You can absolutely accelerate the fruit production of your strawberry plants with the right temperature, sunlight, soil type, and fertilization schedule.
Food Republic – Restaurants, Reviews, Recipes, Cooking Tips
Day: March 3, 2026
Ella Langley is turning heads with her latest hit, but it’s her honesty about mental health that’s really striking a chord. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Ella Langley is turning heads with her latest hit, but it’s her honesty about mental health that’s really striking a chord. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2026, issued a ruling that will have a wide impact. More than 1,400 criminal cases had to be dismissed, the justices ruled, due to lack of adequate counsel available for defendants.
Like other states, Oregon must provide defendants with legal representation if they cannot afford attorneys on their own. But Oregon has less than one-third of the attorneys it needs to provide adequate defense for indigents, or people who can’t afford counsel on their own.
Shortages of this scope are common around the country. Pennsylvania faces a similar shortage of about 30% of the public defenders it needs, with insufficient numbers of attorneys in nearly every county. New Mexico needs 67% more attorneys to provide effective counsel. Kansas needs 277 more public defenders, or roughly triple its current number.
As public policy researchers who study legal defense issues, we believe it’s clear that such shortages have repercussions throughout the criminal justice system.
Without enough lawyers providing indigent defense, defendants sit in jail longer, plead without guidance and risk wrongful convictions. Prosecutors face delays in clearing their cases. Court dockets slow, costs rise and public trust declines.
In other words, indigent defense shortages harm not only defendants but the justice system as a whole.
Rights to an attorney
The Sixth Amendment guarantees individuals facing criminal charges the right to defense counsel, at government expense if required. This right was clarified by a landmark Supreme Court case in 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright. The court ruled that states are required to provide attorneys to defendants who cannot afford an attorney.
About 80% to 90% of state defendants and more than 90% of federal defendants cannot afford a lawyer. The exact rate varies by state, year and type of charge, but it generally falls well above 50% of all criminal cases.
South Florida Sun Sentinel/Amy Beth Bennett via AP
Fulfilling the promise made in Gideon often falls to public defenders and private lawyers appointed by courts. Sixty-three years after the decision, the pool of lawyers willing to fulfill this promise is rapidly shrinking, aging and is overburdened, with lawyers sometimes working without pay.
Texas reflects this national problem. There are too few lawyers handling too many cases, putting the whole criminal justice system at risk. In a research report for the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, our team at Texas A&M University found that the state lost 1,345 attorneys who had been handling indigent defense cases between 2014 and 2023, or about one-fourth of all such attorneys. That decline happened even as the total number of lawyers in Texas grew by more than 25,000.
The problem is worse in rural areas, where judges cannot find enough attorneys to appoint, slowing court operations. In Texas, 27% of attorneys in rural counties are already overburdened and exceeding recommended caseload guidelines.
“I understand the irony of a prosecutor advocating for money for a public defender office, but at the end of the day it would help the county carry out its constitutional obligation,” Val Verde County prosecutor David Martinez told the Texas Tribune. “It would save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.”
Fewer attorneys available
This problem is not new. A 2004 report from the American Bar Association outlined funding shortages that hampered hiring of defense counsel, leading to inexperienced and sometimes incompetent lawyers handling excessive caseloads.
But the problem has accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruption of the labor market.
Our research shows that attorneys who take indigent defense cases often do so out of a strong sense of civic duty and commitment to public service. Attorneys are asked to do far more than just apply the law. They regularly help clients navigate housing, transportation, substance use and mental health needs. Without a strong sense of calling, many attorneys choose other areas of practice instead of public defense.
Some attorneys with a sense of motivation are still unable to join public service. Citing the cost of repaying law school loans, they enter private practice instead.
No simple solutions
The shortage of attorneys willing to take indigent defense cases is a serious policy problem. Solving it requires expanding the pool of attorneys who are available to take these cases – both the attorneys who are practicing today and the attorneys who will enter the profession in the future.
AFP/Chris Torres via Getty Images
Policymakers have mainly focused on expanding the pool of existing attorneys. The most common tools include increasing appointment fees, offering additional financial incentives and creating or expanding public defender offices.
These approaches can help in the short term, but their effects are limited. Raising fees rarely brings new attorneys into indigent defense; instead, it often lures attorneys from neighboring jurisdictions that already face shortages.
Raising fees for private lawyers also fails to address public defender offices, where attorneys are salaried and often paid less than prosecutors. Loan forgiveness programs can help recruitment and retention; research shows they matter for public service careers, but these programs are uneven across states and uncertain over time.
Financial incentives alone will not solve a workforce problem rooted in supply. A sustainable solution requires expanding the pool of prospective attorneys. We believe it would help for recruitment to begin much earlier, at the high school level, especially in rural areas, and continue through college and law school.
Current efforts tend to focus only on law students who are already committed to legal careers. Partnerships between counties, state agencies, bar associations, universities and community organizations could help build pipelines leading to public defense careers. They might offer, for example, internships and mentoring, or reduce barriers for students who want to serve their communities.
Expanding the pool of attorneys will require years of coordinated investment across states, counties, courts, law schools and the legal profession. Short-term incentives can prop up overburdened systems, but long-term recruitment will be needed to keep courts functioning and fully protect the constitutional right to counsel.
Georges Naufal has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.
Emily Naiser has received funding from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
Does politics stress you out? Did the last election cause you to lose sleep, lose your temper or lose a friend? If so, you weren’t alone.
For the better part of two decades, the American Psychological Association has documented a steady increase in the phenomenon of “political stress” among American voters. However, research and reporting during that same period have focused primarily on the political consequences of increasing polarization and division rather than the psychological consequences of the modern political climate.
As a political scientist studying how the public engages with politics and media, I wondered: What does it mean to live in a political environment that is highly confrontational, emotionally charged and difficult to escape? And how does that environment affect people over time?
During the 2024 presidential election, I teamed up with three colleagues to answer those questions. Our book, The Anxious State: Stress Polarization, and Elections in America, published in January 2026, summarizes what we learned.
While several features of the modern political landscape contribute to political stress, one culprit in particular is alarmingly efficient at converting politics into chronic stress – social media.
Political stress builds fast
We conducted four large, nationally representative surveys tracking Americans’ political attitudes and well-being, one every three months over the course of 2024. Across our election year surveys, roughly 4 in 10 American adults consistently reported that politics had caused them to experience at least one significant stress reaction in the past month. These included nontrivial conflicts with friends and family, sleep disruptions, lost tempers and being unable to mentally or emotionally disengage from politics.
In a country of roughly 260 million adults, that amounts to well over 100 million people experiencing measurable political stress in any given month.
In just one example, at each point in 2024, around 17% of American adults reported losing sleep over politics. This translates to roughly 44 million people nationwide. Sleep loss is not a trivial inconvenience. Extensive research shows that insufficient sleep is associated with impaired cognitive function, chronic health problems, diminished productivity and an increase in traffic accidents, just to name a few.
Our findings point to similar trends from the effects of lost tempers, fractured social networks and excessive political rumination. And while some degree of political stress might be expected in the lead-up to a highly consequential election, what surprised us most was how little these numbers changed over time. Despite a year filled with dramatic political events, reported levels of political stress rarely budged.
This stability suggests that political stress is no longer driven primarily by isolated moments of breaking news or electoral upheaval. Instead, it appears to be sustained by the environment in which people now encounter politics – and that environment is increasingly shaped by social media.
Why social media is different
Social media differs from earlier forms of political communication in a crucial way: Content is not presented chronologically or editorially; it is presented algorithmically. Platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok are designed to maximize attention and engagement, which means they privilege content that provokes strong emotional reactions.
In other words, content that causes outrage, fear, moral condemnation and conflict is simply more likely to keep users scrolling, clicking, commenting and sharing.
As a result, political information on social media is more likely to reach people through a sensationalized and emotionally charged lens than information encountered through traditional news sources. And given the architecture of social networks, this content tends to reach users whether they seek it out or not.
Time spent online is stressful, but engagement makes it worse
Our findings show that even passive exposure to political content on social media is linked to elevated political stress. But active engagement – such as likes, reposts and comments – makes the problem substantially worse.
People who reported frequently encountering, commenting on or sharing political content online consistently exhibited the highest overall levels of political stress in our survey. Compared with those who primarily consumed political information passively and without engaging, active participants were far more likely to report losing sleep, losing their temper and feeling unable to disengage from politics.
In other words, the more that social media turns users from observers into participants in political conflict, the greater the psychological toll appears to be.
A generational divide
These effects, while substantial, were not distributed evenly across the population.
Younger Americans, particularly members of Gen Z, reported higher levels of political stress associated with social media use than older cohorts. This is not especially surprising. Younger adults are more likely to rely on social media as a primary source of political information.
For a generation that has never known a political environment without algorithmically curated feeds, the boundary between politics and everyday life is especially thin. Politics does not arrive at scheduled times, through discrete channels. Rather, it is interspersed with expressions of social identity, entertainment and peer interaction. And this constant exposure comes with a psychological cost.
Social media alone certainly isn’t to blame for the anxious and divisive state of America’s political climate. In our research, we identified a number of factors that contribute to Americans’ current levels of exhaustion with politics, including sharp increases in partisan hostility and negative – often uncivil – campaign tactics.
But social media nonetheless stands out for how efficiently it amplifies this stress – and that is unlikely to change unless and until voters become more aware that their emotions and well-being are being negatively influenced by the very platforms they turn to for information and connection.
I don’t own or “work for” the publisher selling our recent book, but the exposure for these data would presumably benefit both they and me.
Politics + Society – The Conversation
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Israel, after a long, devastating war in Gaza, has become so unpopular among many voters in the Democratic base that major candidates in top primaries are using even small connections to the country’s political leaders to hit their opponents.
One Illinois Democratic operative involved in this year’s primaries has dredged up a 2019 trip that Illinois U.S. Senate candidate Juliana Stratton took to Israel to meet with the then-leader of the Israeli opposition Tzipi Livni. The operative, who was granted anonymity because they feared getting blacklisted from future political campaigns, went even further back citing a decade-old plus arrest warrant a British court issued related to a weeks-long conflict with Gaza that started in December 2008. And one of Stratton’s opponents has gone on the record criticizing the trip.
Livni, of course, is one of Netanyahu’s top critics and is solidly on the left in Israel. She is a vocal advocate of a Palestinian state aside a secure Israel despite support for a two-state solution in Israel falling precipitously in recent years. And she has met with numerous Democratic politicians over the years, including Joe Biden in 2010, Barack Obama in 2013 and a congressional delegation led by Nancy Pelosi in 2018.
Despite that record, Illinois Senate primary opponent Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) said that Stratton’s 2019 meeting with Livni raises questions about her leadership.
“Illinois voters believe that judgement matters,” she said in a statement to POLITICO when asked about Stratton’s Livni meeting. “Juliana Stratton owes them an explanation.”
Kelly sees her stance on Livni as one of her progressive bona fides.
“When I first ran for office I made a promise that nothing would compromise my ability to look myself in the mirror each day, and I’ve spent my career standing up and speaking out against injustice,” she said. “I’m the only candidate to call what happened in Gaza a genocide, reject AIPAC money, and refuse ICE-contractor cash.”
Kelly’s views on Israel’s conduct in Gaza have also shifted since she entered the Senate race in May. Kelly and Stratton, who is backed by Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, are facing Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the frontrunner in the March 17 primary. Less than a year ago, Kelly even accepted donations from pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, and she’s been to Israel numerous times as part of congressional trips. In January, Kelly said she wouldn’t take AIPAC money again.
Even tangential ties to the longtime U.S. ally are likely to become campaign issues across the country as the conflict with Iran intensifies into a regional conflagration. All three candidates following the strikes on Iran were quick to condemn the joint U.S.-Israeli action, citing what they believed was Trump’s overreach and swift action without congressional approval. Other Democrats have voiced concern that Trump’s decision could plunge the U.S. into another protracted war in the Middle East.
A Gallup poll released Friday found that around two-thirds of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians with only around 20 percent saying they are aligned with Israelis, down from half of Democrats being pro-Israel in 2016. Nearly 50 percent of Democrats even had an unfavorable view of the Israeli people, while the same amount had a favorable view, according to a Pew poll taken in September.
Stratton is not the only Democratic candidate who has been criticized by rivals for ties to Israel. In the Michigan Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed has blasted rival Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) for being a vocal advocate of Israel and protesters have shown up to her office to denounce donations she’s received from AIPAC. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), whose Senate primary is Tuesday, has also been forced to defend herself for voting to fund defensive weapons for Israel.
Stratton, the current lieutenant governor of Illinois, went to Israel as part of the “2019 Influential Women in Leadership Delegation” organized by the America-Israel Friendship League and the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A video from the organization shows her meeting with Livni, the former vice prime minister and foreign affairs minister.
In 2009, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Livni over accusations of war crimes in Gaza for her role during Operation Cast Lead. She was a member of the Israeli war cabinet during the conflict, which Palestinian authorities and an Israeli human rights organization said killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
She was supposed to give a speech in London at the time but later cancelled her trip. The warrant was withdrawn after the court found out that she wasn’t in the U.K. and the British government formally apologized to her for the arrest warrant.
She also had told Palestinian counterparts in 2007 during negotiations that even though she was the justice minister, “I am against law – international law in particular” and that “Palestinians don’t really need international law.”
Livni’s office has said she was “proud of all her decisions regarding Operation Cast Lead” and that the conflict achieved its objectives to protect Israel and restore Israel’s deterrence from Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza.
The America-Israel Friendship League, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and Livni didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Although Israel has yet to become a leading issue in the campaign, at a recent debate Stratton said she wanted to “see the suffering end” in the region and said that Netanyahu should step down.
Asked about the trip, a Stratton campaign spokesperson said in an email that the Livni meeting was “a group meeting that took place on a delegation trip promoting women in leadership coordinated by a third party – Juliana did not arrange the meeting and was one of several participants.” The spokesperson reiterated that she supports a two-state solution and “wants to see lasting peace in the region.”
This reporting first appeared in Illinois Playbook. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every weekday.
Politics
Carrie Underwood had a pointed response after getting booed during ‘American Idol’s Hollywood Week in Nashville. Continue reading…The Boot – Country Music News, Music Videos and Songs
Carrie Underwood had a pointed response after getting booed during ‘American Idol’s Hollywood Week in Nashville. Continue reading…Country Music News – Taste of Country
On Jan. 6, 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared to a raucous crowd of President Donald Trump’s supporters, many of whom were moments away from storming the U.S. Capitol: “We will not quit fighting.”
Five years later, Paxton’s fighting spirit has him poised to unseat a 24-year incumbent.
It’s been a steady journey. As Texas’ top lawyer, Paxton became a hero of the far right by using rapid-fire lawsuits to spearhead their most important causes, from expanding religious influence in schools to attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He presented himself as a foil to the Obama and Biden administrations, filing more than 100 lawsuits over issues like immigration and environmental regulations. And he continues to steer the power of his office toward investigating alleged election irregularities, particularly in Democratic-led cities like Houston.
On Tuesday, the MAGA grassroots that fueled his rise will reach its apex of influence so far: Paxton is well-positioned to finish first against John Cornyn in the GOP primary for his Senate seat, despite being saddled with tons of political baggage and targeted by millions of dollars in attack ads.
The bare-knuckle Senate primary is likely headed to a runoff, dragging out the party’s own angst over generational change.
For the far-right in Texas, Paxton’s arc shows the ascendent strength of their movement, which has pushed Republican leaders toward adopting increasingly conservative positions. For Cornyn, it means the potential end of his long career in the Senate, and the near-extinction of establishment Republicans within the party.
“Ken Paxton is more than just an attorney general that’s been MAGA. He is a symbol of the heart of the grassroots MAGA movement,” said Steve Bannon, the former senior adviser to Trump and War Room host who has been broadcasting his popular show from a rented ranch in North Texas in the days leading up to the election.
“He’s resilient because folks here know he has fought the good fight for years and years and years,” Bannon said. “He has resilience because people know where his heart is, and he’s a fighter.”
Cornyn is in serious trouble
The MAGA movement is tenacious in protecting its own and knifing its Republican rivals. Paxton has survived an impeachment by the GOP-controlled state House, a federal securities fraud investigation and slew of ethics complaints. Three months after beginning his Senate campaign last year, Paxton’s wife filed for divorce, alleging an extramarital affair. His competitors — including Cornyn, who has said Paxton is too unethical to serve in public office — have hammered his trail of scandals.
And still he’s the front-runner.
Paxton has continued to lead in polling — from even before he launched — despite a concerted effort by Republicans in Washington to boost Cornyn.
“Ideally you want a saint to be your elected leader, and that is something we all hope and pray for one of these days,” said Bo French, former chair of the Tarrant County Republican party, who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. “But until that happens, we need people who are going to be warriors for the cause. And he is seen and beloved among Republican primary voters in Texas as a warrior.”
Cornyn knows the strong headwinds he’s facing, conceding that the composition of primary voters doesn’t reflect his usual base of support. Many Texas Republicans remain angry with the senator for voting in favor of a bipartisan gun control package after the Uvalde school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Cornyn was famously booed onstage at the Texas GOP convention in 2022.
“If only the most radical people show up in the primary … then I think that’s going to be a challenge,” Cornyn said in an interview Saturday with CBS. His other primary opponent, Rep. Wesley Hunt, who is also running a campaign appealing to the far right, said on X that Cornyn’s comments show he has “lost touch with the people you’re supposed to represent” and “your contempt for the voters of Texas is exactly why your career is coming to an end.”
Trump has not endorsed in the race, throwing a wrench into any MAGA pickup Cornyn could get — or that could put Paxton over the line. At an event in Corpus Christi last week, Trump said he had “pretty much” decided who to support, but did not reveal that pick.
Democrats believe Paxton’s baggage makes him beatable in the general election, a view shared by many national Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who is working to keep Cornyn in the GOP caucus.
Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party, said Paxton jeopardizes Republicans at every level of the ticket. “Every one of these top-tier Republicans in the state is wildly unpopular, and they’ll be led by Ken Paxton,” he said. “That’s what puts a lot of these different seats in interesting hands.”
The MAGA vs. establishment fight has been years in the making
Paxton has endured years of legal and personal scrutiny. He also kept winning.
Texas Republicans have repeatedly reelected both Cornyn to the Senate and Paxton as attorney general, backing the leaders of both wings of the party. But recent elections have shown the growing strength of the MAGA faction.
Paxton’s reelections have been aided by the deep coffers of Texas megadonors like Tim Dunn and the Wilks brothers in addition to his hyper-conservative supporters. In 2022, he was challenged by Land Commissioner George P. Bush — the relative of former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Bush tried to sell conservative voters on his vision to restore integrity to the attorney general’s office at a time when Paxton was facing years of securities fraud investigations and bribery allegations. It’s a playbook Paxton allies say Cornyn is reusing.
Voters seemed to prefer Paxton’s combative style. Paxton thumped Bush by a two-to-one margin in that year’s run-off, the clearest sign yet that voters were siding with the MAGA wing and rejecting the old-school establishment.
In 2022, Paxton agreed to pay restitution and perform community service to settle the securities fraud case, which was brought over allegations that he duped investors in a tech startup. The Justice Department, in the final weeks of the Biden administration, decided not to prosecute Paxton over the remaining bribery charges. That eventually led the GOP-heavy Texas House to impeach him before the Senate voted to acquit.
As scrutiny over Paxton intensified within the Texas Republican Party, he cast himself as a martyr, a victim of spurious probes that not only threatened him, but also the integrity of the MAGA base. For the far-right, Paxton’s impeachment acquittal only further strengthened his parallels to Trump.
The onslaught energized his supporters. State Rep. Gary Gates, a Republican, learned that firsthand when he publicly recanted his vote to impeach Paxton after dealing with blowback from the base.
“There was a certain faction of those that support him that were rather upset,” said Gates, who represents a suburban district outside of Houston. “You have to deal with that political reality.”
Paxton often brags that he was one of the few Republicans to attend Trump’s campaign launch at Mar-A-Lago in 2022, when many in the party had abandoned him following the violent insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.
“When you try to take out somebody like those two guys who have fought for our values, and the whole world is weaponized against them, the people are ride-or-die,” said Aaron Reitz, a former deputy in Paxton’s office who, with his backing, is running to succeed him.
“I hope that the establishment wing of the GOP would learn a similar lesson when they have tried to take out Trump, which is they are not in control of this party,” Reitz said. “The grassroots, the people, are in control of the party, and they have to stop spending their millions.”
How Paxton got here
Paxton’s deep base of support is built in part from his lawsuits against frequent targets of the right — high-profile cases that were splashed on the front pages of local newspapers from Beaumont to Amarillo. Throughout his decade as Texas’ top lawyer, Paxton oversaw the Lone Star State’s transformation into an incubator for ultra conservatives issues, from defending abortion restrictions to warning that Muslims will attempt to introduce Islamic law in Texas.
At a recent campaign event in the Houston suburbs as early voting was underway, Paxton ticked off his courtroom successes to a group gathered at a “safari ranch” in Richmond with roaming peacocks, zebras and goats.
Paxton, speaking to the crowd of about 75 supporters, recounted the beginning of his career, starting with when he decided to run for attorney general during his first term in the state legislature because he viewed former President Barack Obama as “a really epic threat” who relied excessively on executive orders to bypass Congress.
In his first AG race, Paxton rode the wave of the Tea Party insurgency to topple an establishment Republican backed by former President George W. Bush. Paxton told the audience, to chuckles, that he sued Obama 27 times in the 22 months they overlapped.
After Obama left office and Trump took his place, Paxton turned his sights away from the White House and toward Silicon Valley. He sued Google (“who was doing really bad things”), Facebook (“we got a lot of money from them”), Twitter (“before Elon”) and Pfizer (“they lied about the vaccine”).
Then Paxton became fixated on probing voter fraud allegations, making him an instrumental figure in Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. He even filed a case directly with the Supreme Court seeking to invalidate election results in Pennsylvania and other battleground states — though the justices rejected his attempt, ruling Texas did not have standing.
When Joe Biden was sworn in, Paxton picked back up his onslaught against the federal government. Then Trump was reelected in 2024, Paxton said, and he “felt like I didn’t have a mission. I’d done my three different missions. I felt like 12 years was enough.”
“And I looked around,” Paxton told the crowd, “and I saw a guy: John Cornyn.”
Adam Wren contributed reporting.
Politics