Some QAnon believers are enraged by Trump's 2024 announcement and have started ignoring 'Q drops.' But experts say the movement is as fervent as ever.

Alia Shoaib
Sun, November 20, 2022

A Trump supporters holds up a large QAnon sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018.Rick Loomis/Getty Images

Many QAnon believers reacted angrily to Trump's 2024 announcement as it negated their election fraud beliefs.

Q-aligned candidates did badly at the midterms, and recent "Q drops" failed to make a stir.

But experts told Insider why the movement is as strong as ever.

When former President Donald Trump announced that he was planning to run for president in 2024, there was confusion and anger in the extremist QAnon community.

The QAnon conspiracy movement, which is based around the belief that Trump is secretly working to expose a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles that run the world, has in recent years grown to become a part of mainstream politics.

While many QAnon believers reacted to his long-anticipated announcement with excitement, some voiced their anger, because it implied he was accepting that he lost the 2020 election – something he and his most ardent supporters have spent the last two years rejecting.

"Hey you guys, the elections are all rigged… But [vote] for me again! This is literally 1984-tier doublethink," one user wrote on 8kun, according to screenshots posted on Twitter.

"He just conceded 2020 election we're just gonna skip over the 2020 and 2022 fraud," another user wrote on Telegram. "There's no justice for treason, there's no justice for crimes against humanity."



The QAnon movement was already on the back foot. The midterm elections were a failure for the conspiracy theory movement, as dozens of candidates aligned with it lost their races for Congress and high-ranking state offices.

And earlier this month, the latest posts by the so-called "Q" on the forum 8kun were met with a lukewarm response.

All of this could be taken as evidence that the movement is losing steam. However, experts believe this is far from the case – and that it is simply evolving and changing shape.

"It's becoming much more mainstream and less devoted to the mythology of Q itself," Mike Rothschild, a QAnon expert who wrote "The Storm is Upon Us," told Insider.

"It certainly still venerates Trump, but a lot of people think Q itself was just a big dead end. The mainstream has embraced the conspiracy theories about the stolen election, COVID being a hoax, etcetera."
One in five Americans believe in the core tenets of QAnon

While it is hard to track how widespread belief in QAnon is, the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute published a study in February that found that nearly one in five Americans believes in its core tenets.

"Our surveys show that QAnon conspiracy theories are not losing popularity over time, despite their championed leader being out of power," said Natalie Jackson, director of research at PRRI, in a press release for the study.

The movement's feverish ideas have contributed to some radicalized individuals committing acts of violence, and others have had their families torn apart and their lives ruined.

Trump's role as a messiah-like figure has long been a key part of QAnon mythology. He has often winked to the movement, increasingly so in recent months, sharing dozens of messages alluding to QAnon on his social media platform Truth Social.

At a Trump rally in September, a song linked to QAnon was played while his supporters raised their index fingers in an unusual salute.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Minden-Tahoe Airport on October 08, 2022 in Minden, Nevada.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

But following his announcement of a third presidential run, many rank-and-file QAnon believers voiced their unhappiness because of its implications for their election fraud beliefs. Moreover, they have long expected him to return to power through "The Storm," which would involve him spearheading a mass arrest of their political enemies and even executions of members of the "Deep State."

Although some are losing faith, some QAnon influencers seem to be throwing their support behind Trump and trying to stub out the bickering. One told followers: "This talk about being angry if he announces a 2024 run needs to cease."

"They're still devoted to him and still worship him as a god figure," Rothschild said. "But some influencers are a little less enthusiastic, essentially starting to give up on the idea of anything good ever happening."

"A few are angry that he's running in 2024 without 'fixing 2020,' as he didn't mention election fraud at all in his announcement. But every time big influencers get mad at Trump, they eventually come around, so they'll be all in on him again soon," he said.
To Q and beyond

The week of the midterm elections, three new "Q drops" appeared. These are cryptic online posts made by an anonymous person called "Q," who claims to be a high-ranking government insider with access to classified information.

The cryptic messages that sparked the conspiracy theory movement were initially posted on the forum 4chan and later moved to the site 8chan which has since been renamed 8kun.

While previous Q drops were met with excitement and flurries of posts from followers scrambling to decode them, the latest drops were largely met with ambivalence.

Fredrick Brennan, who founded 8chan but has since dedicated himself to exposing those behind the Q movement, told Insider that the reaction to the latest Q drops was comparatively "muted" following controversial drops in the summer.

In June of this year, the mysterious Q reappeared after nearly two years of silence. However, observers asserted that the new posts were likely written by Jim Watkins, who owns 8kun, or someone close to him, because of a technical change that was made involving the site's tripcodes, used to identify anonymous users.

People in the movement want action and arrests

Fredrick Brennan and Jim Watkins.YouTube

Brennan, who previously worked closely with Watkins and his son Ron, played a key role in linking Watkins to the new posts at the time.

"In June, there was a big negative reaction. This month, due to that negative reaction, the reaction was basically, you know, muted, who cares," Brennan told Insider.

The father and son duo have long been suspected of being behind QAnon, but they have both denied it.

Another reason why the drops have lost their allure is the long periods of Q's absence.

"Q can't really sustain itself with a few drops every few months," Rothschild said. "And the new drops just have nothing interesting to say and are almost certainly being written or posted by 8kun owner Jim Watkins. People in the movement want action and arrests, not more cryptic questions and rhetorical nonsense."
The power of QAnon influencers

The momentum is now with QAnon influencers, who gained prominence in decoding and translating Q drops and have gone on to amass tens of thousands of followers.

High-profile offshoots include the group led by Michael Protzman, who goes by the username Negative48, and who led his followers to camp out in Dallas with the bizarre promise that John F. Kennedy would reappear. Needless to say, the assassinated former president never showed up.

Michael Brian Protzman, also know as Negative48 and the supposed leader of a QAnon cult, talks with supporters before a rally for former President Donald Trump in Wilmington, North Carolina on September 23, 2022.Madeline Gray for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Many of these influencers act as interpreters and gatekeepers for their followers, picking and choosing which theories and drops they consider to be canonical and worth paying attention to.

Brennan said that he believes these influencers are enjoying the freedom and power they have in a post-Q world.

"They realized that they had a lot more power in a world without Q. In the past, influencers could lose thousands of followers overnight if Q said something that was against one of their pet theories," Brennan said.

However, Rothschild believes that many of the splinter groups like Negative48's are "too weird and outside the norm" for most believers to go along with. "It's all very much in flux without Q to guide the movement," he said.

It remains to be seen how the movement will respond to Trump's third presidential campaign and whether he will be selected as the Republican nominee for 2024.

Despite Q's predictions having not come to fruition, many believers appear to be undeterred in their faith – although it is unclear how long they will wait for the storm that never arrives.

Republicans Lost the Races Where They Spent the Most

Roger Sollenberger
Thu, November 17, 2022 

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty

Pay Dirt is a weekly foray into the pigpen of political funding. 

While the midterm elections dashed Republican hopes for a “red wave,” the green wave wasn’t much more kind to them either.

The Daily Beast reviewed the most expensive House and Senate races in the country, and found that, with a few exceptions, Republican candidates were on the losing end.

Republicans lost three of the five most expensive Senate races, per CRP data, with Democrats clinching the top three—Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. (The Georgia contest, where Sen. Raphael Warnock received the most votes, is headed to a runoff.)

While Republicans are now projected to win a slim majority in the House—far below their expectations—Democrats took all five of the most expensive races, according to CRP data.

Republicans also came up short in outside spending. The top two outside spending groups of the midterms, per CRP, were super PACs aligned with Republican Senate and House leadership, with their Democratic counterparts coming in third and fourth.

GOP Gets Its Consolation Prize: A Bare-Bones House Majority

Those two GOP groups alone had spent nearly $400 million on their efforts to take back the legislature just ahead of the election, where Republicans were favored to win. But Democrats—whose top two super PACs had only spent $225 million—defied the odds in the House and held their Senate majority, and they can still pick up a seat in Georgia.

The GOP’s Senate Leadership Fund super PAC alone spent nearly as much as its Democratic counterparts combined. It invested ads most heavily in Georgia ($39 million), with Pennsylvania (lost) and North Carolina (won) next.

Overall, the Senate money wasn’t evenly distributed, with wide gaps across the most expensive races.

The most costly battle overall—Pennsylvania—commanded a total of $374.4 million in spending, according to CRP data. That’s about $90 million more than the second-most expensive race, in Georgia; the tenth-most expensive, Missouri, only saw $65 million in spending—or about 17 percent as much as Pennsylvania.

The Republican Senate victories, however, are notable, because Democratic candidates—who have outraised Republicans this year—put more cash into most of those races, but still lost. Democrats saw this phenomenon in some marquee 2020 contests, where top-money draws like South Carolina’s Jamie Harrison and Kentucky’s Amy McGrath both came up short in the vote count that year.

The two most glaring discrepancies this time around were Val Demings in Florida (raising $72.3 million to Sen. Marco Rubio’s $46.6 million) and Tim Ryan in Ohio, who outraised his opponent J.D. Vance nearly four-to-one.

How J.D. Vance Found a Way to Love Trump and Win in Ohio

To some extent, the outcomes reflect widely reported GOP concerns this summer that Senate candidates in critical battleground states were struggling to raise money. Those concerns sparked a political budget crisis, with party leaders fighting over who was to blame and who could help make up the difference as the campaigns headed into the home stretch.

That air support was scattered. Where SLF focused on Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina, the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent more money on ads in Arizona ($9 million, per Politico) than any other state. The GOP candidate there, venture capitalist Blake Masters, failed to raise much money—$12.1 million as of Oct. 19, compared to Sen. Mark Kelly’s $81.8 million—and lost the election by more than five points.

But Republicans fared much worse in the House. While the GOP still eked out a majority, they haven’t won a single seat in the top 10 most expensive races, though two of them still remain too close to call as of this writing. The GOP’s Congressional Leadership Fund outspent its Democratic counterpart $188.1 million to $93.6 million to get there.

The total cost of the 2022 midterms is staggering. The Center for Responsive Politics projected the amount to exceed $16.7 billion—more than double the price tag in 2018. And with that much money on the line, blame spreads quickly.

The disappointment among Republicans has sent a shockwave through party ranks. Republicans now face a leadership crisis in both houses, including internal challenges to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

And to an extent, the crisis reflects the financial crisis that reared its head this summer. McCarthy, the top fundraiser in the House, now finds his presumed speakership at risk from a fractious, fiscally hawkish Freedom Caucus. And McConnell, aligned with SLF, has survived a challenge from NRSC leader Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

But Scott is taking flak, too. On Tuesday, Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) called for an audit of the NRSC’s midterm spending. Scott welcomed the prospect, and said he had worked to reform previous failures since taking over in 2021.

“When that’s your starting point, you work really hard to make sure there are transparent processes, and we are more than happy to sit down with any member of the caucus to walk them through our spending,” he said.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Trumps had role in fraud scheme, former exec testifies at company's trial

Graham Kates

Thu, November 17, 2022 

Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg testified in court Thursday, describing how Donald Trump and two of his children allegedly participated in a scheme to defraud tax authorities.

Weisselberg said Donald Trump, or at times Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr., signed checks to pay up to $100,000 for private school tuition for Weisselberg's grandchildren. Weisselberg said he then instructed the company's controller to deduct the $100,000 from his salary, allowing him to report a smaller income. Copies of some of the checks signed by the Trumps have been shown in court.

Weisselberg said the first time Trump signed a tuition check, Weisselberg told him, "Don't forget, I'm going to pay you back for this." The payback, he said, was the salary reduction.

Two Trump Organization entities and Weisselberg are accused of more than a dozen counts of fraud and tax evasion. Weisselberg entered a guilty plea in August, admitting to charges filed by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office accusing him of receiving more than $1.7 million in untaxed compensation.

Weisselberg, who is still on the Trump Organization's payroll, has over the first two days of testimony described a litany of benefits he and several other executives received for which he said their salaries were similarly reduced to avoid paying taxes.

He said for himself and several other executives, the salary reductions were then mitigated by hefty bonus checks paid to the executives as if they were independent contractors for Trump Organization entities.

"Donald Trump always wanted to sign the bonus checks" before he became president in 2017, Weisselberg said.

That practice ceased during the next two years after an internal review led to changes at the company, he said.

"We were going through a company-wide cleanup process, making sure that since Mr. Trump was now president, everything was being done properly," Weisselberg said.

Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg testifies at the company's trial on fraud charges in New York. / Credit: Jane Rosenberg

Defense attorney Alan Futerfas later asked Weisselberg, "(Trump) didn't authorize you to commit tax fraud did he?"

"Of course not," Weisselberg replied.

Weisselberg said the funds delivered as independent contractor payments were used to set up Keogh retirement plans, tax-deferred pension accounts designed for people who are self-employed.

Defense attorneys for the Trump Organization have said the company did nothing wrong, and laid the scheme squarely at Weisselberg's feet, saying he hid the salary reductions and independent contractor payments from the Trumps.

Futerfas asked Weisselberg, "What human being did you scheme with?"

Weisselberg replied, "Jeff McConney," referring to the company's controller, who previously testified during the trial. McConney was granted immunity in exchange for grand jury testimony in the case, and blamed Weisselberg for the scheme.

Futerfas continued with questions seeking to differentiate the Trumps from the executives who worked beneath them.

"Did you conspire with any member of the Trump family?" Futerfas asked.

"No," Weisselberg replied.

"Did you scheme with Jeff McConney?" Futerfas asked.

"Yes," Weisselberg replied.

"Did you scheme with any member of the Trump family?" Futerfas asked.

"No," Weisselberg replied.

Later, Futerfas asked, "Aside from family members, you were among the most trusted people they knew. Is that right?"

"Correct," Weisselberg replied.

Soon after, Futerfas asked, "Are you embarrassed about what you did?"

Choking up, Weisselberg replied, "More than you can imagine."

Earlier Thursday, Weisselberg said under questioning by a prosecutor that other executives at the company were active participants in, and beneficiaries of, similar salary and bonus arrangements.

Weisselberg described arranging for his son Barry's family to live in a newly-renovated apartment on New York's tony Central Park South. He said the location was convenient for Barry Weisselberg's job as manager of an ice rink and carousel run by the Trump Organization in Central Park. Allen Weisselberg said his son paid $500 out of pocket and $500 from his salary per month to rent the apartment, which he described as a "below market" rate.

At the time, Allen Weisselberg and his wife lived in an $8,200 per month company-owned apartment under a lease agreement signed by Donald Trump himself.

Allen Weisselberg said he provided his son's tax paperwork for preparation to the outside accountant who was in charge of the entire Trump Organization's annual tax account. Allen Weisselberg said his son's reported salary at the time "was probably lower than it should have been."

Peter Stambleck, an attorney for Barry Weisselberg, declined to comment.

Ex-Trump Organization CFO says Trump family was in the dark on tax fraud scheme

Adam Reiss and Tom Winter and Chloe Atkins and Dareh Gregorian

Thu, November 17, 2022 

Former President Donald Trump and his two eldest sons signed the checks the Trump Organization's chief financial officer used to cheat on his taxes, but they didn't know it was fraud, the ex-CFO testified Thursday.

Allen Weisselberg, 75, testified for a second day in the criminal trial of Trump's family business in New York City that the only other person in the company who knew about the tax fraud scheme was its controller, Jeffrey McConney.

Asked by Trump lawyer Alan Futerfas in cross-examination whether Trump or anyone else in the company gave him permission to "commit tax fraud," Weisselberg said, "No."

"Did you conspire with the Trump family?" Futerfas asked. "No," Weisselberg said.

Trump Organization's former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg and attorney Alan Futerfas in the courtroom in New York on Nov. 17, 2022. (Christine Cornell)

Weisselberg also testified he hadn't been taking off-the-books perks to benefit the company — he said he was doing it for himself.

"Your decision not to pay taxes was solely to benefit Allen Weisselberg?" Futerfas asked. "Correct," Weisselberg answered.

He acknowledged the company benefited financially but said, "It was my own personal greed that led to this."

Weisselberg, the prosecution's key witness, was indicted along with the Trump Organization in April of last year in what the government described as a 15-year scheme to cheat the system out of tax money.

Weisselberg pleaded guilty in August and agreed to testify for a lesser sentence. While he was removed as CFO after he was indicted, he testified Tuesday that his duties are largely the same and that he's still making the same amount of money — about $1 million a year.

Weisselberg received $1.76 million in “indirect employee compensation” through the scheme, including a rent-free apartment, expensive cars, private school tuition for his grandchildren and new furniture, prosecutors said in court filings. Other executives got similar perks and were paid bonuses as independent contractors, saving the company payroll taxes.

Weisselberg said Trump was aware of the perks he was getting because he and then later his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump would sign the checks.

Under questioning from Futerfas, Weisselberg said the only person who knew he wasn’t paying the proper taxes on the perks was McConney.

McConney testified last week that Weisselberg as the lone bad actor, calling him a “micromanager” who had to sign off on all financial decisions.

Image: Trump Organization's former Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, left, arrives to the courtroom in New York on Nov. 17, 2022. (Yuki Iwamura / AP)

Weisselberg was the only individual charged in the case. Under the terms of his agreement with prosecutors, he agreed to pay nearly $2 million in taxes, interest and penalties and serve five months in jail, followed by five years of probation. He also agreed “to testify truthfully at the upcoming trial of the Trump Organization” or face up to five to 15 years in prison.

He testified earlier Thursday that the Trump Organization cleaned up its business practices after Trump was elected president because of the extra scrutiny it was under.

"Everyone was looking at our company from every different angle you could think of,” including Trump himself, Weisselberg said.

Futerfas asked him whether he'd broken the family's trust with the fraud. "Yes," Weisselberg answered.

Asked whether he was ashamed of his actions, he replied, "More than you can imagine."

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Trump Ex-CFO Tells Jury He and Others Committed Tax Fraud

Patricia Hurtado and Greg Farrell
Thu, November 17, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, testified that greed fueled a tax fraud scheme he says he engaged in with the firm’s controller and the two Trump companies standing trial.

Weisselberg, the prosecution’s star witness against the two business units, told a jury in Manhattan on Thursday that the scheme, which spanned more than a decade, was driven by the simple determination to evade taxes.

“It was my own personal greed that led to this,” the 75-year-old former CFO said on his second day on the witness stand in New York state court.

Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Payroll Corp., one of the two units, tried to show during his cross-examination that Weisselberg’s machinations were concealed from Donald Trump and his family. Weisselberg, who is still drawing his $640,000 annual salary at the Trump Organization even after pleading guilty in the case this summer, grew emotional when Futerfas asked if he had betrayed the family, for whom he has worked for almost 50 years.

Linchpin of Case

Weisselberg’s admission that he committed his crimes together with the Trump companies is the linchpin of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against them. Donald Trump himself, who isn’t charged, has called the trial a baseless vendetta.

“Given that you were getting about $200,000 in expenses, without it being taxed, wasn’t this a savings to the Trump Corporation, because they saved themselves from having to give you a double raise?” Executive Assistant DA Susan Hoffinger asked Weisselberg.

“The Trump Corporation saved some payroll taxes, yes,” he said. Weisselberg later acknowledged that Trump Corp., the other company of the pair, would have had to award him at least $400,000 more to make up for the taxes he’d owe if his compensation weren’t hidden within perks like luxury cars and high-end housing.

Read More: Trump Firm’s Tax Fraud Trial Promises Ex-CFO as Star Witness

“I committed those crimes with Jeff McConney, who I dealt with directly, and Trump Payroll and the Trump Corporation,” Weisselberg told the jury under questioning by Hoffinger.

Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney, who was the prosecution’s first witness, was granted immunity in exchange for his testimony but proved so evasive on the stand that he was declared a hostile witness.

What About the Trumps?

Weisselberg told the jurors Thursday the scam was already in place when he began working for Trump in 1986.

“Did you scheme with any member of the Trump family?” Futerfas asked in his cross-examination.

“No,” Weisselberg said.

Read More: Trump CFO Got Demotion, ‘Small Birthday Cake’ After His Plea

Weisselberg has admitted that Donald Trump personally paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in private school tuition for the executive’s grandchildren. The former CFO and his wife each got a Mercedes-Benz and an apartment paid for by the Trump companies. Prosecutors say these perks were all part of the fraud.

At one point Weisselberg appeared to help the prosecution significantly when Futerfas asked him whether the Trump companies had benefited from the fraud -- a crucial part of the DA’s case.

“I didn’t do the analysis,” Weisselberg said, “but I knew there was a benefit to the company.”

Yet when asked whether not paying taxes on the perks was his decision alone and solely for his own benefit, Weisselberg said yes.

Emotional Testimony

He grew emotional when Futerfas asked if he had lived up to the trust the Trump Organization had placed in him.

“Did you betray that trust?” Futerfas asked.

“Yes,” Weisselberg said.

“And you did it for your own personal gain?” the lawyer asked.

“Correct,” Weisselberg said.

Read More: Trump Firm’s Fraud Trial Sees Drama as Witness Declared Hostile

The executive -- who has worked for three generations of Trumps, starting under Donald Trump’s father, Fred -- then grew teary, his voice cracking.

“Are you embarrassed by what you did?” Futerfas asked.

“More than you can imagine,” Weisselberg said.

“Ashamed?” the attorney pressed.

“Yes, very much so,” Weisselberg said, his face reddening.

He continues his testimony when the trial resumes Friday.

The case is People v. Trump Organization, 01473-2021, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).

In Announcing 2024 Bid for Presidency, Trump Echoes Old Falsehoods

Linda Qiu
Thu, November 17, 2022


The text of Donald Trump's announcement of His 2024 run. 

(Lazaro Gamio/The New York Times)

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump announced his third bid for the presidency Tuesday night in a speech that was like many others that have come before it: packed full of falsehoods.

Trump uttered the first inaccurate claim about two minutes in: that his administration “built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” That was inaccurate even for recent American history. Annual average growth, even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the economy, was lower under Trump than under Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.

Two minutes later, he ticked off at least four hyperbolic statements about his accomplishments as president. He pointed to drugs coming across the border at “the lowest level in many, many years.” (The total flow of drugs is unknowable.) He claimed to have “finally attained the impossible dream of American energy independence.” (Before Trump took office, the country had been projected to become a net exporter of energy, and it still relies on some imports.) He said that “no president had ever sought or received one dollar for our country from China,” which handed over “hundreds of billions of dollars” under his administration. (His tariffs on Chinese imports have so far raised $161 billion, with much of those tariffs passed onto consumers, and duties had been placed on Chinese imports before he took office.) And he repeated his perennial falsehood of delivering “the biggest” tax cuts in American history. (Several others were larger.)

Over the next hour, Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality.

Here’s a fact-check of some of his remarks:

The Economy and Energy Policy

In Trump’s telling, he had made America “great and glorious” and President Joe Biden “destroyed it.” Not content with accurately pointing out that inflation had soared in recent months to the highest point in decades and gas prices had broken records, Trump embellished even more.

He added: “I expect them to go higher, now that the strategic national reserves, which I filled up, have been virtually drained.”

Trump did not completely fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, nor has Biden almost emptied it. Since the first oil was delivered to the stockpile in 1977, it stored the most oil under President Barack Obama, about 726 million barrels. Under Trump, the amount fluctuated between 634 million and 695 million barrels. Under Biden, it has fallen to about 445 million barrels in August, the month with the most recent figures.

“We will immediately tackle inflation and bring down to a level where it was: We were at zero,” Trump claimed.

The Consumer Price Index was at 1.2% in 2020, the last full year he was in office, and 1.4% in January 2021, his last month as president.

“We were $1.87 a gallon for gasoline. Now it is sitting at $5, $6, $7 and even $8,” Trump exaggerated. “The socialist disaster known as the Green New Deal, which is destroying our country, and the many crippling regulations that it has spawned will be immediately terminated so that our country can again breathe and grow.”

Nationally, the average price for gas was $2.39 a gallon in the last week of January 2021. Last week, it was $3.76. The Green New Deal is a proposal by some Democrats in Congress to tackle climate change, and has not been enacted into law.

Immigration and Border Security

Much as he did in his speech announcing his presidential bid seven years earlier, Trump devoted considerable time to discussing border security.

Several times, he falsely heralded the completion of his long-promised border wall. The Trump administration constructed 453 miles of border wall over four years, and a vast majority of the new barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures. Of that, about 47 miles were new primary barriers. The United States’ southwestern border with Mexico is over 1,900 miles.

“When the wall was finished, that’s how we set all these records,” he claimed.

Apprehensions of unauthorized border crossers had decreased in the 2020 fiscal year, Trump’s last full year in office, to about 400,000. That decline was not because of an incomplete physical wall, but in part because of his hard-line immigration policies and in part because migration and travel had dipped in light of the pandemic. Nor were those figures the lowest recorded. The 2016 and 2015 fiscal years yielded similar numbers: 400,000 and 331,000.

Those figures have increased sharply under Biden to more than 2.3 million in the 2022 fiscal year, breaking records. But an accurate comparison was not stark enough for Trump, who inflated the numbers even more.

“It’s 10 million people coming in, not 3 or 4 million people; they are pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what is happening to our country,” he said, offering no evidence.

Foreign Policy

Trump made several assessments about global conflicts and geopolitics that required further scrutiny.

The Islamic State extremist group, he said, “was decimated by me.” The group suffered territorial losses in 2019, but analysts and Trump’s own military officials warned that ISIS fighters remained an insurgent force in the country. Just last month, U.S. Special Forces carried out major strikes against the group.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “never would have happened if I were your president,” he declared. “Just today, a missile was sent in probably by Russia to Poland, 50 miles into Poland.”

This statement, cautious by Trump’s standards, nonetheless contained an exaggeration. At the time of his remarks, Poland had said a missile most likely made by Russia had killed two citizens about 4 miles — not 50 — from its border with Ukraine, but Poland’s president said there was no conclusive evidence. By Wednesday, Poland and NATO had said the missile was more likely a Ukrainian air defense missile and characterized the explosion as an accident.

Trump also mocked the Biden administration’s and other world leaders’ focus on climate change: “They say the ocean will rise 1/8th of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.” Sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise by 10 to 12 inches in the next 30 years alone.

Attacks on Trump Investigations

As he often does during campaign rallies, Trump used misleading claims to portray himself as the victim of what he described as corrupt investigations by the FBI and the Justice Department.

“The FBI offered $1 million to Christopher Steele, who wrote the fake dossier, if he will lie and say that the fake dossier was true,” Trump said. “And he refused to do it, so it had to be really fake.”

The bureau offered Steele, a British former spy who compiled a salacious dossier of unproven rumors about Trump’s ties to Russia, up to $1 million if he could prove those allegations, an FBI analyst testified in court in October. Steele could not and did not receive the money.

“And then they hired somebody, Danchenko, for $200,000 a year, to focus on Trump and to get Trump and other things, including the raid of a very beautiful house that sits right here,” he added. “The raid of Mar-a-Lago, think of it.”

He was referring to Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who provided much of the research for the dossier. Danchenko was recently acquitted on four counts of lying to the FBI about his sources, in an investigation examining the origins of the inquiry into Trump’s ties with Russia. During Danchenko’s trial, an agent testified that the FBI had paid him $200,000 over three years — not one, as Trump said — for his work as a confidential source.

Moreover, Danchenko’s trial and the investigation that spurred it had nothing to do with the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home and private club in Florida. That court-ordered search was focused on retrieving government documents, some classified and marked top secret, that Trump took from the White House and stored there.

“Why didn’t you do Obama, who took a lot of things with him?” Trump continued.

But unlike Trump, former President Barack Obama had not kept documents and instead turned them over to National Archives and Records Administration, as required by a 1978 law.

Election Results

The outcome of the midterm elections and the fact that the Republican Party fell short of expectations were almost an afterthought to Trump.

He claimed premature victory, saying Republicans took a majority in the House of Representatives “just a short time” before his speech though the party was only on the verge of taking control. The race was officially called for Republicans on Wednesday night.

Though Trump refrained from repeating his bogus claims of outright electoral fraud, he still complained about the voting process, which he characterized as “a ridiculously long and unnecessary period of waiting, far longer in fact than any third-world country.”

Trump singled out France, where President Emmanuel Macron won reelection in April. Trump was largely correct that the first projections declaring Macron the winner occurred shortly after the last polling locations closed at 8 p.m. But the relative speed of that call, compared with the first projections of the midterm elections in the United States, can be attributed to the more straightforward election process in France. It was a single race compared with multiple local and state-level races on the ballots in the United States; was administered by a centralized authority, the Interior Ministry, rather than by local election officials under different rules and procedures; and occurred across a single time zone, rather than multiple ones, as in the United States.

Moreover, he is wrong that the United States takes longer than “any” country to count votes. In recent presidential elections, Indonesia took more than a month to count the votes in 2019, Afghanistan five months to declare a winner after its September 2019 vote, and Bosnia weeks to declare a winner this fall.

Trump also briefly defended his position as kingmaker: “I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses.”

Left unsaid: Many of those 200-or-so victories came in deeply conservative districts where Republicans were expected to easily win reelection. In 114 districts where the margin of victory was less than 15%, candidates endorsed by Trump underperformed their baseline by 5 percentage points, according to Philip Wallach, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. An analysis from the Upshot showed a similar result.

And Trump reminisced over past electoral successes, exaggerating again when he claimed to have “won every single area along the borders” in Texas. (In reality, he won seven out of 14 border counties in the state in 2020 and five in 2016.)

“In 2020, I received the largest number of votes of any sitting president in history,” Trump recounted, ignoring that Biden had even more votes.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Gravitics raises $20M for plans to build space station modules north of Seattle

Alan Boyle
Thu, November 17, 2022 

An artist’s conception shows Gravitics’ StarMax module in Earth orbit. (Gravitics Illustration)

A space venture called Gravitics has emerged from stealth with $20 million in seed funding and a plan to build space station modules at a 42,000-square-foot facility north of Seattle, in Marysville, Wash.

As NASA makes plans to phase out the International Space Station in the 2031 time frame, Gravitics and its backers are betting on a rush to launch commercial outposts to low Earth orbit. The operators of those outposts just might need subcontractors to provide the hardware.

Gravitics’ main offering will be a super-sized module known as StarMax. The general-purpose module would provide up to 400 cubic meters (14,000 cubic feet) of usable habitable volume — which represents nearly half of the pressurized volume of the International Space Station.


Multiple StarMax modules could be linked together in orbit like Lego blocks.

“We are focused on helping commercial space station operators be successful,” Colin Doughan, Gravitics’ co-founder and CEO, said today in a news release. “StarMax gives our customers scalable volume to accommodate a space station’s growing user base over time. StarMax is the modular building block for a human-centric cislunar economy.”

The investment group for the newly announced seed round is led by Type One Ventures and also includes Tim Draper from Draper Associates, FJ Labs, The Venture Collective, Helios Capital, Giant Step Capital, Gaingels, Spectre, Manhattan West and Mana Ventures.

“The case for Gravitics is simple,” said Tarek Waked of Type One Ventures, who has joined Gravitics’ board of directors. “Having scalable space infrastructure that is 100% made in the United States is good for the space industry, good for the country, and is just the beginning of an effort that the whole world will benefit from as space becomes more and more accessible.”


Doughan brings nearly two decades of aerospace industry experience to the venture: He was a senior finance manager at Lockheed Martin from 2003 to this January — and served as a co-founder of Altius Space Machines, which was acquired by Voyager Space Holdings in 2019.

Other leading members of the Gravitics team include chief engineer Bill Tandy, a veteran of Ball Aerospace and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture; and director of engineering Scott Macklin, former head of propulsion at Virgin Orbit. Gravitics says its workforce has grown to nearly 40 people, including full-time employees as well as contractors.

Construction permits and job listings point to Marysville, which is about 40 miles north of Seattle, as the site of Gravitics’ 42,000-square-foot facility for development and early production. The company says it’s already begun assembly of its first StarMax prototype, and is preparing to conduct module pressure tests in early 2023.

The ground-based pressure tests would open the way for an orbital test mission that’s yet to be announced. Pre-orders are being taken for module delivery by as early as 2026.


Gravitics is likely to face challenges as it tries to break into a market alongside major players including Thales Alenia Space (which is manufacturing space station modules for Axiom Space); Sierra Space and Blue Origin (which are working on modules for the Orbital Reef space station); Northrop Grumman (which is developing its own space station concept) and Lockheed Martin (which is part of the team for the Starlab space station project, led by Nanoracks).

In a TechCrunch interview, Type One’s Waled said he expected SpaceX’s Starship super-rocket — which is still under development — to open up new opportunities for Gravitics in the years to come. “We’re betting on Starship revolutionizing the industry,” he was quoted as saying.

Because of its size, Starship would be the most suitable rocket for launching StarMax modules, but Gravitics says “StarMax’s family of modules” could be launched on other rockets as well. Gravitics’ StarMax productization lead, Jonathan Goff, said in a tweet that the Starship-friendly, 8-meter-wide version of StarMax “is our primary focus at the moment.”

TechCrunch said Gravitics’ executives were already talking with development groups in Florida about building a production and integration facility near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center — with a square footage exceeding that of the Marysville facility.

Webb Space Telescope spots early galaxies hidden from Hubble




This combination image provided by NASA on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022, shows the Pillars of Creation as imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2014, left, and by NASA's James Webb Telescope, right. The new, near-infrared-light view from the James Webb Space Telescope helps us peer through more of the dust in the star-forming region, according to NASA.

(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI via AP)

MARCIA DUNN
Thu, November 17, 2022 

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s Webb Space Telescope is finding bright, early galaxies that until now were hidden from view, including one that may have formed a mere 350 million years after the cosmic-creating Big Bang.

Astronomers said Thursday that if the results are verified, this newly discovered throng of stars would beat the most distant galaxy identified by the Hubble Space Telescope, a record-holder that formed 400 million years after the universe began.

Launched last December as a successor to Hubble, the Webb telescope is indicating stars may have formed sooner than previously thought — perhaps within a couple million years of creation.

Webb's latest discoveries were detailed in the Astrophysical Journal Letters by an international team led by Rohan Naidu of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The article elaborates on two exceptionally bright galaxies, the first thought to have formed 350 million years after the Big Bang and the other 450 million years after.

Naidu said more observations are needed in the infrared by Webb before claiming a new distance record-holder.

Although some researchers report having uncovered galaxies even closer to the creation of the universe 13.8 billion years ago, those candidates have yet to be verified, scientists stressed at a NASA news conference. Some of those could be later galaxies mimicking earlier ones, they noted.

“This is a very dynamic time," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, a co-author of the article published Thursday. “There have been lots of preliminary announcements of even earlier galaxies, and we’re still trying to sort out as a community which ones of those are likely to be real.”

Tommaso Treu of the University of California, Los Angeles, a chief scientist for Webb's early release science program, said the evidence presented so far “is as solid as it gets” for the galaxy believed to have formed 350 million after the Big Bang.

If the findings are verified and more early galaxies are out there, Raidu and his team wrote that Webb “will prove highly successful in pushing the cosmic frontier all the way to the brink of the Big Bang.”

"When and how the first galaxies formed remains one of the most intriguing questions," they said in their paper.

NASA's Jane Rigby, a project scientist with Webb, noted that these galaxies “were hiding just under the limits of what Hubble could do.”

“They were right there waiting for us,” she told reporters. “So that's a happy surprise that there are lots of these galaxies to study.”

The $10 billion observatory — the world's largest and most powerful telescope ever sent into space — is in a solar orbit that's 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. Full science operations began over the summer, and NASA has since released a series of dazzling snapshots of the universe.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Celtic ruler's ring goes under hammer for £36,000 at auction




BBC Thu, November 17, 2022 


A 2,000-year-old gold ring believed to have been worn by a Celtic ruler could go on display in York after being sold at auction for £36,000.

The "jaw-dropping" jewellery was bought by a British private collector on Wednesday after it spent the last 28 years in its previous owner's cupboard.

The Yorkshire Museum is now in talks with the buyer about displaying the "rare and beautiful object".

The Iron Age ring was unearthed in a field in North Yorkshire in the 1990s.

Dating back to about 100BC, it was thought to have been worn by a chieftain of the Corieltauvi tribe, which ruled parts of what are now the Midlands and Yorkshire before the Roman invasion.

Auction house Noonans had expected the ring to fetch between £24,000 and £30,000 on Wednesday.

Nigel Mills, specialist in ancient jewellery at the firm, said: "We were delighted with the result of this beautiful ring."

He added the auctioneers were "so pleased" the item was staying in the UK and said the buyer now wanted to loan the ring so the public could view it.

Andrew Woods, senior curator at the Yorkshire Museum told the BBC he "would be delighted to be able to display this rare and beautiful object for audiences to enjoy".

"We have an outstanding Iron Age collection and the ring would sit very well on display alongside our other objects," he added.

The artefact was dug up by a metal detectorist in Knaresborough in 1994 who then sold it on to a collector for a few hundred pounds.
'Jaw-dropping'

The collector, a 66-year-old man who wanted to remain anonymous, kept the ring in a cupboard for nearly three decades before deciding to get it valued this year.

He previously told the BBC: "It's jaw-dropping. It's not quite King Arthur's ring, but it's the next thing down."

The ring's distinctive abstract design has been linked to the Iceni tribe, which once ruled a large part of modern day East Anglia.

It is thought it could have ended up in what is now Yorkshire as part of a treaty between feuding tribes.

Mr Mills said: "There is no other ring like it.

Words on bronze hand may rewrite past of Basque language


n this undated photo provided by Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi, a flat piece of bronze shaped like a human hand is held in the Navarra region. Investigators in northern Spain believe they have discovered the oldest written record of a precursor of the Basque language, pushing back its earliest evidence to the first century B.C. The Aranzadi Science Society revealed the inscription found on a flat piece of bronze shaped like a human hand that archaeologists unearthed last year. Investigators believe it is the earliest known evidence of a written Vasconic language, the precursor of modern Basque, a minority language still spoken in parts of northern Spain and southwest France. It challenges the wide-held belief the Vascones started writing in their language after the introduction of the Latin script by Roman invaders.

(Juantxo Egana/Sociedad de Ciencias Aranzadi via AP)



JOSEPH WILSON
Wed, November 16, 2022 

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The discovery of five words inscribed on a 2,000-year-old bronze hand may help rewrite the history of the Basque language, one of Europe's most mysterious tongues.

Investigators in northern Spain said this week they discovered what they believe to be the oldest written record of a precursor to modern Basque, pushing back its earliest evidence to the first century B.C.

The Aranzadi Science Society, a Basque research institute, said the inscription was found on a flat piece of bronze shaped like a human hand that archaeologists unearthed last year. Researchers think it is the earliest known evidence of a written Vasconic language, a precursor to the Basque still spoken in parts of northern Spain and southwest France.

The discovery could challenge linguists' wide-held belief that the Vascones, an Iron Age tribe centered on territory that makes up Spain's modern Navarra region, only started writing in their language after the introduction of the Latin script by Roman invaders.

“This piece completely changes what we thought until now about the Vascones and their writing,” said Joaquín Gorrochategui, professor of Indo-European Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country. “We were convinced that the Vascones didn’t know how to read or write in antiquity and only used script for minting coins.”

Archaeologists believe the hand, which they call “the hand of Irulegi” after the site where it was found at the foot of a medieval castle, was designed to hang on a door, likely as a amulet of protection.

So far, linguists have been able to translate only one of the words inscribed on it: “sorioneku,” which corresponds to the Basque word “zorioneku,” or “fortunate.”

Basque has survived for centuries despite ceding ground to Spanish and French. Several hundred thousand people are estimated to speak the language, also known as Euskara, mostly in the Spanish Basque Country and Navarra regions and across the Pyrenees in a small area of France.

It is considered by linguists to be a “language isolate,” meaning it has no known roots in other language groups.