Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is launching Fair Fight 2020, which aims to enfranchise voters across the country.

Stacey Abrams is not running for president, and says she will instead focus on extending voter protection programs throughout the country.

The Georgia Democrat, whose race for governor drew national attention, says she aims to enfranchise voters across 20 states with an initiative called Fair Fight 2020.

“There are only two things stopping us in 2020: making sure people have a reason to vote and that they have the right to vote,” Abrams said in announcing the initiative at the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, chief executive of Fair Fight 2020, cited “unprecedented voter suppression mainly targeted at communities of color, but also at students and low-income folks across this country.

“Our Democratic presidential nominee, our U.S. Senate nominees and our down ballot Democrats next year are going to need unprecedented support ensuring that voters are able to cast their ballot without issue or incident,” she said.

Last year, Abrams lost Georgia’s gubernatorial race to the Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, who was also overseeing the election as secretary of state. Voting rights was a central issue in the campaign.

A report by The Associated Press said that under an “exact match” law, Kemp had stalled more than 50,000 voter registrations by mostly black voters. The AP also reported that through a process Kemp calls “voter roll maintenance,” his office has “cancelled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012” and that “nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone.”

Kemp has vehemently denied that he attempted to disenfranchise voters in Georgia, but Groh-Wargo calls him “one of the most aggressive architects of voter suppression in the country.” She says Fair Fight 2020 will be working with local partners throughout the U.S. to prevent voter suppression.

The group is collaborating with state Democratic parties to organize and place volunteer observers at polling locations. Groh-Wargo says it will help fund those operations, including hiring voter protection directors and additional staff as well as hotlines to field voter questions.

Erica Peresman, the voter protection director for the Michigan Democratic Party, says she’s eager to work with Fair Fight 2020, and that their collaboration will help ensure “every eligible voter gets to cast a ballot that counts.”

Michigan recently passed a measure which allows any registered voter to request an absentee ballot. “[Fair Fight 2020] can now help us figure out … how do we make sure that all of those absentee ballots are getting counted,” Peresman says.

Fair Fight 2020 says it has been working quietly for many months with Democratic leaders in Georgia and other states to build out voter protection operations. Groh-Wargo says the group’s goal is have these operations in place this year, so that they can begin scaling the effort for the presidential election.

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Maybelle Carter (second from right) in 1974 with her daughters (from left) Helen, Anita and June.

Maybelle Carter apparently made a mean chicken gizzard soup, which called for chicken livers, necks and backs, besides the gizzards. Her daughter June Carter Cash published that recipe, along with a host of others, in Mother Maybelle’s Cookbook: A Kitchen Visit With America’s First Family of Song in 1989, a little over a decade after her mother’s passing. Only those who’d had the privilege of being guests in Maybelle’s home had witnessed what she could do with soup pots and frying pans in the name of painstaking hospitality. Even so, the notion of being able to purchase the recipes for her homecooked meals fit with how the public knew her — as the musical matron who put her Gibson L-5 archtop guitar, autoharp and long memory to use holding her rightful place in professional communities she helped inspire.

There was really no precedent for Maybelle Carter, not at the beginning nor by the end of her five-decade career. In the late 1920s and ’30s, when she was starting out, people who hadn’t seen her perform live, had only heard her on Carter Family records and radio broadcasts, scarcely believed it could be a young woman supplying the trio’s primary accompaniment on guitar. Late in her performing tenure, throughout the ’60s into the ’70s, she was both a grandmotherly figure, demure in her high-collared dresses and greying bob, and an instrumentalist sharing her technique and repertoire, and the spotlight, with mostly male, star musicians a generation or two her junior.

Society tends to treat woman of a certain age like they’re irrelevant, even invisible, their ways antiquated and their powers, skills and accomplishments long forgotten. Even in the realm of country and folk music, each defined in relation its own idea of preserving noble cultural lineage, Carter’s enduring presence was striking. She was still out there working, in an industry vastly changed from the one she started in, still taking unpretentious pride in her abilities, when she finally came to be recognized as a foundational figure, an originator.

In her bucolic southwest Virginia youth, she got her hands on a mail order guitar and proceeded to absorb and apply musical ideas from an array of sources, beginning with her mother’s banjo picking. Maybelle would spend much of her life on the opposite end of that exchange, making herself an approachable source to her literal and figurative progeny.

First, though, she focused on her own development. The guitar playing approach she devised combined the brisk, swinging rhythms of strummed chords and terse, melodic lead licks, and she was serious about its execution. In Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music, authors Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg describe how much it irked Maybelle when record man Ralph Peer wouldn’t allow her a do-ever in the studio to fix a mistake or elected to release a flawed take anyhow for sake of “authenticity.” Decades on in a promotional interview, she sounded both pleased and amused by folkloric appraisals of her playing. “When I started playing the guitar,” she recalled, “I didn’t have nobody to play with me, so that’s how I developed this style of pickin’, and the rhythm too. They call it the ‘Carter scratch’ now,” she goes on, starting to chuckle, “some of ’em do.”

Listeners connected with the Carters as a family delivering sacred and sentimental tunes with accessible directness, even if they weren’t clear on the exact nature of the group members’ relations — that Maybelle had been drafted in her late teens to round out the singing duo of her older cousin Sara and her song-collecting spouse A.P., big brother to Maybelle’s husband Ezra. After the latter two started their own family, Maybelle encouraged the musical aptitude she saw in her daughters Anita and Helen and helped their less tunefully advanced sister June find a performing role by purchasing her an autoharp. When the original Carter trio permanently parted ways in 1943, following the long disintegration of Sara and A.P.’s marriage, Maybelle and her brood carried on, billed as the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle. She was 34 years old at the time, and the “mother” prefix would be attached to her name forever after.

***

The Carters picked up Chet Atkins, whose jazzy guitar playing hadn’t yet taken him very far, as a sideman. On transcriptions of radio segments they recorded together, Maybelle’s role was a supporting one — supplying solid rhythm guitar and harmony singing — except when she stepped forward to honor a request for an old, familiar song from the Original Carter Family repertoire. The dynamic continued after Maybelle and by-then grown Anita, June and Helen made it onto the Grand Ole Opry; Maybelle was as likely to delegate soloing duties to her daughters as to take solos herself.

Her mothering reputation grew as she looked after first Hank Williams, then Johnny Cash, rash, self-destructive, perpetually strung-out young stars who’d show up at her home for steadying succor and hot meals. Cash, who’d developed a strong attachment to June in particular, brought all four of the Carter women on his thriving tours. Carter biographers Zwonitzer and Hirshberg relished pointing out that for all the importance Maybelle placed on setting a good example, she was also known as a speed demon behind the wheel and, as time went on, an avid gambler.

Eventually, Maybelle’s daughters dispersed on separate professional paths. Their success genuinely pleased her, though the tapering off of the sisters-and-mother act, along with country music’s increasing reliance on electrified sounds, left her resigned to supplementing her musical income with overnight nursing shifts. But she would increasingly find herself looked to as a matriarch by male stars, all of them at least a generation younger than her and almost all from outside her family circle. Their interactions, whether folksy or formal, began to bring more serious attention to her musicianship and vast knowledge of songs from a bygone era.

Earl Scruggs, easily the best known bluegrass instrumentalist on the planet by the early ’60s, made it known that he considered her a guitar hero when he and his duo partner Lester Flatt made an album of Carter Family favorites. On it, Scruggs attempted to emulate Maybelle’s distinctive parts. Zwonitzer and Hirshberg noted that that was easier said than done, even when Maybelle, who was mostly playing autoharp on the sessions, offered the use of the archtop she’d used on the original recordings. “He had trouble reproducing Maybelle’s unique tones and nuances,” they wrote, “no matter how perfectly he copied her notes.” During one of her televised appearances with Flatt & Scruggs, the announcer instructed the audience, “Pay attention to the real high notes that Earl’s picking. He said Mama Maybelle taught him these chords.” Scruggs seemed to look for her approval after one melodic instrumental interlude.

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Cash, who’d become a son-in-law to Maybelle upon marrying June, faithfully championed her skill and the Carter Family’s historic contributions to commercial country music, which couldn’t have hurt the case for their 1970 induction in the Country Music Hall of Fame, belated as it was, coming nine years after their contemporary Jimmie Rodgers went in as part of the inaugural class. Cash gave her an affectionately ceremonious introduction on an episode of his television show. “Whether country music is played in New York City, as we are tonight, in an American rural crossroads town or in a foreign land, this next lady is loved and respected, and you can’t really measure her influence in our business, so important she’s been,” intoned the imposing, black-clad host. “She’s been recording now for 46 years, and I hope her new record with a young singer named Johnny Cash doesn’t hurt her career too much.”

His droll self-deprecation drew a grin from her. She gave a slight nod toward the audience to acknowledge its applause and, still smiling, kicked off her spry, signature guitar figure from the Carter standard “Wildwood Flower,” leading Cash’s band into a song descended from it, “Pick the Wildwood Flower.” Eventually Cash strode over to his mother-in-law, leaned over her shoulder and watched her fingers move. He urged her to demonstrate her licks once more, pointed his microphone at her guitar and played up his own ineptitude by comparison. “I see the way you do it,” he said, “but I can’t ever get it going, mama.”

His stage patter brought to life a mother figure’s paradoxical truth: Just because she passes her knowledge along doesn’t mean you’ll ever be able to replicate her unique touch.

***

In the parallel world of the urban folk revival, far from Nashville’s Opry, collegiate listeners had taken an avid, studious interest in music and music-makers that had been around long enough to seem unsullied by the pursuit of profit or popularity. That included Maybelle, the sole still-active member of the original Carter Family. The young, New York-based string band New Lost City Ramblers invited her to join them for an L.A. folk club residency, then for Newport Folk Festival appearances, where she gave workshops on guitar and autoharp. (Her autoharp held special appeal for folkies, who associated it with rustic, front porch music-making, plus it was easier on her arthritis.)

Despite Maybelle’s lifetime of performing experience, these were curious, new settings for her, and she savvily adjusted to expectations, receiving the attention as something she hadn’t necessarily envisioned but had earned nonetheless. Of drawing twenty-something crowds that lapped up her stories and waited politely while she tuned her instruments, she said, “I would have never believed it ’til I done it.”

The names and cover art of albums she released from the early ’60s on hold clues about how her presentation evolved. They had titles like Mother Maybelle Carter & her Autoharp Plays Famous Folk Songs, Queen of the Auto-Harp and A Living Legend. On the front of the latter LP, she’s seated in a stately parlor, a Tiffany-esque lamp on a marble-topped table next to her. Another, from 1973, depicted her in a more idyllic setting, perched on a quilt-draped chair in a patch of grass and wildflowers, and included her studio banter with Nashville A-list session musicians, who marveled over her by-then vintage Gibson. When she mentioned the name of one jaunty, old tune, the players egged her on, “Show us how you did it.”

At the beginning of the ’70s, the long-haired, California country-rockers in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band invited Maybelle, by then in her 60s, along with Scruggs and a slew of other musical elders, to be venerated guests on what became the sprawling, generation-bridging landmark of an album Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Maybelle’s granddaughter Carlene Carter was then in her teens, and the members of the Dirt Band were only about a decade older. In a 2018 interview with NPR, she described how easily her grandmother once more slipped into a matriarchal role at the request of a group of studious, enthusiastic young musicians. Carlene laughed heartily recalling the conversation: “She was like, ‘Well, I guess I’ll go down there with those Dirt Boys. They seem real nice.’ It was just so cute.”

After the album took off, the Dirt Band decided to bring a third incarnation of the Carter Family, featuring Maybelle and various configurations of her daughters and grandchildren, on tour. They knew that there could be no substitute for the presence of a musical mentor who taught everyone what they needed to know to move the picking tradition forward.

Carlene shared the stage with her grandmother those nights. “I think she always amazed people when they actually heard her play live, because she was such a perfectionist about it,” she observed with a mixture of affection and admiration. “And as simple as everything might seem, it’s not that simple. You ask any guitar player if you try to mimic it. They’ll always put way more notes in than they need to and they’ll miss the nuances of the smaller things.”

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More than half of immigrants detained by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are housed in remote rural prisons, according to a new NPR analysis, about 52%. That number is increasing.

Yoel Alonso sat in a cell for 10 months before he ever met with a lawyer. His wife had to travel 1,000 miles to visit him at the remote Louisiana facility where he was detained.

Alonso is not imprisoned for committing a crime. In fact, he turned himself in to immigration officials last October, seeking asylum from Cuba. Since then, he has been detained in two rural facilities — first in Louisiana, and now in Adams County, Miss. — where he is faced with daunting legal hurdles. Chief among them: Alonso has met his lawyer only once in his nearly 11 months in federal custody.

Yoel Alonzo with his wife, Midalis Rodriguez, who is a permanent U.S. resident.

And his plight is becoming more common. More than half of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are housed in remote rural prisons, according to a new NPR analysis, about 52%. That number is increasing.

That is a mounting concern for those who advocate on behalf of immigrants, because detainees in rural areas are facing higher barriers to obtaining a lawyer, more likely to have their asylum cases denied and more likely to be deported to their home countries.

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Alonso sought asylum in the U.S. last October, turning himself over to immigration officials in Laredo, Texas. He was soon moved to a rural detention facility in Pine Prairie, La., a four-hour drive from New Orleans and 1,000 miles away from his family.

“I had the chance to visit him [once] even though it was very far away,” says Alonso’s wife, Midalis Rodriguez, a permanent U.S. resident who lives in southern Florida with their two children.

In June, Alonso was transferred to another rural prison in Adams County, Miss., 100 miles from the nearest city of Baton Rouge.

“It’s a very concerning trend that immigration detention is moving to rural areas, remote areas, where it makes it so much harder for a person in detention to get the support that they need,” says Liz Martinez, a board member for Freedom for Immigrants, an immigrant rights group.

In fact, only a minority of detainees have lawyers at all. According to a 2015 study published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, only 14% of immigrant detainees have legal representation. Those in urban areas are at least four times more likely to have an attorney.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the agency was deliberately detaining people in rural areas far from legal resources.

ICE, which currently detains 55,530 undocumented immigrants, declined to comment on that lawsuit. In an emailed statement, a spokesman said ICE considers proximity to airports, health care and legal resources when selecting facilities. He also says detainees have access to phones and video teleconferencing and can also meet with their attorneys during visiting hours.

But many immigration attorneys say in reality, there are lots of roadblocks: not enough phones, poor connections, little or no access to interpreters, and restrictive visiting hours.

For Alonso, who is 50, it has led to an excruciating wait. His health is failing; he has severe gout and was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Alonso eventually found attorneys to take his case, pro bono; he is among a very tiny fraction of detainees able to secure such free legal services.

So far, he has been denied humanitarian parole twice. His wife says it has been extremely hard for the family.

“What more could a wife with a sick husband want, other than to be with him?” she says in Spanish. “At the very least, I want to offer him my support, and for my children to offer support.”

Money appears to be one big reason such a large share of detainees are ending up in remote regions.

“That’s because of the hospitable environment in rural areas: cheap labor, cheap land,” says Lauren-Brooke Eisen, acting director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. Eisen says many rural areas view prisons as job engines. Hundreds of new rural prisons were built in the 1990s, when inmate populations boomed. Since then, the U.S. incarceration rates waned, leaving lots of empty beds.

Eisen says now ICE is capitalizing on that available space, contracting with those same rural county jails to house detainees, whose numbers are increasing: Just last week, ICE arrested 680 workers during raids on food processing plants in Mississippi.

“Immigration detention spending has skyrocketed and the rural areas benefited from that,” Eisen says.

Loyola University law professor Andrea Armstrong says she sees that happening across Louisiana. “When criminal justice reforms were enacted, that left empty beds that were ripe for contracting with ICE,” she says.

Those contracts can be lucrative. The state pays local sheriffs $24.39 per day to house someone convicted of a crime. By comparison, the average daily rate ICE pays to house an immigrant detainee is five times as much — $126.52.

ICE confirmed it recently opened eight new detention facilities, seven of which are in Louisiana. All but one are in rural areas.

“I’ve never seen an immigration attorney out there,” says Lisa Lehner, director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. She represents detainees held in Glades County, Fla., about 100 miles northwest of Miami. Glades is the state’s fourth least populated county, surrounded by acres of sugar cane fields.

The detention center in Glades has been the subject of a number of complaints and lawsuits, alleging everything from misuse of pepper spray and solitary confinement to religious persecution. Lehner argues conditions are worse in rural facilities in part because there are fewer people present to witness what is happening.

“If there’s lawyers going in and out, you would imagine that the people who are detaining the immigrants are going to behave in a more careful way,” she says.

Deportation of immigrants held in remote facilities is also far more likely, because it’s hard and expensive for detainees there to find attorneys to represent them in court, immigrant advocates say.

Immigration courts in rural areas deny many more asylum cases than those in cities, sending more detainees back to their home countries. Judges in rural immigration courts denied 87% of asylum cases, compared with 54% in urban areas, according to NPR analysis of data from 2013 to 2018 obtained by TRAC, a research project at Syracuse University.

“It is an issue, because it means if you have the bad luck of being detained and in a certain facility then you’re almost guaranteed to be deported,” says Romy Lerner, associate director of the immigration clinic at University of Miami’s law school.

Mississippi detainee Alonso hopes to beat those odds. He is appealing his asylum case and hopes to reunite with his family.

Robert Benincasa contributed to this report.

NPR defined “rural” as those ZIP codes where more than 20% of the population lived in a rural area.

Correction Aug. 15, 2019

In previous audio and Web versions of this report, we said an ICE-contracted jail in Brooklyn, N.Y., lost heat during a cold snap in January. In fact, that facility no longer contracts with ICE and was not doing so at the time.

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In 1984, Chaka Khan enjoyed a career-revitalizing smash with “I Feel for You,” a spangly, funky, Grammy-winning R&B crossover that featured a harmonica solo from Stevie Wonder and a guest rap from Melle Mel. The track had already been covered on records by The Pointer Sisters and Rebbie Jackson, as well as Prince’s self-titled second album, but Khan’s version is the one that became a classic. Before any of those versions, though, the song existed only as an unreleased acoustic demo by Prince, who was just 20 at the time.

Friday morning, the late icon’s estate dropped Prince’s demo as a surprise release, available via streaming services and as the A-side of a 7″ single. (Prince’s original studio recording is the B-side.) The spare demo, which captures the singer and his acoustic guitar back in the winter of 1978-79, turned up on a cassette in Prince’s massive recorded archives, which promise to yield treasures such as this one for many years to come.

“I Feel for You” is available on 7″ for a limited time via Prince’s website.

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The former Arsenal star is looking for a fellow Frenchman to put any differences at Old Trafford to one side and prove himself on the playing field

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Paul Pogba remains a “great player” in the eyes of fellow World Cup winner Robert Pires and has been urged to settle his Manchester United differences with Jose Mourinho.

Two high-profile figures at Old Trafford have become caught up in a long-running saga which is doing neither any favours.

Public outbursts regarding a supposed lack of attacking football and stripping of the Red Devils vice-captaincy have only served to spark transfer talk and provide an unwelcome distraction during a testing period for United on the field.

Pires believes a butting of heads is to be expected at times from two “warriors”, but he concedes that issues need to be ironed out if a warring duo driven by the desire to be successful are to get back on the same page.

The former France international told talkSPORT of the sporting circus engulfing a compatriot in Manchester: “For Mourinho and Paul Pogba, the most important [thing] is to talk to find a good relation.

“Paul Pogba, he fights for the Man Utd shirt, Mourinho is the same.

“So, for Man Utd, the most important [thing] is to win something at the end of the season.

“Maybe they can find the solution, to talk around a table because they are two winners and two warriors, everything now is possible in football.”

Premier League title winner Pires added on a 25-year-old midfielder who has remained inconsistent at club level after returning from a memorable summer in Russia with his country: “Paul Pogba is a great player.

“He won the World Cup with France, he’s now playing for Man Utd.

“He knows Man Utd is maybe the best club in the world, so they have a lot of pressure, but Paul Pogba is a great player.”

With Pogba struggling to find form, talk of a potential January move elsewhere has resurfaced.

La Liga giants Barcelona are considered to be keeping a close eye on events in England, with Josep Maria Bartomeu refusing to rule out a winter raid for a proven performer.

Mourinho, meanwhile, finds himself falling under ever-increasing pressure, with a 3-1 defeat at West Ham on Saturday seeing his ongoing presence at OId Trafford called into question once more.

Mark Uth has earned a maiden Germany call-up despite the Schalke striker not scoring in six Bundesliga outings this season.

Schalke striker Mark Uth has been named in the Germany squad for the first time ahead of Nations League outings against Netherlands and France.

Uth, 27, joined Schalke on a free transfer in pre-season after catching the eye with Hoffenheim last term, scoring 14 times in the Bundesliga to help Julian Nagelsmann’s side qualify for the Champions League.

He is yet to score for his new club despite featuring nine times in all competitions, with Schalke alarmingly second from bottom in the Bundesliga having won just once in six matches.

But Joachim Low has seemingly seen enough from Uth to warrant a first call-up to the senior side.

There are few other surprises in the squad, with Manchester City’s Leroy Sane present once again.

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The winger came in for criticism ahead of Germany’s most recent internationals and then left the camp early to attend the birth of his daughter.

His City team-mate Ilkay Gundogan is not included, however, as he sustained a hamstring injury against Hoffenheim on Tuesday.

Germany squad in full:

Manuel Neuer (Bayern Munich), Marc-Andre ter Stegen (Barcelona), Kevin Trapp (Eintracht Frankfurt); Jerome Boateng (Bayern Munich), Matthias Ginter (Borussia Monchengladbach), Jonas Hector (Cologne), Mats Hummels (Bayern Munich), Thilo Kehrer (Paris Saint-Germain), Antonio Rudiger (Chelsea), Niklas Sule (Bayern Munich); Nico Schulz (Hoffenheim), Julian Brandt (Bayer Leverkusen), Julian Draxler (Paris Saint-Germain), Joshua Kimmich (Bayern Munich), Leon Goretzka (Bayern Munich), Kai Havertz (Bayer Leverkusen), Sebastian Rudy (Schalke), Toni Kroos (Real Madrid); Thomas Muller (Bayern Munich), Leroy Sane (Manchester City), Mark Uth (Schalke), Marco Reus (Borussia Dortmund), Timo Werner (RB Leipzig).

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry takes a seat before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on his nomination to be energy secretary on Jan. 19, 2017.

Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry plans to leave his position at the end of the year, President Trump confirmed to reporters Thursday in Fort Worth, Texas. Trump praised Perry and said he already has a replacement in mind.

“Rick has done a fantastic job,” Trump said. “But it was time.”

Trump said that Perry’s resignation didn’t come as a surprise and that he has considered leaving for six months because “he’s got some very big plans.”

Perry, 69, is one of Trump’s original Cabinet members and recently has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment inquiry of Trump.

Perry was part of what was dubbed “the three amigos” — in addition to Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt Volker, former envoy to Ukraine — charged with managing the U.S.-Ukraine relationship after the White House removed the core of its Ukraine policy team last spring.

Trump reportedly blamed Perry earlier this month for that now-famous call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump pressed Zelenskiy to investigate his potential political rival former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son.

Perry says he wanted Trump and Zelenskiy to talk strengthening energy business ties between the two countries. Regarding the Biden issue, Perry told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “As God is my witness, not once was a Biden name — not the former vice president, not his son — ever mentioned.”

Perry’s name first emerged in the appendix of the whistleblower complaint that launched the impeachment inquiry. He was tapped to attend Zelenskiy’s inauguration last May.

Democrats issued Perry a subpoena on Oct. 10, seeking documents and communications connected to that trip and a series of other events related to the inquiry.

While Perry’s name is making headlines now because of the Ukraine scandal, he had a long political career before becoming energy secretary.

For just over 14 years, he was governor of Texas, the longest-serving governor of the state. He was elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and succeeded George W. Bush when he resigned to become president.

Perry twice ran for president and on the campaign trail vowed to eliminate the agency he would come to lead — although, he famously forgot the name of the Department of Energy during a 2011 debate.

Perry changed his mind about that right around the time Trump nominated him to be secretary of energy. At his confirmation hearing, Perry said he regretted ever suggesting that idea.

Trump tapped him for the job despite wilting criticism Perry delivered as an opponent during the 2016 primary campaign. At a 2015 event, Perry said Trump “offers a barking carnival act that can be best described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery, mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.”

As head of the Department of Energy, Perry was criticized for efforts to help the struggling coal industry. His plan to provide new subsidies to coal and nuclear power plants was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Last year, a photographer said he lost his job after leaking photos of a private 2017 meeting between Perry and coal executive and Trump donor Robert “Bob” Murray. The photos show Perry hugging Murray and the coal boss handing Perry an “action plan” to help the coal companies.

Perry has repeatedly questioned the science behind climate change. Still, his home state of Texas is the largest wind energy producer in the country. For the first half of this year, more electricity was generated in the state by wind than coal, according to member station KUT.

As energy secretary, Perry’s oversight extended well beyond the country’s energy supply. The Department of Energy also oversees 17 national laboratories and is charged with keeping the country’s nuclear weapons safe.

During his tenure, Perry pushed to restart licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage project in Nevada. He also tried to attract more young people to the nuclear energy business, vowing to “make nuclear cool again.” Under Perry’s leadership, the agency held a series of events called the Millennial Nuclear Caucus.

The midfielder was taken to a local hospital after being carted off with a back injury against Napoli on Wednesday

Liverpool are waiting to discover the full extent of Naby Keita’s back injury after the midfielder was carted off in their Champions League defeat to Napoli.

Keita went down just 19 minutes into the Reds’ 1-0 loss in Italy, to be replaced by Jordan Henderson. The Guinean was taken to a local hospital as a precautionary measure after complaining of severe pain in his back, with the club awaiting the results of tests.

Liverpool stayed in Naples on Wednesday evening and Keita is expected to be discharged in time to fly back to Merseyside with the team on Thursday morning.

At this stage there is no indication how long the issue will keep Keita out of action, but the 23-year-old will almost certainly miss Sunday’s Premier League game against Manchester City. Liverpool do, however, have a two-week gap between fixtures after that due to the international break.

Klopp made no excuses for his side’s sloppy, lethargic display at Stadio San Paolo . Liverpool had looked like escaping with a goalless draw only for Lorenzo Insigne to strike in the final minute to give Napoli a deserved victory.

The result leaves Liverpool with three points from their opening two group matches, level with Paris Saint-Germain, who beat Red Star Belgrade 6-1 on Wednesday, and one point behind Napoli. 

However, with back-to-back fixtures against Red Star to come, Klopp’s side will remain confident of progressing to the knockout stages despite Wednesday’s setback.

The 29-year-old retired from Germany duty following criticism regarding a photo with the Turkey president

Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the “racism” suffered by Mesut Ozil must never be repeated after the Arsenal star was forced to retire from the Germany national team.

Ozil came under fire during the summer after posing for a picture with Erdogan in London last May.

Following a disastrous World Cup in which defending champions Germany were knocked out at the group stage, Ozil called time on his international career, citing the “racism and disrespect” he had been subjected to due to his Turkish heritage.

Erdogan has already jumped to the defence of the 29-year-old and has now called for an end to the persecution suffered by the playmaker.

“Such racism must come to an end,” he said during his state visit to Germany.

“Mesut Özil, who was born and raised in Germany, was expelled from the community because he took a picture in England. 

“I could hardly stand it as their president that these young people who made it to the national team, were ejected.”

The photo which caused such outrage was taken during president Erdogan’s election campaign visit to London’s Turkey community earlier in the year.

It exacerbated tensions between the two countries, with many German citizens being held in Turkey on political charges as part of Erdogan’s clamp down on free speech.

Politicians and figures from the Germany Football Federation (DFB) criticised the move.

Manchester City’s Ilkay Gundogan also posed for a picture with Erdogan, who he regards as “my president”.

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Ozil’s Turkish heritage originates from his grandparents, who immigrated from Germany, but felt he was treated like “an immigrant” by disgruntled fans of the team.