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In the news today: Tuesday’s election results provide early warning signs to Republicans and President Donald Trump; Sen. Cory Booker’s speech topples an old record; and how the Jalisco cartel lures recruits with fake jobs. Also, actor Val Kilmer of “Top Gun” and “Batman” fame, dies at 65. |
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford speaks during her election night party after winning the election Tuesday in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Kayla Wolf)
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Wisconsin and Florida elections provide early warning signs to Trump and Republicans
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A trio of elections on Tuesday provided early warning signs to Republicans and President Donald Trump at the beginning of an ambitious term, as Democrats rallied against his efforts to slash the federal government and the outsized role played by billionaire Elon Musk. Read more. |
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In the marquee race for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, the conservative judge endorsed by Trump and backed by Musk and his groups to the tune of $21 million lost by a significant margin in a state that the president won in November. Sauk County, northwest of the state capital of Madison, is a state bellwether that Trump won in November by 626 votes. Sauk shifted 16 points in the direction of Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal favorite backed by national Democrats and liberal billionaire donors.
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While Florida Republicans held two of the most pro-Trump House districts in the country, both candidates also significantly underperformed Trump’s November margins. Republican Randy Fine won his special election in the 6th District to replace Rep. Mike Waltz, who stepped down to serve as Trump’s national security adviser, while Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer, fended off a challenge from Democrat Gay Valimont to win the northwest Florida seat vacated by Matt Gaetz.
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With a nod to America’s civil rights legacy, Sen. Cory Booker makes a mark of his own
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Democratic Sen. Cory Booker ended his record-setting speech the same way he began it, more than 25 hours earlier: by invoking the words of his mentor, the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis. “He said for us to go out and cause some good trouble, necessary trouble, to redeem the soul of our nation,” Booker said. Read more.
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Booker’s feat of political endurance, holding the Senate floor for 25 hours and 5 minutes while delivering a wide-ranging critique of President Donald Trump and his policies broke the record for longest Senate floor speech, a mark that had belonged for decades to Strom Thurmond, the avowed segregationist from South Carolina who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Booker said he’d been aware of Thurmond’s record since first coming to the Senate in 2013, and it bothered him.
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Throughout his speech, he read letters from Americans about the impact that Trump’s agenda is having on their lives, drawing historical parallels and warning that the country faces a “looming constitutional crisis.” Democrats have struggled with how to take on Trump and the slashing of government being carried out by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Grassroots liberal organizers have been urging major Democratic figures to take a more combative approach. Some hoped that Booker’s speech would offer the party lessons going forward.
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Jalisco cartel lures recruits with fake jobs through social platforms and kills those who resist |
Online recruiting techniques and complicit local authorities have been among the details revealed by the renewed investigation of a ranch in western Mexico where authorities say the Jalisco New Generation Cartel trained its recruits. Lured by fake job offers, those who resisted risked death. Read more. |
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One of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says has around 19,000 in its ranks, developed rapidly into an extremely violent and capable force after it split from the Sinaloa cartel. The Jalisco cartel is led by Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, for whom the U.S. government has offered a $15 million reward for information leading to his capture.
The Jalisco cartel employs three recruiting methods: There are volunteers drawn by the pay and imagined lifestyle, which experts say make up the bulk of their number; there’s targeted recruitment of ex-military and police forces, who enter the cartel as trainers and leaders of squads of gunmen. Finally, there’s the kind of forced recruitment that investigators say happened at the Jalisco ranch. Authorities say the cartel uses social platforms — they’ve identified at least 60 pages — to offer fake job opportunities, especially as security guards, with weekly salaries of $600, well above the average for such positions. Once they have the applicants, they force them to join the cartel.
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The case of the ranch also serves as an example of how the Jalisco cartel is able to operate with impunity in territory it controls thanks to the complicity of local authorities, Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology researcher Carlos Flores said. Jalisco’s “capacity for violent action” and style of “irregular warfare” aided its speedy rise, Flores added, which coincided with the emergence of fentanyl as a highly profitable revenue stream.
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Rob de Heer talks next to his artwork at The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, March 25. (AP Photo/Molly Quell)
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From orange peels to bottle caps: Thousands of artists create their own ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’
After sending its most famous work to be featured in Amsterdam’s blockbuster 2023 exhibition of nearly every work by Johannes Vermeer, the Mauritshuis museum found itself with a blank space where the iconic “Girl with a Pearl Earring” had been displayed. The Hague-based institution turned to more than 2,700 artists, from Texas to Ukraine, from age 7 to 70, who created their own interpretations of the 17th-century masterpiece.
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