Tag: #Migrated-1743632887012

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

Making Restaurant Workers Pay for Anti-Minimum Wage Lobbyists

What if I told you the mandatory food safety training that many cooks, servers, and bartenders are required to take before starting their jobs also provided some of the funding for the lobbyists that work to kill minimum wage increases?

I wish that were the script of a scary—but darkly humorous—cultural satire, but as the New York Times’ David A. Fahrenthold and Talmon Joseph Smith report, “…in taking the class, the workers — largely unbeknown to them — are also helping to fund a nationwide lobbying campaign to keep their own wages from increasing.

The company they are paying, ServSafe, doubles as a fund-raising arm of the National Restaurant Association — the largest lobbying group for the food-service industry, claiming to represent more than 500,000 restaurant businesses. The association has spent decades fighting increases to the minimum wage at the federal and state levels, as well as the subminimum wage paid to tipped workers like waiters.”

Given that California is by far the most populous state in the nation, I’m unsurprised to learn that California is among the states where workers take the “vast majority” of ServSafe classes. Perhaps California can take a look at how to stop this practice. And let’s add this to the long list of reasons we should be as generous as possible when we tip people in the service industry. 

Craig Cheslog’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A Major Victory for Maternity Pay

Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir is one of the world’s top women’s soccer players. She’s the captain of the Iceland Women’s National Team, and earlier this year, she joined Juventus, one of the significant Italian Serie A clubs. 

Earlier this week Gunnarsdóttir—and the football players union FIFPRO—won a victory against her previous club, France’s Olympique Lyonnais making it clear that teams need to pay their players in full while they are on maternity leave. 

The Guardian reports: “The Iceland captain Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir has won her maternity claim against Lyon after she was not paid her full salary during pregnancy and has hailed the ruling as a “wake-up call for clubs.”

The 32-year-old turned to players’ union Fifpro to lodge her complaint with Fifa and football’s global body ruled in August last year that the club must pay the full amount owed to Gunnarsdóttir – €82,094.82 (£72,139) – within 45 days of notification of the decision. Fifa said the French club would face a transfer ban if they failed to pay in full.

Fifpro posted on Twitter: “Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir’s landmark ruling against former club Olympique Lyonnais sends a clear message to clubs and footballers worldwide. The strict application of maternity rights is enforceable.”

Lyon is an important club in women’s sports. It is the most-decorated club in women’s soccer, having won eight European Champions League titles and 15 of the last 16 championships in France’s top league, Division 1 Féminine. Gunnarsdóttir explains how this history was one of the reasons she chose to play there in The Players Tribune. 

It shouldn’t have taken a ruling from the world’s governing body—and Gunnarsdóttir should not have had to fight—for Lyon to provide what FIFA’s Maternity Regulations require. I hope this is clear to all teams now. 

Websites Selling Abortion Pills Sharing Customer Data

One would think that companies selling abortion pills would understand how extreme forced-birth politicians and prosecutors in this post-Dobbs world could weaponize the personal data of the people using their services. 

This ProPublica investigation, however, shows how much these companies are failing to protect the people who come to them for this essential service. Jennifer Gollan reports: “Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies, a ProPublica analysis has found.

Using a tool created by the Markup, a nonprofit tech-journalism newsroom, ProPublica ran checks on 11 online pharmacies that sell abortion medication to reveal the web tracking technology they use. Late last year and in early January, ProPublica found web trackers on the sites of at least nine online pharmacies that provide pills by mail: Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy and Online Abortion Pill Rx.

These third-party trackers, including a Google Analytics tool and advertising technologies, collect a host of details about users and feed them to tech behemoth Google, its parent company, Alphabet, and other third parties, such as the online chat provider LiveChat. Those details include the web addresses the users visited, what they clicked on, the search terms they used to find a website, the previous site they visited, their general location and information about the devices they used, such as whether they were on a computer or phone. This information helps websites function and helps tech companies personalize ads.

But the nine sites are also sending data to Google that can potentially identify users, ProPublica’s analysis found, including a random number that is unique to a user’s browser, which can then be linked to other collected data.”

There are things more important than website analytics. These companies need to fix this immediately because a prosecutor in a forced-birth state is going to target a woman for seeking this public health service. 

When QAnon Isn’t Extreme Enough

Bellingcat’s Annique Mossou and Gabriel Geiger report on the new conspiracy theory that seems to be replacing QAnon in Europe, and may be headed our way. 

The conspiracy theory, GESARA/NESARA, is actually one that dates back to the 1990s but has been updated for the cryptocurrency era. 

Mossou and Geiger explain: “Imagine you’re a jaded stalwart of the QAnon conspiracy. The latest batch of ‘drops’ – the cryptic posts into which you’ve read so much – aren’t quite as enticing, and you’re not even sure that Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office.

But you’re not ready to reassess your belief system. Luckily for you, there are other doomsday prophecies to keep you engaged. That’s how you ended up with billions of Zimbabwean dollars. Or Iraqi Dinars.

Whatever the currency, this scenario doesn’t seem so rare in those corners of the internet that are populated by Europe’s conspiracy theorists. New data shows that QAnon’s hold on the continent’s conspiracy discourse has begun to loosen at the same time that some of its European followers flock to a decades-old financial conspiracy. 

That decades-old conspiracy is GESARA, which heralds a financial reset that will see billions of secret funds distributed to people across the globe and the erasure of all debts.”

Don’t threaten me with such a good time. 

Researchers have connected QAnon, and former President Donald Trump’s embrace of it, to political violence. Seriously, these conspiracy theories are dangerous. I wish our law enforcement agencies would take them more seriously. But I haven’t had much confidence in the Department of Homeland Security in these matters since conservative activists got the Obama Administration to retract a study on right-wing extremism in 2009. 

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Stop Treating Mass Layoffs as Normal

We see the numbers in the news. Ten thousand laid off here. Fifteen thousand tech workers getting pink slips there. Elon Musk culling the Twitter workforce ruthlessly because of his ongoing wealth-destroying midlife crisis. 

But as Labor Institute Executive Director Les Leopold reminds us in this Los Angeles Times oped, mass layoffs aren’t only about a company’s bottom line. They are devasting and traumatic for the workers involved. 

Leopold writes, “And the harm is always considerable, as described by a recent report in the Harvard Business Review.

Medical studies have shown that the trauma of unemployment causes disease. One study found that being laid off ranked seventh among the most stressful life experiences — more stressful than divorce, a sudden and serious impairment of hearing or vision, or the death of a close friend.

Experts say that it takes, on average, two years to recover from the psychological trauma of losing a job.

For healthy employees without preexisting health conditions, the odds of developing a new health condition rise by 83% in the first 15 to 18 months after a layoff, with the most common problems being cardiovascular conditions, including hypertension and heart disease, and arthritis. The psychological and financial pressure of being laid off can increase the risk of suicide by 1.3 to 3 times.”

Later in the op-ed, Leopold asks a vital question: “Do we really have to inflict such pain and suffering on millions of working people to build a prosperous society?”

988 Is Making the Suicide and Crisis Hotline Easier to Access

Early reports about the new 988 national number to access the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline indicate that more people are using the service and getting connected to the help they need. 

NPR’s Rhitu Chatterjee reports: “The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline received over 1.7 million calls, texts and chats in its first five months. That’s nearly half a million more than the old 10-digit Suicide Prevention Lifeline fielded during the same period the year before.

…

Not only are more people reaching out, more are being connected to help.

Federal data shows that the Lifeline responded to 154,585 more contacts – including calls, text messages and chats – in November 2022 than the same month the year before. The number of abandoned calls fell from 18% in November 2021 to 12% last November.

The average wait time to speak to a counselor also fell – from close to 3 minutes in November 2021, to 36 seconds last November.”

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: 

• A report from the Gender Equity Policy Institute found “that mothers who live in states with abortion bans were three times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after giving birth, and that babies in those states were 30% more likely to die within their first month of life.”
• YouTube influencers are spreading misinformation about hormonal birth control. 
• What authorities have learned about the recent arson at an Illinois Planned Parenthood.
• Utah Legislative Republicans advance legislation to bypass the state’s Supreme Court injunction blocking the state’s abortion ban.
• Montana Republicans are working to redefine the state constitution’s right of privacy so it doesn’t include abortion.

Art Experts and AI

AI-generated images have gone viral in recent months. Several image generators—including Dall-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion—have enabled people to create images based on user-generated prompts. For example, I asked Dall-E to generate the image at the top of this newsletter by asking it to make an “impressionist oil painting of a restaurant worker.”

How good are these AI bots? The Guardian’s Jo Lawson-Tancred decided to see if AI could fool the experts, “To find out, we set a challenge for three art experts: Bendor Grosvenor, art historian and presenter of the BBC’s Britain’s Lost Masterpieces; JJ Charlesworth, art critic and editor of ArtReview; and Pilar Ordovas, founder of the Mayfair gallery Ordovas. Each was invited to look at pairs of artworks of a similar style and period over Zoom to see if they could tell which was generated by a machine. All three admitted to finding it tougher than expected.”

Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

The Ringer’s Alan Siegel gets Conan O’Brien to reflect on one of the masterpieces of his comedy career: the Marge vs. the Monorail episode of  The Simpsons. This episode is one of my favorites of all time, and it first aired 30 years ago this month. 

O’Brien explains how he came up with combining one of his favorite musicals with the tension found in popular disaster films like The Towering Inferno. 

“Somehow, all those things are swimming around in my head,” O’Brien says. It just took a space-age train to bring them together. “It unfolds really naturally because once you have the idea of a Music Man selling you a monorail, you know Homer’s for it, the town’s for it. … Well, who’s going to be against it? It’s either Marge or Lisa, because they’re sensible. For me, it was Marge. She’ll be the voice of reason who senses this isn’t wise. The first part is Music Man. The second act is an Irwin Allen disaster movie.”

And this is the best song ever written about how to waste the proceeds from a nuclear waste dumping fine. 

This advice is the best. 

Hey, kids! It’s your old buddy Steve King telling you that if they ban a book in your school, haul your ass to the nearest bookstore or library ASAP and find out what they don’t want you to read.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) 4:05 PM ∙ Jan 18, 2023

And a thing I learned yesterday.

The Northernmost part of Brazil is closer to Canada than it is to the Southernmost part of Brazil

— Amazing Maps (@amazingmap) 1:41 PM ∙ Jan 17, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

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.

Craig Cheslog’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

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

1. Editing Martin Luther King Jr. 

The Present Age’s Parker Malloy catches my former local newspaper, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, running a heavily-edited version of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech to remove the liberal politics that were at its core. 

As Malloy explains, “The BDN piece gives audiences the sanitized King, the mythologized man and beloved civil rights hero. What it omits is a messy, important reality.”

Malloy highlights the text the Bangor Daily News cuts from the speech transcript and how what the editors cut changes the meaning of the speech significantly:

“I understand why someone might cut the “Let freedom ring from…” refrain where King lists New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and so on.

Other changes are harder to reconcile. For instance, why omit King saying “…Alabama, with its vicious racists”? Why cut the paragraphs about “the fierce urgency of Now” and calls against “engag[ing] in the luxury of cooling off”? Why remove the paragraph about not being satisfied “as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality”?

Those are the core components of the speech! Those portions of the speech help us understand what King meant when he talked about dreaming of a future in which people are “judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Many (especially on the right) cite that line as evidence that King thought the world would be just fine if suddenly people just started acting “colorblind” to race. It’s not true. That is not what he said, and omitting the list of things that still needed to happen in order to achieve the world he dreamed of, is how the world has been handed a sanitized version of a man who was extraordinarily controversial and despised by a significant portion of Americans during his life.”

This is not the first time the Bangor Daily News has run this edited version of King’s speech, and Professor Kevin Kruse highlighted what the paper had to say the day of the address. Surprise! The paper’s opinion doesn’t age well. 

If you want a good example of how sanitized and sterilized we’ve made MLK’s memory, here’s the editorial the @bangordailynews ran on the day of his “defining speech.”

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) 12:47 AM ∙ Jan 16, 2023

Craig Cheslog’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. Decision Time for Meta

Meta is approaching a self-imposed deadline this month to announce whether it will reinstate former President Donald Trump’s posting privileges on Facebook and Instagram. Meta suspended Trump because of his actions that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. 

Meta’s leadership tried to get its Oversight Board to decide whether to end Trump’s indefinite suspension, but it kicked the final determination back to Meta’s executives in May 2021. The decision is now former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s to make in his role as Meta’s president of global affairs. 

Given that Trump’s posts have gotten even more extreme on his Truth Social platform, I believe Meta should make Trump’s ban permanent. Facebook may not be as powerful as it was in 2020, but it was one of the social media platforms used to organize the failed coup attempt in Brazil earlier this month. The danger to our democracy remains. 

Given the damage done to the United Kingdom in the aftermath of Clegg’s decision to take his Liberal Democrats into a coalition government with David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010, however, I fear this is another big call Clegg will get wrong. 

3. Junk Science Convicts Innocent People

The latest episode of the Legal Talk Network’s On the Road podcast features a great conversation with the Innocence Project’s Chris Fabricant. Fabricant is the author of Junk Science and the American Justice System, a book that analyzes discredited forensic sciences and their impact on our criminal justice system. Fabricant and host Laurence Colletti also discuss why we should do more to ensure people convicted based on junk science or police misconduct can easily access the courts to appeal the verdict against them. 

4. Apple’s False Alarms

The Daily Beast’s Dan Ladden-Hall writes about an unintended consequence of the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature: “An avalanche of unintentional 911 calls are being made by smart watches attached to skiers’ and snowboarders’ when they fall over, authorities in Idaho said. The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office said the devices’ “fall detection” feature has been repeatedly contacting law enforcement from the Schweitzer Mountain ski resort.” I didn’t realize this fall detection feature existed until I tripped while jogging this past weekend, and I had to tell my watch that there was no need to call 911. (How about that humblebrag? Well, the jogging was the dog’s idea, not mine, although he was right.) Anyway, you will want to be aware of this feature before going out.

5. China’s Population Decline

China reported its first population decline in 61 years, the start of what demographers expect will be a long period of decline. As the Wall Street Journal’s Liyan Qi writes, “The National Bureau of Statistics said Tuesday that China’s population dropped to 1.412 billion in 2022, from 1.413 billion in 2021. It was the first decline since the early 1960s, when the country was devastated by famine after Mao Zedong launched his “Great Leap Forward.” This decline reinforces the likelihood that India will surpass China this year as the world’s most populous nation (and will have twice as many people as China by the end of the century). These demographic changes will impact the world’s economy and China’s foreign policy. 

6. Artificial Intelligence Could Help Learning

The most recent episode of Hard Fork, the technology podcast cohosted by the New York Times’ Kevin Roose and Platformer’s Casey Newton, featured the first optimistic conversation with an educator I’ve heard about the potential impact of the new artificial intelligence tools on classroom learning. Their interview with Cherie Shields, a high school English teacher from Sandy, Oregon, went in a direction I didn’t expect, given all of the worries I’ve previously heard about how OpenAI’s chatbot will kill the high school and college essay. Shields explained how she uses OpenAI in her classroom to help her lesson plan and how we can teach students to use the tool as a supplemental personal tutor. I also always appreciate a proper mention of the paperclip maximizer artificial intelligence thought experiment. 

7. The Green Comet is Coming

A comet with a green hue is headed toward Earth this month for the first time in 50,000 years. The Planetary Society’s Kate Howells tells us more, “Comet 2022 E3 (ZTF) — still without a snappy nickname — is currently visible using a telescope, but as it approaches Earth it is expected to get brighter and easier to see. The comet has a long orbit that takes it from the outer reaches of the Solar System in toward the Sun over thousands of years. It will reach its closest point to the Sun on Jan. 12, 2023, after which it will continue on past Earth. The comet will be closest to us on Feb. 1, at a distance of about 42 million kilometers (26 million miles). In the weeks surrounding its closest approach it may be visible with the naked eye or with binoculars.”

8. The JFK Airport Runway Incursion

James Fallows examines what went right and wrong on Friday at John F. Kennedy International Airport when an American Airlines plane took a wrong turn and almost led to a catastrophic situation. Fallows examines the transcripts and the information we currently know. But as he explains, “There is still a large amount we don’t know. About what was happening in that American cockpit, and how a two-pilot team missed the taxi instructions and mixed up which runway was which. About what was happening among the Kennedy control team, and when exactly they realized where the errant plane was heading. About what practices and safeguards will be revised, to reduce the chance of this ever happening again. Because we know that the aviation world is ruthless about learning from its mistakes. And the stakes are high: the highest-fatality airplane disaster in history involved a similar confusion about runway clearances.”

9. Another Warning About a National Debt Default 

Kurt Eichenwald explains why the GOP’s decision to play chicken with the world economy by using the national debt increase to extract concessions is so dangerous in The Greatest Disaster in American History. Eichenwald writes, “I hope we don’t have to get there. We must stop this perennial economic terrorism. If Congress wants to cut the debt, stop doling out tax cuts and spending increases. But that requires hard choices, and Washington doesn’t seem prepared to make them. So, we turn to this performative gimmick every few years, and one of these times, we will pay the price.“ I also wrote about the national debt crisis yesterday and will continue highlighting this perilous situation. 

10. A Statue for My Favorite Player

The first Cubs Convention in three years concluded over the weekend, and I watched the events about my favorite team from my Bay Area location. I was particularly pleased to see Bleed Cubbie Blue’s Sara Sanchez share that my all-time favorite player, Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg, will become the fifth player honored with a statue outside Wrigley Field. I haven’t had many opportunities to write that I was pleased with the Cubs’ ownership in recent years, so this Cubs Con was a nice change of pace. Son Ranto’s Danny Rockett also shared this fun overview of the weekend on Bleed Cubbie Blue. 

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

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

1. I listen to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech from the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on this holiday celebrating his birthday and legacy. Click here for National Public Radio’s website, which has the entire audio and a transcript. The Majority Report also has its annual compilation of King’s speeches, including a previously unheard address about reparations, white economic anxiety, and guaranteed income.

Craig Cheslog’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. We need to talk about the national debt limit. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress that the U.S. would reach the limit on Thursday, January 19, requiring extraordinary measures to avoid a debt default. But at some point early this summer, even those will not be enough. 

The national debt limit represents the cap on the amount of money the federal government can borrow. Raising the national debt limit only authorizes the Treasury to issue the debt needed to fund the spending and revenues on which Congress and the President previously agreed. It’s about paying the bills already due, not about future spending. 

The House Republican majority has declared that it plans to use the need to increase the national debt ceiling to extract concessions from President Biden and the Democratic majority in the Senate. The Washington Post reported that the House GOP has a plan to direct the Treasury to prioritize certain payments once the U.S. reaches the national debt ceiling. “The plan, which was previously unreported, was part of the private deal reached this month to resolve the standoff between House conservatives and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) over the election of a House speaker. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), a leading conservative who helped broker the deal, told The Washington Post that McCarthy agreed to pass a payment prioritization plan by the end of the first quarter of the year.”

Oh great. 

The U.S. defaulting on the national debt would have terrible consequences for the national and world economies. In 2011, as this New York Times story explains, we learned that just approaching a national debt limit breach negatively impacts the economy and individual finances. 

So avoiding a breach of the debt limit is vital. 

Do President Biden and Congressional Democrats have any choice but to agree to significant budget cuts—including to programs like Social Security and Medicare—to prevent that outcome?

I hope the Democratic leadership is examining several alternatives outlined by economists and Constitutional experts. Here are some, in the order of my preference: 

a. Declare that the national debt limit is unconstitutional. Many people point to Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” This point is important, but I agree with Thomas Geoghegan’s argument that this language in the 14th Amendment confirms the 1787 Constitution’s prohibition on Congress from using its powers to default on the national debt. Geoghegan explains, ”Were Congress to use its power to willfully trigger a debt ceiling default, it would be no ordinary constitutional violation. It would be a repudiation of the Constitution in a much more fundamental way, a betrayal of the very purpose of leaving the Articles of Confederation—which did not grant borrowing powers to Congress—behind; that is to say, it rebukes the very thing that gives our Constitution its legitimacy. From the perspective of Hamilton in Federalist 30, it would be tantamount to terminating the Constitution itself.”

b. Biden declaring ignoring the debt ceiling to be the ”least unconstitutional” option as he works to meet his Constitutional requirement to faithfully execute the laws Congress passes. Vox’s Dylan Matthews explains the argument made by University of Florida law professor Neil Buchanan and Cornell law professor Michael Dorf: “Buchanan and Dorf note that Congress, by setting spending and tax policy as well as a debt limit, has given the president three mandates: to spend the amount Congress authorizes, to tax the amount Congress authorizes, and to issue as much debt as Congress authorizes. When the debt ceiling is breached, it becomes impossible for the president to obey all three of these legal requirements.”

c. Mint the trillion dollar coin. A 1997 law gives the U.S. Mint the power to mint platinum coins of any denomination. Congress created the law so the Mint could make money from coin collectors, but there are no upper limits in the law for how much any coin can be worth. In a different Vox article from the one I mentioned above, Dylan Matthews explains the idea and discusses it with attorney Carlos Mucha, who first proposed it on an internet discussion board in 2010 as one of the first debt ceiling battles was coming into focus. As Matthews writes, “Instead of issuing new debt and running afoul of the debt ceiling, the Treasury secretary could simply fund the government by minting platinum coins. In 2013, even former US Mint Director Philip Diehl agreed it would work, and over the years, influential voices like financial journalist Joe Weisenthal and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have also promoted the idea.

But all these people did not simply stumble upon this law. It was brought to their attention by Beowulf, a blog commenter and “reply guy” better known as Atlanta-area attorney Carlos Mucha.”

There should be a robust debate about how much the federal government taxes and spends. But that’s why we have a budget and appropriations process. Minting the coin would be better than seeing the U.S. default on its debt. But I’d rather see the debt limit—and its potentially horrible impact on the national and world economy—eliminated from the conversation. 

3. The American Prospect’s David Dayen argues that regulators, led by the Security and Exchange Commission’s Larry Gensler, prevented a broader economic calamity from the recent cryptocurrency meltdowns by shielding the primary financial system from crypto. 

4. Beautiful Public Data’s Jon Keegan writes about how the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Manual on Uniform Traffic Control works to help to make our roads safer. He writes, “Driving across America today, you will encounter a dizzying variety of cultures, landscapes, people and animals. But the one consistent thing that will stay the same from Maine to California are the signs you pass on the highway. And that is because America’s roads and highways have a big, fat style guide.”

Government entities do a great deal of work behind the scenes. It is vital that we properly acknowledge how much these regulations make our lives safer and better. 

5. The Daily Beast’s Marcel Plichta reviews all of the high-tech Western military weapons that Ukraine is about to receive to help with its defense against Russia’s invasion. 

6. I remember when the media ran many, many stories about the price of gasoline before the election. Esquire’s Jack Holmes has noticed how gasoline isn’t a story now that prices have dropped after the midterm elections

7. Pepsi is replacing Sierra Mist with a new lemon-lime soda called Starry. It’ll be another attempt to take some market share away from Coca-Cola’s Sprite. According to Insider’s Bethany Biron, “In 2021, Sprite raked in $6 billion in sales and carried 8.3% of the overall market, according to Statista data. By comparison, Sierra Mist comprised less than a tenth of 1% of market share, according to Beverage Digest data provided to CNN, which first reported on the launch of Starry.”

8. I.News soccer writer Daniel Storey profiles the community behind the Wrexham soccer team that actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney purchased a couple of years ago. (The purchase and their first year of ownership is also the focus of the outstanding FX documentary Welcome to Wrexham.) Storey goes into the history of the city, the team, and how Reynolds and McElhenney’s efforts have brought a sense of hope to a group of people who haven’t had much to cheer the past decade or two. 

9. One can’t emphasize enough that Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the United States. 

There were 8 full bird Colonels from Virginia in the United States Army in 1860.

6 did not commit treason.

1 resigned, took a commission in the Virginia Militia, then resigned that when Virginia provided the militia to the Confederate Army.

The other was Robert E. Lee.

— Dagger John 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@theSloopJohnM) 5:31 PM ∙ Jan 14, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe.

Here are some topics I’ve found interesting since my last post: 

1. California is about to experience electoral office musical chairs as several Democrats this week announced their intention to run for the United States Senate seat currently held by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). And like the series of five special elections held in the Oakland-Berkeley area in a period just short of 12 months in 1998-99, Barbara Lee is involved. 

While Feinstein has not announced her retirement, her political situation has deteriorated to the point where other electeds aren’t concerned about the potential ramifications of appearing disrespectful. 

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) was the first to announce her intention to run earlier this week. We then heard that Rep. Barbara Lee (R-CA)—who won her seat in the House in the series of special elections I mentioned above—has told colleagues she planned to run. Observers expect Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to jump in soon, and Rep. Rho Khanna (D-CA) also is thinking about the race. I suspect there will be others. 

These elected officials leaving their current office to seek the U.S. Senate opens up seats for other politicians to try to win. And from there, openings could cascade into the State Legislature or county and city offices, depending on the results. 

Politico California explains several scenarios. Here’s an example of what could happen with Lee’s seat (since it’s the closest to where I live): “Progressive stalwart Rep. Barbara Lee’s likely departure is major news in Oakland and Alameda County. Potential successors include Assembly members Buffy Wicks and Mia Bonta; state Sen. Nancy Skinner; just-departed Mayor Libby Schaaf; and BART board member Lateefah Simon. There will be pressure to replace Lee with another Black woman. That could boost Bonta or Simon, who told the San Francisco Chronicle she was “seeking counsel.” Former Oakland Council Member Loren Taylor, who just narrowly lost the mayoral race, indicated interest.”

This election cycle is going to get quite interesting—and expensive. 

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. Given what we currently know about the classified documents found in offices connected to President Joe Biden, far too much of the media’s coverage has been ridiculous. 

Too many reporters and media outlets are trying to earn bothsidesism bona fides by directly comparing the Biden document situation with former President Donald Trump’s refusal to return classified documents. (For example, The Banter’s Bob Cesca rightfully criticizes CBS News for their reporting in this post.) 

Professor Heather Cox Richardson does an excellent job of explaining why the two situations are very different: 

“While there is still a great deal we don’t know about either case, there are obvious and key differences between Biden’s and Trump’s handling of documents. 

In Trump’s case, NARA repeatedly asked him simply to return the documents it knew he had. He refused for a year, then let NARA staff recover 15 boxes that included documents marked classified, withholding others. After a subpoena, his lawyers turned over more documents and signed an affidavit saying that was all of them. But of course it wasn’t: the FBI’s August search of Mar-a-Lago recovered still more documents marked classified. Even now, none of Trump’s lawyers will certify that they have turned over all the documents they are required to. 

Trump is apparently being investigated for obstruction and for violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to withhold documents from a government official authorized to take them.”

3. Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. Valenti opens with a court interpretation in Idaho that, even for these kinds of decisions, is horrific:

“As you know, Idaho’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s abortion ban—but they also offered some ‘clarifications’ on law that aren’t likely to do anything other than further confusion and suffering. For example, Idaho’s ban requires that doctors who legally terminate pregnancies (in the limited exceptions that the state allows to do so) in a way that “provide[s] the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive.” Like, what?

The court writes that doctors performing abortions “must remove that unborn child in a manner that provides the best opportunity for survival (e.g., vaginal delivery or cesarean delivery)” as opposed to a procedure like a D&C—even if the doctor understands that the fetus will not be viable—unless doing so would pose a “greater risk of the death of the pregnant woman.”

The court seems to be saying that the only legal way for doctors to perform abortions isn’t just about the circumstances of a patient’s pregnancy (rape, incest, health, etc) but the way in which that pregnancy is ended. So doctors aren’t actually allowed to perform abortion procedures, but instead must force a woman into a c-section or vaginal birth, unless doing that would make a woman more likely to die. Which goes beyond being nonsensical—it’s monstrous.”

The situation for women and people who can become pregnant continues to deteriorate in the states that have enacted forced-birth policies. We have to continue to pay attention. Valenti has more from Georgia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and West Virginia. 

4. The Missouri State Legislature adopted a rules package to include a more strict dress code for women. As CNN explains, the new rule requires women “to cover their shoulders by wearing a jacket like a blazer, cardigan or knit blazer.”

Lyz Lenz named Missouri State Representative Anne Kelly (R) her Dingus of the Week for sponsoring this rule change. Lenz also explains why it’s important to point out these kinds of changes: 

“Missouri, which has some of the most lenient gun laws in America, restricted female lawmakers’ right to bare arms. 

Missouri is facing a teacher shortage crisis; a childcare crisis; a Josh Hawley crisis; crucial water quality issues; has a school that revived paddling; another school that is closing after numerous lawsuits over allegations of physical, mental, and sexual abuse; not to mention the Cardinals couldn’t win a World Series to save their lives; and Missouri has the words barbeque in America. Seriously, Kansas City barbeque is just meat with ketchup. Jack Stacks is the most overrated barbeque place in the universe. And I’m not even going to mention the number of left-hand exits in Kansas City.

Given all that, this week, Missouri State Rep. Anne Kelly, decided to address the real problems facing the state — the scourge of female lawmakers showing their arms. Kelly proposed a stricter dress code for women and women only. Apparently, in the “Show Me” state women can show everything except their God-given appendages.

Rules like this are designed to make women feel less worthy and make us constantly work harder to measure up to a standard that is always shifting.”

And I am sure there is more to come.

5. President Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week urging “Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold Big Tech accountable” for how these companies handle our private information, violate civil rights, and increase polarization through the spread of disinformation. 

There has long been a need for government action on these fronts. But, as the Innocence Project’s Sarah Chu explains, we must also look at how police, prosecutors, and the government employ this data. That’s because what big tech collects—and the algorithms they use—can lead to wrongful convictions and other harms against innocent people. 

Chu writes, “We agree with President Biden that it’s time to set limits. And while the president emphasized the need for “clear limits on how companies can collect, use and share highly personal data — your internet history, your personal communications, your location, and your health, genetic and biometric data,” we believe Congress must go a step further.

Congress must make explicit in its anticipated bill that it will regulate how investigative tools are used in criminal investigations to protect people’s data and prevent wrongful convictions, including how data may or may not be collected, used, or stored in those investigations. Doing so would ensure the just application of algorithmic technologies far more efficiently than piecemeal regulation of individual technologies — especially given the constant proliferation of new tools.”

Quick Pitches: 

I remember when the media ran many, many stories about the price of gasoline before the election. Isn’t it interesting how it isn’t a story now that gas prices have dropped after the midterms? (Jack Holmes, Esquire)

Let’s never start accepting that this kind of action is normal in a free county.

Not school libraries. Public libraries.

— Morgan Fahey (@morganfahey) 12:24 AM ∙ Jan 14, 2023

The Pentagon plans to bring Ukrainian troops to the United States for training on the Patriot missile defense system. (Dan Lamothe, The Washington Post)

Major League Baseball announced on what day pitchers and catchers will report for each team’s spring training camps. I can’t wait for February 15 to get here. Go Cubs Go! (Major League Baseball) 

Sports accounted for 94 of the 100 most-watched telecasts in 2022. The National Football League had 82 of them. (Austin Karp, Sports Business Journal)

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Here are five things I have found interesting since my last post.

1. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) released his initial 2023-24 state budget. After several years of surpluses, this year’s budget projects a $22.5 billion shortfall. California’s revenue structure is quite volatile, so this kind of swing isn’t too surprising given what’s happened with the stock market and technology sector over the past year. 

Newsom proposes using a series of trigger cuts, deferrals, and reductions in planned one-time spending to balance the budget while protecting his core policy priorities. Newsom also suggests not using any of the $35.6 billion reserve “rainy day” funds in the state’s accounts to reach budget balance.  

The California Budget and Policy Center has an outstanding analysis of what the Governor proposed. It released its First Look: Understanding the Governor’s Proposed 2023-24 State Budget, which details the overall economic picture and what Newsom suggests for spending and policies to produce the required balanced state budget. This report provides a wealth of background information about the budget and the direction Newsom seeks to take the state. 

The release of the January budget starts a six-month dance between the Governor and Legislative leaders, who must make the compromises necessary so the Governor can sign the state budget by the Constitutionally mandated June 30 deadline. 

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2.

For @nytgraphics and @nytimes ongoing coverage of the storms in California, I took a look at two weeks of atmospheric rivers over the West Coast.

nytimes.com/article/califo…

— Scott Reinhard (@scottreinhard) 11:11 PM ∙ Jan 10, 2023

California has gotten a bunch of rain and snow over the past two weeks, but that doesn’t mean the state can stop worrying about its water supply. But the situation has improved, as the Bay Area News Group’s Paul Rogers writes, “For the first time in more than two years, the majority of California is no longer in a severe drought, the federal government reported Thursday, a dramatic turnaround following a series of powerful atmospheric river storms since Christmas.

Overall, 46% of California’s land area remains in severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Only a month ago, on Dec. 6, it was 85%.”

Unfortunately, this wet start doesn’t mean California will end up with all the precipitation it needs to end the drought. CalMatters Alastair Bland reminds us that the state hasn’t seen many wet years recently: “After all, most years in the past 15 have produced an underwhelming amount of rainfall. Since the big water year of 2006, only three — 2011, 2017 and 2019 — have been notably wet. Many climate experts believe California’s predominant weather pattern in the future will be one of steady drought conditions broken periodically by very wet interludes.”

California’s weather patterns are likely to continue to move towards the extremes, with a series of arid years occasionally interrupted by very wet seasons. As The Atlantic’s Jacob Stern explains, “It’s no surprise that climate change has likely played a role in all of this. California has always had something of a “boom-or-bust hydrological economy,” Horton told me, but the booms are getting even wetter and the busts even drier.”

There is more precipitation to come!

The storm parade is not over for California.

Another 3 storm systems will sweep across the state over the next 7 days bringing another 2-5 inches of rain across much of the state.

The Sierra could see up to another 4-8 feet of snow.

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) 10:18 PM ∙ Jan 12, 2023

3. BuzzFeed’s Melissa Segura profiles Chicago attorney Josh Tepfer, who has built an incredible career by successfully winning the exonerations of many wrongfully convicted people. 

Segura writes, “Tepfer’s representation has led to the exoneration of 288 wrongfully convicted people — making him among the most prolific exoneration attorneys since anyone began keeping track. Last August, he spearheaded what is believed to be the first mass exoneration of people convicted of murder, all of their cases hinging on confessions and witness statements that had been obtained by a now-retired police detective, Reynaldo Guevara, who used physical force and manipulation. In a single marathon day of court, Tepfer’s work helped wipe unjust convictions from the records of seven people who’d served a collective 174 years behind bars.”

We need to focus on how corrupt police officers, prosecutors, and judges harm innocent people around the country. We also need to make it easier for people to seek judicial relief when we discover new evidence or scientific advances that demonstrate how our judicial system made a horrible error. 

4. 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: 

There is more coverage of the Alabama Attorney General spokesperson’s admission that the state is seeking to interpret older laws to jail women for abortion. Other states copy what Alabama starts, so we need to be ready for this idea to spread. 

Georgia is offering a $3,000 deduction for a fetus with a detectible heartbeat, but that’s running into implementation problems. Valenti writes, “because a fetus is not actually a person, the guidance has left all sorts of questions open about the deduction as it relates to pregnancy loss, what kind of medical records are necessary, privacy issues, etc. Most of all—the rule gives some insight into how confusing it will be as more states adopt fetal personhood measures (emphasis in original).”

5. It was free Thursday for Craig Calcaterra’s Cup of Coffee newsletter. While I subscribe mainly to read the baseball news, he also is a liberal living in Ohio. I appreciate his political writing as he analyzes his state’s relentless turn to the hard right. 

He’s been trying to warn people that the surprise election of an Ohio State House Speaker earlier this month is not about moderation or bipartisanship. Oh, it is so much more complicated. Yet national political writers are ignoring the context that led a portion of the state’s Republican caucus to abandon the person they tipped for Speaker just a few weeks ago. 

As Calcaterra explains, “But honestly, I cannot get over the fact that a national political columnist with serious academic credentials was allowed to characterize a situation in which a hardcore GOP megadonor made a large donation to a Democrat while simultaneously orchestrating a lurid sting operation which outed a closeted gay man in order to swing the Democratic coalition and some homophobic GOP reps behind a different candidate as “moderation.” 

I’ll understand if you want to scroll past the baseball news down to the Moderation update of Calcaterra’s newsletter to learn more. But the baseball writing is excellent too. 

Quick Pitches: 

Can’t wait for Monday when all the Republicans who’ve spent all year banning Dr MLK from the classroom suddenly remember to misquote him for Internet clout.

— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) 7:21 PM ∙ Jan 11, 2023

Elon Musk sets a Guinness World Record! But it’s for the largest loss of personal fortune in history, as Fortune magazine estimates he’s lost $165 billion of net worth from November 2021 to December 2022. But I am sure he meant to do that. (Faarea Masud, BBC Business)

Roger Bennett and the Men in Blazers’ team highlight what members of the United States Women’s and Men’s National Soccer Teams are doing over in European club play. (American States United)

I hope everyone listens to Chris Hayes. We can’t let them fool us like this again.

.@chrislhayes on Walgreens admitting the shoplifting threat was overstated:

“This is something everyone needs to bookmark in their minds the next time you hear giant corporations warning about a ‘rampant crime wave.’”

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) 2:00 AM ∙ Jan 13, 2023

Thank you for reading As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe. Thank you!

Here are five things I have found interesting since my last post.

1. It is hard not to make a connection between the failed insurrection in Brazil on Sunday and what supporters of former President Donald Trump attempted at the United State Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, writes in Brazil’s Insurrection Reminds Us of the Power of Strongman Personality Cults: “In the Brazilian case, as in the U.S. of Donald Trump, the leader and his allies invested in years-long relentless disinformation campaigns designed to discredit their country’s electoral systems in the public mind. Personality cults create images of the leader as infallible, and preparing followers to see any setback to their hero as the result of nefarious external forces rigging the system against him is part of preserving his competency in their eyes. Having someone or something to blame—President Joe Biden or Lula as it may be—also keeps the personality cult alive by letting followers avoid acknowledging that their hero is a loser.”

And Trump’s personality cult is in some trouble after the losses suffered by his candidates in the midterm elections. As Ben-Ghiat explains, this photo of Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) refusing to take a call from the former president—facilitated by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)—during the Speaker of the House voting would have been hard to imagine just a few months ago. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, holds her smart phone with former US President Donald Trump on the line, as Rep. Matt Rosendale, a Republican from Montana, waves it off during a meeting of the 118th Congress in the House Chamber on Friday.

#SpeakerVote

— Al Drago (@Al_Drago) 4:28 AM ∙ Jan 7, 2023

The Guardian’s Moira Donegan notes that while many in the United States look to Europe for analogies to our history, we share more in common with the Latin American democracies to our south. 

She writes, “Like us, they were founded on early violence that casts long shadows over our subsequent attempts at equality and pluralism: chattel slavery and the dispossession and genocide of indigenous peoples. Like us, they are host to racially and religiously heterogenous populations, aspiring to national projects based not so much in shared ethnic identity as in shared ideals. And like us, these Latin American nations have an authoritarian streak, one that has historically been encouraged, both tacitly and explicitly, by the US itself.”

Donegan notes one key difference between how the United States and Brazil handled the insurrections sparked by their recent authoritarian presidents: Brazil is taking quick action to hold those responsible accountable. 

“But one massive difference is in how the Brazilians have responded to this threat to their democracy. In the aftermath of the January 6 violence, the Biden administration reportedly balked at pursuing an actual impeachment of Donald Trump, stymying Democrats in the House who wanted to pursue an aggressive accountability strategy; in the years since, the Department of Justice has repeatedly dragged its feet, passed the buck, and seemed unable or unwilling to do anything other than passively allow Trump and his inner circle to sabotage the democratic process with impunity.

Not so with the Brazilians. The new leftist president, Lula de Silva, immediately denounced the mob as “neo-fascists,” and was willing, with clarity and candor that would be unthinkable in an American politician, to honestly tell his countrymen that they cannot trust all of the police forces.”

The memory of a recent violent dictatorship does clarify what’s at stake when there is an attack on democracy. I hope people in the United States understand that the danger here is not over.

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. The Hoarse Whisperer shared a remarkable piece of writing, using a toothache to open a conversation how financial hardship doesn’t just change the way one thinks—it rewires the mind. 

In this initial post, the writer explains how his life changed after he left a high-paying but unsatisfying career and was left to try to support a child after a 75 percent cut in income. 

“I postponed and canceled and postponed and canceled. Anything that could wait which affected only me waited. And “It can wait.” meant it would wait forever. There would never be a time when something that wasn’t a crisis when it arose and hadn’t become one would suddenly move to the front of the line.

If you have never had a protracted period of deep, serious, financial struggle, this may not make sense to you as a concept: 

Those decisions start as financial and then become psychological. Not emotional. Psychological. 

Barely getting by is at first a process – a budget exercise – but then it becomes a mindset until it literally rewires your very brain.

In the early going, you’re trying to spin plates while thinking you may be able to keep any from dropping. And then some drop. And them some more drop. And then something big and unexpected happens and you realize you have to choose a bunch to let drop.

And it is that last moment, the unexpected thing that forces you to have to choose a whole bunch of plates to let fall that changes things.”

The writer followed up with a postscript that responded to the comments responding to his initial article. People wanted more of the story. People wanted to know why the writer hadn’t made “better” choices. That question misses the point. 

“My list is not the worst in the world. Worse than some. Not as bad as others.

But misery is not an Olympic event. No one needs to earn a gold medal in hardship to prove they have been sufficiently “hard done by” (as my late British mother-in-law would say) to have bottomed out.

We are all one phone call away from our lives coming apart at the seams. We are all – every one of us – just one single domino away from a cascade over months or years that pulls all of the gravel from under our feet.”

3. Adam Johnson at The Column reacts to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ decision to appoint Christopher Rufo to the board of trustees of the New School in Florida. Rufo is one of the nation’s leading homophobes and transphobes and is also the person who created a fake—but electorally effective—controversy about critical race theory. 

Johnson shows how the mainstream media uses euphemisms to avoid having to discuss the genocidal campaign conservative activists are waging against members of the LGBTQ community. He explains:

“One popular way of obscuring the power dynamics and harm being waged against vulnerable populations is to discuss not humans, or victims, or those under assault, but “issues” to be “opposed.” Transgender people’s identity is an “issue” to be “debated” and, thus, abstract; its victims are not people with lives and parents and friends and partners and humanity—they are simply the battlegrounds for these so-called “gender wars.” No one is subject to incitement campaigns, attacks in the public sphere, or discrimination. There’s no oppressor and oppressed, there is simply a debate club with differing opinions. The human stakes are lost, and the cruelty and dehumanization being promoted by the likes of DeSantis and Rufo is obscured in favor of anodyne-sounding policy “issues.”

Johnson explains four ways reporters obscure the power dynamics and removes the humanity of the people targeted from this conversation. We must remember the lives at stake here. 

4. The World Meteorological Organization announced that the “ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades, with the global phaseout of ozone-depleting chemicals already benefitting efforts to mitigate climate change.” 

This outcome was not inevitable. It was possible only because of the efforts of activists to get governments to take decisive action to phase out the use of the substances that were harming the ozone layer.  

Yes! Collective action can work to solve major global problems. As the Intelligencer’s Chas Denner writes, “The saving of the ozone layer can and should give everyone hope that such movements (and international treaties) are possible, worthwhile, and effective, particularly as the world faces a far more complex and intimidating threat with human-driven climate change.”

5. The Atlantic Hockey Association, a Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Conference, named Army West Point Senior Associate Athletic Trainer Rachel Leahy as its Player of the Week. Non-players don’t usually receive this kind of recognition, but Leahy saved the life of Army forward Eric Huss during a game against Sacred Heart last week. 

As Atlantic Hockey’s press release explains, “Army West Point Athletic Trainer Rachel Leahy’s quick actions when Black Knight junior Eric Huss suffered a throat laceration in Thursday’s Army-Sacred Heart game prevented a serious injury from becoming catastrophic. Leahy was the first person to Huss after the forward was cut by an inadvertent skate blade and remained by his side to control the bleeding from the time they left the ice until Huss arrived at the hospital and entered the emergency room. Huss underwent surgery Thursday evening to close the wound and is expected to make a full recovery from his injury.”

College Hockey News provides more details about the incident and what Leahy had to do to save Huss’ life on the ice. Kudos to those at Atlantic Hockey who thought to recognize Leahy in this fashion. 

Quick Pitches: 

The United Nations reported that in 2021 five million children died before age five, with 47 percent before one month of age. Activists believe better healthcare access and support for pregnant people could significantly lower this rate. (Sarah Johnson, The Guardian)

Puck’s Teddy Schleifer reports about his in-person interview with FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried. It’s a fascinating conversation, but why is he still talking to reporters? (Teddy Schleifer, Puck)

Judd Legum offers more information about the landmark Federal Trade Commission proposed rule to ban noncompete clauses. (Judd Legum, Popular Information)

California has gotten a bit of snow the past couple of weeks. But the drought isn’t over.

Snow continues to pile up across the #Sierra during these series of storms since Christmas Day, now sitting at 215% of avg for this date. Also, the snowpack typically peaks April 1st across the Sierra, and the state now sits at 94% of its April 1st avg! Data from: @CA_DWR #CAwx

— NWS California-Nevada RFC (@NWSCNRFC) 11:21 PM ∙ Jan 10, 2023

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1. Why are some stories covered only once and dropped by the media, but others receive constant coverage? Parker Malloy at The Present Age examines this critical question in Flooding the Zone with Narrative, which reacts to this Alec Karakatsanis’ article about the decisions editors make about what they publish.

Malloy writes: “Why are some issues easily conceptualized as a single news story — ‘the debtors’ prison story’ — while other stories are seen as continuously plentiful sources of daily news to be covered from the same and different angles each night, such as the ‘surge in shoplifting’?”

This! This has been one of my biggest frustrations with the news world. The papers pick and choose which topics get relentless and disproportionate coverage, and which topics are printed and immediately forgotten, never allowed to truly become “stories.”  

Oh yes, I feel this frustration. These editorial choices impact elections and how governments spend our tax money (as we saw last year with the relentless coverage of the overblown shoplifting narrative). I wish the editors and publishers who make these decisions were open to conversations about how this dynamic works.

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. Imagine your partner or someone close to you dying suddenly and then having to deal with radical anti-vax activists publicly while mourning. 

Dr. Céline Gounder explains what she’s faced after the loss of her husband, the late soccer journalist Grant Wahl, to a ruptured aortic aneurysm while he was covering the recent Men’s World Cup in Qatar. (Wahl was one of my favorite writers and journalists, and his death deeply impacted many people.) Because Grounder is an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist who has been a prominent voice during this Covid pandemic, anti-vaxxers leaped to blame the vaccine—and Grounder—for Wahl’s death. The messages they sent to her were nothing short of evil. 

She writes, “I knew that disinformation purveyors would blame Grant’s death on Covid vaccines, and I knew what tactics they would use to do so. I also knew that debunking what these people believe head-on in public risks giving them the attention they crave and invites further trolling. But this situation was different from the many others I’d dealt with as an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist or while serving on the Biden-Harris transition Covid Advisory Board. This was my Grant, and I needed to know what had happened to him. And I knew I had to share that information publicly: Pairing facts with empathy is the best way to disempower trolls.”

Grounder explains that she felt compelled to write about what she’s faced after the anti-vax community tried to blame Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s collapse during a game last week on Covid vaccines. She writes, “When disinformation profiteers leverage tragedies like Grant’s and Mr. Hamlin’s for their personal gain, they retraumatize families, compromise our ability to interpret information and distinguish truth from lies and put all of us at risk.”

And that’s why we should be concerned about these dynamics and their impact on people and society. 

3. Republican politicians like to claim that the goal of their forced birth policies is not to jail the women who may seek abortions. That’s always been a lie, and now another Republican has admitted it. 

Jessica Valenti explains how the Alabama Attorney General’s office plans to work around this promise. She writes, “In the worst wink-wink-nudge-nudge statement I’ve seen in a long time, the Alabama AG’s office told a conservative reporter that just because the abortion ban won’t let them arrest women, it doesn’t mean that the state can’t use other laws to put women behind bars: A spokesperson for Marshall told 1819 News this weekend that even though the Human Life Protection Act exempts women from being prosecuted, it “does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law—which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children. (emphasis added)”

4. I’m not surprised by this one: Popular Information’s Judd Legum follows up on the story about Vicki Baggett, the Florida teacher seeking to have 150 books removed from school libraries under the Stop WOKE Act that Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law last April. 

Legum writes, “While Baggett claims she is keeping inappropriate content away from children, her former and current students tell Popular Information that Baggett openly promoted racist and homophobic beliefs in class.”

That adds some context for why Baggett objects to books like When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball. 

5. Dave Eggers writes in the New Yorker about the Profound Defiance of Daily Life in Kyiv, starting with a visit to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine. While waiting for their tour to start, their guide approached to ask Eggers and the writer Peter Godwin to go to the basement because of an air raid. The guide received the notification from an app on her smartphone. 

Eggers writes, “The technology is now so advanced that Ukrainian citizens can know, more or less in real time, where the Russian missiles are coming from and generally where they’re going. In this case, Russia had just launched some seventy missiles, headed to sites all over Ukraine. The assumption was that they were directed at power substations, meant to cripple the country’s electrical grid. Vladimir Putin’s recent strategy has been to knock out the power in the depth of winter in hopes of breaking the spirits of everyday Ukrainians.

So far this strategy has not worked.”

People who believe in democracy should be glad that’s the case. 

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Quick Pitches: 

Las Vegas Raiders Owner Mark Davis is apparently embarrassed that visiting fans so often outnumber Raiders fans at their new stadium in Las Vegas. I thought taking the money from people visiting Las Vegas for a weekend of gambling and football was why he left his team’s devoted following in Oakland, though? (RaidersBeat.com)

Pocket reminded me of this Guardian commentary by Sally Denton asking Why Is So Little Known About the 1930s Coup Attempt Against FDR? That’s a good question. (Pocket)

Orange Unified School District’s new radical conservative board majority fired its respected Superintendent with no explanation on a day’s notice. I’m glad voters in my area took this threat seriously in last year’s election. (John Fensterwald, EdSource)

Charlie Pierce wonders why everyone has forgotten that Democrats now have subpoena power in the Senate. Oh yes, I would love to see some tit-for-tat. He writes, “I find positively delicious the prospect of hauling Jared Kushner in front of the Senate for every time Hunter Biden is summoned to the Clown Show. I know it’s not exactly good government, but that ship sailed over the horizon last weekend. And tempering the unruly temperament of the House is actually what the Senate was originally designed to do.” (Charlie Pierce, Esquire)

Don’t they know they’re supposed to let them return to their luxury hotels and fly home — then wait a year to ask the public to look at grainy internet photos to find them?

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) 7:58 PM ∙ Jan 9, 2023

Today’s Thought: 

“When only the extremists are willing to take a stand, only the extremists will win. The GOP is a hostage to its most irresponsible members because it’s too frightened to confront them.”—Noah Bertlatsky, Public Notice (1/9/23).

1. Our Constitution has all kinds of interesting (and scary) loopholes and inconsistencies. I often think about how our leaders failed after 9/11 to enact continuity of government provisions to ensure the House of Representatives could convene in the wake of a successful attack that killed more than half of its members.

The start of the 118th Congress has highlighted a new example: no entity is responsible for ensuring that people running for office are actually eligible to run. We can thank the infamous Rep. George Santos (R-NY) for spotlighting this challenge. 

Given all of the lies Santos has told, Vice’s Tim Marchman asks: “Of the many questions surrounding serial fabulist George Santos as he joins the new Congress, one of the most basic is also one of the hardest to answer conclusively: Has he been a U.S. citizen for seven years, one of the three requirements for the job specifically listed in the Constitution?” 

Marchman takes us on a journey from the Clerk of the House of Representatives, the House Ethics Committee, the House Administration Committee, to the New York State Board of Elections and finds that no one believes they have a responsibility to determine eligibility. I doubt the new Speaker of the House will prioritize fixing this issue. 

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

2. Speaking of Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), it took 15 ballots, but he is finally the Speaker of the House. In his Breaking the News Substack, James Fallows notes that Speaker of the House is part of “a category of jobs for which the greatest day is the day your appointment is announced.” 

Fallows is a former presidential speechwriter and often explains what politicians are trying to do with a speech—and whether or not they were successful. In this post, Fallows looks at the speeches made by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Speaker McCarthy right after the final Speaker vote. 

Jeffries’ speech was terrific, and people are going to focus on the A-to-Z rundown of values that closed it (you can watch his speech here from C-SPAN). That’s a sign of a great address! Fallows explains the risks Jeffries took and why they paid off. “By the end of this, Jeffries was having fun, and much of the audience was too. What would he do for Q? And … X? It didn’t go on too long, it was appropriate for the time of night and place in history, it was both sober and jokey, and it made his point. Jeffries never needs to recite this list again, because other people will quote it. He had his opportunity, and he used it.” 

Fallows then examines Speaker McCarthy’s speech (you can watch his speech here from C-SPAN). Fallows writes that McCarthy didn’t mention many of the conspiracy theories that were a significant part of his colleagues’ speeches to nominate him (there was no mention of a stolen election lie here). He even avoided the Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz intentionally disrespectful use of Democrat (rather than Democratic) as an adjective in his remarks. I wish McCarthy could lead the House based more on his acceptance speech, but the MAGA rebels extracted such a high price for their votes to ensure he couldn’t. The situation is about to get much worse for McCarthy and our nation. 

3. Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. Today Valenti explains her frustration with the reporting about abortion medication: “[t]he article, an explainer about abortion medication and the new rules around the pills, goes out of its way to tell readers that abortion medication is illegal in Tennessee, but doesn’t mention—even once—that having the pills shipped to you is not illegal. In fact, the Department of Justice reiterated as much just this week! Mainstream media outlets—especially those in anti-choice states—need to do better for their female readers.” Valenti also shares stories about OBGYN residents who have to leave red states to complete their training because of these bans and once again explains why exceptions to abortion bans may provide political cover for Republican politicians but don’t help people who can become pregnant. 

4. Dr. Joanne B. Freeman is an expert on the history of political violence in the United States, and reading her book The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War was one of my 2022 highlights. So I am listening as she tells us why we should take the chaos we just saw with the Speaker of the House election seriously in this New York Times commentary (gift article). 

Freeman explains how the 133-ballot Speakership debate of 1855-56 reflected the fractions of the nation leading up to the Civil War. Moving back to what we experienced over the past week, Freeman writes: 

“The House has elected a speaker, but that won’t put an end to the internecine Republican battles. They will continue, entangling Congress and stymieing national politics in the process. Politics is a team sport that requires captains, congressional politics, even more so. Today’s congressional Republicans are not a team; they have no captain and they have displayed their failings for all the world to see.

In effect, we’re witnessing the rupture of the Republican Party, the ultimate outcome of Republicans’ continuing failure to stand up to the extremism in their ranks. In choosing to remain silent in the face of their right wing’s politics of destruction, they have essentially endorsed it. Their silence in the face of Donald Trump’s lies and his election loss denial did much the same, laying the groundwork for the upheaval that we’re watching now.”

5. How many innocent people will police arrest because the algorithms behind facial recognition software are notoriously bad when identifying people of color and women? As Gizmodo’s Thomas Germain explains, “Randall Reid says he’s never even been to Louisiana, much less stolen $10,000 worth of Chanel and Louis Vuitton handbags there. That didn’t stop police from arresting the 28-year-old Georgia resident for the theft, committed in a New Orleans suburb, based on an algorithmic guess at what his face looked like. Reid was on the way to a belated Thanksgiving dinner with his mother when the cops picked him up, three states and seven hours away from the scene of the crime. He was locked up for nearly a week.” 

The biases in facial recognition are well known, but the use of the technology is everywhere. What we don’t have are rules for its use. Worse, as Germain writes, efforts to enact regulations stalled out as crime grew as a campaign issue: “This time last year, it seemed like there was a growing movement to ban law enforcement’s use of technology, with legislatures across the country instituting a facial recognition prohibition for their police forces. But that movement lost steam, and a number of states and cities quietly undid their face recognition bans, including California, Virginia, and—you guessed it—New Orleans.”

Quick Pitches: 

I love the Bay Lights art installation on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. They are coming down in March unless philanthropists donate $11 million for an upgraded version. I hope the nonprofit behind this work is successful in raising the money required to keep it going. (Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle)

Last summer, Walgreens was one of the chain stores that raised alarms about thefts from their stores. These claims became part of the campaign that led to a backlash against liberal District Attorneys (like the recall of San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin) and the efforts to redirect a fraction of law enforcement funding to social services. Guess what? “A major US drugstore chain that supposedly experienced a surge in shoplifting last year – fanning the flames of conservative outrage over a purported spike in crime and disorder – said on Thursday that it might have overstated the problem.” Weird how that happens. (Victoria Bekiempis, The Guardian)

Reporters need to do a better job when discussing the debt ceiling.

See downthread. Turns out @GStephanopoulos didn’t follow up to make @GovChristie’s bad faith clear. Will be really important for non-Fox hosts to be better at presenting the plain, one-sided extremism of GOP default threats, especially as we’ve been down this road so many times.

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) 9:35 PM ∙ Jan 8, 2023

Bothsidesism harms many democracies. 

The problem with ‘balanced’ reporting.

— Christian Guthier (@oxford_guthier) 2:57 PM ∙ Jan 5, 2023

Today’s Thought: 

“Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”—Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny.

1. Today is the second anniversary of a violent insurrection against the United States government. As the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol explained, Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies planned this attack against our Constitution in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of power for the first time since the Civil War. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch urges us to see the connection between the events of that day to the still incomplete Speaker of the House election. He writes, “In an alternate timeline, the news in this foggy first week of the new year might be dominated by anniversary journalism, about what we’ve learned since the shock of Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent something like that from ever happening again. Instead, America is again transfixed by utter chaos echoing across those exact same marble corridors of the U.S. Capitol. The only difference is that in this new national horror show, the calls are coming from inside the House. We can’t move on, let alone learn, from 2021′s insurrection when that uprising — crippling our government in the name of celebrity fascism — never ended.”

2 yrs ago: Jan 6, 5:04pm, I took this photo of law enforcement using flash bang grenades & tear gas on a violent mob trying to break into the U.S. Capitol. It was hr 4 in my gas mask, helmet & bulletproof vest photographing hand-to-hand combat between police & U.S. citizens. 1/9

— Leah Millis (@LeahMillis) 12:34 PM ∙ Jan 6, 2023

2. The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday proposed a rule prohibiting employers from imposing noncompete clauses on their workers. The FTC estimates this rule would help 30 million Americans and increase wages by nearly $300 billion annually. President Biden has been critical of noncompete clauses for decades, and he issued an executive order last July encouraging the FTC to curtail their use. Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann noted how important this action could be: “With all due respect to Kevin McCarthy’s wild odyssey to become speaker, this might actually be the most consequential thing that happens in Washington today. The action will either change the face of labor rights or lay the groundwork for a high-stakes showdown over the FTC’s power to shape the rules of antitrust.” Weissmann explains that the issue will likely end up in court, with representatives of the business lobby announcing their opposition to the FTC’s action. Initially reserved for executives, criticism of noncompete clauses rose when it became apparent that many hourly workers—infamously including Jimmy John’s sandwich makers—were subject to them. This proposed rule is the kind of significant policy decision liberals hoped to see from FTC Chair Lina Khan. 

As I Was Saying by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

3. James Fallows, the journalist and one-time presidential speech writer, highlights another outstanding speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his Breaking the News Substack. Fallows writes, “Two weeks ago I wrote about the remarkable care and eloquence of Volodymyr Zelensky’s address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. Four days ago, on New Year’s Eve, Zelensky released a 17-minute video presentation, so exactly timed that he ended with “Happy New Year” greetings a few seconds before the clock reached midnight in his home country.” Fallows analyzes the English version of Zelenskyy’s speech, noting how his use of language, stagecraft, and skill as an orator again rises to the moment. Fallows writes, “Is this acting? Yes. Franklin Roosevelt was acting when he looked jaunty and confident while unable to walk and in severe pain. Theodore Roosevelt was acting when he gave a speech in Milwaukee in 1912 just after being shot in the chest. Performance consistent with values is admirable rather than meretricious. This was very well staged.” Such skill is a crucial quality for a wartime leader. 

4. Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. There is good news to share as South Carolina’s Supreme Court rules that the state’s abortion ban is unconstitutional. We also learn that CVS and Walgreens will carry and sell abortion medication under the new FDA regulations. Valenti also covers the proposals for additional restrictions discussed in Utah, Nebraska, and Georgia.

5. Puck’s Tina Nguyen has some of the best sources among MAGA Republicans. In McCarthy’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold (gift article), Nguyen dives into what is happening behind the scenes as Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) loses vote after vote in his quest to become Speaker of the House. I don’t see how this ends well for him because, for the 20 Republicans who oppose McCarthy, this is personal. As Nguyen writes, “But the night before Thursday’s vote, the strategist close to the 20 predicted that these concessions would do nothing to change the bloc’s position. “Some of the members of the 20 are in a position now where, in order for the history books to show that they did anything, [the speaker] has to be another person. And that’s why I think that the rules, concessions and stuff has not really changed any of the dynamics.” The 20 do not trust him because they believe McCarthy lacks any strong political beliefs, financially supported moderate candidates in the primaries, didn’t help certain MAGA candidates in the general election, and initially criticized former President Trump after the insurrection. So, according to Nguyen, we shouldn’t expect a resolution soon unless McCarthy steps down. She writes, “For now, according to my conversations with allies of the 20, they’re dug in for the long haul. “It could go to next week. It could go to the week after,” a source with knowledge of the negotiations told me last night, seeming to enjoy the unfolding drama. “We’ll figure it out. We’re having fun. (emphasis added)” And I am glad that Twitter’s Allwftopic reminded us that it isn’t just the MAGA 20 who are responsible for what is happening: “All the Republicans are responsible for this madness. Republicans who gerrymandered districts for MAGA Republicans, Republicans controlled Supreme Court who helped them gerrymander those districts for MAGA Republicans, and McCarthy for jumping in bed with these MAGA Republicans.”

Quick Pitches: 

The FBI has increased the reward for information about the pipe bombs placed near the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the January 6 insurrection. Why did it take this long? (Kelly Hooper, Politico)

The ongoing U.S. Speaker of the House election provides an excellent excuse to remember the shenanigans involving the California Assembly Speaker nearly 30 years ago. Willie Brown made surprising things happen. (Kaitlyn Schallhorn, Orange County Register)

Who are the most underrated players in Major League history? Joe Posnanski creates a formula to try to answer this difficult question. A few of them deserve to the in the Hall of Fame. (Joe Posnanski, Joe Blogs)

Over 20 trillion gallons of water are expected to fall across California over the next 2 weeks.

That’s enough water to cover a flat surface the size of California in over half a foot of water.

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) 7:00 PM ∙ Jan 5, 2023

Today’s Thought: 

“History can be erased in ways other than by force of arms. It can be erased by accumulated myth. It can be erased by layer after layer of stony denial. And it can be erased by popular consensus, tacit or otherwise. But history erased is history weaponized, and it will have its day, one way or the other, until it is accorded the respect it is due.”—Charles P. Pierce.

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