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https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/31/covid-funding-deal-congress/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_politics
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If passed in its current form, the $10 billion deal would represent a significant disappointment for the White House, which had publicly campaigned for at least $22 billion in new funds and would probably be forced to scale back elements of its planned response. But lawmakers are facing a rapidly approaching deadline, with Congress soon taking a two-week break, and administration officials warning that they are effectively out of cash for urgent coronavirus needs. The federal government has already begun to wind down a program to cover the costs of health-care providers that give coronavirus tests, treatments and vaccinations to uninsured Americans, an initiative that officials said has cost about $2 billion per month.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Washington Post he was “optimistic” a final deal would be reached, a stance echoed by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in remarks on the Senate floor.
“We are getting close to a final agreement that would garner bipartisan support,” Schumer said, adding that lawmakers were “working diligently” to agree on a package that would address both domestic and global needs.
Romney, who said the money would come from unspent funds in previous stimulus packages, added that he expected a vote on the deal next week.
About half of the money would go for covid therapeutics, while the other half would be at the “discretion” of the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told reporters. A Republican aide said that $750 million was being eyed for research and development of new vaccines and treatments.
Several GOP lawmakers said about $1 billion in funding would be set aside to support global vaccinations — down from the White House’s $5 billion request for global aid. But that number appeared to be in flux, with several Democrats on Thursday arguing for considerably more and lawmakers acknowledging that they were still negotiating.
“If there was a deal, I think we’d be voting on it,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.
Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) has been among the lawmakers pushing to include some funding for the global response after some lawmakers moved to drop it completely. “There [are] 2.5 billion people unvaccinated in the world, and that is an ongoing daily risk to the United States,” Coons said.
The funding package’s collapse three weeks ago prompted U.S. officials to warn that they had exhausted funds to purchase vaccines, antiviral treatments and other supplies, putting the nation at risk. The White House has already reduced the supply of monoclonal antibody treatments to states by 35 percent because of the lack of pandemic funding. Congress is also set to begin a two-week recess on April 9, raising fears that failing to secure a deal now could stall the U.S. response into May.
“Congress, please act. You have to act immediately,” President Biden said in a speech on Wednesday, saying that officials had already been forced to delay or cancel planned orders for covid treatments. “The consequences of inaction are severe. They’ll only grow with time, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
A Biden administration plan to help vaccinate the world will also soon run out of money, administration officials said. That plan, led by the U.S. Agency for International Development, would boost the infrastructure for administering vaccinations in developing nations, which officials say will curb the risk of variants emerging overseas and leading to outbreaks in the United States.
“Without more funding … the United States would have to turn its back on countries that need urgent help to boost their vaccination rates,” Atul Gawande, who leads global health at USAID, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Wednesday. “We can’t let this happen. It not only endangers people abroad, but also risks the health and prosperity of all Americans. The virus is not waiting on Congress to negotiate; it is infecting people and mutating as we speak.”
Some Democrats have called for as much as $17 billion in global covid aid and criticized congressional leaders for backing away from international commitments.
“I recall the president saying that the United States should be, would be, the ‘arsenal of vaccines,’ ” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), vice chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “And I’m extremely disappointed that ever since that statement, and at every possible opportunity, this has been de-prioritized.” Malinowski said he would not support a funding package if it did not include some money for the global response.
For weeks, the White House has publicly sought more than $22 billion for the response, although Biden officials in early January had privately concluded that they needed as much as $80 billion in additional covid aid for vaccines, therapeutics and other supplies.
By early March, congressional leaders had settled on about $15.6 billion and sought to attach that to a broader package to fund the government, an effort to ensure passage of the coronavirus aid.
But some House Democrats were upset over one of the financing mechanisms — an effort to claw back money for state governments to address their pandemic needs. The uproar caused House leaders to strip the coronavirus aid from the deal.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), the chairman of the National Governors Association, said it would have been unfair to rescind money states had been counting on. But he said he still wanted Congress to clinch a deal on more aid, as long as it was fully paid for.
“The last thing that Americans would expect is that we get caught flat-footed again,” Hutchinson said in an interview last week. “The administration says that takes additional funding. I take them at face value for those comments, and so then we got to figure out where that money’s going to come from.”
Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.
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Administration officials acknowledged this week that the move could significantly increase the record number of people trying to cross the southern border, where arrests by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have soared to an all-time high.
The decision, which is expected to be announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, puts Biden in a familiar political bind on an issue he has long struggled to navigate. Liberals are dissatisfied because they called for an end to use of the order, known as Title 42, months ago, while vulnerable centrist Democrats fret that he will further expose the party to attacks from Republicans who say he has not effectively controlled the border.
“There are just some issues in which there’s just no easy policy or political way to resolve them. This is one of those,” said Doug Sosnik, who was a policy and political adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Some Democrats gearing up for competitive races are already distancing themselves from the administration’s plans. The tension was evident in the response from Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who sent a letter to Biden urging him not to lift the order without a more robust blueprint in place for dealing with the aftermath.
“There is still not an adequate plan or sufficient coordination to end Title 42,” Kelly said in a statement after a conversation with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).
In a preview of the midterm attacks Republicans plan to intensify this fall, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attacked Biden over the border in a speech on the Senate floor. “Throwing the floodgates open for an historic spring and summer of illegal immigration would be an unforced error of historic proportions,” said McConnell, who also brought up inflation and Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield distanced Biden from the decision to stop enforcing Title 42, saying “this is a decision that the CDC will make.” But she added, “We are preparing for contingencies. And so what I would say is, you know, our goal is going to be to process migrants in a safe and orderly manner.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) offered a mixed response to a draft plan to wind down the directive that had circulated earlier this week, applauding the end of Title 42 but urging swifter movement.
“This is simply unacceptable given they have had more than a year to prepare,” Menendez said in a statement to The Washington Post. “They should not wait nearly two months before ending Title 42 in its entirety, but rather start doing so in phases.”
The plan the White House is expected to adopt would not fully lift Title 42 until late May, which critics point out is roughly tantamount to another 60-day renewal. By setting the date in late May, the administration would have time to reassess its plans if a new coronavirus variant becomes a greater threat to public health.
Menendez said that the May deadline provides potential migrants with a target date to arrive and might incentivize even more people to come here, known to immigration policy wonks as a “pull factor”: “For an Administration afraid of creating ‘pull factors’, I fear their delay may create the biggest pull factor of them all,” Menendez said.
He discussed the issue briefly in a call Wednesday with Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s top aides, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. The call was focused on Menendez’s desire to get some time with the president to discuss a long-stalled effort to revamp the country’s immigration system, the person said.
Biden officials are making worst-case contingency plans for daily border arrests to more than double from the current volume of more than 7,000 daily apprehensions. They are hiring contractors to add tent facilities that can help process migrants faster, along with additional buses and aircraft to transfer migrants away from the border. And they have established a command center at Department of Homeland Security headquarters staffed by interagency teams that include Federal Emergency Management Administration officials who have handled major disasters.
Still unclear, however, is how the administration might structure a phased approach to ending Title 42 that would lift the restrictions on families first, and single adults later. Single adults are a far bigger challenge: records show migrants arriving as part of a family group accounted for just 16 percent of those taken into custody in February along the southern border.
Either way, Biden faces an uphill climb when it comes to public opinion. A recent Economist-YouGov poll found that just 33 percent of respondents approve of Biden’s handling of immigration. The only area where the president had a lower rating was on guns, where just 27 percent approved.
Even voters in areas far from the border are attuned to immigration. In Wisconsin, which could have one of the most competitive Senate races in the country, 36 percent of voters said they were “very concerned” over illegal immigration, according to a February Marquette Law School poll.
The Title 42 order has been in place since March 2020, when the Trump administration said emergency restrictions were needed to protect U.S. agents, migrants and the public from the spread of the coronavirus inside crowded border stations and detention cells.
The order gave U.S. Customs and Border Protection the ability to summarily “expel” border crossers to their home countries or to Mexico, denying most asylum seekers the right to apply for humanitarian refuge in the United States. CBP has used Title 42 to carry out more than 1.7 million expulsions over the past 24 months, records show.
The vast majority of those quick deportations have occurred under Biden, who ran for president promising a repudiation of President Donald Trump’s enforcement approach at the border.
After taking office, Biden halted construction of the border wall, ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy and sharply scaled back deportations and arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other measures. But he also said his administration would keep “guardrails” in place to avoid having “2 million people on our border.”
Title 42 remained the most significant border policy holdover from Trump. On Thursday, Democratic unity against Trump’s policies gave way to some infighting, creating an additional challenge for Democrats as they seek to show voters they are a unified party.
“It’s an abomination that the Biden administration did not lift Title 42 a long time ago,” said former Housing and Urban Development secretary Julián Castro. “They have been playing craven politics with the lives of desperate people and using public health as an excuses for political expediency.”
“Many of us applaud opening our arms to Ukrainians who are absolutely deserving,” Castro said. “But so are Haitians. So are many Central Americans.”
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), a centrist who is frequently at odds with the president, reiterated his view that Biden should leave the health order in place.
His comments, reported by CNN, caused a rare public squabble between two Democratic senators. Using social media, Menendez called out his colleague: “Let’s not adopt the ‘they are not sending their best’ hate speech from the right, Joe,” Menendez tweeted.
On the Republican side, some lawmakers used Biden’s decision to highlight what they see as a larger and more intractable immigration framework. But others in the party did not hold back from criticizing Biden.
“There will be a deluge at our southern border!” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) in a House floor speech this week.
The Biden administration’s dependency on Title 42 deepened as border crossings soared during the spring of 2021. The president initially described the influx as a “seasonal” norm, but by summer 2021 CBP was reporting more than 200,000 border arrests per month.
The agency reported 1.73 million arrests during the 2021 fiscal year, the highest figure ever recorded. The current fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, is on pace to eclipse that with the exact scenario Biden said he wanted to avoid, bringing “2 million people” into CBP custody.
Immigrant advocates and some Democrats called on Biden to end the expulsions and restore full asylum access, but instead his administration opted to make exemptions for vulnerable groups: unaccompanied minors, individuals with medical issues and later, most family groups.
That produced an enforcement regime at the border that was neither the kind of aggressive application of Title 42 witnessed under Trump nor a return to full asylum access, leaving immigrant advocates angry at Biden, but his border policies approach far less restrictive than his predecessor’s.
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
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“But we know it’s hard when there are those out there that don’t see you and don’t respect you,” Biden added.
In addition to promoting policies benefiting the community, Biden’s White House hosted Amy Schneider, the most successful transgender woman to compete on “Jeopardy!,” as part of the celebrations. Just months after her record-breaking run on the show, Schneider met with Doug Emhoff, husband of Vice President Harris, to discuss the importance of advancing transgender visibility and equality.
She told reporters that the uptick in legislation prohibiting transgender youths from participating in school sports and banning teachers from discussing LGBTQ issues is “really scary.”
“Some of them in particular that are denying medical services to trans youth [are] really sad to me, and it’s really frightening,” Schneider said. But hope is not lost, she added.
“I think that this backlash right now is temporary,” she added. “It’s not going to be too long before these sorts of bills are seen as a thing of the past.”
The administration’s spotlight on these issues comes as several Republican-led states have passed laws and bills that erode protections for transgender people.
The White House announced Thursday that it would take steps to improve travel for transgender people.
Starting April 11, all U.S. citizens will be allowed to select an “X” as their gender marker on their passport applications. This move is aimed at expanding access to accurate identification documents for transgender and nonbinary people.
And the Transportation Security Administration will soon update its scanners with more accurate technology that will reduce the need for the pat-downs and additional screenings that are often required for many transgender travelers.
The Biden administration hopes to expand the “X” gender marker option to airlines and federal travel programs and to make it easier for transgender people to change their gender information in Social Security Administration records.
Andrea Hong Marra, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the groups meeting with the White House, called the Biden administration “the most active in history” in supporting the transgender and nonbinary community.
“Our friends in the administration have held the door open to ensure we always know we matter and to translate that respect into policies that protect our rights,” she said.
Much of the White House’s attention will focus on transgender kids, some of whom will join their parents at the White House to meet Emhoff and Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health and the first openly transgender person to hold an office requiring Senate confirmation.
Biden said attempts to ban transgender youths from sports, outlaw conversations about the LGBTQ community in classrooms and criminalize medical care for transgender youths undermine America’s values.
Last month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called on “licensed professionals” along with “members of the general public” to report the parents of transgender youths to state authorities if their children appear to be receiving gender-affirming medical care.
Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, signed a bill Wednesday that will prevent transgender girls from playing on girls sports teams. The Republican also signed legislation outlawing gender confirmation surgery for any person younger than 18.
Biden called these types of bills “wrong.”
“Studies have shown that these political attacks are damaging to the mental health and well-being of transgender youth, putting children and their families at greater risk of bullying and discrimination,” Biden said.
Anne Branigin contributed to this report.
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Of course, you don’t have to fill those jugs with milk. You could fill them with, say, oil. Four gallons of oil sitting there on your living room carpet, contained by thin plastic. Not the best decision, but useful as an illustration.
I was curious, given the Biden administration’s plan to release oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, exactly how much oil the United States keeps on hand. So I figured I’d convert it into something I can appreciate, like those milk jugs.
This did not work as intended.
As would be expected, the United States has a lot of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. As of March 25, 568.3 million barrels, to be specific. And since each barrel contains the equivalent of 42 gallons of oil, that means that the United States has at its disposal 23.9 billion gallons of oil.
An amount that would take an awful long time to pour into 23.9 billion gallon milk jugs.
But now we do our math. If we were to fill those milk jugs and line them up for the nation’s eventual strategic use, we’d create a line of jugs about 63,000 miles long. Enough to run the distance of the Great Wall of China, and back, and then to the end again, and back and then almost back to the far end once again. If we arranged them in a square, it would cover about 35 square miles, a bit more than half of the entire area of D.C.
This is not a smart way to store this oil, of course, since it wastes so much space. Instead, we would be wise to stack the milk jugs vertically as well, so that we don’t use so much space. If we shaped our milk jugs holding our oil — about 3,400 jugs wide and long and a bit over 2,000 jugs high, we’d have a nice little cube that would sit almost perfectly on the square that surrounds the U.S. Capitol.
If President Biden were to leave the White House and head to a building across the street to regard the petroleum reserve in its Capitol-submerging milk-jug format, it would look like this.
Of course, this storage process does introduce a few foreseeable problems. The Capitol would be unusable, for example, which has both positive and negative repercussions. It would be pretty common for some of those jugs to spring a leak, and quite a problem if one in the middle of the cube were to do so. Not to mention that it is not particularly smart to build a strategic reserve of something in a way that a ne’er-do-well could sabotage dramatically with a BB gun. So, as it turns out, this is not how the government stores all of that oil.
What it does instead is store it in four locations around the Gulf Coast. Were it held in oil silos, those cylindrical structures you see around refineries, it would require nearly 64,000 such silos to contain the country’s current reserve — a massive amount requiring a massive amount of infrastructure. (If the reserve were filled to its allowed limit of 714 million barrels, we’d need nearly 80,000 silos.) Those structures, too, would be at risk of damage.
Instead, we store that oil underground. It’s pretty ingenious, really; when the reserve was created, the government used water to carve massive caverns out of underground salt deposits, forcing water in and extracting a saltwater brine to create space for the oil. The largest storage facility, Bryan Mound in Freeport, Tex., has 19 caverns in which more than 247 million barrels can be stored.
A 1977 proposal to build the site explains how the oil would be inserted and removed. A nested set of tubes pushes oil in and allows brine to escape. (Oil, as you’ll recall from making pasta and/or school, floats on water.) Then, when oil is needed, water is injected and the oil forced up and out.
We can do some back-of-the-envelope math to figure out that the caverns at Bryan Mound are about 64,400 cubic yards big on average. That’s about a fifth of the size of the Hindenburg.
Biden has authorized the release of up to a million barrels of oil a day through the country’s network of pipelines. Were he instead to have it put in 42 million milk jugs, it would be enough to fit in somewhere north of 5,000 semi tractor-trailers.
Bringing a convoy like that to the capital every day, it’s safe to say, would shut things down.
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A year later, the anti-expert instinct Trump had fostered began to show in a different context. States with more Joe Biden voters began seeing much higher rates of vaccination than states that had preferred Trump. The former president’s advocacy was halting and constrained, recognizing that there was more political value in standing against the “so-called experts” than in trying to persuade people to protect themselves against the virus. So his most fervent supporters went looking for more miracles. Florida embraced those antibody treatments. Others began to hype the drug ivermectin.
There was never any evidence that ivermectin was particularly effective at treating coronavirus infections. A smattering of studies suggested that there might be some benefit, but they were limited in scale. By March 2021, the Food and Drug Administration was warning that it hadn’t found any demonstrable benefit from taking the drug to treat covid. But then the delta variant of the coronavirus began to spread, causing particular devastation in states that were less vaccinated and, relatedly, had shown more support for Trump. So many people in those areas sought out ivermectin, convinced that some cure existed beyond the highly effective vaccine promoted by the Biden administration and the “experts.”
We now know with a great deal of confidence that ivermectin does not show any appreciable benefit in treating covid-19. In fact, “volunteers who took ivermectin in the first three days after a positive coronavirus test turned out to have worse outcomes than did those in the placebo group,” as the New York Times reported.
What we don’t know is how many lives might have been lost because of the politicization of ivermectin as an anti-establishment alternative to treatments that did prevent death.
There is no real question that right-wing political leaders touted ivermectin specifically as a way to score partisan points. Consider Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) rhetoric last December.
“Ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, & other treatments are saving lives,” she wrote on Twitter. " …[O]ur response to #COVID19 should be working towards ending obesity, promote covid treatments that are proven to work, & stop the politically driven mass hysteria.”
“Allow people to choose natural immunity or vaccines, w/o discrimination,” she added. Her account was later suspended for repeatedly sharing coronavirus misinformation.
That formulation — vaccines vs. “natural immunity” gained by catching and recovering from the virus — is key. To justify rejecting effective vaccines, you need to both denigrate the vaccines’ efficacy and propose an alternative. That was the role ivermectin played: It was hyped as something you could take to feel better in the event you caught the virus. Then you get “natural immunity” and you’re covered as well as if you had been vaccinated — if you lived.
The challenge, of course, is that many people didn’t live. The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that about 163,000 people died during the delta surge because they weren’t vaccinated. Those deaths were disproportionately in places that had preferred Donald Trump in 2020.
The effect of encouraging people to rely on ivermectin was the same as asking them to rely on wishing upon a star: Some would live and might credit ivermectin for their survival. But that was simply coincidental. Those who might have lived had they been vaccinated were not around to instruct people that ivermectin didn’t work.
This was the central problem. People believed this. That includes some legislators, certainly; just because you see something as politically useful doesn’t mean you are doing so cynically. Using a large platform to amplify claims about an unproven treatment, though, would have the predictable effect of people taking it seriously. So we saw myriad cases in which patients or families, convinced that ivermectin was miraculous, sued medical institutions to force the administration of ivermectin. Hospitals were reluctant, given that, unlike wishing on a star, there were potential negative effects of taking the drug. (Poison-control centers noted an increase in calls about ivermectin.)
Those convinced that the drug worked — hearing it from trusted politicians or podcast hosts — saw conspiracy. The establishment was rejecting ivermectin because it wasn’t profitable, they argued. Or they were doing the bidding of vaccine manufacturers. Even the inefficacy of ivermectin was explained away: Hospitals weren’t administering enough! There was always some reason that could be constructed to explain why The Establishment was trying to suppress ivermectin, and those reasons were never that it wasn’t proven to work and that it risked serious side effects.
It’s important to emphasize how ivermectin correlated to politics. Research published last month showed that counties that supported Trump strongly in 2020 were those that saw more ivermectin prescriptions written in the final months of that year, as attention began to turn to the drug. Google searches for ivermectin in August and September of last year were far higher in a number of metropolitan areas that had backed Trump by wider margins in 2020.
Some of this is a function of ivermectin’s approved use in agriculture: rural areas would be expected both to show more support for Trump and to have more animals needing a drug like ivermectin that targeted parasites. But this was also the period in which ivermectin searches surged, so it’s clearly also linked to the pandemic.
Politics both drove and followed the fixation on ivermectin. Right-leaning political leaders and conservative media figures hyped ivermectin as an alternative to vaccination and their followers believed them. Then, conservative political figures responded to the outrage of the base at the pushback on use of the drug with legislation forcing it to be made available. Earlier this month, USA Today wrote about state legislators who seized on the issue to pass laws mandating the prescription of ivermectin when desired, even as the lack of utility of the drug was becoming more obvious.
Others have gone further. A candidate for attorney general in Wisconsin is pledging to launch homicide probes targeting doctors who didn’t prescribe ivermectin. It’s not just believing the hype, it’s leveraging the false confidence in ivermectin for political benefit.
We will never know how many Americans who might have lived had they been vaccinated decided against it, trusting that drugs such as ivermectin would keep them alive. We do know, though, that there was a concerted effort to convince people that ivermectin would do so, an effort that intertwined with partisan rejection of government expertise. We can say with confidence that the atmosphere of disinformation about ivermectin led to people dying who would otherwise have lived.
We know how deadly covid has been. We’ll never know just how deadly this rhetoric was.
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U.S. District Judge Mark Walker agreed with voters who sued the state that the bill “runs roughshod over the right to vote, unnecessarily making voting harder for all eligible Floridians, unduly burdening disabled voters, and intentionally targeting minority voters — all to improve the electoral prospects of the party in power.”
Walker said that for the next decade, changes to voting laws that affect third-party registration efforts, drop boxes or “line warming” — in which volunteers offer water or chairs to people waiting in line to vote — must be approved first by the court.
“Florida has repeatedly, recently, and persistently acted to deny Black Floridians access to the franchise,” Walker wrote. “This Court also finds that preclearance would prevent future violations.”
Voting rights activists hailed the ruling as a “landmark de”ision," while Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) dismissed it as “performative partisanship.”
“This is a huge victory for voters in this state,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of Equal Ground, one of the groups that sued the state. “It also feels like we are moving the needle forward in expanding access to the ballot box in Florida.”
DeSantis (R) signed the bill, known as SB 90, into law in May, live on Fox News. Although he had touted the state’s elections seven months earlier as flawless, he still pushed changes that critics say would make it harder to vote.
His enthusiasm for changing election laws continued this year, but Thursday’s court ruling means that many of those changes may not be enacted.
At a news conference in West Palm Beach on Thursday, DeSantis said Walker’s ruling “was not unforeseen,” and that it will be reversed on appeal.
“It’s just a matter of how quickly it’s going to get reversed,” he said.
Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R) called Walker’s pre-clearance order “an egregious abuse of his power.”
Walker presided over the nonjury trial in Tallahassee for three weeks this year. His 288-page decision issued Thursday included the recounting of several acts of violence against Black voters in Florida in the past, including a massacre of more than 30 Black residents in Ocoee in 1920 on Election Day after a Black voter went to the polls.
“What is this Court to make of this history? To be sure, there are those who suggest that we live in a post-racial society,” Walker wrote. “But that is simply not so. Florida’s painful history remains relevant; it echoes into the present and sets the stage for SB 90.”
Brenda Wright, senior adviser for legal strategies at the think tank Demos, said Walker recognized the “extremely egregious history of racial discrimination in voting” in his ruling.
“He put together the picture of what SB 90 has done to voting rights in the context of Florida’s history of discrimination,” Wright said. “I would hope this would give pause to those who would enact further restrictions on voting rights.”
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New York Democrats drew a new congressional map with boundaries that could gain their party as many as three new seats, a crucial advantage at a time when the House majority will come down to just a handful of wins.
The judge’s order was the latest redistricting disappointment Democrats have faced in recent weeks after what had been several initial legal wins. A Maryland judge invalidated a Democratic-drawn congressional map, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Wisconsin court-approved legislative maps that added a new majority-Black district, and an Ohio map that heavily favored Republicans, thrown out by the state Supreme Court, is now expected to remain in place for 2022.
The New York congressional map ruled unconstitutional by the state judge would give Democrats 22 seats to four Republican ones. The New York delegation is composed of 19 Democratic seats to eight seats for Republicans. The state lost a seat because of slow growth over the past 10 years.
Democrats, who had full control of New York state government for the first time in a century, argued they were using their power to right wrongs in previous maps. But Republicans decried it as a partisan gerrymander that ran afoul of voters’ wishes to take raw politics out of redistricting.
In 2014, New York voters approved a constitutional amendment to set up a separate entity outside the state legislature to control redistricting. The 10-member commission was split equally along partisan lines. Of the members, eight were appointed by partisan legislative leaders.
The commission was supposed to present a single map to the legislature that state lawmakers could adopt or reject. But beset with its own partisan infighting, the commission did not come up with a unified map, instead submitting two sets of lines, one drawn by the Democrats on the panel and another drawn by the Republicans. The commission’s drama effectively allowed state lawmakers to dismiss its work and create their own map.
“The scourge of gerrymandering is not unique to New York,” McAllister, a Republican, wrote. “In 2014, New York State took major steps to avoid being plagued by gerrymandering. … The 2020 census was the first time after the constitutional amendment that led New York to draw new districts. Therefore, this is a case of first impression in many respects.”
Democrats involved in the redistricting effort said that Republicans purposely took the case to a rural, conservative judge and that the outcome would ultimately be decided by a higher court, where they will fight for the maps to stand.
“This is one step in the process,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for New York state Senate Democrats. “We always knew this case would be decided by the appellate courts. We are appealing this decision and expect this decision will be stayed as the appeal process proceeds.”
Republicans cheered the lower-court decision, calling it a win for New York voters who wanted a less-partisan redistricting process. Democrats have made similar arguments in GOP-held states that also passed anti-gerrymandering ballot initiatives, such as Ohio.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), a co-chairman of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, brushed aside a question about the similarity in circumstances between the two states.
“It’s very difficult to compare state to state in this,” he said during a call with reporters. “What we do see, though, is those who have looked at the New York map, independent experts and those like me involved in the political process, have stated right from the beginning that of all 50 states that have engaged in redistricting, this was by far the worst gerrymandering in the country.”
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Pelosi on Thursday declined to say whether Thomas should recuse himself or resign from the court, telling reporters, “I don’t think he should have ever been appointed, so, we could take it back to there.”
But she did say that the court’s lack of a code of ethics presents a serious problem.
“They have no code of ethics,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference at the Capitol. “And it’s — really? The Supreme Court of the United States? They’re making judgments about the air we breathe and everything else, and we don’t even know what their ethical standard is? … Why should they have lower standards than members of Congress in terms of reporting and all the rest?”
Pelosi noted that H.R. 1, the For the People Act, includes language calling for the establishment of a judicial code of ethics. The measure passed the House this month in a largely party-line vote, but its chances are dim in the Senate.
The speaker suggested that a House committee may have a hearing on the code of conduct issue soon, although she did not elaborate.
On Thomas, in particular, Pelosi said little about the Supreme Court justice but did make a pointed remark about his wife’s text messages urging the Trump White House to work to overturn Biden’s win.
“I’ve heard people say from time to time, ‘Well, it’s a personal decision of a judge as to whether he should recuse himself,’ ” Pelosi said. “Well, if your wife is an admitted and proud contributor to a coup of our country, maybe you should weigh that in your ethical standards.”
Ginni Thomas’s text messages were among thousands of documents related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, including other text messages and emails, that former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the attack before he abruptly stopped fully cooperating with the panel in December.
In some comments, Ginni Thomas was zealous in appealing to Meadows to help overturn the 2020 election results. “Help This Great President stand firm, Mark,” she wrote on Nov. 10, 2020. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he was planning to call for a Supreme Court code of ethics as well in remarks on the Senate floor Thursday.
“I’m on the way to the Senate floor to talk about my Supreme Court Ethics Act and the need for the Supreme Court to adopt a binding Code of Conduct,” Murphy tweeted Thursday morning. “The Thomas revelations make it clear — the Supreme Court cannot and should not police itself.”
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When the pandemic emerged, the Trump administration saw a chance to build a different sort of wall. Using authority it claimed under U.S. Code Title 42, the government began immediately turning away thousands of people at the southern border instead of allowing them to undergo a process of adjudication or seek asylum. The presumptive rationale was that the government wanted to cut down the number of coronavirus-infected individuals entering the United States, but, in testimony before Congress, one official admitted that this move was not based on the statistics at the time. Instead, the quick-removal policy “may have been initiated for other purposes” — a fair assumption.
As a candidate, Joe Biden campaigned in direct opposition to Trump’s immigration policies. But Title 42 was an exception. It persisted, month after month, despite outcry from activists on the left and even despite resignations of administration officials in protest.
This week, the administration announced it would end the policy. One reason for doing so is that the government’s capacity to handle migrants has increased, allowing more people to enter the country to seek residency. But it seems clear that another reason for doing so is that there’s no political benefit to maintaining the policy — but, perhaps, political damage.
All of this centers on numbers. If 200 people were seeking to migrate to the United States per month, there would be little political consternation. But when 200,000 do, things get tricky. And since Biden took office, there have been multiple months in which that mark was surpassed, at least as measured in the number of stops made at the U.S.-Mexico border.
It’s important to note here that measuring the number of people entering the United States is necessarily cloudy. Some people enter illegally and are not detected, meaning they are not included in the government’s released totals. But the increase in barriers at the border after the passage of legislation in 2006 pushed more migrants to monitored crossing points where they could be stopped. So, while the numbers of people apprehended at the border doesn’t measure every entrant, it measures many if not most.
Those monthly figures — and in particular their growth relative to Trump’s presidency — were repeatedly touted by Biden’s opponents as indicating a laxity at the border. In January, for example, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) criticized the administration over the “1.9 million illegal immigrants” apprehended at the border last year. This is inaccurate and misleading for several reasons, as I explained at the time: For one thing, not all of those apprehensions were “illegal immigrants,” and for another, most of those who were apprehended were quickly slated for removal under Title 42.
On a month-by-month basis, you can see the difference between the two administrations under Title 42. When Trump was president, nearly all migrants were set for quick removal. Under Biden, that policy was less strict; children, for example, were allowed to remain. But it was still an important part of the administration’s approach to immigration.
In 2021, only about 300,000 people who were stopped at the border were granted humanitarian release into the country while waiting for their immigration hearings to progress — many, but far fewer than the 1.9 million Jordan cited.
That’s important. The administration faced a real challenge in handling the increase in migrants, making the removal policy useful. But that most of those who were stopped at the border were quickly removed from the country did not diminish any hand-wringing about the number of migrants who were coming to the United States. Jordan and other critics of the administration drew no distinction between those people who spent little to no time on U.S. soil and those who might be on a path to legal residency. It was all presented as “millions surging into the country.”
At the same time, Title 42 probably made those numbers worse. The quick-removal process meant that thousands of people each month would be stopped, removed — and would try again, only to again be stopped. The number of apprehensions was inflated by people being caught more than once, so the government began releasing data on repeat apprehensions. From June of last year through December, more than a quarter of apprehensions were people who’d already been stopped once, inflating the number of people stopped during that period from fewer than 1 million to more than 1.3 million; many of those people were the same people more than once.
These considerations were probably significant in the administration’s decision-making process, but it’s also likely to be the case that the administration is responding to months of anger from an important part of the Democratic base. Immigration activists have been understandably furious that Biden would continue a policy instituted by Trump that kept people seeking asylum in the United States from being able to do so. Removing the policy is also politically useful simply because it eases those criticisms. That Biden gained no credit from the political right for keeping the policy in place makes this easier.
Then, of course, there’s the ostensible rationale for the policy: the pandemic. It has waned, but even before it did, there was no reason to think that migrants were a significant source of new infections in the United States. Migrants were blamed for spreading the virus, yes, but that was rhetoric. The biggest factor in the country’s surges in new infections continues to be what it always was: Americans.
The administration expects by May to have enough capacity to hold migrants as needed. At that point, it plans to end Title 42 — and with it another of Trump’s strategies for limiting migration to the United States.
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Biden appeared to not only have license to take that step — he could also use it to reinforce the narrative that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine bore blame for the ugly crooked numbers people were seeing at the pump. The White House even debuted a new talking point: the “Putin price hike.”
The reality, though, was never going to be so neat. Inflation and gas prices were already bad, and it’s a difficult task to pin their rise on a war that isn’t front-and-center for most Americans.
Evidence now suggests the narrative is coming up well short. Domestic pricing concerns are far outpacing Ukraine on Americans’ list of priorities, and Biden’s poll numbers on his handling of the economy continue to hit new lows. Whatever stomach Americans had for higher prices to support the war in Ukraine, it doesn’t appear particularly strong.
The result: The administration has now taken some extraordinary measures to stem the tide, including a massive release from the strategic reserves and a “use it or lose it” approach to unused permits for drilling on federal land. Biden also had some choice words Thursday for oil companies he accused of putting profits before production.
The impetus is pretty clear.
A poll released Thursday from the Kaiser Family Foundation found 55 percent of Americans say inflation and rising prices are the biggest problem right now — far more than the 18 percent who name the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Even Democrats pick inflation and gas prices by a 2-to-1 margin. Another poll from Quinnipiac University on Thursday found twice as many name “inflation” (30 percent) as “Russia/Ukraine” (14 percent) as their No. 1 issue.
And a poll last week from NBC News straight-up asked people which should be Biden’s top priority: reducing inflation and improving the economy, or working to end the war in Ukraine. Americans chose the former by an overwhelming 68-29 margin.
That last one is perhaps the most telling. It’s logical that people would consider inflation to be the bigger problem in this country, given this country isn’t directly involved in the war. But it’s striking that even amid the brutality of the Russian invasion — and after Americans initially signed off on paying a little more to help out — domestic prices are still far-and-away No. 1 on people’s priority list.
And when it comes to gas prices, specifically, Putin isn’t bearing a ton of the blame.
There’s a real argument to be made that Russia’s invasion is indeed the chief factor, at least of late. As PolitiFact noted this month, the biggest recent spike in prices occurred after the invasion, and most of the increase during Biden’s tenure has taken place in the six-or-so months since Russia’s buildup on Ukraine’s border began working its way into the collective consciousness. Other factors could have contributed in the meantime, but it’s a big one.
Americans don’t necessarily see it that way, though. The Quinnipiac poll shows just 24 percent say the war in Ukraine is “the most responsible for the recent rise in gas prices” — compared with 24 percent who blame oil companies and 41 percent who blame the Biden administration. (Another 5 percent blamed increasing demand from the easing of pandemic restrictions.)
If there’s a kernel of good news in there for Biden, it’s that more people blame some combination of oil companies and the war (48 percent) for gas prices than blame the administration (41 percent). The same is true for inflation, where the NBC poll showed 38 percent blamed Biden, while 28 percent blamed the pandemic, 23 percent blamed corporations and 6 percent blamed the war.
But practically speaking, the impact has been a drag on Biden. His approval rating on the economy dropped to 33 percent in the NBC News poll, and 31 percent in a poll last week from renowned pollster J. Ann Selzer for Grinnell College. Polling on Biden and the economy varies widely, but these are some of the very first quality polls to show his economic reviews hitting the low 30s — and at virtually the same time. (Quinnipiac pegged it at 34 percent.)
And that’s certainly Democrats’ biggest problem ahead of the 2022 midterms. People might have said they were willing to pay more. But when that becomes the new — and then — lasting reality, you tend to seek accountability from the things you have some measure of control over.
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“The problem that we have in Washington, D.C., right now is that there's too much talk, there's too much grandstanding and there's too much quitting,” said state Sen. Chuck Edwards at a Sunday congressional candidate forum in Flat Rock, N.C.
“I believe in truth over theatrics. I believe in no lies,” said Wendy Nevarez, a veteran and paralegal supported by an anti-Cawthorn PAC.
“I'm not the Washington, D.C., Instagram politician,” said Michele Woodhouse, a former local party chair. “I'm a patriot who literally answered the call when Congressman Cawthorn left this district for Charlotte and asked me to step in and run.”
Halfway into his first term, Cawthorn is one of several high-profile, anti-establishment members of Congress from both parties who won upset victories to get there — and now face primary challengers who want them gone.
None look vulnerable in a general election, after redistricting kept them in seats their party should easily win. All of them look beatable to challengers who believe their notoriety has backfired, especially with the new voters added to their seats when the lines were redrawn.
“We’re seeing our freedoms being slowly stolen across the country, and we don’t have a voice in the process,” said Jennifer Strahan, a health-care consultant challenging Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), criticizing the freshman for being removed from congressional committees last year.
“If people are so busy critiquing everything you say, and not willing to actually hear you because you don't have a message that resonates, then it's distracting from really bringing results back to the district,” Strahan added.
Like Cawthorn, Greene won a crowded open-seat primary in 2020; both prevailed in runoff elections against conservative candidates less fluent in the language of the MAGA electorate. Both states still require runoffs if no candidate gets a certain share of the vote on primary day — 50 percent in Georgia, and 30 percent in North Carolina.
That has emboldened their opponents inside the party, even though both Greene and Cawthorn are among the GOP’s strongest fundraisers. On Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition endorsed Strahan over Greene, saying that it would help northwest Georgia to elect someone who “who doesn’t traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories, doesn’t speak to white nationalist organizations and doesn’t applaud and cheer on” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Both seats were also altered by redistricting, with Georgia’s 14th Congressional District absorbing Democratic precincts outside Atlanta so that other Republican precincts could shore up another district. And those new voters, said Strahan, were “excited” to learn about their options.
Cawthorn’s 11th Congressional District, which ties liberal Asheville together with deep-red Appalachia, also grew slightly more Democratic, from a place Donald Trump carried by 16 points to one he carried by 14. But the bigger problem for Cawthorn was the one Woodhouse hammered at the candidate forum — his decision to run in a new district near Charlotte that Republicans had drawn as an even safer seat, with state House Speaker Tim Moore seen as a likely candidate.
When the state Supreme Court threw out that map, Cawthorn returned to the 11th Congressional District, but not without consequences. Candidates like Woodhouse and Edwards were already building campaigns, both saying that the congressman had failed to meet his potential.
“The U.S. House floor is not a training camp for folks to learn how to lead legislatively,” Edwards told Jewish Insider on Monday. An internal poll shared by the Edwards campaign put Cawthorn well ahead of the field, but that was before he told the conservative podcast “Warrior Poet Society” that the real Washington was just as corrupt as the one in “House of Cards.”
The 26-year old congressman had offered up fish stories before, telling one crowd in the district that he’d confirmed “rumors of alcoholism” about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who does not drink. But this time, Cawthorn had implicated Republican colleagues, and couldn’t defend himself when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy asked him to, McCarthy said.
A lurid story of watching anti-addiction advocates “doing a key bump of cocaine right in front of you” was downgraded, according to McCarthy, to “maybe” seeing a staffer snort cocaine from far away, in a parking garage. As for Cawthorn's podcast claim that a lawmaker had invited him to an “orgy,” McCarthy declared that Cawthorn “did not tell the truth.”
“I told him you can't make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole,” McCarthy told Axios after the meeting. Both of North Carolina's Republican senators criticized Cawthorn; on Thursday, Moore joined Edwards, who has scooped up endorsements from fellow state legislators, at a fundraiser in Raleigh.
Some of the House's most prominent left-wing Democrats are facing primary challenges too, thanks in part to the new maps. In New York City, a number of Democrats filed to challenge Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), hoping to take advantage of his vote against last year's infrastructure bill, and of his argument with Democratic Socialists of America over his refusal to support a boycott of Israel. There's no runoff law in New York, but Bowman's opponents were strategic, dropping out until county legislator Vedat Gashi was the only challenger.
“I didn’t like a number of the votes he took,” Gashi told the Somers Record this week. “I thought it didn’t represent the views of the party.”
In Missouri, where state legislators are still debating the next set of House maps, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) got an experienced challenger right before the filing deadline — state Sen. Steven Roberts Jr., who told local media that Bush was hurting the district with positions like slashing the defense budget.
“It's become pretty apparent to me that Congresswoman Cori Bush is not interested in serving as a U.S. Representative,” Roberts said.
Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said in an email that voters would get to choose “between their Congresswoman who loves them and delivered hundreds of millions of dollars to St. Louis, and a host of ego-driven men who seem to think all that Black women leaders do is never good enough.” He pointed to allegations made against Roberts by fellow lawmaker Cora Faith Walker, who died 20 days ago, to add that the senator had been “credibly accused of rape.” (The candidate didn't respond to a question from The Trailer but earlier denied he had raped Walker.)
None of Cawthorn's challengers came with that kind of baggage. On Thursday, his campaign released a primary ad making no reference to any other candidate, saying instead that “smears and attacks” wouldn't bring down the “unstoppable” congressman. At the weekend forum, when each Republican was asked if they would support any winner of the primary, Cawthorn talked like he couldn't imagine losing.
“Absolutely,” Cawthorn said. “If you don’t, you’re a traitor.”
Reading list
All-party primaries — is there anything they can't do?
“Debate-dodging takes off in midterm campaigns,” by David Siders
Voters who don't trust the media may support candidates who avoid it.
“Inside Hunter Biden’s multimillion-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company,” by Matt Viser, Tom Hamburger and Craig Timberg
The laptop and the damage done.
“As election workers face increased threats and intimidation, some states are trying to protect them,” by Barbara Rodriguez
Defending members of a female-dominated profession from harassment.
How post-Jan. 6 MAGA mind-set plays in a swing seat.
“House Republicans tire of Madison Cawthorn’s antics. Some in his district have, too,” by Trip Gabriel
A rough welcome home.
Annapolis Democrats fight to keep a 7-to-1 advantage in Washington.
“One-on-one with Silicon Valley’s enemy No. 1,” by Theodore Schleifer
Chesa Boudin defends himself.
Culture wars
The new Florida law that prohibits discussion of “sexual orientation or gender identity” in public schools below fourth grade has a name: the Parental Rights in Education Act. Opponents who couldn't stop Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) from signing it call the law something else: “Don't Say Gay.” To conservatives' frustration, that name has stuck — but it hasn't changed the politicking around gender ideology at all, with Republicans taking aim at Disney this week after the company condemned the law.
That's partly because conservatives believe the media is out of step with voters on gender and LGBT issues, and that voters recoil once they see and hear about sex education in early grade school. The conservative firm Public Opinion Strategies included questions about the Florida law in its rolling national poll, giving voters a summary of the law: “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in Kindergarten through third grade or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
When it's put like that, 61 percent of voters approved of the legislation, including a majority of Democrats and people who voted for President Biden in 2020. The firm added other questions about whether gender should be removed from birth certificates and whether transgender women should be allowed to play women's sports. Just 8 percent of registered voters said “yes” to the first question, and by a 36-point margin, most said people should “only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender.”
The numbers reminded POS pollster Robert Blizzard of the discourse around Georgia's 2021 voting law, which led to several corporate boycotts of the state, endorsed by Democrats, but which ended up being supported by most voters once Republicans sold it as an anti-fraud measure. A law that generated outrage among Democrats, and brutal media coverage, could have majority support if Republicans explained it correctly.
“This matches what I've seen over the last year or two, especially in focus groups and qualitative research I've done,” said Blizzard. “People think we're going too far left. Too woke. On the quote-unquote ‘Don't Say Gay' bill, Democratic voters support it 2-1, which kind of flies in the face of the conventional wisdom. On the transgender athlete question, they're not sure. It's almost like they're looking for their partisan cue.”
Ad watch
USA Freedom Fund, “Real Work.” It's been more than a week since Ohio GOP U.S. Senate candidates Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons got into a near-physical argument at a forum, after Gibbons correctly said that Mandel had never worked in the private sector. Mandel and his allies have continued to say what the candidate said that night: that Gibbons was demeaning a veteran, saying what he did hadn't been real work. This ad uses Gibbons's quote — “Josh doesn't understand this, because he's never spent a day in the private sector” — but puts text on-screen saying that Gibbons was insulting veterans, and has Marine veteran Brian Sizer, who served with Mandel, calling it “disgraceful” and demanding an apology. “For this guy to imply fighting, getting shot at, dying is not work? It's more than work,” he says.
Tim Ryan for Ohio, “One Word.” A favorable Fox News write-up, condemnation from an Asian American political group: This ad for Rep. Tim Ryan's (R-Ohio) U.S. Senate bid got them both. The “one word” of the title, and the first word from Ryan's mouth, is “China,” and the ad plays a few overlapping clips of the candidate telling voters that America must defeat “Communist China” economically by “investing in Ohio workers.” That's not a new message for Ohio Democrats, but the state chapter of Asian American Midwest Progressives quickly condemned it, urging Ryan to “pull the One Word ad and eliminate all inflated anti-Asian messaging from his campaign.” He didn't pull the ad.
DSCC, “It's in the Plan.” In a 30-second digital spot, the Democrats' Senate campaign arm sums up the least-popular portions, told in scary headlines, of the “Rescue America” plan proposed by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). It would “raise taxes,” “end Medicare” and “end Social Security,” warn Democrats — all technically true, as the plan would tax people who don't currently pay income taxes, and require all legislation to be reapproved every five years.
Perez and Sneed for Maryland, “Tireless.” Barack Obama hasn't endorsed a candidate for governor of Maryland, but he did endorse Tom Perez to run the Democratic National Committee after the 2016 election. Perez's first spot with running mate Shannon Sneed cuts down the audio from Obama's end-of-year news conference that year, when Perez was putting his DNC campaign together; asked about it, Obama talked about Perez's record as labor secretary. The ad splices in a clip of Obama calling Perez “a son of immigrants who worked on the back of a trash truck to pay for college.”
Sarah for Governor, “Educate.” No other Republican is challenging Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas's May 24 primary, but she has stayed on the air, releasing direct-to-camera spots full of conservative campaign promises. Here, she largely promises to keep Arkansas education running the way it is, including “keeping schools open” and pledging not to “indoctrinate” children “with the left's agenda.” (Last year, state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge issued an opinion condemning “critical race theory” and saying that teaching it would violate the law.) The goal: “Prepare students for the workforce, not government dependency,” and let them build lives in Arkansas.
Kevin Rinke for Governor, “Rise.” The Republican candidate for governor of Michigan put $10 million of his own money into his campaign, and $500,000 of it is going behind this ad, a 30-second spot describing how he took over the Rinke Automotive Group after his brother died in a plane crash. The candidate appears in smiling b-roll footage as a narrator sells him as the right man for “a time when our economy, education and government are broken” — with a shot of empty store shelves representing the economy.
The Committee to Elect Rebecca Dow, “True Grit.” Dow, a conservative New Mexico state legislator, didn't enter the race for governor with as much buzz or name recognition as her primary opponent, former TV meteorologist Mark Ronchetti. She takes a whack at him here, lumping him together with Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) as a phony as she rides along a stretch of border wall. “I'm not here to put on a show. I'm here to fight radical socialists, defend our constitutional rights and finish President Trump's wall,” she says. (New Mexico runs along the Mexican border for a bit less than 180 miles.)
Poll watch
“Do you approve or disapprove of the way Republican and Democratic Senators are handling the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson?” (Quinnipiac, March 24-28, 1462 adults)
How Republicans handled it
Approve: 27%
Disapprove: 52%
Don't know/no answer: 21%
How Democrats handled it
Approve: 43%
Disapprove: 34%
Don't know/no answer: 23%
How can you tell if a Supreme Court nomination strategy has backfired? In the moment, it's not clear; several Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee were reportedly worried about how Ketanji Brown Jackson handled days of questions about the sentencing of child sex offenders. But the first national poll on the question, taken during and after the hearings, suggests that the GOP strategy to attack her past sentences flopped. Every demographic group views the GOP's role in the hearings negatively, including White adults without college degrees; just 52 percent of self-identified Republicans approve of how their party handled the hearings.
Democrats, who made little news during the hearings, are viewed more positively, and so is Jackson — 51 percent of all adults support confirming her, to just 30 percent who don't. Just 36 percent of adults, in the same poll, approve of the president's job performance, so Jackson gets significant support from voters who are otherwise sour on Democrats.
“If the 2024 election for president were held today, who would you vote for?” (Marquette Law School, March 14-24, 1004 adults)
Joe Biden: 41%
Donald Trump: 37%
Someone else: 15%
Wouldn't vote: 7%
Joe Biden: 37%
Mike Pence: 33%
Someone else: 21%
Wouldn't vote: 8%
Joe Biden: 38%
Ron DeSantis: 33%
Someone else: 20%
Wouldn't vote: 9%
The president's job approval rating comes in at 44 percent in Marquette's national poll, higher than some other recent surveys but comparable to his numbers in the Gallup poll. No Republican candidate tested by the pollster is in a great position to take advantage of that. Sixty-one percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, and sure enough, 63 percent of voters pick either Biden, nobody or some hypothetical other option when asked about a 2020 rematch. Just 31 percent of voters view Pence favorably, and 25 percent view Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) favorably; both, like Trump and Biden, are underwater. (Thirty-nine percent of voters say they don't yet have an opinion of DeSantis.)
That's a change from the Trump's presidency, when Trump consistently had job approval ratings in the 40s or lower, and pollsters found a number of Democrats running far ahead of him. Before the 2016 and 2020 elections — i.e., before pollsters realized that Trump's support was underestimated — the idea that nearly any Democrat could beat Trump was rampant among party activists, and polling that showed Biden leading Trump by landslide margins helped power him to the nomination. But now, the key figures in the GOP, who candidates are asking for endorsements and modeling their own agendas on, are less popular than an unpopular president.
“Would you prefer the government to continue to adjust covid guidelines and mandates in response to different variants as they arise, to settle on a consistent set of covid guidelines and mandates that we will use from this point forward, or to have no covid regulations and mandates?” (Monmouth, March 10-14, 809 adults)
Continue to adjust guidelines/mandates: 50%
Have no guidelines/mandates: 34%
Settle on a consistent set of guidelines/mandates: 14%
The rollback of mask and vaccine mandates in states that had implemented strict ones happened quickly, and public opinion moved along with it. In another section of Monmouth's national poll, 73 percent of voters now agree with this statement: “It’s time we accept that covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” The new consensus is more nuanced. A third of all adults, but two-thirds of Republicans, share the view that there should be no mandates or rules whatsoever. White voters without college degrees are split, with a plurality of 44 percent saying there should be “no guidelines/mandates.” Most other adults say that the rules can be adjusted, not ruling out the return of some precautions, if they're convinced that they're necessary.
In the states
Michigan. On Tuesday, former Detroit police chief Ralph Godbee dropped out of the Democratic primary for the new 13th Congressional District, where Black politicians have worried that a glut of candidates will allow self-funded Indian American state Rep. Shri Thanedar (D) to win the Detroit-based seat with a plurality of the vote. “I have enough support to split the African American vote or siphon off votes that could be codified behind a consensus candidate,” Godbee explained in a statement.
Tennessee. The Republican supermajority in Nashville advanced legislation that would create residency requirements for federal races, which if implemented would make it impossible for former State Department official Morgan Ortagus to seek a House seat. If the law holds up in court, candidates for Congress would be required to prove that they've lived for at least three years in the district they want to represent; Ortagus relocated from D.C. to Nashville just last year.
“No one questioned my residency when I served our country in the intelligence community, the Trump Administration, nor in the U.S. Navy Reserves,” Ortagus told the Tennessean in a statement. “And President Trump certainly didn't question my residency when he endorsed me for this seat.”
Wisconsin. Chippewa Falls attorney Karen Mueller joined the GOP race for attorney general this week, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Molly Beck that she could use the powers of the office to investigate hospitals where Ivermectin was not prescribed for covid-19 sufferers. (A large study published Wednesday found, as others previously have, that Ivermectin did not help those suffering from covid.)
“I am running for attorney general because of potential homicides in hospitals, because of vaccines — so-called vaccines,” said Mueller, the founder of the conservative Amos Center for Justice and Liberty. “I would open investigations into those deaths and if the facts were substantiated; I would probably bring charges against the people that were responsible for this.” Previously, Mueller wrote a memo to state legislator Timothy Ramthun, now a candidate for governor, arguing that the legislature could and should invalidate the 2020 election.
Redistricting
On Wednesday afternoon, Republican legislators in Louisiana overrode a veto from Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) and approved a congressional map that maintained the party's 5-to-1 seat advantage. Just hours later, plaintiffs supported by the National Democratic Redistricting Committee sued to get the map thrown out.
“Black Louisianians are sufficiently numerous and geographically compact to constitute a majority of eligible voters in a second congressional district stretching from Baton Rouge to the delta parishes along the Mississippi River,” attorneys for four Black voters wrote in their complaint, filed in the Middle District Court. “The new congressional plan has the effect of denying Black voters an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.”
In Missouri, the candidate filing deadline came and went this week while legislators in Jefferson City rejected the new congressional map — maintaining a 6-to-2 GOP advantage, and shoring up one Republican seat — in favor of further negotiations. That came after Senate Republicans had finally overcome a filibuster by conservatives who wanted a map that would eliminate a Kansas City-based seat that Democrats always win.
“When you have a lot of people who are fighting for what they want, eventually you may have to some kind of compromise,” Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) told 93.9 The Eagle on Wednesday. “I think that's what the Senate tried to do.”
Campaigning continued anyway, for the current district lines, and the legislative session isn't over until May. But there are already lawsuits in district court of Cole County (which contains the capital), asking a judge to intervene and draw maps, arguing that it's unconstitutional for candidates to run inside the old lines after 10 years of population changes.
Q&A
On Wednesday, House Democrats' super PAC announced $100 million in ad reservations across the country. None of the first reservations were in New York state. That surprised some Republicans, and Democrats, who see several New York seats as potentially vulnerable, including the 18th Congressional District that Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Sean Patrick Maloney has represented for nine years. Maloney himself has said that the Hudson Valley seat, which has trended left but been redrawn to include more Republican precincts, could be in play, but the House Majority PAC hadn't reserved ads there yet.
“If I wasn’t managing the Frontline program, I’d be on the program,” Maloney said at this month's House Democratic retreat, referring to the DCCC's effort to protect its most vulnerable members.
Republicans see plenty of seats won by President Biden as winnable this year. Dan Conston, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund — the GOP's PAC counterpart — said in an interview that the House Majority PAC's reservations were “a recognition that Democrats have already lost the House” and have “traditionally blue districts in real peril.” New York State Assemblyman Colin Schmitt (R), a 31-year old National Guard member, is running against Maloney on that theory. Ahead of the first quarter fundraising deadline — it's today, if a hundred campaigns haven't texted to tell you already — he talked about his race and why he thought Maloney could lose.
The Trailer: Why are you running, and why do you think you can win?
Colin Schmitt: This is my fourth year in the Assembly. I've been heavily involved in the community for a long time now. Sean Maloney is nowhere to be found. I don't think he was representing our values to begin with, but this is a guy who's not doing retail politics like I am. He's not at the Memorial Day parades or the Fourth of July parades. He’ll pop in for a press conference once a quarter in one of the cities in the district.
Then he gets made the chairman of the DCCC. This is a district that consistently has been good for Republicans in a gubernatorial year. And we've got a guy who can no longer triangulate his politics because of his job with the party. This is generally a working-class district, with some Westchester parts that are a little different. And he didn't check any of those boxes anymore.
In Middletown, one of the cities here, one day, there was no meat and no chicken on the shelves. A constituent sent us the photos, and they went viral. This is real life. The supply chain problems go right back to these big spending packages, which were unacceptable. And he voted for all of that. He's out of touch.
TT: Before this year, the district was trending away from Republicans. Why was that?
CS: In my own races, I’ve operated independently. I'm not relying on another elected official above me. I'm not reliant on any party committee operation. We obviously accept their help and whatever they want to offer, but we’ve been able to overperform.
I think that was there's a mix of factors for why we've slipped. There's obviously been demographic changes. You've had traditional conservative supporters who have moved out of the state at a growing rapid pace. Not too long ago, in the Hudson Valley, you could have “Republican” next to your name, wake up on Election Day, and get elected to what? That’s not the way it is anymore.
TT: Why is it winnable now?
CS: He was sending attack mailers about me before I started running, so this guy clearly thinks they have a winnable race here. I think that we're a juggernaut. No offense to previous opponents, but we're the first opponent, since he became a member of Congress, with a political base, name recognition and the ability to run a real campaign.
The district moved north and picked up new areas in Ulster County and Dutchess County, which Maloney has never represented. There are places where he’s had a kind of legacy of overperformance, running ahead of other Democrats, but they’re out of the district now. When we've polled it, we're both in the 30s — that's a canary in the coal mine. A lot of people don't know who Maloney is, and the polls may be underestimating the anti-Biden sentiment out there.
TT: Maloney has distanced himself from the “defund the police” slogan, but we've seen Republicans and some Democrats running against bail reform and blaming it for high crime. How does that play in the race? What do you actually do on it, at the federal level, if you win?
CS: It's probably the top issue that we're dealing with in the Hudson Valley: The crime issue, the lack of support for law enforcement. I've been fighting cash bail on the statewide level. It's something that my opponent has supported — he’s spoken glowingly of it; he wanted it in the race for attorney general. [Maloney ran for attorney general in 2018, losing the Democratic primary while seeking reelection to his House seat.]
And he’s hired advisers at the DCCC who made a wide range of anti-law enforcement comments. The one that sticks out in my mind was an adviser saying we should burn police precincts to the ground. That’s not acceptable to me. There’s a kind of nickname we have here: the land of guns and hoses. We’ve got so many cops, so many firemen, that work in New York City and live up here. I'm going to take my experiences here in New York and ensure that that is not something that gets advanced in Washington. I want to block the nationalization of our failed cash bail law.
TT: A lot of Republicans have talked about launching investigations into the Biden administration if you win, on everything from the withdrawal from Afghanistan to Hunter Biden's business career. Would you support that?
CS: I think that the situation in Afghanistan was a turning point. I served in the Army National Guard. A lot of my battle buddies were being deployed over there. And it's a real personal issue for a lot of the servicemen — it felt like a real failure. When we win, I'm going to look back at that as the pivot point where Biden and the Democrats started to lose the support of a lot of the people who probably were going to stick with him.
So we need to have the full story on that. The Hunter Biden thing, that's … well, my main focus would be Afghanistan.
TT: If you'd been in Congress last year, not Maloney, would you have voted to challenge the electoral results from Arizona and Pennsylvania on Jan. 6?
CS: Look, the violence that happened on that day is unacceptable. Anybody who illegally entered the Capitol that day or committed any of the crimes should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Joe Biden won the election, and that's what we've got to deal with for now. I support legislation that ensures equal access to voting for everybody and equal confidence in voting for everybody.
TT: But did you agree with the legal questions there? And would you have voted for or against impeachment afterward?
CS: I was a state legislator at the time, so I only saw what's going on in my state. That issue should be left to state legislators in those states. It’s not my place to tell any other state what they should or shouldn't do. No, I would not have voted to impeach him. I didn’t support the impeachment of him either time. In 2021, he had already lost the election, he was leaving office and it was an unnecessary step.
TT: And how would you rate the Biden administration's response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What would you be arguing for if you were in Congress?
CS: It's just another failure of the Biden administration on foreign policy and international security matters. Should this escalate, I mean, it would affect me personally. I'm the last person who wants anything to go worse for American soldiers on the ground. But I think we waited too long and there've been weaknesses that have been exploited. I think we need to continue to provide everything and anything we can provide, without putting our boots on the ground in Ukraine, at this point.
Countdown
… five days until the special primary in California's 22nd Congressional District
… 33 days until the next primaries
… 56 days until Texas runoffs and the special primary in Minnesota's 1st Congressional District
… 74 days until the special House primary in Alaska
… 216 days until the midterm elections
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The answer isn’t just a matter of curiosity; it could matter legally. Coverups, after all, can be used to prove criminal intent. And the Jan. 6 investigation is trending in that direction, with some recent validation.
All of the above-mentioned options are viable, given what we know so far. We know for a fact that the gap wasn’t the result of Trump staying off his phone, as we have at least five phone calls in the public record that aren’t accounted for in the call log. One of them appears in the White House daily diary — a retrospective summary of the president’s actions — but, for some reason, not the call log. And it, for some reason, lacks the detail of the other calls in the diary, including the other party to the call.
Since the news of the gap broke Tuesday, we’ve been able to connect a couple of key dots:
- That final call before the 7½-hour gap — at 11:17 a.m. — appears to have been with then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), based on another document. And according to the same document, it was apparently followed shortly thereafter by a Trump call with Vice President Mike Pence at 11:20 a.m. — a call that isn’t recorded at all in either the diary or call log.
- Another of the unaccounted-for calls — a 2:26 p.m. call mistakenly made to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) but meant for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — appears to have come from a White House device.
That latter revelation comes courtesy of the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who confirmed that the call to Lee came from a number listed as 202-395-0000. That number signifies it originated on an official White House phone.
Both of these suggest the gap didn’t result from the use of untraceable burner phones. If the idea was to shield communications as the plot to overturn the election unfolded, why would the 7½-hour gap feature a call from a White House device — smack in the middle, at 2:26 p.m.?
As for the idea that there was some kind of real-time effort to obscure Trump’s actions, a valid question is why it would begin that early — in the 11 a.m. hour, three hours before the insurrection. There’s very little reason for such an effort to obscure the calls to Loeffler and Pence, since they were calls you might well have expected Trump to make. Loeffler, after all, had just been defeated in a runoff, and the call logs show Trump had also called the other defeated Georgia GOP senator, David Perdue. That Trump would talk to Pence wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, either. (True, the content of the call was Trump asking Pence to overturn the election, but he had engaged in that kind of talk very publicly.)
The counterpoint is that those calls simply could have been wrapped up in a larger effort to cover Trump’s tracks. And that’s where the 11:17 a.m. call is particularly intriguing.
This call stands out. Not only did it omit the other party and other details — which all the other calls included — it also was listed in the daily diary but, for some reason, not in the call log. The other calls are listed in both.
It’s possible the lack of detail on that call and its exclusion from the call log simply reflected the beginning of 7½ hours of sloppiness. But it could also point to tampering after the fact.
As Lowell notes, the daily diary is a retrospective record put together by aides “who have some sway to determine whether a particular event was significant enough to warrant its inclusion.” Piecing together that record could involve reviewing call logs. So how would a call that doesn’t appear in the call logs find its way into the daily diary? It seems possible that someone knew about the call but couldn’t piece together who it was with or details, such as how long it lasted.
And why wouldn’t that information have been available in the call log? One possibility that hasn’t gotten enough attention is that a page of the call logs might be missing, for whatever reason.
As we observed Tuesday, the format of the call log and the gap it contains are notable. The final recorded call before the gap — the 11:04 a.m. call to Perdue — happens to come at the end of a page, and the next recorded call — a request for White House aide Dan Scavino at 6:54 p.m. — is at the top of the next one. If the gap were to have appeared in the middle of one of those pages, it wouldn’t rule out tampering, but the tampering would have been more involved (i.e., going into the document and editing it, rather than simply getting rid of a page).
This, of course, proves nothing; we simply don’t know. But Trump made a habit of not complying with record-keeping rules, notably ripping up papers and removing the very documents that the Jan. 6 committee has sought. His first impeachment included testimony that an unseemly document — the transcript of the call in which he tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide political dirt for his reelection campaign — was moved to a classified server. With someone who so cavalierly flouts record-keeping requirements, it’s difficult to rule such things out.
Stay tuned. The gap is important; the reason for it is more important.
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Here’s what the oil reserves are, how they can change gas prices and the political debate over them.
What are strategic oil reserves and how much oil reserves does the U.S. have?
The reserves are what they sound like: Hundreds of millions of barrels of oil tucked away — most of them in salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana — for when there’s a crisis that raises oil prices. We have roughly 568 million barrels in the reserve right now, report The Post’s Tyler Pager and Jeff Stein.
The idea came about in the 1970s after an energy crisis. The U.S. at the time depended on the Middle East to deliver an influx of oil, and some foreign leaders tried to demand U.S. support for regional conflicts in exchange. The U.S. didn’t want to be beholden to other nations in times of crisis, so it started the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
When have they been used?
The idea is to only tap the reserves in a true crisis — a natural disaster or a war — not every time prices go up. “They are an insurance policy,” said Meg Jacobs, an energy expert and author of “Panic at the Pump.” The U.S. has dipped into its oil reserves various times during recent history, like during the Gulf War, or after Hurricane Katrina, when George W. Bush released 11 million barrels of oil.
What is Biden proposing?
The president proposes releasing 1 million barrels a day, for the next six months.
That means about 180 million barrels of oil will enter the economy that weren’t there before. It’s a truly historic amount — about a third of the strategic reserve.
For comparison, in November, Biden released 50 million barrels of oil to try to lower gas prices.
How do oil reserves affect gas prices?
This is debatable. On paper, the idea is that more oil on the market will mean lower prices. But the U.S. uses about 20 million barrels of oil a day, and Biden is temporarily injecting 1 million more barrels a day. “It’s hard to have any kind of release make a serious dent because our consumption is so high,” Jacobs said.
Still, when combined with other tools, strategic oil reserves can lower gas prices, said Jay Hakes, an energy expert and author of two books about the oil reserve, including “Energy Crisis: Nixon, Ford, Carter and hard choices in the 1970s.”
The government can encourage people to use less oil as a way to stick it to Russia, and that can help blunt prices, Hakes said. Biden is also encouraging other countries with strategic oil reserves to release barrels on the global market.
And the U.S. can encourage companies to ramp up oil production back home. That’s what Biden tried to do Thursday. “Too many companies aren’t doing their part and are choosing to make extraordinary profits and without making additional investment to help with supply,” read a White House announcement on the release of the oil. Biden asked Congress to make oil companies pay a fee if they’re sitting on permits to drill on federal land and not actively drilling oil from existing wells there.
But the main benefit is psychological, especially during a war that has united Americans against Russia. “The fact people know the reserves are there is a strength for the country,” Hakes said.
Jacobs said to think of these oil reserves as a weapon against Russia: “The strategic reserve is part of our arsenal, designed precisely for these kinds of situations.”
What are the downsides of using the oil reserve?
The first is that there is less oil to pull from in a future crisis. Building the reserves back up requires the government to purchase more oil, and that may take years.
The second is the impact on the climate. Environmentalists want the U.S. to drill and consume less oil, not more. Biden tried to counter that criticism by saying he would also invoke a law known as the Defense Production Act to have American companies produce materials for batteries used in electric vehicles. (Driving is the No. 1 reason Americans consume so much oil.)
The third downside is for Biden specifically. This might not significantly change oil prices in the short run, and won’t change them in the long run. It’s also hard to know how high prices would be, without the additional oil — so if Americans still suffer from relatively high prices, they might not notice if the reserves are easing the hit to their wallets.
But Biden doesn’t have many other tools at his disposal to shift oil prices. Though he could emphasize conservation — Americans taking individual actions to use less oil in their daily lives — it was not a popular tactic when Jimmy Carter tried it in the 1970s.
So there’s a risk that Biden makes a big deal about dropping more oil into the economy, it doesn’t work, and then he’s out of other significant actions to take.
What are the politics of the oil reserves?
High gas prices are bad news, politically speaking, for a sitting president and his party. Biden’s poll numbers have reflected that: Even as unemployment goes down, Americans still feel pessimistic about the economy — and largely blame him for it — in part because of high gas and food prices.
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In October, the nonprofit legal watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit against Vos and the Wisconsin State Assembly seeking the release of records related to the investigation.
On Wednesday, Dane County Circuit Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn issued a ruling finding both Vos and the Wisconsin State Assembly in contempt of court for failing to provide those records, despite a court order in November to do so. Bailey-Rihn also ordered Vos and the State Assembly to pay American Oversight’s legal fees and costs.
In her ruling, the judge noted that trial testimony had revealed that a representative for Vos had taken “no reasonable steps to procure records from any contractors,” “no steps at all to review the records he did procure” and “no steps at all to prevent the loss or destruction of the contractors’ records.”
“Robin Vos and the assembly, after hearing and notice, continue to willfully violate a court order, and are therefore in contempt of court,” Bailey-Rihn wrote.
According to the ruling, Vos and the State Assembly have 14 days to submit proof that they have complied with Wisconsin’s public records law and have searched for records that were “deleted, lost, missing or otherwise unavailable,” or to provide an explanation of why a search would not be reasonable. After the 14-day period, they will be fined $1,000 per day until they comply.
Vos and his attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday morning.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, taxpayers are likely to bear the costs of these penalties, which could go beyond the $676,000 in public funds that Vos had approved for the initial partisan investigation.
In a statement, American Oversight noted that Bailey-Rihn’s ruling was a response to only one of three lawsuits the group is pursuing against Wisconsin officials and lawmakers over the Republican-led investigation.
“Speaker Vos and the Assembly have had ample opportunity to comply with the court’s order and produce records,” Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser at American Oversight, said in a statement. “Maybe the threat of a $1,000/day fine until the records are produced will finally encourage compliance and give the people of Wisconsin the answers they deserve.”
Trump and his allies have baselessly alleged for more than a year that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome. In the weeks after the election, dozens of state and federal judges rejected Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the election results.
Several Republican-led state legislatures — including in Wisconsin, where a recount showed Joe Biden had defeated Trump by about 20,600 votes — then launched partisan investigations into the 2020 election directly tied to Trump’s grievances. In Arizona, for example, Trump and his then-attorney Rudy Giuliani reached out personally to GOP officials there to push them to move forward with an election “audit.”
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“High school students are in a mental health crisis,” said Julissa Canales, another D.C. 16-year-old. She wants to be a therapist.
But these very D.C. teens on Monday weren’t posting on social media or complaining to their friends. They had gone to a virtual D.C. Council budget hearing, sitting before a government body, to ask for help.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that nearly all the students who spoke or submitted testimony want to do the work — taking care of others — that the adults aren’t doing well today.
“Students are taking the lead on addressing mental health,” Alynah King, a student at Wilson High School, said at the hearing. “Not the adults.”
A few days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report that confirmed to Americans what they had known all along in their classrooms, at their dinner tables and in their heads: Our children are in serious trouble. In the grips of the pandemic last year, 1 out of every 5 American teens that the CDC spoke to had considered suicide. Forty percent said they felt “persistently sad or hopeless.”
“These data echo a cry for help,” said Debra Houry, a deputy director at the CDC. “The covid-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental well-being.”
It’s “a national emergency,” the American Academy of Pediatrics declared last fall.
That’s what the kids in D.C. said on Monday, too, in the middle of an annual budget process for the public school system that had nearly 250 witnesses submitting testimony on behalf of their passion, their profession or their pet projects: more baseball fields, a food-education program, fixing the filthy bathrooms in one of the biggest high schools in the city.
And students from across the city who work with the Young Women’s Project, a nonprofit that helps kids find power in their voices, wrote impassioned arguments for more robust and effective mental health programs in all D.C. schools.
“My school doesn’t provide many mental health resources and does not share much information about what they do have,” said Noemie Durand, 17, a junior at BASIS. “It’s baffling and incredibly frustrating that the current health and school systems create so many obstacles to receiving that help.”
Durand said she, like many of her peers, suffered during the pandemic.
“The combination of stress from school, isolation from friends, and an extremely toxic relationship and eventual breakup led to destructive burnout and situational depression for most of my 10th-grade year,” she said. But she has parents with the money and means to get her help. Therapy pulled her out of her depression, she said. When she returned to school, she saw the same issues in peers all around her who didn’t know how to get help.
No surprise: She wants to study psychology.
She’ll have no trouble finding work — there’s a startling shortage of mental health workers in America right now. And that doesn’t bode well for the plan that D.C. Public Schools proposed to help students.
The proposed budget for the 2023 fiscal year is big, up to $2.2 billion from last year’s $2 billion. And mental health services have a starring role, making sure that licensed therapists or psychologists from the Department of Behavioral Health are on all 216 public school campuses.
Staffing up isn’t going to be easy.
“Everybody knows that, around the country, there are really not sufficient numbers of [licensed social workers] to serve in various capacities,” the agency’s director, Barbara J. Bazron, told The Washington Post’s Perry Stein. “We are also working closely at getting more people in our pipeline through our internship programs and so forth. We are doing some of the same things that people around the country are doing.”
Good plan, adults. For the future.
But kids need help now.
“Many students don’t realize that their stress levels are rising until they have a panic attack,” said Abatan, a student at McKinley Tech High School. “They need to know what to do in the moment before they are overwhelmed to the point of adding more mental harm to themselves.”
The students proposed a $5 million initiative to create after-school mental health programs in 125 schools.
And they explained that while many schools do have resources, kids don’t know about them, are disconnected from them or are embarrassed to use them.
“At my school, you usually have to go to a teacher first to get help from a therapist,” Canales, a student at Columbia Heights Educational Campus, said in her testimony. “This presents a problem because students have to share why they need to see a therapist and may not feel comfortable sharing that with a teacher.”
Canales’s goal of becoming a therapist one day is a good one.
Let’s hope we can get it right sooner, though.
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Yet Putin and others around him no doubt see it differently. From their perspective, Russia is a global power surrounded by outright adversaries and frenemies like China. It has vast mineral wealth and a large military but also suffers from endemic economic and demographic weaknesses. The imperative to expand its borders as a means to defend them stretches back at least as far as Catherine the Great. Plus, Putin has faced few consequences for his prior adventurism. Throw in an erroneous assumption that all Russian speakers yearn for the motherland, and going for broke now may well seem like a viable political choice.
Clearly, the war isn’t going according to plan for the Kremlin. The West has also displayed more resolve than the reaction to Putin’s earlier excursions signaled.
These setbacks, combined with Putin’s worldview, help explain why he would risk even more damage to Russia by threatening to halt natural gas sales.
This week, the threat came in the guise of a reiterated demand that European buyers pay for gas in rubles rather than euros or dollars. There is a monetary angle to this, forcing buyers to sell hard currency and buy the battered ruble. But the main motivation is to remind those buyers who is heating their homes — and who controls the tap.
As it is, the Kremlin announced Thursday a convoluted plan whereby customers effectively keep paying in euros and dollars, but via designated accounts in Russia that convert that to rubles. Putin, it seems, wasn’t quite ready to follow through on his ultimatum.
Nor should he be. Like the nuclear weapons he has brandished rhetorically, an actual cutoff would entail some mutually assured destruction.
Putin’s war has pushed the European Union to radically rethink its long-term energy relationship with Russia, one that has endured for half a century, even during the Cold War. The incentive remains for both sides not to rock the boat too much. Europe still depends on Siberian gas, which is why it hasn’t sanctioned it. And Russia still relies on payments for it. Indeed, gas payments have risen in importance, according to Thane Gustafson, author of a history of the gas relationship with Europe. His rough math suggests that the share of gas in Russia’s hydrocarbon export revenue — which accounts for more than half of exports overall — has risen to half amid all this disruption, up from a typical level of one-fifth. He adds:
The irony is that one of the bigger investments under Putin has been the development of gas infrastructure to serve the European market for another generation. Yamal, Blue Stream, Nord Stream. All of that is now in ruins.
The economic and social impact in Europe of a prolonged cutoff, including the likelihood of a deep recession, would mark a big escalation of the conflict. Tempting as it may be to see a cutoff as just tit-for-tat following the sanctions on Russia, that ignores the fact that the original “tat” was the brutal and ongoing attack on Ukraine. In any case, if Putin does actually cut off supply, with all that entails, it perhaps should be read as a sign of desperation. Or that whatever method there may have been in his madness, madness has become the method.
More From Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• Russia’s Other War of Attrition Is Against Europe: John Authers
• Putin’s New Alter Ego Is Igor Strelkov: Leonid Bershidsky
• Chechen Wars Foreshadow Putin’s Next Move: Clara Ferreira Marques
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times’ Lex column. He was also an investment banker.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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Meanwhile, your rental income may soon not be enough to cover your mortgage payments. Almost all of the city’s new loans are benchmarked against Hibor, which has been creeping up. Hong Kong pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar, so when the Federal Reserve starts hiking rates, borrowing costs in the city rise too.
You will have to stretch your math. The rental yield stood at 2.4% at 2021 year-end, according to realtor Centaline Property Agency Ltd. That should cover the 1.6% mortgage rate you could get from, say, HSBC Holdings Plc’s local subsidiary, Hang Seng Bank Ltd, which charges a 1.3 percentage-point premium over one-month Hibor.
But not for much longer. Fed fund futures are pricing in about 2 percentage points in rate hikes by year-end, so expect your cost of borrowing to rise in near lockstep. The average 30-year mortgage rate in the U.S. has reached almost 4.7%, the highest since December 2018.
If the futures market is correct on the Fed, by year-end, you will most likely earn negative carry for the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. It will be a seismic mental adjustment for the city’s new generation of landlords.
To make matters worse, this is a renters’ market now. Owners are slashing rent to attract and retain good tenants, as the city enters its third month of soft lockdown. Expats are grumpy. Many have left the city for good. Meanwhile, young people, who make up a big portion of rental demand, may be struggling to find jobs right now. Last year, unemployment rate among those aged 20 to 29 averaged at 8.7%, well above the economy’s overall 5.5% rate. They might just move home and sleep on their parents’ couches.
What’s left is the prospect of rising home prices, which seems unlikely. The last time the Fed raised rates, in 2018, home prices fell by about 10% — and that was with economic growth at 2.8%. Now, Hong Kong is poised to enter a recession. Home prices may fall by 20% by 2025, estimates Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
For over two decades, Hong Kong’s real estate market has been pretty predictable — on the way up. So in the last two years, whenever the city lifted its social-distancing restrictions, home prices saw a mini-rebound. Some investors might be tempted again, as social life gradually comes back. Weekly transaction volumes at 35 housing estates reached a 45-week high, according to Midland Realty.
But think very carefully this time. If we look further back in history, Hong Kong property is by no means a sure bet. It was in a bear market for years, and many owners were deep under water. Home prices tumbled by two-thirds from their peak before the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 to the SARS outbreak in 2003.
So don’t fight the Fed, and learn to live with a recession. Hong Kong property’s got an infection it can’t shake.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
•
Hong Kong’s Covid Policy Is Less Than Zero: Trivedi & Ren
•
Singapore Property Is Hot Even Without Expats: Andy Mukherjee
• Hong Kong Expats, Where’s Your Next Destination?: Anjani Trivedi
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. She previously wrote on markets for Barron’s, following a career as an investment banker, and is a CFA charterholder.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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The U.S. and its allies were swift to act after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Washington led a coalition of more than 30 countries that halted the supply of U.S. goods and services, or those that use American technology or production equipment. A separate package of financial restrictions cut the nation off from global banking systems.
Russia can cope for a little while, but if its war in Ukraine drags on and sanctions remain in place then it’ll eventually run out of the components needed to not only build weapons and military vehicles, but run servers and networks used by the civilian population.
Chinese companies may be tempted to fill the void. Beijing and Moscow seem close — there is “no ceiling” for their cooperation, China said this week — and the two countries are united in their disdain for what they see as Western imperialism. Helping out a friend by shipping some U.S. chips, or computers that contain them, might seem like a friendly gesture and possibly even a lucrative one.
In addition to the aforementioned methods of masking its supply chain, a major Chinese corporation could also mislead its bankers, use external staffing companies to employ engineers in the target country, or simply claim that a subsidiary was no more than a business partner and thus not subject to U.S. embargoes.
We know about these various sanctions-busting schemes because they’re exactly how electronics companies ZTE Corp. and Huawei Technologies Inc. skirted restrictions on sales to Iran. But they got caught, and the punishments were severe. In March 2017, ZTE was hit with a $1.2 billion fine and cut off from buying the U.S. components necessary to make many of its products. The company was forced to suspend operations, fire its board, and replace its management team. Revenue plummeted and the company has struggled to recover ever since.
Huawei this week showed just how damaging sanctions can be.(1) Banned from buying the crucial communications and computing chips needed to power the latest 5G phones and networks, the Shenzhen-based company was forced to reduce production. The result was a 29% drop in sales last year. Even domestic revenue fell 31%, highlighting the simple reality that you cannot sell what you can’t make.
Any Chinese executive running the risk-return calculation on skirting the Russian sanctions needs to remember two things: The U.S. is getting very good at catching violators, and the punishment could hurt not only that company but China as a whole.
President Joe Biden was blunt when he reiterated a warning this week to President Xi Jinping that “he’d be putting himself at significant jeopardy” if he helped his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. China has rejected suggestions that it would try to bypass the embargoes, but has made clear it’s opposed to them. “There has been unnecessary damage to the normal trade exchange with Russia, including between China and Russia,” Foreign Ministry Spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular news briefing in Beijing this week.
Notable about this round of sanctions is the large coalition Washington has built to enforce them. It now has dozens of governments that have been updated on the rules and what to look out for. They will in turn serve as its eyes and ears around the world. In Asia, briefings have been held with industry groups and chambers of commerce in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and China.
Even if it chooses not to be a willing informant, Beijing too knows the rules, with representatives of China’s Ministry of Commerce meeting their counterparts in Washington soon after the embargo was announced. The U.S. also has export-control attaches stationed in foreign countries, and companies themselves are likely to be snitches if they feel others in the supply chain are not following the rules, Deputy Assistant Commerce Secretary Matthew Borman said.
Thus, not only are the chances of getting caught higher than ever, but Beijing has a vested interest in ensuring no one breaks the rules.
Bans apply to components and hardware, as well as the software and equipment required to produce them. So while China is working hard to wean itself off chips made by Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Nvidia Corp., it still needs software from Synopsis Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. as well as tools from Applied Materials Inc. and Lam Research Corp. Any product made using inputs from these companies is subject to the bans.(3)
It could be more than a decade before Beijing can completely replace the entire design and manufacturing supply chain; losing access now would be disastrous. And that’s a real possibility. Should anyone be found breaking Russian sanctions, and Beijing seen aiding and abetting them, Washington may be forced to broaden its punishments — instead of merely forbidding sales to Russia using U.S. technology, Chinese businesses could also be cut off.
That would set China’s drive for technology independence back a long way. The smart move for Beijing now is to comply with the sanctions and make sure its companies do, too. Helping out a friend, and making a quick buck, isn’t worth sacrificing the nation’s long-term plan to become a global technology superpower that can stand on its own two feet.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• Australia Sends a $7.5 Billion Cyber Signal to China: Tim Culpan
• China’s Ukraine Juggling Act Isn’t Over: Clara Ferreira Marques
• How China’s Cybersecurity Laws Could Backfire: Anjani Trivedi
(1) The reason for curbs on Huawei extend beyond Iran sanctions-busting to include Western bans against its networking equipment and claims by the U.S. that it’s a national-security threat.
(2) License exceptions apply to various categories, including consumer devices such as cellphones that are sold to individuals and NGOs, but not government or officials.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Tim Culpan is a technology columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Based in Taipei, he writes about Asian and global businesses and trends. He previously covered the beat at Bloomberg News.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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Russian troops also appeared to be withdrawing from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, officials said.
A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said Moscow could be planning to seize Mariupol as a springboard into the eastern Donbas region, where Russians troops may try to envelop Ukrainian forces. Russia’s military has increasingly tried to seize towns in that part of Ukraine, the Pentagon has said, and forces pulled from the country’s north appear to be heading there.
The focus on Mariupol came as Western officials attempted to assess Russia’s next moves, with troops withdrawing from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, diplomats preparing for more discussions Friday and the war continuing to disrupt oil and natural gas supply around the world.
There were also new claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin is being further isolated from his advisers, with a picture of chaos emerging around Russia’s front lines and tensions at the highest levels of the Kremlin.
Jeremy Fleming, head of Britain’s signals intelligence agency, said in a speech Thursday that Russian soldiers are short on morale and weapons and have refused orders, sabotaged their own equipment and shot down one of their own aircraft.
In Washington, President Biden said Putin “seems to be self-isolated, and there’s some indication that he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers.”
“But I don’t want to put too much stock in that at this time because we don’t have that much hard evidence,” Biden said.
Both Biden and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg expressed doubt Thursday about Russia’s claim that it is withdrawing from the area around Kyiv, with Stoltenberg saying Moscow has lied about its intentions before and appears to be repositioning troops for fresh attacks.
“We can only judge Russia on its actions, not its words,” he said at a news conference in Brussels. “According to our intelligence, Russian units are not withdrawing but repositioning.”
The chief of Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said Russian soldiers were withdrawing from what he characterized as the “main part” of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site, which Russian forces captured in February shortly after the war broke out. But Minister German Galushchenko noted that some troops remain at the facility and cautioned that “no one can predict their next steps.”
Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned atomic energy firm, said Russian forces were handing over Chernobyl to Ukrainian authorities and withdrawing troops. In a statement on Telegram, the company shared a letter in which Russian and Ukrainian forces purportedly agreed to the “transfer of protection” of the site. The claims could not be independently verified.
The Pentagon said Thursday that it was “unclear” about the accuracy of unconfirmed reports that Russian soldiers who are leaving the Chernobyl nuclear station had been exposed to high levels of radiation and presented signs of illness.
Biden’s remarks on Putin came after he announced he had authorized the release of an average of 1 million barrels a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next six months as a “wartime bridge” until U.S. production can ramp up later this year.
The Treasury Department, meanwhile, unveiled new sanctions on Russia’s technology sector, focusing on an area that enables Moscow to acquire technology critical for its military, including one firm that is Russia’s largest microchip producer.
“We will continue to target Putin’s war machine with sanctions from every angle, until this senseless war of choice is over,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected claims that the Russian leader’s advisers have misled him about the invasion of Ukraine.
“They don’t understand President Putin,” he said of Western government and intelligence officials who made those assertions Wednesday. “They don’t understand the decision-making mechanism, and they don’t understand our style of work.”
Putin announced Thursday that he had signed a decree requiring “unfriendly countries” to pay for natural gas in rubles through Russian banks. He said in broadcast remarks that existing contracts would be terminated for those countries that refuse to comply. The stipulation takes effect Friday, a day later than the initial deadline.
But French, German and British officials are rejecting Russian demands to pay for gas deliveries in Russian rubles.
Speaking during a joint news conference later in the day, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner and his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, said they would continue paying in euros. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters that paying in rubles “is not something we will be looking to do,” Reuters reported.
The devastation wrought from five weeks of war showed no signs of ending. The death toll rose to 20 in Tuesday’s Russian missile strike on the regional government headquarters in the southern city of Mykolaiv, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
In a Facebook post Thursday, the agency said rescuers had removed 19 bodies from the scene and that one person died in intensive care. Dozens more were injured.
Drone video published Wednesday and verified by The Washington Post shows widespread destruction in Mariupol. The video, which compared recent images with footage from 2021, shows the stark contrast of before and after the siege, including the Mariupol Drama Theater that was bombed two weeks ago.
The destruction within the city has drawn comparisons with the siege of Aleppo in 2016, when Russian forces helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crush rebels in an eight-month campaign that featured the use of cluster bombs, chemical weapons and other banned munitions, in addition to heavy shelling and conventional airstrikes.
Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev, the Russian three-star general who led forces in Syria, has been identified as the architect of the devastating siege of Mariupol and has been given a new nickname: the Butcher of Mariupol. Ukrainian officials blame him for the bombing of a maternity hospital, the Drama Theater and other buildings in the port city and vowed to see him tried for war crimes in The Hague.
“Remember him,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, tweeted recently over a photo of the 59-year-old general, a man with close-cropped gray hair and pale blue eyes. “This is Mikhail Mizintsev. He is leading the siege of Mariupol.”
The thousands of expected evacuees from Mariupol will be brought to the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia. By Thursday evening, 45 buses had arrived to transport people, according to local officials. Neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians specified when the cease-fire and humanitarian corridor would end, but Ukraine said its soldiers would “guarantee a full cease-fire regime.”
A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross said its teams would travel with the convoy “to facilitate the safe passage of civilians out of Mariupol.”
Despite the agreement, part of the convoy was fired upon Thursday afternoon while driving toward the Russian-held city of Berdyansk, as the column of buses approached a checkpoint, damaging at least one vehicle, according Tetiana Ignatenkova, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration. Previous humanitarian corridors in the country also have been fragile, with both sides accusing the other of violating cease-fires and obstructing supplies.
Since the start of the conflict, 80,000 residents have been evacuated from Mariupol using buses and private transport, according to the local government.
Ukraine will resume peace talks with Russia online on Friday, a senior Ukrainian diplomat participating in the negotiations said on his Telegram channel, after tentative progress in discussions in Istanbul on Tuesday.
David Arakhamia said Ukraine stressed the need for a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a venue not in Belarus or Russia. But Russian officials declined, saying the sides should first work out a more coherent draft agreement, he said. Ukrainian officials have said any peace deal should be signed by the two leaders.
The two sides have been exploring ways for Ukraine to become a neutral country as part of a broader peace deal. Ukrainian officials have demanded a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian forces to the borders that existed on Feb. 23 — a day before Russia launched its invasion, Arakhamia said.
The negotiations have been met with skepticism by Ukrainian and Western officials. Ukrainian lawmaker Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, who visited Washington, D.C., this week as part of a parliamentary delegation, repeatedly said Putin was using the talks as a smokescreen to buy time for his forces in Ukraine to regroup.
“It is difficult to negotiate with someone when the gun is being [pointed] at your head,” she said in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. In remarks to reporters published by CNN on Wednesday, she said Putin was “sending false, lying messages” to the world.
Bennett reported from the Dnipro region of Ukraine. Brittany Shammas, William Branigin, Sarah Cahlan, Jeff Stein and Meryl Kornfield in Washington, Andrew Jeong in Seoul, Kim Bellware in Chicago, Emily Rauhala in Brussels and Adela Suliman in London contributed to this report.
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It said the Adams County Coroner had determined that the child died after ingesting fentanyl and that Montoya and Casias “participated in illicit drug activity” in the child’s presence at home before and after her death.
Montoya was being held on $250,000 bail at the Adams County Jail. Bail was set at $100,000 for Casias. A status hearing for both was set for Monday.
Telephone and email messages seeking comment from Casias’ attorney, Rachel Lanzen, were not immediately returned. Montoya was being represented by the public defender’s office, which doesn’t comment on pending cases.
Court records that would provide details on the accusations weren’t immediately available from the county district court. Christopher Hopper, a district attorney’s spokesman, said he could not provide additional information.
Fentanyl is an unpredictable and powerful synthetic painkiller blamed for driving an increase in fatal drug overdoses. It’s 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton rejected the new policy in a February ruling, saying that impermissible “racial balancing” was at its core. Commonly known as “TJ,” the prestigious school near the nation’s capital is often ranked as one of the best public high schools in the country.
Earlier this month, Hilton also rejected a request from the school system to delay the implementation of his ruling. But the 4th Circuit, in a 3-2 ruling, said the school board had met the legal requirements for a suspension of Hilton’s order while its appeal is pending.
The 4th Circuit panel agreed with school officials who argued that because the selection process for the incoming freshman class is well underway, implementing Hilton’s ruling now would throw the process into chaos.
Judge Toby Heytens wrote that he has “grave doubts” about Hilton’s conclusions “regarding both disparate impact and discriminatory purpose” of the new admissions policy.
“In my view, appellant Fairfax County School Board is likely to succeed in its appeal,” Heytens wrote.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Allison Jones Rushing said putting Hilton’s ruling on hold while the school board appeals his decision is not in the public interest. Jones said any logistical difficulties or inconvenience associated with changing the admissions policy at this late date “simply do not outweigh the infringement of constitutional rights.”
“And everyone — even temporarily frustrated applicants and their families — ultimately benefits from a public-school admissions process not tainted by unconstitutional discrimination,” Rushing wrote.
The case has been closely watched as courts continue to evaluate the role that racial considerations can play when deciding who should be admitted to a particular school. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a similar case alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process.
Fairfield County Public Schools said the order from the 4th Circuit allows the school board to continue with the current application process to select the Class of 2026 this spring.
“For the 2,500+ students in this application pool, this means the race blind process set out by the School Board in October 2020 will remain in place as an appeal challenging the February court decision plays out,” the board said in a news release.
The parents’ group Coalition for TJ, which filed the lawsuit, said the 4th Circuit judges have made a “grave error” in allowing the school system to continue to use its new admissions process.
“If the judges’ decision stands, we would see Fairfax County Public Schools usher in a second class of students to America’s No. 1 public high school through an unconstitutional race-based admissions process,” the coalition said in a statement.
For decades, Black and Hispanic students have been woefully underrepresented in the student body. After criticism over its lack of diversity, the school board scrapped a standardized test that had been at the heart of the admissions process and opted instead for a process that sets aside slots at each of the county’s middle schools. It also includes “experience factors” like socioeconomic background.
The parents’ group argued in its lawsuit that Asian Americans, who constituted more than 70% of the student body, were unfairly targeted in the new policy.
The school’s current freshman class, which was admitted under the new policy, saw a significantly different racial makeup. Black students increased from 1% to 7%; Hispanic representation increased from 3% to 11%. Asian American representation decreased from 73% to 54%.
The school system has insisted that its new policies are race neutral, and the panel evaluating applicants is not even aware of applicants’ race as it conducts its reviews.
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Bell was shot in his neck, arm, leg and hand and underwent surgery at Erie County Medical Center, where he appeared before a judge after regaining consciousness, said Erie County District Attorney John Flynn, who offered dramatic new details of the events.
“You have a high-speed chase... you’ve got a guy firing out the driver’s side window. You’ve got blockades, you’ve got speed on highways, a girl jumping out of the car,” he said at a news conference.
Bell is accused of fleeing two police officers who approached his parked vehicle after noticing its tinted windows around 6 p.m. Tuesday, Flynn said. He cooperated at first but did not get out of the car because he was partially paralyzed in a 2012 shooting and uses medical equipment to walk, the prosecutor said.
When it appeared there was an issue with his registration, Bell drove off. Armed with an illegal handgun with an extended magazine of ammunition, he fired on police as they pursued him through city neighborhoods and on highways for more than 20 minutes, Flynn said.
Early in the chase, before shots were fired, the passenger exited the moving vehicle.
“He was making a turn and had slowed down at some point. She opened the front passenger door and jumped out of the car while it was moving and ended up rolling on the ground and hit up against a pole of some kind,” he said, “like right out of a movie.”
“She was obviously freaking out probably, to say the least, and wanted to have nothing to do with this,” Flynn said.
In the minutes that followed, Bell drove through a police barricade, entered and exited highways and drove wildly through several Buffalo neighborhoods, briefly entering the suburb of Cheektowaga, before turning back toward Buffalo with police officers radioing his route to each other and warning of the danger.
“They’re still shooting. Multiple officers hit!” an officer is heard shouting in a transmission captured by Broadcastify.com.
Three police officers were struck in separate vehicles. All are recovering.
By the time it was over, nine police vehicles were damaged by gunfire, Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said.
Investigators have yet to determine how many shots were fired by Bell, or how many officers fired their weapons, Flynn said.
Bell is due to appear before a county judge at the hospital Friday for an alleged probation violation related to a 2020 illegal firearms charge in the town of Amherst. While on probation, he was prohibited from carrying a weapon.
The attorney who represented Bell at Thursday’s arraignment did not return a call seeking comment on his behalf.
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New York Democrats drew a new congressional map with boundaries that could gain their party as many as three new seats, a crucial advantage at a time when the House majority will come down to just a handful of wins.
The state congressional map ruled unconstitutional by the state judge would give Democrats 22 seats to four Republican ones. The New York delegation is composed of 19 Democratic seats to eight seats for Republicans. The state lost a seat because of slow growth over the past 10 years.
— Colby Itkowitz
Severe storms leave 2 dead in Florida
A line of severe storms packing isolated tornadoes and high winds ripped across the Deep South overnight — killing at least two in the Florida Panhandle, toppling trees and power lines and leaving homes and businesses damaged as the vast weather front raced across several states.
In Florida, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday morning that two people were killed and two people injured when a tornado touched down in the western panhandle.
At least two confirmed tornadoes injured several people Wednesday, damaged homes and businesses, and downed power lines in Mississippi and Tennessee after an earlier storm caused damage in Arkansas, Missouri and Texas.
— Associated Press
Student workers at Dartmouth to unionize
In a first for Dartmouth College, student workers have voted to unionize.
The college announced the successful vote Wednesday involving around 150 students working in the dining hall that provides meals to students living in college housing. It had pledged to remain neutral during the election and said it accepted the results. The vote, according to the Dartmouth, was 52 to 0. It was tallied by the National Labor Relations Board.
The push by the Student Worker Collective at Dartmouth started in January. Some of its concerns were specific to work conditions, including a demand to pay all workers for missed hours due to covid-19 isolation. But it went beyond dining, accusing the administration of failing to respond to a range of issues including mental health and rising rents.
Dartmouth joins Hamilton College in New York, Grinnell College in Iowa and Wesleyan University in Connecticut where undergraduates voted in the past two years to unionize, according to the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions at Hunter College. Graduates students at the University of New Mexico, University of California and Clark University in Massachusetts have also formed unions in those two years. The Columbia graduate teaching and research assistants walked off the job in 2018 to try to pressure the university to recognize their decision to unionize. The union, which has about 3,000 members, reached a tentative agreement with Columbia earlier this year.
— Associated Press
Student killed peer at South Carolina middle school, police say: A 12-year-old student was shot and killed Thursday by another 12-year-old student inside their South Carolina middle school, authorities said. The shooter was found hiding under a deck at a home not far from Tanglewood Middle School in Greenville about an hour after the shooting and was still armed, Greenville County Sheriff Hobart Lewis said. The boy is charged with murder, possession of a firearm at a school and possession of a weapon by someone under 18.
— Associated Press
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The man died at the scene. No other injuries were reported.
The shooting is being investigated by state police officials.
Police didn’t immediately release the names or races of the dead man or the officer who shot him.
The man died at the scene. No other injuries were reported.
The shooting is being investigated by state police officials.
Police didn’t immediately release the names or races of the dead man or the officer who shot him.
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“This has been a long time coming,” said Sen. Antonio Hayes, a Baltimore Democrat. He thanked supporters who have “come together and really advocated on behalf of Maryland families.”
Republicans criticized the measure for failing to spell out how much employees and employers would have to contribute, leaving that for the state’s labor department to define later. They said Democrats were rushing to get the bill to the Republican governor just to meet a deadline so lawmakers will still be in session if the bill is vetoed.
“We’re pushing this bill as quick as we can to get it upstairs,” said Sen. J.B. Jennings, a Republican, who added: “We don’t know the numbers ... this bill is a hot mess.”
Because lawmakers are in the last session of the four-year term, they would not have a chance to override the veto next year if they adjourn before the governor acts on legislation.
The measure would create an insurance pool. Employees and employers would contribute to fund the program. Under the bill, the state’s labor department would set contribution rates to pay for the program. Employers with fewer than 15 employees would not be required to contribute.
The measure also includes job protections to protect employees from retaliation or termination for using the leave.
Seven states and the District of Columbia have paid family and medical leave insurance programs, including California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Washington. Colorado and Oregon have approved programs that have not started yet.
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Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the report, which lays out a series of recommendations to improve military procedures and strategy, will be used as the department develops its own broader plan to reduce civlian harm.
“No other military works as hard as we do to mitigate civilian harm, and yet we still cause it,” said Kirby. ”We’re going to continue to try to learn from past issues.”
RAND concluded that the battle for Raqqa provided important lessons.
Michael McNerney, lead author of the RAND report, called Raqqa “a cautionary tale about civilian harm in urban combat.” He said it “should serve as an extra incentive to the DoD to strengthen its policies and procedures to mitigate, document and respond to civilian harm.”
The RAND report noted that there has been a wide range of estimated civilian casualties during the seige, but also said it believes that 60%-80% of Raqqa was left uninhabitable by the time the city was liberated in October 2017.
Initially the U.S.-led coalition estimted that it was responsible for 38 incidents involving 240 civilian casualties — including 178 who were killed. A consortium of local Syrian and international groups, including Amnesty International and Airwars, put the number of casualties at a “high estimate” of 1,600, but said that about 774 of them could specifically be “verified” by data as the result of coalition action.
The report makes it clear that several thousand more civilians likely died, based on the number of bodies uncovered by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, but many were probably killed by IS or other fighters on the ground.
“Our report focuses on U.S. actions in Raqqa, but the actions of the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian partners undoubtedly contributed far more to civilian harm and suffering in Syria overall,” McNerney said.
The report noted that the challenges in Raqqa were compounded by limits on the number U.S. troops that could be there, as well as where they could be positioned. U.S. troops on the ground could have provided better targeting and civilian information, including on Islamic State militants’ efforts to use civilians as human shields, the report said.
RAND recommended that the U.S. military provide more extensive training and guidance on the need to avoid civilian harm, and plan and execute operations in ways to achieve those goals. Changes could include improved planning, better assessments of potential collateral damage, increased mission rehearsals, improved intelligence gathering, and more selective use of air strikes and munitions that minimize bomb fragmentation.
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But for all that is known about the day, piecing together the words and actions of Donald Trump over that time has proved no easy task, even though a president’s movements and communications are closely monitored.
There’s a gap in the official White House phone notations given to the House committee investigating Jan. 6 — from about 11 a.m. to about 7 p.m., according to two people familiar with the congressional investigation into the riot. Details may still turn up; the former president was known to use various cell phones and often bypassed the White House switchboard, placing calls directly.
And over the past four-plus months a lot has surfaced about what Trump did do and say on Jan. 6 — in texts, tweets, videos, calls and other conversations.
The following account is based on testimony, timelines and eyewitness reporting gathered by The Associated Press and The Washington Post and CBS News, and from officials and people familiar with the events who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity.
SORE AT HIS NO. 2
Trump entered the Oval Office at 11:08 a.m. By that time, about 400 pro-Trump demonstrators had already massed at the Capitol. Trump placed a call to Vice President Mike Pence — their only conversation of the day. It didn’t go well: Trump wanted Pence to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and he was very unhappy the vice president wouldn’t do it.
At 11:38 a.m., the president left the White House to address his rally on the Ellipse, a big grassy oval behind the White House, about a mile or so from the Capitol. It was bitter cold, but that didn’t keep the crowd away. Trump was up on stage by 11:57 and addressed his supporters until about 1:15 p.m.
Among Trump’s challenging final words: “We fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country any more. My fellow Americans, for our movement, for our children, and for our beloved country. So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol.”
‘THEY’RE THROWING METAL POLES’
Growing crowds were migrating to the Capitol. Almost immediately after Trump concluded, a Capitol Police officer called for backup.
“They’re throwing metal poles at us,” the officer said in a panicked voice. “Multiple law-enforcement injuries.”
Would Trump himself head for the Capitol, as he’d suggested in his speech? It was unclear at first, but his motorcade turned to head back to the White House.
At 1:21 p.m., Trump met with his valet at the White House, logs say. At the Capitol, meanwhile, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund begged for help from the National Guard as the crowd started to swell around the west side of the building and became increasingly violent.
By then the TV networks had picked up the melee and were broadcasting live as the mob broke through metal police barricades and advanced toward the doors of the building where lawmakers were gathered to certify the presidential election results. The surreal images soon filled television screens throughout the West Wing, where staffers watched, stunned.
LOCKDOWN
By 2 p.m. the U.S. Capitol was locked down. At 2:11, Pence was evacuated. At 2:15, congressional leaders were evacuated. At 2:43, demonstrator Babbitt was shot trying to enter the House chamber through a window broken by the mob.
No official record has surfaced yet of what Trump was doing during this time. The next entry in Trump’s daily diary is not until 4:03 p.m., when he went out to the Rose Garden to tape a public address after frantic urging.
But during this time Trump was hardly idle. He was in touch with lawmakers and he was, according to aides, watching the violence unfold on national television. And he was tweeting.
At 2:28, he tweeted not about the violence but to show his pique at his vice president:
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
At some point, Trump also talked to lawmakers. Republican Kevin McCarthy told a California radio station that he had spoken to the president.
“I was the first person to call him,” McCarthy said. “I told him to go on national TV, tell these people to stop it. He said he didn’t know what was happening.”
Washington Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler said McCarthy relayed that conversation to her. By her account, when McCarthy told Trump it was his own supporters breaking into the building, Trump responded: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
Trump also talked to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, among other GOP lawmakers. Tuberville later said he spoke to the president while the Senate was being evacuated. Utah Sen. Mike Lee said Trump accidentally called him when he was trying to reach Tuberville.
Others, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, tried but failed to get through to the president.
‘IT HAS GONE TOO FAR’
At 3:14 p.m. a Trump tweet at last made a sideways reference to the havoc. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
At some point, he sequestered himself in the dining room off the Oval Office to watch the violence play out on TV, rewinding and re-watching some parts, according to former aides. Unable to get through by other means, allies including his former chief of staff and communications director resorted to tweeting at him to try to get through. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows was getting a flurry of texts from lawmakers, from Fox News personalities and even Trump’s own children.
“Hey, Mark, protestors are literally storming the Capitol. Breaking windows on doors. Rushing in. Is Trump going to say something?” reads one text.
“We are all helpless,” says another.
As the violence continued, the president’s elder son texted Meadows:
“He’s got to condemn this s(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) Asap,” Donald Trump, Jr. texted.
Meadows responded: “I’m pushing it hard. I agree.”
Trump, Jr. texted again and again, urging that his father act:
“We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
At 4:08 p.m. Trump went out to the Rose Garden. At 4:17 p.m. he released a scripted, pre-recorded video, which included a call for “peace” and “law and order” and finally told his supporters “you have to go home now.”
But they didn’t. Things were still wildly out of control. In fact, the Capitol building was not secured until 5:34 p.m.
At 6:01, Trump’s message was back to indignant: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” he wrote. “Remember this day forever!”
At 6:27, he went back to the residence, and started calling his lawyers.
Congress did not resume counting electoral votes until 8 p.m. They finished at 3:40 a.m. and certified Biden as the winner.
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Associated Press Writers Jill Colvin in New York, Nomaan Merchant, Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick and Mike Balsamo contributed to this report.
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Still Walz, Dawn Staley and Geno Auriemma think the amount of players looking to change schools is getting out of control.
“I always like to say, ‘The grass is greener on the other side because it’s fertilized with a bunch of bull,’” Louisville coach Jeff Walz said. “I think there are a lot of players that will jump into the portal after one year that don’t really have a good grasp of why they’re doing it.”
Staley likened the portal to Twitter, Instagram or TikTok.
“It’s a big ol’ fad that just keeps continuing,” she said. “Is it out of hand? It absolutely is. I don’t know how you control it. But it’s their way. It’s their way of controlling their own destinies.”
Both Staley and Auriemma noted that there were currently more players seeking to transfer than there were scholarships available across the country.
“You know those 850 people in the portal? Three hundred of them are not going to find a school to go to because they’re going to realize it’s not the school they just left,” Auriemma said.
Despite the reservations, they’re still playing along. Emily Engstler (Syracuse), Kianna Smith (California) and Chelsie Hall (Vanderbilt) have been key for Louisville. Engstler and Hall just joined the program this season.
When Engstler was considering the Cardinals, Walz went to Mykasa Robinson to discuss how her role would likely shrink if Engstler were to come and gauge her comfort level.
“She looked at me, and she’s like, ‘I’m tired of guarding her. If we can get her, yes, because she likes to win, and she wants to play with other good players,’” Walz said.
SOUTH CAROLINA SUPPORT
The Gamecocks have led the nation in average attendance for seven straight years, buoyed by a base of more than 10,000 season tickets. Despite the 1,200-mile distance from campus to downtown Minneapolis, there will be plenty of garnet-and-black-clad South Carolina fans voicing their support on Friday night when the Gamecocks take on Louisville.
“They’ve been with us when we weren’t a popular team or we weren’t a whole lot to cheer about,” Staley said. “This is my 14th year being at South Carolina, but the last probably 10, the fans have given us a ride that’s kind of irreplaceable.”
One of the catalysts for the attendance boom was giving fans as much as access to the program as they could, to build relationships and let the locals get to know the players as people.
“You really feel the love in the community,” guard Brea Beal said. “You can go to the store and run into somebody and they’re like, oh my gosh, just freaking out. It’s like a family.”
FOND MEMORY
Walz spent one season at Minnesota on his climb up the coaching ladder, serving as an assistant under current Maryland coach Brenda Frese.
That was 20 years ago, when Hall of Fame finalist Lindsay Whalen was a sophomore for the Gophers on a breakthrough team that reached the Final Four two seasons later. The women’s team at that time played in a smaller gym, the Pavilion, next door to Williams Arena where the Minnesota men’s team has played since 1928.
A water pipe burst that winter, moving the women’s team into the bigger venue. The Gophers were on a roll, and the first game in the building known as “The Barn” was packed to the rafters.
“From that point on, we continued the rest of the season playing in the Barn in front of unbelievable crowds,” Walz said.
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More AP coverage of March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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All-American guard Ochai Agbaji grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, before heading about 20 minutes west on Interstate 70 to become a star for Kansas, which faces Villanova in the first national semifinal Saturday night. His running mate, Christian Braun, grew up in southeast Kansas but also played his high school ball in suburban Kansas City.
Two-time Big East player of the year Collin Gillespie, who has Wildcats coach Jay Wright eyeing a third national title, also played his high school ball about 20 minutes from campus at Archbishop Wood in suburban Philadelphia. Eric Dixon grew up in nearby Willow Grove and Chris Arcidiacono in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.
“We’ve never put an emphasis on recruiting local kids. We’ve put emphasis just going out and getting the best kids,” Kansas coach Bill Self said, “and we’ve been able to recruit national for the most part.
“But it’s pretty special that within 45 minutes of your home you have arguably two of the very best wings in college basketball.”
There are hometown connections in the second semifinal between Duke and North Carolina, too, and those might produce a little extra motivation given that their rival campuses famously lie just 10 miles apart.
Justin McKoy, who played the entire overtime in the Tar Heels’ upset of No. 1 seed Baylor, grew up 30 minutes away in Raleigh. Duke captain Joey Baker only moved about 90 minutes north of his home in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
ONE-ON-ONE
Three years ago, Caleb Samuels had made the decision to transfer from Tulane and was taking a visit to Villanova, where Gillespie and another hometown player, Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, were given the job of showing him around.
Some of the coaches asked if they would have a little shooting competition and, well, one thing led to another.
“We’re two competitive guys. It turned into one-on-one,” Gillespie recalled Thursday, “and he got up on me like, 13-0, and I was scared. I was nervous. I was like, who is this kid? Because I hadn’t heard of him before. And I obviously looked him up and watched his highlights — ‘All right, he can help us.’”
That might’ve been an understatement. Gillespie and Samuels are now two of the Wildcats’ top three scorers.
“I was up 13-0 the first game, and I remember him coming back, making every shot after that, after I missed, obviously, a layup or something,” Samuels said. “He ended up winning that game. The series ended up being 3-1, Collin.”
TEAHAN TRADITION
The Final Four has become a Teahan family tradition.
First it was Connor. He played at Kansas from 2007-11 and went to the Final Four twice, winning a national championship with the Jayhawks in 2008.
Now it’s Chris’ turn. He was a freshman on the 2018 Final Four team and is back this year as a super senior.
“The Teahans have kind of become the first family of our program,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “They both put their handprint all over everything we do.”
CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE
It’s not uncommon to see politicians making public bets on major sporting events with products highlighting their state’s industries. That’s not an option for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper considering home-state teams UNC and Duke have brought their rivalry to New Orleans.
So Cooper on Thursday instead issued a proclamation that the state is “The Center of the College Basketball Universe.”
“The stakes are high on Saturday and fans across the nation will get a firsthand look at two programs that have for decades competed fiercely and divided the loyalty of family and friends, but made our state proud,” Cooper said.
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More AP coverage of March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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More AP coverage of March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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“It’s just been really slow in getting through that new independent process that’s wound up reinvestigating the entire case,” Emmert said, referring to the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP).
The IARP was created out of proposals from the commission led by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2018 to reform the sport. It began looking into allegations against Kansas, Arizona, LSU, Louisville and North Carolina State on the heels of a federal investigation into corruption in college sports that resulted in convictions of shoe company executives, a middle man who worked with them and some assistant college coaches.
Of those FBI cases nearly five years ago, only one -- North Carolina State, tied to its recruitment of one-and-done star Dennis Smith Jr. -- has actually gone through the IARP system to completion and received a ruling that resulted in probation for one year, some vacated victories and penalties for previous coaches.
The four other cases are still pending in the IARP structure, while Auburn went through the more traditional process and received four years of probation in December from an NCAA infractions committee panel.
In the meantime, this year’s NCAA Tournament could be tainted should Kansas win the national championship and subsequently have an unfavorable decision come down in a now half-decade-old investigation.
Created to handle complex cases, the IARP includes independent investigators and decision-makers with no direct ties to NCAA member schools, and rulings cannot be appealed.
Emmert said NCAA institutions need to come up with a process that has “got to be fair. It’s got to be swift. And it’s got to not punish the innocent. ... That’s where the membership’s got to be in all of this, as they shape a new process or rebuild the one that’s in place.”
The Kansas case hinges on whether Adidas representatives were considered boosters — the school contends they were not — when two of them arranged payments to prospective recruits. Kansas does not dispute the payments. Kansas asked for referral to the IARP instead of having the NCAA’s infractions committee handle the matter.
While the lengthy IARP process has been going on, Self agreed to a new contract on April 2, 2021, that will keep him with the school until he retires.
The five-year deal adds one additional year after the conclusion of each season — in effect, making it a lifetime contract. It guarantees him $5.41 million per year with a base salary of $225,000, professional services contract of $2.75 million and an annual $2.435 million retention bonus.
The contact also includes a clause that says the school cannot terminate him for cause “due to any current infractions matter that involves conduct that occurred on or prior to” the signing of the new contract. Instead, he would forfeit half of his base salary and professional services pay while serving any Big 12 or NCAA suspension.
Emmert declined to weigh on on Kansas’ decision to double down on Self.
“I’ll leave it to the school to make decisions about their coaches’ contracts,” said Emmert, who also spoke at the women's Final Four on Wednesday. “That’s their business, obviously. They can do that as they see fit.”
The infractions process has also come up with the Division I Transformation Committee, which is working to recommend ways to modernize and reform NCAA governance and regulatory policies.
Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey, who chairs the committee along with Ohio athletics director Julie Cromer, said the group is looking at both the overall infractions process and the IARP structure as part of its work.
“I don’t know fully what was envisioned and what wasn’t envisioned,” said Sankey, who has served on the NCAA infractions committee. “But we have to have timely outcomes, both for those accused and for those competing against those who are accused. That has to be a point of emphasis.”
Later, Sankey added: “I was on an implementation working group, and I disagreed with elements of the approach. So I think some of these problems were foreseeable. We have an opportunity to correct and enhance the process. That doesn’t mean everybody will like the process.”
Among other topics Emmert addressed:
NATIONAL NIL RULES
Emmert offered an urgent plea to Congress to craft what he said was needed, uniform national legislation governing financial endorsements for athletes know known as name, image and likeness (NIL) deals.
“This tournament’s put on full display the beauty of college sport,” Emmert said. “People love it and enjoy it, and we’ve got to work with the schools and with Congress to make sure we can continue that.
“We’ve got again a relatively short window of time — in my estimate, one and two years,” Emmert continued. “These decisions have to be made because of the dynamics that are underway right now that are far beyond the control of schools, coaches, (athletic directors) or presidents.”
Currently, more than 30 states have been working on their own NIL laws.
TRANSGENDER LEGISLATION
With a number of states considering or passing legislation restricting participation of transgender athletes, Emmert was asked whether the NCAA would bar those states from hosting championship events.
The NCAA has largely followed the Olympic model that allows transgender athletes to compete if they’ve had certain biomedical treatments, including hormone therapies, meant to promote fairness.
Emmert said the NCAA currently requires communities which wish to host events “to explain how it is that they’re going to make sure that the participants in that sport will be allowed to do that in a nondiscriminatory way. ... If they can do that, then we’ll be in those states.”
TRANFER RULES
Emmert said the current transfer rules continue to draw a lot of scrutiny and complaints from coaches and could be adjusted over time.
“The only thing that I can say right now is that it’s clear that students are getting more opportunities to play. They’re getting more freedom of movement in some respects,” Emmert said.
But he added that officials are keeping an eye on how the rules affect “students being able to finish their degrees in a timely fashion and go on and lead productive lives, because we know how few of them will be professional basketball players. It’s a constant point of discussion. I don’t anticipate it going away too soon.”
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AP Sports Writers Aaron Beard, Dave Skretta and John Marshall contributed to this report.
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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“I sit here because of Title IX. Although we have so many wins, we have so much further to go. That’s why we went with having the Title IX story told through my eyes so that you can see if Title IX didn’t exist, I wouldn’t exist,” Parker said.
Parker considers herself a first-generation benefactor of Title IX, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. It states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Parker’s mother, Sara, attended Iowa before Title IX became law. Candace’s 12-year old daughter, Lailaa Nicole Williams, will have more opportunities.
“It means a lot to be able to have my mom and my daughter be a part of this,” Parker said. “I have inspiration from my mom and her story. And then as well for my daughter, I want to continue to open up doors, and I don’t want her to see limitations.”
The documentary also comes as inequities between the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are coming under intense scrutiny.
“Something as simple as March Madness, right? Like, now women can use that. That’s unbelievable. It’s 2022,” Parker said. “But things are changing. But it still doesn’t take away that we still have so much farther to go. I think that’s the whole point of doing this documentary is if you invest, it’s not a charity, it’s an investment. And it’s an honest investment of trying to make it work. And I think for so long, we just existed; women’s sports existed as something that had to be there. And now we look at it as an investment, and then I think we can start moving things forward.”
Parker won a pair of NCAA championships at Tennessee while being coached by one of the pioneers of Title IX, the late Pat Summitt. Parker has parlayed that experience into a successful career as a two-time WNBA champion and MVP and two gold medals in the Olympics.
Parker is also an accomplished analyst for Turner Sports on its NBA and NCAA Tournament coverage since 2018. During discussions about a contract extension at Turner, Parker and her representatives first pitched the idea of a documentary. It got the green light for production last November.
The documentary includes interviews with Billie Jean King, Peyton Manning, Lisa Leslie, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“There’s a number of influential voices that I think I have to pinch myself to realize that they’re a part of it,” Parker said. “To have Billie Jean King, like the 10-year-old girl that did a biography project on her, I just think it’s just so special.
“Title IX doesn’t just impact women. To watch Peyton Manning talk about how Pat really influenced his life, as a competitor and just as an individual. To see somebody that is an icon to say that I think speaks to how valuable women in leadership positions are.”
Having the documentary tip-off Turner’s Final Four coverage on Saturday should give it a broader audience. “The Arena” will air following the documentary and focus on the impact of Title IX on sports and society.
This is also the first project for Parker’s production company — Baby Hair Productions — and was also produced with Scout Productions.
“Having a diverse audience, that’s not just the women and girls, we want everyone to see how impactful and powerful women are in society,” Parker said. “To have this be something that we talk about, especially after with ‘The Arena’ show, I think it speaks to just how important it is.”
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More AP coverage of March Madness: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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“I’m progressing very well from recent hip surgery, but have to exercise caution as I return to play,” English said on Twitter.
There are no alternates at the Masters, an invitation tournament. That puts the field at 90 players, with one spot available if the Texas Open winner this week is not eligible.
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More AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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“Always the elbow,’’ Price said. “It happens every year, all the way back to 2010. Now, everything feels good – arm, elbow and shoulder.’’
It was good enough to impress Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and anybody else who watched Price make his first spring appearance against Cleveland on Wednesday night. The left-hander worked only an inning, but he had two strikeouts and was clocked at 93 mph.
In an abbreviated camp, it wasn’t enough to determine his role. It did remind the Dodgers that Price is still in the mix.
From starter to bullpen, Price’s role with the Dodgers has been uncertain since they acquired the 2012 American League Cy Young Award winner from the Boston Red Sox in a three-team deal that included right-fielder Mookie Betts in February 2020.
Price didn’t pitch at all that year, opting out because of concerns about COVID-19. In 2021, he bounced between the starting rotation and the bullpen with 11 starts and 28 appearances as a reliever. His overall ERA was 4.03.
He arrived at camp in mid-March ready to do anything. Then Roberts mentioned him as a possible starter.
“I’m preparing that way, yeah,” said Price, who is in the final year of a seven-year, $217 million contract. “I think it’d be silly of me to prepare to be a reliever if I’m asked to start. So, I’m preparing to be a starter until otherwise.”
Otherwise looks to be the case. Roberts projects his starting rotation will be Walker Buehler, Julio Urias, Clayton Kershaw, Andrew Heaney and Tony Gonsolin. He cautioned that nothing is set in stone, mostly because pitchers were limited in a camp cut short by major league baseball’s lockout.
The Dodgers signed career starter Tyler Anderson in mid-March, just in case. As for Price, Roberts said: “I just think that David, right now, is not an option in the sense of, he’s not built up. It just doesn’t seem feasible right now.”
The 36-year-old left-hander could still have an immediate role, like one inning in relief early in the season, Roberts said, and moving up to multiple innings as he gets stronger.
“I’m confident in David in any role,’’ Roberts said. “I like his versatility. The role doesn’t matter. It’s just knowing that he’s going to pitch valuable innings in whatever role.”
NOTES
Cody Bellinger took batting practice Thursday on the minor-league side of the Dodgers’ camp. The 2019 National League MVP is 4 for 27 with 17 strikeouts this spring.
“I wouldn’t say I’m alarmed,’’ Roberts said. “I think ‘progressing’ is the word. We’ve got to continue to log at-bats to make him feel as comfortable as possible when the season starts.’’
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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Bieber will be the 12th pitcher in franchise history to make three consecutive opening-day starts.
The 26-year-old went 7-4 with a 3.17 ERA last season, but made only 16 starts because of the shoulder injury. He’s back to 100% now, but Francona wanted to double check Bieber was set given the accelerated, abbreviated spring training due to the lockout.
“We just wanted to make sure that he was ready and if we needed to alter it, because the way we’re coming into the season isn’t the way guys pitched,” Francona said. “It’s just because it’s a short spring and we need to give them the best chance to be as ready as they can be.”
Bieber has split his two previous opening-day starts. He struck out 14 in a win over the Royals in 2020 on his way to winning the Cy Young. Last year, he struck out 12 in a loss to the Detroit Tigers.
Francona hasn’t set his rotation for the season’s first week.
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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/falcons-sign-former-lions-safety-marlowe-to-1-year-contract/2022/03/31/366467ba-b144-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html
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Marlowe may compete with second-year player Richie Grant, a second-round draft pick in 2021, for a starting job.
Marlowe had two interceptions with Buffalo in 2020. He had a fumble recovery and two passes defensed with the Lions last season.
The Falcons have made their secondary a focus in free agency. They also signed former Raiders cornerback Casey Hayward and former Chicago cornerback Teez Tabor.
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More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/todd-bowles-calls-replacing-bruce-arians-bittersweet/2022/03/31/1a2f3f36-b142-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html
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Bowles gets a second opportunity after going 24-40 in four seasons with the New York Jets from 2015 through 2018. He also was an interim head coach in Miami for three games in 2011. He becomes only the 12th minority to get a second head coaching opportunity since 1963, according to data in the NFL’s 2022 Diversity and Inclusion Report.
“When I first started in New York, you try to do things the right way and you don’t do it your way, you end up having regret. So I’m going to do it my way,” Bowles said.
Arians joined Bowles at his introductory news conference and learned the Buccaneers will induct him into the team’s Ring of Honor this season. Brady also was in attendance.
Arians, who turns 70 this year, said his decision to step down as coach was about “succession” and making sure he turned the team over to Bowles with an opportunity to succeed. When Brady unretired on March 13, Arians realized the time was right.
“Succession is way important to me,” Arians said. “This has been my dream for a long time. Guys that know me, they knew I wanted one of my guys to take over.”
Arians dismissed reports of friction with Brady, saying it “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Bowles and Arians have a relationship that dates more than 40 years. Bowles played safety for Arians at Temple in the 1980s and was defensive coordinator on Arians’ staff in Arizona before joining him in Tampa.
“He is the most influential coaching figure and father figure that I have ever had in this league,” Bowles said, adding that it was a bittersweet feeling when he got the news from Arians.
Bowles made it clear he has a different personality than Arians.
“The only thing we have in common is our bald heads,” Bowles said. “He smokes, I don’t. He drinks, I don’t. So, we never got in each other’s way.”
Arians led the Buccaneers to their second Super Bowl title in 2020 and an NFC South title in 2021. With Brady back, Bowles takes over a team that has championship aspirations.
“Good players make good coaches so you always want to have good players,” Bowles said. “I’m not going to apologize for inheriting a talented team. I’ve had less success with a team. It’s different to the fact that I don’t think I can go into this trying to be Bruce. I would fail miserably if I tried. ... I can be me.
“I understand a lot of things I’ve learned from my coaching experience, especially from him so I’m going to take that approach. The one thing I know is I know I can coach football players regardless if you’re an All-Pro or a rookie. All of your players want to be coached and help them get better. I can help people get better and I’m going to use my approach.”
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More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl and https://apnews.com/hub/pro-32 and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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The Bundesliga resumes to a full house as Union Berlin is allowed a capacity crowd for the first time in months for Cologne’s visit. Coronavirus restrictions are being scrapped in Berlin from Friday, part of a wider trend under national guidelines that will see full stadiums across the league. It’s going to be a special game for Cologne coach Steffen Baumgart, a fan favorite at Union for the two seasons he played at the club before its relegation to the third division in 2004. Baumgart played in Union’s heaviest ever second-division defeat, a 7-0 loss to Cologne in October 2002. Union’s record since it gained promotion to the Bundesliga in 2019 is far better. Of five games against Cologne in the top division, the Köpenick-based club has won four and drawn the other. Union has also won its last three Friday night games, in contrast to Cologne, which lost its last three. Another win would let Union replace Cologne in seventh place.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/international-criminal-court-to-open-office-in-venezuela/2022/03/31/240fb53a-b142-11ec-9dbd-0d4609d44c1c_story.html
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In a televised appearance alongside President Nicolás Maduro, Khan said he welcomed the commitment of the Venezuelan government to explore cooperation and technical assistance as part of the efforts to investigate alleged crimes against humanity.
Among other measures, Khan said Maduro’s government agreed to provide visas to court officials and to the participation of international organizations and partners, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Any state that encounters difficulties in complying with the rule of law must be respected,” Khan said. He added that he is “aware that the visit has not been easy, perhaps; but I feel very grateful for the commitment and the frank debates that we have had.”
Khan announced the investigation in November. At the time, the court and Maduro’s administration signed a memorandum of understanding in which the government agreed to cooperate to clarify the facts that led to the initiation of the process.
That announcement followed a lengthy preliminary probe started in February 2018 that focused on allegations of excessive force, arbitrary detention and torture by security forces during a crackdown on anti-government protests in 2017.
Khan’s predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, had indicated there was a reasonable basis to conclude that crimes against humanity had been committed in Venezuela, echoing the findings of the U.N.’s human rights council last year. But she left the decision to open any probe to Khan, a British lawyer who took the reins of the ICC earlier this year.
Maduro on Thursday said the opening of the office in Venezuela will allow for an “effective level of dialogue” that will help clarify the facts in a timely manner.
“We are first interested in seeing justice carried out, and where a crime of the characteristics is committed, it be punished according to the law, on time,” Maduro said. He added that the country’s judicial system is being overhauled.
Since its creation two decades ago, the ICC has mostly focused on atrocities committed in Africa. It could be years before any criminal charges are presented as part of the court’s investigation.
In a written statement, Khan said the start of the process “is not a one-way street” and should also serve as the basis for stronger partnerships.
He said efforts to put into effect the memorandum of understanding will include providing technical assistance and knowledge transfer to Venezuelan authorities “to support the effective investigation and prosecution at the national level of alleged crimes,” as well as offering training and expert advice to help implement domestic legislation.
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Yet Putin and others around him no doubt see it differently. From their perspective, Russia is a global power surrounded by outright adversaries and frenemies like China. It has vast mineral wealth and a large military but also suffers from endemic economic and demographic weaknesses. The imperative to expand its borders as a means to defend them stretches back at least as far as Catherine the Great. Plus, Putin has faced few consequences for his prior adventurism. Throw in an erroneous assumption that all Russian speakers yearn for the motherland, and going for broke now may well seem like a viable political choice.
Clearly, the war isn’t going according to plan for the Kremlin. The West has also displayed more resolve than the reaction to Putin’s earlier excursions signaled.
These setbacks, combined with Putin’s worldview, help explain why he would risk even more damage to Russia by threatening to halt natural gas sales.
This week, the threat came in the guise of a reiterated demand that European buyers pay for gas in rubles rather than euros or dollars. There is a monetary angle to this, forcing buyers to sell hard currency and buy the battered ruble. But the main motivation is to remind those buyers who is heating their homes — and who controls the tap.
As it is, the Kremlin announced Thursday a convoluted plan whereby customers effectively keep paying in euros and dollars, but via designated accounts in Russia that convert that to rubles. Putin, it seems, wasn’t quite ready to follow through on his ultimatum.
Nor should he be. Like the nuclear weapons he has brandished rhetorically, an actual cutoff would entail some mutually assured destruction.
Putin’s war has pushed the European Union to radically rethink its long-term energy relationship with Russia, one that has endured for half a century, even during the Cold War. The incentive remains for both sides not to rock the boat too much. Europe still depends on Siberian gas, which is why it hasn’t sanctioned it. And Russia still relies on payments for it. Indeed, gas payments have risen in importance, according to Thane Gustafson, author of a history of the gas relationship with Europe. His rough math suggests that the share of gas in Russia’s hydrocarbon export revenue — which accounts for more than half of exports overall — has risen to half amid all this disruption, up from a typical level of one-fifth. He adds:
The irony is that one of the bigger investments under Putin has been the development of gas infrastructure to serve the European market for another generation. Yamal, Blue Stream, Nord Stream. All of that is now in ruins.
The economic and social impact in Europe of a prolonged cutoff, including the likelihood of a deep recession, would mark a big escalation of the conflict. Tempting as it may be to see a cutoff as just tit-for-tat following the sanctions on Russia, that ignores the fact that the original “tat” was the brutal and ongoing attack on Ukraine. In any case, if Putin does actually cut off supply, with all that entails, it perhaps should be read as a sign of desperation. Or that whatever method there may have been in his madness, madness has become the method.
More From Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:
• Russia’s Other War of Attrition Is Against Europe: John Authers
• Putin’s New Alter Ego Is Igor Strelkov: Leonid Bershidsky
• Chechen Wars Foreshadow Putin’s Next Move: Clara Ferreira Marques
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy, mining and commodities. He previously was editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote for the Financial Times’ Lex column. He was also an investment banker.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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Meanwhile, your rental income may soon not be enough to cover your mortgage payments. Almost all of the city’s new loans are benchmarked against Hibor, which has been creeping up. Hong Kong pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar, so when the Federal Reserve starts hiking rates, borrowing costs in the city rise too.
You will have to stretch your math. The rental yield stood at 2.4% at 2021 year-end, according to realtor Centaline Property Agency Ltd. That should cover the 1.6% mortgage rate you could get from, say, HSBC Holdings Plc’s local subsidiary, Hang Seng Bank Ltd, which charges a 1.3 percentage-point premium over one-month Hibor.
But not for much longer. Fed fund futures are pricing in about 2 percentage points in rate hikes by year-end, so expect your cost of borrowing to rise in near lockstep. The average 30-year mortgage rate in the U.S. has reached almost 4.7%, the highest since December 2018.
If the futures market is correct on the Fed, by year-end, you will most likely earn negative carry for the first time since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. It will be a seismic mental adjustment for the city’s new generation of landlords.
To make matters worse, this is a renters’ market now. Owners are slashing rent to attract and retain good tenants, as the city enters its third month of soft lockdown. Expats are grumpy. Many have left the city for good. Meanwhile, young people, who make up a big portion of rental demand, may be struggling to find jobs right now. Last year, unemployment rate among those aged 20 to 29 averaged at 8.7%, well above the economy’s overall 5.5% rate. They might just move home and sleep on their parents’ couches.
What’s left is the prospect of rising home prices, which seems unlikely. The last time the Fed raised rates, in 2018, home prices fell by about 10% — and that was with economic growth at 2.8%. Now, Hong Kong is poised to enter a recession. Home prices may fall by 20% by 2025, estimates Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
For over two decades, Hong Kong’s real estate market has been pretty predictable — on the way up. So in the last two years, whenever the city lifted its social-distancing restrictions, home prices saw a mini-rebound. Some investors might be tempted again, as social life gradually comes back. Weekly transaction volumes at 35 housing estates reached a 45-week high, according to Midland Realty.
But think very carefully this time. If we look further back in history, Hong Kong property is by no means a sure bet. It was in a bear market for years, and many owners were deep under water. Home prices tumbled by two-thirds from their peak before the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997 to the SARS outbreak in 2003.
So don’t fight the Fed, and learn to live with a recession. Hong Kong property’s got an infection it can’t shake.
More From Bloomberg Opinion:
•
Hong Kong’s Covid Policy Is Less Than Zero: Trivedi & Ren
•
Singapore Property Is Hot Even Without Expats: Andy Mukherjee
• Hong Kong Expats, Where’s Your Next Destination?: Anjani Trivedi
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. She previously wrote on markets for Barron’s, following a career as an investment banker, and is a CFA charterholder.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
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