Sunday, January 21,2024. Annette’s News Roundup.
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Joe is always busy.
Yesterday was a big anniversary.
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Kamala is always busy.
Harris is leading on gun violence prevention. Will it reach young voters?
Vice President Harris says young voters could create a "sea change" on the issue of gun violence prevention if they turn out and vote.
It's an issue that the Biden campaign says will help motivate a key part of its base of support — and one where it sees Harris as being an effective messenger.
"On this issue, it is a lived experience," Harris told U.S. mayors in Washington on Thursday, describing what she's learned from talking to younger people about the gun violence epidemic.
"They are aware of the solutions. And I think, frankly, when they start voting in their numbers, we're going to see a sea change."
At the White House, Biden put Harris in charge of this issue
Harris has long been talking about gun violence prevention, dating back to her first position in office as a district attorney in San Francisco.
"I have witnessed and seen autopsies. I know what guns do and gun violence does to the human body," Harris told the mayors. "For so many of you — you, too, know what gun violence does to people, to a community, to families, to the psyche of a community."
POLITICS
Biden is creating a new White House office focused on gun violence prevention.
In September, when President Biden created the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, he tapped Harris to lead it.
Gun violence prevention is an issue Harris has spoken about frequently from the White House. Last month, she convened state legislators for a meeting on taking state level action on gun control.
But as focus turns to the reelection campaign, Harris is making gun violence prevention an issue she brings up all over the country. It even comes up at events that aren't specifically focused on it.
Last year, for example, she embarked on a tour of college campuses around the country, where her office says she met with more than 15,000 students. And gun violence came up at every stop.
On the campaign trail, gun violence is an issue Harris will champion
In a recent poll from Tufts University, 26% of young people said gun violence prevention was a top issue for them in the 2024 election. Among young Black voters, the number jumped to 36%.
As enthusiasm for the Biden-Harris ticket has waned among young voters in recent months, there's been an added focus from the vice president on connecting with young voters and the issues they prioritize.
MIDDLE EAST CRISIS — EXPLAINED
In Dubai, Harris deals with 2 issues important to young voters: climate and Gaza
"The more that she's out there talking and connecting to these folks, it also, I think, earns her credibility," Eve Levenson, the Biden campaign's newly announced Director of Youth Engagement, told NPR in an interview.
The campaign says they're framing the conversation around gun violence in a similar way they are to other issues like reproductive rights and education, by putting it in the context of freedom and civil rights.
"That is what young people want, is to be able to have that freedom and to be able to have a government that's supporting them and not constraining them," Levenson said.
Gun violence is the number one killer of children in the U.S.
One in five people in the U.S. have a family member who has been killed by a gun. And gun violence recently became the number one killer of children in the United States.
ELECTIONS
'We're not just voting. We're also running.' David Hogg launches young candidate PAC
Ryan Barto, a spokesperson for March for Our lives, a gun control group started after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., said the anxiety around gun violence and the prevalence of it in young peoples' lives has led to them turning out to vote with the issue in mind.
"Especially when it happens in your community, it changes things. And it definitely, definitely turns out people to vote. It's why, again, we've seen year after year the youth vote be one of the most powerful forces in our election," Barto said.
Biden's support from young voters has sagged
In the 2020 election, youth voter turnout was critical for Biden's success, and young voters also helped Democrats cinch control of the Senate in the two run-off races in Georgia.
John Della Volpe with Harvard University's Institute of Politics conducts polls with young people. He said younger voters consider "basic human rights" top of mind when they think about a variety of issues, including climate change, reproductive rights and foreign policy.
"It's really about wrapping thing together in terms of a set of values. That's what young people vote. They're values-based voters not transactional voters," he said.
Young voters have been less than enthusiastic lately about Biden. A recent poll from NBC News showed the president's support among 18- to 34-year-olds dropped from 46% in September to 31% in November.
Della Volpe pointed to Biden's continued support for Israel in its war against Hamas — which has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians — as one of the reasons for the decline.
"Recognizing the importance that young people put on that particular issue will be important ... hearing from the administration, and hearing that they respect the views of young people even though they may not always be in agreement, I think that goes a long way," Della Volpe said.
The campaign needs to do more to reach out to young voters
Abby Kiesa, the deputy director of the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, told NPR the Biden campaign has more work to do with young voters.
Getting young people to turn out to vote takes more more than talking about key issues and posting about them on social media, she said. Campaigns also need to teach new voters how to get engaged in the voting process.
"There's a lot of hard work to bring millions of young people into democracy," Kiesa said. "Millions of young people have turned 18 since the 2022 election."
CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR
What Young Voters Want in 2024
The Biden campaign points out that it's still early — they have 10 months to go until November and want to earn younger peoples' votes. And that effort has started earlier in the year than usual, Levenson said.
In 2016 and in 2020, Democratic campaigns didn't hire a youth engagement director until later in the summer, said Levenson, who started her job this month.
"We're starting significantly earlier in terms of the youth engagement work," she said. "We're really excited to be able to have significantly more time to build out a really great program." (NPR).
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Trump update.
Trump’s racism is out there for all to see.
Trump mocks Nikki Haley's first name. It's his latest example of attacking rivals based on race.
ATLANTA (AP) — Donald Trump used his social media platform Friday to mock Nikki Haley ‘s birth name, the latest example of the former president keying on race and ethnicity to attack people of color, especially his political rivals.
In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, as “Nimbra.” Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.” She took the surname “Haley” upon her marriage in 1996.
Trump, himself the son, grandson and twice the husband of immigrants, called Haley “Nimbra” three times in the post and said she “doesn’t have what it takes.”
The attack comes four days before the New Hampshire primary, in which Haley is trying to establish herself as the only viable Trump alternative in the Republicans’2024 nominating contest.
Trump’s post was an escalation of recent attacks in which he referenced Haley’s given first name — though he’s misspelled it “Nimrada” — and falsely asserted she is ineligible for the presidency because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born in 1972.
The attacks echo Trump’s “birther” rhetoric against President Barack Obama. Trump spent years pushing the conspiracy theory that the nation’s first Black president was born in Kenya and not a “natural born” U.S. citizen as required by the Constitution. That effort was part of Trump’s rise among Republicans’ most culturally conservative base ahead of his 2016 election that surprised much of the U.S. political establishment.
Haley has dismissed Trump’s latest attacks as proof that she threatens his bid for a third consecutive nomination.
“I’ll let people decide what he means by his attacks,” Haley told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday when asked about Trump’s false assertions that her heritage disqualifies her from the Oval Office. “What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums, if he’s spending millions of dollars on TV. He’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong.”
Trump’s campaign did not reply to an inquiry about his comments.
Since Monday’s Iowa caucuses — which Trump won by 30 points over Ron DeSantis, who placed second — Haley has aimed to portray the rest of the GOP primary battle as a two-way race between Trump and herself despite her narrow third-place finish. Haley’s campaign is aiming for a stronger showing in New Hampshire, hoping for a springboard into her home state South Carolina, which holds the South’s first presidential primary next month.
For his part, Trump bounces between declarations that the nominating fight is already effectively over and blasting Haley as if the two are indeed locked in a tight contest. Trump still criticizes his other remaining rival, DeSantis, but his preferred pejoratives for the Florida governor, “Ron DeSanctimonious” or “Ron DeSanctus,” have nothing to do with race or ethnicity. DeSantis is white.
Trump’s focus on Haley’s name comes as far-right online forums have for months been littered with mentions of her given name alongside racist commentary and false “birther” claims. Haley’s name and family background also have become talking points on the left. Some widely circulating social media posts have called her a hypocrite for saying America was “never a racist country” when she likely experienced racism herself.
Pastor Darrell Scott, a Black man who has led a diversity coalition for Trump’s previous campaigns, defended the former president’s latest attacks as “slings and arrows” that come in election season.
“You have to dissect politics as politics. It’s not personal,” said Scott. “He’s not intending to demean her or degrade her in any way. He’s just doing that to garner votes.”
Scott said Trump “has a compassionate side that most people don’t see” and defended his aggressive approach as a “goose-and-gander situation” for a public figure constantly “under attack for everything.”
Tara Setmayer, senior adviser to the Lincoln Project group that opposes Trump from within the conservative movement, agreed that Trump’s rhetoric works in a Republican primary. But she said that’s a damning reality for the party and does not excuse his behavior.
“These are the rantings of an incredibly, almost pathetically insecure man who has demonstrated over his entire career his racism and bigotry,” said Setmayer, who is multiracial and calls herself a former Republican and now a conservative independent. “Why would anyone expect it to be any different now, when an entire political party has enabled this level of morally questionable behavior?”
Amid the fallout Friday, Trump won the endorsement of South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican and formerly a presidential candidatehimself. Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in 2012, during her first term as governor.
Trump has a long history of using race, ethnicity and immigrant heritage as a cudgel.
For years, he has referred to Obama as “Barack Hussein Obama,” putting an obvious emphasis on the 44th president’s middle name. Obama was the son of a white American mother and a Black father from Kenya. He was born in Hawaii, though Trump spent years asserting Obama had manufactured the story and a birth certificate to support it. Trump eventually admitted his claims were false but then, during the 2016 general election, said he did so only to “get on with the campaign.”
When David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, encouraged Republican primary voters to back Trump in 2016, Trump responded in a CNN interview that he knew “nothing about David Duke, I know nothing about white supremacists.”
Trump is also among many Republicans who deliberately mispronounce Vice President Kamala Harris’s name. Rather than the correct “KA’-ma-la,” Trump sometimes says, “Ka-MAH-la.” Harris, who is of Indian and Jamaican descent, is the first woman to become vice president and the third non-white person as either president or vice president, following Obama and Charles Curtis, Herbert Hoover’s vice president who had Native American ancestry.
Leading up to Trump’s 2017 inauguration, civil rights icon John Lewis, then a Black congressman from Georgia, said he would not attend Trump’s inauguration because he considered him an illegitimate president. Trump reacted by blasting Lewis’s Atlanta-based district as being in “horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested).” The district includes downtown Atlanta, Coca-Cola’s world headquarters, the Georgia Institute of Technology and principal sites of the 1996 Olympic Games, among other attributes.
During his presidency, Trump questioned during a meeting with lawmakers why the U.S. would accept immigrants from Haiti and “shithole countries” across Africa instead of countries like Norway. He did not explicitly mention race but the White House followed disclosure of his comments with a statement explaining that Trump supported granting access to the U.S. for “those who can contribute to our society.”
He also has said that four congresswomen of color should go back to the “broken and crime infested” countries they came from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the U.S.
Trump’s mother was born Mary Anne MacLeod in Scotland and came to the United States between the two world wars. His paternal grandfather, Frederick Trump, was a Bavarian-born immigrant from Germany in the 1880s. Trump’s first wife, Ivana Zelníčková before their marriage, was born in what is now the Czech Republic. His third wife, former first lady Melania Trump, was born Melanija Knavs in what is now Slovenia. That means four of Trump’s five children also are children of immigrants.
Haley frames her family’s story as proof that the U.S. “is not a racist country.” She sometimes highlights her role in taking down the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina statehouse grounds after a racist massacre in her state — though she had sidestepped requests to remove the banner earlier in her term. And Haley has for years navigated Trump’s penchant for racist rhetoric.
“I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK,” Haley said during the 2016 primary campaign after she had endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio over Trump. “That is not a part of our party; that is not who we want as president.” (Associated Press).
Trump’s mental condition is out there for all to see.
Former President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to confuse Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when talking about the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and again repeated false claims about Pelosi.
“By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know they -- did you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it, because of lots of things, like Nikki Haley is in charge of security, we offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down,” Trump said.
The Speaker of the House is not responsible for US Capitol security, as CNN previously fact-checked. Pelosi’s office has explicitly said she was not even presented with an offer of 10,000 troops, and the speaker of the House has no authority to prevent the deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard.
“A deeply confused Trump confuses Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley multiple times: Nikki Haley was in charge on January 6. They don’t want to talk about that,” the Biden campaign responded to the moment on X. (CNN).
One more thing.
Trump is frequently confused and incoherent. The media immediately interprets what Trump must mean (as CNN did above) and whoosh - they normalize what we all would otherwise label as mental decline.
Why do the press and his opponents act as if this man, the leader of the Republican Party, is sane? Here is more proof he isn’t. 👇
Misnaming “Cassius Clay” in this fantasy 👇 is just the start of Trump’s madness.
Hey, finally, one of Trump’s opponents told it like it is.
Haley Hits Trump on Age, Suggesting He Is ‘in Decline.’
Nikki Haley’s attack on Donald J. Trump’s mental fitness was her sharpest yet, with just days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
Nikki Haley on Saturday escalated her attacks on Donald J. Trump, directly criticizing his mental acuity for the first time a day after the former president appeared to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, during his Friday night rally in New Hampshire.
In a news conference with reporters after her campaign event in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley stopped short of calling Mr. Trump mentally unfit. But she did question whether he would be “on it” enough to lead the nation.
“My parents are up in age, and I love them dearly,” she said. “But when you see them hit a certain age, there is a decline. That’s a fact — ask any doctor, there is a decline.” (New York Times).
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Be afraid. The Russians are still at it.
Microsoft corporate emails hacked by Russian-backed group, company says.
Microsoft revealed Friday that some of its corporate email accounts were hacked by a Russian-backed group.
The tech company said in a blog post that its security team detected the attack on Jan. 12 and quickly identified the group responsible: Midnight Blizzard, "the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium."
Microsoft revealed Friday that some of its corporate email accounts were hacked by a Russian-backed group.
The tech company said in a blog post that its security team detected the attack on Jan. 12 and quickly identified the group responsible: Midnight Blizzard, "the Russian state-sponsored actor also known as Nobelium."
late November, the group allegedly used a "password spray attack," where a user uses a single common password against multiple accounts on the same application, to "compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold," according to Microsoft.
MORE: 9 Russians charged with cyberattacks targeting US companies
The group then "used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents," the company said.
The hackers allegedly were targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard, Microsoft said.
Microsoft was able to remove the hacker's access to the email accounts on Jan. 13, according to a company filing with the SEC.
MORE: DOJ charges 2 Russian officers with global hacking campaign targeting US, UK intelligence officials
"To date, there is no evidence that the threat actor had any access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems. We will notify customers if any action is required," the company said.
The company said it is in the process of informing its affected users.
The investigation is ongoing. (ABC News).
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Wonder if today is the day Coach K will have to call the woman whose win record surpasses his own.
Tara VanDerveer, Stanford’s women’s Basketball 🏀 Coach earns 1202 victories to tie Duke men’s coach, Mike Krzyzewski’s record.
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) — Stanford’s players formed a postgame circle and Kiki Iriafen offered her celebratory teammates a little perspective on their coach, Tara VanDerveer:
“Tara’s been winning since our parents were kids.”
Yes, pushing five decades.
A head coach since her mid-20s and still doing it now at 70, VanDerveer tied Mike Krzyzewski as the winningest coach in college basketball history with her 1,202nd victory Friday night. She guided the No. 8 Cardinal past Oregon 88-63 while losing leading scorer Cameron Brink for the final three quarters with a leg injury.
“It’s like a dream come true. To have a dream and watch it play out,” VanDerveer said of her fortunate timing entering coaching after not having that as a player pre-Title IX.
“I planned to go to law school because there were no coaches. That was not a job for women. My timing was horrible for playing but it was very good for coaching. I was a head coach when I was like 24 years old. I’m just really thankful that I get to have a job that it’s not a ‘JOB’ job. I love coming to the gym, it was just fun at practice today. Just to experience this is more than I ever could have dreamed of.”
Cardinal players hugged their smiling coach and lifted her up in celebration after the teams shook hands. Brink even took a turn, perhaps a positive sign regarding her leg. She was headed for an X-ray.
VanDerveer can set the record Sunday, when she goes for 1,203 as Stanford (16-2, 5-1 Pac-12) hosts Oregon State. A couple dozen former Stanford players are expected to be on hand for the potential milestone.
“The amount of people that come just shows the impact she’s had on the game, the impact she’s had at Stanford and on this program,” Iriafen said. “For us, we’re just soaking it in how honored we are to be a part of her historic moment even though she won’t allow herself to celebrate it too big. We’ll celebrate for her. This is just an amazing experience being here and being coached under her. The opportunity to make history on Sunday is really exciting.”
Brink landed awkwardly on her left leg and limped to the locker room with help at the 3:41 mark of the opening quarter. She returned to the bench just before the end of the period. Brink had made all three of her field goals for six points to go with two rebounds, an assist and a steal in six minutes.
Iriafen had 21 points on 10-for-17 shooting, 15 rebounds and a pair of blocked shots as the Cardinal bounced back from a 71-59 loss at then-No. 5 Colorado on Sunday. Talana Lepolo added 13 points and eight assists with just one turnover.
The 70-year-old VanDerveer is in her 38th season at Stanford and 45th as a college coach. She turned around the programs at Idaho and Ohio State before arriving in the Bay Area. VanDerveer has adapted based on her players’ strengths, cherishing the opportunity to learn something new from fellow coaches at every level.
And now she has matched Coach K’s win total with Duke and Army.
“I think any young coach out there, that’s who you should watch,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves said of VanDerveer. “That’s how you should coach, and I’m really happy for them. I’m also happy for us that we weren’t the record setting one. We’re just the tying one. But I’m happy for her. She deserves everything that she’s getting and has gotten.”
Stanford raced ahead 20-0 with Oregon missing its first eight shots before Kennedy Basham’s layup at the 3:45 mark of the first quarter.
Chance Gray contributed 19 points and five assists to lead the Ducks (11-8, 2-4), who had won their previous two after a three-game skid.
Big Picture.
Oregon: Oregon committed 12 turnovers after finishing with 27 in a 70-68 victory last Sunday at Arizona that was played without fans because of an ice storm in Eugene. Stanford scored 15 points off the miscues. The Ducks have lost their last seven against the Cardinal.
Stanford: VanDerveer has just one losing season, going 13-15 in her first campaign at Stanford in 1985-86. She has more wins than 355 of the 360 Division I NCAA programs. She was away from the Cardinal for a 29-3 season — she doesn’t get those victories — while coaching the 1996 U.S. Olympic team that captured a gold medal in the Atlanta Games. (Associated Press).
Stanford's Tara VanDerveer, 2011.
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