It’s My Party And I’ll Try If I Want To
July 12, 2022
Some Good News
- ‘A ‘Wow’ moment’: US renewable energy hit record 28% in April. What’s driving the change? (USA Today)
- An Iowa couple bought back their small town’s newspaper from media giant Gannett (NPR)
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft
Biden In Plain Sight
President Biden is entertaining any possible solution to the Supreme Court’s anti-abortion ruling, including declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access. Of course, the only real solution is congressional action, but that won’t happen as long as Senate Democrats lack a filibuster-proof majority of 60. And they won’t have that unless voters choose more representatives who support a person’s right to control her own reproductive health.
Biden was enjoying a bike ride Sunday near his family’s Delaware beach house when he stopped to talk to reporters. He repeated for the umpteenth time that he lacks the power to force the dozen-plus states with strict restrictions or outright bans on abortion to allow the procedure. “I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said patiently. Congress would have to codify that right, and for that to have a better chance, voters need to elect more lawmakers who support abortion access. Unfortunately, the president – and by extension his party – has some really low approval ratings, meaning something cataclysmic needs to happen in November to change what historically happens in midterm elections: the party in power loses seats in Congress.
Abortion bans aren’t just bad for those who can get pregnant – they’re potentially bad for business. Republican-led, business-friendly states like Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia have offered reduced taxes and regulations as incentives to lure companies to relocate. Social policy wasn’t a big issue – until last month’s rollback of reproductive rights. No major announcements have been made yet about companies canceling expansions or relocating offices out of jurisdictions where abortion is now banned. But some of America’s biggest businesses, including JPMorgan Chase, AT&T, and the Walt Disney Company have said they plan to help employees who need abortion access but can’t obtain it where they live. States like Texas might be so well-established as business havens that they can shrug off concerns about abortion rights and talent recruitment. But states like Arkansas and Oklahoma that lack long-standing status as economic powerhouses could have a harder time. A recent Pew survey found over 3 in 5 people with advanced degrees disapproved of the SCOTUS ruling, as did almost 70% of people under 30. Experts say states imposing rigid abortion bans are all but certain to suffer economically. (CBS News, NYT ($), FiveThirtyEight, Pew Research)
It’s My Party And I’ll Try If I Want To
- So far, 11 candidates have thrown their hats in the ring to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson as leader of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. The 1922 committee of Conservative members of parliament (MPs) – which organizes the leadership contest – said hopefuls would need at least 20 nominations from the party’s 358 lawmakers to even proceed to the first round of votes on Wednesday.
- Anyone receiving less than 30 votes will be eliminated before another vote follows on Thursday. Nearly all the contenders have promised extensive business or personal tax cuts to win their colleagues’ support. The field will be whittled down to a final two candidates by lawmakers before a mail-in ballot of the Conservative Party’s members – who number fewer than 200,000 – takes place over the summer.
- At present, former defense minister Penny Mordaunt is leading the pack, followed by equalities minister Kemi Badenoch and Rishi Sunak, whose resignation as finance minister helped bring down Johnson. The winner will be announced on September 5. (Reuters)
Everybody France Now
- In June, Russia reduced the flow of natural gas that it ships through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline into western Europe to 40% of capacity. Politicians and industry worry there will be further supply constraints linked to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
- To avoid a potential disruption in supply, France’s energy-intensive companies are speeding up contingency plans and converting their gas boilers to run on oil. Several of the top executives who gathered over the weekend at a business and economics conference in southern France said they were preparing for possible blackouts. The head of Michelin, one of the world’s leading tire manufacturers, said “we’ve converted our boilers, so they’re capable of running on gas or oil, and we can even switch to coal if we need to.”
- Industries across Europe have had to resort to more polluting fuel than gas as they tackle the cost to the economy of business disruption and surging energy prices. Unfortunately, that means longer-term targets to switch to zero-carbon fuel are delayed. (Reuters)
Additional World News
- Taiwan vice president makes rare Japan visit to pay respects to Abe (Reuters)
- Last year, Cubans took to the streets. Now they’re fleeing the island. (WaPo, $)
- Global population to hit 8 billion, but growth slows: UN (Al Jazeera)
- Gas pipeline shutdown starts amid German suspicion of Russia (ABC)
- Pacific Islands Forum: Ardern says total membership ‘critical’ as PIF shaken by Kiribati’s exit (Guardian)
- Exclusive: US weighs possible resumption of offensive arms sales to Saudis (Reuters)
- Lithuania widens curbs on Kaliningrad trade despite Russian warning (Reuters)
The Last Laugh
- To Elon Musk, buying – or not buying – Twitter is quite humorous. Musk disclosed late Friday he was pulling out of his agreement to buy the social media platform, citing a lack of information about the number of Twitter users made up of bots. His lawyer said that placed Twitter “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the original agreement. Twitter responded by saying it would “pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.”
- Early Monday, Musk tweeted four images of himself laughing next to captions that read: “They said I couldn’t buy Twitter. Then they wouldn’t disclose bot information. Now they want to force me to buy Twitter in court. Now they have to disclose bot information in court.” That was followed by a picture of actor Chuck Norris playing chess with a single pawn on his side of the board, a complete set of pieces on the other side, and Musk tweeting, “Chuckmate.”
- Twitter investors aren’t laughing. Shares of Twitter stock were down 5% in pre-market trading Monday; they were already well off April’s agreed-upon $54.20-a-share purchase price, closing Friday at $36.81. (CNN)
Go v. Stay
- The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has some young women rethinking their choices of where to go to college. Oberlin College in Ohio, with its excellent academic and music programs, seemed like a perfect fit for a California high school student who plays flute and piano and hopes to eventually study medicine or law. But 16-year-old Nina Huang crossed the college off her application list after Ohio enacted a near-total ban on abortion last month. “I don’t want to go to school in a state where there is an abortion ban,” she explained.
- A counselor with Top Tier Admissions in Massachusetts said students have told her they’re taking some top schools in Texas, Florida, and Tennessee off their application lists due to their restrictive abortion laws. But another counselor said even though several students raised similar concerns about attending college in North Carolina after it passed a law in 2016 restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use, they still chose to attend highly selective Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Reuters)
Additional USA News
- Investigative report into the Uvalde elementary school shooting could be released within 10 days (CNN)
- House January 6 committee to focus on Trump’s tweet at extremist group hearing (Guardian)
- A swimmer was infected with a brain-eating amoeba after visiting an Iowa beach (CNN)
- Fire crews use proactive measures to protect Yosemite’s renowned sequoias as blaze grows (CNN)
- Jobs report fuels White House optimism that recession will be averted (WaPo, $)
- House GOP marches into deeper blue terrain as Dem prospects fade (Politico)
- Biden’s Approval Hits 33 Percent; Democrats Want 2024 Options, Poll Shows (NYT, $)
Eat, Drink, And Be Merry
- And finally, a tidbit from the Duh Files. In one of the first studies to explore how hunger affects emotions as people go about their daily lives, psychologists have found that the hungrier people felt, the angrier they became. In other words, “hanger” or being “hangry” is a real thing.
- The study came about after Professor Viren Swami’s wife kept telling him he was “hangry” and should do something about it. Swami, a social psychologist, began wondering if being hangry was a real condition. He decided to perform an experiment on how hunger affects everyday emotions. He recruited 64 volunteers ages 18 to 60 and asked them to record both their hunger levels and emotions on a smartphone app, five times a day for three weeks. The research showed hunger was indeed associated with stronger feelings of anger and irritability and lower levels of pleasure. Said differently, we’re not happy when we’re hungry.
- Swami believes the study raises a serious point about children who go to school hungry – they’re less likely to learn effectively and more likely to have behavioral problems, so ensuring students are properly fed should be a priority. For adults who find their social skills plummeting after skipping lunch, the advice is what you might suspect: Just don’t go hungry. Stay calm and eat a sandwich. (Guardian)
Additional Reads
- Three runners are gored in a tense 5th Pamplona bull run (NPR)
- Faroe Islands to limit controversial dolphin hunt quota to 500 (Al Jazeera)
- Viral video shows sea lions chase away too-close beachgoers in Southern California (NBC)
- Anarchy in paradise: how a fringe community descended into darkness (Guardian)
- Search for the universe’s mysterious dark matter begins a mile underground in South Dakota (USA Today)
- EXPLAINER: When is Manhattanhenge? Where can you see it? (AP)
- One in Six Calls to National Suicide Prevention Lifeline End Without Reaching a Counselor (WSJ, $)