Why Twitter says Bloomberg’s fake Sanders tweets don’t break its rules

The Bloomberg campaign’s controversial tweets fictitiously quoting Bernie Sanders, briefly explained

By Shirin Ghaffary Feb 25, 2020 VOX

Facing criticism, the campaign of Mike Bloomberg deleted a series of fictitious quotes by Bernie Sanders, which the campaign said was satire. Getty Images
IT WAS A JOKE EXCUSE

On Monday, presidential hopeful and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s campaign posted — and then deleted — several controversial tweets about rival Sen. Bernie Sanders that prompted confusion and tested the rules of what political campaigns can share on social media.

The tweets, which Bloomberg’s campaign called satire, featured fictitious quotes attributed to Sanders, in which Sanders appeared to praise dictators like Kim Jong Un, Bashar al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin, with the hashtag “#BernieonDespots.”

While the tweets are now gone, people are continuing to debate social media companies’ responsibilities when it comes to policing political speech online. Though Twitter and other platforms have implemented rules that limit the sharing of certain types of political misinformation, controversy abounds.

The Bloomberg campaign posts are another example of how much confusion exists online about what’s true and what’s not, and what’s the difference between a joke or an attack — and how finding a clear answer often depends on context and nuance that doesn’t always come through clearly in a tweet or a Facebook update.

The Bloomberg campaign just tweeted out 6 fake/mock quotes attributed to Bernie Sanders.

Then, in a separate tweet, the campaign said that "to be clear" the tweets were satire.

Has Twitter commented on whether the string of tweets violate its policies on misinformation? pic.twitter.com/g8pPL8YyYV— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) February 24, 2020

With the Bloomberg campaign’s tweets about Sanders, for example, the account followed up on the thread by tweeting, “To be clear — all of these are satire — with the exception of the 60 Minutes clip from last night.” (Sanders recently said on the CBS program that he opposes the authoritarian regime of Cuba’s late Fidel Castro, but that it’s “unfair to simply say everything is bad” about the leader, such as a mass literacy program he implemented).

To many, it was obvious these tweets were an attempt at a joke. But others criticized the Bloomberg campaign for posting what they saw as a misleading attempt to smear Sanders using fabricated quotes.

When the series of tweets were viewed together, it was more obvious that they were satirical. But the fake Sanders quotes appeared on some people’s Twitter feeds in isolation — lacking context, seemingly serious to some, and all the more confusing. It’s just one of several recent instances where Bloomberg’s tweets, sponsored memes, and other social media activity have tested the boundaries about what is allowed on social media

Not sure who's running this twitter feed, but these aren't real quotes & it's misleading for them to be in quotation marks. You might think the "joke" is obvious but a lot of people on the internet won't know it's satire. This is how disinformation spreads https://t.co/6TCATqsD2n— Clare Malone (@ClareMalone) February 24, 2020

Even when they’re not being satirical, politicians generally have a lot of leeway in what they can say on social media without violating company rules around misinformation or hate speech. President Trump has repeatedly tweeted false statements about everything from his impeachment proceedings to immigration, and he has posted media that some see as inciting violence toward political opponents. All of this has remained on Twitter because the company considers Trump’s posts newsworthy, despite calls for the company to take them down.

And Facebook (unlike Twitter and YouTube) continues to enforce a controversial policy that allows lies in political ads, such as the Trump campaign’s ad making false claims about the activities of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine. Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren has tested those boundaries by running a fake ad claiming Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg endorsed Donald Trump for president, meant to be a critique of the rule.

Twitter, like other major social media companies, doesn’t ban content just because it’s false or potentially misleading, but it does have a set of rules barring any content that’s considered “platform manipulation” or “spam.” A spokesperson for Twitter told Recode that the Bloomberg campaign’s specific tweets falsely quoting Sanders didn’t violate any of its current rules on the site.

If Bloomberg’s campaign had posted an edited image, like a fake screenshot (as opposed to text) of Bernie making fictitious statements, then it would likely be a violation of Twitter’s upcoming manipulated media policy that is rolling out on March 5.

The spokesperson also told Recode, “Admittedly, satire is a challenging one. Context of the content is important. As it pertains to the synthetic and manipulated media rule it is pretty well explained in the blog in that we evaluate the potential impact of the media i.e. is the content in question ‘shared in a deceptive manner.’”

Twitter’s policy is far from clear and will continue to require some subjective calls on what is and isn’t a joke. The rules on Facebook or YouTube are not much clearer because every major tech company is grappling in 2020 with how to balance users’ free speech with their ability to do harm.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg consistently (and perhaps smartly) continues to push the boundaries of these platforms’ rules — garnering criticism, but also getting free publicity.

Last Friday, Twitter suspended 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts run by people paid by the Bloomberg campaign who were posting identical tweets in favor of the candidate. Twitter said the accounts violated its policies on “platform manipulation and spam.” In this case, because the language of many of the posts were word-for-word copies of the same coordinated language, it was a clear violation of the platform’s rules.

The campaign also posted a doctored video of the last Democratic presidential debates that made it seem as though Bloomberg had an “epic mic drop” moment that stumped his opponents — even though, as my colleague Alex Ward explained, he didn’t.

The campaign has more broadly been paying people $2,500 a month to post positive content about Bloomberg on social media and text their friends about him. And it’s paying much more to big-name influencer Instagram accounts to post ironic memes about the candidate.

In every case, Bloomberg has received criticism, and in some cases, social media companies have hit the candidate with a slap on the wrist for these tactics that blur the lines between spam, misinformation, and clear advertising.

But in the end, the publicity may be well worth any criticism. Whether you agree with it or not, Bloomberg is smartly exploiting the gray areas social media companies have established around politics and free speech online. It’s a difficult problem that will only get more complicated for social media platforms as we get closer to Election Day.

TIME TO COME IN FROM THE COLD

Once Cold War heroes, ‘Miracle on Ice’ team struggles 

with backlash from donning ‘Keep America Great’ hats

 at Trump rally


'Greatest sports story': Trump praises ‘Miracle on Ice’ team
NO THAT WAS THE CANADIAN TEAM BEATING THE SOVIETS IN 1972

If he had to do it again, hockey legend Mike Eruzione said, he would not put on the red “Keep America Great” hat.

DUH OH

President Trump listens as Mike Eruzione, captain of the 1980 U.S men’s Olympic hockey team, speaks at a campaign rally on Feb. 21 in Las Vegas. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

He and his teammates from the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey squad hadn’t meant to make a grand political statement when they appeared onstage as President Trump’s surprise guests at a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Friday. They happened to be in town to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the “Miracle on Ice” — their shocking upset of the Soviet Union en route to the gold medal, perhaps the most unifying moment in American sports history — when they got a call from Trump’s campaign inviting them to a private photo line with the president.

The next thing they knew, Eruzione said, Trump was introducing them at the rally and a campaign aide was handing them the caps as they took the stage. Four of the former players chose not to wear them — but 10 others did, prompting a huge backlash on social media from Trump’s critics, who view the distinctive red campaign hats as sharply politicized symbols of hate, racism and xenophobia.

“You going to light into me, too? We’re getting killed!” Eruzione said in an interview. Now serving as the director of special outreach at his alma mater, Boston University, Eruzione said he has received angry calls and messages from the school’s alumni. One said he purchased Eruzione’s new book about the 1980 team but no longer intends to read it. His Twitter mentions are a nightmare

One message read: “In 1980, you beat the Russians, and yesterday the Russians beat you.”“If we knew we were going to piss off this many people, we probably would not have put the hats on,” said Eruzione, 65, who served as the team’s captain and scored the game-winning goal against the Soviet team. “That’s the big question here. A lot of the stuff I got was, ‘You guys said it’s not political, but when you put the hats on, you made it political.’ ”

The “Miracle” team is the latest group to become entangled in the fierce cultural fight over the meaning of the Trump campaign’s most successful piece of merchandise, one that has raised tens of millions of dollars since 2016, according to Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager. Last spring, Parscale said, the campaign surpassed 1 million sales of the $25 red “Make America Great Again” hats, featuring the 2016 campaign slogan in white lettering. That was before Parscale’s team unveiled a 2020 update with the new slogan, “Keep America Great.”

Though Trump campaign officials this week declined to provide an updated tally of how many hats have been sold, their ubiquity was evident at the Las Vegas rally, where it appeared that a majority in the crowd of thousands were wearing them.

Beyond their fundraising prowess, the “MAGA” and “KAG” hats have served as potent marketing for the president’s specific brand of nationalistic, us-versus-them politics, through which he has risen to power by provoking and accentuating the nation’s deep divisions of race, ethnicity and gender.

Over the years, the hats have become suffused with the divisive rhetoric of a president whose campaign rally refrains of “Build a wall,” “Send her back” and “Lock her up” have stirred up his conservative base and outraged his liberal and moderate critics. The MAGA slogan has been impugned by critics as an implicit desire to return to an era in American history when the white male ruling class did not feel threatened by minorities and women.

“It’s hard to believe there are still people who don’t get that it means, ‘Keep America white,’ and ‘Keep America free of Mexican immigrants,’ ” said Matthew A. Sears, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick in Canada who has written critically about the Trump hats.

“When people say it’s ‘just a hat,’ and you can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t attribute racism to it — that’s how symbols work,” Sears added. “It’s basically like a uniform: It’s a way to signal in shorthand something that stands for a whole realm of policies or positions.”Regardless of the intent of those who wear the Trump hats, they have been at the center of a number of highly charged incidents.

In November, Washington Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki enthusiastically donned a MAGA hat during the team’s White House celebration with Trump after winning the World Series, prompting the president to physically embrace him. The scene provoked an outcry on social media from fans pledging to no longer support him, but Suzuki professed he was “just trying to have some fun” and not being political.

Two weeks ago, Trump tweeted a short clip from HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” in which comedian Larry David de-escalates a road rage confrontation with a tough-looking biker by donning a red MAGA hat. “Tough guys for Trump!” the president tweeted, though his critics quickly noted that he appeared to miss the punchline. The episode features a recurring gag in which David employs the pro-Trump accessory as a “great people repellent” in liberal Los Angeles.

Trump’s supporters have accused his critics of overreacting to the hats and, in doing so, demonstrating their own political intolerance. Some Trump supporters have been physically assaulted for wearing MAGA hats, and some restaurant owners have declined to serve anyone wearing them.

In an email, Tim Murtagh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said: “The 1980 Olympic hockey team reminds us of a time when as a nation we came together to defeat communism. It is a shame that today’s liberals are so intolerant of other political viewpoints that they threaten to cancel such great sports heroes from our history.”

But critics said the hats, which have been worn by far-right groups and white supremacists, have made racial and ethnic minorities feel intimidated.

Alexandre Bissonnette, a Canadian man who reportedly spent hours scouring Trump’s Twitter feed, was sentenced last year to 40 years in prison for killing six Muslims in a Quebec City mosque in 2017; a photograph of him wearing a MAGA hat was found on his computer.

Last summer, Jeffrey Omari, a visiting assistant professor at Gonzaga University School of Law, wrote an essay titled, “Seeing Red: A professor coexists with ‘MAGA’ in the classroom,” in which he explained his reaction to a student wearing a Trump hat.

“I was unsure whether the student was directing a hateful message toward me or if he merely lacked decorum and was oblivious to how his hat might be interpreted by his black law professor. I presumed it was the former,” wrote Omari, who is African American. “As the student sat there directly in front of me, his shiny red MAGA hat was like a siren spewing derogatory racial obscenities at me.”

Omari said that after his piece was published in the ABA Journal, a legal trade magazine, he received so many threatening calls and emails that he stopped answering his phone and engaged campus police.

“I never anticipated the vast amounts of hate mail and threats we received,” he said.

Eruzione also expressed surprise at the outrage provoked by his appearance with Trump. A member of the president’s golf club in Jupiter, Fla., Eruzione, who said he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016, once appeared on Trump’s former reality show “Celebrity Apprentice.”

After the team took photos with him backstage in Las Vegas, Trump invited them to join him onstage. “What are you going to say?” Eruzione said. “To us it was, ‘Sure.’ ”

When he was handed the red hat, he said, “I just put it on. I wasn’t thinking. Maybe this shows I’m naive, shows I’m stupid. I don’t know. I don’t follow politics. I know he’s had some issues and said a lot of things people don’t like.”

Eruzione ruefully compared the backlash against the team with the joy in 1980 when they were hailed as heroes amid Cold War tensions. During the interview, he called up his Twitter account and began reading some of the angry tweets over the phone: “Did they have to wear those hats? … A shame on all of you for wearing those divisive, racist hats. … 40 years ago, you brought joy, but tonight it’s deep sadness.”

“I told my wife, ‘People think we are a disgrace,’ ” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO 
Feds order South Bay reservoir drained amid fears of catastrophic dam failure


By Bob Egelko and Michael Cabanatuan 

SF CHRONICLE

Video by ABC 7 San Francisco


Federal water officials have ordered Silicon Valley’s chief water supplier to start draining its largest reservoir by Oct. 1 because a major earthquake could collapse the dam and send floodwaters into communities from Monterey Bay to the southern shore of San Francisco Bay.

But Valley Water, the agency that manages the Anderson Dam and Reservoir, says it has already lowered the reservoir’s water below the level initially sought by federal officials — and that the total drainage the federal government now demands would actually make the dam more vulnerable to earthquake damage, while also reducing water supplies and causing environmental harm.

The reservoir, in a gorge 3 miles east of U.S. 101 between Morgan Hill and San Jose, is one of 10 storing water for the Santa Clara Valley Water District, now known as Valley Water. Built in 1950, it can hold 89,073 acre-feet of water, more than half of the 170,000 acre-feet stored in all of the district’s reservoirs.

Valley Water officials have known since 2008 that a 6.6 magnitude earthquake on the Calaveras Fault at the 240-foot earthen dam could cause it to collapse. Over the years, the agency has lowered water levels and reported its progress to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The reservoir, at current levels, “provides a buttressing effect” for the dam’s intake structure, Christopher Hakes, a Valley Water dam safety official, said in a Dec. 31 letter to FERC. “Lowering reservoir levels beyond the current level would decrease the structural reliability of the intake structure” and its protection against earthquakes.

FERC’s dam safety director, David Capka, was unconvinced. He ordered Hakes in a letter Thursday to drain the reservoir “as quickly as you can,” starting the process by Oct. 1 and completing it before the winter of 2021-22. In the meantime, Capka said, Valley Water can look for emergency water supplies and work with federal, state and local agencies to “minimize environmental impacts.”

“It is unacceptable to maintain the reservoir at an elevation higher than necessary when it can be reduced, thereby decreasing the risk to public safety and the large population downstream of Anderson Dam,” Capka wrote. “Your actions to date do not demonstrate an appropriate sense of urgency.” 

© Tom Stienstra, Tom Stienstra / The Chronicle

Coyote Creek downstream of the outlet from Anderson Dam near Morgan Hill west of U.S. 101.

In response, Valley Water’s chief executive, Norma Camacho, said in a statement Monday that “the demand to empty Anderson Reservoir could result in unsafe consequences.”

But the local district lacks authority to defy federal regulators. Valley Water spokesman Matt Keller said the district’s Board of Directors would address the issue shortly.

The district is due to start work in 2022 on a five-year earthquake retrofit for the dam. Camacho said legislation has been introduced in Sacramento to speed up the regulatory process for the retrofit.

The district reduced the storage level of the reservoir to 68% of capacity in 2008, then to 58%. It says it has now lowered the level to 45 feet above drainage, 10 feet below the level demanded by Capka in December.

Still, a spillover from the dam during heavy rains three years ago sent water pouring down Coyote Creek and into San Jose, inundating neighborhoods in one of the region’s worst floods in decades.

The district has alternate sources of water, including the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, which combined furnish more than half its supply, along with groundwater.

But Camacho, the chief executive, said draining the reservoir would not only be unsafe but also environmentally destructive.

“The inability to keep a consistent flow in Coyote Creek downstream of the dam year-round would significantly impact sensitive native fish, amphibians, reptiles, wetlands, and riparian habitats,” she said. “Water quality could also be significantly impacted downstream of the dam.”

The dispute coincided with, but was apparently unrelated to, the latest round of water wars between the Trump administration and California.

On Thursday, the state sued the federal government over new rules that supply more water to Central Valley farmers by increasing pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. The suit said the diversion violates environmental laws and would harm salmon and other endangered fish in the delta estuary.

SOUTH CAROLINA DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY DEBATE LOSERS

WASHINGTON POST PICKS THE BIGGEST LOSERS

 MSNBC MODERATORS 

CANNOT RUN A DEBATE (PROVEN YET AGAIN, AD NAUSEUM)

The moderators: There were two big problems here. One was that this was a complete free-for-all for much of the debate, with candidates talking over one another and no one enforcing the rules. Playing loose can work when it means the candidates actually debate, but many times Tuesday night, they were just allowed to talk past the moderators and game the system. The Post’s Josh Dawsey said it well:

And second — and speaking of gaming the system — was that the booing and cheering were out of control. There is a reason many debates prohibit outward shows of support or dissent: Because it encourages people to stock the room and play to the cameras. We don’t yet know if that’s what happened Tuesday, but Bloomberg’s supporters were especially vocal, and Sanders found himself booed a surprising amount, given he’s competing for a South Carolina win.

Meet the moderators of the South Carolina Democratic debate

Seven candidates take the stage ahead of the state’s primary this week

By Li Zhouli@vox.com Feb 25, 2020

Gayle King attends as ViacomCBS Inc. rings the opening

 bell at the Nasdaq on December 5, 2019, in New York City. 

John Lamparski/Getty Images


Journalists from CBS News will moderate the 10th Democratic debate in Charleston, South Carolina on Tuesday, February 25. The debate, which the network is co-hosting with the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, will air just days before Saturday’s South Carolina primary.

The network’s moderators will be CBS Evening News’s Norah O’Donnell, CBS This Morning’s Gayle King, Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan, CBS’s chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett, and 60 Minutes’ Bill Whitaker.

The effects of the debate could be significant: A sizable chunk of voters made their decisions in the last few days before the New Hampshire primary and cited the debate before the race as an important factor. The same dynamic could play out in South Carolina, where there is absentee voting but no formal early voting.

The criteria to qualify for this debate was very similar to the requirements for the Nevada debate: Candidates needed to hit a 10 percent polling threshold in at least four Democratic National Committee-sanctioned polls, or 12 percent in two South Carolina polls released between February 4 and February 24. They could also qualify for the debate by winning one delegate to the Democratic National Convention from the Iowa, New Hampshire, or Nevada races.

Seven candidates have qualified: Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar; former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg; former Vice President Joe Biden; and billionaire activist Tom Steyer.

The moderators, who will play a major role in shaping the night’s conversation, all cover politics in different capacities at CBS:
Norah O’Donnell is an anchor of the daily CBS Evening News program and the network’s election specials.
Gayle King is a host of the daily CBS This Morning program. She’s also editor-at-large of O, The Oprah Magazine and longtime best friends with Oprah.
Margaret Brennan is the network’s senior foreign affairs correspondent and the moderator of the weekly Face the Nation program.
Major Garrett is the chief Washington correspondent for CBS News.
Bill Whitaker is a correspondent for the weekly 60 Minutes program.
The Democratic National Committee is making a concerted effort to increase the diversity of debate moderators

The DNC has made a commitment to increase the diversity of debate moderators in the 2020 cycle and has mandated that at least one person of color and one woman serve as a moderator in every debate.

Given how historically white and male the debate space has been, greater diversity among moderators has been a priority for advocacy groups including NARAL, Emily’s List, and Color of Change.

In an open letter last spring, the groups urged media outlets and other organizations to ensure that at least 50 percent of the moderators running the debates were women and at least 50 percent were people of color. UltraViolet, an organization dedicated to gender equity, spearheaded the letter, which also called out sexism in political media coverage writ large.

Though the roster of moderators hasn’t always hit activists’ bar thus far, the DNC has lived up to its pledge. It began the debates in Miami last June with a diverse group of moderators. The 10th debate will continue that trend: Of the five moderators, three are women and two are people of color.

Hours after eulogizing Gigi and Kobe Bryant, Oregon's Sabrina Ionescu makes NCAA history

Ionescu entered the NCAA record books yet again on Monday against No,. 4 Stanford with her ninth rebound of the night, the 1,000th of her career.

That board made her the first player in college basketball history — man or woman — to record 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists in her career.


HISTORY!! 🐐👑

Sabrina Ionescu is the first NCAA player EVER with 2,000 points, 1,000 assists and 1,000 rebounds!!#GoDucks | @sabrina_i20 pic.twitter.com/TrJPrWLUW0— Oregon Women’s Basketball (@OregonWBB) February 25, 2020

It’s hardly the first time Ionescu has reached a milestone in her career, but that collection of her numbers — as well her NCAA record 26 triple-doubles — perfectly captures the well-roundedness of her game that has made her one of the biggest stars in women’s basketball as an amateur.

Ionescu’s success is also a reflection of her relationship with Bryant and his daughter Gianna. The elder Bryant once took Gianna and friends to one of Ionescu’s games at Oregon, and she had since struck up a personal relationship with the pair that included training with them and helping coach Bryant’s team.

She posted a lengthy tribute to the pair after their deaths last month, pledging to personally live out their legacy.

That relationship was further shown hours before the game at the Staples Center memorial service, where Ionescu spoke about Bryant’s impact on women’s basketball.


"I wanted to be a part of the generation that changed basketball for Gigi and her teammates. Where being born female didn't mean being born behind."

Sabrina Ionescu pic.twitter.com/HaaJEhHFbp— AJ McCord (@AJ_McCord) February 24, 2020

“I wanted to be a part of the generation that changed basketball for Gigi and her teammates,” Ionescu said. “Where being born female didn’t mean being born behind, where greatness wasn’t divided by gender.”

“‘You have too much to give to stay silent.’ That’s what he said. That’s what he believed. That’s what he lived. Through Gigi, through me, through his investment in women’s basketball. That was his next great act, a girl dad.

Ionescu is widely expected to be selected first overall in the upcoming WNBA draft, and seems well on track to becoming the kind of global star that can expand the reach of women’s basketball. Just like Kobe would have wanted.

Video player from: NBC Sports (Privacy Policy)Oregon basketball star Sabrina Ionescu spent her Monday morning paying tribute to Kobe Bryant as one of many speakers at the Los Angeles Lakers legend’s memorial service. She spent her Monday night doing the same thing on the court.

Military Will Study Brain Injuries From Iran Attack for Years: Pentagon

Military scientists will be studying injuries sustained in Iran's ballistic missile attack on American troops for years to come, a top Pentagon official has said.

© AYMAN HENNA/AFP via Getty Images/Getty A picture taken on January 13, 2020 shows damage at the Ain Al Asad military airbase housing U.S. and other foreign troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.

Joint Staff Surgeon Air Force Brigadier General Paul Friedrichs told reporters at a Monday briefing it was "extraordinary" that no U.S. troops were seriously injured in the January 8 attack on two Iraqi military bases hosting American soldiers.

U.S. forces initially reported no casualties, but it later emerged that at least 110 soldiers sustained traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) from the 11 impacts at the Ain al Asad base in Iraq's Anbar province. Those affected exhibited a range of symptoms, Friedrichs explained Monday, but none were classified as serious. Most have now returned to active duty.

Though normal examinations and MRI scans reveal much about TBI, Friedrichs said it is difficult to establish the extent of the injuries without taking samples from affected brains to study under microscopes, something done post-mortem.

Friedrichs—a neurologic surgeon by training—said TBI can be in the form of bruising on or bleeding in the brain—which can be seen on MRIs—or microscopic damage to nerves, which can only be identified in tissue samples with microscopes.

"The most definitive diagnosis is done after someone has died," he said. "But we'd prefer not to get to that point."

"We're a learning organization," Friedrich continued. "We're going to tear this data apart, in all likelihood, for years, comparing it with other datasets [from other conflicts and incidents]." He said the Pentagon intends to "learn as much from this as we can" through a "continuous learning process" that will last "a long time."

The Iranian attack—named Operation Martyr Soleimani after the major general assassinated by the U.S. days before—involved more than a dozen Fateh-110 missiles, 11 of which landed at the Asad base.

The missiles can carry a warhead of some 1,000 pounds—far larger than any U.S. forces have faced in recent low-intensity guerrilla wars in the region.

"No one lost a leg. No one lost an eye. No one lost a limb, which, you know, was remarkable, given the strength of these munitions," Friedrichs explained.

U.S. forces were pre-warned of the attack and most were able to take shelter in bunkers, though this did not entirely protect them from the concussive shock waves.

TBI symptoms include headaches, dizziness, memory problems, balance problems, nausea, vomiting, difficulty concentrating, irritability, visual disturbance and ringing in the ears.

Freidrichs said that six service members are still going through diagnosis, but that "every single person that we've identified is getting the treatment that they need."

Friedrichs noted that the bunkers were "very effective at protecting people from acute traumatic injuries.

"And that's a good news story that these service members who were exposed to a very significant attack did not have shrapnel or other life, limb or eyesight-type injuries there."

The Pentagon is already field testing pressure sensors that in future could give a clearer picture of who was exposed to dangerous blasts, Friedrichs said. "If your tracker shows that you were exposed to a blast event, then we're going ahead and evaluating those folks to see whether they have traumatic brain injury."

Corporate monopolies are hiding in your grocery aisle

Psst: The same company is selling you Q-Tips, mayonnaise, and Ben & Jerry’s.

By Emily Stewartemily.stewart@vox.com Feb 25, 2020

The typical American grocery aisle has an abundance of choice, but in reality, a handful of corporations control the majority of household brands. Andrew Renneisen/Getty Images


At your local pharmacy, the options can feel overwhelming, even in the deodorant aisle. Dove, Axe, or Degree? Or maybe Secret, Gillette, or Old Spice? Or maybe Speed Stick?

While the brands and labels are different, you actually don’t have that many choices at all. Three companies basically own the aisle — Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Colgate-Palmolive. They’re three of the biggest consumer goods conglomerates in the world.

That’s the thing about the choices you think you have in spending your money: A lot of the time, they’re just not real.

That’s the conclusion of a new report from the American Economic Liberties Project. The organization launched in February and is headed by Sarah Miller, former deputy director of the anti-monopoly think tank Open Markets Institute and an antitrust expert. Its mission is to combat monopolistic behavior and corporate power and their effects on democracy and the economy. It’s part of a growing push for antitrust enforcement on the left.

The Economic Liberties Project report delves into the “illusion of choice” — basically, the fact that across industries, a handful of corporations control the majority of products, brands, and services. It ranges from cereals, beers, and snacks to car rental services, hotels, and even eyeglasses.


“We assume that we have all of these choices and that all of these products are competing for our dollars on price and quality, and it’s really not the case,” Miller said in an interview. “It’s one other tactic in a set of tactics around how monopolistic conglomerates leverage market power.”  

Ben and Jerry do not own Ben & Jerry’s

You might vaguely know of Unilever, but you definitely know its products: Vaseline, Q-tips, Pond’s, Caress, and St. Ives. And that’s just what’s in the pharmacy. Unilever also owns Lipton and Tazo Tea, Seventh Generation and Cif, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Perhaps most surprising about Unilever’s catalog is its ice creams, including Breyers, Popsicle, Klondike, Talenti, and Ben & Jerry’s. The latter was acquired by Unilever in 2000.

There’s nothing particularly nefarious about companies such as Unilever owning a ton of brands, but it’s something that consumers just don’t realize. And in an age when people are trying to be more conscious of their purchasing choices, like seeking natural or local brands, it’s, well, jarring.

You think the money you spend on a pint of Cherry Garcia is going to Bernie Sanders-loving Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield up in Vermont. It’s actually going to London-based Unilever, which clocked over $50 billion in revenue last year across more than 100 brands. (Ben & Jerry’s is still headquartered in Burlington, though, and says it’s been able to largely stick to its socially conscious mission.)
A lot of the choice you see when you travel isn’t real

Three companies — Enterprise, Hertz, and Avis — control about half of the car rental industry, even if the names of the stands at the airport are different. Avis, for example, owns Zipcar, Enterprise owns Alamo, and Hertz owns Thrifty and Dollar.

And next time you’re planning a trip and trying to find the best prices on your flight or hotel, you might want to note that a lot of the websites you’re surfing aren’t actually competing with one another. Booking Holdings owns Booking.com, Kayak, and Priceline, among others.
A look at Big Eyewear

Among the most eye-popping (pun intended) multi-brand monopolies is in eyeglasses. $50 billion European conglomerate EssilorLuxottica essentially owns the eyewear industry — it manufactures brands such as RayBan, Oakley, and Ralph Lauren. It also owns LensCrafters, Sunglass Hut, and Vision Direct.

In 2018, journalist Sam Knight for the Guardian did a deep dive into EssilorLuxottica’s eye monopoly, which it achieved in 2017 when Essilor, a French company, bought Luxottica, an Italian company, for $24 billion:

If Luxottica has spent the last quarter of a century buying up the most conspicuous elements of the optical business (the frames, the brands and the high-street chains) then Essilor has busied itself in the invisible parts, acquiring lens manufacturers, instrument makers, prescription labs (where glasses are put together) and the science of sight itself.

The company holds more than 8,000 patents and funds university ophthalmology chairs around the world. In deals that rarely make the business pages, Essilor buys up Belgian optical laboratories, Chinese resin manufacturers, Israeli instrument makers and British e-commerce websites.
Why this matters

Corporate consolidation and monopolies aren’t the most headline-grabbing issues, but they’re really present in our everyday lives. New York University economist Thomas Philippon, author of The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, estimates that corporate consolidation is costing American households an additional $5,000 a year.

The idea is that the more competitors there are in a space, the more pressure there is to keep prices down and the quality of a product or service high. But because of how antitrust laws have been enforced (or, rather, not) in recent decades, competition has declined, and fewer players have been allowed to dominate. Even though, as the illusion of choice shows, people don’t even realize it.

But as I recently explained, monopolies and corporate concentration can impact much more than your grocery store receipt:

Corporate concentration means companies have to compete less for workers, and therefore could push wages down. Monopolies and oligopolies can also harm suppliers — if Amazon gets big and powerful enough, it could control what shippers such as FedEx and UPS can charge it.

Consumers also lose the ability to vote with their wallets and eyeballs — basically, to say, I don’t like what a company is producing, what it’s charging, or how it’s behaving and go somewhere else.

Corporate power is a hard problem to solve. It’s also often invisible. So the next time you go shopping, maybe check the label.

Elizabeth Warren takes aim at Amazon’s taxes again during speech at Seattle rally

BY JAKE GOLDSTEIN-STREET on February 23, 2020 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks at a rally in Seattle on Feb. 22. (Photo courtesy of Jake Goldstein-Street)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren called out Amazon in its own backyard at a rally in Seattle on Saturday evening.

The Democratic presidential candidate again criticized the Seattle-based tech giant for skirting federal taxes at an event that her campaign said drew more than 7,000 people.

“You know that last year, Amazon, Eli Lilly, and Halliburton reported billions of dollars in profits and paid zero in taxes,” she said, responding to an attendee during a Q&A session at end of her rally. She added that “rich people and giant corporations ‘ought to be paying their taxes, too.”

It was the only Amazon-related mention of the night at the Seattle Center Armory, just blocks from Amazon’s campus in South Lake Union. Warren, who previously spoke in Seattle this past August, also did not discuss her headline-grabbing proposal to break up and more closely regulate Amazon and other big tech companies.

The tax claim has become a rallying cry of Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, among others on the left. Amazon has been mentioned far more than any other tech company during the 2020 Democratic presidential debates, with candidates frequently citing the company’s tax bill.  

(GeekWire Photo)

Elected officials, progressive activists, and academics frequently take aim at Amazon for reportedly paying nothing in federal income taxes. Researchers and journalists came to that conclusion by calculating the tax deferrals and credits Amazon is eligible for. CNBC reported Amazon paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018 and received a $129 million tax rebate from the federal government, for example.

Amazon last month disclosed new details about its U.S. taxes for 2019, saying its federal income tax expense for the year was more than $1 billion, in addition to more than $2 billion in other types of federal taxes. It was the first time Amazon has published this level of detail about its federal tax obligations, after enduring years of criticism for not paying its fair share.
Related: Bernie Sanders takes on the ‘billionaire class’ at rally near Seattle, home to Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates

However, the federal income tax is still a small fraction of the company’s profits, representing about 6 percent of the $14.5 billion in operating income that Amazon reported in its year-end financial report.

Warren’s event in Seattle comes after a “dominant” performance at a Democratic debate in Las Vegas last week when she heavily criticized former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Warren attacked Bloomberg again on Saturday, saying that Bloomberg is “hiding his taxes” and would be like “substituting one arrogant billionaire for another.” She also criticized President Donald Trump for putting the interests of the rich over the poor.

“What Donald Trump hopes is that if we’re spending our time fighting each other, no one will notice that he and his corrupt family and his corrupt buddies are stealing the wealth and dignity of this country,” she said.

Warren’s call for a wealth tax drew some of the loudest applause of the night. The plan would implement a 2% annual tax on fortunes worth more than $50 million, and 3% on fortunes worth more than $1 billion.

“Democrats like a 2% wealth tax and a majority of Republicans like a 2% wealth tax,” she said.

Warren congratulated Sanders for winning the Nevada caucuses. Sanders spoke in the Seattle area last week, criticizing the “billionaire class” in the home of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — the two richest people in the world.

Other candidates have been visiting Washington. South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Vice President Joe Biden attended recent private fundraisers and Sen. Amy Klobuchar came to the University District in September for a public event at a coffee shop.

Washington is set to play more of a role in the primary with its contest moved up to March 10 and ballots being sent out last week, but the race could look wildly different come early next month with South Carolina voting next week and the 14 Super Tuesday states just days later.

Expedia cuts 3,000 jobs, including 500 at new Seattle HQ — read the internal email to employees

BY TAYLOR SOPER on February 24, 2020 

Expedia Chairman Barry Diller. (Expedia Photo)

Expedia Group is laying off 12 percent of its workforce, about 3,000 employees, in an effort to “streamline and focus” the Seattle-based online travel giant under chairman Barry Diller following the ouster of its CEO and CFO late last year.

In an email sent to staff Monday, unnamed executives from Expedia Group’s “Travel Leadership Team” said the company had been “pursuing growth in an unhealthy and undisciplined way,” echoing comments made by Diller earlier this month following its fourth quarter earnings report.

Expedia said at the time that it was targeting $300 to $500 million of annual cost savings, but hadn’t previously announced explicit plans for job cuts.

The layoffs come across the company and globe. About 500 people will be let go in Seattle, where Expedia recently moved to a new 40-acre waterfront campus and employs more than 4,000 people. Expedia said it will eliminate certain projects and activities, and reduce the use of vendors and contractors. It will provide impacted workers with severance packages that include extended healthcare.

“Moving forward, we will exert more discipline in setting priorities and allocating resources, simplify our business processes and inter-dependencies, raise the bar on performance standards, and demonstrate and demand accountability for results,” Expedia leaders wrote in the internal email, which you can read in full below.

A view of a skybridge — with windows that actually slide open — that looks west toward Puget Sound at Expedia’s new headquarters in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Expedia employed 25,400 people as of Dec. 31, up from 24,500 employees at the end of 2018. The company posted $12 billion in revenue in 2019, up 8 percent, and profits of $565 million. It has 351 job openings on its careers page.

The cuts were not connected to the coronavirus outbreak, though Expedia said earlier it expects a $30 to $40 million loss in the current quarter due to the disease.

Expedia expects to record $135 million to $185 million in total pre-tax charges this year related to the layoffs, according to a SEC filing.

Diller and vice chairman Peter Kern took over day-to-day operations at Expedia after the abrupt resignation of former CEO Mark Okerstrom and CFO Alan Pickerill on Dec. 4.
Barry’s back: Expedia chairman Barry Diller opens up on hour-long earnings call — here’s what he said

At the time, Diller cited a strategy disagreement between the former top executives and the board over efforts to unify the company’s brands and technology. Expedia Group includes brands and sites such as Vrbo, Travelocity, Orbitz, HomeAway and many others, in addition to the flagship Expedia.com. The reorganization effort led by Okerstrom aimed to unify the company’s brands and technology, and help Expedia take better advantage of the larger company’s scale.

The executive shakeup came a little more than two years after Okerstrom was promoted to the CEO role, succeeding Dara Khosrowshahi after he left to become Uber’s top leader.

“My passion and outlook for the future of Expedia Group are as great today as they were two decades ago when we made our first investment in online Travel,” Diller said in a statement Monday. “I am confident that simplifying our business and clarifying our focus by making these difficult changes, our teams can get back to working on the projects and priorities that make the most sense for us, our customers, and our partners.”

Diller was more blunt on Expedia’s earnings call last month, describing the company as a “bloated organization.”

“We’d somewhat become a kind of consultant-led and wildly complex business,” he said.

Diller, the former Paramount Pictures chairman, started the Fox television network and USA Broadcasting. He oversees a wide range of online brands as chairman of the IAC media and internet company. Diller made his first investment in Expedia in 2001 and remains its chairman.

He’s spent the past two months “on the ground” with Expedia leadership, learning the ins and outs of the business, and figuring out what needs to change.

The 78-year-old said he recently heard that for employees at Amazon in Seattle the work-life balance mantra was “all work and no life,” whereas at Expedia it was “all life and no work.”

“Now that’s an enormous exaggeration. We’ve got wonderful people in the business and this is not damning our employees,” Diller said on the call. “But for several years we really lost clarity and discipline. So we’re changing a great deal. We’re stopping this too large complexity. We’re simplifying our strategy. We’re stopping doing dumb things and starting to do what we think are good things.” 

Expedia Vice Chairman Peter Kern; Expedia Chairman Barry Diller; and Ariane Gorin, president of Expedia Business Services, chat on stage at a company Town Hall meeting in December. (Expedia Photo)

Kern, who was also on the call, added that “we’ve seen a fair bit of wasted energy and calories going into things that may not have promise, and may not get us to the promised land.”

Some of the planned changes include getting all of the company’s data on one platform and aggressively growing its direct-to-consumer business.

“We have historically taken a brand-by-brand approach and now we are taking a market-by-market approach,” said Kern.

Diller said Expedia is not doing a CEO search but indicated that the current leadership structure is temporary. “It’s not going to last beyond 2020,” he said on the earnings call.

Expedia employees began moving into the company’s new $900 million headquarters this past October, relocating from its old office in Bellevue, Wash. The company will not sublease space at the sprawling new complex and the layoffs won’t affect remaining construction at the former home of biotech giant Amgen.

Expedia stock sank after the company missed earnings expectations in November. Shares have risen since the executive swap in December and rose again after the fourth quarter earnings report.

But shares were down nearly 7 percent Monday amid a stock market drop on coronavirus fears. Expedia expects that the disease will impact the company beyond the current quarter. United Airlines today withdrew its 2020 profit forecast due to uncertainty with coronavirus.

Read the full email sent to staff below.


Team Expedia Group –

Following our disappointing 2019 business performance and our change in senior-most management, the Travel Leadership Team has spent the last few months determining a better way forward. A major reason for our management change was the deep belief from Barry, Peter, and the Board that while travel remains rich with opportunity, our Company needed a fresh and forward look at clarifying our strategy and simplifying our operations.

After consulting with leaders around the globe, we recognize that we have been pursuing growth in an unhealthy and undisciplined way. The accountability for our results lies with the Travel Leadership Team, and we are committed to fundamental changes in our approach to improve success. Moving forward, we will exert more discipline in setting priorities and allocating resources, simplify our business processes and inter-dependencies, raise the bar on performance standards, and demonstrate and demand accountability for results.

Today, we are announcing our intent to reduce and eliminate certain projects, activities, teams, and roles to streamline and focus our organization. In geographies where we have clarity, we will start implementing these intended changes this week by notifying individuals. In others, we will be initiating consultations with employees and their representatives to discuss our proposals.

Transitions like this are difficult as the impact is felt by teammates, colleagues, and friends we have known and partnered with through ups and downs. For those who will be leaving, we thank you for your many contributions to Expedia Group and wish you safe travels as you find your next opportunity. For the many who are continuing forward, travel is intensely competitive and demands our very best leadership, innovation, collaboration, and execution to win. This is what we are asking of you and demanding of ourselves, along with the day-to-day discipline that will make us a more nimble and thriving company for years to come.

Great tech companies have walked this same path in order to come back stronger and more competitive than ever. We have restarted the journey and bringing the world within reach is in our hands. Let’s redouble our efforts for our customers, our partners, our investors, and ourselves to make Expedia Group the successful, growing, and winning company we can all be proud of.

The Travel Leadership Team

Taylor Soper is GeekWire's managing editor, responsible for coordinating the newsroom, planning coverage, and editing stories. A native of Portland, Ore., and graduate of the University of Washington, he was previously a GeekWire staff reporter, covering beats including startups and sports technology. Follow him @taylor_soper and email taylor@geekwire.com.

UPDATED

This is the math that made Katherine Johnson — one of NASA’s “Hidden Figures” — a legend

Johnson, who died Monday at age 101, did groundbreaking work in helping return astronauts safely to Earth.

By Brian Resnick@B_resnickbrian@vox.com Updated Feb 24, 2020

NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2015. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Katherine Johnson, who died Monday at age 101, was a pioneer in many ways: She was an early employee of NASA (and even worked at the agency that predated it), and an African American woman working in a field hugely dominated by white men. She was also a pioneer in that her work helped put humans in space, and returned them safely home to Earth.

Before rising to pop-culture fame with the book and movie Hidden Figures, before being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Johnson created and calculated some extremely important equations to make America’s adventures in spaceflight successful. As Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian, told the Washington Post in an obituary: “If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math.”

Here’s what she did, and why she’ll be remembered for a long time.
NASA gave Johnson landing zones. She figured out how to get spacecraft there.

In the 1960s, NASA had figured out how to launch a human being aboard a rocket into space. That was an extremely impressive feat. But equally hard was getting that human to land safely back on Earth.

One of the trickiest bits: the spacecraft couldn’t just land anywhere. Were an astronaut to touch down in a desolate corner of the ocean, without any land in sight, it could presumably take days to be rescued (if rescued at all).

This means that Johnson needed to calculate the entire trajectory of the flight — where it started, how fast it went, and where it would land. The missions to send humans to space and back had to be precise and choreographed. Johnson’s math enabled that choreography.

She best explained her job in her own words: “Early on, when they said they wanted the capsule to come down at a certain place, they were trying to compute when it should start,” Johnson said in a 2008 NASA interview. “I said, ‘Let me do it. You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I’ll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.’ That was my forte.”

And so, she calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s historic 1961 flight that put the first American in space, and landed him in the Atlantic Ocean.

But greater challenges were to come. Shepard visited space, but he was not put into orbit around the Earth. He went up, and came down. Flying, essentially, in a simple parabolic arc.

Orbit — having the spacecraft encircle the Earth — is harder.

Katherine Johnson at NASA’s Langley Research Center in 1980. NASA/Donaldson Collection/Getty Images

In orbit, not only is the spacecraft moving at 17,000 mph, the Earth below is also moving, rotating on its axis.

Here, Johnson’s challenge was the same. She had to take a landing zone for an orbiting spacecraft, and calculate backwards: figuring out the math for how the spacecraft would arrive there.

She did this work to prepare for Astronaut John Glenn’s historic 1962 mission when he became the first American to orbit the globe.

This work meant juggling a lot of different variables: where the rocket took off, where it entered obit, how quickly it was moving in orbit, the rotation of the Earth beneath it, the angle at which it ought to reenter the Earth, and the location of the splashdown.

In figuring it out, she became the first woman to ever co-author a research paper at NASA. Entitled “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position,” the paper — with co-author Ted Skopinski — basically explains where an orbiting spacecraft should fire its reentry rockets to land on a particular portion of the Earth.

Famously, before Glenn took off on his first orbital spaceflight, he requested Johnson double-check all the orbital math of the mission by hand — being slightly distrustful of the new-fangled electronic computers that NASA had installed to do the work.

Glenn’s flight, and the math making it happen, was the subject of the 2016 film Hidden Figures, in which Johnson, as well as other African American women working at NASA, are given the spotlight amid a workforce that’s largely white and male.

But Johnson’s work didn’t stop there. She worked on the Apollo program, which brought humans to the moon for the first time: Her calculations were critical in getting the lunar lander to meet back up with the command module in orbit around the moon. She later worked on the space shuttle program, as well as satellites, before retiring in 1986. Today, there’s a computational research facility at NASA’s Langley campus named after her.
Johnson’s celebrity came late in life, but it’s also important

Her mathematics is an important legacy. But so is the legacy of her recent celebrity. For too long, Johnson’s contributions to the space program were unknown by the public. The story of America’s success in the space race has largely been told through the stories of the men at NASA. But Johnson was there, too. And it’s important to remember that.

The public needs more diverse role models in science. “When you think about what a scientist means, you probably think of an Einstein figure — a man in a lab or at a chalkboard with fuzzy, unkempt hair,” as my Vox colleague Julia Belluz has written. “When you think of a scientist’s voice, you might conjure Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan. With these voices and images so pervasive in our culture, it’s easier to associate ‘scientist’ with ‘man’ — and in particular, ‘white man.’”

Women scientists like Vera Rubin, Nettie Stevens, Henrietta Leavitt, Rosalind Franklin, Johnson and so many others ought to be just as famous. Today, too many women — and minorities — still feel unwelcome in many corners of science. Johnson’s legacy shows them they have every right to be there.

Katherine Johnson, ‘hidden figure’ at NASA during 1960s space race, dies at 101

When Katherine Johnson began working at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1953, she was classified as “subprofessional,” not far outranking a secretary or janitor.

© Provided by Thomson Reuters, LLC 2.

THE WOMEN BEHIND THE MISSION: NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson wrote the calculations for the Apollo 11 trajectory to the moon. She was one of just a few African-American women hired to work as "human computers" to check and verify engineer calculations at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the agency that preceded NASA. Johnson was a key contributor to several space milestones. She wrote the trajectory for Alan Shepherd's flight in 1961, the first by an American in space, and the verification of calculations for John Glenn's 1962 orbit, the first by an American. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and her life story was turned into the 2016 film "Hidden Figures." NASA/Handout via REUTERS

Hers was a labor not of scheduling or cleaning but rather of mathematics: using a slide rule or mechanical calculator in complex calculations to check the work of her superiors — engineers who, unlike her, were white and male.

Her title, poached by the technology that would soon make the services of many of her colleagues obsolete, was “computer.”

Mrs. Johnson, who died Feb. 24 at 101, went on to develop equations that helped the NACA and its successor, NASA, send astronauts into orbit and, later, to the moon. In 26 signed reports for the space agency, and in many more papers that bore others’ signatures on her work, she codified mathematical principles that remain at the core of human space travel.

She was not the first black woman to work as a NASA mathematician, nor the first to write a research report for the agency, but Mrs. Johnson was eventually recognized as a pathbreaker for women and African Americans in the newly created field of spaceflight.

Like most backstage members of the space program, Mrs. Johnson was overshadowed in the popular imagination by the life-risking astronauts whose flights she calculated, and to a lesser extent by the department heads under whom she served.

She did not command mainstream attention until President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the country’s highest civilian honor — in 2015. The next year, her research was celebrated in the best-selling book “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly and the Oscar-nominated film adaptation starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe.


NASA mathematician portrayed in 'Hidden Figures' breaks down how she helped astronauts


Mrs. Johnson was “critical to the success of the early U.S. space programs,” Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian, said in a 2017 interview for this obituary. “She had a singular intellect, curiosity and skill set in mathematics that allowed her to make many contributions, each of which might be considered worthy of a single lifetime.”

A math prodigy from West Virginia who said she “counted everything” as a child — “the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed” — Mrs. Johnson worked as a schoolteacher before being hired as a computer at the NACA’s flight research division, based at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

The agency was established in 1915 and began enlisting white women to work as computers 20 years later. Black computers, assigned mainly to segregated facilities, were first hired during the labor shortage of World War II. Mrs. Johnson was one of about 100 computers, roughly one-third of whom were black, when she joined the NACA.

The movie “Hidden Figures” took occasional liberties with fact to emphasize the indignities of segregation. Mrs. Johnson, played by Henson, is forced to run half a mile to reach the “colored” bathroom. In reality, Mrs. Johnson said, she used the bathroom closest to her desk.

“I did not feel much discrimination, but then that’s me,” she recalled in a 1992 NASA oral history. When she detected hints of racism, such as when a white colleague stood up to leave as soon as she sat down, she said, she tried not to respond. “I don’t wear my feelings on my shoulder. So I got along fine.”

Mrs. Johnson had a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and spent her early career studying data from plane crashes, helping devise air safety standards at a time when the agency’s central concern was aviation. Then, in October 1957, the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik thrust the space race into full tilt.

Mrs. Johnson and dozens of colleagues wrote a 600-page technical report titled “Notes on Space Technology” outlining the mathematical underpinnings of spaceflight, from rocket propulsion to orbital mechanics and heat protection.

One of rocket science’s most vexing challenges, they soon realized, was calculating flight trajectories to ensure that astronauts returned safely to Earth, splashing down in the ocean reasonably close to a Navy vessel waiting to pluck them from the water.

For astronauts such as Alan B. Shepard Jr., who became the first American in space when Freedom 7 launched on May 5, 1961, the math was relatively straightforward. Shepard’s craft rose and fell, like a champagne cork, without entering orbit.

Calculating the trajectory for an orbital flight, such as the one to be undertaken by Marine pilot John Glenn in 1962, was “orders of magnitude more complicated,” said Shetterly, the “Hidden Figures” author.

“I said, ‘Let me do it,’ ” Mrs. Johnson recalled in a 2008 NASA interview. “You tell me when you want it and where you want it to land, and I’ll do it backwards and tell you when to take off.”

Mrs. Johnson’s findings, outlined in a 1960 paper she wrote with engineer Ted Skopinski, enabled engineers to determine exactly when to launch a spacecraft and when to begin its reentry. The paper, “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position,” marked the first time a woman wrote a technical report in NASA’s elite flight research division.

“You could work your teeth out, but you didn’t get your name on the report,” she said in the 1992 oral history, crediting her breakthrough to what she described as an assertive personality. When a superior said that she could not accompany male colleagues to a briefing related to her work, Mrs. Johnson asked, “Is there a law that says I can’t go?” Her boss relented.

Mrs. Johnson’s handwritten calculations were said to have been more trusted than those performed by mainframe computers. A short time before Glenn launched into space, he asked engineers to “get the girl to check the numbers.”

“All the women were called ‘the girls,’ ” said Barry, “and everyone knew exactly which girl he was talking about.” Mrs. Johnson, who was then 43, spent a day and a half checking the trajectory calculations made by the IBM computer before giving the go-ahead to Glenn, who became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth.

In a subsequent report, Mrs. Johnson took her calculations one step further, working with several colleagues to determine how a spacecraft could move in and out of a planetary body’s orbit. Her formulas were crucial to the success of the Apollo lunar program and are still in use today, Barry said. “If we go back to the moon, or to Mars, we’ll be using her math.”
Modest beginnings

Katherine Coleman was born in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., then a town of about 800, on Aug. 26, 1918. Her mother was a former teacher. She credited her proclivity for mathematics to her father, a farmer who had worked in the lumber industry and could quickly calculate the number of boards a tree could produce.

By 10, Katherine had finished all the coursework offered at her town’s two-room schoolhouse. Joined by her mother and her three older siblings, she moved to Institute, a suburb of the state capital, to attend the laboratory school of West Virginia State College while her father remained at home to support the family.

Mrs. Johnson went on to study at West Virginia State, a historically black college, with plans to major in French and English and become a teacher. A mathematics professor — W.W. Schiefflin Claytor, widely reported to be the third African American to receive a doctorate in math — persuaded her to change fields.

Mrs. Johnson later recalled his saying: “You’d make a good research mathematician, and I’m going to see that you’re prepared.” She had never heard of the position before. “I said, ‘Where will I get a job?’ And he said, ‘That will be your problem.’ ”



© NASA NASA research mathematician Katherine Johnson is photographed at her desk at NASA Langley Research Center with a globe, or "Celestial Training Device," in 1962.After graduating in 1937, at 18, she taught at a segregated elementary school in Marion, Va., a town near the North Carolina border.

Three years later, she was one of three black students selected to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate programs. She dropped out of her master’s in mathematics program after one semester to start a family with her husband, James Goble, a chemistry teacher. She later returned to teaching, in West Virginia, before a brother-in-law suggested she apply for a computer position at Langley.

Goble died of cancer in 1956, and three years later Mrs. Johnson married James Johnson, an Army artillery officer. He died in 2019.

Mrs. Johnson’s death was confirmed by lawyer and family representative Donyale Y.H. Reavis, who said she died at home in Newport News, Va., but did not cite a specific cause.

Survivors include two daughters from her first marriage, Joylette Hylick of Mount Laurel, N.J., and Katherine Moore of Greensboro, N.C.; six grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. Her daughter Constance Garcia died in 2010.

Mrs. Johnson was invited to move to Houston in the mid-1960s to help establish what is now the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, but she declined the offer to maintain her family’s ties to the Hampton community, Shetterly said.

At Langley, where she retired in 1986, she performed calculations that determined the precise moment at which the Apollo lunar lander could leave the moon’s surface to return to the command module, which remained in orbit high above. She also contributed to NASA’s space shuttle and Earth satellite programs.

After the release of “Hidden Figures,” Mrs. Johnson played down the importance of her role in the early years of the space program. “There’s nothing to it — I was just doing my job,” she told The Washington Post in 2017.

“They needed information, and I had it, and it didn’t matter that I found it,” she added. “At the time, it was just a question and an answer.”

harrison.smith@washpost.com

Read more:

‘Hidden’ no more: Katherine Johnson, a black NASA pioneer, finds acclaim at 98

The stars of ‘Hidden Figures’ are now immortalized on street sign

The ‘Hidden Figures’ stars on how working at NASA in the 1960s is a little like Hollywood
© NASA An undated photo of Mrs. Johnson at NASA.

‘Human computer’ Katherine Johnson dies at 101

She was the inspiration for the movie Hidden Figures and calculated the flight paths for NASA’s early missionsBy Justine Calma@justcalma Feb 24, 2020

Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images

NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose calculations helped get the first Americans to space and back safely, died today at the age of 101. Among her many accomplishments, she completed the trajectory analysis for Alan Shepard’s 1961 suborbital flight, which was the first time the US sent a human into space.

HER WORK PROPELLED MANY OF AMERICA’S BREAKTHROUGHS IN SPACE EXPLORATION

Johnson’s work over 33 years propelled many of America’s breakthroughs in space exploration, including Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” on the Moon. But the contributions she made weren’t recognized until decades later. Johnson was made to work in a segregated wing with other black women mathematicians when she started at NASA predecessor The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) in 1953. Yet, her work was so integral to NASA’s early missions that John Glenn asked her to double-check computer calculations for his flight before becoming the first US astronaut to orbit Earth in 1962.

“Ms. Johnson helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space even as she made huge strides that also opened doors for women and people of color,” NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement. “Her dedication and skill as a mathematician helped put humans on the Moon and before that made it possible for our astronauts to take the first steps in space that we now follow on a journey to Mars.”

Johnson’s groundbreaking contributions were recognized in 2015 when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed on civilians, from President Barack Obama. The bestselling-book-turned-Oscar-nominated-movie Hidden Figures brought Johnson’s legacy to the big screen in 2016, in which she was portrayed by Taraji P. Henson. NASA also named a building in her honor in 2017.

In an interview, she was asked what she’d tell young engineers working in the building that bears her name. “Do your best, but like it,” Johnson said. “If you don’t like it, shame on you.”

“I like work. I like the stars and the stories we were telling and it was a joy to contribute to the literature that was going to be coming out. But little did I think it would go this far,” Johnson said in the 2017 interview.

“If you think your job is pressure-packed, [Johnson’s] meant that forgetting to carry the ‘1’ might send somebody floating off into the solar system,” Obama said when Johnson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. “Katherine was a pioneer who broke the boundaries of race and gender, showing generations of young people that everyone can excel in math and science and reach for the stars,” he said.