WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on Wednesday nominated Rep. Steve Scalise to be the next House speaker and will now try to unite around the conservative in a floor vote to elect him after ousting Rep. Kevin McCarthy from the post.

In private balloting at the Capitol, House Republicans pushed aside Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, in favor of Scalise, the current majority leader, lawmakers said. The Louisiana lawmaker is seen as a hero to some after surviving a mass shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice few years ago.

Republicans who have been stalemated after McCarthy’s removal will seek to assemble their narrow House majority around Scalise in what is certain to be a close vote of the full House. Democrats are set to oppose the Republican nominee.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Stalemated over a new House speaker, the Republican majority is meeting behind closed doors Wednesday to try to choose a new leader, but lawmakers warn it could take hours, if not days, to unite behind a nominee after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster.

The two leading contenders, Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, appear to be splitting the vote among their Republican colleagues. McCarthy, who had openly positioned himself to reclaim the job he just lost, told fellow GOP lawmakers not to nominate him this time.

“I don’t know how the hell you get to 218,” said Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, referring to the majority vote typically needed in the 435-member House to become speaker. “It could be a long week.”

It’s an extraordinary moment of political chaos that has brought the House to a standstill at a time of uncertainty at home and crisis abroad, just 10 months after Republicans swept to power. Aspiring to operate as a team and run government more like a business, the GOP majority has drifted far from that goal with the unprecedented ouster of a speaker.

Americans are watching. One-quarter of Republicans say they approve of the decision by a small group of Republicans to remove McCarthy as speaker. Three in 10 Republicans believe it was a mistake, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The hard-right coalition of lawmakers that ousted McCarthy, R-Calif., has shown what an oversize role a few lawmakers can have in choosing his successor.

“I am not thrilled with either choice right now,” said Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., who voted to oust McCarthy.

Both Scalise and Jordan are working furiously to shore up support. Both are easily winning over dozens of supporters and could win a majority of the 221 Republicans.

But it’s unclear whether either Scalise or Jordan can amass the votes that would be needed from almost all Republicans to overcome opposition from Democrats during a floor vote in the narrowly split House. Usually, the majority needed would be 218 votes, but there are currently two vacant seats, dropping the threshold to 217.

Many Republicans want to prevent the spectacle of a messy House floor fight like the grueling January brawl when McCarthy became speaker.

“People are not comfortable going to the floor with a simple majority and then having C-SPAN and the rest of the world watch as we have this fight,” said Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla. “We want to have this family fight behind closed doors.”

Some have proposed a rules change that Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., the interim speaker pro tempore, is considering to ensure a majority vote before the nominee is presented for a full floor vote.

McCarthy himself appeared to agree with a consensus approach. “They shouldn’t come out of there until they decide that they have enough votes for whoever they bring to the floor,” McCarthy said.

But short of a rules change, Republican lawmakers would be expected to agree to a majority-wins process — whichever candidate wins the internal private vote would be given the full backing of the Republicans on the floor.

It’s no guarantee. Scalise and Jordan indicated they would support the eventual nominee, lawmakers said. But many lawmakers remained undecided.

While both are conservatives from the right flank, neither Scalise nor Jordan is the heir apparent to McCarthy, who was removed in a push by the far-right flank after the speaker led Congress to approve legislation that averted a government shutdown.

Scalise, as the second-ranking Republican, would be next in line for speaker and is seen as a hero among colleagues for having survived severe injuries from a mass shooting during a congressional baseball practice in 2017. He is now battling blood cancer.

“We’re going to go get this done,” Scalise said as he left a candidate forum Tuesday night. “The House is going to get back to work.”

Jordan is a high-profile political firebrand known for his close alliance with Donald Trump, particularly when the then-president was working to overturn the results of the 2020 election, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Trump has backed Jordan’s bid for the gavel.

Scalise and Jordan presented similar views at the forum about cutting spending and securing the southern border with Mexico, top Republican priorities.

Several lawmakers, including Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who engineered McCarthy’s ouster, said they would be willing to support either Scalise or Jordan.

Others though, particularly more centrist conservative Republicans from districts that are narrowly split between the parties, are holding out for another choice.

“Personally, I’m still with McCarthy,” said Rep. David Valadao, a Republican who represents a California district not far from McCarthy’s.

“We’ll see how that plays out, but I do know a large percentage of the membership wants to be there with him as well.”

“I think it’s important whoever takes that job is willing to risk the job for doing what’s right for the American public,” McCarthy said.

For now, McHenry is effectively in charge. He has shown little interest in expanding his power beyond the role he was assigned — an interim leader tasked with ensuring the election of the next speaker.

The role was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to ensure the continuity of government. McHenry’s name was at the top of a list submitted by McCarthy when he became speaker in January.

While some Republicans, and Democrats are open to empowering McHenry the longer he holds the temporary position, that seems unlikely as the speaker’s fight drags on.

I'll turn you on like a tiger baby
Hard body motor city love life
I'll take you for a ride down the midway baby
Be my little human sacrifice
Do my kisses burn?
Do they take your breath
You've got a lesson to learn now
I'm the kiss of death
History is written by winner baby
So let's make a little of our own tonight
If you're thinking that my idea for fun is a drag
Then you've never been to paradise

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is dropping out of the Democratic primary race against Joe Biden to launch an independent campaign for president next year, he said in a speech on Monday.

Speaking to a crowd in front of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he cast his decision to leave the party his family has symbolized for decades as in keeping with American values of individualism -- and his own platform, which mixes liberal policy priorities with tougher rhetoric on immigration and controversial claims about public health.

"Something is stirring in us. It says, 'It doesn't have to be this way,'" Kennedy said. "People stop me everywhere, at airports and hotels and malls on the street, and they remind me that this country is ready for a history-making change. ... They are ready to reclaim their freedom, their independence. And that's why I'm here today. I'm here to declare myself an independent candidate … for president of the United States."

"I'm coming here today to declare our independence from the journey of corruption, which robs us of affordable lives, our belief in the future and our respect for each other. But to do that, I must first declare my own independence, independence from the Democratic Party," he said.

An attorney and activist, Kennedy is the scion of one of the country's most famous Democratic families: His father is slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and his uncle is former President John F. Kennedy.
PHOTO: Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during a campaign event at Independence Mall, Oct. 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. speaks during a campaign event at Independence Mall, Oct. 9, 2023, in Philadelphia.

Matt Rourke/AP

The younger Kennedy in April launched a long shot bid against Biden for the 2024 Democratic nomination.

Since then, however, Kennedy has attracted relatively little support from Democrats in national polling, according to 538, though he has drawn millions in donations from a base of supporters.

An independent bid is a new twist in next year's election -- at a time when surveys consistently show voters have soured on a potential rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump -- though it's not yet clear if Kennedy can draw enough voters away from the two-party system.

Teasing his Philadelphia speech last week as one that would create a “sea change in American politics,” Kennedy’s announcement follows mounting speculation about his future in the party after repeatedly sparring with the Democratic National Committee over the rules governing its primary and complaints of an unfair process.

At Monday's event, Kennedy called out some of his relatives for attending in support. Others in the family, however, have been vocally critical. Sister Kerry Kennedy released a statement on social media from her and three of their siblings calling his candidacy "perilous for our country."

Author and speaker Marianne Williamson is now the only notable challenger to Biden in the Democratic primary, though he continues to poll far ahead of her and party officials have said they support his reelection.

Kennedy drew a sharp rebuke from Democrats over the summer after he was recorded citing a false conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was "targeted to" certain ethnicities while Chinese people and Jews of European descent were more immune. In a later appearance before a House committee, he denied that he is racist or antisemitic.

Kennedy said last month that he had not ruled out an independent run to challenge the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees in the November 2024 election, despite having repeatedly ruled out such a possibility over the summer.

"I'm a Democrat. You know, I'm a traditional Democrat, and … part of my mission here is to summon the Democratic Party back to its traditional ideals," Kennedy told Fox News in August.

But in September, he refused to rule out the possibility of an independent run during a campaign town hall in North Charleston, South Carolina, telling a supporter he was “going to keep all my options open."

At the time, Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, dismissed the idea of him leaving the Democratic primary.

“Regardless of what's been said, even by the candidate himself, we have not abandoned hope for the Democratic Party," he told ABC News when asked about Kennedy’s apparent openness to an independent run.

Last week, the Kennedy-aligned American Values 2024 political group said that it had been polling him as an independent candidate.

“I can tell you that I think the right move is for him to run as an independent,” Tony Lyons, American Values' co-chair, told ABC News last week.

I don't know what the world may need, but I'm sure as hell that it starts with me, and that's a wisdom I have laughed at

I don't know what the world may want
But a good stiff drink it surely don't
So I think I'll go and fix myself a tall one

'Cause what the world needs now is a new kind of tension
'Cause the old one just bores me to death
'Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head

I don't know what the world may need
But a V-8 engine's a good start for me
I think I'll drive and find a place to be surly

I don't know what the world may want
But some words of wisdom could comfort us
Think I'll leave that up to someone wiser

'Cause what the world needs now are some true words of wisdom
Like la la la la la la la la la
'Cause what the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head

I don't know what the world may need
And I'll never grasp your complexities
I'd be happy just to get your attention
I don't know what the world may want
But your long sweet body lying next to mine
Could certainly raise my spirits

'Cause what the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra
So I can get you in bed
What the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head

What the world needs now
What the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head
What the world needs now
What the world needs now is a new Frank Sinatra
So I can get you in bed
What the world needs now
What the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head
What the world needs now
What the world needs now is another folk singer
Like I need a hole in my head

In recent days, Democrats have tried to show our colleagues in the Republican majority a way out of the dysfunction and rancor they have allowed to engulf the House. That path to a better place is still there for the taking.

Over the past several weeks, when it appeared likely that a motion to vacate the office of speaker was forthcoming, House Democrats repeatedly raised the issue of entering into a bipartisan governing coalition with our Republican counterparts, publicly as well as privately.

It was my sincere hope that House Democrats and more traditional Republicans would be able to reach an enlightened arrangement to end the chaos in the House, allowing us to work together to make life better for everyday Americans while protecting national security.

Regrettably, at every turn, House Republicans have categorically rejected making changes to the rules designed to accomplish two objectives: encourage bipartisan governance and undermine the ability of extremists to hold Congress hostage. Indeed, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) publicly declared more than five hours before the motion to vacate was brought up for a vote that he would not work with House Democrats as a bipartisan coalition partner. That declaration mirrored the posture taken by House Republicans in the weeks leading up to the motion-to-vacate vote. It also ended the possibility of changing the House rules to facilitate a bipartisan governance structure.

Things further deteriorated from there. Less than two hours after the speakership was vacated upon a motion brought by a member of the GOP conference, House Republicans ordered Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and former majority leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) to “vacate” their hideaway offices in the Capitol. The decision to strip Speaker Emerita Pelosi and Leader Hoyer of office space was petty, partisan and petulant.

House Republicans have lashed out at historic public servants and tried to shift blame for the failed Republican strategy of appeasement. But what if they pursued a different path and confronted the extremism that has spread unchecked on the Republican side of the aisle? When that step has been taken in good faith, we can proceed together to reform the rules of the House in a manner that permits us to govern in a pragmatic fashion.

The details would be subject to negotiation, though the principles are no secret: The House should be restructured to promote governance by consensus and facilitate up-or-down votes on bills that have strong bipartisan support. Under the current procedural landscape, a small handful of extreme members on the Rules Committee or in the House Republican conference can prevent common-sense legislation from ever seeing the light of day. That must change — perhaps in a manner consistent with bipartisan recommendations from the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.

In short, the rules of the House should reflect the inescapable reality that Republicans are reliant on Democratic support to do the basic work of governing. A small band of extremists should not be capable of obstructing that cooperation.

The need to change course is urgent. Congress is in the midst of a Republican civil war that undermines our ability to make life more affordable for American taxpayers, to keep communities safe and to strengthen democracy. Traditional Republicans need to break with the MAGA extremism that has poisoned the House of Representatives since the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and its aftermath — when the overwhelming majority of House Republicans continued to promote the “big lie” and voted not to certify the presidential election.

House Democrats remain committed to a bipartisan path forward, as we have repeatedly demonstrated throughout this Congress by providing a majority of the votes to prevent a government shutdown this month and avoid a catastrophic default on America’s debt in June.

At this point, we simply need Republican partners willing to break with MAGA extremism, reform the highly partisan House rules that were adopted at the beginning of this Congress and join us in finding common ground for the people.

Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) is the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives.

The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump's classified documents case on Friday temporarily paused a series of significant pre-trial deadlines pertaining to prosecutors' sharing of sensitive materials that the former president is entitled to while building his defense, The Messenger reports.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon authorized a paperless order delaying the deadlines she'd previously set for October 2023 through May 2024, when the trial for Trump and his three co-defendants in the case is scheduled to start in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Though Cannon's order doesn't address the May 20 start date for the trial itself, it does state that all of the scheduled deadlines connected to classified information are on hold "pending consideration and resolution" of a Trump motion proposing a new timeline that was filed last month.

That Sept. 22 filing accused special counsel Jack Smith's team of making "unjust efforts...to foist rushed CIPA litigation on the Court, President Trump, and his co-defendants."

A separate motion filed Wednesday night by Trump's legal team has, however, made the trial schedule a point of contention as the GOP frontrunner has requested a delay of at least six months in the start date of the trial until "in or after mid-November 2024," pushing it past Election Day.

The motion cited ongoing legal litigation over the sensitive evidence alongside scheduling conflicts with Trump's other federal criminal case in Washington, D.C. — of which he filed a motion to dismiss late Thursday — regarding alleged election obstruction.

"The March 4, 2023 trial date in the District of Columbia, and the underlying schedule in that case, currently require President Trump and his lawyers to be in two places at once," Trump's attorneys wrote in the Wednesday filing.

Some legal experts questioned Cannon's Friday order and suggested that it could pave the way for Trump to delay the trial date.

"Judge Cannon puts CIPA deadlines on hold until she rules on Trump’s pending motions," national security lawyer Bradley Moss wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "Now the real question becomes how long it takes her to make a ruling."

"Not a good sign for those who want a trial in May. We haven’t even reached the point in CIPA where the court has truly difficult decisions to make," tweeted Brandon Van Grack, a former Justice Department official who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team.

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"Realistically, delays can sometimes be necessary to accommodate issues involving classified discovery, but this seems over much," former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance added. "This is a judge who is happy to see the case move slowly."

"She is going to delay and delay. She has already been an embarrassment and it’s going to get much worse," predicted Georgia State Law professor Eric Segall.

Trump was first federally indicted in June over his alleged illegal retention of national security documents after leaving office. The special counsel brought a superseding indictment against him in late July, adding charges related to alleged obstruction of government efforts to retrieve the materials and bringing the total number of counts against Trump in the case to 40. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat viewed as a national leader in voting rights, has received 67 death threats and over 900 threats of online abuse within just three weeks, according to a system used by her office that tracks harassment and threats against election workers.

In 2020, Griswold's office launched a "rapid response" election security unit, a team of election security experts tasked with protecting Colorado's elections from cyber-attacks, foreign interference and disinformation campaigns. A year later, her office set up a tracker to monitor the growing number of threats against election workers.

Griswold told Salon that "if anybody understands" what election workers around the country "are going through, it's me." She continued, "Everything that we have done for my security, we have had to fight tooth and nail for. State and federal governments have largely abandoned election workers. I understand what these county clerks are going through and I'll do anything I possibly can to ease their burden and make sure that they feel safe and supported."

Election workers in many states and counties are leaving their jobs in large numbers due to an increase of harassment and threats, the proliferation of conspiracy theories and heightened workloads, according to a new report released this week by Issue One, democracy-focused nonprofit group.

The group's research focused on 11 states in the American West and found that roughly 40% of counties in those states have had a new chief local election official since the 2020 presidential election. In four states, that number exceeds 50%.

These turnover rates, experts say, pose a distinct threat to American democracy, since election administrators with decades of knowledge and experience are leaving their roles and being replaced by individuals with vastly less experience not long before a pivotal presidential election that is likely to see near-record voter turnout.

"Election workers across the country are dedicated to keeping our democratic processes secure, fair and safe," Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, told Salon. "When experienced election officials leave their positions, they take with them years of institutional knowledge and expertise. Our leaders have an obligation to protect our nation's election workers and make sure they have what they need to keep our elections strong."

According to Griswold, Republicans allied with Donald Trump's MAGA movement are doing everything they can to "destabilize" elections and convince local election officials to quit, up to and including harassing workers and threatening them with violence.

"There is a coordinated national effort to undermine American elections," Griswold said, pointing to the example of Trump supporters showing up to county clerk's offices in 2021 and threatening them if they didn't provide access to voting equipment.

The turnover rate among local election officials since 2020 is far higher than it was previously, particularly in battleground states where local election officials have faced a heightened level of death threats and harassment, the Issue One report found.

Making matters worse, the report found, new election officials are grappling with a shortage of resources to staff other vital roles essential to ensure that elections run smoothly.

More than 160 chief local election officials have departed from their roles since November 2020 within the 11 Western states tracked by Issue One tracked. Those 11 states includes two perennial battleground states and a mix of Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning states, where elections are typically managed at the county level by a single official.

As these threats have surged and election officials have left their positions in droves, Griswold said, not enough has been done to safeguard the integrity of the electoral process.

"State and federal governments have abandoned our quest to safeguard democracy, to a large extent," Griswold said. "With that said, people in my office — we are very scrappy and dedicated, and we're going to get the job done."

"State and federal governments have abandoned our quest to safeguard democracy, to a large extent," said Jena Griswold. "That said, people in my office are scrappy and dedicated. We're going to get the job done."

Griswold said she has implemented specific measures to address likely issues ahead of next year's elections. She has expanded her team to offer direct support to Colorado's counties and, within the past year, has contracted with former election officials to increase much greater on-the-ground presence.

She has also spearheaded changes in the Colorado state legislature, such as criminalizing retaliation against election workers and providing a process to shield their personal information and to make "doxxing" — or revealing a person's home address and phone number without their consent — a punishable offense.

Colorado has also enacted a law prohibiting the "open carry" of firearms close to drop boxes, voting centers and areas where ballots are being processed, in an effort to ensure that election workers are not intimidated by armed individuals. Her team has also prepared for hypothetical "disaster scenarios," including such potential instances as a "deepfake" video showing Griswold spreading false information.

"We've overcome a lot of challenges with a great outcome," Griswold said, "including armed men filming people at drop boxes to county clerks that breach their own security trying to prove the Big Lie. "There has been massive disinformation, and we continue to have incredibly well-run elections. I think 2024 will be no different."

The Brennan Center released a poll in April that surveyed local election officials and found that 12% of workers were new to their jobs since the 2020 election, and that 11% said they were likely to leave their jobs before the 2024 election.

Nearly one in three election officials have been harassed, abused or threatened because of their jobs, the survey found, and more than one in five are concerned about being physically assaulted on the job during future elections. Nearly half the respondents expressed concern for the safety of other election officials and workers.

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The Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland has created a task force on election threats, but so far it has been quiet. Just 14 cases have been prosecuted involving threats against election officials and workers, leading to nine convictions, according to an August press release.

For many years, local election officials were relatively anonymous figures, working behind the scenes with little controversy to ensure the integrity of democratic processes.

But the spotlight was turned on many of them unexpectedly during the 2020 presidential election, largely due to a coordinated disinformation campaign led by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters. Most officials say the surge in harassment and threats came as a direct result, prompting numerous officials to retire or resign.

Even in solidly Republican Utah County, "People came out of the woodwork to spout, parrot and share these national election-denying conspiracies."

Josh Daniels is a former county clerk of Utah County, the second-largest county in its namesake state. He says he faced this dilemma personally. He initially joined the county's election team in 2019 as chief deputy after being recruited by a friend who had been elected clerk.

Then the 2020 presidential election happened.

"People came out of the woodwork in our community to spout, parrot and share these sorts of national election-denying conspiracies," Daniels said. "It became quite exhausting," Daniels said.

His office was inundated with phone calls from individuals accusing election officials of being untrustworthy. They were subjected to what he called "Cyber Ninja-style audits," similar to the one conducted in Arizona's Maricopa County.

Daniels was forced to spend many hours in public meetings with "angry" individuals who made baseless allegations drawn from internet conspiracy theories.

Utah County is predominantly white and predominantly Republican. Donald Trump won nearly two-thirds of the vote there in 2020. Nonetheless, Daniels said, the "political dynamic" of the community changed in the wake of that election, thanks to a "loud faction" of the community that spread distrust about how the election had been conducted.

"We didn't get a lot of help from other political leaders in our community," Daniels said. Instead, some "would almost accelerate" the tension, creating "forums for more of these concerns to be shared and create further political chaos."

Daniels decided not to seek re-election in 2022, but he says the conspiracy theories and threats against election workers have continued.

In Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah — the four states with the highest turnover rates among election officials — Issue One's research found that twice as many local election officials had left their positions than had done so in Washington and Idaho.

Among the 161 counties in Western states that have new chief local election officials since November 2020, the report notes a significant decline in the average years of experience held by these officials, going from a previous figure of about eight years to roughly one year. The "brain drain associated with this exodus is real," the report finds, calculating that departing election officials in those counties have taken with them more than 1,800 years of combined experience.

Nearly five months after thousands of film and TV writers went on strike over more equitable pay and working conditions in the streaming era, effectively shutting down the entertainment industry, Hollywood studio and streaming executives at long last have reached a tentative deal with the Writers Guild of America, East and West.

In an email to members late Sunday, the union said it had reached “an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language.”

The union said it will share details about what the union negotiators and studio executives agreed to once union leadership reviews the final language in the agreement.

“What we have won in this contract—most particularly, everything we have gained since May 2nd—is due to the willingness of this membership to exercise its power, to demonstrate its solidarity, to walk side-by-side, to endure the pain and uncertainty of the past 146 days. It is the leverage generated by your strike, in concert with the extraordinary support of our union siblings, that finally brought the companies back to the table to make a deal,” the email to members continued. “We can say, with great pride, that this deal is exceptional—with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership.”

Once ratified by the union members, the agreement could have huge effects, setting historic precedents on major industry-wide issues. Throughout the strike, writers have framed the fight as an existential one, showing the ways longstanding inequities in the industry have jeopardized the future of writing as a profession and restricted the types of people who can make a living as a writer in Hollywood. The issues that led them to strike include dwindling pay while corporate executives reap profits from writers’ work and the need for guardrails around the use of artificial intelligence. (HuffPost’s unionized staff are also members of the WGA East, but are not involved in the strike.)

The resolution to the strike means writers can soon resume work on film and TV shows, putting an end to a monthslong standstill on virtually all film and TV production. Looming deadlines likely motivated the studio executives, represented by the trade group Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, to finally reach a deal with the writers. Had the strike stretched further into the fall, network shows would not have enough time to put together a partial season of programming.

In the email to members, the union said that the writers are technically still on strike, since the agreement is subject to votes from the union’s negotiating committee and then from leaders of the WGA West and East. Those votes are tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, the WGA said.

Following those votes, union leaders would then authorize a full membership ratification vote on the agreement. During the ratification vote, members would then be allowed to return to work, the union said.

Throughout the strike, writers have had the upper hand in terms of public perception, picketing nearly daily in front of major studios and corporate headquarters in New York and Los Angeles. In addition to laying out the stakes of the strike in no uncertain terms, they were also able to point to the massive corporate greed of Hollywood executives, showing the huge gap between executive salaries and most writers’ relatively meager wages.

It did not help that studio executives continually dug a deeper hole for themselves and added to the public perception of them as cartoon villains — including giving anonymous quotes to Hollywood trade publications asserting the strike was meant to bleed writers dry. For instance, in July, a studio executive anonymously told Deadline: “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.”

The writers’ ability to wield the power of public protest also got results. Earlier this week, Drew Barrymore reversed plans to resume her talk show without her striking writers, after she faced a week of massive public backlash. Her announcement set off a domino effect: Several more talk shows that had been slated to return while their writers are on strike also reversed their plans.

Since July, actors represented by the Screen Actors Guild have also been on strike over similar issues as the writers. While studio executives will need to reach a separate agreement with SAG-AFTRA, the resolution of the writers strike is an optimistic sign for a similar deal with the actors.

The twin strikes have marked a historic moment for Hollywood labor unions. They also come amid a turning point for the labor movement across the country. Just last week, workers represented by the United Auto Workers launched a series of historic strikes, the first time the union has conducted a simultaneous work stoppage at all three major U.S. automakers. In recent years, accelerated by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers across many industries have unionized, drawing attention to corporate greed, exploitation and inequality between corporations and workers.

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado judge overseeing the first significant lawsuit to bar former President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential ballot on Friday issued a protective order prohibiting threats and intimidation in the case, saying the safety of those involved — including herself and her staff — was necessary as the groundbreaking litigation moves forward.

“I 100% understand everybody’s concerns for the parties, the lawyers, and frankly myself and my staff based on what we’ve seen in other cases,” District Judge Sarah B. Wallace said as she agreed to the protective order.

The order prohibits parties in the case from making threatening or intimidating statements. Scott Gessler, a former Colorado secretary of state representing Trump in the case, opposed it. He said a protective order was unnecessary because threats and intimidation already are prohibited by law.

It was sought by lawyers for the liberal group Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is seeking to disqualify Trump from the ballot under a rarely used Civil War-era clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Gessler said heated rhetoric in this case has come partly from the left.

“We do have robust political debate going on here,” he said. “For better or worse, this case has become a focal point.”

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed around the country seeking to disqualify Trump from the 2024 ballot based on the 14th Amendment clause barring anyone who swore an oath to the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from running for office. Their arguments revolve around Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to halt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election.

The case in Colorado is the first filed by a group with significant legal resources. The issue is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never ruled on the insurrection provision in section three of the 14th Amendment.

Wallace has set an Oct. 30 hearing to discuss whether Trump needs to be removed under Colorado law prohibiting candidates who don’t meet qualifications for higher office from appearing on ballots. She has said she wants to give the Colorado Supreme Court — and possibly U.S. Supreme Court — as much time as possible to review the decision before the state’s Jan. 5 deadline to set its 2024 presidential primary ballot.

A parallel case in Minnesota filed by another well-financed liberal group is scheduled to be heard by that state’s supreme court on Nov. 2.

Trump’s attorneys are scheduled to file two motions to dismiss the lawsuit later Friday. One will contend the litigation is an attempt to retaliate against Trump’s free speech rights. Wallace has set an Oct. 13 hearing to debate that claim.

Sean Grimsley, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the case, proposed the protective order in court Friday. He cited federal prosecutor Jack Smith last week seeking a gag order against Trump for threats made in his prosecution of the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

“At least one of the parties has a tendency to tweet — or Truth Social,” Grimsley said, referring to Trump’s own social network where he broadcasts most of his statements, “about witnesses and the courts.”

Birdsong is one of the most beautiful sounds on the planet, but did you know that those tweets and calls have a complex 'sentence' struture that could tell us a lot about the evolution of human language?

When composer Emily Doolittle was given the chance to spend time at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, the birds she heard became her inspiration.

Doolittle wove together the sounds of partridges, geese and wrens in a piece she titled Seven Duos for Birds or Strings, first performed in 2014.

"Many birds use similar timbres, pitch relationships and patterns to human music," she says. "I think there is lots of room for musicians and scientists to work together to better understand animal songs."

Like Doolittle, researchers around the world are increasingly exploring links between birdsong and human sounds. We may be far apart on the evolutionary tree (scientists estimate the last common ancestor of birds and mammals may have lived more than 300 million years ago), but humans nevertheless happen to have a lot in common with birds when it comes to making themselves heard. The musician wren, for example, which features in Doolittle’s work, is native to the Amazon and has inspired music across South America. As Doolittle found, the wren sings using the same intervals found frequently in human music – octaves, perfect fifths and perfect fourths.
Meaning behind the music

But do beautiful birdsong and chirping calls contain more than melody? Is there a deeper complexity that affects the meaning? Toshitaka Suzuki and his colleagues at The Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan certainly think so. They’ve found that Japanese tits can arrange the calls they make in order, like words in a sentence, with the arrangement of calls changing the overall meaning – a system known as syntax. The rules of syntax in human language relate to the structure of a sentence, and the order in which we say words. It’s why we would say ‘I’m going to the shops,’ rather than ‘the shops to I’m going,’ for example.

"Tits are known for having these very complicated call systems – a lot of the calls in the Japanese tit repertoire have meanings," explains David Wheatcroft at Uppsala University in Sweden, who also worked on the Japanese study. One call refers to predatory snakes, for instance, and another to the danger of hawks overhead. Parents also have different calls for their chicks, telling them to flee or duck in the face of danger. What is special about Japanese tits is that they seem able to combine at least two of these calls together.

The researchers learnt that there was one particular combination that prompted birds to scan for a predator and then also to approach and harass it. Like human syntax, this combination only worked if the tits’ calls were uttered in a particular order.

"Syntax was considered to have uniquely evolved in humans, but our study demonstrates that it has evolved in a wild bird, too. I think many basic features of language capacity are shared between humans and non-human animals, including birds," says Suzuki. According to Wheatcroft, songbirds such as the Japanese tit may even provide a new model for studying the evolution of syntax.

Linguist Moira Yip at University College London welcomes such exciting new work into animal communication, but points out that tits’ capabilities are limited when compared to what humans can do.

"They have found a system that has two “words”, and one combination, and at the moment that is it," she says. "We, on the other hand, can combine any adjective and any noun to make a new phrase… so from only 10 adjectives and 10 nouns we can create a hundred two-word phrases."

"In evolutionary terms, birds are extremely distant relatives of humans," she adds. Even so, the way birds learn their songs does show some parallels with the way humans acquire language – for example, the way we use syllables and stress certain sounds in a rhythmic way. "Birdsong has internal structure that is reminiscent of the way human speech groups sound," says Yip.
Honeyed tones

However far apart we are from birds in terms of evolution, most of us love birdsong. Bird watchers often learn to imitate their calls, and a few societies have built a dialogue with the birds around them. In parts of Africa, honey gatherers connect with a bird known as the honeyguide, which helps them track down bees’ nests.

"People walk through the bush making special sounds to alert honeyguides. The Yao people of Mozambique make one particular sound in this context," says evolutionary biologist Claire Spottiswoode at the University of Cambridge, who has studied them. It’s like a trill followed by a grunt, she says.

‘Talking’ to the birds like this doubles the odds that a honeyguide will help search for a bees’ nest.

"It tells the honeyguide you’re their friend," one honey gatherer told her. This system brings many benefits. For the hunter-gatherer Hadza community in Tanzania, as much as a tenth of their calories comes from the honey they collect. In return, the birds feed on the wax after the humans have taken the honey.

"The interaction between humans and honeyguides is likely to be very ancient, probably something in the order of hundreds of thousands of years," adds Spottiswoode. While tame animals often interact with their owners, honeyguides are wild, making this relationship unique. "Their cooperative behaviour has almost certainly evolved through natural selection," she says.

Research such as this highlights that birds aren’t as ‘bird-brained’ as some people had assumed. Indeed, in 2016, European and South American researchers studying two-dozen species found that, while birds’ brains may be relatively tiny, the cells within them can be more densely packed than those of rodents and some primates. Parrots and songbirds have some of the most surprising brains of all.

"We probably underestimated how many species have some communication system," says Moira Yip. "Nevertheless, the gulf between human language and the systems found in birds, cetaceans and even primates remains huge, and how that gulf was crossed as humans evolved remains largely mysterious."

Even so, bird researchers continue to be surprised by the likenesses they see between humans and birds, especially in making a tune.

"There is no common ancestor of birds and humans that had a music-like song," says Doolittle. "But somehow, independently through evolution, birds and humans have ended up fairly similar, both in the way they sound and in the role songs play in their lives."

Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but congressional Republicans are once again careening toward internal crisis and a damaging government shutdown.

You may remember this song-and-dance from the last four or five times the party’s hard-line Freedom Caucus members held America’s economy hostage. That doesn’t make our latest spin on the roller coaster any less nauseating.

In the past, Republican leaders managed by the slimmest of margins to avert financial catastrophe by working with Democrats to pass temporary funding bills. This time it isn’t even clear they can achieve that minimum level of competence — in part because House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has blown his internal credibility to bits.

Meanwhile, the American people are watching the slow, loud and very public disintegration of Republican unity.

Once again, McCarthy’s own caucus has taken the sledgehammer to his knees. Over the weekend, a dozen Republican lawmakers publicly declared they would oppose the Speaker’s latest effort to keep the government open. Now McCarthy’s legacy risks being defined by the GOP’s transformation into a nonfunctional party of nonstop national crisis.

It isn’t even clear that a sizable minority of Republican lawmakers want to keep the government open. Freedom Caucus stalwarts including Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) dismissed McCarthy’s proposal out of hand without even attempting to offer an alternative. Luna, who recently gave birth and is still in the hospital, went so far as to say she’d leave her recovery bed in order to guarantee McCarthy’s continuing resolution fails.

Luna offers the perfect visual of the current GOP: A lawmaker willing to drag herself out of a hospital bed in order to ensure the federal government does not function.

That’s all the more perverse when you realize a federal shutdown would deny a paycheck to nearly 15,000 Floridian federal workers, as it did in 2019. A shutdown would also grind Federal Housing Authority and Veterans Administration mortgage processing to a halt, slamming the brakes on thousands of Florida homebuyers. If only Luna and her colleagues were so willing to risk their health in ways that actually helped their constituents.

The spat over funding the government also drew Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) into a Twitter scuffle with Gaetz, who called the stopgap plan “a terrible bill” and “one BAD VOTE,” while once again raising the specter of calling a vote to oust McCarthy from his position. Gaetz will find ready allies in House Democrats, who dismissed McCarthy’s 8 percent across-the-board cuts to domestic programs as unserious. Once again, the Speaker of the House finds himself without any allies to advance his agenda.

Even non-Freedom Caucus Republicans are abandoning McCarthy. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) torched the plan in a statement released on Monday, accusing McCarthy of lacking the spine to lead.

“It is a shame that our weak Speaker cannot even commit to having a commission to discuss our looming financial catastrophe,” Spartz wrote. “Our founding fathers would be rolling over in their graves.” Hardly the language of someone likely to support McCarthy if the Freedom Caucus puts forward a vote of no confidence.

There is some truth to Republicans’ many criticisms. A party that rants endlessly about increasing border security can’t, in the same breath, support a resolution that slashes funding for those same border security efforts. That lack of foresight is trademark McCarthy: a plan rushed out under duress, full of internal contradictions and not especially convincing to anyone who matters.

But if McCarthy’s bill is dead-on-arrival, it’s not clear the Freedom Caucus has the support to do any better. A Democratic Senate won’t even glance at the HFC’s even more extreme proposed cuts, and members of their own party are losing patience with their antics. Said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York: “This is not conservative Republicanism. This is stupidity … these people can’t define a win. They don’t know how to take yes for an answer. It’s a clown show.”

In the nine months since taking power in the House, Republicans have only proven capable of careening the nation from one preventable crisis to the next. Eventually their brinksmanship will break down and plunge our nation into a costly, painful government shutdown. Not only is there no one leading the GOP, every effort at unifying them behind a clear policy platform only deepens their bitter fractures. It is worth asking why these types of financial disasters only happen when Republicans control our national purse-strings.

In the end, American voters still appreciate a competent government that looks out for their financial futures. They won’t find that in whatever passes for today’s Republican Party. Instead, they will find lawmakers who have given up on governing in favor of the easy work of grievance politics.

That may offer many soon-to-be-ousted Republicans a lucrative second act in the right-wing media, but it does nothing to solve the problems facing our nation. Whatever Speaker McCarthy may wish to be true, his Republican Party is now undeniably the party of nonstop national crisis. That constant chaos will weigh heavily on voters’ minds next year.

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.