The Full Belmonte, 10/31/2022
“FIRST ROE, NOW BAKKE — Another landmark Supreme Court decision from the 1970s is likely to fall.
This morning, SCOTUS will hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the use of race in college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
There is little mystery about the outcome.
Previous attempts to overturn the use of affirmative action by colleges have failed. In 2003, Justice SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR, nominated by RONALD REAGAN, provided the decisive vote in Grutter v. Bollinger. In 2016, Justice ANTHONY KENNEDY, another Reagan nominee, did the same in Fisher v. University of Texas. Those cases narrowed the use of race in admissions to one permissible goal: diversity.
But the court has changed radically since 2016, and the six conservative justices have a history of hostility to Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the 1978 opinion that first blessed college affirmative action programs. As the court made clear in Dobbs, if five justices believe that an old case is ‘egregiously wrong,’ 40-plus years of precedent don’t matter.
And Chief Justice JOHN ROBERTS is unlikely to play the role of bridge-builder as he did in the ACA-saving NFIB v. Sebelius , when he was successful, and in Dobbs, when he wasn’t. On rolling back affirmative action, Roberts is the chief hawk on the court.
His two most oft-quoted lines on the issue come from the earliest days of his SCOTUS tenure. ‘It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,’ Roberts wrote in a 2006 gerrymandering case . ‘The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,’ he wrote in a 2007 school desegregration case.
It was in that latter opinion that Roberts best articulated the conservative view of Brown v. Board of Education, which is at the heart of the cases that will be heard today. Brown, he insisted, quoting one of the plaintiff’s lawyers at oral arguments in 1952, concluded that ‘no state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.’
This line has become the legal rallying cry of Students for Fair Admissions, the plaintiff in today’s cases, so expect to hear it more than once if you listen to the live audio stream of the proceedings .
For Harvard and UNC, as Adam Liptak writes in the Times this morning , Brown was not strictly about color-blindness: ‘Brown meant to do away with a racial caste system that subjugated Black students, and that the decision surely allowed efforts to assemble varied student bodies to ensure educational diversity.’
The seemingly pre-ordained opinions in these cases won’t be handed down until the spring, but they will have a profound effect. The legal right’s view that affirmative action discriminates against whites and Asians, as today’s two lawsuits allege, is colliding with the political right’s stoking of a narrative about alleged reverse discrimnation harming white Americans.
Just today, Meridith McGraw reports, it came to light that a group launched by former Trump aide STEPHEN MILLER is running a radio ad alleging that the Biden administration pushes policies designed to damage white people.
‘When did racism against white people become OK?’ the ad begins. ‘JOE BIDEN put white people last in line for Covid relief funds. KAMALA HARRIS said disaster aid should go to non-white citizens first. Liberal politicians block access to medicine based on skin color. Progressive corporations, airlines, universities all openly discriminate against white Americans. Racism is always wrong. The left’s anti-white bigotry must stop.’
It was widely understood that the votes to overturn Roe existed, but the full political impact of the decision was hard to grasp until it was released. With Dobbs, abortion policy returned to the states.
That won’t happen if affirmative action is banned in college admissions. It will be illegal everywhere. Evidence from state-level bans in places like Michigan and California suggest that Black and Latino student populations at top universities would decline significantly.
Bloomberg’s Kelsey Butler and Patricia Hurtado note that’s one reason that ‘[n]early 70 major U.S. companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google, General Electric Co., and JetBlue Airways Corp. warned in a brief to the court that without affirmative action they’ll lose access to ‘a pipeline of highly qualified future workers and business leaders’ — and will struggle to meet diversity hiring goals they’ve set.’
Race-conscious affirmative action with the goal of achieving widespread diversity is deeply ingrained in most elite institutions, not just universities. In her 2003 opinion, O’Connor said that ‘in order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly opened to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.’
Bloomberg columnist NOAH FELDMAN, who teaches law at Harvard, recently noted that it was Bakke, and the Supreme Court’s long history upholding it, that helped mainstream this diversity gospel.
What’s going to happen when SCOTUS rips up its foundation?” Read more at POLITICO
Legal abortions fell 6% post-Roe
“Legal abortions in the U.S. fell 6% in the first two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, The New York Times reports(subscription).
Why it matters: The data — from WeCount, an organization led by the Society of Family Planning — marks the first attempt to count nationwide abortions since the court's decision.
In states that banned or severely restricted the procedure, there were over 8,000 fewer abortions in August than in April — a 95% decrease, WeCount found.
The number of abortions increased by about 11% in states where abortion remained legal.
Illinois had the biggest increase in the number of abortions, with 2,710 more in July and August than in April and May.” Read more at Axios
Midterm elections
“With a little more than a week to go until Election Day, more than 20.7 million pre-election ballots have been cast in 46 states. As of Sunday, Texas, Florida and California have crossed the 2 million ballot threshold, according to data from elections officials. More than 1.6 million ballots have also been cast in Georgia, where Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams faced off Sunday in their second and final gubernatorial debate. Separately, a top US cybersecurity official said there are no ‘specific or credible’ threats to disrupt election infrastructure during this year's midterms, even as the federal government remains concerned about attempts -- both online and in-person -- to interfere in the vote.” Read more at CNN
“Voters in Missouri, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Maryland will vote on whether they want to join D.C. and 19 other states in legalizing recreational marijuana. All but Maryland are among the most conservative states in the country, showing the growing support of the movement across political lines.” Read more at NPR
Who Is the Man Accused of Attacking Nancy Pelosi’s Husband?
Those who have known the suspect describe an individual who seemed to fall into isolation and deeply troubling thoughts.
By Kellen Browning, Alan Feuer, Charlie Savage and Eliza Fawcett
Oct. 30, 2022
“SAN FRANCISCO — A trail of strained relationships. An itinerant life that included a stint living in a storage unit. A personality that was ‘consumed by darkness.’
Accounts from people who know the man accused of the break-in and violent attack Friday on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, described indications of a troubled individual and growing signs of politically fueled hate.
That man, David DePape, 42, remains in custody and will likely face several charges, including attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon, as early as Monday, with an arraignment expected Tuesday, the authorities said. The San Francisco district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, said on Saturday that Mr. DePape had given a statement to the San Francisco Police Department, though she declined to elaborate.
According to law enforcement officials, Mr. DePape broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home in the early morning hours on Friday through a back entrance. He was looking for Ms. Pelosi, who was in Washington, the authorities have said, and yelled, ‘Where is Nancy?’ In a struggle with Mr. Pelosi, 82, over a hammer, Mr. DePape struck Mr. Pelosi with it at least once as the police arrived and apprehended him, the police said. At the house, Mr. DePape had zip ties, a person with knowledge of the investigation said on Sunday.
On Saturday, Ms. Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues that her husband’s condition was continuing to improve and that she thanked them for their support. “Our children, our grandchildren and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our Pop,” she wrote. “We are grateful for the quick response of law enforcement and emergency services, and for the life-saving medical care he is receiving.”
Ms. Jenkins said that Mr. DePape had sustained ‘minor injuries’ and had been treated at a hospital, but it was uncertain on Saturday evening whether he was still receiving medical care.
A precise sequence of the break-in is still emerging, and a portrait of Mr. DePape is only beginning to take shape. People who have known him at various points in his life reveal a shy person who sought to improve the world, but also as someone whose life seemed to drift and whose behavior seemed strange at times, even unhinged.
When Linda Schneider, 65, knew Mr. DePape for a couple of years starting in 2009, she was running an urban farm for low-income communities in the East Bay area. Mr. DePape would help her with her chickens and occasionally house-sit for her, she said.
At the time, Mr. DePape was living out of a storage unit in Berkeley and making hemp bracelets, said Ms. Schneider, who still lives in California. He had been using hard drugs but was trying to straighten his life, she said. She recalled him as being reliable, easygoing and painfully shy.
“He wouldn’t even have a bank account because he was terrified of talking to a teller,” she said.
By 2012, Ms. Schneider said she began receiving “very bizarre” emails from Mr. DePape in which he equated himself with Jesus Christ. She felt the messages were “somewhat dangerous,” she said, and she stopped communicating with him.
“This was a guy who didn’t have a lot of internal strength,” she said. “He’d follow anything a little abnormal in front of him.”
Teresa DePape, who is married to Gene DePape, Mr. DePape’s stepfather, first met David DePape when he was in high school in Powell River, British Columbia. Ms. DePape remembered him as a funny teenager who liked to joke and laugh and play computer games. He had some friends, she said, but not a lot. ‘He was a good kid,’ she said.
Mr. DePape finished high school in Armstrong, another city in British Columbia, but the family had little contact with him after that point, she said.
‘We tried to at first,’ she said. ‘But he never responded, so we stopped.’
Mr. DePape left Canada about 20 years ago, in pursuit of a relationship that brought him to California, as reported by CNN.
Law enforcement officials over the weekend were examining what appeared to be Mr. DePape’s copious online presence, though they declined to comment publicly on his online accounts.
But a blog written by a user who called himself ‘daviddepape’ contains an array of angry and paranoid postings. The blog’s domain was registered to an address in Richmond, Calif., in August, and a resident of that town said that Mr. DePape lived at that address. From August until the day before the attack on Mr. Pelosi, the blog featured a flurry of antisemitic sentiments and concerns about pedophilia, anti-white racism and ‘elite’ control of the internet.
One of the blog posts suggested that there had been no mass gassing of prisoners at Auschwitz, and others were accompanied by malicious and stereotypical images. Another reposted a video lecture defending Adolf Hitler.
In one post, written on Oct. 19, the author urged former President Donald J. Trump to choose Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, as his vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party this month and then made several high-profile campaign appearances with Republicans running for office.
‘Trump you NEEEEEEEED to make Tulsi your VP in 2024,’ the user wrote. ‘Of the ENTIRE democrat presidential candidates in 2020. She was the only democrat candidate who WASN’T running on a platform of being an insane mentally unwell demagogue.’
But mixed in with those posts were others about religion, the occult and images of fairies that the user said he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging system.
Several other posts were consumed with culture war issues and seemed to closely track with current events. One post was about the nearly $1 billion defamation judgment entered this month against Alex Jones, the founder of the conspiracy theory-driven media outlet Infowars.
Still, Ms. Schneider said that she was stunned and angered when she learned that the police had identified Mr. DePape as Mr. Pelosi’s attacker….” Read more at New York Times
“Elon Musk, Twitter's new owner, tweeted a conspiracy theory Sunday about the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Musk, who has 112 million followers on the platform, posted a baseless article about the attack from a website that purports to be a news outlet and wrote, ‘There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.’ He later deleted the tweet, but not before racking up more than 28,000 retweets and 100,000 likes. Musk's post comes amid concerns about how the billionaire will run Twitter and if misinformation and hate will be given a bigger platform on the site. It also comes as concerns are being raised that Musk's takeover could impact the upcoming midterm elections if he makes good on his promise to restore the accounts of users who were previously banned from the platform.” Read more at CNN
Musk wants to take on TikTok
“Elon Musk mused yesterday to his 112 million Twitter followers about his speedy plans for his acquisition — including new video capability to compete with TikTok (above).
He changed his Twitter bio to ‘Chief Twit’ just before taking over last week, and tweeted yesterday about Twitter employees: ‘Tweeps will be twits going forward, as the latter has vastly more gravitas.’
Blue check mark ALERT: News broke yesterday of Musk's apparent plan to charge anywhere from $5 to $20 per month for verified users to keep the blue check marks certifying their Twitter identities.
‘The whole verification process is being revamped right now,’ he tweeted — then retweeted a poll about how much people would pay.
Musk deleted the conspiracy theory he had retweeted about Paul Pelosi.
He didn't explain why. But he posted a screenshot of a New York Times headline reporting he had shared a link from a site known to publish false news.
‘This is fake,’ Musk shot back. ‘I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times!’” Read more at Axios
New York to Pay $26 Million to Men Wrongly Convicted of Killing Malcolm X
Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam spent more than 20 years in prison after the civil rights leader was assassinated in 1965. He had broken with the Nation of Islam.
Oct. 30, 2022
“New York City has agreed to pay $26 million to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of two men whose convictions in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X were thrown out last year after a judge found ‘serious miscarriages of justice,’ according to the city and federal court records.
The two men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, each spent more than 20 years in prison after their hasty arrests and a trial that relied on questionable evidence in one of the most notorious murders of the civil rights era.
Their exonerations last November — Mr. Islam’s was posthumous — came as allegations of racism and discrimination in the criminal justice system were again prompting national protests and political debate.
The throwing out of the men’s convictions came after a 22-month investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, then led by Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and the men’s lawyers, which found that prosecutors, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department had withheld key evidence that probably would have led to acquittals had it been presented to a jury.” Read more at New York Times
End of Great Resignation
Data: Indeed. Chart: Axios Visuals
“Remember the Great Resignation — the COVID era's unprecedented churn in the labor market?
For a while, it seemed like everyone was job-hopping. Well, those days are likely behind us — especially in pandemic-fueled sectors, including tech, Emily Peck writes for Axios Markets.
Why it matters: The red-hot labor market is cooling off. Demand for workers is down sharply from last year, according to new data from the job site Indeed.
What's happening: Tech's woes could be an early indicator of what's to come in the broader labor market, which has stayed strong despite other worrying signs in the economy.
Fewer job openings is a sign of less demand for workers — and an indicator you won't be able to job hop your way to the kind of sky-high pay increases certain professionals scored in 2021.
Zoom out: Lower demand means slowing wage growth. The Employment Cost Index, out Friday, showed wage growth falling in Q3 — though still relatively high.
Fewer workers are quitting their jobs for better prospects, ZipRecruiter's chief economist Julia Pollak said in a note, with a chart titled, ‘The Great Resignation is coming to an end.’
‘Amid increased fears of a possible recession, employees are prioritizing job security over pay,’ she writes.
Reality check: While overall job listings are down 9% on Indeed this year, they're still 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
‘There's still a relative bounty of job openings,’ Bunker said. ‘It's just not as bountiful.’” Read more at Axios
'“Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is returning to center stage after a bruising election that saw him beat Jair Bolsonaro to retake Brazil’s presidency.
He may still have a mountain to climb.
The leftist former union leader, who first came to power two decades ago, took 50.9% of the vote to Bolsonaro’s 49.1% in yesterday’s runoff to set up a third term at the helm of Latin America’s largest economy.
It’s a remarkable outcome for a politician who just three years ago was in jail for corruption, charges later dropped on procedural grounds. Simone Iglesias lays out in this profile how Lula overcame his darkest days to pull off the historic comeback.
Key reading:
Lula Edges Out Bolsonaro to Win the Presidency of Divided Brazil
Jail Term to a Third Term: The Inside Story of Lula’s Comeback
Yet his victory by the narrowest margin in Brazil’s modern history underscores the divisions in society exacerbated by four years of Bolsonaro.
The incumbent didn’t comment on his defeat yesterday. Early trading suggests markets may rally given several Bolsonaro allies and congressional leaders accepted the result, reducing the chances of a contested outcome. Bolsonaro repeatedly clashed with the electoral authorities in the run up to the vote.
More broadly, this is the first time a sitting president has lost a re-election bid in Brazil, illustrating the difficulties incumbents have to retain power in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic that ravaged Latin America, exposing inequalities.
It follows a pattern seen across the region in the past 18 months with Colombia, Chile and Peru electing leftist governments over center-right administrations.
In his victory speech, Lula stressed that his victory means the return of a more active international role, pledging that ‘Brazil is back.’
But with a divided congress, the largest states in opposition hands and little room to maneuver, Lula will have to shore up his administration at home before making a wider impact.
For Lula, the hardest part of his political journey may still lie ahead.” — Juan Pablo Spinetto Read more at Bloomberg
Lula addresses supporters in Sao Paulo after winning the election. Photographer: Tuane Fernandes/Bloomberg
Suspension bridge collapse kills at least 133 in India
By AJIT SOLANKI, KRUTIKA PATHI and SHEIKH SAALIQ
“MORBI, India (AP) — Military teams were searching Monday for people missing after a 143-year-old suspension bridge collapsed into a river Sunday in the western Indian state of Gujarat, sending hundreds plunging into the water and killing at least 133 in one of the country’s worst accidents in years.
As families mourned the dead, attention was turning to why the bridge, built by the British in the late 1800s and touted as an ‘engineering marvel,’ collapsed and who might be responsible.
The local government had awarded a 15-year contract to maintain and manage the bridge to a Morbi-based company, Ajanta Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd., mainly known for making clocks, mosquito racquets and electric bikes.
It reopened the bridge, which spans a wide section of the Machchu river, on Oct. 26. That’s the first day of the Gujarati New Year, which coincides with the Hindu festival season, and the newly reopened attraction drew hundreds of sightseers.” Read more at AP News
“More strikes | Ukraine said Russia conducted a wave of missile attacks across the country today including against critical infrastructure in Kyiv, leaving parts of the capital without electricity and water. The assault came after Moscow accused Ukraine of weekend drone attacks against its Black Sea fleet — claims disputed by Kyiv — and pulled out of a key deal allowing safe passage of Ukrainian grain exports.
Wheat futures surged after Russia quit the agreement seen as critical for easing tight world supplies and controlling global food costs.
The government in Kyiv along with Turkey and the United Nations agreed to have vessels carrying food from Ukrainian ports sail today, pushing back against Russia.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Reality check | Rishi Sunak won an endorsement from financial markets in his first days as UK prime minister, and even some favorable polling numbers after weeks of disastrous ratings for the ruling Conservative Party. His first full week in power may be more challenging. Sunak’s economic policy is set to face scrutiny as the Bank of England delivers what could be its biggest interest-rate hike in more than 30 years, and questions continue to swirl over security breaches by his Home Secretary Suella Braverman.” Read more at Bloomberg
Robust labor markets are defying central bankers’ efforts to tamp down inflation and economists’ predictions that recession is around the corner. A strong job market is good for workers, but it’s bad for inflation, signalling to the world’s policymakers that they can’t ease up on the most aggressive pace of interest rate hikes in decades.
“Trade tactics | The US and its European allies have cooperated on restricting exports to Moscow since President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The Biden administration has now raised the idea of using some of the same information sharing and enforcement coordination to reinforce its own bilateral restrictions on exports to China, sources tell Jorge Valero. The subject came up as European Union and US officials negotiate the agenda for their next high-level trade forum in early December.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, the latest in a series of exchanges ahead of a possible face-to-face meeting between their presidents as soon as the Group of 20 summit in Bali next month.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Challenging times | South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s handling of a deadly crowd surge in Seoul that killed more than 150 people will give him a chance to prove to critics he can lead, or hand his opponents more fodder to paint his administration as incompetent. Yoon convened emergency meetings just hours after the crush occurred late Saturday night in the popular nightlife district of Itaewon, where tens of thousands were celebrating Halloween.
Yoon’s government has launched an investigation into the tragedy, one of the country’s deadliest incidents in years.” Read more at Bloomberg
Forensic investigators at the site of the deadly crowd crush. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
AP Top 25: Tennessee, Ohio St tied at 2, UGA next for Vols
By RALPH D. RUSSO
“Tennessee moved into a tie with Ohio State for No. 2 in The Associated Press college football poll Sunday to set up a 1 vs. 2 matchup next week with top-ranked Georgia.
Georgia-Tennessee will be the 25th regular-season game matching the top two teams in the AP poll, and the third straight involving Southeastern Conference teams. Neither the Bulldogs nor the Volunteers have ever played in a 1-2 game in the regular season.
Georgia remained No. 1 for the fourth straight week, receiving 30 first-place votes and 1,528 points in the AP Top 25 presented by Regions Bank.
The Volunteers moved up a spot, receiving 18 first-place votes and 1,500 points to match Ohio State. The Buckeyes received 15 first-place votes. The last time there was a tie at No. 2 in the AP poll was Nov. 14, 2004, between Auburn and Oklahoma behind No. 1 Southern California.
On Saturday, Tennessee routed Kentucky 44-6 and Ohio State won 44-31 at Penn State.” Read more at AP News
Expedition Finds Cameras Left by Yukon Mountaineers in 1937
Some of the cameras, from a climbing expedition 85 years ago, still had film in them. Conservators are looking to see if any images can be recovered.
Oct. 30, 2022
“The explorers Bradford Washburn and Robert Bates traveled to the remote Yukon wilderness in 1937 to climb Mount Lucania, but the month of bad weather that preceded their trip had left the Walsh glacier, the starting point of their expedition, covered in ‘fathomless’ slush and ‘cut to ribbons by dozens of new crevasses,’ Mr. Washburn wrote in The Alpine Journal.
The poor conditions made it impossible to get a flight off the glacier after their climb, so the men hiked more than 100 miles to safety, shedding supplies that would have been too heavy to carry.
Nestled in the cache they left behind were cameras that Mr. Washburn, a renowned photographer, had planned to retrieve a year later but never did.
Instead, a seven-person expedition team recovered the cameras in August, 85 years later and more than 12 miles from where they had been left. The team of explorers announced their discovery on Thursday.
The explorers found a portion of one of Mr. Washburn’s aerial shutter cameras, a Fairchild F-8. They also recovered two motion picture cameras with the film loaded, a DeVry “Lunchbox” camera model and a Bell & Howell Eyemo 71, as well as mountaineering equipment.
Conservators at Parks Canada, which oversees national parks in Canada, are treating the cameras to see if any images can be recovered.
The idea to recover the cameras came from Griffin Post, a professional skier who had learned about the cache while reading a 2002 book about the explorers’ harrowing journey, “Escape from Lucania” by David Roberts.
He read Mr. Washburn’s journals, enlisted the help of scientists and this year led two expeditions to the glacier in Kluane National Park and Reserve in the northwest corner of Canada in search of the cameras.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Gerald Stern was a wistful poet who won a National Book Award. He died at 97.” Read more at New York Times