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    Was Basketball Invented in Herkimer, NY? The Human Calculator Thinks So.

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    The official story is that Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Springfield, Mass., in 1891. But what about the teenager tossing cabbages in upstate New York a year earlier?Just off the too-quiet Main Street in the upstate New York town of Herkimer, a man sat in a booth at Crazy Otto’s Empire Diner, making his case. Between bites of two eggs, three pancakes and a ham slice the size of a paperback, he politely defied accepted American lore.His case goes like this: Basketball was invented not by Dr. James Naismith in Springfield, Mass., in 1891, as everyone is taught, but by a Herkimer teenager who came up with the idea first, about a year earlier, while tossing heads of cabbage into a basket.Before you say, “Check, please,” know that this stocky, white-haired heretic isn’t some random Herkimer eccentric; he is the Human Calculator, also known as Scott Flansburg, who has astonished people around the world with his ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide vast numbers with finger-snap speed. He may be the most notable Herkimer native since the Herkimer Hurricane himself, Lou Ambers, world lightweight boxing champion of the 1930s.But Mr. Flansburg has set aside his wizardry to champion what he argues is his hometown’s rightful place in sports history, and he says he has receipts — well, some receipts. He has assembled a group of local leaders and created the nonprofit Herkimer 9 Foundation, dedicated to an admittedly improbable pursuit: to revitalize this town with a basketball-related museum, a basketball-related events center and even a pavilion topped with the world’s largest basketball.“Basketball was invented on our Main Street,” Mr. Flansburg, 61, said, nodding toward the nearby avenue where there’s a lot not happening.Herkimer, once bustling, has become another largely abandoned town along the Erie Canal in New York.Patrick Dodson for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides

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      The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office.President Trump ordered his White House counsel and the attorney general on Wednesday to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his staff in Mr. Trump’s latest attempt to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor.In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge.The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides.The former president called such claims “ridiculous and false” in a statement on Wednesday after the order’s release.“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” he said. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.”The order comes after disclosure in recent weeks that Mr. Biden, 82, had received a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer and in the wake of renewed scrutiny of his health during his presidency.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Amplifies Another Outlandish Conspiracy Theory: Biden Is a Robotic Clone

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      President Trump reposted another user’s false claim that the former president had been “executed” in 2020 and replaced by a robotic clone.President Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory on social media on Saturday night saying former President Joseph R. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.The president has blamed Mr. Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Mr. Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Mr. Biden’s knowledge. (Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)Mr. Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with cabinet officials promoting such theories.Last month, while sitting next to the president of South Africa in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump claimed that white South African farmers were victims of mass killings and displayed an image intended to back up his assertion; the image was actually of the conflict in eastern Congo. Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that white South Africans are victims of genocide, even though police statistics do not show that white people in the nation are any more vulnerable than other groups.Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with false or misleading statements — according to one tally, he made 30,573 of them, or 21 a day on average — and he repeatedly shared conspiracy theories in the lead-up to the 2024 election.A New York Times analysis of thousands of Mr. Trump’s social media posts and reposts over a six-month period in 2024 found that at least 330 of them described both a false, secretive plot against Mr. Trump or the American people and a specific entity supposedly responsible for it. They included suggestions that the F.B.I. had ordered his assassination and accusations that government officials had orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Trump’s repost of the robot conspiracy theory came a day after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was feeling good after beginning treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Biden’s diagnosis last month was not new and had been concealed from the public. More

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      Trump Casts Himself as a Protector of Persecuted White People

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      President Trump publicly dressed down the president of South Africa based on a fringe conspiracy theory, providing a vivid distillation of his views on race.In the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump positioned himself as the savior of white South Africans.Sitting alongside Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, Mr. Trump said white people were “being executed.” He referred over and over again to “dead white people.” He dressed down Mr. Ramaphosa, who helped his country cast off the racist policies of apartheid, and questioned why he was not doing more when white people were being killed.“I don’t know how you explain that,” Mr. Trump said. “How do you explain that?”The American president was not much interested in the answer, which is that police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa.The confrontation provided a vivid demonstration of Mr. Trump’s views on race, which have animated his political life going back years. After rising to power in part by framing himself as a protector of white America, Mr. Trump has used his platform, in this case the Oval Office, to elevate claims of white grievance.For Mr. Trump, white people are the true victims; Black people and minorities have received an unfair advantage in the United States. And when Mr. Trump looks to South Africa, a majority-Black country emerging from a legacy of apartheid and colonialism, he sees white people who need sanctuary in the United States.Invoking the teachings of his old mentor, Nelson Mandela, Mr. Ramaphosa pleaded for civility in the dialogue between the two leaders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Orders Halt to Aid to South Africa, Claiming Mistreatment of White Landowners

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      President Trump on Friday ordered that all foreign assistance to South Africa be halted and said his administration would prioritize the resettling of white, “Afrikaner refugees” into the United States because of what he called actions by the country’s government that “racially disfavored landowners.”In the order, Mr. Trump said that “the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa” and that American officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”It follows Mr. Trump’s accusation on his social media site on Sunday that the South African government was engaged in a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum.” He vowed a full investigation and promised to cut off aid.“South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” the president wrote in the post. “It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention.”The order was stunning in providing official American backing to long-held conspiracy theories about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.Mr. Trump has made repeated claims without evidence that echoed those conspiracy theories. In 2018, he ordered his secretary of state to look into “the large scale killing of farmers” — a claim disputed by official figures and the country’s biggest farmers’ group.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says Trump Will Seek to Remove Fluoride From Drinking Water

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Saturday that among the first acts of a second Trump administration would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” a stunning potential reversal of what is widely considered one of the most important public health interventions of the past century.The statement, posted on social media, is among the more concrete pledges made by Mr. Kennedy — a former independent presidential candidate who is now backing Mr. Trump — in his capacity as a top adviser on Mr. Trump’s transition team. It also raises the specter of an all-out assault on public-health expertise should Mr. Trump win next week’s election, a prospect that has already caused significant alarm among experts across the medical and environmental fields.As president, Mr. Trump would not have the power to order states and municipalities to remove fluoride from their water supplies; fluoridation is a matter of local control.But a presidential pronouncement would inject the White House into a debate that stretches back to the 1950s, when conspiracy theories swirled around fluoridation, with critics claiming it was a Communist plot to poison Americans’ brains — a view that was memorably parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s film “Dr. Strangelove.”More recently, however, there has been scientific debate around the practice, with some studies suggesting that excess exposure to fluoride — at levels twice the amount recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency — could harm infants’ developing brains. But scientists, including those at the federal government’s National Toxicology Program, say more research is needed to understand whether lower exposure to fluoride has an effect.The process of adding small amounts fluoride to drinking water, or fluoridation, began about 80 years ago to prevent tooth decay. That effort, public health officials say, has been extraordinarily successful. A majority of Americans today live in water systems that are fluoridated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists fluoridation as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No, poll workers aren’t handing out Sharpies to invalidate ballots.

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      The false claimSome people have falsely claimed that election workers have provided Sharpies, markers or other writing utensils to certain voters in an attempt to somehow invalidate their ballots.Why it is falsePoll workers provide writing utensils that have been tested with ballots and ballot-reading machines long before Election Day. These can include pens, pencils and markers like Sharpies — which are often appropriate to use.Election administrators sometimes rely on recommendations from voting machine companies and then supply those writing tools to election workers.Some companies behind ballot-tabulating machines, including Dominion Voting Systems, recommend felt-tip markers like Sharpies because their fast-drying ink prevents smears. Other election offices, like Maricopa County’s in Arizona, redesigned ballots so that any bleed-through from markers would not impair the ballot.If any writing utensil causes a problem with reading a paper ballot — for instance, if a mark smeared or bled through to the other side — voters are offered an opportunity to vote again, according to the Council of State Governments. If there are additional problems, ballots can be adjudicated by hand using a team of reviewers that includes a Democratic and a Republican representative.How the falsehoods are being usedThe claims often circulate in the form of anecdotes and personal stories that spread rapidly online.These false claims have been featured prominently in election misinformation since at least 2020, when “Sharpiegate” became a viral story that bolstered false claims of widespread voter fraud.That year, the claims were catapulted to larger audiences by right-wing influencers and Trump supporters, including Charlie Kirk, the founder of a pro-Trump youth organization, and Eric Trump, the former president’s son. More

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      in Elections

      No, noncitizens are not voting in droves.

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      The false claimFormer President Donald J. Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that scores of noncitizens — including illegal immigrants — are voting or trying to vote in the United States presidential elections.Why it is falseIt is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and studies have concluded that noncitizen voting is essentially nonexistent.A 2017 analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit, showed that election officials in 42 jurisdictions found only about 30 incidents of potential noncitizen voting in the 2016 election — among more than 23.5 million votes cast, or 0.0001 percent. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called claims of widespread noncitizen voting “bogus” this year after reviewing state policies and previous audits.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, announced in October that the state had found only 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered voters. An earlier audit he conducted in 2022, going back 25 years, identified 1,634 people who had tried to register to vote but whose citizenship couldn’t be verified. None were allowed to cast a ballot. Georgia has not identified any example of a noncitizen in Georgia who voted in that time.How the falsehoods are being usedThe claim has played a central role in voter fraud conspiracy theories for years, but Mr. Trump and other Republicans have made it a focal point of their targets against immigration and election integrity.“There’s going to be thousands upon thousands of noncitizens voting,” Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, told Politico — a claim he has repeated in news conferences. “If you have enough noncitizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”In July, a group tied to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a video claiming to show noncitizens who were registered to vote. The New York Times found that the video was deceptive. Three of the seven people said they had misspoken, and state investigators found no evidence that any of the people had registered to vote.In October, Mr. Trump claimed that the Department of Justice was trying to put illegal voters “back on the Voter Rolls” in Virginia. The Justice Department sued to stop the Republican governor’s executive order that could remove noncitizen voters. The department cited a federal law that prevents purging voter rolls en masse within 90 days of an election — a process that a lawyer with the Justice Department said puts “qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate.” More

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      Barricades and Bulletproof Glass: A County Prepares for Election Day

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      With the specter of political violence looming, the Department of Homeland Security has advised hundreds of communities on election safety. Luzerne County, Pa., is at the center of the unrest.With northeastern Pennsylvania awash again in the reds and oranges of a dazzling autumn, workers recently planted boulders around a government building in downtown Wilkes-Barre to address a seasonal ugliness. But this was no beautification project.Luzerne County is bracing for Election Day.Across the country, the doubts and anger ginned up by the spurious election-fraud claims of former President Donald J. Trump have unsettled the once-routine civic task of collecting and counting votes. With the specter of political violence looming, the Department of Homeland Security has advised hundreds of concerned communities on election safety.At the center of this maelstrom of distrust is Luzerne County, which, for some, has become Exhibit A for election conspiracy theories. Unnerved by local chatter, county officials have implemented several extraordinary security measures — including a primitive fortification of large rocks around the county building in Wilkes-Barre where the Bureau of Elections is located.The boulder installation in this swing-state city of 45,000 could serve as a metaphor for the United States of 2024, in which planning for the sacred exercise of democracy might include preparing for a car bomb.“We’re a microcosm,” said the county manager, Romilda Crocamo, the recipient of repeated threats. The most recent one, serious enough that she alerted law enforcement, was delivered by text to a close relative who is very private and not involved in politics.“Somebody had to go through a lot of effort to make that connection,” Ms. Crocamo said.Emily Cook, the director of the county’s Bureau of Elections, has also been threatened, both on social media and in person. “People say that I deserved to be executed,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More