The Full Belmonte, 2/17/2022
Satellite image: Maxar Technologies
“A new military pontoon bridge has been established over the Pripyat River in Belarus, less than four miles from the Ukraine border, Maxar Technologies found.
Satellite images this week continue to show heightened military activity in Belarus, Crimea and western Russia, Maxar said.
Why it matters: The Biden administration told reporters last evening that it now believes Russia's claims of withdrawing troops from near Ukraine are ‘false,’ Axios' Zachary Basu reports.
Moscow has in fact increased its presence on the border ‘by as many as 7,000 troops’ in recent days, a senior administration official said. Read more at Axios
U.S. soldiers disembark yesterday in Poland from a C-17 cargo plane.
Photographer: Wojtek Radwanski/AFP/Getty Images
“Troop movements | Russia rejected claims by the U.S. and U.K. that it’s added 7,000 troops to what Biden has said are roughly 150,000 already near Ukraine’s borders, rather than withdrawing forces. The Defense Ministry in Moscow says a pullback continues of soldiers and equipment following the completion of drills, and Russia has repeatedly said there are no plans to invade Ukraine. European Union leaders hold talks today on the crisis.” Read more at Bloomberg
A poster depicting Ahmaud Arbery outside the Glynn County courthouse during the state murder trial of Gregory McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan in November. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
“One of the three White men convicted in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder did not want his daughter dating a Black man and called him the n-word in a text message, according to the FBI.
Another shared a meme that claimed ‘White Irish slaves were treated worse than any other race in the U.S.’ The third, Travis McMichael, who fatally shot Arbery in February 2020, spoke about killing Black people and wrote in a message that he loved his job because ‘zero n-----rs work with me.’
‘We used to walk around committing hate crimes all day,’ he wrote in another text conversation a few months before the shooting.
The second day of testimony in the federal hate crimes trial over Arbery’s death opened Wednesday with an FBI analyst detailing dozens of racist social media posts and messages allegedly sent by the three men who chased and killed Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, in their coastal Georgia neighborhood in early 2020.” Read more at Washington Post
“Loved ones will gather Thursday to remember Amir Locke, the 22-year-old Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police during a predawn, no-knock raid on Feb. 2 . Civil rights icon Rev. Al Sharpton is expected to officiate at the funeral. Locke was described by family as a ‘good kid’ who ‘wanted to change lives.’ Protests have continued for nearly two weeks in the Twin Cities over Locke's killing and over the use of no-knock raids. The service will be held at Shiloh Temple International Ministries, the same church that hosted the funeral for Daunte Wright, another young Black man shot by a Minneapolis police officer last year. That officer, Kim Potter, was convicted of manslaughter and could be sentenced to more than seven years in prison Friday.” Read more at USA Today
A protester holds a sign demanding justice for Amir Locke at a rally on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2022, in Minneapolis.Christian Monterrosa, AP
“J. Alexander Kueng, one of three former Minneapolis officers on trial for violating Floyd’s civil rights during the fatal 2020 arrest, testified in his own defense Wednesday that he had never been given scenario training on how to stop another officer from using excessive force.
Under defense questioning, Kueng said he wasn’t sure if Chauvin was violating policy by pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck because he hadn’t been explicitly trained on such maneuvers and couldn’t see how much pressure Chauvin was using.
During his testimony, Kueng recalled the struggle that ended up with Floyd handcuffed and facedown on the ground. Kueng, who was positioned at Floyd’s back, said another officer, Thomas K. Lane, asked Chauvin if they should shift the man into his side, which Chauvin quickly rejected.” Read more at Washington Post
“President Biden ordered the National Archives to hand over a range of visitor logs from the Trump White House to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rejecting his predecessor’s claim that the material is protected by executive privilege.
The decision boosts the committee’s efforts to gather information about who was coming and going from the White House not just on the day of the attack last year but also in the months preceding it as President Donald J. Trump sought to overturn the election.
Mr. Biden had similarly decided last year not to support Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege over other batches of White House documents and records sought by the committee. Mr. Trump went to federal court to block the release of those earlier batches but lost.” Read more at New York Times
“A massive storm system is forecast to bring severe weather to much of the central, eastern and southern U.S. into Thursday . Winter storm warnings have been issued across portions of the upper Midwest. After progressing northeastward, snow is expected to impact Chicago early Thursday, according to AccuWeather. Forecasters say snow will expand into Detroit and deliver anywhere from 3 to 6 inches. In the South, large parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee will be at risk of powerful thunderstorms and possibly tornadoes, forecasters said. More than 20 million people are in a zone that's at risk of severe weather, according to the national Storm Prediction Center. The areas most in danger included Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis and Nashville in Tennessee; and Huntsville, Alabama, forecasters said.” Read more at USA Today
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teased on Wednesday that the Biden administration is considering changes to mask guidance as the COVID-19 situation continues to improve across the country, with more states and cities relaxing restrictions amid improved caseloads and hospitalizations.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters the agency is considering alterations to its mask guidelines, acknowledging that individuals are ‘so eager’ to do away with masking rules. She noted that the CDC is shifting its COVID-19 focus in the direction of hospitalizations as a key measuring stick to determine the severity of an outbreak.
‘We all share the same goal -– to get to a point where COVID-19 is no longer disrupting our daily lives, a time when it won’t be a constant crisis — rather something we can prevent, protect against, and treat,’ Walensky said.
‘We must consider hospital capacity as an additional important barometer,’ Walensky continued. ‘We want to give people a break from things like mask wearing when these metrics are better and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen.’
For now, the guidance remains unchanged. Health officials still recommend that people wear masks at indoor public spaces in locations of high viral transmission. However, case totals continue to plummet across the country. The U.S. is reporting an average of 124,000 new infections per day over the past seven days — a total that is down from 800,000 per day roughly a month ago at the height of the omicron surge (CNBC).
NBC News: CDC expected to update mask guidance as early as next week.
Reason: Walensky confirms behind closed doors she won't relax school mask guidance.
Julia Manchester, The Hill: Democrats face blowback over COVID-19 policies.
However, changes continue to be made at the state and municipal levels. Philadelphia on Wednesday followed a move by Washington, D.C., earlier in the week and nixed its requirement for individuals to show proof of vaccination to dine indoors. Shortly after the news landed, the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers added that they would not be requiring vaccine proof to attend games. However, unlike the District, it kept intact its indoor mask mandate (CBS Philly).” Read more at The Hill
© Associated Press/Matt Rourke
“The US government plans to make high-quality masks available for kids, a senior adviser to the White House told CNN yesterday. The move appears to be an extension of the Biden administration's ongoing effort to distribute 400 million free N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile for the public to access at pharmacies and community health centers nationwide. About 230 million of those masks have already been delivered to those locations. Last month, the federal government began distribution of 1 billion free Covid-19 tests directly to households. More than 50 million households have already received their tests, and millions more are on the way, officials said.” Read more at CNN
“US lawmakers have less than two days to pass a short-term funding extension to avoid a government shutdown on Friday. It remains unclear when the Senate will vote on the continuing resolution, which would keep the government open by extending funding through March 11. Discussions about the measure are being delayed by some Republicans who are making demands tied to the vote. A group of six conservative senators specifically said they would oppose the expedited passage of the resolution unless they get a vote to defund the remaining vaccine mandates the Biden administration imposed. Complicating matters further, some Democrats are absent due to personal and family reasons, causing concern the party may be short of votes needed to defeat the Republican amendments.” Read more at CNN
“Several major US airlines are asking the federal government to create a coordinated ‘no-fly list’ for violent and disruptive passengers, but their request is being met by pushback from GOP lawmakers. A group of Republican senators is arguing the mandate would seemingly equate unruly passengers to terrorists ‘who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland,’ the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland this week. While airlines may ban an unruly passenger from their own flights, competition rules mean that information is not shared with other carriers, so unruly individuals can easily fly on different carriers after violent or disruptive incidents. Nearly 500 unruly passenger incidents have been reported in the first six weeks of 2022, according to data from the Federal Aviation Administration, and 80 incidents have been referred to the Justice Department to consider criminal prosecution.” Read more at CNN
“In Stamford, Conn., a 46-year-old resident pleaded guilty after putting a portion of $4 million in coronavirus aid toward the purchase of a Porsche. And a Mercedes. And a BMW.
In Somerset, N.J., a 51-year-old woman allegedly invented employees, inflated wages and fabricated entire tax filings to collect $1 million in loans.
And in St. Petersburg, Fla., a federal judge sentenced to prison a 63-year-old man who obtained $800,000 on behalf of businesses that did not exist.
The cases and charges, each announced over the past month, count among hundreds involving a slew of programs enacted by Congress in the darkest days of the coronavirus pandemic — money dispatched with an urgency at the time that it is now putting Washington’s watchdogs to the test.
Roughly two years after lawmakers approved their first tranche of rescue funds, the U.S. government is grappling with an unprecedented challenge: how to oversee its own historic stimulus effort. Totaling nearly $6 trillion, the loans, grants, direct checks and other emergency assistance summed to more than entire federal budget in the fiscal year before the coronavirus arrived, creating a unique and long-term sxtrain on the nation’s policymakers to ensure the funds have been put to good use.
Policymakers and economics widely agree that the investments helped rescue the U.S. economy from the worst crisis since the Great Depression, aiding out-of-work Americans and saving businesses from shuttering for good. But the money remains hard to track. There are lingering questions as to whether it benefited those who needed it the most. And the aid continues to be a ripe target for criminals nationwide, the full extent of which is only beginning to come to light.
‘There is no question that the immense fraud that took place at the crush of the pandemic in 2020, particularly in small business loans and unemployment insurance, is the largest oversight challenge the Biden administration inherited,’ said Gene Sperling, the president’s chief coordinator for stimulus spending, stressing that the administration is taking ‘significant steps to strengthen anti-fraud controls.’
Nowhere was the promise and peril more evident than at the Small Business Administration. The normally lumbering SBA moved at lightning speed to disburse roughly $1 trillion to cash-strapped firms, hoping to stanch the bleeding at a time when many companies were laying off workers in droves. But the agency’s approach, particularly during the Trump administration, also carried a steep cost, as the SBA did not put in place a wide array of policies that might have prevented significant waste, fraud and abuse.
The troubles are laid bare in stinging federal oversight reports issued over the past year. Across the agency’s two key emergency initiatives, investigators have questioned nearly every aspect of SBA’s spending, flagging billions of dollars in suspect loans and grants, overpayments to those who should not have received them and in some cases outright fraud. One effort meant to help businesses in economic distress may even be rife with identity theft: Watchdogs said they had received more than 845,000 applications for aid that are now suspected of having come from individuals using stolen identities — some of which were funded anyway.
Meanwhile, the calls to the SBA’s tip line for criminal activity spiked by more than 37,000 percent over an 18-month period earlier in the outbreak. The agency’s top watchdog issued numerous warnings about its management of more recent stimulus programs adopted under President Biden, including multibillion-dollar funding for restaurants and performance spaces. And only last month, the SBA received another blow: A panel of pandemic watchdogs highlighted more than five dozen criminal cases that might have been prevented if only the SBA had been more diligent earlier in the pandemic.
The troubles may represent just the tip of the iceberg, according to federal officials and outside experts, who together warn the U.S. government could face years of expensive and intricate sleuthing work. The agency’s own inspector general, Hannibal ‘Mike’ Ware, long has cautioned in that the SBA faces a daunting future, telling Congress in January it is still ‘realizing the true scope of fraud’ that occurred under its watch.” Read more at Washington Post
“Facing serious allegations about his ethics and conduct in office, Ryan Zinke, then secretary of Donald Trump’s Interior Department, told a government official in 2018 that he had done nothing improper. Negotiations over a land deal in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont., were proceeding without him. His involvement was minimal, he said; his meeting with the project’s developers at Interior headquarters was ‘purely social.’
But a report released Wednesday by the department’s internal watchdog caught Zinke in a lie. Email and text message exchanges show he communicated with the developers 64 times between August 2017 and July 2018 to discuss the project’s design, the use of his foundation’s land as a parking lot, and his interest in operating a brewery on the site.
‘These communications, examples of which are set forth below, show that Secretary Zinke played an extensive, direct, and substantive role in representing the Foundation during negotiations with the 95 Karrow project developers,’ Inspector General Mark Greenblatt’s office wrote.
Zinke ‘was not simply a passthrough for information, ‘the report said. “He personally acted for or represented the Foundation in connection with the negotiations.”
The report found that Zinke broke federal ethics rules repeatedly by improperly participating in real estate negotiations with the then-chairman of the energy giant Halliburton and other developers.
Zinke continued to represent his family’s foundation in the negotiations for nearly a year, investigators found, even after committing to federal officials that he would resign from the foundation and would not do any work on its behalf after he joined the Trump administration.
He met with the developers in his office at Interior headquarters in the summer of 2017, after which he gave them a personal tour of the Lincoln Memorial and dined with them at a German beer garden in the District, Biergarten Haus, according to records of his official schedule. Although investigators said they could not be sure what was discussed during this visit, they found it was not entirely social, as the developers presented Zinke with a plan for the parking lot during their trip to Washington.” Read more at Washington Post
“RICHMOND — Gov. Glenn Youngkin took to the steps of the Virginia Capitol on Wednesday to ceremonially sign a bill making masks optional in public schools, proclaiming before scores of cheering supporters that ‘we are reaffirming the … fundamental rights all parents have to make decisions for their children.’
Youngkin (R) treated the bill-signing like a major campaign event, with schoolchildren brought in as a backdrop and Republican legislator on the steps of the Capitol portico behind them.
‘This morning was my ninth suspension over not wearing a mask,’ Fairfax County fourth-grader Bronagh McAllister, 10, told the crowd as she stood next to Youngkin. ‘It’s been really hard to do work. … Thank you to Governor Youngkin that he has made it a law that parents or kids can make the decision of their own.’
The law goes into effect immediately, but school districts have until March 1 to comply. Youngkin, who built his campaign for office partly on a promise to end school mask mandates, cast his first big legislative win as ‘restoring power back to parents.’
He also said the moment signals a new chapter in the coronavirus pandemic, ‘reestablishing our expectations that we will get back to normal, and this is the path.’
The measure he signed took an extraordinary — and extraordinarily fast — route to his desk. Youngkin signed an executive order on his inauguration day that said parents had the power to opt their children out of school mask mandates.
Democrats protested loudly, calling the action unconstitutional, and there were several challenges in court, with one state judge questioning the legality of the order.
But last week, Sen. Chap Petersen — a Fairfax Democrat who has long held that no governor should be able to impose such mandates — supported a measure to make it state law that masks are optional.
Two Democrats joined him, and the measure cleared the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Republican-controlled House of Delegates took up the Senate bill in expedited fashion, approved it on a party-line vote and had it to Youngkin’s desk by Monday.
That version would have gone into effect July 1, so Youngkin amended it with an ‘emergency clause’ that would make the law effective immediately. He also added a line saying school districts have until March 1 to comply, and another line specifying that the law does not prevent the governor from taking emergency steps to fight future health crises.
Youngkin said Wednesday that he added that last line at the request of Democrats and that he takes it to mean he could require masks if needed.” Read more at Washington Post
“Some records connected to the investigation into Bob Saget’s sudden death won’t be released right now. A Florida judge issued a temporary block after the late comedian’s family sought an injunction due to their graphic nature. The local sheriff’s office said it was sensitive to the relatives’ privacy wishes, and the medical examiner’s office declined to comment. The ME’s preliminary report said Saget died from blunt head trauma, likely from an unwitnessed accident.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“NEW YORK — Ken Kurson, a close friend of former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has pleaded guilty in state court to misdemeanor charges of computer trespass and attempted eavesdropping, more than a year after he was pardoned by Trump for federal charges that he stalked a doctor, her colleague and the colleague’s spouse.
If he avoids arrest for a year and completes 100 hours of community service, his plea can be downgraded to harassment.” Read more at Washington Post
“A bipartisan Senate bill aims to hold social-media companies accountable for harm to children. The Kids Online Safety Act would require tech companies to provide periodic assessments of how their algorithms, design features and targeted advertising systems might contribute to harm to minors. Kids would be able to opt out of algorithmic recommendations, protect their personal information and disable potentially addictive product features, among other changes.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A wildfire started near the Sierra Nevada mountains, burning through 1,800 acres and forcing evacuations, officials said. The fire, named the Airport Fire, is the latest of many winter blazes to plague California this year.” Read more at USA Today
“SMETHPORT, Pa. (AP) — Some Democrats here in rural Pennsylvania are afraid to tell you they’re Democrats.
The party’s brand is so toxic in the small towns 100 miles northeast of Pittsburgh that some liberals have removed bumper stickers and yard signs and refuse to acknowledge their party affiliation publicly. These Democrats are used to being outnumbered by the local Republican majority, but as their numbers continue to dwindle, the few that remain are feeling increasingly isolated and unwelcome in their own communities.
‘The hatred for Democrats is just unbelievable,’ said Tim Holohan, an accountant based in rural McKean County who recently encouraged his daughter to get rid of a pro-Joe Biden bumper sticker. ‘I feel like we’re on the run.’
The climate across rural Pennsylvania is symptomatic of a larger political problem threatening the Democratic Party ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Beyond losing votes in virtually every election since 2008, Democrats have been effectively ostracized from many parts of rural America, leaving party leaders with few options to reverse a cultural trend that is redefining the nation’s political landscape.
The shifting climate helped Republicans limit Democratic gains in 2020 — the GOP actually gained House seats despite former President Donald Trump’s loss — and a year later, surging Republican rural support enabled Republicans to claim the Virginia governorship. A small but vocal group of party officials now fears the same trends will undermine Democratic candidates in Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, states that will help decide the Senate majority in November, and the White House two years after that.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to devote the vast majority of its energy, messaging and resources to voters in more populated urban and suburban areas….
Barack Obama won 875 counties nationwide in his overwhelming 2008 victory. Twelve years later, Biden won only 527. The vast majority of those losses — 260 of the 348 counties — took place in rural counties, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.
The worst losses were concentrated in the Midwest: 21 rural counties in Michigan flipped from Obama in 2008 to Trump in 2020; Democrats lost 28 rural counties in Minnesota, 32 in Wisconsin and a whopping 45 in Iowa. At the same time, recent Republican voter registration gains in swing states like Florida and North Carolina were fueled disproportionately by rural voters.
Biden overcame rural losses to beat Trump in 2020 because of gains in more populous Democratic counties. Perhaps because of his victory, some Democratic officials worry that party leaders do not appreciate the severity of the threat.” Read more at AP News
London Breed, San Francisco’s mayor.Jim Wilson/The New York Times
An earthquake
“Elections to the San Francisco Board of Education are not normally national bellwethers. The city is a proud symbol of liberalism, not a swing district, and school-board elections — as Thomas Fuller, The Times’s San Francisco bureau chief, notes — ‘have for decades been obscure sideshows to the more high-profile political contests.’
But the recall election this week that ousted three board members wasn’t about only local politics. It also reflected a trend: Many Americans, even in liberal places, seem frustrated by what they consider a leftward lurch from parts of the Democratic Party and its allies. This frustration spans several issues, including education, crime and Covid-19.
Consider these election results from last year, all in politically blue places:
In Minneapolis, voters rejected a ballot measure to replace the city’s Police Department with an agency that would have focused less on law enforcement.
In Seattle, voters elected Ann Davison — a lawyer who had recently quit the Democratic Party because she thought it had moved ‘so far left’ — as the city’s top prosecutor. Davison beat a candidate who wanted to abolish the police.
In New York, voters elected as their mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who revels in defying liberal orthodoxy. As a candidate, Adams promised to crack down on crime. Since taking office, he has signaled his frustration with Covid restrictions.
In the Democratic-leaning suburbs of both New Jersey and Virginia, Republican candidates for governor did surprisingly well. Several postelection analyses — including one by aides to Phil Murphy, New Jersey’s Democratic governor, who narrowly survived — concluded that anger over Covid policies played a central role.
Three reasons for change
The San Francisco school-board recall joins this list. There, three separate issues drove the campaign.
First, the school board had attempted to rename 44 schools, so that they no longer honored anybody deemed reactionary. Among the apparent reactionaries were Paul Revere, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Senator Dianne Feinstein and John Muir, the environmentalist.
Second, the board tried to scrap an admissions system, based on grades and test scores, for Lowell High School, which Mark Barabak of The Los Angeles Times calls ‘one of the city’s most sacred institutions.’ A lottery would have replaced it.
Third, the board kept schools closed for months during the pandemic and showed little concern for the damage. One of the since-recalled board members waved away the ineffectiveness of remote classes, saying that children were ‘just having different learning experiences.’
Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco.Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
To many parents, board members have seemed overly focused on projecting symbols of virtuousness while ignoring the needs of families. ‘We are not getting the basics right,’ Siva Raj, a father who helped organize the recall effort, said.
Another recall organizer, Autumn Looijen, used an analogy to explain the anger. Covid was akin to an earthquake that forced people to move into tents on the sidewalk, she suggested. ‘Finally, your elected leaders show up and you’re like, ‘Thank God, here’s some help,’ Looijen told Politico. ‘And they say, ‘We are here to help. We’re going to change the street signs for you.’
What’s striking about this situation is that the Republican Party is also out of step with public opinion on many of the same issues. Republicans have defended the Confederate flag, nominated candidates who make racist comments and launched an exaggerated campaign against critical race theory. Republicans have opposed popular measures to improve police accountability and gun regulations. Republicans have made false statements about Covid vaccines and claimed that masks are a tool of government oppression.
Rather than responding with positions that are both more liberal and more popular, some Democrats and progressive activists have responded by overreaching public opinion in the other direction.
They have opposed the resumption of normal operations in schools. They have said they would no longer honor popular former presidents, like Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. They have called for defunding the police.
They have also called for abolishing the agency that enforces immigration laws; eliminating private health insurance, maintaining the current system of affirmative action and forbidding almost all abortion restrictions.
Dividing lines
On some of these issues, public opinion splits along racial lines, with Democrats taking the positions favored by voters of color and Republicans aligning with white voters. Many Democrats believe that it would be immoral to do otherwise, whatever the political price.
On other issues, though, the racial dynamics are messier. Many Asian and Latino voters oppose the current version of affirmative action, which helps explain why the changes to Lowell High School resonated in San Francisco. Many Black and Latino voters are to the right of Democratic politicians on abortion and crime.
Class seems to be at least as big a dividing line as race. College-educated Democrats — who dominate the ranks of politicians, campaign staffs and activist organizations — tend to be well to the left of working-class Democrats. By catering to its well-off base, the party creates electoral problems for itself, because there are more working-class Americans than college graduates.
You could see this dividing line in the New York mayor’s race. Adams won the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island with a multiracial coalition, while losing affluent white neighborhoods. (Adams’s heterodox politics are common among Black Americans, the political scientist Christina Greer has written.)
You can also see the dividing line in San Francisco, where the city’s mayor, London Breed, who is Black, endorsed the recall. In an interview with Yahoo News this week, Breed said, ‘It breaks my heart that kids in our public school system still have to wear masks.’
Her comments are a reminder that many elected Democrats, including President Biden, tend to disagree with the party’s left flank on several of these issues and to be more in tune with public opinion. But that flank nonetheless influences voters’ image of the party. In the most recent national elections, in 2020, Democrats fared worse than they expected, despite the highest voter turnout in decades.” Read more at New York Times
“The Justice Department is investigating whether they tried to do that by sharing damaging research reports ahead of time or by engaging in illegal trading tactics. ‘Spoofing’ involves flooding the market with fake orders in an effort to push a stock price up or down and has been illegal since 2010. ‘Scalping’ involves activist short-sellers cashing out their positions without disclosing that they’ve done so. Short-sellers don’t get a lot of love in the business world—remember their huge losses during meme-stock rushes?—though some have been credited with exposing corporate frauds.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Dallas Cowboys in 2016 paid $2.4 million in settlements to cheerleaders over a 2015 incident in which a top executive was accused of being in their locker room with his cellphone out while they undressed, a person familiar with the matter said. The team confirmed that it investigated the episode and reached a settlement.
The allegations were made against Rich Dalrymple, the club’s longtime senior vice president for public relations and communications who was a top lieutenant for Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, the person said.
In a statement to ESPN, which earlier reported the settlement, Dalrymple denied any wrongdoing. He didn’t respond to a request for comment by The Wall Street Journal.
In a statement, a spokesman for the team said the allegations were investigated thoroughly at the time and no wrongdoing was found.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON—The Education Department will discharge another $415 million in student debt held by borrowers who said they were defrauded by for-profit schools that misrepresented their graduates’ employment prospects or otherwise swindled them, federal officials said Wednesday.
The loans of nearly 16,000 former students are being forgiven under a legal provision known as borrower defense to repayment, which allows students to have their debts erased if they prove that their schools defrauded them.
The borrowers whose loans were addressed Wednesday said the four for-profit schools, DeVry University, Westwood College, ITT Technical Institute’s nursing school and Minnesota School of Business/Globe University, provided deceptive information about their employment prospects, Education Department officials said.
The relief also covers former students of other institutions who have previously qualified for borrower defense relief, but who had not previously applied for it. That includes borrowers who attended defunct schools such as Corinthian Colleges and Marinello Schools of Beauty.
Only one of the schools, DeVry, is still in operation. The action marks the first time the Education Department has used the borrower defense program to aid the former students of an open school.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Will Biden make big changes in immigration policy?
Johan Ordonez/AFP via Getty Images
“A for-profit prison operator, GEO Group, will administrate a pilot program that will place hundreds of migrants who have crossed the southern US border under house arrest, through its subsidiary BI Incorporated. The Biden administration had previously announced its intention to provide alternative detention arrangements for migrants who have entered the US via the border with Mexico.” [Vox] Read more at Reuters / Ted Hesson and Mica Rosenberg
“The administration plans to include as many as 400,000 migrants in the program, which will have detainees confined to their places of residence for 12 hours per day and monitored by the company. Immigrants rights groups have denounced the decision, saying that it continues to enrich private corporations on the backs of vulnerable people.” [Vox] Read more at The Hill / Rafael Bernal
“‘Digital prisons may be less expensive than locking people in cages, but the goal here is to shut down privatized detention, not shape-shift,’ Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign organizer with Mijente, a nonprofit focused on Latinx political organizing, said in a statement to Vox. ‘It is reprehensible that corporations are still making a profit from incarceration.’ [Vox]
“At present, about 180,000 migrants awaiting their hearings are already monitored using ankle bracelets or other devices as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce the number of people in detention facilities. The new program is set to pilot in Baltimore and Houston, and will expand to a nationwide program later in the year.” [Vox] Read more at Axios / Stef Knight
“Democrats in Congress are also pushing the Biden administration to look into the border enforcement treatment of Black migrants, citing specifically the mass deportation of Haitian migrants last year. One hundred legislators in both chambers are urging the administration to abrogate Title 42 — a Trump-era policy that allowed deportations for public health reasons — which the Biden administration is still using.” [Vox] Read more at NYT / Eileen Sullivan
“The legislators' letter describes the US’s history of cruelty toward Haitian migrants in particular, including i’nterdicting Haitian refugees in the high seas and over the course of the next decade sent some 25,000 asylum seekers back to an island suffering under the rule of brutal U.S.-backed dictatorships.’ The letter also recounts the first Bush administration’s detention of more than 300 Haitians who had been exposed to HIV in a detention center at Guantanamo Bay.” [Vox] Read more at Rep. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
“When a global pandemic threatened to throw the 2020 presidential election into chaos, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed to state and local election agencies to ensure they had the resources to conduct a fair and accessible election, ultimately allowing administrators to manage record turnout with relatively few hiccups.
Two years later, that money is gone and while the pandemic has ebbed it has not disappeared, and new challenges have arisen, including rising security threats, supply-chain disruptions and escalating costs for basic materials such as paper ballots, which have gone up by as much as 50 percent around the country, according to some estimates.
Election officials and voting experts are now warning as the midterm elections get underway that new funding is needed to avoid significant problems in November.” Read more at Washington Post
“PETROPOLIS, Brazil (AP) — Rio de Janeiro state’s government has confirmed 94 deaths from floods and mudslides that swept away homes and cars in the city of Petropolis. But even as families prepared to bury their dead, it was unclear Thursday how many bodies remained trapped in the mud.
Rubens Bomtempo, mayor of the German-influenced city nestled in the mountains, didn’t even offer an estimate for the number of people missing, with recovery efforts still ongoing.
‘We don’t yet know the full scale of this,’ Bomtempo said at a news conference Wednesday. ‘It was a hard day, a difficult day.’” Read more at AP News
“Mass testing | Hong Kong plans a testing blitz of the entire city, a tactic used to root out Covid-19 cases on the mainland, Chi Yui Siu and Iain Marlow report, as the financial hub struggles to control its most challenging outbreak. The move follows Chinese President Xi Jinping’s call for the city to take ‘all necessary measures’ to contain the virus.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Door shutting | The U.K. is set to scrap the so-called golden visa program that gives foreign nationals a path to residency if they invest more than $2.7 million, as the government looks to curb the influence of Russian money. Britain has been reviewing the visas since 2018, after the poisoning of ex-Russian agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury sank ties with the Kremlin.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Speeding up | African governments are playing catch-up in vaccinating against the coronavirus, with just 12% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people fully inoculated and the World Health Organization listing 20 nations at high risk of missing a target of dosing 70% of their populations by mid-year. Read this list on what countries are doing to overcome a mixture of hesitancy, complacency and a dearth of shots and health-care workers.” Read more at Bloomberg
“18¢ — The estimated per-gallon gasoline tax some Democrats want suspended for the rest of the year. Average national gasoline prices are up by about $1 a gallon from a year ago, according to AAA, and contributing to higher prices on things like food and furniture. Opponents say the proposed halt is a gimmick and won’t change anything.
224 million — The number of prescriptions for the most common antidepressants in 2021, up from 216 million in 2019, according to health-research firm IQVIA. Despite the increase, many patients are finding their medications have stopped working. To combat that, psychiatrists are boosting dosages or having patients try a new drug or combination of meds.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Lives Lived: Walter Dellinger, an advocate for civil and reproductive rights, served as a top legal official in Bill Clinton’s administration. He died at 80.” Read more at New York Times
“Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva will return to the ice Thursday for the second half of the women's individual competition – and possibly clinch a gold medal – amid a doping scandal that continues to roil the Olympics. Valieva, 15, recently tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned performance-enhancing substance, but was later cleared to compete. Her lawyer has suggested she ingested the drug unknowingly through her grandfather, who takes the medication for heart trouble. Valieva finished in first place Tuesday during the short program, but a retired Olympic and world figure skating judge said she should not be leading the competition. In other action Thursday, the U.S. women's hockey team fell to Canada in the gold medal game, settling for silver and Mikaela Shiffrin skied out in the slalom run of the combined and will not medal in Beijing.” Read more at USA Today
“Negotiations aimed at ending Major League Baseball's lockout will resume Thursday. The players' association notified management Wednesday it is ready to respond to the offer MLB made last weekend, proposals that were received coolly by the union.
Baseball's ninth work stoppage, its first since 1995, is now in its 78th day, one day after spring training workouts had been scheduled to start.
USA TODAY MLB reporter Gabe Lacques says the regular season is in jeopardy as fewer than two weeks remain before a projected Feb. 28 deadline to strike a deal and get players in camp long enough to ramp them up for the March 31 Opening Day. He did note, however, that ‘the waters are navigable.’” Read more at USA Today
At the start of the final, Canada had scored 54 goals, an Olympic record.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
“The Canadian women’s hockey team beat the U.S. to win gold.” Read more at New York Times