When it comes to the 4th of July, fireworks and film go hand-in-hand! Both David Fair and Russ Collins are on vacation this week, so WEMU's Mat Hopson and Marquee Arts cinema programming director Nick Alderink meet up to chat about the newest films and special screenings coming your way this Independence Day weekend!

After a week away, WEMU's David Fair returns to chatting about cinema with Marquee Arts executive director Russ Collins. As they do every week, they deliver all of the details on new films and the many special screenings coming to Ann Arbor!

Whether you prefer the modern age of cinema or the silent era, there's plenty of films worth checking out this weekend and beyond! WEMU's Russ Collins from Marquee Arts gives the full cinematic rundown in his conversation with WEMU's David Fair.

We just wrapped up a fantastic fall fundraiser a few days ago, so let's celebrate with a good movie! WEMU's Mat Hopson steps in for David Fair this week to chat about all of the cinematic offerings coming soon to your favorite movie houses with Marquee Arts executive director, Russ Collins!

Don't know about you, but I had a pretty rough week so I'm indulging myself with Jinjer and Spiritbox, starting with one of the greatest collabs of the current millenium: Spiritbox - Circle With Me ft. Tatiana Shmayluk of Jinjer

Megan Thee Stallion - TYG (feat. Spiritbox) Jinjer - Who Is Gonna Be The One - Live Spiritbox - The Mara Effect - live Jinjer - Pisces - Live Spiritbox - The Mara Effect - live Jinjer - Just Another We will return to more varied programming next week, probably.

There's an illustration I remember fairly vividly from when I was a kid, but I don't remember whether it was a print or in a book. It depicted tiny dragons, smoke curling from their nostrils, lounging around and/or on a big, beautiful book with cabochons and other jewels either set on or around the book, perhaps with candles and greenery nearby as well. The image shows this from the perspective of slightly above and to one side of the book and dragons, but not from directly above. I don't know whether this was a stand-alone illustration or an illustration in the book, nor whether there was more than one such illustration. it might have been inside the front or back cover. I was really into jewels as a kid, and I remember being entranced by this image and spending some time staring at it. This could have been from the '80s or '90s or earlier. Anyone else remember this?

How do women who mud wrestle or take regular mud baths (esp. naked, say at a spa) avoid getting mud in their, er, orifices—or do they avoid it? Would tampons be useful in preventing such an occurrence? Or is that even necessary?

And if mud is allowed into the vagina or anus, does that lead to an increased incidence of infection (whether by yeast or bacteria)? How would one go about (or, ladies, how have you gone about) preventing such resultant infections? And do spas have problems with the transmission of such infections in their mud baths?

I've found an abstract from a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that found a greater incidence of pustular follicular dermatitis outbreaks among mud-wrestling college students (no joke) at the University of Washington in Seattle—but that doesn't speak to the question of vaginal, anal or urethral irritation stemming from prolonged mud exposure.

(And yes, this is a serious question, I promise—the topic came up during a conversation I was party to a while back about, well, vaginal irritation/infections. Fun stuff, huh?)

This was my experience this morning: I'm cycling, and I see this guy running, opposite direction to me. He has a cap on, and on top of the cap was what (at first) I thought was a light. Then I thought maybe it was a camera. Then as he got closer I thought it was a donut, like maybe an orange cream filled or something. then as I got closer I heard very regular beeping that I'm pretty sure was coming from the not-donut. And then I couldn't tell what it was, apart from it was orange and about 2 inches tall, maybe cylindrical or donut-shaped. My best guess is that it was some sort of device to help him regulate head/posture, kind of like "teach kids to walk while balancing books on their head". Google is not helping. Can the hivemind suss this out?

Is there a way to change the Microsoft voice Zira so she stops saying "Mississippi" when the word miss is used as a title or with a period at the end of it? I found two files (MSTTSLocEnUS.dat and MSTTSLocEnCA.dat) in the folder C:WindowsSpeech_OneCoreEnginesTTS that contain the text "mississippi" but they are both dat files and when I open them in Wordpad or Notepad, I cannot find the text. I looked in Windows Speech options and there is no place to fix pronunciations. I am using Windows 11 and it does not seem to happen when I use the David voice, only the Zira voice.

What is the greatest of all the covenant promises? What effect should God’s promise of a new earth have on our personal Christian experience?

How does the story of Moses’ death and later resurrection show us how the New Testament, though often based on the Old Testament, does take us further than the Old Testament and can indeed shed much new light upon it?

Paul wrote Hebrews to strengthen the faith of the believers amid their trials. He reminded them (and us) that the promises of God will be fulfilled through Jesus, who is seated at the right hand of the Father, and who will soon take us home. In the meantime, Jesus mediates the Father’s blessings to us. So, we need to hold fast to our faith until the end.

Why is it important to recognize that our faith results from and feeds on God’s faithfulness? How can we learn more to trust in His faithfulness to us and to the promises He has made to us?

Atlanta police released images of a second person of interest in the July 4 shooting death of 8-year-old Secoriea Turner. The first person of interest has been cleared, attorneys for the family said. Her parents, Charmaine Turner and Secoriey Williamson, are pleading with the public to provide information about those responsible in the death of their child. The reward is up to $50,000, and anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at 404-577-8477.

Secoriea Turner, the 8-year-old girl shot to death July 4 near the burned-down Wendy's in Atlanta, had nothing to do with ongoing protests against police brutality, her family's lawyers say. At a news conference Monday, Secoriey Williamson, the girl's father, begged for anyone with information to come forward. He even played to the conscience of his daughter's killer, pleading with the shooter to come forward.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is taking up New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on his offer to send a team to conduct testing and contact tracing of people exposed to the coronavirus. Cuomo announced Monday that New York State will deploy coronavirus assistance to the capital of Georgia as the state continues to experience an increase in COVID-19 cases.

I do not want to be alive. This is not a new development; I first voiced this opinion to my mother when I was five years old, and it has persisted through the subsequent four decades despite therapy, a vast array of medications, and multiple forms of invasive treatments that have made my existence even less bearable while having no affect on my depression (or, as I think of it, my identity and most fundamental self). Given the opportunity to press a button and fast-forward to my deathbed, I'd do it without hesitation. But these Nazi motherfuckers will not leave the people I love alone. They are forcing me to stay alive, even though I hate every minute of it, just so I can contribute my meager skills to the war effort against them. You have no idea how furious I am, because all I want is to die, and they won't let me, because if I did I'd be ceding the world to them, and I refuse to do that without exhausting every drop of blood within me. If I can't have a single moment of joy, peace or happiness, then neither can they.

Two things:

1. Narrow your focus to your sphere of influence, just for now, because in this moment of helplessness and defeat, when we are feeling powerless, it behooves us to remember we do have immense power. Kamala Harris was never going to bring a casserole to your neighbor when their spouse was in the hospital, that's you. Donald Trump cannot steal the laughter from your friends' lips when you tell them a joke, that laughter is entirely in your power. You have the power to choose connection, fellowship, mutual aid, joy, hard work, love, passion, devotion, faith. To me, remembering that I have power is cause for hope.

2. When you're out there using your power to connect with your fellow human beings, look for the helpers. Take heart in their existence, their perseverance. Do everything you can to become one of them.

I'm sorry you've been through so much lately, but I think you are definitely catastrophizing. I'd say the likelihood you'll be a target of political violence is pretty close to zero. I would suggest you stop reading the news/Reddit for a bit if it's causing you to feel this way - go for walks in your new neighborhood, make plans to see your friends in the city, etc.

Fresh off the latest meeting about incorporation, and I want to say: thank you to the moderators and Jessamyn who keep the site going and thank you to the volunteers past and present putting in work to build new possibilities for the site, including making it easier for more people to volunteer and contribute in different ways.

I'm also truly proud of the decision made early on by the volunteers to do things together, even if that meant slowing down. I'm the kind of person who sees a problem and goes into fix-it mode as fast as possible. Practicing on a hugely meaningful project like Metafilter to listen and consider all of our viewpoints and work through to a communal path was hard. It was sometimes frustratingly slow! But by the second half of our timeline, I can see now that we get important things done faster and faster and how strong the foundation we've built is (heh, bad pun) because we've got trust and a collaborative thoughtful process.

I'd also like to recognise the people who took a deep breath before writing a reply in a high-termperature thread, the people who edited down the snark in their comments or thought - I'll change to the thread about kitten videos instead. It is hard to be civil and think about other people when they're text on a screen - and it's harder when so much media encourages profit by provoking yelling.

Metafilter is an internet third space that isn't trying to profit actively from yelling. And sometimes we gotta yell in some threads - but most of the time we talk, and I so so appreciate having a third space where people can talk without an algorithm aimed at our lizard brains.

I am the son of a Holocaust survivor. When my dad was 11, his parents put him and his 13 year-old brother on a boat, alone, from their home in Amsterdam so they could come to America and escape the Nazis.

Hilariously, just one generation later, this website suggests I get back on the boat and return to exactly the same place for exactly the same reason.

In real life I moved to Japan from the U.S. years ago. Didn't soften the blow of the election one whit.

Wherever you go, there you are.

I work in a women's health clinic that does first-term abortions as one of its services.

We have a comment form on our web site where people who want to volunteer as patient escorts can reach out. Typically, we get about one or two inquiries a week.

Yesterday alone, we got twenty-five.

This doesn't take "Will the destination country even accept you as an immigrant" into consideration.

I'm moving to Cozylandia under my duvet and I'm never coming out.

I'm usually allergic to a lot of the way "find the bright side" kind of things are framed, but this extended quotation from Great Tide Rising by Kathleen Dean Moore came across my Mastodon feed and really resonated with me.

Over the years, college students have often come to my office distraught, unable to think of what they might be able to do to stop the terrible losses caused by an industrial growth economy run amok. So much dying, so much destruction. I tell them about Mount Saint Helens, the volcano that blasted a hole in the Earth in 1980, only a decade before they were born.

Those scientists were so wrong back in 1980, I tell my students. When they first climbed from the helicopters, holding handkerchiefs over their faces to filter ash from the Mount Saint Helens eruption, they did not think they would live long enough to see life restored to the blast zone. Every tree was stripped gray, every ridgeline buried in cinders, every stream clogged with toppled trees and ash. If anything would grow here again, they thought, its spore and seed would have to drift in from the edges of the devastation, long dry miles across a plain of cinders and ash. The scientists could imagine that– spiders on silk parachutes drifting over rubble and plain, a single samara spinning into the shade of a pumice stone. It was harder to imagine the time required for flourishing to return to the mountains – all the dusty centuries.

But here they are today: On the mountain, only thirty-five years later, these same scientists are on their knees, running their hands over beds of moss below lupine in lavish purple bloom. Tracks of mice and fox wander along a stream, and here, beside a ten-foot silver fir, a coyote's twisted scat grows mushrooms. What the scientists know now, but didn't understand then, is that when the mountain blasted ash and rock across the landscape, the devastation passed over some small places hidden in the lee of rocks and trees. Here, a bed of moss and deer fern under a rotting log. There under a boulder, a patch of pearly everlasting and the tunnel to a vole's musty nest. Between stones in a buried stream, a slick of algae and clustered dragonfly larvae. Refugia, they call them: places of safety where life endures. From the refugia, mice and toads emerged blinking onto the blasted plain. Grasses spread, strawberries sent out runners. From a thousand, ten thousand, maybe countless small places of enduring life, forests and meadows returned to the mountain.

I have seen this happen. I have wandered the edge of Mount Saint Helens vernal pools with ecologists brought to unscientific tears by the song of meadowlarks in this place.

My students have been taught, as they deserve to be, that the fossil-fueled industrial growth culture has brought the world to the edge of catastrophe. They don't have to "believe in" climate change to accept this claim. They understand the decimation of plant and animal species, the poisons, the growing deserts and spreading famine, the rising oceans and melting ice. If it's true that we can't destroy our habitats without destroying our lives, as Rachel Carson said, and if it's true that we are in the process of laying waste to the planet, then our ways of living will come to an end – some way or another, sooner or later, gradually or catastrophically – and some new way of life will begin. What are we supposed to do? What is there to hope for at the end of this time? Why brother trying to patch up the world while so many others seem intent on wrecking it?

These are terrifying questions for an old professor; thank god for the volcano's lesson. I tell them about the rotted stump that sheltered spider eggs, about a cupped cliff that saved a fern, about all the other refugia that brought life back so quickly to the mountain. If destructive forces are building under our lives, then our work in this time and place, I tell them, is to create refugia of the imagination. Refugia, places where ideas are sheltered and encouraged to grow.

Even now, we can create small pockets of flourishing, and we can make ourselves into overhanging rock ledges to protect life so that the full measure of possibility can spread and reseed the world. Doesn't matter what it is, I tell my students; if it's generous to life, imagine it into existence. Create a bicycle cooperative, a seed-sharing community, a wildlife sanctuary on the hill below the church. Raise butterflies with children. Sing duets to the dying. Tear out the irrigation system and plant native grass. Imagine water pumps. Imagine a community garden in the Kmart parking lot. Study ancient corn. Teach someone to sew. Learn to cook with the full power of the sun at noon.

We don't have to start from scratch. We can restore pockets of flourishing life ways that have been damaged over time. Breach a dam. Plant a riverbank. Vote for schools. Introduce the neighbors to one another's children. Celebrate the solstice. Slow a river course with a fallen log. Tell stories of how indigenous people live on the land. Clear the grocery carts out of the stream.

Maybe most effective of all, we can protect refugia that already exist. They are all around us. Protect the marshy ditch behind the mall. Work to ban poisons from the edges of the road. Save the hedges in your neighborhood. Boycott what you don't believe in. Refuse to participate in what is wrong. There is hope in this: An attention that notices and celebrates thriving where it occurs; a conscience that refuses to destroy it.

From these sheltered pockets of moral imagining, and from the protected pockets of flourishing, new ways of living will spread across the land, across the salt plains and beetle killed forests. Here is how life will start anew. Not from the edges over centuries of invasion; rather from small pockets of good work, shaped by an understanding that all life is interdependent, and driven by the one gift humans have that belongs to no other: practical imagination – the ability to imagine that things can be different from what they are now.

On this Special Edition of Political Rewind, it’s a look at the biggest political stories of 2019. A new governor put his unique stamp on Georgia, an unexpected resignation put the state front and center in the race for Senate, and two Georgia members of Congress announced their departures.

Cesia Baires knocks on the three apartment doors above her restaurant and a neighboring taqueria just before curfew. A woman opens the door. Her two young children are inside. "Remember," she says to them in Spanish. "Same thing as yesterday. I'm going to come check on you. If there's anything you guys need, give us a call right away." Meanwhile, a few men climb through the window and on to the roof to set up semi-automatic weapons as the curfew begins in Minneapolis. It's something Baires never thought she would have to do as a small-business owner, but then she found out these apartments were occupied. "Material things we can replace, that's true," she says. "But there are families up here. These aren't empty buildings." A car drives by boarded-up businesses as it crosses Lake Street in Minneapolis. Volunteers, sometimes armed, are working together to protect homes and businesses. Jim Urquhart for NPR As break-ins and fires raged in the first days of mass protests over the killing of

Since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd on Memorial Day, NPR has faced ethical challenges every hour of every day, including how to describe the killing, how to use the audio of Floyd's last words, how to document Floyd's life and how to describe the mass demonstrations. The best answer to every one of these questions is: embrace precision, be descriptive, use more words. The more this happens, the better the journalism. When news organizations, including NPR, sometimes fall short, it's usually because of an attempt to economize words. This week we received questions and complaints from a number of listeners about a variety of topics. I have summarized them across four general questions that I put to two senior editors and one host. Here's a breakdown of the most frequent questions and the answers I received: Why do hosts and reporters say, "George Floyd died in police custody?" It seems like an understatement. That phrase does feel incomplete, even weak, given that

Rows of armed agents were deployed around the protests in Washington, D.C. this past week, but it was not obvious who they were: They had no name tags, no badge numbers and no emblems to identify which agencies they worked for. Their arrival sparked shock and alarm. Now, Democratic lawmakers are calling for legislation that would make it illegal for these officers to not identify themselves. In the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) are cosponsoring a bill that would require officers to identify themselves while "engaged in crowd control or arresting individuals involved in civil disobedience or protests in the United States." In the House, Virginia Democrat Don Beyer, whose district is just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., is working on similar legislation. "How do we tell these alleged federal police officers from white supremacist militia groups?" Beyer said in an interview Sunday with NPR's Weekend Edition . "How do you ever

Ella Jones will be sworn in as mayor of Ferguson, Mo., next week, becoming the first black mayor — and the first woman — to lead the city that gained national attention when police killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014. The protests that erupted in response helped establish the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Still, nearly six years after Brown's death, Jones says the protests against police brutality — this time in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis — feel the same. "I don't think they feel any different," Jones tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on All Things Considered . The officers who were involved in the shooting of Brown were not indicted . But his death drew the attention of the federal government and the city entered into a federal consent decree in 2016 that resulted in widespread policing and municipal court reforms. Jones thinks that despite the work Ferguson has done, her city — which has a population that is two-thirds black — still feels like the

The police killings of George Floyd , Eric Garner and other black men and women began with allegations of a minor offense, such as passing a counterfeit $20 bill or selling individual, untaxed cigarettes. Misdemeanors — these types of low-level criminal offenses — account for about 80% of all arrests and 80% of state criminal dockets, says Alexandra Natapoff, a law professor at the University of California at Irvine and author of Punishment Without Crime . "It's surprising to many people to realize that misdemeanors — these low-level, often chump-change offenses that many of us commit routinely without even noticing it — make up the vast majority of what our criminal system does," Natapoff tells NPR's Ari Shapiro on All Things Considered . "The offenses can include everything from traffic offenses to spitting, loitering, trespassing, all the way up to more serious offenses like DUI or many domestic violence offenses," she says. "It's ... the vast majority of ways that individuals

A New York City police officer has been suspended after apparently using a chokehold during an arrest in Rockaway, Queens. NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea said the department is investigating the incident, which happened Sunday. Cellphone video shot by a bystander shows several police struggling to subdue a Black man, including one officer who had his arm around the man's neck. One bystander shouts, "Stop choking him!" Police body-cam footage, which Shea said was released in a spirit of transparency, shows a group of police watching three men on a boardwalk who are shouting invective and slurs at passersby and the police. After more than ten minutes, one of the men picks up a plastic bag and gets closer to the police, asking, "Are you scared?" The officers then tackle him, and one officer appears to use a chokehold. A voice is heard saying, "He's out," before the officers move off the man, who moments later walks away in handcuffs with police. The man, who has been identified by his

The New York police officer accused of using a chokehold in an incident captured on video Sunday has been charged with strangulation. The officer, 39-year-old David Afanador, was suspended the same day the cellphone video appeared to show him choking a Black man on a Queens boardwalk. Now he's been arrested and charged with felony strangulation and attempted strangulation. Afanador pleaded not guilty and was released Thursday afternoon without bail. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz noted that New York state had criminalized chokeholds just days earlier. "The ink from the pen Gov. Cuomo used to sign this legislation was barely dry before this officer allegedly employed the very tactic the new law was designed to prohibit," Katz said in a statement. "Police officers are entrusted to serve and protect — and the conduct alleged here cannot be tolerated." Afanador could face up to seven years in prison if convicted. Sunday's incident began when police responded to complaints about

Philando Castile, Eric Garner and George Floyd. The deaths of these Black men at the hands of police have fueled outrage over police brutality and systemic racism. Men make up the vast majority of people shot and killed by police. But the names of Black women who were also killed are generally missing from Americans' collective memories, says Kimberlé Crenshaw, co-founder and executive director of the African American Policy Forum . The Say Her Name campaign, created by Crenshaw's group in 2014, is meant to include women in the national conversation about race and policing. A few women's names and stories, such as Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by Louisville, Ky., police executing a no-knock search warrant in March, have been part of the Black Lives Matter movement. But others have not — women such as Michelle Cusseaux and Kayla Moore. In 2014, Cusseaux was shot by police in her Phoenix home while they were attempting to take her to a mental health facility. In 2013, police

Officials in Allentown, Pa., have released a roughly ten-minute surveillance video showing officers subduing and arresting a man in front of a local hospital on Monday evening. The man ends up face-down on the ground, and as two officers pin the man's arm behind his back, a third officer kneels on his neck. The release of the footage by Allentown police came days after activists tweeted a shorter, 26-second video , which has been viewed hundreds of thousand of times. Police say the man was taken into the hospital and, after treatment, was released. His name and medical details were not disclosed. Police also didn't release the names of the officers. Reaction to the video has sparked comparisons to what happened to George Floyd, the Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day. Derek Chauvin, the white officer who was filmed kneeling on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, has since been fired and faces a second-degree murder charge. Three other officers were also

While protests set off by the killing of George Floyd show no signs of letting up, another quieter protest has been stirring at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Irwin County, Georgia. There, a group of detainees staged a hunger strike and protest over video chat to raise the alarm over a lack of precautions against the spread of COVID-19 inside the detention center.

When COVID-19 hit Savannah, city leaders were particularly concerned about the homeless population — or “roofless people,” as 3 rd District Alderwoman Linda Wilder-Bryan prefers. Her drive to help people who couldn’t get into shelters led to a proposal for “ Dundee Village .” Now, plans are underway for a safe and sanitary complex of tents – which will later be converted to livable shipping containers – to house people displaced by the pandemic and at risk of contracting COVID-19 on the streets.

For generations, “The Talk” has been a mainstay in African American families. At some point, Black children all get warnings from elders about how to avoid – and survive – police encounters. It’s a rite that cuts across region, socioeconomic status and profession – even for members of law enforcement.

John Lewis has gotten into a lot of trouble in his life. The now 17-term House Representative from Atlanta has been arrested 45 times – five as a U.S. congressman. One of the original Freedom Riders , Lewis trained in nonviolent resistance, but faced a lot of brutality during his time as a young activist in the civil rights movement. He suffered harassment and attacks during lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, his skull was fractured by a blow from a Klansman in 1961, and he was badly beaten after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on Bloody Sunday .

Copyright 2020 KJZZ. To see more, visit KJZZ . STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Hospitals in Arizona are reaching capacity. Coronavirus infections there continue to rise. And the governor, who once pushed ahead with reopening, has now delayed the start of school. Is that enough? From our member station KJZZ, Rocio Hernandez reports. ROCIO HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: Arizona students are some of the first in the nation to go back to school. Some districts opened their doors as early as end of July. But that won't be the case this year. In June, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey issued an executive order pushing back the reopening of brick-and-mortar schools. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) DOUG DUCEY: At this point in time, we are going to delay the first day of school till August 17. HERNANDEZ: That's too soon, says teacher Stacy Brosius at Deer Valley Unified School District in Phoenix. STACY BROSIUS: I don't want to be the teacher that gets COVID and have my third-graders have to attend my funeral. But I

Did a mega drought topple empires 4,200 years ago? is an article by Michael Marshall in Nature [archive link] about the debate around the 4.2-Kiloyear Event, which was possibly a major shift in global climate patterns that started around 2200 BCE. The effects were especially stark in the Fertile Crescent, where social complexity decreased markedly, empires fell, and cities were abandoned, as recounted in the video essay The First Bronze Age Collapse and the Intermediate Bronze Age. If you want more granular detail, best known archaeological site for this period has a good website with lots of information, The Tell Leilan Project.

That's it. Given this terrible, horrible, no good week, I'd like to hang onto some signs of hope. They don't have to be political, anything will do.

If you're visiting MetaFilter for the first time in a while because whoa, US election, just a friendly reminder that MetaFilter depends on member support in order to keep running. Additionally, MetaFilter is moving to a community-run model, so you might want to check out the latest update about that.

But because this is a weblog, a few additional links about communities below the fold.

Online communities come with real-world consequences for individuals and societies (Communications Psychology; the bibliography is fun)

How to find your community (Vox)

How to find healthy online communities (Mental Health America)

(Nostalgia trip) Online communities (Pew Research, 2001)

And more nostalgia - the classic 1995 Ghosts in the Machine

Bernie Sanders thinks he has a pretty good idea why Hillary Clinton and Democrats lost in the 2016 election. "Look, you can't simply go around to wealthy people's homes raising money and expect to win elections," the Vermont senator, who gave Clinton a surprisingly strong run for the Democratic nomination, told NPR's David Greene in an interview airing on Morning Edition. "You've got to go out and mix it up and be with ordinary people." That picks up on a criticism of Clinton devoting too much time to fundraising — and not enough to on-the-ground campaigning in traditionally Democratic states, like Michigan and Wisconsin. In the general election, Clinton never visited Wisconsin after she became the nominee and visited Michigan late in the game. The two Upper Midwestern states swung narrowly to Trump: Wisconsin by slightly more than 20,000 votes and Michigan by slightly more than 10,000. During the primary, Sanders boasted of his small-donor donations. "The Democratic Party swallowed

Updated at 4 p.m. ET The Justice Department's watchdog has launched a sweeping review of conduct by the FBI director and other department officials before the presidential election, following calls from Congress and members of the public. Top advisers to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton have blamed FBI Director James Comey, in part, for her loss in November. Now, federal investigators say they will examine whether public statements by Comey in July, October and November 2016 ran afoul of policies that caution officials not to influence the outcome of an election and to avoid making derogatory comments about people who haven't been formally charged with wrongdoing. Comey has previously told friends and employees that he had few good choices in the investigation into Clinton's handling of classified information on her private email server. In a statement Thursday, Comey said, "I am grateful to the Department of Justice's IG for taking on this review. He is professional and

Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: Presidential inaugurations are supposed to be about unity. That may be more inspirational than aspirational, rather, than anything else this year. Donald Trump will be sworn in later this morning in the wake of a divisive and ugly campaign that perhaps describes the deeply partisan era we're living in. We're hearing different perspectives on Trump's Inaugural Day this morning and one of them is that of the novelist Attica Locke. She is also a writer on the TV program "Empire," and she spoke to our own Steve Inskeep. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: We called you up on the morning after the election. That sounded like an excruciating morning for you. ATTICA LOCKE: It was, and I can't say that things have gotten necessarily better for me. INSKEEP: What do you mean? LOCKE: I wake up every day and think, this is how much this country can't stand black people that this has happened. Or I think, this is how much this country did not want a

Updated at 9 p.m. ET Russia's military intelligence agency launched an attack days before Election Day on a U.S. company that provides election services and systems, including voter registration, according to a top-secret report posted Monday by The Intercept . The news site published a report, with redactions, by the National Security Agency that described the Russian spear-phishing scheme, one it described as perpetrated by the same intelligence agency — the GRU — that the Obama administration imposed sanctions on for the 2016 cyber mischief. According to the NSA report, Russian hackers sent emails to people who worked at a company that provides state and local election offices with voter registration systems, trying to trick them into giving up their user credentials. The Intercept reports, "At least one of the employee accounts was likely compromised, the agency concluded." The NSA report says that the Russians then used information from that account to launch a separate phishing

Facebook's concession that it sold $100,000 in ads to Russian-linked accounts last year may be "just the tip of the iceberg" of how social networks were used to interfere in the election, warned the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who is leading the Senate's investigation into Russia's election attack, said Thursday he has long believed that Moscow used overt social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to intervene in the 2016 election, as well as other covert tools such as cyberattacks. "And you know, the first reaction from Facebook, of course, was, "Well, you're crazy, nothing's going on,'" Warner said at a national security conference in Washington, D.C. "Well, we find yesterday there actually was something going on. And I think all we saw yesterday in terms of their brief was the tip of the iceberg." Facebook acknowledged in a blog post on Wednesday that 470 accounts "affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia"

The CIA on Thursday was forced to walk back an assertion by Director Mike Pompeo, who incorrectly said U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian efforts to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election were unsuccessful. Asked at a security conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday whether he could say with absolute certainty that the November vote was not skewed by Russia, Pompeo replied: "Yes. Intelligence community's assessment is that the Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election." In a later clarification, the head of the CIA's office of public affairs, Dean Boyd, said: "The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling has not changed, and the Director did not intend to suggest that it had." U.S. intelligence concluded in a January assessment that "the senior-most officials" in Russia had authorized hacks into the Democratic National Committee and officials connected with the Clinton campaign. And then