The Full Belmonte, 8/30/2022
Today's Artemis I launch has been scrubbed after engine issue
Kennedy Space Center, Florida (CNN)The launch of NASA's historic Artemis I moon mission has been postponed after the team was unable to work through an issue with one of the rocket's four engines.
The next opportunity to send the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft on their journey is September 2, but whether or not another attempt is made that day depends on how testing goes.
‘Launch controllers were continuing to evaluate why a bleed test to get the RS-25 engines on the bottom of the core stage to the proper temperature range for liftoff was not successful, and ran out of time in the two-hour launch window,’ according to an update from NASA. ‘Engineers are continuing to gather additional data.’
The launch team still needs to troubleshoot the engine issue and will keep the rocket in its current configuration to gather data and assess what needs to be done. Both the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, sitting on Launchpad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, remain stable, according to NASA officials.
Prior to the scrub, the countdown was extended into an unplanned hold as the launch team worked on a troubleshooting plan for one of the rocket's four engines.
That's because the launch team discovered an issue with an engine bleed in engine #3. Attempts to reconfigure it were unsuccessful.
During engine bleeds, hydrogen is cycled through the engine to condition it for launch. Three of the four engines are performing as expected, but engine #3 experienced an issue.” Read more at CNN
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents already examined by FBI, Justice Dept. tells judge
A ‘filter team’ has ‘completed its review ‘of material possibly covered by attorney-client privilege, the court filing says.
A photo illustration shows from the government’s partially released F.B.I. search warrant affidavit for former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. The affidavit was heavily redacted for the protection of witnesses and law enforcement and to ensure the ‘integrity of the ongoing investigation.’ (Photo Illustration by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“FBI agents have already finished their review of possibly privileged documents seized in an Aug. 8 search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to a Justice Department court filing Monday that could undercut the former president’s efforts to have a special master appointed to review the files.
The ‘filter team’ used by the Justice Department to sort through the documents and weed out any material that should not be reviewed by criminal investigators has already ‘completed its review,’ the brief filed by Justice Department prosecutors says. The filing came in response to a ruling Saturday by U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon to hold a hearing this week on Trump’s motion seeking the appointment of a special master.
The new government filing says prosecutors will provide more information later this week. But in the meantime, it notes that even before the judge’s weekend ruling, the filter team ‘identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information, completed its review of those materials, and is in the process of following the procedures’ of the search warrant to handle any privilege disputes.
Trump’s legal team filed the request two weeks after the Aug. 8 search, calling the court-approved law enforcement action a ‘shockingly aggressive,’ politically motivated raid. The former president’s lawyers claimed that federal authorities seized records to which they had no legal right.
Although the judge, who was nominated to her position by Trump in 2020, said she was inclined to appoint a special master, she also said her order ‘should not be construed as a final determination on Plaintiff’s Motion.’
Federal authorities took about two dozen boxes of materials from Mar-a-Lago during the search, including 11 sets of classified documents, several of them categorized as top secret. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, told congressional lawmakers Friday that U.S. intelligence analysts will conduct a review of the classified materials to determine the potential risk to national security if their contents were disclosed.” Read more at Washington Post
Judge delays Gov. Kemp’s testimony in Ga. probe until after November election
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R). (Al Drago/Bloomberg)
“The judge presiding over the Georgia grand jury investigation into possible election interference by Donald Trump and his allies on Monday denied a motion from Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to quash a subpoena requiring him to testify.
However, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney also delayed Kemp’s appearance before the grand jury until ‘some date soon after’ Election Day in November. Kemp, who is running for reelection against Democrat Stacey Abrams, has alleged that the investigation is politically motivated.
In his six-page order, the judge rejected Kemp’s request to toss the subpoena while recognizing the potential impact of the investigation on the upcoming Nov. 8 election.
‘The Governor must honor the subpoena — as have the Secretary of State and the Attorney General and many other agents of the State in these criminal proceedings,’ McBurney wrote.” Read more at Washington Post
Forget about the federal government sending you free at-home Covid-19 tests.
“The program will be suspended Friday because of a lack of congressional funding, according to the website where tests can be ordered. Senate lawmakers negotiated a bipartisan spending deal to repurpose $10 billion in Covid funds, but it got hung up. Since the program began in January, more than 350 million free tests have been delivered, the White House said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Graham predicts ‘riots in the streets’ if Trump prosecuted over classified docs
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has moved from a fierce critic of former President Donald J. Trump to a loyal companion.Credit...Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times
“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday warned of ‘riots in the streets’ if former President Trump is prosecuted for his handling of classified materials found when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home.
‘If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle … there’ll be riots in the streets,’ Graham told former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, who now hosts Fox News’s ‘Sunday Night in America.’
Trump shared a clip of the interview on Truth Social later Sunday evening.
Gowdy was chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which probed the 2012 terror attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead and uncovered a private email server used by Clinton.
Graham expressed concern that Trump is treated with ‘a double standard’ and repeated his warning of riots regarding the Georgia special grand jury investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
Graham himself has been subpoenaed in that probe in connection with phone calls made to Georgia election officials seeking to change the election results in the state.
The South Carolina senator on Sunday also talked about claims that the FBI was told to ‘back off’ investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop to keep stories about the president’s son out of headlines ahead of the 2020 election.
‘Most Republicans, including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him,’ Graham said.” Read more at The Hill
Dutch soldier dies after being shot outside Indianapolis hotel
Three Dutch commandos in the United States for training were wounded in the shooting early Saturday.
“A Dutch special forces soldier who was one of three commandos shot outside a hotel in Indianapolis over the weekend has died of his injuries, the Dutch Defense Ministry said Monday.
The soldier, who has not yet been identified, was ‘surrounded by family and colleagues’ when he died Sunday night, the ministry said in a statement.
The soldier was one of three members of the Dutch Commando Corps who were shot early Saturday in downtown Indianapolis.
The Dutch defense ministry said the other two wounded soldiers were conscious and able to speak.” Read more at NBC News
Candidate, Links Fed Diversity to Economic Woes
The sarcastic barb from Mr. Masters, which was widely condemned, was in response to a report of increased diversity at the Federal Reserve.
“Blake Masters, the Republican nominee challenging Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, suggested in a sarcastic Twitter post late Sunday that the nation’s economic struggles were connected to increased gender and racial diversity in Federal Reserve leadership.
He then dug in on Monday with a video in which he denounced ‘the Democrats’ diversity obsession’ and described Vice President Kamala Harris as a beneficiary of an ‘affirmative action regime.’
‘Finally a compelling explanation for why our economy is doing so well,’ Mr. Masters wrote on Sunday in response to an Associated Press report that found there were, according to the news agency, ‘more female, Black and gay officials contributing to the central bank’s interest-rate decisions than at any time in its 109-year history.’
The post drew swift backlash, which Mr. Masters alluded to in a follow-up video Monday evening. ‘Well, this tweet made people mad,’ he said, before adding that he didn’t care ‘if every single employee at the Fed is a Black lesbian as long as they’re hired for their competence’ and that he had ‘never spoken to anyone who can say with a straight face that Kamala was somehow the most qualified candidate for that job.’
Ms. Harris is the first woman and the first Black person to serve as vice president and had extensive political experience — including as a United States senator and the attorney general of California — before Joseph R. Biden Jr. chose her as his running mate. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday evening.
Some fellow conservatives echoed the sentiment of Mr. Masters’s initial tweet and criticized the focus on diversity at the Fed at a time of high inflation. A number of Republican candidates and elected officials have also disparaged efforts to promote diversityand combat bigotry more broadly, and Republican primary voters have rewarded some nominees who espouse racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic views.
Mr. Masters, a venture capitalist endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump, has been particularly outspoken. Among other things, he has promoted what experts in extremism describe as a sanitized version of the racist ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory — claiming that Democrats are trying to bring more immigrants into the country in order to dilute the political power of native-born citizens — and characterized the United States’ gun violence problem as ‘people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other — very often, you know, Black people, frankly.’
Mr. Masters’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment Monday. His campaign manager said last month, in response to criticism of the candidate’s immigration views, that voters were ‘tired of being sorted into color boxes and prefer substance to identity pandering’ — echoing how many on the right seek to paint efforts that combat racism, sexism and other forms of bias as ‘identity politics’ and ‘wokeness.’
Republican voters seemed unmoved by a string of revelations about Mr. Masters’s views ahead of his Aug. 2 primary, including youthful writings that his opponent, Jim Lamon, had criticized as antisemitic. Mr. Masters handily defeated Mr. Lamon.
But whether Mr. Masters can appeal to voters beyond his right-wing base in November seems to be weighing on party leaders: Senate Republicans’ political action committee canceled $8 million of television, radio and digital advertising in Arizona last week, signaling increasing pessimism about Mr. Masters’s ability to win a race that Republicans once saw as a relatively easy pickup en route to retaking a Senate majority.
Mr. Masters has stripped hard-line abortion policies from his website — an implicit recognition of the backlash Republicans are facing over the overturning of Roe v. Wade — and released an ad in which he sought to cast his abortion platform as ‘common sense.’
The website changes, reported by NBC News on Thursday, removed language in which Mr. Masters described himself as ‘100 percent pro-life’ and called for a constitutional amendment that would give fetuses the same legal rights as an infant or adult.
The anti-abortion movement is pursuing such measures, known as fetal personhood laws, as a way to criminalize abortion as murder and to eliminate the exceptions included in many current abortion bans. But a growing volume of data shows the political perils of that policy. Republican candidates have underperformed in special elections held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, and voters in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed state legislators to ban or severely restrict abortion.
More Republicans have shifted away from hard-line abortion positions in recent weeks. Mr. Masters’s ad, which focused on rare third-trimester abortions and said Mr. Kelly supported an ‘extreme’ policy, was in line with a longtime anti-abortion strategy of centering public messaging on abortions later in pregnancy — even though more than 90 percent of abortions take place at or before 13 weeks’ gestation, and the state laws that have taken effect since June generally ban the procedure early in pregnancy, or at any point.” Read more at New York Times
Pakistan floods: One third of country is under water - minister
Image caption, A flooded street on Monday in Nowshera district
“One-third of Pakistan has been completely submerged by historic flooding, its climate minister says.
Devastating flash floods have washed away roads, homes and crops - leaving a trail of deadly havoc across Pakistan.
‘It's all one big ocean, there's no dry land to pump the water out,’ Sherry Rehman said, calling it a ‘crisis of unimaginable proportions.’
At least 1,136 people have died since the monsoon season began in June, according to officials.
The summer rain is the heaviest recorded in a decade and is blamed by the government on climate change.
‘Literally, one-third of Pakistan is underwater right now, which has exceeded every boundary, every norm we've seen in the past,’ Ms Rehman told AFP news agency.
‘We've never seen anything like this,’ the minister added.
Of those who are known to have died, 75 were in the past 24 hours alone, officials said on Monday, adding that the death toll is expected to rise.
Speaking to the BBC, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said one-third of those killed are believed to be children.
‘We're still coming to grips with the extent of the damage,’ he added.
Officials estimate that more than 33 million Pakistanis - one in seven people - have been affected by the historic flooding.
Heavy waters in the country's northern Swat Valley have swept away bridges and roads, cutting off entire villages.
Thousands of people living in the mountainous area have been ordered to evacuate - but even with the help of helicopters, authorities are still struggling to reach those who are trapped.
‘Village after village has been wiped out. Millions of houses have been destroyed,’ Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Sunday after flying over the area in a helicopter.
Those who managed to escape have been crowded into one of many makeshift camps across the country.
‘Living here is miserable. Our self-respect is at stake,’ flood victim Fazal Malik told AFP from a school that was being used to home some 2,500 evacuees in the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Provinces like Sindh and Balochistan are the worst affected but mountainous regions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have also been badly hit.” Read more at BBC
”EU foreign ministers are this week set to back suspending the bloc’s visa facilitation agreement with Moscow in an effort to curb the number of travel permits issued after some eastern member states threatened to unilaterally close their borders to Russian tourists. Some countries have demanded collective action to stop ordinary Russians from travelling to the EU on tourist visas, in the latest challenge for the bloc as it tries to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine while maintaining unity among its 27 members. Countries including the Czech Republic and Poland stopped issuing visas to Russian tourists shortly after president Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February. They have since demanded that Brussels enact a complete ban, echoing a plea from Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But others have continued to grant the travel documents, allowing Russians with visas to travel anywhere in the the Schengen free-movement area. As a first step, ministers plan to give political support to suspending the EU-Russia visa facilitation agreement at a two-day meeting in Prague that begins on Tuesday, three officials involved in the talks told the Financial Times. ‘It is inappropriate for Russian tourists to stroll in our cities, on our marinas,’ said a senior EU official involved in the talks. ‘We have to send a signal to the Russian population that this war is not OK, it is not acceptable.’
Parts of the 2007 deal relating to free movement of government officials and businessmen were suspended in late February. A wider suspension would remove preferential treatment for Russians when applying for all EU visas, requiring more documents, making them more expensive and significantly increasing waiting times. ‘We are in an exceptional situation and it requires exceptional steps. We want to go beyond suspending the visa facilitation,’ said the senior EU official, adding that deeper changes could be introduced by the end of the year. However, there is no consensus on additional measures that Brussels could take that would either reduce the number of EU visas to be issued to Russians or halt their issuance entirely, or on proposals such as extending any ban to citizens of Belarus, which has supported Putin’s invasion. Some countries, including Germany, have cautioned against an outright ban. Josep Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat who will chair the Prague talks, has said he opposes a ban on all Russian visas, saying the bloc needed to ‘be more selective’. Finland, Poland and the Baltic countries, which border Russia, have therefore suggested they are prepared to stop allowing Russians with tourist visas to enter their territories, citing the Schengen agreement’s national security exceptions.” Read more at Financial Times
Supporters of Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr gather outside the Government Headquarters in the capital Baghdad's Green Zone, on Aug. 29, 2022. (Ahmad Al-rubaye / AFP via Getty Images)
BAGHDAD — Followers of a prominent Shiite cleric stormed Iraq’s presidential palace Monday, in an outburst of anger after the cleric vowed to quit politics. The resulting clashes with security forces left at least 12 people dead, health officials said.
By late evening, gunfire and explosions were rattling windows across the capital, as long-simmering political arguments gave way to the deployment of heavy weapons and mortar rounds.
The violence was the most serious during a summer of unrest in Iraq, which has been without a government for the better part of a year and captive to escalating feuds between political factions, including followers of the cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, and rival Shiite groups that are backed by Iran.
Sadr’s followers stormed the palace after he announced his ‘final’ retirement from politics — a threat he has made before, during years in the public eye, but one that could have more serious consequences in the charged political climate, and with the country ruled by a caretaker government.
‘You are free of me,’ Sadr told his supporters in a resignation message posted Monday afternoon on Twitter.
The fallout was immediate. Sadr’s supporters, who had been holding a sit-in inside the Green Zone, where government offices and diplomatic missions are located, scaled the gates of the palace and paraded through its ornate halls, in scenes shared on social media. Soon afterward, sounds of live ammunition echoed in the capital, as security forces descended on the protesters.
Elsewhere in Iraq, Sadr’s supporters blocked roads and government buildings, including in Basra, to the south. The U.N. mission in Iraq called the developments an ‘extremely dangerous escalation’ and implored protesters to withdraw from the Green Zone.
‘Iraqis cannot be held hostage to an unpredictable and untenable situation. The very survival of the State is at stake,’ the mission said in a statement.
Iraq’s political dysfunction — a feature of civic life since the U.S. invasion nearly two decades ago entrenched a sectarian, kleptocratic order — entered its latest phase in October, when Sadr won the largest number of seats in parliament but failed to form a government. After months of political paralysis, Sadr withdrew his lawmakers from the legislature in June and sent his followers to occupy the parliament.
A rival political bloc, comprising Shiite groups backed by Iran, has also held protests and sit-ins in the Green Zone, raising fears of a confrontation. In the background of the political infighting, Iraqis have suffered mightily, as state institutions, from schools to hospitals, deteriorate without government support.
Sadr, a populist who has opposed both U.S. and Iranian influence in Iraq, has called for early elections, as well as the barring of political figures who served after the U.S. invasion from working in government. — Mustafa Salim and Kareem Fahi Read more at Washington Post
“Ukrainian officials said new attacks on Russian forces in the Kherson region were underway, potentially signaling the start of an offensive to recapture occupied territory. For weeks, they have signaled that their forces would mount a counterattack in the south.” Read more at Washington Post
Image caption, Ukrainian soldiers prepare artillery at the southern front line near Kherson last month
“‘Britain’s House of Lords is bloated, lazy and unpopular. It’s certainly undemocratic, and by design. It’s a chamber of cronies; a palace of patronage, where some members barely care enough to show up,’ writes my colleague William Booth. But rather than modernization — the chamber may receive another 50 life peers, if Boris Johnson gets his way.” Read more at Washington Post
“Iran sent its first shipment of combat drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, U.S. officials said. The move underscores deepening ties between Moscow and Tehran while also highlighting Russia’s struggles to supply its overstretched military. The transfer, however, has already been marred by technical issues, U.S. security officials said.” Read more at Washington Post
Chris Dawson found guilty of murdering wife Lynette, ending 40-year Australian mystery
Chris Dawson arrives at NSW Supreme Court on August 30, 2022 to hear the judge's verdict.
“Brisbane, Australia (CNN)One of Australia's longest-running cold cases documented in the popular ‘Teacher's Pet’ podcast has ended with the conviction of Chris Dawson for the murder of his wife Lynette.
Dawson, 74, was arrested in 2018 after police re-examined evidence and investigated new claims made in the podcast that the high school teacher was having an affair with a 16-year-old student when his wife vanished in January 1982.
Dawson has long denied any involvement in the disappearance of his wife, who was 33 when her husband formally reported her missing in February of the same year.
He claimed she walked out on him and their two young children, and pleaded not guilty to one charge of murder.
On Tuesday, Justice Ian Harrison discounted sightings of her in subsequent years as mistaken or fabricated, and said while the verdict was unsupported by direct evidence, circumstantial evidence pointed to Dawson's guilt.” Read more at CNN
Photo: Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images
“On the outskirts of New Delhi, these two never occupied ‘Twin Towers’ high-rise apartments were leveled yesterday in a controlled demolition after India's top court declared they violated fire-safety regulations.” Read more at Axios
The debate over American fascism gets louder
President Biden speaks during a rally hosted by the Democratic National Committee at Richard Montgomery High School on Aug. 25 in Rockville, Md. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“Last week, President Biden dropped the f-word. He warned during a stump speech in Maryland that the country’s right-wing movement, which remains dominated by his predecessor, former president Donald Trump, has embraced ‘political violence’ and no longer believes in democracy.
‘What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,’ Biden said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. ‘It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.’
Biden was gesturing to various ongoing Republican initiatives to restrict voting access as well as a slate of Republican midterm candidates who, to this day, deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There’s also the tacit support of some Republicans for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the violent rhetoric that has emerged among some corners of the right in the wake of a publicized FBI investigation into classified documents Trump kept in his private Florida golf club residence.
The simple invocation of ‘fascism’ elicited howls of outrage from Republicans and triggered a weekend of political chatter. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee described the president’s remarks as ‘despicable.’ Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.) said on CNN that it was ‘horribly inappropriate’ to brand a segment of the U.S. population as ‘semi-fascist’ and called on Biden to apologize.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) tweeted that ‘communists have always called their enemies ‘fascists.’ One historian of Latin America responded to Cruz, noting that, while communists had other names for their opponents before the rise of fascist parties in the 1920s, fascists have always used anti-communist hysteria to ‘stir violence’ and ‘augment their power.’ (Never mind the relative absurdity of casting a figure with as centrist a record as Biden as a ‘communist.’)
For his part, Trump posted Monday on his personal social media website another complaint about the 2020 election having been stolen from him and an unconstitutional demand that he be declared its victor, two years later. Over the weekend, leading Republican lawmakers warned of violence in the streets should the Justice Department move to prosecute as a number of investigations into his activities go forward.
Biden and his allies did not back down from the message. ‘You look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they’re doing in attacking our democracy, what they’re doing and taking away our freedoms, wanting to take away our rights, our voting rights ― I mean, that is what that is,’ White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday. ‘It is very clear.’
There is no consensus in the U.S. political conversation on what ‘fascism’ even is, let alone which set of political actors should earn its ignominious attribution. On the left, there’s a hardening belief that a Republican Party still captured by Trump is hostile to fair elections, bent on dismantling liberal democracy, and is taking its cues from more clear-cut would-be authoritarians like illiberal Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
On the right, there’s a parallel, if more histrionic, insistence that the Democrats and the liberal establishment comprise some sort of tyrannical front. That grievance has supercharged their long-running culture war and underlies recent moves by Republican state governments to ban certain books and censor what schools can teach about race, history and sexuality.
Numerous historians and political scientists have weighed in on the uses and misuses of forging analogies to the 1930s, when fascism took root in Europe. Experts in comparative politics have charted how the modern Republican Party has drifted toward the extremes of Western politics, even while the Democrats still occupy what can be broadly considered in Western democratic terms as the center.
Scholars of fascism see Trump’s political ideology and style not as a redux of the past, but a brand of far-right, pseudo-authoritarian for the present. Regular readers of Today’s WorldView for the past half decade will know that we have not been shy about invoking ‘fascism’ in the American context as we parsed the tumult of the Trump years, the ultranationalism and nativism animating his supporters and his own conspiratorial demagoguery.
Biden’s decision to deploy the term may reflect a more aggressive stance ahead of a bruising midterm election cycle. That could be a tactic to gin up Democratic voters. ‘They have thought they weren’t seeing the strong fighter, the person they elected, and they attributed it to age and to weakness,’ Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, told my colleagues. ‘I hope we can anticipate more of this. People have been craving it.’
But the substantive claim Biden made is also important. The ‘semi-’ in ‘semi-fascism’ was doing a lot of rhetorical work for the U.S. president, who was not likening Trump and his movement to the genocidal monstrosity of the Third Reich. But his critics nevertheless seemed to suggest that was the subtext of his remarks, and dismissed the charge offhand.
So what may be a useful lens through which to see Biden’s invocation of fascism? Writer Jonathan Katz put forward a thorough analysis over the weekend, citing the work of Robert Paxton, a respected historian of Vichy France and author of the 2004 book, ‘The Anatomy of Fascism.’
Katz quoted Paxton at length: ‘Fascism in power is a compound, a powerful amalgam of different but marriageable conservative, national socialist, and radical right ingredients, bonded together by common enemies and common passions for a regenerated, energized and purified nation, whatever the cost to free institutions and the rule of law.’
All of that scans quite neatly onto the rhetoric and atmospherics of modern-day Republicanism, as Katz himself lays out in his essay.
‘The danger is not that American fascism will necessarily or even probably turn out like Italian Fascism — or German, Syrian, Argentinian, or any other. We are not going to live a shot-for-shot remake of the Holocaust or the Second World War,’ Katz wrote. Rather, he continued, ‘the danger would be in the triumph of an exclusionary, violent, anti-democratic cult of personality, which by definition will not be dislodged through elections, politics, or civil debate.’” Read more at Washington Post
“For cash-strapped renters, the situation is getting more dire in many US metro areas. The Zumper National Rent Index shows the median rent for a newly listed one-bedroom apartment is now at $1,486 nationally, up 11.8% over August 2021 — beating last month’s record high. More than half of US cities are showing double-digit rent hikes, with some over 30%.” Read more at Bloomberg
The Manhattan skyline. Photographer: Ismail Ferdous/Bloomberg
Inevitable: Melting Greenland ice sheet will send seas nearly a foot higher, study finds
“Even if the entire world stopped burning fossil fuels today, a new study finds the Greenland ice sheet would still lose enough ice to add nearly a foot to rising sea levels.
Melting over the past century has altered the ice sheet's equilibrium, according to the study led by two glaciologists at the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. For the ice sheet to correct that imbalance, it will lose an estimated 100 trillion tons of ice, adding at least 10.8 inches to global average sea levels.
That’s ‘a very conservative rock-bottom minimum,’ said Jason Box, a glaciology professor with Denmark's geological survey.
Greenland's contribution to sea level rise could be more than 2 feet within the century if the pace of warming continues, the authors reported in the journal "Nature Climate Change," even though the study doesn't attach specific time frames.
Many nations committed during the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change to hold the line on emissions to rein in rising global average temperatures, but it could be decades before the world reaches net zero emissions.” Read more at USA Today
Professor Jason Box takes samples as he stands on exposed ice below the snow line of the Greenland Ice Sheet in West Greenland during the … Show more THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF DENMARK AND GREENLAND, GEUS
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
“Tens of millions of Americans are struggling to keep the lights on.
The rising cost of natural gas is driving up the price of heating and electricity — and some 20 million U.S. households are behind on their utility payments, Bloomberg reports.
That's about 1 in 6 homes in America.
Now, as several states end pandemic-era moratoriums on shutting off power, households that continue to fall behind on their bills could see shutoffs.
What's happening: The average price for electricity was up about 15% last month, compared with July 2021. That's the steepest year-over-year price jump in electricity since 2006, per Bloomberg.
The price spikes are far worse in Europe, where imported Russian natural gas is slowing to a trickle because of the war in Ukraine.
What's next: Expect electricity prices in the U.S. to climb even higher in the coming months, as Europe's energy crisis deepens, Axios climate and energy reporter Andrew Freedman notes.” Read more at Axios
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
“Truth Social, the app launched by Donald Trump as a free speech platform for conservatives, is facing serious financial and legal stress as it tries to survive, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer writes.
Why it matters: The app is the former president's biggest business venture since leaving office — and his best effort to create an alternative populist megaphone after being banned from Twitter.
What's happening: For now at least, it's following a chaotic trajectory like so many of Trump's other businesses.
Truth Social owes a vendor — an internet infrastructure company for conservatives, RightForge — $1.6 million, sources tell Axios.
The situation, first reported by Fox Business, puts Truth Social at risk of losing the cloud hosting it needs to operate.
Beyond financial issues, Truth Social and the blank check company (SPAC) it plans to merge with in order to go public are facing serious legal problems — and regulatory probes — that could derail those plans.
The blank check company, Digital World Acquisition Corp., is under investigation by the SEC for possibly negotiating the deal prior to going public.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused Trump's application for a trademark for "Truth Social."
An investor sued Digital World Acquisition Corp.'s CEO last year, claiming fraud.
The intrigue: It's unclear how many people — or exactly who — are working for Truth Social. Most members of Trump's presidential inner circle aren't involved in Truth Social's day-to-day operations.
Its CEO, former Republican congressman Devin Nunes, makes occasional media appearances to discuss the app. A few people say on LinkedIn that they work for Truth Social.
State of play: The app's problems haven't stopped conservatives from exploring the service, where Trump now posts regularly without fear of being throttled or banned.
As of mid-August, the app had 3 million downloads worldwide across iOS (mostly in the U.S. and a few thousand in the UK), per Data.ai, an app measurement company.
Truth Social saw a surge of downloads in response to the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search.
Truth Social isn't available on Android, meaning that around 44% of smartphone users in the U.S. can't download it.” Read more at Axios
Data: Sabato's Crystal Ball. Chart: Skye Witley/Axios
“2022 has seen the second-highest number of primary losses for House members since 1948, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.
Why it matters: Rising populism is weakening the shield of incumbency.
By the numbers: 14 House incumbents have failed to secure their party's nominations this cycle.
2020 saw the most successful primary challenges in a non-redistricting year since 1974. That suggests this is a trend.
The big picture: The only year since the 1940s that saw more House primary losses than 2022 was 1992, when 19 incumbents lost renomination, according to data from Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball.
Many factors were at play in '92: The presidential election swept Bill Clinton to power. Redistricting. The House bank scandal. And recession backwash.
Between the lines: Aside from redistricting, the bulk of this year's losses can be attributed to two major clashes:
Former President Trump's effort to purge enemies — especially those who voted for his impeachment, including Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Tom Rice (R-S.C.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.). All lost.
The struggle between progressive Democrats and the establishment. Moderates, including Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), and progressives, including Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), lost to ideological foes.” Read more at Axios
“House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy's leadership PAC has reserved another $37 million in TV time for the last two months before midterms — with $9 of every $10 targeting seats carried by President Biden in 2020, Axios' Hans Nichols and Sophia Cai have learned.
Why it matters: The aggressive buy from the Congressional Leadership Fund is a rejoinder to growing talk about Democrats finding a shot to retain the House.
What's happening: Democrats hope to harness voter energy around protecting abortion rights to motivate their base and appeal to independents in an election Republicans had hoped would focus on economic anxiety.
Republicans remain confident they can retake the House. CLF is doubling down on offensive spending, even in places where Biden won by double digits two years ago.
What we're watching: Biden's approval ratings are still low, but show signs of creeping up after Democratic legislative wins on clean energy, prescription-drug prices, manufacturing, semiconductors and veterans.
Inflation remains a big worry, but the pace has slowed. And Americans got some late-summer relief on gas prices.” Read more at Axios
U.S. Open: Serena Williams Highlights Round 1 With a Win
Williams kicked off her farewell tour at Flushing Meadows by beating Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, 6-3, 6-3. She will face Anett Kontaveit of Estonia, the No. 2 seed, in the second round.
Serena Williams’s Grand Slam singles career will live on for at least another match.
“On one of her favorite stages, Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, beat Danka Kovinic of Montenegro, 6-3, 6-3, in front of a celebrity-packed capacity crowd on an electric opening night at the U.S. Open.” Read more at New York Times
Photo: LM Otero/AP
A mint-condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million yesterday, blasting into the record books as the most ever paid for sports memorabilia, AP reports.
Why it matters: The market has grown exponentially more lucrative in recent years.
The rare Mantle cathe contentious "Hand of God" goal in soccer's 1986 World Cup.
That easily surpassed the $7.25 million for a century-old Honus Wagner baseball card recently sold in a private sale.
Just last month, the heavyweight boxing belt reclaimed by Muhammad Ali during 1974's "Rumble in the Jungle" sold foy $6.2 million.” Read more at Axios
Mickey Mancard breaks record, as sports memorabilia soar
By BOBBY CAINA CALVANyesterday
“NEW YORK (AP) — A mint condition Mickey Mantle baseball card sold for $12.6 million Sunday, blasting into the record books as the most ever paid for sports memorabilia in a market that has grown exponentially more lucrative in recent years.
The rare Mantle card eclipsed the record just posted a few months ago — $9.3 million for the jersey worn by Diego Maradona when he scored the contentious ‘Hand of God’ goal in soccer’s 1986 World Cup.
It easily surpassed the $7.25 million for a century-old Honus Wagner baseball card recently sold in a private sale.
And just last month, the heavyweight boxing belt reclaimed by Muhammad Ali during 1974′s ‘Rumble in the Jungle ‘sold for nearly $6.2 million.
All are part of a booming market for sports collectibles.
Prices have risen not just for the rarest items, but also for pieces that might have been collecting dust in garages and attics. Many of those items make it onto consumer auction sites like eBay, while others are put up for bidding by auction houses.” Read more at AP News
Mable John, Motown’s First Female Solo Artist, Dead at 91
Blues singer and older sister of Rock Hall-inductee Little Willie John also recorded for Stax Records and as a longtime member of Ray Charles' Raelettes
“MABLE JOHN, THE first female solo artist signed to Motown (then Tamla) Records, a Stax singer and longtime Ray Charles collaborator, has died at the age of 91.
John died Thursday at her home in Los Angeles; no cause of death was revealed. ‘We loved her and she was a kind person,’ her nephew Kevin John told the Detroit News.
The older sister of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted R&B singer Little Willie John, Mable was born in Louisiana and grew up in the South before the John family moved to Detroit in the early 1940s. Like her musical family, John embarked on a career as a singer, opening for artist like Billie Holiday.
At the same time, Mable John also worked at the Friendship Mutual Insurance Agency, a company run by Bertha Gordy, the mother of Berry Gordy, then an aspiring music producer. “He had no money and no way of getting around, but he had these people who wanted to hear his songs, so I drove him around,” John said of Gordy.
After one of Gordy’s earliest songs — Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ ‘Got a Job’ — failed to secure distribution, Gordy founded his own label Tamla in 1958. John became the first solo female artist to sign and record on the label, which two years later became Motown Records.” Read more at Rolling Stone
One hiker dead, two hospitalized after group got lost on trails near Lake Havasu City
“LAKE HAVASU CITY, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) - A hiker has been found dead after he became separated from a group of four hikers who had got lost on trails in a park near Lake Havasu City.
On Friday afternoon around 2:30 p.m., a group of hikers called 911 saying that they were out of water, lost and showing signs of heat exhaustion after going for an outing in Sara Park. Lake Havasu City Fire Department requested help from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office to find the group consisting of a 63-year-old woman, a 61-year-old man, a 31-year-old man, and a 27-year-old woman.
Fire officials found three hikers near the trail and sent the two women to a nearby hospital for treatment. The 61-year-old man was taken back to the Command Post where he told officials that the 31-year-old man had left them to find the trailhead when they called 911. Search and rescue teams were sent out along the trail system in the park. Kingman and Phoenix DPS Ranger helicopters also searched overhead.
On Saturday, the man was found dead off of the trail system in a desert wilderness area. The hikers told officials that they were visiting Sara Park from out of town and were unaware of hiking in the heat of the day on challenging trails. The man has not been identified at this time.” Read more at Arizona Family
‘The Invitation’ Tops Box Office With $7 Million in Catastrophically Slow Weekend
“If three new movies debut in theaters, but nobody goes to see them…
That is how Sony’s creepy thriller T’he Invitation’ managed to top box office charts with a paltry $7 million from 3,114 North American cinemas. Its win comes with some pretty weak bragging rights; it’s the lowest first-place finish since May 2021, when COVID was keeping lots of people at home and ‘Spiral’ grossed only $4.5 million.
Now, it’s not the pandemic that’s preventing most audiences from going to theaters. It’s the lack of appealing options. Overall, the domestic box office generated just $52.7 million over the weekend, according to Comscore — the worst collective result in months.” Read more at Variety
Oh my gourd: Nebraska man paddles 38 miles in hollowed out pumpkin
Duane Hansen says his knees still hurt after he broke a pumpkin-paddling record that actually exists
Step aside, ultramarathoners: America has a new endurance athlete, and he’s as gourd as it gets.
A Nebraska man has set a new world record after he paddled 38 miles down a river in a huge, hollowed-out pumpkin he grew himself.
Duane Hansen of Syracuse, Nebraska, completed his journey last week, according to a Facebook post from the city of Bellevue on Saturday.
Photos on social media show Hansen crouched inside the giant squash, which weighed in at 846lb, according to the Facebook post. Officials said Hansen set off down the Missouri river around 7.30am and completed his journey just after 6.30pm.” Read more at The Guardian