September 26 2024

FLASH Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane around 8 p.m. ET tonight on FL Gulf coast
1 NYC Mayor Eric Adams Indicted on Federal Criminal Charges, Denies Wrongdoing
2 Congress Passes Stopgap Bill, Averts Shutdown Until December 20
3 Election Roundup: Harris Unveils Economic Plan, Supports Ending Filibuster, Trump Assassination Attempt Probe
4 America's Aging Power Grid Struggles to Keep Up with AI’s Growing Energy Demands
5 Airstrikes Fail to Weaken Yemen’s Houthi Military, Iran Brokers Talks to Supply Russian Missiles
9/26/1960 Kennedy and Nixon square off in first televised presidential debate

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FLASH Hurricane Helene is expected to make landfall as a Category 4 hurricane around 8 p.m. ET tonight on FL Gulf coast

1 NYC Mayor Eric Adams Indicted on Federal Criminal Charges, Denies Wrongdoing

Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on federal criminal charges, according to people with knowledge of the matter, and will be the first mayor in modern New York City history to be charged while in office. The indictment is sealed, and it was unclear what charge or charges Mr. Adams, a Democrat, will face or when he will surrender to the authorities. Federal prosecutors were expected to announce the details of the indictment on Thursday. The mayor, in a videotaped speech posted online late Wednesday, adopted a combative tone, saying any charges against him would be “entirely false” and “based on lies.” He said he had been targeted by the federal authorities because he had “stood my ground” for New Yorkers. Mr. Adams, 64, also made it clear he had no intention of resigning, which he is not required to do under the City Charter. He said he would request an “immediate” trial and would “fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength, and my spirit.” The indictment comes a little less than a year after federal agents searched the home of Mr. Adams’s chief fund-raiser and seized the mayor’s electronic devices as he left a public event in Manhattan. The mayor and his aides have said he was cooperating with the authorities, and Mr. Adams has continued to insist that he has done nothing wrong. Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, was elected New York’s 110th mayor in 2021 after a campaign built on a pledge to reduce crime, bring professionalism to City Hall and tap his personal brand of “swagger.”

Article Source: NYT

2 Congress Passes Stopgap Bill, Averts Shutdown Until December 20

Both houses of Congress passed a bill to continue funding the government at current levels until December 20th, averting a shutdown. Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, had to rely on Democratic votes to pass the measure, though a majority of Republicans also backed it. Mr Johnson earlier tried to pass a package that would have extended funding through March and required voters to show proof of citizenship at polling stations. He withdrew it after protests from Democrats and from some Republicans. When the issue comes up again in December a new president-elect may change legislators’ calculations.

Article Source: Economist

3 Election Roundup: Harris Unveils Economic Plan, Supports Ending Filibuster, Trump Assassination Attempt Probe

A Harris economic plan  

Kamala Harris pledged to use the might of the government to support domestic manufacturing and help the U.S. beat China in the industries of the future, embracing a policy that puts federal intervention at the heart of her economic plan. Harris on Wednesday said that if elected president, she would support a new tax credit that will invest tens of billions of dollars in domestic manufacturing. The credit would aim to create jobs in cutting-edge fields such as biotechnology and aerospace production, and to strengthen traditional industries such as iron and steel, Harris said in a policy document.  President Biden has long championed such policies, dedicating hundreds of billions of dollars to supporting the country’s manufacturing of computer chips, electric vehicles, batteries and other high-tech goods.  Donald Trump has also placed American manufacturing at the core of his economic campaign, though the former president aims to use import tariffs and a targeted corporate tax cut to support domestic producers. Harris’s campaign has criticized Trump’s proposals, saying the costs of the new tariffs would likely get passed along to American consumers, leading to higher prices.  

B Harris supports ending filibuster  

Vice President Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio that she supports eliminating the Senate filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. Harris' comments are the latest example of the Democratic presidential nominee trying to distinguish herself from former President Trump on the politically potent topic of abortion, viewed as a weak spot for Republicans. As the nominee, Harris had, until now, not said publicly whether she would support bypassing the filibuster rule — which requires 60 votes for passage of most major legislation — to enshrine abortion rights into federal law.  

C Trump assassination-attempt probe   

An interim Senate report released this morning finds sweeping failures by the Secret Service that directly contributed to a gunman’s ability to carry out an assassination attempt against DONALD TRUMP at his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The bipartisan assessment from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee — the first external review to publicly emerge — “pointed to multiple critical failures by the Secret Service, including ones related to planning for the event, communications and crucial security decisions,” Jordain Carney reports. “The panel accused the Secret Service of failing to clearly lay out responsibilities or plan security. Agency personnel denied to the committee that they were individually responsible or deflected blame, according to the report.” “The panel also interviewed a Secret Service counter-sniper who said that they saw officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was perched, but the person said they did not think to notify anyone to get Trump off the stage.”

Article Source: WSJ, Axios, Politico

4 America's Aging Power Grid Struggles to Keep Up with AI’s Growing Energy Demands

Sophisticated, impactful use of artificial intelligence is vital for holding our own against China and other rivals in an increasingly competitive world.  But AI uses a lot of electricity. A simple ChatGPT-4 query uses more than 10 times the wattage of a Google search. The difference arises from complexity: The GPT model utilizes 1.76 trillion parameters to predict each word in a sentence, while Google uses just 4 to 10 million to rank screenfuls of webpages. America’s aging power grid isn’t going to be able to handle AI’s increasing load. Imagine each electron used to power a single computation — for a GPS route, say, or a medical test, or a cybersecurity system — is a car trying to get home. Today, that car must make its way on a complicated network of aluminum power lines that are the equivalent of back roads, many of them crowded, with no interstate highways. That’s the U.S. electricity transmission system: more than a century old, patching together 3,200 local and regional utilities, struggling to carry even the existing load. It takes the United States 10 to 20 years to get approval for and build new transmission lines. Compare that to China’s autocratic centralized efficiency: Beijing has largely consolidated its regional utilities into one state-run organization, and it can build new power lines in under five years. China now has a power system with a speed and scale that may be challenging for the United States to match; from 2014 to 2021 China built 80 times the interregional grid capacity that we did.

Article Source: WaPo OPINION

5 Airstrikes Fail to Weaken Yemen’s Houthi Military, Iran Brokers Talks to Supply Russian Missiles

A US-UK airstrikes in Yemen designed to end the Houthi disruption of commercial shipping have not seriously degraded the group’s military capability, the vice-chair of the UN-recognised government in Yemen has said. Aidarous al-Zubaidi told the Guardian in an interview he feared the Houthis were using the strikes to rally support behind their cause by portraying the west as the aggressor in Yemen.  

B Iran has brokered ongoing secret talks between Russia and Yemen's Houthi rebels to transfer anti-ship missiles to the militant group, three Western and regional sources said, a development that highlights Tehran's deepening ties to Moscow. Seven sources said that Russia has yet to decide to transfer the Yakhont missiles – also known as P-800 Oniks - which experts said would allow the militant group to more accurately strike commercial vessels in the Red Sea and increase the threat to the U.S. and European warships defending them.

Article Source: Guardian, Reuters

9/26/1960 Kennedy and Nixon square off in first televised presidential debate

Ed note: This debate is a prime example of how advances in information technology shape politics, just as the transition from print to radio and the shift from TV to social media has further transformed politics. Information technology has always played a crucial role in American politics, influencing how candidates present themselves and how voters engage with them. Kennedy emerged the apparent winner from this first of four televised debates, partly owing to his greater ease before the camera than Nixon, who, unlike Kennedy, seemed nervous and declined to wear makeup. The viewers who watched the debate on TV believed that John F. Kennedy won, while those who listened to it on the radio thought Richard Nixon had the upper hand. Although he lost the election, Nixon returned to the national stage in 1968 in a successful bid for the presidency. Like Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Nixon declined to debate his opponent in the 1968 presidential campaign. Televised presidential debates returned in 1976, and have been held in every presidential campaign since.

Sources

2. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/09/25/nyregion/eric-adams-indicted-corruption?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20240926&instance_id=135319&nl=the-morning&regi_id=61468173&segment_id=178866&te=1&user_id=02b32d846497687a8f0c061d7ffd16b1&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare#eric-adams-indicted

3. Economist newsletter

4. A https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/harris-puts-government-intervention-at-heart-of-economic-policy-f6bdc459?st=dahoNG&reflink=article_copyURL_share
B https://www.axios.com/2024/09/24/harris-filibuster-abortion-trump-2024
C https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/09/25/whos-laughing-on-long-island-00180898?nname=playbook-pm&nid=0000015a-dd3e-d536-a37b-dd7fd8af0000&nrid=c564e993-5468-4c61-8278-38966999b02e&nlid=964328

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/24/ai-power-grid-china-competition/

6. A https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/24/us-uk-airstrikes-not-hurt-houthi-military-capability-yemen
B https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-brokering-talks-send-advanced-russian-missiles-yemens-houthis-sources-say-2024-09-24/