On Friday, Utah’s state House of Representatives distinguished itself by becoming the country’s first legislative body to pass an anti-trans bill in 2024.

It also happens to be dangerously extreme, by seeking to make it a criminal offense for people to use a bathroom in a public building that doesn’t correspond with the gender on their birth certificate. According to Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation nationwide, the law raises the prospect of people forced to “potentially undergo a genital examination if under criminal investigation for being in the bathroom.” People determined under the law to have used the wrong bathroom inside public spaces, from colleges to Salt Lake City’s airport, could be sent to jail for up to 6 months. 

The bill, which would need to pass the state’s Senate and be approved by the governor to become law, is so extreme that Reed and others have said it could even ensnare cisgender people and subject them to prosecution if someone thinks they’re peeing in the wrong place.

As Chris Geidner writes at Law Dork, “It is extreme legislation that explicitly retrofits the crimes of voyeurism and criminal trespass in the state to allow for the prosecution of many transgender people for using the right bathroom.”

When pressed on the House floor, the bill’s sponsor could not point to a single example of inappropriate behavior by a trans person in an Utah bathroom. But members of the Utah House—which meets for only 45 days a year and just started its 2024 session on Tuesday—nonetheless voted 57 to 17 to police bathrooms.

GOP presidential contender Nikki Haley responded to former President Donald Trump’s gaffe from Friday night, in which he confused her with Nancy Pelosi and suggested that she had something to do with the security failures at the US Capitol on January 6. 

“Last night, Trump is at a rally and he’s going on and on mentioning me several times as to why I didn’t take security during the Capitol riots,” she told an audience in Keene, New Hampshire. “I wasn’t even in DC on January 6.”

 

 

 

Despite Arsenal’s 5-0 win against Crystal Palace this afternoon, Piers Morgan is convinced that the Gunners need a new striker.

Arsenal returned from their winter break in superb fashion, as they stunned struggling Palace with a performance that could see them sack their manager.

The Eagles have been one of the toughest teams for Arsenal to face, but the Gunners did not find any difficulty in that game.

It was one of the easiest victories they will achieve in a long time, and their players will be happy with the result.

However, Morgan is not convinced about their attacking display and insists the team still needs a striker like Ivan Toney.

Mikel Arteta anticipates a more aggressive approach from his team in the second half of the season following their 5-0 victory against Crystal Palace this afternoon.

Arsenal was part of the title race for much of the first half of the season, but a couple of crucial losses towards the end of 2023 saw them drop valuable points against West Ham and Fulham.

With the team experiencing poor form recently, the win against Palace was crucial to reassure fans that they can finish the season strongly. The convincing 5-0 victory is expected to boost the team’s confidence, and Arteta is looking forward to seeing a more aggressive and assertive Arsenal in the upcoming matches.

He tells the BBC:

“We used moments of the game we knew could exploit really, really well. The subs did really well and had a big impact. Everyone was really focused.

Gabriel Magalhaes revealed that Arsenal has been working on setpieces, and it paid off as at least two setpieces caused problems for Crystal Palace in their 5-0 victory this afternoon.

The Gunners showcased their quality throughout the game, with the first two goals stemming from setpieces. Despite Palace struggling to make an impact, Arsenal demonstrated a well-rounded performance.

Having secured a 5-0 win, Arsenal has bounced back from three consecutive losses, and a potential long winning run could reignite their title challenge. Gabriel, who scored the first goal and played a role in the second (which was given as an own goal), highlighted the team’s focus on causing problems with setpieces, a strategy that proved effective in the match.

The Brazilian said to Premier League Productions:

“I’m so happy to score goals for the team. I think one more minute and Gabriel Martinelli will score three goals.

Ian Wright expressed his satisfaction with Arsenal’s performance in their 5-0 victory against Crystal Palace this afternoon.

The Gunners entered the match on the back of three consecutive losses and were in dire need of a win. Taking advantage of a much-needed break, they spent some days in Dubai before the fixture, aiming to settle nerves and refresh the players for the challenging second half of the season.

Facing a struggling Crystal Palace side, Arsenal dismantled their opponents effortlessly. Despite Palace having a poor game, Arsenal capitalised on their chances, and Wright is pleased with the team’s overall performance.

He said on Premier League productions:

“I thought Arsenal played very well. They had lost three games on the spin and had to come with real determination and spirit to show they can get back right on track.”

Nikki Haley, like most candidates who have sought to deny Donald Trump the 2024 GOP nomination, has had to carefully calibrate her criticism of the former president, who remains overwhelming popular inside the party. One attack she’s been willing to deploy is to gently suggest that, at 77, he’s too old to be president again.

Trump helped make her case last night in the form of what seemed to be a senior moment, where he repeatedly confused Republican Nikki Haley, who spent years as his UN ambassador, with former Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi. In a rambling digression during a rally in New Hampshire, the former president blamed Haley for security lapses at the Capitol on January 6, even though Haley had left the federal government more than two years before the riot.

The moment came after Trump complained that the media never report on the size of his rally crowds, as compared with Haley’s smaller ones. But then he made his bizarre segue, as he seemed to blame his primary opponent for what happened at the Capitol. “By the way, they never report the crowd on January 6. You know Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley, you know, they—do you know they destroyed all of the information, all of the evidence, everything, deleted and destroyed all of it. All of it, because of lots of things,” Trump said. “Like Nikki Haley is in charge of security. We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, National Guards, whatever they want. They turned it down. They don’t want to talk about that. These are very dishonest people.”

A deeply confused Trump confuses Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley multiple times: Nikki Haley was in charge on January 6. They don’t want to talk about that pic.twitter.com/f3lhWgAzUw

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 20, 2024

Gabriel Martinelli expressed delight following Arsenal’s 5-0 victory over Crystal Palace, where his brace played a role in the win.

Arsenal, having lost three consecutive games leading up to this match, was expecting another challenging encounter. However, Crystal Palace performed surprisingly poorly, allowing the Gunners to secure a comfortable victory without being at their best.

While the result may seem flattering, it was a much-needed win for Arsenal as they were desperate to return to form. Martinelli, initially starting the game on the bench, made a significant impact when he came on in the final minutes, contributing two late goals to seal the impressive victory.

After the match, the Brazilian said to the BBC:

“I’m so pleased for the team. I think we needed a performance like that. I’m here to help the team even if I only play one, two or three minutes.

Mikel Arteta had to do something to breathe new life into Arsenal’s attack so we saw Trossard replace Martinelli on the wing.

The Gunners started brightly and after ten minutes the change paid off as Trossard delivered a perfect corner onto Gabriel’s head to give us the lead, but still no attacker on the scoresheet.

After that the game went a bit flat with Palace staying physical and Arsenal only getting a short time around the Palace keepers area.

After half an hour it was Palace laying on pressure and forcing a very loose pass out from Raya went straight to Lerma and suddenly Raya had to make a great save to stop the equalizer.

We than went straight down the other end, won a corner, and yet again Gabriel got on the end of it and suddenly we had doubled our lead.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The global transition to clean energy has a cost, but it may be a lot lower than the figures that sometimes get thrown around. The differences are large, amounting to trillions and even tens of trillions of dollars.

A new analysis from RMI, the clean energy research and advocacy group, identifies what its authors say is a basic flaw in many of those estimates: They don’t fully take into account the decrease in fossil fuel spending.

“This kind of narrative that there’s a massive surge in capital that’s required is simply incorrect,” said Kingsmill Bond, a co-author of the report and an analyst for RMI whose work covers the financial side of the energy transition.

The report finds that global capital spending (money used for equipment and property, among other things) on energy supply is on track to be about $2.5 trillion in 2030, up from $2.2 trillion in 2023.

On my way to Moms for Liberty’s New York City town hall last night, I passed a posh-looking elderly woman, decked out in a brown fur coat, matching fur hat, and bright red lipstick. 

This was a more typical sight on the Upper East Side—the wealthy enclave that has been home to characters like Carrie Bradshaw, Jared and Ivanka, and much of the cast of Gossip Girl—than the one I encountered at the end of the block. Outside the Bohemian National Hall—a Czech and Slovak cultural center on East 73rd Street that the right-wing group booked to great outrage—protesters wielding signs with slogans like “Moms for Bigotry” and “Protect Children From Hate” shouted down attendees who filed into the building (which included Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew, and disgraced former congressman George Santos) via a police-protected ramp. Moms for Liberty, the so-called parents’ rights group that has pushed book bans and helped stir the moral panic about pronoun usage in schools, promised the event would consist of “important discussions about education in NY.”

“They need to go back to Florida—take the bigotry back where it belongs,” said one protester. “If it works in DeSantis land, fine. It doesn’t work here.”

But the protesters were skeptical that the group had anything of substance to offer at its first formal event in deep-blue New York City. 

“They need to go back to Florida—take the bigotry back where it belongs,” said protester and Brooklyn resident Julie DeLaurier, who said her two kids were graduates of the city’s public schools. “If it works in DeSantis land, fine. It doesn’t work here.”

New York City schools, she added, need “full funding—not censorship.” (The city’s education department will face $100 million in new cuts during the next fiscal year, on top of $600 million in cuts Mayor Eric Adams already announced, Chalkbeat New York reported this week.)

Millionaires from around the world support wealth taxes as a way to curb extreme inequality, according to a new poll that was released to coincide with the meeting of the World Economic Forum wrapping up today in Davos, Switzerland. “Davos” has evolved into quite the place to be for the billionaire set, who fly in on their private jets to party and schmooze with government and business bigwigs from all over the planet—and basically get to feel important.   

The poll results were accompanied by a letter signed by 260 millionaires—including Brian Cox, who plays billionaire Logan Roy in Succession—and a few billionaires, asking world leaders to raise their taxes. It was conducted by UK firm Survation at the behest of Patriotic Millionaires, a group of affluent Americans that advocates for fairer tax policies.

The key takeaways:

More than half of respondents said extreme wealth is a threat to democracy, that it hinders social mobility and prevents others from improving their lots, and that it exacerbates climate change.Two-thirds said they would support higher taxes on themselves if the money were used to improve public services and infrastructure—70 percent felt such policies and investments would make their economies stronger.Three-quarters favored a 2 percent wealth tax on billionaires. Indeed, 58 percent said they would support such a tax for anyone with more than $10 million in assets.

The respondents consisted of 2,300 citizens of G-20 nations who have more than $1 million in “investable” assets—or net assets excluding a person’s primary residence. Globally, this puts them within the richest 5 percent, per Patriotic Millionaires—though only barely in the United States, where the average household in the top 10 percent has assets of $5.2 million, according to data from RealTimeInequality.org.  

There are 184,300 US households with average wealth of $141.5 million. I can’t imagine they would let their fortunes be taxed without making an epic stink.

The poll results accompanied PM’s Proud to Pay More report, which profiles a handful of very wealthy people who believe their class should be taxed much more heavily. “We have spent the last 50 years believing in and nurturing an economic idea: that intensifying investment in the individual and encouraging the personal protection of wealth will benefit everyone,” writes Giorgiana Notarbartolo, an Italian entrepreneur from an old, wealthy industrial family. “It’s not hard to see how much damage the reality of the application of this idea has brought to our society.”

District Judge Lewis Kaplan has said it multiple times: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Kaplan wrote it in May 2023, when he presided over one of the trials against Trump. And he reminded jurors of the rape this week, during the latest proceedings in the multi-layered, winding rape and defamation cases brought against Trump by Carroll.  

Last spring, author and journalist Carroll sued Trump, testifying that he had raped her decades ago and had defamed her since by denying the accusations. Carroll won that suit. The jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and said he must pay $5 million—but they came short of saying he had raped her due to the legal scope of New York State’s penal code.  

In New York, someone can only be convicted of rape if they can prove vaginal penetration by a penis. In Carroll’s testimony, which mirrored what she had described privately for decades and publicly for the first time in 2019, she said Trump used both his fingers and his penis in the assault. But during the trial, the jury had only concluded that Trump had “deliberately and forcibly penetrated Ms. Carroll’s vagina with his fingers, causing immediate pain and long lasting emotional and psychological harm,” Kaplan’s decision from last year reads.   

That the jurors did not find that Carroll had proven rape, Kaplan explained, “does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” “Indeed,” he continued, “as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.” 

Federally, rape is defined as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” This broader explanation, while still dependent on penetration, would include assaults using fingers.  

The police response to the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed two teachers and 19 elementary school students at Robb Elementary School, was significantly botched by “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training,” a damning review from the Justice Department found on Thursday.

The long-awaited report detailed systemic failures by both state and local law enforcement surrounding the massacre, one of the worst school shootings in US history, including the events that contributed to the 77-minute delay between the arrival of first responders and when the shooter was killed.

“The victims and survivors should’ve never been trapped with that shooter for more than an hour as they waited for their rescue,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a Thursday press conference discussing the contents of the report. “The families of the victims deserved more than incomplete, inaccurate, and conflicting communications from officials of their loved ones.”

According to the DOJ, several failures laid the groundwork for the much-scrutinized delay, including officers spending more than 40 minutes searching for a key to a door that investigators say had likely been unlocked. Investigators wrote: “Though the entry team puts the key in the door, turns the key, and opens it, pulling the door toward them, the CIR Team concludes that the door is likely already unlocked, as the shooter gained entry through the door and it is unlikely that he locked it thereafter.”

The report, based on a review of more than 14,000 pieces of data and more than 260 interviews, also directly called out Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department officials, including former police chief Pete Arredondo for instructing officers not to enter some classrooms until keys had been secured.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Puerto Rico has begun using batteries connected to residents’ rooftop solar panels to provide backup power for its grid, helping prevent blackouts and offering an alternative to fossil fuel-burning peaker plants. It could be the first step toward building one of the largest virtual power plants of its kind.

The yearlong pilot, launched late last year by Puerto Rico’s utility Luma Energy, will pull power from up to 6,500 households during energy shortages. It is part of a transformational effort to modernize a deteriorating grid and transition to clean energy. 

If the program is successful, it could lead to a much larger virtual power plant with the potential to make peaker plants, which run only when demand spikes, unnecessary. “It could be really significant,” said Ben Hertz-Shargel, a grid expert at the research firm Wood Mackenzie, adding that if it were expanded to include all home batteries on the island, it would be larger than any residential-storage virtual power plant in North America.  

Virtual power plants, or VPPs, are networks of distributed energy resources—like home batteries, electric water heaters, or heat pumps—that can help the grid. They can manage energy demand, such as by adjusting smart thermostats during peak hours. Some can also supply power to the grid, by drawing from home or even EV batteries.

England fans once blamed a Steven Gerrard misplaced pass at the Euros on the fact that he didn’t have a winter break... obviously. Today, Marcus, Jim and Vish discuss whether this new-look January schedule is finally the solution to Premier League burnout.

Elsewhere, what do Zinedine Zidane, Philippe Coutinho and Gareth Barry have in common? And we try to decide on one wildcard spot for the England squad in the summer! Theo Walcott, anyone?

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The Prem is back with a big ol’ relegation six-pointer! Marcus, Jim, Andy and Vish preview that and a whole lot more.

We wonder in what state Kevin De Bruyne will return to Premier League action against Newcastle, Phil Brown gets last one shot at management before he gets the Bargain Hunt gig, and there is a MAJOR headloss in the final round of Jack’s Encyclopaedia.

And, of course, to one of our long-time favourite characters in football: Sven, we’re wishing you well.

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In a twist that left Marcus’ aunt practically choking on her Victoria sponge, Liverpool turned the first leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final on its head after going behind against Marco Silva’s men! But then Fulham do have a chance of winning the Euro Millions. So, you know, there is always that.

Marcus and Jim reflect on an intriguing encounter where Liverpool once again found a way to win thanks to the only person who’s more Scouse than then Scouse cat. Will they ever stop winning from a goal down? Plus, you’ll never believe the mega prize money for the Carabao Cup and you certainly WILL believe how Jose Mourinho’s Roma spent their evening.

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Football recently lost one of its greats. Today, Marcus, Jim, Andy and Vish remember Franz Beckenbauer – a player who reinvented his position and whose name has more significance than almost anyone else in the sport, though not without controversy.

Elsewhere, Marcus jinxes Middlesbrough after their historic win against Chelsea last night, before we ask the question on everyone's lips: why haven't Man United signed Jesse Lingard yet?! Jim then puts some well-deserved cake in Marcus’ face after Dominic Calvert-Lewin has his three-match suspension for getting sent off against Crystal Palace overturned. 

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That’s (almost) a wrap on the FA Cup third round! And we’re already looking forward to Liverpool playing Maidstone United on a plastic pitch at 12:30 in a few weeks’ time…

Marcus, Luke and Vish look back on some of the best bits from one of the best weekends in the football calendar. Jason Tindall pulling on Sunderland fans’ heartstrings? Darwin Nunez playing a fan’s head like a drum? And a Pascal Chimbonda update?! Yes please.

Plus, there’s the small matter of football’s true fairytale on FA Cup weekend: Jordan Henderson wants a return to the Premier League. Tune in for our reaction to all that and much more!

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