The Full Belmonte, 9/28/2022
Ian now Category 4: Catastrophic threat to Fla.
GOES-East GeoCcolor satellite image: NOAA via AP
“This was Hurricane Ian over the Gulf of Mexico at 12:41 a.m. EDT.
Here's our latest reporting from Axios Tampa Bay's Ben Montgomery and Selene San Felice + severe-weather expert Andrew Freedman:
Ian — declared a Category 4 storm at 5 a.m. EDT — is expected to make landfall this afternoon along Florida's southwest coast.
Gov. Ron DeSantis warned of ‘catastrophic flooding and life-threatening storm surge’ and widespread power outages.
Hurricane warnings include Fort Myers + Tampa and St. Petersburg, which braced for their first direct hit from a big hurricane since 1921.
As of 4:38 a.m. ET today. Map: NOAA
Rain in some areas could hit 18 inches or more (above).
Axios Local dispatch from Ben Montgomery after boating along the Hillsborough River, which was void of boat traffic:
A few of the newer homes along the river were shuttered, but most sat unprotected. Several residents worked to tarp or secure their boats and haul patio furniture inside.
Cuba (pop. 11 million) is entirely without power after Ian caused the grid to collapse, Reuters reports:
Cuba's electrical grid — decades-old and in desperate need of modernization — has been faltering for months, with blackouts an everyday event across much of the island.
The storm was too much for the system, provoking a failure that shut off the lights.” Read more at Axios
“Hurricane Ian could be one of the costliest storms in US history—around $45 to $70 billion in economic losses. The hurricane is set to make landfall in Florida Wednesday or early Thursday, potentially as a catastrophic Category 4 storm. It hit Cuba as a Category 3 storm in the early hours of Tuesday with 125 mile per hour winds and life-threatening storm surge. Track Ian’s path here. Vietnam meanwhile is evacuating 400,000 people ahead of Typhoon Noru, which may be the strongest storm facing that country in two decades.” Read more at Bloomberg
Storm clouds are seen over St. Petersburg, Florida, as Hurricane Ian approaches Photographer: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP
McConnell endorses bill to prevent efforts to subvert presidential election results
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), talks with reporters after a weekly policy luncheon, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has endorsed a bipartisan electoral count reform bill in the Senate, giving the legislation a key boost over a similar bill the House passed last week. Both bills seek to prevent future presidents from trying to overturn election results through Congress, and were directly prompted by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win.
The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), would amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and reaffirm that the vice president has only a ministerial role at the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, as well as raise the threshold necessary for members of Congress to object to a state’s electors.
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, McConnell said he would ‘strongly support’ the legislation, saying it did not ‘rashly replace current law with something untested.’
"‘Congress’s process for counting their presidential electors votes was written 135 ago. The chaos that came to a head on Jan. 6 of last year certainly underscored the need for an update,’ McConnell said. ‘The Electoral Count Act ultimately produced the right conclusion … but it’s clear the country needs a more predictable path.’
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is also likely to back the bill. Both Schumer and McConnell sit on the Senate Rules Committee, which will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the legislation.
Their votes would all but cement the bill’s likelihood of passing the Senate. The bill already enjoyed strong bipartisan support, with 11 Democratic and 11 Republican senators signing on to co-sponsor it last week.” Read more at Washington Post
Top State Judges Make a Rare Plea in a Momentous Supreme Court Election Case
In a surprising filing, state chief justices opposed an argument pressed by Republicans — that state legislatures may set federal election rules unconstrained by state constitutions.
The Supreme Court is set to hear a case that could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — ‘It’s the biggest federalism issue in a long time,’ Chief Justice Nathan L. Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court said on the phone the other day. ‘Maybe ever.’
He was explaining why the Conference of Chief Justices, a group representing the top state judicial officers in the nation, had decided to file a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in a politically charged election-law case. The brief urged the court to reject a legal theory pressed by Republicans that would give state legislatures extraordinary power.
Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a law professor at Harvard, said the brief underscored how momentous the decision in the case could be.
‘It’s highly unusual for the Conference of Chief Justices to file an amicus brief in the Supreme Court,’ he said. ‘It’s even rarer for the conference to do so in a controversial, ideologically charged case.’
If the Supreme Court adopts the theory, it will radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by giving state lawmakers independent authority, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules in conflict with state constitutions.
The conference’s brief, which was nominally filed in support of neither party, urged the Supreme Court to reject that approach, sometimes called the independent state legislature theory. The Constitution, the brief said, ‘does not oust state courts from their traditional role in reviewing election laws under state constitutions.’
The case, Moore v. Harper, No. 21-1271, will be argued in the coming months. It concerns a congressional voting map drawn by the North Carolina Legislature favoring Republicans that was rejected as a partisan gerrymander by the state’s Supreme Court. Republican lawmakers seeking to restore the legislative map argued that the state court had been powerless to act.” Read more at Washington Post
Newest addition to Trump’s legal team sidelined in Mar-a-Lago search case
By Kaitlan Collins, CNN
“The newest addition to former President Donald Trump’s legal team, Chris Kise, has been sidelined from the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation less than a month after he was brought on to represent Trump in the matter, two sources familiar with the move tell CNN.
Kise is expected to remain on Trump’s legal team but is not leading the work related to the federal government’s investigation into how the former President handled 11,000 documents seized from his Florida home in August following a lengthy effort by the government to retrieve them. The reason for the shift in Kise’s role remains unclear and he may instead focus his efforts on the other investigations Trump is facing, which range from his business practices to the January 6 insurrection.
The move is notable given Kise, the former solicitor general for Florida, was brought on to the team after a weeks-long search and struggle to find someone willing to take on the case who was also experienced in Florida law. The legal strategy for fighting the Justice Department following the August seizure of over 100 documents marked as classified was also in disarray.
Kise’s hiring came with an unusual price tag of $3 million, paid for by Trump’s outside spending arm. The retainer fee, paid upfront, raised eyebrows among other lawyers on Trump’s team, given the former President has a developed a reputation for not paying his legal fees.
His sidelining will likely be read as another setback for Trump as he faces multiple investigations.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: ‘Chris Kise’s role as an important member of President Trump’s legal team remains unchanged, and any suggestion otherwise is untrue.’
Kise did not respond to a request for comment.
Kise had been viewed among Trump contacts as a serious white-collar attorney and trial lawyer, with Florida court chops. Before he came aboard, other lawyers on Trump’s team were perceived in legal circles to have made serious missteps in the investigation, such as not fully recognizing the legal risk of the documents investigation before the search of Mar-a-Lago, telling investigators all classified records had been turned over, missing opportunities to argue for executive privilege and having an appeals court deliver a drubbing against Trump’s bid to block classified documents in the investigation.
So far, Kise doesn’t appear to be deeply involved Trump’s other most serious criminal investigative risk – the Justice Department’s January 6 investigation. Kise was not present in a DC federal courthouse last week alongside three other Trump attorneys who are arguing for confidentiality around Trump’s conversations at the end of his presidency. They are attempting to block a federal grand jury from gathering information from an expanding circle of close Trump aides about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Kise left his large law firm that he had been with for more than a decade, Foley & Lardner, to take the job as a solo practitioner. He previously worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ transition team and has won four cases before the Supreme Court.” Read more at CNN
TikTok Bans Political Fund-Raising Ahead of Midterms
By Tiffany Hsu
“Less than two months before the midterm elections, TikTok is blocking politicians and political parties from fund-raising on its platform.
In a blog post on Wednesday, the social media platform said it would prohibit solicitations for money by political campaigns. The company said political accounts would immediately lose access to advertising features and monetization services, such as gift giving, tipping and e-commerce capabilities.
Over the next few weeks, TikTok will clamp down on politicians’ posting videos asking for donations, or political parties’ directing users to online donation pages, the company said.
Accounts run by government offices will be slightly less restricted. TikTok said such accounts would be allowed to advertise in limited circumstances, such as when running educational campaigns about Covid-19 booster shots. But the people operating those accounts must work with someone from the company to run that kind of campaign.” Read more at New York Times
Sedition Trial of Oath Keepers Gets Underway
Jury selection began on Tuesday in the case of Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the far-right militia group, and four other members charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
By Alan Feuer
Sept. 27, 2022
“Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, and four other members of the far-right group prepared to present a novel and risky defense as they went on trial on Tuesday for seditious conspiracy in the attack on the Capitol last year, charged with plotting to use force against the government.
They intend to tell the jury that when armed teams of Oath Keepers made plans to rush into Washington from Virginia on Jan. 6, 2021, they believed they would be following legal orders from the president himself.
Lawyers for the five defendants are set to argue at the trial — which began on Tuesday with jury selection — that the Oath Keepers were waiting on Jan. 6 for President Donald J. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, a Revolutionary-era law that grants the president wide powers to deploy the military to quell unrest in emergencies.
As the trial in Federal District Court in Washington moves forward, lawyers in the case have said, Mr. Rhodes intends to take the stand himself and testify that even though Mr. Trump never did invoke the act, the Oath Keepers believed that he was going to do so. Their preparations for violence on Jan. 6, he will argue, should be thought of as a lawful attempt to help the president, not as an illegal attack against the United States.” Read more at New York Times
Roger Stone Promoted Violence, Then Sought Pardon After Jan. 6, Evidence Shows
The texts from Mr. Stone are among the evidence expected to be presented at the House investigative committee’s next hearing, which was postponed because of Hurricane Ian.
The House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol has not held a hearing since July. It has not determined whether the next one will be its last.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times
“WASHINGTON — Shortly after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, as authorities began arresting people across the country in connection with the violence, the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. started texting with a lawyer representing President Donald J. Trump in his second impeachment trial, seeking a pardon.
‘There will be mass prosecutions,’ Mr. Stone wrote to David I. Schoen, the lawyer. ‘Mark my words.’
Could Mr. Schoen ‘plug’ his pardon request the next time he spoke to the president?
The text messages are part of a trove of video evidence Danish filmmakers have turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, which also shows Mr. Stone threatening violence and spelling out plans to fight the election results. Some of the material was expected in the panel’s next hearing, which had been planned for Wednesday but was postponed abruptly on Tuesday afternoon, with committee members citing the impending impact of Hurricane Ian.
‘At this point I’d be happy if he pardoned me and Kerik again,’ Mr. Stone wrote to Mr. Schoen, referring to Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner and longtime ally of Mr. Trump who had repeatedly challenged the results of the election. ‘He’s already pardoned both of us so he would take no heat for it whatsoever.’
Mr. Schoen answered: ‘If he can be the only president impeached twice maybe you should be the only person pardoned twice.’
The footage shows Mr. Stone using bellicose language and laying out plans to create and exploit uncertainty about the election results to help Mr. Trump cling to power.
‘Fuck the voting,’ he says at one point with a laugh. ‘Let’s get right to the violence. Shoot to kill.’
The committee obtained the footage from the filmmakers after extensive negotiations, issuing a subpoena and then traveling to Copenhagen to spend a week going through the evidence. They received about 10 minutes out of 170 hours of footage from a crew that trailed Mr. Stone for more than three years to make a documentary, entitled ‘A Storm Foretold.’” Read more at New York Times
Activists Flood Election Offices With Challenges
By Nick Corasaniti and Alexandra Berzon
Sept. 28, 2022, 3:00 a.m. ET
“Activists driven by false theories about election fraud are working to toss out tens of thousands of voter registrations and ballots in battleground states, part of a loosely coordinated campaign that is sowing distrust and threatening further turmoil as election officials prepare for the November midterms.
Groups in Georgia have challenged at least 65,000 voter registrations across eight counties, claiming to have evidence that voters’ addresses were incorrect. In Michigan, an activist group tried to challenge 22,000 ballots from voters who had requested absentee ballots for the state’s August primary. And in Texas, residents sent in 116 affidavits challenging the eligibility of more than 6,000 voters in Harris County, which is home to Houston and is the state’s largest county.
The recent wave of challenges have been filed by right-wing activists who believe conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 presidential election. They claim to be using state laws that allow people to question whether a voter is eligible. But so far, the vast majority of the complaints have been rejected, in many cases because election officials found the challenges were filed incorrectly, rife with bad information or based on flawed data analysis.
Republican-aligned groups have long pushed to aggressively cull the voter rolls, claiming that inaccurate registrations can lead to voter fraud — although examples of such fraud are exceptionally rare. Voting rights groups say the greater concern is inadvertently purging an eligible voter from the rolls.” Read more at New York Times
Lawsuit Seeks to Block Biden’s Student Debt Cancellation Plan
A lawyer at a conservative legal group said in a complaint that he would personally be financially harmed by the government’s approach.
By Stacy Cowley
Sept. 27, 2022
“The first legal challenge to President Biden’s plan to wipe out billions of dollars of federal student loans arrived on Tuesday, when a lawyer working for a conservative legal group filed a lawsuit seeking to block debt cancellation.
‘In an end-run around Congress, the administration threatens to enact a profound and transformational policy that will have untold economic impacts,’ Frank Garrison, a lawyer at Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a complaint filed in federal court in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana. ‘The administration’s lawless action should be stopped immediately.’
The biggest obstacle for those seeking to fight Mr. Biden’s plan in court has been finding a plaintiff who has the legal standing to claim that they would be harmed by the policy. Mr. Garrison’s claim centers on the Biden administration’s plan to automatically cancel the debts of some borrowers, arguing that it would personally harm him by forcing him to pay taxes on those forgiven debts.
Mr. Garrison, who lives in Indiana, has been pursuing loan forgiveness through a relief program for public service workers, he said in his court filing. Under that program, he would eventually qualify to have his loan debt wiped out without owing any federal or state taxes.” Read more at New York Times
Spending Bill Survives Senate Test, Staving Off Government Shutdown Threat
The vote on Tuesday came after Senator Joe Manchin agreed to leave out a plan to make it easier to build energy infrastructure projects, including a gas pipeline in his home state of West Virginia.
Sept. 27, 2022
“WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to move forward with a temporary spending package needed to keep the federal government running past Friday, drawing closer to averting a shutdown after Democrats dropped an energy proposal that had drawn bipartisan opposition.
Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, had tucked the energy measure into the must-pass bill to fulfill a promise Democratic leaders made privately to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, in exchange for Mr. Manchin’s vote last month for the party’s major climate, tax and health care law.
But the inclusion of the proposal, which would make it easier to build oil, gas, solar and wind infrastructure around the country, had rankled lawmakers in both parties and complicated the perennial autumn push on Capitol Hill to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.
At least two members of the Democratic caucus and several Republicans warned they would vote against the spending measure because of Mr. Manchin’s provision, making it unlikely that the legislation could move forward as long as it was included.” Read more at New York Times
Wall Street to Pay $1.8 Billion in Fines Over Traders’ Use of Banned Messaging Apps
Eleven banks and brokerages admit they violated rules that require storage of written communications
The firms in the settlement include the brokerage unit of Bank of America.PHOTO: LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
“WASHINGTON—Eleven of the world’s largest banks and brokerages will collectively pay $1.8 billion in fines to resolve regulatory investigations over their employees’ use of messaging applications that broke record-keeping rules, regulators said Tuesday.
The firms include brokerage units of Bank of America Corp., BAC -1.48%▼ Barclays PLC,BCS -2.61%▼ Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, CS -1.73%▼ Deutsche Bank AG,DB -4.80%▼ Goldman Sachs Group Inc., GS -1.10%▼ Morgan Stanley, UBS Group AGUBS -0.07%▼ and Nomura NMR -1.20%▼ Holdings Inc. Brokerage firms Jefferies LLC and Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. also settled the claims with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The fines, which many of the banks had already disclosed to shareholders, underscore the market regulators’ stern approach to civil enforcement. Fines of $200 million, which many of the banks will pay under the agreements, have typically been seen only in fraud cases or investigations that alleged harm to investors.
But the SEC, in particular, has during the Biden administration pushed for fines that are higher than precedents, saying it wants to levy fines that punish wrongdoing and effectively deter future potential harm.
Eight of the largest entities, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, agreed to pay $125 million to the SEC and at least $75 million to the CFTC. Jefferies will pay a total of $80 million to the two market regulators, and Nomura agreed to pay $100 million. Cantor agreed to pay $16 million.
Broker-dealers have to follow strict record-keeping rules intended to ensure regulators can access documents for oversight purposes. The firms settling with the SEC and CFTC admitted their employees’ conduct violated those regulations.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Fighting hunger | President Joe Biden’s administration says it has secured more than $8 billion in private and public sector commitments to help combat hunger ahead of a high-profile White House event to address the issue today. Food insecurity has been spreading among Americans with low-paying jobs, a situation that could worsen as the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates and the economy slows.” Read more at Bloomberg
How Kevin McCarthy’s political machine worked to sway the GOP field
Allies spent millions in a sometimes secretive effort to weed out candidates who could cause the House leader trouble or jeopardize GOP victories in November
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) at a manufacturing facility in Monongahela, Pa., in September. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
“Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) made a name for himself as a firebrand social media phenomenon who delighted in trolling the left, famously boasting to colleagues that he had built his House office by focusing on communications not legislation.
But the strategy made him vulnerable to forces within his own party that helped end his time in office. Top allies of Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, worked this spring to deny Cawthorn a second term in office, after the Donald Trump-endorsed lawmaker made controversial comments about cocaine use and sex parties in Washington that led McCarthy to announce he had ‘lost my trust,’ according to multiple Republicans briefed on the effort, which has not been previously reported.
GOP lobbyist Jeff Miller, one of McCarthy’s closest friends and biggest fundraisers, and Brian O. Walsh, a Republican strategist who works for multiple McCarthy-backed groups, were both involved in an independent effort to oppose Cawthorn as part of a broader project to create a more functioning GOP caucus next year, said the Republicans, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.” Read more at Washington Post
Fetterman’s Push for Clemency Becomes an Attack Line for Oz
As Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, John Fetterman has pushed for second chances for certain convicts. But crime has become a focal point for Republicans nationwide in the 2022 elections.
By Trip Gabriel
Sept. 27, 2022
“Lee and Dennis Horton maintained their innocence through 27 years behind bars. The brothers were convicted in a 1993 robbery and fatal shooting in Philadelphia that they say they did not commit.
‘We were forgotten men,’ Lee Horton said. ‘Nobody was paying us any mind. John Fetterman reached out and pulled us up. He saved our lives because there’s no doubt we would have died in prison.’
Mr. Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 in large part to rejuvenate the Board of Pardons as a last stop for justice. One of the lieutenant governor’s few duties is to be the chair of the board, which had grown moribund.
Under his leadership, the number of inmates serving life sentences who were recommended for clemency and release, including the Hortons, has greatly increased.
Now that record has become a top issue for Mr. Fetterman’s opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, with Republicans training intense fire on the Democrat on social media, in email blasts and in $4.6 million in TV ads accusing him of ‘trying to get as many criminals out of prison as he can.’
After the Horton brothers were released in 2021, Mr. Fetterman gave them jobs as field organizers for his campaign.
‘If John Fetterman cared about Pennsylvania’s crime problem, he’d prove it by firing the convicted murderers he employs on his campaign,’ Brittany Yanick, a spokeswoman for Dr. Oz, said this month.
Mr. Fetterman, in an interview, accused Dr. Oz of fear-mongering and twisting the facts of the Hortons’ case and those of others he championed. ‘Of course, these ghouls are going to do that kind of thing and distort and lie about the truth,’ he said.
Across the country, Republicans have taken up the issue of crime to rally midterm voters, confronting a rise in violence in most major cities that began during the coronavirus pandemic. Among them is Philadelphia, which is on pace to equal last year’s record 562 homicides.” Read more at New York Times
“So Liz Truss plunges deeper into her ideological experiment with the UK economy.
The prime minister has knocked more than $500 billion off the value of UK assets since her finance minister announced 161 billion pounds ($172 billion) of unfunded tax cuts last week. And the bond market crash that triggered is set to ramp up mortgage rates for millions of borrowers.
Key reading:
IMF Tells UK to ‘Re-Evaluate’ Tax Cut as Global Criticism Mounts
Moody’s Warns Large Unfunded UK Tax Cuts Threaten Credit Rating
BOE Needs 100bps Rate Hike on UK’s ‘Big Gamble,’ El-Erian Says
German Finance Minister Wary of the UK’s Fiscal ‘Experiment’
The International Monetary Fund, in a highly unusual criticism of a Group of Seven government, urged Truss to reverse course, joining a torrent of criticism from the economics profession (which Truss herself has publicly derided).
There seems little prospect of a U-turn. The massive fiscal giveaway is the centerpiece of Truss’s entire project, a policy she spent weeks defending during the summer campaign for the Conservative Party leadership. More likely would be a politically damaging round of spending cuts.
Remember also the famous stubbornness of her hero, Margaret Thatcher. ‘You turn if you want to,’ Thatcher told the Tory party conference in 1980, as her reforms drove up unemployment at the outset of her time in office. ‘The lady’s not for turning.’
Truss will make her maiden speech as prime minister at her party’s conference next week, and that will be another crucial test of her support. The opposition Labour Party has surged to a record 17-point poll lead, according to YouGov.
The Tory membership will probably be the last group to lose faith in her heady cocktail of Thatcherism redux. But even the party faithful may be unsettled by the free market’s verdict on her offensive.” — Ben Sills Read more at Bloomberg
A pedestrian passes a closed shop in London on Monday. Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
An Israel-Lebanon Border Deal Could Increase Natural Gas Supplies
Offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean could become one of several new energy sources for European countries as they seek independence from Russia.
Sept. 27, 2022
“Israel and Lebanon have technically been at war since 1948, but the countries are close to an agreement that could increase production of natural gas, helping energy-starved Europe.
Officials from the two countries have said they are close to resolving long-running disputes over their maritime borders, which would allow energy companies to extract more fossil fuels from fields in the Mediterranean Sea.
The increased production won’t make up for the gas that Europe is no longer getting from Russia. But energy experts say an Israeli-Lebanese agreement should give a vital push to efforts to produce more gas in that part of the world. Over the last four years, energy production in the eastern Mediterranean has been growing as Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Cyprus have worked together to take advantage of oil and gas buried under the sea.” Read more at New York Times
“In what could be another major escalation in the standoff between the Kremlin and Europe over Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, Germany and the US said they suspected the crucial Nord Stream gas pipeline system was damaged by an act of sabotage. Evidence is said to point to a violent act rather than technical issues after Swedish seismologists detected two explosions in the area on Monday, when leaks appeared almost simultaneously in the Baltic Sea. The pipelines were already out of action, but any hope the Kremlin might have turned them back on at some point have now been dashed. Gas prices jumped and Denmark moved to bolster the security of energy assets. It’s the clearest sign yet Europe must weather winter without much Russian gas, and that sanctions over Putin’s seven-month war—one in which potentially tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed by his soldiers—come at a cost.” —Margaret Sutherlin Read more at Bloomberg
Gas leaks from a damaged Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea on Tuesday. Source: Norwegian Armed Forces
Alec Baldwin and Others Could Face Charges in ‘Rust’ Shooting, D.A. Says
In a funding request, the Santa Fe County district attorney said that up to four people potentially face criminal charges in the shooting death of a cinematographer on a film set last year.
By Julia Jacobs
Sept. 26, 2022
“The Santa Fe County District Attorney’s Office has said that up to four people, including the actor Alec Baldwin, could be charged in the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust” last year if prosecutors decide criminal charges are warranted.
The district attorney’s office speculated on the possible charges in a request to state officials late last month that asked for additional funding to cover the costs that would be incurred if charges were brought, which would result in several high-profile trials.
While the district attorney, Mary Carmack-Altwies, made it clear in her funding request that her office had not yet decided whether to bring charges — ‘If charges are warranted,’ she began one sentence — the funding request also went into greater detail than she has in the past, noting that her office could charge up to four people.
A document attached to the funding request said, O’ne of the possible defendants is well-known movie actor Alec Baldwin.’
For nearly a year, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office has been investigating the death of the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, who was shot on Oct. 21 as Mr. Baldwin practiced drawing an old-fashioned revolver from a shoulder holster. He had incorrectly been told the gun did not contain live ammunition, but it went off, firing a bullet that killed Ms. Hutchins and injured Joel Souza, the film’s director. Mr. Baldwin has insisted that he is not to blame for the fatal shooting, saying that he had not pulled the trigger and did not know how live rounds got onto the set.” Read more at New York Times
Alzheimer's drug slowed progression of disease in late-stage study, drugmakers say
“In a widely-anticipated study, Eisai and Biogen on Tuesday said their Alzheimer's drug slowed cognitive decline among people with early signs of the disease.
The study, led by Eisai, which has teamed with Biogen to develop the drug called lecanemab, showed the drug targeting amyloid beta in the brains of study participants slowed memory and thinking problems.
Eisai officials said the new study recruited 1,795 people with earlier Alzheimer's disease and amyloid beta in the brain. Participants received either a 10 mg per kilogram dose every two weeks over 18 months or a placebo.
The study reported the drug reduced cognitive decline by 27% in people who received the drug compared to placebo.
People on the medication experienced side effects such as brain swelling and tiny bleeds common with similar amyloid-targeting drugs. The study reported that 17% of people experienced small brain bleeds, compared to 8.7% in the placebo group. The side effects were detected in brain images but rarely caused symptoms.
Eisai already submitted an application to FDA for accelerated approval of the drug based on a smaller, earlier-stage clinical trial. Eisai officials said they will now submit the new trial results to the FDA to bolster its case that lecanemab should be approved as an Alzheimer's treatment.
The companies expect FDA will make a decision by Jan. 6.” Read more at USA Today
Virginia Students Walk Out in Protest of Anti-Trans Policies
Photo: Matthew Barakat/AP
“On Tuesday, students at over 90 Virginia public schools walked out in protest of Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s regressive new guidelines on the rights of transgender students, the Washington Post reports. In a draft policy released earlier this month, the state’s Department of Education claims the guidelines will achieve ‘cultural and social transformation at schools’ by requiring students to use programs and facilities — including bathrooms and locker rooms — that correspond to their ‘biological sex.’ The guidelines, set to be instituted across 133 Virginia school districts in October, will defer to parents to determine a student’s pronouns, names, and gender expression, a policy that fails to account for a student’s personal wishes and risks outing them to unaccepting family members. Parents will be required to submit legal documentation in order to change their child’s name and gender on school records, but per the Post, even a court order will only go so far: School employees won’t have to address a student by their chosen names or pronouns if they feel doing so would go against their ‘constitutionally protected’ free speech.
Over 1,000 students had reportedly walked out by 11 a.m. Tuesday, many of them waving rainbow and transgender flags and holding up signage; protests continued throughout the afternoon. Youngkin’s proposal — which has drawn ire from activists and fear from gender-nonconforming children — arrives at a time when states across the country are rolling back the freedoms of transgender students, whether it’s passing a swath of anti-LGBTQ+ school legislation or proposing to criminalize hormone therapy and ban lessons pertaining to gender identity. The guidelines will officially go into effect after a 30-day public-comment period that began Monday and has already amassed over 17,000 responses, which Virginia’s Department of Education is required to review and address.” Read more at The Cut
Offices become homes
Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
“Cities and states across the country are looking to transform vacant office buildings into housing — a solution for both empty downtowns and housing shortages.
Adaptive reuse of existing buildings also is gaining popularity for environmental benefits, Kate Marino writes for Axios Markets.
Why it matters: Commercial districts with little to no residential presence turned into near ghost towns during the pandemic, becoming a blight on the cityscape and a detriment to surviving businesses.
Reality check: Even though offices are still only half-full in many cities, these types of conversions have yet to really pick up steam. They're expensive, and loads of red tape and zoning laws usually get in the way.
What's happening: A few big cities are creating new incentives they hope will unleash a wave of housing conversions in the decade ahead.
Chicago this week proposed an initiative to repurpose high-vacancy buildings in its downtown financial district into homes, offering tax credits and incentives along with financing tools.
In New York City, real estate trade association REBNY estimates that a ‘conservative’ conversion rate of 10% of NYC's lower-tier office buildings could generate approximately 14,000 new residential units.
The L.A. City Council is expected to consider an updated ordinance that would provide financial incentives to convert downtown office buildings. A Rand study in L.A. found underutilized commercial properties that could collectively produce 92,000 housing units.
California's 2023 budget allocates $400 million in incentive grants for office-to-residential conversions.
Denver is also funding studies.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pitched a 20-year tax abatement tied to these kinds of conversions.
The bottom line: Saying goodbye to concentrated office districts and 9-to-5 downtowns is a process that probably will play out for decades — part of the pandemic’s lasting impact on our lifestyles and communities.” Read more at Axios
The Last, Painful Days of Anthony Bourdain
A new, unauthorized biography reveals intimate, often raw, details of the TV star’s life, including his tumultuous relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento. And it’s drawing criticism from many of his friends and family.
“After Anthony Bourdain took his own life in a French hotel room in 2018, his close friends, family and the people who for decades had helped him become an international TV star closed ranks against the swarm of media inquiries and stayed largely silent, especially about his final days.
That silence continued until 2021, when many in his inner circle were interviewed for the documentary “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain” and for “Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography.” The two works showed a more complex side of Mr. Bourdain, who had become increasingly conflicted about his success and had in his last two years made his relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento his primary focus. But neither directly addressed how very messy his life had become in the months that led up to the night he hanged himself at age 61.
On Oct. 11, Simon & Schuster will publish what it calls the first unauthorized biography of the writer and travel documentarian. “Down and Out in Paradise: The Life of Anthony Bourdain” is filled with fresh, intimate details, including raw, anguished texts from the days before Mr. Bourdain’s death, such as his final exchanges with Ms. Argento and Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, his wife of 11 years who, by the time they separated in 2016, had become his confidante.
‘I hate my fans, too. I hate being famous. I hate my job,’ Mr. Bourdain wrote to Ms. Busia-Bourdain in one of their near-daily text exchanges. ‘I am lonely and living in constant uncertainty.’
Drawing on more than 80 interviews, and files, texts and emails from Mr. Bourdain’s phone and laptop, the journalist Charles Leerhsen traces Mr. Bourdain’s metamorphosis from a sullen teenager in a New Jersey suburb that his family couldn’t afford to a heroin-shooting kitchen swashbuckler who struck gold as a writer and became a uniquely talented interpreter of the world through his travels.
Mr. Leerhsen said in an interview that he wanted to write a book without the dutiful sheen of what he called “an official Bourdain product.” Indeed, he portrays a man who at the end of his life was isolated, injecting steroids, drinking to the point of blackout and visiting prostitutes, and had all but vanished from his 11-year-old daughter’s life.
‘We never had that big story, that long piece that said what happened, how the guy with the best job in the world took his own life,’ said Mr. Leerhsen, a former executive editor at Sports Illustrated and People who has written books on Ty Cobb, Butch Cassidy and a racehorse named Dan Patch.
The book has already drawn fire from Mr. Bourdain’s family, former co-workers and closest friends. His brother, Christopher Bourdain, sent Simon & Schuster two emails in August calling the book hurtful and defamatory fiction, and demanding that it not be released until Mr. Leerhsen’s many errors were corrected.” Read more at New York Times
The $25,000 Rookie Dinner Has N.F.L. Players Divided
Young athletes are expected to treat their veteran teammates to an exorbitant meal. Is it a form of team bonding — or hazing by another name?
Sept. 26, 2022
“A bottle of Screaming Eagle cabernet sauvignon: $3,495. Nineteen shots of Rémy Martin Louis XIII Cognac: $4,525. Rib-eye steaks, seafood platters, bottles of Voss water: $1,014.
Total bill: $17,748. With tip, more than $20,000.
For many diners, that would seem an outlandish amount to spend on a meal, even for a large group. For athletes in the National Football League, it’s a decades-old ritual known as the rookie dinner — an exorbitant meal that new players are expected to finance for their teammates.
In this particular case, the bill for a 2014 meal at a Del Frisco’s steakhouse was charged to Lane Johnson, a first-round draft pick and offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles, who then posted the bill on Twitter.
In 2019, D’Andre Walker, a fifth-round draft pick and a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans, posted a dinner bill totaling more than $10,000 from Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse in Nashville. That same year, Deebo Samuel, a wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, took his teammates out for a $3,700 rookie dinner at Shanahan’s, a steakhouse in Denver. The possible record-holder is a 2010 dinnerat a Pappas Bros. Steakhouse where Dez Bryant, then a first-year player for the Dallas Cowboys, took on a $55,000 tab.
These dinners are accepted as a cultural norm among players, fans, coaches and the league itself. (N.F.L. officials declined to comment for this story.)
So when Torrey Smith, a two-time Super Bowl champion with the Baltimore Ravens and the Philadelphia Eagles, took to Twitter in June to share his disdain for rookie dinners, it was a rare instance of an N.F.L. athlete’s speaking out against a longstanding custom.
‘Dudes come into the league with no financial literacy and real problems but folks think 50k dinners are cool! NAH!’ he wrote, prompting discussions of whether the tradition is merely team bonding, or a form of hazing that can have damaging financial consequences.
“This dinner sets a precedent for a lifestyle that the majority of players cannot afford to do and shouldn’t be living anyway,” Mr. Smith said in a recent interview. He decided to speak out after watching a video from the football-focused podcast “The Pivot,” in which the first-year New York Jets player Garrett Wilson was told about the cost of rookie dinners for the first time.
“A lot of nonplayers were like, ‘What is the big deal? You are rich,’” Mr. Smith said. But, he added, this type of overspending can be a slippery slope, especially in a sport where a player’s success isn’t always guaranteed.
The N.F.L. is the highest-grossing professional sports league in the United States, with estimated revenues of $11 billion in 2021. Yet its players — who enter the league in their early 20s and become six- or seven-figure earners overnight — make less than many professional male athletes in other sports. They are not guaranteed contracts, and the average length of their careers is just short of three years, according to the N.F.L. Players Association. A 2015 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that more than 15 percent of N.F.L. players had declared bankruptcywithin 12 years of leaving the profession.
Teams in other professional sports have initiation rituals, and some even host rookie dinners, but those in the N.F.L. tend to get the most attention online, given the size of the teams and, subsequently, the dinner bill.
“It is the worst possible league to have a dinner like this,” said Will Leitch, a contributing editor at New York magazine who founded the sports website Deadspin.
For many teams, these meals have morphed into shows of excess. They often take place at high-end steakhouses before the season starts. Veteran players intentionally order the most expensive items in multiples: lobster, steak, top-shelf Cognac.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Just Jaeckin was a fashion photographer turned film director. French censors blocked his first movie, “Emmanuelle,” but it later became a sensation. He died at 82.” Read more at New York Times