Current Affairs Of Pakistan & World: 11/24/21

Playbook PM: The economy is coming back. Do voters believe it?

Nov 24, 2021

By Rachael Bade, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun

Presented by

POSITIVE ECONOMIC NEWS — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell to a historic low this week, AP's Paul Wiseman reports . "Jobless claims dropped by 71,000 to 199,000, the lowest since mid-November 1969. But seasonal adjustments around the Thanksgiving holiday contributed significantly to the bigger-than-expected drop. Unadjusted, claims actually ticked up by more than 18,000 to nearly 259,000. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekly ups and downs, also dropped — by 21,000 to just over 252,000, the lowest since mid-March 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy."

— WSJ's Sarah Chaney Cambon reports that "household spending rose 1.3% in October from a month earlier, while personal income increased 0.5% last month."

BUT, BUT, BUT … Even while these numbers are good, don't expect them to immediately change Americans' negative perceptions of the economy. There's still a major disconnect between these sorts of positive statistics and how everyday voters feel about their own finances. At the moment, it all comes back to fears about inflation — and growing concerns that Democrats aren't doing enough to address it.

Case in point: In a mini Twitter thread on Tuesday, Obama bro/"Pod Save America" host JON FAVREAU drew his followers' attention to a Third Way/ALG Research study of Virginia voters who supported both JOE BIDEN in 2020 and GLENN YOUNGKIN in 2021. It was released in mid-November to little fanfare, but is definitely worth a read. Some of the tough-love toplines for Democrats:

— "Voters couldn't name anything that Democrats had done, except a few who said we passed the infrastructure bill."

— "Voters are unhappy with the direction of the country and don't think we get it. They aren't hearing solutions from us, they don't think we're doing anything to address the big issues

— "Voters believe the economy is bad, and no amount of stats can change their mind (at least in the short term). Jobs numbers, wage numbers, and the number of people we've put back to work don't move them. We should still talk about these (more the wage and back-to-work numbers), but we should realize that they will have limited impact."

— And this one is particularly interesting: "Voters think we are focused on social issues, not the economy. They aren't hearing us talk about the economy enough, and the things they are hearing about our agenda (people mentioned the child tax credit, paid leave, free college) don't have to do with getting people back to work or taking on the cost of goods. That's deadly in an environment when it's the top issue."

Dem leaders might not want to admit that, and instead continue to paint a rosy picture of their ability to sell the Build Back Better package to the public. But Favreau has a reality check: "I completely understand the frustration that might come from reading this, and I share it. But I promise you that dismissing or caricaturing these kinds of voters — our fellow citizens — is not the way to win them back. And there's no path to victory without winning them back."

Good Wednesday afternoon. We're sending Playbook PM a little early today so Rachael can go eat Skyline for lunch in Ohio.

ALSO … PROGRAMMING NOTE — Playbook PM will be off on Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. We'll be back in your inbox on Monday afternoon.

THANKSGIVING HISTORY LESSON — WaPo's Ronald Shafer has the story on "Franksgiving" — the time that FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT tried to move Thanksgiving up a week in 1939 in a bid to boost the economy. "ALF LANDON, the Republican whom Roosevelt had trounced in the 1936 election, accused FDR of arbitrarily acting 'with the omnipotence of a Hitler.' But the business world was delighted with the change."

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JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

COMING TO THE COMMITTEE — Former President DONALD TRUMP said in a statement today that he would grant permission for BERNIE KERIK to testify publicly and provide documents to the Jan. 6 select committee, after Kerik asked him to waive attorney-client privilege. The full statement, via Vice's Elizabeth Landers

— Trump's statement comes a day after Kerik told the committee that he planned to comply with a subpoena, our colleague Betsy Woodruff Swan scooped. "The committee subpoenaed Kerik in part because its investigators believed he attended a meeting at the Willard Hotel in Washington on Jan. 5 with [RUDY] GIULIANI, STEVE BANNON and others. But according to the letter POLITICO reviewed — which his lawyer sent Tuesday to the panel's chair, Rep. BENNIE THOMPSON (D-Miss.) — that's a fabrication."

TRUMP CARDS

PAYMENTS PERTURB GOP — Recent reports that the RNC made payments to a law firm representing Trump are stirring up some frustration among top Republicans, CNN's Gabby Orr reports . "[S]ome RNC members and donors accused the party of running afoul of its own neutrality rules and misplacing its priorities. Some of these same officials who spoke to CNN also questioned why the party would foot the legal bills of a self-professed billionaire who was sitting on a $102 million war chest as recently as July and has previously used his various political committees to cover legal costs."

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JUDICIARY SQUARE

SCOTUS WATCH — Republican state legislators' ability to legally defend North Carolina's voter ID law is set to come before the Supreme Court, Josh Gerstein reports. "The justices on Wednesday granted a request from the GOP state senate and house leaders to take up a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that denied their request to intervene in a suit the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP brought against the voter ID law. The move means arguments in the case will likely be scheduled at the Supreme Court early next year, with a decision expected by June or July."

POLICY CORNER

CLIMATE FILES — The White House is creating a new energy division within the Office of Science and Technology, and appointed Stanford-based energy expert SALLY BENSON to coordinate climate policy, WaPo's Maxine Joselow reports . "Benson will serve as deputy director for energy and chief strategist for the energy transition at OSTP. … Benson said that one of her top priorities is ensuring that the swift transition to a clean energy economy benefits all Americans, rather than leaving behind some workers in the oil and gas sector and other polluting industries."

HOW WE GOT HERE — NYT's Jim Tankersley takes a microscope to the inflation issue and how the Biden administration miscalculated where the nation was headed earlier this year. "From the administration's perspective, the problem is not that there is too much money sloshing around, as Republicans and some economists insist, but that consumers are throwing an unexpectedly large amount of that money at a narrow set of things to buy. Put another way: If Mr. Biden had sent people travel vouchers or DoorDash gift cards for services — instead of sending Americans direct payments as part of his $1.9 trillion rescue plan in March — the inflation picture might look different right now."

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS — NASA has undergone a new mission to protect the Earth, NYT's Joey Roulette writes . "On Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. Eastern time, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, or DART, from a U.S. Space Force base in California (it was Tuesday local time). A 1,200-pound, refrigerator-size spacecraft will trek around the sun to slam into a small asteroid named Dimorphos at 15,000 miles per hour next year. If the mission succeeds, it could demonstrate for the first time humanity's ability to punch a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth." ICYMI: "Whose job is it to prevent Armageddon?" by Bryan Bender

THE PANDEMIC

WHERE THE SPIKES ARE — NYT's Keith Collins has a helpful collection of visualizations that show where coronavirus cases are rising across the country.

CONGRESS

KNOWING CORI BUSH — Rep. CORI BUSH (D-Mo.) talks to BuzzFeed News about her place in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party after nearly one year in Congress. "Bush is determined not to fit in," Lissandra Villa writes . "She's not in Congress to move up in leadership, she says, or hoard institutional power. But what power that leaves her with is uncertain. Progressives in Congress are in a precarious spot, trying to flex over Biden's agenda while getting heat from constituents about symbolic votes and looking down the very real possibility of being a small slice of the House minority after next year's elections. The tension between her role in Congress as she sees it and the realities of the institution, her party, and its leadership are palpable."

— To wit, here's Bush on how she differs from Speaker NANCY PELOSI: "I don't wear those same glasses that she wears. For me, I'm not a woman first, I'm Black first. I don't care about party lines the way that she does. I don't care about looking like I'm leading, or care about being the one that is staying within — like, just playing the game."

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BEYOND THE BELTWAY

PROBING THE POLICE — In the absence of federal oversight, a handful of states have empowered their attorney general to conduct "investigations into the 'pattern or practice' of civil rights abuses by police departments," WaPo's Kimberly Kindy reports . "So far, the new laws have only passed in Democratic-controlled state legislatures, but bills containing the measures received some bipartisan support in two of the four states. Since the bills became law, pattern or practice investigations have been launched exclusively by Democratic state attorneys general. … Among the four states that recently granted these new powers to their attorneys general, Colorado is the first to complete an investigation, which looked into the Aurora Police Department."

CRISIS OF CARE — NYT's Jennifer Steinhauer reports on the shortage of care available to veterans, including IAN FISHBACK, "who had retired from the Army, died last week, in circumstances still unclear, alone and broke in a group home, convinced he was being persecuted by the very forces he had once embraced. He was 42. … A shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychiatric nurse practitioners across the United States has worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, mental health experts say, and lawmakers have struggled to find a solution."

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

FOR YOUR RADAR — "Russia staged military drills in the Black Sea, south of Ukraine, on Wednesday, and said it needed to sharpen the combat-readiness of its conventional and nuclear forces because of heightened NATO activity near its borders," Reuters' Alexander Marrow and Pavel Polityuk report in Moscow and Kyiv.

IRAN SO FAR AWAY — "The head of the United Nations atomic watchdog agency left Iran late Tuesday after failing to reach a deal to allow inspectors access to a factory making equipment for Tehran's nuclear program, diplomats said Wednesday, casting a fresh shadow over international nuclear talks set for next week," WSJ's Laurence Norman reports in Berlin.

PLAYBOOKERS

IN MEMORIAM — Veteran Washington meteorologist Doug Hill "was 71 when he died Nov. 22 at his home in Leland, N.C. His daughter, Maggie Hill, confirmed the death but did not cite a cause," WaPo's Harrison Smith writes. "An Air Force veteran who served for six years in the Prince George's County Police Department, Mr. Hill took a winding path to meteorology. But he had tracked the weather ever since he was a boy, getting an early introduction to the power of thunderstorms on his seventh birthday, when a backyard celebration at his family's rowhouse in the Baltimore suburbs was forced inside by the sound of thunder."

California Today: The state’s oldest women’s basketball players

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November 24, 2021

By Soumya Karlamangla

California Today, Writer

It's Wednesday. A San Diego basketball league provides competition and joy for women as old as 95. Plus, groups of thieves hit high-end stores in the Bay Area

Marge Carl, 92, of the Splash shoots against Young at Heart, another San Diego team.John Francis Peters for The New York Times

SAN DIEGO — The sounds spilling from the gym suggested an ordinary basketball game: tennis shoes squeaking against a slick court, hollow thumps of a ball, a referee's shrill whistle.

But inside was a rare tableau. Older women, some in their 80s and 90s, hustled to pass, steal and shoot. They dribbled and wove skillfully as they sprinted toward the basket.

Kirsten Cummings, a former professional basketball player, recalled the first time she walked into this Y.M.C.A. in San Diego's Mission Valley neighborhood.

"There's this group of women who were playing and I was so mesmerized by them. They were 75 years old," Cummings told me. "I got goose bumps."

This is the San Diego Senior Women's Basketball Association, one of the largest leagues in the nation for women 50 and over. California's second-biggest city is home to several senior sports teams and hosts the San Diego Senior Games, which draws thousands of competitors from across the state for an Olympics-style event each year.

"We're very outdoor-oriented, fitness-oriented, so it was a natural thing that Senior Games would flourish here," said Cummings, who grew up in San Diego and now oversees the event. "San Diego has people who don't think twice about learning basketball at the age of 79."

On a recent Sunday morning, I chatted on the Y.M.C.A. court sideline with Marge Carl, who has played in the women's league since it was founded in the mid-1990s.

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Carl, now 92, wore a blue jersey that matched her bright eyes. Her team, the Splash, which is for women 80 and over, was scheduled to compete in 45 minutes.

The league includes 75 women across 13 teams, roughly grouped by skill level, who face off every Sunday. The games are three-on-three for 30 minutes on a half court.

John Francis Peters for The New York Times

Carl, like most of the women here, came of age before Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law that significantly increased opportunities for women to participate in school sports. So she didn't learn how to play basketball until her 60s.

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But that's kind of her style. She graduated from college in her seventh decade. She retired well into her 80s.

Carl pointed to her temple and warned me, "This doesn't die unless you let it."

For her 90th birthday, she went skydiving: "There was a man strapped to my back. How bad could it be?"

Newbies to the basketball league learn to guard and rebound in its rookie training program. And once on a team, players might have 40 years or more to fine-tune their skills.

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Cummings, who has coached the Splash as a volunteer, said she was initially surprised by the older women's desire to improve. She once slept through a practice and was reprimanded by a player in her 80s.

"I'll tell you, I never missed practice after that," Cummings said. "The more I coached them the more I got to see past that facade of, you know, they're sweet old ladies. No, these are serious senior athletes."

The San Diego Senior Women's Basketball Association was founded in the mid-1990s.John Francis Peters for The New York Times

The league also thwarts the slow creep of loneliness that comes with aging.

Carl told me that her childhood friends have died. Other women have outlived their spouses by decades. Their children are often consumed with the responsibilities of their own families.

But these teammates meet on the court several times a week. Players have officiated one another's weddings and taken trips together.

Carl nodded toward a younger woman lacing up her sneakers. This year, she drove Carl to her Covid-19 vaccine appointments.

"They are the sisterhood," Carl told me.

The Splash has the oldest roster in the league, with all its players 80 or older.John Francis Peters for The New York Times

Currently, the league's oldest member is 95, but she was recovering from surgery when I visited. Other players were sidelined with injuries or medical conditions that have worsened over the years. The physical toll of aging is rendered in stark relief on the court.

Marianne Hall, 86, coached women's high school basketball when Title IX was being rolled out. But she hadn't played on a team herself until the 1990s, when her friend told her about San Diego's newly created league.

"I don't jump anymore," Hall recalled saying.

"None of us jump," the woman replied.

When games ceased last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, Hall wondered whether she was too old to return. She worries about falling. Though the league now has a vaccine requirement, many players have not come back since practice started up again in June.

But Hall, who recently became a great-grandmother, wore her headband and jersey on that Sunday morning. She was ready to play.

At noon, women scurried onto the court for the next game, between Hall's and Carl's teams.

Players, many in masks, passed the ball quickly among one another. Some tried to intercept and block shots.

Within minutes, Carl grabbed hold of the ball. She lifted her arms and heaved it toward the basket.

Swoosh.

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If you read one story, make it this

Late Tuesday night, NASA launched a new mission: crash into asteroid, defend planet Earth.

Container ships offloading at the Port of Los Angeles.Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The rest of the news

Medical device shortage: Port backlogs have led to shortages of medical supplies in California and forced some patients to reuse medical tubes, CalMatters reports.
Theranos trial: Taking the stand again on Tuesday, Elizabeth Holmes painted herself as someone whose best intentions were misinterpreted.
Grammy Awards: See the full list of 2022 nominees.
Housing crunch worsens: At least four U.C. campuses have resorted to housing students in hotels this fall, CalMatters reports.
Low Covid-19 case rate: California has one of the lowest coronavirus infection rates in the country, but the risk of a winter surge remains, The Associated Press reports.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Weather warning: There is a red flag warning through Friday for parts of Orange, San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.
Drug bust: A trucker attempting to smuggle large amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine was arrested in San Diego, The Guardian reports.

CENTRAL CALIFORNIA

Covid-19 surge: Health officials in the San Joaquin Valley are pleading with the state to make it easier to transfer patients to places like Los Angeles as coronavirus admissions climb, The Los Angeles Times reports.
Oil spill: Chevron appears to be selling oil from an illegal spill in western Kern County, Capital & Main reports.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

Stores ransacked: Groups of thieves raiding high-end stores in the Bay Area are believed to be part of sophisticated criminal networks, The Associated Press reports.
"San Fransicko" review: This book by Michael Shellenberger raises important questions about homelessness in San Francisco, but his answers are mired in controversy.
Family killed in crash: Four people from Sacramento County were killed after a driver going the wrong way on Interstate 80 crashed into their vehicle, The Associated Press reports.

Linda Xiao for The New York Times

What we're eating

Pumpkin maple cornbread, an extremely versatile side dish.

Paddling along the north shore of Lake Tahoe.Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Where we're traveling

Today's travel tip — or tips, rather — comes from Gretchen Henry:

It was a lifelong dream to live in California. We settled in Santa Barbara County. Here are my favorite spots to visit that we loved in our 20 years there:1) Just loved the Ojai Valley Inn and Resort in Ojai. A beautiful setting for the gracious building and gardens2) The grocery store and health food store just before you get to Solvang; one can sit outside and picnic in the nearby wineries3) Loved visiting Pasadena — San Marino and the beautiful gardens there4) Palm Desert — especially in the evenings5) Driving through the desert from Santa Barbara to Sacramento6) Of course, Lake Tahoe

Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We'll be sharing more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.

What we're recommending

Our 100 notable books of 2021.

Tell us

Do you have a story about a time you saw your parents or elders differently? Share your story with the "Modern Love Podcast" and you might make it onto a future episode.

And before you go, some good news

Three Humboldt County students have been selected to play in the Indigenous Bowl — an annual football match honoring 60 of the nation's best high school football players of Native American descent.

Darvin Davis IV, a student at Hoopa High School and a Yurok tribal member, told Local Coast Outpost that he was looking forward to meeting other young Indigenous players from around the country. The game will be held in Minneapolis on Dec. 5.

"That's the most exciting part about it," Davis said. "To meet and play with new people and to make new brothers and bonds that I won't ever forget."

Thanks for reading. I won't be back until Monday because of the Thanksgiving holiday.

(P.S. Here's an earlier newsletter on the benefits of gratitude.) — Soumya

Here's today's Mini Crossword, and a clue: Where dreams are made (3 letters).

Steven Moity, Mariel Wamsley and Shelby Knowles contributed to California Today. You can reach the team at CAtoday@nytimes.com.

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