What Happened: July 12, 2021

The Big Story

Eric Adams, the likely next mayor of New York City, visited the White House Monday to discuss “rising gun crimes”—a phrase the Biden administration has repeatedly used to characterize the broader rise of violent crime in U.S. cities. The invitation is significant because Adams, an ex-cop, just won the Democratic primary in New York by campaigning as a moderate who would be tough on crime, standing on the other side of the divide from the Democrats’ more progressive wing, which has downplayed crime as a distraction from police reform. But multiple polls show that rising crime is a serious issue for both Democrats and Republicans, with most respondents saying Biden is handling it poorly. An ABC News/Washington Post poll from July 2 showed that only 38% of Americans approve of Biden’s response to the surge in crime, with 48% expressing disapproval. In a new weekly survey from the Democratic polling firm Navigator Research, crime beat the coronavirus pandemic in importance for both Republicans and Democrats—who were otherwise sharply divided on other issues. A broad cross section of respondents said they viewed crime as “a major crisis,” a consensus that included 57% of Republicans, 52% of Democrats, and 70% overall of Black voters. In New York, Adams has emerged as the candidate who can speak to that majority, a point he stressed a number of times in press appearances over the weekend. “Cities are hurting all across America, and New York personifies that pain—the inequalities, the gun violence, the lack of really looking after everyday, blue-collar workers,” Adams said in an appearance on ABC News’ This Week. “We can’t be so idealistic that we’re not realistic,” he added. 

Read it here: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-elections-government/ny-eric-adams-public-safety-ideology-mayoral-race-20210711-ipab6vivrnc6vjo2clpnhe2mvi-story.html

Today’s Back Pages: We See You Randi

The Rest

Thousands of Cubans assembled in cities across the country on Sunday to demonstrate against the Communist government run by President Miguel Díaz-Canel in what have been described as the largest protests since 1994, when Fidel Castro was still alive. Spurred by shortages of food and vaccines amid a spike in COVID-19 cases on the island, as well as by long-standing popular anger toward the repressive government, marchers called for Díaz-Canel to step down while chanting “freedom” and “down with Communism.” The Cuban government has responded to the protests with security crackdowns across the country and at least 80 arrests, according to Cuban activists. In a statement Monday, President Biden said, “We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime.”

Irish mixed martial artist and megastar Conor McGregor crumpled in the Octagon Saturday night in agony and defeat after his ankle snapped in the final seconds of the first round of his lightweight bout with Louisiana native Dustin Poirier at UFC 264. With Poirier leading decisively before the injury, the fight was called by doctor stoppage. It was a disappointing ending to the rubber match between the two elite fighters who had each claimed one knockout victory in their previous two matchups—even more disappointing as McGregor continued to mouth off while immobile on the ground, threatening to kill Poirier and his wife in their sleep before he was wheeled out on a stretcher and rushed to get emergency surgery for a fractured tibia and fibula.

In more sports news, Serbian tennis pro Novak Djokovic defeated Matteo Berrettini to win his sixth championship at Wimbledon, tying the record held by Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. And Italy defeated England to win the Euro 2020 final, after a 1-1 match was decided by a shoot-out in which Italy’s goalie stopped three penalty kicks.

Israeli archaeologists have found what appears to be a jug estimated to be about 3,100 years old inscribed with the name of Jerubbaal, the biblical judge. This is the first time the name has been found on an artifact outside of the biblical book of Judges. The discovery was made during an excavation in Khirbat er-Ra’i, a site near Kiryat Gat in southern Israel.
Read it here: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israeli-archaeologists-find-biblical-name-jerubbaal-inked-on-pot-from-judges-era-1.999061

“Start snitching” is the gist of a new campaign from the FBI that leans way into repressive security state territory by encouraging family members to “help prevent homegrown violent extremism” by reporting “suspicious behaviors” to the agency.

Acting as his own best marketing department, British billionaire Richard Branson launched into space Sunday, boosting the profile of his Virgin Galactic business as competition between private space travel businesses heats up. The flight aboard the VSS Unity lasted roughly an hour and reached an altitude of 53.5 miles above the earth, with a five-person crew of pilots and specialists controlling the ship and Branson as the sole passenger. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla owner Elon Musk are also in the space business, in which commercial travel is the most exciting and attention-grabbing product on offer but only one part of a much larger market that includes plans to develop communications satellites and other space infrastructure.

A Haitian-born doctor who has lived in Florida off and on for the past 20 years has been arrested and named as a suspected ringleader in the assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse. The doctor, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 63, is the third person with ties to the United States who has been arrested in the plot, along with some two dozen suspected mercenaries from Colombia. Multiple contradictory accounts have emerged about the nature of the plot that led to the killing of Moïse, but new details suggest that Sanon was attempting to seize power in Haiti. With new details coming out and the plot growing more complicated by the day, it’s clear that it will be some time before we have anything like a full picture of what happened in Haiti.

In a sign that the market for Boomer nostalgia is giving way to Gen X nostalgia, an original, opened copy of Super Mario 64 just sold for $1.56 million. The Nintendo classic that marked the dawn of a new gaming era was placed on auction in Dallas and sold Sunday. Previously, a copy of The Legend of Zelda sold for $870,000 and a different, unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros sold for $660,000. They don’t make it cheap to buy your youth back at auction. 

Here’s a survey that looks at the class dynamics involved in efforts to defund the police. Bottom line: It’s the folly of well-off people.

% who support defunding the police

Income less than $50K: 22%

Income $50-100K: 23%

Income more than $100K: 32%

Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while taking a toll on the lower classeshttps://t.co/eJUDdKrxEj pic.twitter.com/XBjmZAPHT5

— Rob Henderson (@robkhenderson) July 10, 2021

Editor’s note: A news item in Friday’s edition of The Scroll mentioned a twitter thread that provided “an illuminating, if sympathetic, account” of how millions of “non-insane, non-extremist Trump supporters might have come to the conclusion that the 2020 election was stolen.” It was some buildup, but I failed to provide the link. I regret the oversight. Here’s the thread in question:

I think I’ve had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x

— MartyrMade (@martyrmade) July 8, 2021

The Back Pages

We See You Randi

In a column in Sunday’s New York Post, Karol Markowicz sees teachers unions attempting to slip out and escape the legacy of their efforts to keep schools closed, and does her best to shut the door. In light of new guidance from the CDC that acknowledges the hardship to children caused by prolonged closure and urges schools to reopen, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, is trying to rewrite history. Markowicz explains:

Last week, The Washington Post ran an adoring interview with Weingarten, the latest in a string of carefully placed pieces in friendly outlets aimed at fixing her shattered reputation. Here she is “taking a strong stand”; there she is calling “for reopening all classrooms next year.”

It’s gaslighting, and the record must be set straight.

Last September, as schools across the country were trying to open, Weingarten could be counted on to oppose any such move. “If community spread is too high … if you don’t have the ­infrastructure of testing, and if you don’t have the safeguards that prevent the spread of viruses in the school, we believe that you cannot reopen in person,” Weingarten said.

As Markowicz points out, by that point U.S. officials had ample evidence to draw on—including the example of schools in Europe where schools “had opened without masking, without social distancing, and with no ‘infrastructure of testing.’”

Again and again, Weingarten responded to evidence that schools could be safely reopened by using the union’s considerable muscle to lobby for keeping kids out of the classroom. Emails that have since been released to the public show that “safety” and policy suggestions made by high-level AFT officials to members of the CDC in February were incorporated, sometimes verbatim, into the agency’s guidance.

As Oakland school teacher Alex Gutentag (soon to be interviewed in the Backpages) described in a recent Tablet essay, it was often the neediest kids who suffered most:

It is impossible to overstate the severity of this disruption caused by school closures for these students, many of whom did not have a computer or internet at home when virtual learning began. Online, my students got only a fraction of the regular curriculum. Kids who had once loved the social aspects of school were left with only the parts of school they hated, and students with disabilities who depended on school for daily living needs were cut off from a vital service.

The reason for calling attention to this now is not only to keep Weingarten from deflecting blame onto Jewish members of the “ownership class,” as she has tried to do in the past. It’s also because kids suffered and are still suffering because of the decisions that she made.

Read it here: https://nypost.com/2021/07/11/dont-let-randi-weingarten-whitewash-her-role-in-school-closures/