The Full Belmonte, 12/28/2022
US Supreme Court keeps asylum limits in place for now
By REBECCA SANTANA and ELLIOT SPAGAT
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is keeping pandemic-era limits on asylum in place for now, dashing hopes of migrants who have been fleeing violence and inequality in Latin America and elsewhere to reach the United States.
Tuesday’s ruling preserves a major Trump-era policy that was scheduled to expire under a judge’s order on Dec. 21. The case will be argued in February and a stay imposed last week by Chief Justice John Roberts will remain in place until the justices make a decision.
The limits, often known as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law, were put in place under then-President Donald Trump at the beginning of the pandemic, but unwinding it has taken a torturous route through the courts. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attempted to end the policy in April 2022, but a federal judge in Louisiana sided with 19 Republican-led states in May to order it kept in place. Another federal judge in Washington said in November that Title 42 must end, sending the dispute to the Supreme Court. Officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
Immigration advocates sued to end the policy, saying it goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. They’ve also argued that the policy is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve.
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision comes as thousands of migrants have gathered on the Mexican side of the border, filling shelters and worrying advocates who are scrambling to figure out how to care for them….” Read more at AP News
Architect of plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer to face sentence
By JOEY CAPPELLETTI
“GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — Prosecutors are recommending a life prison sentence for a co-leader of the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s governor, reminding a judge that social media posts and secretly recorded conversations revealed a chilling desire to spark a ‘reign of terror i’n 2020.
Barry Croft Jr. was due in federal court Wednesday, a day after key ally Adam Fox was sentenced to 16 years in prison after prosecutors also recommended a life sentence for his role in a scheme to snatch Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and galvanize their confederates toward civil war in other states.
The conspirators were furious over tough COVID-19 restrictions that Whitmer and officials in other states had put in place during the early months of the pandemic, as well as perceived threats to gun ownership….” Read more at AP News
Military police enforce driving ban in snow-stricken Buffalo
By CAROLYN THOMPSON and JENNIFER PELTZ
“BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — State and military police were sent Tuesday to keep people off Buffalo’s snow-choked roads, and officials kept counting fatalities three days after western New York’s deadliest storm in at least two generations.
Even as suburban roads and most major highways in the area reopened, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz warned that police would be stationed at entrances to Buffalo and at major intersections because some drivers were flouting a ban on driving within New York’s second-most populous city.
More than 30 people are reported to have died in the region, officials said, including seven storm-related deaths announced Tuesday by Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown’s office. The toll surpasses that of the historic Blizzard of 1977, blamed for killing as many as 29 people in an area known for harsh winter weather….” Read more at AP News
Southwest Airlines slammed by another day of cancellations
“Southwest Airlines was responsible for the bulk of flight cancellations and delays again on Tuesday, signaling that the airline's recent troubles aren't parking at the gate just yet.
The latest: Southwest accounted for 2,599 of the 3,050 canceled U.S. flights by 4 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to FlightAware.” Read more at Axios
Trump's taxes
“Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns will be released Friday morning,a source told CNN. The returns will be placed into the congressional record that day during a House pro forma session. The highly anticipated release comes after the panel asserted last week that the IRS failed to properly auditTrump’s taxes while he was in office. The committee released a report that detailed six years’ worth of his tax returns, including his claims of massive annual losses that significantly reduced his tax burden. Chairman Richard Neal and fellow Democrats have said that the records they obtained showed that the presidential audit program failed to work as intended. Neal charged Trump’s returns were only subjected to the mandatory audit once, in 2019, after Democrats inquired.” Read more at CNN
U.S. Military Works to Enlist Recruits Who Have Faced Behavioral Challenges
The Pentagon accepts people previously diagnosed with conditions including ADHD if enough time has passed
The Pentagon said it plans to assess the effectiveness of its new program in six months’ time so that it has a year of data to study.PHOTO: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
“The Defense Department has for the first time allowed 700 recruits who had been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder to join the military without a waiver under revamped rules that could be a pathway for those who have confronted mental-health or other developmental conditions.
In June, the military, which has been facing major recruiting challenges, said that those who had suffered from 38 different medical conditions could serve as long as they hadn’t demonstrated symptoms nor required medication for treatment for three, five and seven years, depending on the condition.
Among the most notable changes is one for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, allowing those previously diagnosed with the condition, but who haven’t suffered from or been treated with medication for it over the previous three years, to join without a medical waiver. The decision to put the equivalent of an expiration date on a previous developmental condition could be a model for similar changes around those treated for mental-health conditions, defense officials said.
The Pentagon said it plans to assess the effectiveness of its new program in six months’ time so that it has a year of data to study. In addition to department-wide policies, each service sets its own specific standards….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
FDA, Concerned About Safety, Explores Regulating CBD in Foods, Supplements
Agency, which is studying the effects of cannabis-derived ingredients, aims to reveal its oversight plans in the coming months
Cannabis plants contain dozens of cannabinoid chemicals, including cannabidiol, or CBD.PHOTO: MARY ALTAFFER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“The Food and Drug Administration is studying whether legal cannabis is safe in food or supplements and plans to make recommendations for how to regulate the growing number of cannabis-derived products in the coming months, agency officials said.
‘Given what we know about the safety of CBD so far, it raises concerns for FDA about whether these existing regulatory pathways for food and dietary supplements are appropriate for this substance,’ said FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Janet Woodcock, who has led the agency’s efforts looking at cannabis regulation.
Patrick Cournoyer, who heads the FDA office developing the agency’s cannabis strategy, said the agency wants to know whether CBD can be safely eaten every day for a long period or during pregnancy, for example. He pointed to concerns about future fertility.
Congress legalized hemp and its resulting products in 2018 but left them to the FDA to regulate. Since then, makers of products such as CBD oil have operated without specific federal rules guiding their manufacture or marketing, while some states have moved ahead with their own sets of rules.
Large companies have held off investing in the space as they wait for the agency to decide whether any cannabis-derived products can be treated as food or supplements, rather than as drugs. Yet cannabis-derived products have still proliferated: A 2021 report by the FDA said the $4.6 billion market was expected to quadruple by 2026.
As of now, the agency says CBD and similar chemicals cannot be added to foods or marketed as supplements. If companies make therapeutic claims about their products, they must prove with clinical trials that they meet the agency’s standard for new drugs.
Cannabis plants contain dozens of cannabinoid chemicals, including cannabidiol, or CBD. Another main chemical, known as THC, causes the high associated with marijuana use. Unlike THC, CBD isn’t psychoactive. Some researchers and companies say it can ease pain.
Research on cannabinoids is in early stages, according to the National Institutes of Health, which is funding studies exploring how the substance works in the body and its potential to relieve pain. Some evidence suggests CBD may be harmful to some people, the NIH says.
The FDA has approved a drug named Epidiolex containing CBD for the treatment of certain types of epilepsy in patients 2 years of age and older. When that drug was being tested, some people taking it had sleeplessness or diarrhea, while others had liver problems that forced them to stop taking it, according to the NIH….
The FDA regulates medicines, medical devices, dietary supplements and food, such as infant formula. The agency in recent years began overseeing the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products.
As drinks, snacks and other products containing cannabis have spread, many companies and lawyers have been awaiting the agency’s direction before developing their own offerings….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Most of Jackson, Miss., has been without water since Christmas Eve.
“Why? A leak in the system, which officials are struggling to find. It has left most people in the state capital without access or with orders to boil their water.
It’s part of an ongoing problem: Federal officials say city leaders have long mismanaged the utility, leading to a collapse of the system in early 2021 and more issues this summer.” Read more at Washington Post
Pandemic Learning Loss Could Cost Students $70,000 in Lifetime Earnings
Study by Stanford University economist projects the losses could total $28 trillion over the rest of this century
Students are taking longer to learn concepts this year, require more tutoring and struggle to engage in group activities, according to a new study by a Stanford economist.PHOTO: NAM Y. HUH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ben Chapman and Douglas Belkin
“Learning loss could shave $70,000 off the lifetime earnings of children who were in school during the pandemic, according to a new study by a Stanford economist.
The sobering forecast is based on an analysis of the sharp declines in the scores of eighth-graders on national math tests taken between 2019 and 2022.
If the learning losses aren’t recovered, K-12 students on average will grow into less educated, lower-skilled and less productive adults and will earn 5.6% less over the course of their lives than students educated just before the pandemic, said Eric A. Hanushek, a Stanford University economist who specializes in education. He said the losses could total $28 trillion over the rest of this century.
‘The economic costs of the learning losses will swamp business cycle losses,’ said Dr. Hanushek.
Scores on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, fell across the board. Dr. Hanushek’s analysis is based on eighth grade math test scores that fell an average of eight points from 2019, before the pandemic. That is the largest drop ever recorded on the 32-year-old exam and translates to between 0.6 and 0.8 years of missed school, according to Dr. Hanushek.
‘The economic costs of the learning losses will swamp business cycle losses.’
— Eric A. Hanushek, Stanford University economist
Students in Oklahoma, Delaware and West Virginia fared among the worst, with declines of about 12 points. Students in Idaho, Alabama and Alaska showed some of the smallest declines—four points—and Utah didn’t register a statistically significant decline.
Those declines could translate into lifetime income loss of between 3% and 9% depending on the state, Dr. Hanushek said.
Dr. Hanushek’s analysis echoes a study released in October by researchers from Harvard and Dartmouth Universities, which estimated that if the learning loss isn’t reversed, it would equate to a 1.6% drop in lifetime earnings for the average K-12 student.
That study also found learning loss leads to lower high school graduation rates and college enrollment as well as higher teen motherhood, arrests and incarceration….” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Vatican says health of retired pope Benedict XVI ‘worsening’
By FRANCES D'EMILIO
“VATICAN CITY (AP) — The health of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has worsened due to his age, and doctors are constantly monitoring the frail 95-year-old’s condition, the Vatican said Wednesday.
Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said Pope Francis, who asked the faithful earlier Wednesday to pray for Benedict, went to visit his predecessor in the monastery on Vatican grounds where the retired pontiff has lived since retiring in February 2013.
‘Regarding the health conditions of the emeritus pope, for whom Pope Francis asked for prayers at the end of his general audience this morning, I can confirm that in the last hours, a worsening due to advanced age has happened,’ Bruni said in a written statement.
‘The situation at the moment remains under control, constantly monitored by doctors, accordin’g to the statement.
At the end of his customary Wednesday audience with the public in a Vatican auditorium, Francis departed from his prepared remarks to say that Benedict is ‘very sick’ and asked the faithful to pray for the retired pontiff….” Read more at AP News
Taiwan extends mandatory military service as tensions with China persist
“Taiwan will extend and reform its period of mandatory military service to one year as the country continues to contend with heightened tensions with China, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced at a press conference Tuesday.
Why it matters: Taiwan's current four-month mandatory military service program is no longer sufficient to meet the country's combat readiness ‘in terms of quantity and quality of training,’ Tsai said.
Tsai called the move an ‘incredibly difficult decision’ but emphasized that it was necessary for the country's national security and ‘democratic way of life.’
State of play: Starting in 2024, the military service will be extended to one year, with the change applying to all men born after Jan. 1, 2005.
The salary of draftees will also be quadrupled, from roughly $195 to more than $650 per month, per CNN.
Changes will also be made to make the program more rigorous, including training with new weapons such as javelin missiles and increasing the amount of live ammunition training, Tsai said.
Military service is currently optional for women in Taiwan, per the Washington Post.
What they're saying: ‘Not only in Europe, but also in Asia, China's expansion continues to impact the international order, threatens regional peace and stability, and affects cross-strait relations,’ Tsai said.
‘No one wants war, neither the government and people of Taiwan nor the international community,’ she added.
‘Peace will not fall from the sky,’ Tsai said, adding that ‘only by preparing for war can we avoid war, and only by being able to fight can we stop war.’
The big picture: Tensions between China and Taiwan have been rife in 2022. After outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, China responded with live-fire drills near Taiwan.
Tsai's announcement came days after China's military deployed dozens of planes across the median line of the Taiwan Strait.
The U.S. has been urging Taiwan to bulk up its defense capabilities for years, per the Financial Times.
‘We welcome Taiwan’s recent announcement on conscription reform, which underscores Taiwan’s commitment to self-defense and strengthens deterrence,’ read a statement Tuesday from the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy.” Read more at Axios
The battle for Kyiv revisited: the litany of mistakes that cost Russia a quick win
Moscow completely misjudged Ukraine, issuing some invading soldiers with parade dress to march down Kyiv’s main street
“Six days before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, a small group of western intelligence officers were briefing on the Russian military plan. On a quiet table, in an unfashionable chain restaurant in London, an astonishing strategy was recounted: a blitzkrieg to surround Kyiv and Ukraine’s other big cities, followed by a “kill list” operation run by Russian FSB intelligence to eliminate Ukraine’s national and local leaders.
Western intelligence was certain of the Kremlin’s intentions. But many of the Russian soldiers about to start the biggest war in Europe since the second world war had no clear idea what was to come. Bored troops, nominally on exercises in Khoyniki, Belarus, 30 miles north of Ukraine, were selling their diesel fuel in the week before the invasion and passing the time by drinking.
Russia had built up troops on the Ukrainian border since March 2021, but it was not until autumn that the US and the UK became sure of Putin’s invasion plan. Soon after, briefings began seeping out to western media. Warnings were passed to Ukraine’s sometimes sceptical leaders of the key part of the plan: a direct attack from Belarus aimed at Kyiv through Chornobyl, still closed off after the 1986 disaster, supported by the seizure of the Hostomel military airbase, north-west of the capital, which would allow Russia to drop in troops and supplies to surround and capture Kyiv.
It is well reported that the CIA director, Bill Burns, met Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in January to warn him of Russian intentions towards Hostomel, which, if held, could be used as a bridgehead to airlift in thousands of troops to take Kyiv. But it is understood that was just one of several of pieces of detailed intelligence passed on by the west, the start of a period of strategic cooperation that helped Ukraine to marshal its defences for the most important battle of the war so far.
At the same time, Russia’s initial plan was so poorly organised and communicated that it proved easy to frustrate. While many troops massing at the border had little of idea of the invasion strategy, others, particularly in more elite units, were told to seize Kyiv within as little as half a day. Soldiers were, in some cases, issued with parade dress so they could march down Khreshchatyk, Kyiv’s main street, in three days after the attack, in the mistaken belief they were conducting little more than a policing operation against a docile population.
Russia had launched its invasion a day earlier, and control of the capital was everything. As Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, remembers, many in the west, as well as the Kremlin, thought Ukraine would collapse quickly – “that during 72 hours, Kyiv will fall down”. For all the intelligence help, Ukraine’s forces had been lightly armed by the west, with US Javelin and UK NLAW anti-tank weapons designed for a guerrilla campaign against an occupying force. Russia had more than 150,000 troops in its invasion force, similar to Ukraine’s total army, but a larger supply of tanks, and superior air and missile power to strike targets from the air.
“I saw personally a secret order from Russian commanders to their air assault troops that they have to control the government quarter … during 12 hours,” said Reznikov earlier this month. The order had been retrieved from a dead body, he added, probably the victim of days of fighting at Hostomel.
The strategic airbase, 15 miles north-west of the capital, was captured on 25 February by Russian paratroopers, landing in two dramatic waves of 10 helicopters each. But a lack of air support meant that Ukraine’s nearby ground defences were largely intact, and so were able to prevent hundreds of Russian reinforcements from landing.
It was a decisive element in the battle for the city, but it was also close run, not least because Kyiv had kept most of its best forces – 10 brigades of troops – in the east, defending the Donbas. Andrii Antonyshchak, a former MP and colonel of the National Guard of Ukraine, who took part in the battle of Kyiv, said the defence had first to fall to a small deployment of non-combat national guardsmen.
“I also want to emphasise the feat of our Hostomel brigade, 150 people, who were not fighters. There had been a rotation, and those that were combat-ready had been sent to the east,” the commander said. Had the guards and their reinforcements not acted to stop transport planes landing, Antonyshchak added, “the road to Kyiv would have been open”.
Russia was failing to make its military advantages count, showing that it did not understand what it was up against. George Barros, a Russia expert at the US Institute for the Study of War, said: “Russia did not conduct a full-fledged air and missile campaign to destroy Ukrainian command and control elements and to strike concentrations of conventional forces. Their initial air campaign only lasted seven hours when, to be effective, it should have lasted 72 hours.” It focused largely on static military targets, reflecting a lack of real-time intelligence and, Barros says, a belief that “the Ukrainians would not put up much of a fight”.
No concerted attempt was made to bomb the president’s official residence the Mariinsky Palace, or other government buildings in Kyiv. Instead, there were special forces raids aimed at capturing or killing Volodymyr Zelenskiy, similar in approach to the eye-catching and ultimately over-confident assault on Hostomel. Two months later, the president told Time magazine he had been warned that Russian strike teams had parachuted into Kyiv to kill or capture him and his family.
As night fell on the first day of war, gunfights broke out around the government quarter, with Russian forces making two attempts to break in. Assault rifles and bulletproof vests were brought for Zelenskiy and his aides, in chaotic scenes. “It was an absolute madhouse,” Oleksiy Arestovych, one of the president’s highest-profile advisers told the US magazine. “Automatics for everyone.” Memorably, Zelenskiy refused a US offer to leave – “I need ammunition, not a ride” – and as dark fell on 25 February, he released a handheld video confirming he and Ukraine’s leadership were alive. “We’re here,” they said.
Zelenskiy had been criticised for being late to respond to the Russian buildup and western warnings. Ukraine’s military reserves had only been called up the day before the invasion, 23 February. The president was “not responsible enough and attentive enough with the information received from the UK intelligence,” complained one senior Ukrainian MP. But, by contrast, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, had simply fled Kabul as a small column of Taliban fighters approached in the summer of 2021. By staying and fighting, Zelenskiy gave Ukraine a point to rally around.
The task of attacking Kyiv fell to Col Gen Alexander Chaiko and forces from Russia’s Eastern Military District, traditionally “the least capable part of the Russian military”, according to Barros. While Russian invaders in the south and east adopted more conventional military battle plans suitable for war fighting, a recently released paper by the Rusi thinktank described the forces bearing down on Kyiv from Belarus marching “in administrative column by road” for speed, expecting to file into an already pacified city.
With Ukraine’s best forces in the east, Russia at one point had an astonishing 12 to 1 advantage in troop numbers north of Kyiv, according to Rusi. But the Russians, whose tanks and trucks were painted with the letter V, could not make weight of numbers count. Meanwhile, the task of the defending the capital fell to three Ukrainian brigades of which two, critically, were artillery at a time when Kyiv’s forces could roughly match Russian heavy guns before its stocks ran out.
Although there was no shortage of publicity – accompanied by videos – of Ukrainians successfully knocking out tanks with Javelins and NLAWs, Rusi’s assessment is now that there were nowhere near enough of these to make a difference on the battlefield. Instead, the heavy guns were decisive. “Despite the prominence of anti-tank guided weapons in the public narrative, Ukraine blunted Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv using massed fires from two artillery brigades,” the thinktank concludes.
Three days into the war, the most advanced Russian forces were halted between Bucha and Irpin, 13 miles north-west of the capital, leaving behind a trail of twisted, smouldering wreckage, described by one of the first reporters to visit as a “Russian Death Valley”. The invaders were never to advance further. Instead, they were left lined up in a column snaking back to the Belarus border that became 40 miles long, an increasingly easy target for Ukrainian counterattackers, who were able to create bottlenecks by destroying more and more Russian armoured vehicles.
Battered by artillery, ambushed from the ground – and even for a few days bombed from the above by what was left of Ukraine’s small air force – it became clear that the column aimed at Kyiv was sustaining too many losses. Few reinforcements were available, as Russia’s overall invasion was spread out across Ukraine, from Kherson to Kharkiv. It was inevitable the attack on Kyiv would have to be abandoned – and after 35 days it was, meaning that whatever happened next, Ukraine’s existential survival was guaranteed.
The attackers had failed because Putin and the Kremlin had comprehensively misjudged the situation, and their opponents. “The way the Russians designed their campaign and the key planning assumptions they made fundamentally undermined their chances of success on the battlefield,” said Barros. It was not, sadly, the end of the war, but it was the end of the beginning.” Read more at The Guardian
After presidency, unclear fate for Brazil’s brash Bolsonaro
By CARLA BRIDI
“BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Jair Bolsonaro told supporters that the future could only bring him three possibilities: arrest, death or a second term as Brazil’s president.
None of those outcomes came to pass. And his Oct. 30 loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva set off two months of relative silence for the self-styled standard-bearer of the Brazilian conservative movement.
Bolsonaro’s oft-cited motto is ‘God, Family, Country,’ and as president he handed more power to the armed forces and loosened gun restrictions. Many of Bolsonaro’s far-right supporters remain in his thrall and have camped outside military buildings, pleading futilely for army intervention that would keep the president in power.
But Bolsonaro authorized his chief-of-staff to preside over the transition process, and moving trucks have started showing up at the presidential palace and residence. Personal items were spotted being removed, especially art given as gifts by supporters – including life-size wooden sculptures of Bolsonaro and a motorcycle.
A seven-term fringe lawmaker before winning his presidential campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro has discussed holding a salaried position in his Liberal Party, a party executive involved in discussions told The Associated Press, asking not to be identified because plans haven’t been announced.
Bolsonaro addressed backers in the capital, Brasilia, once after he lost the vote, saying briefly that the armed forces were under his control. A second time, he stood in silence as backers prayed for him.
Some supporters insist that Bolsonaro would not let them down by giving up the fight but others have started to decamp from important sites. According to Bolsonaro’s official daily agenda, he worked just over an hour each day from the election until Dec. 23.
The Liberal Party will be the biggest party in both the Lower House and Senate. It has declared its opposition to Lula’s incoming government and Bolsonaro is expected to lead the effort within the party, the party executive said.
But many of the Liberal Party’s members are neither fully loyal to Bolsonaro nor ideologically aligned with him, and they will have incentives to work with the new administration, said Guilherme Casarões, political analyst and professor at Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. The Liberal Party is considered centrist and is known for making deals with the sitting government….” Read more at AP News
Mickey’s Copyright Adventure: Early Disney Creation Will Soon Be Public Property
The version of the iconic character from “Steamboat Willie” will enter the public domain in 2024. But those trying to take advantage could end up in a legal mousetrap.
“LOS ANGELES — There is nothing soft and cuddly about the way Disney protects the characters it brings to life.
This is a company that once forced a Florida day care center to remove an unauthorized Minnie Mouse mural. In 2006, Disney told a stonemason that carving Winnie the Pooh into a child’s gravestone would violate its copyright. The company pushed so hard for an extension of copyright protections in 1998 that the result was derisively nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
For the first time, however, one of Disney’s marquee characters — Mickey himself — is set to enter the public domain. “Steamboat Willie,” the 1928 short film that introduced Mickey to the world, will lose copyright protection in the United States and a few other countries at the end of next year, prompting fans, copyright experts and potential Mickey grabbers to wonder: How is the notoriously litigious Disney going to respond?
“I’m seeing in Reddit forums and on Twitter where people — creative types — are getting excited about the possibilities, that somehow it’s going to be open season on Mickey,” said Aaron J. Moss, a partner at Greenberg Glusker in Los Angeles who specializes in copyright and trademark law. “But that is a misunderstanding of what is happening with the copyright.”
The matter is more complicated than it appears, and those who try to capitalize on the expiring “Steamboat Willie” copyright could easily end up in a legal mousetrap. “The question is where Disney tries to draw the line on enforcement,” Mr. Moss said, “and if courts get involved to draw that line judicially.”
Only one copyright is expiring. It covers the original version of Mickey Mouse as seen in “Steamboat Willie,” an eight-minute short with little plot. This nonspeaking Mickey has a rat-like nose, rudimentary eyes (no pupils) and a long tail. He can be naughty. In one “Steamboat Willie” scene, he torments a cat. In another, he uses a terrified goose as a trombone.
Later versions of the character remain protected by copyrights, including the sweeter, rounder Mickey with red shorts and white gloves most familiar to audiences today. They will enter the public domain at different points over the coming decades.
“Disney has regularly modernized the character, not necessarily as a program of copyright management, at least initially, but to keep up with the times,” said Jane C. Ginsburg, an authority on intellectual property law who teaches at Columbia University.
The expiration of the “Steamboat Willie” copyright means that the black-and-white short can be shown without Disney’s permission and even resold by third parties. (There may not be much sales value left, however. Disney posted it for free on YouTube years ago.) It also means that anyone can make use of the film and the original Mickey to further expression — to create new stories and artwork.
Winnie the Pooh, another Disney property, offers a window into what could happen.
This year, the 1926 children’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh,” by A.A. Milne, came into the public domain. An upstart filmmaker has since made a low-budget, live-action slasher film called “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” in which the pudgy yellow bear turns feral. In one scene, Pooh and his friend Piglet use chloroform to incapacitate a bikini-clad woman in a hot tub and then drive a car over her head.
Disney has no copyright recourse, as long as the filmmaker adheres to the 1926 material and does not use any elements that came later. (Pooh’s recognizable red shirt, for instance, was added in 1930.) Fathom Events will give “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” directed by Rhys Waterfield, a one-day theatrical release in the United States on Feb. 15.
Here is where it gets tricky: Disney also holds trademarks on its characters, including the “Steamboat Willie” version of Mickey Mouse, and trademarks never expire as long as companies keep submitting the proper paperwork. A copyright covers a specific creation (unauthorized copying), but trademarks are designed to protect against consumer confusion — to provide consumers assurance about the source and quality of a creation.
Boiled down, any public domain use of the original Mickey cannot be perceived as coming from Disney, Ms. Ginsburg explained. This protection is strong, she added, because the character, even in his early form, has such close association with the company. People glance at those ears and smile and “automatically associate it with Disney,” she said.
In 2007, Walt Disney Animation Studios redesigned its logo to incorporate the “Steamboat Willie” mouse. It has appeared before every movie the unit has released since, including “Frozen” and “Encanto,” deepening the old character’s association with the company. (The logo is also protected by a trademark.) In addition, Disney sells “Steamboat Willie” merchandise, including socks, backpacks, mugs, stickers, shirts and collectibles.
“Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” most likely does not run afoul of Disney’s trademarks because “no reasonable person would ever believe that Disney would authorize that kind of story,” Mr. Moss said. Pooh’s face is also slightly distorted in the film.
“Ever since Mickey Mouse’s first appearance in the 1928 short film ‘Steamboat Willie,’ people have associated the character with Disney’s stories, experiences and authentic products,” Disney said in a statement. “That will not change when the copyright in the ‘Steamboat Willie’ film expires.”
It added, “We will, of course, continue to protect our rights in the more modern versions of Mickey Mouse and other works that remain subject to copyright, and we will work to safeguard against consumer confusion caused by unauthorized uses of Mickey and our other iconic characters.”
The topic of Mickey Mouse and copyright has loomed in the public consciousness since the late 1990s, when Disney and other entertainment companies — and, notably, the estates of composers like George Gershwin — successfully lobbied Congress to extend copyright protections. In many ways, Mickey has become the ultimate symbol of intellectual property, a character more well known than even Santa Claus, market researchers have said.
The 1998 copyright extension prompted a court fight, with detractors arguing that Congress disregarded the Constitution, which holds that copyright protection be given for a “limited” time. “Free the Mouse” bumper stickers began appearing, according to Paul Goldstein, a professor at Stanford Law School and the author of a five-volume treatise on U.S. copyright law.
“Disney was no more active in pushing for the extension than anyone else, but they made for a convenient villain,” he said.
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 to uphold what Congress had done. But the justices did so while holding their nose. “We are not at liberty to second-guess congressional determinations and policy judgments of this order, however debatable or arguably unwise they may be,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority opinion.
Disney lawyers and lobbyists likely determined long ago that pressing Congress for another extension would fail. “That last one is held in such bad, bad odor,” Mr. Goldstein said. “I don’t think there was any option to try and extend further.”
That means early versions of Popeye, King Kong, Donald Duck, Flash Gordon, Porky Pig and Superman will enter the public domain at various points over the next decade.
If there is anything that Disney takes more seriously than intellectual property, it is public image. In 2020, a Disney affiliate charged an elementary school $250 for showing “The Lion King” without permission at a P.T.A. fund-raiser. The media storm that followed was so intense that Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, apologized and said he would make a personal donation.
In the last decade, Disney has also had to contend with the rise of “creator culture,” Mr. Moss noted. Digital technology has allowed creativity and expression to flourish online, with YouTube vloggers, Instagram influencers, TikTokers and Twitter rabble-rousers incorporating intellectual property into new works.
That could pose a challenge for Disney when “Steamboat Willie” comes into the public domain. “They won’t be able to go after everyone,” Mr. Moss said. “Battle lines will have to be drawn.”
Ms. Ginsburg said she was watching closely to see if Disney and other entertainment companies tried to apply trademark law as a substitute for or extension of copyright — as she put it, “apply a separate protection to get to the same place.” In a Supreme Court intellectual property case from 2003 involving 20th Century Fox, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, warned of using trademarks to generate “a species of mutant copyright law.”
“This is a looming area,” Ms. Ginsburg said. “We’re on the cusp of a time when copyrights in a range of visual works will expire.”” Read more at New York Times
J.J. Watt, Quarterbacks’ Nightmare, Is Retiring From the N.F.L.
Watt became an outsize celebrity for a defensive player during 10 seasons with Houston and two with Arizona, dominating on the field and raising millions of dollars for hurricane relief.
“J.J. Watt, the Arizona Cardinals defensive end who has been one of the most dominant players at his position for much of the past decade, winning three N.F.L. Defensive Player of the Year Awards and almost certainly securing a future spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, indicated on Tuesday that this season would be his last in the league.
Watt posted pictures on Twitter that showed him; his wife, Kealia; and their infant son, Koa, on the field at the Cardinals’ stadium and wrote: “Koa’s first ever NFL game. My last ever NFL home game. My heart is filled with nothing but love and gratitude. It’s been an absolute honor and a pleasure.” The Cardinals’ final two games of the regular season will be on the road, and, at 4-11, they have been eliminated from playoff contention.
Watt, 33, who played for Central Michigan and Wisconsin in college, was drafted No. 11 overall by the Houston Texans in the 2011 draft. At 6-foot-5 and nearly 300 pounds, Watt quickly became one of the N.F.L.’s most disruptive defensive players, compiling four seasons with at least 15 sacks….” Read more at New York Times