The Full Belmonte, 3/17/2024
THE LATEST NEWS
Russia
A polling station in Moscow. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
“Today is the last day of Russia’s presidential vote. Vladimir Putin is expected to win, as the Kremlin limits opposition.” [New York Times]
“Experts worry he could use a victory to crack down even further on dissent and escalate the war in Ukraine.” [New York Times]
“Street demonstrations are banned, but some of Putin’s critics hope to cast protest votes for other candidates. Read more takeaways.” [New York Times]
2024 Election
“Claims by Donald Trump’s allies that they are being censored online have hurt the effort to filter election disinformation.” [New York Times]
“Trump continues to project a dark view of the country. He said some migrants were ‘not people’ and predicted a ‘blood bath’ if he loses.” [New York Times]
“President Biden’s campaign has a significant cash advantage over Trump’s. Read how the Trump campaign is trying to raise money.” [New York Times]
Israel-Hamas War
A family preparing to break their Ramadan fast in the ruins of their house. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“People in Gaza are struggling to celebrate Ramadan, a time of religious devotion and fasting. See photos from the enclave.” [New York Times]
“A maritime shipment of aid reached Gaza for the first time since the war began.” [New York Times]
Other Big Stories
In southwestern Iceland. Icelandic Coast Guard, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“A volcano erupted in southern Iceland with little notice, the latest in a string of eruptions in the area.” [New York Times]
“A man was keeping an alligator illegally in his pool in New York and sometimes let people swim with it, the authorities said.” [New York Times]
“A recent legal settlement could change the rules for buying and selling houses, including relators’ commissions.” [New York Times]
POLITICS
President Biden quipped at last night's 139th annual Gridiron Dinner, a white-tie classic held by the press: ‘One candidate's too old and mentally unfit to be president. The other guy's me.’” [Axios]
“Former President Trump said yesterday in Ohio, referring to the auto industry: ‘If I don't get elected ... it's gonna be a bloodbath for the country.’ You'll see that quote out of context a lot. The Biden-Harris campaign said: ‘He wants another January 6.” [Axios]
Fans listen to former President Trump yesterday near Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
“Biden's campaign announced this morning that it raised $53 million in February and has $155 million on hand, ‘the highest total amassed by any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle.’ Trump hasn't announced February figures.” [Axios]
“RFK Jr.'s campaign added Nicole Shanahan, a Bay Area lawyer who helped pay for a super PAC's Super Bowl ad on his behalf, to the list of potential V.P. picks. The list also includes Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura. After Mediaite reported that Shanahan is the expected pick, the campaign director tweeted that she's been part of the conversations. Shanahan is president of the Bia-Echo Foundation, which invests in ‘reproductive longevity & equality, criminal justice reform, and a healthy & livable planet.’ She was formerly married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Kennedy's running mate will be announced March 26 in Oakland.” [Axios]
GOP's thin line
Source: House of Representatives. Graphic: Mehlman Consulting
Smallest House majority in 70 years:
“Bruce Mehlman notes in his Six-Chart Sunday on Substack that with the coming departure of Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), House Republicans will command the smallest partisan majority since 1954.” [Axios]
Netanyahu describes Schumer's comments calling for elections as "totally inappropriate"
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says comments from US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that described him as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East were ‘totally inappropriate.’
On Thursday, Schumer criticized Netanyahu’s government, calling for new elections in a speech on the Senate floor on the Israel-Hamas war.
Speaking to CNN's Dana Bash about Schumer’s calls for elections, Netanyahu said whether elections were held or not in Israel was something ‘the Israeli government does on its own.’”
Read More at CNN
“Ireland is one of the most pro-Palestinian nations in the world. Public support for Palestinians is higher in Ireland than even some majority-Muslim countries, according to polling data. Ireland was the first European Union member to call for Palestinian statehood in 1980 and the last to grant Israel permission to open an embassy in 1993.
So what drives Ireland's support for Palestinians? It’s complicated. To learn why, we'll need to dive into Irish history. It's a great day to do so — it's St. Patrick's Day after all.
Paulo Nunes dos Santos for NPR
A little under a century ago, the Irish and Palestinians were both under British rule. Britain called the Palestinian territory British Mandate Palestine, or Mandatory Palestine.
Many Irish people see similarities between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the decadeslong Catholic-Protestant fighting in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.
Ireland's Sinn Fein party is leading the polls ahead of elections later this year or early 2025. Sinn Fein has historic ties to Irish Republican Army militants, who themselves had a decades-long alliance with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In the early 20th century, Ireland was very pro-Israel. Many identified with the Jewish history of being a displaced people and wanted Jews to have a safe place to go. Public opinion flipped with Israel annexing and occupied more Arab land.
Read more about Ireland's history with Israel and Palestinians, including a darker chapter during World War II, here.” [NPR]
March 17, 2024
By Billy Witz
Good morning. The N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments begin this week. Here’s why the brackets could be more unpredictable than ever.
Indiana State playing Murray State. Joseph C. Garza/Tribune-Star, via Associated Press
Picking a winner
“Happy Selection Sunday!
Green beer and lucky leprechauns aside, today is one of America’s great (unofficial) holidays. It’s the day the 68-team brackets for the N.C.A.A. men’s and women’s basketball tournaments are revealed.
Tonight’s unveiling of the matchups may bring back a feeling you haven’t had since digesting the prompt for that 10th grade U.S. history essay: What in the world do I make of all this?
Did Duke get a favorable draw? What’s the path for my school? Which No. 12 seed looks like a Cinderella? Where the heck is McNeese State? Is Cream Abdul-Jabbar in the field? And how come the Fairfield women’s team is called the Stags?
No matter how much basketball you’ve studied since November — poring over KenPom ratings, streaming games from obscure conferences, reciting the eight-player rotations of the Purdue men and the South Carolina women before you go to bed — there is so much uncertainty when it comes to filling out your bracket.
Picking winners has never been simple — remember, over all these years, there has never been a perfect bracket — but recent changes to the sport have made it more unpredictable than ever. I’ll explain them in today’s newsletter.
New rules
Three years ago, under mounting legislative and judicial pressure, the N.C.A.A. changed two major rules. It allowed athletes to make money from so-called name, image and likeness payments, and it eased restrictions on players transferring from one school to another. Those changes — prompted in part by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the N.C.A.A.’s authority — have upended the top levels of college sports.
Nahiem Alleyne of the St. John’s Red Storm. Sarah Stier/Getty Images
Transfers happen through a system known as the portal, which works something like an online dating service: If players want to change schools, they put their names in the portal, and coaches at other schools can then recruit them. With the introduction of N.I.L. payments, those recruiting offers now come with a payday — at least, one that can be handled above the table.
This has created something akin to free agency in college sports. Consider Nahiem Alleyne. He played for Virginia Tech in the 2021 and ’22 tournaments, won a national championship at Connecticut last season, and is now trying to go again with St. John’s this year. He is hardly an outlier.
Celeste Taylor starred for Texas when it reached the Elite Eight in 2021. She got to the second round last year with Duke. Now, she’s trying to carry Ohio State to its first women’s Final Four since 1993.
This year’s field
All this tumult has coincided with the rise in attention on the women’s game — turbocharged by the popularity of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, whose offensive wizardry makes her games appointment viewing.
In fact, many of the sport’s most compelling story lines this year are in the women’s tournament.
Last week’s bench-emptying brouhaha between the defending champion, L.S.U., and top-ranked South Carolina adds some spice — especially if the two meet again in the Final Four in three weeks.
Can South Carolina, with an entirely new starting lineup, do what last year’s team could not: add a championship to an unbeaten regular season? Does Geno Auriemma, the coach of UConn, have one more title run left in his injury-ravaged team? Will Oregon State, left behind when its fellow Pac-12 schools abandoned the conference last year, make a run to the Final Four?
The men’s tournament might lack the dramatic story lines or the star power of the women’s, but it could make up for that with unpredictability and dramatic finishes, thanks to a field that is more balanced top to bottom.
A year ago, two unheralded programs — San Diego State and Florida Atlantic — staged a Final Four thriller, which ended with Lamont Butler’s sinking a go-in-or-go-home jumper at the buzzer to send San Diego State to the championship. This year, both upstarts will be back in the field.
So will Purdue and its 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey, who hopes to avoid being slew by another David after last year’s loss to No. 16 seed Fairleigh Dickinson. And UConn, which last year won its fifth title in the last quarter century — more than blue-blooded Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana and U.C.L.A. combined — is a fitting avatar for the moment.
With all the changes to college sports, is such unpredictability the new normal? It may be too soon to say. But one bit of advice when filing out brackets this week: It’s best to use pencil.” [New York Times]
THE WEEK IN CULTURE
Music
South by Southwest 2024 Adam Davis/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Dozens of musicians and panelists withdrew from this year’s South by Southwest festival, which ends today, to protest the involvement of the U.S. military and defense contractors.
Kacey Musgrave’s new album, “Deeper Well,” is about gratitude. “Musgraves may be contented, but she’s not complacent,” Jon Pareles writes in his review.
Olivia Rodrigo invited a reproductive care organization to distribute free emergency contraception and abortion information at her “Guts” world tour, Variety reports.
Film and TV
Barry Keoghan, Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy: Irish hunks are having a moment in Hollywood.
“High & Low: John Galliano” captures the fashion designer’s prodigious talent while raising industry wide issues that go beyond just Galliano’s story, Rhonda Garelick writes.
A24 announced it will rerelease the movies Ex Machina, Hereditary and Uncut Gems in IMAX, Vulture reports.
Gerald Levin, a former Time Warner chief executive, died at 84. He was an architect of the company’s failed merger with AOL, considered the worst corporate marriage in U.S. history.
The Royal Family
Jack Plunkett/Invision, via Associated Press
A federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, brought by her half sister, who had accused Meghan of falsely disparaging her.
The extended absence of Kate, Princess of Wales, and King Charles’ cancer diagnosis: See a timeline of the family’s tumultuous past few months.
Other Big Stories
Elon Musk called off Don Lemon’s partnership with X, a day after the two conducted an interview. Lemon said he had asked Musk about his business ventures and reported drug use.
James Conlon, the musical director of the Los Angeles Opera, will step down in 2026, his 20th year in the role.
The athletic apparel company Outdoor Voice is closing all its stores on Sunday. The brand became popular for its Instagram-friendly aesthetic.
The actress Olivia Munn said she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer last year and undergone a double mastectomy.
A colorful unionizing effort at the Medieval Times has come to an end, The Huffington Post reports.
The small online literary magazine Guernica retracted an Israeli writer’s essay about finding common ground with Palestinians, after it led to staff resignations.” [New York Times]
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will remain on the Georgia case.
“Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on and prosecute the Georgia 2020 election interference racketeering case against former President Donald Trump and 14 of his co-defendants, a judge ruled. Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor with whom she engaged in a romantic relationship, resigned from the case.
On the third and final day of voting in Russia’s presidential election, lines at some polling stations grew after supporters of the deceased opposition leader Alexey Navalny called on people to protest the election. A wave of Ukrainian drones also targeted various parts of the country, including Moscow.
The 6% commission, a standard in home purchases, is no more. In a sweeping move expected to reduce the cost of buying and selling a home, the National Association of Realtors announced a settlement with homesellers, agreeing to end landmark antitrust lawsuits by paying $418 million in damages and eliminating rules on commissions.
Former Vice President Mike Pence said he ‘cannot in good conscience’ endorse presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, a stunning repudiation of his former running mate and the president he served with.
Blaise Taylor, an analyst at Texas A&M and son of the associate head coach, was arrested after being indicted in the 2023 deaths of his girlfriend and her unborn child, authorities said. Taylor is a former college football star at Arkansas State.
TUESDAY
Several states are holding primary elections, including Arizona, Florida and Illinois. The primary for the special election to fill former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's seat is also on Tuesday. He represented California's 20th Congressional District and announced last year that he was stepping down.
WEDNESDAY
The Fed will announce a decision on interest rates. Federal Reserve officials said the economy is likely to soften this year, allowing the central bank to start cutting rates. The US economy added 275,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate rose to 3.9%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
THURSDAY
The owners of a Colorado funeral home accused of improperly storing bodies will be in court for an arraignment hearing. In January, a judge determined there was probable cause for multiple counts against Jon and Carie Hallford, including money laundering, forgery and abuse of a corpse. An investigation began after a foul odor was reported at the funeral home in Penrose.
FRIDAY
Congress is running up on yet another government funding deadline, with one week to go before a potential partial shutdown of critical departments. The federal government has once more begun the mandatory process of planning to bring the affected agencies’ nonessential functions to a halt.” [CNN]
What to Watch For
“Today is St. Patrick’s Day.
Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio hold primary elections on Tuesday.
Reddit is expected to make its initial public offering on Thursday.
A summit of European Union leaders begins on Thursday.
Louisiana and Missouri hold primary elections on Saturday.” [New York Times]