The New York Giants came into the 2022 season with questions about two important positions on their team – quarterback and running back.
As the season heads into Week 17, New York may have found their answers to the questions about how they will proceed with Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley going into the 2023 offseason. The Giants view both players as part of their future next year and beyond, according to the NFL Network.
“Both of these guys are free agents. The Giants do plan to attempt to work out a deal with both of these guys,” NFL Network insider Ian Rapoport said on “NFL GameDay Morning” Sunday. “Obviously the franchise tag is available. You can only tag one, so in this scenario, one would need a multi-year deal and one could have a tag.”
New York reportedly hopes to have both players back for next season. But the contracts likely won’t be player friendly, the report suggested. The “price would have to be right” for the Giants to bring both players back.
The Giants are on the cusp of the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
Jones has put together a solid year. He has 3,028 passing yards, 13 touchdown passes and five interceptions. New York declined his fifth-year option before the start of the season.
Barkley earned his second Pro Bowl selection. He has 1,254 rushing yards and 10 rushing touchdowns this season. He’s at the end of a four-year extension he signed in 2018. The Giants exercised his option for 2022 in April 2021.
Rep.-elect Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) said Sunday that he’ll probably have to “couch surf for a little bit” as he begins his tenure in Congress, after he tweeted last month that he was denied an apartment in Washington, D.C. because of his “really bad” credit.
“I’m dealing with it right now, getting denied from apartments, trying to figure out where I’m going to live because I have bad credit. I’m probably just going to have to couch surf for a little bit,” Frost told ABC’s “This Week” ahead of being sworn-in on Tuesday.
Frost has said in the past that the reason his credit is so low is because of his congressional campaign. Though he worked at Uber as a driver to make ends meet, the money wasn’t enough to pay for the cost of living and running for Congress for a year and a half, he said.
Frost said that while he had been told he could apply to an apartment with bad credit, he was later denied and lost out on the application fee.
Frost may be the first Generation Z congressman, but he’s not the first to be unable to afford a D.C. apartment as he takes the position.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) ran as a young progressive candidate in 2018, after which she said she could not afford to rent an apartment in Washington, D.C. at the time.
Frost is taking the seat formerly held by former Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who left the House to run for a Senate seat.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he is a “no” on a possible 2024 presidential bid but that “it would be fun” to run against former President Trump because he “just lies.”
“No, it’s not my intention, no. But it would be fun to run against him because he stands up and just lies. He tells untruths,” Kinzinger said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“People love it because it’s entertaining but eventually, people have a concern for their country,” he added.
Kinzinger, who is leaving Congress when his term ends on Tuesday, chose not to run for reelection to another term in Congress after becoming isolated from much of his party over his condemnation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
He was also one of 10 House Republican to vote for Trump’s impeachment following the Capitol riot.
“So no, my intention is not to run in 2024. But it would be fun. It would be fun to stand on a stage with Donald Trump and actually tell the truth because when he’s on a stage it’s nothing but lies that come out,” Kinzinger said.
Trump announced his third bid for the White House in November, becoming the first major candidate to get in the race.
Kinzinger also said during the interview with CNN that he would not miss his job in Congress and looked forward to focusing on “broader things” and “bigger fights.”
He also said he blamed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for visiting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Florida following the riot, helping keep the former president relevant politically.
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Mourners carry the bodies of Samer Houshiyeh, 21, left, and Fouad Abed, 25, during their funeral in the West Bank city of Jenin, Monday, Jan. 2, 2023. The two men were killed in the village of Kafr Dan near the northern city of Jenin. The Israeli military said it entered Kafr Dan late Sunday to demolish the houses of two Palestinian gunmen who killed an Israeli soldier during a firefight in September. The military said troops came under heavy fire and fired back at the shooters. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, including a man claimed by an armed group as a member, during a confrontation that erupted early Monday when troops entered a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said.
The two men were killed in the village of Kafr Dan near the northern city of Jenin. The Israeli military said it entered Kafr Dan late Sunday to demolish the houses of two Palestinian gunmen who killed an Israeli soldier during a firefight in September. The military said troops came under heavy fire and fired back at the shooters.
It was the latest bloodshed in the region that has seen Israeli-Palestinian tensions surge for months. On Monday, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem said 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2004, a period of intense violence that came during a Palestinian uprising.
The Palestinian Health Ministry identified those killed as Samer Houshiyeh, 21, and Fouad Abed, 25. Houshiyeh was shot several times in the chest, according to Samer Attiyeh, the director of the Ibn Sina Hosipital in Jenin. Attiyeh initially said Abed was 17, but the ministry later gave his age as 25.
An armed group, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, later claimed Houshiyeh as a member. The group, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, published an older photo in which Houshiyeh had posed with rifles. Video on social media showed his body wrapped with the armed group’s flag as his mother and other mourners bid farewell.
It was not immediately clear whether the second Palestinian killed was also affiliated with a militant group.
Israel says it demolishes the homes of militants as a way to deter potential attackers. Critics say the tactic amounts to collective punishment.
The Israeli military has been conducting near-daily raids into Palestinian cities and towns since a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis killed 19 last spring.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, according to B’Tselem’s figures, making 2022 the deadliest since 2004, when 197 Palestinians were killed. A fresh wave of attacks killed at least another nine Israelis in the fall. The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel’s 55-year, open-ended occupation of the West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians seek those territories for a future state.
The New York Jets may not be totally finished with Zach Wilson even after a disastrous second season that saw him start the year injured and later lose his job to third-string quarterback Mike White.
The Jets have no plans to move the 2021 No. 2 overall draft choice in the offseason, the NFL Network reported Sunday. The organization reportedly views the former BYU standout as “an incredibly hard worker, a good teammate and very smart.” The team allegedly believed he “handled his demotions well” and kept working with the goal of getting better in mind.
Wilson started the season on the mend when he suffered a knee injury in the preseason. He got his first start in Week 4 against the Pittsburgh Steelers and had a touchdown pass and two interceptions. He would break out against the New England Patriots in Week 8 with a 355-passing-yard performance with two touchdowns and three interceptions in a loss.
His year took a rocky turn after the team only mustered three points in a Week 11 loss to the Patriots. He completed only nine passes for 77 yards during the game. He took incredible heat afterward for failing to take responsibility for the loss and was subsequently benched for White.
When White broke his ribs against the Buffalo Bills, Wilson got a chance to play against the Detroit Lions and Jacksonville Jaguars but didn’t win either game.
In between that, Jets coach Robert Saleh bemoaned the pressure quarterbacks face to perform as soon as they hit the NFL.
“The frustrating thing is that this kid’s going to be a good quarterback,” Saleh said after a loss to the Lions. “The NFL and this new instant-coffee world that we’re in just does not want to give people time. So, we look at him, and he is just nitpicked with a fine-tooth comb, everything he does, and rightfully so. It is what it is. He did a lot of really good things, so we’re going to try our best to focus on the things he did good and make sure that we kind of bring that to life, and we’ll continue to work on the things he needs to improve on.”
If this season’s any indication, sometimes it behooves an organization to wait and see with a quarterback. Geno Smith has been the best example of that.
He was thrust into a starting role with the Jets in 2013 and barely got two seasons as the starting quarterback before he was benched. He ended with the New York Giants and Los Angeles Chargers before he joined the Seattle Seahawks and made his way back to the starting role. He was selected to the Pro Bowl for the first time in 2022 after throwing 27 touchdown passes with 3,886 yards.
Wilson still has two years left on his rookie deal.
For the U.S. economy, 2022 was a wild and somewhat painful year. And 2023 could be even more intense.
A year of stubbornly high inflation, rapid interest rate hikes and war-driven energy shock have weakened the U.S. economy. While the job market remains remarkably strong, many economists say the U.S. is likely to slip into a recession at some point next year.
And even if the nation avoids a recession, Americans will still contend with higher prices, high interest rates and the unknown impacts of the Fed’s fight against inflation. Political standoffs over government funding, entitlement programs and the federal debt limit also risk tipping the economy into more pain.
Plan for high inflation
Inflation has slowed significantly after peaking this summer at four-decade highs, bringing some minor relief to cash-strapped shoppers. Easing supply chain issues, slower consumer spending and lower fuel costs should help make some goods more affordable next year than last, all while the strong US dollar helps make imports cheaper.
Even so, prices still rose 7.1 percent annually as of November, according to the consumer price index (CPI), an inflation rate well above pre-pandemic norms.
Economists at Goldman Sachs expect prices for goods to fall from current levels next year enough to achieve a negative inflation rate, thanks largely to “more moderate commodity price inflation, falling transportation costs, and downward pressure on import prices,” they wrote in a Monday analysis.
But prices for many services — especially housing and health care — are likely to keep rising after skyrocketing through much of last year, they said.
“We expect a more limited decline on the services side, with core services [inflation] from 5 percent to a still high 4.5 percent by December 2023,” the Goldman Sachs economists wrote.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has also warned that the U.S. is far off from price stability and even slower inflation in 2023 will still be hard for many households to stomach.
“There’s an expectation that the services inflation will not move down so quickly, so that we’ll have to stay at it,” Powell said during a press conference earlier this month.
“We may have to raise rates higher to get to where we want to go.”
Brace for higher interest rates
Even if inflation keeps falling, the Fed has made clear it won’t stop hiking interest rates in the beginning of next year and plans to keep them high for the foreseeable future.
Fed officials expect to hike their baseline interest rate range up to a span of 5 to 5.25 percent by the end of 2023, up from the current range of 4.25 to 4.5 set earlier this month, according to their latest projections. They also don’t expect to cut rates until 2024, though a steep recession could force the Fed to change plans.
“We are doubtful that the goods-driven decline in inflation that we expect in 2023 would be sufficient to give the [Fed] confidence that inflation is moving down in a sustained way, which Powell has said is the criterion for cutting,” economists at Goldman Sachs explained.
“But more than that, we remain skeptical that the [Fed] will cut just for the sake of returning to neutral,” they wrote.
Job security can be valuable in a recession
A historically strong job market has helped the U.S. economy power through high inflation and defy previous predictions of a slowdown. It has also allowed millions of employed Americans to find new jobs, often with better pay or career opportunities, thanks to a glut of job openings and much smaller workforce.
Economists are increasingly fearful a recession could force thousands — if not millions — of Americans out of their jobs next year. The Fed has projected the jobless rate to rise to 4.6 percent by the end of 2023 as the economy slows under higher interest rates intended to make it weaker.
“Though the economy has not yet suffered a recession, growth has sharply slowed and is weaker than the third-quarter data suggest,” Scott Hoyt, Moody’s Analytics senior director, wrote in an analysis last week.
If the U.S. hits a recession in 2023, recent hires without seniority could find themselves among the first to be laid off. Firms in industries that are hit hard by high interest rates may also face financial pressure, which could threaten jobs in sectors such as technology and real estate.
“I don’t think anyone knows whether we’re going to have a recession or not and, if we do, whether it’s going to be a deep one or not. It’s just, it’s not knowable,” Powell said.
Don’t expect the stock market to roar back
Stocks are set to close 2022 with steep losses after setting new record highs toward the end of last year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down roughly 9 percent since the start of 2022, while the Nasdaq composite and S&P 500 index have plunged 35 percent lower and 20 percent lower, respectively, over the past 12 months.
The persistence of high inflation, the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the upward climb of interest rates sapped confidence from the market and momentum from stocks after posting double-digit percentage gains throughout the pandemic.
While 2023 may be calmer, many investment experts see the market bouncing somewhere in between the record highs set in 2021 and the nadir of the past year’s selloff.
“Even in relatively calm years, the market still experiences some ups and downs. For 2023, hopefully the market’s inevitable waves will prove to be manageable. But I believe we need to brace for the possibility that they will be more treacherous,” Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro for Fidelity Management and Research.
Wall Street will be fixated on when the Fed plans to stop hiking rates and whether the economy will weaken enough to force them to the Fed to curtail its strategy. Fights over government funding and the debt ceiling will also shake confidence among investors, particularly if the U.S. gets close to a potentially catastrophic default on the national debt.
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New York has become the sixth state in the United States to legalize natural organic reduction, popularly known as human composting, as a method of burial.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the legislation on Saturday. Washington was the first state to legalize human composting in 2019, followed by Colorado and Oregon in 2021 and Vermont and California in 2022.
“I am committed to having my body composted and my family knows that,” Howard Fischer, a 63-year-old investor living north of New York City, told The Associated Press. “Whatever my family chooses to do with the compost after it’s done is up to them.”
The alternative, green method of burial aligns with Fischer’s philosophical view on life: to live in an environmentally conscious way.
The process involves the body of the deceased being placed into a reusable vessel, along with plant material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The organic mix creates the perfect habitat for naturally occurring microbes to do their work, quickly and efficiently breaking down the body in about a month’s time.
The end result is a cubic yard stack of nutrient-dense soil amendment, the equivalent of about 36 bags of soil, that can be used to plant trees or enrich conservation land, forests or gardens.
“A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said in a statement. “Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains.”
“Cremation uses fossil fuels and burial uses a lot of land and has a carbon footprint,” Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, a full-service green funeral home in Seattle that offers human composting, said. “For a lot of folks being turned into soil that can be turned to grow into a garden or tree is pretty impactful.”
After the best semifinal day in the nine-year history of the College Football Playoff, the title game will match the defending national champion against the closest thing the sport has had in years to a Cinderella team.
It will be No. 1 Georgia (14-0) looking for its second straight championship against upstart and No. 3 TCU on Jan. 9 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
The four-team playoff has been littered with lopsided semifinal games, but Saturday — and into early Sunday and the new year — delivered two thrillers and a combined 179 points.
The Bulldogs came from 14 points down in the second half to beat No. 4 Ohio State 42-41 in the Peach Bowl and advance to the CFP championship game for the third time under coach Kirby Smart.
“If we want any chance of winning a national championship, we have to play a lot better football than we played tonight, but we have to keep the resiliency and composure along with us,” Smart said.
The Bulldogs and Buckeyes played a classic that came down to a missed field goal by Ohio State with three seconds left. Amazingly, it was even better than the wild opener of the semifinal doubleheader between No. 3 TCU and No. 2 Michigan.
“We’re going to celebrate it,” TCU quarterback Max Duggan said. “Obviously, we’re excited, but we know we got a big one coming up.”
TCU, the first Big 12 to win a playoff game, will be looking for its first national title since 1938. Under coach Dutch Meyer, the Horned Frogs beat Carnegie Tech 15-7 in the Sugar Bowl to complete a 10-0 season.
The Southeastern Conference champion Bulldogs opened as a 13 1/2-point favorites, according to FanDuel Sportsbook, in what will be the fifth meeting between the schools.
Georgia has won them all, including the last in the 2016 Liberty Bowl.
Coming off a 5-7 season in 2021 and picked to finish seventh in their conference before the season, the Horned Frogs have embraced the underdog role and thrived on being doubted.
“We know we’re going to hear it again. It’s not going to stop now,” first-year coach Sonny Dykes said. “We got to do what we did this game (against Michigan). We’ve got to answer that criticism and show up and do what we’re supposed to do.
“If we think that’s going away, I think you guys all know that’s not. That’s just the way it is.”
TCU would be the first team to win a national championship the year after having a losing season since Michigan State in 1965.
Georgia, No. 1 for most of the season, is looking for its third national title, trying to become the first back-to-back champion in the CFP era and the first since Alabama won the BCS in 2011 and ’12.
It will be a matchup of Heisman Trophy finalist quarterbacks, with Duggan and Georgia’s Stetson Bennett.
Neither is a future NFL draft first-rounder, and both had ups and down in the semifinal but came through in the biggest spots.
Bennett threw for 398 yards and two touchdowns in the fourth quarter, including the game winner with 54 seconds left.
These Bulldogs rely more on Bennett and their offense than last year’s championship team, which fielded one of the best defenses college football has had in recent history. Georgia ranked fifth in the nation in yards per play (6.97) coming into the playoff.
The Frogs have have a powerful offense, too, with Duggan and star receiver Quentin Johnston, who had 163 yards on six catches against the Wolverines.
This is the penultimate season of the four-team version of the playoff before it expands to 12 teams in the 2024 season.
Before Saturday, only three of 16 semifinals had been decided by single digits, and all those blowouts helped fuel a desire to grow the field in the hope of creating some more interesting postseason games.
This New Year’s Eve, the four-team playoff turned out to be an eight-hour college football party.
After losing to TCU, Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh summed up his team’s game, and as it turns out, the day.
“The winner,” he said, “was football.”
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I spoke with Meijer as he ducked in and out of the House chamber to vote on a series of rule changes. Meijer and I spoke about whether he could ever again support Trump, the wayward direction of the Republican Party and whether he could envision a return to Washington.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Adam Wren: How do you feel as your time in Congress comes to an end?
Peter Meijer: Obviously bittersweet. There’s a lot of work that we were able to get done; but a lot more that we had hoped to be able to do. Being a freshman in the minority, you’re kind of fighting and running uphill. You’re trying to convince the majority to bring something to the floor.
A lot of other folks gauge their metrics by just bill introductions. Our goal was, if we’re going to be working on something, it should be toward the end of having it signed into law at the end of the day, rather than doing something only for messaging. I’m proud that the prior record for the number of bills signed into law by a freshman in the minority was at two, and now we’re at least four — I would argue five.
Wren: As a veteran who served in the U.S. Army Reserves in Iraq, and as an NGO operative in Afghanistan, one of your key goals was to reform the War Powers Act. How would you evaluate your progress on that?
Meijer: I think we substantively advanced the issue in the National Security Performance and Accountability Act of 2021 that we introduced in the spring of last year. It was the most bipartisan, most thoroughly fleshed-out approach, including bicameral conversations and conversations with the White House. Obviously, we weren’t able to get that signed into law. But that’s also the type of long-term reform where you have to have an understanding and an expectation it will be probably chunked out with an idea of giving folks more comfortable, very substantive change.
Wren: What do you think your biggest accomplishment was in Congress?
Meijer: Being part of the team that passed the Veterans Burn Pits Exposure Recognition Act of 2021. Folks who are suffering the consequences of that exposure can be diagnosed and treated and have better outcomes.
Wren: You said your departure from Washington and Congress is “bittersweet.” I take that to mean there is part of you that is happy to be leaving here.
Meijer: Definitely not on the policy side. I think one of the challenges on the politics side is you just have to spend a lot of time reacting in some areas where there may be valid concerns, but where the factual basis of those concerns is lacking.
Wren: Such as?
Meijer: There was this big hubbub about these amendments to the World Health Organization’s pandemic preparedness. Everyone is worried that “our sovereignty is going to be stripped away; don’t do anything.” And half the time, you don’t really have any authority over that. But our sovereignty is not going to be infringed on by the World Health Organization.
Wren: You’re talking about a one-world government kind of conspiracy?
Meijer: There were initially amendments that were proposed by the Trump administration because of China’s lack of transparency. And then that led to a delay in the international response. It reminded me of the time my mom thought she saw a UFO in California; it took her 30 seconds: “I saw a UFO.” But it took me 45 minutes to figure out that it was a B-2 stealth bomber. It ends up not being the most productive exercise.
Wren: As the scion of the Meijer supermarket franchise, you could be next in line to take it over. Has there been recent talk about a succession plan?
Meijer: I obviously have a deep love and a vested interest in the long-term success of our family business. But I think in the short term, my focus is much more policy.
Wren: You’re worth more than $50 million. What’s the biggest splurge you’ve made?
Meijer: I don’t know if my Chevy Colorado counts. I also have a boat that I bought for $5,000 on Craigslist.
Wren: Will you go back to Michigan?
Meijer: Oh, yeah. Michigan is home. I don’t have a visceral hatred of Washington that some do. It’s a place like any other. But it’s not home.
Wren: How would you describe the state of the Michigan Republican Party today, post-midterms?
Meijer: Highly uncertain. The midterm elections were a bloodbath in the state. We lost control of the state house and the state senate for the first time in 40 years. We don’t have any prominent statewide elected offices at all. All the Democratic incumbents swept, obviously. West Michigan will have its first Democratic representation in Congress since Watergate. It’s a pretty bleak outcome. In a moment that should force a lot of introspection, I’ve seen a lot of folks who are responsible for the debacle only rising in stature.
Meijer: I think Tudor did the best with what she had. She was in a very unenviable position. And I think it was really unfair that the state party threw her under the bus. She was the only statewide candidate who was actually elected in a primary.
At the end of the day, there’s been such an echo chamber on the right. It doesn’t help [Michigan held] very late primaries. So everybody was just being forced to walk the tightrope, increasingly away from where the persuadable voters they needed were [ideologically]. And then incumbents don’t have that disadvantage.
Wren: Do you have a 2024 Republican presidential candidate in mind who you’d like to win?
Meijer: My strong bias is for a Republican nominee who could win.
Wren: Would you support Donald Trump if he were the nominee in 2024 after voting to impeach him last year?
Meijer: I have no idea how I would do that.
Wren: No idea?
Meijer: Yeah.I want someone to demonstrate a track record of being able to win. Hillary Clinton was probably the worst Democratic nominee of my lifetime. If he was outlining a positive agenda and speaking of the things that were started and hoping to be completed, if his message was about pointing the country in a better direction, it would be very different than what we have right now, which is just like the pettiest of petty grievances. I think he had a very negative impact on both candidate selection in terms of endorsements, but also just the amount of quality candidates in competitive seats. I think there’s a constructive role that he could be playing, and I have yet to see him make an effort, so to hell with it.
Wren: To hell with what?
Meijer: With the idea ofrunning at this moment [against other Trumpist candidates]. What is required from a purity test standpoint — folks know they need his endorsement, and then what they end up doing to get that endorsement ends up being disqualifying.
Wren: This dynamic played out with your Republican primary opponent, John Gibbs, the far-right conspiracy theorist who criticized women’s right to vote and propagated the idea that Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta participated in satanic rituals. Yet you went to a unity rally with him. That surprised me.
Meijer: I was surprised at the media reaction to that. In my mind, not going to something like that is a sore loser move. The least I can do is wish him congratulations and best of luck. It’s funny there were a lot of kind of anti-Trump and Never Trump folks who trashed me for that. I was like, “Oh, do you want me to act the same way [Trump] did? Do you want me to deny that I lost? Do you want me to be a sore loser? Come on.”
Wren: You were upset about the Democrats interfering in your primary by boosting your challenger.
Meijer: I don’t know that I’d say upset. The hypocrisy was so transcendent, just the cynicism. I think my rule of thumb is Republicans should probably not pick the person the Democrats want to be the candidate. If the Democratic incumbent is popping a bottle of champagne when they realize who their opponent is going to be, we probably didn’t make the right choice.
Wren: Would you run for the seat again in 2024?
Meijer: I’m not going to foreclose any possibility.
Wren: You took an unauthorized trip to Afghanistan with Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, a fellow veteran, to Kabul in August of last year during the chaotic withdrawal of troops. It was widely criticized. The White House, the Pentagon and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said your presence there diverted from the withdrawal mission. Do you have any regrets?
Meijer: If I have a regret, it’s that we probably could have been there for a week and nobody would have known. The only reason why they were aware is because I thought the right thing to do was to just kind of announce ourselves, don’t ask for any support to take up any resources, contrary to a lot of the White House trying to tar and feather us out of their own sense of embarrassment.
I just think back to talking to some of the folks who were on the ground, they were like, “It’s awesome you came.” They just felt like they were working in this crucible.
Wren: Your office, by virtue of your NGO and veteran experience, became a command center in helping to get people out. How many did you help evacuate?
Meijer: We’ve gone back and forth on whether or how we can quantify that. It was very much a team effort. Our office handled thousands of cases. And we’re still working on casework for those who are back here.
Wren: Do you ever wonder if all the events of your life might have been leading up to that specific moment?
Meijer: It is hard to imagine how I could have been better positioned to try to make the maximum impact. This is why I’m continuing to stay engaged on Afghanistan.It’s rare for somebody who worked in Afghanistan to be in Congress. It’s even more rare for somebody who worked and lived by themselves in downtown Kandahar City — I just have a unique perspective and personal network.
Wren: Where do you think the Trump fixation in the Republican Party is headed?
Meijer: I think in a lot of the media there’s such a Trump fixation. He tapped into something that predated him and that will remain after him. In some places, he delivered, but the positive-to-negative ratio started to shift pretty dramatically, giving into some of the most unchecked impulses. We don’t really have the moderating effect of the water cooler in American life, right, where you’re like, ‘I think this thing is important out there.’ I don’t think there’s a race of lizard people who are controlling our lives.
My frustration is [conspiracy theories] lead folks on the right to go down these rabbit holes and chase their own tails. Meanwhile, some of the really serious, severe things that are critical for us to get ready for the future of the country: competing with China, dealing with our deficit, dealing with entitlement reforms. These are not easy things that we can like, manage in bite-sized chunks.
So much of the energy is ultimately expended down avenues that are just hamster wheels. I think that gives Democrats a tangible advantage. We saw that electorally, when they can at least pretend to be speaking to issues and not seem crazy, even if they are unwilling to change their policy outcomes that are not making those issues better. At least rhetorically, they seem to be coming from a more reality-grounded place.
Jeremiah Green, drummer and co-founder of rock band Modest Mouse, has died at 45.
In a statement released to their Instagram late Saturday, the band wrote in part, “Today we lost our dear friend Jeremiah. He laid down to rest and simply faded out.”
On Tuesday, the rocker’s brother Adam Green told Fox News Digital, “He is doing great considering the circumstances … He played a lot of shows with the cancer, but the doctor gave him the green light to play all the way up to the last West Coast date. His goal is to be back on tour this spring in South America. He has about 4 weeks of Chemo and Radiation left.”
His mother, Carol Namatame, also confirmed the loss, writing on Facebook that her son “lost his courageous battle with cancer on December 31.”
Also to their Instagram, Modest Mouse wrote, “I’d like to say a bunch of pretty words right now, but it just isn’t the time. These will come later, and from many people. Please appreciate all the love you give, get, have given, and will get. Above all, Jeremiah was about love. We love you.”
The Grammy-nominated band was formed in Washington back in 1992 by co-founders Green, Isaac Brock, and Eric Judy.
The band is currently slated to perform at Lollapalooza Argentina 2023 festival in March.
An original statement from Brock shared directly to the band’s Instagram four days ago was optimistic about Green’s recovery. He wrote of Green’s treatment, “It seems to be going smoothly and making a positive difference. Jeremiah, as am I, are believers in the power of positive energy, so if you would be so kind as to send “good vibes”( to quote Jeremiah) in the direction of Jeremiah and his family, that’d be great.”
His mother echoed the sentiments, writing on Facebook, “He’s [sic] so strong and so brave and hanging in there!”
It was Seattle-based DJ Marco Collins who confirmed the severity of Green’s cancer on his own social media.
Unfortunately, the 45-year-old died as a “husband, father, son and brother,” as described by his mother.
“He went peacefully in his sleep. Jeremiah was a light to so many. At this time the family is requesting privacy. More information will be forthcoming including a Celebration of Life for friends and fans in the coming months. Jeremiah’s loved ones would like to thank everyone for their continued well wishes and support,” Namatame added.
