Pinterest faces investigation by California civil rights agency


25 August 2022 - 

BY SARAH FRIER AND KURT WAGNER

An agency attorney on Tuesday emailed several former employees, including Ifeoma Ozoma, who went public in 2020 with allegations of underpayment and racial discrimination.
Image: Bloomberg

Pinterest Inc. is facing an investigation by the California Civil Rights Department, the company confirmed, after a number of employees brought forward discrimination claims in recent years.

An agency attorney on Tuesday emailed several former employees, including Ifeoma Ozoma, who went public in 2020 with allegations of underpayment and racial discrimination. “CCRD is conducting an investigation into Pinterest Inc. and you have been identified as a potential witness,” the email says, according to a copy viewed by Bloomberg.

Pinterest confirmed the inquiry, which was earlier reported by Protocol.

“The California Civil Rights Department (CCRD) is conducting investigations of a number of companies, and Pinterest is one of them,” the company said in a statement Wednesday. “Our discussions with the CCRD are ongoing and we remain committed to reviewing and evolving our people practices to best support our employees.”

In late 2020, Pinterest paid $20 million to settle a gender-discrimination case brought by former COO Francoise Brougher. She alleged she was paid less than her male peers, excluded from the company’s initial public offering process and eventually fired for speaking out about discrimination.

She came forward after the public statements by two Black women, Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, who said they were underpaid and that the company’s human resources department had dismissed their claims of discrimination. Pinterest has previously said it investigated those cases and found no wrongdoing.

The company added that it has been investing in policies to improve representation in the technology industry, and at Pinterest.

The CCRD, formerly known as the Department of Fair Employement and Housing, had no comment.

Vietnam War photographer Tim Page dies in Australia at 78

“One of his famous lines was, 'the only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph,'” 

Legendary Vietnam War photographer, writer and counter-culture documenter Tim Page has died Wednesday at his Australian home

ByROD McGUIRK 

Associated Press
August 25, 2022, 


CANBERRA, Australia -- Legendary Vietnam War photographer, writer and counter-culture documenter Tim Page died Wednesday at his Australian home. He was 78 years old.

The British-born, self-taught photographer died of liver cancer with friends at his bedside at his rural home at Fernmount in New South Wales state, friends posted on social media.

Ben Bohane, an Australian friend and fellow photojournalist, described Page as one of the world’s great war photographers as well as a “real humanist.”

“He always said that it was more important to be a decent human being than a great photographer. So his humanism, through his photojournalism, really shone through,” Bohane told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday.

“One of his famous lines was, 'the only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph,'” Bohane added.

Page was wounded four times as a war reporter covering conflicts in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the 1960s and ’70s.

He stood out for his flamboyance and extravagant personality as well as his talent and commitment as a photographer. He inspired the drug-addled photojournalist played by Dennis Hopper in the Francis Coppola-directed, Oscar-winning 1979 Vietnam War movie “Apocalypse Now.”

Page embraced and documented the drug culture since the 1960s in Indochina and the United States.

He worked as a freelance photographer from the late 1960s for music magazines including Rolling Stone and Crawdaddy, sharing assignments with some of the most significant writers of the era such as Hunter S. Thompson. Page embraced his “Gonzo photographer” reputation.

He was arrested along with Jim Morrison when with Doors frontman was famously dragged by police from a stage in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1967. Morrison was arrested for inciting a riot, indecency and public obscenity. Page was arrested obstructing police. Both spent the night in police cells before charges were dropped.

As well as the Indochina wars, Page also covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Solomon Islands, Israel, Bosnia and East Timor.

Page wrote a dozen books about his war experiences and music.

He was born in Tunbridge Wells in England on May 25, 1944. He was raised by a foster family after his merchant navy sailor father died in a submarine attack in the North Atlantic.

He left Britain in 1962, traveling through Europe, the Middle East and then Asia where he began photographing a civil war in Laos.

He created iconic images of the Vietnam War while working for news organizations including the AP, UPI, Time-Life and Paris Match.

He moved to Australia in 2002 to be with his longtime Australian partner Marianne Harris and became an adjunct professor of photojournalism at Griffith University at Brisbane in Queensland state.

He is survived by Harris and Kit Clifford, his son from a previous relationship with Clare Clifford.

Russian patriarch cancels event where he was to meet pope

25 August 2022, 

Russia Ukraine War Vatican. Picture: PA

Kirill has justified the invasion of Ukraine on spiritual and ideological grounds, calling it a ‘metaphysical’ battle with the West.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has cancelled his planned attendance at an interfaith meeting in Kazakhstan next month where he was expected to meet with Pope Francis, a top Orthodox official said.

The move is seen as a sign of further deterioration in relations over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, head of foreign relations for the Moscow Patriarchate, was quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency as saying that Kirill would not be attending the September 13-15 meeting and that therefore any meeting with Francis was off.

Kirill has justified the invasion of Ukraine on spiritual and ideological grounds, calling it a “metaphysical” battle with the West.

He has blessed Russian soldiers going into battle and invoked the idea that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.

Francis had confirmed as recently as last month that he would meet with Kirill at the Kazakh meeting in what would have been the second-ever encounter between a pope and a Russian patriarch.

The first was in 2016 and their second had been planned for June but was postponed over the diplomatic fallout of the war.

Francis has denounced the war in Ukraine but has tried to keep a door open to dialogue with Moscow, refraining from condemning Russia, President Vladimir Putin or Kirill by name.

His balanced approach has angered Kyiv, which this week condemned his comments lamenting that innocents on both sides were paying the price of war.

Francis made those comments on Wednesday as he marked six months of war and referred to the weekend car bomb slaying in Moscow of Darya Dugina, a nationalist Russian TV commentator and daughter of the right-wing Russian political theorist, Alexander Dugin, who ardently supports the war.

Francis listed the “poor girl” killed by a car bomb in Moscow, as well as orphans in Ukraine and Russia, among the “innocents” who have been victimised by the “insanity of war.”

Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andrii Yurash, said Francis’ words were “disappointing” by seemingly equating “aggressor & victim, rapist and raped”.

In a tweet on Wednesday, he asked how it was possible for Francis to cite an “ideologist of imperialism as innocent victim?”

By Press Association

Rolando Cubela, the Cuban Commander who Conspired to Kill Fidel Castro, Dies in Miami

Faure Chomón, Fidel Castro and Rolando Cubela after the triumph of the 1959 Revolution. (El rastro del invasor)

14ymedio, Havana, 24 August 24, 2022 — Commander, former political prisoner and doctor Rolando Cubela died at the age of 90 on Tuesday morning in the Miami hospital where he had been admitted for several weeks, according to family sources. A member of the Rebel Army, the guerrilla leader was part of a conspiracy to kill Fidel Castro in the 1960s.

Born in 1932 in the city of Cienfuegos, Cubela studied medicine and was a leader of the University Student Federation (FEU). After Fulgencio Batista’s military coup, on March 10, 1952, he joined the Revolutionary Directorate, a group founded by José Antonio Echeverría and Fructuoso Rodríguez.

Cubela was part of the clandestine cell that murdered Colonel Antonio Blanco Rico, head of the Military Intelligence Service, in Havana on October 27, 1956. After that action, he went into exile in Miami, where he was when his colleagues from the Directorate raided the Presidential Palace, on March 13, 1957, and failed to kill Batista.

Upon his return to Cuba, he established himself with other members of the Revolutionary Directorate in the guerrilla struggle in the Escambray mountains, where in 1958 he signed the Pact of El Pedrero with Ernesto Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, an alliance with the July 26 Movement that allowed the capture of the city of Santa Clara, in which Cubela was injured.

After Fidel Castro came to power, he was promoted to the rank of commander of the Armed Forces, and in 1959 he was elected president of the FEU over the other candidate, Pedro Luis Boitel, who in 1972 died on a hunger strike in prison. From the first years, Cubela began to have profound differences with the communist course of the revolutionary process.

In November 1963, a CIA agent met Cubela in Paris, who then held the position of military attaché of the Cuban embassy in Madrid. There he was given a feather, with poison in the quill, to puncture Castro when he was near him. But Cubela never used the device, since he preferred to use a rifle with a telescopic sight and silencer so as not to be so close to the target.

The delivery of the rifle was delayed, and the Cuban intelligence services ended up encircling Cubela, who was arrested in February 1966 and sentenced to death, although, due to Castro’s direct intervention, his sentence was commuted to 25 years, of which he served 12. In 1979, he went into exile in Madrid, where he worked as a doctor, and in 1988 he obtained Spanish nationality.

His profile in Madrid was very discreet due to the danger of being killed by Castro. In 2007, he participated in two public events organized by the Democracia Ya Platform, one of them in front of the Cuban Embassy in Madrid. Unlike other exiled commanders, such as Huber Matos and Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo, Cubela did not found an anti-Castro organization during his time off the island.

After retiring from his job as a doctor, he settled in Miami, where he also maintained a low profile. The man who could have killed Fidel Castro survived him by at least six years.

Translated by Regina Anavy

S. Korean trade minister meets with biz leaders on disadvantageous provisions in new U.S. trade laws

Updated: 2022-08-25 

South Korean government officials met with business leaders today to talk about ways to deal with new laws in the U.S. that could put Korean companies at a disadvantage.
Those new laws seek to discourage the purchase of products with materials or components made in China.
Responses could include meeting with U.S. officials directly, changing Korea's production processes and/or sourcing materials from countries other than China.
Shin Ha-young reports.

The Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act is a concern for South Korea's electric vehicle manufacturers as it only allows tax credits for cars that are assembled in North America.
Then there's the CHIPS and Science Act, which offers semiconductor manufacturers billions of dollars to build new fabrication plants in the U.S. with the condition that they will not make new investments in China.
South Korean companies would get those benefits too, but with strings attached known as "guardrails."

In response, South Korea's Minister of Trade, Industry, and Energy held a meeting with business leaders on Thursday to go over the impacts and to discuss ways to respond such as room for flexibility and possible exemptions.

"We need to prepare shields and spears; shields to deal with the challenges we're now facing under the new laws and sharp spears to take this situation as an opportunity to dominate the market."

In terms of the CHIPS Act, the ministry is planning to express the country's stance through existing channels it has with the U.S. Commerce Department.
Thursday's meeting was joined by officials from major companies including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Hyundai Motor Group, which are expected to suffer under the new laws.
They discussed ways to deal with Inflation Reduction Act, such as by getting automakers to review their production plans and quickly beginning factory construction in the U.S.
For battery makers, it'll be about gradually switching mining investment to other countries like Australia and Chile.
Currently, Korea depends on China for the mining of the raw materials used to make batteries.
Minister Lee Chang-yang added that South Korea's response has been the fastest among other countries that're expected to feel the effects of the new U.S. laws.

"As part of the efforts, a ministry official will visit the U.S. for high-level consultation on the laws with Washington before the end of August, while the Trade Minister is planning to visit in September. Shin Ha-young, Arirang News."

Reporter : hyshin@arirang.com

Korea to seek joint response with EU over

Biden’s bill

Industry Ministry says WTO complaint over anti-inflation act is last resort
By Kim Yon-se
Published : Aug 25, 2022 -

Industry Minister Lee Chang-yang (right) speaks during a meeting with business leaders to take countermeasures against the US move to take a protective trade stance over some industrial sectors, such as semiconductors and electric vehicles, in Seoul on Thursday. (Yonhap)

SEJONG -- The South Korean government is to seek a joint response with the EU to deal with the US Inflation Reduction Act that slashes subsidies to electric vehicles not made on American soil, rather than seeking dispute settlement within the bilateral trade agreement frame the two forged years ago.

Seoul would continue to raise arguments that the US law goes against the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement, but a joint response scenario with other countries seems more feasible to press Washington than filing the case straight to the World Trade Organization, Industry Minister Lee Chang-yang said, adding he would visit the US next month.

Calling the a complaint “a last resort,” Chung Dae-jin, deputy trade minister, said the government will initiate consultations next month with the US and EU nations who also face damages.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Thursday, the move comes amid a situation where the US is set to prevent global chipmakers -- which are offered incentives and tax benefits in the US market -- from newly investing in the Chinese market for the next decade.

For the automobiles sector, the US is moving to offer a variety of benefits to only carmakers that produce electric vehicles at factories in the North American market.

The US has also specified that the electric vehicles should be powered by batteries produced in North America to satisfy the requirement of state subsidies.

These regulations are based on the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips Act, both of which have passed through the US Congress.

The Industry Ministry held an emergency meeting with business leaders from the three industrial segments in Seoul on the day, saying the Korean government would not spare any effort to map out measures in close collaboration with the private sector.

Participants included executives from Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor, LG Energy Solution, Samsung SDI, SK On and business lobbies for semiconductors, automobiles and batteries.

The ministry said it would continue to hold talks with the US Department of Commerce in a bid to garner exemptions from the list of chipmakers that would be banned from investing in China and some other markets for 10 years in return for enjoying the coming incentives between 2022 and 2026 and tax deductions of 25 percent in the US.

The ministry said it “would bolster partnerships, which have already been fostered with the Commerce Department, if necessary, and actively utilize communication channels on bilateral supply chains” in an effort to minimize damages on the local semiconductor industry.

In the automobiles sector, the Industry Ministry forecasts that electric vehicles shipped to the US from Korea, Japan, Germany and Sweden will be excluded from the list of subsidy targets, as the US specified that it would apply the subsidy requirement of EVs, finally assembled in the US, starting from later this year.

Further, the EVs should meet the requirement of using batteries produced in the US.

Korea, which exported 32,000 EVs in 2021, may possibly take a joint action with the European Union, saying that few global EV producers could satisfy the strict requirements.

By Kim Yon-se (kys@heraldcorp.com)

‘Inflation law may disrupt Korean exports of 

100,000 plus EVs’

By Kim Da-sol
Published : Aug 25, 2022 - 



Manufacturing line for Ioniq 5 inside Hyundai Motor Group’s Ulsan production plant.

 (Hyundai Motor Group)

South Korean carmakers on Thursday said at least 100,000 electric vehicles built here would face disruption in export sales annually under the new US law, which excludes battery-powered vehicles made outside of the US from tax credits. They also urged the South Korean government to revise the current subsidy law and map out temporary measures for local carmakers, such as tax credits.

According to the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association, of which Hyundai Motor and Kia are members, the new US law would hit hard not only Korean carmakers, but also some 13,000 subcontracted auto parts makers here who are already going through hard times due to a dramatic shift from combustion engine cars to electrified models.

As Hyundai and Kia make all their flagship EV models at domestic plants, they fear losing market competitiveness over the axed subsidies for foreign EV makers.

KAMA emphasized that Korean carmakers have hired over 100,000 US nationals through more than $13 billion in investments there over the past three decades. Korea has also subsidized EVs imported from the US in accordance with the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement.

In May, Hyundai Motor Group signed a $5.5 billion plan to build EV and battery manufacturing facilities in the US state of Georgia –- the first of its kind outside Korea.

“The US Inflation Reduction Act will constrict the South Korean production of EVs, and even negatively impact the country’s future mobility competitiveness and workforce in the EV sector,” said KAMA Chairman Chung Man-ki, adding that the South Korean government should review the current EV subsidy law and reexamine the system to soften the damage to local carmakers.

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)

BlackRock 401(k) Suits Pressure Labor Department to Act 

Photo Illustration: Jonathan Hurtarte/Bloomberg Law; Photos: Getty Images

Aug. 25, 2022,

 Glide path strategies a key point of legal contention

• DOL abandoned rulemaking; last guidance in 2013

A surge in new lawsuits challenging workplace retirement plans over the set-it-and-forget-it funds they default investors into is renewing calls from industry critics who say the US Labor Department should be doing more to protect 401(k) savers.

At least 11 companies, including Booz Allen Hamilton Inc., Citigroup Inc., and Microsoft Corp., have been named in a spate of almost identical lawsuits going after a target-date index suite operated by BlackRock Inc.

Retirement plan participants at those firms claim their current or former employers mismanaged the plans by choosing BlackRock funds over better-performing market options. Retirement plan sponsors who are held to a strict fiduciary standard of prudence under the law failed to adequately track those investments over time, which resulted in a loss of savings potential, the lawsuits claim.

Target-date funds are the most common investment vehicle marketed to participants at work, but the one-stop-shop darlings of the retirement investment industry are confronting an unexpected set of challenges this year that cast a shadow over more than $1.8 trillion in savings. The litigation, new research suggesting most employers don’t use TDFs effectively, and lawmakers’ calls to investigate the way they’re managed are putting pressure on regulators to weigh in.

“The Department of Labor is supposed to be the regulator of fiduciary responsibility law in the United States; it’s their job,” said Daniel Aronowitz, managing principal and owner of Euclid Fiduciary. “I feel like they’ve abdicated their responsibility in this particular context, allowing plaintiff lawyers to serve as the regulator of fiduciary law.”

‘To’ vs. ‘Through’

A key component of the lawsuits targeting BlackRock’s index suite is the low-cost “to-retirement” glide path the company’s money managers use to balance underlying investments.

To-retirement TDFs stop trading once the target retirement date has been reached, but “through retirement” funds assume investors will keep their savings in the plan post-retirement. They keep trading, and have a different risk portfolio than to-retirement plans at different savings stages.

The Labor Department issued guidance for plan sponsors on “to” and “through” plan comparisons in 2013, and at least twice proposed and then delayed a set of specific disclosures sponsors would provide participants about the risks associated with funds before abandoning the rulemaking effort entirely in 2017.

“The department needs to resurrect the notion of putting some risk disclosures in plans, because these are inherently risky products,” said Ron Surz, president and CEO of PPCA Inc. and its division, Target Date Solutions.

Surz has spent years calling on the agency to do more to protect participants from TDF money mangers who he says have a financial interest in stacking plans with riskier investments near the target date. In July, he wrote an open letter to the Employee Benefits Security Administration in which he said fiduciaries should be forced to make an “explicit choice” between “safe” and “risky” target-date investment strategies.

No Action

Surz isn’t alone.

Morningstar Inc. published research in July recommending that the Labor Department issue more guidance clarifying the role sponsors need to play in the review and evaluation of target-date glide paths, and even amending the default investment rules to make customizable target-date options more appealing.

“This is an area that we haven’t seen guidance from the department since 2013,” said Lia Mitchell, a Morningstar retirement policy analyst. “I do think there’s a contingent of plan sponsors who are misunderstanding these products, and we’ve seen the industry change a great deal recently.”

Plan sponsors overwhelmingly default their investors in “through-retirement” glide paths, even though a minority of plan participants keep their savings in the plan after retirement, the Morningstar research shows.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called for a government watchdog review of target-date funds last year. The pair asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the predominance of TDFs in the market, investment selection, marketing, and recommendations for future legislation or regulation.

“The millions of families who trust their financial futures to target-date funds need to know these programs are working as advertised and providing the retirement security promised,” the lawmakers wrote.

BlackRock isn’t named in any of the lawsuits, because the money manager doesn’t serve as a fiduciary to the plans whose investors access its funds. The company said it is deeply committed to retirement investment research and has a long history of working closely with plans and their consultants.

“Our investment process takes into account multiple factors, including return objectives, market cycles, time horizon, and risk management,” a company spokesperson told Bloomberg Law. “As a result, BlackRock’s LifePath Index funds are highly regarded by many fiduciary decision-makers and independent evaluators of investment products for delivering consistently strong outcomes for plan participants over time.”

Labor Department Responds

DOL officials this week said they have worked closely with the Securities and Exchange Commission to help clear up confusion about different target-date options in the market.

In May, the SEC proposed a names rule (RIN 3235-AM72) that would force companies to reevaluate not only the names but the underlying investment strategies they use to market target-date products, among others.

“I think it’s very confusing for individuals,” said Ali Khawar, acting assistant secretary for employee benefits. “We’re paying attention to this. I don’t have a promise of guidance, but I don’t have a promise of not guidance either.”

Khawar said he and the Solicitor’s Office have been monitoring the spike in cases targeting BlackRock funds to identify areas of general confusion where the department’s amicus guidance would be helpful.

“One of the questions we’re asking ourselves and talking to the Justice Department about is whether or not there’s an interest in the government participating in some way,” Khawar said.

Khawar stressed, however, that it’s exceedingly rare for the department to weigh in on cases at the district court level.

 DACA Rule Release Aims to Bolster

 Program for ‘ Dreamers’ 

DACA recipients and their supporters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on June 18, 2020.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Aug. 24, 2022, \

Administration aims to fortify program’s legal standing

Fifth Circuit considering arguments on policy’s legality

The Biden administration on Wednesday released the final version of regulations intended to fortify the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program against legal challenges.

The program, launched in a 2012 memo by the Obama administration, offers protection from deportation and the ability to work legally to some 600,000 undocumented young people who came to the US as children. The regulation replaces the Obama-era memo and takes effect Oct. 31.

The Biden administration crafted the regulation in response to legal challenges that have plagued DACA since its inception. The rule doesn’t make the program bulletproof, however, as some litigants and judges question whether the Department of Homeland Security has authority to issue broad deportation protections at all.

“Today, we are taking another step to do everything in our power to preserve and fortify DACA, an extraordinary program that has transformed the lives of so many Dreamers,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

Mayorkas called on Congress to pass legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, often known as Dreamers. Many lawmakers quickly echoed that sentiment, pushing the Senate to take up House-passed legislation (H.R. 6) protecting Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants.

“This step forward does not take away from the urgency for 10 Senate Republicans to join all Democrats to pass the House-passed bipartisan Dream and Promise Act and provide certainty and a pathway to citizenship for our hardworking Dreamers across the country,” Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

The legislation would need the support of 10 Republicans and all Democrats to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold—an uphill battle amid increasing Capitol Hill polarization on immigration policy ahead of midterm elections.

Inside the Rule

The DHS’s final regulation maintains existing criteria for DACA status and the process for seeking work authorization. The rule will apply only to DACA renewal requests, not to new applications, while a federal court order remains in place barring DHS from granting new requests for status.

DACA has faced challenges in court from Republican-led states even after a Trump administration effort to rescind the program was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2020.

Last year, Houston-based US District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled the program was unlawful because it was created through a secretarial memo and not a formal rulemaking process. The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard arguments in an appeal of that ruling in July.

“DHS has carefully and respectfully considered all aspects of the analysis in that decision, including that decision’s conclusions about DACA’s substantive legality,” the agency said in the final regulation Wednesday, adding that it “respectfully disagrees.”

The Department of Homeland Security received more than 16,000 comments in response to a draft rule released in September. The proposed rule largely codified the 2012 memo that created the program.

However, the draft regulations allowed recipients to apply for deferred action and work eligibility separately, to the chagrin of immigration advocates and business groups who feared that could ultimately undermine employment authorization. The final version retains the existing process.

(Updated with additional reporting throughout.)

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS RELUCTANT TO BE WOKE?

The Party’s Fear of Alienating White Voters Is Misplaced—And Creating a Missed Opportunity


The Democratic Party’s reluctance to take stronger positions on racial justice removes opportunities to connect with core voters, writes political scientist Ashley Jardina. Courtesy of AP Images.

by ASHLEY JARDINA | AUGUST 18, 2022

Recent debates over how race fits into American politics have centered on one word: “woke.” Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” which took effect in July, is intended to restrict how schools and businesses can talk about race. While this policy was part of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign against critical race theory, Democratic Party members have used similar language to argue against making race a central issue of their political platform. In November 2021, long-time Democratic Party strategist James Carville claimed “stupid wokeness” was to blame for the party’s loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

The idea of “staying woke” became an important refrain among Black Lives Matter activists after a spate of police killings of Black men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. These debates over “wokeness” are the latest in a long history of Republican efforts to win over white Democratic swing voters with racially conservative attitudes that political scientists call “racial resentment.” Democrats have often tried to maintain support from these whites by staying silent on racial issues.

But my research shows that racial resentment among white Democrats is at all-time low and by failing to take stronger positions on racial justice—out of concern they could alienate moderate whites – the party is missing a historic political opportunity.

Since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Democrats have taken gradually more progressive positions on racial justice issues, social welfare programs, and immigration policies than Republicans. As a result, majorities of racial and ethnic minorities have increasingly supported the Democratic Party and self-identified non-Hispanic white voters have steadily allied with the Republican Party. According to data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), in 1968, 52 percent of white Americans identified as Democrats and 37 percent as Republicans; by 2020 those values had reversed: 53 percent of white voters were Republicans, while only 37 percent of white voters aligned with the Democratic Party.

By comparison, 80 percent of Black Americans and nearly 60 percent of Hispanic Americans currently identify as Democrats.

There is empirical evidence that Democrats could see gains if they embrace the progressivism of their core constituencies: racially liberal white voters and people of color.

But even as the party’s non-white voter base grows, Democrats have continued to express concerns about losing white voters because of racial positions. In 2017, a former Bill Clinton pollster blamed identity politics for weakening the party’s electoral chances. Earlier this year, racial justice activists like Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, chided President Biden for omitting racial justice issues in his State of the Union Address, even as he addressed his nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

My research suggests, however, that when Democrats stay silent on race to appease white moderates, they are making a tactical error. It’s a lose-lose situation for Democrats who are soft on racial justice because Republicans will still attack them for being too liberal. In Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and elsewhere, Republican candidates aligned with former President Donald Trump continue to take aim at Democratic positions on identity politics, regardless of Democrats’ reluctance to raise the issue. Additionally, when Democrats avoid racial issues, they fail to address the needs of their large, and growing, constituency base of people of color and risk alienating their own base of support.

Social scientists such as Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders introduced the concept of white “racial resentment” to describe the more subtle forms of racial prejudice that emerged after the civil rights movement. Instead of extreme beliefs about biological inferiority and preferences for segregation, racial resentment addresses a more covert type of racism that is expressed in the language of personal responsibility and denial of racial discrimination.

Researchers measure this form of prejudice primarily through survey research. Respondents are asked questions about perceptions of work ethic and personal responsibility. For example, respondents are asked how strongly they agree with statements like, “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black people should do the same without special favors.” And: “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Black people to work their way out of the lower class.” Individuals who deny the consequences of racial discrimination and blame Black people’s poor work ethic for racial disparities receive a higher “resentment score.”

Using data from the ANES, which has routinely measured whites’ levels of racial resentment since the 1980s, Duke University graduate student Trent Ollerenshaw and I analyzed how white Americans’ levels of racial prejudice have changed over time. Our findings showed that racial resentment among white Democrats is at an all-time low.

This suggests that Democrats have an historic opportunity to advance more racially progressive policies. By leveraging burgeoning white progressivism on race, Democrats may also serve the interests of—and thereby, attract—another crucial constituency: people of color, whose support for the Democratic Party appears to have eroded somewhat in recent years.

We find that during the 1980s and 1990s, white Democrats had only slightly lower levels of racial resentment than white Republicans, and both were more politically conservative than now. The two groups began drifting apart in the early 2000s, a trend that accelerated at the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2008 and became a gulf by 2016. By 2020, the two parties were further apart than ever. While white Democrats’ resentment scores declined dramatically, white Republicans’ racial resentment scores in 2020 had not changed much since 1986, the same year Howard Beach race riots in Queens, New York, killed a Black man and the state of Arizona rescinded the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

There are two likely explanations for this trend: More racially prejudiced white Democrats have left the party in recent years, or they have substantially changed their views. Multiple surveys of the same individuals between 2011 and 2020 provide evidence for the latter explanation: they show that whites who remained Democrats have expressed less racial resentment over time.

The next critical question for political researchers and Democratic strategists is: Does declining racial resentment among white Democrats suggest there is greater support for specific policy solutions?

Our analysis shows that many white survey respondents in 1980s and 1990s opposed policies that are perceived to benefit Black people, disproportionately, such as affirmative action and welfare spending increases.

During the Obama era, however, white Democrats’ support for these policies increased substantially. A 2020 poll by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute revealed that more than 73 percent of white Democrats supported affirmative action policies in college admissions and more than 66 percent supported them in hiring practices. More white Democrats support affirmative action now than ever before.

Our analysis suggests that the Democratic Party’s reluctance to take stronger positions on racial justice due to concerns about racially resentful whites is a lost opportunity. There is empirical evidence that Democrats could see gains if they embrace the progressivism of their core constituencies: racially liberal white voters and people of color.


ASHLEY JARDINA is a political scientist at Duke University, a fellow at the Public Religion Research Institute and the author of White Identity Politics.

Kim Cheatle: Biden taps PepsiCo executive to head Secret Service

Sravasti Dasgupta - 4

Biden© AP

US president Joe Biden has appointed Kimberly Cheatle as the new director of the Secret Service.

Ms Cheatle has served in the Secret Service for 27 years and was the first woman to be named assistant director of protective operations, the division that provides protection to the president and other dignitaries.

In 2021, she was awarded the Presidential Rank Award by Mr Biden.

She is currently working as as a security executive at PepsiCo.

Ms Cheatle will become the second woman to head the Secret Service after Julia Pierson who was appointed by Barack Obama in 2013.

“Kim has had a long and distinguished career at the Secret Service, having risen through the ranks during her 27 years with the agency, becoming the first woman in the role of Assistant Director of protective operations,” Mr Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.

“Jill [First Lady] and I know firsthand Kim’s commitment to her job and to the Secret Service’s people and mission. When Kim served on my security detail when I was Vice President, we came to trust her judgement and counsel.

“She is a distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills, and was easily the best choice to lead the agency at a critical moment for the Secret Service. She has my complete trust, and I look forward to working with her,” he added.

Prior to her stint as assistant director of protective operations, Ms Cheatle served as Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office, providing oversight for all mission-related investigations, protective intelligence and protective visits in the state of Georgia.

Her appointment comes as the Secret Service is at the centre of growing criticism after admitting that text messages from around the time of the Capitol riot in January last year were deleted.

In a statement on 14 July, a spokesperson for the Secret Service denied that personnel “maliciously deleted text messages”.

“In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the [DHS inspector general] in every respect – whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts,” Anthony Guglielmi said.

In addition, personnel from the Secret Service personnel were invoked in several testimonies to the House select committee probing insurrection last year.

This has raised serious questions about the behaviour of former president Donald Trump and his attempts to provoke a mob and subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Welcoming Ms Cheatle to lead the Secret Service, Mr Guglielmi said she “is a law enforcement veteran and served as the first female assistant director in charge of all protective operations for the agency before retiring”.

“We are ecstatic to welcome her back as the next Director of the United States Secret Service,” he said in a tweet.

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I STOOD IN LINE FOR THE MONKEYPOX VACCINE. ALL AROUND ME WERE ECHOES OF OTHER EPIDEMICS

From AIDS to COVID-19, Gay Men Have Found Camaraderie Amid the Barrage of Threats to Their Health

Robert Whirry couldn't find a place to get his monkeypox vaccine—until, finally, a friend texted with a fresh tip: a nearby hospital had doses. He dropped everything to stand in line. "I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I have a work Zoom scheduled later, but this may be my only chance," he remembers thinking.

 Courtesy of AP Images.


by ROBERT WHIRRY | AUGUST 25, 2022

It is early August 2022 and I am in San Francisco for a few days. In urban areas with large gay populations such as Los Angeles, where I’m from, and here, monkeypox is on the mind of all my gay friends, and a topic of great interest among my straight ones. As with the first days of COVID-19, this consciousness seems to have come out of nowhere. Only weeks ago monkeypox seemed like a minor issue. Now there are more and more stories of friends of friends who have contracted it—experiences of the worst pain ever, like broken glass scraping on skin, and of the horror when the lesions travel to the genitals and anal canal, where the pain is constant and agonizing.

For those of us who are sexually active gay men, the timing seems particularly cruel. It was only recently that the shadow of COVID lifted a bit, giving something of a return to normalcy in regards to sexual practices. Monkeypox spreads through close contact, particularly sexual contact, and many gay men have contracted it. Sex and physical intimacy are dangerous again. It’s time to once again limit sexual contact—to heave another sigh, accept the new reality, and try and find a way to get the vaccine.

It isn’t easy. I had registered for the vaccine in Los Angeles and in nearby Long Beach, but had been unable to obtain it. Now, in San Francisco, at a little after 8 in the morning on a Tuesday, a friend texts me that he’d gotten out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to get in line at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Rumor was, they had a batch of monkeypox vaccine—maybe 600 doses, no one knows for sure—which they were going to start giving out at 8 a.m.

When my friend arrived at 5:30 a.m. there was already a two-block line, and he was lucky number 125—assured he would get the vaccine that day. His text urges me to get down to SF General ASAP. I pull on some clothes, call a Lyft, and rush out the door. I haven’t had my coffee yet, and I have a work Zoom scheduled later, but this may be my only chance.
Sex and physical intimacy are dangerous again. It’s time to once again to limit sexual contact—to heave another sigh, accept the new reality, and try and find a way to get the vaccine.

When I get there, the line is down to one block long, and there is a moment of joy and relief when a smiling health outreach worker hands me a paper slip: number 531. I will get my first monkeypox vaccine dose that day! She also gives me a questionnaire to fill out and a small, bright yellow pencil, as if I were about to commence a round of miniature golf. I try to remember the last time I have used or even held a pencil. Filling out the form in faint graphite feels somehow inadequate to the importance of the moment.

The vaccine line snakes along slowly but constantly. It is a warm day in the city, and it’s nice to be in the sun. I look around at my companions in line. We are all of us gay men, most alone, some in pairs. I have flashbacks to the early days of the AIDS crisis. The desperate waiting for initial treatments, taking an early HIV test and waiting an unnerving two weeks for the result, struggling to get the first doses of combination therapies. We were stigmatized in those early days, and we fear we could be stigmatized anew.

And of course there are more recent flashbacks, to COVID-19—the confusion and anxiety for everyone seeking to get vaccinated and the glorious memory of getting that first dose, and the sense of liberation and newfound safety that came with it.

About halfway through the line, an earnest young activist hands each of us a card urging us to sign a petition demanding the government take more urgent steps to fight monkeypox, including making more vaccine doses available immediately. Later, near the vaccine site entrance, I come across a huge pile of petition cards discarded on a bench. Political apathy will always exist to some degree, but I wonder how much this castoff mound may also speak to the number of gay men who feel exhausted and overwhelmed in the face of a seemingly endless barrage of political and health threats.

Getting the vaccine goes amazingly smoothly. I walk to a numbered table where an intern in scrubs greets me warmly and transcribes the information on my penciled questionnaire into a database. I go upstairs to receive my vaccine. An older, jovial male nurse smiles broadly at me, offers me a seat, and asks: Which arm? The injection is painless, and I do not at first realize it is over. I see the nurse toss my used syringe into a gigantic red sharps box, on top of hundreds of other spent doses. There we are, thrown together, as we were in line.

I think of all the death and suffering among gay men that the organized, friendly health professionals at San Francisco General Hospital must have seen since the first days of the AIDS epidemic. In some ways this is just another response to a health crisis, offered generously and efficiently, without judgment, and mustering the greatest resources they are capable of providing.

I walk out of the vaccine facility with a lightness in my step, knowing that I am one of the lucky ones. There are still vaccines available today, just as there had been when my friend texted me a few hours earlier. I text other friends to tell them to come down here, and see other men doing the same. We are in this together—men who are still in many ways outsiders to mainstream American sexual culture, who have achieved a certain level of liberation in our celebration of the joy and intimacy of sex, and who, if we are lucky, have good friends who reach out in a time of crisis and tell us to get our ass down here right away.


ROBERT WHIRRY is a freelance grant proposal and report writer who has worked in HIV and public health since 1985.