A Diamond in the Rough

An American Story, and New Shirts!

Let's begin today with a story that features two of America's longstanding pastimes: baseball and racism. And since the latter of those seems to be, once again, at the forefront of an American election, we'll set our story in a place that embodies the demagoguery that often divides us: Florida. "Xavier Medina, an assistant coach for Estero, watched from across the diamond. In all his years coaching youth sports, he had never seen a team abandon its own players. As the bizarre scene unfolded, he was witnessing the antithesis of what sports were supposed to be about. The cliches of teamwork and togetherness were collapsing in real time. Players wearing the same uniform were not united against Estero. They were divided against themselves. His second conclusion was even worse: The walkout did not appear to be a reckless act concocted by teenagers, but rather orchestrated and blessed by coaches and parents. The kids were taking the lead from the grown-ups." Howard Bryant in ESPN: A racial slur and a Fort Myers High baseball team torn apart. "While many team issues fell under the common soap opera of high school sports -- a nationwide epidemic of meddling parents and overbearing coaches, the unending battle between fair participation and winning at all costs -- virtually the entirety of the grievances that destroyed the 2023 baseball team can be traced to two specific areas: the internecine racial history of Fort Myers, and, more urgently, the enforcement of conservative mandates playing out in education in Florida and around the nation."

2

It's Good to Be the King

If the Supreme Court majority thinks a president should have total immunity, maybe Biden should arrest, imprison, and replace the Supreme Court majority. What's he got to lose? That sounds crazy. In other words, it has something very much in common with the sad, worrisome Supreme Court hearing on presidential immunity. Something absurd (presidents as kings) was made to seem serious, and something remarkably serious (the actual coup and insurrection) was turned into a triviality. Slate: The Last Thing This Supreme Court Could Do to Shock Us. "Justice Samuel Alito best captured the spirit of arguments when he asked gravely “what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society” (good start!), then answered his own question: total immunity for criminal presidents (oh, dear). Indeed, anything but immunity would, he suggested, encourage presidents to commit more crimes to stay in office: 'Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?' Never mind that the president in question did not leave office peacefully and is not sitting quietly in retirement but is instead running for presidential office once again. No, if we want criminal presidents to leave office when they lose, we have to let them commit crimes scot-free. If ever a better articulation of the legal principle 'Don’t make me hit you again' has been proffered at an oral argument, it’s hard to imagine it."

+ The New Yorker: King Donald’s Day at the Supreme Court. "By the end of the nearly two hours and forty minutes of oral arguments, it seemed likely that the outcome would not so much vindicate Trump’s outlandish claims as provide the further delay that he has sought. Several conservative Justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, specifically raised the option of sending the case back to the lower courts, perhaps to set a clearer standard dividing non-prosecutable official acts from prosecutable private actions."

+ When your media brands, your political leaders, and your Supreme Court justices, diminish the damage done by your king/president, then you tend to agree. WaPo (Gift Article): Anti-democratic warning signs are blinking in current polling. "The Pew Research Center published data Wednesday showing that about half of Republicans (and independents who lean Republican) think Trump did nothing wrong in trying to overturn his 2020 loss." And from CNN: "About three-quarters of voters currently backing Trump against President Joe Biden in the 2024 election say they will stick with him even if he is convicted of a crime, while 24% of Trump’s backers say a conviction might cause them to reconsider their support."

3

Reef Madness

"The Philippines in 1999 deliberately ran aground a World War II-era landing ship on a half-submerged shoal, establishing the vessel as an outpost of the Philippine navy. The BRP Sierra Madre, which has remained on Second Thomas Shoal ever since, has now become the epicenter of escalating tensions between the Philippines and China — and a singular trip wire that could draw the United States into an armed conflict in the Pacific, say officials and security analysts." WaPo(Gift Article): Asia’s next war could be triggered by a rusting warship on a disputed reef.

+ "Beijing cannot achieve better relations with Europe while supporting the greatest threat to European security since the end of the Cold War." Blinken meets with Xi, as U.S. objects to China's support of Russia.

4

Weekend Whats

What to Watch: Netflix describes its new black and white, slow rolling, film noir series Ripley as a psychological thriller in which a con artist assumes the identity of wealthy man. I know, I know, that sounds like the show you've been watching for the last eight years. But this one is really good (and there's not a drop of orange).

What to Doc: Thank You, Goodnight is a four-part, all access series chronicling the epic past and uncertain future of the iconic band Bon Jovi. A 40-year odyssey of rock ‘n roll idolatry on the precipice as a vocal injury threatens to bring everything to a halt. (What can I say, I'm a sucker for New Jersey rockers.)

What to Wear: I buried the lead! We've got some new T-shirts and sweatshirts in the NextDraft Store, including the first Managing Editor, Internet merch and a great way to let people know you identify with Team Reality. And you can get 20% off your order today (Friday, 4-26-24) by using the code FLASHSALEFRIDAY at checkout.

5

Extra, Extra

Big Scan on Campus: "Inflation, Healthcare, Housing, Gun Violence, and Jobs ranked as the top five most important issues – in that order. 'The only issue time that inflation did not win its individual match-up was when it was paired with women’s reproductive rights. Women’s reproductive rights was considered the more important issue, 57% to 43%.'" Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics recently released its Spring 2024 poll of young voters (taken about a month ago) and there was at least one result that will probably surprise you. Of the 16 issues polled, “Israel/Palestine” ranked as the 15th most important compared to the others – only viewed as more important than student debt.

+ Big Plan on Campus: "Throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus antiwar and civil rights demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents and police." College administrators are falling into a tried and true trap. (I shared several other takes and links in on the campus protests yesterday: College Material.)

+ Skip the Quacks, Take the Vax: "146 million lives saved were among children under 5, including 101 million infants. Because the averted deaths were so concentrated among young people, who on average would go on to live for 66 years, vaccines gave their beneficiaries an astounding 9 billion additional years of life." The breathtaking lifesaving impact of vaccines.

+ Baba Booey: "President Joe Biden said Friday during a one-on-one interview with radio host Howard Stern that he is willing to debate Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 presidential election." (Don't be surprised that Howard Stern's interview of Joe Biden broke news. Stern is the best interviewer around.) Meanwhile, Stern's advice for Biden in the debate: "Just stand there & say over & over, ‘Can you find me 11,000 votes?’ You don’t get to run if you fixed an election!" (That sounds sane. So I guess in today's America, Stern is a shock jock again.)

+ Captive Market: "The Appeal’s 9-month investigation uncovered prison commissaries’ exploitative, inconsistent systems with inside prices up to five times higher than in the community and markups as high as 600 percent." Locked in, Priced Out: How Prison Commissary Price-Gouging Preys on the Incarcerated. (Private equity strikes again.)

+ Auto E-Rot-icism: "NHTSA found that Tesla’s driver-assist features are insufficient at keeping drivers engaged in the task of driving, which can often have fatal results." Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving linked to hundreds of crashes, dozens of deaths.

+ Volcanic Cash: "Located in Antarctica, Mount Erebus releases tiny pieces of crystallized gold among the gas, steam and rock it spews into the air daily. Some gold specks have been discovered more than 600 miles away from the volcano." One of Earth's most active volcanoes spews $6,000 in gold dust every day.

6

Feel Good Friday

Area Man Buys Newspaper: "The world needs laughter; it needs satirical criticism more than ever ... And that’s why we think this is the right time and the right way to help The Onion continue to grow, continue to flourish, and frankly I’m concerned if we hadn’t done this, I don’t know what would have happened." The Onion is going from an uncertain future with a PE firm to a more hopeful one with new owners that love it. The Onion Is Sold by G/O Media.

+ "Doctors have begun trialling in hundreds of patients the world’s first personalized mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma, as experts hailed its 'gamechanging' potential to permanently cure cancer."

+ We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized. It's too early to breathe a sign of relief, especially if your sighs have high greenhouse gas emissions.

+ He was stranded after a serious car accident. Then an old white pickup pulled over.

+ "Carrie Clark said her family’s indoor-only cat, Galena, mysteriously disappeared on April 10. Friends and family helped them search their house, neighborhood and surrounding community for a week while they plastered missing posters around town and on social media." Well, they found the cat. Utahns reunited with pet cat they accidentally shipped with Amazon return. Now you know why cats love getting in boxes. They want to escape.