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Next month, New College of Florida will welcome activist and writer Steve Sailer, a ‘proponent of scientific racism’

New College of Florida (NCF) will host the extremist writer Steve Sailer, who has been described as a “white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”, at a college-branded public event next month.

New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution, and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior Christopher Rufo. That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” Richard Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.

DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College – like abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage and denying professors tenure – have seen the departure of more than a third of the faculty, and given rise to myriad legal actions.

Flooding and landslides strike southern Appalachians after hurricane pummeled region and wreaked havoc

More than 50 people are confirmed dead and almost 3.5 million are without power on Saturday, after strong winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Helene wreaked unprecedented havoc across large swathes of the south-eastern United States.

Historic flooding continued over parts of the southern Appalachians on Saturday, as first responders worked to reach stranded communities in trying conditions while local authorities began to assess the scale of the damage and displacement.

“It looks like a bomb went off,” said Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, after surveying the damage from the air on Saturday.

The spacecraft lifted off with two crew members and two empty seats, so that the NASA astronauts who rode Boeing's Starliner to orbit will be able to join for the ride home.

SpaceX launched two new crew members to the International Space Station on Saturday, in a capsule that will eventually bring home two NASA astronauts who flew to orbit on Boeing’s problem-plagued Starliner spacecraft.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket on Saturday afternoon from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The flight, known as Crew-9, carries NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.

The duo will join five other astronauts and cosmonauts already onboard the orbiting lab, rounding out the Expedition 72 crew.

The letters obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network, show people's concern over the tone of the Facebook post by Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski

At least 59 Ohio residents have complained to the state's attorney general over posts made by an Ohio sheriff suggesting that people should keep track of homeowners who have signs supporting Democrat Kamala Harris for president.

Bruce Zuchowski, the sheriff for Portage County just southeast of Cleveland, posted the suggestion to his social media account on Sept. 13, when he talked about Harris’ campaign and border policies.

…

Some people said they were angry, accusing Zuchowski of voter intimidation and racism. Others, including people who live in Portage County, said the sheriff’s post made them afraid.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

Threads is following X's lead, blocking links to purportedly leaked documents about vice presidential candidate JD Vance.

Meta says the links could come from hacked or leaked sources — and it's blocking them because of the potential connection. The FBI and other intelligence agencies last month warned that Iran-backed hackers had sought to access information from the Trump campaign.

Purportedly hacked documents have been floating around various media outlets ever since, and while the existence of these documents has been reported, almost all outlets have refused to publish the details due to the potentially illicit way they were obtained.

It looks like a family holiday card except that the woman and children posing with Republican Derrick Anderson are not his wife or his offspring. 

Anderson, who running in a close race for Virginia’s seventh congressional district, was seen in another image seated around the dining table with the same woman and three girls.

The images came to light in an article by The New York Times, headlined “G.O.P. Candidates, Looking to Soften Their Image, Turn to Their Wives,” which reported how “male Republicans struggling to appeal to female voters concerned about their records on reproductive rights are unleashing their spouses to make the pitch on their behalf.”

However Anderson, who is childless, engaged to be married and lives alone with his dog, sought to borrow the wife and children from a longtime friend in an apparent effort to appear as a family man.

🗳️ Register to vote: https://vote.gov/

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has vowed to continue defending what he considers Texans' right to carry firearms on land owned or leased by governmental entities.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled Thursday night that it would not block a firearms ban at the State Fair of Texas. Paxton's office had sued claiming the city and the fair are violating state law by prohibiting most people from bringing firearms onto public property. 

A Dallas County judge declined to issue an injunction preventing the ban's enforcement. Neither the Fifteenth Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court intervened.

A Massachusetts woman accused of operating a high-end brothel network with wealthy and prominent clients in that state and the Washington, D.C., suburbs pleaded guilty in federal court Friday.

Han Lee and two others were indicted earlier this year on one count of conspiracy to persuade, entice, and coerce one or more individuals to travel in interstate or foreign commerce to engage in prostitution and one count of money laundering, according to prosecutors.

‘I believed things he told me that I now understand to be … lies,’ Dave Hancock says in new Rittenhouse documentary

A former spokesperson for Kyle Rittenhouse says he became disillusioned with his ex-client after learning that he had sent text messages pledging to “fucking murder” shoplifters outside a Chicago pharmacy before later shooting two people to death during racial justice protests in Wisconsin in 2020.

Dave Hancock made that remark about Rittenhouse – for whom he also worked as a security guard – on a Law & Crime documentary that premiered on Friday. The show explored the unsuccessful criminal prosecution of Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

As Hancock told it on The Trials of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 90-minute film’s main subject had “a history of things he was doing prior to [the double slaying], specifically patrolling the street for months with guns and borrowing people’s security uniforms, doing whatever he could to try to get into some kind of a fight”.

New indictment leaves Anthony Odiong facing seven sexual assault charges – all in connection with three women

A grand jury in Texas has handed up more felony sexual assault charges against a Roman Catholic priest accused of preying on women whom he met while ministering to them in that state as well as in south-east Louisiana, officials said.

Anthony Odiong is now facing a total of five charges of sexual assault in the first degree and two more such counts in the second degree – all in connection with three separate women – after a new indictment was handed up against him on Thursday in the McLennan county, Texas, state courthouse.

A Minnesota resident who came into contact with a bat in July died of rabies, the state’s department of health announced Friday. 

The person’s death marks a rare occurrence, as fewer than 10 people in the the U.S. die from rabies each year, according to the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. The person is over the age of 65 and was exposed to a bat in western Minnesota in July, the Minnesota Department of Health said. 

CDC officials confirmed the rabies diagnosis at its lab in Atlanta on Sept. 20. In a news release, the state health department said it was working to evaluate whether more people were exposed to the disease, but said there was no ongoing risk to the public

State Sen. Mike Maroney was hit with a DUI charge last week after being charged with indecent exposure in August.

A Republican state senator from West Virginia is being asked to step down by his local GOP party chair after being arrested on a drunk driving charge — his second arrest in as many months.

State Sen. Mike Maroney, who was first elected in 2016, was arrested in August on a charge of indecent exposure.

“While the legal process must take its course, the perception of impropriety and the repeated legal entanglements surrounding Senator Maroney have brought discredit to the West Virginia Senate,” Ethan Moore, chairman of the Monongalia County Republican Executive Committee, said in a statement. “We believe it is in the best interest of Senate District 2 and the state for Senator Maroney to resign, restoring public trust and the integrity of the Senate.”