Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:
A High Five for Obstruction
Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) demonstrated their deep commitment to working people by sharing a high five over their promise never to reform the Senate filibuster at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Sinema also suggested that keeping the filibuster in place led to more productivity in the last Congress. As Bloomberg’s Steven T. Dennis reports:
“Joe and I were not interested in sacrificing that important guardrail,” she said. “That massive voting-rights bill was not passed through Congress, and then we had a free and fair election all across the country.”
Sinema also suggested the duo’s actions led to a series of accomplishments.
“That was the basis for the productivity, for some incredible achievements that made a difference for the American people in the last two years,” Sinema said.”
One of my rules of politics is that there is always an internal logic to the decisions an elected official makes. He or she may not explain to others what is actually driving them—whether it is ambition, something personal, or responding to kompromat—but there is a reason.
As Robert Caro quotes former President Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate:
“The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you,” he said. “The most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying not to say.”
So figuring out what is not being said is so important. But I have yet to figure out what Sinema is trying to accomplish. I don’t see how this helps her.
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What the January 6 Committee Didn’t Share About Social Media
I realize the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol had to prioritize what it included in its report given the need to finish before the new House Republican majority took over earlier this month.
While we knew that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) worked to keep the focus of the committee’s findings on former President Donald Trump, now we learn that Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) reportedly played a role in minimizing the critique of the Silicon Valley companies she represents.
The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski, Cristiano Lima, and Drew Harwell dug into what wasn’t in the final report, even though investigators had drafted a memo outlining their findings:
“The Jan. 6 committee spent months gathering stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online extremism and calls for violence that preceded the Capitol riot.
The evidence they collected was written up in a 122-page memo that was circulated among the committee, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post. But in the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in their final report, reluctant to dig into the roots of domestic extremism taking hold in the Republican Party beyond former president Donald Trump and concerned about the risks of a public battle with powerful tech companies, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the panel’s sensitive deliberations.
Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals. The draft report details how most platforms did not take “dramatic” steps to rein in extremist content until after the attack on the Capitol, despite clear red flags across the internet.”
The memo mentioned in the above story details how social media companies failed to respond to warnings about what was happening on their platforms but failed to take action until after the insurrection.
Given what has happened with Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover in October 2022, I have no confidence we will see better reactions in the future.
Elon’s Hardcore Chaos
Speaking of Twitter, Zoë Schiffer, Casey Newton, and Alex Heath collaborate on a New York magazine cover story describing the chaos he has created since launching his bid to take over the company.
The story Schiffer, Newton, and Heath tell highlights how toxic a combination of arrogance and nastiness can impact a company and the people trying to make it work. They write:
“According to more than two dozen current and former Twitter staffers, since buying the company in October 2022, Musk has shown a remarkable lack of interest in the people and processes that make his new toy tick. He has purged thousands of employees, implemented ill-advised policies, and angered even some of his most loyal supporters. Those who remain at the company mostly fall into two camps: people trapped by the need for health care and visas or cold-eyed mercenaries hoping to ascend through a power vacuum.
Today, Musk has become notorious for the speech he suppresses, rather than the speech he allows, from suspending journalists for tweeting links to his jet tracker to briefly restricting users from linking to their accounts on Instagram and Mastodon.
In three months, Musk has also largely destroyed the equity value of Twitter and much of his personal wealth. He has indicated that the company could declare bankruptcy, and the distraction of running it has caused Tesla stock to crater, costing him $200 billion.
If “free speech” was his mandate for Twitter the platform, it has been the opposite for Twitter the workplace. Dissenting opinion or criticism has led to swift dismissals. Musk replaced Twitter’s old culture with one of his own, but it’s unclear, with so few workers and plummeting revenues, if this new version will survive. As one employee said in December, “Place is done for.”
Remarkably, given how closely I have followed the story of Elon and Twitter, the situation turned out to be worse than I thought.
The Atmospheric River Scorecard
The California Sun’s Mike McPhate compiled a set of statistics that tell the story of the series of atmospheric rivers California has experienced since New Year’s Eve. He writes:
“The rain is finally relenting. While Northern California could face some light precipitation Wednesday, meteorologists predicted that the rest of January would be dry. Here are some of the stunning numbers from the great California drenching of 2022-2023:
- At least 19 people died, a toll higher than the last two wildfire seasons combined. L.A. Times
- More than 18 inches of rain fell on San Francisco in its wettest 22-day period since 1862. Other isolated places across the state got more than 50 inches. @NWSBayArea | CNN
- Some reservoirs filled up so much that they had to release water. Levels at the reservoirs of Oroville, Folsom, Sonoma, and Don Pedro, among others, are all now at least 100% of average for this date. Water.ca.gov
- The Sierra snowpack now stands at 247% of normal for this time of the year, or in the technical language of State Climatologist Michael Anderson: “epic levels.” KQED | Water.ca.gov
- More than 500 landslides were recorded since New Year’s Eve, a troublingly large number attributed to California’s young geology, prolonged drought, and widespread burn scars. @CAGeoSurvey | AGU.org
We need a few weeks to process the rain we’ve received. But even all this rain and snow isn’t enough to end the drought if the precipitation stops now as it did after a wet December 2021.
Abortion, Every Day
Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. Here are some stories that she highlights today:
- Someone set an Illinois Planned Parenthood on fire;
- Idaho State Senator Scott Herndon compared his bill to eliminate that state’s rape and incest exceptions to the work of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.;
- Wyoming Republicans are trying to ban abortion medication unless a woman’s health or life is at risk while going out of their way to omit psychological reasons from that definition; and
- This informative conversation between legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern about the forced-birth movement’s lie that they are not trying to prosecute women under state abortion bans.
Student Mental Health Crisis
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Elissa Miolene shares troubling findings about how our students are faring: “according to two recent national surveys, the ripple effects of pandemic isolation — along with a hostile political climate — are continuing to affect youth across the state, with LGBTQ+ young people paying the highest price.”
There are efforts in California to respond to this crisis, including programs included in last year’s state budget. Miolene writes:
“Last year, Children Now, along with seven children’s hospitals and organizations, asked Newsom to declare a state of emergency for children’s mental health and fast-track new spending. In the months since, those requests were enveloped into the state’s master plan, with $50 million allocated to create a youth suicide reporting program, and $40 million to support organizations working to prevent youth suicide. While the larger master plan will be rolled out over the next three years, the first of these two programs has already been initiated, and the second will begin in early 2023.”
Elected officials and educators must continue taking this mental health emergency seriously. I hope to see more action on this as the State Legislature begins its work this year.
More Calls to Ban Pretextual Police Stops
California State Senator Steven Bradford (D-Gardena) is trying again to pass legislation banning many kinds of pretextual police stops because of racial bias. New reports from two state commissions recommending this action may help Bradford’s latest effort.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s Dustin Gardiner writes: “Justice reform advocates are hopeful, however, that the effort could succeed this year after two state boards that study racial profiling recommended lawmakers ban or limit such stops because the evidence is clear they exacerbate racial disparities and rarely lead to seizures of contraband.
Within the past month, the state’s Racial and Identity Profiling Advisory Board and the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code both made that recommendation for the first time.”
The GOP’s Fake War with Corporate Lobbyists
Popular Information’s Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby debunk spin from media entities—including Fox News, Axios, and The New York Post—that the new GOP House leadership is refusing to work with corporate lobbyists.
As Legum and Crosby report: “There will be little evidence of such a “war” between House Republicans and corporate lobbyists on February 7, when “Team McCarthy” hosts its first major political event of the year — a mega-fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Washington, DC.
Attendees are required to donate or raise at least $50,000. You need to donate or raise even more cash to be a co-host ($100,000) or host ($250,000). All of the proceeds will benefit the McCarthy Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee that benefits McCarthy’s reelection campaign, McCarthy’s leadership committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. The establishment of joint fundraising committees is a tactic used by both parties to circumvent campaign finance laws that cap the donations to any one committee.
All ten hosts and co-hosts listed on the invitation are corporate lobbyists.”
Supreme Dysfunction
The Atlantic’s Steven Mazie, who has covered Supreme Court arguments since 2013, shares that there appears to be a breakdown in relationships along the Justices since the Dobbs decision eliminating the federal Constitutional right to access abortion health care last summer.
A New Kind of Support for Ukraine
The president of the Shakhtar Donetsk soccer club, which hasn’t been able to play in their home city since 2014 because of the Russian invasion of the Donbas region of Eastern Ukraine, has made a significant donation to the Ukrainian war effort with a portion of the proceeds from the transfer of Mykhaylo Mudryk to the English club Chelsea.
The circumstances here are even more interesting, given that Chelsea’s previous owner was Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. The United Kingdom forced Abramovich to sell Chelsea after being sanctioned following last February’s invasion.
International soccer sees players move from team to team from sales rather than trades as in U.S. professional sports. Despite all of the hardships since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014, Shakhtar Donetsk continues to perform at a high level, including in European competitions. I also look forward to Chelsea having the opportunity to play a friendly against Shakhtar after Ukraine wins the war.
James Webb Finds its First Exoplanet
Popular Science’s Laura Baisas reports on a significant discovery from the new James Webb Space Telescope: “the multi-mirrored space observatory has identified its first new exoplanet named LHS 475 b. At only 41 light years away from Earth in the constellation Octans, the exoplanet is about 99 percent of our world’s diameter.”
U.S. Women Start Year with Victory
The United States Women’s National Team opened the calendar year with a 4-0 victory at New Zealand in front of a record crowd for the hosts.
New Zealand will co-host the Women’s World Cup with Australia starting July 20. The U.S. and New Zealand will play again on Saturday.
They needed some time to get started, but in the end, they cruised to the win thanks to two goals from Mallory Swanson. And this Rose Lavelle backheel was sublime.
Alex Morgan slots one home, but that backheel from Rose is the real stunner
— Meg Swanick (@Meg_Swanick) 4:30 AM ∙ Jan 18, 2023
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