24 November 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
The Problem Solvers' feckless pursuit of bipartisanship is a guarantee to do nothing.
Whether centrists are willing to withhold their speakership votes from McCarthy on Jan. 3, as some conservatives have indicated, remains to be seen. But it’s not just the more moderate Joyce-led group eyeing ways to have extra influence next year. Even as Washington’s attention after the midterm turns to the Freedom Caucus, members of the Main Street Caucus and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus are talking among themselves about it. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), the Problem Solvers’ co-chiefs, met for dinner last week and talked about possible rules changes to help ensure their roughly 50 members next year are more unified, and therefore more powerful, on the floor next year. Among them: guidelines to endorse only bills that are bipartisan when introduced.
That sounds like a fine way to ensure that no Democratic policies emerge from the House of Representatives. Tough bargainer, that Gottheimer, boy.
“We just want to make the group more accountable ... I mean, the whole point of our group is to stick together on the floor when we endorse bills,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that their ability to coalesce could be “important” given the tight margin. Other factions in the House are already looking to form alliances with the centrist group. Fitzpatrick said he’s been hearing from Freedom Caucus members who want to find common ground with the moderate wing next year, as well as from Democratic senators who are looking for GOP allies in the lower chamber as they weigh their legislative priorities.
(We should pause here to point out that, as near as I can tell, in the five sorry-ass years of its existence, the Problem Solvers Caucus has solved exactly one problem: helping Gottheimer's private equity sugar daddies out with the problems they have with paying taxes.)
I know I'm wasting my time here, but let me say for the benefit of readers who may be just joining American democracy (already in progress): There are no Republican moderates! The party is made up of hard-core conservatives on one hand and, on the other, hard-core conservatives who howl at the freaking moon. Take, for example, the several "moderates" quoted in the Politico piece. This is Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, on the idea of codifying reproductive freedom:
“I stand with life and voted against the extreme federal pro-abortion bill today. It would have led to taxpayer funding of abortions and would remove late term abortion bans among other adopted pro-life laws in place by various states, including overturning Nebraska’s ban on dismemberment abortions which has wide support in our state. I’m grateful for the pro-life women in Nebraska like Deb Fischer and Jean Stothert, as well as those in Congress who spoke out for life today.”
At best, you get mush, like this from Brian Fitzpatrick, the Abbott to Gottheimer's Costello, on the day the Dobbs decision was handed down:
At the core of our democracy must always be the goal of building bridges, not driving wedges. This issue, as sensitive as it is, must be approached in this same manner. With empathy, with understanding, and with compassion. I urge all state legislatures, including in my own state of Pennsylvania, to follow this lead. Support two-party solutions. Reject single-party solutions. Build bridges, don't drive wedges.
Sure, Brian. You know what was a single-party solution? The Freedom To Vote Act, which passed without a single Republican vote, including yours. Want another? The Inflation Reduction Act, passed without a single Republican vote, including yours. OK, one more: the egregious tax cut bill passed by the previous administration? The Republicans rammed that sucker through after playing the so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats for the suckers they are. So you'll have to pardon me for thinking that, when Speaker Whoever cracks the whip, you'll be there for whatever the moon-howlers propose. You all could prove me wrong by refusing to vote to fund any of the useless snipe hunts that are coming along in January. Here's a test, Brian. Your likely future Speaker is howling racism at the moon.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) fired back at House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Monday after he renewed a threat to remove her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for what he characterized as “repeated antisemitic and anti-American remarks.” McCarthy, who is angling to become House speaker in January, repeated the vow multiple times over the weekend, including during a television interview and during an appearance before a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. Republicans are poised to claim a narrow House majority in the next Congress.
Ms. Reece would like a word:
READ MORE 
People walk in the snow in the city center of Kyiv, Ukraine. (photo: Andrew Kravchenko/AP)
As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries.
“Put simply, this winter will be about survival,” Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, regional director for the World Health Organization, told reporters on Monday in Kyiv, saying the next months could be “life-threatening for millions of Ukrainians.”
Already, snow has fallen across much of Ukraine and temperatures are dipping below freezing in many parts of the country. Dr. Kluge said that 2 million to 3 million Ukrainians were expected to leave their homes “in search of warmth and safety,” though it was unclear how many would remain inside the country.
On Wednesday, Russia pounded Ukraine with another barrage of missiles, striking energy infrastructure and residential areas across the country, killing at least three people in Kyiv, according to local authorities, and setting off blackouts in much of the country, including Lviv in western Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry, in a statement, said the bombing left the “great majority of consumers without power.” The strikes caused a temporary shutdown of “of the majority of thermal and hydro-electric plants," potentially disrupting heat and water supplies.
Even before Wednesday’s attacks, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment.
The dire warnings indicate that despite a string of losses on the battlefield, Russia’s airstrikes have wrought destruction that will severely test Ukrainians’ national resolve and sharply raise the costs for Kyiv’s Western allies, who are struggling with spiking energy prices in their own countries.
Military experts said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to compensate for territorial losses, and to create a sense of war fatigue among Ukraine’s European NATO allies in hopes that they will eventually pressure Kyiv to make concessions and slow arms shipments that enabled Ukraine’s victories.
“This is all about the weaponization of refugees,” retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said in a phone interview.
“By making Ukraine uninhabitable in the winter time, they are potentially sending millions more Ukrainians to Europe,” Hodges said. “That would put pressure on European governments. The hope is that Europe, in turn, would pressure Kyiv.”
“The Russians are losing everywhere,” Hodges said, adding that “their only tactic” is to target nonmilitary civilian infrastructure “to drag things out” and hopefully obtain a solution “more favorable to the Kremlin.”
However, a senior European Union official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief the press, said the bloc could absorb a new wave of refugees and would support Ukraine “as long as it takes.”
“However Putin to tries to break the will of Ukrainian people, we will provide what they need,” the official said.
But Russia is showing no sign of relenting. Last week, Moscow unleashed brutal barrages involving about 100 missiles and scores of self-destructing drones on two separate days, hitting targets throughout the country and leaving nearly 10 million Ukrainians without power.
For weeks, Russian missiles have targeted key components of Ukraine’s electrical transmission system, knocking out vital transformers without which it is impossible to supply power to households, businesses, government offices, schools, hospitals and other critical facilities.
During a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the state-run power grid operator, called the damage to the power system “colossal.”
And Russia last week broadened its targets. Oleksiy Chernyshov, chief executive of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz, said in an interview that a “massive rocket attack” hit 10 gas production facilities in the Kharkiv and Poltava regions, including Shebelinka, one the largest production and drilling areas.
“Of course, we will do our best now to recover, but this will take time and resources and material,” Chernyshov said. “Time is of the essence,” he added. “Because winter is now.”
The targeting of the gas supply was a critical development, said Victoria Voytsitska, a former member of parliament now working with civil society groups on getting Ukraine the equipment it needs. If Moscow takes out the gas system, she said, cities and villages across the country could become “uninhabitable.”
Now the question is what Russia will attack next.
Voytsitska and others believe the targets will include other parts of the gas delivery system, as well as bridges and railway lines. She expressed special concern that Russia could strike the plants that operate major cities’ centralized heating systems, exposing millions to freezing temperatures.
“Nothing is stopping [the Russians],” she said. “What is going to stop them are Western air missile defense systems of which we don’t have enough yet.”
Cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv, the capital, are undergoing scheduled blackouts to reduce strain on the electrical grid, especially during peak usage hours.
These outages usually last around four hours, though the number of shutdowns vary. Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipro in central Ukraine, said nine hours was the longest any section of his city had gone without power. In Kyiv, deputy head of the city administration Petro Panteleyev said blackouts can last up to 12 hours.
Stores and restaurants may be dark during the day but keep regular hours, often needing customers to pay cash because credit card terminals do not work. At night, lightless streets turn into treacherous obstacle courses, especially after snow and rain. Gas-fueled generators are now often heard chugging away.
But when Russia launches major attacks, as it did last week, large sections of the country are plunged into darkness for extended periods of time, as repair crews scramble to respond.
Ukrainian officials have sought to project confidence.
For now, the situation is “difficult, [but] under control,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko wrote in response to questions from The Washington Post. But with “each attack it becomes more difficult,” he said, to restore damaged equipment and assure the system runs smoothly.
The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has insisted that Russia’s strikes are serving military purposes, and will continue until Moscow’s military objectives are achieved.
Western officials, however, dispute that there is any military utility.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the missile strikes had “little or no military purpose,” and constituted a war crime. “With the onset of winter, families will be without power, and more importantly, without heat,” Austin said. “Basic human survival and subsistence is going to be severely impacted and human suffering for the Ukrainian population is going to increase.”
Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, said the current situation was akin to a “wide, convenient highway that’s been hit by a bomb.”
“You can take detours in the same direction,” Kudrytskyi wrote in response to written questions. “It is clear that when all the cars traveling on the highway turn onto narrower detours, they create traffic jams and it takes more time to get to their destination. But you still get to where you’re going.”
Russians, he said, were mainly targeting substations, nodes on the electrical grid where the current is redirected from power stations. The main components of these substations are autotransformers — “high-tech and high-cost equipment” that is difficult to replace.
Kudrytskyi said that some parts of the grid have been hit five times. Repair crews “work 24/7 to restore the damage as quickly as possible,” he said, but then a Russian missile “flies into this equipment again,” leaving “a pile of charred scrap in the place where they installed a new transformer.”
As a result, Ukraine’s energy operators need vast quantities of almost all basic materials.
A list of “urgent needs” from DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, circulating in Washington, lists dozens of transformers along with circuit breakers, bushings and transformer oil.
The U.S. Agency for International Development says it has been working to secure energy assistance for Ukraine, including $7 million in repair equipment for Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Mykolaiv, with a first delivery scheduled next week. In a statement, the agency also said “we have procured and are working to deliver” more than 1,700 generators, including some to be used for emergency heating centers.
But it is the autotransformers — the “heart” of the substations, in the words of Kudrytskyi — that are at the top of the Ukrainians’ list of needs and the key to keeping the country’s electrical grid functioning.
The Ukrainians have tried to buy up every autotransformer they can find, going as far as South Korea to purchase them, but they still need to place orders for more to be built.
“We try to collect everything around the world that they have now, and order more,” said Olena Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry.
While manufacturers are sympathetic to Ukraine’s problems, it can be difficult for them to set aside orders from other customers. The equipment also needs to be brought to Ukraine. Each autotransformer weighs more than 500 pounds, Kudrytskyi said, making it a large, easy target for bombing while in transit.
Officials in Washington say they are conscious of Ukraine’s needs and working urgently to find and deliver spare parts. One senior policymaker, who was not authorized to talk to the press and spoke on the condition of anonymity, described working “12 to 15 hours a day” on the problem.
Among the challenges, the policymaker said, are that U.S. manufacturers do not always have needed equipment in stock — and if they do, it can take too long to get it to Ukraine. One idea is to establish a reserve of spare parts in Poland, so that equipment could rushed into Ukraine when needed.
Olena Pavlenko, the president of DiXi Group, a Kyiv-based energy consultancy, was in France and Washington last week to try to push Ukraine’s partners to speed up equipment deliveries. But Pavlenko said she was worried that Washington was not moving fast enough.
The E.U. has set up a platform to match Ukrainian requests to countries with available equipment. French President Emmanuel Macron has announced a Dec. 13 donor meeting focusing in part on infrastructure.
But for some, mid-December is still a long way away. “The words ‘critical’ and ‘urgent’ are too weak to describe the pressing needs of the power system for repair equipment,” Galushchenko, the energy minister, said. “For us, it’s not every day that is important, but every hour.”
READ MORE 
Billionaires. (photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Why do we keep believing things that are too good to be true?
Considering the events of the last several months, you could also interpret doublethink to mean things like “the metaverse is the future,” “people will pay millions of dollars for shitty art,” or “this crypto billionaire definitely has my best interests in mind.” It’s a trite reference, but it’s sort of the only one that makes sense. Somehow, somewhere along the way, the American public was duped into believing that these things could be true despite being, well, not.
On November 11, the 30-year-old CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, resigned after his firm filed for bankruptcy. Prior to its implosion, Bankman-Fried (colloquially referred to as SBF) was regarded as a boy genius in the crypto world, not only because of his billionaire status but because he was widely considered to be “one of the good ones,” someone who advocated for more government regulation of crypto and was a leader in the effective altruism space. Effective altruism (EA) is part philosophical movement, part subculture, but in general aims to create evidence-backed means of doing the most good for the most people. (Disclosure: This August, Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation, Building a Stronger Future, awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project. That project is now on pause.)
Instead, Bankman-Fried did the opposite: He tanked the savings of more than a million people and may have committed fraud. In a conversation with Vox’s Kelsey Piper, he essentially admitted that the do-gooder persona was all an act (“fuck regulators,” he wrote, and said that he “had to be” good at talking about ethics because of “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us”).
In terms of corporate wrongdoing, the SBF disaster is arguably on par with Enron and Bernie Madoff. Here was a dude who marketed himself as a benevolent billionaire and convinced others to invest their money with him simply because he was worth $26 billion (at his peak). He partnered with celebrities like Tom Brady and Larry David to make crypto — a wildly risky investment that rests on shaky technology — seem like the only way forward. Both Brady and David, among several other famous people, are now being accused in a class-action suit of defrauding investors amid FTX’s collapse.
But there have been other examples of technological doublethink in recent history. Over the past year, Mark Zuckerberg has campaigned so hard for the mainstreaming of the “metaverse” that he changed the name of one of the world’s most powerful companies to reflect his ambitions. His metaverse, though, called Horizon, would end up looking like a less-fun version of The Sims, a game that came out in the year 2000 (but even Sims had legs). The strategy has not, as of publication time, paid off. The company lost $800 billion.
What’s ironic, though, is that anyone with eyeballs and a brain could have simply told Zuckerberg that Horizon is terrible. Not only is it ugly and functionally useless, it’s also expensive (VR headsets cost hundreds of dollars at minimum). People did, to be sure, tell him that — since its rollout, the platform has been widely mocked in the media and online — it’s just that Zuckerberg hasn’t listened.
There’s this thing in tech where entrepreneurs tell themselves that their job is to innovate. They are the builders, they say, charting the way forward for the next generation of rubes who will follow them, years late, into the future. But often what they are doing is following wherever the money is, wherever the godlike venture capitalists decide to turn on the spigot. They believe they can predict what’s coming simply because “that’s where the money is” and end up surprised when the money ends up in something totally pointless.
The most convincing argument I ever heard about Web3 is that “Well, that’s what all the smart people are working on.” Back in February, I attended a meetup for crypto-curious women at an expensive, trendy hotel bar where everyone was very cool and nice. The part that stuck out to me the most was when the organizer said into the mic, “Whether we like it or not, it’s happening.” The pitch was that because all of these finance bros were getting rich on crypto and NFTs, then maybe we could catch up to them.
What wasn’t said, but what I heard, and what I’ve always heard when someone explains Web3 to me, was: “Yeah, we know this all seems fucking stupid. We know that most NFT art sucks and the idea of anyone paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for it doesn’t make even a little bit of sense. We know that this whole system is basically a pyramid scheme and that it’s bad for the environment and that no one has ever really come up with a good use case for it. But that’s where the money is.”
I don’t think anybody that invested in crypto is an idiot; in fact, I believed the opposite. After attending the meetup I was convinced that enough people would buy into this kind of marketing out of fear and FOMO that in a few months’ time I’d be paying for my coffee in Ethereum. Sure, I couldn’t really understand what was so useful about crypto or DAOs or whatever, but these women seemed smart and normal and people were making a lot of money.
The problem is that engineering is pretty bad at teaching the fact that marketing doesn’t just mean TV commercials and pretty packages. NFTs weren’t marketed based on how cool they looked (which was: not at all). They were marketed by rich dudes, or supposedly rich dudes, who positioned themselves as the only ones who were smart enough to know where the world was going. “You think this is just a jpeg?” they seemed to ask. “Enjoy being poor.”
But any woman with a Facebook account could have informed them that this is precisely the strategy used by multi-level marketing companies shilling protein shakes and leggings. Every get-rich-quick scheme is an exercise in doublethink: “It might not make sense in any logical way you’re used to, but look at my new car! You could have one too!”
Did anyone really think that a billionaire could be benevolent? Did anyone think Horizon was the future? Did people think Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover was going to proceed in any normal way? Probably. We lie to ourselves all the time. In a world in which liberal arts colleges and humanitarian studies are increasingly demonized as “wokeism factories,” it’s the technologists who are made to seem like the rational ones. Those who criticize them end up seeming naive, or ignorant, or afraid of progress, so much so that sometimes, we end up believing it ourselves instead of believing our own eyes.
READ MORE
Police tape blocks off the Club Q parking lot Sunday morning in Colorado Springs. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
The attack.
Shortly before midnight Saturday, a lone shooter, identified by police as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, allegedly entered Club Q wearing body armor and carrying an AR-15-style assault rifle. Aldrich immediately began shooting, according to Colorado Springs police chief Adrian Vasquez. The club’s owners said Aldrich arrived at the nightclub with “tremendous firepower,” with security-camera footage indicating the shooter had as many as six magazines of ammunition.
Five people were killed and 18 injured — 17 by gunshot — in the rampage, which lasted less than ten minutes. It ended when the suspect was subdued by patrons inside the club. In an account given to the New York Times, military veteran Richard Fierro described tackling and beating Aldrich with the suspect’s own pistol as he enlisted other customers to help him. “I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Fierro said. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.” The boyfriend of Fierro’s daughter was one of the dead.
Colorado Springs mayor John Suthers said the attack “has all the appearances of being a hate crime.” Police said two firearms, including a long gun, were recovered at the scene. The FBI is assisting with the investigation. On Monday, court records showed Aldrich had been charged with five counts of murder and five counts of “bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.”
The first 911 call reporting the shooting came at 11:57 p.m.; the first responding officers arrived on the scene at 12:02 a.m. and quickly took the suspect into custody. Aldrich remains hospitalized with undisclosed injuries.
The gunman has non-life threatening injuries, according to a source familiar with the matter. He was armed with a semi-automatic rifle, similar to an AR-15.
— Jesse Aaron Paul ☀ (@JesseAPaul) November 20, 2022
The source said law enforcement has collected evidence suggesting the shooting was a hate crime. https://t.co/nccN334lQX
Survivor Joshua Thurman, 34, told the Colorado Sun he was on the dance floor when the shooting started and originally thought the gunfire was part of the music. Thurman, who along with two other patrons was able take refuge in a dressing room, said he saw only the muzzle flash of the attacker’s gun. “There was nothing keeping that man from coming in to kill us,” he told the Sun. “Why did this have to happen? Why? Why did people have to lose their lives?”
— Lance Benzel (@lancebenzel) November 20, 2022
#ClubQ has a bar and dance club , w/ a soundproofed wall separating them. It has drag queen shows three or four days a week, and one was in progress when the shooting started, Thurman said.
— Lance Benzel (@lancebenzel) November 20, 2022
Club Q, in a statement released on its Facebook page early Sunday morning, said that it was “devastated by the senseless attack on our community” and that “we thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.” Club Q co-owner Matthew Haynes said Sunday that the club remained vigilant about security following the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando. “We’ve worked with the Colorado Springs Police Department and the F.B.I. in response to various threats over the years,” he told the Times. “But there had been no known recent threats toward Club Q.”
“Club Q is a safe haven for our LGBTQ citizens,” Vasquez, the police chief, said Sunday. “Every citizen has the right to feel safe and secure in our city, to go about our beautiful city without fear of being harmed or treated poorly. I’m so terribly saddened and heartbroken.”
Statement from #ClubQ, the LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs that police say was the scene of a mass shooting overnight. According to their post, the gunman was subdued by heroic customers. @DenverChannel #ColoradoSprings pic.twitter.com/CJnV4NjEHc
— Brandon Richard (@BrandonLRichard) November 20, 2022
The Sun reports that multiple events were planned at the club over the weekend, including an all-ages brunch and drag show Sunday morning recognizing Transgender Day of Remembrance:
In two Instagram posts on Saturday prior to the shooting, Club Q announced that Saturday night’s party would include a birthday celebration for a community member. In the second post, it announced that a Sunday brunch and drag show would recognize Transgender Day of Remembrance, which honors trans people who have been killed. The drag brunch is a regular event at the club and is billed as being open to people of all ages. Such events have in recent years become focal points for protests by anti-LGBT groups.
Colorado governor Jared Polis, the country’s first openly gay governor, called the attack “horrific, sickening, and devastating.”
— Governor Jared Polis (@GovofCO) November 20, 2022
Polis was unable to travel to Colorado Springs on Sunday because he recently tested positive for COVID-19, but he took part in a virtual vigil. The governor ordered flags to be flown at half staff for five days in remembrance of the five victims of the attack, according to the Times.
President Biden responded to the attack Sunday:
Jill and I are praying for the families of the five people killed in Colorado Springs, and for those injured in this senseless attack.
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 20, 2022
While no motive in this attack is yet clear, we know that gun violence has a particular impact on LGBTQI+ communities across our nation.
The victims.
The five victims have been identified as Raymond Green Vance, Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, and Ashley Paugh.
Vance, 22, whose girlfriend’s father, Fierro, attacked the suspect, was visiting Club Q for the first time and was joined by his girlfriend and several others. In a statement provided to CNN, the Vance family said, “Raymond was the victim of a man who unleashed terror on innocent people out with family and friends,” Vance’s family said in a statement, “His own family and friends are completely devastated by the sudden loss of a son, grandson, brother, nephew, and cousin loved by so many.”
Paugh, 35, was visiting Colorado Springs with a friend Saturday and capped off her trip with a night at Club Q. She had an 11-year-old daughter and was an avid hunter and fisher. “Nothing will ever be the same without her,” Paugh’s sister, Stephanie Clark, told NBC News. “Right now, I don’t want to laugh. She was a loving, caring person who would do anything for anybody. We’re gonna miss her so much.”
Rump, 38, worked as a bartender at Club Q. “He was an awesome guy,” Tim Bates, a friend of Rump, told the Sun. “He was the sweetest guy. He was a snarky, snarky, snarky man.”
Aston, 28, was a transgender man who also worked as a bartender at the club. Two years ago, he moved from Tulsa to Colorado Springs, where his parents lived. “We are in shock, we cried for a little bit, but then you go through this phase where you are just kind of numb, and I’m sure it will hit us again,” Aston’s mother, Sabrina, told the AP. I keep thinking it’s a mistake, they made a mistake, and that he is really alive.”
Loving, 40, was visiting the club during a trip she was taking from Denver, per the New York Times. Her sister, Tiffany, said she learned of her death from the FBI. “She was loving, always trying to help the next person out, instead of thinking of herself,” she said.
One of the people injured in the attack was the DJ performing at the club on Saturday night, Tara Bush (DJ T-Beatz), according to a GoFundMe launched to help support her and her family. Bush suffered gunshot injuries and required surgery, according to the page.
CPR has put together a post for anyone who wants to support the victims and their families from near or afar.
Club Q is directing monetary donations to the Colorado Healing Fund: https://t.co/3O19MsSBu1
— Elise Schmelzer (@EliseSchmelzer) November 20, 2022
GoFundMe has also verified three campaigns accepting donations:
-https://t.co/qCWGzrv2NW
-https://t.co/baibgmlqPe
-https://t.co/pNARGwJhD9
Saturday night’s attack was the deadliest mass shooting targeting a gay nightclub in the U.S. since 49 people were killed by a gunman at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June of 2016.
The suspect.
Colorado Springs police identified the shooter as Anderson Lee Aldrich. In court filings Tuesday, Aldrich’s attorneys referred to the suspect as “Mx. Aldrich,” and wrote that Aldrich is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. Aldrich’s motive remains unconfirmed. The club’s owners said Sunday they had never seen them before.
Using he/him pronouns, the Washington Post reported Monday that Aldrich was known as Nicholas Brink until the age of 15, when he legally changed his name. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and his mother was arrested for arson when he was 12. Before the name change, Brink had been the subject of internet harassment, per the Post:
At age 15, he became the target of a particularly vicious bout of online bullying in which insulting accusations were posted to a website, along with his name, photos and online aliases, according to a review of the site by The Washington Post. At some point, a YouTube account was created under his name, featuring a crude, profanity-laden animation under the title, “Asian homosexual gets molested.”
In June 2021, Aldrich was arrested in a suburb on the outskirts of Colorado Springs after woman called the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to report that Aldrich had threatened her with a homemade bomb and multiple weapons. Aldrich was eventually arrested after a brief standoff with police, who found no bomb. No charges were filed, however, and the case was later sealed, according the Colorado Springs Gazette. As the Post notes:
Why local prosecutors declined to pursue charges in the case was not clear.
Also unclear was whether any petitions had been filed against Aldrich preventing him from possessing a firearm. Colorado’s 2019 “red flag” law gives local judges the authority to order the confiscation of firearms from individuals with a history of mental illness or violence.
Club Q has been a sanctuary for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ+ community.
Club Q has long been one of the only LGBTQ+ nightclubs in Colorado Springs, where it has been in business for 21 years. In an interview with the Sun, co-owner Matthew Hayes explained that the LGBTQ+ community faced discrimination in public when the club opened, and “Club Q was that safe place for people to come and feel and understand that they are normal — that the way they feel is normal and there are people just like them.” He said, in the decades since, the venue has been as much a community center as it has been a club. “There have been so many happy stories from Club Q. People meeting and relationships being born. So many celebrations there. We’re a family of people more than a place to have a drink and dance and leave.” He said he doesn’t yet know what will happen to the club in the aftermath.
Several other locals and community leaders emphasized to the Sun how important and welcoming Club Q has been.
Former Texas police officer and Colorado Springs Chaplain Michael Travis at the Club Q site.
— Dan Boyce (@BoyceDan) November 20, 2022
He said he has long thought of the club as a 2nd home for him and his husband.
"It's like akin to being burglarized or something, but much worse. You're not even safe in your own home." pic.twitter.com/7GKPIbaQvc
A rise in anti-trans rhetoric.
The attack in Colorado Springs comes amid a stark rise in anti-trans rhetoric, particularly in the political world. Nationwide, statehouses have taken up legislation that seeks to ban gender-affirming care for youth or place limits on which sports teams students can join and which bathrooms they can use.
Drag shows have also come under fire, particularly storytelling events held at libraries, which critics deem dangerous for children without citing evidence. In June, a Republican lawmaker from Florida drafted a bill to make it a felony to take a child to a drag show. Drag performances have faced heavy protests with some venues even receiving threats of violence for holding them, resulting in canceled programs.
Club Q, which hosts drag performances and other events, was attacked into the morning of November 20, which is recognized as the Transgender Day of Remembrance, honoring the memory of members of the trans community lost to anti-trans violence and bigotry.
READ MORE
Stickers on a table for after voters cast their ballots in 2022 in Atlanta. (photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images)
The number of young voters in Georgia more than doubled since 2014, counter to the narrative provided by David Shor.
The narrative aligns with the politics of the popularists, who argue that Democrats ought to hew to a moderate center to win over swing voters, rather than stand for a progressive agenda. The most vocal critic of the media’s credit to young voters for Democratic overperformance has been strategist David Shor.
“There was no ‘Youthquake’ — turnout relative to 2018 was strongly associated with age, with turnout increasing starkly in older counties and decreasing the most in younger counties,” Shor wrote on Twitter. “This [youth turnout] narrative is basically made up and journalists should stop reporting it.”
AP votescast data also finds that Republicans outnumbered Democrats in this election - Democratic candidates won anyway because they both won independents and convinced many self-identified Republicans to vote for them! https://t.co/5Z0mkkfgXt
— (((David Shor))) (@davidshor) November 9, 2022
Instead, he argued, persuasion was at work. “AP votescast data also finds that Republicans outnumbered Democrats in this election,” he wrote. “Democratic candidates won anyway because they both won independents and convinced many self-identified Republicans to vote for them!”
In a follow-up post, he wrote, “We now have fully completed individual level administrative vote history in Georgia — it seems like there was a substantial drop in relative turnout among young people, with 2022 seeing relative turnout rates much closer to 2014 than to 2018.”
We now have *fully completed individual level administrative vote history* in Georgia - it seems like there was a substantial drop in relative turnout among young people, with 2022 seeing relative turnout rates much closer to 2014 than to 2018. https://t.co/S60rR582Nt pic.twitter.com/FdCr8Qh1yf
— (((David Shor))) (@davidshor) November 16, 2022
There’s no question that persuading voters to switch sides is an important component of politics. But the way Shor did his calculation obscures the explosion in voter turnout that Democrats have seen since 2014.
The key is in the word “relative.” To get a relative rate, it matters heavily what the denominator is. The denominator in Shor’s data for Georgia is registered voters. But in late 2016, Georgia implemented automatic voter registration, and the number of registered voters skyrocketed, particularly among young people. So even if the total number of young voters surged, the rate would stay similar. And, indeed, a closer look at the numbers shows that young voters in Georgia did indeed surge to the polls in much higher numbers than in 2014.
Georgia’s automatic voter registration signed people up when they came to get or renew a driver’s license. Voter registration subsequently surged. According to the census, in 2014, there were roughly 4.3 million total registered voters in Georgia. By 2018, there were 4.8 million. By 2022, there were 7.9 million, according to the Georgia secretary of state.
In 2014, just 42 percent of eligible voters ages 18 to 24 were registered to vote, out of a population of 895,000, the census found. And just 201,000 in that group actually voted — 22 percent of those eligible. But if you calculate the rate by the number of registered voters, rather than eligible voters, the number is more impressive: Fifty-three percent of those ages 18 to 24 who were registered to vote came out and voted.
The next midterm election, in 2018, came with Donald Trump in the presidency and a youth movement around gun violence following the Parkland shooting, leading to an unquestionable surge in turnout. The total number of voters climbed from 2.9 million to 4.08 million.
The population of potentially eligible voters ages 18 to 24 in Georgia slightly increased, from 895,000 to 1.037 million, but the number registered jumped from 367,000 to 516,000, as two years of automatic voter registration significantly increased the rolls. The number of registered voters ages 25 to 34 climbed from 622,000 to 746,000.
If we throw voter registration out — since the introduction of automatic registration makes a reliable comparison across years impossible — and only focus on the rate of eligible voters who turned out, the numbers are stark. In 2014, just 28 percent of people ages 18 to 34 voted, for a total of 535,000. In 2018, 42 percent of those eligible young people voted — a 50 percent jump over 2014 — for a total of 935,000 people.
So where does 2022 fall?
For a direct comparison, we can’t use census data, which won’t be available for some time. Census data is also not as accurate as data pulled directly from the voter file, like the kind of research done by Democratic consulting firm TargetSmart.
According to the firm’s research, in 2014, 203,874 people under the age of 30 voted in 2014 in Georgia, representing 7.9 percent of the overall turnout. In 2018, that number exploded to 478,240, or 12.1 percent, an unheard of jump of 50 percent over the 2014 midterm, matching the census finding.
Complete 2022 numbers from TargetSmart aren’t public yet, but CEO Tom Bonier said the final youth vote in Georgia will represent 10.9 percent of the electorate, a substantial increase over 2014, but lower than 2018 (and slightly closer to 2018 than 2014). What makes the increase that much more impressive, of course, is that the overall turnout massively expanded as well. Making up 7.9 percent of 2.6 million is a much smaller total number of young voters than 10.9 percent of 4.1 million.
In fact, the total number of young voters casting ballots in 2022, given those numbers, will be more than double the number of young people who voted in 2014. The total population of Georgia was 7.3 million in 2014; now it’s over 10 million. But that means the rate of increase among young voters substantially outpaced the rate of population growth.
Shown the TargetSmart numbers, Shor agreed that the automatic voter registration law may make the comparison to 2014 difficult. “My numbers show proportions of registered voters,” said in a direct message. “Comparisons to 2014 are tricky because Georgia implemented pseudo-AVR after 2016.”
“It’s possible if you make the denominator adult eligible population things look better for the 2014 comparison,” he continued. “Though that’s hard because we don’t *really* know the number of young adults over time. But turnout was definitely down quite a bit from 2018. This generally has to be contextualized with turnout for Biden voters clearly having been below Trump voters.”
The robustness of youth turnout is doubly impressive given the scarce resources devoted to it in 2022. In 2018, NextGen, the Tom Steyer-funded youth voter turnout machine, spent $33 million reaching young people. After Steyer’s failed presidential bid in 2018, he largely abandoned NextGen, another instance of a billionaire growing bored of his progressive project. The group registered 258,000 voters in 2018, and just 78,000 in 2022. They don’t list Georgia as a state they worked in in 2022.
More broadly, the universe of organizations built up over the years to register young voters has withered. The United States Student Association, the oldest of them, has effectively disappeared. Vote.org, once a powerhouse, went through a period of tumult, split into two rival organizations, and no longer has the punch it once did. The Center for American Progress shuttered its youth voting arm, and so on. That young people still powered Democrats to victory speaks to the potential of a coalition that responds to their interests.
READ MORE
Israeli forces detain a Palestinian following a protest in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike. (photo: Ammar Awad/Reuters)
The Commission estimates that since 1967, Israeli forces have incarcerated over 50,000 Palestinian children. They have also wounded and killed Palestinian minors. Some 20,000 of these children have been jailed since the year 2000, the outbreak of the second Intifada or uprising in the Palestinian West Bank. Some 9,000 minors have been imprisoned since the 2015 demonstrations in Jerusalem, and most of them are from East Jerusalem.
This year alone, 770 Palestinian minors have been detained in Israeli jails, and in October 119 were imprisoned.
The Palestinian Commission on Detainees and Ex-Detainees says that at this moment about 160 Palestinian children are languishing in Israeli prisons. Three of these are girls, two sixteen-year-olds and one seventeen-year-old, two of them from Al-Khalil / Hebron. Four of the minors are held under the illegal Israeli practice of “administrative detention,” under which individuals can be held in prison for an indefinite amount of time with no former charges being filed against them and no opportunity for a trial.
“Administrative detention” is a violation of the principle of habeas corpus, which requires that the government produce those arrested and bring them before a judge or release them. This principle is recognized by all democratic countries and is enshrined in the International Declaration of Human Rights. Despite the characterization of Israel as a “democracy,” it isn’t really any such thing, and lack of habeas corpus is one reason why. Another is that it keeps 5 million people under its rule stateless and without basic human rights.
The Palestinian Commission on Detainees points out that some persons arrested as a minor languish in jail for many years, becoming adults while on the inside.
The Commission accuses Israeli authorities of brutalizing these minors in prison, with either corporal punishment or psychological abuse. These forms of brutality are intended to get the children to confess orally or in writing to the charges Israeli authorities have laid against them, under conditions that would get such confessions thrown out of court in the civilized world.
Israeli practices in detaining and jailing minors violate the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, passed by the UN General Assembly, as well as other human rights instruments.
They give the sad example of Fatima Taqatiqa, 15, from a village near Bethlehem, who was wounded and nevertheless arrested, and who died in prison in 2017.
Some children are sentenced to house arrest, a practice that has turned hundreds of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem into prisons.
READ MORE 
COP27 was another milestone for young climate activists as they became official climate policy stakeholders under the ACE Action Plan. (photo: Dominika Zarzycka/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)
This year’s COP27 was another milestone for them — they became official stakeholders in climate policy under the ACE action plan, which was created at COP27 in Egypt over the last few weeks.
Young people’s voices and opinions will now be much more impactful when it comes to the design and implementation of climate policies, explains Hailey Campbell, one of the negotiators who made it happen.
“Official recognition as stakeholders in the ACE Action Plan gives young people the international backing we need to demand our formal inclusion in climate decision-making and implementation,” she told CNBC’s Make It.
Campbell is also the ACE co-contact point for YOUNGO, the youth constituency for the United Nations’ framework convention for climate change and the co-executive director of the U.S.-based organization Care About Climate.
What is the ACE action plan?
ACE stands for Action for Climate Empowerment and is outlined in article 12 of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Improving education and awareness around climate change by making research easily accessible is one of its aims. Another goal of the article, and the new plan developed at COP27 to support it, is making sure governments and organizations around the world work together on policies and take opinions from the public and stakeholder groups into account when making decisions.
Srishti Singh from the Indian Youth Climate Network, who worked alongside Campbell at COP27, told CNBC’s Make It that the new ACE plan is key when it comes to different groups being considered in climate policy.
“Strengthening ACE in climate policy means better participation of stakeholders at local, regional, and global levels, including youth,” she said.
What does this mean for climate policy?
In short, being official stakeholders means young people get a bigger seat at the table. Campbell hopes that now, they will be able to shape policies that affect their future and work “with those who will not be here to see the impacts of decisions made today.”
The youth constituency should also see additional funding and support to take part in future COP conferences and other events about climate change, she adds.
Especially in recent years, young people have been some of the most vocal about strong climate targets and policies. Millions joined school strikes around the world, others took part in U.N. youth climate summits or made headway as activists, like 19-year old Greta Thunberg, or reached political leadership positions liked 28-year old Ricarda Lang, who is the co-leader of the German Green party.
This year’s COP27 also saw the first ever official youth representative, Omnia El Omrani, fight for the inclusion of young people’s voices, the launch of a climate youth negotiator program that aims to empower young climate activists from the global south, and the inaugural youth climate forum.
Campbell says the goal was for young people to be at the center of policy-making.
“When we talk about representation, we don’t just want it at international negotiations and we don’t want to only be consulted. We want it at all levels of government and we want to be partners because action happens on the ground,” she said.
Her and her colleagues also hope to change the way older generations see climate change and its urgency.
“We know that including more youth creates more ambitious and just outcomes, so hopefully we will be able to advance quicker action on the climate crisis through our genuine involvement,” Campbell concluded.
How did they make it happen?
Most people on YOUNGO’s team had never formally learned negotiation skills. This included Bettina Duerr, a policy officer at Federation Internationales Des Mouvements Catholiques d’Action Paroissial.
“I did not have specific training or support in this role, but I used experiences from other contexts. Plus, our working group was really supportive throughout,” she told CNBC’s Make It.
“It helped that I was already in touch with the working group before COP27 and that we planned our strategy,” she added.
As well as learning from each other, previous networking had put the group in contact with experienced negotiators who gave them advice, Campbell added.
But their overall strategy boiled down to just three points, she explained. Those included writing out agreements they hoped to reach, partnering with other constituencies and making sure they had other groups in their corner, backing their ideas.
Duerr and Campbell both described the negotiations as intense, draining and stressful — but their commitment to the cause outweighed this.
“We’d stop anything we were doing to join last minute meetings with each other and with parties that wanted to champion our perspective,” Campbell said.
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.