Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), a longtime leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, won’t seek reelection next year — another blow to Democrats’ efforts to keep control of the House after the midterm elections.

Butterfield, first elected to an Eastern North Carolina congressional seat in 2004, saw his district undergo significant changes in redistricting. Under its current configuration, now-President Joe Biden won by about 9 points there last year, as Butterfield won reelection by a similar margin — the closest of his electoral career.

Republicans in the state legislature shifted the lines to make the seat less Democratic, however, in the new map, which was enacted earlier this month. Biden would only have won the seat by 3 points under the new lines, and the National Republican Congressional Committee has identified the 74-year-old Butterfield as one of its top targets next year.

Democrats are suing over the new map, arguing that it dilutes the influence of Black voters in his district, which is currently divided roughly evenly between white people and Black people. But the party, in the immediate term, will be looking for another candidate to keep the seat in Democratic hands: The filing deadline for the early-March 2022 primary is Dec. 17.

Target Corp. Chief Executive Brian Cornell says the retailer continued to show the same strength heading into the back end of the year as it did during the front end, reporting third-quarter earnings and revenue that blew past Street expectations.

Net income totaled $1.49 billion, or $3.04 per share, up from $1.01 billion, or $2.01 per share, last year. Adjusted EPS of $3.03 was ahead of the FactSet consensus for $2.82.

Revenue totaled $25.65 billion, up from $22.63 billion a year ago and also ahead of the FactSet consensus for $24.61 billion.

Digital sales were up 29%. And comp sales growth, which the company says was driven by traffic, was up 12.7%. The FactSet consensus was for growth of 8.2%.

“With a strong inventory position heading into the peak of the holiday season, our team and our business are ready to serve our guests and poised to deliver continued, strong growth, through the holiday season and beyond,” Cornell said in an earnings statement.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/target-blows-past-quarterly-earnings-expectations-11637148887?reflink=mw_share_twitter

America's young women are on the cusp of a rite of passage that's been reserved for men until now: registering with the Selective Service when they turn 18.

Driving the news: Whether allowing women to serve in combat also means they should have to sign up for the military draft has been a debate for decades. Now, an unlikely coalition of feminists, veterans and conservatives could make it law as part of the Senate's expected passage of the National Defense Authorization Act.

The House included the change when it passed its version of the NDAA in September. The Senate could act as early as this week.

A majority on the Senate Armed Services Committee backed the change in a markup over the summer. One group of Republicans now is renewing an effort to block it as the Senate considers amendments before a final vote, but it's not clear they have the numbers to stop it.

Jury selection in the federal sex-trafficking trial for Ghislaine Maxwell got underway Tuesday in a Manhattan courtroom. Judge Alison Nathan questioned potential jurors about the case, looking to winnow down a jury pool of hundreds of people into a panel that will hear charges that Maxwell helped disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse minors as young as 14.

Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the crimes. She's accused of luring minors and young women into Epstein's orbit from the 1990s into the early 2000s, grooming them for sexual abuse and sometimes participating in sexual encounters herself.

Jury selection is expected to be a lengthy process
On Tuesday, Maxwell watched as the judge questioned prospective jurors about the case in the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in lower Manhattan.

A key question centered on whether the jurors were familiar with Maxwell or Epstein's names — and if so, whether what they already know about them would make if difficult to act as a a fair and impartial juror.

In my political circles, the socialist and activist left, the recent defeat of India Walton, a democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, seemed all too familiar, even if she lost in an unusual way to the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron Brown. Ms. Walton prevailed against Mr. Brown in the Democratic primary, but for the general election, he ran a write-in campaign to retain his position.

That outcome saddens and disappoints me. Like many admirers of Ms. Walton, I believe she was terribly mistreated by the New York Democratic Party, which largely fell in line behind Mr. Brown, even though he was not running as a Democrat. It’s not fair that Ms. Walton had to run against him twice, with the weight of a lot of centrist Democrats and Republicans behind him in the general election, and that he enjoyed the support of several prominent labor unions and much of the city’s and state’s larger party infrastructure. (Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand did endorse Ms. Walton.)

Nevertheless, I am willing to say something far too few leftists seem willing to: Not only did Mr. Brown win, but he won resoundingly (the race is not officially over but stands at roughly 59 percent for Mr. Brown to 41 percent for Ms. Walton); it’s time for young socialists and progressive Democrats to recognize that our beliefs just might not be popular enough to win elections consistently. It does us no favors to pretend otherwise.

What too many young socialists and progressive Democrats don’t seem to realize is that it’s perfectly possible that the Democratic Party is biased against our beliefs and that our beliefs simply aren’t very popular.

Oh FFS - they are still there. "QAnon followers who flocked to grassy knoll to 'see JFK Jr. come back to life and announce a presidential run with Trump' REFUSE to leave Dallas hotel and call city their 'promised land'"

Whole thing is a larp to make us look bad.

Can we image search and link these to fed bois? No way there are still people there.

Only Soros has money for a week+ of hotel.