#Mike is also Donna approved so… it doesn’t get better than that | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

statusquoergo · 5 years

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Credit where credit is due, Gabriel did a nice job directing this episode. He had more screen time that I’m used to from actors pulling double duty, and he seems to have handled the extra workload well.

That’s not to say the episode was flawless. Yeah, by Season 9 standards, it was pretty good overall, but I mean. Season 9 standards.

We start off at home with Louis and Sheila having a terse exchange over tea as I wonder, yet again, why they’re together at all if they’re always so goddamn pissy about everything. Louis bemoans his demotion as Sheila irritably directs him to drink his rooibos and asks him what the big deal is, being that he didn’t even want the job in the first place (true). Louis parries that he only said that because Donna offered it to him the same night he found out about Sheila’s pregnancy (true), but at any other time in his life, he would have taken it (false). On the contrary, you may remember this fairly unambiguous exchange from “Pecking Order” (s08e02) between Doctor Lipschitz and Louis: “As I recall, you accepted Harvey becoming managing partner after Jessica left.” “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be managing partner.” I suppose I’ve never accused this show of internal consistency before, why bother starting now?

Louis then delightfully compares himself to a ball-less cat and laments that though “the job wasn’t sunshine and rainbows, [he] was getting really good at it,” and excuse me but what? Forget that disastrous hearing that summoned Faye to their doorstep, his most recent acts as managing partner include trying to bully Professor Gerard into letting him be the keynote speaker at Harvard’s Ethic Conference to talk up his failing firm, and going completely off the rails trying to fire the poor IT guy for failing to digitally break into the New York State Bar Association. Louis sucked at being managing partner.

Next up is a reminder that I need to be careful what I wish for as Donna and Harvey discuss his reflexive support of her impassioned but quite incorrect argument against Louis trying to fire Benjamin, and how much she didn’t appreciate it. Turns out it wasn’t so reflexive; he did it because she thought she would like it, which is its own magnificently flawed concept—thinking she’ll get mad at him for disagreeing with her doesn’t say much for his respect for her integrity—but then Donna realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to leave him if he doesn’t unconditionally support her, and you just know the writers thought they were being real clever with this. (Wait, isn’t one of Harvey’s defining character traits his ability to read people? “You read books, I read people” was actually one of the first things he said to Mike in the pilot… Gosh it’s been a long time.)

As I was saying about this show’s internal consistency, two things about this whole exchange: One, all through Season 7, Harvey had no trouble calling Paula out when she was being ridiculous and disagreeing with her about all kinds of shit. Two, as recently as “Everything Changes” (s09e01), Harvey cooed that “[he’s] finally where [he’s] supposed to be” when he’s with Donna, to which Donna replied “We both are,” and like, are they a match made in Heaven right out of the box or what? His trust in their relationship is wildly inconsistent. Unless he wants to forfeit his autonomy for some reason? I don’t know, it’s weird and I don’t like it.

I also take issue with Donna’s dismissive “Oh, my god. Of course. Harvey, I’m not gonna leave you.” This has been an issue for him since forever, as she well knows, but rather than ask him what’s wrong—is he really afraid she’ll leave him over something so small?—or point out that he needs to go to therapy (if she wants to be tactful, she could ask if he wants to “talk to someone” about this), she treats it as an endearing character quirk, and someone needs to save Harvey from all this shit yesterday.

The interruption to this…reconciliation isn’t quite as cringy as the can opener bit from the last episode, but I’ve gotta call it out for being just some truly lazy storytelling. Gretchen appears out of nowhere to tell them they “need to go see Louis,” on account of his demotion, and Donna’s deer-in-headlights response is “Oh, my god. We need to go to him right now.” Yeah, no shit, that’s what Gretchen just said, except this framing affords Harvey the opportunity to mount his noble high horse and declare: “No. You go to him. I need to go see Faye.” Which he does, dramatic music and all, declaring that “dammit, not everybody has to do everything by [her] book,” and I must point out that she demoted Louis for trying to fire the employee who he asked to perform an illegal activity that he failed to perform only because he was caught; in what book is that okay? He then asserts: “You want consequences, I’ll give you consequences,” which is delightfully reminiscent of that old classic, “I’ll give you something to cry about,” in that it makes absolutely no sense, and Harvey, you adorable impetuous dumbass, if your goal is to convince her to leave, I think you might be going about it in a little bit the wrong way.

Roll title crawl! (No seriously, that was all just the cold open.)

Anyway Donna does go to comfort Louis, already treating herself and Harvey as a unit when she assures him that “if [he] ever [needs her] or Harvey during any of this Faye bullshit,” they’re there for him, and dropping the much more interesting detail that she has a much older sister she doesn’t want to talk about who “turned every man she was ever with into an emotional doormat,” which I don’t have time to fic right now but I feel like might explain a lot. Then Alex and Samantha have an endearing little exchange wherein Samantha proposes doing something to help Louis and Alex clarifies that it has to be ethical, and it’s nice to know that at least a couple of people around here aren’t completely insane.

Speaking of things being insane, I won’t fault Gabriel for this because the direction itself is fine, but from a writing perspective, the narrative construct of this next scene is terrible. Harvey shows up at a meeting with Some Guy whose nondescript company is apparently, thanks to his board and the company’s lawyers, being taken over (by someone) against his wishes, and the only hint of context for any of this is that “the people” orchestrating this takeover are “related” to Faye. The obvious conclusion to this exchange is that Harvey is going to help this guy, who is apparently the CEO of this random organization, sue the company by acting as a shareholder rather than a C-level employee, and I still have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Back at the firm where I do kind of know what’s going on, Susan the Associate approaches Katrina with a problem she found in the VersaLife case Katrina’s working, and as soon as they gave her a name in the last episode, I know she was going to be important. More to the point, it looks like Katrina’s got herself an associate! (Remember when senior partners were required to hire their own associates? It was a whole big thing back in Season 1, I think.)

Next up, Louis is having lunch with an old friend, Saul the Judge, who informs him that some other judge is retiring or being fired or something, and offers him a judgeship, and there is so much wrong with this scene that I don’t even know where to begin.

Yes I do. Since when has Louis’s lifelong dream been to be a judge? This is literally the first time he’s ever expressed any interest in it, at all. And another thing, that is not how judicial selection works.

In New York State, judges, depending on the court, are either appointed by the governor and confirmed by the State Senate, nominated by a commission and approved by the governor, chosen at a partisan nominating convention and elected by the voting public, or appointed by the mayor. Qualified individuals can apply to be considered, such as by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee, but there’s no one-and-done offer/acceptance transaction between someone currently on the bench and his lawyer pal, so either this guy is offering Louis a job that doesn’t exist or, more likely, the writers don’t know shit about the New York City legal system.

Moving on. Harvey shoves a recusal form in Faye’s face as he informs her that he “got” a case against her old firm, and he’s “taking it,” as though he didn’t go way out of his way to hunt it down in the first place. He then throws a stupidly juvenile hissy fit, claiming he’ll use whatever he fucking has to to “win,” and prove his system his better than hers, but he won’t have to cross any lines because she de-balled (second reference, just as charming as the first) the guys at her old firm so much that “they’re shaking in their boots” at the mere threat of lawsuit. This whole exchange is basically a showcase of Harvey acting like a spoiled child, and I know he’s a passionate guy but I gotta say, I’m getting tired of this whole act.

Back to that clusterfucking disaster of a judgeship offer, Louis fesses up to Sheila but admits that he doesn’t want to accept the drop in salary with a kid on the way, or leave his friends in the lurch, and she in turn fesses up that she asked Saul to make the offer in the first place because “being a judge has always been [his] dream.” (SINCE WHEN?) Louis is incensed until she tells him that it was basically Saul’s idea, but that if he doesn’t take it now, he’ll never get the change again, which… Why? Well, I guess they haven’t pointlessly manufactured any tension in awhile. Anyway, Louis promises to sleep on it.

Elsewhere, Samantha proposes committing conspiracy to get Faye out of their lives and Alex shuts that shit right away, and I’m actually really enjoying their dynamic right now. Susan asks Katrina what she should do about a smart, funny paralegal she clicks with; Katrina, having “seen that before,” recommends finding a new paralegal, and I’ve never had this question before but is Katrina anti-Machel for some reason? Doesn’t matter. Susan proposes reaching out to opposing counsel, who just so happens to be an old family friend, and Katrina wisely tells her not to, but somewhat less wisely starts and ends her rationale with “Because I know,” which I’m sure won’t motivate Susan to act in any sort of way.

Now, I’m no dream theorist, but luckily this show has all the subtlety of a Liberace action figure, so it’s not too difficult to figure out what Louis’s subconscious mind is trying to say: He wants to humiliate Faye (for demoting him and taking over his firm), he wants to bang Donna (and maybe also Alex), he thinks of Harvey as his peer but also his inferior (who he wants desperately to impress and probably also to fuck), and his confidence is mainly derived from the approval and admiration of others. Also he wants to have sex with basically everyone. Maybe not Gretchen. But everyone else.

Dr. Lipschitz, to whom Louis was evidently relaying the events of this dream, finds the whole thing quite amusing, but points out that if Louis takes the judgeship, he won’t have his friends around him anymore. Double-edged sword and all that.

Part II

#suits usa #season 9 #s09e03 #analysis

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mst3kproject · 6 years

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Short: Once Upon a Honeymoon

When I started this blog I really wasn’t planning to do anything with the shorts. Mr. B Natural changed all that by being impossible to ignore, so here I am, coming back around to episodes I’ve already seen so that I can visit the shorts that precede them. I’ve seen Night of the Blood Beast many, many times, and every time I do, this short makes a bigger impression than the movie. It’s so colourful. So catchy. So sexist. So fucking weird.

Jeff and Mary are a wholesome fifties couple who are just about to go on their honeymoon when they get a phone call – the score Jeff wrote for a musical doesn’t meet the star’s approval, and his boss, Gordon, wants him to come up with a new melody! Lucky Jeff’s guardian angel, Wilbur, is around to provide him with some inspiration… except that instead of inspiring Jeff to write music, Wilbur’s angel dust inspires Mary to daydream about redecorating her house and putting telephones in every room. Finally, the sound of the rotary phone gives Jeff an idea for his music. He dashes off a tune in five minutes, and he and Mary head out to have a wholesome fifties honeymoon with wholesome fifties sex.

I assume that the original version of the ‘wishing song’ is the one Mary sings to herself while making coffee. If so, I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, because it seems an awful lot more memorable than the final version we’re given at the end – it’s the one I’m humming to myself right now as I type this. Ah, well.

In the Thanksgiving version of the episode, Pearl gives Dr. Forrester the short and tells him it’s about ‘telephones or some damn thing’. There are, indeed, many telephones in this short. Wilbur the guardian angel keeps one under his robe. Jeff’s boss Gordon has one with speakerphone, which I can only assume was considered technological wizardry in 1956. Jeff and Mary have one in their living room, and Mary’s fantasy home has telephones in the kitchen and bedroom, too. The short was sponsored by Bell, so one must assume it’s supposed to be advertising phones in some capacity.

But Once Upon a Honeymoon kind of makes more phones look like a bad idea. True, his portable phone allows Wilbur the angel to keep in touch with heaven while he’s out on a job, but the short also looks ahead to the disadvantages of having telephones everywhere. As long as you’ve got a phone near you all the time, it’s impossible not to take your work home with you. If Jeff and Mary didn’t have a telephone, they could have gone on their honeymoon and Jeff’s boss would simply have had to wait until he got back. The self-important diva who’d rejected the song in the first place wouldn’t have been able to call up and bother them. If ignorance is bliss, then more phones equals entirely too much knowledge.

Then there’s Gordon’s attitude towards re-writing the song, as if he’s asking Jeff to run down to the corner for coffee instead of, you know, writing an entire two-to-five-minute piece of music over again from scratch. This speaks to a point I already made in my review of The Stone Flower – people who don’t make art often don’t understand that it is hard work. Gordon says, you must have a dozen old tunes sitting around, as if he can’t imagine that there might be reasons why Jeff rejected these, or that they might not fit into the soundscape of the show. Worse, both Gordon and his star, Sonia, keep calling Jeff’s house impatiently to ‘see how it’s coming’. Apparently it never occurs to either of them that constant interruptions are not very inspiring.

All this makes me wonder: if Wilbur’s job is to give Jeff inspiration so he can get this obstacle out of the way and go on his honeymoon, why does he instead inspire Mary to sing about telephones? This doesn’t seem like an accident – she says I just wish I had a decent kitchen! and he smiles and sprinkles his angel dust to make her dream of one. Maybe he’s keeping her occupied so she can’t join the chorus nagging Jeff to get on with it, but it didn’t seem like she would have done that anyway. The film implies that Mary has spent the day keeping busy and staying out of Jeff’s way to let him work.

Mary’s behaviour in the short has always struck me as odd, but when I think about it, it’s not just what she’s doing – it’s also what she’s not doing. I can accept that she’s twirling around and singing about her desire to renovate the kitchen, because that sort of thing goes on in short advertising films from the 50’s. What I’m confused about is why her badly-decorated home is her primary complaint on a day when she’s just been told she might not be going on her honeymoon.

The honeymoon is clearly a big deal to this couple. They’ve waited until a year after their wedding, which implies that they don’t have a lot of money and have had to save up. Jeff secured a promise from his boss that he would have the time off – a promise the man seems happy to break without a moment’s lost sleep. Jeff is bitterly disappointed and annoyed by this development, calling Gordon a ‘vulture’ and Sonia a ‘temperamental ballerina’. We see him sulk, skip lunch, chainsmoke, and bang on the piano in frustration.

Mary doesn’t express anything similar, which is weird because it’s her honeymoon, too. She’s been waiting for it just as long as Jeff has. She’s got the bags packed and the place cleaned up in preparation for them to leave. When in the same room as her husband she is supportive, trying to encourage him while ignoring his bad mood for fear of making it worse – this seems like a sensible way to treat a grouchy artist. But even in private, she shows no sign that the delayed honeymoon has upset her. Jeff talks back to Gordon on the phone, while Mary is polite and cheerful with Sonia. Mike and the bots try to fill in what is missing here, as for example when they have Mary call the other woman a copper-bottomed bitch, but that just makes the absence more conspicuous.

If Mary wishes she had a kitchen phone, shouldn’t it be so she can call her friend Vy and complain about the situation without Jeff having to listen to her? If she’s going to fantasize herself into a musical, why doesn’t it involve the sandy beaches and romantic dinners she’s missing out on? Mary literally has greater patience than an angel – the chief angel gets far more frustrated with Wilbur than Mary is with anything!

The answer, as you may have guessed by now, is that it’s because Mary is not a character. She’s just here to sell us telephones. Although she gets the majority of the screen time, the only characters in this little film are Jeff and the two angels – they’re the ones who display some form of personality. The rest are mere stock figures: a Demanding Boss, a Prima Donna, and a Perfect Wife.

Mary has no opinion about the honeymoon because the ideal housewife should not want vacations or sexual fulfillment – all she’s supposed to want is to cook meals and clean house and be support staff for her husband. This is Mary’s fantasy: a redecorated home and fully-equipped kitchen that will allow her to be an even better housewife, and to impress her friends and neighbours with her superior domesticity (as in the phone conversation she imagines with Vy). She has no ambitions or desires outside of Jeff. The ideal housewife of the 50’s is not a person in her own right, merely an accessory to her husband.

This extends to the bedroom, which she imagines as having twin beds rather than one large enough for a couple. This was pretty standard in the media of the time, but it seems to imply that her fantasy life doesn’t even include sex. Female sexuality was a taboo topic in the first half of the twentieth century, and sex was supposed to be a duty wives performed, lying back and thinking of England, rather than something they actively wanted. Mary’s fantasy includes neither children nor any room for them. Children would just make a mess of her beautiful, squeaky-clean new home. She doesn’t want to be a mother, she only wants to be a wife.

The house is Mary’s entire world. She does not leave it until the end, when Jeff literally carries her out. Although she receives telephone calls from Gordon, from Sonia, and from her possibly imaginary friend Vy, the only time Mary makes one is when Jeff orders her to. She never initiates contact with the outside, only reacts to it and to her husband’s wishes concerning it… which is actually really creepy. It’s like women are zoo animals kept in habitats designed to stimulate them and keep them in ignorance of the idea of freedom.

Am I reading way too much into a little film that’s just supposed to make me want to buy a second telephone? Yes, I’m pretty sure I am, but I’m also pretty sure real women don’t normally fantasize about kitchen appliances. In the interests of science, I tried to take a survey of my co-workers to find out what their fantasies are. The first one I asked told me she thinks about meeting a guy at a party, getting him falling-down drunk, then taking him home and putting on a penguin costume before getting into bed with him. The idea was that when the guy woke up, he would see the strategic hole cut in the penguin costume and think drunk-him had slept with a furry.

On second thought, I’m happy with Mary’s new kitchen. I don’t want to see a short where somebody sings about that.

#mst3k #reviews #once upon a honeymoon #50s

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paulbenedictblog · 4 years

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New Post has been published on %http://paulbenedictsgeneralstore.com%

Usa today Rockefeller Center tree, green tongue pot myth, deer at sea: News from around our 50 states

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Usa today Alabama

Auburn: Auburn University says its smartly-known golden eagle Nova, additionally called Battle Eagle VII, may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. The college made the announcement Tuesday in a news open. The 20-year-feeble male eagle for bigger than a decade soared above the gang at college football games. He was sidelined from the pregame tradition after a 2017 prognosis of cardiomyopathy, a chronic disease of the center. Dr. Seth Oster, college avian veterinarian for the college’s Southeastern Raptor Center, talked a pair of most modern exam indicated the eagle may per chance likely even be in the early levels of heart failure. Veterinarians are adjusting remedy dosages to pick out a mediate about at to treat the situation. Aurea, a 5-year-feeble female golden eagle, and Spirit, a 23-year-feeble female bald eagle, have made pregame flights this season.

Usa today Alaska

Ketchikan: Attorneys have filed a category-action lawsuit that seeks to reverse a most modern payment amplify in a neighborhood of verbalize-owned properties providing assisted residing care. Recordsdata organizations list the lawsuit filed in Ketchikan Superior Court docket asks a non-public to effort a preliminary and everlasting injunction in opposition to payment will increase at Pioneer Houses. The lawsuit names the verbalize of Alaska, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and Alaska Department of Successfully being and Social Products and companies officers as defendants. The Sept. 1 payment changes elevated the mark of a Pioneer Houses bed by between 40% and 140%. One in every of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit says the verbalize all straight away elevated charges, harming residents. An Alaska Department of Law first payment says the division needs to evaluate the criticism nonetheless normally would now not discuss about ongoing instances.

Usa today Arizona

Flagstaff: A proposal to rep an “ecologically friendly” perpetual resting verbalize on deepest lands in direction of the Coconino Nationwide Forest may per chance likely even now not be so restful for the 13 tribes that take into legend the nearby San Francisco Peaks sacred. Better Issue Forests, a San Francisco, California-essentially essentially based mostly firm, purchased the land from a Phoenix proprietor and announced plans to rep its third “memorial forest,” or cemetery, on the property northwest of Flagstaff. The corporate needs to verbalize cremated remains round a chosen tree on the parcel, which sits at an elevation of 8,400 toes and capabilities ponderosa and southwestern white pine, quaking aspens, and Douglas fir bushes, to boot to a meadow. The project, if it clears verbalize and county regulatory hurdles, may per chance likely likely be preserved as a conservation station. Nonetheless the 160-acre place lies in direction of the boundaries of land deemed eligible to be designated a “old cultural property” surrounding the San Francisco Peaks and the Kachina Peaks Barren predicament and, in the break, to be positioned on the Nationwide Register of Historic Places. An announcement from the Hopi Tribe called the concept a “total violation of our non secular and cultural beliefs.”

Usa today Arkansas

Cramped Rock: The city’s teachers are staging demonstrations over the verbalize’s stripping of their collective bargaining vitality and its ongoing adjust of the district. Nonetheless they’re offering few clues on whether or now not they’ll strike for the first time in decades. Teachers, oldsters and students held “drag-ins” around the 23,000-student district Wednesday, strolling into college constructions together earlier than classes started to picture their beef up for the union. They’re fragment of a chain of actions union leaders have deliberate after the verbalize Board of Education’s resolution to strip its collective bargaining vitality. The union’s contract with the district expired Thursday. The head of the union says it hasn’t dominated out a strike, which may per chance well likely likely be the first in the district since 1987. Arkansas has been as a lot as the ticket of Cramped Rock’s schools for merely about 5 years.

Usa today California

Riverside: Officers have quashed plans to create a modern city called Paradise Valley on the southern fringe of Joshua Tree Nationwide Park in the Southern California desolate tract. The Riverside County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to settle for its Planning Commission’s recommendation and deny the project with out continuance. The resolution is a victory for conservationists and residents who voiced issues about sprawl in the inland predicament east of Los Angeles. It’s a blow to GLC Enterprises, which had been seeking to get approval for Paradise Valley for 15 years. The developer envisioned a community with 8,500 properties and 1.3 million sq. toes of condo for industrial and civic makes enlighten of. Supporters whisper it can likely per chance have created jobs and $5 million in annual tax earnings.

Usa today Colorado

Denver: Proposition DD, which is succesful of legalize sports having a bet in the verbalize, has secured passage. The measure passed by about 1.4%, in step with unofficial results posted by the Secretary of Issue’s Place of work on Wednesday afternoon. That dissimilarity doesn’t descend in direction of the 0.5% margin of victory to feature off an computerized narrate, that technique correct sports having a bet will seemingly be allowed as rapidly as Also can, ought to serene the live result lengthen in the first payment count. Proposition DD would legalize sports having a bet in Colorado via established casinos and online via web sites operated by any of the 38 casinos currently under verbalize oversight. The verbalize would make a selection 10% of salvage proceeds from sports having a bet and exhaust most of its decrease – as a lot as $29 million yearly – on water projects in direction of Colorado.

Usa today Connecticut

Hartford: Slip-hailing company Lyft is offering powerful-needed free transportation in town to faded inmates via a modern partnership with town and a nonprofit criminal justice reform neighborhood. Louis Reed, nationwide organizer for the bipartisan neighborhood #decrease50, announced Wednesday that an initial installment of 60 to 80 codes free of payment Lyft rides is now on hand for distribution at town’s Welcome Center. Mayor Luke Bronin says transit bus routes are tiny, and the modern partnership will relief get folk to job interviews or health care appointments. Hartford is the first city to pick out fragment in this plot, nonetheless diversified cities and organizations around the nation are expected to enlighten, at the side of Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland and Contemporary York City, to boot to a pair of rural areas.

Usa today Delaware

Dover: Officers are making ready to send potable water to properties advance Dover Air Power Defective after deepest wells were stumbled on to have chemical contaminants exceeding federal health advisory levels. The Delaware Issue Recordsdata reports town’s utility committee voted Oct. 29 to waive an annexation requirement so the properties can get city water service. Issue officers announced in July that defense force officers had notified them about wells substandard with per- and polyfluoroalykyl substances. Such chemical compounds are stumbled on in diversified products, at the side of firefighting foam that has been used at defense force bases nationwide. City Manager Donna Mitchell says Dover needs the waiver in preparation of the contaminated coming forward and asking for water service relief, which she says it has yet to fabricate. The contaminated has been providing bottled water to affected properties.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: An ex-FBI agent is telling jurors that Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone quoted his hero Richard Nixon as Stone entreated an companion now not to contradict his non-public testimony to lawmakers. The quote was cited in a Stone textual pronounce detailed by faded agent Michelle Taylor at Stone’s trial. A Stone companion, radio host Randy Credico, was requested in 2017 to appear earlier than the House Intelligence Committee. That’s when Stone texted him: “ ‘Stonewall it, plead the fifth, the relaxation to assign the concept …’ Richard Nixon.” Stone is on trial in federal court in Washington on prices of lying to Congress and tampering with a behold. He was charged under particular counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Stone denies wrongdoing. Stone has prolonged admired Nixon and has a tattoo of the late president on his support.

Usa today Florida

Wauchula: A 33-year-feeble orangutan granted correct personhood by a non-public in Argentina is settling into her modern atmosphere at the Center for Massive Apes in central Florida. Patti Ragan, director of the center in Wauchula, says Sandra is “very sweet and inquisitive” and adjusting to her modern residence. She was born in Germany and spent 25 years at the Buenos Aires Zoo earlier than arriving in Florida on Tuesday. In 2015 Attain to a resolution Elena Liberatori dominated that Sandra is legally now not an animal nonetheless a non-human particular person with rights. She remained at the zoo, which closed in 2016, except leaving for the United States. On the center, Sandra joins 21 orangutans and 31 chimpanzees rescued or retired from circuses, stage reveals and the weird and wonderful pet alternate.

Usa today Georgia

Atlanta: For the first time in three decades, town is now not going to host a Peach Drop to ring in the modern year. The Atlanta Journal-Structure reports Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms broke the news Tuesday in direction of an interview with Majic 107.5/97.5’s afternoon host Ryan Cameron. Bottoms says officers are taking a ruin to reevaluate the place and the intention in which the tournament is deliberate. She says town now now not owns Underground Atlanta, which adds issues to hosting the tournament, which has at instances drawn 100,000 folk. The Peach Drop debuted in 1989 – a play off Contemporary York City’s Times Sq. ball descend. After a non-public developer purchased Underground Atlanta, town moved the Peach Drop to Woodruff Park for Contemporary Year’s 2017 nonetheless brought it support to Underground Atlanta last year.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: A settlement has been reached over a deadly excessive-rise fireplace, even supposing the amounts to be paid by insurance protection companies to plaintiffs remains confidential. The Honolulu Basic particular person-Advertiser reports a settlement conference was concluded Tuesday regarding the July 2017 Marco Polo building fireplace that killed four folk. Officers whisper the fireplace at the 568-unit building was one of many worst in stylish Honolulu historic past, requiring the efforts of about 130 firefighters. A non-public has ordered defendants to get monetary disbursements out of an escrow legend by Jan. 15. The settlement looks to unravel loads of court cases filed over the fireplace that caused an estimated $107 million in hurt. Attorneys whisper they’re now not allowed to keep in touch about settlement amounts their customers are expected to receive.

Usa today Idaho

Boise: The verbalize granted a conditional waiver Thursday to the U.S. Department of Energy that may per chance likely even enable analysis quantities of spent nuclear gasoline into the verbalize after years of blocking off such shipments. The settlement announced by Gov. Brad Cramped and Attorney Fashioned Lawrence Wasden, each Republicans, technique the Idaho Nationwide Laboratory may per chance likely even receive about 100 kilos of spent gasoline for experiments as fragment of a U.S. system to develop nuclear vitality and carve support greenhouse gas emissions. The waiver requires the Energy Department to first indicate it will process 900,000 gallons of excessive-level radioactive liquid extinguish that sits above a broad aquifer that gives water to farms and cities. The Energy Department has spent some $600 million seeking to fabricate that, so some distance having failed nonetheless reporting correct progress earlier this year at its Built-in Wreck Medication Unit.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: Advocacy groups at the side of the ACLU of Illinois have filed court cases in opposition to two county sheriff’s departments for alleged violations of the TRUST Act, which limits cooperation between native police and federal immigration authorities. The groups whisper it’s fragment of an effort announced Thursday to show screen law enforcement agencies for compliance of the 2017 that law prohibits native police from conserving a particular person on an immigration detainer except there’s a warrant signed by a non-public, among diversified things. The court cases narrate sheriff’s departments in Stephenson and Explore counties unlawfully detained loads of immigrants for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after minor traffic offenses. Republican faded Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the TRUST Act in 2017 with backing from law enforcement. Democrats widely supported the premise.

Usa today Indiana

Indianapolis: Regardless of warning indicators flashing this past summer season, Indiana economists whisper they manufacture now not query a recession in 2020, nonetheless the verbalize’s economy will proceed growing at a slower streak. A tight labor market, weakness in manufacturing and the continued alternate war with China are expected to make contributions to a slowdown in the verbalize’s economy. Indiana’s financial output is expected to grow at a streak of about 1.25% next year, in step with the most contemporary financial forecast released by the Kelley College of Industry at Indiana University. Per the forecast, Indiana’s 2020 economy will seemingly be anemic. There are present intellectual spots, such because the 50-year low in unemployment, more folk collaborating in the labor force and elevated wages. Nonetheless economists in the support of the Kelley College forecast talked about political dysfunction and international alternate friction have disrupted provide chains, causing industry and user self belief to erode.

Usa today Iowa

Cedar Falls: The University of Northern Iowa’s president says he’s forming a committee to address minority and diversified students’ allegations of systemic racism on the Cedar Falls campus. President Trace Nook took responsibility in a most modern letter to the college community for the college’s failure to adequately fulfill needs feature by an ad hoc student neighborhood and backed by the student govt. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports Nook’s action follows a social media advertising and marketing campaign of criticism by the student neighborhood, Racial and Ethnic Coalition. Among diversified things, the neighborhood posted video testimonials from minority students talking about issues they’ve had on campus, at the side of facing a racist professor and seeking to navigate college fluctuate policies.

Usa today Kansas

Topeka: Time is running out to originate construction on a modern coal-fired vitality plant earlier than its enable lapses. The wrestle over the plant has lasted bigger than a decade. By the time the Kansas Supreme Court docket cleared the technique for construction in 2017, a company eager on it called the potentialities it can likely likely be constructed “some distance-off.” Nonetheless the Kansas City Basic particular person and Wichita Eagle list that paperwork they obtained picture the utility spearheading the project told regulators “foremost pastime” remains in building the plant. Sunflower Electrical Energy Corp. requested for an 18-month extension of a key enable “to finalize preparations” for its construction. Issue regulators renewed the enable except March 2020 and warned they'd now not enable more time. Sunflower didn’t rule the relaxation in or out this week.

Usa today Kentucky

Frankfort: Issue parks are offering a discount on lodging to active-accountability defense force people and to veterans via March 31. An announcement from Kentucky Issue Parks says the USA Militia Good deal is on hand to those currently serving in the navy, retired people of the defense force, veterans, Nationwide Guard people and reservists. With the carve price, hotel rooms originate at $59.95 a evening, and one-bed room cottages originate at $79.95 a evening. The charges are correct at a majority of Kentucky’s 17 resort parks, nonetheless there’s a $5 upcharge at Barren River, Cumberland Falls, Kentucky Dam Village, Lake Barkley, Lake Cumberland and Natural Bridge. The discount is additionally on hand at John James Audubon Issue Park. Extra data is on hand online.

Usa today Louisiana

Contemporary Orleans: Five hundred seventy-one of many verbalize’s public schools, or about 44%, have “many times struggling groups of students” and are actually required to rep improvement plans. Louisiana’s Department of Education released efficiency data Wednesday as fragment of the verbalize’s compliance with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Among the 571 schools are 271 labeled as wanting “total improvement,” for chronic low overall grades or terrible commencement charges. Three hundred diversified schools – at the side of some with excessive overall grades – must work to toughen efficiency among sub-groups of students, at the side of English language rookies, low-earnings students and those with disabilities. The division pointed to promising findings, at the side of more schools earning A and B grades.

Usa today Maine

Harrington: A lobsterman hauled in an weird and wonderful steal 5 miles off the flit – a stay deer. Ren Dorr says he was setting traps when he saw a young deer Monday morning. He says the deer had given up swimming and was being carried farther offshore. He and his crew hauled the 100-pound buck aboard. Having a wild animal in a confined condo may per chance likely even be anguish. Nonetheless Dorr tells the Bangor Day to day Recordsdata that the deer was so tuckered out that he “laid just correct down savor a dog.” He says it took a half of-hour to plot support to Harrington, where the deer was feature free. Dorr says that he has considered deer swimming earlier than nonetheless that this was diversified. He says that if he and his crew hadn’t intervened, the deer would were “a goner.”

Usa today Maryland

Baltimore: The different of holiday makers who visited the verbalize last year may per chance likely even have dropped relatively of, nonetheless a list says they spent extra cash than in 2017. The Financial Affect of Tourism in Maryland list was announced Wednesday at the annual Maryland Tourism and Shuttle Summit. The list says company spent bigger than $18 billion last year, up about 2.1% from the earlier year. Total visitation decreased from 42.5 million to 41.9 million in 2018, nonetheless the decrease was offset by will increase in visitor per-commute spending. That was driven by longer stays at more in-verbalize locations. The list says most of Maryland’s company got right here by car. Alternatively, the Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport served a list 27.2 million passengers last year.

Usa today Massachusetts

Boston: The mayor says an effort to rename the sq. in a historically sad neighborhood to Nubian Sq. isn’t slow despite the failure of a citywide referendum. Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh talked about Wednesday that his verbalize of labor will seemingly be meeting with title-switch advocates to keep in touch about next steps. Walsh says that entails formally petitioning town’s Public Improvement Commission for the title switch. He says voters in the Roxbury neighborhood overwhelmingly approved the proposal to rename Dudley Sq.. Walsh’s verbalize of labor says 1,986 Roxbury residents voted in favor to 957 in opposition to. The nonbinding referendum failed citywide, with 46% in favor and 54% in opposition to. Supporters want to rename the industrial center after the usual African empire because Thomas Dudley played a key role in Massachusetts’ slave alternate in colonial instances.

Usa today Michigan

Corwith Township: The verbalize now owns a huge, prolonged-sought allotment of northern property boasting a lake, forests and rare species that’s in the fluctuate of the verbalize’s elk herd. The Michigan Department of Natural Property says it’s performed the $3.8 million defend shut of the Storey Lake property. The deal to have interplay roughly 2,000 acres in the north-central Decrease Peninsula took about two decades to wrangle. The land in Otsego and Cheboygan counties sits between diversified pieces of public acreage: the Pigeon River Country Issue Forest and a tract of verbalize-managed forest land. Officers whisper the property is commence for correct hunting, fishing, tenting, hiking and plant life and fauna viewing. The public will seemingly be invited to pick out part in putting in place an get right of entry to concept. The land once was in the fingers of an proprietor from Switzerland.

Usa today Minnesota

St. Paul: Gov. Tim Walz has requested U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to deny a catastrophe for 12 counties of northwestern Minnesota where farmers are having a elaborate harvest season. In his quiz Thursday, the governor talked about the unrelenting tainted weather this season has plot on high of challenges farmers were already facing from low commodity prices and alternate uncertainties. He says crops have fallen victim to flooding, disease and freezing temperatures. A secretarial catastrophe declaration would get emergency loans on hand to affected producers. The USDA normally requires that a county have a 30% loss in manufacturing of now not decrease than one gash. Walz notes that the soybean and sugarbeet harvests in northwestern Minnesota are running technique in the support of attributable to heavy rains, whereas an early freeze ended many of the potato harvest.

Usa today Mississippi

Taylor: The mayor has all straight away resigned after bigger than four decades relatively than labor. The Oxford Eagle reports James E. Hamilton sent his resignation to the Taylor Board of Aldermen this week. He additionally stepped down because the town’s planning administrator. No critical aspects or reasoning were equipped to the overall public, and the newspaper says its makes an strive to contact Hamilton were unsuccessful. Alderman Ellen Meacham says the aldermen unanimously voted to settle for every of Hamilton’s resignations, though she desires Hamilton may per chance likely even’ve finished the last two years of his present duration of time as mayor. The board on Tuesday discussed a diversified election to be held in early 2020. Crucial aspects aren’t finalized. Hamilton ran unopposed in essentially the most most modern election in 2017.

Usa today Missouri

Kansas City: A frigid weather draw had folk in the metro station attempting bigger than just correct a sweater this week – it additionally had them reaching for nostril plugs. The Nationwide Weather Provider speculated in a tweet that a frigid front that swept into the metro Wednesday evening carried farm odors with it and trapped them in the shallow fragment of the atmosphere. One particular person replied to the clarification announcing, “I believed my dogs tracked in poo from outside! I’m now not crazy.” Meteorologists later tweeted what they described as a excessive-resolution reverse trajectory model to picture the seemingly provide of the “questionable air quality.”

Usa today Montana

Helena: The Massive Divide Ski Put may per chance likely likely be the first ski station in the verbalize to commence for the modern season this Saturday. Aided by the early chilly and snow this descend, the crew has been making snow for a pair of weeks now. Owner Kevin Taylor tells the Self reliant File that the Nov. 9 opening will seemingly be its earliest ever to having a chairlift running. Taylor says the ski station opened Nov. 10 last year and Nov. 11 in 2017. Running on Saturday may per chance likely likely be the Sincere Excellent fortune Chairlift on the decrease mountain to boot to the yard towrope. Snowmaking continues on some additional runs, nonetheless for the reason that most modern chilly snap was so rapid, Taylor is unsure whether or now not diversified runs will commence this weekend or next.

Usa today Nebraska

Lincoln: Officers concept to diminish crew at one verbalize-drag residence for juvenile offenders whereas adding to the team at two diversified companies and products. The Department of Successfully being and Human Products and companies announced the changes Wednesday as fragment of a a lot bigger overhaul of its Formative years Rehabilitation and Medication Center draw. Department officers whisper they concept to carve support the team at the YRTC in Geneva effective Jan. 6, 2020, because that facility won’t be serving as many youths. Nonetheless they concept to hire additional employees at YRTC companies and products in Lincoln and Kearney. Department officers whisper crew individuals who lose their jobs may per chance likely have the different to enlighten for jobs at the diversified YRTC companies and products or in diversified areas in verbalize govt. They whisper they hope to steal employees whenever doable.

Usa today Nevada

Las Vegas: The Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Property’ resolution to pick out some distance flung from its web place a list a pair of sacred American Indian place is drawing criticism. A division first payment talked about the elimination resolution got right here at the quiz of the Issue Historic Preservation Place of work over issues it will also picture the place to vandalism or looting. Nonetheless Rupert Steele, chairman of the Utah-essentially essentially based mostly Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, whose tribe is among folk that take into legend the place sacred, talked about no one consulted the tribe regarding the resolution. The Goshute, Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes all take into legend the place, known because the swamp cedars, sacred and non-public the bushes are threatened by a proposal to pipe groundwater from northern and eastern Nevada to Las Vegas. “I may per chance likely per chance like that up there,” Steele talked about of the eradicated list. “That technique the guidelines may per chance likely even be free flowing to the total folk.”

Usa today Contemporary Hampshire

Plymouth: Plymouth Issue University has got a $48,000 grant to put in force a program to educate kids regarding the risks of e-cigarettes. The program known as “CATCH,” an acronym for Coordinated Technique to Child Successfully being. It entails lecture room lessons, come in direction of-led actions, and social and community beef as a lot as educate kids. By January 2020, students in the PSU Successfully being and Physical Education Teacher Certification program who're making ready to remain student educating or college health self-discipline experiences will receive practising. They'll put in force this plot in 35 center and excessive schools in direction of the verbalize in spring 2020. The grant is from the CVS Successfully being Foundation.

Usa today Contemporary Jersey

Atlantic City: The federal govt has dropped its objection to a pair of southern Contemporary Jersey towns the enlighten of sand from a nearby offshore place to replenish their seashores. The most modern action by U.S. Internal Secretary David Bernhardt ought to serene get ongoing beach widening and storm security projects more cost-effective. It additionally removes the necessity for an weird and wonderful proposal floated loads of months ago that would have let some towns shave sand off the end of a pair of of their bigger dunes and enlighten it to widen seashores. On Monday, Bernhardt wrote to Salvage. Jeff Van Drew, a Democrat who represents the affected station of the southern Contemporary Jersey flit, announcing the protection reversal. The prohibition “was growing pointless crimson tape that was having the reverse manufacture of its real intent,” Van Drew talked about in an announcement.

Usa today Contemporary Mexico

Roswell: A lawyer from this town smartly-known because the place of an alleged 1947 UFO smash says he's going to self-discipline President Donald Trump in early-voting Contemporary Hampshire. The Roswell Day to day File reports approved reliable Rick Kraft has filed the categories needed to appear on the ballotas a Republican candidate in the first-in-the-nation presidential predominant. Per the Contemporary Hampshire secretary of verbalize’s web place, Kraft filed his declaration of candidacy Tuesday. The 61-year-feeble Kraft says he made up our minds to drag after he and his foremost other visited the Contemporary Hampshire Issue House in Concord, Contemporary Hampshire, and realized how easy it is to get on the ballot. He called the streak “a bucket list-form ingredient.” Kraft says he would now not concept on coming into any diversified verbalize primaries or caucuses.

Usa today Contemporary York

Florida: A Norway shipshape that years ago was displayed on its proprietor’s espresso table will rapidly rise in a magnificent grander setting: the center of Rockefeller Center. Carol Schultz equipped the sapling for the 1959 Christmas season. After exhibiting it in her residence in the village of Florida, Contemporary York, she planted it in her front yard. In 2010, Schultz and her companion Richard O’Donnell went on Rockefeller Center’s web place and made the 14-ton tree’s narrate for stardom. Earlier this year, they realized it had been chosen. It was decrease Thursday and lifted by crane onto a flatbed truck. This will seemingly likely advance Saturday at Rockefeller Center, where this may per chance possibly likely even be hoisted and surrounded by scaffolding for the decoration process. The lighting fixtures ceremony is slated for Dec. 4.

Usa today North Carolina

Charlotte: Sixteen-year-feeble environmental activist Greta Thunberg says she plans to abet a youth-led climate rally in the Tar Heel Issue this week. Thunberg tweeted Wednesday that she will seemingly be a part of the strike Friday at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Executive Center. Thunberg won international attention for a speech at the United International locations Climate Action Summit in September. Recordsdata retail outlets list the narrate Friday is being organized by the student-led N.C. Climate Strike motion. An total lot of folk attended a rally the neighborhood hosted in September, the identical day hundreds of hundreds of folk around the enviornment skipped college and work to drag govt action on climate switch.

Usa today North Dakota

Bismarck: A descend survey indicates the mule deer population continues to recover in the western North Dakota Badlands thanks to yet one more correct year of fawn manufacturing. Mule deer in the predicament persisted three straight harsh winters ending in 2011 that resulted in list-low fawn manufacturing. The Bismarck Tribune reports biologists counted 2,218 mule deer in direction of the October survey, shut to last year’s 2,446. The ratios of 41 bucks per 100 does and 84 fawns per 100 does additionally held regular. Issue Wildlife Chief Jeb Williams says the real numbers are encouraging even in the occasion that they don’t signify an amplify. Hunting mule deer does was banned for four straight seasons starting in 2012 to help the population recover. North Dakota’s gun season for mule and white-tailed deer opens at noon Friday.

Usa today Ohio

Columbus: Gov. Mike DeWine has signed into law a measure repealing the verbalize’s gross sales tax on tampons and diversified female hygiene products. The Republican governor signed the measure Wednesday. It was integrated in yet one more invoice that gives a tax credit ranking to teachers who engage college gives. Democratic verbalize Salvage. Brigid Kelly, of Cincinnati, and Republican verbalize Salvage. Niraj Antani, of Miamisburg, cosponsored the real legislation repealing the so-called red tax. Most states serene tax tampons and diversified menstrual products, at the side of pads and cups. They’re normally categorized as “luxury objects” in preference to necessities that are now not taxed, equivalent to food or clinical gives. Ohio is among a pair of dozen states that have currently changed such policies.

Usa today Oklahoma

Tulsa: A Republican verbalize lawmaker has abandoned his effort to rename a stretch of Route 66 after President Donald Trump. Issue Sen. Nathan Dahm told the Tulsa World on Wednesday that he’s performed seeking to rename the 4-mile stretch of the iconic motorway in northeastern Oklahoma after Trump. The Oklahoma Route 66 Association and Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell each impulsively rejected naming sections of Route 66 after Trump or any diversified political resolve. Pinnell, who oversees Oklahoma’s advertising and marketing and branding, and others were working to connect the route of the faded U.S. 66 for tourism. Pinnell says a “uniform branding” will rapidly be rolled out. Issue Salvage. Ben Loring, who represents the district where the proposed stretch of motorway is located, says it will even have adversely affected tourism.

Usa today Oregon

Portland: The verbalize Department of Environmental Quality says smoky skies and stagnant air are expected to hang round in Oregon and southwest Washington for yet one more week. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the agency in the muse issued an air quality advisory Monday nonetheless on Wednesday prolonged the warning. The agency now expects the air quality advisory to be in manufacture except now not decrease than Nov. 12. Stagnant air cases are trapping smoke and diversified contaminants advance the floor where folk breathe. A total lot of county and native health agencies have issued burning restrictions. DEQ requested folk to enlighten burn restrictions of their areas and defend some distance flung from pointless outside enlighten, critically those with lung or heart issues and young kids.

Usa today Pennsylvania

York: Police officers are alleging in some DUI instances that those that’ve currently smoked marijuana have green tongues. Law enforcement is even told to investigate cross-test a “doable green coating” in one in fact just correct practising program taught all over the enviornment. Police can narrate no scientific analysis to help up the premise. Yet, for decades, they’ve used the observation as one of loads of indicators to interpret doable motive and get arrests in criminal instances. An prognosis of larger than 1,300 DUI instances that reached the York County Court docket of Fashioned Pleas in 2018 stumbled on now not decrease than 28 that talked about phrases equivalent to “green coating,” “green movie” and “green tint.” Scott Harper, a defense approved reliable in West York, list it as “more or much less junk science.” He currently argued in a DUI case in York County that there’s “no evidence that a ‘green tongue’ is indicative of any particular stage of marijuana impairment (assuming it in fact is evidence of the relaxation at all).” The Nationwide Group for the Reform of Marijuana Laws was more blunt. “The science in the support of marijuana consumption turning your tongue green is ready as sound because the science in the support of the earth being flat or that lying makes your nostril grow,” Erik Altieri, govt director of NORML, talked about in an electronic mail.

Usa today Rhode Island

South Kingstown: Researchers whisper the verbalize’s rich, moist soil may per chance likely even get it a pacesetter in the manufacturing of saffron, a luxurious spice. The Windfall Journal reports University of Rhode Island researchers stumbled on a take a look at feature may per chance likely even yield 12 kilos of saffron per acre once a year – bigger than double the harvest in Iran, which produces 90% of the enviornment’s saffron. Researchers whisper the domestic attach apart a matter to for saffron is on the rise, with 35 heaps imported in 2016 and 50 heaps predicted by 2021. Saffron is popular in Center Japanese, Indian and diversified cuisines nonetheless has diversified makes enlighten of. Wholesale prices drag about $5,000 per pound. Buyers can pay $20 for a pair of threads of saffron and $95 for a quarter-ounce. University researchers whisper saffron is costly because it’s delicate to reap.

Usa today South Carolina

Reevesville: The ballotfor the mayoral whisk in this little town was blank Tuesday, leaving voters to jot down in whomever they wished. The Put up and Courier reports Paul Wimberly didn’t know he’d been reelected as Reevesville’s mayor except he spoke with a reporter the next morning. Wimberly has been mayor for 34 years nonetheless missed the election registration decrease-off date this year when Dorchester County was attach apart responsible of the whisk. The hopeful contenders on the City Council additionally missed the decrease-off date, that technique the whisk had no first payment candidates. Wimberly talked about he wasn’t too afraid, because the 1.6-sq.-mile town of about 196 folk is aware of his face and title. So he’s now help in the $300-per-year management role for the town, which depends totally on volunteer positions.

Usa today South Dakota

Pierre: Gov. Kristi Noem says the verbalize is now bigger than 99% compliant with federal Precise ID necessities ahead of next year’s decrease-off date. Noem talked about Thursday that early work by the verbalize’s driver licensing program to meet the decrease-off date technique that every body eligible South Dakotans, with solely a pair of exceptions, have already got been issued a Precise ID-compliant license or card. She says the October 2020 decrease-off date will form now not have any manufacture on those with a Precise ID license or card issued in South Dakota. The federal Precise ID Act sets minimal security standards for licenses. A Precise ID-compliant driver’s license will seemingly be needed to board domestic flights starting Oct. 1, 2020. South Dakota began issuing Precise ID-compliant licenses and identification playing cards Dec. 31, 2009.

Usa today Tennessee

Knoxville: Functions are actually commence for a modern scholarship at the University of Tennessee that guarantees definite students free tuition. A college news open says the UT Promise scholarship is equipped to qualifying verbalize residents attending UT’s campuses in Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin and Memphis. It requires that students total eight volunteer service hours a semester and make a selection part in a mentoring program. To be eligible, present, fleshy-time UT students will must have a family family earnings under $50,000 yearly and qualify for the Tennessee HOPE Scholarship. Scholarship students will seemingly be paired with a mentor in descend 2020. To enlighten for the scholarship, present students must total the scholarship application and the 2020-21 Free Utility for Federal Student Support by Feb. 1. They additionally must total eight hours of community service by July 1.

Usa today Texas

Huntsville: An inmate who was a member of a white supremacist gang was executed Wednesday evening for strangling a girl merely about 20 years ago over fears she would alert police about his drug operation. Justen Hall, 38, got a lethal injection at the verbalize penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2002 slaying of Melanie Billhartz. Prosecutors talked about Hall killed Billhartz, 29, with an extension wire from his drug condo in El Paso and then buried her physique in the desolate tract. His attorneys had requested to quit the execution, alleging he was now not competent to be executed and had a historic past of mental illness. Nonetheless a non-public in El Paso last month denied the quiz. Hall was the 19th inmate attach apart to loss of life this year in the U.S. and the eighth in Texas. Three more executions are scheduled in Texas this year.

Usa today Utah

Salt Lake City: A lawmaker who was aiming to be the first Latina mayor of Salt Lake City has conceded the whisk to a city councilwoman who rose to prominence combating air pollution. Democratic Sen. Luz Escamilla talked about in an announcement Wednesday that she conceded in a phone name to fellow Democrat Erin Mendenhall and wished her the “easiest of success.” Mendenhall took a commanding early lead with merely about 59% of the vote Tuesday, nonetheless Escamilla vowed to defend in the whisk except the count was total. Escamilla says that changed after she got modern critical aspects on the different of uncounted mail-in ballots. She says the figures were decrease than expected, making it very now not actually for her to overtake Mendenhall. Mendenhall will change one-duration of time Mayor Jackie Biskupski, who made up our minds now not to drag all over again.

Usa today Vermont

Burlington: Famend Vermont ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s is accused of misleading its customers regarding the create of milk and cream used in its products. Environmental advocate and faded gubernatorial candidate James Ehlers says father or mother company Unilever is making the most of pretend advertising and marketing, in step with a most modern lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court docket in Burlington. The federal criticism filed Oct. 29 alleges that Unilever violated its customers’ belief by announcing Ben & Jerry’s products were made with milk and cream sourced from “satisfied cows” on Vermont dairy farms that make a selection part in its humane “Caring Dairy” program. Handiest a minority of the cream and milk used in the ice cream comes from a pair of of these farms, the criticism alleges. “The last milk and cream originates from factory-fashion, mass-manufacturing dairy operations, precisely what buyers who make a selection Ben & Jerry’s products would savor to defend some distance flung from,” the criticism says.

Usa today Virginia

Abingdon: Voters have defeated a proposal that would have relocated their historic courthouse’s capabilities to a vacant Kmart building in a strip mall. The Bristol Herald Courier reports every precinct in Washington County voted in opposition to the proposal in a referendum this week. The streak was proposed because county officers and judges had expressed effort over security points and a lack of condo and parking. Nonetheless the premise had drawn derision at earlier public hearings. County Administrator Jason Berry says the live result's a “sure message from the oldsters.” He says a committee discovering out the negate will now revisit at 2016 engineering watch and likely take into legend modern alternatives.

Usa today Washington

Olympia: Issue auditors whisper an investigation revealed elevators and escalators are now not yearly inspected as required by verbalize law. KING-TV reports the Department of Labor and Industries failed to stare bigger than half of of the verbalize’s 18,000 conveyances in 2018. Investigators whisper hundreds of conveyances failed to have inspections for 2 or three years, and three were now not inspected in over 10 years. Department officers whisper the backlog was attributable to a building affirm that generated more elevators and escalators wanting inspections. Officers whisper the verbalize additionally struggled to steal inspectors, nonetheless additional funding has allowed the division to pay larger salaries and add additional inspectors. Officers whisper deepest insurance protection policies require conveyance inspections a pair of instances a year. The verbalize division solely serves as a evaluate and steadiness.

Usa today West Virginia

Daniels: An American Heritage Girls troop has helped to lift funds for its mentor’s most cancers remedy. The Register-Herald reports troop people Kate Hontz, Rebekah Stephens and Callie Bethel held a fundraiser last Saturday to help pay for Rachel Quesenberry’s chemotherapy treatments. Callie told the newspaper that the trio “just correct wished to fabricate the relaxation we are succesful of also” to help with Quesenberry’s clinical prices. The 33-year-feeble Quesenberry was recognized with breast most cancers in January and has since passed via chemical and surgical treatments that require her to dash back and forth between Huntington and Daniels. The newspaper says Quesenberry has had IV transfusions that require her to pick out additional chemotherapy remedy for five years. The newspaper says all proceeds from the tournament will dash straight away to Quesenberry, as will any vendor costs.

Usa today Wisconsin

Madison: Contemporary data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals students at the verbalize’s flagship campus are getting out sooner than ever, in mild of mounting nationwide issues and conversations regarding the rising mark of college. College students who graduated from UW-Madison with a bachelor’s stage in the 2018-19 college year did so in a median of fine under four calendar years – 3.96 years, to be loyal – in step with data from the college’s Place of work of Academic Planning and Institutional Study. It’s the first time since the college started monitoring moderate time to stage four decades ago that the amount has been so low. The frequent, calculated in fleshy calendar years (now not academic years), technique students are serene spending a diminutive bigger than the eight-semester now not new to most bachelor’s stage programs.

Usa today Wyoming

Cheyenne: An duration in-between legislative panel has rejected a proposal that would amplify the verbalize tax on alcohol to fund substance abuse remedy programs. The proposed invoice equipped by Republican verbalize Sen. Charlie Scott, of Casper, was voted down 7-6 on Wednesday by the Joint Committee on Labor, Successfully being and Social Products and companies. Proponents of the invoice famed that Wyoming’s excessive suicide payment indicates the persevering with substance issues facing the verbalize and that substance abuse programs in the verbalize had considered sizable funding cuts in most modern years. Alternatively, opponents contended that the tax amplify was unfair and pointless because present revenues were satisfactory to address the substance abuse programs.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

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Battling Sex Crime in Kansas: ‘It’s Nice to Know Someone Believes You’

Sheryl Richardson remembers the man being on top of her. She remembers the sensation of not being able to hold her head up. She remembers how she felt afterwards.

“I was in a lot of pain,” she said. “A lot of pain.”

Other details are fuzzy. Richardson said she was drugged and raped in her central Topeka, Kansas apartment. The man took her keys and drove off with her vehicle.

Richardson didn’t report the incident for several months, but it was eating at her; so eventually she went to the city’s Law Enforcement Center to talk with a Topeka police detective.

“It’s nice to know someone believes you,” she said.

But even though Richardson could identify the man who assaulted her, an arrest still hadn’t been made at the time this article was written.

According to a report from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, in 2017, a rape occurred every seven hours and six minutes in the state. Although survivors reported knowing who the suspect was in 80 percent of incidents, only 13 percent resulted in an arrest.

Justice for survivors through the criminal justice system remains elusive in Kansas.

The likelihood of a conviction drops off at each step of the criminal justice system, from making an arrest to the filing of charges. While investigations are complicated by delayed reporting and trauma, prosecuting cases becomes difficult when there is negligible evidence and he-said-she-said testimony.

However, advocates say bringing a case to the justice system can compound the trauma of a sexual assault and that healing may have to come from other avenues.

The Topeka Police Department’s Special Victims Unit offers one such alternative.

Topeka Police Lt. Jennifer Cross (left) and Sgt. Donna Eubank of the city’s Special Victims Unit discuss the department’s victim-centered approach to sexual assault cases. Photo by Thad Allton/The Capital-Journal

Police Lt. Jennifer Cross, who heads the unit, said that although police want higher arrest rates. “better services to victims” can have a significant impact.

She points to the fact that the number of rapes reported in Topeka nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018, from 44 to 84.

The increase “tells us that our victims’ services and our collaboration is improving because victims are more comfortable coming forward,” Cross said.

“The number one thing, though, is I think that we have to believe victims unless there’s something that tells us we shouldn’t believe victims.”

The first challenge, she said, is to overcome the trauma experienced by victims, which take many forms, ranging from not being ready to talk about what happened, to young victims not realizing the nature of the offense. Others may be hesitant to come forward because they were using drugs or drinking under the legal age.

‘Victim-Blaming’

“There’s a lot of victim blaming that goes on from the victims themselves where they second-guess decisions they made or choices they made and we have to get them comfortable enough,” Cross said.

“What’s important for us is to ensure that victims understand that they’re not to blame for something that happened to them, even if there were choices that they made that they’re not OK with disclosing and creating that environment where disclosure is more likely to occur.”

The unit in the past couple of years has worked to become more victim-centered. The Topeka Police Department partners with the YWCA’s Center for Safety and Empowerment to connect victims with services.

“Even if you can’t get a criminal prosecution, the more services, and the more support that a victim receives, the more likely they are to be able to overcome that trauma and move forward,” Cross said.

“Abut Sexual Violence” Flyer distributed by the YWCA Center for Safety and Employment in Kansas

A detective from the unit was recently approved to undergo Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview (FETI) training, a method that takes into account trauma responses. The unit also engages with street-level officers about initial police responses.

Cross said justice varies from victim to victim.

“Justice for us is full accountability to someone who perpetrates a crime like that against anyone,” she said.

“But sometimes that’s difficult for us too, because our idea of justice and what we want to see the outcome be is different than what the victim wants, and part of the victim-centered approach is being sensitive to what the victim wants and not pushing our agenda on them either.

“One of the difficulties we face is wanting to move forward more with a victim who’s not ready to do so and trying to find ways to be OK with that.”

The Difficulty of Prosecuting Rape Cases

Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay said prosecuting rape cases is “absolutely more difficult.”

Cases may or may not have physical evidence. They can hinge on one person’s credibility, becoming a he-said-she-said situation. There usually isn’t a witness. Some victims may waver on testifying.

A case will proceed if there is “a reasonable likelihood of conviction,” Kagay said. Some cases may have a 50-50 chance. If there is a clear path to conviction, the DA’s office will go forward.

Shawnee County District Attorney Mike Kagay Photo by Thad Allton/The Capital-Journal

“[With] sex cases in particular, I think, you have to be willing to take that step forward,” he said.

The office has a victim-witness coordinator who serves as a point of contact, relaying logistical information like court dates, connecting victims to resources and accompanying them to court. They also partner with the YWCA, which can provide an advocate.

Kagay said they have to balance a victim’s needs with holding an offender accountable.

“If someone’s willing to rape another human being, chances are they’d be willing to rape another human being,” he said.

Kagay said he hasn’t ever heard from a victim who regretted testifying.

“On the contrary, I think it tends to be a more empowering experience for them to be able to get up there and tell their story,” he said.

Justice, according to Kagay, is what a jury decides.

“If we believe our victim, and we do because we’ve filed the case and are moving forward, then we believe justice should be the jury also believing the victim and holding that person accountable,” he said. “At the end of the day, you have to be OK with whatever they decide.”

That means when a jury acquits a defendant, “We have to call that justice too.”

Victim Turned Advocate

Shannon Reid, 34, said she survived 12 years of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. She reported it to authorities in fall 2007, about four years after it ended, when she found out her stepbrother had an infant daughter.

“I was scared for her, and so that was what prompted me to report,” Reid said.

The Lawrence, Kansas police detective “did right by me,” Reid recalled. “She acted like an advocate.”

Reid said the detective obtained overwhelming evidence, but the case “very abruptly ended at the DA’s office,” who declined to prosecute.

“I felt gobsmacked,” she said.

The Douglas County District Attorney’s Office said it evaluates probable cause and the likelihood of a favorable jury outcome, considering such factors as victim and suspect statements, physical evidence and corroboration.

Reid’s case occurred when there was still a five-year statute of limitations on prosecuting rape cases. That law changed in 2013.

There was an allegation of long-term sexual abuse that ended in 2003,” the DA’s office said.

“A report was made to law enforcement on November 28, 2007. An investigation resulted in credible evidence of sexual abuse by the suspect; however, a case could not be filed due to the running of the statute of limitations in effect at the time of the events.”

Reid was angry for a while and internalized shame. Maybe if she had reported it sooner it would have been prosecuted, she thought. But then she began to wonder why it turned out the way it did. She turned to learning advocacy, and she now works as a court advocate in domestic violence cases.

“I do this work because of my experiences and in part to think about what life would have been like had any advocate come ever into my or my mom’s life and stood by us,” she said.

Reid has “a very different definition of justice now than I did when I decided to report it.”

She said going through the criminal justice system can be disempowering. The victim’s role is to tell the story over and over, she said, but they don’t have a seat at the table in the decision-making process.

“It becomes everybody else’s crusade,” she said.

She believes it is realistic to change things so victims have more power and choice in asking for certain actions to be taken.

As it stands now, however, “I definitely don’t believe that justice is possible through the legal system personally,” Reid said.

Even if her stepfather had gone to prison, she said, it only would have made him more dangerous, because incarceration doesn’t rehabilitate.

The Quest for Healing

Michelle Treglio said justice may not be possible in her situation because the person who abused her has died.

But healing is a different story.

One of the most important parts of that process has been understanding the biological responses to trauma. Through therapy, she has learned that people’s brains have a “safety net” where they can put painful things away. But when those experiences are triggered, it causes a “swirly tornado” that can make it difficult to go through the criminal justice system.

“Everything is kind of jumbled — your dates, exactly what people said, everything — because it’s such an emotional thing and a fearful thing,” she said. “Then they discredit you.”

Michelle McCormick, director of the YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment . Photo by Thad Allton/The Capital-Journal

Michelle McCormick, director of the YWCA Center for Safety and Empowerment in northeast Kansas, said rape is “wildly under-reported,” but she credited the #MeToo movement with helping foster dialogue about sexual violence.

According to national statistics, 68 percent of incidents go unreported. In 2018, the center received 319 reports of sexual assault or sexual violence, McCormick said.

We credit some people feeling more comfortable coming forward to some social movements that have been happening like #MeToo because it created some space for people to come forward,” she said.

The week after #MeToo went viral in October 2017, the center’s hotline saw a 433 percent spike in calls. Similar increases occurred last year when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed, and this year after a documentary alleging child sex abuse by Michael Jackson was released.

“There’s more dialogue about it, and thank God, because it’s stuff that you tend to hold in,” Treglio said.

McCormick said societal shifts need to occur.

“It has to happen in every sphere, in my mind — it has to happen at home, in families, in those kinds of relationships, it has to happen in schools, it has to happen in our criminal justice system,” she said.

“It has to happen everywhere that we come to terms with the fact that we have some ugly dynamics going on as human beings and in our culture and we have to be brave enough to face it.”

Other changes include more consent education, better responses to child abuse and different messages to boys and men about the meaning of masculinity. McCormick also said there needs to be an understanding that harmful behavior is on a continuum.

“Some of the cultural aspects that lead up to this don’t get challenged enough in our culture,” she said, pointing to sexual harassment.

Treglio said they were on the right track, but more work needs to be done.

“The survivors lead the way,” McCormick said.

“They show us, they teach us, they inspire us.”

Katie Moore, a staff writer for the Topeka Capital-Journal, is a 2010 John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim Justice Reporting Fellow. This is a slightly abridged version of a reporting project prepared as part of her fellowship. Read the full story here.

Battling Sex Crime in Kansas: ‘It’s Nice to Know Someone Believes You’ syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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statusquoergo · 5 years

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Part I

I actually like the next bit, but then, I’m a mean person.

Donna tries to go toe-to-toe with Faye, asserting that she and Harvey actually serve the firm’s best interests by being a couple, because they balance each other. Faye says that’s irrelevant, and Donna retorts that this is personal for Faye because she and Harvey remind her of herself and her ex-husband. This may or may not be the case, but either way, Faye shuts that shit right down: “This is a conflict of interest, and I will not be cajoled, threatened, or coerced into thinking it’s not.” My hero.

Up next is Harvey’s one-on-one with Donna’s father. They’re laughing along to some story about Donna being a competitive skier before she got into theater until Harvey gets back to business with the acknowledgment that James has some concerns about him that Harvey’s “taken some steps to alleviate.” James appreciates Harvey meeting him “man to man,” but things take a turn for the worse when Harvey explains that he pulled some strings to get the money James needs for the deal he’s in town to settle, and James accuses him of digging into his business and trying to buy his approval.

Hold the fucking phone.

James’s last and only other appearance in this series thus far was in “Live to Fight” (s05e12), in which it’s revealed that when Donna was a child, he lost all their family’s money on a real estate gamble, and after Donna started working for Harvey, he asked her to get Harvey to give him a loan for $250,000, which Harvey refused. Donna proposed to give her father access to her 401(k) until Harvey threatened to tie up his legal proceedings for the next 20 years, after which point James declared his intentions to commit bank fraud by illegally inflating his assets and disappeared into the night. And now he’s getting on Harvey’s case for trying to help him with a business deal that’s apparently going very badly? Sounds to me like Harvey is very much looking out for Donna’s best interests by trying to keep this asshole in the black so he won’t be tempted to commit another federal crime! “Treat my daughter better than you treat me,” get out of here with that shit, you shyster.

Also Katrina refuses to modify the code of conduct for Louis because it’s precisely that sort of thing that got them “saddled with Faye in the first place,” so, good call there.

More fill-in-the-blanks for Alex and the Masterson case; eight years ago, Bratton heavily implied that he would have Alex’s family hurt or killed if he exposed the conspiracy, which I guess is a decent enough reason to not do that, but now in the present day, Rosalie wants her revenge. She goes to Samantha for help and Samantha agrees to help her “find something on this guy”; I’m not sure if they’re talking about Bratton or Craig, but it doesn’t really matter.

Donna found out about Harvey’s meeting with her father and is none too pleased about it, accusing him of “making it clear to him that [Harvey thinks] he’s a bad businessman,” which, yes, hi, bank fraud. She then projects the fuck out of her anger at Faye by expressing her fear that Harvey thinks he’s better than her, which of course Harvey vehemently denies, and Donna finally tells him about Faye’s sine qua non for them to both keep their jobs. (Funny that she says “one of [them] has to give up their vote, and that one of [them] is [her],” when Faye was pretty clear that it could be either of them making the sacrifice.) She then lets slip an interesting detail: She didn’t tell him about it right away because she didn’t want to hear him say that his vote is more important than hers. I’ve already established that I think that’s true, but I wonder if this is a case of Donna agreeing with me—she knows it but doesn’t want to hear it out loud—or she thinks it’s not true but she doesn’t trust Harvey. But yeah, no, the firm is stronger because they’re a couple, for sure.

Then Louis comes in to argue, again, that they need to get rid of Faye, this time because “she’s turned Katrina against [him],” and Harvey argues right back that they have to use their limited amount of leverage wisely (what leverage) and the “bigger fish” at the moment is getting Donna her vote back. Louis yells that it’s unfair the battle they’re choosing is Harvey’s, especially since it’s Harvey’s fault Faye is there in the first place since this goes all the way back to Harvey hiring Mike; there’s a lot of shouting, and Donna tries to play the voice of reason by insisting that it’s not worth it to be at each other’s throats over Faye because she won’t be there forever. Louis goes to the bullpen to pout (or, uh, reminisce) and Harvey goes to forgive him for blaming him, acknowledging that he was disrespecting Louis, which he knows because Donna accused him of doing the same to her father, and I’m only this saying this one more time, James Paulsen lost his family’s finances on a bad business deal and committed bank fraud to save himself after Harvey stopped him from pilfering his daughter’s 401(k).

ANYWAY.

Final flashback (finally)! Eight years ago, Alex repeatedly tried to give Craig a consolation gift after Bratton gave Alex the Masterson account (for blackmail reasons) but since Alex wouldn’t tell him why he wouldn’t share Masterson, Craig started holding a grudge, so that’s what that’s about. In the present, Alex asks Samantha what Rosalie’s plan is and further asks her to let him fix everything instead, so that’s sweet, I guess, that they’re trying to protect each other, but you know what might work better is if they talked to each other and worked together. Then Harvey shows up with some incredibly clumsy dialogue to fill them in on recent events (“Harvey, what’s going on?” “A lot of things, some of which you know, some of which you don’t. But I’m gonna tell you what they are, and then tomorrow morning we’re gonna put a stop to them.”) and…that’s that? Oh, Louis apologizes to Katrina but asks her to put something else in the code of conduct and “ram it down [Faye’s] throat” rather than try to slip it past her, so that's…colorful.

Alright, I know this next scene is supposed to be very badass, what with the rock music and the power walking and the slow motion effect, but my god it looks so stupid. I mean come on, they’re in slow motion. There’s rock music. Seriously, all that’s missing is a massive explosion in the background. Harvey, Louis, Alex, and Samantha storm Faye’s office and declare that they’re a united front, they trust each other, they’re not hanging Donna out to dry, blah blah whatever. It seems that the addition Louis asked Katrina to make to the code of conduct is a blanket waiver of conflict? Boy, that is…optimistic, but they are boxing themselves into a tiny, tiny corner there. Then they all threaten to resign if she doesn’t start treating them with respect, and points for aiming high, but she’s threatened to fire them and close the firm before; the first thing she said to Louis, right after she arrived, was that if he didn’t hand over control of the firm, she’d have them all suspended from the bar for six months, and in “Special Master” (s09e02), they asked what would happen if they didn’t follow her rules and she said, quote, “You mean if you continue to cross lines? Then you’ll be fired.” Why do they think this is going to be an effective tactic? If I was in her position, I think I’d just be like, “Yeah, okay, good luck in the jobs market with this dumpster fire on your résumé.”

The first example of really open communication so far this episode does unfortunately come with a little bit of a damper on it, and not just the fact that there are only about eight minutes left: Faye asks Gretchen if she told Donna about her divorce, because it was “very painful to have that thrown in [her] face” (she does have a heart!), but as a result of that bullshit the Power Rangers just pulled with their conflict waiver, she’s decided to return Donna’s vote because “maybe [they] all have things [they] can learn from each other.” Oh, Faye. You were doing so well.

Deus ex machina alert: Samantha has…something on Craig that persuades him to finish the Panasonic deal sans blackmail to avoid “mutually assured destruction” (based on what), so that’s convenient. Then Harvey meets with James again, at Harvey’s place this time, to apologize for disrespecting him, James says Harvey and Donna sound like him and Donna’s mother, Harvey says James has an amazing marriage, and this is so much cheap talk without any supporting demonstration that I can’t take any of it seriously at all.

Back in “Stalking Horse” (s08e15), Donna asks her mother if she regrets giving James the money for that business deal that didn’t work out; her mother says no, because how could she have known it would fail, and Donna says, with no clarification, that he’d let her down before (quite a shift from her early assertion in “Live to Fight” that “[her] father has never done anything wrong in his life”). Her mother says he never let her down in ways that matter, but between her claim that James is the “kindest, gentlest, most loving man [she’s] ever met” and his literal attempt to save himself from financial ruin by taking custody of his daughter’s retirement account, I’m starting to wonder if self-delusion isn’t something of a habit in the Paulsen household. And what about that much older daughter who emotionally manipulates all of her romantic partners?

In any event, James admits that he might’ve overreacted (you think?) and also that he’s still having trouble with his business deal and if Harvey could help him out that would be great, and seriously, I have less than no respect for this man.

Rosalie approaches Samantha to thank her for taking care of things with Craig, Samantha thanks her for welcoming her into their home, Alex invites her over to play “a late-night game of Settlers of Catan,” they call her family, it’s all very cute, and then.

And then.

Donna is leaving Rachel a message (more Mike Ross priming, I guess) when Harvey comes in and delightedly brags that her dad loves him, but holy shit character development, he goes on to say that while he knows he needs to share when he disagrees with her, “if [they’re] gonna make this work, [she needs] to come to [him] when something is wrong in [her] life.” Brace yourself, every fic writer who’s ever spent hours agonizing over how to do a proposal scene just right, because I am here to tell you that your efforts are not only good enough, they’re probably too good for mainstream television, because here’s your competition:

“Wait a second. What do you mean ‘if’ this is gonna work?” “Donna, you know we’re gonna be together forever, right?” “Well, not if that’s how you’re gonna ask me.” “Doesn’t matter how I ask you.” “Why not?” “Because we both know however I ask it won’t be exactly the way you would have instructed me to ask, so might as well ask you any way I want.” “Well— That— I—” “Go ahead.” “Okay—” “Keep stumbling. That’s only the second time I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words.” “So, we’re engaged, then?” “Well, I— No, it’s—” “Look who’s stumbling now.”

What. The fuck.

What…the fuck.

Harvey actually says “Sweet baby Jesus” when he sees his mom is calling (that’s a real thing he says, with words from his mouth), she asks how things went with Donna’s dad, he says it went great, he “introduces” her to Donna (over the phone, no video chat), and Donna grabs the phone to tell her “what [her] son just tried to pull off.” Lily is “all ears,” and…fade to black.

So like.

Uh.

The, um. The next episode is the Mike episode.

#suits usa #s09e04 #season 9 #analysis

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