Should 9-year-old girls be able to get an abortion? If yes, vote no on Ky Amendment #2.

Teri Carter 

Tue, September 13, 2022 

Shortly after my 16th birthday, a man sexually abused me. I was starting my junior year of high school. I knew the man. I liked the man. I trusted the man. He was a pillar of my small town, beloved by all. He was handsome, young, and married with two little babies. And what he did was criminal.

Teri Carter

This is where I am supposed to tell you if I got pregnant and had an abortion, but I am not going to tell you. I am not going to tell you because it is none of your business.

On Sept. 8, the Courier-Journal reported, “In Kentucky, the two youngest patients to receive an abortion over the past two years were age 9. Under Kentucky law, sexual intercourse with a 9-year-old is considered first-degree rape,” and that “34 girls ages 15 or younger received abortions in 2021, according to state statistics.”

New laws would force these children — these babies themselves — to carry a fetus to term.

On Aug. 30, the South Carolina House attempted to pass a total abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. It failed by only eight votes. A lawmaker argued that if a child was raped by her father, she had choices. All she needed to do, he said, was get her father — her rapist — to give her a ride to Walmart the next day to get the morning-after pill. If he would not take her, she could call an ambulance, he said.

I want you to pause and think about the logistics of this, such an absurd level of insanity I cannot believe I had to write the paragraph.

The other day I ran into a woman at Kroger who asked me a question I had not yet considered. Who, she wanted to know, is going to raise all of the offspring of women addicted to drugs who will be forced to carry a pregnancy to term? And what will it cost taxpayers to pay for their potentially lifelong mental and medical care?

I never told a soul about my sexual abuse when it happened. I was ashamed and somehow thought it was my fault, that I’d asked for it. I finally told my childhood girlfriends 34 years later, the weekend of my 50th birthday. You know what their response was? It was a good thing I’d never told because no one would have believed me. The man would been believed. It would have ruined my life, they told me, certain I would have had to leave school, maybe even leave town.

Being a poor kid with a single mom, I wonder how would we have survived.

There seems to be a fantasy today about the number of newborns soon to be available for adoption. This will not happen, and it is childish to think otherwise. People keep babies they do not want for any number of reasons: pressure from family who insist they will help, shame at being seen as someone who would give away a baby, the inability to give away a baby you’ve carried for nine months, and more.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we talk mostly about the effects on girls and women, but I often wonder if men have considered the impact these strict, new anti-abortion laws will have on their own lives. What will happen to young boys in high school and college who impregnate the girls they are dating? More babies will mean more child support, for one thing, for the next two decades of their lives. And is our court system prepared for the massive influx of cases to ensure mothers get the support they need from reluctant fathers?

An extensive study published in AARP magazine found that 46 percent of men reported cheating on their partners. Again, reality. What if these men impregnate the women they are having affairs with? How will this affect their wives, their children?

Do you believe men are suddenly going to stop having affairs because there is a new anti-abortion law? I told you my abuser was young and married with two little babies. Imagine his wife, a young mother herself, having to deal not only with her cheating husband, but the publicity in a small town that he had abused a 16-year-old child who might now be pregnant and having his baby. How might this have destroyed her life and her children’s lives?

Now multiply this over and over and over and over again, and think about your own 16-year-old daughters, your little girls ages 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 …

Our constitutional rights are on the ballot this November. If passed, Kentucky’s Amendment 2 would block the right to abortion, no matter the reason, including rape, incest, and life of the mother. Do we want judges and politicians making the most difficult, life-changing, sometimes shame-filled medical decisions for us and our loved ones? The answer is no.

You have the right to privacy and the right to make your own choices, which are hard enough without government interference.

Their choices — your choices — are nobody’s business.

I beg you to vote NO on Kentucky’s Amendment 2 in November.

Teri Carter is a writer in Anderson County.

WHY WE NEED A SOCIALIST REVOLUTION

Melinda French Gates on her foundation’s shocking findings that gender equality won’t happen for 100 years: ‘Money is power’

Hillary Hoffower

Tue, September 13, 2022 

For Melinda French Gates, hope looks like the group of female scientists leading breakthrough research in Africa by running a surveillance system to pick up diseases. Or the Senegal woman who started a business recycling tires found on the streets into synthetic turf. Or the female cofounder of a Kenyan organization who partners with women running informal day cares to make them more accessible to low-income families.

French Gates has met with all these women, she tells Fortune in an interview, and their stories are her shining beacons of light in a world where gender equality remains in the shadows.

“When I see women achieving their dreams in science, or as businesswomen, and supporting other women, that keeps me hopeful,” she says. “It helps me know we actually can make progress.”

Such optimism is needed. The UN General Assembly set a goal in 2015 to achieve global gender equality by 2030 as part of its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—ambitious objectives focused on “peace and prosperity.” But now at the halfway point, the world is nowhere close to accomplishing it.

So reveals the 2022 Goalkeepers Report released today by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which regularly assesses the progress the world has made toward achieving the SDGs. With insights from data partner Equal Measures 2030, the foundation estimates that gender equality won’t be a feasible reality until 2108 at the earliest—three generations later than they hoped.

Gender equality is “falling further and further out of reach,” French Gates writes in the report. She adds that development experts knew the world wasn’t on track to reach this goal by 2030 when they first put the goal into writing, but progress has stalled in large part because of the pandemic.

It took an incalculable toll not just on women’s health but on their livelihoods, French Gates says, adding that many were pushed out of the formal sector and lost their jobs in the informal sector. Consider that the labor force participation rate among women worldwide is 47%, whereas it’s 72% for men, per the report. That’s a 25% gap to parity.

But the pandemic is a “cop-out” in French Gates’ eyes. The real problem is that the world hasn’t focused enough on gender equality, she writes, adding that “when it does, it treats symptoms, not the cause.”

It’s why “gender-neutral” events like the pandemic end up exacerbating the gender chasm, she says, pointing to economic inequality as a root cause: The World Bank reported that pre-pandemic, the difference in expected lifetime earnings between women and men globally totaled $172.3 trillion, double the world’s annual GDP.

While efforts to close the gap have long focused on “empowering” women, Gates says that’s where we’re missing the mark—lasting gender equality instead relies on women actually gaining power. She spoke with Fortune about the three key areas of women’s power that are crucial to establish first.

Education, contraceptives, and money

The roots of women’s inequality begin during childhood. Unicef finds that 129 million girls are out of school worldwide, with only 49% of countries achieving gender parity in primary education.

“Young girls need to be educated,” French Gates says. “With your education, you can unlock doors.”

But to live your dreams, she continues, women “need to have access to contraceptives so they can decide whether to have children and space them.”

Projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a research center at the University of Washington and a Gates Foundation partner, suggest that 77.9% of women ages 15 to 49 will have their family planning needs met with modern methods by 2030—short of the 100% an SDG is aiming for. That’s slightly less than the 78.4% of women who fell into that cohort in 2021, signifying a slowdown in progress for reproductive health care services over the next decade.

The third key is money. “When women have economic means in their own hands—not just cash, but in an account that they control—it unlocks all kinds of things for their lives,” French Gates says.

She’s placed great importance on helping women access digital bank accounts, particularly in lower-income countries where their access to new technology is often limited. It’s a tool we didn’t have 15 years ago, she says, accessible via smartphone or even an old plastic cell phone.

Even saving $1 or $2 a day via a digital bank account gives women power, she explains: feeding her family, sending her kids to school, building credit, investing in a business. Women worldwide have told French Gates that having these economic opportunities changed others’ perceptions of them, from their mothers-in-law to their husbands.

“Money is power, and that is a huge tool for women,” French Gates says. But, she adds, women can’t often get there if they don’t have some form of education and if they don’t have so many children.

French Gates believes progress is possible for gender equality and the other 16 SDGs considering the substantial progress the world has made with past goals, from a decline in malaria deaths to widespread HIV treatment. But the pandemic and other conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine and the reversal of women’s rights in the U.S. and Afghanistan, have set the world back.

“What hangs in the balance is millions of people not going hungry or living a healthy life and having their full potential,” she says. “But the world's got to make investments now. We’re going to get back on track, and we have a lot of catching up to do.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Astrobotic expands with acquisition of Masten Space Systems

Aria Alamalhodaei

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic has acquired Masten Space Systems after the latter company filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of July. The acquisition comes following a successful $4.5 million bid for Masten’s assets in a Delaware bankruptcy court earlier this month.

The acquisition includes Masten’s substantial portfolio of space technologies, including its vertical take-off and landing rocketry and propulsion test centers. The acquisition brings the two companies’ combined workforce to over 200 employees, some of whom will continue to operate at Masten’s headquarters in Mojave, California. Founder and CTO of Masten, David Masten, is joining Astrobotic as chief engineer.

Astrobotic said it would continue suborbital flight operations at Masten’s facilities in Mojave, while continuing development of the Xogdor rocket. This rocket, the newest of Masten’s terrestrial landers, can be used by government and commercial customers to validate technologies like payload integration and landing systems. Masten also maintains propulsion test stands, which will continue to operate under new ownership.

“Masten’s suborbital launch vehicles and propulsion test centers are national assets for the space industry,” Astrobotic CEO John Thornton said in a statement. “We are excited to operate and expand these services for companies, governments, and space agencies internationally,”

Masten is also developing a series of lunar landers, and Astrobotic -- which is sending two landers to the moon under contracts with NASA -- will undoubtedly benefit from the influx of related tech. That includes “innovations in lunar night survival, instant landing pads construction, lunar water mining technology, and lunar infrastructure construction technologies,” which will continue to be developed, Astrobotic said.

It is unclear whether Astrobotic will fulfill Masten’s first lunar mission, Masten Mission 1. That mission, which is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, is scheduled for 2023.

The Delaware bankruptcy court held an auction for Masten’s assets on September 6. Two companies submitted additional bids: Intuitive Machines, which bid $2.7 million for a SpaceX launch credit, and $750,000 for testing equipment from Impulse Space.

NASA's science chief Zurbuchen to step down by year's end

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's science chief who oversaw some of the U.S. space agency's ambitious endeavors including the successful deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope and Perseverance Mars rover, is set to step down at the end of the year.

The Swiss-American astrophysicist has served as head of NASA's science mission directorate since 2016, shepherding the agency's roughly 100 such missions. He announced his planned departure in a memo sent to NASA employees on Tuesday.

"This is a difficult decision for me, but I believe it is time for a new beginning - for the directorate and for me," Zurbuchen wrote.

His planned departure comes as NASA focuses heavily on sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually to Mars under its multibillion-dollar Artemis program begun in 2019.

Zurbuchen led the science directorate as it sent NASA's Perseverance rover to the Martian surface, where it has collected rock samples to study whether that planet once may have had conditions conducive to life. The rover's mission also included the flight of a helicopter on another planet for the first time.

NASA launched the Webb telescope, the most powerful space observatory ever built, last December, and in July it began to provide spectacular images of the cosmos.

Zurbuchen's unit played an early role in Artemis with its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an effort to deploy privately built lunar landers to study the moon's surface before people land there in the next few years.

He also played a crucial role in starting NASA's first-known effort to examine unidentified aerial phenomena - better known as UFOs - assembling a team of civilian scientists to assist a Pentagon program in tracking and detecting mysterious objects in the sky.

"From the diversity of the team he assembled, to delivering countless successful space science missions that have changed our view of the universe, to investing in new and better ways of accomplishing space science goals and growing the overall community, Thomas has been a force for positive change across NASA," said Bobby Braun, the head of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab's space exploration sector.

Senator Ted Cruz confronted on plane by heckler who asked him to name one Uvalde victim, video shows

Alia Shoaib

Sat, September 17, 2022 

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, listens during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson before the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday, March 21, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

• A heckler on a plane asked Texas Senator Ted Cruz to name one victim of the Uvalde school shooting.

• Cruz instead talked about his failed school safety bill.

• Since the Uvalde school shooting in Texas in May, Cruz has resisted calls to support gun control measures.

Senator Ted Cruz was confronted by a heckler who asked him to name one victim of the mass school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

A video posted on Twitter by the heckler shows the man confronting the Texas senator on a plane.

The man starts by sarcastically thanking the Republican for "everything you've done since Uvalde." "All those podcast episodes must have raised a lot of money," he said.

 

Cruz responds by talking about his proposed school safety bill, blocked on the Senate floor on Wednesday. Cruz had asked for unanimous consent, which means that any opposition stopped the bill from passing.

Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, had derided Cruz and his legislation as "theater" and not an "actual attempt to pass legislation."

In the video, the heckler then asks Cruz whether he knows any of the names of the Uvalde victims.

"I do. And ask why Chris Murphy objected and stopped the biggest school safety bill that's ever passed yesterday," Cruz responded.

The heckler ignores Cruz's comment and asks him to name any Uvalde victim agains.

"But you don't kno. You don't care about the facts. You're a partisan, that's okay," Cruz says before turning away.

The poster shared the video on Twitter along with a message of support for Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke for governor of Texas.

Since the Uvalde school shooting took place in May, Cruz has resisted calls to support gun control measures.

The parents of Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, a 10-year-old killed in the Uvalde shooting, said they asked Cruz in a private meeting on Wednesday to support a federal ban on semi-automatic weapons.

"Instead, he said he supports increasing law enforcement presence on school campuses," Kimberly Mata-Rubio, the bereaved mother, wrote on Twitter.

Haiti unrest worsens misery as residences face water shortage
 

Sat, September 17, 2022

PORT AU PRINCE (Reuters) - Thousands in Haiti faced water shortages after days of protest virtually halted distribution, eyewitnesses said on Saturday, as an approaching storm caused more worry in the reeling country.

Many residents of Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince have been forced to shelter at home this week as gunfire broke out and burning tires blocked streets during protests of fuel price hikes and crime.

That slowed or halted companies that typically deliver water in the city where daily highs have been hitting 34 degrees centigrade (93 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many took advantage of an expected half day truce to rush to distribution centers to stockpile a few days supply of water and cooking gas, which has also run short in many places.

Fears about the approach of tropical storm Fiona also fueled the rush to get water. Forecasters said the storm's heaviest rains were more likely to hit the Dominican Republic on the east of Hispaniola island.

Jean-Denis Sévère, a resident of Fort National, said many had to travel miles to fill buckets and bottles, then lug them back home.

"I live in Fort National, since there are blockades in the country, we came here to buy water. If it was not for these places, we would die from thirst," he said.

The country's latest unrest came as inflation surged to its highest in a decade and gang violence has left hundreds dead and thousands displaced, with much of Haiti's territory beyond government reach.

Richardson Adrien, a Port-au-Prince resident, told Reuters the lack of potable water was just the latest headache. Residents in recent months have also struggled to find fuel, leaving some unable to work.

Finding clear water "is a problem. We look for it everywhere and we can't find it. We put Clorox in the water to be able to drink it, you can't find water," he said.

The Haitian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Steven Aristil; Writing by Carolina Pulice; Editing by David Gregorio)

5 / 5

Cleanup day comes to Philippine capital's polluted bay

Filipino environmentalists hold cleanup drive on international coastal cleanup day

Sat, September 17, 2022
By Peter Blaza and Jay Ereño

MANILA (Reuters) - Hundreds of volunteers joined a mass cleanup drive along the coast of the polluted Manila Bay in the Philippine capital to mark International Coastal Cleanup Day on Saturday.

Volunteers and government workers, including hundreds of coast guard personnel, collected sachets, rubber slippers and other non-biodegradable waste that have been washed in the Manila Bay, a 60 km (37 mile) semi-enclosed estuary facing the South China Sea.

"This initiative will help make our coastal area in Manila Bay better so that our tourists and visitors will see the beauty of the bay," college student Kendrick Lopez, 18, told Reuters during the cleanup drive.

Waters along the Manila Bay, famous for its idyllic sunsets, are heavily polluted by oil, grease and trash from nearby residential areas and ports.

The Philippines is rich in marine resources, with nearly 36,300 km (22,555 miles) of coastline in the archipelago of more than 7,600 islands.

But it is the world's top polluter when it comes to releasing plastic waste into the ocean, accounting for roughly a third the total, according to an April 2022 report by the University of Oxford's Our World in Data, a scientific online publication.

"We need to do these (cleanup drives) for our environment and to discourage people from throwing trash on the seaside," Janet Panganiban, a 36-year-old volunteer, told Reuters.

Critics say laws regulating solid waste are inadequate and poorly enforced, leaving governments and communities struggling to address the pollution crisis.

The International Coastal Cleanup Day is held every third Saturday of September to raise awareness of the growing garbage problems affecting coastlines around the world.

(Reporting by Jay Ereno and Peter Blaza; Writing by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

Cleanup day comes to Philippine capital's polluted bay




 

Majority of Latino Voters Out of GOP's Reach, New Poll Shows

Jennifer Medina, Jazmine Ulloa and Ruth Igielnik

The New York Times

Sun, September 18, 2022 

Amelia Alonso Tarancon, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago, 

at her home near Fort Lauderdale, Sept. 16, 2022. 

(Saul Martinez/The New York Times)

It has been nearly two years since Donald Trump made surprising gains with Hispanic voters. But Republican dreams of a major realignment of Latino voters drawn to GOP stances on crime and social issues have failed to materialize, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.

The poll — one of the largest nonpartisan surveys of Latino voters since the 2020 election — found that Democrats had maintained a grip on the majority of Latino voters, driven in part by women and the belief that Democrats remained the party of the working class. Overall, Hispanic voters are more likely to agree with Democrats on many issues — immigration, gun policy, climate. They are also more likely to see Republicans as the party of the elite and as holding extreme views. And a majority of Hispanic voters, 56%, plan to vote for Democrats this fall, compared with 32% for Republicans.

But the survey also shows worrying signs for the future of the Democratic message. Despite that comfortable lead, the poll finds Democrats faring far worse than they did in the years before the 2020 election. Younger male Hispanic voters, especially those in the South, appear to be drifting away from the party, a shift that is propelled by deep economic concerns. Weaknesses in the South and among rural voters could stand in the way of crucial wins in Texas and Florida in this year’s midterms.

Anthony Saiz, 24, who reviews content for a social media platform in Tucson, Arizona, said he had to take on a second job baking pizzas at a beer garden to make ends meet. Saiz voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and considers himself a Democrat because he grew up in a Democratic household. But under Biden, he said, the cost of living seemed to have doubled for him even as he moved into a smaller apartment.

“The choices he has been making for the country have been putting me in a bad spot,” he said of the president.

How Latinos will vote is a crucial question in the November elections and for the future of American politics. Hispanic voters are playing a pivotal role in the battle over control of Congress, making up a significant slice of voters — as high as 20% — in two of the states likeliest to determine control of the Senate, Arizona and Nevada. Latinos also make up more than 20% of registered voters in more than a dozen highly competitive House races in California, Colorado, Florida and Texas, among other states.

Democrats have long assumed that the growing Latino electorate would doom Republicans, and the prospect of an increasingly diverse electorate has fueled anxieties among conservatives. The 2020 election results — in which Trump gained an estimated 8 percentage points among Hispanic voters compared with 2016 — began changing both parties’ outlooks. The Times/Siena poll shows that historic allegiances and beliefs on core issues remain entrenched, although some shifts are striking.

Although majorities of Hispanic voters side with Democrats on social and cultural issues, sizable shares hold beliefs aligned with Republicans: More than one-third of Hispanic voters say they agree more with the GOP on crime and policing, and 4 in 10 Hispanic voters have concerns that the Democratic Party has gone too far on race and gender. Hispanic voters view economic issues as the most important factor determining their vote this year and are evenly split on which party they agree with more on the economy.

Hispanic voters in America have never been a unified voting bloc and have frequently puzzled political strategists who try to understand their behavior. The 32 million Latinos eligible to vote are recent immigrants and fourth-generation citizens, city dwellers and rural ranchers, Catholics and atheists.

Both parties have been full of bluster and soaring expectations for Latino voters, raising and spending millions of dollars to attract their support, but there has been little concrete nonpartisan data to back up their speculation. The survey offers insights into a portion of the electorate that many strategists have called the new swing vote and whose views are often complicated by contradictions among subgroups.

Dani Bernal, 35, a digital marketer and entrepreneur in Los Angeles, said she switched back and forth between candidates from both parties, in large part based on their economic policies. Her mother, she said, had arrived in Florida from Bolivia with only a bag of clothes and $500 to her name, and had been able to thrive there because taxes were low and the cost of living had been affordable. Economic issues loom large in her decisions, Bernal said.

“I am registered as a Republican, but I am exactly like Florida: I swing back-and-forth,” she said.

Republicans are performing best with Hispanic voters who live in the South, a region that includes Florida and Texas, where Republicans have notched significant wins with Latino voters in recent elections. In the South, 46% of Latino voters say they plan to vote for Democrats, while 45% say they plan to vote for Republicans. By contrast, Democrats lead 62% to 24% among Hispanic voters in other parts of the country.

A generation gap could also lead to more Republican gains. Democrats, the poll found, were benefiting from particularly high support among older Latino voters. But 46% of voters younger than 30 favor Republicans’ handling of the economy, compared with 43% who favor Democrats.

Republicans also have strength among Latino men, who favor Democrats in the midterm election but who say, by a 5-point margin, that they would vote for Trump if he were to run again in 2024. Young men in particular appear to be shifting toward Republicans. They are a key vulnerability for Democrats, who maintain just a 4-point edge in the midterms among men younger than 45.

The Times/Siena poll provides a glimpse of Latino voters who have traditionally supported Democrats in the past but plan to vote for Republicans this fall: They are disproportionately voters without college degrees who are focused on the economy, and they are more likely to be young, male and born in the United States but living in heavily Hispanic areas.

Immigration remains a key issue for Hispanic voters, and both parties have a particular appeal. While Democrats have pushed for overhauling the legal immigration system and providing a path to citizenship for many immigrants living in the country illegally, Republicans have focused on cracking down on illegal immigration and using border politics to galvanize their base.

Democrats maintain a significant advantage on the issue of legal immigration, with 55% of Hispanic voters saying they agree with the party, compared with 29% who say they agree with Republicans. But the GOP has made inroads as it has stepped up anti-immigration rhetoric and policy: 37% of Latino voters favor Republicans’ views on illegal immigration. And roughly one-third support a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Amelia Alonso Tarancon, 69, who emigrated from Cuba 14 years ago and now lives outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wants Congress to offer legal status to workers living in the country illegally who have been in the country for decades. But she agrees with Republicans on their hard-line views against illegal immigration. The issue motivated her to vote for Trump, although she is a registered Democrat.

“I know this country is a country of immigrants, but they should immigrate in a legal way,” she said. But Alonso Tarancon said she no longer supported the former president after he refused to hand over the presidency, fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and “took all those documents” to Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida.

“I don’t consider myself a Democrat or Republican — I am on standby right now until the next election,” she said.

In their effort to attract new voters, Republicans have frequently criticized Democrats as being too “woke.” The accusation resonates with many Hispanic voters, with 40% saying that the party has gone too far in pushing a “woke” ideology on race and gender. But there is a clear split: 37% take the opposite view and say the party has not gone far enough. And nearly 1 in 5 Hispanic voters surveyed said they didn’t know whether Democrats were too woke — a term that cannot be easily translated into Spanish.

On many social and cultural issues, Hispanic voters remain aligned with the Democratic Party.

The majority, 58%, have a favorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, while 45% say the same about the Blue Lives Matter movement, which defends law enforcement personnel. A majority believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; even among Republican Hispanics, 4 in 10 oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Support for Black Lives Matter and abortion rights is propelled largely by young people. Asked whom they agreed with more on gun policy, 49% said Democrats, while 34% said Republicans.

Republicans attempting to court Latino voters have repeatedly painted Democrats as elitist and out of touch, but the poll suggests that the strategy is having limited success.

Nearly 6 in 10 Hispanic voters continue to see the Democrats as the party of the working class. Although white Republicans uniformly see themselves as the working-class party, even some Hispanic Republicans believe that mantle belongs to Democrats. And there was no evidence in the poll that Republicans were performing any better among non-college-educated Latinos or among Hispanics who lived in rural areas, two key demographic groups they have focused on for outreach. One in 4 Hispanic voters in rural areas remain undecided about whom they will vote for in November.

Democrats have been roundly criticized for their embrace of the term Latinx, which is meant to be more inclusive than the gendered words Latino and Latina. Previous surveys have shown only a small minority of Hispanic voters prefer the term. But the poll suggests that Latinx is hardly the most polarizing issue; just 18% said they found the term offensive.

—

POLL METHODOLOGY: The Times/Siena survey of 1,399 registered voters nationwide, including an oversample of 522 Hispanic voters, was conducted by telephone using live operators from Sept. 6-14. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points for the full sample and 5.9 percentage points among Hispanic voters. Cross-tabs and methodology are available for all registered voters and for Hispanic voters are available at nytimes.com.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Saudi Arabia arrests man over pilgrimage for Queen Elizabeth

Tue, September 13, 2022 at 5:27 AM·1 min read

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi police arrested a Yemeni man this week after he advertised on social media his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he paid tribute to the memory of Queen Elizabeth II.

The pilgrim, who was not identified by name, had posted footage earlier this week that showed him holding a banner honoring the late queen from inside the courtyard of Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

The clip quickly spread online, sparking outrage among devout Muslims and leading to the man's arrest on Monday for “violating the regulations and instructions” of the holy site. Security forces referred him to the public prosecutor to face charges.

The Grand Mosque, among the holiest sites in Islam, is off-limits to non-Muslims. Saudi Arabia also bans signs and political slogans from the sacred courtyard for fear of offending Islamic sensibilities. Queen Elizabeth, who died last week, was head of the Church of England.


“Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, may Allah grant her peace in heaven and accept her among the righteous,” the banner read in English and Arabic.

The mosque's white-and-gray marble complex is visible behind the Yemeni man. Umrah is the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca, which can performed at any time of the year.

Phony document riddled with spelling and syntax errors mysteriously appeared on Mar-a-Lago court docket

Published: Sept. 17, 2022 

Associated Press

An aerial view of the Mar-a-Lago club on Aug. 31

. AP/STEVE HELBER

WASHINGTON (AP) — When a government document mysteriously appeared earlier this week in the highest profile case in the federal court system, it had the hallmarks of another explosive storyline in the Justice Department’s investigation into classified records stored at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate.

The document purported to be from the U.S. Treasury Department, claimed that the agency had seized sensitive documents related to last month’s search at Mar-a-Lago and included a warrant ordering CNN to preserve “leaked tax records.”


The document remained late Thursday on the court docket, but it is a clear fabrication. A review of dozens of court records and interviews by the Associated Press suggest the document originated with a serial forger behind bars at a federal prison complex in North Carolina.

The incident also suggests that the court clerk was easily tricked into believing it was real, landing the document on the public docket in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant case. It also highlights the vulnerability of the U.S. court system and raises questions about the court’s vetting of documents that purport to be official records.

The document first appeared on the court’s docket late Monday afternoon and was marked as a “MOTION to Intervene by U.S. Department of the Treasury.”

The document, sprinkled with spelling and syntax errors, read, “The U.S. Department of Treasury through the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service have arrested Seized Federal Securities containing sensitive documents which are subject to the Defendant Sealed Search Warrant by the F.B.I. arrest.”

It cited a federal statute for collecting financial records in federal investigations. The document also included the two supposed warrants, one that claimed to be sent to CNN in Atlanta and another to a towing company in Michigan.

Those supposed warrants, though, are identical to paperwork filed in another case in federal court in Georgia brought by an inmate at the prison medical center in Butner, N.C. The case was thrown out, as were the array of other frivolous lawsuits the man has filed from his prison cell.

The man has been in custody for several years since he was found not competent to stand trial after an arrest for planting a fake explosive outside the Guardian Building, a skyscraper in Detroit. Since his incarceration, he has filed a range of lawsuits and has impersonated the Treasury Department, claimed to be a federal trustee and claimed to be a lawyer for the Justice Department, a review of court records shows.

In the Georgia case, the man alleged that Trump and others had “acquired ‘millions of un- redacted classified tax returns and other sensitive financial data, bank records and accounts of banking and tax transactions of several million’ Americans and federal government agencies,” court documents say.

The judge in that case called his suit “fanatic” and “delusional,” saying there was no way to “discern any cognizable claim” from the incoherent filings.

The man has repeatedly impersonated federal officials in court records and has placed tax liens on judges using his false paperwork, two people familiar with the matter told the AP. Because of his history as a forger, his mail is supposed to be subjected to additional scrutiny from the Bureau of Prisons.

It’s unclear how the documents — the fake motion and the phony warrants — ended up at the court clerk’s office at the courthouse in West Palm Beach, Fla.

A photocopy of an envelope, included in the filing, shows it was sent to the court with a printed return address of the Treasury Department’s headquarters in Washington. But a postmark shows a Michigan ZIP code, and a tracking number on the envelope shows it was mailed Sept. 9 from Clinton Township, Mich., the inmate’s hometown.

The AP is not identifying the inmate by name because he has a documented history of mental illness and has not been charged with a crime related to the filing.
“There is simply nothing indicating that he has any authorization to act on behalf of the United States,” the judge in the Georgia case wrote.

But despite the clear warning signs — including a stamp noting the Georgia case number on the phony warrants — the filing still made its way onto the docket.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the Treasury Department would not comment. They declined to answer on the record when asked if the document was false and why the government had not addressed it.

Representatives in the court clerk’s office and the magistrate judge overseeing the search warrant case did not respond to requests for comment.