Dear Commons Community,

Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect Aug. 1.

A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock had challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.

The judge also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.

The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling, saying that the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized First Amendment rights. As reported by the Associated Press.

“The question we had to ask was — do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement.

The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in an email Saturday that his office would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law.”

The executive director of Central Arkansas Library System, Nate Coulter, said the judge’s 49-page decision recognized the law as censorship, a violation of the Constitution and wrongly maligning librarians.

“As folks in southwest Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he said in an email.

“I’m relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS’ librarians has lifted,” he added.

Cheryl Davis, general counsel for the Authors Guild, said the organization is “thrilled” about the decision. She said enforcing this law “is likely to limit the free speech rights of older minors, who are capable of reading and processing more complex reading materials than young children can.”

The Arkansas lawsuit names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford County in west Arkansas. A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford County library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library.

The plaintiffs challenging Arkansas’ restrictions also include the Fayetteville and Eureka Springs Carnegie public libraries, the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American Publishers.

Good decision on the part of Judge Brooks!

Tony

Asa Hutchinson

Dear Commons Community,

GOP presidential candidate Asa Hutchinson called out his fellow Republican presidential candidates who have said they would pardon former President Trump if they are elected to the White House.

CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Hutchinson on “Face the Nation” yesterday if he believed Trump should be pardoned “for the good of the country,” which is what former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has suggested. This comes as Trump faces additional charges in the classified documents case and a potential second federal indictment over his alleged involvement in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

“No. First of all, there should not be any discussion during a presidential campaign,” he said. “You don’t put pardons out there to garner votes. That is premature. Obviously, if there’s a conviction —.”

Brennan interjected him to ask if he thinks Haley is using pardons to gain votes.

“Well, I think that anybody who promises pardons during the presidential campaign is not serving our system of justice well and it’s inappropriate,” Hutchinson responded.

Haley, along with a handful of other GOP presidential candidates, have said they will consider pardoning Trump if they are elected to the White House. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy yesterday doubled down on his pledge to pardon Trump amid fresh charges filed against the former president.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also said he does not think it would be good for the country if Trump went to prison when discussing the possibility of a pardon for the former president last week. Former Vice President Mike Pence said last month that any talk of pardoning Trump is “premature.”

Hutchinson has it right!

Tony

Don’t forget it: Orchard Beach is the gem of the Bronx!

Make the most of your #SummerOfNYC and catch some rays and waves this weekend. #InTheBronx pic.twitter.com/TJOoQ4CgrB

— City of New York (@nycgov) July 30, 2021

Dear Commons Community,

Mara Gay, a member of the New York Times editorial board, has a piece today entitled, When It Comes to Swimming, Why Have Americans Been Left on Their Own?  She laments that too many Americans do not have safe places to swim, a situation exasperated this summer by people seeking relief from the prolonged heat waves blanketing parts of our country. Here is an excerpt.

“In this summer’s widespread heat wave, millions of Americans are sweating it out without a safe place to swim. The dearth of public pools makes it harder to learn basic water safety skills or simply cool off in a country broiling from the extreme heat of climate change. The problem has been exacerbated in recent years by a national lifeguard shortage, leading to partly closed beaches and public pools. Along the New York City waterfront this summer, hordes of swimmers are crowding together in small sections of sand while expanses of beach sit empty for want of lifeguards. Lines of sweaty New Yorkers form outside city pools that are operating at reduced capacity….

One reason drowning rates are so high is that when a safe place to swim isn’t readily available, Americans often enter the water anyway, seeking relief from the heat wherever they can. In New York City alone, at least four teenagers have drowned since 2010 trying to swim in the Bronx River. The Bronx is home to more than 1.4 million people but has just eight open public pools. That’s about one pool for every 175,000 people. The most beloved public pools, when they receive good investment, attract Americans of many backgrounds, creating a space for people to swim and play together who may not otherwise interact. Like libraries and parks, they are an essential piece of social infrastructure in a democracy.”

Gay concludes:  “Every American deserves the chance to swim somewhere just as nice.”

As a child growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s, I learned how to swim at Orchard Beach (see video above). It was and still is “the gem of the Bronx.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie labelled former President Donald Trump a “one-man crime wave” as he faces  three new felony charges and a third potential indictment looms.

Christie, an ex-Trump ally turned critic who is running for president, slammed the former president after “Pod Save America” host Jon Lovett asked him if he’s heard of anyone facing between “four and six trials within a few months for different legal issues.”

“No, no. Usually, folks like this commit discrete crimes and wind up having one trial. This guy has been a one-man crime wave,” said Christie, a former federal prosecutor.

“Look, he’s earned every one of them. If you look at it, every one of these is self-inflicted and that’s why – do I think that prosecutors exercise prosecutorial judgment in discretion in some respects that are questionable? Yeah and they always have but what I say to people all the time is whether you agree or disagree with the prosecutors, look at the underlying conduct.”

Christie’s criticism arrives in the same week that Trump’s lawyers met with prosecutors ahead of a potential indictment.

Special counsel Jack Smith also brought three new felony charges against Trump on Thursday in the case on the former president’s handling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The former governor – who hasn’t held back his jabs toward his GOP rival in recent weeks – brought up whether Trump’s conduct is “appropriate” for someone with presidential hopes before naming which prosecution he “absolutely” believes in.

“For instance, the prosecution in Manhattan is one that I wouldn’t have brought as a prosecutor. But do we want someone as president who is willing to pay off a porn star who he had an affair with, two months before a national election to hide it from the people who he’s asking for their vote for president of the United States? I think that’s probably conduct that we should be frowning upon,” he said.

“So I don’t believe in the Manhattan prosecution. I absolutely believe in the classified documents prosecution.”

Keep at him, Christie!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Scientists have revived a worm that was frozen 46,000 years ago — at a time when woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and giant elks still roamed the Earth.

The roundworm, of a previously unknown species, survived 40 meters (131.2 feet) below the surface in the Siberian permafrost in a dormant state known as cryptobiosis, according to Teymuras Kurzchalia, professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden and one of the scientists involved in the research.

Organisms in a cryptobiotic state can endure the complete absence of water or oxygen and withstand high temperatures, as well as freezing or extremely salty conditions. They remain in a state “between death and life,” in which their metabolic rates decrease to an undetectable level, Kurzchalia explained. As reported by CNN.

“One can halt life and then start it from the beginning. This a major finding,” he said, adding that other organisms previously revived from this state had survived for decades rather than millennia.

Five years ago, scientists from the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science in Russia found two roundworm species in the Siberian permafrost.

One of the researchers, Anastasia Shatilovich, revived two of the worms at the institute by simply rehydrating them with water, before taking around 100 worms to labs in Germany for further analysis, transporting them in her pocket.

After thawing the worms, the scientists used radiocarbon analysis of the plant material in the sample to establish that the deposits had not been thawed since between 45,839 and 47,769 years ago.

But still, they didn’t know whether the worm was a known species. Eventually, genetic analysis conducted by scientists in Dresden and Cologne showed that these worms belonged to a novel species, which researchers named Panagrolaimus kolymaenis.

Researchers also found that the P. kolymaenis shared with C. elegans — another organism often used in scientific studies — “a molecular toolkit” that could allow it to survive cryptobiosis. Both organisms produce a sugar called trehalose, possibly enabling them to endure freezing and dehydration.

“To see that the same biochemical pathway is used in a species which is 200, 300 million years away, that’s really striking,” said Philipp Schiffer, research group leader of the Institute of Zoology at the University of Cologne and one of the scientists involved in the study. “It means that some processes in evolution are deeply conserved.”

And, Schiffer added, there are other actionable insights which can be gleaned by studying these organisms.

“By looking at and analyzing these animals, we can maybe inform conservation biology, or maybe even develop efforts to protect other species, or at least learn what to do to protect them in these extreme conditions that we have now,” he told CNN.

Pretty “cool.”

Tony

Hunter Biden’s daughter Navy, seen here with her mother Lunden Roberts.

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden yesterday for the first time publicly acknowledged his seventh grandchild, a 4-year-old girl fathered by his son Hunter with an Arkansas woman, Lunden Roberts, in 2018.

“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” Biden said in a statement. It was his first acknowledgement of the child. As reported by the Associated Press.

“This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter,” he said. “Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

Hunter Biden’s paternity was established by DNA testing after Roberts sued for child support, and the two parties recently resolved outstanding child support issues. The president’s son wrote about his encounter with Roberts in his 2021 memoir, saying it came while he was deep in

“I had no recollection of our encounter,” he wrote. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”

The president, who has made a commitment to family central to his public persona, has faced increasing criticism from political rivals and pundits for failing to acknowledge the granddaughter. According to a person familiar with the matter, he was taking the cue from his son while the legal proceedings played out. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters.

Hunter Biden has four other children, including a son, Beau, born to his wife Melissa Cohen in 2020. He was named after the president’s late son who died of cancer in 2015, leaving behind two children.

Biden’s grandchildren have played a distinctive role in his presidency, often accompanying the president or first lady on trips and making regular visits to the White House. The president has also credited his grandchildren with persuading him to challenge then-President Donald Trump for the White House in 2020.

Biden’s acknowledgement is long overdue.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading David Grann’s The Wager:  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.  Grann is the best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of  Z.  The Wager is currently on The New York Times best-seller’s list and deservedly so.  It is a page-turner on the fate of The Wager and its crew in the mid-1700s. Grann provides engaging descriptions of the period, life on board a British warship, and most importantly, the crewmen.  Grann is at his best when he sketches human  behavior as captains, midshipmen, and sailors are in a fight for their lives when the their ship runs ground and they have to survive on a small island with meager food supplies.  I won’t give away too much of the plot or the ending only to say that if you enjoy tales of survival on the high seas in the 18th century, you will enjoy The Wager.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. economy accelerated to a 2.4% annual growth rate from April through June, showing continued resilience in the face of steadily higher interest rates resulting from the Federal Reserve’s 16-month-long fight to bring down inflation.

Yesterday’s estimate from the Commerce Department indicated that the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — picked up from the 2% growth rate in the January-March quarter. Last quarter’s expansion was well above the 1.5% annual rate that economists had forecast.

Driving last quarter’s growth was a burst of business investment. Excluding housing, business spending surged at a 7.7% annual rate, the fastest such pace since early 2022. Companies plowed more money into factories and equipment. Increased spending by state and local governments also helped fuel the economy’s expansion in the April-June quarter.

Consumer spending, the heart of the nation’s economy, was also solid last quarter, though it slowed to a 1.6% annual rate from a robust 4.2% pace in the first quarter of the year.

Investment in housing, though, fell, weakened by the weight of higher mortgage rates.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“This is a strong report, confirming that this economy continues to largely shrug off the Fed’s aggressive rate increases and tightening credit conditions,’’ said Olu Sonola, head of U.S. economics at Fitch Ratings. “The bottom line is that the U.S. economy is still growing above trend, and the Fed will be wondering if they need to do more to slow this economy.”

In fighting inflation, which last year hit a four-decade high, the Fed has raised its benchmark rate 11 times since March 2022, most recently on Wednesday. The resulting higher costs for a broad range of loans — from mortgages and credit cards to auto loans and business borrowing — have taken a toll on growth.

Still, they have yet to tip the United States into a widely forecast recession. Optimism has been growing that a recession isn’t coming after all, that the Fed can engineer a so-called “soft-landing” — slowing the economy enough to bring inflation down to its 2% annual target without wrecking an expansion of surprising durability.

This week, the International Monetary Fund upgraded its forecast for U.S. economic growth for all of 2023 to 1.8%. Though that would be down from 2.1% growth for 2022, it marked an increase from the 1.6% growth that the IMF had predicted for 2023 back in April.

At a news conference Wednesday after the Fed announced its latest quarter-point rate hike, Chair Jerome Powell revealed that the central bank’s staff economists no longer foresee a recession in the United States. In April, the minutes of the central bank’s March meeting had revealed that the Fed’s staff economists envisioned a “mild” recession later this year.

In his remarks, Powell noted that the economy has proved resilient despite the Fed’s rapid rate hikes. And he said he still thinks a soft landing remains possible.

By any measure, the American job market has shown itself to be remarkably strong. At 3.6% in June, the unemployment rate hovers just above a five-decade low. A surge in retirements after COVID-19 hit in early 2020 has contributed to a shortage of workers across the country, forcing many companies to raise wages to attract or keep staffers.

Higher pay and job security are giving Americans the confidence and financial wherewithal to keep shopping. Indeed, consumer spending, which drives about 70% of economic activity, rose at a 4.2% annual rate from January through March, the fastest quarterly pace in nearly two years. Americans have kept spending — crowding airplanes, traveling overseas and flocking to concerts and movie theaters.

And the Conference Board, a business research group, reported Tuesday that Americans this month are in their sunniest mood in two years, based on the board’s reading of consumer confidence.

Indeed, many consumers are finally enjoying some relief from spiking prices: Year-over-year inflation, which peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, has eased consistently ever since. Inflation-adjusted hourly pay rose 1.4% in June from a year earlier, the sharpest such gain since early 2021.

“Inflation is easing, moving in the right direction,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics. ”In other words, the Fed is achieving what it wants without causing damage to the economy, so they don’t need to push too hard from this point on.’’

Still, Farooqi suggested, the surprisingly healthy GDP report makes it somewhat more likely that the Fed will raise rates again because the economy appears to be “much stronger’’ than what the central bank would like to see. With stronger growth comes a greater likelihood of high inflation.

But Thursday’s GDP report contained some encouraging news for the Fed’s inflation fighters: One measure of prices — the personal consumption expenditures index — rose at a 2.6% annual rate last quarter, down from a 4.1% pace in the January-March quarter, to the lowest level since the end of 2020.

Though that is still above the Fed’s 2% inflation target, it amounts to “another welcome sign of disinflation,” said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The Biden White House’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated Thursday that investment in factories and other manufacturing facilities added 0.4 percentage point of growth last quarter, the largest such proportion since 1981. President Joe Biden pushed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act last year to encourage domestic manufacturing. Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JP Morgan Chase, agreed that much of last quarter’s uptick in business investment was “likely in response to recent federal incentives.’’

“This progress wasn’t inevitable or accidental,’’ the president said in a statement. “It is Bidenomics in action.’’

The economy continues to improve and move forward!

Tony

Rudy Giuliani  (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Rudy Giuliani admits he lied about two Georgia election workers he infamously accused of trying to rig the 2020 election for President Biden.

The ex-New York City mayor and current lawyer for former President Donald Trump conceded in a late night court filing that he does not contest the allegations against him made in a defamation lawsuit filed by Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss.

“(Giuliani) does not contest that … such actionable factual statements are false,” his lawyers wrote in the signed filing.

Despite the admission, Giuliani, 79, insisted that he should not be found liable because the statements “did not carry meaning that is defamatory, per se” and that they are “constitutionally protected statements or opinions.”

Giuliani is facing possible sanctions from Federal District Court Judge Beryl Howell for repeatedly failing to hand over information demanded by the election workers.

It remains to be seen if his latest legal strategy will satisfy the judge.

Giuliani was one of Trump’s primary mouthpieces in the weeks after the 2020 election and repeatedly spread lies about supposed fraud that could have helped Biden win.

He claimed without evidence that Freeman and Moss were caught on video surveillance passing USB drives to help Biden cheat. The pair testified under oath that it was actually a ginger mint. Last month, Freeman and Moss were cleared of any wrongdoing by Georgia investigators.

Giuliani faces a slew of legal worries related to his efforts to help Trump overturn the election.

He has been questioned by the Atlanta grand jury that might indict Trump and others next month for election interference in the Peach State.

The former mayor has also cooperated with special counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 probe of Trump.

He was also hit with an unrelated lurid sexual harassment lawsuit in which a business consultant claims he forced her to have sex with him.

Giuliani says the woman wasn’t an employee and they were dating.

For the past several years, “America’s Mayor” has been involved with one embarrassment after another.  At least he admits he is a liar that is more than the “liar in chief ” Donald Trump ever does!

Tony