The Full Belmonte, 1/1/2023
Deadly Russian Strikes Hammer Ukraine on New Year’s Eve
Explosions hit the capital, Kyiv, and other cities on the final day of a year shaped by Russia’s invasion. Flanked by soldiers, Vladimir V. Putin called the invasion a ‘sacred duty’ of Russians.
By Andrew E. Kramer and Anton Troianovski
Dec. 31, 2022
“KYIV, Ukraine — Russia rained missiles and exploding drones on Ukraine’s capital and other cities on Saturday in a deadly New Year’s Eve assault, punctuating President Vladimir V. Putin’s stated resolve to prosecute a war he called a ‘sacred duty to our ancestors and descendants.’
The aerial bombardments killed at least one person and partly destroyed a hotel in the capital, Kyiv, inflicted damage elsewhere and forced Ukraine’s war-ravaged electric utilities to pre-emptively shut off power.
‘There are explosions in Kyiv!’ Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, wrote on the Telegram messaging app. ‘Stay in shelters!’
Describing the New Year’s Eve assault as ‘inhuman’ and Russia as a ‘terrorist state,’ President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine directed his rage at Mr. Putin and his subordinates, declaring in a videotaped reaction that ‘those who give orders for such strikes, and those who carry them out, will not receive a pardon. To put it mildly.’
Even for residents inured to brazen Russian bombings, the wail of air-raid sirens and the explosive thuds on New Year’s Eve and into the first hours of 2023 were especially galling. If Mr. Putin’s intent was to demoralize them, the aerial assault only generated more hate….” Read more at New York Times
Chief justice ignores controversial Supreme Court term in annual report
“It was one of the most controversial terms in Supreme Court history, with the shocking leak of a draft opinion that eventually overturned a half century of abortion rights, public polls that showed record disapproval of the court’s work and biting dissension among the justices themselves about the court’s legitimacy.
But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. chose not to address those or any other controversies in his annual ‘Year-end Report on the Federal Judiciary,’ issued Saturday. Instead, he focused on a high mark of the judiciary’s past — a federal district judge’s efforts to implement school desegregation at Little Rock’s Central High School after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
‘The law requires every judge to swear an oath to perform his or her work without fear or favor, but we must support judges by ensuring their safety,’ Roberts wrote in his nine-page report. ‘A judicial system cannot and should not live in fear. The events of Little Rock teach about the importance of rule by law instead of by mob.’
Roberts thanked Congress for recently passing the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, named for the son of New Jersey District Judge Esther Salas. Anderl was murdered in 2020 when he answered the door to their home in what was meant to be an attack on the judge.
The legislation allows judges to shield on the internet certain personal information about themselves and their families, such as home addresses, some financial information and employment details of their spouses. It has an exception for media reporting, but some transparency groups have worried that broad interpretation of the law could inhibit watchdog efforts.
Roberts also commended ‘the U.S. Marshals, Court Security Officers, Federal Protective Service Officers, Supreme Court Police Officers, and their partners’ for ‘working to ensure that judges can sit in courtrooms to serve the public throughout the coming year and beyond.’
That’s about as close as Roberts came in his 18th report to commenting on the present day. The chief justice and other conservative members of the court have seen protesters outside their homes since the May leak of a draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which a majority of the court overturned Roe v. Wade’s federal guarantee of abortion rights.
A California man is facing attempted assassination charges after being arrested outside the suburban Maryland home of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh with weapons and a plan to break into the justice’s house.
Roberts announced an investigation of the leak of the draft Dobbsopinion in the spring, just days after it was published in Politico, calling it a ‘singular and egregious breach of … trust that is an affront to the court and the community of public servants who work here.’
He directed Supreme Court Marshal Gail A. Curley to investigate the leak, saying that ‘to the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed.’
But Roberts has not publicly mentioned the investigation since then. Last summer, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the justices were expecting reports from Roberts about the work, but nothing has been exposed beyond leaked accounts of disagreements among justices and their clerks about attempts to examine cellphone records.
It is only one controversy to engulf the court. Several media outlets reported on what a former antiabortion evangelical leader said were efforts to encourage conservative justices to be bold in decisions regarding the procedure. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. denied a specific allegation from Rev. Rob Schenck to the New York Times that the justice or his wife disclosed to conservative donors the outcome of a pending 2014 case regarding contraceptives and religious rights.
Congressional leaders demanded the court investigate, but Roberts through a legal counsel said there was little to probe after both Alito and the person to whom he was alleged to have given the information denied it.
Congressional Democrats have also questioned whether efforts by Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas encouraging state legislators and White House officials not to give up on efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results — reported by The Washington Post and others — should prompt her husband, Justice Clarence Thomas, to recuse himself from litigation related to that issue.
Those legislators have demanded the court create a more formal code of conduct to deal with such questions.
Three years ago, Justice Elena Kagan told a congressional committee that the justices were ‘very seriously’ looking at the question of whether to have a Code of Judicial Conduct that’s applicable only to the U.S. Supreme Court. But beyond Roberts saying such decisions should be made by the judicial branch alone, the chief justice has passed up the chance to be specific about plans.
Some thought the chief justice might return to such matters in his annual message, released by tradition on New Year’s Eve.
Instead, Roberts highlighted the courage of Judge Ronald N. Davies, brought in from North Dakota to preside over efforts to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High School over the objections of Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus.
The bench from which Davies presided will be brought to the Supreme Court in 2023 as part of an exhibit about the court’s role in school desegregation and specifically the efforts of Thurgood Marshall, who argued Brown and later became the first Black Supreme Court justice.
‘The authentic bench will give visitors an opportunity to transport themselves in place and time to the events in Little Rock of 65 years ago,’ Roberts wrote. ‘The exhibit will introduce visitors to how the system of federal courts works, to the history of racial segregation and desegregation in our country, and to Thurgood Marshall’s towering contributions as an advocate before he became a Justice.’” (Washington Post)
Jan. 6 Transcripts Reveal Disagreements That Divided Trump Camp
Interviews revealed that people in President Donald J. Trump’s orbit had very different views on seizing voting machines, the Proud Boys and each other’s roles.
By Luke Broadwater, Alan Feuer, Catie Edmondson and Stephanie Lai
“The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on Friday released more than 40 additional transcripts of its interviews, bringing the total number of transcripts published to more than 160.
So far, the transcripts have added details to the public’s understanding of how police intelligence failures contributed to the Capitol attack, how former President Donald J. Trump considered ‘blanket pardons’ for those charged, and how Trump-aligned lawyers allegedly tried to steer witness testimony.
The committee is rushing to publish more interviews before Jan. 3, when Republicans will take control of the House. Though the committee conducted more than 1,000 interviews, many of them were informal; only a few hundred were transcribed sessions.
Here are some takeaways from the thousands of pages released this week.
Giuliani thought seizing voting machines could be an impeachable offense.
At a chaotic meeting in the Oval Office in December 2020, outside advisers urged Mr. Trump to use the military to seize voting machines in a bid to rerun the election.
That was too much for even Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer who had encouraged baseless election fraud claims but told Mr. Trump that the plan could be impeachable behavior.
‘This may be the only thing that I know of that you ever did that could merit impeachment,’ Mr. Giuliani recalled telling the president.
In his interview with the committee, Mr. Giuliani refused to discuss his role in many aspects of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, though he said he had rejected Mr. Trump’s idea of granting him a pardon.
‘The president asked me what I thought of it,’ he said of the pardon. ‘And I said I thought it would be a terrible mistake for him.’
Mr. Giuliani was less forthcoming when asked if Mr. Trump had ever thought of pardoning himself. ‘That would be privileged, actually, if he raised that with me,’ he said.
The Secret Service was concerned about the Proud Boys leader’s White House visit.
On Dec. 12, 2020, hours before hundreds of members of his far-right group took part in a pro-Trump protest, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, posted a photo of the White House steps on social media.
‘Last minute invite to an undisclosed location,’ Mr. Tarrio wrote on Parler, a right-wing social media app.
Newly released emails and testimony suggest that some Secret Service agents were concerned about how a prominent far-right extremist had so easily gained access to the White House.
Committee investigators later determined that the White House visit had been a public event that was likely arranged by a friend of Mr. Tarrio, Bianca Gracia, the founder of a group called Latinos for Trump.
In an email obtained by the committee, Ron Rowe, the chief of staff to the Secret Service’s director, asked Bobby Engel, a Secret Service agent: ‘Can we get some specifics on who submitted him for the tour? Why didn’t we pick up on his role/membership in the Proud Boys?’
Anthony Ornato, a former Secret Service agent who was Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff for operations, told the panel that he did not recall if he knew who the Proud Boys were at the time of Mr. Tarrio’s visit. The group’s name notably came up during a 2020 presidential debate.
Mr. Tarrio is one of five members of the Proud Boys who are now on trial in Washington, where they are facing charges of seditious conspiracy. Opening arguments are expected to begin next month.
Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas tried to play down her role in contesting the election.
In a wide-ranging interview, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who is known as Ginni, sought to play down her role in attempts to challenge election results.
Ms. Thomas acknowledged that she had exchanged text messages after the election with Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, in which she recommended that he support Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who was pushing false accusations that foreign governments had hacked into the country’s voting machines.
Ms. Thomas denied that she had discussed her activities with her husband. But she did acknowledge that she had been referring to Justice Thomas as her ‘best friend’ in texts with Mr. Meadows, in which she said a talk with her ‘best friend’ had cheered her up while she was distraught over Mr. Trump’s loss.
‘My husband often administers spousal support to the wife that’s upset,’ she told investigators.
Ms. Thomas also acknowledged taking part in a project called FreeRoots that had sent mass emails to state lawmakers in key swing states saying they had ‘power to decide if there were problems in their election.’
In a tense exchange with Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and vice chairwoman of the panel, Ms. Thomas said that she still believed that the election had been marred by fraud. When questioned further, Ms. Thomas could not come up with any specific instances of fraud.
C.I.A. staff had a ‘suicide pact’ to resign if Trump fired the director.
New details also arose this week about plans to replace the director of the Central Intelligence Agency with a Trump loyalist in the final stages of the administration. The committee received testimony about a mass resignation plan at the C.I.A. in opposition to Mr. Trump’s attempt to replace Gina Haspel as director with Kashyap P. Patel, a lawyer and staunch supporter of the president.
According to Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former White House communications director, Ms. Haspel had a ‘suicide pact’ in place, in which the entire intelligence community would resign if she were removed from her post.
‘Allegedly, for about 14 minutes, Kash was actually the C.I.A. director,’ Ms. Griffin said.
Trump’s White House was marked by constant infighting.
One theme throughout the transcripts is the intense infighting that was a constant feature of the Trump White House. Lawyers fought with lawyers. Communications staff fought among themselves. The president berated aides of all ranks.
Some examples: Ms. Griffin provided a scathing assessment of Kayleigh McEnany, the former White House press secretary: ‘I am a Christian woman, so I will say this. Kayleigh is a liar and an — She’s a opportunist.’
The Trump adviser Jason Miller told investigators he was ‘pissed off’ when he learned that Cleta Mitchell, a longtime conservative lawyer, listed his name as the official to contact on a document she circulated denying that President Biden had won the election. ‘I called Cleta and said, ‘What the hell?’’ Mr. Miller said. ‘And she said, ‘Yeah, you guys weren’t moving fast enough, so I just put your name on it and sent it out.’
Trump didn’t want to do ‘a big PR push’ for a Capitol Police officer who died after Jan. 6.
The transcripts also show the conditional nature of the former president’s support for law enforcement. Mr. Trump agreed at the urging of his staff to lower the flag over the White House to honor a Capitol Police officer who died after Jan. 6, but ‘was adamant that we not do a press release or a big PR push,’ Mr. Miller wrote in a text message.
‘We want to make it clear nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump but we don’t want to blast it out,’ Mr. Miller wrote.
A furniture executive bankrolled private jets for Trump’s circle.
Testimony released Friday detailed how Patrick Byrne, a former chief executive of the furniture retail company Overstock, took on the role of a financier who chartered private jets for people in Mr. Trump’s circle as they fought election results.
Trips included bringing Trump supporters and members of the Proud Boys to attend rallies in Washington before Jan. 6, taking lawyers and cyberexperts to investigate voting machines and transporting people who signed affidavits about election fraud.
Mr. Byrne also attended a White House meeting in which participants urged Mr. Trump to seize voting machines. In his deposition, Mr. Byrne said he had called for the meeting and asked the president to ‘put us in, coach.’
In one telling, the fake electors scheme originated from a senator.
According to Ms. Mitchell, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, came up with the idea to submit alternate electors to cast their ballots for the former president instead of Mr. Biden.
‘It was actually Mike Lee’s idea,’ she told investigators.
Mr. Lee has said he was eager to fight alongside Mr. Trump, but backed off when evidence of a stolen election did not appear. Mr. Lee ultimately voted to certify the election for Mr. Biden.” (New York Times)
Mark Meadows Won’t Face Voting Fraud Charges in North Carolina
The state attorney general said there was ‘not sufficient evidence’ to bring charges against Mr. Meadows or his wife, Debra Meadows.
“Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, will not face voter fraud charges after officials determined that he did not fraudulently register to vote and cast a ballot in North Carolina during the 2020 presidential election, the state attorney general said on Friday.
The attorney general, Josh Stein, said there was ‘not sufficient evidence’ to bring charges against Mr. Meadows or his wife, Debra Meadows.
The State Bureau of Investigation conducted the investigation and found that because Mr. Meadows was ‘engaged in public service’ in Washington, he was qualified for a residency exception, officials said. Under North Carolina law, if a person moves to Washington or other federal territories for government service, then the individual will not lose residency status in the state.
The couple also signed a yearlong lease, which was provided by their landlord, for a Scaly Mountain, N.C., residence listed on their voting registration, prosecutors said, and cellphone records showed Mrs. Meadows was in the area in October 2020.
Mr. Meadows was a North Carolina member of Congress until March 2020, when he went to work in the White House. Then, six weeks before the 2020 election, the couple registered to vote using the address of a modest, three-bedroom mobile home with a rusted roof in Scaly Mountain.
Law enforcement officials in Macon County, a rural community in the mountains of western North Carolina, became aware of questions surrounding Mr. Meadows’s voter registration in early March after The New Yorker revealed that he had registered to vote at a residence where he did not live.
The North Carolina Department of Justice then asked the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate if any laws were broken.
Before he registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain home, Mr. Meadows had voted in 2018 from a home in Transylvania County, N.C., and in 2016 from Asheville, N.C., according to North Carolina records.
‘My office has concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt against either Mr. or Mrs. Meadows, so my office will not prosecute this case,’ Mr. Stein said in a statement. ‘If further information relevant to the allegations of voter fraud comes to light in any subsequent investigation or prosecution by authorities in other jurisdictions, we reserve the right to reopen this matter.’
Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mr. Meadows, declined to comment on Friday.
Despite cases of voter fraud being rare, Mr. Meadows has been one of the primary speakers boosting former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud both before and after the 2020 election.
During an August 2020 interview on CNN, Mr. Meadows warned of fraud in voting by mail and said people are able to register to vote in multiple places at once, leading to fraud.” (New York Times)
Recount Confirms Democrat’s Victory in Arizona’s Attorney General Race
Kris Mayes defeated Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican election denier, by 280 votes out of 2.5 million ballots cast, a court announced.
By Neil Vigdor
“Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general in Arizona, prevailed on Thursday in a recount by a razor-thin margin over Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican, bringing clarity to one of the last undecided races of the midterms.
The margin of victory for Ms. Mayes was 280 votes out of about 2.5 million ballots cast in the November election, said Judge Timothy J. Thomason of the Maricopa County Superior Court, who announced the recount’s results in a brief judicial hearing. The recount reduced the margin between the two candidates by about half, with the Election Day results showing Mr. Hamadeh trailing Ms. Mayes by 511 votes.
Mr. Hamadeh, whose legal effort to have himself declared the winner was dismissed by a judge on Friday, continued to sow doubt in the election results, saying in a post on Twitter that ‘we must get to the bottom of this election’ and calling for ballots to be inspected.
But during closing arguments in last week’s trial, Mr. Hamadeh’s lawyer, Timothy La Sota, acknowledged that he did not have any evidence of intentional misconduct or any vote discrepancies that would make up the gap between the candidates.
On Thursday, Ms. Mayes shared a photo of her certificate of election on Twitter and issued a statement about the recount results, saying that ‘democracy is truly a team sport’ and that she was ready to get to work as attorney general.
The recount was conducted by county election officials, who reported their results to the secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat. She won the governor’s race last month against the Kari Lake, a Republican election denier who continues to dispute her defeat.
The outcome of the attorney general’s contest dealt another blow to Republicans in a state where the party entered the midterms with heightened expectations of creating a red wave by seizing on high inflation and the flagging job approval numbers of President Biden.
That perceived advantage turned out to be a mirage, with Democrats winning most of the marquee statewide offices.
Election deniers pointed to technical glitches on Election Day, which disrupted some ballot counting in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, to fuel conspiracy theories and baseless claims. Mr. Hamadeh and Ms. Lake contended that the election had been compromised.
But election officials in Maricopa County, which is led by Republicans, have defended the voting process and said that there was no evidence that voters were turned away from casting ballots.” (New York Times)
Critics say a new media law signed by Zelensky could restrict press freedom in Ukraine.
Lawmakers who passed the bill said it would help meet European Union conditions for membership, but journalists have denounced it as a move toward censorship.
“President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Thursday signed into law a bill that expands the government’s regulatory power over the news media, a measure that journalist organizations have warned could erode press freedoms in the country.
While some of the law’s more stringent provisions were relaxed in response to criticism, serious concerns about the independence of the regulatory body remained, domestic and international news media groups said on Friday, noting that they were still reviewing details of the final 279-page legislation.
The law expands the authority of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to cover the online and print news media. Previous drafts gave the regulator the power to fine news media outlets, revoke their licenses, temporarily block certain online outlets without a court order and request that social media platforms and search giants like Google remove content that violates the law, the Ukrainian news media reported.
Mr. Zelensky, whose administration has been accused of undermining press freedom in recent years, ordered the drafting of a law increasing media regulation in 2019.
The measure was passed by Ukraine’s Parliament this month, along with a spate of other bills that lawmakers say were intended to help the country meet the European Union’s legislative conditions for membership. The bills included measures to protect the rights of national minorities.
But Ukrainian journalists and international press freedom groups raised alarms about the media bill as it advanced through Parliament, saying that it went far beyond what the European Union requires and accusing the government of using the membership obligations as a pretext to seize greater control of the press.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group that champions press freedom around the world, called for Ukrainian lawmakers to drop the bill in September, saying that it tightened ‘government control over information at a time when citizens need it the most.’
The European Federation of Journalists, whose general secretary called a previous draft of the law ‘worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes,’ said on Friday that the legislation remained in contradiction with European press freedom standards because the independence of the state media regulator, whose members are appointed by the president and Parliament, could not be guaranteed.
‘Ukraine will demonstrate its European commitment by promoting a free and independent media, not by establishing state control of information,’ said the federation's general secretary, Ricardo Gutiérrez.
The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine said there was a lack of transparency as the draft bill was revised, claiming that changes were made in closed-door parliamentary committee meetings and that members of the news media and the public were not given sufficient time to respond.
The union said in a statement issued before Ukraine’s Parliament voted to approve the bill that the legislation would erode the freedoms that ‘distinguish the social system of Ukraine from the regime of dictatorial Russia.’ The union did not immediately respond to a request for comment after Mr. Zelensky signed the bill into law.
The main legal department of Ukraine’s Parliament also noted in an analysis published this month that it had been given little time to review changes in the bill and that the legislation’s language gave insufficient consideration to the risk of introducing censorship.
Ukrainian officials have rejected charges that E.U. requirements were being used as a cover to rein in press freedoms. Significant revisions to the draft bill were made in consultation with news media professionals, they said, and argued that sweeping changes to Ukraine’s media legislation were overdue.
‘Of course, this bill is even broader than the E.U. directive, because we needed to change and modernize our media legislation, which has not been changed for 16 years,’ Yevheniia Kravchuk, the deputy chair of the Parliament’s information policy committee, said in a statement after the bill was approved. ‘It was adopted back when there was no internet at all.’
At least one Ukrainian organization focused on press freedom, the Kyiv-based Institute of Mass Information, said on Thursday that it was largely satisfied with the revised legislation but would monitor its implementation. The organization’s main concern remains ensuring the independence of the media regulator.
‘To improve it, we will need to introduce amendments to the Constitution, which is unfortunately not possible during the martial law,’ said the executive director, Oksana Romaniuk. ‘It is one of our main plans for future.’” (New York Times)
Their Mothers Were Teenagers. They Didn’t Want That for Themselves.
Teen pregnancies have plummeted, as has child poverty. The result is a profound change in the forces that bring opportunity between generations.
JENNINGS, Mo. — Brittnee Marsaw was born to a 15-year-old mother in St. Louis and raised by a grandmother who had given birth even younger. Half grown by the time her mother could support her, Ms. Marsaw joined her three states away but never found the bond she sought and calls the teen births of preceding generations “the family curse.”
Ana Alvarez was born in Guatemala to a teenage mother so poor and besieged that she gave her young daughter to a stranger, only to snatch her back. Soon her mother left to seek work in the United States, and after years of futilely awaiting her return Ms. Alvarez made the same risky trip, becoming an undocumented teenager in Washington, D.C., to reunite with the mother she scarcely knew.
While their experiences diverge, Ms. Marsaw and Ms. Alvarez share a telling trait. Stung by the struggles of their teenage mothers, both made unusually self-conscious vows not to become teen mothers themselves. And both say that delaying motherhood gave them — and now their children — a greater chance of success.
Their decisions highlight profound changes in two related forces that shape how opportunity is conveyed or impeded from one generation to the next. Teen births have fallen by more than three-quarters in the last three decades, a change of such improbable magnitude that experts struggle to fully explain it. Child poverty also plunged, raising a complex question: Does cutting teen births reduce child poverty, or does cutting child poverty reduce teen births?
While both may be true, it is not clear which dominates. One theory holds that reducing teen births lowers child poverty by allowing women to finish school, start careers and form mature relationships, raising their income before they raise children. Another says progress runs the other way: Cutting child poverty reduces teen births, since teenagers who see opportunity have motives to avoid getting pregnant….” Read more at New York Times
Georgia Downs Ohio State in Semifinal on Last-Minute Touchdown
Georgia scored in the final minute of the game, and Ohio State missed a field goal in the first minute of 2023.
By Alan Blinder
“ATLANTA — The Georgia Bulldogs appeared very nearly finished, just as they had looked for much of Saturday night.
Adonai Mitchell had caught a touchdown in the final minute of the Peach Bowl, one of the College Football Playoff’s semifinal showdowns, and Georgia had a lead of one measly point over Ohio State. But here were the Buckeyes, the No. 4 seed that had slid into the playoff after a debacle of a loss to Michigan, at the line of scrimmage and preparing for a field goal to win.
The perpetual clock showed midnight Eastern time and the start of 2023. The clock that mattered more here, though, showed eight seconds, and the uprights stood 50 yards away, the kind of cruel distance that promised to leave one team a championship contender and the other an also-ran.
The snap came. Noah Ruggles swung his right leg, and then the ball swung wide to the left. The triumph of the comeback ordeal — and it was very much an ordeal for the 79,330 people inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta — would belong to Georgia, and Georgia alone. The Bulldogs won, 42-41, to advance to the national championship game against No. 3 Texas Christian, which toppled second-ranked Michigan in the Fiesta Bowl.
‘We didn’t play our best football game — a lot of that had to do with Ohio State,’ said Georgia Coach Kirby Smart, who added, ‘If we want any chance at winning a national championship, we have to play a lot better football than we played tonight.’
Indeed, the Bulldogs, like the Horned Frogs of T.C.U., have much to consider between now and their meeting in California on Jan. 9. Perhaps most urgently, Georgia will need to figure out where and how its vaunted defense, which entered the Peach Bowl having allowed opponents about 292 yards a game, went wrong enough to surrender 467.
Ohio State, of course, brought a formidable offense to Atlanta, with C.J. Stroud, a two-time Heisman Trophy finalist, at quarterback and a wizard of a receiver, Marvin Harrison Jr., all too ready to make any given play fodder for a hype video next season at the Horseshoe. For much of the night, that offense threatened to expel top-seeded Georgia and end its quest to become the lone back-to-back champion in playoff history.
Georgia was hardly caught unaware. Its players and coaches had preached how fearsome Ohio State could be and how the Buckeyes’ loss to Michigan was far from an indictment.
The Bulldogs, who won last season’s title as the No. 3 seed, had watched the film. They had studied the habits and tells of Coach Ryan Day’s team. They had swagger and, effectively, a home-field advantage. And it still did not take long for the Buckeyes to conjure chaos.
It did not help that Georgia missed a 47-yard field goal on its opening drive. The ball returned to the Buckeyes, and Stroud used a 24-yard pass to Harrison to move Ohio State into Georgia territory. Later, Stroud took a snap and Harrison swept — no, surged — across the field and caught a touchdown.
The Bulldogs retaliated with a touchdown by way of a quick throw from quarterback Stetson Bennett to Kenny McIntosh, but quickly found themselves down 21-7 early in the second quarter, in part because of their own miscues. Bennett, himself a Heisman finalist, had thrown an interception that helped lead to an Ohio State score, and nerves were fraying in Atlanta and Athens, in Norcross and Waycross.
Georgia fans of this particular era, after all, are not accustomed to trailing by any margin, much less a double-digit one.
Still, Georgia trailed by 4 at halftime and eventually set up for its surge with less than nine minutes left in the game.
After a hapless Ohio State drive, Bennett found Arian Smith charging alone up the field. The throw arrived as Smith’s feet reached the playoff logo at the Ohio State 25. He ran, ran and ran a little more. He could have slowed down a touch since no Buckeye defender was close enough to try a lunge to stop him.
Ruggles responded to the touchdown with a 48-yard field goal for Ohio State. Two minutes, 43 seconds to go, and Georgia, the reigning champion, was down by 6 in Atlanta.
This was not a game where many fans were leaving. (Theatrics aside, if you had paid what some of them did to get in — a mortgage payment or more — you might have been hard-pressed to leave, too, no matter the score.) The stadium, where Georgia had crushed two opponents this season, stayed awash in red, scarlet and hoarseness. The Peach Bowl, they were reasonably certain, would prove a lot better than the Peach Drop, a local New Year’s Eve celebration.
The Bulldogs navigated deep into Ohio State territory. On second and 5, the ball rested on the 10 as the largest crowd in the stadium’s history thundered as if championship ambitions depended on a single minute, which they did.
Mitchell lined up close to Georgia’s sideline and took off as Bennett bounced backward. Mitchell zipped past a defender, cutting toward the middle of the field. Bennett passed. Mitchell, now in the end zone, cut back toward his sideline. Georgia’s band loomed nearby.
He caught the touchdown. Jack Podlesny kicked the extra point for the 42-41 lead.
Ohio State had 54 seconds for its final drive. The Buckeyes reached Georgia’s 32, helped greatly by a scramble from Stroud for 27 yards.
‘We had done our job, and then we trusted the defense,’ Bennett said. ‘Then at that point, it was up to, I guess, the kicker.’
It was, in fact, up to Ohio State’s kicker.
Ruggles trotted out. Midnight hit. He took aim.
He and Ohio State got only anguish.” Read at New York Times
T.C.U. Upends Michigan in Wild Playoff Semifinal
Texas Christian returned two interceptions for touchdowns, just part of a zany back-and-forth upset of Michigan, 51-45, which put the Horned Frogs in the national championship game.
By Billy Witz
“GLENDALE, Ariz. — Sonny Dykes is not the ideal of the jut-jawed football coach. He opens his program up, instead of building walls around it. He freely acknowledges there were times when he was a younger coach — several, in fact — that the pressure of winning games became suffocating.
And he is not afraid to flash his western Texas humor — inviting Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh over to his hotel room the night before their College Football Playoff semifinal to crack open a bottle of bourbon. (Harbaugh, for the record, declined, saying it was past his bedtime.)
What Dykes is doing though, in his first year at Texas Christian University, is turning the college football world on its ear.
The Horned Frogs, who were picked to finish seventh in the Big 12 with an unremarkable roster, little following outside their Fort Worth campus and a hypnotic animated toad as their talisman, are on the brink of a national championship after shocking Michigan, 51-45, in a wild, inside-out, upside-down College Football Playoff semifinal on Saturday.
The victory sent the Horned Frogs, who began the season unranked, storming onto the field knowing their magical run will culminate on Jan. 9 in the national championship game in Inglewood, Calif.
There the interlopers will meet Georgia, which scored a touchdown in the last minute to beat Ohio State in the Peach Bowl, winning a battle of two of college football’s blue bloods who ritually make the sport’s playoff showcase their own.
The last time T.C.U. played for a national championship it was in the 1938 season, where it claimed a title by beating Carnegie Mellon in the Sugar Bowl.
‘We’re know we’re going to hear it again,’ said Dykes, whose players listened to analysts — and even Michigan players — who wondered how the Horned Frogs could stay in the game. ‘It’s not going to stop now. We play in 10 days and we’re going to hear the same crap.’
On Saturday in the desert, they used any slights as fuel.
T.C.U.’s undersized, unconventional defense thwarted the previously unbeaten Wolverines — returning two interceptions of quarterback J.J. McCarthy for touchdowns and frustrating Michigan’s vaunted rushing attack — and the offense, which got an enormous second-half boost from backup running back Emari Demercado, executed to near perfection when it mattered most.
As much fight as Michigan showed, rallying from 18 points late in the third quarter to draw within a field goal, the Wolverines bungled a bushel full of opportunities — including their last fourth-down gasp, when the snap from center caught McCarthy off guard and the ball bounced off his knee, leading to a mad scramble of laterals with less than 30 seconds to play.
The Horned Frogs then had to survive a disquieting moment when officials reviewed the play for targeting before deciding that no foul had occurred.
‘It was a hell of a way to end a ballgame,’ Dykes said.
The Wolverines had spoken this week of being much better prepared this season than last, when they met their two stated goals by winning the Big Ten and snapping an eight-game losing streak to Ohio State. In their playoff loss to Georgia a year ago, they were just happy to be there, they acknowledged this week.
But from the start on Saturday, they played as if their place here was not a privilege but a burden. Michigan fumbled away one scoring chance in the end zone, wasted another when a trick play went kaput, settled for two short field goals, and surrendered a touchdown when Bud Clark — who also recovered the fumble — picked off McCarthy and bolted 41 yards for the game’s initial score, giving T.C.U. a lead it never relinquished even amid the chaos.
The Horned Frogs, by contrast, were superb when it mattered most.
The roots of their offensive execution, particularly near the goal line, were borne from the disappointment of their only loss — to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game in early December.
When T.C.U. was stonewalled on back-to-back cracks from inside the 1-yard line in overtime, Dykes immediately pledged to be better there if his team got into the playoff. Earlier this week, he said the Horned Frogs would have to be stronger up front, but also more creative.
‘We’ve put a lot of work into, a lot of attention to it,’ Dykes said several days ago. ‘When you look at college football these days, teams are so evenly matched, typically what the game comes down to is being able to convert third downs and, especially, fourth downs and scoring situations.’
Dykes proved prescient.
Quarterback Max Duggan, after being stuffed on third down at the goal line, bulled over Michigan safety Rod Moore and tumbled into the end zone after an offensive wrinkle left him with one defender to beat on fourth down.
Duggan later evaded a blitz to hit Taye Barber on a crossing route — an effective weapon all afternoon — for another score from near the goal line.
Meanwhile, Michigan floundered when it sniffed the end zone, mostly by being too clever for its own good — as if Rich Rodriguez had hijacked Harbaugh’s headset.
The Wolverines, on fourth-and-goal at the 2 on the game’s opening possession, ran their version of the Philly Special, the reverse and throw back to the quarterback that the Philadelphia Eagles used to great acclaim to bamboozle the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2018.
The Horned Frogs were neither bammed nor boozled.
McCarthy was blanketed and receiver Colston Loveland, with no one to throw to, was dropped at the 10 by Dylan Horton.
‘Put that on me,’ Harbaugh said. ‘They had it wired and they had it well defended. Sitting here now, I definitely wished I would have called a different one.’
The play also sent a message to the Horned Frogs — that Michigan, which had mauled so many opponents during the regular season, had resorted to trickery.
‘When they were going really deep in their bag, I knew we were in their heads,’ said Johnny Hodges, a transfer from Navy where he started only four games in three seasons (which included a redshirt year). ‘They weren’t confident. You don’t win championships on trick plays.’
Instead, it was the Horned Frogs who ran with impunity — particularly Demercado, who replaced injured starter Kendre Miller in the second quarter and rushed for 150 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries and also bought Duggan time by repeatedly picking up the Michigan blitz.
He did so again after losing a fumble — the only one of his career — that had allowed Michigan to close within 41-38 early in the fourth quarter. His block allowed Duggan to hit Quentin Johnson on a short crossing route that he turned into a 76-yard score.
‘When you first get out in the moment, your heart is racing,’ said Demercado, a junior college transfer who will play his final college game just down Interstate 105 where he grew up in Downey, Calif. ‘But you get hit once or twice and it’s just football.’
One of the more intriguing story lines entering Saturday was how the Horned Frogs’ unconventional defense — a three-lineman, three-linebacker and five-defensive back unit designed to stop the Air Raid offenses that are prevalent in the Big 12 — would hold up against a Michigan team that preferred mugging its opponents.
‘You don’t see them playing against people who look like us, so it’s really hard to watch the tape and say, ‘OK, this will definitely work, but this won’t,’ Michigan co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss said. ‘At the same time, they have the same issue. They’re not seeing us go against a 3-3-5 defense, so they don’t really know what we’re going to look like either.’
The first snap of the game seemed to provide an encouraging clue for Michigan.
The Wolverines sent tailback Donovan Edwards straight up the gut behind the heart of its decorated, bruising offensive line — center Olusegun Oluwatimi and guards Trevor Keegan and Zak Zinter.
Edwards was greeted at the line of scrimmage by a gaping hole and a few steps later he was in the clear. But Edwards, who repeatedly sprinted away from Ohio State’s defense in the thumping of their rival, soon found out he wasn’t in the Big Ten anymore.
Instead of a message-sending touchdown, Clark tracked Edwards down and collared him at the 21-yard line with what turned out to be a tone-setting tackle: There would be no running away from the Horned Frogs.
There would also be no catching them.” (New York Times)
Woman Accuses Steven Tyler of Sexually Assaulting Her in the 1970s
In a lawsuit filed under California’s Child Victims Act, the woman says she met the Aerosmith frontman when she was 16.
By Dan Bilefsky
Dec. 30, 2022
“Steven Tyler, the frontman of the rock band Aerosmith, has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a woman in the 1970s when she was a teenager and he was in his mid-20s.
In the lawsuit, the woman, Julia Misley, accuses Mr. Tyler of using his status and power as a famous rock star to ‘groom, manipulate, exploit’ and ‘sexually assault’ her over the course of three years. She has previously discussed her relationship with Mr. Tyler, writing online that she met him at an Aerosmith concert in Portland, Ore., in 1973, shortly after her 16th birthday.
The lawsuit, earlier reported by Rolling Stone, was filed this week under the California Child Victims Act, which temporarily lifted the statute of limitations so people who said they were sexually abused as children could file civil cases. The three-year period to file a complaint ends on Saturday.
Mr. Tyler is referred to in the lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, as ‘Defendant Doe 1.’ Lawyers and representatives who have worked for him did not respond to requests for comment.
In Mr. Tyler’s memoir ‘Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?’ he writes about a time he was so in love that he ‘almost took a teen bride,’ describing sexual encounters with her in planes and elevators. He also describes an apartment fire that sent his unnamed lover to a hospital with smoke inhalation; Ms. Misley recounts a similar experience in her writings and her lawsuit.
Ms. Misley, who is now 65 and previously went by the name Julia Holcomb, also appears in the book’s acknowledgments.
She said in a statement on Friday that she was spurred to take legal action by the change in California law and that she was grateful for the new opportunity to be heard.
‘I want this action to expose an industry that protects celebrity offenders, to cleanse and hold accountable an industry that both exploited and allowed me to be exploited for years,’ she wrote, citing Mr. Tyler by name.
Her lawsuit alleges that in 1973 a ‘leading member of a world-famous rock band’ who was 25 years old took Ms. Misley to his hotel room after a concert in Portland and ‘performed various acts of criminal sexual conduct.’ According to the lawsuit, the singer then bought Ms. Misley a plane ticket for a concert in Seattle because she was a minor and could not travel with him across state lines.
The lawsuit says the musician eventually persuaded her mother to let him become her legal guardian, so that, among other things, he could enroll her in school and provide her with better medical care. It then alleges that he ‘did not meaningfully follow through on these promises and instead continued to travel with, assault and provide alcohol and drugs’ to Ms. Misley.
In his memoir, Mr. Tyler says he gained custody of the person who nearly became his ‘teen bride.’ ‘Her parents fell in love with me, signed papers over for me to have custody, so I wouldn’t get arrested if I took her out of state,’ he writes. ‘I took her on tour.’
According to the suit, Ms. Misley eventually became pregnant by the singer and was coerced by him to have an abortion.
In her public writings, Ms. Misley described a turbulent upbringing before she was ensnared by a world of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll under Mr. Tyler’s stewardship. She later left him and married, becoming a mother of seven children.” (New York Times)
Anita Pointer of The Pointer Sisters dies at age 74
By Tina Burnside and Nouran Salahieh, CNN
Anita Pointer performs at the Venice Family Clinic's 32nd Annual Silver Circle Gala at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 3, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California.
Mike Windle/Getty Images
“Anita Pointer, one of the founding members of the R&B group The Pointer Sisters, has died at age 74, according to her publicist Roger Neal.
Pointer passed away Saturday at her home in Los Angeles where she was surrounded by her family, Neal said in a statement to CNN. The cause of death was cancer, he said….” Read more at CNN