Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Remembering Grant Wahl

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We begin today with the Executive Editor of Sports Illustrated Jon Wertheim and his remembrance of SI’s soccer reporter for nearly a quarter of a century, Grant Wahl.

In the summer of 1997, an amiable kid from Kansas with the physique of a car antenna walked into Sports Illustrated. My new office mate came bearing a bag of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for us to share, a Kansas ball cap, a quiet confidence and an evangelist’s passion for soccer.

Grant Wahl, who died suddenly after collapsing at the World Cup in Qatar, was quick to explain that this great love—foreign to so many in the office and in his beloved home state—stemmed from an undergraduate trip to South America. He saw club teams train, snuck into stadiums, watched Boca Juniors and somehow got to write about it for credit. Little did any of us know this genial convert (with little ability to kick a ball) would go on to become the greatest soccer writer of our generation, covering the world’s biggest sport more like a foreign correspondent than a beat writer. More Nicholas Kristof—a journalistic idol of Grant’s—than a keyboard warrior in the press box.

Grant’s first World Cup for SI was 1998 in France. He returned with giddy stories, his faith in the sport more fervent than ever. He was no less excited the following year when the U.S. women did their thing.

For almost 25 years at SI—and just as critically the last three years on his own—Grant has covered the sport with vigor, rigor and affection, domestically and abroad. He covered people and places, not just the vectors of the ball. He devoted time and attention to both men’s and women’s soccer. Even for those he couldn’t fully convert, we came to appreciate the sport more because of him. More important, it was hard not to be inspired by his approach to the work.

Laurie Roberts of The Arizona Republic says that the defection of Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Democrat to independent could be a boon to Arizona Republicans...or, for that matter, to Arizona Democrats.

Republicans have got to be thrilled with Sinema's defection.

Coming off disastrous election losses in 2022, they now are presented with a chance to scoop up the golden egg in 2024 — if only they don’t prematurely lop off the head of the goose.

Which is entirely possible, should they continue to do as they did this year and nominate terrible candidates.

Democrats like to portray their victory in all of the major state races this year as Arizona turning blue. Really, it was more about Arizona turning against Trump and his hand-picked slate of extremists.

For the third time, in the case of the Senate race. (See losses by the Trump-endorsed McSally in 2018 and 2020 and by the Trump-endorsed Blake Masters in 2022.)

To win in 2024, Republicans must undergo a full-on makeover.

Alex Burness of Bolt magazine reports about the rejection of Proposition 309 by Arizona voters, a statewide ballot measure designed to tighten voter ID measures.

...Arizonans on Nov. 8 bucked this history, despite Proposition 309’s huge fundraising advantage and the lack of organized opposition. They narrowly rejected the measure by about 18,000 votes, or 0.76 percent.

It was the first defeat in ten years for a ballot measure increasing voter ID mandates in the U.S., according to the National Conference of State Legislatures’ database. (Minnesotans rejected a voter ID measure by eight percentage points in 2012.)

Local advocates on both sides of the measure told Bolts that they were surprised by the outcome but explained it by naming several factors, starting with antipathy to Trumpism.

“Fundamentally, I just don’t think we can look at this one in a vacuum,” said Sarah Gonski, a Phoenix-based elections lawyer who has represented Democratic candidates in the state in recent cycles.​

Will Bunch of The Philadelphia Inquirer decries the downgrading of yet another school district’s civics curriculum, this time in the Pennridge School District just north of Philadelphia.

Locally, the debate over the future of social-studies education flared in the Pennridge School District in Philadelphia’s northern exurbs, a community that has been riven in the last couple years by debates over issues like LGBTQ pride flags in the classroom and diversity education. But board members who voted 5-4 this week to reduce the number of social studies credits needed for high-school graduation from four — standard in most area districts — to three claimed the move wasn’t political. They intended to give students more flexibility to take college-prep classes, and to add a requirement for a personal finance course, giving teens a practical skill.

Pennridge’s downgrading of social studies appeared to be in line with the pre-pandemic and pre-Trump-era trends of prioritizing science and technology over other subjects. But this move generated widespread opposition from teachers and students in the Bucks County district — showing how the fight over what kids ought to be learning is becoming a front-burner issue in the 2020s. [...]

In regions with GOP-dominated legislatures or education boards, the fight isn’t over reducing social studies but radically changing it, to stress a conservative definition of “patriotism” while eliminating lessons about the role of racism or hot-button history topics like slavery and the fight for LGBTQ rights.

Robin Wright of The New Yorker details the deeper context of the prison swap involving WNBA star Brittney Griner and arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Griner’s return brought a well-known case to its end, but she was just one of at least sixty Americans currently held hostage or wrongfully detained in eighteen different countries, according to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation. (Foley was an American journalist kidnapped by isis in Syria in 2012; he was beheaded twenty-one months later.) During the past decade, the average number of Americans detained abroad has risen by almost six hundred per cent, the Foley Foundation reported. The length of time hostages are held has increased by sixty per cent. Nearly half of the U.S. nationals wrongly detained have been held for more than five years, the foundation noted. Three-quarters are in five countries: China, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela. (Today, foreign governments hold more Americans than terrorist groups do.)

This week, Biden claimed that dozens of Americans have been released since he took office nearly two years ago, but a State Department spokesperson could only specify releases from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Haiti, Venezuela, and the region of West Africa. Last year, the U.S. joined a fifty-eight-nation initiative launched by Canada to impose sanctions and other punitive measures to deter hostage-taking. The families of captives say the effort lacks teeth.[...]

Since the nineteen-nineties, the U.S. commitment to globalization has led more Americans to travel abroad—and more to be taken hostage, Brinkley told me. “We’re a symbol of global capitalism and financial success, and we have a hard-earned reputation, as we leave no person behind. So, in a way, Americans abroad, whether you’re in Yemen or Venezuela, you become a target,” he added. Foreign governments calculate, often rightly, that they can “cut a sweetheart deal” to win freedom for their own nationals convicted of criminal activity or espionage if they abduct Americans, Brinkley said. The public inevitably blames a President when Americans linger in captivity for months or years.

Grace van Deelen of InsideClimateNews reports that many Americans are migrating to regions that are also “high wildfire risk” areas.

Migration trends are influenced by a number of factors such as job availability, housing costs, and cultural or political fit. Americans also consider so-called “natural amenities,” like a mild climate, variation in the landscape and water bodies, when they determine where to move. Such amenities act as migration “pulls,” and incentivize people to live nearby.

According to the study, led by a team from the University of Vermont and published in the journal Frontiers in Human Dynamics, the areas pulling Americans most strongly are also those where residents are at higher risk of natural disasters like wildfires and summer heat. Cities identified as migration hotspots included Seattle, Portland, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Austin, Dallas, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington, D.C., while large swaths of the Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains and the South also received a higher influx of people than surrounding areas.

Places with high wildfire risk, said Clark, tend to also have dramatic, varied landscapes, and might be farther outside of urban areas, both qualities attractive to people looking to move. The Rockies and Pacific Northwest, both named as migration hotspots, offer plenty of opportunities for outdoor recreation and have a milder, drier climate than other parts of the U.S. The hotspots in the South, such as Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta and parts of Texas, could be attracting people due to historically lower living costs, said Clark.

“It’s not that people are attracted to wildfires,” said Mahalia Clark, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont and the lead author on the study. “Something else about those counties is attractive in spite of wildfires.”

Isabella Cuetoof STATnews reports on efforts by U.S. medical and public health experts to stay ahead of an expected ‘tsunami’ of chronic disease.

Chronic disease often begins long before the diagnosis. It begins, sometimes, in homes full of disease-causing pests, cities ravaged by natural disasters, or towns without doctor’s offices and nearby grocery stores.

So getting ahead of the nation’s chronic disease problem means addressing problems early. As a physician, Bakshandeh visited patients in their homes and found impoverished neighborhoods full of bedbugs, cockroaches, and water leaks. People couldn’t afford pest control or plumbers, and they would then develop illnesses or infections as a result. Instead of waiting until issues festered into a blisteringly expensive visit to the emergency room, Bakshandeh thought, “Maybe I can call a plumber to fix the leak that’s causing this outbreak of Legionella that’s giving you pneumonia.”

Likewise, providers (and payers) should meet patients at their level of food literacy, panelists said. Misleading food labels, confusing nutritional information, and little education about diet means Americans are left in a gulch.

Raphael Tsavkkoo Garcia writes for Al Jazeera that Brazil needs a process of “de-radicalization” and not reconciliation following the violent aftermath of October’s presidential election.

Since Bolsonaro lost his attempt to secure another term as Brazil’s president in October, thousands of his most fanatical supporters have been occupying major roads across the country, demanding – despite there not being any evidence of fraud – the election be overturned or the military intervene to keep the far-right leader in power.

At first, these roadblocks were inconvenient but largely peaceful. But as weeks passed by and no real pathway for Bolsonaro to remain in power appeared, the protests gradually turned violent. Especially in states where the president has a large support base, such as Santa Catarina, Mato Grosso and Rondônia, “Bolsonaristas” started using homemade bombs and firecrackers to stop traffic. They blockaded roads with burning tyres, bins and tree trunks. They set trucks, and in one case, an ambulance, on fire. Truck drivers across the country reported being assaulted and robbed.

The violence perpetrated by Bolsonaro supporters is not limited to roadblocks either. In Rondônia, the president’s supporters allegedly targeted a water pipeline and shot at the building of a newspaper critical of his government. In Santa Catarina, they attacked Federal Highway Police officers with stones. In Brasilia, they shot at a bar known to be frequented by the left.

Finally today, Yasmeen Abutaleb of The Washington Post reports an exclusive that President Joe Biden will call for the African Union to become permanent members of the G-20.

African leaders have for years expressed frustration at being left out of discussions on global affairs and crises that affect them, from the coronavirus to food security, saying they often feel like bystanders while Western countries drive most international bodies.


Those frustrations came to a head during the coronavirus pandemic, when African countries were hit particularly hard by the fallout. Despite the extensive experience of African countries in disease surveillance and protocol, they were not included in decisions on questions such as when to mask, whether to ban travel, and when to test before traveling, said Mvemba Dizolele, director and senior fellow at the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

African countries also have felt left behind in the distribution of coronavirus treatments and vaccines, often receiving them just before they expire and without sufficient storage and distribution capacity.

Have a good day, everyone!