#welcome to the state house Washington

[doodlemcnoodlee]

Fist off sorry for the big wall of text coming up, I just had to get this out of head so I can finally sleep and not keep thinking about this -v-

Okay so we know that the states do have kids and partners but like do their family's know?? Do the in laws know? Or it just one big family secrets that only a few know about, what are they might to do when their kids and wife get older but they never age??

Won't people question that? Would it be harder for them to date because they have to worry about telling the wrong person that they are a state? So the states make a game out of it to see who can get the most people trying to expose them in the past before Gov gives up all together and just let's the public know? Dose the other parts of the government even know? From the welcome to the table or seems like at lest some of them do, but what about the people in chairs that switched out ever election, some of those people are bound to slip up at some point or get made they were kick out and tell the public! Would the public even believe them at that point???

Or ever, or would it turn into another  conspiracy, OoOo states are alive and the government is trying to bind it from you OoOo, if you told someone would they even believe you? Or would they just think your crazy and start spreading that as a story of a wired guy you met, what about after the government comes out and says it's true? Would anyone believe them???

Would they have to show pictures of them when they were younger to prove, yeah I was a live for a while haha, which being me to another thought, do they have human names? And if so do they change it, if so after how long? Surly they would have to because they would be found out pretty easily if they did, but that would also be a lot of work to change everything so I'm not sure, also if they have banks and stuff would they have to let more people in, or do they just switch banks a lot so they ces keep using the same info?

What if they tell someone but the break up/divorce  have they made special government workers to "take care of them" before they can spared the word, or just make them sound as insane as possible so no one will ever believe them.

Another thing is are their family okay with them living on the state house? Like at all??

Did Gov even clear it with the states first or no? Dude they have kids to rise and your taking them away to lie with other states!

And for what for them to get alone? Who give a shot about that let their kids have a father figure Their life, also how would you even explain that to your kids? I'm sorry I have to leave you guys my work is forcing me to live with my coworkers until we can fet along :D

Also how do their families feel about them possibly having countless children and wife's that died before hand like in the 1800?

Who know how many states have kids from back then, has their Statehood ever been exposed because their family tree would be fucked? Like hey wait why do all theses people lead back to someone very much alive to this day?

What about their kids having kids? Do those kids know about the family secret or are they clueless about it? Are their states just filled up with their family members at this point?

Like hey we have the same great grandpa and look his still alive to this day making more off springs to make his state less empty 😌 surely the government would have to be working overtime just to cover everything up unless everyone already knows about it for some reason, that also bags the question would their people be okay will the state making all the calls since their "human" at lest in a way, would they think the state is making all the calls or the people they elected into the government?

Also what would they do if their kids uses yeah well my dad is the sate of Washington? Could the states use their  positions to kick out families and people they don't like?

Ie a guy bumped into you without saying sorry, welp guess you'll never get a job here again! Nore will anyone in you family either! So it's this tired family line that can't get a job in New York after someone killed his pigeon, his tracking their entire family line to make sure none of them can sneak back into the state no matter how many years have gone by.

Anyways this is all to say them having wife's and kids create a lot of questions I would love to see Ben's opinion on

You know what. Scratch that, Fuck you Ben for making me stay up thinking about fictional anatomical states , because now I just keep coming back to add more stuff!

But on the mean time thank you for coming to another late night rambling with Thunder <3

[aliesbienish]

A study of wolves

Paul Lahote x Reader.

A relocation to La Push brings more than just a new career.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

A rare sunny day was surely a good omen. You read that North West Washington state had one of the wettest climates in the country, so pulling into La Push with clear skies and warm sun rays was surely a positive sign. It was nice to finally be here, out of the bustling city and into an area of lush green trees and isolated beaches.

Deciding to apply for the graduate internship across the country was spur of the moment. Sure getting paid to complete ecological surveys of the areas wolf populations was a dream job, but you had no expectations of getting it and therefore no reason to believe you would be packing up your life. Yet two weeks ago that unrealistic dream suddenly became reality. So here you were in a small reservation town with all your belongings stuffed into the boot of your car feeling for the first time like a proper adult.

You had managed to find your way to a small wooden cabin on the outskirts of town, your home for the duration of this project. You had detoured to Seattle a few days previously to meet your new supervisor and to get training on the process, but otherwise you were pretty much autonomous. You were the only one from national parks stationed in the area, but the local La Push council were kind enough to support you during this project. They had approved use of their cabin, and negotiated to have a council member with you during work in the field. This you were rather thankful for, knowing that managing to get lost and costing the parks department money to send out a rescue wouldn’t be a good look for your career.

Stepping out of the car, and taking a big stretch, you turned around to see two men waiting on the cabins porch.

“You must be [y/n], welcome to La Push,” A smiling man in a wheelchair declared as he offered his hand to shake. “I’m Billy Black, the chief here. This is Sam Uley, he and a few others will be the ones to help you navigate our forests ,”

“Thank you for having me, it’s lovely to meet you both.”

“We just wanted to welcome you, as well as invite you out for a bonfire this evening. We tell traditional stories, and have a barbecue. But more importantly it would be a good chance to meet some locals.”

“Absolutely, as long as I’m not intruding that would be brilliant,”

“Not at all,” Sam’s deep voice replies, speaking for the first time. “My partner and I live a few houses down, we’ll collect you on our walk down so you don’t get lost,”

You smiles and nodded gratefully. After collecting the cabins keys from Billy and declining Sam’s help to move your bags, since you had so little anyway, they were on their way and you started to get settled.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

The summer sun was still high in the sky when Sam came to collect you that evening. He introduced you to his fiancé Emily who you instantly took a liking too. She seemed bubbly and inviting, happily asking questions and getting to know you. You had quickly schooled yourself when you first saw her, ignoring the scar that cut across her otherwise flawless face. However you were curious as it seemed to match the claw size of the gray wolves that roamed the area.

The walk to the beach was short and flat, and you were soon making your way out onto the sand. You heard the distant sound of chatter as Sam lead you passed driftwood and out onto the open beach. Ignoring the growing nerves settling in your stomach you followed him and Emily towards the large unlit bonfire surrounded by people. Billy was the first one you spotted and he quickly invited you over and introduced you to the other senior council members. He then called over his teenage son Jacob, who reluctantly said hi with his friends Quil and Embry.

After speaking with council members, mostly about the work you would be doing, it was time for food. Plates were passed around and you were happily munching on roast potatoes when the bonfire was lit and Billy’s voice started to reverberate around the group. The stories of the Quileute people and their shifter legends were fascinating. In particular their link with wolves sparked your interest, and you couldn’t help wonder how big the local wolf population was back in the days of Taha Aki.

Eventually the legends came to a close and you came back to reality. The older members began to pack up and Emily beckoned you over from further down the beach.

“[Y/N], hope you’re having a good time. The elders and kids will be heading off but we are staying around for a few drinks. If you’re happy to stay I can introduce you to a few people your own age.”

“That would be amazing,”

Emily smiled and thrust a can of beer into your hand which you gratefully accepted. A bit of liquid courage wouldn’t go astray. She lead you towards the small group hanging around the water.

“Hi [y/n], “ Sam greeted as you invaded the circle. “Babe,” he placed a kiss on Emily’s forehead and wrapped her into his side.

“[Y/n] is the parks worker who Billy told us about. [Y/n] this is Kim,” she pointed to the smiling short brunette who gave a small wave. “Her boyfriend Jared,” the taller boy with arms wrapped over Kim’s shoulders gave a cheery hello. “And Paul. Who along with Sam and Jared will be helping you with the study,”

You turned to face the last member of the small group, who had grunted as a greeting. Paul was the closest to you and you had to crane your neck to see him. Once you caught a glimpse of his face, which was lit by the dying embers of the fire, time seemed to slow. Your eyes met and you could hear him audibly gasp.

That trigged noise in the rest of the group that you didn’t quite understand. Emily gave a little clap, Jared and Kim giggled with each other and you were sure Sam was almost sighing in relief.

You snapped out of the trance and almost reluctantly pulled your gaze away.

“It’s lovely to meet you all, and thank you for being so welcoming.” You smiled, not realising your whole life was about to change.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Part two

Well looks who’s branching out from Bridgerton. Thought it was time to go back to my fanfic writing roots, I almost feel like I’m 13 again. Anyone keen in a part two?

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #18

May 10-17 2024

The Justice Department endorses lifting many restrictions on marijuana. Since the 1970s marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive classification for drugs that are highly addictive, dangerous and have no medical use, like heroin. Schedule I drugs are nearly impossible to get approval for research studies greatly hampering attempts to understand marijuana and any medical benefits it may have. The DoJ recommends moving it to Schedule III, drugs with low risk of abuse like anabolic steroids, and testosterone. This will allow for greater research, likely allow medical marijuana, and make marijuana a much less serious offense. President Biden welcomed DoJ's decision, a result a review of policy he ordered. Biden in his message talked about how he's pardoned everyone convicted of marijuana possession federally. The President repeated a phrase he's said many times "No-one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,"

The Department of Interior announced no new coal mining in America's largest coal producing region. The moratorium on new coal leases has been hailed as the single biggest step so fair toward ending coal in the US. The Powder River Basin area of Wyoming and Montana produces 40% of the nations coal, the whole state of West Virginia is just 14%. The new rule is estimated to reduce emissions by the equivalent of 293 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, the same as taking 63 million gas powered cars off the road.

Vice-President Harris announced that the Biden-Harris Administration had broken records by investing $16 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Harris, a graduate of Howard University, is the first President or Vice-President to have gone to a HBCU. The Administration's investment of $900 million so far in 2024 brought the total investment of the Biden-Harris administration in HBCUs to $16 billion more than double the record $7 billion. HBCUs produce 40% of black engineers, 50% of black teachers, 70% of black doctors and dentists, and 80% of black judges. HBCUs also have a much better record of helping social mobility and moving people out of generational poverty than other colleges and universities.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $30 billion dollars in renewal funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program. The program supports 2.3 million families that are in need of housing with vouchers that help pay rent. This funding represents a $2 billion dollar increase over last year.

The Department of Agriculture announced $671.4 million in investments in rural infrastructure. The money will go to project to improve rural electric grids, as well as drinking water and wastewater treatment infrastructure. The money will go to 47 projects across 23 states.

HUD announced a record breaking $1.1 billion dollar investment in Tribal housing and community development. HUD plans just over 1 billion dollars for the Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG) program. This is a 40% increase in funding over 2023 and marks the largest ever funding investment in Indian housing. HUD also is investing $75 million in community development, supporting building and rehabbing community buildings in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

The Department of Transportation announced $2 billion in investments in America's busiest passenger rail route, the Northeast Corridor between Washington DC and Boston. This is part of a 15 year, $176 billion plan to rebuild the corridor’s infrastructure and prepare for increased ridership and more trains. So far investments have seen a 25% increase, 7 million riders, over figures last year. a fully funded plan would almost double Amtrak service between New York City and Washington, D.C., and increase service between New York City and Boston by 50%. It would also allow a 60% increase in commuter trains.

HUD announced plans to streamline its HOME program. Currently the largest federal program to help build affordable housing, the streamlining of the rules will speed up building and help meet the Biden Administration's goal of 2 million new affordable housing units. HUD announced last week $1.3 billion dollars for the HOME program, which built 13,000 new units of housing in 2023 and helped 13,000 families with rental assistance

The Department of Interior announced $520 million in new water projects to help protect against drought in the western states. The funding will support 57 water related projects across 18 western states. The projects focus on climate resilience and drought prevention, as well as improving aging water delivery systems, and improving hydropower generation.

The Departments of Agriculture and HHS have stepped up efforts to wipe out the H5N1 virus prevent its spread to humans while protecting farmers livelihoods. The virus is currently effecting dairy cattle in the Texas panhandle region. The USDA and HSS are releasing wide ranging funds to help support farms equipping workers with Personal Protective Equipment, covering Veterinary costs, as well as compensating farmers for lost revenue. HHS and the CDC announced $101 million in testing an monitoring. This early detection and action is key to preventing another Covid style pandemic.

The Senate confirmed Sanket Bulsara to a life time federal judgeship in New York and Eric Schulte and Camela Theeler to lifetime federal judgeships in South Dakota. This brings the total number of judges appointed by President Biden to 197. For the first time in history the majority of a President's judicial nominees have not been white men.

Bonus: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that transgender health insurance exclusions were illegal. The ruling came from a case first filed in 2019 where an employer refused to cover an employee's gender affirming surgery. The court in its ruling sited new guidance from the Biden Administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that declared that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects trans people in the work place. These kinds of guidelines are often sited in court and carry great weight.

[mariacallous]

Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), soon to be the first transgender member of Congress, was targeted by multiple Republican measures to bar transgender women from using Capitol bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

Democrats have rallied to McBride’s defense, accusing Republicans of bullying McBride and attacking other LGBTQ+ people who work at and visit the Capitol.

Democrats have tried to refocus the conversation on other issues important to voters, such as healthcare and the high cost of living — taking a page from McBride’s own political playbook.

At a Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday, Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) watched as colleagues approached and offered their support to Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who will soon be sworn in as the first out transgender member of Congress.

“We have your back,” Balint recalled her fellow representatives telling McBride. “We stand with you.”

At a Thursday event where incoming House freshmen got assigned offices, McBride’s name was met with the loudest applause.

According to Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, many Democratic members are excited to welcome and meet McBride — not just as a queer history-maker, but as a new colleague whose reputation as an effective state legislator in Delaware preceded her to Washington.

The support has been intentionally loud, Balint said, because Democrats also want to send an unequivocal message to House Republicans who have targeted McBride with comments and actions in recent days that Democrats “are not going to retreat” on transgender rights.

“We have to absolutely recommit ourselves to this fight, for protecting everyone’s inherent dignity,” Balint said.

On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) filed a resolution that would prohibit transgender women from using Capitol bathrooms that align with their gender identity. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced a similar policy for Capitol bathrooms, locker rooms and changing rooms. The same day, Mace filed a bill that would expand such bans to federal facilities across the country.

Mace said her measures, which would require approval, are to protect women and girls, then launched a new line of merchandise to profit off her stance. She has previously espoused support for LGBTQ+ rights.

In issuing his bathroom rule, which falls under his purview as speaker, Johnson said, “Women deserve women’s-only spaces.” He also noted that all members have private bathrooms within their offices — though those can be far from the House floor.

The day prior, Johnson had responded to a question about the issue by stressing the need to “treat all persons with dignity and respect.”

Access to bathrooms has long been an issue for women at the Capitol, which originally operated on the presumption that legislators were men. Only after more and more women won seats in Congress and called out the dearth of facilities for them did the issue get resolved.

With the latest measures targeting McBride, Democrats say they are struggling to combat fresh discrimination in the same sphere — a backsliding they view as particularly cruel for its targeting of a single incoming legislator, and extra alarming for its potential to harm other queer people who visit or work in the Capitol.

“This incredibly craven and cruel attack directed at [McBride] was certainly intended to dehumanize her before she has even been sworn in, but it actually doesn’t just affect our first trans member of Congress,” Balint said. “It impacts all of the people who work on Capitol Hill who identify as trans and nonbinary. It impacts the reporters who cover the Hill that identify as trans and nonbinary. And it also impacts every single one of our constituents who come into the halls of Congress to meet with us.”

Speaking out in opposition to the measures is about supporting McBride, who is “a serious legislator” and wants to get to work on a range of tough issues without having to worry about where she can get to a toilet, Balint said. But it is also about “showing the LGBTQ community across the country that we are standing up for them and pushing back.”

The debate follows an election cycle steeped in anti-transgender rhetoric, when many Republicans — including President-elect Donald Trump — took to ridiculing Democrats over their support for transgender equality as a central campaign message, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in collective ad spending.

“The Republican Party has laser-focused on transgender inclusion as something that it wants to roll back, and so the exciting addition of the first openly trans member of Congress has prompted a hideous response — which is [for them] to participate in an ad hominem attack that takes the form of exclusion,” said Kate Redburn, co-director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.

Democrats have at times struggled to respond to the barrage of Republican attacks. However, in the last week, they seem to have landed on an approach out of McBride’s own playbook in Delaware — where she won a statewide congressional seat not by running away from her transgender identity and support for queer rights, but by contextualizing them alongside other important issues, such as the cost of living and access to healthcare.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote on X on Tuesday that she is proud to serve alongside McBride, and that it was “disappointing to see Republicans pull stunts” attacking her.

“They should take a page out of Rep-Elect McBride’s book,” Pressley wrote, “and focus on actually governing.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) similarly questioned Republicans’ decision to start the next Congress by “bullying” McBride instead of focusing on real issues. “This is what we’re doing?” he said.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has a transgender grandson and has been outspoken against past anti-LGBTQ+ measures, hit a similar note in an interview Thursday, in which she called the Republican measures attacking McBride “absolutely outrageous” and “completely out of line.”

“What a ridiculous focus this is,” she said. “There are needs of many, many Americans who don’t have the healthcare that they need, seniors who can’t afford their medications. Those are the things that we should get to work on, that I’m sure Sarah would want to get to work on — and this is just off the deep end.”

In her own remarks, McBride has acknowledged what many view as the bigotry at the root of the Republican measures, but also tried to refocus the conversation on getting things done for her constituents.

“I’m not here to fight about bathrooms. I’m here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families,” she said in a statement Wednesday. She said Johnson’s rules were an “effort to distract from the real issues facing this country,” but that she wouldn’t let them distract her — even as she follows them.

On Thursday, she made clear that she will work to ensure Capitol Hill is safe for everyone, including her LGBTQ+ constituents, but doesn’t plan on allowing “a right wing culture war machine” to turn her identity “into the issue.”

Lisa Goodman, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist in Delaware and friend of McBride’s, said the representative-elect’s family and friends back home “are disappointed that this is how people who are going to be her colleagues are greeting her.”

But they aren’t worried, Goodman said, because they know McBride is capable of navigating such waters.

“She can handle these attacks and keep focused on what is the big picture — what is important in the big picture — like no one I have ever met,” Goodman said.

Goodman said McBride has a rare talent for winning over people, which will serve her well in the coming months, as she gets to know her new colleagues — Democrats and Republicans alike.

“She’s just a deeply good person, and my hope is that, as her Republican colleagues in Congress get to know her, they will see her as a person and not as some unknown member of the trans community who they feel it’s OK to attack,” Goodman said.

Balint said several Republican House members have told her in private that they support the LGBTQ+ community and don’t support divisive policies. She said she hopes McBride’s kindness and humanity in the face of such attacks will bring those Republicans to her side — and maybe even inspire them to take a stand for her.

“It is their time to finally show some courage,” Balint said. “I’m asking them to stand up for the basic, inherent dignity of all of us here in this building.”

[palestinegenocide]

The exquisite choreography of hosting a war criminal at the White House

The grisly farce that is the Biden administration’s support for Israeli war crimes became even more grotesque this week.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington in a few days. Democrats believe overwhelmingly that Netanyahu is carrying out a genocide– nearly 39,000 Palestinians deaths with thousands more under the rubble. So some Dems will boycott Netanyahu’s speech to the Congress, but the Democratic Party leadership is rolling out the welcome mat.

Netanyahu is to meet at the White House with the president who has provided Israel with endless munitions to carry out the war. And though many expect Biden to drop out of the presidential race,the New York Times says Biden won’t do so before he meets with Netanyahu, because Biden does not want to give the far-right-wing prime minister who has repeatedly bossed Democratic presidents the “satisfaction” of seeing Biden when he’s a lame duck.

Though if you think Kamala Harris will stand up for human rights and U.S. interests if she becomes president—think again, she is going to meet Netanyahu too, the White House assured the press.

Why meet with this war criminal at all? To answer that, consider who are the most important voters in the Biden debate right now: the donors who are the last shoe to drop on Biden’s reelection hopes, pulling their money to pressure the president to get out of the race.

Many of these donors now in rebellion are big Israel supporters. Michael Moritz the latest billionaire to put it to Biden has been in solidarity with Israel. Reid Hoffman who organized a concerned donors call with Kamala Harris calls Israeli forces a model.

While another group of 75 donors almost all of whom want Biden out is reported by CNBC to include as leaders Ari Emanuel and his brother Zeke. Ari Emanuel said that Israel’s war is “justified” in May 2024, and has said that he loves the country. Of course, there are Dem donors who don’t care about Israel. But the power map is clear.

It’s not like Trump is any different. The top Republican donor is thought to be Miriam Adelson, the Israeli doctor, and she is reportedly spending millions to stake Trump to a promise to allow Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Just as Adelson’s late husband Sheldon, once the biggest Republican donor, asked Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem and trash the Iran deal, and Trump followed through, in utter contempt for the Palestinian people and world leaders.

So our Middle East policy is up for bid by billionaire zealots. This is what a liberal democracy looks like.

In any just order, the U.S. would have nothing to do with Israel. The country is committing flagrant war crimes in Gaza, killing journalists and athletes and other civilians with complete impunity.

And the International Court of Justice last week issued (yet another) ruling saying that the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are violations of international law.

Back in December 2016 the Obama administration after 8 years of being walked over by Netanyahu allowed the U.N. Security Council to issue the same determination, in a resolution on which Obama abstained, that condemned the occupation. President-elect Trump called the Russians to try and stop the resolution but it went through. And of course nothing came of it. The Biden administration has never followed through on the landgrab, and the ethnic cleansing.

Al Jazeera graphic showing Israeli land seizures at a 25 year high in West Bank.

The Knesset passed a resolution this week saying there must never be a Palestinian state; that would be an “existential threat” to Israel.

Netanyahu repeated the claim of Jewish supremacy in his response to the International Court of Justice.

The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland. No absurd opinion in the Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestoral home.

The Biden administration is incapable of condemning these racists. “It’s like pulling teeth to get you to say something on this,” a reporter complained in the State Department this week after the Knesset’s attack on a Palestinian state.

Antony Blinken was unable to say a critical word about Netanyahu during a fawning interview in Aspen (by NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly) in which he used a football metaphor to claim the U.S. was doing something to stop the genocide. “I believe we’re inside the 10-yard line and driving toward the goal line in getting an agreement that would produce a ceasefire, get the hostages home, and put us on a better track to trying to build lasting peace and stability.”

And keep the bombs flowing, as Israel bombs hospitals and refugee camps…

Netanyahu should be persona non grata in Washington. But he will be welcomed with open arms.

As a former Biden official Tariq Habash said on a webinar this week, our policy is “rooted in anti-Palestinian racism”– in the dehumanization and erasure of Palestinians.

Habash quit the Biden administration in January. Let’s hope that his courage and honesty are infectious.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Welcome to the mystery mansion. The owners won't allow the whole house to be pictured, and won't disclose the address, except that it was built in 1914 and is in Seattle, Washington. It has 12bds, 15ba, and had a major restoration, paying complete attention to authentic details. Priced at $4.998M, but it's perfection.

Before you enter the grand entrance, there's a large foyer with benches.

Delicately beautiful stained glass window. Look at the detailed wood carving.

What an amazingly spacious entrance hall.

Beautiful library- love that corner chair right by the shelves.

Gorgeous dining room with stunning wood walls and a built-in cabinet.

The thing about these gorgeous historic homes is that unless you have furniture like this, it's not going to look the same.

Off the dining room is this wonderful sunroom.

In the kitchen they went with a completely modern look with a few older elements like the reproduction lighting and the built-in hutch.

Wow, look at the original closet in this room.

The grand staircase has such a big landing, there's room for 2 loveseats and a coffee table. Note the lovely leaded glass windows.

Very spacious main bedroom is one of 12.

What an elegant closet/dressing room. You can tell that the original floor was stripped and refinished.

Amazing. This is one of 15 baths, and it's completely modernized, but they used reproduction plumbing fixtures. It's very light and bright now, but it has Victorian style plumbing. Look at that rib shower.

The porch out front has a covered area, an open patio, and stairs to the garden.

Very large brick patio.

Plus, a porte cochere. The home sits on about 1/3 of an acre.

[zvaigzdelasas]

US Threats led to rupture of vital military ties, Nigerien leader says - WaPo

A crucial military relationship between the United States and its closest West African ally, the country of Niger, ruptured this spring after a visiting U.S. official made threats during last-ditch negotiations over whether American troops based there would be allowed to remain, according to the country’s prime minister.

In an exclusive interview, Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine put the blame for the breakdown squarely on the United States, accusing American officials of trying to dictate which countries Niger could partner with and failing to justify the U.S. troop presence, now scheduled to end in the coming months. Niger has been central to efforts to contain a growing Islamist insurgency in West Africa.

The rift between the former allies has created an opportunity for Russia, which has moved quickly to deepen its relationship with Niger, dispatching troops to the capital, Niamey, last month to train the Nigerien military and supplying a new air defense system. Russian and U.S. troops now occupy opposite ends of an air base.

After a military coup d’état ousted Niger’s democratically elected president last year, the United States froze security support as required by U.S. law and paused counterterrorism activities, which had involved intelligence gathering on regional militant activities from a massive drone base in the country’s north. The United States has kept more than 1,000 military personnel in place while negotiating with Niger over their status and urging the junta to begin restoring democracy.

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Zeine said. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us. We have seen what the United States will do to defend its allies, because we have seen Ukraine and Israel.”

Niger’s insistence that American troops depart culminated in the U.S. announcement last month that it would withdraw them. The pullout, which two U.S. officials said would begin in coming months, represents a significant setback for the Biden administration and will force it to reconfigure its strategy for countering Islamist extremists in the volatile Sahel region.

Though tense discussions between U.S. and Nigerien officials have been previously reported, Zeine’s remarks revealed the extent of the disconnect between the two countries. While the Americans were pressing their counterparts over democracy and their relations with other countries, Niger was asking for additional military equipment and what it considered a more equitable relationship between the two forces, according to his account. He also revealed just how exasperated the Nigeriens had become with the United States.

Relations with the United States have been strained since the junta took power, appointing Zeine, an economist, as prime minister two weeks later. The U.S. government condemned the coup and called for the release of President Mohamed Bazoum, who was put under house arrest.

Zeine said leaders of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or by its French initials CNSP, were bewildered that the United States had frozen military support while insisting on keeping the troops in the country without justifying their continued presence. The American response in the wake of Niger’s coup contrasted sharply with that of other nations, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, he said, which have welcomed the new Nigerien leaders with “open arms.”

He said the Nigerien leaders took particular umbrage at remarks by Molly Phee, the State Department’s top official for African affairs, who he said had urged the government during a March visit to Niamey to refrain from engaging with Iran and Russia in ways objectionable to Washington if Niger wanted to continue its security relationship with the United States. He also said Phee had further threatened sanctions if Niger pursued a deal to sell uranium to Iran.

“When she finished, I said, ‘Madame, I am going to summarize in two points what you have said,’” recounted Zeine, who has led negotiations with the United States. “First, you have come here to threaten us in our country. That is unacceptable. And you have come here to tell us with whom we can have relationships, which is also unacceptable. And you have done it all with a condescending tone and a lack of respect.”[...]

Since 2012, the United States has maintained a military presence in Niger, with most U.S. personnel stationed at the Agadez drone base, which cost about $110 million to build. That base has been “impactful” for counterterrorism efforts across the region, said Gen. Michael E. Langley, who heads U.S. military operations in Africa. In an interview earlier this year, Langley warned that the U.S. losing its footprint in Niger would “degrade our ability to do active watching and warning, including for homeland defense.”[...]

When Phee first arrived in Niger in December, Zeine said, he showed her photographs of Nigeriens waving American flags during protests against France, Niger’s former colonial power. While protesters set fires and smashed windows at the French Embassy, he noted, they left the U.S. Embassy untouched.

“Nigeriens were saying, ‘Americans are our friends, they will help us this time to annihilate the terrorists,’” said Zeine. “But there was radio silence.” He added that Niger would have not looked to Russia and other countries for help if the United States had responded to requests for more support, including for planes, drones and an air defense system.[...]

Although Niger is insisting that the U.S. military leave, Zeine said that his government wants to continue economic and diplomatic relations with the United States and that “no Nigerien considers the United States as the enemy.” He said he told Phee and Campbell that Niger would rather have American investors than soldiers.

“If American investors arrived, we would give them what they wanted,” he recounted telling the States Department officials. “We have uranium. We have oil. We have lithium. Come, invest. It is all we want.”

14 May 24

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

Democratic governors and attorneys general are working to Trump-proof their states ahead of his inauguration, gearing up to ensure their residents have access to medication abortion and the resources in place to fight Donald Trump’s actions in court. On Thursday morning, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he is taking the first step to safeguard his state from some of Trump's worst policies by calling a special legislative session. Newsom wants the legislature to pass more funding for the California Department of Justice so that it can file lawsuits against Trump’s actions if need be. "The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack—and we won’t sit idle," Newsom said in a release. "California has faced this challenge before, and we know how to respond. We are prepared, and we will do everything necessary to ensure Californians have the support and resources they need to thrive."

Newsom thinks California will have to fight Trump on reproductive freedom and protecting LGBTQ+ individuals, as Trump’s Project 2025 agenda calls for banning medication abortion and rolling back LGBTQ+ rights. For example, Project 2025 calls for banning medication abortion, for once again banning transgender individuals from serving in the military, and eliminating protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. “No matter what the incoming Administration has in store, California will keep moving forward,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a news release. “We’ve been through this before, and we stand ready to defend your rights and protect California values. We’re working closely with the Governor and the Legislature to shore up our defenses and ensure we have the resources we need to take on each fight as it comes.” Other states such as Massachusetts, Washington, and New York have stockpiled doses of mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion that Republicans want to ban nationwide. Project 2025 calls for revoking mifepristone’s Food and Drug Administration approval, even though the drug has been proven to be safe. 

[...] And Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker held a news conference on Thursday to assure residents that “Illinois will always strive to make you welcome and safe and protected."  Pritzker said, "Chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied it. Perhaps this time may be different. But if it isn't, Illinois will remain a place of stability and competent governance."

This is what needs to be done in Blue states like California, New York, and Illinois: Trump-proofing their states to protect access to abortion, gender-affirming care, mifepristone, and LGBTQ+ rights.

This can be a prelude to a potential blue state secession to protect what made America great.

[jimblejamblewritings]

Our Violent Delights Will Not Have Violent Ends: The Twilight Saga Rewrite (Book 1, Twilight) | Part 1.

Summary: Y/N Swan is just like every other girl and she likes it that way. Normal is fantastic. Normal creates a functioning member of society. Normal is the reason she moved to a small town to live with her police officer father... only to find out that she gets the farthest thing from what she wanted. \\ This is a re-write of Twilight. Basically if I had been Stephenie Meyer and wrote Twilight. I will be combining some of the movie and book and the pace will be more like the movies. Not terribly high word count like the books. We might equal one book's word count when we finish doing all four of them. Hope you enjoy!

Warnings for the Series: light violence, light angst, light smut

Warnings for the Chapter: none

Pairing: Edward Cullen x reader, Jacob Black x reader

Word Count: 3.5k

Author's Note: If there are "I" written anywhere in the story, please let me know. I'm posting this story on Wattpad in the I form so I might forget to erase one or two here. Enjoy being casted in the feature role of Bella Swan. Let's go:

A police car pulled up in front of you as you waited outside Seattle-Tacoma International. To think, only four months ago you were trying to purchase plane tickets for spring break. Only you wanted to go to New York with the rest of your classmates. The last place you were ever thinking of was Washington. The state, not even D.C. 

And more importantly not Forks, Washington. But you promised your mom that you could handle this. The only thing worse than that small town for the entire year was traveling so much you might as well be homeschooled. When your mom remarried her now husband, Phil, he played baseball for the Phoenix team.

Phil’s good but he wasn’t good enough to be traded around. You thought your whole life would be Arizona. Until Florida called. And your sweet stepfather and lovingly erratic mother packed up everything before suddenly remembering you had school. So moving to Forks had been a you decision but you're not sure how good of a decision that was. 

The car in front of you rolled down its window until you could see your dad. Charlie flashed a smile that you struggled to return. He’s great. You've spent every single summer with him and almost every one of those summers was in Forks.

But two months is a lot different from the entire school year. You knew only a few people that would be going to Forks High School. A pang hit your heart when you thought about your friends again. You guys promised to call but you'd probably fall out of each other’s lives anyway. But you tried to smile once more, putting your suitcases in the back of the police car and pulling on a thick wool sweater over your shirt and overalls. 

As soon as you slid into the passenger seat, it started to rain — a stark reminder that this wasn’t Phoenix. 

You could feel Charlie’s head keep turning to the side to look at you. Like your dad in more ways than one, the start to small talk was awkward for you. The two of you went back and forth in a silent dance until Charlie saved you from speaking about the weather. 

“Your hair has gotten longer.” 

You grabbed a piece of your now shoulder length hair. Two years ago, in the spur of the moment, you had shaved your head to start over. It was the moment after that you decided you would never do that again. Charlie had to suffer the period of you not being able to look at yourself in the mirror. You looked like an egg. It took dedication but your hair was now long and damage free. 

“Yeah, I’ve tried to stop using heat completely. Except the blow dryer.” 

While starting small talk might have been difficult, once Charlie and you were talking no one could get you to stop. The conversation was still going as the car passed the ‘Welcome to Forks’ sign that should have read population: too damn small instead of an actual number — and even when we got out of the car and into the house. Your room wasn’t terribly different from other summers but you noticed drawers and wardrobes that weren’t there before. You guessed when one permanently moves they suddenly need storage for their things. Charlie even cleared more bathroom space. 

That was probably the one thing you hated about this house. One bathroom. Someone should have slapped the architect that ever suggested this… and then slap the builder that followed through anyway. 

You only unpacked the bare essentials for the next week or so. The rest could be slowly unpacked as time went on. Charlie helped for a few hours before doing his shuffle he does whenever he’s uncomfortable. All he could say was okay before leaving the room.

Even though you two can talk for hours, he’s still awkward to his core. You supposed that you should be happy as a teenager that he doesn’t hover. He never has. You used to think it was because being a cop made him busy all the time and he just developed the habit. As the years went on, it became more apparent that it was just his personality. 

A car honk right outside the window caught your attention. You looked through the glass to see an orange pickup truck and some of the only two faces in town that were familiar to you. Your feet carried you out the door before you were even aware until you crashed right into a boy with hair longer than yours, roughly your height, and only a few months younger in age. 

“Woah, Y/N/N, slow down before you hurt yourself. You know you can't be trusted on your own two feet. I'm surprised you're still standing right now or is it just because I'm holding you up.” Jacob said as he gave you a smile. 

“Whatever, dick."

"Whoa, Y/F/N. Language when you're standing right in front of me," Dad interjected but he didn't look that offended.

"Sorry... Hi, Billy.” 

“Hi, Y/N. Glad you’re back and here to stay. Charlie wouldn’t shut up about it since you told him.” 

Your dad rolled his eyes. “Keep talking and I’ll roll that wheelchair right into the middle of the road.” 

“Not before I ram you in the ankles.” 

You and Jacob’s dads abandoned you to play fight in the road. You couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight. 

“I’m glad to see they’re still behaving like that.” 

“Oh, yeah. Days go by and nothing’s different. It's getting worse with old age actually, I'm convinced that's why Mom is always on business trips… So, do you like your present?” 

You turned to face Jacob. “Hmm?” 

He patted the truck just as your dads came back. Your eyes went wide and your lips twitched until they formed a large smile. 

“Are you serious? This is perfect! Dad, you didn’t have to get me a car.” 

Charlie shrugged. “I work late sometimes and thought that your personal autonomy was very important.” 

He’s trying to sound like a parent that actually read the child psychology books. The why he bought me a car didn’t matter. It was the fact that he just did. A truck didn’t exactly fit my aesthetic but something about vintage ones totally did.

"Don't worry, I worked on it myself. Everything's perfect," Jacob said.

"You did this? By yourself now? Jake, what the heck. That's crazy you're doing it on your own now. Why are you so amazing?"

Before anyone could actually answer you, you whipped open the door and sat inside. You remembered this truck very well from playing in it since you and Jake were four. Billy had this thing for at least seventeen years. The first thing you noticed were the new leather seats. They were pink instead of gray. The second thing you noticed was the engine’s sound. Smoother than it had ever sounded before. 

Jacob opened the passenger door, hopping in to show you how the car operated. He was a genius at fixing cars and trucks. You wouldn’t be surprised if he owned his own mechanic shop some day. 

“And that’s it.” He patted the steering wheel. “If anything breaks, let me know.” 

“Thank you! God, I’m so glad I have one recognizable face at school.” 

“You’ve only been missed two summers. Did you already forget I don’t go to Forks?” 

“Right.” 

Jake, like most of the Quileute kids, went to a high school on the reservation in La Push. People weren’t as judgmental when they all shared something common. There they could wear their hair long, tell folklore stories without getting made fun of, or try speaking little words here and there of Quileute so the language doesn’t die with their great grandparents.

All things you would have loved to be part of or just sit on the sidelines and observe. Maybe you should have complained to Charlie until you went there. Now you couldn’t leech off of Jacob and had to actually make friends on your own. Disgusting. 

Your sentiments didn’t change as you got in the truck and headed to school. You were assigned a parking space the moment you transferred. Unlucky you, you were stuck in the front parking lot.

So much for leaving to go get a better lunch than whatever grub they were going to serve at the cafeteria. Charlie worked too much to even think about asking him to get you something. And you couldn’t ask him to cook either. He’s not really shit at it. It's just his taste buds suck. So unless you wanted to text him a specific lunch menu each Sunday, it was Russian Roulette of lunch. That was too much work. Charlie thinks salami and grapes belong on the same piece of Nutella and butter toast. 

When you finally found the parking space, after three circles around, you turned off the engine and found a bunch of eyes greeting you. Lots of them. That’s what being the new kid in a small town gets a person. The eyes stopped staring once you got out of your truck — they needed a face to match the name Bella Swan. 

“Nice ride,” a black boy in a red hoodie said as he nodded at your car. 

“Thanks, just got it.” 

“Cool.” 

You didn’t exchange any other words before you entered the building. You stared at the paper schedule, trying to memorize classrooms and the stupid tiny map in the corner. An arm suddenly tapped your shoulder. 

“You’re Y/F/N Swan, right? Our new girl.” 

You turned to your right to see an Asian boy with a black polo shirt and the most emo haircut you've seen in a while. You took a double take at his outfit and then at the outfits of your peers around you. Suddenly, you were feeling terribly overdressed.

Your thrifted Burberry monogram poncho doubled as a blanket that you would inevitably need because it sat on top of a long sleeved black mini dress. Was it impractical for January in Washington? Probably. But fashion made everything work. At least you had worn snow boots. 

“Yeah. It’s just Y/N by the way.” 

“Just Y/N. Got it. Well, hi, I’m Eric and your eyes and ears of this place. Anything happens and I know about it. If you need a tour guide, shoulder to cry on, or lunch date then I’m your man.” 

Eric made conversation naturally, no small talk in sight. Kind of like Jacob. You chuckled. “I’ll take a rain check on the lunch date but I do need to find room 33C.” 

“Let me lead the way.” 

He started to lead you down the hallway and to a set of stairs. “So, why move to Forks?” 

“I’m not a baseball girl.” 

Eric snapped his fingers. “Perfect tagline for your spread. I’m the editor-in-chief of the paper and you are front page news.” 

“Oh… Just the front page right? I mean I don’t mind the paper but more than two pages and I’ll transfer.” 

“Got it. Spread killed, feature only. And here’s your stop.” 

“Thank you so much.” 

“I’ll be back for whatever other classes you need to find.” 

True to his word, Eric came back and led you to all my morning classes, including the dreaded P.E. You didn’t hate exercise. You just hated whatever wasn’t pilates or a Jane Fonda workout. Besides, you were never good at P.E. anyway. The testament to that was the gym teacher thinking you should do the volleyball exercises with some of the other girls. 

You flinched as the ball came towards you. It didn’t go back over the net. Instead, it hit my calculus desk partner, Mike Newton, in the back of the head. 

“Sorry!” you yelled as you sped away to hide in the locker room until lunch period. 

Mike seemed to forget about it when lunch came. He talked your ear off all the way into the cafeteria. You had forgotten that a small town wouldn’t be like Phoenix. Everyone wanted to talk to the new kid. Whether they were friends or not was yet to be determined. But Mike was a gentleman. He pulled out your seat for you. 

“Thank you.” 

“My pleasure, Madame.” 

Eric laughed. “Mikey, glad you met my girl Y/N.” 

“Oh, your girl?”

“Excuse me, my girl. We even bonded over cars,” The black boy from earlier rubbed your hair in fake affection before pulling the chair out from under Mike. 

“You’re so dead, Tyler!” he yelled as they ran after him. 

The two girls at your table gave a mix of a laugh and a scoff. A girl with a chunky pink headband slid over a juice carton from her tray. 

“Sorry about that. It’s like kindergarten all over again, isn’t it? You’re the shiny new toy. Hi, I’m Jessica by the way.” 

“Oh, almost forgot,” the other girl with glasses picks up a camera. “Smile!” 

The flash blinded me for a moment. “Woah.” 

“Sorry, I need some candids for the spread.” 

“The spread is dead, Angela,” Eric said in an oddly defensive tone. “Don’t bring it up again… I got your back, babe.” 

You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped from your throat. Eric left, leaving you, Jessica, and Angela at the table. Angela set her camera down. 

“Great, now what am I supposed to do about filling up the rest of the newspaper? I can’t do another editorial on teen drinking. It’d be the third time.” 

“You could always run a psa on eating disorders,” you tried to offer an option. “Or um… padding on the swim team?” 

The other girls looked at you and for a moment you thought you said something completely wrong but they began laughing. You caught bits of the conversation as you focused on my food: some of the guys bragging about their sizes that seemed totally fake, speedos fitting improperly, and wondering if they only pad for school pictures. 

Going back to the conversation, a glimpse at the window caught your eye before you could speak. Five people walked like this school was a runway. 

“Who are they?” you asked. 

Jessica dropped her fork on her tray, ready to tell you everything. “The Cullens. Dr. and Mrs. Cullen’s foster kids.”

The names were ones you couldn't remember hearing while visiting over the summers. They were either new kids or never came around La Push. One thing you couldn’t deny was that they were all attractive. And the shorter girl had wicked fashion sense. She strutted by like the rest of them in her thin and flowy white maxi skirt with a chunky black sweater and heels entirely too high for you to ever try wearing. You felt almost entranced just looking at them.

“They’re all like together,” Jessica continued. “Rosalie, the blonde one, yeah she’s with the big one, Emmett. Like a thing.”

“Jess, they’re not actually related,” Angela quickly interjected.

“Yeah I know, but it’s still kinda weird that they live together, don’t you think? Anyway, the small dark-haired girl Alice is with Jasper. He’s the one that always looks like he’s in pain. The two blondes are actually siblings, Mrs. Cullen’s niece and nephew or something like that.”

“Dr. Cullen’s like this foster dad matchmaker.”

“Maybe, he’ll adopt me,” Angela said.

You chuckled. If Dr. Cullen was such a matchmaker then you’d have to tell Charlie goodbye.

“What about him?” you motioned to the last guy left. He walked ahead of his foster siblings like he was the leader or something. 

“Edward? Totally hot, supposedly single. No one here seems good enough for him. Don’t waste your time. Like I care, just don’t waste your time.” 

“Trust me, wasn’t planning on it.” 

You knew that Jessica could have a skewed perspective. Maybe something happened between the two of them but Angela seemed to agree with her. This Edward probably was nothing but bad news and trouble.

You dared myself to look at their table again. Your eyes squinted when you saw their trays. Nothing looked touched. When you looked up, all five of them were staring at you. You whipped your head around and didn’t dare look back again until after lunch. 

Thankfully, the classes you had right after lunch didn’t have any of them… until bio class. The teacher, Mr. Donoghue motioned for you to sit at the only empty seat that happened to be next to Edward. You nodded and began moving to the chair. A chill ran down you spine and you shivered as the chill pierced your back. Edward stiffened up at the same time. 

You scowled as he held his hand over his mouth and nose. You had taken a shower, put on nice perfume, lotioned, and wore nice jewelry. There was absolutely no way you smelled. His hand stayed over the lower part of his face the entire class period. Even when he had to hand over material, he pushed them to you with a pencil. The moment the bell rang, Edward was gone. Good riddance. 

Mr. Donoghue signed the last spot in my slip saying you made it to class successfully and now you could give it to the receptionist. You paused in the doorway after seeing someone’s back but it was too late. The receptionist had seen you. 

“Just a moment, dear.” 

The person with the back turned around to reveal a troubled face. He grabbed his coat. “Never mind, I’ll just have to endure it.” 

You rolled your eyes, handed in you slip and went to your truck. Edward was a total douche. Yet you couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d be seeing each other more often than you’d like. Probably more often than he’d like as well. 

Charlie wasn’t finished working when school was over but had enough time for a dinner break. His friend, Waylan, brought takeout from Subway. You didn’t remember Waylan very well. He left for most of the summer each year to visit his kids and grandkids that left Washington. You all moved stuff around on Charlie’s desk to clear space so you could eat. You had a Spicy Italian sub while the two of them ate BLTs. The two of them shared a different sentiment about the Cullens when you asked them. 

Unlike the kids at school, they had nothing but praise. The Cullens weren’t weird but mature and well-rounded teenagers. And Dr. Cullen was the best surgeon they’ve had… and he stayed past one year which is an accomplishment. Certain jobs like doctors and lawyers always come from out of town. Most leave after one or two years, not able to handle the slow pace of this green and gray town. 

Soon, Charlie and Waylan talked in the most stereotypical old man fashion that you had actually checked out of the conversation. Your cellphone rang as you grabbed a potato chip from the small bag that came with your sandwich. 

“That’s Mom, I’m gonna take this.” 

“Tell your mom I said hi, Y/N/N.” 

You nodded as you walked away.  

~~

The next day at school, Edward wasn’t there. You had planned to confront him and find out what his problem was when he didn’t even know you. You weren't exactly popular back in Phoenix but no one had any issues with you. Never. 

However, his siblings were there. Not that you were going to approach them. Your problem was their brother not them and you weren't trying to make enemies in such a small town. You watched them walk into the building as you leaned against your truck. You turned when something hit your back. 

“Y/N!” 

You laughed as you looked at the Twizzler on the ground. “Seriously, Tyler? How dare you waste good food,” you said as you grabbed your bag and walked over to where the kids you met yesterday were all crowded around what you assumed was Tyler’s van. 

He shrugged. “I would hardly call Twizzlers the peak of fine dining.” 

We all walked inside at the start of a bell ringing. The day had been pleasant without your science partner. And the next day was the same when he didn’t show up again. And the next day until the entire week had gone by without Edward showing his face. 

Your first week of school was lucky. You had missed any torrential rain. But you couldn’t say the same for that Monday. The only thing worse than rain was rain when it was below freezing outside. Your front steps were covered in ice. Your phone rang as you closed the house door.

"Hey, Jake... First week done, somewhat a success. Hey, when is Spring Break for you guys? We should totally start coordinating now if we want to try and leave town."

Despite being careful as you talked, you must have stepped incorrectly because before you knew it, your butt had gone down the last three concrete steps leading away from your door and to your driveway. 

“Woah, woah, Y/N/N. Are you okay?” Charlie asked as he helped you up. 

“Yeah, just fine, Dad. Ice isn’t exactly helpful to the severely uncoordinated.” 

“That’s why I got new tires for you. The old ones were getting pretty bald.” 

“Thank you.” 

You both high-fived before getting into your respective cars and leaving. It felt like you were already used to the routine of Forks when you pulled into your parking spot and found yourself automatically going to Tyler’s van. You sat with Jessica, Angela, Eric, or Mike whenever you had class and swapped snacks with Tyler in between every morning class because your lockers were right next to each other. And the group always walked to lunch together. 

“Salad or Sandwich… Hello? Earth to Y/N?” 

You blinked to see Jess snapping her fingers in front of you. “Sorry.” 

“We wanted to know what you wanted? The lines are backing up so we’re splitting up and tackling stations.” 

“Nice, divide and conquer the cafeteria.” 

“The Vikings got nothing on us.” 

“As long as the only thing we’re conquering and pillaging are those sandwiches.” 

“Absolutely. They might have had great hair but I'm not interested. So, ham and cheese, turkey, or those stupid cucumber ones that no one likes?” 

“Hey, I like them!” 

Jess laughed and walked to her designated line. Mike and you were in charge of gathering everyone’s desserts and soups. Three wanted brownies and three wanted chocolate chip cookies, four wanted tomato soup and two wanted chicken noodle. You all wanted saltine crackers. Every now and then, you looked over your shoulder at what made you stop in you tracks. Edward was back. 

And your biology class was the first class after lunch.  

(part 2) ...

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[andmaybegayer]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/29/india-assassination-raw-sikhs-modi/

cool cool cool

(full text below the cut)

An assassination plot on American soil reveals a darker side of Modi’s India

Greg Miller, Gerry Shih, Ellen Nakashima

The White House went to extraordinary lengths last year to welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a state visit meant to bolster ties with an ascendant power and potential partner against China.

Tables on the South Lawn were decorated with lotus blooms, the symbol of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party. A chef was flown in from California to preside over a vegetarian menu. President Biden extolled the shared values of a relationship “built on mutual trust, candor and respect.”

But even as the Indian leader was basking in U.S. adulation on June 22, an officer in India’s intelligence service was relaying final instructions to a hired hit team to kill one of Modi’s most vocal critics in the United States.

The assassination is a “priority now,” wrote Vikram Yadav, an officer in India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, according to current and former U.S. and Indian security officials.

Yadav forwarded details about the target, Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, including his New York address, according to the officials and a U.S. indictment. As soon as the would-be assassins could confirm that Pannun, a U.S. citizen, was home, “it will be a go ahead from us.”

Yadav’s identity and affiliation, which have not previously been reported, provide the most explicit evidence to date that the assassination plan — ultimately thwarted by U.S. authorities — was directed from within the Indian spy service. Higher-ranking RAW officials have also been implicated, according to current and former Western security officials, as part of a sprawling investigation by the CIA, FBI and other agencies that has mapped potential links to Modi’s inner circle.

In reports that have been closely held within the American government, U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the operation targeting Pannun was approved by the RAW chief at the time, Samant Goel. That finding is consistent with accounts provided to The Washington Post by former senior Indian security officials who had knowledge of the operation and said Goel was under extreme pressure to eliminate the alleged threat of Sikh extremists overseas. U.S. spy agencies have more tentatively assessed that Modi’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, was probably aware of RAW’s plans to kill Sikh activists, but officials emphasized that no smoking gun proof has emerged.

Neither Doval nor Goel responded to calls and text messages seeking comment.

This examination of Indian assassination plots in North America, and RAW’s increasingly aggressive global posture, is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former senior officials in the United States, India, Canada, Britain, Germany and Australia. Citing security concerns and the sensitivity of the subject, most spoke on the condition of anonymity.

That India would pursue lethal operations in North America has stunned Western security officials. In some ways, however, it reflects a profound shift in geopolitics. After years of being treated as a second-tier player, India sees itself as a rising force in a new era of global competition, one that even the United States cannot afford to alienate.

Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on U.S. soil, a Western security official said: “Because they knew they could get away with it.”

The foiled assassination was part of an escalating campaign of aggression by RAW against the Indian diaspora in Asia, Europe and North America, officials said. The plot in the United States coincided with the June 18 shooting death of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., near Vancouver — an operation also linked to Yadav, according to Western officials. Both plots took place amid a wave of violence in Pakistan, where at least 11 Sikh or Kashmiri separatists living in exile and labeled terrorists by the Modi government have been killed over the past two years.

The Indian intelligence service has ramped up its surveillance and harassment of Sikhs and other groups overseas perceived as disloyal to the Modi government, officials said. RAW officers and agents have faced arrest, expulsion and reprimand in countries including Australia, Germany and Britain, according to officials who provided details to The Post that have not previously been made public.

The revelations have added to Western concerns about Modi, whose tenure has been marked by economic growth and rising global stature for India, but also deepening authoritarianism. A recent report by Freedom House, a human rights organization, listed India among the world’s practitioners of “transnational repression,” a term for governments’ use of intimidation or violence against their own citizens — dissidents, activists, journalists — in others’ sovereign territory.

India is part of an expanding roster of countries employing tactics previously associated with China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes. It is a trend fueled by factors ranging from surging strains of nationalism and authoritarianism to the spread of social media and spyware that both empower and endanger dissident groups.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs declined to respond to detailed questions submitted by The Post or provide comment for this article. Responding to questions raised by a Post reporter at a news briefing last week, spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said that India was still investigating the allegations and that the Pannun case “equally impacts our national security.”

Jaiswal referred reporters to previous ministry statements that targeted killings are “not our policy.”

For the Biden administration, which has spent three years cultivating closer ties with India, the assassination plots have pitted professed values against strategic interests.

Last July, White House officials began holding high-level meetings to discuss ways to respond without risking a wider rupture with India, officials said. CIA Director William J. Burns and others have been deployed to confront officials in the Modi government and demand accountability. But the United States has so far imposed no expulsions, sanctions or other penalties.

Even the U.S. criminal case reflects this restraint. Senior officials at the Justice Department and FBI had pushed to prosecute Yadav, officials said, a step that would have implicated RAW in a murder-for-hire conspiracy. But while a U.S. indictment unsealed in November contained the bombshell allegation that the plot was directed by an Indian official, it referred to Yadav as only an unnamed co-conspirator, “CC-1,” and made no mention of the Indian spy agency.

Justice Department officials who took part in the White House deliberations sided against those urging criminal charges against Yadav. Administration officials denied any undue influence. “Charging decisions are the prerogative of law enforcement alone,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, “and the Biden NSC has rigorously respected that independence.”

The only U.S. charges made public to date are against an alleged middleman, Nikhil Gupta, who is described in the indictment as an Indian drug and weapons trafficker enlisted to hire a contract killer. Gupta, an Indian national who has denied the charges, was arrested in Prague on June 30 and remains in prison. He is awaiting a Czech court ruling on a U.S. request for his extradition.

Even in recent days, the Biden administration has taken steps to contain the fallout from the assassination plot. White House officials warned the Modi government this month that The Post was close to publishing an investigation that would reveal new details about the case. It did so without notifying The Post.

Laying a trap

For decades, RAW was regarded as a regional player, preoccupied by proxy wars with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency. Under Modi, however, RAW has been wielded as a weapon against dissidents in India’s vast global diaspora, according to current and former U.S. and Indian officials.

The U.S. operation shows how RAW tried to export tactics it has used for years in countries neighboring India, officials said, including the use of criminal syndicates for operations it doesn’t want traced to New Delhi. It also exposed what former Indian security officials described as disturbing lapses in judgment and tradecraft.

After the plot against Pannun failed, the decision to entrust Yadav with the high-risk mission sparked recriminations within the agency, former officials said. Rather than joining RAW as a junior officer, Yadav had been brought in midcareer from India’s less prestigious Central Reserve Police Force, said one former official. As a result, the official said, Yadav lacked training and skills needed for an operation that meant going up against sophisticated U.S. counterintelligence capabilities.

Attempts by The Post to locate or contact Yadav were unsuccessful. A former Indian security official said he was transferred back to the Central Reserve Police Force after the Pannun plot unraveled.

The U.S. affidavit describes Yadav as an “associate” of Gupta who procured the alleged drug trafficker’s help by arranging for the dismissal of criminal charges he faced in India. Gupta had a history of collaborating with India’s security services on operations in Afghanistan and other countries, according to a person with knowledge of his background, but he had never been used for jobs in the West.

Petr Slepicka, a lawyer in Prague who represents Gupta, declined to comment on the case except to say that his client denies the charges against him. In court filings in India, Gupta’s family members described him as an innocent “middle-class businessman” whose arrest was a case of mistaken identity. They said he traveled to Prague “for tourism” and to explore new markets for a “handicraft” business, according to the court filings.

Yadav and Gupta spent weeks trading encrypted texts about the plot to kill Pannun, according to a U.S. affidavit filed in support of the request for Gupta’s extradition. To find a willing assassin, Gupta reached out to someone he had been in touch with for at least eight years and understood to be a drug and weapons dealer. In reality, according to the affidavit, the supposed dealer was an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The two were discussing “another potential firearms and narcotics transaction,” according to the affidavit when, on May 30, Gupta abruptly asked “about the possibility of hiring someone to murder a lawyer living in New York.”

From that moment, U.S. agents had an inside but incomplete view of the unfolding conspiracy. They orchestrated Gupta’s introduction to a supposed assassin who was actually an undercover agent, according to court filings. They captured images of cash changing hands in a car in New York City — a $15,000 down payment on a job that was to cost $100,000 when completed.

At one point, the indictment said, U.S. agents even got footage of Gupta turning his camera toward three men “dressed in business attire, sitting around a conference room,” an apparent reference to Indian operatives overseeing the mission. “We are all counting on you,” Gupta told the purported assassin on the video call, according to the indictment.

Yadav indicated that there would be more jobs after Pannun, including one “big target” in Canada. But a separate hit team got to that assignment first, according to the U.S. indictment, suggesting that RAW was working with multiple criminal elements.

Hours after Nijjar was gunned down in his car on June 18 outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, Yadav sent a video clip to Gupta “showing Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in his vehicle,” according to the indictment.

The message arrived as U.S. authorities were laying a trap for Gupta. Seeking to draw him out of India and into a friendly jurisdiction, U.S. agents used their DEA informant to persuade Gupta to travel to the Czech Republic for what he was led to believe would be a clandestine meeting with his American contact, according to officials familiar with the operation.

Gupta arrived in Prague on June 30 — 11 days after Czech authorities, acting at the behest of U.S. officials, had secretly issued an arrest warrant for him.

As he exited Vaclav Havel Airport, Gupta was intercepted by Czech police, who ushered him into a vehicle in which two U.S. federal agents were waiting, according to court filings submitted by Gupta’s family in India. He was questioned for hours while the car meandered around the city. His laptop was seized and his phone held to his face to unlock it, according to the family petition.

Gupta was eventually deposited in Prague’s Pankrac Prison, where he remains awaiting possible extradition. Seeking help, Gupta’s family tried to reach Yadav last year but could find no trace of him, according to a person familiar with the matter. After months of near-constant contact with Gupta, the person said, CC-1 had “disappeared.”

Engaging with the underworld

Though Yadav served as RAW’s point man, current and former officials said the operation involved higher-ranking officials with ties to Modi’s inner circle. Among those suspected of involvement or awareness are Goel and Doval, though U.S. officials said there is no direct evidence so far of their complicity.

As RAW chief at the time, Goel was “under pressure” to neutralize the alleged threat posed by Sikh extremists overseas, said a former Indian security official. Goel reported to Doval, and had ties to the hard-line national security adviser going back decades.

Both had built their reputations in the 1980s, when the country’s security services battled Sikh separatists and Muslim militants. They were part of a generation of security professionals shaped by those conflicts much the way their U.S. counterparts came to be defined by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Doval, 79, has claimed roles in undercover missions from the jungles of Myanmar to the back alleys of Lahore, Pakistan — tales that contributed to his frequent depiction in the press as the “James Bond of India.”

He also exhibited a willingness to engage with the criminal underworld. In 2005, after retiring as head of India’s domestic intelligence service, he was inadvertently detained by Mumbai police while meeting with a reputed gangster. Doval was seeking to enlist one crime boss to assassinate another, according to media reports later confirmed by senior Indian officials.

Before being tapped as national security adviser by Modi in 2014, Doval publicly called for India’s security apparatus to shift from “defense” to “defensive offense” against groups threatening India from other countries, especially Pakistan.

Goel, who was then rising into the senior ranks at RAW, shared Doval’s instincts. Police forces under Goel’s command in the early 1990s were tied to more than 120 cases of alleged extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances or torture, according to a database maintained by Ensaaf, an Indian human rights group based in the United States. Goel was so closely associated with the brutal crackdown that he became an assassination target, according to associates who said he took to traveling in a bulletproof vehicle.

Former Indian officials who know both men said Goel would not have proceeded with assassination plots in North America without the approval of his superior and protector.

“We always had to go to the NSA for clearance for any operations,” said A.S. Dulat, who served as RAW chief in the early 2000s, referring to the national security adviser. Dulat emphasized in an interview with The Post that he did not have inside knowledge of the alleged operations, and that assassinations were not part of RAW’s repertoire during his tenure.

U.S. intelligence agencies have reached a similar conclusion. Given Doval’s reputation and the hierarchical nature of the Indian system, CIA analysts have assessed that Doval probably knew of or approved RAW’s plans to kill Sikhs his government considered terrorists, U.S. officials said.

A fierce crackdown

India’s shift to “defensive offense” was followed by a series of clashes between RAW and Western domestic security services.

In Australia, two RAW officers were expelled in 2020 after authorities broke up what Mike Burgess, head of the Australian intelligence service, described as a “nest of spies.”

Foreign officers were caught monitoring “their country’s diaspora community,” trying to penetrate local police departments and stealing information about sensitive security systems at Australian airports, Burgess said in a 2021 speech. He didn’t name the service, but Australian officials confirmed to The Post that it was RAW.

In Germany, federal police have made arrests in recent years to root out agents RAW had recruited within Sikh communities. Among them, German officials said, were a husband and wife who operated a website purportedly covering local Sikh events but who were secretly on RAW’s payroll.

In Britain, RAW’s surveillance and harassment of the Sikh population — especially a large concentration near Birmingham — became so egregious in 2014 and 2015 that MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, delivered warnings to Goel, who was then serving as RAW’s station chief in London.

When confronted, Goel scoffed at his counterparts and accused them of coddling Sikh activists he said should be considered terrorists, according to current and former British officials. After further run-ins, British authorities threatened to expel him, officials said. Instead, Goel returned to New Delhi and continued to climb RAW’s ranks until, in 2019, he was given the agency’s top job.

RAW’s record of aggressive activity in Britain has fanned suspicion that the agency was involved in the death of Sikh activist Avtar Singh Khanda, who died in Birmingham last year, three days before Nijjar was killed in Canada. British officials have said Khanda suffered from leukemia and died of natural causes, though his family and supporters have continued to press for further investigation.

A U.S. State Department human rights report released this month catalogued India’s alleged engagement in transnational repression. It cited credible accounts of “extraterritorial killing, kidnapping, forced returns or other violence,” as well as “threats, harassment, arbitrary surveillance and coercion” of overseas dissidents and journalists.

RAW’s operations in Western countries during Modi’s tenure have been overwhelmingly aimed at followers of the Sikh religion, especially a minority faction seeking to revive the largely dormant cause of creating a separate state called “Khalistan.”

That movement had peaked in the 1980s, when thousands were killed in violent skirmishes between the Indian government and Sikh insurgents. One brutal sequence beginning in 1984 included an Indian assault on the Sikh religion’s holiest site, the Golden Temple; the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikhs in her security detail; and the bombing of an Air India flight widely attributed to Sikh extremists. A fierce crackdown quashed the insurgency, prompting an exodus of Sikhs to diaspora communities in Canada, the United States and Britain.

As Sikhs settled into their new lives abroad, the Khalistani cause went quiet until a new generation of activists — whose leaders included Pannun and Nijjar — sought to rekindle the movement with unofficial referendums on Sikh statehood and with protests that at times have seemed to glorify violence. A parade in Canada last year included a float depicting Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and Khalistan supporters have stormed and defaced Indian diplomatic facilities in Western cities.

The effort has seemed to gain little traction beyond a minority within the diaspora communit

[callme2heaven]

Unannounced

A/N: This is my first one shot with Stone and I just started typing. I hope it turned out okay!

Genre: Angst/Fluff

Word Count: 1,479

Warnings: Andrew Wood's death is mentioned

Two raindrops raced each other down the window. The rain reminds me that I’m almost home, somewhere I haven’t been in years, Seattle. 

The chatter in the Greyhound broke my concentration. I looked around curiously. Loads of people, either returning to the rainy city, or venturing into the unknown. 

I happen to be doing both. 

The bus pulled into the station and my tummy twisted in knots. I began having second thoughts. I was showing up unannounced after years of little to no contact. 

I grabbed my luggage from the storage under the bus and meandered off to find a taxi. 

I rattled off the address to my best friend's house and hoped for the best. 

The scenery around was exactly as I remembered and yet so different. Maybe it was just me, I’d grown used to the desert in Eastern Washington. 

The cabbie pulled over and I realized there was no turning back. I mean I still could, but I’d feel real shitty about it. I paid the man and got out with my stuff. 

I made the daunting walk up to the door, my heart raced and I knocked three times. I wanted to turn away and run. 

It wasn’t fair of me. My grandma was sick and so I moved across the state to take care of her. A coincidence that everything at the time was falling apart so I was looking for an escape was just happenstance. 

The door cracked open and it was like all the air was sucked out of my lungs. 

Stone Gossard, his hair was longer now. His hazel eyes widened. We stared at one another. I was shocked when he reached out and brought me into a tight hug. I hugged him back and breathed him in. 

Stone held me at arms length and studied me. 

“What are you doing in Seattle? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” He asked. I shrugged. 

“It just felt like time to come home.” I answered. Stone smiled softly at me. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me unless I just showed up. Flawed I know.” I rambled and Stone’s smile faltered. 

“Look, I know things weren’t great and we didn’t really communicate well while you were in Pasco, but I’ll always want you around. You’re my best friend, even when we’re mad at each other. Okay?” Stone said sternly. I studied his face and nodded. “Have you got a place to stay?” 

“No, I just got to town. I really didn’t have a game plan.” I responded. Stone chuckled. 

“Glad to know you’re still the impulsive girl I always knew.” He grinned. 

“Impulsive?” I asked, eyes widening. Stone gave me a look and I looked away. “Okay, yeah, I’m impulsive.” I admitted. 

“You can stay with me.” Stone said. 

“Are you sure?” I asked, looking back to him. 

“You’re always welcome in my home.” He said, and stepped back, opening the door wider for me to enter. It smelled woodsy, as I remembered, comforting. 

“I’ll take that.” He said and took my luggage disappearing further into the house. I took off my shoes and hung up my jacket. 

I moseyed into the living room. I studied the photos, there were some with the Mother Love Bone line up. I smiled seeing Andy. There were some with other groups, and what I assumed is the Pearl Jam lineup. I didn’t meet the shy front man before I left, but he’s got an incredible voice. Then I saw some sprinkled with me in there, in almost all of them Stone and I are next to each other. My favorite is just the two of us, I can’t remember what he said anymore but the photo caught me mid cackle as he smirked triumphantly at me. 

“Are you hungry?” Stone asked entering the room. I turned to him and my tummy gurgled at that exact moment. “I’ll take that as a yes.” He replied and turned to go to the kitchen, I followed him. 

I pulled out two plates while he pulled stuff to make sandwiches out of the fridge. We made our sandwiches in a comfortable silence before sitting at the table. 

“Thanks for taking me in and feeding me.” I said, truly thankful he didn’t send me away. 

“I think you think that I’m upset with you, but I’m not.” Stone said and bit into his sandwich. My eyebrows furrowed. 

“What?” 

“Eat.” Stone said not elaborating. 

I took a bite of my sandwich, and munched on some chips. 

“How was Pasco?” He asked, changing the subject. 

“Way different. It was good to be with Nan and help her out.” I responded. 

“How is she?” Stone asked, then took a sip of his drink. 

“She passed away 5 months ago.” I answered, and took a sip of my own drink. 

“I’m sorry, I know she was important to you. She lasted a lot longer than the doctors said she would.” He replied. 

“Yeah, you knew Nan, she was a fighter up until the end.” I said, “I’ve heard your new band on the radio by the way. I really like it, your new singer has an incredible set of pipes.” 

“Yeah, he’s a cool guy.” Stone said. 

We chatted comfortably as we ate, the more we talked the easier it was. Like no time had passed. 

Stone and I washed up the plates and utensils. 

“Do you mind if I take a shower?” I asked. 

“No, make yourself at home. I have band practice but I’ll be back later tonight.” Stone replied. 

“Okay, have fun.” I waved him off. 

The water cascaded down my body and my mind kept replaying what Stone said earlier. That I think he’s upset with me but he’s not. I mean he isn’t wrong, I was fully expecting him to take one look at me and tell me to leave. That’s not his true character though. Ever since I’ve known Stone, he has always been so kind and dependable. 

After letting my brain spiral I got out and dried off putting on a comfortable oversized shirt and a pair of shorts. The exhaustion of the traveling and emotional turmoil caught up with me and I found myself crawling into Stone’s bed not even thinking about it. 

I felt the bed sink down and the covers move around. My eyes fluttered open and I watched as Stone settled in facing me. Our eyes met. 

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” He whispered. We were close enough I could feel his breath when he spoke. 

“It’s okay, sorry I fell asleep on your bed, I can go to the couch.” I said and started to get up. Stone reached out and stopped me. 

“We’ve shared a bed before, no need to leave.” Stone said. I settled back down and we stared at one another. 

“What did you mean earlier?” I asked softly. 

“I’m not upset with you is all.” He stated. 

“Why? I would be.” I replied. Stone rolled his eyes. 

“I was hurt at first. You left, and you didn’t say anything. The two times we talked on the phone it was short and dry. At the end of the day, I just wanted my best friend around, ya know? Andy died, and the person I wanted to find comfort in was you. We started a new band and the first person I wanted to tell about it was you. You’ve always been the most important person to me and more than anything, I just fucking missed you.” Stone said. Tears filled my eyes. 

“I missed you too.” I said as my voice cracked. 

“Don’t ever leave like that again, okay?” Stone whispered as he brushed my hair from my face. 

“Promise.” I said holding out my pinky. Stone smiled softly and wrapped his pinky around mine. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.” I said. 

“You’re here now.” He replied. “Jeff and the others are excited to see you by the way. Are you up to seeing them tomorrow?” Stone asked. 

“Yeah, I am. I’m excited to see them too.” I smiled. 

“Good, I had to stop Jeff from coming over tonight. But he can only be stalled for so long.” He said and I laughed. 

“So is anybody mad?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t just Stone I left behind in Seattle. 

“No, I mean not really. Jeff might squeeze you to death and then sternly tell you that leaving like that was really shitty.” He replied. 

“Totally fair.” I laughed. 

The conversation lulled and I felt myself drifting off again, when Stone spoke up. 

“I’m glad you came back.” 

“Me too.” I responded sleepily. 

I felt Stone’s lips brush up against my forehead before I fell asleep. 

Stone was right, I’m here now. And I’m never leaving his side again. 

Thanks for reading! Feel free to chat :)

[e-dubbc11]

Let's hope this little summer sleepover will bring some sun. Could use it 🤣❤️

I hope it's okay I combined from two different lists, but I would absolutely love

And "Can you kiss it better?"

With our dear Rumlow. You write him so good 🥰❤️

Happy summer to you, my dear ⛱️🌊☀️

My darling Lily,

I’m so happy you enjoy the way I write for Rumlow. So I hope you like what I did here because I’m pretty pleased with how this came out ♥️♥️♥️

Beat the Heat

Photos are not mine. They are courtesy of Pinterest/Google.

Pairing: Brock Rumlow x F! Reader

Warnings: Some swear words, sexual references but mostly PG-13, fluff, Brock being Brock ie, a grouch, arguing, smooches.

Word Count: 2.7K-ish

Summary: Reader and Brock buy a new home and move in on the hottest day of the summer.

A/N: I’m sorry there’s so much teasing in this one and not actual smexy time, if that’s something you want, don’t hesitate to let me know 🤣🥵

As always, thank you for reading!  I appreciate it so much and comments, reblogs are welcome and encouraged. Don’t be shy to tell me your favorite part. 💕💕 💕

He had taken one look at the property and almost put in an offer before even looking at the interior of the large brick ranch-style house. The five-acre lot surrounded by lush greenery, enormous trees, and enchanting walking trails was what sold him. This little sanctuary in Fairfax Station, Virginia offered a rural living space but still let you remain in close proximity to the rapid pulse of Washington, D.C., where you both worked.

He liked the quiet…and you did too.

The canopy of tall trees above tried their best to block out the sun but it still warmed the grass underneath and a symphony of bird songs floated down from the twisted and knotted branches. Your only company and neighbors close by were the diverse assortment of wildlife from families of deer, mischievous foxes, and high flying birds of prey.

It was a combination of serenity and seclusion that was a welcomed sight from busy city life you wanted to get away from. You just didn’t want to live there anymore so this place was perfect.

The hard lines on his face and furrowed brow softened when he noticed how quiet it was, how undisturbed the property was with the exception of the house and the charming fire pit, and his amber colored eyes shined like gold against the sun in the bright blue sky.

A wide smile stretched across your face when you noticed how happy this place made him; you knew it was home even before he told you it was the one.

“You love it already, don’t you handsome.” You stated with a warm smile.

Slightly embarrassed, Brock replied, “I do, doll. I really do. I can’t explain it but—“

You cut him off. “You don’t have to, baby. It’s written all over your face. We probably should look at the inside of the house too though.” You said sarcastically.

The lines around his eyes crinkled when he smiled and the rasp in his voice sounded incredibly sexy when he laughed. At work, Brock tended to be a little on the grouchy side. At SHIELD, he had a tough, high stress job while yours was a little more laid back which is why you were good for him. You taught him how to relax and have a good time and also made him smile and laugh which wasn’t easy to do.

It might be good for you to live away from the city but you’ll have to wait to see if your offer would be accepted.

**********

2 Weeks Later

After a long day at work, you had kicked your shoes off, changed into comfortable clothes, and poured yourself a glass of wine. It was late spring so it was starting to get really warm and your ride home wasn’t exactly comfortable anymore. The exhaust from all the cars, the heat, and humidity all made it harder to breathe so you were happy to be home where the temperature inside was perfect.

The sound of keys jingled outside your apartment door from the hallway. Brock must be home. He walked through the door wearing his leather jacket and holding his motorcycle helmet. His wild dark hair was a mess from wearing the helmet for the ride home; it just made him sexier in your eyes.

Brock walked over to where you were sitting, resting his helmet on the couch, he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to yours. Cupping his cheek, his skin felt warm from being underneath the helmet.

“Warm out there today, huh doll?” He asked rhetorically.

Pulling away from him slightly, you replied, “What did I tell you about putting that helmet on my white couch, Rumlow?”

“And didn’t I tell YOU that maybe a white couch wasn’t the best idea? Hmmm?” He said with a sly smile.

“Oooh…it’s a good thing you’re cute. How was your day, handsome? You didn’t come visit me today; you must have been busy.” You said with narrowed eyes.

Brock eased the jacket off of his shoulders and headed for the kitchen to get a beer like he did every day after a long day at work.

“Ah, I’m sorry sweetheart. I got a phone call from the realtor at lunch, that’s why I couldn’t visit today.” He said.

You aggressively closed your book and set your wine down on the coffee table.

Nervously, you asked, “What did she say, Brock?!!”

He frowned, took a sip of his beer, and sat down next to you.

“I’m sorry to tell you this baby, but…” He paused with a serious look on his face.

Immediately, you felt your stomach drop into your toes and your heart started to beat faster and faster. You were ready to express your disappointment when he finished his sentence.

“Pack your shit, we’re movin’ to Virginia!!” He exclaimed.

Confused and caught off guard, you asked, “Wait, what? They accepted our offer?!!”

“They sure did!” He said.

Brock’s lips collided with yours. Easing you backwards so you were resting against the arm of the couch, he settled himself between your legs, his lips brushed against your cheeks and he parted your lips with his tongue. His thick fingers pressed into the outside of your thigh as he kissed the hollow of your throat.

His stubble tickled your neck and you started to giggle.

“That tickles, baby!” You said, grasping his hair and drawing his head back to meet your gaze. “So when are we moving?!”

“Soon.” He replied. “I do love this place but I can’t wait to get the fuck outta the city, ya know?”

“I know Brock, I know.” You said. “Ooh, it’s gonna be hot outside when we move though, but I don’t really wanna wait, do you?”

“We’ll be fine, sweetheart. Besides, we do have those new water guns we haven’t tested out yet.” He said.

With raised eyebrows, you replied, “Oh you mean the water CANNONS?”

“Yeah those will be fun…and make sure you wear a white t-shirt.” Said Brock with a wink.

All you could do was roll your eyes.

“I’ll try to remember that.” You said, playfully.

**********

Of course you were getting ready to move on the hottest day of the summer so far. You had on a white V-neck t-shirt, cut-off denim shorts, and your hair was piled high on top of your head to keep it off of your neck.

Also and unfortunately, you had been arguing with Brock all morning about things that normally wouldn’t be a big deal but it was already 80 degrees outside and you both were cranky and hot from loading the moving truck.

He became angry with you when you said your dresser was ready to be put in the truck but the drawers were still full of clothes.

“I’ll just take the drawers out when they’re moving it so then all I’ll have to do is put the drawers back in when we get to the house.” You had said.

Brock was angry because he didn’t want the movers to see your underwear drawer. He didn’t say it out loud but you knew that was the reason.

There were two moving trucks. One that you and Brock loaded yourselves to drive over and the other was hired to move the heavy furniture. He became VERY angry when you said you were going to ride with the movers instead of him. You made sure Brock heard you ask them if it was alright.

“Do you guys mind if I ride with you to the new house? My boyfriend is being an ASSHOLE!” You said, curtly.

You could hear Brock growling under his breath at the thought of you riding in a moving truck in between a bunch of sweaty men. The blood in his veins burned like wildfire and his muscles stiffened every time he pictured you smiling at them or laughing with them. You knew it was only a matter of time before he exploded.

When you arrived at the house, you directed the movers to the rooms where you wanted the furniture placed. You could feel Brock staring at you, his mouth twisted with anger, and ready to pounce if one of the movers looked at you in a way he didn’t like.

The midday sun shined through the tops of the trees while a warm breeze rustled the leaves above you. It had to be at least 90 degrees out there even under the towering trees. Beads of sweat dripped down the side of your neck as you tried to cool yourself down with a hand held portable fan.

You and Brock were still not speaking to each other. Every time you were inside of the house, he was doing something outside and vice versa. After the movers had unloaded their truck, they left and you and Brock were there all alone without a buffer between the two of you.

It had already been a long day and while you were looking for the kettle so you could make some tea, you came across the box in the garage that had the water guns in it. A wide smile stretched across your face when you thought about getting Brock back for being a dick all day but you also hated fighting with him.

Even though he could obviously be a big grouch, you loved him and you knew that he loved you too, so what a better way to break the ice and the tension than to spray him with ice cold water.

Brock was resting in one of the Adirondack chairs around the fire pit. He had on his aviator sunglasses and he had taken off his t-shirt so he was just in his undershirt and pants, although you couldn’t tell if his eyes were closed or not.

The defined muscles in his arms were tight like piano wire and suddenly your breath was caught in your throat. His warm tanned skin was a sharp contrast to the tight white undershirt he had on, his legs were kicked out straight in front of him, crossed at the ankles, and his hands were folded across his chest.

It's hard to stay mad at him when he looks that hot just sitting in a chair.

The garden hose was attached to the garage so you could easily fill up the water guns without Brock seeing you and hose water is very COLD water. An evil chuckle escaped your lips as you crept to the side of the garage and started filling up the water guns. He was going to cool off one way or another.

By the way his chest was slowly rising and falling, it looked like Brock was sleeping but you couldn’t be sure. The cold drops of water dripping from the water gun dried immediately on the hot asphalt of the driveway and your body was starting to cool down from running your wrists under the refreshing water.

Brock picked his head up when he saw you walking across the yard toward him but still remained in a relaxed position.

“What are ya doin’ with those, doll? You comin’ to anger me some more ‘cause you did a pretty good job of that already.” He said with bitterness in his voice.

You stopped about five feet from where he was sitting, dropped the second water gun at your feet and replied, “Well one of these is for you if you want it to be. Or you can sulk some more; it’s up to you.”

“You think you’re bein’ cute, but you’re not. Ridin’ in their moving truck all the way down here, think that’s NOT gonna make me crazy?! You like makin’ me jealous like that?” He asked.

You shrugged.

“I dunno, you like bein’ a dick all day? ‘Cause you were!” You said with vigor.

He watched you pump the gun a few times to build up pressure and then you put your finger on the trigger.

“This is such a stupid fight, Brock. Just admit that you were mad because you didn’t want the movers looking in my underwear drawer.” You said sternly.

To anyone walking or driving by, the sight of the two of you arguing in the yard while one of you points a water gun at the other was probably quite comical.

“FINE! FINE!! Yes, I was mad about that! You have sexy underwear, baby. Of course I don’t want them looking at it.” He yelled.

A wide smile stretched across your face and you touched your tongue to your top teeth.

With a slight tilt of your head, you said, “Awwww, you like my sexy underwear, baby?”

Brock hung his head in slight embarrassment and a shy smile. He ran his fingers through his thick brown hair and replied, “You know I do, sweetheart.”

With narrowed eyes and a soft press of your lips, you said, “Well…I guess I can forgive you. But I still think you need to be punished.”

You aimed the water gun at his sunglasses.

Brock made a stop motion with his hand and said, “If you spray me with that water gun, I swear—“

And then pulled the trigger.

“Ahhh!!” He cried out, as the water knocked the glasses off of his face and into his lap.

You started to laugh as you continued to hit him in the face and drench his upper body.

“I regret nothing!!” You said, laughing maniacally.

His sunglasses fell to the ground when he stood up and started to move toward you.

“Well, you better start running!” He said with a devilish smile.

Brock picked up the other water gun and began chasing after you. Freezing cold water hit you directly in the back as it soaked through your white t-shirt.

Although the water was cold, it felt really good against your hot skin. Ducking and weaving, you tried to avoid the stream of water coming from Brock’s gun. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t but you were having a lot of fun doing it.

When you finally ran out of water, you surrendered on the porch outside the front door by dropping your gun and put your hands in the air. Brock’s wet undershirt clung tightly to his body and you could see all of his ab muscles through the shirt as droplets of water dripped down his broad shoulders.

Still trying to catch your breath, you said, “You’re all wet, Mr. Rumlow.”

Brock inched closer and you could feel his warm breath on your lashes, the ache between your thighs growing stronger and hungrier for him as he pulled you flush against him. His mouth split into a smile as his eyes speared you like a wild animal on the hunt.

He aggressively kissed the sculpted hollow of your throat, a muffled gasp escaped your lips, and you could feel him through his pants, pressed against your core.

With ease, he unbuttoned your shorts and his fingers disappeared underneath your waistband, touching the wet spot on your panties as he purred in your ear, “So are you, baby.”

A quiet whine fell from your lips as you pulled his face toward yours for a kiss. His lips were cool and wet against yours as he parted them with his tongue, gently pushing against your teeth, wanting desperately to tangle with yours.

Moaning against your lips, he suddenly broke the kiss. “I’m sorry, doll. I acted like a jerk today.”

“I’m sorry too, handsome. You’re not a dick…all the time.” You replied with a smirk. “Will you help me take off these wet clothes? I’ll show you my underwear.” You said with a laugh and a wink.

“Let’s go upstairs, sweetheart.” Said Brock.

He kissed you again and when you pulled away you said shyly, “Oh I think I hurt my knee when I stepped in that divot in the yard.”

“Did you?” He said with a devilish smirk.

“Can you kiss it better?” You asked, batting your eyelashes at him.

Brock leaned in to whisper in your ear, “Ya know I gotta kiss other parts before I get to your knee, right?”

You giggled and replied, “Oh I’m counting on it, baby.”

You loved your new home already.

Tag List: @gijos @nutmeg17 @nekoannie-chan @k-marzolf

Others that might enjoy: @fluffyprettykitty @itwasthereaminuteago @jvanilly @randomlittleimp

If I tagged you and you didn’t want to be, just let me know and I’ll never do it again. As always, thank you again for reading!

[batboyblog]

Welcome to Infrastructure Week, Biden edition.

For the 4 years of the Trump Presidency it felt like every other week was gonna be "Infrastructure Week" but some piece of chaos derailed the Trump White House's plans.

well Yesterday, May 13th 2024, The Biden Administration declared this week Infrastructure Week to highlight ALL the major work they've done in the last 3 years.

Under the 2021  Bipartisan Infrastructure Law $454 billion in funding has gone to over 56,000 specific projects across all 50 states, the territories, DC, and tribal communities.

The White House launched a Map of all the projects you can look at

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is part of President Biden's wider Investing in America agenda, and together with the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan, all passed by Biden and Democrats in Congress has brought $866 billion dollars in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments.

They released a State by State factsheet to show projects in all 50 states, all the territories and DC

Roads & Bridges: The Biden Administration has launched improvements on 257,000 miles of roads, and repaired 13,000 bridges. This $300 billion investment in our roads and bridges is the biggest since President Eisenhower’s interstate highway system in the 1950s. The Administration has given special attention to addressing historic injustice in our infrastructure. Many minority communities have been divided by highway bypass projects from the 1940s forward, such as the Sweet Auburn neighborhood of Atlanta Georgia. The Biden-Harris Administration is now helping reconnect divided communities and righting historic wrongs. The Department of Transportation put out a video highlighting the story of Philadelphia's Chinatown, how being split in half and have a multilane highway in the middle of their community effects them, and how the Stitch project will positively impact the people who live there who have fought for years for such relief.

Rail: The Biden Administration has invested  $66 billion for rail, the largest investment in passenger rail since the inception of Amtrak. The President recently announced $16.4 billion for 25 passenger rail projects on the Northeast Corridor. This will improve service for riders from Boston to Washington DC. President Biden has also announced $8.2 billion in new funding for 10 major high speed passenger rail projects across the country. These include a high speed rail project to connect Los Angeles with Las Vegas, which broke ground April 22nd. Planned to be finished in 2028 in time for the LA Olympics, the train will take 2 hours to get from Rancho Cucamonga, California to downtown Las Vegas making it the fastest way between the two cities.

Transit and School Buses: The Administration has invested $90 billion in public transit, the largest in American history. To date the DoT has helped replace 3,000 public buses with low or zero emission buses while the EPA has replaced 5,000 school buses with clean buses.

Electric Vehicle Charging, EV Batteries & Critical Materials: The Biden Administration is the first to directly invest in electric vehicle charging. the number of publicly available charging ports on America’s roads has surpassed 182,000, over a 90% increase since President Biden took office. The President has also invested in domestic manufacturing of batteries, already five manufacturing plants have broken ground.

Clean Water: The President invested over $50 billion government-wide for the largest upgrade to the nation’s water infrastructure in history. This funding places us on a path to meet the President’s commitment to replace every toxic lead pipe in America and works to close the wastewater gap for 2 million people who lack basic sanitation. These funds have already financed over 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects across the country, including over 800 projects that will deliver clean water for Tribal communities that lack basic water services. To date, the Administration has deployed funding that will help replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes. 

High-Speed Internet: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $65 billion to help ensure that everyone in America has access to affordable, reliable high-speed internet—regardless of their income, race, or zip code.  Over the last year, all 56 states and territories have developed their plans for how they will spend more than $40 billion in funding to connect every unserved location within their borders. That funding comes atop $1 billion for middle-mile infrastructure, which will build more than 12,000 miles of fiber across 370 counties. These projects, will connect 10,500 people, 1,600 farms, and 295 businesses directly to fiber networks. The Department of Commerce has also awarded 148 Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) grants, serving over 280 Tribal Governments, which will connect more than 65,000 Tribal households, subsidizing thousands of devices, and funding digital inclusion activities for Tribal communities. 

Deploying Clean Energy: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes more than $62 billion in funding at the Department of Energy to advance our clean energy future by investing in clean energy demonstration and deployment projects, developing new technologies, and modernizing our power grid. This includes an investment of over $20 billion to upgrade the nation’s grid—a critical component to achieve President Biden’s goal of delivering a 100% carbon-pollution free power sector by 2035. 

Legacy Pollution: Thanks to funding in the The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law the EPA has been able to cap 8,000 orphaned oil and gas wells, with tens of thousands more to be plugged in the years to come. Over 100 Superfund sites have also been cleaned up or started with funds from the Law as well.

And More!

[deadpresidents]

A Deadly "Peacemaker" and Unlikely Matchmaker: The Worst First Date Ever.

On February 28, 1844, Dolley Madison was far removed from her time as First Lady of the United States, but still held on to her spot as Washington's Greatest Hostess. She was the widow of a bona fide Founding Father, James Madison -- the 4th President of the United States and principal author of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights -- but he had left the White House almost 27 years earlier and died in 1836. However, Dolley -- now 75 years old -- remained a darling of the Washington social scene. Though she often struggled financially, Dolley Madison continued entertaining guests in the nation's capital and helped organize social gatherings around the city, acting as a sort of guest hostess wherever she visited and whenever she was invited -- and she was invited everywhere. Now, as the first auguries of spring began their awakening in-and-around Washington, D.C., Dolley helped plan a cruise down the Potomac River on the newly-built USS Princeton -- a showcase vessel for the United States Navy which happened to be one of the most advanced warships of its time. Nearly 70 years after the Declaration of Independence, Dolley Madison was still the life of the party and an ideal person to help plan a celebration aboard the USS Princeton, just as she'd been doing throughout the entire life of the young American nation.

[Dolley Madison, daguerreotype by Mathew Brady in 1848, four years after the Princeton explosion.]

Launched just six months earlier, the Princeton was the U.S. Navy's first propeller-driven warship and its Captain, Robert Field Stockton, was proud of his charge. A cruise to demonstrate the ship's speed, capabilities, and weaponry to the Washington elite would be advantageous to the Navy's growth and to Captain Stockton's ambition. Besides Dolley Madison and the Princeton's crew of 178 sailors, the ship welcomed over 350 guests, including dignitaries such as Secretary of State Abel Upshur, Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Gilmer, Secretary of War William Wilkins, Postmaster General Charles A. Wickliffe, Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and other diplomats and members of Congress. The most celebrated guest on the Princeton that day, however, was President John Tyler, who had also invited a young woman he had been romantically interested in, Julia Gardiner, and her father, David Gardiner, an influential New York lawyer and former State Senator.

Everyone on board the Princeton had underlying reasons for taking the cruise down the Potomac. For some, it was to see the Princeton for themselves. For others, it was because it was the place to be for politicians and diplomats on that February day. Some took the cruise for the opportunity to observe others, and some took the cruise in order to be noticed. The big draw, however, was a chance to see the Princeton's two large guns -- weapons so big and powerful that they were given their own names: the "Oregon" and the "Peacemaker" -- being fired. Both of the guns were impressive, but the "Peacemaker" was an amazing spectacle. At the time, it was the largest naval gun in the world. The ship was so new and the "Peacemaker" was so potentially devastating that, as of the day of the Princeton's cruise down the Potomac, the weapon had been fired no more than five times, according to Captain Stockton.

In February 1844, John Tyler was entering the final year of a contentious, controversial, and accidental Presidency. Elected as Vice President alongside William Henry Harrison in 1840, Tyler spent only a month in the Vice Presidency before President Harrison died in office. On April 4, 1841, Tyler became the 10th President of the United States, but his succession was not a smooth one. Harrison had been the first President to die in office and the Constitution was not specifically clear about Presidential succession. To many, including everyone in President Harrison's Cabinet, Tyler was still the Vice President and only assumed the duties of the Presidency, not the title or the privileges (such as living in the White House). At his first meeting with the men Harrison had appointed to the Cabinet, the Cabinet all but insisted that they would rule by committee and that Tyler had no more power or influence than, say the Postmaster General (which was a Cabinet-level position until 1971). Many Americans felt that Tyler was merely "Acting President," and that he was to defer to the will of the Cabinet on all issues.

Tyler vehemently disagreed and the manner in which he assumed office set a precedent that was followed by all future Vice Presidents and was eventually cemented into the Constitution. Tyler declared that he was not the Vice President or the "Acting President," but that Harrison's death had propelled him directly into the office of President of the United States to serve out the remainder of Harrison's elected term with the same powers and duties and privileges that come with the office. Tyler moved into the White House and, when his Cabinet balked at his assumption of power, he accepted the resignation of everyone but his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster (Webster eventually resigned in 1843).

President Tyler's troubles did not disappear once Harrison's hand-picked Cabinet departed or after Tyler settled into the Executive Mansion. The slavery question was tearing the nation further and further apart by the day. When Tyler won election in 1840 as Harrison's Vice President, he did so as a member of the Whig Party, but when it came down to Tyler's personal political ideology he was all over the political spectrum. As a younger man, he supported Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans and he supported Andrew Jackson during Jackson's first term before Tyler became a Whig. Upon his Vice Presidential nomination, there were questions about Tyler's Whig credentials, but the Whigs needed a strong Southern balance on the ticket and accepted Tyler. But now that General Harrison was dead, President Tyler's independence frustrated his party, which felt that he was not sufficiently Whiggish. With former President Andrew Jackson out of the picture and retired in Nashville, and with Whigs in control of Congress and the White House, the party attempted to establish another Bank of the United States. The Whig Congress pushed through a bill creating a new Bank of the United States, but President Tyler definitively broke ranks with the party that had nominated him for national office and vetoed the bill. Twice. So, just months after assuming the Presidency, Tyler was expelled from the Whig Party and remained a President without a party until he left the White House in 1845.

Now, on a warm day at the end of February 1844, Tyler was thinking about whether or not he would support the annexation of Texas. The President also thought of romance. In September 1842, Tyler's wife, Letitia, died in the White House after suffering a stroke. Tyler was still grieving when he began courting Julia Gardiner in January 1843. Tyler had met Julia while his wife was still alive, but he didn't become smitten with her until after his wife's death. Tyler and Julia kept their relationship guarded from the public and the President was even secretive about it to his (very large) family. Part of the reason for his reluctance to be open about his feelings was because Letitia had only been dead for a few months when he started dating Julia. However, a bigger reason was Julia's age. When they began dating, Julia Gardiner was just 22 years old. The 52-year-old President was wary about how his children (he and Letitia had seven children who lived to maturity) would feel about him dating a woman who was five years younger than his oldest daughter.

The age difference also worried Julia's family. Julia Gardiner was the daughter of David Gardiner, a wealthy New York lawyer and former New York State Senator. She was born in 1820 on an island in the Long Island Sound named after her family, and had everything that she wanted or needed while growing up on Gardiner's Island. Julia was beautiful and much in demand by the eligible bachelors of the East Coast. After meeting President Tyler, Julia first tried to reject his advances, but she was certainly intrigued by the powerful and charming Virginian. For his part, Tyler was madly in love with Julia and he first proposed to her in late-1843. Julia's mother did not approve of her daughter marrying a man 30 years older than Julia, so Tyler didn't get an answer. By inviting Julia and her father to accompany him on the USS Princeton, John Tyler hoped to show David Gardiner that he could impress the wealthy New Yorker and demonstrate that he could be a wonderful husband to Julia.

[Julia Gardiner Tyler, around the time of the Princeton explosion and her marriage to President Tyler, c. 1844]

••• Guests gathered at the Washington Navy Yard as ferries transported them across the Potomac River to Alexandria, Virginia, where the USS Princeton was anchored and ready for the afternoon cruise down the Potomac. As dignitaries boarded Captain Stockton's ship, they marveled at the size of the two guns on deck and examined every inch of the 164-foot warship. Music was provided by the United States Marine Band -- "The President's Own" -- and food was served below deck as the Princeton began its leisurely cruise down the Potomac. As guests explored the Princeton and watched the historic sites on both shores of the Potomac pass by, the massive "Peacemaker" gun was fired to the delight of everyone on the ship. The rounds fired by the powerful "Peacemaker" were capable of traveling up to three miles. As the warship cruised down the river the rounds that were fired were aimed at ice floes in the distance which were breaking apart as the afternoon sun warmed the Potomac. The cruise continued, with men mostly on the deck and pretty much all women below deck where food and drinks flowed freely, conversation was genial, and some of the guests were gleefully singing and clearly enjoying themselves.

When the Princeton reached Mount Vernon and George Washington's sprawling estate came into view, the ship fired another round from the "Peacemaker" in tribute the first President and then turned around for the return trip to Washington, D.C. The Princeton's passengers had gathered below deck for celebratory toasts and to listen to the impromptu singing concert taking place in the salon. At around 4:00 PM, some of the men requested a chance to witness the "Peacemaker" being fired again, but Captain Stockton demurred, telling the men, "No more guns tonight." However, one of the men who wished to see the "Peacemaker" fired once again was Thomas W. Gilmer, the man who had become Secretary of the Navy just 10 days earlier -- a man who just happened to be Captain Stockton's superior. Gilmer's wish was something akin to an order to Captain Stockton, so Stockton headed to the deck and had the gun prepared to be fired once more.

Many of the men began heading upstairs to witness the firing of the "Peacemaker" while the women mostly remained below deck and continued with their songs and conversations. President Tyler was heading up the gangway plank towards the deck when he was told that his son-in-law, William Waller, the husband of his daughter Elizabeth, was about to sing one of Tyler's favorite songs. Instead of heading to the deck, the President headed back into the salon and was handed a drink. Upstairs, men crowded around the giant "Peacemaker" for one last demonstration of its firing power.

On the deck, Secretary of War William Wilkins jokingly told the spectators, "Though I am Secretary of War, I do not like this firing, and believe I shall run!" before moving to the far side of the Princeton. The remainder of the guests were close to the "Peacemaker" and the big gun was ready to be fired. The Princeton was about 15 miles downriver from Washington, D.C. and two sailors took the final steps for firing the weapon.

Suddenly, at 4:06 PM, a massive explosion rocked the Princeton and the deck was obscured by white smoke and an eerie silence. President Tyler rushed up to the deck to investigate what had happened, but what he found was a horrific scene. The "Peacemaker" -- the largest naval gun in the world -- had exploded at the breech. The powerful explosion tore part of the ship's deck and the "Peacemaker" broke into red-hot pieces of iron that flew into the crowd of spectators. Nobody downstairs was injured, but the deck of the Princeton was a place of horror. Eight people had been killed and 17 were seriously injured, including Captain Stockton and Senator Thomas Hart Benton. As President Tyler reached the deck, the silence turned to anguished screams and confusion.

The President fought through the smoke and found that the toll was high. Secretary of State Abel Upshur was dead -- literally disemboweled by the blast. Navy Secretary Gilmer was dead. The Princeton's Commander Beverly Kennon and two Princeton sailors were dead. American diplomat Virgil Maxcy was dead. President Tyler's slave, Armistead, who had requested and been granted permission from Tyler to view the gun as it was being fired was dead. And, finally, David Gardiner -- the father of the woman that the President hoped to marry -- was also killed by the blast, his arms and legs severed from his body by the force of the explosion. A tearful President was devastated by the loss of two of his senior Cabinet members, and he headed back down below deck to notify the women about what had happened. With dozens of victims and witnesses screaming, crying, and/or in shock throughout the ship, there was an attempt to keep most of the passengers below so that they didn't see the gruesome scene on the deck.

[Secretary of State Abel Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Gilmer, who were both killed by the explosion on Feb. 28, 1844.]

The smoke-filled deck of the Princeton was covered with blood, dismembered limbs, dead bodies, and stunned survivors, many of whom had been wounded by pieces of red-hot, iron shrapnel from the gun or pieces of human beings torn apart by the explosion. Throughout the ship, ears were ringing and people were rendered temporarily deaf by the sound of the blast. Below decks, the women who had accompanied the Princeton awaited more news from above, which quickly trickled downstairs. Someone yelled, "The Secretary of State is dead!" and the news did not improve. When Julia Gardiner found out that her father was among those who had been killed in the blast, she fainted -- directly into the arms of President Tyler. Dolley Madison, who had seen much in her 75 years -- during the War of 1812, she barely escaped the White House shortly before British forces captured Washington and burned the Capitol and the Presidential Mansion -- was certainly stunned by the tragedy aboard the ship, but she quickly did her best to comfort the Princeton's passengers who were shaken and distressed.

As the USS Princeton limped back to Washington, D.C., John Tyler comforted Julia Gardiner as best as he could. For the President, his pleasure cruise with the woman he hoped to marry and her wealthy father could not have gone worse. Now, David Gardiner was literally laying in pieces on the deck of the Princeton as Tyler -- who was also returning to Washington without a Secretary of State or Secretary of the Navy -- tried to console Gardiner's young daughter, but she remained unconscious until the ship arrived back in Alexandria, Virginia.

When the Princeton arrived at Alexandria, President Tyler physically carried Julia Gardiner from the wounded warship. On the gangplank, Julia finally awakened in the President's arms, and as she later said, "I struggled so that I almost knocked both of us off the gangplank. I did not know at the time, but I learned later it was the President whose life I almost consigned to the water." President Tyler had Julia taken directly to the White House where she spent the next few days recuperating under the watchful eyes of the President and his large family.

The bodies of Julia's father, the two dead Cabinet members (Secretaries Upshur and Gilmer), the Princeton's Commander Kennon, and the diplomat Maxcy remained on board the Princeton on the night of February 28th. The injured went to hospitals and homes around the capital city. The next day, Washington was in official mourning as the word of the tragedy spread and the signs of mourning -- black crepe hanging on the White House and other public buildings --were displayed. As Washington mourned, the bodies of Gardiner, Upshur, Gilmer, Kennon, and Maxcy were transported to the White House, where their flag-draped caskets rested in honor in the East Room. (It's safe to assume that President Tyler's slave wasn't awarded the same honors -- when the bodies were removed from the Princeton, they were all placed in magnificent mahogany caskets, except for Armistead, who was placed in one made from cherry. The President did reportedly give Armistead's mother $200.)

After two days of lying in state in the East Room of the White House, Gardiner, Upshur, Gilmer, and Kennon were transferred to St. John's Episcopal Church, where all of official Washington showed up to pay their respects at their joint funeral (Maxcy's family took his remains for a private funeral and burial shortly after his body arrived at the Executive Mansion). It was a solemn occasion -- one of the biggest tragedies to strike the United States up to that point, and a significant loss to President Tyler, both professionally and personally. Tyler was mourning two important members of his Cabinet, and the woman he hoped to marry was burying her father after he had been killed in the most gruesome manner imaginable on a cruise that Tyler had invited him to take.

The funeral started with an ominous and unfortunate signal: the firing of loud artillery across from the Executive Mansion could not have been a pleasant reminder to those who had survived the tragedy on board the Princeton a few days earlier. The bodies of Upshur, Gilmer, Kennon, and Gardiner were taken to Congressional Cemetery following the funeral and buried there, although Gardiner was later exhumed and reburied on Gardiner's Island in New York. After narrowly escaping death or serious injury on the Princeton a few days earlier, President Tyler found himself in danger once again as he left the funeral. Traveling through the busy streets of Washington in his horse-drawn carriage, the President's horses were startled by the crowds and bolted -- leaving Tyler helpless in a runaway carriage until a man bravely rushed out from a hotel entrance and helped stop the carriage.

••• Being comforted by President Tyler and his immediate family in the aftermath of her father's death changed Julia Gardiner's mind about marrying the much older President. Tyler had done everything possible to console her and make her feel safe in the days after the Princeton explosion. Later, Julia would write that, "After I lost my father, I felt differently towards the President. He seemed to fill the place and to be more agreeable in every way than any younger man was or could be." While the loss of her father was certainly tragic, John Tyler happened to be in the right place at the right time, and, in a strange way, David Gardiner's death may have helped spark the romance between the President and Gardiner's daughter. Several weeks after the Princeton tragedy, Tyler asked Julia's mother (who herself was nearly a decade younger than the President!) for her blessing to marry Julia and Mrs. Gardiner approved of the union.

Still, the marriage was not without controversy. The wedding took place on June 26, 1844, just a few months after the Princeton explosion. Julia and her family were still in mourning for Mr. Gardiner, so the wedding was solemn and low-key. Plus, the President's family -- particularly his daughters from his first marriage -- were reluctant to accept his new bride. After all, Tyler's first wife had died less than two years earlier, and Julia Gardiner was about the same age as Tyler's daughters; in fact, she was five years younger than Tyler's oldest daughter. One more unique aspect of the wedding was that this was the first time an incumbent President of the United States had ever gotten married while in office. Normally, it would be blockbuster social news, but the President's wedding was kept strictly private.

Accompanied only by his son, John Tyler III, the President and Julia Gardiner were married at the Church of the Ascension in Manhattan (which is still standing today, at Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street in Greenwich Village) on June 26, 1844. Very few people even knew that the President was in town until after the wedding when they heard the salute from the guns of warships in New York Harbor as he and his new First Lady departed the city (again, maybe firing the guns wasn't the greatest idea for this particular couple at that particular time?). According to one of the only eyewitness accounts of the wedding, published in The New York Morning Express the day after the nuptials, the bride was given away by her brother and and "robed simply in white, with a gauze veil depending from a circlet of white flowers wreathed in her hair." After the ceremony, the wedding party held a dinner at Lafayette Place before the President and Mrs. Tyler departed the city by steamer, staying the night in Philadelphia, before proceeding back to Washington on a special train the next day.

[The Church of the Ascension in Manhattan where President Tyler and Julia Gardiner were married on June 26, 1844.]

When President Tyler left office in 1845, he and his wife retired to Tyler's plantation in Virginia, Sherwood Forest. They had seven children (in addition to the seven surviving children from Tyler's first marriage) and remained happily married, despite the 30-year age difference between the husband and wife. In January 1862, the Tylers headed to Richmond for Tyler's inauguration as a member of the Confederate House of Representatives. Tyler was the only former President who did not remain loyal to the Union during the Civil War. On January 18th, the 71-year-old Tyler died in Richmond's Exchange Hotel, likely due to complications from a stroke and was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery with Confederate honors. Widely considered a traitor in the North, official notice of Tyler's death wasn't given until 1915 when Congress finally erected a monument near his grave.

Julia Gardiner Tyler lived until 1889, but remarkably, as of 2024, one of President and Mrs. Tyler's grandsons is still living. With seven children (the last of which died in 1947 -- 157 years after John Tyler's birth!), the Tylers were blessed with a wealth of grandchildren and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born in 1928) is still alive today (his brother, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., died in 2020). In the 1970s, Harrison Tyler purchased and restored his grandfather's beloved Virginia plantation, Sherwood Forest, and often spoke about his family's unique place in history until his health started to fail in recent years.

••• As for the USS Princeton, well, it never truly recovered from the "Peacemaker" explosion. Captain Robert Field Stockton was absolved of blame for the tragedy and went on to fame in California during the Mexican-American War (he has a city named after him near Sacramento), and later was elected a United States Senator from New Jersey. The Princeton participated in engagements in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican-American War, but its hull was found to be rotting after the war ended. It was broken up for scrap in Boston and the "Peacemaker's" twin gun -- the "Oregon" -- can be seen today on the grounds of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

[The "Oregon" gun from the USS Princeton, now on display at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.]

During World War II, a new USS Princeton was commissioned. A 622-foot-long aircraft carrier, the new Princeton engaged in action in the Pacific Ocean. On October 20, 1944 -- 100 years after the explosion of the "Peacemaker" during President Tyler's Potomac River cruise -- the modern Princeton was attacked by a Japanese dive bomber in the Leyte Gulf and 108 sailors were killed. Even the Princeton's descendants seem to be cursed.

[fatehbaz]

County and city governments in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, etc.:

"Yea, totally, we're compassionate and humane. We're the enlightened 'Left Coast' after all, right? So we acknowledge that our homelessness and housing prices are so obscene that even people across the planet, in other nations, are aware of and horrified by the reputation of cities like San Francisco and Seattle, whose names have become notorious. Anyway. In the past two or three years, the situation has significantly worsened, because these cities have aggressively increased legal attacks and intimidation against homeless people, by increasing crackdowns on and criminal sentences for 'loitering' and for sleeping outside. Portland, for example, has aggressively cleared long-standing camps and unofficial traditional places of refuge while outlawing 'camping'. Our cities have been dramatically increasing the frequency of camp sweeps, trashing peoples' only belongings. This year in 2023, for the third consecutive summer in a row, temperatures will again be reaching above 105 degrees Fahrenheit for multiple days, in these cities, like Seattle, where even 70% of rented households have no air conditioning due to the typically mild marine climate of the coast. The past year has been "the hottest on record" for the planet. Meanwhile, already earlier in July 2023, temperatures in Phoenix were above 110 degrees for 19 straight days. In the past year, the state of New Mexico saw a 48% increase in homelessness. The LA Times and LA Homeless Services Authority reported in June 2023 that on any given night there are over 46,000 people experiencing homelessness in the City of Los Angeles, while on any given night L.A. County hosts about 75,000 (seventy-five thousand) people experiencing homelessness. That's a lot of people who will be subject to persistent extreme heat. Therefore, because we are compassionate and humane, we will be declaring an official state of emergency and temporarily halting our police enforcement of camp sweeps ... for the next three days. Until Friday morning or whatever. After that, we're coming back with the bulldozers and heavily armed cops to cleanse you filth and purge our streets."

(Reading about, for example, in August 2023, Portland mayor's office being like: "We had big raids on homeless camps scheduled for this week when temperatures will be above 100 degrees, but we'll postpone them until Friday! :) You're welcome!")

[allapprovaloffersandjobs]

2024 US Election Results Live Updates: President Joe Biden meets Trump at White House, both pledge smooth transition

Link Here : https://tinyurl.com/3u8b9tjr

Biden and Xi will meet in Peru as US-China relations tested again by Trump's return

President Joe Biden will hold talks Saturday with China's Xi Jinping on the sidelines of an international summit in Peru, a face-to-face meeting that comes as Beijing braces for Donald Trump's return to the White House. A senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement, confirmed plans for the meeting to take place while the two leaders are in Lima for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. That will come just over two months before Trump's inauguration. The official declined to comment on how Biden and his advisers would address questions certain to be raised by Xi and Chinese officials about the incoming Trump administration or whether Biden would discuss the US-China relationship with Trump during the president-elect's visit to the White House on Wednesday. Washington and Beijing have long had deep differences on the support China has given to Russia during its war in Ukraine, human rights issues, technology and Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy that Beijing claims as its own. A second Trump administration is expected to test US-China relations even more than the Republican's first term, when the US imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese products. That brought Beijing to the negotiating table, and in 2020, the two sides signed a trade deal in which China committed to improve intellectual property rights and buy an extra $200 billion of American goods. A couple of years later, a research group showed that China had bought essentially none of the goods it had promised. (AP)

00:18 (IST) Nov 14

Melania Trump boycotts tea invitation from Jill Biden while husbands meet

Melania Trump boycotted a meeting with Jill Biden, while their husbands held a traditional meeting at the White House on Wednesday. Two hours before US President-elect Donald Trump and President Joe Biden were to meet, the office of Melania Trump said in an X post, "Mrs Trump will not be attending today's meeting at the White House." "Her husband's return to the Oval Office to commence the transition process is encouraging, and she wishes him great success," it said. Her office did not give a reason for her not taking up First Lady Jill Biden's invitation for tea. But it added, "In this instance, several unnamed sources in the media continue to provide false, misleading, and inaccurate information. Be discerning with your source of news." It did not specifically deny any of the reports about her not meeting Jill Biden. (IANS)

00:18 (IST) Nov 14

Bitcoin rises above $90,000 on Trump euphoria

Bitcoin broke through the $90,000 level on Wednesday, as its rally showed no signs of easing on expectations that Donald Trump as U.S. president will be a boon for cryptocurrencies. The world's biggest cryptocurrency has become one of the most eye-catching movers in the week since the election and on Wednesday touched record highs. It was last up 5.49% at $93,158, marking a 32% rise since the Nov. 5 election. Smaller peer ether has also risen 37% since election day, while dogecoin, an alternative, volatile token promoted by billionaire Trump-ally Elon Musk was up more than 150%. Trump embraced digital assets during his campaign, promising to make the United States the "crypto capital of the planet" and to accumulate a national stockpile of bitcoin. (Reuters)

00:17 (IST) Nov 14

'Welcome back': Trump, Biden shake hands in White House

Joe Biden welcomed Donald Trump back to the White House on Wednesday, in a show of civility to a bitter rival who failed to extend him the same courtesy four years ago. The US president and president-elect shook hands in front of a roaring fire in the Oval Office as they pledged a smooth transition -- a stark contrast to Trump's refusal to recognize his 2020 defeat. "Welcome back," Biden, 81, said as he congratulated the 78-year-old Trump and offered brief opening remarks to the man he has repeatedly slammed as a threat to democracy. "Politics is tough, and in many cases it's not a very nice world. It is a nice world today and I appreciate it very much," Trump said. Trump added that the transfer of power would be "smooth as you can get" -- despite the fact that his transition team has not yet signed some key legal documents ahead of his inauguration as president on January 20.