The Full Belmonte, 5/8/2022
“LOUISVILLE, Ky. — After disqualifications and a pandemic and thoroughbred racing’s long discussion about betamethasone, the 2022 Kentucky Derby was billed as a ‘return to normal.’
There was nothing normal about this.
Rich Strike, who was on the also-eligible list until Friday morning, made a stunning move along the rail to win the Kentucky Derby on a cool and cloudy first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs.
At 80-1 odds, Rich Strike scored the second-biggest upset in Kentucky Derby history and paid $163.60 on a $2 win bet. Donerail, at 91-1 odds in 1913, is the longest shot to win the race.” Read more at USA Today
Artur Serdyuk in his destroyed home in eastern Ukraine yesterday.Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
“Ukrainian forces pushed Russian invaders back from Kharkiv.” Read more at New York Times
“All women, children and elderly people were evacuated from the steel plant where the last Ukrainians were holding out in Mariupol.” Read more at New York Times
“Jill Biden, the first lady, met with Ukrainian refugees in Romania.” Read more at New York Times
“Russia miscalculated how much support it would get from Ukrainians.” Read more at New York Times
“Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will use a day commemorating victory over the Nazis to extol the use of military force.” Read more at New York Times
“KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers on Saturday ordered all Afghan women to wear head-to-toe clothing in public – a sharp, hardline pivot that confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and was bound to further complicate the militant group's dealings with an already distrustful international community.
It was the latest in a series of repressive edicts issued by the Taliban leadership, not all of which have been implemented. Last month, for example, the Taliban forbade women to travel alone, but after a day of opposition, that has since been silently ignored.
The decree, which calls for women to only show their eyes and recommends they wear the head-to-toe burqa, evoked similar restrictions on women during the Taliban's previous rule between 1996 and 2001.
‘We want our sisters to live with dignity and safety,’ said Khalid Hanafi, acting minister for the Taliban’s vice and virtue ministry.
The Taliban previously decided against reopening schools to girls above grade 6, reneging on an earlier promise and opting to appease their hardline base at the expense of further alienating the international community. But this decree does not have widespread support among a leadership that's divided between pragmatists and the hardliners.
That decision disrupted efforts by the Taliban to win recognition from potential international donors at a time when the country is mired in a worsening humanitarian crisis.” Read more at USA Today
“Northern Ireland is on the cusp of having a nationalist leader for the first time in its history after Sinn Fein, once considered the political wing of the IRA, emerged as the largest party in regional elections yesterday.” Read more at CNN
“It was the equivalent of: “Show your work.” To help explain its puzzling rejection of dozens of math textbooks, the state of Florida released nearly 6,000 pages of reviewer comments this week and revealed an often confusing, contradictory and divisive process.
A conservative activist turned textbook reviewer was on the lookout for mentions of race. Another reviewer didn’t seem to know that social-emotional learning concepts, like developing grit, should be banned, according to the state. A third flagged a word problem comparing salaries for male and female soccer players.
As part of the official review process, the state assigned educators, parents and other residents to review textbooks, in part to determine whether they adhered to Florida’s teaching standards for math — from simple addition in kindergarten to interpretation of graphs in high school statistics.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and allies in the state legislature have also fought against what he calls ‘woke indoctrination’ in public schools and advanced a series of regulations and laws intended to limit how race, gender and social-emotional subjects are taught.
So reviewers were asked to flag ‘critical race theory,’ ‘culturally responsive teaching,’ ‘social justice as it relates to CRT’ and ‘social-emotional learning,’ according to the documents.
In an illustration of how politicized and subjective those terms have become, the various reviewers seldom agreed on whether those concepts were present — and, if they were, whether the books should be accepted or rejected for including them.
While many states and school districts appoint textbook reviewers, Florida’s process has been highly unusual. Some reviewers considered race and social-emotional learning alongside detailed points of math content and pedagogy, while others looked only for critical race theory, according to the documents.
It is not clear why particular reviewers took on a more narrow task, and the Florida Department of Education did not immediately respond to a list of written questions about the review process.
But in an April news release announcing the textbook rejections, the department said, ‘Florida’s transparent instructional materials review process ensures the public has the opportunity to review and comment on submitted textbooks.’” Read more at New York Times
“Three Americans were found dead and a fourth person was hospitalized Friday at a Sandals resort in the Bahamas, officials said.
It remains unclear how they died. Royal Bahamas Police Force said it was investigating a report that a couple had complained of feeling ill and had sought treatment at a hospital.” Read more at USA Today
Screenshot: McCormick for U.S. Senate
“Dave McCormick, who privately lobbied hard to win former President Trump’s blessing, is going after Trump for backing Dr. Oz in the country's hottest current race — the Pennsylvania GOP race for U.S. Senate.
Why it matters: It’s McCormick v. Trump in the final stretch before the May 17 primary. Trump slammed McCormick last night at a rally in Pennsylvania. Now McCormick is punching back in an ad you're seeing first on Axios — ridiculing the endorsement of Oz.
McCormick's campaign tells me the ad will begin airing on TV on Monday as the main ad for the week — the last week before the primary.
The ad, called ‘Wrong Endorsement in Pennsylvania,’ includes a clip of Fox News' Laura Ingraham saying on her show: ‘It was a mistake to endorse Oz.’
This is a big deal: Trump attacked McCormick for the first time last night, at a rainy, muddy rally last night outside Pittsburgh.
Trump said that as CEO of Bridgewater, the world's largest hedge fund, McCormick ‘managed money for communist China.’
Trump asserted McCormick is the ‘candidate of special interests and globalists and the Washington establishment ... ripping off the United States with bad trade deals and open borders.’ (AP)
Trump spent more time criticizing McCormick during his hour+ remarks than he did praising Oz, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.
McCormick ‘may be a nice guy, but he’s not MAGA,’ Trump said.
The crowd booed when a warm-up speaker mentioned Oz.
Mehmet Oz and former President Trump last night in Greensburg, Pa. Photo: Gene J. Puskar/AP
“Zoom out: McCormick wanted Trump's backing badly, turning to his wife, Dina Powell, a former Trump official, and Trump-friendly advisers like Hope Hicks to plead his case. They mostly pushed Trump to remain neutral in the race. But Trump stiffed McCormick in a very public way.
A poll released this week by Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., showed a statistical tie — Oz 18% and McCormick 16% among Republicans, with conservative activist Kathy Barnette at 12%. (Go deeper.)
McCormick is backed by Mike Pompeo, Trump's former Secretary of State.
Reality check: The ad calls Oz ‘PRO-ABORTION.’ Oz formerly spoke in favor of abortion rights, but now says he is ‘100% Pro-Life.’
McCormick said this morning on ‘Fox & Friends,’ from a diner in Sewickley (Allegheny County), Pa.:
‘President Trump's very popular in Pennsylvania — and with good reason, because his America First policies absolutely were great for Pennsylvanians and for Americans. The problem is Mehmet Oz isn't popular in Pennsylvania.’” Read more at Axios
“Democrats are testing a midterm message that expands their abortion-rights argument to a broad push on health care, Axios' Alexi McCammond and Sophia Cai report.
Why it matters: The strategy would seek to divert voters' attention from inflation, crime and the border.
Zoom out: Campaigning on health care helped put Democrats over the top in 2018 and 2020. But in this cycle, COVID's economic and psychological fallout is putting President Biden's party on its heels.
The White House thinks this week's Supreme Court leak could galvanize women, people 35 and younger and people of color.
Democrats won back the House in 2018 — flipping 41 seats — in large part due to messaging on health care. Over half the TV ads boosting Democrats in the lead-up to Election Day that cycle mentioned health care, the Wesleyan Media Project found.
Navigator Research, a progressive group, yesterday released a memowith new polling data citing strong public support for specific Democratic health care proposals.
These include calls to expand seniors' Medicare to cover hearing aids, empower Medicare to lower drug prices, cap monthly insulin costs for diabetics and lower health insurance premiums for families who must purchase their own coverage
Democrats already were gearing up to campaign against an agendaproposed by Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell rejected the plan.” Read more at Axios
“Vladimir Putin will send a ‘doomsday’ warning to the West when he leads celebrations Monday marking the 77th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany, Reuters reports.
Defiant toward Western isolation since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin will speak in Moscow's Red Square before a parade of troops, tanks, rockets and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
A fly-by over St. Basil's Cathedral will include supersonic fighters, Tu-160 strategic bombers and, for the first time since 2010, the Il-80 ‘doomsday’ command plane, which would become the roaming command center for the Russian president in event of nuclear war.
In a grand spectacle, 11,000 troops will march across Red Square along with 131 pieces of military hardware.
Reality check: Ukraine has exposed the weakness in Russia's military.” Read more at Axios
“With the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the movement against abortion rights nears its apex. But this fight actually began more than a century before Roe was decided. In the early days of the U.S., the legal cutoff for abortion was the moment a pregnant patient could feel the fetus move. But by the early 1900s, every state had made the procedure illegal — with some exceptions. Read our brief history of the anti-abortion movement in America.
We also fact-check 7 persistent claims about abortion — and delve into how reversing Roe would affect transgender people, too.” Read more at NPR
“NASA is planning its first mission to bring Martian dirt and rocks back to Earth. But before that happens, the agency must figure out how to protect our planet against any alien microbes that could hitch a ride — if such a thing exists on Mars. ‘It’s a very low probability that there's anything living at the surface,’ one expert says. ‘But there is a possibility.’” Read more at NPR
Photo: San Antonio Museum of Art via AP
“Art collector Laura Young bought a marble bust at a Goodwill store in Austin for $34.99 in 2018. It turned out to be a Roman bust dating to the late 1st century B.C. to the early 1st century A.D., and had disappeared from the collection of King Ludwig I of Bavaria after World War II.
At Goodwill, it was on the floor, under a table.
Now it's on display at the San Antonio Museum of Art through May 2023, then will be returned to Germany.” Read more at Axios