against it, saying police officers have responded.
“You’ve had calls from other people?” she asks, sounding incredulous and heartbroken. “So they’re already there?”
Yes, the operator says. “It is an unsafe situation.”
– Donovan Slack
Shooter’s parents can’t explain how ‘Mr. Floyd Central’ became a mass killer
The parents of the 25-year-old bank employee who killed five people in a hail of bullets say they can’t explain how the son voted “Mr. Floyd Central High” seven years ago turned into a brutal killer.
The family of Connor Sturgeon said late Tuesday that he had “mental health challenges” but that there were never any warning signs he was capable of what police described as the targeted shooting of Old National Bank colleagues gathered for a meeting Monday morning.
“No words can express our sorrow, anguish, and horror at the unthinkable harm our son Connor inflicted on innocent people, their families, and the entire Louisville community,” the family said in a statement.
As Louisville police seek a motive, Interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel denied reports that Sturgeon was about to get fired from his job at the bank. She told CNN on Wednesday that “there was no discussion about him being terminated.”
Body camera video from the first two police officers who responded shows them taking fire in what Deputy Police Chief Paul Humphrey described as an “ambush.”
Governor, mayor among hundreds paying tribute to victims at vigil
Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday afternoon at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali Center – about a mile from the site of the shooting – for a vigil to honor the five persons killed.
They have been identified as Joshua Barrick, 40, Thomas Elliott, 63, Juliana Farmer, 45, James Tutt, 64, and Deana Eckert, 57. They were all bank employees.
Among those who spoke at the memorial were Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg. Beshear was close friends with Elliott, whom the governor credited with helping launch his law career.
Beshear urged those in attendance to remember to express their love for those they care about.
“We can live for the fallen, and we can live better for them. We can be better,” Beshear said. “We can be better family members. Better dads. Better moms. We can be better community members, and we can be better people. Let’s commit that to them.”
Officer Nickolas Wilt fights for his life
Officer Nickolas Wilt remained in the hospital in critical condition after being shot in the head as he ran toward the gunfire. The released version of Wilt’s footage cuts off before he is shot.
A bullet grazed fellow officer Cory Galloway, Wilt’s field trainer, on his left side. Galloway found cover behind a large planter and eventually fired the round that took down the assailant.
Wilt, 26, graduated from the Louisville Metro Police Academy 10 days before the shooting. Gwinn-Villaroel said she had sworn him in as his family watched, and Wilt’s twin brother is going through the academy now, friends of the family said. Wilt was working just his fourth shift as a police officer.
The two officers’ quick response Monday saved lives, Gwinn-Villaroel said: They “did not hesitate” when the call came in at 8:38 a.m.
“I’m just truly proud of the heroic actions of those two officers and everybody else that responded,” Gwinn-Villaroel said. “They went toward danger in order to save and preserve life, and that’s what you saw yesterday. They stopped the threat so other lives could be saved.
“They showed no hesitation, and they did what they were taught to do.”
– Lucas Aulbach and Madeline Mitchell, Louisville Courier Journal
Galloway: ‘I think I’ve got him down’
Galloway’s video shows him and Wilt as they reach the top of the stairs outside the bank. Wilt is not shown being hit, but Galloway rolls down the stairs and positions himself behind the planter and on the sidewalk. He takes cover there for just over three minutes before other officers arrive.
At that point, Galloway is shown firing several shots. The gunshots are audible, but the footage does not offer a clear view of the fatal shot. Humphrey said Galloway did not have a “close-range shot” and the stairs obscured his camera angle.
“I think I’ve got him down,” Galloway says. He then walks up the stairs and over shattered glass. An image blurred by police shows the shooter down in the lobby, near a second set of glass doors.
“There’s only a few people in this country that can do what they did. Not everybody can do that,” Humphrey said. “They deserve to be honored for what they did because it is not something that comes easily, it is not something that comes naturally. … That’s superhuman.”
– Madeline Mitchell and Lucas Aulbach, Louisville Courier Journal
Impromptu memorial to victims emerges outside bank
The steps outside of Old National Bank have been transformed into a somber memorial crowded with flowers. White crosses with blue hearts bear the names of the victims. Kett Ketterer, who works nearby at KD & Company wholesale flower company, unloaded more than a dozen potted Easter lilies.
“I think everybody’s just in shock, and you have to have some way to express yourself in your grief,” he said. “And I’m trying to understand. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Andrew Thuita came to the memorial because his girlfriend works nearby downtown. She was safe, but he has been too close to tragedy before. In 2018, he had gone shopping at the Jeffersontown Kroger on the same day two people were shot and killed.
“Another statistic in America,” Thuita said. “There is something wrong.”
– Maggie Menderski, Louisville Courier Journal
Timeline for a tragedy
Sturgeon made a number of posts on his now deleted Instagram account shortly before the rampage began. Among them: “They won’t listen to words or protests. Let’s see if they hear this.” Sturgeon, armed with an AR-15 rifle, then livestreamed his assault.
Humphrey said the first 911 call came in at 8:38 a.m., and officers were sent to the scene. Wilt and Galloway arrived at the entrance to the bank three minutes later and were met with gunfire that forced them to back up their vehicle. One minute later they got out of the car, and two minutes after that Wilt was shot and officers returned fire.
At 8:45 a.m., after a burst of gunfire, officers entered the bank and confirmed the suspect was down. Sturgeon died at the scene.
Family statement mourns loss of son, his victims
The shooter’s family reached out to the Louisville community in their statement Tuesday night.
“We mourn their loss and that of our son, Connor. We pray for everyone traumatized by his senseless acts of violence and are deeply grateful for the bravery and heroism of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department,” the statement read.
“While Connor, like many of his contemporaries, had mental health challenges which we, as a family, were actively addressing, there were never any warning signs or indications he was capable of this shocking act. While we have many unanswered questions, we will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement officials and do all we can to aid everyone in understanding why and how this happened.”
A star athlete with negative self-image
Sturgeon grew up in southern Indiana and graduated from Floyd Central High School, about 12 miles northwest of Louisville. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alabama, an school spokesperson confirmed.
At Floyd Central, he played basketball for his father, Todd Sturgeon, who was the head coach. The younger Sturgeon was named “Mr. Floyd Central” in 2016 as a senior.
A former friend and teammate at Floyd Central told The Daily Beast this week that Sturgeon was “smart, popular and a star athlete.”
But in a 2018 college essay at the University of Alabama, Sturgeon wrote, “My self-esteem has long been a problem for me,” and as a “late bloomer in middle and high school, I struggled to a certain extent to fit in, and this has given me a somewhat negative self-image that persists today.” The essay was posted to a website called “CourseHero,” CNN and The Daily Beast reported, but it has since been taken down.
Study warns critical ocean current is nearing ‘collapse.’ That would be a global disaster.
Doyle Rice, USA Today – April 11, 2023
Due to global warming, a deep ocean current around Antarctica that has been relatively stable for thousands of years could head for “collapse” over the next few decades.
Such a sudden shift could affect the planet’s climate and marine ecosystems for centuries to come.
So says a recent study that was published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.
The cold water that sinks near Antarctica drives the deepest flow of a network of currents that spans throughout the world’s oceans, known as the overturning circulation. The overturning carries heat, carbon, oxygen and nutrients around the globe.
This in turn influences climate, sea level and the productivity of marine ecosystems. Indeed, the loss of nutrient-rich seawater near the surface could damage fisheries, according to the study.
‘Headed towards collapse’
This deep ocean current has remained in a relatively stable state for thousands of years, but with increasing greenhouse gas emissions and the melting of Antarctic ice, Antarctic overturning is predicted to slow down significantly over the next few decades.
“Our modeling shows that if global carbon emissions continue at the current rate, then the Antarctic overturning will slow by more than 40% in the next 30 years – and on a trajectory that looks headed towards collapse,” said study lead author Matthew England of the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Speaking about the new research, paleoclimatologist Alan Mix told Reuters “that’s stunning to see that happen so quickly.” Mix, a paleoclimatologist at Oregon State University and co-author on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, who was not involved in the study, added “It appears to be kicking into gear right now. That’s headline news.”
Such a collapse would also impact a nearby Atlantic Ocean current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, which transports warm, salty water from the tropics northward at the ocean surface and cold water southward at the ocean bottom.
This current includes the well-known Gulf Stream, which affects weather patterns in the U.S. and Europe. “The main issue for the AMOC at the moment is meltwater from Greenland, which slows that current,” England told USA TODAY.
Other studies in recent years about the AMOC drew comparisons to the scientifically inaccurate 2004 disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” which used such an ocean current shutdown as the premise of the film. In a 2018 study, authors said a collapse was at least decades away but would be a catastrophe.
An Antarctic “tidewater” glacier meets the ocean in this 2018 photo that also shows sea ice floating on the water’s surface.
Cause of the current slowdown
What’s causing the currents to slow down and potentially collapse? “Climate change is to blame,” England wrote for the Conversation. “As Antarctica melts, more freshwater flows into the oceans. This disrupts the sinking of cold, salty, oxygen-rich water to the bottom of the ocean”.
Specifically, more than 250 trillion tons of that cold, salty, oxygen-rich water sinks near Antarctica each year. This water then spreads northward and carries oxygen into the deep Indian, Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
“If the oceans had lungs, this would be one of them,” England said.
“Simply put, a slowing or collapse of the overturning circulation would change our climate and marine environment in profound and potentially irreversible ways.” he wrote.
England told USA TODAY that the main impact for North America would be sea-level rise along the East Coast.
In addition, another impact of the collapse of the AMOC would be a transition to a more La Nina-like-state in the Pacific Ocean, England said. La Niña, a natural cooling of sea water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, affects weather and climate in the U.S. and around the world.
It tends to lead to worsening droughts and wildfires in the Southwest U.S., and more hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.
What can be done?
“Our study shows continuing ice melt will not only raise sea levels, but also change the massive overturning circulation currents which can drive further ice melt and hence more sea-level rise, and damage climate and ecosystems worldwide,” England wrote in the Conversation. “It’s yet another reason to address the climate crisis – and fast.”
How to Fall Back Asleep After Waking Up in the Middle of the Night
Ashley Zlatopolsky – April 11, 2023
Sleep experts share what to do and what to avoid.
jhorrocks/Getty Images
You’ve probably been here before: It’s 3 a.m., you’re awake for reasons you can’t explain and now you can’t fall back asleep. Should you continue tossing and turning and hope for the best, or get out of bed to do something that makes you sleepy again? The best course of action lies somewhere in the middle. Here’s what sleep experts recommend doing (and avoiding) if you wake up in the middle of the night and need help falling back to sleep.
What causes nighttime waking?
Normal, natural sleep patterns.
There are few things worse than waking up in the middle of the night, whether from anxiety or another reason, and not being able to fall back asleep. But waking up in the middle of the night is actually normal. “Everybody wakes up in the middle of the night,” says Philip Lindeman, MD, PhD and a sleep expert with Ghostbed. “Normal sleep cycles are such that we all enter at least a very shallow phase of wakefulness several times per night.” This can include interludes of getting up to use the bathroom and then going back to sleep. In fact, he adds that you may not even remember many of these awakenings happening.
Other causes of nighttime waking can include stress, anxiety, illness, hunger, discomfort, or changes in your sleep routine and sleep environment, explains clinical psychologist Carolina Estevez, PsyD. Then there are causes like nightmares or night terrors, or environmental noise or light disturbances.
Clearly middle-of-the-night waking is common and far from unavoidable, and is typically fine if we can get back to sleep without much of a problem. The real issue arises when you wake up, either naturally or unnaturally, and can’t fall back asleep afterward. This can actually cause more stress and anxiety that keeps you awake, and of course cause you miss out on precious sleep for your overall health.
How to Fall Back Asleep, According to Experts
Let your mind wander in a “happy place.”
If you’re awake in the middle of the night and wondering how to fall back asleep, Dr. Lindeman first recommends getting yourself in a good headspace. “Try guiding yourself into a ‘happy place,’ ‘flying’ over a place you like, or even ‘walking’ there if it helps,” he says. “Don’t worry if your eyes are open or closed, because it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the room is dark.” Dr. Lindeman says to “let your mind wander and do your best to stay there,” which can lull you into a sleep.
After about 20 minutes, find another place to lie down.
However, Dr. Lindeman adds that it’s important not to force sleep, which he says can have the opposite effect. If more than 20 minutes have gone by and you’re still lying awake in bed, Estevez suggests getting up and going into another room that might help calm your mind. Ideally, this is a room with a couch or even another bed where you can lie down and encourage rest.
“You can also try relaxation techniques such as deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation,” she adds. Some research has shown that slow breathing, together with healthy sleep hygiene and habits, may be more effective for insomnia than interventions like hypnosis or prescription medications. One breathing exercise called 4-7-8 breathing, which involves an elongated exhale, helps deactivate your stress system and activate your rest and digest system.
Get more physical exercise during the daytime.
Estevez also says that incorporating regular physical activity into your day can help promote better sleep quality at night and prevent occurrences of nighttime waking and sleeplessness.
There’s more on the list of things you should avoid rather than things you should do if you’re wondering how to fall back asleep. The biggest thing to avoid: your cell phone, and then your TV. “Don’t open your phone, tablet, or computer,” Dr. Lindeman says. “It’s the worst thing you can do because the wavelength of light emitted will bottom out your melatonin levels.” Since blue light and bright light stops melatonin production, which is essential to making you feel sleepy, playing around on your phone or putting on a Netflix show can cue your body further for wakefulness.
Dr. Lindeman also cautions against turning on a light, eating, drinking, or taking medicine unless you’re in pain (such as being sick with a virus and unable to fall back asleep because of it). If you’re really struggling to fall back asleep and none of the above has helped, you can try taking a hot bath or diffusing lavender oil in your bedroom, but these should be last resorts, since the act of turning on lights or looking for things to help might in turn wire your brain some more.
Another thing to avoid is the clock. Seeing what time it is can cause anxiety and keep you from falling back asleep, so if you have regular nighttime awakenings that leave you awake for long periods of time, you may want to consider removing any clocks from your room (or at least keeping them out of your sight). If noise is keeping you up, earplugs or a sound machine are other options to consider, while light disturbances can be blocked out with a good set of blackout curtains or a quality eye mask.
If waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep is affecting your mental health or daily functioning, and you’ve tried all of the above to no avail, an underlying medical sleep condition, like insomnia, could be at the root of the problem. To get to the bottom of it, Estevez says, “speaking with a health professional may be helpful in developing an individualized treatment plan.” However, be sure to practice good sleep hygiene, keep a regular sleep schedule and avoid stimulating activities at night, like scrolling your phone before bed or working out late.
Pressured by Their Base on Abortion, Republicans Strain to Find a Way Forward
Jonathan Weisman – April 11, 2023
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Feb. 2, 2023 (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)
Republican leaders have followed an emboldened base of conservative activists into what increasingly looks like a political cul-de-sac on the issue of abortion — a tightly confined absolutist position that has limited their options before the 2024 election season, even as some in the party push for moderation.
Last year’s Supreme Court decision overturning a woman’s constitutionally protected right to an abortion was supposed to send the issue of abortion access to the states, where local politicians were supposed to have the best sense of the electorate’s views. But the decision on Friday by a conservative judge in Texas, invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, showed the push for nationwide restrictions on abortion has continued since the high court’s nullification of Roe v. Wade.
Days earlier, abortion was the central theme in a liberal judge’s landslide victory for a contested and pivotal seat on the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. Some Republicans are warning that the uncompromising position of their party’s activist base could be leading them over an electoral cliff next year.
“If we can show that we care just a little bit, that we have some compassion, we can show the country our policies are reasonable, but because we keep going down these rabbit holes of extremism, we’re just going to keep losing,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who has repeatedly called for more flexibility on first-term abortions and exceptions for rape, incest and the life and health of the mother. “I’m beside myself that I’m the only person who takes this stance.”
She is far from the only one.
The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, has been showing polling to members of her party demonstrating that Americans largely accept abortion up to 15 weeks into a pregnancy and support the same exemptions that Mace wants. Dan O’Donnell, a conservative radio host in Wisconsin, wrote after the lopsided conservative defeat in the state Supreme Court contest that abortion was driving young voters to the polls in staggering numbers and that survival of the party dictated compromise.
“As difficult as this may be to come to grips with, Republicans are on the wrong side politically of an issue that they are clearly on the right side of morally,” he wrote.
The problem goes beyond abortion. With each mass shooting, the GOP’s staunch stand against gun control faces renewed scrutiny. Republicans courted a backlash last week when they expelled two young Democratic lawmakers out of the Tennessee state legislature for leading youthful protests after a school shooting in Nashville that left six dead. Then on Monday came another mass shooting, in Louisville, Kentucky.
“My kids had friends on Friday night running for their lives,” said Mace, referring to a shooting on South Carolina’s Isle of Palms, which elicited no response from most of her party. “Republicans aren’t showing compassion in the wake of these mass shootings.”
The party’s stand against legislation to combat climate change has helped turn young voters into the most liberal bloc of the American electorate. And Republican efforts to roll back LGBTQ rights and target transgender teenagers, while popular with conservatives, may be seen by the broader electorate as, at best, a distraction from more pressing issues.
Rep. Mark Pocan, an openly gay Democrat from Wisconsin, said Monday that in the short term, the Republican attacks on transgender Americans were having a real-world effect, with a rise in violence and bigotry. But he said it is also contributing to the marginalization of the party, even in his swing state.
He pointed to the “WOW counties” that surround Milwaukee — Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington — where then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker won 73% in 2014, and where the Republican, Dan Kelly, won 58.7% in the state Supreme Court race last week.
“We keep seeing our numbers increase in those counties because those Republicans largely are economic Republicans, not social Republicans,” Pocan said, adding that GOP candidates “definitely are chasing their people away.”
Mace does appear to be correct that her desire for compromise is not widely shared in a party in which analysts continue to look past social issues to explain their electoral defeats.
Kelly was a poor candidate who lost by an almost identical margin in another state Supreme Court race in 2020, noted David Winston, a longtime pollster and strategist for House Republican leaders. And, Winston added, Republicans may have lost female voters by 8 percentage points in the 2022 midterm elections, but they lost them by 19 points in 2018.
If inflation and economic concerns remain elevated, he added, the 2024 elections will be about the economy, not abortion or guns.
Republicans greeted the abortion-drug ruling on Friday, by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, with near total silence. The judge gave the Biden administration seven days to appeal, and on Monday, senior executives of more than 250 pharmaceutical and biotech companies pleaded with the courts to nullify the ruling with a scorching condemnation of Kacsmaryk’s reasoning.
Most anti-abortion advocates are not backing down. Katie Glenn Daniel, the state policy director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the most powerful anti-abortion groups, said Wisconsin’s results were more about anti-abortion forces being badly outspent than about ideology. In her state, Florida, she noted, Democrats scorched Republicans with advertising in 2022 saying they planned to ban abortion without exceptions. Republicans, from Gov. Ron DeSantis on down, easily prevailed that November.
Republicans need to keep pressing with abortion restrictions that will affect Democratic states as well as Republican ones, she said.
“A national minimum standard is incredibly important. Without it there will continue to be late-term abortions, and governors like Gavin Newsom are very motivated to force his views on the rest of the country,” she said of California’s Democratic governor.
Last week, the Florida state Senate approved legislation pushing the state’s ban on abortion from the current 15 weeks into pregnancy to six weeks. If the state’s House of Representatives approves it, DeSantis has said he will sign it. If DeSantis runs for president as expected, his signature would thrust abortion squarely into the 2024 race for the White House.
Last year, John P. Feehery, a veteran Republican leadership aide in the House, urged his party to find a defensible position on abortion that included flexibility on abortion pills, allowed early pregnancies to be terminated and detailed a coherent position on exceptions for rape, incest and health concerns. He said Monday that he was repeatedly told abortion would be a state-level issue and federal candidates should just stay quiet.
“They didn’t want to do the hard work on abortion,” he said, blaming “a lack of leadership” in the party that still has the Republican position muddled.
Guns are another issue where silence is not working. The shooting in Louisville, which left six dead, including the gunman, and eight wounded, kept the issue of guns in the spotlight after last week’s heated showdown in Tennessee — and before a three-day gathering of the National Rifle Association on Friday in Indianapolis. The Kentucky attack was the 15th mass shooting this year in which four or more victims were killed, the largest total in a year’s first 100 days since 2009, according to a USA Today/Associated Press/Northeastern University database.
“You can’t stop paying attention after one horrible event happens. You have to watch what happens afterward,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, 26, a Florida Democrat who last year became the first member of Generation Z to be elected to the House.
Voices for compromise are beginning to bubble up, in some cases from surprising sources. Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, one of the country’s largest anti-abortion groups, said Monday that even she was “somewhat concerned” that the Republican Party might be getting ahead of the voters on abortion. Her organization has drafted model legislation to ban abortion at the state level in every case but when the life of the mother is in grave danger. But, Tobias said, that legislation comes with language to extend those exceptions to the “hard cases,” pregnancies that result from rape or incest, or that might harm a mother’s health.
“We’ve always known the American public does not support abortion for all nine months of a pregnancy,” she said. “They want some limits. We are trying to find those limits.”
She added, “If we can only at this time save 95% of the babies, I am happy to support that legislation.”
Volcano eruption in Russia’s Kamchatka spews vast ash clouds
Associated Press – April 11, 2023
Smoke and ash are visible during the the Shiveluch volcano’s eruption on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia, Tuesday, April 11, 2023. Shiveluch, one of Russia’s most active volcanoes, erupted Tuesday, spewing clouds of ash 20 kilometers into the sky and covering broad areas with ash. (Alexander Ledyayev via AP)
MOSCOW (AP) — A volcano erupted early Tuesday on Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula, spewing clouds of dust 20 kilometers (65,600 feet) into the sky and covering broad areas with ash.
The ash cloud from the eruption of Shiveluch, one of Kamchatka’s most active volcanoes, extended over 500 kilometers (more than 300 miles) northwest and engulfed several villages in grey volcanic dust.
Officials closed the skies over the area to aircraft. Local authorities advised residents to stay indoors and shut schools in several affected communities. Two villages had their power supplies cut for a few hours until emergency crews restored them.
Ash fell on 108,000 square kilometers (41,699 square miles) of territory, according to the regional branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Geophysical Survey. Scientists described the fallout as the biggest in nearly 60 years.
The village of Klyuchi, which is located about 50 kilometers (some 30 miles) from the volcano, was covered by an 8-centimeter (3-inch) layer of dust. Residents posted videos showing the ash cloud plunging the area into darkness.
Kamchatka Gov. Vladimir Solodov said there was no need for mass evacuation, but added that some residents who have health issues could be temporarily evacuated.
Shiveluch has two parts, the 3,283-meter (10,771-foot) Old Shiveluch, and the smaller, highly active Young Shiveluch.
The Kamchatka Peninsula, which extends into the Pacific Ocean about 6,600 kilometers (4,000 miles) east of Moscow, is one of the world’s most concentrated area of geothermal activity, with about 30 active volcanoes.
In Wisconsin, a big win for liberals and a warning for the GOP
Mike Bebernes – Senior Editor – April 9, 2023
How Wisconsin’s new liberal supreme court could rule on abortion rights, redistricting
What’s happening
On Tuesday night, while most of the political world was still focusing on the indictment of former President Donald Trump, a liberal candidate secured a major win that arguably suggests more about how future national elections may go than anything that happened in that New York City courtroom earlier in the day.
In Wisconsin, a liberal judge, Janet Protasiewicz, decisively defeated her conservative opponent, Daniel Kelly, and secured a seat on the state’s Supreme Court in a race widely considered to be the most important election of 2023. Protasiewicz’s victory will give liberals a majority on the Wisconsin court for the first time in 15 years. This potentially offers them the opportunity to strike down a 19th-century law banning nearly all abortions and to redraw congressional maps that have allowed Republicans to dominate the Wisconsin Legislature, despite the near 50-50 split of voters in the state.
Although the contest was nonpartisan on paper, it had all of the markings of a traditional campaign. Democrats and Republicans rallied intensely behind their preferred candidates, spending a combined $42 million on the race — nearly three times the previous record for any state Supreme Court election. Protasiewicz campaigned heavily on abortion and democracy reform, while Kelly attempted to portray her as “soft on crime.”
In another high-profile race Tuesday night in Chicago, the progressive candidate, Brandon Johnson, beat the conservative Democrat Paul Vallas in the race to become mayor of the nation’s third-largest city. These two victories come five months after Democrats overcame predictions of a “red wave” in last year’s midterm elections by winning key Senate, House and governors’ races across the country.
Why there’s debate
The Wisconsin Supreme Court will probably have a significant impact on politics in the state, but many political observers say it also serves as a strong bellwether of the political dynamics in the country ahead of next year’s critical presidential election cycle.
Commentators on both sides of the political spectrum say the result should be a flashing red warning light for Republicans about the dangers they face in 2024. They argue that Protasiewicz’s win shows that the dynamics that fueled the GOP’s lackluster showing in the midterms — most notably opposition to Trump and backlash to the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning abortion protections established in Roe v. Wade — are still swaying swing voters. Many also make the case that Republicans have little hope of pivoting away from such unpopular positions because of the intensely pro-Trump and anti-abortion views of the party’s core voters.
There are also practical implications of the new liberal majority on Wisconsin’s top court that could benefit Democrats. If the court throws out the state’s gerrymandered district map, which is strongly biased in the Republicans’ favor, that could help Democrats gain a handful of seats in the House of Representatives and tip the balance in the state Legislature in their favor. Some legal experts add that having Protasiewicz on the bench, rather than an ally of Trump, like Kelly, dramatically reduces the chances that a GOP-backed legal effort to challenge the state’s results in the next presidential election would be successful.
Other observers are wary of making too many predictions based on a single, off-year election, with more than 18 months to go before the presidential election. They argue that the types of voters who turn out for a state Supreme Court race don’t necessarily reflect the voters who will turn out next November, especially if Trump himself is on the ballot. It’s also possible, some add, that abortion may not be as potent an issue for Democrats in the future, because the question may largely have been settled in most states by the time voters head to the polls.
What’s next
Protasiewicz is scheduled to be sworn in in August, and the court is expected to quickly take up challenges to both the state’s centuries-old abortion ban and its gerrymandered district map. There has been some speculation that Republicans in the Wisconsin State Senate may attempt to impeach Protasiewicz to prevent her from tipping power in the court, but the party’s leaders have insisted that is not going to happen.
Perspectives
Republicans’ refusal to abandon unpopular positions means the losses will keep coming
“Republicans were, after all, warned. Again and again. On Trump and abortion, but also on guns, moral Grundyism, and their addiction to the crazy. Yet despite all the red blinking lights — and they are flashing everywhere — the GOP simply smacks its lips and says, ‘This is fine.’ More, please.” — Charlie Sykes, Bulwark
The GOP has time to stem its losses on abortion if it’s willing to moderate on the issue
“The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. … Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. Republicans who insist on that position could soon find that electoral defeats will lead to even more liberal state abortion laws than under Roe.” — Editorial, Wall Street Journal
An obscure, off-year court race can’t tell us much about how national elections will go
“The supreme-court election is a big win for the Left, but it would be foolish to suggest it means Wisconsin won’t be a competitive state in 2024. Turnout in 2023 was significantly higher than in a typical supreme-court election but significantly lower than in the November 2022 midterm elections or the 2020 presidential election.” — John McCormack, National Review
Democratic strength in Midwest swing states narrows the GOP’s path to the White House
“These gains in turn will further energize progressives and elect more Democrats in a virtuous circle. It is hard to imagine any Republican presidential candidate carrying Wisconsin in 2024, and that pattern is likely to hold in other key Midwestern states.” — Robert Kuttner, American Prospect
Unique circumstances made abortion more central in Wisconsin than it will be in most other contests
“The answer seems to be that abortion is a winning issue for Democrats, but only in some circumstances. When a campaign revolves around the subject — as the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did this week and voter referendums in Kansas, Kentucky and Michigan did last year — abortion can win big even in purple or red states. … But there is not yet evidence that abortion can determine the outcome of most political campaigns.” — David Leonhardt, New York Times
The GOP’s MAGA base is driving the party straight toward disaster in 2024
“The GOP nominee will have most likely endorsed a national abortion ban (or at least draconian abortion restrictions in their own state) to make the party’s primary voters happy. … If messaging about defending abortion rights and democracy commanded a sizable majority in this highly polarized, blue collar-heavy swing state, it may well continue constituting Kryptonite to MAGA — all the way through 2024.” — Greg Sargent, Washington Post
The messages that have helped the GOP win in the past may not work today
“Away from the Trump circus, it certainly feels like a shift is happening. The go-to Republican scare tactics – Socialism is coming! Crime is rampant! The family is under attack! – aren’t working. And when the face of your party becomes the first former president ever indicted, the old ‘party of law and order’ line falls a bit flat.” — Rex Huppke, USA Today
The result should inspire Democrats to proudly stand up for progressive policies
“For Democrats, there is a lesson here. When they run on protecting abortion rights, they tend to win. When they shy away from messages that are central to their party’s identity — for instance, by tacking to the center with tough-on-crime policies — their record is much more mixed. … In much of the country, voters don’t want Republican-lite candidates. They want Democrats who act like Democrats.” — Alex Shephard, New Republic
Abortion fights may be largely settled by the time the presidential election comes around
“Abortion might be legal in Wisconsin by the 2024 election. I think that’s actually quite likely. So, you know, abortion as a motivating issue might not be there for some voters.” — Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, FiveThirtyEight
A liberal majority on Wisconsin’s court will counter the GOP’s efforts to subvert democracy
“A redrawn map could put two or three GOP-held seats in Congress in play for Democrats. … The actual winner of the 2024 Wisconsin presidential election will all but certainly receive the state’s electoral votes.” — Christina Cauterucci, Slate
Is there a topic you’d like to see covered in “The 360”? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.
Trump and His Lawyers: A Restless Search for Another Roy Cohn
Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan – April 9, 2023
Todd Blanche, a newly hired criminal defense lawyer for former President Donald Trump, leaves the courthouse after Trump’s indictment, in New York, April 4, 2023. (Ahmed Gaber/The New York Times)
Seated far to the left of the defendant, former President Donald Trump, in a Manhattan, New York, criminal courtroom Tuesday was a lawyer who has never tried a case in court, whose phone was seized by federal agents executing a warrant last year, and who once hosted syndicated news segments bombastically defending the Trump White House.
Seated to Trump’s far right was Todd Blanche, a newly hired criminal defense lawyer who also represents the lawyer at the far left end of the table, Boris Epshteyn. In between them was Joe Tacopina, a combative presence on cable television who recently represented Trump’s future daughter-in-law, Kimberly Guilfoyle, before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The tableau, rounded out by another lawyer, Susan Necheles, from Trump’s arraignment on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, revealed more about the client than about the case at hand. It was emblematic of his relentless search for the perfect lawyer — and of his frequent replacement of his lawyers when they fail to live up to his ideal for how the perfect lawyer should operate.
Trump has long been obsessed with lawyers: obsessed with finding what he thinks are good lawyers and obsessed with ensuring that his lawyers defend him zealously in the court of public opinion.
His lawyers’ own foibles are seldom disqualifying, so long as they defend him in the manner he desires.
That often means measuring up to the example of Roy Cohn, Trump’s first fixer-lawyer, who represented him in the 1970s and early 1980s. Cohn, whose background included being indicted himself and who was eventually disbarred, earned a reputation for practicing with threats, scorched-earth attacks and media manipulation.
Trump’s continual efforts to identify and recruit the newest Roy Cohn have always been unusual and impulsive, according to interviews with a half-dozen people who have represented Trump or been involved in his legal travails over the past seven years.
He has occasionally hired lawyers after only the briefest phone call, knowing little to nothing about their background but having been impressed by a quick introduction or by seeing them praise him on Fox News.
It took only an introduction over the phone by Epshteyn on a conference call for Trump to hire Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, to handle discussions with the government over its efforts to recover classified materials in Trump’s possession. (Corcoran has since become the focus of government efforts to pierce attorney-client privilege and learn about his discussions with Trump in connection with a grand-jury subpoena for classified material at Mar-a-Lago as the government amasses evidence of obstruction of justice. Prosecutors believe Trump may have misled Corcoran during those discussions.)
Trump hired Jim Trusty, a former federal prosecutor, to work on the classified documents case after seeing him discuss one of Trump’s legal entanglements as a commentator on television.
“That’s one of the first questions: ‘Can you go on TV?’ He picks his lawyers literally off of TV,” said one lawyer who used to represent Trump, who insisted on anonymity to avoid publicly breaking confidence with a former client. “It’s more important that you go on TV for him and how you look on TV than what you actually say in the courtroom.”
The same lawyer cited Trump’s lawsuits against journalist Bob Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize Board as actions that any experienced lawyer would have known would get him or her “laughed out of court.”
“He wants people who will go out and say things that lawyers can’t say, things you just can’t say in a courtroom,” the former Trump lawyer said. “Lawyers who push back don’t make it.”
The Woodward and Pulitzer lawsuits were advocated nonetheless by Epshteyn, according to two of the former president’s advisers, because Epshteyn is “the good news guy” who relays to Trump only what he thinks will please him. (Others say Epshteyn has delivered bad news as well, when it’s been necessary.)
Epshteyn declined to comment.
“President Trump has assembled a legal team that is battle-tested and proven on all levels,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump. “With the law, facts and truth on President Trump’s side across the board, the witch hunts and hoaxes being thrown against him and his supporters have no chance. President Trump will not be deterred and will always keep fighting for America and Americans.”
Trump employs some veteran lawyers with extensive experience, who are candid with him even though they know he may disregard their advice or, worse, attack them for giving it, according to some who have worked in Trump’s orbit. And he hasn’t pushed them all to go on television. But longtime Trump observers see a correlation between others on his current team and the self-described “elite strike force” that championed Trump’s false claims of a stolen election after his defeat by Joe Biden.
Epshteyn was part of the group that pushed to keep Trump in power and has since stayed involved as a communications and in-house counsel. Still, several of Trump’s advisers were surprised to see Epshteyn seated at the defense table when photos were published from inside the Manhattan courtroom Tuesday: While Blanche, Tacopina and Necheles were all named in the court transcript as attorneys of record in the criminal case, Epshteyn was not.
Until he announced his presidential campaign in November, Trump had paid at least $10 million to his lawyers over the prior two years using money donated to his political action committee. The fact that he was not personally on the hook for the money seemed to make Trump even more impulsive in his hiring of lawyers, according to a person familiar with his legal decisions.
Trump is not an easy client: He often tells lawyers that he is smarter than them and more experienced in legal combat. He is given to instructing them not only what to say on television but also what to say in court.
In an interview in 2021, Trump named Cohn and Jay Goldberg, who represented him in his divorce from his first wife, Ivana, as the two best lawyers he had ever had.
“I’m not finding people like this; Jay Goldberg, you know, he was a great Harvard student, but he was great on his feet,” Trump said, before making clear how much he saw the job of his lawyers as representing him in the public eye: “I know they’ve got to exist, they’re around, but you don’t see it. A lot of people choke. They choke, you know, when the press, when you call, when the press calls. In all fairness, the press calls, and they can’t handle it.”
While Trump has privately praised Tacopina for his appearances on television, some of the former president’s advisers have been unhappy with them; Tacopina was recently joined in talking about the Manhattan criminal case by Trusty, though Trusty represents Trump in the classified documents case.
Another lawyer who has worked with Trump — his former attorney general, William Barr — shook his head at the sight of the defense table Tuesday.
Barr, who sat for an interview with the House select committee investigating Trump’s efforts to stay in office, explained that lawyers working for Trump tend to come to one conclusion.
“Lawyers inevitably are sorry for taking on assignments with him,” Barr said on Fox News. “They spend a lot of time before grand juries or depositions themselves.”
