Clearing My Tabs #36: Biden Goes to Kyiv

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:

President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at St. Michaels Golden-Domed Cathedral on a surprise visit to Kyiv.

— Evan Vucci (@evanvucci) 10:47 AM ∙ Feb 20, 2023

Leading Off

Biden’s Presidents’ Day Surprise

President Biden’s surprise trip to Ukraine was an inspiring example of the power of presidential leadership in the fight to preserve democracy.

With the first anniversary of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine coming up on Friday, it was Biden in Kyiv making a case for democracy rather than Putin there celebrating the rebirth of empire.

This trip was also remarkable because it was the first time a U.S. president had traveled to a war zone not controlled by our nation’s military since the Civil War.

The New York Times’ Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear provide the historical context:

“Since Abraham Lincoln rode to the front lines outside Washington to watch battles in Northern Virginia during the Civil War, no sitting president has gotten that close to combat. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited North Africa; Lyndon B. Johnson went to Vietnam; Bill Clinton toured the Balkans; George W. Bush and Barack Obama traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan; and Donald J. Trump went to Afghanistan.

But in all those cases, they went to countries or areas under control of American forces or after hostilities had eased. In this case, the United States military would not be present in Ukraine, nor would it control the airspace. American military planes were spotted hovering in eastern Poland near the border during the trip, but officials said they never entered Ukrainian airspace out of concern that it would be taken as the sort of direct American intervention that Mr. Biden has avoided.”

I wonder if FDR deserves more credit here for his World War II trans-Atlantic voyages by ship before his first airplane trip to North Africa in 1943, but still, what Biden accomplished yesterday is something quite rare in history. There was a significant risk to him involved, even if our government rightly warned Moscow ahead of time.

As The Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf writes, Biden joined a group of U.S. presidents who traveled to Europe to make a point about freedom to a Russian or Soviet leader.

Kennedy and then Reagan in Berlin. Now Biden in Kyiv.

Periodically during the past sixty years, American presidents have stood up at the Eastern edge of Europe and looked to Russia to say, “We stand with our allies. Our resolve is unshakeable.”

Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall.” Biden, on his surprise President’s Day visit to Kyiv said, “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine strands. Democracy stands.”

We should not take this fact for granted. Now or in the future.

The war is not likely to end quickly. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum explains, Biden’s visit not only demonstrates solidarity with Ukraine, it sends an important message to Russia, China, and the rest of Europe.

These messages matter because Ukraine is now engaged in a war of attrition on several fronts. In the eastern part of the country, Ukraine and Russia are fighting an old-fashioned artillery battle. Russia sends waves of conscripts and convicts at the Ukrainian defenses, suffering huge losses and appearing not to care. The Ukrainians use up huge quantities of equipment and ammunition—one Ukrainian politician in Munich reminded me that they need a bullet for every Russian soldier—and, of course, take losses themselves.

But alongside that ground combat, a psychological war of attrition is unfolding as well. Putin thinks that he will win not through technological superiority, and not through better tactics or better-trained soldiers, but simply by outlasting a Western alliance that he still believes to be weak, divided, and easily undermined. He reckons that he has more people, more ammunition, and above all more time: that Russians can endure an infinite number of casualties, that Russians can survive an infinite amount of economic pain. Just in case they cannot, he will personally demonstrate his capacity for cruelty by locking down his society in extraordinary ways.

As several analysts pointed out yesterday, had former President Trump won a close 2020 election, we may have seen him in Kyiv with Putin celebrating the annexation of Ukraine into Russia. After all, Trump’s first impeachment involved withholding Congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine. I also agree with those who believe that the damage Trump did to the NATO alliance may have led Putin to think he would not face this kind of response.

Symbolism matters in politics, and I am glad Biden was willing to take the calculated risks of such a trip to Kyiv before his planned trip to Poland. We will need more of this kind of resolve to fight back against MAGA Republican efforts to stop supporting Ukraine as our attention drifts to other issues, including the 2024 election campaign.

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Newsom’s Plan to Narrow Achievement Gaps

California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed adding a new “equity multiplier” to combat persistent achievement gaps. EdSource’s John Fensterwald explains this would be the most significant change to the state’s education funding system since the state created the Local Control Funding Formula a decade ago.

His proposal, announced last month, grew out of a push by Black legislators to direct new money specifically toward helping Black students raise achievement. Since the 1996 voter initiative Proposition 209 bans affirmative action in public schools, Newsom is proposing a different approach.

A small proportion of Black students would benefit from attending the state’s poorest schools that would receive $300 million in new ongoing funding — a strategy Newsom is calling an “equity multiplier.”

But the legislation would do something else that officials say would benefit nearly all Black students: It would direct school districts to use the yearly state funding to help all student groups improve academic achievement.

You can find the details of the equity multiplier proposal starting at the bottom of page 33 of the proposed K-12 Omnibus Trailer Bill (pdf).

This proposal is the latest step in negotiations between Newsom and members of the California State Legislature. In addition to providing additional funding, the bill language attempts to clarify how school districts can spend supplemental funding to support low-performing students. As Fensterwald explains:

The governor’s plan would focus extra funding on all low-performing student groups in about 800 out of about 10,000 schools. This bill explicitly calls for addressing disparities among racial groups, with the expectation that districts would use extra funding intended for underperforming students.

There had been some confusion about that issue, Allen acknowledged, because supplemental funding under LCFF is distributed based on the number of English learners, low-income, foster and homeless students attending a district. Some districts assumed that funding therefore could not be focused on the specific needs of low-performing Black students and other racial and ethnic groups — even if identified by dashboard measures — unless they fit into one of those groups.

This new law would tell districts their funding is to benefit all student racial and ethnic groups including Black students. “It’s the difference between should, under the existing law, and must,” Allen said.

It would be great to clear up this confusion. I am not sure that $300 million is enough to do the job, but I suspect that will be a part of the budget negotiations that will continue through June.

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Quick Pitches

Politics

Pocket released a collection including one great story about each president of the United States. I’ll be working my way through this over the coming weeks. (Pocket Collections, Hail to the Chief: One Great Article About Every U.S. President)

The Carter Center announced on Saturday that former President Jimmy Carter had entered hospice care. Residents of his hometown of Plains, Georgia, shared reflections about the most famous resident of their town. “After losing re-election, Mr. Carter and his wife traveled the world to build homes for the poor, help combat diseases, help organize fair elections and promote books on a wide range of subjects. But they settled in this tiny town where they both grew up and were the leading citizens for decades.” (Cameron McWhirter, Wall Street Journal)

California legislators will take a more targeted approach to regulate social media this year, focusing on how they harm children. (Laurel Rosenhall, The Los Angeles Times)

Michigan Republicans chose an extreme election denier over the weekend as their new state party chair. They did this even after losing a series of elections that now give Democrats control over all of the statewide offices and both chambers of the state legislature. The fact that Michigan Republicans are doubling down on the extremism that contributed to these poor results is yet another sign that the base is still with Trump. (Michael Tomasky, The New Republic)

Brian Stelter, the former CNN media reporter and author of a book about Fox News’ close relationship with the Trump Administration, reacts to the revelations included in the Dominion Voting Systems filing in its defamation lawsuit against the network. “What a curious word—respect. Journalists are taught that to respect the audience means to report the truth clearly and carefully. But inside Fox, which is first and foremost a provider of entertainment, respect meant something else. Reading the texts and emails, I was reminded of another thing the Fox & Friends producer had said. “We were deathly afraid” of the audience, he admitted, “but we also laughed at them. We disrespected them. We weren’t practicing what we preached.” (Brian Stelter, The Atlantic)

Science

The Atlantic’s Jennifer Senior offers a brief guide about how to talk about Long COVID with people like her who are dealing with it. “The fact is, no one—including doctors (especially doctors, dear God, these doctors)—knows the right things to say to those of us who have long COVID, because no one seems to be thinking about this wretched condition in the right way. Nor does anyone seem to understand the unique psychological suffering associated with this condition. It’s hideous—arguably worse than some of the very worst of our physical symptoms. Which, let’s face it, are already pretty grim.” (Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic)

Thanks to the swift adoption of green energy measures, Europe avoided a winter of energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and the subsequent energy import sanctions. This result shows how swiftly we can change how much carbon we use. (David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to significant restrictions on arctic research. “Suddenly, nearly every international collaborative effort with Russia in the Arctic—from polar bear and whale studies to research on commercial fishing, permafrost thaw, sea-ice retreat, peatland ecology, and wildfires—was on hold.” (Ed Struzik, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

Society

A group of investors has been hoping to prove that the Renaissance painter Raphael was the artist who created a painting found in an antique shop in 1995. Will artificial intelligence help convince leading experts that the piece is legitimate? “Art historians have disagreed about whether Mr. Ayers’s find is a real Raphael. A new report commissioned by the owners from Art Recognition, a Zurich firm that uses machine learning to analyze artists’ brushstrokes, has found a 97% probability that the faces of Jesus and Mary in the work were painted by Raphael. “(Kelly Crow, The Wall Street Journal)

Companies that used to use artificial intelligence algorithms to help hire workers are now using them to determine who to lay off. I suspect lawsuits are coming. (Pranshu Verma, The Washington Post)

The Codex Sassoon, the oldest nearly complete Hebrew bible, is headed for auction in May. “The Codex Sassoon tells multiple stories — not just those recounted in its pages, but also the story of the Hebrew Bible itself, and how its text was fixed and then handed down in the form we know today.” Sotheby’s expects it will sell for between $30-50 million. (Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times)

The fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering has become Hasbro’s first $1 billion brand for annual sales. “Since it was introduced in the mid-1990s, more than 50 million people — including the rapper Post Malone and the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt — have played Magic in hobby shops and around kitchen tables around the world. The game casts players as wizards who derive their powers by picking cards from the decks they have built, drawing from an ever-expanding universe of cards that are bought, sold and traded in a thriving secondary market. Magic’s popularity has spawned a cottage industry of video games, comic books, a Caribbean cruise and an animated series in development for Netflix.” (Gregory Schmidt, The New York Times)

Sports

A new independent report confirms that UEFA (the European soccer federation) and French police lied when they tried to blame Liverpool supporters for the dangerous crowd situation created by their mismanagement of last year’s Champions League Final. “The report of the independent panel commisioned by Uefa to investigate the chaos intimates what, again, we already knew: fans’ efforts in staying relatively calm, looking after others, and documenting the issues outside the stadium, probably saved lives.” It is especially unforgivable that authorities would seek to blame Liverpool supporters for what happened, given how that team’s supporters were also wrongfully accused of creating a situation leading to 97 deaths at Hillsborough in 1989. I agree that UEFA’s leaders, including President Aleksander Čeferin, should resign in disgrace. (Daniel Storey, inews.co.uk)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the creation of a new “economic reform committee” due to the likely bankruptcy of the Bally regional sports networks and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s willingness to ignore luxury tax penalties. Trying to keep players from getting their share of the sport’s revenues has been a priority of professional baseball owners since the National League implemented the reserve clause in 1879. (Evan Drellich, The Athletic)

The Closer

But why is Calvin Coolidge so angry?

My Saturday fun project: using AI, every US president as a Pixar character.

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) 8:14 PM ∙ Feb 18, 2023

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