Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Haze

[Brexiter]

We begin today with Dan Diamond, Joshua Partlow, Brady Dennis, and Emmanuel Felton of The Washington Post reporting about the dangers of the wildfire haze that occupies much of the air in the mid-Atlantic and northeastern regions of the United States.

The shroud above the Northeast prompted public health authorities to convene emergency meetings, hospitals to prepare for a possible uptick in patients and lawmakers to again call for legislation to tamp down the risks of a warming world. The acute public health threat posed by the fumes, which carry dangerous gases and fine particles that can embed in people’s lungs and bloodstream, coupled with the transformation of major cities’ skylines punctured many Americans’ sense of invulnerability.


“Climate change is real. It is here. The extreme weather and disasters like these wildfires, thousands of miles away, land right here in our great city and impact our health,” New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said at a news conference Wednesday morning, urging residents to stay indoors, wear masks if needed outdoors and take other precautions. City officials said the air was the worst in more than 50 years — with an Air Quality Index score Wednesday that at one point reached 484, signifying “hazardous” conditions — and would likely last several days.


Wildfire smoke has posed a growing health risk in the United States for years, with Western states repeatedly reeling from fires and residents attempting to cope by purchasing personal air filters, staying indoors and adopting other ad hoc solutions. In interviews on Wednesday, federal experts touted guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how to stay safe. But the smoke enveloping the East Coast arrives at a moment when many Americans have tuned out warnings from public health officials in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Many people in affected areas continued their usual routines despite the intense haze, scratchy throats and other manifestations of the smoky conditions.

Matthew Yglesias writes for The New York Times that President Joe Biden certainly know how to … uh, keep a low profile when necessary.

While Speaker Kevin McCarthy blitzed Fox News and funneled daily doses of spin through the Capitol Hill tipsheets, the White House was publicly saying and doing very little — so little that it felt like basically nothing. Backbench House Democrats, progressive Twitter and liberal advocacy groups exhorted Mr. Biden to insist on a straightforward debt-ceiling increase by the G.O.P. House, but braced themselves for the worst: A tired, timid, too-moderate, too-ineffectual president with his head stuck in the distant past was about to get fleeced by the rabid right.

Yet what emerged from intense talks at the White House was a deal that turned out to be surprisingly — almost shockingly — favorable to Mr. Biden’s supporters. Somehow, the seemingly floundering White House pulled off a negotiating coup.

This happened, at least in part, because Mr. Biden understands something fundamental about congressional politics that’s frustrating to journalists, activists and political junkies: It’s often better to just shut up.

I largely agree with this essay—and to agree with Yglesias is very, very, rare for me.

There are already plenty of stories here at on the seemingly imminent indictment of #45, so I will share new YouGov polling on what the public thinks.

Do you think Donald Trump intentionally took classified documents when he left the White House? % saying "yes" U.S. adult citizens: 56% Democrats: 83% Independents: 51% Republicans: 29%https://t.co/n6OXbBGxo0 pic.twitter.com/uhAggaGaqT

— YouGov America (@YouGovAmerica) June 7, 2023

Charles Blow of The New York Times talks about the stochastic terroristic threats to the LGBTQ community and all who are responsible for it (h/t to Daily Kos’ own G2geek for the coining the term).

The way this kind of terrorism works is that it not only punishes expression, condemns identities and cuts off avenues for receiving care but also creates an aura of hostility and issues grievous threats. It’s like burning a cross on someone’s lawn: It’s an attempt to frighten people into compliance and submission.

The Republican politicians pushing anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws usually pretend that their principal, if not their sole, motivation is to protect children. But these laws operate in furtherance and protection of the fragile patriarchy, in perpetuation of the twin evils of homophobia and heterosexism and in reinforcement of abusive gender-identity policing.
[...]

These politicians have Willie Horton-ized the transgender equality movement and, by extension, the whole movement for L.G.B.T.Q. equality.

And one of the saddest aspects of this episode has been seeing a small but vocal group of people who claim to be liberal — and who one would think would be allies — aid and abet the arguments of transphobes.

LZ Granderson of the Los Angeles Times says that it’s about time that corporate America picks a damn side.

That’s right, corporate America: You’re going to have to tell us who you’re loyal to.

That should have been clear after Anita Bryant’s homophobic crusade dragged Florida’s citrus industry through the proverbial mud back in the 1970s. But companies got the wrong idea for a while on LGBTQ+ issues, thinking they could safely monetize queer acceptance while remaining silent during queer oppression. They can’t get away with it anymore.

“Loyalty” is not just about who your customer base is. It’s a question of principle first, and commerce follows. For example, Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday for religious purposes, forgoing revenue because of principle. The current culture war is testing companies’ loyalty to core principles in ways we have not seen in some time. This is not a war in which corporations can shout “go team” no matter who wins. This war doesn’t allow anyone to be neutral.

So be prepared to fight.

Companies will have to decide if “diversity, equity and inclusion” are principles worth fighting for or popular buzzwords to include in a fiercely written mission statement no one bothers to remember.

Nia Prater of New York magazine reports on the reintroduction of stop-and-frisk policing tactics in New York City.

When Mayor Eric Adams announced last year that he would revive the NYPD’s anti-crime units, critics were concerned because of the units’ history of brutality. They had been disbanded in 2020 following weeks of protests after the murder of George Floyd, as they were frequently subject to complaints of racial profiling and aggressive tactics.

[...]

Now, a new report issued by the department’s federal monitor suggests that critics’ fears have been validated. In her report, released on Monday, Mylan Denerstein writes that officers with the Neighborhood Safety Teams are stopping, frisking, and searching members of the public at an “unsatisfactory level of compliance,” adding that the department’s oversight of these tactics is “inadequate at all levels.”

Denerstein’s team audited reports and recordings of stops made by the units for six months of 2022 and found Neighborhood Safety Team officers had “reasonable suspicion” for 76 percent of stops, meaning nearly a quarter of stops had been made unlawfully. The report also determined that illegal stops were made at a rate “nine percentage points higher” than the 2020 rate for the department as a whole. Of the people stopped by police in these encounters, more than 97 percent were Black or Hispanic.

While Jenna Moon, Max Tani, and Ben Smith’s byline is on this Semafor article about the crisis at CNN following the firing of Chris Licht, the view here about the overall fragility of the cable news business is all Ben Smith.

The decline of cable has been predicted since the birth of the internet. Veterans of the industry have developed a weariness about predictions of their doom. “We’re melting — in the shade,” a network president once told me. He wasn’t stressed about it.

But the cable news era is pretty new, and fragile. The format has held a central place in U.S. politics for about 20 years, give or take. CNN is a child of the 1980s, but Fox and MSNBC only launched in 1996, and took some time to find their footing. Tucker Carlson’s famous firing from Crossfire, after Jon Stewart accused the show of “hurting America,” was in 2004, a year when the big political television controversy revolved around Dan Rather’s CBS coverage. A bank of simultaneous cable feeds used to mean you were in some plugged-in news hub like the White House lower press office. Now it usually means you’re at a gym.

Seen through that lens, Jeff Zucker’s tenure at CNN was less a statement about what news ought to be than a heroic feat of television magic. He staved off irrelevance because he saw clearly that there was only one big pool of viewers left for CNN, MSNBC’s alarmed Democratic audience. He competed aggressively and head-to-head for them. He was aided by Donald Trump, whose politics almost required a confrontation with The Establishment, represented by its most famous brands.

Brian Stelter writes for The Washington Post that CNN can’t go back to 1995.

Over time, anchors and producers came to believe that Zaslav and Licht wanted CNN to be the Food Network but for news — inoffensive, predictable, safe to leave on in the living room all day. As one CNN anchor told me, “If you try to be all things to all people, you’re not anything to anybody.”

That sounds like product that would appeal to everyone, CNN circa 1995, before Fox News and MSNBC launched. A product akin to Headline News, CNN’s little sister, which has been in decline for years and no longer has its own newscasts.

[...]


We live in an age that requires a muscular form of TV journalism, one that defends truth against a torrent of lies — and accepts that the truth-telling will spur backlash from some viewers.


The men and women who were, until Wednesday, Licht’s lieutenants feel like the past year’s worth of programming decisions have confused the audience. The anchors have been confused, too — will they be rewarded internally for interrupting when a guest says something bogus or will they be chastised by the boss? Will they be respected for defending democracy and plain old human decency or will they be maligned as being “opinionated?”

Paul Adams of BBC News reports on the probable long-term agricultural damage that will occur due to the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine.

The agriculture ministry on Wednesday predicted that fields in southern Ukraine could "turn into deserts as early as next year", as vital irrigation systems, which depend on the vast Kakhovka reservoir, cease to function.


The reservoir is fast disappearing, sending an estimated 4.4 cubic miles of water roaring down the Dnipro River towards the Black Sea.

Before the war, the ministry says, 31 irrigation systems provided water for 584,000 hectares (more than 2,200 sq miles) of farmland.


"The dam was the only source of water for irrigation," First Deputy Minister Taras Vysotsky told me.

[...]


The Kherson region is among Ukraine's most fertile and productive.


Apart from its famous watermelons, the rich farmland either side of the Dnipro River produces a host of different crops, from onions and tomatoes to sunflowers, soybeans and wheat. Dairy farms are also likely to be affected.

Finally today, Phil Boas of The Arizona Republic thinks that use of the word “woke” should be restored to the “deeply layered” and austere meanings that first defined its usage within African American communities.

Someday when the cultural moment that many have called “The Great Awokening” is finally, mercifully, over, Americans of all races should fight to give African Americans their word back.

Less than 10 years ago, “woke” was a word so deeply layered with history and meaning it could evoke years of pain suffered by descendants of slaves coming of age in Jim Crow America.

You don’t have to be African American, however, to feel its history. The word woke is seminal to our larger culture in ways most of us have never understood.

It’s one of the great words in American English and it should be preserved in its purest form.

Have the best possible day, everyone!