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    Democratic Florida lawmaker indicted for allegedly stealing $5m in Fema funds

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    Democratic representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida was indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly funneling more than $5m worth of federal disaster funds from her company into her 2021 congressional campaign.The indictment states that Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, stole $5m in Fema overpayments that their family healthcare company received, moving the money through multiple accounts to hide its origins. The indictment alleges that the majority of the money was used for Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional campaign, as well as for the personal benefit of the defendants.“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” said attorney general Pamela Bondi.“No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”The indictment also alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and one of her staffers, Nadege Leblanc, arranged additional campaign contributions through straw donors, using the money obtained from Fema under the names of friends and relatives.Additional charges are being pressed against Cherfilus-McCormick and her tax preparer, David K Spencer, of conspiring to file a false federal tax return. If convicted, Cherfilus-McCormick faces up to 53 years in prison.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Guardian has contacted Cherfilus-McCormick for comment. More

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      Plastic surgeons wrestle with requests for ‘Mar-a-Lago face’: ‘You’re going to look like Maleficent’

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      Picture a plastic surgeon’s office. You might imagine a sleek Los Angeles practice, with discreet entrances meant to conceal celebrities from the paparazzi. Maybe a Dallas high-rise, where monied housewives spend on postpartum “mommy makeovers”. Or a Miami location, where influencers and OnlyFans stars film TikToks of their BBLs. One city you might not think of is Washington DC. But its buttoned-up reputation belies a newly buzzing industry.Much has been made of the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face”, or the uncannily smooth and artificially voluminous features seen on the likes of Maga elite such as Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz. The bee-sting puffy lips, frozen brows and taut necks have been compared to Real Housewives stars, sleep paralysis demons and – ironically, considering the Republican party’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture war – drag queens (minus the campy fun).As of January, plastic surgeons in Washington DC have seen a “surge in ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ requests from Trump insiders”, Axios recently reported. Surgeons told the outlet that more Washingtonians want their procedures to be not unnoticed but obvious and overdone.Axios attributed the aesthetic shift to the influx of transplants from south Florida (where Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s gaudy private club, is located), who are no strangers to nip-tuck tune-ups. Others theorize that going through these procedures is a calculated act of political deference to Trump’s preferred (and unnatural) beauty standards.Dr Anita Kulkarni is a plastic surgeon who practices out of DC’s West End neighborhood and specializes in postpartum body contouring. Enter her office, and you will be greeted by staff who look good, but not worked on – and that is the effect most of her clients have gone for. “Before this second Trump term, I just didn’t see a lot of patients coming in making unreasonable requests,” Kulkarni says. But since the inauguration, she has fielded half a dozen or more – not a large sample size, but enough for the surgeon to take note.She says nobody comes in asking for Mar-a-Lago face by name; the most obvious clue is when a patient with visible lip filler comes in wanting more. “I have to say: ‘I cannot put any more in there safely.’” Or they will want more cheek or jawline filler. “‘To my eye, if I put any more in there, you’re going to cross over from looking like the best version of yourself to looking like Maleficent.’ I have to say no in a way that I have never seen before.” And still patients will try to talk their way into more. But placing fresh filler over an existing layer too soon can cause lumpiness, and Kulkarni does not want to risk being known for that look.“My aesthetic doesn’t necessarily have to be your aesthetic for me to give you what you want,” she says. “But when you go outside the range of what a normal human face should look like, that’s not a place I’m willing to go.”More still might shrug their shoulders and say Mar-a-Lago face is part of society’s wider embrace of body contouring. Kris Jenner’s ageless, 70th-birthday facelift may look less garish than Laura Loomer’s balloonish attributes, but both are just as fake. It comes at a time when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports there were more than 28.5m minimally invasive procedures done in 2024; lip augmentation, dermal fillers and neuromodulator treatments (such as Botox) cracked the top five.Dr Troy Pittman, a plastic surgeon based in DC, says that across the country, people are more willing to talk about the work they have had done. “That’s not a bad thing,” he sys. “But in a town like DC, there is this glamming up of Washington with this new administration, so it’s become more prevalent. They’re OK with looking enhanced.”Dr Kelly Bolden is also a DC-based plastic surgeon. Most of her clients are people of color – she is the medical director of Cultura Dermatology, a practice that specializes in cosmetic treatments for deeper skin tones – and she is not seeing a boom in Mar-a-Lago face requests. But she has noticed a shift, especially among her younger clients in their 20s and 30s.View image in fullscreen“They come in and actually tell me that they like the artificial look. A couple of my patients have said those exact words to me,” Bolden says. Some of the most visible Trump officials are young, such as press secretary Karoline Leavitt and her deputy Anna Kelly (both 28, and the latter is a former pageant queen), and they’re always camera-ready. “I think most of [Trump’s] administration is on the younger side compared to traditional ones, so that’s probably a little bit of where the trend comes from.”Those who want a Mar-a-Lago face have to be able to handle needles: Bolden says it is most often achieved via shots and injectables underneath the skin. “It’s overdone filler and Botox that gives them that mask-face type of appearance.”This is not a look Bolden is known for. Sometimes, she outright denies these requests. Or she will compromise. “Usually I’ll look at them and say: ‘Let’s balance you out, let’s make it more even.’ It’s almost like just as long as they get a little bit more, it will satisfy them,” she says.After the Duchess of Sussex announced her engagement to Prince Harry in 2017, Pittman said women would bring photos of Meghan to appointments and ask for her nose. “That’s a trap,” Pittman says. “We’re not trying to make people look like clones of each other.” He would similarly talk down someone who brought in a picture of Ivanka or Melania Trump. “Whenever people come in asking for a branded look, that can lead to either very unrealistic expectations or artificial results.”Other plastic surgeons advertise Mar-a-Lago face. A practice out of Boca Raton, Florida – less than an hour away from Mar-a-Lago – calls it a procedure that “doesn’t scream surgery. Instead, it whispers refinement.” Dr Shervin Naderi, based in the DC area, described the look as “a modern aristocratic mask” in his practice’s blog.When does a patient know it’s time to ease up on the procedures? Bolden says it’s common not to; the industry term is perception blindness. “The first time someone gets filler, the majority of the time, it looks good,” she said. “Then people get used to it, and they see a wrinkle come back or some sagging, and they’re like, ‘I need more.’ They’re chasing after something without realizing it. A little bit more, a little bit more, and you can’t really see the evolution.”The aesthetics of politics have long been an uneasy topic, especially as it relates to women. Nicole Russell, a columnist at USA Today, called jokes about Mar-a-Lago face “cruel attacks” on conservative women. To others, the face has come to symbolize an allegiance to Trump and his policies. See Noem wearing full glam to an ICE raid, beach waves tumbling over her bulletproof vest. Or Leavitt at the press podium, insisting Trump’s name in Jeffrey Epstein’s emails means nothing, as she purses overlined pink lips to match her shimmery eye shadow.Men are not spared the political aesthetic shift either. Ninety-two per cent of surgeons report treating male patients, with facelifts and sculpted jawlines being top picks. Pittman told Axios his male patients want to look “younger … more virile and masculine” like Pete Hegseth, via Botox, liposuction and eyelid rejuvenation. A fitting counter to Maga’s leading women.But, just like trends, administrations ebb and flow. Mar-a-Lago face won’t last forever – literally. “Nothing in plastic surgery is permanent,” Bolden says. “Filler goes away. Most people will say you get a good eight to 10 years out of a facelift. Everything has a lifespan.” More

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      More than 1,000 flights canceled on second day of cuts tied to government shutdown

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      US airlines again canceled more than 1,000 flights on Saturday, the second day of the Federal Aviation Administration’s order to reduce air traffic because of the government shutdown.So far, the slowdown at many of the nation’s busiest airports hasn’t caused widespread disruptions. But it has deepened the impact felt by what is now the nation’s longest federal shutdown.“We all travel. We all have somewhere to be,” said Emmy Holguin, 36, who was flying out of Miami on Saturday to visit family in the Dominican Republic for the week. “I’m hoping that the government can take care of this.”Analysts warn that the upheaval will intensify and be felt far beyond air travel if the cancellations pick up and move closer to the Thanksgiving holiday.Already there are concerns about the impact on cities and businesses that rely on tourism and the possibility of shipping interruptions that could delay getting holiday items on store shelves.Here’s what to know about the flight reductions:Both of the first two days of the FAA’s slowdown have seen more than 1,000 flights canceled, according to FlightAware, a website that tracks flight disruptions.On Saturday – typically a slow travel day – the airport serving Charlotte, North Carolina, was by far the hardest hit, with 120 arriving and departing flights canceled by midday.Airports in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and Orlando, Florida, were among the others with the most disruptions. Staffing shortages in Charlotte and Newark, New Jersey, slowed traffic too.Not all the cancellations were due to the FAA order, and those numbers represent just a small portion of the overall flights nationwide. But they are certain to rise in the coming days if the slowdown continues.The FAA said the reductions affecting all commercial airlines are starting at 4% of flights at 40 targeted airports and will be bumped up again on Tuesday before hitting 10% of flights on Friday.The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has warned that even more flight cuts might be needed if the government shutdown continues and more air traffic controllers are off the job.Air traffic controllers have gone without paychecks for nearly a month as the shutdown continues, leading many to call in sick and add to already existing staffing shortages.Most controllers are working mandatory overtime six days a week during the shutdown without pay, and some are taking second jobs to pay their bills, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) has said.Most travelers were relieved to find that airlines largely stayed on schedule on Friday, and those whose flights were called off were able to quickly rebook. So far, longer international flights haven’t been interrupted.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere’s still a lot of uncertainty about what flights will be canceled next.And not everyone has the means to pay for a hotel or deal with a last-minute disruption, said Heather Xu, 46, who was in Miami on Saturday after a cruise and flying home to Puerto Rico.“Travel is stressful enough. Then you put these disruptions in place and it really makes everything more challenging,” she said.Rental car companies reported a sharp increase in one-way reservations on Friday, and some people are simply canceling flights altogether.Other repercussions from the air traffic slowdown might also include higher prices in stores, as nearly half of all US air freight is shipped in the bellies of passenger aircraft.Major flight disruptions could bring higher shipping costs that get passed on to consumers, said Patrick Penfield, professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University.More losses will ripple through the economy if the slowdown continues – from tourism to manufacturing, said Greg Raiff, CEO of Elevate Aviation Group.“This shutdown is going to impact everything from cargo aircraft to people getting to business meetings to tourists being able to travel,” he said. “It’s going to hit the hotel taxes and city taxes. There’s a cascading effect that results from this thing.’’ More

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      Passengers start to feel bite of flight cuts amid US government shutdown

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      A US government order to make drastic cuts in commercial air traffic amid the government shutdown has taken effect, with major airports across the country experiencing a significant reduction in schedules and leaving travellers scrambling to adjust their plans.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said the move is necessary to maintain air traffic control safety during a federal government shutdown, now the longest recorded and with no sign of a resolution, in which air traffic controllers have gone without pay.While airlines have started to reduce domestic flights, global hubs such as JFK in New York and LAX in Los Angeles will be affected, meaning delays and sudden changes that could have a cascading effect on international air traffic. The FAA said the reductions would start at 4% and ramp up to 10% by 14 November. The reductions are set to be in effect between 6am and 10pm and impact all commercial airlines.“We are seeing signs of stress in the system, so we are proactively reducing the number of flights to make sure the American people continue to fly safely,” said Bryan Bedford, the FAA administrator.As of Friday morning, more than 800 US-linked flights had been cancelled, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. The data showed about four in five cancelations globally were related to the US.Transportation secretary Sean Duffy warned on Friday that cancellations could rise to 15% or 20%. “If the shutdown doesn’t end relatively soon, the consequence is that more controllers don’t come to work,” he told Fox News, as US airspace became a potent proverbial weapon in the political standoff.Since the beginning of the shutdown, which began last month after a breakdown between Republicans and Democrats over spending plans, air traffic controllers have been working without pay, which has already caused delays.A potential agreement between the parties to reopen the government appeared to crumble again on Friday after Democrats in the Senate, emboldened by Tuesday’s favorable election results for them, rejected an emerging proposal that would have linked a stopgap funding bill known as a continuing resolution to three full-year appropriations bills.The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, has announced 40 “high-traffic” airports across the country that would need to reduce flights. A 4% reduction in operations at those airports has taken effect but this will increase to 10% over the next week.Duffy has accused Democrats of being responsible for any “mass chaos” that ensues, even though the shutdown is the result of both Republicans and Democrats refusing to agree to a deal.The director of the National Economic Council​, Kevin Hassett, told Fox Business on Friday that he did not discount a broader impact on US economic activity from the air space restrictions.“Business travel is a really big, important part of air travel – and if business travel isn’t happening then those are deals that aren’t being cut and hotel rooms that aren’t being filled,” he said.“Travel and leisure is a place that’s really being heavily hit right now and if it continues to get hit, if the air travel thing goes south for another week or two, then you could say that they would have at least a near-term downturn,” Hassett added.View image in fullscreenThe cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by the aviation analytics firm Cirium.With deep antagonism between the two political parties, Donald Trump’s government has beaten the previous record for the longest shutdown, which was set during his first term in 2018-19.United, Southwest and Delta airlines began cancelling flights on Thursday evening.Affected airports cover more than two dozen states including the busiest across the US – such as Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami and San Francisco. Flight schedules will be reduced in some of the US’s biggest cities, including New York, Houston and Chicago.Scott Kirby, the United Airlines CEO, said in a statement that the airline “will continue to make rolling updates to our schedule as the government shutdown continues so we can give our customers several days’ advance notice and to minimise disruption”.Delta Air Lines said it would comply with the directive and “expects to operate the vast majority of our flights as scheduled”.The airspace disruption comes two weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday – typically the busiest travel period of the year – and raises the pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal to end the shutdown.Politically inspired flight chaos, with its potential to continue into or beyond the Thanksgiving holiday later this month, has exacerbated pre-existing structural issues in air travel scheduling, airspace constraints and safety considerations, including outdated air traffic control equipment and a long-term shortage of air traffic controllers.“The FAA is a slow-moving bureaucracy,” said Michael Taylor, a travel analyst at JD Power. “It has a daunting task keeping planes from colliding with each other, and they do a really good job with that, but it makes them ultra-conservative in terms of the technologies they could be using. It’s not like your living room where everything is digital. The FAA still relies on technology invented for the second world war.“Under-staffing is long-term problem and that’s not going to change with a political solution to the shutdown,” he adds. Coupled with underlying technological issues, politicians have learned that travel is an unique opportunity to apply pressure. “This is a leverage point that politicians can use to try to drive public opinion towards one party or the other. It’s a shame but that’s where we are today,” Taylor added.In a statement, American Airlines said most customers would be unaffected and long-haul international travel would remain as scheduled. Customers could change their flight or request a refund. “In the meantime, we continue to urge leaders in Washington to reach an immediate resolution to end the shutdown,” the airline said.The government shutdown has left shortages of up to 3,000 air traffic controllers, according to the administration, in addition to at least 11,000 more receiving zero wages despite being categorised as essential workers.“I’m not aware in my 35-year history in the aviation market where we’ve had a situation where we’re taking these kinds of measures,” Bedford has said. “We’re in new territory in terms of government shutdowns.” More

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      Out-of-touch Trump talks up economy among sycophants and stars in Miami

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      It was the week in which Republicans took a beating at the polls, the government shutdown became the longest in history, and 42 million people across the country, including 3 million in Florida, saw their federal food aid slashed.But in the alternative reality of Miami, where tickets to an overwhelmingly conservative business conference headlined by Donald Trump cost up to $1,990, and billionaires from Saudi Arabia rubbed shoulders with equally wealthy American tycoons such as Jeff Bezos and Ken Griffin, those events created barely a ripple.Instead, in a gesture that appeared almost to mock the widening disparity between the city’s haves and have-nots, organizers of the America Business Forum cooked up a little treat for attendees: a $50 gift card to spend on food to sustain themselves while they listened to their president congratulate himself for a “golden age” he said his “economic miracle” had delivered.Advocates say the move, along with the high-budget opulence of the conference itself, was an ill-timed insult to more than a half-million Miami-Dade county residents who just saw their own ability to buy essential groceries for their families kiboshed by the gutting of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).“There’s just a massive cognitive dissonance between what real people are going through, and the elite,” said Larry Hannan, communications and policy director of State Voices Florida, a coalition of more than a hundred non-partisan, pro-democracy and civic engagement groups.“Jeff Bezos does not need a $50 food card. But we saw that with the Great Gatsby theme party last week. They just can’t seem to stop doing things that are shockingly out of touch.“We’ve been through shutdowns before, and while obviously the White House bubble is always somewhat insane, presidents are usually smart enough, they usually know not to flaunt this type of stuff. But this administration does not seem to care.”The president’s hour-long address on Thursday had the flavor of a political rally, with familiar insults for old political foes such as the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and a new one: Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York.View image in fullscreenTrump touched on his economic agenda, and lauded a host of speakers from the worlds of politics, sport and business that filled the two-day agenda, created largely by Francis Suarez, mayor of the city of Miami, to showcase south Florida and its investment opportunities.Lionel Messi, the Argentina soccer star and World Cup winner, provided celebrity glitz from sporting circles, along with tennis champions Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. A conversation between Suarez and María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader and democracy activist who last month won the Nobel peace prize that Trump coveted, was well received on day one.Yet overall it was a curious and unmistakably politically charged event with a field of Trump sycophants on the stage, loudly cheered by a crowd of mostly younger and affluent supporters of the president in the audience, some blending business suits with his trademark red Make America Great Again (Maga) caps.How else to explain the presence of Javier Milei, the rightwing president of Argentina, the country whose shaky economy Trump helped shore up last month with a $20bn currency swap lifeline? Or that of Saudi Arabians Fahad AlSaif, head of its $925bn Public Investment Fund, and Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Riyadh’s ambassador to the US, touting their country as ripe for investment while the Trump family’s financial ties and influence there come under greater scrutiny?Then there was Gianni Infantino, head of Fifa, international soccer’s governing body, dropping hints that Trump is in line for the organization’s first peace prize, an unwanted new award that observers see created specially for the president as consolation for his Nobel snub.Other speakers, including Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan; Adam Neumann, founder of WeWork and Flow; and Griffin, the hedge-fund manager and Republican donor; have all previously praised, worked with or voted for Trump, offering more than a suggestion of a politically skewed lineup.Suarez, unsurprisingly, saw it differently.“We wanted it to be a sort of a cross-section from different verticals, right?” he told the Guardian.“We got in a room. We said, ‘Hey, what are the leading voices?’ People from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different genders … sports, business, politics, technology, things that touch everyone’s lives.”He pointed to discussions of upcoming, money-spinning notable events in Miami, including the Formula One grand prix, next year’s G20 economic summit at Trump’s Doral golf resort, and games during the 2026 World Cup, which he called “a generational opportunity”.“Our hope is that Miamians are transformed by the experience,” Suarez said. “We want them to leave thinking, ‘I can be on that stage.’”View image in fullscreenThe advocates of State Voices Florida, however, believe many Miamians are more focused right now on other issues, especially soaring housing and food costs. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis rejected a call from Hannan’s group and others to declare an emergency over Snap benefits and tap state reserves to fund urgent food distribution.“Any civics teacher would tell you it’s his job to look after the people of Florida, and he’s doing the exact opposite,” Hannan said, noting the juxtaposition of a conference of billionaires taking place in the same county in which almost 25% of households rely on Snap benefits to survive.“There just seems to be this detachment at the top. I don’t think the answer is electing a Democrat or electing a Republican, I just think we have to have more empathy for people who are struggling in this state.”Empathy was in short supply in Miami from Trump, a president not known for ever taking responsibility during a crisis.“The radical left Democrats are causing millions of Americans who depend on food stamps to go without benefits,” he said, blaming the out-of-office opposition party for the government shutdown.“I just want to have a country that’s great again. Is that OK?” More

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      California is voting on redistricting. An election skeptic runs the process in one county

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      When Clint Curtis was appointed to oversee voting in California’s Shasta county earlier this year, the Florida-based lawyer and election skeptic pledged to “fix” the voting process.Curtis had never before administered an election and didn’t live in this rural northern California region. But he was well-known to followers of the US election denialism movement, who believe the voting system is not secure and that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Curtis, a former congressional candidate, described himself as an expert in elections law and had long argued that voting machines could be hacked and that the government could manipulate the results of elections.The ultra-conservative majority on Shasta county’s board of supervisors was hopeful he could overhaul their elections and set an example for the rest of the US.Now, that vision is being put to the test.On 4 November, California voters will decide on a high-stakes redistricting proposal in the first election Curtis is tasked with administering.The special election is one with particular national importance: the ballot measure proposes to suspend the work of California’s independent redistricting commission and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic seats in the US House of Representatives. The effort is a direct attempt to neutralize Texas’s partisan gerrymander, which, engineered at Trump’s behest, created several new safe Republican districts.Curtis says he’s overseeing the most transparent election in county history, with a livestream of ballot processing and a new area set aside for observers.“We’re showing people everything, which means they actually have no reason to mistrust it, because they can watch it with their own eyes,” he said.View image in fullscreenCritics say Curtis’s changes have made them distrust an election system they once felt confident in. They’re alarmed by a statement from the California secretary of state’s office that Curtis hadn’t worked with the department on his plans for the election as he had said. The county’s board of supervisors, which appointed Curtis, threatened to censure him after he stopped sharing press releases with a well-known local media outlet.They’ve raised concerns about a reduction in drop boxes all well as about several temporary staff members Curtis has hired, many of whom have been outspoken critics of the elections office and its workers, and one who even unsuccessfully sued the county after she lost a local race last year.“How is this going to increase trust in the community?” asked resident Dawn Duckett, who previously served on a county elections commission. “You [had] this vocal minority of people that [had] concerns. Now you’ve got everybody else now concerned about elections. The whole county is in a state of chaos and turmoil.”Shasta, a county of 180,000 people where Republicans outnumber Democrats more than two to one, has been attracting national attention for its far-right politics and thriving election-denier movement for years.In the wake of the 2020 election, a group of local activists convinced of widespread voter fraud waged a years-long campaign against former election officials and staff – one that resulted in many of them leaving the office.The former registrar of voters, Cathy Darling Allen, in 2022 told a US Senate committee that activists had weaponized election observation activities; that she and staff faced interference and bullying from residents who accused them of election fraud; and that record numbers of poll workers didn’t show up for work. Tensions continued to heighten and that same year, local “election integrity” activists, unaffiliated with the elections office, visited the homes of some voters while wearing gear labeled “official voter taskforce”, which Allen said at the time could amount to voter intimidation.Allen was one of a few county election officials with a national profile, said Mark Lindeman, the policy and strategy director of the non-profit Verified Voting, with a reputation for competence, knowledge of election procedure and an openness to policy conversations. But the attacks on her and the office were relentless.The activists found support from at least part of the county leadership, with some members of the board of supervisors not shy about their desire to affect change nationally by dramatically remaking voting in Shasta county. Their efforts have drawn interest from people such as MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, who has for years pushed misinformation about the integrity of voting machines. Some have claimed, without evidence and despite their own successful elections, that voting in the county has been manipulated for years.In 2023, Shasta’s governing body cut ties with Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine company at the center of baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud, without consulting the elections office. The board of supervisors sought to implement a hand-count system that experts warned would be costly and far less accurate before the state thwarted their plans. They established an ill-fated elections commission that made recommendations, such as hand-counting ballots, that would have violated state law.View image in fullscreenWhen health issues forced Allen to retire with more than two years left in her term, the board opted to appoint a former prosecutor, Tom Toller, to the role rather than Allen’s deputy, Joanna Francescut, who had more than 16 years’ experience.He became a vocal defender of the office, stating that he never saw evidence of fraud and that the workers were talented and dedicated. But the campaign against the office continued. Laura Hobbs, a failed supervisor candidate, sued the office, claiming that an error in the placement of her name on the ballot cost her the election. A judge ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, citing a “profound” lack of evidence.Toller also resigned owing to health issues and endorsed Francescut, but earlier this year the board moved to appoint Curtis rather than the assistant elections clerk and registrar of voters. During a public interview, Curtis highlighted his appearances on the shows of Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon and his work with Mike Lindell, and said he had decades of experience in elections law. He had spent years advocating for hand-counting votes, and arguing that elections were not secure.He told the board that restoring trust in elections was personal to him, repeating an account he has shared countless times over the years – that as a computer programmer he once developed a software that could change votes. “I broke it. I better fix it,” he said.In voting to hire Curtis, the supervisor Chris Kelstrom said his appointment could “change voting not only in Shasta county but possibly the whole state and possibly the whole nation”.Curtis quickly fired Francescut, and moved to start reshaping Shasta elections.In his new role, Curtis installed additional cameras in the Shasta county elections office to capture ballot processing, removed a gate at the front and significantly reduced the number of ballot drop boxes. He hired Brent Turner, a San Francisco Bay Area-based attorney and elections reform activist who served on the board of the California Association of Voting Officials, as his deputy.“This was a very contentious place. They were fighting with the public. They were locking them behind these basically spiked walls. They locked them up. Couldn’t let [observers] see anything,” he said of the facility. (As election workers faced growing hostility from observers, the former registrar of voters, Allen, in 2023 had tall metal fencing installed in the office.)Curtis and Turner provided a tour of the office to the Guardian. The mood inside was jubilant as longtime prominent critics of the department processed ballots in the weeks before the election. State law prevents the county from hand-counting, and Curtis said his focus was on taking additional security measures.But cameras, Lindeman noted, have done little to move people who are obsessed with transparency and believe something sinister is happening.“We always see room to do things even better, but the idea that someone can just wave a wand in the great beyond and make the results something different is not factual,” he said. “And it does a real disservice to Americans to attempt to mislead them in that way.”In Curtis’s view, the office was meeting its goals in establishing an election that everyone can trust. “I’ve looked at a million elections. This is the first [that] I don’t have to sue people so that’s good,” he said. “From a lawyer’s perspective, we’re very solid.”But Curtis himself has already faced the threat of a lawsuit, accusing him of targeting a local media outlet, Shasta Scout, because of coverage he didn’t like.The outlet had published a story revealing that the secretary of state’s office said it had not approved Curtis’s plans for the election, contradicting his claims, said Annelise Pierce, the editor and founder of Shasta Scout. Turner, Curtis’s deputy, told Pierce that she was coming close to “meddling” in elections and might be engaging in election interference, Pierce said.Curtis soon excluded Shasta Scout from receiving press releases, telling the non-profit that his office only “notifies potential media outlets that appear legitimate”. The First Amendment Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group, warned Curtis that excluding Shasta Scout was a violation of the first amendment and made the county vulnerable to a lawsuit.Less than a week later, the board of supervisors voted unanimously to condemn Curtis’s actions and said it would censure him if it happened again.“The board’s vote was a real surprise to our community, because we’ve seen this board sort of play a little fast and loose with first amendment rights over the past year,” Pierce said. “And we’ve reported on that. But in this case, they really strongly supported access, and I think that’s a win for the community.”The elections office moved to publish all its press releases online in the aftermath of the incident. Turner said Shasta Scout had received “bad information” and was speaking to the wrong people in the secretary of state’s office.“Those people were giving information which was not correct, because we have been in constant conversation with the secretary of state since I’ve been here,” Turner said. (The office said that it had not approved Curtis’s plans, telling Shasta Scout: “We have not seen, nor have been provided, with any such plans.”)For his part, Curtis said the board received only one side of the story and he had reported Shasta Scout to the IRS and US Department of Justice for what he described as a questionable non-profit status. Pierce said the outlet, one of more than 500 associated with the Institute for Nonprofit News, was operating legally and its filings were up to date. She said Curtis told her that he viewed Shasta Scout as a partisan outlet, but that he declined to provide her with examples of reporting he took issue with.“We’re a non-profit news organization that believes in non-partisan reporting. We don’t take a stance on things like Prop 50 or who should be elected to office,” she said. “We respect our readers. We just try to provide them with the information that will help them to make those decisions.”At a meeting of the board of supervisors in late October, several residents said Curtis’s attack on the outlet had them on edge. So did recent changes and Curtis’s decision to hire some of the same local activists who had campaigned against the elections office and its staff for years. Among the new hires was Hobbs, the failed supervisor candidate, who filed another lawsuit against the office earlier this year.“It’s an extreme concern to me to have many election deniers basically have total access to the ballots and to the elections office,” said Steven Kohn, a local business owner who has frequently spoken to the board in support of the office. He said that he believed Shasta county has long had fair elections and that he was no longer confident in the office.View image in fullscreenCurtis said he has encouraged people of all political backgrounds to apply for jobs within the office, and that some concerned residents “just want to whine”. Turner was quick to clarify Curtis’s comments.“I think they’re rightfully nervous, because there have been issues with the systems, and people get nervous about change, but these are upgrades, security upgrades that, by the use of transparency, it shores up the system and you have to recognize that systems always can be upgraded,” he said.Bringing together critics with the office staff they used to criticize has served as a “psychological integration”, Turner said, adding that morale is high. The office has been in “consistent and ongoing” conversations with the state about the changes, Turner said, and he hopes it can serve as an example to other counties. The California secretary of state’s office said in a statement to the Guardian this week that staff visited Shasta to observe the county’s new processes, but that it had not approved any proposed plans.The saga in Shasta county stands apart from other places, said Lindeman of Verified Voting, describing Curtis as a contender for the “most clearly unqualified” elections official in the country.Lindeman expressed concern about recent comments from Curtis that logic and accuracy testing, which ensures voting equipment is fully functional, is a “waste of time”. “That’s like saying that umbrellas are a waste of time because a brick might fall on your head,” Lindeman said. “Good logic and accuracy testing is the first line of defense to help protect voters’ votes.”But Lindeman was rooting for the county, saying: “I will be hoping that Clint Curtis manages to lead a successful election for the people of Shasta county, who certainly deserve it.”Curtis has already announced his plans to run for office when his term is up, writing on his campaign website that “if politicians can gain this seat back, America will never return to real elections again”. Francescut too is running with the endorsement of other elections officials, retired sheriffs and her predecessor Toller, who wrote that her “professionalism and impartiality transformed this former election skeptic”. More

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      DeSantis urges Florida universities to stop hiring foreign visa workers

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      Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is urging the state’s universities to stop hiring international employees through the H-1B visa program.DeSantis said he wants the Florida board of governors “to pull the plug” on the practice. Nearly 400 foreign nationals are currently employed at Florida’s public universities under the H-1B visa program, reported the Orlando Sentinel.“Universities across the country are importing foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of hiring Americans who are qualified and available to do the job,” said DeSantis in a statement. “We will not tolerate H-1B abuse in Florida institutions. That’s why I have directed the Florida Board of Governors to end this practice.”However, it’s unclear how such a move could be carried out. States do not have authority to revoke federal visas, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services regulations prohibit firing employees based on immigration status.Last month, Donald Trump raised the H-1B visa fee from $215 to $100,000, a decision likely to face legal challenges. He also issued a proclamation alleging “systematic abuse” of the program.The H-1B program permits employers to hire skilled foreign professionals for specialized positions that are difficult to fill with US workers. Across Florida, more than 7,200 people hold H-1B visas.The program has caused friction among Trump supporters. Some, such as Elon Musk, argue it’s essential for US innovation, while others, including DeSantis, contend it enables companies to replace Americans with lower-paid foreign labor.DeSantis cited positions filled by workers from China, Argentina and Canada, arguing these roles were taken from qualified Floridians in favor of “cheap labor”.The University of Florida is one of the state’s largest users of the H-1B program, employing more than 150 staff members under the visa, according to an Orlando Sentinel review of federal data. Other universities also rely heavily on the program, including the University of South Florida with 72 employees and Florida State University with 69, according to the Tampa Bay Times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEducators note that most H-1B visa holders at these institutions work in departments such as computer science, engineering, physics and chemistry. About 60% of people who earned PhDs in computer science from US universities in 2023 were temporary visa holders, not citizens or permanent residents, reported the Sentinel.Donald Landry, the University of Florida’s interim president, said during the news conference that the university will embrace DeSantis’s review of H-1B visas. “Occasionally, some bright light might be good enough for the faculty, and then we will try and retain the person into whom we’ve invested so much,” Landry said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “But that’s the exception that proves the rule.” More

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      The right wants Charlie Kirk memorials across the US – but is it just an attempt to capitalize on his killing?

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      Republicans and conservatives are campaigning to quickly build statues and other memorials across the United States for the slain rightwing activist Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination at a college event in Utah last month.Political leaders in states such as Florida, Michigan and Oklahoma have not only called for construction of memorials but in some cases also threatened to penalize colleges that refuse to publicly honor Kirk, who was killed on 10 September.The heavy-handed push to honor Kirk, who held views that many see as racist and sexist, follows Donald Trump’s moves to restore monuments of Confederate leaders that were removed in recent years, which appear to be part of a broad effort to impose rightwing views on the country.“The way in which you keep the culture war going – or the way that you win it – is to have religious icons like Charlie and use their face and their name and their likeness to further your cause,” said Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia who has studied Christian nationalism.Kirk, who co-founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was killed at Utah State University during one of his signature events in which he debated students.Since then, Trump and others in his administration, such as Stephen Miller, have blamed the shooting – without producing any evidence – on a coordinated violent effort by the “radical left” and threatened to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” the left’s “terrorism and terror networks”.Kirk often criticized gay and transgender rights and made Islamophobic statements and once suggested that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake”. However, at the state and local level, Republican lawmakers have described Kirk as a “modern civil rights leader” who stood for “allowing everybody to voice their opinion respectfully”.Just a week after Kirk’s murder, Ohio Republican state senators Shane Jett and Dana Prieto introduced legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to build a “Charlie Kirk memorial plaza” with a statue “that features the conservative leader sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk “and his wife standing and holding their children in their arms”.A few weeks later, in Florida, Kevin Steele, a state house Republican, also proposed legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to rename roads for Kirk.“The Florida State University shall redesignate Chieftain Way as Charlie James Kirk Road,” the bill states. “Pasco-Hernando State College shall redesignate Mrs Prameela Musunuru Health and Wellness Trail as Charlie James Kirk Trail.”In Florida, if the schools do not establish the memorials by stated deadline, the state would withhold funding from the institutions, and in Oklahoma, the state would fine the schools, according to the legislation.Boedy, the University of North Georgia professor, likened the lawmakers’ threats to withhold state money to Trump’s moves to cut off federal funding to universities unless they met his list of demands.“State funding for education should be based upon students’ interest in majors, in enrollment and in science, in objective criteria, and honoring a single person is not part of that,” said Boedy, who has been on Turning Point’s watchlist of “professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”.Jett, Prieto and Steele did not respond to requests for comment.Kirk was critical of higher education and wrote a book titled The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth.“I find it really ironic that the state of Oklahoma is demanding that every public university have a Charlie Kirk memorial plaza,” said Erika Doss, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas and the author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America.While the states have not approved the legislation requiring the memorials, at least one Florida county has installed a sign for a Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway, despite some public opposition.And less than a week after the murder, New College of Florida, a liberal arts university that has been the subject of a conservative takeover, also posted on X an AI-generated image of a bronze sculpture of Kirk at a table and stated that it would build the statue on campus “to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life”.That may not be easy. After events like 9/11, the Vietnam war, and the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, public monuments were often not built for years, sometimes decades.Quickly sharing a fake image of a Kirk memorial “is a lie”, Doss said. “It matters because it doesn’t tell the truth about how complicated and necessarily complicated making public art should be.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy waiting years to build a memorial, you can see how time really changes the “emotional tenor and the perspective on the event”, said Gabriel Reich, a professor of history and social studies at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied collective memories of the US civil war and emancipation.“How people feel about [Kirk’s killing] five years from now may be different, and it may depend on what happens between now and then,” said Reich. “Does the political violence escalate and continue? Does it get tamped down?”It’s not a foregone conclusion that the schools will build the monuments.In Michigan, the Mecosta county board of commissioners wanted Ferris State University to build a statue for Kirk and offered to split the funding, but the school president declined, citing a “a longstanding practice that limits statues on campus to individuals who have made significant, direct contributions to Ferris State University itself”, according to the Detroit Free-Press.At New College, alum William Rosenberg sees the proposed statue as an attempt by the administration to distract from problems at the school, which was once a highly ranked institution considered among the most liberal in the country.“New College was a welcoming environment for people who were motivated and wanted to learn and wanted to do it on their own terms,” said Rosenberg, who graduated in 1980 with a degree in medieval studies.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has tried in recent years to transform the school by appointing political allies such as the conservative activist Christopher Rufo to its board of trustees, firing its president and revamping its curriculum.Since then, the school has seen its national ranking and graduation and retention rates plummet, while the state now spends significantly more on each student than those at its other public universities, according to Inside Higher Ed.After posting the AI image of the statue, New College’s president, Richard Corcoran, touted the public response in a weekly email.“In the first 72 hours of the announcement, New College of Florida was mentioned nearly 3 billion times (including traditional media in the graph below, and reposts on social media),” the email stated. “Normally, New College receives about 100 million impressions a month. In 72 hours, New College received about 2 1/2 years of media coverage.”A New College spokesperson, James Miller, declined an interview request.Rosenberg, a semi-retired computer engineer, doubts the school will actually build the statue because of Corcoran’s “history of promising the world and delivering nothing”.“A lot of alumni feel it was a gross PR move to capitalize on Charlie Kirk’s murder,” Rosenberg said. “New College of Florida has now become a political pawn whose real mission is about making political headlines while the on-the-ground education has nosedived.” More

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      Florida politician faces backlash over calls for mass deportation of Indians

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      A city councilmember in Florida is facing backlash from national Indian American organizations, members of Congress, and local residents after posting a series of social media messages that insulted Indian people living in the US and called for them to be deported en masse.Chandler Langevin, a Palm Bay council member elected last year, made derogatory comments about Indian people across several posts on the social media platform X over roughly three weeks this fall. He claimed that Indians come to America to “drain our pockets” before returning to India, “or worse … to stay”.His remarks have sparked widespread anger. Since 29 September, residents along with regional and national Indian American groups have crowded Palm Bay city council meetings and demanded that he step down.On Thursday night, the council voted 3-2 to formally censure Langevin. During the meeting, Rob Medina, the mayor who also serves on the council, said: “We’re all overwhelmed by everything. This nation was founded on immigrants … We are all part of the very fabric of the flag, our banner, the United States of America.”Hindus for Human Rights, a national advocacy organization, released a letter calling the remarks “overtly bigoted, dehumanizing, and dangerous” and urged Republican governor Ron DeSantis to suspend Langevin from his role.“If your office fails to act decisively, it sets a dangerous precedent: legitimizing hate speech by elected officials and normalizing hostility toward minority communities,” the letter added.The Asian American Hotel Owners Association also strongly condemned the remarks, saying during a council meeting earlier this month that they “echo some of history’s darkest rhetoric, drawing disturbing parallels to the language of hate that has led to violence and persecution around America”.Florida Republicans, such as Representative Mike Haridopolos and Senator Rick Scott, as well as several Democratic politicians, have also spoken out against Langevin’s comments.“The Brevard Republican Party does not condone or share Mr. Chandler Langevin’s position with regard to the Indian community and culture here in our County,” Brevard county’s Republican party chair, Rick Lacey, said in a statement. “Even though Mr. Langevin is a registered Republican, his views are his, and his alone.”Florida’s Democratic party chair, Nikki Fried, also released a statement, saying: “Chandler Langevin’s comments towards the Indian American community are vile and reprehensible. The people of Palm Bay deserve better leadership than someone who so proudly displays his hateful ignorance through divisive and racist rhetoric.Speaking to the Washington Post earlier this week, Langevin said his intention was to spark “discourse” on immigration. “I’m not the first Republican to make a mean tweet,” he said. More