Biden commemorates 75th anniversary of desegregation order in U.S. armed forces and condemns political blockade on military appointments

by NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent

 Stacy M. Brown

July 29, 2023

President Joe Biden Credit: Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz

In a ceremony held at the Truman Library Institute, President Joe Biden paid tribute to a pivotal moment in American history—the 75th anniversary of the executive order signed by President Harry Truman that desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces.

The commemoration not only honored the courage and sacrifice of Black veterans but also highlighted the profound impact of diversity on the strength and capabilities of the military.

President Harry S. Truman’s landmark order, signed on July 26, 1948, declared that there should be “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin,” Biden emphasized.

During the three-day symposium, Biden championed the significance of this decision, which paved the way for future civil rights laws and legal rulings and laid the foundation for a more inclusive and powerful military.

In his address, the President praised the contributions of service members of color, acknowledging their equal bravery and sacrifices.

He celebrated the increasing diversity within the U.S. military, noting that over 40 percent of the active-duty force comprises people of color, a significant increase from the mere 2 percent representation in 1948.

“As our military became more diverse, it became stronger, tougher, and more capable — proving our diversity is a strength, not a weakness — a necessary part of our warfighting and our deterrence and our successful military operations,” the President insisted.

“And our unity out of many, not division, ensures good order and discipline, unit cohesion, effectiveness, and military readiness. We’ve seen it with generations of patriots, regardless of who they are mentored and trained by. Fellow servicemen from every background, like my friend, the late Colin Powell.”

Biden also highlighted the progress made in promoting gender equality, with about 20 percent of the current active-duty force comprised of women.

“Our military became stronger, tougher, and more capable as it became more diverse,” Biden asserted.

He noted that diversity is not a weakness but a strength, vital to successful military operations, warfighting, and deterrence.
Unity, he said, is a critical factor in maintaining good order, discipline, and unit cohesion.

However, the President also used the occasion to address a pressing issue affecting the military—the political blockade on military appointments.

He pointed out that Republican senators, particularly Sen. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama, have been obstructing more than 300 military operations nominations for political reasons, causing significant harm to military readiness, security, leadership, and troop morale.

Among the pending appointments is General C.Q. Brown, an F-16 pilot and wing commander, who is poised to become the first African American to lead any Armed Services branch as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Additionally, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the second woman in the Navy to achieve the rank of four-star admiral, is awaiting confirmation as the first female Chief of Naval Operations.

Biden voiced his concern that this partisan freeze on appointments is disrupting military families’ lives, freezing their pay, and impacting their ability to plan for the future.

He argued that it’s crucial to have these outstanding leaders confirmed to address national security challenges effectively and support military families in their critical career decisions.

The President also criticized the opposition to Pentagon policies that would grant servicemen and women and their family’s access to reproductive healthcare rights in states where such access is currently denied.

He condemned the GOP blockade, stressing that it was affecting the lives of military spouses and service members stationed in those states.

Biden urged an end to the political impasse, emphasizing the importance of putting the needs of the military first and prioritizing national security above partisan agendas.

“A growing cascade of damage and disruption, all because one senator from Alabama and 48 Republicans who refuse to stand up to him, to lift the blockade over the Pentagon policy offering servicemen and women, their families access to reproductive healthcare rights they deserve if they’re stationed in states that deny it,” Biden remarked.

“I think it’s outrageous. But don’t just take it from me. Hundreds of military spouses petitioned to end the extreme blockade. One spouse referencing the senator from Alabama said, quote, ‘This isn’t a football game. This nonsense must stop right now.’”

Tax complaint filed against rightwing parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty




Michigan attorney alleges organization, named an extremist group by Southern Poverty Law Center, in violation of non-profit status

MacKenzie Ryan

THE GUARDIAN 

Sat 29 Jul 2023 

A Michigan attorney has confirmed she filed an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) complaint against Moms for Liberty, the parental rights group with positions against racially inclusive and LGBTQ+ education in schools. The complaint, which is private but was obtained by the Guardian, alleges that the rightwing organization is in violation of its 501(c)4 non-profit status.

Experts in tax law say an IRS investigation into the Moms for Liberty, named an extremist group by Southern Poverty Law Center, would take at least two years. If their non-profit status is revoked, it would most likely cause the group to re-characterize as a private organization, further decreasing transparency about how money is flowing into it.

Representatives for Moms for Liberty declined to comment, saying they would be unable to respond to questions without seeing a copy of the complaint.

The eight-page complaint questions whether Moms for Liberty is a political educational organization and notes public posts endorsing Republican candidates, the group’s campaigning for Republican candidates, and links to partisan training materials.

“It would be a permissible educational purpose if there were advocating to remove gender discussions from classrooms and schools if there was a balanced presentation of benefits and drawbacks of using a person’s preferred pronouns, supporting LGBTQ youth, impacts on children of being ‘exposed’ to LGBTQ supportive environments,” the complaint states. “There is not.”

The complaint cites a landmark case, American Campaign Academy v Commissioner, in which a school for Republican candidates was ultimately denied its non-profit status because it was providing partisan-only education.

Admission to local chapters is through private Facebook pages and controlled by the national organization, the complaint continues, obscuring the ability to determine how the group’s educational activities benefit the public.

The IRS complaint also examines if Moms for Liberty is an action organization, raising questions about its participation in political campaigns and active recruitment of school board candidates.

“The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office,” the complaint reads. “However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity.”

Many of the elements of the complaint – the issues raised about Moms for Liberty’s private memberships and websites and questions about it being a political educational organization – will not pass muster, Phillip Hackney, associate professor of law at University of Pittsburgh said, though Hackney said he does think the complaint is correct in bringing up the group’s intervention in political campaigns. 501(c)4 groups, the most common type of dark money organizations, are allowed to endorse candidates and participate in an unlimited amount of lobbying. Hackney warned the group’s campaigning and promoting candidates can theoretically get into “a damage area” if it exceeds 25% of their group’s activities.

If it stretches past that to 25 to 50% of the group’s activities, it reaches “a real danger zone”, he said. Once campaigning becomes more than half of what the group is participating in, they can lose their non-profit status. With continuing budget resolutions, Hackney said Congress has made it hard for the IRS to give clarity in this space.

Additionally, Hackey calls 501(c)4 groups “charitable-organizations lite”, formed exclusively for social welfare purposes with the goal of doing something broadly in the public interest. Social welfare is a hard-to-define term, he said; as a result, the organizations that don’t quite fit the standards for a charitable non-profit will instead go into the “trash bin” of a 501(c)4.

A wide range of organizations can fit into the gray-area definition of social welfare. An Urban Institute study found that the majority of 501(c)4 groups are community service clubs, but also include sports leagues, veterans organizations, health providers and insurers, and homeowner and tenant associations.

More people are familiar with 501(c)3 non-profit, tax-exempt charitable organizations that do not need to pay taxes on earnings or donations, a benefit that makes this type of non-profit “superior” to 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, Hackney said. Charities can do a small amount of lobbying, though the exact amount of activities and expenses they’re allowed to contribute according to IRS law remains unclear. They are nonetheless prohibited from “intervening in a political campaign directly or indirectly”, such as endorsing a presidential candidate, Hackney said.

“That same prohibition does not apply to a (c)4. A number of charitable organizations will set up a charity, then have a sister social welfare organization that conducts lobbying,” Hackney said, calling it a “troublesome space”.

The charity will not be able to intervene with a political campaign, while the sister organization will. The organizations need to ensure the money coming in through the charity does not get mixed in with the 501(c)4 sister organization.

Social welfare organizations do not receive the same type of far-reaching tax benefits as charities. For example, they do not need to pay taxes on their goods and services if they further the organization’s purpose. If that standard isn’t met, a business tax applies. Nevertheless, this type of non-profit structure contains a tremendous boon for wealthy donors: tax exemption on gifted securities.

Barre Seid, a Chicago billionaire, donated $1.65bn in securities to the Marble Freedom Trust, a rightwing 501(c)4 run by Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo. Marble Freedom and Seid did not need to pay taxes on the stock transfer, which represented 100% of Seid’s ownership of the electrical goods manufacturing company Tripp Lite. If the securities had appreciated during the time frame Marble Freedom Trust owned the stock, it wouldn’t have been required to pay taxes on those gains. However, the conservative fund ultimately sold the stock; the power management company Eaton Corporation acquired it in March 2021.

Within a month, Marble Freedom Trust used the proceeds from the sale to funnel tens of millions of dollars into other conservative groups advocating for rightwing judges and greater privacy protections for libertarian and conservative donors, CNN reported.

Currently, charitable organizations and social welfare organizations do not need to disclose their donors. IRS rules about non-profit donor disclosures changed during the Trump administration, opening the tap for dark money to flood election politics without the public knowing about it. Hackney argued that disclosure is “a reasonable thing” that is “part of the democratic fabric”, but social welfare organizations are able to operate in a way that resists it, particularly when they are doing issue advocacy.

IRS investigations into a 501(c)4 like Moms for Liberty would be “heavily fact intensive”, Hackney said, with an agent reviewing materials and going back and forth with attorneys for 18 months. The IRS has a statute of limitations to complete an investigation within three years, he said. If the group’s status is revoked after that time, it probably would not owe back taxes but would reorganize as a taxable, private organization with even less transparency and no prohibitions on political campaigning.

 

The Return of MDMA

Some doctors are itching to prescribe ecstacy again. How do we avoid the regulatory mistakes of the '80s?

NIKO VOROBYOV | 7.29.2023  REASON

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(Photo 177051537 © Olha Karpovych | Dreamstime.com)

I Feel Love MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World, by Rachel Nuwer, Bloomsbury, 384 page, $28.99

In 2006 a Florida man named Zulfi Riza reached out to Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Riza was suicidal. He was suffering from PTSD, anxiety, depression, and anger issues. He had tried countless remedies, and he felt that Doblin was his last hope. Riza had heard that an underground network of psychiatrists practiced therapy using the illegal drug MDMA, better known as ecstasy or molly. And Doblin knew of such a therapist.

But Riza also suffered seizures. Should a medical emergency take place during a session, the therapist would be exposed and could lose their license, or worse.

Doblin told him he couldn't help. Riza killed himself the very same morning.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had unilaterally outlawed MDMA in 1985 under emergency powers granted to it by Congress. To back up the ban, the agency cited flimsy evidence about MDA, another drug entirely. It was a catastrophic case of government overreach. Zulfi Riza was just one of many people whose lives may have been saved had they not been forced to seek help in secret.

The DEA isn't the only villain in this story. In 2002, a senator from Delaware named Joe Biden proposed the Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy (RAVE) Act. This eventually passed, in somewhat watered-down form, as the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act. It basically made party organizers liable for drugs consumed on the premises. This made it much more complicated to organize services such as testing partygoers' drugs for dangerous ingredients, as it would implicitly admit there was drug-taking on-site.

At a time when Americans are dying in record numbers from accidentally ingesting substances such as fentanyl, a de facto ban on drug checking in places where Americans take drugs—clubs, festivals—seems especially criminal.

Now that the war on weed is all but lost—federal legalization of marijuana feels like a matter of when, not if—the next battlefront will be over MDMA and other psychedelics. This year Australia allowed licensed therapists to give patients the drug. (It did the same as well for magic mushrooms.) Meanwhile, the Biden administration expects MDMA and psilocybin to be approved therapeutically within the next few years.

Rachel Nuwer's book I Feel Love arrives just in time for the debate. It exhaustively chronicles MDMA's journey from a therapeutic tool to an underground party pill and back to therapy. Although many drug books dwell on the criminal element—killer kingpins, sophisticated smugglers—Nuwer, a respected science journalist, mostly prefers to explore the positive potential of ecstasy and the forces, such as MAPS, seeking to unleash it.

As illicit narcotics go, ecstasy is relatively benign. It does not, as an infamous episode of Oprah suggested, turn your brain into Swiss cheese. Instead, it floods you with an overwhelming sense of love, joy, and empathy—the kind of feeling you get, as Nuwer puts it, "if you were suddenly reunited with a good friend that you hadn't seen in years, and you stayed up all night talking because you were so happy to see each other."

It's precisely these properties that make MDMA such a useful tool for addressing trauma, anxiety, and other mental health issues. Since it's virtually impossible to feel bad while on it, patients can dive deep into traumatic events without being overcome with emotions, and open up to their therapists about things they'd normally keep bottled up.

But as any seasoned tripper will tell you, it's not just the drugs; it's how and where you use them—the set and setting. Someone undergoing MDMA-assisted therapy will get support and guidance from trained professionals. Likewise, someone spending all night pumping his fist in the air at a warehouse party in Brooklyn is unlikely to walk away with any psychological breakthroughs.

Rick Doblin's quest to legalize ecstasy features prominently in the book. Doblin has been fascinated with psychedelics ever since his time studying at New College in Florida, in those days an open-minded institution where students took acid and hung around a clothes-free swimming pool. When the DEA announced its intent to outlaw ecstasy in 1984, Doblin led the counterattack, rallying lawyers, shrinks, and scientists. When that failed and the ban was soon to go into effect, Doblin sold ecstasy pills that had been donated by one of the drug's first kingpins, Michael Clegg, to fund experiments on rats and dogs. Doblin then enrolled at Harvard and interned at the White House to become an insider in government policy.

MAPS has been behind several promising studies showing MDMA's potential in treating combat veterans, sexual assault survivors, and others. Less happily, Doblin and MAPS have been criticised recently for how they handled a sexual abuse case during one of their clinical trials. While creepy therapists are hardly unique to psychedelics, tossing mind-altering chemicals into the mix leaves patients particularly vulnerable. Doblin also has a reputation as a psychedelic evangelist who sometimes gets ahead of himself, which has hurt the cause at times. To her credit, Nuwer doesn't shy away from Doblin's flaws, which will likely get more attention as the debate around psychedelics heats up.

Although Nuwer does an excellent job of breaking down the scientific studies of ecstasy and how exactly it works on the brain, there are still gaps in the research. Some experts have questioned whether enough is known about those for whom MDMA-assisted therapy doesn't work. Could it actually make things worse? Certainly, there are accounts of patients feeling suicidal after a session, a point which Nuwer perhaps covers a little too briefly.

Still, most people aren't taking ecstasy in a clinical setting to cope with survivor's guilt after surviving an IED blast in Fallujah. They're doing it to let loose at boisterous jamborees like Coachella and Burning Man. Nuwer feels no shame describing herself rolling on molly at house parties.

As for ecstasy's alleged dangers: Millions of people have taken the drug since the late '80s, but there hasn't been a corresponding epidemic of brain damage. An infamous study that seemed to show that it caused brain damage in monkeys turned out to be bogus after it was discovered the monkeys had been injected not with molly but with meth.

That isn't to say ecstasy is harmless. Nothing is—even caffeine can kill you in heroic doses. But most of the drug's dangers exist precisely because of the DEA's decision to ban it all those years ago. Nuwer tells the story of Martha Fernback, a 15-year-old English schoolgirl who died in 2013 after swallowing half a gram of 91 percent pure MDMA powder. Like almost everyone else who wants to feel the euphoric bliss of molly, she purchased her gear from an underground pusher, not a licensed pharmacist. She had no idea what dose she was taking, or even if it contained MDMA at all.

Imagine if we played the same stupid games with liquor or beer. Actually, you don't have to imagine. Certain parts of the world have banned booze, so the people there aren't sipping fine wine; they're drinking moonshine or bathtub hooch. Many of them then go blind or die. Rather than crusade against the evils of drugs, Martha's mother joined a campaign called Anyone's Child, calling for a reform of British laws and the legalization of ecstasy.

The ancient Greeks had a word, pharmakon, that can mean either "poison" or "medicine." It's too bad we can't always tell which is which.

Studies Keep Finding That Social Media Algorithms Don't Increase Polarization. Why Is the Press So Skeptical?

New research on Facebook before the 2020 election finds scant evidence to suggest algorithms are shifting our political views.

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN | 7.29.2023 

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(Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash )

New research looking at Facebook in the run-up to the 2020 election finds scant evidence to suggest that social media algorithms are to blame for political polarization, extremism, or belief in misinformation. The findings are part of a project in which Meta opened its internal data to academic researchers. The results of this collaboration will be publicized in 16 papers, the first four of which were just published in the journals Science and Nature.

One of the studies found that switching users from an algorithmic feed to a reverse chronological feed—something suggested by many social media foes as the responsible thing to do—actually led to users seeing more political content and more potential misinformation. The change did lead to seeing less content "classified as uncivil or containing slur words" and more content "from moderate friends." But none of these shifts made a significant difference in terms of users' political knowledge, attitudes, or polarization levels

"Algorithms are extremely influential in terms of…shaping their on-platform experience," researcher Joshua Tucker, co-director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, told The Washington Post. Despite this, "we find very little impact in changes to people's attitudes about politics and even people's self-reported participation around politics."

Another of the experiments involved limiting re-shared content in some users' feeds. Reshares—a measure of social media virility—"is a key feature of social platforms that could plausibly drive" political polarization and political knowledge, the researchers suggest. Users who saw no reshared content for three months did wind up having less news knowledge, as well as lower engagement with the platform and less exposure to "untrustworthy content." But it did not make a difference in political attitudes or polarization levels.

Nor did increasing users' exposure to ideologically diverse views—as another of the experiments did—wind up significantly shifting "affective polarization, ideological extremity, candidate evaluations and belief in false claims."

Taken together, the studies strike a strong blow against the "zombie bite" theory of algorithmic exposure, in which people are passive vessels easily infected by divisive content, fake news, and whatever else social media platforms throw at them.

They're the latest in a long line of papers and reports casting doubt on the now-conventional wisdom that social media platforms—and particularly their algorithms—are at fault for a range of modern political and cultural problems, from political polarization to extremism to misinformation and much more. (Reason highlighted a lot of this research in its January 2023 cover story, "In Defense of Algorithms.")

Yet despite a substantial body of research challenging such assumptions, a lot of the press remains credulous about claims of tech company culpability and villainy while reporting very skeptically on any evidence to the contrary. And this media bias is on full display in the coverage of the new Facebook and Instagram studies.

The Post's piece on them contains this in-article ad after the first paragraph: "Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter."

It's an almost perfect distillation of the larger dynamic at play here, in which traditional media—having lost ample eyeballs and advertising dollars to social media—seems intent to cast tech platforms as untrustworthy, unscrupulous, and dangerous for democracy, in contrast to the honest, virtuous, and democracy-protecting members of the mainstream press.

The Post piece goes on to quote three people uninvolved with the Facebook studies who have qualms about it, including "Facebook whistleblower" Frances Haugen. "She argued that by the time the researchers evaluated the chronological approach during the fall of 2020, thousands of users already had joined mega groups that would have flooded their feeds with potentially problematic content," the Post reports.

This is, of course, a very different complaint than the one typically heard from Haugen and her ilk—that Facebook's algorithms deliberately push divisive and extreme content. Here Haugen shifts the goal posts, complaining about groups that people self-select into and the fact that Facebook showed them content from these groups at all.

And the Post also moves the goal posts, describing the study as being "conducted in a world in which, in many ways, the cat was already out of the bag. A three-month switch in how information is served on a social network occurred in the context of a long-standing change in how people share and find information." Tucker tells the Post: "This finding cannot tell us what the world would have been like if we hadn't had social media around for the last 10 to 15 years."

Of course, the big fear for years has been about bursts of election-time information—pushed by hostile foreign actors, U.S. political groups, etc.—and their potential ability to tilt political outcomes thanks to algorithmic amplification. These new studies squarely strike at such fears, while any "long-standing change" in information finding is, in this context, utterly irrelevant, as is some hypothetical world in which social media never existed. The only purpose statements like these seem designed to serve is to minimize the findings in question.

The coverage in Science—which published three of the new papers—is even weirder. The journal has packaged the studies in a special issue with the cover line "Wired to Split" and an introduction titled "Democracy Intercepted."

The cover features two groups of people—one dressed in red, one dressed in blue—sitting on opposite sides of the Meta logo, facing in opposite directions. Each member of each group is intently looking at a laptop or tablet or smartphone, with several members appearing outraged. The design seems to illustrate the exact opposite of what was actually found in the studies, as do the slogans and introductory text associated with the new studies.

"Can a business model that prioritizes 'engagement algorithms' pose a threat to democracy?" asks Science in the introduction. It goes on to state that "tech companies have a public responsibility to understand how design features of platforms may affect users and, ultimately, democracy. The time is now to motivate substantive changes and reforms." It teases the research in question—without once mentioning that the findings go against more hysterical interpretations. It's as if the whole package was designed with a preferred narrative in mind but no regard for the actual research at hand.

Because what the actual research found—as Talia Stroud, a lead researcher on the project and director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin puts it—is that experimenting with popular ideas to tweak algorithms in a supposedly socially responsible way simply "did not sway political attitudes."

Stroud is quoted in Nature, which does a better overall job of framing the research in a realistic way ("Tweaking Facebook feeds is no easy fix for polarization, studies find" is the headline of an article about it). But even Nature can't resist quotes that minimize the findings. "The science is nice, but the generalizability seems limited," Northwestern University political scientist James Druckman is quoted in Nature as saying. "This is just another data point in that discussion."

ELIZABETH NOLAN BROWN is a senior editor at Reason.

Congressional Black Caucus confronts ongoing assault on Black rights

by NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent Stacy M. Brown

July 29, 2023

Congressional Black Caucus members Credit: Photo courtesy of NNPA

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) firmly stated that Black Americans are being attacked in various ways nationwide, with Republicans leading these efforts.

“We refuse to be victims, and we will not be silenced,” declared CBC Chairman and Representative Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) during a State of Black America press event held at the Capitol.

“Our fundamental rights are under siege, and our history is being denied. But we will not passively witness these actions. Too many people count on us to fight for them.”
Recent events in several GOP-led state legislatures have intensified concerns within the CBC.

Despite a Supreme Court order, Alabama and Louisiana legislatures refused to create an additional district with a majority of Black residents.

The Florida State Board of Education has approved new education guidelines that downplay the harsh history of slavery.

Instead, they emphasize the perceived benefits gained from the skills of enslaved people.
Rep. Maxwell Frost from Florida, the youngest member of the House, expressed frustration with his state’s guidelines.

He said these guidelines aim to erase and indoctrinate this generation with white supremacy.

However, Frost warned that Florida officials should not underestimate Black America’s determination to organize and resist.

Members of the CBC said that statements made by their GOP counterparts at the Capitol have deeply disturbed them, adding to the mounting discontent. Rep. Eli Crane from Arizona made an offensive comment during a House floor debate by referring to Black people as “colored people.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Tommy Tuberville from Alabama defended a controversial statement by denying the racism of white nationalists.

Horsford acknowledged that expectations from Republican leaders are minimal at this point, but Representative Troy Carter (D-La.) demanded that the party’s leaders take a stand against such bigotry.

“The silence from Republicans and others in the face of such egregious statements is deafening,” Carter said. “We will not condone the erasing of history. We must stand together to put an end to this.”

The CBC has issued a list of demands, calling on the Department of Justice and the Department of Education to launch investigations into education policies.

The caucus recently met with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to discuss policies about Black history.

They also sent formal letters to Cardona and Attorney General Merrick Garland, urging for a “strong legal strategy.”

“Black people did not benefit from slavery; we built this country,” emphasized Horsford. “Our toil, sweat, and tears went into constructing the very foundation of this nation. Elevating Black America is an elevation for all. We will not tolerate this assault on our rights.”

Alef Flying Car Prototype in Works as Pre-Order Sales Surge, Company Says

BY ALEKS PHILLIPS ON 7/29/23 

Technology start-up Alef hopes to have a live demonstration prototype of its commercial flying car by the end of this year, its CEO told Newsweek, after the company announced it has already received 2,500 pre-orders.

The San Mateo, California-based outfit—which in October revealed its Model A, with an aerial range of 110 miles—said in late June that it had received approval from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) for a special airworthiness certificate, which would allow it to carry out research and development activities.

Jim Dukhovny, the man behind Alef and a science fiction enthusiast, said that once research and development of the Model A had finished, the company would begin "hand made production" of the car, before moving to an "automated manufacturing" set-up.

Once the Model A was in production, he said, Alef would seek full certification in the U.S., paving the way for the first domestic flights in a personal car that can also be driven on the road.

A prototype of the Model A flying car, manufactured by San Mateo, California-based tech start-up Alef, is seen on display and, inset, CEO Jim Dukhovny. The concept has already attracted 2,500 pre-orders.ALEF AERONAUTICS INC

"We hope to get it to the customers as soon as possible," Dukhovny said. He told CNBC in December that he anticipated that cars would be flown by consumers as early as 2025.


The number of customers looking to buy the $300,000 car when it is ready has surged since the start of the year. The company announced in January that it had received 440 orders in the final quarter of 2022, but it said this week that this had now risen to 2,500 pre-orders—a more than quintupling of interest.

Alef said on Tuesday that current orders alone would amount to $750 million in revenue once the cars were delivered—a tripling of its expected income in half a year. Some 2,100 individuals had placed deposits, while the sale of a further 400 had been brokered through commercial agreements with businesses, including one Californian car dealership.

The company said that the pre-orders "signify a proof of market demand from both individuals and corporations."

Alef flying car video reveals how $300,000 vehicle actually works

The Model A doesn't rely on large wings for flight like a conventional plane, but Alef has instead worked eight rotating blades underneath its permeable bodywork that elevate the car.

Computer-generated demonstrations of the concept show that the car's aerodynamic bodywork allows the entire vehicle to act as a giant wing, with the car tilting horizontally during flight. The car's passenger pod—which can seat two people—is designed to rotate after it takes off, so the driver is always facing the direction of travel.

The car will be entirely electric and is intended to be capable of being driven on the street and able to make vertical take-offs and landings—meaning owners could soon be flying straight off their driveways.

While the Model A is designed for longer-range travel, it will also be able to "hop" over congested areas on the road, allowing users to circumvent traffic.

But there are still a lot of hurdles the company has to overcome. Dukhovny, who has a background in software engineering, said that following its special airworthiness certification, "we hope to have a live demo of the precursor to Model A for the media by the end of this year" while development on the Model A continues.

To make flying cars a global possibility, Alef also needs to "verify with favorable jurisdictions outside [the] U.S. where we can deploy next year," he said, before production of the car could begin in earnest.

A computer-generated graphic demonstrating the Alef Model A in flight. Once it is in the air, the whole car is designed to rotate sideways so that its eight rotating blades can propel it forward.

ALEF AERONAUTICS INC


Announcing the FAA approval on June 27, the company said it was "the first time a vehicle of this nature has received legal approval to fly from the U.S. Government." At the time, Dukhovny described it as "one small step for planes, one giant step for cars."

An FAA spokesperson previously told Newsweek the Model A received special airworthiness certification on June 12 "for limited purposes, including exhibition, research and development." The provisional approvals carry various restrictions, depending on the vehicle they are granted for, including aerial surveillance and advertising.

However, the spokesperson also denied Alef's claim to being a flying car pioneer, saying that it was "not the first aircraft of its kind for which the FAA has issued a special airworthiness certificate."

Asked about this, Dukhovny said that "obviously [the] FAA is THE authority, so their word is ultimate," but suggested it was referring to electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft or experimental aircraft, "which have been certified before many times."

"However, from my knowledge, a car, in a traditional definition (driving, parking, looks—all of a traditional car) has never been certified," he added.

When approached for further comment on Friday, an FAA spokesperson told Newsweek that the agency stood by its previous statement, and declined to comment further.

Blinken tells Australia that WikiLeaks founder is accused of ‘very serious’ crime


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks to Australian Minister of Defense Richard Marles and Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong during Session I at Queensland Government House in Brisbane, Australia, Saturday, July 29, 2023. 

(Pat Hoelscher/Pool Photo via AP)

BY ROD MCGUIRK
 July 29, 2023

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday pushed back against Australian demands for an end to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s prosecution, saying the Australian citizen was accused of “very serious criminal conduct” in publishing a trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

Australia’s center-left Labor Party government has been arguing since winning the elections last year that the United States should end its pursuit of the 52-year-old, who has spent four years in a British prison fighting extradition to the United States.

Assange’s freedom is widely seen as a test of Australia’s leverage with President Joe Biden’s administration.

Blinken confirmed on Saturday that Assange had been discussed in annual talks with Foreign Minister Penny Wong in Brisbane, Australia.

“I understand the concerns and views of Australians. I think it’s very important that our friends here understand our concerns about this matter,” Blinken told reporters.

“Mr. Assange was charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country,” he added.

Wong said Assange’s prosecution had “dragged for too long” and that Australia wanted the charges “brought to a conclusion.”

Australia remains ambiguous about whether the United States should drop the prosecution or strike a plea bargain.

Assange faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse over WikiLeaks’ publication of of hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military documents in 2010.

American prosecutors allege he helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning steal classified diplomatic cables and military files that WikiLeaks later published, putting lives at risk.

Australia argues there is a “disconnect” between the U.S. treatment of Assange and Manning. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s 35-year sentence to seven years, which allowed her release in 2017.

JUST SAY NO TO TRANSPHOBIA

To the Other Dad on the Playground the Day My Son Wore a Pink Dress

 

This dad was apprehensive when his young son wanted to wear a pink dress to the playground. Another dad's reaction impressed him with the need to write about it. Here is the letter, dad to dad.

This dad was apprehensive when his young son wanted to wear a pink dress to the playground. Another dad’s reaction impressed him with the need to write about it. Here is the letter, dad to dad.

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Dear Other Dude at the Playground on Saturday –

I couldn’t fight the need to write you about an incident between our kids. Remember me? I was the dad with the son wearing a pink dress.

Before he burst onto the playground, and as I parked the car, he was positively vibrating. I asked, “Now…you’re sure you want to wear your dress?”

He shouted in response, “Yes! Because I want to show everyone how beautiful I am in this beautiful dress!”

It was a big deal for him; and for me.

He hasn’t asked to wear a dress “out,” before. I didn’t fight it. Who cares, right?

Or so we’d like to think.

As you noticed, he couldn’t contain his excitement showing off the dress to the only two kids playing…your daughter and her friend. He skipped and twirled and chased them for ten minutes shouting, “Do you like my dress? I’m wearing a dress! Can I play with you? Will you play with me?”

Remembering those ten minutes fills me with emotion…because his unencumbered joy thrilled me. He radiated happiness. He beamed like a sun, like a firework, like every clichéd metaphor for joy. Except it wasn’t a metaphor. It was glorious.

How I wish he could hold on to that pure excitement.

How I wish I could watch him be that thrilled every day of his life.

I’m sad because society somehow tamps down such delight. It’s embarrassing to the rest of us. Except behind closed doors, when do adults (or even teenagers) jump around with excitement? And some day even my little boy will probably be self-conscious about such excitement.

And of course, wearing a dress in public might not always bring him such unabashed joy.

Your daughter and her friend were obviously older and uninterested in welcoming a new playmate. (Especially one so desperate…nay, aggressive…in his playtime invitation.)

But my son continued, “Do you see my beautiful dress? It’s a Sleeping Beauty dress!”

Then my reticence was confirmed when your daughter walked by me saying to her friend, “I don’t want to play with a boy in a dress.”

I admit I wanted to trip her.

I think it’s safe to assume you’re a heterosexual father and you live in rural Connecticut. Parents probably don’t allow their kids to gender-bend. (You don’t even see it much in NYC.)

But when your daughter said to you, “Daddy, that boy is wearing a dress,” your response was a pure gold moment, for me: “Well…you’re wearing pants, aren’t you?”

I was touched and surprised by your compassion.

Like you, I just want my kids to be happy. And while I worry that wearing princess dresses might one day bring tears of betrayal for my son, right now, he loooooves to do so.

So, thank you.

Thank you for showing my son support for his choices.

Thank you for bringing more acceptance to your (understandably) inquisitive daughter.

I fully anticipate others insulting my boy’s self-expression. That obviously petrifies me. That’s what makes me tamp down (but not outlaw) the dresses. I want to protect my exuberant cherub from betrayal and shame for as long as possible. (I know that’s a losing battle, but still. A daddy can try.)

But more important that sadness is his self-expression. So we go with it and compliment him and encourage him, putting off that day of sadness for as long as possible.

And then we’ll deal with that.

So: thank you for encouraging my son’s joy.

You helped me be a better father, in turn.

Thanks, dude.

Daddy Coping in Style

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2017