Podcasts about AAG

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded its latest Term. And over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has continued to duke it out with its adversaries in the federal courts.To tackle these topics, as well as their intersection—in terms of how well the courts, including but not limited to the Supreme Court, are handling Trump-related cases—I interviewed Professor Pamela Karlan, a longtime faculty member at Stanford Law School. She's perfectly situated to address these subjects, for at least three reasons.First, Professor Karlan is a leading scholar of constitutional law. Second, she's a former SCOTUS clerk and seasoned advocate at One First Street, with ten arguments to her name. Third, she has high-level experience at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), having served (twice) as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.I've had some wonderful guests to discuss the role of the courts today, including Judges Vince Chhabria (N.D. Cal.) and Ana Reyes (D.D.C.)—but as sitting judges, they couldn't discuss certain subjects, and they had to be somewhat circumspect. Professor Karlan, in contrast, isn't afraid to “go there”—and whether or not you agree with her opinions, I think you'll share my appreciation for her insight and candor.Show Notes:* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Stanford Law School* Pamela S. Karlan bio, Wikipedia* The McCorkle Lecture (Professor Pamela Karlan), UVA Law SchoolPrefer reading to listening? For paid subscribers, a transcript of the entire episode appears below.Sponsored by:NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com.Three quick notes about this transcript. First, it has been cleaned up from the audio in ways that don't alter substance—e.g., by deleting verbal filler or adding a word here or there to clarify meaning. Second, my interviewee has not reviewed this transcript, and any transcription errors are mine. Third, because of length constraints, this newsletter may be truncated in email; to view the entire post, simply click on “View entire message” in your email app.David Lat: Welcome to the Original Jurisdiction podcast. I'm your host, David Lat, author of a Substack newsletter about law and the legal profession also named Original Jurisdiction, which you can read and subscribe to at davidlat dot Substack dot com. You're listening to the seventy-seventh episode of this podcast, recorded on Friday, June 27.Thanks to this podcast's sponsor, NexFirm. NexFirm helps Biglaw attorneys become founding partners. To learn more about how NexFirm can help you launch your firm, call 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com. Want to know who the guest will be for the next Original Jurisdiction podcast? Follow NexFirm on LinkedIn for a preview.With the 2024-2025 Supreme Court Term behind us, now is a good time to talk about both constitutional law and the proper role of the judiciary in American society. I expect they will remain significant as subjects because the tug of war between the Trump administration and the federal judiciary continues—and shows no signs of abating.To tackle these topics, I welcomed to the podcast Professor Pamela Karlan, the Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School. Pam is not only a leading legal scholar, but she also has significant experience in practice. She's argued 10 cases before the Supreme Court, which puts her in a very small club, and she has worked in government at high levels, serving as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama administration. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Professor Pam Karlan.Professor Karlan, thank you so much for joining me.Pamela Karlan: Thanks for having me.DL: So let's start at the beginning. Tell us about your background and upbringing. I believe we share something in common—you were born in New York City?PK: I was born in New York City. My family had lived in New York since they arrived in the country about a century before.DL: What borough?PK: Originally Manhattan, then Brooklyn, then back to Manhattan. As my mother said, when I moved to Brooklyn when I was clerking, “Brooklyn to Brooklyn, in three generations.”DL: Brooklyn is very, very hip right now.PK: It wasn't hip when we got there.DL: And did you grow up in Manhattan or Brooklyn?PK: When I was little, we lived in Manhattan. Then right before I started elementary school, right after my brother was born, our apartment wasn't big enough anymore. So we moved to Stamford, Connecticut, and I grew up in Connecticut.DL: What led you to go to law school? I see you stayed in the state; you went to Yale. What did you have in mind for your post-law-school career?PK: I went to law school because during the summer between 10th and 11th grade, I read Richard Kluger's book, Simple Justice, which is the story of the litigation that leads up to Brown v. Board of Education. And I decided I wanted to go to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and be a school desegregation lawyer, and that's what led me to go to law school.DL: You obtained a master's degree in history as well as a law degree. Did you also have teaching in mind as well?PK: No, I thought getting the master's degree was my last chance to do something I had loved doing as an undergrad. It didn't occur to me until I was late in my law-school days that I might at some point want to be a law professor. That's different than a lot of folks who go to law school now; they go to law school wanting to be law professors.During Admitted Students' Weekend, some students say to me, “I want to be a law professor—should I come here to law school?” I feel like saying to them, “You haven't done a day of law school yet. You have no idea whether you're good at law. You have no idea whether you'd enjoy doing legal teaching.”It just amazes me that people come to law school now planning to be a law professor, in a way that I don't think very many people did when I was going to law school. In my day, people discovered when they were in law school that they loved it, and they wanted to do more of what they loved doing; I don't think people came to law school for the most part planning to be law professors.DL: The track is so different now—and that's a whole other conversation—but people are getting master's and Ph.D. degrees, and people are doing fellowship after fellowship. It's not like, oh, you practice for three, five, or seven years, and then you become a professor. It seems to be almost like this other track nowadays.PK: When I went on the teaching market, I was distinctive in that I had not only my student law-journal note, but I actually had an article that Ricky Revesz and I had worked on that was coming out. And it was not normal for people to have that back then. Now people go onto the teaching market with six or seven publications—and no practice experience really to speak of, for a lot of them.DL: You mentioned talking to admitted students. You went to YLS, but you've now been teaching for a long time at Stanford Law School. They're very similar in a lot of ways. They're intellectual. They're intimate, especially compared to some of the other top law schools. What would you say if I'm an admitted student choosing between those two institutions? What would cause me to pick one versus the other—besides the superior weather of Palo Alto?PK: Well, some of it is geography; it's not just the weather. Some folks are very East-Coast-centered, and other folks are very West-Coast-centered. That makes a difference.It's a little hard to say what the differences are, because the last time I spent a long time at Yale Law School was in 2012 (I visited there a bunch of times over the years), but I think the faculty here at Stanford is less focused and concentrated on the students who want to be law professors than is the case at Yale. When I was at Yale, the idea was if you were smart, you went and became a law professor. It was almost like a kind of external manifestation of an inner state of grace; it was a sign that you were a smart person, if you wanted to be a law professor. And if you didn't, well, you could be a donor later on. Here at Stanford, the faculty as a whole is less concentrated on producing law professors. We produce a fair number of them, but it's not the be-all and end-all of the law school in some ways. Heather Gerken, who's the dean at Yale, has changed that somewhat, but not entirely. So that's one big difference.One of the most distinctive things about Stanford, because we're on the quarter system, is that our clinics are full-time clinics, taught by full-time faculty members at the law school. And that's distinctive. I think Yale calls more things clinics than we do, and a lot of them are part-time or taught by folks who aren't in the building all the time. So that's a big difference between the schools.They just have very different feels. I would encourage any student who gets into both of them to go and visit both of them, talk to the students, and see where you think you're going to be most comfortably stretched. Either school could be the right school for somebody.DL: I totally agree with you. Sometimes people think there's some kind of platonic answer to, “Where should I go to law school?” And it depends on so many individual circumstances.PK: There really isn't one answer. I think when I was deciding between law schools as a student, I got waitlisted at Stanford and I got into Yale. I had gone to Yale as an undergrad, so I wasn't going to go anywhere else if I got in there. I was from Connecticut and loved living in Connecticut, so that was an easy choice for me. But it's a hard choice for a lot of folks.And I do think that one of the worst things in the world is U.S. News and World Report, even though we're generally a beneficiary of it. It used to be that the R-squared between where somebody went to law school and what a ranking was was minimal. I knew lots of people who decided, in the old days, that they were going to go to Columbia rather than Yale or Harvard, rather than Stanford or Penn, rather than Chicago, because they liked the city better or there was somebody who did something they really wanted to do there.And then the R-squared, once U.S. News came out, of where people went and what the rankings were, became huge. And as you probably know, there were some scandals with law schools that would just waitlist people rather than admit them, to keep their yield up, because they thought the person would go to a higher-ranked law school. There were years and years where a huge part of the Stanford entering class had been waitlisted at Penn. And that's bad for people, because there are people who should go to Penn rather than come here. There are people who should go to NYU rather than going to Harvard. And a lot of those people don't do it because they're so fixated on U.S. News rankings.DL: I totally agree with you. But I suspect that a lot of people think that there are certain opportunities that are going to be open to them only if they go here or only if they go there.Speaking of which, after graduating from YLS, you clerked for Justice Blackmun on the Supreme Court, and statistically it's certainly true that certain schools seem to improve your odds of clerking for the Court. What was that experience like overall? People often describe it as a dream job. We're recording this on the last day of the Supreme Court Term; some hugely consequential historic cases are coming down. As a law clerk, you get a front row seat to all of that, to all of that history being made. Did you love that experience?PK: I loved the experience. I loved it in part because I worked for a wonderful justice who was just a lovely man, a real mensch. I had three great co-clerks. It was the first time, actually, that any justice had ever hired three women—and so that was distinctive for me, because I had been in classes in law school where there were fewer than three women. I was in one class in law school where I was the only woman. So that was neat.It was a great Term. It was the last year of the Burger Court, and we had just a heap of incredibly interesting cases. It's amazing how many cases I teach in law school that were decided that year—the summary-judgment trilogy, Thornburg v. Gingles, Bowers v. Hardwick. It was just a really great time to be there. And as a liberal, we won a lot of the cases. We didn't win them all, but we won a lot of them.It was incredibly intense. At that point, the Supreme Court still had this odd IT system that required eight hours of diagnostics every night. So the system was up from 8 a.m. to midnight—it stayed online longer if there was a death case—but otherwise it went down at midnight. In the Blackmun chambers, we showed up at 8 a.m. for breakfast with the Justice, and we left at midnight, five days a week. Then on the weekends, we were there from 9 to 9. And they were deciding 150 cases, not 60 cases, a year. So there was a lot more work to do, in that sense. But it was a great year. I've remained friends with my co-clerks, and I've remained friends with clerks from other chambers. It was a wonderful experience.DL: And you've actually written about it. I would refer people to some of the articles that they can look up, on your CV and elsewhere, where you've talked about, say, having breakfast with the Justice.PK: And we had a Passover Seder with the Justice as well, which was a lot of fun.DL: Oh wow, who hosted that? Did he?PK: Actually, the clerks hosted it. Originally he had said, “Oh, why don't we have it at the Court?” But then he came back to us and said, “Well, I think the Chief Justice”—Chief Justice Burger—“might not like that.” But he lent us tables and chairs, which were dropped off at one of the clerk's houses. And it was actually the day of the Gramm-Rudman argument, which was an argument about the budget. So we had to keep running back and forth from the Court to the house of Danny Richman, the clerk who hosted it, who was a Thurgood Marshall clerk. We had to keep running back and forth from the Court to Danny Richman's house, to baste the turkey and make stuff, back and forth. And then we had a real full Seder, and we invited all of the Jewish clerks at the Court and the Justice's messenger, who was Jewish, and the Justice and Mrs. Blackmun, and it was a lot of fun.DL: Wow, that's wonderful. So where did you go after your clerkship?PK: I went to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where I was an assistant counsel, and I worked on voting-rights and employment-discrimination cases.DL: And that was something that you had thought about for a long time—you mentioned you had read about its work in high school.PK: Yes, and it was a great place to work. We were working on great cases, and at that point we were really pushing the envelope on some of the stuff that we were doing—which was great and inspiring, and my colleagues were wonderful.And unlike a lot of Supreme Court practices now, where there's a kind of “King Bee” usually, and that person gets to argue everything, the Legal Defense Fund was very different. The first argument I did at the Court was in a case that I had worked on the amended complaint for, while at the Legal Defense Fund—and they let me essentially keep working on the case and argue it at the Supreme Court, even though by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, I was teaching at UVA. So they didn't have this policy of stripping away from younger lawyers the ability to argue their cases the whole way through the system.DL: So how many years out from law school were you by the time you had your first argument before the Court? I know that, today at least, there's this two-year bar on arguing before the Court after having clerked there.PK: Six or seven years out—because I think I argued in ‘91.DL: Now, you mentioned that by then you were teaching at UVA. You had a dream job working at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. What led you to go to UVA?PK: There were two things, really, that did it. One was I had also discovered when I was in law school that I loved law school, and I was better at law school than I had been at anything I had done before law school. And the second was I really hated dealing with opposing counsel. I tell my students now, “You should take negotiation. If there's only one class you could take in law school, take negotiation.” Because it's a skill; it's not a habit of mind, but I felt like it was a habit of mind. And I found the discovery process and filing motions to compel and dealing with the other side's intransigence just really unpleasant.What I really loved was writing briefs. I loved writing briefs, and I could keep doing that for the Legal Defense Fund while at UVA, and I've done a bunch of that over the years for LDF and for other organizations. I could keep doing that and I could live in a small town, which I really wanted to do. I love New York, and now I could live in a city—I've spent a couple of years, off and on, living in cities since then, and I like it—but I didn't like it at that point. I really wanted to be out in the country somewhere. And so UVA was the perfect mix. I kept working on cases, writing amicus briefs for LDF and for other organizations. I could teach, which I loved. I could live in a college town, which I really enjoyed. So it was the best blend of things.DL: And I know, from your having actually delivered a lecture at UVA, that it really did seem to have a special place in your heart. UVA Law School—they really do have a wonderful environment there (as does Stanford), and Charlottesville is a very charming place.PK: Yes, especially when I was there. UVA has a real gift for developing its junior faculty. It was a place where the senior faculty were constantly reading our work, constantly talking to us. Everyone was in the building, which makes a huge difference.The second case I had go to the Supreme Court actually came out of a class where a student asked a question, and I ended up representing the student, and we took the case all the way to the Supreme Court. But I wasn't admitted in the Western District of Virginia, and that's where we had to file a case. And so I turned to my next-door neighbor, George Rutherglen, and said to George, “Would you be the lead counsel in this?” And he said, “Sure.” And we ended up representing a bunch of UVA students, challenging the way the Republican Party did its nomination process. And we ended up, by the student's third year in law school, at the Supreme Court.So UVA was a great place. I had amazing colleagues. The legendary Bill Stuntz was then there; Mike Klarman was there. Dan Ortiz, who's still there, was there. So was John Harrison. It was a fantastic group of people to have as your colleagues.DL: Was it difficult for you, then, to leave UVA and move to Stanford?PK: Oh yes. When I went in to tell Bob Scott, who was then the dean, that I was leaving, I just burst into tears. I think the reason I left UVA was I was at a point in my career where I'd done a bunch of visits at other schools, and I thought that I could either leave then or I would be making a decision to stay there for the rest of my career. And I just felt like I wanted to make a change. And in retrospect, I would've been just as happy if I'd stayed at UVA. In my professional life, I would've been just as happy. I don't know in my personal life, because I wouldn't have met my partner, I don't think, if I'd been at UVA. But it's a marvelous place; everything about it is just absolutely superb.DL: Are you the managing partner of a boutique or midsize firm? If so, you know that your most important job is attracting and retaining top talent. It's not easy, especially if your benefits don't match up well with those of Biglaw firms or if your HR process feels “small time.” NexFirm has created an onboarding and benefits experience that rivals an Am Law 100 firm, so you can compete for the best talent at a price your firm can afford. Want to learn more? Contact NexFirm at 212-292-1002 or email betterbenefits at nexfirm dot com.So I do want to give you a chance to say nice things about your current place. I assume you have no regrets about moving to Stanford Law, even if you would've been just as happy at UVA?PK: I'm incredibly happy here. I've got great colleagues. I've got great students. The ability to do the clinic the way we do it, which is as a full-time clinic, wouldn't be true anywhere else in the country, and that makes a huge difference to that part of my work. I've gotten to teach around the curriculum. I've taught four of the six first-year courses, which is a great opportunityAnd as you said earlier, the weather is unbelievable. People downplay that, because especially for people who are Northeastern Ivy League types, there's a certain Calvinism about that, which is that you have to suffer in order to be truly working hard. People out here sometimes think we don't work hard because we are not visibly suffering. But it's actually the opposite, in a way. I'm looking out my window right now, and it's a gorgeous day. And if I were in the east and it were 75 degrees and sunny, I would find it hard to work because I'd think it's usually going to be hot and humid, or if it's in the winter, it's going to be cold and rainy. I love Yale, but the eight years I spent there, my nose ran the entire time I was there. And here I look out and I think, “It's beautiful, but you know what? It's going to be beautiful tomorrow. So I should sit here and finish grading my exams, or I should sit here and edit this article, or I should sit here and work on the Restatement—because it's going to be just as beautiful tomorrow.” And the ability to walk outside, to clear your head, makes a huge difference. People don't understand just how huge a difference that is, but it's huge.DL: That's so true. If you had me pick a color to associate with my time at YLS, I would say gray. It just felt like everything was always gray, the sky was always gray—not blue or sunny or what have you.But I know you've spent some time outside of Northern California, because you have done some stints at the Justice Department. Tell us about that, the times you went there—why did you go there? What type of work were you doing? And how did it relate to or complement your scholarly work?PK: At the beginning of the Obama administration, I had applied for a job in the Civil Rights Division as a deputy assistant attorney general (DAAG), and I didn't get it. And I thought, “Well, that's passed me by.” And a couple of years later, when they were looking for a new principal deputy solicitor general, in the summer of 2013, the civil-rights groups pushed me for that job. I got an interview with Eric Holder, and it was on June 11th, 2013, which just fortuitously happens to be the 50th anniversary of the day that Vivian Malone desegregated the University of Alabama—and Vivian Malone is the older sister of Sharon Malone, who is married to Eric Holder.So I went in for the interview and I said, “This must be an especially special day for you because of the 50th anniversary.” And we talked about that a little bit, and then we talked about other things. And I came out of the interview, and a couple of weeks later, Don Verrilli, who was the solicitor general, called me up and said, “Look, you're not going to get a job as the principal deputy”—which ultimately went to Ian Gershengorn, a phenomenal lawyer—“but Eric Holder really enjoyed talking to you, so we're going to look for something else for you to do here at the Department of Justice.”And a couple of weeks after that, Eric Holder called me and offered me the DAAG position in the Civil Rights Division and said, “We'd really like you to especially concentrate on our voting-rights litigation.” It was very important litigation, in part because the Supreme Court had recently struck down the pre-clearance regime under Section 5 [of the Voting Rights Act]. So the Justice Department was now bringing a bunch of lawsuits against things they could have blocked if Section 5 had been in effect, most notably the Texas voter ID law, which was a quite draconian voter ID law, and this omnibus bill in North Carolina that involved all sorts of cutbacks to opportunities to vote: a cutback on early voting, a cutback on same-day registration, a cutback on 16- and 17-year-olds pre-registering, and the like.So I went to the Department of Justice and worked with the Voting Section on those cases, but I also ended up working on things like getting the Justice Department to change its position on whether Title VII covered transgender individuals. And then I also got to work on the implementation of [United States v.] Windsor—which I had worked on, representing Edie Windsor, before I went to DOJ, because the Court had just decided Windsor [which held Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional]. So I had an opportunity to work on how to implement Windsor across the federal government. So that was the stuff I got to work on the first time I was at DOJ, and I also obviously worked on tons of other stuff, and it was phenomenal. I loved doing it.I did it for about 20 months, and then I came back to Stanford. It affected my teaching; I understood a lot of stuff quite differently having worked on it. It gave me some ideas on things I wanted to write about. And it just refreshed me in some ways. It's different than working in the clinic. I love working in the clinic, but you're working with students. You're working only with very, very junior lawyers. I sometimes think of the clinic as being a sort of Groundhog Day of first-year associates, and so I'm sort of senior partner and paralegal at a large law firm. At DOJ, you're working with subject-matter experts. The people in the Voting Section, collectively, had hundreds of years of experience with voting. The people in the Appellate Section had hundreds of years of experience with appellate litigation. And so it's just a very different feel.So I did that, and then I came back to Stanford. I was here, and in the fall of 2020, I was asked if I wanted to be one of the people on the Justice Department review team if Joe Biden won the election. These are sometimes referred to as the transition teams or the landing teams or the like. And I said, “I'd be delighted to do that.” They had me as one of the point people reviewing the Civil Rights Division. And I think it might've even been the Wednesday or Thursday before Inauguration Day 2021, I got a call from the liaison person on the transition team saying, “How would you like to go back to DOJ and be the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division?” That would mean essentially running the Division until we got a confirmed head, which took about five months. And I thought that this would be an amazing opportunity to go back to the DOJ and work with people I love, right at the beginning of an administration.And the beginning of an administration is really different than coming in midway through the second term of an administration. You're trying to come up with priorities, and I viewed my job really as helping the career people to do their best work. There were a huge number of career people who had gone through the first Trump administration, and they were raring to go. They had all sorts of ideas on stuff they wanted to do, and it was my job to facilitate that and make that possible for them. And that's why it's so tragic this time around that almost all of those people have left. The current administration first tried to transfer them all into Sanctuary Cities [the Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group] or ask them to do things that they couldn't in good conscience do, and so they've retired or taken buyouts or just left.DL: It's remarkable, just the loss of expertise and experience at the Justice Department over these past few months.PK: Thousands of years of experience gone. And these are people, you've got to realize, who had been through the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, both Bush administrations, and the first Trump administration, and they hadn't had any problem. That's what's so stunning: this is not just the normal shift in priorities, and they have gone out of their way to make it so hellacious for people that they will leave. And that's not something that either Democratic or Republican administrations have ever done before this.DL: And we will get to a lot of, shall we say, current events. Finishing up on just the discussion of your career, you had the opportunity to work in the executive branch—what about judicial service? You've been floated over the years as a possible Supreme Court nominee. I don't know if you ever looked into serving on the Ninth Circuit or were considered for that. What about judicial service?PK: So I've never been in a position, and part of this was a lesson I learned right at the beginning of my LDF career, when Lani Guinier, who was my boss at LDF, was nominated for the position of AAG [assistant attorney general] in the Civil Rights Division and got shot down. I knew from that time forward that if I did the things I really wanted to do, my chances of confirmation were not going to be very high. People at LDF used to joke that they would get me nominated so that I would take all the bullets, and then they'd sneak everybody else through. So I never really thought that I would have a shot at a judicial position, and that didn't bother me particularly. As you know, I gave the commencement speech many years ago at Stanford, and I said, “Would I want to be on the Supreme Court? You bet—but not enough to have trimmed my sails for an entire lifetime.”And I think that's right. Peter Baker did this story in The New York Times called something like, “Favorites of Left Don't Make Obama's Court List.” And in the story, Tommy Goldstein, who's a dear friend of mine, said, “If they wanted to talk about somebody who was a flaming liberal, they'd be talking about Pam Karlan, but nobody's talking about Pam Karlan.” And then I got this call from a friend of mine who said, “Yeah, but at least people are talking about how nobody's talking about you. Nobody's even talking about how nobody's talking about me.” And I was flattered, but not fooled.DL: That's funny; I read that piece in preparing for this interview. So let's say someone were to ask you, someone mid-career, “Hey, I've been pretty safe in the early years of my career, but now I'm at this juncture where I could do things that will possibly foreclose my judicial ambitions—should I just try to keep a lid on it, in the hope of making it?” It sounds like you would tell them to let their flag fly.PK: Here's the thing: your chances of getting to be on the Supreme Court, if that's what you're talking about, your chances are so low that the question is how much do you want to give up to go from a 0.001% chance to a 0.002% chance? Yes, you are doubling your chances, but your chances are not good. And there are some people who I think are capable of doing that, perhaps because they fit the zeitgeist enough that it's not a huge sacrifice for them. So it's not that I despise everybody who goes to the Supreme Court because they must obviously have all been super-careerists; I think lots of them weren't super-careerists in that way.Although it does worry me that six members of the Court now clerked at the Supreme Court—because when you are a law clerk, it gives you this feeling about the Court that maybe you don't want everybody who's on the Court to have, a feeling that this is the be-all and end-all of life and that getting a clerkship is a manifestation of an inner state of grace, so becoming a justice is equally a manifestation of an inner state of grace in which you are smarter than everybody else, wiser than everybody else, and everybody should kowtow to you in all sorts of ways. And I worry that people who are imprinted like ducklings on the Supreme Court when they're 25 or 26 or 27 might not be the best kind of portfolio of justices at the back end. The Court that decided Brown v. Board of Education—none of them, I think, had clerked at the Supreme Court, or maybe one of them had. They'd all done things with their lives other than try to get back to the Supreme Court. So I worry about that a little bit.DL: Speaking of the Court, let's turn to the Court, because it just finished its Term as we are recording this. As we started recording, they were still handing down the final decisions of the day.PK: Yes, the “R” numbers hadn't come up on the Supreme Court website when I signed off to come talk to you.DL: Exactly. So earlier this month, not today, but earlier this month, the Court handed down its decision in United States v. Skrmetti, reviewing Tennessee's ban on the use of hormones and puberty blockers for transgender youth. Were you surprised by the Court's ruling in Skrmetti?PK: No. I was not surprised.DL: So one of your most famous cases, which you litigated successfully five years ago or so, was Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Court held that Title VII does apply to protect transgender individuals—and Bostock figures significantly in the Skrmetti opinions. Why were you surprised by Skrmetti given that you had won this victory in Bostock, which you could argue, in terms of just the logic of it, does carry over somewhat?PK: Well, I want to be very precise: I didn't actually litigate Bostock. There were three cases that were put together….DL: Oh yes—you handled Zarda.PK: I represented Don Zarda, who was a gay man, so I did not argue the transgender part of the case at all. Fortuitously enough, David Cole argued that part of the case, and David Cole was actually the first person I had dinner with as a freshman at Yale College, when I started college, because he was the roommate of somebody I debated against in high school. So David and I went to law school together, went to college together, and had classes together. We've been friends now for almost 50 years, which is scary—I think for 48 years we've been friends—and he argued that part of the case.So here's what surprised me about what the Supreme Court did in Skrmetti. Given where the Court wanted to come out, the more intellectually honest way to get there would've been to say, “Yes, of course this is because of sex; there is sex discrimination going on here. But even applying intermediate scrutiny, we think that Tennessee's law should survive intermediate scrutiny.” That would've been an intellectually honest way to get to where the Court got.Instead, they did this weird sort of, “Well, the word ‘sex' isn't in the Fourteenth Amendment, but it's in Title VII.” But that makes no sense at all, because for none of the sex-discrimination cases that the Court has decided under the Fourteenth Amendment did the word “sex” appear in the Fourteenth Amendment. It's not like the word “sex” was in there and then all of a sudden it took a powder and left. So I thought that was a really disingenuous way of getting to where the Court wanted to go. But I was not surprised after the oral argument that the Court was going to get to where it got on the bottom line.DL: I'm curious, though, rewinding to Bostock and Zarda, were you surprised by how the Court came out in those cases? Because it was still a deeply conservative Court back then.PK: No, I was not surprised. I was not surprised, both because I thought we had so much the better of the argument and because at the oral argument, it seemed pretty clear that we had at least six justices, and those were the six justices we had at the end of the day. The thing that was interesting to me about Bostock was I thought also that we were likely to win for the following weird legal-realist reason, which is that this was a case that would allow the justices who claimed to be textualists to show that they were principled textualists, by doing something that they might not have voted for if they were in Congress or the like.And also, while the impact was really large in one sense, the impact was not really large in another sense: most American workers are protected by Title VII, but most American employers do not discriminate, and didn't discriminate even before this, on the basis of sexual orientation or on the basis of gender identity. For example, in Zarda's case, the employer denied that they had fired Mr. Zarda because he was gay; they said, “We fired him for other reasons.”Very few employers had a formal policy that said, “We discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.” And although most American workers are protected by Title VII, most American employers are not covered by Title VII—and that's because small employers, employers with fewer than 15 full-time employees, are not covered at all. And religious employers have all sorts of exemptions and the like, so for the people who had the biggest objection to hiring or promoting or retaining gay or transgender employees, this case wasn't going to change what happened to them at all. So the impact was really important for workers, but not deeply intrusive on employers generally. So I thought those two things, taken together, meant that we had a pretty good argument.I actually thought our textual argument was not our best argument, but it was the one that they were most likely to buy. So it was really interesting: we made a bunch of different arguments in the brief, and then as soon as I got up to argue, the first question out of the box was Justice Ginsburg saying, “Well, in 1964, homosexuality was illegal in most of the country—how could this be?” And that's when I realized, “Okay, she's just telling me to talk about the text, don't talk about anything else.”So I just talked about the text the whole time. But as you may remember from the argument, there was this weird moment, which came after I answered her question and one other one, there was this kind of silence from the justices. And I just said, “Well, if you don't have any more questions, I'll reserve the remainder of my time.” And it went well; it went well as an argument.DL: On the flip side, speaking of things that are not going so well, let's turn to current events. Zooming up to a higher level of generality than Skrmetti, you are a leading scholar of constitutional law, so here's the question. I know you've already been interviewed about it by media outlets, but let me ask you again, in light of just the latest, latest, latest news: are we in a constitutional crisis in the United States?PK: I think we're in a period of great constitutional danger. I don't know what a “constitutional crisis” is. Some people think the constitutional crisis is that we have an executive branch that doesn't believe in the Constitution, right? So you have Donald Trump asked, in an interview, “Do you have to comply with the Constitution?” He says, “I don't know.” Or he says, “I have an Article II that gives me the power to do whatever I want”—which is not what Article II says. If you want to be a textualist, it does not say the president can do whatever he wants. So you have an executive branch that really does not have a commitment to the Constitution as it has been understood up until now—that is, limited government, separation of powers, respect for individual rights. With this administration, none of that's there. And I don't know whether Emil Bove did say, “F**k the courts,” or not, but they're certainly acting as if that's their attitude.So yes, in that sense, we're in a period of constitutional danger. And then on top of that, I think we have a Supreme Court that is acting almost as if this is a normal administration with normal stuff, a Court that doesn't seem to recognize what district judges appointed by every president since George H.W. Bush or maybe even Reagan have recognized, which is, “This is not normal.” What the administration is trying to do is not normal, and it has to be stopped. So that worries me, that the Supreme Court is acting as if it needs to keep its powder dry—and for what, I'm not clear.If they think that by giving in and giving in, and prevaricating and putting things off... today, I thought the example of this was in the birthright citizenship/universal injunction case. One of the groups of plaintiffs that's up there is a bunch of states, around 23 states, and the Supreme Court in Justice Barrett's opinion says, “Well, maybe the states have standing, maybe they don't. And maybe if they have standing, you can enjoin this all in those states. We leave this all for remind.”They've sat on this for months. It's ridiculous that the Supreme Court doesn't “man up,” essentially, and decide these things. It really worries me quite a bit that the Supreme Court just seems completely blind to the fact that in 2024, they gave Donald Trump complete criminal immunity from any prosecution, so who's going to hold him accountable? Not criminally accountable, not accountable in damages—and now the Supreme Court seems not particularly interested in holding him accountable either.DL: Let me play devil's advocate. Here's my theory on why the Court does seem to be holding its fire: they're afraid of a worse outcome, which is, essentially, “The emperor has no clothes.”Say they draw this line in the sand for Trump, and then Trump just crosses it. And as we all know from that famous quote from The Federalist Papers, the Court has neither force nor will, but only judgment. That's worse, isn't it? If suddenly it's exposed that the Court doesn't have any army, any way to stop Trump? And then the courts have no power.PK: I actually think it's the opposite, which is, I think if the Court said to Donald Trump, “You must do X,” and then he defies it, you would have people in the streets. You would have real deep resistance—not just the “No Kings,” one-day march, but deep resistance. And there are scholars who've done comparative law who say, “When 3 percent of the people in a country go to the streets, you get real change.” And I think the Supreme Court is mistaking that.I taught a reading group for our first-years here. We have reading groups where you meet four times during the fall for dinner, and you read stuff that makes you think. And my reading group was called “Exit, Voice, and Loyalty,” and it started with the Albert Hirschman book with that title.DL: Great book.PK: It's a great book. And I gave them some excerpt from that, and I gave them an essay by Hannah Arendt called “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” which she wrote in 1964. And one of the things she says there is she talks about people who stayed in the German regime, on the theory that they would prevent at least worse things from happening. And I'm going to paraphrase slightly, but what she says is, “People who think that what they're doing is getting the lesser evil quickly forget that what they're choosing is evil.” And if the Supreme Court decides, “We're not going to tell Donald Trump ‘no,' because if we tell him no and he goes ahead, we will be exposed,” what they have basically done is said to Donald Trump, “Do whatever you want; we're not going to stop you.” And that will lose the Supreme Court more credibility over time than Donald Trump defying them once and facing some serious backlash for doing it.DL: So let me ask you one final question before we go to my little speed round. That 3 percent statistic is fascinating, by the way, but it resonates for me. My family's originally from the Philippines, and you probably had the 3 percent out there in the streets to oust Marcos in 1986.But let me ask you this. We now live in a nation where Donald Trump won not just the Electoral College, but the popular vote. We do see a lot of ugly things out there, whether in social media or incidents of violence or what have you. You still have enough faith in the American people that if the Supreme Court drew that line, and Donald Trump crossed it, and maybe this happened a couple of times, even—you still have faith that there will be that 3 percent or what have you in the streets?PK: I have hope, which is not quite the same thing as faith, obviously, but I have hope that some Republicans in Congress would grow a spine at that point, and people would say, “This is not right.” Have they always done that? No. We've had bad things happen in the past, and people have not done anything about it. But I think that the alternative of just saying, “Well, since we might not be able to stop him, we shouldn't do anything about it,” while he guts the federal government, sends masked people onto the streets, tries to take the military into domestic law enforcement—I think we have to do something.And this is what's so enraging in some ways: the district court judges in this country are doing their job. They are enjoining stuff. They're not enjoining everything, because not everything can be enjoined, and not everything is illegal; there's a lot of bad stuff Donald Trump is doing that he's totally entitled to do. But the district courts are doing their job, and they're doing their job while people are sending pizza boxes to their houses and sending them threats, and the president is tweeting about them or whatever you call the posts on Truth Social. They're doing their job—and the Supreme Court needs to do its job too. It needs to stand up for district judges. If it's not willing to stand up for the rest of us, you'd think they'd at least stand up for their entire judicial branch.DL: Turning to my speed round, my first question is, what do you like the least about the law? And this can either be the practice of law or law as a more abstract system of ordering human affairs.PK: What I liked least about it was having to deal with opposing counsel in discovery. That drove me to appellate litigation.DL: Exactly—where your request for an extension is almost always agreed to by the other side.PK: Yes, and where the record is the record.DL: Yes, exactly. My second question, is what would you be if you were not a lawyer and/or law professor?PK: Oh, they asked me this question for a thing here at Stanford, and it was like, if I couldn't be a lawyer, I'd... And I just said, “I'd sit in my room and cry.”DL: Okay!PK: I don't know—this is what my talent is!DL: You don't want to write a novel or something?PK: No. What I would really like to do is I would like to bike the Freedom Trail, which is a trail that starts in Montgomery, Alabama, and goes to the Canadian border, following the Underground Railroad. I've always wanted to bike that. But I guess that's not a career. I bike slowly enough that it could be a career, at this point—but earlier on, probably not.DL: My third question is, how much sleep do you get each night?PK: I now get around six hours of sleep each night, but it's complicated by the following, which is when I worked at the Department of Justice the second time, it was during Covid, so I actually worked remotely from California. And what that required me to do was essentially to wake up every morning at 4 a.m., 7 a.m. on the East Coast, so I could have breakfast, read the paper, and be ready to go by 5:30 a.m.I've been unable to get off of that, so I still wake up before dawn every morning. And I spent three months in Florence, and I thought the jet lag would bring me out of this—not in the slightest. Within two weeks, I was waking up at 4:30 a.m. Central European Time. So that's why I get about six hours, because I can't really go to bed before 9 or 10 p.m.DL: Well, I was struck by your being able to do this podcast fairly early West Coast time.PK: Oh no, this is the third thing I've done this morning! I had a 6:30 a.m. conference call.DL: Oh my gosh, wow. It reminds me of that saying about how you get more done in the Army before X hour than other people get done in a day.My last question, is any final words of wisdom, such as career advice or life advice, for my listeners?PK: Yes: do what you love, with people you love doing it with.DL: Well said. I've loved doing this podcast—Professor Karlan, thanks again for joining me.PK: You should start calling me Pam. We've had this same discussion….DL: We're on the air! Okay, well, thanks again, Pam—I'm so grateful to you for joining me.PK: Thanks for having me.DL: Thanks so much to Professor Karlan for joining me. Whether or not you agree with her views, you can't deny that she's both insightful and honest—qualities that have made her a leading legal academic and lawyer, but also a great podcast guest.Thanks to NexFirm for sponsoring the Original Jurisdiction podcast. NexFirm has helped many attorneys to leave Biglaw and launch firms of their own. To explore this opportunity, please contact NexFirm at 212-292-1000 or email careerdevelopment at nexfirm dot com to learn more.Thanks to Tommy Harron, my sound engineer here at Original Jurisdiction, and thanks to you, my listeners and readers. To connect with me, please email me at davidlat at Substack dot com, or find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, at davidlat, and on Instagram and Threads at davidbenjaminlat.If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate, review, and subscribe. Please subscribe to the Original Jurisdiction newsletter if you don't already, over at davidlat dot substack dot com. This podcast is free, but it's made possible by paid subscriptions to the newsletter.The next episode should appear on or about Wednesday, July 23. Until then, may your thinking be original and your jurisdiction free of defects. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit davidlat.substack.com/subscribe

Opportunities presented by digitalisation and AI go beyond traditional generational shifts; they will require fundamental change in the mindsets of business leaders Shannon Chamber CEO Helen Downes was quick to engage with Skillnet Ireland's new chief executive, Mark Jordan, following his appointment in March 2025, by inviting him to address a luncheon to mark the tenth anniversary of Shannon Chamber Skillnet. The event, which took place in the Radisson Blu Hotel in Limerick last week, attracted a guest list which included Chamber member companies, representatives from Skillnet Ireland, Skillnet Business Networks in the Mid-West region, the tertiary education sector and private training providers. Skillnet Ireland is recognised internationally as a best practice model for workforce development, supporting the competitiveness, productivity, and innovation of Irish businesses. Under the leadership of newly appointed chief executive Mark Jordan, the organisation remains committed to building on its excellent track record of the past 26 years. Since its inception in 1999, Skillnet Ireland, via its 70 Business Networks, which includes Shannon Chamber Skillnet, has continually evolved. This evolution is reflected in the expanding profile of the businesses it supports, the deepening and diversification of its engagement strategies, and the ongoing development of innovative support schemes tailored to the needs of industry. "Our success depends on aligning Skillnet Ireland's work with national strategies, including the National Digital and the National AI Strategies," said Mark Jordan. "To remain relevant, we need to anticipate change and have meaningful conversations with companies to bridge the gap in skills development. This is particularly important as 59% of SMEs and MNCs expect their core skills to undergo a major shift in the next two to three years, and that, by 2027, 50% of today's skills will be obsolete," he added. Focusing on future skill requirements, Mr. Jordan stated: "Digitalisation will play a critical role in helping companies become more resilient nationally and internationally. Technologies such as machine learning and AI will be central in the transformational journey of companies in many sectors, as will sustainable business practices, which have become an integral part of Ireland's enterprise sector". Highlighting regional achievements, he noted: "In the past year alone, 3,000 businesses in counties Clare, Limerick and Tipperary, upskilled 7,000 people through Skillnet Ireland programmes. That level of engagement is impressive, and it's only set to grow." Mr Jordan was joined on the podium by representatives from Atlantic Aviation Group (AAG), Element Six and Engine Lease Finance Corporation (ELFC) for a lively question and answer session moderated by Shannon Chamber Skillnet Network Manager, Alan Kelly. Trevor Rogers, organisation development manager with AAG, Stephen Linnane, general manager, Element Six, and Maria Frost, senior vice president, human resources at ELFC, brought valuable insights into the strategic importance of keeping employees' skills aligned with the evolving needs of industry. During a panel discussion, they shared their views on topics as diverse as: people development during a corporate merger, addressing skills gaps post-apprenticeships, Skillnet Ireland as an operating model, the future of learning and development and the growing relevance of sustainability literacy. They highlighted the benefits of having balanced skills within an organisation and discussed the positive payback, in terms of mindset shift and increased motivation, that can result from introducing a skills-based pay programme, as well as the urgency of prioritising digital literacy across all sectors. Having witnessed, first hand, a clear escalation in the demand for talent development programmes, Shannon Chamber CEO, Helen Downes, said that operating a Skillnet Business Network has enabled the Chamber to help local b...

Sustainable practices, by definition, seek to maintain the same, whereas regenerative practices recognize that natural systems are currently impacted and it applies management techniques to restore the system to improved productivity. Regenerative and sustainable actions can use essentially the same practices, the difference is the application and the management of those tools. Farmers are faced with skyrocketing input costs, declining product efficiency and industry pressure to implement sustainable and regenerative practices. The speaker will argue that revolutionary biological products have the ability to increase input efficiency, reduce reliance on chemical products, restore soil health and enable farmers to produce higher quality crops, sustainably. Speaker: Joshua Day Chief Joshua Day Chief is Chief Executive Officer of AdvancedAg (AAG). Since 2013, he has propelled the company's growth through groundbreaking research projects that have helped redefine biological technology in the agriculture industry. Collaborating closely with dealers, suppliers, and end-users, Joshua addresses soil and water remediation with a collaborative team approach, positioning AAG as a global leader in sustainable agricultural solutions. Joshua advocates for a future where Canadian agriculture thrives sustainably. As a visionary leader, environmental advocate, and community builder, Joshua is steering AdvancedAg towards a future where innovative solutions coexist with the principles of sustainability. An unwavering advocate for environmental stewardship, Joshua's leadership extends beyond AAG. Recognized with the Honouring Excellence – Rising Star Award in 2020 by Lethbridge College, Joshua was later elected to serve on the Lethbridge College Board of Governors, contributing to the development of future leaders. In 2018, he received the Alumni Achievement Award from the Canadian Environmental Technology Advancement Corporation, solidifying his commitment to advancing environmental technologies.

Shannon-based Atlantic Aviation Group (AAG) has welcomed an announcement by the Department of Further and Higher Education and the National Apprenticeship Office regarding a significant expansion of aircraft mechanic apprenticeship places across Ireland. As part of the expansion, AAG will deliver 75 additional training places from September 2025, playing a key role in the national effort to double the annual apprenticeship intake from 79 to 160. The move is seen as a vital response to growing global demand for skilled aircraft maintenance engineers. Atlantic Aviation Group (AAG) is one of Europe's leading independent MROs and aviation solution providers, employing more than 800 people in Ireland and the UK. With a history spanning 65 years, AAG offers a wide range of services including aircraft maintenance, design, engineering, Part 147 training, and aircraft management solutions. Speaking about the apprenticeship announcement, AAG CEO Shane O'Neill said: "We are proud to support this expansion and to train apprentices not just for our organisation, but for the benefit of the entire Irish aviation sector. This investment reflects the strategic importance of developing a strong pipeline of engineering talent to meet the needs of a rapidly evolving industry." AAG has long been a leader in aviation training, providing world-class education and real-world experience through its EASA Part 147-approved training academy. The company's apprenticeship programme has produced numerous award-winning graduates and continues to be a vital stepping stone for careers in aviation. "Doubling the number of training places is not just a win for the industry - it's a win for apprentices across the country who will now have greater access to a rewarding and internationally respected career path," added Anthony Brennan, Chief People Officer at AAG. "We look forward to welcoming a new cohort of ambitious future engineers to Shannon later this year." AAG's participation in this national apprenticeship expansion underscores its ongoing commitment to workforce development and excellence in aviation maintenance training. Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless TD and Minister of State at the Department Marian Harkin TD yesterday announced the expansion of apprenticeship opportunities after a comprehensive consultation. Minister Lawless said: "I am pleased we were able to rapidly double training places for this important apprenticeship and bolster Ireland's position as a key player in the global aviation industry. It is essential the apprenticeship system is agile and can scale up or down quickly as required, based on the dynamic needs of the sectors we serve. Details of the aircraft mechanic apprenticeship can be found here: https://apprenticeship.ie/career-seekers/get-started/learn-more/electrical/aircraft-mechanics-l6.

Our Athlete Advisory Group (AAG) plays a vital role informing the strategic direction and shaping education strategies of the agency. Through their collective lived experience, they provide insights into the pressures and influences that can threaten the integrity of sport, and how we can better assist athletes to be clean, safe and fair in sport. Marathon runner Cassie Fien was a member of our AAG for more than four years. With her final term recently coming to an end, we had a chat with Cassie about her role on the AAG, in particular, the lived experience she was able to share as a sanctioned athlete. Hear more of Cassie’s unique and valuable insights in this episode of On Side. Find out more at https://www.sportintegrity.gov.au/ Follow us on our social accounts: https://www.facebook.com/SportIntegrityAus https://www.instagram.com/sportintegrityaus https://x.com/protectingsport https://au.linkedin.com/company/sport-integrity-australiaSupport the show: https://www.sportintegrity.gov.au/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the aviation industry faces a growing demand for skilled aircraft maintenance engineers, Shannon-based Atlantic Aviation Group (AAG) is responding by opening applications early for its prestigious four-year Apprenticeship in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering. With the sector experiencing a surge in recruitment needs, this sought-after programme provides aspiring engineers with a unique opportunity to gain internationally recognised qualifications and hands-on experience in a fast-paced and dynamic industry. The AAG Apprenticeship Programme has produced award-winning apprentices at both national and international levels, equipping graduates with the expertise needed to thrive in the aviation sector. "There has never been a better time to pursue a career in aircraft maintenance engineering," said Anthony Brennan, Chief People Officer of AAG. "The aviation industry is growing, and skilled engineers are in high demand. Our apprenticeship programme offers world-class training, mentorship, and real-world experience, setting graduates up for long-term career success." AAG apprentices graduate with highly sought-after qualifications, opening doors to exciting career opportunities in both Ireland and abroad. Many former apprentices have gone on to secure senior roles within AAG and across the global aviation industry. This four-year apprenticeship combines hands-on, on-the-job training with structured off-the-job technical education, covering key topics such as Engineering fundamentals, Aircraft structures and sheet metal repair, Avionics and electrical systems and Jet engines and aerodynamics. How to Apply Interested candidates can apply online via the official Application Form and can see more details here about the Apprenticeship Programme. Applications are now open for this unmissable opportunity to launch a career in aviation! More about Irish Tech News Irish Tech News are Ireland's No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland's No.1 Tech Podcast too. You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here: https://anchor.fm/irish-tech-news If you'd like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie now to discuss. Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at Info@IrishTechNews.ie now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience. You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

In this inspiring episode, we sit down with Meg Stevens, a veteran of college athletics and the driving force behind Arizona Athletic Grounds (AAG). Meg shares her journey, her vision for empowering young female athletes, and the exciting launch of the Girls First Initiative. Key Highlights: Introduction to Meg Stevens: Learn about Meg's background and her extensive experience in collegiate athletics. Career Transition: Q: After two decades in college athletics, what inspired your move to AAG? Meg discusses the motivations behind her career shift and the impact she aims to make. One Team Philosophy: Meg explains her "One Team" philosophy and how it shapes the culture at AAG. Empowering Young Women: Q: How are you establishing AAG as a premier facility for women's athletics? Insights into initiatives and programs designed to support female athletes. Girls First Initiative: Q: What is the Girls First Initiative, and why did you launch it? Meg outlines the goals of the initiative and its significance for young women in sports. Challenges in Youth Sports: Q: What's the biggest challenge in leading a youth sports complex in Arizona? A candid discussion about the hurdles faced in the industry. Overcoming Obstacles: Q: What's the biggest hurdle you have overcome in your career? Meg shares her personal experiences and lessons learned. Job Satisfaction: Q: What's the best part of your job? Discover what fuels Meg's passion for her work. Advice for Aspiring Leaders: Q: What would you say to someone who wants a similar career path to yours? Practical advice for women looking to follow in her footsteps. Life Outside Work: Meg shares a glimpse of her life outside of AAG. Inspiration: Q: What is your favorite quote? A motivational quote that resonates with Meg's journey. Exciting Announcement: Next week, AAG will unveil their inaugural class of “Girls First” Ambassadors—three outstanding female collegiate athletes who will each receive $10,000 to inspire future generations of female athletes. Listen in as Meg Stevens shares her vision for the future of women's sports and how AAG is leading the charge! Connect with Us: Follow us on social media for updates and behind-the-scenes content. Subscribe to Leadership is Female for more empowering stories from women leaders. Episode Links: Arizona Athletic Grounds Girls First Initiative Leadership is Female Thanks for tuning in! Like, share and follow Leadership is Female. instagram.com/leadershipisfemale instagram.com/emilyjaenson --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/leadershipisfemale/support

Many autoimmune neuromuscular disorders are reversible with prompt diagnosis and early treatment. Understanding the potential utility and limitations of antibody testing in each clinical setting is critical for practicing neurologists. In this episode, Teshamae Monteith, MD, FAAN speaks with Divyanshu Dubey, MD, FAAN, author of the article “Autoimmune Neuromuscular Disorders Associated With Neural Antibodies,” in the Continuum® August 2024 Autoimmune Neurology issue. Dr. Monteith is the associate editor of Continuum® Audio and an associate professor of clinical neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida. Dr. Dubey is an associate professor in the departments of neurology and laboratory medicine and pathology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Additional Resources Read the article: Autoimmune Neuromuscular Disorders Associated With Neural Antibodies Subscribe to Continuum: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @headacheMD Guest: @Div_Dubey Transcript Full episode transcript available here Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum, the premier topic-based neurology clinical review and CME journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Thank you for joining us on Continuum Audio, which features conversations with Continuum's guest editors and authors who are the leading experts in their fields. Subscribers to the Continuum journal can read the full article or listen to verbatim recordings of the article and have access to exclusive interviews not featured on the podcast. Please visit the link in the episode notes for more information on the article, subscribing to the journal, and how to get CME.   Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Divyanshu Dubey about his article on autoimmune neuromuscular disorders associated with neural autoantibodies, which is part of the August 2024 Continuum issue on autoimmune neurology. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?   Dr Dubey: Hi, Dr Monteith. Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this podcast. I'm doing well.   Dr Monteith: Well, why don't you introduce yourself to the audience? And, call me Tesha.   Dr Dubey: I'm Divyanshu Dubey (please, call me Div). I'm one of the autoimmune neurology consultants here at Mayo Clinic Rochester. I'm an Associate Professor of neurology, as well as lab medicine and pathology. My responsibilities here are split - partly seeing patients (primarily patients with autoimmune disorders, including neuromuscular disorders), and then 50% of my time (or, actually, more than 50%), I spend in the lab, either doing research on these autoimmune disorders or reporting antibodies in a clinical setting for various antibody panels which Mayo's neuroimmunology lab offers.   Dr Monteith: That's a nice overlap of subspecialty area. How did you get into this work?   Dr Dubey: I think a lot of it was, sort of, by chance. Meeting the right people at the right time was the main, sort of, motivation for me. Initially, I trained in India for my medical school and didn't really got much exposed to autoimmune neurology in India. I think our primary concern in my training was sort of treating TB meningitis and cerebral malaria - that was my exposure to neurology, including stroke and some epilepsy cases. As a part of application for USMLEs and coming here to residency, I did some externships, and one of the externships was at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and that's when I worked a few weeks with Dr Posner and got introduced to the idea of paraneoplastic neurological syndrome working with him. And that sort of started - I wouldn't call it vicious cycle - but my interest in the area of autoimmune neurology and paraneoplastic neurological disorders, which subsequently was refined further through residency and fellowships.   Dr Monteith: That's interesting. I actually rotated through - I did a externship also at Sloan Kettering, and I had a clinic with Dr Posner. And I thought, at the time, he was such a rock star, and, like, I took a picture with him, and I think he thought it was insane. And I didn't go into autoimmune neurology. So, you know, interesting pathways, right?   Dr Dubey: Yes. And I think he's inspired many, many people, and sort of trained a lot of them as well.   Dr Monteith: So, why don't you tell us what you set out to do when writing this article?   Dr Dubey: So, I think, given my background and training in various subspecialties in neurology, I was, sort of, formally did fellowships in autoimmune neurology, as well as neuromuscular medicine. One of the areas in these areas that I focus on is in my clinical practice, as well as in my sort of lab work, is autoimmune muscular disorders - and that to, specifically, autoantibodies and their clinical utility for autoimmune muscular disorders. So, that's what I wanted to focus on in an article. When I was invited to write an article on autoimmune muscular conditions in general, I thought it was very difficult to pack it all in one chapter or one article, so I narrowed my focus (or tilted my focus) towards antibody-positive disorders and trying to understand how we as neurologists can firstly sort of identify these conditions (which may end up being antibody-positive) – and then, on the other hand, once we get these antibody results, how we can find the utility in them or find them useful in taking care of our patients. At the same time, I also wanted to kind of highlight that these antibodies are not perfect, they do have certain limitations – so, that's another thing I sort of highlighted in the article.   Dr Monteith: So, why don't we just start with a very broad question - what do you believe the role of autoantibodies is in the workup of neuropathies and then neuromuscular disorders? Obviously, when we think of myasthenia gravis, but there are some presentations that you may not necessarily think to first order autoantibody tests. So, what is the role, and where does it fit in the paradigm?   Dr Dubey: I think it's extremely crucial, and it's evolving as time goes on, and it's becoming more and more clinically relevant. Let's say three, four decades ago, the number of biomarkers which were available were very limited and only a handful - and there has been a significant increase in these biomarkers with growing utilization of newer techniques for discovery of antibodies, and more and more people jumping into this field trying to not only discover, but try and understand and validate these biomarkers (what they truly, clinically mean). These antibodies, like you pointed out, ones for myasthenia (such as acetylcholine receptor-binding antibodies, or MuSK antibodies), they can be extremely helpful in clinical diagnosis of these patients. We all know the importance of EMG in managing our patients with neuromuscular disorders. But, oftentimes, EMG nerve conduction studies are often not available at every center. In those scenarios, if you have antibodies with very high clinical specificity, and you're seeing a patient on examination whom you're seeing ptosis (fatigable ptosis), double vision, you're suspecting myasthenia, you send antibodies, and they come back positive. It brings you closer to the answer that may, in turn, require you to refer to a patient to a place where you can get high-quality EMGs or high-quality care. In addition to getting to the diagnosis, it also, sometimes, leads you in directions to search for what is the trigger. A good example is all these paraneoplastic neurological syndromes (which we started our conversation with), where once you find a biomarker (such as anti-Hu antibodies or CRMP5 antibodies) in a patient with paraneoplastic neuropathies, it can direct the search for cancer. These are the patients where, specifically, these two antibodies, small-cell lung cancer is an important cancer to rule out - they require CT scans, and if those are negative, consider doing PET scan – so, we can remove the inciting factor in these cases. And then, lastly, it can guide treatment. Depending upon subtypes of antibodies or particular antibodies, it can give us some idea what is going to be the most effective treatment for these patients.   Dr Monteith: I think paraneoplastic syndromes are a very good example of how autoantibodies can help guide treatment. But, what other examples can you provide for us?   Dr Dubey: Yeah, so I think one of the relatively recent antibody tests which our lab started offering is biomarkers of autoimmune neuropathies - these are neurofascin and contactin, and those are great examples which can target or guide your treatment. I personally, in the past, have had many CIDP patients before we were offering these testings, where we used to kind of start these patients on IVIG. They had the typical electrodiagnostic features, which would qualify them for CIDP. They did not show any response. In many of these cases, we tried to do sort of clinical testing or sort of research-based testing for neurofascin and contactin back in the day, but we didn't have this resource where we can sort of send the blood, hopefully, and within a week, get an answer, whether these patients have autoimmune neuropathy or not. Having this resource now, in some of these cases, even before starting them on IVIG, knowing that test result can guide treatments, such as considering plasma exchange up front as a first-line therapy, followed by rituximab or B-cell depleting therapies, which have been shown to be extremely beneficial in these conditions. And it is not just limited to neurofascin or contactin (which are predominantly IgG4-mediated condition), but the same concept applies to other IgG4-mediated diseases, such as MuSK myasthenia, where having an antibody result can guide your treatment towards B-cell depleting therapies instead of sort of trying the typical regimen that you try for other myasthenia gravis patients.   Dr Monteith: And you mentioned where I was reading that, sometimes, nerve conduction studies and EMG can be useful to then narrow the autoantibody profiles. Oftentimes, in the inpatient service, we order the autoantibodies much faster, because it's sometimes harder to access EMG nerve conduction studies - but talk about that narrowing process.   Dr Dubey: Yeah. And it goes back to the point you just made where we end up sending, sort of, sometimes (and I'm guilty of this as well), where we just send antibodies incessantly, even knowing that this particular patient is not necessarily likely to be an autoimmune neurological disorder, and that can be a challenge, even if the false-positive rate for a particular test is, let's say 1% - if you send enough panels, you will get that false-positive result for a particular patient. And that can have significant effects on the patient - not only unnecessary testing or imaging (depending on what type of antibody it is), but also exposure to various immunotherapies or immunosuppressive therapies. It's important to recognize red flags – and that's one of the things I've focused on in this article, is talking about clinical, as well as electrodiagnostic, factors, which make us think that this might be an autoimmune condition, and then, subsequently, we should consider autoantibody testing. Otherwise, we can be in a situation - that 1% situation - where we may be sort of dealing with a false-positive result, rather than a true-positive result. In terms of EMGs, I think I find them extremely useful, specifically for neuropathies, distinguishing between demyelinating versus exonal, and then catering our antibody-ordering practices toward specific groups of antibodies which are associated with demyelinating neuropathies (if that's what the electrophysiology showed) versus if it's an exonal pathology (considering a different subset of antibodies) - and that's going to be extremely important.   Dr Monteith: You're already getting to my next question, which is what are some of the limitations of autoantibody testing? You mentioned the false-positivity rate - what other limitations are there?   Dr Dubey: So, I think the limitations are both for seropositive, as well as seronegative, patients. As a neurologist, when we see patients and send panels, we can be in a challenging situation in both of those scenarios. Firstly, thinking about seropositives - despite the growing literature about neurology and antibodies, we have to be aware, at least to some extent, about what methodologies are being utilized for these antibody tests. And what I mean by that is knowing when you're sending a sample to a particular lab, the methodology that they're utilizing - is that the most sensitive, specific way to test for certain antibodies? We've learned about this through some of the literature published regarding MOG and aquaporin-4, which has demonstrated that these antibodies, which we suspect are cell surface antibodies, not only generate false-positive, but also false-negative results if they are tested by Western blots or ELISAs. Similar can be applied to some of the cell surface antibodies we are investigating on the autoimmune neuromuscular side (we have some sort of unpublished data regarding that for neurofascin-155). Secondly, it's also kind of critical when you're getting these reports to kind of have a look at what type of secondary antibodies are being utilized, an example being we talked about neurofascin-155, and I mentioned these are IgG4-predominant diseases, so testing for neurofascin IgG4 and knowing that particular patient is positive IgG4 rather than neurofascin pan-IgG. That's an important discrimination, and important information for you to know, because we have seen, at least in my clinical practice, that patients who are positive for neurofascin IgG4 follow the typical story of autoimmune neuropathies - the ones who are not (who are just neurofascin-155 IgG-positive), oftentimes can have wide-ranging phenotypes. The same applies to neurofascin-155 IgMs. And then (not for all antibodies, but for some antibodies), titers are important. A good example of that is a3 ganglionic receptor antibodies, which we utilize for when we're taking care of patients who have autoimmune dysautonomia - and in these cases, if the titers of the antibodies are below .2 nmol/L, usually, those don't have a high specificity for AAG diagnosis. So, I get referred a lot of patients with very low titers of a3 ganglionic receptor antibodies, where the clinical picture does not at all look like autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy. So, that's another thing to potentially keep in mind. And then, on the seronegative front, it's important to recognize that we are still sort of seeing the tip of the iceberg as far as these antibodies or biomarkers are concerned, specifically for certain phenotypes, such as CIDP. If you look at the literature, depending upon what demographics we're looking at or sort of racial profiles we're looking at, the frequency of these autoimmune neuropathy biomarkers range from 5% to 20%, with much higher frequency in Asian patients - so, a good chunk of these diseases are still seronegative. In the scenario where you have a very high suspicion for an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder (specifically, we'll talk about neuropathies, because that's why we utilize tissue immunofluorescence staining on neural tissues), I recommend people to potentially touch base with that tertiary care lab or that referral lab to see if they have come across some research-based antibodies which are not clinically validated, which can give you some idea, some additional supportive idea, that what you're dealing with is an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder. So, we have to keep the limitations of some of these antibody panels and antibody tests in mind for both positive, as well as negative, results.   Dr Monteith: So, you've already given us a lot of good stuff, um, about titer seronegativity and false-positive rates. And, you know, also looking at the clinical picture when ordering these tests, utilizing EMG nerve conduction studies, give us a major key point that we can't not get when reading your article.   Dr Dubey: I think the major key point is we are neurologists first and serologists later. Most of these patients, we have to kind of evaluate them clinically and convince ourselves at least partly that this might be an autoimmune neuromuscular disorder before sending off these panels. Also, I find it useful to narrow down the phenotype, let's say, in a particular neuropathy or a muscle disease or a hyperexcitability syndrome. So, I have a core group of antigens, autoantigens, or autoantibodies, which I'm expecting and making myself aware of - things beyond that will raise my antenna - potentially, is this truly relevant? Could this be potentially false-positive? So, clinical characterization up front, phenotypic characterization upfront, and then utilizing those antibody results to support our clinical decision-making and therapeutic decision-making is what I've tried to express in this article.   Dr Monteith: And what is something that you wish you knew much earlier in your career?   Dr Dubey: It's a very challenging field, and it's a rapidly evolving field where we learn many things nearly every year, and, sometimes, we learn things that were previously said were incorrect, and we need to kind of work on them. A good example of that is initial reports of voltage-gated potassium-channel antibodies. So, back in the day when I was actually in my medical school and (subsequently) in my residency, voltage-gated potassium-channel antibodies were closely associated with autoimmune neuromyotonia, or autoimmune peripheral hyperexcitability syndromes. Now, over time, we've recognized that only the patients who are positive for LGI1 or CASPR2 are the ones who truly have autoimmune neuromuscular disorders or even CNS disorders. The voltage-gated potassium-channel antibody by itself, without LGI1 or CASPR2, truly doesn't have a very high specificity for neurological autoimmunity. So, that's one example of how even things which were published were considered critical thinking or critical knowledge in our field of autoimmune neuromuscular disorders has evolved and has sort of changed over time. And, again, the new antibodies are another area where nearly every year, something new pops up - not everything truly stands a test of time, but this keeps us on our toes.   Dr Monteith: And what's something that a patient taught you?   Dr Dubey: I think one of the things with every patient interaction I recognize is being an autoimmune neurologist, we tend to focus a lot on firstly, diagnosis, and secondly, immunotherapy - but what I've realized is symptomatic and functional care beyond immunotherapy in these patients who have autoimmune neurological disorders is as important, if not more important. That includes care of patients, involving our colleagues from physical medicine and rehab in terms of exercise regimen for these patients as we do immunotherapies, potentially getting a plan for management of associated pain, and many other factors and many other symptoms that these patients have to deal with secondary to these autoimmune neurological conditions.   Dr Monteith: I think that's really well said, because we get excited about getting the diagnosis and then getting the treatment, but that long-term trajectory and quality of life is really what patients are seeking.   Dr Dubey: Yeah, and as you pointed out, most of the time, especially when we are in inpatient service, or even when we're seeing the patients upfront outpatient, we are seeing them, sometimes, in their acute phase or at their disease not there. What we also have to realize is, what are the implications of these autoimmune neurological conditions in the long term or five years down the line? And that's one of the questions patients often ask me and how this can impact them even when the active immune phase has subsided - and that's something we are actively trying to learn about.   Dr Monteith: So, tell me something you're really excited about in your field.   Dr Dubey: I think, firstly (which is pretty much the topic of my entire article), is novel antibodies and new biomarker discoveries. That's very exciting - we are actively, ourselves, involved in the space. The second thing is better mechanistic understanding of how these antibodies cause diseases, so we can not only understand diseases, we can also try and understand how to target and treat these diseases - this is being actively done for various disorders. One of the disorders which continue to remain a challenge are T-cell mediated diseases, where these antibodies are just red flags or biomarkers are not causing the disease, but it's potentially the T-cells possibly attacking the same antigen which are causing disease process, and those are often the more refractory and harder-to-treat conditions. I'm hoping that with some of the work done in other fields (such as rheumatology or endocrinology for type one diabetes), we're able to learn and apply the same in the field of autoimmune neurology and autoimmune neuromuscular medicine. And then, the final frontier is developing therapies which are antigen specific, where you have discovered that somebody has a particular antibody, and if that antibody is pathogenic, can I just deplete that antibody, not necessarily pan-depleting the immune system. And there is some translational data, there's some animal model data in that area, which I find very exciting, will be extremely helpful for many of my patients.   Dr Monteith: So, very personalized targeted therapies?   Dr Dubey: Correct. Without having all the side effects we all have to kind of take care of in our patients when we start them on, let's say, cyclophosphamide, or some of these really, really, significantly suppressive immunosuppressive medications.   Dr Monteith: Well, thank you so much. I learned a lot from reading your article to prepare for this interview, but also just from talking to you. And it's clear that you're very passionate about what you do and very knowledgeable as well, so, thank you so much.   Dr Dubey: Thank you so much. Thank you for inviting me to do this. And thank you for inviting me to contribute the article.   Dr Monteith: Today, I've been interviewing Dr Divyanshu Dubey, whose article on autoimmune neuromuscular disorders associated with neural autoantibodies appears in the most recent issue of Continuum on autoimmune neurology. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues. And thank you to our listeners for joining us today.   Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information, important for neurology practitioners. Use this link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at Continpub.com/AudioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.

In deze Parade-uitzending volgen we het spoor terug naar de 18e eeuw. Deze zomer staat Esther van der Wel op de Parade met hun voorstelling Bet en Aag, over de beroemde schrijfsters Betje Wolff en Aagje Deken. Met hun briefroman Sara Burgerhart belandden ze in de Canon van Nederland en representeren ze de Verlichtingsideeën. Door hun schrijverschap werden ze ware beroemdheden in hun tijd. En ze waren onafscheidelijk. Ze werkten samen, woonden samen en sliepen in hetzelfde bed. Was dit enkel een vruchtbare samenwerking, een hechte vriendschap, of toch meer? Esther van der Wel gaat in hun voorstelling op zoek naar wat zij nog meer van elkaar waren. Wat blijft er van deze beroemde schrijfsters, behalve hun boeken? Presentatie: Lara Billie Rense. In het tweede uur de Wat Blijft podcast over Schrijver Esmee Schenck de Jong, gemaakt door Maarten Dallinga. Redactie zomeruitzendingen: Laura Iwuchukwu, Nina Ramkisoen, Geerte Verduijn, Jessica Zoghary, Adinda Hijl, Sjoerd Alders, Noah van Diepen, Nienke Spaan  Eindredactie: Bram Vollaers Productie: Mare de Vries

This Day in Legal History: Gulf of Tonkin ResolutionOn August 7, 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a pivotal moment in American history that marked a significant escalation in the Vietnam War. This resolution was a direct response to the alleged attack on the USS Maddox by North Vietnamese forces on August 4, 1964. The text of the resolution granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." Essentially, it provided the President with a blank check to conduct military operations in Southeast Asia without an official declaration of war. President Johnson's message to Congress emphasized the need for decisive action to protect American interests and allies in the region. He portrayed the resolution as a means to maintain international peace and security, suggesting that failure to act would embolden Communist expansion. The resolution received overwhelming support in Congress, with only two Senators, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, voting against it. This legislative act significantly broadened the executive powers and set the stage for large-scale American involvement in Vietnam, leading to a prolonged and contentious conflict that would have lasting impacts on both American and Vietnamese societies.The Biden administration's $250 million initiative aims to bolster electric trucking along the Northeast I-95 corridor through the Clean Corridor Coalition plan. This involves installing chargers in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut to support electric trucks, aligning with the administration's climate goals to cut 18.6 million tons of carbon emissions by 2050. Despite this, electric trucks only represent 0.23% of registered U.S. trucks, partly due to their higher cost compared to diesel trucks.The trucking industry's adoption of electric vehicles is unpredictable due to varying fleet management practices and preferences. Larger companies like J.B. Hunt and Schneider National are leading by integrating electric trucks, potentially setting a trend for smaller fleets. The initiative also intends to inspire private motorists by showcasing electric trucks.Effective placement of chargers, likely at existing rest stops, is crucial for the plan's success. However, the power capacity at these locations may pose challenges. A mix of charger types is essential to accommodate different charging needs and maintain truck operation efficiency.Permitting and zoning are being addressed to streamline the installation process. This initiative could potentially pave the way for broader national adoption of electric trucking, although substantial investment in charging infrastructure is needed for full electrification. The coalition's efforts might inspire mid-sized and smaller fleets to follow suit, enhancing the shift towards greener transportation. The detailed focus on charger placement and power availability highlights the legal and logistical complexities of this initiative, emphasizing the need for coordinated efforts between state and local governments.Electric Trucks Put to the Test in I-95 Corridor Charger ProgramThe U.S. public school system has become a new battleground over religious expression, particularly regarding the display and teaching of religious texts. Louisiana and Oklahoma have enacted laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments and the teaching of the Bible in public schools, respectively. These moves challenge the Constitution's "establishment clause," which separates church and state. This year alone, lawmakers in 29 states have proposed 91 bills promoting religion in schools, driven by conservative opposition to liberal curriculums and the Supreme Court's recent rightward shift.In Louisiana, Attorney General Liz Murrill defends the Ten Commandments law as a way to address discipline in schools, while Governor Jeff Landry suggests non-religious parents tell their children to ignore the displays. Oklahoma's policy focuses on the Bible's historical and cultural significance, but some school districts resist the change. The National Association of Christian Lawmakers (NACL) is coordinating these efforts, producing model bills for state legislatures.The Supreme Court's recent rulings have emboldened conservative Christians by expanding religious rights in public life. Decisions supporting school prayer, exempting religious entities from certain regulations, and backing individuals' rights to refuse services for same-sex weddings have all contributed to this movement. As more laws emerge, the Court may need to address whether such mandates create denominational preferences or coerce religious participation.How US public schools became a new religious battleground | ReutersThe Justice Department's Tax Division has been without a Senate-confirmed assistant attorney general (AAG) for most of the time since January 2009, with only a two-year exception. This vacancy undermines morale, hampers tax administration, and impacts taxpayers negatively. The AAG oversees civil tax trials, appeals, and criminal tax cases, making the role crucial for effective tax enforcement.Historically, presidential appointees have brought unique expertise and accountability to the position. For instance, under President George W. Bush, Eileen J. O'Connor revitalized the Tax Division by updating policies and expediting investigations. Nathan J. Hochman continued these efforts before the position became largely vacant. Although President Obama briefly appointed Kathryn Keneally, who led a successful initiative against Swiss banks facilitating tax evasion, subsequent nominees failed to gain Senate confirmation.President Trump did not fill the position, and President Biden has also left it vacant without nominating a candidate. This lack of leadership has contributed to a 72% decline in federal tax prosecutions since 2013. The absence of an AAG means there is no one to take responsibility for tax policy decisions, motivate prosecutors, or engage with the IRS and Congress. The resulting leadership void diminishes the Tax Division's effectiveness and prestige.To restore the division's functionality and reputation, it is crucial for the next administration and Senate to prioritize appointing a qualified AAG. This would enhance tax enforcement, support the division's employees, and ensure better tax compliance and administration.Tax Leadership Vacuum in Justice Department Must Come to an EndOn August 6, 2024, Ohio Judge Michael Holbrook upheld a state law banning gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and hormones, for transgender minors, following a challenge by families of transgender adolescents. The decision, which came after a non-jury trial, had previously been blocked by Holbrook during the trial. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost supported the ruling, asserting the legislature's authority to protect children from making irreversible medical decisions.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its Ohio chapter, representing the plaintiffs, expressed their intent to appeal, emphasizing the critical nature of gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature passed the law in January, despite Governor Mike DeWine's veto, which he issued after hearing from parents about the lifesaving impact of gender-affirming care.The plaintiffs argued the law violated a 2011 state constitutional amendment preventing state laws from prohibiting the purchase of healthcare. Judge Holbrook countered that the amendment did not prevent the state from regulating healthcare providers' actions, categorizing gender-affirming care as wrongdoing. He stated that those opposed to the law should seek change through the voting process rather than the judicial system, citing the potential risks and permanent outcomes associated with gender-affirming care as a legitimate state interest in passing the law.Ohio ban on gender-affirming care for minors upheld by judge | Reuters This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

If the values of your organization are not matching up with your personal values, this episode is for you!  In this conversation with the Austin Alliance Group team, we're tossing you the key to the golden handcuffs you're wearing at work as we explore the challenges and opportunities in creating a positive work culture. AAG has made it their mission to inspire workplaces to be more human. Fueled by the power of curiosity, vulnerability, and trust to create positive change in organizations, they know from experience, emphasizes the role of effective communication and feedback in building strong relationships between managers and employees. We discuss the importance of empathy, vulnerability, and trust in the workplace and the crucial need for leaders to take responsibility and lead by example.  Connect with the Austin Alliance Group Team: Website: www.austinalliancegroup.com  LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/austin-alliance-group  Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to the Team from Austin Alliance Group 02:41 Changing the Mentality of HR 04:53 Challenging the Traditional Top-Down Approach 09:14 Evolving Leadership and Management Tactics 12:09 The Importance of Trust and Open Communication 16:50 Building Trust through Vulnerability 18:31 Authenticity in Creating a Positive Work Culture 23:11 Introduction and Discussion on Work Culture 24:40 Leadership's Role in Fostering a Healthy Work Environment 27:05 The Importance of Trust and Vulnerability in Building Strong Relationships 29:06 HR's Role in Shaping Company Culture 32:36 Navigating Difficult Work Situations: Prioritizing Well-being and Growth

A group of Irish engineering students are hoping for a stellar experience in Europe's premier competition for rocket design that brings together international university teams to advance space and aerospace technology. A team from University of Limerick have touched down at the Mach-24 Conference taking place in Spaceport Machrihanish, Argyll, Scotland until Sunday (July 14), where they will launch their new rocket, called Morrígu with an altitude of up to 3 kilometres. The UL Aeronautical Society (ULAS) launched a new High-Powered Rocketry (HiPR) division in late 2022. This initiative offers students opportunities to engage in the learning, building, and launching of rockets. The team consists of over 35 students from various disciplines, working on projects such as Sionna, Sionna 2, TVC, and Mach-24. The team's efforts span research-focused initiatives to competitive endeavours in international competitions. The Mach-24 conference is a premier university-centred conference organised by Discover Space UK which provides a platform for showcasing innovative rocket designs, such as ULAS HiPR's Morrígu. The event fosters collaboration, knowledge exchange, and competition among the brightest minds in the field, furthering advancements in aerospace technology. As part of a partnership, Atlantic Aviation Group (AAG) has made a contribution to the project to support the development and launch of Morrígu. The 100mm wide rocket has a max altitude of 3km, a 1kg deployable cansat (a mini-satellite), an AI-powered onboard camera, a 100mm body diameter and weighs 8 kilograms. Commenting, Susan Keating, Chief Commercial Officer of Atlantic Aviation Group, praised the "innovative and ambitious HiPR team." She added: "Their dedication to advancing aerospace engineering and providing hands-on experience to students aligns with our commitment to fostering the next generation of aviation and aerospace professionals. We look forward to seeing the team launch Morrígu and continuing their work into the future." Daire O'Sullivan, ULAS-HiPR captain, said: "We are extremely grateful to have Atlantic Aviation Group supporting ULAS HiPR. Through Mach-24 and our other projects, HiPR is creating opportunities and capabilities in space science and engineering for students in UL and nationwide. Partnering with AAG enables these ambitions and provides important exposure." See more stories here.

Have you ever thought about the ripple effect your daily actions can have on the world around you? I'm thrilled to support you in growing your Direct Selling business as I firmly believe that by showing up every day and doing what you are meant to do, you can create a profound impact - not only on the people you directly interact with, but also on the larger community. Today, I am excited to introduce you to a truly inspirational figure, David Schmidt, the founder and CEO of LifeWave. LifeWave is one of the fastest-growing Direct Selling companies globally and I'm excited to explore why as part of this two-part LifeWave series.  With over 30 years of experience in business and product development, David's journey began with a childhood dream of becoming an inventor. His passion has evolved into a mission to enhance both the quality and longevity of our lives. In our conversation, David shares his insights into bridging the gap between science and intuition, highlighting how innate knowledge can be harnessed to improve our well-being. We delve into various fascinating topics; from deciphering hidden codes in the Bible to leveraging AI for business growth. So, grab a notepad - you'll want to jot down some of the profound insights shared today. Enjoy this remarkable interview!  P.S. Missed Part One? Check out the Direct Selling Accelerator Podcast, Episode 214 on your favorite streaming app or find the link in the resources below.   We'll be talking about:  ➡ [0:00] Introduction ➡ [3:42] How did LIfeWave start? ➡ [5:06] This is the place for us ➡ [7:06] Quick fun facts about David Schmidt ➡ [9:17] Day to day challenges ➡ [12:03] Why should we keep going? ➡ [15:08] Feathers and bricks ➡ [17:09] How to plan 10 years ahead ➡ [20:46] Crazy inventions that didn't make the cut ➡ [23:15] How is thinking 10 years ahead relevant to solopreneurs? ➡ [25:34] Future planning my business ➡ [28:04] Controlling our personal health ➡ [34:43] Living past 120 years ➡ [38:12] Health of the way your body produces energy ➡ [43:52] Light therapy ➡ [47:50] Explosion of health information ➡ [49:29] What to look out for ➡ [53:32] Science is about of making observations ➡ [55:08] David's favourite book ➡ [56:24] David's dream superpower ➡ [57:19] David's favourite quote ➡ [58:48] David's advice to his past self ➡ [1:00:21] Final thoughts   Resources:  Book Recommendation:   ➡ Book of Genesis: Bible   Quote: ➡ “What lies behind you and what lies before you pales to insignificance as compared to what lies within you “ - Ralph Waldo Emerson   Part One of the two-part LifeWave Series on the Direct Selling Accelerator Podcast:  ➡ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbogb6-XZ74    About our guest: David Schmidt is the inventor of LifeWave technology and founder and CEO of LifeWave. David's experience in business and product development spans over 30 years and includes a formal education in Management Information Systems and Biology at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY. David then went on to pursue several entrepreneurial endeavors and, as a result, owned successful companies involved in manufacturing and product development.  One of these companies, Advanced Applications Group, is a research and development center that specialized in energy-production technologies for both military and commercial applications. During his time with AAG, David developed new methods for producing hydrogen and oxygen, designed and prototyped multi-fueled, bladeless-turbine power generation systems, and constructed metal-combustion rocket engines. The LifeWave Technology was born out of three years of intense research by David into the concept of being able to naturally increase energy and stamina through elevation of fat burning, utilizing wireless communication to the human body via phototherapy.   Connect with David Schmidt: ➡ David Schmidt's website: https://www.lifewave.com/ ➡ David Schmidt's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWaveHealth ➡ David Schmidt's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-schmidt-a4b24b4/   Connect with Direct Selling Accelerator: ➡ Visit our website: https://www.auxano.global/ ➡ Subscribe to Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DirectSellingAccelerator ➡ Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auxanomarketing/ ➡ Email us at grow@auxanomarketing.com.au   If you have any podcast suggestions or things you'd like to learn about specifically, please send us an email at the address above. And if you liked this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Intelligent Monitoring Group Ltd (ASX:IMB) joins Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss binding agreements to acquire Everjazz Pty Limited (Alarm Assets Group or AAG) and ACG Integration Pty Ltd (ACG) for a total of $15.9 million. These acquisitions are anticipated to add $5.7 million to FY24 proforma EBITDA, at an EV/EBITDA multiple of 2.8x. The acquisitions will bring more than 35 skilled technicians and expand IMG's national coverage, enhancing capacity for growth in its commercial business. The client bases of AAG and ACG include ASX 100 companies and large government clients. To fund the acquisitions, IMG will issue approximately 60.4 million new shares at $0.32 each, raising about $19.3 million. This represents a 7.2% discount to the last closing price and a 0.4% discount to the 10-day volume-weighted average price. The proceeds will cover acquisition costs, transaction expenses and working capital requirements. Completion of the acquisitions is subject to various conditions, including financier approval, and is targeted for June 30, 2024. Hambling highlighted the acquisitions as strategic additions to ADT's business, projecting a revenue run rate increase to $12 million annually by June 2024, with further growth anticipated. #ProactiveInvestors #IMG #ASX #Acquisitions #SecurityServices #BusinessGrowth #Investment #ASX #Technicians #CommercialBusiness #EBITDA #EquityPlacement #StrategicGrowth #ADT #NewShares #InstitutionalInvestors #NationalCoverage #RevenueGrowth #SecurityIndustry #InvestorSupport #Refinancing #Australasia #invest #investing #investment #investor #stockmarket #stocks #stock #stockmarketnews

Want to shift from managing people to building a culture & a team?In this episode of The Business Ownership Podcast I interviewed Jason Scott.J. Scott, a talentless, real-life anti-hero who doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk. Growing up in the streets of Los Angeles with less-than-ideal parents, J. learned early on that actions speak louder than words.J. Scott is the epitome of the anti-thought leader, proving that leadership isn't about being the most talented or successful person on the team. It's about helping your team members define and deliver success. If you surround yourself with talented people and inspire them to reach for THEIR potential, the leader doesn't need to be talented. They just have to play for the team. J. Scott is a regular guy who's proven that actions speak louder than words.Jason has spent over 20 years leading global transformational efforts for DirecTV, Trader Joe's, Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT Games, Sony Pictures, ResMed, AAG, Universal Music Group, Remitly, and others. He is the author of two Amazon-bestselling books “It's Never Just Business: It's About People” and “The Irreverent Guide to Project Management, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Project Management.” Jason is a sought-after keynote speaker, with 5-star reviews for his unique, people-centric, and outcome-obsessed approach to change that has generated breakthrough results and created meaningful jobs. His passion to mentor and training a new generation of leaders led him to start the Transformational Leadership Academy where he leads a 14-week certification program. Learn how to build a high-performing team. Check this out!Show Links:Jason Scott LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonscottJason Scott Website: https://www.jasonscottleadership.com/120VC Website: https://www.120vc.com/120VC YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTqPCasdYzfsJ7nV61KWSqQBook a call with Michelle: https://www.AwarenessStrategies.com/m30Join our Facebook group for business owners to get help or help other business owners! The Business Ownership Group - Secrets to Scaling: https://www.facebook.com/groups/businessownershipsecretstoscalingLooking to scale your business? Get free gifts here to help you on your way: https://www.awarenessstrategies.com/

Please enjoy 550-AAG a great episode of the legendary Apollo 11 Mission Audio NASA -

Please enjoy 938-AAG a great episode of the legendary Apollo 11 Mission Audio NASA -

Please enjoy 939-AAG a great episode of the legendary Apollo 11 Mission Audio NASA -

Please enjoy 939-AAG a great episode of the legendary Apollo 11 Mission Audio NASA -

Shannon is to receive another boost, with the announcement of 30 new trainee positions at Atlantic Aviation Group. AAG, one of Europe's largest aircraft maintainance companies, is seeking to recruit trainee aircraft technicians to help the firm service its expanding client base. In partnership with the Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board, the company will open two recruitment periods for its traineeship programme this year, with the first phase of recruitment beginning on June 10th and the second phase beginning in October. AAG Chief Aviation Services Officer Eva O'Keeffe says the partnership aims to address the global shortage of qualified aircraft maintenance technicians.

Thursday Edition Rabaut & Co. 10-noon-10:20 @BenRobertsHL  joins-UK & the portal-McDonald's AAG-recruiting-@JayDavis_1981 11-FF thoughts, preview-NBA down the stretch-WFF preview-NfL draft board shakeups-3 100pt preps SatSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thursday Edition Rabaut & Co.-10:20 @BenRobertsHL  joins-UK & the portal-McDonald's AAG-recruiting-@JayDavis_1981 11-FF thoughts, preview-NBA down the stretch-WFF preview-NfL draft board shakeups-3 100pt preps SatSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

00:00 Presentación11:00 Entrevista Mateo Fernández de Oliveira17:00 Entrevista Maggie Simmermacher20:00 Entrevista Ivan Tcherkaski(Psicólogo Deportivo en AAG)23:00 AGENDA del Fin de Semana

00:00 Presentación06:50 Entrevista Homenaje Roberto De Vicenzo 12:00 Entrevista Andrés Schönbaum, Presidente de la AAG 22:11 Entrevista Mateo Fernandez De Oliveira

Hello Interactors,I'll admit it, the early summer weather here in Seattle has been a distraction. So, I turned to a writing companion this week to help. I took my notes from a talk I saw at the AAG conference in March, and you know what comes next…I pasted it in ChatGPT. I then took some papers referenced in the talk, grabbed their abstracts, and pasted those in ChatGPT. After a few iterations of ‘expand on this', ‘merge these…' and ‘shrink this to three sentences' I had all the working components needed to form an essay roughly 1000 words long.I pasted that into Word and began editing in my own voice and adding bits of my own thoughts. When I'd get stuck on a concept or blending of concepts, I'd ask ChatGPT to blend them for me. When I was unsure or dubious of its confidence, I'd turn to Google Scholar and Wikipedia for further reference or content to be rewritten more evidentially.I find ChatGPT a valuable writing companion. Some facts are often way off and downright fictional at times, but it is good at taking a jumble of ideas, lists of points, or disparate topics and putting them into cohesive starting points. Especially when the sun is shining and it's 72 degrees outside.Let me know what you think and what your thoughts are on using ChatGPT for this kind of thing. Here's what ChatGPT says are three takeaways from this post.Key Takeaways:* Grid and Place Cells: Researchers have discovered specific patterns of neuron firing in the brains of rats, mice, bats, and humans, known as place cells and grid cells. Place cells are found in the hippocampus and respond to specific locations in the environment, while grid cells in the entorhinal cortex form grid-like patterns representing the overall layout of space.* Non-Euclidean Geometries: The discovery of grid cells and cognitive maps challenges the dominance of Euclidean geometry in understanding spatial cognition. Grid cells exhibit a hexagonal grid pattern, highlighting the non-Euclidean nature of cognitive maps in the brain.* Computational Models: The integration of computational models such as reinforcement learning and successor representations, inspired by the research on place cells and grid cells, offers a deeper understanding of spatial cognition. These models capture the complex interactions between cognition, decision-making, and the environment, reflecting the non-Euclidean nature of grid cells and challenging traditional geometric frameworks. By incorporating these computational approaches, researchers can develop more comprehensive and inclusive models of spatial cognition that consider the interconnectedness and dynamic nature of cognitive processes and the environments we navigate.As interactors, you're special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You're also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let's go…TELLTALE CELLS OF RAT TRACESIn my last post, I talked about how Platonic and Euclidian geometric purity and gridded Cartesian planes may have overly influenced Western thought, beliefs, and actions. Scientific thinking may have been errantly seduced by the certainty and accuracy of rational proofs to describe not only the physical world but how our minds and body interact with it and each other. We now know it's likely the world is constructed of layers of indeterminant, interrelated complex interactions occurring at atomic, chemical, biological, psychological, sociological, astronomical, and cosmological levels.And yet theoretical and observable patterns emerge amidst this chaos that can and are described and understood through both Euclidean and non-Euclidean patterns. For example, patterns found in the brain. Cognitive scientists studying rats in the 1970s discovered a collection of neurons fired when a rat entered a particular place in a maze. They called these neuron firing locations place cells.This video shows a rat running around in a circular environment (black line) and any time a particular cell is active (red dots). The red dots cluster around one location, which is the place field of the cell. (Source: Jankowski M, O'Mara S (2015) via Wikipedia)Place cell patterns are found primarily in the hippocampus region of the brain. They're derived from a collection of firing neurons that selectively respond to specific locations or places in an environment. Place cells are influenced by environmental cues and play a crucial role in spatial memory formation, allowing for the association of specific memories or experiences with particular places. They are instrumental in the formation of cognitive maps, which are inherently non-Euclidean because they can include unpredictable shortcuts, deviations, and distortions.As research continued in the 1990s, the arrangement of these patterns began showing signs of grid-like regularity. Some speculated the brain was forming a kind of rectangular grid. And then in 2005, scientists discovered grid-like patterns firing in an area neighboring the hippocampus, the entorhinal cortex – also involved in spatial processing and memory. They termed these grid cells and they indeed resembled Euclidean regularity.  These collections of neurons fire at regular intervals as a rat moves about the environment. As it nears a node of its virtual lattice, neurons fire in the entorhinal cortex. These nodes make a grid-like pattern, but it's not a regular rectangular grid. It instead is comprised of hexagonal shapes. Unlike place cells, which have specific firing fields for distinct locations, grid cells offer a continuous representation of space, capturing the overall layout and virtual hexagonal geometry of the environment in the brain.By establishing a kind of coordinate system, scientists theorize grid cells are used to monitor movement and position relative to the surrounding space. This supports path integration and reinforcement which helps maintain a sense of direction and distance traveled. While the eyes play a crucial role in strengthening these patterns, the lattice is nonetheless present even when traversing in the dark – absent of external cues.While this phenomenon has been found in the brains of rats, mice, bats, and humans, similar findings exist in insects, albeit sparse and more static. Neurons in their antennal lobe encode the identity of odors through patterns formed by synchronized oscillating feedback loops with other neurons responsible for olfactory processing and learning.Research on place cells, grid cells, and other brain structures involved in spatial representation and learning can provide valuable insights into how humans perceive and navigate space. By understanding the neural mechanisms underlying spatial cognition, researchers can refine and validate cognitive models of space.MOST CERTAINLY A CERTAIN UNCERTAINTYWhile I was attending the American Association of Geographer's conference in Denver last March, I attended a session aimed at a body of research called behavioral and cognitive geography (BCG). This discipline has opened new avenues for understanding the links between human cognition, behavior, and the environment. This interdisciplinary field combines concepts from geography, psychology, neuroscience, AI, and other disciplines to explore how individuals and groups interact with space and make decisions individually and collectively.One important aspect of BCG is decision making. Researchers in this field aim to develop more representative models of decision making by incorporating insights from disciplines such as judgment and decision making. This involves moving away from unrealistic assumptions grounded in traditional, rational interpretations in geography using Euclidean geometry. Two of my professors at UCSB, Reg Golledge and Waldo Tobler, both called for non-Euclidean investigations after forays into their groundbreaking research in cognitive maps in the 1970s.Advancing this knowledge will require accounting for the context of spatial decision making. This includes social norms, institutions, and the physical environment that influences us. Additionally, acknowledging the heterogeneity among decision makers and considering cultural values is crucial for developing comprehensive decision models that are representative of all groups.Collaborations with fields such as artificial intelligence, computational neuroscience, and social physics are contributing to expanding the scope and ambition of BCG. One researcher in this area from the University of Leeds, Ed Manley, presented at the conference. He is developing new analytical methods that blend topological and computational neuroscience, like those found in grid and place cell research, to account for both Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries and explanations.His recent research integrates both cognitive and behavioral geography using advanced agent-based modeling and spatial analysis. By leveraging the availability of large-scale, rich data on human mobility with computational models of spatial cognition he sees opportunities for deepening our understanding of how people interact with place.There are two computer-based models he is currently exploring – reinforcement learning (RL) and successor representations (SR). These concepts are influenced and inspired by advancements in neuroscience – including place cell and grid cell research. Reinforcement learning is a general framework for learning optimal behavior through interactions with an environment while successor representations are a specific method used within reinforcement learning.Reinforcement learning involves an agent that learns to make decisions and take actions in an environment to maximize cumulative rewards. The agent interacts with the environment, receives feedback in the form of rewards or penalties, and adjusts its behavior based on this feedback. The goal is to learn rules that map states to actions to maximize the expected cumulative reward.Successor representations represent the state transitions and expected future rewards associated with different states. Instead of directly representing states and their values, successor representations capture the underlying structure of the environment. Probability scores are mapped to transitions between states and the expected cumulative reward that can be obtained from each state.The modeled probability values of a state relates to the expected cumulative reward obtained by starting from that state and following a particular set of rules. By representing states in terms of their expected future rewards, successor representations provide a more compact and informative representation of the environment.COMPLEXITY AND CONNECTION IN SUCCESSOR EVOLUTIONIn the context of reinforcement learning, successor representations can be used to facilitate learning and decision-making by providing a structured representation of the environment's dynamics. This allows computer-based agents to make better-informed decisions based on the expected future rewards associated with different states.Manley's integration of SR into cognitive geography holds promise for understanding the construction of spatial knowledge and its connection to cognition. This method captures the idea that previous choices inform future decisions, mirroring the cognitive processes involved in spatial learning. This approach is closely linked to the spatial-dependent nature of tasks, which arise from geographic processes – including the formation of the natural and built environment.This research also shows potential for tailoring learning processes to known demographic and background factors, allowing for more fair, accurate, and representative models of spatial cognition. This enables researchers to account for the diverse influences that shape decision-making and spatial behavior among different populations and their environments.Moreover, the utilization of these methods in cognitive geography provides an avenue to develop models of space that blend metric and topological representations systematically. This integration allows for a more comprehensive understanding of spatial environments, capturing both the quantitative measurements and the qualitative relationships between locations.This approach to geography represents a departure from dominant Platonic, Euclidean, and Cartesian thinking, embracing complexity and connectedness. These computational approaches reflect and acknowledge the dynamic nature of cognition, where the iteration of past choices inform future decisions.It highlights the interconnectedness between cognition and the environment, challenging compartmentalized views and fostering interdisciplinary approaches. This departure from fixed and predetermined paths echoes a broader shift towards embracing complexity in our understanding of the world. It encourages us to view spatial cognition as a dynamic process influenced by a multitude of factors, rather than relying solely on rigid geometric frameworks and dogma.It invites us to move away from rigidity and instead embrace the dynamic, interwoven nature of our cognitive processes and the environments we navigate. By doing so, we can foster a more nuanced, inclusive, and holistic understanding of spatial cognition and representation that aligns with the intricacies and interdependencies of the world we inhabit. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

In this episode, Azra Naqvi sits down with Shamim Hanafi, one of the most prominent literary critics in South Asia, to discuss the life and work of Qurratulain Hyder, one of the most celebrated writers in Urdu literature.Throughout the interview, Hanafi shares his insights on Hyder's contributions to Urdu literature and her role in shaping the literary landscape of the Indian subcontinent. He highlights Hyder's groundbreaking novel "Aag ka Darya" (River of Fire), which is widely considered a masterpiece of modern Urdu literature.Hanafi also discusses Hyder's approach to storytelling, her use of multiple languages and her exploration of themes such as identity, history, and memory. He provides a detailed analysis of her writing style, and how it evolved over the course of her career.The conversation also touches upon Hyder's personal life, including her experiences as a female writer in a patriarchal society, and her relationship with other prominent literary figures of her time.Overall, this episode offers a fascinating insight into the life and work of one of Urdu literature's most iconic figures, as well as a glimpse into the broader cultural and historical context in which she lived and wrote.

Brian joined Ameriprise Financial as a financial advisor in 2001 in Voorhees, New Jersey.  Brian was the #1 first year advisor in New Jersey in 2001, a Mercury Award and 1st year top achiever winner and Career Development Conference qualifier.  In 2004, Brian made the difficult career decision to give up working with clients so that he could focus his career full-time on leadership.  Brian became the Branch Manager for the AAG (P1) Ft. Lauderdale, FL, branch and successfully grew that branch from 12 financial advisors to more than 50 from 2004-2009.  In 2009, Brian re-located back to the Northeast to become the Complex Director in AAG for the Philadelphia Complex covering Eastern PA, Southern NJ and Delaware.  At the end of 2010, Brian moved back to FL to become the AFG Senior Franchise Field Vice President for the state of Florida. From 2010-2020, Brian helped to grow the Florida Territory from $87m GDC to over $135m GDC and ranked in the top 3 in recruiting new advisors to the firm in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016, 2018 and 2019.  In December 2020, Brian became the Regional Vice President for Ameriprise's Central Region, overseeing the states of Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Utah.  Brian has among the strongest advisor satisfaction results in the company and has a tremendous passion for engaging with advisors one-on-one, as well as in small group settings, to truly understand their personal and professional objectives and how he can connect resources and provide advice to help advisors achieve their goals.  Brian is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP), Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor (CRPC) and an Accredited Wealth Management Advisor (AWMA). He has been recognized for his outstanding leadership with the company's prestigious Outstanding Leader Award 5 times in 2004, 2013, 2014 and 2017 and 2020.Brian is a father of two boys, Greyson (9) and Sterling (6) and is very involved in coaching their basketball & flag football.  Brian is an avid athlete, having completed dozens of marathons and triathlons headlined by the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon and the Miami Half Ironman (2x), Augusta Half Ironman (2x), the Atlantic City Half Ironman, the Miami Man Half Ironman and the Florida full Ironman.  Brian has leveraged all of his athletic endeavors to raise money and help the grassroots organization The Chase Michael Anthony Kowalski Memorial Foundation get off the ground.  Chase Kowalski was a 6 year old boy who loved sports – baseball, running and triathlons.  Chase was killed in the Sandy Hook, CT, school shooting in December 2012.  Brian has raised more than $50,000 to-date through his running and triathlons to honor Chase's memory.  Brian also is an ambassador for an organization called Special Compass, which partners abled-bodied athletes with differently-abled persons to help those with disabilities participate in running, cycling and triathlon races.Thank you to Mr. Mora and to The Bamboo Pack! You guys make this all possible.Your Host,Brian https://www.specialcompass.org/https://cmakfoundation.org/https://bamboolab3.com/

[The Mortgage Report ] Older Americans see the biggest property tax spikes in these cities [Reverse Mortgage Daily] Draft mortgagee letter would give an earlier start to HECM assignment claim filing [Multiple Source] Finance of America's acquisition of AAG complete

Hello Interactors,I've been absent the last few weeks. First our kids were back for spring break and then I was off to the American Association of Geographers (AAG) national conference in Denver, Colorado. Both were fun, exhilarating, and inspiring and I'm bursting with things to write about!We're officially in spring here in the northern hemisphere. I now turn to cartography and the role mapmaking plays in shaping how we interact with people and place. There will be themes of cartography in this initial spring post, but first I'm offering my impressions of the conference.As interactors, you're special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You're also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let's go…BURRITO BOYS“It's got a nice kick to it”, he said, as I sat down to join him for breakfast. He introduced himself as Mark. He lifted his attendee badge that hung around his neck. It read, Mark Schwartz. We broke the awkwardness by talking men's basketball. The Kansas Jayhawks, my mom's beloved team, had recently been eliminated from the NCAA tournament. He informed me he got his PhD from Kansas in 1985 and is now teaching and researching at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee in the geography department.Mark is a climatologist. More specifically, he's one of the foremost experts in phenoclimatology which looks at the effects of climate change on seasonal variability. We humans look to the calendar to tell us when spring arrives, but what if you're an ant or a plant? They already know, so phenologists look for the biological responses to seasonal changes. Phenology comes from two Greek words that roughly combine to mean ‘the study of bringing to light'.Mark co-founded the National Phenology Network (NPN). This is where the world turns to see when spring is officially arriving across the United States. Including journalists. Here's a story in the Washington Post on this spring's arrival and the NPN website. It features quotes from Mark.“‘What I like to tell folks is that you still need to be prepared for considerable variation from year to year. You won't simply be able to start planting your garden earlier each year…”Before long, another gray-haired man joined us. I observed older attendees at this conference naturally congregated. Gerontology...from geron and logia (the study of old men). Our new guest introduced himself as Ron. I could tell he was older than Mark and myself and I was right. When I was three years old, in 1968, Ron Abler was getting his PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota. Soon after, in 1971, he was the lead author on an influential geography textbook on spatial organization. He went on to teach and conduct research at Pennsylvania State University and was the President of the AAG from 1985-86. There's an AAG award named after Ron, the Ronald F. Abler Distinguished Service Honors. Mark was a recipient in 2005.We were soon joined by another older gentleman, but closer to my age. He introduced himself as Joseph and I read his badge as Joseph Oppong. He was the recipient of the Abler award in 2021 and studies medical geography at North Texas State University. He received his masters in 1986 and PhD in 1992 from the University of Alberta in Canada and his bachelor's at the University of Ghana in 1982. Joseph was one of a few at the conference of African descent, but like the rest of America the geographic, cultural, and biological diversity of this academic community is increasing. This was apparent in my first session of the first day of the conference.JUST GEOGRAPHYThe morning before my breakfast with the burrito boys, I attended a panel consisting of four young academic women of Indigenous, Hispanic, Black, and mixed heritage. It included Fantasia Painter, an Assistant Professor of Global and International Studies at UC Irvine, Elyse Hatch-Rivera, a student seeking a law degree at Macalester in Minnesota, Gabriella Subia Smith, a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Colorado, and Dr. Danielle Purifoy, a geography professor at the University of North Carolina with a law degree from Harvard.Fantasia's paper: Our Lands, Your Lines: How Inter and Intra National Borders Try and Fail to Contain Indigenous Land. She argues “that inherent in the idea of “the desert” is the undoing of the settler colonial bordering project. This is not a desert. This is O'odham land.” Elyse's paper: The Right to Secure: The 100 Mile Border and the Making of a Carceral Geography. She “explores the emergence of the 100-mile border zone (HMBZ) in order to argue that the U.S. has expanded its borders inward and redefined notions of national security and our modern understanding of human rights.”Gabriella's paper: The Evolution of Colorado's Third District. She argues “Looking at the evolution of congressional districts can help us to better understand both the possibilities for equitable political representation and the limits of borders for fixing politics in place.”Danielle's paper: Setting [Futile] Boundaries: Black Municipalities in the White Settler State. She uses two case studies showing how decades work of “scholars of law, geography, and political science have taken up the social, political, and environmental impacts of this largely white municipal practice of geopolitical exclusion on Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.”Here's a video of Fantasia introducing herself and her work at UC IrvineThe conference theme was Toward More Just Geographies and this session was a fitting kick-off. It was titled Futile Borders: Why Borders Fail and How Borders Function in the Incomplete Project of Settler Colonialism. These scholars, all of whom have a legal focus to their work, challenged the popular and simplified notion of borders as articulated in both popular culture and the legal text of the United States. They drew attention to the violence these words perpetuate through legal acts of interdiction, deterrence, and deportation.The panel description cites research pointing to “[s]ettler state violence and legal-spatial violence” that “permeate borders through border enforcement practices of surveillance and detention and also through attempts to map over Indigenous lands and nations by creating colonial certainty over jurisdiction and national membership.”While these laws exists to protect the rights of some “it is through law, legal decision-making, and formal processes, policies, and practices that legal-spatial border violence is enacted and sustained.” It is the law, as currently written, that “help to form, manage, and control borders and mobility [that] weaponize state violence and operate to assert settler legal authority.”During the discussion, one of the presenters positioned legal text as a form of fiction that feature fantasy borders on maps that ignore the non-fiction realities of plant and animal existence, persistence, and relationships – including with humans. These fictions provide the “legal reach of the state [to] extend externally and outwards in order to preserve imperial power while regulating and restricting immigration and mobility through racialized strategies.”This panel was a powerful introduction to the conference. It featured perspectives of bright, ambitious academic women of color who are bringing miles and piles of fresh knowledge to the academy and students. Many similar sessions were offered by women and BIPOC scholars who seek to challenge traditional institutional geographic histories, knowledge, and perspectives pervasive in the field of geography. I attended at least one a day for five days straight, but there were so many I couldn't attend them all.The field of geography, and cartography in particular, was invented in large part to discern and delineate the natural world for the purpose of dispossession and ownership of land and people for and by private and government actors. As one attendee told me, “Cartography barely has a just leg to stand on.” Consequently, these forums and platforms act as a mirror to the discipline of geography. They offer opportunities for scholars and practitioners to become more self-aware, reflective, and critical of geography's past and future. If sustained, this focus, attention, and prioritization of pluralized perspectives has the power to transform the discipline – to tilt the world toward more just geographies.It's a tilting earth that brings about seasonal change. Mark Shwartz and his team of geographers maintain a map that chronicles the bringing of light to the natural world. It offers no human bias, no imperial agenda, and reveals just how fictional borders really are. Phenoclimatology reveals human-induced climate change is causing spring's arrival to become increasingly meteorologically erratic and extreme.Many scholars at this conference pointed to how settler-state induced human and environmental violence have contributed to these climatic changes. They also showed how these forms of legal, economic, and spatial geographies are causing increasingly erratic and extreme societal injustices and imbalances. They're chronicling and remapping a discipline by bringing light to the world of geography. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Jason Scott is a CEO, founder, speaker, author, instructor, and location independent entrepreneur who's recognized as an expert in transformational leadership that gets sh*t done #GSD. As CEO of 120VC, Jason has spent over 20 years leading global transformational efforts for DirecTV, Trader Joe's, Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT Games, Sony Pictures, ResMed, AAG, Universal Music Group, Remitly, and others. He is the author of two Amazon- bestselling books “It's Never Just Business: It's About People” and “The Irreverent Guide to Project Management, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Project Management.”Jason is one the most sought-after keynote speakers, with 5-star reviews for his unique, people centric and outcome-obsessed approach to change that has generated breakthrough results and created meaningful jobs. His passion to mentor and train a new generation of leaders, led him to start the Transformational Leadership Academy where he leads a 14-week certification program. In 2020, Jason launched the 120 Brand Community, featuring Brick and Matter CO, BAMCO, a brand accelerator transforming how brands can go to market, and Next Jump Outfitters, an overland guide and ecommerce business transforming how people balance work and play as location independent entrepreneur. In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, J. Scott is a devoted husband and father of two based out of Tacoma, WA.During the episode we discuss…fostering trust on your teamhelping your team architecting their own roadmap to a shared goalwhy most projects failthe difference between authority and leadershipthe benefits of communicating your accomplishments dailyRead Jason Scott book, “It's Never Just Business, It's About People” https://www.amazon.ca/Its-Never-Just-Business-People/dp/1544502249Connect after the interview:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonscott120vcTwitter: https://twitter.com/120VC_PMYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTqPCasdYzfsJ7nV61KWSqQWebsite: http://www.120vc.comClaim your free gift!We're giving away a one-year membership to the world's #1 business book summary service for leaders! Our gift will help you stay on top of the latest ideas, decide which books to read next, and engage your teams.To get your gift:Leave a rating or review on your favorite listening channel.Take a screenshot of your review.Share the screenshot on LinkedIn, and mention either “Allison Dunn” or “Deliberate Directions” and the “Deliberate Leaders Podcast”.=============Allison DunnExecutive Business CoachDeliberate Directions + Executive Business Coaching + Training Center3003 W Main Street, Suite 110, Boise ID 83702(208) 350-6551Website https://www.deliberatedirections.comLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisondunnPodcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deliberate-leaders-podcast-with-allison-dunn/id1500464675

Jack Vinijtrongjit is Co-Founder and CEO at AAG Ventures, a Web3 infrastructure company focusing on providing software that helps users simplify interactions with blockchain applications and the Metaverse.   Why you should listen AAG is a web3 infrastructure company focusing on providing software that helps simplify interactions with blockchain applications and the Metaverse for mainstream users and traditional companies. AAG provides a secure and easy-to-use MetaOne® wallet, as well as infrastructure software, such as a cross-chain search engine and GameFi SDK for enterprise companies. With the belief that education is the key to unlock the potential of web3, AAG is also exploring the concept of Learn-and-Earn with the mission of enabling economic opportunities worldwide via the Metaverse economy. AAG aims to bring 1 billion people into the Metaverse economy by 2030. Supporting links AAG Ventures Andy on Twitter  Brave New Coin on Twitter Brave New Coin   If you enjoyed the show please subscribe to the Crypto Conversation and give us a 5-star rating and a positive review in whatever podcast app you are using.

Jason Scott is a CEO, founder, speaker, author, instructor, and location independent entrepreneur who's recognized as an expert in transformational leadership that gets sh*t done #GSD. As CEO of 120VC, Jason has spent over 20 years leading global transformational efforts for DirecTV, Trader Joe's, Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT Games, Sony Pictures, ResMed, AAG, Universal Music Group, Remitly, and others. He is the author of two Amazon-bestselling books “It's Never Just Business: It's About People” and “The Irreverent Guide to Project Management, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Project Management.”     CONNECT WITH Jason Scott Website: https://www.120vc.com/ LinkedIn 120VC: https://www.linkedin.com/company/120vc/ LinkedIn Jason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonscott120vc/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTqPCasdYzfsJ7nV61KWSqQ Twitter: https://twitter.com/120VC_PM     CONNECT WITH Cedric Francis Website: https://www.lead2greatness.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cedricbfrancis Twitter: https://twitter.com/cedricbfrancis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leadtogreatness/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedric-b-francis-a0544037/   DONATE TO Meet the Streets Outreach Website: https://www.mtsoutreach.org   Disclosure: Links contain affiliates. When you buy through one of our links we will receive a commission. This is at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Lead to Greatness and allowing us to continue to bring you valuable content.   Promo:   Try Audible Premium Plus and Get up to two free audiobooks: https://amzn.to/3as87Aw   Recording Equipment   Mic - https://amzn.to/3dHeSAi   Road Castor Pro - https://amzn.to/3aujvvS   Headset - https://amzn.to/2QM2O8a   Mic Cable - https://amzn.to/3dJ9Wec   USB Cable (Mac Book Only) - https://amzn.to/2PbAPy2   USB Cable (Windows Only) - https://amzn.to/3sK5K2h   Cable Compatible with Bose Brands - https://amzn.to/32BpN8j   Camera - https://amzn.to/3ncI7Oz   Mini Switcher - https://amzn.to/3dJGiWy   Micro HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3tISvQK   High Speed HDMI to HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3v3NfaG 

The January 6th Committee investigation is over and four criminal charges against former President Donald Trump have been referred to the Justice Department by the Committee. In this episode, hear a summary of 23 hours of testimony and evidence presented by the Committee which prove that former President Trump went to extraordinary and illegal lengths to remain President, despite losing the 2020 Election. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Support Congressional Dish via Patreon (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536. Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! View the shownotes on our website at https://congressionaldish.com/cd266-contriving-january-6th Executive Producer Recommended Sources “PREPARED REMARKS: Sanders Files Amendment on Microchip Legislation to Restrict Blank Check Corporate Welfare.” Jul 19, 2022. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD236: January 6: The Capitol Riot CD228: The Second Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump The Final Committee Report “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol,” [House Report 117-663] 117th Congress Second Session. Dec 22, 2022. U.S. Government Publishing Office. The January 6th Committee “Inside the Jan. 6 Committee.” Robert Draper and Luke Broadwater. Dec 23, 2022. The New York Times Magazine. 2020 Election Litigation “Litigation in the 2020 Election.” Oct 27, 2022. The American Bar Association. “‘Trump Won Two-Thirds of Election Lawsuits Where Merits Considered.'” Daniel Funke. Feb 9, 2021. PolitiFact. January 6th Security Failures “Capitol Attack: The Capitol Police Need Clearer Emergency Procedures and a Comprehensive Security Risk Assessment Process,” [GAO-22-105001] February 2022. U.S. Government Accountability Office. Electors and Vote Certification Process “Who Are Electors And How Do They Get Picked?” Domenico Montanaro. Dec 14, 2020. NPR. “About the Electors.” May 11, 2021. U.S. National Archives. John Eastman “Who is John Eastman, the Trump lawyer at the center of the Jan. 6 investigation?” Deepa Shivaram. Jun 17, 2022. NPR. “About Us.” The Federalist Society. “The Eastman Memo.” Trump and Georgia “The Georgia criminal investigation into Trump and his allies, explained.” Matthew Brown. Nov 22, 2022. The Washington Post. “Here's the full transcript and audio of the call between Trump and Raffensperger.” Amy Gardner and Paulina Firozi. Jan 5, 2021. The Washington Post. AG Bill Barr Interview “In exclusive AP interview, AG Barr says no evidence of widespread election fraud, undermining Trump.” Mike Balsamo. Dec 11, 2020. “Barr tells AP that Justice Dept. hasn't uncovered widespread voting fraud that could have changed 2020 election outcome.” Dec 1, 2020. The Associated Press. Past Electoral Vote Challenges “Post Misleadingly Equates 2016 Democratic Effort to Trump's 2020 ‘Alternate Electors.'” Joseph A. Gambardello. Jun 29, 2022. FactCheck.org. “Democrats challenge Ohio electoral votes.” Ted Barrett. Jan 6, 2005. CNN. Fake Electors “What you need to know about the fake Trump electors.” Amy Sherman. Jan 28, 2022. PolitiFact. “Exclusive: Federal prosecutors looking at 2020 fake elector certifications, deputy attorney general tells CNN.” Evan Perez and Tierney Sneed. Jan 26, 2022. CNN. “American Oversight Obtains Seven Phony Certificates of Pro-Trump Electors.” Mar 2, 2021. American Oversight. Censure of Cheney & Kinzinger “Read the Republican Censure of Cheney and Kinzinger.” Feb 4 2022. The New York Times. Audio Sources 12/19/22 Business Meeting December 19, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol 10/13/22 Business Meeting October 13, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Featured speakers: Kayleigh McEnany, Former White House Press Secretary Molly Michael, Former Executive Assistant to the President Pat Cipollone, Former White House Counsel Clips Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Why would Americans assume that our Constitution, and our institutions, and our Republic are invulnerable to another attack? Why would we assume that those institutions will not falter next time? A key lesson of this investigation is this: Our institutions only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold, regardless of the political cost. We have no guarantee that these men and women will be in place next time. Any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way. And also please consider this: The rulings of our courts are respected and obeyed, because we as citizens pledged to accept and honor them. Most importantly, our President, who has a constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws, swears to accept them. What happens when the President disregards the court's rulings is illegitimate. When he disregards the rule of law, that my fellow citizens, breaks our Republic. January 6 Committee Lawyer: To your knowledge, was the president in that private dining room the whole time that the attack on the Capitol was going on? Or did he ever go to, again only to your knowledge, to the Oval Office, to the White House Situation Room, anywhere else? Kayleigh McEnany: The the best of my recollection, he was always in the dining room. January 6 Committee Lawyer: What did they say, Mr. Meadows or the President, at all during that brief encounter that you were in the dining room? What do you recall? Gen. Keith Kellogg: I think they were really watching the TV. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Do you know whether he was watching TV in the dining room when you talked to him on January sixth? Molly Michael: It's my understanding he was watching television. January 6 Committee Lawyer: When you were in the dining room in these discussions, was the violence of capital visible on the screen on the television? Pat Cipollone: Yes. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): A federal appeals court in Pennsylvania wrote, quote, "charges require specific allegations and proof. We have neither here." A federal judge in Wisconsin wrote, quote, "the court has allowed the former President the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits." Another judge in Michigan, called the claims quote, "nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were either destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden." A federal judge in Michigan sanctioned nine attorneys, including Sidney Powell, for making frivolous allegations in an election fraud case, describing the case as a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process. Recently, a group of distinguished Republican election lawyers, former judges and elected officials issued a report confirming the findings of the courts. In their report entitled "Lost, Not Stolen," these prominent Republicans analyzed each election challenge and concluded this: Donald Trump and his supporters failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. On December 11, Trump's allies lost a lawsuit in the US Supreme Court that he regarded as his last chance of success in the courts. Alyssa Farah: I remember maybe a week after the election was called, I popped into the Oval just to like, give the President the headlines and see how he was doing and he was looking at the TV and he said, "Can you believe I lost to this effing guy?" Cassidy Hutchinson: Mark raised it with me on the 18th and so following that conversation we were in the motorcade ride driving back to the White House, and I said, like, "Does the President really think that he lost?" And he said, "A lot of times he'll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election, but, you know, he pretty much has acknowledged that he, that he's lost. 07/12/22 Select Committee Hearing July 12, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Witnesses: Jason Van Tatenhove, Former Oath Keepers Spokesperson Stephen Ayres, January 6th Defendant Clips Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL): According to White House visitor logs obtained by the Committee, members of Congress present at the White House on December 21 included Congressmen Brian Babin (TX), Andy Biggs (AZ), Matt Gaetz (FL), Louie Gohmert (TX), Paul Gosar (AZ), Andy Harris (MD), Jody Hice (R-GA), Jim Jordan (OD), and Scott Perry (PA). Then Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) was also there. Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL): We've asked witnesses what happened during the December 21 meeting and we've learned that part of the discussion centered on the role of the Vice President during the counting of the electoral votes. These members of Congress were discussing what would later be known as the "Eastman Theory," which was being pushed by Attorney John Eastman. 06/28/2022 Select Committee Hearing June 28, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Witnesses: Cassidy Hutchinson, Former Special Assistant to the President and Aide to the Chief of Staff Clips 9:10 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Today's witness, Ms. Cassidy Hutchinson, is another Republican and another former member of President Trump's White House staff. Certain of us in the House of Representatives recall that Ms. Hutchinson once worked for House Republican whip Steve Scalise, but she is also a familiar face on Capitol Hill because she held a prominent role in the White House Legislative Affairs Office, and later was the principal aide to President Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows. 10:10 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): In her role working for the White House Chief of Staff, Miss Hutchinson handled a vast number of sensitive issues. She worked in the West Wing, several steps down the hall from the Oval Office. Miss Hutchinson spoke daily with members of Congress, with high ranking officials in the administration, with senior White House staff, including Mr. Meadows, with White House Counsel lawyers, and with Mr. Tony Ornato, who served as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff. She also worked on a daily basis with members of the Secret Service who were posted in the White House. In short, Miss Hutchinson was in a position to know a great deal about the happenings in the Trump White House. 24:20 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): On January 3, the Capitol Police issued a special event assessment. In that document, the Capitol Police noted that the Proud Boys and other groups planned to be in Washington DC on January 6, and indicated that quote, "unlike previous post election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter protesters, as they were previously, but rather, Congress itself is the target on the Sixth. 27:45 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Of course the world now knows that the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 had many different types of weapons. When a President speaks, the Secret Service typically requires those attending to pass through metal detectors known as magnetometers, or mags for short. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): The Select Committee has learned about reports from outside the magnetometers and has obtained police radio transmissions identifying individuals with firearms, including AR-15s near the Ellipse on the morning of January 6. Let's listen. Police Officer #1: Blue jeans and a blue jean jacket and underneath the blue jacket complaintants both saw the top of an AR 15. Police Officer #2: Any white males brown cowboy boots, they had Glock-style pistols in their waistbands. Police Officer #3: 8736 with the message that subject weapon on his right hip. Police Officer #4: Motor one, make sure PPD knows they have an elevated threat in the tree South side of Constitution Avenue. Look for the "Don't tread on me" flag, American flag facemask cowboy boots, weapon on the right side hip. Police Officer #5: I got three men walking down the street in fatigues and carrying AR-15s. Copy at Fourteenth and Independence. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): We're going to show now an exchange of texts between you and Deputy Chief of Staff Ornato, and these text messages were exchanged while you were at the Ellipse. In one text, you write, "but the crowd looks good from this vantage point, as long as we get the shot. He was f---ing furious." But could you tell us, first of all, who it is in the text who was furious? Cassidy Hutchinson: The he in that text that I was referring to was the President. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): And why was he furious, Miss Hutchinson? Cassidy Hutchinson: He was furious because he wanted the arena that we had on the Ellipse to be maxed out at capacity for all attendees. The advanced team had relayed to him that the mags were free flowing. Everybody who wanted to come in had already come in, but he still was angry about the extra space and wanted more people to come in. Cassidy Hutchinson: And that's what Tony [Ornato] had been trying to relate to him [President Trump] that morning. You know, it's not the issue that we encountered on the campaign. We have enough space. They don't want to come in right now, they have weapons they don't want confiscated by the Secret Service. They're fine on the Mall, they can see you on the Mall and they want to march straight to the Capitol from the Mall. But when we were in the off stage announced tent, I was part of a conversation -- I was in the, I was in the vicinity of a conversation -- where I overheard the President say something to the effect of you know, "I don't think that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me take the effing mags away. Let my people in, they can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in, take the effing mags away." Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): On December 1, 2020, Attorney General Barr said in an interview that the Department of Justice had now not found evidence of widespread election fraud, sufficient to change the outcome of the election. Ms. Hutchinson, how did the President react to hearing that news? Cassidy Hutchinson: I left the office and went down to the dining room, and I noticed that the door was propped open in the valet was inside the dining room changing the tablecloth off of the dining room table. The valet had articulated that the President was extremely angry at the Attorney General's AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Miss Hutchinson, Attorney General Barr described to the Committee the President's angry reaction when he finally met with President Trump. Let's listen. Former Attorney General Bill Barr: And I said, "Look, I I know that you're dissatisfied with me and I'm glad to offer my resignation" and then he pounded the table very hard. Everyone sort of jumped and he said "Accepted." Reporter: Leader McCarthy, Do you condemn this violence? Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): I completely condemn the violence in the Capitol. What we're currently watching unfold is un-American. I'm disappointed, I'm sad. This is not what our country should look like. This is not who we are. This is not the First Amendment. This has to stop and this has to stop now. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Did White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows ever indicate that he was interested in receiving a Presidential Pardon related to January 6? Cassidy Hutchinson: Mr. Meadows did seek that pardon. Yes, ma'am. Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): While our committee has seen many witnesses, including many Republicans, testify fully and forthrightly, this has not been true of every witness. And we have received evidence of one particular practice that raises significant concern. Our committee commonly asks witnesses connected to Mr. Trump's administration or campaign whether they'd been contacted by any of their former colleagues, or anyone else who attempted to influence or impact their testimony, without identifying any of the individuals involved. Let me show you a couple of samples of answers we received to this question. First, here's how one witness described phone calls from people interested in that witness's testimony. "What they said to me is, as long as I continue to be a team player, they know I'm on the right team, I'm doing the right thing, I'm protecting who I need to protect, you know, I'll continue to stay in good graces in Trump World. And they have reminded me a couple of times that Trump does read transcripts and just keep that in mind as I proceed through my interviews with the committee." Here's another sample in a different context. This is a call received by one of our witnesses. "A person let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he's thinking about you. He knows you're loyal, and you're going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition." I think most Americans know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns. 06/23/22 Select Committee Hearing June 23, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Witnesses: Jeffrey A. Rosen, Former Acting Attorney General Richard Donoghue, Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Steven Engel, Former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Eric Herschmann, Former White House Senior Advisor Clips Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): From the time you took over from Attorney General Barr until January 3, how often did President Trump contact you or the Department to push allegations of election fraud? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: So between December 23 and January 3, the president either called me or met with me virtually every day, with one or two exceptions like Christmas Day Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ): Again, I join my colleagues in calling on Attorney General Barr to immediately let us know what he's doing. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): We're already working on challenging the certified electors. And what about the court? How pathetic are the courts? Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL): January 6, I'm joining with the fighters in the Congress, and we are going to object to electors from states that didn't run clean elections. Democracy is left undefended if we accept the result of a stolen election without fighting with every bit of vigor we can muster. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): The ultimate date of significance is January 6. This is how the process works. The ultimate arbiter here, the ultimate check and balance, is the United States Congress. And when something is done in an unconstitutional fashion, which happened in several of these states, we have a duty to step forward and have this debate and have this vote on the 6th of January. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: So both the Acting Attorney General [Rosen] and I tried to explain to the President on this occasion, and on several other occasions that the Justice Department has a very important, very specific, but very limited role in these elections. States run their elections. We are not quality control for the states. We are obviously interested in and have a mission that relates to criminal conduct in relation to federal elections. We also have related civil rights responsibilities. So we do have an important role, but the bottom line was if a state ran their election in such a way that it was defective, that is to the state or Congress to correct. It is not for the Justice Department to step in. And I certainly understood the President, as a layman, not understanding why the Justice Department didn't have at least a civil role to step in and bring suit on behalf of the American people. We tried to explain that to him. The American people do not constitute the client for the United States Justice Department. The one and only client of the United States Justice Department is the United States government. And the United States government does not have standing, as we were repeatedly told by our internal teams. Office of Legal Counsel, led by Steve Engel, as well as the Office of the Solicitor General researched it and gave us thorough clear opinions that we simply did not have standing and we tried to explain that to the President on numerous occasions. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Let's take a look at another one of your notes. You also noted that Mr. Rosen said to Mr. Trump, quote, "DOJ can't and won't snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election." How did the President respond to that, sir? Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: He responded very quickly and said, essentially, that's not what I'm asking you to do. What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: There were isolated instances of fraud. None of them came close to calling into question the outcome of the election in any individual State. January 6 Committee Lawyer: And was representative Gaetz requesting a pardon? Eric Herschmann: Believe so. The general tone was, we may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the President's positions on these things. A pardon that he was discussing, requesting, was as broad as you could describe, from the beginning of time up until today, for any and all things. He had mentioned Nixon and I said Nixon's pardon was never nearly that broad. January 6 Committee Lawyer: And are you aware of any members of Congress seeking pardons? Cassidy Hutchinson: I guess Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks, I know, both advocated for, there to be a blanket pardon for members involved in that meeting and a handful of other members that weren't at the December 21 meeting as the preemptive pardons. Mr. Gaetz was personally pushing for a pardon and he was doing so since early December. I'm not sure why. Mr. Gaetz had reached out to me to ask if he could have a meeting with Mr. Meadows about receiving a Presidential pardon. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Did they all contact you? Cassidy Hutchinson: Not all of them, but several of them did. January 6 Committee Lawyer: So you'd be mentioned Mr. Gaetz and Mr. Brooks. Cassidy Hutchinson: Mr. Biggs did. Mr. Jordan talks about congressional pardons but he never asked me for one. It was more for an update on whether the White House is going to pardon members of Congress. Mr. Gohmert asked for one as well. Mr. Perry asked for a pardon too, I'm sorry. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Mr. Perry, did he talk to you directly? Cassidy Hutchinson: Yes, he did. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Mr. Clark was the acting head of the Civil Division and head of Environmental and Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice. Do either of those divisions have any role whatsoever in investigating election fraud, sir? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: No. And and to my awareness, Jeff Clark had had no prior involvement of any kind with regard to the work that the department was doing. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Is there a policy that governs who can have contact directly with the White House? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: Yes. So across many administrations for a long period of time, there's a policy that particularly with regard to criminal investigations restricts at both the White House and the Justice Department and those more sensitive issues to the highest ranks. So for criminal matters, the policy for a long time has been that only the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General from the DOJ side can have conversations about criminal matters with the White House, or the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General can authorize someone for a specific item with their permission. But the idea is to make sure that the top rung of the Justice Department knows about it, and is in the thing to control it and make sure only appropriate things are done. Steven Engel: The purpose of these these policies is to keep these communications as infrequent, and at the highest levels as possible, just to make sure that people who are less careful about it who don't really understand these implications, such as Mr. Clark, don't run afoul of those contact policies. Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: He acknowledged that shortly before Christmas, he had gone to a meeting in the Oval Office with the President. That, of course, surprised me. And I asked him, How did that happen? And he was defensive, he said it had been unplanned, that he had been talking to someone he referred to as "General Perry," but I believe is Congressman Perry, and that, unbeknownst to him, he was asked to go to a meeting and he didn't know it, but it turned out it was at the Oval -- he found himself at the Oval Office. And he was apologetic for that. And I said, Well, you didn't tell me about it. It wasn't authorized. And you didn't even tell me after the fact. You know, this is not not appropriate. But he was contrite and said it had been inadvertent and it would not happen again and that if anyone asked him to go to such a meeting, he would notify [Former Acting Deputy Attorney General] Rich Donohue and me. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): On the same day Acting Attorney General Rosen told Mr. Clark to stop talking to the White House, Representative Perry was urging Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to elevate Clark within the Department of Justice. You can now see on the screen behind me a series of tasks between representative Perry and Mr. Meadows. They show that Representative Perry requested that Mr. Clark be elevated within the department. Representative Perry tells Mr. Meadows on December 26, that quote, "Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down, 11 days to January 6 and 25 days to inauguration. We've got to get going!" Representative Perry followed up and says quote, "Mark, you should call Jeff. I just got off the phone with him and he explained to me why the principal deputy won't work especially with the FBI. They will view it as not having the authority to enforce what needs to be done." Mr. Meadows responds with "I got it. I think I understand. Let me work on the deputy position." Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Mr. Donohue on December 28, Mr. Clark emailed you and Mr. Rosen a draft letter that he wanted you to sign and send to Georgia State officials. This letter claims that the US Department of Justice's investigations have quote, "identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the state of Georgia." The letter also said this: quote, "in light of these developments, the Department recommends that the Georgia General Assembly should convene in special session," end quote, and consider approving a new slate of electors. Steven Engel: The States had chosen their electors, the electors had been certified, they'd cast their votes, they had been sent to Washington DC. Neither Georgia nor any of the other States on December 28, or whenever this was, was in a position to change those votes. Essentially, the election had happened. The only thing that hadn't happened was the formal counting of the votes. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: I had to read both the email and the attached letter twice to make sure I really understood what he was proposing because it was so extreme to me, I had a hard time getting my head around it initially. But I read it and I did understand it for what he intended and I had to sit down and sort of compose what I thought was an appropriate response. In my response, I explained a number of reasons this is not the Department's role to suggest or dictate to State legislatures how they should select their electors. But more importantly, this was not based on fact, that this was actually contrary to the facts, as developed by Department investigations over the last several weeks and months. So I responded to that. And for the Department to insert itself into the political process's way, I think would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a Constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn't seem to really appreciate it. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): President Trump rushed back early from Mar-a-Lago on December 31, and called an emergency meeting with the Department's leadership. Mr. Donohue, during this meeting, did the President tell you that he would remove you and Mr. Rosen because you weren't declaring there was election fraud? Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: Toward the end of the meeting, the President, again was getting very agitated. And he said, "People tell me I should just get rid of both of you. I should just remove you and make a change in the leadership, put Jeff Clark and maybe something will finally get done." Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Mr. Rosen during a January 2 meeting with Mr. Clark, did you confront him again about his contact with the President? And if so, can you describe that? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: We had -- it was a contentious meeting where we were chastising him that he was insubordinate, he was out of line, he had not honored his own representations of what he would do. And he raised again, that he thought that letter should go out. And we were not receptive to that. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): So in that meeting, did Mr. Clark say he would turn down the President's offer if you reversed your position and sign the letter? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: Yes. Subsequently, he told me that on the on Sunday the 3rd. He told me that the timeline had moved up, and that the President had offered him the job and that he was accepting it. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): White House Call Logs obtained by the Committee show that by 4:19pm, on January 3, the White House had already begun referring to Mr. Clark as the Acting Attorney General. Let's ask about that, what was your reaction to that? Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen: Well, you know, on the one hand, I wasn't going to accept being fired by my subordinate. So I wanted to talk to the President directly. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: So the four of us knew, but no one else, aside from Jeff Clark of course, knew what was going on until late that Sunday afternoon. We chose to keep a close hold, because we didn't want to create concern or panic in the Justice Department leadership. But at this point, I asked the Acting AG [Rosen], what else can I do to help prepare for this meeting in the Oval Office, and he said, You and Pat [Cipollone] should get the Assistant Attorney Generals on the phone, and it's time to let them know what's going on. Let's find out what they may do if there's a change in leadership, because that will help inform the conversation at the Oval Office. We got most, not all, but most of the AAGs on the phone. We very quickly explained to them what the situation was. [They] essentially said they would leave, they would resign en mass if the President made that change in the department leadership. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): DOJ leadership arrived at the White House. Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: The conversation this point was really about whether the President should remove Jeff Rosen and replace him with Jeff Clark. And everyone in the room, I think, understood that that meant that letter would go out. And at some point, the conversation turned to whether Jeff Clark was even qualified, competent to run the Justice Department, which in my mind, he clearly was not. And it was a heated conversation. I thought it was useful to point out to the President that Jeff Clark simply didn't have the skills, the ability and the experience to run the Department. And so I said, "Mr. President, you're talking about putting a man in that seat who has never tried a criminal case, who's never conducted a criminal investigation, he's telling you that he's going to take charge of the department, 115,000 employees, including the entire FBI, and turn the place on a dime and conduct nationwide criminal investigations that will produce results in a matter of days. It's impossible. It's absurd. It's not going to happen, and it's going to fail. He has never been in front of a trial jury, a grand jury. He's never even been to Chris Wray's office." I said at one point, "if you walked into Chris Wray's office, one, would you know how to get there and, two, if you got there, would he even know who you are? And you really think that the FBI is going to suddenly start following you orders? It's not going to happen. He's not competent." And that's the point at which Mr. Clark tried to defend himself by saying, "Well, I've been involved in very significant civil and environmental litigation. I've argued many appeals and appellate courts and things of that nature." And then I pointed out that, yes, he was an environmental lawyer, and I didn't think that was appropriate background to be running in the United States Justice Department. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Did anybody in there support Mr. Clark? Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: No one. Along those lines, he [former President Trump] said, "so suppose I do this, suppose I replace him, Jeff Rosen, with him, Jeff Clark, what would you do?" And I said, "Mr. President, I would resign immediately. I'm not working one minute for this guy [Clark], who I just declared was completely incompetent." And so the President immediately turned to to Mr. Engel. Steven Engel: My recollection is that when the President turned to me and said, "Steve, you wouldn't leave, would you?" I said, "Mr. President, I've been with you through four Attorneys General, including two Acting Attorneys General, but I couldn't be part of this." Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: And I said, and we're not the only ones. No one cares if we resign. If Steve and I go, that's fine, it doesn't matter. But I'm telling you what's going to happen. You're gonna lose your entire Department leadership, every single AAG will walk out on you. Your entire Department of leadership will walk out within hours." And I said, "Mr. President, within 24...48...72 hours, you could have hundreds and hundreds of resignations of the leadership of your entire Justice Department because of your actions. What's that going to say about you?" Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: And then the other thing that I said was that, you know, look, all anyone is going to sort of think about when they see this...no one is going to read this letter....all anyone is going to think is that you went through two Attorneys General in two weeks until you found the environmental guy to sign this thing. And so the story is not going to be that the Department of Justice has found massive corruption that would have changed results of the election. It's going to be the disaster of Jeff Clark. I think at that point Pat Cipollone said, "Yeah, this is a murder suicide pact, this letter." Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL): Mr. Cipollone, the White House Counsel, told the Committee that Mr. Engels response had a noticeable impact on the President, that this was a turning point in the conversation. Mr. Donohue, towards the end of this meeting, did the President asked you what was going to happen to Mr. Clark? Former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue: He did. When we finally got to, I'd say, the last 15 minutes of the meeting, the President's decision was apparent, he announced it. Jeff Clark tried to scrape his way back and asked the President to reconsider. The President double down said "No, I've made my decision. That's it. We're not going to do it." And then he turned to me and said, "so what happens to him now?" Meaning Mr. Clark. He understood that Mr. Clark reported to me. And I didn't initially understand the question. I said, "Mr. President?" and he said, "Are you going to fire him?" And I said, "I don't have the authority to fire him. He's the Senate confirmed Assistant Attorney General." And he said, "Well, who has the authority to fire him?" And I said, "Only you do, sir." And he said, "Well, I'm not going to fire him." I said, "Alright, well, then we should all go back to work." 06/21/22 Select Committee Hearing June 21, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Witnesses: Rusty Bowers, Arizona House Speaker Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling, Georgia Secretary of State Chief Operating Officer Wandrea ArShaye, “Shaye” Moss, former Georgia election worker Ronna Romney McDaniel, RNC Chair Justin Clark, former Trump Campaign lawyer Robert Sinners, former Trump campaign staffer Andrew Hitt, Former Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Laura Cox, Former Michigan Republican Party Chair Josh Roselman, Investigative Counsel for the J6 Committee John Eastman, Former Trump Lawyer Mike Shirkey, Majority Leader of the Michigan Senate Angela McCallum, Trump Campaign caller Rudy Giuliani Clips Josh Roselman: My name is Josh Roselman, I'm an Investigative Counsel for the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol. Beginning in late November 2020. The President and his lawyers started appearing before state legislators, urging them to give their electoral votes to Trump, even though he lost the popular vote. This was a strategy with both practical and legal elements. The Select Committee has obtained an email from just two days after the election, in which a Trump campaign lawyer named Cleata Mitchell asked another Trump lawyer, John Eastman, to write a memo justifying the idea. Eastman prepared a memo attempting to justify this strategy, which was circulated to the Trump White House, Rudy Giuliani's legal team, and state legislators around the country and he appeared before the Georgia State Legislature to advocate for it publicly. John Eastman: You could also do what the Florida Legislature was prepared to do, which is to adopt a slate of electors yourself. And when you add in the mix of the significant statistical anomalies in sworn affidavits and video evidence of outright election fraud, I don't think it's just your authority to do that, but quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that to protect the integrity of the election here in Georgia. Josh Roselman: But Republican officials in several states released public statements recognizing that President Trump's proposal was unlawful. For instance, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called the proposal unconstitutional, while Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers wrote that the idea would undermine the rule of law. The pressure campaign to get state legislators to go along with this scheme intensified when President Trump invited delegations from Michigan and Pennsylvania to the White House. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Either you or speaker Chatfield, did you make the point to the President, that you were not going to do anything that violated Michigan law? Mike Shirkey: I believe we did. Whether or not it was those exact words or not, I think the words that I would have more likely used is, "we are going to follow the law." Josh Roselman: Nevertheless, the pressure continued. The next day President Trump tweeted quote, "hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself. THE WORLD IS WATCHING!!!!" He posted multiple messages on Facebook, listing the contact information for state officials and urging his supporters to contact them to quote "demand a vote on decertification." These efforts also involves targeted outreach to state legislators from President Trump's lawyers and from Trump himself. Angela McCallum: Hi, my name is Angela McCallum, I'm calling from Trump campaign headquarters in Washington DC. You do have the power to reclaim your authority and send us a slate of Electors that will support President Trump and Vice President Pence. Josh Roselman: Another legislator, Pennsylvania House Speaker Brian Cutler, received daily voicemails from Trump's lawyers in the last week of November. Cutler felt that the outreach was inappropriate and asked his lawyers to tell Rudy Giuliani to stop calling, but Giuliani continued to reach out. Rudy Giuliani: I understand that you don't want to talk to me now. I just want to bring some facts to your attention and talk to you as a fellow Republican. Josh Roselman: These ads were another element in the effort. The Trump campaign spent millions of dollars running ads online and on television. Commercial Announcer: The evidence is overwhelming. Call your governor and legislators demand they inspect the machines and hear the evidence. Fake electors scheme Casey Lucier: My name is Casey Lucier. I'm an Investigative Counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol. On November 18, a lawyer working with the Trump campaign named Kenneth Chesebro wrote a memo arguing that the Trump campaign should organize its own electors in the swing states that President Trump had lost. The Select Committee received testimony that those close to President Trump began planning to organize fake electors for Trump in states that Biden won in the weeks after the election. At the President's direct request, the RNC assisted the campaign in coordinating this effort. January 6 Committee Lawyer: What did the President say when he called you? Ronna Romney McDaniel: Essentially, he turned the call over to Mr. Eastman, who then proceeded to talk about the importance of the RNC helping the campaign gather these contingent electors in case any of the legal challenges that were ongoing change the result of any dates, I think more just helping them reach out and assemble them. But the My understanding is the campaign did take the lead, and we just were helping them in that in that role. Casey Lucier: As President Trump and his supporters continued to lose lawsuits, some campaign lawyers became convinced that convening electors in states that Trump lost was no longer appropriate. Justin Clark: I just remember I either replied or called somebody saying, unless we have litigation pending this, like in the states, like, I don't think this is appropriate, or no, this isn't the right thing to do. I'm out. Matt Morgan: At that point, I had Josh Findlay email Mr. Chesebro, politely, to say, "This is your task. You are responsible for the Electoral College issues moving forward". And this was my way of taking that responsibility to zero. Casey Lucier: The Committee learned the White House Counsel's Office also felt the plan was potentially illegal. January 6 Committee Lawyer: And so to be clear, did you hear the White House Counsel's office saying that this plan to have alternate electors meet and cast votes for Donald Trump in states that he had lost was not legally sound? Cassidy Hutchinson: Yes, sir. Casey Lucier: The Select Committee interviewed several of the individual fake electors, as well as Trump campaign staff who helped organize the effort. Robert Sinners: We were just, you know, kind of useful idiots or rubes at that point. You know, a strong part of me really feels that it's just kind of as the road continued, and as that was failure, failure, failure that that got formulated as what do we have on the table? Let's just do it. January 6 Committee Lawyer: And now after what we've told you today about the Select Committee's investigation about the conclusion of the professional lawyers on the campaign staff, Justin Clark, Matt Morgan and Josh Findlay, about their unwillingness to participate in the convening of these electors, how does that contribute to your understanding of these issues? Robert Sinners: I'm angry, I'm angry. Because I think in a sense, you know, no one really cared if people were potentially putting themselves in jeopardy. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Would you have not wanted to participate in this any further, as well? Robert Sinners: I absolutely would not have had I know that the three main lawyers for the campaign that I've spoken to in the past, and were leading up, we're not on board. Yeah. Andrew Hitt: I was told that these would only count if a court ruled in our favor. So that would have been using our electors. Well, it would have been using our electors in ways that we weren't told about and we wouldn't have supported. Casey Lucier: Documents obtained by the Select Committee indicate that instructions were given to the electors in several states that they needed to cast their ballots in complete secrecy. Because the scheme involved fake electors, those participating in certain states had no way to comply with state election laws, like where the electors were supposed to meet. One group of fake electors even considered hiding overnight to ensure that they could access the State Capitol, as required in Michigan. January 6 Committee Lawyer: Did Mr. Norton say who he was working with at all on this effort to have electors meet? Laura Cox: He said he was working with the President's campaign. He told me that the Michigan Republican electors were planning to meet in the Capitol and hide overnight so that they could fulfill the role of casting their vote per law in the Michigan chambers and I told him in no uncertain terms that that was insane and inappropriate. Casey Lucier: In one state, the fake electors even asked for a promise that the campaign would pay their legal fees if they got sued or charged with a crime. Ultimately, fake electors did meet on December 14, 2020 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin. At the request of the Trump campaign, the electors from these battleground states signed documents falsely asserting that they were the quote, "duly elected" electors from their state and submitted them to the National Archives and to Vice President Pence in his capacity as President of the Senate. In an email produced to the Select Committee, Dr. Eastman told the Trump campaign representative that it did not matter that the electors had not been approved by a state authority. Quote, "the fact that we have multiple slates of electors demonstrates the uncertainty of either. That should be enough." He urged that Pence "act boldly and be challenged." Documents produced to the Select Committee show that the Trump campaign took steps to ensure that the physical copies of the fake electors' electoral votes from two states were delivered to Washington for January 6. Text messages exchanged between Republican Party officials in Wisconsin show that on January 4, the Trump campaign asked for someone to fly their fake electors' documents to Washington. A staffer for Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson texted a staffer for Vice President Pence just minutes before the beginning of the Joint Session. This staffer stated that Senator Johnson wished to hand deliver to the Vice President the fake electors' votes from Michigan and Wisconsin. The Vice President's aide unambiguously instructed them not to deliver the fake votes to the Vice President. Even though the fake elector slates were transmitted to Congress and the Executive Branch, the Vice President held firm and his position that his role was to count lawfully submitted electoral votes. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): Brad Raffensperger is the 29th Secretary of State of Georgia, serving in this role since 2019. As an elected official, and a Republican Secretary, Raffensperger is responsible for supervising elections in Georgia and maintaining the state's public records. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): Speaker Bowers, thank you for being with us today. You're the speaker of the Arizona House and a self-described conservative Republican. You campaigned for President Trump and with him during the 2020 election. Is it fair to say that you wanted Donald Trump to win a second term in office? Please? Rusty Bowers: Yes, sir. Thank you. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): And is it your understanding that President Biden was the winner of the popular vote in Arizona in 2020? Rusty Bowers: Yes, sir. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Before we begin with the questions that I had prepared for you, I want to ask you about a statement that former President Trump issued, which I received just prior to the hearing. Former President Trump begins by calling you a RINO, Republican in Name Only. He then references a conversation in November 2020, in which he claims that you told him that the election was rigged, and that he had won Arizona. To quote the former President, "during the conversation, he told me the election was rigged and that I won Arizona," unquote. Is that false? Rusty Bowers: Anywhere, anyone, anytime that has said that I said the election was rigged, that would not be true. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): And when the former President, in his statement today, claimed that you told him that he won Arizona, is that also false? Rusty Bowers: That is also false. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Mr. Bowers, I understand that after the election, you received a phone call from President Trump and Rudy Giuliani, in which they discussed the result of the presidential election in Arizona. If you would, tell us about that call. Rusty Bowers: Mr. Giuliani came on first. And niceties...then Mr. Trump, President Trump, then-President Trump came on. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): During the conversation did you ask Mr. Giuliani for proof of these allegations of fraud that he was making? Rusty Bowers: On multiple occasions, yes. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): And when you asked him for evidence of this fraud, what did he say? Rusty Bowers: He said that they did have proof. And I asked him, "Do you have names?" [He said] for example, we have 200,000 illegal immigrants, some large number, five or six thousand, dead people, etc. And I said, "Do you have their names?" Yes. "Will you give them to me?" Yes. The President interrupted and said, "Give the man what he needs Rudy." He said, "I will." And that happened on at least two occasions, that interchange in the conversation. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Did you ever receive from him that evidence either during the call, after the call, or to this day? Rusty Bowers: Never. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): What was the ask during this call? Rusty Bowers: The ones I remember, were first, that we would hold -- that I would allow an official committee at at the Capitol so that they could hear this evidence, and that we could take action thereafter. I said, "to what end? To what end the hearing." He said, well, we have heard by an official high up in the Republican legislature that there is a legal theory or a legal ability in Arizona, that you can remove the the electors of President Biden and replace them. And we would like to have the legitimate opportunity, through the committee, to come to that end and and remove that. And I said that's, that's something that's totally new to me. I've never heard of any such thing. And I would never do anything of such magnitude without deep consultation with qualified attorneys. And I said, I've got some good attorneys, and I'm going to give you their names. But you're asking me to do something against my oath and I will not break my oath. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Did you also receive a call from US Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona on the morning of January 6? Rusty Bowers: I did. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): And what did Mr. Biggs asked you to do? Rusty Bowers: I believe that was the day that the vote was occurring in each state to have certification or to declare the certification of the electors. And he asked if I would sign on both to a letter that had been sent from my State, and/or that I would support the decertification of the electors. And I said I would not. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Speaking Bowers, did the President call you again later in December? Rusty Bowers: He did, sir. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Did you tell the president in that second call that you supported him, that you voted for him, but that you are not going to do anything illegal for him? Rusty Bowers: I did, sir. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Nevertheless, his lawyer John Eastman called you some days later, and what did Dr. Eastman want you to do? Rusty Bowers: That we would, in fact, take a vote to overthrow -- or I shouldn't say overthrow -- that we would decertify the electors, and that we had plenary authority to do so. But I said, "What would you have me do?" And he said, "Just do it and let the court sorted out." And I said, "You're asking me to do something that's never been done in history, the history of the United States. And I'm going to put my state through that without sufficient proof? And that's going to be good enough with me? That I would, I would put us through that, my state that I swore to uphold, both in Constitution and in law? No, sir." Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): I want to look even more deeply at the fake electoral scheme. Every four years, citizens from all over the United States go to the polls to elect the President. Under our Constitution, when we cast our votes for president, we are actually voting to send electors pledged to our preferred candidate to the Electoral College. In December, the electors in each state meet, cast their votes, and send those votes to Washington. There was only one legitimate slate of electors from each state. On the Sixth day of January, Congress meets in a joint session to count those votes, and the winner of the Electoral College vote becomes the president. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): Secretary Raffensburger, thank you for being here today. You've been a public servant in Georgia since 2015, serving first as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and then since January 2019, as Georgia Secretary of State as a self described conservative Republican. Is it fair to say that you wanted President Trump to win the 2020 election? Brad Raffensperger: Yes, it is. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Secretary Raffensperger, did Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and by what margin? Brad Raffensperger: President Biden carried the state of Georgia by approximately 12,000 votes. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): Bear in mind as we discuss this call today that by this point in time, early January, the election in Georgia had already been certified. But perhaps more important, the President of the United States had already been told repeatedly by his own top Justice Department officials that the claims he was about to make to you about massive fraud in Georgia were completely false. 06/16/22 Select Committee Hearing June 16, 2022 House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol Witnesses: Greg Jacob, Former Counsel to Vice President Mike Pence J. Michael Luttig, Retired judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and informal advisor to Mike Pence Julie Radford, Former Chief of Staff for Ivanka Trump Eric Herschmann, Former White House Senior Advisor Nicholas Luna, Former Assistant to President Trump Gen. Keith Kellogg, Former National Security Advisor to VP Pence Clips 16:45 Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): Greg Jacob was Counsel to Vice President Pence. He conducted a thorough analysis of the role of the Vice President in the Joint Session of Congress under the Constitution, the Electoral Count Act, and 230 years of historical practice. But he also has firsthand information about the attack on the Capitol because he lived through it. He was with the Vice President and his own life was in danger. 31:05 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Eastman was, at the time, a law professor at Chapman University Law School. He prepared a memo outlining the nonsensical theory that the Vice President could decide the outcome of the election at the Joint Session of Congress on January 6. 32:50 Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY): Dr. Eastman himself admitted in an email that the fake electors had no legal weight. Referring to the fake electors as, quote "dead on arrival in Congress" end quote, because they did not have a certification from their States. 46:40 Greg Jacob: We had a constitutional crisis in 1876 because in that year, multiple slates of electors were certified by multiple slates [sic]. And when it came time to count those votes, the antecedent question of "which ones?" had to be answered. That required the appointment of an independent commission. That commission had to resolve that question. And the purpose of the Electoral Count Act of 1887 had been to resolve those latent ambiguities. Now I'm in complete agreement with Judge Luttig. It is unambiguous that the Vice President does not have the authority to reject electors. There is no suggestion of any kind that it does. There is no mention of rejecting or objecting to electors anywhere in the 12th amendment. And so the notion that the Vice President could do that certainly is not in the text. But the problem that we had and that John Eastman raised in our discussions was, we had all seen that in Congress in 2000, in 2004, in 2016, there had been objections raised to various states. And those had even been debated in 2004. And so, here you have an Amendment that says nothing about objecting or rejecting. And yet we did have some recent practice of that happening within the terms of the Electoral Count Act. So we started with that. 1:20:45 Greg Jacob: He again tried to say, but I don't think the courts will get involved in this. They'll invoke the political question doctrine and so if the courts stay out of it, that will mean that we'll have the 10 days for the States to weigh in and resolve it. And then, you know, they'll send back the Trump slates of electors, and the people will be able to accept that. I expressed my vociferous disagreement with that point, I did not think that this was a political question. Among other things, if the courts did not step in to resolve this, there was nobody else to resolve it. You would be in a situation where you have a standoff between the President of the United States and, counterfactually, the Vice President of the United States saying that we've exercised authorities that, Constitutionally, we think we have by which we have deemed ourselves the winners of the election. You would have an opposed House and Senate disagreeing with that. You would have State legislatures that, to that point, I mean, Republican leaders across those legislatures had put together, had put out statements, and we collected these for the Vice President as well, that the people had spoken in their States and that they had no intention of reversing the outcome of the election. We did receive some signed letters that Mr. Eastman forwarded us by minorities of leaders in those States, but no State had any legislative house that indicated that added any interest in it. So you would have had just a an unprecedented Constitutional jump ball situation with that standoff. And as I expressed to him, that issue might well then have to be decided in the streets. Because if we can't work it out politically, we've already seen how charged up people are about this election. And so it would be a disastrous situation to be in. So I said, I think the courts will intervene. I do not see a commitment in the Constitution of the question, whether the Vice President has that authority to some other actor to resolve there. There's arguments about whether Congress and the Vice President jointly have a Constitutional commitment to generally decide electoral vote issues. I don't think that they have any authority to object or reject them. I don't see it in the 12th Amendment, but nonetheless. And I concluded by saying, "John, in light of everything that we've discussed, can't we just both agree that this is a terrible idea?" And he couldn't quite bring himself to say yes to that. But he very clearly said, "Well, yeah, I see we're not going to be able to persuade you to do this." And that was how the meeting concluded. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA): We understand that the Vice President started his day on January 4 with a rally in Georgia for the Republican candidates in the US Senate runoff. When the Vice President returned to Washington, he was summoned to meet with the President regarding the upcoming Joint Session of Congress. Mr. Jacob, during that meeting between the President and the Vice President, what theories did Dr. Eastman present regarding the role of the Vice President in counting the electoral votes? Greg Jacob: During the meeting on January 4, Mr. Eastman was opining there were two legally viable arguments as to authorities that the Vice President could exercise two days later on January 6. One of them was that he could reject electoral votes outright. The other was that he could use his capacity as Presiding Officer to suspend the proceedings and declare essentially a 10-day recess during which States that he deemed to be disputed, there was a list of five to seven states, the exact number changed from conversation to conversation, but that the Vice President could sort of issue and demand to the State Legislatures in those States to re-examine the election and declare who had won each of those States. So he said that both of those were legally viable options. He said that he did not recommend, upon questioning, he did not recommend what he called the "more aggressive option," which was reject outright, because he thought that that would be less politically palatable. The imprimatur of State Legislature authority would be necessary to ultimately have public acceptance of an outcome in favor of President Trump. And so he advocated that the preferred course of action would be the procedural route of suspending the Joint Session and sending the election back to the States. And again, the Vice President's first instinct here is so decisive on this question, there's just no way that the framers of the Constitution who divided power and authority, who separated it out, who had broken away from George III, and declared him to be a tyrant, there was no way that they would have put in the hands of one person, the authority to determine who was going to be President of the United States. And then we went to history. We examined every single electoral vote count that had happened in Congress since the beginning of the country. And critically, no Vice President, in 230 years of history, had ever claimed to have that kind of authority, hadn't claimed authority to reject electoral votes, had not claimed authority to return electoral votes back to the States. In the entire history of the United States, not once had a Joint Session, ever returned electoral votes back to the States to be counted. So the history was absolutely decisive. And again, part of my discussion with Mr. Eastman was, if you were right, don't you think Al Gore might have liked to have known in 2000, that he had authority to just declare himself President of the United States? Did you think that the Democrat lawyers just didn't think of this very obvious quirk that he could use to do that? And of course, he acknowledged Al Gore did not and should not have had that authority at that point in time. So at the conclusion of the meeting on the 4th, the President had asked that our office meet with Mr. Eastman the next day to hear more about the positions he had expressed at that meeting, and the Vice President indicated that....offered me up as his counsel, to fulfill that duty. We had an extended discussion an hour and a half to two hours on January 5. What most surprised me about that meeting was that when Mr. Eastman came in, he said, "I'm here to request that you reject the electors." So on the 4th, that had been the path that he had said, "I'm not recommending that you do that." But on the 5th, he came in and expressly requested that. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA): Mr. Jacob did you, Mr. Short, and the Vice President have a call later that day, again, with the President and Dr. Eastman? Greg Jacob: So, yes, we did. Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA): And what did Dr. Eastman requested on that call? Greg Jacob: On that phone call, Mr. Eastman stated that he had heard us loud and clear that morning, we were not going to be rejecting electors. But would we be open to considering the other course that we had discussed on the 4th, which would be to suspend the Joint Session and request that State Legislatures reexamine certification of the electoral votes? Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA): Trump issued a statement claiming the Vice President had agreed that he could determine the outcome of the election, despite the fact that the Vice President had consistently rejected that position. Mr. Jacob, how did the Vice President's team reacts to the stat

Happy Christmas & Merry Geoholidays! The guys were joined this week by the one and only Joseph Kerski! With 30 + years experience in all 4 sectors of society including nonprofit (AAG, NCGE, UCGIS, others), government (NOAA, US Census Bureau, USGS), industry (Esri), and academia (University of Denver and others), Joseph's focus is on using geography and Geographic Information Sciences (GISc) to expand the use of spatial thinking in all sectors of society. He has been at Esri for nearly 17 years and is currently the Education Manager. We learned what life at Esri is like, what life is like growing up in a hotel, what the 5 societal forces are, why spatial thinking is vitally important, and a whole heck of a lot more. This was a GREAT conversation! Music for this episode by Lee Brice!!!

[RMD] Celink is now HUD's official HECM loan servicer [MarketWatch] A hot market cools way down [RMD] Behind the scenes on FAR's acquisition of AAG's direct sales channel

On today's episode, Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler talks with Chris Clow, editor of Reverse Mortgage Daily, about some of the seismic shifts in the reverse industry over the last two weeks, including Finance of America buying AAG, the collapse of Reverse Mortgage Funding and more.HW Media articles related to this episode:Inside the collapse of RMF, America's fifth-largest reverse mortgage lenderFoA to acquire AAG's DTC retail businessOne way reverse mortgages can fund aging in place: Home renovationsEnjoy the episode!HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported across HW Media. Each morning, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsrooms that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted and produced by the HW Media team.

In today's episode, Jim Greatorex, VP of VGM's Live at Home talks with Gabrielle Welter, Strategic Business Development Manager at AAG. They talk about how people can use reverse mortgages as funding resources for home accessibility projects.   

120VC Founder and CEO Jason Scott is a leader who jumps in to take care of people and get sh*t done, #GSD. From the start of his career jumping out of helicopters as a rescue swimmer in the United States Navy to now over two decades as the CEO of 120VC leading global transformational efforts for DirecTV, Trader Joe's, Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT Games, Sony Pictures, ResMed, AAG, Universal Music Group, Remitly, and others.After two decades of helping deliver transformation initiatives for Fortune 1000 brands, Jason launched the 120 Brand Community, applying the transformative power of #GSD to reimagine servant leadership, enable teams to deliver products, build brands that matter, and transform how people balance work and play as digital nomads.In addition to being a successful entrepreneur, J. Scott is a devoted husband and father and author of two Amazon-bestselling books “It's Never Just Business: It's About People” and “The Irreverent Guide to Project Management, An Agile Approach to Enterprise Project Management.” To mentor and train a new generation of leaders, Jason founded the Transformational Leadership Academy with keynote talks, workshops, and a 14-week certification program. 120VC.com

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a non-profit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields. Its headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded on December 29, 1904, in Philadelphia. As of 2020, the association has more than 10,000 members, from nearly 100 countries. Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and President of the AAG.  Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a non-profit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields. Its headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded on December 29, 1904, in Philadelphia. As of 2020, the association has more than 10,000 members, from nearly 100 countries. Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and President of the AAG.  Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/geography

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a non-profit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields. Its headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded on December 29, 1904, in Philadelphia. As of 2020, the association has more than 10,000 members, from nearly 100 countries. Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and President of the AAG.  Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The American Association of Geographers (AAG) is a non-profit scientific and educational society aimed at advancing the understanding, study, and importance of geography and related fields. Its headquarters is located in Washington, D.C. The organization was founded on December 29, 1904, in Philadelphia. As of 2020, the association has more than 10,000 members, from nearly 100 countries. Emily T. Yeh is Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder and President of the AAG.  Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Stewart Howden and his guest, Mike Jones, former president of the AACA, and Auto Appraiser at AAG.

In the episode we have punishment reviews of BeyBlade, AAG, and Highlander Endgame.  We then tackle several debates about great movies, actors, and movie scenarios.   Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/entertain_this)

It's not uncommon for commentary about former president Trump's spending habits to be met with raised eyebrows and stifled chuckles; soundbites about golf resorts and hotel empires induce a special kind of side-eye when they pop in and out of the news. But beyond anecdotes, most Americans probably don't know the colossal extent of Trump's spending. How bad was it? Bad, argued Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston. According to Johnston, Trump's self-beneficial money machine started churning less than 40 minutes after taking the oath of office and didn't slow down during his four years of presidency. Johnston's new book, The Big Cheat, layed out the flow of money in and out of hundreds of Trump's enterprises. He chronicled the conflicts of interest, the favors, and the entanglement of actions that benefited only the Trump family — but came at a great cost to the American people and jeopardized our national security. David Cay Johnston is a journalist, author, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting. He has been called “One of America's most important journalists” by The Washington Monthly, and he has acted as an uncredited source of documents and insight for major campaign reports by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and network television. He has chronicled Donald Trump's conduct in two other books: Temples of Chance and the New York Times bestseller The Making of Donald Trump. Sarah Reyneveld is an attorney, community advocate, union member, and parent. Sarah currently serves as a Managing Assistant Attorney General (AAG) in the Washington Attorney General's Office's (AGO) Environmental Protection Division and previously served as an AAG representing the Department of Labor and Industries for nine years. Sarah is a proud 15-year state employee who feels blessed to have worked at the AGO, Washington State Governor's Office, Washington State Senate, and the University of Washington. She received a BA from Smith College, MPA from UW Evans School, and law degree from UW Law School. In 2016, she received the inaugural Evans School Young Alumni Award for her distinguished public service. Buy the Book: The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family (Hardcover) from Third Place Books Presented by Town Hall Seattle. To become a member or make a donation click here. 

One in four people feels they have a sense of community in their neighborhood. Where do you fall in? Do you feel excitement when the lady in the brown house pulls in at the same time? Or do you suddenly have to check your Instagram until she passes? In this episode, we share our history of funny neighborhood interactions, the unspoken rules of connecting across the property lines, and some ideas for getting to know your neighbors. Whether you live in the middle of nowhere or in a giant apartment building, remember, you don't have to make a new best friend. But a happy wave and casual hello just might help create a more comfortable and joyful community...and potentially more puppy playdates and packages saved from unexpected rainstorms.  In this episode, Maggie claims that knowing your neighbors helps with safety and security. It's real! This article on PsychologyToday cites some research on it and AAG lists it as a top reason to get to know your neighbors.Say hi!Subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts. Together, we can help create a more feel-good kinda world. Drop us a hello on Instagram and Facebook at @HowtoSayHiPod And, send us your stories! Our email is  HowtoSayHiPod@gmail.com.Cover art and graphics are by the kind and talented Brent McCormick. Thanks to The Wimps for the theme song and other music you hear on this podcast.

Marina Cortazzo, head of technology solutions delivery for AAG, shares some of her most exciting and challenging projects. From running full infrastructure for Anastasia Beverly Hills to leveraging technology that transformed dining experiences for Dine Brands, Marina's experience in IT spans over two decades and covers a vast array of industries. Join host Alison Dean as she and Marina discuss what digital transformation means and why a company needs to crystalize its identity to have a rock-solid strategy.

In the second episode of the Aviation Growth Podcast, Scott Ashton, the CEO & President at Aerox, stops by the office to chat with Greg. After holding several key leadership positions in aviation (GE, Gama, AAG, CSS), Scott had the opportunity to move to SW Florida and buy Aerox in 2020. Aerox offers a full line of aviation oxygen systems, parts, and accessories, including TSO oxygen masks and PMA oxygen cylinders. They also operate an FAA repair station. In their discussion, Greg and Scott talk about the benefits and obstacles around owning a business, the current state of the aviation supply chain, the value of executive coaching, the future of the aviation industry, and some of the latest developments in oxygen systems. The podcast can be watched on Youtube or Vimeo and listened to on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and anywhere else you listen to podcasts. To learn more about Aerox or shop their products, visit www.aerox.com To connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottashton/ To connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregpheine/

EP 76 Senior Care Industry Netcast: Kelly Rogers- Gerontologist / Financial Resources Experthttps://www.asnmarketingplan.com/ep-76-senior-care-industry-netcast-kelly-rogers-gerontologist-financial-resources-expert/Kelly RogersNational Sales Coach & Certified GerontologistNMLS ID: 1065452AAG | American Advisors GroupPhone:  916.204.4463Email:  krogers@aag.com Address:  1255 Treat Blvd. Suite 300. Office 343. Walnut Creek, California 94597Valerie VanBooven RN BSN:This is Valerie VanBooven with the Senior Care Industry Netcast, where leaders with three or more years of experience in the senior care market share their advice. So with that, let's get to it. In a few sentences, tell us who you are and what you do.Kelly Rogers:Excellent. Hi, everyone. My name is Kelly Rogers. (https://www.aag.com/seniorcareprofessionals/)Right now I currently work for a company you might've heard of, American Advisors Group, known as AAG. You've probably seen those Tom Selleck commercials on TV. We specialize in being the nation's leader for home equity solutions for seniors, but we also work with VAs.It doesn't matter your age. A lot of people think it's just reverse, but it's not. We want to make sure that we're looking at all home equity options for everybody. We just happen to specialize in doing it with seniors.

Today, I am interviewing Gregg Outlaw, the Co-founder, President & CEO of All About GOD Ministries, Inc. (AAG.) Gregg is leading the AAG Resilient Truth project, raising the alarm about Google's censorship of the Gospel and the Christian worldview. This viewpoint discrimination is happening to Christian ministries' websites worldwide, who have lost nearly half of their […]