The too-close-to-call Democratic primary race that will likely decide New York’s next mayor was thrown into disarray after election officials admitted they accidentally included “test” results in the vote count, resulting in 135,000 extra ballots.
The botching of the city’s first ranked-choice election was first flagged by front-runner Eric Adams, who pointed out that preliminary results from the Board of Elections showed that 941,832 votes were cast for the Democratic mayoral nomination, a huge increase of from the 799,827 that were counted on Primary Day last week.
The BOE clarified their screw-up in a tweet Tuesday night.
“It has been determined that ballot images used for testing were not cleared from the Election Management System (EMS),” the board said of the fiasco.
“When the cast votes were extracted for the first pull of RCV {ranked choice voting} results, it included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the mea culpa continued.
“The board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported.”
Tuesday’s unofficial results, after a total of 11 rounds of ranked-choice counting, had Adams narrowly leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by 368,898 votes to 352,990 or 51.1 percent to 48.9 percent, with Maya Wiley and 10 other candidates eliminated.
“Today’s mistake by the Board of Elections was unfortunate,” Adams tweeted in response. “It’s critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time.”
A total of 219,944 ballots “with no choices left” were listed as “inactive.” But the city still has yet to count more than 124,000 absentee ballots sent by mail.
“New Yorkers want free and fair elections, which is why we overwhelmingly voted to enact ranked choice voting,” Garcia said in a press release. “The BOE’s release of incorrect ranked choice votes is deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation.”
Wiley also blasted the BOE for its latest blunder in a Tuesday night statement.
“This error by the Board of Elections is not just failure to count votes properly today, it is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” Wiley said.
“Today, we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws, but because those who implement it have failed too many times.”
“Today’s mistake by the Board of Elections was unfortunate,” Adams said in a statement late Tuesday. “It is critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time.“ | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
NEW YORK — The New York City Board of Elections accidentally included results from a mock trial of the city’s new ranked-choice voting system in unofficial primary returns released Tuesday — a snafu that threw the election process into chaos.
Tallies released Tuesday afternoon indicated that Kathryn Garcia had come within 2.2 points of leading Democratic candidate Eric Adams after ranked-choice tabulations were processed. But, shortly after the results were released, reporters and campaign staffers noticed there were roughly 135,000 more votes counted than those reported on election night.
Three hours after releasing the numbers, the Board of Elections issued a statement acknowledging a “discrepancy” and subsequently took down the totals from their website.
After 10 p.m. Tuesday, the board finally came clean with a statement: The “test“ ballots were never cleared out of the tabulation system and thus added the additional votes into the total, skewing the numbers. The board said that it has removed all of the erroneous ballots from the count and will re-run the results — though when the new rankings will be ready was still unclear.
“The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate [action] to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported,” the statement said.
The error drew harsh recriminations from city leaders already wary of ranked-choice voting, including Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who had already begun to question the process.
“Today’s mistake by the Board of Elections was unfortunate,” Adams said in a statement late Tuesday. “It is critical that New Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time.“
The candidate acknowledged “the Board’s transparency“ in disclosing the error and said he looked “forward to the release of an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”
The board said it would re-run the results Wednesday, but the delay has already dealt a significant setback to the process. Absentee ballots, which could prove decisive in the final outcome, won’t be counted until next week. And campaigns that end up on the losing end of the final tally are likely to file a flurry of legal challenges based on the board’s prosecution of the election so far. The worst-case scenario — a manual recount of the votes — could delay a final outcome for months.
Maya Wiley, who on election night finished second to Adams in first-rank votes and remains a contender in the race, bemoaned the board’s mistake and referenced its history of headline blunders.
“This error by the Board of Elections is not just failure to count votes properly today, it is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” she said in a statement. “Sadly it is impossible to be surprised.”
The City Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus said in its own statement Tuesday that the board’s mistake confirmed its worst fears about the rollout of the new system by an error-prone BOE, in one of the most consequential city elections in decades.
“Our members warned the public for months that the City was ill-prepared to execute elections under the new Ranked-Choice Voting system, and the concerns they raised continue to be borne out by the facts,” the group said. “Despite its year-long dithering in implementing Ranked-Choice, BOE still had several months and four separate RCV special elections for City Council this past winter and spring to ensure quality control by the time of the June primary, but has failed here to produce timely and accurate results.”
Susan Lerner of good government group Common Cause New York said that the BOE’s admission showed that human error was to blame and not anything related to the new voting system itself.
“We appreciate all the campaigns’ consistent pro-democracy message that fair and accurate results are worth waiting for,” she said in a statement. “The long time opponents of RCV seizing this moment to attack a more democratic system of elections — that exit polling shows voters overwhelmingly support — are misguided, and misleading the public.”
Adams, who had a large lead headed into last week’s primary, had already begun to sow doubts in the ranked-choice system earlier this month, accusing the elections board of not sufficiently preparing voters for the new system. The approach allows people to pick their top five candidates in order of preference.
“The Board of Elections betrayed us once again and didn’t properly educate and get information out,” Adams said at a Lower Manhattan campaign stop in early June. “It would be lucky if we get these results by January 18. We don’t know how long this is going to take. I’m really troubled about the outcome of this, I hope the counting does not equal the rollout.”
Despite Adams’ dire warnings, New Yorkers appeared to take to the new system fairly easily. But the elections board’s tabulation error is likely to draw a series of complaints if the final results are close — especially from the campaigns themselves. More than 124,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted and the race is still anyone’s call.
In an odd quirk of election law, candidates must file any legal challenges to the process by Friday even though the full results may not be known for weeks, according to attorney Jerry Goldfeder. That means that if the Adams camp or any other campaign believes it will eventually want to contest the results, they will need to head to court within days to reserve their right to sue.
“It’s crazy,” Goldfeder said. “And it needs to be reformed.”
It indicated that there would be some “legal” consequences for the officials.
The news agency said that some members of the Politburo and its Presidium, as well as some Workers’ Party secretaries, have been replaced. It did not provide further details. In North Korea, all power is concentrated in the monolithic leadership of Mr. Kim, and he has frequently reshuffled the party and military elites, holding them responsible for policy failures.
The North claims officially to be free of Covid-19, although outside experts remain skeptical, citing the country’s public health system and lack of extensive testing.
But North Korea, aware of its vulnerability to epidemics, has also enforced some of the harshest measures against the spread of the virus.
Last year, it created a buffer zone along the border with China, issuing a shoot-to-kill order to stop unauthorized crossings, according to South Korean and U.S. officials. South Korean lawmakers briefed by their government’s National Intelligence Service last year have said that North Korea executed an official for violating a trade ban imposed to fight the virus.
Last July, when a man from South Korea defected to the North, North Korea declared a national emergency for fear he might have brought the virus.
The Seattle Times reported two women, a 65-year-old from Seattle and a 68-year-old from Enumclaw, both died of hyperthermia, meaning both bodies had become dangerously overheated, citing the King County Medical Examiner’s office.
The heat may have claimed the life of a worker on a nursery in Oregon, the state’s worker safety agency, known as Oregon OSHA. A 4-year-old boy also drowned Monday, the newspaper said.
Heat-related illness accounted for about 10% of all King County emergency room visits Monday. In total, 357 county residents visited emergency rooms for heat-related issues during the three heat wave.
With the temperature well over 100 degrees, Spokane, Wash., firefighter Sean Condon, left and Lt. Gabe Mills, assigned to the Alternative Response Unit of of Station 1, check on the welfare of a man in Mission Park in Spokane, Wash., Tuesday, June 29, 2021. The special fire unit, which responds to low priority calls, has been kept busy during this week’s heatwave. (Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review via AP)
On Monday, 223 visits to emergency departments were made and emergency workers responded to 165 heat-related calls.
Officials in Bremerton, Washington, said heat may have contributed to four deaths in that Puget Sound city. But Vince Hlavaty, Bremerton’s medical officer, told the Kitsap Sun that firefighters cannot say definitively whether the heat was the cause of death.
The dangerous weather that gave Seattle and Portland consecutive days of record high temperatures exceeding 100 degrees was expected to ease in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures spike.
The National Weather Service said the mercury reached 109 degrees in Spokane — the highest temperature ever recorded there.
A sign in the window of the Dick’s Drive-In in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood is shown Monday. The walk- and drive-up restaurant, which is not air-conditioned, closed early Sunday and all day Monday due to excessive heat. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
President Joe Biden, during an infrastructure speech in Wisconsin, took note of the Northwest as he spoke about the need to be prepared for extreme weather.
“Anybody ever believe you’d turn on the news and see it’s 116 degrees in Portland Oregon? 116 degrees,” he said, working in a dig at those who cast doubt on the reality of climate change. “But don’t worry — there is no global warming because it’s just a figment of our imaginations.”
In western Washington state, residents were given a reprieve as temperatures dropped by as much as 40 degrees. In some corners, the temperature went from more than 100 degrees by 3 p.m. to the low 70s by 8 p.m., Fox affiliate KCPQ-TV reported.
The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more extreme.
The heat may also be responsible for rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand. About 9,300 Avista Utilities customers in Spokane lost power on Monday and the company said more planned blackouts began on Tuesday afternoon in the city of about 220,000 people.
People walk near Pike Place Market, Tuesday, June 29, 2021, in Seattle. The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting an electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
“We try to limit outages to one hour per customer,” said Heather Rosentrater, an Avista vice president for energy delivery.
She said about 2,400 customers were without power as of shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, mostly on the north side of the city, and those customers had been alerted about the planned outage. About 21,000 customers were warned Tuesday morning that they might experience an outage, she said.
Washington — Ronald Fischetti, a lawyer representing former President Trump in his stand-off with New York prosecutors, expects the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to bring criminal charges against Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, in the coming days, but told CBS News he does not foresee charges against the former president himself.
During a virtual meeting with prosecutors last Thursday morning, Fischetti said he asked Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. for details on the charges that are under consideration.
“I asked specifically, ‘Are any of these charges related to Donald Trump?’ And the answer was no,” Fischetti told CBS News on Tuesday.
The Trump Organization’s legal team anticipates the company will be accused of tax crimes relating to alleged failure to pay taxes on corporate benefits and perks, including cars and apartment buildings provided to employees.
“They didn’t use the word ‘fringe benefits’ or anything like that, but they alleged improper benefits that were conferred on some of the high-ranking individuals in the Trump Organization,” Fischetti said.
During last Thursday’s meeting, prosecutors left attorneys for Mr. Trump and his company with the distinct impression that they planned to proceed with charges in the coming days, possibly as early as this week. The decision to bring charges against the company itself — instead of company employees — could give prosecutors leverage to demand changes on the corporate level or levy fines as part of a negotiated settlement.
According to sources familiar with conversations between the legal teams, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office gave defense lawyers until this past Monday to dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges against the company, which oversees the former president’s real estate and business holdings.
Trump Tower on May 19, 2021 in New York City.
John Smith/VIEWpress
Attorneys for the Trump Organization plan to immediately move to dismiss the case in court if charges are brought by the grand jury, according to those familiar with the defense team’s legal strategy. The legal team believes the threat to the Trump Organization posed by prosecution is disproportionate to the alleged misconduct, and feel prosecutors would be unable to prove that the company’s leadership — including the former president — had any specific knowledge of improper benefits granted to employees.
“The district attorney has had all these years, all this time to do this investigation thoroughly from top to bottom,” Fischetti told CBS News. He later added, “And what they’ve come down with is this indictment which they’ve told us is going to be on fringe benefits for some unnamed employees. For cars, apartments, and I don’t know what else.”
Fischetti added that he believes the district attorney’s office has “no evidence whatsoever” showing that the Trump Organization was implicated in what he called “this minimal tax evasion by individuals, which was never charged and has never been charged by the IRS.”
“We intend to win,” Fischetti said.
Keir Dougall, a CBS News legal contributor and former federal prosecutor, said it would be difficult for the Trump Organization’s lawyers to convince a court to dismiss the potential charges on the basis that such prosecutions are rare.
“Let’s say that these charges were rarely, if ever, brought — that’s not a defense,” Dougall told CBS News. “That claim by itself is not a defense. You might have a claim if you could prove that this was a discriminatory selective prosecution. You might be able to argue that even though a crime was committed, the case should be dismissed because of discriminatory selective prosecution, but that kind of a motion is extremely difficult to win on.”
Bennett Gershman, a former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for six years and now a law professor at Pace University, said it’s not typical to bring a prosecution for allegedly neglecting to pay taxes on corporate benefits and perks, but said the investigation is unique.
“We’re not talking about your typical case. You’re talking about Donald Trump and the Trump Organization and trying to turn a key witness who so far appears to be reluctant to cooperate,” Gershman told CBS News, referencing Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization who has come under scrutiny by prosecutors in recent months. “The prosecutors are using whatever leverage they have, all the ammunition they have at their disposal. This is still early in the game, we’re at the beginning.”
The district attorney’s office obtained years of the former president’s tax records in February following a lengthy court battle that reached the Supreme Court. Investigators from the New York Attorney General’s Office, which is working with the DA’s office, have secured depositions from several high-ranking Trump Organization executives.
During last week’s meeting, according to Fischetti, prosecutors did not mention Weisselberg by name, nor were any other individuals singled out. The defense attorney also noted there was no mention of allegations made by Mr. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen or adult film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged she had an affair with Mr. Trump before he took office, a claim the former president has denied.
Mary Mulligan, an attorney for Weisselberg, declined to comment to CBS News.
According to Fischetti, the defense team initiated the meeting with Vance’s office. He characterized the prosecutors as “very polite,” although the discussion became heated at times.
“They listened very attentively, because they’re very polite,” Fischetti said. “It got a little aggressive sometimes. Back and forth. But that’s always expected.”
While no charges have been filed, Mr. Trump issued a lengthy statement on Monday night, decrying the prosecutors as “Witch Hunters” who are “rude, nasty, and totally biased in the way they are treating lawyers, representatives, and some of the wonderful long-term employees and people within the Trump Organization.”
If the Trump Organization were to be charged, Dougall said the company could face adverse business consequences from an indictment, and the environment for the Trump Organization could worsen if there is a conviction.
“The risk is that the investigation continues along, people flip and the prosecutors solve the problem that prosecutors always have in organizational cases: They can link knowledge and direct involvement in the charged crime against the organization, they can link that conduct directly to the head of the organization, Trump, or someone higher up,” he said.
Dougall, however, said any consideration of charges by a grand jury against Mr. Trump seems to be “a ways off, if it happens at all.”
The New York Attorney General’s Office launched a civil probe in 2019 after Cohen testified before Congress and detailed allegations of wrongdoing by the Trump Organization. The investigation initially focused on whether the company inflated the valuations of assets while seeking loans and insurance coverage and deflated the value of other assets to reduce tax liability. The office said in May it was investigating the Trump Organization in a “criminal capacity.”
Vance has been pursuing a criminal investigation since 2018 and initially targeted hush-money payments made by Cohen during the 2016 presidential campaign to Daniels. Vance’s office has since indicated in court filings that the investigation has widened to look at possible crimes as wide-ranging as fraud and tax evasion.
New York City’s great experiment with ranked-choice voting continued Tuesday as the city’s board of elections reallocated ballots from last week’s Democratic mayoral primary for the first time — and screwed up the count so badly they had to take it down and apologize hours later.
In a statement, the board explained that in addition to more than 700,000 real ballots, they had accidentally included about 135,000 “test” ballots in the count that weren’t from actual voters. And obviously that would… throw things off a bit.
This was never supposed to be the final count, since over 100,000 absentee ballots weren’t included in this preliminary tally. But it was supposed to give the first real glimpse into what reallocation could end up looking like, and the impact ranked-choice voting has had on the race.
The real, though incomplete, first-round results tallied on election night showed Eric Adams in first place, Maya Wiley in second, Kathryn Garcia in third, and Andrew Yang in fourth. But in a ranked choice count, what happens next is reallocation. The lowest-ranking candidates are eliminated, one by one. Then, ballots for eliminated candidates are reallocated to whoever those voters ranked next, if anyone.
The incorrect preliminary tally released by the board showed things getting surprisingly close after reallocation. But since they included so many bogus ballots in their count, it can’t be relied on. So we’re still basically in the dark about where things are.
The whole situation is an embarrassment for the city’s board of elections, which has long had a reputation for incompetence.
This story originally analyzed the incorrect tally released by New York City’s board of elections. References to that tally have been removed.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to lift a ban on evictions for tenants who have failed to pay all or some rent during the coronavirus pandemic.
By a 5-to-4 vote, the court left in place the nationwide moratorium on evictions put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and which was challenged by the Alabama Association of Realtors.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who cast the fifth and deciding vote, wrote in a concurring opinion that he voted not to end the eviction program only because it is set to expire on July 31, “and because those few weeks will allow for additional and more orderly distribution” of the funds that Congress appropriated to provide rental assistance to those in need because of the pandemic. He added, however, that in his view Congress would have to pass new and clearer legislation to extend the moratorium past July 31.
The Biden administration has said it does not plan to extend the moratorium any further.
Also voting to leave the program intact until July 31 were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Dissenting were Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. They would have blocked the moratorium from continuing for another month.
The decision comes at a time when roughly 7 million American households say they are still behind on their rent. Many suffered job loss during the pandemic. And delays have stopped more than $46 billion in congressionally approved rental assistance from reaching many people facing eviction who need it.
Housing groups have been warning that pulling the CDC eviction protections away from people before that congressional aid can reach them would spark a wave of evictions that could otherwise be avoided.
Evictions often send families into a downward financial spiral. It can be very hard to find another place to live with an eviction on your record. People can end up living in their cars, motels when they can afford it or in homeless shelters. Research has found there’s also a disparate impact on people of color.
During the pandemic, public health experts have warned — and research showed — that evictions result in more coronavirus cases because people end up living in more crowded situations, where they are more likely to catch or spread the disease.
At the outset of the pandemic, Congress adopted a limited, temporary moratorium on evictions. After Congress’ moratorium lapsed last July, however, then-President Donald Trump asked the CDC to step in and issue a new eviction ban, which it did in September. In March, President Biden extended that ban, which was to expire at the end of June. Then on June 24, the Biden administration notified the Supreme Court that it had extended the moratorium until July 31. It also said that barring a rise in coronavirus cases, the “CDC does not plan to extend the Order further.”
Landlords have long argued that the CDC order was an overreach and that the agency doesn’t have the power to, in effect, take control over their own properties away from them.
A group of the nation’s landlords challenged the eviction ban and on May 5, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the CDC has exceeded its authority. The judge, however, blocked her own decision from going into effect to give the government time to appeal. On June 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the stay, prompting the landlords to go to the Supreme Court.
Keeping the status quo in place “will prolong the severe financial burdens borne by landlords under the moratorium for the past nine months,” the property owners said.
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting a electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand.
Officials said a dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to the intense heat that began late last week.
The dangerous weather that gave Seattle and Portland consecutive days of record high temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celcius) was expected to ease in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures spike.
The National Weather Service said the mercury reached 109 F (42.2 C) in Spokane— the highest temperature ever recorded there.
About 9,300 Avista Utilities customers in Spokane lost power on Monday and the company said more planned blackouts began on Tuesday afternoon in the city of about 220,000 people.
“We try to limit outages to one hour per customer,” said Heather Rosentrater, an Avista vice president for energy delivery.
She said about 2,400 customers were without power as of shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, mostly on the north side of the city, and those customers had been alerted about the planned outage. About 21,000 customers were warned Tuesday morning that they might experience an outage, she said.
Avista had to implement deliberate blackouts on Monday because “the electric system experienced a new peak demand, and the strain of the high temperatures impacted the system in a way that required us to proactively turn off power for some customers,” said company president and chief executive Dennis Vermillion. “This happened faster than anticipated.”
Rosentrater said the outages were a distribution problem, and did not stem from a lack of electricity in the system
Meanwhile, authorities said multiple recent deaths in the region were possibly related to the scorching weather.
The King County Medical Examiner’s office said two people died due to hyperthermia, meaning their bodies had became dangerously overheated. The Seattle Times reported they were a 65-year-old Seattle woman and a 68-year-old Enumclaw, Washington, woman.
And the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office on Tuesday told the Daily Herald in Everett, Washington, that three men — ages 51, 75 and 77 — died after experiencing heat stroke in their homes. They were from Everett, Granite Falls and Marysville in Washington.
The heat may have also claimed the life of a worker on a nursery in Oregon, the state’s worker safety agency, known as Oregon OSHA, said on Tuesday.
The man who died was from Guatemala and had apparently arrived in the United States only a few months ago, said Andres Pablo Lucas, owner of Brother Farm Labor Contractor that provided workers for the nursery, including the man who died.
The man, whose name was not disclosed, died at Ernst Nursery and Farms, a wholesale supplier in St. Paul, 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Salem, on Saturday amid sweltering temperatures. An Oregon OSHA database listed the death as heat-related.
“The employee was working on a crew moving irrigation lines. At the end of the shift he was found unresponsive in the field,” said agency spokesman Aaron Corvin.
Speaking in Spanish, Pablo Lucas said when workers gathered together shortly after noon on Saturday, they noticed one of them was missing. They began searching and found his body. Pablo Lucas said he didn’t remember the man’s name.
Pablo Lucas said the laborers often have the option to start working near sunrise when it is cooler and can stop around midday, but some want to stay regardless of the heat.
“The people want to work, to fight to succeed,” he said. “For that reason, they stay.”
Officials in Bremerton, Washington, said heat may have contributed to four deaths in that Puget Sound city. But Vince Hlavaty, Bremerton’s medical officer, told the Kitsap Sun that firefighters cannot say definitively whether the heat was the cause of death.
In Bend, Oregon, authorities said the deaths of two homeless people in extreme heat may have been weather-related.
The United Farm Workers urged Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to immediately issue emergency heat standards protecting all farm and other outdoor workers in the state with a strong agricultural sector. The state’s current heat standards fall short of safeguards the UFW first won in California in 2005 that have prevented deaths and illnesses from heat stroke, the union said in a statement.
Unlike workers in California, Washington state farm workers do not have the right to work shade and breaks amid extreme temperatures.
“I was off today so I was helping distribute water and information to the cherry harvesters,” said Martha Acevedo, a wine grape worker from Sunnyside, Washington, said in a union statement. “They were struggling. No shade, not even cold water.”
Seattle was cooler Tueday with temperatures expected to reach about 90 F (32.2 C) after registering 108 degrees F (42 Celsius) on Monday — well above Sunday’s all-time high of 104 F (40 C). Portland, Oregon, reached 116 F (46.6 C) after hitting records of 108 F (42 C) on Saturday and 112 F (44 C) on Sunday.
President Joe Biden, during an infrastructure speech in Wisconsin, took note of the Northwest as he spoke about the need to be prepared for extreme weather.
“Anybody ever believe you’d turn on the news and see it’s 116 degrees in Portland Oregon? 116 degrees,” the president said, working in a dig at those who cast doubt on the reality of climate change. “But don’t worry — there is no global warming because it’s just a figment of our imaginations.”
The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more extreme.
KCNA said Kim made the comments during a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that he called to discuss the anti-virus failures. It said Kim criticized senior officials for supposed incompetence, irresponsibility and passiveness in planning and executing anti-virus measures amid a lengthening pandemic.
“In neglecting important decisions by the party that called for organizational, material and science and technological measures to support prolonged anti-epidemic work in face of a global health crisis, the officials in charge have caused a grave incident that created a huge crisis for the safety of the country and its people,” the KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying.
While North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30,000 people, experts widely doubt its claim of a perfect record, considering the country’s poor health infrastructure and ties to China.
From the start of the pandemic, North Korea described its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed cross-border traffic and trade. The lockdown has further strained an economy already battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
Kim during a political conference earlier this month called for officials to brace for prolonged Covid-19 restrictions, indicating that the country isn’t ready to open its borders anytime soon despite its economic woes.
The North’s extended border controls come amid uncertainties over the country’s vaccination prospects. COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, said in February that the North could receive 1.9 million doses in the first half of the year, but the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.
“This legislation will remove these commemorations from places of honor and demonstrate that as Americans we do not celebrate those who seek to divide us.”
The legislation requires states to remove and replace any statues or busts that honor those who voluntarily served in the Confederacy from public display in the Capitol.
Lawmakers put a particular emphasis on removing Taney’s bust, noting that he authored the infamous “Dred Scott v. Sanford” ruling that declared that Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens. The bust will be replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the high court.
“The Dred Scott decision was a blot on our history and represents the tragic legacy of slavery and racism that should not be celebrated in our country … It is fitting that we honor Justice Thurgood Marshall instead, a fighter for justice and inclusion, who sought to advance the civil rights movement,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., in a statement.
Other prominent statues and busts that would be removed include a statue of Jefferson Davis, who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and Alexander Stephens, who served as the vice president to Davis.
In addition to ridding the Capitol of Confederate statues and busts, the legislation also incorporates the Confederate Monument Removal Act led by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif. It orders the removal of statues that symbolize “slavery, sedition, and segregation,” including statues of John C. Calhoun, Charles Brantley Aycock, and James Paul Clarke, Democrats said in releasing the bill.
The legislation also requires the architect of the Capitol to identify other statues or busts that honor the Confederacy, which will be removed and returned to the states that originally sent them.
The passage of the legislation comes after nationwide protests over racial justice last year, prompted by the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a white Minneapolis officer, Derek Chauvin. Last week, Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
The efforts to remove Confederate monuments in the U.S. intensified after Floyd’s death, with nearly 170 confederate statues reportedly removed in 2020 alone, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Ian Fury, a spokesperson for Noem, said the undisclosed amount was paid to the state of South Dakota by Willis and Reba Johnson’s Foundation, a Tennessee-based nonprofit that donates to various groups, including churches and the National Rifle Association, according to 2018 tax filings. Willis Johnson has donated to GOP campaigns for decades, including at least $550,000 to Trump in 2019 and 2020, filings show.
The sun shines near the Space Needle, Monday, June 28, 2021, in Seattle. Seattle and other cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees.
Ted S. Warren/AP
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Ted S. Warren/AP
The sun shines near the Space Needle, Monday, June 28, 2021, in Seattle. Seattle and other cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend, with temperatures soaring well above 100 degrees.
Ted S. Warren/AP
Record-breaking temperatures have soared well past 100 degrees across the Pacific Northwest, where the area is trapped beneath a blistering “heat dome.”
In a region where average temperatures are closer to the 70s this time of year, houses can be seen with blacked-out windows covered with blankets to help with the heat. The area’s normally mild summers mean many households don’t have air conditioning.
The historic heatwave is bringing with it fears about what could follow over the rest of this summer.
The Pacific Northwest has a lack of air conditioners as hot weather is not typical. Here, Portland, Oregon residents stay at a cooling center.
Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The Pacific Northwest has a lack of air conditioners as hot weather is not typical. Here, Portland, Oregon residents stay at a cooling center.
Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Records set one day have been broken the next.
Records have been shattered daily in parts of the Northwest, including Portland and Seattle. Portland broke records three days in a row, hitting 108 on Saturday, 112 on Sunday and then 116 on Monday.
Seattle reached 108 degrees on Monday during the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. Here, a mother and daughter carry umbrellas to shield from the sun.
John Froschauer/AP
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John Froschauer/AP
Seattle reached 108 degrees on Monday during the heat wave in the Pacific Northwest. Here, a mother and daughter carry umbrellas to shield from the sun.
John Froschauer/AP
In Seattle, the temperature rose to 108 on Monday. In Pasco, Wash., the mercury climbed to 118 degrees, the hottest temperature the state has recorded since 1961.
Portland recorded three of its hottest days in history last Saturday and this Sunday and Monday. Here, a couple and their dog lay in the shade during the heat wave.
Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Portland recorded three of its hottest days in history last Saturday and this Sunday and Monday. Here, a couple and their dog lay in the shade during the heat wave.
Maranie Staab/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In some places, the heat is so intense it has even melted power cables. In downtown Portland, the Portland Streetcar service shut down on Sunday, posting a picture on Twitter of a power cable with a hole burnt into it.
Roads have buckled under the heat in Portland
Pacific Northwest infrastructure is cracking — literally — under the pressure. In Everson, Wash., temperatures have caused the pavement to soften and expand. This can create rutting, buckling, and potholes, particularly in high-traffic areas.
State Route 544 milepost 7 near Everson, Wa is currently closed. The asphalt roadway is buckling and unsafe for travel. WSDOT is advised and detours are currently being set up.
Widespread drought extending from the West and all the way into the Great Plains has only worsened under the heat dome. In the Northwest, a typically wet area, abnormally dry and drought conditions have expanded in a matter of weeks. On June 22, the U.S. Drought Monitor reported 79.8% of the region was in drought just ahead of the fire season.
Scientists say the warming climate is making both heat waves and droughts more frequent and intense
A sign is shown on the door of a Molly Moon’s Ice Cream store in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The store was closed Monday due to excessive heat.
Ted S. Warren/AP
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Ted S. Warren/AP
A sign is shown on the door of a Molly Moon’s Ice Cream store in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. The store was closed Monday due to excessive heat.
Eric Adams got 51.1 percent of the vote after ranked-choice votes were tabulated. | Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
NEW YORK — Eric Adams barely held onto his lead in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary after voters’ lower-ranked candidates were accounted for on Tuesday.
He now outpaces Kathryn Garcia by just 2.2 points with more than 120,000 absentee ballots left to count.
Those ballots will now decide the race, with Adams up by just 15,908 votes.
Garcia overtook Maya Wiley for the second place spot once the city’s Board of Elections tallied 11 rounds of ranked-choice voting Tuesday.
The system, being used for the first time, allowed voters to pick up to five candidates in order of preference. Once a candidate is knocked off, their votes are spread out to the remaining hopefuls. The absentee ballots will be factored into another tabulation next Tuesday before the board releases a final certification by July 12.
“Once all the votes are counted, I know everyone will support the Democratic nominee and that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Garcia said in a statement. “We look forward to the final results. Democracy is worth waiting for.”
Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has now secured just over 51 percent of the vote,upfrom the 31.7 percent he received in first-place votes when New Yorkers hit the polls last Tuesday.
However, he released a statement Tuesday questioning the Board of Elections’ math. The vote total from the ranked-choice tabulation was more than 100,000 ballots higher than the unofficial tally on election night.
“We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection,” he said in a statement. “We remain confident that Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York because he put together a historic five-borough working class coalition of New Yorkers to make our city a safer, fairer, more affordable place.”
Adams has said multiple times he would accept the results of the election and support whomever emerged as the Democratic nominee.
“People ask all the time are you going to accept the outcome?” he said last week. “Darn right I am.”
Wiley, who finished in second place last week with 22.2 percent, fell to third before being eliminated in the rankings. She trailed Garcia by less than 1 point, however, meaning that the leaderboard could easily change once again when the paper ballots are opened. And with such tight margins, she did not concede.
“I said on election night, we must allow the democratic process to continue and count every vote so that New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and government,” she said in a statement. “And we must all support its results.”
Her voters appeared largely to support Garcia over Adams, delivering the former sanitation commissioner enough votes to come within striking distance of first place.
Fourth place went to Andrew Yang — who had campaigned with Garcia in the days before last week’s primary and urged his supporters to rank her second.
Tuesday’s results, however, showed Garcia was the prime beneficiary of Yang’s elimination, suggesting the duo’s alliance swayed Yang’s supporters.
When Yang was nixed in the tenth round, his votes boosted Garcia and Adams by roughly 6 points each. Wiley got just 3 points.
“If we don’t win but we help elect Kathryn Garcia, that’s a pretty good outcome,” Yang campaign co-manager Chris Coffey said of the candidate’s thinking when he joined the accord.
“Overall, it’s shaping up to be a busy fire season and a very active fire season,” Tom Rolinski, a fire scientist with the utility Southern California Edison, said in an interview this month. “The fact that our fuels are drier than normal, and we are in exceptional drought, is very concerning to us.”
Killer ex-cop Derek Chauvin is close to reaching a plea deal on his federal civil rights charges that would allow him to escape life in prison for George Floyd’s murder, according to a report.
Multiple sources told WCCO that the former Minneapolis officer is close to the deal that would see him serving his sentence in federal prison, but at the same time as the 22½ years he already got on his state conviction for murdering Floyd in May last year.
It would include the 45-year-old former cop having to finally explain exactly what he did to Floyd and why he did it, WCCO said.
The deal would likely involve a 20- to 25-year sentence that he would serve at the same time as his state sentence, WCCO’s sources said. Without it, Chauvin faces life in prison on the charges, the outlet noted.
The negotiations with prosecutors could be what Chauvin was referring to when he told his sentencing hearing last week that he could not give a full statement because of “legal matters.”
George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020.Ben Crump LawA still image from a video showing the fatal arrest of George Floyd.AP
“There’s gonna be some other information in the future that will be of interest and I hope these will give you some peace of mind,” Chauvin had said, which WCCO suggested was the plea deal.
Former Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mary Moriarty told the outlet that Chauvin’s swift guilty verdict in the state case is undoubtedly a motivating factor in seeking a deal.
“In federal court, there would be a substantial difference between what he would receive if he went to trial and was convicted versus what he would get if he pled guilty, and as they say, take responsibility for his actions,” Moriarty said.
George Floyd’s brother Philonise speaks to reporters after the sentencing of Derek Chauvin on June 25, 2021.REUTERS/Eric MillerGeorge Floyd’s daughter, Gianna, gives an impact statement during the sentencing hearing for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in a courtroom sketch from June 25, 2021.REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg
WCCO said the US Attorney’s Office declined to comment, and Ben Crump, the Floyd family attorney, and Eric Nelson, the attorney for Chauvin, did not respond.
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