Congress Dodges Government Shutdown With Last-Minute, Short-Term Deal

In a dramatic turn of events, the House and Senate on Saturday passed a measure to extend government funding through mid-November, averting an imminent government shutdown just hours before the deadline. The last-minute bipartisan effort seemingly came together in a matter of hours, after months of negotiations across a divided Congress had gone nowhere and much of Washington had assumed an imminent shutdown was all but certain.

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Failure to pass a bill by midnight would have resulted in the fourth government shutdown in the last decade, impacting hundreds of thousands of federal workers and government contractors who would have received no pay until a deal was made. But by Saturday afternoon, it became clear that both sides were working towards an agreement to avoid that scenario. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has faced pushback from the far-right faction of his party, made the surprising move to introduce a clean stopgap bill, knowing that he could only pass it with the support of most of the chamber’s Democrats. 

“It’s alright if Republicans and Democrats join together to do what is right,” McCarthy said on Saturday when asked about his GOP colleagues vowing to oust him. “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room.”

The measure, which extended government funding for about 45 days and allocated $16 billion for disaster relief, passed the House in a 335-91 vote. Notably, the bill lacked funding for Ukraine, which many far-right Republicans oppose, and did not include border security provisions that many House Republicans had said were a priority. Lawmakers have vowed to take up both issues separately.

The fast-moving spectacle that unfolded on Capitol Hill on Saturday was nothing short of gripping, with a functioning federal government hanging precariously in the balance. Just hours after the House passed the measure, the Senate followed suit, voting 88 to 9 to send the bill to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it before midnight.

The strategy appeared to be a last-ditch effort by McCarthy to demonstrate that Republicans were making an effort to keep the government open after leadership had failed to pass their own version of a stopgap bill on Friday. But in doing so, it put McCarthy’s political future in jeopardy as he confronts ongoing threats from the far-right wing of his party, who have vowed to remove him from the speakership should he navigate a funding plan with Democratic support. McCarthy decided to roll the dice on his own political survival in order to ensure the uninterrupted operation of federal agencies.

As House Republicans struggle to govern with a razor-thin five-seat majority, the threat to McCarthy’s leadership comes most directly from Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and at least four other conservative hardliners. “I’ve said that whether or not Kevin McCarthy faces a motion to vacate is entirely within his control, because all he had to do was comply with the agreement that he made with us in January,” Gaetz said before the House vote. “Putting this bill on the floor and passing it with Democrats would be such an obvious blatant and clear violation of that. We would have to deal with it.”

Before the vote, House Republican leadership expressed a sense of inevitability, asserting that they had exhausted all other options. Dissident conservatives had previously derailed an earlier plan, leaving them with little choice but to pass a bill extending funding at the current $1.6 trillion annual rate through November 17th, which closely aligned with the Senate’s approach except for the omission of an emergency $6 billion in funds for Ukraine.

The decision to scratch the Ukraine aid—at least for now—marks a crucial blow to the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky, who met with Biden last week and pleaded for new weapons systems, including F-16 fighter jets and longer-range ATACMS missiles. The White House, which did not respond to a request for comment as of press time, had requested $20.6 billion from Congress to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. One House Democrat told TIME on Saturday evening that Senate Democrats would begin moving a supplemental for Ukraine as soon as next week.

Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the lone House Democrat to vote against the short-term measure, said he did so because the bill didn’t include funding for Ukraine. “Putin is celebrating,” he told CNN. “We got 45 days to fix it.”

House Democratic leadership made clear that Ukraine funding was still among their top priorities, releasing a statement saying that when the House returned, they expected McCarthy “to advance a bill to the House Floor for an up-or-down vote that supports Ukraine, consistent with his commitment to making sure that Vladimir Putin, Russia and authoritarianism are defeated.”

The decision by McCarthy to advance the legislation on Saturday marked a significant shift for the Speaker, who had spent months attempting to placate a dissident faction within his party. Despite offering spending bills with substantial cuts and additional restrictions on migrants, he was unable to draw the needed votes from within his caucus. McCarthy expressed his frustration earlier Saturday, stating, “I have tried for eight months…I couldn’t get 218 Republicans.”

Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican and the majority leader, said Saturday that his party would restart the appropriations process on Monday and continue to push for border security restrictions and spending cuts until the Nov. 17 deadline. “Believe me, this is not the end. This is the beginning of our continued fight to secure our border, to get government spending under control, and to get our economy back on track,” he said.

The drama on Saturday also spilled over to the Democratic side when Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York triggered a fire alarm in one of the Capitol office buildings, prompting a building-wide evacuation, at a point when House GOP leadership was scrambling to pass the bill and Democrats were complaining they needed more time to understand what was in it. Bowman told reporters hours later that it was a mistake and that he was rushing to get votes, but Republican leadership is calling for an ethics investigation into the matter—alleging that it was done in an attempt to delay the vote. Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, also of New York, drafted a resolution to have Bowman expelled from Congress over the incident.

The passage of the legislation on Saturday followed a nerve-wracking week in Washington, as federal agencies prepared for a government shutdown that many assumed was likely to happen. Essential workers, including the armed forces, air traffic controllers, and airport security personnel, faced the grim prospect of continuing to work without pay until the standoff was resolved.

But while Congress avoided an immediate shutdown, they only pushed their problems off until mid-November, when the latest legislation expires. Congress has yet to make progress on the 12 annual appropriations bills that keep the lights on at several federal agencies, raising the possibility that the shutdown will still happen, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

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Putin Says Waging War in Ukraine Defends Russian ‘Sovereignty’

Russia is defending its “sovereignty” and “spiritual values” by waging war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said in a video address posted on the Kremlin website.

The speech came a year after Putin signed documents to illegally annex four Ukrainian regions in Europe’s biggest land grab since World War II.

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“We are defending Russia itself, are fighting together for the Motherland, for our sovereignty, spiritual values and unity, for victory,” he said of the invasion Kremlin forces launched in February 2022.  

Putin said Russia has to implement a “large-scale program” to revive and develop the annexed regions, and vowed to achieve its goal. Kremlin forces control only parts of the four regions, whose combined area is roughly the size of Bulgaria. 

The speech sought to demonstrate that Putin has solidified his territorial claims even as Kyiv’s four-month-old counteroffensive, backed by billions of dollars in weapons from the U.S. and other allies, makes halting progress in the country’s east and south.

The Kremlin held sham referendums a year ago to annex the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions. The votes drew condemnation from the United Nations and Ukraine’s allies, and aren’t recognized internationally.

Russia-appointed authorities held elections in those regions earlier this month, even as Moscow’s forces continue to lose parts of the territory they took at the start of the February 2022 invasion. 

Ukrainian units this week moved forward near the village of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region, with troops pushing toward Russian strongholds further south. The Institute for the Study of War, U.S.-based military analysts, called it a “tactical breakthrough” but said the situation remains fluid.

Russia in 2014 annexed the Crimean peninsula, which Ukraine has been targeting recently with more frequent attacks on weapons, bases and supply lines there.

In a speech last year at a signing ceremony to formalize control over the four occupied regions in Ukraine, Putin vowed the annexation would be irreversible and that people on these territories would become Russian citizens “forever.” 

In a post on Telegram, Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister who’s now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said the war will last “until the complete destruction” of the Kyiv government and “liberation of native Russian territories.” Medvedev, a frequent provocateur on social media, also wrote that Russian will have “more new regions.” 

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Borrowers Are Reassessing Their Budgets as Student Loan Payments Resume

NEW YORK — Millions of Americans must start repaying their federal student loans again in October, with monthly payments averaging hundreds of dollars. To get ready, borrowers are cutting expenses, taking on additional work, and looking for options to reduce their monthly payments.

Megan McClelland, 38, said she has started asking for October shifts with a catering company and a winery to help supplement her income.

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McClelland’s main job is as a counselor at Petaluma High School in California. During the more than three years payments were suspended because of the pandemic, she paid off her car loan and was able to save for the first time. She’ll put the $235 she was spending on her car payment toward her student loan, but that still leaves another $270 or so she’ll have to reallocate or earn.

“It had been a huge relief the past few years to not have that financial burden,” she said. “In the next months, I’m looking to see where I can scale back in my budget. Probably less going out to eat, and more picking up side gigs.”

Justin Cole, 35, of Little Rock, Arkansas, said he doesn’t know how he’s going to come up with the $166 a month he’ll owe starting in October. That’s the estimated payment on his roughly $19,000 of loans from paying for college more than 10 years ago.

“I’m already in a mountain of debt, and while I just got a raise at work, it doesn’t go into effect until we’re full staffed at my family practice clinic,” he said.

Cole works the front office at a medical practice, checking in patients, handling records and managing payment collection. Some of his other debt comes from medical expenses after a car accident early in the pandemic.

“If those loans were forgiven, I could finally work on getting my credit up and actually saving money for once,” he said. “If they were forgiven out of the blue, I’d be ecstatic.”

The Supreme Court in July rejected a plan by President Joe Biden’s administration to wipe away $400 billion in student loan debt.

For now, Cole has applied for adjustments to his payments based on both the new SAVE plan and prior income-driven repayment options, which are listed as processing and “in review” on his account. The SAVE, or “Saving on a Valuable Education,” plan allows borrowers to make lower payments based on a percentage of their discretionary income.

His major household expenses are “rent, car payments, groceries, and utilities — the same as everybody else,” he said.

Not yet clear is how millions of people suddenly having less discretionary income might affect the economy.

On an earnings call last month, the chief financial officer of Target said that student loan payments restarting will “put additional pressure on the already-strained budgets of tens of millions of households,” a sentiment echoed by the financial chiefs of Best Buy and other retailers.

In the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of economic conditions, one restaurant-industry observer in Boston said workers are taking on more hours, and, for the first time, credit card debt has topped $1 trillion. According to credit bureau TransUnion, more than half of student loan holders added credit card debt during the pandemic. Meanwhile, consumer savings, which peaked in 2021, are on the decline.

McClelland qualifies for Public Service Loan Forgiveness as a public school teacher who will have worked in the field for 10 years next March. She’s putting her loans in order to hopefully receive that cancellation next year. The program erases remaining debts for federal student loan holders who work in public service while making 10 years of payments.

“I only have six payments to go, but it’s still stressful,” she said. “I have to find about $500 a month starting next month towards this payment that I haven’t had in so long.”

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is one of several avenues for relief still available to many with student debt. After Biden’s original plan for forgiveness was struck down by the Supreme Court in July, the White House has said it will use the Higher Education Act to bring cancellation to more borrowers. It’s currently undergoing a process known as “negotiated rule-making” to determine the details of that plan.

Other sources for relief for borrowers include: false certification, borrower defense, closed school, total/permanent disability discharges, and alternate repayment programs like income-driven repayment.

McClelland, for her part, said she now spends a lot of time counseling high school students on how to avoid taking on burdensome loans.

“I had no financial guidance when I was younger, from my own parents or from school,” she said. “I didn’t ever understand the long term impact.”

Despite working while in school and since — moonlighting at Starbucks, wineries and restaurants as well as counseling — McClelland still has a balance of about $38,000 in debt, from original loans of $10,000 towards her undergraduate studies and $40,000 for her masters in counseling at Sonoma State.

“I knew I wanted to go to college, and my parents didn’t have any money,” McClelland said. “I tell kids all the time, openly, ‘As someone who was once in your shoes, I highly recommend finding a way to avoid taking out loans.’ When you’re 17 or 18 years old, you think, ‘Oh, sure, I’ll figure this out.’ Then it’s frustrating to still be in this financial situation.”

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Biden Isn’t at Fault for the Looming Shutdown, Says White House Budget Director

WASHINGTON — Staring down a likely government shutdown, the White House wants to make sure any blame falls at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue — specifically on House Republicans.

After all, it’s House Republicans who have been paralyzed by their inability to pass a funding package, and Republicans who don’t want to uphold a bipartisan spending agreement from earlier this year.

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President Joe Biden is hoping the rest of the country will see things the same way. It’s a murky proposition at a time of extreme political polarization, with many Americans dug into their partisan corners regardless of the facts of the matter.

A shutdown would arrive at a tenuous moment for Biden, who already faces low poll numbers and concerns about the economy as he seeks a second term in office, partially on the pitch that he offers steady stewardship in Washington.

If no spending bill passes Congress by the end of Saturday, federal workers stop getting paid, air travel could be ensnarled by staffing shortages and food benefits will pause for some of the country’s most vulnerable families.

Asked on Friday if Biden should bear any responsibility for the shutdown, White House budget director Shalanda Young said “absolutely not” and accused Republicans of being cavalier with people’s lives.

“The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck,” she said. “That’s real. And that’s what makes me angry.”

Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior adviser, blamed the looming shutdown on “the most extreme fringe” of House Republicans in a presentation to allies on Thursday. She said “we have to hold them accountable” and “make sure they pay the political price.”

Speaking from the White House, she criticized adherents of former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” coalition — but she stopped just short of using the MAGA acronym.

“We’re not allowed to actually use the M-word here in the White House right now,” said Dunn, referring to legal guidance intended to ensure compliance with the Hatch Act, which prevents political activity while administration officials are on the job. “But everyone here knows what I mean. It’s a four-letter word. It begins with M. It ends with A. It’s got an AG in the middle.”

Dunn added, “So those people are the ones who are refusing to do their job and shutting the government down for no reason.”

The current crisis is a sequel to the standoff over raising the debt limit earlier this year. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., refused to authorize the federal government to issue debt unless Biden negotiated over spending cuts.

After resisting, Biden agreed to budget talks, reaching a bipartisan deal that averted a first-ever default. But now a group of House Republicans want even deeper spending cuts and they’ve threatened to oust McCarthy from the speaker’s job if they don’t get what they want.

So far, the White House has refused to negotiate, stressing that an agreement was already in place and House Republicans are refusing to honor its terms. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday that Republicans were “solely to blame” for any shutdown, calling that “a basic fact.”

Administration officials have also been highlighting that a shutdown would cause lapses in paychecks for military service members and delays in assistance for victims of natural disasters.

The White House messaging effort has received no shortage of unintended help from Republicans themselves, with moderates criticizing their hard-right colleagues.

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, said “just throwing a temper tantrum and stomping your feet — frankly, not only is it wrong — it’s just pathetic.”

Even McCarthy acknowledged recently that some members of his caucus “just want to burn the whole place down.”

At a Wednesday fundraiser outside San Francisco, Biden said McCarthy cares more about protecting his job as speaker than keeping the government open.

“The fact is that I think that the speaker is making a choice between his speakership and American interests,” Biden said.

While Washington endured partial shutdowns as long as 35 days during Trump’s presidency, Biden warned his donors that Republicans could shutter the government for weeks, if not months.

“It would be disastrous for us, especially if it became long-term,” he said.

Romina Boccia, a veteran of Washington fiscal debates and the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, said this situation is much different than the government shutdown in 2013.

At that time, Republicans were united around trying to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And even then, it didn’t work. Once the shutdown happened, Boccia recalled, “it didn’t provide any more leverage,” and “Republicans caved and reopened the government when they learned the hard way that they weren’t going to get their way.”

This time, she said, “it’s not clear what they’re trying to get out of a government shutdown. It just seems dysfunctional all around.”

Some polls conducted ahead of the expected shutdown suggest Biden and Democrats in Congress could bear a substantial portion of the blame if a closure occurs. But U.S. adults generally have two conflicting priorities regarding the federal budget.

About 60% of them say the government spends too much money, but majorities also back more money for Social Security, health care and infrastructure, according to a survey by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This enables some Republicans to say the public backs them on cuts, but it also justifies spending on programs that are projected to contribute to higher deficits in the years to come.

The likely shutdown overlaps with Biden ramping up next year’s reelection campaign. For the past few months, the president has taken full ownership of the economy’s performance as inflation has dropped while unemployment has stayed low.

But an emerging set of risks are on the horizon and most U.S. adults still feel pessimistic about the country’s direction.

Mortgage rates are at a 22-year high. Oil prices are nearly $91 a barrel, pushing up the cost of gasoline. Unionized autoworkers are likely entering a third week of strikes. Student loan repayments are restarting. Pandemic-related money for child care centers is set to end, potentially triggering a set of closures that could hit working parents.

A government shutdown would be another dose of chaos that could cause pain for millions of households. White House officials who are ready to blame Republicans say they’d rather see a shutdown avoided.

“I’m still hoping,” Young said Friday. “I’m still remaining an optimist.”

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The Arrest in the Tupac Shakur Killing Is Related to the Biggie Smalls Murder Case

LAS VEGAS — The first arrest in the 1996 slaying of Tupac Shakur had its roots in the investigation of the killing of Biggie Smalls.

The shooting deaths of the two hip-hop luminaries and rivals — Shakur in Las Vegas and Smalls in Los Angeles six months later — have always been culturally inseparable, and one man, Duane Keffe D. Davis, found himself involved in both investigations.

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On Friday, Davis was arrested and charged with murder, with prosecutors saying he ordered and masterminded the Shakur killing.

Now retired Los Angeles police detective Greg Kading was assigned to investigate the slaying of Smalls — whose legal name was Christopher Wallace — and in 2009 interviewed Davis as a person of interest in the case. Davis had had been at the party at the Peterson Automotive Museum that Wallace had just left when he was shot.

Kading had helped build a federal drug case against Davis to get leverage to compel him to talk to Los Angeles police, who to date have made no arrests in the Wallace case.

“He confesses to his involvement in the Tupac Shakur case, he gives all the details of how he and his co-conspirators killed Tupac,” Kading recalled in an interview Friday with The Associated Press.

Davis, who had immunity for what he said in his police interview but not what he said outside it, went on to divulge many of the same details in documentaries, on podcasts and in a tell-all 2019 memoir that would give new life to the Las Vegas police probe and help lead to his grand jury indictment.

“He has essentially talked himself right into jail,” Kading said.

Davis had long been known to investigators as one of four suspects identified early in the investigation. He isn’t the accused gunman but was described as the group’s ringleader by authorities at a news conference and in court. In Nevada a defendant can be charged with a crime, including murder, if you help someone commit the crime.

Davis, now 60, said in his memoir, “Compton Street Legend,” that he provided the gun used in the drive-by shooting.

Davis was arrested early Friday while on a walk near his home on the outskirts of Las Vegas, hours before prosecutors announced in court that a Nevada grand jury had indicted the self-described “gangster” on one count of murder with a deadly weapon. He is due in court next week.

The grand jury also voted to add a sentencing enhancement to the murder charge for gang activity that could add up to 20 additional years if he’s convicted.

Hundreds of pages of transcripts released Friday provide a view into the first month of grand jury proceedings, which began in late July with testimony from former associates of Davis, friends of Shakur and a slate of retired police officers involved in the case early on. Their testimony painted a picture for the jurors of a deep, escalating rift between Shakur’s music label Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records, which had ties to Davis and represented Wallace.

“It started the whole West Coast/East Coast” rivalry that primarily defined the hip-hop scene during the mid-1990s, one of Davis’ former associates testified.

Davis denied an interview request Friday from jail, and court records don’t list an attorney who can comment on his behalf. Phone and text messages to Davis and his wife on Friday and in the months raided their home in the nearby city of Henderson on July 17 were not returned.

In a statement Friday, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, the rapper’s sister, described the arrest as a victory, but in a measured tone.

“This is no doubt a pivotal moment. The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community,” she said. “It’s important to me that the world, the country, the justice system, and our people acknowledge the gravity of the passing of this man, my brother, my mother’s son, my father’s son.”

She gave no praise to the authorities who have worked the case.

“I know there’s been many people who did not believe that the murder of Tupac Shakur was important to this police department,” Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference Friday. “I’m here to tell you, that was simply not the case. It was not the case back then, and it is not the case today.”

He added, “every single victim, every life that is lost is important and remains a priority to this police department.

On the night of Sept. 7, 1996, Tupac Shakur and Death Row Records founder Marion “Suge” Knight were in Las Vegas to watch a Mike Tyson heavyweight title match. Outside the fight just after it ended, the men were involved in a brawl with Davis and his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, with whom Shakur had feuded previously.

Later that night, Shakur was sitting in a BMW that Knight was driving when a Cadillac pulled up next to them and gunfire erupted.

Shakur was shot multiple times and died a week later at the age of 25.

Davis, in his memoir, said he was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac and had slipped a gun into the back seat, from where he said the shots were fired.

He implicated Anderson, saying he was one of two people in the backseat.

Anderson died two years later. He denied any involvement in Shakur’s death.

The rapper’s death came as his fourth solo album, “All Eyez on Me,” remained on the charts, with some 5 million copies sold. Nominated six times for a Grammy Award, Shakur is still largely considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time.

from TIME https://ift.tt/Fo9IWxR

What Needs to Happen to Tackle Fashion’s Climate Impact

On Sept. 17, on the heels of New York Fashion Week, Climate Week saw more than 70,000 people marched in the streets of Manhattan demanding the end of fossil fuel industries and climate justice at scale. This was in stark contrast to the shows on the runway, where collections were presented without the slightest acknowledgement of the increasing signs of our ongoing climate emergency— some as recent as a week before Fashion Week began, with the floods in Libya killing thousands of people and displacing hundreds of thousands.

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Despite Fashion Week’s dreadful silence regarding one of today’s most pressing existential issues, shows, including luxury fashion brand Coach, were interrupted by climate protests and signs calling for the end of animal exploitation (also implicated in greenhouse gas emissions). This resulted in protestors being violently snatched by men in black and kicked out of venues.

Is fashion a reflection of a larger denial of and apathy towards the reality of the climate crisis, or is the industry, as fashion critic Cathy Horyn writes in The Cut, “halted into a paralysis?”

The consensus seems to be that fashion executives aren’t visibly addressing the climate crisis. When speaking with creative directors, designers, and fashion industry professionals, there seems to be a shared fear amongst them: A fear of “getting canceled” for not doing the right thing—or for not doing enough when it comes to addressing climate issues. But visibly or not, the question remains: Are they anxious enough about the scientific consensus that in less than six years, without a massive reduction in carbon emissions, our world will begin to tip into a chain of ecosystem collapse?

As a climate activist, I have worked since the early aughts to provide access to crucial information regarding climate justice in the fashion industry and beyond through my organization Slow Factory. Through our work, we have observed that there is an undeniable collective anxiety that seems to exist only on the surface of the fashion industry. And while the fashion industry is filled with promises and good intentions, with a few exceptions, the overall trajectory of fashion is one of business as usual.

Read More: You Might Want to Think Twice About Clothing Brands That Push Rental, Resale, and Recycling

On the one hand, lack of transparency and lack of clear data remain an issue. But more fundamentally there seems to be a lack of perspective in the fashion industry as a whole: stakeholders operate in narrow tunnel vision goal-oriented frameworks that aren’t broad enough to perceive the entire system in question. The industry is made up of complex decentralized systems that have a plethora of human rights issues and environmental impacts particularly around chemical dyes and textile waste. Businesses, however, have a hard time making decisions that would impact the overall system because they don’t have a clear overview of it. Instead, decisions are made with laser-focused precision on certain parts of the industry, but limited impact to the whole. Currently, bridging the gap between intention and action relies on adjacent non-profits and institutions such as Fashion for Good, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), and the Apparel Impact Institute—all three of which are not collaborating closely enough to problem solve and have competing agendas. The proposed Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act (also known as the Fashion Act) also makes many promises to reduce emissions, but that depends not only on brands and their C-Suite’s endorsement. It also relies on a plethora of other actors (producers, manufacturers, marketers, and other executive decision makers) that need to work together towards shared goals and establish clear milestones.

How can the fashion industry, known for its fierce competitiveness, reach a collective agreement, share knowledge and data, and have enough incentive to collaborate in order to reduce carbon emissions? Especially when the general reaction on social media tends to lean into despair and doubt that these harmful systems of overproduction and exploitation of human labor can’t be transformed at scale in time.

Like any good relationship, we need to start communicating. The fashion industry is large, complex, and touches on so many global systems—from agriculture, animal husbandry, metals, and mining to global transportation, supply chains, pulp and paper, manufacturing, plastics and fossil fuels, retail and consumer goods—that it creates a microcosm of the entire global economy. Some of these industries are working in tandem with each other—and some are not aware that they must be. Companies and even departments continue to operate in silos, and although the issues and solutions are systemic, brands seldom meet to discuss shared climate goals unless they are on stage at conferences, making promises to appease their customer base with often dubious follow-through.

Ignorance, then, becomes a sinister bliss, and downplaying sustainability seems to be the norm in fashion—as though the elephant in the room was not big enough, loud enough, interrupting pristine fashion shows enough. But in this vast system of complexity where the long-term negative effects will be felt by all (and the offenders are only concerned with short-term profit), who will be shouldering and fronting the financial commitment required to fund systemic change? And better yet, how can we measure impact within the fashion industry when most of the data points aren’t traceable and can’t seem to agree on sustainable standards?

A 2018 report co-authored by Fashion for Good and Apparel Impact Institute estimates that the systemic change within the fashion industry required to address the climate emergency will cost $1 trillion. This will require the biggest offenders and players in the industry to collaborate and invest in solutions.

Solutions are starting to get underway. Measuring impact and decarbonization solutions that move beyond clean tech and towards processes within the industry has recently inspired multiple players to raise funds to support necessary innovation in the industry. This includes replacing fossil fuel-based ones such as polyester, acrylic with new materials such as fiber derived from recycled plastic bottles. There are also initiatives and frameworks in fashion embracing a total carbon reduction across the supply chain, such as the UNFCCC Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, and the Fashion Pact launched in 2019 as a mission given to Kering Chairman and CEO, François-Henri Pinault by French President, Emmanuel Macron, with dozens of global fashion signatories.

Read More: Stella McCartney Is Changing Fashion From Within

But overall the industry is far away from meeting any science-based emissions targets, so further efforts are necessary. The Fashion Act, for instance, would require fashion companies to be responsible for their entire supply chains. Slow Factory has also developed its own context-specific framework called the Sustainable Standard, which would force fashion brands to consider the emissions and human rights effects of their operations and their waste, reusing their deadstock materials including unwanted and unsold goods.

So far, a few funds have emerged focusing on financing climate-informed solutions in the fashion industry. For example, the Slow Factory Fund for Systemic Change is now raising 0.01% of these required funds—$100 million—to invest in socially responsible climate justice solutions. It is the only fund unifying goals of emissions reduction, human rights, and waste circularity. Apparel Impact Institute’s $250 million Fashion Climate Fund aims for incremental change across the fashion supply chain to reduce emissions. Both of these funds are examples of initiatives that represent clear investments in a shared future, leveraging philanthropic and venture funding sources to accelerate climate innovation.

If fashion executives care and can act fast enough to invest in solutions, we can achieve true traceability, work across departments, measure impact, and reflect the times the industry exists in.

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Dianne Feinstein, a Senator Representing California for Over 30 Years, Dies at 90, AP Sources Say

WASHINGTON (AP) — Dianne Feinstein, a centrist Democrat who served as California’s senior senator since 1992, dies at 90, AP sources say.

This is a breaking news story that will be updated.

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Myanmar Resistance Leader Claims Majority Control Over Territory

The acting leader of Myanmar’s government-in-exile said resistance forces are in control of about 60% of the country’s territory and poised to threaten the ruling junta in key strongholds as fighting rages across the Southeast Asian nation.

Violence has intensified in Myanmar as the military led by Min Aung Hlaing, facing a crumbling economy and growing signs of dissent within his regime, struggles to keep up with a multi-front conflict from several armed ethnic groups. A shadow government allied with ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and formed after the 2021 coup, along with other armed ethnic groups, have been ramping up ground attacks with an eye on new military operations, including near the capital city of Naypyidaw.

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“It has been more than two years since we started the people’s defense war. Now, cooperation between PDFs and ethnic revolutionary forces are yielding good results,” Duwa Lashi La, the acting president of the exiled National Unity Government, said in an interview Thursday, referring to his armed wing. “We are now in a position to even threaten Naypyidaw.”

While the junta still oversees key cities, an assessment by a group of Myanmar experts last year said the military retained stable control of just 17% of the country’s total land area. Local media have reported recent attacks in the capital, including on a junta airbase this month. 

Major General Zaw Min Tun, lead spokesman for the ruling State Administration Council, didn’t answer calls seeking comment on the extent of the opposition’s control of the country. The regime views the NUG and its allies as terrorists. 

The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution in December demanding an end to violence in Myanmar as well as the release of political prisoners. While the resolution’s impact was limited after China, Russia and India abstained, the junta’s ability to generate revenue has still faced setbacks partly due to several rounds of economic sanctions by the US and its partners.

Air Strikes

The junta has nevertheless expanded assaults against its civilian population of 55 million, including nearly 700 air strikes between April 2022 and July of this year. That’s more than double carried out in the 14 months following the 2021 coup, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said this week. He said the military has also conducted mass killings and burned villages as it seeks to deter civilians from cooperating with its enemies.

NUG leader Duwa Lashi La, a Kachin politician and lawyer, said resistance fighters have seized more than 100 junta outposts throughout the country following thousands of clashes with government troops this year and last. It has also facilitated about 14,000 military defections, he added.

Morale in the junta has been called into question, while a corruption probe recently saw two lieutenant generals close to Min Aung Hlaing replaced. Widespread unrest recently prompted the regime to extend a state of emergency for another six months until Jan. 31, dashing hopes of a general election this year. 

“It is very encouraging to see that more military personnel are trying to reach out to us via our informers at different government offices,” Duwa Lashi La said. “There are negotiations in progress for some brigadier generals to defect but they haven’t joined yet.”

With the pro-democracy icon and the de facto leader of the ousted civilian government, Suu Kyi, facing life in prison, the acting president of the NUG said there was little transparency over the state of her health. Even if she were released, though, it might not change the course of the conflict.

“There may be something Daw Aung San Suu Kyi wants to be and we will have to take it into consideration,” he said. “But we will not change our direction for her voice only.”

from TIME https://ift.tt/Ezq79ky

Her Friends Called Her the ‘Vagina Whisperer.’ Now Half a Million Followers Do Too

The costume that made Sara Reardon famous isn’t all that easy to identify, at least for a child. Her sons guessed that her beloved outfit, in which she films many of her Instagram videos for over half a million followers, was perhaps a sandwich of some sort. “They were like, ‘Mom, why are you in that hot dog costume all the time?’” She had to explain that, in fact, she was dressed as a vulva.

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Acquired for $100 in 2018 to celebrate reaching 10,000 followers on Instagram, the vulva costume has become a signature of Reardon’s Instagram account “The Vagina Whisperer,” and she calls it the “best investment” she’s ever made in her business. Reardon, a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic-floor therapy, started the account in 2017, but her friends had been casually calling her the “vagina whisperer” for years. When they started getting pregnant, giving birth, and encountering common problems like leaking urine, Reardon offered them therapeutic solutions. “Pregnant friends would ask me about perineal massage or what’s the best belly support, and I thought, ‘I’m writing this email over and over again, let me just put it on Instagram,’” she says.

Pelvic-floor therapists focus on the basket of muscles at the base of the pelvis that affects peeing, pooping, menstruation, and sexual health. About one in four American women has a pelvic-floor disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health. Though women can face pelvic-floor issues across their life spans, many patients encounter problems for the first time during pregnancy and after childbirth.

“When you’re pregnant, you sign up for these emails, like, ‘Your baby is as big as a papaya.’ Well, your pelvic floor is basically the hammock stretching to support that papaya as it grows bigger and bigger,” says Reardon, 41. Women can experience complications such as pain during sex, chronic pelvic discomfort, and even pelvic organ prolapse—when a person’s internal organs collapse into her vagina. Those who do seek help often do so when these issues have progressed to an unsustainable level.

“Pregnancy and postpartum is such a huge transformation for our bodies, and we were getting zero education about how to take care of it,” Reardon says. “Every pelvic-floor therapist will tell you, patients come in and ask, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner?’” Those conversations require intimacy and trust, something that attracted Reardon to pelvic-floor therapy in the first place.

Read More: Exhaustion, Incontinence and the Messy Reality of Returning to Work After a Baby

Instagram was the most expedient way to reach women before they encountered problems. “I was seeing a lot of women in my clinic who had these mesh surgeries for prolapse and their lives and vaginas were completely destroyed because this mesh situation went totally wrong,” Reardon says. “And I was like, ‘I don’t really want to spend my career doing damage control for people.’ There’s so much we can do to prevent this.” (In 2019, the FDA halted the sale of surgical mesh devices used in transvaginal surgeries to treat pelvic organ prolapse; mesh is still used in abdominal surgeries to treat the condition.)

Reardon has made it her mission to alert women to proactive solutions that they can start implementing even during pregnancy. She rarely uses obscure medical terminology and tries to infuse humor into her posts, whether they involve her squatting over a toilet making exaggeratedly strained faces to demonstrate what not to do or showing off kitschy knitted vulvas she ordered online. She shimmies to the latest viral pop song while explaining how to properly wash a vulva (with just water!). Her Instagram page contains a lot of basic information that can be revelatory: Busy women, she says, often rush and push to pee, unwittingly damaging their pelvic floor.

Most women assume pain and incontinence to be a natural consequence of childbirth, just one of many sacrifices mothers make when they become parents. Others are simply too embarrassed to ask for help. Women’s health is understudied and under-discussed in general, but that’s particularly true when it comes to the most intimate parts of the body.

Dr. Karen Tang, a gynecologist and gynecological surgeon, has built a large Instagram following herself talking about, among other things, chronic pelvic pain. “I actually went through an entire ob-gyn residency and didn’t learn about pelvic-floor physical therapy,” she says. “It’s kind of ridiculous.” Only once, when she was in her fellowship, did a doctor point out to her that pelvic-floor therapy could be a great, noninvasive option for many patients before turning to medication or surgery. Tang, 44, thinks things have changed a lot since she was in medical school, though she still would like to see more awareness. She now does a pelvic-floor check on anyone who comes to her complaining of chronic pain, sexual issues, or incontinence, and refers almost every patient with these concerns to pelvic-floor physical therapy.

Read More: Why There’s So Much Pregnancy Trauma on TV Right Now

The feeling that information is hidden and that patients are on their own to seek it out is widely shared by Reardon’s followers. “Wish this was discussed prior to birth!! I thought something was seriously wrong with me,” one person commented on one of Reardon’s post about peeing after childbirth. On a post about diastasis recti, when the ab muscles separate during pregnancy, a mother who gave birth three times wrote that she had this condition and “found out by coming across your page. I never knew and my doctors never looked for that after I had children.”

Sara Nicolas, a 44-year-old in Tigard, Ore., was only vaguely aware of the concept of her pelvic floor when she discovered “The Vagina Whisperer.” “When I was in my 20s, it was all the rage to just do a ton of kegels to ‘have better sex,’ and it was really eye-opening for me to look at her account and realize pelvic-floor therapists exist and physical therapy is a lot more nuanced than just kegels.” Nicolas does not have children but discovered through Reardon’s content that women who have never given birth can struggle with pelvic-floor problems too. “She is sitting there on a toilet, and it could be a situation where you can’t believe she’s putting this on the Internet, but the visual helps,” she says. “I’m a lot more comfortable talking to my gynecologist about any issues I have now.” Nicolas says her mother, who emigrated from Mexico, did not speak openly about these problems. “She grew up very poor and moved to the States, and in her generation, you just didn’t talk about these issues,” she says.

Reardon believes more women are now pushing back against this societal silence about female pain. “I think my generation of women were brought up with, ‘Here’s a book and a box of tampons. Figure it out,’” she says. “I think a younger generation of women is like, ‘F-ck this. I don’t want to end up in diapers. Help me out here.’”

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Interest in exercising the pelvic floor has soared in recent years. Google Trends shows that searches for “pelvic floor therapy” have increased 244% since 2018. Celebrities like Ilana Glazer, Lena Dunham, and Meghan Trainor have brought attention to pelvic health in interviews about their own experiences with the health care system. Emily Oster, the author of hit pregnancy and parenting books like Expecting Better and Cribsheet, has boosted Reardon’s profile by citing her in her newsletter and including her in a conversation with comedian Amy Schumer.

Read More: Emily Oster Still Thinks Data Can Help Ease (Some) Parental Anxiety

Reardon attributes the rise in conversation about the pelvic floor—and the boost in her followers—in part to the pandemic. Clinics shut down. Everything went digital. TikTok blew up in the United States. Pelvic-floor therapists proliferated on the platform: Pelvic-floor therapist Alicia Jeffrey-Thomas has attracted 1 million TikTok followers with the account ThePelvicDanceFloor. U.K.-based physiotherapist Suzanne Vernazza went viral for her “squeeze along” videos, which encouraged her followers to practice kegels to trendy TikTok songs.

“Birth was a scary thing during that time,” says Reardon. “Raising babies in isolation is a hard thing. So I think people really went to Instagram for connection and information and education.” In March 2020, Reardon had 100,000 followers. Today, she has 550,000.

Tang points out that increasingly people are turning to social media to find information about their health that they’re not getting in doctors’ offices or sex-ed classes, a reflection of larger structural problems in the American health care system. She is publishing a book next year called It’s Not Hysteria about the things women are never told about their gynecological health. “You feel uncomfortable talking with friends or family or even a doctor, but you find a funny video and it seems accessible,” she says of Reardon’s content. “If you can do it in a way that is nonjudgmental and entertaining but also so honest, I think that’s what the Vagina Whisperer does so well.”

Investors, seeing the skyrocketing demand, have begun to fund femtech companies, like Bloom and Pelvic Gym, focused on pelvic-floor therapy. The Academy of Pelvic Health Physical Therapy, a nonprofit professional association with 4,032 members, says it’s seen a 21% increase in membership since 2018. Three years ago, a company called Origin launched in-person and online pelvic-floor-therapy. A representative says Origin has since treated more than 30,000 patients in all 50 states through their 20 in-person clinics as well as virtual instruction. (Glazer joined the company as an adviser last year.)

Online therapy has its drawbacks. As with all medical topics, misinformation on pelvic health proliferates on the Internet; as one pelvic-floor therapist posted earlier this year, it helps to look for accounts created by licensed pelvic-floor therapists with degrees in physical therapy rather than those who portray themselves as “trainers” or “coaches.” Tang also argues that physical examinations are needed, at least initially, to make sure patients are exercising their internal muscles correctly—though she believes virtual therapy is better than no therapy at all. These companies say they are attempting to fill a gap in our health care system. Some 40% of U.S. women who give birth do not even attend a postpartum visit with their ob-gyn, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

“Health care literacy is a huge part of this,” Reardon says. “You don’t even know what you need, and then you don’t know how to get it once you need it.” Congress introduced a bipartisan bill, the Optimizing Postpartum Outcomes Act, last year that could help more women get access to pelvic-floor care after birth through Medicaid. It was revised and reintroduced in April.

In France, by contrast, postnatal pelvic-floor therapy is covered for every new mother. “I question the priorities in America. Our medical system is really based on efficiency,” she says. Doctors focus on making sure mother and baby survive birth, and that the baby is healthy, she says, but there is far less focus on the mother’s well-being once the baby is out. “How can mom be healthy? Some hospitals bring in lactation consultants to help with breastfeeding for the baby. Why not pelvic-floor therapists to help with recovery for mom?”

Read More: The Goddess Myth: Why So Many New Mothers Feel Guilt

These days Reardon spends about 30% of her time in her clinic in New Orleans and the rest making reels for social media and videos for her subscription-based platform, the V-Hive, which includes pre-recorded video courses, virtual consults, and a newsletter and has become three times as lucrative as her physical-therapy practice. For a monthly fee, you can watch Reardon demonstrate exercises and, for her pregnancy series, how to push correctly, minimize tearing, and prevent common problems like diastasis recti. She also partners with companies like Frida Mom promoting their postpartum recovery products on Instagram.

In September, Reardon announced that she is writing a book titled Floored, described on Publishers Marketplace as a “rallying cry for women’s health and a complete guide to pelvic floor care at every age and stage.” She is working on partnering with hospital systems or insurance companies to get her workout videos for pregnancy and postpartum into the hands of women who are expecting or have given birth. And someday she hopes to turn the V-Hive platform into an app with pelvic-floor-therapy information and workouts that proves as popular as—but more useful than—the ones that compare your baby to a fruit.

Reardon has found that while she tries to focus on health and biology, some view the fact that she is talking about women’s body parts as inherently political. While she posted frequently on the importance of bodily autonomy in the lead-up to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, she’s done less of that recently. “I do find myself pulling back from commenting on reproductive rights just because people are a—holes,” she says. When online publications write about Reardon or people on social media post pictures of her in her costume, she says the comments can turn “sexist, raunchy, and trollish.” One that’s stuck with her: “The problem isn’t vaginas, it’s what they’re attached to.” “My Instagram followers who chose to follow me are so supportive, but then when I venture outside that platform, I realize sometimes that there’s still this stigma,” she says. She’s begun turning down media opportunities where an interviewer won’t allow her to say “vagina” on air.

But among her devotees, Reardon’s directness is her very appeal. Reardon says it’s critical that we use correct anatomical vocabulary and applies this rule to her own home as well. She tells her 6- and 8-year-old sons, for instance, to use terms like “testicles” instead of “balls.” They know she helps patients with their pelvic floors. They’re permitted to play with the models of the female reproductive system sitting on desks and coffee tables all over her house. Just one thing is off limits: they are not allowed to touch the vulva costume with which their mom built her brand. The company that made it shut down so she’s unable to buy a backup. “It’s very precious,” says Reardon.

from TIME https://ift.tt/rkwPqKv

As China Censors Homegrown Feminism, a Japanese Feminist Scholar Becomes a Bestseller

In the last few years, China’s government has promoted increasingly conservative social values, encouraging women to focus on raising children. It has cracked down on civil society movements and made laws to drive out foreign influence.

So a 75-year-old Japanese feminist scholar who’s not married and does not have children is an unlikely celebrity on the country’s tightly censored internet.

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But Chizuko Ueno, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, is a phenomenon. She leapt to fame in China in 2019 with a speech that criticized social expectations for women to act cute and the pressure they face to hide their success.

Ueno’s popularity reflects a surge in interest in women’s rights, said Leta Hong Fincher, a research associate at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute who has written about gender discrimination and feminism in China.

About a decade ago, China had a rambunctious feminist movement that staged protests like occupying a men’s restroom to demand more toilets for women, or marching in wedding dresses spattered with fake blood to draw attention to domestic violence. But that movement has been silenced as President Xi Jinping’s administration has tightened controls on civil society and promoted conservative family values in a bid to boost childbirths.

Read More: China Is Desperate to Boost Its Low Birth Rates. It May Have to Accept the New Normal

Ueno declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story.

In mainland China, Ueno’s books sold more than half a million copies in the first half of 2023, according to sales tracker Beijing OpenBook, and 26 were available in Chinese bookstores as of September. They cover topics ranging from “misogyny” in Japanese society to feminist approaches to elder care issues in an aging society.

Starting From the Limit, a collection of letters between Ueno and Suzumi Suzuki, a writer who used to act in Japanese porn, topped the 2022 Books of the Year list on the popular Chinese review platform Douban.

Fans said Ueno’s openness about choosing not to marry or have children makes her a role model.

Edith Cao, a writer who spoke on the condition of being identified by her English nickname due to fear of government retaliation, said seeing an East Asian woman succeed without a family helped her decide not to marry. Yang Xiao, a graduate student, said Ueno’s example helped assuage her anxieties about being single and inspired her to start booking holidays alone to build confidence.

Relationships are a divisive issue even among Ueno’s Chinese fans. Earlier this year, fans attacked a Chinese video blogger who asked Ueno if she hadn’t married because “she’d been hurt by men,” saying the blogger had reinforced traditional assumptions. That started a series of online conversations about marriage and feminism that lasted for months, with related hashtags drawing some 580 million views on the Twitter-like social media platform Weibo.

Ueno doesn’t write about China, and that’s probably one key reason her books have escaped censorship, said Hong Fincher.

Feminist ideas are not banned in China, but authorities view all activism with suspicion.

Police regularly summon owners of bookstores and cafes and pressure them to cancel feminism-themed events, several organizers and founders told The Associated Press. Online, posts that refer to the #MeToo movement are deleted, and nationalist bloggers attack feminists with a public presence as foreign agents.

Chinese journalist and activist Huang Xueqin, who helped spark China’s first high-profile #MeToo case, was tried last week for allegedly inciting subversion of state power. According to a copy of the indictment published by supporters of Huang, she was accused of publishing “seditious” articles and facilitating training activities on “non-violent movements.”

Protest and campaigning are no longer possible, said Lü Pin, a Chinese feminist activist based in the U.S., meaning feminism is confined to individual action and small groups. The Ueno boom, she said, has helped keep feminist ideas in the “lawful” mainstream.

Read More: How Podcasts Became a Symbol of China’s Gen Z Feminist Movement

Megan Ji, a 30-year-old financial analyst, said it wasn’t until she read one of Ueno’s books that she began taking an interest in the ideas of feminists.

That helped her confront her boss when he began caressing her back at an after-work karaoke party with colleagues and potential business partners. She works in a competitive industry in which fitting in at after-work parties is widely considered vital to her job, and another woman hadn’t said anything when a drunken manager placed his arm over her shoulder.

But when her boss began badgering her to sing, she shouted: “Do you respect me? Who do you take me for?” Her colleagues were shocked, but Ji’s boss apologized, both on the spot and again the next day. Ji said she didn’t suffer retaliation, and no awkward parties have happened in the office since then.

The AP could not independently verify Ji’s account, and she requested to be identified by her English name to avoid repercussions from her company.

Guo Qingyuan, a 35-year-old copywriter, said that reading Ueno led him to question how he saw women. He stopped talking about women’s looks with his buddies, he said, and sought out children’s books for his daughter that didn’t promote stereotypical gender roles.

Cao, the writer who also offers support to victims of domestic violence, said there are problems that reading feminist books won’t solve.

Two years after China first added “sexual harassment” as a cause of lawsuits in 2019, the Yuanzhong Family and Community Development Service Center, a Beijing-based nonprofit group, found that only 24 cases using the law were recorded in a nationwide database. The researchers identified 12 other cases related to sexual harassment that were filed using other laws.

Ueno-inspired feminism is unlikely to bring direct pressure to change laws. It’s a lot tamer than earlier waves of activism, although it may be more widespread.

But “even if her words can’t bring policy change,” Cao said, they “have further stoked an underlying force.”

—AP researcher Wanqing Chen in Beijing contributed to this story.

from TIME https://ift.tt/al6SHyq

’Candid’ Talks Between U.S. and China Officials Raise Hopes of Xi-Biden Meeting in November

Senior U.S. and Chinese officials held “candid” talks in Washington as a flurry of high-level diplomacy bolsters expectations President Xi Jinping will attend a major summit in California this year.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the top State Department official for Asia, met with Vice Foreign Minister for Asia Sun Weidong on Thursday, in the latest exchange of government officials from the world’s largest economies. 

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The two men had a “constructive” conversation about regional issues including North Korea, and emphasized the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific, according to a State Department readout.

Read More: Why China, Russia, and North Korea Joining Forces in the Indo-Pacific Isn’t Necessarily a Prelude to War

China and the U.S. have been trying to stabilize their relationship after an alleged Chinese spy balloon floated over America earlier this year, sending ties into free fall. The two sides are also sparring over trade, President Joe Biden’s curbs on Beijing’s access to cutting edge technology and Xi’s territorial claims over Taiwan.

The Biden administration has sent a slew of cabinet-level officials to Beijing since June to get relations back on track. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Malta earlier this month to discuss a meeting of their leaders.

The next opportunity for leader-level talks would be the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco in November. China said earlier this week it is talking to the U.S. about who will represent the Asian nation at the event, and will make an announcement “in due time.”

Vice Premier He Lifeng and Wang are both now discussing possible visits to Washington to prepare for a potential meeting between Xi and Biden, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing unidentified people briefed on the matter.

In another sign of thawing ties, Washington recently asked Beijing for its help handling the return of a U.S. soldier who crossed into North Korea. “China provided the necessary assistance in the humanitarian spirit,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday at a regular press briefing.

Last week, China and the U.S. said they were establishing working groups to discuss economic and financial issues, in another sign of improving communication lines. The Treasury Department said that meetings will now be held at the vice-minister level, with officials reporting back to Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Vice Premier He.

Biden hasn’t spoken to Xi since last year’s Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. The two men were expected to rub shoulders at the G-20 summit in India earlier this month, but Xi abruptly snubbed that meeting for the first time since taking power in 2012.

from TIME https://ift.tt/poQlcMD

Weapons at the Center of the War in Ukraine Are Inspiring India to Upgrade Its Artillery

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India is planning to add more self-propelled, long-range artillery to its arsenal after officials conducted a study indicating their effectiveness in shaping Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The South Asian country wants to obtain another 400 of these guns, which would make the equipment about a sixth of all artillery pieces in the Indian armory, according to officials aware of the details, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The war in Ukraine has made India only the latest country to reevaluate its armory, preparedness for war, and priorities on the battlefield. Officials cited an Indian military study showing that long-range artillery with mobility is effective in influencing battle outcomes. Counterstrikes by the enemy are more likely to destroy guns in static positions, the officials said, citing the study.

Read More: Inside the Race to Arm Ukraine Before Its Counteroffensive

A majority of India’s 100 self-propelled guns are deployed along a 3,488 kilometer (2,167 mile) disputed border with China. Indian officials said soldiers from both countries have patrolled their respective sides toe-to-toe for the last three years.

India currently uses vintage field guns, mostly of Russian origin, that cannot move on their own, though the country has recently started upgrading its artillery units. The military has added U.S.-made light field guns that can be carried on helicopters.

Crucially, the Indian military study showed that the country must cut the time needed to locate and fire at a target from five to 10 minutes to about a minute.

Units that assist gun batteries to acquire targets are being reorganized and rearmed. Last week, the chief general of India’s army, Manoj Pande, said at a seminar that these units are being equipped with “remotely piloted aircraft and loiter ammunitions and swarm drones.”

The nation is adding more long range rockets and missiles to improve its “reach and fire power and reaction capability along the northern border,” said General Pande, who didn’t elaborate on the exact number of additional reinforcements.

from TIME https://ift.tt/T9zHMZh

As His Rivals Argue at the Church of Reagan, Trump Kicks Dirt on the Gipper’s Grave

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took incoming fire from all sides as he stood at center stage Wednesday night at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif. So, too, did tech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, who again doubled-down on his belief that transgender kids were mentally ill; former Vice President Mike Pence followed-up with a proposed federal ban on gender-affirming care for students and almost insta-executions for guilty mass shooters. And—hooboy—did no one see Sen. Tim Scott launching a rocket alleging Ramaswamy was “in business with the Chinese Communist Party and the same people that funded Hunter Biden.”

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Messy? Of course. And yet, despite the drama and shade, borderline slander and sinister sneering, Wednesday’s second GOP debate among White House hopefuls may still have mattered less than the man who didn’t show: former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner in polls, money, and self-confidence who couldn’t be bothered. Instead of joining his fellow Republicans under Ronald Reagan’s Air Force One at The Gipper’s presidential temple, Trump instead jetted to Michigan in the midst of an autoworker strike to offer his version of worker-based populism. Whereas Ronnie fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers during his first year on the job and set back the labor movement in a huge way, there was Trump—some 2,300 miles away—rambling at a nonunion factory, yet still seemingly contradicting a half-century Republican orthodoxy once again.

All of which explains why, with Trump leading his nearest competitor, DeSantis, by a 42-point spread using a platform of grievance, gotcha’, and goblins, it might be worth asking if anyone is looking for Reagan’s Morning in America any longer. At the first GOP debate, staged in Milwaukee, Ramaswamy seemed to mock that nostalgia: “It is not Morning in America. We live in a dark moment.” Such sacrilege was unthinkable in a pre-Trump era.

After the first Republican debate, Trump’s lead widened, his hold on the party hardened, and his challengers largely seemed to fade into the background. As much as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made gains with her defense of the neocon standards and traditional Republican values, it still didn’t move the needle enough to give Trump reason to worry. Which begs this question: Is Ronald Reagan’s place as a sacralized figure in the Republican Party a thing of yesterday? Or has its crown been replaced by one shaped like a baseball cap and stitched with Make America Great Again? Has Reagan reached peak irrelevance in a party seemingly hellbent on hewing to whatever whim Trump harbors when he gets out of bed at his Bedminster club?

Since Reagan first burst onto the national scene with an ideology-resetting speech at CPAC in 1974, he was considered the gold standard for the modern conservative movement, a new true north for what it meant to cut taxes, provide international security through an unbeatable American military, and demonstrate an absolute indifference to most social-safety nets in pursuit of bigger gains. Politicians still jockey to emulate The Great Communicator, activists still wear replicas of his campaign T-shirts, and donors still respond to the Pavlovian ring of those 80s-era slogans that sometimes feel like gospel. For years, the thinking was that if a candidate could replicate Reagan’s magic, they could crack the code to the modern Republican Party.

Then, along came Trump. Where Reagan saw a City on a Hill, Trump saw American Carnage. Where Reagan promised Morning in America, Trump promised to Lock Her Up. As Reagan negotiated amnesty for 3 million immigrants in the country illegally, Trump sought to build a border wall, lock up migrants, and gleefully discussed separating families. And Trump came within striking distance of winning a second term in the White House, winning more votes than any other incumbent President in history.

Now on his second contested run for the nomination, Trump may be looking as much to get back into power as to tapdance on Reagan’s grave, which is on the same hillside campus that hosted the debate Wednesday evening. Everything that Reagan stood for—worthy of honor or abhorrence—seems deserving of Trump’s contempt. Reagan sought to win the Cold War with allies and internationalism, while Trump preached isolationism and deference to Moscow. So much so that Trump declined to return to the scene of his second ever political debate in 2015, the one where he said he’d get along with Putin, wanted to put Ivanka Trump on the $10 bill, and refused to apologize to Jeb Bush’s Mexican-born wife.

So as the candidates Wednesday night sparred about how to secure the Southern border and combat Chinese influence, there was an almost aggressive ahistorical appreciation for Reagan’s record. Scott said “The City on the Hill needs a brand new leader.” DeSantis invoked Reagan’s 1989 farewell message and Ramaswamy sought to hide behind Reagan’s 11th Commandment to never speak ill of another GOP figure. And, as Ramaswamy broke a half-century of conservative foreign policy norms—many made seemingly unbendable by Reagan himself—Pence roared the Reagan mantra that “peace comes through strength.”

But it may have all been in service of a legend that no one longer moves the modern Republican Party, and the candidates at times seemed all too aware of it. That much was clear when the evening coasted toward a close with a pointed debate about how much responsibility Haley bore for costly curtains installed at her government-provided home where she lived while serving as the U.N. Ambassador in New York. (The decision actually dates to the Obama administration.)

For decades, Reagan was a must-kiss ring. Even after his passing in 2004, candidates still made the pilgrimage to meet with his widow. And after she passed in 2016, mainstream candidates and hopefuls still made the trek to Simi Valley to offer their view of conservatism and its future.

For Trump? All of that seems beneath him. And his rivals hoped voters would catch the snub.

“You know who else is missing in action? Donald Trump is missing an action,” DeSantis said. “He should be on this stage tonight. He owes it to you to defend his record.” Christie offered his own twist, testing a new nickname in the style of his nemesis: “If you keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. They will call you Donald Duck.”

Trump knows his ideology: whatever makes him feel popular and powerful in the moment. He seemed to know who Margaret Thatcher was, but he couldn’t contain his giddiness—or hyperbole—when he met the Queen of England. While MAGA is his official slogan, Hedonism Over History might be more accurate. And if that means tossing aside the long-held deification of Reagan, that’s just part of the deal. His supporters get it, his party excuses it, and the country may just reward it.

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Trump’s Message in Michigan: He’s Looking Past His GOP Rivals

Donald Trump is looking past the Republican presidential primary. By skipping the second GOP debate Wednesday night to speak to striking auto workers in Michigan, Trump diverted attention away from his rivals and signaled that he has all but turned his focus to the general election.

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In doing so, Trump wasn’t only counter-programming his Republican rivals on a California stage. He was confronting the man blocking his return to the White House, President Joe Biden, who became the first commander in chief in history to join a picket line the day before outside Detroit. And he was making a play for white working-class voters in a critical swing state where a bitter labor standoff has become a stark political test for the candidates. 

“I put everything on the line to fight for you,” Trump said in a meandering, hourlong speech to workers at a non-union auto facility. “I’ve risked it all to defend the working class from the corrupt political class that has spent decades sucking the life, wealth, and blood out of this country.” At one point, Trump asked United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain and other union leaders for their endorsement. “They have to endorse Trump, because if they don’t, they are just committing suicide.”

Read More: The Biggest Moments From the Second Republican Debate.

Trump tried to contrast Biden’s support for Democratic-leaning unions by excoriating his administration’s embrace of electric vehicles, saying it would cripple the auto industry. “The damn things don’t go far enough and they’re too expensive,” he said. “I make a pledge to the automakers: a vote for President Trump means the future of the automobile will be made in America.” 

The pitch to middle-class voters in Michigan is part of a critical test for Trump. After narrowly winning the state in 2016, Trump lost to Biden in Michigan by roughly 154,000 votes in 2020. The former President senses an opportunity to make up ground with working-class Americans as striking Michigan auto workers seek a 40% wage increase to meet the rising cost of living.

It’s not only in Michigan that the battle for white working-class voters could prove decisive. The voting bloc makes up more than 40% of the entire electorate. In 2016, 62% of them cast ballots for Trump, according to a study conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University—nearly double the total  racked up by GOP President George H.W. Bush in 1992.  But four years later, Trump’s support dipped and Biden won 33% of white working-class voters, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 28%, according to data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. 

In his speech, Trump never mentioned any of his Republican adversaries, whom he leads by huge margins in polls. “They’re all competing for jobs and want to be Secretary of Something or they even say VP. Does anybody see any VP in the group? I don’t think so,” he said of the GOP candidates debating the same night in California. 

Instead, the former President struck a populist tone. He lamented the loss of nearly 60,000 factories in America in the 21st Century, which he blamed on China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. “I have to give you the right numbers,” he said. “Otherwise, the fake news is out there.” (Data from the Census Bureau has shown that 59,794 manufacturing establishments shuttered in the United States from 2001 through 2015, but it’s far from clear that China was the impetus.)

Read More: Biden Is Trying to Kickstart an Electric Vehicle Race.

Trump also slammed Biden’s policies designed to boost the production of electric vehicles, and made a direct appeal to blue-collar voters. “The workers of America,” he said to the crowd, “are getting screwed.” The message marked a new turn in Trump’s campaign to win back the White House. It’s not Republican primary voters he thinks he needs to worry about anymore. It’s the up-for-grabs voters who will decide the general election. 

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