Third-term Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) was the first surprise contender. But more are expected to follow soon. Confidantes of Tammy Murphy, the wife of Gov. Phil Murphy, have begun reaching out to staff and consultants as she moves closer to a run, according to two people familiar with the conversations. Rep. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), has also refused to rule out a bid.
And on the Republican side, Rep. Jeff Van Drew — a Democrat not too long ago — is contemplating a bid and said he has talked to Trump about it.
“A free for all,” is how longtime Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) summed it up.
In a state where politics is defined by its nasty, often seedy, underside, the cycle is shaping up to be particularly volatile. And it’s happening fast.
And his wife continues to be in the news for killing a man. Here's Amy Goodman on Democracy Now:
Damning new information has emerged in the bribery indictment against New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, his wife Nadine and two of their three co-defendants. Nadine Menendez hit and killed a pedestrian in a 2018 car crash in Bogota, New Jersey. Not only did she not suffer any legal repercussions, she received a new car following the lethal crash. According to police reports and dashcam video, Nadine Menendez claimed the 49-year-old victim jumped onto her windshield. She was not held by police or tested for drugs or alcohol after the crash. Video of police questioning her immediately after the crash shows an officer treating her deferentially.
Police officer: “Our job is to investigate everything that happens. That’s what we’re trying to do. Obviously, the more information” —
Nadine Arslanian: “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Police officer: “No, no.”
Nadine Arslanian: “I — you know?”
Police officer: “Look, I understand. I understand. It does expedite our investigation when people can help us out, because” —
Nadine Arslanian: “And I wasn’t” —
Police officer: — “if we can clear you from any wrongdoing, I want to get you home and comfortable and not here anymore. You know what I’m saying? Nothing against you.”
The fatal crash took place before Nadine was married to the senator but while the two were in a relationship. She received a brand-new Mercedes-Benz four months after the crash. According to court documents in the bribery indictment, the $60,000 car was gifted to Nadine by New Jersey businessmen Wael Hana and Jose Uribe, two co-defendants in the bribery case. Prosecutors accuse Senator Menendez of offering to put pressure on the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office to go easy on an associate of Uribe. According to the indictment, Wael Hana, an Egyptian American citizen, “worked to introduce Egyptian intelligence and military officials to Menendez for the purpose of establishing and solidifying a corrupt agreement.”
Senator Ben Cardin, who replaced Menendez as Senate Foreign Relations chair, just blocked $235 million in U.S. military funding to Egypt. A judge has set a trial date of May 6 in the bribery case against the Menendez couple, Hana, Uribe and another businessman, Fred Daibes.
And here's CNN.
And here's NBC.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) lead a new poll measuring voter preferences ahead of the 2024 U.S. Senate race in California, but a plurality of likely primary voters in the state are still undecided.
In a Berkeley IGS poll released Thursday, Schiff led with 20 percent support among likely voters, Porter followed with 17 percent support, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) had 7 percent support and Democratic tech executive Lexie Reese had 1 percent support. Among Republican candidates, James Bradley received 10 percent support and Eric Early received 7 percent support.
Kevin McCarthy has been toppled in a right-wing revolt - the first time ever that a US House of Representatives Speaker has lost a no-confidence vote.
The final tally was 216-210 to remove the congressman as leader of the Republican majority in the lower chamber of Congress.
Hardliners in his party voted against him after he struck a deal with Senate Democrats to fund government agencies.
There is no clear successor to oversee the House Republican majority.
Though an interim speaker was named, the fact that Republicans joined in with their opposition to take down McCarthy reiterates a strong underlying message:
While Trump would be eligible to become speaker since House rules do not require the position to be filled by a member, he has previously indicated that he is not interested in the role.
If the former president were to accept his nomination and managed to become the next speaker, it would represent an extraordinary turn of events as he campaigns to regain the presidency in 2024.
Trump has been indicted four times in the past six months. He is facing charges in two federal cases—one related to the classified documents held at his Mar-a-Lago estate and the other in connection to his election interference efforts, culminating in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
He has also been indicted in Manhattan in connection with a hush money payment to an adult film star and in Georgia in a case involving efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results there. In total, he's been charged with 91 felony counts, many of which carry sentences greater than two years of imprisonment.
Over the last year, according to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, what has been most striking is the pivot of censorship advocates from books in school libraries to books in public libraries.
"Last year, about 16% of demands to remove books involved public libraries," Caldwell-Stone says. "This year, to date, it's 49%."
Town by town is taking you to Agawam, Springfield and Chicopee.
It’s day two of banned book week at the Agawam Public Library with displays of challenged and banned books over the past 50-plus years.
“Let Freedom Read” is the official 2023 campaign from the American library association and the Agawam Library is encouraging visitors to learn about banned books and what it means to have the freedom to read.
Kyle Lukoff, the author of “Call Me Max” and the Newbery Honor book “Too Bright to See,” among others, said the national publicity did little to nothing to improve sales of “Max.” Instead, it introduced his work to people who want to remove it from bookshelves in their local schools and libraries.
“I’ve had this said to me many times — ‘I wish my book would get banned because that’s the best way to get it on the best-seller list,’” Lukoff said in a phone interview. “That certainly never happened for me.”
Lukoff hasn’t yet earned royalties from “Call Me Max” or the other two books in its series, he said. His advances were $2,500 per book, and he won’t earn those royalties until all of them earn the money back.
Lukoff’s experience — and the experiences of hundreds of authors whose books have been banned in the last school year — contradicts a common refrain among some authors and anti-censorship proponents that banning a book results in a sales surge.
“When books get banned, even when authors do see a spike in sales, it is much more devastating for careers in the long run,” Lukoff said. “If your book is kept out of libraries and schools in entire states — that does translate to a long-term consistent drop in sales.”
Phil Bildner, a children’s book author and advocate for fellow writers, said that “having a book banned is not a badge of honor.”
“I still don’t think most people grasp just how financially devastating this book banning era is to queer authors and authors from marginalized communities,” said Bildner, who runs the Author Village, a group that represents authors and illustrators for school visits. “And I know most people don’t grasp the emotional toll it’s having on the authors in the crosshairs.”
Up until recently, a list of banned books was a blend of the usual suspects — “The Catcher in the Rye,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The Bluest Eye” — and newer favorites like “The Hate U Give” and “Thirteen Reasons Why.”
But book bans have surged in the last year. PEN America, an organization that supports and protects First Amendment rights for writers, journalists and other communicators, reported that more than 3,300 books were banned in the 2022-2023 school year, a 33% increase from the previous school year. These bans “overwhelmingly” target books about race and racism, as well as books with LGBTQ characters, PEN America said in its September study on school book bans.
There are concentrated efforts from groups like Moms for Liberty and LaVerna in the Library, an offshoot of Utah Parents United, to ban dozens of books at once. These groups compile comprehensive lists of books that contain what these groups point to as objectionable material. Websites like Rated Books and BookLooks grade books based on their content and highlight potentially objectionable paragraphs on their sites, posting entire pages out of context.
Vocal individuals have also had immense power in banning books: The Washington Post reported in May that 60% of book challenges in the 2021-2022 school year came from just 11 people.
Oprah Daily spoke to Isabel Wilkerson about book bans, including that of Caste, which has been removed from some libraries. A film version of Caste, titled Origin and directed by Ava DuVernay, premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month.
How did you find out that your book was banned?
My name came up in social media when The Washington Post ran a piece last spring about a library system in Texas that shut down all its libraries, and when the libraries reopened, Caste had “mysteriously vanished.”
How did it make you feel? What did you do? Is there anything you can do?
I was saddened but not surprised. These bans only affirm the forewarnings in the book. We’re in a period of backlash and retrenchment, which the book attests to and foreshadows. The only thing I can do is to keep pressing forward in my work, knowing that we can’t run from history and that the truth will win out in the end.
Putting aside your own work, what do you think of the situation overall?
In writing Caste, I had to do a tremendous amount of research into India and Germany during the Nazi era. The Nazis studied the United States’ Jim Crow laws in creating the Nuremberg laws. We are coming perilously close to the spirit of what they were doing in another century with the banning of books. It’s revisiting a past that we should never want to experience again.
This is coming at the worst possible time for us as a nation. We have an existential crisis in our demographics, politics, policing, and women’s reproductive rights. We’re a country on parallel tracks, and from responses to my books (The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste), I can see that some people are hungry and thirsty to understand the history of how we got here and what we can do. Then you have another segment that’s closing the door as quickly as others are pushing it open. It becomes yet another symbol of how deeply divided we remain and how these enduring divisions have managed to intrude upon us in this century. As we’re looking back at previous centuries to understand this one, we are, at the same time, replicating much of what we thought was in the past.
One of my favorite readers, LeVar Burton is the Honorary Chair of Banned Books Week. I listen faithfully to his podcast where he reads a short story. Some years ago, I had the privilege of hearing him live doing a wonderful reading from a local author. He is a reading advocate, writer, and television and film star
Now, for the main event-the list of banned books. Some of the books I have read and enjoyed. As I said before, I was in shock and even saddened because I don’t think these books should be banned. I will list mine here but to get the whole list visit the American Library Association’s website.
My Books on the List
1. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Challenged for depiction of sexual abuse, EDI content, claimed to be sexually explicit
2. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
Banned due to themes of death and the fact that the main characters are talking animals.
3. Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank
Banned mostly in regard to passages that were considered “sexually offensive,” as well as for the tragic nature of the book, which some felt might be “depressing” for young readers. The passages in question regarded Anne describing her anatomy, sexual feelings, and homosexual descriptions of her friend.
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