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PHILADELPHIA — Joel Embiid has missed 16 games this season because of left knee injury management, knee swelling, personal reasons and a three-game suspension. But after he misses his 17th contest against the Orlando Magic, the 2023 NBA MVP will start to wade into dangerous territory and be in jeopardy, once again, of being disqualified for regular-season awards. The NBA, in cooperation with the National Basketball Players Association, instituted a 65-game rule last season for awards, hoping it would deter players and teams from leaning on load management to take off games. The seven-time All-Star was disqualified last season after playing in only 39 games. The most games Embiid can play in this season is 65 if he participates in all of the remaining contests starting with Sunday’s game against the Bulls in Chicago. But that is highly unlikely since Embiid is not expected to play on back-to-back nights because of load management. Embiid, who has missed the last six games, is averaging career lows of 19.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.0 block. He’s also registering career lows of 37.9% shooting from the field and 16.7% on 3-pointers. While he’ll remain sidelined, Paul George will return after a one game of load management to face the Magic (16-8) at the Wells Fargo Center. Meanwhile, center Andre Drummond (sprained right ankle) was upgraded to questionable after being scheduled to miss the game. His status change could be tied with reserve center Adem Bona being sidelined with a bruised left knee. The Sixers (5-15) will look to avenge Wednesday’s 106-102 loss to Orlando. ©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.NoneWelcome to Pollapalooza, our occasional polling column. Americans disapprove of Biden pardoning his son For months, President Joe Biden was clear: Despite his constitutional right to pardon people of crimes, he would not issue a pardon for his son Hunter, who was convicted earlier this year for illegally purchasing a firearm and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and filing false tax returns . But on Dec. 1, he went back on his word, issuing a " Full and Unconditional Pardon " of the younger Biden. The pardon covered not only the crimes he's been convicted of, but also any "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." Politicians on both sides of the aisle were quick to condemn the pardon as self-serving and hypocritical, and the public's reaction hasn't been much better. According to a YouGov poll conducted on Dec. 2, only 34 percent of Americans approved of the president's decision to pardon his son, while 50 percent disapproved — including 35 percent who "strongly" disapproved. Interestingly, though, that's a more divided reaction than a previous YouGov poll showed back in September 2023, when the idea of a Hunter Biden pardon was completely hypothetical. Back then, only 13 percent of Americans said they would support the president pardoning his son, and 72 percent said they would oppose it — including 56 percent who "strongly" opposed it. If you dig into the polls' crosstabs, you can see that this shift was largely caused by Democrats . In the 2023 poll, Democrats opposed a Hunter Biden pardon 64 percent to 21 percent. But in this week's poll, those numbers were exactly reversed: 64 percent of Democrats approved of the pardon, and 21 percent disapproved. Why the 180? It's possible that the election of President-elect Donald Trump caused Democrats to look at Hunter Biden's situation differently. Trump has promised to prosecute his political enemies , so Democrats may feel that Hunter Biden needs legal protection from being unfairly targeted. During his first term, Trump also pardoned several political allies and has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters during his second term, so Democrats may feel that Biden's pardon is mild in comparison. Democrats may also have been convinced by Joe Biden's argument in his pardon notice that Hunter Biden was treated more harshly just because he was the president's son. But it's also possible that Democrats have gotten on board with the Hunter Biden pardon simply because the Democratic president did. Political science research is clear that voters change their opinions about things based on the cues of trusted elites. When Joe Biden was saying that he would " respect the judicial process " with regard to his son's conviction, Democrats agreed with him. When Biden changed his mind and issued the pardon, a lot of Democrats probably followed his cue. And in this, Hunter Biden's is just like most other high-profile presidential pardons over the years. In a separate survey , YouGov asked Americans if they approved or disapproved of 18 specific pardons since the 1970s, and one consistent pattern was that Democrats tended to approve of pardons issued by Democratic presidents and Republicans tended to approve of pardons issued by Republican presidents. As it so often does, partisanship rules all — even in matters of criminal justice. —Nathaniel Rakich Do Trump voters actually like Sarah McBride? This year saw a major milestone for the transgender community: Democrat Sarah McBride was elected as the first openly transgender representative in the House, representing Delaware's at-large congressional district. In the wake of her election, South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender women from using women's restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, which she said was explicitly intended to target McBride. The issue caused some predictable controversy, with multiple members of the House issuing statements and Speaker Mike Johnson announcing a policy to bar transgender women from women's restrooms in the Capitol and House office buildings. In the wake of all this controversy, we'd typically turn to the polls to help us sort out what people think about the incident and the people involved in it. Indeed, YouGov/The Economist asked respondents how they felt about McBride and Mace in their weekly survey after the dispute. According to the poll, Mace had a net favorability of 0, while McBride had a net favorability of +2, though only about half of respondents said they had an opinion of either woman. But a look under the hood provides a bit of insight — and a note of caution — about interpreting polling data on relatively unknown public figures. Both politicians were assessed in what's known as a "favorability battery," in which a pollster shows respondents a list of people and asks if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each. The battery here included 14 people, some of whom, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are outspoken Trump allies. In fact, other than McBride and Mace, every name on the list was someone that Trump has nominated to a position in his upcoming administration. And it appears that respondents figured that out: Each person had higher favorability ratings among Trump voters than Harris voters. That included McBride, which may indicate respondents who hadn't actually heard of her before assumed she was affiliated with Trump's incoming administration, rather than a political figure who'd made the news for very different reasons. While Trump voters may have been inclined to rate all of Trump's nominees positively, Harris voters appear to have done the opposite. According to this survey, McBride's favorability is underwater by 10 points among Harris voters, while she enjoys a positive 20 point net favorability among Trump voters. In addition, 46 percent of respondents to the survey gave an opinion of McBride, an implausibly large number claiming to be familiar with a freshly elected representative from one of America's smallest states. This is just one example of a poll that appears to tell us one thing on the surface, but underneath it may be measuring something completely different. In this case, we see a significant number of respondents who appear to be answering the survey based entirely on perceived partisanship (we sometimes call this expressive responding ). And while normally we might say to just "throw it in the average," in this case we can't: This is the only national survey we've seen that asked Americans how they feel about McBride. Unfortunately for us, it looks like we still don't really know. —Mary Radcliffe Morning in America for Republicans Americans have undoubtedly been feeling down on the state of the country throughout the last election cycle, but at least some are feeling more optimistic now that the election is over. In a CivicScience poll the week after the election, 46 percent of respondents said they were optimistic about the future of the country, up from the 38 percent who said the same in the spring of 2023. That change was driven largely by a big swing among Republicans: The week after the election, 63 percent said they felt very or somewhat optimistic, compared to just 32 percent last year. In comparison, optimism increased just 4 points among independents and decreased 12 points among Democrats. Other recent polls on the national mood show even more drastic shifts within each party before and after the election, with Democrats and Republicans practically swapping positions on the same questions. For example, Trump's trademark Make America Great Again slogan fed off the increasingly prevalent idea that America's best days are in its past, but Democratic voters in a post-election YouGov/CBS News poll are now much more likely to agree with that sentiment than Republicans. For their part, Republicans seem confident Trump will make good on his MAGA pledge: In a turnabout from how they felt in October, more than two-thirds now say America's best days are in its future. In other recent polling, the share of registered voters who think things in the U.S. are "generally headed in the right direction" remained relatively low (around 30 percent) in the months before and after the election, but that feeling has risen sharply among Republicans while plummeting among Democrats , most of whom now say the country is "off on the wrong track." These patterns aren't unique to the 2024 election, though. For instance, YouGov/The Economist's regular tracking polls show that there was a huge bump in the share of Republicans who felt good about the country's direction right after Trump's 2016 victory, and an even bigger one after he took office the next January. The same was true for Democrats after Biden's win four years later. Needless to say, it's pretty normal in today's highly polarized times for Americans' outlook for the country to correlate closely with whether their preferred party holds the presidency. But there are ways that Republicans' optimism and Democrats' pessimism this year does stand out. Notably, Democrats are particularly pessimistic about the future of their own party, while Republicans are riding high. A mid-November survey by Pew Research found that Americans who identify with or lean toward the GOP felt better about their party's future than they ever have in the Trump era: A whopping 86 percent said they felt optimistic, compared to only 13 percent who felt pessimistic. In contrast, only 51 percent of Democrats said they felt optimistic about the future of their party, while 49 percent felt pessimistic. That's 10 points lower than the 61 percent who were still optimistic about the party after Trump's first win in 2016, and a drop of more than 30 points compared to 2020. So while Republicans try to put their optimism into action, Democrats look to be in for some soul searching. —Tia Yang
India's longest bull market has more room to run - Morgan StanleyStanding Out In The Crowd: ColorCase's Pelican CasesElon Musk, the world's richest person and one of Donald Trump's closest allies, met with US lawmakers Thursday on his plans for overseeing radical government spending cuts under the incoming administration. President-elect Trump rewarded the Tesla, X and SpaceX chief for his support during the White House campaign by naming him head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, along with another wealthy ally, Vivek Ramaswamy. Although the office, dubbed DOGE, has a purely advisory role, Musk's star power and intense influence in Trump's inner circle bring political clout. As Musk and Ramaswamy strode into the Capitol for meetings with lawmakers, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson touted "a new day in America." "There's an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse," he told reporters. "Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does almost nothing well." Musk and Ramaswamy have said they can identify billions of dollars of cuts in spending, sparking questions about whether Republicans will even try to slash politically popular social security programs. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last month, the two businessmen laid out plans for the White House to cut staff, trim government programs and reduce federal regulations, even if it means bypassing Congress, which holds budgetary power. "The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote. "We're doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. During Trump's election campaign, Musk vowed to reduce federal spending by $2 trillion. This would represent cutting total US spending by a third, almost certainly meaning devastation of social support programs -- something that has never garnered strong political backing. Musk's emphasis on firing large numbers of government employees, however, echoes Republican talking points about the need to take on an overbearing state and may garner more support. Musk says he is seeking "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy." Musk suggested banning government employees from working at home as an opening tactic. "Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome." Cuts will also target subsidies to public broadcasters and groups such as Planned Parenthood, which campaigns for abortion access and offers an array of reproductive health services. But DOGE is unlikely, at least initially, to go after welfare programs such as Social Security or health insurance for the poor and seniors, Ramaswamy said in an interview with Axios on Wednesday. Such cuts should be "a policy decision that belongs to the voters" and their representatives in Congress, Ramaswamy said. A reduction in military spending, which climbed to $820 billion in 2023, is also unlikely to be on the table. Musk's new role raises the question of potential conflicts of interest, since he could be issuing policy recommendations that impact directly on his own business empire. Underlining the close connection to DOGE, Musk's favorite cryptocurrency is called Dogecoin. rle/ev/md/sms/md
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Victoria’s Secret & Co. Reports Third Quarter 2024 ResultsFans of Beyoncé were shocked to note a surprising tweak in the superstar's last name. Amid controversial accusations involving her husband Jay-Z and Sean "Diddy" Combs — with both having denied allegations of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl at a MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000 — Forbes listed Beyoncé as "Beyoncé Knowles" versus her full married name "Beyoncé Knowles-Carter." This incited speculation among fans about a discreet change to her public persona. Disney was 'hesitant' in allowing Jay-Z at Lion King red carpet amid allegations Beyonce and Jay-Z's $200 million mansion in danger as Franklin Fire covers Malibu Social media users swiftly reacted by circulating Forbes' depiction of the star, pondering whether it signified a strategic shift: "My good sis where's your hyphen," one fan probed, while another claimed: "Look how she don't want Carter associated with her now." Questions like "When did Beyonce change her last name?" surfaced alongside declarations such as: "The soft launch name change." A die-hard Beyoncé fan questioned the recent media narrative, commenting: "Forbes has ALWAYS gone by just Beyoncé-Knowles. This is NOT new. Why are you trying to come up with a false narrative?" Certain fans interpreted the move as possibly preluding upcoming endeavors: "The soft launch name change is a clever way to tease something new!" However, some pointed out that Forbes has consistently used either "Beyoncé" or "Beyoncé Knowles," excluding “Beyoncé Knowles-Carter” from their references, reports the Mirror. Despite this claim, Forbes did call the superstar "Beyoncé Knowles-Carter," back in September when she debuted her Whisky brand, SirDavis. Renowned for embracing her marital surname, Beyoncé often goes by "Mrs. Carter" and even released an album entitled Cowboy Carter. Meanwhile, amid rape accusations leveled against him, Jay-Z condemned the allegations through a forceful social media statement. He blasted the claims as "heinous in nature" and sharply criticized attorney Tony Buzbee, who alleges that Sean "Diddy" Combs has over 120 victims — a contention Diddy denies. The rapper stressed: "These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one! ! Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case." Jay-Z's scathing remarks didn't end there. He also accused Buzbee of being a notorious showman, familiar with such sensationalism. "This lawyer, who I have done a bit of research on, seems to have a pattern of these type of theatrics! I have no idea how you have come to be such a deplorable human Mr. Buzbee, but I promise you I have seen your kind many times over," he asserted. "I'm more than prepared to deal with your type. You claim to be a marine?!" he continued: "Marines are known for their valor, you have neither honor nor dignity." DON'T MISS: Diddy's 5 chilling words to girl, 13, before she was allegedly 'raped by Jay Z' [INSIGHT] Jay-Z's statement as he says he's 'heartbroken' to share accusation with kids [COMMENT] Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher 'moving to Europe' as Diddy strain mounts [LATEST] Jay-Z also shared his distress over the potential impact this lawsuit could have on his family: "My only heartbreak is for my family," he stated. "My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people," he expressed: "I mourn yet another loss of innocence. Children should not have to endure such at their young age." He added: "It is unfair to have to try to understand inexplicable degrees of malice meant to destroy families and human spirit. My heart and support goes out to true victims in the world, who have to watch how their life story is dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser in a cheap suit." Tony Buzbee has refuted Jay-Z's allegations of extortion and blackmail.
(The Center Square) – Adoption of institutional neutrality is supported by better than 6 in 10 tenured and nontenured faculty at the University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University and Duke University, a report says. Nationally, 66% of faculty say “colleges and universities should not take positions on political and social issues,” says Silence in the Classroom, the 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey Report. At Duke, the percentage is 71%, at Carolina 65%, and at Wake 64%. Higher education is facing mounting challenges, from the costs to the positions it favors. Silencing students or faculty has drawn sharp criticism from Capitol Hill to every corner of the nation sending people to the ballot box. Carolina, established in 1789, is the nation’s oldest public university. It also earlier this year became embattled in free speech controversy tied to the war between Hamas and Israel. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression , as FIRE is more formally known, is a nonprofit nonpartisan organization billing itself as “defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought.” Surveys on topics related to free expression and academic freedom were made of 6,269 tenured, tenure-track and nontenure faculty at 55 four-year colleges and universities in America. In North Carolina, the sampling was of 145 at Carolina, 80 at Duke, and 55 at Wake Forest. For each campus, respondents said the top “difficult issue to discuss” is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Asked for top three issues, the Middle East saga was 79% at Carolina, 71% at Wake Forest and 68% at Duke. Each campus was split on the second and third choices. At Duke, 57% said affirmative action and 51% transgender rights. At Carolina, 54% said affirmative action and 53% racial inequality. And at Wake, 63% said racial inequality and 55% transgender rights. All were talking points of various candidates, particularly the presidential race, in the election cycle climaxing last month. In response to faculty feeling “they could not express their opinion because of how others would respond,” the choices of “occasionally,” “fairly often” and “very often” drew a combined 69% at Wake Forest, 69% at Duke and 67% at Carolina. Fairly often and very often were 35% at Duke. Statements pledging commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is rarely or never justified of faculty job candidates, said 61% at Duke, 44% at Carolina and 42% at Wake Forest. Nationally, the response was 50%. Academic freedom leaned more toward secure than not at all three institutions on a split of about 60%-40%. As for faculty feeling a need to “hide their political beliefs from other faculty in an attempt to keep their job,” answers of “never” were chosen by 43% at Duke, 42% at Carolina and 36% at Wake Forest. Among the national findings of the FIRE survey: • More faculty (35%) than during the McCarthy era (9%) say they toned down their writing for fear of controversy. • Threats of discipline for teaching, research, academic talks or other off-campus speech was incurred by 14%. • Faculty feeling unable to speak freely for fear of how others would respond was 27%. • Fear of damaged reputations because of misunderstandings with something said or done was 40%. • Fear of losing jobs because of misunderstandings with something said or done was 23%.
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