title: North Dakota

text: Federal court cases are heard in the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota, which holds court in Bismarck, Fargo, Grand Forks, and Minot. Appeals are heard by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis, Missouri.


title: North Dakota

text: MIT's Election Performance Index ranked North Dakota #1 in overall election administration policy and performance in the 2018, 2014, 2012, 2010, and 2008 elections.


title: North Dakota

text: The major political parties in North Dakota are the Democratic-NPL and the Republican Party. , the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party are also organized parties in the state.


title: North Dakota

text: At the state level, the governorship has been held by the Republican Party since 1992, along with a majority of the state legislature and statewide officers. Dem-NPL showings were strong in the 2000 governor's race, and in the 2006 legislative elections, but the League has not had a major breakthrough since the administration of former state governor George Sinner.


title: North Dakota

text: The Republican Party presidential candidate usually carries the state by a considerable margin; in 2020, Donald Trump won over 65% of the vote. Of all the Democratic presidential candidates since 1892, only Grover Cleveland (1892, one of three votes), Woodrow Wilson (1912 and 1916), Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932 and 1936), and Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) received Electoral College votes from North Dakota.


title: North Dakota

text: On the other hand, Dem-NPL candidates for North Dakota's federal Senate and House seats won every election between 1982 and 2008, and the state's federal delegation was entirely Democratic from 1987 to 2011. However, both of the current U.S. senators, John Hoeven and Kevin Cramer, are Republicans, as is the sole House member, Kelly Armstrong.


title: North Dakota

text: North Dakota has a slightly progressive income tax structure; the five brackets of state income tax rates are 1.1%, 2.04%, 2.27%, 2.64%, and 2.90% as of 2017. In 2005 North Dakota ranked 22nd highest by per capita state taxes. The sales tax in North Dakota is 5% for most items. The state allows municipalities to institute local sales taxes and special local taxes, such as the 1.75% supplemental sales tax in Grand Forks. Excise taxes are levied on the purchase price or market value of aircraft registered in North Dakota. The state imposes a use tax on items purchased elsewhere but used within North Dakota. Owners of real property in North Dakota pay property tax to their county, municipality, school district, and special taxing districts.


title: North Dakota

text: The Tax Foundation ranks North Dakota as the state with the 20th most "business friendly" tax climate in the nation. Tax Freedom Day arrives on April 1, 10 days earlier than the national Tax Freedom Day. In 2006, North Dakota was the state with the lowest number of returns filed by taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of over $1M—only 333.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and actress. Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band the Pleased.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City. Her debut album, "The Milk-Eyed Mender", was released in 2004 to critical acclaim and garnered Newsom an underground following. She would receive wider exposure with the release of "Ys" (2006), which charted at number 134 on the "Billboard" 200 and was nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Music Prize.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: She released two further albums: "Have One on Me" (2010), and "Divers" (2015), the latter of which outsold all of her previous albums. Newsom has been noted by critics for her unique musical style, sometimes characterized as psychedelic folk, and for her prominent use of harp instrumentation. She has also appeared as an actress with roles in the television series "Portlandia" and in the 2014 film "Inherent Vice".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom was born on January 18, 1982 in Grass Valley, California. Her parents, both doctors, were "progressive-minded professionals" who previously lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Newsom was raised in Nevada City along with her older brother, Peter, and younger sister, Emily. She is the second cousin, twice removed, of Gavin Newsom, Governor of California.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: As a child, Newsom was not allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. She describes her parents as "kind of idealists when it came to hoping they could protect us from bad influences, like violent movies, or stupid stuff." She was exposed to music from a young age. Her father played the guitar, and her mother was a classically trained pianist who played the hammered dulcimer, the autoharp and conga drums. Newsom attended a Waldorf school where she studied theater and learned to memorize and recite long poems.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: At the age of five, Newsom asked her parents if she could learn to play the harp. Her parents eventually agreed to sign her up for harp lessons, but the local harp instructor did not want to take on such a young student and suggested she learn to play the piano first. She did, and later moved on to the harp which she "loved from the first lesson onward." She first played on smaller Celtic harps until her parents bought her a full-size pedal harp in the seventh grade.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: After high school, she studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, where she played keyboards in The Pleased. She dropped out, however, in order to focus on her music and returned to live with family in Nevada City.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: In 2002–03, after appearing as a guest musician on Nervous Cop's self-titled collaboration album, Newsom recorded two EPs, "Walnut Whales" and "Yarn and Glue". These homemade recordings were intended to serve as a document of her early work and were not intended for public distribution. At the suggestion of Noah Georgeson, her then-boyfriend and recording engineer of the EP, she burned several copies to sell at her early shows. Newsom's friend and bandmate in Golden Shoulders, Adam Kline, gave one of her CDs to Will Oldham at a show in Nevada City. Oldham was impressed with Newsom's music and asked her to tour with him. He also gave a copy of the CD to the owner of Drag City, his record label. Drag City signed Newsom and released her debut album "The Milk-Eyed Mender" in 2004.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver to promote the album and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales. The tour was the subject of the 2011 documentary, "The Family Jams". In December 2004, she performed with Smog and Weird War at Drag City's "It's a Wonderful Next Life" Christmas party. She also appeared as a guest musician on Vetiver's 2004 self-titled album, and the following year, on Vashti Bunyan's "Lookaftering" (2005). The track "Sprout and the Bean" was featured in the 2008 horror film "The Strangers".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: "The Milk-Eyed Mender" had sold 200,000 copies of as 2010 and helped her garner an underground following. The album was remarked as a "neo-folk benchmark" by music historian John Morrish in 2007 and was named the 12th best folk album of all time by "NME".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Her second album,"Ys" (/ˈiːs/), was released in November 2006, also by Drag City. The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O'Rourke. On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album "Song Cycle" by Parks, which led to him being chosen to arrange her work on "Ys". To support "Ys", Newsom performed the album live in 2008 with the Brooklyn Philharmonic in New York City and with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Sydney, Australia. "Ys" garnered Newsom wider exposure, charting at number 134 on the "Billboard" 200. The album was also nominated for a 2007 Shortlist Music Prize. As of 2010, "Ys" had sold 250,000 copies.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: In 2009, she appeared in the music video for the song "Kids" by the group MGMT. Also in 2009, Newsom appeared as a guest harpist on the Moore Brothers' album "Aptos" and played piano on Golden Shoulders' "Get Reasonable". On March 28, 2009, she performed over two hours of new material at an unannounced concert in Big Sur, California with fellow Nevada City singer-lyricist Mariee Sioux under the pseudonym the Beatles's. Those in attendance reported that about one-third of her new material was played primarily on piano, with a backing arrangement of banjo, violin, guitar and drums.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: On January 12, 2010, an entry cryptically entitled "@!?*(%$#!!" was posted on the Drag City website. It contained a link which led to a short comic strip titled "Joanna Newsom 'Have One on Me'" with a date of February 23, 2010. Later that day, it was confirmed by Spunk!, Newsom's Australian label, that the title and date represented the title of Newsom's upcoming album and release date. On February 11, 2010, "Pitchfork Media" reported that Newsom would be the subject of a tribute book titled "Visions of Joanna Newsom" which was published by Roan Press and features a contribution from author and publisher Dave Eggers.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom's third studio album, "Have One on Me", was released on February 23, 2010, in North America. A triple album recorded in Tokyo in 2009, it consists of over two hours of songs. Writing for the "Los Angeles Times", Ann Powers praised the album's variety, adding: "Newsom uses the songwriter's default mode to explore how traditional love, for women, can be both the beginning and the end of possibility: a way to escape home and be exiled from it; to welcome children or be burdened by fertility; to be entrusted with secrets, or betrayed." Throughout 2010, she toured Europe and North America to promote the record, supported by a five-piece band, and also appeared as a guest composer on the album "How I Got Over" by the Roots, released in June of that year. She was also selected by Matt Groening to perform at the edition of the All Tomorrow's Parties festival he curated in May 2010 in Minehead, England. In December 2010, a tribute album of Newsom covers was released as a digital download. Artists involved include M. Ward, Billy Bragg, Francesco Santocono, Guy Buttery and Owen Pallett, with all proceeds going to Oxfam America's Pakistan Flood Relief Efforts.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: On July 19, 2011, Newsom's second single, "What We Have Known," was released on 12" vinyl. The single was originally the b-side to her first single, "Sprout and the Bean". In June 2011, she filmed her second music video (for the song "Good Intentions Paving Company") with directors Karni & Saul. Newsom was selected by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he curated in March 2012 in Minehead, England. In late 2011, Newsom contributed vocals to "The Muppet Show Theme" for "The Muppets" and appeared on the cover of the 10th anniversary issue of "Under the Radar" with Robin Pecknold.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom began 2012 with television appearances on "Austin City Limits" (on January 21) and "Portlandia" (on February 7).


title: Joanna Newsom

text: On June 25, 2012, she performed at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco with Philip Glass and Tim Fain as part of a benefit for the Henry Miller Memorial Library. She performed a new song at the concert tentatively titled "The Diver's Wife", a love story concerning pearl hunting, which would eventually become the title track from her next album, "Divers". On October 14, she performed another new song tentatively called "Look and Despair" at the Treasure Island Festival, which was renamed "Sapokanikan" and released as the lead single from "Divers".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom appeared on a track titled "Kindness be Conceived" on Thao and the Get Down Stay Down's album "We the Common", released in February 2013. In March 2013, Newsom contributed to the song "The Man Who Ran the Town" from the album "Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear" by British skinhead band Hard Skin.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: She appeared in and narrated the 2014 film "Inherent Vice", directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" called Newsom's narration in the film "gorgeously rendered." In 2015, Newsom provided additional vocals for the Lonely Island's songs "Ras Trent" and "We Are a Crowd".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: "Divers", her fourth solo record, was released on October 23, 2015. The album peaked at number one on the "Billboard" Alternative Albums chart and outsold her 2006 album,"Ys".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: On December 8, 2015, she performed "Leaving the City" from the album on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert".


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom's musical style has been labelled as progressive folk, chamber folk, indie folk and baroque pop.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom's early work was strongly influenced by polyrhythms. After "Ys", Newsom said she had lost interest in polyrhythms. They "stopped being fascinating to me and started feeling wanky."


title: Joanna Newsom

text: The press has sometimes labeled her as one of the most prominent members of the modern psychedelic folk and freak folk movement. Newsom, however, claims no ties to any particular music scene. Her song-writing incorporates elements of Appalachian music and avant-garde pop.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Newsom is a soprano. Her vocal style (in the November 2006 issue of "The Wire", she described her voice as "untrainable") has shadings of folk and Appalachian shaped-note timbres. Newsom has expressed disappointment at comments that her singing is "child-like."


title: Joanna Newsom

text: Critics noticed a change in Newsom's voice on her album "Have One on Me". In the spring of 2009, Newsom developed vocal cord nodules and could not speak or sing for two months. The recovery from the nodules and further "vocal modifications" changed her voice.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: She met comedian-musician-actor Andy Samberg in 2006 at one of her concerts. Newsom's engagement to Samberg was confirmed by his representative in February 2013. They married on September 21, 2013, in Big Sur, California.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: In March 2014, Newsom and Samberg purchased the estate Moorcrest in Beachwood Canyon, Los Angeles, which had been owned in the 1920s by the parents of actress Mary Astor, and prior to that was rented by Charlie Chaplin. They also own a home in the West Village of Manhattan, New York.


title: Joanna Newsom

text: On August 8, 2017, Samberg's representative confirmed that Newsom and Samberg had become parents to their first child, a daughter.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Robert Scott Speedman (born September 1, 1975) is a British-Canadian actor. He is best known for portraying Ben Covington in the coming-of-age drama television series "Felicity", Lycan–Vampire hybrid Michael Corvin in the gothic horror–action "Underworld" films, and Barry "Baz" Blackwell in the TNT crime drama series "Animal Kingdom". His other film work includes "Duets", "Dark Blue", "", "The Strangers", "Barney's Version", "The Vow", and "Crimes of the Future". In 2021, he returned to "Grey's Anatomy" as a main character following a guest role in season 14 as Dr. Nick Marsh.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Speedman was born in London, to Scottish parents Mary (née Campbell), a primary school teacher and champion runner, and Roy Speedman (1944–1999), a department store buyer. His sister, Tracey, died from cancer on February 8, 2016. At the age of four, he and his family moved to Toronto. He was a competitive swimmer who attended Earl Haig Secondary School's now defunct gifted athlete program. As a member of the Canadian Junior National Swim Team, Speedman placed ninth at the 1992 Olympic trials. Suffering a neck injury soon after, he was forced to leave the sport. To find a new focus outside of athletics, Speedman became interested in acting. He went on to attend the University of Toronto and York University to study his craft.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Encouraged by a friend to appear on "Speaker's Corner", a viewer open-forum run by Toronto's Citytv, Speedman expressed interest in auditioning for the role of Robin in the film "Batman Forever", which was being cast in Toronto at the time. Though the appearance earned him an audition, Speedman was not cast in the role, which was ultimately given to Chris O'Donnell. The audition did, however, give Speedman the exposure he needed and he quickly arranged an agent and began auditioning for Canadian television and film roles.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Speedman made his television debut in 1995, appearing in an episode of the series "", followed by a recurring role in the series "Nancy Drew" that same year. After appearing in several small TV roles, Speedman decided to go to New York City to study for a short time at the Neighborhood Playhouse before dropping out and returning home to Toronto. His big break came when he got a call from an American casting agent who wanted him to audition for a new series called "Felicity". Portraying brooding college student Ben Covington opposite overnight star Keri Russell as Felicity, Speedman received much acclaim on the popular series. Soon after "Felicity", Speedman began to get offers for more prominent roles while working on the series. In 2000, Speedman was given the role of Billy Hannan opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the film "Duets".


title: Scott Speedman

text: After ending a four-year run on "Felicity", Speedman quickly found success in film. In 2002, he was cast in his first major starring role in a feature, portraying an inexperienced LAPD detective caught in a web of corruption, opposite Kurt Russell, in the police drama "Dark Blue". Next, Speedman portrayed the husband of a terminally ill woman opposite fellow Canadian and high-school alumna Sarah Polley in the independent drama "My Life Without Me". Speedman won a "Golden Wave Award" for his work on the film.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Later in 2003, Speedman starred opposite Kate Beckinsale in the supernatural thriller film "Underworld". Making an impression on audiences in the stylized vampire–werewolf film, Speedman was honored with a Saturn Award in the category "Cinescape Face of the Future Award". Then, he went on to star alongside James Marsden in the thriller "The 24th Day" and Ice Cube in "". Upon the success of the first "Underworld" film, Speedman reprised his role as Michael Corvin in the 2006 sequel "". He appeared alongside Willem Dafoe in "Anamorph" and Wes Bentley in "Weirdsville". Speedman also starred with Liv Tyler in the 2008 horror–thriller "The Strangers", and alongside Rachel Blanchard in the mystery drama "Adoration", directed by Atom Egoyan.


title: Scott Speedman

text: In July 2009, it was reported that Speedman was to star alongside Dustin Hoffman among others in the film adaption of "Barney's Version". Pre-production began in August 2009, and filming took place in Rome, New York and Canada. Speedman also starred in the independent Western "The Last Rites of Ransom Pride" alongside Lizzy Caplan and Dwight Yoakam.


title: Scott Speedman

text: Archive footage of Speedman from the previous "Underworld" films was used in the 2012 & 2016 sequels, "" and ""; his facial likeness was superimposed on a stand-in for his character's brief role in the film. He had a supporting role as Jeremy in "The Vow".


title: Scott Speedman

text: Speedman last starred as XO Sam Kendal in the ABC military drama series "Last Resort", which premiered on September 27, 2012.


title: Scott Speedman

text: In June 2013, Speedman was selected to star in Ryan Murphy's HBO production called "Open" alongside Wes Bentley. In 2014, he co-starred with Julia Stiles in Lluís Quílez Sala thriller film "Out of the Dark". He starred in various independent films such as "Barefoot", "The Captive", and "The Monster".


title: Scott Speedman

text: He starred as Barry "Baz" Blackwell in the TNT crime drama series "Animal Kingdom" until the first episode of season 3. In 2018, he had a guest role on "Grey's Anatomy" as Dr. Nick Marsh, before becoming a series regular in season 18.


title: Scott Speedman

text: In October 2020, it was announced that Speedman had been cast in the recurring role of Matthew Engler on the third season of the Netflix thriller series "You".


title: Scott Speedman

text: In 2017, he began dating Lindsay Rae Hofmann. In May 2021, Hofmann announced her pregnancy with their first child. The couple welcomed their daughter, Pfieffer Lucia, on October 26, 2021.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Jessica Rose Brown Findlay (born 14 September 1987) is an English actress. She played Lady Sybil Crawley in the ITV television period drama series "Downton Abbey" and Emelia Conan Doyle in the 2011 British comedy-drama feature film "Albatross".


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In 2014, she appeared as Beverly Penn in the film adaptation of the Mark Helprin novel "Winter's Tale". In 2015, she co-starred in Paul McGuigan's "Victor Frankenstein" as Lorelei, the Esmerelda-like acrobat. In 2016, she joined the cast of the biopic feature film, "England is Mine", about the early life and career of English singer Morrissey, who co-founded the indie rock band The Smiths.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Brown Findlay portrayed Charlotte Wells, a madam's daughter and sex worker, in the three series run of "Harlots" (2017–2019), a period drama television series initially screening on ITV Encore in the UK and on Hulu Plus in the US. In 2020, she was in the main cast of the series "Brave New World".


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Brown Findlay grew up in Cookham, Berkshire. Her father is a financial adviser and her mother is a teaching assistant. She told "Vanity Fair" in 2012, "I grew up there, as did my Mum. My Nan and Granddad are around the corner. It is a very familiar place and incredibly dear to my heart. It's sort of quiet, but wonderfully so."


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: She trained with the National Youth Ballet and the Associates of the Royal Ballet, and at age 15 was invited to dance with the Kirov at the Royal Opera House for a summer season. She attended Furze Platt Senior School in Maidenhead. At the end of her GCSEs, she was accepted to a number of ballet schools, but chose to attend the Arts Educational School for the A-level courses it provided and its pastoral care. She was there for two years. In the second, she had three operations on her ankles, the last of which went wrong, preventing her from continuing as a dancer.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: After encouragement from an art teacher, she finished her education at Arts Educational School, Tring Park, then moved on to a fine art course at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design. In a 2012 interview with "Vanity Fair", she said, "Growing up, I was completely in love and infatuated with ballet. Ballet was my life completely." She subsequently attended university in London, where she discovered the stage. She said, "Acting was the element from ballet that I actually loved and missed the most."


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Brown Findlay was cast in the lead role of 17-year-old Emilia Conan Doyle for "Albatross", a 2011 British coming-of-age comedy drama film directed by Niall MacCormick, co-starring Julia Ormond, Felicity Jones and Sebastian Koch. Its premise is a teenage aspiring writer entering the lives of a dysfunctional family on the south coast of England, with bookish young women meeting up with a peer who lacks any boundaries or inhibitions. She was next cast in two episodes of the British science fiction comedy-drama television show "Misfits," where she appeared in the first-season finale as a wholesome religious girl whose superpower is convincing everyone to abandon their delinquent behaviour in favour of celibacy.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Almost immediately after her work in "Albatross", Brown Findlay was cast in the ITV period drama television series "Downton Abbey" as Lady Sybil Crawley, the youngest and most forward-thinking of the Grantham daughters. In a 2012 interview with "Vanity Fair", she said, "I thought this character of Sybil was fascinating, and I liked her modern attitude to life." She was the second major cast member to leave the series when her character died from eclampsia after giving birth in the third series. During a 2015 interview, "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes discussed the plot twist: "Jessica Brown Findlay, who played Sybil, had said she was going to leave right from the beginning. She said, 'I'm doing three years, then I'm leaving.' So that was all worked out."


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: She next appeared as Abi in the "Black Mirror" episode "Fifteen Million Merits" with English actor Daniel Kaluuya. The episode imagined a dystopian future where people earn merits on exercise bikes and the only way to escape their slave-like existence is to audition for reality TV judges.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In 2012, Brown Findlay became the face of the Dominic Jones jewellery line. She was cast in "Not Another Happy Ending" by John McKay, and in the miniseries "Labyrinth", based on the novel of the same name by Kate Mosse, portraying Alaïs Pelletier. In 2012, she was cast as Beverly Penn in the film adaptation of the novel "Winter's Tale" (2014) with Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In July 2015, she played emotionally conflicted stepmother Alice Aldridge in "The Outcast", the BBC's two-part television adaptation of Sadie Jones’ novel.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In May 2015, Brown Findlay made her professional theatre debut at the Almeida Theatre, London, as Electra in a new adaptation of "The Oresteia," to positive reviews. The production subsequently moved to the Trafalgar Theatre in London's West End. Writer/director Robert Icke cast Brown Findlay in his production of "Uncle Vanya" at the same venue in February the following year.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In September 2016, it was announced that Brown Findlay would play Ophelia in a new production of "Hamlet" at the Almeida Theatre in London. The production was critically acclaimed and also later moved to the West End, where it ran until September 2017 with award-winning "Sherlock" and "Fleabag" actor Andrew Scott as Hamlet.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In 2016, Brown Findlay joined the cast of a biopic feature film initially entitled "Steven", about the early life and career of English singer Morrissey, who co-founded the indie rock band The Smiths. The film, renamed "England is Mine", premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 2017, with "Dunkirk" actor Jack Lowden in the lead role.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Brown Findlay starred as Bella Brown in "This Beautiful Fantastic", a 2016 British romantic drama film directed and written by Simon Aboud as a repressed foundling who forms a new life through her relationships with a curmudgeonly neighbour (Tom Wilkinson), a gifted cook (Andrew Scott) and an eccentric inventor (Jeremy Irvine).


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In 2017, Brown Findlay portrayed Charlotte Wells, a brothel owner's daughter and famed courtesan, in "Harlots", a period drama television series created by Alison Newman and Moira Buffini, and inspired by "The Covent Garden Ladies" by Hallie Rubenhold. It premiered on 27 March 2017 on ITV Encore in the UK and on 29 March 2017 on Hulu Plus in the US. It focuses on Margaret Wells, who runs a brothel in 18th century England and struggles to raise her daughters in a chaotic household. Also in 2017, Brown Findlay voiced the character of Fay in the animated film "Monster Family".


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In May 2019, it was announced that she would star as Lenina Crowne in the NBCUniversal series "Brave New World", based on the classic 1932 novel by Aldous Huxley. It was subsequently moved to the Peacock network.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: In 2021, she starred as Pamela Legat in the Netflix film "Munich: The Edge of War," describing events in Britain and Germany prior to the start of World War II.


title: Jessica Brown Findlay

text: Brown Findlay began dating actor Ziggy Heath in late 2016. They married on 12 September 2020. On 5 November 2022, their twin sons were born.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and essays interrogated the social and cultural sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the U.S. House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).


title: Gore Vidal

text: A grandson of a U.S. Senator, Vidal was born into an upper-class political family. As a political commentator and essayist, Vidal's primary focus was the history and society of the United States, especially how a militaristic foreign policy reduced the country to a decadent empire. His political and cultural essays were published in "The Nation", the "New Statesman", the "New York Review of Books", and "Esquire" magazines. As a public intellectual, Gore Vidal's topical debates on sex, politics, and religion with other intellectuals and writers occasionally turned into quarrels with the likes of William F. Buckley Jr. and Norman Mailer.


title: Gore Vidal

text: As a novelist, Vidal explored the nature of corruption in public and private life. His style of narration evoked the time and place of his stories, and delineated the psychology of his characters. His third novel, "The City and the Pillar" (1948), offended the literary, political, and moral sensibilities of conservative book reviewers, the plot being about a dispassionately presented male homosexual relationship. In the historical novel genre, Vidal recreated the imperial world of Julian the Apostate (r. AD 361–363) in "Julian" (1964). Julian was the Roman emperor who attempted to re-establish Roman polytheism to counter Christianity. In social satire, "Myra Breckinridge" (1968) explores the mutability of gender roles and sexual orientation as being social constructs established by social mores. In "Burr" (1973) and "Lincoln" (1984), each protagonist is presented as "A Man of the People" and as "A Man" in a narrative exploration of how the public and private facets of personality affect the national politics of the United States.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal was born in the cadet hospital of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, the only child of Eugene Luther Vidal (1895–1969) and Nina S. Gore (1903–1978). Vidal was born there because his father, a U.S. Army officer, was then serving as the first aeronautics instructor at the military academy. The middle name, Louis, was a mistake on the part of his father, "who could not remember, for certain, whether his own name was Eugene Louis or Eugene Luther". In the memoir "Palimpsest" (1995), Vidal said, "My birth certificate says 'Eugene Louis Vidal': this was changed to Eugene Luther Vidal Jr.; then Gore was added at my christening [in 1939]; then, at fourteen, I got rid of the first two names."


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal was baptized in January 1939, when he was 13 years old, by the headmaster of St. Albans school, where Vidal attended preparatory school. The baptismal ceremony was effected so he "could be confirmed [into the Episcopal faith]" at the Washington Cathedral, in February 1939, as "Eugene Luther Gore Vidal". He later said that, although the surname "Gore" was added to his names at the time of the baptism, "I wasn't named for him [maternal grandfather Thomas Pryor Gore], although he had a great influence on my life." In 1941, Vidal dropped his two first names, because he "wanted a sharp, distinctive name, appropriate for an aspiring author, or a national political leader ... I wasn't going to write as 'Gene' since there was already one. I didn't want to use the 'Jr.


title: Gore Vidal

text: His father, Eugene Luther Vidal Sr., was director (1933–1937) of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce during the Roosevelt Administration, and was also the great love of the aviator Amelia Earhart. At the U.S. Military Academy, the exceptionally athletic Vidal Sr. had been a quarterback, coach, and captain of the football team; and an all-American basketball player. Subsequently, he competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics and in the 1924 Summer Olympics (seventh in the decathlon, and coach of the U.S. pentathlon). In the 1920s and the 1930s, Vidal Sr. was a founder or executive of three airline companies: the Ludington Line (later Eastern Airlines), Transcontinental Air Transport (later Trans World Airlines), Northeast Airlines.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Gore's great-grandfather Eugen Fidel Vidal was born in Feldkirch, Austria, of Romansh background, and had come to the U.S. with Gore's Swiss great-grandmother, Emma Hartmann.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal's mother, Nina Gore, was a socialite who made her Broadway theater debut as an extra actress in "Sign of the Leopard", in 1928. In 1922, Nina married Eugene Luther Vidal Sr. and thirteen years later, in 1935, divorced him. Nina Gore Vidal then was married two more times; to Hugh D. Auchincloss and to Robert Olds. She also had "a long off-and-on affair" with the actor Clark Gable. As Nina Gore Auchincloss, Vidal's mother was an alternate delegate to the 1940 Democratic National Convention.


title: Gore Vidal

text: The subsequent marriages of his mother and father yielded four half-siblings for Gore Vidal – Vance Vidal, Valerie Vidal, Thomas Gore Auchincloss, and Nina Gore Auchincloss – one step-brother, Hugh D. "Yusha" Auchincloss III from his mother's second marriage to Hugh D. Auchincloss, and four step-brothers including Robin Olds from his mother's third marriage to Robert Olds, a major general in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), who died in 1943, 10 months after marrying Nina. Through Auchincloss Vidal also was the step-brother once removed of Jacqueline Kennedy. The nephews of Gore Vidal include Burr Steers, a writer and film director, and Hugh Auchincloss Steers (1963–1995), a figurative painter.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Raised in Washington, D.C., Vidal attended the Sidwell Friends School and St. Albans School. Given the blindness of his maternal grandfather, Senator Thomas Pryor Gore, of Oklahoma, Vidal read aloud to him, and was his Senate page, and his seeing-eye guide. In 1939, during his summer holiday, Vidal went with some colleagues and professor from St. Albans School on his first European trip, to visit Italy and France. He visited for the first time Rome, the city which came to be "at the center of Gore's literary imagination", and Paris. When the Second World War began in early September, the group was forced to an early return home; on his way back, he and his colleagues stopped in Great Britain, and they met the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Joe Kennedy (the father of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, later the President of the United States of America). In 1940 he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School and later transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, where he contributed to the Exonian, the school newspaper.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Rather than attend university, Vidal enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17 and was assigned to work as an office clerk in the USAAF. Later, Vidal passed the examinations necessary to become a maritime warrant officer (junior grade) in the Transportation Corps, and subsequently served as first mate of the "F.S. 35th", a US Army Freight and Supply (FS) ship berthed at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. After three years in service, Vidal suffered hypothermia, developed rheumatoid arthritis and, consequently, was reassigned to duty as a mess officer.


title: Gore Vidal

text: The literary works of Vidal were influenced by numerous other writers, poets and playwrights, novelists and essayists. These include, from antiquity, Petronius (d. AD 66), Juvenal (AD 60–140), and Apuleius (fl. c. AD 155); and from the post-Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), and George Meredith (1828–1909). More recent literary influences included Marcel Proust (1871–1922), Henry James (1843–1916), and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966). The cultural critic Harold Bloom has written that Gore Vidal believed that his sexuality had denied him full recognition from the literary community in the United States. Bloom himself contends that such limited recognition more resulted from Vidal's "best fictions" being "distinguished historical novels", a subgenre "no longer available for canonization".


title: Gore Vidal

text: The literary career of Vidal began with the success of the military novel "Williwaw", a men-at-war story derived from his Alaskan Harbor Detachment duty during the Second World War. His third novel, "The City and the Pillar" (1948), caused a moralistic furor over his dispassionate presentation of a young protagonist coming to terms with his homosexuality. The novel was dedicated to "J. T."; decades later, Vidal confirmed that the initials were those of his boyhood friend and St. Albans classmate, James Trimble III, killed in the Battle of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, and that Trimble was the only person he ever loved. Critics railed against Vidal's presentation of homosexuality in the novel as natural, a life viewed generally at the time as unnatural and immoral. Vidal claimed that "New York Times" critic Orville Prescott was so offended by it that he refused to review or to permit other critics to review any book by Vidal. Vidal said that upon publication of the book, an editor at E. P. Dutton told him "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now, you will still be attacked for it". Today, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal took the pseudonym "Edgar Box" and wrote the mystery novels "Death in the Fifth Position" (1952), "Death before Bedtime" (1953) and "Death Likes it Hot" (1954) featuring Peter Cutler Sargeant II, a publicist-turned-private-eye. His satirical novel "Messiah", detailing the rise of a new nontheistic religion that comes to largely replace the Abrahamic faiths, was also published in 1954. The Edgar Box genre novels sold well and earned black-listed Vidal a secret living. That mystery-novel success led Vidal to write in other genres and he produced the stage play "The Best Man: A Play about Politics" (1960) and the television play "Visit to a Small Planet" (1957). Two early teleplays were "A Sense of Justice" (1955) and "Honor". He also wrote the pulp novel "Thieves Fall Out" under the pseudonym "Cameron Kay" but refused to have it reprinted under his real name during his life.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the 1960s, Vidal published "Julian" (1964), about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. A.D. 361–363), who sought to reinstate polytheistic paganism when Julian viewed that Christianity threatened the cultural integrity of the Roman Empire; "Washington, D.C." (1967), about political life during the presidential era of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945); and "Myra Breckinridge" (1968), a satire of the American movie business, by way of a school of dramatic arts owned by a transsexual woman, the eponymous anti-heroine.


title: Gore Vidal

text: After publishing the plays "Weekend" (1968) and "An Evening With Richard Nixon" (1972) and the novel "Two Sisters: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir" (1970), Vidal concentrated upon the essay and developed two types of fiction. The first type is about American history, novels specifically about the nature of national politics. "The New York Times", quoting critic Harold Bloom about those historical novels, said that Vidal's imagination of American politics "is so powerful as to compel awe." The historical novels formed the seven-book series Narratives of Empire: (i) "Burr" (1973), (ii) "Lincoln" (1984), (iii) "1876" (1976), (iv) "Empire" (1987), (v) "Hollywood" (1990), (vi) "Washington, D.C." (1967), and (vii) "The Golden Age" (2000). Besides U.S. history, Vidal also explored and analyzed the history of the ancient world, specifically the Axial Age (800–200 B.C.), with the novel "Creation" (1981). The novel was published without four chapters that were part of the manuscript he submitted to the publisher; years later, Vidal restored the chapters to the text and re-published the novel "Creation" in 2002.


title: Gore Vidal

text: The second type of fiction is the topical satire, such as "Myron" (1974), the sequel to "Myra Breckinridge"; "Kalki" (1978), about the end of the world and the consequent ennui; "Duluth" (1983), an alternate universe story; "" (1992), about the adventures of Timothy, Bishop of Macedonia, in the early days of Christianity; and "The Smithsonian Institution" (1998), a time-travel story.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the United States, Vidal is often considered an essayist rather than a novelist. Even the occasionally hostile literary critic, such as Martin Amis, admitted that "Essays are what he is good at ... [Vidal] is learned, funny, and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating."


title: Gore Vidal

text: For six decades, Vidal applied himself to socio-political, sexual, historical and literary subjects. In the essay anthology "Armageddon" (1987) he explored the intricacies of power (political and cultural) in the contemporary United States. His criticism of the incumbent U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, as a "triumph of the embalmer's art" communicated that Reagan's provincial worldview, and that of his administration's, was out of date and inadequate to the geopolitical realities of the world in the late twentieth century. In 1993, Vidal won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for the anthology "United States: Essays 1952–92" (1993).


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 2000, Vidal published the collection of essays "The Last Empire", then such self-described "pamphlets" as "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace", "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta" and "Imperial America", critiques of American expansionism, the military–industrial complex, the national security state and the George W. Bush administration. Vidal also wrote a historical essay about the Founding Fathers of the United States, "Inventing a Nation". In 1995, he published a memoir, "Palimpsest", and in 2006 its follow-up volume, "Point to Point Navigation". Earlier that year, Vidal had published "Clouds and Eclipses: The Collected Short Stories".


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 2009, he won the annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture".


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the same year, the Man of Letters Gore Vidal was named honorary president of the American Humanist Association.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1956, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Gore Vidal as a screenplay writer with a four-year employment contract. In 1958, the director William Wyler required a script doctor to rewrite the screenplay for "Ben-Hur" (1959), originally written by Karl Tunberg. As one of several script doctors assigned to the project, Vidal rewrote significant portions of the script to resolve ambiguities of character motivation, specifically to clarify the enmity between the Jewish protagonist, Judah Ben-Hur, and the Roman antagonist, Messala, who had been close boyhood friends. In exchange for rewriting the "Ben-Hur" screenplay, on location in Italy, Vidal negotiated the early termination (at the two-year mark) of his four-year contract with MGM.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Thirty-six years later, in the documentary film "The Celluloid Closet" (1995), Vidal explained that Messala's failed attempt at resuming their homosexual, boyhood relationship motivated the ostensibly political enmity between Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) and Messala (Stephen Boyd). Vidal said that Boyd was aware of the homosexual subtext to the scene and that the director, the producer and the screenwriter agreed to keep Heston ignorant of the subtext, lest he refuse to play the scene. In turn, on learning of that script-doctor explanation, Charlton Heston said that Vidal had contributed little to the script of "Ben-Hur". Despite Vidal's script-doctor resolution of the character's motivations, the Screen Writers Guild assigned formal screenwriter-credit to Karl Tunberg, in accordance with the WGA screenwriting credit system, which favored the "original author" of a screenplay, rather than the writer of the filmed screenplay.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Two plays, "The Best Man: A Play about Politics" (1960, made into a film in 1964) and "Visit to a Small Planet" (1955), were theater and movie successes. Vidal occasionally returned to the movie business, and wrote historically accurate teleplays and screenplays about subjects important to him. "Billy the Kid" (1989) is one, about William H. Bonney, a gunman in the New Mexico territory Lincoln County War (1878), and later an outlaw in the U.S. Western frontier. Another is 1979's "Caligula" (based upon the life of the Roman Emperor Caligula), from which Vidal had his screenwriter credit removed because the producer, Bob Guccione, the director, Tinto Brass, and the leading actor, Malcolm McDowell, rewrote the script to add extra sex and violence to increase its commercial success.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the 1960s, Vidal migrated to Italy, where he befriended the film director Federico Fellini, for whom he appeared in a cameo role in the film "Roma" (1972). He also appeared in the American television series "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" and in the films "Bob Roberts" (1992), a serio-comedy about a reactionary populist politician who manipulates youth culture to win votes; "With Honors" (1994), an Ivy league comedy-drama; "Gattaca" (1997), a science-fiction drama about genetic engineering; and "Igby Goes Down" (2002), a coming-of-age serio-comedy directed by his nephew, Burr Steers.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal began to drift towards the political left after he received his first paycheck, and realized how much money the government took in tax. He reasoned that if the government was taking so much money, then it should at least provide first-rate healthcare and education.


title: Gore Vidal

text: As a public intellectual, Vidal was identified with the liberal politicians and the progressive social causes of the old Democratic Party.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1960, Vidal was the Democratic candidate for Congress for the 29th Congressional District of New York, a usually Republican district that including most of the Catskills and the western bank of the Hudson River, including Newburgh, but lost to the Republican candidate J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57 percent to 43 percent. Campaigning under the slogan of "You'll get more with Gore", Vidal received the most votes any Democratic candidate had received in the district in fifty years. Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, friends who spoke on his behalf.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1982, he campaigned against Jerry Brown, the incumbent Governor of California, in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate; Vidal forecast accurately that the opposing Republican candidate (Pete Wilson) would win the election. That foray into senatorial politics is the subject of the documentary film "" (1983), directed by Gary Conklin.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In a 2001 article, "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh," Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. He concluded that McVeigh (a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the First Iraq War, 1990–91) had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as an act of revenge for the FBI's Waco massacre (1993) at the Branch Davidian Compound in Texas, believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis. In concluding the "Vanity Fair" article, Vidal refers to McVeigh as an "unlikely sole mover," and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal was very much against any kind of military intervention in the world. In "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta" (2002), Vidal drew parallels about how the United States enters wars and said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked Imperial Japan to attack the U.S. in order to justify the American entry to the Second World War (1939–45). He contended that Roosevelt had advance knowledge of the dawn-raid attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). In the documentary "Why We Fight" (2005), Vidal said that, during the final months of the war, the Japanese had tried to surrender: "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but Truman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs ... To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the balance of power in the world. To declare war on communism. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war".


title: Gore Vidal

text: As a public intellectual, Vidal criticized what he viewed as political harm to the nation and the voiding of the citizen's rights through the passage of the USA Patriot Act (2001) during the George W. Bush administration (2001–2009). He described Bush as "the stupidest man in the United States" and said that Bush's foreign policy was explicitly expansionist. He contended that the Bush Administration and their oil-business sponsors, aimed to control the petroleum of Central Asia, after having gained hegemony over the petroleum of the Persian Gulf in 1991.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal became a member of the board of advisors of The World Can't Wait, a political organization which sought to publicly repudiate the foreign-policy program of the Bush Administration (2001–2009) and advocated Bush's impeachment for war crimes, such as the Second Iraq War (2003–2011) and torturing prisoners of war (soldiers, guerrillas, civilians) in violation of international law.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In May 2007, while discussing 9/11 conspiracy theories that might explain the "who?" and the "why?" of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., Vidal said


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the "American Conservative" article "My Pen Pal Gore Vidal" (2012), Bill Kauffman reported that Vidal's favorite American politician, during his lifetime, was Huey Long (1893–1935), the populist Governor (1928–32) and Senator (1932–35) from Louisiana, who also had perceived the essential, one-party nature of U.S. politics and who was assassinated by a lone gunman called Carl Weiss.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Despite that, Vidal said, "I think of myself as a conservative", with a proprietary attitude towards the United States. "My family helped start [this country] ... and we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country". Based upon that background of populism, from 1970 to 1972, Vidal was a chairman of the People's Party of the United States. In 1971, he endorsed the consumer-rights advocate Ralph Nader for U.S. president in the 1972 election. In 2007, he endorsed Democrat Dennis Kucinich in his candidacy for the U.S. presidency (in 2008), because Kucinich was "the most eloquent of the lot" of presidential candidates, from either the Republican or the Democratic parties and that Kucinich was "very much a favorite out there, in the amber fields of grain".


title: Gore Vidal

text: In a September 30, 2009 interview with "The Times" of London, Vidal said that there soon would be a dictatorship in the United States. The newspaper emphasized that Vidal, described as "the Grand Old Man of American "belles-lettres"", claimed that America is rotting away – and to not expect Barack Obama to save the country and the nation from imperial decay. In this interview, he also updated his views of his life, the United States, and other political subjects. Vidal had earlier described what he saw as the political and cultural rot in the United States in his essay "The State of the Union" (1975),


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1975, Vidal sued Truman Capote for slander, over the accusation that he had once been thrown out of the White House for being drunk, putting his arm around First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and then insulting her mother. Said Capote of Vidal at the time: "I'm always sad about Gore—very sad that he has to breathe every day." Mutual friend George Plimpton observed: "There's no venom like Capote's when he's on the prowl—and Gore's too, I don't know what division the feud should be in." The suit was settled in Vidal's favor when Lee Radziwill refused to testify on Capote's behalf, telling columnist Liz Smith, "Oh, Liz, what do we care; they're just a couple of fags! They're disgusting."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1968, the ABC television network hired the liberal Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. as political analysts of the presidential-nomination conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties. After days of bickering, their debates degraded to vitriolic "ad hominem" attacks. Discussing the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, the public intellectuals argued about freedom of speech, namely, the legality of protesters to display a Viet Cong flag in America, Vidal told Buckley to "shut up a minute". Buckley had likened violent left-wing protesters to German National Socialists. Vidal stated: "As far as I'm concerned, the only sort of pro-crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself." Buckley replied: "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered." ABC's Howard K. Smith interjected, and the debate resumed without violence. Later, Buckley said he regretted having called Vidal a "queer", but still expressed some distaste for Vidal when he said that he was an "evangelist for bisexuality".


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1969, in "Esquire" magazine, Buckley continued his cultural feud with Vidal in the essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" (August 1969), in which he portrayed Vidal as an apologist for homosexuality; Buckley said, "The man who, in his essays, proclaims the normalcy of his affliction [i.e., homosexuality], and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher." The essay is collected in "The Governor Listeth: A Book of Inspired Political Revelations" (1970), an anthology of Buckley's writings from the time.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal riposted in "Esquire" with the September 1969 essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." and said that Buckley was "anti-black", "anti-semitic" and a "warmonger". Buckley sued Vidal for libel.


title: Gore Vidal

text: The feud continued in "Esquire", where Vidal implied that in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized a Protestant church in Sharon, Connecticut (the Buckley family hometown) after the wife of a pastor had sold a house to a Jewish family. Buckley again sued Vidal and "Esquire" for libel and Vidal filed a counterclaim for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of "Myra Breckinridge" (1968) as a pornographic novel. The court dismissed Vidal's counterclaim. Buckley accepted a money settlement of $115,000 to pay the fee of his attorney and an editorial apology from "Esquire", in which the publisher and the editors said that they were "utterly convinced" of the untruthfulness of Vidal's assertions. In a letter to "Newsweek" magazine, the publisher of "Esquire" said that "the settlement of Buckley's suit against us" was not "a 'disavowal' of Vidal's article. On the contrary, it clearly states that we published that article because we believed that Vidal had a right to assert his opinions, even though we did not share them."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In "Gore Vidal: A Biography" (1999), Fred Kaplan said that "The court had 'not' sustained Buckley's case against "Esquire" ... [that] the court had 'not' ruled that Vidal's article was 'defamatory'. It had ruled that the case would have to go to trial "in order to determine, as a matter of fact, whether or not it was defamatory". The cash value of the settlement with "Esquire" represented 'only' Buckley's legal expenses."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 2003, Buckley resumed his complaint of having been libeled by Vidal, this time with the publication of the anthology "Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing" (2003), which included Vidal's essay "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr." Again, the offended Buckley filed lawsuit for libel and "Esquire" magazine again settled Buckley's claim with $55,000–65,000 for the fees of his attorney and $10,000 for personal damages suffered by Buckley.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the obituary "RIP WFB – in Hell" (March 20, 2008), Vidal remembered Buckley, who had died on February 27, 2008. Later, in the interview "Literary Lion: Questions for Gore Vidal" (June 15, 2008), "New York Times" reporter Deborah Solomon asked Vidal: "How did you feel, when you heard that Buckley died this year?" Vidal responded:


title: Gore Vidal

text: On December 15, 1971, during the recording of "The Dick Cavett Show", with Janet Flanner, Norman Mailer allegedly head-butted Vidal when they were backstage. When a reporter asked Vidal why Mailer had knocked heads with him, Vidal said, "Once again, words failed Norman Mailer." During the recording of the talk show, Vidal and Mailer insulted each other, over what Vidal had written about him, prompting Mailer to say, "I've had to smell your works from time to time." Apparently, Mailer's umbrage resulted from Vidal's reference to Mailer having stabbed his wife of the time.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In "The Atlantic" magazine interview "A Conversation with Gore Vidal" (October 2009), by John Meroney, Vidal spoke about topical and cultural matters of U.S. society. Asked his opinion about the arrest of the film director Roman Polanski, in Switzerland, in September 2009, in response to an extradition request by U.S. authorities, for having fled the U.S. in 1978 to avoid jail for the statutory rape of a thirteen-year-old girl in Hollywood, Vidal said: "I really don't give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?"


title: Gore Vidal

text: Asked for elaboration, Vidal explained the cultural temper of the U.S. and of the Hollywood movie business in the 1970s:


title: Gore Vidal

text: Asked to explain the term "American values", Vidal replied: "Lying and cheating. There's nothing better."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In response to Vidal's opinion about the decades-old Polanski rape case, a spokeswoman for the organization Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Barbara Dorris, said, "People should express their outrage, by refusing to buy any of his books", called Vidal a "mean-spirited buffoon" and said that, although "a boycott wouldn't hurt Vidal financially", it would "cause anyone else, with such callous views, to keep his mouth shut, and [so] avoid rubbing salt into the already deep [psychological] wounds of (the victims)" of sexual abuse.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1997, Vidal was one of thirty-four public intellectuals and celebrities who joined a publicity campaign waged by Scientologists against the German government, signing an open letter addressed to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published in the "International Herald Tribune", alleging that Scientologists in Germany were treated "in the same way that the Nazi regime persecuted the Jews". Scientologists are free to operate in Germany; the Church of Scientology, however, is not recognized as a religious body but as a business with political goals and thus monitored by the German domestic intelligence service. Despite signing the letter, Vidal was critical of Scientology as a religion.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1967, Vidal appeared in the CBS documentary "", in which he expressed his views on homosexuality in the arts. Commenting on his life's work and his life, he described his style as "Knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn."


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal often rebutted the label of "gay". He maintained that it referred to sexual acts rather than sexuality. Gore did not express a public stance on the HIV-AIDS crisis. According to Vidal's close friend Jay Parini, "Gore didn't think of himself as a gay guy. It makes him self-hating. How could he despise gays as much as he did? In my company he always used the term 'fags'. He was uncomfortable with being gay. Then again, he was wildly courageous." Biographer Fred Kaplan concluded: "He was not interested in making a difference for gay people, or being an advocate for gay rights. There was no such thing as 'straight' or 'gay' for him, just the body and sex."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the multi-volume memoir "The Diary of Anaïs Nin" (1931–74), Anaïs Nin said she had a love affair with Vidal, who denied her claim in his memoir "Palimpsest" (1995). In the online article "Gore Vidal's Secret, Unpublished Love Letter to Anaïs Nin" (2013), author Kim Krizan said she found an unpublished love letter from Vidal to Nin, which contradicts his denial of a love affair with Nin. Krizan said she found the love letter while researching "Mirages", the latest volume of Nin's uncensored diary, to which Krizan wrote the foreword. Vidal would cruise the streets and bars of New York City and other locales and wrote in his memoir that by age twenty-five, he had had more than a thousand sexual encounters. Vidal also said that he had an intermittent romance with the actress Diana Lynn, and alluded to possibly having fathered a daughter. He was briefly engaged to the actress Joanne Woodward before she married the actor Paul Newman; after marrying, they briefly shared a house with Vidal in Los Angeles.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal enjoyed telling his sexual exploits to friends. Vidal claimed to have slept with Fred Astaire when he first moved to Hollywood and also with a young Dennis Hopper.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 1950, Vidal met Howard Austen, who became his partner for the next 53 years, until Austen's death. He said that the secret to his long relationship with Austen was that they did not have sex with each other: "It's easy to sustain a relationship when sex plays no part, and impossible, I have observed, when it does." In "" (1995), by Judy Wiedner, Vidal said that he refused to call himself "gay" because he was not an adjective, adding "to be categorized is, simply, to be enslaved. Watch out. I have never thought of myself as a victim ... I've said—a thousand times?—in print and on TV, that everyone is bisexual."


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the course of his life, Vidal lived at various times in Italy and in the United States. In 2003, as his health began to fail with age, he sold his Italian villa "La Rondinaia" (The Swallow's Nest) on the Amalfi Coast in the province of Salerno and he and Austen returned to live in their 1929 villa in Outpost Estates, Los Angeles. Howard Austen died in November 2003 and in February 2005 his remains were re-buried at Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., in a joint grave plot that Vidal had purchased for himself and Austen.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In 2010, Vidal began to suffer from Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, a neurological disorder caused by his years of alcohol abuse. On July 31, 2012, Vidal died of pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of 86. A memorial service was held for him at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City on August 23, 2012. He was buried next to Howard Austen in Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C. Vidal said he chose his grave site because it is between the graves of two people who were important in his life: Henry Adams, the historian and writer, whose work Vidal admired; and his boyhood friend Jimmie Trimble who was killed in World War II, a tragedy that haunted Vidal for the rest of his life.


title: Gore Vidal

text: Postmortem opinions and assessments of Vidal as a writer varied. The "New York Times" described him as "an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile, or gotten more mileage from their talent." The "Los Angeles Times" said that he was a literary juggernaut whose novels and essays were considered "among the most elegant in the English language". The "Washington Post" described him as a "major writer of the modern era ... [an] astonishingly versatile man of letters".


title: Gore Vidal

text: "The Guardian" said that "Vidal's critics disparaged his tendency to formulate an aphorism, rather than to argue, finding in his work an underlying note of contempt for those who did not agree with him. His fans, on the other hand, delighted in his unflagging wit and elegant style." The "Daily Telegraph" described the writer as "an icy iconoclast" who "delighted in chronicling what he perceived as the disintegration of civilisation around him". The BBC News said that he was "one of the finest post-war American writers ... an indefatigable critic of the whole American system ... Gore Vidal saw himself as the last of the breed of literary figures who became celebrities in their own right. Never a stranger to chat shows; his wry and witty opinions were sought after as much as his writing." In "The Culture of the United States Laments the Death of Gore Vidal", the Spanish on-line magazine "Ideal" said that Vidal's death was a loss to the "culture of the United States" and described him as a "great American novelist and essayist". In "The Writer Gore Vidal is Dead in Los Angeles", the online edition of the Italian newspaper "Corriere della Sera" described the novelist as "the "enfant terrible" of American culture" and that he was "one of the giants of American literature". In "Gore Vidal: The Killjoy of America", the French newspaper "Le Figaro" said that the public intellectual Vidal was "the killjoy of America" but that he also was an "outstanding polemicist" who used words "like high-precision weapons".


title: Gore Vidal

text: On August 23, 2012, in the program a "Memorial for Gore Vidal in Manhattan", the life and works of the writer Gore Vidal were celebrated at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, with a revival of "The Best Man: A Play About Politics" (1960). The writer and comedian Dick Cavett was host of the Vidalian celebration, which featured personal reminiscences about and performances of excerpts from the works of Vidal by friends and colleagues, such as Elizabeth Ashley, Candice Bergen, Hillary Clinton, Alan Cumming, James Earl Jones, Elaine May, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon, Cybill Shepherd, and Liz Smith.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In the 1960s, the weekly American sketch comedy television program "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" featured a running-joke sketch about Vidal; the telephone operator Ernestine (Lily Tomlin) would call him, saying: "Mr. Veedul, this is the Phone Company calling! (snort! snort!)." The sketch, titled "Mr. Veedle", also appeared in Tomlin's comedy record album "This Is a Recording" (1972).


title: Gore Vidal

text: Vidal provided his own voice for the animated-cartoon version of himself in "The Simpsons" episode "Moe'N'a Lisa". He also voices his animated-cartoon version in "Family Guy". He was interviewed in the "Da Ali G Show"; the Ali G character mistakes him for Vidal Sassoon, a famous hairdresser.


title: Gore Vidal

text: The Buckley–Vidal debates, their aftermath and cultural significance, were the focus of a 2015 documentary film called "Best of Enemies", as well as a 2021 play by James Graham, inspired by the film.


title: Gore Vidal

text: In season eight, episode eight of "The Office" titled "Gettysburg", Oscar Martinez calls Dwight Schrute "Gore Vidal" when Dwight tries to explain his version of history naming the "Battle of Schrute Farms" as the northernmost battle in the Civil War. Dwight responds to Oscar that he doesn't "know who that is".


title: Gore Vidal

text: A Netflix biopic titled "Gore" was filmed in 2017. It was directed and co-written by Michael Hoffman, and based on Jay Parini's book "Empire of Self, A Life of Gore Vidal". The film, which starred Kevin Spacey in the title role, was cancelled and remains unreleased due to sexual misconduct allegations made against Spacey.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Maria Leonor "Leni" Gerona Robredo (; born Maria Leonor Santo Tomas Gerona; April 23, 1965) is a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the 14th vice president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022.


title: Leni Robredo

text: She was the wife of the late Jesse Robredo, who was interior secretary from 2010 until his death in 2012. A long-time human rights lawyer and social activist, she eventually ran for public office and was elected in 2013 as the 3rd district representative of Camarines Sur, her home province. She served in this position for three years, writing legislation on agrarian reform, people empowerment, and anti-corruption. She then assumed the vice presidency in 2016, after winning that year's election. Robredo defeated Bongbong Marcos, son of the ousted dictator and kleptocrat Ferdinand Marcos, by a narrow margin of 263,473 votes. Bongbong Marcos protested the results, alleging that her party, the Liberal Party, had manipulated the votes. However, the Supreme Court found no evidence of fraud and even reported that her actual lead over Marcos was higher at 278,566. Robredo is the second woman to serve as vice president of the Philippines, after Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and the first vice president from the Bicol Region.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo has spearheaded multiple programs in the Office of the Vice President (OVP); her flagship anti-poverty program, "Angat Buhay" (), has helped address key areas including education, rural development, and healthcare, in partnership with more than 300 organizations. During the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines, the OVP under Robredo responded by providing free shuttle services for frontline workers, swab tests, telehealth services, and raised funds for relief operations across the country. Robredo was awarded by the government of Thailand in 2016 for her work and advocacy in women's empowerment and gender equality. Under her leadership, the OVP also received the for the office's quality management systems.


title: Leni Robredo

text: During her vice presidency, she served as the chair of the Liberal Party and "de facto" leader of the opposition to President Rodrigo Duterte's administration, where she was appointed by Duterte and briefly served as the chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council and the co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs. She has received backlash from government supporters for her being staunchly critical to Duterte's policies such as the war on drugs, counter-insurgency initiatives, COVID-19 pandemic response, and soft stance toward China. She has been a constant target of disinformation, with many articles making false claims about her personal life to discredit her.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo ran for president as an independent candidate in the 2022 Philippine presidential election with Liberal Party leader Senator Francis Pangilinan as her running mate. Her campaign, which centered on thwarting another Marcos regime, was noted for the strength of its volunteers and the attendance in its rallies, her popularity among the younger generation. Robredo lost the election, placing second with 15,035,773 votes; her campaign has been observed to have been affected by disinformation against her, as well as her lack of political machinery.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Maria Leonor Santo Tomas Gerona was born on April 23, 1965, in Naga, Camarines Sur, Philippines. She was the first of three children born to Naga City Regional Trial Court Judge Antonio Gerona (c. 1933–2013) and Salvacion Santo Tomas (1936–2020).


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo attended the basic education department of Universidad de Sta. Isabel in Naga, graduating from elementary school in 1978, and from high school in 1982. She earned her degree in Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of the Philippines School of Economics at UP Diliman in 1986, and proceeded to study law at the University of Nueva Caceres, graduating in 1992. She passed the bar exams in 1997.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Gerona chose to temporarily forego law studies and instead decided to work as a researcher for the Bicol River Basin Development Program (BRBDP), a government agency tasked with integrated area development planning in the three provinces of the Bicol Region. Here she met then-program director Jesse Robredo, who would eventually become her husband.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Having passed the bar on her second attempt in 1996 and admitted in May 1997, Robredo served in the Public Attorney's Office, a role in which she often took up the defense for cases pursued by her husband, who by then had become Mayor of Naga.


title: Leni Robredo

text: From 1998 to 2008, Robredo became the coordinator of Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panligan (SALIGAN), a Naga-based alternative legal support group. SALIGAN's work aimed to encourage young legal professionals to take on leadership roles, and involved visiting distant rural communities to provide legal services to residents who would otherwise have little or no access to such services, as well as conducting legal advocacy by proposing amendments and new laws based on the needs of these marginalized communities. Later, the group's focus shifted to include helping rural women to acquire capital in order to participate in competitive markets.


title: Leni Robredo

text: In addition, Robredo founded the Lakas ng Kababaihan ng Naga Federation, an organization that provides training and livelihood opportunities for women, in 1989.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo ran in Camarines Sur's 3rd congressional district during the Philippine general elections of 2013. On May 16, 2013, she was proclaimed winner, beating Nelly Favis-Villafuerte (of Nationalist People's Coalition/United Nationalist Alliance), wife of former Congressman Luis Villafuerte and member of the politically powerful Villafuerte dynasty.


title: Leni Robredo

text: During her term in congress, Robredo was the vice chairman of the House committees on good governance, public accountability, and revision of laws, and a member of 11 other house panels. She was known for being a strong advocate of the Freedom of Information Act, and a strong supporter of the Bangsamoro Basic Law.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Participatory governance and transparency were the major objectives and thrusts of Robredo's legislative agenda. The first law Robredo authored in congress was the Full Disclosure Policy Bill (HB 19), which would have mandated all government agencies and their sub-units and projects to disclose their budget and financial transactions in a conspicuous manner "without any requests from the public." Concerned that the marginalized sector should not be denied access to government frontline services and public meetings based on their attire, she sponsored the Open Door Policy Act (House Bill No. 6286), which prohibits government offices and agencies from implementing strict dress codes.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo also authored the People Empowerment Bill (HB 4911), which sought to allow more participation from Filipinos in decision and policy-making, and the Participatory Budget Process Bill (HB 3905), which sought to increase participation in budget-related decisions in government projects by locals. She also wrote the Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Bill (HB 3432) to prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion or belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expressions, language, disability, HIV status, etc.


title: Leni Robredo

text: To promote transparency in the taxation process, she sponsored the house version (House Bill 05831) of what would eventually become Republic Act RA10708, the Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act of 2009 (TIMTA).


title: Leni Robredo

text: Other major legislation co-authored by Robredo includes the Anti-Dynasty Bill and the Healthy Beverage Options Act (House Bill 4021).


title: Leni Robredo

text: As a member of the 16th Congress, Robredo was one of the principal authors of the house version of "The Tax Incentives Management and Transparency Act (TIMTA)" (Republic Act RA10708, House Bill 05831), which was enacted on December 9, 2015. She also co-authored the house version of the following laws: the “National Children’s Month Act,” Republic Act RA10661 (HB01641) enacted on May 29, 2015, declaring the celebration of the national children's month on November of every year; the "Charter of the Quezon City Development Authority," Republic Act RA10646 (HB03899), lapsed into law on November 8, 2014; the "Open High School System Act," Republic Act RA10665 (HB04085) enacted on July 9, 2015, establishing and appropriating funds for the open high school system; Republic Act RA10638 (HB04089), extending the corporate life of the Philippine National Railways for another 50 years, enacted on June 16, 2014; Republic Act RA10707 (HB04147), amending the "Probation Law of 1976" enacted on November 26, 2015, rationalizing and strengthening the probation system; the "Graphic Health Warnings Law," Republic Act RA10643 (HB04590), enacted on November 15, 2014, prescribing the printing of graphic health warnings on tobacco products; Republic Act RA10655 (HB05280), decriminalizing premature remarriages, enacted on March 13, 2015; and the "Sangguniang Kabataan Reform Act.of 2015," Republic Act RA10742 (HB06043), enacted on January 15, 2016.


title: Leni Robredo

text: In addition, Robredo was one of many co-authors of the National Budgets for the years 2014 (RA10633, HB02630, enacted on December 20, 2013), 2015 (RA10651, HB04968, enacted on December 23, 2014), and 2016 (RA10717, HB06132, enacted on December 22, 2015).


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo was also a key supporter of: HB 4911: People Empowerment Bill to create a partnership between local governments and civil society through the establishment of a people's council in every local government unit. This act also prescribes the powers and functions of said council; HB 3432: Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination to prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion or belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expressions, language, disability, HIV status, and other status, and provide penalties for these; HB 4021: Healthy Beverage Options to regulate the availability of beverages to children in schools and for other purposes; HB 19: Full Disclosure Policy to require the full disclosure of all information on fiscal management from all national government departments, bureaus, agencies, and other instrumentalities, including government-owned or controlled corporations and their subsidiaries and local governments. This act will also provide penalties for violations of said requirements; HB 3905: Participatory Budget Process to institutionalize citizens’ participation in the budget process and for other processes; and HB 3237: Freedom of Information to strengthen the right of citizens to information held by the government.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On October 5, 2015, after her three daughters set aside their initial objections, Robredo announced that she would run for the post of Vice President of the Philippines under the Liberal Party in the 2016 election, as the running mate of presidential candidate Mar Roxas. Robredo won the election with 14,418,817 votes, or 35.11 percent of cast ballots, narrowly defeating her closest rival, Senator Ferdinand Marcos, Jr, by 263,473 votes or by 0.64 percent.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo was sworn in as vice president of the Philippines on June 30, 2016, at the Quezon City Reception House, which she had since used as her office.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo first met President Rodrigo Duterte personally at the Armed Forces of the Philippines change-of-command ceremonies at Camp Aguinaldo on July 1, 2016, a day after their inauguration. She later paid a courtesy call on him at Malacañang Palace on July 4, their first formal meeting. On July 7, Duterte called Robredo during a press conference to offer her the cabinet position of head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, which Robredo accepted. Robredo is the third vice president to head the government agency focused on housing programs, following her immediate predecessors Noli de Castro and Jejomar Binay. Duterte earlier said that he did not want to appoint a cabinet position to Robredo due to his unfamiliarity with her and his friendship with Marcos.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On December 4, 2016, Robredo was informed by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. "to desist from attending all Cabinet meetings starting December 5", which prompted her to release a statement tendering her resignation as the chairwoman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council, effective the following day.


title: Leni Robredo

text: In March 2017, Robredo sent a video appeal to the United Nations in which she claimed that the Philippine National Police had unwritten policies in its operations in the drug war, where family members of drug peddlers were allegedly being held hostage and relatives of drug users and pushers wanted by the police were being killed. Robredo's message to a side meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs annual meeting in Vienna last March 16 stirred a political firestorm as it coincided with the filing by Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano of the first impeachment case against President Duterte. Robredo also claimed of a "palit ulo" (head swapping) scheme, where police allegedly rounded up families of accused drug personalities to demand for their relatives to be taken in exchange for the accused drug personalities if they could not be found. Citing a lack of evidence to the claims, a group of lawyers and academics filed an impeachment attempt against Robredo for allegedly "betraying her oath to defend the country." The impeachment campaign against her was rejected by Duterte himself, and never gained traction due to a lack of endorsement from the House of Representatives.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On November 4, 2019, Duterte assigned Robredo to be co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) until the end of his term in 2022, said presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo. After 19 days, however, Duterte fired Robredo from her post after stiff opposition from the Duterte administration following her meetings with foreign entities and request for classified drug war information during her tenure as ICAD co-chair.


title: Leni Robredo

text: The Office of the Vice President under Robredo was identified by the Commission on Audit in 2017 for delays in liquidating travel expenses. But for the next four consecutive years (2018–2022), the office received the highest audit rating from the commission.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo has spearheaded programs under the Office of the Vice President (OVP). As of January 2022, her flagship anti-poverty program Angat Buhay has benefitted 622,000 families in 223 cities and municipalities across the country since she assumed office in 2016. P520 million worth of aid has been mobilized for the program, mostly from donations by the private sector. The OVP under Robredo has partnered with 372 organizations in the implementation of Angat Buhay. The Angat Buhay program focuses on six key advocacy areas, namely: public education, rural development, food security and nutrition, women empowerment, universal healthcare, and housing and resettlement.


title: Leni Robredo

text: In October 2017, the Senate increased the 2018 budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) by ₱20 million, which was allotted for the vice president's Angat Buhay program. In the same month, Robredo called on fellow Filipinos to remember the 165 soldiers and police who gave their lives for the liberation of Marawi City. Robredo said her office was already preparing to help in the rehabilitation of Marawi City, primarily through its flagship anti-poverty program.


title: Leni Robredo

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the OVP under Robredo provided free shuttle services for pandemic frontline workers, swab tests, telehealth services, and raised funds for relief operations across the country. The office has also delivered 7,350 personal protective equipment (PPEs) to nine hospitals, including the San Lazaro Hospital, the Philippine General Hospital, and the Lung Center of the Philippines. A total of ₱17.3 million was raised for these donations, including food and care packages for the health workers and their families.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On October 24, 2018, Robredo officially launched the opposition senatorial slate for the 2019 senatorial elections, declaring that 'the opposition is alive.' The opposition candidates ran under the "Otso Diretso" slate, which included former senator Mar Roxas, election lawyer Romulo Macalintal, Mindanao peace advocate Samira Gutoc-Tomawis, human rights lawyer Jose Manuel Diokno, former congressman Erin Tañada, former solicitor general Florin Hilbay, senator Bam Aquino, and Magdalo party-list Rep. Gary Alejano. All Otso Diretso candidates lost the election, the second time that a Liberal Party-led coalition suffered a great loss since 1955.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo has been a constant victim of memes and "fake news" articles since taking office in 2016, some of which she claims emanate from a Senate source. Dealing with these, she said, was a "test of character". Numerous fake news stories have been manufactured on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other blog sites against Robredo after she won the vice presidency in 2016, a portion of which were fabricated by pro-Duterte bloggers. Robredo has demonstrated the falsehood of these statements against her.


title: Leni Robredo

text: During the 2022 Philippine presidential election campaign period, Robredo was the "biggest victim" and target of misinformation reportedly perpetrated by social media supporters of fellow presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo's winning margin of 0.61% is the closest margin since Fernando Lopez's victory in the 1965 vice presidential election. Her opponent, Bongbong Marcos, filed an electoral protest on June 29, 2016, a day before inauguration. On February 16, 2021, the PET unanimously dismissed Marcos' electoral protest against Robredo.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo officially announced her campaign for president of the Philippines on October 7, 2021, the day she filed her certificate of candidacy before the Commission on Elections as an independent candidate despite her being the party leader of the Liberal Party of the Philippines. Hours after the announcement, a source from Robredo's camp revealed that she had selected senator and Liberal Party president Francis Pangilinan as her running mate.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo placed second in the official tally with 15,035,773 votes, and lost to fellow presidential candidate Bongbong Marcos by a wide margin of over 31 million votes.


title: Leni Robredo

text: After her term ended, Robredo established a non-governmental organization called Angat Buhay, taking the name and template of the anti-poverty program that she established during her tenure as vice president.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo has repeatedly expressed her dissent for the government's war on drugs, particularly the policy of Oplan Tokhang. After her short tenure as the co-chairperson of the government's ICAD, she made recommendations to improve the government's campaign against drugs. During her presidential campaign, she vowed to continue intensified efforts against drugs, but would focus on rehabilitation and prevention.


title: Leni Robredo

text: During the Marawi siege, Robredo called for unity as government troops engaged in a firefight against the Maute group in Marawi, and she organized donations and directed relief operations for the victims. She then visited wounded soldiers in Iligan to give support and contributions. Robredo respects President Duterte's implementation of martial law in the whole of Mindanao as a way to combat terrorism, but has requested measures to ensure that the implementation would not resemble the "abuses and violations" during Ferdinand Marcos' implementation of Proclamation No. 1081. She also questioned the coverage and prolongation of the implementation and called on members of the Congress to review and validate the implementation as a "constitutional duty". Robredo said that the martial law in Mindanao has failed to address threats in the region. On November 26, 2019, Robredo called on the government to assure that troop deployments in Samar, Negros, and Bicol would not lead to martial law.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo voiced her support for the proposed anti-turncoat law in the House. During her congressional career, she co-authored the Anti-Dynasty Bill.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Robredo criticized China for establishing missiles in the South China Sea. She says that China must first recognize the "Philippines v. China" arbitral ruling before forging any agreement with the Philippines, a position that contrasts with that of Duterte's more diplomatic approach. Robredo called for transparency in government-sponsored deals with China.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Leni was married to Jesse Robredo, whom she met while working at the Bicol River Basin Development Program, from 1987 until his death from a plane crash in 2012. The couple has three daughters: Jessica Marie "Aika" Robredo, Janine Patricia "Tricia" Robredo, and Jillian Therese Robredo. Their eldest daughter, Aika, was an executive assistant at the Office of Civil Defense and holds a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School (which Jesse also received from the same school), while their second eldest, Tricia, is a licensed physician and was a UAAP basketball sideline reporter for National University. Their youngest, Jillian, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree with a double major in economics and mathematics on a scholarship at New York University.


title: Leni Robredo

text: From May 14, 2017, Robredo has hosted her own public service radio program entitled "BISErbisyong LENI", aired on DZXL, until June 26, 2022, after her term end as vice president.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On August 1, 2016, Robredo was awarded the Honorary Outstanding Woman Award of the Year 2016 by the Thai government, coinciding with Thailand's Women's Day. The recognition was given to Robredo for her work and advocacy on women's empowerment and gender equality.


title: Leni Robredo

text: On August 23, 2016, Robredo was awarded the Most Influential Filipina Woman of the World award by Filipina Women's Network (FWN), a non-government organization.


title: Leni Robredo

text: Pathologist Dr. Raymundo Lo named a pink orchid hybrid after Robredo. "Rhyncholaeliocattleya Leni Robredo", which was only named upon Robredo's announcement of her candidacy for president in October 2021, was said took seven years to bloom since its pollination from two orchid species. The flower is not yet in commercial production.


title: Leni Robredo

text: In July 2022, the Ateneo de Manila University announced the discovery of two new species of water scavenger beetles. One of them, "Anacaena angatbuhay", named after Robredo's Angat Buhay program, had been discovered in Ifugao.


title: Logistic regression

text: In statistics, the logistic model (or logit model) is a statistical model that models the probability of an event taking place by having the log-odds for the event be a linear combination of one or more independent variables. In regression analysis, logistic regression (or logit regression) is estimating the parameters of a logistic model (the coefficients in the linear combination). Formally, in binary logistic regression there is a single binary dependent variable, coded by an indicator variable, where the two values are labeled "0" and "1", while the independent variables can each be a binary variable (two classes, coded by an indicator variable) or a continuous variable (any real value). The corresponding probability of the value labeled "1" can vary between 0 (certainly the value "0") and 1 (certainly the value "1"), hence the labeling; the function that converts log-odds to probability is the logistic function, hence the name. The unit of measurement for the log-odds scale is called a "logit", from logistic unit, hence the alternative names. See and for formal mathematics, and for a worked example.


title: Logistic regression

text: Binary variables are widely used in statistics to model the probability of a certain class or event taking place, such as the probability of a team winning, of a patient being healthy, etc. (see ), and the logistic model has been the most commonly used model for binary regression since about 1970. Binary variables can be generalized to categorical variables when there are more than two possible values (e.g. whether an image is of a cat, dog, lion, etc.), and the binary logistic regression generalized to multinomial logistic regression. If the multiple categories are ordered, one can use the ordinal logistic regression (for example the proportional odds ordinal logistic model). See for further extensions. The logistic regression model itself simply models probability of output in terms of input and does not perform statistical classification (it is not a classifier), though it can be used to make a classifier, for instance by choosing a cutoff value and classifying inputs with probability greater than the cutoff as one class, below the cutoff as the other; this is a common way to make a binary classifier.


title: Logistic regression

text: Analogous linear models for binary variables with a different sigmoid function instead of the logistic function (to convert the linear combination to a probability) can also be used, most notably the probit model; see . The defining characteristic of the logistic model is that increasing one of the independent variables multiplicatively scales the odds of the given outcome at a "constant" rate, with each independent variable having its own parameter; for a binary dependent variable this generalizes the odds ratio. More abstractly, the logistic function is the natural parameter for the Bernoulli distribution, and in this sense is the "simplest" way to convert a real number to a probability. In particular, it maximizes entropy (minimizes added information), and in this sense makes the fewest assumptions of the data being modeled; see .


title: Logistic regression

text: The parameters of a logistic regression are most commonly estimated by maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE). This does not have a closed-form expression, unlike linear least squares; see . Logistic regression by MLE plays a similarly basic role for binary or categorical responses as linear regression by ordinary least squares (OLS) plays for scalar responses: it is a simple, well-analyzed baseline model; see for discussion. The logistic regression as a general statistical model was originally developed and popularized primarily by Joseph Berkson, beginning in , where he coined "logit"; see .


title: Logistic regression

text: Logistic regression is used in various fields, including machine learning, most medical fields, and social sciences. For example, the Trauma and Injury Severity Score (TRISS), which is widely used to predict mortality in injured patients, was originally developed by Boyd "" using logistic regression. Many other medical scales used to assess severity of a patient have been developed using logistic regression. Logistic regression may be used to predict the risk of developing a given disease (e.g. diabetes; coronary heart disease), based on observed characteristics of the patient (age, sex, body mass index, results of various blood tests, etc.). Another example might be to predict whether a Nepalese voter will vote Nepali Congress or Communist Party of Nepal or Any Other Party, based on age, income, sex, race, state of residence, votes in previous elections, etc. The technique can also be used in engineering, especially for predicting the probability of failure of a given process, system or product. It is also used in marketing applications such as prediction of a customer's propensity to purchase a product or halt a subscription, etc. In economics, it can be used to predict the likelihood of a person ending up in the labor force, and a business application would be to predict the likelihood of a homeowner defaulting on a mortgage. Conditional random fields, an extension of logistic regression to sequential data, are used in natural language processing.


title: Logistic regression

text: As a simple example, we can use a logistic regression with one explanatory variable and two categories to answer the following question:


title: Logistic regression

text: A group of 20 students spends between 0 and 6 hours studying for an exam. How does the number of hours spent studying affect the probability of the student passing the exam?


title: Logistic regression

text: The reason for using logistic regression for this problem is that the values of the dependent variable, pass and fail, while represented by "1" and "0", are not cardinal numbers. If the problem was changed so that pass/fail was replaced with the grade 0–100 (cardinal numbers), then simple regression analysis could be used.


title: Logistic regression

text: The table shows the number of hours each student spent studying, and whether they passed (1) or failed (0).