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'It's Never Been Joe.' At Maryland's Carroll County fair nobody thinks Biden is running the country
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Amid the gleaming classic cars and towering combines on display at Maryland’s Carroll County 4-H Fair, I found a bevy of voters to talk to. I was curious if they thought that President Joe Biden is still running the country. Nobody said yes. Not one soul.
When I asked Marge, a local in her 60s who works for a remodeling company, she just laughed at first and said, “No, not at all.” She was handing out American flags at her booth and I pushed a bit, asking when she thought he had stopped being in charge, “About a year,” she said, “but it’s gotten worse and worse,” referring to Biden’s decline.
Mark and Bob, on the other hand, two farmers manning the American Legion table, don’t believe Biden has ever been in control, though they admit it is far more obvious now. So, who do they think is running things? “I don’t know, “Mark said, “maybe Obama, or some cabal, it’s never been Joe.”
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“This is Obama’s third term,” Bob chimed in without quite interrupting, as old friends do, “and if Kamala wins it will be his fourth term.”
Mark told me that he had not always been a firm Trump supporter, and when I asked what had changed he told me, “When Trump spoke at the March for Life [in 2020] it meant a lot to me, no president ever had, we go almost every year.”
It was telling that what sold him on Trump was a personal choice by the former president, and a risky one, not a cookie-cutter focus grouped decision, but one that Mark believed was from Trump’s heart.
President Biden boards Air Force One as he departs Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, on July 23, 2024. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
They explained to me that Carroll is the reddest county in the Old Line State, and it felt that way. There were Trump shirts here and there, flags everywhere, not a whole lot of vegan options at the food stalls, no kale was present unless on display, it certainly didn’t feel like I was in a blue state.
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Congressional candidate Kim Klacik is looking to take advantage of that by vying, as a Republican, for the open seat being left by Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger, and owing to redistricting in 2022, the website 538 has moved the district from strong blue to lean blue.
“This is Obama’s third term,” Bob chimed in without quite interrupting, as old friends do. “And if Kamala wins it will be his fourth term.”
It’s still a bit of a long shot, but as Klacik campaigned alongside Board of Education candidate Dr. Greg Malveaux it was clear she has a following in the area. “I hear you on the radio,” one middle-aged man came up and said to her, “You make a lot of sense.”
All politics is local, so the conversations included education — I spotted a Moms for Liberty tent nearby, they are becoming ubiquitous — as well as a controversial plan by Democrats to run power lines with giant towers through people’s farms, supposedly to save the environment.
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Time and again the folks I talked to came back to the national political scene. They have not moved on from the assassination attempt against Trump as much of the media seem to have, and at least one person I spoke to is suspicious about the role of the Secret Service and the FBI.
What was notable about the consensus that Biden had been put out to pasture, much like the prize Heifers in the livestock displays, is that there was no real sense of shock or fear or anger, more of a resigned attitude that we are simply governed by committee now.
Nobody I spoke to particularly liked Vice President Kamala Harris, but they also didn’t seem to hate her, it was more like she was irrelevant, just a figurehead who could almost be anyone.
I got the strong sense, not for the first time since Biden bowed out, that in some voters’ minds this has become a choice not between Trump and Harris but between Trump and the deep state.
I had brought my son along, it was a fair, after all, and back at my car he realized he’d lost his phone. I thought it was probably over at the picnic table where we ate, and sure enough, there it was. A gentleman there in a trucker cap with his family handed it to me and said, “We’ve been passing it off, figured someone would come back for it.”
I handed it to my son, and said, “Be more careful,” trying to sound stern, but kind of laughing to myself, thinking, you’re really not in Brooklyn anymore.
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A man was sentenced to 115 years in prison on Monday for the fatal shooting of a New York City police officer who had ordered him to step out of a car in Queens in 2024.
More than 200 people, mostly police officers, packed a courtroom in State Supreme Court in Queens to hear Justice Michael Aloise sentence Guy Rivera in the killing of Jonathan Diller, 31, who was promoted to the rank of detective after his death.
“It took me five minutes to calculate these numbers,” Justice Aloise said. “It’s going to take you a lifetime to calculate the damage you did and the grief that you caused.”
He said that Mr. Rivera had determined his own fate “the second you pulled that trigger.”
Detective Diller’s wife, Stephanie, who sat among the officers in the courtroom, read a statement in court just before the sentencing, speaking of the pain and loss that she and her son, Ryan, now 3, have suffered. Ms. Diller, who testified during the trial, spoke directly to Mr. Rivera as he sat at the defense table.
“This is the last moment I will allow you to take from me,” she said as tears rolled down her cheeks. “You took my husband, Jonathan. You took the future we planned together. The life we were building, the years we were supposed to share together.”
“What you did to Jonathan” she said, “gave me and our son a life sentence without him.”
A jury found Mr. Rivera, 36, guilty earlier this month on four charges, including aggravated manslaughter, in Detective Diller’s death, but acquitted him of the most serious charge, first-degree murder. The decision, after a three-week trial in Queens, stunned the dozens of police officers present when it was announced in the courtroom on April 1.
To find him guilty of murder, the jury had to decide whether they believed Mr. Rivera had intended to kill Detective Diller when he pointed his gun at him in the Far Rockaway section of Queens on March 25, 2024. They ultimately determined that Mr. Rivera had intentionally pulled the trigger, but did not intend to kill him.
Mr. Rivera did not speak at his sentencing at the advice of one of his lawyers, Jamal Johnson, who told Justice Aloise they would appeal the conviction.
Mr. Johnson, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, said after the hearing that Justice Aloise’s statement at sentencing showed the court “had already made up its mind about sentencing well before the trial was conducted.”
During the trial, prosecutors said that before the fatal shooting, Detective Diller’s partner, Sgt. Sasha Rosen, saw Mr. Rivera and another man, Lindy Jones, come out of a store and get into a car. Mr. Rivera had an L-shaped object in the pocket of his sweatshirt that resembled a firearm, prosecutors said.
Detective Diller approached the vehicle and asked Mr. Rivera repeatedly to comply with orders. When he did not, Sergeant Rosen reached in to pull him out of the car.
Then Mr. Rivera fired, the jury found. The defense argued that Mr. Rivera’s gun went off accidentally when Sergeant Rosen pulled him out, striking Detective Diller. Prosecutors said Mr. Rivera then turned his gun on Sergeant Rosen, but the weapon jammed.
Justice Aloise did not allow the jury to see video that, the defense contended, showed Mr. Rivera’s arm was broken during his confrontation with the police.
That evidence would have directly undermined the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Rivera was physically able to pull the trigger when he tried to shoot Sergeant Rosen, they said.
In all, Mr. Rivera was sentenced to 25 years to life for the aggravated manslaughter conviction; 40 years to life for the attempted murder of Sergeant Rosen; and 25 years to life for each of the gun possession counts. He was ordered to serve those sentences consecutively.
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On Monday, after the sentencing, dozens of police officers smiled and embraced one another as they left the courtroom. The prosecutors who tried the case and Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, hugged several of Detective Diller’s family members.
Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, called the sentence “obviously the right result, for him and for anyone who kills a New York City police officer.”
Outside the courthouse, members of the Police Benevolent Association, the police officers’ union, said they were pleased with the sentence.
“The verdict in this case did not send the right message to the Diller family and every police officer who wears the uniform,” said Patrick Hendry, the union president, who spoke at the foot of the courthouse stairwell, backed by nearly 100 police officers.
“But this sentence,” he said, “it sent the right message.”
Say bonjour to the return of “Beauty and the Beast.” The national tour has been in Boston before, but this is the first time in 25 years that Disney is behind the production.
Kyra Belle Johnson stars as Belle, the bookworm who doesn’t quite fit into her quiet village.
“I think part of treating her like a real person is finding the humor and finding the faults and breathing and being present on stage every night,” Johnson said.
As Mrs. Potts, Kathy Voytko embodies the beloved teapot.
“When I was talking to my daughters about, ‘How do you feel about mom being gone for the better part of a year?’ They said, ‘Well, geez, mom, we’re gonna miss you, but it’s Mrs. Potts,’” Voytko explained.
The actors told WBZ-TV that Disney’s involvement in this tour makes a noticeable impact, with Voytko saying, “There is nothing like a Disney-produced Disney production because the magic in the show, the attention to detail, the loving recreation of the movie that we all know and love, plus some elements of surprise.”
Johnson added, “They care about this piece of art so much… And they’re really precious with it, but at the same time, they’re open with it.”
Book writer Linda Woolverton worked with the cast in the rehearsal room to make sure the piece felt modern.
“She literally changed some scenes and lines specifically for us and our versions of these characters to make it seem grounded and real,” Johnson explained.
And Johnson gained extra insight into Belle’s life by visiting the Alsace region of France, which inspired the original Disney animators.
“Walking in the town and having like a storefront and then the leaning building that was this like blue and the wooden windows and somebody leaning out of it talking to somebody on the street. These are real places, it’s not just like a made-up place in your head.”
The wonder she felt is echoed in the audience’s response.
“This is a gate for a lot of new theater lovers. We get a lot of people who this is their first show,” said Johnson.
“It’s for everybody,” added Voytko. “It’s for adults, it’s for married couples, it is for a date night, it for a pack of pals who just want to see something nostalgic from their youth and it makes it a thrill for us every single day.”
You can see Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at the Citizens Opera House in Boston through Sunday.
A historic number of people flooded into Pittsburgh for the NFL Draft on Thursday.
Around 320,000 fans attended the opening round of the draft on Thursday night just outside of Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh, which marked an attendance record for round one of the draft, ESPN announced on Monday afternoon. In total, about 805,000 people attended the three-day event.
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ESPN also said that about 13,2 million people tuned in to watch the first round of the NFL Draft on Thursday night, which made it the third-most watched opening round under the current format, which started back in 2010. Only the 2025 and 2020 editions of the draft drew a bigger audience on the first night.
The league said that a record amount of merchandise was sold throughout the NFL Draft weekend, too, though it did not provide a figure or metric there. The previous record on that front was set last season in Green Bay.
The Las Vegas Raiders used the No. 1 overall pick on Indiana quarterback and reigning Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza on Thursday night. Mendoza, who led the Hoosiers to the national championship earlier this year, was not in attendance in Pittsburgh. Instead, he celebrated with his family from home in Miami.
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The NFL Draft will be held next spring in Washington D.C. for the first time in modern history. It’s expected to be held on the National Mall. Washington D.C. held the draft one other time back in December 1940.
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