The Full Belmonte, 8/8/2022
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats pushed their election-year economic package to Senate passage Sunday, a hard-fought compromise less ambitious than President Joe Biden’s original domestic vision but one that still meets deep-rooted party goals of slowing global warming, moderating pharmaceutical costs and taxing immense corporations.
The estimated $740 billion package heads next to the House, where lawmakers are poised to deliver on Biden’s priorities, a stunning turnaround of what had seemed a lost and doomed effort that suddenly roared back to political life. Cheers broke out as Senate Democrats held united, 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote after an all-night session.
‘Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests,’ President Joe Biden said in a statement from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. ‘I ran for President promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does — period.’” Read more at AP News
“The Senate-passed climate bill, if approved unchanged by the House, has a plausible chance of slashing domestic emissions and resetting the dynamic in global climate talks.
The bill would invest roughly $370 billion in renewables, electric vehicles, hydrogen, clean energy equipment manufacturing, home efficiency and other climate programs.
Takeaways from Axios Generate co-authors Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman:
U.S. emissions may fall a lot: Energy analysts who favor strong climate action say the plan should bring the U.S. within shouting distance of Biden's pledge under the Paris agreement — cutting domestic greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, compared to 2005 levels.
The tenor of global climate talk could change: The likely enactment of legislation to back up America's commitments would boost U.S. credibility to convince other countries to take actions of their own.
Between the lines: U.S. climate policy strongly favors carrots over sticks.
The biggest climate provisions are major new or wider tax incentives for renewables developers, clean-energy equipment makers, homeowners and more.
The separate bipartisan infrastructure law is also a cash infusion for EV charging and emerging technologies.
Reality check: A clean-power mandate for utilities couldn't get past Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Carbon pricing proposals have little traction. And a recent Supreme Court ruling will likely limit the breadth of executive regulations.” Read more at Axios
Rice for making koji is spread out at a Japanese brewery. Growth has been low or negative in Japan for years, while unemployment is currently at 2.6%.PHOTO: NORIKO HAYASHI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
“From Berlin to Tokyo to Wellington, economic growth is slowing or turning negative across advanced economies, yet labor markets remain historically tight.
Talk of a ‘jobful recession’ has centered on the U.S., where payrolls grew by more than half a million in July and the unemployment rate declined to its prepandemic low of 3.5% even as economic output contracted in the three months through June. The same conundrum crops up around the world.
In Germany, growth stalled in the three months through June, and the country faces imminent recession as its energy supplies dry up. But the unemployment rate remains close to a 40-year low, and almost half of companies say worker shortages are hampering production. The jobless rate in the wider eurozone is at a record low. New Zealand’s economy shrank in the first three months of the year, but its jobless rate, at 3.3%, has stayed close to a multidecade low.
It is the opposite of the ‘jobless recovery’ diagnosed after the 2008 global financial crisis, when economic growth in the U.S. and parts of Europe picked up but unemployment remained painfully high for years.
The current dichotomy might not last. Central banks are raising interest rates to rein in high inflation, which could in time undercut labor demand. The Bank of England on Thursday raised its policy rate by 0.5 percentage point, to 1.75%, and forecast a lengthy recession that would likely boost unemployment to 5.5% from its current 3.8%, which matches the prepandemic low.
Still, subdued growth may coincide with ultralow unemployment more often in coming years, judging by the country that experienced it first. For three decades Japanese growth has been low or negative, averaging 0.8%, but its unemployment rate has never been more than 5.5% and has ratcheted steadily lower since 2010 to stand at 2.6% now—close to its prepandemic low of 2.2%.
The reason, economists say, is a tight labor market because of an aging population and relatively few immigrants, features that have become more pronounced in other advanced economies during the pandemic.
In the years before the pandemic, Japan took steps to make it easier for mothers of small children to work, keep older workers on the job, and loosen restrictions on migrant labor, such as allowing foreign students to work 28 hours a week. But just as those measures were making an impact, the pandemic hit and Japan closed its borders to most new workers.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Eli Lilly, based in Indianapolis, says it is concerned the law will impact its ability to attract ‘diverse scientific, engineering and business talent from around the world.PHOTO: MADDIE MCGARVEY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Indiana-based companies Eli Lilly LLY -1.46%▼ & Co. and CumminsInc. CMI 0.22%▲ spoke against the state’s new abortion law, saying the restrictions could hurt the companies’ ability to keep and attract employees and could affect where the businesses grow.
The Saturday statements came after Indiana’s governor on Friday signed a near-total ban on abortions shortly after lawmakers approved it. The ban takes effect Sept. 15 and includes exceptions.
Lilly, based in Indianapolis, said the company is concerned the law will impact its ability to attract ‘diverse scientific, engineering and business talent from around the world.’ The company, with a market capitalization of $292 billion, is one of the biggest employers in Indiana, with more than 10,000 of its approximately 37,000 global workers in the state.
Calling abortion a ‘divisive and deeply personal issue,’ the company said it has expanded its health-plan coverage to include travel for reproductive services unavailable locally. Many businesses have made similar adjustments since the U.S. Supreme Court in June said abortion wasn’t a constitutional right.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has been controlled by the Russians since the early days of the war. ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO/REUTERS
Explosions Rock Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
Shelling around the facility intensified over the weekend amid radiation fears
“ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine—Explosions shook Europe’s largest nuclear plant over the weekend, prompting fears that the war could unleash a nuclear catastrophe.
Located in the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar along the Dnipro river, which divides the Russian and Ukrainian forces in the area, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is now perilously close to the front lines of the fighting.
Each side blamed the other for shelling near the plant, which severed a high-voltage power line, prompting plant staff to close one of its six reactors over the weekend, according to the Ukrainian nuclear regulator, Energoatom. The plant has been controlled by the Russians since the early days of the war, but Ukrainian staff are still operating it.
‘This time a nuclear catastrophe was miraculously avoided, but miracles cannot last forever,’ Energoatom said on Telegram Sunday.
Roughly 500 Russian troops were at the nuclear station, where they have been entrenched for several weeks and are firing rockets at Ukrainian positions across the river, according to Ukrainian officials.
So far, Ukrainian authorities have said there has been no damage to the reactors and no radiological release. But rockets fired on Saturday night damaged three radiation monitors, Energoatom said on Telegram Sunday, and about 800 square meters of window surfaces in plant buildings were damaged due to fragments from explosions. One nuclear plant employee was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — A fragile cease-fire deal to end nearly three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza held into Monday morning — a sign the latest round of violence may have abated.
The flare-up was the worst fighting between Israel and Gaza militant groups since Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers fought an 11-day war last year, adding to the destruction and misery that have plagued blockaded Gaza for years.
Since Friday, Israeli aircraft had pummeled targets in Gaza while the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group fired hundreds of rockets at Israel.
Over three days of fighting, 44 Palestinians were killed, including 15 children and four women, and 311 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Islamic Jihad said 12 of those killed were militants and Israel said some of the dead were killed by misfired rockets.
Israel on Monday said it was partially reopening crossings into Gaza for humanitarian needs and would fully open them if calm is maintained. Gaza’s lone power plant came back online Monday after fuel trucks entered a cargo crossing for the first time since the crossings with the strip were closed last week. The closure prompted a fuel shortage that ground the plant to a halt on Saturday. Gaza suffers from a chronic power crisis.” Read more at AP News
“BEIJING (AP) — China said Monday it was extending threatening military exercises surrounding Taiwan that have disrupted shipping and air traffic and substantially raised concerns about the potential for conflict in a region crucial to global trade.
The exercises would include anti-submarine drills, apparently targeting U.S. support for Taiwan in the event of a potential Chinese invasion, according to social media posts from the eastern leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party’s military arm, the People’s Liberation Army.
The military has said the exercises involving missile strikes, warplanes and ship movements crossing the midline of the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides were a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the self-ruled island last week.
China has ignored calls to calm the tensions, and there was no immediate indication of when it would end what amounts to a blockade.” Read more at AP News
University of La Verne in California says it refunded millions of dollars to students for housing and other expenses during pandemic closures.PHOTO: ETIENNE LAURENT/SHUTTERSTOCK
“Colleges and universities faced a barrage of lawsuits in the peak pandemic days of 2020 after schools shut down their campuses and moved classes online while charging students their usual tuition rates.
Two years later, the Covid-19 tuition wars are building toward a decisive phase.
A number of courts have issued rulings that provided a boost to students and parents seeking refunds, including last week in a case against a small private university in California. That decision followed a recent federal appeals court ruling that allowed claims to proceed against Loyola University Chicago. But those rulings stand in tension with other decisions for schools that said students don’t have valid claims. Pending cases from higher-level courts could bring more clarity.
The cases could turn on what specific promises schools made to students about in-person education—and whether students suffered any harm in the switch to remote classes, said Benjamin J. Hinks, a Boston-area employment and higher-education lawyer who has followed the litigation.
‘We’re definitely seeing a trend towards plaintiff-friendly rulings at the pretrial stages,’ Mr. Hinks said. ‘However, these are hard-fought cases, and the fight is not over for universities.’
Most of the cases revolve around the academic spring semester of 2020, when emergency quarantine measures in the period before vaccines forced the country’s higher-education industry to suspend in-person classes and close their physical campuses, barring access to laboratories, dormitories, libraries, student centers and athletic facilities.
At many schools, academia’s temporary move to virtual learning didn’t come with any discounts to tuition or student service fees. But it left a trail of hundreds of lawsuits in federal and state courts demanding restitution.
Legally, the battle isn’t so much about whether an online learning experience is inferior. Judges aren’t supposed to make judgments about academic quality under long-held doctrine insulating schools from lawsuits alleging ‘educational malpractice.’
Plaintiffs have argued that schools were contractually obligated to deliver an in-person education and unfairly kept all their money.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Photos from Maggie Haberman via Axios
Remember our toilet scoop in Axios AM earlier this year? Maggie Haberman's forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher.
Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal.
Trump denied it and called Haberman, whose New York Times coverage he follows compulsively, a ‘maggot.’
Well, it turns out there are photos. And here they are, published for the first time.
Haberman — who obtained the photos recently — shared them with us ahead of the Oct. 4 publication of her book, ‘Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.’
A Trump White House source tells her the photo on the left shows a commode in the White House.
The photo on the right is from an overseas trip, according to the source.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich told Axios: ‘You have to be pretty desperate to sell books if pictures of paper in a toilet bowl is part of your promotional plan.’
‘We know ... there's enough people willing to fabricate stories like this in order to impress the media class — a media class who is willing to run with anything, as long as it anti-Trump.’
Cover: Penguin Press
Between the lines: The new evidence is a reminder that despite the flood of Trump books, Haberman's is hotly anticipated in Trumpworld.
Haberman's sources report the document dumps happened multiple times at the White House, and on at least two foreign trips.
‘That Mr. Trump was discarding documents this way was not widely known within the West Wing, but some aides were aware of the habit, which he engaged in repeatedly,’ Haberman tells us.
‘It was an extension of Trump's term-long habit of ripping up documents that were supposed to be preserved under the Presidential Records Act.’
The handwriting is visibly Trump's, written in the Sharpie ink he favors.
The scrawls include the name of Rep. Elise Stefanik of upstate New York, a Trump defender who's a member of House Republican leadership.” Read more at Axios
Mehmet Oz and Shaquille O'Neal at Fanatics Super Bowl Party in Culver City, Calif., in February. Photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images
“Inexperienced Republican candidates are threatening to cost Mitch McConnell a long-expected Senate majority in this year's midterms.
The GOP roster is filled with Trump-endorsed celebrities who've never run political campaigns — former NFL star Herschel Walker in Georgia, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and best-selling author J.D. Vance in Ohio.
The winner in Tuesday's GOP primary in Arizona, Blake Masters — a venture capitalist who ran an unconventional primary comparing his candidacy to a tech startup — has resisted hiring political strategists to help tailor his message for November, according to Republican sources familiar with his campaign.
Why it matters: Despite a favorable political environment for Republicans, these nominees are trailing in recent public polls, Axios' Josh Kraushaar writes.
McConnell acknowledged the lowered expectations in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier: ‘I think when this Senate race smoke clears, we're likely to have a very, very close Senate still, with us up slightly or the Democrats up slightly.’
Reality check: Political outsiders are sometimes the right candidates.
Democrats won control of the House in 2018 by recruiting military veterans, businesswomen and physicians to win over swing voters.
Those candidates also campaigned as moderates, unlike the current crop of Trump-backed Republicans.
The bottom line: McConnell prefers experienced candidates who stay on message. Trump likes zany outsiders who stand outside the political mainstream. But Trump won key fights in the GOP primaries.” Read more at Axios
President Biden on the South Lawn this morning. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
“President Biden landed this morning in Rehoboth Beach, Del., after testing negative for COVID for the second day in a row. It's his first trip out of Washington in more than two weeks.” Read more at Axios
This road in Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, Calif., was destroyed by heavy rain on July 31. Photo: S. Andeskie/National Park Service
“A monsoon in Death Valley ... floods in Vegas casinos.
‘Death Valley has averaged about 1.96 inches of precipitation per year since record keeping began in 1911,’ the L.A. Times reports. ‘Nearly 75% of that amount fell in the space of a few hours on Friday.’
Friday’s storm — roads turned into rushing rivers, and dumpsters rammed parked cars — marked the second time flash flooding hit Death Valley within a week.
Photo: National Park Service via AP
Above: Cars are stuck in mud and debris from flash flooding at The Inn at Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, Calif., on Friday.
The big picture: It's not just the West. The Washington Post saysclimate change is producing ‘Extreme Summer’ coast to coast, turning "a season of joy into a season of disaster."
Billion-dollar disasters are rising.
The bottom line: Heat waves, wildfires and rainstorms are all outrunning America's infrastructure, Axios' Andrew Freedman writes.” Read more at Axios
“NEW YORK (AP) — The stylized action romp ‘Bullet Train,’ starring Brad Pitt, arrived with a $30.1 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, as the last big movie of Hollywood’s summer recovery landed in theaters.
The ‘Bullet Train’ debut for Sony Pictures was solid but unspectacular for a movie that cost $90 million to make and was propelled by Pitt’s substantial star power. Even if it holds well in coming weeks, movie theaters have no major studio releases on the horizon for the rest of August, and few sure things to look forward to in early fall.
While late summer is always a quiet period in theaters, it will be especially so this year — and likely to sap some of the momentum stirred by ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ ‘Jurassic World: Dominion,’ ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ and others. After a comeback season that pushed the box office close to pre-pandemic levels, it’s about to get pretty quiet in cinemas.” Read more at AP News
“GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — The last five weeks feels like three months to 20-year-old Joohyung “Tom” Kim, and for good reason. The South Korean kid who named himself after a cartoon train is on the fast track.
He got a rare PGA Tour start in the Scottish Open because of his standing on a Korean tour points list, hopeful of doing well enough to get a shot at the Korn Ferry Tour finals.
Now he’s a PGA Tour winner who is No. 21 in the world and headed to the FedEx Cup playoffs, and he can probably count on a spot with the International team at the Presidents Cup.
All aboard with Tom the Train!
‘It’s been a crazy month,’ Kim said.
He announced his arrival on the PGA Tour at the Wyndham Championship, where he began the tournament with a quadruple-bogey 8 and finished it with a 9-under 61 for a five-shot victory.” Read more at AP News