internal-open-access

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Why Teen Voices Matter in the 2024 Election

      by

      For most teenagers, a presidential election year offers a dilemma. Elections have consequences, as the saying goes, and this is especially true for young people, who are at the center of any number of issues dividing the U.S. electorate. Yet most teens can’t vote.All spring and summer, the Headway team has been talking with high school students about this year’s election. Headway is an initiative at The New York Times that covers the world’s challenges through the lens of progress. Since the march of progress will have its longest effects on the youngest of us, that lens has made Headway especially interested in the experiences of the world’s youth.We have been especially curious about youth voter turnout this year, given how youth engagement in presidential elections has changed over the past few cycles. The 2020 election was particularly striking. The spread of the coronavirus meant that going to the voting booth was particularly fraught. The two contenders for the presidency were the oldest in American history. The 2016 election had notably low youth participation. On the eve of the 2020 election, The Times posed the question, “Why don’t young people vote, and what can be done about it?”But then young people defied expectations. According to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University, Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted at higher rates in 2020 than they had in any elections except 1992 and 1972 (which was right after the voting age was lowered to 18). Their votes last election far outstripped the margin of victory in swing states, making them critical to the outcome.In collaboration with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that covers education in several American communities, the Headway team has been posing questions about the election to high school students, and asking them what questions they have for their peers about the race. We’ve heard from nearly 1,000 students from red, blue and purple states, all representing diverse backgrounds and schools. Their responses have been illuminating. While some high schoolers don’t consider the election particularly relevant to their interests, many do. Even when they can’t vote, many teenagers in every part of the country are highly interested in the election. They are eager to inform themselves about it, craving more forums to discuss it with peers and others, and yearning to see their voices represented in the outcome.So for the next two months, if you’re a teenager in the United States, we want to ask you all about your experience of the election. Consider this your formal invitation to participate in what we’re calling the Headway Election Challenge.

      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

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Join Us: The Loopholes of Hawaii’s Pay-to-Play Law

      by

      A joint investigation examined the role money plays in politics in Hawaii. Hear how journalists put the story together in a livestreamed event on July 10. Hawaii is reeling from one of the largest corruption scandals in its history. Former State Senator J. Kalani English and former State Representative Ty Cullen pleaded guilty in February 2022 to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes during their time in office. Starting as early as 2014, and continuing until at least 2020, state and local politicians raked in campaign contributions at late-night fund-raising parties.Hawaii had passed an anti-corruption law in 2005 that was billed as one of the nation’s most ambitious efforts to end pay-to-play government contracting.Join journalists from The Times and Honolulu Civil Beat, a nonprofit newsroom, for a hybrid discussion about how they uncovered systematic failures in Hawaii’s reform efforts at 10:30 a.m. Hawaii time (4:30 p.m. Eastern time) on Wednesday, July 10. Register here.Blaze Lovell, the reporter, and Dean Baquet, who edited the investigation, will discuss the project, which included an analysis of hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions and more than 70,000 state contracts. The conversation will be moderated by Patti Epler, the editor and general manager of Civil Beat.To register for the event and to submit a question for the panelists, visit Civil Beat’s event page. A link to the recording will be sent to everyone who signs up. The event draws on reporting from The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship, an initiative that gives local journalists a year to produce investigations about their communities. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Former Waupun Prison Warden and 8 Employees Charged in Inmate Deaths

      by

      Inmates had complained about a monthslong lockdown that cut them off from family members and timely medical care.The former warden of a Wisconsin prison and eight other prison employees were charged on Wednesday in connection with multiple inmate deaths over the last year, the local sheriff said.The prison, Waupun Correctional Institution, about 70 miles northwest of Milwaukee, was the subject of a 2023 report by The New York Times and Wisconsin Watch that found that inmates had been confined to their cells for months and denied access to medical care.The prison’s former warden, Randall Hepp, had left his job earlier this week. He was charged with misconduct in public office, a felony. Mr. Hepp’s arrest was first reported by The Associated Press. His attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.The other prison employees, most of whom worked as correctional officers and registered nurses, were charged with abuse of an inmate. Two of the correctional officers and a sergeant were also charged with misconduct.In announcing the arrests during a Wednesday news conference, Dale J. Schmidt, the sheriff for Dodge County, Wis., said Mr. Hepp and the other employees had failed to adequately care for inmates in their custody. Sheriff Schmidt described in detail four deaths, including one involving a prisoner who had not eaten in days and was “drinking sewage water” and “played in the toilet.” The medical examiner said the cause of death was malnutrition and probable dehydration, and ruled it a homicide.Randall Hepp, former warden of Waupun Correctional Institution.Dodge County (Wis.) Sheriff’s OfficeDo you, or does anyone you know, work for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections?

      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

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Riverside County Jail Death Lawsuit Is Settled for $7.5 Million Amid Inquiry

      by

      A violent encounter captured on video was part of a surge in jail deaths that spurred an inquiry into the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.Video from inside a Southern California jail shows a violent confrontation in October 2020 in which 10 sheriff’s deputies burst into the cell of a man who was having delusions and resisting medical care, restrained him and repeatedly shocked him, leading to his death days later.Officials in Riverside County did not bring charges against any of the deputies involved in the encounter with the man, Christopher Zumwalt, 39, but quietly agreed in December 2023 to pay $7.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by his family.Depositions from the case and video footage obtained by The New York Times show the frantic and violent minutes when deputies tried to force Mr. Zumwalt out of his cell as he paced and talked incoherently. In the video, deputies wearing helmets and shields toss canisters of pepper spray into the small concrete room, struggle with Mr. Zumwalt, and strap him to an emergency restraint chair. They cover his head with a spit mask and move him to another cell, where he sat unmonitored and appeared to stop breathing for at least five minutes. He died on Oct. 25, 2020, after experiencing cardiac arrest.Mr. Zumwalt, who was arrested near his home on Oct. 22, 2020, on suspicion of public intoxication, was never charged with a crime, and the arrest report indicates that he was to be released with a citation after he sobered up from the methamphetamine he admitted to taking the night before. On the day of his arrest, he was issued a citation for bringing drugs into a jail.In a statement Friday, Sheriff Chad Bianco said his deputies did nothing wrong and characterized the settlement as a business decision by lawyers that does not imply wrongdoing.“The facts of this case clearly show the actions of our deputies were appropriate and lawful,” Sheriff Bianco said, adding that actions taken by Mr. Zumwalt in a “methamphetamine-induced psychosis caused his death.” More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Elections

      Will a carbon market happen?

      by

      An enormous amount of work is underway to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but who will pay for it?Dear Headway readersHere’s a mood brightener for you: Lots of scientific and business model innovation is now going toward removing carbon from the atmosphere.But there’s a hitch. Who’s going to pay for it?For years now, the hoped-for answer has been “businesses.” As a way of compensating for their emissions, many companies now buy carbon offsets, which pay for things like planting trees or growing cover crops to capture carbon in the soil. They do this either to comply with regulations or out of a sense of corporate citizenship. Europe and the United Kingdom have “compliance markets,” since they have imposed limits on emissions. But in the U.S. there is only a “voluntary carbon market,” reliant on the squishier concept of good will.Private market, public trustThe voluntary carbon market is much smaller than the compliance markets, but it had been growing quickly — up until about a year ago. That’s when prices for offsets swooned and large buyers pulled back. A series of press reports found that many credits, especially those intended to avert deforestation, had flawed underpinnings. Some companies that touted themselves as “carbon neutral” based on offsets they purchased have been sued by customers for making false claims.Those who are trying to put markets to work for nature restoration worried that the critiques, while often merited, could torpedo the industry.“More than anything, it’s perpetuated a lack of trust in the voluntary carbon market, which has greatly affected demand,” the Arbor Day Foundation lamented last year.Trust: Markets can’t scale without it. Trust is forged from common standards and the knowledge that someone’s enforcing them. Carbon markets have neither of those things, yet.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

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      California Proposition 1 Election Results 2024

      by

      Polls close at 11 p.m. Eastern time. In the 2022 state primaries, first results were reported 11 minutes later, and the last update of the night was at 6:10 a.m. Eastern time with 48 percent of votes reported. All active registered voters were mailed a ballot, which must be postmarked by Election Day and received […] More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      ‘Oppenheimer’ Is the Origin Story. These Three Movies Reveal Our Nuclear Present.

      by

      The national security writer W. J. Hennigan has spent many years ringing the alarm about the world’s new nuclear era — the subject of At The Brink, a new series from New York Times Opinion — and the crisis on the horizon. For anyone whose interest was piqued by the origin story of nuclear weapons in “Oppenheimer,” Mr. Hennigan, who happens to be a movie buff, recommends three essential films that illuminate our new nuclear era.An edited transcript of the above audio essay by Mr. Hennigan follows:W.J. Hennigan: For many years, people haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about nuclear weapons, but that’s changed — both because of the war in Ukraine as well as the popularity of the recent Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer.”The idea that a biopic about a scientist and nuclear weapons would be so popular, the fact that it’s won so many awards and has sparked such an interest, is really quite surprising.For the past quarter-century, an entire generation has come of age without really having to worry about the bomb. This has not something that’s been front of mind.Nuclear weapons were the predominant national security concern for our country for a half-century, and that was reflected within culture and art. Throughout the Cold War, you could see the topic of nuclear weapons in movies, video games, television shows, cartoons, songs, comic books, board games. There were alcoholic drinks inspired by nuclear weapons.That kind of changed on a dime after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but even though the concern and awareness over the nuclear peril faded, the danger hasn’t gone away. We’ve entered a new nuclear era, but that’s not being publicly discussed in the way that it has in the past.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

    • 63 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Missouri Republican Caucus Results 2024

      by

      The Republican caucuses will take place in person across the state beginning at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Instead of secret ballots, participants will move around a room and form groups that will determine how many representatives each candidate will have at district and state conventions held later. Missouri voters may affiliate with a party via […] More