The Thomas fire burning in Southern California is on the verge of becoming the largest blaze on state record, accomplishing a shocking feat for this time of year.
The relentless wildfire burning in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties has burned a total of 272,000 acres and remains 60 percent contained as of Wednesday, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire, said in a release.
While the fire’s growth has slowed since igniting on Dec. 4, it’s on track to claim the title of the state’s largest fire on record from the 2003 Cedar Fire, which burned more than 280,000 acres in San Diego County. The data is based on records dating back to 1932.
While good weather conditions in recent days have allowed firefighters to make progress in fighting the blaze, wind gusts of up to 70 mph are expected to pick up tonight or tomorrow and could challenge firefighters working on the Thomas fire, Cal Fire spokesman Daniel Berlant said in a Wednesday update.
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Gene Blevins / Reuters
Firefighters attack the Thomas fire’s north flank with backfires near Ojai, Dec. 9, 2017.
ESPN President and Disney Media Networks Co-Chairman John Skipper resigned Monday, citing a struggle with addiction.
“Today I have resigned from my duties as President of ESPN,” Skipper said in a statement.
“I have struggled for many years with a substance addiction,” he added. “I have decided that the most important thing I can do right now is to take care of my problem.
“I come to this public disclosure with embarrassment, trepidation and a feeling of having let others I care about down.
“To my colleagues at ESPN, it has been a privilege. I take great pride in your accomplishments and have complete confidence in your collective ability to continue ESPN’s success.”
Back in September, Vox Day, a Gamergate holdover who has assumed the position of racist alt-right figurehead, published a handful of brief excerpts from what he described as the “Andrew Anglin” style guide. For the blissfully unaware, Anglin is a neo-Nazi troll and propagandist who runs The Daily Stormer, one of the more prominent sites of the white supremacist web. The passages selected by Vox Day in his blog post suggested that Anglin is persnickety about detail and presentation ― except on the subject of the Jews, who are to be blamed “for everything.”
HuffPost has acquired the 17-page document in its entirety, as well as transcripts from an IRC channel where the document was shared in an effort to recruit new writers. It’s more than a style guide for writing internet-friendly neo-Nazi prose; it’s a playbook for the alt-right.
The style guide, according to Vox Day, was a set of directives for whoever might be writing under Anglin’s name, the idea being that Anglin’s army of ghostwriters need to maintain some sense of consistent style. But the guide appears to be for all of the site’s writers, many of whom write under their own names (or at least their own pseudonyms).
In a victory for internet service providers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, the Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to repeal net neutrality rules.
FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, forged ahead with the vote, despite widespread opposition and a request from 18 state attorneys general to delay it over concerns that the public comment process was corrupted by fraudulent messages. The repeal proposal passed 3-2 on party lines.
The hearing was temporarily delayed — and the room evacuated — by a bomb threat before Pai could cast the fifth and final vote. Commissioners were permitted to continue after police and dogs searched the empty chamber.
The repeal rolls back so-called “Title II” regulations that classified the internet as a public utility, and which, among other things, required internet service providers, or ISPs, to treat all of the data traveling on their networks equally.
Republican Roy Moore faced serious accusations of sexual misconduct in his bid to become Alabama’s next senator. But instead of bowing down and backing out, he stayed in the race and went on the attack ― just like Trump did in last year’s presidential race. He accused the media and the establishment of orchestrating a conspiracy against him, and cast the race as pitting good against evil, Christians versus everyone else.
Both Trump and Moore bet that their conservative base would stick by them and push them to victory.
But on Tuesday, Alabama sent a message that this time it wouldn’t work, not even in a conservative state that Trump won by 28 percentage points in 2016.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is calling on President Donald Trump to resign over the more than a dozen sexual misconduct allegations against him.
Booker made the comments Saturday during a campaign event in Alabama to support Doug Jones, the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate. Jones is engaged in a tight race against embattled Republican candidate Roy Moore, whose campaign has been dogged by sexual misconduct accusations.
Booker told VICE News that the sexual harassment allegations against Trump are “far more damning” than the claims against Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who on Thursday announced his resignation from office after multiple women accused him of groping them.
“I just watched Al Franken do the honorable thing and resign,” Booker said. “My question is — why isn’t Donald Trump doing the same thing? Who has more serious allegations against him, with more women who have come forward.”
As President Donald Trump attends the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Saturday, lawyers for his Justice Department are defending a voting law in Texas that a district court judge found intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters.
Trump’s presence at the ceremony has already attracted controversy, after civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said he would not attend, saying Trump’s presence was an insult to the people of the civil rights movement. And the Texas case is just one of a series of examples of how the Trump administration so far has failed to advance a key civil right: the right to vote.
In the Jim Crow South, measures like poll taxes and literacy tests restricted African-Americans from casting ballots. As a result, voting rights were a key piece of the civil rights movement in Mississippi and across the country. In the summer of 1964, hundreds of volunteers came to Mississippi to increase black voter registration in the state. Three of those civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were murdered that summer while working to extend the franchise. In 1965, Lewis was nearly killed during a march for voting rights in Alabama. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, a key plank of the civil rights movement, continues to be one of the most powerful tools for protecting the right to vote.
It’s been difficult to watch the Christian community embrace a person like Donald Trump. Evangelicals have had to perform mental gymnastics to pretend Donald Trump felt about religion anything close to what they claim to feel. This was supposed to be the “family values” party. Mike Pence, who won’t even have dinner with a woman other than his wife, suddenly doesn’t mind that Trump had babies with three different women and said on tape that he liked to grab women by the p***y.
Trump might be a lying, scheming, narcissistic con-artist but he doesn’t pretend to be religious. Sure, he faked it a couple of times by holding up a Bible with pages looking like they’d never been opened. He also tried quoting some scriptures but that went horribly wrong when he said “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” But he doesn’t claim to consult God before making decisions.
As for family values, Trump’s been married three times, dumping each wife for the woman he was having an affair with. His wives raise his kids for him. On the Howard Stern show, Trump said “I mean, I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park.” Other than his adult children who run his businesses, we never see Trump spending time with his kids. There are a couple of photo-ops with his 10-year old, Barron. But instead of golfing at his resorts, shouldn’t Trump spend time with his, um, you know, 10 year old? He also has another daughter who is around so infrequently most people don’t remember her name. Obviously, Trump will never be mistaken for the dad from Leave It To Beaver.
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) said Thursday that he will not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend because President Donald Trump’s “attendance and hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed” in the museum.
“After careful consideration and conversations with church leaders, elected officials, civil rights activists, and many citizens of our congressional districts, we have decided not to attend or participate in the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum,” Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, said in a statement.
Lewis said the president’s “disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants, and National Football League players disrespect the efforts” of civil rights leaders.
“The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi,” he added. “After President Trump departs, we encourage all Mississippians and Americans to visit this historic civil rights museum.”
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Paul Morigi via Getty Images
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) speaking at an event in Washington, D.C., in May. He announced on Thursday that he will not attend the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum this weekend.
It was late morning in an artsy cafe, the smell of coffee and baked goods sweetening the air, and Ashley Bishop sat at a table, recalling a time when she was taught that most of secular American society was worthy of contempt.
Growing up in private evangelical Christian schools, Bishop saw the world in extremes, good and evil, heaven and hell. She was taught that to dance was to sin, that gay people were child molesters and that mental illness was a function of satanic influence. Teachers at her schools talked about slavery as black immigration, and instructors called environmentalists “hippie witches.”
Bishop’s family moved around a lot when she was a child, but her family always enrolled her in evangelical schools.
So when Bishop left school in 2003 and entered the real world at 17, she felt like she was an alien landing on Planet Earth for the first time. Having been cut off from mainstream society, she felt unequipped to handle the job market and develop secular friendships. Lacking shared cultural and historical references, she spent most of her 20s holed up in her bedroom, suffering from crippling social anxiety.
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Amanda Lucier for HuffPost
Ashley Bishop didn’t find out until after she graduated from Christian schools that she was unprepared for a wider world of education.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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Civil Rights Museum
James' World 2 