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How 'greener' steam could help Boston buildings cut climate-warming emissions

Buildings account for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions in Boston and Cambridge. Both cities have aggressive climate goals that require large building owners to gradually reduce emissions to net zero by 2050. One big challenge building owners face is to figure out how to cut their heating systems’ emissions, which account for roughly half of their carbon footprint. Many of these large buildings rely on older steam heat systems, which were originally developed to use the steam byproduct from electricity generated by burning coal, and later natural gas. Now, a natural gas power plant in Kendall Square is trying to make that steam greener. Vicinity Energy, the company that runs the plant, is installing an industrial-scale electric boiler to produce the steam. As more renewable energy is developed to power Massachusetts’ electrical grid, the steam’s carbon footprint will continue to lower. Eventually, “it'd be zero emissions, right? Because we're going to take in renewable power,” said Don Silvia, Vicinity Energy’s regional vice president of operations. The steam from Vicinity’s plant heats travels through 30 miles of pipe to heat more than 200 buildings — hospitals, biotechnology laboratories, museums, hotels and office space. “Part of the reason why we can do what we're doing is because we're not starting from scratch,” said Silvia. Greening the steam production could cut roughly 20% of the emissions from Boston’s largest buildings, according to a 2018 report commissioned by the city. “By getting the steam generation facilities to adopt these sort of solutions, we are significantly reducing Boston and Cambridge's emissions,” said Michael Gevelber, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Boston University. Vicinity Energy's Kendall Square power plant in Cambridge. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) Other buildings could benefit from the electric boiler technology, too. Massachusetts has at least 21 steam heating systems, according to the International District Energy Association. Those systems serve university communities, downtown areas and medical complexes such as the Longwood Medical area in Boston. But the cost may be a challenge. Experts say that transitioning to the electric boiler steam will be expensive for building owners. “Electricity costs 3 to 5 times more than natural gas,” Gevelber said. In addition, because the Massachusetts electrical grid is still mostly powered by fossil fuels, the electricity that powers the boiler is still generating emissions. For clients who want to buy net zero steam, Vicinity Energy will purchase local renewable energy credits — and that will cost more. “Each building owner really needs to understand their building and how they’re most cost effectively going to meet the declining emission limits,” Gevelber said. Improving building insulation can reduce how much heat a building uses, and installing electric heat pumps can help move away from fossil fuels. Experts say the solution can be a mix of options, including clean steam. One Vicinity Energy client that is looking into these options is the Massachusetts General Hospital campus in Boston. Steam accounts for 12% of the campus’ emissions. Vicinity Energy's Don Silvia stands where the newly acquired electric boiler will be installed at the Kendall plant in Cambridge. (Jesse Costa/WBUR) “Steam is not the only option available to us. Heating can be done with heat pumps very effectively,” said Jonathan Slutzman, Massachusetts General Hospital’s medical director for environmental sustainability. He said the hospital has not decided if they will buy the electric steam. So far, one building developer has signed up to buy steam generated by the electric boiler. The boiler has the capacity to produce about one-third of the steam the plant currently generates, said Vicinity Energy’s president Bill DiCroce. The company plans to generate steam through other clean sources in the future, such as an industrial-scale heat pump. Eventually, Vicinity Energy will phase out nearly all natural gas generation at the plant, but it may take several years. In the meantime, Silvia said other steam operators are starting to show interest in electric boilers. Recently, a representative from a Vicinity Energy plant in Philadelphia toured the Cambridge facility. “Everybody's coming and looking at what we're doing and figuring out how we're going to do it,” he said. With more cities passing legislation to lower carbon emissions, using electric boilers to serve steam heat systems could be a part of the solution.

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Hundreds rally for Palestinians at demonstration in Copley Square

The rally came as Israeli airstrikes persist in the Gaza Strip , killing more than 6,500 Palestinians since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. On Tuesday, the US rejected growing support for a ceasefire in the war, which started after a Hamas sneak attack on Oct. 7 in Israel that left more than 1,400 Israelis killed or captured. Demonstrators spilled across the sidewalk outside the Dartmouth Street entrance of the Boston Public Library’s main branch. Many held handmade signs, some reading “Free Palestine,” “Jews for a free Palestine,” and “End all US aid to apartheid Israel.” For a second time in recent days, hundreds filled Copley Square Wednesday evening for a rally in support of Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war continued into a third week. Advertisement Several attendees spoke to the crowd gathered below the BPL’s steps. One speaker called Gaza the “largest open-air prison in the world.” Another called upon colleges and universities to take a “clear moral stance” against genocide. The protest was the second held in recent days in Copley Square in support of Palestinians. Erin Clark/Globe Staff In between speakers, the crowd shouted multiple chants, including “We will free Palestine within our lifetime” and “Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! The occupation has got to go” to the beat of a drum. Lea Kayali, of the Palestinian Youth Movement, said she’s been protesting in support of Palestinians for the last two weeks. “I think it’s important that folks understand, beyond just the numbers of Palestinians that have been killed, the fact that nowhere in Gaza is safe.” The rally was organized by multiple pro-Palestinian groups based in Boston and on local college campuses. Throughout Wednesday, multiple college students across Massachusetts protested against Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Two of the groups that helped organize the Copley rally included the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Harvard University African and African American Resistance Organization. Advertisement Amari Butler, a Harvard student, said she was at the rally on behalf of both groups. “We’re here to show our government and to show the people here in the United States that we are all for a free Palestine,” Butler said. Butler added that she wants to see “an end to the siege on Gaza” and “an end to all US aid to Israeli apartheid.” Emily, who requested that her last name not be used, is a student at the University of Massachusetts Boston and a first-generation Palestinian who attended the rally with several of her cousins. In regard to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, she said, “I think everyone’s here today to clarify that this isn’t a war that’s happening. It is genocide.” Kayali said “an immediate ceasefire” is needed in Gaza. “I think the reason people keep coming and taking to the streets again and again, day after day, is to just send that message that we need to stop this genocide,” she said. Maeve Lawler can be reached at maeve.lawler@globe.com. Follow her @maeve_lawler.

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Do Political Ads Even Matter Anymore?

Welcome to Massachusetts, Mr. President. On the off chance you pick up a Herald today, we’d like to offer you some advice. First, don’t run for re-election. We’re getting right to the point, but someone needs to. The Democrats didn’t want Hillary Clinton again and Liz Warren is annoying, so the DC elite set you up for an Oval Office reservation. It’s time to check out. Secondly, and most importantly, if you insist on running, please drop Vice President Kamala Harris. If you could do that now, we’d all appreciate it. Thanks for reading this far, so we’ll keep going. John Kerry continues to insult every American who works hard to put food on the table. It’s baffling as to why you put up with this smug, globetrotting polluter who’s vain enough to believe others don’t see right through his “do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do” persona. Please fire him. Full disclosure: we’re a little sore here because Kerry has informed the Herald the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to him. Clearly, he was another failed presidential candidate, so you tossed him a bone to let him hopscotch across the planet trying to dictate what others should all do. We’d like to see what his carbon footprint is lately. But back to the advice. Ironically, if you did jettison Harris and Kerry and choose a better running mate, your chances in 2024 would improve dramatically. Is that why you had California Gov. Gavin Newsom debate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis the other night on Fox? Please share those focus group results with all of us. Today would be nice. We realize you won’t toss Harris or Kerry, and that’s why you need to announce you’ll be stepping down next year. Being decisive is not your forte. The world needs leadership more than ever. Putin, Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah and all the rest are watching you equivocate with every move you make. We’ve avoided mentioning your birthday — happy 81 — but going soft does come with age. America can’t risk another four years of your administration. Your indecisiveness with migrants crossing the border — or entering the country through all the others holes in the immigration system — is bankrupting major cities across the nation. Our state’s end-of-year supplemental budget was held up for a few days by heroic Republicans who want better controls on the migrant mess. Yet, you just delegate this to VP Harris — again, why she needs to go — while mayors and governors beg for millions to bail you out. We’ll bet this topic won’t come up today as you hobnob behind closed doors while being serenaded by James Taylor. Again, if you stood on the tarmac and Logan Airport right after you land to declare you’re here to make a major announcement on the migrant flood, you could actually win over fed-up voters. But you won’t. We understand the political playbook instructs that while in Massachusetts, don’t bother to be bold because Democrats rule the roost. But since this is an advice column, be careful. Independent-minded voters have Nov. 5 marked on their calendars. That’s the message you’ll receive — loud and clear — when you are pushed out. Why not take our word for it now?

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Henry Kissinger, US diplomat who was revered and reviled, dies at 100

Henry Kissinger, a brilliant master of the art of statecraft and one of the most polarizing figures of the Vietnam War era, died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut. He was 100. A man of towering intellect who shaped U.S. foreign policy during one of the most dynamic and explosive eras in the nation's history, Kissinger was both revered and reviled for his work in the Nixon White House, as he opened up China, eased relations with the Soviet Union and both enflamed and ended the Vietnam War. Kissinger's career in politics began with work as an unofficial advisor to Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, before Richard Nixon tabbed him as head of the National Security Council from 1969 to 1974, and Secretary of State from 1973 until 1977. The Vietnam War would come to define Kissinger's White House career. The war was already a decade old with no end in sight when the Nixon Administration inherited it, and one their first moves was to try to get the South Vietnamese to take control of their side of the war with the North, while beginning the draw down of U.S. troops. Get Boston local news, weather forecasts, lifestyle and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Boston’s newsletters. "I'm uniting Vietnam and both halves are screaming at me," Kissinger once said. But at the same time, the U.S. was expanding the battlefield by running secret bombing missions over Cambodia and Laos. In 1971, Kissinger began a series of secret meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Le Duc Tho, eventually leading to the Paris Peace Accords, which called for an end to U.S. involvement in Vietnam, as well as a ceasefire by the North and South. For their efforts, Kissinger and Tho were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, one of the most controversial choices in the organization's history. "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize," said songwriter Tom Lehrer at the time. Tho would refuse his share of the award on the grounds that there was not yet real peace in Vietnam. Though Kissinger spent countless hours negotiating for peace, and managed to withdraw more than 500,000 U.S. troops out of Vietnam, he would occasionally infuriate those on the left with his professorial mien, formidable ego and condescension. "The very people who shout 'power to the people' are not going to be the people who will take over this country if it turns into a test of strength," Kissinger said in the early '70s, as anti-war protests were rocking the nation's college campuses. Kissinger's efforts as a globetrotting mediator would lead to the birth of the term "shuttle diplomacy," as he flew back and forth between Israel and Arab nations, trying to smooth over differences, and had a hand in ending the Yom Kippur War. "Realpolitik" was another hallmark of the Kissinger worldview, encouraging Nixon to approach foreign powers on a practical level rather than an ideological one. Instead of shunning the Soviets and Chinese for being communist, he engaged them as global powers with whom the U.S. had to coexist. Kissinger was a key force behind the détente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that lead to the first SALT treaty (Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty) in 1972. But the greatest foreign policy success during the Kissinger era was the normalization of relations with China. Nixon's 1972 meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong was the first ever visit by a U.S. president to the People's Republic of China. "What we are doing now with China is so great, so historic, that the word 'Vietnam' will be only a footnote when it is written in history," said Kissinger that year. For all of his achievements, Kissinger's time in the White House was so controversial that his appearances drew protesters for years after the war in Vietnam ended, and in 2001, journalist Christopher Hitchens wrote "The Trail of Henry Kissinger," a 145-page volume outlining the statesman's alleged war crimes. Hitchens accused Kissinger of planning, arming or signing off on assassinations, coups and massacres in Chile, Cyprus, Kurdistan and East Timor, among other faraway lands. “It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough,” wrote Hitchens. When he wasn't shaping U.S. foreign policy in the late '60s and early '70s, Kissinger earned a reputation as something of a ladies' man, hitting the town with the likes of Jill St. John, Candace Bergen, Liv Ullman, Marlo Thomas and Zsa Zsa Gabor among others, and he was a frequent patron at Studio 54 in New York. "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," Kissinger famously explained when asked about his success with some of the world's most beautiful women. After leaving the State Department in 1977, Kissinger retreated to private practice, working as a consultant. Though he held no official title in the U.S. government, Kissinger enjoyed almost diplomatic-level access to world leaders. As such, he drew criticism for leveraging his relationships into millions of dollars in fees from clients eager to do business in China and other far off lands. In 2002 Kissinger again was a lightning rod for controversy, when the Bush Administration appointed him to head the 9/11 Commission. Just two weeks later amid accusations of a possible conflict of interest, he resigned from the commission, rather than reveal his client list. Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born on May 27, 1923, in Furth, Germany, the son of a teacher and a homemaker. The Jewish family fled Nazi Germany in 1938, stopping first in London, before heading on to America. Kissinger began attending City College in New York in 1941, but was drafted two years later, serving as a translator for U.S. Army intelligence in Germany until 1946. Upon returning home, Kissinger enrolled in Harvard University as a sophomore in 1947, graduating summa cum laude three years later. He would go on to earn a Masters in '52 and his doctorate in '54 from there as well. Kissinger is survived by his wife Nancy, whom he met when she was a student at Harvard, and his two children, Elizabeth and David, from a previous marriage. In Memoriam: People We've Lost in 2023

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Atlanta Sheriff Rules Out Special Treatment if Trump Is Indicted There

The sheriff of Fulton County, Ga., said on Tuesday that if former President Donald J. Trump were to be indicted in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, he would not receive special treatment, and would be booked and photographed like any other defendant. The Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, has signaled that she will bring indictments in the matter by the middle of the month. “Unless someone tells me differently,” the sheriff, Patrick Labat, said on Tuesday, his office would follow “normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status. We’ll have mug shots ready for you.” Sheriff Labat’s remarks raised the prospect that a former president could be booked at the county jail near downtown Atlanta. But it remains to be seen whether the Secret Service would weigh in and alter the sheriff’s plans, should an indictment of Mr. Trump come to pass.

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A Texas Community Attracts Migrant Home Buyers, and Republican Ire

In the dense, damp forests northeast of Houston, a pair of brothers hit on a viable real estate business model: Offer plots of cheap land and unconventional loans for people who wanted to build their own houses, with few restrictions. The concept took off, not least among the large population of undocumented immigrants in Texas, who often do not have the legal paperwork needed for most bank loans. The Colony Ridge community, whose first residents moved in a decade ago, is now home to 40,000 people or more, with plans to more than double in size. Over the years, its swift growth and predominantly Hispanic population drew opposition from the mostly white residents of a small nearby town and some local officials, who lodged complaints and filed lawsuits. Opponents spray painted “Build that wall” on one of the developer’s billboards after Donald J. Trump’s election. One sent a desiccated chicken foot — and a note describing a voodoo hex — as a warning to the county judge.

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3 Takeaways From the Investigation Into Trumps Pardon of Jonathan Braun

Here are the main takeaways from our investigation, which is based on documents and interviews with current and former officials and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case: The Commutation Undercut a Federal Criminal Investigation Mr. Trump’s decision to commute Mr. Braun’s sentence undermined what had been an ambitious Justice Department investigation being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan into predatory lenders in the merchant cash advance industry by pulling the rug out from under investigators who had been in negotiations with Mr. Braun about cooperating with them. Prosecutors felt they needed an industry insider to flip on others in the business, explain the intricacies of lending agreements and serve as a narrator on the witness stand. In Mr. Braun, who had made clear he was desperate to get out of prison, they thought they had an ideal candidate. They were still going back and forth with his lawyer about a deal that would have freed him from prison when Mr. Trump commuted his sentence. Prosecutors instantly lost their leverage over Mr. Braun. The investigation into the industry, and Mr. Braun’s conduct, remains open but is hampered by the lack of help from an insider. The Case Exposed Shortcomings in the Justice System At multiple levels, right up to the president, the justice system appeared to fail more than once to take full account of all of Mr. Braun’s activities despite longstanding concerns among prosecutors that he was a threat and could not be deterred. A decade and a half ago, he fled the country while the Justice Department was closing in on him in the drug case, but prosecutors later let him out of jail while awaiting sentencing because he agreed to cooperate with their ongoing investigations into drug traffickers. But he used that freedom to establish himself as a predatory lender, leading to a string of accusations that he employed threats and intimidation — a record that the Trump White House seems not to have considered or given any weight in granting him the commutation.

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Mass. Senate unanimously passes bill banning cat declawing

Dogs may be a human’s best friend, but lawmakers in the state Senate gave cats across the commonwealth four legs up on Thursday, unanimously passing legislation that bans declawing in all but the most medically necessary of circumstances. As it’s currently written, the legislation sponsored by Sen. Mark C. Montigny, D-2nd Bristol/ Plymouth, would only allow a licensed veterinarian to perform a declawing, tendonectomy, and similar procedures.

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2023 Bostonians of the Year: The beleaguered MBTA commuter

Last spring, Nicole Merullo descended the stairs of the MBTA station in Harvard Square, swiped her T pass at the fare gates, and weaved her way down the ramp to the platform of the inbound Red Line train. All the while, her fellow commuters — those not completely immersed in their phones, anyway — looked on with a bit of wonder. Some smiled and nodded. Others shook their heads in solidarity. A few confused passengers mustered up the confidence to ask her about the cardboard sign that dangled from a piece of red string around her neck. Merullo was staging a one-woman protest. On her sign, she had written a plaintive message in bold black marker to anyone paying attention: WE DESERVE A BETTER T. Advertisement In many ways, Merullo was an oracle for our era. Her sky-is-falling plea for better service was prompted after the MBTA, under federal mandate, began operating on a vastly reduced schedule in 2022 that still remains in place today. But her proselytizing felt particularly prescient this year when, in the very same station, a 20-pound panel suddenly fell from the ceiling, nearly striking a commuter. The video clip of the insulation tile dropping in a cloud of dust mere inches from the woman’s white high-tops felt like an act of God: Bear witness as the infrastructure of our once-great transportation system crumbles at our very feet! Get Globe Magazine An engaging blend of award-winning narrative journalism, opinion, lifestyle, travel, recipes, and advice. Enter Email Sign Up In this, the Year of our Lord 2023, navigating Greater Boston via public transportation has become an increasingly fraught endeavor. Discussing the daily commute now requires rhetoric from the Age of Exploration: Fare thee well fellow traveler, and may the wind be at your back. Embark with bravery and an iron will to conquer the unknown. Kiss your loved ones, for you know not when you’ll see them again. Advertisement Those bold enough to venture forth have suffered through station shutdowns, slow zones, and train breakdowns. They’ve stuffed themselves like cattle onto MBTA buses and shuttles, frittering away hours as they creep through Boston’s noxious traffic. At many points this year, it’s been faster to walk alongside the T than to ride it. That is, if your train happens to be running at all. Nicole Merullo wearing a protest sign. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff/File “We are in a very, very dire place,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said of the MTBA this fall. The system, she said, was “barely adequate for the needs of a world-class economic engine and hub for our workforce.” And that was before the MBTA announced massive defects along the new, $2.3 billion Green Line extension. And before it said it would shut down segments of all four subway lines for repairs over 14 months, often for days or weeks at a time. And before the news that repairing the entire system’s decrepit stations, tracks, and signals would require at least $24.5 billion, the cost of another Big Dig. And yet, still we ride. Whether due to virtue or sheer need, a commitment to climate consciousness, a sense of civic duty, or just because it’s the cheapest way to get downtown, MBTA riders are an essential part of keeping our mass transit system — literally — on track. These commuters are the red blood cells traveling the arteries of our city’s beating heart. To ride now is to keep this city and region alive — pumping dollars into businesses and museums and universities. Staffing office buildings and restaurants, construction sites and science labs. Keeping cars, and their carbon dioxide, off our streets. Advertisement And so this year, we celebrate them as the Bostonians of the Year: The Beleaguered, Intrepid, Absolutely Essential MBTA Commuters. Just as essential workers kept the city’s institutions humming during the darkest moments of COVID, essential riders are now doing their part to keep cities such as Boston vibrant. (It’s worth noting, of course, that MBTA employees were considered essential themselves, and many other essential workers could only get to their jobs because of the T.) Today’s transit riders play an increasingly critical role in a city’s competitiveness and in our ongoing post-COVID recovery. “These are our heroes,” says Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow with the Brookings Institution. They’re eating lunch from restaurants. Going shopping. And by just showing up to work, they contribute to the commercial real estate occupancy levels — supporting a critical piece of our city’s tax base. All this, despite the fact, Loh adds, “that the T is having an operational crisis that is existential.” An exhausted passenger on the Red Line in April. Erin Clark/Globe Staff Loh experienced it firsthand when she visited Boston earlier this year: She had 70 minutes to travel roughly 5 miles from the airport to Kendall Square for a meeting, but didn’t make it in time. “I traveled hundreds of miles” to be at the event, she says. “But I wasn’t even close.” Advertisement The MBTA, like many urban transit networks, went into freefall during COVID. Ridership dropped to just 10 percent of pre-pandemic levels — and is now at around 64 percent. Car traffic, however, is back, and nearing pre-COVID levels. In January, the city got the distinction of being ranked the fourth worst in the world for roadway gridlock. As of August, Boston streets were 5.2 percent more congested than they had been a year prior, according to the GPS service Waze. For many, taking mass transit has become a catch-22: More Bostonians would take the T if it became more reliable, but it can’t become more reliable unless more Bostonians take the T. Take the recent workaround the MBTA offered to riders getting off the Red Line when it shut down the Green Line for repairs: Instead of getting a transfer at Park Street, they were instructed to take the underground tunnel to the Orange Line, hop on a train to Back Bay Station, then walk to Copley Square to get a shuttle bus traveling the Green Line route. It was a frustration for everyone, and a nightmare for anyone with mobility challenges. “We have gone so far beyond asking T riders what we have any right to ask of them,” says Charles Chieppo, a senior fellow at the Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank. “There just aren’t even words for it. And that just breaks my heart.” The fact that riders keep riding despite these obstacles is proof that a public transit recovery is possible, but getting there is infuriating. This September, for example, daily ridership on the T grew to the highest it had been since 2020, peaking at 67 percent of pre-pandemic levels. That same month also saw among the longest delays yet this year for the Red Line — when trains crept an hour and 22 minutes slower than their typical pace during peak travel times, according to TransitMatters’ Data Dashboard. Advertisement For Xavier Calderon, 23, getting to his job as an overnight security guard near South Station has been a crapshoot over the past year, as he’s navigated Red Line slow zones and shutdowns along the Ashmont line. “The trains are delayed without any warning or anything. And then I end up showing up to work like 20 or 30 minutes late,” he says. He’s lucky to have understanding managers and a measure of flexibility at work, but knows others aren’t in the same position. Orange Line delays at Sullivan Station in July. Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff During the September shutdown, Calderon had to budget carefully to take an Uber to and from his Dorchester home for $20 each way. “Whether it’s ordering Ubers or trying to get a ride or something like that, it kind of makes more work for me,” he says. “The last minute warnings or last minute switches ruin a lot of people’s days.” Fare revenues for the MBTA are down overall as a result of the chaos (and riders’ ongoing concerns about COVID), and remain a fraction of what they once were. They used to fund more than 42 percent of MBTA operating costs, but that figure dropped to as low as 10 percent last year, and now hovers around 20 percent. But fares are more than just dollars that help the bottom line, Loh says. “Fare revenue is about a recognition of the personal value of the connection that transit provides.” For transit systems to work, they need to become less “peaky” — focusing less on getting workers to downtown offices, she says, and instead looking to build better public transportation networks that can serve all trips at all points of the day. That means more frequent, all-day bus routes that serve suburbs and more off-peak trips to serve hybrid workers who no longer need to be in the office every day between 9 and 5. And it means finding more creative solutions to incentivize ridership and raise funds for transit in the process. “People who use transit generate a lot of benefits for other people by staying off the road and leaving space for others,” Loh says. “And yet those benefits accrue to others, not to the transit riders.” That’s part of why New York is now experimenting with congestion pricing and regional sales tax revenue to fund its transit costs. And it’s also worth noting that the beleaguered riders who rely most on public transit, and spend the most time on the system, are often the ones who earn the least. The US Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey found that in 2022, a third of Americans did some or all of their work from home, up from less than a quarter of the public pre-pandemic. But not all jobs are created equal. Most of those remote positions required a bachelor’s degree or higher. And in the Boston area, the wealthiest ZIP codes, such as Cambridge and Newton, have some of the highest rates of remote workers. On an October afternoon, around 80 people were evacuated from a Green Line train. Diti Kohli/Globe Staff Ironically, those ZIP codes are also some of the best serviced by transit, which likely accounts for the one bright spot in MBTA ridership these days: The commuter rail trains reached a “post-pandemic peak” this October, surpassing 90 percent of their pre-pandemic levels. (Disrupted Red Line service pushing commuters onto the Fairmount line and Halloween trains to Salem also had a hand in this spike.) Boston has been piloting fare-free bus routes to attempt to acknowledge wealth disparities among riders. But there are other ways to subsidize low-income commuters, too: Washington, D.C., has experimented with a low-income fare program for SNAP recipients — T officials have discussed similar possibilities here — while in Seattle, transit passes are provided for residents of public housing. The MBTA’s viability also stands to offer one of the biggest solutions to our region’s ballooning housing crisis. One of the most promising housing measures passed in the state in the last five decades, the MBTA Communities Act, requires 177 cities and towns in the MBTA’s service area to pass new zoning to permit multifamily housing units in dense areas, largely around transit stations. But suburban pushback to the act is real — one Milton resident at a public meeting recently suggested shutting down the Mattapan trolley entirely just to avoid meeting the housing requirement — and is bolstered every time the T spontaneously bursts into flames. The success of the MBTA Communities Act “really depends on people believing that the T is going to work well,” says Jarred Johnson, who heads TransitMatters, the local advocacy group celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. “I think the state has got to think really hard about how it boosts people’s confidence in this system . . . And it’s not only making the system work, but having people believe that the system works, which is somewhat different but really critical.” A rider with her 15-month-old daughter on the Blue Line in July. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Johnson also believes the T can do more to recognize — and celebrate — the role riders play in tackling other big, existential issues the city faces, such as combating climate change. Why not post more signs about how much carbon train commuters are keeping out of our atmosphere, for example? Why not make people feel good about taking the train? “For so many of the things that we care about, and so many of the big challenges we face, the T is, I’d argue, a really critical part of solving those problems,” Johnson says. “That, for me, is why it is so important that we celebrate the T and celebrate its potential, even in the state that it’s been in. We need to celebrate the people that keep thinking about it and keep pushing the state and the region to honor their side of that contract. Because we are not going to build the housing that we need to, we’re not going to solve climate change, and we’re not going to solve congestion, if we don’t have a T that works.” If anything, the bright side of our MBTA maelstrom is that it’s inspired a new generation of transit activists such as Nishanth Veeragandham, a 17-year-old high school junior from Lexington, who has relied on the train to get him to his volunteer placement in Central Square every Friday afternoon for the past three years. Some of his classmates disparage the T. “In school, people say they should stop funding the T or just shut it down entirely,” he says. “They want to prioritize cars, because that’s just what they’re used to.” But he’s a believer, and has already started attending TransitMatters’ advocacy meetings (though he was severely late to his last one, thanks, of course, to a delayed train). “With the MBTA, when people don’t advocate for these services they fall into decline, and when public support — the town or community — is less willing to provide funding, it falls into a spiral,” Veeragandham says. “I want people to see that when they ride on a bus that that contribution matters. Ideally it opens their eyes to the work of how public transportation helps other people.” Because that really, at its heart, is what being a public transit rider is about: the public good. It’s something Tracy Hadden Loh waxed poetic about on X while riding the Silver Line during another visit to Boston this year, noting the passengers who cut across age, race, and class lines. “It’s not just transit of last resort,” she says. “And that kind of broad buy-in from really diverse populations means that if the T can solve its reliability problems, I think ridership will explode.” Fields Corner station in February. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Johnson of TransitMatters says he and a member of the group’s board, former Massachusetts transportation secretary Jim Aloisi, bring this up all the time. “In a world in which so many of the things that we do are shaped by class and race and all of these other factors, transit becomes one of the few places where people of different races and social classes mix,” Johnson says. “That is a really important thing that we could lose if we don’t take care of transit, and we leave transit as something that you only take because you don’t have any options.” That’s why celebrating straphangers, and the role they play in keeping the system honest, is so essential. Nicole Merullo, our one-woman protest, wore her sign daily for months, finally taking it off last winter. This year, when she started graduate school and her commute changed, she grew so frustrated with the T’s unreliability that she began taking a university shuttle to get to campus. That decision should be a cautionary tale for the MBTA: If it can lose a committed rider like Merullo, it can lose almost anyone. But Merullo hasn’t lost hope. She’s been optimistic since MBTA general manager Phillip Eng started in the role in March, and believes he’s bringing much-needed transparency to the organization. “I have a sense of pride in our transportation system,” she says. Meanwhile, the riders will keep riding, and keep hoping that one day we’ll all eventually reach our destination: The dependable system that we deserve. Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her @janellenanos.

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Holyoke panel recommends parking enforcement team upgrades, like uniforms and UTVs

HOLYOKE — These front-line enforcers take a lot of flak, every day, and they say they need better, official protection. Is this an active U.S. combat team overseas, asking for lifesaving body armor? That’s a negative. It’s the city’s two-person parking enforcement division. On a daily basis, this brave duo has to contend with nasty letters, being spat at and even aluminum cans being hurled at them while at work. The parking enforcers have been in numerous dangerous situations, which they believe could be mitigated with proper uniforms and safety equipment. It also will help them get the respect they deserve, said Jaime Morrow, the interim chief procurement officer. Two separate parking enforcement proposals will head to the City Council for a vote Tuesday; they include upgraded uniforms that clearly state “parking enforcement,” two-way radios and two Kubota utility vehicles. The Finance Committee recommended the proposals that had originally been packaged as one, in a 4-1 vote with one abstention Wednesday, after Morrow and Laura E. Wilson, the city’s tax collector, made clarifications about the cost and the necessity of the items. Holyoke City Councilor Kevin A. Jourdain said, if the city has $51,000 to spare, it should be directed toward fixing broken meters. (Aprell Munford / The Republican)Aprell May Munford According to Morrow, the new uniforms will be rented from New England Uniform of West Springfield and come with weekly dry cleaning, per a Department of Public Works union contract. The contract calls for 11 pairs of pants, 11 long-sleeve shirts, five short-sleeve shirts and a jacket. Renting uniforms is a better value, as opposed to purchasing, because of staff turnover, Morrow said. Currently, the parking enforcers are wearing DPW shirts and have paid out of their own pocket to purchase reflective sweatshirts, hats and body cameras, all in an effort to get more respect, look more professional and for their own safety, Wilson said. The parking enforcer’s daily duties include collecting coins, ticketing, mowing and “keeping a watchful eye” on city parking lots, Wilson said. On a separate bill heading to the council will be the two-way radios and the two four-season Kubota UTVs. At times, the enforcers are asked to patrol parking lots, and the two-way radios would provide the enforcers direct contact with the Holyoke Police Department and DPW. “It is a safety issue,” Morrow said. “These enforcers are on the street with the police; they are another city employee, advocating for Holyoke safety. They should have money and resources.” While the finances in the city are tight, a new vehicle would mean the parking enforcers could do their jobs more quickly, efficiently and safely, Wilson said. The UTVs were selected because they can haul equipment, can be easily repurposed if parking enforcement is eliminated in the future and provide security when parking revenue is being collected. The parking enforcers sometimes push a dolly with the coin collectors in recycling bins up and down the street, Wilson said. The specific coin holders they use are too heavy when they are filled, but the UTVs can be retrofitted with a mechanism to help carry the weight. As they are collecting with the recycling bins, the parking enforcers feel unsafe when people approach them and ask, “What’s in there?” Wilson said. City Councilor Kevin A. Jourdain said if the city has $51,000 to spare, it should be directed toward fixing broken meters. (Aprell Munford / The Republican)Aprell May Munford Joseph M. McGiverin, Finance Committee chair, said the last he heard was that 50% of the meters in Holyoke were broken. Despite that, enforcers have collected about $37,000 in coins. Since January, they have issued about 3,700 tickets, totaling $76,590, with $38,910 in outstanding fines. That does not include the monthly parking passes, Wilson said. The change Holyoke collects gets shipped directly to the Federal Reserve for conversion, Wilson said. Additionally, enforcers also fix meters that are vandalized frequently. Some meter heads need repairs, because they’re old, but finding parts is difficult, said Carl Rossi, the DPW director, in an interview. The DPW is looking forward to a parking study to be completed and plans to address the broken meters by modernizing the entire system, Rossi said. Morrow said the idea is that, with the proper equipment, the enforcers can be made fully functional and can collect almost double the revenue. Parking enforcers also are responsible for mowing city lots; they currently schlep the mowers to lots to maintain them, but with new UTVs, there would be enough space in the back bed to transport power equipment. McGiverin questioned if mowing lawns and watching parking lots were a good use of parking enforcement’s time. It diminishes their authority, Wilson said. Eventually, Wilson would like to see a city ordinance amended to expand parking enforcement’s territory and to revisit parking enforcers’ job descriptions. As of now, enforcers cannot ticket on Front and Dwight streets, where officials say people are parking on the bridge, in handicap parking spaces and blocking downtown business parking lots, Wilson said.

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Iowas political paradox: red state leads in wind as GOP denies climate change

Sign up for The Meltdown, a weekly newsletter highlighting the latest apocalyptic dramas, debunking climate myths, and sharing sustainability hacks, all while arming you with information to hold polluters and the government accountable. Enter your email to subscribe. Iowa holds a unique place in American politics. Far from the corridors of power in Washington D.C. or the wealthy streets of New York City, this modestly populated farming state of just under 4 million people has been the nation’s first gauge in presidential elections for over fifty years. It’s a curious focal point where the first significant decisions about who might lead the country are made. Despite the Republican Party’s stronghold in Iowa, the state stands out in another, perhaps paradoxical way: its commitment to renewable energy. In 2022, Iowa led the nation in wind turbine energy, with around two-thirds of its electricity coming from renewable sources, primarily wind. This presents an intriguing contrast as we head into Monday’s caucus. Iowa, a state that vigorously champions renewable energy, is governed by a party whose rhetoric often downplays or even dismisses climate change. This was evident in a recent GOP primary debate in Des Moines, where both Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley scoffed at the idea of human-made climate change. Both expressed desires to dismantle President Joe Biden’s green policies, with Gov. DeSantis questioning why the U.S. should act while countries like India and China lag behind in environmental efforts. So, how does this dichotomy resonate within Iowa itself? To get a clearer picture, Reckon turned to Cody Smith, a senior policy advocate at the Iowa Environmental Council. Based in Des Moines, this coalition is dedicated to ensuring a just and healthy environment, as well as a sustainable future for all Iowans. Reckon: Iowa is a state leader in wind energy, but it’s also a solidly red state. Sort of a paradox. How do Republicans at all levels of politics, including presidential candidates, reconcile those dueling messages? Cody Smith: I would start off by saying that Iowans are independent thinkers and we have had the responsibility of being first in the nation in the presidential nominating contests for decades now. And that’s part of the culture here. I think that independent thinking allows Iowans of all parties and all political affiliations to be able to recognize that wind energy is good for our economy, it’s good for our farmers, and it’s good for our rural communities. Just in 2021, Iowa wind turbines generated about $57 million in state and local taxes. It also paid $67 million in land lease payments to landowners hosting the projects. What that shows us is wind energy is a winning investment for Iowa’s communities, whether or not you believe in climate change. It certainly seems possible to believe in renewable energy and reject climate change at the same time, even though those ideas typically exist as polar opposites of the current energy narrative. How does that play out in Iowa? It’s possible to believe in both, but I would argue that most Iowans recognize that climate change is impacting the state. We’ve seen flooding in 2019 and 2008, where we had some deaths and disastrous floods. In 2020, we saw a major derecho that had a massive impact on our electrical system. And wind energy has performed well throughout all of those disasters. I think it’s possible to walk that line. The messaging itself is interesting. There have been comments from leading candidates about wind energy having negative impacts on health and other things. I think Iowans are able to see through that and recognize that wind energy is playing an important role in our communities, funding schools, helping improve roads, and other important local services that we see, including fire and EMS. A recent poll noted that 75% of Iowans said they would back a candidate who recognized climate change as the greatest threat to humanity. What does that tell us about Iowa voters? Iowans are no strangers to the impacts of climate change, as I mentioned. We’ve had an increasing amount of natural disasters, whether it’s flooding or even heat waves this summer. These are things that we have hardly seen in the state, and they seem to be happening every other year or sometimes even multiple times in one year. I think anybody, particularly farmers, whose livelihood relies on the natural resources of Iowa, is experiencing those changes every year. They’re living through unprecedented heatwaves, floods, and the impact that has had on our economic activities, whether it’s farming and agriculture, or our manufacturing sector. As we move forward throughout the next several years, I think it’s going to continue to rise as an issue in the minds of Iowans. Despite anti-climate change and renewable energy rhetoric seemingly louder than ever, there also seems to be this growing acceptance of renewable energy throughout the country. For example, GOP-led Texas leads the nation in many different types of renewable energy production. How has that creeping and almost silent acceptance of renewable energy in red states happened? I think you hit the nail on the head. Iowans, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, know that renewable energy just makes sense. It’s common sense that investing in renewable generation is the cheapest for customers of our electric utilities, as well as being good for the environment. And whether or not climate change is a motivating factor for Iowans in their decision-making processes, everybody wants clean water and they want clean air. When we think about the communities that are still hosting coal plants across the state, they’re having to deal with pollution impacts at the local level. And that’s regardless of the carbon dioxide or methane emissions that may come from those plants. For example, up in Sioux City, Iowa, Mid-American Energy runs two coal plants. We actually had the nation’s 15th-largest coal plant. So, we have these challenges where communities are breathing in that toxic air dealing with sulfur dioxide or nitrous oxide and increasing rates of asthma. This is a real issue and people see renewable energy as a clear alternative, not only to clean the pollution of our fossil fuel generation that we still have and operate, but also to be able to have a lower cost option for customers as we move forward into the next several decades. Looking at the political bureaucracy, how all the levers and mechanisms of government work, how has Iowa managed to pursue so many wind turbine projects? A number of regulatory frameworks and incentives have led to wind energy being so dominant here in the state of Iowa. Some of them are a little bit more wonky, such as advanced ratemaking, which is a practice that allows our electric utilities to recover the costs and get a guaranteed return on investment for new projects and electricity generation before they’ve even built it. The idea here is that they can get some regulatory certainty and know the investments that they’re going to make will have a guaranteed return before they build them. That practice has been around in Iowa for about 15 to 20 years. And that has really allowed the risk to be removed from wind energy generation as we kind of tested it out and continued to grow. There’s some question about whether or not that’s still necessary, given the proven reliability and cost-effectiveness of wind energy. I would also mention that both the state and federal governments have had production tax credits and investment tax credits for wind energy and solar energy. The state’s credits have since expired, but the federal government’s investment and production tax credits for wind energy and solar energy have continued to drive the marketplace and make it more cost-effective, even without those tax credits in place. Wind energy is still the most cost-effective electricity source generator. You brought up something interesting that is a major issue nationwide. Coal ash disposal has become one of the greatest threats to the environment and communities in recent years. How is Iowa dealing with its coal ash? Recent research has demonstrated that about 99% of coal plants are more expensive to operate than renewables. We have to think about how we regulate our utilities and how we set up our policies to make sure that the decisions they make are cost-effective for customers and good for reliability. When it comes to coal ash, we have seen some of our utilities in the state, for example, Mid-American Energy, propose dumping their coal ash deposits directly into the Missouri River. Here at the Iowa Environmental Council, we pushed back on that, and they eventually abandoned the application to the state. But Iowans were ready to jump up and push back against that because they recognized even if people value coal for reliability — or maybe they have generational jobs where workers, their fathers and grandfathers have worked at the same plant — nobody wants to have that coal ash or the pollutants associated with coal-fired electricity dumped directly into our state’s rivers. Iowans, again, are demonstrating that we are independent thinkers who evaluate things as they come through. It gets difficult during the caucus season because things that happen here are directed by the national conversation as much as they inform it. It can be hard to really see what Iowans believe and how we influenced this process. What does the future look like for renewable energy in Iowa? I don’t want to sugarcoat everything and say there aren’t challenges. It’s not necessarily helpful to the industry or to the cost for Iowa’s electricity and electric customers when candidates degrade wind energy and then spread false narratives about the impacts on health. For example, some claim wind turbines can cause cancer. That’s not helpful. In recent years, we’ve seen a growth in opposition from local residents for both wind and solar. And that’s going to become increasingly challenging as the opposition continues to get organized. There’s research that demonstrates that this increase in organization from the opposition is also being funded by the fossil fuel industry. That’s not unique to Iowa. Five years ago, somebody might show up and complain that a wind turbine is too close to their home or farm, or they just don’t like the way that it looks. Those are valuable, verifiable and objective concerns that can be mitigated by responsible citing and zoning. But over the last five years, as this issue has become more politicized, we’ve definitely seen an influx of resources on the opposition side to push back and spin false narratives about the health impact, the reliability, and the overall success of wind energy in the state of Iowa. It’s a growing concern. But we’re hopeful that, looking forward, Iowans will continue to exercise independent judgment and see the truth for what it is.

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Opinion | The DeSantis Campaign Is Revealing What Republican Voters Really Want

If Ron DeSantis surprises in Iowa and beyond, if he recovers from his long polling swoon and wins the Republican nomination, it will represent the triumph of a simple, intuitive, but possibly mistaken idea: That voters should be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders. It was always clear, going into 2024, that a large minority of the Republican primary electorate would vote for Donald Trump no matter what — including, in the event of his untimely passing, for the former president’s reanimated corpse or his A.I. simulation. A smaller bloc strongly preferred a pre-Trump and un-Trump-like Republican; this has become the Nikki Haley constituency. This left a crucial middle bloc, maybe 40 percent of the party in my own guesstimation, that was Trump-friendly but also seemingly persuadable and open to another choice. These were those Republicans who mostly hadn’t voted for Trump in the early primaries in 2016, who had regarded him as the lesser of two evils during his tilt with Hillary Clinton, but who had gradually become more authentically favorable toward him over the course of his presidency — because of the judges he appointed, because of the strength of the economy, because they reacted against the hysteria of his liberal opponents, or just because of the alchemy of partisan identification. I talked to a lot of these kind of Republicans between 2016 and 2020 — not a perfectly representative sample, probably weighted too heavily toward Uber drivers and Catholic lawyer dads, but still enough to recognize a set of familiar refrains. These voters liked Trump’s policies more than his personality. They didn’t like some of his tweets and insults, so they mostly just tuned them out. They thought that he had the measure of liberals in a way that prior Republicans had not, that his take-no-prisoners style was suited to the scale of liberal media bias and progressive cultural hegemony. But they acknowledged that he didn’t always seem entirely in charge of his own administration, fully competent in the day-to-day running of the government.

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The Collapse of Newspapers Puts Democracy in Peril - The New York Times

She might also have benefited from a bit of luck. When Congress invited her to a congressional hearing on antisemitism on Dec. 5 with her peers from Harvard, Penn and M.I.T., Dr. Shafik said she could not go. She told representatives that she had already planned to attend the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, where she introduced a panel about women leaders. The Congressional hearing did not go well. The University of Pennsylvania president lost her job and the Harvard president became mired in weeks of controversy. But instead of fighting for her job, Dr. Shafik was announcing a new initiative, called Values in Action, in which she called for informed debate, not “taunts and cruelty.” Still, she is walking a precarious path. Her call for compassion and respect, some students said, does not reflect what they say has been a repressive effort to rein in pro-Palestinian protesters that has gone farther than at other Ivy League universities: In November, Columbia’s administration made the extraordinary decision to suspend temporarily two pro-Palestinian student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. “I just think the university is not identifying the proper threat,” said Deen Haleem, a third-year law student and a leader of Law Students for Palestine. “The current threat right now are the universities that are shutting down pro-Palestine speech.”

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Hamas and Israel Extend Cease-Fire for 2 Days, Qatar Says

The deal came after an Israeli offer to continue the cease-fire by one day for every additional 10 hostages released, who would be exchanged for 30 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The Israeli hostages released on Monday were three women and eight children, all of them kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led assault on Israel on Oct. 7, when more than 200 people were seized and taken to Gaza. They included Sharon Alony Cunio, 34, and her twin 3-year-old daughters, Emma and Yuli Cunio, three of the six members of their family who were taken hostage. David Cunio, the twins’ father and Ms. Cunio’s husband, is believed to still be in Gaza. Her sister and niece were released on Friday. The French government said three of those released on Monday were dual Israeli-French citizens. A number of those kidnapped have dual nationalities, including about 10 Israeli-Americans, of whom only one, a 4-year-old girl, has been released. Hamas said it had received a list of three women and 30 minors that Israel would release in return on Monday. The exchanges so far have focused on Israeli and Palestinian women and minors. Dozens of Israeli soldiers as well as civilian Israeli men in their 70s and 80s are still being held captive in Gaza. In several cases, children have been released without their fathers, and wives without their husbands. Family separations have been a stumbling block in the hostage negotiations. Israeli officials have expressed concerns to Qatari mediators that some children were being released without mothers who were also being held captive, running counter to the agreement, according to an official briefed on the talks. The official said Hamas has said that in those cases, the mothers are being held by different groups, and it would take time to get them. Late Monday, Israel’s Army Radio, citing the prime minister’s office, reported that the government had received a list of hostages held by Hamas who are expected to be released on Tuesday. The swap of hostages and prisoners is being negotiated by the government of Qatar, where many of Hamas’s political leaders live, and which has long acted as an intermediary for nations that refuse to deal directly with Hamas.

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To Handle a Surge of Illegal Crossings, Border Officials Stop Legal Ones

The 18-year-old wrote poetry about the beauty in the world and read novels that explored the complexities of humanity. She channeled her passion for music on stage, found solace in songwriters such as Samia and Weyes Blood, and savored the spectacle of operas. To those who knew her best, the words captured her very essence. Last summer, Aria Kamal wrote that her purpose in life was to “open my heart and love.” Most of all, she listened without judgment to friends and reminded them often how much they meant to her. Now, through their grief, Kamal’s loved ones are remembering how much she meant to them. Just days after Christmas, she was killed by her father, Rakesh Kamal, who also killed his wife, Teena, inside the family’s Dover home before taking his own life, officials said. Advertisement “I loved Aria very, very much. She was an extraordinarily gifted and wonderful person and I feel so lucky that our paths crossed,” said Owen, who met Kamal at Middlebury College, where she was a freshman. The two were in a relationship, and he asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy. “The thing I loved most about her was that she just radiated love. She was kind to everyone she knew, and let her love shine into the world unconditionally.” They struck a connection by sending each other song recommendations. Soon, they were walking around campus together, gazing at the stars and sharing poetry. The last poem they read together was “Mysteries, Yes” by Mary Oliver, which opens with the line, “Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood.” “We always talked about how we were so lucky to have met so early in college — that we had so much time together,” he said by email. “No one saw this coming. I am still shocked every day. Please hold your loved ones as tight as you can.” Advertisement Before the tragedy, police said they had no interactions with the family, and if there were trouble at home Kamal never let it show, said Sophie, a close friend from Milton Academy, where Kamal attended high school. “There was no indication from her recently that anything was wrong with her home life,” she said via email. She asked to only be identified by her first name. During their junior year, Sophie and Kamal sat next to each other in English class every day. Sharing a taste for dry humor, they quickly became close. Kamal had a “witty irreverence” that Sophie admired and made her giggle so much she would kick her under the table to stop. When the class was reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go,” Kamal offered a deft analysis that Sophie nodded along to, “as if I had had any clue who Ishiguro was prior to our class.” “As I began to know her more, I started realizing what an incredibly special person she was,” Sophie said. Sophie said she trusted Kamal to listen to her with an open mind and offer her insight. With an innate empathy, Kamal was an unwavering source of support for many friends, she said. She stood out for her ability to be her true self without fear, another classmate recalled. “Most importantly, she wasn’t afraid to show that she loved, something that I think most high schoolers were afraid to do,” the classmate said. “She meant so much to so many people, and I really hope she knew that.” Advertisement For a creative writing assignment during her senior year, Kamal wrote a narrative detailing her personal struggles and periods of isolation when she entered high school. By learning to find joy in small things and seeking out companionship, she described gaining a renewed appreciation for life. “The love of life, of people, of the world, that she developed clearly didn’t come easily, which made me admire it even more,” Sophie said. The friends hadn’t seen each other since graduating in June but called and texted regularly. During one of their last conversations, Sophie reached out to let Kamal know she was listening to “Linger” by The Cranberries, a band she loved. The friends reflected on “how truly happy we were for the first few months of college,” she said. At Middlebury, where Kamal was studying neuroscience and involved in a range of student groups, including Women in Computer Science, the college choir, theatre, and a group for students interested in foraging, she was “finally finding her people,” Sophie said. Aria Kamal. LinkedIn Kamal told her a lot about Owen and how good things were between them. “I think the last few months of her life were the happiest she had been since I knew her,” she said. “She wanted to fall in love and stay in love, to sing opera, to see lots of beautiful places, and to have kids someday, who she would have loved so well,” Sophie said. Advertisement Devastated by her death, Owen described Kamal as a “brilliant and unique person who had a wonderful and full life.” “She saw all the good, and all the beauty, and had a wonderful gift in that she could make you see it, too,” he said. “She truly made you feel like the only person in the world when she spoke to you, love and light just radiated from her. She could hold her own in even the most niche topics of conversation and was one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” Many aspire to make the world a better place. But Kamal “really had the will and ability to do so,” Owen added. “She would want us all to go on, to live twice as hard, and twice as beautifully, for her. And to hold the beauty of this world in our hearts. She knew that love would save us all,” he said. Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.

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Jeff Roe, Top Strategist for Star-Crossed DeSantis Super PAC, Resigns

Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for the leading super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, resigned on Saturday night, the latest and perhaps most significant departure from the group, which has been consumed by turmoil in recent weeks. Since the day before Thanksgiving, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, has seen the resignation of one chief executive and one board chairman; the firing of a second chief executive, along with two other top officials; and now the late-night quitting of Mr. Roe. All have come after intense infighting and finger-pointing as Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls. “I can’t believe it ended this way,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement he posted on X on Saturday night. The news of Mr. Roe’s resignation was first reported by The Washington Post. His decision to quit followed comments from the new chairman of the super PAC’s board, Scott Wagner, a DeSantis loyalist and appointee in Florida. Mr. Wagner had explained to The Washington Post why the previous chief executive and two others — all of whom had worked for Mr. Roe — had been fired.

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Opinion | History Argues for Disqualifying Trump

One of the most difficult things to ask a judge to do is issue a ruling that he or she believes is actually dangerous. Even if you can make a strong case that the letter of the law is on your side, judges are tempted to narrow the reach of disfavored laws or sometimes virtually rewrite them in order to avoid outcomes that are deemed too radical or disruptive. Thus, it’s incumbent on good lawyers to argue not merely in favor of the letter of the law but also for the underlying merit of the law itself. My newsletter two weeks ago focused mainly on the legal argument for disqualifying Donald Trump from the presidency on the basis of the text and history of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I made the case that the plain language of the amendment should disqualify Trump regardless of the consequences, which many observers — including some strongly opposed to Trump — believe would be dire and violent. Today, by contrast, I will make the case that even the consequences argue for Trump’s disqualification. Or, put more directly, that the consequences of not disqualifying the former president are likely to be worse than those of disqualifying him. This is the lesson of history both recent — the Trump era and Jan. 6, 2021 — and more distant. The profound mistakes of the Reconstruction-era Congress, just years after the Civil War and the ratification of the 14th Amendment, teach us about the high cost of welcoming insurrectionists back into high office. I addressed these points briefly in a short post for our new Opinion blog, but they deserve more attention. Critics of applying Section 3 to Trump have correctly and eloquently argued that removing him from the race could trigger a convulsive and potentially violent backlash in the American body politic. Millions of Americans would feel as if their choice was taken from them and that scheming elites were destroying American democracy.

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House Passes Defense Bill, Clearing It for Biden

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed an $886 billion defense bill, clearing the measure for President Biden after pushing past a revolt from the far right over the exclusion of restrictions they had sought to abortion access, transgender care, and racial diversity and inclusion policies at the Pentagon. The 310-to-118 vote reflected the bipartisan nature of the bill, which earned the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans despite the vocal opposition of hard-liners, who staged a last-ditch rebellion on the House floor to try to block its passage. Mr. Biden is expected to sign the measure into law, maintaining Washington’s six-decade streak of approving military policy legislation on an annual basis. This year’s defense bill authorizes a 5.2 percent pay increase for service members and civilian employees of the Pentagon. It also invests in a variety of measures to improve competition with Russia and China, including an expansion of regional partnerships in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, development of hypersonic weapons and upgrades to the nuclear arsenal. The bill sets up a submarine deal at the heart of a new security partnership with Britain and Australia known as AUKUS, and directs hundreds of millions of dollars toward sending weapons to Ukraine and Israel. It does not settle the greater question of whether Congress will approve tens of billions of dollars in emergency funds for the two countries’ war efforts as part of a $110.5 billion spending bill that has stalled in Congress, amid a dispute between Republicans and Democrats about attaching measures to crack down on migration across the U.S. border with Mexico.

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Fetterman, Breaking With the Left on Israel, Rejects Progressive Label

In April 2022, during his Senate primary campaign in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman spoke enthusiastically about his unqualified support for Israel and said he did not consider himself a “progressive” when it came to his views on the Jewish state. “Whenever I’m in a situation to be called on to take up the cause of strengthening and enhancing the security of Israel or deepening our relationship between the United States and Israel, I’m going to lean in,” Mr. Fetterman, then the lieutenant governor, told Jewish Insider at the time. When it came to far-left Democrats who harshly criticized Israel, he added, “I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense.” So as the left has turned against Mr. Fetterman in recent weeks, branding him #GenocideJohn for his unequivocal support of Israel’s fierce retaliation against Hamas in response to the group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the senator has dug in. Once a darling of progressives who positioned himself as a champion of the underdog and highlighted his association with Senator Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, Mr. Fetterman now has a less rosy view of the left and says the label of “progressive” does not fit him anymore.

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Heres What We Know About the Israel-Hamas Deal

A deal between Israel and Hamas for a temporary cease-fire appeared to take effect on Friday. Here is a closer look at the agreement, mediated in part by Qatar, and how it is expected to play out. What’s in the deal? The agreement is for at least a four-day pause in hostilities. During that time, at least 50 women and children — from the roughly 240 people that Israeli officials say were abducted on Oct. 7 — were expected to be exchanged for 150 Palestinian women and minors imprisoned in Israeli jails. The deal also includes an increase in humanitarian aid for Gaza, but Qatar’s foreign ministry did not release details. Hamas said Thursday that 200 trucks carrying relief supplies and four fuel trucks would enter the territory each day during the four-day pause. Israeli officials did not immediately comment. Israel said its warplanes would not fly over southern Gaza for the duration of the cease-fire, and would not fly over the northern part of the territory for six hours each day. How is it being carried out? The pause had been scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. Gaza time (midnight Eastern) on Friday, Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman, Majed al-Ansari said Thursday, which Hamas confirmed. Mr. al-Ansari said a first group of 13 hostages would then be released starting at 4 p.m., in exchange for an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners. In general, both Israel and Hamas have signaled that roughly 30 Palestinians will be exchanged for every 10 Israeli hostages. Each day of the pause, Israel and Hamas will receive lists of the hostages and prisoners to be released, with Qatar passing them between the two parties, according to Mr. al-Ansari. He said that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be designated to receive the hostages, though he gave no further detail on the group’s role or where the hostages would cross the border. The Israeli government has said that the hostages would be freed in four groups during the truce, each with at least 10 people. An Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity on Wednesday said hostages turned over by Hamas would be taken to hospitals, and the seriously injured transported by helicopter. Those under 12 will be met at the border by their families, the official said, while older hostages will meet their families at hospitals, where they will also be debriefed by security services. The official said the first Palestinians to be released from Israeli prisons will be allowed home only after the first tranche of Israeli hostages are freed. Who are the Palestinian prisoners? The Israeli government this week published a list of 300 names — all people 18 years old and younger or women — of Palestinian prisoners being considered for release. It was not immediately known who would be among the 150 to be released. All the names on the list were described as “security prisoners,” or people who had been arrested in connection with offenses against national security. The prisoners are accused of offenses including supporting terrorism, acts of violence and throwing stones. There are also several charges of attempted murder. Most of the prisoners on the list had not been convicted of the charges. There were 32 women and girls listed, including two 18-year-olds and a 15-year-old. Of the boys, 144 are 18 years old and 123 are between 14 and 17. Who are the hostages being freed? The Israeli prime minister’s office said it had received an initial list of names of the hostages who would be released and had contacted their families. It did not specify how many names were on that list. At least 36 children and teenagers, ranging in age from infancy to the final year of high school, are being held in Gaza, and little is known about their whereabouts or well-being. Some, but perhaps not all, of them are expected to be among the hostages released in the coming days. White House officials said on Tuesday that they expected the agreement to include the release of three Americans: two women and a toddler. What happens after the cease-fire? Israel has said that it will restart fighting after the truce ends and that it still intends to force Hamas from power in every part of Gaza. But some analysts say that it could prove difficult for Israel to regain momentum, particularly if Hamas dangles the possibility of further hostage deals — and if Israel’s partners push for a longer truce. Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.

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politics

The New State of the War in Gaza

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music After the accidental killing of three hostages by Israel’s military, the country’s defense minister appeared to announce a shift in strategy, giving the clearest indication to date of a possible slowing down of the operation in Gaza. Patrick Kingsley, Jerusalem bureau chief for The Times, and Hiba Yazbek, a reporter for The Times, discuss Israel’s military campaign and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

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Texas abortion: Kate Cox case reveals broader antiabortion strategy

On the surface, this would seem to be exactly the kind of rare exception Texas lawmakers had in mind when they passed their state’s highly restrictive abortion laws. Cox’s physician told her that she is at high risk of suffering life-threatening complications — and that her ability to have a third child will be compromised — if she carries her pregnancy to term. But when a Texas judge granted Cox’s request for an emergency order to obtain an abortion, the state’s attorney general not only appealed the decision but threatened each of three hospitals at which Cox’s doctor has admitting privileges with criminal and civil penalties if they performed the abortion . Kate Cox, a woman in Dallas who is 20 weeks pregnant with a child diagnosed with trisomy 18, an almost-always fatal condition, was the first person after the fall of Roe v. Wade to go to court to get an emergency order permitting abortion . Cox’s case was historic in other ways, too: For decades, court orders for abortions generally were granted only for minors acting without parental consent . Advertisement On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court temporarily blocked the lower court’s emergency order, pending further review. Get The Primary Source Globe Opinion's weekly take on politics, delivered every Wednesday. Enter Email Sign Up Regardless of how this particular case is resolved, the attorney general’s initial response raised a troubling question: Can a state really punish doctors for carrying out a procedure explicitly allowed by a court order? Kate Cox, 31, got permission from a state judge to obtain an abortion, but it's unclear whether she will be blocked from proceeding. Uncredited/Associated Press The answer is that a court order, or injunction, like the one Cox got offers unclear protection, especially in Texas. Start with SB8, the law that lets anyone in Texas sue an abortion doctor or anyone “aiding or abetting” them for at least $10,000 per abortion. SB8 made headlines in 2021 because of its bounty structure, which seemed to incentivize complete strangers to target abortion doctors and anyone in a patient’s support network who could qualify as an accomplice. The law also contained a little-noticed provision that prevented defendants from shielding themselves with a court order overruled by a later court, even if the court order was in effect when the abortion took place. Advertisement It’s worth asking whether this is constitutional. The 14th Amendment still guarantees due process of law, which requires defendants to have notice of what is prohibited — and when. How can doctors and other defendants have notice that an order issued by a court is no good before another court has even weighed in? US Supreme Court precedent is less clear on this than we would hope. In 1920, the court decided Oklahoma Operating Company v. Love, a case that involved Oklahoma’s anti-monopoly laws. Justice William Brandeis addressed the possibility that a party challenging a law would win an injunction early in litigation only to lose later. Brandeis’s opinion reasoned that when this happened, there should be no penalty for actions taken “pendente lite,” or during the litigation, so long as a plaintiff had reasonable grounds for a challenge. Winning a court order certainly suggests that a challenge had a reasonable foundation. But the Supreme Court muddied the waters in 1982 in Edgar v. MITE Corporation, which struck down an Illinois law on corporate takeovers. Two of the dissenting justices, Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, suggested that an injunction early in a legal battle offered “permanent protection from penalties for violations of the statute that occurred during the period the injunction was in effect.” The majority didn’t address Marshall and Brennan’s assertion, but Justice John Paul Stevens wrote separately to argue that the court simply didn’t have the authority to create this kind of protection. Advertisement The Supreme Court’s decision in Oklahoma Operating Company v. Love is still the law, but the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, and other conservatives are betting it won’t be for long. Other antiabortion activists have even broader aspirations. Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general, has argued that states have the authority to prosecute people for abortions that occurred when Roe was the law because the Supreme Court later overruled it. If people can be prosecuted for actions taken in reliance on a court’s word, the implications will be radical. Abortion opponents in recent decades have prioritized the idea of criminal punishments for anyone who assists abortion, especially doctors. In the the aftermath of the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, physicians in restrictive states have steered clear of violating criminal laws, and the patients who have managed to access abortion have traveled to other states or ordered pills online. But doctors relying on a valid court order might assume they are protected and feel obligated to intervene in cases like Cox’s. If Paxton’s theory works, that could open the door to more prosecutions of doctors. Texas law authorizes penalties up to life in prison for performing abortion. Advertisement This threat will serve to discourage doctors from performing abortions, even in cases where patients ultimately prevail in court. Given that pregnancy lasts only so long, even merely delaying a procedure for someone like Cox might stop an abortion from taking place at all — never mind what the law says about exceptions. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision was unprecedented in the fact that it destroyed an individual right that had existed for decades. Cox’s case is a reminder that Dobbs may be just the beginning. If some abortion opponents have their way, anyone who convinces a court to recognize their rights would have to look over their shoulder, wondering if a later court will change course. Mary Ziegler, a contributing writer for Globe Ideas, is a professor of law at the University of California, Davis. Her latest book is “Roe: The History of a National Obsession.”

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Trump legal team files motion to pause proceedings pending appeal

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump filed a motion Tuesday urging U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to pause proceedings against Trump while his appeal is pending. The filing comes after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review Trump's appeal in an expedited manner. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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JPNA Holds Vote on Two Projects East Boston Times-Free Press

By Michael Coughlin Jr. At last week’s monthly meeting, the Jeffries Point Neighborhood Association (JPNA) opened the polls to members to vote on projects at Maverick and Jeffries Streets. The first project up for discussion and vote was a proposed café called Café Gloria, located at 287 Maverick Street. Will Isaza, who initially presented his café concept to the JPNA last month, explained that he currently has a signed lease in hand but is now looking to rezone the property to a restaurant and café space. At last month’s meeting, Isaza, an East Boston resident, likened his concept for the space to an internet café. “The concept is as you see here — Café Gloria — will be a coffee and espresso bar from an East Boston born and bred resident,” said Isaza. Isaza also spoke about some of the partners for the project. The proposed café would work with Broadsheet Coffee Roasters out of Somerville. “We’re importing our own coffee bean in particular and roasting in Somerville,” he said. The café would also partner with Mavam Espresso, based out of Seattle, for its espresso and equipment. Regarding the food and beverage options at the café, Isaza displayed a mock menu that includes specialty and classic coffee drinks, tea, rice bowls, and “cold take-home food.” There was only one question concerning the project, which related to the financial viability of the project due to capacity restrictions on the property that Isaza explained at last month’s meeting. “The majority of the business will have to be takeout just because of the capacity,” said Isaza. In the end, members of the JPNA supported the project by a vote of 26 to 1. The next project discussed concerned Unit One at 49 Jeffries Street and was presented to the JPNA by Attorney Richard Lynds. This project was initially presented at the JPNA’s Planning and Zoning meeting last month. As part of this project, the living space in unit one at the property would be extended and include the enclosure of a deck. It should be noted that the project does not include a proposed change in occupancy. Lynds explained that currently, the unit is a one-bedroom with living space in the back with an outside deck attached and described the project as straightforward. “We’re basically closing in a portion of that deck, rebuilding a portion of the deck, and essentially extending the living area out to where that deck is,” said Lynds. He also indicated that the project would not really change anything regarding the building’s footprint and called the zoning violations that need relief “technical.” Lynds also said that the proponent is looking to “increase the space here to allow for a little bit more of a cozier sized unit.” “We feel that the impact is minimal based upon the current conditions of the building as it stands now,” he added. During the discussion time for the project, Andrew Pike, the JPNA’s Treasurer, read out a comment opposing the proposal. Pike, in part, read, “This addition will change the landscape of the street. Also, this will set a precedent for other homeowners on the street.” However, Lynds responded and disagreed with the resident’s comment, saying, “This is such a modest addition to the building. I don’t feel that this is actually going to change much by way of the impact on surrounding properties, including the abutters.” “The structure, for all intents and purposes, is already there. We’re essentially enclosing that lower level only. So whether or not that sets precedent on the rest of the street, that’s not really accurate,” he added. Following Lynds’ response, another comment from the chat claimed that the property was being extended with the deck, but Lynds refuted that, explaining that the deck is already there. “We’re enclosing the area where the deck currently is and replacing the balance of the deck with a smaller deck. I mean, it’s essentially all within the footprint of what’s already there today,” said Lynds. Moreover, Lynds mentioned that a rebuilt staircase to the second floor is the only area that comes back further than what exists currently. As for the vote, JPNA members supported the proposal by a vote of 18 to 6, with two voters abstaining. The JPNA is slated to meet again on December 11th for its Winter Potluck.

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Student walkout at Hampshire Regional comes as teachers push for new leadership

Protest group blocks busy streets in downtown Boston near historic landmarks Share Copy Link Copy JOHN ATWATER. HE’S LIVE THERE WITH WHAT THEY’RE TRYING TO CALL ATTENTION TO JOHN. WELL, BEN, A NUMBER OF JEWISH GROUPS ORGANIZED THIS RALLY, AND THEY ARE CALLING FOR A CEASE FIRE IN THE WAR BETWEEN BETWEEN ISRAEL AND HAMAS. YOU CAN SEE BEHIND US HERE SEVERAL HUNDRED PEOPLE NOW IN THE INTERSECTION. YOU MENTIONED IT STAYED IN CONGRESS HERE, RIGHT IN THE SHADOWS OF THE OLD STATE HOUSE. SO, RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF THE CITY, OF COURSE, THIS IS CAUSING SOME TRAFFIC BACKUPS, SOME GRIDLOCK IN THE AREA JUST DOWN STATE STREET HERE IN THE FOREGROUND. THIS IS FULL OF CARS. JUST A HALF HOUR AGO, BUT THEY WERE ABLE TO BACK OUT OF HERE. BUT IN THE DISTANCE YOU CAN SEE PEOPLE TAKING DETOURS TRYING TO GET AROUND THIS INTERSECTION. POLICE NOW DIRECTING TRAFFIC AT INTERSECTIONS AROUND THIS ONE TO TRY TO GET PEOPLE HOME. BUT IT IS CAUSING A LOT OF DISRUPTION IN THIS AREA. WE DID TALK WITH SOMEONE WHO WAS STUCK IN THEIR CAR. HE WAS A PASSENGER. HE GOT OUT OF HIS CAR. HE UNDERSTOOD THE MESSAGE HERE. HE DECIDED TO TAKE THE T AS THE DRIVER. HE WAS WITH, THEN JUST WAITED IT OUT. BUT THESE PROTESTERS ARE THE SAME PROTESTERS WHO SHUT DOWN THE BU BRIDGE. THAT WAS LAST MONTH. THEY SAY THAT THEY ARE DOING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE THEIR VOICES ARE NOT BEING HEARD. WE ARE NOT HERE TO TARGET PEOPLE WHO ARE STUCK IN TRAFFIC. WE ARE HERE TO GET OUR MESSAGE OUT TO THE PEOPLE IN POWER WHO CAN. ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS WAR AND STOP THE BOMBING. SO SPECIFICALLY TRYING TO SEND THAT MESSAGE TO SENATOR WARREN AND SENATOR MARKEY, THIS GROUP, THEY STARTED THEIR RALLY AT CITY HALL THIS AFTERNOON. THEY THEN WALKED OVER TO THIS INTERSECTION JUST A BLOCK OR TWO AWAY. THAT WAS ABOUT AN HOUR AGO. SO THIS TRAFFIC IMPACT, IT HAS BEEN LINGERING NOW FOR A GOOD HOUR. NOT CLEAR HOW LONG THE GROUP WILL BE HERE, BUT IT DOES SEEM LIKE THEY WILL BE HERE THROUGH THE RU GET LOCAL BREAKING NEWS ALERTS The latest breaking updates, delivered straight to your email inbox. Your Email Address Submit Privacy Notice

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Bangladesh Leader Headed to 4th Straight Term in Vote Marred by Crackdown

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh was headed toward a fourth consecutive term in office as voting ended on Sunday in a low-turnout election that had been marred by a widespread crackdown on the opposition. Security remained tight across the country of 170 million people as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition, which has boycotted the election as unfair, pushed for a nationwide strike. The situation had remained tense in the days leading up to the vote, with episodes of violence — including arson on a train in Dhaka that killed four people, and the torching of more than a dozen polling stations — reported from across the country. Ms. Hasina, 76, who cast her vote in Dhaka, the capital, soon after polls opened at 8 a.m. local time, urged people to come out in large numbers. Early results showed her party with a clear majority. On the campaign trail, she had called for political stability and continuity, often by mentioning the country’s violent history of coups and counter-coups, including one that killed her father, Bangladesh’s founding leader, in the 1970s. She had highlighted her efforts to champion economic development, and her secular party’s resistance to the rise of Islamist militancy, as reasons the voters should give her another term.

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politics

Michigan Supreme Court Decides Trump Can Stay on Ballot

The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday gave Donald J. Trump an important victory in the legal battle over his eligibility to return to the White House by allowing the former president to appear on the state’s primary ballot in February. But in a narrow ruling, the court left the door open for a new challenge to bar Mr. Trump from the general election ballot in the key battleground state over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The decision was the latest in the high-stakes efforts to block Mr. Trump from returning to power. It follows the bombshell ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which on Dec. 19 determined in a 4-to-3 opinion that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Colorado Republican Party said it had asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear an appeal of the decision. Lawyers across the country are venturing into largely unexplored legal terrain that could have far-reaching implications for future elections as they argue over a constitutional amendment passed after the Civil War.

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Seizing Darfur Region, Paramilitary Forces Are Accused of Atrocities

Bodies littered the road out of El Geneina, a town in western Sudan, as Dr. Rodwan Mustafa and his family sped down a bumpy road that led to the border with Chad and, they hoped, safety. A day earlier, rampaging Arab militiamen had grabbed Dr. Mustafa by the neck, accusing him of giving medical care to enemy fighters. That was his signal to run. Racing toward the border with his family in a car, he saw chickens clucking over the bloodied corpses of those who hadn’t fled in time. A camp for displaced people stood empty, burned to the ground. He spotted a dismembered hand on the roadside. “The smell of death was everywhere,” said Dr. Mustafa, who made it to a refugee camp in Chad and spoke by phone from there.

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On separate Mass. and Cass issues, Boston City Council shows unity and division

Politics On separate Mass. and Cass issues, Boston City Council shows unity and division Councilors agreed that businesses near Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard should get a tax break but disagreed over an issue related to the street cleaning there. Members of the Boston City Council during a meeting earlier this year. Pat Greenhouse/Boston Globe During Wednesday’s Boston City Council meeting, Councilor Erin Murphy brought forth two items related to Mass. and Cass, the area surrounding the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard. The first was a push for a tax break for businesses there. The second was a call to examine whether street cleaning equipment used at Mass. and Cass should also be used in other parts of the city. They were met with very different responses from her fellow councilors. Various crises affecting residents intersect at Mass. and Cass, where those struggling with homelessness, substance use, and mental health regularly gather. Mayor Michelle Wu said last week that public safety had noticeably deteriorated there recently. In the days since, officials across the city have been vocal about the best ways to decrease crime and get people the help they need. Help for businesses Business owners in the neighborhood are being negatively impacted by the situation at Mass. and Cass, Murphy said. So she filed a hearing order Wednesday to discuss offering property tax abatements to business owners in the Newmarket Area, which contains Mass. and Cass. “We know that they’re struggling, through none of their own doing, and we’ve failed them in not providing a safe environment. Many have been adversely impacted by the deteriorating conditions of the neighborhood that aren’t accurately reflected in property tax valuation, including declining public safety, cleanliness, and quality of life over a number of years,” Murphy said. Advertisement: To deal with the conditions, 65 members of the Newmarket Business Association spent $3.9 million in security costs and incurred $1.9 million in damages just in 2021, according to the order. These costs have only risen since then, and business owners recently invested $500,000 in security, including the installation of closed-circuit television cameras. To help these businesses, the city could offer a property tax abatement to the ones feeling the most negative impacts. The abatement would be an effort to compensate for increased fees, costs of doing business, and “negatively impacted quality of life,” according to the order. This idea was met with wide support by Murphy’s colleagues. Eleven councilors signed onto the order. Only Councilor Frank Baker, who was absent, did not. “They’ve put up with enough, they deserve better,” Councilor Michael Flaherty said of the businesses near Mass. and Cass. “This city needs to partner with them, and I think a call for an abatement is fair, it’s reasonable, it would be a practical solution for this body to work with the administration to bring some much-needed tax relief to the folks that have endured more than anyone can ever imagine.” Collisions over street cleaning A few minutes later, Murphy spoke about another hearing order she filed. The street cleaning equipment being used on roadways near Mass. and Cass by the city and its contractors is also being used to clean streets in other neighborhoods like Back Bay, Downtown, and Chinatown, according to the order. Advertisement: This could potentially pose a health risk to residents, Murphy said. In the order, she called for using “specialized equipment, solely designated for this area,” because of the “hazardous and infectious” materials commonly found at Mass. and Cass. There was pushback from some of Murphy’s colleagues on this topic. The Boston Public Health Commission assessed the relative risks of spreading infectious diseases by public works vehicles as “low to negligible,” Councilor Gabriela Coletta said. She acknowledged that the direct use of needles poses a higher risk of spreading infectious disease across Boston, but said that the overall harm to the public purported in Murphy’s order should not cause alarm to residents. One of the streets singled out in Murphy’s order was Atkinson Street, where overdoses are a daily occurrence. A street sweeper has not gone down Atkinson Street in seven months, Coletta said. Instead, the city uses flusher trucks that spray a cleaning solution on the street. These are used in areas such as Faneuil Hall after horses are stationed there. In addition, Coletta said that street sweepers undergo high pressure washes after every use. “I don’t take issue with my colleague looking to elevate and call for accountability as it relates to the situation happening at Mass. and Cass,” Coletta said. “I do take issue with the framing, whether intentional or unintentional, that pushes a narrative where the public is made to feel fear, unwarranted fear, for their health without due diligence done by the people they should trust most.” Advertisement: Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune said she looked forward to learning more about the topic, but urged her fellow councilors to “avoid any sort of ‘us versus them’ mentality.” Louijeune, who is Haitian-American, said that the Haitian community was unfairly targeted during the HIV crisis in “dehumanizing” ways meant to keep them separate from others. “Any time we think about having to use separate things, or having to keep things differently because of a certain population that is already facing a lot of stigma, I just want to call that out,” she said. On Wednesday evening, Murphy released a statement firing back at her colleagues for being “willing to play politics with a public health issue.” She said hearing orders are simply used to get more information about specific issues and accused others of spinning it to earn points during election season. “There’s a reason that the Boston City Council gets called a ‘clown show‘ in the media,” Murphy said in her statement. “It’s because some members would prefer to stand in the Council Chamber and lob insults rather than trying to solve problems.”

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Newton teachers union votes to go on strike starting Friday

Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, said on Sunday that one of its top commanders had been killed in its war with Israel there. The announcement from Hamas came on the third day of a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas to facilitate the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Israel has vowed it will continue its military campaign in the enclave after the truce is scheduled to end on Tuesday morning, with its primary goal being the destruction of Hamas. On Sunday morning the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, issued a brief statement saying that Abu Anas al-Ghandour, who led the group’s fighters in northern Gaza, and three other commanders had been killed. It did not provide further details on when or where they had died. The Israeli military said earlier this month — before the truce began — that it had targeted Mr. al-Ghandour in a strike on Hamas’s underground infrastructure, but did not say at the time whether he was dead or alive. On Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had killed Mr. al-Ghandour “prior to the operational pause” in fighting, calling him a “leading figure in the planning and execution” of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The military also confirmed it had killed the three other commanders Hamas named in its statement — Aiman Siam, Wael Rajeb and Rafet Salman. A number of other Hamas officials and commanders are believed to have been killed since Israel launched a war in retaliation for the group’s Oct. 7 attacks, which killed an estimated 1,200 people in southern Israel and led to the abduction of roughly 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Mr. al-Ghandour was the most senior commander that Hamas has confirmed dead since the group’s announcement last month that Ayman Nofal, a member of its General Military Council and the commander of the Central Brigade in the Qassam Brigades, had been killed. The State Department put Mr. al-Ghandour under U.S. sanctions in 2017, saying that he had been “involved in many terrorist operations” — including a 2006 attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and led to the kidnapping of another, Gilad Shalit. Mr. Shalit was released in October 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One of those freed in the deal, Yahya Sinwar, eventually became Hamas’s leader in Gaza and, according to Israeli officials, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks.

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Jeff Roe, Top Strategist for Star-Crossed DeSantis Super PAC, Resigns

Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for the leading super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, resigned on Saturday night, the latest and perhaps most significant departure from the group, which has been consumed by turmoil in recent weeks. Since the day before Thanksgiving, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, has seen the resignation of one chief executive and one board chairman; the firing of a second chief executive, along with two other top officials; and now the late-night quitting of Mr. Roe. All have come after intense infighting and finger-pointing as Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls. “I can’t believe it ended this way,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement he posted on X on Saturday night. The news of Mr. Roe’s resignation was first reported by The Washington Post. His decision to quit followed comments from the new chairman of the super PAC’s board, Scott Wagner, a DeSantis loyalist and appointee in Florida. Mr. Wagner had explained to The Washington Post why the previous chief executive and two others — all of whom had worked for Mr. Roe — had been fired.

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WATCH LIVE: House panel holds final impeachment hearing for DHS Secretary Mayorkas

“From the beginning, it was clear that the government wanted to isolate Aleksei, especially ahead of the election,” Mr. Zhdanov said, referring to the coming presidential race in Russia that President Vladimir V. Putin is widely expected to win. There has been no immediate response from the Kremlin to Mr. Navalny’s transfer. Throughout his absence from the public eye, the Russian government had been dismissive about his whereabouts. Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said on Dec. 14 that the Kremlin had “neither the possibility, nor rights or desire to trace the fate of convicts,” referring to Mr. Navalny. Over the last decade, Mr. Navalny has been the only Russian opposition politician who posed a serious challenge to Mr. Putin’s monopoly over the country’s political landscape. He built a robust political organization with offices across the country and drew thousands to his anti-Kremlin rallies. Over the last few years, the Russian government went to great lengths to dismantle the infrastructure he had created. Many of his allies had to flee Russia or were arrested. Mr. Navalny’s new penal colony, officially known as IK-3 Polar Wolf, is in the settlement of Kharp and is among the harshest and remotest prisons in Russia. Inmates endure long, dark, cold winters as well as clouds of mosquitoes in the summer. The penal colony is a successor to a Gulag labor camp, established there for prison workers building a railway across the Russian Arctic, ordered by Stalin, but never finished in full. Mr. Navalny’s previous prison, in the town of Melekhovo, was only about 160 miles east of Moscow, meaning that his lawyers could drive there in a matter of hours. In contrast, the new prison is some 1,200 miles from the capital. A train to Kharp, called the Polar Arrow, departs Moscow every second day and takes 44 hours to reach the town.

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Prosecutors Push Back on Trumps Contempt Claims in Election Case

The newest season of “Southern Hospitality” will premiere on Thursday, Dec. 7 at 9 p.m. ET. on Bravo. Viewers without cable looking to stream season 2 and the rest of the show can watch it online using DirecTV Stream, Sling, and fuboTV. DirecTV and fuboTV both offer free trials. “Accepting nothing short of perfection from her staff, Leva runs a tight ship, but her once-close-knit team faces a multitude of obstacles as they try to keep their jobs while maintaining their friendships and relationships,” Bravo wrote about the show. See a sneak peek of the new episode below. How can I watch the newest episode of ‘Southern Hospitality’? Viewers looking to stream can do so by using FuboTV, Sling or DirecTV Stream. Both FuboTV and DirecTV offer free trials when you sign up and Sling offers 50% off your first month. What is FuboTV? FuboTV is an over-the-top internet live TV streaming service that offers more than 100 channels, such as sports, news, entertainment and local channels. What is DirecTV? The streaming platform offers a plethora of content including streaming the best of live and On Demand, starting with more than 75 live TV channels. DirecTV also offers a free trial for any package you sign up.

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Israel-Hamas War Israeli Government Says It Will Uphold Cease-Fire if Hostages Are Freed

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called for the government to back a hostage deal, while saying that he will continue the war on Hamas. The Israeli government said Wednesday morning that it would uphold a brief cease-fire in Gaza if Hamas freed 50 of the hostages it captured during its assault last month on Israel. The decision, announced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in a WhatsApp message early Wednesday, includes a pause of at least four days in the fighting in Gaza. If it holds, it would be the longest halt in hostilities since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks prompted Israel to begin its bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. “The Israeli government is committed to the return of all abductees home,” the government said. It added: “Tonight, the government approved the outline for the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 abductees — women and children — will be released for 4 days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting. The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite.” The deal cannot be enacted until Thursday at the earliest, to allow time for Israeli judges to review potential legal challenges to the prisoner release, according to Israeli officials. Until the cease-fire begins, the situation is likely to remain fluid. Hamas and Qatar, the lead mediators of the deal, did not immediately comment. Hamas and its allies in Gaza captured about 240 hostages during their raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7, which also killed an estimated 1,200 people, most of them civilians, according to Israeli officials. Israel has responded with thousands of airstrikes and invaded Gaza with ground forces, killing roughly 13,000 people in the fighting, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory. Under the terms of the deal, Israel would release 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails if Hamas released 50 hostages held captive in Gaza, according to two Israeli officials who requested to speak anonymously in order to discuss a sensitive matter more freely. But the government’s official statement did not include this detail. Both officials said the arrangement would likely be spread over at least four days and would involve roughly 10 hostages being released each day in exchange for roughly 30 prisoners. The time frame could be extended if more hostages are released, the officials said. Fighting would cease during that time, Israeli troops would remain in their current positions, and Israel would refrain from flying surveillance aircraft over Gaza for six hours a day, the officials said. Civilians currently in southern Gaza will not be allowed to return to the north, the officials added. Israel and Hamas have been negotiating indirectly for weeks over the roughly 240 hostages taken to Gaza in the Hamas attacks on southern Israel. A deal had seemed within reach on a few occasions only for the negotiations to stall or fall apart. Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas had signaled that they would be prepared to accept a cease-fire if Israel also agreed to it. “The ball is now in the occupation’s court,” Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader, told reporters in Beirut on Tuesday night, referring to Israel. “Hopefully, we are approaching this cease-fire — if the occupation wants it,” he added. Earlier in the day, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s Qatar-based political leader, told the Reuters news agency that the armed group was “close to reaching a truce agreement” with Israel. The Israeli government has vowed to destroy Hamas, but it has also come under domestic pressure to free the hostages. A brief cease-fire could allow Israel to achieve part of the latter objective before returning to the former. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Tuesday night that Israel’s campaign to prevent Hamas from controlling any part of Gaza would continue after the cease-fire. “We are at war, and we’ll continue this war until we meet all our objectives: dismantling Hamas, returning our hostages, and ensuring that in Gaza there will be no one that threatens Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said. A pause in the fighting — however brief — could bring some measure of relief to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where health authorities say that more than 12,000 people have been killed in Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion. More than one million Gazans have been displaced, and civilians are running perilously low on basic human necessities like food and water. As part of its offensive against Hamas, Israel has cut off electricity to Gaza and blocked the delivery of most fuel, saying it could be diverted for the armed group’s use. Edward Wong , Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

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Another take on Henry Kissinger: Cambodian-Americans in Mass. see man who destroyed their country

And for many his death has resurrected painful stories of a homeland wracked by decades of civil war, and the US’s deadly legacy continues to this day as Cambodia labors to demine and clear the countryside of tons of unexploded ordnance. But to some Cambodian Americans in Massachusetts and across the country, Henry Kissinger was something else entirely: the man who directed the secret US bombing of their home country and paved the way for the rise of a genocidal regime. He has been described since his death Wednesday as a “noted statesman,” a “scholar-turned-diplomat,” and a giant of American foreign policy who helped avert nuclear war. Advertisement “People are posting [on social media] that he’s evil or that they’re surprised he lived to 100 [considering] the acts he was involved with,” said Sovanna Pouv, a longtime leader in the Cambodian-American community in Lowell, the city with the second-biggest Cambodian-American population in the country, after Long Beach, Calif. Pouv, like so many Cambodian Americans, came to the United States as a refugee after the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group, took over the country and killed at least 1.5 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979. The personal tragedies of that brutal period were vividly rendered in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields. Some historians and Cambodian Americans believe Kissinger’s actions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War created the circumstances for the rise of the regime. During that war, Kissinger, serving under President Richard Nixon first as national security advisor and then secretary of state, directed the carpet bombing of broad swaths of Cambodian territory where, he said, Vietnamese communist soldiers were hiding out. In an now-infamous excerpt from a transcript of phone calls in 1970, Kissinger relays Nixon’s order for an expanded bombing to his assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig. Advertisement “He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn’t want to hear anything. It’s an order, it’s to be done,” Kissinger said. “Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?” The bombing began as a covert operation against a neighboring state. It killed at least 50,000 civilians, but likely many, many more, and destabilized the country. “That really laid the foundation for the Khmer Rouge genocide,” said Vesna Nuon, one of Lowell’s three Cambodian-American city councilors. “They used [the bombing] as propaganda and a tool for recruiting a large group of Cambodians to join them.” The 60-year old Nuon recalled that as a child in Cambodia, he sometimes overheard his father and his father’s friends discussing Kissinger in the early 1970s. “My father would talk about how bitter he was and how Kissinger and the others who planned [the bombing] got away with it for a long time,” he said. “Have you ever once heard [Kissinger] say that what he did to Cambodia was wrong?” Nuon said. “I don’t think he ever once said that.” A foremost practitioner of realpolitik, Kissinger largely dismissed criticisms of his Cambodia record, sometimes defending himself as a man making pragmatic choices among terrible options. Critics have alleged his decisions in Cambodia amounted to war crimes. State Representative Vanna Howard, whose district includes Lowell, said her uncle was killed in the US bombing of Cambodia. Her father, both maternal grandparents, and her three younger siblings were killed in the civil war that followed. “Only my mom and I survived,” she said. Advertisement “It’s unfortunate [Kissinger] was never brought to justice,” she added. Pouv, 43, said that not all Cambodian Americans are aware of Kissinger. “I didn’t know about him until I was in my 30s,” he said. Pouv was born in a refugee camp near the Thai border and came to the United States with his family as a toddler. The family moved to Lowell in the mid-1980s, he said. His mother never talked about the bombing or the civil war preceding the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of the country. “She lost her parents in the war and was separated from her sister,” he said. Once they reached the United States, “she was trying to survive in this new country and…she kind of brushed a lot of it under the rug.” At Lowell High School, Pouv said, “they barely talked about the Cambodian genocide.” He graduated in 1999 and, later, educated himself about Kissinger, the bombing, and the civil war. (Pouv was the executive director of the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell from 2014 to 2021, and then moved to Long Beach.) Sokhary Chau, 50, the mayor of Lowell, said many older Cambodians, including his elder siblings, came to the US as young adults and were too old to enroll in school. “They started working right away,” he said, and may never have caught up on details of Cambodia’s history. Kissinger’s death, Pouv said, “is a big opportunity to educate the community about what he did.” Advertisement Chau said his father was killed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975. He was just a young boy when his mother managed to bring all seven children out of Cambodia in 1979. But Chau said he only learned of Kissinger “after many years in school in the US.” Over the years, he has come to take a more expansive view of Kissinger’s legacy that acknowledges his record beyond Cambodia. “I laud Mr. Kissinger for many valuable and successful foreign policies around the world,” Chau said. Kissinger is credited with brokering China’s opening to the United States and with remaking the US-Soviet relationship during the Cold War. He was also jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 with his communist counterpart Le Duc Tho for negotiating the armistice in Vietnam. Two members of the Nobel Committee quit the committee in protest and Le Duc Tho refused to accept the prize. But Kissinger, who served as secretary of state under two presidents and advised many more, was also accused of being the architect of other US foreign policy outrages, including supporting the coup that toppled Chilean president Salvador Allende and ushered in the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. US Congresswoman Lori Trahan, whose district includes Lowell, is the chair of the Congressional Cambodia Caucus. She said on Thursday: “Secretary Kissinger will undoubtedly be celebrated for the diplomatic breakthroughs he negotiated… At the same time, many Cambodian and Vietnamese families here in Massachusetts and across our nation will remember him for the dark legacy he left in their home countries.” Advertisement Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.

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The Twin Fronts in the Battle Over Israels Identity

The decision by the Israeli Supreme Court to reject legislative control over the judiciary ends for now the languishing effort by the far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu to diminish the courts, which had already sparked nine months of protests that only ended when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The protests had deeply divided Israel, but the subsequent war united it, with even pilots and reservists who had vowed to ignore military exercises immediately showing up to fight before they were called. If the court’s decision on Monday ripped off this wartime poultice, displaying anew the cultural war at the heart of Israeli politics, Mr. Netanyahu and his government responded by appealing again to wartime unity to try to downplay their loss. It was another version of Mr. Netanyahu’s argument against just about every critic of his performance and his policies — that these are all subjects to be discussed “after the war.” And the ruling of the court, however important, is expected to have little or no impact on the conduct of the war itself.

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Land taken from Boston homeowners in 1970s now being used to ease housing crisis

Decades after plans to build a new highway through Roxbury and Jamaica Plain resulted in the destruction of hundreds of homes, three developers are on their way to adding more than 1,400 affordable homes to the neighborhood. At 250 Centre St., 110 new mixed-income apartments were recently completed, the most recent milestone 15 years in the making. Hundreds more will be added over the next few years.

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Lawyer for Election Workers Says Damages From Giuliani Should Send a Message

A lawyer for two former Georgia election workers told members of a jury in federal court on Thursday that they should send a message in considering how much Rudolph W. Giuliani should have to pay for spreading defamatory lies about them as part of his effort three years ago to keep President Donald J. Trump in office. “Send it to Mr. Giuliani,” the lawyer, Michael J. Gottlieb, said in his closing argument. “Send it to any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take the chance to seek profit and fame by assassinating the moral character of ordinary people.” The election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who were counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Fulton County, Ga., on Nov. 3, 2020, are asking for at least $24 million each from Mr. Giuliani for baselessly accusing them of cheating Mr. Trump out of votes and broadcasting that lie to millions of followers on social media. Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington has already found that Mr. Giuliani, who served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer and helped lead the effort to overturn the 2020 election result, defamed the women. The jury in the civil trial is only being asked to determine what damages Mr. Giuliani should pay. The jurors adjourned on Thursday afternoon and were set to pick up their deliberations on Friday.

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Hochul to Propose A.I. Research Center Using $275 Million in State Funds

Burundi’s president said that gay people in his country should be stoned, amid a widening crackdown against L.G.B.T.Q. people in the East African nation that is adding to the anti-gay sentiments sweeping across the region and the wider African continent. While President Evariste Ndayishimiye’s remarks do not have the force of law, they are an escalation of provocative statements directed at L.G.B.T.Q. people elsewhere by African government officials. Mr. Ndayishimiye said that gay people should not be accepted in Burundi, a conservative nation where consensual same-sex intimacy among adults can already be penalized with up to two years in prison. “I think that if we find these kinds of people in Burundi, it is better to take them to a stadium and stone them,” Mr. Ndayishimiye said on Friday during an event in the country’s eastern Cankuzo Province, where he answered questions from journalists and members of the public. “That’s what they deserve.”

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Migrants Sleep in the Snow in Desperate Wait for ID Cards

As snow swirled down after midnight on Tuesday, about three dozen migrants, including two families with children, huddled on the sidewalk under thin blankets outside a city office in Brooklyn. They had temporarily left their homeless shelters to spend the night camping in the 20-degree wind chill for a chance at a prize whose significance was not quite clear: a New York City-issued identification card called IDNYC. Some said they had been told by shelter workers that the card was a necessary step on the road to legal employment. One woman who was six months pregnant said she had heard she needed the card to get seen at a public hospital. As winter settles in, the situation faced by the 68,000 migrants in city shelters has grown more precarious and left many eager to find their way to self-sufficiency but confused about the many rules that govern the steps to get there.

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Biden-Trump 2024: Biden aggressively calls out his predecessor

But in the past month, Biden has “Trump” on the brain and the tip of his tongue. Over the course of three events during a fund-raising swing in the Boston area last week, Biden fired that name into the crowd a total of 34 times as he blasted Trump for his record in office, his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and his plans if he returns to the White House. WASHINGTON — For more than 2½ years, it was rare for President Biden to publicly utter the name of the person he replaced. Donald Trump usually was “the former president,” “my predecessor,” or simply “the other guy.” Advertisement “It’s not hyperbole to suggest you’re the reason why Donald Trump is not only a former president but a defeated former president,” he told supporters at the Shubert Theater before a concert by James Taylor. “Which makes him, yes, a loser.” Get Today in Politics A digest of the top political stories from the Globe, sent to your inbox Monday-Friday. Enter Email Sign Up With amped up rhetoric and an almost singular focus, Biden and his campaign have been going after Trump far more aggressively the past several weeks before any Republican primary votes even have been cast. The president’s abandonment of his disdain for citing Trump by name is emblematic of a shift to a general election strategy and comes after some disconcerting polls numbers for Biden, a burst of controversial statements by Trump, and alarming reports about the former president’s plans if he wins another term. “Trump is going to be the nominee, so start now on reminding people of the contrast,” said Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. Trump’s recent rhetoric has only fueled that argument. After Trump said late last month he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the Biden campaign immediately sprang into action to defend the health care law that Biden helped pass while vice president in the Obama administration. Advertisement The Biden campaign quickly produced a TV ad with a nurse talking about Biden’s efforts to make health care more affordable and saying “the last administration’s policies were so troubling.” Then the campaign organized a media conference call with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, both Democrats, saying that Trump wants to take away Americans’ health care. “Health care is a great opportunity to compare the best of Biden to the worst of Trump,” Cooper said. There was a similarly aggressive response last week after Trump made more controversial remarks, during a town hall on Fox News. Asked if he would promise that he “would never abuse power as retribution against anybody,” Trump responded, “Except for Day One.” The Biden campaign quickly highlighted the comment and campaign officials addressed it Wednesday at a news conference in Alabama before the Republican presidential primary debate there. “Trump is providing daily ammunition to remind voters about how dangerous he is,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, specifically pointing to Trump’s 91 criminal indictments. “Biden world is moving into more of a campaign rhythm and the evidence of that is that you’re starting to see very rapid responses to Trump’s stumbles.” A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The Biden campaign wants to frame the election as a stark choice, said spokesman Ammar Moussa. “The American people chose light over darkness and hope over fear in 2020 when Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 7 million votes, and we’re going to do the work to ensure voters understand the enormous stakes of next year’s election,” he said in a written statement. Advertisement Biden apparently has decided he can’t do that without actually saying Trump’s name after avoiding it for most of his presidency. “Biden had committed himself to expunging the words Donald Trump from his vocabulary and (wishfully) from public discourse, as if he would unintentionally increase his predecessor’s power by innocuously incanting his name,” Franklin Foer wrote in his book released in September titled “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future.” A president avoiding the name of his predecessor isn’t unusual, but Biden took it to another level. He declined to say “Trump” even in making routine comparisons to the previous administration. He also avoided Trump’s name in speeches where he was a focus. Biden didn’t say his name at all in his speech at the Capitol on the first anniversary of the insurrection, referring to him only as “the former president.” “I did not want to turn it into a contemporary political battle between me and the [former] president,” Biden said when reporters asked why he didn’t use Trump’s name. “It’s way beyond that.” President Biden spoke in Statuary Hall at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2022, to mark the one-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Drew Angerer/Associated Press Biden took office while the country was still struggling with the COVID pandemic so it made sense to focus on bipartisan governing and avoid mentioning the divisive Trump, said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg. It also was unclear Trump would run again so “elevating someone who may not even be a candidate makes no sense.” Advertisement Biden largely stuck to that strategy even after Trump announced his candidacy a year ago and cemented a gigantic lead in Republican polls. At a Sept. 20 New York City fund-raiser, Biden didn’t say Trump’s name once, according to the White House transcript. He referred to him as “my predecessor,” “the former guy,” “the other guy,” and “the guy I was running against.” But on Nov. 5, polls from The New York Times and Siena College showed Trump leading Biden in five of the six battleground states that determined the last election. The news, combined with Biden’s continued poor approval ratings, rattled many Democrats. Then, two days after state and local elections around the country, Biden appeared ready to make up for lost time. He used Trump’s name 14 times at a Nov. 9 fund-raiser in Chicago. Less than three weeks later, at a Colorado fund-raiser, Biden doubled his use of Trump’s name to 28. The new strategy of directly naming and targeting Trump shows the campaign believes it’s time to elevate the likely Republican nominee, said Matt A. Barreto, who conducted polling for the 2020 Biden campaign and continues to poll for the Democratic Party. “You have to stop making it only about you as the incumbent,” he said. “You need to make it about your opponent.” Advertisement Nathan Gonzales, editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan publication that covers presidential and congressional campaigns, said the New York Times battleground polls “should have been a wakeup call that this is a serious race” and that Democrats need to go after Trump aggressively. “Trump is going to be relentless and non-aggression usually doesn’t go well against him,’ Gonzales said. The Biden campaign has gotten additional ammunition from recent news reports about what a second Trump term might look like, including one last month by The Washington Post that Trump and his supporters were developing plans that included investigating or prosecuting outspoken critics and political opponents while also potentially using the military to quell protests. “Part of why I think national polls have been challenging for Biden is that so much of the focus has been on Biden,” Greenberg said. “And what we know is that when more of the focus is on Trump, and also the notion of a choice between Trump and Biden, that the landscape looks a lot better.” Biden is fond of saying, “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.” And he’s no longer resistant to naming names. “Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” Biden said at a fund-raiser in Boston’s Seaport district last Tuesday, one of 13 mentions of his likely 2024 opponent’s name. “And the former president makes no bones about it.” Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.

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Henry Kissinger at 100: A contradictory legacy of peace and terror

Kissinger guided US foreign policy from 1969 to 1977, first as President Nixon’s national security advisor and then as secretary of state. He skillfully managed alliances and daringly rearranged the world’s political cartography. His love of order, however, blinded him to what “order” means in many countries outside Europe. He never hesitated to support leaders who pledged loyalty to Washington, no matter how grotesque their excesses. By his own admission, he failed to understand the rising Third World nationalism that shaped his era. At the peak of his power in the early 1970s, public opinion surveys showed Kissinger to be the most admired man in America. He remains an icon, the ultimate foreign-policy wise man. Yet his name is forever stained by his support for violent campaigns in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that laid waste to nations and left hundreds of thousands of dead. Was he a brilliant statesman or a war criminal? Yes. If it’s true that only the good die young, what does that say about Henry Kissinger, who turns 100 this Saturday? Get The Primary Source Globe Opinion's weekly take on politics, delivered every Wednesday. Enter Email Sign Up “I am not interested in, nor do I know anything about, the southern portion of the world from the Pyrenees on down,” he acknowledged while attending a reception at a South American embassy in 1969. When a Chilean diplomat accused him of not understanding Chile, he replied, “No, and I don’t care. Nothing important can come from the south. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington and then to Tokyo. What happens in the south is of no importance.” Advertisement This stark dichotomy — master of great-power diplomacy but clueless about much of the world — shapes Kissinger’s legacy. His great gift, much lacking in Washington today, was to see the world as it is, rather than through the lens of political platitudes. Even now, he remains far more insightful than any of our leaders on great matters like Russia-Ukraine, China-Taiwan, and the future of Europe. Advertisement Most lamentable about Kissinger was his failure to extend his realistic vision beyond what he called “the axis of history.” He considered protest movements to be threats to global stability. This led him to support campaigns of murderous repression in several countries. He rejected the idea that the United States should respect the choices of others. In 1973 he promoted a coup against President Salvador Allende of Chile with succinct reasoning: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people.” Kissinger, then the secretary of state, at a dinner in Beijing in 1974 with Chinese Deputy Prime Minister Deng Xiaoping and White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld. Associated Press The case against Kissinger is weighty. Supporting the Chile coup, which imposed dictatorship on a country with one of the hemisphere’s oldest democracies, would be just one item. In 1971 Kissinger encouraged Pakistan to embark on a campaign against Hindu separatists that US diplomats told him at the time was genocide and “a reign of terror.” Two years later he helped President Nixon secretly bomb Cambodia. Then he gave Indonesia’s leader the go-ahead for a fierce campaign against separatists on the island of New Guinea. These and other sins were vividly catalogued in a 2001 screed by the polemicist Christopher Hitchens called “The Trial of Henry Kissinger.” Hitchens marveled that although Kissinger was “a stupendous liar” with “wildly aberrant moral judgment,” he remained a social celebrity. “The pudgy man standing in black tie at the Vogue party is not, surely, the man who ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way,” Hitchens mused. “Oh, but he is. It’s exactly the same man.” Advertisement Kissinger must find it maddening that some historians harp on his actions in countries he considers unimportant. He would much rather be judged by his key role in forging détente with the Soviet Union and engagement with China, which were among the greatest diplomatic triumphs of the Cold War. As for Vietnam, the verdict remains split. Some admire Kissinger’s dogged pursuit of “peace with honor,” including more than 60 negotiating sessions with his Vietnamese counterpart. Others say he prolonged and intensified the war, only to settle in 1973 for a deal that he might have had four years earlier. Students in Cyprus demonstrated against Kissinger and the American government in 1974, after Turkey invaded the island nation. Some Greek Cypriots believed that the invasion was a plot on the part of Britain and the United States. -/AFP via Getty Images By supporting dictators who were US allies, Kissinger soiled America’s image in much of the world. He insisted that he was doing nothing more or less than defending American interests. Debate over his role divided the country. Among his defenders was a character in Wallace Shawn’s 1985 play “Aunt Dan and Lemon.” “Don’t you understand that you and I are only able to be nice because our governments are not nice?” she asks. “While we sit here in the sunshine and have our discussions about what we’ve read in the morning papers, there are certain other people, like Kissinger, who happen to have the very bad luck to be society’s leaders. And while we sit here chatting, they have to do what has to be done. . . . Worms! How dare they attack him for killing peasants? What decisions did they make today?” Advertisement Compassion was never Kissinger’s strong suit. His legacy is a tangled mix of peace and war. He combined deep knowledge about some parts of the world with willful ignorance about others. One of his own cryptic mottos sums up the best and worst of him: “If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.” Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

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Ahead of possible vote, City Council drills down on details of police patrolmens contract

Dr. Claudine Gay, who made history as Harvard University’s first Black and second female president just about one year ago, resigned Tuesday afternoon. For some, like Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, the resignation meant a victory in a long-waged fight.

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Boston No Longer Requires Sex Or Gender On Marriage Certificates

Available for Roku, Fire TV, AppleTV WFMZ+ STREAMING NEW WAY TO WATCH! Brand New App to watch all of WFMZ-TV News and Syndicated Programing 24/7 on your Streaming App enabled TV.

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Inside the Border Talks That Could Decide the Fate of Ukraine Aid

Legal Back and Forth The case centers on Senate Bill 2, a state law that sets several restrictions on gun ownership, most notably a ban on firearms in a long list of public places. Since the ban was introduced, there has been a lot of back and forth over whether the law, which took effect on Jan. 1, could be enforced. After concealed-carry permit holders and other gun-rights organizations sued the state, arguing that the law was unconstitutional, Judge Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California blocked enforcement of the law, on Dec. 20. Judge Carney said at the time that the ban would unconstitutionally “deprive” citizens of their right to bear arms. He granted a preliminary injunction on the law, saying it was “repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.” Just last weekend, on Dec. 30, a panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put the injunction on hold, clearing the way for the law to take effect. But on Saturday, a different set of Ninth Circuit judges dissolved that ruling, reinstating the lower court’s injunction. Background on the Law Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrat of California, signed Senate Bill 2 into law shortly after it was introduced in September. Under the law, guns are banned in public places, which are divided into 26 categories with various locations, including playgrounds, public transportation, stadiums, amusement parks and museums. In addition, the law bars people from carrying firearms on the grounds of private businesses unless there is clear signage indicating that guns are allowed. It also sets the minimum age for obtaining a gun license at 21 and adds more requirements for gun safety training to receive a new license. Mr. Newsom had hailed the earlier appeals court ruling that let Senate Bill 2 take effect, saying it would “allow our common-sense gun laws to remain in place while we appeal the district court’s dangerous ruling.” The bill was part of a wave of legislation on gun control that took place after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen to strike down a New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of guns outside homes. The Supreme Court drastically shifted the standard for restrictions on firearms with that decision, handed down in 2022. Several states have since sought to restrict the carrying of firearms. New York, for instance, passed a law to prevent people from carrying guns in “sensitive locations” such as Times Square, sports venues and houses of worship as well as on public transit. The law has created confusion and generated numerous lawsuits. What’s Next Litigation over the constitutionality of California’s ban will continue, with arguments set for April. Proponents of the law argue that it is constitutional and that it will keep Californians safe. California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has argued that “more guns in more sensitive places makes the public less safe.” But critics say the ban is too broad, applying to too many places in the state. “For decades, people with a license to carry in public have been able to carry in all of these places,” C.D. Michel, a general counsel for California Rifle & Pistol Association, said after the December appeals court ruling.

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Israel, Hamas cease-fire deal with hostage release is in final stages as Netanyahu meets officials

In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads. Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated. It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era. Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.

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Volunteers, council members recognized for service to communities (Letter)

The News Tribune was an afternoon paper, which was typical for northern New Jersey, where the big New York papers dominated the mornings. The hometown paper was waiting on the doorstep after work, with the local news, as well as supermarket coupons, classified ads, church service schedules and high school sports scores. It was a great school for a rookie reporter. The veteran editors had time to go over articles, and reporting on local scandals, strikes or council meetings offered a crash course on accuracy and fairness. You were writing, after all, for people who knew the turf and would light up your phone if you got it wrong. The paper had a special hell for a new reporter after the first mistake that required a correction: The person would be made to get up on the round editors’ desk in the middle of the newsroom and eat a hot chile from a jar kept especially for the ordeal by Elias Holtzman, one of the veteran editors. I took my turn, gagging as the pepper burned a permanent fear in my mind of getting it wrong. Young reporters usually didn’t stay long — not because of the chiles but because a local paper was the classic starting rung, the apprenticeship, for a career in reporting. But the training was invaluable and the experience unforgettable, especially for the power of reporting to get things done. Keeping tabs on local politicians in northern New Jersey was always productive; a series I did with a colleague on the exorbitant fees charged by municipal attorneys prompted public indignation and action, and the quotes were rich. A local official charged with taking bribes offered this wisdom when flying off to the Caribbean for vacation: “The good thing about America is a man is innocent until proved broke.” It was a school, too, for readers. The candidates in local elections or speakers at school board meetings dealt with matters that made a tangible and immediate difference to readers. Official corruption was not some distant problem; it was misuse of funds that should have gone to your child’s school or your library. By way of a footnote, it was satisfying to learn that the lies of Representative George Santos were revealed, before he was elected, by a small Long Island paper, The North Shore Leader. Pity the word didn’t spread then beyond its 20,000-odd readers.

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G.O.P. Debate Takeaways, and a Tech Start-Up Collapse

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.

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Influential Koch network backs Nikki Haley in GOP presidential primary

CNN — The influential network associated with billionaire Charles Koch will throw its money and influence behind former South Caroline Gov. Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary, the group announced Tuesday. The decision could dramatically reshape the Republican field – roughly seven weeks before the Iowa caucuses – as Americans for Prosperity Action deploys its vast resources and standing army of conservative activists on behalf of the former South Carolina governor. The endorsement marks the latest sign that powerful Republican donors are coalescing behind the candidacy of the former US ambassador to the United Nations. She has seen prominent figures join her campaign in recent weeks, particularly after South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott exited the race. Earlier this year, AFP Action – a political arm of Koch’s network – pledged to back a single contender in the GOP presidential primary for the first time in its history. And it made clear that it would bypass former President Donald Trump in its quest to find what Emily Seidel, a top AFP official, called a president “who represents a new chapter.” “When we announced our decision to engage in our first ever Republican presidential primary, we made it clear that we’d be looking for a candidate who can turn the page on our political dysfunction – and win. It’s clear that candidate is Nikki Haley,” Siedel said Tuesday. “We can’t keep looking to the politicians of the past to fix the problems of today. Nikki Haley represents a new generation of leadership and offers a bold, positive vision for our future. AFP Action is proud to be endorsing her and we will be doing everything we can to help make her the next President of the United States.” The former president is the Republican primary’s clear front-runner in both national and early state polling, with Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis each jockeying to emerge as the main Trump alternative. The network already has spent millions of dollars on advertising in early voting states this year to cast Trump as likely to lose the general election. One ad, “Unelectable,” described Trump as a serial loser who would imperil Republicans in Congress. “If Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we could lose everything,” the narrator says. In addition to attempting to stir doubts about Trump among the GOP faithful, network officials have said part of their 2024 strategy is to bring a broader range of voters into the GOP primary process to help alter the outcome of early contests. During his White House tenure, Trump, often sparred with Koch officials, who sharply criticized his administration’s trade and hardline immigration policies. But the network supported the Trump administration on other priorities, including a tax cut bill he signed into law in late 2017 and a criminal justice overhaul. The network also backed his nominees to the US Supreme Court. This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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politics

How the Israel-Hamas War Tore Apart Public Defenders in the Bronx

That September confrontation was just a prelude. After the Oct. 7 attack, the union representing the Bronx Defenders staff issued a statement. It referred to Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has now killed more than 18,000 people, as genocidal, voiced support for “Palestinian liberation and resistance under occupation” and did not mention the 1,200 Israelis killed in the Hamas attack. The fallout has threatened the future of the publicly funded organization. The fight in the Bronx about a faraway war could have concrete consequences for the nearly 20,000 clients whom the Defenders represent annually in eviction proceedings, child custody matters and criminal cases, among other matters. The union’s statement has provoked condemnation from the mayor, fury from the lawyers who face Bronx Defenders in court and an outcry in the broader legal community of New York City, where other public defense organizations have experienced similar upheaval. The rancorous politics of the Israel-Hamas war have put immense pressure on leaders to issue statements on the conflict, even if such statements have little effect. The conflict has roiled Ivy League universities, forcing the University of Pennsylvania’s president to resign. It has divided Democrats, split Hollywood and caused an uproar at nonprofits whose focus ranges from free speech to women’s health. The statement of the Bronx Defenders union was the product of a furious debate within the organization itself. One side saw it as an extension of the mission, a global struggle for social justice and human rights. The other saw it as inflammatory and detrimental to the group’s more immediate task: defending New York City’s most vulnerable.

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Not satisfied: Sarno apologizes for lack of snow removal on Springfield streets after weekend storm

The spacious property located at 91 Old Colony Road in Wellesley Hills was sold on Dec. 29, 2023. The $2,500,000 purchase price works out to $1,014 per square foot. The house, built in 1938, has an interior space of 2,465 square feet. This two-story house presents a roomy floor plan, featuring four bedrooms and three baths. Inside, a fireplace adds character to the home. The property is equipped with forced air heating and a cooling system. Additional houses that have recently changed hands close by include:

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Adamss Approval Rating Sinks to Lowest for Any N.Y.C. Mayor Since 1996

Mayor Eric Adams, who faces a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising and rampant criticism over his handling of the migrant crisis, has seen his approval rating plunge to 28 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released on Wednesday. The approval rating — the lowest for any New York City mayor in a Quinnipiac poll since it began surveying the city in 1996 — reveals the extent of the political damage Mr. Adams has suffered in recent weeks, after the F.B.I. seized his cellphones, a woman filed a legal claim accusing him of sexual assault in 1993 and he made unpopular budget cuts to the police, schools and libraries. Roughly 58 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of Mr. Adams’s job as mayor, and the dissatisfaction was nearly across the board. A majority of those polled said that the mayor did not have strong leadership qualities, did not understand their problems and was not honest or trustworthy. He also received some of his lowest ratings over his handling of homelessness and the city budget, with only 22 percent of voters supporting him on those issues.

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School Committee election disputes continue between Gosselin and Gunther

WESTFIELD - Jeffrey Gosselin, who ran unsuccessfully for the Westfield School Committee in the Nov. 7 Municipal Election, filed a suit against the Westfield Democratic City Committee on Dec. 26, 2023 in Superior Court in Springfield. In the lawsuit, Gosselin charged the democratic committee and its chair Jeffrey Gunther with not following its bylaws when he was denied financial assistance for his campaign following a request for support that he said he made during the Sept. 14 and Oct. 12 meetings. Gunther also ran for the School Committee, and was elected.

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White House Eyes Possible Threat to Good Friday Agreement: Rwanda

Hampshire Regional High School students walked out of class on Tuesday morning to demonstrate support for the district’s teachers bargaining for a new contract. Meanwhile, the district’s teachers union called on the School Committee not to renew the contract of Superintendent Diana Bonneville due to ”a trend of poor decision making and significant errors in judgment,” according to a statement by the Hampshire Regional Education Association.

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Can Electability Save Nikki Haley?

A long time ago, in a Republican Party far, far away, a seasoned former governor suggested a theory for winning the 2016 election. The nominee must be willing to “lose the primary to win the general,” Jeb Bush advised, alluding to the tension between the demands of primary voters and the broader electorate. His adage didn’t hold up in that campaign: Bush did indeed lose the primary in 2016 to Donald Trump, badly, but then Trump rode a nativist, populist and grievance-laced message all the way to the White House. Eight years later, Trump has only strengthened his grip on the Republican base, despite, or because of, his litany of legal troubles. His 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses this week signaled how fully he has remade the party in his image. But to a dwindling number of Republicans willing to criticize Trump out loud, the tension Bush described rings more true than ever: Even as Trump has inspired extraordinary loyalty among the Republican base, the party lost the House, Senate and White House during his time in office.

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Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Deadly Bombings in Iran

The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Thursday for the bombing attack that killed 84 people in Kerman, Iran, a day before, during a memorial procession for Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, according to a post on the extremist group’s official Telegram account. The extremist group called the attack a “dual martyrdom operation,” and described how two militants approached a ceremony at the tomb of General Suleimani and detonated explosive belts strapped to their bodies “near the grave of the hypocrite leader.” The general, a widely revered and feared Iranian military officer who was the architect of an Iranian-led and -funded alliance of Shiite groups across the Middle East, was assassinated four years ago in an American drone attack. The Islamic State, a Sunni Muslim organization, considers its mission to kill apostate Muslims, including Shiites. Iran, a majority-Shiite country, is led by a theocratic government in which Shiite clerics are in charge.

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Ukraine Carries On Fight While Pondering an Erosion of U.S. Aid

As the Kremlin reveled in the failure of Congress to approve new military assistance for Ukraine and President Biden railed against Republican lawmakers for “kneecapping” an ally in their hour of need, Ukrainian soldiers, political leaders and Kyiv’s allies were all left asking the same question on Thursday: What happens if the United States stops providing military assistance? Officials in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and Ukrainians themselves are still hopeful Congress will ultimately pass an assistance package — and have been cautious about saying anything that could ensnare them in America’s bitter domestic political battles. But given the dire consequences if the United States cannot find a way to keep providing military assistance, officials in Kyiv are racing to bolster their nation’s own military capabilities and working to deepen ties with other allies who remain steadfast in their support. However voting might go in other countries, “We will not stop defending our country — we will not give up a single piece of our land,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said in a statement issued Thursday morning, hours after Republicans in the United States Senate blocked a measure to provide tens of billions of dollars more in aid to Ukraine.

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Maine Joins Colorado in Finding Trump Ineligible for Primary Ballot

Maine on Thursday became the second state to bar Donald J. Trump from its primary election ballot after its top election official ruled that the former president’s efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election rendered him ineligible to hold office again. Hours later, her counterpart in California announced that Mr. Trump would remain on the ballot in the nation’s most populous state, where election officials have limited power to remove candidates. The official in Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, wrote in her decision that Mr. Trump did not qualify for the ballot because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. A handful of citizens had challenged his eligibility by claiming that he had incited an insurrection and was thus barred from seeking the presidency again under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. “I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection,” Ms. Bellows, a Democrat, wrote.

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Splitting with Colorado, Michigan will keep Trump on 2024 ballot

Michigan’s Supreme Court is keeping former President Donald Trump on the state’s primary election ballot. The court said Wednesday it will not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling from groups seeking to keep Trump from appearing on the ballot. It said in an order that the application by parties to appeal a Dec. 14 Michigan appeals court judgment was considered, but denied “because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.” The ruling contrasts with Dec. 19 decision by a divided Colorado Supreme Court which found Trump ineligible to be president because of his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That ruling was the first time in history that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment has been used to disqualify a presidential candidate. The Michigan and Colorado cases are among dozens hoping to keep Trump’s name off state ballots. They all point to the so-called insurrection clause that prevents anyone from holding office who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution. Until the Colorado ruling, all had failed. The Colorado ruling is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the rarely used Civil War-era provision. The plaintiffs in Michigan can technically try again to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the general election, though it’s likely there will be a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the issue by then. The state’s high court on Wednesday upheld an appeals court ruling that the Republican Party could place anyone it wants on the primary ballot. But the court was silent on whether Section 3 of the 14th Amendment would disqualify Trump in November if he becomes the GOP nominee. “We are disappointed by the Michigan Supreme Court’s decision,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech for People, the liberal group that filed the suit to disqualify Trump in the state. “The ruling conflicts with longstanding US Supreme Court precedent that makes clear that when political parties use the election machinery of the state to select, via the primary process, their candidates for the general election, they must comply with all constitutional requirements in that process.” Trump hailed the order, calling the effort to keep him off the ballot in multiple states a “pathetic gambit.” Only one of the court’s seven justices dissented. Justice Elizabeth M. Welch, a Democrat, wrote that she would have kept Trump on the primary ballot but the court should rule on the merits of the Section 3 challenge. The court has a 4-3 Democratic majority. Trump pressed two election officials in Michigan’s Wayne County not to certify 2020 vote totals, according to a recording of a post-election phone call disclosed in a Dec. 22 report by The Detroit News. The former president ‘s 2024 campaign has neither confirmed nor denied the recording’s legitimacy. Attorneys for Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit group also involved in efforts to keep Trump’s name off the primary ballot in Minnesota and Oregon, had asked Michigan’s Supreme Court to render its decision by Christmas Day. The group argued that time was “of the essence” due to “the pressing need to finalize and print the ballots for the presidential primary election.” Earlier this month, Michigan’s high court refused to immediately hear an appeal, saying the case should remain before the appeals court. Free Speech for People had sued to force Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to bar Trump from Michigan’s ballot. But a Michigan Court of Claims judge rejected that group’s arguments, saying in November that it was the proper role of Congress to decide the question.

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As a 2024 Rematch Looms, Americans Watch With Disbelief

With the New England Patriots sitting at 3-11, sitting oh-so-close to the No. 1 slot in the 2024 NFL Draft, we’re set for another week of Bill Belichick facing questions about his job status. He’ll be asked the questions. But don’t expect any illuminating answers. That was the case Monday morning when Belichick made his regular appearance on WEEI’s Greg Hill Show. Hill asked Belichick if there were any assurances he could make to fans that no decision has been made over his status with the team beyond the 2023 season. BET ANYTHING GET $250 BONUS ESPN BET CLAIM OFFER MASS 21+ and present in MA, NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, TN, LA, KS, KY, CO, AZ, IL, IA, IN, OH, MI. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-Gambler. “Nothing’s changed,” Belichick said. “We’ve got Denver this week. Gonna do all we can to get the team ready to play well against Denver.” Patriots chairman Robert Kraft has reportedly been upset with the lack of onfield success in New England over recent years. Now, eyes are on Kraft to see if he’ll make a change at the head coaching position this offseason. It’s gotten to the point where vague comments made by Kraft on “College GameDay” have been dissected to see if they were a reference to Belichick’s job security. Belichick was asked, with all that going on, if he feels like Kraft has given him proper support. “Look, I think any questions you have for Mr. Kraft you should ask Mr. Kraft,” Belichick said. The responses are more or less the same refrain Belichick has been repeating all season, even with rumors swirling and reports suggesting that his time in New England may be done. How does Belichick keep his focus with so much outside noise going? “I don’t know. I don’t sit around and listen to talk radio and read stuff every day,” Belichick said. “I’m going to do what I do and that’s prepare the team to get ready for Denver.” Finally, Belichick was asked if he wanted to stay in New England. If the decision were up to him, would he keep coaching the Patriots long-term? “I’m not getting into the past the future or anything else,” Belichick said. There you have it. The Patriots have three games left in the regular season. The way things are looking now, it doesn’t seem we’ll have any more clarity on Belichick’s job status any time soon.

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Oakland Educators Hold Unauthorized Teach-in Supporting Palestinians

Some public school educators in Oakland, Calif., presented pro-Palestinian lessons on Wednesday as part of an unauthorized teach-in. The school district said this week that it opposed the event, and some Jewish groups and parents condemned it and called for teachers who participated to be disciplined. The teach-in was organized by a group of activists within the local teachers’ union, the Oakland Education Association. But the union president, Ismael Armendariz, emphasized that the materials had not been reviewed by his group. The event’s anonymous organizers created a lengthy list of suggested curriculum materials for all grade levels, from pre-K through high school. The document calls Israel an “apartheid state” and refers to “the historic and unfolding oppression and genocide of Palestinians.”

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Lee Jae-myung: South Korean opposition leader stabbed during visit to Busan

Seoul, South Korea CNN — South Korea’s main opposition party leader Lee Jae-myung was attacked with a knife during a visit to the southern city of Busan on Tuesday, according to an official from his party. Lee was touring the construction site of the Gadeokdo New Airport when he was struck on the left side of his neck while speaking to a crowd of reporters, the official said. The Democratic Party official told CNN that Lee was bleeding, but was conscious, and has been taken to hospital. This is a breaking news story. More to come.

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Ohio Governor Orders Restrictions on Transgender Care After Vetoing Ban

In a battle for all four quarters, No. 2 Longmeadow girls basketball handed No. 3 Northampton its first loss of the season, winning 66-60 on Wednesday. With the win, the Lancers remain undefeated through eight games this winter.

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Biden Is Trying to Rein In Israel. Is It Working?

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music As the cease-fire in Gaza has ended and the fierce fighting there has resumed, the United States has issued sharper warnings to Israel’s leaders that they have a responsibility to avoid civilian casualties. Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, discusses the public and private ways in which President Biden is trying to influence Israel’s conduct.

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As Zelensky Heads to Washington, Russia Targets Kyiv With Missiles

What comes to mind when you think of Connecticut? Preppy? Wealthy? Snooty? Old? A pit stop between New York and Massachusetts? Gov. Ned Lamont, a second-term Democrat, would not be surprised.“Sleepy, suburban. Not very diverse,” he suggested in an interview at his office in the Statehouse. “Let’s face it,” he continued, “our perception, our lifestyle was considered a little out of date.” He would like to change that. Governor Lamont, who once publicly urged residents to stop “badmouthing” Connecticut, has begun a state rebranding campaign. “Make It Here,” a $1.8 million advertising blitz, paints Connecticut as creative and diverse. It joins “Find Your Vibe,” a $3 million tourism effort.

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Trump in Maine: Election official boots former president from ballot

The reception from voters is indicative of the north-south, urban-rural divide that has created a cultural and political gulf among many Maine residents. For some Republicans and Trump supporters in the upper part of the state, Thursday’s decision by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to label Trump an insurrectionist is an affront to their rights that also sets a dangerous precedent. For many Democrats, it was a relief. AUGUSTA, Maine — The decision by Maine’s secretary of state to bar former president Donald Trump from the state’s Republican primary election rippled through the state Friday, drawing the ire of Republicans and the support of Democrats, and raising eyebrows among some constitutional scholars. Advertisement For Margaret Graham, who was returning her son’s Christmas gift at an Auburn Mall shoe store Friday, Trump’s affiliation with the US Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, seems obvious. “Just because he wasn’t convicted doesn’t mean he wasn’t a part of it,” said Graham, a 64-year-old Sabattus resident who mostly votes for Democrats. Amy Gove, a retired tour guide who said she has been a Republican “forever,” said voters should be allowed to vote. “I just think that anybody who has not been through the court system should not be penalized for anything,” said Gove, 76, who was shopping at an Augusta Hannaford’s grocery store. “It’s the old, ‘You’re not guilty until you’re proven guilty.’” Bellows’s decision injected Maine in the national debate about Trump’s eligibility just months ahead of the state’s March 5 primary. After a hearing on Dec. 15 involving parties challenging Trump’s eligibility as well as Trump’s lawyers, Bellows said Trump had violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Civil War-era provision that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office. She said Trump violated the clause because of his role in the Jan. 6 attack, when a mob stormed the US Capitol as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Advertisement The attack was preceded by a rally where Trump told a crowd of his supporters that the election was stolen and urged them to “fight like hell.” Trump now faces federal charges over his efforts to take power. In an interview Friday, Bellows said the constitution’s qualifications for president “are requirements, not a menu,” but acknowledged that her decision isn’t a final one. According to state law, a challenger or Trump himself can appeal her decision to a Maine Superior Court within five days of the ruling, meaning at some point next week. Her decision won’t go into effect until the Superior Court rules on an appeal, or the time to appeal has expired. “My job is to follow the law,” she said. “If the courts make a different decision, I will abide by that.” The situation underscores the inconsistent patchwork of ballot access among the 50 states. While dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump from the ballot, the Maine case is the first in which a secretary of state — not a court — decided to bar Trump from the ballot. In another 14th Amendment case, a Michigan judge ruled that Congress, not the judiciary, should decide whether Trump can stay on the ballot. That ruling is being appealed. In Oregon, the liberal group Free Speech For People filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Trump from the ballot there. Advertisement And a Colorado court recently ruled 4-3 that Trump was ineligible for the White House — the first state to do so. Other lawsuits have surfaced in Florida and Arkansas. In New England, Massachusetts’ and Rhode Island’s top election officials have affirmed that Trump will appear on primary ballots if he qualifies. Nicholas Jacobs, a government professor at Colby College in Waterville, said that to some political scientists, Bellows’s decision amounts to “constitutional hardball,” where acts that are technically legal may “fly in the face” of the stability the US Constitution is meant to ensure. As a result, the electorate may grow more divided and possibly more distrustful of how elections are run. “This is fueling a longstanding narrative of ‘the two Maines,’ ” Jacobs said. “There is a political group that caters to the newcomers in the south of the state, then the rest of Maine. That is a pretty tragic consequence of this.” Jeffrey Selinger, a political professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, said while constitutional qualifications to serve as president are often “clear and easy,” such as a candidate being at least 35 years old, the clause in question in the Maine case contains ambiguity. If a critical mass of people lose faith in the legitimacy of an election that doesn’t include a leading GOP candidate, it can be “corrosive,” Selinger said, causing what he described as a “rupture [in trust] that is not easy to mend.” Advertisement “If it became a common sense among a majority of people that a legitimate candidate who is popular was denied access to the ballot and as a result, someone else won, it’s hard to predict how that grievance would be expressed,” he said. While most states have a winner-take-all policy, Maine and Nebraska divide electoral votes based on the winner in each of its congressional districts, and then reserve two at-large votes based on the statewide popular vote. Trump won one of Maine’s four electoral votes in 2016 and in 2020. Many Mainers who disagree with Bellows said Trump not being on the ballot would limit their rights. “People feel [Bellows] is not in a position to unilaterally take away someone’s right to be on the ballot,” said Kerry McKim, chair of the Hancock County Republican Party. “I think it sets a dangerous precedent for our elections and how free and open they really are.” Hancock County is in Maine’s Second Congressional District, which voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020. Bridget Barrows, a registered Republican who owns a property management business, doesn’t closely follow political news or events, and didn’t vote in the last two presidential elections. But she said voters should have the ultimate decision on Trump. “I have friends that would vote for Trump and I have friends that would not, and I don’t really pay attention either way,” said Barrows, who is 40. “But I do feel bad that my friends who would vote for him can’t. I don’t think that’s fair.” Advertisement Bridget Barrows, 40, said: "I do feel bad that my friends who would vote for him can’t. I don’t think that’s fair.” Michael G. Seamans Dana Pooler, a retiree living in Vassalboro, is a lifelong Republican who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. He called Trump the “best president we’ve ever had.” Pooler, 69, said he planned to vote for Trump in the primary, and he’s deeply upset that he might not have the chance to do so. “It’s unconstitutional,” he said. “I think it’s against the law, she has no right to do that.” Zachary Toth, a commercial plumber living in Oxford, said he sent Bellows a long message on Facebook expressing his concern. He said if Trump were facing insurrection charges, or a conviction, he would feel differently. “I think that anybody who is sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution can look at this and see that it’s not constitutional,” Toth, 34, said. “He’s never been convicted of it.” Zachary Toth 34, of Oxford, said: I think that anybody who is sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution can look at this and see that it’s not constitutional." Michael G. Seamans But Jim Webb, a retiree who describes himself as a “flaming liberal,” said the law is clear: Trump can’t be on the ballot. “It’s called the 14th Amendment. We can’t choose what amendments we decided to obey,” Webb said in an interview in Augusta. “There are interpretations, but that’s our secretary of state’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment. Period, end of argument.” Brenna Giannetti, a homemaker from the Portland suburb of Windham, also said she was happy with Bellows’s decision. Although Giannetti typically votes for Democrats, she said she voted for Trump in 2016 because she was looking for a positive change. But his time as president flipped her opinion. ”He cooked his own goose,” Giannetti, 54, said. “He definitely does not belong running for office, let alone being in office.” Samantha J. Gross can be reached at samantha.gross@globe.com. Follow her @samanthajgross. Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.

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Trump Asks Appeals Court to Toss Election Case on Immunity Grounds

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked an appeals court in Washington on Saturday night to toss a federal indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that he was immune to the charges because they arose from actions he had taken while he was in the White House. The weekend filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was the latest salvo in a long-running and crucial battle between Mr. Trump and the special counsel, Jack Smith, over whether the former president enjoys immunity to the election interference charges. The fight over immunity has now touched all three levels of the federal court system, including the Supreme Court, which on Friday declined Mr. Smith’s request to intervene and hear the case before the appeals court. The ultimate resolution of the issue will have a significant effect not only on the overall viability of the election interference case, but also on whether a trial on the charges is postponed until the heart of the 2024 campaign — or even until after the election. At that point, if Mr. Trump wins the presidency, he could order the charges to be dropped. In a 55-page brief to a three-judge panel of the court, D. John Sauer, a lawyer who has been handling appeals for Mr. Trump, argued that under the Constitution, judges cannot hold the president accountable for any acts undertaken while in office.

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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu endorses Enrique Pepn for City Council, rejecting Ricardo Arroyo

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu endorsed her former employee Enrique Pepén for the District 5 seat on the City Council, scorning the embattled incumbent Ricardo Arroyo, a longtime ally she’s supported in prior elections. In a Monday statement, Wu described Pepén as “exactly the kind of leader we need in government,” saying that he “not only knows City Hall inside out, but has lived the challenges of our community through growing up in Boston and now raising his two young kids here.” “He’ll be a fantastic partner on the Council with the shared progressive values, determination, and heart for service to make Boston a city for everyone,” Wu said. The endorsement, first reported by Politico, is the mayor’s latest effort to back her former employees in the Boston City Council race, ahead of the Sept. 12 preliminary. Pepén worked as the executive director of the Boston Office of Neighborhood Services under Wu. Wu has also backed Henry Santana, her former director of civic organizing, for councilor-at-large, and Sharon Durkan, a political fundraiser who worked for the mayor when she was a city councilor, for the District 8 seat. Pepén previously worked for former City Councilor Tito Jackson, former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III and former Mayor Marty Walsh. The son of Dominican immigrant parents, he was born and raised in Boston and lives in Roslindale with his wife and two children, according to his campaign website. “I am profoundly humbled and honored to receive the support of my mentor and friend Michelle Wu,” Pepén said in a Monday statement. “I share Mayor Wu’s dedication to serve our community and meet people where they are.” The two other challengers vying to unseat the progressive incumbent are Jose Ruiz, an officer with the Boston Police Department, and Jean-Claude Sanon, a small business owner. While the endorsement may be seen as the mayor’s latest attempt to reshape a City Council prone to infighting and scandals over the past two years, it may also be interpreted as a direct indictment on Arroyo, the current District 5 councilor. Wu’s statement did not mention Arroyo by name, but she did yank her support for him ahead of last year’s preliminary election for Suffolk County district attorney, when old sexual misconduct allegations came to light. In a Monday statement, Arroyo said he was “proud to be the only candidate in this race with a proven independent and progressive record.” “Like the residents of District 5, I am focused on the issues that impact their daily lives and will continue to be a champion for racial, environmental, economic and social justice,” Arroyo said. The mayor had initially stuck by Arroyo after the 2005 and 2007 misconduct allegations surfaced, but eventually joined big-name progressive politicians U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey in pulling their support, after a Boston Globe report revealed one of the women was a minor at the time. Still, Wu said on a prior GBH Boston Public Radio appearance that she had voted for Arroyo in the Suffolk DA primary. She also backed him during his initial bid for City Council in 2019. Arroyo has denied the allegations and charges were never filed. It was later revealed in two federal reports that former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins colluded with Arroyo to tip the outcome of the election for Suffolk District Attorney, by leaking information that led to damaging pre-primary stories about his opponent that were published by the Globe. The Herald chose not to publish the leaked information until after the primary. Arroyo has denied any wrongdoing, stating that he had no knowledge Rollins was leaking sensitive information on his behalf, and denied pressuring the state’s top prosecutor to investigate his primary opponent, now-DA Kevin Hayden. Rollins resigned when the two reports were made public in May. In late June, Arroyo admitted to a state ethics violation, and agreed to pay a $3,000 fine for continuing to represent his brother, Felix G. Arroyo, in a 2018 civil lawsuit involving the city after he became a city councilor. The lawsuit involves sexual assault allegations made against his brother by a former city employee. Arroyo was also one of three city councilors named in a bullying and harassment complaint made by a City Council attorney in April, the Herald reported last week. He dismissed the complaint as “baseless.”

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Judge threatens to bar Trump from courtroom over interjections during E. Jean Carroll trial

Read this article for free! Plus get unlimited access to thousands of articles, videos and more with your free account! Please enter a valid email address. By entering your email, you are agreeing to Fox News Terms of Service and Privacy Policy , which includes our Notice of Financial Incentive . To access the content, check your email and follow the instructions provided. A judge threatened to bar former President Trump from his civil trial in New York City on Wednesday over his loud reactions to E. Jean Carroll's testimony claiming he ruined her reputation after she accused him of sexual abuse. Judge Lewis Kaplan admonished Trump for his audible reactions to Carroll’s testimony in front of the jury, threatening that the former president could be barred from the trial if he continues. Trump was heard saying "that’s not true," "it’s a witch hunt" and "it really is a con job" during Carroll’s testimony. After the jury was excused for lunch, Kaplan told Trump that his right to be present during the trial could be forfeited if he is disruptive. TRUMP CANNOT ASSERT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY IN E JEAN CARROLL DEFAMATION LAWSUIT, APPEALS COURT RULES "Mr. Trump, I hope I don't have to consider excluding you from the trial," Kaplan said in an exchange after the jury was excused for lunch, adding: "I understand you're probably eager for me to do that." "I would love it," Trump responded from the defense table. "I know you would like it. You just can't control yourself in this circumstance, apparently," Kaplan said. "You can't either," Trump muttered before walking out. EXCLUSIVE: TRUMP TO APPEAL VERDICT IN E JEAN CARROLL CIVIL CASE, SAYS HE HAS 'ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA' WHO SHE IS The judge attempted to crack down on Trump speaking loudly while conferring with his lawyers after Carroll’s lawyer complained about the remarks for a second time. Carroll testified about the various threats she has received since she accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s, including death threats and threats of rape. When asked if she regretted her decision, Carroll said, "Only momentarily. I'm very glad I came forward." CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Carroll is seeking $10 million in compensatory damages and millions more in punitive damages. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Opinion | Why This Could Be a Dangerous Year for the Iowa Caucuses

What if Mr. Trump cracks 50 percent? (I’m guessing he will but am hoping to be wrong.) If so, is the race basically over? What if he pulls only 45 percent? 40? If Nikki Haley squeaks past Ron DeSantis, should he drop out? What if she smokes him? Could any third-place showing count as a win for Ms. Haley? And my obsession: What degree of belly flop could persuade Vivek Ramaswamy to leave politics forever? The top contenders have approached the expectations game differently. Heading into the final stretch, Mr. DeSantis has been all sass and swagger, predicting total victory. “We’re going to win here in Iowa,” he assured Fox News shortly before Christmas. Bold strategy, but bluffing is perhaps his only hope. The guy has bet everything on the caucuses. If he goes down hard, and certainly if Ms. Haley bests him, you will hear the sound of pundits, political opponents and quite possibly the rest of his disgusted party pounding nails into the coffin of his candidacy. Even so, raising the bar leaves him even less wiggle room to recover from anything other than a first-place showing — which pretty much no one expects. Mr. Trump has been a bit cagier. He has been crowing about crushing it in the polling, pushing the expectations bar ever higher. “The poll numbers are scary because we’re leading by so much,” he bragged at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, last month. But the man is no idiot. He has been hedging his boasts, telling Iowa fans he is a little nervous that he is so overwhelmingly popular that they might feel comfortable skipping the caucuses. “You got to show up,” he urged supporters at the Waterloo event. “Even if you think we’re going to win by a lot.” In case things go sideways, he has laid the groundwork for a quintessentially Trumpian message: I am such a huge winner that I (almost) lost! Ms. Haley is attempting a more complicated game plan. Her politics aren’t well suited for Iowa, where the G.O.P. is dominated by white evangelicals. She hasn’t spent as much time in the state as Mr. DeSantis or built a ground game anywhere nearly as elaborate. Instead, she has gone with a classic Iowa move: making clear that she expects to lose the race. That way, no one expects much from her, and even a lackluster showing can be brushed off or even spun as a win. Thus, we see her spreading the word that she is looking beyond Iowa to the broader playing field — at times perhaps a bit too aggressively, as when she quipped to a crowd in New Hampshire that their job was to “correct” Iowa’s vote.

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Harris to Stand In for Biden at U.N. Climate Conference

Vice President Kamala Harris will attend the annual United Nations climate summit in Dubai on Friday and Saturday, standing in for President Biden, who will skip the event for the first time since taking office. A spokeswoman for Ms. Harris said in a statement on Wednesday that while at the summit, known as COP28, the vice president would “underscore the Biden-Harris administration’s success in delivering on the most ambitious climate agenda in history, both at home and abroad.” But her presence is unlikely to satisfy some climate activists, who have said that Mr. Biden’s decision to skip the summit — which is being attended by nearly 200 leaders from around the world — will undermine international efforts to confront the planet’s changing climate. White House officials have said Mr. Biden is consumed with other global issues, including the war between Israel and Hamas and securing funding for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, which has become the subject of an intense congressional clash in recent days.

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Colorado Supreme Court removes Trump from 2024 ballot based on 14th Amendments insurrectionist ban

CNN — In a stunning and unprecedented decision, the Colorado Supreme Court removed former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 ballot, ruling that he isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban.” The ruling was 4-3. The ruling will be placed on hold pending appeal until January 4, pending a certain appeal to the US Supreme Court, which could settle the matter for the nation. The state Supreme Court decision only applies to Colorado but the historic ruling will roil the 2024 presidential campaign. Colorado election officials have said the matter needs to be settled by January 5, which is the statutory deadline to set the list of candidates for the GOP primary. Ratified after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the wording is vague, it doesn’t explicitly mention the presidency, and has only been applied twice since 1919. All seven justices on the Colorado Supreme Court were appointed by Democratic governors. Six of the seven subsequently won statewide retention elections to stay on the bench. The seventh was only appointed in 2021 and hasn’t yet faced voters. Trump denies wrongdoing regarding January 6 and has decried the 14th Amendment lawsuits as an abuse of the legal process. He is under federal and state indictment in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election – and he has pleaded not guilty. On the campaign trail, Trump has derided the lawsuits and argued that they are an attempt to use the courts to stop him from returning to the White House while he is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Key findings The court issued several key findings in its sweeping decision: • Colorado state law allows voters to challenge Trump’s eligibility under the federal constitution’s “insurrectionist ban.” • Colorado courts can enforce the ban without any action from Congress. • The insurrectionist ban applies to the presidency. • The January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was an insurrection. • Trump “engaged in” the insurrection. • Trump’s speech “inciting the crowd” on January 6 was “not protected by the First Amendment.” The ruling comes as a similar appeal is pending in Michigan, where Trump also prevailed. He has beaten back 14th Amendment challenges in several key states, while the challengers have pledged to keep fighting in the courts potentially even after the 2024 presidential election, if he wins. A group of Republican and independent voters filed the lawsuit, in coordination with a liberal government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. A district judge held a weeklong trial and issued a stunning ruling in November that labeled Trump as an insurrectionist but said the presidency is exempt from the vague ban in the 14th Amendment. The Colorado Supreme Court held oral arguments earlier this month, where the justices appeared divided at times. Some of their questions suggested they were open to the idea that the ban applies to Trump, while at other times, some justices were unsure if the trial court even had jurisdiction to adjudicate the matter in the first place. This story is breaking and will be updated.

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Israel-Hamas War Israeli Government Says It Will Uphold Cease-Fire if Hostages Are Freed

The Newton Teachers Association announced Thursday night that educators won’t be in school on Friday — the union’s members voted to go on strike. The union announced the vote’s outcome on Facebook in a live stream showing a planned rally, where it was announced that 98% percent of membership voted in favor of going on strike. The Newton Teachers Association said it believes Newton has “more than enough money” to increase pay and hire more support staff and social workers, to address the “student mental health crisis,” and to establish a “humane paid family leave for all educators,” according to a Thursday press release.

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Hamas Says Commander of Its Northern Gaza Brigade Is Dead

Hamas, the armed group that controls Gaza, said on Sunday that one of its top commanders had been killed in its war with Israel there. The announcement from Hamas came on the third day of a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas to facilitate the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Israel has vowed it will continue its military campaign in the enclave after the truce is scheduled to end on Tuesday morning, with its primary goal being the destruction of Hamas. On Sunday morning the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, issued a brief statement saying that Abu Anas al-Ghandour, who led the group’s fighters in northern Gaza, and three other commanders had been killed. It did not provide further details on when or where they had died. The Israeli military said earlier this month — before the truce began — that it had targeted Mr. al-Ghandour in a strike on Hamas’s underground infrastructure, but did not say at the time whether he was dead or alive. On Sunday, the Israeli military said in a statement that it had killed Mr. al-Ghandour “prior to the operational pause” in fighting, calling him a “leading figure in the planning and execution” of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The military also confirmed it had killed the three other commanders Hamas named in its statement — Aiman Siam, Wael Rajeb and Rafet Salman. A number of other Hamas officials and commanders are believed to have been killed since Israel launched a war in retaliation for the group’s Oct. 7 attacks, which killed an estimated 1,200 people in southern Israel and led to the abduction of roughly 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities. Mr. al-Ghandour was the most senior commander that Hamas has confirmed dead since the group’s announcement last month that Ayman Nofal, a member of its General Military Council and the commander of the Central Brigade in the Qassam Brigades, had been killed. The State Department put Mr. al-Ghandour under U.S. sanctions in 2017, saying that he had been “involved in many terrorist operations” — including a 2006 attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and led to the kidnapping of another, Gilad Shalit. Mr. Shalit was released in October 2011 in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. One of those freed in the deal, Yahya Sinwar, eventually became Hamas’s leader in Gaza and, according to Israeli officials, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks.

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CNNs Iowa Debate Will Be a DeSantis-Haley Showdown

A Republican presidential primary debate that CNN plans to host in Des Moines next week will be a one-on-one showdown between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who are fighting to emerge from the state’s caucuses as the definitive alternative to former President Donald J. Trump. Both Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, are long shots to win the caucuses, given that they are trailing Mr. Trump in polls of Iowans by more than 30 points on average. But if either one is to have even a small chance of claiming the nomination, that person needs to drive the other out of the race, which they could do — or at least take a first step toward doing — by beating them for second place in Iowa. Mr. Trump did not participate in the official debates sponsored by the Republican National Committee last year, and he will not participate in the CNN debate in Iowa either. (The Iowa event will be followed by a similar one in New Hampshire.) And no other candidate qualified by the deadline on Tuesday. Participants needed at least 10 percent support in three national or Iowa polls that met CNN’s criteria, including at least one poll of likely Iowa caucusgoers. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who has largely ignored Iowa in favor of campaigning in New Hampshire; and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas did not meet that mark.

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National GOP slams Biden for Boston fundraisers

National Republicans took aim at President Joe Biden as he touched down in Boston for a trio of high-dollar fundraisers on Tuesday, including one headlined by singer-songwriter James Taylor. “Joe Biden is taking the day off to cozy up to his elite donors while Hamas is still holding as many as eight Americans hostage,” Republican National Committee Chairperson Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. “His weak leadership has emboldened our enemies, and his misplaced priorities are disgraceful.” Biden landed at at Boston Logan International Airport at 11:18 a.m., where he was greeted by Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, according to pool reports. There, Biden walked out from behind a blue curtain at 2:02 p.m. and spoke from behind a podium using teleprompters. He opened with comments on Hamas’ treatment of women and girls, according to pool reports. “Hamas terrorists inflicted as much pain and suffering in women and girls as possible,” Biden said of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. “The world can’t just look away at what’s going on. It’s on all of us... to forcibly condemn the sexual violence of Hamas terrorists without equivocation,” Biden continued. “Let me be crystal clear: Hamas’ refusal to release the remaining young women is what broke this deal and end the pause in the fighting. Everyone still being held hostage by Hamas need to be returned to their families immediately. We’re not going to stop.” Tuesday’s marquee event was the James Taylor concert benefiting the Biden Victory Fund. The event is set to be held at the Shubert Theater in Boston’s Theater District, the Boston Herald reported Tuesday. According to the eventbrite listing for the event, tickets ranged from $50 to $7,500. The listing describes the concert as “an evening with President Joe Biden and special guest James Taylor,” and says it will last three hours, MassLive previously reported. Taylor, a six-time Grammy Award winner, has several ties to Massachusetts. Not only was he born in Boston, but he spent summers on Martha’s Vineyard as a child and attended Milton Academy. According to The Boston Globe, Taylor has supported many Democratic candidates over the years, including Hilary Clinton and Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Tuesday’s round of events marked Biden’s second trip to Massachusetts in the last few weeks after celebrating Thanksgiving on Nantucket with his family.

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U.S. Considers Task Force to Guard Red Sea Ships From Iranian Proxy Forces

The United States is in discussions with its allies to set up a naval task force to guard ships traveling through the Red Sea after the latest attack on several commercial vessels in what appears to be an escalating extension of Israel’s war with Hamas by Iranian-sponsored proxy forces. Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, said on Monday that such patrols or escorts could be the appropriate response to the targeting of ships in the region. He compared the mission to similar task forces in the Gulf, where Iranian naval forces have at times been aggressive with other ships, and off the coast of Somalia, where pirates have preyed on private vessels in the past. “We are in talks with other countries about a maritime task force of sorts involving the ships from partner nations alongside the United States in ensuring safe passage of ships in the Red Sea,” Mr. Sullivan told reporters at the White House. “Those talks are ongoing as we speak. I don’t have anything formal to announce. But that would be a natural part of the comprehensive response to what we’re seeing.” Mr. Sullivan’s comments came a day after several commercial ships came under fire and a U.S. Navy destroyer shot down three drones during an hourslong attack on Sunday. One of the drones intercepted was heading toward the destroyer, the U.S.S. Carney, according to United States Central Command. There were no injuries or damage reported by the Carney, the Pentagon said.

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The Social Contract Has Been Completely Ruptured: Irelands Housing Crisis

The skyrocketing cost of private rentals has left many people struggling to afford housing in Dublin and other Irish cities, pushing some to move abroad and others to commute long distances. The crunch has left teachers and social workers priced out of the communities they serve, professional couples unable to buy homes and people on lower incomes fearing homelessness. The recent xenophobic riots in Dublin capitalized on the grievances of people struggling to cover their housing costs and exposed to the world the deep fractures that the crisis has created. But the issue is decades in the making, experts say, and has become the driving force in Irish politics. “Policy created this crisis,” said Rory Hearne, an associate professor in social policy at Maynooth University, west of Dublin. “It’s not immigrants, it’s not asylum seekers,” he added, naming groups the far right accuses of pushing up housing demand. “The housing policy created this housing crisis, and that complete refusal to develop public housing and to build affordable housing.” While a major issue across Ireland, the housing shortage is felt most acutely in the Dublin region, home to around a quarter of the country’s population of just over five million. Two-thirds of Irish people 18 to 34 still live with their parents — one of the highest rates in Europe according to E.U. statistics, which put the continent’s average at 42 percent.

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Don't compare me to the almighty.' The origin of Biden's saying.

“Don’t compare me to the almighty,” White said in launching his bid for a fourth mayoral term. “Compare me to the alternative.” His impromptu statement didn’t last long and wasn’t captured on audio or video. But a bit of it still echoes in American politics and voters could hear it often this year. WASHINGTON — The TV camera crews had departed Boston City Hall after a news briefing on May 21, 1979, when Mayor Kevin H. White surprised a clutch of lingering reporters and his own aides with an announcement that wasn’t expected for weeks: He was running for reelection that fall. Advertisement President Biden adopted the saying years ago and sometimes attributed it to the late White, a fellow Irish-Catholic politician whom he admired, while other times he cites his father, or no one at all. Ascertaining its true source is complicated, but determining its meaning is not. It neatly defines Biden’s political persona — at once religious, pragmatic, self-effacing, and pugnacious — and succinctly frames his challenge in overcoming low approval ratings to win a second term in a likely rematch against Donald Trump. Get Today in Politics A digest of the top political stories from the Globe, sent to your inbox Monday-Friday. Enter Email Sign Up “It is actually the antithesis of the Trumpian statement, ‘I alone can fix it,’ " said former Biden speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum. “Trump says, ‘I alone can fix it,’ and doesn’t. Joe Biden says, ‘Don’t compare me to the almighty’ and comes pretty damn close to getting everything done that people hoped for him to do.” Biden’s frequent use of the almighty comparison has pushed it into the political lexicon, with other politicians picking it up and some citing him as the source. But as with many political sayings, its origin is unclear. Boston Mayor Kevin White and his wife, Kathryn White, stand on stage during his victory party at the Copley Plaza in Boston on Nov. 6, 1979, after White won a fourth consecutive term for mayor. David L. Ryan White himself in 1979 attributed the phrase to the Canadian prime minister at the time, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, according to the Globe’s story on his announcement. But there’s no record in the Canadian media of Trudeau saying it himself and it appears to have first been said about him. Advertisement “We don’t have to compare him to the ideal,” Finance Minister John Turner said of Trudeau days before Canada’s 1972 elections, according to The Montreal Star. “We don’t have to compare him to the almighty. We just have to compare him to the alternative.” Other members of Trudeau’s Liberal Party adopted the saying, and it was used in a party election strategy document reported in news stories in April 1979, just weeks before White quoted it in Boston. Trudeau used a bland variation in a 1978 press conference, “Considering the alternatives, I’m the best man,” according to his biographer, John English. But English said in an email that he wouldn’t be surprised if Trudeau adopted it and failed to cite Turner. “The two of them came to dislike and distrust each other, and Trudeau would never give him credit for the origins of his comment,” said English, a retired history professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario and former Liberal member of the Canadian Parliament. “He undoubtedly knew of it. In fact, Trudeau had a remarkable memory and drew upon it for quips that became identified with him.” Trudeau was known for his eloquence, as was White, who was Boston mayor from 1968-84. The trait helped make White a finalist to be the running-mate of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972. Advertisement White’s former press secretary, Boston public relations executive George Regan, who was his aide for 11 years, said he had never heard him use the almighty comparison before the 1979 reelection announcement. Neither had Micho Spring, his chief of staff from 1978-84. “He thought it captured the essence of what an election is — a choice between two actual candidates — not between an incumbent and an ideal,” Spring, now a reputation strategy consultant, said in an email. But Ira Jackson, who was White’s chief of staff from 1972-75, said he remembered White using it earlier than 1979. “I think it’s very much the way he viewed himself,” Jackson, who now teaches a course on leadership and social change at Harvard. “Just the fact that he would say, ‘Don’t compare me to the almighty’ suggested that might be a reference point that people had in mind, himself included. But it was a wonderful way of Kevin positioning himself: a little bit of humility, a little bit of humor, a lot of Irish and very competitive.” Those characteristics, particularly the Irish part, help explain the connection to Biden, who also leans into that heritage. “He was a very big fan of Kevin White’s. They just really hit it off,” said Ted Kaufman, a longtime Biden aide who was appointed as his Senate replacement when he became vice president. “He was always really respectful of mayors and how difficult that job is.” Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and President Reagan, in Ottawa during an international summit on July 18, 1981. GEORGES BENDRIHEM/AFP via Getty Images As Biden told it during a 2011 forum in Washington, he was in Boston for a Democratic Party event during his first year in the Senate in 1973 and heard White use the slogan as reporters were hounding him. Advertisement “And the gaggle of press got him as he came out of the mayor’s office and basically said, ‘Well, wise guy, hot shot ... how do you feel now?’ " Biden said. “And he looked at them. I’ll never forget what he said. He said, ‘Look, don’t compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative.’ ” Biden was at a Democratic event in Boston in 1973, according to the Globe archives. He was the luncheon speaker at a political seminar at the Sheraton Boston Hotel on Dec. 8, 1973, sponsored by the Democratic State Committee. But White, “who was invited and listed as a panelist, was conspicuous by his absence,” the article said. A search of the Congressional Record, news archives, and White House transcripts indicates Biden first began using the almighty comparison in public while campaigning for Democrats ahead of the 2010 midterm elections. “You know, there used to be a mayor of Boston ... this is way back in ‘72. His name was Kevin White. He said, ‘Don’t compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative,” Biden told the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting in St. Louis on Aug. 20, 2010, drawing laughter and cheers before repeating the saying for emphasis, according to a transcript. But Biden, typically careful to attribute other people’s words after a 1987 plagiarism scandal derailed his first White House bid, has shifted the attribution from White to his father over the years. Advertisement “My dad used to have an expression. He’d say, “Joey, don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.” Biden told a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser in Boston on Sept. 12, 2022. And sometimes Biden doesn’t attribute the saying at all. Kaufman said Biden used it well before he became vice president in 2009, the point when almost all his public comments were chronicled by the White House and news media. “He doesn’t always attribute it to his father, but that’s how I remember it, especially when he first got started,” Kaufman said. “His father was good at this kind of stuff, so it wouldn’t surprise me that his father told him that.” A Biden campaign spokesman declined to comment on the origins of the saying. Kaufman said Biden primarily uses it when campaigning. Biden and White have similarities that would lead both to embrace the almighty comparison, said Nussbaum, who researched a speech White almost gave, defying Boston’s court-ordered school busing, for his 2022 book, “Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History.” “Look at [White’s] old speeches, they were this wonderful combination of progressivism, civic hope, good governance, and idealism, combined with a real political savvy. And, of course, the Irishiness of it all,” said Nussbaum, who was Biden’s speechwriter from February 2021 to May 2022 and now is a partner at the Washington public affairs firm Bully Pulpit International. “I think a lot of that is in Biden’s DNA. And White was a peer of a lot of the people who Biden admired and modeled himself after.” Former Boston mayor Martin J. Walsh said the saying is a perfect fit for Biden. “It’s coming from his heart, it’s coming from his gut,” said Walsh, who is close to Biden and served as his labor secretary before stepping down in March. “He wouldn’t be running for president if the alternative was stronger, and he’s concerned about the alternative.” For Jackson, White’s former chief of staff, the almighty comparison indicates Biden is willing to take the fight directly to Trump. And it’s an ideal way to sum up the choice facing Americans next fall, as it was for Bostonians in 1979. “It’s so useful. It’s so memorable. It’s so penetrating. It’s so simple,” Jackson said. “It’s wonderful that Biden occasionally attributes it to Kevin White. That’s a sign of his humility and that sort of fraternity of Irish pols who respect one another. But it’s not necessary. And I don’t think Kevin White thought it was necessary to always refer to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. And who knows where Trudeau got it, if he got.” Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.

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Bans Havent Lowered the National Abortion Rate. Pro-Lifers Must Find Another Way. - The New York Times

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Lawmakers Press Biden Administration for Tougher Curbs on China Tech

The person accused of running a sprawling brothel network in Boston and Virginia made an “outstanding” amount of money running the business over the last several years, concealing over $1 million in-part through “structured money orders,” a federal agent wrote in court documents filed Wednesday. Prosecutors accused Han Lee, a 41-year-old Cambridge resident, of heading up a brothel network that catered to politicians, doctors, lawyers, and military officers in both states and had the infrastructure to “persuade, induce, and entice” women to travel across state lines for prostitution work. Han Lee’s financial records detailing the illegal business were “impeccable,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security agent wrote in court documents. Law enforcement said they found at least 16 cell phones, utility bills, a computer, and other documents inside Han Lee’s Cambridge apartment. “From a shelf, investigators seized a Louis Vuitton shoe box which contained hundreds of money order receipts for both Western Union and United States Postal Service that appeared to be organized by date, location, and rent amount,” investigators wrote in court documents. There were detailed ledgers detailing the daily activity of the brothels in Virginia and Boston, the latter of which prosecutors said were run by Junmyung Lee, a 30-year-old Dedham resident. One ledger found in the apartment was found open to a page showing the stage names, appointment dates and times, and earnings of women, specifically to people who were then-listed on the Virginia brothel website, investigators said in court documents. Both Han Lee and Junmyung Lee voluntarily agreed Wednesday to remain in custody while their case plays out in federal court, according to court records. Investigators said the brothels were run as a cash business and the accused leaders took lengthy measures to conceal the money they made. Brothel leaders deposited cash into their own accounts, spreading them out and later converting them into money orders “to make the funds appear more legitimate,” investigators said in court documents. They also used “third-party bank accounts” to receive deposits and conduct other financial transactions, according to authorities. “The co-conspirators also engaged in ‘structuring,’ (intentionally splitting larger amounts of money into a series of smaller sums to avoid scrutiny from law enforcement or compliance obligations), both in the manner in which the co-conspirators made cash deposits into their own accounts, as well as the manner in which they converted cash into money orders, in order to avoid reporting requirements,” investigators said. Investigators said Han Lee purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of money orders from the United States Postal Service and Western Union “which she then used to pay for various expenses tied to the prostitution business.” Han Lee had “lavish and extravagant” spending habits even though she lacked legitimate employment, investigators said. The Louis Vuitton shoe box that served as a filing cabinet for the brothel business had a $1,360 sticker price for the shoes, according to investigators. “Investigators located luxury bags and shoes, including items from Yves St. Laurent, Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Christian Louboutin, and Jimmy Choo. I am aware that Han’s bank records reflect purchases at other luxury stores, including Balenciaga,” DHS Special Agent Zachary Mitlitsky wrote in an affidavit. During searches of cellphones carried by women working at the brothels, investigators said they found communications from Han Lee that laid out “house rules” for commercial sex workers at the brothels. Those included turning on “the song while working,” being careful with cigarettes, not going outside “with heavy makeup,” and refraining from using “red lights or other colored lights in front of the door,” according to court documents filed by investigators. “No matter how much I talk, there are guests who enter the building silently,” Han Lee is accused of writing in the “house rules.”

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Senator Says He Will Drop His Blockade of Most Military Promotions

SOUTHWICK — To promote Small Business Saturday, the town’s Economic Development Commission has organized the second annual Shop Southwick Dine Southwick, and will conduct a drawing for $25 gift cards to local restaurants. Anyone who visits any of the 11 participating retailers will be entered in the drawing. “The whole purpose is to cross-pollinate between retailers and restaurants,” said Inga Hotaling-Washington, the chair of the EDC. She said on Saturday morning, members of the EDC will drop off tickets to each of the 11 retailers. Shoppers who visits them can fill out a ticket with their name and phone number and on Dec. 20, tickets will be drawn from each individual retailer to win a $25 gift card from the 10 restaurants participating.

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As U.S. Support for Ukraine Falters, Europe Splits on Filling the Gap

In Estonia, a four-story banner that combines the flags of Ukraine and Estonia hangs over a main square in the capital, Tallinn. In Latvia, Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins is calling for allies to “ramp up military support to Ukraine without delay.” And the leader of Lithuania, where President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine began a tour of Baltic States on Wednesday, recently made a pointed plea to help Kyiv hold the line against invading Russian forces as support for Ukraine in the war elsewhere in Europe threatens to fragment. “For all those saying they are tired of war in Ukraine - a reminder by the terrorist Russia that there’s no limit to its brutality& thirst for blood,” President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania wrote on the social media platform X on Dec. 29, hours after a Russian barrage of missiles and drones slammed into cities across Ukraine. Almost nowhere is the emotional investment for Ukraine’s war effort stronger than in the Baltics, where the three former Soviet states declared independence at the end of the Cold War to escape Russia’s grip. Mr. Zelensky’s trip there this week, an early diplomatic foray of 2024, comes as he tries to rally support for his war effort from a bastion of political backing while other European nations show increasing fatigue and financial distress from a war that began nearly two years ago.

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Slow Rollout of National Charging System Could Hinder E.V. Adoption

Federal prosecutors pushed back on Friday night against former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to hold them in contempt of court for continuing to file motions while the case accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election is paused. The filing by the prosecutors, who work for the special counsel, Jack Smith, was the latest salvo in a tit-for-tat battle over the unusual freeze in the election interference case, which is central to the government’s attempts to hold Mr. Trump accountable for seeking to reverse his electoral defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. In a brief set of court papers, Mr. Smith’s team acknowledged that the election interference case had been placed on hold while Mr. Trump seeks to have the underlying charges dismissed with broad claims that he is immune to the indictment. But the prosecutors said that they were nonetheless continuing to “voluntarily” file motions and turn over discovery materials to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, explaining that the steps they were taking “impose no requirements” on the former president. “Nothing here requires any action by the defendant,” the prosecutors wrote, “and he fails to explain how the mere receipt of discovery materials that he is not obligated to review, or the early filing of government pleadings to which he does not yet need to respond, possibly burdens him.”

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Trump Signals Plans to Go After Intelligence Community in Document Case

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers filed on Tuesday night that they intended to place accusations that the intelligence community was biased against Mr. Trump at the heart of their defense against charges accusing him of illegally holding onto dozens of highly sensitive classified documents after he left office. The lawyers also indicated that they were planning to defend Mr. Trump by seeking to prove that the investigation of the case was “politically motivated and biased.” The court papers, filed in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla., gave the clearest picture yet of the scorched earth legal strategy that Mr. Trump is apparently planning to use in fighting the classified documents indictment handed up over the summer. While the 68-page filing was formally a request by Mr. Trump’s lawyers to the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, to provide them with reams of additional information that they believe can help them fight the charges, it often read more like a list of political talking points than a brief of legal arguments.

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Wellesley president asked to say Israel criticism isnt antisemitism; she refused

Wellesley’s president pushed back this week on a letter signed by some faculty members calling on the college’s administration to issue a statement that criticism of the nation of Israel is not the same as antisemitism. In a letter to the Wellesley community, President Paula A. Johnson affirmed that anti-Israel and anti-zionist speech can create a hostile environment for students.

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Uneaten and Trashed: How New York Wasted 5,000 Migrant Meals in One Day

New York City is paying tens of thousands of dollars a month for meals that are supposed to go to feed migrants but instead are never eaten and are thrown away, according to internal company records reviewed by The New York Times. The meals are provided by DocGo, a medical services company that won a no-bid, $432 million contract from the city to provide broad migrant care, despite having had no experience in doing so. DocGo receives up to $33 a day per migrant for providing three meals a day for each of the roughly 4,000 migrants in its care. From Oct. 22 to Nov. 10, more than 70,000 meals were recorded by DocGo as being “wasted,” according to internal company records obtained by The Times. At $11 a meal, the maximum rate allowed by the contract, the wasted food for that 20-day period would cost taxpayers about $776,000, or about $39,000 a day. At that rate, the bill for the tossed food would exceed $1 million a month — just as Mayor Eric Adams is making billions of dollars in budget cuts to help pay for the city’s spending on migrant care.

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Gov. Maura Healey just signed a $3.1B year-end spending bill. Here are 3 things to know

The $3.1 billion year-end budget bill that Gov. Maura Healey signed Monday will – among other things –provide immediate financial relief to the commonwealth’s shelter system, and give pay increases to tens of thousands of unionized state employees. Here are three things to know. How will the new budget bill help unhoused families? The 2023 year-end spending bill will immediately infuse $250 million into the state’s emergency assistance program to help it run through the rest of the fiscal year. The bill would also require Healey to spend up to $50 million of the funds on an overflow site to house homeless families by Dec. 31. The influx of migrants entering the Bay State seeking a place to live has dried up the amount of space in the state’s shelter system. The crisis prompted Healey to restrict the number of people who could stay in the state’s shelter to 7,500 families, pushing those in need to a waitlist. State officials designated a few conference rooms in the state’s transportation building in Boston to serve as an overnight shelter space until an overflow site has been launched. Lt. Gen. Scott Rice, who leads the state’s response to the ongoing shelter crisis, has said that he and his team are locating an overflow site to house the hundreds of people stuck on the state waitlist. What else would the budget bill do? The bill provides nearly $400 million to fund pay increases in union contracts for tens of thousands of state employees, some of whom are police officers, teachers and/or transit workers. The bill also shells out $75 million for school districts impacted by special education tuition rate increases; $15 million in disaster relief aid for towns and cities harmed by storms and natural disasters in 2023, and $100 million in pension payments to remove any liability from the 2015 early retirement incentive program, according to the Massachusetts Senate’s office. What are people saying about the bill? The bill has been widely praised by advocates and lawmakers. Max Page, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, praised the activism from members of his group to get the bill signed. “Thousands of MTA members worked alongside colleagues from other unions making phone calls, sending emails, signing petitions, and showing up to events, both on their campuses and at the State House,” Page said. “The solidarity of public-sector workers was beautiful to behold. Legislators felt the heat for their inexcusable inaction.” Andrea Park, Director of Community Driven Advocacy at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, said that she was “relieved and grateful” that the bill was signed, MassLive reported. Park has been in contact with members of the Healey administration to understand their progress in locating an overflow site. Senate President Karen Spilka, D-Middlesex/Norfolk, also praised members of her chamber in getting the bill signed. “The Senate understands how much of an impact our work has on the residents of the Commonwealth—especially when pay raises for hard-working employees and funding for emergency shelter is on the line,” Spilka said in a statement. “I’m proud of the urgency the Senate has repeatedly shown in getting this bill to the governor’s desk, and I’d like to thank all of my colleagues in the Senate for getting this done, especially Senate Ways and Means Chair Rodrigues and Senate Minority Leader [Bruce] Tarr.”

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Gazans flock to aid trucks as US, Israel discuss future of Hamas war

BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Nearly 200 residents took part in a holiday competition for a great cause on Sunday morning. 35 teams competed in The Home for Little Wanderers 2023 Gingerbread House Decorating Contest at the Mandarin Oriental in the Back Bay. While the contestants created a neighborhood of houses with sugar shingles, CEO of Little Wanderers Lesli Suggs said they hope to raise $100 thousand for at-risk children. “For children in public schools, early childhood, young adults who are aging out of care, we provide those critical services to ensure that children have the opportunity to grow up in safe and loving families,” said Suggs.

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Three Questions About Iowa

So far, the 2024 presidential campaign looks to be the least competitive in decades. The incumbent president is likely to win the Democratic nomination easily, while a former president seems to be running away with the Republican nomination. Of course, this conclusion is based only on opinion polls, rather than actual voting. By tonight, however, voting will have begun, at least on the Republican side, thanks to the Iowa caucuses. Today’s newsletter offers a preview, in the form of three questions. 1. What’s the biggest story tonight? Don’t get distracted by secondary issues. The big question is whether Donald Trump wins the landslide victory that polls have forecast. If he does, it will be the clearest sign yet that he is on pace to join Richard Nixon, Franklin D. Roosevelt and only a handful of earlier politicians who won the nomination of a major party at least three-times. Recent polls have shown Trump receiving around 50 percent of the Republican vote in Iowa, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis both at 20 percent or below. The only other significant candidate remaining is Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been polling below 10 percent.

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WATCH LIVE: FBI Director faces grilling on Capitol Hill

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Opinion | This Is Going to Be the Most Important Election Since 1860

I recently sent out a list of questions about the 2024 elections to political operatives, pollsters and political scientists. How salient will abortion be? How damaging would a government shutdown be to Donald Trump and the Republican Party? Will the MAGA electorate turn out in high percentages? Will a Biden impeachment by the House, if it happens, help or hurt the G.O.P.? Will the cultural left wing of the Democratic Party undermine the party’s prospects? Will the key battleground states be Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin? How significant will Black and Hispanic shifts to the Republican Party be, and where will these shifts have the potential to determine the outcome? Will Kamala Harris’s presence on the ticket cost President Biden votes? Why hasn’t Biden gained politically from his legislative successes and from improvements in the economy? Will that change before the 2024 elections? Why should Democrats be worrying? From 2016 to 2023, according to Morning Consult, the share of voters saying that the Democratic Party “cares about me” fell to 41 percent from 43 percent while rising for the Republican Party to 39 percent from 30 percent; the share saying the Democrats “care about the middle class” fell to 46 percent from 47 percent while rising to 42 percent from 33 percent for the Republican Party. What’s more, the percentage of voters saying the Democratic Party is “too liberal” rose to 47 percent from 40 percent from 2020 to 2023 while the percentage saying the Republican Party was “too conservative” remained constant at 38 percent. Why should Republicans be worrying? Robert M. Stein, a political scientist at Rice, responded to my question about MAGA turnout by email: “Turnout among MAGA supporters may be less important than how many MAGA voters there are in the 2024 election and in which states they are.”

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Lawmakers pushing for MBTA Commuter Rail electrification by 2035

In her third State of the State address, Gov. Kathy Hochul will propose a first-of-its-kind statewide consortium that would bring together public and private resources to put New York at the forefront of the artificial intelligence landscape. Under the plan, Ms. Hochul would direct $275 million in state funds toward the building of a center to be jointly used by six of the state’s research institutions, including the State University of New York and the City University of New York. Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute would each contribute $25 million to the project, known as “Empire A.I.” Additional private funding has been secured through the Simons Foundation and from the billionaire Thomas Secunda, who helped found Bloomberg L.P. The initiative’s futuristic focus stands out from many of the governor’s other proposals, which are aimed at combating problems like medical debt, literacy and maternal mortality.

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How Trump Sidestepped the Tradition of Iowa Pandering

Campaigning in Iowa in the months leading up to the caucuses has traditionally involved candidates’ embracing local customs, visiting familiar locations and championing policies aimed at helping the state’s farm-driven economy. But this year, the Republicans seeking their party’s presidential nomination have largely avoided over-the-top pandering to local priorities — and any such attempts appear not to be as effective as in the past. That’s largely because former President Donald J. Trump, who has run in the style of an incumbent, has dominated the state while barely setting foot in it. Though he refers to Iowa farmers in his speeches and talks about how he has poured money into the state, Mr. Trump has eschewed the classic retail politicking that is a mainstay of the caucuses in favor of larger rallies while focusing his message more on national issues. In doing so, Mr. Trump is suggesting that it is perhaps not as necessary to show so much deference to local priorities to score a victory in Iowa — at least, for a former president with a huge following.

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Indian American Leaders in Iowa Say They Feel Abandoned by Nikki Haley

With less than a week to go before the Iowa caucuses, leaders with some of the largest and most active Indian and South Asian American associations in the state say Nikki Haley has missed a major opportunity to run up her margins against her opponents: Engaging Indian American voters. As one of only a handful of Indian American candidates to ever run for president of the United States and the only woman in the Republican primary field, Ms. Haley has inherently generated interest in the Indian and South Asian American communities, and she has a number of prominent Indian American donors. But like other Republicans who have run in the primary this cycle, she has not aggressively courted voters of color and rarely plays up her identity to draw in new voters. In interviews, former and current leaders of the Indo American PAC-IA, the Iowa Sikh Association and the Indo American Association of Iowa said they began reaching out to the Haley campaign in the late spring and early summer — back when she was still polling in the single digits and was finding little traction in the state. They had hopes of hosting her at their temples, town hall-style events or house parties. But as of late Tuesday, no such appearances have materialized. The lack of outreach, several said, has been frustrating and alienating for some their membership.

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Trump Prosecutor in Georgia Seeks to Avoid Testifying in Colleagues Divorce Case

Fani T. Willis, the district attorney prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump, is trying to quash a subpoena seeking her testimony in the divorce proceedings of a special prosecutor she hired to manage the case. A court filing last week accused Ms. Willis of having a romantic relationship with the prosecutor, Nathan J. Wade. The motion containing the accusation was filed by Michael Roman, one of Mr. Trump’s 14 co-defendants in the criminal case. The motion argues that the relationship, which it provided no proof of, amounted to a conflict of interest; it seeks to have Mr. Wade, Ms. Willis and her office dismissed from the case. Mr. Roman’s lawyer has said that sealed court records in the pending divorce case between Mr. Wade’ and his wife, Joycelyn, contain documentation of his relationship with Ms. Willis. Ms. Wade’s lawyer subpoenaed Ms. Willis last week, requiring her to be deposed on Jan. 23.

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Letting Trump Off the Hook Will Change the Shape of History - The New York Times

After the passage of the first Enforcement Acts, written to protect the civil rights of the formerly enslaved, Congress created a bipartisan committee in 1871 to investigate reports of vigilante violence against freed people and their white allies in the states of the former Confederacy. The next year, the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States released its report, a 13-volume collection of testimony from 600 witnesses, totaling more than 8,000 pages. The men and women who spoke to the committee attested to pervasive violence and intimidation. There were innumerable reports of whippings and beatings and killings. “Tom Roundtree, alias Black, a Negro, murdered by a Ku Klux mob of some 50 or 60 persons, who came to his house at night on the third of December last, took him out, shot him and cut his throat,” reads a typical entry in the volume devoted to Klan activity in South Carolina. “James Williams,” reads another entry in the same volume, “taken from his home at night and hung by Ku Klux numbering about 40 or 50.” There were also, as the historian Kidada E. Williams shows in “I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction,” accounts of terrible sexual violence. Williams describes one attack in which a group of vigilantes whipped their victim, Frances Gilmore of Chatham County, N.C., “set fire to her pubic hair and cut her genitals.” Because of these reports and others collected by lawyers, journalists and other investigators, the American public had “access to more information about the Ku Klux than about almost any other person, event, phenomenon or movement in the nation,” the historian Elaine Frantz Parsons observes in “Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction.” Between government reports, testimony from witnesses, the confessions of Klansmen and the physical evidence of violence and destruction, it would seem impossible to deny the awful scope of Klan terror, much less the existence of the Klan itself.

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Opinion | The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions

Trump’s evolution into a Jesus-like figure for some but not all white evangelicals began soon after he began his first presidential campaign. As David P. Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, explained by email: Some of Trump’s Christian followers do appear to have grown to see him as a kind of religious figure. He is a savior. I think it began with the sense that he was uniquely committed to saving them from their foes (liberals, Democrats, elites, seculars, illegal immigrants, etc.) and saving America from all that threatens it. In this sense, Gushee continued, “a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role. Trump is seen by many as actually having done so while president.” This view of Trump is especially strong “in the Pentecostal wing of the conservative Christian world,” Gushee wrote, where he is sometimes also viewed as an anointed leader sent by God. “Anointed” here means set apart and especially equipped by God for a holy task. Sometimes the most unlikely people got anointed by God in the Bible. So Trump’s unlikeliness for this role is actually evidence in favor. The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God, according to Gushee: The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, “They’re not persecuting me. They’re persecuting you.” The idea that he is unjustly suffering and, in so doing, vicariously absorbing the suffering that his followers would be enduring is a powerful way for Trump to be identified with Jesus. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, gave voice to this phenomenon when she protested the filing of criminal charges against Trump. On her way to a pro-Trump rally in Manhattan on April 3, 2023, she told Brian Glenn of the Right Side Broadcasting Network: Jesus was arrested and murdered by the Roman government. There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical, corrupt governments, and it’s beginning today in New York City, and I just can’t believe it’s happening, but I’ll always support him. He’s done nothing wrong. The more interesting case, Gushee wrote, is Trump himself. I accept as given that he entered politics as the amoral, worldly, narcissistic New York businessman that he appeared to be. Like all G.O.P. politicians, he knew he would have to win over the conservative Christian voting bloc so central to the party. If people wanted to make him out to be savior, anointed one and agent of God, he would not object. It enhanced their attention and loyalty and his power over and in this group. Lacking any inner spiritual or moral compass that would seek to deflect overinflated or even idolatrous claims about himself, he instead reposted their artwork and videos and so on. Anyone truly serious about the Christian faith would deflect claims to being a savior or anointed one, but he did not have such brakes operating. I do not suppose that he actually believed himself to be any of these things, but others did, and it helped him, and it fed his ego, so why stand in the way? Certain denominations among evangelicals are more willing to believe Trump is God’s messenger than others. John Fea, a professor at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, wrote by email that there are evangelicals of the charismatic and Pentecostal variety — the so-called New Apostolic Reformation or Independent Network Charismatics — who believe that Donald Trump is an agent of God to rescue the United States from the atheistic, even demonic, secularists and progressives who want to destroy the country by advancing abortion, gay marriage, wokeness, transgenderism, etc. “This whole movement,” Fea wrote, is rooted in prophecy. The prophets speak directly to God and receive direct messages from him about politics. They think that politics is a form of spiritual warfare and believe that God is using Donald Trump to help wage this war. (God can even use sinners to accomplish his will — there are a lot of biblical examples of this, they say.) But even this group of Christians does not see Trump as the Messiah, Fea wrote: “They will be quick to tell you that only Jesus is the Messiah. They do not believe Trump has special powers, but he is certainly an agent or vessel for God to work through to make America Christian again.” As far as Trump goes, Fea continued, “he probably thinks these charismatics and Pentecostals are crazy. But if they are going to tell him he is God’s anointed one, he will gladly accept the title and use it if it wins him votes. He will happily accept their prayers because it is politically expedient.” Robert P. Jones, the founder and chief executive of P.R.R.I. (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute), contends that Trump’s religious claims are an outright fraud: Trump has given us adequate evidence that he has little religious sensibility or theological acuity. He has scant knowledge of the Bible, he has said that he has never sought forgiveness for his sins, and he has no substantive connection to a church or denomination. He’s not only one of the least religious but also likely one of the most theologically ignorant presidents the country has ever had. Trump, Jones added in an email, “almost certainly lacks the kind of religious sensibility or theological framework necessary to personally grasp what it would even mean to be a Jesus-like, messianic figure.” Despite that, Jones wrote, “many of his most loyal Christian followers, white evangelical Protestants, have indeed come to see him as a kind of metaphorical savior figure.”

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How Texas Kept the Lights On in the Recent Deep Freeze

The widely anticipated third season of the HBO anthology series “The White Lotus” now has a few more famous faces tied to the upcoming project — set to begin filming shortly. In a release on Friday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that actors Parker Posey, Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, Dom Hetrakul and Tayme Thapthimthong are confirmed cast members for the third installment of the Emmy-winning comedy-drama about the adventures and misadventures of guests and staff at luxury “White Lotus” resorts around the world. The six additions join returning cast member Natasha Rothwell — who played masseuse “Belinda” in the series’ first season set in Hawaii — as the show embarks on a new resort located in Thailand, according Warner Bros. Discovery. Filming will begin in the Southeast Asian nation in February, with production taking place in and around such notable destinations as Koh Samui, Phuket and Bangkok, Warner Bros. Discovery added, noting that HBO has partnered with the Tourism Authority of Thailand to support filming and promotion of the new season. “The White Lotus” debuted in July 2021 and received 20 total Emmy nominations across 13 categories with 10 wins for its first season. It has been nominated for an additional 23 Emmy’s for its second season, which took place in Sicily, Warner Bros. Discovery said. The show was created and has been written, directed and executive produced by Mike White.

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Congressional Leaders Unveil Stopgap Bill to Head Off Shutdown

Congressional leaders unveiled stopgap legislation on Sunday to avert a partial government shutdown, teeing up a race to pass the bipartisan spending deal into law before a deadline at the end of the week. The bill, which came out of a spending deal negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson and Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, would temporarily extend funding for some federal agencies until March 1 and for others through March 8. It would keep the government funded at its current spending levels, without any policy changes or conditions. Facing opposition from hard-line House Republicans and a razor-thin G.O.P. majority, Mr. Johnson will most likely need to rely on the same coalition — made up of Democrats and mainstream Republicans — to pass the bill that both he and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy have relied on to keep the government funded. In a sign that Democrats were preparing to muster the bulk of the votes to pass the bill, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, signaled his backing of the bill on Sunday night. He wrote to his caucus that he was “in strong support of the effort to keep the appropriations process moving forward and avoid a disruptive partial government shutdown.”