The Associated Press – The Denver Post https://www.denverpost.com Colorado breaking news, sports, business, weather, entertainment. Tue, 10 Sep 2024 03:39:52 +0000 en-US hourly 30 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 https://www.denverpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/cropped-DP_bug_denverpost.jpg?w=32 The Associated Press – The Denver Post https://www.denverpost.com 32 32 111738712 The iPhone 16, new AirPods and other highlights from Apple’s product showcase https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/apple-iphone-16-product-showcase/ Tue, 10 Sep 2024 01:18:59 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6609472&preview=true&preview_id=6609472 CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple squarely shifted its focus toward artificial intelligence with the unveiling of its hotly anticipated iPhone 16 along with a slew of new features coming with the next update to the device’s operating system. While the new phone lineup headlined Monday’s showcase, the tech giant also shared updates to its smartwatch and AirPod lineups.

Here are all the biggest announcements from Apple’s “Glowtime” event.

Apple Intelligence

Apple’s core artificial intelligence offerings are being packaged and billed as Apple Intelligence — first revealed at the company’s developers conference in June.

These features include the ability to search for images in your library by describing them, creating custom emojis, summarizing emails and prioritizing notifications. Apple Intelligence will also upgrade Apple’s virtual assistant Siri to get it to better understand requests and give it some awareness of on-screen actions taking place on the phone, hopefully making it more useful.

What sets Apple apart from what’s being offered by rivals Samsung and Google? It is trying to preserve its longtime commitment to privacy by tailoring its AI so that most of its functions are processed on the device itself instead of at remote data centers. When a task requires a connection to a data center, Apple promises it will be done in a tightly controlled way that ensures no personal data is stored remotely.

Most of Apple’s AI functions will roll out as part of a free software update to iOS 18, the operating system that will power the iPhone 16 rolling out from October through December. U.S. English will be the featured language at launch but an update enabling other languages will come out next year, according to Apple.

iPhone 16 and the camera button

The iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max will offer slightly bigger displays and feature variants of the powerful A18 chip, which gives Apple the computing power its devices need to run AI functions.

The iPhone 16 “has been designed for Apple Intelligence from the ground up,” CEO Tim Cook said during Monday’s event.

On the other end of the spectrum, the biggest physical change to the iPhone 16 lineup comes in the form of a dedicated camera-control button. The button responds to clicks and gestures, allowing users to quickly snap pictures, preview a shot or start video recording.

The button also allows owners to use something called Visual Intelligence, which will tell the iPhone 16 to automatically search on things you take photos of.

The phones will start shipping Sept. 20. The iPhone 16 will retail for $799, with the Plus model going for $899. The iPhone 16 Pro will cost $999, while the Pro Max will sell for $1,199.

Apple Watch upgrades

The Apple Watch Series 10 features a larger, and brighter, wide-angle OLED display that will allow users to better view the watch at an angle. But Apple focused much of its presentation on the device’s ability to detect signs of sleep apnea.

The new device is also being offered in a titanium finish for the first time, joining a longtime trend in the watch industry of offering a tougher, more lightweight, and perceived higher-quality, alternative to traditional materials.

The Series 10 watch starts at $399 and will be available on Sept. 20.

Airpods lean toward being a listening device

The new AirPods 4 series will come with an upgraded chip for better audio quality, and will feature more active noise cancellation.

If you frequently lose your ear buds, the new AirPods will also play a sound when you locate them through the Find My app.

In a medically focused update to the AirPods Pro 2, Apple said it will upgrade the devices so they can act as an over-the-counter hearing aid. A free software update will provide the upgrade and also include options to help protect hearing and the ability to administer a clinical-grade hearing test.

The AirPod 4 model costs $129, while the version with active noise cancelling will cost $179. They both ship on Sept. 20.

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6609472 2024-09-09T19:18:59+00:00 2024-09-09T19:23:53+00:00
James Earl Jones, acclaimed actor and voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93 https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/james-earl-jones-acclaimed-actor-and-voice-of-darth-vader-dies-at-93/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 20:51:06 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6609122&preview=true&preview_id=6609122 By MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.

His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.

The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.

“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”

Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”

He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in Disney’s animated “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.

“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the payment in these streets looks for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.

Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three Tom Clancy blockbuster adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.

Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”

As a rising stage and television actor, he appeared in “As the World Turns” in 1965, one of the first Black actors to have such role on daytime TV. He performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.

Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.

When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.

“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”

Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.

Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.

At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.

In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.

True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.

Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.

In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”

Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.

“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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6609122 2024-09-09T14:51:06+00:00 2024-09-09T15:14:16+00:00
Wisconsin recalls eggs after a salmonella outbreak in 9 states including Colorado https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/eggs-recalled-salmonella-outbreak-colorado/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:49:18 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608827&preview=true&preview_id=6608827 Wisconsin health officials initiated a recall of eggs following an outbreak of salmonella infections among 65 people in nine states — including Colorado — that originated on a Wisconsin farm.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said in a statement Friday that among those infected by salmonella are 42 people in Wisconsin, where the eggs are believed to have been sold.

“The eggs were distributed in Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan through retail stores and food service distributors,” the department said. “The recall includes all egg types such as conventional cage-free, organic, and non-GMO, carton sizes, and expiration dates in containers labeled with ‘Milo’s Poultry Farms’ or ‘Tony’s Fresh Market.’”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a statement on its website that 65 people in nine states were infected by a strain of salmonella, with 24 hospitalizations and no deaths as of Friday. The states include Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Utah and California, the agency said.

One case has been reported in Colorado to date, according to the CDC.

The egg recall was undertaken by Milo’s Poultry Farms LLC of Bonduel, Wisconsin, the CDC said.

“Anyone who purchased the recalled eggs is advised to not eat them or cook with them and to throw them away. Restaurants should not sell or serve recalled eggs,” the Wisconsin health department said.

The department advised anyone who ate the eggs and is experiencing symptoms to contact a health care provider. Symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever and vomiting lasting for several days, the statement said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture in July announced new measures to limit salmonella in poultry products. The proposed directive included requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella levels under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six particularly sickening forms of the bacteria, three found in turkey and three in chicken.

Bacteria exceeding the proposed standard and identification of any of the strains would prevent poultry sales and leave the products subject to recall.

The CDC estimates salmonella causes 1.35 million infections annually, most through food, and about 420 deaths. The Agriculture Department estimates there are 125,000 infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year.

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6608827 2024-09-09T12:49:18+00:00 2024-09-09T13:02:58+00:00
Colorado’s Shilo Sanders has surgery on arm, Deion Sanders says https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/colorados-shilo-sanders-has-surgery-on-arm-deion-sanders-says/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:36:28 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6609004&preview=true&preview_id=6609004 By PAT GRAHAM

DENVER (AP) — Colorado safety Shilo Sanders had surgery after sustaining an arm injury in the team’s loss to Nebraska, his father and coach, Deion Sanders, said Monday in a social media post.

Deion Sanders posted pictures of his son, including one with Shilo Sanders in a wheelchair and another with his arm in a cast as he recovered in a hospital bed. Deion Sanders wrote: “God is Good! Can’t wait to see u back ready to go. Love ya son!”

There’s no timetable for a return. The school doesn’t typically announce injuries.

Deion Sanders said in his NBC halftime interview Saturday he thought his son broke his forearm. He had no update, though, after the game.

Shilo Sanders appeared to hurt his arm in the first quarter Saturday while making a tackle on Nebraska running back Dante Dowdell in a 28-10 loss to the Cornhuskers. Sanders went to the locker room and didn’t return to play.

The loss of Shilo Sanders would be a big blow for a defense that’s trying to get in sync under new defensive coordinator Robert Livingston. Sanders has 11 tackles this season. Sophomore Savion Riley is listed as his backup on the depth chart.

Last season, Sanders was an all-Pac-12 honorable mention selection after finishing with 69 tackles and an interception. He started his career at South Carolina before joining his father at Jackson State and following him to Boulder.

Quarterback Shedeur Sanders was banged up in the Nebraska game, too, after being sacked five times. Behind a shaky offensive front, he threw for 244 yards and one touchdown. He also had a costly first-quarter interception that Nebraska returned for a score.

“There’s nothing that recovery and everything can’t fix,” the quarterback said of his health after the game. “We’re going to get back to the drawing board.”

Colorado beat FCS North Dakota State 31-26 in the season opener. The Buffaloes play at Colorado State on Saturday night.

___

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6609004 2024-09-09T12:36:28+00:00 2024-09-09T14:42:45+00:00
Video shows officers dragged Tyreek Hill out of his car after he put his window back up https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/video-shows-officers-dragged-tyreek-hill-out-of-his-car-after-he-put-his-window-back-up/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 18:07:32 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6609506&preview=true&preview_id=6609506 By TERRY SPENCER and ALANIS THAMES

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — A police officer dragged Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill out of his sports car by his arm and head and then forced him face-first onto the ground after Hill put up the window of his car during a traffic stop before Sunday’s game, body camera video released Monday shows.

The video showed that the altercation between the Miami-Dade County officers and Hill escalated quickly. The officers cursed at Hill but he did not resist their physical force or strike at them. He did tell one officer, “Don’t tell me what to do.” Six officers’ body camera videos have been released.

Police Director Stephanie Davis said the tape would normally not be released while the investigation is ongoing, but she wanted to demonstrate the department’s “commitment to transparency and maintaining public trust.”

In a CNN interview later Monday night, the 30-year-old NFL star said he was “embarrassed” and “shell-shocked” by the situation.

Video shows that two motorcycle officers went after Hill after he appeared to speed past them at in his McLaren sports car on the roadway entering Hard Rock Stadium in light traffic — they later said they clocked him at 60 mph (37 kph). They turned on their lights and pulled Hill over. One knocked on the driver’s window and told him to put it down, which Hill did and handed him his driver’s license.

“Don’t knock on my window like that,” Hill told the officer repeatedly.

“I have to knock to let you know I am here,” the officer told Hill while repeatedly asking why the player didn’t have his seatbelt on.

“Just give me my ticket, bro, so I can go. I am going to be late. Do what you gotta do,” Hill told the officer while putting his darkly tinted window back up.

“Keep your window down,” the officer told him, again tapping on the glass. Hill can still be seen inside.

Hill rolled the window down slightly and said, “Don’t tell me what to do.” He put the window back up.

Hill told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he did roll his window back up, citing concern about drawing unwanted attention to himself.

“If I let my window down, people walking by, driving by, they’re going to notice that it’s me,” Hill said. “And they’re going to start taking pictures, and I didn’t want to create a scene at all. Like, I just really wanted to get the ticket and then go on about my way.”

The officer again told Hill to put his window back down or “I am going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car.”

The officer then demanded Hill open the door. Another officer stepped up and said, “Get out of the car or I will break that … window,” using an obscenity.

The door opened and the second officer reached in and grabbed Hill by the arm and the back of the head as the player said, “I am getting out.”

Hill later guessed that he wasn’t moving as quickly as the officers would have liked.

“I wasn’t moving fast because I’ve got injuries,” said Hill, who started his ninth NFL season. “I got things that I go through. I play a physical sport.”

The second officer forced Hill face-first onto the ground. Three officers pulled Hill’s arms behind his back as Hill yelled into his cellphone, “I am getting arrested Drew,” talking to the Dolphins’ director of security, Drew Brooks.

The officers handcuffed Hill and one put a knee in the middle of his back. “If we tell you to do something, do it.”

“Take me to jail, brother, do what you gotta do,” Hill replied.

“We are,” an officer said.

“You crazy,” Hill said to the officer.

The officers stood Hill up and walked him to the sidewalk. One officer told him to sit on the curb. Hill said to the officer he just had surgery on his knee.

An officer then jumped behind him and put a bar hold around Hill’s upper chest or neck. He pulled Hill into a seating position.

“Chill, bro,” Hill told the officers.

At that point, teammate Jonnu Smith parked his SUV in front of Hill’s car, got out and asked what was going on. The officers ordered Smith to get back in his vehicle and leave. They then told him they were going to give him a ticket for blocking the road.

Defensive tackle Calais Campbell also pulled up. He was told to leave and when he didn’t, he was briefly handcuffed.

Hill and Campbell were eventually released and allowed to go into the stadium. Hill received citations for careless driving and failing to wear a seatbelt, but was never arrested, the video shows. One officer was placed on administrative leave. An internal affairs investigation has been launched.

The Dolphins, in a statement released Monday night said they have a strong relationship with the police department but were “saddened” by the altercation.

“As is on full display in the videos released tonight, there are some officers who mistake their responsibility and commitment to serve with misguided power,” the team said. “While we commend MDPD for taking the right and necessary action to quickly release this footage, we also urge them to take equally swift and strong action against the officers who engaged in such despicable behavior.”

Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, defended the officer’s actions, saying in a statement that Hill was not “immediately cooperative” with officers on the scene, that the officers followed their policy in handcuffing Hill, who was “redirected to the ground” after refusing to sit.

Julius B. Collins, Hill’s attorney who appeared with him on CNN, said there was one officer who was the “most aggressive” but another who initially approached Hill’s car was not aggressive at all. Neither was Hill, Collins added.

“You saw also, he put up his hands to show that he didn’t have a firearm. He wasn’t a threat and that he was complying with officers. I mean, you know, as far as this statement goes, though, from the police union, I think the video contradicts everything that they’re saying.”

Hill, who is Black, said he wondered what would have happened to him if he weren’t an NFL star. Some of his teammates who are also Black said they were used to seeing that sort of interaction.

“I hate talking like this, man, because I have a kid fan base,” Hill said. “But the reality of it, yeah, it’s the truth. If I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, worst-case scenario, we would have had a different article — ‘Tyreek Hill got shot in front of Hard Rock Stadium.’ That’s worst-case scenario. Or ‘Tyreek Hill put in handcuffs and taken in and booked.’”

This isn’t the first off-field incident involving Hill.

He was accused of punching his girlfriend in college and got kicked off the team at Oklahoma State, later pleading guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation. In 2019, prosecutors in suburban Kansas City declined to charge Hill after an alleged domestic violence incident involving his fiancée and their 3-year-old child.

Hill said Monday he wants to turn this recent incident into a positive.

“I’m a good ole country boy from South Georgia, man,” Hill said. “I’m not a big believer in dividing people.”

___

Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Associated Press Writer David Fischer contributed to this report.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

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6609506 2024-09-09T12:07:32+00:00 2024-09-09T21:39:52+00:00
“I’m living a lie”: On the streets of a Colorado city, pregnant migrants struggle to survive https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/venezuelan-migrants-aurora-colorado/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 14:28:22 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608476&preview=true&preview_id=6608476 By BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS, Associated Press

AURORA — She was eight months pregnant when she was forced to leave her Denver homeless shelter. It was November.

Ivanni Herrera took her 4-year-old son Dylan by the hand and led him into the chilly night, dragging a suitcase containing donated clothes and blankets she’d taken from the Microtel Inn & Suites. It was one of 10 hotels where Denver has housed more than 30,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, over the last two years.

First they walked to Walmart. There, with money she and her husband had collected from begging on the street, they bought a tent.

They waited until dark to construct their new home. They chose a grassy median along a busy thoroughfare in Aurora, the next town over, a suburb known for its immigrant population.

“We wanted to go somewhere where there were people,” Herrera, 28, said in Spanish. “It feels safer.”

That night, temperatures dipped to 32 degrees. And as she wrapped her body around her son’s to keep him warm enough that he could sleep, Ivanni Herrera cried.

Seeking better lives, finding something else

Over the past two years, a record number of families from Venezuela have come to the United States seeking a better life for themselves and their children. Instead, they’ve found themselves in communities roiling with conflict about how much to help the newcomers — or whether to help at all.

Unable to legally work without filing expensive and complicated paperwork, some are homeless and gambling on the kindness of strangers to survive. Some have found themselves sleeping on the streets — even those who are pregnant.

Like many in her generation, regardless of nationality, Herrera found inspiration for her life’s ambitions on social media. Back in Ecuador, where she had fled years earlier to escape the economic collapse in her native Venezuela, Herrera and her husband were emboldened by images of families like theirs hiking across the infamous Darién Gap from Colombia into Panama. If all those people could do it, they thought, so can we.

They didn’t know many people who had moved to the United States, but pictures and videos of Venezuelans on Facebook and TikTok showed young, smiling families in nice clothes standing in front of new cars boasting of beautiful new lives. U.S. Border Patrol reports show Herrera and the people who inspired her were part of an unprecedented mass migration of Venezuelans to America. Some 320,000 Venezuelans have tried to cross the southern border since October 2022 — more than in the previous nine years combined.

Just weeks after arriving in Denver, Herrera began to wonder if the success she had seen was real. She and her friends had developed another theory: The hype around the U.S. was part of some red de engaño, or network of deception.

After several days of camping on the street and relieving herself outside, Herrera began to itch uncontrollably with an infection. She worried: Would it imperil her baby?

She was seeing doctors and social workers at a Denver hospital where she planned to give birth because they served everyone, even those without insurance. They were alarmed their pregnant patient was now sleeping outside in the cold.

Days after she was forced to leave the Microtel, Denver paused its policy and allowed homeless immigrants to stay in its shelters through the winter. Denver officials say they visited encampments to urge homeless migrants to come back inside. But they didn’t venture outside the city limits to Aurora.

As Colorado’s third-largest city, Aurora, on Denver’s eastern edge, is a place where officials have turned down requests to help migrants. In February, the Aurora City Council passed a resolution telling other cities and nonprofits not to bring migrants into the community because it “does not currently have the financial capacity to fund new services related to this crisis.” Yet still they come, because of its lower cost of living and Spanish-speaking community.

In fact, former President Donald Trump last week called attention to the city, suggesting a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment complex. Authorities say that hasn’t happened.

The doctors treated Herrera’s yeast infection and urged her to sleep at the hospital. It wouldn’t cost anything, they assured her, just as her birth would be covered by emergency Medicaid, a program that extends the health care benefits for poor American families to unauthorized immigrants for labor and delivery.

Herrera refused.

“How,” she asked, “could I sleep in a warm place when my son is cold on the street?”

Another family, cast out into the night

It was March when David Jaimez, his pregnant wife and their two daughters were evicted from their Aurora apartment. Desperate for help, they dragged their possessions into Thursday evening Bible study at Jesus on Colfax, a church and food pantry inside an old motel. Its namesake and location, Colfax Avenue, has long been a destination for the drug-addicted, homeless veterans and new immigrants.

When the Jaimez family arrived, the prayers paused. The manager addressed the family in elementary Spanish, supplementing with Google Translate on her phone.

After arriving from Venezuela in August and staying in a Denver-sponsored hotel room, they’d moved into an apartment in Aurora. Housing is cheaper in that eastern suburb, but they never found enough work to pay their rent. “I owe $8,000,” Jaimez said, his eyes wide. “Supposedly there’s work here. I don’t believe it.”

Jaimez and his wife are eligible to apply for asylum or for “ Temporary Protected Status ” and, with that, work permits. But doing so would require an attorney or advisor, months of waiting and $500 in fees each.

At the prayer group, Jaimez’s daughters drank sodas and ate tangerines from one participant, a middle-aged woman and Aurora native. She stroked the ponytail of the family’s 8-year-old daughter as the young girl smiled.

When the leader couldn’t find anywhere for the family to stay, they headed out into the evening, pushing their year-old daughter in her stroller and lugging a suitcase behind them. After they left, the middle-aged woman leaned forward in her folding chair and said: “It’s kind of crazy that our city lets them in but does not help our veterans.” Nearby, a man nodded in agreement.

That night, Jaimez and his family found an encampment for migrants run by a Denver nonprofit called All Souls and moved into tent number 28. Volunteers and staff brought in water, meals and other resources. Weeks later, the family was on the move again: Camping without a permit is illegal in Denver, and the city closed down the encampment. All Souls re-established it in six different locations but closed it permanently in May.

At its peak, nearly 100 people were living in the encampment. About half had been evicted from apartments hastily arranged before their shelter time expired, said founder Candice Marley. Twenty-two residents were children and five women were pregnant, including Jaimez’s wife. Marley is trying to get a permit for another encampment, but the permit would only allow people over 18.

“Even though there are lots of kids living on the street, they don’t want them all together in a camp,” Marley said. “That’s not a good public image for them.”

A city’s efforts, not enough

Denver officials say they won’t tolerate children sleeping on the street. “Did you really walk from Venezuela to be homeless in the U.S.? I don’t think so,” said Jon Ewing, spokesman for Denver’s health and human services department. “We can do better than that.”

Still, Denver struggled to keep up with the rush of migrants, many arriving on buses chartered by Texas to draw attention to the impact of immigration. All told, Denver officials say they have helped some 42,700 migrants since last year, either by giving them shelter or a bus fare to another city.

Initially, the city offered migrants with families six weeks in a hotel. But in May, on pace to spend $180 million this year helping newcomers, the city scaled back its offer to future migrants while deepening its investment in people already getting help.

Denver paid for longer shelter stays for 800 migrants already in hotels and offered them English classes and help applying for asylum and work permits. But any migrants arriving since May have received only three days in a hotel. After that, some have found transportation to other cities, scrounged for a place to sleep or wandered into nearby towns like Aurora.

Today, fewer migrants are coming to the Denver area, but Marley still receives dozens of outreaches per week from social service agencies looking to help homeless migrants. “It’s so frustrating that we can’t help them,” she said. “That leaves families camping on their own, unsupported, living in their cars. Kids can’t get into school. There’s no stability.”

After the encampment closed, Jaimez and his family moved into a hotel. He paid by holding a cardboard sign at an intersection and begging for money. Their daughter only attended school for one month last year, since they never felt confident that they were settled anywhere more than a few weeks. The family recently moved to a farm outside of the Denver area, where they’ve been told they can live in exchange for working.

On the front lines of begging

When Herrera started feeling labor pains in early December, she was sitting on the grass, resting after a long day asking strangers for money. She waited until she couldn’t bear the pain anymore and could feel the baby getting close. She called an ambulance.

The paramedics didn’t speak Spanish but called an interpreter. They told Herrera they had to take her to the closest hospital, instead of the one in Denver, since her contractions were so close together.

Her son was born healthy at 7 pounds, 8 ounces. She brought him to the tent the next day. A few days later the whole family, including the baby, had contracted chicken pox. “The baby was in a bad state,” said Emily Rodriguez, a close friend living with her family in a tent next to Herrera’s.

Herrera took him to the hospital, then returned to the tent before being offered a way out. An Aurora woman originally from Mexico invited the family to live with her — at first, for free. After a couple weeks, the family moved to a small room in the garage for $800 a month.

To earn rent and pay expenses, Herrera and Rodriguez have cleaned homes, painted houses and shoveled snow while their children waited in a car by themselves. Finding regular work and actually getting paid for it has been difficult. While their husbands can get semi-regular work in construction, the women’s most consistent income comes from something else: standing outside with their children and begging.

Herrera and her husband recently became eligible to apply for work permits and legal residency for Venezuelans who arrived in the United States last year. But it will cost $800 each for a lawyer to file the paperwork, along with hundreds of dollars in government fees. They don’t have the money.

One spring weekday, Herrera and Rodriguez stand by the shopping carts at the entrance to a Mexican grocery store. While their sons crawl along a chain of red shopping carts stacked together and baby Milan sleeps in his stroller, they try to make eye contact with shoppers.

Some ignore them. Others stuff bills in their hands. On a good day, each earns about $50.

It comes easier for Rodriguez, who’s naturally boisterous. “One day a man came up and gave me this iPhone. It’s new,” she says, waving the device in the air.

“Check out this body,” she says as she spins around, laughing and showing off her ample bottom. “I think he likes me.”

Herrera grimaces. She won’t flirt like her friend does. She picks up Milan and notices his diaper is soaked, then returns him to the stroller. She has run out of diapers.

Milan was sick, but Herrera has been afraid to take him to the doctor. Despite what the hospital had said when she was pregnant, she was never signed up for emergency Medicaid. She says she owes $18,000 for the ambulance ride and delivery of her baby. Now, she avoids going to the doctor or taking her children because she’s afraid her large debt will jeopardize her chances of staying in the U.S. “I’m afraid they’re going to deport me,” she says.

But some days, when she’s feeling overwhelmed, she wants to be deported — as long as she can take her children along. Like the day in May when the security guard at the Mexican grocery store chased off the women and told them they couldn’t beg there anymore. “He insulted us and called us awful names,” Rodriguez says.

The two women now hold cardboard signs along a busy street in Denver and then knock on the doors of private homes, never returning to the same address. They type up their request for clothes, food or money on their phones and translate it to English using Google. They hand their phones to whoever answers the door.

The American Dream, still out of reach

In the garage where Herrera and her family live, the walls are lined with stuffed animals people have given her and her son. Baby Milan, on the floor, pushes himself up to look around. Dylan sleeps in bed.

Herrera recently sent $500 to her sister to make the months-long trip from Venezuela to Aurora with Herrera’s 8-year-old daughter. “I’ll have my family back together,” she says. And she believes her sister will be able to watch her kids so Herrera can look for work.

“I don’t feel equipped to handle all of this on my own,” she says.

The problem is, Herrera hasn’t told her family back in Venezuela how she spends her time. “They think I’m fixing up homes and selling chocolate and flowers,” she says. “I’m living a lie.”

When her daughter calls in the middle of the day, she’s sure not to answer and only picks up after 6 p.m. “They think I’m doing so well, they expect me to send money,” she says. And Herrera has complied, sending $100 a week to help her sister pay rent and buy food for her daughter.

Finally, her sister and daughter are waiting across the border in Mexico. When we come to the U.S., her sister asks, could we fly to Denver? The tickets are $600.

She has to come clean. She doesn’t have the money. She lives day to day. The American Dream hasn’t happened for Ivanni Herrera — at least, not yet. Life is far more difficult than she has let on.

She texts back:

No.

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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6608476 2024-09-09T08:28:22+00:00 2024-09-09T11:08:14+00:00
A 9/11 anniversary tradition is handed down to a new generation https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/a-9-11-anniversary-tradition-is-handed-down-to-a-new-generation/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 13:39:15 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608427&preview=true&preview_id=6608427 By JENNIFER PELTZ

NEW YORK — A poignant phrase echoes when 9/11 victims’ relatives gather each year to remember the loved ones they lost in the terror attacks.

“I never got to meet you.”

It is the sound of generational change at ground zero, where relatives read out victims’ names on every anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people are expected again at this year’s ceremony Wednesday.

Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos, and a sense of solemn responsibility.

Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the Sept. 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.

“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13.

He read the names of his grandfather and several other people the last two years, and plans to do so on on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementoes in his room from his grandfather Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter.

The teen told the audience last year that he’s heard so much about his grandfather that it feels like he knew him, “but still, I wish I had a chance to really know you,” he added.

Allan volunteered to be a reader because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes to have children who’ll participate.

“It’s an honor to be able to teach them because you can let them know their heritage and what to never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he already finds himself teaching peers who know little or nothing about 9/11.

When it comes time for the ceremony, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he’s assigned to read.

“He reflects on everything and understands the importance of what it means to somebody,” his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz, said.

Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond ground zero. War memorials honor fallen military members by speaking their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations host readings of Holocaust victims’ names on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah.

The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the memorial there.

On Sept. 11 anniversaries, the Pentagon’s ceremony includes military members or officials reading the names of the 184 people killed there. The Flight 93 National Memorial has victims’ relatives and friends read the list of the 40 passengers and crew members whose lives ended at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The hourslong observance at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is almost exclusively dedicated to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three sites, plus the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. All are read by relatives who volunteer and are chosen by lottery.

Each is given a subset of names to render aloud. Readers also generally speak briefly about their own lost kin, frequently in touching detail.

“I think often about how, if you were still here, you would be one of my best friends, looking at colleges with me, getting me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, hanging out at the Jersey Shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo.

Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversation.

“Chris would have loved that” is a phrase often heard around the house.

She has read twice at the trade center ceremony.

“It means a lot to me that I can kind of keep alive my uncle’s name and just keep reading everybody else’s name, so that more of the upcoming generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass down the importance of what happened.”

Her two younger sisters also have read names, and one is preparing to do so again Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to steel herself to sign up.

“I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, who is Mozzillo’s sister. “They’re braver.”

By now, many of the children of 9/11 victims — such as Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — have long since grown up. But about 100 were born after the attacks killed one of their parents, and are now young adults.

“Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony.

One young reader after another at the event commemorated aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers whom the children have missed throughout their lives.

“My whole life, my dad has said I reminded him of you.”

“I wish you got to take me fishing.”

“I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.”

“Even though I never got to meet you, I will never forget you.”

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6608427 2024-09-09T07:39:15+00:00 2024-09-09T07:40:05+00:00
Today in History: September 9, first Black tennis player wins what is now the U.S. Open https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/today-in-history-september-9-first-black-tennis-player-wins-what-is-now-the-u-s-open/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 08:00:57 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608269&preview=true&preview_id=6608269 Today is Monday, Sept. 9, the 253rd day of 2024. There are 113 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 9, 1957, Althea Gibson became the first Black tennis player to win the U.S. National Championships, which is now known as the U.S. Open.

Also on this date:

In 1776, the second Continental Congress formally adopted the name “United States of America,” replacing the “United Colonies of North America.”

In 1850, California was admitted as the 31st U.S. state.

In 1919, about 1,100 members of Boston’s 1,500-member police force went on strike. The strike was broken by Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge with replacement officers.

In 1948, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was declared.

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction, a measure primarily concerned with protecting voting rights. It also established a Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice.

In 1971, prisoners seized control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, taking 42 staff members hostage and demanding improvements to inmate treatment and living conditions.

In 2022, King Charles III gave his first speech to Britain as its new monarch, vowing to carry on the “lifelong service” of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, who died a day earlier.

Today’s Birthdays:

  • Singer Dee Dee Sharp is 79.
  • Former NFL quarterback Joe Theismann is 75.
  • Actor Angela Cartwright is 72.
  • Musician-producer Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) is 72.
  • Actor Hugh Grant is 64.
  • Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., is 61.
  • Actor Constance Marie is 59.
  • Actor Adam Sandler is 58.
  • Actor Julia Sawalha (suh-WAHL’-hah) is 56.
  • Model Rachel Hunter is 55.
  • Actor Eric Stonestreet is 53.
  • Actor Henry Thomas is 53.
  • Actor Goran Visnjic (VEEZ’-nihch) is 52.
  • Pop-jazz singer Michael Bublé (boo-BLAY’) is 49.
  • Actor Michelle Williams is 44.
  • Actor Zoe Kazan is 41.
  • Soccer player Luka Modrić is 39.
  • Country singer-songwriter Hunter Hayes is 33.
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6608269 2024-09-09T02:00:57+00:00 2024-09-09T02:01:17+00:00
Syria says Israeli strikes kill 18 people in a large-scale attack https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/09/syria-says-israeli-strikes-kill-18-people-in-a-large-scale-attack/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 07:00:19 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608422&preview=true&preview_id=6608422 By ALBERT AJI and ABBY SEWELL

MASYAF, Syria (AP) — The number of people killed in overnight Israeli strikes in Syria has risen to 18 with dozens more wounded, Syria’s health minister said Monday — the largest death toll in such an attack since the beginning of the war in Gaza.

One of the sites targeted was a research center used in the development of weapons, a war monitor said. Syrian officials said civilian sites were targeted.

Israel regularly targets military sites in Syria linked to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Those strikes have become more frequent as Hezbollah has exchanged fire with Israeli forces for the past 11 months against the backdrop of Israel’s war against Hamas — a Hezbollah ally — in Gaza.

However, the intensity and death toll of Sunday night’s strikes were unusual.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations. The strikes often target Syrian forces or Iranian-backed groups.

Israel has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in Syria, particularly since Syria is a key route for Iran to send weapons to Hezbollah.

Israeli strikes hit several areas in central Syria, damaging a highway in Hama province and sparking fires, Syrian state news agency SANA said.

Speaking to reporters, Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabbash described the strikes as a “brutal and barbaric aggression.” He said the death toll had risen to 18 with nearly 40 wounded.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said 25 were killed, including at least five civilians, while the others included Syrian army soldiers and members of Hezbollah and other Iran-linked armed groups.

One strike targeted a scientific research center in Masyaf, and other sites where “Iranian militias and experts are stationed to develop weapons in Syria,” the observatory said. It said the research center was reportedly used for developing weapons, including short- and medium-range precision missiles and drones.

Minister of Electricity Mohammad al-Zamel said the strikes had caused “truly significant” damage to water and electricity infrastructure.

“This brutal attack targeted civilian targets, and the martyrs were mostly civilians, as were the wounded,” he said.

Muhammad Sumaya, a firefighter with the Hama Fire Brigade, was wounded when shrapnel from one of the strikes hit his foot.

When the strikes began, he said while being treated in the Masyaf hospital Monday, “we moved from one place to another to deal with the fires and work to extinguish them.” While they were working, he said, “a missile landed right next to us.”

Azzam al-Omar, a SANA photographer, said he was hit by shrapnel in the chest when a missile landed while he was photographing the aftermath of a strike.

Local media also reported strikes around the coastal city of Tartous, which the observatory said were the result of air defense missiles falling.

On Monday afternoon, a charred car remained at the scene of one strike and smoke was still rising from some spots where fires had been put out.

Also on Monday, Saudi Arabia officially reopened its embassy in Damascus, marking a full restoration of relations between the two countries.

Syria was widely shunned by Arab governments over the brutal crackdown by the government of Bashar Assas on protesters in a 2011 uprising that descended into civil war. The breakdown in relations culminated with Syria being ousted from the Arab League.

As Assad consolidated his control over most of the country and the civil war turned into a largely frozen conflict, Arab states moved toward a rapproachement with Damascus.

Saudi Arabia cut off diplomatic relations with Syria in 2012. Last year, soon after Syria was reinstated to the Arab League, the two countries announced they were restoring relations.

___

Sewell reported from Istanbul. Associated Press journalist Samar Kassaballi in Damascus contributed to this report.

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6608422 2024-09-09T01:00:19+00:00 2024-09-09T13:46:22+00:00
Harris’ past debates: A prosecutor’s style with narrative flair but risks in a matchup with Trump https://www.denverpost.com/2024/09/08/harris-past-debates-a-prosecutors-style-with-narrative-flair-but-risks-in-a-matchup-with-trump/ Mon, 09 Sep 2024 04:02:39 +0000 https://www.denverpost.com/?p=6608383&preview=true&preview_id=6608383 By BILL BARROW

ATLANTA (AP) — From her earliest campaigns in California to her serving as President Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has honed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to blend punch lines with details that build toward a broader narrative. She might shake her head to signal her disapproval while her opponent is speaking, counting on viewers to see her reaction on a split screen. And she has a go-to tactic to pivot debates back in her favor: saying she’s glad to answer a question as she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend a past one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will put the Democratic vice president’s skills to a test unlike any she’s faced. Harris faces former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who will participate in his seventh general election debate since 2016 for an event that will be seen by tens of millions of viewers just as early voting in November’s election starts around the country.

People who have competed against Harris and prepared her rivals say she brings a series of advantages to the matchup, including her prosecutorial background juxtaposed with Trump being the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Still, Harris allies warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who veers between policy critiques, personal attacks, and falsehoods or conspiracy theories.

“She can meet the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation against Harris in the fall of 2020. “She has shown that in different environments. I would not underestimate that in any way.”

Julian Castro, a Democrat who ran for president against Harris in the 2020 primary, said Harris blended “knowledge, poise and the ability to explain things well” to stand out during crowded primary debates.

“Some candidates get too caught up with trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a very good balance.”

Balancing narrative and detail

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about her approach, said the vice president views the events like a jury trial she would have led when she was district attorney in San Francisco or querying a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill as a U.S. senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on merit while leaving more casual or piecemeal viewers with key takeaways.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves but also about a larger strategy of offering a vision for what your leadership and style looks like,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 primary debate preparation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but folds them into a broader narrative — the same way she would talk to jurors.

“She states a thesis and then follows with fact, fact, fact,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris hammered Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable 2019 primary debate when she skewered Biden for how he had talked about race and institutional racism. She weaved her critique of Biden’s record with her own biography as a young, biracial student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl was me,” Harris said in a widely circulated quip that punctuated her story about court-ordered busing that helped non-white students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument aren’t good at wrapping that with an effective narrative,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Landing memorable punches

Castro said Harris has a good feel for when to strike, a quality he traced to her trial experience. In 2019, as multiple Democratic candidates talked over one another, Harris sat back before getting moderators to recognize her.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” she said, taking control of the conversation and drawing applause.

When Harris faced Pence in 2020, it was a mostly civil, substantive debate. But she got in digs that framed Pence as a serial interrupter, as Trump had been in his first debate with Biden.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at one point, with a stern look. At another: “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation.”

Finding traps in policy

Debates have sometimes put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primary matches, Tulsi Gabbard, who this year has endorsed Trump, blitzed Harris over how aggressively she prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders as a district attorney.

That fall, Pence made Harris sometimes struggle to defend Biden’s positions. Now, her task will be to defend not just Biden’s record, but her own role in that record and what policies she would pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top aides, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about more liberal positions Harris took in her 2020 primary campaign, especially on fracking, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery and how to treat migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.

“We were surprised that she missed some opportunities (against Pence) when the conversation was centered around policy,” Short said.

Timing, silence and nonverbal communication

One of Harris’ earliest debate triumphs came in 2010 as she ran for California attorney general. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public pension while still being paid a salary for a current public post.

“I earned it,” Republican Steve Cooley said of the so-called “double-dipping” practice.

Harris looked on silently, with a slightly amused look as Cooley explained himself. When moderators recognized her, she said just seven words – “Go for it, Steve. You earned it!” — in a serious tone but with a look that communicated her sarcasm. The exchange landed in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is quite effective at nonverbal communication and knowing when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often will shake her head and, with other looks, telegraph her disapproval while her opponent is speaking. Then she smiles before retorting, or attacking, in a conversational tone.

“She defuses some of the argument that Trump makes that she is ‘a nasty woman,’ that she’s engaging in egregiously unfair behavior, because her nonverbal presentation is actually undercutting that line of attack,” Jamieson said.

Meeting a new challenge with Trump

For all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and massive stage. Democrats who ordinarily tear into Trump instead appeared on Sunday’s news shows to make clear that Harris faced a big task ahead.

“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, yet another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, on CNN. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “a nasty and crafty stage presence” who makes preparation difficult. And with ABC keeping the candidates’ microphones off when they are not speaking, Harris may not find it as easy to produce another viral moment that hinges on viewers having seen or heard Trump at his most outlandish.

“The best thing she can do,” Castro said, “is not get distracted by his antics.”

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6608383 2024-09-08T22:02:39+00:00 2024-09-09T07:34:23+00:00