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Howard Blatt, stroke survivor who co-founded an aphasia support group, died at 88

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Howard Blatt, stroke survivor who co-founded an aphasia support group, died at 88

Judy and Howie Blatt in 1996.

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In 1983, Howard Blatt was a middle-aged married father working as an electrical engineer at MIT when he collapsed in his kitchen. He’d had a stroke.

That health catastrophe left him with a paralyzed arm and leg, as well as almost total loss of speech. He was diagnosed with aphasia, a brain disorder that can occur after strokes and head injuries, and robs people of their ability to communicate.

Here’s how Blatt, who died May 7 at his home near Boston at age 88, described his post-stroke condition: “No talking — zip. Speech — zip. One incident. Changed life.”

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Although he used adaptive devices to overcome some of his physical disabilities, he never fully recovered. And he discovered, to his dismay, that support networks for people with aphasia were a rarity in the early 1980s.

So, with his wife and a small group of other people, Blatt helped create an organization that may be his most important legacy: the Aphasia Community Group, now one of the country’s oldest and largest continuously operating support groups for people with aphasia and their families.

Many of its members say the group — founded in 1990 at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston and now based at Boston University — rescued them from isolation.

It offers an expansive array of services and activities — including concerts, book groups, potluck meals, health information, and technology tips for managing disabilities — as well as companionship for people whose speech was stolen by strokes and other brain injuries.

“You think, oh my God, I am alone,” said Mary Borelli, 61, a former elementary school principal in Massachusetts who was unable to speak after having a stroke at age 47. When she first attended the Aphasia Community Group, “I was like, here are people that understand what I’m going through, and they know how I’m feeling,” she recalled, “and it was a beautiful thing.”

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At the group’s meetings, noted Borelli, who speaks haltingly after years of rehabilitative therapy, “Everybody says, ‘Take your time. Take as long as it takes to tell your story,’ and then we all clap for each other. It’s so good.”

Aphasia does not affect intellect, so some aphasia sufferers liken it to living in a prison within their own brain; their minds work, yet they are unable to express themselves or understand spoken or written language. The condition can prevent them from speaking, reading, writing or comprehending, sometimes a combination of those, sometimes all of them. According to the American Stroke Association, at least 2 million people in the U.S. have aphasia, commonly as a result of stroke.

“Aphasia is so isolating,” said another Aphasia Community Group co-founder, Jerry Kaplan, a Boston University speech-language pathologist who has led the organization since its inception. “Newcomers invariably say to me at some point, ‘I thought I was the only one.’”

Thousands of people have attended the group since it began more than three decades ago, and for many of them it “becomes a very important part of their lives,” he added.

“It’s a place that feels safe, feels comfortable,” Kaplan said. “It’s a place where they meet other people who are struggling with the same challenges.”

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After Blatt had his stroke at age 48, he and his wife, Judy, quickly recognized the need for a local support network. At the time, there wasn’t even a national group; the National Aphasia Association was founded in 1987, several years after Blatt’s aphasia diagnosis.

“There was nothing when Howie had the stroke,” said Judy, who was then a 46-year-old elementary school teacher with two daughters in college. “Boy, we would have appreciated having something. I mean, we were so young.”

The Aphasia Community Group — part of the Aphasia Resource Center at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences — draws people of all ages. Its members live mainly in New England, but during the coronavirus pandemic its meetings shifted to Zoom, allowing people around the country to dial in and join.

Many of its attendees considered Blatt an inspirational figure, thanks to his eclectic range of post-stroke accomplishments. Known widely as Howie, he was not able to return to his job as a computer hardware designer at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories after his stroke, but he worked methodically to regain as much function as possible.

A drawing made for the Blatts by one of their two daughters, Julia Blatt, for their 40th wedding anniversary.

A drawing made for the Blatts by one of their two daughters, Julia Blatt, for their 40th wedding anniversary.

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He progressed from a wheelchair to a metal brace to a plastic leg support. He did extensive physical, occupational and speech therapy. He re-earned his driver’s license, then drove cross-country by himself multiple times, documenting his trips with copious photographs. He dabbled in sculpting and designed additions to his house.

“He built a table, he built closets, he built cabinets,” Judy Blatt, now 87, recalled. “He figured out how he could do it with one hand.”

He studied grammar to try to improve his speech, treating English as a foreign language to be re-learned. He also created a newsletter called The Aphasia Advocate.

Throughout his rehab, Blatt documented his work in binders, assigning grades to himself. Immediately after his stroke, he gave himself flunking scores in all categories. Eventually, his grades improved, and he even earned an occasional A.

Over the decades, he was a faithful member of the Aphasia Community Group, as was Judy, his wife of 64 years.

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When Borelli, the former school principal, began attending its meetings and met Blatt, she thought: “I want to be like Howie,” she recalled.

“I think Howie was the example of what you could do with all the loss he had,” said Judy Blatt. “He was sort of a model.”

Other group members, she added, “could look at Howie and see what you could actually do, because he had done it.”

The Aphasia Community Group, which will celebrate its 35th anniversary next year, is one of Blatt’s most enduring achievements, and “for folks that have stayed with it for many years, it became a family,” Kaplan said.

“This was a tenacious man who was really given a tough break in midlife, with young children, at the top of his game in his profession, and his communication gifts were largely wiped out,” Kaplan said of Blatt. “But he did not give in to this for 40-plus years. And not only did he survive; he thrived.”

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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