“Kuentzel’s new evidence destroys the prosecution’s case,” they wrote“to make it clear that any reasonable juror would likely have reasonable doubt” of Mr. Künzel’s guilt.

The court rejected his request for review without comment. In 2016, when Mr. Künzel appealed to the Supreme Court again, Mr Miz claimed in his own friend from the memo: “This court must allow for review and ensure that the compelling constitutional claims of a man who is most likely in fact innocent are allowed on the merits.”

The court again rejected the petition without comment, effectively depriving Mr. Künzel of his legal options. If he had not died, he would eventually have to be executed.

William Ernest Kuenzel was born on January 11, 1962 in Rockford, Alabama. He was raised by his mother, Barbara Kuenzel, and stepfather, Glenn Kuenzel, whose military service led them to move to various military bases. Billy Kuenzel left school after the eighth grade and took a job as an auto mechanic; He later worked in a cotton mill and construction site.

He had a brief marriage that resulted in his only child, William Jr., who survived him along with three grandchildren, his half-brothers, Kenneth Kuenzel and Steve Dennison, and his half-sisters, Gloria Bean and Janice Talley.

Mr. Kunzel worked on offshore oil platforms in Louisiana, and after returning to Alabama, he was employed in a textile factory near Goodwater, a town near Sylakoga, where he met Mr. Venn.

After his conviction in 1988, Mr. Künzel did not have a lawyer until Brian Stevenson, from Equal Justice Initiativethe labor lawyer asked. David Dretsintake the case in 1993. IN article about the case on news website Vice.com in 2016, Mr Stevenson recalled that Mr Dretsin “was probably the first lawyer we tried to recruit who actually touched me and he put his hand on my arm and said, ‘You know, it’s all right. , I”. I’m going to do it.”

By any conventional measure, David McCormick’s pedigree is impressive.

Champion wrestler. West Point graduate. Army Ranger. PhD. from Princeton. Technical performer. Treasury officer in the administration of George W. Bush.

The Senate nominee from Pennsylvania didn’t get one more credential: MAGA Champion.

Like Republican candidates across the country, McCormick has diligently tried to pose as a Trump-style challenger, hoping he can win over enough of the former president’s supporters to win the nomination in a crowded primary.

But this transformation of MAGA was not easy. McCormick says he’s a fan of Donald Trump. But he also has a history of ruptures with the former president and of taking positions that run counter to the foundations of the Republican Party. And while he has strong ties to the state — he grew up in Bloomsburg, a city of about 15,000 along the Susquehanna River — McCormick’s job at a hedge fund with strong ties to China kept him from turning into a populist. .

In an interview, McCormick claimed that his experience with China is an advantageand his campaign is challenging the notion that he has vulnerabilities in regards to the Trump base.

“Dave is the only true America First candidate who, if elected, will work every day to restore President Trump’s growth stimulus policies, including getting our economy back on track, countering China, restoring US strength on the world stage, and ensuring security of our border,” said Jess Szymanski, spokesperson for the McCormick campaign.

“He hasn’t finished talking yet”

Until recently, McCormick was the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund whose fieldstone and glass headquarters is on a 22-acre wooded campus in Westport, Connecticut. has been hit hard by the changes in global trading that Bridgewater traders and analysts are trying to monetize every day.

McCormick is married to Deanna Powell, a former Trump administration official who now works for Goldman Sachs. The couple warned their friends that McCormick planned to play Trump’s views on the campaign trail — what they described as simply the cost of running in the Republican primary right now, according to two of his Wall Street business associates, who asked not to be mentioned in private conversations.

For now, McCormick has a lot of work to do, according to longtime Trump allies.

“He doesn’t have the right looks,” said Sam Nanberg, a former political adviser to Trump. He hasn’t finished speaking yet.

The lane adjacent to Trump?

McCormick may not want to completely emulate Trump. In Pennsylvania, where President Biden won by a 1.2 percentage point margin, he might be better off running on what neutral Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas called the “Trump-adjacent streak.”

McCormick’s bid could be a test of how close a candidate needs to be to Trump to get into the Trump-adjacent lane.

A former Democrat, McCormick made extensive comments about world affairs, and they weren’t always very MAGA.

In 2016 during speaking at the West Point Society in New York, he criticized “the impulse of some candidates to close our doors and leave the world to its fate.” In 2017, he described Trump’s aides as “There is no understanding of how the world works.”

IN 2018 article in The Washington Posthe supported Amy McGrath, a Democrat who would later challenge Senator Mitch McConnell in her race against Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky.

More recently, McCormick called the January 6 riot at the Capitol “terrifying” and “a dark chapter in American history.”

new invention

What should an aspiring Republican senator do?

McCormick’s first task was to find Trump administration aides to vouch for him, including Hope Hicks, Stephen Miller and Cliff Sims, who are serving as campaign advisers. He is backed by David Urban, a West Point graduate who led the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania in 2016. Matthew Pottinger, a Chinese hawk and Trump’s deputy national security adviser, backed him up.

He then repositioned himself in Trump-friendly media such as Fox News and Washington Examiner.

IN interview with Fox News host Mark LevineMcCormick said he fought against “the weakness and the revival that you see all over the country”. He noted that he drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck around Pennsylvania to meet with voters. And although his father was the rector of the university, he made sure to mention the “family farm”, which he now owns.

Breitbart, a right-wing website founded by Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide, provided McCormick with particularly favorable coverage. There was an article citing “sources close to” McCormick that went under the heading: “Exclusive – ‘Populist Potential’: CEO of World’s Biggest Hedge Fund Plans to Pass Full MAGA in Pennsylvania Senate’s Impending Bid.” An survey McCormick cited his call for a new strategy to counter China. Another story included photos of McCormick walking along the US-Mexico border.

“We need to get back to Trump’s policies that have worked,” McCormick said in his op-ed. “Completing the border wall is the backbone of any serious plan.”

The hard part: China

McCormick has been critical of China’s trade practices for years, especially intellectual property theft, allies say. As a Treasury Department official, he called for stricter controls on the export of American technology that could be used for military purposes.

But other past comments about US-China relations are now being discussed. reporters exhumed and armed with his adversaries.

“When China prospers, America prospers,” McCormick wrote in paper 2007 published in an economic journal. “The United States must also avoid the siren song of protectionism.”

But McCormick’s bigger problem may be Bridgewater’s extensive work in China. Ray Dalio, the founder of the hedge fund, has been described as “fascinated” by the country, so much so that he modeled some of Bridgewater’s internal governance structures on “aspects of Chinese political ideology.” Wall Street Journal account.

Before leaving Bridgewater last year, McCormick told staff on a conference call that he disagreed with Dalio comparing China’s human rights record to that of a “strict parent.” quickly retold by Bloomberg. He then expressed his views in article for FoxNews.comwriting that “it is long past time for American leaders to directly confront the Chinese Communist Party.”

This was not enough to stop his opponents. The campaign of Mehmet Oz, one of his main rivals in the Senate, better known as Dr. Oz, released an advertisement accusing him of “betraying us” as a Wall Street executive and criticizing his ties to China; The Pennsylvania Democrats created a website blessedbyChina.comwith a selectively cut clip of his commentary over the years.

There are two endorsements that could help McCormick fend off these attacks, Republicans say.

One of them will be from Trump, who does not support the current candidate. The other will be from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose own reinvention from bow-tie conservative to fiery populist has made him one of the most influential voices on the right.

As Nanberg, a former Trump adviser, put it, “All you need is one snippet from Tucker.”

Kate Kelly contributed to the report.

What to read in the evening

What’s in a political name?

An unknown candidate who goes by the name of a well-known politician decides to run. It’s the plot of Eddie Murphy’s 1992 comedy The Extraordinary Gentleman and a subplot of the next week’s Texas primary.

Republicans voting for Texas governor on Tuesday will find Rick Perry on their ballots. Not a three-term former governor and energy secretary in the Trump administration. This is another Rick Perry campaigning as a fifth-generation Texan and Christian conservative from Parker County in north central Texas. He emailed us, praising us for being “persistent” in tracking him down, but declined to be interviewed. Attempts to contact the former governor were unsuccessful.

In politics, a name is a brand: Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton. For George P. Bush, whose uncle and grandfather were presidents, his famous name is both a blessing and a curse as he is running for attorney general.

“I’m the first person to admit that having a famous name at least gives me some notoriety that maybe if I didn’t have a famous name I wouldn’t get,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democrat from Alabama, who won the 2018 Congressional Primary but lost the general election. Kennedy is not related to the Kennedy family of Massachusetts. He was named after his father, who was from Philadelphia.

Bob Stump was a political legend in the Western Valley of Arizona who died in 2003, shortly after over 25 years in Congress. When another Bob Stump whose legal name is actually Christopher Robert Stump – ran for Congress in 2018, the congressman’s widow did not like it. In a letter to local news outlets she accused the candidate of “misleading voters”.

This prompted the mother of candidate Bob Stump to write her own letter. Detailing a sentimental story name in her family. Her Bob Stump lost the Republican primary and didn’t respond to our requests to talk about his experience.

Editor’s Note: David Farenthold, investigative reporter for The Times, needs your help. Find out more here.

Is there anything you think we are missing? Anything you want to see more? We would like to hear from you. Write to us at [email protected].

Two hours northeast of Los Angeles, Adelanto is best known for its prisons. Gabriel Reyes, the city’s part-time mayor — a Republican who runs a small currency trading and marketing business — said the city-owned stadium, which once hosted a minor league baseball game, is little used outside of the annual Kushstock cannabis festival.

“I haven’t seen us make a lot of money from this,” he said, “but if they all want to fill up at our gas station in Arco and we get this California tax, then, hey, we’ll say, “Thank you.” you!'”

On Wednesday, the mayor’s wife sang the national anthem to the truckers before they left for their next stop in Kingman, Arizona. Among the speakers at the rally was Dr. Pierre Corey, an active supporter of the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin is not recommended as a cure for Covid-19, and Pastor Rob McCoy, a Republican politician and evangelical leader in Southern California who gained notoriety for defying pandemic regulations and calling Gov. Gavin Newsom “Gov. Newsolini.”

Ms Dundas, who hosted the event, said: “It’s been two years and it’s time to open up the damn economy without any restrictions.”

The list of organizations backing the column included those led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., leader of the anti-vaccine movement, and General Michael Flynn, a former Trump administration national security adviser.

This latest group, the America Project, has combined its efforts to challenge Covid-19 policies with the relentless promotion of pro-Trump conspiracy theories. The group is led by Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com, who, along with General Flynn, played a central role in whimsical plot convince the former president to use the military to take over the voting machines in an attempt to stay in power.

WASHINGTON – Court of North Carolina rejected the map drawn by the Republicans from the state’s 14 congressional districts on Wednesday and replaced its own version, the second time in less than two weeks that a court in the state invalidated the Republican House card as unconstitutionally biased.

The new map, drawn by a non-partisan group of four redistricting experts, appears to split North Carolina’s congressional districts roughly evenly between Republicans and Democrats in a state where voters are evenly split along party lines. This gives each party six relatively safe seats in the House of Representatives and makes the remaining two wins for either side.

A Republican-drawn map that was rejected would have given the Republican Party six safe seats and four Democrats, leaving the remaining four as a toss-up.

Voting rights groups and Democrats have opposed the latest Republican card, saying it unduly favors the Republicans. A three-judge panel of the State Supreme Court in Raleigh agreed. On Wednesday, it ruled that the latest map did not meet the fairness standards set by the state Supreme Court on Feb. 4, when that court invalidated the original map drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

In a resolution dated February 4 The State Supreme Court said that the Republican maps of congressional districts and seats in the State Legislature violate many provisions of the State Constitution that guarantee free speech, free elections, and equal protection. Any valid card, the judges said, must satisfy “some combination” of five statistical criteria for partisan fairness developed by political scientists in recent decades.

What you need to know about redistricting and fraud

On Wednesday, a Raleigh court approved a Republican-drawn State House map, which was supported by all parties in the redistricting lawsuit, and a new Republican State Senate map, which was opposed by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

One plaintiff, the League of Conservation Voters of North Carolina, said it would appeal the State Senate card to the State Supreme Court. It was not immediately clear whether other plaintiffs or the Legislature would appeal any decision of the Raleigh Court.

Wednesday’s decision further cemented the growing role of state courts in redistricting since 2019, when the U.S. Supreme Court said guerrilla machinations are a political issue outside of its jurisdiction. In recent weeks, the Ohio Supreme Court has twice dismissed State Assembly cards drawn up by the Republican Redistricting Commission.

Also on Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court placed its mark on the map of that state’s Congress. party dispute resolution the boundaries of seats in the House of Representatives by selecting a map drawn by a political scientist at Stanford University.

Stanford’s 17-seat House card, proposed by Democratic supporters who filed a redistricting lawsuit last year, appears to give Republicans nine pretty safe seats and Democrats eight. campaign non-partisan legal center analysis. Each party currently holds nine seats in the House of Representatives, but Pennsylvania will lose one seat next year due to a reshuffle after the 2020 Census.

How redistricting works in the US

Card 1 of 8

What is redistribution? This border redrawing Congress and state legislatures. This happens every 10 years after the census to reflect changes in the population.

How it works? The census dictates how many congressional seats each state will get. Mappers then work to ensure that all counties in the state have approximately the same number of residents to ensure equal representation in the House of Representatives.

Who draws new cards? Every state has your own process. Eleven states leave mapping to an external commission. But in the majority — 39 states — state legislators are drawing new cards for Congress.

If state legislators can choose their districts, won’t they be biased? Yes. Partisan cartographers often move county lines—subtly or blatantly—to group voters in one place. a path that advances a political goal. This is called gerrymandering.

Is gerrymandering legal? Yes and no. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts no role in blocking guerrilla machinations. However, the court left intact the parts of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting racial or ethnic fraud.

On Tuesday, two Republican candidates for seats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives asked a federal court to stop a state court from choosing a card, arguing that the federal constitution places that responsibility solely on the legislature. There have been speculations that Republicans in North Carolina might make a similar appeal.

In the past, federal courts have rejected such arguments. But in recent months, four conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have hinted at support for a new argument called independent state legislature doctrinethat state legislatures have complete authority over electoral laws in the absence of action by Congress.

Any further delay in the approval of county maps in Pennsylvania or North Carolina could cause problems with the election scheduling, which has already been delayed as a result of litigation. Pennsylvania has extended the filing deadline for primary candidates until mid-May due to a dispute over congressional districts and Republicans in the state Legislature. sued last week to block the maps of the State House and Senate drawn up by the Legislative Redistribution Commission.

In North Carolina, filing for the primary is due to resume on Thursday, but further calls from either card could delay that.

There is a precedent, said Jerry Cohen, a longtime expert on the North Carolina legislature and politics, and a member of the Wake County Election Commission in Raleigh. “In 2016, we had separate congressional primaries later that year” over the map controversy, he said. So I think anything is possible.

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court heard the arguments Wednesday in a tangled debate over whether Republican-led states can intervene to defend Trump-era immigration policies that the Biden administration has abandoned. The policy, which is a revision of the “community fee” rule, has imposed a new test on the wealth of green card applicants.

Some judges questioned the Biden administration’s legal maneuvering, suggesting it was aggressive, obscene and half way too smart.

“It’s really a case for collusion,” Chief Justice John J. Roberts Jr. said of the administration’s strategy, which included passing a court ruling against the policy and resisting states’ attempts to intervene to argue their favor.

Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. spoke sarcastically about what happened.

“I congratulate everyone in the Department of Justice or the Executive who developed this strategy and was able to implement it with military precision,” he said, adding, “I don’t know of a precedent where a new administration would do anything.” like this”.

Other judges have said that new presidential administrations routinely change course and that states are trying to get in the wrong court anyway.

“In many ways, it is not unprecedented,” said Judge Brett M. Cavanaugh, “when the government accepts an unfavorable decision that nullifies a rule. It’s not unprecedented at all.”

Judge Elena Kagan has questioned the convoluted judicial strategy being followed by states seeking to revive the Trump administration’s policies. It was, she said, a “quadruple shot at the bank,” which apparently included an attempt to intervene in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco in the hope of overturning the decision of the federal trial court in Illinois. that the states could file a new lawsuit in federal court in Washington.

Helen H. Hong, a lawyer for the Democratic-led states and localities who first challenged the policy, said that “There’s nothing the Ninth District can do to restore the rule.”

Policy in question revised “community fee” rulewhich allows officials to deny permanent legal status, also known as a green card, immigrants who may need government assistance. In the past, only substantial and permanent cash assistance or long-term institutionalization was considered, and less than 1 percent of applicants were disqualified for reasons of public liability.

The Trump administration’s revised rule expanded the criteria to include “in-kind benefits that provide for basic needs such as housing or food” used for any 12 months within a 36-month period. The use of two types of benefits within one month counts as two months, and so on.

The policy has been contested in lawsuits across the country and has been blocked by several federal judges. But in January 2020, by 5 votes to 4, the Supreme Court revived politics while the appeals moved forward.

Since President Biden took office last year, his administration has decided not to defend the policy in court. At the request of the administration, the Supreme Court dismissed a separate appeal to the judges, and lower federal courts took similar action.

Based on a nationwide Illinois federal court ruling against the policy and without following due process, the administration then reversed the policy. (Since started the process release your version.)

Critics called the administration’s move a legal game to ensure that there was no final decision on the legitimacy of the old policy.

Mark Brnovich, Arizona Attorney General, urged judges to take what he called an “unprecedented legal maneuver,” adding that “the rule has saved states collectively over a billion dollars a year.”

But Brian H. Fletcher, a federal government lawyer, said only a handful of people have been denied green cards under the policy. “During the year the 2019 rule was in effect,” he said, “we know that it affected only about five of the approximately 50,000 status adjustment applications to which it was applied, or about one hundredth of a percent. “.

The arguments in Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, no. 20-1775, followed the Supreme Court’s decision. announcement last week that he will decide whether the Biden administration can end the Trump-era immigration program that forces asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border to wait for approval in Mexico.

WASHINGTON – Ivanka Trump, former president Donald J. TrumpThe eldest daughter, who was one of his senior advisers, is in talks with the House Committee of Inquiry January 6 attack on the Capitol two people familiar with the discussions spoke about the possibility of cooperation with the panel.

It was not immediately clear whether the talks, which aides described as tentative, would result in Ms. Trump providing the Panel with substantive information, or whether they would simply be a delaying tactic, as some committee aides feared. But this was the latest example of the group trying to contact the former president’s inner circle to find out what he was doing and saying when rioters stormed the Capitol on his behalf.

Ms. Trump was one of several aides who unsuccessfully tried to convince Mr. Trump to stop the violence, which has injured more than 150 police officers and forced lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for their lives.

Ms. Trump’s lawyers have been in talks with the committee since January, when the committee sent her a letter asking her to volunteer, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

She has yet to agree on a date when she could speak with the committee’s investigators, and the committee has not threatened an imminent subpoena, people familiar with the discussions say. Those close to Ms. Trump said she hoped to avoid a subpoena and was not going to follow the path followed by her father’s ally Stephen K. Bannon, who refused to cooperate with the committee and was later charged with contempt of congressional accusations.

“Ivanka Trump is in talks with the committee to voluntarily appear for an interview,” a spokeswoman for Ms. Trump confirmed in a statement Wednesday.

Mr. Trump did not demand that his daughter ignore the committee’s demands, as he did with his other former top aides. And Ms. Trump is unlikely to take any step that Mr. Trump didn’t know about and didn’t approve of, people familiar with her thinking say.

Instead, the former president presented his adult children as victims of an investigation he called illegal.

Ms. Trump’s private conversations with the committee are taking place as the committee’s lawyers also is negotiating with another potentially important witness: Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who helped lead efforts to reverse the 2020 election results.

During those discussions, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer made it clear to the committee that the former mayor of New York did not intend to provide information against Mr. Trump, arguing that doing so would violate attorney-client privilege and Mr. Trump’s requirements for executive confidentiality. , but he is considering providing information about his relationship with members of Congress, according to a person familiar with the talks.

With the Capitol under siege, both Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump called lawmakers in an attempt to delay confirmation of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

So far, the committee has treated Ms. Trump with respect, seeking only her voluntary cooperation, insisting that its members respect her privacy, and emphasizing that its questions will be limited to events directly related to the January 6 attack.

This is partly because members of the group see her as a key witness in their investigation and worry about the public backlash if it is perceived as being too aggressive towards the former president’s family members. The committee did not want to use its subpoena powers against members of Mr. Trump’s family, the media, and members of Congress.

The Panel has already received some testimony about Ms. Trump’s interactions with her father in connection with the January 6 attack and the events that led to the violence.

January 20th miss trump letterThe committee said it had heard from Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was Pence’s national security adviser, about Trump’s refusal to condemn the violence as the crowd engulfed the Capitol, despite White House officials including Ms Trump at least twice – convincing him to do so.

Capitol Riot Aftermath: Key Events

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Civil lawsuits. federal judge in Washington rules this three civil suits against Donald J. Trump, linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, can move forward. The ruling means plaintiffs can ask the former president for information about his role in the events.

classified information. The National Archives stated that disclosed classified information among the documents that Mr. Trump took with him from the White House when he left office. The discovery raises new doubts about how the former president handled government documents.

Mr. Kellogg testified that Mr. Trump turned down requests from him, as well as from Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and Kayleigh McEnany, White House press secretary. Mr. Kellogg then approached Ms. Trump to intervene.

“She came back because Ivanka can be quite pushy,” Mr. Kellogg testified.

Mr. Kellogg also testified that he and Ms. Trump witnessed a telephone conversation in the Oval Office on the morning of January 6, in which Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence into agreeing to a plan to drop the electoral vote for Mr. – Biden. when Congress convened for the official tally, thus canceling the 2020 election and allowing Mr. Trump to remain in office.

Mr. Kellogg told the committee that the president accused Mr. Pence of not being “tough enough” to cancel the election. Ms. Trump then turned to Mr. Kellogg and said, “Mike Pence is a good man,” Mr. Kellogg testified.

The investigation threatens to draw unwanted attention to Ms. Trump, who has all but disappeared from the public eye since her father’s tumultuous end to the presidency. During her four years in the Trump administration, she worked to build her own political brand, focusing on women in the workforce and presenting himself as a more polished Trump, without mean-spirited tweets and erratic behavior.

She gave a prime-time speech at the Republican National Convention and became one of the most popular fundraisers and as a campaign stand-in for both her father and other Republican candidates.

Mr. Trump enjoyed promoting the idea that his daughter might one day run for president herself, and since leaving the White House, there have been rumors that Ms. Trump might challenge Senator Marco Rubio for his seat in Florida, where she moved from with his family. after the end of Mr Trump’s term.

Instead, Ms. Trump has largely faded into the shadows, surprising even some longtime confidants. On the social media she has curated for years, she has posted three photos of herself in the last 13 months: two photo shoots of her getting her shots and one delivering boxes of food.

She is still in demand with Republican candidates in the midterm elections, but has not yet been in the campaign and in the support game. Instead, she lives her private life in Miami, a few hours away from her father’s Mar-a-Lago complex, where she still draws tabloid admiration to this day.

Alan Feyer contributed reporting.

Today: Classrooms are led by master sergeants, the Biden administration is trying to end policies targeting Chinese researchers, and after a hiatus from the pandemic, Modern Love is back with a college essay competition.

Substitutes in camouflage

Troops of the National Guard state classes in new mexico help with severe staffing shortages associated with the pandemic. While there, they use their informal motto “Semper Gumby” – “Always Flexible”.

In one class in Estancia, about an hour from Albuquerque, my colleague Erica L. Green watched a member of the guard use his uniform in a vocabulary lesson. The students worked on their pronunciation of “boss R” as in -er, -ir-, -ur.

“My deputy wears gear,” one of the students replied.

“Yes,” answered the teacher, Lieutenant Colonel Susana Corona, beaming. “The Superintendent gives me permission to wear the uniform. I wear a pair of boots.”

Other states have also turned to the military to help schools deal with the situation. In Massachusetts, members of the National Guard drove school buses. in Oklahoma police officers served as substitutes. Some critics are concerned that the increase in the number of uniformed officers in schools could cause anxiety for students who have historically had hostile experiences with law enforcement.

But in New Mexico, schools have mostly adopted the state militias as difficult but an important step towards recovery.

“You always have to be ready when there is a need, when there is a call to duty,” said Colonel Corona, who last year watched her own fourth grader try to study remotely.

Some teachers expressed gratitude for what one of them called “extra bodies.” Others see the rollout as a way to avoid solving long-standing problems at the heart of staffing shortages, although state legislators have just passed legislation that increase the basic salary of teachers by by an average of 20 percent starting this summer.

Erica reported that most of the students didn’t care, but one third grader told her that she knew “it’s not normal.”

First graders can talk too. They called their new teacher, a staff sergeant. Rayna Myers-Garcia, Ms. Soldier”.

One day, when the teacher was unexpectedly absent, Sgt. Myers-Garcia used a Google search to teach a fraction lesson. The next day, she had worksheets her mother printed out for the morning icebreaker, a bag of prizes she bought at Walmart, and two lesson plans she borrowed from other teachers.

“In their defense, I will say that their teacher is not here, and instead of a teacher they have a soldier,” she said.

But despite the Guards’ hiccups and flexible approach, superintendents and school leaders said the shortage was too great to manage without outside help.

“The image that comes to mind is when you walk into a grocery store and see bare shelves,” said Roysenne Lafayette, a school counselor in a farming community about a half hour south of Albuquerque.

This fall, her school was missing about half a dozen teachers. Aviator First Class Jennifer Marquez joined us last month, covering several topics.

“We will use her every day until she receives an order to return,” said school principal Eliseo Aguirre, “which I hope will not happen before the end of the year.”

End of the “Chinese Initiative”

The US Department of Justice will announce soon changes in the China Initiative, a Trump-era effort to combat threats to China’s national security. The changes will likely focus on efforts to root out scientists who have lied or concealed their Chinese affiliation.

Critics pressured the Biden administration to shut down the program, saying it unfairly targeted Asian professors, froze scientific research, and fueled anti-Asian sentiment.

They also said the program combined financial disclosures with more serious crimes such as espionage and theft of trade secrets, which erroneously gave the impression that anyone hiding ties to China were spies.

And although the program did lead to numerous prayers as well as beliefsseveral cases against academics ended the acquittal or dismissal.

In one loud failure, the prosecutor’s office dropped the charges against Gan Chen, a mechanical engineering professor at MIT, after the Department of Energy said his undisclosed connection to China would not affect his grant application.

“You work hard, you get good results, you build a reputation,” Dr. Chen. said my colleague Ellen Barry Earlier this year. “The government gets what it wants, right? But in the end, you are treated like a spy. It just breaks your heart. It undermines your confidence.”

News about viruses

• New Virginia law actually mask ban at local school giving parents the right to release their children without giving reasons. The law signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin last week also restricts distance learning.

• The Maryland State Board of Education voted in favor of cancel school mask mandate on Tuesday. The State Assembly will make the final choice.

• A school district in Jackson, New Jersey is raising the pay of bus drivers to $30 an hour from $22.67 an houran attempt to eliminate the deficit.

• Masks will optional in Anchorage Public Schools from Feb. 28.

• New Hampshire will no longer allow schools are moving to fully remote or hybrid learning due to outbreaks.

• Good article from The Atlantic: Olga Khazan researched the issue: “Should parents themselves decide what children learn and how they live, or should government agencies also play a role?”

• And a good read from the Associated Press: Remote school made life easier junior olympians combine training, competition and classwork.

What else do we read

Colleges and universities

• Head of the California State University System resigned amid allegations that he had previously mishandled complaints of sexual harassment.

• UC Berkeley said it might have to accept thousands fewer students than planned. A state appeals court ruled that it should have restricted reception at the pandemic level after a legal battle with a group of residents.

• For many years, the State University of New York system has applied inflexible debt collection practices For former students with unpaid tuition bills. Now officials are promising change.

• New Mexico is expected expand your free college program this autumn is already one of the most generous in the country.

• University of Alabama employee resigns after police arrest him on charges of extortion of prostitution.

• The private investor was sentenced to 15 months in jaillongest sentence in a nationwide college admissions bribery case.

• Howard University received $2 million donation digitize a large collection of black newspaper archives.

• Just weird: Brigham Young University student tried to make rocket fuel in his campus kitchen. He forced out 22 students after he released a fireball.

San Francisco review

• Chinese American voters and volunteers were critical to victory the student council remembers an election in which three members lost by a landslide.

• “This year, a lot of parents tell me, ‘We’re done with being scapegoats,’ one of the campaign organizers told my colleague Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief. “We are still looked upon as foreigners. We are Americans. You must respect us.”

• From opinion: Jay Caspian Kahn looked at the way the organizers capitalized on anger about changes in the admissions process to Lowell, an elite public high school. (For more see last episode newsletter and podcast Time to Say Goodbye, co-hosted by Jay. The conversation starts at about 54 minutes.)

And the rest…

Modern Love College Competition

The last time Modern Love hosted college essay competition was in 2019. The world was… a different place, especially for college students.

The competition is finally back. And we want to hear from you. What was love like for you during these unusual times? Have you experienced amazing opportunities, unexpected challenges, new ways of communicating, or making the best of difficult circumstances?

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The only lawsuit stemming from the nighttime police raid that killed Breonna Taylor began on Wednesday, but the case does not focus on the officer who shot her, but on a former police detective accused of recklessly endangering his neighbors by shooting at their apartment. in Louisville. , Key.

Brett Hankinson who was fired a few months after the raid in March 2020, he faces three charges of wantonly making a threat after firing 10 shots during the operation. A former chief of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department said Mr. Hankinson fired “blindly” and that several bullets hit a neighbor’s apartment, endangering three people sleeping there: a pregnant woman, her husband and their 5-year-old daughter. old child.

When the police broke down the door to Ms. Taylor’s apartment, her boyfriend shot one officer in the leg. Guy, Kenneth Walker, later said he did not hear them announce themselves and believed they were intruders. The officers returned fire, killing Ms. Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who worked as an emergency room technician. Her death sparked protests in Louisville and across the country.

The officers initially obtained court permission to serve a “no knock” warrant at an apartment where they believed evidence of drug trafficking linked to her ex-boyfriend might be found, but the order was changed to a raid requiring the officers to announce their actions. presence at the entrance to the apartment.

Unlike other recent high-profile police shootings that have often been videotaped, there is no such footage. last moments before Ms. Taylor’s death because the police did not use body cameras. The murder of Ms Taylor has brought renewed attention to no-strike orders as competing accounts appeared about whether the cops introduced themselves before kicking in her door.

It also sparked criticism of the justification the police used to obtain a warrant to carry out the raid. The police said they believe that the ex-boyfriend used her apartment receive packages related to the drug trade, but according to her family’s lawyer, Ms. Taylor recently ended her relationship with him. By the time her apartment was searched, her ex-boyfriend was already in custody. The police also did not have an ambulance on duty in the area.

Mr. Hankison fired 10 bullets at the door and patio window of Ms. Taylor’s apartment without a line of sight, and some of them hit the next block. His bullets hit the soap dish, the table, and the sliding glass door. None of Mr. Hankinson’s bullets hit Ms. Taylor or anyone else, but two other officers’ bullets hit Ms. Taylor, and she bled to death after being shot five or six times.

Since Ms. Taylor’s death, several cities, including Houston as well as Minneapolis, have limited the use of contactless orders. Earlier this month, a Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Amir Locke, a 22-year-old black man.while serving a warrant for the protection of an apartment in the city center.

Wednesday’s opening statements came just months after Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced his office would not file charges against either of the two police officers who shot Ms. Taylor. including Detective Miles Cosgrove, who the FBI says fired the fatal bullet. The grand jurors who voted to indict Mr. Hankison said Mr. Cameron, a Republican, did not give them the opportunity to press charges in the murder of Ms. Taylor.

In Louisville, people protested in the streets for more than 100 days over a refusal to charge any officers in the death of Ms. Taylor. Earlier this month, lawyers and Judge Ann Bailey Smith of Jefferson County Circuit Court began the tedious process of reducing the 250 juror to 15. By Tuesday evening jury The trial, which is expected to last two weeks, has been expedited.

Under Kentucky law, a person commits the offense of intentionally endangering when he “intentionally commits acts that create a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury to another person” and does so “in circumstances demonstrating the utmost indifference to the value of human life”. ” Other states may use terms such as “reckless endangerment” for an equivalent crime.

The crime is a felony and can carry a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine for each count. A person may be guilty of intentionally creating danger even if they did not intend to harm anyone or commit a crime.