The Full Belmonte, 5/24/2022
People 5 years and older are eligible to get the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine and booster.
PHOTO: MADDIE MCGARVEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Pfizer said three doses of its Covid-19 vaccine were 80% effective in young children. An early analysis of study results showed the three-shot regimen was effective at preventing symptomatic illness, generated a robust immune response and was safe and well-tolerated in children ages 6 months to 5 years old. Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, said they plan to complete submissions for FDA authorization this week.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp greet the crowd during a rally yesterday in Kennesaw, Georgia.
“Primary elections are being held in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas today. Many eyes are on Georgia, where former Vice President Mike Pence has been rallying support for Gov. Brian Kemp, the Republican incumbent. Pence appeared at an event for Kemp yesterday -- and it was widely seen as an implicit rebuke of former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Kemp's primary opponent, former GOP Sen. David Perdue. On the Democratic side, Stacey Abrams is running unopposed, setting up a potential rematch with Kemp following a previous loss to him in 2018. Since her defeat, Abrams has soared to national prominence and is no longer an underdog with little following outside of Georgia. This comes as early voting has surged to record levels in the Georgia primary, with more than 800,000 ballots cast ahead of today's contests.” Read more at CNN
“The US supreme court on Monday gutted constitutional protections that for years have provided a federal lifeline to innocent prisoners facing prolonged incarceration or even execution following wrongful convictions stemming from poor legal counsel given to them by the states.
In a 6 to 3 ruling, the newly-dominant rightwing majority of the nation’s highest court barred federal courts from hearing new evidence that was not previously presented in a state court as a result of the defendant’s ineffective legal representation.
The decision means that prisoners will no longer have recourse to federal judges even when they claim they were wrongfully convicted because their lawyers failed to conduct their cases properly.
The decision eviscerated the supreme court’s own precedent in a move that the three liberal justices called ‘illogical’ and ‘perverse’. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision, warning it would leave ‘many people … to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel’.
The ruling in Shinn v Ramirez was written by Clarence Thomas, the rightwing justice who has come to the fore as a result of the court’s sharp shift to the right following Donald Trump’s three appointments. He was supported by all five other conservative justices, including the chief justice, John Roberts.
In his opinion, Thomas presented the case as one of states’ rights. He said that federal courts should not be allowed to override the states’ ‘core power to enforce criminal law’.
That continues to be the case, the majority ruled, even where defendants are given bad legal advice by counsel provided for them by the very same states that are condemning them to long prison sentences or even execution.
In future, they will have no recourse to a federal court to try and reverse their wrongful conviction.
The case before the justices arose after state officials in Arizona petitioned the supreme court to prevent two of the state’s death row inmates – one with a strong case of proclaimed innocence, the other with a history of family abuse – from seeking relief in federal court from capital punishment.
The state argued that the condemned men should not be allowed to present new evidence to a federal judge when they had failed to do so previously in state court.
Lawyers for the condemned men pointed out that they had only failed to present the evidence in state court because the legal counsel they had been assigned by the state was woefully inadequate.
If they were blocked from petitioning a federal court, the men would in effect be sent to the death chamber simply because incompetent lawyers had missed a filing deadline or failed to uncover a glaring truth.
Monday’s majority ruling prompted an outpouring of angry and anguished criticism from innocence rights groups and death penalty experts.
The Innocence Project said that overturning wrongful convictions was never easy, and that ‘today’s supreme court decision makes it that much harder to secure justice for wrongly-convicted people’.
Thomas’s opinion also overturns previous supreme court rulings, in an abrogation of the court’s own adherence to the principle of stare decisis – that is, being faithful to precedent. In 2012 the supreme court ruled in Martinez v Ryan that prisoners could have access to federal court in cases where they had suffered from ineffective legal counsel in the state courts.
‘The supreme court seems hell-bent on disrespecting precedent and rolling back rights,’ said Janai Nelson, president of LDF, America’s first civil and human rights law organization.
In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor decried the ruling. ‘This decision is perverse. It is illogical,’ she wrote.
Sotomayor argued that under the court’s own precedent, prisoners cannot be held accountable – and effectively punished – for ‘their attorneys’ failures to present claims in state court’.
She concluded that as a result of the majority decision from the nine-member supreme court bench, the Sixth Amendment to the US constitution’s guarantee that criminal defendants have the right to effective legal counsel at trial ‘is now an empty one’.
In future, she said, prisoners who have had poor legal assistance would have no relief. ‘The responsibility for this devastating outcome lies not with Congress, but with this court.’” Read more at The Guardian
“The House Ethics Committee is investigating three Republicans: Madison Cawthorn, Ronny Jackson and Alex Mooney.” Read more at New York Times
“President Joe Biden today met with the other leaders of the ‘Quad’ nations -- Japan, India and Australia -- at an in-person summit in Tokyo to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and other pressing issues. The leaders talked about their responses to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and reiterated their ‘strong resolve to maintain the peace and stability in the region,’ according to a joint statement. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials reported Russian aerial strikes in east-central Ukraine and heavy fighting in the eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces are trying to advance. New satellite images also appear to show Russian ships loading up with what is believed to be stolen Ukrainian grain. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of ‘gradually stealing’ Ukrainian food products and trying to sell them.” Read more at CNN
Ukrainian forces firing a Howitzer.Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
“Ukraine has deployed the first American heavy artillery in battle. Times journalists toured the hidden sites.” Read more at New York Times
“A Maryland man who draped himself in a far right-affiliated flag and sprayed a fire extinguisher at police during the deadly Capitol attack on January 6 has been sentenced to nearly three years in prison, according to federal court records.
Matthew Ryan Miller, 23, pleaded guilty in February to felony obstruction of an official proceeding – that day’s joint congressional session to certify Joe Biden’s win over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election – as well as assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers.
At a hearing on Monday, Miller was sentenced to two years and nine months. Judge Randolph Moss also ordered Miller to spend two years on probation after his release and to pay $2,000 in restitution.” Read more at The Guardian
“In response to a global outbreak of monkeypox cases, the US is working to release a vaccine from the nation's Strategic National Stockpile to combat the rare virus. There is one confirmed case of monkeypox and four suspected cases in the US, the CDC said. The confirmed case is in a man in Massachusetts, and the four other suspected cases are in men in New York, Florida and Utah. While anyone can get or spread monkeypox, a ‘notable fraction of cases’ in the latest global outbreak are happening among gay and bisexual men, the CDC said yesterday. As a result, the CDC decided to hold a news conference about the outbreak now because LGBTQ Pride month usually kicks off around Memorial Day weekend, and officials wanted to make sure the community was aware of the situation.” Read more at CNN
“The Justice Department has updated its use-of-force policy for the first time in 18 years, telling federal agents they have a duty to intervene if they see other law enforcement officials using excessive force — a change that follows years of protests over police killings.
The new policy is outlined in a memo issued Friday by Attorney General Merrick Garland, which circulated Monday among rank-and-file federal law enforcement agents.
The Washington Post reviewed a copy of the four-page memo addressed to the heads of the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons. Garland wrote in the memo that the guidance aims to keep the official policies of those agencies, which are arms of the Justice Department, up to date with current training and practices of federal law enforcement.” Read more at Washington Post
“Californians could face mandatory statewide water restrictions this summer unless residents and businesses scale back on their water use, Gov. Gavin Newsom said. California is stretching into its third year of drought and the state's reservoirs are dropping to critically low levels. In July 2021, Newsom announced a drought emergency, calling on residents and businesses to voluntarily cut their water usage by 15%. Yet in March, not only had the target not been met, but urban water usage rose by 19% from March 2020, according to the State Water Resources Control Board. Scientists found earlier this year that the West's current megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years, and the climate crisis has made it 72% worse.” Read more at CNN
“Princeton University’s board of trustees voted Monday to fire longtime classics professor Joshua Katz, adopting the president’s recommendation and finding that the faculty member failed to cooperate fully in a sexual-misconduct investigation.
Dr. Katz’s allies slammed the president’s recommendation last week to fire him, characterizing it as a politically motivated effort to silence the academic after he criticized the school’s antiracism initiatives. They said Dr. Katz’s comments in a 2020 essay didn’t align with what they described as Princeton’s liberal orthodoxy and therefore weren’t tolerated.
University administrators have said there was ample reason to dismiss the professor and that politics played no role in the decision.
Dr. Katz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. His lawyer, Samantha Harris, said last week that a past relationship with a student had already been adjudicated and that the university was condemning the professor for his political beliefs.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Ukraine and Russia’s plummeting wheat exports threaten Egypt’s political stability. Long the world’s top importer of wheat, Egypt provides subsidized bread nearly free to 72 million people, out of a total population of 103 million. To head off potential unrest, Cairo has cast a global net for new wheat supplies from Paraguay to India and is directing the country’s farmers to harvest wheat earlier than usual this year.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Three theories on Biden’s repeated Taiwan gaffes
U.S. President Joe Biden on May 22. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool/Reuters)
“When it comes to President Biden and Taiwan, a confusing pattern has developed. It repeated in Tokyo on Monday.
It goes like this: Biden is asked if the United States would respond militarily if China invaded Taiwan. The president responds, ‘yes.’ The world freaks out, wondering if there has been a major change in policy. The White House says there has been no change and that everyone is freaking out over nothing.
Is it really nothing? Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims, is not recognized diplomatically by the United States but works closely with Washington. And so, for decades, the United States has maintained a careful policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ that allows the United States to be deliberately unclear on the question of Taiwan’s defense, even as it enjoys otherwise close relations including arms sales.
Yet, over the course of just nine months, Biden has said at least three times that the United States would defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion. Though administration officials have thrice walked back these statements, amid heightened tensions with Beijing, it’s reasonable to wonder if the ambiguity is starting to wear a little thin.
Here are three theories about what Biden’s remarks mean.
1. They’re gaffes.
One of the easiest explanations is that each time he spoke of defending Taiwan, Biden was misspeaking. It’d be an understandable mistake: Taiwan policy is complicated, shrouded in lingo that often only those who track the issue closely seem to understand. And Biden’s remarks about U.S. agreements with Taiwan often appear to be factually incorrect.
During his visit to Tokyo on Monday, for example, Biden was asked whether the United States would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded. He responded directly: ‘Yes, that’s the commitment we made.’ This directly echoes remarks he made in a town hall interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper in October when he told the host that the United States had made a ‘commitment’ to protecting Taiwan.
In an earlier interview with ABC News last August, Biden appeared to suggest that the United States had a commitment to protect Taiwan similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that guarantees collective self-defense. ‘We made a sacred commitment to Article 5 that if in fact anyone were to invade or take action against our NATO allies, we would respond. Same with Japan, same with South Korea, same with — Taiwan. It’s not even comparable to talk about that,’ Biden said in an interview, which took place during the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan.
But there is no formal requirement for the United States to protect Taiwan.
The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which set out provisions for unofficial but substantive relations with Taiwan, does not call for the United States to protect Taiwan in the case of a war. The treaty does not make any military commitment to defend Taiwan, instead stating specifically that ‘the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain sufficient self-defense capabilities.’
A more informal understanding is also in place regarding Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy. Here, the United States has acknowledged Beijing’s position that there is only one China but it has also said that Taiwan’s fate should not be decided by force. But Biden also made a confusing error in his remarks here, suggesting that the United States had ‘signed onto [the One China Policy] and all the attendant agreements made from there,’ when the Shanghai Communique between Washington and Beijing only acknowledges the Chinese position.
2. There’s a new policy.
Biden would hardly be the first U.S. official to make a gaffe on Taiwan policy. He’s not even the only one of his administration to do so. But his comments have now been repeated enough that many do not buy that it’s just a mistake.
Some China-watchers say that, at this point, it’s best to just assume that Biden is signaling a new policy. Bill Bishop, author of the popular China-focused newsletter Sinocism, tweeted Monday that strategic ambiguity looked ‘dead’ and that it has become ‘obvious they are not gaffes’ — particularly if you are China’s Xi Jinping.
‘Strategic ambiguity is over. Strategic clarity is here. This is the third time Biden has said this. Good. China should welcome this. Washington is helping Beijing to not miscalculate,’ Matthew Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown, wrote in his own tweet.
The key to this theory is to remember that Biden is president: If he says that the United States would protect Taiwan if China is invaded, you would assume that it would. And Taiwanese officials had been calling on Biden to do away with ambiguity: In an interview with the Today’s WorldView newsletter in 2020, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States called for ‘some degree of clarity’ on the issue.
But the idea is undercut by the repeated denials that a new policy is in place from other administration officials. On Monday, a White House official told reporters that people were misinterpreting Biden’s comments and that he was simply reiterating the 1979 pledge made to support Taiwan with the military means for self-defense.
3. It’s the old policy, with a new spin.
Because of this, perhaps the most persuasive idea about Biden’s comments is that this is still ‘strategic ambiguity,’ just with a new, harder spin.
It makes most sense particularly when you consider the context: Biden was speaking in Japan for the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a new initiative of a dozen countries designed to be a bulwark against China. Notably, Taiwan has not been offered a place in the framework, despite a bipartisan majority of 52 senators writing to ask that it be a founding member.
The move to exclude Taiwan was widely interpreted as a nod to Beijing’s interests. But Biden’s comments about Taiwan could be interpreted as a warning. Biden said Monday that though he did not expect China to invade Taiwan, Beijing was ‘already flirting with danger.’
Lev Nachman, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, wrote on Twitter that while Biden’s language was clumsy, it wasn’t a reversal of any policy. ‘Strategic ambiguity is about under what conditions the US would intervene in a war over Taiwan, not a flat out refusal to answer if it would intervene,’ Nachman argued.
Other presidents have had their own views on how hard to push the idea of military support for Taiwan; both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations offered thinly veiled warnings to Beijing about invading Taiwan. But despite fierce anti-China rhetoric in public, President Donald Trump offered little firm support for Taiwan and is reported to have privately taken a dim view of U.S. support for Taiwan in the event of an invasion.
‘If they invade, there isn’t a … thing we can do about it,’ he reportedly told an unnamed Republican senator in 2019, according to a book published last year by my Washington Post colleague Josh Rogin.
If this is accurate, Biden’s comments could be an attempt to remind China that the threat of military intervention could be real. It’s still a policy built on ambiguity, just with a little more strategy to back it up.” Read more at Washington Post
“Russia’s high-profile resignation. Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat to the United Nations, resigned from his post in Geneva on Monday. ‘Never have I been so ashamed of my country,’ he wrote in his resignation letter.
‘Those who conceived this war want only one thing—to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail on yachts comparable in tonnage and cost to the entire Russian Navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity,’ he wrote in a searing condemnation of the war. ‘To achieve that they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes. Thousands of Russians and Ukrainians have already died just for this.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The Biden administration is quietly mediating among Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt on negotiations that could be a first step on the road to normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
It involves finalizing the transfer of two strategic islands in the Red Sea from Egyptian to Saudi sovereignty, U.S. and Israeli sources tell Axios from Tel Aviv author Barak Ravid.
Why it matters: It would be the most significant U.S. foreign policy achievement in the Middle East since the Abraham Accords, which were brokered by the Trump administration and led to normalization agreements between Israel, UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.
The U.S. and Israeli sources said the agreement is not complete.
The White House wants an agreement to be reached before President Biden's trip to the Middle East at the end of June, which could include a stop in Saudi Arabia, according to the sources.
Zoom out: The Tiran and Sanafir islands control the Straits of Tiran — a strategic sea passage to the ports of Aqaba in Jordan and Eilat in Israel.
Saudi and Egyptian officials say Saudi Arabia gave Egypt control of the islands in 1950.
The Saudis supported the Abraham Accords but made it clear at the time they wouldn't normalize relations with Israel unless there was serious progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” Read more at Axios
“Raisi seeks revenge. After a senior official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was assassinated over the weekend, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has promised to avenge his death. ‘I have no doubt that revenge for the pure blood of this martyr on the hands of the criminals is inevitable,’ Raisi said on Monday. So far, nobody has claimed responsibility for the killing.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Boris Johnson’s future. The British Prime Minister’s political future has been called into question once again as new photos emerged of him drinking at a November 2020 gathering at Downing Street that appears to have breached government COVID restrictions. The revelations come as Westminster braces for the release of a full report on the rule violations, which is expected on Wednesday.
Johnson was fined once already by London police but was not fined for his attendance at this particular event. There are now 15 Conservative MPs openly calling for him to resign; it would take 54 to trigger a no-confidence vote.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The British government is trying to draw a line under the more than 1,000 unsolved murders from the so-called Troubles that blighted Northern Ireland for three decades before the Good Friday peace agreement. As Kitty Donaldson reports, legislation being introduced into Parliament today proposes to offer immunity from prosecution to anyone who genuinely cooperates with investigations in an attempt to resolve killings that still haunt the province.” Read more at Bloomberg
“$563 billion — The combined losses so far this year of the world’s 50 wealthiest people, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s more than the GDP of Sweden or the market caps of all but six companies in the S&P 500. At least one billionaire has bucked the trend: Warren Buffett’s net worth has risen this year by $1.2 billion.
12.2 — The average age in years of vehicles on U.S. roadways in 2021, a record. Vehicles on average have been getting older in the U.S. for the past two decades as quality has improved, but high prices and limited availability since the start of the pandemic have added to the trend.
$4.6 million — Auction price for the 1969 Fender Mustang guitar that Kurt Cobain played in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” music video, much higher than the estimated price of between $600,000 and $800,000. Jim Irsay, owner of the NFL’s Indianapolis Colts, made the winning bid. The Cobain family will donate a portion of the proceeds to Kicking the Stigma, an initiative from Irsay on mental-health awareness.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
A graduation ceremony at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where students articulated a range of views on student-loan forgiveness.
PHOTO: CORNELL WATSON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Some voters will be unhappy no matter what President Biden does about student-loan forgiveness.
“In the coming weeks, Biden is expected to decide whether to put forward his loan-forgiveness plan, which is aimed in part at motivating young voters ahead of the November midterm elections. Those with heavy debt loads worry the plan will be too weak, and some are upset the president is taking so long to act. At the same time, voters who scrimped to pay off their loans or didn’t go to college say it would be unfair to make taxpayers subsidize school debt for Americans whose education can boost their earning power.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A federal judge on Monday blocked Catholic University from auctioning off a memorable white-and-blue dress worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” after a Wisconsin woman filed a lawsuit claiming she was the rightful owner of the gingham pinafore garment donned by Dorothy.
Judge Paul G. Gardephe of U.S. District Court in Manhattan granted a preliminary injunction a day before the dress was scheduled to be auctioned in Los Angeles, where it had been expected to sell for more than $1 million. Catholic University had planned to use that money to endow a new faculty position in the Rome School of Music, Drama and Art.
Judge Gardephe ruled that the dress could not be sold by Catholic University until the lawsuit was resolved. Both sides are set to meet in court on June 9.
In her lawsuit, filed earlier this month, Barbara Ann Hartke claims the dress belonged to the estate of her uncle, the Rev. Gilbert Hartke, who was once chairman of the university’s drama department and received the dress as a gift in 1973 from the Academy Award-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, who was also an artist in residency at the university.” Read more at New York Times
DroneUp is delivering packages for Walmart. Photo: DroneUp
“Walmart customers in parts of six states — Florida, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, Utah and Arkansas — will soon be able to have orders delivered by drone in less than 30 minutes, Joann Muller writes in Axios What's Next.
Why it matters: This'll be the first large-scale drone delivery operation in the U.S. Drone deliveries have been available only in a few small towns, with customers selecting from a short list of items.
Walmart's DroneUp delivery network will expand to 34 sites by the end of the year, potentially reaching 4 million U.S. households.
The new markets are Phoenix ... Tampa and Orlando ... Dallas ... Salt Lake City ... and Richmond.
Walmart already has limited drone delivery in Arkansas.
Customers will be able to order anything from Tylenol to diapers to hot dog buns — 100,000 different products in all, up to a total of 10 pounds — delivered by drone for $3.99.” Read more at Axios
“Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins was intoxicated when a dump truck hit and killed him on a Florida interstate earlier this year.” Read more at USA Today
“The mayor of Southern California city Anaheim is resigning today amid a swirling political scandal over the sale of Angel Stadium to the baseball team.” Read more at USA Today
“Some of the employees of the major video game company Activision Blizzard, which is behind Call of Duty, Overwatch and Candy Crush and other games, are joining a union.” Read more at NPR
“Climate change-induced heat waves could affect you even when you're asleep. A new study reveals a possible correlation between hotter weather and poorer sleep in some parts of the world, with the worst impacts on women, older people, residents of lower-income countries and people already living in hot climates.” Read more at NPR
“Lives Lived: ‘We decided that pickles are a fun food,’ Robert Vlasic said in 1974. Lighthearted marketing helped his company, Vlasic Pickles, become the nation’s leading purveyor of the briny condiment. Vlasic died at 96.” Read more at New York Times
FILE - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform with the concert ‘The River Tour’ at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Spain, Saturday, May 14, 2016. On Monday, May 23, 2022, Springsteen and the E Street Band announced that they will begin a tour in February 2023 in the United States, followed by stadium shows beginning in April in Europe. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
“NEW YORK (AP) — The Boss is hitting the road again, and the E Street Band band is coming with him.
The rockers announced Monday that they will begin an arena tour in February in the United States, followed by stadium shows beginning in April in Europe.
Details on the cities the rockers will visit in the U.S. will be announced later, but it’ll be the first time the group has toured since wrapping The River Tour in Australia in February 2017.
‘After six years, I’m looking forward to seeing our great and loyal fans next year,’ Springsteen said in a statement.
The European concerts will begin April 28th in Barcelona, the announcement said. Other stops in Europe will include Dublin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Copenhagen with the last European show announced so far happening July 25 in Monza, Italy. Concerts in Britain and Belgium will also be announced later.
The North American dates will be split into two segments, with a second leg beginning in August.
The group’s last release was the 2020 album ‘Letter to You.’” Read more at AP News