Republicans were ridiculed for being unable to unite behind Kevin McCarthy and vote for him as the new House speaker Tuesday – and seemingly airing dirty GOP laundry for all Americans to see.
“This is the worst game of chicken ever. It’s just like a game of chicken [where] you have [one] car going at the other, and you wait, ugh. It’s not even that. It’s just bad,” Greg Gutfeld said.
“It’s just bad. It’s like the Republicans read a book by the Democrats saying ‘How To Really Screw Up Your Party.’
Twenty Republicans voted against McCarthy in favor of nominating Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. The House Minority leader needs 218 votes to secure a majority and become speaker but fell short twice by fourteen votes.
Gutfeld argued the GOP likely would have already elected McCarthy if the voting process weren’t broadcast on TV like a reality show.
“What are we doing? Gutfeld asked. “If this were relegated to C-SPAN, we wouldn’t even know it existed, and they would probably get through it, but because it’s on our shows now, they are like, ‘Okay, this is for my future, I need to do this to make the people on Twitter happy or [get] my buddies on television [to] invite me more often.'”
FILE – In this May 16, 2018, file photo, House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., listens during a roundtable in Washington. McCarthy says thieves broke into his office in Bakersfield, Calif., and that he’s hoping for help from the public to identify them. ((AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File))
“The Five” co-host Judge Jeanine Pirro said Americans watching at home are asking, “‘What the heck is wrong with these people?’”
“‘We elected them, we gave them money. We now have the majority in the House and they can’t get along with each other?'” she quipped.
Pirro argued the GOP needs to stop holding votes and get together and find out how to bring in the 20 Republicans who voted against McCarthy.
“The truth is McCarthy worked like a dog for the last two years. He raised $250 million for candidates, some of whom haven’t even been sworn in yet and were against him,” she said.
Former NFL player and ESPN analyst Ryan Clark described Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin’s collapse on the field as football’s “extremely ugly” side.
Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed during the Bills’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday. His heartbeat was restored on the field, according to the Bills, and he remains in a “critical condition” at a Cincinnati hospital.
“Tonight, we got to see a side of football that is extremely ugly, Clark told ESPN. “A side of football that no one ever wants to see or never wants to admit exists.”
The game was later postponed with players from both teams visibly distraught following the incident.
“This is about Damar Hamlin. It was about a young man at 24-year-old living his dream … and now he fights for his life,” added Clark
Within 10 seconds of Hamlin’s collapse, Bills team trainers were treating him. An ambulance was on the field in less than five minutes, footage shows, and he was given CPR, according to an ESPN broadcast.
“When Damar Hamlin falls to the turf, and when you see the medical staff rush to the field, and both teams are on the field, you realize this isn’t normal. You realize this isn’t just football,” Clark, who himself once collapsed during a game in 2007 while he was playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, told ESPN.
Clark had a complication with a sickle cell trait and had to be rushed to hospital. He eventually had his spleen and gall bladder removed, forcing him to miss the remainder of the season before making a full recovery. He went on to become an analyst for ESPN on the NFL and MMA.
“I dealt with this before, and I watched my teammates, for days, come to my hospital bed and just cry. I had them call me and tell me that they didn’t think I was gonna make it,” Clark recalled on ESPN’s live broadcast.
“And now this team has to deal with that, and they have no answers.”
Clark finished by calling on everyone in the football fraternity, pundits and fans alike, to have more compassion for the players putting themselves at risk for others’ entertainment.
“And so the next time that we get upset at our favorite fantasy player, or we’re upset that the guy on our team doesn’t make the play, and we’re saying he’s worthless and we’re saying ‘you get to make all this money,’ we should remember that these guys are putting their lives on the line to live this dream.”
Clark’s analysis of what happened to Hamlin has been widely praised on social media.
“Blown away by how good Scott Van Pelt and Ryan Clark are handling this. Not exactly an easy assignment, and they’re shining. Perspective, class, honesty, emotion, all of it,” sports writer Jason Mackey wrote on Twitter, while former sports writer Matt Lindner said the two hosts’ handling of the coverage will be “taught in journalism classes for years to come.”
Meanwhile, former NFL player Dante Stallworth told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that the NFL is a “brutal sport.”
“I think people forget that,” said Dante Stallworth, who noted that Hamlin’s “mother was there witnessing this with her own eyes.”
“They look at players more as commodities sometimes – especially with fantasy football,” added Stallworth. “Sometimes we forget the human side, that these players are actually human beings and they have families and they have wives and kids.”
Stallworth also praised the decision to call off the game, something that he said would not have happened in his day.
“Five, 10 years ago the game probably would have resumed,” he said. “Half the players on the field were crying, Bengals players were crying … To see the players’ reactions, even though we couldn’t see what was going on, that told me the story of everything happening on the field.”
That includes several big elections — three gubernatorial contests and major American cities electing their mayors — along with the fight around the congressional maps used for 2024 playing out in courts across the country in the upcoming year.
Here are the four big election storylines to follow in 2023:
Kentucky’s wild governor’s race, and two other chief executive contests
The Kentucky gubernatorial contest has already gotten off to a chaotic start, with a slew of prominent Republicans in the state lining up to challenge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is seeking a second term.
The crowded Republican field already includes state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — long rumored to be a successor-in-waiting to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — and Kelly Craft, who was then-President Donald Trump’s second and final permanent ambassador to the United Nations. Other notable candidates include state Auditor Mike Harmon and Agricultural Commissioner Ryan Quarles. There are persistent rumblings that former Gov. Matt Bevin might get into the race and even rumors that former pizza magnate “Papa John” Schnatter himself could launch a bid.
Trump has already made an early endorsement in the race, backing Cameron in June.
The GOP senses a real pickup opportunity. Beshear only narrowly defeated Bevin in 2019, and Republicans have been champing at the bit for the opportunity to challenge him since. But Democrats will rally to his defense, with new Democratic Governors Association Chair Phil Murphy saying in an interview with POLITICO late last year that defending Beshear would be “priority number one.”
Two other states will be holding gubernatorial elections this year as well. In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited in the otherwise red-leaning seat. Only one notable candidate — Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry — has declared their candidacy thus far.
And in Mississippi, GOP Gov. Tate Reeves is expected to seek another term, although at least some other Republicans in the state have been kicking the tires on runs of their own.
All three states will also be holding down-ballot statewide contests as well.
The redistricting battles continue
After a much-delayed redistricting process, states scrambled to lock in their congressional maps ahead of the 2022 election. But those maps are anything but set-in-stone for 2024.
The Supreme Court is poised to issue opinions on a pair of cases about redistricting by the end of June that could dramatically change the landscape. The first, Merrill v. Milligan, concerns Alabama’s map, where challengers sought to have it tossed by alleging it weakened the power of Black voters in the state.
The court — although seemingly chilly to the state’s argument that a key civil rights law needs to be read in a “race neutral” manner — seems likely to rewrite the test used to determine if a minority group’s voting power is being “diluted.” That will likely result in less voting power for minority groups in Congress. Outside of Alabama, ongoing cases in states like Georgia and Louisiana likely hinge on the court’s decision.
The second major Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, originated in North Carolina. There, the state Supreme Court tossed out the map drawn by Republicans as an illegal partisan gerrymander, with a court-drawn map eventually being used in 2022. Republican legislators sought to have the nation’s highest court negate the state court’s map, advancing a once-fringe legal theory called the “independent state legislature” doctrine that argues that state courts have little to no role in checking state legislatures’ power to set the rules around federal elections.
The Supreme Court seems unlikely to adopt the most muscular version of the theory. But depending on where the justices land, it could reopen the redistricting process both in the Tarheel State and elsewhere where state courts waded into the mapmaking process.
The 2022 elections in a handful of states will also likely have an impact on congressional lines in 2023. Republican-aligned justices won a majority on the North Carolina state Supreme Court — making the court much more likely in the future to back the party’s legislatively drawn lines. And in Ohio, a Republican justice who had repeatedly ruled that the lines there were illegal partisan gerrymanders favoring her party retired and was replaced, also giving GOP mapmakers there more of a free hand in those fights that are expected to continue this year.
A big 2023 election that could have ramifications over future redistricting fights is a Wisconsin state Supreme Court contest in early April. That court currently has a narrow 4-3 conservative majority, with Justice Patience Roggensack’s seat up next year after she opted to not seek another term. She is part of the court’s conservative majority, so a win by a liberal-leaning jurist would flip the balance of the court in a state where Democrats have challenged maps as illegal gerrymanders in the past.
But there is significant uncertainty around the race. Two liberal judges — Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Claire Protasiewicz — are running alongside two conservative judges, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow and former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. All four are competing in a primary (the office is technically nonpartisan) in February, with the top two advancing to the general election.
Pennsylvania will also host a state Supreme Court election in November to fill the seat of the late state Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat who died in September.
Temperature check in Virginia
A handful of states will also hold state legislative races in 2023, with the contests in Virginia as the likely headliners in November.
Both chambers are up in the commonwealth, which will be the only state that has a split Legislature in 2023. Republicans narrowly control the state House, while Democrats have a slim majority in the state Senate. Democrats took control of both chambers during the 2019 elections, only for Republicans — on the coattails of now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win — to flip back the state House in 2021.
The 2023 election should serve as a temperature check heading into 2024. It will also be the first election held under new maplines in the state, after a chaotic redistricting process led to the state House races in 2021 being held under last decade’s lines. (The state Senate was not up in 2021.)
A preview of the battle for control of the chambers will come in January, where there is a special election to fill Republican Jen Kiggans’ state Senate seat. She vacated it to join the House after defeating Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in November, and both parties are competing in the Virginia Beach-area district. President Joe Biden carried the district in 2020, according to data compiled by CNalysis, but Youngkin won the area in 2021. Republican Kevin Adams will face off against Democrat Aaron Rouse on Jan. 10, and the contest will be held under last decade’s lines.
Louisiana, Mississippi and New Jersey will also hold legislative elections next year, but partisan control of the state House is unlikely to flip.
Big city scrambles
Five of the nation’s 10 largest cities — Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Dallas — are holding mayoral elections this year, according to Ballotpedia, setting up battles over local control that will affect millions of Americans.
Chicago’s mayoral election is already incredibly contentious. Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot is facing eight rivals in her bid for a second term. The election is on Feb. 28, but if no candidate receives a majority of the vote — which is likely, given the field — the top two advance to a runoff in early April.
The polling that has been publicly released, although sparse, has shown Democratic Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia with an edge, with Lightfoot and a few other candidates close behind. Crime will likely play an outsize role in debates, and progressive politics and the power of Black and Latino voters in the majority-minority city will come into play, too.
Four years ago, Lightfoot campaigned as a progressive reformer. But in office, she has drawn criticism for opposing an ultimately successful push to elect the city’s school board and her handling of homelessness and crime — which has seeped into the same white enclaves that helped elect her four years ago.
Supporters credit Lightfoot with guiding the city through the pandemic, championing legislation in the city that led to a higher minimum wage, creating the city’s first elected civilian police oversight group and working to pay down the city’s pension debt. And though crime persists, there are declines in some areas, including the homicide rate.
In Philadelphia, 10 Democrats have already jumped into the 2023 election to succeed incumbent Mayor Jim Kenney, who is term-limited. The race will test how residents in Pennsylvania’s biggest city want to handle the homicide rate: More police? More progressive policies? Somewhere in the middle?
With several prominent women in the running, including three former city councilmembers and the city’s former controller, the contest could also give the city its first female mayor. Former City Councilwoman Helen Gym, a progressive who advocated for taking down a statue of the late Mayor Frank Rizzo, is widely viewed as the early frontrunner. The partisan primaries are in mid-May, with the eventual Democratic nominee the heavy favorite in November.
The Texas cities are a grab bag. In Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner is term-limited and a crowded field has already started to form to succeed him. Both Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson and San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg plan on running for another term.
All told, Democrats are expected to continue their dominance of the nation’s largest cities. All five cities have an incumbent Democratic mayor, with the exception of Nirenberg, who is an independent but generally considered progressive.
Holly Otterbein and Shia Kapos contributed to this report.
The U.S. State Department called on China to be more transparent about the current COVID-19 outbreak and origins of the virus, hitting back at a Chinese official who called travel restrictions “unacceptable” on Tuesday.
“If the [People’s Republic of China] wants to see countries do away with various requirements that have been put in place, there’s a way to help bring that about and that is with additional transparency,”
“Long before this COVID surge in the PRC, we have consistently called for additional transparency from the PRC regarding COVID, including in the context of COVID origins,” Price added. “We think it is profoundly in the world’s interest, but it’s also profoundly in the PRC’s interest that they do so as well.”
China relaxed its “zero-COVID” strategy last month amid nationwide protests and surging cases, but health officials around the world have expressed skepticism about official data coming out of the country.
Travelers walk at a terminal hall of the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, China, on March 23, 2022. (REUTERS/Tingshu Wang)
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist who sits on a World Health Organization committee that met with Chinese officials on Tuesday, told Reuters that the numbers China has released are “not very credible.”
“We want to see a more realistic picture of what is actually going on,” Koopmans told the new outlet.
At least a dozen countries, including the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Italy, have placed restrictions on travel from China.
Masked travelers check their passports as they line up at the international flight check in counter at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning criticized the restrictions on Tuesday, saying that they lack “scientific basis.”
“We firmly reject using COVID measures for political purposes and will take corresponding measures in response to varying situations based on the principle of reciprocity,” she told reporters.
Paul Best is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital and Fox Business. Story tips and ideas can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.
Fox News host Jesse Watters warns Sam Bankman-Fried is in “trouble” if there is any similarity between his case and Bernie Madoff’s scheme involving the mob’s money on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”
A new Netflix documentary says Bernie Madoff was taking millions of dollars in from criminals – everybody from drug cartels to Russian mobsters. And when they all came knocking on Bernie’s door to have it back, he didn’t have it. Instead of paying up, the documentary says Madoff pled guilty to 150-year prison sentence so he wouldn’t get whacked. Remember, Madoff just confessed, said I did it, said send me away. If Madoff for years was able to get away with taking in mob money, drug money, right under the nose of the feds, just imagine what’s going on in crypto, the currency notorious with mobsters, sex traffickers and hackers. Warren Buffett’s right-hand man calls it “rat poison.”
The Democratic Party must love them some “rat poison” because Sam “Mini-Madoff” took millions in rat poison and fed it to Joe Biden. Did drug money buy the Democrats the Senate? Oh, just look for yourself. $41 million right into the Democrats’ dirty war chest. Where’d the stolen crypto money come from? Well, if we’re learning anything from Bernie Madoff’s story, it’s that this is a lot of dirty, stolen money and people are dying over it.
In the past few months, there’s been a slew of crypto executives dropping dead. Yeah. One died in his sleep, another died from a helicopter crash and the other one died drowning in Puerto Rico. Is this all a coincidence? Well, we don’t know. But we do know if Mini’s investors were cartels and mobsters, Mini’s in some trouble and so are all the other crypto brokers who lost the mob’s money.
Confession: I’m a recovering skin picker. It’s bad, I know—any dermatologist will tell you that picking your skin is a major skin health no-no, but when I’m really stressed out, I just can’t help myself. My hands will almost always end up on my forehead, feeling around for even the smallest bump or blemish to squeeze into oblivion. And in the event that there’s an actual pimple to pick at, it’s never enough to just pop it and walk away. Instead, I’ll pick, squeeze, poke and prod until I’ve turned what would’ve been a minor blemish (gone in a few days tops) into a gnarly wound that’ll be on my face for a week plus. The original tiny spot is now a crater surrounded by swaths of angry, swollen skin. TLDR: stress picking at your face never ends well, but it happens.
Now, I’ve personally picked at my skin enough times to know that once you’ve reached the point of no return (the one where you look in the mirror and immediately regret what you’ve done to your face), the best thing to do is drop your hands (wash them immediately), and do damage control. But caring for skin after stress picking is not the same as caring for it pre-blemish—so we asked dermatologists for the best course of action.
Use gentle cleansers + toners
CeraVe, Hydrating Facial Cleanser — $15.00
“The best thing to do is to wash the area with a gentle cleanser to prevent the area from getting infected,” explains Ramya Garlapati, MD, a board-certified dermatologist based in Miami—and this CeraVe cleanser is as gentle as it gets. The creamy, non-foaming formula leaves skin feeling clean, but not stripped, and doesn’t leave a film behind. It’s chock full of barrier-boosting ceramides to help replenish and heal sensitized skin and hyaluronic acid to help retain moisture. Plus, devoid of any potent actives or fragrances that can further irritate the skin after stress picking.
When my skin is in recovery mode post-stress picking, I press pause on all of my active, exfoliating toners and use Futurewise Slug Boost instead. Not only does it contain dermatologists’ holy grail humectant ingredient—glycerin—it’s also full of other hydration heroes like hyaluronic acid, polyglutamic acid, and squalane. Together, the ingredients make up a replenishing skin-care cocktail that keeps skin moisturized and balanced as it heals, and primes it for the following steps in your skincare routine. For the full slugging effect, go in with Futurewise’s Slug Cream next while your skin is still damp.
Aveeno, Calm and Restore Oat Gel Moisturizer — $25.00
Shereene Idriss, MD, board-certified dermatologist, founder of Idriss Dermatology in NYC, and creator of the #PillowtalkDerm series on Instagram says a glycerin-based moisturizer is a must when caring for skin post-stress picking.
“Glycerin is a superstar and my personal favorite humectant that keeps the skin lipids between our skin cells in a healthy state which will help restore your skin’s barrier,” she explains. “Additionally, at relatively high concentrations, it has the ability to lower the density of bacteria in wounds, decreasing the risk of developing an infection.”
Dr. Idriss says Aveeno’s Calm and Restore Moisturizer is one of her favorites, because “it combines glycerin with oatmeal and panthenol, two key ingredients that help soothe and nourish the skin to help it heal better.”
This Krave Beauty water cream has a simple, no-frills formula that’s exactly what sensitized skin needs after a bout of picking. The star ingredient is oatmeal extract, which “is very soothing and helps improve the redness and inflammation,” says Audrey Kunin MD, board-certified dermatologist and founder of DERMADoctor. Oatmeal works alongside trehalose (a water-binding plant sugar) and squalane to gently hydrate skin while soothing redness and irritation brought on by picking. What’s more, the featherlight texture absorbs like a dream, and won’t overwhelm oily or combination skin types.
Beloved by beauty fans on TikTok, La Roche Posay’s best-selling Cicaplast Baume B5 isn’t only a must-have for ‘French girl slugging,’ it’s also key for soothing and nourishing skin after stress picking to support better healing. According to Dr. Idriss, the multipurpose, glycerin-powered ointment is the perfect combination of moisturizing and calming ingredients—making it exactly what sensitized skin needs after picking. “It’s formulated with Centella Asiatica, which is traditionally used to improve small wounds and is a known anti-inflammatory agent. It also has panthenol and shea butter which will help restore your skin’s barrier.”
When your skin is already raw and angry after picking, an acne-fighting spot treatment is not the answer. Instead, Dr. Kunin recommends using a Polysporin ointment on the affected area. The antibiotic ointment uses bacitracin zinc and polymyxin B sulfate to help prevent infection and speed up the healing process. Plus, it’s probably already in your home first aid kit.
Because skin is dehydrated during the healing process, it can trigger excess collagen production and lead to scarring. Because of this, “keeping the wound moist with an ointment allows for a better cosmetic outcome when healing and can reduce scarring,” says Dr. Garlapati. She recommends a petrolatum-based ointment because it forms a protective barrier over injured skin which “reduces the rate of water loss through the skin” and sets the stage for better healing.
Her petroleum-based ointment of choice is Cerave’s Healing Ointment. It’s fragrance-free, approved by the National Eczema Association, and is infused with skin-loving ceramides and hyaluronic acid for added benefits.
“If you are a picker and just can’t help yourself, cover it up with a patch to stop yourself from picking,” says Dr. Idriss. Hero Cosmetics’ Mighty Patch uses medical-grade hydrocolloid to effectively pull the gunk out of pimples and help them heal, making them your first line of defense against stress picking. The sticky patches shield sensitized, picked-at skin from germs to minimize scabbing and scarring brought on by popping, while saving you from the very real urge to pick at blemishes further.
One thing I constantly forget about every time I stress-pick is the shame that sticks around for days while I wait for my handy work to heal. Starface’s hydrocolloid pimple patches take that out of the equation entirely thanks to their playful star shape that you’ll be proud to wear while out and about. Beyond the joy-inducing aesthetic, these patches’ unique shape actually helps them cling onto skin more effectively so they can reduce inflammation, protect skin from bacteria, and speed up the healing process. And did we mention they come in a refillable compact?
Conservatives celebrated on Tuesday the successful enactment of a new law in Louisiana that requires ID and age verification within the state to access online porn.
The bill was originally spearheaded by Louisiana State Rep. Laurie Schlegel, R., earlier in 2022 and finally went into effect on Sunday. The new law states that websites containing 33.3% or more of pornographic material will now be held liable for ensuring their viewers are 18 or older or risk legal ramifications.
“Online pornography is extreme and graphic and only one click away from our children. This is not your daddy’s Playboy. And if pornography companies refuse to be responsible, then we must hold them accountable. This law is a first step,” Schlegel tweeted on Dec. 29.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, Schlegel said the law now treats the internet the same as brick and mortar businesses that provide pornographic material.
“We require brick and mortar businesses to check ID before providing anyone access to this type of material but somehow we’ve given the internet a free pass. How does this make sense? And because it’s free and easily accessible without any need to show verify your age, hardcore pornography is just a click away from our children,” Schlegel said. “Research has shown that kids as young as six are now seeing pornography and that 1 in 10 visitors of porn sites are now under 10 years old. This is not acceptable. One researcher even said that children’s unlimited access to extreme and graphic pornography is the ‘largest unregulated social experiment in history’ and our society is paying the price.”
She continued, “It’s pretty simple. The standard for all business should be the same when it comes to explicit material. We must protect our children from the dangers of pornography online the same way that we do in the physical world. Thankfully, the technology today has changed the game in this area and allows us to not only protect children but also protect the privacy of those adults who want to view this material. Act 440 also protects privacy ‘A commercial entity that is found to have knowingly retained identifying information of the individual after access has been granted to the individual shall be liable to the individual for damages resulting from retaining the identifying information, including court costs and reasonable attorney fees as ordered by the court.’”
Several other Twitter users celebrated the news as a step in the right direction of managing online pornography.
“Proof of age to obtain hardcore porn should not be a controversial position,” columnist David Marcus tweeted.
Journalist Ryan James Girdusky wrote, “What a big win from Louisiana.”
Catholic priest Fr. Matthew Schneider agreed, “Based. This is a great idea. More places should pass laws like this. (This is not banning pornography but taking it back to what it was in the 90s when you needed to go to a special store or the video rental place’s back room, both of which banned minors & would check ID.)”
Daily Signal senior reporter Mary Margaret Olohan tweeted, “Bravo. Let’s take more steps to protect our children’s innocence.”
“The interesting thing about what is happening in Louisiana with online pornography is that the porn companie$ are proving that they have the capability to do this cheaply — and are refusing to do this in other states,” Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow Terry Schilling wrote.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., proposed a similar bill to Congress in December called the Shielding Children’s Retinas from Egregious Exposure on the Net (SCREEN) Act. The bill would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require all pornographic websites to adopt age verification technology.
“Every day, we’re learning more about the negative psychological effects pornography has on minors. Given the alarming rate of teenage exposure to pornography, I believe the government must act quickly to enact protections that have a real chance of surviving First Amendment scrutiny. We require age verification at brick-and-mortar shops. Why shouldn’t we require it online?” Lee said.
The year has only just started but already Europe has broken an alarming number of weather records as extreme heat spread across the continent.
On New Year’s Day, at least eight European countries recorded their warmest January day ever: Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Belarus, Lithuania, Denmark and Latvia, according to the climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who tracks extreme temperatures across the globe.
It’s “the most extreme heat wave in European history,” Herrera told CNN, based on how far above normal temperatures rose.
Cities that would often be covered in snow instead saw temperatures spike to levels usually seen in summer. “The real ‘monster’ part of this warm spell was December 31 to January 1,” Herrera told CNN.
On January 1, Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, recorded a peak of 20 degrees Celsius (68 Fahrenheit), the Czech town of Javornik reached 19.6 degrees Celsius (67.3 Fahrenheit), and Jodłownik, a village in Poland, recorded a peak of 19 degrees Celsius (66.2 Fahrenheit).
Ukraine also recorded its highest temperature in January outside of Crimea.
When you consider how far above normal temperatures climbed, the current weather event is even more extreme than the heat waves that scorched much of Europe last summer, said Herrera. And not only is the heat unusually intense, it also spans a large area, from Europe’s borders with Asia to northern Spain.
“For the first time, a heat wave in Europe can rival the most intense ever recorded in North America,” said Herrera.
The driving force behind the exceptional heat was a warm air mass from the west coast of Africa, which moved across Europe, bringing unseasonably warm conditions, according to the UK Met Office.
While meteorologists say it’s too early to confidently attribute this extreme heat to climate change, scientists have warned that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense.
“The increases in average global temperatures caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels make it more likely that temperature records will be broken,” said Rebecca Oakes, a climate scientist at the Met Office.
The record-breaking temperatures have alarmed meteorologists, but they have also had the effect of helping to ease the energy crisis that has gripped the continent.
Natural gas prices in Europe soared since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as President Vladimir Putin restricted supply to the continent, and many countries reduced their imports from Russia. But this unprecedented wave of warm weather has meant a lower demand for gas, contributing to natural gas prices slumping to their lowest level since Russia launched its invasion in February last year, according to data from Refinitiv.
In Ukraine, the unseasonably warm weather has also helped.
“Due to warm weather, [energy] consumption in Ukraine is reduced,” the country’s state-owned electricity operator Ukrenergo announced Tuesday. Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian government, tweeted on New Year’s Day: “Putin wanted to freeze Ukrainian allies and defeat Ukraine. Instead, even the weather is on our side.”
But while the warm weather may provide some relief, meteorologists warn this spell offers a glimpse of a concerning future.
Europe has entered “uncharted territory,” said Herrera. “It is one thing to beat even a century old record by few decimals, it is another one to shatter about 5,000 records in two days, in some cases with margin of more than 5 degrees Celsius.”
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his wife, former Trump administration Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, for “unnecessary turmoil” within the GOP in the wake of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) failure to win the lower chamber’s Speakership.
“There is so much unnecessary turmoil in the Republican Party,” Trump said, saying the disorder is due in large part to McConnell, Chao and their “RINO” allies, using an acronym for “Republicans In Name Only.”
The statement is the latest example of Trump attacking not only McConnell but also his wife, who last month denounced the former president’s frequent use of a racist nickname for her. Trump repeated the nickname in his latest statement.
The former president’s comments came just after the House on Tuesday sat through three votes for Speaker, only to adjourn without a winner.
Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) came out ahead of McCarthy in all three rounds of voting, but neither candidate secured the necessary 218 to take the top leadership spot — despite Republicans holding 222 seats after this year’s midterms.
Nineteen Republicans voted against McCarthy in the first two votes, and the number of dissenters rose to 20 in the third round.
Trump had initially tried to help McCarthy get the votes he needed, but declined on Tuesday to say whether he’d continue supporting the lawmaker after he lost the three consecutive elections.
The House will head into a fourth vote when they reconvene on Wednesday at noon, and the process will continue until a nominee gets a majority of lawmakers’ ballots.
There are many ways to have fun on the road, and seldom has that been more true than now. The latest example of that comes from Wisconsin, in the form of the 7Fifteen Motorworks Troy Indy Special.
The result of John Kendall and his father’s hard work, the car is an attempt to recreate a classic hot rod known as the 1959 Troy Roadster. Lovingly reimagined for modern drivers, the Troy Indy Special can be purchased as a turnkey car.
Kendall says he and his father thought the Troy Roadster would be an easy one to recreate (which they now admit was hubris), so they bought the car and 3D scanned it in order to allow them to create a faithful, but modernized homage. The result is a surprisingly advanced little car that looks a bit like if Carroll Shelby had put his spin on the Lotus Super 7.
Indeed, it’s powered by an American V8, which in this case is a GM LS3, and buyers are offered two power options, with the base engine making 495 hp (369 kW/502 PS). If that’s not quite enough oomph for you, the company will turn up the wick so that it produces 525 hp (391 kW/532 PS), but either way the engine is naturally aspirated.
Thanks to its aluminum bodywork and its minuscule proportions, the Indy Special tips the scales at just 2,200 lbs (998 kg) with a tank full of gas and all the fluids in it. That makes it a speedy little devil, indeed. Helping to slow it down are Wilwood brakes, and to keep everything under control through the corners, 7Fifteen Motorworks, has installed independent inboard pushrod coilover suspension at all four corners.
That makes the car quite the performer, while the exquisite workmanship means that the car can be sold ready to drive. Unfortunately, elevated workmanship, low weight, and high performance aren’t a cheap combination, and the Troy Indy Special starts at $195,000.
According to Jay Leno, though, who featured the car recently on his YouTube channel, it’s well worth the money. Not only does he think you’d struggle to make the car yourself for less, the result of 7Fifteen Motorworks’ efforts is a good car.
“You got plenty of torque no matter what gear you’re in,” says Leno. “When you’re going 40, you feel like you’re going 80.”
