Matthew Watkins
@MWatkinsTrib
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Managing editor for news and politics at @texastribune . Winner of the 2011 Texas Christmas Tree Growers Association Award for business writing.
Austin
Joined January 2011
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This is wild.
GOP megadonor Steve Hotze hired 20 investigators to find voter fraud in Harris County. So far there's been one arrest: An ex-cop he hired rammed a van he thought was filled with illegal ballots.
(The van actually had A/C parts and tools.)
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BREAKING: A&M has confirmed to me that the white nationalist rally on campus has been cancelled.
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Two powerful
@MikalaCompton
photos on the front page of the
@statesman
today: One of a kid crying in the gallery as the House votes to ban gender care for trans kids; another of a crying 6-year-old trans girl as her family prepares to leave the state.
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Comments from A&M regent Tony Buzbee on the white nationalist rally coming to campus.
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The NWS map for Texas right now is absolutely insane. There are flood, tornado, red flag (dangerous wildfires), high wind and blizzard warnings in various parts of the state. Also coastal flood and high surf advisories.
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Two TX GOP county chairs said Floyd's death was staged to trick black people into voting against Trump; a third shared an image of an MLK quote next to a banana and a fourth posted a meme that George Soros paid for Floyd's killing and for people to riot.
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It’s troubling how many people think a journalist’s job is to tell them what they want to hear, rather than tell them what’s going on in the world.
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And now we will all debate whose loss was better, which is basically the perfect summation of the UT-A&M rivalry this decade.
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Breathtaking find by
@asherprice
: In memos from the 1950s, UT officials explicitly explained why they decided to start considering standardized test scores in admissions: to keep black students out.
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This stopped me cold:
The ACLU says the government has phone numbers for some of the parents who were deported without their children. But the government has resisted turning those numbers over, saying in court that doing so would be "burdensome."
“For every parent who is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration.”
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In Texas, you can lose your professional license if you fall behind on your student loan payments.
Which means you can lose your job.
Which means it'll be even harder to make your student loan payments.
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The thing that strikes me the most about today's Beto news is how many national publications sent political reporters to El Paso to cover his town hall.
Here:
And here 👇
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Hours after
@texastribune
reported that JBS Beef was refusing to let the state in its plant to test workers, the company relented.
Impact journalism gets thrown around a lot, but
@alexazura
's reporting literally might have saved lives.
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New
@jsmccullou
: TX sheriff under investigation on allegations that his department seized cash from undocumented migrants before turning them over to ICE, without instigating forfeiture proceedings and even if the migrants weren't accused of a state crime.
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In retrospect, Democrats probably should have started worrying when Pete Gallego stuck with the campaign catchphrase "I trust Pete" in his race against another guy named Pete.
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Votes were still being counted in Texas today; Tarrant County flipped from red to blue this afternoon.
Also, Texas state law allows overseas ballots to be received — not counted, received — four days after Election Day. Five days for military ballots.
Hey ponder this Texas had 11.3 million votes cast and before midnight the votes had been counted & public posted. Some military and provisional ballots counted today.
Bipartisan poll watchers and election judges present.
#txlege
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The former field director for Stacey Abrams will run Beto's campaign in Texas.
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Williamson County early vote:
Biden 50.5%, Trump 47.3%
Trump won by almost 10 points in 2016.
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I found the data in this story astounding. There have been nearly 2,500 boil-water notices reported in Texas this year — nearly 7 per day. And that's likely an undercount.
Most are in rural areas. One water supplier is averaging 6 per month.
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Honestly believe TLO is the perfect website. It looks like it was designed in 1998, but it is relentlessly functional and if it were ever redesigned I’d be angry and hopelessly lost.
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This 12-year-old, Jeremy Shuler, graduated from Texas Tech ISD last spring. He's enrolling in Cornell in the fall.
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One thing we know for sure from the early returns: The Beto/Abbott voter exists.
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Food for thought on the Texas GOP convention:
John Cornyn, booed in the hall, received 76% of the vote in his last primary race.
Greg Abbott, who didn't give a speech, received 67%.
Ken Paxton, who got a standing ovation, received 43% in March.
Very loud boos for John Cornyn as he takes the stage at the
@TexasGOP
convention. Cornyn has faced opposition within the party for working with Democrats on a gun package after the shooting in Uvalde.
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Texas is allowing restaurants and retail stores to open Friday.
Schools remain closed and daycares are only open to kids of essential workers.
But if you don't go to work bc you don't have child care, you can lose unemployment benefits.
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After a deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Democrats called for swift action on guns. Gov. Greg Abbott said he'd convene roundtable discussions. And Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said schools have "too many entrances and too many exits."
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As TX was reopening in May,
@GovAbbott
said he was keeping a close eye on the % of tests that return positive.
"If the positivity test rate is more than 10%, that’s one of those red flags that we begin to look at," he said.
Today the rate hit 10.42%
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Today in misplaced anger: Folks from PETA are at the
@utsystem
board meeting to protest animal testing at...Texas A&M.
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NEW: “I’m so scared”: 911 recordings reveal fear and urgency of those trapped in Uvalde elementary school
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Just got this press release under the heading "TODAY CHARLOTTESVILLE TOMORROW TEXAS A&M"
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Reminder that we don’t have a Secretary of State right now. The last one appointed by Abbott called the 2020 election “smooth and secure” and stepped down as it became clear the Senate wasn’t going to confirm her.
New: In late evening statement,
@TXsecofstate
office says it will audit 2020 election results in four of the state’s most populous counties.
Still no response directly from
@GovAbbott
, who Trump pressed earlier today to add audit legislation to the special session call.
#txlege
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Today's
@theeagle
newspaper in College Station, TX has an obituary for a 6-year-old chicken named "Big Mama."
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A scoop by
@James_Barragan
&
@davis_winkie
: Many National Guard troops deployed to the border by
@GregAbbott_TX
could end up owing thousands in unexpected taxes due to a withholding error by the state, the latest payroll snafu to emerge in the deployment.
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My favorite thing about college football is how absolutely dumb it makes people.
Two prestigious research universities were like, "We should let our bulldog and steer meet each other on a crowded football field."
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It seemed odd last week that AG Ken Paxton gave his first interview to a little-known legal website after his top aides accused him of bribery.
Today, it was revealed that the outlet is tied to a massive pay-for-play network associated with GOP groups.
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Texas grid vulnerable to blackouts during severe winter weather, even with new preparations, ERCOT estimates show
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Look, every single new positive case of the coronavirus is bad news.
But sharing graphs showing the uptick in cases in recent days without noting that testing significantly increased does not show the full story of what's happening in Texas right now.
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A short thread: Two years ago,
@neenareports
and I wrote a story about the UT System’s $23 billion endowment — and how less than 1% of its annual payout goes toward financial aid for undergraduates.
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My disappointed kid after the first week of kindergarten: “I still haven’t learned how to read and write.”
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Personal news: Today is my last day at
@texastribune
. Tomorrow, I start my new job as
@texasmonthly
’s King Ranch chicken editor.
#blessed
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Austin, Texas, y'all: Where the "Don't Make Minor Grammatical Fixes to the City Charter" movement garners a bigger share of the vote than Ted Cruz.
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Restaurants reopening means a tough choice for some employees: Return to work and feel put your health at risk or stay home and risk losing your unemployment benefits. by
@ceproctor23
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ESPN folks can't tweet about non-sports political or social issues "unless otherwise approved by senior management."
An easy prediction: Here is the part of ESPN's new social media guidelines, with all its subjectivity, that will be violated:
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In a West Austin neighborhood with a $1.4 million median home value that touts its near-absence of apartments, neighbors are suing to block a single unit of affordable housing.
Here's what it would look like, and what the vacant lot looks like now.
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Me as a reporter: That 50-word dependent clause about an arcane higher education policy is vital to my story and it's insulting that you suggested that I take it out.
Me as an editor: ✂️✂️✂️✂️✂️✂️
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July is a great month to start your new job as politics editor, they said. The news is slow, and you can ease your way into it.
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The latest holy crap development in the mass confusion Texas created by legalizing hemp: A driver stopped in the Panhandle was jailed for a month before authorities realized that the 3,350 pounds he was hauling didn't have a criminal level of THC.
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Lubbock decided to join the ERCOT grid to give residents more choice on electricity providers. Since then, we had the winter storm, which drove up those providers' prices, and a whole lot of conservation notices. People aren't thrilled.
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Programming note: Starting July 8, my new title at
@TexasTribune
will be politics editor.
I'm excited to work w/ some of the best political reporters in the business. But I have big shoes to fill from
@amanbatheja
, who is leaving for an upstart daily called the
@nytimes
.
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Cruz says here that election observers in Philly are not being allowed in to watch the vote counts.
That’s not true. A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit today after the Trump campaign’s attorney admitted that its observers were being allowed in the room.
I am angry.
The American people are right to be angry.
We need observers.
Now.
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The term “revenge porn” appears five times in this article.
Funny how none of these folks called it "revenge porn" when it happened to Joe Barton
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The state police agency helping run Texas' border security initiative was duped into providing a Chinese organized crime group 3,000 driver's licenses using Asian Texans' stolen identities. The group then sold the IDs to people in the country illegally.
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My old person version of Tik Tok is just having faith that all the best Tik Toks will end up being shared on Twitter anyway.
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On the bright side, UNC now won't have to vacate its title this summer.
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Coronavirus in Texas today:
The Austin mayor is warning about hospitals being overrun.
In Dallas, medical officials say numbers are "trending upwards alarmingly."
A leading expert says Houston could soon "become the worst affected city in the U.S."
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BREAKING: Baylor Athletic Director Ian McCaw has been "sanctioned and placed on probation."
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News:
@UTAustin
will adjust its automatic admissions threshold. Now you'll have to be in the top 6% to get in automatically.
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DPS has spent months investigating protesters at the TX Capitol, arresting people at gunpoint, threatening to conduct no-knock raids at a suspect's grandmother's house and charging 14 ppl, including one who faces up to 20 years for throwing a water bottle.
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So, um, an Austin-themed food hall is now open in Brooklyn. It features a coffee shop called South Congress, a salad place called Bluebonnets and a pizza place called Austino's, plus sections serving barbecue, fried chicken and "Mex-Tex."
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Inbox: Texas A&M's enrollment this year is a record-breaking 68,625.
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So Dems in Texas have donated more to two out-of-state US Sen candidates than the amount that Rochelle Garza has reported raising in her bid to unseat a massively influential GOP attorney general facing a felony indictment and a separate FBI investigation.
Quick 🧵 on Texas Senate spending:
Texas voters have no Senate race this cycle, but that doesn't mean they aren't making their presence felt in crucial races elsewhere. In some of the most-watched contests, Texans have donated overwhelmingly to Dem candidates.
@TexasTribune
(1/)
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New from
@MitchellFerman
: ERCOT telling power plants to delay maintenance during this hot spring is squeezing "more out of plants than what is safe," one industry official says.
At least 1 plant that went down last week had been told to delay repairs.
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The next time one of our stories on the state budget struggles to get page views, I'm going to add "Wichita Falls has the best tacos in Texas" to the end, wait for gullible people of San Antonio to work themselves into a frenzy and watch the clicks roll in.
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So on Monday, the A&M System board will vote to hire a former Ivy League president to run Prairie View A&M and a national championship-winning coach lured away from Florida State to run the football team. John Sharp is a persuasive guy.
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In 2050, there'll be one journalist and 500,000 PR people. All the journo will have time for is deleting press releases from his/her inbox.
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Breaking: Texas Southern U confirms it has cancelled its commencement speech by Sen
@JohnCornyn
. There had been calls to protest @ the HBCU
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Just stumbled across an old list I made of the 37 reporting internships I applied to during my senior year in college.
How many offers did I get? 0.
Would like to reach back across time to tell me (and others currently in that situation) to stick with it. It's gonna be OK.
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Just spoke with Preston Wiginton. Said he hasn't heard from A&M about cancellation. "I guess my lawyers will be suing the state of Texas."
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Months after posting this (now-deleted) tweet,
@BriscoeCain
has been named chair of the Texas House Elections Committee, which will likely take on
@GovAbbott
's emergency item of "election integrity" during the 2021 legislative session.
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This means we won’t see early voting totals from the biggest county in the state until at least 8 p.m.
BREAKING: A state district judge has ordered Harris County to extend voting hours at nine polling locations that failed to open on time this morning.
#Midterms2018
#ElectionDay
#Election2018
#tx2018
#txlege
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Is Donley County, with the highest per capita number of positive coronavirus tests, the sickest county in Texas? Or has the county judge — also the only doctor — just tested more people in a successful push to convince locals to stay home?
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Texas has 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people.
Italy has 3.2 per 1,000.
South Korea has 12 per 1,000.
by
@ewaltersTX
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Well, today, the system — under the leadership of a new chancellor and new board chairman — allocated $160 million from that endowment to cover the tuition and fees of UT-Austin undergraduates with family incomes under $65,000.
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It's fascinating how so many prominent people who say they're coming to Texas to flee the stifling nature of modern day progressives choose to relocate to easily the most progressive city in Texas.
We got sick of complaining about how broken higher education is. So we decided to do something about it.
Announcing a new university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth:
@uaustinorg
:
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As a parent with a stable job I can do remotely, a partner here to help, a safe home and financial security, these past two months have been some of the most challenging of my life. What this crisis is doing to families without those advantages is unimaginable to me.
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The best universities in TX, according to
@usnews
1. Rice
2. UT (tie)
2. SMU (tie)
3. Baylor
4. A&M
5. TCU
6. UTD
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The Dallas County Commissioners Court candidate who admits to financially pressuring his kids to marry white people is now losing by nine votes.
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Friday night news dump: I’m changing roles @ the Trib.
I wanted desperately to work at
@TexasTribune
from the moment it launched 10 yrs ago and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here now with such talented, dedicated and fun people. A dream come true.
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Inbox: Texas A&M's fall enrollment is 66,426. That's a record.
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For those asking whether lawmakers have anything better to do than write bills about the UT/A&M football game, here's a selection of other legislation filed so far this month.
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Ken Paxton's former assistant is a star witness for the House impeachment case, per
@zachdespart
.
He's told investigators about hearing Paxton say he'd need to "check with Nate" about paying for a home renovation. And described this awkward encounter.
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If you haven't been following
@jsmccullou
's reporting on Greg Abbott's border enforcement efforts, you really should be.
Today a judge ordered Texas to release 220+ migrant men who had been held in a state prison for more than a month without charges.
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NYT just straight up listing Texas as a battleground state without even feeling the need to explain or defend.
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This is the lead story on the WaPo, and it’s on the NYT homepage. Local media has covered extensively.
Police say they have no idea about the motive.
But congrats on your uninformed, irresponsible tweet going viral.
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.
@POTUS
with the rookie mistake. Orders three Torchy's Tacos for lunch. Has trouble making his next appointment.
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Today's the 51st anniversary of the UT Tower shooting. Read my story from 2016 about the man who helped stop it.
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A reporter told me today that she had a dream last night that she quit her job and then punched me in the face 10 times so yeah this editing thing is going pretty well.
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Trump’s speech is over. No mention of the UT-A&M game.
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I think I'm being cyber bullied by fans of the actor who came to the Capitol to speak out against cyber bullying.
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White nationalist Preston Wiginton now says Richard Spencer will attend the rally Wiginton is organizing for 9/11 at Texas A&M.
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To recap: Of the 7 top aides who accused Texas AG Ken Paxton of bribery and other crimes this month ...
- 2 have been fired
- 2 are on administrative leave
- 1 quit
by
@emmaplatoff
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Breaking: A federal judge has ordered
@Baylor
to release significant information from the Pepper Hamilton report.
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April 2019: “Born to be in it” in Vanity Fair
December 2019: Bum Steer in Texas Monthly.
It’s been quite a year.
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Wow. A UT vice president had some harsh words about Abigail Fisher.
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