SOMERSET — A Minnesota teenager died and four other people were seriously hurt after being stabbed while tubing down a western Wisconsin river, authorities said.
St. Croix County Sheriff Scott Knudson the victims and suspect, a 52-year-old Prior Lake, Minnesota man, were all on the Apple River when the attack happened Saturday afternoon. Knudson said investigators were working to determine what led to the stabbings and whether the victims and suspect knew each other. They were tubing with two different groups that included about 20 people.
Water Recovery authorities combed the Apple River with metal detectors after five people were stabbed while tubing down the river Saturday in Somerset.
ALEX KORMANN, STAR TRIBUNE VIA AP
“We don’t know yet who was connected to who, who knew each other or what precipitated it,” Knudson said.
The knife attack happened on a difficult-to-access section of the river near the town of Somerset, which is about 35 miles east of Minneapolis. The suspect was arrested about an hour and a half later while getting off the river downstream.
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“Thank goodness a witness had taken a photo of him,” Knudson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “Another witness located him at the exit of the tubing area, where he was taken into custody.”
A 17-year-old boy from Stillwater, Minnesota, died. Two of the other victims were flown to a hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, and two others were taken there by ambulance. The sheriff’s office said Sunday that the condition of all four surviving victims — a woman and three men in their 20s — ranged from serious to critical. They suffered stab wounds to their chests and torsos.
The sheriff’s office didn’t name the victims, but did provide a few details about them. The victims included a 20-year-old man and a 22-year-old man from Luck; a 22-year-old man from Elk River, Minnesota; and a 24-year-old woman from Burnsville, Minnesota;
The name of the suspect wasn’t immediately released, but St. Croix County jail records show a 52-year-old man was being held without bond on suspicion of first-degree homicide, four counts of aggravated battery and four counts of mayhem.
Edgewood High School’s football team was in the WIAA playoffs when it was disqualified for having an ineligible player.
This was one of the most unusual cases I covered this year.
East High School business teacher David Kruchten, explained himself in a letter to US District Judge James Peterson before his sentencing.
Amid days covering unspeakable tragedy, it was a wonderful diversion to meet Alan Crossley, a volunteer with Wheels for Winners.
A state Supreme Court decision put the drunken driving homicide case against Dawn Prado, pending since 2015, back on the Dane County docket.
Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email.
A proposal by the Biden administration to exchange notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner and former marine Paul Whelan, two high-profile Americans currently detained in Russia, has been met with praise, confusion and fury.
While some have praised the Biden administration and state department for doing whatever it takes to bring back Griner and Whelan, others have cast skepticism towards the deal, especially when it comes to releasing Bout, who has a notorious international reputation.
Many have wondered: is it worth exchanging two wrongfully detained Americans for an arms dealer nicknamed the “Merchant of Death”? Others ask if the deal should include Marc Fogel, the “other American” currently imprisoned in Russia after trying to enter the country last year with half an ounce of medical marijuana? Still more wonder if any exchange might encourage further hostage-taking? What about the several hundred thousand Americans who continue to be arrested domestically on marijuana-related charges?
In February, Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport after authorities found vape canisters containing cannabis oil – for which she had a doctor’s recommendation – in her bags. The arrest of the Phoenix Mercury star quickly made headlines as it came amid heightened US-Russia tensions ahead of Moscow sending its forces into Ukraine a week later.
Griner has since been detained in Russia and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted of transporting drugs.
Brittney Griner speaks to her lawyers standing in a cage at a courtroom prior to a hearing in Khimki, Russia on 26 July. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
In December 2018, former US marine and corporate security executive Paul Whelan was arrested in Russia on espionage charges and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. According to Russian officials, he was caught with a flash drive that contained classified information. Whelan, who also holds passports from Canada, the UK and Ireland, has repeatedly denied the charges and claims that he was set up.
The US government has denounced Whelan’s charges as false and declared both Whelan and Griner as “wrongfully detained”.
On Wednesday, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, announced that the US has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to release Whelan and Griner. Although Blinken refused to say what the US was offering in return, a source familiar with the matter confirmed a CNN report that Washington was willing to swap Bout, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in the US, as part of the exchange .
Prisoner swaps have been a long part of the history between the two former cold war adversaries. The first major exchange between the US and the Soviet Union occurred in February 1962 when Americans gave up Rudolf Abel, a convicted KGB spy, in exchange for American pilot Gary Powers, whose U2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union two years earlier. The exchange, which took place on the fog-covered Glienicke Bridge on a cold, cloudy Berlin morning, was adapted into a Steven Spielberg thriller over 50 years later.
The Powers-Abel exchange paved the way for further prisoner swaps. A little over 20 years later, the US conducted what one American official called the “biggest spy swap” in history. The US released four eastern European spies in exchange for 25 people detained in East Germany and Poland. In more recent memory, 10 Russian agents detained by the US were exchanged in 2010 for four Russian officials that the Kremlin had jailed over their illegal contacts with the west.
Paul Whelan holds a sign as he stands inside a defendants’ cage during his verdict hearing in Moscow, Russia, on 15 June 2020. Photograph: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters
In April, former US marine Trevor Reed was released back to the US after being detained in Russia since 2019. Russian authorities had accused Reed of attacking a Moscow police officer and sentenced him to nine years in jail. In exchange for Reed, the US released jailed pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for conspiring to import more than $100m worth of cocaine into the US.
Despite these exchanges, none have quite involved the notoriety of a figure like Bout. Born in 1967 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to a bookkeeper and a car mechanic, Bout went on to train as an interpreter at Moscow’s Soviet Military Institute of Foreign Languages.
Rumored to speak six languages, Bout developed a decades-long career by acquiring Soviet military transport plans and filling them with various weapons that were left behind after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. Since then, Bout has supplied weapons to conflicts around the world including Afghanistan, Angola, Congo, Lebanon, Somalia and Yemen.
For decades, governments and rebels fought each other with weapons that Bout sold to either side.
In 2008, Bout was arrested in Bangkok after he was caught on camera trying to sell weapons for use against Americans by undercover US Drug Enforcement and Administration agents. He was convicted in a New York court in 2011 and was sentenced to 25 years at a federal prison in Marion, Illinois.
Reports of Bout’s potential release have since been met with an array of emotions.
Kathi Austin, founder of the Conflict Awareness Project, a non-profit that investigates major arms traffickers, expressed concerns about the possibility of Bout’s release.
“I spent nearly 15 years chasing Bout around the globe to stop his trade in death… My life and that of other colleagues and UN peacekeepers were put on the line to bring him to justice,” she told the Guardian.
“You cannot imagine how much I have emotionally struggled with the idea of Bout’s release … Putin knew very well what he was doing by making Brittney Griner a bargaining chip … In a post-release situation … Putin is certain to weaponize Bout in areas of the world where the Merchant of Death has a proven track record,” she said.
Viktor Bout waits in a holding cell in Bangkok on 9 March 2009. Photograph: Sukree Sukplang/REUTERS
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the nonpartisan membership organization Arms Control Association, echoed Austin’s concerns.
In a statement to the Guardian, Kimball said: “Releasing Viktor Bout … could certainly lead to adverse consequences … If he is part of a prisoner swap with Russia, it could damage future efforts to hold accountable those who illegally facilitate dangerous weapons transfers to warlords , conflict zones and undemocratic regimes.”
Jodi Vittori, a former air force lieutenant colonel and current professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said: “Given that Mr Bout has been incarcerated since then, it is unlikely that his arms trade networks remain significantly intact.”
Nevertheless, Vittori expressed concern over the irony of such a proposal, saying: “Trading American hostages for a notorious Russian arms trafficker with the ominous moniker of the Merchant of Death sends the world mixed messages at a time when the United States is striving to arm Ukraine as it fights for its life and democracy against Russia.”
Jordan Cohen, a defense policy and arms sale analyst at the Cato Institute, cast doubt on Bout’s ability to cause harm in the short term if he is released. “US and western intelligence will likely track him and his network to make sure no sudden arms trafficking deals are happening. Beyond that, his years in prison and solitary confinement also likely diminished his ability to quickly mobilize his network, ”Cohen told the Guardian.
Others have praised the Biden administration for its proposal. Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, tweeted: “I applaud @SecBlinken & @StateDept efforts to bring Britney Griner and Paul Whelan home even if it means handing over Viktor Bout.”
However, I have urged the state department to also include Marc Fogel in the deal. Fogel, a former history teacher at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, was arrested last August after trying to enter Russia with medical marijuana that his doctor prescribed him to treat “severe spinal pain”. Russian authorities sentenced him to 14 years of hard labor, accusing him of committing “large-scale drug smuggling”.
“The tragic situations of Brittney Griner and Marc Fogel seem very similar. So I would hope Fogel could be included in a package deal. Getting three innocent Americans back, not just two, for one real criminal, seems like a good trade to me,” McFaul, whose sons Fogel taught at the Anglo-American School, told the Guardian.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Jane Fogel said that her hopes of securing her husband’s release have been fading, saying: “There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Marc will be left behind.”
While Griner’s wife received a call from Joe Biden, Fogel’s family has been stalled at the state department’s “mid-functionary level”. In a letter Marc Fogel recently addressed his family regarding the prisoner swap reports that the Washington Post reviewed, he wrote: “That hurt… Teachers are at least as important as bballers.”
Meanwhile, others have criticized the irony of the state department’s proposal as hundreds of thousands of Americans remain incarcerated over marijuana charges.
The Libertarian party of New Hampshire responded to the news of the prisoner swap by writing about action on drug offenses in the US, saying: “America is mad at Russia for doing to Brittney Griner what it does to 374,000 people per year.”
another user tweeted: “I often wonder how Americans who have family members still in American prisons over weed, feel watching this entire #BrittneyGriner thing unfolds?”
Former President Donald Trump “has to be rattled” now that the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on US Capitol is speaking with some of his former top Cabinet officials, a biographer of his said on Sunday.
The comment came from Tim O’Brien, the author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald and senior executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion, during an interview on MSNBC after he was asked about the possible plans for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be interviewed by the panel.
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that the House committee interviewed former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and that lawmakers had asked the former Trump official about discussions at the Cabinet level to use the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office in the wake of the riot. Pompeo is also likely to speak with the panel soon, according to the AP, which has also reached out to former Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf.
Former President Donald Trump “has to be rattled” now that the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol is speaking with top former cabinet officials, a biographer of his said Sunday. Above, Trump is seen on Friday in Bedminster, New Jersey. Mike Stobe/LIV Golf
“Mike Pompeo said he’s considering talking to the committee about possibly testifying. Do you think Trump is rattled by these senior members of his administration cooperating?” MSNBC host Lindsey Reiser asked O’Brien.
“I can’t get inside his head that completely, but Trump has always believed in unwavering loyalty….And I think throughout most of his presidency that was a pretty firm wall. I don’t think you saw many people in his inner circle—they quit before they really decided to rat him out,” he responded.
The biographer said he believes “the work” of the January 6 panel “has convinced” high-ranking Trump officials to testify. He added that it’s “unfortunately very late in the process,” but thinks these ex-Cabinet members “took their cues” from other Republicans like former Attorney General Bill Barr, who testified before the committee, and Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who is vice-chair of the panel.
“The substance of what the committee appears to be asking Mnuchin and Pompeo and others about…is whether or not they were so alarmed by what happened on January 6 that they wanted to invoke the 25th Amendment and force Trump’s removal from office,” O’Brien said. “So he has to be rattled by that because these are people in the past…I think who would never have publicly gone on the other side against him.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump’s press office for comment.
In a separate interview earlier this month, O’Brien said that Republicans are “telling themselves lies” and are hoping that Trump will go away.
The death toll from severe flooding in eastern Kentucky has risen to 28 people, including several children, and the governor said more fatalities are expected as search-and-rescue teams go door-to-door in the Appalachian foothills to assess the damage.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) announced the latest death toll in a news release Sunday evening.
“We are still focused on meeting the immediate needs of providing food, water and shelter for thousands of our fellow Kentuckians who have been displaced by this catastrophic flood,” he said in the release. “At the same time, we have started on the long road to eventual recovery.”
Earlier Sunday, Beshear said that rescue crews were continuing to search for survivors as the rain resumed and that authorities had unconfirmed reports of additional deaths.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said July 31 that more fatalities are expected as rescue efforts continue in the flood-hit areas of eastern Kentucky. (Video: Reuters)
Because of hazardous conditions such as downed power lines, as well as spotty cellphone service, he said some affected areas are inaccessible and the state doesn’t have a “firm grasp” on the number of missing.
“With the level of water, we’re going to be finding bodies for weeks, many of them swept hundreds of yards, maybe a quarter-mile-plus from where they were lost,” Beshear told NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
The Lexington Herald-Leader put the death toll at 33 on Sunday night, based on reports of additional deaths from two county coroners’ offices.
In some families, everyone in their household perished, the governor said. The state was doubling the National Guard to search for victims, he said.
Among the most tragic stories has been the death of four siblings who had clambered onto their roof to escape rising floodwaters. After the roof collapsed, the family clung to tree branches, according to an account in the Herald-Leader. A swell of water swept the children away.
The disaster has led to flash flooding, landslides and mudslides. The storms displaced hundreds of residents and caused “hundreds of millions of dollars” in damage, the governor said in a YouTube video posted Sunday.He has said it could take years to rebuild in the region. Kentucky Power reported on Twitter that as of midday Sunday, power had been restored to about 50 percent of customers who had lost it.
According to the news release Sunday evening, 359 survivors are being temporarily sheltered at 15 shelters and at two state parks and campgrounds.
The Kentucky floods were caused by 1-in-1,000-year rainstorms that scientists say are emblematic of the type of extreme weather that will become more common as the Earth warms.
Explainer: How two 1-in-1,000 year rain events hit the US in two days
On “Meet the Press,” Beshear addressed the extreme weather — including an unusual spate of tornadoes in December that devastated parts of Kentucky and other states — and said officials must ensure that the state’s “roads, our bridges, our culverts, our flood walls can withstand greater intensity.”
Rural water and wastewater systems are easily overwhelmed, he said, and upgrading their infrastructure is “so expensive.” He said the American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure legislation passed last year were a “good start” and allowed the state to afford improvements “that we haven’t been able to do before.”
“But if we truly want to be more resilient, it is going to take a major federal investment as well as here in the state,” Beshear said.
The National Weather Service is predictingseveral rounds of showers and storms for the area from Sunday through Tuesday, with possible flash flooding. A “brief dry period” is expected Wednesday, but Thursday could bring more rain.
Beshear urged residents to take precautions.
“Next couple days are going to be hard,” he saidin the YouTube video. “We’ve got rain and maybe even a lot of rain that’s going to hit the same areas. Please pray for the people in these areas, and if you are in the areas that are going to get hit by rain, make sure you stay safe. Make sure you have a place that is higher ground. Go to a shelter.”
HINDMAN, Ky. (AP) — Damage to critical infrastructure and the arrival of more heavy rains hampered efforts Sunday to help Kentucky residents hit by recent massive flooding, Gov. Andy Beshear said.
As residents in Appalachia tried to slowly piece their lives back together, flash flood warnings were issued for at least eight eastern Kentucky counties. The National Weather Service said radar indicated up to 4 inches (10.2 centimeters) of rain fell Sunday in some areas, with more rain possible.
Beshear said the death toll climbed to 28 on Sunday from last week’s storms, a number he expected to rise significantly and that it could take weeks to find all the victims.
Thirty-seven people were unaccounted for as search and rescue operations continued early Sunday, according to a daily briefing from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A dozen shelters were opened for flood victims in Kentucky with 388 occupants.
Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the US National Guard Bureau, told The Associated Press about 400 people have been rescued by National Guard helicopter. I have estimated that the guard had rescued close to 20 by boat from hard-to-access areas.
At a news conference in Knott County, Beshear praised the fast arrival of FEMA trailers but noted the numerous challenges.
“We have dozens of bridges that are out — making it hard to get to people, making it hard to supply people with water,” he said. “We have entire water systems down that we are working hard to get up.”
Beshear said it will remain difficult, even a week from now, to “have a solid number on those accounted for. It’s communications issues — it’s also not necessarily, in some of these areas, having a firm number of how many people were living there in the first place.”
The governor also talked about the selflessness he’s seen among Kentucky residents suffering from the floods.
“Many people who have lost everything but they’re not even getting goods for themselves, they’re getting them for other people in their neighborhoods, making sure that their neighbors are OK,” Beshear said.
Among the stories of survival that continue to emerge, a 17-year-old girl whose home in Whitesburg was flooded Thursday put her dog in a plastic container and swam 70 yards to safety on a neighbor’s roof. Chloe Adams waited hours until daylight before a relative in a kayak arrived and moved them to safety, first taking her dog from her, Sandy, and then the teenager.
“My daughter is safe and whole tonight,” her father, Terry Adams, said in a Facebook post. “We lost everything today… everything except what matters most.”
On an overcast morning in downtown Hindman, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) southeast of Louisville, a crew cleared debris piled along storefronts. Nearby, a vehicle was perched upside down in Troublesome Creek, now back within its debris-littered banks.
Workers cleaned nonstop through mud-caked sidewalks and roads.
“We’re going to be here unless there’s a deluge,” said Tom Jackson, who is among the workers.
Jackson was with a crew from Corbin, Kentucky, where he’s the city’s recycling director, about a two-hour drive from Hindman.
His crew worked all day Saturday, and the mud and debris were so thick that they managed to clear one-eighth of a mile of roadway. The water rushing off the hillsides had so much force that it bent road signs.
“I’ve never seen water like this,” Jackson said.
Attendance was down for the Sunday morning service at Hindman’s First Baptist Church. Parishioners who rarely miss a service were instead back home tending to cleanup duties caused by floodwaters and mud.
The Rev. Mike Caudill said his church has pitched in to help the reeling community, serving meals and setting up tents for people to pick up cleaning and personal hygiene supplies.
Totes filled with clothes and photos were stacked on retired teacher Teresa Perry Reynolds’ front porch, along with furniture too badly damaged to salvage.
“There are memories there,” she said of the family photos she and her husband were able to gather.
Her husband’s wallet, lost as they escaped the fast-rising water Thursday to go to a neighbor’s house, was later found.
“All I know is I’m homeless and I’ve got people taking care of me,” she said.
Parts of eastern Kentucky received between 8 and 10 1/2 inches (20-27 centimeters) over 48 hours. About 13,000 utility customers in Kentucky remained without power Sunday, poweroutage.us reported.
President Joe Biden declared a federal disaster to direct relief money to more than a dozen Kentucky counties.
Last week’s flooding extended to West Virginia, where Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for six southern counties, and to Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin also made an emergency declaration that enabled officials to mobilize resources across the flooded southwest portion of the state.
___
Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia. Associated Press writer Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.
The Republican primary features a onetime state superintendent-turned-attorney general, a real estate business owner who now ranks at the top of the GOP primary’s latest poll, and a Maricopa County state representative who married into the Udall family political dynasty.
They have courted endorsements from far-right figures including former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Rep. Paul Gossar. And each of the aspiring school chiefs have portrayed classrooms as being overrun with hypersexualized lessons and critical race theory that harm children still regrouping after months of mask mandates and school closures.
“Before, you couldn’t pay someone enough to go to an education board meeting — now all of a sudden, they’re taking the battle to the school districts,” Mike Noble of OH Predictive Insights, a nonpartisan Arizona pollster that has tracked Republican voters’ favored candidates throughout the campaign, said in an interview.
“Critical race theory has really caught on, especially with folks on the right, so that’s kind of their battlefront for superintendent of public instruction,” Noble said. “That’s one that really resonates with the Republican base.”
Critical race theory is an analytical practice of examining how race and racism permeates American law and society. Most public school officials across the country say they do not teach the theory, even in districts where lawmakers are seeking to ban it.
Hoffman, a speech pathologist who first took office as a political novice in a surprise 2018 victory, believes she can win with a message that appeals to independent voters — who made up roughly one-third of the Arizona electorate last year — and moderate Republicans willing to cross party lines. She’s trying to build the kind of message being urged by national liberal education groups scrambling to help Democrats gain ground on education policy.
“It can be disheartening for me to see the divisive language that really puts a wedge between our schools and families,” Hoffman said about her Republican opponents in an interview. She is running unopposed in her party primary.
“They want to be leading our school system. Yet they’re attacking it, and have this very negative rhetoric of distrust around our public schools in a time when our schools need our support more than ever,” she said.
While the Republicans hoping to challenge Hoffman in November have groused about classroom lessons, conservatives control Arizona education policy. Ducey and the state’s GOP-controlled legislature have enacted a rush of education laws during the pandemic despite Hoffman’s opposition, including a universal school voucher program, and bans on sports participation and gender-affirming surgical procedures for LGBTQ youth.
The state superintendent technically carries an administrative role to distribute school funding and carry out laws and policies, though they also hold influential posts on the state board of education and state university board of regents.
Democrats nationally are also struggling to recover their grip on school-based politics after Youngkin won office last year with help from frustrated and swing-voting parents angered by the consequences of Covid-19’s school lockdowns.
Liberal advocacy group research shows the party has lost the trust of voters and parents in dozens of congressional battlegrounds, including Arizona, to handle education. And polls point to frustration that both major parties — but especially Democrats — are more focused on race and gender instead of helping students get back on track in class.
“The political high ground in education debates will be held by whichever side is seen as focused on advancing education fundamentals,” Hart Research Associates pollsters wrote in a June 21 memo for the American Federation of Teachers labor group, following interviews with 1,758 likely voters in Arizona and six other battleground states. “The side seen as politicizing education will be at a distinct disadvantage.”
The trio of Republicans listed on Tuesday’s primary ballot agree they want to remove politics from education and get schools back to basics, even as they appeal to party-line voters with culture-based appeals.
“This a terrible, terrible direction that the country has gone in,” said Tom Horne, a leading Hoffman opponent who seeks a political comeback following tenures as the state’s attorney general and school superintendent.
The leading fundraiser in the race, largely thanks to $550,000 in personal loans to his own campaign, Horne has promoted his past efforts to ban local Mexican-American studies programs — later deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge — as a pillar of his campaign despite a past record of alleged campaign finance violations and a reported FBI investigation.
“I want to get the focus back on academics,” Horne said in an interview. “I want to get rid of the distractions, which in addition to being distractions from academics, are inherently evil and immoral and backwards in emphasizing race and sexuality rather than teaching kids to treat each other as individuals.”
Real estate broker Shiry Sapir said she pulled her children out of their public school and enrolled them in a private institution when Covid-19 pushed classes into remote learning, and she has emerged in local polls this summer.
“I’ve literally been all over the state talking to different Republican groups. The message from them is absolutely what I’ve been talking about: the sexualization, the grooming, the critical race theory, the lack of academic excellence, and of course the issues with masks,” Sapir said in an interview.
“It’s not just conservative mothers, and it’s not their anger. It’s their worry. We’re worried about our children,” Sapir said. “I am the extent of that. I’m the voice that we don’t have. I’m the voice that we must have.”
State Rep. Michelle Udall, chair of the Arizona House education committee and a licensed math teacher, backed legislation that would have allowed state regulators and civil courts to revoke educator licenses and fine schools $5,000 if “any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex” is part of their curriculum.
“You can teach the facts, you can teach what happened, and you can help students understand the horrible things that people went through and the horrible outcomes that racism brings,” Udall said in an interview. “Students need to know that history. Those are skills and knowledge they need to be successful. Whereas critical race theory and the gender identity stuff, those are not.”
Conservatives are staring down a very tight race. An OH Predictive Insights poll of roughly 500 likely GOP primary voters since July 27 showed Horne and Sapir tied for first place with support from 21 percent of respondents. Udall was in third place with 14 percent. Forty-four percent of voters said they were undecided. The survey had an approximate margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Still, it’s not clear Arizona’s general election voters will flock to a Republican superintendent candidate who has focused on cultivating the party’s most conservative wing.
A May survey of 500 likely state voters commissioned by the Education Forward Arizona organization concluded that fewer than half of respondents supported bans on critical race theory or restricting discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation during sex education.
That leaves Hoffman, who has endorsements from the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood, to save her campaign funds and prepare for the fall.
“We have such a high number of independent voters here and also a portion of Democrats and Republicans who will cross party lines for a candidate that they believe in,” Hoffman said.
“I hope I will be a model,” she said. “We will find out in November.”
In Arizona, where GOP state legislators have embraced Trump’s fictions and financed investigations into the 2020 vote count, Trump supporters are “gunning for secretary of state,” said Mike Noble, the chief of research and managing partner at the Arizona-based polling firm OH predictive insights. “[It] is definitely one they have really put a priority on.”
Finchem does face significant opposition in the primary, including from Beau Lane, a businessman endorsed by GOP Gov. Doug Duey. But if the latest polling is any guide, Arizona Republicans are poised to elevate someone who has relentlessly sought to undermine confidence in state elections as their pick to run future elections.
Finchem has been one of the chief proponents of election conspiracy theories since the 2020 election. He was a significant booster of the GOP-led review of all of the ballots cast in 2020 in Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, which was strongly opposed by the Republican-dominated county government and a bipartisan cast of election officials. Finchem also advocates the fanciful plan of “decertifying” the 2020 election results in Arizona, which has no basis in the law, and he counts others who worked to undermine American elections among his prominent supporters of him, including Michael Flynn, Jenna Ellis and Mike Lindell.
Finchem has charged ahead in the lone series of public polling from OH Predictive Insights. The group’s surveys over the last year have had Finchem in the lead but never getting above the mid-teens.
But in their final poll on the eve of the primary, Finchem stormed ahead, leading the field with 32 percent, compared to 11 percent for his closest rival in Lane. The Trump-backed candidates in the Republican primaries for governor and Senate, Kari Lake and Blake Masters, respectively, also had double-digit leads in the survey.
“Trump’s recent visit to Arizona really helped increase the awareness” of his endorsed candidates, Noble said, but particularly of the secretary of state’s race.
Finchem’s biggest challenger for the nomination is believed to be Lane, an advertising executive. Two state lawmakers — Michelle Ugenti-Rita and Shawnna Bolick — were in the high single digits in the OHPI poll, with a plurality of 41 percent still undecided.
Lane hails from the business wing of the state party. He launched his campaign touting the endorsement of dozens of business leaders in the state. And in July, he scored the endorsement of outgoing Ducey, the term-limited governor, who praised him for his integrity and “competence in [his] ability to actually do the job they seek.”
“I think the governor recognizes the importance of having someone who could actually be governor in addition to being secretary of state,” said Daniel Scarpinato, a veteran consultant and former top Ducey aide who is on Lane’s campaign team. “I think he sees Beau as being a mainstream conservative who could effectively execute our elections without politicizing it.”
Finchem has referred to Lane as a “Democrat plant” on his Telegram channel, and has claimed that internal polls have shown him up over the advertising exec. But supporters of Finchem have shown at least some concern about the rest of the field potentially splitting the vote.
Trump put out a statement days before the ballot request deadline in the state, reinforcing his endorsement of Finchem as “the kind of fighter we need to turn Arizona and our Country around.” The former president also attacked one of Finchem’s opponents in his statement by him — but went after Ugenti-Rita as “a weak ‘Never Trumper’ RINO” without mentioning Lane.
Lane and Finchem have been the only two candidates with notable advertising expenditures on the airwaves, according to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact. Lane’s campaign has spent roughly $423,000 on TV and radio advertising, edging out the roughly $256,000 that Finchem has spent there. (Finchem also has about $79,000 in digital advertising.)
Lane’s most recent spot has been a contrast spot, attacking Finchem for once supporting the National Popular Vote Compact — “if he had it his way, Hillary Clinton would have been our president” — while playing up his background as a “business guy.” Finchem’s ad, meanwhile, features Trump praising him and boosting his role with the election review in the state.
But the combined spending of well under $1 million between the two men is merely a drop in the bucket compared to the tidal wave of political advertising that Arizonans are currently subjected to. Over $93 million has already been spent on radio and television ads in Arizona this year — headlined by the competitive Republican gubernatorial and Senate primaries.
“It is a low-information race, which is kind of unfortunate because it is an important position,” said Scarpinato. “Because you have so many competitive races, more than we’ve really seen in a generation in Arizona, you have a lot of people undecided and that is leaving some of these downballot races wide open.”
It is also the second major primary in the state that pits Ducey against Trump, who has publicly feuded since the 2020 election. In the governor’s race, Ducey has backed former state board of regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, while Trump has thrown his support behind Lake, a former TV anchor.
The Arizona secretary of state race is expected to be among the most competitive election administrator elections this year. And it will be an open race, with current Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs the frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
The Democratic primary is a faceoff between Adrian Fontes, the former top election official for Maricopa County, and state House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding.
That primary has quietly become acrimonious between the two men. The political arm of a nonprofit founded by Bolding called Our Voice Our Vote has helped boost his campaign by him, leading to charges of self-dealing from Fontes’ camp. (Bolding told the Arizona Republic that he and his wife have walled themselves off from the political operation of the nonprofit.) And Fontes blamed Bolding’s apparatus for airing an overdue tax bill, which he said was inadvertent.
The race will also test the saliency of the election conspiracy theories that have been so potent in Arizona. Finchem and Lake have worked together in the past: The two filed a joint lawsuit looking to block the use of ballot tabulators in the state, a common target for unfounded claims about the security of American elections.
Barring a blowout in a statewide primary, there’s a strong chance that the winner of the election won’t be known on Tuesday night — the exact situation that Trump took advantage of in 2020 to discredit his loss.
Both Finchem and Lake have signaled they are more than willing to follow the former president’s lead with their own campaigns. In a joint Q&A at a late June fundraiser, which was first reported by Axios Phoenix, both candidates suggested that they would challenge a loss.
“Ain’t gonna be no concession speech coming from this guy,” Finchem said. “I’m going to demand a 100 percent hand count if there’s the slightest hint that there’s an impropriety.”
But there remains at least one huge question mark — the vote of Sinema, whose support is just as critical as Manchin’s in the 50-50 Senate. Like Manchin, she has opposed dismantling the Senate filibuster to pass other Democratic priority bills. She did help remodel Biden’s larger Build Back Better bill before Manchin blocked it last year. But now there are questions about whether she will back tax changes affecting private equity investors in the Manchin-Schumer compromise. As the 50th Democrat needed to pass the measure with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote, Sinema has huge leverage to seek changes that threaten the bill’s fragile foundation, and she has so far avoided giving her verdict on the deal.
Manchin suggested on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday that he hadn’t spoken to Sinema about the package since he agreed on it with Schumer. But he paid tribute to his Arizona colleague de ella and her previous work on reducing prescription drug prices – a goal that is included in the new draft law.
“When she looks at the bill and sees the whole spectrum of what we’re doing and all of the energy we’re bringing in — all of the reduction of prices and fighting inflation by bringing prices down, by having more energy — hopefully, she will be positive about it,” Manchin said. “But she will make her decision about her. And I respect that.”
Manchin wields his power
Manchin, blanketing Sunday TV talk shows, demonstrated his power at the fulcrum of a closely divided Senate as he put his spin on the legislation — always with an eye on voters back home in a deeply red state. Once again, Manchin has succeeded in putting his state of him, one of the poorest and smallest in the nation, at the center of Washington policy making.
He has also used his power to champion centrism at a time when both parties seem to be moving toward their most radical base supporters. After repeatedly infuriating Democrats by thwarting Biden’s agenda, he’s now disappointing Republicans who had hoped he would maintain his opposition to him. On Sunday, Manchin insisted his package would lower inflation, expand domestic energy production, ensure certain corporations pay their fair tax share, and would benefit Americans by cutting prescription drug costs for Medicare patients.
The measure would also spend nearly $370 billion on fighting climate change and developing a new green energy economy, reviving efforts that had seemed doomed just weeks ago by opposition from the coal-state senator. If the bill does pass the Senate and later makes it through the House, it would instantly transform Biden into the President who made the greatest commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and would enshrine his global leadership of the effort to stave off the most disastrous future effects. of climate change. It comes as extreme weather events — from drought in the American West to flooding in Kentucky that has killed at least 28 people — are ravaging the US.
The climate funding is not the only key Democratic priority in the bill.
The Manchin-Schumer bill, now rebranded as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” includes extended Affordable Care Act subsidies that would also cement another key reform wrought by Democratic power in the 21st century — Obamacare. These twin achievements could go some way to changing perceptions of the Biden presidency — which, despite some successes, including a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue package and a rare bipartisan infrastructure law — has seen key agenda items like voting rights and police reform founder in the Senate.
While the passage of the bill could come too late to save Democrats from the painful punch of high inflation in midterm elections in November, it might turnout of progressives demoralized by the failure to do more with the party’s thin control of Washington power. Taken together with the mobilization of liberals following the conservative Supreme Court’s overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion, and majority public support for gun restrictions in the wake of a string of mass shootings, Democrats would at least have a platform to run on in November if they can succeed in weaving a coherent narrative on their achievements.
While Republican strategists believe that the House is already heading toward them, according to new CNN reporting over the weekend, a late spike in Democratic enthusiasm could spur the hopes of party leaders who believe the Senate is not a lost cause — especially against a clutch of candidates in ex-President Donald Trump’s image who could scare off suburban voters.
GOP mobilizes to prevent Democratic win
Manchin explained on Sunday that he understood the invective hurled his way by many Democrats, and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, after he derailed the previous “Build Back Better” plan over his belief that it would fuel already soaring inflation. He said that he hoped the new measure would pass by the end of this week, when the Senate is due to break for an August recess.
The timetable remains a high wire act — just one case of Covid-19 among Democratic senators, for example, could fracture the party’s majority since all Republicans are expected to be against it. There have been several recent positive tests among senators that have sent them into isolation, including Manchin.
In defending his deal with Schumer, the West Virginia senator said that “in normal times,” Republicans would support the bill, since it would pay down the deficit, accelerate permitting for oil and gas drilling and increase energy production — all of which the GOP has previously been on record supporting.
But GOP senators are mobilizing to try to prevent passage of the bill, which would represent a victory for Biden and the Democrats before the midterms.
“It really looks to me like Joe Manchin has been taken to the cleaners,” Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey told Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“Look, this bill, the corporate tax increase, is going to slow down growth, probably exacerbate a recession that we’re probably already in,” said Toomey, who’s retiring. He argued that prescription drug price controls would slow development of life-saving medicines and that the bill would subsidize “wealthy people buying Teslas.”
Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said on ABC News’ “This Week” that another multi-billion dollar spending bill could inject “an incredible amount of uncertainty” into the economy just as it entered a recession.
Debate is raging in Washington on that last point following the release of an official report last week showing a second straight quarter of negative growth. The White House insists that given strong job growth, the economy is not in a classic contraction. In practical terms, however, the inside-the-Beltway semantics make little difference to Americans confronted by grocery bills that are far more expensive than a year ago, even if the prices at the pump have eased somewhat in recent weeks.
Republicans accused of ‘cruelty’ over veterans’ health care
The battle over the climate and health care bill will take place in parallel this week with a fierce controversy over the GOP blockage of a bill that would provide health care to veterans exposed to toxic fumes from burn pits, which were used to incinerate waste at military installations during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Activists, including comedian Jon Stewart, have accused the GOP of “cruelty” after some senators who voted for a previous version of the bill voted not to advance this one. Republicans, meanwhile, accuse Democrats of inserting new spending and complain that their amendments were not included. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said on “State of the Union” that a Toomey amendment would put a “year-on-year” cap on what the department can spend on veterans exposed to burn pits and would lead to “rationing of care.”
Biden, in a FaceTime call from isolation after he registered another positive Covid-19 test on Saturday, promised protesters at the Capitol that he’d fight for the legislation “as long as I have a breath in me.”
Toomey told Tapper, however, that he had long raised opposition to the measure since he wanted funding for burn pit care included in year-on-year appropriations rather than in the mandatory spending column. He said the current legislation would allow Democrats to divert $400 billion for other purposes. And he denied claims that Republicans are holding up the bill to prevent Democrats from scoring another win, following the closing of the Manchin-Schumer deal, as “absurd and dishonest.”
However, the sight of Republicans voting against veterans’ health care — whatever the intricate details of the case — threatens to further an impression that the party is becoming more extreme. And it also takes the focus off the key issues that are most likely to sway the midterm elections in the GOP’s favor, including inflation, gasoline prices and Biden’s low approval rating.
A now-fired professor at the University of West Georgia has been accused of fatally shooting an 18-year-old woman, officials said.
Richard Sigman, 47, was arrested and charged with murder shortly after Anne Jones, 18, died after being shot in a parking deck in Carrollton, Georgia on Saturday, the Carrollton Police Department said.
Police said the officers were initially called to the Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton at around 12:30 am over reports of a woman who had been shot.
Jones was pronounced dead at the medical center and Sigman was arrested and charged with murder, three counts of aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of crime, police said.
Callers told police that the incident unfolded off Adamson Square in a courthouse parking deck after Sigman got into a verbal altercation with another man at Leopoldo’s, a popular pizzeria in the square.
Police said the other man was alleged to have told at least one security guard that Sigman had threatened to shoot him. When security approached Sigman, they saw that he had a weapon and ordered him to leave.
Anna Jones, 18, from Carrolton, Ga., who was shot dead on July 30, 2022.GoFundMe
Sigman left and began walking to the parking deck, where he began shooting into a parked vehicle, striking Jones, police said.
“Friends immediately drove her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead,” police said.
In a statement provided to WXIA, an NBC affiliate based in Atlanta, a spokesperson for the University of West Georgia said Sigman was fired on Saturday.
“On behalf of the university, we wish to convey our deepest condolences to Anna’s family and many friends,” said Dr. Brendan Kelly, UWG’s president, in a statement shared with WXIA.
“We know this news is difficult to process and affects many members of our university community. We ask that you keep Anna’s family, friends, and all who have been touched by this tragedy in your thoughts during this tremendously difficult time,” the statement said.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. A webpage listing the school’s faculty with the Department of Management in the Richards College of Business had as recently as last month named “Rick Sigman” as a lecturer at the school. His profile of him has since been removed from the page.
According to WXIA, Jones had been enrolled to attend UWG in the fall, but police said she was not one of Sigman’s students, according to the outlet.
The teen had recently graduated from Mount Zion High School, according to a statement posted on social media by school leaders.
“Anna loved this school and this community and she will be missed dearly by many,” the statement said, sharing a link to a GoFundMe page set up to help cover funeral costs. As of early Monday, more than $17,800 had been raised.
Chantal Da Silva is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital based in London.
A now-fired professor at the University of West Georgia has been accused of fatally shooting an 18-year-old woman, officials said.
Richard Sigman, 47, was arrested and charged with murder shortly after Anne Jones, 18, died after being shot in a parking deck in Carrollton, Georgia on Saturday, the Carrollton Police Department said.
Police said the officers were initially called to the Tanner Medical Center in Carrollton at around 12:30 am over reports of a woman who had been shot.
Jones was pronounced dead at the medical center and Sigman was arrested and charged with murder, three counts of aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of crime, police said.
Callers told police that the incident unfolded off Adamson Square in a courthouse parking deck after Sigman got into a verbal altercation with another man at Leopoldo’s, a popular pizzeria in the square.
Police said the other man was alleged to have told at least one security guard that Sigman had threatened to shoot him. When security approached Sigman, they saw that he had a weapon and ordered him to leave.
Anna Jones, 18, from Carrolton, Ga., who was shot dead on July 30, 2022.GoFundMe
Sigman left and began walking to the parking deck, where he began shooting into a parked vehicle, striking Jones, police said.
“Friends immediately drove her to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead,” police said.
In a statement provided to WXIA, an NBC affiliate based in Atlanta, a spokesperson for the University of West Georgia said Sigman was fired on Saturday.
“On behalf of the university, we wish to convey our deepest condolences to Anna’s family and many friends,” said Dr. Brendan Kelly, UWG’s president, in a statement shared with WXIA.
“We know this news is difficult to process and affects many members of our university community. We ask that you keep Anna’s family, friends, and all who have been touched by this tragedy in your thoughts during this tremendously difficult time,” the statement said.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. A webpage listing the school’s faculty with the Department of Management in the Richards College of Business had as recently as last month named “Rick Sigman” as a lecturer at the school. His profile of him has since been removed from the page.
According to WXIA, Jones had been enrolled to attend UWG in the fall, but police said she was not one of Sigman’s students, according to the outlet.
The teen had recently graduated from Mount Zion High School, according to a statement posted on social media by school leaders.
“Anna loved this school and this community and she will be missed dearly by many,” the statement said, sharing a link to a GoFundMe page set up to help cover funeral costs. As of early Monday, more than $17,800 had been raised.
Chantal Da Silva is a breaking news editor for NBC News Digital based in London.
