North Dakota is the hardest working state in America.
Alaska, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas rounded out the top five.
The bottom five states included West Virginia, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and New Mexico.
North Dakota is the hardest working state in America, according to a new report from WalletHub.
WalletHub compared the 50 states across 10 key indicators, ranging from average hours worked per week to the number of workers with multiple jobs to identify where the nation’s hardest working people live.
The Peace Garden State achieved the top spot in part due to the high number of average weekly hours worked – coming in second place behind Alaska. North Dakota also held the lowest idle-youth rate.
Alaska, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas rounded out the top five, while the bottom five states included West Virginia, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island and New Mexico.
Alaska averages the highest number of average hours worked per week, compared to Utah, which averages the lowest at 37,
Meanwhile, Nebraska, Utah, and South Dakota had the highest employment rates, according to the report.
The report also found that the average American ends the year with 4.6 vacation days left unused. Mississippi has the highest share of workers who leave vacation days on the table.
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Experts – including Steven Glazer, the Chair of Social/Behavioral Science at Norwalk Community College – told WalletHub that jobs conditions are on the rise and recommended interventions to ensure workers continued safety.
“Job conditions have improved since employers across various sectors of the economy have done what they can to ensure worker and customer safety to guarantee success for the individual company,” Glazer said. “Authorities can provide employers with greater access to testing and vaccines for their employees where they are difficult to come by.
“In addition, financial assistance can be offered to guarantee that employees do not lose out on any portion of their compensation should they be out of work for an extended period, due to contracting any virus,” Glazer concluded.
The U.S. Mint on Monday announced coin designs for its five new honorees in the second year of its American Women Quarters Program.
Indigenous Hawaiian composer Edith Kanaka’ole, Mexican American journalist Jovita Idár and Native American ballerina Maria Tallchief are among the women to be featured in reverse designs on quarters issued in 2023.
The new designs will also depict aviator Bessie Coleman, the first African American and first Native American woman pilot, and diplomat Eleanor Roosevelt, the longest-serving first lady.
The designs are “emblematic of the accomplishments and contributions of trailblazing American women,” according to a press release.
“The ethnically, racially, and geographically diverse group of individuals honored through this program reflects a wide range of accomplishments and fields, including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space, and the arts,” the U.S. Mint continued.
The coins will enter circulation next year.
“Edith Kanaka`ole was a leader in revitalizing Hawaiian language and culture, and her legacy still serves as a catalyst for Hawaiian knowledge today. I’m excited to see the design for her commemorative quarter, and I look forward to seeing these quarters put into circulation,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) wrote on Twitter after the designs were announced.
Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro (D) said he was “thrilled” that Idár, a South Texan journalist, would be memorialized for “her legacy and contributions to our society” in the new coins.
The previous 2022 five-coin rollout included author Maya Angelou, astronaut Sally Ride, suffragist Nina Otero-Warren, Hollywood film star Anna May Wong and Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.
The presence of al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, under the protection of the Taliban in a luxury villa in Kabul raises important questions about who is actually running the country and what this means for U.S. and allied interests.
When U.S. forces killed al-Zawahiri on July 31, he was not just visiting Afghanistan’s capital city. He and his family were staying in a home owned by the family of Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has emerged as Afghanistan’s most important and lethal power broker. As one of two deputies to the Taliban’s senior leader, Haqqani wields oversized influence in the government’s senior councils, with the power to appoint the governors of Afghanistan’s eastern provinces.
His position as interior minister gives him control over Kabul, Afghanistan’s internal security forces and its intelligence apparatus. In short, Haqqani runs the country’s “power ministries.” The clan’s personal army, the powerful Haqqani network, is a radical Afghan Islamist group that was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department in 2012, and the FBI offers a reward of up to $10 million for information that leads to Haqqani’s arrest.
One year on from its return to power, the Taliban predictably has run Afghanistan into a ditch. More than half the population requires urgent food aid, including more than a million malnourished children. The health sector is collapsing. International donors, who had funded almost 80 percent of the country’s economy, have ceased their financial support. The United Nations estimates that as much as 97 percent of the country may fall below the poverty line by the second half of this year.
Afghanistan’s political struggles have exacerbated this humanitarian tragedy. Haqqani’s power grab appears to have sidelined the Taliban old guard, epitomized by Abdul Ghani Baradar, who led the Taliban’s negotiations with the United States in Doha to end the war. Last September, the increasingly confident Haqqani faction forced Baradar and Defense Minister Yaqoob Omar, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, to flee Kabul to the safety of their home base in Kandahar in a dispute over ministerial appointments. In the ensuing struggle for control of the government, the head of Pakistan’s intelligence service traveled to Kabul to ensure that the key positions went to Pakistani loyalists from the hardline Haqqani network, not those who led the Doha negotiations.
While Baradar and the Kandahari faction are attempting to broadly abide by the Doha Accord — in which the Taliban committed to preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists in order to secure the release of $7 billion of Afghan foreign reserves frozen by the United States and its allies — the former commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) recently acknowledged: “They’re finding it difficult to do.”
According to a recent U.N. report, the reason for this failure is clear: “The Haqqani Network remains a hub for outreach and cooperation with regional foreign terrorist groups and is the primary liaison between the Taliban and al Qaeda.” Counterterrorism experts also assess that the Haqqani Network is using the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K) as another tool to consolidate its power.
As long as the Haqqanis remain Afghanistan’s ascendant power, international recognition of the country, containment of jihadist extremists and alleviation of Afghanistan’s accelerating humanitarian crisis will prove impossible.
Two countries in particular bear a significant share of responsibility for this state of affairs: Pakistan long has provided sanctuary for the Haqqanis, as well as logistical and political support for the network. It is a notoriously two-faced U.S. ally whose military and security services work at cross-purposes to U.S. interests throughout the region. As one noted expert observed: “The removal of the Haqqanis from Afghanistan is an ambition which would unite most regional powers as well as the Kandaharis. However, it is difficult to see how it could possibly happen even if the support of Pakistan could be secured. The Haqqanis control Kabul, are heavily armed and intend to stay.”
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also plays an unhelpful role in support of the Haqqanis. Senior members of the Haqqani network, including Afghanistan’s current minister of refugees, Khalil al Haqqani, have relied on sources in the UAE for fundraising and have used the UAE as a base for their front companies. Emirati banks hold the accounts of senior Haqqani members. In return, this year the Haqqanis awarded the Emiratis a no-bid contract to run Kabul airport, which they control. In short, the UAE provides an essential financial lifeline to the Haqqani network.
If the Biden administration is truly serious about fighting terror and helping the people of Afghanistan, it will have to adopt a tougher approach to putative allies such as Pakistan and the UAE. They are enabling a known terrorist enemy, in open contravention of both U.S. interests and international commitments. Enabling evil never works; it merely spawns more evil.
Dr. John C. Hulsman is president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a global political-risk consulting firm headquartered in London, Milan and Bavaria. A life member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, he is a contributing editor for Aspenia, the flagship foreign policy journal of The Aspen Institute, Italy. Follow him on Twitter @JohnHulsman1.
The White House said Monday it is not involved in the intelligence community’s damage assessment of classified documents recovered from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate but said such a review is “appropriate.”
“The White House is not involved in the damage assessment that the DNI is going to be conducting over these documents,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters when asked about the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) assessment.
“It is an appropriate action for the director and the intelligence community to undertake,” Kirby said.
News broke late last week that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines had informed Congress that the intelligence community would conduct an assessment of the national security risks of the disclosure of classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago.
Before that disclosure, the White House had refused to answer questions about the prospect of a damage assessment.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), as well as lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had requested a damage assessment following revelations about the classified documents.
A heavily redacted FBI affidavit used to secure a warrant to search Mar-a-Lago that was released on Friday said that federal authorities discovered 184 classified documents in the initial review of documents that had previously been recovered from Trump’s property. That discovery spurred the unprecedented search on Aug. 8.
The search warrant released earlier this month indicated that the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago are part of an investigation into potential violations of the Espionage Act, as well as other laws.
The White House has sought to keep distance from the investigation, saying it is under the purview of the Justice Department and that President Biden has no say in the probe. Trump, who is weighing another presidential run against Biden in 2024, has decried the investigation as politically motivated.
Even so, Biden briefly mocked Trump’s claims about a broad declassification order when asked by reporters last week.
“’I’ve declassified everything in the world. I’m president,’” Biden said sarcastically. “Come on.”
Bridgestone on Monday announced plans to invest an additional $42 million to establish commercial operations for planting and harvesting a rubber-rich shrub called guayule.
The guayule plant bears small white flowers and narrow silvery leaves that grows in hot, arid desert areas with plenty of sun and little water.
In May, Bridgestone debuted Firestone Firehawk race tires made with guayule natural rubber grown and extracted at the company’s Arizona facilities during the Indy 500 Pit Stop Challenge.
One of the world’s largest tire manufacturers is betting big on a desert shrub native to Northern Mexico and the Southwestern United States to produce a new, more sustainable source of natural rubber.
Bridgestone on Monday announced plans to invest an additional $42 million to establish commercial operations for planting and harvesting a rubber-rich shrub called guayule at scale in the American Southwest. Since 2012, the company has invested more than $100 million in guayule farming and processing research as part of its plan to achieve carbon neutrality and make its tires from 100 percent renewable materials by 2050.
The guayule plant is a woody shrub that bears small white flowers and narrow silvery leaves that grows in hot, arid desert areas with plenty of sun and little water. While guayule has been used at times as a source for commercial rubber throughout the 20th century, including during World War II when the U.S. faced a sudden rubber shortage, the plant has not been widely utilized. Currently, more than 95 percent of the world’s natural rubber supply is extracted from the Para rubber tree, which is native to South America but is largely grown on rubber plantations in South Asia in a tropical climate.
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Bridgestone argues that extracting rubber from guayule in the U.S. would eliminate environmental impacts associated with importing rubber from overseas. Perhaps more importantly, guayule can be cultivated using very little water. The plant requires as little as half the water it takes to grow commercial crops currently grown in the southwestern U.S., such as cotton and alfalfa. The company is aiming to bring guayule-based rubber to commercial production by 2030.
“We’re extremely bullish on the potential for guayule as a domestic source of strategically critical materials, such as rubber, hypoallergenic latex, building material adhesives and renewable fuel just to name a few. We’re thrilled to be taking this major step toward commercialization before the end of the decade,” Nizar Trigui, chief technology officer of Bridgestone Americas, said in a statement.
Bridgestone broke ground on a guayule processing and research center in Mesa, Arizona in 2012 and currently operates a 281-acre farm in Eloy, Arizona. The company says it is expanding the number of local farmers it works with in Arizona and is hoping to plant 350 new acres of guayule in the coming year, with the ultimate goal of establishing 25,000 acres.
In May, Bridgestone debuted Firestone Firehawk race tires made with guayule natural rubber grown and extracted at the company’s Arizona facilities during the Indy 500 Pit Stop Challenge.
“With guayule, we can reduce the environmental impacts that come with overseas sourcing while also realizing a more sustainable agricultural system for parts of this country that are facing persistent and worsening climate conditions, so it’s really something with many benefits for our environment and our economy,” Trigui said.
Mired in investigations as his term came to an unseemly end, a former Republican president is subsequently dogged by the threat of prosecution for conspiracy and obstruction of justice while in office. He courts additional controversy by removing official documents upon his departure from the White House.
His case threatens to distract the country as it confronts recession, inflation, an energy crisis and a series of foreign policy challenges.
That scenario might describe the state of American politics in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. But it would also be an accurate depiction of the situation in August 1974, when President Gerald R. Ford took office following the resignation of Richard M. Nixon. And it led to a momentous decision.
On Sept. 8, in a televised address to the nation, he pardoned Nixon for any offenses linked to his role in the Watergate cover up.
Ford feared the effect that litigation and a trial of a year or more would have on the nation. “Ugly passions would again be aroused,” Ford said, “our people would again be polarized in their opinions, and the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.”
The pardon was met with a storm of protest, and the goodwill Ford had generated upon assuming office quickly evaporated. He was accused of making a deal with Nixon, promising him exoneration in advance. But he held firm. He even appeared before the House Judiciary Committee (the first president to do so since Abraham Lincoln) to defend his decision.
“I was absolutely convinced,” he testified in October of that year, “ that if we had had [an] indictment, a trial, a conviction, and anything else that transpired after this that the attention of the President, the Congress and the American people would have been diverted from the problems that we have to solve. And that was the principal reason for my granting of the pardon.”
Ford believed there was legal justification for his decision, one rooted in a 1915 Supreme Court precedent. In Burdick v. United States, the court ruled that a pardon issued by President Woodrow Wilson to a New York newspaper editor carried an “imputation of guilt” and that the acceptance of a pardon was “an admission of guilt” on the part of the accused. While he might avoid conviction in court, Nixon’s implied admission would assure the verdict of history.
Not that the former president would ever admit guilt explicitly. In his statement accepting the pardon, Nixon conceded that “I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate,” characterizing his actions as “mistakes.” But in language reminiscent of a consent decree, he would neither admit nor deny any criminal acts.
“I know,” he wrote, “that many fair‐minded people believe that my motivation and actions in the Watergate affair were intentionally self‐serving and illegal. I now understand how my own mistakes and misjudgments have contributed to that belief and seemed to support it. This burden is the heaviest one of all to bear.”
Ford paid a serious price for his action. His press secretary, Jerald terHorst, immediately resigned. His approval rating, according to Gallup, dropped from 71 percent to 50 percent.
By the summer of 1976, as he entered a close reelection race with Jimmy Carter, only 35 percent of Americans approved of the pardon and 55 percent were still opposed. It may well have cost Ford what turned out to be a close election.
With the passage of time, the pardon came to be seen differently. When the question was last posed in a 1986 Gallup survey, 53 percent of the country approved of Ford’s decision, and 39 percent was still opposed.
By May 2001, opinions seemed to come full circle. Caroline Kennedy presented Ford with the John F. Kennedy Library’s Profile in Courage award for making his decision. “In doing so,” she said, “he placed his love of country ahead of his own political future.”
In seconding his niece’s announcement, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, “I was one of those who spoke out against his action then. But time has a way of clarifying past events, and now we see that President Ford was right. His courage and dedication to our country made it possible for us to begin the process of healing and put the tragedy of Watergate behind us.”
Two days after the pardon, The New York Times editorialized that “a more divisive and distasteful outcome” to the Watergate affair “could scarcely be imagined.” The paper argued that in the absence of a conclusive legal judgment “the way will be open wide for a subsequent demagogic rewriting of history that could poison the political atmosphere for generations to come.”
But looking back half a century later, it is difficult to argue America would have been a better place in the years to follow had the Justice Department pursued Nixon in court.
To quell the ugly passions that have been aroused during the Trump years, and prevent Americans from being further polarized in their opinions (to borrow language from President Ford), would it be too much to ask President Biden to offer a preemptive pardon to Donald Trump for any and all offenses he may have committed, and have the former president even obliquely accept it?
No doubt it would. And even if it came to pass, it would be met with outrage at both ends of the political and media spectrums.
But the investigations of Donald Trump being pursued in Congress and at the Justice Department are doing very little to foster “a process of healing.” We may not conclude it for another 50 years, but we may well be on a course that will “poison the political atmosphere for generations to come.”
Paul C. Atkinson, a former executive at The Wall Street Journal, is a contributing editor of the New York Sun.
Teachers’ salaries have declined by about 3 percent nationally from 2010 to 2021.
In the U.S., the average teacher salary is $65,090.
Pennsylvania, California and New York have the highest average teacher salaries in the country, compared to all other occupations.
Teachers’ wages vary drastically across the country – and educators will even find that some states offer higher salaries depending on what grade level they teach.
Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Business.org analyzed how teachers are compensated across the country, ranking the best and worst average teacher salaries in comparison to the average salary for all other occupations.
Nationally, teacher salaries have declined by about 3 percent from 2010 to 2021, with pay dropping over 10 percent in Indiana, Florida, Wyoming, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana.
Other states, including South Dakota, Vermont and California, actually increased teacher salaries, and in Washington state teacher pay increased nearly 23 percent from 2010 to 2021.
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Grade level also matters, with Business.org finding elementary school teachers earn about $61,350 on average, middle school teachers earn about $61,320 and high school teachers earn about $61,820.
Here are some of the best-paying states for teachers in the 2020-2021 academic year:
Pennsylvania
According to Business.org, the average teacher salary for the 2020-2021 school year was $71,281 for teachers in Pennsylvania—while all other occupations averaged at $55,260. That’s a nearly 29 percent difference in teacher salaries compared to all occupations.
California
The average teacher salary was $85,892, with all other occupations averaging $68,510. Teachers in California earn about 25 percent more than all other occupations.
New York
Teachers are paid about $87,738 on average, while all other occupations are paid about $70,460 in New York. That’s a difference of about 24 percent.
Rhode Island
Teachers in Rhode Island are paid on average $75,966 and all other occupations earn about $62,120—a 22 percent difference.
Connecticut
The average teacher is paid $79,742, while all other occupations average $62,130. Teachers are paid about 21 percent more.
Hawaii
In Hawaii, teachers are paid on average $70,922 and all other occupations earn about $59,760— a nearly 19 percent difference.
Though Business.org found teachers earn 11 percent more than the average salary across the nation — making $65,090 a year while the national average salary is $58,260 — one survey found 80 percent of Americans feel teachers are underpaid.
One report by the Economic Policy Institute found that from 1996 to 2021, public school teachers’ weekly wages increased just $29—from $1,319 to $1,348. Teachers earn about 23 percent less compared to other college-educated workers, the report found.
Teacher pay is one potential explanation behind the national teacher shortage, with an estimated 300,000 educators and support staff needed in classrooms across the country.
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NEW YORK (NewsNation) — The rising cost of living and the impact of inflation have left millions of households across the U.S. with outstanding utility bills — an issue that could get worse with power shutoffs on the horizon and cooler weather looming.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which collects national data on energy assistance programs, says 1 in 6, or more than 20 million households, are behind on their power bills.
A primary source behind the utility debt is a surge in energy prices. Natural gas prices have jumped since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The cost of natural gas was up 30.5% year-over-year in July, according to the U.S. Labor Department. The average rate for electricity was up about 15% in July — the largest increase since 2006.
Across the country, millions more are over 60 days behind and in danger of losing their service as the bill is coming due.
In March, the Office of the New York Comptroller said 1 in 8 New Yorkers hadn’t paid their utility bills. That’s 1.2 million people owing a combined $1.8 billion to utilities, and since then, not much has improved.
In New Orleans, some residents carry four-figure utility bills. On Saturday, Entergy New Orleans hosted its first energy fair to learn more about payment options, energy-efficient education, electric vehicles and hurricane preparedness.
“This is a great opportunity, providing that we have the money to go ahead and assist our residents.”
In Indiana, Duke Energy, the state’s largest power provider, is considering a 7% price hike or $11 more on each bill starting in October.
Utility companies blame inflation and the high cost of natural gas for inflated prices.
“This is a temporary rate increase. again, fuel cost fluctuates,” said Angeline Protogere, a Duke Energy spokesperson.
With “pandemic” utility moratoriums expiring, power companies are preparing for shutoffs, meaning it could be a long cold winter for many families.
“We are continuing that moratorium until September 1st,” said Patrick Stella of National Grid, a power company providing service in New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
For those drowning in utility debt, all 50 states received nearly $5 billion in federal funding for home energy assistance programs to help low-income families pay their high utility bills.
It’s usually first come, first served, and with millions of people in the same predicament, waiting to ask for help could leave people in the dark.
This has been a very hot summer for many parts of the country, which left people running their air conditioners longer, only adding to their outstanding unpaid balances.
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Without the federal protections in place to prevent shutoffs like those that existed early in the pandemic, utility companies are seeing customers rack up debt at an unprecedented pace.
While late and unpaid bills for utilities are common and have always been, it’s the amount of utility debt that Americans have racked up that’s leading to calls for more federal assistance to pay down these balances.
Before the pandemic, the National Energy Assistance Directors Association reported that overall, Americans had about $8 billion in utility debt.
As payment moratoriums kicked in, the number began to grow to more than 13 billion. Then, in the first six months of this year, utility companies hiked rates and more Americans fell behind on their bills, adding $3 billion in utility debt in 180 days.
The recent armed assault on the FBI’s Cincinnati office by a right-wing insurrectionist, and his fellow travelers’ social media salvos against the bureau for executing a lawful search warrant at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, indicate that it’s time to recall past efforts to shore up the agency’s public image.
With a passion for history and cinema, a fondness for Jimmy Stewart, and a cousin-in-law in the FBI, I spent part of my childhood watching “The FBI Story” multiple times. I still tune in when the Turner Classic Movies channel runs the 1959 film. Of course, I now realize that it represents a propaganda vehicle created by controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to aggrandize the bureau’s image in the American mind.
Amidst the Cold War, and the FBI’s efforts to fight communism, while recognizing the blowback against McCarthyism from civil libertarians, Hoover calculated in the 1950s that literary and Hollywood paeans to his agency were in order. He and his colleagues cooperated with Don Whitehead, a double Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting during the Korean War, who published in 1956 a book on the bureau’s history, “The FBI Story: A Report to the People.”
Hoover granted Whitehead access to FBI files and penned the Random House book’s foreword. Noted as a courageous reporter, who had earned the nickname “Beachhead Don” for going ashore with American forces in major World War II invasions (including Normandy), Whitehead was both a credible journalist and a patriot — the perfect author of a book to present the nation’s law enforcement agency in its best light.
And there are plenty of heroic stories in the FBI’s history, from its founding in 1908 to the mid-20th century, including tracking terrorists and saboteurs during the two world wars and the decade between them; chasing Prohibition-era gangsters, most famously John Dillinger and Al Capone; investigating the tragic kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son; intercepting Japanese espionage messages after Pearl Harbor; and capturing communist spies during the Cold War, including the Rosenbergs. Whitehead revised his riveting tales for a children’s version of the book.
Hoover then reached out to his Hollywood friend, film director and producer Mervyn LeRoy, to translate Whitehead’s book for the silver screen. LeRoy had directed World War II films intended to bolster American morale, like 1944’s “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” starring Spencer Tracy as Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, whose 1942 air raid over the Japanese capital represented the first American attack on the enemy’s homeland.
In essence, Hoover acted as co-producer of “The FBI Story” and assigned two of his agents to supervise its filming. If the bureau’s director disliked how scenes portrayed his agency, he asked that they be re-shot. He contributed to casting decisions, as well. Who better to play the movie’s lead fictional FBI agent, Chip Hardesty, than Jimmy Stewart, a World War II hero for his bombing missions over Germany as a pilot in the Army Air Force, for which he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre.
Even more appropriate, Stewart had portrayed an idealistic senator fighting corruption in Frank Capra’s 1939 classic, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” In 1955, Stewart, then a general in the Air Force Reserve, starred in “Strategic Air Command,” a Hollywood film advocating the need for funding a strong military aviation force during the Cold War. Moreover, Stewart was a lifelong Republican, who supported conservative GOP presidential candidates and promoted patriotic causes.
In 1959’s “The FBI Story,” distributed by Warner Brothers studio, Hoover appears in a cameo role. Stewart’s wife, played by Vera Miles, begs him to leave his dangerous job as an FBI field agent but Hardesty reneges on his promise to do so when he hears an inspirational speech delivered by the bureau’s director. A hagiographic homage to the nation’s law enforcers, the movie covers the FBI’s triumphs featured in Whitehead’s book. Often melodramatic, it still contains moments of genuine pathos, as when Hardesty’s partner is killed in a shootout with a gangster. I admit to shedding a tear when the Hardestys receive a telegram with news that their son has been killed as a Marine at the Battle of Iwo Jima.
By the film’s end, Stewart’s character is a senior desk officer delivering inspirational speeches to new agents. His daughter has married the son of his deceased field partner, who, naturally, becomes an FBI agent to avenge his father’s death. The couple name their son after his war-hero uncle, killed in the Pacific. The final patriotic scene depicts the family driving past the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery.
The film’s estimated box office take was $3.5 million (more than $35 million in 2022 dollars), making it a top 25 money-maker in 1959. Another Stewart film that year, “Anatomy of a Murder,” was second only to Academy Award winner “Ben-Hur” in ticket revenues. Variety’s review of “The FBI Story” deemed it “a tense, exciting film story told in human terms,” with Stewart’s performance labeled “restrained … wry and intelligent, completely credible.” Clearly, Hoover was pleased, awarding LeRoy the FBI’s Distinguished Service Award.
LeRoy seemed unfazed by his collaboration with the bureau’s director: “I am extremely proud of The FBI Story. … It was authentic[ally] done to the last detail. … I didn’t want to jeopardize my personal friendship with J. Edgar Hoover by doing anything that wasn’t accurate.” As Yale historian and author of the definitive book on Hoover, Beverly Gage, has observed, during his 48 years as the FBI’s director, Hoover was a public relations master.
In today’s wholly different era of incendiary social media, public cynicism, political polarization, partisan television news, and politicians who attack law enforcement, such 1950s-style propaganda is unlikely to reverse the tide. Yet the current FBI director might want to revisit his predecessor’s strategy and construct new tactics to burnish the bureau’s public image in the American psyche.
Barbara A. Perry is Presidential Studies director and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Follow her @BarbaraPerryUVA.
President Biden will visit Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two key swing states, to mark Labor Day next week, the White House announced.
Biden will travel to Pittsburgh and Milwaukee to “celebrate Labor Day and the dignity of American workers,” a White House advisory said on Monday.
The trip will represent Biden’s second to the state of Pennsylvania in less than a week’s time; Biden is scheduled to visit Wilkes-Barre on Tuesday to give a speech about gun safety.
Both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are home to closely watched Senate races that will help determine the control of the upper chamber next year.
A spokesman for Democratic Senate nominee Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman said that he would not attend the event in Wilkes-Barre with the president on Tuesday but would meet with Biden when he returns to the state for Labor Day.
“He will be marching in the Labor Day parade in Pittsburgh next week, and he looks forward to talking to the President there about the need to finally decriminalize marijuana,” Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello told The Hill.
While the White House advisory was light on the details, Biden is reportedly expected to appear at Milwaukee’s Laborfest, a large celebration that covers multiple cities in the state of Wisconsin.
A spokeswoman for Democratic Senate nominee Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes said he plans to attend Laborfest, but it’s unclear if Biden and Barnes will meet along the way.
“The Lt. Governor is excited to participate in Laborfest events throughout Milwaukee, Madison and Racine. His priority is talking to Wisconsin voters and supporting the labor movement that gave his family a ticket to the middle class,” Barnes communications director Maddy McDaniel told The Hill.
Biden is increasing his domestic travel as the midterm elections draw closer to promote his accomplishments and help shore up Democrats’ chances in November. Later this month, he’ll make another stop in Ohio to attend the groundbreaking of an Intel semiconductor manufacturing facility and promote the bipartisan chips bill he signed into law earlier in August.
Some Democratic candidates in difficult races have kept Biden at arm’s length amid his low polling numbers. The president’s approval rating has shown signs of recovering, however, and his recent slate of achievements like the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act have given Democrats newfound hope of holding onto their razor-thin majorities in Congress in the midterms.
