Latest news with #Aldrich
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
WKBN announces Male Student Athlete of the Year
WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) – East Liverpool senior Nicholas Aldrich was named the 2025 WKBN/WYTV Student Athlete of the Year on Thursday night. The award, along with a $1,000 college scholarship, was presented to Aldrich at the annual Student Athlete of the Year banquet at DiVieste's Banquet Center. Aldrich played four sports at East Liverpool, broke five school records in swimming (50m, 100m, 200m and 500m Freestyle along with the 100m Butterfly) and graduated as class Valedictorian. He also held leadership positions in the band, choir and theater. Aldrich served as troupe president and student director in theater. He was a member of the Tri-M Music Honor Society in band, and served as delegate at the HOBY Youth Leadership seminar. Aldrich was class president and a member of Outdoor Adventure Club, Booster Club, and Culture Club. He also served a president of both National Honor Society and French Club. He earned over 30 college credits during his high school career, and will study Aerospace Engineering and Biochemistry at The Ohio State University this fall. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why isn't Congress doing anything about Trump? They want to be re-elected.
Question: Why doesn't Congress act more as a check on the President? Answer: Political science has spent a fair amount of time studying how and why members of the U.S. Congress make the decisions that they do. One of the most significant early books on the issue was written by David Mayhew in 1974 titled, 'The Electoral Connection.' Mayhew essentially argued that you can understand the choices made by members of Congress when viewing it through their desire to be re-elected. In Mayhew's view, politicians are motivated by self-interest, and that begins with their desire to win re-election. Subsequent research and studies of Congress have challenged this view as too limiting or missing other factors, such as a desire to increase their power (Dodd 1977), support their party (Aldrich 2011), or advocate for policy (Arnold 1990). Nonetheless, the desire to win re-election remains a useful heuristic for finding a rough understanding of what motivates choices in Congress. Opinion: This Teacher Appreciation Week, remember the key to your student's success So, why don't members of the House challenge the President when they disagree? Because doing so can be politically costly. If the President is popular with a representative's party base, or even just in their district, speaking out against the President can trigger a backlash. For many members, especially in safe seats where the only real threat comes from a primary challenger, criticizing a President from their own party is like painting a target on their back. The risk isn't losing a general election, it's losing to someone more loyal, more vocal, more willing to toe the party line. Former Republican Rep. Lynn Cheney of Wyoming is a recent example of a Congresswoman whose criticism likely cost her politically. There's also party leadership to consider. Committee assignments, endorsements, and fundraising help are controlled, to some degree, by party leaders who tend to demand loyalty. Picking a fight with the President can easily be interpreted as picking a fight with the party, and that can result in a reduction of one's influence and power in Congress. Party resources may not flow to members who are not "team players". Criticism is a risky move for a member who wants to keep climbing the ranks or even just stay in Congress. While much of this logic has been true for a long time, there are some added factors today based on the way Congress has evolved over time. We are in an increasingly polarized nation, which has made bipartisanship harder and party unity more important. Many people see the other party as the enemy and their own party as part of their personal identity. In that environment, independent voices are discouraged. The President, as the symbolic and strategic leader of the party, becomes a figure that members are reluctant to oppose — even if they might privately disagree. Opinion: We tried warning you about a Trump autocracy. But don't lose hope. At the core of all of this is a pretty straightforward calculation: will this help me get re-elected? If the answer is no, chances are that opposition will be behind the scenes, if present at all. Not because members of Congress do not have opinions, but because survival in politics often means picking your battles — and criticizing a President from their own party isn't usually the one most Congresspersons choose to pick. Kevin Wagner is a noted constitutional scholar and political science professor at Florida Atlantic University. The answers provided do not necessarily represent the views of the university. If you have a question about how American government and politics work, email him at kwagne15@ or reach him on Twitter/X @kevinwagnerphd. This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump isn't getting checked by Congress. It's about elections | Opinion
Time of India
10-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
DOGE's zombie contracts: They were killed but have come back to life
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads At least 44 of the government contracts cancelled on the orders of Elon Musk's cost-cutting initiative have been resurrected by federal agencies, wiping out more than $220 million of his group's purported savings, according to a New York Times analysis of federal spending Musk's group continues to list 43 of those contracts as "terminations" on its website, which it calls the "Wall of Receipts." The group even added some of them days or weeks after they had been resurrected. The result was another in a series of data errors on the website that made the group seem more successful in reducing government costs than it had White House says that this is a paperwork lag that will be revived contracts ranged from small-dollar agreements about software licenses to large partnerships with vendors that managed government data and records. Most of the contracts were cancelled in February and March, when Musk's group, the Department of Government Efficiency, was demanding that agencies make huge cuts in spending and agencies reinstated them, sometimes just days later. In one case, the Environmental Protection Agency revived a contract after just 2 1/2 hours. Musk's group still listed that one as cancelled for weeks afterward, even after it had been revived and then extended -- so that it will cost more now than reversals illustrated not only the struggles of Musk's team to produce accurate data about its results but also the drawbacks of its fast, secretive approach to cutting spending as part of a sweeping effort to slash $1 trillion from the $7 trillion federal budget in a few said that, in its rush, Musk's group had recommended killing contracts that were unlikely to stay dead. Some were required by law. Others required skills that the government needed but did not reversals raise broader questions about how many of the Musk group's deep but hasty budget cuts will be rolled back over time, eroding its long-term effect on bureaucracy and governing in northern Virginia, government contractor Larry Aldrich was notified in February that his company, BrennSys, had lost its contract to do web design and produce videos for a Department of Veterans Affairs website for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder."The VA cannot do this work on its own," Aldrich said. "They don't have the manpower or the skill set."It did not last."Two weeks later, we got an email saying it was going to be reinstated," Aldrich said. "I was like, 'Wow, somebody must have gone back and told them, "We can't do this."'"A White House spokesperson, Harrison Fields, said the reversals showed that agencies had reevaluated cuts they made in the initial push to comply with Musk's directions."The DOGE Wall of Receipts provides the latest and most accurate information following a thorough assessment, which takes time," Fields said. "Updates to the DOGE savings page will continue to be made promptly, and departments and agencies will keep highlighting the massive savings DOGE is achieving."Musk's group has listed more than 9,400 contracts it claims credit for cancelling, for a total of $32 billion in savings. In all, Musk's group says it has saved taxpayers $165 with that output, Fields said, the reversals identified by The New York Times were "very, very small potatoes."He declined to say if contracts on the group's list beyond those that the Times found had also been Times uncovered those reversals by searching the Federal Procurement Data System, a government system that tracks changes to contracts. The Times looked for instances in which contracts listed as cancelled on Musk's website had shown signs of new life, such as having added funding, an extended timeline, or an update that included words like "rescind" or "reinstate."That search turned up 44 of the cost-cutting group's zombies, contracts killed but then restored to total may still be an undercount, because changes to contracts can take time to appear in the procurement data system and because there is no standard way to identify a reinstated contract in this system. The Times' search may have missed resurrections began in Romero and her husband had a contract to offer leadership training to lawyers at the Agriculture Department. They lost it Feb. 14 and gained it back four days was a godsend for Romero and her husband, providing $45,000 in revenue at a time when all their other federal business had disappeared."We had lost all of the income that we were planning for calendar year 2025. We've had to sell our house. We're in the process of moving into a condo," she said. "We just feel really fortunate that we had this resource to buy some time."The Agriculture Department said in a statement that it had restored this contract after discovering it was "required by statute." It declined to say which statute. Romero said she felt the reinstatement was the product of personal intervention, crediting a senior Agriculture Department lawyer who had been a major supporter of her and her husband's work."All I know is, she retired two weeks later," Romero reversals began to Department of Veterans Affairs reinstated 16 contracts, the most of any agency in the Times' department declined to comment about why. But veterans' groups noted that some of the cancelled contracts involved functions required by law, such as a contractor who helped veterans search for military records to use as proof in obtaining contract was restored after eight the Education Department , Musk's group said it had saved $38 million over multiple years by cancelling a contract to manage a repository of data about schools nationwide. But lawmakers and advocacy groups objected, saying that the law required that data to be collected and that the government needed it to determine which schools qualified for certain grants, like some tailored for rural areas."They should have used a scalpel," said Rachel Dinkes of the Knowledge Alliance , an association of education companies, including the one that lost this contract. "But instead, they went in with an ax and chopped it all down."That grant was restored after 18 days, but with $17 million of its potential funding stripped shortest-lived cancellation involved an EPA contract, signed in 2023, to pay a Maryland-based company for help raising awareness about asthma. The EPA cancelled that contract at 4:31 p.m. March 7, according to contracting data. Then it reinstated the contract -- in effect, canceling the cancellation -- at 6:58 p.m. the same night."Any procurement that is reinstated reflects that the agency determined that funding action supported Administration priorities," the EPA said. The agency declined to give details about this case. Last month, the EPA extended this contract for another year, agreeing to pay $171,000 more than before the cancellation. The contractor did not respond to the start of his group's work, Musk said the government would most likely have to undo some spending cuts."We need to act fast to stop wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money," Musk said on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast in February. "But if we make a mistake, we'll reverse it quickly."But Musk also made a second promise, crucial to carrying out the first. He said his group would post the details of its work online to enable the public to have an accurate and up-to-date picture of what it had cut."We can name the specifics, line by line," Musk said in the same interview. "We've got the receipts. We post the receipts."The Times has found numerous errors on the group's website since the these errors inflated the value of the savings Musk's team had achieved. Musk promised the group could make $1 trillion in budget cuts this year, but so far, it has fallen far short of that aim. And even those cuts have been inflated because of the inclusion of errors and group, for instance, previously claimed credit for cancelling programs that actually ended years or even decades ago. It also double-counted the same cancellations and once posted a claim that confused "billion" and "million."This month, the Times sent the White House a list of dozens of revived contracts that were still on the list. Two days later, Musk's group removed one: the EPA contract that had been cancelled for less than a at the same time, it added five other already-revived contracts to its list of "terminations," claiming credit for $57 million more in savings that had already been rolled back.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ducks to hire Joel Quenneville as next head coach after 2021 resignation amid Blackhawks scandal: Reports
Content warning: This article contains alleged depictions of sexual assault. Four years after he resigned from the Florida Panthers amid a sexual-assault investigation involving his former team, Joel Quenneville is back in the NHL. Quenneville will reportedly become Anaheim Ducks' next head coach, according to multiple reports. The news comes less than a year after Quenneville was reinstated by the NHL following his resignation from the Panthers in 2021. Quenneville resigned as the team's head coach after the NHL launched an investigation into claims Chicago Blackhawks' video coach Brad Aldrich sexually assaulted a player in 2010. Quenneville served as the Blackhawks' head coach from 2008 to 2019, when the alleged assault reportedly occurred. An independent investigation into those claims found that Quenneville — as well as multiple members of the Blackhawks' front office — were aware of the allegations against Aldrich, but declined to take action until three weeks after those allegations came to light within the organization. Prior to the independent investigation's findings, Quenneville claimed he was unaware of the alleged assault. The Blackhawks were in the midst of a playoff run at the time, and team executives reportedly did not want to invite negative publicity during the postseason. The Blackhawks went on to win the Stanley Cup that season. It was the team's first championship in nearly 50 years. The investigation also found that another instance of sexual assault involving Aldrich and a player allegedly occurred during the three-week window in which members of the team knew about the allegations surrounding Aldrich, but did not report them to the Blackhawks' human resources department. At the time that report was released, Quenneville was in his third season as the Panthers' head coach. A day after the investigation's findings were released, Quenneville coached the Panthers, sparking outrage from fans and others in the hockey world. The next day, Quenneville resigned. Following Quenneville's resignation, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said he would need to meet with the coach before he could hold another job in the NHL. In July 2024, Quenneville — along with other members of the Blackhawks' front office, including general manager Stan Bowman — was reinstated by the league. Just after being reinstated, Bowman was hired as the Edmonton Oilers' general manager. Shortly after the independent investigation findings came to light, former Blackhawks prospect Kyle Beach came forward as the player who was reportedly assaulted by Aldrich. At the time, Beach — who was selected by the team in the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft — claimed many within the organization were aware of the alleged abuse. Multiple former Blackhawks players and staff members said they — and the team — were aware of the reported abuse. Following the team's 2010 Stanley Cup win, the Blackhawks went on to win the Stanley Cup in both 2013 and 2015. All three championships came under Quenneville. After a slow start to open the 2018-19 NHL season, the Blackhawks fired Quenneville. He joined the Panthers the following year, and put up a 79-40 record with the franchise before his resignation. In 2014, Aldrich was sentenced to nine months in jail after reportedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old hockey player in Michigan. His name was removed from the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup in 2021.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Ducks to hire Joel Quenneville as next head coach after 2021 resignation amid Blackhawks scandal: Reports
Content warning: This article contains alleged depictions of sexual assault. Four years after he resigned from the Florida Panthers amid a sexual-assault investigation involving his former team, Joel Quenneville is back in the NHL. Quenneville will reportedly become Anaheim Ducks' next head coach, according to multiple reports. The news comes less than a year after Quenneville was reinstated by the NHL following his resignation from the Panthers in 2021. Quenneville resigned as the team's head coach after the NHL launched an investigation into claims Chicago Blackhawks' video coach Brad Aldrich sexually assaulted a player in 2010. Quenneville served as the Blackhawks' head coach from 2008 to 2019, when the alleged assault reportedly occurred. An independent investigation into those claims found that Quenneville — as well as multiple members of the Blackhawks' front office — were aware of the allegations against Aldrich, but declined to take action until three weeks after those allegations came to light within the organization. Prior to the independent investigation's findings, Quenneville claimed he was unaware of the alleged assault. The Blackhawks were in the midst of a playoff run at the time, and team executives reportedly did not want to invite negative publicity during the postseason. The Blackhawks went on to win the Stanley Cup that season. It was the team's first championship in nearly 50 years. The investigation also found that another instance of sexual assault involving Aldrich and a player allegedly occurred during the three-week window in which members of the team knew about the allegations surrounding Aldrich, but did not report them to the Blackhawks' human resources department. At the time that report was released, Quenneville was in his third season as the Panthers' head coach. A day after the investigation's findings were released, Quenneville coached the Panthers, sparking outrage from fans and others in the hockey world. The next day, Quenneville resigned. Following Quenneville's resignation, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said he would need to meet with the coach before he could hold another job in the NHL. In July 2024, Quenneville — along with other members of the Blackhawks' front office, including general manager Stan Bowman — was reinstated by the league. Just after being reinstated, Bowman was hired as the Edmonton Oilers' general manager. Shortly after the independent investigation findings came to light, former Blackhawks prospect Kyle Beach came forward as the player who was reportedly assaulted by Aldrich. At the time, Beach — who was selected by the team in the first round of the 2018 NHL Draft — claimed many within the organization were aware of the alleged abuse. Multiple former Blackhawks players and staff members said they — and the team — were aware of the reported abuse. Following the team's 2010 Stanley Cup win, the Blackhawks went on to win the Stanley Cup in both 2013 and 2015. All three championships came under Quenneville. After a slow start to open the 2018-19 NHL season, the Blackhawks fired Quenneville. He joined the Panthers the following year, and put up a 79-40 record with the franchise before his resignation. In 2014, Aldrich was sentenced to nine months in jail after reportedly sexually assaulting a 16-year-old hockey player in Michigan. His name was removed from the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup in 2021.
