Job growth slowed slightly in August but remained well above pre-pandemic levels as steady consumer spending powered another strong month of hiring.
The U.S. added 315,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate rose to 3.7 percent, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department, up from 3.5 percent in August.
Economists expected the U.S. to gain roughly 300,000 jobs last month without the unemployment rate budging, according to consensus estimates. While the unemployment rate rose by 0.2 percentage points, the labor force participation rate also rose by 0.3 percentage points.
Rising unemployment and slowing job gains are rarely good news for an economy. But the August jobs report showed the economy toward ample job growth and lower inflation.
The U.S. has recovered all of the 21 million jobs lost to onset of the pandemic and has already added close to 3 million jobs in 2022 alone. But businesses have still struggled to hire enough workers to meet intense demand from consumers, even after raising wages at rapid rates.
Some economists and policymakers have been concerned that the national labor shortage could be fueling high inflation by forcing businesses boost wages and prices quickly. As the size of the workforce increases, businesses may have an easier time finding workers without having to raise wages at rapid rates. That could also help businesses keep their prices stable and sap momentum from inflation.
Forty-seven years to the day after the United States suffered the then-bloodiest attack on our territory at Pearl Harbor, our nation exited an era of continuous fear of annihilation. From World War II through the Cold War, first the Japanese and German war machines and then the Soviet military had threatened to destroy the United States and its most vital partners around the world.
But on Dec. 7, 1988 a most unlikely hero, Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, opened a new pathway to peace.
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, the heir to Joseph Stalin’s brutal empire transformed international politics. He already had begun by allowing more free speech and movement in Soviet territories that had before suffered oppression and tyranny. He had signed a treaty with the United States eliminating a whole class of intermediate nuclear missiles. Now, he did the unthinkable: He unilaterally slashed his forces in Central Europe — the crucible of the most fraught and terrifying conflict for the last half-century. Gorbachev announced the unconditional withdrawal of 50,000 soldiers and 5,000 tanks from the countries his predecessors had fought so hard to dominate: East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Overall, the Soviet Union would eliminate 500,000 soldiers from the fearsome Red Army.
This was just the beginning of what would become a sprint for peace after four decades of arms races.
From the vast concrete hall of the General Assembly, the Soviet leader drove through a warm, boisterous crowd of once cynical, now euphoric New Yorkers to meet President Ronald Reagan and Vice President (and President-Elect) George H.W. Bush on a small island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. With the world watching, the current and future leaders of enemy superpowers embraced one another as friends.
Gorbachev had not acted alone; he had a vital partner in Reagan. The American president recounted that, despite their differences, he and Gorbachev had “walked a long way together to clear a path to peace.” Beginning with their first meeting more than three years earlier in Geneva, Reagan said he and the Soviet leader were “two men in a room together who had the capability of creating the next world war, or the capability of bringing peace to the world.” Reagan said “it was evident that they had decided to keep the world at peace.”
The Soviet leader responded that “he highly valued their personal rapport,” and although they faced many domestic and international difficulties, together they had begun “movement toward a better world” — the undeniable aspiration of his United Nations speech. Gorbachev explained that his country “had become a different one” — less tyrannical and threatening to those around it. “It would never go back to what it had been three years before,” no matter who was leading it.
As the last Cold War leaders bid goodbye, watched by thousands of stunned, joyous onlookers, the last half-century of Russian-American nuclear conflict was fading rapidly into history. The Soviet leader and his American partner had done more than negotiate treaties; they had restored trust between two long-suspicious societies. Gorbachev and Reagan modeled and promoted that trust, and it quickly spread.
Younger readers who came of age after the Cold War are spared the memories of what it was like to live in that four-decade stand-off: the fear of Soviet tyranny, the unrelenting terror of nuclear weapons, and the constant, gnawing knowledge that every day could be the last day of human existence.
This is why the Reagan-Gorbachev moment was so transformative. Now, Americans no longer believed the Soviet Union wanted to annihilate us. Soviet citizens no longer worried that a deranged American president was about to launch a nuclear strike. And soon enough, citizens of East Germany and elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain no longer feared that Moscow would crush their aspirations for freedom as they tore down the long-hated Berlin Wall.
We were young witnesses to this incredible transformation. We both graduated from high school in 1990, one of us in New York City, the other in Tucson, Ariz. After an adolescence filled with Cold War fears, in our senior year of high school we felt the exuberance of a flowering of peace and the enormous promise of new freedoms. These changes were captivating and continued into our college years as we saw other visionary leaders such as Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Helmut Kohl, and Nelson Mandela lead their nations — and the world — into new moments of reconciliation, unity, peace and freedom. Together they helped inspire our decisions to become historians and policy scholars. They taught us that cooperation across deep divisions is possible, that longstanding problems can be solved, and that leadership is indispensable.
Now we are both professors. As we prepare undergraduate and graduate students to take up the mantle of leadership, we are fortunate to have the examples of Gorbachev and Reagan to show a new generation what is possible, even in the most challenging of times. We also share the obvious evidence that, despite Gorbachev’s prediction, the world has retreated to many of the old nightmares because of venal, misguided leadership, accompanied by craven complicity from so many who know better.
Too many voices now despair for the future. Too many leaders seem intent on fueling conflict, rather than preventing it. Too many citizens have lost hope in an intoxicating swirl of social media rage. Too many scholars have abandoned any belief in the power of leaders to overcome structural challenges and solve big problems.
This pessimism has good cause but it is self-defeating. It echoes the low points of the 47 years of conflict after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It neglects how individuals of enormous courage, commitment and integrity ran against the tide and brought warring sides together for mutual gains. It forgets how leaders set aside enmity and chose to make peace.
We need leaders who are willing to do the same today. We can try to encourage them, but the drive to abandon hate and encourage hope must come from within the people in power. There is no substitute for leaders who work to unleash what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” That was the true greatness of Gorbachev that we witnessed, despite his many flaws. That is the greatness a new generation of responsible citizens must find to build peace and partnership again.
William Inboden is associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, executive director of the Clements Center for National Security, and a distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, all at the University of Texas at Austin. His previous government service includes senior director for strategic planning at the National Security Council under President George W. Bush.He is the author of several books, including “The Peacemaker,” forthcoming in November.
The owner of the social media site OnlyFans, which is known for featuring adult content, has been paid more than $500 million in dividends from the company since the end of 2020.
Owner Leonid Radvinsky received $517 million in dividends over 2021 and 2022, according to an annual report released Thursday and acquired by Bloomberg.
The overall profits of OnlyFans, owned by holding company Fenix International Inc., multiplied by a factor of seven during the most recent year on record, which ended Nov. 30, due to a massive increase in users during the pandemic.
Radvinsky profited by $284 million over that time period in addition to the $233 million he has acquired in 2022 through the subscription service.
OnlyFans takes a 20 percent cut of the profits made by the over 1.5 million individuals hosted on the site, who have made over $3 billion since the advent of the company, according to the report.
The Hill has reached out to OnlyFans for comment on its profits report.
OnlyFans briefly announced last year that it would ban all “sexually-explicit” content from its site, a decision it quickly reversed “due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators.”
President’s Biden’s forgiveness of up to $20,000 of the amounts owed on 45 million outstanding student loans represents the official death knell of any semblance of market discipline in America. Unfortunately, his administration has not been alone in giving away taxpayer money without attaching strings to ensure that everyone has some skin in the game.
Higher education is a good thing, and the more well-educated people we have, and the better educated they are, the better it is for the nation. But there are much better ways to achieve those goals than by using taxpayer money in undisciplined ways that distort the incentives underlying financial markets. Government subsidies abound, and it may indeed be in the public interest from time to time to accept the moral hazard that accompanies a massive taxpayer funded bailout when the benefit outweighs the moral hazard created. But this delicate balance increasingly seems to be relying on political expediency rather than financial reality.
The ultimate cost to U.S. taxpayers from student loan forgiveness may exceed $500 billion, or about one-third of the $1.6 trillion outstanding student debt. That is roughly equivalent to the time-adjusted price tag for the entire savings and loan crisis — a cost authorized by Congress, not just the president or a single political party.
Students can now freely walk away from $20,000 of their debt without committing to serve at a non-profit, in the military or in federal, state, tribal or local government office — factors that under current rules can be the basis for extraordinary student loan relief. The Treasury will simply write a check to the ultimate holders of the loan for most of the amount forgiven or write that amount off the federal ledgers, leaving the taxpayers to once again foot the bill. But consider the moral hazard created. If you had another $50,000 of student loans left, would you pay another dime?
This is only the tip of the financial iceberg that government largesse has constructed. Since 1980, the total cost of both four-year public and private college has nearly tripled, even after accounting for inflation. Because the federal government lends students the money to subsidize these skyrocketing fees, any sense of market discipline is completely obliterated, particularly when universities do not share in the loss. Unfortunately, it’s not just students and universities that the government has incentivized to disassociate themselves from reality.
The government has created so many financial safety nets that there is a national expectation that consumer and institutional markets will be bailed out when things get tough enough. In the Great Depression, taxpayer money was used to fund a wide array of job-creating activities, including the construction of the Hoover Dam, subsidization of farmers and the hiring of authors to write state guidebooks.
Since then, depositors of failed financial institutions, car manufacturers, insurance companies, airlines, small businesses, investment banks and mutual funds all have enjoyed some sort of bailout subject to varying degrees of financial pain. Rational fiscal policy would suggest that there be rules that condition government largesse and that they include meaningful commitments and limitations if we are serious about not distorting the incentives and risks that make markets work.
In the 1980s, when the failure of Continental Illinois and 3,000 financial institutions threatened the national economy, significant costs were imposed on senior management, directors and stockholders in return for the use of government money.
The authors of the 2020 book “The Rise of Carry” suggest that when the government continuously bails out financial markets without significant strings attached, it is actually incentivizing large financial entities to take excessive risk to maximize short-term profits (and annual compensation packages), expecting that the government will come forward with a taxpayer funded bailout when the bubble explodes.
The Founders would be appalled to see taxpayers subsidizing financial companies that take massive risks, student borrowers that walk away from their loan commitments when the vast majority of our youth do not attend or graduate college and wealthy educational institutions that increasingly charge unbelievable sums to support their unrestrained infrastructures.
The more we forget about the importance of skin in the game, the more we ensure that taxpayer funded bailouts will beget even more taxpayer funded bailouts. We should care about that, even if politicians no longer seem to.
Thomas P. Vartanian is executive director of the Financial Technology & Cybersecurity Center and a former general counsel of the FSLIC. He is the author of “200 Years of American Financial Panics: Crashes, Recessions, Depressions and the Technology that Will Change it All.” William M. Isaac is former chairman of the FDIC and Fifth Third Bancorp and is chairman of the Secura|Isaac Group and Blue SaaS Solutions.
The new cases raised the number of states where diners have fallen ill to six.
According to the CDC, as of Aug. 31, a total of 97 people nationwide have been infected with an outbreak strain of E. coli after dining at the popular fast-food spot. The agency has not confirmed the cause of the outbreak but said many sick people reported eating sandwiches with romaine lettuce at the restaurants before falling ill.
Officials did not specify where in New York or Kentucky the new cases were reported. It had previously noted incidents in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. In New York, between one and five cases had been reported as of Thursday’s release.
Symptoms of E. coli can also include a fever higher than 102 degrees Fahrenheit, vomiting to the point of being unable to keep down liquids, and signs of dehydration, the CDC said.
CDC map showing where the 97 people in this E. coli outbreak lived:
Content source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases (DFWED)
If you are experiencing these symptoms, the CDC asks that you keep a record of what you ate in the week before becoming sick to help identify the possible source of the infection.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday recommended that tech giant Amazon’s objections to votes by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) be blocked.
“I conclude that the Employer’s objections be overruled in their entirety,” wrote the NLRB hearing officer according to documents posted by ALU President Christian Smalls.
The report continues: “The Employer has not met its burden of establishing that Region 29, the Petitioner, or any third parties have engaged in objectionable conduct affecting the results of the election.”
Region 29 of the NLRB initially held the election to decide whether the ALU would officially represent fulfillment center employees working at Amazon’s JFK8 building. The company’s dispute was transferred to Region 28 of the board after Amazon claimed that Region 29 displayed questionable conduct in the election.
The election, which took place in March 2022, found that employees voted to be represented by the ALU by a margin of 10.8 percent.
The Hill has reached out to Amazon and the ALU for comment on the recommendation.
“While we are pleased with her findings, the Amazon workers in the ALU understand that this is just the beginning of a much longer fight,” the ALU said of the NLRB officer’s recommendation.
The statement continued: “It is our hope that the Regional Director for Region 28 can expedite our certification and that the NLRB enforces Amazon’s legal obligation to negotiate with the workers of the ALU.”
Reports of an imminent return to the Iran nuclear deal have reached a fever pitch once again. Washington and Tehran are going back and forth over the European “final text” for reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Biden White House and State Department have launched an intensive round of news briefings to prepare the public for a forthcoming announcement.
Behind the intensity of the negotiations and speculation about their outcome is a disturbing but irrefutable truth: The nuclear deal does not solve the Iran nuclear problem. By pretending that it does, the Biden administration threatens to leave the United States with unappealing options: using force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, driving Israel to do so, or living with a nuclear-armed Iran.
For the better part of a decade, analysts have debated the costs and benefits of the deal, with interminable finger-pointing characterizing the back-and-forth. Nevertheless, except for the most zealous JCPOA advocates, observers agree on several undisputable points.
Most significantly, they acknowledge that the deal’s primary restrictions on Iranian uranium enrichment are limited and temporary. By 2031, the JCPOA allows Iran to enrich and stockpile uranium without limitation, using advanced centrifuges in hardened underground facilities that Tehran previously hid from the International Atomic Energy Agency, in violation of Iran’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Deal supporters argue that restricting Iranian enrichment now is worthwhile, even though the JCPOA legitimizes unrestricted Iranian enrichment later and provides Tehran hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Deal opponents argue that the deal leads to a much richer, nuclear-armed Iran and has sparked a Middle East nuclear arms race, as Iran’s neighbors seek to secure for themselves the same capabilities the JCPOA grants the Islamic Republic.
Even deal proponents have noted that Iran’s JCPOA violations since 2019 — in particular, high levels of enrichment, uranium stockpiling, and experimentation with uranium metallurgy — have no civilian justification. Deal critics agree and have pointed out that these violations — which are directly relevant to the production of nuclear weapons — would be permitted under the JCPOA in the coming years. The difference is only a matter of timing.
But seven years after the original conclusion of the nuclear deal, and as its provisions have begun to expire, the timing is now critical. Because the JCPOA does not provide a long-term solution to the Iranian nuclear problem, the United States needs a “Plan B,” whether or not it reenters the deal.
Officials in the Biden administration used to speak of negotiating a “longer, stronger deal,” implicitly acknowledging the JCPOA’s inherent flaws and the need for a backup plan. After nearly a year and a half of talks, Iran has made it clear that it has no desire to extend or expand the deal. Why would it? Returning to the JCPOA would remove economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime, thereby also removing the main incentives to make future concessions. Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration quietly abandoned talk of a longer, stronger deal months ago.
President Biden has asserted that U.S. policy is to prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons. If this is still the case, what is his plan to genuinely block Iran’s paths to nuclear weapons for the long term? With the relaxation of pressure, how does the administration intend to dissuade or deter Iran from its decades-long pursuit of nuclear weapons?
During Biden’s visit to Israel last month, a reporter asked if he would use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He answered that he would, if that was the last resort. Yet by returning to the JCPOA, the president is forcing himself down the path that he claims he wants to avoid.
If he discards economic and diplomatic pressure to rejoin an agreement that will unfetter Iran’s nuclear program in just a few short years, the use of force will be Biden’s only remaining option to stop Iran from going nuclear — the last resort. Instead, Biden should walk away from the deal. Doing so would allow him to develop a Plan B that uses the entire spectrum of coercive tools and possibly to avoid the use of force.
With or without the deal, Biden needs to prepare his Plan B. Failing to do so would almost certainly result in an Israel-Iran war, a nuclear Iran, or both. Biden claims that he wants none of these outcomes, but his policy choices suggest otherwise. Time is running out.
President Biden issued a midterm-minded message on Thursday that America’s democratic values are at risk and that former President Trump and his most ardent backers are the chief reason why as his party seeks to continue momentum ahead of the November elections.
Biden, speaking in prime-time from the perch of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, namechecked his 2020 general election opponent frequently as he sought to up the stakes for voters heading into the stretch run of the political season. During the 24-minute address, the president said that Trump “represents an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.”
“But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans,”said Biden, who was flanked on stage by Marine guards.“And that is a threat to this country.”
According to The Hill’s Brett Samuels and Morgan Chalfant, White House officials insisted Thursday night’s speech would not be political in nature. However, that idea evaporated quickly as Biden levied multiple criticisms of his predecessor and Republicans, while rounding out the address by touting policy victories on issues such as on police funding and the pandemic.
The address came at a key time for Biden and Democrats. The party in power is on the upswing after a number of key wins over the past month — including two special election victories that have helped buoy the spirits of Democrats after spending much of the past year struggling to counter GOP messages on the economy and inflation.
Notably, the president has also grown more combative amid the Democratic resurgence. In recent weeks, he has called out “MAGA Republicans” on a number of occasions. The rhetoric hit a crescendo last week at a political rally in Maryland where he described the movement as akin to “semi-fascism” (The New York Times).
That remark has drawn rebukes from across the GOP spectrum. The latest came in a prebuttal speech on Thursday by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said that the first line of Biden’s speech should have been an apology “for slandering tens of millions of Americans as fascists” (The Hill).
▪ Niall Stanage: The Memo: Midterms shape up as proxy war between Biden and Trump.
The president’s speech, however, had an alternative purpose: to turn the November elections into a choice between his agenda or a return to Trumpism and the ways of “MAGA Republicans.” It also allowed Biden the chance to discuss cultural issues that have animated Democrats and progressives since the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Roe v. Wade.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” Biden said. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
Wrapping up his address, Biden also called on Americans to “vote, vote, vote.”
▪ Politico: Trump is heading to Pennsylvania to make his case. So is Biden.
▪ The Hill: Trump says he will “look very favorably” at pardons, apologies for Jan. 6 rioters if elected in 2024.
▪ The Washington Post: New York Police Department veteran who assaulted police receives longest Jan. 6 sentence yet: 10 years.
Biden’s speech also came as Jan. 6-related investigations rage on. Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Pat Philbin, Cipollone’s deputy in the counsel’s office under Trump, are expected to appear today before a federal grand jury probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Cipollone, who served as counsel on Jan. 6, was subpoenaed by the grand jury last month in connection with the Justice Department’s look into Trump’s actions leading up to the attack. The move is part of its criminal probe of efforts to overturn the 2020 electoral results (NBC News).
The fallout from Jan. 6 could also lead to congressional action. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) became the tenth Senate Republican to throw their weight behind the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887.
The proposal, which is spearheaded by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), would clarify “ambiguous provisions” of the vice president’s role in overseeing the process of certifying an election following Trump’s pressure campaign against former Vice President Mike Pence last year. The legislation would increase the threshold for objecting to electors from just one member of the Senate and the House, respectively, to at least one-fifth of the 535 members of Congress.
Grassley’s support is significant as it would likely provide a filibuster-proof majority on the bill (Washington Examiner).
Related Articles
▪ The New York Times: Top lawyer for Oath Keepers is arrested in connection with Jan. 6 attack.
▪ The Hill: State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governorship, sues Jan. 6 committee.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ POLITICS & INVESTIGATIONS
A federal judge on Thursday left the door open to appointing a “special master” to examine documents seized by the FBI earlier this month from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, but did not make a final decision on the matter.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said she will issue a written order “in due course” on whether to appoint the third-party individual to review the collected evidence. Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, did not indicate a timeline for her decision (The Hill).
During the two-hour hearing, Cannon pressed prosecutors over what the “harm” in appointing a third-party figure to review the documents. Jay Bratt, the head of the counterintelligence section at the Justice Department, argued that a special master could slow the work of investigators and pose a risk to national security. Cannon countered that it could be possible to make the appointment without jeopardizing the security risk assessment (The New York Times).
Cannon wrote last Saturday that it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master, Chris Kise, the former Florida solicitor general who recently joined Trump’s legal team, argued that appointing a special master as a neutral third party would restore faith in the investigation.
“This is an unprecedented situation. We need to lower the temperature,” Kise said. “We need to take a deep breath.”
CBS News: Federal judge orders Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to testify to Georgia grand jury, but limits scope of questioning.
A little more than two months out from the midterm elections and there’s are trouble in the Senate GOP ranks as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, issued a not-so-veiled criticism of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over concerns about the party’s stable of candidates this fall.
In an op-ed, Scott panned Republicans for “trash-talking” the party’s candidates for the Senate, added that the remarks are “treasonous” and that the detractors should “pipe down” amid the push to win back the majority in November (The Hill).
“Unfortunately, many of the very people responsible for losing the Senate last cycle are now trying to stop us from winning the majority this time by trash-talking our Republican candidates,” the Florida Republican wrote. “It’s an amazing act of cowardice, and ultimately, it’s treasonous to the conservative cause.”
The comments were viewed as another chapter in the feud between Scott and McConnell, who said last month that “candidate quality” could stand between Republicans and the Senate majority. The Kentucky Republican also said at the time that the GOP had a better chance of winning back the House than the Senate (The New York Times).
▪ Politico: Defiant Scott explains “strategic disagreement” with McConnell over battle for Senate.
▪ The Hill: Republicans rage against ranked choice voting after Alaska election.
▪ The Hill: Cook Political Report moves five House races toward Democrats.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ ECONOMY & ADMINISTRATION
All eyes this morning will be on the labor market as the August jobs report will provide another snapshot at the economic well-being of the U.S. and could open the door to more aggressive action by the Federal Reserve.
After a white-hot report emerged in July, the jobs numbers are expected to slow slightly for August, but are still likely to be strong across multiple sectors of the market. According to Dow Jones projections, the economy added roughly 318,000 jobs in July (down from 528,000 in June), with the unemployment rate sticking at 3.5 percent.
This morning’s numbers are of particular importance, as they will arrive ahead of the Fed’s expected decision later in the month to further hike interest rates, with the state of the labor market playing a key role in that call. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that the central banking system is committed to combating high inflation with higher rates, adding that the economy and labor market are likely to experience “pain” as a result (CNBC).
The August jobs report will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET.
▪ The Hill: Goldman Sachs releases forecast on housing downturn: “Further to fall.”
On Saturday, attention will shift from the jobs numbers to the launching pad when NASA will once again attempt to launch the Artemis I moon rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., less than a week after the initial attempt was scrapped.
According to team leaders, the two-hour launch window for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will begin at 2:17 p.m. ET on Saturday. Monday’s attempted launch was scuttled after the SLS’s third engine did not fall to the right temperature, with a hydrogen leak also playing a role.
“We’ve got a path forward,” John Honeycutt, the manager for the SLS program, said on Tuesday. “We’re in the mode now of processing the data that we got and updating our approach prior to the next launch attempt. I’m confident where the team’s headed.”
CBS News: NASA gears up for second attempt to launch Artemis moon rocket.
OPINION
■ The Trump Show is good for Trump — and Biden, by Rich Lowry, contributing editor, Politico Magazine. https://politi.co/3q2zAQP
■ To defend democracy, don’t call Trump a semi-fascist, by Jonathan Bernstein, columnist, Bloomberg Opinion. https://bloom.bg/3CKx35g
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will meet at 10 a.m. for a pro forma session and return to work in the Capitol on Sept. 13.
The Senate convenes at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends on Tuesday.
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will speak about his administration’s economic efforts at 11 a.m., before having lunch with Vice President Harris at noon. The president and first lady Jill Biden will depart for Camp David, where they will spend the weekend, at 3 p.m.
Vice President Harris will meet with Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to discuss the ties between the two countries.
Economic indicators: The Labor Department will unveil the August jobs report at 8:30 a.m.
The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 11:45 a.m.
A 14-member delegation from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Thursday and said that they are there to stay after months of negotiations to gain entry and amid fighting by both sides in the area. The two nations accused each other of shelling in the region and trying to derail the visit by the group. Underscoring the issues with the plant, Ukraine’s state nuclear power company said hours before their arrival that mortar shelling by Moscow led to the shutdown of one of its reactors, amid other issues.
“The IAEA is now there at the plant and it’s not moving. It’s going to stay there. We’re going to have a continued presence there at the plant with some of my experts,” IAEA director Rafael Grossi said after its initial look inside the plant (The Associated Press).
▪ The Hill: Why the world is worried about a nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel on Thursday recommended updated COVID-19 vaccine boosters for people 12 and older that are aimed at combating BA.4 and BA.5 strains of the omicron variant. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will give the final OK in the near future, clearing the way for jabs to start being distributed. The vote passed 13-1, with one member voting against over a concern about lacking enough human data on the shots (The Hill).
The New York Times: The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading.
Anthony Fauci, the outgoing chief White House medical adviser, said the U.S. should prepare for a “pretty bad flu season” later this year. According to Fauci, the Southern Hemisphere is already experiencing a more severe flu season, adding that those countries usually encounter new flu strains sooner than those in the U.S. “We should be prepared for that superimposed upon what I hope is the residual and not another spike of Covid,” Fauci told Bloomberg Law (The Hill).
On the legal side, a federal judge preliminarily declined to toss Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’s fraud conviction on Thursday as part of her last-ditch effort to avoid jail time. Amy Saharia, Holmes’s lawyer, argued that the head of the failed blood-testing company did not misrepresent the company (or did not know she was) to investors. A federal jury found Holmes guilty of four counts of wire fraud in January. Judge Edward Davila said he would make a decision about Holmes’ request on Oct. 17, the same day she is set to be sentenced (Bloomberg News).
➤ TECH
Twitter on Thursday announced that it is starting to test a new feature on its platform to allow users edit a tweet after posting it. The feature — the company’s most requested to date — would allow users to edit a tweet “a few times” up to 30 minutes after it was posted, the company said in a blog post. “If you see an edited Tweet it’s because we’re testing the edit button,” Twitter said in a post from its official account. “This is happening and you’ll be okay” (The Hill).
Politico: How Twitter’s edit button could change the calculus in Washington.
And finally … 👏👏👏 Congratulations to Morning Report Quiz winners, all of whom possess a nose for news!
Our end-of-summer puzzle took note of odiferous headlines around the globe, and these champions are all coming up roses this morning: Patrick Kavanagh, Mary Anne McEnery, Amanda Fisher, Richard Baznik, Harry Strulovici, Ki Harvey, Terry Pflaumer, Pam Manges, Kathleen Kovalik, Len Jones, Lou Tisler and Andre Leblanc.
In the United Kingdom, Prince Charles, an enthusiastic horticulturist and lover of Highgrove House gardens, launched a line of perfume in August that boasts “top notes of geranium, lavender and hyacinth.” A percentage of proceeds will go to charity.
In Sweden, surströmming, or fermented herring, is a delicacy described by some as smelling like “bad eggs” and a “decomposed body,” that left fans lined up outside supermarkets last week to score some of the nation’s scarce supply.
In Italy, Mayor Roberto Gualtieri landed on the front page of The New York Times this week because garbage (and garbage fires) are fouling Rome’s air.
According to U.S. news accounts as summer ripened, residents near San Francisco Bay became upset about smelly surpluses of seaweed and algae, and recent fish-killing algae blooms in the Sunshine State are dubbed red tide, which means the answer we were looking for was “all of the above.”
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The midterm elections are shaping up as a proxy war between President Biden and former President Trump.
Biden has gone after Trump in a fiery fashion in recent weeks, including in Thursday night’s prime-time speech in Philadelphia.
Referring to the movement that takes its inspiration from the former president, Biden said: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
The Thursday speech made crystal clear that the days of Biden seeking to focus only on his own agenda, or making oblique reference to “the former guy,” are a thing of the past.
Biden also recently contended that elements of the current Trump-centric Republicanism amount to “semi-fascism” — a reference that delighted his base even as it elicited a demand for an apology from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Trump, meanwhile, is playing a huge role in the elections — though in a way that may wind up hurting the GOP.
GOP Senate nominees who won their primaries in part thanks to the former president’s backing have encountered serious turbulence in their general election campaigns. That’s true to a greater or lesser degree of Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Herschel Walker in Georgia, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona.
Trump has, of course, also returned to the headlines in the most dramatic fashion possible after the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago club on Aug. 8. Almost one month later, there is no sign of that story ebbing.
The upshot is that a midterms campaign that seemed likely to be fought on the economy and inflation just a few months ago is now shaping up as a battle between the two septuagenarians who faced off in the last presidential election — and who might yet have a rematch in the next one.
Putting the focus on Trump is just fine with Democrats.
“To the extent that this election becomes about Trump, I don’t think it is good for the Republicans,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh. “It may be somewhat motivating to their base, but as a whole it takes them off of the frame that they would prefer — talking about inflation, the economy, to some degree crime.”
Last weekend, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) responded to the ongoing controversy over Trump’s handling of presidential records by complaining on ABC’s “This Week” that it was “less than 100 days before the election [and] suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation.”
Todd Belt, a George Washington University professor who specializes in political management, also noted that Trump faces several investigations beyond the Mar-a-Lago matter, including a Georgia probe into efforts by him and his allies to overturn the 2020 election and the Department of Justice examination of the events around the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Politically, that could be problematic for the GOP, given that Republicans normally benefit from their strong anti-crime, pro-law enforcement image.
“The fact that the leader of the party is under several different investigations really undercuts the Republican playbook for the upcoming election,” Belt said.
Even so, Republicans argue that Biden’s newly vigorous campaigning mode is not a panacea for his party’s challenges either.
They note that the president’s approval ratings remain poor, even though they have ticked up a little from their lowest points.
In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Biden’s approval stood at 42 percent, with roughly 55 percent of the public disapproving, on Thursday evening.
Biden has enjoyed some big wins lately, particularly the passage of a huge bill addressing climate change, prescription drug costs and taxes, but other efforts — like his decision to wipe out up to $20,000 in student loan debt for some borrowers — are more politically divisive.
“It doesn’t really serve Democrats well to have Biden out front and center,” said GOP strategist Ron Bonjean. “He has had some buoyancy in the polls but his numbers are still low. And look at the number of Democrats in contested races who are walking away from the student loans issue.”
Biden, for his part, is clearly trying to link Trump, the GOP and the recent conservative tilt of the Supreme Court into one overarching narrative.
Democrats’ standing has improved in the polls since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in late June, and the abortion issue was vital to a Democratic victory in an Aug. 23 special House election in New York’s 19th District. There, Democrat Pat Ryan made abortion rights a centerpiece of his campaign and carried the district, a classic bellwether.
In Philadelphia, Biden asserted: “MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
Belt, the George Washington University professor, noted that Biden had spoken out strongly against Trump and Trumpism at the start of this year, to mark the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. That didn’t noticeably help Democratic political fortunes.
But “what’s different this time is that Biden has the wind in his sails,” Belt said, “Right now, he is riding a wave of success. And that makes it a better time to take on former President Trump.”
The world’s nuclear watchdog is visiting the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine this week amid concerns sparked by shelling around the plant.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), warned last month that military action around the plant raised “very real risk of nuclear disaster.”
Experts say the effects of such a disaster could lead to radiation leakage that impacts the local communities, but would most likely not lead to a global catastrophe.
So what are the stakes for Ukraine and the world if Russia’s war leads to a nuclear disaster?
“The kind of shelling we’re seeing should not be a significant impact on the reactors. In the way that it’s being done now, which is, you know, occasional shelling,” said Jonathan Cobb, senior communication manager at the World Nuclear Association.
Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors that generate half of its electricity, according to the World Nuclear Association. Six of these reactors are located at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
The Zaporizhzhia plant has been under Russian control since the early days of its invasion of Ukraine, even though Ukrainian workers still operate the plant.
The facility — the largest nuclear plant in Europe — is directly on the front lines of the fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
The IAEA’s visit comes days after Ukraine warned of “renewed shelling.” In a statement released Aug. 28, the IAEA said the shelling hit the area of the plant’s “two special buildings” which house facilities like water treatment plants, equipment repair shops and waste management facilities.
All measurements of radioactivity at the site were within normal range, and there was “no indication of any hydrogen leakage.”
Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said nuclear plants must be continuously cooled, meaning there has to be a way to remove heat generated by nuclear fuel. If the plant is connected to Ukraine’s electric grid, then the cooling is provided by water pumps that are powered by the grid.
If not, then the plants have emergency diesel generators that can provide that power.
“In a well-functioning, peacetime nuclear power plant, all these layers of protections and barriers are there. They work perfectly well,” Buongiorno said. “And now, there is no indication that they’re not working well, either.”
There have only been two major accidents related to nuclear reactors in history. The first was Chernobyl in 1986, when a reactor when out of control during a test, leading it to explode.
More recently, in March 2011, Japan was hit by a major earthquake followed by a tsunami that led to power loss at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The power led to the cooling systems failing in three reactors, causing the core to overheat.
Experts say the worst-case scenario at Zaporizhzhia would look more like what happened in Fukushima rather than what happened in Chernobyl.
Fighting between the Russians and Ukrainians could disrupt the cooling mechanism of the reactors, which could cause the core to overheat, leading it to melt — often referred to as a nuclear meltdown.
But getting to a nuclear meltdown would take a major event, experts say, because the reactors themselves have six-feet-thick concrete containment vessels protecting them.
“At least in theory, if even if there was a direct hit, there would be at least some protection,” said Mitchel Wallerstein, a nonresident senior fellow at The Chicago Council.
The greatest concern in such a scenario is for the local population that lives around the area.
The Ukrainian government has reportedly begun distributing potassium iodide pills, which help prevent inhaled or swallowed radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid — a gland located in the neck that makes hormones to help to regulate the many functions of the body, such as its metabolic rate. Exposure to radiation can increase the risk of developing thyroid cancer.
Despite the protections at Zaporizhzhia holding for now, experts see high value in the IAEA’s visit.
All but five of the 14 inspectors had left the plant as of Thursday, along with Grossi, with the remaining scheduled to leave Saturday.
While there, the team will assess the safety of the plant and assess safeguards and equipment to monitor nuclear material, as well as checking on the Ukrainian workers at the facility.
“These workers have been running the plant in occupied territory essentially for six months,” Cobb said. “And there have been reports — as yet, unconfirmed … of poor treatment of the workers by the Russian forces there.”
Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director general who is now a fellow at the Stimson Center, said the agency is there to gather evidence and records of how the reactors have been operating in recent months.
“I would expect that this will take four or five days,” Heinonen said. “If it is shorter then I think that they will come back with less information, and I’m sure Mr. Grossi will not agree to that. But on the other hand, they are in the hands of the occupying force.”
In a video posted to Twitter, Grossi said the agency will establish a “continued presence” at the plant, which experts said would be a valuable move.
“Just reporting on conditions would be a very valuable service. Maintaining that safeguard function, and as being an independent United Nations presence there that could report as best they could, on the way in which the workforce has been treated by the Russian military forces on the site,” Cobb said.
“That would be a very sensible and valuable function that they can provide.”
