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There are two winless teams left in the NFL this season.

One of them is the Texans, which probably doesnt come as much of a surprise given the low expectations they carried into the year. The Raiders being 0-3 is a bit more unexpected, but thats where they find themselves after a late rally fell short in a 24-22 road loss to the Titans.

That loss comes after the Raiders blew a big lead against the Cardinals at home in Week Two and wide receiver Davante Adams said the early season results are not sitting well with him.

Frustrated and angry, Adams said, via SI.com. Expect more. Its not easy to win in this league. We know that. Nobodys naive to the fact that nobodys just going to lay down and just give you a victory, but at the end of the day we expect more and we will do better as we move forward.

Adams later said frustration is OK as long as you do something about it and the challenge for the Raiders moving forward will be figuring out how to execute at a higher level quickly enough to keep the season from going completely off the rails.

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Davante Adams frustrated and angry by 0-3 start - NBC Sports

DeSantiss focus on television was prescient. Ron was obsessed with Fox. Thats how he got on Trumps radar, a former adviser said. Multiple Republicans who interacted with DeSantis told me DeSantis began tailoring his policies to appeal to Fox viewers. His first question was always, How will that play on Fox? If you give an opinion he doesnt like, he says, I dont think that will play well on Fox, a prominent Republican said. Fox was on in the office 24/7. Ron made it abundantly clear he would only do Fox, a former staffer remembered. Getting Ron booked on Hannity was a high priority, another former DeSantis staffer said. According to a source, DeSantis texts with Hannity and Fox host Laura Ingraham.

In 2015, DeSantis was among a group of nine Republican House members who founded the hard-right Freedom Caucus. He courted the groups then chairman, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. Jim would call Ron from across the room, and Ron would go running over, the former DeSantis staffer recalled. But DeSantis was dismissive of his peers. Ron didnt respect Mark Meadows. I could see it in the way they interacted, a former staffer said. Ron hated Kevin McCarthy. Same with Boehner. He thought he was smarter than them, a former staffer said. DeSantis was particularly turned off by social conservatives like then Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz. He also thought the Freedom Caucus guys were all nuts, a former staffer recalled. Ron had a Do Not Disturb sign and hed put it on his door anytime Chaffetz was coming by the office, another staffer said. A onetime staffer told me the sign, when hung, applied to all staff and visitors, save for Casey.

A former local newscaster, Casey DeSantis is by far her husbands closest confidant and advisersmoothing his rough edges and repairing relationships.RON SACHS/ABACA PRESS/ALAMY.

Like many elected Republicans, DeSantis was appalled when Trump ran for president. Ron made more fun of Donald Trump than anyone I know, one of the former DeSantis staffers told me. He thought Trump was fucking nuts, said another. Two staffers remembered DeSantis was particularly shocked by Trumps appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Washington in December 2015. This room negotiatesperhaps more than any room Ive spoken to, maybe more, Trump told the audience. Ron came back to the office and said, I cant believe Trump said that! Then we pulled up old SNL videos of Trump doing Dominos pizza commercials and stood around the computer making fun of Trump for 30 minutes.

DeSantis pivoted after the 2016 election. He hung out at Trumps Washington hotel, pushed a bill to defund the Mueller investigation, and shilled on Fox News. I liked him because he was out there defending me very strongly on the Mueller hoax, Trump told me in an interview last year. In November 2017, DeSantis earned an invitation to fly with Trump on Air Force One to a rally in Pensacola, Florida. DeSantiss congressional staff lamented his transformation. Ron is one of the smartest people Ive come in contact with. He had such potential, but he became nothing but a Trump suck-up. Its really sad, a former staffer told me. Ron is an intellectual. And then theres this persona hes a populist-like Trump figure, which is very clearly crafted, another said.

DeSantiss MAGA makeover paid off when he ran for governor in 2018. During the GOP primary, Trump gave DeSantis two endorsements and propelled DeSantis to close a 17-point deficit on the front-runner, the states moderate agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam. Ron went through the roof as soon as I endorsed him, Trump said. A month before the primary, DeSantis aired a campaign ad that showed him reading Trumps Art of the Deal to his infant son, Mason, and encouraging his toddler daughter, Madison, to build a wall with toy blocks. DeSantis beat Putnam by 20 points.

DeSantis yoked himself even tighter to Trump when he faced Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum in the general election. DeSantiss campaign went sideways out of the gate when he told a Fox News interviewer, The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by electing Gillum, who would have become Floridas first Black governor. DeSantis insisted the apparent racist dog whistle was unintentional and privately blamed his staff for failing to clean up the controversy. He has a hard time taking responsibility for anything that goes wrong, a member of the campaign said. A month before the election, polls were deadlocked. To right the ship, DeSantis hired Trumps 2016 Florida campaign chief, Susie Wiles, to run his campaign. Meanwhile, a parade of MAGA royalty campaigned for DeSantis, who defeated Gillum by 30,000 votes. Trump dragged Ron across the finish line, a longtime Trump adviser told me.

The biggest complaint you hear about DeSantis is that he never says thank you.

A rift between the two men opened almost immediately. DeSantis seems to be making the political calculation that, whether Trump runs in 2024 or not, the 76-year-old former president has an expiration date. Trumps list of legal and political liabilities continues to grow. During the week of August 8 alone, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to retrieve hundreds of government documentsmore than 100 highly classifiedTrump allegedly took from the White House; a Manhattan judge ordered Trumps company to stand trial in October for criminal tax fraud; and New York attorney general Letitia James deposed Trump in her long-running investigation into his business practices.

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Ron DeSantis: The Making and Remaking (and Remaking) of a MAGA Heir - Vanity Fair

Three Republicans running in what should be winnable races this year have been all but abandoned by the national GOP, leaving them in limbo with just over a month to go until Novembers midterm elections.

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastrianos bid for governor is failing to gain traction. In Arizona, Senate nominee Blake Masters has seen funding dry up for his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly. And in Ohio, J.R. Majewskis challenge to the longest-serving woman in the history of the House of Representatives was hobbled last week after a national Republican campaign group pulled its advertising for him.

To be sure, all three candidates could still win in November. But right now theyre struggling, and their fellow Republicans dont seem keen to help.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Doug Mastriano won the May primary for the Republican gubernatorial nomination easily, securing more than 40% of the vote in a crowded field. This came despite an unsuccessful effort by more moderate Republicans to consolidate around an alternative candidate, which was undercut by former President Donald Trumps last-minute endorsement of Mastriano.

A former Army colonel, Mastriano didnt rely on traditional advertising during the primary. Instead, he played to hard-right Pennsylvania Republican voters on social media, and won a following by opposing anti-COVID-19 efforts and supporting Trumps baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

GOP power brokers in the state were trying to stop Mastriano because they felt his views were too extreme for general election voters in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. Mastriano attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., and has sued the committee investigating the events of that day for wanting to question him. Hes also said that he would put in place new voting restrictions and has called for a complete ban on abortion.

There is also concern that if elected, Mastriano would try to throw out Pennsylvanias election results in 2024 should the state be won by a Democratic presidential candidate.

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Former President Donald Trump and Mastriano at the rally in Wilkes-Barre. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

The Republican Governors Association has not thrown financial support behind Mastriano, instead focusing on other races. At an event last month, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey the RGA chairman said the group would not fund lost causes.

You have to show us something, you have to demonstrate that you can move numbers and you can raise resources, Ducey added, in remarks recently reported by Axios.

Last week a Mastriano campaign adviser called for supporters to push the RGA to get involved in the race. Appearing in a Facebook livestream, Mastriano noted he was really not finding a lot of support from the national-level Republican organizations. Mastriano has avoided talking to the press, and a Saturday rally in the state capital of Harrisburg was sparsely attended.

The governors race was seen as winnable. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who is not running again due to term limits, is unpopular. But the Democratic nominee going up against Mastriano, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has already won two statewide races, emerged unscathed from the gubernatorial primary in which he was the only candidate, and has been a successful fundraiser, giving him a major financial edge.

While Mastriano has been mostly absent from the airwaves, Shapiro started running ads criticizing Mastrianos positions before Mastriano had even won the GOP nomination. Shapiro explained the tactic to Yahoo News in May, saying he felt it was apparent Mastriano would win the nomination and adding, We think theres a clear contrast in this race and we want to make sure were out in front highlighting those differences and getting a jump on the general election.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvanias Democratic nominee for governor, at Franklin County Democratic Party headquarters on Sept. 17 in Chambersburg. (Marc Levy/AP)

Jim Wertz, the Democratic Party chairman in Erie County, told Yahoo News that hes had some Republican donors approach him at events asking how they could help Shapiro. Erie is one of the states most important swing counties, with Trump winning it in 2016 while winning the state and Joe Biden doing the same in 2020.

Its a real sign of trouble for the Republican Party that they continue to nominate characters that a sizable portion of the party cant support or defend, Wertz said. That said, we take nothing for granted. There is still a large contingent of election deniers and insurrectionists in the heart of the Republican Party, and we cant ignore their enthusiasm for extremist candidates and how that might affect the outcome of these midterm races.

The Mastriano campaign did not respond to Yahoo News request for comment.

Recent polling on the race has been both sparse and varied: While some surveys show Shapiro with a double-digit lead, others have Mastriano within a few points.

Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters at a rally on July 22 in Prescott, Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Blake Masters won a crowded GOP Senate primary thanks in large part to the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel and Trumps endorsement. But since August, the fundraising gap between Masters and his opponent, Democratic incumbent and former astronaut Mark Kelly, has only grown.

Thiel and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fought over who should be on the hook for backing Masters in the general election. As a result, a super-PAC aligned with McConnell canceled nearly $10 million in booked advertising across television, radio and digital last week. Thiels super-PAC, meanwhile, has bought ads supporting Masters, but Thiel himself has been reluctant to spend more of his personal fortune on the rookie candidate.

As of the most recent filings, Kelly had raised $52 million versus $4 million for Masters.

Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who has worked closely with Thiel for years, won a contentious primary for the GOP nomination by hewing close to Trump. Masters has promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats are plotting to win elections by importing immigrants to replace native-born voters; called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot a false flag operation, claiming that one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out; has blamed Black people, frankly for Americas gun violence problem; and has suggested privatizing Social Security.

Masters has been particularly hard-line on abortion, calling for a federal personhood amendment, which would criminalize the procedure nationwide.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in the U.S. Capitol on July 27. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Last year Masters said support for abortion rights had become demonic and likened the procedure to religious sacrifice. Yet amid waning polls and fundraising numbers, Masters scrubbed his website of extreme language pertaining to reproductive rights last month. Abortion remains a key issue in Arizona, where a judge ruled last week that a near-total ban dating back to an 1864 law should go back into place.

According to a recent New York Times report, Masters was in Washington, D.C., last week at an event with McConnell pressing potential donors, saying, We dont need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out.

Polling earlier this month showed Kelly with double-digit leads on Masters, but two recent surveys indicated the race has tightened. Both the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics give Kelly the edge and have the race rated as lean Democrat. In their decision to move the race from a toss-up toward Kelly last week, Cook analyst Jessica Taylor wrote that Masters was emblematic of candidates beset by problems and anemic fundraising.

Republican congressional candidate J.R. Majewski at a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Sept. 17. (Tom E. Puskar/AP)

Republican groups were fully behind Majewski in his race to defeat Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who represents the Ninth District, which runs along the states northern border with Lake Erie. Kaptur became a top Republican target earlier this year when a redrawn Ohio map made her district significantly more Republican.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy campaigned with Majewski in August, and the political novice spoke at a Trump rally earlier this month. All of this support came despite Majewskis attendance of the Jan. 6 rally and his ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

However, last Thursday, multiple outlets reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee had withdrawn a nearly $1 million ad buy. The day before, the Associated Press reported that Majewski had misrepresented his military service. According to military records, he was primarily stationed at an Air Force base in Japan but served a six-month deployment in Qatar loading planes to support the Afghanistan war effort in 2002.

Majewski, right, at the VFW Post 2529 annual corn roast in Sandusky, Ohio, on Aug. 20. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

This is in contrast to the language of his campaign, where he refers to himself as a combat veteran, and a biography published by national Republicans, which refers to him as part of a squadron [that] was one of the first on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11. The AP also found that Majewski had likely exaggerated his professional experience, unable to find evidence to support his claim that he was an executive in the nuclear power industry.

Majewski has said the AP report is incorrect. At a press conference Friday, he said that his deployments to Afghanistan were classified, he had photos of himself in Afghanistan he might share and he was considering suing the AP over the story.

Let me be clear, Majewski said. Anyone insinuating that I did not serve in Afghanistan is lying. I served in our United States of America, across multiple countries in many roles, but that didnt matter to the liberal media, who wrote a politically motivated hit piece on me.

Kaptur's campaign released a statement saying the appearance left Ohioans with more questions than answers.

His misleading claims need to be addressed, and its incumbent upon him to provide honesty and clarity not continued evasiveness and deflection, said campaign manager Kyle Buda. He has provided no evidence refuting these reports, and Ohioans need to know the truth.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, at the VFW corn roast. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Kaptur has also taken pains to separate herself from national Democrats in her newly drawn district that Trump would have won by 3 points if it had been in place in 2020. In August she even released an ad criticizing President Biden for his China policy.

Marcy Kaptur: She doesnt work for Joe Biden; she works for you, the ad says.

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mary Altaffer/AP, Rick Scuteri/AP, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

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Why the GOP has shunned some Republicans in key races - Yahoo News

A thriller on a serial killer who targets critics I had a good laugh when I learnt of the theme of Chup: Revenge of the Artist since it sounded like certain filmmakers fantasy more than a concept for a film. It took me back to an interview in which director Rohit Shetty had told me he views critics as frustrated people and vultures, adding: a few of them are even scared to meet me because they know that the moment I meet them, Im going to thrash them and go to jail for a day. (Source: The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic)

So yeah, the theme is unwittingly funny although it is dead serious. For the record, Chupis not directed by Rohit, but by R. Balki (Shamitabh, Ki & Ka, Padman) who has also written the story. The screenplay and dialogues are by Balki, Raja Sen and Rishi Virmani. And the mystery in the foreground is spun into a tribute to the film icon Guru Dutt whose Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) was famously trashed by critics and rejected by the audience, only to attain a cult status decades afterwards. He never officially directed a film again but is rumoured to have ghost directed the ones he produced in subsequent years, before dying tragically in 1964.

Guru Dutts biography is made-for-cinema material, but that is not what Chupis. The story does, however, feature elements from the filmmakers life, it overtly references his oeuvre, and in its technique and narrative style takes inspiration from the late legend.

A senior Mumbai policeman (Sunny Deol) in Chupis desperately trying to solve a series of gruesome murders of film critics. While he conducts his investigation, in the same city a young journalist called Nila (Shreya Dhanwanthary) dreams of becoming a critic. Nila meets a florist (Dulquer Salmaan), and they are immediately drawn to each other.

In the first half of Chup, Balki succeeds in creating an atmosphere of intrigue, with a blend of a deliberately languorous pace that is a curious contrast to the urgency of the polices task, Vishal Sinhas cinematography that is designed to hark back to the great V.K. Murthys play with light and shadow in Guru Dutts works, and memorable old Hindi film songs including Jaane kya tune kahi. The suspense lasts for a while after the murderers identity is revealed much earlier than you might expect, because the question of why and how next remain.

Despite this, the films grip loosens considerably as it rolls along, due to the weakness of the love saga at the centre of these proceedings. Chupis not constructed as a how/whodunnit or a police procedural, and its impact is heavily dependent on the appeal of Nilas gradually developing bond with her handsome boyfriend whose eccentricities are made known to the viewer early on but not to her. The scenes with them, however, seem more focused on looking and sounding like an old-world screen romance than feeling right. Shreya and Dulquer are both capable of fine acting, but any emotional resonance they might have achieved is overshadowed by the directors preoccupation with ambience and appearance.

The starting point of their affair is off-putting. When she is still no more than his customer, he follows her home, and one day lands up at her house with a bouquet. Instead of getting creeped out and/or terrified by such stalking or at the very least, being wary of him as almost every woman I know would be, she invites him in.

Chupgets other things right. Its critique of criticism is largely on point, taking on financially corrupt reviewers, those who act like astrologers predicting a films box-office fate, and those with insufficient knowledge of cinema, all this without coming across as a condescending lecture and without caricaturing individual critics or lampooning the job. Chupis off the mark though in its portrayal of gender diversity in the profession, depicting the overwhelming majority of Mumbai/Hindi film critics as male, which is not the reality.

In an era when Christians have more or less disappeared from Hindi cinema, Chupgives us a rare protagonist from this religious minority, that too a chap who is shorn of the cringe-worthy stereotypes of pre-1990s Hindi film Christians back when the community was a familiar presence in stories. The late arrival in Chup of a second significant Christian character who is an alcoholic gave me pause, since drunkenness was once part of the stereotype, but the normalised representation of the hero without his religious background being over-emphasised has the effect of turning the other man into just another person with a drinking problem rather than a fellow fitted into the long-prevalent template of Tony The Drunk with the open shirt and massive cross on his chest who would say hum God se bolta and hum pray karenga.

The leading lady is southern Indian and of mixed parentage, another primary players name suggests that she is Parsi, again both are written and acted sans stereotypes.

That said, Pooja Bhatts character has a terribly politically incorrect, fat-shaming explanation for how she arrives at the gender of the murderer, and while I dont know if psychologists would agree with her analysis, the tacky manner in which she conveys the point had me sorely missing the intelligent dialogue writing of the American series Criminal Minds that is focused on serial killings. Poojas Zenobia, who specialises in the study of serial killers, gets some of the films most poorly written lines, and her acting makes them even more awkward.

Sunny Deol is unusually restrained in Chupuntil a Gadar-esque moment that ruins everything for him and is strangely out of character for the policeman he plays, when he screams the word bastard into emptiness and leaps out of a building in anger.

Chupnever fully rises above being interesting in theory. At one point, Nila makes a crucial career decision that should, logically, have had a strong influence on the murderers plans, but surprisingly, despite a build-up, does not. And the revelation about this violent persons motivations are clearly intended to be moving, but I found myself struggling to care.

Even Chups prettiness wears thin early on. V.K. Murthys lighting and cinematography always served to enhance the mood of a film while lending an aura to its characters and luminescence to their faces. Chupachieves the former in its pre-interval portion, but does not have the same visual outcome. And in the end, when Dulquer is called upon to replicate Guru Dutts body language and postures from well-remembered scenes, the effort is strained.

DQ, as the young superstar is known to fans, has made some excellent choices in Malayalam cinema during his decade-long career, with forays into Tamil and Telugu that have stood him in good stead. He is way better than any of the Hindi films he has done. Despite its positives, Chups aspirations to grandeur make it far less engaging than its uncommon theme might suggest. Balkis film fails to grasp the essence of Guru Dutts magic, which was rooted not merely in the beauty of visuals and music, but in the ability to use both to capture the pain, mischief, sense of humour, love and longing of his characters with empathy. In contrast, Chupfeels distant from its characters and uninvolved.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Chup: Revenge of the Artist is now in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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Chup: Revenge of the Artist movie review: Dulquer Salmaan is better than the Hindi films hes choosing - Entertainment News , Firstpost - Firstpost