Just hours after federal agents entered Mar-a-Lago on August 8 to seize highly classified national security documents, Rep. Paul Gosar urged a fight to the finish. “The FBI raid on Trump’s home tells us one thing,” the far-right Arizona congressman tweeted. “Failure is not an option. We must destroy the FBI.”

Three days later, an Ohio man named Ricky Shiffer donned tactical gear, armed himself with an AR-15, and went to the FBI field office in Cincinnati. After failing to breach the facility, he fled and later died in a shootout with law enforcement. Shiffer was a frequent user of Trump’s Truth Social site, where the ex-president has kept up steady attacks on political opponents and the Justice Department and FBI. Shiffer had posted about imminent violence, telling fellow Trump supporters to be ready “to jump into civil war.”

“People, this is it,” Shiffer wrote shortly after the Mar-a-Lago news broke. A Navy veteran who claimed he was also at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he called for stocking up at gun stores with “whatever you need to be ready for combat.” He also said “patriots are heading to Palm Beach” and should kill any federal agents who try to stop them.

Was Shiffer spurred to attack the FBI by the statements from Trump and Gosar? It’s hard to know, and that’s no accident. Shiffer’s actions point to a rhetorical method experts call “stochastic terrorism,” whereby a leader vilifies a person or group in ways likely to instigate random supporters to attack those targets, while the instigator maintains a veneer of plausible deniability. Trump made this form of incitement a hallmark of his presidency, galvanizing extremists by railing against and dehumanizing his “enemies.” The country saw the devastating consequences when his supporters stormed Congress to obstruct certification of the presidential election. And now a growing number of Republicans are emulating Trump’s technique.

“While these attacks may defy specific predictability,” threat assessment experts Molly Amman and Reid Meloy wrote in a 2021 study in the journal Perspectives on Terrorism, “their likelihood is greatly increased by the public demon­ization process.” Repetition and saturation through social media and news coverage further amplifies the effect, they observed.

Union Berlin sit top of the Bundesliga and last week, Andy travelled there to witness European football history in their first Europa League game against Belgium's history-makers, Union Saint-Gilloise. 

After UEFA announced a trial for safe standing, Union Berlin were at last able to bring European football home – just three years after securing their first ever promotion to the Bundesliga.

Andy takes in Union’s legendary atmosphere and speaks to fans on both sides on what was a truly special night for two clubs championing the little guy.

Where should Andy head to next? Tweet us @FootballRamble and email us here: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

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The inner sanctums of artists through the centuries are shown in a new book

In a letter sent to the president on Wednesday, nearly half of American governors—all Republican—voiced their opposition to Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, announced last month.

“We fundamentally oppose your plan to force American taxpayers to pay off the student loan debt of an elite few,” they write in the letter.

The main argument is that Biden’s student debt forgiveness will harm lower-income families by forcing their hard-earned dollars to go to repaying the debts of America’s wealthiest, including high-salary lawyers and doctors who hold debt from graduate degrees.

“The top 20 percent of earning households hold $3 in student debt for every $1 held by the bottom quintile, generating a lopsided reality where the wealthy benefit at the expense of the working,” the governors write in their letter. “Simply put, your plan rewards the rich and punishes the poor.”

But this argument misses the fact that Biden’s debt forgiveness project includes two different elements aimed specifically at preventing America’s wealthiest from obtaining debt forgiveness, instead restricting the program to middle- and lower-income families.

Rail workers across the country may be on the verge of going on strike for the first time in three decades—a decision that would immediately cripple supply chains and cause billions in economic losses per day. Workers could walk off the job, or companies could lock them out, as soon as Friday if a deal isn’t reached. 

The dispute is not about pay, but the day-to-day indignities of working in the industry. Rail workers often don’t have weekends, get no sick days, and say that taking the time to care for themselves and their families can lead to being fired. As engineer Ross Grooters puts it, workers are “just fighting for the basic right to be able to be people outside of the railroad.”

The White House has been scrambling to try to avoid a strike that would upend the country’s economy in the lead-up to the midterm elections, and President Joe Biden has been in touch with unions and railroad companies, Politico reports. A shutdown could disrupt shipments of everything from coal and lumber to food and the chlorine used to treat wastewater. Amtrak trains that rely on freight carriers’ tracks are already being canceled.  

A shutdown could disrupt shipments of everything from coal and lumber to food and the chlorine used to treat wastewater.

Failing to reach a deal by Friday does not guarantee a strike, since both sides could agree to extend negotiations. But administration officials are developing contingency plans to try to keep essential goods moving in the event of a shutdown, an outcome that White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has said is “not acceptable.”

Unionized workers and rail companies have been in contract negotiations for more than two years. In July, Biden established a Presidential Emergency Board tasked with providing recommendations on how to end the dispute. Last month, the board proposed pay increases of 24 percent over five years, additional bonuses, and one extra personal day a year. It also called for lifting a cap on workers’ health care premiums, and did not back workers’ calls for sick days and less-punitive attendance policies.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Republican-led legislatures have passed anti-protest laws drafted by an extreme right corporate lobbying group in a third of all American states since 2018, as part of a backlash against Indigenous communities and environmentalists opposing fossil fuel projects, new research has found.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) helped draft legislation criminalizing grassroots protests against pipelines, gas terminals, and other oil and gas expansion projects in 24 states under the guise of protecting critical infrastructure.

ALEC, which is funded by rightwing state lawmakers, corporate sponsors and trade groups, and wealthy ideologues, creates model legislation on a whole range of conservative issues such as gun control, abortion, education funding and environmental regulations.

“State legislatures have found a new legislative mechanism to oppress frontline communities and cause further harm and destruction to our planet.”

The laws were passed in 17 Republican-controlled states, including Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Kansas, West Virginia and Indiana, where protesters now face up to 10 years in prison and million-dollar fines, according to a new report from the nonprofit Climate Cabinet.

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity.

As she opened her $1,600 property tax bill in February, Edith Baltazar suddenly lost her appetite for the eggs she’d prepared for lunch with her daughter. Her thoughts raced: Would their home be taken away if she couldn’t pay it?

Baltazar’s daughter wept. The family would have to make a difficult decision: the property tax or $2,000 for diabetes medication.

The taxes won.

“Sometimes you have to choose—pay your property taxes instead of paying your water bill and everything else,” said Baltazar, recalling the stressful experience in a July interview.

Marcus, Jim and Vish convene after Liverpool battle past Ajax (and our favourite-named player) to snatch three points and Spurs collapse in the Eric Dier Derby!

Plus, can another Marcus make it into the England squad? Will Atlético mug off Barcelona further still? And while Jurgen Klopp is dishing out truths, we’re firing mistruths out about Marcus’ TV taste. He loves Gervais, really.

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“I just need some space” is a disingenuous way to tell a romantic partner you’re Just Not That Into Them. As the top Michigan court ruled last week, it’s also a disingenuous way to attempt to remove from the Michigan midterm ballot an abortion-rights referendum that received 325,000 more voter signatures than the required 425,000. 

But that’s what Citizens to Support Michigan Women and Children argued last month in a complaint to Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers. The anti-abortion group alleged the proposed ballot measure text, which sought to explicitly insert into Michigan’s constitution reproductive rights up until fetal viability, lacked enough spacing between words, rendering the verbiage into “groupings of letters that are found in no dictionary and are incapable of having any meaning.”

To be clear, the amendment is at the very least legible. Restaurants and magazines probably shouldn’t employ the ballot measure’s maker to design their menus or page layouts, but it’s not the “hodgepodge of nonsensical gibberish” that Citizens to Support Michigan Women and Children made it out to be.

Part of the proposed amendment to the Michigan constitution.

AP

Independent 20th Century—the newest venture from the Independent art fair—makes a compelling argument that the typical fair set-up, a multi-story sprawl of the art historical canon, needs rethinking. There are just 32 booths featuring famous and unfamiliar 20th-century artists. It unfolds over a single floor of the Battery Maritime Building, steps from the Staten Island Ferry send-off. It’s intimate and tightly curated, and a blessed departure from Spring/Break and the Armory Show, which both opened this week. 

The baseline of quality here is high, chock-full of highlights, and many galleries matched the unusual circumstances with ambitious offerings. Below, a look at six stellar artists getting their due there.