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<title>25 July, 2022</title>
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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Liz Cheney’s Revenge on Donald Trump—and Her Own Party</strong> - The season finale of the January 6th committee showed Republicans wallowing in the former President’s dishonor. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/liz-cheneys-revenge-on-donald-trump-and-her-own-party">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Harvesting Wheat in Drought-Parched Kansas</strong> - A global grain shortage has put extra pressure on American farmers. Can they navigate extreme weather and skyrocketing inflation when the world needs them most? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/harvesting-wheat-in-drought-parched-kansas">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Abortion Surge Engulfing Clinics in Pennsylvania</strong> - Patients are travelling to the state from Ohio, Kentucky, and even Louisiana, but how long will that option last? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-abortion-surge-engulfing-clinics-in-pennsylvania">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Clare Sestanovich Reads “You Tell Me”</strong> - The author reads her story from the August 1, 2022, issue of the magazine. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice/clare-sestanovich-reads-you-tell-me">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>How the Federalist Society Won</strong> - The conservative legal movement was pivotal in getting Roe v. Wade overturned. But does it have any control over what happens next? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/how-the-federalist-society-won">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Will the pro-abortion billionaires please stand up?</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="A crowd of people hold up a banner that reads, “Legal abortion nationwide now!”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/oxtMyfFDjTcYM9OmJ3qaqSp4ekc=/374x0:6347x4480/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71169470/1241808260.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Abortion rights activists protest in front of the White House on July 9, 2022. | Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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Billionaires helped defeat Trump in the name of democracy. Will abortion bans inspire the same fervor?
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="f9GE9A">
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During the 2020 election, <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/7/16/21326740/silicon-valley-biden-trump-fundraising-reports-steve-ballmer">left-leaning billionaires</a> — particularly <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/3/21121243/silicon-valley-billionaires-reid-hoffman-dustin-moskovitz">tech billionaires</a> — who previously hadn’t been big political spenders emerged as a powerful political force. Several of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest, from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz to LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21529490/silicon-valley-millionaires-top-donors-2020-election-donald-trump">spent massive sums</a> to help oust President Donald Trump and <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/27/21271157/tech-billionaires-joe-biden-reid-hoffman-laurene-powell-jobs-dustin-moskovitz-eric-schmidt">elect Joe Biden</a>; it ended up being the <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/02/2020-cycle-cost-14p4-billion-doubling-16/">most expensive election in history</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nz9LzJ">
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But in the face of a new crisis prompted by the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/6/24/23176750/supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-read-dobbs-decision-text">June Supreme Court decision</a> in <em>Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health</em>, which overturned <em>Roe v. Wade</em> and ended a constitutional right to abortion, the same liberal billionaires aren’t yet responding with a similar sense of urgency.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sk7fZp">
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Though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/21/gops-2022-small-dollar-fundraising-sputters-democrats-lead-grows/">Democrats have outpaced Republicans</a> in small-dollar fundraising this cycle, <a href="https://rollcall.com/2021/10/18/fundraising-reports-paint-murky-picture-of-democrats-future/">fundraising during the 2021-2022 cycle</a> has been more difficult compared to 2018 and 2020, especially when taking into account that <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-presidents-party-almost-always-has-a-bad-midterm/">Democrats are the underdogs in the midterms</a>. Throughout Biden’s term, major donors have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/04/us/politics/biden-donors-white-house.html">expressed dissatisfaction with the White House</a>, which could explain the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/01/democratic-donors-warn-they-may-hold-back-money-for-midterms.html">slower-than-hoped-for pace of fundraising</a> up until now.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zcOn8m">
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Cooper Teboe, a political strategist and donor adviser, told Recode that among Silicon Valley’s major Democratic donors, there has likely been “a 50 percent-plus drop-off between last year and this year.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6CVc30">
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But Teboe is hopeful that <em>Roe</em> was the jolt that donors needed. “I have seen a lot of those same folks, who might have been anti-Trump Republicans or even Libertarians or very moderate, reengaged since <em>Roe</em> came down,” he said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FKIMcv">
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With this re-energization, Teboe predicts an eye-popping amount of spending by the end of the 2022 election cycle.
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</p>
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<h3 id="HBOjkj">
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How Democratic billionaires have wielded their influence so far
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L7iTo9">
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It’s nothing new that many political donors prefer to be low-key when they can. The etiquette among fundraisers and strategists is typically to not name names and instead talk in broad, optimistic strokes. But this tendency to remain in the shadows also makes it hard to gauge whether some of the most powerful political forces in our democracy are in fact responding to the attack on abortion rights with the urgency it merits.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7OId7T">
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What we can glean from public statements powerful billionaires have made so far isn’t all that stirring. A handful — many of them known more for their philanthropy than for their political activity — condemned the SCOTUS decision, including <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/06/24/melinda-french-gates-says-supreme-courts-roe-overturn-backward-step/">Melinda French Gates</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-03/meta-s-sandberg-slams-supreme-court-draft-on-abortion-rights#xj4y7vzkg">Sheryl Sandberg</a>, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-24/billionaires-bill-gates-george-soros-slam-supreme-court-s-abortion-decision#xj4y7vzkg">Bill Gates, George Soros</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/MikeBloomberg/status/1540345352796180485">Mike Bloomberg</a>. Many tech companies, including Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Microsoft, and Tesla, are covering travel expenses for employees needing abortion care. Salesforce CEO and major progressive donor (<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/3/21162629/marc-benioff-political-donations-endorsements-democrats-california-primary">at least until 2020</a>) Marc Benioff <a href="https://twitter.com/benioff/status/1436508394194718720">tweeted</a> that his company would help employees relocate out of Texas if they wished to.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JPyJpY">
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The latest slate of Federal Election Committee filings, which disclose contributions through the end of June, offers some insights, though it’s hard to say if these donations were made in reaction to the <em>Dobbs</em> decision. Mike Bloomberg, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/15/us/politics/michael-bloomberg-spending.html">titan among Democratic donors</a> and a major funder of reproductive rights, has so far <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_name=Bloomberg%2C+michael">contributed about $1.5 million</a> to <a href="https://www.independenceusapac.org/">his own PAC</a> this year, some of which was <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00532705/?tab=spending">used to buy ads</a> supporting pro-abortion rights Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA). Bloomberg also made an individual contribution to Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running against Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI) in the primary. Both are pro-abortion rights, but Stevens is the <a href="https://rollcall.com/2022/07/12/michigan-democrats-picking-sides-in-levin-stevens-primary/">more moderate candidate</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fHDtY0">
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The billionaire’s foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, says it began giving emergency grants to abortion access organizations immediately after the SCOTUS decision but declined to share more details.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BCFpWZ">
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Bloomberg Philanthropies director of communications Rachel Nagler told Recode over email that there hasn’t been any meaningful change in the philanthropy’s strategy post-<em>Dobbs,</em> given that “supporting pro-choice policy and legislation, and electing pro-choice candidates, has always been a priority for Mike Bloomberg.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KDnq4T">
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Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who emerged as a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/21/facebook-co-founder-dustin-moskovitz-tells-why-he-donated-20-million-to-defeat-donald-trump.html">powerful political ally to the Democrats</a> in 2016, spent <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/20/21523492/future-forward-super-pac-dustin-moskovitz-silicon-valley">at least $22 million in 2020 on ads to help defeat Trump</a>. But he doesn’t appear to have made any political contributions so far in 2022. A spokesperson for Moskovitz told Recode they didn’t have anything to share about his current political spending plans.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oF9qGf">
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Founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and <a href="https://www.vox.com/23066877/carrick-flynn-effective-altruism-sam-bankman-fried-congress-house-election-2022">effective altruist</a> Sam Bankman-Fried, who was a <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/3/20/22335209/sam-bankman-fried-joe-biden-ftx-cryptocurrency-effective-altruism">top Biden donor in 2020</a>, revealed in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-election/crypto-billionaire-says-spend-record-breaking-1-billion-2024-election-rcna30351">an interview in late May</a> — after the <em>Dobbs</em> decision had leaked — that he expects to spend over $100 million in the 2024 presidential election.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VucSKi">
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Bankman-Fried indirectly funded a political candidate who doesn’t support full access to abortion by <a href="https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00809236/1613366/sa/ALL">giving $1.3 million</a> to America United, a super PAC that has backed Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX). Cuellar has come under fire recently for being an anti-abortion Democrat who only supports the right to an abortion “in the case of <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/03/henry-cuellar-jessica-cisneros-texas-aboriton-roe-wade/">rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother</a>.” Emily’s List endorsed Cuellar’s pro-abortion rights opponent <a href="https://emilyslist.org/news/entry/emilys-list-endorses-jessica-cisneros-for-congress">Jessica Cisneros</a>, but Cisneros lost to Cuellar in the primary race.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mCkZ5z">
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Though Bankman-Fried has not said anything publicly about his stance on abortion rights, a group he funds called <a href="https://www.againstpandemics.org/about">Guarding Against Pandemics</a> gave $100,000 to abortion rights advocacy super PAC <a href="https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00738674/1610578/sa/ALL">NARAL Freedom Fund</a>. Bankman-Fried has not responded to Recode’s requests for comment on his stance and plans for political donations post-<em>Dobbs</em>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rrIbye">
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Cuellar has also received financial backing from <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21451481/linkedin-reid-hoffman-billionaire-democratic-party-tension-silicon-valley">vocal anti-Trump Democratic donor</a> Reid Hoffman, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/05/24/henry-cuellar-reid-hoffman-primary/">through a PAC</a> called Mainstream Democrats to which <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/28/linkedins-hoffman-spending-to-elect-more-mainstream-democrats-to-congress.html">Hoffman has donated millions</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EADzyt">
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“We didn’t tell them they had to spend in one race or another,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political adviser to Hoffman. “We do believe that it is important to invest in keeping the Democratic Party politically viable in battleground geographies, which is not possible if the Justice Democrats and Our Revolution are successful.” These two groups work to elect progressive Democratic candidates; Our Revolution was started by key members of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign team.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O4j3Gq">
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The <em>Dobbs</em> decision only means this strategy of electing centrists must continue “multiplied by a thousand,” Mehlhorn continued, claiming that Republicans in Texas are much more eager to run against Cisneros rather than Cuellar.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="T1zKYC">
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Hoffman is personally pro-abortion rights. But he has not made any public statements of support for abortion rights or condemnation of the <em>Dobbs</em> decision, as some other pro-abortion rights billionaires have done.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CP2rCX">
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“A leftist billionaire talking about choice in California — does that help in our political moment to protect abortion rights?” Mehlhorn said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sRsB7c">
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“This is not about what Reid thinks about the substantive issues,” he said. “This is about getting everybody to agree that we cannot let the extremists take power.”
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</p>
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<h3 id="k7jxOV">
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The loud whispers around abortion funding
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</h3>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7OsMiF">
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But it isn’t the case that an influential donor needs to choose between being a staunch and publicly outspoken defender of abortion rights or making strategic donations to elect the Democratic candidates that have a chance of winning in battleground regions.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jWszVl">
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Some Democratic strategists and pro-abortion rights advocates say prominent figures need to be more vocal and more unequivocal in this fight over reproductive rights. Time is of the essence, and it’s more difficult to hold powerful people to commitments that they haven’t made publicly. It’s difficult enough to hold billionaires accountable by any measure, but public scrutiny is at least one way. Flying under the radar — and defending it as a smart political strategy, as many donors try to do — dodges even that.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pD5Hh8">
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“We need to have a fight. This is not a time for measured words,” said Erica Payne, a longtime progressive strategist and founder of <a href="https://patrioticmillionaires.org/">Patriotic Millionaires</a>, a group of millionaires who advocate for higher taxes on the wealthy.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QXSdfK">
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Payne pointed to the gender of many major Democratic donors as a factor in how the donor class has responded so far. “We would sure not be having this issue if the male funders of the Democratic Party thought there was a chance they would get knocked up,” she mused.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MdwjhS">
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“We cannot stand on the sidelines when this fundamental right is taken away from half our population,” said Pamela Shifman, president of the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/big-progressive-politics/">influential progressive donor network Democracy Alliance</a>, which Payne helped start in 2005.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R6GtoM">
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Shifman was more optimistic about donors being energized to fund political action on abortion. “I think donors are seeing how much courage is being shown by activists and are really wanting to step up,” said Shifman. There are currently a little over 100 members in the Democracy Alliance, and some of the most powerful names in the Democratic Party have been associated with the group — George Soros was a founding donor.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZDIWqX">
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But Shifman did acknowledge a gender disparity. “There are men who are funding this work, but I think we also need more public voices about this,” she said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xu651v">
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One such public voice is Bob Fertik, a longtime reproductive rights activist and founder of the #voteprochoice advocacy group. “I’m pretty unique, as a man donating to abortion. There are not a lot of other men who do,” he said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Btna2J">
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Famous men who do fund abortion rights advocacy include George Soros, Warren Buffett, and Mike Bloomberg. Though men <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/donor-demographics">generally spend more on political donations than women</a>, some of the biggest recent donations to pro-abortion advocacy groups have come from women. Planned Parenthood Votes <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/itemizer/filing/1617948/schedule/sa">received $1 million</a> from Andrea Soros, George Soros’s daughter, in late June, as well as $500,000 from Jennifer Allan Soros, the billionaire’s daughter-in-law. Julie Packard, David Packard’s daughter, also gave $500,000 in June. Billionaire philanthropist <a href="https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00738674/1610578/sa/ALL">Dagmar Dolby gave $300,000</a> to NARAL Pro-Choice America’s super PAC in late May.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kRoNSV">
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Fertik believes that powerful donors are certainly paying attention, even if they aren’t currently funding abortion and aren’t speaking up. “Billionaires are generally not comfortable speaking publicly about abortion,” he said.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zYQ7sF">
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“It absolutely would make a tremendous difference if one or more billionaire men said they were going to fund the election of a pro-choice candidate and put their money behind it,” said Fertik.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rHA4U9">
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Teboe, the donor adviser, suggests that one reason donors, including tech billionaires, responded and made political donations so forcefully in 2020 was because they connected the possibility of Trump’s reelection with a direct threat to democratic systems — that he was a leader who they thought didn’t <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/7/31/22603477/trump-efforts-overturn-election-results-rosen-donoghue">believe in free, fair elections</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="l45ACw">
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The connection between abortion bans and democracy is perhaps less obvious for donors. “I think that a lot of folks saw their involvement as a one-time thing — get rid of Trump, and we get back to a little bit of normalcy; we can choose between big government or small government or high taxes [and] low taxes,” he said. Some of the money that poured in from Silicon Valley in 2020 stemmed from the desire to <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/10/30/21540616/silicon-valley-fundraising-donald-trump-joe-biden-analysis">deal with Trump</a> rather than an intention to stay involved in politics. For example, before Trump, Hoffman’s role in politics was <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/21451481/linkedin-reid-hoffman-billionaire-democratic-party-tension-silicon-valley">much more low-key</a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8FGgvX">
|
||
But Teboe believes some of the initial hesitancy from progressive male funders stems not from a place of disinterest, but from a sense that it isn’t their place to take the mic. He expects that more and more major donors will make announcements soon. “I think they’ll come as the FEC reports come out, and people get to ask questions. I think these folks like to try to fly under the radar as long as they can,” Teboe told Recode.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="7ZPogq">
|
||
A billionaire-led fight for democracy is a flawed democracy
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1T5e8y">
|
||
If <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/2/9/18088962/super-pacs-and-dark-money">political spending is speech</a>, there’s more talking in politics today than ever before — including a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/21/citizens-united-turns-10-today-heres-what-weve-learned-about-dark-money/">worrying amount of dark money</a> on both the right and the left. Federal election spending has <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/cost-of-election">steadily risen over the years</a>, but it soared in 2020. The cost of the 2016 elections was a little over $7 billion; in 2020, it was $14 billion. According to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/us/politics/democrats-dark-money-donors.html">New York Times analysis</a>, Democrat-aligned dark money groups spent over $1.5 billion in the last election. Much of this money comes from billionaires who have enormous influence over our democracy and public policies, even if they aren’t elected and don’t have the same checks on their power that elected officials do.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kCldHM">
|
||
Even with public disclosure rules, the complex structure of political funding can create fog around what exactly donors are doing — they might give to a PAC with broad or vague aims that in turn makes a donation to another PAC, that makes another donation to a different PAC. Or they might give to a nonprofit advocacy group that isn’t required to disclose its donors at all. By passing the money down the line, donors can choose to claim or defer credit or blame for their political influence.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fcOeWv">
|
||
In the face of such extreme attacks against abortion rights, many want to know whether influential elites plan on speaking up or staying quiet. But that in itself highlights a big problem at the heart of how politics works in the US. The destruction of abortion protections, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1107733632/poll-majorities-oppose-supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-and-worry-about-other-righ">against the will of the people</a>, presents another chance for billionaire donors to try to preserve our flawed democracy, as some of them attempted to do in 2020 — even if the very existence of billionaires and the extent of their influence is something many people see as undemocratic.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>The deadliest road in America</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ik-kL27QNJMbNfcSIDr2DzHjoDc=/232x0:4131x2924/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71148824/US_19_031.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
An aerial view of traffic at the intersection of US-19 and Main Street in New Port Richey, Florida. The road, according to researchers, is the most perilous in the nation for pedestrians.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Being a pedestrian in the US was already dangerous. It’s getting even worse.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-left">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JZdERB">
|
||
<em>Part of the </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/23178787/highlight-july-2022-issue"><em><strong>July 2022 issue</strong></em></a><em><strong> </strong></em><em>of </em><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-highlight"><em><strong>The Highlight</strong></em></a><em>, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.</em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bFP4z1">
|
||
Drive along this part of US-19, a stretch of highway in Pasco County that parallels Florida’s Gulf Coast, and you’d be forgiven for not noticing the danger. It looks like a lot of American roads, especially in the South: flat, straight, and wide. Three lanes move in each direction, and extra turn lanes on the right and left bring the total number of lanes to eight or nine at most intersections. The road runs through several cities and places — Hudson, Port Richey, New Port Richey, and Holiday — but because of all the sprawl, you never really feel like you’ve left town.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="egR4Pv">
|
||
Along the road is a panoply of American consumerism: Walmart, Publix, tattoo parlors, chain hotels, motels, 7-Elevens, multiple Dunkin’s, medical equipment stores, condemned buildings, strip clubs, auto body repair shops, oil change places, custom paint job businesses, chain restaurants, deserted property waiting to be redeveloped, and a mini-golf course where you can feed baby alligators, fenced in near the sidewalk.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XrSw8S">
|
||
Walk along this road, and you might begin to notice the danger. The speed limit is 45 to 55 miles per hour, but the cars are often going much faster. The crosswalks are so few and far between that a simple act — crossing the street to get to a business a few hundred feet away — might mean walking over half a mile to reach the nearest crosswalk. Even with sidewalks set back from the road, it’s clear that US-19 wasn’t built for pedestrians.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="p-fullbleed-block">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/tAtSQxoQhBMHrGnmaQMVyVryyVQ=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764787/US_19_022.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A cyclist and a pedestrian cross US-19 at Main Street. SUVs have gotten bigger over the last two decades — and more dangerous to pedestrians.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0LJPJbjVoaS6A4bGHnXM2T8-Avc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764788/US_19_039.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Retailers line US-19 north of Green Key Road in New Port Richey.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KTxN91">
|
||
Robert Schneider, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, has never driven on this part of US-19. But amid a <a href="https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Full-Report22">rise in pedestrian deaths</a> across the country, Schneider and three of his colleagues — Rebecca Sanders, Frank Proulx, and Hamideh Moayyed — decided to look at the data on pedestrian deaths to try to find out where they were happening most frequently. Using information from the government’s database of fatal car crashes, the <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars">Fatality Analysis Reporting System</a>, Schneider and his colleagues looked at all the pedestrian deaths recorded between 2001 and 2016. The idea was to identify hot spots: 1,000-meter segments of roadway where six or more pedestrians were killed over two eight-year periods. “We thought: What can we find out about the places where these fatalities happened?” Schneider says. There would likely be similarities, he assumed, which could point to potential safety improvements. “One thing we wanted to shed light on is that they truly aren’t random.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7QhHNx">
|
||
They were expecting to find some overlap. But one road came up so many times that the results, Schneider says, were “eye-popping.” Out of the 60 hot spots they identified as having a high number of deaths, seven of them were on US-19 in Pasco County alone — more than any other road in the United States. “When you add the numbers up, that’s 137 pedestrian fatalities over the entire Pasco County. That’s an incredibly high number,” Schneider says. “If an airplane crashed there and 137 people died, people would know about it,” he says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="The map shows the fatal pedestrian crash spots identified in Schneider’s paper. Seven of 60 are in Pasco County, Florida." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hzeNamlrbjkhFf35thxKQOqKNOc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23767181/81YJc_the_fatal_pedestrian_crash_hotspots_2001_2016.png"/> <cite>Youyou Zhou/Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9MrTVE">
|
||
The study looked at deaths through 2016 — the most recent year finalized data was available. But a Vox analysis of open-source data from the Florida Department of Transportation showed that pedestrian fatalities have continued to be a problem: 48 people have been killed in car crashes that involved pedestrians on US-19 in Pasco County between 2017 and June 2022.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="The map shows the fatal pedestrian crash spots in Florida, with yellow dots highlighting those on US-19." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/1nv5g3F8QzFrl0W1n0Q8mu0hvPA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23768109/FL_highway_crashes_re.jpg"/> <cite>Youyou Zhou/Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="yxoOwf">
|
||
For every 100 miles on US-19, there have been at least 34 deaths since 2017, making it the deadliest road across the state.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="US-19 is the deadliest highway for pedestrians in Florida. An average of 34 pedestrians died per 100 miles there between 2017 and 2022." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9txpngb_qMxbvSJGqkvxFKGS3NM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23887073/SqkHo_us_19_is_the_deadliest_highway_for_pedestrians_in_florida.png"/> <cite>Youyou Zhou/Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1TAQKC">
|
||
Locals might not have the statistics at their fingertips, but they know that US-19 is dangerous. In 2020, 13 people traveling US-19 by car in Pasco County were killed in crashes. For residents who rely on it, US-19 is both mundane and maddeningly treacherous. Crashes are so ubiquitous that some talk about an old bumper sticker on cars that read: “Pray for me, I drive on US-19.” Another part of US-19, in neighboring Pinellas County, is sometimes <a href="https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/driving-tampa-bay-forward/public-meeting-scheduled-for-us-19-changes-in-north-pinellas-county">called</a> “death valley.” But the road is pretty much unavoidable for most people trying to move freely through the area, and the alternatives aren’t much better. No one is more endangered on the road than those who use it unprotected by a ton of steel — and there are a lot of them.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Nk7XaO">
|
||
“This road has so many cars,” says Julie Bodiford, a nurse who lives in the area, “and it’s death after death.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YQ11DR">
|
||
Julie’s brother, Kevin Bodiford, knew US-19 well. He didn’t have a car and he liked to walk, so the 33-year-old traveled it often, to visit friends and to move between his extended family’s houses. Each morning, he met his mom for coffee at the 7-Eleven on US-19 and New York Avenue in Hudson; it was their daily ritual, the way he checked in with her to let her know that he was okay.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-right c-float-hang">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="The satellite image shows the location where Kevin Bodiford was killed by a truck on US-19 on June 10, 2021." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/fSOmabAYoZBAghR1AsJmbWrjeiw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23760015/Crash_spot_rev2.jpg"/> <cite>Youyou Zhou/Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="68tnXa">
|
||
Just after 2 am on June 10, 2021, Kevin was walking on the side of the road. Surveillance footage from the 7-Eleven shows him in a baby blue shirt, blue shorts, a UNC baseball cap, and a backpack. He’d been at a friend’s house for a bonfire earlier in the night; Julie thinks he was headed for their mom’s house.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bp8TvP">
|
||
In the official crash report from that night, the police said that Bodiford was trying to cross the road. The footage Kevin’s family obtained from a nearby business is grainy, but it shows something else: Kevin walks, and a truck towing a trailer passes him without incident. Then he appears to stop. Headlights illuminate his body. A white Chevrolet pickup truck plows through. In the video, Kevin is there one moment and gone the next. He was thrown from the road. His backpack was knocked off. The driver tapped the brakes and drove off, leaving Kevin to die on the side of the highway.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UajRWR1sfZUNFHUjy-h3iqP9gHE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764588/US_19_003.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Julie Bodiford visits a roadside memorial for her brother, Kevin Bodiford, near the intersection of US-19 and New York Avenue. Kevin was fatally struck in 2021; the driver did not stop.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="rhTkri"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="taVrkj">
|
||
Because life in the United States<strong> </strong>is so structured around cars — so many of us depend on them, due to sprawl and lack of good public transit, and because infrastructure in this country is built with drivers in mind — it can be easy to miss the broader crisis unfolding on our streets. Most of us, when we drive, tend to think about our experiences as specific; our roads might have horrible traffic, or our community’s drivers might be particularly reckless. But the evidence mounting over the past few years indicates that something much larger is going on: America is experiencing a pedestrian fatality crisis.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="vtoV6P">
|
||
It’s not just Florida. In 2020, more than 6,700 pedestrians were killed while walking and using wheelchairs, despite a dramatic decrease in the number of cars on the road and the number of miles traveled. Data from the Governors Highway Safety Association that year projected that the pedestrian fatality rate <a href="https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Addendum21">soared 21 percent</a>, amounting to “the largest ever annual increase in the rate at which drivers struck and killed people on foot.” That same year, <a href="https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813266">nearly 39,000 people were killed in car crashes</a>, the largest number of deaths since 2007. When the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its preliminary findings, the NHTSA’s deputy administrator <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-traffic-exclus/u-s-traffic-deaths-fell-after-coronavirus-lockdown-but-drivers-got-riskier-idUSKBN26M6KR">told</a> Reuters: “We’ve never seen trends like this, and we feel an urgency … to take action and turn this around as quickly as possible.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Pedestrian fatalities have been on the rise in the US in the past decade." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7lkAnIssIZX-Wgh1pHcpG-dtUZU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23767561/EBhMw_pedestrian_fatalities_have_been_on_the_rise_in_the_past_decade.png"/> <cite>Youyou Zhou/Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="jneKSz">
|
||
In 2021, the problem managed to get even worse. Preliminary data from the Governors Highway Safety Association found that 7,485 pedestrians were killed by drivers, <a href="https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians22#:~:text=The%20report%20projects%20that%20drivers,single%20year%20in%20four%20decades.&text=GHSA%20previously%20issued%20a%20report,by%20State%20Highway%20Safety%20Offices.">an 11.5 percent increase over the year before</a>, and the most pedestrian deaths recorded in nearly 40 years. In response to the rising death toll among pedestrians and drivers, the US Department of Transportation announced more than $5 billion <a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-transportation-pete-buttigieg-50eda706e949e4fec059c7169363c83a">in funding</a> for local efforts to make roads safer. “We face a national crisis of fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in making the announcement this May.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6uMNip">
|
||
We are so inured to the dangers of driving — and the death toll it regularly incurs — that many people don’t recognize that the United States is an outlier among comparable countries: People are more than twice as likely to die in an automobile crash here as in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/why-canada-isn-t-having-a-traffic-safety-crisis">Canada</a> or parts of Europe.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="i0ESVz">
|
||
In Florida, which has long been one of the deadliest states to be a pedestrian, 716 people were killed walking on roads and streets in 2020. In 2021, the death toll reached 899, the highest numeric increase of pedestrians killed in any state. “The way to think about Florida is as a leading edge,” says Eric Dumbaugh, a professor of urban planning at Florida Atlantic University and associate director of the <a href="http://science.fau.edu/departments/urban-regional-planning/research/cscrs/index.php">Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety</a>. “Because there’s so much growth going on relative to other places, we see trends that happen nationally go on a lot faster here.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/l8UM2t66IMWCBhSfjR7SejCFreU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764896/US_19_027.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A roadside memorial for Gayle Marie Klein on US-19 at Green Key Road in New Port Richey.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CenquYqA__Qk2_jDocIr4qcF8nc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764899/US_19_024.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A roadside memorial for Logan Blakley on US-19 at Main Street in New Port Richey.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VVQ78EPUdp_281wEvGmms389F98=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764561/US_19_015.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Traffic rolls into New Port Richey, Florida, on US-19. Multiple lanes, high speeds, and the number of turning points make the road highly dangerous — especially for pedestrians.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure></div></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pkuHMZ">
|
||
In 2011, state and local officials in Pasco County began meeting to discuss how they could make the road safer, following <a href="https://smartgrowthamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/dangerous-by-design-2011.pdf">a national report</a> indicating that the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area, where the county is located, was the second most dangerous metropolitan area in the country for pedestrians (the top four were all in Florida). The state <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/accidents/Six-years-ago-Pasco-officials-tried-to-prevent-pedestrian-deaths-on-U-S-19-Pedestrians-are-still-dying-so-they-re-trying-again-_171661076/">spent millions</a> on improvements it said would help make the road safer. In 2018, according to the Tampa Bay Times, the state <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/accidents/Six-years-ago-Pasco-officials-tried-to-prevent-pedestrian-deaths-on-U-S-19-Pedestrians-are-still-dying-so-they-re-trying-again-_171661076/">put another</a> $100,000 into developing a new action plan to address the high number of deaths.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bPUahK">
|
||
Last year, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) installed crosswalks at some intersections that were missing them, added more sidewalks, built out curbs, installed LED streetlights, and handed out bright lights to people who travel the road by foot or bike at night.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J2TM7Q">
|
||
“It’s a huge priority, for the state of Florida, to fix this issue,” says Kristen Carson, a spokesperson for FDOT.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BYs0vQ">
|
||
It isn’t just US-19, though. In recent years, other roads in the state have also seen high numbers of pedestrian deaths. “US-19 may be worse,” says Dumbaugh, “but we’ve got a bunch of roads competing for that title.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="Wth7cp"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Muphpt">
|
||
New Port Richey Mayor Rob Marlowe, who has lived in the area since 1963, says that years and years of deaths — and complaints from the locals who travel along US-19 — have done little to make it better. “US-19 is a problem, and it has been as long as I can remember,” Marlowe says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NzYOIPsqoi-OmTZqpBKHOOoVqJg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764551/US_19_012.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
“US-19 is a problem, and it has been as long as I can remember,” says New Port Richey Mayor Rob Marlowe, who’s lived in the area since 1963.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cYoYMr">
|
||
On an oppressively humid Thursday in early June, I meet Marlowe at his office, on the second floor of City Hall. He wants to show me what the streets look like in his community, so we get in his Tesla and drive around town, through New Port Richey’s central commercial district, where palm trees line the avenues, and its residential neighborhoods, where Spanish moss drips from trees shading colorful bungalows.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7wDTZl">
|
||
Everywhere, there are signs of roads designed without pedestrians in mind: residential streets that are needlessly wide, despite a lack of traffic, and sidewalks only wide enough for one person, if they’re present at all.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cbXyDN">
|
||
The problem, Marlowe says, “really took root back in the 1960s, as the area exploded in population.” Subdivisions sprang up along US-19, as developers anticipated a growing population of retirees who wanted to live cheaply and get around by car. In most cases, the only way to get from one subdivision to another, he says, was to get on US-19 — but back then, it was easier to navigate, because it was only a couple of lanes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="O0RWoX">
|
||
Marlowe pulls up to the intersection of Main Street and US-19 — the center of the deadliest hot spot in the country, according to Schneider and his colleagues’ study — where state officials recently built out the curb to provide a safe space for pedestrians trying to cross, and to slow down drivers coming around the bend. As we turn right onto the highway and head north, he tells me to be on the lookout for the next safe place to cross.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/p5vMbvZdCpDWDN9bF9I8rsISx0g=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764982/US_19_021.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Pedestrians often have to cross eight or nine lanes on US-19.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UmK93I">
|
||
The crosswalks are so far apart it’s easy to see why some people decide to make a run for it. After Main Street, we don’t see another crosswalk until Grand Boulevard in Port Richey — 1.7 miles away. That means someone looking to get across the street between the two might need to walk an extra mile or more to find a safe crossing. The speed limit is 45 mph through New Port Richey, but Marlowe says it’s not uncommon to see people doing over 60 mph, making the road essentially a freeway with residential and commercial development on either side. “US-19 was designed for speed, and they” — meaning drivers — “use it that way,” he says. “The tendency seems to be to just go as fast as you can.” At night, the sheer size and width of the road make visibility a challenge (even with LED streetlights, which are meant to improve visibility), making it even more deadly for pedestrians who try to cross.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="P9N7hx">
|
||
“The danger of US-19, and all highways, is in their design,” says Frank Starkey, who grew up in the area. Starkey founded a real estate development and consulting firm called <a href="https://people-places.com/">People Places</a> and worked closely with the mayor and other city officials on the revitalization of downtown New Port Richey. Part of the revitalization effort, both men agreed, required slowing down traffic on Main Street, so drivers were more likely to interact with local businesses, and pedestrians could move safely without fear of being hit by cars. But city officials aren’t responsible for US-19 — state officials are. “FDOT’s reason for living is to get as many people as possible, as far as possible, in the least amount of time. That’s their issue,” Marlowe says. “It may not be written that bluntly, but that’s it. In the case of Frank and myself, we’d like people to slow down.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oxBMzY">
|
||
It’s a fundamental conflict, one that plagues communities like New Port Richey all over the country. State transportation departments, Dumbaugh, the urban planning professor, says, designed arterial roads to be high-speed and efficient ways of carrying lots of traffic. Land developers then built up property around the roads. “Once that happens,” Dumbaugh says, “you’ve put together a few things that are fundamentally incompatible.” Add more housing to the mix and you’ve got a situation where people are walking, Dumbaugh says, “in environments that were never designed to accommodate it.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="obb5A3"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pMw6WB">
|
||
Julie and Kevin Bodiford were best friends, but they were more than that. They were only a few years apart in age, and they were alone a lot as kids, so Kevin was like her sidekick, her little brother, and her oldest son all rolled into one.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="trtDIb">
|
||
As kids, they’d get off the school bus at the end of the day and it would just be the two of them. They adapted to each other’s interests: Julie would play football with Kevin, who was a natural athlete, and he would agree to play Barbies and let her paint his nails with clear polish. Julie loved to sing and dance, so Kevin set up speakers and a microphone for her. “He was my roadie,” she says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="p-fullbleed-block">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/K8rQZBDnoXDrnAusnD7eF7xDNqo=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764902/US_19_006.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
“He was my protector, more than anything,” Julie Bodiford says of her brother Kevin.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YwkCo1_lGCPw7RbTi6sS4WSWk-U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764906/US_19_009.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Julie holds a photo of her brother Kevin, taken in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2019.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OnLS6V">
|
||
Kevin was the freewheeling one in the family. He was always operating at full volume, cracking jokes, reminding his more staid family members that life was meant to be enjoyed. He had been incarcerated on and off and sometimes struggled with mental illness. He was also a loving uncle, who tattooed his nieces and nephews’ footprints on his arm and delighted them by doing pushups with the kids on his back.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="h9r2h9">
|
||
Growing up, Kevin was Julie’s protector — the person who made her feel safe. His strength sometimes made him seem invincible. Losing him in this way shattered Julie’s sense of security. She struggles with PTSD from what she experienced the night of his death, and the memories of her mom calling her, screaming that her brother had been killed. At the hospital, she remembers the police officer who came to confirm Kevin’s identity, and how pained and red his eyes looked as he asked to see her identification. The officers who responded to the scene that night were just down the road, dealing with another crash that killed a motorcyclist and two people in a car. Julie, a nurse, worries about how they handle the aftermath of these crashes.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4ygbRI">
|
||
“People just think, ‘Oh, it was just some guy,” she says. “Well, that ‘some guy’ mattered to a whole frickin’ family. You hit him and left him like a stray dog on the side of the road. Like it wasn’t a human life.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="AyV9x4"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7ErgaD">
|
||
When fatal crashes happen, the questions — from law enforcement, the media, commenters on Facebook — inevitably turn to human behavior: Was the driver drunk? What was the pedestrian wearing? Was the driver texting? How fast were they going? Was the cyclist wearing a helmet? What was the pedestrian wearing? Could they be easily seen in the dark? In other words, we look for ways to blame individual behavior, rather than consider the larger systemic forces at play.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UCMFSu">
|
||
That instinct, to attribute a fatal crash to some failure of personal responsibility, distracts us from the bigger picture: that many of our road designs are inherently unsafe. Jessie Singer, author of the <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/There-Are-No-Accidents/Jessie-Singer/9781982129668">book</a> <a href="https://www.vox.com/23016529/there-are-no-accidents-jessie-singer"><em>There Are No Accidents</em></a>, says that the things we think of as “accidents” are in fact the result of dangerous conditions in our built environments. The reality is that the more vulnerable among us suffer the consequences more than others. People who are low-income, who are disadvantaged because of their race, their immigration or housing status, or their status as pedestrians in an environment built for cars, are more at risk of dying as a result.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/0RDJDCryYLhnD1Zpqb-Y2Evv0Bs=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23778566/US_19_028.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A roadside memorial on US-19 at New York Avenue in north Pasco County.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FNPHVG">
|
||
We focus on individual blame, Singer says, because that makes it easier for us to believe that it couldn’t happen to us. Plus, it prevents us from having to make the hard structural changes necessary to prevent crashes from happening again: to call them accidents makes them seem at once inevitable and impossible to change. “This narrative kind of lets the government and corporations off the hook from having to protect us,” Singer says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zau3gT">
|
||
If accidents are supposed to be random, Singer says, “then accidental death would be evenly distributed across the country — but it’s not.” Schneider’s study showed that pedestrian deaths aren’t random, either. The places with the most pedestrian deaths tend to look like US-19 in one way or another: high-speed, with multiple lanes, and lots of commercial and residential development around them. Three-quarters of them are bordered by low-income areas, where people may be less likely to have access to a car. They are in places as diverse as Langley Park, Maryland; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Manhattan, New York; and Los Angeles, California. They’re places where pedestrians are forced to cross roads that are <a href="https://smartgrowthamerica.org/dangerous-by-design/">dangerous by design</a>, alongside trucks and SUVs that are getting bigger and deadlier all the time.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="I9G6js"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="a29u8l">
|
||
A decade ago, Charles Marohn coined the term “stroad” to describe roads like US-19. Marohn, a professional engineer who used to work on road design, wanted a useful shorthand for a problem that has become a feature of many communities. A road, Marohn explained, is meant to move people as quickly as possible from one location to another, and engineers design them to be wide, with lots of lanes and clear zones on either side to make driver errors less deadly. Streets, on the other hand, are places: where people live, shop, eat, and play. Because streets are highly developed on either side, vehicle traffic needs to be slow, to accommodate people outside of cars.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="NAb2I9">
|
||
A “stroad,” Marohn says, is the worst of both worlds. “If you think of a futon that’s trying to be both a couch and a bed and does neither of them well — that’s a stroad. A stroad tries to be both a street and a road at the same time, and it underperforms at both,” he says. Stroads are highly congested, with drivers stuck in stop-and-go traffic and turning across several lanes, and the potential for collisions increasing exponentially.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="p-fullbleed-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6Cac-1u_4cvr4zRhiXg23oTCPps=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23775917/US_19_033.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
The intersection of US-19 and Main Street, looking south, in New Port Richey.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="giz7Xb">
|
||
“Stroads are really deadly,” Marohn says. And US-19, with its high speeds, multiple lanes, cars turning on and off — and people walking, biking, and using wheelchairs — is kind of like a stroad on steroids. “This is literally the deadliest design that we could come up with,” he says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rQhzZe">
|
||
Traffic engineers’ typical response to high congestion is to create more lanes for more traffic, Marohn says, which only makes the problem worse. Studies have shown that more lanes tend to <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/">create <em>more</em> traffic</a>, which means that building out stroads usually results in the same amount of gridlock. What happens when engineers widen roads and create clear zones, Marohn says, is that drivers respond to those cues. “It tells drivers, we’ve got your back, and the way that drivers respond to that is by shutting off the active part of their brains,” he says.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0a13kG">
|
||
Road design isn’t the only factor contributing to the increase in pedestrian deaths. Over the past 20 years, the size of SUVs and trucks sold for personal use has grown bigger and bigger — and those cars have proven <a href="https://smartgrowthamerica.org/bigger-vehicles-are-directly-resulting-in-more-deaths-of-people-walking/">more deadly for pedestrians and cyclists</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bl8IwxBnub-oGWKXhxt8aQ8vCVY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764929/US_19_020.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Crosswalks are few and far between on some parts of US-19, so pedestrians and cyclists frequently cross without them.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UGvlP5">
|
||
At the same time, the country’s housing crisis has created a larger population of people without homes, who are particularly vulnerable to being hit by cars.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="GQJZV7">
|
||
Experts are still studying why pedestrian fatalities surged across the country during the pandemic, but some think the disruption to normal traffic patterns as Americans stayed home may have exacerbated the problem, because congestion is actually one of the few things that can force cars to slow down. “The congestion has in a sense been covering up our deadly designs,” Marohn says. “What the pandemic did is reveal how deadly our design approach is.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5MVaCd">
|
||
Marohn thinks the fix is for local communities — not traffic engineers — to decide what they want a given road or street to be, and then to focus on meeting those goals, essentially deprogramming stroads so that they’re either streets or roads. It would mean slowing traffic way down to keep cars from moving through streets too quickly, or removing businesses’ driveway access to stroads and keeping pedestrians far from the road so they can become safe for high-speed travel.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-wide-block">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/BuSySvR6Fg7YovOYnLdWI1pDClA=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764753/US_19_023.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A new walkway was designed to minimize the distance needed for pedestrians to cross US-19 at Main Street in New Port Richey.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="R3MuLi">
|
||
Pedestrian safety experts say there is a lot more we could do to ensure streets are safer for people outside of cars. Governments could improve public transit, investing in modes of transportation that are less deadly than driving, and install more traffic cameras to discourage speeding without creating more opportunities for deadly interactions between drivers and police. Car manufacturers could use speed limiting devices to slow cars down. States and local municipalities could design roads to be narrower, remove lanes, and use street design features such as chicanes, traffic circles, curb extensions, and speed humps to help calm traffic. Recently, thousands of advocates and officials across the country <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/09/2022-04894/new-car-assessment-program#open-comment">urged safety regulators</a> to begin studying the safety of vehicles for people outside of the car as well as drivers and passengers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ihgAb6">
|
||
“There are simple solutions here,” Singer says. But they require a shift in perspective, one that entails “not focusing on the last thing that went wrong and the last person who made a mistake, but accepting that mistakes are inevitable and premature death is not, and that we can put systems in place that prevent harm when we make mistakes.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="8xgRdv"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t8jXjQ">
|
||
They are easy to miss at first, unless you’re looking for them. But then you start to see them everywhere: the roadside memorials for people killed along US-19. One day, I pull over to look at a memorial for Rhonda-Ann Grzyb, killed in a crosswalk in 2017. Driving a bit farther, I make a U-turn across three lanes of traffic to stop at another, for Matthew Francis Sands, killed trying to cross the road on foot in 2018. A short distance from there, down a sidewalk, partially flooded, is another for Kevin Michael Osborne, killed when his SUV collided with a Jeep Cherokee in 2007. After a certain point, it no longer feels safe to keep crossing multiple lanes of traffic for each stop, so I drive south across Pasco County toward Tampa and count the number of memorials I see. Over about 15 miles, I come across 12 more signs commemorating the dead.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="p-fullbleed-block">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid">
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9Vq23VQ43kJeBGzNtt-aTOwPW-c=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764852/US_19_008.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Kevin Bodiford’s brother marked the site where Kevin died on US-19.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div class="c-image-grid__item">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/2-YKM63Vvx2VDsH7xfBmT-gW6JI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764687/US_19_001.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Julie visits a roadside memorial her family made for her brother Kevin.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="3t6Fae">
|
||
After Kevin Bodiford died, the family made a cross with flowers that they took to the spot where he was killed. At some point it was dug up — they’re not sure by whom — so they made another. The state also placed a memorial sign that says “Drive safely in memory of Kevin Bodiford” near the spot where he was killed. His brother spray-painted Kevin’s name on the road, close to two circles he painted, which outline the place where Kevin’s blood spilled.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rF9ryj">
|
||
The man who hit Kevin was arrested and is facing charges for leaving the scene; Julie thinks the family would have felt more forgiving if he had just stayed. Instead, they find themselves returning to court for hearing after hearing, hoping for some accountability for Kevin’s death.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="lDAnRo">
|
||
The family didn’t really want to celebrate the holidays without him last year. When they gathered, his mom brought his ashes with her. Julie keeps some of them sealed in a heart locket she wears every day. She got a half-sleeve tattoo of a cardinal breaking free from a cage, to honor Kevin’s memory.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rDRbBU">
|
||
She has no real choice but to keep driving the road where her brother was killed.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="AnDakH"/>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="moK948">
|
||
On my final evening in Pasco County, I’m driving on US-19 past Main Street, where Marlowe took me earlier in the day, when I see a group of people gathered on the street corner near a gas station. Most of them look to be in their late teens and early 20s. Dusk is settling in, and big pink cotton-candy clouds glow to the west, over the water. I pull over and ask a group of young women what they’re doing. One woman, whose name is Jessie, tells me it’s the one-year anniversary of her boyfriend’s death. He was 21 and driving his car when a driver struck and killed him.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Bvzprp48tGb2mFEpmYFip0KnI00=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23764470/US_19_040.JPG"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
A roadside memorial for Logan Blakley is displayed near the intersection of US-19 at Main Street in New Port Richey. Blakley was killed driving his car in 2021.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KVMMwt">
|
||
Jessie and her friends are from the area. US-19 has always been a part of their lives. It’s not just pedestrians; it’s perilous for drivers, too, they say. “It’s extremely dangerous,” Jessie says. “There’s been so many accidents.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tngUFc">
|
||
While we are talking, an ambulance screams past, its lights flashing. Jessie and her friends watch it drive by. One of them nods toward the vehicle. “That’s probably one now.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LvuDOL">
|
||
<em>Marin Cogan is a senior correspondent at Vox.</em>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div>
|
||
<div id="MgrQtd">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>Welcome to the July issue of The Highlight</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/F4C5AVun4Oze5YlsAogfWnFXjoA=/154x0:4247x3070/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/71169396/US_19_029.0.jpeg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Daniel Wagner for Vox
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
In this issue: How one Florida road became the deadliest in the nation for pedestrians; behind the scenes of a Black rodeo; the rise of the new suburbs; and more.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<div class="c-float-left">
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YYgW4HsU995yniG4Y5QuEoQvF0Y=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21899595/VOX_The_Highlight_Box_Logo_Horizontal.png"/>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ttAcpf">
|
||
For the past three summers, Americans — desperate to escape pandemic quarantines and still hampered by limited international travel — have spent their summers on the road. The result has meant many more drivers on the nation’s highways, more exploration of our own backyard, and more connection with the geography.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="cv13m1">
|
||
Our summertime jaunts, as well geography and our connection to it, proved the loose inspiration for this month’s issue of The Highlight. Our cover story pinpoints a very specific Florida road, US-19, that has, for years, been a local source of consternation because of the danger it poses to drivers, and to pedestrians in particular. Meanwhile, nationally, evidence is mounting that America is experiencing <a href="https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Full-Report22">a pedestrian fatality crisis</a> that has reached a disturbing new peak in the past two years. Vox senior correspondent Marin Cogan visited US-19 to understand how a potent combination of the pandemic, suburban infrastructure, bigger SUVs, and other systemic forces might contribute to the rapidly rising pedestrian death toll — in Florida and across the US.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KeA2TV">
|
||
The West, and the lore around it, was inspiration for photographer Gabriela Hasbun, who, on a chance visit to the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo stop in California in 2007, discovered an astonishingly modern, inclusive Black cowboy culture that challenges the image of the white cowboy perpetuated by old Westerns. (In fact, Black cowboys are estimated to have made up a quarter of all cowboys.) Hasbun’s images, taken over a decade, help rewrite our notion of the West, who it belonged to, and what rodeo culture looks like today.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tH10G9">
|
||
Writer Addison Del Mastro has been writing about urban and suburban change for years; Vox tasked him with thinking about what’s happening in the suburbs now, as newly remote workers inhabit the space around them rather than commute, and as more millennials are turning to the burbs to make their housing dollars go a little further, driving up prices across the nation. He finds that the change prompted by newcomers might point to a large shift in the whole definition of suburban life, one that perhaps we should have seen coming.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LkTPNk">
|
||
Most of the climate solutions we hear about are geared toward property owners, who are free to make all sorts of changes to their land and buildings. But renters are much more limited — they have to rely on their landlords for making structural changes that can reduce their climate impact. There are a few things renters can do, writes Neel Dhanesha.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r6ww7f">
|
||
We also look at land acknowledgments: What are they, and why are they everywhere from movie credits to bar menus? And finally, it’s not just you — the world around us is noisier than ever, and that’s having an effect on your attention span and your life.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="ZgeVL7"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/f53LFn5opLZf9j_vDkbFwh6pzQ0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23776205/US_19_031.jpg"/> <cite>Daniel Wagner for Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="MAdyXv">
|
||
<a href="https://www.vox.com/23178764/florida-us19-deadliest-pedestrian-fatality-crisis"><strong>The deadliest road in America</strong></a><strong> </strong>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LiFliI">
|
||
Being a pedestrian in the US was already dangerous. It’s getting even worse.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9S9rIb">
|
||
By Marin Cogan
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="xpoNAo"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="Two riders on horseback with print skirts that extend over the rumps of their horses." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Gr0z2rB-SvTg19ecez9F0mSyGSw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23843594/B0000910_exclusive.jpg"/> <cite>Gabriela Hasbun</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="tklHXy">
|
||
<strong>A Black rodeo rewrites the story of the West </strong><em>(coming Tuesday)</em>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KU0sch">
|
||
At the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, Black riders and fans bring a sense of swaggering cool to a culture overlooked by the history books.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="OYCFBi">
|
||
By Lavanya Ramanathan, photos by Gabriela Hasbun
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="8Eow8k"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/X1XfP9hDy02ewWnpdiYvTxHGM80=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23765796/vox_suburb.jpg"/> <cite>Lia Lao for Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="DcTgHv">
|
||
<strong>What if the suburbs were just a first draft? </strong><em>(Coming Tuesday)</em>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZLFNlV">
|
||
Remote work, the arrival of homeowning millennials, and other forces can be an opportunity to remake them for the better.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="rSk5Tm">
|
||
By Addison Del Mastro
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="FkU2QS"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="An illustration shows a tall apartment building with a heat-evoking orange background and wisps of blue smoke passing in front of it. In the building’s windows, various people look outside or perform chores inside." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TnsWlGFKifnTJY_ZpsfH5l9OuI0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23689856/STORY_1_SET_2.jpg"/> <cite>Shanée Benjamin for Vox</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="s3OOLo">
|
||
<strong>Climate fixes are all aimed at property owners. What about renters? </strong><em>(Coming Wednesday)</em>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="aTQpfj">
|
||
You don’t have to own a home to be a part of the climate solution.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Alzrwm">
|
||
By Neel Dhanesha
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="w5z2uA"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Lx4Jzxu9kZf6Z-Bqe-cjwRR3vOw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23759431/GettyImages_1235822649.jpg"/> <cite>Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="sY3N4Q">
|
||
<strong>The rise of land acknowledgments — and their limitations </strong><em>(Coming Thursday)</em>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="fpEdS7">
|
||
More institutions are making note of Indigenous rights to land. Does it make a difference?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HpeNwP">
|
||
By Emily St. James
|
||
</p>
|
||
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="gO5mjm"/>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="An illustration of a person’s head in silhouette with a hand to the ear and lightning bolts denoting sound causing the ear to turn red." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/e9HXk6VTOPs2dAlQANDQROJEgJY=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23754337/GettyImages_466101033.jpg"/> <cite>Getty Images</cite>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<h3 id="E5RqUW">
|
||
<strong>The power of silence in a deafening world </strong><em>(Coming Friday)</em>
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xwHszF">
|
||
Why there’s more noise, and more kinds of it — and why it might be ruining our focus.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WZoHU5">
|
||
By Leigh Marz and Justin Zorn
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>National selection trials in Delhi, Bhopal</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Forest Flame, Star Admiral, Shabelle and De Villiers excel</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>India can repeat Thomas Cup show at CWG: Satwik</strong> - ‘The preparations have been really good and the mood is upbeat’</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Morning Digest | Droupadi Murmu to take oath as President today; India beats West Indies by two wickets in 2nd ODI to clinch three-match series, and more</strong> - A select list of stories to read before you start your day</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Axar Patel fires India to series-clinching win over WI in 2nd ODI</strong> - Shardul Thakur picked most wickets, returning with figures of three for 54 in 7 overs</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Kerala High Court upholds recruitment eligibility conditions in NTPC</strong> - Appeal against single judge’s order</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Congress intensifies stir against Sriram Venkitaraman’s appointment as Alappuzha Collector</strong> - It calls Venkitaraman a tainted bureaucrat and called for revoking his appointment</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>State’s hopes of permissions for more open market borrowings dashed</strong> - Finance Minister asserts that borrowings by the State-owned institutions will be considered State’s borrowing</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Watch | These women in Karnataka make bags that are a hit in Europe</strong> - A video on how women handcrafters from Mekalamaradi built an internationally respected brand of women’s accessories.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Andhra Pradesh: Electricity employees waiting for PRC recommendations</strong> - Fixing a single master scale, 45% fitment hike and unlimited medical policy are among the demands</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russia denies causing global food crisis</strong> - Its foreign minister, who is in Egypt, says the West is distorting the truth as the Ukraine war rages.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>In pictures: From Tenerife to Greece, wildfires rage in Europe</strong> - Blazes have broke out across the country, leaving charred ruins and forcing thousands to evacuate.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>France energy: Air-conditioned shops will be told to shut doors to cut waste</strong> - New rules will force shops to keep doors shut when air conditioning is on and limit use of neon signs.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Chess robot breaks seven-year-old boy’s finger during Moscow Open</strong> - The child was trying to make his next move at the Moscow Open when the robot grabbed him.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Italy migrants: Nearly 1,200 arrive by boat in 24 hours</strong> - Officials warn that immigration centres are being overwhelmed by the pace of new arrivals.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Black Panther: Wakanda Forever teaser is a moving tribute to Chadwick Boseman</strong> - Plus a new <em>She-Hulk</em> trailer, sneak peeks at <em>Ant-Man: Quantum-Mania</em>, and more. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1868997">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>We test an electric Mercedes that can can go 747 miles on a single charge</strong> - Mercedes-Benz built the Vision EQXX for ultimate efficiency, but still in comfort. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1869001">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Review: Framework’s next-gen Laptop follows through on its upgradeable promises</strong> - Battery life is the Framework Laptop’s Achilles heel, but it’s still unique. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1867724">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>WHO declares monkeypox an international emergency as child cases raise alarm [Updated]</strong> - The declaration comes amid new reports of cases in children. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1868796">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Keanu Reeves dropped by Comic-Con to reveal John Wick 4 sneak peek teaser</strong> - “Have you given any thought to where this ends? No one, not even you, can kill everyone.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1868957">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><strong>I was in a new IT themed restaurant the other day…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
When I walked in I could see the place decorated like the inside of a computer. The tables looked like motherboards, the placemats looked like keyboards, and the glasses looked like giant USB sticks. The host was there to greet me and he was dressed in the usual “nerd” attire - glasses, pocket protector, etc. But something seemed off. He seemed really, really sad. I shrugged it off as he showed me to my table.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
When I get to my table a waitress in glasses brings me a menu to look at. She hardly says anything to me. She actually seems even <em>more</em> depressed than the first guy!
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
After perusing the “main menu” I decide to have the fish and microchips. A waitor comes back to take my order. He’s barely listening to me. He sobs as she writes down my order, then storms away in tears. What was that all about?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Anyway 25 minutes goes by and no food arrives. 45 minutes goes by and no food arrives. An HOUR goes by and there’s no food nor a waitor in sight. Finally the manager walk by me and I grab is arm for answers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Hey, man! What the hell is going on? I’ve been waiting here an hour already! Where the hell is my food and why are all your staff so upset?!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
The manager replies, “I’m so very sorry, sir. All of our servers are down.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Candid_Dragonfly_573"> /u/Candid_Dragonfly_573 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7fbjj/i_was_in_a_new_it_themed_restaurant_the_other_day/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7fbjj/i_was_in_a_new_it_themed_restaurant_the_other_day/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>A woman got married not long after high school and her husband broke her heart when he ran off with another woman. She eventually got back into the dating scene, and fell in love again with another man. They married but he turned out to be an asshole who hit her when he was angry.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
She divorced him as well. Over time she met a third man who seemed perfect for her in every way but one- he was terrible in bed. She married him anyway, reasoning that sex would improve the more they knew eachother but it didn’t, and after a year she finally divorced him.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Having now been divorced three times she decided to join an online dating service and was very blunt about her preferences- she flat out asked for a man who would never hit her, never run off with another woman and be good in bed. About three weeks later her doorbell rang and when she answered it there was a man in a wheelchair who had no legs and no arms. He said “Hello, I think I’m your perfect man.” She said “Really? How so?” Said the man “well, I have no arms so I will never beat you, and I have no legs so I will never run off with another woman. She stared at him and asked “Umm… are you good in bed?
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
And he answered “I rang the doorbell, didn’t I?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/LatterTowel9403"> /u/LatterTowel9403 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w70nf6/a_woman_got_married_not_long_after_high_school/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w70nf6/a_woman_got_married_not_long_after_high_school/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>I was watching a show about Ancient Egypt, and they mentioned that there were Seven Sacred Oils that they used to anoint the dead with.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I thought that sounded interesting, so I decided to Google “Seven Sacred Oils of Egypt” and the entire front page of results is about where I can buy the essential oils the Egyptians used, you know mlm shit.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
I cannot stress enough how this is not what I was looking for, but in hindsight I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that looking up something related to Ancient Egypt led me to a pyramid scheme.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Non-Cannon"> /u/Non-Cannon </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w71d4k/i_was_watching_a_show_about_ancient_egypt_and/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w71d4k/i_was_watching_a_show_about_ancient_egypt_and/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>What’s the difference between Beer Nuts and Deer Nuts?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Beer Nuts are $1.50 a pound. Deer Nuts are under a Buck
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/BigDCanuck"> /u/BigDCanuck </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7cyby/whats_the_difference_between_beer_nuts_and_deer/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7cyby/whats_the_difference_between_beer_nuts_and_deer/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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<li><strong>Someone told me to write a haiku for them. I was like,</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF -->
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“I’m not doing that. Write your own goddam haiku.” The nerve of some folks.
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/AutiGaymer"> /u/AutiGaymer </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7drwi/someone_told_me_to_write_a_haiku_for_them_i_was/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/w7drwi/someone_told_me_to_write_a_haiku_for_them_i_was/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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