I saw some stats on this months ago, especially after the initial explosion. I’m curious if the growth is still continuing at a good pace and also how everyone feels about the growth/activity within their communities.

Let me clarify: We have a certain amount of latency when streaming games from both local and internet servers. In either case, how do we improve that latency and what limits will we run in to as the technology progresses?

I’m considering a graduate degree in engineering but I’m not sure what to expect out of grad school compared to undergrad studies. Share whatever you’d like about your degree, experience earning it, if you’d do it over again, and how it’s affected your life.

I’ve used both Apple Music and Spotify in recent years and while their discovery is okay, it always plays it safe. As if they’ve made a genre that is just for me and won’t play anything outside of that. How do I expand my music horizons?

Finally getting around to checking out Fallout 4. I played it through without the DLC a while back but I think it’s about time I get down to it on my list and play through the DLCs. I wanted to do it on the survival difficulty or one of the harder ones at least. That led to me checking out the achievements. I don’t keep up with newer games but I didn’t realize achievements have gotten quite this bad. Most of the achievements are ones you get from the story itself, no challenge there. Then I found out there is no achievement for higher difficulties. I enjoy a challenge, it’s why I go back and play games that I enjoy. And I know it’s a reward in and of itself to beat it, but it feels less validating to not have an achievement. Especially in an open world game where people will want to experience more of it.

It’s not even that games have gotten easier per se, but more than they don’t reward playing on harder difficulties and skimp on challenges like achievements. I like harder difficulty because it encourages me to engage with every system I can. So what gives? Is this just me or has everyone else noticed how phoned in most achievements and difficulty options are these days?

Looking for an alternative to apps like TickTick and Todoist but I don’t want a subscription to deal with. I can justify a one time purchase of a todo app though as long as it’s reasonable. Any recommendations?

Or even just a good open source paid app?

Former President Donald Trump’s legal defense against federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election is beginning to take shape.

During a speech in New Hampshire Tuesday, Trump argued, as his lawyers have in recent days, that his statements about the election were constitutionally protected speech. He claimed that his First Amendment rights are under attack — not just because he was indicted in connection to his repeated lies that the election had been stolen from him, but also because prosecutors are seeking a protective order preventing him from speaking publicly about evidence revealed as part of the discovery process in the case.

“I’ll be the only politician in American history not allowed to speak because of our corrupt system,” he told the crowd.

John Lauro, a member of his legal team, argued on CNN earlier this week that Trump “had every right to advocate for his position” — including when he “asked” Pence to throw out Electoral College votes from certain states on January 6, 2021 — and that his advocacy is now “being criminalized.”

And Trump pushed back Tuesday on the notion that he knew he had lost the election but sought to overturn the results anyway — what may become a sticking point as prosecutors attempt to convince jurors that he had criminal intent.

Altogether, those statements suggest that Trump’s team appears to be currently pursuing three lines of legal defense: that his speech is protected under the First Amendment, that he didn’t order Pence to participate in an illegal scheme to stop the certification of the election results, and that he couldn’t have criminal intent if he didn’t truly understand he had lost. It might be too early to tell whether those defenses will prove enough to acquit Trump. And we still don’t know the full breadth of the evidence that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith has in his possession, though many legal experts say the indictment is well-drafted and the most serious of the three levied against Trump so far. We asked legal experts how strong they think these three defense strategies are. Here’s what they said.

Defense strategy 1: Trump’s statements about election fraud were protected as free speech under the First Amendment Smith acknowledges in the indictment that Trump had every right under the First Amendment to protest the results of the election, as the former president and his lawyers have claimed. “They don’t want me to speak about a rigged election. They don’t want me to speak about it. I have freedom of speech, the First Amendment,” Trump said Tuesday.

But Smith argues that what Trump wasn’t allowed to do was urge others to form an illegal plan to undermine the results.

The indictment describes that plan as involving a prolonged pressure and influence campaign that targeted state politicians in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona. When no politician would help him overturn the election, the indictment says Trump went on to use “Dishonesty, Fraud, and Deceit” to assemble a slate of unlawful Electoral College electors in seven states, and that he and his allies lied to many electors to get them to go along with the plan. Then, Trump tried to use the powers of the executive branch — those given to the Justice Department and the vice president — to stay in power. Finally, the indictment places at Trump’s feet the violence of January 6 and a plan to stop the certification of the vote.

All of those actions go far beyond simply protesting the results.

What do legal experts think of this defense? “You don’t have the First Amendment right to solicit a crime or to pressure other people to take illegal action,” said Cheryl Bader, a professor of criminal law at Fordham Law. “The speech here is both the evidence of the engineering of overturning the results, and it’s also the vehicle that he used to solicit the action.”

The question is whether Smith has the evidence to support the fact that Trump did exactly that, and we don’t yet have a full picture of how strong that evidence might be. Trump’s legal team only needs to plant enough doubt of that in jurors’ minds for them to acquit him. That’s why, at this early point in the case, the First Amendment defenses put forth by Trump “aren’t irrational or absurd and may have some basis,” said Kevin O’Brien, a former assistant US attorney in New York who specializes in white-collar criminal defense. “I don’t think the First Amendment argument is a bad argument at this stage.”

Defense strategy 2: Trump was “aspirational” in his request that Pence not certify the election results Lauro has argued that Trump was “aspirational” in asking (rather than ordering) Pence not to certify the election results. “What President Trump did not do is direct Vice President Pence to do anything. He asked him in an aspirational way. Asking is covered by the First Amendment,” he told CNN.

What do legal experts think of this defense? That defense might seem a bit absurd on its face. But O’Brien said it’s “not a stupid claim” and “points out something interesting about the way Trump works” that may help protect him in this case. “Trump oftentimes doesn’t finish things. He sort of encourages people to go storming the Capitol, and then he gets in a limo and goes home,” O’Brien said. “He’s never out front. He never has the courage of his convictions, if he has any convictions. He has other people doing the dirty work. And at some point, he just walks away.”

At the same time, John C. Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, pointed out that Pence is likely to testify as to whether he understood Trump’s language as aspirational or a demand. “Remember, too, that Pence has stated that Trump told him that his problem was that he was just ‘too honest.’ That does not sound like an aspirational request, but a request to follow his direction,” he said.

Coffee also noted that there were other points where Trump seemed to explicitly demand that fellow Republicans join his cause, including when he pressured officials in Georgia to “find” the votes necessary for him to win the state. “I think we see a lot of very heavy-handed bullying conduct that cuts against this idea that his words were aspirational,” Bader said. Defense strategy 3: Trump always believed that the election was fraudulent To convict Trump, prosecutors will need to show that Trump had criminal intent. Trump’s lawyers have suggested that he couldn’t have criminal intent because he was reacting to what he believed was legitimate election fraud, despite many people around him telling him otherwise.

Trump has maintained that he believes the election was rigged against him: “There was never a second of any day that I didn’t believe that the election was rigged,” he told the crowd Tuesday.

What do legal experts think of this defense? Legal experts said that prosecutors may not need to necessarily prove that Trump knew he lost the election, only that he knew he was using possibly unlawful means to reach the end he believed was right: another four years in the White House.

“Even if he believed he had won the election and it had been stolen from him, if he then went out and formulated a plan to prevent the legitimately elected electors of various states from voting and having the results certified, that would probably satisfy the intent standard,” O’Brien said.

Bader said that Smith is likely going to argue that Trump took illegal actions that “transcend what his personal motivation is for engaging in this conduct.” But he’s also likely going to argue that Trump is lying when he says he always believed that the election was stolen from him.

“There’s so much evidence that this was just a fantasy and that this was all pretext,” she said. “Smith is going to focus on the evidence of all the instances where advisers, staffers, court decisions, intelligence agencies, the Department of Justice are all telling him that there’s nothing there, that the emperor has no clothes. And yet, Trump persisted and actually ramped up the pressure campaign.”

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a maverick Democrat who has often bucked party leadership, told a radio station in his home state of West Virginia on Thursday that he is "thinking seriously" about leaving the party.

"I'm not a Washington Democrat," Manchin said in the interview on Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval, a West Virginia Metro News show. "I've been thinking seriously about that (becoming an independent) for quite some time."

Manchin and Democratic-turned-independent colleague Senator Kyrsten Sinema have been thorns in top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer's side since the party won its majority in 2020. Democrats hold a 51-49 majority, including three independents who caucus with them.

Last month Manchin further stirred Democratic concerns with an appearance in the early-voting state of New Hampshire with the "No Labels" group, where he mulled starting a third-party presidential campaign in 2024, challenging Democratic President Joe Biden. Having a third-party candidate would "threaten" the two major political parties, Manchin said.

Manchin has used his influence to block legislation that he opposes - including expanding voting rights protections and child tax credits - and to ensure passage of bills he supports, such as a major tax and climate law that passed last summer.

He faces a tough re-election bid next year in Republican-leaning West Virginia, which former President Donald Trump won by almost 39 percentage points in 2020. Manchin has not yet said if he will seek re-election, but he would face an even steeper road if he spurned his party and the fundraising support it can provide.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, a former Democrat-turned Republican, began his campaign in April for the Republican nomination to seek Manchin's seat.

Manchin, a popular former governor who was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, has kept his seat in part by maintaining a reputation as a rare conservative Democrat in Washington.

U.S. prosecutors on Thursday asked a federal judge to begin former President Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden on Jan. 2, 2024.

That date would have the trial get underway just two weeks before the first votes are cast in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, a race in which Trump is the front-runner.

U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith's office asked a judge in a court filing on Thursday to start the trial on Jan. 2 in part due to the public's interest in a speedy trial.

Smith's office said that interest is "of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate votes."

A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately return a request for comment. Prosecutors also predicted it will take about four to six weeks to put forward the bulk of their case against Trump at trial.

Trump last week pleaded not guilty to charges over the alleged election conspiracy. Smith's office said it is prepared to turn over to Trump by the end of August most of the evidence it intends to use at trial in a process known as discovery.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, who is presiding over the election case, is set to hold a Friday hearing on how that evidence may be handled by Trump and his defense team.

Prosecutors also said there is a "minimal" amount of classified information involved in the election case, and asked Chutkan to address that issue at a previously scheduled Aug. 28 hearing.

A January trial would have Trump on trial three times in the first half of 2024. He will go to trial in March over New York state charges that he falsified documents in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. Trump also faces a May trial from Smith in southern Florida over the retention of classified documents after leaving office.

Ohio’s special election on Tuesday could raise the threshold for amending the state’s constitution and have a potentially critical impact on the future of abortion rights in the state. With few other elections happening in an off year, a ballot measure in Ohio that would enshrine abortion rights in its constitution will be one of the most closely watched elections in November 2023. But first voters will decide this Tuesday on whether a supermajority should be necessary for constitutional amendments, which could require abortion rights advocates to climb a steeper hill to achieve their goal this fall.

Here are three things to know ahead of Ohio’s special election Tuesday:

It’s the first of two key ballot measures in Ohio this year Ohio voters will turn out at the polls twice in three months for ballot measures that will have long-lasting implications.

First, there’s the ballot measure being voted on in a special election on Tuesday. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) and state Rep. Brian Stewart (R) last November proposed this measure, which would raise the threshold for amending the state constitution. They said at the time that the amendment was intended to counter the influence of special interests and out-of-state actors.

Second, there’s a ballot measure on Nov. 8, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The measure specifically states that Ohioans would have a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” with “reasonable limits.”

The Aug. 8 vote comes despite state lawmakers having approved legislation that mostly banned holding special elections in August.

The lawmakers determined that holding special elections that month was too expensive and had too little turnout to be fair or worth having. But Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) went ahead and signed the resolution from Stewart following approval from the state legislature, setting the Tuesday special election for raising the threshold to change the constitution. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in June following a legal challenge that the special election could move forward despite the law.

Abortion rights advocates, meanwhile, had proposed the second ballot measure, which seeks to protect abortion rights, after the state’s six-week ban on the practice was temporarily blocked amid legal battles. The ban had gone into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, but was put on hold in September. A representative for Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, which proposed the abortion ballot measure, told The Hill last week that they do not expect to ultimately win the case, so it turned to the ballot measure.

Abortion rights advocates were able to gather more than 700,000 signatures to put the abortion measure on the ballot in November—about 300,000 more than necessary. LaRose certified that enough signatures had been obtained late last month.

It’s seen as a direct response to November abortion measure The amendment being voted on Tuesday, called Issue 1, would implement three policies that would make passing future amendments — including the November abortion rights measure — more difficult.

If approved, Issue 1 would require that, effective immediately, amendments would need to receive support from at least 60 percent of voters instead of the current threshold of a simple majority in order to go into effect.

It would also require that, starting Jan. 1, petitions for constitutional amendments receive signatures from at least 5 percent of voters in all 88 of Ohio’s counties based on how many people voted in the last gubernatorial election. Petitions currently only need to receive support from that amount in half of the state’s counties.

Lastly, the measure would eliminate a 10-day period that a petitioner has after submitting a petition for an amendment to obtain additional signatures if some of their signatures are determined to be invalid. That would also go into effect on Jan. 1.

Abortion rights activists have argued that Issue 1 was specifically designed to prevent the abortion rights measure in November from passing as polls show a majority of Ohioans would vote to protect rights to the procedure. LaRose has mostly argued that Issue 1 is about protecting the constitution, but he faced controversy for saying at one point that it is “100 percent about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.” Lauren Blauvelt, the vice president of government affairs and public advocacy at Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, told The Hill last week that her coalition reached enough signatures in 55 counties — considerably more than the current requirement — for the abortion measure to qualify for the November ballot. She argued that requiring signatures from all 88 counties would make citizens being able to put forward a ballot measure “impossible.”

Those advocating in favor of Issue 1, most of whom are Republican, have argued that putting these rules in place is necessary to stop special interests from being able to influence a governing document as powerful as the state’s constitution.

GOP strategist Mark Weaver argued that only having a simple majority to amend the constitution is a “very low bar.” His firm has produced some ads encouraging people to vote “yes” on the Aug. 8 ballot.

The current system for constitutional amendments in Ohio has operated since the modern constitution went into effect in 1912. Both are part of nationwide battle over abortion rights.

The fight over abortion in Ohio is just the latest in an extensive struggle over access to abortion in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe. Regardless of whether Issue 1 passes Tuesday, the abortion amendment passing in November would undoubtedly be a major win for abortion rights advocates in a state that moved to ban the procedure after Dobbs.

Referenda have been held in half a dozen states on abortion access questions over the past year. In each of those votes, the side in favor of abortion rights won. A measure to state that the Kansas constitution does not protect abortion rights failed last August in the first major test on abortion rights in the post-Roe world.

Voters in Vermont and California, two solidly liberal states, comfortably approved measures to codify abortion rights in their state constitutions in November, further safeguarding protections already protected through state law.

Michigan voters also approved a state constitutional amendment to protect access to abortion, overturning an almost century-old state ban that went into effect after Dobbs. At the same time, measures that would have put additional restrictions on abortion were narrowly rejected in the conservative-leaning states of Kentucky and Montana.

If the Ohio abortion rights amendment passes in November, it would be a major win for liberals in a state that has been trending red for years.

Jeff Rusnak, an Ohio strategist supporting the abortion amendment, told The Hill last week that the Tuesday measure can be a “change election” that sets the stage for November. Advocates are also engaging in efforts to put abortion rights on the ballot in several other states.

Those on both sides of Issue 1 have said they expect higher turnout than usual for a special election, given the attention that has been given to it.

Every day, employees at Aurora Pro Services, a North Carolina home-repair company, would gather for a mandatory prayer meeting, according to a federal complaint. They stood in a circle while leaders, including the company owner, allegedly read Bible scriptures and prayed. In the circle, the owner required Aurora’s employees to recite the Lord’s Prayer in unison and requested prayers for poorly performing employees, the complaint alleged. The meetings became “cult-like,” Mackenzie Saunders, a former Aurora employee, alleged in the complaint, filed in June 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. Saunders, who is agnostic, attended the meetings after she was hired in November 2020 but stopped going in January 2021. John McGaha, another former employee, said the prayer meetings were about 10 minutes long when he started in the summer of 2020 and stretched to 45 minutes a few months later. When McGaha, an atheist, asked to be excluded from portions of the meetings, he was rebuked by Aurora’s owner, who said it would be in his “best interest” to attend, the complaint states. Days later, the company allegedly halved McGaha’s pay. When McGaha asked to skip the meetings a second time, he was allegedly told that he did not have to believe in God but that he had to participate in the prayer meetings.

Aurora fired McGaha and Saunders in 2020 and 2021, respectively, after they objected to the prayer meetings — a move that will cost the company $50,000, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced last week. The company has agreed to pay McGaha $37,500 and Saunders $12,500 to settle the religious discrimination and retaliation lawsuit, which the agency said violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The commission said it attempted to reach a pre-litigation settlement before launching the lawsuit.

Aurora and attorneys for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday evening. In an October court filing responding to allegations from McGaha, Aurora’s attorneys denied that the prayer meetings were mandatory, that they singled out poorly performing employees and that McGaha was terminated for refusing to participate in the prayers. McGaha objected to the meetings in a “disruptive” and “uncordial” manner on his last day of employment, according to Aurora’s response.

McGaha, a former construction manager for Aurora, joined the company in June 2020 and initially attended the company’s prayer meetings, which also briefly addressed business matters, according to the complaint. He grew uncomfortable as the meetings got longer and when, in one instance, he was allegedly asked to lead a prayer and declined.

Aurora’s owner, who is not named in the complaint, twice denied McGaha’s requests to be excused from portions of the meetings that involved prayer, according to the complaint.

“If you do not participate, that is okay, you don’t have to work here,” Aurora’s owner allegedly told McGaha in front of other employees. “You are getting paid to be here.” McGaha was fired in September 2020, six days after his second request to skip the meetings, according to the complaint.

Aurora was still holding the meetings that November when Saunders joined as a customer service representative, the complaint states.

While Saunders worked for Aurora, the owner allegedly took attendance at the prayer meetings and reprimanded employees for not attending. Saunders stopped attending the meetings in January 2021 and was terminated several weeks later because she was “not a good fit” for the company, the complaint states.

As part of the settlement, Aurora will train all of its employees, including its owner, on anti-discrimination and religious accommodation policies, the commission said.

“Federal law protects employees from having to choose between their sincerely held religious beliefs and their jobs,” said Melinda C. Dugas, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Charlotte District Office. “Employers who sponsor prayer meetings in the workplace have a legal obligation to accommodate employees whose personal religious beliefs conflict with the company’s practice.”

A potent storm system is moving east after battering the Ohio River Valley Sunday and increasing the risk for severe weather Monday across a large area of the country to the east of the Mississippi River.

The worst of it will be from the Appalachians into Maryland, southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C., primarily due to damaging winds. Areas from northeastern Tennessee to parts of Maryland and southern Pennsylvania are under a moderate risk, Level 4 out of 5, for severe storms.

An area from northern Alabama into southern New York, including Atlanta, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Binghamton, New York, is under an enhanced risk, Level 3 out of 5, for severe storms. A slight risk for severe storms, a Level 2 of 5, spreads from western Alabama to southern New York, including New York City, Pittsburgh, Charleston, South Carolina, Virginia Beach, Virginia and Wilmington, North Carolina. Parts of the Northeast could also see heavy rainfall in association with these storms. A slight risk for excessive rainfall, or a Level 2 of 4, has been issued for the Northeast.

Scattered rainfall of 2 to 4 inches is possible Monday. "In the areas of thunderstorms, severe weather and flash flooding will be a threat," the National Weather Service said.

There were over 150 storm reports across the East on Sunday and over 130 Saturday, including eight tornadoes, spread across Colorado, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.

There were another 92 reports of damaging wind and 37 reports of large hail, mainly across the central Plains and mid-Mississippi River Valley.

While parts of the East brace for hail and heavy rain, cities from Arizona to Florida will continue to deal with dangerous heat this week. "Numerous record high temperatures and record high morning minimum temperatures are likely over the next few days with no end in sight going into the later part of this week," the National Weather Service said.

Excessive heat warnings and heat advisories in effect across the southern part of the country, from southeast California into Florida, will likely remain in effect "for the foreseeable future as there is no relief in sight to the heat for the remainder of the week across these areas," the weather service said.

About 65 records were set or tied on Saturday and Sunday so far across cities in Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. At least 120 more could be set from Sunday through Tuesday.

Austin, Texas, hit 105 degrees Sunday, marking the 30th consecutive day with a high temperature over 100 degrees.

Albuquerque reached a high of 102 Saturday -- breaking the prior record of 98 degrees set in 1995. This is also the hottest August day ever in the city.

In New Orleans -- where city officials warned that high humidity levels will result in temperatures that "feel like" 115 degrees or higher -- cooling centers were open for residents in need of respite from the heat, officials said.

"The forecasted excessive heat warning for Monday, Aug. 7 will mark the 17th excessive heat warning issued for 2023 so far, beating the previous record of five warnings in 2021," New Orleans officials said in a news release.

The Security Service of Ukraine accused Russia on Friday of preparing to stage a "false flag" attack at the Mozyr oil refinery in Belarus in order to blame Ukrainian saboteurs as part of an effort to draw Minsk into the war in Ukraine.

The attack, it said in a statement on the Telegram app, would be carried out by military and intelligence forces sent by Moscow to Belarus disguised as Wagner mercenaries who were exiled after staging a mutiny in Russia in June.

"Russia plans to accuse Ukraine of what they have done in order to try once again to draw Minsk into the full-scale war against our state," it said in a statement, without providing evidence.

It said its assertions were based on information obtained from several sources, including a captured Russian serviceman.

Belarus is a close Kremlin ally and Moscow's forces used Belarusian territory as a staging ground for their abortive drive towards the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv at the beginning of their February 2022 full-scale invasion. But Minsk's troops have not taken part in the war.

Fighters from Wagner, a Russian mercenary group, launched a mutiny against the Russian defence establishment in June and some of its fighters have since moved to Belarus under a deal.

There was no immediate comment on the Ukrainian statement from Russia or Belarus.

Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has been sentenced to 19 more years in jail on extremism charges which he has dismissed as an attempt to silence him.

The prosecution had demanded a 20-year prison sentence, and the politician himself said that he expected a lengthy, “Stalinist” term.

Friday’s verdict marked his fifth criminal conviction; the sentence is the longest of the three he has been handed. Navalny appeared before the judge wearing his prison uniform, smiling and speaking with another defendant.

He is already serving a nine-year sentence for fraud and contempt of court in a penal colony east of Moscow. In 2021, he was also sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for a parole violation. The latest trial against Navalny has been taking place behind closed doors in the colony where he is imprisoned.

Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, decried the sentence as “a sinister act of political vengeance that not only targets Navalny personally but serves as a warning to state critics across the country”.

She added that the outcome of “today’s sham trial” is the latest example of the “systematic oppression of Russian civil society that has intensified since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year”.

The court at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235km (145 miles) east of Moscow, was trying him on six separate criminal charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organisation.

In a video feed from Friday’s court hearing, Navalny could be seen wearing a black prison uniform and standing with his arms folded as he listened to the verdicts. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock condemned the ruling.

“Russia’s arbitrary justice system imprisoning Alexei Navalny for another 19 years is pure injustice,” she wrote on social media. “Putin fears nothing more than standing up against war and corruption and for democracy — even from a prison cell. He will not silence critical voices with this.”

The 47-year-old is President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe and has exposed official corruption and organised large anti-Kremlin protests. Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

The latest charges related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. His allies said the charges retroactively criminalise all the foundation’s activities since its creation in 2011. Navalny has rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and has accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.

In his closing statements last month, Navalny condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine. “[Russia is] floundering in a pool of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with a poor and robbed population, and around it lie tens of thousands of people killed in the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century,” he said.

On August 1, the Fitch Ratings agency downgraded the United States’ long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+ for only the second time in the nation’s history, in what’s generally seen as a signal of concern about the US’s creditworthiness.

Many seemed perplexed by the move. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called it “bizarre and inept,” economist and Bloomberg columnist Mohamed El-Erian said it was “strange,” and the White House said in a statement that the move “defies reality.”

In a statement, Fitch cited three reasons for downgrading the US rating: concerns the US economy is going to deteriorate over the next three years; a high national debt; and repeated political standoffs over managing the country’s finances (specifically, brinksmanship over the country’s self-imposed debt limit, the cap on how much to US can borrow to pay its bills).

However, many economists and other financial experts have expressed bewilderment over the motivation for the downgrade. The agency provided little hard data to back up its stated concerns about looming economic collapse, said Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics and public policy at Stony Brook University. And many experts disagree with Fitch’s pessimistic view of the country’s financial future.

“If you don’t have credible evidence of a long-term inflation problem, then you don’t have reason to be concerned about a long-term debt problem,” said Kelton.

The real reasons for the downgrade, Kelton said, may be less related to the US’s ability to pay its debts, and more related to its willingness to do so. That much was clear from the agency’s repeated mention of its concerns about the country’s “erosion of governance relative to ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ rated peers over the last two decades,” specifically with respect to difficulties in raising the debt ceiling, oscillations in tax policy, and increases in government spending.

Whatever stimulated the move, both history and math suggest the changed credit rating will not have meaningful effects on the US economy.

Who is Fitch and why does anyone care what they think?

Fitch is one of the three big independent credit rating agencies whose takes on countries’ creditworthiness really matter on the world stage. The other two are Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s.

These credit rating agencies’ credibility is rooted at least in part in tradition. All three have come under some fire in the past — notably, for exacerbating Europe’s financial crisis between 2008 and 2012 by overrating struggling financial institutions and underrating several European countries. Still, after the US and European governments passed reforms aimed at improving the agencies’ transparency and competitiveness (and after Standard & Poor’s paid an enormous settlement for fraudulent activities contributing to the crisis), their assessments of countries’ creditworthiness remain the financial world’s gold standard.

Big institutions (like pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and the like) rely on these agencies because they don’t keep their money under mattresses or in checking accounts: They generally invest their assets in a variety of ways in the hopes their money will grow as economies grow over the years. And they decide where to invest those assets based on ratings like Fitch’s.

If a country has a high credit rating, an institution can feel secure that investing in companies and industries in that country will probably yield long-term gains, and that the country will eventually make good on the financial promises it makes.

For years, US Treasury bonds have stood fast as one of the safest and most reliable investments where institutions can watch their assets grow. And over most of that time, the US has had a consistently high credit rating across all three agencies (with one notable exception; more on that later). The fact that may be changing now is part of why Fitch’s decision is such a big deal.

Fitch’s reasons for downgrading the US’s credit rating are a little sus

Although Fitch cited recession concerns, high national debt, and political dysfunction as their reasons for the downgrade, Kelton said those reasons don’t really track.

“Judging by their own commentary, they did it because they’re very confused,” she said. The bulk of Fitch’s rationale for the downgrade rested on concerns about the country’s fiscal trajectory, but there isn’t any evidence for that, she said.

A high national debt is also not a legitimate cause for creditworthiness concerns in a country that, as Alan Greenspan said earlier this year, can print money. In this situation, the US’s solvency, and its ability to pay its debts, isn’t really in question.

It’s pretty common for the governments of large, industrial economies to spend more than they take in, said Kelton. If all Fitch needs “to arrive at the conclusion that the government’s fiscal trajectory is unsustainable, then I’m here to challenge that viewpoint,” she said.

What’s perhaps more in question is whether political dysfunction would lead the US to be unwilling to pay what it owes. The US came within days of defaulting on its debt in June, and at least some Republicans seemed willing to allow a default to happen in order to extract various political concessions from the White House. Should that sentiment spread, that could cause serious problems for all the countries and institutions who took on that debt, expecting to be repaid.

But if that’s the agency’s argument, it seems to have muddied the waters a bit by also saying it has concerns about the US’s solvency. There seems to be some subtext that Fitch doesn’t believe US lawmakers can get their act together to fix looming issues like rising Medicare costs and the mass retirement of baby boomers, and that it doesn’t trust Congress to always avoid a default. But Kelton said it’s frustrating that Fitch didn’t say that in plain language.

“If you want to just be explicit and say, ‘We have grave concerns about the direction of US politics, or we think that there’s a chance Congress is turning into a banana republic,’” said Kelton, “fine.”

“But they didn’t do that,” she said.

History repeating is sometimes good

It’s unclear what the downstream effects of this downgrade will be. In the short term, markets can overreact, said Kelton — and indeed, this morning, US and global stock markets fell.

It’s much less clear what the long-term effects will be. Theoretically, a ding to the US’s creditworthiness means a ding to the creditworthiness of the financial institutions that invest heavily in US Treasury bonds. Downstream effects of that could hypothetically include higher interest rates and increased costs to US taxpayers.

But that doesn’t seem likely to happen. Although analysts have concerns that the downgrade would do a bit of damage to the country’s reputation, many still expect the actual impact on confidence and investment in US government-backed securities to be limited, according to reporting from Reuters.

This isn’t the first time the US credit rating has taken a hit — and Fitch isn’t the first agency to ding the country’s creditworthiness. In 2011, after the US government engaged in a debt ceiling standoff, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the US rating from AAA to AA+.

The consequences were underwhelming: “Nothing happened,” said Kelton. In fact, she recalls that the day after the 2011 downgrade, the appetite for US Treasury bonds — a key measure of investor confidence in the American government’s solvency — was up, not down. (That generally seems to have remained true yesterday and today.)

That’s because sophisticated investors understood that the global financial system is built on the US’s ability to follow through on its financial promises, said Kelton. They bet that even if political troubles were putting debt in jeopardy at the time, things would normalize soon. If history is any indication, investors still have confidence in the US.

Other experts seemed to have similar recollections of the event and its economic resonance. “Remember when S&P downgraded America in 2011?” tweeted Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. “Neither do I.”

Former President Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday on charges he participated in a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results — an effort that reached a bloody crescendo as his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Following an investigation by special counsel Jack Smith, a grand jury voted to charge Trump with conspiracy to defraud the United States, witness tampering and conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding.

Trump, who has been summoned to appear in court on Thursday, is still the leading candidate in the Republican primary race. If he pleads not guilty (as he has with the other indictments), we could be hearing about his trial as he makes his case for the White House.

Here are five key points to help get you up to speed.

1. This is the third criminal indictment for Trump, but it's more than just another legal woe

The former president now faces legal peril in three criminal cases — following March's indictment on 34 counts of falsifying business records and June's indictment on 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases.

A prosecutor in Fulton County, Ga., is leading a separate investigation into Trump's alleged efforts to pressure state election officials there. And Trump is also fighting two civil lawsuits, including a federal jury finding that left him liable for battery and defamation.

But this latest indictment stands apart from Trump's other legal challenges.

The Department of Justice's investigation into Jan. 6, 2021, is among the most sprawling and complex in U.S. history — it gets at the heart of the alleged effort to overturn legitimate election results and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power.

"The attack on our nation's Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," said the special counsel in a short statement before reporters. "As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies. Lies by the defendant, targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government."

2. The latest charges represent significant legal peril

The indictment charges Trump with four serious federal criminal offenses:

Conspiracy to defraud the United States applies to Trump's repeated and widespread efforts to spread false claims about the November 2020 election while knowing they were not true and for allegedly attempting to illegally discount legitimate votes all with the goal of overturning the 2020 election, prosecutors claim in the indictment. Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding was brought due to the alleged organized planning of Trump and his allies to disrupt the electoral vote's certification in January 2021. Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding is tied to Trump and his co-defendants' actual efforts after the November 2020 election until Jan. 7, 2021, to block the official certification proceeding in Congress. Conspiracy against rights is a Civil War-era law that applies to Trump and his co-conspirators' alleged attempts to "oppress, threaten and intimidate" people in their right to vote in an election.

University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias described the overall case against former Trump as "damning" and representing real "legal jeopardy."

3. The indictment lists six anonymous co-conspirators Trump is the only person who is charged and he is the only defendant in this latest indictment. But the court document scatters some clues for the future in terms of who else might potentially face charges.

Six people are labeled as co-conspirators in the indictment. They are given individual numbers and potentially identifying traits but they are not identified by name in the court document.

Some are attorneys who helped promote bogus election fraud claims. Co-conspirator 3 is described as an attorney who privately acknowledged that the unfounded election fraud claims were "crazy." Another, co-conspirator 4, was a Justice Department official who worked on civil matters and "attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures."

And their descriptions line up with those of people who could be of interest to investigators, such as former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell and former DOJ attorney Jeffrey Clark.

4. Trump is calling this indictment "fake." And, yes, he's still leading the polls Even before the indictment was unsealed, Trump and his allies were actively working to control the narrative, calling this a sham indictment and accusing the Biden administration of trying to interfere with the 2024 election.

On Truth Social, Trump said a "Fake Indictment" was evidence of "prosecutorial misconduct." His campaign issued a formal statement (and, later, a fundraising pitch) calling it "election interference." And his Republican allies in Congress — plus even some of his GOP primary foes — cast the indictment as political persecution at the hands of the Biden administration.

But as NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez pointed out in an interview with All Things Considered, the attacks from Trump and his supporters are focusing on the process — not so much the substance.

"They claim these are politically motivated charges. They attack the special counsel. But they don't necessarily refute specific allegations," Ordoñez said. "They don't argue Trump never incited those followers who attacked the Capitol. They never say that Trump didn't seek a group of fake electors."

That's because after two impeachments, three indictments and quite a few scandals in between, Trump has conditioned his supporters to see each allegation against him as a reason to rally around him.

And it works. In March, several weeks before the first indictment, Trump had just 43% of the vote in Republican polling, according to a RealClearPolitics average. But a day after he was charged in a hush-money scheme to an adult film actress, his numbers had jumped to 50%.

Two months later, he was indicted for mishandling classified documents. His polling average jumped again.

As of Monday, ahead of the news of the latest indictment, Trump was still in the lead among Republican presidential candidates.

5. Charges for 2020 election interference are starting to pile up The federal indictment of Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 election came soon after similar election interference charges were made public against a Trump ally in Michigan.

Matthew DePerno — the most recent Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, who worked with Trump's team to try to contest his 2020 loss in the state — was arraigned Tuesday on state charges for an alleged effort to unlawfully gain access to voting machines.

DePerno has been charged with undue possession of a voting machine, willfully damaging a voting machine and conspiracy, according to the special prosecutor investigating the case.

Investigations into election interference are ongoing elsewhere, as well. Arizona's Democratic attorney general is investigating the 2020 fake electors there, and a Georgia prosecutor is set to soon announce her long-awaited charging decisions in an investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election there.

And all of these investigations are happening separately from the Justice Department's sprawling and complex investigation into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

On that day, Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, injuring scores of law enforcement officers, forcing a panicked evacuation of the nation's political leaders and threatening the peaceful transfer of power after Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

To date, the DOJ has charged more than 1,000 people in what's become the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history.

That list now includes Trump.

Donald Trump has been indicted by a federal grand jury on four criminal counts in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“Shortly after election day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results,” the indictment states.

The newest case against Trump strikes at what’s seen as the former president’s most serious betrayal of his constitutional duties, when his efforts to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election sought to undermine US democracy and the long-held American tradition of a peaceful transfer of presidential power.

The plot to overturn the 2020 election shattered presidential norms and culminated in an unthinkable physical assault on the Capitol on January 6, as Congress met to validate President Joe Biden’s victory. Even before that, Trump engaged in an unprecedented pressure campaign toward state election workers and lawmakers, Justice Department officials and even his own vice president to persuade them to throw out the 2020 results.

Trump has been summoned to appear before a magistrate judge in Washington, DC, federal court at 4 p.m. ET on Thursday, the Justice Department announced.

The four counts are: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

Six unindicted co-conspirators were included. Among the six are four unnamed attorneys who allegedly aided Trump in his effort to subvert the 2020 election results. Also included is one unnamed Justice Department official who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations and influence state legislatures with knowingly false claims of election fraud.”

Smith also mentions an unnamed “political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.”

Smith’s move to bring charges will test whether the criminal justice system can be used to hold Trump to account for his post-election conduct after he was acquitted in his impeachment trial related to his actions that day.

The indictment is the second time in two months that Smith has brought charges against Trump. In June, Trump was charged with retention of classified documents and conspiracy with a top aide to hide them from the government and his own attorneys. And separately in March, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Trump on state charges of falsifying business records.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in both cases – and is likely to do so again when he’s arraigned on the latest charges.

The new special counsel indictment comes as Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. The first two indictments have done little to impact his standing in the race.

Trump’s March indictment marked the first time in US history that a former president had faced criminal charges. Now there are three separate, concurrent cases where the president is facing felony allegations, which are all going to play out as Trump seeks to return to the White House in 2024 following his loss to Biden in 2020.

Fake electors plot hatched after 2020 election was unprecedented attempt to subvert Electoral College The so-called fake electors plot was an unprecedented attempt to subvert the Electoral College process by replacing electors that Biden had rightfully won with illegitimate GOP electors.

Trump supporters in seven key states met on December 14, 2020, and signed fake certificates, falsely proclaiming that Trump actually won their state and they were the rightful electors. They submitted these fake certificates to Congress and to the National Archives, in anticipation that their false claims would be embraced during the Electoral College certification on January 6, 2021.

At the time, their actions were largely dismissed as an elaborate political cosplay. But it eventually became clear that this was part of an orchestrated plan.

Senior Trump campaign officials orchestrated the fake electors plot and directly oversaw the state-by-state mechanics – linking Trump’s campaign apparatus to what originally looked like a hapless political stunt by local Trump supporters.

Federal investigators have subpoenaed the fake electors across the country, sent FBI agents to interview witnesses about their conduct, and recently granted immunity to two fake electors from Nevada to secure their grand jury testimony.

In Michigan, the state’s attorney general charged the 16 fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election with multiple felonies. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is also expected to ask a grand jury this month to bring charges related to efforts in Georgia to subvert the election results.