Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War.”

The revelations were made in Woodward’s  latest book, is due out next week.  As reported by  The Associated Press.

Trump denied the reporting in an interview with ABC News’ Jonathan Karl. “He’s a storyteller. A bad one. And he’s lost his marbles,” Trump said of Woodward.

Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist’s 2021 book, “Rage.” Trump later sued over it, claiming Woodward never had permission to publicly release recordings of their interviews for the book. The publisher and Woodward denied his allegations.

Trump has had multiple calls with Putin since his White House term ended

Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book, though it does not detail what they discussed.

Trump senior adviser and longtime aide Jason Miller told Woodward that he had not heard Trump was having calls with Putin and said, “I’d push back on that.” But Miller also said, according to the book, “I’m sure they’d know how to get in touch with each other.”

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, said none of the stories in Woodward’s books are true. In a statement on Tuesday, he called them “the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Trump’s relationship with Putin has been scrutinized since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.

U.S. intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, though an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following an in-person meeting with Putin in Helsinki.

In recent years, Trump has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. He has said Ukraine should have made concessions to Putin before Russia invaded in 2022. He also previously touted his good relationship with Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.

Trump sent COVID-19 test machines to Putin for his personal use

Woodward reports that Trump sent Putin COVID-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.

Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be mad at Trump over it, but Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew, according to the book. Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.

The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia. It was previously reported by The Associated Press and other agencies that Trump’s administration in May 2020 sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.

Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview Tuesday with radio host Howard Stern, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling” to get tests.

“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day,” said Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.

Trump and Putin are birds of a feather.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last evening, Elaine and I took a walk along the beach at Sconset on Nantucket. The surf, sky and dunes were all quite beautiful.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Chris Wallace bluntly said he had enough with Fox News’ “conspiracy” and “lies,” so he left for CNN in 2021. 

In a Mediaite interview released yesterday, the longtime anchor explained how he reached the tipping point at the conservative news channel after 18 years there (see video below).

Wallace said a “firewall” between Fox News anchors and its opinionated personalities crumbled during the 2020 presidential election. The network’s calling of Arizona, a swing state, in Joe Biden’s favor and the subsequent backlash and viewer defection it suffered changed the culture, he said.

The erosion continued as Fox News downplayed the Jan. 6 Capitol attack after amplifying Donald Trump and his allies’ false claims that the election was stolen.

“I saw a poll that said that 70% of Republicans did not think that Joe Biden is the legitimate president,” Wallace said. “That’s horrifying. When you talk about why did you leave and why was it unsustainable? I had no problem with conservative opinion any more than I do with liberal opinion. But what I do have a problem with is conspiracy, lies. The truth is non-negotiable. It’s not something that you can sit there and shade or in any way play with. And I saw way too much of that happening.”

Wallace, who was promoting his new book, “Countdown 1960: The Behind-the-Scenes Story of the 312 Days that Changed America’s Politics Forever,” also expressed no sympathy whatsoever for his old network having to dish out $787 million to Dominion to settle a lawsuit after Fox News fraudulently claimed the company’s balloting machines were rigged against Trump.

“I viewed it as I’m glad to see that somebody is paying for playing with the truth,” he said. “And for very much breaking what I think is our almost sacred charter, which is to inform people, not to misinform people. To the degree that Fox was scared by the cost of calling Arizona correctly and people going to other more conservative outlets, there’s also a cost to lying and to misrepresenting. And I was happy to see that cost was being exacted.”

Fast-forward to 21:10 for many of Wallace’s comments about his Fox News tenure:

Wallace gave a more diplomatic take on his exit to The New York Times in 2022.

“I just no longer felt comfortable with the programming at Fox,” he said.

“When people start to question the truth — Who won the 2020 election? Was Jan. 6 an insurrection? — I found that unsustainable,” he added.

The only person left at Fox who even tries to report the news honestly is Neil Cavuto. Bret Baier use to be honest but he joined the conspiracy of liars a few years ago.

Tony

Nobel Committee Secretary General Thomas Perlmann speaks to the media in front of a picture of this year’s laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun during the announcement of the Nobel Prize in medicine winners.  Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to US scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on the discovery of microRNA, a molecule that governs how cells in the body function.

Their research revealed how genes, which contain the instruction manual for life, give rise to different types of cells within the human body, a process known as gene regulation.

The Nobel Prize committee announced the prestigious honor, seen as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, in Sweden on Monday. It praised the “groundbreaking discovery,” which the committee said “revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation.”

The discovery of gene regulation by microRNA – a family of molecules that helps cells control the sort of proteins they make that has been at work for hundreds of millions of years – was the result of decades of work by Ambros, a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Ruvkun, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.

“Their discovery… is of fundamental importance to understand how cells work, and thus how organisms develop,” said Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genomics at Stockholm University. “This finding was groundbreaking, and has affected more or less all fields of biology and medicine,” he told CNN via email.

Congratulations to Professors Ambros and Ruvkun!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Elaine and I are spending a few days on Nantucket.  The weather has been great for October.

The photo above was taken last evening on the deck of the beach house where we are staying.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday commenting on the Vice Presidential Debate and specifically JD Vance’s performance.  Entitled, “JD Smirks His Way Into the Future“, she makes no bones about the fact that Vance was auditioning as the leader of the Republican Party after the 2024 election assuming Kamala Harris wins.  I saw the debate, and the same thought occurred to me. Vance was being Mr. Nice Guy to Tim Walz and to the TV audience, hoping they would forget his behavior as Trump’s running mate. Here is a excerpt.

“Unless you need to fake it to improve your favorability numbers — like Vance did in his debate against Tim Walz.

David Axelrod had predicted it would be a match between a Labrador retriever and a coyote. But there were two Labs onstage.

Vance’s performance was chilling. Once I thought Trump would be an aberration for Republicans. But on Tuesday night, I saw the future of the party and it was lies piled on lies, and darkness swallowing darkness.

Vance seemed like a replicant. There was no sign of the smarmy right-wing troll who said Harris “can go to hell” and told CNN’s Dana Bash that he created stories about migrants eating cats and dogs to dramatize a narrative that helps the Republican ticket. (A racist narrative.)

His views against abortion are adamantine and, until recently, he was an I.V.F. opponent. He has a bizarre, degrading view of the role of women in American society.

But on Tuesday night, he put on a mask of likability and empathy. “Christ have mercy, it is awful,” Vance said, looking down and shaking his head, when Walz told of his teenage son witnessing a shooting.

The chameleon brought back the JD Vance who was the darling of Hollywood, when “Hillbilly Elegy” was made into a movie, before he ambitiously code-switched into a Trumper. His wife, Usha, a debate adviser, helped him craft a persona that made him more palatable to women.

He was wily and deceptive in how he talked about abortion, stressing that women needed “options” and sending his love to an old friend who he said had had an abortion.

One woman in the CNN focus group was impressed with his empathy and talk of options, saying she was surprised and encouraged that Vance sounded so “progressive.”

But before the 40-year-old JD teamed up with the 78-year-old Donald, his abortion position was draconian. For women in the wrong states, the need to get an abortion is a terrifying prospect that could lead to death, if you are denied the proper treatment. And treatment is harder to get because doctors fear going to jail.

It’s remarkable, given Vance’s compassionate tone in his book, and his plea that the people of Appalachia be understood rather than ridiculed, how easily he morphed into someone with no compassion, stereotyping migrants and women.

After nearly 90 minutes of being lulled by Vance’s sham persona, Walz finally ripped his opponent’s mask off when Vance refused to say Trump lost the last election.

“Tim,” Vance protested, “I’m focused on the future.”

It was the truest thing Vance said in a night of lying about his own positions and mythical Trump achievements.

Vance was focused on the future — his own.”

Trump must have been mad as hell over Vance’s debate performance.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Friday, the tech giant Meta unveiled a set of A.I. tools, called Meta Movie Gen, for automatically generating videos, instantly editing them and synchronizing them with A.I.-generated sound effects, ambient noise and background music.  As reported by The New York Times.

Video is nothing without audio,” said Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative A.I., said in an interview.

Given a short text description of an image, one tool creates a video. Then, given another description of some sounds, a second tool adds the audio.

A demonstration included short videos — created in minutes — of a man in a poncho standing over a waterfall, a snake slithering through a forest and a person riding an all-terrain vehicle across the desert. Each included music as well as sound effects.

The new system also lets people upload photos of themselves and instantly weave these images to moving videos.

It generates 16-frame-per-second videos that last for up to 16 seconds. In some cases, these videos are flawed. During one demonstration for The New York Times, when asked to generate a video of a dog in a park talking on a cellphone, it mistakenly grafted a human hand onto the phone.\

This video’s A.I. prompt: “A fluffy koala bear surfs. It has a gray and white coat and a round nose. The surfboard is yellow. The koala bear is holding onto the surfboard with its paws. The koala bear gets on the surfboard, its facial expression is focused. The sun is shining.”  See video below.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, sees the technology as a way to accelerate the work of Hollywood movie-makers and online creators. Like OpenAI, it has started testing the technology with a small group of professionals.

The two companies are among many developing this kind of tool; others include start-ups like Runway and Pika and tech giants like Google and Microsoft. Though many believe the technology could speed the work of seasoned moviemakers, it could also replace less experienced digital artists.

Others experts worry that the technology could become a quick and inexpensive way of creating online disinformation, making it even harder to tell what’s real on the internet.

While OpenAI and other companies have been reluctant to release some A.I. technologies amid concerns about disinformation and other potential risks, Meta has been quicker to share them freely, arguing that the risks are not as great as they may seem.

Tony

This video’s A.I. prompt: “A fluffy koala bear surfs. It has a gray and white coat and a round nose. The surfboard is yellow. The koala bear is holding onto the surfboard with its paws. The koala bear gets on the surfboard, its facial expression is focused. The sun is shining.”  Credit …Video by Meta.

Jamie Dimon.  Photograph – Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump claimed Friday on Truth Social that he’d received the endorsement of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who appeared to have no knowledge of the development and immediately disavowed it.

“New: Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has endorsed Trump for President,” a post on Trump’s Truth Social account read. As reported by The Huffington Post.

As of Friday afternoon, the lie had garnered 6,910 likes and 2,270 “ReTruths.”

Joe Evangelisti, a spokesperson for JPMorgan Chase unequivocally denied the claim.

“Jamie Dimon has not endorsed anyone,” Evangelisti told CNBC. “He has not endorsed a candidate.”

The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

During the Republican presidential primary, Dimon had urged corporate leaders to support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump.

When an NBC reporter asked Trump about the post, the Republican presidential nominee said he knew nothing about it.

As of this story’s publication, the false endorsement was still on Trump’s Truth Social account more than three hours after it was first published, even after Trump had made several more posts.

Dimon has been critical of Trump in the past, suggesting in 2018 that the then-president wasn’t all that smart.

“I think I could beat Trump… because I’m as tough as he is, I’m smarter than he is,” Dimon reportedly said at an event in New York. “And by the way, this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money. It wasn’t a gift from daddy.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Teacher vacancies around the country have risen significantly since the pandemic. In response,  the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education’s research wing, has launched a new center intended to understand the changing teacher workforce and find better staffing approaches for districts.

As of 2022-23, federal data show 44 percent of public schools—and a majority of high-poverty schools and ones that serve mostly students of color—started the school year with one or more teaching vacancies (see chart above). These included both existing and new positions that were unfilled.  As reported by Education Week.

A majority of school leaders with vacancies say they can’t get enough qualified teachers to fill open posts, particularly in perennial high-need areas such as special education and science, technology, engineering, and math fields. As of December 2023, nearly 1 in 10 active teachers—270,000 nationally—was underqualified for their position.

The new center will study the costs, implementation, and effects of state and local efforts to improve staffing—from financial bonuses and alternative-licensure pathways to new teacher career ladders and working conditions—in the Atlanta and Houston area public schools, as well as in Arkansas, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. For the next five years, the center will lead researchers at 10 research institutions to evaluate policies and identify best practices in recruiting and retaining teachers, as well as bolstering the pipeline of new educators.

Below is an excerpt of an interview with Dan Goldhaber, the principal investigator for the center and director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) at the American Institutes for Research, discussing teacher hiring issues.

Tony

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

How do you think declining K-12 student enrollment will affect teacher labor markets and staffing?

I don’t know that we should expect that the declining enrollment is going to lead to a declining teacher workforce, because that depends on policies like class size and what localities choose to do funding-wise.

You could have declining [full-time employees] in elementary ed., at the same time that you’re still struggling to hire enough STEM teachers or special education teachers, because special ed. in particular is an area with a lot of turnover. Those things could happen within the very same school systems. I think you will see some cases where there are both layoffs and staffing challenges at the same time.

Some research suggests the pipeline for new teachers is stabilizing, but there are still shortages in key areas. What is the center exploring in this area?

One of the things that we’re interested in is, would providing teacher candidates with more information about their job prospects influence their area of specialization? As an example, the likelihood of getting employed is much higher if you get a STEM credential than an elementary ed. credential.

Well, if you tell someone that in their last semester before they are going on the job market, they probably can’t change what they’re going to do. But if you tell them that early on, then maybe they say, “oh, I was planning on being an elementary teacher, but maybe I’ll become a STEM teacher, or I’ll get a STEM-focused credential, so if I don’t get a job as an elementary ed., I’ve got a backup plan.”

We are surveying these teacher candidates across three states and [in] a bunch of different teacher education programs, early on in their training. And then for a subset of them, we’re giving them some information about what the job market has looked like in recent years, to see if it affects … ultimately what they actually do. We’re working with the teacher ed. programs to be able to link them to the state [student longitudinal data systems], so we can see, do they actually become teachers and if so, where are they employed? And if so, what is their area of specialization?

We are looking at teacher roles. North Carolina [one of the states of focus for the center] has been big on that, what they call “advanced teacher roles” or ATRs. If you are in an advanced teacher role school, what are the implications for teacher retention and student achievement?

How has the pandemic affected teaching as a profession?

I think a lot of people want to have schooling go back to the way it was pre-pandemic without much change. And I think that’s true in some respects, but one issue that I worry about, particularly for the teacher workforce, is that there’s a lot more post-pandemic flexibility about remote work. And, you know, we don’t think remote works all that well for teachers.

I do wonder whether the fact that you are tied to a location, you have less flexibility of travel and what you’re doing with teaching, whether that effectively disadvantages teaching as a profession when competing with some other jobs.

In just talking to practitioners, I’ve seen that there’s been a real shift in the way that they think about a teaching career. We see more of these alternative programs that make it easier to transition to teaching from other careers. I do think there is recognition by policymakers, at least, that people move around more or at least are thought to move around more in their career.

Licensing and certification are key areas of focus for the center. How is alternative certification affecting teachers entering the profession?

In recent years, if you look at [federal] Title II data [on teacher quality], there is a higher share of people getting licensed that come from non-[institutions of higher education] programs. Sometimes it’s easy to think that half the teachers in the country come from alternative programs. It’s nothing like that; roughly 85 percent of licenses are still being granted by traditional college- and university-based institutions. But it varies from state to state.

So, in Texas, roughly half the teachers are coming from these non-IHE based programs. And what’s less well known … is diversity in the teacher workforce has increased in the last couple of decades. I think a lot of the diversity of the teacher workforce is coming from these alternative routes.

There’re two avenues of research that go on with regards to alternative routes and certification: How effective are the teachers that get different kinds of credentials [and] … what does it mean for supply and demand?

What do we know about the role of local school districts in developing their own teachers?

The idea behind grow-your-own programs is often that there is a more diverse workforce within the local labor market—oftentimes employed by the school system as paraeducators and whatnot—and if we grow those people into teachers, it accomplishes a couple of goals. One, it might help to diversify the workforce.

Two, because of the localness of teacher labor markets, those are people that are likely to want to be employed in that school system because they’re already employed and ensconced in the local community.

Source:  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

Businesses added 254,000 jobs in September, the government reported yesterday, far surpassing forecasts. It was a sign that the economy, rather than stumbling into a slowdown, still has a spring in its step.

The unemployment rate declined to 4.1 percent, from 4.2 percent. Reported pay gains for workers were also better than expected, at 4 percent over the previous 12 months, an uptick from the August reading. With inflation continuing to ease substantially, that is welcome news for households trying to gain financial traction.  As reported by The New York Times.

The impressive job gains, across several industries, followed several months of slower hiring. And the previous two monthly reports were revised upward. For now, the data has all but erased analysts’ concerns, based on historical trends, that the “hard landing” of a recession could be looming in the near future.

“I actually think we are in the mother of all soft landings,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, who had been among the prominent worriers.

Real-time estimates of overall economic growth remain strong. Productivity growth is robust, Ms. Swonk noted. Retail sales are solid. And interest rates, though high, have recently fallen.

“It appears the recovery is not only on solid ground, but will accelerate,” said Robert Frick, an economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. While “it pays to be skeptical” in the uncertain environment of the past year, he added, “the best news for American workers overall is wage growth remains good, and well above the rate of inflation — that means purchasing power is strengthening.”

Stocks rose on the news, as indications of a widely employed consumer base and a resilient economy are generally a boon to corporate earnings.

Good economic news all around!

Tony