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Sen. Cramer details serious finger injury

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.) on Monday posted an update on a hand injury he suffered last month that he had previously said could result in amputation. 

“3 weeks ago I crushed 2 fingers between 2 rocks and lost the tip of 1,” Cramer said on Twitter. “Thanks to great surgeons and 4 hrs of HBOT treatments and prayers of many, especially my grandchildren, my remaining tissue is healing nicely.”

Cramer announced the injury to his hand near the end of June, saying that the incident happened while he was working in his yard.

He later detailed the incident, explaining that the injury happened when he was moving a large rock before he was set to go swimming with his grandchildren. The rock rolled onto his ring and pinky fingers, crushing them.

The injury to his right hand required immediate surgery, where the Senator said there was a  “possible need for amputation.”

Cramer missed Senate votes and a hearing at the end of June but said on Monday he would be heading back to D.C.

“Looking forward to returning to DC this evening. #GodIsGood” the senator tweeted.

Cramer was in good spirits after the injury occurred, making jokes about the issue saying “his future NFL career is over,” according to Cramer’s communications director, Molly Block.

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The Jan. 6 committee is modeling a better way to conduct hearings

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol has developed a novel format that can benefit future congressional investigations involving complex matters with high visibility and strong political interests. Unlike past investigations and hearings where information was presented largely through the questioning of witnesses in limited periods of time (often five minutes) by different committee members with widely varying interests, the Jan. 6 committee has presented the fruits of its investigation in a coherent, organized manner through meaningful visuals and videos; clear, uninterrupted questioning; and penetrating hearing summaries via closing statements. It’s a welcome lesson.  

Too often, particularly in the past decade, the public has seen congressional hearings that either made little sense or resembled political food fights. With members often haranguing witnesses and denouncing their own colleagues, these proceedings suggested that the “investigation” was focused more on scoring political points than on exposing the facts. One of the core reasons for this, of course, is the extreme polarization that continues to grip Congress, but another is that with respect to highly partisan issues, the standard hearing protocol tends to obscure key issues, rather than reveal facts in a clear way so the public can understand them.   

Congressional hearings commonly follow a format in which the chair and ranking member each give an opening statement followed by statements by other members of the committee. That is then followed by opening statements by the first panel of witnesses. Each member, then, is usually given five minutes to question the witnesses on the panel. The order of questioning rotates between the two parties, Republicans and Democrats, until all committee members who want to ask questions have been satisfied. Usually there are several such panels.  

While the intention of that process is to give each member the opportunity to participate, when the issue is highly partisan the result for the listening audience is often confusion and diversion from the most important facts and the true purpose of the hearing. The Jan. 6 committee chose to break that mold and agree beforehand to have brief opening statements by the chair and vice chair, no opening statements by the other members or witnesses, and to limit questioning largely to one member. The result has been to dramatically improve the clarity and public understanding of the facts.   

Complementing this new order is the committee’s use of visuals — excerpts from the earlier depositions and visual displays of key texts and memoranda. Using this technology has enabled the public to see firsthand the evidence the committee members have seen and heard. The difference in the impact is dramatic.  

Some critics complain that the committee had made up its mind on the facts before the hearings. Well, that’s true in most congressional hearings. The job of the committee during its investigation is to dig deeply into the facts so that the committee knows what the documents reveal and what the witnesses have said and will say in their testimony. The purpose of the hearings is to show the public what the committee has learned — in particular, the key evidence and how the committee interprets it. And when the subject of the hearings is highly political, the key evidence can get lost in the political back and forth among the members or in questions being asked that are extraneous to the purpose of the hearing. See, for example, the Benghazi hearings. 

But here, the Jan. 6 committee has shown us how a committee, with forethought, the judicious use of technology, and bipartisan cooperation, can provide to the public detailed information in a clear and convincing manner that focuses on the substance of the material being presented and not on the personalities or political aspirations of the committee members.  

This requires, of course, the involvement and agreement of all committee members. Obviously, such unity of purpose is not always possible; in fact, it’s all too rare. But it is possible, as evidenced by previous successful investigations, such as Watergate and the Joint Inquiry into the 9-11 Terrorist Attacks, where all participants agree that informing the public in an understandable way is the real goal of congressional hearings. Hopefully, future investigations of this nature will adopt the mindset and methods of the Jan. 6 committee for the benefit of the public and American democracy. 

Jim Townsend is director of the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy. 

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Did Putin blunder the Kremlin into a dystopian World War III?

Two bronze statues of a 10th century Varangian grand prince, one in Kyiv overlooking the Dnipro River and the other outside the red crenelated walls of the Kremlin in Moscow gazing southwest toward Kyiv, stand 470 miles apart in Eastern Europe. Symbolically, they are at the core of the armed conflict in Ukraine between two of the Norseman’s legacy namesakes — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They are also at the center of what arguably has devolved into a dystopian third world war.

Volodymyr the Great, in Ukrainian, or Vladimir the Great, in Russian, was the founder of the proto state of Kievan Rus’ — a then loosely autonomous region in what is today parts of Ukraine, Belarus and eastern Russia. Ostensibly, the Kievan Rus’ territory mirrored the Viking trade routes connecting Scandinavia to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. It also included Crimea, where St. Volodymyr was baptized in 988, introducing Orthodox Christianity to Eastern Europe.

Today that territorial expanse has engulfed the global community in a bizarre and unexpected war after Putin blundered the Kremlin into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, only to have his troops abruptly falter and stall on the outskirts of Kyiv before being forced to withdraw.

Putin’s justifications for invading — and by extension, his excuses for dragging the international world into his war — are ever-changing. First, it was to reunite Kievan Rus’ based on obscure Medieval historical ties. Then it was to finish the work of World War II by “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Currently, it is to create a multipolar world, which, conveniently, would entitle Putin to all of Ukraine.

No one in January — not President Biden, nor the Pentagon, nor even Putin — believed that by July the world would be embroiled in this equivalent of World War III. Plus, no equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (sparking World War I) or a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor (bringing the U.S. into World War II) appeared on the horizon. In early February, the debate was whether Ukraine could last 72 hours if Russia invaded. By late February, it had shifted to whether Kyiv could stand for 30 days. By late March, prognosticators debated if or when Putin would turn to tactical nukes to “escalate to de-escalate” his invasion.

Yet, here we are. And, ironically, unlike in WW I when the Triple Entente and Triple Alliance triggered nations automatically into war, the NATO alliance to date has spared the U.S. from putting “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, thus enabling Washington to focus primarily on a modern-day Lend-Lease approach of militarily supporting Kyiv.

Presently, an equilibrium appears to have set in on the Ukraine battlefields, largely taking the form of a bloody stalemate more akin to the trench warfare of Verdun in WWI than to what any serious Pentagon military war planner envisioned a WWIII might look or feel like. Thus far, Ukraine has effectively withstood repeated Russian assaults in large part because of superior NATO weaponry and training, as well as the valiant esprit de corps of its troops.

Russia, meanwhile, is tenuously avoiding a culminating point in Ukraine — Clausewitz’s classic definition of defeat — because of the Kremlin’s willingness to sacrifice however many Russian soldier deaths or wounded in action it takes to wage this war of attrition. Likewise, for now, China, India and Middle Eastern countries are willing to throw Putin economic lifelines in order to profit off Moscow’s severely sanctioned economy. China and India alone now account for 50 percent of the Kremlin’s oil exports at heavily discounted (as much as 30 percent) prices.

As Putin declares an operational pause in Donbas, Washington needs to quickly recalibrate how to decisively win this war. That begins with rapidly coming up to speed on where the battlefields are.

The obvious one is the roughly 9,000 square miles comprising Donbas — an area equivalent in size to New Hampshire or Vermont — where, paradoxically, a conflict global in scale is largely being fought on a relatively miniscule hot battlefield. Despite recent territorial advances by Russia in Luhansk, progress has been slow and costly. Ukraine’s introduction of HIMARs and other advanced NATO offensive weapons may marginalize Russian artillery and change the course of the war.

Less obvious, in terms of understanding the war, is how economic alliances, as instruments of national power, are rapidly becoming the peer competitor, if not prevailing force, of military alliances. Much has been made of Western sanctions against Russia; however, Moscow, at least for now, has successfully deflected the impact of those sanctions back onto the U.S. and Europe in the form of higher energy and food costs.

It also means understanding that this war is unlikely to go nuclear. Despite fantasizing on Russian state media about using nuclear weapons to destroy Ukraine and/or NATO, Putin realizes that, short of an attack by NATO on Russia, his military is in no position to take on the alliance’s military forces. Moscow struggles to advance a kilometer at a time in Donbas. It simply does not have the capacity or will to conventionally widen the conflict.

Plus, notably, to date the Kremlin has absorbed humiliating defeats without resorting to tactical nukes, including retreating from Kyiv, the sinking of the Moskva and, most recently, the embarrassing evacuation of Snake Island, Ukraine’s Alamo.

Still, Putin is unlikely to stop. Ukraine was merely the first steppingstone in retaking the heart of Kievan Rus’ — and beyond. His calculated plot has long been underfoot and nothing will dissuade Putin from doggedly pursuing his would-be Peter the Great empire version of the Russian Federation.

As evidence, revisit Putin’s establishment of Nov. 4 as Russia’s National Unity Day. Since 2005, Putin has used the new holiday to erase the old communist narrative of Russia and build a narrative that Ukraine spiritually and territorially is an inseparable part of Russia. He unveiled the statue of Vladimir the Great on National Unity Day in 2016 and then, last year, exploited the day to declare Crimea is “forever a part of Russia,” leading up to his “special operation” in Ukraine.

This war is not what the Pentagon, politicians, or Americans in general thought it might be: a nuclear and/or biological Armageddon. But it is global in scale — especially economically — and its outcome will be as defining as the end of WWII. Nothing less than global democracy as we have known it since 1945 is at stake.

Thankfully, history foreshadows a positive end to this dystopian WWIII. Volodymyr the Great survived in Kyiv because of help from his Nordic relative, Haakon Sigurdsson, the ruler of Norway — and his Viking descendants in Sweden and Finland are choosing NATO and Volodymyr Zelensky over Vladimir Putin. 

Mark Toth is a retired economist, historian and entrepreneur who has worked in banking, insurance, publishing and global commerce. He is a former board member of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, and has lived in U.S. diplomatic and military communities around the world, including London, Tel Aviv, Augsburg and Nagoya. Follow him on Twitter @MCTothSTL. 

Jonathan Sweet, a retired Army colonel, served 30 years as a military intelligence officer. His background includes tours of duty with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the Intelligence and Security Command. He led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012-14, working with NATO partners in the Black Sea and Baltics. Follow him on Twitter @JESweet2022. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Over three quarters of U.S. states experiencing some form of drought

There are 40 states that are currently experiencing some form of drought, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Drought Monitor.  

The most severe drought conditions are in the Western part of the country in states like Texas, California and Arizona, where the extreme heat and lack of rainfall has caused water levels at Lake Mead to recede so much at least two human skeletons and a sunken WW2 era vessel have been found in parts of the now-exposed bottom.  

Americans living in states not impacted by drought conditions should still be concerned since a stressed water supply in one area can have a ripple effect impacting neighboring states or large swaths of the country, according to Jonathan London, associate professor of human ecology at the University of California, Davis.  

“What happens in one state affects many others both in terms of food and in infrastructure,” said London. 

For example, farms in the San Joaquin Valley in central California grow a quarter of the country’s food so a drought in that area means less food to ship out to cities across the country.  

Dryer grasslands and forests boosts the chances of wildfires, which can in turn hurt the air quality by increasing exposure to harmful pollutants or altering air pollution patterns, one study found.  

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Here is a breakdown of all the levels of drought states are experiencing:  

Only moderate drought:  

1. Alaska 

2. Maine 

3. New Hampshire 

4. Massachusetts 

5. Connecticut  

6. Rhode Island 

7. Michigan 

8. Indiana 

9. Kentucky 

10. Wisconsin 

11. Virginia 

12. Alabama 

13. Washington 

14. Arkansas 

15. Minnesota 

Severe and moderate drought:  

16. Illinios 

17. Missouri 

18. North Carolina  

19. South Carolina 

20. Georgia 

21. Tennessee 

22. Mississippi 

23. Louisianna  

24. South Dakota 

Moderate, severe and extreme drought:  

25. Iowa 

26. Nebraska 

27. Wyoming 

28. Hawaii 

29. Idaho 

Moderate, severe, extreme and exceptional drought:  

30. Oklahoma 

31. Texas 

32. Colorado 

33. Kansas 

34. Montana 

35. Oregon 

36. California 

37. Nevada 

38. Utah 

39. Arizona 

40. New Mexico 

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Why ‘friend-shoring’ is at the top of Yellen’s agenda in Japan

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in Tokyo meeting with Japanese officials about ways to restructure supply chains to bring down inflation. 

Specifically, she’ll be talking about “friend-shoring,” a riff on the term “on-shoring” that refers to the process of re-jigging supply chains to favor U.S.-friendly countries that is gaining popularity in policymaking circles.  

As the U.S. battles high inflation while keeping an eye on the geopolitical fallout from the war in Ukraine, alliances with key countries in East Asia are rising to the forefront of the U.S. economic agenda.  

Friend-shoring aims to increase economic cooperation with allies to avoid production and transportation snags made worse by geopolitical developments like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. 

Yellen is meeting Tuesday with Japanese business leaders to discuss how “friend-shoring with trusted economic partners can help ease inflationary pressures over time and address the bottlenecks that are raising prices for consumers,” the Treasury Department said in a statement. 

The trip comes ahead of a meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers in Indonesia later this week.   

While economic cooperation with partner countries is nothing new, the idea of bringing production pipelines into closer coordination along geopolitical lines has gained a new relevance following the pandemic, which saw a huge range of policy responses from world governments that had sweeping economic impacts. 

Strict lockdowns in China, for example, contributed to labor shortages in one of the world’s most important labor markets, which translated into production stoppages and delays that ultimately contributed to higher prices for U.S. consumers. 

The process of friend-shoring exists within the broader context of globalization, which took off in the 1990s with NAFTA and the establishment of the World Trade Organization, which China joined in 2001. 

Analysts don’t think that policymakers are reconsidering the fundamental tenets of globalization, which by and large moved production to the global south while pushing technological development in the global north. But they may be refining the model. 

“I don’t think we’re turning back the clock by decades here, but the last couple years have made a lot of companies recognize elements of fragility that they didn’t realize were there,” Chad Syverson, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said in an interview. “Basically, the machine had been built and it works really great when it’s on and there’s nothing bothering it, but you give it a bit of a bump and all of a sudden you get a lot of problems you didn’t know were there before.” 

Businesses are taking the notion of friend-shoring — also referred to as “near-shoring” — seriously, calling attention to deeper structural changes occurring beneath the more visible shocks of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

“These immediate effects are only part of the story,” supply chain expert Knut Alicke wrote in a May note for business operations consultant McKinsey & Co. “In fact, they may be overtaken in the long term by slower-moving but more permanent effects on supply chains occurring beneath the surface.”

“Supply chain leaders could face challenges with short-term shocks while installing the building blocks of deeper structural reform. Nonetheless, structural reform may be the only way for leaders to restore the resilience that companies depend on from their supply chains, as is evident from several of the short- and longer-term implications of the disruptions,” he added.

According to a 2020 survey of “supply chain leaders” performed by McKinsey, many companies are in the process of bringing production pipelines closer to home.

“About 93 percent of respondents told us that they plan to increase the level of resilience across their supply chain. They intend to do that using a variety of mechanisms, including dual sourcing of raw materials, increasing their inventories of critical products and, to a lesser extent, by near-shoring, dual-sourcing, or regionalizing their supply chains,” Alicke said in a write-up of the survey. 

In addition to its economic dimension, friend-shoring has security implications. With China adding aircraft carriers to its navy in a bid to push back on U.S. dominance in the Pacific, increased economic cooperation with countries like Japan could go along with tighter military coordination. 

Yellen’s trip comes in the wake of the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose death prompted an outpouring of condolences and support for Japan from U.S. officials. 

A statement released by the U.S., India and Australia following Abe’s death drew attention to the role of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue as a regional security structure. 

“Prime Minister Abe was a transformative leader for Japan and for Japanese relations with each one of our countries,” President Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in the joint statement. “He also played a formative role in the founding of the Quad partnership, and worked tirelessly to advance a shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific. Our hearts are with the people of Japan — and Prime Minister Kishida —  in this moment of grief.” 

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Monday that he intends to move forward with efforts to revise Japan’s pacifist Constitution to allow the country to have a formal military, Japanese news agency Kyodo reported. 

Such a revision had long been a political goal of Abe, who believed the pacifist clause in Japan’s Constitution had been imposed by the United States after World War II. 

During Yellen’s visit to Japan, she will also meet with Japanese Finance Minister Suzuki Shunichi, the Treasury Department said. They’re expected to discuss setting a price cap on Russian oil “to limit revenue for Russia’s military while at the same time dampening the impact of the war on gas and energy prices in America and globally.” 

The finance chiefs will also talk about ways to further increase economic sanctions on Russia, a U.S. Treasury official said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden closes in on China tariffs decision while midterms loom

President Biden is contending with competing political and policy pressures as he closes in on a decision on whether to lift Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports. On one hand, it’s one of the only options at Biden’s disposal to try to lower the price of everyday goods that are subject to tariffs of up to 25 percent.  

But axing tariffs would have a minimal impact on inflation, experts say, and doing so could alienate Biden’s labor union backers, some of his own Cabinet members and voters while causing him to look weak on China — all while heading into the midterm elections.

The U.S. is conducting its four-year review of the Section 301 tariffs placed on furniture, footwear, sunscreen, appliances, bicycles and other consumer goods, and officials have indicated the White House will announce its decision soon.  

Experts expect Biden to lift or reduce tariffs on a relatively tiny fraction of imports: as little as $10 billion worth of Chinese products out of the roughly $350 billion in goods slapped with tariffs by former President Trump. 

That move would likely appease White House advisers who see widespread tariff reductions as politically and strategically perilous ahead of November’s elections and Biden’s meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping expected to take place this month.  

“You have some Cabinet officials who don’t want to do anything that’s seen as helping China in any way, and you’ve got others concerned more with the economy, saying that tariffs haven’t really achieved any strategic objective,” said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So this seems like a compromise, but it’s weighted very much toward mostly keeping the tariffs.” 

Consumer prices rose 8.6 percent in the last 12 months ending in May, the fastest rate of increase in four decades. The Labor Department will release June’s inflation numbers on Wednesday.  

The White House wants to show that it is doing all it can to fight inflation without appearing soft on China in the run up to the midterms, and Democrats in several key races are touting their efforts to combat Beijing’s trade practices, which they say discriminate against U.S. workers.  

A recent Morning Consult poll found that 44 percent of Democrats preferred to keep China tariffs in place while 28 percent favored tariff reduction as of May, a sharp reversal from February, when 47 percent of Democrats wanted Biden to reduce the import levies to fight inflation. Just 24 percent of U.S. adults said they want reduced tariffs, according to the survey.  

“We cannot continue to enable China’s practices that cripple our workforce by allowing Chinese made products to flood our markets,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who is running for Senate this year, wrote in a recent letter to Biden urging him to keep tariffs in place. 

Labor union support for the tariffs is another key factor for Biden, who on the campaign trail said he’d be the most pro-labor president in history and has closely aligned himself with union leaders. A coalition of top unions, including the United Steelworkers and United Auto Workers, filed a comment with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s office last month stating that they are “united in the view” that tariffs should be extended. 

Roughly 400 organizations and companies have filed comments backing the tariffs, with some arguing that they have helped push U.S. businesses away from outsourcing, making the nation’s supply chains more resilient to geopolitical turmoil. 

“Canceling these tariffs would create further unhealthy dependence on Chinese supply chains and embolden future systematic trade abuses as bad actors know that the U.S. will not hold them accountable,” the National Council of Textile Organizations, Narrow Fabrics Institute and U.S. Industrial Fabrics Institute wrote in a letter to Tai.

Retailers and other major importers, on the other hand, are pushing for tariff reductions to lower consumer prices, seeing the inflationary environment as the best opportunity yet to roll back Trump’s trade agenda. Business interests on both sides of the debate are pushing for a more robust exclusion process that makes it easier for companies to win tariff exemptions.

“As inflation hits 40-year highs, families are spending more and getting less, hurting everyone. But retailers have a plan to lower prices: The first step is to repeal tariffs,” read a recent television ad from the National Retail Federation. “It’s time to act now, before it’s too late.” 

Biden administration officials have played down the inflationary impact of tariff relief in recent weeks, signaling that the White House won’t make aggressive cuts to Trump-era duties. 

“We should be clear about what lifting tariffs would and wouldn’t do. Lifting tariffs isn’t going to bring down top-line inflation in a very significant way. What it will do is help consumers on certain household goods,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. 

“We are briefing [Biden] and I expect him to make a decision shortly,” she added. “And if he decides to lift certain tariffs, it will be because he knows he has to think about doing everything he possibly can to provide any relief to consumers. But he’s going to do it in a thoughtful way that is strategic … and without hurting American workers.” 

Tai and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan want to keep levies in place to retain leverage in potential trade negotiations with China, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has suggested that tariff cuts could be warranted. 

A widely cited study from the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that lifting tariffs on all Chinese imports would reduce inflation by roughly 0.3 percent in the near term, with the total impact potentially reaching 1 percent in the long run. The total impact would be far less significant if Biden goes through with small-scale tariff cuts.   

“If it’s $10 billion, that’s a very small amount in the American economy,” Brookings’s Dollar said. “So I think people would barely notice it.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

How Elon Musk’s Twitter feud could unfold in court

Elon Musk’s attempt to walk away from his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter is likely to result in a protracted legal battle between the billionaire and the social media platform.  Musk’s team contended in a filing Friday that Twitter had breached the agreement, which allows him to terminate the purchase. 

 But Twitter is unlikely to let the Tesla and SpaceX CEO off the hook from what it says is a binding commitment to purchase the company, and it retains the ability to ask a judge to compel Musk to complete the deal. 

 The company is expected to take the dispute to Delaware Chancery Court, a local court that handles investor disputes, as early as this week. 

 Chancery judges in Delaware, which is the corporate home for more than half the public companies in the U.S., including Twitter, hear complex business law cases without juries. 

 Twitter will most likely seek a declaratory judgment in the case, asking the judge to determine whether the company has violated the terms of the sale agreement. 

 Musk and his legal team in Friday’s filing outlined three ways they believe Twitter violated the contract, two of which concern the number of bot accounts on the platform. 

 The first, they wrote, is that Twitter failed to provide Musk with information he requested to independently determine how many fake accounts there are. 

But that could a difficult calculation for Twitter or Musk to make with precise certainty. And Brian Quinn, an associate professor at Boston College law school, said it may not even be the type of information the company is required to provide under the sale agreement.

 Musk’s second argument is that Twitter has underreported its spam account figures in public filings, which could cause a “material adverse effect” on the company’s value. Convincing a judge of that argument could allow Musk to walk away from the deal cleanly, but it has only been successfully argued once in a Delaware court.  

Musk’s final contention is that Twitter breached the agreement when it fired two senior executives after the deal was signed in a way that broke the promise the company had made to operate normally until completion of the sale. 

 For all three, the burden of proof will be on Musk to prove a violation occurred. 

 “These kind of cases that involve sophisticated parties paying the most expensive lawyers in the world to negotiate and sign these deals, when you end up in court the judge treats them like big boys and girls,” Quinn said. “You decided to buy this company … you did this deal and now you have to live up to it. That’s generally the way the courts approach this.” 

 If the judge decides that Twitter did not violate the terms of the deal, the company could ask for a “specific performance,” which per the terms of the agreement would compel Musk to complete the purchase of outstanding shares for $54.20.  

 Theoretically, Musk could still decline to follow through, teeing up an even more protracted legal process. 

 Or the two parties could agree at any point to terminate the deal and settle for damages that could total 10 figures. They could also theoretically renegotiate a lower price, but that could open the company to shareholder lawsuits, given the precipitous fall of Twitter’s stock since the deal was signed. 

 Bret Taylor, the chairman of Twitter’s board, said Friday that the company is determined to complete the deal “on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.” 

 Twitter has reportedly tapped Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a firm that employs the former chief justice of Delaware’s Supreme Court, who also served as chancellor of the Chancery Court, to handle the case. 

Even though most legal experts favor Twitter in the event the case goes to court, the platform could prove to lose more in the short term. 

 “It’s the worst-case scenario for Twitter,” said Dan Ives, a managing director and senior equity research analyst focused on technology at Wedbush Securities. “Because when the circus show started in April, there was always skepticism that Musk would ultimately go through with the deal. But the fact that he ripped the Band-Aid off in this fashion, in July, it leaves Twitter blowing in the wind.” 

 Over the months or even years that it takes Twitter to fight Musk and his nearly limitless resources in court, the company will have to face a damaged brand reputation and frustrated workforce. 

 Twitter stock fell 11 percent Monday to just above $32 a share, down roughly $20 from the day the company accepted Musk’s acquisition offer. 

 How relatively newly appointed CEO Parag Agrawal charts the next few months, starting with the company’s earnings report later this month, looks to be crucial for Twitter’s future. 

 “Twitter facing the richest person in the world in courts in Delaware is not where they envisioned this when the bid came in in April,” Ives told The Hill. “It’s caused a pure fiasco at Twitter.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Harris to request $600M for ocean resilience in Pacific Islands

Vice President Harris on Tuesday will request $600 million in funding for economic development and ocean resilience, which is intended to build on efforts that enable U.S. fishing-fleet access to the Pacific and combat the scourge of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

The $600 million request to Congress will break down to $60 million per year for the next 10 years and builds on the 33-year-old South Pacific Tuna Treaty that is considered a cornerstone of political and economic cooperation between the U.S. and Pacific Islands.

The funding request is part of a group of actions Harris will announce when she participates virtually on Tuesday in the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting, hosted by forum chair Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama of Fiji.

The U.S., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom will also provide a combined $2.1 billion in development assistance for the region. They will establish the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP), which is a coordination mechanism that is aimed to support priorities in the region.

Discussions will also begin with Kiribati and Tonga about establishing U.S. embassies in those countries, appointing the first-ever U.S. envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum, and crafting and publishing the first-ever U.S. strategy on the Pacific Islands.

The vice president will also announce efforts to bring the Peace Corps back to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu, and that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is taking steps to expand its presence in the area.

The White House said the actions aim to advance the Biden-Harris administration’s ongoing efforts to strengthen the U.S.-Pacific Islands partnership.

Source: TEST FEED1