New Hampshire

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Unrelenting Heat Stifles Millions of Americans for 3rd Consecutive Day

      by

      As the heat wave moved east, the Northeast felt the brunt of the conditions. But forecasters provided a glimmer of relief, saying “conditions should improve over New England” this weekend.From the Midwest to the northern tip of Maine, millions of Americans sweltered under a springtime heat wave on Wednesday that stifled the Eastern portion of the United States for a third consecutive day.As the heat wave moved east, the Northeast felt the brunt of the conditions, stemming from a high-pressure system called a heat dome that scorched the Great Lakes region earlier this week.Conditions in a swath of central Maine were particularly brutal, largely because the area was farther from ocean winds, according to Jay Engle, a forecaster at the National Weather Service. The heat index — a measure that includes temperature and humidity to showcase how hot it actually feels — topped 100 degrees in some areas, and temperatures reached as high as 95 degrees in cities like Bangor, Houlton and Millinocket, according to the National Weather Service. In Caribou, in the northeastern tip of the state, it was 96 degrees, tying the highest temperature ever recorded there.More than 78 million people were under heat warnings, watches and advisories on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Heat waves are not uncommon in mid-June, but the Weather Service warned that this one could last longer than some places have experienced in decades. Heat waves are also hotter, more frequent and longer lasting now because of global warming.But forecasters provided a glimmer of relief: Meteorologists at the Weather Prediction Center said in a post on its website that “conditions should improve over New England” this weekend.Still, in many areas, Wednesday felt more like the height of summer than the last full day of spring. Cities and states helped residents deal with the stifling temperatures by opening more cooling centers, moving some Juneteenth celebrations indoors and pushing up opening hours of pools and beaches.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

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      How Trump’s Most Loyal Supporters Are Responding to the Verdict

      by

      Many saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, of their values and even of democracy itself. The sense of grievance erupted as powerfully as the verdict itself.From the low hills of northwest Georgia to a veterans’ retreat in Alaska to suburban New Hampshire, the corners of conservative America resounded with anger over the New York jury’s declaration that former President Donald J. Trump was guilty.But their discontent was about more than the 34 felony counts that Mr. Trump was convicted on, which his supporters quickly dismissed as politically motivated.They saw in the jury’s finding a rejection of themselves, and the values they believed their nation should uphold. Broad swaths of liberal America may have found long-awaited justice in the trial’s outcome. But for many staunch Trump loyalists — people who for years have listened to and believed Mr. Trump’s baseless claims that the system is rigged against him, and them — the verdict on Thursday threatened to shatter their faith in democracy itself.“We are at that crossroads. The democracy that we have known and cherished in this nation is now threatened,” Franklin Graham, the evangelist, said in an interview from Alaska. “I’ve got 13 grandchildren. What kind of nation are we leaving them?”Echoing him was Marie Vast, 72, of West Palm Beach, Fla., near Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. “I know a lot of people who say they still believe in our government,” she said, “but when the Democrats can manipulate things this grossly, and use the legal system as a tool to get the outcome they want, the system isn’t working.”Among more than two dozen people interviewed across 10 states on Friday, the sentiments among conservatives were so strong that they echoed the worry and fear that many progressives described feeling after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade almost two years ago.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

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Last Coal-Fired Power Plants in New England Are to Close

      by

      The company that owns the Merrimack and Schiller stations in New Hampshire plans to turn them into solar farms and battery storage for offshore wind.The last two coal-fired power plants in New England are set to close by 2025 and 2028, ending the use of a fossil fuel that supplied electricity to the region for more than 50 years.The decision to close the Merrimack and Schiller stations, both in New Hampshire, makes New England the second region in the country, after the Pacific Northwest, to stop burning coal.Environmentalists waged a five-year legal battle against the New Hampshire plants, saying that the owner had discharged warm water from steam turbines into a nearby river without cooling it first to match the natural temperature.In a settlement reached on Wednesday with the Sierra Club and the Conservative Law Foundation, Granite Shore Power, the owner of the plants, agreed that Schiller would not run after Dec. 31, 2025 and that Merrimack would cease operations no later than June 2028.“This announcement is the culmination of years of persistence and dedication from so many people across New England,” said Gina McCarthy, a former national climate adviser to President Biden and former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama administration who is now a senior adviser at Bloomberg Philanthropies, which supports efforts to phase out coal.“I’m wicked proud to live in New England today and be here,” Ms. McCarthy said. “Every day, we’re showing the rest of the country that we will secure our clean energy future without compromising.”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

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Political operative and firms behind Biden AI robocall sued for thousands

      by

      A political operative and two companies that facilitated a fake robocall using AI to impersonate Joe Biden should be required to pay thousands of dollars in damages and should be barred from taking similar future actions, a group of New Hampshire voters and a civic action group said in a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday.The suit comes weeks after Steve Kramer, a political operative, admitted that he was behind the robocall that spoofed Biden’s voice on the eve of the New Hampshire primary and urged Democrats in the state not to vote. Kramer was working for Biden’s challenger Dean Phillips, but Phillips’s campaign said he had nothing to do with the call and Kramer has said he did it as an act of civil disobedience to draw attention to the dangers of AI in elections. The incident may have been the first time AI was used to interfere in a US election.Lawyers for the plaintiffs – three New Hampshire voters who received the calls and the League of Women Voters, a voting rights group – said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind seeking redress for using AI in robocalls in elections. The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is investigating the matter.Two Texas companies, Life Corporation and Lingo Telecom, also helped facilitate the calls.“If Defendants are not permanently enjoined from deploying AI-generated robocalls, there is a strong likelihood that it will happen again,” the lawsuit says.The plaintiffs say Kramer and the two companies violated a provision of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits voter intimidation as well a ban in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act on delivering a prerecorded call to someone without their consent. They also say the calls violated New Hampshire state laws that require disclosure of the source of politically related calls.The plaintiffs are seeking up to $7,500 in damages for each plaintiff that received a call that violated federal and state law. The recorded call was sent to anywhere between 5,000 and 25,000 people.“It’s really imperative that we address the threat that these defendants are creating for voters,” Courtney Hostetler, a lawyer with the civic action group Free Speech for People, which is helping represent the plaintiffs, said in a press call with reporters on Thursday.“The other hope of this lawsuit is that it will demonstrate to other people who might attempt similar campaigns that this is illegal, that there are parties out there like the League of Women Voters who are prepared to challenge this sort of illegal voter intimidation, and these illegal deceptive practices, hopefully make them think twice before they do the same,” she added.NBC News reported Kramer paid a street magician in New Orleans $150 to create the call using a script Kramer prepared.“This is a way for me to make a difference, and I have,” he said in the interview last month. “For $500, I got about $5m worth of action, whether that be media attention or regulatory action.”Mark Herring, a former Virginia attorney general who is helping represent the plaintiffs, told reporters on Thursday that kind of justification was “self-serving”.“Regardless of the motivation, the intent here was to suppress the vote, and to threaten and coerce voters into not voting out of fear that they might lose their right to vote,” he said. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Fake Biden robocalls in New Hampshire linked to Texas companies, officials say

      by

      US authorities issued cease-and-desist orders on Tuesday against two Texas companies they believe were connected to robocalls that used artificial intelligence to mimic Joe Biden’s voice and discourage people from voting in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary last month.During a news conference to discuss the investigation, officials described the calls as the clearest and possibly first known attempt to use AI to interfere with an election in the US.The New Hampshire attorney general, John Formella, said investigators have identified the source of the calls as Life Corporation and said they were transmitted by a company called Lingo Telecom.New Hampshire issued cease-and-desist orders and subpoenas to both companies, while the Federal Communications Commission issued a cease-and-desist letter to the telecommunications company, Formella said. In a statement, the FCC said it was trying to stop “behavior that violates voter suppression laws.”“That’s been something we’ve been concerned about in the law enforcement community for a while, and it’s certainly something that state attorneys general have talked about, but we had not seen as concrete of an example as this, days before a primary,” he said.A message left for Life Corporation’s owner, Walter Monk, at his company Wholesale Communication was not immediately returned. Alex Valencia, who was named in an FCC letter as the chief compliance officer at Lingo Telecom, did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.The recorded message was sent to between 5,000 and 25,000 voters two days before the 23 January primary. It used a voice similar to Biden’s, employed his often-used phrase, “What a bunch of malarkey” and falsely suggested that voting in the primary would preclude voters from casting a ballot in November’s general election.Biden won the Democratic primary as a write-in candidate after he kept his name off the ballot in deference to South Carolina’s new lead-off position for the Democratic primaries.The calls falsely showed up to recipients as coming from the personal cellphone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic party chair who helps run Granite for America, a super Pac that supported the Biden write-in campaign. Formella said at least 10 people who received the calls then called Sullivan.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe apparent attempt at voter suppression using rapidly advancing generative AI technology is one example of what experts warn will make 2024 a year of unprecedented election disinformation around the world. Formella said the investigation is just beginning, but he wanted to send a strong message to deter others who might be tempted to interfere in this year’s elections.“Our message is clear: law enforcement across the country is unified on a bipartisan basis and ready to work together to combat any attempt to undermine our elections,” he said. More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Nikki Haley Isn’t Going Anywhere

      by

      What is Nikki Haley doing? What are her real intentions? Those questions have dominated every aspect of her candidacy.So much of what’s been said about Ms. Haley the last few months has been about what she’ll do after she loses — even that the original premise of the campaign must have contained hidden ambitions or total delusion. There’s been an assumption, even from would-be allies, that there must be another angle to the campaign, that she must want the vice presidency.That’s partly because, in her speeches, Ms. Haley often resists giving her listeners satisfaction, withholding the obvious point, allowing them to fill in what they want, both to Ms. Haley’s benefit and peril. She did not make a strong moral case against Donald Trump last year.But here we are after her big loss in New Hampshire, framed by many as the definitive end. Right now, Ms. Haley’s unwillingness to publicly engage with the obvious works differently, reveals different things.For instance, in a hotel ballroom by the Charleston, S.C., airport, with people decked out in “SC ❤️ NH” stickers, cheerfully wanting something they and everybody else know they probably won’t get, she proceeded as normal, giving that homecoming crowd primarily her normal remarks. She layered in critiques of Mr. Trump that dealt with inarguable surface realities, like how he talked about her the night before rather than about solutions to the nation’s problems: “He didn’t talk about the American people once; he talked about revenge!” (When she ran through a variety of problems he could have talked about, one woman yelled, “He don’t know!”)Insofar as she engaged with the obvious, literal reason that people in the room seemed so amped — that she was still in the race — it was this: “You know, the political elites, in this state and around the country, have said that we just need to let Donald Trump have this.” That was clearly what people in the room, who dropped into a long “noooo,” had come to hear discussed.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?  More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      The Ogre Gorging on America

      by

      If you can imagine the lobby bar of the Manchester Marriott as an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, I can explain how it felt to cover the New Hampshire primary.I will need the help of the late Seamus Heaney, who described what it was like to be quaffing in Heorot Hall while Grendel lurked and swooped through the frost-stiffened north.In his lyrical translation of “Beowulf,” Heaney described Grendel as “the terror-monger,” the “captain of evil” and “the dread of the land.”He wrote that the fiend “ruled in defiance of right” and was “malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.”The “powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance,” he said, adding: “Grendel waged his lonely war, inflicting constant cruelties on the people, atrocious hurt,” pursuing “vicious raids and ravages.”The New Hampshire primary felt like a chapter of that Old English saga: Donald Trump, the ogre who keeps coming back to terrorize us, was stomping around that lovely little snow-covered state, devouring his foes.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?  More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Tim Scott’s behaviour around Trump is ‘humiliating’, says the Rev Al Sharpton

      by

      The South Carolina Republican senator Tim Scott’s behaviour around Donald Trump is “humiliating”, the civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton said.“It was humiliating to watch what Tim Scott did as a sitting senator,” Sharpton told MSNBC, for which he hosts a show, after Scott appeared with the former president in New Hampshire, where Trump won the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday.Trump faces 91 criminal charges (including 17 for election subversion), civil lawsuits (one arising from a rape claim a judge called “substantially true”) and attempts to keep him off the ballot for inciting an insurrection.Regardless, his only remaining rival for the Republican nomination is Nikki Haley, who in 2012, as governor of South Carolina, appointed Scott to the US Senate.The only Black Republican in that chamber, Scott ran for president himself but dropped out early, endorsing Trump before New Hampshire.Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, said: “I think [Trump] will be the nominee. And I think he’s demanding people bow to him.“There are few moments in my life [when] I’ve been more embarrassed than to watch Tim Scott. You know, I know Tim and I are both practicing Christians, but I don’t know if he could pray like that to the other side. It was humiliating to watch what Tim Scott did as a sitting senator. And at one time … he wasn’t even on the script, he interrupted Trump to pay homage.”In Nashua, Trump said: “Did you ever think [Haley] actually supported you, Tim? And you’re the senator of her state. And [you] endorsed me. You must really hate her.”Interrupting, Scott said: “I just love you.”“That’s why he’s a great politician,” Trump said.Sharpton said: “It’s not a fine day in my life to watch [Scott] do that. To think that we fought to see people like him, Black, become high-elected in the south … he has a right to be Republican, he has a right to [endorse] Donald Trump, but to do it in such a way that is so humiliating was troubling. Let’s put it that way. I’m going to try to be as nice as I can.”Other critics were less nice.Etan Thomas, an NBA player turned writer, said: “Good Lord, Tim Scott. Shaking my head.”Tara Setmayer, a Republican operative turned Trump opponent, asked: “Who’s worse? Trump or his court jester enablers?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe author Jeff Sharlet said: “I hold Tim Scott in contempt, but the depth of self-abasement here is hard to look at. All the more so for understanding how Trump’s supporters see it, a racist inoculation against charges of racism that in turn ‘permits’ more racism.”On CBS, Scott was asked about his decision to oppose Haley.“Let’s not forget that President Trump appointed Nikki Haley to be an ambassador [to the United Nations],” Scott said. “So she’s certainly campaigning against him.”He claimed he had not heard Trump suggest that as president he would investigate Haley if she did not drop out. His host pointed out that Trump said Haley had “a very bad night” and added: “I don’t get angry, I get even” as cameras caught Scott laughing.“I did,” Scott conceded. “I did.”Asked about speculation he could be Trump’s running mate, Scott said: “The only conversation I had with [Trump] about being vice-president was, ‘I’ll never ask you to be vice-president, I’ll never ask to be part of your cabinet.’”Pressed on whether he would like to be vice-president, Scott declined to answer. More