phlove legit or not

phlove legit or not 5 things to watch in the Chicago Bears-San Francisco 49ers game — plus our Week 14 predictionsIn the highly tumultuous closing days of Donald Trump ’s first term in office, BuzzFeed News received an angry letter from his outgoing administration. The subpoena, issued on December 1, 2020, was delivered as Trump was preoccupied with efforts to overturn the democratic order and nullify the results of the presidential election he had just lost to Joe Biden . As BuzzFeed reported at the time, “Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators issued a subpoena this week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources — an extraordinary attempt by the government to interfere with a news outlet acting under the protections of the First Amendment, and a move that the agency’s former chief lambasted as ‘embarrassing.’” The aggressive letter from the Trump-era ICE read: “Failure to comply with this summons will render you liable to proceedings in a U.S. District Court to enforce compliance with this summons as well as other sanctions.” It added, “You are requested not to disclose the existence of this summons for an indefinite period of time. Any such disclosure will impede this investigation and thereby interfere with the enforcement of federal law.” To many media and political observers — including officials who served in the Trump administration who were aware of the document at the time — the subpoena wasn’t worth the price of the paper on which it was printed. It was a temper tantrum, not a real legal threat. For starters, Trump and his officials would be out of a job in less than two months. There wasn’t much will, much less the time, within the federal government to make good on this threat to an investigative reporter , his sources, and his publication. There wasn’t even a chilling effect, per se , because their guy had failed at winning reelection. That was then. Now, after vanquishing Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump and his team have four more years to try to intimidate and target leakers, whistleblowers , and foes in the media — especially if situations involve what they claim is highly sensitive information or classified intel. They intend to use the opportunity. Editor’s picks The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time In reporting this story, Rolling Stone spoke with attorneys close to the president-elect, incoming Trump administration officials, and other Republicans who’ve talked to Trump about staunching embarrassing press leaks during a second administration. Two of the sources with knowledge of the matter specifically cited the Dec. 1 subpoena as a model, and something that Trump allies and lieutenants are expecting to issue more of during the second term — this time, with the benefit of years, not days. It’s merely one facet of sprawling plans to clamp down on whistleblowers and bully Trump’s enemies in the press, after Trump’s inauguration once again in late January. Expect more communications seizures, more whistleblower prosecutions, and more personal lawsuits or legal threats from Trump against news outlets. “Oh, it’ll be brutal,” says one conservative lawyer who’s discussed certain plans and ideas with Trump and his inner circle. “Gloves off [because] we’ve learned our lessons from the first time and one lesson is you have got to be even more aggressive.” One reason much of the Trumpworld elite wants the gloves torn off is because they are, with good reason, expecting a torrent of leaks to the media after Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., next month. With Trump’s intention to nominate several controversial or scandal-plagued figures to the most senior levels of American government — including Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to helm the Department of Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, and Kash Patel as FBI director — Trump and his inner sanctum are predicting officials in various departments and agencies will leak early and often, several of the sources say. Related Content Dem Senators Demand: No Anti-LGBTQ or Abortion Measures in Funding Bill Mark Zuckerberg Continues Sucking Up to Trump as Meta Gives $1 Mil. to Inaugural Fund Trump Is Starting to Walk Back His Vow to Bring Down Grocery Prices Pete Hegseth Is a Threat to Veterans’ Health Care and Benefits This is, of course, a matter that Trump cares about deeply. During his first term in the Oval Office, intra-office paranoia and frenzied leak hunts — both officially by federal investigators and informally by zealous Trump aides — were a hallmark of the administration. But Trumpland isn’t only worried about stamping out leaks, of classified information and other details, from members of what the president-elect and his cronies deride as the “Deep State.” Often, the backstabbing is coming from inside the house. According to two sources familiar with the matter, Trump has personally grown furious about some of the leaks that have occurred from the current presidential transition process, and has in some instances fumingly demanded to know who in his midst could have possibly whispered certain information to the press. When Trump steps back into office, a top priority will be undoing much of the Biden agenda — and that includes some of the administration’s efforts to limit the extent to which the government can terrorize whistleblowers and leakers. During Biden’s first year in office, his attorney general, Merrick Garland, announced that the Department of Justice would bar federal prosecutors — with some exceptions — from seizing journalists’ phone records and other private communications during the course of leak investigations. According to several of the knowledgeable sources, some of whom have discussed the topic with Trump in the past year, the president-elect and multiple attorneys in his orbit aim to promptly nix that Biden-era DOJ policy. In the words of one Trump adviser, it’s “going in the trash can,” with some Trump officials intent on tearing it up right near the start of Term 2. Among committed Trumpists close to the president-elect, there has also been discussion of potentially creating new offices in the FBI or DOJ to focus exclusively on hunting for leaks and plugging the deluge of media leaks. In the summer of 2017, Trumps’ first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, mentioned that the FBI had formed a new unit to deal with leaks, including of classified info. Sessions also announced that the Trump administration had tripled the number of criminal leak investigations in the time since President Barack Obama left office. “In cases where there have been leaks that are criminal in nature, U.S. law enforcement and the incoming attorney general should follow the evidence wherever it leads, regardless of what the prior administraiton’s attorney general thinks, or what the internal memorandum was,” says Steven Groves, who worked as a lawyer in Trump’s first White House. Both the Obama and Trump administration attracted significant uproar from press-freedom groups for their secret DOJ seizures of records from reporters and others . Whatever record Obama and his Justice Department set, Trump and his senior officials were determined to shatter it. Gurgling beneath the first Trump administration’s rhetorical and propaganda war on his nemeses in political media, there was a ton of real action. For instance, the first Trump administration referred a record number of leaks to the feds for criminal investigations. “Obama’s Justice Department indicted eight journalistic sources under the Espionage Act, more than all U.S. presidents before him combined,” The Intercept reported back in 2019 . “Donald Trump is now surpassing Obama’s eight-year record in just over two years in office.” That amped-up war on government whistleblowers was powered in part by the same Espionage Act under which Trump was criminally investigated and charged in Special Counsel Jack Smith ’s now-defunct case. The war is set to come roaring back and then some after Trump is sworn in. So far, the twice-impeached former (and future) president, who also became a convicted felon during his 2024 campaign, has named ultra-loyalist Pam Bondi as his choice to lead the Justice Department. Early this month, Trump announced that another hyper-MAGA-devotee, Kash Patel , was his new pick to serve as FBI director. Patel has made no secret of his desire to use the levers of federal power to pursue those he views as anti-Trump subversives in the press and government. A year ago, Trump’s choice to take over the FBI told fellow Trump ally Steve Bannon that if Trump won, they’d seriously “go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media,” repeating the anti-democratic lie about “people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” Patel added : “We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators.” Indeed . The sources close to Trump add that non-government actors will be integral to their plans for combatting who they deem overly meddlesome reporters. Multiple sources say that as sitting president, Trump still intends to have his small armada of personal lawyers who aren’t working in the administration handle his (often frivolous) lawsuits — or, more often than not, enraged legal threats that don’t result in suits — against media outlets that cross him during a new term. In the final days of the 2024 campaign, Trump sued CBS for the ludicrous amount of $10 billion — based on the even more ludicrous idea that the way 60 Minutes edited a Kamala Harris interview was somehow actionable. “The anticipated leaking is a matter of utmost investigative and litigation priority for [us],” says Mike Howell, a former Trump Homeland Security Department official who nowadays works as the executive director at the Heritage Foundation ’s Oversight Project. “We have several outstanding lawsuits about leaked information over the last several years that the Trump administration will inherit. A lot of these lawsuits have to do with the FBI, including things that were directly harmful to President Trump ... Therefore, on Day 1 of the second Trump administration, it’ll inherit a bunch of FOIA litigation it’ll have to answer for ... It will already have a duty to figure out how this information left the Biden administration, via leak.” Howell continues that during the second Trump presidency, “whenever we see a leak of particular interest out in the press, you can anticipate that we are going to deploy our investigative team and litigation team to figure out how that information left the government. We will use our vast source network and other tools at our disposal to try to identify the source of the leak, to supplement whatever investigation is ongoing.” In campaigning on a platform of retribution, bloodlust, and authoritarian impulse , Trump made no secret of his longstanding desire to punish his enemies in the media. In recent years, Trump has even made the idea of journalists getting raped in prison — and thus tortured into naming their confidential sources’ identities — into an audience-pleasing laugh line at some of his rallies. As he prepares to take office once again, the president-elect is not hiding his interest in going after journalists. Last month, the president-elect personally pressured Republican senators to sink the PRESS Act , bipartisan reporter-shield legislation. Trump posted to social media that conservatives “MUST KILL THIS BILL.” But it wasn’t just a social-media post. Trump was invested enough in this matter that he spoke privately and on the phone with certain GOP lawmakers about making sure President Biden never signs this bill, a source with knowledge of the situation and another person briefed on it tell Rolling Stone . This week, Senate Republicans dutifully blocked it. On Thursday, as he accepted Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” award, Trump said that “the media’s tamed down a little bit; they’re liking us much better now, I think,” adding, with a smile: “If they don’t, we’ll have to just take them on again and we don’t want to do that.”

Thanksgiving Travel Latest: Airport strike, staff shortages and weather could impact holiday travelLow turnout in Chad parliamentary election boycotted by opposition as military rule ends

Vancouver female-led morning radio show taps power of keeping it realThis holiday season, ‘Don’t Call Me Resilient’ brings you a booklist with your playlistAnother day, another game, another laundry list of head scratching plays. The Jets lost on the road to the playoff-bound Buffalo Bills by an embarrassing final of 40-14, and to be honest, the game wasn’t even that close. Things got so bad that the Jets finally pulled Aaron Rodgers in the fourth quarter after an abysmal performance. Rodgers went 12 for 18 for 112 yards, two interceptions and was sacked for a safety. In fact, the lone Jets scoring came when Tyrod Taylor drove the team down the field and connected with Garrett Wilson for a nine-yard touchdown and again the next drive on a 20-yard pass to Tyler Conklin. Tyrod Taylor connects with Garrett Wilson to get the Jets on the board pic.twitter.com/WYnmoY146V In the game, Aaron Rodgers did pass Tom Brady on an all-time list. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any list that a quarterback strives to be on. Rodgers passed Brady as the most sacked quarterback of all time. Rodgers who was sacked four times in the game for 26 yards, surpassed Brady’s mark of 565 sacks in his career. On a more positive note, Garrett Wilson, who has been the talk of some trade speculation this off season , finished the day with seven catches for 66 yards, giving him over 1,000 yards on the season. He is only the fifth player to record 80 receptions and 1,000 yards in each of his first three seasons. For the Jets, the loss was a different chapter in the same story we have seen all season long. The defense got slowly bled and gave up bad third downs. The offense looked fantastic for a few plays, only to mess things up later in the drive. Other times, the offense looked like a pedestrian high school offense. And let’s not forget the penalties. The Jets had 16 accepted penalties in the game against them for 120 yards. That’s more than the number of rushing yards either team had in the game. While most of the penalties were easy calls for the officials from an undisciplined Jets team, some where the result of Josh Allen’s bellyaching and flopping. GRAPHIC: Josh Allen gets yet another roughing the passer call pic.twitter.com/K3VXN8oUeo For the Jets, they are one week away from a merciful ending to the season against the Miami Dolphins in a game that could actually have playoff implications for the Dolphins. The 4-12 Jets could keep the Dolphins from the playoffs depending on how the rest of week 17 and 18 play out. I know there are people who only want the Jets to lose so they get a better draft pick, but it would be fun to see the Jets keep the Dolphins from the post-season. After the game, Jeff Ulbrich seemed to be at a loss for words to describe the butt-whipping the Jets received at Highmark Stadium. "Give a lot of credit to Buffalo, they got after us in every way. Outcoached us, outplayed us, not good enough." Jeff Ulbrich gives his opening remarks after today's loss to the Bills: pic.twitter.com/uS3Ody3Dz0 I would continue to give my thoughts on Josh Allen, but he would likely try and get me flagged for a roughing the passer. This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

Utah Hockey Club walks to arena after bus gets stuck in Toronto traffic

Ed Sheeran sends apology to Manchester United coach Ruben Amorim after gatecrashing interviewThanksgiving Travel Latest: Airport strike, staff shortages and weather could impact holiday travelThe most recent United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) focused on finance, but it fell short in more ways than one. The contentious negotiations -- representatives from several developing countries walked out in protest -- defied the odds to produce a commitment -- the "Baku Climate Unity Pact" -- from developed economies to deliver $300 billion in climate funding annually to their poorer counterparts by 2035. That is triple the target agreed in 2009 (and reached, for the first time, in 2022), but it is nowhere near the estimated $1.3 trillion in annual financing that developing economies will need over this period. Although the agreement represents progress, we must recognise it as merely a starting point. But insufficient financing is only part of the problem. The reality is that as world leaders clashed in Baku amid unprecedented international tensions, the true battle being waged was for the future of climate finance -- and women's role in it. Women and children are 14 times more likely to die in climate-related disasters than men, and women comprise 80% of those displaced by extreme weather. These disparities are not incidental but are rooted in systemic inequalities. Yet the so-called New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance includes just one reference to women and girls: in paragraph 26, it "urges parties and other relevant actors to promote the inclusion and extension of benefits to vulnerable communities and groups in climate finance efforts, including women and girls". Women and girls' greater vulnerability to climate change reflects systemic inequality of access to education, economic opportunities and decision-making power. These differences are also apparent at climate-related forums. While this year's COP was heralded as the most gender-balanced in terms of registrations, women accounted for just 35% of delegates (up from 34% at COP28). Of the 78 world leaders who attended, a mere eight were women, and only four addressed gender-specific issues in their statements. Climate initiatives that explicitly include women have been shown to produce better outcomes for entire communities. Moreover, women are already leading some of the most innovative and effective climate initiatives globally in areas ranging from sustainable agriculture to renewable energy deployment. The conclusion should be obvious: the potential for gender-responsive climate finance to unlock more efficient pathways for decarbonisation, adaptation, and resilience makes it a strategic necessity. And yet for every US$100 (3,378 baht) of climate finance deployed globally, only 20 cents goes towards supporting women, and only 0.01% of climate finance addresses both climate action and women's rights. Even so, COP29 was not a total loss for women and girls. The enhanced Lima work programme on gender was extended for another decade, though without additional funding for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat to support implementation. In addition, the 27 gender-specific provisions in the final "Presidency text on gender and climate change" emphasised the vital role of women's full, meaningful and equal participation in climate action and the critical importance of incorporating gender considerations into all policymaking domains. The "gender action plan" that countries agreed to develop for adoption at COP30 provides a framework for progress. Despite these commitments, COP29 fell short in addressing critical intersectional issues such as the links between gender equality, peacebuilding, and climate action. Similarly, calls to address gender gaps in skills -- such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics training to access green jobs -- and the care economy as part of climate action failed to make it into the final document. While the text encouraged gender-responsive climate finance and simplified access for grassroots women's organisations and indigenous communities, it lacked the structural push necessary to ensure implementation at scale. To transform COP29's promises into reality, we need clear international guidelines for gender integration backed by allocated budgets, measurable targets and participatory approaches to ensure effective, transparent and accountable climate finance. High priority should be given to financing local initiatives, particularly in informal settlements, where women often lead climate-resilience efforts. Robust tracking systems -- which monitor not only how much money is pledged but also where it goes and who it benefits -- are essential. Of course, international action alone cannot close the gender gap in climate action; national policy frameworks are also vital. And here, too, women continue to be sidelined. According to the latest analysis from the UNFCCC, 82% of countries mention gender in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), but fewer than 26% include meaningful gender considerations in their long-term strategies and investments. As countries prepare their updated NDCs -- to be submitted this February and assessed at COP30 in November -- they must take care to incorporate gender-specific programmes and policies. We do not know whether the international environment will be any less tense when countries gather in Brazil for COP30. But we do know that the failure to pursue meaningful climate action would carry astronomical costs, as the proliferation of deadly climate disasters results in lost lives and trillions of dollars in lost output. We also know that if the fight against climate change is to succeed, it must be as inclusive as it is transformative. That is why COP30 offers us a unique opportunity to reflect on our priorities and align gender equality with the Paris climate agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. The climate crisis is not gender-neutral, so our solutions cannot be. Without a consistent focus on gender-responsive climate finance, we risk perpetuating cycles of vulnerability. Thirty years after the UN's Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action established gender equality's place on the global agenda, we must achieve another leap forward for women's rights, this time as a vital part of the fight against climate change. ©2024 Project Syndicate María Fernanda Espinosa, a former president of the UN General Assembly, is Executive Director of GWL Voices and Co-Chair of the Debt Relief for a Green and Inclusive Recovery Project. She was a member of the COP29 International Advisory Committee.WASHINGTON — The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before leaving office on Jan. 20. The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said. The officials, who said they expect the announcement to be made on Monday, spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet made public. The new aid comes as Russia has launched a barrage of attacks against Ukraine’s power facilities in recent days, although Ukraine has said it intercepted a significant number of the missiles and drones. Russian and Ukrainian forces are also still in a bitter battle around the Russian border region of Kursk, where Moscow has sent thousands of North Korean troops to help reclaim territory taken by Ukraine. Earlier this month, senior defense officials acknowledged that that the Defense Department may not be able to send all of the remaining $5.6 billion in Pentagon weapons and equipment stocks passed by Congress for Ukraine before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. Trump has talked about getting some type of negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, and spoken about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many U.S. and European leaders are concerned that it might result in a poor deal for Ukraine and they worry that he won’t provide Ukraine with all the weapons funding approved by Congress. The aid in the new package is in presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons off the shelves and send them quickly to Ukraine. This latest assistance would reduce the remaining amount to about $4.35 billion. Officials have said they hope that an influx of aid will help strengthen Ukraine’s hand, should Zelenskyy decide it’s time to negotiate. One senior defense official said that while the U.S. will continue to provide weapons to Ukraine until Jan. 20, there may well be funds remaining that will be available for the incoming Trump administration to spend. According to the Pentagon, there is also about $1.2 billion remaining in longer-term funding through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which is used to pay for weapons contracts that would not be delivered for a year or more. Officials have said the administration anticipates releasing all of that money before the end of the calendar year. If the new package is included, the U.S. has provided more than $64 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022.