What the F.B.I.’s Raid of Mar-a-Lago Could Mean for Trump - A former federal prosecutor and general counsel for the F.B.I. explains the process and implications of obtaining a search warrant on the home of a former President. - link
The Democrats Finally Deliver - The Senate’s passage of a sweeping, if imperfect, climate-change-and-health-care bill is a landmark moment in U.S. policymaking. - link
How Hurricanes Get Their Names - In an age of more intense storms, forecasters explain their aims. - link
Exhibit A of Trump’s Recklessness - The classified documents recovered by federal agents at the former President’s Mar-a-Lago estate add to the picture of his out-of-control behavior after he lost the 2020 election. - link
The Sound of Electric Cars, and Elizabeth Kolbert on a Historic Climate Bill - Electric cars are nearly silent; that’s a problem sound designers can fix. Plus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning climate journalist on what the Inflation Reduction Act means for the planet. - link
From Vox
The power of listening, explained (to kids) -
Naomi Baker/Getty Images
Today, Explained to Kids explores how hearing works and why actively listening with empathy is key to resolving arguments between friends.
Today, Explained to Kidsis back for a second season. In each episode of this Vox podcast, a group of friends takes a journey to the Island of Explained. Kids (and adults) come along to explore the magical island and meet its whimsical inhabitants, all while tackling some of the biggest questions in the world. This summer, we’ll answer questions about how to make the future better through the way we eat, care for our environment, listen to each other, and more.
In Today, Explained to Kids: You’re not LISTENING!, Kiarra and Izii are having an argument when they are unexpectedly transported to the Island of Explained. There, they meet an Engin-Ear and a magical unicorn who teach them how hearing works and why actively listening with empathy is key to resolving arguments between friends.
Listen to the episode with the young people in your life — or just because — and then come back here to download our educational activities that build on what we learned in the episode. Thanks to early childhood education specialist Rachel Giannini for developing our learning materials!
For season two, Today, Explained to Kids is teaming up with KiwiCo to bring four new episodes to life with fun and enriching home-based activities to create a seamless listening and hands-on experience.
A second Trader Joe’s just unionized. It could be the next Starbucks. -
A Trader Joe’s in Buffalo, New York, in 2015. | Melissa Renwick/Toronto Star via Getty Images
The grocery chain is now famous for Hawaiian shirts, frozen foods, and union jobs.
A Trader Joe’s in downtown Minneapolis became the second unionized location in the US on Friday, less than a month after a Massachusetts location became the first. One in Boulder, Colorado, could be next, bringing the effort to unionize the grocery chain across the country. There will likely be many more in between.
This could be the start of a mass union effort at Trader Joe’s in which victory leads to victory, and unions become a reality for America’s retail and hospitality workers, who are among the lowest paid.
In other words, Trader Joe’s could be the next Starbucks.
After a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, became the first company-owned location to unionize last December, more than 215 other stores around the country have done the same. That initial win set off a chain reaction of Starbucks workers working together to share notes on how more locations could organize. Workers explained the unionization process, shared tips with their colleagues, and told would-be union members what anti-union tactics to expect from the company. The strategy seems to be paying off, as more Starbucks employees join union ranks every week.
“That’s our vision. That’s what we want,” Sarah Beth Ryther, a worker at the Minneapolis Trader Joe’s, told Recode last week ahead of the union vote. “We really and truly are interested in creating a larger movement because we are all going through the same things.”
Trader Joe’s, a California-headquartered grocery chain known for outfitting employees in Hawaiian shirts and offering higher-end goods at lower-end prices, has more than 500 locations in more than 40 US states. Workers at the two newly unionized locations say they’ve heard from peers interested in unionizing in every state where there’s a Trader Joe’s.
There’s a reason, workers say, that more than 50 years after Trader Joe’s was founded, three separate stores all got the idea to unionize pretty much at once. The company’s retail employees nationwide are facing the same issues regarding worker safety, pay that’s no longer competitive, and benefits that aren’t as good as they used to be.
“Trader Joe’s earned the reputation they have for being a good place to work by taking care of us and listening to us,” said Woody Hoagland, who’s been at Trader Joe’s for 14 years and whose store in Massachusetts was the first to unionize. “Then it started to slowly get chipped away and it really took a pretty precipitous fall during the pandemic.”
Hoagland explained that making $24 an hour, which is near the maximum he can get at a Trader Joe’s store in his area, still makes it very difficult to pay rent onan apartment for himself and his two kids. As the cost of goods has risen much faster than wages, he says, Trader Joe’s is no longer offering a living wage. Meanwhile, in recent years the company has minimized its retirement benefits and raised requirements to receive health care, while their jobs have become more dangerous thanks to the pandemic.
The other big reason Trader Joe’s is unionizing now, of course, is the organizing activity at Starbucks. The recent spate of successful unionizations at the coffee giant showed workers at Trader Joe’s that it was possible for them too. And there are a lot of similarities between the two companies.
As people have historically done at Starbucks, many came to work for Trader Joe’s because of the reputation it had for being a good place to work. Like Starbucks workers, Trader Joe’s employees became inadvertent front-line workers, who forged tight bonds with coworkers over their shared experiences working in person during the pandemic. Trader Joe’s and Starbucks organizers both say they’re trying to hold their companies to the higher standard the companies themselves have set, lest they become just as bad as other retailers. Even their demands are similar: better pay, better benefits, more safety precautions, and a bigger say in how the store is run.
Trader Joe’s did not respond to a request for comment.
Workers at Trader Joe’s and Starbucks also say they need unions to claw back worker protections that eroded as the highly unionized manufacturing economy gave way to the low-paying service industry. The pandemic brought an already bad situation to a boiling point and spurred workers to fight back. A tight job market means workers have more leverage now than they have had in recent history. And pro-union sentiment makes now as good a time as any to change things.
Some 70 percent of non-union workers said they’d join a union at their primary workplace in a new survey by career services site Jobcase. Of these skilled and hourly workers, 41 percent said they’re more likely to do so now than they would have been three years ago. A Gallup poll last year found the highest approval rate for unions in nearly 60 years. And union filing petitions were up 57 percent in the first half of fiscal year 2022 compared with 2021, according to the National Labor Relations Board.
It’s a long journey, though, from filing for a union to actually getting one. First, a majority of workers at a particular store need to vote in favor of a union, which itself isn’t an easy task since the company can use workers’ time on the job to convince them otherwise. And if the workers organizing do win the vote, the union and company then have to negotiate a contract, which both have to agree to — a process that can be lengthy if it happens at all.
And while Trader Joe’s bears many similarities to Starbucks — both progressive companies that have resorted to union-busting tactics, their employees say — there are differences, too. Trader Joe’s stores are typically much larger than Starbucks. The unionized Trader Joe’s locations, for instance, have about 80 employees, while a typical Starbucks has around 25. Union organizers say it’s much easier to organize small groups because it’s more intimate and easy to connect one-on-one.
The first two Trader Joe’s unions have organized under an independent union, Trader Joe’s United, similar to how Amazon workers in Staten Island founded their own union. That independent status helps avoid criticism that these union movements are being forced from the outside. (The Trader Joe’s location in Boulder has joined forces with a much larger existing union, the United Food and Commercial Workers). Meanwhile, Starbucks stores are unionizing under the umbrella of Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. Still, these Starbucks employees say their union is very much worker-led, even if it leans on another union for help.
The differences, however, aren’t stopping Trader Joe’s and Starbucks workers from trying to support each other’s efforts. Unionized workers at a nearby Starbucks showed up to support Minneapolis Trader Joe’s workers at their rally last week, and Trader Joe’s United has been broadly supportive of Starbucks’ organizing efforts.
“They showed up for us, and we’ll show up for them,” Ryther said.
More importantly, Trader Joe’s workers around the country are reaching out to one another, offering advice, exchanging tips, and hoping their union effort catches on as fast as Starbucks’.
These Trader Joe’s victories are one of several high-profile union wins this year at places people don’t normally expect unions. Stores as far afield as Apple stores or outdoor apparel retailer REI are taking advantage of a unique point in time to eke out better conditions for American workers.
Of course, their leverage might only last as long as hiring remains difficult and the economy is good. But for now, it’s looking strong.
What nuclear secrets could Trump have possibly taken? -
Former President Donald Trump holds up a fist as he departs Trump Tower in New York on August 10, headed to a deposition for the state attorney general’s office, which is investigating the Trump Organization. | Julia Nikhinson/AP
A nuclear weapons historian explains why it’s so hard to know what material Trump took.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons” were among the things FBI agents were looking for when they searched Mar-a-Lago this week. And there were numerous examples of “secret,” “confidential,” and “top secret” documentslisted on the official property receipt from the seizure that was released Friday.
A warrant released alongside the receipt suggested the FBI may be looking into violations of the Espionage Act and potential obstruction of justice as well.
Former President Donald Trump has denied taking any nuclear-related documents, calling the Post’s reporting a “Hoax.” Trump has been known to issue false and misleading statements before, of course, which raises the question: If Trump had nuclear secrets lying around his house, what might they be?
“It could be anything ranging from something that would endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of people to something that has no impact on anything whatsoever. That’s how vague the classified categorization is,” Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear weapons, told me.
I reached out to Wellerstein after the Post report, and after the New York Times reported that federal investigators were concerned about information from “special access programs” — what the Times called “extremely sensitive” US operations abroad, or sensitive technology or capabilities — falling into the wrong hands if it was being stored at Mar–a-Lago. In his research, Wellerstein has focused extensively on the history of nuclear weapons, presidential power over them, and how nuclear secrets are safeguarded.
I asked Wellerstein to offer some ways to think about all this news, and whether Trump could be in legal trouble. Our conversation, below, has been edited for clarity.
Christian Paz
How should we understand what’s going on here?
Alex Wellerstein
There’s two frameworks that I keep coming back to. One, is there a national security risk to how these documents were handled or stored? [Was there any] breaking the law or breaking regulations?
Separate from the question of whether Trump could be prosecuted — that’s a harder question to answer in some ways, because the president can declassify certain categories of things, sort of by fiat — is there a risk in keeping these kinds of documents at Mar-a-Lago?
Mar-a-Lago is potentially not set up to handle these kinds of documents according to the regulations. If you have a top secret document, that implies, through these regulations, how you can handle this document, what kind of safe it can be in, who is allowed to be guarding the safe, what they have to be armed with. All of that kind of stuff.
Then there’s the perhaps more significant legal angle which is, what are the responsibilities of the White House with the preservation and disposition of records, which is a totally separate issue. It’s pretty clear you’re not allowed to take records home and keep them and not give them to the National Archives and not give them to your successors. There are pretty tight regulations around what you are allowed to do with these kinds of records.
Christian Paz
Does that legal framework apply to nuclear secrets?
Alex Wellerstein
Nuclear is tricky, because nuclear secrets are handled by a different law [the Atomic Energy Act] than the rest of [government] secrets, and the president’s ability to sort of arbitrarily declassify things in a nuclear realm is not as obvious. The law constricts nuclear secrets very differently than it constricts most national security information. It’s hard to know whether it could either be something incredibly banal and not interesting, or something that would have massive implications for American security and diplomacy. And so it’s the entire gamut of extremes.
Now, to get back to the original question — could POTUS remove things from the RD category unilaterally (and without telling anyone ahead of time)? The Atomic Energy Act certainly makes zero provisions for this. It is pretty clear on the procedures and agencies involved. pic.twitter.com/WO0bZD4Bld
What about the term “special access program”? Does that suggest something significant?
Alex Wellerstein
Usually when you have something like a special access program, what you’re essentially saying is, we have lots of secrets that we think, if they got released, would do damage to the United States.
In principle, that’s the baseline. And then as you go up the ranks of secrecy, like confidential, secret, and top secret, you’re essentially saying, the damage would be more and more. And it goes from saying, for example, “Well, this could make our relationship with Japan a little more difficult” — that’s the form of damage — to the top level, which is, “We could have entire intelligence sources compromised, people could die, our plans could be rendered nil, they could attack us first and we lose hundreds of millions”: just as imaginative as you can get.
So “special access program” is just another one of these layers, where you’re essentially saying, “Look, we really think this is important stuff. And so the number of people who can have access to it needs to be smaller, and those people have to be specially vetted.” This is the kind of stuff that would potentially have some sort of nasty implication in the very short term, but that could be very vague.
Whether that’s true or not [about the material the Times reported was in Mar-a-Lago] — people have misused these things, and overapplied them, and used them for things that are just embarrassing — who knows? Without more information, it’s hard to even speculate, but if it’s got stuff like that in there, that means that somebody, when making that document, thought, this is hot stuff. So you know, handle with care.
Christian Paz
This also gets us to the question of how much the government tends to classify materials that might not legitimately need to be classified to begin with. Part of the reason we don’t know what classified documents the former president might have is because so many things are classified to begin with.
Alex Wellerstein
This is an anecdote, but somebody who used to work at Los Alamos [National Laboratory] told me a little while ago that they would occasionally mix in certain amounts of higher level classification into a document because it would allow them to just easily classify the document at a certain level and not have to worry about segregating out certain types of information, and just doing this; essentially, a bureaucratic hack to make their jobs easier. Which I found a horror, but he told us as a funny joke.
And I was like, well, that’s horrifying, right? You’re admitting that you have gamed the system in a way that overclassifies because it’s easier to handle, in some ways, higher classified things; they come with more responsibilities, and they come with more regulations, but if you’re already in a world that’s highly used to using these things, you know that fewer people are going to look at your program and get in your way. I’m not saying that’s a universal example, but it’s hard to know what is “legitimate.” And it’s also hard, inherently, to even have a definition of legitimate that we would all agree on.
Another good example: is this the true worst-case scenario for nuclear documents? What if … one of these nuclear documents confirms that the United States knows, as we know it does, that Israel has nuclear weapons?
The United States does not admit to knowing that, and Israel does not admit to having them. We are still able to sell Israel arms, even though we’re not supposed to sell them to nations that are nuclear states that are not in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And so I can tell you, they have nuclear weapons; there’s books about how they have nuclear weapons; you can look it up on the internet [and] see pictures of their nuclear weapons, essentially.
Another good example, and this is what some people have speculated among the worst-case scenarios: because the United States doesn’t acknowledge [Israel’s nuclear weapons], there’s that legal fiction. So a document from the US that acknowledged it would destroy the legal fiction if it was released or brought out. It could create problems for another country, too. Maybe they get to enjoy the fiction for their domestic politics. And suddenly they’ve got to confront that domestically. Right? It can’t be ignored.
It’s one of the reasons why the argument that the president can arbitrarily declassify things if he wants to [is] not a good practice. It’s a terrible idea. It’s absolutely the worst approach you could have for this. Except in cases where the president really felt that there was some pressing need to release something and all of his agencies were telling him they didn’t want it to be released, but the president really felt that that was important.
But I’ve never gotten any sense that Donald Trump has done anything like that. Every time he’s released classified information, which he has done many times — there’s that famous picture he tweeted of the bombing of that Iranian site, which was really tricky, because it revealed information about what we can see in our satellites, which is very classified, like what resolution they can go to — I’ve never seen a deliberate, “People need to know this” situation. That seemed like an “oh, cool” situation.
Christian Paz
I saw you’ve spoken about Harry Truman — how as president, nuclear weapons were used largely without his involvement, and how he revealed some nuclear secrets post-presidency. Is this at all like that?
Alex Wellerstein
It’s just a very odd situation. It’s not something that happens normally. There have certainly been cases in which former officials of different sorts have talked about things that either they thought were unclassified, or they just hadn’t given any thought to its classification.
Truman had a number of issues with saying, especially after his presidency, stuff that annoyed current administrations or made them feel like he was getting into territory he really shouldn’t get into. And this is just one example of that, but the one I posted [is] the document about [Truman talking about how much plutonium was in the first atomic bomb]. And for Truman, you can kind of give him a little slack since this literally got invented under his watch.
In 1956, the FBI was told by someone — probably someone at the AEC — that Harry Truman was telling people how much plutonium was in the first atomic bomb. pic.twitter.com/w4WDNGCHV8
The closest that I can think of now is Jimmy Carter, who has said some things that seem to be very clearly implying that Israel had nuclear weapons. And that’s not what he’s supposed to say. Again, that’s a very open secret. But that’s the only other example that comes to mind.
They don’t prosecute most people who violate security, and even with nuclear things, prosecution is a really high bar. And the laws for prosecuting are not that ironclad in terms of their constitutionality. So if … they don’t think you’re a spy, what they usually do is an administrative sanction, where you might lose your clearance and then have to apply to get it renewed and it’s a big, ugly sort of thing, but it’s not like going to jail for taking documents home with you. It’s not common.
The government did, in the 1940s, have some issues with GIs who had stolen photographs that they weren’t supposed to have and then tried to sell them. I know there’s been speculation that one of the reasons Trump may have these documents is to sort of give them away or sell them, not as espionage, but as mementos. So that’s not totally unprecedented, and they did prosecute some people for that. But again, these were GIs … I don’t think the odds of prosecution for mishandling of secrets are super high, just because it’s so legally difficult anyway, but if it’s a president, it’s even more legally difficult and legally unclear, and they do have discretion over whether they prosecute these kinds of things.
But I do think it’s pretty significant that this clearly violates the Presidential Records Act. There’s [not] a lot of interpretation there, whereas with the nuclear stuff, or the Espionage Act, you have a lot of interpretation about what the president actually can do. But the Presidential Records Act is pretty straightforward.
From The Hindu: Sports
Sindhu suffers stress fracture injury; out of badminton World Championship - The 27-year-old Sindhu, winner of five medals in the Worlds including a gold, will now be closely monitored during the recovery phase.
Test cricket won't die in my lifetime but who'll be playing it?, says Ian Chappell - The former Australia captain believed that international cricket faces a real challenge of retaining players in the face of rapid expansion of T20 leagues
PM Modi hosts India's Commonwealth Games contingent - The Indian athletes produced a sensational show in Birmingham, claiming 61 medals, including 22 gold, 16 silver and 23 bronze.
Unvaccinated Novak Djokovic out of U.S. Open tuneup in Cincinnati - Men’s tennis world no. 6 has not received COVID-19 vaccination and will not be allowed to travel to the United States
New Zealand beats Windies by 90 runs, leads T20 series 2-0 - The West Indies managed only 125/9 in reply of Kiwi’s mammoth total of 215/5
From The Hindu: National News
COVID cases drop in Telangana -
The Preamble, crafted by deft needlework - Homemaker embroiders Constitution’s Preamble in Malayalam, working nearly 10 hours a day for five months
Revanth expresses apology but Komatireddy Venkata Reddy not yet satisfied - Revanth releases a video
BJP practises what it preaches: Rajnath Singh - Rajnath Singh unveiled the statue Veer Durgadas Rathore at Salvan Kalan village of Jodhpur on the Rajput general’s 385th birth anniversary
Rajiv Gandhi govt. decision to ban Rushdie's book was justified, taken for law & order reasons: Natwar Singh - Former Minister of State for External Affairs K. Natwar Singh said he was “very distressed” over the attack.
From BBC: Europe
Drought hits Germany’s Rhine River: ‘We have 30cm of water left’ - The Rhine is a key shipping route for Germany and Europe - so what happens if it’s too shallow to use?
Montenegro: Gunman kills 11 after family dispute - Three members of the same family were killed - the gunman was shot dead by a civilian.
Ukraine war: Crimea blasts significantly hit Russian navy - UK - The Ministry of Defence says the blasts have “significantly degraded” Moscow’s Black Sea Fleet.
German ex-leader Gerhard Schroeder sues parliament over lost perks - The former chancellor has faced criticism over his links to Russian energy companies.
Puck Fair: Wild goat removed from festival ‘throne’ amid Irish heat alert - The goat is taken down from its pedestal on Friday for the second day in a row as temperatures soar.
From Ars Technica
How long will it take to understand long COVID? - Researchers have proposed a variety of theories to explain symptoms of COVID long-haulers. - link
Poliovirus detected in NYC sewage; health officials urge vaccination - Meanwhile, officials in London reported finding poliovirus over 100 times in sewage. - link
LG plans to introduce 20-inch OLED panels this year - The smallest consumer OLED TV LG makes currently measures 42 inches. - link
How to upgrade to Windows 11, whether your PC is supported or not [Updated] - Supported or not, new or old, this is everything you need to know. - link
Betelgeuse is bouncing back after blowing its top in 2019 - “We’re watching stellar evolution in real time.” - link
From Jokes Subreddit
76% of people don’t know opposite words for the following: -
Once upon a time, there lived a man who had a terrible passion for baked beans. -
He loved them dearly, but they always had an embarrassing and somewhat explosive effect on him.
One day he met a girl and fell in love. When it became apparent that they would marry, he thought to himself, “she’ll never go through with the marriage with me carrying on like this,” so he made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans. Shortly afterward, they were married.
A few months later, on the way home from work, his car broke down. Since they lived in the country, he called his wife and told her that he would be late because he had to walk home. On his way, he passed a small cafe and the wonderful aroma of baked beans overwhelmed him. Since he still had several miles to walk he figured he could walk off any ill effects before he got home. So he went in, ordered, and had 3 extra large helpings of delicious baked beans. He farted all the way home. By the time he arrived home he felt reasonably safe.
His wife met him at the door and seemed somewhat excited. She exclaimed, “Darling, I have the most wonderful surprise for you for dinner tonight!” She put a blindfold on him, and led him to his chair at the head of the table and made him promise not to peek.
At this point he was beginning to feel another one coming on. Just as his wife was about to remove the blindfold, the telephone rang. She again made him promise not to peek until she returned, and away she went to answer the phone.
While she was gone, he seized the opportunity. He shifted his weight to one leg and let go. It was not only loud, but also ripe as a rotten egg. He had a hard time breathing, so he felt for his napkin and fanned the air about him.
He had just started to feel better, when another urge came on. He raised his leg and RRIIIPPPP!!! It sounded like a diesel engine revving, and smelled worse. To keep from gagging, he tried fanning his arms a while, hoping the smell would dissipate. Then he got another urge. This was a real blue ribbon winner, the windows shook, the dishes on the table rattled and a minute later the flowers on the table fell over. While keeping an ear tuned in on the conversation in the hallway, and keeping his promise of staying blindfolded, he carried on like this for the next ten minutes, farting and fanning each time with his napkin. When he heard the phone farewells he neatly laid his napkin on his lap and folded his hands on top of it.
Smiling contentedly, he was the picture of innocence when his wife walked in. Apologizing for taking so long, she asked if he had peeked at the dinner table. After assuring her he had not peeked, she removed the blindfold and yelled, “SURPRISE!!!”
There, seated around the table to his great alarm, were twelve dinner guests for his surprise birthday party!
I was auditioning for a play today, and the director yelled at me. He said my acting reminded him of a female reproductive organ! Needless to say I stormed off… -
But after I thought about it, I went back. I had to apologize for ovary acting.
