Southern University's youngest graduate ever has his diploma. Here's what's next for him.HOUSTON -- A federal judge in Texas rejected the auction sale of Alex Jones' Infowars to The Onion satirical news outlet, criticizing the bidding for the conspiracy theory platform as flawed as well as how much money families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting stood to receive. The decision late Tuesday night is a victory for Jones, whose Infowars site was put up for sale as part of his bankruptcy case in the wake of the nearly $1.5 billion that courts have ordered him to pay over falsely calling one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history a hoax. Families of the Sandy Hook victims had backed The Onion's bid. Following a two-day hearing in Houston, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said he would not approve the sale, while citing concerns about transparency in the auction. That clears the way for Jones to keep - at least for now - Infowars, which is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The Onion had planned to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January as a parody. "We are deeply disappointed in today's decision, but The Onion will continue to seek a resolution that helps the Sandy Hook families receive a positive outcome for the horror they endured," Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion's parent company, Global Tetrahedron, posted on social media late Tuesday. Lopez cited problems - but no wrongdoing - with the auction process. He said he said he did not think that those involved in the auction acted in bad faith and that everyone "put their best foot forward and tried to play within the rules." Still, Lopez said he said he did not want another auction and left it up to the trustee who oversaw the auction to determine the next steps. The Onion offered $1.75 million in cash and other incentives for Infowars' assets in the auction. First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones' name that sells nutritional supplements, bid $3.5 million. The bids were a fraction of the money that Jones has been ordered to pay in defamation lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Lopez said the auction outcome "left a lot of money on the table" for families. "You got to scratch and claw and get everything you can for them," Lopez said. Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families who sued Jones in Connecticut, said they were disappointed in the judge's ruling. "These families, who have already persevered through countless delays and roadblocks, remain resilient and determined as ever to hold Alex Jones and his corrupt businesses accountable for the harm he has caused," Mattei said in a statement. "This decision doesn't change the fact that, soon, Alex Jones will begin to pay his debt to these families and he will continue doing so for as long as it takes." Jones, who did not attend the proceedings, went back on his program late Tuesday to celebrate the judge's ruling, calling the auction "ridiculous" and "fraudulent." Although The Onion's cash offer was lower than that of First United American, it also included a pledge by many of the Sandy Hook families to forgo $750,000 of the auction proceeds due to them and give it to other creditors, providing the other creditors more money than they would receive under First United American's bid. The sale of Infowars is part of Jones' personal bankruptcy case, which he filed in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in defamation lawsuits in Connecticut and Texas filed by relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. Jones repeatedly called the shooting that killed 20 children and six educators a hoax staged by actors and aimed at increasing gun control. Parents and children of many of the victims testified in court that they were traumatized by Jones' conspiracies and threats from his followers. Jones has since acknowledged that the Connecticut school shooting happened. Most of the proceeds from the sale of Infowars, as well as many of Jones' personal assets, will go to the Sandy Hook families. Some proceeds will go to Jones' other creditors. Trustee Christopher Murray had defended The Onion's bid in court this week, testifying that he did not favor either bidder over the other and was not biased. He also revealed that First United American submitted a revised bid in recent days, but he said he could not accept it because the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit objected. The Onion valued its bid, with the Sandy Hook families' offer, at $7 million because that amount was equal to a purchase price that would provide the same amount of money to the other creditors. In a court filing last month, Murray's lawyers called First United American's request to disqualify The Onion's bid a "disappointed bidder's improper attempt to influence an otherwise fair and open election process." Jones' attorney, Ben Broocks, noted that the Sandy Hook lawsuit judgments could be overturned in pending appeals and got Murray to acknowledge that the Sandy Hook families' offer in The Onion bid could fall apart if that happens. That's because the percentage of the auction proceeds they would be entitled to could drop sharply and they wouldn't get the $750,000 from the sale to give to other creditors. Up for sale were all the equipment and other assets in the Infowars studio in Austin, as well as the rights to its social media accounts, websites, video archive and product trademarks. Jones uses the studio to broadcast his far-right, conspiracy theory-filled shows on the Infowars website, his account on the social platform X and radio stations. Many of Jones' personal assets also are being sold. Jones has set up another studio, websites and social media accounts in case The Onion wins approval to buy Infowars and kicks him out. Jones has said he could continue using the Infowars platforms if the auction winner is friendly to him. Jones is appealing the money has been ordered to pay in judgments citing free speech rights.Who’s ready to get a little action in? Just like the legendary Elton John said in 1973, . WWE fighting that is! (Yes, I just did that. You know you love it.) This weekend marks the revival of “Saturday Night’s Main Event,” for the first time since 2008. , the event returns to its roots by taking place at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York. Saturday’s card features five matches — seemingly the new normal for major WWE events — and has four championship matches, including the finals to crown the very first Women’s United States Champion. Naturally, the Uncrowned crew had to rock and make our boldest predictions. So feel free to get a belly full of beer, but try not to get drunker than a barrel full of monkeys and join us for a preview of “Saturday Night’s Main Event.” (OK, OK, I promise I'm done.) Rhodes' title run has a lot of story left, but it feels like the end could be coming soon. , and a rivalry with Randy Orton as a heel could be huge. But the most interesting option is CM Punk. Punk thrives as a heel, and his history with Rhodes adds some extra layers. Their time in AEW and the injury Punk suffered during last year’s Royal Rumble could both play into the story. If Punk wins this year’s Rumble, he could go after Rhodes in a way that feels personal and intense — perfect for WrestleMania. The question of all questions. Realistically, the person who end Rhodes' reigns is undeniably MJF in a perfect world that just doesn't exist. So it's hard to pin down who feels right to do the honors as we head into 2025. My original dream was LA Knight. Unfortunately, "The Megastar" has cooled down through his U.S. title reign and recently lost that belt to Shinsuke Nakamura. Knight could still be it, but for that to work he'll have to reheat the way only he can, and in turn, Rhodes would have to go full Homelander heel. Or hell, if Nakamura keeps getting presented how he has since returning, he might be a fun one. Randy Orton is a lovely long-term storytelling choice. At the very least, a match between the two has to be in the cards — whether Orton wins or not. And I'm not in love with the idea of him winning because of where he's at in his career. Someone like Bron Breakker would be ideal for the WWE for the highest match quality. CM Punk is an easy choice because he's CM Punk. Ultimately, this boils down to WWE not currently having a heel at the level of Roman Reigns worth putting over against him, which is why I suggest Rhodes' inevitable slow heel turn. I'm copping out with these requirements and multiple answers, I know. CM Punk is the answer at 2026's WrestleMania after he at 2025's WrestleMania. But my wild card? Nick Aldis. If you know, you know. I feel like I am the resident Jey Uso public relations guy when it comes to the Uncrowned crew. Anyway, despite Kevin Owens making a VERY strong case with this feud, Uso’s the clear answer for me. Ultimately, this boils down to two things — Rhodes holding the strap through WrestleMania and Roman Reigns remaining at a level where he doesn’t need the championship to be among WWE’s biggest draws. , Reigns coming out of it as the ultimate Tribal Chief and giving his blessing to Uso — “I have what I need, it’s your time Uce” — would get a major pop on the Raw after ‘Mania. This works even better if, like Drake suggested, Rhodes goes full Homelander mode sometime in 2025. As weird at a glance as it is to have Tiffany Stratton in the tournament, she's the one. Let's get crazy! — a master manipulator, double-crossing and doing everything in their power to meet their selfish desires. That means making history with this new title before dastardly cashing in her Money in the Bank on a world champion to become a double champ. Sure, that defeats the belt's purpose for a period, but you're building an ultra-heel star. You're welcome, WWE. For the record, I think whoever wins this is going to almost immediately drop the belt to Bianca Belair. If I believe that is going to happen, it narrows my choices down to Michin or Chelsea Green, neither of whom have held a singles championship in either NXT or WWE. While Green has been nothing short of amazing in her current role as a semi-comedy act, I think Michin comes out on top when all is said and done. Bayley would be a safe pick to give the new title credibility, but this feels like a chance to spotlight someone new. Chelsea Green could be the perfect choice. Green has been a consistent standout, balancing character work with solid performances in the ring. Giving her the title would bring some fun to the division while giving others a fresh face to chase. Big E seems like a natural for this. He’s already proven he’s great behind the desk on pre- and post-show panels, and his personality connects with a wide audience. He’s also shown how quickly he can change gears. Just recently, . Big E has the kind of presence and adaptability that could work in both wrestling commentary and, down the line, something bigger. This feels pretty obvious. It's Cody. He already has the look down and speaks well under any circumstance. Maybe drop the blonde. But other than that? "All-American Roller-Codster" all day. For the sake of not doubling up with “The American Nightmare,” I’ll go with Gunther. Even as a heel, he has a charm about him. Just watch him work the audience on the microphone. Plus, we already had a beloved Austrian transplant hold a major political office this century, so why not again? Gunther chopping the ever-loving souls out of Finn Bálor and Damian Priest. Plus, it's a triple-threat match and that's all the chaos we ever need. Shouts to Iyo Sky as well, who has been stellar these past few months — as always. She's winning that title. I WILL double up here and go with the triple-threat match between Gunther, Damian Priest and Finn Bálor. I fully expect these guys to put on an absolute banger, and while more-seasoned fans might be better able to follow the storytelling in the match itself, the contrasting styles between the three should have anyone walking away from this thinking, “That was .” Cody Rhodes’ entrance with the Winged Eagle WWE Championship is going to grab attention. The belt has a lot of nostalgia tied to it, and it’s a cool way for WWE to kick off their partnership with NBC. Even if you don’t know the history of the belt, the presentation will feel like a big deal. It would be fun to bring back WCW Nitro’s "Spring Breakout" for NXT. Picture a wrestling ring by a pool, with a beach setup in the background, that was "Spring Breakout" in the late 1990s. NXT’s roster would have a field day with a venue like that. Matches could spill into the water, and the visuals alone would make it something different from a regular show. NXT has done a great job of bringing a lot of these back, but one that has laid dormant for more than two decades (in WWE at least) is “Bash at the Beach.” AEW actually had a BATB branded show in 2020 — after which there was a legal battle involving trademarks, ironically with Cody Rhodes, and WWE regained the rights to the name — but we haven’t seen WWE run this in nearly a quarter century. Considering the significance the event has in the history of professional wrestling, I would say it deserves to return. Side note: I would have 1000% said “Monday Nitro” at Club La Vela in Panama City Beach, Florida, but I believe we’re sticking to pay-per-views/PLEs. Is there any other right answer besides Taboo Tuesday/Cyber Sunday? I mean, honestly. That event was completely ahead of its time with the online voting theme and elements it had throughout. We couldn't be in any more of a digital age with 2025 around the corner and I'm still stunned it hasn't returned since 2008. Any bit of interaction goes such a long way and adds investment. Talk about nostalgia, man. Cody Rhodes (Dansby, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Kevin Owens Gunther (Dansby, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Damian Priest vs. Finn Balor Liv Morgan (Dansby) vs. Iyo Sky (Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) Chelsea Green (Dansby), Bayley (Riggs), Tiffany Stratton, Michin (Sulla-Heffinger) Drew McIntyre (Dansby, Riggs, Sulla-Heffinger) vs. Sami Zayn

The cochlear question: as the parent of a deaf baby, should I give her an implant to help her hear?Donald Hand Jr. scores 29 with 10 rebounds, Boston College beats Fairleigh Dickinson 78-70

Defamation: Abuja, Oyo courts bar further sale of Farotimi’s bookTrump asks US Supreme Court to pause law threatening TikTok ban

NEW YORK — President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers urged a judge again Friday to throw out his hush money conviction, balking at the prosecution's suggestion of preserving the verdict by treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies. They called the idea "absurd." The Manhattan district attorney's office is asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to "pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful," Trump's lawyers wrote in a 23-page response. In court papers made public Tuesday, District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books after Trump's lawyers filed paperwork this month asking for the case to be dismissed. They include freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029, agreeing that any future sentence won't include jail time, or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn't sentenced and his appeal wasn't resolved because of presidential immunity. Former President Donald Trump appears May 30 at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York. Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove reiterated Friday their position that the only acceptable option is overturning his conviction and dismissing his indictment, writing that anything less will interfere with the transition process and his ability to lead the country. The Manhattan district attorney's office declined comment. It's unclear how soon Merchan will decide. He could grant Trump's request for dismissal, go with one of the prosecution's suggestions, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump's parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court, or choose some other option. In their response Friday, Blanche and Bove ripped each of the prosecution's suggestions. Halting the case until Trump leaves office would force the incoming president to govern while facing the "ongoing threat" that he'll be sentenced to imprisonment, fines or other punishment as soon as his term ends, Blanche and Bove wrote. Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. The prosecution's suggestion that Merchan could mitigate those concerns by promising not to sentence Trump to jail time on presidential immunity grounds is also a non-starter, Blanche and Bove wrote. The immunity statute requires dropping the case, not merely limiting sentencing options, they contend. Attorney Todd Blanche listens May 30 as his client Donald Trump speaks at Manhattan criminal court during jury deliberations in his criminal hush money trial in New York. Blanche and Bove, both of whom Trump tapped for high-ranking Justice Department positions, expressed outrage at the prosecution's novel suggestion that Merchan borrow from Alabama and other states and treat the case as if Trump died. Blanche and Bove accused prosecutors of ignoring New York precedent and attempting to "fabricate" a solution "based on an extremely troubling and irresponsible analogy between President Trump" who survived assassination attempts in Pennsylvania in July and Florida in September "and a hypothetical dead defendant." Such an option normally comes into play when a defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether it is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Merchan could innovate in what's already a unique case. "This remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding," prosecutors wrote in their filing this week. But at the same time, it wouldn't "precipitously discard" the "meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers." Prosecutors acknowledged that "presidential immunity requires accommodation" during Trump's impending return to the White House but argued that his election to a second term should not upend the jury's verdict, which came when he was out of office. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution. Other world leaders don't enjoy the same protection. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial on corruption charges even as he leads that nation's wars in Lebanon and Gaza. Trump has fought for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Prosecutors said he fudged the documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which Trump denies. Trump's hush money conviction was in state court, meaning a presidential pardon — issued by Biden or himself when he takes office — would not apply to the case. Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes. Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith ended his two federal cases, which pertained to Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in each case. Trump was scheduled for sentencing in the hush money case in late November, but following Trump's Nov. 5 election win, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the former and future president's sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office. Among President-elect Donald Trump's picks are Susie Wiles for chief of staff, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state, former Democratic House member Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Susie Wiles, 67, was a senior adviser to Trump's 2024 presidential campaign and its de facto manager. Trump named Florida Sen. Marco Rubio to be secretary of state, making a former sharp critic his choice to be the new administration's top diplomat. Rubio, 53, is a noted hawk on China, Cuba and Iran, and was a finalist to be Trump's running mate on the Republican ticket last summer. Rubio is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “He will be a strong Advocate for our Nation, a true friend to our Allies, and a fearless Warrior who will never back down to our adversaries,” Trump said of Rubio in a statement. The announcement punctuates the hard pivot Rubio has made with Trump, whom the senator called a “con man" during his unsuccessful campaign for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination. Their relationship improved dramatically while Trump was in the White House. And as Trump campaigned for the presidency a third time, Rubio cheered his proposals. For instance, Rubio, who more than a decade ago helped craft immigration legislation that included a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally, now supports Trump's plan to use the U.S. military for mass deportations. Pete Hegseth, 44, is a co-host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend” and has been a contributor with the network since 2014, where he developed a friendship with Trump, who made regular appearances on the show. Hegseth lacks senior military or national security experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he would inherit the top job during a series of global crises — ranging from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing attacks in the Middle East by Iranian proxies to the push for a cease-fire between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah and escalating worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea. Hegseth is also the author of “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” published earlier this year. Trump tapped Pam Bondi, 59, to be attorney general after U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration. She was Florida's first female attorney general, serving between 2011 and 2019. She also was on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020. Considered a loyalist, she served as part of a Trump-allied outside group that helped lay the groundwork for his future administration called the America First Policy Institute. Bondi was among a group of Republicans who showed up to support Trump at his hush money criminal trial in New York that ended in May with a conviction on 34 felony counts. A fierce defender of Trump, she also frequently appears on Fox News and has been a critic of the criminal cases against him. Trump picked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a well-known conservative who faced sharp criticism for telling a story in her memoir about shooting a rambunctious dog, to lead an agency crucial to the president-elect’s hardline immigration agenda. Noem used her two terms leading a tiny state to vault to a prominent position in Republican politics. South Dakota is usually a political afterthought. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Noem did not order restrictions that other states had issued and instead declared her state “open for business.” Trump held a fireworks rally at Mount Rushmore in July 2020 in one of the first large gatherings of the pandemic. She takes over a department with a sprawling mission. In addition to key immigration agencies, the Department of Homeland Security oversees natural disaster response, the U.S. Secret Service, and Transportation Security Administration agents who work at airports. The governor of North Dakota, who was once little-known outside his state, Burgum is a former Republican presidential primary contender who endorsed Trump, and spent months traveling to drum up support for him, after dropping out of the race. Burgum was a serious contender to be Trump’s vice presidential choice this summer. The two-term governor was seen as a possible pick because of his executive experience and business savvy. Burgum also has close ties to deep-pocketed energy industry CEOs. Trump made the announcement about Burgum joining his incoming administration while addressing a gala at his Mar-a-Lago club, and said a formal statement would be coming the following day. In comments to reporters before Trump took the stage, Burgum said that, in recent years, the power grid is deteriorating in many parts of the country, which he said could raise national security concerns but also drive up prices enough to increase inflation. “There's just a sense of urgency, and a sense of understanding in the Trump administration,” Burgum said. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ran for president as a Democrat, than as an independent, and then endorsed Trump . He's the son of Democratic icon Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated during his own presidential campaign. The nomination of Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services alarmed people who are concerned about his record of spreading unfounded fears about vaccines . For example, he has long advanced the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism. Scott Bessent, 62, is a former George Soros money manager and an advocate for deficit reduction. He's the founder of hedge fund Key Square Capital Management, after having worked on-and-off for Soros Fund Management since 1991. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary. He told Bloomberg in August that he decided to join Trump’s campaign in part to attack the mounting U.S. national debt. That would include slashing government programs and other spending. “This election cycle is the last chance for the U.S. to grow our way out of this mountain of debt without becoming a sort of European-style socialist democracy,” he said then. Scott Turner is a former NFL player and White House aide. He ran the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term in office. Trump, in a statement, credited Turner, the highest-ranking Black person he’s yet selected for his administration, with “helping to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities.” Sean Duffy is a former House member from Wisconsin who was one of Trump's most visible defenders on cable news. Duffy served in the House for nearly nine years, sitting on the Financial Services Committee and chairing the subcommittee on insurance and housing. He left Congress in 2019 for a TV career and has been the host of “The Bottom Line” on Fox Business. Before entering politics, Duffy was a reality TV star on MTV, where he met his wife, “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy. They have nine children. A campaign donor and CEO of Denver-based Liberty Energy, Write is a vocal advocate of oil and gas development, including fracking — a key pillar of Trump’s quest to achieve U.S. “energy dominance” in the global market. Wright also has been one of the industry’s loudest voices against efforts to fight climate change. He said the climate movement around the world is “collapsing under its own weight.” The Energy Department is responsible for advancing energy, environmental and nuclear security of the United States. Wright also won support from influential conservatives, including oil and gas tycoon Harold Hamm. Hamm, executive chairman of Oklahoma-based Continental Resources, a major shale oil company, is a longtime Trump supporter and adviser who played a key role on energy issues in Trump’s first term. President-elect Donald Trump tapped billionaire professional wrestling mogul Linda McMahon to be secretary of the Education Department, tasked with overseeing an agency Trump promised to dismantle. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s initial term from 2017 to 2019 and twice ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. She’s seen as a relative unknown in education circles, though she expressed support for charter schools and school choice. She served on the Connecticut Board of Education for a year starting in 2009 and has spent years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University in Connecticut. Brooke Rollins, who graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development, is a longtime Trump associate who served as White House domestic policy chief during his first presidency. The 52-year-old is president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute, a group helping to lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration. She previously served as an aide to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and ran a think tank, the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Trump chose Howard Lutnick, head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald and a cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his nominee for commerce secretary, a position in which he'd have a key role in carrying out Trump's plans to raise and enforce tariffs. Trump made the announcement Tuesday on his social media platform, Truth Social. Lutnick is a co-chair of Trump’s transition team, along with Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who previously led Trump’s Small Business Administration. Both are tasked with putting forward candidates for key roles in the next administration. The nomination would put Lutnick in charge of a sprawling Cabinet agency that is involved in funding new computer chip factories, imposing trade restrictions, releasing economic data and monitoring the weather. It is also a position in which connections to CEOs and the wider business community are crucial. FILE - Former Rep. Doug Collins speaks before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at a campaign event at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, Oct. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. Karoline Leavitt, 27, was Trump's campaign press secretary and currently a spokesperson for his transition. She would be the youngest White House press secretary in history. The White House press secretary typically serves as the public face of the administration and historically has held daily briefings for the press corps. Leavitt, a New Hampshire native, was a spokesperson for MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Trump, before joining his 2024 campaign. In 2022, she ran for Congress in New Hampshire, winning a 10-way Republican primary before losing to Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. Leavitt worked in the White House press office during Trump's first term before she became communications director for New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, Trump's choice for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped by Trump to be director of national intelligence, keeping with the trend to stock his Cabinet with loyal personalities rather than veteran professionals in their requisite fields. Gabbard, 43, was a Democratic House member who unsuccessfully sought the party's 2020 presidential nomination before leaving the party in 2022. She endorsed Trump in August and campaigned often with him this fall. “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community,” Trump said in a statement. Gabbard, who has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades, deploying to Iraq and Kuwait, would come to the role as somewhat of an outsider compared to her predecessor. The current director, Avril Haines, was confirmed by the Senate in 2021 following several years in a number of top national security and intelligence positions. Trump has picked John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence during his first administration, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency in his next. Ratcliffe was director of national intelligence during the final year and a half of Trump's first term, leading the U.S. government's spy agencies during the coronavirus pandemic. “I look forward to John being the first person ever to serve in both of our Nation's highest Intelligence positions,” Trump said in a statement, calling him a “fearless fighter for the Constitutional Rights of all Americans” who would ensure “the Highest Levels of National Security, and PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH.” Kash Patel spent several years as a Justice Department prosecutor before catching the Trump administration’s attention as a staffer on Capitol Hill who helped investigate the Russia probe. Patel called for dramatically reducing the agency’s footprint, a perspective that sets him apart from earlier directors who sought additional resources for the bureau. Though the Justice Department in 2021 halted the practice of secretly seizing reporters’ phone records during leak investigations, Patel said he intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters. Trump has chosen former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to serve as his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency . Zeldin does not appear to have any experience in environmental issues, but is a longtime supporter of the former president. The 44-year-old former U.S. House member from New York wrote on X , “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI.” “We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water,” he added. During his campaign, Trump often attacked the Biden administration's promotion of electric vehicles, and incorrectly referring to a tax credit for EV purchases as a government mandate. Trump also often told his audiences during the campaign his administration would “Drill, baby, drill,” referring to his support for expanded petroleum exploration. In a statement, Trump said Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.” Trump has named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband. Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission. Carr made past appearances on “Fox News Channel," including when he decried Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris' pre-Election Day appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” He wrote an op-ed last month defending a satellite company owned by Trump supporter Elon Musk. Trump said Atkins, the CEO of Patomak Partners and a former SEC commissioner, was a “proven leader for common sense regulations.” In the years since leaving the SEC, Atkins has made the case against too much market regulation. “He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World. He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. The commission oversees U.S. securities markets and investments and is currently led by Gary Gensler, who has been leading the U.S. government’s crackdown on the crypto industry. Gensler, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, announced last month that he would be stepping down from his post on the day that Trump is inaugurated — Jan. 20, 2025. Atkins began his career as a lawyer and has a long history working in the financial markets sector, both in government and private practice. In the 1990s, he worked on the staffs of two former SEC chairmen, Richard C. Breeden and Arthur Levitt. Jared Isaacman, 41, is a tech billionaire who bought a series of spaceflights from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk . He is the founder and CEO of a card-processing company and has collaborated closely with Musk ever since buying his first chartered SpaceX flight. He took contest winners on that 2021 trip and followed it in September with a mission where he briefly popped out the hatch to test SpaceX’s new spacewalking suits. Rep. Elise Stefanik is a representative from New York and one of Trump's staunchest defenders going back to his first impeachment. Elected to the House in 2014, Stefanik was selected by her GOP House colleagues as House Republican Conference chair in 2021, when former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney was removed from the post after publicly criticizing Trump for falsely claiming he won the 2020 election. Stefanik, 40, has served in that role ever since as the third-ranking member of House leadership. Stefanik’s questioning of university presidents over antisemitism on their campuses helped lead to two of those presidents resigning, further raising her national profile. If confirmed, she would represent American interests at the U.N. as Trump vows to end the war waged by Russia against Ukraine begun in 2022. He has also called for peace as Israel continues its offensive against Hamas in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon to target Hezbollah. President-elect Donald Trump says he's chosen former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO. Trump has expressed skepticism about the Western military alliance for years. Trump said in a statement Wednesday that Whitaker is “a strong warrior and loyal Patriot” who “will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended” and “strengthen relationships with our NATO Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability.” The choice of Whitaker as the nation’s representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an unusual one, given his background is as a lawyer and not in foreign policy. President-elect Donald Trump tapped former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia to be ambassador to China, saying in a social media post that the former CEO “brings valuable expertise to help build our relationship with China.” Perdue lost his Senate seat to Democrat Jon Ossoff four years ago and ran unsuccessfully in a primary against Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. Perdue pushed Trump's debunked lies about electoral fraud during his failed bid for governor. A Republican congressman from Michigan who served from 1993 to 2011, Hoekstra was ambassador to the Netherlands during Trump's first term. “In my Second Term, Pete will help me once again put AMERICA FIRST,” Trump said in a statement announcing his choice. “He did an outstanding job as United States Ambassador to the Netherlands during our first four years, and I am confident that he will continue to represent our Country well in this new role.” Trump will nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a staunch defender of Israel and his intended nomination comes as Trump has promised to align U.S. foreign policy more closely with Israel's interests as it wages wars against the Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah. “He loves Israel, and likewise the people of Israel love him,” Trump said in a statement. “Mike will work tirelessly to bring about peace in the Middle East.” Huckabee, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and 2016, has been a popular figure among evangelical Christian conservatives, many of whom support Israel due to Old Testament writings that Jews are God’s chosen people and that Israel is their rightful homeland. Trump has been praised by some in this important Republican voting bloc for moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Guilfoyle is a former California prosecutor and television news personality who led the fundraising for Trump's 2020 campaign and became engaged to Don Jr. in 2020. Trump called her “a close friend and ally” and praised her “sharp intellect make her supremely qualified.” Guilfoyle was on stage with the family on election night. “I am so proud of Kimberly. She loves America and she always has wanted to serve the country as an Ambassador. She will be an amazing leader for America First,” Don Jr. posted. The ambassador positions must be approved by the U.S. Senate. Guilfoyle said in a social media post that she was “honored to accept President Trump’s nomination to serve as the next Ambassador to Greece and I look forward to earning the support of the U.S. Senate.” Trump on Tuesday named real estate investor Steven Witkoff to be special envoy to the Middle East. The 67-year-old Witkoff is the president-elect's golf partner and was golfing with him at Trump's club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sept. 15, when the former president was the target of a second attempted assassination. Witkoff “is a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy,” Trump said of Witkoff in a statement. “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud." Trump also named Witkoff co-chair, with former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, of his inaugural committee. Trump said Wednesday that he will nominate Gen. Keith Kellogg to serve as assistant to the president and special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who has long been Trump’s top adviser on defense issues, served as National Security Advisor to Trump's former Vice President Mike Pence. For the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups formed after Trump left office to help lay the groundwork for the next Republican administration, Kellogg in April wrote that “bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong, America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties.” (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib) Trump asked Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., a retired Army National Guard officer and war veteran, to be his national security adviser, Trump announced in a statement Tuesday. The move puts Waltz in the middle of national security crises, ranging from efforts to provide weapons to Ukraine and worries about the growing alliance between Russia and North Korea to the persistent attacks in the Middle East by Iran proxies and the push for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah. “Mike has been a strong champion of my America First Foreign Policy agenda,” Trump's statement said, "and will be a tremendous champion of our pursuit of Peace through Strength!” Waltz is a three-term GOP congressman from east-central Florida. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan and also worked in the Pentagon as a policy adviser when Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were defense chiefs. He is considered hawkish on China, and called for a U.S. boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to its involvement in the origin of COVID-19 and its mistreatment of the minority Muslim Uighur population. Stephen Miller, an immigration hardliner , was a vocal spokesperson during the presidential campaign for Trump's priority of mass deportations. The 39-year-old was a senior adviser during Trump's first administration. Miller has been a central figure in some of Trump's policy decisions, notably his move to separate thousands of immigrant families. Trump argued throughout the campaign that the nation's economic, national security and social priorities could be met by deporting people who are in the United States illegally. Since Trump left office in 2021, Miller has served as the president of America First Legal, an organization made up of former Trump advisers aimed at challenging the Biden administration, media companies, universities and others over issues such as free speech and national security. Thomas Homan, 62, has been tasked with Trump’s top priority of carrying out the largest deportation operation in the nation’s history. Homan, who served under Trump in his first administration leading U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was widely expected to be offered a position related to the border, an issue Trump made central to his campaign. Though Homan has insisted such a massive undertaking would be humane, he has long been a loyal supporter of Trump's policy proposals, suggesting at a July conference in Washington that he would be willing to "run the biggest deportation operation this country’s ever seen.” Democrats have criticized Homan for his defending Trump's “zero tolerance” policy on border crossings during his first administration, which led to the separation of thousands of parents and children seeking asylum at the border. Customs and Border Protection, with its roughly 60,000 employees, falls under the Department of Homeland Security. It includes the Border Patrol, which Rodney Scott led during Trump's first term, and is essentially responsible for protecting the country's borders while facilitating trade and travel. Scott comes to the job firmly from the Border Patrol side of the house. He became an agent in 1992 and spent much of his career in San Diego. When he was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020, he enthusiastically embraced Trump's policies. After being forced out under the Biden administration, Scott has been a vocal supporter of Trump's hard-line immigration agenda. He appeared frequently on Fox News and testified in Congress. He's also a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Former Rep. Billy Long represented Missouri in the U.S. House from 2011 to 2023. Since leaving Congress, Trump said, Long “has worked as a Business and Tax advisor, helping Small Businesses navigate the complexities of complying with the IRS Rules and Regulations.” Former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler was appointed in January 2020 by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and then lost a runoff election a year later. She started a conservative voter registration organization and dived into GOP fundraising, becoming one of the top individual donors and bundlers to Trump’s 2024 comeback campaign. Even before nominating her for agriculture secretary, the president-elect already had tapped Loeffler as co-chair of his inaugural committee. Dr. Mehmet Oz, 64, is a former heart surgeon who hosted “The Dr. Oz Show,” a long-running daytime television talk show. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate as the Republican nominee in 2022 and is an outspoken supporter of Trump, who endorsed Oz's bid for elected office. Elon Musk, left, and Vivek Ramaswamy speak before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at an Oct. 27 campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. Trump on Tuesday said Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Ramaswamy will lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency" — which is not, despite the name, a government agency. The acronym “DOGE” is a nod to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin. Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside the government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.” He added the move would shock government systems. It's not clear how the organization will operate. Musk, owner of X and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has been a constant presence at Mar-a-Lago since Trump won the presidential election. Ramaswamy suspended his campaign in January and threw his support behind Trump. Trump said the two will “pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Russell Vought held the position during Trump’s first presidency. After Trump’s initial term ended, Vought founded the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that describes its mission as “renew a consensus of America as a nation under God.” Vought was closely involved with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term that he tried to distance himself from during the campaign. Vought has also previously worked as the executive and budget director for the Republican Study Committee, a caucus for conservative House Republicans. He also worked at Heritage Action, the political group tied to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Trump says he’s picking Kari Lake as director of Voice of America, installing a staunch loyalist who ran unsuccessfully for Arizona governor and a Senate seat to head the congressionally funded broadcaster that provides independent news reporting around the world. Lake endeared herself to Trump through her dogmatic commitment to the falsehood that both she and Trump were the victims of election fraud. She has never acknowledged losing the gubernatorial race and called herself the “lawful governor” in her 2023 book, “Unafraid: Just Getting Started.” Dan Scavino, deputy chief of staff Scavino, whom Trump's transition referred to in a statement as one of “Trump's longest serving and most trusted aides,” was a senior adviser to Trump's 2024 campaign, as well as his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. He will be deputy chief of staff and assistant to the president. Scavino had run Trump's social media profile in the White House during his first administration. He was also held in contempt of Congress in 2022 after a month-long refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. James Blair, deputy chief of staff Blair was political director for Trump's 2024 campaign and for the Republican National Committee. He will be deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs and assistant to the president. Blair was key to Trump's economic messaging during his winning White House comeback campaign this year, a driving force behind the candidate's “Trump can fix it” slogan and his query to audiences this fall if they were better off than four years ago. Taylor Budowich, deputy chief of staff Budowich is a veteran Trump campaign aide who launched and directed Make America Great Again, Inc., a super PAC that supported Trump's 2024 campaign. He will be deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel and assistant to the president. Budowich also had served as a spokesman for Trump after his presidency. Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health Trump has chosen Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to lead the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya is a physician and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, and is a critic of pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates. He promoted the idea of herd immunity during the pandemic, arguing that people at low risk should live normally while building up immunity to COVID-19 through infection. The National Institutes of Health funds medical research through competitive grants to researchers at institutions throughout the nation. NIH also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at its labs in Bethesda, Maryland. Dr. Marty Makary, Food and Drug Administration Makary is a Johns Hopkins surgeon and author who argued against pandemic lockdowns. He routinely appeared on Fox News during the COVID-19 pandemic and wrote opinion articles questioning masks for children. He cast doubt on vaccine mandates but supported vaccines generally. Makary also cast doubt on whether booster shots worked, which was against federal recommendations on the vaccine. Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Surgeon General Nesheiwat is a general practitioner who serves as medical director for CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey. She has been a contributor to Fox News. Dr. Dave Weldon, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Weldon is a former Florida congressman who recently ran for a Florida state legislative seat and lost; Trump backed Weldon’s opponent. In Congress, Weldon weighed in on one of the nation’s most heated debates of the 1990s over quality of life and a right-to-die and whether Terri Schiavo, who was in a persistent vegetative state after cardiac arrest, should have been allowed to have her feeding tube removed. He sided with the parents who did not want it removed. Jamieson Greer, U.S. trade representative Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council Trump is turning to two officials with experience navigating not only Washington but the key issues of income taxes and tariffs as he fills out his economic team. He announced he has chosen international trade attorney Jamieson Greer to be his U.S. trade representative and Kevin Hassett as director of the White House National Economic Council. While Trump has in several cases nominated outsiders to key posts, these picks reflect a recognition that his reputation will likely hinge on restoring the public’s confidence in the economy. Trump said in a statement that Greer was instrumental in his first term in imposing tariffs on China and others and replacing the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, “therefore making it much better for American Workers.” Hassett, 62, served in the first Trump term as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He has a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and worked at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute before joining the Trump White House in 2017. Ron Johnson, Ambassador to Mexico Johnson — not the Republican senator — served as ambassador to El Salvador during Trump's first administration. His nomination comes as the president-elect has been threatening tariffs on Mexican imports and the mass deportation of migrants who have arrived to the U.S.-Mexico border. Johnson is also a former U.S. Army veteran and was in the Central Intelligence Agency. Tom Barrack, Ambassador to Turkey Barrack, a wealthy financier, met Trump in the 1980s while helping negotiate Trump’s purchase of the renowned Plaza Hotel. He was charged with using his personal access to the former president to secretly promote the interests of the United Arab Emirates, but was acquitted of all counts at a federal trial in 2022. Trump called him a “well-respected and experienced voice of reason.” Andrew Ferguson, Federal Trade Commission Ferguson, who is already one of the FTC's five commissioners, will replace Lina Khan, who became a lightning rod for Wall Street and Silicon Valley by blocking billions of dollars worth of corporate acquisitions and suing Amazon and Meta while alleging anticompetitive behavior. “Andrew has a proven record of standing up to Big Tech censorship, and protecting Freedom of Speech in our Great Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding, “Andrew will be the most America First, and pro-innovation FTC Chair in our Country’s History.” Jacob Helberg, undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment Dan Bishop, deputy director for budget at the Office of Budget and Management Leandro Rizzuto, Ambassador to the Washington-based Organization of American States Dan Newlin, Ambassador to Colombia Peter Lamelas, Ambassador to Argentina Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.Former Director of CARE Ghana, David Kumi, has launched a scathing critique of Ghana’s Electoral Commission (EC), accusing the body of dismissive behavior and failing to heed public concerns. According to a report by Ghana Web on Saturday, December 28, 2024, Kumi’s comments came after a recent EC statement that the practice of re-collation during elections is not new, a position Kumi described as contradictory. Kumi expressed frustration over what he perceived as the EC’s arrogant posture, asserting that the Commission behaves as though it is infallible. He argued that this approach undermines public trust and disrespects the intelligence of Ghanaians. The former CARE Ghana director particularly took issue with what he described as inconsistencies in the EC’s policies and public statements. According to Kumi, the EC had previously declared that Ghana no longer practices re-declaration or re-collation of election results, advising candidates who feel aggrieved to seek legal redress. However, the latest pronouncement from the Commission appears to contradict that position. He also seemingly suggested that there is no sense in any of the actions made under the EC chairperson, Jean Mensa. He said, “Whatever the EC is saying doesn’t make sense because you were the same person who said the country no longer practices re-declaration and re-collation. Thus, any candidate who feels cheated should go to court. And you come back to say and do otherwise, then there is no sense in any of her actions.” Kumi also called on the EC to adopt a more transparent and accountable approach in its dealings with the public. He urged the Commission to recognize the intelligence of Ghanaians and to communicate policies in a manner that respects their concerns. “You have done something, and it has gone wayward. Instead of you telling us something we are willing to hear and taking needed actions, you are doing what will please you. What are you trying to tell Ghanaians?” Kumi questioned. He emphasized the need for the EC to act in a way that fosters public confidence, particularly in a democratic system where the credibility of the electoral process is paramount. Kumi also raised broader concerns about the independence granted to the EC under Ghana’s constitution. While acknowledging the importance of an independent electoral body, he argued that this autonomy has led to what he described as misbehavior by the Commission. He also pointed to the controversy surrounding the use of the Ghana Card as the sole identification document for voter registration as a case in point. “Whatever we say or suggest, they either take it or leave it, whether good or bad. We advised that lots of people are yet to receive their Ghana Cards, so the idea of it being the only means to vote should not be considered, but the EC chose to once again do what it pleases,” he added.Unique among ‘Person of the Year’ designees, Donald Trump gets a fact-check from Time magazine

Unique among ‘Person of the Year’ designees, Donald Trump gets a fact-check from Time magazineHow I Love Lucy changed televisionEL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) — Justin Herbert is dealing with an ankle injury for the second time this season. The Chargers quarterback did not practice Wednesday as Los Angeles began preparations for its game Sunday against Tampa Bay. Herbert injured his left ankle during the first quarter of last Sunday's 19-17 loss at Kansas City. Herbert said Wednesday that the injury occurred during a 7-yard scramble on third down during the opening drive. Television cameras showed him grimacing and walking slowly to the sideline after the play. “It was difficult to play with," he said. "It was one of those things where we limited some of the runs out of the pocket. I didn't feel great, but it was one of those things to play through.” Herbert's left leg was later bruised after taking a hard hit from linebacker Nick Bolton during the second quarter. Herbert missed only one play and completed 21 of 30 passes for 213 yards and a touchdown. “The contusion, I think that is something that is easily recoverable. I'm doing everything I can with the ankle,” Herbert said. “If I felt like I could have practiced at 100% and make sure everyone was able to get full-speed reps, I would have. I didn't think I was able to do that today, so the trainers and I were on the same page.” Herbert suffered a high sprain to his right ankle during the third quarter of a 26-3 win at Carolina on Sept. 15. That limited his mobility and some of the play calls in losses to Pittsburgh and Kansas City the next two games. However, Herbert is not in a walking boot this time, which was the case with the injury earlier in the season. The fifth-year quarterback also said the pain tolerance with his ankle injury is better to deal with compared to the earlier one. “I’d like to see him get treatment and not be on his feet. He will do everything in his power to play on Sunday,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. The Chargers have lost two of their last three, but are the sixth seed in the AFC with an 8-5 record. After facing NFC South-leading Tampa Bay on Sunday, Los Angeles hosts Denver in a Thursday night matchup on Dec. 19 as both teams are vying for a playoff spot. It's the second time in three seasons Herbert is dealing with an injury after a game at Kansas City. In 2022, he fractured rib cartilage after taking a hard hit from Chiefs defensive lineman Michael Danna during the fourth quarter. Herbert missed two weeks during training camp because of an injury to the plantar fascia in his right foot. He also had a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder near the end of the 2022 season and two broken fingers last year, including one on his throwing hand that caused him to miss the final four games. Herbert has joined Tom Brady as the only players who have not thrown an interception in 11 straight games with a minimum of 15 attempts in each game. Brady accomplished the feat with New England in 2010. The last time Herbert was picked off was midway through the first quarter on Sept. 15 by Carolina’s Jaycee Horn. Herbert has also gone 335 consecutive pass attempts without an interception, the fifth-longest streak in league history. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Unique among ‘Person of the Year’ designees, Donald Trump gets a fact-check from Time magazineThe Shrimpers host Ebbsfleet United at Roots Hall on Boxing Day. And Maher is desperate to send what promises to be another big crowd home happy. “You always get a big crowd in for Boxing Day and I think everyone has been indoors for 24 hours so they want to get out to watch football and their team,” said Maher. “It’s a tradition and it’s one I enjoy. “They’re normally local games as well that families all go to and enjoy their day. “Our job is to make sure they do enjoy it by getting the right result.” Blues, who sit 16th in the standings, will be favourites for the game against their rock bottom opponents. But Maher knows Ebbsfleet will also be fired up for the clash. "They're having a difficult time but anyone coming to Roots Hall knowing there's 7,000 or 8,000 there will be up for it and a lot of teams are," said Maher. "Our job is to deal with that and put on a good performance to get a good result. "Ebbsfleet will be wanting to improve and it's our job to make sure that doesn't happen. "We've got to go and win the game." The Shrimpers will be bidding to bounce back from Saturday's 3-0 defeat at York City. And Maher has made sure the players quickly forgot about the setback. "There's obvious disappointment from Saturday in terms of the result," said Maher. "We review it, go through it and look at what we can do better but you've got to get over it quickly because you have to prepare again and train properly like we've done today" However, Maher also felt there were some positives to take from Saturday's game. "You have to take away the good stuff too," said the Blues boss. "The disappointing thing is the goals we conceded and how quickly they came put the game out of sight. "The positive spin is that for 65 minutes we've gone to a team who full of confidence and been a match in certain areas. "We've been competitive and had our moments which if they go the way you want then the games changes but it didn't and we've got to do better."

Former Canadiens draft pick hoping for NHL comeback after spending time in RussiaNEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 28, 2024-- Halper Sadeh LLC, an investor rights law firm, is investigating whether the sale of Altair Engineering Inc. (NASDAQ: ALTR) to Siemens for $113.00 per share in cash is fair to Altair shareholders. Halper Sadeh encourages Altair shareholders to click here to learn more about their legal rights and options or contact Daniel Sadeh or Zachary Halper at (212) 763-0060 or sadeh@halpersadeh.com or zhalper@halpersadeh.com . The investigation concerns whether Altair and its board of directors violated the federal securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to shareholders by failing to, among other things: (1) obtain the best possible consideration for Altair shareholders; (2) determine whether Siemens is underpaying for Altair; and (3) disclose all material information necessary for Altair shareholders to adequately assess and value the merger consideration. On behalf of Altair shareholders, Halper Sadeh LLC may seek increased consideration for shareholders, additional disclosures and information concerning the proposed transaction, or other relief and benefits. We would handle the action on a contingent fee basis, whereby you would not be responsible for out-of-pocket payment of our legal fees or expenses. Halper Sadeh LLC represents investors all over the world who have fallen victim to securities fraud and corporate misconduct. Our attorneys have been instrumental in implementing corporate reforms and recovering millions of dollars on behalf of defrauded investors. Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. View source version on businesswire.com : https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241228354674/en/ CONTACT: Halper Sadeh LLC One World Trade Center 85th Floor New York, NY 10007 Daniel Sadeh, Esq. Zachary Halper, Esq. (212) 763-0060 sadeh@halpersadeh.com zhalper@halpersadeh.com https://www.halpersadeh.com KEYWORD: NEW YORK UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LEGAL SOURCE: Halper Sadeh LLC Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 12/28/2024 02:08 PM/DISC: 12/28/2024 02:08 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241228354674/en

ICE Boxing Day breakfast party takes vibes to higher level

Red Sox acquire reliever Jovani Morán from Twins for utility player Mickey GasperPremier David Eby made his annual visit to the B.C. business community this week, but if you were looking for specifics and good news, you were left grasping at straws. Paper straws, which fall apart pretty much right away. As evidence that he’s turned a page with the business community, Eby cited fast-tracking nine wind energy projects. There will be more examples, he promised vaguely, with no hint of what industries or projects he may be favouring. Or why. Or how. Or when. So it’s fair to say Eby is not exactly throwing caution to the wind to attract more investment into B.C. – which is seeing the , and virtually nothing in line to replace it. B.C. Chamber of Commerce president Fiona Famulak tried her best to coax a commitment to natural resources out of Eby, asking a question that cited the Mining Association of B.C.’s analysis that it takes 12-15 years to permit a mine in this province. Pushing back, Eby claimed his government had reduced the timeline for mining permits by 40 per cent, but offered no corroborating evidence. Even if we take the premier at his word, that means the 12-15-year review period has been cut to seven to nine years. That’s some thin gruel. And even thinner when one considers it came just minutes after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump put this out on his Truth Social: “Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!” Or, put another way: “Drill, baby, drill!” How does that affect Canada? It’s better understood that Trump’s proposed 25 per cent tariffs would be incredibly harmful. For example, the softwood lumber tariff has resulted in $9 billion paid by Canadian producers since 2017. That’s by one industry on one product, at a rate less than half of what Trump is threatening. And yet this policy of “fully expedited approvals” could be even more damaging to the B.C. economy. If you’re an investor in oil, natural gas, tech, automobile manufacturing, mining, battery plants, pipelines, large development projects or other big-ticket items, why would you ever come to B.C., when you could get to work in any American state far faster and cheaper? Where your jobs and investment would be welcomed with open arms and the removal of regulatory barriers? By contrast, the BC NDP government has slathered cost and red tape on to business since 2017: multiple tax hikes, anti-employer rhetoric, WorkSafe regulations skewed completely to labour. And their soft-on-crime and drug-friendly policies have ramped up petty crime, again harming business. “When you have a near-death experience as a politician, it focuses the mind,” Eby said at the end of his speech, turning the focus back to himself. That’s all well and good. But it’s our provincial economy and our businesses that are having a near-death experience right now, as the provincial deficit and debt rush out of control, government hiring and costs far outpace the corporate sector that has to pay for them, and . America’s arms are wide open. But despite his political near-death experience, B.C.’s premier seems as unfocused and as unhelpful as ever.Jakub Stancl and Vojtech Hradec each had three goals and two assists as Czechia thumped Kazakhstan 14-2 on Saturday at the world junior hockey championship. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * Jakub Stancl and Vojtech Hradec each had three goals and two assists as Czechia thumped Kazakhstan 14-2 on Saturday at the world junior hockey championship. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Jakub Stancl and Vojtech Hradec each had three goals and two assists as Czechia thumped Kazakhstan 14-2 on Saturday at the world junior hockey championship. Stancl now leads the international tournament with four goals and three assists. Matej Mastalirsky also had a hat trick as Czechia (2-0-0-0) had eight goals in the second period alone. Adam Novotny, Vojtech Cihar, Adam Jecho,Petr Sikora, and Jakub Dvorak all added a goal in the rout. Jan Kavan made 16 saves for the win in net. Kirill Lyapunov and Alexander Kim replied for Kazakhstan (0-2-0-0). Goaltender Vladimir Nikitin stopped 17-of-26 shots and Jokhar Dudarkiyev allowed five goals on 10 shots. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Later, Danny Nelson had a pair of goals as the United States beat Latvia 5-1. Ryan Leonard, Zeev Buium and Max Plante rounded out the attack for the U.S. (2-0-0-0), while Hampton Slukynsky made 25 saves for the win. Davids Livsics was the lone scorer for Latvia (0-1-0-1) a day after it stunned Canada 3-2 in a shootout. Linards Feldbergs turned aside 36 shots in net. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 28, 2024. Advertisement

“There Is No Sense In Any Of Her Actions” Kumi Slams EC Over Alleged Refusal To Accept CorrectionsA cereal switch-up is stirring up sweet — well, mostly salty — discussion. Post Consumer Brands confirmed to TODAY.com that it’s discontinuing its beloved Oreo O’s cereal and replacing it with something new: Oreo Puffs. It features chocolaty cereal puffs and mini marshmallows with the aim of creating a similar experience to dunking an Oreo cookie into a glass of milk. According to Post, Oreo Puffs are made with real Oreo cookie wafers — which are the cookies that sandwich the creme.. The new cereal will be available at retailers nationwide including Walmart and Target for an MSRP of $4.99. According to Post, Oreo Puffs are made with real Oreo cookie wafers — which are the cookies that sandwich the creme.. The new cereal will be available at retailers nationwide including Walmart and Target for an MSRP of $4.99. “With its introduction, OREO PUFFSTM cereal will replace OREO O’s® cereal on store shelves,” Post tells TODAY.com in an email. Oreo O’s was introduced to U.S. markets in 1997, stayed on shelves until 2007, and then was brought back in 2017 during a big wave of nostalgic marketing. And just like that ... it’s returned to the vault of cereals past. We’ll check back in about 10 years to see if it’s revived from its sugary slumber again. News of the swap has hit the crumb-filled corners of social media, with popular snack-spotting Instagram account Markie Devo posting about the new product and its predecessor. As usual, his comments section had thoughts. “They should’ve kept the rings but added marshmallows,” wrote one commenter. “Sooo coco puffs,” another said , referencing the General Mills-brand analog to the new cereal. “ya know some things just need to be left alone !!” wrote another, and one more added , “I’m tired of every cereal turning into puffs 😢.” Others were excited about the breakfast-basednews. “These sound amazing,” wrote one user, and another added , “Oh wow my kids would be all over this one!” “OREO Puffs Cereal is out now and will be REPLACING OREO O’s Cereal!” one more user wrote on a separate post about the cereal, adding they think the new cereal is an upgrade. “It’s disappointing whenever a beloved item becomes discontinued, but this is actually very exciting news for us because we believe marshmallows BELONG in OREO Cereal!” This story first appeared on TODAY.com . More from TODAY :Donald Trump appointed the ex-girlfriend of his eldest son as the ambassador to GreeceAnn Selzer still wonders why final Iowa Poll badly missed its mark

I knew my daughter could hear: not just because she loved music, but because she had perfect rhythm. She punched her fists in the air like a human metronome, and brought a doughy heel to the ground precisely on each downbeat. I had thrown off the yoke of milestone-tracking months earlier, having become fixated on her inability to roll during the precise developmental week for rolling. So when she didn’t form consonants at the prescribed time, I made a deliberate choice to ignore it. It didn’t occur to me that deafness might not be a binary, and that certain vibrations and pitches – the downbeat of a song by toddler-music group the Wiggles, say – could be apprehended, while other subtle speech sounds might be snatched out of a sentence. So it was a couple of months after her first birthday when we discovered that our Botticellian baby had mild hearing loss, and two years after that when she lost almost all of her remaining hearing entirely. Like most hearing parents of deaf children, my first close relationship with a deaf person was with my child. Despite a relatively broad cultural education, I knew next to nothing about hearing loss or deaf culture. What little I had absorbed was an incomplete and almost entirely inaccurate patchwork of pop culture snippets – the mother’s horror when her baby doesn’t react to the fire engine’s siren in the film Mr Holland’s Opus (1995); Beethoven’s struggle to hear the first performance of his Ninth Symphony; the lift scene in Jerry Maguire (1996) where the loving boyfriend signs “you complete me” to his partner; Quasimodo’s apparent industrial deafness from the bells of Notre-Dame; and, worst of all, the appalling memory of my university housemate imitating a deaf accent for laughs. This bleak landscape of ignorance and misinformation is often the lookout from which parents begin making decisions, as deaf critics have rightly pointed out. But although I began educating myself belatedly, it didn’t take long for the calcified layers of assumptions and approximations to disintegrate. Chief among them was the unquestioned belief that hearing loss, for an early deafened person, is even a loss at all. In a recent interview with the news site Truthout , the deaf philosopher Teresa Blankmeyer Burke argues that the language of tragic loss seems particularly ill-fitting for a deaf child: “Some of us do not share this experience [of loss] at all, but only know what it is to be in our bodies as they have always existed.” News headlines about childhood deafness and hearing technology often slip into the “from deaf tragedy to hearing miracle” narrative, missing this crucial point about self-concept entirely. For many parents, this has intuitive clarity too. Absolutely smitten with my baby’s many tiny perfections, I had a stubborn sense that her deafness was not a pit she had fallen into, but just one of many extraordinary discoveries about her that I was making every day. It was a comforting certainty to cling to in the wee hours, when I was beset by a looping reel of terrors about the shadowy obstacles she would undeservedly face, and that I would be impotent to protect her from. Even accepting the reality of life’s vicissitudes, most of us hope for a relatively smooth course for our children. Unfettered sensorial access to the world being at the bottom of a hierarchy of wishes, and fundamental to the rest. The idea that so much was arbitrarily denied a baby so new to the world was, at times, almost impossible to withstand. F rom the moment of discovery of their child’s hearing loss, a parent finds themselves not only unmoored by circumstance, but adrift in a tempestuous cultural debate. While not exactly a global topic of dinner-table conversation, the battle for the identities and futures of deaf children is fiercely fought. Arguments drift down from academic journals to social media, where many new parents are washed ashore in the absence of a definitive source of information about their child’s future. Trying to reconcile the contradictory advice given by a new cast of characters – GPs, paediatricians, ear, nose and throat specialists, audiologists, speech therapists, disability insurance advisers, interested observers – I looked at Instagram to find some clarity in authentic, lived experience. Starting with a few anodyne hashtags, I initially found a bunch of mothers (differing in every respect, but always, always mothers) sharing inspiring stories about the lives of their deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Unlike the normative “blend-in-or-else” diktats of my 1980s childhood, this new world was a sea of diversity – confident smiles, “ Deaf Gain ” wallpapers, kids signing in slang, and proudly visible, brightly coloured hearing technology. I was buoyed up by this extraordinary community, and lifted yet again when my daughter’s metallic pink hearing aids arrived. She no longer had to jam her Wiggles keyboard to her ear to hear the music, and all of my hesitations and ambivalences were converted into happy certainties. But the tone of my feed shifted quite quickly. Gone were the mothers meticulously crafting Spider-Man hearing aid covers and Peppa Pig cochlear implant cases, and in their place were reels and posts that had a more political flavour. We had begun working with a speech-therapist using the LSL (listening and spoken language) or AVT (auditory-verbal therapy) approach, which aims to ensure children don’t miss the verbal data bombardment they need in early childhood to develop spoken language. This is essentially about optimising hearing technology – hearing aids or cochlear implants (CI) – so that a deaf or hard-of-hearing child can access the full range of speech sounds, and then using play-based games and activities that focus on listening and speaking (very similarly to traditional speech therapy for hearing children with speech delay). Historically, some exponents of this approach discouraged the use of sign, but not these days and certainly not in my experience. However, they do prioritise spoken language in the early years, recognising that sign languages can be tricky for hearing adults to attain with the necessary proficiency and syntactic complexity in the time a child needs them to. But what I had experienced as a genuinely caring, evidence-based and pragmatic attempt to empower deaf children and give them the widest set of options had been singled out as an example of “ audism ” by influential deaf and deaf-adjacent critics – a sinister assimilationist model with paternalistic colonial overtones and a complicated history. Critics argued that Alexander Graham Bell – the founding father of what is still one of the major LSL programmes in the US – was not so much a benevolent supporter of deaf children, but a eugenicist and “oralist” with grotesque views about deafness on a self-appointed mission to eradicate sign languages. There were traumatised adults distancing themselves from their parents entirely for forcing them, despite great difficulty, to listen, speak and lip-read. The teary-eyed social media phenomenon of babies with hearing aids and CIs being filmed hearing sound for the first time was disparagingly called “ inspiration porn ” or “switch-on porn” – the vulgar showboating of an arrogant hearing class determined to convert their perfectly deaf children into imperfectly hearing ones. Not only was it inaccurate (no hearing technology makes hearing easy or natural for deaf people), but it spoke of, at best, a normative desire to correct or fix something that was not in their view broken – only different. There were videos about so-called “ language deprivation ” – when a child is in effect linguistically starved because parents and providers incorrectly assume their aids or implants give them sufficient access to the subtle speech sounds around them. Through this lens, the speech therapy games we parents were playing weren’t cute or supportive – they were the pastel-coloured attempts of a hegemonic hearing overclass to turn their happy deaf children into unhappy hearing ones. On one level, I was very moved by these arguments, and it seemed fair to lend more weight to the opinions of those with lived experience of deafness than to those without. I began to wonder if I was compelling my non-consenting deaf daughter to “pass” imperfectly and at great personal cost in a hearing world, rather than empowering her to flourish easily by her own lights in the deaf one. While my husband was able to contextualise the deaf culture proponents as a small but noisy minority, I became ever more anxious and fixated on their arguments. And when my daughter progressively lost what remained of her hearing and cochlear implants were proposed, my wheels began to spin in the ethical mud. C ontrary to what many imagine, cochlear implants are not just fancy hearing aids. A hearing aid amplifies sound using the existing mechanisms and pathways of the ear, but the clarity of speech can tail off once hearing loss is in the severe to profound ranges, with things sounding a lot louder, but not necessarily clearer. A cochlear implant, by contrast, is an electronic device that creates the sensation of sound by bypassing the inner ear entirely and stimulating the auditory nerve with a set of electrodes. There is an internal component, with a magnet, a receiver and an electrode array that spirals around the cochlear (a biomimetic design inspired by a strand of grass curling around a shell’s spiral), and an external component with a microphone to pick up sound, with a processor to encode it. While hearing aids are relatively uncontroversial, the internal portion of a cochlear implant requires surgery, which entails risk. There is a significant period of rehabilitation as the brain learns to make sense of a totally new type of electronic input, and the external processor itself is slightly larger and more visible on the head. Deaf adults can of course make this decision for themselves, but increasingly the recommendations are for parents to implant their children in infancy as this generally produces the best outcomes. Even in the past few years, the age of recommended implantation for severely to profoundly deaf babies has dropped to nine months. Their astonishing success rate in aiding the understanding of speech has meant a new generation of deaf adults are emerging who do not use sign language in the way they would have done only a few decades earlier. While for some this is one of the great advances of modern medicine, for others it is a deeply worrying evolution. The new technological possibilities and their swift adoption have understandably caused widespread consternation in deaf communities globally. The future of their complex and rich visual languages is endangered by the developments, as well as the communities and ways of life that stem from them. These are genuine and valid concerns, and ones that are rarely addressed in moderate, bipartisan terms. There are also broader ethical concerns raised by surgical intervention of this kind on children whose lives are not threatened, and who are not in a position to request or consent. Why is the case of cochlear implantation so different from other parallel medical situations that a parent has to navigate? Why is it controversial in the way that an artificial limb or cornea transplant is not? Unlike the parent of a child with vision loss who pursues laser surgery in an uncomplicated way, the parent of a deaf child is implicated in a much larger politico-cultural struggle. To my outsider’s eyes, a lot of this was not the tangled snarl of identity politics, but seemed largely to stem from a fundamental disagreement over the metaphysics of deafness. Whereas the hearing world, hand in hand with the medical one, has conceptualised deafness as a sensory deficit that can be “restored” – albeit partially, temporarily and imperfectly – parts of the deaf world argue that this approach demonstrates an outdated pathologisation of difference. Happily, we live in an era where neuro- and other divergences are no longer seen as aberrations, but rather as part of a welcome heterogeneity of biology and perspective. Deaf critics and disability theorists thus pose the question: why does society want to frame deafness as a medical abnormality rather than a sensory difference? In their view, the medical model is the outward face of a punishing normative tyranny. Any deviations from the standard hearing model are ushered – either gently and kindly or violently and oppressively – back to the midline. Like the twisted “benevolent” logic of gay conversion therapies, even the so-called good intentions of parents and bystanders (as anti-racist campaigners have long argued) could perpetuate discrimination just as easily as the malign ones. The psychologist Harlan Lane went even further, arguing that deafness is actually more akin to an ethnicity than to a disability. If the same rights and protections apply here as to other cultural, religious and racial minorities, then the entire therapeutic landscape looks incredibly sinister. At its mildest, the mainstream model of improving a deaf child’s hearing becomes the enforced alteration of a member of a cultural and linguistic minority. And at worst, as with the cochlear implant, it is not only an invasive surgery that endangers and irrevocably changes a child, but also threatens the extinction of an imperilled language and the erasure of a cultural group. Lane likens the hearing parents of a deaf child to parents who adopt a child from a different racial background, arguing they have a similar responsibility to uphold the cultural mores and traditions of their child’s ethnic group. Tom Humphries, the deaf culturalist who coined the term “audism”, has a deeply cynical view of hearing parents, positioning them simply as legal “owners” of their deaf children, many of whom eventually “migrate” back to what he strongly implies is their true cultural home. He explicitly likens this pattern of ownership and return to that of African American enslaved people or Latin American populations under colonial rule. As a parent, this line of argumentation is jarring, to say the least. While it lies at the extreme end of the debate, many deaf critics have joined Humphries in arguing vociferously that hearing parents cannot be trusted to give informed consent on behalf of their child – surgical or otherwise. W ith these sorts of arguments informing a good deal of the public discourse around deafness, what is the hearing parent of a deaf child to think? And more importantly, how are they to act? The underlying assumption of CI critics seems to be that the neutral stance is to do nothing, and that any intervention at all requires moral licence. But doing nothing isn’t always neutral – most obviously in medical scenarios – and can be a malign act of withholding. There is a genuine moral dilemma here, because a parent must give informed consent one way or the other. Not acting while the child is young is potentially equally culpable. If the anti-CI arguments are not convincing, then it’s possible that their proponents have indirectly harmed the potential development of some children and their ability to flourish in the widest set of circumstances. Alongside the passionate critiques of Lane, Humphries and others, there is also considerable weight lent to the academics arguing quite the opposite – that denying a deaf child a cochlear implant is neglect. In the western world, where early paediatric implantation in severely to profoundly deaf children is considered to be the “ standard of care ”, making the choice not to implant could be seen as a radical decision to withhold a mainstream technology that most of a deaf child’s peers will be using. And what are the ethics of withholding when that technology has safety implications, and could enable the deaf child-then-adult to apprehend dangers to themselves or others? Footsteps in the dark, a window breaking, a car approaching on a quiet street, a fire alarm, a scream in the shopping centre, a baby crying in the next room – none would be audible to my daughter without an implant. And from a feminist perspective, she may need, as women always have done, a loud voice to shout, or to argue with her healthcare providers, or to advocate for herself in an emergency. The implant would provide her with a clearer pathway to power and impact in the world, and to positions of influence where she would be underrepresented both as a woman and as a deaf person. To refuse her a CI based on the arguments of Lane et al would be to use the future of an individual as a blunt weapon to achieve benefit for the broader deaf community. Now, this could open me up to the charge that it would be individualistic and anti-solidaristic to prioritise my daughter’s personal future at any expense. But there’s also a persuasive argument that what benefits the deaf individual is, when multiplied, what raises the collective. It strikes me that the more deaf people can participate actively in positions of power and influence, the better the outcome for deaf people en masse – and, as much as we may wish it wouldn’t, this entails having considerable proficiency in the primary mode of communication. In strictly utilitarian terms, a successful implant hugely expands the number of people a deaf person can communicate with – amplifying their perspective and connecting them in the hearing world, while not precluding their ability to communicate solely using the richness of sign language/s in the deaf one. For me, it is a version of the dilemma that plagues any other movement for systemic social justice. In my experience, this debate often arises in discussions among women too – there is a tension between our responsibility to unpick larger hegemonies and create opportunities for change, and our attempts to personally flourish within the world as it is now, however flawed. But there is a way to have a measure of both. I’ve begun to think of this as a sort of dialectical pragmatism – a way of holding two seemingly contradictory things in mind and moving forward in a way that works. Ultimately, I think it’s possible to want to create the conditions for the best life possible for our daughter, while simultaneously remaining conscious that she is having to bend painfully to fit a system that doesn’t speak for her the way it should. With so many strident either/ors bouncing back and forth, thinking more dialectically can bring clarity in other aspects of the debate too. We can then hold both that her deafness is perfect and does not need to be “fixed”, and that she may benefit from a helpful intervention just as I have from things such as glasses, medications or surgeries – all of which do not ultimately alter my dignity or identity. We can say both that there is justifiable concern from deaf adults who wish to safeguard their communities and languages from the evolution of hearing technology, and that there is a new generation of deaf voices with cochlear implants who haven’t entered the debate and will have their own perspectives. We can maintain a dislike for the tech-utopian view of CIs as a miraculous cure for a tragic affliction, and accept that they have proven to be an extraordinary, life-changing daily support to more than 1 million people worldwide. It’s OK to acknowledge that the hearing perspective is a muddy lens through which we view the world (and which leads us to valorise auditory pleasures in a way deaf people don’t), and also admit that it is fine to want to give your child the qualia of soaring strings and voices in the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. But the fork in the road in front of us was not only binary, but time-critical. Forced into a nauseating either/or decision that would torment even the most level-headed parent, my husband and I eventually arrived at a bald piece of logic that wouldn’t burn away with challenge: the idea that there was only one option that contained a kernel of both options within it. Only one that really left her with any kind of agency. If she wishes to, in adulthood our daughter can have her cochlear implant removed and fully immerse herself in what is so clearly the rich, joyous, fulfilling deaf world. We plan to learn Australian Sign Language (Auslan) as a family, so that she will have an easy fluency and cultural connection with a community that will, I’m sure, become hugely important to her. But without full access to spoken English in the critical development window of her early years, she will probably never regain the nuances of spoken communication later on; something that is only a problem in that it will close doors that she may later wish were open, and chiefly – it wouldn’t be her choice to do so. She would be constrained by the boundaries of what she may later choose – and what in any other era or in parts of the world would certainly be her future – but to actively place the constraint on her now feels premature. She is three and three-quarters, and fluently reading early chapter books for pleasure. She knows more about the solar system and the workings of the digestive tract than I do, and her future seems as unbounded as her mind. So we made an excruciating decision that, to us, leaves the fewest limits to the scope of her life as possible, and places the decisions back in her hands, where they should be. Our neighbourhood pear tree is just beginning to rouse itself after winter, and my little girl has been emerging too – into a world of new sounds that were beyond the reach of her hearing aids. Yesterday she heard the tiniest, most pitiful bird chirp, and told me so excitedly, with a strong, clear voice. On a windy day she stopped, wide-eyed and said: “I hear the leaves rustling with my coch-le-ah!” with all the triumph she saves for brandishing treasures found on walks. We hold a both/and view here, too, and also celebrate the magic of her “quiet ears” and the unique perspective they afford her. When she removes her processor before sleep, it’s clear she is relieved to submerge into calm again. But she holds the dialectical promise of silence and sound at once – this time literally, insisting on gripping her processor tightly in her palm while she falls asleep. In this way she stands pragmatically astride both worlds. In silence, but with a hearing key right at hand; ready to unlock the blooming, buzzing cacophony of the world whenever she chooses. This essay first appeared under the title The Cochlear Question on Aeon.co Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here .Stocks likely to keep up positive momentum on strong valuations