Biden’s dog Major will return to the White House after biting incident

There is Major breaking news: President Joe Biden’s wayward pup is no longer in the doghouse.

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    President Joe Biden says his rescue dog, a German Shepherd named Major, is being trained after an incident last week but has not been banished from the White House, adding the pet is still adjusting to life there surrounded by strangers. "Major did not bite someone and penetrate the skin," Biden told the ABC program "Good Morning America" in an interview that aired on Wednesday. "You turn the corner and there's two people you don't know at all and they move, and he moves to protect," Biden added, referring to U.S. Secret Service and other staff who the German Shepherd encounters at the 18-acre (7-hectare) White House complex.

  • A good boy again: Biden's dog will return to the White House

    There is Major breaking news: President Joe Biden’s wayward pup is no longer in the doghouse. Biden, in an interview that aired Wednesday, said that his dog Major, who had been involved in a biting incident at the White House, was “a sweet dog.” Biden added that “85% of the people there love him.”

  • Jimmy Kimmel Crushes Don Jr. for Accusing Biden of ‘Sniffing’ Children

    ABCAfter taking some particularly brutal shots at a post-presidency Donald Trump on Monday, Jimmy Kimmel pivoted on Tuesday to take on his “fraudigal son.”As the late-night host explained, “DJTJ is angry that Biden hasn’t weighed in on the sexual misconduct allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is getting close to breaking presidaddy’s all-time sexual misconduct record by an American politician.”During an especially unhinged appearance on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo the night before, Trump Jr. said that Biden is “probably not the best person to talk about these things given his history of sniffing children.”Trump Jr. seemed to be referring to past accusations of inappropriate touching by Biden but was also deliberately winking toward the QAnon conspiracy theories surrounding Democratic politicians and pedophilia.Jimmy Kimmel Brutally Mocks Trump’s Post-Presidency BodyHBO’s QAnon Docuseries ‘Q: Into the Storm’ Believes It Has Discovered Q’s Identity“We want to know what you are sniffing, that’s what we’d like to know,” Kimmel shot back. “If I was you Donny, I’d stuff the word ‘sniffing’ back into the family thesaurus.”Then, after playing another clip of Trump Jr. claiming that Biden has had “the most disastrous first 60 days in the history of American politics and certainly the presidency,” Kimmel issued a challenge.“Name 10 presidents. Go ahead, we’ll wait,” the host said, “I’m working on a new game show for Donald Trump Jr. It’s called ‘Name 10 Presidents and Pee in this Cup.’”For more, listen and subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • It’s Time to Rectify Our School-Closing Mistake

    Just over one year ago, on March 12, 2020, the children of Ohio were the first in the nation to be sent home from shuttered schools because of COVID-19. Within two weeks, every other state had followed Ohio’s lead. Given how little we knew about the virus then, most people believed closing schools was the safest decision. But a year later the evidence says something entirely different: Closing schools was a mistake. The high costs of closing schools are indisputable. Surveys of parents and teachers, as well as projections and trends in test scores, indicate that students are far behind in their learning, and that achievement gaps are growing. Economic estimates predict that students will lose $12,000–$15,000 in lifetime earnings for every month schools remain closed, and related U.S. GDP losses are forecast to run into the tens of trillions of dollars. Even more important costs cannot be measured in dollars or test scores. The social isolation that students have struggled with in this “new normal” has led to widespread increases in child anxiety and depression, punctuated by tragic rises in adolescent mental-health emergencies and suicides. These costs are a strain for most students, and almost inconceivable for the very youngest, who may struggle to remember life without them. Had blanket school closings been absolutely necessary to control COVID-19, their costs could be justified in retrospect. But we know now that they weren’t absolutely necessary. Children are roughly half as susceptible to COVID-19 as adults, and are far less likely to experience severe symptoms or increase transmission among adults. CDC data indicate that school-aged children make up under 10 percent of confirmed COVID-19 cases and 0.08 percent of COVID-19 deaths, despite accounting for 23 percent of the population. And study after study shows that, when basic mitigation strategies are followed, in-school transmission is exceptionally rare. Even for those who don’t trust the research, evidence that universal school closures could have been avoided is in plain sight. Data from my recently launched Return to Learn Tracker, which monitors over 8,500 school districts, show that thousands of districts have been fully in-person since November 2020. In fact, many districts stayed open when COVID-19 caseloads were three to six times last spring’s highs. Yet even under the watchful eye of school-district leaders, researchers, and the media, accounts of increased transmission in these districts haven’t materialized. Closing schools last spring should be identified as the mistake it was. It was a reasonable step to take at the time, because of the uncertainty we then had about the lethality, transmission, and best practices for mitigation of the virus. But we must name it a mistake now, because, in too many places, reopening decisions remain rooted in a conviction born last spring that universal closures are the only truly safe option. And until leaders with the gravitas to challenge that conviction do so, too many reopening decisions will remain grounded in the past. This problem is rooted in what social psychologists call “motivated reasoning,” whereby we give more weight to evidence supporting our views and discount that which challenges our priors. Faulty “motivated reasoning” is amplified by the political polarization that has characterized reactions to the COVID pandemic since last summer, so for many on the left, President Trump’s repeated, ham-fisted demands that schools reopen immediately last summer only cemented the belief that in-person learning is unsafe. Indeed, the partisan divide over school reopening in opinion polls is just as stark in districts’ actual offerings. Four times as many districts in counties that voted for Biden (21 percent) as districts in counties that voted for Trump (5 percent) continue to keep all their schools fully remote. Changing perceptions and decisions in those blue districts will require strong Democratic leadership, particularly from President Biden. But so far, that leadership has been inconsistent. Biden’s December promise to get a “majority” of schools reopened in his first 100 days was a strong start, but the administration faltered in following through. In February, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dialed back the pledge, saying the goal was now to have “more than 50 percent” of schools open for “some teaching in classrooms, at least once a week.” A week later, President Biden said he hoped to be “close” to reopening K–8 schools by April 30, “many of them five days a week.” Biden must lead with conviction and take advantage of the strong tailwinds right now — falling case rates, a trend toward reopening schools, and mounting evidence on how to do so safely — to challenge outdated beliefs about the risks of in-person learning. Vague hopes of being “close” to reopening won’t get the job done. The president needs to unequivocally set the expectation that all students be given the opportunity to attend school in person by the end of April. The science and evidence are clear: Closing schools last year was a reasonable reaction to an impossible set of circumstances, but it was a mistake, and that mistake will stay with us until we admit it. In March 2021, we need the leadership to act on what we now know, and to deliver the option for every student to safely resume in-person learning this year.

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  • Trump's final border wall spree left a disjointed mess resembling 'conceptual art'

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  • How Cuomo's Team Tried to Tarnish One of His Accusers

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At the time, officials in the governor’s office were aware of another sexual harassment issue involving Cuomo that had not yet become public. Six months earlier, Charlotte Bennett, an executive assistant and senior briefer, had told two senior officials in the governor’s office that he had harassed her, asking her probing personal questions including whether she was monogamous and whether she slept with older men. Bennett went public with her allegations in The New York Times last month, saying in an interview how she “understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me,” adding that she “felt horribly uncomfortable and scared.” Bennett came forward just days after Boylan had written an essay on Medium, detailing the allegations that she initially made on Twitter Dec. 13. Boylan wrote that the governor would repeatedly try to touch her on her arms, legs and lower back, and that he once suggested they “play strip poker.” Since then, several other women have accused Cuomo of inappropriate conduct, from unwanted sexual advances to unsolicited kisses and groping. The governor has denied ever touching anyone inappropriately and has pleaded with New Yorkers to await the outcome of two separate investigations: one overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James, and another by the state Assembly. 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The draft extensively disparaged Boylan and accused her of using her claims for “political retribution.” The letter pointed out that Boylan’s campaign consultant also represented a political adversary of the governor’s, and that Boylan was “supported by lawyers and financial backers of Donald Trump: an active opponent of the governor.” The initial plan for a letter about Boylan illustrated how the Cuomo administration was prepared to launch a broader effort to damage her credibility. The approach appeared consistent with a culture of intimidation from the governor’s office that former aides have described, and Boylan was clearly a target. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that aides to Cuomo called at least six former aides shortly after Boylan’s Twitter posts, which accused the governor of harassing her in front of others. The calls were to ask whether the former aides had heard from the accuser, or to learn things about her. Some of those contacted felt as if the calls were meant to intimidate them from speaking out. Another of Cuomo’s accusers and another former aide, Ana Liss, said that she had received a call from a top adviser to the governor shortly after Boylan tweeted about the governor in December. “I thought, why would he do that?” Liss, who now works for Monroe County, said in an interview. “He was trying to confirm how broad Lindsey’s network was.” On Tuesday, Boylan’s lawyer, Jill Basinger, said the letter was another attempt to smear her client. “Once again, a victim of sexual harassment who has the courage to tell her story is put in the position of not only having to relive the trauma of a toxic work environment but defend herself against the malicious leaking of supposed personnel files, character assassinations and a whisper campaign of retaliation,” Basinger said. “This page needs to be ripped out of the governor’s harassment handbook.” The use of such tactics in harassment claims is so commonplace that it has its own acronym: DARVO, which stands for “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.” “It is incredibly common for individuals who experience sexual harassment to also experience retaliation,” said Emily Martin, vice president for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center, which runs the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. “We’ve heard from thousands of individuals who are seeking help to address workplace harassment, and more than 70% of them say they have also experienced retaliation.” Shortly after Boylan had first accused Cuomo, several media organizations published details of her personnel records that were released by the Cuomo administration, outlining unflattering accounts of Boylan’s past actions as a boss and recommendations of disciplinary action against her. For supporters of Cuomo, who has denied any wrongdoing, the documents were exculpatory, painting a picture of a disgruntled employee with an ax to grind. Beth Garvey, acting counsel to Cuomo, defended the release of Boylan's records, saying on Tuesday that, with certain exceptions, “it is within a government entity’s discretion to share redacted employment records, including in instances when members of the media ask for such public information and when it is for the purpose of correcting inaccurate or misleading statements.” She, too, cited the attorney general’s investigation and refrained from additional comment. The speed at which the documents were provided was exceptional, particularly considering that statehouse reporters in Albany and elsewhere are accustomed to waiting for months, if not years, for access to public records through the state’s Freedom of Information Law. “The administration has a well-documented record to being pretty closed on FOIL,” said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, noting efforts to stymie reporters looking into Joseph Percoco, a close aide of Cuomo’s who was convicted of federal corruption charges in 2018. “There’s considerable and consistent examples of them making it extremely difficult to get records.” Lawyers who work on sexual harassment said that an employee's work history was immaterial to whether or not they can claim harassment. “There’s not a defense to harassment that the person was a bad employee,” said Elizabeth Kristen, a senior staff attorney with Legal Aid at Work in San Francisco, adding, “It’s not even relevant. Maybe she was the worst employee in the world, but she could still be harassed.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

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