The News Not Noise Letter: News That Doesn’t Suck (And Some That Does)
There’s a little more time to make a debt deal. Plus: states are loosening child labor laws, Trump vs DeSantis is meow, and Tina Turner’s lessons for all of us.
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A rundown of this week’s big stories:
Debt Ceiling: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the US now has until June 5 to avoid default. Congress has gone on recess for Memorial Day weekend and could be called back to Washington to vote with 24 hours advance notice if a deal is reached. Negotiators continue to work toward an agreement and an anonymous official told Reuters that President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy have nearly reached a two-year deal that would raise the debt ceiling but cap most non-defense discretionary spending to current-year levels. Once they reach an agreement it still has to pass both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. My advice: assume nothing is settled until both the House and Senate have voted.
Child Labor Crisis: What should we do about the tight labor market? Increasingly, state lawmakers are looking to a once-inconceivable option: loosen child labor laws. For the first time since the nation set Fair Labor Standards in the 1930s, many state legislators throughout the country (mostly, though not exclusively, Republicans) are pushing to increase the number of hours children can work, lower the ages for children to perform certain jobs, and make it easier for employers to hire children — sometimes without requiring employers to verify their ages. Wisconsin legislators are considering a measure to allow children as young as 14 to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants. A bill in Ohio that would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work as late as 9pm during the school year with parental permission is likely to pass soon — despite federal child labor laws mandating that children that age cannot work later than 7pm when schools are in session. Similar child labor rules are being considered or have already passed in Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. Keep in mind, immigrants previously filled many of these jobs, but with the current dysfunction at the border – and no political will to create pathways to legal migration – it seems politicians are looking to kids to fill the gaps. Are we ok with this?
2024 GOP Updates: After a glitch-filled Twitter announcement that he’s running for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week that will amend Florida law and allow him to run for president without resigning as governor. Meanwhile, Trump and DeSantis have been attacking one another with increasing ferocity: Trump released a video referring to DeSantis as “Rob DeSanctimonious,” and a deepfake video in which DeSantis’ Twitter announcement is re-imagined with a fake Elon Musk, the FBI, the Devil, George Soros, and Hitler (don’t click if you are triggered by that description.) DeSantis is now hitting back, for the first time attacking Trump by name and claiming, without evidence, that Trump is “running to the left.” 🤷♀️ Also in the running is South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who launched his campaign this week with a very different tone from Trump and DeSantis, arguing that Republicans must choose between “victimhood or victory.”
Mar-a-Lago Document Updates: The Washington Post reported this week that the investigators working with the Special Counsel have evidence of 3 possible types of obstruction of justice and mishandling documents. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, officials told the Post that two Trump aides allegedly practiced moving boxes of classified documents, and then actually moved them the day before a scheduled visit by the FBI to retrieve them. Trump also reportedly kept some of the documents visible in his office, showing them to people who were not authorized to view them. Recall that in the CNN town hall, when asked if he showed documents to anyone Trump said, “not really.” Trump’s lawyers have requested a meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland – and posted that letter on Truth Social. Legal experts say this indicates the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents is wrapping up, so we should know soon whether Trump will face charges. The Special Counsel’s separate investigation into Trump’s possible involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection is ongoing.
Here’s some news that doesn’t suck:
Tina Turner’s Inspiration: Why am I including Tina Turner’s death at the age of 83 in News that Doesn’t Suck? Because she was an inspiration when I discovered her in the 1980s – a fierce, happy, gifted woman who claimed her voice and success without denying her struggles. Her passing this week moved people to share inspiring stories about her, stories I never previously knew. For those of you too young to have known her, Turner was born to a family of farmers. She reached fame at a young age in an R&B act with her husband and producer, Ike Turner. Proud Mary was among their iconic hits. Ike Turner was physically abusive – she recounted many broken bones at his hands and said she attempted suicide during their marriage. She eventually left him and staged a comeback with an astonishing hit solo album (Private Dancer) and tour that turned her into an international superstar. She found Buddhism and learned to chant. Articles after her death quote her talking about a practice she adopted: every time she had a negative thought, she would replace it with a positive thought and repeat the positive thought many times over to “counteract” the negative thought. A 60 Minutes producer wrote this tweet thread recounting the time Turner stood up to the smug sexism of anchor Mike Wallace during a sit-down interview (the full thread is a delight to read). The final 60 Minutes interview gives you a feel for her contagious spirit and you can also hear her beautiful chanting. Later, Turner married her sweetheart – a producer who was 16 years her junior; in one of the most selfless acts of love imaginable, he donated a kidney to Turner when she was gravely ill. There are many fantastic quotes attributed to her, my favorite: “My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself.” ❤️ Thank you Tina Turner. Simply the Best.
Looted Art Returned: This week we’re sharing two key victories in the movement to return looted art and artifacts to their countries of origin: Greece announced it recovered 351 looted objects from a disgraced British art dealer’s holdings, and two San Diego art collectors returned 65 pre-Hispanic objects to Mexico. The Greek artifacts were repatriated after a 17-year legal battle with Robin Symes, the British antiquities dealer who was exposed as a key player in a massive organized black market in looted goods. The items spanned millennia and the oldest is “an anthropomorphic figurine made of highly polished white stone from the 4th millennium BCE.” Meanwhile the Mexican objects included items made by peoples indigenous to what is now western Mexico. Some of these items were created in a style usually reserved for “large underground burial chambers,” suggesting they may have originally been taken from these tombs. Now, the Greek and Mexican items are safe in their respective countries, undergoing critical inspection and, if necessary, restoration. Both countries say they plan to display recovered goods so their people can see their cultural heritage locally, without having to travel to the US or UK to do so.
AI As Mobility Aid: Researchers in Switzerland have created an AI “thought decoder” that helped a paralyzed man regain significant mobility. In 2011, Gert-Jan Oskam was paralyzed from the waist down when a motorcycle accident injured his spinal cord. Now, he has regained control over his movements and can walk, climb steep ramps and staircases, and navigate obstacles in his path. This is thanks to a new set of AI-equipped implants that act as a “digital bridge” that communicates signals from his brain to his spinal cord. Doctors and scientists have been working for decades on electrical stimulation technology to retrain patients’ spinal cords and muscles to work together and increase patients’ mobility, but these older models have been limited, making it challenging for patients to walk on anything but perfectly flat surfaces. The AI model that Oskam uses doesn’t focus on electrical stimulation to injured sections of his spinal cord but instead bypasses the injury altogether, creating a sort of alternate route for brain signals to travel. The AI technology used machine-learning algorithms trained to know when Oskam was trying to move in a specific way and to share these signals with intact nerves below his injury. At a press briefing, Oskam compared the old, pre-AI techniques to his new AI implants: “The stimulation before was controlling me, and now I’m controlling the stimulation.” There’s a lot going on in the world of AI that’s troubling (more on AI and regulations here), but this use-case is doing a lot of good.
The Books the Bans Ignore: Bans on books with LGBTQ+ themes are leaving some queer students without stories that reflect their identities. Carnegie Mellon professor of English literacy and cultural studies Kathy M. Newman has a tip: books in sci-fi and fantasy genres provide a cover for LGBTQ+ themes and can slip past identity censors. She tells The Hill that it can be harder to detect queer content in fantasy books where mystical creatures and magical battles fill every page. She also said that outlandish fiction books are less likely to appear on the lists that censorship advocates frequently look to for novels to ban. The American Library Association says in US 2022 book bans hit a record high. Until these regressive policies change, if you’re raising a child in a state with book bans, consider looking to fantasy and outer space for a literary haven.
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