Former US President Donald Trump, pictured in Florida on September 11, 2021, saw his bogus fraud claims debunked by courtrooms, state governments and Congress across the United States (AFP/CHANDAN KHANNA)
Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account on Thursday morning to attack the Lincoln Project and threaten them with a lawsuit after Fox News agreed to run one of their latest ads attacking the former president.
The ad, which can be seen below, accuses Trump of manipulating his followers for financial gain with the narrator telling his fans he is "ripping them off" which apparently led to the former president to flip out.
In his post, Trump also lashed out at Fox News for accepting the ad.
"The Perverts and Lowlifes of the Lincoln Project are back on, where else, Fox News. I thought they ran away to the asylum after their last catastrophic campaign, with charges made against them that were big time sleaze, and me getting many millions more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016," he wrote.
He then added, "The Paul Ryun run Fox only has high standards for 'Trump' ads, but not for anyone else. The Perverts should not be allowed to 'false advertise,' and Fox News should not allow it to happen."
For their part, the founders of the Lincoln Project were quick to capitalize on the free advertising from Trump by re-posting the clip on Twitter with the introduction: "This is the ad that pissed off Trump this morning."
Donald Trump's attempt to get a civil suit filed by Capitol police officers who were brutalized by insurrectionists on Jan. 6 dismissed failed and will proceed.
According to a report from Bloomberg News, US District Judge Amit Mehta poured called cold water of the former president's bid to get out from under the lawsuit by claiming presidential immunity.
The report states, "The arguments raised by Trump and other defendants were 'in large part duplicative of those the court already considered and addressed' in a previous civil suit against the former president, Mehta wrote. In that case, Mehta ruled that Trump’s speech at a rally preceding the riot went beyond protections afforded by the First Amendment and those shielding presidents from civil liability while in office."
A large part of the case hinges on the former president's exhortation to his followers to "fight like hell" which is believed to have encouraged the violence that forced lawmakers to flee for their lives following a "Stop the Steal" rally.
With Bloomberg adding, "During the attack, 140 police officers were assaulted and rioters caused more than $2 million in property damage," the new report adds, "The case brought by the Capitol police officers stands apart because of the long list of 20 defendants, Mehta wrote."
Have you ever worried if the play between your cats was getting too rough? A new study published in Scientific Reports has investigated play and fighting in cats.
Their aim was to use simple behaviours anyone could observe to work out what was play and what might lead to fights. This is important because the consequences of fights include injuries to animals and humans. At worst, you may even have to rehome one of your cats if they’re not getting along.
Categorizing cat ‘fights’
The study, led by Noema Gajdoš-Kmecová from University of Veterinary Medicine and Pharmacy in Slovakia and from the University of Lincoln, UK, analyzed 105 videos of interactions between 210 cats.
The research team then developed an ethogram – a list of specific behaviors used in the study of animal behavior. These were put into six groups:
Inactive: head and body motionless and in specific position, for example crouching
Wrestling: cats in physical contact with wrestling movements
Chasing: one cat runs in pursuit or another cat runs away
Other interactive activities: for example grooming, approaching, raised fur on back
Non-interactive: activity directed towards themselves or an inanimate object, for example drinking, self-licking
Vocalisation: for example growl, hiss, meow
The researchers used terms such as “cats play fighting” to find relevant videos on YouTube.
Each video was analyzed to identify which of these behaviors were shown by each cat. Each interaction was then analysed statistically to work out which behaviours appeared together in clusters.
From this, the researchers separated the videos into three categories of interactions.
Playful: included 40% of cats from the videos and included wrestling and a lack of vocalizing.
Agonistic: agonistic behaviours are any social behaviors that include threatening, aggression and submission. Cats in this group vocalized and had recurring bouts of inactivity; 32% of cats from the sample landed in this group.
Intermediate: this group included 28% of cats and was more closely associated with the playful group than the agonistic group. Cats in this group interacted for prolonged periods with pauses in between.
As a crosscheck, these behavioral categories observed from the videos agreed fairly well with how the four authors, experts in cat behavior, described each interaction.
Despite being quite territorial, some cats can happily share a home with others of their feline kind.Smile19/Shutterstock
What does this tell you about your cats’ play?
If your cats are wrestling, they are most likely playing. When there is friction between cats in a multi-cat household, they tend to avoid physical contact. Instead, they’ll use offensive or defensive maneuvres that don’t involve extended direct contact, such as slapping.
If your cats are vocalizing, and chasing between periods of inactivity (such as crouching) they are most likely fighting. Vocalization is an especially important clue here to an aggressive, rather than playful interaction. Chasing is OK if it’s mutual, but if one cat is chasing or one cat is running away, that’s not so positive.
The intermediate group is the tricky one. It contains elements of both playful and agonistic behaviors, though was more closely related to the playful than the agonistic group. This suggests play could become agonistic, depending on what happens during the interaction.
In particular, the authors observed frequent breaks within the interaction, which may allow cats to reassess their partner’s interest in playing, and avoid escalation from play to aggression.
The big fights are easy to spot
This study is the first to apply a scientific approach to cat behaviors anybody can identify, describing three types of interactions to help identify between play and fighting in cats.
We all know when cats are really fighting, but the main strength is in working out intermediate examples – where it could be OK, but could also escalate.
The study focused on obvious behaviors anybody can observe, but cats can be quite subtle, too. They also use facial expression, ear and tail placement, and pheromones to communicate. These subtle signals may be just as important in differentiating between what is playing and what is fighting.
Not all cat communication is obvious to us humans – they tend to use their ears, faces, and even pheromones to signal to each other. Gurkan Ergun/Shutterstock
If your cats really are besties (sleep in close contact and share food and toys) the occasional bit of agonistic play is okay.
But if your cats don’t get on as well, you might need to watch for signs of agonistic behaviors. Tension between cats is not always obvious, but can affect their physical and mental health.
If you are unsure if your cats are really getting along, seeking help early from an expert in cat behavior can prevent a cat-astrophe.
The leadership team of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is scrambling to control and whip Republican votes in the House, after a series of decisions and rule changes they made to appease the Republican base and secure McCarthy's Speakership votes to begin with have left them with diminished power and new logistical challenges, reported CNN on Friday.
"Their majority is narrow and divided sharply between the moderates – who hail from Biden-won districts and are the reason Republicans have the majority in the first place – and the hardliners who from the outset have asserted themselves as the ultimate deciders of McCarthy’s fate as speaker," reported Lauren Fox and Melanie Zanona. "That dynamic, combined with a lengthy list of concessions McCarthy made in his quest to secure the speaker’s gavel, could make it more difficult for the House GOP to pass even messaging bills – let alone essential and heavier lifts like raising the nation’s borrowing limit or politically dicey questions like whether to impeach President Joe Biden or a member of his Cabinet."
"Further complicating matters, McCarthy abolished the House’s remote voting system put in place during the pandemic, making the GOP’s razor-thin majority even more tenuous. Already, House Republicans are down one vote for the next few weeks with the absence of Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, who was recently injured after a fall," said the report. "'Our biggest challenge will be attendance,' House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told CNN in an interview. 'People staying healthy and staying on the field.'"
Proxy voting was adopted in the House during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow members to conduct regular business remotely if that was required for health and safety. Republicans themselves used the procedure on numerous occasions; however GOP leaders like McCarthy opposed it on principle from the start and eliminated it when they took over — which is now making it harder for them to govern with a slim majority.
One Republican raging about the lack of cohesion in the party is Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who is particularly complaining about how McCarthy, as part of a promise with the Freedom Caucus, is fast-tracking the "FairTax" bill — a highly controversial measure to abolish the IRS and create a 30 percent national sales tax that even McCarthy himself doesn't support. “I called and said that’s BS,” Bacon said to CNN, about how the bill could skip the amendment process. “It’s gotta go through committee just like every other bill, and I think these bills will be improved.”
