Dodgers trade for infield depth, adding Cavan Biggio from the Blue Jays

• June 12, 2024

LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers added more infield depth, acquiring veteran utility man Cavan Biggio from the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday for minor-league right-hander Braydon Fisher.

The Dodgers are expected to option outfielder Miguel Vargas to Triple-A Oklahoma City to make room on the active roster.

Biggio, 29, has six seasons of experience with the Blue Jays, batting .227 with 48 home runs and 176 RBIs in 490 career games. He was batting just .200 with two home runs and nine RBIs in 44 games this season before he was designated for assignment Friday.

The son of Hall of Famer Craig Biggio, who played 20 seasons for the Houston Astros, has played every position but pitcher and catcher. The left-handed hitter could split time at third base with Kiké Hernandez until Max Muncy returns from an oblique injury.

On Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts suggested that Muncy’s recovery will still take some time. The veteran third baseman has not played since May 15. Hernandez has played the bulk of the time at third base, but was batting .190 in 19 games since Muncy went on the IL.

“He’s running, throwing, catching the baseball, but as far as swinging, he’s not doing that,” Roberts said of Muncy. “I don’t know when we’re gonna pick that up. No updated timeline. If you’re not swinging the bat, I just don’t know what that progression looks like.”

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Biggio, a Houston native and Notre Dame product, has 80 games of experience at third base (68 starts) and played four games (two starts) at the position this season.

Fisher, 23, was a fourth-round draft pick in 2018 out of Clear Falls High School in League City, Texas. He was 2-1 with a 5.68 ERA this season in 15 combined relief appearances between Double-A Tulsa and Oklahoma City. He has a 5.51 ERA across 134 career minor league appearances (12 starts).

Vargas, 24, was 5-for-20 (.250) with one home run and four RBIs across eight games with the Dodgers this season.

In 107 major league games over the past three seasons, Vargas is a career .195 hitter with nine home runs and 44 RBIs. By contrast, in 99 games at Triple-A over the past two seasons, Vargas was batting .291 with 18 home runs and 81 RBIs.

​ Orange County Register 

For Sandy Hook shooting survivors, high school graduation is a ‘bittersweet’ milestone

• June 12, 2024

NEWTOWN, Conn. — The students who survived the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 live with their trauma — and without their friends — every day.

Sitting around a table at the Edmund Town Hall in Newtown on their last Friday as high school students, five seniors who survived the shooting were making plans to leave Sandy Hook soon, heading off to college campuses and careers. Many of their future plans are driven by the advocacy work that has helped them heal.

The weight of their loss is heavy this week as they prepare to accept their diplomas without 20 of their friends. And the fear that they carry with them is palpable with every bang of a door closing and every shuffle of a footstep in the hall behind them.

Eleven-and-a-half years after they ran for their lives through the neighborhood near their school and huddled beside backpacks in their cubbies, the fear still sneaks up on them in the form of a quickened heart rate and a held breath.

Sandy Hook survivors honor fallen classmates with vow to keep advocating for gun violence prevention

Their classroom daydreams drift to escape routes and hiding places. Where is the closest window? Would they fit under that desk? They think about it when their back is to a door. When they’re in a crowd at a concert. Would they fight? Run? Help their friends?

Those were decisions they never should have had to make, but did, when a gunman stormed their school and massacred their classmates and teachers on Dec. 14, 2012.

As they prepare to graduate from Newtown High School on Wednesday, they’re vowing to continue to fight for gun violence prevention until no other child has to make those same decisions.

“Graduation is a really big milestone in our lives. And I think walking across that stage will be a really bittersweet moment.” says Junior Newtown Action Alliance’s Grace Fischer, 18. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

‘Bittersweet’ memories

Lilly Wasilnak, Ella Seaver, Emma Ehrens, Matt Holden and Grace Fischer are members of the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, a grassroots gun violence prevention organization started in Newtown in the wake of the shooting.

The five teens drifted into town hall in staggered waves on Friday after returning from Washington D.C. On Thursday, a group of six survivors and their parents walked into the White House and sat down with Vice President Kamala Harris, telling her what they saw, heard and felt as their classmates were killed around them in the first grade.

They hope their stories will reach the Oval Office and, in turn, help influence the national policy changes they’ve been hoping for since they were 6 and 7 years old.

When contemplating how they felt meeting Harris and how they have felt throughout their senior year as they posed for prom pictures, chose their dorm rooms and picked up their caps and gowns, the word that came to mind for this group of five survivors was the same: “Bittersweet.”

“Graduation is a really big milestone in our lives,” said Fischer. “And I think walking across that stage will be a really bittersweet moment.”

“Everything is bittersweet,” said Seaver. “You smile and cry on the same things.”

In between all the things that trigger flashbacks to the worst moments of their lives, they also get glimmers of the lives their friends did get to live.

They remember pretending to be parents in the kindergarten school kitchen and tracing out drawings of barn animals on the classroom rug.

Emma Ehrens, 17, says she grasps on to what she can remember back in 2012, like how she envied her friend’s perfect brunette curls or how her teacher taught her to tie her shoes. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

“Do you remember chasing the boys around the playground?” Fischer asked, laughing as the group often does when they talk about fond memories of their friends.

They talk about birthday parties and playdates, painting cardboard houses and pushing their friends in plastic toy cars. They share memories of playground swings and a knocked out baby tooth, making Papier-mâché fans and playing in a friends’ pool.

They remember making a childhood vow to “marry that girl someday” and not knowing if it would have come true. And wishing a happy birthday to a little girl whose birthday party, planned for the next day, would never happen.

For Fischer, it’s hard to think about childhood and think of anything but the shooting. She wishes she could just focus on moments when she made friends, ate ice cream cones.

Others wish they had memories of games they played to share with their own kids someday. But the tragedy, they said, has taken too great a toll on their lives.

As the seniors prepare to leave Sandy Hook, they try to keep the happy memories of their classmates close. Even as they fade with time and trauma.

Sandy Hook survivors such as Matt Holden, 17, try to keep the memories of their fallen classmates close. “Sometimes (people) kind of forget that they were people too, they weren’t just victims. They were people we knew, we loved.” (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

Ehrens, now 17, said one of the young girls who was killed was one of her best friends in their first years of school.

“I can’t remember what she sounds like and it kills me,” she said. She grasps on to what she can remember, how her teacher taught her to tie her shoes and blow her bubble gum and how she envied her friend’s perfect brunette curls.

“It was so curly, it was so cute. I don’t want to forget that, but there’s no part of her left here besides her memory,” she said.

So they keep mementos in their bedrooms, many of which may soon be packed up and brought to dorm rooms across the country: A Lightning McQueen toy, a Hello Kitty necklace, a teddy bear, a framed photo of two kindergartners coloring.

“You’re trying to remember the people and these memories,” said Seaver. “You’re trying everything to hold onto this thread of them that sometimes feels like it’s slipping away.”

But the survivors will not let the kids and teachers they left behind in their school be forgotten.

“To the rest of the world it seems like a list of names, but to us they were so much more than that,” said Wasilnak. “They were these bright, bubbly fun people who shaped our childhoods. And even though we didn’t get to know them for a long time they have had such an influence on all of us.”

“Sometimes (people) kind of forget that they were people too, they weren’t just victims,” added Holden. “They were people we knew, we loved. So remember them for who they were, not just who they are now that they’re not with us.”

“There is a community that has been built,” said Seaver. “There’s always a shoulder that you can go cry on, laugh with, smile and just break down with if you need to, because this isn’t something that goes away within the first year of this happening. We’re here, 11, 12 years later, still talking about it.”

“To the rest of the world it seems like a list of names, but to us they were so much more than that,” says Lilly Wasilnak, as she gets ready to graduate from Newtown High School without 20 of their classmates. (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

Journey to advocacy

Just as they sat with Harris and shared their stories, they went around the same circle when they first joined the Jr. Newtown Action Alliance, recounting what they could and could not remember.

“When all of us kind of started this journey we all sat down and shared our stories with each other,” said Seaver. “And it’s kind of like a puzzle piece. Because so many of us remember different things, things that we’ve purposely tried to erase from our memory to save ourselves. (It) hurts to remember, but it also really reminds you that you’re not alone, unfortunately so.”

Talking about their memories and trauma ahead of graduation, they said, helped them understand how their entire lives have been shaped by what happened in 2012.

“We all got put in this club that we don’t want to be in, but we’re kind of forced to be in,” said Wasilnak.

They meet with other survivors across the country to inspire hope, to learn how they are coping. They call their lawmakers and lobby against those who oppose assault weapon bans.

“There is a community that has been built,” said Ella Seaver, 18. “There’s always a shoulder that you can go cry on, laugh with, smile and just break down with if you need to, because this isn’t something that goes away.” (Aaron Flaum/Hartford Courant)

These students, and many like them, have marched on Washington D.C., met face-to-face with members of Congress, lobbied on Capital Hill and now gone into the White House, urging the adults who are meant to protect them to please do so.

They want to get ghost guns off the streets, to prevent DIY guns from being manufactured. They want safe storage laws and background checks and safer schools.

The long lasting ripple effect of mass shootings is something the Sandy Hook survivors hope they can help other Americans understand across the map, across the political aisle and in positions of power.

Fischer said they tell their stories to inspire change but also “to remember that our story wasn’t just the time that we spent in that school. It is the 11 years after when our stories continued, the therapy and the funerals were had to go through. It didn’t end that day.”

“It doesn’t just affect the students or teachers who were in the building, it’s the parents who had to go pick up their kids from the fire station and see all the chaos and see the parents of the children that were lost,” added Seaver. “It’s the siblings that were old enough to understand what happened. It’s the first responders who had to be there and be strong enough to deal with it but ultimately are also falling apart on the inside.”

All of those people are the reasons they continue to work toward change.

“We have a purpose. We don’t want more kids to have to go through what we did or more kids to have to lose their lives to guns,” said Wasilnak.

They want to prevent other towns from facing the same fate and they don’t want survivors who aren’t ready to speak out to endure any further pain.

“As powerful as it is to share your voice, it’s painful. Simply put,” said Seaver.

“We have to be the voices for those who aren’t ready yet,” said Wasilnak.

So they tell their stories again and again and again because if they don’t, who will?

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Most of the survivors have been through years of therapy and are still not at the finish line. They may be done with their classwork in Newtown schools, but they’ll never be done working through what they experienced there.

“We’ve all overcome so much to get here and there’s still so much to overcome,” said Seaver. “Going into the real world and going into college and even beyond that. It seems like it’s one specific day that affected us, but it’s so much more than that.”

They want people to know that they wish they weren’t doing this work, but they’re doing it to save lives.

“These people were the kids that we played at the playground with every single day. Those happy memories of them, I think, will always be in our minds,” said Fischer. “We don’t want to think of them as just victims, they were our friends.”

As they accept their diplomas Wednesday, the survivors hope that they receive “more than thoughts and prayers” — that peers, future professors, college roommates and all the new people they meet will honor their first-grade classmates with action, advocacy and their votes.

​ Orange County Register 

Manhattan DA Bragg, prosecutor from Trump hush money trial to testify before Congress

• June 12, 2024

Molly Crane-Newman | New York Daily News

NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and a member of the prosecution team that secured Donald Trump’s conviction for covering up a conspiracy to hide information from voters on Tuesday agreed to testify about the case before Congress next month.

“It undermines the rule of law to spread dangerous misinformation, baseless claims, and conspiracy theories following the jury’s return of a full-count felony conviction in People v. Trump,” a spokesperson for Bragg said in a statement to the New York Daily News.

“Nonetheless, we respect our government institutions and plan to appear voluntarily before the subcommittee after sentencing.”

Bragg and Assistant District Attorney Matthew Colangelo, who delivered the prosecution’s opening statement at the hush money trial, will voluntarily submit to questions from the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee on July 12, a day after Trump’s sentencing. Both have been the subject of relentless attacks from the right alleging their involvement in a Democrat-led plot to prevent the former president from regaining power.

A jury found Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30 following a seven-week trial in Manhattan Supreme Court, making him the first U.S president ever to be convicted of a crime. Trump has vowed to appeal and could face prison time when he returns to court. He is also accused of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election and hoarding and mishandling sensitive government documents in three other cases, in which he’s pleaded not guilty.

The Manhattan charges stemmed from Trump’s reimbursement to Michael Cohen for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels 11 days out from the 2016 election within a scheme to disguise sordid allegations about his past from the electorate that also included payoffs to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a Trump Tower doorman.

In the latest effort of many by Trump-backing Republicans to bring into disrepute criminal accusations against their leading contender for president, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan requested Bragg and Colangelo testify before the subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which he chairs, the day after Trump’s conviction in May.

Trump’s allies have alleged Colangelo and Bragg’s crossover at the New York attorney general’s office and Colangelo’s former position at the Department of Justice is evidence of a conspiracy to take him down orchestrated by the White House. President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted of gun charges in a DOJ case carrying up to 25 years on Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday that it would also hold a hearing this Thursday to review the DA’s “political prosecution of President Trump.”

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In a letter to the committee first reported by ABC News Tuesday, assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte said “extraordinary steps” taken to investigate claims by Trump’s allies in Congress found no back channel between the DOJ and the DA.

“(The) conspiracy theory that the recent jury verdict in New York state court was somehow controlled by the Department is not only false, it is irresponsible,” Uriarte wrote.

“Indeed, accusations of wrongdoing made without — and in fact contrary to — evidence undermine confidence in the justice system and have contributed to increased threats of violence and attacks on career law enforcement officials and prosecutors.”

Uriarte categorically denied any collaboration between the state-run DA’s office and the federal DOJ against Trump and said he believed that was clear to those levying allegations.

“The Department has no control over the District Attorney, just as the District Attorney has no control over the Department,” Uriarte wrote.

“The Committee knows this.”

©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Biden plan to brand Trump a felon is hobbled by son’s conviction

• June 12, 2024

Hadriana Lowenkron | (TNS) Bloomberg News

Hunter Biden, like Donald Trump, is now a convicted felon — a personal and political blow to his father, President Joe Biden, that complicates his 2024 campaign for reelection.

The younger Biden is the first child of a sitting U.S. president convicted of a felony. He was found guilty of violating federal laws for illegally buying a gun during a period he was taking crack cocaine. Jurors delivered their verdict after deliberating for three hours, capping a one-week trial in a prosecution brought by his father’s own Justice Department.

That outcome, and another trial for Hunter — on tax charges starting in September, just two months before voters head to the polls — threaten to hang over Biden’s campaign, posing a painful messaging test in his race against Trump. The president has assailed Trump as a “convicted felon,” to capitalize on the first former U.S. president found guilty of a felony for falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments.

“I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” Biden said in a statement moments after Hunter’s verdict. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery.”

Biden, who has said he would not pardon his son, said he would “respect the judicial process” as Hunter considers an appeal, adding that he and the first lady, Jill Biden, “will always be there for Hunter and the rest of our family with our love and support. Nothing will ever change that.”

How the conviction impacts the president’s campaign against Trump, whom he has cast as a threat to the rule of law, as well as the effect on voter perceptions of both candidates remain unclear. What is certain is Hunter Biden and Trump’s cases are poised to run on parallel tracks during the campaign as they face sentencing and potential appeals, another twist to an already close race.

Todd Belt, director of the political management program at George Washington University, acknowledged the difficult situation facing the president.

“He did promise us a return to normalcy and it’s not normal for presidents to comment on trials like this in such a way,” Belt said, ahead of the verdict. “He really wants to avoid the perception of partiality.”

The political challenge posed by the conviction was almost immediately apparent. The verdict came in just hours before the president was poised to deliver remarks on his administration’s steps to ratchet up scrutiny on gun purchases at an Everytown for Gun Safety event. (Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, helped found and is a current supporter of Everytown for Gun Safety.)

Republican Scrutiny

A planned deal between Hunter and prosecutors that would have avoided jail time fell apart last year. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed a special counsel, David Weiss, who would indict Hunter Biden on the gun and tax charges. Hunter’s lawyers have accused Weiss of caving to political pressure from Republicans who cast the initial plea agreement as a sweetheart deal for the president’s son.

Trump nominated Weiss to serve as the U.S. attorney for Delaware and was kept on by Biden. He was appointed as a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2023 to manage the cases against Hunter Biden.

Republicans have long tried to connect Hunter’s troubles and business dealings to his father, without evidence or success. House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry into the president, an effort that is all but dead. No evidence has turned up showing the president benefited from his son’s misdeeds.

Democratic strategist Basil Smikle said Republicans “may seize on a guilty verdict and continue to find ways to connect the president to the actions of his son, even though it’s been clear that the president hasn’t been involved such that it would impact his presidency.”

Cornell Belcher, another Democratic strategist, predicted Americans would be able to separate the son’s troubles from his father.

“They’re not going to hold the president accountable for something that his child was accused of, just the way they would not want to be held accountable for something that their child is accused of,” Belcher said.

Trump’s campaign in a statement called Hunter’s trial “a distraction from the real crimes” of the president and repeated unsubstantiated claims of corruption.

Trump Impact

Trump, who faces three additional criminal indictments, though the trials are unlikely to happen before the election, has assailed his prosecutions as politically motivated and orchestrated by the president, without evidence. A day after Trump’s conviction, Biden spoke from the White House, criticizing the Republican as “dangerous” and “irresponsible” for saying the hush-money trial was rigged.

Some political strategists predicted Biden could use Trump’s guilty verdict to appeal to independents and undecided voters. John Malcolm, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, suggested that approach would be undermined by a guilty verdict for Hunter.

“That’s going to blunt the sting of the Trump conviction, although how much I don’t know,” he said.

A conviction secured by the DOJ against the president’s own son could also help Democrats undercut Trump’s claims the agency is targeting him politically, but linking the cases that way pose its own risks to Biden.

Smikle, the Democratic strategist, called Biden “very careful about drawing a line between what’s personal and what’s governmental.” He said the president can speak about Hunter best from “the perspective of a father who cares deeply about his son without necessarily bringing it to the campaign.”

But he also saw little impact on Biden or Trump supporters.

“If you’re going to vote for Joe Biden, this is not going to deter you,” Smikle said. “If you’re going to vote for Donald Trump, this will give you more reason to vote for Donald Trump.”

___

©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

Elizabeth Holmes appears to gain ground as her appeal is heard

• June 12, 2024

A lawyer for imprisoned fraudster Elizabeth Holmes on Tuesday appeared to make headway with the trio of judges weighing her bid for a new trial.

Holmes, 40, was convicted by a jury in early 2022 on four felony counts of defrauding investors in Theranos, her now-defunct Palo Alto blood-testing startup. On Tuesday, her appeal was heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, with one of her lawyers and a prosecutor facing off before a three-judge panel.

Holmes’s lawyer, Amy Saharia, claimed that Judge Edward Davila, who presided over the trial in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, had improperly allowed former Theranos scientist Dr. Kingshuk Das to give expert testimony before the jury. Appellate court Judge Ryan Nelson indicated in comments Tuesday that she may have a point.

“There’s a pretty good story here for Ms. Holmes,” Nelson said. “They do have a pretty good basis for some unfairness here.”

Even so, he noted that her conviction is supported by “pretty overwhelming evidence.”

Much of the 50-minute hearing was consumed by arguments over whether the judge in Holmes’ trial broke court rules by letting Das tell the jury his opinions about how poorly Theranos’ technology performed. Appeals courts can order new trials if they find trial judges made mistakes in applying the law or if proceedings were not fair.

Jurors in Holmes’ four-month trial in San Jose U.S. District Court heard that Das’ examination of Theranos’ processes and technology led him to void all the test results — 50,000 to 60,000 of them — from the company’s problematic ‘Edison’ blood-analyzer devices. Das told the jury that after he informed Holmes that her devices “were apparently malperforming from the very beginning,” she countered with an “alternative explanation” that the problems arose from the company’s quality-assurance processes, not its machines.

But Saharia argued that statements by Das, including “I found these instruments to be unsuitable for clinical use,” broke court rules and should never have been heard. His testimony about whether the technology worked represented opinions based on scientific evidence, and under court rules, such statements in a jury trial can only come from witnesses who go through the court process of being deemed experts, Saharia argued.

Nelson said he had “some problems” with the testimony Davila allowed Das to provide and suggested that prosecutors used Das to “get in some of that testimony” that should have only come from an expert witness.

Federal prosecutor Kelly Volkar told the judges Davila “carefully parsed” Das’ testimony and sustained several objections from Holmes’ lawyers when Das was being questioned on the witness stand.

“This was a case where every issue was often litigated to death,” Volkar said, adding that Davila “took great care in making rulings.”

Judge Jacqueline Nguyen said Davila properly allowed Das to discuss what he told Holmes. But Nguyen appeared to agree that the testimony requiring “highly specialized knowledge” was not appropriate for a witness not court-approved as an expert.

Saharia said Holmes’ legal team does not dispute that Theranos testing was inaccurate.

“The central issue in this case was whether Ms. Holmes knowingly misrepresented the capabilities of Theranos’ technology,” Saharia said. “She in good faith believed in the accuracy of this technology.”

Holmes, a Stanford University dropout, was charged in 2018 in connection with $878 million in losses among Theranos investors. Davila pegged the hit to investors resulting from her criminal conduct at $381 million.

In November 2022, Davila sentenced Holmes, a mother of two young children, to 11 years and three months in prison. Holmes, U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate No. 24965-111, has slashed about two years off her sentence — likely through good behavior and taking programs at her minimum-security prison — and is scheduled to walk free in August 2032.

Theranos, founded by Holmes in 2003 and once valued at $9 billion, claimed its machines could use just a few drops of blood from a finger-prick to perform more than a thousand tests, for everything from diabetes and cancer to pregnancy and HIV infection.

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Jurors in Holmes’ trial heard evidence that Holmes doctored internal Theranos documents by adding pilfered pharmaceutical companies’ logos to suggest the firms had validated her technology, and that she and Theranos had falsely suggested to investors that her machines were in battlefield use. The jury also heard that Theranos provided investors with wildly inflated revenue expectations and that it sought to cover up the poor performance of its machines.

Federal criminal appeals succeed at very low rates, according to the federal courts system. If Holmes loses, she could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but its justices only hear about 100 to 150 appeals per year of the more than 7,000 it is typically asked to review, according to the courts system. The judges Tuesday did not say when they would rule on her appeal.

Also on Tuesday in the same court, Patrick Looby, a lawyer representing Holmes and former Theranos president Sunny Balwani argued before the three judges that Davila’s order that the pair pay more than $450 million in restitution to investors should be thrown out.

Looby argued that their fraud did not rob Theranos of its “residual” value. “The fact that the investors may have had difficulty selling their shares is not owing to the fraud,” Looby asserted. “It’s just the nature of investing in a private company.”

Volkar argued that victims had “no opportunity” to recoup their costs.

Nelson appeared to agree.

“If you can’t recoup,” Nelson said, “it’s not residual value.”

​ Orange County Register 

YouTuber, Comicstorian creator Ben Potter killed in Colorado crash

• June 12, 2024

Popular YouTuber and Windsor resident Ben Potter, who brought comic books to life as audio dramas on his channel Comicstorian, was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Interstate 25 near Fort Collins, Colorado, on Saturday.

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Potter, 40, was driving southbound on I-25 near mile 267.5 at 9:19 a.m. when his silver Toyota 4Runner drove off the right shoulder, crossed the frontage road and rolled several times, according to the Colorado State Patrol. He died at the scene.

Potter was wearing a seatbelt and was the only person in the vehicle, CSP said in a news release Tuesday. No other vehicles were involved in the crash.

Investigators do not believe drugs, alcohol or excessive speed were factors in the crash, according to the agency.

Potter’s wife, Nathalie Potter, described him as supportive, loving, genuine and a good listener in a post on social media site X.

“He would do his best to make everyone laugh and make sure they were okay. He was our rock and he’d reassure his loved ones whenever they needed it,” Nathalie Potter wrote.

Comicstorian has amassed more than 3 million subscribers and published nearly 4,000 videos since Potter started posting 10 years ago, according to the channel’s YouTube page.

Potter’s love of exciting stories and well-written characters sparked his YouTube career, she wrote, and the Comicstorian team intends to keep going “to honor him by continuing to tell great stories by great people, as well as to keep the memory of our very own superhero alive.”

​ Orange County Register 

Should we fear AI? Auto tech founders say we’ll learn to live with it

• June 12, 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the talk of the tech world and has become the dominant new kid on the block in the world of Silicon Valley startups.

AI has also taken to the streets as fully autonomous robotaxis have been roaming San Francisco since last August — and are expected to expand to the rest of the Peninsula soon.

Founded in 2017 in Mountain View, Applied Intuition is among the companies that have emerged at the forefront of developing driver-assisted and automated-driving technologies.

Applied Intuition has Detroit roots, but co-founders Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig say the company is Silicon Valley through and through, and have no plans of following the supposed “tech exodus” to other states such as Texas or Florida.

In April, Applied Intuition reached an agreement with Audi to develop automated driving systems for its vehicles. A deal with Porsche was also recently signed where Applied Intuition would develop software for the luxury carmaker.

While the company is less than seven years old, Applied Intuition landed a $6 billion valuation earlier this year with a $250 million series E investment bagged last March.

We chat with Younis, the former chief operating officer of famed startup accelerator Y Combinator, and Ludwig, who previously led engineering work at Android Automotive for Google. The founders talk about their confidence in autonomous vehicles, fears around artificial intelligence and why they won’t leave the Bay Area.

Q: What is Applied Intuition?

Younis: We build software and AI products that ultimately help people who are in the vehicle industry (whether private or commercial vehicles).

Q: What interested you in developing AI for vehicles?

Younis: So I went to the General Motors Institute for undergrad and I worked at General Motors. And Peter has multiple generations of General Motors alums in his family. We’re both from Detroit.

We grew up there (Peter and I) and we’ve lived out here now for 10 plus years. But within the automotive industry, we realized very quickly that General Motors actually doesn’t make all the stuff that goes in the car.

We recently launched a vehicle platform. So the platform is in the physical vehicle that runs the software and helps you run the applications in the vehicle.

And then we are in the (military) defense business, which is doing some off-road autonomy.

So you can summarize that as we’re like a vehicle software supplier. We supply software that goes on vehicles and to engineers who are building vehicles.

Q: Safety concerns have been raised over autonomous driving in recent months. How does Applied Intuition address these concerns?

Ludwig: The safety (of autonomous vehicles) does vary depending on the company that’s working on the technology.

One of our big focuses is we actually enable companies to make these systems more safe with a variety of tools and infrastructure that we provide. In general, companies try extremely hard to make these systems very safe.

These are systems that meaningfully are generally safer than human drivers, and I think in the long term, these systems will be much, much safer than human drivers.

But right now there is this differentiation between what’s called driver assistance versus a robot taxi.

Q: You announced a partnership with Porsche recently — does this mean we’ll be seeing Porsche autonomous cars on the road anytime soon?

Younis: I can’t speak for Porsche, but I can talk about us — and yes — you will see our software on many, many vehicles. We’re already a supplier to 18 of the top 20 global automotive makers.

Q: Can you describe your company culture and philosophy?

Younis: We’re as Bay Area of a company as you get. Most of our employees are located here in fourbuildings in Mountain View. Most of our employees are software engineers and all are partners of the company.

That’s a very Silicon Valley thing. And we’re a venture-backed company, and the vast majority of our investors, around 90% or more, come from the Bay Area. I mean it is a Bay Area company that is funded by Bay Area investors, and is an employee base which is software engineers, who basically built their lives around here. So in that sense, we’re as traditional Silicon Valley as you get.

It is just also the ethos of the company — as a Silicon Valley company in all the ways that a Silicon Valley company is defined. We’re a business that functions off of our revenues. We are cash flow positive, and do not operate off of investor dollars.

Q: AI has been the talk of the town, and of the world, over the past year or longer. Are the fears people have over AI warranted?

Younis: Any time there’s a new technology, there’s a lack of understanding.

We’re always with new technology entering uncharted territory. And so you always have to be thoughtful about how we approach it.

Take the example of self driving. There is no debate that it will save lives, because the system is always attentive. It has more sensors than human eyes, and it consistently improves.

Some people are going to be afraid of its capabilities, but that’s because they don’t understand the capabilities. They understand that technology works, but not always the “how.”

When cell phones started coming in, there was a pretty big backlash on cell phones. Remember those bumper stickers that would say no cell phones in the car? Now, if you get in a car with someone who doesn’t have a cell phone, you’ll be like, “Are you crazy? How are we going to get where we’re going if you don’t have Google maps?”

Over the arc of human progress, we will learn how to live with AI and use it for our maximal advantage.

Q: With all the conversations over a supposed “tech exodus” to states like Texas and Florida, will you stay in the Bay Area?

Younis: I think the thing that is very hard to find outside of the Bay Area is frankly the number of software engineers that exist here that have precisely the right skills and, two, engineers who understand the value of equity.

It’s easier to explain equity to somebody who’s in the Bay Area. But these are some of the reasons the Bay Area is compelling — lots of people who kind of understand startup life and not only big company life.

Name: Qasar Younis Position: Co-Founder & CEO Education: M.B.A., Harvard University Residence: Bay Area

Name: Peter Ludwig Position: Co-Founder & Chief Technical Officer Education: Master of Science in Engineering & Computer Science, University of Michigan Residence: Bay Area

Five things about Qasar and Peter

— Younis and Ludwig are Michiganders— Their parents live a quarter mile from each other— Their families both worked at GM— Younis was COO of YCombinator in 2015— Younis and Ludwig, along with the Applied Intuition team, take off their shoes and wear slippers when in the office.

​ Orange County Register 

Uncertainty grips US-Mexico border in early days of Biden executive order

• June 12, 2024

Lautaro Grinspan | (TNS) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

EL PASO, Texas — A 24-year-old mother from Venezuela called it “destiny” that she and her twin daughters had made it into the U.S. just hours before new restrictions were enacted at the border.

Clad in a purple tracksuit, Jenny Giro breastfed her daughters while sitting on the ground of a bustling migrant shelter in the border town of El Paso, Texas.

The timing of the trio’s illegal entry into the U.S. was fortuitous: They crossed the border and turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents at 9 a.m. on June 4, shortly before the Biden administration declared an emergency at the border and issued an executive order restricting asylum protections.

“I was shocked when I found out (about the executive order) because I had no idea that was going to happen,” Giro told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It was destiny that I came when I did.”

Within hours of her arrival, Giro was processed by border officials, outfitted with an ankle monitor, and released. By Friday, the 24-year-old was resting at the El Paso shelter awaiting a free bus ride northward, courtesy of the Texas state government.

Representatives from local U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials wouldn’t answer questions on how much the new executive order had impacted migration flows in this sector of the border, if at all, in its first days of implementation. The agency only updates its publicly available database of migrant apprehensions on a monthly basis.

The leadership of the Sacred Heart Church migrant shelter, whose operations are among those most likely to immediately notice changes in border policy, said it could take several weeks for the full extent of the executive order’s impact to come into focus.

The new policy is the most restrictive border rule instituted by President Biden, choking off access to asylum application process when illegal border crossings reach 2,500 a day. It ends when they average below 1,500 for a week straight. Crossings have not been that low since July 2020.

Asylum is a humanitarian protection for people who face certain types of persecution or torture in their home countries, and it allows people to remain in the U.S. permanently.

Migrants are still eligible for asylum if they show “exceptionally compelling circumstances” exist, such as a health emergency or an imminent risk of harm. Exceptions are also extended to unaccompanied children and victims of human trafficking.

The aim of Biden’s executive order is to boost quick deportations of migrants who illegally cross the border — a sanction that comes with a five-year ban on reentering the country.

Immigration advocates and lawyers said the policy change was unlikely to migrants from attempting to enter the country, at least in the short-term. Many would-be border crossers are already on their journey to the border — a lengthy path through Central America and Mexico. Migrants interviewed by the AJC at the Sacred Heart Church shelter said it took them months to reach the southern border from their home. And experts on the ground said that as long as the border isn’t completely shut down — something this new executive order won’t bring about — word will spread that there is still a possibility of entering the U.S.

“There’s always going to be hope,” said Imelda Maynard, an attorney at Estrella Del Paso Legal Aid, speaking to a group of journalists Friday.

Limited detention and deportation capacity has curtailed the immediate impact of the new executive order. According to reporting from the Associated Press, the administration has not scheduled more deportation flights to ramp up the number of migrants returned to their home countries under the new border measure. The U.S. can only deport a handful of nationalities across the southern border to Mexico. Most migrants must be flown back to their country of origin.

At the Sacred Heart Church shelter, the number of new migrant admissions had already been trending downward. An average of about 90 people are spending the night on the shelter’s foldable mats, compared to a capacity of 120. That’s a far cry from December 2023, when shelter director Michael DeBruhl said close to 1,000 people lined up outside his facility to seek assistance. That month, illegal entries to the U.S. reached an all-time high, with crossings averaging more than 8,300 daily.

DeBruhl, a former Border Patrol agent, said he ascribed the change to stepped-up enforcement of irregular migration within Mexico.

Antonio Bolivar, a 35-year-old Venezuelan migrant at Sacred Heart, said he was deported three times back to Guatemala, Mexico’s neighbor to the south, while trying to make his way up to the U.S. with his wife and two children. He said his failed attempts to reach the U.S. tested his resolve, but his fourth attempt was successful. He came onto U.S. territory at the end of May. He said he was determined to keep trying to give his children a better future.

According to DeBruhl, it will likely take around a month for the dust to settle and the impact of the executive order to become clear, while both U.S. officials to the north and migrants and smugglers to the south assess what implementation looks like.

“The thing is that the Border Patrol is going to take the brunt of this executive order and that they will have to process everybody,” he said. “You’re going to have all these Border Patrol agents making these decisions, all these nuances, of a policy that’s just been implemented,” he said.

When Title 42, a pandemic-era policy to restrict border crossings expired in May 2023, the expected border surge took some time to materialize.

“So that may happen now. I mean, maybe we won’t know for a month or a few weeks (what’s going to happen). I think everybody has a tendency to kind of wait and see, on the south side,” DeBruhl said. “The last few days, we have actually seen no difference whatsoever.”

It didn’t take long for the new asylum restrictions to draw condemnation from immigrant community advocates, including in Georgia.

“The right to seek asylum from persecution is a fundamental human right. Any action on the part of this administration to prevent people fleeing persecution from seeking a safe haven through applying for asylum is reprehensible and must be strongly condemned,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, legal director of Project South, an Atlanta-based organization that advocates for detained immigrants, in a statement.

Gigi Pedraza, executive director of the Atlanta-based Latino Community Fund, echoed that sentiment.

The executive order “shows that immigrants once again are the first on the chopping board when it comes to political gain,” she said in a statement referencing the 2024 election. “We are disappointed to say the least.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans to challenge Biden’s measures in court.

In El Paso, DeBruhl said the new asylum restrictions for those who enter illegally will likely push people to seek entry through an already oversubscribed online app known as CBP One, which awards 1,450 spots daily to legally cross into the U.S. at an official port of entry. The wait time for a CBP One appointment can take up to eight months, according to a May report by the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Migrants can only start trying to book CBP One appointments when they get to northern Mexico.

“It’s hard to get appointments, and the journey is really difficult. So, let’s say they’ve been traveling for five months. They’ve gotten robbed, they’ve gotten beaten, they’ve gotten kidnapped. And then, they get an appointment for four months from now. There’s a lot of frustration,” DeBruhl said.

Antonio Bolivar, the Venezuelan migrant, considers himself lucky. He was able to get a CBP One appointment at the Paso del Norte Port of Entry, an eight-minute walk from the Sacred Heart shelter, after just a one-month wait time.

His plan is to take construction jobs in El Paso to make enough money to buy a bus or plane ticket to Tennessee, to meet acquaintances there. Because he entered the country legally through the app, he will have a work permit in hand in a few weeks, and he won’t have to fear deportation for at least two years.

Still, he said he feels for fellow Venezuelans whose opportunity to come to the U.S. might have become more limited because of the Biden executive order.

“There’s a certain sadness, no? I have friends, family members who were thinking about coming, and maybe they’ll have to wait,” he said.

This story was reported through an El Paso-based fellowship on U.S. immigration policy organized by Poynter, an institute for the professional development of journalists, with funding from the Catena Foundation, a private family foundation based in Colorado.

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©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register