Hernández Rivera Reiterates He’ll Put Status Issue on Back Burner
The San Juan Daily Star, the only paper with News Service in English in Puerto Rico, publishes 7 days a week, with a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday edition, along with a Weekend Edition to cover Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
By THE STAR STAFF
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is supporting the ongoing reconstruction of the historic Cabezas de San Juan Lighthouse through an obligation of nearly $726,200 to the Puerto Rico Conservation Trust for damage following Hurricane Maria.
The lighthouse in the municipality of Fajardo was built in 1880. In addition to its great historical value, it is a maritime navigation tool for the northeastern region of Puerto Rico.
“Projects like these that seek to preserve historical monuments, while caring for and educating about the preservation of our flora and fauna, are essential for the survival of our ecosystem,” said Federal Disaster Recovery Coordinator José Baquero. “Our mission is for future generations to enjoy the natural beauty that defines our culture.”
The Cabezas de San Juan Natural Reserve has 11 terrestrial and marine ecosystems, including the bioluminescent lagoon (Laguna Grande), the surrounding forest, and an extensive network of reefs and seagrass beds. The organization receives between 50,000 and 60,000 visitors a year of all ages, both local visitors and tourists.
Johanna Santiago Torres, the superintendent of Cabezas de San Juan Natural Reserve, said the organization’s mission is to protect 33% of Puerto Rico’s ecosystems by 2033, in collaboration with the federal and local government, private entities and the communities surrounding those spaces.
The lighthouse is one of the sites visited as part of the reserve’s tours and is part of the National Register of Historic Places. Regarding the ongoing repairs, Santiago Torres said
the restoration of the facilities strengthens the protection of ecosystems and guarantees safe spaces for environmental education, research and Puerto Rico’s natural resources.
In addition to the reserve’s value in helping reduce high temperatures and mitigate the effects of climate change, the superintendent emphasized that it is important to preserve Cabezas de San Juan because of the ecosystems that live there and because it is an oasis for the different migratory, endemic and native species that arrive.
“It is very important for the community, for the people who visit us, to have a space where they feel connected to nature, because we, human beings, are part of nature, so these spaces serve for that, to connect,” Santiago Torres said.
By THE STAR STAFF
Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Electoral Commissioner Karla Angleró González and Alternate Commissioner Gerardo “Toñito” Cruz Maldonado earlier this week requested an investigation from the interim president of the State Election Commission Alternate Chairwoman Jessika Padilla Rivera earlier this week into alleged irregularities detected in early voting by mail.
The PDP commissioners presented a list of 41 registered voters in precincts 67 and 113 of Santa Isabel who requested early vote by mail.
“It is highly suspicious to us that the ballots of all these voters were requested to the same address. PO BOX 1508, Santa Isabel, 0075, despite the fact that the voters live in
different places in the municipal jurisdiction,” Angleró said. “This situation brings up serious doubts since contradictory persons with different residential addresses have requested their ballots be sent to the same postal address.”
In the petition, the PDP official requested that the voter envelopes that that have not yet been validated be put in safe custody until the situation has been clarified -- until a board contacts the voters involved to corroborate the legitimacy of the requests and resolves any doubts related to the process -- and that the SEC chairwoman issues a detailed report to the electoral commissioners on the irregularities detected in order that an appropriate decision can be made.
Cruz added that in addition to the Santa Isabel situation, the PDP has detected three other cases that raise questions.
By THE STAR STAFF
Resident commissioner-elect Pablo José Hernández Rivera said in a Hill editorial this week that his mandate will be to put the pursuit of statehood for Puerto Rico aside and focus on economic development.
“For the first time since 2000, the people of Puerto Rico have elected a resident commissioner (non-voting delegate) to Congress who opposes statehood for Puerto Rico and thinks we should focus on different priorities. That would be me,” he wrote in the editorial.
“Puerto Ricans are simply tired of the sterile status debate,” he continued. “In my campaign, I pledged that instead of wasting time dealing with Puerto Rico’s political status, I would focus more on promoting new tools for the island’s economic development, securing equal treatment in federal programs, and accelerating the disbursement of federal funds for the electrical grid’s reconstruction. The people listened and agreed.”
In the race for resident commissioner, the pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party won by the largest margin since 1964. As reported by the STAR in its Nov. 7 edition, Hernández Rivera said his mandate is to put statehood aside and prioritize economic development.
While his predecessor, now governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón, of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party and a Republican, agrees with Hernández Rivera on the urgent need for
economic development, her position is that statehood won a recent nonbinding status referendum, and, accordingly, she will pursue that option.
“Let’s clarify this ‘mandate’ with straightforward facts. Four years ago, 52 percent of Puerto Ricans voted for statehood in a simple yes-or-no vote. This year, that number dropped to 47 percent, when you count the blank or void ballots that thousands cast, either in protest of the exclusion of the island’s current commonwealth status or of the referendum’s nonbinding nature. Support for statehood thus dropped below 50 percent,” Hernández Rivera wrote in the Hill.
“The lack of a clear mandate, declining support and Republican opposition to statehood in Washington should suffice to pause all discussions regarding the topic,” he added.
“Instead, we should focus on a more productive agenda that addresses the island’s real priorities and problems, and how the island can support, rather than lean on, the mainland.”
One longtime advocate for statehood wasn’t buying it. In a press release issued Wednesday, New Progressive Party Rep. José Aponte Hernández demanded that Hernández Rivera accept the victory of statehood in the Election Day status consultation and work in Congress to implement the will of the people of Puerto Rico.
“The elected Resident Commissioner has before him an electoral mandate in favor of the admission of Puerto Rico as a state of the union,” Aponte said in the statement. “At this moment, because we understand that by counting the early votes the support will increase, 57 percent of the voters freely and democratically selected
statehood in the status consultation. That is a robust majority of the voters. Mr. Hernández cannot ignore that result as he tries to do; on the contrary, he has to act on it.”
“Recently, the elected Resident Commissioner has made a series of statements in which he indicated that statehood is not on his ‘agenda’ before Congress, even though it was on the ballot and received the majority of votes and there is a mandate from the sovereign in a democracy, the People,” the veteran lawmaker added. “On his agenda must be the implementation of the People’s public policy, statehood. The People do not want to return to the past, they do not want to live in the colony, as Hernández wants to happen with his obsession of returning us to the ’50s and ’60s.”
Aponte said he will be communicating with the leadership of the new Congress to establish the triumph of statehood in the most recent status consultation, which was carried out using U.S. House Resolution 8393, better known as the “Puerto Rico Admission Act,” a bipartisan measure approved in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the current Congress the measure was introduced in the House as HR 2757, which has 100 co-authors between Democrats and Republicans. A similar bill in the U.S. Senate has the support of 27 senators.
“Congressmen from both national parties will know that Puerto Rico chose to be admitted as a state of the union and by a marked majority margin,” Aponte said. “That message will get through even if the incoming Resident Commissioner does not want to talk about the matter.”
By THE STAR STAFF
Sigfrido Steidel Figueroa, the administrative director of the island courts system, earlier this week announced the operational plan for the judicial branch for the Thanksgiving period, which runs from today, Nov. 28 to Sunday, Dec. 1.
During those days, the court centers and peripheral courtrooms of the Court of First Instance, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, along with the Court Administration Office, will remain closed.
The investigation rooms in Aguadilla, Mayagüez and Ponce will operate on reduced schedules, while those in Bayamón and San Juan will work in a consolidated
manner at the San Juan Judicial Center, from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. The rest of the judicial regions will operate with oncall judges available through the police barracks.
The Virtual Municipal Courtroom will be available from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. to handle urgent matters such as protection orders and involuntary mental health admission orders. Forms and guides are available on the official Judiciary portal.
The Supreme Court extended any terms that expire during the closure until the next business day. More details are available on the website www.poderjudicial.pr and on the official social media pages of the judicial branch.
By THE STAR STAFF
The director of La Fondita de Jesús added to Wednesday’s traditional Thanksgiving turkey lunch a call to the new government and the general public to remember the needs of vulnerable populations and the homeless on the island.
“Every year at this time, Puerto Ricans sit down to celebrate Thanksgiving at tables where there is no shortage of turkey and the joy of being together,” said Josué Maysonet, executive director of La Fondita de Jesús. “It can also be a time to think and commit to acting for those who are in need due to so many difficult circumstances in life. Here at La Fondita we do not forget them and with the support of the good people of Puerto Rico we can make a difference in their difficult times.”
At this year’s special Thanksgiving activity, there was breakfast for the participants, a religious ceremony, games, and lunch for more than a hundred homeless people. Health services were also provided by way of a mobile unit.
Maysonet added that as they have done for almost 40 years, the charitable organization impacts the lives of homeless people, marginalized people, senior citizens, and families from impoverished communities on a daily basis. Once again they held a special Thanksgiving activity for homeless people. There was breakfast for the participants, a religious ceremony, games, and lunch for more than a hundred homeless people. Health services were also provided by way of a mobile unit.
“It is important at this time to remind them that they are not alone and can give thanks with us,” Maysonet said. “Here they are part of a family and we always want them to have hope that we can help them. There are many
who have left the streets, already have their homes after overcoming their problems and today they are here as volunteers. We give thanks for them and for everything they do to help others.”
The La Fondita de Jesús director reminded the new government of the commitments they made to the people when they were elected, and this includes caring for the homeless, the economically disadvantaged elderly, and families who are vulnerable because they do not have affordable housing.
“There are many needs of our people and it is up to the government to assist,” he said. “In the Third Sector, organizations like La Fondita are willing to collaborate within the alliances that are needed to improve the quality of life of our people.”
La Fondita provides essential services (food, showers, clothing, recreation, transportation, etc.); psychosocial and health services; affordable, adequate and safe housing; community organization; capacity building and disaster relief; and it empowers citizens while promoting equity and social justice, Maysonet said.
By THE STAR STAFF
Citizen Victory Movement (MVC by its initials in Spanish) General Coordinator
Ana Irma Rivera Lassén has asked Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) President Juan Dalmau Ramírez to set aside legislative seats for the MVC if the Minority Law is activated to increase minority representation in both chambers.
Under the minority law, if in a general election more than two-thirds of the members of either chamber are elected from one political party or from a single ticket, then members of minority parties who obtained more than 3% of the vote for their gubernatorial candidates can obtain additional seats.
The number of members of the Senate or of the House of Representatives or of both houses will be increased by declaring elected a sufficient number of candidates of the minority party or parties to bring the total number of members to nine in the Senate and to 17 in the House of Representatives, according to the law.
The Minority Law is activated after the scrutiny or recount of votes.
Rivera Lassén said she asked the PIP, in writing, to give the MVC some of the seats it may be picking up in the Legislature.
“How would it be? That is a discussion and that discussion must be held with the PIP,” the senator said in an interview on Radio Isla. “I think it is a very good discussion. It is a discussion that will be the subject of some legal articles, whether it happens or not.”
Article 1014 of the Electoral Code provides that, after the general scrutiny, the State Election Commission (SEC) must, first, certify the 11 at-large senators and 11 at-large representatives, as well as the two senators per senatorial district and one representative per House district.
Once this occurs, the SEC must determine the number and names of the additional candidates from the minority parties that must be declared elected.
Rivera Lassén acknowledged that dividing seats among the PIP-MVC Alliance “is complicated.” Dalmau was second in the voting for governor in the November election.
“As a lawyer, I tell you that, if it happens, it is complicated, but it could be done,” she said. “I would not doubt that it would end up in court either. Still, our history in Victoria Ciudadana [Citizen Victory] has had a lot to do with the courts and, in fact, because we say things and do things that challenge institutionality. Many times, they take us to court, or we take them to court.”
Thursday, November 28, 2024 6
By ISABELLE TAFT
Colleges and universities have tightened rules around protests, locked campus gates and handed down stricter punishments after the disruptions of pro-Palestinian demonstrations and encampments last spring.
The efforts seem to be working.
Universities have seen just under 950 protest events this semester so far, compared with 3,000 last semester, according to a log at the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard University’s Ash Center. About 50 people have been arrested so far this school year at protests on higher education campuses, according to numbers gathered by The New York Times, compared with more than 3,000 last semester.
The protests stemmed from Israel’s response to the Hamasled assault in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, Israeli authorities say. Israel’s subsequent war in the Gaza Strip has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.
When students have protested this fall, administrators have often enforced — to the letter — new rules created in response to last spring’s unrest. The latest moves have created scenes that would have been hard to imagine previously, particularly at universities that once celebrated their history of student activism.
Harvard temporarily banned dozens of students and faculty members from libraries after they participated in silent “study-ins” — where protesters sit at library tables with signs opposing the war in the Gaza Strip — though a similar protest did not lead to discipline in December 2023. At Indiana University Bloomington, some students and faculty members who attended candlelight vigils were referred for discipline under a new prohibition on expressive activity after 11 p.m. University of Pennsylvania administrators and campus police officers holding zip ties told vigil attendees to move because they had not reserved the space in compliance with new rules.
And at Montclair State University in New Jersey, police officers often outnumber participants at a weekly demonstration where protesters hold placards with photos of children killed in Gaza and the words “We mourn.”
“They say it’s to keep us safe, but I think it’s more to keep us under control,” said Tasneem Abdulazeez, a student in the teaching program.
The changes follow federal civil rights complaints, lawsuits and withering congressional scrutiny accusing universities of tolerating antisemitism, after some protesters praised Hamas and called for violence against Israelis.
Some students and faculty members have welcomed calmer campuses. Others see the relative quiet as the bitter fruit of a crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech. They worry President-elect Donald Trump, who as a candidate called for universities to “vanquish the radicals,” could ratchet up the pressure.
In many cases, universities are enforcing rules they adopted before the school year began. While the specifics vary, they generally impose limits on where and when protests can occur and what form they can take.
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors and an associate professor of media studies at Rutgers University, said the restrictions have made people afraid.
“They feel like they’re being watched and surveilled,” he said. “I think there’s a strong degree of self-censorship that’s taking place.”
But Jewish students who felt targeted by protesters have praised the rules — and the speed at which universities have enforced them — for helping to restore order and safety. Naomi Lamb, director of Hillel at Ohio State University, said the school’s new protest policies seem to be working well.
“I appreciate the response of administrators to ensure that there is as little antisemitic action and rhetoric as possible,” she said.
Some of the tactics protesters used last semester have been met with stringent responses this school year. At the University of Minnesota, 11 people were arrested after they occupied a campus building. Last school year, some universities let protesters occupy buildings overnight and even for days at a time.
At Pomona College in California, the president invoked “extraordinary authority” to bypass the standard disciplinary process and immediately suspend or ban some pro-Palestinian protesters who took over a building Oct. 7 this year. A college spokesperson said the unusual move was justified because the occupation had destroyed property, threatened safety and disrupted classes, and noted that students were given opportunities to respond to the allegations against them.
At some campuses, protesters have taken up new tactics to challenge the new restrictions.
Study-ins like those at Harvard have also taken place at Ohio State, Tulane University and the University of Texas at Austin. Students typically wear kaffiyehs and tape signs to their laptops with messages like “Our tuition funds genocide.”
“It’s kind of designed to put the administration in this bind of either you ignore it, or you enforce rules but you look like kind of a jerk,” said Jay Ulfelder, research project manager at Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab.
A Harvard spokesperson said a January 2024 statement from university leadership made clear that demonstrations are not permitted in libraries or other campus areas used for academic activities.
During Sukkot, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the harvest, members of the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace set up “solidarity sukkahs” at about 20 schools including Northwestern and the University of California, Los Angeles. The sukkahs, or huts, commemorate the structures the Israelites lived in while wandering in the desert for 40 years and are often decorated with gourds, fruit and lights. JVP members added signs saying “Stop Arming Israel.”
The sukkahs were removed at nine universities, according to JVP, with administrators citing new rules prohibiting unauthorized structures.
When facilities workers arrived with power tools to tear down the sukkah at Northwestern, JVP members told them it was wrong to do so before the end of the weeklong holiday, said Paz Baum, a senior.
“They do not care about our ability or right to practice our religion,” Baum said. “They only care about limiting Palestinian speech.”
The new restrictions may not be the only factor behind diminished protest activity this semester. Some protest groups have embraced more violent rhetoric — praising Hamas’ attack
The Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 6, 2024. Harvard temporarily banned dozens of students and faculty members from libraries after they participated in silent “study-ins.” (Sophie Park/The New York Times)
on Israel, for example — alienating some students who had sympathized with their cause.
Some things have not changed, however: There is still little consensus about what it means for a campus to be safe and when speech critical of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.
At Montclair State, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators have criticized the number of police officers and administrators at their events, President Jonathan Koppell said he was trying to strike a balance between “competing priorities.”
In an interview, Koppell said the officers stationed at protests are necessary to protect everyone on campus, including the protesters. He noted that demonstrations on campus have been peaceful and people have “engaged responsibly.”
He added that some community members want him to prohibit the pro-Palestinian gatherings altogether, something he has resisted.
“You have a desire for some people to be able to say whatever they what, wherever they want, whenever they want,” Koppell said. “And you have some people who would like to see an environment where there’s an absolute limitation on people’s ability to protest.”
“Anybody who wants an absolute in either direction is going to be unhappy,” he added.
Even as universities crack down, administrators and faculty members say the federal government under Trump could try to force further changes at institutions.
Still, much remains unclear about what could happen. His pick to lead the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, has less education experience than is typical of education secretaries in the past and has publicly said little about campus protests.
Abed A. Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said he did not think Trump could make campuses more hostile to pro-Palestinian protests than they already are.
“Are they going to continue with their crackdown on anti-Israel speech? I think they will,” he said, referring to universities. “That’s not because Trump is in office. They started this. It’s been happening.”
Yes, it
By MICHAEL LEVENSON
For 19 years, Richard Burton, a letter carrier in Athens, Georgia, drove the classic boxy mail truck, with only a fan on the dashboard to keep the cabin cool in the sweltering summer months. A second fan plugged into the cigarette lighter didn’t make much of a difference, he said.
But about two months ago, Burton, 46, became one of the first letter carriers in the United States to get a long-awaited upgrade: a new electric mail truck with air conditioning, a 360-degree camera and a sliding cargo door on the side that allows the unloading of packages directly onto the sidewalk.
“It makes the job easier to do because you’re not sweating bullets out there,” he said. “And in Georgia, you can imagine how hot it gets.”
The new mail trucks — 10 years in the making — have started rolling into American neighborhoods, and the early reviews from letter carriers are positive. Many have complained for years that the mail trucks they have been driving, which were introduced in the 1980s, break down frequently and are stiflingly hot, as climate change pushes temperatures to greater extremes. The rear cargo space is so small, they say, that they have to crouch inside to grab packages.
The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, as the new truck is called, promises some long-overdue relief. But its appearance has not been universally applauded. It has a giant windshield and a low-slung hood designed to allow drivers of almost any height to see the road. One car enthusiast on YouTube called it “ugly by design.” Ezra Dyer, a columnist for Car and Driver, went further, describing the truck as a “visual abomination.”
“It looks like a robot Beluga whale — built by the East German government,” he wrote in 2021, after the design was unveiled. “It also reminds me of the baseball bullpen golf carts that were designed to look like motorized baseball hats.”
Burton said that people on his route have been stopping him to take photos and to ask if they can peek inside.
“I know a lot of people say it looks funny,” he said. “It looks like a duck or a platypus. It does. But I tell them it gets the job done. It works for me.”
Fans say the design just takes some getting used to.
a
safer, Renfroe said, allowing packages to be unloaded directly onto the curb. The old mail trucks had to be unloaded from the back, which resulted in postal workers‘ being injured and even killed when they were hit by oncoming vehicles, Renfroe said.
Planning for the new vehicles started in 2014, when the Postal Service began soliciting ideas from letter carriers. Some of their suggestions were incorporated into the final design, such as nonslip surfaces and lights on the doorsteps, and a third sun visor for the windshield.
The trucks also have airbags, automatic emergency braking and a collision-avoidance system — safety features that are common in many new vehicles but were missing from the old vehicles.
The new trucks may require some adjustment for letter carriers accustomed to driving the old delivery vehicles.
Ykeyler Barnes, a letter carrier in Athens, said when she first got her new electric mail truck, she thought it wasn’t working when she pushed the button to start it. So she called a mechanic to check it out.
“He said, ‘It starts — you just can’t hear it because it’s electric,’” Barnes said. “I thought that was so funny. I came home and told my family and we got a good laugh out of it.”
“It is the goofiest thing in the world when you first look at it,” said Douglas Lape, a special assistant to the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, a union that represents 205,000 postal delivery workers.
“But I will tell you, it grows on you.”
The mail trucks are the most prominent piece of the Postal Service’s plan to invest $9.6 billion to modernize its fleet of aging delivery vehicles and make them more efficient, safer and better equipped to carry packages.
The Postal Service ordered 50,000 of the new trucks in March 2022, according to Oshkosh Defense, the Wisconsin company that won the contract to produce the vehicles at a plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
A month later, attorneys general from 16 states and the District of Columbia, along with five environmental groups and the United Auto Workers union, sued the Postal Service, complaining that most of the new vehicles would be gas-powered, undercutting the fight against climate change.
In December 2022, the Postal Service
changed course and announced that 75% of the new mail trucks would be battery-powered.
The trucks are designed to travel about 70 miles on a single charge, more than enough for the 12 to 15 miles of daily driving that city letter carriers generally do, including frequent stops, Lape said.
Brian L. Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the new trucks have several advantages over the model they are replacing, the Grumman Long Life Vehicle. In addition to air conditioning — perhaps the most critical upgrade — they have more cargo space, because letter carriers now deliver far more packages and far fewer letters and magazines than they did in the 1980s.
The cargo door on the side of the new mail trucks is also
Driving a larger truck took a little getting used to, she said.
But Barnes, who has been delivering mail for 26 years, said that she appreciated the air conditioning and the additional cargo space, which allows her to walk inside the truck and get packages without having to stoop. She said other letter carriers will also come to appreciate the additional room for packages, especially during the holidays.
“You’re going to have to get used to it,” she said. “But once you pass that phase, you’re going to really like it.”
By LAUREN HIRSCH, EMMA GOLDBERG and JORDYN HOLMAN
In June of 2020, as protesters spilled into the streets after the murder of George Floyd, Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, promised action.
In a blog post, he said that “slavery, lynching, the concept of separate but equal … have morphed into a set of systems today that are all too often, unjust” and promised to address systemic racism by establishing a Center for Racial Equity that would give out $100 million in grants over five years. He also pledged to make changes within the company and “actively shape our culture to be more inclusive.”
Four and a half years later, Walmart is sending a different message, pulling back on some of those initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion, known as DEI.
As a result of the changes, the company will stop sharing data with the Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit that tracks corporate LGBTQ+ policies. Third-party merchants will no longer be able to sell some LGBTQ+-themed items, such as chest binders, on Walmart.com that could be marketed to children. It will no longer use the terms DEI and Latinx in official communications. And Walmart will not renew the Center for Racial Equity, the philanthropic initiative that McMillon announced in 2020, when the agreement expires next year.
Robby Starbuck, an anti-DEI activist and a social media influencer, declared the changes a victory Monday. In a post on social media, Starbuck said that he had told executives at the company that he was working on a story about “wokeness” at Walmart, but that instead the two sides had “productive conversations” to make changes “before Christmas when shoppers have very few large retail brands they can spend money with who aren’t pushing woke policies.” A spokesperson for Walmart confirmed the changes, some of which were already in motion.
“We’ve been on a journey and know we aren’t perfect, but every decision comes from a place of wanting to fos-
ter a sense of belonging, to open doors to opportunities for all our associates, customers and suppliers, and to be a Walmart for everyone,” the company said in a statement.
Walmart wasn’t the only company to make DEI pledges in 2020. At the time, there were questions about whether it was a movement, or a temporary moment.
“I anticipated in 2020 we might see something like this, but it’s certainly been a ferocious pushback,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law.
Many companies are also concerned about the threat of litigation targeting DEI programs after a 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious college admissions. At NYU School of Law, the Meltzer Center has been hosting a quarterly webinar for employers helping them to understand which DEI programs are legally safe, and which could possibly make them targets for lawsuits.
A shopper in the produce section of a Walmart store in Malvern, Ark., June 5, 2024. Walmart, like many other companies, has been reviewing its diversity, equity and inclusion practices since the Supreme Court rejected affirmative action at colleges last year. (Will Newton/The New York Times)
Glasgow and his colleagues use a mnemonic called “the three P’s”: programs that show preference to legally protected groups and give them a palpable benefit — like hiring quotas or internships open only to candidates of a certain race — can make employers legally vulnerable.
Diversity experts note that while companies worry about the social and cultural backlash they’re facing, they also have to juggle concerns about their workforce. Some feel that scaling back DEI will hamper efforts to recruit and retain Black workers.
“What’s discouraging — the blowback from this — is that companies that have renounced their DEI commitments may find it hard to recruit people of color and harder to retain them once they do recruit them,” said Frank Dobbin, a DEI expert at Harvard University and author of the 2022 book “Getting to Diversity.” “I think this will have an unfortunate effect on Walmart’s current employees.”
For Black workers, said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociologist and DEI expert at Washington University in St. Louis, pulling back from diversity policies “reinforces the message that they don’t belong.”
Starbuck has waged online campaigns against a number of companies whose policies he deems too “woke.” While he is benefiting as much from a trend to reverse DEI policy as he is instigating it, companies across the United States have been preparing for the potential of possible attacks by activists. For them, the calculus involves weighing the impact on suppliers and employees against the potential financial cost of a boycott or other actions pushed by Starbuck. Walmart’s actions underline the risk it may see in a public fight, particularly as the anti-DEI agenda gets a boost after Donald Trump’s election.
Until now, it was clear what sort of companies were changing their DEI approaches. “What we’re not seeing are organizations that recruit mostly from liberal elite colleges pulling back from DEI,” Glasgow said.
Starbuck initially focused on companies with customers he thought would most likely be sympathetic to his cause, like Tractor Supply and John Deere. Walmart represents a different kind of company: one with employees and customers on both sides of the political divide, what Starbuck has referred to as a “50-50” customer base.
“This is Walmart preparing for a Trump presidency and Justice Department,” said Amber Madison, co-founder of Peoplism, a DEI consultancy. “If Walmart’s assessment of the Trump administration is that it will protect his friends and go after its enemies, this is Walmart showing they’re a friend.”
Starbuck would likely agree. “America just voted, and we voted against ‘wokeness,’” Starbuck said in a video posted on the social platform X, as he announced his next targets: Amazon and Target.
Wall Street’s main indexes fell on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq leading declines as technology stocks slumped on Thanksgiving eve on worries the Federal Reserve may be cautious about rate cuts after stubbornly strong U.S. inflation data.
Data showed consumer spending increased solidly in October, suggesting the U.S. economy maintained its strong pace of growth early in the fourth quarter, but progress on lowering inflation appeared to have stalled.
Traders added to bets the Fed will lower borrowing costs by 25 basis points at its December meeting, according to CME’s FedWatch. However, they anticipate the central bank leaving rates unchanged at its January and March meetings.
Investors were still gauging the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge on Monday to impose duties of 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada and 10% on Chinese goods unless they halt flows of the deadly opioid fentanyl and illegal migrants into the U.S.
Goldman Sachs said in a note this week an escalation in tariff policy risks delaying the return to 2.0% inflation target.
At 01:56 p.m. the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 107.54 points, or 0.24%, to 44,752.77, the S&P 500 lost 20.04 points, or 0.33%, to 6,001.59 and the Nasdaq Composite lost 116.33 points, or 0.61%, to 19,059.24.
Dell fell 11.8% with HP down 6.2% after downbeat quarterly forecasts, weighing on the Information Technology sector, which led sectoral declines and lost 1.3%.
The sentiment spread to megacaps such as Nvidia and Microsoft, which dropped 1.9% and 0.8% respectively, while the Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index slid 2% to hit its lowest in more than two months.
The Russell 2000 index, which hit a record high earlier in the week, eked out a 0.14% gain.
Investors also assessed data earlier in the day which showed the economy grew at a solid clip in the third quarter, while weekly jobless claims fell again last week, leaving the door open for another interest-rate cut from the Federal Reserve in December.
“Inflation has proven to be a little stickier than the Fed would have liked, which may give them pause with respect to cutting rates,” said Scott Welch, chief investment officer at Certuity.
“There are questions around the effects of Trump’s stated tariff policy, which, if implemented could be pretty inflationary and so the Fed is going to have to balance itself between the economic data and the incoming administration’s policy agenda.”
Minutes from the Fed’s November meeting, released on Tuesday, showed policymakers were uncertain about the outlook for interest-rate cuts and how much the current rates were restricting the economy.
November 28, 2024
By BEN HUBBARD
For years, Hezbollah told the Lebanese that it alone could defend them from Israel. It boasted of powerful weapons and hardened commandos who would unleash deadly “surprises” if war broke out. And it assured its followers that a regional alliance of militias supported by Iran would jump in to support it in battle.
Those myths have now been shattered.
After 13 months of war, Hezbollah entered a cease-fire with Israel on Wednesday that it will struggle to convince anyone, other than its most fervent loyalists, is not in fact a defeat.
The 60-day truce, which is supposed to lay the groundwork for a more lasting ceasefire, comes after three months of withering Israeli attacks that have thrown the organization into disarray.
Deep intelligence infiltration enabled Israel to assassinate many senior leaders, including Hezbollah’s secretary-general of 32 years, Hassan Nasrallah. Israel bombarded the group’s most loyal communities, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee and blowing up dozens of villages, ensuring that many people have no homes to immediately return to.
And Hezbollah’s fateful decision to consult no one before firing rockets at Israel, setting off a conflict that grew into Lebanon’s
Residents from Lebanon’s south drive along the coastal road 51, outside Beirut on Nov. 27, 2024, after the cease-fire began to take hold. After 13-months of war, Hezbollah entered a cease-fire with Israel on Wednesday that it will struggle to convince anyone, other than its most fervent loyalists, is not in fact a defeat. (Daniel Berehulak /The New York Times)
most deadly war in decades, has left it isolated in the country and in the wider Middle East, with Lebanon facing an exorbitant bill for reconstruction.
Many of Hezbollah’s opponents in Lebanon and elsewhere hope that the war has weakened it enough that it will no longer be able to impose its will on the country’s political system. But it remains unclear whether Lebanon’s other parties will now feel empowered to stand against it.
Hezbollah still has many thousands of fighters in Lebanon and commands the loyalty of a large share of the country’s Shiite Muslims.
After the cease-fire took hold Wednesday, thousands of them poured back into Beirut’s southern suburbs to inspect the damage. Many honked their horns, waved yellow Hezbollah flags and said that Hezbollah’s survival amounted to a win.
“Morale is high and there is victory,” said Osama Hamdan, who was cleaning out the shop where he sells water pumps. His family’s apartment had been damaged and would cost more than $5,000 to fix so they could move back in, he said.
“None of this is important,” he said. “What is important is the victory and the resistance. We are with them to the end.”
Yet Israel’s battering of Hezbollah will likely echo in Lebanon and across the region for years.
At the height of its power before the war, it was perceived to be such a military threat that Israel and the United States feared that a war with the group could set the region ablaze and devastate Israel.
But as the war escalated, Hezbollah’s allies failed to come to its aid in any effective way, undermining the credibility of Iran’s network. And Israel stepped up its attacks so
fast — incapacitating thousands of Hezbollah members by detonating wireless devices and heavily bombing their communities — that Hezbollah found itself unable to mount a response close to what it had threatened for years.
Securing the cease-fire required the group to make serious concessions.
Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with Hamas after that group’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. For months, as Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, Hezbollah’s leaders swore that the battle would end only when Israel stopped attacking the Gaza Strip.
That demand is nowhere to be found in the new cease-fire, leaving Israel free to continue its quest to destroy Hamas.
The new cease-fire also gives an oversight role to the United States, which Iran and Hezbollah have long railed against for its staunch support for Israel. Iran and Hezbollah would have only accepted such an arrangement if they were desperate to stop the war, analysts said.
“It indicates the degree to which Iran is concerned and worried about its new vulnerability and the incoming Trump administration,” said Paul Salem, a Lebanon expert at the Middle East Institute, a think tank.
Hezbollah’s presence on Israel’s border also deterred Israel from attacking Iran, because of fears that Hezbollah would bombard northern Israel in response. That threat has been drastically reduced, depriving Iran of a key defense. Iran and Israel have exchanged direct fire in recent months but Iran has yet to respond to Israel’s most recent bombardment, apparently to avoid a broader war.
“The shoe that hasn’t fallen yet is the
obvious fact that there is a huge imbalance between Israel and Iran,” Salem said. “Israel can attack Iran at will and Iran cannot do the same.”
In Lebanon, too, Hezbollah is likely to face an array of economic, social and political challenges if the cease-fire holds.
For years, it justified its arsenal to other Lebanese as essential to defend the country against Israeli attacks. Now, it has not only failed in that defense but must answer to fellow Lebanese who are angry that it singlehandedly dragged the country into a costly war that no one else wanted.
“Hezbollah is worried about the internal dynamics in the country,” said Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “There are many people who are not happy with what happened, and not just opponents but people in Hezbollah’s orbit.”
The war has displaced 1.2 million people, the government says, mostly Shiite Muslims from Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley.
Many of them are now sheltering in areas dominated by other sects — Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze — many of whom do not want them to stay and fear that Hezbollah members could draw Israeli fire.
Caring for the displaced and repairing the war’s damage will pose a major challenge to Lebanon, whose economy was in crisis before the fighting began, and to Hezbollah, whose supporters have been the hardest hit.
A World Bank report this month estimated that nearly 100,000 housing units had been damaged or destroyed and about 166,000 people had lost their jobs in the war. It estimated the total physical damage and economic losses at $8.5 billion.
Given Iran’s own economic troubles and Hezbollah’s unpopularity with other Middle Eastern governments, it is unclear who may contribute funds for reconstruction, and with what conditions.
Nevertheless, Hezbollah’s remaining public figures have already begun marketing the cease-fire as a victory, saying their fighters kept firing missiles, rockets and drones into Israel and valiantly confronted the Israeli troops who invaded southern Lebanon.
“From now, we confirm that the resistance will remain, will continue, will carry on,” Hassan Fadlallah, a Lebanese parliamentarian from Hezbollah, told Reuters in an interview Tuesday.
By MATINA STEVIS-GRIDNEFF and SIMON ROMERO
If President-elect Donald Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.
After his missive Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25% tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.
Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.
The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.
As Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.
Canada’s line: Better than Mexico
Even before Trump’s tariff statements, Canadian officials publicly and privately had been laying the groundwork for a negotiating stance that was based on drawing contrasts between Canada and Mexico.
Canada has been pointing out in meetings with allies of Trump that it is doing much better than Mexico in three areas that matter to Trump: borders, China and jobs, according to two senior Canadian officials involved in those discussions, as well as a United States official familiar with them.
The three officials spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the conversations and because they were not authorized to brief the news media.
On the border, the key motivation behind Trump’s tariff threat, Canadian officials have been telling Republicans such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that Canada has a firm grip on its border with the United States. A surge in migrants crossing into the United States without legal permission over the summer was a blip, not a trend, the officials have said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada spoke to Trump on Monday evening, and relayed a plan to further fortify the border, according to another Canadian official who requested anonymity to discuss a private conversation.
On Tuesday, Trudeau and senior mem-
President Joe Biden, from left, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pose for an official photo at the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit at the National Palace in Mexico City, Jan 10, 2023. President elect Donald Trump’s opening salvo in trade and border talks with the United States’ immediate neighbors is casting a harsh light on the North American alliance. (Doug Mills/The New York Times)
bers of his Cabinet called for calm and insisted that they would be able to work with Trump.
“Rather than panicking, we’re engaging in constructive ways to protect Canadian jobs like we have before,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons. “The idea of going to war with the United States isn’t what anyone wants.” He added, “There is work we can do together. That is the work we will do seriously, methodically. But without freaking out.”
The second area where Canadian officials claim to be better partners with the United States than Mexico is on trade with China.
Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, has repeatedly brandished Canada’s imposition of 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles this summer as evidence that Canada is in sync with Trump’s hawkish attitude toward China.
And the two senior Canadian officials said they had raised this contrast privately in conversation with Republicans, suggesting that Mexico was reluctant to sever economic ties with China.
“We are very aligned with this U.S. administration on the issue of China, which is a central issue for them,” Freeland said this month.
On jobs, the two senior Canadian officials have sought to emphasize that the United States and Canada are more comparable in terms of prosperity and wage levels than Mexico, suggesting that Canada isn’t stealing American jobs. Trump has accused Mexico of doing just that.
Trudeau has allowed the members of his government to pursue a “better than Mexico” approach while telling Mexico he does not
Some are questioning Canada’s strategy of casting scrutiny on Mexico after Trump placed Canada alongside Mexico in his threat to impose tariffs, drawing comparisons to the previous negotiation of the trade agreement among the three countries, which happened during Trump’s first presidency.
“They were trying to play Trump’s game, but the political bet they made didn’t pay off,” said Diego Marroquín Bitar, a scholar who specializes in North American trade at the Wilson Center, a Washington research group. “Now they’re in the same position as Mexico again.”
Marroquín Bitar compared Canada’s current stance with the reactions to Trump’s threats of imposing tariffs on both countries during his first administration.
intend to split their alliance, according to the Canadian officials.
Sheinbaum strikes back
In Mexico, President Claudia Sheinbaum has taken a different approach, centering the discussion about tariffs largely on the trade relationship between Mexico and the United States.
She has also downplayed statements from Canadian officials as political posturing, saying last week that Trudeau had personally reassured her that he did not agree with removing Mexico from the treaty.
Sheinbaum added Tuesday morning that she was planning on sending a separate letter to Trudeau laying out how Mexico would proceed on the issues of tariffs and Chinese imports.
Still, she took a shot at Canada. During her daily news conference Tuesday, Sheinbaum said Canada’s imports of electric vehicles from China reached $1.6 billion in 2023, demonstrating what she described as “exponential growth.”
“In Mexico’s case, the figure is much lower,” she added.
Unlike Trudeau’s political weakness at home, which is casting doubt over his handling of the Trump transition, Sheinbaum, who was elected recently, has much stronger domestic backing in her approach.
At that time, he said, Mexican negotiators sought to keep Canadians closely informed of their own discussions with the first Trump administration. In the end, the three countries agreed jointly in 2020 to overhaul the trade deal that had governed commerce in North America for decades.
“It’s a little hypocritical that they are now trying to throw Mexico under the bus,” Marroquín Bitar said.
Trade dynamics in North America are also in flux in ways that could end up strengthening Mexico’s hand in any negotiations.
“A few years ago, Canada was, in many metrics, more important than Mexico, at least when it comes to trade,” Marroquín Bitar said.
But now, he added, Mexico is “the top supplier of imports to the U.S., its top export destination.”
“Mexico is the country that buys the most agricultural products from the U.S.,” he said, “more so than Canada, more so than China.”
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
Forget the necktie that will sit in Dad’s closet or the perfume that your sister Sue will soon regift, for I have some better ideas.
This is my annual holiday giving guide, and I think you’ll like the charities I recommend this year — and so will Dad and Sue if you contribute in their names. You can donate and find out more information through my Kristof Holiday Impact Prize website, KristofImpact.org, which I’ve used for the past six years to support nonprofits in my giving guide.
Here’s what your contributions can accomplish this year:
Give a woman her life back! One of the most heartbreaking conditions I’ve reported on is obstetric fistula, a childbirth injury that happens in poor countries when a woman endures many hours of obstructed labor and no doctor is available to perform a C-section. The baby usually dies, and the woman is left with injuries affecting the vaginal wall and the bladder or rectum, so she continuously leaks bodily waste.
These women — sometimes just teenage girls — can feel stigmatized and humiliated, even that they have been cursed by God.
The good news is that together we can help them reclaim their lives, with a corrective surgery that costs just $619 per person. A nonprofit called the Fistula Foundation has financed more than 100,000 surgeries through a network of more than 150 hospitals in more than 30 countries. Yet need remains enormous.
Save a child’s life! One of the worst things that can happen to someone is to lose a child, and that is still far too common in poor countries. In the West African country of Mali, for example, almost 1 in 10 children died before the age of 5 as of 2017.
An organization called Muso Health has figured out how to deploy community health workers in remote places and save large numbers of children. When Muso Health moved into Mali, child mortality in the areas where it worked fell an astonishing 95% over seven years, according to a published study. That’s because children were much more likely to be treated promptly for malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and other ailments.
One recently published study found that even in an area with escalating armed conflict, Muso reduced child deaths
by 63%. In addition to Mali, Muso now works in five other African countries to help improve care, but resources remain scarce.
All this is a bargain: The cost of bringing one more person into the Muso health care network is only $22 per year.
Help a child learn to read! Books were my childhood’s magic carpets that lifted me on the lifelong journey that now leads me to write this column. I owe so much to “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and to Freddy the Pig. But too many kids in America today don’t have books, library cards or parents accustomed to reading to them.
That’s where Reach Out and Read comes in. It hands out children’s books to low-income American families — more than 7 million books last year — but even more important, it piggybacks on well-child visits to pediatricians, who encourage parents to read to the child regularly.
The doctors give a book on each visit, from birth until the program ends at the age of 5. That amounts to 14 or 15 books for a child in the program.
For those who don’t have money to donate but do have time, I also offer an option for volunteering:
Walk someone through a personal crisis! We’ve all heard about rising mental health problems and the loneliness epidemic, affecting young people in particular, and Crisis Text Line offers a way for you to help. It’s a 24/7 service in which trained volunteers provide free, confidential mental health support, all by text messages.
Why texts rather than voice calls? Young people are used to texting, and some people may find texting less embarrassing than a phone conversation. Crisis Text Line supports 3,500 text conversations each day with the help of about 15,000 active volunteers, handling everything from bullying concerns to suicidal feelings. To reach the service, people wanting help simply text “hello” to 741741.
Volunteers get training online for 15 to 20 hours, including practice with a conversation simulator, before they are connected to incoming texts. In an emergency, a volunteer can get help from staff supervisors who jump in to assist.
More than 90% of the volunteers report that their own mental health improves as a result of their participation.
These are nonprofits that change the world and give each of us the chance to help others in profound ways. Whether your priority is helping women and girls overcome a devastating gynecological condition or saving children’s lives or helping kids learn to love books, these are transformative causes, and each organization has an excellent record. As we prepare for the holidays, I’m betting your kids or siblings or friends would get more of a kick from a donation in their names to one of these nonprofits than from a fruit basket.
If you’re feeling dispirited by national or global events, remember the adage that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It feels like a relief and privilege at this time to be able to do something so positive. So I hope you’ll visit
KristofImpact.org to donate or volunteer; this is your chance to be a miracle worker.
Contact Kristof at Facebook.com/Kristof, Twitter.com/ NickKristof or by mail at The New York Times, 620 Eighth Ave., New York, NY 10018.
Manuel Sierra
María de L. Márquez
POR CYBERNEWS
SAN JUAN – El capitán del Puerto de San Juan, Luis Rodríguez, informó este miércoles que el Muelle 3 Oeste del puerto de San Juan permanece cerrado para operaciones de cruceros hasta nuevo aviso, en espera de estudios de evaluación requeridos y una inspección en el lugar por parte de la Guardia Costera de los Estados Unidos.
“Uno de los principales objetivos de la Guardia Costera es garantizar la seguridad de las instalaciones portuarias marítimas del país. Comprendemos los inconvenientes, pero es crítico asegurar la seguridad del puerto, los cruceros y las miles de personas que dependen de esta instalación”, expresó Rodríguez en declaraciones escritas.
Explicó que el cierre operativo fue establecido en abril de 2024, luego de un incidente que resultó en la pérdida de una estructura de amarre de delfines en las proximidades del muelle principal. La Guardia Costera notificó el control operativo a San Juan Cruise Port y a la Autoridad de Puertos de Puerto Rico mediante el formulario de Requisitos
de Inspección de Instalaciones CG835(f), exigiendo estudios satisfactorios sobre el estado de la estructura para su evaluación.
Hasta la fecha, los estudios requeridos no han sido entregados. Una vez recibidos, el personal de Prevención de Instalaciones Portuarias de la Guardia Costera realizará una inspección para determinar si se puede levantar el control operativo.
El Muelle 3 Oeste es crucial, ya que recibe los cruceros más grandes del mundo. La Guardia Costera reitera su disposición para avanzar inmediatamente una vez que se presenten los estudios necesarios.
El secretario de Justicia estaba enajenado y eso lo vieron hoy, dice integrante de Comité
POR CYBERNEWS
SAN JUAN – Para la exfiscal, Janet Parra Mercado, integrante del Comité de Transición de la gobernadora electa, Jenniffer Aidyn González Colón, el Departamento de Justicia no ha cambiado en nada, después de los dos años que han pasado desde su renuncia. “Yo lo veo igual. Obviamente, sí hay unos asuntos como (los cambios en) la cuestión de crímenes cibernéticos, el aumento a los fiscales, no podemos decir que es 100 por ciento malo todo. Pero las razones por las que yo me fui del departamento están ahí. Ustedes pudieron ver hoy (el miércoles) a un secretario que básicamente eran sus dos funcionarias las que contestaban las preguntas y esa fue una de las ra-
• Evaluaciones
• Quistes pilonidales
• Lipoma
• Hernias inguinales, umbilical y ventral
• Queloides
zones por las que yo me fui, porque yo entendía que él estaba enajenado del departamento y que su toma de decisiones no eran las correctas. Y eso lo vieron hoy. ¿Quiénes contestaban por él? Las funcionarias”, dijo Parra Mercado en conferencia de prensa.
Utiliza las teclas de flecha arriba/ abajo para aumentar o disminuir el volumen.
Durante las vistas de públicas del Departamento de Justicia, el secretario Domingo Emanuelli Hernández contestaba las preguntas que luego eran ampliadas o aclaradas por la subsecretaria, Mónica Rodríguez Madrigal o la jefa de fiscales, Jessika Correa González.
Las vistas públicas recesan hasta el lunes.
• Tiroides y paratiroides
• Remoción de lesiones cutáneas
• Tumores musculares
• Catéteres para quimioterapia (Medport)
• Tumores gastrointestinales
• Laparoscopia de vesícula
• Gastrostomía abierta y percutánea
• Amputaciones
Somos la cara de la medicina de calibre mundial en Puerto Rico
Thursday, November 28, 2024 16
By ELISABETH VINCENTELLI
‘The Missing’
To communicate, Eric (Carlo Aquino) needs to write: texts on his phone or messages on a dry-erase board he always carries with him. How could he talk? After all, there is a blur where his mouth should be — an effect that is poetically rendered in Carl Joseph Papa’s animated film, which used the rotoscoping technique to trace drawings over its live cast. Not that anybody appears to notice anything amiss with Eric’s face, including his mother, Rosalinda (Dolly De Leon, a Golden Globe nominee for “Triangle of Sadness”), and his sweet co-worker Carlo (Gio Gahol), who may be flirting. In flashbacks told in childlike scrawls, we see Eric being taken by aliens, who turn out to be more inquisitive than hostile. He escapes, but they haunt his memories and likely are the key to his silence. There is a long tradition in science fiction of aliens and assorted creatures as metaphorical expressions — among the boldest examples is the monster from the Id in “Forbidden Planet,” from 1956. “The Missing,” which was the Philippines’ submission for the 2023 Academy Awards, operates in that same realm. This beautiful film is heart-wrenching at times, but it also builds up to a message of hope and love. (Stream it on Netflix.)
‘The Present’
A character who does not speak is central to Christian Ditter’s well-crafted family film as well. Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda) is a neurodivergent kid who spends most of his time tinkering in his workshop. When he discovers that an old grandfather clock can turn back time by up to 12 hours, he decides to rewind the same day (or sometimes just a few minutes, to get redos) over and over to try to save his parents’ faltering marriage. “The Present” introduces two riffs on the classic “Parent Trap” narrative of children plotting to keep their parents together: time travel and rotating points of view. The movie presents the fateful hours leading up to the dinner where mom and dad (Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear) will announce they’re separating from the adults’ perspective as well as the three kids’, who include Taylor’s older siblings, Emma (Shay Rudolph) and Max (Mason Shea Joyce). In addition to being saccharine-free — which is rare enough in this type of film — “The Present” offers a sympathetic, funny portrayal of a boy who is different, and accepted and loved by his family. (Stream it on Hulu.)
‘Die Alone’
Carrie-Anne Moss lands her best role in a long while in this postapocalyptic film, so fans of this underused actress should check it out just for her. But there is a lot more to “Die Alone,” which builds up to a fantastic plot twist and a wrenching conclusion that feels earned.
Emma (Kimberly Sue-Murray), from whom he was separated when the world went to pot. He patches together what happened from flashes of memory that slowly cohere into an unsettling reality.
Mae welcomes Ethan to her isolated farm, where one of her remaining pleasures in that grim world is listening to the 1968 hit “Crimson and Clover” on vinyl. Writer-director Lowell Dean puts the song to actual narrative use and it casts a spooky light on the ending. I’m still reeling. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms; free on Hoopla.)
Many films revolve around someone who must come up with a lot of cash fast. Odds are good that only one involves using a “sentient orgasm-granting yeast mass” to raise the money. When Darla (Alex E. Harris) finds herself owing $349,000.22 in back taxes, she’s at a loss, and her flailing business of bespoke cat caskets is not going to help. While filling in for her mother (Constance Shulman) as a cleaner for the mysterious Arnot Pickens (Thomas Jay Ryan), Darla discovers a plastic tub filled with a kind of rubbery disc that she identifies as the culture of yeast and bacteria used to make kombucha. Except this one doesn’t make kombucha but is an alien creature that can give powerful orgasms. And it talks, too (voiced by JS Oliver), informing Darla that it wants to go to space. She agrees to help in exchange for basically pimping the creature’s extraordinary power to pay her tax bill.
Moss plays the grizzled Mae, who has managed to survive a virus that turned people into ravenous plantlike zombies (they look a bit like the DC Comics creature Swamp Thing). They are called “the reclaimed,” according to a theory that the apocalypse was created by nature fighting back after centuries of abuse by humankind.
The film’s central character is an amnesiac named Ethan (Douglas Smith), who only remembers that he must meet up with his girlfriend,
Eric Laplante and Susie Moon’s deadpan debut feature mines its surreal premise for all it’s worth — and keeps adding extra wrinkles, including revelations about Pickens’ nature and the agenda of Mother, as the pleasure-dispensing entity is nicknamed. If you embrace its idiosyncratic vibe, this is indie comedy at its finest. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms; free on Hoopla.)
Whenever someone says “nothing ever happens in this town,” you can be sure hell is about to break loose. And so it goes in “Alien Country,” a goofy movie that seems to have been engineered for those of us who end up tuning in every time the Kevin Bacon-vs.-giant worms B masterpiece “Tremors” (1990) appears on some godforsaken channel. Here the fateful words are uttered by aspiring sing-
The
er Everly (Renny Grames, who wrote the film with director Boston McConnaughey), bored in her desert town — the spectacular locations are in Utah. Her doofus boyfriend, Jimmy (K.C. Clyde), is a mechanic who moonlights as a demolition-derby driver. When the couple stumble onto a mysterious portal, they go through it with seemingly little consequence. Except that they didn’t notice the dangerous critters that sneaked out.
They do, however, notice Ben (Charan Prabhakar), a nice alien that was able to take a human appearance and has come to help them.
The film actually does not show the hostile visitors from another world all that much. They are more talked about than seen, which is OK because “Alien Country” is at its best when it wanders into digressions (there is a priceless exchange about spelling the name of a local named Bo, played by Austin Archer) or casually drops funny details (like vacuuming spores). That stuff is harder to pull off than special effects. (Rent or buy it on most major platforms.)
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya testifies before the House Select Subcommittee on the coronavirus on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 28, 2023. President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday evening, Nov. 26, 2024, that he had selected Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health. (Kenny Holston/The New York Times)
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday evening that he had selected Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a Stanford physician and economist whose authorship of an anti-lockdown treatise during the coronavirus pandemic made him a central figure in a bitter public health debate, to be the director of the National Institutes of Health.
“Together, Jay and RFK Jr. will restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease,” Trump wrote on social media, referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his choice to lead the NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services.
If confirmed by the Senate, Bhattacharya would lead the world’s premier medical research agency, with a $48 billion budget and 27 separate institutes and centers, each with its own research agenda, focusing on different diseases like cancer and diabetes. Bhattacharya, who is not a practicing physician, has called for overhauling the NIH and limiting the power of civil servants who, he believes, played too prominent a role in shaping federal policy during the pandemic.
He is the latest in a series of Trump
health picks who came to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic and who hold views on medicine and public health that are at times outside the mainstream. The president-elect’s health choices, experts agree, suggest a shake-up is coming to the nation’s public health and biomedical establishment.
Bhattacharya is one of three lead authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a manifesto issued in 2020 that contended that the virus should be allowed to spread among young healthy people who were “at minimal risk of death” and could thus develop natural immunity, while prevention efforts were targeted to older people and the vulnerable.
Through a connection with a Stanford colleague, Dr. Scott Atlas, who was advising Trump during his first term, Bhattacharya presented his views to Alex Azar, Trump’s health secretary. The condemnation from the public health establishment was swift. Bhattacharya and his fellow authors were promptly dismissed as cranks whose “fringe” policy prescriptions would lead to millions of unnecessary deaths.
Bhattacharya also became a go-to witness in court cases challenging federal and state COVID policies. He joined a group of plaintiffs in suing the Biden administration over what he called “COVID censorship,”
arguing that the administration violated the First Amendment in working with social media companies to tamp down on COVID misinformation.
He also argued against mask mandates for schoolchildren in Florida and Tennessee. Judges in both states dismissed him as unqualified to make medical pronouncements on the matter.
“His demeanor and tone while testifying suggest that he is advancing a personal agenda,” Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee wrote in 2021, adding that he was “simply unwilling to trust Dr. Bhattacharya.”
More recently, amid widespread recognition of the economic and mental health harms caused by lockdowns and school closures, Bhattacharya’s views have been getting a second look, to the consternation of his critics, who have accused those entertaining his ideas of “sane-washing” him.
Perhaps the most notable reflection has come from Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the National Institutes of Health. In 2020, Collins called Bhattacharya and his co-authors “fringe epidemiologists.” Last year, Collins suggested that he and other policymakers might have been too narrowly focused on public health goals — saving lives at any cost — and not attuned enough to balancing health needs with economic ones.
“I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made,” Collins said in December 2023, at a conversation hosted by Braver Angels, a group that addresses political polarization. He did not address Bhattacharya or the Great Barrington Declaration specifically.
But Bhattacharya still provokes extremely strong feelings. Dr. Jonathan Howard, an associate professor of neurology and psychiatry at NYU Langone Health, who treated patients at Bellevue Hospital at the height of the pandemic, has assailed Bhattacharya in a book, “We Want Them Infected.”
Howard said Bhattacharya “bungled basic facts” about the pandemic. In March 2020, for example, Bhattacharya suggested in a Wall Street Journal opinion essay that the pandemic was not as deadly as
it was being made out to be, and that the death toll might top out at 40,000 Americans; in the end, 1.2 million died.
Bhattacharya responded on social media by calling Howard “unhinged” and his book “inane,” advising him to “take an epidemiology class if you don’t want to keep embarrassing yourself.”
The Great Barrington Declaration grew out of a meeting in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, convened by the American Institute for Economic Research, a think tank dedicated to free-market principles. Its authors, who included doctors, scientists and epidemiologists, wrote that they had “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.” They called their approach “Focused Protection.”
Alarmed and angry, 80 experts published a manifesto of their own, the John Snow Memorandum (named after the 19th-century English epidemiologist), saying that the declaration’s approach would endanger Americans who had underlying conditions that put them at high risk from severe COVID-19 — at least one-third of U.S. citizens, by most estimates — and result in perhaps a half-million deaths.
“I think it’s wrong, I think it’s unsafe, I think it invites people to act in ways that have the potential to do an enormous amount of harm,” Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, a Harvard infectious disease specialist, said at the time. Walensky later became director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when President Joe Biden took office.
Last month, Bhattacharya hosted a forum on pandemic policy at Stanford, saying he had hoped to bring together people of different views who would “talk to each other in a civil way.” But the forum itself became the target of attacks — a development that Stanford’s president, Jonathan Levin, called “dispiriting.”
One of Bhattacharya’s Stanford colleagues, Dr. Pantea Javidan of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was quoted in The San Jose Mercury News as saying the symposium gave “a platform for discredited figures who continually promote dangerous, scientifically unsupported or thoroughly debunked approaches to COVID.”
Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9.
Sudoku Rules:
Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
1. Port of Okinawa
2. Green subj.
3. Shellshocked
4. To ____ (perfectly)
5. Presents
6. ___ d'honneur (duel)
7. Ending of several pastas
8. List in a book (abbr.)
9. Canonized woman of Fr.
10. "Absolutely, monsieur!"
11. Chocolate toffee bar
12. Dispatched
13. Mount near Olympus
18. Addressed a crowd
21. Sitcom ET
23. Broadcast
24. Sgt., for one
25. Admit (to), with "up"
26. ___ plume
27. Slip-up
28. Cowboy's cry
29. Khan who married Rita Hayworth
31. Noteworthy period
32. Machinist's tool
33. Measured portions
38. "___ kleine Nachtmusik"
40. Pure and virtuous
41. Plural ending for can or her
44. Neighbor of Ken. and Eth.
45. Italian possessive pronoun
46. Capitulates
49. Words before go
50. Pupil's place
53. Accolade
54. Dying star
55. "Door's open, come ___!"
56. 1960s White House daughter
58. "Das Lied von der ___" (Mahler)
70. Head for the other side
71. Exxon, formerly
59. Some deer
60. Pint-peddling places
61. This, to Tomás
63. Marijuana component, for short
64. Laugh part
65. Miso veggie
By GRACE RAYNOR / THE ATHLETIC
Tobi Haastrup had no idea what to do. He had never lined up in a defensive stance. He was not sure what it meant to jump offside, and he had never heard of a tackle for loss. Come to think of it, he did not exactly know what downs were, or how they worked. But there he was, working out last summer with the Mayde Creek High School football team in Houston.
“Everything was new to me,” said Haastrup, who was born and raised in England. Who needs to know the rules when you are 6-foot-4, 235-pound 17-year-old and run a 10.7-second 100-meter dash?
The school’s defensive line coach, Dechristeon Wilson, who is also the school’s assistant track coach, urged Haastrup to try football heading into his senior year. At best, Haastrup would take to the sport. At worst, he would leave high school with no regrets.
“Little did I know,” Haastrup said.
On Aug. 30, he played in his first football game and finished with five sacks and a few offside penalties.
Within a week, more than a dozen Football Bowl Subdivision schools, including Mississippi, Louisiana State, Tennessee and Texas A&M, reached out with scholarship offers.
Three months later, Haastrup is up to 23 offers and one of the most coveted uncommitted prospects in the class of 2025. The early signing period is next month. The superstar who never attended a summer camp or took an official visit before this fall is ranked No. 279 nationally in the 247Sports Composite.
With official visits to Boston College, Missouri, Vanderbilt, Florida State, Texas Tech and Southern California in the books, Haastrup will make stops at Michigan and Oregon before a Dec. 2 decision and Dec. 4 signing.
And to think, three months ago, he knew nothing of the Big Ten or Southeastern Con-
ference.
“It’s overwhelming at times,” he said. “But I thank God each and every day for the experiences.”
Haastrup was born in England and spent the first nine years of his life in South East London. He did not follow American football.
The family moved to the Sacramento, California, area in 2016 and then, three years later, relocated to Houston, where Tobi, the youngest of three children, started to come into his own as a sprinter and shot-putter.
But he never thought much about football. That changed this past summer.
Mike Arogbonlo was hired as Mayde Creek High School’s football coach in May after a stint as the quarterbacks coach at Duncanville High School, a Texas powerhouse. A few of his new assistant coaches wasted little time in filling him in on priority No. 1.
“The first thing I was told by the coaching staff was if I could get this kid to come out that looks great, is fast — he’s a great athlete,” Arogbonlo said of Haastrup. “I said, OK. And I went and found him, and we started talking.”
Haastrup and Arogbonlo hit it off, bonding over their Nigerian roots. There was an innocence to Haastrup that Arogbonlo appreciated. More than anything, the player was willing to learn and had no problem acknowledging what he did not know.
“It just kind of takes you back to the basics,” Arogbonlo said. “There were a lot of questions that he had: ‘What’s a first down? Where’s the down marker? What’s a defensive end, and what’s the difference between a defensive end and an outside linebacker?’
He didn’t know any of those things. But he’s been like a sponge, just soaking in whatever he can.”
Wilson, the defensive line coach, realized the staff needed to simplify the game for Haastrup as much as possible. He decided to relate football to track whenever he could. Exploding out of a defensive lineman’s stance was just like springing out of track blocks. The same speed Haastrup used in races would be what got him to the quarterback, too. The only difference was Haastrup would need to learn to run around a curve instead of down a straightaway, which Wilson prepared him for with
various figure-eight drills. The two worked on ghost moves, bull rushing and other passrushing techniques, with Wilson letting Haastrup pick his favorites come gametime.
“With him, it was like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to take it back — way back,’” Wilson said. “Like I’m teaching younger and younger kids. Like I’m teaching my nephew or someone. But I love that because it was like a blank canvas.”
When the season rolled around, Haastrup’s biggest issue was lining up offside. He would be so focused on his pass-rush technique that he forgot the basics and kept picking up 5-yard penalties.
“All I knew was, ‘Get down and just see ball, get ball,’” he said.
But as time progressed, Haastrup started to be more comfortable. By midseason, he settled in and did not need to look to the sideline as often for guidance. Through film study, he was able to pick up how opposing linemen set their feet and eventually developed countermoves he could use.
Mayde Creek was just 5-5 this season, but Haastrup finished with 20 tackles for loss and nine sacks, playing at the Class 6A level of Texas high school football.
“The main question was always, ‘Is he 6-3 or 6-4?’” Arogbonlo said. “And I would tell coaches: ‘I don’t care what he is. He’s a 10.7 100-meter runner at 240 pounds. This is a no-miss because at worst he’s playing special teams.’”
Arogbonlo said he fields a call or two from a college coach every day about Haastrup, who is starting to get a feel for which programs are historically the most successful and which conferences are the most competitive. Wilson, the school’s recruiting coordinator, has helped guide him through the process, encouraging him to trust his instincts.
Academics are important to Haastrup, who eventually wants to attend medical school and become an orthopedic surgeon. His 19-year-old sister is studying neuroscience at Texas A&M. Development will be a major part of the decision, too.
“Because I’m still so new to the sport,” he said, “it’s definitely going to be one of the most important decisions I make in my life.”
In a college football world in which prospects are often first identified in eighth or ninth grade, Haastrup’s story is rare.
“Football can take you places you never thought you would go,” Wilson said.
In Haastrup’s case, he’s just getting started.
“I suspect with more time, with nutrition, with the training table on the next level, with the coaching staffs, I just expect a huge growth,” Arogbonlo said. “I really believe he’s a Sunday player. That’s the kind of kid I think he is.
“If God could make a football player, he made Tobi.”
Answers to the Sudoku and Crossword on page 21
