Adams is accused of striking a deal with the Trump administration to get his criminal case dropped in exchange for help on immigration action.

Good Evening, Burkwood Hills Families—

Due to expected inclement weather, the Burkwood Hills school district is moving to a Flexible Instruction Day (FID) tomorrow. All students should log in virtually for instruction and follow their typical daily schedule. And by “typical daily schedule,” we mean an absolute clusterfuck of pleading and consequence-threatening to get your kids to do literally any of their required work while you also somehow do your job from home. You will break down emotionally and spiritually multiple times throughout the day and annoy everyone in your family.

Scheduled activities will include playing Twister with the cats in a pile of Magna-Tiles, crying, throwing half-eaten Uncrustables at the kitchen window, running manically through the house in pajamas, watching TV, more crying, and eating a gross ton of Z-Bars.

Students will log onto their twelve-year-old tablet with no power cord for a Zoom call with twenty other children, most of whom are screaming into their screens, asking what to do. Eventually, your child’s teacher’s exhausted face will appear and go through an inaudible PowerPoint presentation about addition or phonics that your child will utterly ignore. The teacher will then email you a worksheet. You will go through the worksheet with your child, who is now distracted by his brother hanging off the side of the table, throwing gobs of Fisher-Price slime at the dog, screaming, “I’m Spider-Man! I’m Spider-Man!” You will end up doing the worksheet in your child’s handwriting.

All afterschool and evening activities will proceed as scheduled. You cannot imagine what these might be, but they are likely attended by parents who have it more together than you. Parents on the PTA. Parents who hand out snacks at soccer games. Parents who make costumes for the school plays, even for kids who are not their own. That is not you—therefore, please disregard the announcement about afterschool and evening activities.

Why did you study the humanities in college? Why didn’t you do what your uncle suggested and go into engineering? Or study law like your mom wanted? Then you might have a high-paying job and could afford to send your children to private school, where snow days are probably spent at the museum appreciating fine art or planting trees. No, you had to study English literature, and you now teach at one of several dying colleges, shuttling between blank-walled classrooms and bussing home frantically to trade off with your spouse, who is attending to the nightmare of Flexible Instruction Day. The article you are supposed to be writing is not even half-done, and your kids are eating chocolate chips straight out of the bag.

What is wrong with you? When did your life become like this? Don’t even think about blaming the economy. Your single mother worked three jobs and helped you and your siblings with homework in the evenings. You started crying the other day because you couldn’t open a jar of banana peppers. There are parents fleeing from terrorism and war who manage to read their children stories before bed. Meanwhile, last night before bed, you watched three TikToks with your kids, and one of them had the word “fuck” in it

If you don’t get your shit together parenting-wise, your kids are going to start thinking that being a YouTuber is a viable career path. One day, they’ll have to go to an important dinner with their boss and be unable to eat anything but chicken nuggets, embarrass themselves, get fired, and die. They’ll forget how to read, which is probably impossible, but if any kids could test this limit, it’s them.

All staff, besides the facilities department, should feel free to work from home or come into the building if they like. Members of the facilities department should report to work based on virtual instruction protocol per their supervisor. Parents should fuck off and die but also make sure their children somehow complete a full day of schoolwork.

Thank you for your patience (lol),
BHSD Administration

The administration continues its takedown of data that it doesn’t agree with. To get ahead of the wave, if by just a little, Andrew Van Dam for Washington Post’s Department of Data charted datasets that might disappear soon.

Tags: government, takedown, Washington Post

For artist Candace Hicks, storytelling is just as much verbal as it is tactile and visual. Her latest exhibition at Austin’s Ivester Contemporary, The Story I Tell at Parties, is a surrealist exploration of the reliability of memory and the stories we share, woven and unraveled across embroidered panels of fabric. The show features work from her ongoing series, Notes for String Theory, where hand-embroidered pages mimic school composition notebooks with familiar yet warped versions of blank pages that symbolize Hicks’ own writer’s block during the pandemic. Another series incorporates disclaimers and linguistic trends through Google Ngrams. Finally, there are three large quilts, each embroidered with fading accuracy of one of Hicks’ most unique stories told at parties.

“Making art about literature is the number one theme that runs through my work,” she says. Hicks, who is the coordinator of Foundations at Stephen F. Austin State University, earned a Master’s in Fine Arts in printmaking from Texas Christian University, where she began making cloth artist books. “Reading is a very tactile activity, and I wanted to recreate that softness,” she says. As she began to look into the tradition of cloth books, she was intrigued by creating books about coincidences. Now 20 years in and a 150 volumes later, her books have been collected by universities, rare book collectors, and museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art. 

In her Ngram series, Google search histories showcase trends over the years of certain words, including “red pill,” “mansplain,” “feminist,” “Karen,” and “vaccine,” words that not only have shaped our language over the last few years but politics as well. 

The three quilts, titled Ron, I Think, The Sixth Sense, and Y2K, were Hicks’ way of taking “advantage of all the things that call to mind domesticity and comfort — the perfect metaphor to tell this story,” she says.

In Ron, I Think, she recalls a memory from when she was 19 and working at Blockbuster. “Every time I attend a social gathering and people are telling outlandish stories, I wait impatiently to tell the story of my manager at Blockbuster. I’ve told it so many times that even I can’t be sure how much of it is true,” she writes on the quilt.

The story unfolds: One day, her manager, Ron, confided in her that he was actually 15, had run away from home and that his large stature — “broad-shouldered with a heavy brow and a resonating Hulk voice” — was due to gigantism. Ron was later fired for stealing, and Hicks never saw him again.

The quilt, Y2K, is the least factual. “At the time, I was sleepwalking a lot,” Hicks says, which likely distorted her sense of what was a dream and what was reality. In the quilt, she remembers reading Lolita for a book club where no one read the book. “They claimed the subject matter put them off of it, but in my experience, no one ever reads the book in a book club,” it reads. “I had an annotated copy, and I loved getting lost in the footnotes.” In a confusing coincidence, Hicks turned on the made-for-TV movie, unaware Lolita had been made into a film. It was a moment of wacky déjà vu, something she also depicts in the quilt.

Hicks’ next project, which she is currently working on as a Fulbright Scholar in Amiens, France, a city with a rich textile history dating back to the Middle Ages, focuses on sharing personal narratives of reproductive healthcare. Utilizing embroidery to preserve these handwritten stories, she feels it’s the “perfect media to directly advocate for women’s rights,” she says. “As an artist that uses embroidery, I have received a lot of unearned credit for political activism, but with each new project, I seek opportunities to support and engage with my community,” she says.

 

The Story I Tell at Parties is on view at Ivester Contemporary through February 22.

The post Review: Candace Hicks: “The Story I Tell at Parties” appeared first on Glasstire.

The governor also called on lawmakers to prohibit the practice at all schools.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation after a member of conservative activist group Moms for Liberty, saying she was speaking on behalf of a Bellaire parent, claimed teachers were calling a student by preferred pronouns against the parent's will.

Demonstrators in Houston were part of a nationwide protest against the administration of President Donald Trump, who has issued executive orders aimed at cracking down on immigration to the U.S., ending DEI initiatives and reducing federal spending.

In brief: Temperatures are going to get rather cold this week in Houston, with a light freeze possible in the urban core of the city on Thursday morning, and temperatures in the upper 20s possible for inland suburban areas. After that we’ll see a warming trend into the weekend, and next week.

Mardi Gras

The largest celebration of Mardi Gras in Texas begins Friday in Galveston, and runs over the next two weekends. This year I’m excited to say that Matt and I will be the grand marshals for a parade on the second weekend, the Ben E Keith Parade on Saturday March 1, at 4 pm CT. More information on the route can be found here. We’re excited to see everyone.

Our parade is two weeks from now, but we can begin to get a sense of the weather for opening weekend of Mardi Gras. Friday looks to be chilly, with temperatures in the upper 40s, and gray skies. There will be a slight chance of rain on Friday afternoon and evening. Saturday will be warmer, in the 50s, on Galveston Island, but with a decent chance of rain during the daytime. Sunday looks pretty nice, likely with mostly sunny skies and highs in the low 60s. The forecast for the following weekend, of Saturday March 1, is hazier. But temperatures do look to be fairly warm.

Spring is around the corner?

There is no question that this week is going to be cold in Houston, with much of the area likely to see a freeze on Thursday morning. The chill will linger into the weekend. But after that? Next week looks considerably warmer and then we’re on into March. We cannot definitively say that this week will bring our last freezing temperatures of the 2024-2025 winter season, but I think it’s a distinct possibility. So if you like winter, enjoy this week. And if you’re tired of the colder weather, change is on the way.

Monday

Temperatures are in the upper 30s to lower 40s across Houston this morning, and we’re headed toward a fine day. Expect highs in the lower 60s with plenty of sunshine today. Light winds will shift from the northeast to southeast as we return to an onshore, warmer flow. As a result we will see increasing clouds this evening, and low temperatures tonight only falling into the lower 50s.

Tuesday

This will be a cloudy, warmer day with highs of around 70 degrees. We’ll see a chance of light to moderate showers for much of the day, but I don’t anticipate anything too disruptive. A cold front will approach the area during the evening hours, and we could see a broken line of showers and thunderstorms move through the area between 6 pm and midnight. Overall accumulations for most of the region through Tuesday night should be on the order of 0.5 inch. Drier and much colder air will filter into the area after midnight, leading to cold conditions on Wednesday morning of around 40 degrees.

Wednesday

This will be a cold winter day, with partly sunny skies and gusty northerly winds. Highs may reach the upper 40s before temperatures plunge on Wednesday night. At this time I expect lows of about 30 degrees in the city of Houston—hence our post on Sunday about expecting a light freeze rather than a hard freeze—as skies clear out some overnight. Some well-inland areas will likely see temperatures in the mid- to upper-20s.

Thursday

This should be a mostly sunny, chilly day, with high temperatures in the mid-40s. Expect another cold night, although temperatures should be a couple of degrees warmer on Thursday night than Wednesday night.

Friday

Clouds return Friday, and this should help to hold highs in the low- to mid-40s for much of Houston. As atmospheric moisture levels start to recover some, we could see some rain chances later on Friday or Friday night, although accumulations look slight.

Saturday, Sunday, and beyond

We’ll begin a warming trend this weekend that will continue int next week. There will be a chance of light to moderate showers on Saturday, with high temperatures near 50 degrees in Houston. Lows on Saturday night will fall to around 40 degrees with clearing skies. As noted in the Mardi Gras outlook above, Sunday looks sunny and fine, with highs in the vicinity of 60 degrees.

Highs for most of next week should slot into the 70s, with mild nights in the 50s and 60s. It really should feel spring-like for the rest of the month of February.

I watched a lot of the SNL 50 anniversary show Sunday night but was called away for personal stuff.  It turns out I would have missed it anyway.Social media chatter from angry Houston NBC affiliate KPRC 2 viewers says that the station cut off the special early and went to its 10 p.m. newscast.Right around midnight Monday morning, KPRC made no comment on the incident.The Saturday Night Live

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Remember the letter-writer whose doctor’s office constantly left them on hold while they needed to be working? Here’s the update.

I wrote in a few months ago about struggling to schedule doctor’s appointments when I worked at a busy reception desk. Thanks very much to both you and the kind commenters who offered sympathy and suggestions. It was nice to receive confirmation that there wasn’t some easy solution I was missing, and I appreciated the suggestions to use an earpiece from other people who’d done front desk work.

I also saw a few suggestions that my question wasn’t really a work question, which got me thinking about why I’d written in the first place. The real concern underwriting my (admittedly not well-phrased!) question was that having to make these calls was hurting my standing at work. I am (mis)classified as exempt and expected to remain available to answer the phone and address clients during my lunch. Any time I spend where I’m not visibly working as hard as possible is regarded with suspicion, and as I mentioned in the original letter, it has been suggested that I might have to start using vacation or sick time to cover these calls I have to make outside my nonexistent break time. When I wrote in I was concerned less with dealing with my doctor’s office (which I felt sucked and wasn’t going to change) and more with managing the optics/potential consequences at a workplace that, on reflection, also sucks and also isn’t going to change.

So ultimately, I did resolve the doctor’s office problem with doctor’s office solutions. First, I spoke with my doctor, and they gave me permission to use the client portal’s chat functionality, which is supposed to be exclusively for non-urgent medical questions, to request appointments. But more importantly, I changed one of my medications to something I can self-administer at home instead of one I have to go to the doctor’s office multiple times a year for. This reduces the frequency of my scheduling attempts and has the added benefit of saving me sick time. I’m lucky I had this as an option.

I hope this information is helpful to anyone else in a similar situation, and I hope in a future update I’ll be able to tell you I’m working somewhere different.

Me again, here to say that if you’re a receptionist you’re almost certainly not legally allowed to be treated as exempt, and they owe you overtime pay (including back pay) and you should contact an employment lawyer in your state. Meanwhile, carefully log all the hours you work so there’s a record of what you’re owed.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Remember the letter-writer whose anti-vax employee was pressuring a coworker not to vaccinate her baby? Here’s the update.

I really appreciated your advice and several of the thoughts from the commenters as well.

I have weekly one-on-ones with each member of my team, so after reading your response, I used that next meeting with Cordelia as an opportunity to step in, after taking care of our usual business.

I used the framing about how if the roles were reversed, if Dawn didn’t want to vaccinate and someone was pressuring her to, I would need to shut that conversation down, because Dawn deserves to be able to come to work and not be questioned or hassled about any or all of her medical decisions … just like you, Cordelia. I would never let anyone pressure you or give you a hard time about not getting vaccinated, and now I need you to give your coworker that same respect.

She teared up and said, “I just wish someone would have told me not to give my little boy all of those poisonous shots; he would still be alive now,” and then started sobbing. It was horrible.

I gave her some tissues and a little bit of time. After a reasonable amount of time, I told her that I understood that Dawn’s pregnancy might have brought up a lot of really hard and painful memories for her, and that I was ready to support her in any way that was reasonable, but that did not and could not include pressuring Dawn in any way. She nodded and said that she understood.

At this point, there were less than 30 minutes left in the workday, and I asked if she wanted to go ahead and leave a little bit early. She agreed, got her coat, and left work.

I stayed at my desk for a few more minutes to steady myself. (I am not someone who typically makes other people cry, and even though I knew I was doing the right thing, it was still deeply unpleasant.) Once I felt like myself again, I went to Dawn’s desk to check in with her.

After asking if she was okay, I said that I’m sure she had already noticed that pregnant women often get a lot of unsolicited advice and information, and that if she was ever feeling pressured or harassed by a coworker to please let me know, because that wasn’t acceptable at work. She said, “Oh, that’s why Cordelia was upset? Thanks for talking to her. I really appreciate it.” I told her I was happy to do it, that it was my job, and that I was sorry it had taken me so long to notice and put a stop to it originally, but that if there were any further issues, please let me know right away. We had our regularly scheduled one-on-one two days later, and I reiterated this point, but she said everything was good.

Cordelia has seemed more or less like her usual gregarious self since them. The three of them have continued to have lunch together most days and as far as I can tell without truly egregious eavesdropping haven’t been talking about anything more serious than the weather (very cold), Taylor Swift (very talented), and Willow’s new haircut (very cute).

Dawn is just a few weeks away from going on her maternity leave, and is as happy, anxious, excited, and exhausted as you might expect. As far as I can tell, this particular issue is entirely resolved.

Also? Thank goodness for this blog! I am someone who ended up in this role because I was very good at doing the work that Cordelia, Willow, and Dawn are doing, so I guess my bosses figured that I would be naturally good at supervising people doing that same work. But I don’t have any previous experience with managing people, and even with just three people, it is really HARD; it doesn’t come naturally to me at all. I’m very thankful to have this collection of good advice to read, and when push really came to shove, to be able to ask my specific question. Thanks again!

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Canceling a women’s group because of DEI concerns

I’m a PhD student and it seems like my university is trying to cancel the Women in Computer Science networking group that I run. They’re going about it in a really weird way: rather than directly saying “this is illegal D.E.I.,” they’re trying to send us on a bureaucratic runaround to maintain the status quo of funding and booking rooms. We’re in New England, so I suspect it would be locally unpopular to bluntly state that they’re cancelling women’s groups due to D.E.I. How do I fight this? Just delay, delay, delay until this political storm blows over? Fight it head on? Go to the press?

Go to your campus media, and possibly your local media. That’s outrageous.

The only DEI that’s “illegal” is giving a preference to one demographic group over another; gathering to support a particular group or to discuss issues affecting them is not illegal, even under the new federal directives that have been issued. This is a crock.

2. Are minimum requirements really an absolute minimum?

I’ve read your advice that it’s usually okay to apply if I meet about 80% of the qualifications for a job, but does the category of qualifications matter? When job postings split their criteria into “minimum” and “ideal,” is it fine to apply to jobs where I don’t (exactly) meet the “minimum”?

For example, a job will say a candidate “must have (a) five years of experience working with Role; (b) three years of experience in Environment; (c) two years of experience doing Work; and (d) familiarity with This, That, and The Other.” And that “an ideal candidate” would also have qualities/experience (e-h).

I’ll have (b-g) but (a) is iffy: say they want someone with five years experience working with C-level executives and I have five years with directors, or my relevant experience was 15 years ago in a job that isn’t on my resume because it’s otherwise completely unrelated to my current career. I have been applying anyway, addressing the discrepancy in the cover letter, but am I right to still apply?

Yes. If you didn’t have anything near (a), then it wouldn’t make sense to apply since that’s listed as a minimum requirement. But your experience is close enough that it’s reasonable to throw your hat in the ring. It could turn out that they’re being absolute rigid about that requirement, but there’s frequently room for some flexibility of interpretation if you have all the other qualifications. You can’t really know from the outside whether that will be the case or not, but you’re close enough to it that if you’re interested, you should apply.

Related:
should I apply to jobs I’m not fully qualified for?

3. Taking sick leave for emotional upset

I’m wondering your take on something I did a few years ago. I had something very upsetting happen in my personal life and was having a hard time focusing on work; I basically wanted to curl up and cry all day. I work remotely and had a light day — two meetings and no urgent to-dos. I went to both of the meetings but other than that didn’t do any work and used PTO to cover the hours.

To me, this felt like the mental health equivalent of a bad cold. I could have powered through and worked a full day, and I would have if needed. But on that particular day I didn’t need to, so I chose to take it easy. (I was back to work the next day.) What do you think?

That’s a completely legitimate use of a sick day. Mental health is part of your health!

Related:
what do I say when I’m calling in sick for a mental health day?

4. Can I just use the phonetic pronunciation of my name as my digital name?

I have a name that’s pronounced differently from the typical pronunciation. Let’s say my name is Aron – pronounced like A-Ron, not like “Erin.”

Coworkers call me A-Ron, until they see an email exchange with my name spelled Aron and now they call me “Erin.” Would it be okay if I changed my digital signature to A-Ron, so that people (coworkers and clients) will stop making their own assumptions about how to pronounce my name based on how it’s spelled? This is so frustrating to me, to have people who use to call me A-Ron, suddenly start calling me “Erin” because they saw my name in print.

Does anyone care if my digital name is legally correct? Going a step further, what are the legalities when I am writing a contract? I assume that I would use the correct spelling of my name to sign. But would I place the phonetic spelling in the contract, so that people see it and continue to call me by the correct name?

The phonetic pronunciation isn’t normally included in my business emails, but I do include it in my personal email account.

It’s going to cause problems and confusion if you spell your name one way in emails but need it spelled a different way on official forms and contracts (or work travel arrangements that someone else makes for you, etc.). But the solution for work emails is the same solution you’re already using in personal emails: include a note with the phonetic pronunciation in your signature. So your sign-off would be:

Aron Porcupine (pronunciation: A-ron)

That’s not uncommon to do if you have a frequently-mispronounced name, and it should solve a lot of it. You’ll also need to be willing to correct people in the moment if they mispronounce it, though.

5. Can I accept a job offer on the spot?

Can I accept a job right away if I’m sure I want it?

The context: There is one university in town, and I’ve been fairly certain for several months now that (a) it’s the only place better than my current position regularly posting jobs and (2) I want to leave my current position. I’ve applied for several jobs at the university over the past year, interviewed for two before this one, and been a finalist for one, so I’ve already talked to HR about their benefits and PTO. The salary range is available online. I would have twice as much maternity leave. I already know I want the job.

Assuming there are no surprises such as a lower salary than I expect, is there any reason I should delay and ask for a day or two to think it over? I am planning to negotiate salary right away if offered the job.

If you already feel confident you want to accept, there are no surprises in the offer, and there are no additional questions you need answered before making up your mind, there’s no reason you can’t accept on the spot (or begin negotiations immediately)! A lot of people do that.

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2019.

A reader writes:

I have a dark sense of humor. I now realize that my boss does not. During a standard “how was your day off” conversation between my supervisor, manager, and a few peers, my manager mentioned that he was a chaperone for one of his kid’s field trips to Gatorland. Naturally, I asked if any of the kids on the trip got eaten by an alligator. When the response was no, I followed up with a “darn, you should get a refund” joke that everyone laughed at and then the conversation and the morning carried on.

Being the day after Mardi Gras, someone from our office brought in king cake, and our manager asked if anyone found the baby. The coworker who brought it in stated she didn’t hide the baby in the cake because of the chance of someone choking on it. I then followed up with a joke that using a piece of real baby would avoid this issue, provided it’s deboned. Most of my immediate work group found this hilarious, but my manager nervously laughed and had the most concerned look on his face. I then realized the timing of this joke was just a bit later in the morning following the previous joke, and now there’s a chance my boss thinks I’m a kid-cannibal.

My question is: Any tips for navigating humor in the office? Obviously everything was said and understood to be all in a joking manner, but I’m concerned he was a bit weirded out by it. While I’m sure it’s a fine line between what’s hilarious and what’s not okay in an office setting joke-wise, I’d appreciate any help (or even just any good stories) regarding this.

A good guideline at work is to stay away from jokes about harm coming to things that people around you are likely to hold dear — like kids and animals — or jokes that feel mean-spirited.

Dark humor at work is tricky. I don’t want to say “it’s best avoided” because I hate the idea of work stamping all individuality out of people, and often the ways that people deviate from the bland norm are what makes them interesting and likable. But the truth is … yeah, maybe it’s best avoided at work, or confined to really small quantities. (Tell one dark joke at work every few months, and you have an amusing sense of humor, provided it’s the right joke. Tell two in a single day, and you risk being the person who’s not reading the room and is making people uncomfortable.)

Another thing to keep in mind at work is that you don’t know what’s going on in people’s personal lives in the way that you would with close friends. If you make a macabre joke about a baby, you don’t know if you’re saying that to someone who might have lost a child or is dealing with other struggles that will make it land really differently than you intended.

And yes, some of the funniest humor is risky in some way. But you’re not really being asked to bring that kind of sharp edge to work, where your job is to get along with other people, not to entertain.

Dark humor can also drag a team’s mood down. It can be exhausting to hear a lot of it if that’s not your own style (and you’ve got to assume that in any work group, there’s going to be a mix of humor styles — so some people aren’t going to like it, and are going to find it cynical/off-putting/wearying).

None of this means that you have totally bland yourself down and only tell dad jokes from now on. But there’s a lot of room in between.

SEATTLE—Voicing concern about the adult’s aberrant behavior, sources confirmed Monday that it was almost weirder that Richard Shea, a grown man on Roblox, wasn’t using the online gaming platform to groom children. “If he was on here trying to find underage players and lure them into some sort of sexual relationship, that would be super fucked-up, but at least it would explain his reasons for spending hours each day playing virtual experiences designed by children. This guy isn’t a predator, though,” said Roblox player Mason Briggs, 11, telling reporters that the fact that there was no sinister sexual motivation behind Shea’s dogged pursuit of high scores on games such as Blox Fruits and BedWars and that he seemed to play only for fun was bizarre and inexplicable. “I remember he invited me and a few friends to an in-game party where we could all play and communicate together. He never pressured us to reveal contact information or made any sort of inappropriate or explicit remark. He mostly just wanted tips on how to make it through the Ancient Ruins map on Adopt Me! It kind of gave me the creeps.” At press time, Briggs was reportedly all the more disturbed after receiving a private message from Shea informing her that he’d have even more time to play now that he had received tenure.

The post It Almost Weirder That Grown Man On Roblox Isn’t Grooming Children appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Expressing frustration over the vice president’s continued presence in both the White House and his life, President Donald Trump was reportedly unsure Monday about what department he had to cut to make JD Vance go away. “I’ve tried the Education Department, USAID, the FBI, and still he keeps showing up,” said Trump, who lambasted the 40-year-old vice president as “the very definition of fraud and waste.” “What is he, anyway? A judge or something? I could just ask, of course, but then I’d have to talk to him. Even worse, every day JD Vance is still hanging around is one more day I have to spend with Musk.” At press time, Trump resolved to eliminate the Department of Agriculture next.

The post Trump Unsure What Department He Has To Cut To Make JD Vance Go Away appeared first on The Onion.

Kristi Noem has vowed to use her power as Secretary of Homeland Security to crack down on immigration. Here is everything you need to know about the Trump cabinet member’s background.

Ethnicity: Real Housewife

Religion: Cabela’s fundamentalist

Homeland Security Experience: Has Ring camera

Dream Job: Host of an HGTV show about making over the border wall

Who Trump Thinks She Is: Sarah Palin

Hair: 100% horse-grade

Hardest Part Of Job: Sharing an office with Pete Hegseth

Personal Motto: God, family, get out of this country

Favorite Dog Trick: Be dead

The post Political Profile: Kristi Noem appeared first on The Onion.

New comic!
Today's News:

The protagonist in the original Dragon Age is essentially railroaded into joining the Grey Wardens, which explains how you as the player are able to deal with the threat of the darkspawn and the blight without succumbing to it. As the series goes on, we seem to be straying from that premise.

The 5.0 magnitude earthquake is tied for the sixth strongest in state history. Scientists have warned for years that increased fracking in West Texas is causing higher earthquake activity.

Kentucky has seen the worst effects of the rain so far, reporting at least nine dead.

Summary

• Flooding in Kentucky and West Virginia came to fruition as forecast, with at least 8 people killed thus far and numerous rivers seeing their worst flooding since 2021 and in a couple cases near records.
• Next, a major winter storm will bring widespread moderate to heavy snow through the week from the Plains into the Mid-South and Mid-Atlantic, along with possible ice in the Carolinas.
• Some record cold will follow that storm in the Plains, Texas, and the South before a more notable warm-up begins to expand after next weekend.

Kentucky & West Virginia flooding

Yesterday’s high risk of rainfall that we noted on Friday came to fruition as forecast unfortunately.

Overall, the NWS forecast was fantastic for the area, with some areas in eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia seeing a bit more rain than expected. Otherwise, the idea of 3 to 7 inches with higher amounts verified very well. The flooding that’s ongoing is rather bad, and the death toll is at least eight. There are flood warnings all over Kentucky right now, as well as into West Virginia and Ohio and even southwest Pennsylvania. Some notable flooding reports include the Tug Fork River in West Virginia, which saw its second highest crest on record and highest since 1984.

The South Fork of the Kentucky River in Booneville, KY is going to come extremely close to the record that was set there back in 2021.

For many other locations along the Ohio River and elsewhere in Kentucky, the river flooding will be the worst since 2021 as well.

Here comes winter again

The good news now is that the rain is done, and we will get a little time to get some of this high water flushed through the system, though not all of it, especially on the larger rivers, like the Ohio. But the bad news is that cold and winter weather are on the way to some of these same hard-hit locations. A significant and fairly southern track winter storm is on the way this coming week. The storm will get going as a couple strong disturbances track east of the Rockies and ultimately try to “phase” just off the East Coast, resulting in a large, potent nor’easter.

The storm will develop late tomorrow night and Tuesday across the Plains, slide east across the Deep South or Gulf Coast, and then off the East Coast and toward Atlantic Canada, deepening the whole way. This will be a major storm with numerous hazards from heavy rain in the Deep South to potential severe weather to ice or sleet in the Carolinas to heavy snow to the north of there from the Plains into Kentucky to the Jersey Shore and southeast New England.

From the NWS Blend of Models below, you can see approximately how much snow is expected to fall. Anywhere in purple may well see 6 inches or more.

Some select preliminary snowfall estimates include 4 to 8 inches in Kansas City, 5 to 10 inches in St. Louis, 3 to 6 inches in Lexington, KY, 6 to 12 inches in Richmond, 5 to 10 inches in Atlantic City, and 4 to 8 inches on Cape Cod. Visit weather.gov to get the latest forecast for your exact location.

In addition, there are some pretty significant ice accumulations being flagged on a couple models for southeastern North Carolina, including Fayetteville, Goldsboro, and Greenville. A story to watch.

In addition, the cold coming in behind this storm will be notable, with numerous record lows possible on Thursday morning across the Plains, Texas, and the Deep South.

This may not match the intensity of what was seen last month in parts of the country, but it will be dang cold for sure!

For those who have had their fill of winter for a while, there will be notable changes coming. The 8 to 14 day forecast from the Climate Prediction Center shows high confidence in widespread above normal temperatures across much of the country.

The East Coast may continue to see some colder weather, however. More to come!

In brief: There has been a lot of uncertainty about the extent to which the coldest air from this coming week’s Arctic freeze will push all the way down to the coast. It now looks like Houston will be spared the very coldest conditions, so be thinking more along the lines of a light freeze in the city rather than a hard freeze.

Good morning on a beautiful, if chilly Sunday morning. We’re just jumping into your timeline with a weekend update because we finally have some higher confidence in how cold temperatures will get this coming week. If you recall, during the second half of last week, in our forecasts, Matt and I were hedging our bets on somewhere between very cold (low 20s) and not quite so cold (low 30s). At this point we’re leaning toward the milder end of the spectrum, which is good because it would likely spare the majority of the Houston metro area from a hard freeze.

Forecast quick look

Today is going to be cold, with highs in the 50s, and we’ll see a night with temperatures near freezing on Monday morning. Inland areas may even see a light freeze. But then we’re going to see a warmup on Monday and Tuesday, with highs potentially reaching 70 degrees. Rain showers are likely ahead of the next front on Tuesday, which will send temperatures plunging on Tuesday night. The big question has been how much of the Artic air that is going to spill into the lower United States will make it all the way down to the Texas coast. The answer, at this point, seems to be that the coldest air is going to get shunted off to the east.

Thursday morning freeze

We’ll have full details in our Monday forecast, but the bottom line is that low temperatures in Houston on the coldest morning next week, Thursday, are likely to be closer to 30 degrees than 20 degrees. Some areas south of Interstate 10 may not even freeze. Some areas along and north of Highway 105 may still see lows of 25 degrees or below. So the bottom line is that yes, it is going to get cold this week. But not as cold as we experienced in January, and with no precipitation in the cards during the coldest time periods, impacts will likely be minimal. More tomorrow!

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OTTAWA – Pierre Poilievre, who has famously spent his 21-year political career vociferously attacking any person or political entity which opposed him, has vowed to “any day now” begin training that same rhetorical fire on the American billionaires currently threatening Canada’s sovereignty. The Conservative Leader is renowned for never once hesitating to publicly criticize Liberals, […]

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