Anyone know about this event?

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Sue for the right to access health records of women who leave the state for an abortion. These people are mean, disgusting, and awful.

Nearly 200 absentee ballots somehow went uncounted in Wisconsin’s liberal capital after the Nov. 5 election, prompting state election officials to launch an investigation Thursday into whether the city clerk broke the law.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted unanimously to investigate whether Madison City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl failed to comply with state law or abused her discretion. Commission members said they were concerned the clerk’s office didn’t inform them of the problem until late December, almost a month and a half after the election. Commission Chair Ann Jacobs certified Wisconsin’s election results on Nov. 29.

Witzel-Behl’s office said in a statement that the number of uncounted votes didn’t affect the outcome of any race or referendum on the ballots. But Jacobs said the oversight was “so egregious” that the commission must determine what happened and how it can be prevented as spring elections approach.

“We are the final canvassers,” Jacobs said. “We are the final arbiters of votes in the state of Wisconsin and we need to know why those ballots weren’t included anywhere.”

Witzel-Behl said in an email to The Associated Press that her office looks forward to working with the commission to determine what happened and how to prevent the same issues in future elections.

It’s another misstep for Witzel-Behl, who announced in September that her office mistakenly sent out up to 2,000 duplicate absentee ballots. She blamed it on a data processing error.

According to election commission documents, the commission learned of the uncounted ballots on Dec. 18, when Witzel-Behl’s staff told the commission that they recorded more absentee ballots as received than ballots counted in three city wards.

The commission asked Witzel-Behl to provide a detailed statement, which she did two days later. The memo stated that on Nov. 12, the clerk’s office discovered 67 unprocessed ballots for Ward 65 and one unprocessed ballot for Ward 68 in a courier bag found in a vote tabulating machine.

The memo also stated that her office was reconciling ballots for Ward 56 on Dec. 3 when 125 unprocessed ballots were discovered in a sealed courier bag. Reconciliation is a post-election process in which officials account for every ballot created. That work begins immediately after an election. Clerks have 45 days to complete it.

The memo does not offer any explanation, saying only that the clerk’s office planned “to debrief these incidents and implement better processes.”

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The clerk’s office issued a statement on Dec. 26 saying it had informed the elections commission and would send an apology letter to each affected voter.

Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway released her own statement the same day saying the clerk’s office didn’t tell her staff about the problem until Dec. 20. She said her office plans to review the city’s election procedures. The mayor issued a new statement Thursday saying she appreciates the election commission’s investigation and the city will cooperate with the probe.

Wisconsin is a perennial battleground state in presidential elections. Republican Donald Trump won the state this past November on his way to reclaiming the White House, beating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by about 29,000 votes.

Madison and surrounding Dane County are well-known liberal strongholds. Harris won 75% of the vote in the county in November.

There goes another one.

Walk-on fullback Rusty VanWetzinga will hit the portal.

Initially committed to Southern Illinois to play linebacker before flipping to Iowa and walking on as a full back.

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I know the Swarm is planning an event on the day of the game. What time will doors open for that?


Is there a Hawkeye Huddle planned the night prior?

Any information is appreciated!

He's signed with the Ottawa Blackjacks of the Canadian Elite Basketball League.

As noted in the tweet, he's currently with the Sioux Falls Skyforce, a G-League affiliate of the Miami Heat

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That day where people whose entire existence is based on threads on this site bump as many of their threads to the top of the board as possible.

Hawkeye Athletics hasn’t made much of a dent in paying back the $50 million it borrowed from the main University of Iowa campus during the height of the pandemic, leaving $47.6 million outstanding on the 2021 loan — even as contributions from the Big Ten Athletics Conference to its budget continue to climb.



Although UI Athletics paid $3 million back to the main campus in 2022, $1.5 million in 2023 and $1.5 million this year, the loan’s 2.5 percent interest rate has swallowed up most of those payments — shaving just $2.3 million off the principal to date, according to UI Chief Financial Officer Terry Johnson.


“So of the $1.5 million, $1.2 million went to fund the interest expense that was charged to Athletics in FY24,” Johnson told the Iowa Board of Regents in November about the department’s 2024 payment. “Therefore, the balance of about $300,000 was applied toward the loan.”




When the main campus agreed to loan UI Athletics $50 million from its cash reserves in early 2021, the department was projecting a $75 million deficit for the budget year from expected pandemic-related losses — which also caused it to cut three men’s sports: tennis, gymnastics, and swimming and diving.


Later that summer, UI Athletics — which calls itself a “self-sustaining auxiliary enterprise” that “receives no general university support” — ended the budget year with a less-severe deficit of $45 million. And the following year in fiscal 2022, the department topped its projected revenue rebound by nearly $10 million — setting a new income record of $126.8 million.


The department has set revenue records every year since thanks, in part, to higher football, wrestling and women’s basketball ticket sales and boosts in conference support — although some of the income increases have been due to “reserve fund transfers” to pay court settlements, legal fees and “staff transition costs.”


UI Athletics’ current fiscal 2025 budget projects another revenue record, reaching $150.5 million thanks to conference contributions topping $75.2 million — a 22 percent increase over last year; 37 percent increase over 2019; and 140 percent increase over the $31.3 million it got from the Big Ten a decade ago in 2015.





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“Most primary revenue sources are anticipated to increase in FY 2024,” according to a recent summary of the UI Athletics budget.


Given that budget picture, Regent David Barker said of the department’s loan payments to date, “That sounds like a slow amortization schedule.”


“So far, yes,” Johnson acknowledged, noting terms of the loan require it to be paid off within 15 years and its interest rate to be repriced every five.


“We were expecting starting in fiscal 2026 for conference revenues and things like that to increase,” he said. “So I’m anticipating that Athletics will be in a position to pay off more of the loan at a faster rate.”


Adding a caveat that “there are a few things going on also in Athletics that will temper that a little bit,” Johnson said he’s urging a faster payback schedule.


“Bottom line, they’re interested — and I’m very interested — in paying this off as quickly as possible,” Johnson said.


“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Regents President Sherry Bates said.

Line of credit​

In addition to the pandemic loan, UI Athletics owed $155.6 million in revenue bond principal balances, as of June 30, 2023, according to an independent accountant’s report. The bonds were issued in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2021 for improvements to Kinnick Stadium and Carver-Hawkeye Arena.


The department additionally owed $10.3 million on two 2020 facility leases, according to the report.


And, campus officials confirmed, it owes $21.3 million on two previous facilities-related loans from the main campus — separate from the 2021 loan — both of which have a 2 percent interest rate and no fixed repayment schedule.


“Projects are paid by the university on an ongoing basis and the department makes payments as funds are available from operations,” according to the auditor’s report.


UI officials told The Gazette they don’t have “documentation or written agreements” for those institutional loans that helped support facility projects like the new marching band practice facility, field hockey grandstand and football operations building.


“When a capital project is identified and approved, construction may begin before all funding is available from committed sources,” spokesman Chris Brewer said. “So, the university provides departments a line of credit as needed for small projects, charging interest.”


UI Athletics has borrowed $17.5 million on one line of credit and has repaid $6.7 million to date — with $10.8 million outstanding. On the other — which has supported things like the new wrestling training facility and gymnastics/spirit squad facility — the campus owes $10.5 million.


Officials didn’t say how much has been borrowed on that line of credit total over the years but reported making payments of $14.4 million in 2023 and $9.6 million in fiscal 2024.


In total, per the 2023 auditors report, UI Athletics had $235.1 million in outstanding debt.

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YEMASSEE, S.C. (WCSC/Gray News) - Four monkeys remain uncaptured weeks after 43 primates escaped from a research facility in South Carolina.

The rhesus macaque monkeys escaped from Alpha Genesis near Yemassee on Nov. 7.

On Sunday, the company’s CEO, Greg Westergaard, said his team still sees the remaining four monkeys together in a tree almost daily.

“The four monkeys look good, and engage in species-typical behaviors such as grooming and tree-climbing,” he said in a statement. “I could have them darted but have not given that directive because it could pose a danger to the monkeys and since they are doing well, we are just waiting for them to go in the traps.”


Westergaard said the 39 primates that were recaptured are in good health.

He confirmed in mid-November that there was no structural failure in the containment area where the monkeys are kept. He said there are two gates you must pass through to get inside the main enclosure where the monkeys live.

The company is assuming the failure to secure the gates “was the result of human error rather than malice,” Westergaard said, but he added that they have no way of knowing that for certain.

The employee who was responsible for leaving the gates open left the facility after the monkeys escaped, but Westergaard said he was not aware of any argument or disagreement involving the employee that would have been a motive for leaving the gates open on purpose.


Westergaard said they continue to provide fruit and other treats to the four escaped monkeys, which he said “probably slows down the trapping process” but added that it seems to him to be “the right thing to do.”

”Rhesus monkeys are native to the Himalayan Mountains in Northern India, so the relatively mild Lowcountry winters are not an issue for them,” he said.

This is the first update on the ongoing efforts to recapture the last of the escaped primates since news broke weeks ago that the U.S. Department of Agriculture was reviewing a complaint against the research facility.

The animal rights activist group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it submitted whistleblower complaints alleging misconduct.


“I can confirm that we recently received a complaint with some detailed allegations and that we are reviewing them to determine whether there are Animal Welfare Act noncompliance we need to follow up on,” USDA spokesman R. Andre Bell said in a statement.

Alpha Genesis did not respond to requests for comment on the complaint, and the USDA has not provided updates on where that review stands.

Over the last 10 years, the facility has received over $130 million from the Department of Health and Human Services with the majority of that funding coming from taxpayer dollars.

I was surprised. My argument was that Trump's ceiling is 40% of the vote and independents are not going to want 4 more years of chaos that they saw between 2017-2021. They both, nevertheless, think Trump will win in the choice between 2 bad candidates.

That is all. Garbage game. No defense. Pouty losers not playing.

Prof Weissman started his research on mRNA type vaccines in 2005 or 15 years before Covid 19 hit. Kariko soon joined him with her expertise. And even to know how to do this procedure needed the amazing Human Genome Project and genetic sequencing to be perfected.

All these other people at Pfizer and Moderna got the glory and the money but I just wanted to show who really did it.

I like the concept a lot.

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Man point: they couldn't or wouldn't distance themselves from unpopular far lefty progressive viewpoints.

The party went into an election with policies it couldn’t defend—or even explain.
By Helen Lewis

One of the mysteries of this election is how the Democrats approached polling day with a set of policies on gender identity that they were neither proud to champion—nor prepared to disown.

Although most Americans agree that transgender people should not face discrimination in housing and employment, there is nowhere near the same level of support for allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports—which is why Donald Trump kept bringing up the issue. His campaign also barraged swing-state voters and sports fans with ads reminding them that Kamala Harris had previously supported taxpayer-funded gender-reassignment surgery for prisoners. The commercials were effective: The New York Times reported that Future Forward, a pro-Harris super PAC, found that one ad “shifted the race 2.7 percentage points in Mr. Trump’s favor after viewers watched it.” The Harris campaign mostly avoided the subject.

Since the election, reports of dissent from this strategy have begun to trickle out. Bill Clinton reportedly raised the alarm about letting the attacks go unanswered, but was ignored. After Harris’s loss, Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts went on the record with his concerns. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” he told the Times. The recriminations go as far as the White House, where allies of Joe Biden told my colleague Franklin Foer that the current president would have countered Trump’s ads more aggressively, and “clearly rejected the idea of trans women competing in women’s sports.”

One problem: Biden’s administration has long pushed the new orthodoxy on gender, without ever really explaining to the American people why it matters—or, more crucially, what it actually involves. His officials have advocated for removing lower age limits for gender surgeries for minors, and in January 2022, his nominee for the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, refused to define the word woman, telling Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, “I’m not a biologist.”

On sports—an issue seized on by the Trump campaign—Biden’s White House has consistently prioritized gender identity over sex. Last year, the Department of Education proposed regulations establishing “that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.” Schools were, however, allowed to limit participation in specific situations. (In April, with the election looming, this part of the Title IX revision was put on hold.) Harris went into the campaign tied to the Biden administration’s positions, and did not have the courage, or strategic sense, to reject them publicly. Nor did she defend them.

The fundamental issue is that athletes who have gone through male puberty are typically stronger and faster than biological females. Rather than contend with that fact, many on the left have retreated to a comfort zone of claiming that opposition to trans women in women’s sports is driven principally by transphobia. But it isn’t: When trans men or nonbinary people who were born female have competed in women’s sports against other biological females, no one has objected. The same season that Lia Thomas, a trans woman, caused controversy by swimming in the women’s division, a trans man named Iszac Henig did so without any protests. (He was not taking testosterone and so did not have an unfair advantage.) Yet even talking about this issue in language that regular Americans can understand is difficult: On CNN Friday, when the conservative political strategist Shermichael Singleton said that “there are a lot of families out there who don’t believe that boys should play girls’ sports,” he was immediately shouted down by another panelist, Jay Michaelson, who said that the word boy was a “slur,” and he “was not going to listen to transphobia at this table.” The moderator, Abby Phillips, also rebuked Singleton, telling him to “talk about this in a way that is respectful.”

A few Democrats, such as Colin Allred, a Senate candidate in Texas, attempted to counter Republicans’ ads by forcefully supporting women’s right to compete in single-sex sports—and not only lost their races anyway, but were attacked from the left for doing so. In states such as Texas and Missouri, the political right is surveilling and threatening to prosecute parents whose children seek medical treatments for gender dysphoria, or restricting transgender adults’ access to Medicaid. In this climate, activists believe, the Democrats should not further jeopardize the rights of a vulnerable minority by legitimizing voters’ concerns. “Please do not blame trans issues or trans people for why we lost,” Sam Alleman, the Harris campaign’s LBGTQ-engagement director, wrote on X. “Trans folks have been and are going to be a primary target of Project 2025 and need us to have their backs now more than ever.”