An earthquake hit the North Carolina mountains Saturday, USGS confirms. What we know.

Major earthquakes are rare in North Carolina, but seismic events can happen any time of the year

US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Joe Marusak
Sat, January 28, 2023 

A 1.8 magnitude earthquake registered in the North Carolina mountains near Virginia on Saturday, federal seismologists confirmed.

The quake struck at 4:09 a.m. and was centered about 6 miles miles northwest of West Jefferson and 13 miles west-southwest of Boone, the USGS reported.

The earthquake had a depth of 2.36 miles, according to the USGS.

West Jefferson is a town of about 1,200 people in Ashe County, about 120 miles northwest of Charlotte.

No injuries or damage were reported.

While there’s no single magnitude above which damage occurs, damage typically results when the earthquake magnitude reaches somewhere above 4 or 5, according to the USGS.

No one reported feeling Saturday’s quake, according to the USGS.

The USGS asks that anyone who felt the quake to report it on Earthquake.USGS.gov.

Typically, earthquakes below magnitude 2.0 can be felt if the quake is shallow enough and if people are very close to its epicenter, according to VolcanoDiscovery.com.

Recent NC quakes

On Tuesday, Jan. 10, a 1.2 magnitude earthquake registered in western Catawba County, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.

The quake struck at 2:57 a.m. and was centered about 3.7 miles southeast of the community of Mountain View, the USGS reported. The earthquake had a depth of 2.17 miles, according to the USGS.

In May 2022, a 2.2 earthquake struck southeast of the town of Catawba, also in Catawba County.

About three years ago, Sparta, North Carolina, experienced a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that researchers recently discovered left a “rupture” in the ground more than 1.5 miles long, The Charlotte Observer previously reported.

Major earthquakes are rare in North Carolina, but seismic events can happen any time of the year, according to the N.C. Division of Environmental Quality.

The night of the Mountain View quake, South Carolina experienced its first confirmed tremor of the year, The State reported.

The 1.9 magnitude earthquake struck the Hopkins area of Richland County at 11:03 p.m., the South Carolina Emergency Management Division said.

EDITORIAL: Democrats' plan to expand abortion rights is not 'extreme'

PRE THE SQUAD

BARBARA BUSH BIO BY SUSAN PAGE 

Portland Press Herald, Maine
Sun, January 29, 2023

Jan. 29—About a dozen people each year in Maine require an abortion after fetal viability — roughly 24 weeks, a limit long written into state law — almost always because of a fatal diagnosis for the fetus.

That represents just 0.5% of the abortions sought in Maine each year. Yet for some of these individuals and their families, lack of access to the procedure levies an enormous cost, both financial and emotional, on top of already heartbreaking circumstances.

A bill proposed by Gov. Mills would fix that by allowing abortions after viability "when necessary in the professional judgment of the health care professional." Republicans in the State House call the proposal "extreme."

We call it compassionate — and in step with what Mainers have supported for years.

Critics also say that Mills is breaking her campaign promise not to expand abortion rights.

On that, they are right — the governor's bill certainly expands access to abortion, however limited and called for it may be.

For some, that may call into question the governor's honesty, something Mills will have to contend with in the future. But it's no reason to reject modest, thoughtful and necessary changes to Maine law on an issue that a clear majority of Mainers support.

Unlike the rhetoric coming from anti-abortion lawmakers, the bill from Mills, along with three others proposed by Democratic lawmakers, grapples with the biological and moral complexity of abortion. The proposals try to fulfill the spirit of the state law by making abortion accessible to any Maine resident who needs one, regardless of where they live or how much money they make.

The bill from Mills would allow an abortion to be performed past fetal viability in the rare times when doing so shows grace and mercy.

In announcing the bill, the governor cited the case of Dana Peirce of North Yarmouth, whose routine ultrasound in the 32nd week of pregnancy found a rare and deadly genetic mutation in the child she and her husband had already named Cameron.

"Since his normal 20-week anatomy scan," Peirce wrote in an op-ed last year, "he had broken several bones, and his rib cage was too small for his lungs to fill with air. Cameron was suffering, and if he survived birth, he would not be able to breathe."

In order to end Cameron's suffering, Peirce was forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars to have the procedure out of state, away from her home and support system. In cases like Peirce's, all Maine law does is pile heartbreak onto heartbreak.

No one should have to make that choice.

And, let's not forget, not everyone could — those who couldn't afford to travel would have no choice but to carry that doomed, painful pregnancy to term.

No, the governor's bill is not extreme. It's humane.

What's extreme is forcing someone to spend the final weeks of their pregnancy wondering how much their newborn child will suffer before he dies.

Extreme would force children as young as 10 to carry a pregnancy to term and give birth to their rapist's child.

Extreme would keep essential medications from the people who need them just because those drugs may be used for abortions.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision cutting down Roe v. Wade, those extremes have become real threats — largely because anti-abortion factions refuse to think of the issue in anything but absolutes.

Gov. Mills' proposal appears to address the different circumstances that families can face, as, in their own way, do the abortion bills from Democratic lawmakers, by protecting providers and making sure cost and geography don't determine the rights of pregnant Mainers.

The final wording of the bills has not been released. With such complex issues at hand, it will take legislative work to make sure these proposed laws do what their sponsors say they will and don't themselves cause unforeseen difficulties.

But protecting reproductive rights isn't "extreme" — it's the right thing to do, which is why Mainers have supported it for decades.

Powell’s Narrow Path Would Avoid Routes Taken by Burns, Volcker

Rich Miller

(Bloomberg) 

Sun, January 29, 2023 

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is trying to avoid emulating both the derided Arthur Burns and the celebrated Paul Volcker as he confronts intense pressure to rein in inflation and sidestep a recession.

Ex-Fed chief Burns let inflation get out of control in the 1970s by failing to keep monetary policy tight enough for long enough to permanently beat back price pressures. Volcker then conquered double-digit inflation in the 1980s, but the victory came at an enormous expense: A painfully deep economic downturn that pushed unemployment above 10%.

“Powell wants to write his own page in the history books as someone who, unlike Burns, did not blink and reverse too soon, and, unlike Volcker, did not intentionally cause a recession,” said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon who previously spent a quarter century working at the Fed.

The result: After aggressively raising interest rates last year to catch up with a price surge they initially dismissed, policymakers are expected to downshift to a quarter-percentage-point hike this week as they probe for a policy stance tight enough to tame inflation without a recession.

Powell is likely to accompany that with a promise to keep rates elevated for some time and not ease policy before the Fed is certain it has price pressures in check.

There’s a lot that could go wrong with this hybrid strategy. Oil prices and inflation could flare anew — a distinct possibility now that China is reopening the world’s second-largest economy — forcing the Fed to revisit rate hikes later in the year.

Conversely, unemployment could rise by more than the modest amount policymakers expect as they hew to a tight policy stance to combat inflation.

Optimistic Tone

Fed officials from both sides of the policy spectrum have recently sounded more optimistic about the central bank’s chances of engineering a soft landing that moderates price gains without crunching the economy.

Vice Chair Lael Brainard, widely considered a dove, said this month that she saw “slightly better” chances of such an outcome.

St. Louis Fed President James Bullard, a hawk, was more definitive: “The prospects for a soft landing have improved markedly,” he said on Jan. 18.

The Biden administration – which has a lot at stake in the Fed getting policy just right – is also talking up the outlook.

Jared Bernstein, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Bloomberg Television on Jan. 26 that he saw “a plausible and credible path to what the Fed calls a soft landing and what we think of as a transition to steady, stable growth.”

Behind the optimism: A fall in inflation. The personal consumption expenditures price index – the Fed’s favorite gauge – rose 5% in December from a year earlier, down from 7% in June though still well above the central bank’s 2% goal.

Fed officials have also been heartened by signs of a slowdown in rapid wage growth, which they’re hoping will be confirmed by the release of the latest employment cost index, a broad measure of compensation, at the start of their two-day policy meeting Tuesday.

Recession Risks

Most private economists though don’t think the Fed will get by without pushing the US into a downturn. Forecasters surveyed by Bloomberg this month put the probability of a contraction over the next year at 65%.

The housing market is already in recession, hammered by the steep rise in interest rates engineered by the Fed in 2022.

While demand has picked up a bit as mortgage rates have eased from last year’s highs, “we’re probably not at the bottom yet,” said Doug Duncan, chief economist at mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

Manufacturing has also hit the skids, hurt by a slowdown in the global economy and a shift in consumer spending away from goods to services.

3M Co., the maker of everything from Post-it notes to touch-screen displays, said last week that it plans to cut about 2,500 manufacturing jobs after demand tailed off toward the end of 2022.

Consumer expenditures, the bulwark of the economy, have held up in the face of sky-high inflation, as households have drawn on savings built up during the pandemic and seen their incomes boosted by a vibrant jobs market.

“While macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty persists, consumer spending has been remarkably resilient,” Mastercard Inc. Chief Executive Officer Michael Miebach said in a Jan. 26 statement on the company’s 2022 earnings.

But there were signs of fraying as 2022 drew to a close. Adjusted for changes in prices, personal spending dropped 0.3% in December, with outlays for services stagnating, the first month without an increase since January 2022.

What Bloomberg Economics Says...

“Despite a soft headline print for December’s personal consumption expenditure deflator, inflation remains heady in core services excluding housing rents... The lack of evidence that the durable inflation component is moderating means Powell will maintain his hawkish message of holding rates higher for longer.”

— Anna Wong, economist


“The consumer spending engine may start to sputter,” said Deutsche Bank Securities chief US economist Matthew Luzzetti, who forecasts the economy will slip into a moderate recession in the second half of 2023.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said he expects the US to dodge a downturn, but acknowledged that it’s a close call.

“To avoid a recession, we’re going to need a bit of luck and some reasonably deft policy making by the Fed,” he said.

--With assistance from Katia Dmitrieva, Reade Pickert and Ana Monteiro.

Disappearing Barbecues Show Global Beef Demand Is Under Pressure

“Today, barbecuing is a luxury” 

Agnieszka de Sousa, Jonathan Gilbert and Leslie Patton
Sat, January 28, 2023 at 6:15 AM MST·5 min read

(Bloomberg) -- The world’s consumers have been cutting back on meat eating since the early days of the pandemic. In 2022, the demand hit came for beef, and even as inflation cools, all signs point to continued pressure this year, especially in some of the world’s most carnivorous nations.

It’s not uncommon to see meat buying slide during downturns for the economy. What’s striking is that demand is falling faster in many of the countries where beef has traditionally been the protein of choice. In Brazil, consumption was on its way to a record low in 2022. US shoppers have cut back on purchases by more than 4% in the past year, NielsenIQ data show, while UK sales of beef roasts and steaks have tumbled.

Perhaps no one place better captures the trend than Argentina. The Argentine barbecue, or asado as the locals say, is so tightly woven into the national fabric that even through some of the worst recessions, consumption has proven resilient to belt-tightening. Recent soaring prices in the nation long famed for eating more beef than almost anywhere else are forcing consumers to trade down to chicken, which is now vying for the title of the country’s top protein.

Omar Anibal Sosa, a 41-year-old father of three who lives in Buenos Aires, is wistful when he remembers his last asado — more than a month back, which in Argentina feels like a lifetime ago. He can remember the menu – he reluctantly substituted once-irreplaceable short ribs and flank with low-quality cuts of skirt steak, along with chicken and pork. And he bought the beef by asking the butcher to cut him a meager steak or two, rather than, as is traditional, placing his order by the kilo.

“I used to fire up the grill every weekend,” said Sosa, who works as a church handyman and delivery driver.

“Today, barbecuing is a luxury,” he said.

For 2023, the US Department of Agriculture predicts roughly flat consumption worldwide. In some of the biggest beef markets, though, there’s a pronounced slide. In Argentina, the agency sees a drop of more than 2%. A decline of almost 5% is expected for the US.

It can be tricky to accurately capture the demand drop, because most forecasters take meat production as the basis of their consumption estimates. Some of the best measures of waning interest in beef come from a combination of tracking retail sales and anecdotal information.

Faltering demand signals headwinds for the world’s major beef producers including JBS SA and Tyson Foods Inc. The companies have also battled herd-shrinking droughts, higher input costs and increasing pressure from investors to produce meat more sustainably.

The pressure on beef demand is welcome news for the planet. By some measures, agriculture accounts for more global greenhouse gas emissions than transport, thanks in large part to livestock production.

At Made in Hackney, a vegan community cookery school in east London, founder Sarah Bentley says she has noticed an evolution in people’s attitudes since setting up the school a decade ago. Lentils, once considered unfashionable and “a bit hippy,” are now a big hit among her patrons. Cooking classes get booked up quickly. Most students aren’t vegan or vegetarian, but they’re curious about affordable eating, she said.

“You can’t argue with the price point,” Bentley said.

In the UK, beef purchases at grocers and restaurants have fallen 5.8% from a year earlier, with sales of roasting joints down 22%, according to data compiled by farm adviser AHDB. Steak buying dropped about 19%.

Many of the consumption changes will seem subtle. People will trade down cuts and proteins — first goes beef, then pork and chicken. Dishes like spaghetti bolognese will get less meat in the sauce and instead get bulked up with extra tomatoes or water.

“Meat is something that gets hit quite quickly, especially for lower-income consumers,” said Rupert Claxton, a consultant at Gira who’s studied the meat industry for about two decades.

In the US, Michael Roberts, head of marketing at a non-profit in Oak Park, Illinois, saw his prior business as a consultant dry up during the pandemic, while his partner was diagnosed with brain cancer. As their incomes shrank and health expenses soared, Roberts and his partner cut their meat eating from four times a week to two, typically replacing beef and chicken with pinto beans, lentils and rice.

“The red meat has gone by the wayside,” said Roberts, 57, who’s struggling with low iron levels. “That really no longer comes in the house. We've substituted a lot of meatless meals, which can be healthy and there's nothing wrong with it. But it's primarily beans, rice and lentils for the protein.”

To be sure, it’s too early to say if the trend will stick globally. Many economists still expect consumption to expand in some places over the next decade as the population grows and as consumers in Asia and other emerging markets eat more beef.

Back in Argentina, it’s estimated that per capita beef consumption reached 47.2 kilograms in 2022, according to beef industry group Ciccra. That compares with a modern-day record of 68.7 in 2007. Consumption of chicken, meanwhile, has grown to nearly 46 kilograms from roughly 18 two decades ago, thanks to its competitive price, Rosario Board of Trade data show.

It feels like a stripping down of national identity for a country that traditionally has rivaled neighboring Uruguay for the title of world’s biggest carnivore on a per capita basis. The nation’s government said about a year ago that it would seek to keep beef consumption above 50 kilos per person, through policies like export quotas. But so far that goal is proving out of reach and inflation is raging. Annual food inflation in Buenos Aires in December was 97.5%, according to the latest data from the national statistics agency.

For consumers like Sosa, the father of three, the outside grill, once a communal point of great pride, has instead become painful reminder of what was.

“It never used to look all abandoned like that,” he said.

--With assistance from Tatiana Freitas, Jinglu Gu and Dominic Carey

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

 

ITS NOT A PLUMBER, ELECTRICIAN OR CARPENTER

ChatGPT is on its way to becoming a virtual doctor, lawyer, and business analyst. Here's a list of advanced exams the AI bot has passed so far.



Lakshmi Varanasi
Sat, January 28, 2023 

ChatGPT is a chatbot launched by OpenAI that uses generative artificial intelligence to create its own content.

The bot has been used to generate essays and write exams, often passing, but making mistakes, too.

Insider rounded up a list of the assignments, quizzes, and tests ChatGPT has passed.

Wharton MBA Exam

ChatGPT would have received a B or B- on a Wharton exam, according to a professor at the business school.David Tran Photo/Shutterstock

Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch recently tested the technology with questions from his final exam in operations management— which was once a required class for all MBA students — and published his findings.

Terwiesch concluded that the bot did an "amazing job" answering basic operations questions based on case studies, which are focused examinations of a person, group, or company, and a common way business schools teach students.


In other instances though, ChatGPT made simple mistakes in calculations that Terwiesch thought only required 6th-grade-level math. Terwiesch also noted that the bot had issues with more complex questions that required an understanding of how multiple inputs and outputs worked together.

Ultimately, Terwiesch said the bot would receive an B or B- on the exam.

US medical licensing exam

ChatGPT passed all three parts of the United States medical licensing examination within a comfortable range.Getty Images

Researchers put ChatGPT through the United States Medical Licensing Exam — a three part exam that aspiring doctors take between medical school and residency — and reported their findings in a paper published in December 2022.

The paper's abstract noted that ChatGPT "performed at or near the passing threshold for all three exams without any specialized training or reinforcement. Additionally, ChatGPT demonstrated a high level of concordance and insight in its explanations."

Ultimately, the results show that large language models — which ChatGPT has been trained on— may have "the potential" to assist with medical education and even clinical decision making, the abstract noted.

The research is still under peer review, Insider noted based on a report from Axios.

Essays

While ChatGPT has generated convincing essays on occasion, it's also raised eyebrows for spewing out well-written misinformation.Tech Insider

It didn't take long after ChatGPT was released for students to start using it for essays and educators to start worrying about plagiarism.

In December, Bloomberg podcaster Matthew S. Schwartz tweeted that the "take home essay is dead." He noted that he had fed a law school essay prompt into ChatGPT and it had "responded *instantly* with a solid response."

In another instance, a philosophy professor at Furman University caught a student turning in an AI-generated essay upon noticing it had "well-written misinformation," Insider reported.

"Word by word it was a well-written essay," the professor told Insider. As he took a more careful look however, he noticed that the student made a claim about the philosopher David Hume that "made no sense" and was "just flatly wrong" Insider reported.

In an interview in January, Sam Altman— CEO of OpenAI which makes ChatGPT — said that while the company will devise ways to help schools detect plagiarism, he can't guarantee full detection.

Microbiology Quiz

ChatGPT successfully passed through a college level microbiology quiz.Clouds Hill Imaging Ltd./Getty Images

Science journalist and executive editor of Big Think, Alex Berezow, tested ChatGPT with a 10-question microbiology quiz that he devised.

Berezow, who also holds a Ph.D in microbiology, noted that the questions would be appropriate for a final exam for college level students. ChatGPT "blew it away," Berezow wrote.

In one example, Berezow asked:

"An emergency room patient presents with a terrible headache and stiff neck. The doctor orders a spinal tap to collect cerebrospinal fluid. A Gram stain of the CSF reveals the presence of Gram negative diplococci. What is the diagnosis?"

To which ChatGPT correctly responded:

Based on the information you provided, the Gram stain of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) shows the presence of Gram-negative diplococci, which are bacteria that are typically oval-shaped and occur in pairs. This finding is consistent with the diagnosis of meningitis.

In another instance he asked:

"In five words or less, what is the point of Koch's postulates?"

To which ChatGPT said:

Establish causality between microbe and disease.

Taking out the word "and" Berezow said ChatGPT "Nailed it."

ChatGPT recently passed exams in four law school courses at the University of Minnesota, based on a recently published paper written by four law school professors at the school.

In total, the bot answered over 95 multiple choice questions and 12 essay questions that were blindly graded by the professors. Ultimately, the professors gave ChatGPT a "low but passing grade in all four courses" approximately equivalent to a C+.

Still the authors pointed out several implications for what this might mean for lawyers and law education. In one section they wrote:

"Although ChatGPT would have been a mediocre law student, its performance was sufficient to successfully earn a JD degree from a highly selective law school, assuming its work remained constant throughout law school (and ignoring other graduation requirements that involve different skills). In an era where remote exam administration has become the norm, this could hypothetically result in a struggling law student using ChatGPT to earn a JD that does not reflect her abilities or readiness to practice law."

Virtual employees on the rise in China, should Americans be worried?

Kurt Knutsson, CyberGuy Report

FOX News
Sat, January 28, 2023 


Technology has been taking over the world, especially within the last decade with the advent of the gig economy. Now, more and more companies are figuring out how to make themselves more efficient by becoming more tech friendly.

However, China is taking this to the next extreme with the growing popularity of virtual people. Some of the largest Chinese tech companies are hopping on this bandwagon, and many are wondering if this will affect American jobs.

Human & Robot Hand recreates Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" Painting

Virtual people are simulations of human beings on computers, also known as virtual characters or avatars. They combine animation, sound tech, and machine learning that create digitized human beings who can interact with people virtually.

These virtual employees can perform various tasks, such as customer service, data entry, and content creation. They can also be used in video games, virtual worlds, simulations, and be programmed to interact with people in various ways, such as on social media, digital marketing, and other forms of online communication.

China uses 2D and 3D virtual people to help grow their tech companies. Some have even appeared in American internet spaces, especially as social media influencers.

Part of the reason why these virtual people have grown so much in popularity over the years is that they cost so little to make. The price range spans from as little as $2,800 to as much as $14,300 to use per year.

Costs are continuing to go down, as the price tag has already dropped 80% since last year. Some experts believe that due to these low costs, virtual people will continue to grow in popularity and that the industry could potentially grow up to 50% annually through 2025.

Beijing city even announced a plan back in August of 2022 to continue growing their use of virtual people for companies with the hope to have the industry valued at over 50 billion yen by 2025.

Tech companies are first to embrace virtual people, yet their presence among other industries is growing fast. China already has a plan to get more virtual people to work in broadcasting and manufacturing.

They also have them currently working in various financial services, local tourism boards, and state media. Many brands are especially looking for virtual people to represent them and help sell their content with the growing presence of cancel culture and many celebrities generating negative press over the years.

If more brands use virtual people, they won't have to worry about getting involved in personnel or criminal scandals like a human being could since everything about them is programmed.

Woman working with VR

The rapid growth of virtual people has certainly hit other areas of the world quicker than here in the U.S. As I mentioned, the presence of virtual social media influencers is undoubtedly growing on the internet.

Other than that, some companies have just used virtual reality to help regularly train their frontline employees. Some of these companies include JetBlue, Walmart, and MGM Resorts. Many of them have found it helpful as their companies deal with serving the public in some capacity.

Regarding virtual people taking over for actual humans, America is not quite at that point just yet. With the advent of ChatGPT that uses artificial intelligence to mimic human thinking, virtual employees could ultimately result in job losses for Americans as some businesses choose to automate specific tasks or outsource them to virtual workers.

Proponents argue that it is also possible the growth of virtual employees could lead to the creation of new human jobs, such as those related to the development and management of virtual workers.

While the use of virtual employees can bring cost savings and increased efficiency to companies, it's important to consider the potential negative impacts. Aside from the obvious human job loss which could be colossal, virtual workers could bring about new privacy, misinformation, and accountability concerns.

L´HOSPITALET, BARCELONA, SPAIN - 2018/11/30: A young girl seen getting ready to play with virtual reality glasses on a Play Station during the Barcelona Games World Fair.

Overall, the effect of virtual employees on the job market is likely to be complex and multifaceted. It's tough to make definitive predictions about how it will affect American workers. One thing is for sure, you know I will stay on this very important topic and bring you the latest developments as I see how virtual employees unfold and how it will affect you and your family.

Declining enrollment, empty schools, union battles: Mayoral candidates grapple with big challenges in Chicago Public Schools

Priorities included more social services, affordable housing, student-based budgeting, bilingual education, fewer standardized tests and protection of teacher pensions. “Why do we have to fight for these things?” Faraj asked. “Why don’t we already have these things in place?” 

One woman, answered decisively: “Capitalism and white supremacy.”

A.D. Quig, Alice Yin, Gregory Pratt, Chicago Tribune
Sun, January 29, 2023

LONG READ

The auto shop in West Rogers Park resembled a classroom preparing for the first day of school when mayoral hopeful Brandon Johnson joined educators there recently to discuss the future of Chicago schools.

Fresh pastries on a table welcomed the crowd, nearly all Chicago Teachers Union members, and the walls were adorned with long, bright scrolls of paper for a brainstorming activity. In a corner, children played on iPads and rode bikes.

Johnson, a longtime leader with the powerful union who won its endorsement and financial backing, used the gathering to hail CTU’s work, while also referencing its battles with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel.

“We really wished that the people who were sworn to support and to represent the interests of working people, that they wouldn’t have so much animus and disdain towards things as simple as a library, a librarian, social workers and counselors and housing that was affordable,” Johnson said.

While Johnson casts the union’s role as an underdog fighting for better schools, Lightfoot sees CTU’s advocacy in starker terms, accusing the union of politicizing education, wielding undue influence and playing a part in Chicago Public Schools’ enrollment loss.

Conflict with the teachers union has been a hallmark of Lightfoot’s term, starting with a bitter teachers strike months after she took office. Since then, she’s repeatedly clashed with CTU over COVID-19 restrictions, spending priorities and an elected school board, which she supported as a candidate, then balked at.

In a vivid display of the deeply held mutual acrimony, Lightfoot recently pointed a finger at Johnson during a meeting with the Tribune Editorial Board and accused the CTU of bringing “chaos” to Chicago schools.

Whoever becomes mayor for the next four years will face enormous challenges and a daunting transition from a school board selected by City Hall to one elected by voters.

As a result of action by state lawmakers in 2021, the Chicago Board of Education will become a 21-member hybrid panel in two years, with 10 members elected to four-year terms in the 2024 general election and 11 members, including the board president, appointed by the mayor. It would transition to a fully elected board by 2027.

Other issues include what to do with expensive, underused or vacant buildings, how to reverse years of enrollment decline, and ensuring stability for a system with deeply strained finances. Then there’s the matter of the union’s contract, which expires in 2024 and whose renewal risks another protracted fight.

It all could add up to one of CPS’ biggest inflection points. Daniel Anello, CEO of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago, said the next mayor will have power to steer the city in ways that can help or hurt its public schools, even with less direct control over CPS policy.

“We’ve had declining enrollment for almost 20 years and there’s no sign of it really slowing, and the root causes of it are the Black exodus, a slowing of Latinx immigration into the city, and declining birthrates. There just aren’t enough kids for the schools,” Anello said. “You have school buildings that are massive with too few students in them to fill the whole building, and yet some of those schools are functional educationally. How does the city solve that? How does the city think about changing the exodus of people leaving? And how does the city get more people to come to Chicago?”
Financial woes

As the district approved its $9.4 billion budget, leaders were urged to think ahead to when federal COVID-19 relief funds expire in 2024.

Placing added pressure: The city has started shifting costs off its books and onto CPS, a move Lightfoot adopted as a way to balance her budgets. An October report prepared for the district noted that the necessary untangling of the two entities ahead of the school board transition “creates additional uncertainties and risks, both for CPS’ operating budget and for the finances of its students and their families.”

CPS was already weighed down by a heavy debt burden. The costs now on the district’s balance sheet include $175 million for nonteacher pensions in 2022 and nearly $30 million per year for crossing guards and school police.

Every mayoral candidate has said securing more funding from Springfield would be a top priority. CPS is more than $1 billion per year below a state-set funding target based on student need. Candidates Paul Vallas, a former CEO of CPS, and Ja’Mal Green, a community activist, have called for an audit to determine how much money is being spent in the classroom.

“If the money really follows the kids to the classroom, and we know for a fact that only 60% of the money does, then we’re gonna get more social workers, we’re gonna get more mental health counselors, we’re gonna get smaller class sizes,” Vallas said at a January forum.

State Rep. Kambium “Kam” Buckner, another mayoral candidate, has said he’s uniquely positioned to get money out of state lawmakers and would shift the city’s public school funding model from being solely student enrollment-based and would install a nurse, social worker and librarian at each campus.

Most candidates have also said funding should be based on need, not enrollment.

U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, another candidate, has called the CPS budget allocation from Springfield to be doubled. He backs another attempt to “establish a fairer tax system” in Illinois to support schools, an allusion to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s failed 2020 graduated income tax bid.

“I truly understand how urgent it is to properly fund our schools,” García said at a recent forum. “We need to move away from our overreliance on property taxes, which is causing so much great harm, including in Chicago displacement of people who live in or near gentrifying areas. How do we do this? We can work with the General Assembly.”

Lightfoot echoed García during a recent forum, saying, “I’m not going to rest” until the state ups its contribution to CPS.

“We’ve got to get more money from Springfield, bottom line,” Lightfoot said. “Their obligation is to make sure that our public school system is fully funded, and they don’t get it. They think that the work that was done in the prior administration is good enough. It’s not.”

School closings

In September, Buckner stood before columns of boarded-up windows at the former Laura S. Ward Elementary School, which was shut during the district’s mass school closings in 2013. The West Side campus was quiet, with few cars and pedestrians passing by as he spoke from a makeshift lectern.

“Nearly a decade later, it remains vacant and closed. Nothing could be a stronger example of failed leadership, failed policy and failing our children,” Buckner said. Though he noted the schools were closed under Emanuel, Buckner said Lightfoot “let them fester” and criticized her for “an apathy-laden administration.”

Buckner pushed a bill through the legislature that placed a moratorium on school closings until 2025. The provision was meant to give officials time to work out plans for low-enrollment buildings. Buckner argued the city hasn’t taken advantage of that time to address a major challenge. Shuttering buildings is controversial, and so is choosing a replacement.

Asked how she would prepare for that deadline, Lightfoot sidestepped the question.

“I’m not going to skip ahead years from now on a process that I don’t know what the result will be,” Lightfoot said. “But what I can tell you is, we will never do anything when it comes to an individual school ... where we are not deeply engaged with the residents of those communities.”

The mayor’s answer reflects the deep sensitivities around the issue of closing schools and then reusing the buildings. The mayor once proposed using closed schools as a training ground for police officers and is working on a plan to house migrants in a South Side school, two proposals that generated fierce pushback.

Challenger Willie Wilson, a business owner, blamed crime and high taxes for enrollment decline and empty buildings, saying that reducing both would welcome back families. He’s said he would “close some of those schools down that have 10% or 25% capacity” and “sell them” or “open some up as trade schools.”

Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, also on the Feb. 28 ballot for mayor, has said the district needs to make tough choices on empty schools, though he didn’t commit to closing any. Other candidates have been less open about their plans.

Elected school board

Lightfoot campaigned on an elected board but then dropped the idea, with legislators enacting the change over her objections. She has not detailed how she might engage the future board, and instead continues to argue it’s not too late to change the law to shrink the board’s size from the planned 21 members. She’s said repeatedly that number is “unwieldy.”

“I’m not giving up,” she told reporters in mid-January. “The largest elected school board is Miami-Dade and it has nine. The largest appointed school board is New York City. It has 13. This makes no sense.”

Whether reduce the board’s size is a winnable goal is another question. Aside from winning the Chicago casino in Springfield, Lightfoot has not had significant success with state legislators. She also has a famously strained relationship with Senate President Don Harmon and tensions with Pritzker.

Even though it’s well on its way to fruition, much about the elected school board remains to be sorted out, including the shape of its districts and any campaign finance limits or curbs on the influence of labor or other interest groups.

If he becomes mayor, Vallas said he would not hesitate to get involved in school board elections to support and oppose candidates.

“I’m not afraid of more democracy, and if you’re going to have an elected school board, then it’s important for the mayor to get engaged in school board elections if they want to have influence,” he said at a forum this month.

Enrollment

Pre-COVID, CPS reported more than half of district-run schools tracked for capacity were considered “underutilized.” Enrollment has declined from about 400,000 students a decade ago to just over 320,000 for this school year.

At a January forum, candidate Sophia King, the 4th Ward alderman, floated the idea of expanding Chicago’s “opportunity zones,” a term for a federal program that offers tax incentives for investors in low-income neighborhoods. It primarily operates on the city’s South and West sides.

“We have to grow the city,” King said. “And if we’re not a safe community, or have good schools, we’re not going to do that.”

She also wants to expand selective enrollment schools, install after-school programs to reengage students at every school and bring “back the trades,” she said. King is a former teacher and CPS administrator who helped launch the Ariel Community Academy in Kenwood.

“Other than safety … I think education is our next top priority,” King said in response to a lightning-round question on her most important campaign issue outside of crime. “If we don’t have a safe city, and we don’t have schools that people can go to, our city is going to continue to decline.”

Vallas has one of the deepest histories in education of the mayoral candidates: He was CPS CEO during Mayor Richard M. Daley’s “turnaround” process between 1995 and 2001, when charter and selective enrollment schools began to take off. He’s argued that he left the district on solid financial footing and “never had a work stoppage.”

He’s also been superintendent of schools in Philadelphia and in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and of the state-run Recovery School District in New Orleans as the city rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina. He also worked in post-earthquake school systems in Haiti and Chile.

In recent years, Vallas has also been a consultant for the charter school industry, including the Alternative Schools Network, where his work focused on “expanding education to students who have dropped out,” according to his campaign, and with Charter School Renewal, now called the School Improvement Partnership. There, he “helped locate and find strong leaders in the education sector” for “potential jobs as principals, teachers, directors and administrators,” his campaign said.

Vallas has called for Chicago families to have “100% choice” in where they send their children to school, saying in a campaign video that the issue is “the unfinished business of the American Civil Rights Movement.”

In a guest blog post on former Tribune columnist John Kass’ website, Vallas supported providing direct funding via vouchers “for parents to use at the school of their choice. It also means empowering the community to choose local school models that best suits their needs.”

His stance has led to Johnson accusing Vallas of being the “privatizer-in-chief” and saying it was “morally bankrupt” for Vallas to speak on public education. Vallas has scoffed at that attack.

“We have children who are prisoners in their own community” because of lack of school choice, Vallas said.

Labor troubles

Under Lightfoot, Chicago schools have seen three teacher work stoppages amid disputes over the union contract and COVID reopening. Since Stacy Davis Gates was elected union president last year, the relationship between the union and city leaders has shown so signs of thawing.

While Lightfoot and the union blame each other for the conflict, Buckner recently said, “It doesn’t seem that both entities came to the table with good faith.” If elected, Buckner said he would begin negotiations over the union’s next contract almost immediately.

“I won’t do it by proxy, I won’t do it by tweet. I’ll do it myself if I have to from my kitchen table, because we have not provided any stability or any cadence that is helpful to teachers, parents and students in this district,” Buckner said.

The district could be on the verge of another strike in 2024, a point some candidates may seize on. Vallas, for instance, recently responded to criticism from Johnson by arguing that he should be called “three-strike Johnson,” in reference to recent work stoppages by the teachers’ union.

King had her own bundle of incentives for new educators like interest-free home loans.

“Teachers are leaving now faster than we can keep them,” King said at a forum. “They’re the one profession where we throw everything at their feet that we’re unable to resolve and ask them to do that. They need that incentive.”

Green said addressing teacher shortages is key to making sure students get a good education. He said he would do so by making community college free as well as offering new teachers help with the down payment and closing costs if they want to buy a home. He also has promised to expand universal prekindergarten to 3-year-olds, a costly proposition.

‘You should be very mad’

Although Johnson has a long history as a teacher union’s leader, he has yet to release a full plan for the city’s schools.

CTU has focused on broader social issues for more than a decade, and that emphasis was underscored at the recent event in West Rogers Park.

Rami Faraj, a CPS teacher and organizer with United Working Families, a group allied closely with CTU, instructed the room to divide into groups and prioritize a set of school-related issues.

From one group, priorities included more social services, affordable housing, student-based budgeting, bilingual education, fewer standardized tests and protection of teacher pensions. The demands were met with nods and snaps from others in the room, including Johnson.

“Why do we have to fight for these things?” Faraj asked. “Why don’t we already have these things in place?”

One woman, Celeste Esquivel, answered decisively: “Capitalism and white supremacy.”

Another CPS teacher, Praise Lee, followed up by blaming policies stretching back to Republican President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act placing outsize importance on testing instead of student enrichment.

“I think it’s a long history of priorities that have happened via politics, but for many reasons, right?” Lee said. “The priorities just have not been there, but we know because we’re on the ground, right? We’re doing the work.”

As the conversation progressed that evening, CPS teacher Nora Flanagan remarked, “Sorry, I’m getting really mad.”

Faraj responded, “You should be very mad.”

Johnson stood and observed. He would not go on to speak again, but when the topic returned to the election, an earlier message of his was evoked by an organizer, Isaac Krantz-Perlman, to great applause: “Who better to run for mayor than a teacher?”

Christian Nationalism's Popularity Should Be a Wake Up Call

Jared Yates Sexton
Sat, January 28, 2023

Pro-Trump Christian nationalist Jericho Marchers hold

Pro-Trump Christian nationalist Jericho Marchers march around the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. after meeting with several Republican state legislators on March 15, 2021. Credit - Paul Weaver—SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

When I was a boy In Indiana, I lived in perpetual fear. These were the 1980s and so that fear took predictable forms, including the threat of nuclear devastation at the hands of the Soviet Union. Sometimes, during tornado drills in elementary school, teachers would tell us we were practicing for the inevitable atomic strike while reminding us how lucky we were to have been born Americans.

On Sundays, I huddled against the end of the hard wooden pews in my small Baptist church as the preacher sweated and begged God for Armageddon. The world had become too wicked. Too perverse. Satan had found an ally in Moscow and willing accomplices within the United States, including liberals, feminists, gays, and violent criminals who seemed to hide behind every corner. The Devil wasn’t an abstraction or a metaphor, but a malevolent being who could manifest in your living room. And his powers were immense and his influence omnipresent. Our sick culture’s movies, television shows, and music were demonic and designed to tempt us away from God.

If things were going to be put right, if Good was going to triumph over Evil, then it was going to require nothing short of war.

Read More: 3 Threats Christian Nationalism Poses to the United States

The conversations I heard back 30 years ago sound a lot like the ones I’ve been hearing recently. But what was largely kept behind closed doors is now the defining dialogue of a public and worrying movement. I first noticed it in 2016, as I reported from the crowds at Donald Trump rallies, and have since seen it dominate the Republican Party, conservative media, and watched it grow into an international political project.

And, to my horror, the specifics are the same. The world has been tainted. Society is decadent and depraved. Democracy is a danger and subject to manipulation by a satanic conspiracy. And, in order to put things right, any and all means, including extreme violence, is not only an option, but likely necessary.

What I did not understand then is that our congregation was being prepared to accept changes outside the walls of our tiny church. The fiery sermons laid the groundwork for political and economic actions that would otherwise seem cruel and unreasonable. Without the religious narratives, the idea of overturning elections, imprisoning political opponents, creating an oppressive system, or executing “enemies,” which I have heard called for many times now, might be met with some resistance.

Courtesy of Penguin Random House, LLC.

In trying to understand these authoritarian energies, the rise of Christian Nationalism, and the crisis we face, my research has informed me that these narratives have followed very discernible and predictable cycles. Beginning with the merging of Christianity and state power in Rome, the tenets of the faith have been co-opted into aiding in the preservation and expansion of power. The religion’s persecution complex fuels larger concepts of apocalypticism that create life or death struggles where literally everything hangs in the balance and compromise and mercy are tantamount to suicide.

A philosophy of “righteous persecution,” forwarded by Saint Augustine, creates justification for oppression, telling true believers that inflicting suffering on sinners is justified if it is for their own spiritual benefit or the benefit of the faith. This has legitimized unthinkable horrors, including enslavement, genocide, colonization, and tyrannical systems that haunt our past and our present.

Our modern moment is once more defined by these concepts. The warnings that used to be relegated to Sunday mornings fill the halls of Congress and are repeated 24 hours a day on Fox News. Individuals and families that would have probably sat across the aisle from me all those years ago are now regularly posting pictures of themselves brandishing semiautomatic weapons with biblical quotes in the captions. And that’s only when they’re not retweeting QAnon conspiracy theories that tell the same horror stories that inspired other authoritarian movements like Nazism, Fascism, and have led to one annihilation and war after another.

The “solutions” are appalling and unsurprisingly they echo the extreme measures necessitated by a looming apocalypse. The evil traitors must be stopped at all costs. Some want them in prison, others need to see them swinging from every light pole. Virtually everything, including our government, elections, economy, and popular culture, are controlled by a sinister conspiracy that is, depending on the day, either explicitly the domain of Jewish puppet masters or simply the Devil himself at the controls, and so seizing power and using cleansing violence and the muscle of the state are the only means of deliverance.

Since reporting from those Trump rallies, I have watched with revulsion as the people I knew and loved lifted a reality television host to the status of messiah. It is yet another component of Christianity, the idea of a “divine agent” who becomes a tool of the almighty and executor of his will on Earth. There have been many, including Constantine in Rome, who assumed this mantle while promising to protect or expand Christendom and used its influence to wield enormous power. Dictators, demagogues, and tyrants have long anchored their status to this concept, and in an environment like ours, the time is ripe for anyone willing and shameless enough to grab the mantle and use it.

Already we have glimpsed the possible ramifications. It is evident in Russia with Vladimir Putin and in Hungary with Viktor Orbán, both of whom have weaponized these concepts in order to rig their political systems, dismantle democracy, and, in Putin’s case, justify an illegal war by claiming it is a defense against godless conspirators deadest on destroying the faith.

In America, we have seen suffering inflicted on refugees, boldfaced white supremacy and cruelty, attacks on gay and transgender Americans, open anti-Semitism, the destruction of Roe V. Wade, and even an attempted coup. These are all worrying examples of supposedly unthinkable developments this ideology serves. Whether it will enable further losses of civil rights and liberties, oppression, totalitarianism, and even war remains to be seen, but much will depend on our understanding of the very real nature of this threat.

This heretical ideology represents an existential crisis. Its gaining popularity and influence should serve as a wakeup call that the danger extends beyond Donald Trump or his cadre of fame-seeking flunkies. The terror that kept me and countless other young people awake at night in the past has escaped the confines of the church and now possesses millions of Americans the same way we once worried a demon might take over our bodies and our souls.

And let there be no doubt that history is very clear what the consequences are should we not exorcise this harmful spirit from the body politic.

This excerpt is adapted from The Midnight Kingdom: A History of Power, Paranoia, and the Coming Crisis by Jared Yates Sexton, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2023 by Jared Yates Sexton

CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Property documents for a London apartment suggest wanted 'crypto-queen' is alive after allegedly vanishing in 2017 with $4 billion from investors

Jordan Hart
Sun, January 29, 2023

On Tuesday, Ruja Ignatova was placed on the FBI's most wanted list, making her the 11th woman to ever appear on the list.FBI

Wanted fugitive Ruja Ignatova hasn't been seen since October 2017.

The "crypto-queen" allegedly scammed billions out of investors before disappearing for years.

A recent property listing hints that Ignatova is alive and still on the run, reports say.

Listings for a property in the UK may have just located the "crypto-queen" Ruja Ignatova years after her disappearance in 2017.

Bulgarian-born Ignatova, 42, is wanted by the FBI for allegedly scamming investors out of $4 billion between 2014 and 2016 in a Ponzi scheme using her now-defunct company OneCoin. She was charged in absentia in 2019 for wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering.

In October 2017, she vanished until documents related to a penthouse apartment in London seemingly pointed to her whereabouts, the New York Post reported. Previously, it was unclear if Ignatova was still alive and on the run.

The lead was discovered by investigative reporter and host of "The Missing Cryptoqueen" podcast Jamie Bartlett. He alleges that Ignatova initially purchased the property under a company name, but was forced to be named as the company's beneficiary under a new rule, per the New York Post.

Earlier this month, Ignatova's lawyers filed a formal claim on the property with financial regulators and Ignatova was listed as the apartment's "beneficial owner," the report reads. The penthouse was originally listed for over $15 million before being dropped to around $13 million.

The posting was reportedly taken down after the property agent learned of its connection to the fugitive. It remains unclear whether or not the apartment has been sold.

Ignatova is currently the only woman on the FBI's most wanted list, and she's the 11th woman to appear on the list in its 72-year history, Insider's Sarah Al-Arshani reported Tuesday.

Bartlett told UK-based digital publication iNews that the move was "one of the most interesting developments in the story."

"It suggests she is still alive, and there are documents out there somewhere which contain vital clues as to her recent whereabouts," Bartlett said.

He added: "If nothing else it should make it easier for the authorities to freeze that asset — and maybe even start getting money back to victims."

PRISON NATION U$A

Lawsuit accusing private prisons in Arizona of slavery now before top appeals court



Adam Shaw

FOX News
Fri, January 27, 2023 

A lawsuit from civil rights organizations accusing private prisons in Arizona of practicing slavery is now before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals amid a broad left-wing pushback against the use of private prisons and immigrant detention centers.

The lawsuit, led by the NAACP, was initially filed in 2020 against the Arizona Department of Corrections, arguing the state is violating the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of slavery.

The suit argues the use by the state of private prisons involves "substituting a prisoner-corporation relationship for a state-prisoner relationship by relegating prisoners to the status of human inventory and making prisoners slaves to the private prison corporations; attenuating government protection, oversight, safety, and wellbeing of prisoners within the private prisons; and creating financial incentives to design and operate facilities that incarcerate more people for longer periods of time."

The state argued that the lawsuit is mounting a "general attack on the use of private prisons and relies on speculation that private operators may engage in unconstitutional conduct or have engaged in such conduct in non-ADCRR-contracted facilities in the past and that they may be harmed if the operators behave as they have alleged."

CALIFORNIA BANS PRIVATE PRISONS AND IMMIGRANT DETENTION CENTERS

Arizona Central reported at that time that about 8,000 inmates of an overall population of around 40,000 were incarcerated in private jails. A federal court dismissed the lawsuit, and an appeal is now before the traditionally liberal Ninth Circuit. The plaintiffs hope the case reaches the Supreme Court.

A number of briefs have been filed in favor and against the lawsuit. On the plaintiff’s side, briefs filed by left-wing and civil rights groups argue that the reintroduction of private prisons is a callback to racist practices from the 19th century and that such prisons have greater racial disparities and worse conditions.

AZ GOV. KATIE HOBBS CREATES COMMISSION TO STUDY STATE'S PRISON PROBLEMS

"Today, attempts to evade the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against slavery are being tested again using private, for-profit corporations who bid for, buy and sell, and extort prison labor from U.S. citizen prisoners, many of whom are African American," a brief by the professors and graduates of the University of Arkansas Little Rock states.

An amicus brief filed by Latino Justice noted some private facilities are used to house immigrants and claimed the centers include "glaring racial disparities."

"These centers overwhelmingly detain Black and Latino people who have not been accused of any crime, but are instead held for alleged violations of civil immigration law," it says.

The brief also notes that the Biden administration has pledged to shut down a number of private immigration detention centers. The administration has been aiming to rely on Alternatives to Detention, and the number of immigrants in custody across the U.S. remains low.

California banned for-profit prisons in 2019, including for-profit immigration detention centers.

A separate brief by the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Center argues the system is exacerbated by detention quotas that undermine due process for those in custody.

"The same companies profiting from the mass incarceration system have capitalized on the mass detention of immigrants, leading some scholars to compare incarceration of Black men in the ‘new Jim Crow’ with the increased use of for-profit detention to hold immigrants, many of whom are Latinx," the brief says.

Other groups have pushed back in support of Arizona. The Day 1 Alliance, which emphasizes the importance of the private sector in American life, argues that the private sector operation of prisons is beneficial for the inmates and society in general.

A lawsuit alleges prisons in Arizona are practicing slavery.

They argue the use of private sector prisons is subject to multiple levels of oversight, often embedded in their government contracts, and reject the idea that contractors will cut corners to pursue greater profits. It also notes the use of substance counseling and educational and vocational programs to help reduce recidivism rates.

"Private sector contractors are able to maintain lower costs because their size and experience enable them to take advantage of economies of scale in their purchasing power for such essentials as clothing, food, health care services, hygiene items and various other services and supplies," they say.

They also argue that the language of Arizona’s statutes, which say a proposal for a contract cannot be accepted until it offers cost savings, results in a "detailed statutory scheme (that) mandates cost savings while maintaining service quality, which benefits the taxpayer while causing no detriment to incarcerated individuals."

"The required cost savings that are realized through utilizing private sector contractors are designed to combat the enormous strain placed on government budgets by increases in the number of incarcerated individuals," the alliance argues.

It cited data that contractor-operation facilities cost $64.65 per inmate per day compared to $80.20 per day for their public counterparts.

Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs holds a campaign event at the Carpenters Local Union 1912 headquarters Nov. 5, 2022, in Phoenix, Ariz.

The brief accuses the plaintiffs of "hurling baseless insults at these private sector contractors, filled with hyperbole and fictitious assertions that are devoid of factual validity."

"The reality is that the efforts of these private sector contractors should be lauded and replicated, including their goal of improving the lives of the inmates who cross the thresholds of the facilities that they operate," they say.

The case comes as Gov. Katie Hobbs on Wednesday announced the creation of a commission to study problems in Arizona’s prisons, including staffing levels and the health care offered to those behind bars.

The creation of the commission by Hobbs, Arizona’s first Democratic governor since 2009, came several days after she ordered a separate review of the state’s death penalty protocols.

"We cannot deny there is an urgent need to provide transparency and accountability in Arizona corrections system," Hobbs said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.