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Do Utah Democrats send a candidate to Novembers ballot in the U.S. Senate race, which most likely extends the partys five-decade-long losing streak? Or, should they compromise their values to make an uneasy alliance with a conservative candidate in hopes of denying Sen. Mike Lee another term in Washington?

Its certainly not the most exciting Choose your own adventure book on the shelf, but its on the spring syllabus for Utahs Democrats.

Distilled to its essence, it is a choice between principles and practicality, and neither are particularly great choices for Utahs minority party.

Kael Weston is unopposed in the Democratic Party, so giving him the nomination should be nothing more than a formality. Traditionally, lone candidates are nominated by acclamation at the partys convention without the need for a formal vote by delegates.

Not this year, though.

A group of prominent Democrats, fronted by former Rep. Ben McAdams and Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, say the party should withhold its nomination to increase the chances for independent Evan McMullin to defeat Lee.

Wilson admits its a gamble, but Democrats havent won a U.S. Senate election in Utah for 50 years, and she would like to try something different, even if it results in electing someone who is much farther to the right on the political spectrum.

Im well aware Evan McMullin would not be as good as a Democrat in terms of my values and what I believe. But I expect he would invite us into the room when hes making tough decisions. Thats not an opportunity Mike Lee is affording me right now, Wilson says.

Its a brutally pragmatic argument and one you dont often see in todays hyperpolarized political culture. Even if Democrats decide to kick party politics aside, there is no guarantee McMullin can beat Lee in November.

McAdams also says he would willingly trade McMullin for Lee, even if their politics rarely align.

Youll never have a candidate who agrees with you 100% of the time, and losing accomplishes nothing, McAdams says.

McAdams says he is on board with the plan because he believes Lee is an obstructionist who is unwilling to compromise.

Washington, D.C., is a dumpster fire. I personally know how broken and dysfunctional it is, and Mike Lee is the ringleader of that dysfunction. He cant even find his way to bipartisanship on things like roads and bridges, McAdams says. We have got to start sending people to Washington who are going to be constructive and work to fix whats broken.

But what of Weston? Doesnt he deserve the opportunity to represent the Democratic party? This clinical assessment of the race shoves him and his political ambitions aside.

Longtime Utah Democrat Quang Dang, who is helping Weston plot his political strategy, says the gambit put forward by McAdams and Wilson will do lasting damage to the party.

This whole plot to not have a Democratic candidate on the ballot is absurd. Never in the history of this party has this been done, Dang says. We have to deal with this gimmick, and gimmicks dont work in politics, especially Utah politics.

Weston is not a rookie candidate. He ran against Rep. Chris Stewart in 2020, losing to the Republican by 22 points in Utahs 2nd Congressional District.

Dang says Democrats who want to push Weston aside for McMullin are making many assumptions. First, Lee likely faces a primary against one or two other Republicans. Both Becky Edwards and Ally Isom are gathering signatures to avoid elimination at the GOP convention. Although Lee is the presumptive favorite, Dang says thats not a fait accompli, and the political winds could shift.

Politics is not sports betting. We ought to vote for the candidate that best represents our values and principles, not on who we think is most likely to win, Dang says.

The problem for Weston or any Democrat running statewide in Utah is simple math. You have to get more votes than your opponent.

Longtime political strategist Reed Galen says the numbers are more favorable for McMullin than Weston, but its still a long shot.

Are there enough Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents in Utah to beat Mike Lee? Are there enough Republican voters who dont like Mike Lee to cross over and vote for a Democrat? I think the answer to all of those questions is an unequivocal no, Galen says.

The former Republican and Park City resident helped form the Lincoln Project in 2020 as part of the effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning another term in the White House. He says Democrats are not known for looking at politics pragmatically.

They lead with their hearts a lot, not with their heads. When it comes to cold calculations, theyre not very good at it. For Democrats who dont like Mike Lee, there are only two choices in this race: Mike Lee or Evan McMullin, Galen says.

While this strategy is very rare, it is not unprecedented. In the 2014 Kansas U.S. Senate race, the Democratic nominee, Chad Taylor, dropped out to clear the way for independent businessman Greg Orman. According to Smart Politics, Orman lost by nearly 11 points to Pat Roberts, but the race was much closer than in the past as Republicans won the previous nine U.S. Senate races by an average of 37 points.

The United Utah Party has already thrown its weight behind McMullin, endorsing his candidacy against Lee.

How this plays out will depend on the whims of Democratic delegates who will be selected at the Democratic caucus meetings next week. All of this culminates at the state convention at the end of April.

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Utah Democrats face dilemma: help an independent to try to beat Sen. Mike Lee or stand with the party - Salt Lake Tribune

He also made a second, subtler, but no less significant change to the script on Jan. 6, 2021, according to newly released documents and testimony. This previously unreported adjustment, further illustrating his pushback to the Trump-led gambit, involved a simple question that he asked each time a states electoral vote results were introduced: Are there any objections?

What sounded like boilerplate lingo actually served as an intentional emphasis by Pence on the federal law that lets members of Congress challenge presidential results the exact element of certification that Trump and attorney John Eastman sought to undercut.

Pences job that day was to oversee the counting of electoral votes before a joint session of Congress. The Constitution and the Electoral Count Act, the federal law thats governed the Electoral College process since 1887, required that Pence lead the crucial meeting of the House and Senate in his capacity as vice president.

During the lengthy session, which was interrupted for hours by a violent mob attack, Pence punctuated every states electoral votes with a question to lawmakers: Are there any objections? No vice president had added those words since Al Gore presided over his own defeat in 2001. Notably, Gore was the only one to have done it since at least 1937.

Pence embraced the long-dormant rhetoric in part as a rebuttal to Eastman, a close Trump ally, Pences counsel Greg Jacob told congressional investigators.

According to Jacobs testimony, as well as contemporaneous emails released by the Jan. 6 select committee, Eastman had spent several days before Jan. 6, 2021, pushing Pence and Jacob to embrace a fringe legal theory: That Pence could simply refuse to count some of Joe Bidens presidential electors. When it became clear that Pence would not go along, Eastman fell back on another proposal. Pence, he said, should declare the election in dispute and recess the session for 10 days, giving Republican-led state legislatures a chance to appoint new electors. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) assembled 10 GOP colleagues to embrace a similar push.

Mike Pences decision to craft and employ his own unprecedented language as he presided over the final step of the 2020 election reflected his resistance to a pressure campaign by then-President Donald Trump to subvert the process.

But Jacob pushed back, arguing that sending the election to the states to select new electors would violate the Electoral Count Acts provisions giving federal lawmakers the chance to decide which ones to count. In no previous election, he noted, even in ones with some disputed states, had Congress sought the input of state legislators to resolve disputes.

The Electoral Count Act, Jacob noted, says the vice president shall call for objections after each state, and Pence made the decision to explicitly add those calls to articulate his disagreement with Eastmans theory.

Jacob told the select committee last month that he debated this point with Eastman in the days before Jan. 6.

The Electoral Count Act says: You shall call for objections, Jacob told the committee. [T]he shalls were important to us, which was one of the reasons we had made sure that the transcript or the scripts for Jan. 6 had the call for objections because that was one of the things that the statute specifically required.

Matthew Seligman, an election law expert and Yale University fellow, said Pences decision to revive the objection language was prudent because for the first time in the statutes history, the ECAs procedures were under assault.

Prior vice presidents may not have felt the need to explicitly say out loud that members of Congress could object, Seligman said.

Out of every Electoral College session since 1937 the first one after the 20th Amendment moved the presidential inauguration from March to January Gore and Pence were the only vice presidents to call for objections after each state, according to a review of the Congressional Record.

Emails released by the select committee showed that Eastman and Jacob continued to debate the validity of congressional objections deep into the morning of Jan. 6. Jacob eventually accused Eastman of supporting made up legal theories that would never hold up in court, an exchange that grew heated as the pro-Trump mob closed in on the Capitol.

Pence had foreshadowed his plan to call for objections during public remarks meant to rally Trump supporters in the days before Jan. 6. While Trump was increasingly dialing up pressure on Pence, the then-vice president heartened Trump allies by assuring them that Well have our day in Congress. Well hear the objections.

Republican lawmakers aligned with Trump had worked on a plan to challenge the electors from a handful of states. The insurrection disrupted the proceedings just as an objection to Arizonas electors was being debated, and after the riot was contained, only one other challenge to Pennsylvanias electors was advanced for debate.

Before that day, Pence had strenuously avoided tipping his hand publicly about whether he would embrace any of Eastmans extreme proposals, though hed signaled it within the White House. He made his intentions public in a letter he issued moments before the Jan. 6 session began, in which he repeatedly referenced his plan to call for objections.

As presiding officer, I will ensure that any objections that are sponsored by both a Representative and a Senator are given proper consideration, and that all facts supporting those objections are brought before the Congress and the American people, Pence said. Those who suggest that raising objections under the Electoral Count Act is improper or undemocratic ignore more than 130 years of history.

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Another Jan. 6 mystery revealed: Pence's second script rewrite - POLITICO

Facilitating the loosening of former President TrumpDonald TrumpGOP talking point could turn to Biden's 'underwhelming' Russia response House Oversight Committee opens investigation into New Mexico 2020 election audit Hunter Biden paid off tax liability amid ongoing grand jury investigation: report MOREs iron grip on the Republican Party are cumulative sets of actions and statements emanating from spheres of GOP influence. Meanwhile, elected leaders fear of Trump backlash and name-calling is diminishing signaling the post-Trump era has begun. Trumps unraveling is akin to a decline by 1,000 cuts. Lets examine it.

The players are prospective 2024 presidential candidates, officeholders, the Republican National Committee (RNC), former high-ranking Trump officials, a conservative think tank and a mega-donor kingmaker who owns a jet.

We begin on March 4 at the RNCs major donor retreat in New Orleans, attended by former Vice President Mike PenceMichael (Mike) Richard PenceThe post-Trump era has begun The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - What now after Zelensky's speech? The Hill's Campaign Report: Democrats look for a reset MORE. His appearance proves that Trump could not prevent Pence from addressing this high-roller crowd. Indirectly, Pence spoke critically of Trump, saying, "There is no room in this party for apologists for PutinVladimir Vladimirovich PutinRepublican senators introduce bill to ban Russian uranium imports Hillicon Valley Invasion complicates social media policy Defense & National Security Blinken details Russia's possible next steps MORE. There is only room for champions of freedom." Pence boldly countered Trumps earlier praise of the Russian dictator he infamously called savvy and a genius in the war's opening days.

Upon leaving the RNC, Pence felt confident because he was embarking on a secret, potentially game-changing trip that could challenge Trumps supremacy.

On March 5, Trump also spoke at the retreat, generating news that will long be re-quoted. He joked that the U.S. should "put the Chinese flag" on F-22 fighter jets and "bomb the shit" out of Russia. You can imagine the audience gasping.

Later that Saturday night (but not reported until March 9),Trump was heading home aboard an unnamed donors plane when engine failure forced an emergency landing. The harrowing incident unleashed several news cycles of Trump plane drama.

Suspiciously starting on March 9, Trump supporters received an email solicitation titled "Update: Trump Force One."It stated, "My team is building a BRAND NEW Trump Force One," which appeared to be seeking donations.

Then watch Trumps airspace since he has lost altitude with that previously mentioned mega-donor kingmaker who owns a jet. Ironically (also first reported on March 9), Mike Pence had boarded the kingmakers jet bound for Israel and later the Ukraine-Poland border.

Here is why Pences trip could be perceived as a flashing red signal that the post-Trump era has begun. The plane is owned by Miriam Adelson widow of Sheldon Adelson a GOP donor extraordinaire who died in January 2021. Mr. Adelson was a casino empire multibillionaire, a personal friend of Donald Trump and the force behind the American Embassy in Israel moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. By the way, reportedly, the Adelsons contributed $220 million to the Republican Party during the 2020 election cycle.

Continuing her husbands legacy, earning Miriam Adelsons support is the political equivalent of winning the Mega Millions lottery. Is Mike Pence the 2024 lottery winner? Watch his airspace.

While in Israel, Mrs. Adelson, Pence and wife Karen prayed over Sheldons grave and dined with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuBenjamin (Bibi) NetanyahuMORE. Then the Pences joined Samaritan's Purses refugee relief mission at the Ukraine-Poland border.

Beyond Miriam Adelsons financial resources, her support for Pence signals that Trump may not be a viable 2024 candidate, and that it may be time to move on.

Years earlier, Trump had been Adelsons golden boy. On March 13, 2016, a Hill headline read, Gingrich: Adelson signal is big for Trump. After Sheldon Adelson publicly endorsed Trump, the signal was that Trump had entered the Republican mainstream worthy of support by GOP elites. Former House Speaker Newt GingrichNewton (Newt) Leroy GingrichMORE (R-Ga.), an early Trump supporter, disseminated the signal. (Note: In 2012, Adelson contributed $20 million to keep Gingrichs presidential campaign afloat.)

Although Pence was aboard Miriam Adelsons plane and is likely a contributor to Pences advocacy groups recent $10 million ad buy against House Democrats Mrs. Adelson alone can not usher in the post-Trump era.

Suffice it to say, the Russia-Ukraine war has weakened Trump with self-inflicted wound-like statements and his previous anti-NATO stance while emboldening GOP leaders to denounce the twice-impeached former president. Then, on cue, a name-calling bombshell dropped on Saturday night after a Trump rally in South Carolina.

Continuing his feud with Trump, Rep.Tom Rice(R-S.C.) called the former president a would-be tyrant. At the rally, Trump was harder on President BidenJoe BidenRepublican senators introduce bill to ban Russian uranium imports Energy & Environment Ruling blocking climate accounting metric halted Fauci says officials need more than .5B for COVID-19 response MORE than on Putin. Trumps harshest words for the ruthless dictator were, Hes driven to put it together. It [the invasion] shouldve never of happened if he respected our president.

Also from the House was the recent headline, McCarthy breaks with Trump on Putin: Russian leader not 'savvy,' 'genius.' That was uncharacteristically anti-Trump criticism from House Minority LeaderKevin McCarthyKevin McCarthyHouse eyes advantages of proxy voting beyond pandemic The post-Trump era has begun Zelensky challenges conscience of Congress MORE (R-Calif.). Usually, he courts and counts on Trumps support (dreaming of his future title House Speaker McCarthy should the GOP win control of the House in the midterm elections).

In another cut, Trumps social media app Truth Social is underperforming and off to a rocky start even Trump is not an active user.

And like sharks smelling blood while circling the waters of Mar-a-Lago, there are an increasing number of 2024 anti-Trump presidential candidates who are envisioning a primary challenge. Furthermore, many highly touted Trump-endorsed primary candidates are struggling with fundraising and momentum.

Then last week, in what was a blatant Trump snub, the prestigious conservative American Enterprise Institute did not invite him to its annual World Forum attended by other GOP leaders.

And dont forget the blow-up with his former Attorney General William BarrBill BarrThe post-Trump era has begun Democrats urge DOJ to address 'insider threats' from candidates who deny 2020 results Barr says dealing with Trump, advisers like 'wrestling an alligator' MORE, prompting Trump to send a childish name-calling letter to NBC's Lester Holt after Holt interviewed Barr. The letter is a window into Trumps mindset.

Besides all the cuts, the most severe knife wounds could result from various legal actions pending in New York and Georgia. Most watched will be the House Jan. 6 committees conclusions and ultimately whether Attorney General Merrick GarlandMerrick GarlandGOP senators seek probe of 'egregious' conditions at NJ nursing home The post-Trump era has begun Biden signs reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act MORE indicts Trump for criminal conspiracy or defangs the politically explosive matter.

The post-Trump era has been born (though Donald still rocks the cradle).

Myra Adams writes about politics and religion for numerous publications. She is a RealClearPolitics contributorand served on the creative team of two GOP presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008. Follow her on Twitter @MyraKAdams.

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The post-Trump era has begun | TheHill - The Hill

Artificial intelligence is getting cheaper, better at the tasks we assign it, and more widespreadbut concerns over bias, ethics, and regulatory oversight still remain. At a time when AI is becoming accessible to everyone, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence put together a sweeping 2022 report analyzing the ins and outs of the growing field. Here are some of the highlights.

The number of publications alone on the topic tell a story: They doubled in the last decade, from 162,444 in 2010 to 334,497 in 2021. The most popular AI categories that researchers and others published on were pattern recognition, machine learning, and algorithms.

Whats more, the number of patent filings related to AI innovations in 2021 is 30 times greater than the filings in 2015. In 2021, the majority of filed patents were from China, but the majority of patents actually granted were from the US.

The number of users participating in open-source AI software libraries on GitHub also rose from 2015 to 2021. These libraries house collections of computer codes that are used for applications and products. One called TensorFlow remains the most popular, followed by OpenCV, Keras and PyTorch (which Meta AI uses).

Specifically, out of the various tasks that AI can perform, last year, the research community was focused on applying AI to computer vision, a subfield that teaches machines to understand images and videos in order to get good at classifying images, recognizing objects, mapping the position and movement of human body joints, and detecting faces (with and without masks).

[Related: MIT scientists taught robots how to sabotage each other]

For image classification, the most popular database used to train AI models is called ImageNet. Some researchers pre-train their models on additional datasets before exposing them to ImageNet. But models still make mistakes, on average mis-identifying 1 out of 10 images. The model that performs the best is from the Google Brain Team. In addition to identifying images and faces, AI can also generate fake images that are nearly indistinguishable from real ones, and to combat this, researchers have been working on deepfake detection algorithms that are based on datasets like FaceForensics++.

[Related: This new AI tool from Google could change the way we search online]

Natural language processing, a subfield that has been actively explored since the 1950s, is slowly making progress in English language understanding, summarizing, inferring reasonable outcomes, identifying emotional context, speech recognition and transcription, and translation. For basic reading comprehension, AI can perform better than humans, but when language tasks get more complicated, like when interpreting context clues is necessary, humans still have an edge. On the other hand, AI ethicists are worried that bias could affect large language models that draw from a mixed bag of training data.

Tech companies like Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have been improving the AI used in recommendation systems. The same is true for AIs role in reinforcement learning, which has enabled it to react and perform well in virtual games such as chess and Go. Reinforcement learning can also be used to teach autonomous vehicles tasks like changing lanes, or help data models predict future events.

As AI appears to have become better at doing what we want it to do, the cost to train it has come down as well, dropping by over 60 percent since 2018. Meanwhile, a system that wouldve taken 6 minutes to train in 2018 would now only take a little over 13 seconds. Accounting for hardware costs, in 2021, an image classification system would take less than $5 to train, whereas that cost wouldve been over $1,000 in 2017.

More AI applications across industries means more demand for AI education and jobs. Across the US in 2021, California, Texas, New York, and Virginia had the highest demand for AI-related occupations. In the last decade, the most popular specialties among PhD computer science students were artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Private investment in AI is at an all-time high, totalling $93.5 billion in 2021 (double the amount from 2020). AI companies that were skilled in data management, processing, and cloud, according to the report, got the most funding in 2021, followed by companies dedicated to medical and healthcare and financial technology (fintech for short).

In fiscal year 2021, US government agencies spent $1.53 billion on AI research and development for non-defense purposes, which was 2.7 times the amount spent in fiscal year 2018. For defense purposes, the Department of Defense allocated $9.26 billion across 500 AI research and development programs in 2021, which was about 6 percent more than what it spent in the year before. The top two uses of AI were for prototyping technologies and in programs countering weapons of mass destruction.

Last, the report looked at global, federal, and state regulations related to AI (looking for keywords like artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomous vehicle or algorithmic bias). The report examined 25 countries around the world, and found that they have collectively passed 55 AI-related bills to law from 2016 to 2021. Last year, Spain, the UK and the US each had three AI-related bills that became law.

Continued here:
Artificial intelligence is everywhere now. This report shows how we got here. - Popular Science

MOOREA, French Polynesia. Titouan Bernicot was 16 when he had an epiphany: Everything he loved about living on an island in the South Pacific was tied to coral reefs.

Titouan Bernicot [Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]Moorea, where he lives, is made up of a coral reef and lagoon system, and even though the corals define the island, theyre increasingly at risk

Bernicot, 23, started Coral Gardeners in April 2017 from his bedroom. Now, he and his team are setting their sights on an audacious goal: to replant 1 million corals across the world by 2025. If they have any hope of hitting that number, theyll have to dramatically increase their planting, an effort that is being aided by a new artificial intelligence system.

Our goals for the next couple of years are to become the largest and most advanced coral restoration program on the planet, he said in an interview outside his office on the island.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]The Coral Gardeners team restores damaged reef areas that have suffered from rising temperatures or other natural and human disturbances. There are currently three active nursery sites in French Polynesia, which have close to 9,000 corals growing. The first restored reef is in the back garden of Bernicots home, in Maharepa.

According to Coral Gardeners data, 500 million people around the world directly rely on reefs for food, income, coastal protection, and more.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]The group uses various restoration techniques, and they focus efforts on super corals to create more resilient reefs. Super corals are a resistant species that can survive in extreme water temperatures. The group identifies super corals in the lagoon, cuts or trims a small portion of them, and places them in the nurseries on ropes, tables, or trees. There, they are monitored for at least a year. Once theyre large enough, the grown fragments are trimmed and planted onto damaged areas of the reef, where they continue growing, making the reef more resilient as the corals go on to spawn.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]In the site outside Bernicots home, people can see the activity through a livestream known as ReefOS. The artificial intelligence system is a combination of hardware and software that documents every aspect of the growing process. Theres also a 360-degree camera that takes pictures and labels the fish species as they repopulate the reef.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]In 2021, Coral Gardeners partnered with Cornell University to create a bioacoustic AI model with the reef soundscape, which helps to better understand the sounds effect on the ecosystem. They also teamed up with the University of Hawaii to integrate advanced 3D mapping and photogrammetry techniqueswhich is the science of extracting information from photographsinto the monitoring process. By modeling the structure of the reef, the team can learn critical metrics such as the biomass and the coral growth rate. Using this technology to map the reefs structure before and after the restoration efforts, Coral Gardeners can better track their impact.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]The new techniques will allow the team to measure and understand the impact theyre having on the corals, including the biodiversity of the ecosystem, the fish population, coral disease, and bleaching detection.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]The ReefOS AI model, which is currently in Maharepa and Cooks Bay, will be deployed at every restored reef site around the world as the organization expands. We want to become the most advanced reef restoration around the world in terms of technology . . . and also be able to share everything that we learned and the data we collected in an open-source and collaborative way, says Karine Toumazeau, strategist for Coral Gardeners.

The organization is on track to replant about 15,000 corals in 2022, and while this is the equivalent to what theyve transplanted in the past four years combined, its still a far cry from their goal of 1 million. The reefs theyve replanted thus far have about a 96% survival rate, according to Toumazeau.

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]While they werent able to provide an average cost-per-coral, the overhead for the project can be expensive. The group has raised $1.8 million in the last four years, but they hope to open at least 20 international branches in the next few years, which would require significantly more funding. So far, the majority of the funding has come from a coral adoption program, donations, merchandising, and partnerships.

Social media has been a real boon for fundraising. With more than half a million followers on Instagram, Coral Gardeners is the most followed account in all of French Polynesia, Bernicot notessomething he takes pride in. This following has helped drive growth, as celebrities like Paris Hilton have publicly given gifts of coral. (She gave it in honor of Britney Spears birthday.)

[Photo: Ryan Borne/Coral Gardeners]We are not in an ecosystem where you can meet a lot of entrepreneurs, he said. There arent a lot of start-up mentors in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. I dont know any other projects that have that reach globally.

Still, one of the ideas behind Coral Gardeners is to create opportunities for local islanders. A childhood friend of Bernicots and the friends brother were among the first on the payroll of the more than 20 staff members.

I dont want ocean conservation to be a part-time job, Bernicot said. I want people that love the ocean to be able to make a career saving their playgrounds.

Continue reading here:
How one group is using artificial intelligence to replant coral reefs - Fast Company