Public Disruptions

 

Riding public transportation lately, I’ve come to almost expect troublesome interactions. It is as if the people and the trains are infecting each other with a crazy virus — or maybe it’s just my bad timing.

But there seem to be a lot of people talking to themselves, which is fine, except when that talk turns loud and threatening to fellow riders. Two of the last three times I’ve ridden Bart, the system’s police have restrained men who were acting in ways other riders found threatening.

“Who in here called the police?” one officer proclaimed loudly as he entered the car where I was seated near a guy opening and closing some sort of large metal-encrusted band and waving it around in a way that felt menacing to the rest of us.

The police officer didn’t stop to talk to him but chose another fellow sitting nearby with a bunch of packages and a bicycle.

“Do you have a knife?” he asked.

“No, I don't.”

Apparently satisfied, the cop disappeared. The menacing fellow resumed waving his metal encrusted band until another officer eventually appeared. This one did confront the disrupter, which clearly angered him because he became more boisterous than ever.

He complained loudly about being harassed until the next stop, where he got off.

More recently, as I approached another Bart station, two cops were chasing a guy leaving the train until they caught him and forced him to the ground.

“Don’t hurt me,” he said over and over, before they took him away.

I do not know what mixture of actual crime, mental illness, good (or bad) law enforcement practices, surveillance, danger or confusion were involved with these events, but I do know in the end, one of the disruptions caused me to miss my connection.

Time was tight, so I exited the Bart system and ordered a Lyft instead.

SATURDAY’S HEADLINES:

• People ages 16 to 25 across 10 countries are extremely worried about the climate crisis and are frustrated at governments' inaction, according to a new survey. Three-quarters of young respondents said they believe “the future is frightening,” and 56% felt “humanity is doomed,” with 45% saying their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. [HuffPost]

• Independent Journalism Is at Risk. Here’s How to Save It. (NYT)

• Pandemic mystery: Scientists focus on COVID’s animal origins — Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. (AP)

• COVID Has Broken the Economy (Atlantic)

• Abortion Clinics Can Challenge Texas Law, High Court Rules

  The Supreme Court ruled that abortion clinics can move forward with a challenge to Texas’ ban on most abortions, a decision that puts the state law in jeopardy even though the justices allowed it to remain in effect for now. (WSJ)

• The Secret History of the U.S. Diplomatic Failure in Afghanistan (New Yorker)

• The United Nations says Afghanistan's economy is collapsing 'before our eyes'(NPR)

• Afghan women: Secret diaries of changing lives (BBC)

• Racists, Taliban supporters flock to Twitter’s new audio service after executives ignored warnings (WP)

• The Court Invites an Era of Constitutional Chaos (Atlantic)

• How Nursing Homes’ Worst Offenses Are Hidden From the Public (NYT)

• Tractor-trailer full of migrants crashes in southern Mexico, killing at least 55 (WP)

• Scientists puzzle over Omicron’s origins as variant spreads (Financial Times)

• WikiLeaks' Julian Assange moved a step closer to facing criminal charges in the United States for breaking spying law and conspiring to hack government computers after Washington won an appeal over his extradition in an English court.(Reuters)

• US consumer inflation up 6.8% in past year, most since 1982 (AP)

• Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Bid to Shield Material From Jan. 6 Inquiry(NYT)

• Trump campaign lawyer authored two memos claiming Pence could halt Biden’s victory (Politico)

• A year after former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely accused a Georgia mother and daughter of election fraud, the threats have not been investigated by local police or state authorities. Offering a first detailed account of their ordeal, the two election workers tell Reuters about lynching threats and racial slurs, along with alarming visits by strangers, including Kanye West’s publicist, to their homes. (Reuters)

• The Jan. 6 committee needs to get louder. Much louder. (WP)

• Jan. 6 committee issues six new subpoenas, including two Trump associates(Politico)

• Starbucks workers in upstate New York voted to form the first union inside the coffee chain's U.S. corporate-owned stores. [HuffPost]

• Has Twitter warped politics? (Politico)

• California’s Ship Backlog Moves Farther Out to Sea (WSJ)

• Tropical forests can recover from deforestation remarkably fast and on their own, new study finds (WP)

• Ukraine and Russia blamed each other after a push to agree a new ceasefire in eastern Ukraine broke down as tensions over a Russian troop buildup near its southern neighbor persisted. (Reuters)

• Ukraine Commanders Say a Russian Invasion Would Overwhelm Them (NYT)

• House Approves Post-Trump Curbs on Presidential Power (NYT)

• Michigan's Jim Harbaugh is AP coach of the year (Yahoo News)

• 2 stars of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ look back at a classic (AP)

• Stephen Curry’s remarkable rise to three-point king (WP)

• Decade’s Most Powerful Piece Of Journalism Fighting Tooth And Nail To Crawl Out From Under Dog Food Ad (The Onion)

Doing It Together

 When I think back over the past 50 years, one of the most dramatic changes in journalism has been the way reporters have started working in teams. 

In school in the 60s, we were taught that the way it worked historically was that a series of great men -- and a few great women -- achieved journalistic success individually. Partnerships were rarely mentioned.

The big names were John Peter Zenger (1697-1746), Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1912), Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) ... and more recently Barbara Walters (1929-present) and Tom Wolfe (1931-present).

There were investigative reporters too, like Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Jacob Riis in the early 20th century and then Jessica Mitford, Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein in our time. (These are the famous ones, there were many others.) They too mostly worked alone.

Modern scholars credit the Center for Investigative Reporting and Mother Jones for establishing the non-profit model of investigative journalism.

So concentrating on those two organizations, which encapsulated so much of my own career, what's true its that we produced our muckraking reports in teams much more than as individuals. Maybe this was a Baby Boomer thing; after all, we were such a huge generation numerically that we rarely did anything in life completely alone.

Woodward & Bernstein are a tad older than our generation, but they certainly are the most famous co-authors in American journalism history. But they didn’t work together all that long, either.

Personally, I have published with many co-authors, both because I love working with collaborators and because we all uniquely bring different qualities to the partnership.

Some of us specialize in interviews, some in documents, some as investigators, some as writers or story-tellers. But what can be most valuable in a team is the ability to bring an unusual perspective on the story.

It’s not the kind of work that suits every temperament. People who get too easily frustrated and who give up easily tend to drop off teams. People who worry more about process than results rarely work out in these kinds of projects. Egos all too easily rear their ugly heads; competing egos are poisonous.

But for those of us who can stick it out, team stories yield most of the best journalism out there today.

Perhaps, when I work (intermittently) on a memoir of my career, the title of any such book ought to be: "We Did It Together."

Then again, it all depends what the meaning of the word "it" is.

[NOTE: I published a different version of this essay a year ago.]

***

The irony is hardly lost on any of the attendees to Biden’s two-day “democracy summit” this week that the U.S. is the country where the most serious recent threat to overthrow a major republic occurred.

Congress is investigating, of course, piling up evidence about what happened on January 6th, but the deeply partisan nature of the political process in the U.S. virtually guarantees its findings will have little credibility outside of Democratic Party circles. Republicans have sworn off any interest in finding out how close we came to a coup.

Meanwhile the threats to democracy here and overseas continue. Will the summit make a difference? IDK, but at least they are talking about it. 

And that is something because tyranny thrives in silence.

FRIDAY’S HEADLINES:

• President Joe Biden's "democracy summit" today with leaders of more than 100 nations puts the U.S. on display as the only major industrial power to undergo a modern threat to overthrow representative democracy. [HuffPost]

• The World’s Largest Democracy Is Failing — What the attacks against the journalist Rana Ayyub reveal about the state of India’s democracy (Atlantic)

• CDC chief says omicron mostly mild so far (AP)

• Omicron may require fourth vaccine dose, Pfizer says (WP)

• The number of Americans fully vaccinated against COVID-19 reached 200 million amid a dispiriting holiday-season spike in cases and hospitalizations that has hit even New England, one of the most highly inoculated corners of the country. But in Vermont, for example, 90% of COVID-19 patients in intensive care were unvaccinated. [AP]

• Omicron’s Explosive Growth Is a Warning Sign (Atlantic)

• Omicron: WHO concerned rich countries could hoard vaccines (BBC)

• Long covid is destroying careers, leaving economic distress in its wake (WP)

• Omicron is highly transmissible, researchers say (NHK)

• FDA authorizes Pfizer Covid booster for 16-, 17-year-olds (Politico)

• How will the world decide when the pandemic is over? (AP)

• Italy's antitrust watchdog said it had fined Amazon $1.28 billion for alleged abuse of market dominance, in one of the biggest penalties imposed on a U.S. tech giant in Europe. Global regulatory scrutiny of tech giants has been increasing after a string of scandals over privacy and misinformation, as well as complaints from some businesses that they abuse their market power. (Reuters)

• Schools Are Closing Classrooms on Fridays. Parents Are Furious. — Desperate to keep teachers, some districts have turned to remote teaching for one day a week — and sometimes more. Families have been left to find child care. (NYT)

• Schools Confront a Wave of Student Misbehavior, Driven by Months of Remote Learning (WSJ)

• An Arkansas state senator has filed a bill that goes even further than Texas' ban on abortion — this bill aims to ban abortion at any stage of pregnancy, and would deputize private citizens to enforce the law. “What Texas has done is absolutely awesome,” state Sen. Jason Rapert (R) told news outlets in September after Texas passed its six-week ban. Florida and Ohio have similar measures pending. [HuffPost]

• Democrats Are Losing the Culture Wars (Atlantic)

• Republicans have been campaigning in battleground states to put local officials who oversee key election functions in the hands of party loyalists. In some counties in Georgia, the result has been the removal of several Black Democrats from these boards. (Reuters)

• Transgender people can’t be baptized unless they’ve ‘repented,’ Catholic diocese in Michigan says (WP)

• New York set to become largest U.S. city to enable non-citizen voting (Reuters)

• New US jobless claims fall to lowest level since 1969 (Financial Times)

• Some of the nation’s leading ocean and climate scientists are calling on the U.S. government to invest up to $1.3 billion in research on human interventions that could boost the oceans’ ability to suck up planet-warming carbon dioxide in the coming decades. Jolting seawater with electricity to make it less acidic and boost its ability to suck up carbon dioxide is one idea among several, some more radical than others. [HuffPost]

• A new European Union plan to improve conditions for the growing number of gig economy workers could mean millions more of them are classified as employees entitled to benefits, the latest setback for digital platforms that rely on independent contractors to deliver food and offer rides. (AP)

• Without access to charging stations, Black and Hispanic communities may be left behind in the era of electric vehicles (WP)

• A new poll finds major warning signs for Biden and fellow Democrats — The NPR/Marist survey has President Biden with a 42% approval rating. Americans also don't feel the direct payments or expanded child tax credits Democrats doled out helped them much. (NPR)

• The number of journalists worldwide who are behind bars reached a global high in 2021, according to a new report from the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that 293 reporters were imprisoned as of December 1 this year. (Reuters)

• An Afghan village shrivels in worst drought in decades (AP)

• ‘A great suffering’: Starvation and the collapse of Afghan health care (Politico)

• New Zealand to ban smoking for next generation in bid to outlaw habit by 2025 (Guardian)

• What Children Lose When Their Brains Develop Too Fast — Adverse early experiences can make young minds inflexible, while a carefree childhood has clear cognitive benefits. (WSJ)

• Where the Despairing Log On, and Learn Ways to Die — It has the trappings of popular social media, a young audience and explicit content on suicide that other sites don’t allow. It is linked to a long line of lives cut short. (NYT)

• Dinosaur Tracks Show the Fearsome Predators Had Usain Bolt Speed (WSJ)

• ‘You Know, If I Were You, I’d Go After Finland,’ Says Biden Trying To Dissuade Putin From Invading Ukraine (The Onion)

FRIDAY’S LYRICS

“I Shall Be Released”

By Bob Dylan

They say everything can be replaced
They say every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here

I see my light come shining
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

They say every man needs protection
They say that every man must fall
Yet I swear I see my reflection
Somewhere so high above this wall

I see my light come shining
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

Now, yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd
A man who swears he's not to blame
All day long I hear him shouting so loud
Just crying out that he was framed

I see my light come shining
From the west down to the east
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released

Trust in Time

 

One constant during this pandemic is the recurring fear, confusion and controversy as each surge and/or new variant appears. Accordingly, you can almost take your pick of which news stories to believe — either Omicron is a serious threat or it’s not; the vaccines offer good long-term protection or they don’t; and the worst is over or the worst is yet to come.

The whole mutating mess is a litmus test of whether you are an optimist or a pessimist by nature or experience, as well as how much you feel you can trust media reports about these matters.

An additional issue in the age of the Internet, of course, is you can find whatever point of view you wish to embrace out there is the wilds of social media and the endless parade of websites catering to fringe audiences.

For my part, I try to scan as many legitimate media sources as possible, focusing on those that have proven to be reliable in the past, or whose internal fact-checking methodologies I’m familiar enough with to trust that they will usually get things right.

But when it comes to the behavior of the coronavirus and the mRNA vaccines devised to fight it, both topics are still too new and uncertain for anyone to make confident long-term predictions about their impacts. That’s the bottom line.

That brings it all down to trust — trust in the public health officials, scientists, and vaccine manufacturers — as well as in the media to get the story straight and accurate. And trust in all of those parties has been strained to the limit during this crisis. Especially trust of the media.

Restoring trust once it has been broken is a difficult process for anyone. Meanwhile, the variants will just keep coming, and the vaccines will just keep coming, so the mixed messages will just keep coming.

And I can do is to try my level best to parse them day by day as we continue this difficult journey together.

Thank you for reading my daily essays!

THURSDAY’S HEADLINES:

• Two years into this pandemic, the world is dangerously unprepared for the next one, report says (WP)

• Germany recorded the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 since February, while France registered a surge in hospitalizations after a rise in new infections in mid-November. (Reuters)

• Americans’ Pandemic-Era ‘Excess Savings’ Are Dwindling for Many — The drop in cash reserves has vast implications for the working class and could dampen consumer spending, a large share of economic activity. (NYT)

• Research: Omicron escapes Pfizer-induced immunity (NHK)

• BioNTech and Pfizer said a three-shot course of their COVID-19 vaccine was able to neutralize the new Omicron variant in a laboratory test and they could deliver an Omicron-based vaccine in March 2022 if needed. (Reuters)

• Lab results show omicron has ‘much more extensive escape’ from antibodies than previous variants (WP)

• Up to one million COVID-19 vaccines are estimated to have expired in Nigeria last month without being used, two sources told Reuters, one of the biggest single losses of doses that shows the difficulty African nations have getting shots in arms. (Reuters)

• Amid Push to Vaccinate Children, Other Challenges Deluge Pediatricians — At one clinic serving low-income children, treatment for health problems that have gone unchecked during the pandemic is more in demand than coronavirus shots. (NYT)

• The variant has been reported in 57 nations and the number of patients needing hospitalization is likely to rise as it spreads, the World Health Organization said. We look at how Omicron is a wake-up call for vaccine developers. (Reuters)

• Omicron has recently been found in wastewater samples across California, and local health officers say it could mark the start of a winter surge. (SFC)

• Studies suggest sharp drop in vaccine protection v. omicron — yet cause for optimism (NPR)

• More than 100 Los Angeles firefighters have been placed on unpaid leave for failing to get vaccinated against Covid-19. (KTLA5)

• Why Washington Won’t Fix Student Debt Plans That Overload Families (WSJ)

• How Returning to Office Work Is Impoverishing the Middle Class (Politico)

• Three Myths of the Great Resignation (Atlantic)

• A swarm of more than 40 earthquakes in 24 hours is causing a buzz in the northwest US (CNN)

• Like an iceberg that hides most of its mass beneath the surface, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol incited by former President Donald Trump has quietly gathered far more information than its public announcements suggest. “While we’ve announced roughly 40 subpoenas, the select committee has heard from 275 witnesses," a committee aide said. [HuffPost]

• In militants’ hands, drones are a deadly new wild card in Middle East — Since the U.S. killing of a key Iranian general two years ago, Iran-backed militias have acquired scores of attack drones — along with a growing willingness to use them. (WP)

• Can Germany’s New Chancellor Revive the Left in Europe? — Olaf Scholz wants to win back workers who defected to the populist far right. Success could make him a model for Social Democrats everywhere. (NYT)

• The former child refugee helping Afghan asylum seekers (BBC)

• Afghans wait and worry at US bases after frantic evacuation (AP)

• Afghanistan: Girls' despair as Taliban confirm secondary school ban (BBC)

• Chinese weddings fall to 13-year low as demographic crisis brews (Financial Times)

• At the Ukrainian border, Putin stands on the edge of a precipice (WP)

• Chile Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage at Fraught Political Moment — The legalization of same-sex marriage in Chile comes as the country grapples with sweeping demands for social change. (NYT)

• Biden’s Supreme Court commission endorses final report noting bipartisan public support for term limits (WP)

• The West’s Nuclear Mistake — No government that really regarded climate change as its top energy priority would close nuclear plants before the end of their useful lives. (Atlantic)

• Hispanic Voters Now Evenly Split Between Parties, WSJ Poll Finds (WSJ)

• With more than two dozen states poised to ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court gives them the OK next year, California clinics and their allies in the state Legislature on Wednesday revealed a plan to make the state a “sanctuary" for those seeking reproductive care, including possibly paying for travel, lodging and procedures for people from other states. (AP)

• Visa, the world's largest payment processor, launched a global crypto advisory service for clients such as banks and also merchants, as the adoption of digital currencies gains steam. (Reuters)

• China is ‘the world’s biggest captor of journalists’ with 127 detained, report says(WP)

• HarperCollins has pulled former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo's book, titled "Deep Denial," after Cuomo's firing from the network. Cuomo’s book was going to be about “the harsh truths that the pandemic and Trump years have exposed about America," according to the publisher. [HuffPost]

• A major outage disrupted Amazon's cloud services, temporarily knocking out streaming platforms Netflix and Disney+, Robinhood, a wide range of apps and Amazon.com's e-commerce website as consumers shopped ahead of Christmas. (Reuters)

• A Legendary VC Has a Plan for Solving Climate Change (Atlantic)

• State environmental officials will unveil a test proposal this week to feed manatees that are starving as a result of manmade pollution. This is not usually done with any wild animal, but the situation has become such an emergency that it has to be considered, said the Save The Manatee Club executive director.[AP]

• What Happened to American Conservatism? (Atlantic)

• Lego to Build New Factory in Asia to Meet Rising Demand (WSJ)

• Massive planet 10 times bigger than Jupiter discovered orbiting pair of giant stars (NBC)

• Last Pickle Delighted To Finally Have Whole Jar To Self (The Onion)

THURSDAY’s LYRICS:

"I Must Have Done Something Bad”

George Jones

I must have done something bad some time in my life

And I paid for it time and again

But this time you've hurt me so bad I could lay down and die

And the pain grows each day ten times ten times ten

Where Truths Meet

[NOTE: This is an update of an essay I first published a year ago on December 10, 2020.]

"You're right from your side / I'm right from mine," Bob Dylan wrote in one of his more obscure songs. Similar sentiments from other artists capture the convoluted nature of mutual truth that we all seek in one way or another.

And this raises a particular dilemma for journalists as we attempt to cover corporate and civic affairs for the public. Thus our methodology. I should elaborate.

I remember an incident from our "Circle of Poison" investigation in the 1970s and 1980s. I was focused on the moral aspect of U.S. companies shipping banned pesticides to Third World countries, which exposed farmworkers and their families to health risks, and led to more pollution of the environment, which of course knows no borders.

At an international gathering of people concerned with this issue in Mexico, including many who worked at chemical companies, a representative of Dow Chemical approached me and said, "I understand your concern but what's wrong with helping a hungry world eat?"

His point was that even if the pesticides were considered too dangerous for us here in the U.S., food scarcity was such in poorer countries that such compromises made sense. After all, at least in the short term, pesticides boost food productivity.

His comment got me thinking and we started investigating what crops the hazardous pesticides were being applied to. That research led to a breakthrough in our analysis, as almost all of the crops sprayed in Third World countries did not go to local people but were "export crops" destined to end up right back here in the U.S. with you and me.

This completed the "circle" in our analysis and guaranteed the book would cause more waves than it would have had we solely focused on the impacts overseas.

Thus did an industry representative help us complete a major piece of our investigation. My guess is that he didn't know himself what the pesticides were sued for; he just assumed they were part of an effort to boost local food production.

This example is why we always counsel students and young journalists to probe all sides of the issues they investigate. Environmentalists and worker safety activists may have one perspective; manufacturers and farmers may have another; regulatory agencies may reflect yet another point of view.

In the interest of achieving the highest quotient of truth possible, journalists have to consider whether everybody might be right at the same time. In my example, the guy from Dow was right -- there’s nothing wrong with helping hungry people get food. The environmentalists are right -- pesticides harm the environment. And the regulators that push for more sustainable methods of agricultural production are right about what's best for the long term.

Maybe that is one of the keys to good journalism, or an honest inquiry of any type. Maybe we should always be searching for the ways everybody can be right in one way or another. Maybe then we will get to the Venn diagram of the matter.

Of course, inevitably, this approach has its limits. We have to make choices. Some things we do because they are the right thing to do. 

Morality has to trump the profit motive when it comes to sustaining life on earth.

WEDNESDAY’S HEADLINES:

• Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars— The automaker may have undermined safety in designing its Autopilot driver-assistance system to fit its chief executive’s vision, former employees say. (NYT)

• A major British study into mixing COVID-19 vaccines has found that people had a better immune response when they received a first dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech shots followed by Moderna nine weeks later, according to the results. (Reuters)

• CDC issues ‘very high’ risk warning for travel to France and Portugal (WP)

• Desperation drives thousands of Afghans a day across borders (AP)

• Whistleblower: As Afghanistan fell, UK abandoned supporters (AP)

• Former D.C. National Guard Col. Earl Matthews accused Lt. Gen. Charles Flynn — brother of disgraced former security adviser Michael Flynn — and Lt. Gen. Walter Platt of lying to Congress about what happened behind the scenes as rioters breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. According to Matthews, the two men have played a key role in the Pentagon’s attempt to shirk responsibility for a dangerously sluggish, hours-late response to the violence. [HuffPost]

• One of suspected killers of Saudi journalist Khashoggi arrested in France(Reuters)

• As virus abates in India, hunger crisis persists (WP)

• Omicron Is Fast Moving, but Perhaps Less Severe, Early Reports Suggest (NYT)

• A coalition is suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to intervene on behalf of San Joaquin Valley residents, who breathe some of the most polluted air in the country. (Capital & Main)

• Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are suing Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, for $150 billion over allegations that the social media company did not take action against anti-Rohingya hate speech that contributed to violence. (Reuters)

• Biden’s Supreme Court commission set to vote on final report (WP)

• The path to power for Republicans in Congress is now rooted in the capacity to generate outrage. This has helped elevate a group of far-right lawmakers — including Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona — whose inflammatory comments once would have made them pariahs. [AP]

• Gen Z most stressed by pandemic, citing toll on careers, education and relationships, poll says (WP)

• Omicron’s less severe cases prompt cautious optimism in South Africa(Financial Times)

• Opioids Feel Like Love. That’s Why They’re Deadly in Tough Times. — America can’t arrest its way out of a problem caused by the fundamental human need to connect. (NYT)

• Scientists find ‘stealth’ version of Omicron that may be harder to track(Guardian)

• How Pearl Harbor forced the world’s first around-the-world commercial flight(WP)

• Why Are We Still Isolating Vaccinated People for 10 Days? (Atlantic)

• US, China still at odds over coronavirus origins (NHK)

• Stocks, Oil Gain on Omicron Optimism (WSJ)

• In Georgia, Republicans’ Faustian bargain with Trump is catching up with them(WP)

• Black People are Leaving Chicago en Masse. It's Changing the City's Power Politics. (Politico)

• ‘Disastrous’ plastic use in farming threatens food safety – UN (Guardian)

• On Ukrainian Front, Grinding War and Weary Anticipation of Invasion (NYT)

• Instagram is touting safety features for teens. Mental health advocates aren’t buying it. (WP)

• Biden’s cyber leaders go to Silicon Valley for more help fighting hackers(Politico)

• Justice Dept. Files Voting Rights Suit Against Texas Over New Map — The department said the state’s redistricting plan would violate the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against minority voters. (NYT)

• Trump’s Blood Oxygen Level in Covid Bout Was Dangerously Low, Former Aide Says (NYT)

• Most voters back abortion rights but are not swayed by threat to Roe, poll finds(Politico)

• Lawmakers say they’ve reached deal to avert another debt ceiling crisis (WP)

• Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, Michigan defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, Pittsburgh quarterback Kenny Pickett and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud were announced Monday as finalists for the Heisman Trophy. (AP)

• Man Starting To Think He Didn’t Win 1995 Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes Sweepstakes For Free Trip To Australian Outback (The Onion)

WEDNESDAY’s LYRICS:

It's a restless hungry feeling
That don't mean no one no good
When ev'rything I'm a-sayin'
You can say it just as good
You're right from your side
I'm right from mine
We're both just one too many mornings
An' a thousand miles behind

-- Bob Dylan (One Too Many Mornings)