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      Lawmaker Is Left With ‘Lifetime Trauma’ as Attacker Pleads Guilty

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      Andrey Desmond pleaded guilty to three felony charges in the attack on Maryam Khan, a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives, last June.It has been nearly 10 months since a man attacked Maryam Khan, the first Muslim elected to the Connecticut House of Representatives, outside an Eid al-Adha prayer service in Hartford, Conn. She is still struggling to heal, she said.“I have a lot of things to get through, both emotionally and physically,” Ms. Khan said. “I’m still working on trying to heal and process what happened.”But she felt some closure in a courtroom on Tuesday, she said, when she watched her attacker plead guilty to felony charges related to the attack.The man, Andrey Desmond, 30, of New Britain, Conn., pleaded guilty to attempted third-degree sexual assault, strangulation and risk of injury to a child, according to the clerk’s office at the State Superior Court in Hartford.“He claimed to understand what was happening, and for me, personally, it was helpful to be there and to witness that,” Ms. Khan said.Under the terms of a plea agreement, Mr. Desmond is required to serve five years in prison, register as a sex offender and receive mental health treatment after he is released. His sentencing is scheduled for June 4.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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      Nebraska Republicans Renew Push for ‘Winner Take All’ Electoral System

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      A renewed push by Nebraska Republicans to move to a “winner-take-all” system in presidential elections has raised the prospect that the 2024 contest could end in an electoral college tie — with the House of Representatives deciding the winner.Nebraska and Maine are the only states that divide their electoral votes according to the presidential winners of congressional districts. In 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the eastern district around Omaha and its one vote. On Tuesday, Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska, a Republican, threw his support behind a G.O.P.-led bill languishing in the state’s unicameral legislature that would end the practice.“It would bring Nebraska in line with 48 of our fellow states, better reflect the founders’ intent, and ensure our state speaks with one unified voice in presidential elections,” Mr. Pillen wrote in a statement.The resurrection of the state bill was sparked this week by Charlie Kirk, the chief executive of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump conservative advocacy group, who pressed the state legislature to move forward on social media.Former President Donald J. Trump quickly endorsed the governor’s “very smart letter” on his social media site.And for good reason. If Mr. Biden were to hold Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but lose Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and the one Nebraska vote he took in 2020, the electoral college would be deadlocked at 269 votes each. The House would then decide the victor, not by total votes but by the votes of each state delegation. That would almost certainly give the election to Mr. Trump.But that Sun-Belt-sweep-plus-one scenario still might be out of reach. Democrats in the legislature expressed confidence on Tuesday that they could filibuster the measure, and the state legislative session is set to end on April 18.Conversely, Maine, where Democrats hold the governor’s office and a majority in the legislature, could change its system to take back the electoral vote that Mr. Trump won in 2020. Mr. Biden won Maine by nine percentage points, but Mr. Trump took a vote in the electoral college by winning the state’s rural second district. More

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      Peter Shapiro, Political Groundbreaker in New Jersey, Dies at 71

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      He bucked the Democratic machine to become the youngest member of the state’s General Assembly and reformed government as the first Essex County executive.Peter Shapiro, who as a 23-year-old insurgent was the youngest person ever elected to the New Jersey General Assembly and who later became the first Essex County executive, died on Thursday at his home in South Orange, N.J. He was 71.The cause was respiratory failure after long being treated for lung disease, his wife, Bryna Linett, said.As a young assemblyman, Mr. Shapiro helped streamline the way local government worked after successfully campaigning in 1977 for a charter change that coupled Essex County’s nine-member Board of Chosen Freeholders (now the Board of County Commissioners) with a strong county executive in what was the state’s most populous county, which includes Newark.He ran for the newly created position the next year, defeating a Democratic organization candidate for the nomination and overpowering a Republican rival, Robert F. Notte, by a record margin. As county executive, he reformed the county’s welfare program, decentralized other services to make them more responsive to localities, refinanced the pension system and lowered the county property tax rate.“Peter, what you did for Essex County is precisely what I am attempting at the state level,” Gov. Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, said at the time.Seeking re-election in 1982, and after defeating two rivals in a Democratic primary, Mr. Shapiro said: “We were able to show that it’s possible to take an old urban government like Essex County’s, a government that a lot of people had given up on, and make it more responsive, more efficient, bring down the taxes and make it a model of what’s right with government.”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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      Iowa Passes Bill to Make Returning After Deportation a State Crime

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      Iowa lawmakers passed a bill on Tuesday that would make it a crime to enter the state after being deported or denied entry into the United States. The passage puts the Midwestern state on track to join Texas in enforcing immigration outside the federal system.The Iowa bill, which passed on the same day that the Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce a new law empowering police officers to arrest unauthorized migrants, now goes to the desk of Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, who said she planned to sign it.“President Biden and his administration have failed to enforce our immigration laws and, in doing so, have compromised the sovereignty of our nation and the safety of its people,” Ms. Reynolds said Tuesday evening in a statement. “States have stepped in to secure the border, preventing illegal migrants from entering our country and protecting our citizens.”Iowa Democrats, who have lost power over the last decade and are vastly outnumbered in the Legislature, mostly opposed the legislation but were powerless to stop it.“This bill is a political stunt and a false promise that doesn’t contain the needed resources,” State Senator Janice Weiner, a Democrat from the Iowa City area, said when her chamber debated the measure. “It’s a gotcha bill.”The bill would make it a misdemeanor for someone to enter Iowa if they were previously deported, denied entry to the United States or had left the country while facing a deportation order. In some cases, including if the person had certain prior convictions, the state crime would become a felony. Iowa police officers would not be allowed to make arrests under this legislation at schools, places of worship or health care facilities.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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      Albany Should Pass Parole Reforms

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      Scientists have found that most cells in our bodies regenerate every seven to 10 years on average. This includes certain cells in the heart and brain. Can we assume, then, that our moral and emotional compasses are also capable of transforming over time?As a New York State parole commissioner for 12 years, I evaluated the readiness for release and risk to public safety of more than 75,000 incarcerated people. I saw these changes in people every day.Yet in spite of those transformations, the number of aging long-termers warehoused in prisons has only increased in recent years.Two bills in the New York State Legislature could challenge that trend. Both would give people in prison fairer shots at parole. Versions of this legislation have been introduced since 2018 but were never put to a vote. This year, lawmakers should pass them.Many long-termers languish in cells or in substandard prison infirmaries, or even in so-called long-term care units. With labored breathing, they limp to the mess hall and miss their chance to eat, sink deeper into dementia, fall and get seriously injured, and navigate hearing and vision impairment. At the same time, they are under the supervision of guards who lack the training and often the empathy to properly manage the diminished capacity of many older people to follow often senseless prison rules.When I was a commissioner, from 1984 to 1996, it was unusual for me to meet a parole candidate over the age of 50. Now there are more than 7,500 incarcerated people ages 50 and older in New York, or about 25 percent of the entire state prison population. In fact, between 2008 and 2021, the overall prison population declined by half, yet the population age 50 and older increased, with ballooning health care costs crowding out other budget priorities. The state spends between $100,000 and $240,000 on incarcerated people who are 55 or older, according to one of the reform measures before the State Legislature; for others, the figure is about $60,000.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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      Oregon Is Recriminalizing Drugs, Dealing Setback to Reform Movement

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      Oregon removed criminal penalties for possessing street drugs in 2020. But amid soaring overdose deaths, state lawmakers have voted to bring back some restrictions.Three years ago, when Oregon voters approved a pioneering plan to decriminalize hard drugs, advocates looking to halt the jailing of drug users believed they were on the edge of a revolution that would soon sweep across the country.But even as the state’s landmark law took effect in 2021, the scourge of fentanyl was taking hold. Overdoses soared as the state stumbled in its efforts to fund enhanced treatment programs. And while many other downtowns emerged from the dark days of the pandemic, Portland continued to struggle, with scenes of drugs and despair.Lately, even some of the liberal politicians who had embraced a new approach to drugs have supported an end to the experiment. On Friday, a bill that will reimpose criminal penalties for possession of some drugs won final passage in the State Legislature and was headed next to Gov. Tina Kotek, who has expressed alarm about open drug use and helped broker a plan to ban such activity.“It’s clear that we must do something to try and adjust what’s going on out in our communities,” State Senator Chris Gorsek, a Democrat who had supported decriminalization, said in an interview. Soon after, senators took the floor, with some sharing stories of how addictions and overdoses had impacted their own loved ones. They passed the measure by a 21-8 margin. The abrupt rollback is a devastating turn for decriminalization proponents who say the large number of overdose deaths stems from a confluence of factors and failures largely unrelated to the law. They have warned against returning to a “war on drugs” strategy and have urged the Legislature to instead invest in affordable housing and drug treatment options.The Joint Interim Committee on Addiction and Community Safety Response discussing the effects of and changes to Measure 110 at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem last month.Jordan Gale 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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      Oregon Tries and Fails to Eliminate Daylight Saving Time, for Now

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      Also, did you know Oregon has two time zones?Oregon’s state senate failed to advance a bill on Tuesday that would have abolished daylight saving time in most of the state and switched it to standard time for the entire year, the latest chapter in an effort by states to settle on whether clocks need to fall back or spring forward at all.The bill proposed that the part of the state in the Pacific Time Zone — almost all of the state is, save Malheur County, which is on Mountain time — abolish “the annual one-hour change in time from standard time to daylight saving time.”The measure isn’t entirely dead: The state senate sent the bill back to committee to be amended to make sure that if it were to happen Oregon wouldn’t be the only state in the region switching to permanent standard time.Lawmakers in Oregon’s neighboring states have proposed similar bills. In Idaho this week, a bill was introduced to get rid of daylight saving time, and there is a similar bill in front of California’s Assembly. In Washington State, a bill to abolish daylight saving time and return to permanent standard time failed last month.“We are leading the way,” Kim Thatcher, a sponsor of the Oregon bill, said on the State Senate floor this week before the bill’s failure. “I think we’re not going to be alone in this, but there might be a little weirdness at first, just know that.”Oregon would have been the first West Coast state to spend its entire year on standard time. Arizona (except for the Navajo nation) and Hawaii also observe standard time year-round. And in 2022, Mexico ended daylight saving time for most of the country, but carved out an exception for the area along the U.S. border.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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      To Save San Francisco, a Democrat Wants to Scrap Environmental Reviews

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      State Senator Scott Wiener hopes to spur redevelopment in the struggling downtown core by eliminating a major environmental hurdle.Not long ago, it would have sounded preposterous: A San Francisco Democrat asking to peel back California’s treasured environmental protections in the heart of the city.It would have been like painting the Golden Gate Bridge gray or cheering on the Los Angeles Dodgers. It just would not have flown.But as California grows more desperate for housing and San Francisco struggles to revive its city core, State Senator Scott Wiener says one thing must go: environmental review.Mr. Wiener on Friday will propose one of the broadest rollbacks of the once-vaunted California Environmental Quality Act by asking the state legislature to allow most projects in downtown San Francisco to bypass the law for the next decade.Empty buildings could more easily be demolished to build theaters, museums or college campuses, Mr. Wiener said. Office towers could more readily be converted to a wide variety of housing. The withering mall on Market Street could more quickly become something else — like the soccer stadium that Mayor London Breed has envisioned.“We know we need to make downtown viable,” Ms. Breed, a sponsor of the bill, said. “We can’t let process get in the way.”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