I was too young for Iowa football having an outside shot in 1985. The 2005 White Sox World Series, 2009 USMNT Confederations Cup Final vs Brazil, 2010 Blackhawks' Stanley Cup and 2021 Iowa wrestling were unforgettable, but none of them were on this level. We're Iowa. We aren't supposed to be this good at such a high profile sport. With the eyes of the nation on us in a way that only football could compete with. And it's my alma mater I grew up by, in the state I grew up in. And on top of that, I have fallen in LOVE with this team like none other. Especially because my daughters have fallen in love with this team and I've taken them to games since they were tots. I honestly think I would bawl my eyes out if they won a natty. I haven't wanted a championship for a team this bad in my lifetime, AINEC. I can't be the only one, right?

When Iowa wins tonight I can only imagine it will get worse over the weekend. But c'mon, man, give the Iowa girl her due.

This dude apparently thinks the media coverage should have been more spread out this season to all the top women players, not just Caitlin. He seems to have a big bro love for Paige Bueckers.

Paige Bueckers is getting right what we all got wrong about women's basketball coverage

My brother is in NYC near Times Square and is looking for a place to watch the game. Any suggestions?

Let’s say you’re an ardent Donald Trump supporter and you decided to invest $100,000 of your retirement savings into Trump Media because your favorite former president says it’s a “highly successful” company.


Well, if you bought in during last week’s initial public offering at the peak of $79.38 a share, your $100,000 nest egg was worth only $57,000 this week when the stock hit a low of $45.26 after an April Fool’s Day crash — a 43 percent loss in just three trading days.

Not for the first time, Trump has played his supporters for suckers.
The skid came after Trump Media reported this week that it lost $58.2 million in 2023 on sales of just $4.1 million — which suggests that Trump Media is practically worthless. The shares are bound to collapse further unless some wealthy entity — Saudi Arabia? China? — buys shares to gain leverage over Trump, who can’t dump his own stake for six months.



Now comes word that, of course, Trump has filed a lawsuit against two of the company’s co-founders, both former contestants on “The Apprentice.” Trump Media’s lawsuit accuses them of “mismanagement,” saying they “failed spectacularly at every turn” and “made a series of reckless and wasteful decisions.”


Trump Media is sounding more and more like the Trump presidency.
I thought about the Trump stock bubble while watching the former president and presumptive GOP nominee address adoring supporters on Tuesday here in Green Bay, where he held his first rally in 17 days. In a sense, what he did with Trump Media was just a variation on what he does to his supporters every day, whether convincing them to buy Trump-endorsed Bibles and sneakers, or selling them on election lies and white nationalism.

Three thousand die-hard Trump fans had come to the convention center to see him in the teeth of a winter storm that dumped up to a foot of snow on northern Wisconsin. In their rapturous reception for the “real president,” as election-denying pillow magnate Mike Lindell called Trump during a warm-up speech, I saw the kind of unshakable faith in a man that could lead someone to invest hard-earned money in a worthless company.


And Trump was, as always, rewarding their adoration by selling them one self-interested swindle after another.
He announced that he had won his fraud case in New York: “The appellate division said, ‘You won the case, that’s it.’” (The court has not yet heard his appeal of the fraud judgment against him.)

He also announced that “it came out that we won this state” in 2020. (Trump lost Wisconsin by 20,682 votes.)




At the heart of the speech was his original swindle, and still his go-to scam: convincing his supporters that their lives were being destroyed by dark-skinned invaders. It was the story of how “Crooked Joe and his migrant armies of dangerous criminals” are producing a “bloodbath” among innocent, native-born Americans.
It’s not the least bit true. Homicide and violent crime, after rising during the pandemic, have dropped for two straight years and are lower than during Trump’s final year in office. There is scant evidence that immigrants — legal or undocumented — commit more than their share of crime, and a lot of evidence that migrants are more law-abiding, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler has detailed.



But that doesn’t stop Trump from talking about the “massive crime” brought by “[President] Biden’s flood of illegal aliens” — the theme of his Green Bay rally and an earlier event in Grand Rapids, Mich. “They’re not humans. They’re not humans. They’re animals,” Trump said. “I’ll use the word ‘animal’ because that’s what they are.”
If Trump wasn’t suggesting that all immigrants are animals, the nuance was easily lost. “Trump Calls Migrants ‘Animals’ in Michigan Stop,” was the headline on Trump-friendly Newsmax.


He blamed migrants for “coming into our country with contagious diseases.” He warned of “illegal alien criminals crawling through your windows and ransacking your drawers,” where they “loot the jewelry.” When migrants aren’t busy doing that, they’re fixing to “obliterate Medicare and Social Security” and fill schools with “new migrant students who don’t speak a word of English.”



To illustrate the fictitious wave of “migrant crime,” Trump, at his stops in Michigan and Wisconsin, cited violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. (“Last week, another illegal alien criminal was arrested in Alabama for raping a mentally incapacitated 14-year-old girl.”)
You could just as easily cherry-pick from police blotters to make it appear as though there’s a crime wave being perpetrated by evangelical Christians, or Trump supporters — and it would be just as dubious.
But it suits his purposes to frame migrants, because “they’re coming from places that you don’t want them to come from,” as Trump put it. “They’re coming from the Congo, Yemen, Somalia, Syria,” he said at another point. “They’re country-changing, country-threatening and they’re country-wrecking. They’re destroying our country.”



To reverse this “invasion,” he told the Green Bay crowd, which was almost entirely White, “we’re going to end up with the largest deportation in American history.” It was one of the biggest applause lines of the night.
Even before Trump took the stage, the audience had been primed to fear the invaders.
“In Joe Biden’s America, he has a VIP program, and it’s for illegal aliens,” Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) told them. “And you are the second-class citizens in America now, aren’t you?”
Another Wisconsin Republican, Rep. Glenn Grothman, posed this question: “Who is the only man who has the ability to stop the United States from disappearing in November?”

“Trump!” people yelled.
“You’re absolutely right,” the congressman confirmed.
And, so, the fearful masses buy in. Watching Trump sell his swindle about migrants, it occurred to me that those suckered by the Trump Media IPO got a better deal, relatively speaking. Those who bought “DJT” shares lost only their shirts. But those who have been snookered into seeing migrants as diseased animals have lost part of their souls.

When Walder St. Louis entered the Miami pawnshop in October 2021, his shopping list contained just a few items: Two AK-47s and an AR-15.
Germine Joly, then head of the Haitian gang 400 Mawozo, had placed the order from a Port-au-Prince prison. St. Louis would soon send two barrels of firearms back to the Haitian capital.


Heavily armed gangs control 80 percent of Port-au-Prince, the United Nations has estimated, where they rape, kidnap and kill with impunity. Haiti doesn’t manufacture firearms, and the U.N. prohibits importing them, but that’s no problem for the criminals. When they go shopping, the United States is their gun store. The semiautomatic rifles that have wrought human carnage from an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., to a Walmart in El Paso are also being used to menace the Haitian government and terrorize the population.
U.S. authorities seized some of the guns in the 400 Mawozo plot before they could be smuggled, and Joly, St. Louis and two others pleaded guilty to federal gunrunning conspiracy charges. The gang would soon gain notoriety for kidnapping 17 American and Canadian missionaries.


Other firearms, purchased in part with ransom money, slipped into Haiti undetected. That’s the most common outcome, analysts say, owing to access in the United States, corruption in Haiti and insufficient screening in both countries.



William O’Neill, the U.N.’s independent expert on human rights in Haiti, called conditions here “cataclysmic.” The presidency is vacant; the prime minister has announced his intention to resign; the National Assembly has gone home. Security forces are outgunned by criminals, who have grown in power since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.
O’Neill said last week it was “incredible” that “weapons and bullets are still going to the gangs, mostly from the United States.”
“There’s got to be much, much more vigorous enforcement of the arms embargo by everybody, but certainly the United States,” he said, “because if the gangs don’t have guns or bullets, they lose their power.”
U.S. evacuating Americans from Haiti as humanitarian crisis worsens
The influx of U.S. guns to criminals is a growing problem across the Caribbean.

Nearly 85 percent of guns found at crime scenes in Haiti and submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2021, the most recent year for which data was available, were traced to the United States. In the Bahamas in 2022, that figure was 98 percent.


Exasperated Caribbean leaders last year declared the flood of U.S. weapons “a direct threat to our democracy” and urged Washington to join their “war on guns.”
“The right to bear arms is still a raging debate in the United States,” said Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas. “We don’t intend to get involved,” but “their right to bear arms … ought not to give them the right to traffic [them].”

Four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump has so many criminal counts pending against him (88), as well as three major civil judgments (two E. Jean Carroll cases and one for fraudulent property evaluations in New York), that his threats, lies, attacks and assorted outrages often get framed in purely legalistic terms. Well, his attack on New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan’s daughter did not actually violate the original gag order because it didn’t mention family members. Oh, his reposting of a doctored photo showing President Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck does not technically violate 18 U.S. Code Section 871 because he was not inciting action.




Such an approach is deeply misguided. Not every situation calls for us to play “name that crime.” Framing the discussion that way drains Trump’s reprehensible conduct of its moral dimension and minimizes his threat to democracy. He then winds up getting a pass if his behavior cannot be characterized as a violation of a specific statute or court order.


When voters are considering his fitness for office, Trump’s conduct, whether legal or not, should be assessed in the context of democratic norms and moral principles that would apply to any office seeker, especially one running for president. Someone who targets a judge’s daughter on social media or reposts violent imagery of a sitting president is simply unfit for the Oval Office. (As historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat urged, “Wake up people. This is an emergency. This is what authoritarian thugs and terrorists do. Trump is targeting the President of the United States.”)
The burden should not be solely on judges, both those on Trump cases and those observing, to raise the red flag, as Merchan did in expanding the gag order. (“The threats to the integrity of the judicial proceeding are no longer limited to the swaying of minds but on the willingness of individuals, both private and public, to perform their lawful duty before this Court,” he wrote.) The obligation falls on the public, political leaders and media to defend the rule of law and democracy itself, whether or not a specific order has been violated. In short, Trump’s assault on our democracy must be viewed not “merely” as legal infractions; the response must come not only from judges.



Reducing all of Trump’s reprehensible offenses to legalities also gives Republicans an excuse to avoid condemning his behavior. (Well, it’s up to the judge to decide if he violated a court order.) When Trump assaults democratic norms, Republicans rarely come forward to condemn him. Too many interviewers do not press them to take responsibility for the conduct of their nominee. (How can you support someone who targets a judge’s daughter? In what universe is it permissible to show a photo of the president bound and gagged?)
Too often, only former Republican officeholders condemn Trump. “This is one of those things where we can’t move past the headline: Donald Trump shared an image of the president of the United States tied in the back of a pickup truck, bound and gagged,” retired Republican congressman Joe Walsh said on CNN. “I mean, stop there. ... This is way beyond politics. This is an incitement to violence.” Now, that’s the framework for discussing Trump’s serial outrages.
Democrats up and down the ticket would be well advised to press their opponents: Is there any line Trump could cross that you wouldn’t defend? How can voters expect you to uphold your oath in the face of his threats and complaints? Meanwhile, the media, elected leaders and voters should not ignore that Trump’s conduct need not be illegal to be disqualifying.

New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two women who said their rights were violated when they were forced to remove their hijabs before the police took their arrest photographs.
The financial settlement filed on Friday, which still requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest development in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who said they felt shamed and exposed by the police officers’ actions.
“When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt as if I were naked; I’m not sure if words can capture how exposed and violated I felt,” Ms. Clark said in a statement. “I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers.”
In response to the lawsuit, the Police Department in 2020 changed its policy to allow religious people to be photographed wearing head coverings, as long as the coverings were not obstructing their faces.
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In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department said the lawsuit had “resulted in a positive reform for the N.Y.P.D.”

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“The agreement carefully balances the department’s respect for firmly held religious beliefs with the important law enforcement need to take arrest photos,” said the spokesman, Nicholas Paolucci. “This resolution was in the best interest of all parties.”
Damages from the settlement, which total just over $13 million once administrative costs and lawyers’ fees are deducted, will be split among the thousands of people who are expected to file eligible claims.

Ms. Clark, who was arrested on a violation of an order of protection in Manhattan in 2017, said she “wept and begged to put her hijab back on” while standing in Police Headquarters at One Police Plaza with the head scarf around her shoulders, according to the complaint.
Ms. Aziz, who was also arrested on a violation of an order of protection, said she had a similar experience eight months later when she was arrested in Brooklyn. She sobbed as she “stood with her back to the wall, in full view of approximately one dozen male N.Y.P.D. officers and more than 30 male inmates,” the complaint said.

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“Forcing someone to remove their religious clothing is like a strip search,” said Andrew F. Wilson, a lawyer with Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, who is representing the women.
Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a civil rights group, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the settlement “a milestone for New Yorkers’ privacy and religious rights.”
“The N.Y.P.D. should never have stripped these religious New Yorkers of their head coverings and dignity,” he said.
The Police Department had previously issued interim orders that people who were arrested could be photographed with religious head coverings at precincts or taken to a private area to be photographed at One Police Plaza.
In 2018, the city reached a $60,000 settlement with each of three Muslim women who had been forced to remove their hijabs for arrest photographs and said that their religious rights had been violated.
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In response to Ms. Clark and Ms. Aziz’s lawsuit, the Police Department said it would change its patrol guide and begin training officers to “take all possible steps, when consistent with personal safety,” to allow people who are arrested to keep their headwear on in order to respect their “privacy, rights and religious beliefs.”
There are a few exceptions to the policy, including for distinguishing features that could be hidden by a head covering.
The patrol guide now instructs officers that if an uncovered photo must be taken, “the prisoner must be transported to the appropriate borough court section, where the photograph will be taken in a private area by a member of the service of the same gender.”
The policy change was one of a series of adjustments the Police Department has made in recent years related to religious head coverings. In 2016, the department said it would allow officers who wore beards or turbans for religious reasons to keep them.
Lawyers for Ms. Clark and Ms. Aziz estimated that at least 3,600 people could qualify for compensation of $7,000 to $13,000 though the settlement. According to the terms reached with the city, people who were forced to remove their religious head coverings between March 16, 2014, and Aug. 23, 2021, could qualify.
New York City has agreed to pay $17.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two women who said their rights were violated when they were forced to remove their hijabs before the police took their arrest photographs.
The financial settlement filed on Friday, which still requires approval by Judge Analisa Torres of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the latest development in the class-action lawsuit filed in 2018 by Jamilla Clark and Arwa Aziz, two Muslim women who said they felt shamed and exposed by the police officers’ actions.
“When they forced me to take off my hijab, I felt as if I were naked; I’m not sure if words can capture how exposed and violated I felt,” Ms. Clark said in a statement. “I’m so proud today to have played a part in getting justice for thousands of New Yorkers.”

By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
Donald Trump’s campaign is reportedly strapped for cash. Small-dollar donations are running far behind their 2020 pace. Big Trump rallies aren’t yielding his biggest cash hauls. Some large-dollar donors are hesitant, in part because they worry (with good reason) that their money will be used not for the campaign but to pay his legal bills. So he has been wooing right-wing billionaires.
I have no idea how successful he’ll be, but it seems highly likely that at least some billionaires will provide substantial sums to a man who tried to overturn the last election and has been open about his authoritarian intentions — using the Justice Department to go after his political opponents, rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants and putting them into detention camps and more.
Which raises the question: Why would billionaires support such a person?
After all, it’s not as if they’ve been suffering under President Biden. Economists, myself included, often remind people that the stock market is not the economy. Low unemployment and rising real wages — both of which, by the way, the Biden economy has delivered, even if many people don’t believe it — have much more relevance to most people’s lives.
But stock prices are probably a much better indicator of how the very wealthy, who hold a lot of financial assets, are doing. And although in 2020 Trump predicted a stock crash if Biden won, the market has, in fact, been hitting record highs under the current administration.
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Why, then, back a candidate who more or less promises to unleash social and political chaos?
One straightforward answer is that the wealthy will almost certainly pay lower taxes — and corporations will be less regulated — if Trump wins than if Biden stays in office.
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If you believe, like some leftists, that Republicans and Democrats are basically the same — that both serve the interests of corporations and the elite — you’re wrong. The modern Democratic Party isn’t, despite what prominent Republicans say, Marxist or socialist. It does, however, have a track record of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for social programs. Notably, the Affordable Care Act used new taxes on high-income individuals to pay for health care subsidies.

These new taxes helped lead to a jump in the effective federal tax rate on the highest-income 0.01 percent of the population: President Barack Obama did much more income redistribution than many people realize. Trump, by contrast, passed a big tax cut that favored the wealthy and largely reversed the Obama-era rise in their effective tax rate. (Why do people still refer to Trump as a populist?)
Biden is now proposing significant tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy. And he wouldn’t even have to pass legislation to preside over tax increases: Most of the provisions in the Trump tax cut will expire at the end of next year unless Congress renews it.
But I’d say that the prospect of lower taxes shouldn’t be enough to get billionaires to support Trump.

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After all, how much would the extra money really matter to people whose lifestyles are already incredibly lavish? My sense looking in from the outside is that among the very wealthy, making more money is less about what they can afford than it is about prestige — making more than others in their peer group. And the thing about higher taxes is that because they would apply to everyone, they wouldn’t alter the rat race: Your perceived rivals would take the same hit you would.
And a Trump return to power would make America a scarier place, which should matter much more even to billionaires than a few percentage points on their tax rate.
But do they understand that?
Last year, writing about the brief infatuation of tech bros with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., I noted that the very wealthy are often less informed about what’s going on in the world than many ordinary citizens, because they live in a social bubble. The danger Trump poses to American democracy is — or should be — obvious. It may be less obvious, however, to people who, because of their wealth, seem to think they know better and can surround themselves with confidants who assure them that they do know better.
Consider the case of Elon Musk. Need I say more?
I’d also speculate that even billionaires who recognize Trump’s authoritarian leanings probably imagine, if they think about it at all, that their wealth will protect them from arbitrary exercises of power.
They should — but won’t — learn from the experience of the Russian oligarchs who helped put Vladimir Putin in power. They eventually discovered that once you’ve installed a dictator, your wealth isn’t the shield you might have thought it was and you may still find yourself sent to Siberia. And before you say that such worst-case-scenario thinking can’t possibly apply in America, bear in mind that the Trump alarmists have mostly been right and the apologists have mostly been wrong; I’m old enough to remember when Trump’s former acting chief of staff wrote that “If He Loses, Trump Will Concede Gracefully.”
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So will Trump get support from billionaires? Probably. If he wins, will they end up regretting their choice? My guess is they will — but by then, it’ll be too late.

Former senator Joe Lieberman knows better than most the impact third-party bids can have on presidential elections. His 2000 Democratic campaign for vice president fell just 537 Florida votes short of victory, in a state where Ralph Nader, the liberal activist and Green Party nominee, won more than 97,000 votes.


But that didn’t stop the Connecticut Democrat turned independent from joining a meeting Thursday in support of plans by the centrist group No Labels to get presidential ballot lines in all 50 states for 2024. The group calls its effort an “insurance policy” against the major parties nominating two “unacceptable” candidates next year.
Asked if President Biden, his former Senate colleague, would be unacceptable, Lieberman said the answer was uncertain.

“No decision has been made on any of that. But we’re putting ourselves in a position,” Lieberman said. “You know, it might be that we will take our common-sense, moderate, independent platform to him and the Republican candidate and see which one of them is willing to commit to it. And that could lead to, in my opinion, a No Labels endorsement.”


Uncertainty over the $70 million No Labels ballot effort has set off major alarm bells in Democratic circles and raised concerns among Republican strategists, who have launched their own research projects to figure out the potential impacts. As Lieberman spoke, the Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to block No Labels from ballot access in that state on procedural grounds. Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way has argued that the plot is “going to reelect Trump,” and Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has accused No Labels of wanting “to play the role of spoiler.”
“The only way you can justify this is if you really believe that it doesn’t really matter if it is Joe Biden or Donald Trump,” said Stuart Stevens, a former presidential campaign strategist for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, who now works with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “So it is sort of a test. If you live in a world where it doesn’t matter, this is kind of harmless. If you live in a world where it does matter, it is dangerous.”

Splits have also emerged inside the organization. William Galston, a Brookings Institution policy scholar, said this week that he would separate himself from No Labels, which he helped found, over its 2024 planning for a third-party campaign to challenge Biden and Trump.


“I am proud of No Labels’ record of bipartisan legislation, and I know its leaders want what is best for the country. But I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy,” he said in a statement. “There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his reelection.”
No Labels chief executive Nancy Jacobson said Galston had added a lot to the No Labels cause. “We’re sad to see him go,” she said in a statement.

Among the group’s advisers is former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, a Republican who just lost a Senate bid in the face of Trump opposition; former director of national intelligence Dennis Blair; and Benjamin Chavis Jr., a former executive director of the NAACP.


“I just wanted to emphasize on the spoiler question: I would not be involved if I thought in any account that we would do something to spoil the election in favor of Donald Trump,” Chavis said at the meeting, which was attended in person or via Zoom by 16 No Labels staff and supporters, including Blair and McCrory. “That’s just not going to happen.”
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who has not declared whether he will run for reelection next year, and former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) are also supporters of the effort, and both said they have not ruled out participating in a No Labels presidential ticket, if it happens.

“If enough Americans believe there is an option and the option is a threat to the extreme left and extreme right, it will be the greatest contribution to democracy, I believe,” Manchin said in an interview. When asked whether he would participate in a No Labels ticket, he said, “I don’t rule myself in and I don’t rule myself out.”
“I think it is really important to have that option. Because we have never been at the point we are today in America,” Hogan added. “The vast majority of people in America are not happy with the direction of the country and they don’t want to see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump as president.”

The group has already gained ballot access in Arizona, Colorado, Alaska and Oregon, with signature-gathering efforts underway in many other states. Jacobson, a former Democratic fundraiser, said the organization has until March 2024 to make a decision on whether to field a presidential ticket. It would pick one Republican and one Democrat as presidential and vice-presidential nominees, she said, with an announcement of their identities coming no later than April 15 of that year, when a No Labels convention is planned in Dallas.



Jacobson has not revealed the identities of the donors funding the effort, saying she is shielding them from public attacks, and will not discuss possible names of potential candidates. The group, which helped to found the House Problem Solvers Caucus, was founded in 2010 as a policy antidote to rising polarization. It later established political fundraising efforts to support candidates that backed its agenda.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, distanced himself from No Labels 2024 planning. “This is not an effort I’m personally involved with or supportive of,” he said in a statement.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), the other co-chair, said he supports more voices in U.S. politics. “If our 247-year-old American experiment is to survive, there must be a centrist voice at the table in this conversation,” he said.



Jacobson has left open the possibility that No Labels could use its ballot lines to field third-party candidates for Senate or House races, a potential nightmare scenario for some Democrats given the recent decision of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) to leave the party.
“It could happen, but no plans at this time,” she said. “It is one ticket, one time. We are not a political party.”
The group plans to roll out a “common sense policy agenda” this summer to rally the country around bipartisan solutions to the nation’s problems, such as pairing more border security with a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.

“Americans like choices,” said Ryan Clancy, a No Labels senior adviser. “We are heading down a road where both parties could be looking at the public and saying, ‘Yeah, two-thirds of you don’t want this choice but too bad. It’s your only choice and you’ll like it.’ We think we can do better.”


At the center of its strategy is a controversial reading of opinion polls, including extensive surveys that No Labels has commissioned from HarrisX, a company whose corporate parent is overseen by Jacobson’s husband, Mark Penn, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton who has distanced himself from the Democratic Party. Clancy said Penn is not involved with No Labels.
In a slide deck presented at the meeting Thursday, the leaders of No Labels argued that high levels of economic concern, growing independent voter identification and the conviction among many people that the country is on the wrong track all set the stage for a third-party bid to be more successful than at any time in recent history.

It's a sad, sad day.

"The Pittsburgh Penguins announced today that the shipment carrying the Jaromir Jagr bobbleheads for tonight’s game against the San Jose Sharks has been stolen after its arrival in California. As a result, the bobbleheads are not in Pittsburgh and will not be distributed at tonight’s game, but will be distributed at a later date.

The Penguins learned that they were victims of cargo theft after failing to receive the shipment as scheduled. The team worked with the manufacturer and transportation companies to alert the appropriate state and federal authorities who are currently working to locate the cargo. This is an open investigation and no further comment will be made in order to not hamper with the recovery of the goods.

“We were shocked to be a victim of cargo theft, and we are working closely with local and federal authorities on the investigation” said Penguins President of Business Operations Kevin Acklin. “While this unfortunate incident adds to the legend of Jaromir Jagr, who will be in attendance as our guest at tonight’s game, we look forward to resolving this theft and delivering the prized Jagr bobbleheads to their rightful homes, with our fans,” said Acklin."

Immigration has been robust over the past two years, creating a flood of potential workers that is both supercharging the job market and leading to surprises and quirks in closely watched economic data.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that net immigration will total about 3.3 million people this year, matching the 2023 number and far exceeding the 900,000 that was normal before the pandemic.

The jump has come as legal migration and border apprehensions surge, and while the jump in immigration is politically contentious, the resulting pop in population is also fueling strong hiring.
Economists think that as immigration adds to the labor supply, job growth can remain strong without overheating the economy. A Brookings Institution analysis recently estimated that employers could add 160,000 to 200,000 jobs per month this year without a big risk of wages spiking and inflation rising. Without all of the immigration, that would have been more like 60,000 to 100,000.
But because immigration flows are uncertain, estimates of that “break even” employment level vary widely. Goldman Sachs puts it at 125,000, while economists at Morgan Stanley think it could be as high as 265,000.
And immigration may help to explain a recent data mystery: a big gap between two primary employment measures.
Each month, the government releases employment figures based on two surveys. The “establishment survey,” compiling data from businesses and government agencies, is used to measure overall job gains. A second measure, drawing on surveys of households and Census Bureau population estimates, is the basis for the unemployment rate and for most demographic information.
Hiring has surged in recent months in the establishment survey even as the household survey has shown it falling. Such a huge divergence is unusual, and it has left analysts scrambling to figure out which survey is giving a reliable read.
Immigration could be behind at least some of the divide. Companies typically report hiring workers of all types, including immigrants, in real time. That explains the strong job gains in the establishment survey. Census estimates, on the other hand, are likely to pick up the recent surge in immigration only with a delay.
For the household survey, “the immigration data that feed into the estimate lag by a year and a half,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote. “In contrast, we think the payroll survey is probably closer to correct.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing new demands from Democrats to include humanitarian aid for a variety of global hot spots in a foreign aid package, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: It complicates the speaker's precarious path for passing aid to Israel and Ukraine as he tries to balance competing demands from all ends of the ideological spectrum.

• "He's a bit boxed in," one House Democrat said of Johnson. "He goes one way, he loses votes, he goes another way, he loses votes, and he's got people who are talking about throwing him out every day."
• "No matter which path he walks down ... one's with alligators, one's with piranhas. It's a nightmare version of choose-your-own adventure."

Driving the news: Eight House Democrats, led by Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), urged Johnson in a letter on Tuesday to include at least $9.16 billion in aid to countries facing violent conflicts and other humanitarian crises.

• In addition to Ukraine and Gaza, the letter calls for aid to Sudan, Haiti, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Lebanon.
• "By abdicating this responsibility, our nation would allow unstable areas around the world to grow even more volatile—fueling threats to our security," the lawmakers wrote.

Between the lines: Johnson will need Democrats to vote overwhelmingly for any foreign aid bills under a process that requires them to attain a two-thirds majority.

• Democrats have not been pleased by proposals Johnson has floated to structure Ukraine aid as a loan and attach legislation to lift a pause on liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports and seize frozen Russian assets.
• "You throw LNG in there, that's a huge poison pill. I'm not sure people will swallow that pill on the Democratic side," said the House Democrat.
• Many House Democrats cited the lack of humanitarian aid for Palestinians as their basis for voting against a standalone Israel aid bill in February.

The other side: Humanitarian aid to Palestinians is deeply unpopular among the Republican lawmakers Johnson is trying to appease, as is non-military aid to Ukraine and government spending in general.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has threatened to trigger a vote to remove Johnson as speaker if he holds a Ukraine aid vote in any form.
• A House Republican close to the speaker told Axios the chances of additional humanitarian aid getting a vote in the House are "slim."

The bottom line: Johnson "is going to have to do whatever he can to get as many Republicans [as he can]," the House Democrat told Axios.

• But, the lawmaker said, Johnson "does this with Democrats. I think there's no other way around it. ... The question is: How can he save the most face in the process?"

Everyone knows the studs and studettes of hort/giao have had sex on a train. That's what trains are meant for.

But have you busted a nut on top of the train, as it was moving? Well, these train surfing imbeciles of NYC have. Something for all of us to aim for. Edgy!

This actually sounds like a good idea:

A program to give financial assistance to rural attorneys is in the works at the Iowa Capitol, and lawmakers say it will be vital to ensure Iowans continue to have adequate legal representation.



House File 2407, which House lawmakers passed out of a committee Thursday, would create a program to pay participating attorneys over five years.


Each payment would be equal to 90 percent of the cost of in-state tuition at the University of Iowa law school — around $22,000 — each year for five years.




The state would partner with counties and cities to provide the payments, requiring participating local governments to pay 35 percent of the cost each year, while the state pays the remainder.


To be eligible, cities or counties would need to have a population of less than 26,000 and be at least 20 miles from a city with a population of 50,000.


A participating attorney also would need to contract with the state to provide public defense to residents who cannot afford an attorney.


Rep. Brian Lohse, R-Bondurant, said the state has been struggling with a shortage of contract attorneys and attorneys in rural areas, and similar programs have had success in other states.


“Hopefully, we have the same success, both in terms of attracting attorneys to rural areas, but also increasing the number of contract attorneys that we have, doing that important work across the state,” he said.


The program would be limited to five attorneys during the first year as a pilot program, Lohse said, before potentially being opened to more applicants.


After passage in the House Appropriations Committee, the bill is eligible for vote in the full chamber.

Police, firefighter disability change advances​

Certain firefighters and police officers in Iowa would have broader claims for disability benefits under a bill House lawmakers passed on Thursday.


House File 2680 would change the state's pension program for professional police officers and firefighters, which covers police departments in 49 of Iowa's largest cities and fire departments in 38 of those.


Under the bill, the pension would cover disabilities that were caused from long-term physical stress but not traceable to a specific incident. It would also cover mental health problems like post-traumatic stress disorder caused by traumatic incidents on the job.


The bill has been in the works for several years and passed the House multiple times, but it has not been signed into law. The bill is now eligible for consideration in the Senate, where a similar bill passed out of committee last year.

Positive outlook from Iowa businesses​

Iowa businesses retain an overall positive sentiment regarding the state’s economy, according to the latest quarterly survey from the Iowa Business Council.


The overall economic outlook in the year’s first quarter was put at 63.16 by the council’s member businesses. That’s an increase from the previous quarter and above the historical average. Any measurement above 50 indicates a positive outlook on the economy, the Council said.


“The first quarter findings show continued optimism in Iowa’s economy,” Phil Jasper, president of Raytheon and chair of the Iowa Business Council, said in a statement. “With sizable increases in most categories, these results further indicate an acceleration of growth for Iowa’s overall business climate.”


The Iowa Business Council is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that represents 22 of the state’s largest employers. The Council’s Economic Outlook Survey has been conducted quarterly since 2004.

E15 sales set record in 2023​

Sales of E15 — gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol — hit a record high in Iowa in 2023, according to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.


Iowa's E15 sales reached 178 million gallons last year, the organization said, a 47 percent increase from the previous year.


E15 sales represented about 13.3 percent of the state's gasoline sales. Also, a record 68 million gallons of biodiesel was blended into Iowa diesel in 2023.


Iowa is the top producer of corn-based ethanol in the country, producing as much as 4.5 billion gallons a year.


"Iowans appreciate having cheaper, cleaner burning E15 as an option at the pump, leading to record breaking sales in 2023," Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement. "Biofuels not only play a huge role in Iowa’s agriculture economy, but provide Iowans with a cheaper alternative to regular fuel.


“Iowa was the first state in the country to adopt an E15 standard."

The Daily Iowan has purchased two weekly newspapers near Iowa City — the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and Solon Economist.


The acquisition from Dubuque-based Woodward Communications marks the first newspaper purchase for the DI. Publishing of these newspapers is effective with the Feb. 8 editions.


“We are excited for this opportunity and it’s a great fit for our organization,” said DI Publisher Jason Brummond, who will manage and serve as publisher of each publication. “Community newspapers play an important and integral role in their communities, and we believe strongly in quality local journalism.”



The Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and Solon Economist’s current staff members will continue operations of serving the readers and advertisers in those communities. Print subscriptions will be uninterrupted by the acquisition, as well as the weekly print publications distributed by mail on Thursdays.


The Sun will retain its office in downtown Mount Vernon.


The Daily Iowan, a part of the Iowa City-based non-profit corporation Student Publications, Inc., is the nationally recognized and award-winning student newspaper housed on the University of Iowa’s campus.


The UI’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication will jointly operate the Mount Vernon and Solon newspapers to provide student journalists with opportunities to contribute to the publications and gain local reporting experience. The papers’ local editors will continue to lead the editorial direction.


“News-academic partnerships like this one are more important now than ever before as community newspapers reduce staff or close,” said Melissa Tully, professor and director of the UI School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “Investing in local journalism and working with nearby communities offers students a chance to produce meaningful work and gain professional experience while working alongside veteran journalists at the newspapers. I’m thrilled about the opportunity to collaborate with the Daily Iowan and the teams in Mount Vernon and Solon on this exciting venture.”


The DI’s professional staff will handle some business processes for the newly acquired newspapers.

More than the points scored and 3s made. Is Iowa is something like 20-1 when caitlyn get 10 assits. Means other players scoring. Watch the assists not pts.

Eluded to a couple players Iowa has targeted in the portal in some other articles, but took some time to do a little digging on the four reported guys.

STORY:

We have a few HORTers who could pass the interview...

Stolen Election Beliefs Now Part Of RNC Hiring Criteria​

March 27, 2024 Republicans, Trump cultists

And, another note, is she really a cis female? Looks a little masculine...


The Washington Post reports:

Those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee after a Trump-backed purge of the committee this month have been asked in job interviews if they believe the 2020 election was stolen, according to people familiar with the interviews, making the false claim a litmus test of sorts for hiring.
In recent days, Trump advisers have quizzed multiple employees who had worked in key 2024 states about their views on the last presidential election, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interviews and discussions.
The question about the 2020 election has startled some of the potential employees, who viewed it as questioning their loyalty to Trump and as an unusual job interview question. A group of senior Trump advisers have been in the RNC building in recent days conducting the interviews.

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Read the full article.