US Politics

‘Crafting an illusion’: US rail firms’ multimillion-dollar PR pushNorfolk Southern, the company behind the Ohio train crash, and other rail firms spent millions on marketing and lobbyingSix children, smiling and laughing, sit at a table with lunch boxes open in front of them. “Hey guys! My dad can stop a train with his finger,” one brags. “My mom can see into the future,” another says, holding up her hands as binoculars. “My mom? She speaks train,” a third claims.‘Nobody has answers’: Ohio residents fearful of health risks near train siteRead moreJust then, her mom walks into the room. Another child asks if it’s true that she can talk to trains. “You betcha,” she says with a wink, as she stands in front of a sky-blue sign emblazoned with the logo of the Norfolk Southern Corporation.The kids’ conversation takes place in “Everyday Superheroes”, a 2018 video created for Norfolk Southern, the $12.7bn operator of the train carrying toxic chemicals that derailed earlier this month in East Palestine, Ohio, causing an environmental disaster of still unknown proportions.The video, part of an ad campaign called “Reimagine Possible”, was produced by RP3, a Maryland-based public relations agency. RP3 said the campaign was designed to reach “policymakers and opinion elites… whose perceptions are vital to Norfolk Southern’s success.” The people targeted by the campaign “tend to support companies whose leadership helps spur innovation and growth”, the agency wrote, explaining in a case study how the campaign was designed to “convince people they’re actually innovative”.The PR push is a window into a years-long, multimillion-dollar campaign by America’s biggest railroad corporations to win favor among federal regulators and policymakers and push back against calls for tougher regulation – a successful campaign that is coming under closer scrutiny following the Ohio disaster.Another video, set to its own version of School House Rock’s Conjunction Junction, starts with the lyrics: “Norfolk Southern, what’s your function? Hooking up the country, helping business run. Trains! They haul everything, safely and on time.”Between 2015 and 2022, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the trade organization representing large train companies, spent more than $39.4m lobbying the federal government, according to data compiled by the nonprofit OpenSecrets. The AAR and its dues-paying members, who include Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, BNSF and CSX, have also made millions of dollars’ worth of political contributions.But as Norfolk Southern’s “Reimagine Possible” campaign reflects, the industry also employs more indirect tactics to promote what the AAR calls “balanced regulation”, its euphemism for eliminating mandatory, government-enforced safety standards in favor of voluntary, industry-led oversight.An analysis by the Guardian found that between 2015 and 2019, the most recent year for which data are available, the AAR paid Subject Matter, a Washington DC-based PR and government affairs firm, more than $23.3m for “paid media consulting + advertising,” according to the AAR’s annual filings with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That sum represents nearly as much as the group spent on lobbying during the same period.Subject Matter’s work for the AAR included “Freight Rail Works”, which the agency described as “a comprehensive campaign to help ensure this critical industry remains top-of-mind for Washington DC-area policymakers and influencers.” “Transforming for Tomorrow”, another campaign produced by Subject Matter, was designed to “showcase the surprising technological advancements that power America’s rail network” and “cover all major touchpoints for our DC beltway audience”. Neither Subject Matter nor RP3 responded to a request for comment.According to the AAR’s 2019 tax filing, the trade association’s “integrated communications campaign” is designed in part to demonstrate “how railroads use modern technology to improve safety and provide public benefits”.As part of its communications push, the AAR has paid for dozens of sponsored articles in the Washington Post and Politico, two publications widely read by the “policymakers and opinion elites” who the group targets with its messages of innovation and self-regulation. Under headlines such as “No need to fix a freight rail system that is thriving” and “How America’s freight railroads became great again,” the AAR touts its members’ impact on the US economy and warns of the consequences of new regulations. Other stories, including “How freight rail is putting the brakes on human error,” argue that the industry is already making technology investments on its own, with the implication (and sometimes the explicit connection) that new safety requirements are unnecessary or even detrimental to those efforts.The rail industry has also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars a year funding GoRail, a tax-exempt 501(c)4 organization that advocates for the railroad industry before local, state and federal policymakers and officials. According to IRS filings, between 2015 and 2019 the AAR gave $2m to GoRail, a sum that represents more than one-fifth of GoRail’s total revenue during that period.GoRail’s operations are tightly integrated with the country’s largest rail companies, and its agenda is closely aligned with their interests. GoRail’s board consists almost entirely of railroad executives and the president of the AAR, and the role of board chair rotates annually among executives from Norfolk Southern, BNSF, Union Pacific and other firms. GoRail and the AAR, as well as Railpac, the AAR’s political action committee, all operate out of the same building in Washington DC. Neither GoRail nor the AAR responded to requests for comment.Unlike the AAR, however, GoRail exists to generate grassroots support – or the appearance of grassroots support – for the industry’s policy agenda. GoRail’s annual reports and IRS filings regularly boast of how many letters it sent to Congress, social media “impressions” it generated and “lawmaker-advocate connections” and “educational meetings” it organized. As a Norfolk Southern executive who chaired the GoRail board wrote in the organization’s 2017 annual report, “Via thousands of field meetings with key local influencers annually and a sophisticated media strategy, GoRail’s team is able to build the relationships that matter and then utilize these connections to impact policy decisions when it counts.”One policy decision to which the industry remains strongly opposed is a proposal from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to require most trains, particularly those carrying hazardous materials, to have at least two crew members on board. The “train staffing” rule’s supporters, including railroad workers and their union representatives, argue that having multiple workers on board makes trains safer to operate and leaves them more capable of responding to accidents when they occur.Individual companies such as Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific, as well as GoRail and the AAR, have helped lead the industry’s opposition to the proposal, frequently using the same arguments that they deploy in their PR campaigns to argue that the rule is unnecessary because of their investments in new technologies.Crew tried to stop Ohio train after alert about wheel bearing, safety report findsRead moreDuring a 14 December FRA hearing about the rule, for instance, a representative for Norfolk Southern told the FRA that the company opposed the train staffing requirement in part because it would prevent the company from “redeploy[ing]” conductors from trains to “ground-based role[s]”. “Once again technology has supplanted the conductor’s traditional safety role,” the representative said.A Union Pacific representative, meanwhile, told the FRA that while the company “has always been, and continues to be, a driver of innovation in this industry”, the train staffing proposal “is threatening to take us down the path of obsolescence”. A GoRail issue brief makes a similar claim that “Mandating a specific railroad crew is a disincentive to research new technologies”.In quarterly earnings calls and presentations to shareholders, however, the companies suggest that reducing the number of workers on trains is as much about cutting short-term costs as it is about developing new technology or promoting innovation. Even as Norfolk Southern’s PR campaign calls its workers “everyday superheroes”, over the past two decades the company has managed to cut more than 9,600 jobs while increasing shareholder dividends and stock buybacks by 4,500%, as More Perfect Union recently reported. “Crew staffing of trains…has remained consistent,” a company spokesperson told the Guardian in a statement. “Norfolk Southern continues to make substantial progress recruiting new crew members.”“When [companies] think of railroad, they do not think of cutting-edge. They think of cutting crew size and cutting corners to do it,” said Vincent Verna, a representative of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and a former locomotive engineer for Union Pacific, during the 14 December FRA hearing. “Simply cutting the size of the crew for more profits has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with avarice.”The railroad industry has deployed a similar two-step argument in opposition to other safety proposals, including a rule that would have required trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes, as the Lever reported. The publication found that during the Trump administration, Norfolk Southern and the AAR helped defeat a proposal to require ECP brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials – even though ECP brakes were one of the innovations that industry leaders, including Norfolk Southern, had “previously touted” as examples of the industry’s technological prowess.While there is little doubt that railroad companies are indeed investing in and implementing new technology, the industry appears determined to use the idea of technology – as well as the prospect of future technology – to defeat new safety requirements and regulations.Its approach was summed up in a 2017 blog post from the PR agency hired by the AAR to “deliver [the] message home to policymakers” that the industry’s technology investments are important for the US economy. The agency created a video of a hard hat- and yellow safety vest-clad spokesperson for Freight Rail Works being “cloned” dozens of times. The video’s header: “Association of American Railroads: Crafting an illusion to deliver a powerful message”.TopicsOhio train derailmentRail industryUS politicsOhiofeaturesReuse this content More

Ukrainian children orphaned by war ‘need a tremendous amount of help’President of Los Angeles-based nonprofit Kidsave says Americans need to be made aware that Ukrainian needs go beyond military aidSince Russian troops invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their support for the encroached country by volunteering to fight for it while others have called on politicians to equip the defenders with munitions and weapons.Randi Thompson is calling on Americans to ponder another way: aiding efforts to place Ukrainian children orphaned by the Russian invasion in new families within their country.Thompson is the president, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Kidsave, which is dedicated to connecting older children in institutionalized care around the world with families to adopt them. The group had worked in Ukraine for six years before the invasion by Russian forces on 24 February 2022 made a bad situation worse.Officials estimate there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war there started – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization.Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans.At least 6,000 Ukrainian children have been forced into camps and facilities across Russia – without parental consent – by the invaders, according to a report from the Conflict Observatory, which is supported by the US state department. And Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, has said his teams have documented more than 14,000 instances of Ukrainian children being forced into adoption in Russia since the invasion, which shows no signs of ending anytime soon.“There’s no question that the fighting is going to continue,” Thompson said. “The suffering is going to continue.”According to Thompson, Ukraine has made it a clear priority to keep in the country any of its children who are in need of adoption as opposed to sending them abroad. And Kidsave has done what it can, investing a million dollars from its coffers into its operations in Ukraine, according to Thompson.The group first used cargo vans to move to safety nearly 120 children that the organization had placed with families.It then bought 17 more vehicles for its fleet, including 22-passenger sprinters, buses with capacities of 50 to 62 passengers, and cargo trucks, including an 18-wheeler with refirgeration.That fleet has crossed checkpoints, gone into towns ensnared by conflict and have helped evacuate more than 30,000 people while also assisting in the delivery of more than 1,000 tons of humanitarian aid, with Kidsave staffers and their charges sometimes having to navigate behind the invaders’ lines using satellite phones, night vision goggles, protective gear and helmets, Thompson said.Among those whom Kidsave evacuated were three children – ages three, four and six – whose mother died from an illness after she had left her physically abusive husband and taking them with her. They had moved in with a loving, attentive foster family whose home ended up surrounded by shelling and bombing.The foster parents were unable to leave, but they made arrangements to move the children out of the conflict zone and, through Kidsave, place them with another family in Ukraine, motivated – as Thompson put it – by a nationwide sense of, “I’m going to be my brother’s keeper now.”In a statement provided to the Guardian, Ukraine-based Kidsave staff member Olena Shulha described how the children told stories, drew pictures, played and watched cartoons until they fell fast asleep during a two-day, nonstop trip of nearly 1,100 miles that was not devoid of explosions and shelling.Shulha said the children were happy to brave the trek after being told there was “a new life waiting for them, full of interesting moments, love and care, new friends and discoveries.”“We explained to them that there was a new family who would take care of them in a safe place,” Shulha wrote. “We pray that their little hearts will never again experience separations, wars and disappointments.”While many of her compatriots may be unable to help prolong such work by physically getting on the ground in Ukraine, Thompson said a new campaign offers them the chance to get involved from a distance.The Flat Sasha project centers on a cartoon depiction of a 12-year-old child who’s been displaced from a Ukrainian orphanage by the Russian invasion. It can be printed out, decorated and displayed in cars, schools, offices or social media, and anyone with a smartphone can scan a QR code on the caricature that links to information about children in institutionalized care in war-torn Ukraine.The QR link does offer the opportunity to donate money that would provide food, medicine, shelter, fuel and counseling services to the children with whom Kidsave works. The donations would also aid the construction of a center in Ukraine aimed at providing mentorship, therapy and other emotional support services to children trying to grow up in conflict.But, if nothing else, just becoming aware – and spreading the awareness – that Ukrainian needs go beyond military aid is vital as the war slogs through its second year, according to Thompson.“We want Americans to [realize] these children still need a tremendous amount of help,” Thompson said.TopicsUkraineUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Dining across the divide US special: ‘We were on the brink of an uncomfortable conversation’They are both Democrats, but what subjects – from Ukraine to defunding the police – would leave them at odds?Jordan, 30, Providence, Rhode IslandOccupation Works at the progressive Jewish Liberation Fund, which aims to make Jewish philanthropy more effective. Captain of the US cross-country running championship teamVoting Record Progressive Democratic – about “as far left as you can go, but stopping short of radical or revolution”Amuse bouche Regularly meets up with a couple of Japanese housewives to practise his JapaneseJudith, 65, Branford, ConnecticutOccupation Retired professor of contemporary literature at Yale. PoetVoting record DemocratAmuse bouche Designs pocket parks in her home townFor starters Jordan I had duck confit, lobster pasta, chocolate cake, chamomile tea. We found a lot of common ground on teaching more about slavery in schools. Judith thinks we should focus on how humans have been cruel to each other over time, but for me it’s more important to focus on the history in America and how that helps us understand the world we live in now. In a lot of places slavery wasn’t so racially codified as it was here.Judith I had nougat de foie gras, bass, Grand Marnier souffle for dessert. It was delicious. He was more focused on contemporary discussions of the American experience that I was. The longer, worldwide historical context was more important to me.Jordan It’s important to teach about chattel slavery. I’m not saying it was worse for us than, say, the Japanese enslaving Koreans, but the racial codification of slavery in America still affects what our world looks like and the narratives that equate people of a certain race to negative habits and stereotypes.The big beef Judith Jordan believes we should take money from the police and give it to other types of social workers to help deal with crime. I don’t. If you want a society based in law that has arisen out of constitutional democracy, you need some way of enforcing the law. The combination of underfunding and lack of respect for the law has exacerbated tendencies we don’t like in the police.Jordan It doesn’t feel like lack of resources is the issue. I’m from St Louis. Look at Ferguson. Look at Milwaukee. The police that killed Tyre Nichols in Memphis were part of one of these highly trained units. The police should be in a public safety department so they aren’t self-supervised.Judith We should increase police funding, but it should be based on more stringent training and education, to make it a profession with salaries to match. I would have national regulation of local police. The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black, so there’s something else going on. Those officers were totally unqualified for a job that puts the power of life and death in their hands. That’s not a racial issue.Jordan We were on the brink of an uncomfortable conversation. Judith was saying we live in a violent society and there are cultural differences between groups. Judith grew up in a more working-class background; mine is more bourgeois. But I don’t think she experienced a reckoning of concentrated poverty and trauma, and how that affects and drives people.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSharing plateJudith My grandparents fled Ukraine during the pogroms. We need to look at Ukraine as fighting for the ideals we have now and give them support.Jordan It’s complicated. I don’t think we should be diverting funds, and Russia is clearly a bad actor. But I find the lack of dissent a little surprising. The left-wing progressive space is generally anti-war, so we should be thinking about this.For aftersJudith We got into some interesting things, like do you want a national police force so you don’t have these little islands of police where the culture is leaning toward violence? That makes me uncomfortable because wherever there is a national police force, there is a potential for danger.Jordan Whatever our public safety force looks like, it shouldn’t be the free-for-all it is now. As Jewish people, we agreed a national public force could be a scary thing. It doesn’t feel like police forces have a lack of resources. I don’t qualify as a police abolitionist but I have serious questions about police departments and what they look like right now.TakeawaysJordan Judith reminded me of my grandma, which I loved. But I disagreed with this idea of cultural differences being one of the causes of crime.Judith Jordan is a very delightful person. These questions are complex, and we need more context and nuance. We’re always focused on the minute-to-minute catastrophe. Additional reporting: Kitty Drake Jordan and Judith ate at Union League Cafe, New Haven, Connecticut. Want to meet someone from across the divide? Find out how to take partTopicsLife and styleDining across the divide US specialSocial trendsUS politicsUS policingDemocratsSlaveryfeaturesReuse this content More

Louisiana anti-abortion group calls on doctors to stop denying care exempted by banGroup speaks out after hospitals refused to offer treatment for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage citing ambiguous lawAn influential group in Louisiana that has long opposed abortion access is calling out medical providers and their legal advisers who – for an apparent fear of liability – have cited the state’s ban on most abortions to deny treatments that remain legal.The group spoke out after hospitals in the state’s capital, Baton Rouge, refused to provide treatments for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage.The treatments which Kaitlyn Joshua needed were similar to an abortion, and her doctors feared being prosecuted, citing purported ambiguities in the ban on terminating most pregnancies which took effect in Louisiana after the US supreme court last year overturned the nationwide abortion rights granted by Roe v Wade.Even though Louisiana has some of the tightest restrictions against abortion in the US, Joshua was legally entitled to the care she sought under an exception to the ban which involves miscarriages, Sarah Zagorski of Louisiana Right for Life said.Zagorski, whose organization has been involved in anti-abortion legislation since 1970, said it is clear under Louisiana’s abortion ban that it is legal to provide and receive miscarriage treatments, even if they closely resemble some abortions.“It was just a gross misunderstanding of the law from the practitioners handling the case, unfortunately,” Zagorski said.In a recent interview with the Guardian, Zagorski said the public in general urgently needs more education on the exceptions to the abortion ban in a state which has the highest maternal mortality rate in the US. While she stopped short of saying what her organization might be able to contribute that effort, she did say it was imperative for medical providers and their legal teams to take it upon themselves to study and comprehend the exceptions to the abortion ban in Louisiana, especially in light of a case like the one centering on Joshua.Joshua for her part has retained an attorney, though neither she nor the lawyer would comment to the Guardian on what actions they are possibly contemplating against any providers who turned Joshua away.“The law itself is very specific about this,” Zagorski added. “This should not have been how this happened.”Louisiana’s abortion ban states, in part: “Abortion shall not mean any one or more of the following acts, if performed by a physician: …The removal of a dead unborn child or the inducement or delivery of the uterine contents in case of a positive diagnosis, certified in writing in the woman’s medical record along with the results of an obstetric ultrasound test, that the pregnancy has ended or is in the unavoidable and untreatable process of ending due to spontaneous miscarriage, also known in medical terminology as spontaneous abortion, missed abortion, inevitable abortion, incomplete abortion, or septic abortion.”To the author of the ban, the Louisiana state senator Katrina Jackson, the language makes it clear that miscarriage treatment is distinct from an abortion. Though she did not speak with the Guardian, she has previously released a statement to National Public Radio and its local New Orleans affiliate, WWNO, saying that nothing in the law bans women from receiving miscarriage treatments.But Jackson has not indicated whether she may try to at all clarify the legislation she authored. She first faced calls to do at least that after Louisiana woman Nancy Davis, who was carrying a skull-less fetus that would die within a short time of birth, was denied an abortion in the state and had to travel to New York to terminate the pregnancy.Abortion access advocates have similarly rallied around Joshua.At six weeks pregnant with her second child, Joshua called a physician group in Baton Rouge – her state’s capital – to schedule her first prenatal appointment, but the clinic denied her an appointment. The group said it was no longer providing prenatal care for women under 12 weeks of pregnancy because it thought it was too risky in light of the abortion ban that took effect in Louisiana after last year’s overturning of Roe v Wade to be ambiguous.Miscarriages most frequently occur during the first trimester of pregnancy, and they require the same medical procedures as abortions, Joshua – who declined to speak to the Guardian – was told. Joshua told WWNO that the clinic did not want to face possibly being investigated if their miscarriage care was interpreted as an abortion.As a Black woman, Joshua told WWNO that she was aware of maternal-related deaths in her state. A 2018 report by the Louisiana Department of Health found that Black women are four times more likely than their white counterparts to die during childbirth, so she decided to schedule her next appointment with a Black obstetrician.Yet before her appointment, Joshua bled heavily and felt severe pain between her 10th and 11th week of pregnancy. She went to Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge for immediate care and received an ultrasound that showed her fetus had a faint heartbeat and had stopped growing three or four weeks earlier.Joshua’s pregnancy hormones, meanwhile, were abnormally low. Nonetheless, the hospital would not confirm that she was having a miscarriage.By the next evening, Joshua ended up at Baton Rouge general hospital after losing a large amount of blood and tissue. A female doctor told Joshua that there appeared to be a cyst in her ultrasound and questioned if she was pregnant.Joshua told WWNO that the doctor recommended waiting at home for the miscarriage to pass, if this was in fact a spontaneous abortion. However, the doctor refused to give her treatments that would lessen the pain and quicken the miscarriage.“She stated that they’re not going to put … ‘spontaneous abortion’ [anywhere] because that would then flag an investigation on them,” Joshua told WWNO.Zagorski says it’s natural for things to be confusing for providers and patients after last year’s landmark supreme court decision. Nonetheless, Joshua’s ordeal was separate and apart and clearly fit the built-in exceptions, she said.For the record, Zagorski said neither her group nor the ban support aborting a child with life-threatening medical conditions, as seen in the Nancy Davis case. “We believe that even in dire severe cases like that, where the baby is likely to not live long, that it is still a human life and there are ways that a woman can deliver naturally and have hospice care for that baby,” Zagorski said.Despite that stance, Louisiana’s state health department issued an emergency rule late last month that allows women to terminate pregnancies if their unborn child suffers from one or more of 25 listed medical conditions, including acrania. The medical diagnoses remain an exception to the abortion law for at most 180 days.Abortion access advocates would prefer Louisiana and other similarly situated states to do away with their bans altogether. But the legislatures of Louisiana and those other states are controlled by conservatives who oppose abortion.TopicsAbortionLouisianaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

RNC chair: candidates must sign loyalty pledge if they want to join 2024 debatesRonna McDaniel says loyalty pledge by primary candidates should be a ‘no-brainer’ for party’s presidential hopefulsThe Republican National Committee’s chairperson has said that all GOP primary candidates should sign a pledge promising to support the eventual party nominee if they wish to participate in the presidential debates.Ronna McDaniel, the RNC’s leader since 2017, told CNN in an interview Sunday that even though the debate criteria have not yet been released, the loyalty pledge should nevertheless be a “no-brainer” for the party’s presidential hopefuls.“If you’re going to be on the Republican National Committee debate stage asking voters to support you, you should say, ‘I’m going to support the voters and who they choose as the nominee’,” McDaniel told CNN host Dana Bash.“Anyone getting on the Republican national committee debate stage should be able to say, ‘I will support the will of the voters and the eventual nominee of our party,’” she added.Bash went on to play a recent Donald Trump interview clip in which the former president indicated to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he was unsure whether he would support the eventual GOP nominee if it wasn’t him.“It would have to depend on who the nominee was,” said Trump, who announced himself as a 2024 candidate in the fall.Responding to that clip, McDaniel said, “I think they’re all going to sign” the loyalty pledge.She added: “I really do. I think President Trump would like to be on the debate stage.“We can’t be attacking each other so much that we lose sight of: we have to beat the Democrats. We have to beat Joe Biden in 2024. And we may have divisive primaries and differences of opinions, but in the end we have to settle those to win the big picture, which is governing our country and doing right by the American people,” she said.Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, who is considering running for the Republican nomination for president, has criticized the loyalty pledge.Hutchinson has said Trump shouldn’t be allowed to run for president because his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 after he urged them to fight like hell.“For leaders such as myself who believe Donald Trump is not the right direction for the country … that would certainly make it a problem for me to give an across-the-board inclusion pledge,” Hutchinson told the Washington Post earlier this month.McDaniel addressed Hutchinson’s criticism by saying: “I think you support the voters.” McDaniel said she is the niece of former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, was appointed to the RNC by Trump and would support either if they clinched the 2024 nomination, even if the two men didn’t support each other.Other Republicans who have entered the presidential race include former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley as well as biotech millionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Prominent Republicans who could eventually launch presidential runs include former vice-president Mike Pence, ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and Florida governor Ron DeSantis.The RNC has scheduled its first presidential primary debate for August.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

Covid-19 likely emerged from laboratory leak, US energy department saysUpdated finding a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged and comes with ‘low confidence’The virus which drove the Covid-19 pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons program, according to an updated and classified 2021 US energy department study provided to the White House and senior American lawmakers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.The department’s finding – a departure from previous studies on how the virus emerged – came in an update to a document from the office of National Intelligence director Avril Haines. It follows an FBI finding, issued with “moderate confidence”, that the virus spread after leaking out of a Chinese laboratory.The conclusion from the energy department – which oversees a network of 17 US laboratories, including areas of advanced biology – is considered significant despite the fact that, as the report said, the agency made its updated judgment with “low confidence”.Conflicting hypotheses on the origins of Covid-19 have centered either on an unidentified animal transmitting the virus to humans or its accidental leak from a Chinese research laboratory in Wuhan.The spread of Covid-19, just one in a line of infectious coronoviruses to emerge, caught global health bodies unawares in early 2020. It has since caused close to 7 million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and disrupted trade as well as travel.Former US president Donald Trump politicized the issue, calling it the “China virus”, triggering a racialization of a pandemic that his Democratic successor Joe Biden has sought to avoid. But political polarization remains under the surface of efforts to establish its origins.The energy department’s updated findings run counter to reports by four other US intelligence agencies that concluded the epidemic started as the result of natural transmission from an infected animal. Two agencies remain undecided.US officials, the Journal said, also declined to expand on new intelligence or analysis that led the energy department to change its position. They also noted that the energy department and FBI arrived at the same conclusion for different reasons.The CIA remains undecided between leak and natural transmission theories, according to the National Intelligence Council study. But while the initial 2021 report did not reach a conclusion, it did offer a consensus view that Covid-19 was not part of a Chinese biological weapons program.The National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, acknowledged Sunday that there are a “variety of views” within US intelligence agencies on the issue.“Some elements of the intelligence community have reached conclusions on one side, some on the other, and a number have said they just don’t have enough information to be sure,” Sullivan told CNN.But he said that the Biden administration has “directed repeatedly every element of our intelligence community to put effort and resources on getting to the bottom of this question”.Sullivan added that Biden had specifically requested that the National Laboratories under the energy department be brought into the assessment. “He wants to put every tool at use to figure out what happened,” Sullivan said.“Right now there is not a definitive answer to emerge from the intelligence community on this question,” he added, referring to eight of 18 agencies – along with the National Intelligence Council – that have looked in Covid-19s origins.A previous report by the energy department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in May 2020 concluded that a lab-leak theory was plausible.The updated, five-page NIC assessment, the Journal reported, “was done in light of new intelligence, further study of academic literature and consultation with experts outside government” and comes as Republicans in Congress press for more information.A spokesperson for the energy department wrote in a statement that the agency “continues to support the thorough, careful, and objective work of our intelligence professionals in investigating the origins of Covid-19, as the president directed”.Chinese officials have disputed that Covid-19 could have leaked from its labs, among them the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) and the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.According to the initial US 2021 intelligence report, Covid-19 first circulated in Wuhan, China, no later than November 2019, when three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – reportedly involved in coronavirus research – were sick enough to seek hospital care.TopicsCoronavirusUS politicsChinaAsia PacificBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

Dining across the divide US special: ‘She said there are no leaders in the Republican party, just idiots’Neither of them likes Donald Trump, but would they agree on the economy, healthcare or immigration?Lali, 62, Chicago, IllinoisOccupation Now retired, Lali worked in international accounting and mergers and acquisitionsVoting record Always DemocratAmuse bouche Lali lives in Chicago, but has an organic farm and an off-grid house in Wisconsin. She’s also lived on four different continentsJozsef, 68, Waterloo, IowaOccupation Business consultant, now semi-retiredVoting record Jozsef is registered as an independent, but considers himself conservative and mainly votes Republican. He “held his nose” and voted for Trump in 2016, but now hates him “with a passion”. In 2020 he voted for BidenAmuse bouche Jozsef moved to the US from Hungary as a toddler and is a foodie. He makes a mean goulash – the secret is homegrown Hungarian paprikaFor startersJozsef I had grilled grouper – of all the things to eat in Iowa! They had a nice Reuben sandwich on the menu, but I’m diabetic and have a heart stent. The rule from my doctors is that if your food has flavour, you’re not allowed it.Lali I had sweet-potato soup, a Reuben sandwich with a salad, a craft beer and tiramisu. He ate the fish that goes in the fish tacos. I had a huge dish of food and he had a teeny thing on a teeny plate.Jozsef Lali was outgoing and friendly. We started off talking about the weather – that’s the typical greeting in the midwest. Then we started denigrating Trump for about 10 minutes. And it went on from there.The big beefJozsef We didn’t have a large disagreement about a major issue. We were loud, but polite. Especially as she was a woman. If it was a guy, it might have been different. That’s being sexist, but that’s because I’m old. Men are afraid to argue with women, let’s face it.Lali We agreed on a lot of the symptoms and many of the causes, but had very different solutions. He thinks capitalism is the answer to everything, but it has been messed up in this country. We agreed there should be more education funding. I think it has been deemphasized by Republicans because there have been so many studies that show the better educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democrat.Jozsef She’s very black and white about Republicans. I would describe her as a typical Democrat – she spouts a lot of talking points from that side of the aisle: “All Republicans do this. All Republicans are jerks.” She claimed they are out to dumb down America, because that’s their voting block: dumb people. I totally disagree. I said: “It would take really smart people to come up with that complex a plan.” I don’t think the Republicans are smart enough to come up with something like that.Lali He kept trying to say Democrats and Republicans are both messed up. I said: “No, there’s a degree of difference in how messed up they are.” Republicans have a lot more whack-jobs than we do.Jozsef She said there are no leaders in the Republican party. Just idiots. And I said: “Show me a good leader in your party. For the last eight years you have not been able to produce one.” Biden’s a nice guy, but he’s a doddering old man.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSharing plateJozsef We agreed that something has to happen with healthcare in America. It’s a disgrace that the richest country in the world can’t keep people healthy. She said the government should control healthcare. I said I’d be afraid for our government, as it stands, to run it.Lali In my view, healthcare should not be a for-profit enterprise. His view was that it shouldn’t be for profit, but it could be in the private sector. I didn’t fully understand what that meant.For aftersJozsef We talked about immigration as we’re both immigrants. She wants an open policy: “Let’s get ’em all in here.” I said: “I want to build a 1,000-mile wall on the southern border with a five-mile gate and put Transport Security Administration machines in the gate.” Whoever wants to come over and work can come in, but let’s make them go through the security turnstile like at the airport. Let’s have stronger security.Lali We overlapped on the need for immigrants. Where we disagreed was on his views about immigrants being forced to work. He said his father had been forced to work in a coalmine in Belgium. I pointed out that all immigrants need sponsors to make sure they’re not a public charge. And he was like: “You’re probably right about that. But they should be made to work.”TakeawaysJozsef When we were leaving, she accused me of being a closet liberal. And honestly, I am getting to be a pinko as I want a woman to be president next. It’s time somebody used their brain instead of their testosterone.Lali I really enjoyed the lunch, but was a little frustrated that he didn’t have more fact-based rejoinders to what I was saying. I was working with a set of facts; he was working with a set of views.Additional reporting: Kitty Drake Lali and Jozsef ate at La Rana Bistro in Decorah, Iowa.Want to meet someone from across the divide? Find out how to take partTopicsLife and styleDining across the divide US specialUS politicsSocial trendsUS healthcareUS immigrationfeaturesReuse this content More

Zandra Flemister, first Black woman in Secret Service, dies aged 71Hailed as ‘a trailblazer’, Flemister experienced widespread racism and discrimination during her tenure at the federal agencyThe first Black woman to have been hired by the US Secret Service, Zandra Flemister, has died at the age of 71, leaving behind as her legacy a rich political career, her fight with Alzheimer’s, and a lawsuit that details the widespread racism and discrimination she suffered during her tenure at the federal agency known for protecting presidents.Flemister, who died Tuesday, was “a trailblazer” and “inspired a future generation of agents,” the Secret Service’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, said in a statement about her death.She started her work at the Secret Service in 1974, four years before her transfer out to the foreign service – which in part protects Americans abroad – in 1978.During her time at the Secret Service, Flemister guarded the families of US presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.“I … wanted to be a trailblazer for other African American women,” she would say later about her Secret Service career. But it’s important to note that statement was contained in an affidavit forming part of a class-action lawsuit that saw more than 100 Black agents and former agents detail a culture of racist discrimination in the Secret Service.Microaggressions, ultimatums and hostile verbal comments against her peppered her experience at the Secret Service.A fellow agent once referred to her as a “prisoner” while they were on duty, making her feel “embarrassed and humiliated”, according to a detailed obituary of Flemister in the Washington Post.The Post recounted how her supervisor told her she would have to abandon her afro-style haircut if she wanted to be promoted. And even after Flemister followed the supervisor’s advice, she felt disrespected and as though she was put on “exhibition”.Once, a colleague put a gorilla’s picture on Flemister’s identification.Beyond her own experience, she also described witnessing anti-Black racism from her colleagues. While working with the presidents of Senegal and Grenada during their visit to the US, Flemister heard her white colleagues use the N-word in reference to the leaders of the nations, which respectively are in Africa and the Caribbean.Her career blossomed after she transferred to the foreign service. She would go on to become the supervisory consul general in Pakistan, and after that she earned selection to the senior foreign service in 2006.About then, unbeknownst to her, the Alzheimer’s with which she contended was setting in.By 2010, her symptoms were serious enough that she had to request retirement at the relatively early age of 59.Long before her retirement, Flemister fought for her rights as well as those of others in the Secret Service who had been victims of racism. A lawsuit filed in 2000 alleged racial discrimination within the agency, and she wrote that she saw it loud and clear during her time that she would not be “allowed to have a successful career in the Secret Service” because of her race.“My requests for transfers to career-enhancing squads [were] consistently denied, my credibility and competency constantly questioned, and [there was] the common use of racial epithets in my presence,” she wrote.Her bout with Alzheimer’s eventually became severe enough that it left her unable to follow through the course of the lawsuit.Flemister’s husband of 42 years, John Collinge, told the Post that she died due to a respiratory failure that was related to her Alzheimer’s disease. Survivors also include her son, Samuel Collinge.TopicsSecret ServiceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More