House Leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Mike Johnson

Dear Commons Community,

The U.S. House or Representatives approved $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session as Democrats and Republicans banded together after months of hard-right resistance over renewed American support for repelling Russia’s invasion.

With an overwhelming vote, the $61 billion in aid for Ukraine passed in a matter of minutes, a strong showing as American lawmakers race to deliver a fresh round of U.S. support to the war-torn ally. Many Democrats cheered on the House floor and waved blue-and-yellow flags of Ukraine.

Aid to Israel and the other allies also won approval by healthy margins, as did a measure to clamp down on the popular platform TikTok, with unique coalitions forming to push the separate bills forward. The whole package will go to the Senate, which could pass it as soon as Tuesday. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.  As reported by The Associated Press. 

“We did our work here, and I think history will judge it well,” said a weary Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who risked his own job to marshal the package to passage.

Biden spoke separately with Johnson and Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries to thank them for “putting our national security first” by advancing the legislation, the White House said.

“I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law and we can quickly send weapons and equipment to Ukraine to meet their urgent battlefield needs,” the president said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said he was “grateful” to both parties in the House and “personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track,” he said on X, formerly Twitter.

“Thank you, America!” he said.

The scene in Congress was a striking display of action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine. Johnson relied on Democrats to ensure the military and humanitarian funding — the first major package for Ukraine since December 2022 — won approval.

The morning opened with a somber and serious debate and an unusual sense of purpose as Republican and Democratic leaders united to urge quick approval, saying that would ensure the United States supported its allies and remained a leader on the world stage. The House’s visitor galleries were crowded with onlookers.

“The eyes of the world are upon us, and history will judge what we do here and now,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee

Passage through the House cleared away the biggest hurdle to Biden’s funding request, first made in October as Ukraine’s military supplies began to run low.

The GOP-controlled House struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance for Ukraine be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico border, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker’s office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes as a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.

“Sometimes when you are living history, as we are today, you don’t understand the significance of the actions of the votes that we make on this House floor, of the effect that it will have down the road,” said New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “This is a historic moment.”

Opponents, particularly the hard-right Republicans from Johnson’s majority, argued that the U.S. should focus on the home front, addressing domestic border security and the nation’s rising debt load, and they warned against spending more money, which largely flows to American defense manufacturers, to produce weaponry used overseas.

An historic moment indeed.

Thank you House Republicans and Democrats who worked together to pass this legislation.

Tony

Students participate in a march in support of Asna Tabassum, whose graduation speech has been cancelled at USC. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Amid the decision to cancel this year’s valedictorian speech, the University of Southern California announced it would be eliminating all outside speakers and honorees from its main-stage commencement taking place next month.

In a memo released on Friday, the university said, “To keep the focus on our graduates, we are redesigning the commencement program. Given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program, university leadership has decided it is best to release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony.”

Scheduled keynote speakers included USC alumnus filmmaker Jon M. Chu, director of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Wicked.” Sports icon Billie Jean King was also scheduled to speak.

Asna Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim (pictured in the above photo in the upper right-hand corner),  was scheduled to give a commencement speech on May 10. School administrators, however, decided to cancel her speech citing safety concerns.

USC said the decision was based on potential threats regarding the selection of the valedictorian.

“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement,” provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at USC, Andrew T. Guzman, said in a letter to students on Monday. “While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety.”

Tabassum spoke about the situation with ABC News Live’s Phil Lipof on Wednesday.

“The valedictorian honor is ultimately a unifying honor, right? It’s emblematic of USC’s unifying values. And I think I take that to heart.”

“I wanted my speech to be in the genre of a valedictory speech, and so that being said, I wanted to impart a message of hope. I also wanted to impart a message of responsibility,” Tabassum said to Lipof.

USC — which expects a crowd of 65,000 for the commencement festivities on May 10 — said the focus of the ceremony should be “on the tremendous accomplishments of our 19,000-plus graduates, their friends, their families, and the staff and faculty who have been such a critical part of their journeys.”

Interesting decision USC has made to avoid controversy at its commencement!

Tony

The Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Photograph: Nora Eckert/Reuters.

Dear Commons Community,

Volkswagen workers at the carmaker’s Chattanooga plant in Tennessee have voted to unionize with the United Auto Workers, a historic victory for the union and the labor movement’s efforts to expand to the southern United States.  As reported by The Guardian.

The vote was the first union election to be held as part of the UAW’s ambitious organizing drive aimed at unionizing 150,000 workers at non-union auto plants around the US.

The win makes the Chattanooga factory the first auto plant in the south to unionize via election since the 1940s.

The union made the call late Friday night after some 2,200 ballots were counted in favor of unionizing. The plant has about 4,300 eligible voters.

The victory is a milestone toward expanding union efforts in the southern US where labor unions have historically faced aggressive opposition and union density has lagged far behind other parts of the US.

Workers at a Mercedes plant in Vance, Alabama are set to vote on whether to join the UAW in mid-May. Shawn Fain, the UAW president, is also targeting Tesla, whose boss, Elon Musk, has vigorously fought unionization efforts.

Workers at the plant in Chattanooga voted against the union in 2014 and 2019 in closely contested elections. In 2014, the UAW tried to partner with Volkswagen management to push for a works council similar to ones the company has in Germany, where Volkswagen is headquartered. But the plans faced significant backlash from anti-union groups and Bob Corker, the Republican US senator whose staff was in contact with anti-union groups over messaging ahead of the election.

The UAW had been expected to win its latest vote given the firm support of workers beforehand, a quick turnaround from filing for the election to holding it, and a changing culture and landscape that has seen the US labor movement and the surge in the UAW’s popularity after its successful strike against the US’s domestic automakers last year.

Against that background, Republican elected officials had been less eager to come out against the UAW.

“The UAW is sending a strong signal that big change may be coming to places where most thought the labor movement was dead and buried,” said professor Sharon Block, executive director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School.

“In the wake of the settlement of the strikes at the Big Three this fall, the transplant auto companies in the south gave their workers wage increases – the UAW bump – thinking that they could buy off their workers on the cheap. The UAW’s organizing campaign throughout the transplant companies in the south is a bet that workers can’t be bought off so cheaply. The UAW’s message to these workers is: ‘Don’t settle for crumbs.’”

A spokesperson for Volkswagen said in an email ahead of the vote: “We respect our workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests. We fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to a secret ballot vote on this important decision.

“Volkswagen is proud of our working environment in Chattanooga that provides some of the best-paying jobs in the area.”

Congratulations to the UAW and to Volkswagen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Twelve  jurors, along with six alternates, will consider evidence in a first-ever trial to determine whether a former U.S. president is guilty of breaking the law. Prosecutors intend to call at least 20 witnesses, according to Trump defense lawyer Susan Necheles. Trump may testify on his own behalf, in a risky move that would open him up to cross-examination.

The jury consists of seven men and five women, mostly employed in white-collar professions: two corporate lawyers, a software engineer, a speech therapist and an English teacher. Most are not native New Yorkers, hailing from across the United States and countries like Ireland and Lebanon. The alternates, who will also hear the case, are held in reserve in case one of the jurors has to leave due to illness or some other cause.

Trump is accused of covering up a $130,000 payment his then-lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she says they had a decade earlier.

Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and denies any such encounter with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in three other criminal cases as well, but this is the only one certain to go to trial ahead of the Nov. 5 election, when the Republican politician aims to again take on Democratic President Joe Biden.

A conviction would not bar Trump from office.

I tend not to cover trials on this blog but this is major news especially here in New York where the trial is taking place.

Tony

Max Azzarello.  Courtesy of Fox 5 News.

Dear Commons Community,

Max Azzarello died yesterday after setting himself on fire outside the New York courthouse where Donald Trump’s hush-money trial was taking place as jury selection wrapped up, but officials said he did not appear to have been targeting Trump or any other aspect of the trial. As reported by Reuters and other media.

The man burned for several minutes in full view of television cameras that were set up outside the courthouse where the Trump  criminal trial is being held.  NBC News quoted New York City police as saying the hospital where the man was taken had declared him dead.

Witnesses said the man pulled pamphlets out of a backpack and threw them in the air before he doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire. One of those pamphlets included references to “evil billionaires” but portions that were visible to a Reuters witness did not mention Trump.

The New York Police Department said the man, who was identified  as Max Azzarello of St. Augustine, Florida, did not appear to be targeting Trump or others involved in the trial.

“Right now we are labeling him as sort of a conspiracy theorist, and we are going from there,” Tarik Sheppard, a deputy commissioner with the Police Department, said at a news conference.

In an online manifesto, a man using that name said he set himself on fire and apologized to friends, witnesses and first responders. The post warns of “an apocalyptic fascist coup” and criticizes cryptocurrency and U.S. politicians, but does not single out Trump in particular.

A smell of smoke lingered in the plaza shortly after the incident, according to a Reuters witness, and a police officer sprayed a fire extinguisher on the ground. A smoldering backpack and a gas can were visible.

The shocking development came shortly after jury selection for the trial was completed, clearing the way for prosecutors and defense attorneys to make opening statements on Monday in a case stemming from hush money paid to a porn star. The court adjourned later in the afternoon.

Poor soul who was obviously in need of psychological help!

Tony

A Pro-Israel protest and a Pro-Palestinian counter protest took place at Columbia University yesterday. (Kelsea Petersen / NBC News)

Dear Commons Community,

One day after Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik testified before the U.S. Congress, over 100 people were arrested and issued summonses for trespass after protesters set up an encampment at the University in support of Gaza, police said.

The demonstrators occupied the space on the university’s South Lawn for 30 hours, Mayor Eric Adams said after the arrests yesterday. Columbia asked the NYPD for help and said the students had been suspended and were refusing to leave, police said.  As reported by NBC News.

“Columbia University’s students have a proud history of protests and raising their voices,” Adams said, but he said that they don’t have the right to violate university policies.

“We will not be a city of lawlessness,” Adams said.

One of the protesters, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s daughter Isra Hirsi, 21, who attends neighboring Barnard College in Manhattan, said on social media platform X that she was suspended for “standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide,” along with at least two other students.

Hirsi, an organizer with a student group that advocates for Palestinians, said this was her first time being punished as a student activist in her three years at the New York City school.

“Those of us in Gaza Solidarity Encampment will not be intimidated,” she wrote.

More than 108 were arrested and given summonses for trespass, including Hirsi, police said. Two of those people were also charged with obstruction of governmental administration, according to authorities.

The students that were arrested were peaceful, did not resist “and saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner,” NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said.

But around 500 other students left class and surrounded the quad “and were telling us that we’re the KKK,” among other insults, Caban said. Video from the scene obtained by NBC News shows crowds chanting “shame on you!” but does not capture the entire incident.

Columbia University’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, said in a memo to police earlier yesterday that more than 100 people were occupying the area.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” the memo said.

Shafik said the demonstrators were trespassing, refusing to disperse and damaging campus property, among other violations.

In a statement Thursday, Shafik said she authorized police to clear the encampment “out of an abundance of concern” for safety on campus.

By late Thursday afternoon, police had disassembled the original tent encampment, but protesters were beginning to build a new one on an adjacent lawn.

“Columbia is committed to allowing members of our community to engage in political expression — within established rules and with respect for the safety of all,” the memo said.

Barnard said its staff identified its students who were at the encampment and told them to leave or face sanctions. Those still there Thursday morning were placed on interim suspension, the university said. The camp was set up during the early morning hours of Wednesday, it said.

Barnard did not say how many students were suspended or confirm that Hirsi was among them. It did not say how long the suspension would last but said it would continue to suspend students who stay.

“Now and always, we prioritize our students’ learning and living in an inclusive environment free from harassment,” the school said in a memo about the suspensions.

Hirsi could not be immediately reached for comment.

Omar did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Democrat, who represents Minnesota, is a Somali refugee who made history as one of the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress.

On Wednesday, Omar questioned Shafik about protests on campus during a congressional hearing in which Shafik strongly denounced antisemitism.

Omar told Shafik she was “appalled” to learn that Columbia suspended six students this month for their involvement in a pro-Palestinian panel event on campus.

“There has been a recent attack on the democratic rights of students across the country,” Omar said.

At a news conference by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine held outside Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s residence, student Layla Saliba condemned the clearing of the camp.

“What happened today at Columbia University was an act of violence towards Arab, Muslim, Palestinian students, Jewish students and just anybody who supports Palestinian liberation,” she said.

Saliba, in the school of social work, and others criticized Shafik, including for her testimony before Congress Wednesday. The arrests are part of an effort on campus to attack those with pro-Palestinian views, she said.

A difficult issue being faced by a number of college presidents!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In announcing the new NYS Budget yesterday, Governor Kathy Hochul indicated that the State would be making good  on its January 2024 proposal to fund a new consortium of colleges and universities entitled, Empire AI, whose main function would be to put the State at the forefront of AI development.  Empire AI will include seven founding institutions—Columbia, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Simons Foundation. A tentative plan would be to house an AI center at the SUNY University Center at Buffalo.

Below is a more detailed description of the Empire AI initiative.

Good move on the part of Governor Hochul and the State of New York!

Tony

————————————————–

Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the creation of a consortium to secure New York’s place at the forefront of the artificial intelligence transformation. The consortium, named Empire AI, will create and launch a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence computing center in Upstate New York to be used by New York’s leading institutions to promote responsible research and development, create jobs, and unlock AI opportunities focused on public good. Governor Hochul also released a new policy to ensure agencies within state government understand how to responsibly harness the opportunity of AI technology to better serve New Yorkers.

“Since the days of the Erie Canal, New York has always led the nation on technology and innovation,” Governor Hochul said. “The Empire AI consortium will be transformative: Bringing jobs and opportunity to New York and making us a global leader in this groundbreaking sector. Together with our partners in academia and the private sector, we’ll harness the power of artificial intelligence and ensure this technology is being used for the public interest.”

Access to the computing resources that power AI systems is prohibitively expensive and difficult to obtain. These resources are increasingly concentrated in the hands of large technology companies, who maintain outsized control of the AI development ecosystem. As a result, researchers, public interest organizations, and small companies are being left behind, which has enormous implications for AI safety and society at large. Empire AI will bridge this gap and accelerate the development of AI centered in public interest for New York State. Enabling this pioneering AI research and development will also help educational institutions incubate the AI-focused technology startups of the future, driving job growth.

Empire AI will be a consortium that includes seven founding institutions—Columbia, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Simons Foundation. By increasing collaboration between New York State’s world-class research institutions, Empire AI will allow for efficiencies of scale not able to be achieved by any single university, empower and attract top notch faculty and expand educational opportunity, and give rise to a wave of responsible innovation that will significantly strengthen our state’s economy and our national security. The University of Buffalo is under consideration as a potential site.

Bringing together AI researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and others, the initiative will be funded by over $400 million in public and private investment. This includes up to $275 million from the State in grant and other funding, and more than $125 million from the founding institutions and other private partners including the Simons Foundation and Tom Secunda. The Simon Foundation’s Flatiron Institute is a community of scientists working to advance research through computational methods, including data analysis, theory, modeling and simulation. Tom Secunda is co-founder of Bloomberg LP and the Secunda Family Foundation, which provides millions of dollars a year in grants to conservation, healthcare, scientific advancement and other causes.

The Governor has also directed the Office of Information Technology Services to issue a first-of-its-kind AI Policy, which can be found here. The Policy establishes the principles and parameters by which state agencies can evaluate and adopt AI systems to better serve New Yorkers, including for example, helping to match people with jobs, more efficiently delivering benefits, exploring accessibility tools, and identifying and mitigating cyber threats. The Policy will also ensure agencies remain vigilant about evaluating any risks of using AI systems and protecting against unwanted outcomes.

Today’s announcements build on Governor Hochul’s commitment to making New York a leader in cutting-edge technology development, bringing companies like Micron and TTM Technologies to the state and investing in advanced semiconductor research and manufacturing in Albany. Governor Hochul has also advanced projects to get technology into New York’s schools. In December, the Governor broke ground on the Syracuse Science, Technology, Arts and Math High School — Central New York’s first regional technical high school. In July, Governor Hochul announced New York State Pathways in Technology had been awarded $31.5 million dollars in funding to prepare New York students for high-skill jobs in technology.

New York State Office of Information Technology Services Chief Information Officer and Director Dru Rai said, “The establishment of the first-ever statewide policy governing AI will serve as a roadmap to leverage this rapidly emerging technology to find maximum benefit while mitigating risk, and complement the extraordinary work our employees are already doing to benefit the people of New York. Under the leadership of Governor Hochul, we are proud to play an important role in the state’s next phase of AI, and these guidelines will ensure we do so fairly, responsibly and transparently.”

SUNY Chancellor John B. King, Jr. said, “Governor Hochul’s EmpireAI initiative will put crucial resources in the hands of SUNY’s extraordinary researchers and educators. These cutting-edge scientific tools will be utilized to both spur innovation, and establish best practices for the ethical use of AI’s transformative power. SUNY is proud to lead the charge in this emerging field, and to be part of Governor Hochul’s nation-leading consortium.”

CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said, “New York’s higher education institutions, including CUNY, have long been leaders in research and scholarship and this new initiative and computational facility will allow us to collectively advance and utilize AI technology and create a national model for this work. I’m grateful to Governor Hochul for her leadership and to partners like the Simons Foundation whose investment in Empire AI will allow CUNY to participate in this effort and continue elevating the transformative power of research for the public good.”

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said, “The vision for Empire AI is to provide the academic research community in New York with a state-of-the-art computational facility that supports cutting-edge research. We are grateful to Governor Hochul for her bold vision to ensure that academic institutions in New York State can remain competitive and forward-looking as this fast-moving technology continues to transform our lives. Columbia is thrilled to be part of this initiative.”

Cornell University President Martha E. Pollack said, “I am excited to see the development of this shared computing facility, which will fast-track cutting-edge research and responsible AI tools to the benefit of all New Yorkers. As artificial intelligence promises to transform our economy, accelerate medical breakthroughs, and offer unprecedented tools for research, it is imperative that academic research institutions like Cornell partner to optimize AI technology in service of the public good. I especially want to thank Governor Hochul for a groundbreaking approach that will unlock pioneering AI research by and with Cornell faculty, and put New York at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation.”

New York University President Linda G. Mills said, “Scientific discovery and innovation across various fields is the product of hard work and collaboration, and is increasingly fueled by access to ever greater computing power. NYU is excited to join our fellow academic partners across the city and state to ensure Empire AI helps New York remain one of the world’s leading tech capitals and at the forefront of AI technology. We also thank Governor Kathy Hochul for her leadership and commitment to this kind of long-term investment, which enables great universities to conduct important research and, in turn, to contribute to New York’s prosperity, create new jobs and new economic sectors, and secure New York State’s tech leadership position well into the future.”

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Martin A. Schmidt said, “Since our founding 200 years ago, our mission at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been to advance technological discovery for the benefit of all. Now, in the century to come and as an inaugural member of Empire AI, we will continue that mission by further exploring how artificial intelligence can improve everyone’s lives. We applaud Governor Hochul’s vision to bring together the state’s foremost research institutions to realize tangible applications of AI that are pioneering, powerful and safe.”

Simons Foundation President David Spergel said, “The Simons Foundation is excited to be a partner in building this new AI facility that will enable researchers at CUNY, the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute and other NY State partners to have access to cutting edge facilities.”

Bloomberg LP Co-Founder and Vice Chairman Tom Secunda said, “Empire AI is an incredible step forward to ensure our state and nation can harness, understand, and thoughtfully put to work the latest in artificial intelligence and computation to explore new frontiers and serve all New Yorkers. I am grateful for the Governor’s leadership and the State’s partnership to bring this to reality. It will dutifully serve a generation of researchers and bring hope and opportunity to all.”

Tech:NYC President & CEO Julie Samuels said, “Empire AI is exciting because it firmly places our state at the epicenter of AI development. By bringing together some of the country’s leading research institutions, along with private sector partners, we’re ensuring that access to world-class computing power is shared across global companies, non-profit institutions, and academic experts in New York. AI technologies are poised to transform the ways we live and work, and these partnerships are key to generating the flywheel effect of groundbreaking innovation and entrepreneurship across the state. With Empire AI, we’re pioneering safe, equitable, and accessible AI innovations that will benefit every corner of New York’s economy.”

Courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education; Istock.

Dear Commons Community,

David C.K. Curry, a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Potsdam, has a featured article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which ” he reviews how colleges including his own are retrenching faculty and “gutting” the liberal arts.  Here is an excerpt:

“The State University of New York at Potsdam, where I teach, recently fired seven tenured faculty members, at least one of whom had worked there for more than 35 years. The precise number of contract nonrenewals on top of this is a closely guarded secret. Eighteen programs have been discontinued, and more have been so depleted as not to have any full-time faculty members at all. This, it was recently announced, is just the first round of cuts.

Without warning, the soon-to-be-retrenched were summoned to a mandatory meeting and told they would be let go in a year. A “realignment” plan announced in February 2022 was the writing on the wall. In my own department, philosophy, the realignment plan seemed to confirm what we had suspected: that we were victims of a multiyear effort to kill off our program, first revealed by the refusal to replace two of our department’s four full-time faculty colleagues when they retired, in 2018 and 2020.”

He goes to comment how what happened at Potsdam is playing itself out in other colleges and universities.

“This is a tale that is already old from the retelling. The steep cuts at West Virginia University brought the story into national focus, but similar “realignments,” “transformations,” and “restructurings” have been unfolding for the last three years. At Emporia State University, in Kansas, 30 faculty members were laid off in September 2022 because of “extreme financial pressure.” SUNY-Fredonia and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro have recently announced planned program and personnel cuts that follow the template to a tee. Marquette, Valparaiso, Wright State — the list is constantly growing.”

This is a sad and difficult time for the liberal arts and for much of higher education.  Curry’s piece is important reading.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Ezra Klein, had an interesting piece last week entitled, “Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You,” in which he comments on why after being a twenty-year user of Gmail,  he decided “to euthanize” his account.  He reviews the history of Gmail and its impressive “technological triumphs”  but then laments “What they (Gmail)  thought was a priority and what I thought was a priority diverged.”  His main concern was that he received too much email that was irrelevant because Gmail was “monetizing”  user accounts.  I started having the same feelings as Klein years ago.  I did not “euthanized” my account but I do not use it very often and never give out my Gmail address to anyone needing to email me.

Below is Klein’s entire column.

Tony

—————————————————————————————

The New York Times

Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.

April 7, 2024

By Ezra Klein

Opinion Columnist

There is no end of theories for why the internet feels so crummy these days. The New Yorker blames the shift to algorithmic feeds. Wired blames a cycle in which companies cease serving their users and begin monetizing them. The M.I.T. Technology Review blames ad-based business models. The Verge blames search engines. I agree with all these arguments. But here’s another: Our digital lives have become one shame closet after another.

A shame closet is that spot in your home where you cram the stuff that has nowhere else to go. It doesn’t have to be a closet. It can be a garage or a room or a chest of drawers or all of them at once. Whatever the space, it is defined by the absence of choices about what goes into it. There are things you need in there. There are things you will never need in there. But as the shame closet grows, the task of excavation or organization becomes too daunting to contemplate.

The shame closet era of the internet had a beginning. It was 20 years ago that Google unveiled Gmail. If you were not an internet user back then, it is hard to describe the astonishment that greeted Google’s announcement. Inboxes routinely topped out at 15 megabytes. Google was offering a free gigabyte, dozens and dozens of times more. Everyone wanted in. But you had to be invited. I remember jockeying for one of those early invites. I remember the thrill of finding one. I felt lucky. I felt chosen.

A few months ago, I euthanized that Gmail account. I have more than a million unread messages in my inbox. Most of what’s there is junk. But not all of it. I was missing too much that I needed to see. Search could not save me. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Google’s algorithms had begun failing me. What they thought was a priority and what I thought was a priority diverged. I set up an auto-responder telling anyone and everyone who emailed me that the address was dead.

Behind Gmail was an astonishing technological triumph. The cost of storage was collapsing. In 1985, a gigabyte of hard drive memory cost around $75,000. By 1995, it was around $750. Come 2004 — the year Gmail began — it was a few dollars. Today, it’s less than a penny. Now Gmail offers 15 gigabytes free. What a marvel. What a mess.

Gmail’s promise — vast storage mediated by powerful search tools — became the promise of virtually everything online. According to iCloud, I have more than 23,000 photos and almost 2,000 videos resting somewhere on Apple’s servers. I have tens of thousands of songs liked somewhere in Spotify. How much is jotted down in my Notes app? How many conversations do I have stored in Messages, in WhatsApp, in Signal, in Twitter and Instagram and Facebook DMs? There is so much I loved in those archives. There is so much I would delight in rediscovering. But I can’t find what matters in the morass. I’ve given up on trying.

What began with our files soon came for our friends and family. The social networks made it easy for anyone we’ve ever met, and plenty of people we never met, to friend and follow us. We could communicate with them all at once without communing with them individually at all. Or so we were told. The idea that we could have so much community with so little effort was an illusion. We are digitally connected to more people than ever and terribly lonely nevertheless. Closeness requires time, and time has not fallen in cost or risen in quantity.

The digital giants profit off my passivity. I now pay Apple and Google a monthly fee for more storage. It would take too long to delete everything necessary to remain beneath their limits. Various algorithms attempt to do for me what I no longer do for myself. They present me with pictures from my past and offer to sell me books of my own memories. They serve me up songs that are like the ones I’ve loved before but lost long ago. My feed is stuffed with recommended content from influencers and advertisers who mean nothing to me.

A few months ago, I vowed to take back control of my digital life. I began with my email. I subscribed to Hey, an email service that takes a very different view of how email should work. Gmail and virtually all of its competitors assume anyone should be able to email you and then you should store and sort and search and categorize those messages. Hey assumes that only the people you want email from should be able to email you.

The first time anyone sends you a message, it goes into what’s called the Screener, and you have to whitelist or blackball the sender. If you blackball the sender, that’s it. You never see email from that address again. It also has another feature I love: a clean screen for replying to emails, so you can think and compose without the visual clutter common to so many other services.

Hey forces me to make choices rather than encourage me to avoid them. I constantly have to ask whether I want email from this or that sender, and if so, where it should go. Which is not to say Hey is perfect or even that it fully solves the problems I’m describing. Its search is far inferior to Google’s. It’s too hard to rediscover mail that I’ve viewed but took no action on. There’s no way of sorting different kinds of mail that come from the same address. It has trouble threading long conversations with many, many participants. I miss the easy integration with all the other Google products I need to use.

But for me, for now, the friction is what I’m looking for. I am grateful — genuinely — for what Google and Apple and others did to make digital life easy over the past two decades. But too much ease carries a cost. I was lulled into the belief that I didn’t have to make decisions. Now my digital life is a series of monuments to the cost of combining maximal storage with minimal intention.

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have stored everything and saved nothing.

I do not blame anyone but myself for this. This is not something the corporations did to me. This is something I did to myself. But I am looking now for software that insists I make choices rather than whispers that none are needed. I don’t want my digital life to be one shame closet after another. A new metaphor has taken hold for me: I want it to be a garden I tend, snipping back the weeds and nourishing the plants.

Courtesy of Tom Williams | Credit: CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Defiant and determined, House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back yesterday against mounting Republican anger over his proposed U.S. aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other allies, and rejected a call to step aside or risk a vote to oust him from office.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“I am not resigning,” Johnson said after a testy morning meeting of fellow House Republicans at the Capitol.

Johnson referred to himself as a “wartime speaker” of the House and indicated in his strongest self-defense yet he would press forward with a U.S. national security aid package, a situation that would force him to rely on Democrats to help pass it, over objections from his weakened majority.

“We are simply here trying to do our jobs,” Johnson said, calling the motion to oust him “absurd … not helpful.”

But as night fell, the speaker’s resolve collided with Republican opposition to his plan.

For hours, Johnson holed up at the Capitol with lawmakers sorting through their alternative strategies, particularly ways to attach U.S.-Mexico border security measures to the package. No bill text was released, putting passage of any aid this week in serious doubt.

“We’ll see,” Johnson said about the legislation, ducking into a meeting that dragged toward midnight.

Yesterday had initially brought a definitive shift in tone from both the House Republicans and the speaker himself at a pivotal moment as the embattled leader tries, against the wishes of his majority, to marshal the votes needed to send the stalled national security aid for Israel, Ukraine and other overseas allies to passage.

Johnson spoke over the weekend with President Joe Biden as well as other congressional leaders about the emerging U.S. aid package, which the speaker plans to move in separate votes for each section — with bills for Ukraine, Israel, the Indo-Pacific region. He spoke to Biden about it again late Monday.

After Johnson briefed the president, White House officials said they were taking a wait-and-see approach until the text of the speaker’s plan is released and the procedural pathway becomes more clear.

“It does appear at first blush, that the speaker’s proposal will, in fact, help us get aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel and needed resources to the Indo-Pacific for a wide range of contingencies there,” John Kirby, the White House’s national security spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday.

The speaker is considering a complicated approach that would break apart the Senate’s $95 billion aid package for separate votes, and then either stitch it back together or send the components to the Senate for final passage, and potentially onto the White House for the president’s signature.

All told, it would require the speaker to cobble together bipartisan majorities with different factions of House Republicans and Democrats on each measure.

Additionally, Johnson is preparing a fourth measure that would include various Republican-preferred national security priorities, such as a plan to seize some Russian assets in U.S. banks to help fund Ukraine and another to turn the economic aid for Ukraine into loans. It could also include provisions to sanction Iran over its weekend attack on Israel, among others.

The speaker’s emerging plan is not an automatic deal-breaker for Democrats in the House and Senate, but the more Republicans try to pile on their priorities the further they push Democrats away from any compromise.

During their own closed-door meeting, Leader Hakeem Jeffries said House Democrats would not accept a “penny less” than the $9 billion in humanitarian aid that senators had included in their package with money for Gaza, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss it.

Johnson will need Democratic votes to pass aspects of his package, but Democratic support for Israel is slipping in both the House and Senate amid the Netanyahu government’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza that has left 30,000 people dead. A previous House GOP bill for Israel gutted the assistance for Gaza.

House Republicans, meanwhile, were livid that Johnson would be leaving their top priority — efforts to impose more security at the U.S.-Mexico border — on the sidelines. Some predicted Johnson will not be able to push ahead with voting on the package this week, as planned.

Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., called the morning meeting an “argument fest.”

When the speaker said the House GOP’s priority border security bill H.R. 2 would not be considered germane to the package, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a chief sponsor, said it’s for the House to determine which provisions and amendments are relevant.

“Things are very unresolved,” Roy said.

The speaker faces a threat of ouster from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the top Trump ally who has filed a motion to vacate the speaker from office in a snap vote — much the way Republicans ousted their former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, last fall..

While Greene has not said if or when she will force the issue, and has not found much support for her plan after last year’s turmoil over McCarthy’s exit, she drew at least one key backer Tuesday.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., rose in the meeting and suggested Johnson should step aside, pointing to the example of John Boehner, an even earlier House speaker who announced an early resignation in 2015 rather than risk a vote to oust him, according to Republicans in the room.

“Speaker Johnson must announce a resignation date and allow Republicans to elect a new Speaker to put America First and pass a Republican agenda,” Greene wrote on social media, thanking Massie for his support for her motion to vacate.

Johnson did not respond, but told the lawmakers they have a “binary choice” before them.

The speaker explained they either try to pass the package as he is proposing or risk facing a discharge petition from Democrats that would force a vote on their preferred package — the Senate approved measure. But that would leave behind the extra Republican priorities.

Later Johnson drew prominent support from six Republican committee chairmen in a unified show of force.

“There is nothing our adversaries would love more than if Congress were to fail to pass critical national security aid,” said Reps. Tom Cole of Appropriations, Ken Calvert of the Defense Appropriations subcommittee, Mario Diaz-Balart of the State and Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee, Mike Rogers of the Armed Services Committee, Michael McCaul of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Mike Turner of the Intelligence committee in a joint statement.

“We don’t have time to spare,” the chairman said. “We need to pass this aid package this week.”

As the House debates, Ukraine faces increasing difficulty fighting Russia’s invasion.

Lawmakers have stepped up their efforts to explain to Americans that the overseas aid to Ukraine largely flows to U.S. defense manufacturers to bolster production of missiles, munitions and other military provisions then sent abroad.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week on social media the U.S. and others’ response to Iran’s attack on Israel shows the potential of what can be done with “allied action.”

Johnson is in a most difficult position with the looney right-wing Republican representatives in the House!

Tony