Justice Dept. Plans to Take On Affirmative Action.

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• The US Justice Department wants to crack down on affirmative action policies at colleges and universities, according to a new memo that was leaked last night. [NYT / Charlie Savage]
• Memos obtained by the New York Times indicate the department plans to investigate and sue colleges and universities for “intentional race-based discrimination.” [NYT / Charlie Savage]
• “The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on ‘investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.’ The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, ‘intentional race-based discrimination,’ cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minorities to university campuses. Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.”
  -- “Two people familiar with the internal discussions at the Justice Department’s civil rights division said that the move came after career staffers who specialize in education issues refused to work on the project out of concerns it was contrary to the office’s long-running approach to civil rights in education opportunities,” Sari Horwitz and Emma Brown report. “As a result, political leadership within the department decided to run the effort themselves, these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.”
  -- The news prompted some on social media to recirculate this ProPubica story from November: “The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into Harvard,” by Daniel Golden, who wrote a 2006 book entitled “The Price of Admission.” “My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. … I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision. ‘There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,’ a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me.”
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• The DOJ’s argument is that schools are discriminating against white students by rejecting them in favor of students of color, even if both demonstrate similar academic achievement. [Washington Post / Emma Brown and Sarah Larimer]
• It could also refer to Asian-American students — who are increasingly seen as the "victims" of affirmative action among groups that oppose these policies. [Vox / Libby Nelson]
• This move should come as no surprise, given that affirmative action is a huge conservative issue and has been for decades. [The Washington Post / Philip Bump]
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• That the Justice Department will seek to curb affirmative action has energized Trump’s base – rallying conservatives around the issue at a time when the administration has struggled to deliver on core Republican priorities. Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa report: “Sessions’s apparent intention to prohibit ‘intentional race-based discrimination’ is also a window into the direction he is pulling the department’s Civil Rights Division in his effort to reverse Obama administration policies on a range of issues, including criminal justice, policing and voting rights. 
• For a Republican Party still searching for consensus in the Trump era, Sessions’s moves signal that the administration is embracing the base during a time of turbulence and tension, with heavy attention being paid to the concerns of the white voters who lifted Trump into the presidency.Some Republican operatives also see the affirmative action initiative as a strategic play by the White House to rally middle-class and upper-middle-class white voters, especially as the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill has stalled.”
• The issue came up most recently in 2016, when the Supreme Court upheld an affirmative action program at the University of Texas that was challenged by a prospective white student who was not accepted there. [CNN / Ariane de Vogue]
• Affirmative action proponents, on the other hand, argue that the policy evens the playing field for minority students. In the University of Texas case, the university argued that giving more minority students access to higher education would lead to more diverse leaders in government and business. [The Atlantic / Alia Wong and Isabel Fattal]
• Some education experts say that rather than such an intense focus on race in colleges and universities, the federal government should be turning its attention to inequality in K-12 education instead. [Inside Higher Ed / Scott Jaschik]

ESCO'S LIST OF REASONS FOR WHAT HAPPENED:

Jim Comey’s letter of Oct. 28, 2016, which notified Congress that he was reopening his investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct State Department business, effectively ended her candidacy. (She leans heavily on various analyses done by the data maestro Nate Silver to make her case.) 

Combine that letter with the full-saturation media coverage Comey’s investigation had been getting all along, 

Russian interference — fake news stories on social media, email hacks

Bernie Sanders supporters who failed to come out and vote. According to exit polls, as was feared by the Clinton campaign, nearly 10 percent of millennials voted for third-party candidates. (Bernie Sanders’s efforts to persuade the millennials to vote for Clinton, after having painted her for months as a corrupt creature of Wall Street, weren’t successful enough.) 

The effect of the third parties:

On the reasonable assumption that by far most of those who voted for the third-party candidates would have otherwise gone for Clinton, Gary Johnson, the odd-duck Libertarian, with 3.2 percent of the popular vote, and Jill Stein, of the Green Party, receiving just 1 percent, damaged and perhaps destroyed Clinton’s chances. (Ah, not-so-sweet memories of Florida 2000.) Together they appear to have cost her critical states, though it was Johnson who made the principal difference. The national contest was nearly tied 47.7 percent to 47.4 percent, so Johnson’s and Stein’s combined just over 4 percent tipped the Electoral College Trump’s way. 

Counties with high economic distress and a large working class:

Trump over-performed the most in counties with the highest drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates. Much of this relationship is accounted for by economic distress and the proportion of working-class residents. 

Trump performed best in counties with high economic distress and a large working class. Drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates are higher in counties with more economic distress and a larger working class. 

Many of the counties with high mortality rates where Trump did the best have experienced significant employment losses in manufacturing over the past several decades.

 Counties won by Trump account for just 36 percent of the total national economy; counties won by Hillary Clinton account for 64 percent. This degree of inequality has created large communities of people with no future -- whose only aspiration, understandably, is to turn back the clock.

Misogeny and sexism:  a 2014 Pew Research Center poll showed just how few voters hoped to see a female president in their lifetime. BUT:   A  majority of white women voted for Trump and helped him to victory. Trump won 53% of white women,...The Guardian spoke with women who voted for Trump, who explained that economics and dislike for Clinton meant they were willing to overlook Trump’s rhetoric. 

Obama-Trump voters … effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters.

50 percent of Obama-Trump voters said their incomes are falling behind the cost of living, and another 31 percent said their incomes are merely keeping pace with the cost of living.

‌•A sizable chunk of Obama-Trump voters — 30 percent — said their vote for Trump was more a vote against Clinton than a vote for Trump. Remember, these voters backed Obama four years earlier.

‌•42 percent of Obama-Trump voters said congressional Democrats’ economic policies will favor the wealthy, vs. only 21 percent of them who said the same about Trump. (Forty percent say that about congressional Republicans.)

BUT  :A new analysis shows that those Obama voters who switched to the president were largely Republican to start with.(DANA MILBANK, WASHINGTON POST)

Racism:

The Republican National Convention, Cleveland, July 2016. According to preelection polling, if you tallied only white voters, Trump would have defeated Clinton 389 to 81 in the Electoral College. (Gabriella Demczuk)

White America’s discomfort with the anti-racist, multicultural vision of our country that the Clinton campaign embraced. Analyses of postelection survey data have revealed that in 2016, the American electorate was more sharply polarized along lines of racial tolerance than it had been at any time in recent memory — and that “individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump.”

Voter suppression in swing states, made possible by the Supreme Court decision in 2013 cutting down the Voting Rights Act also made a difference. That the Clinton brand was also tarnished among black voters further brought down black turnout. African-American turnout in Michigan and Florida, for example, did not match 2012 levels.

Clinton's campaign, in spite of its extensive networks and deep pockets, failed to detect that something on the ground was wrong. She failed to spend enough time and resources in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin.   She should have appeared in more rural areas. In sum, she neglected the Rust Belt.

The ever-present animus toward her. Call it the sense of inauthenticity large swaths of the population felt about her.

 David Axelrod said "Clinton's reputation for dodging responsibility for her mistakes hurt her in the past and ...hindered her in the campaign. [There was] a sense that she never fully was willing to take responsibility for her mistakes, particularly that server,"

She couldn’t find a satisfactory way to speak to the fears of the white working class. 

Her own fatal combination of oratorical weakness and a (fair or unfair) reputation for coziness with malign special interests.

It’s possible that a more inspired candidate would have won the electoral college, simple as that. 

In spite of that — in spite of everything — Clinton still won the popular vote by almost 3 million. But it didn’t matter. What happened is, it wasn’t enough.

 When an election is decided by 80,000 votes, a plausible case can be made for the decisive impact of a wide variety of individual factors. And there is some evidence to support virtually every popular narrative for Clinton’s defeat.

  

TRUMP TRIUMPHS, REBOOBLICANS ADRIFT

MICHAEL GERSON, WASHINGTON POST


Those Republicans who believe that Trump is being cynical, disloyal or politically calculating continue to misunderstand the man. The president has no discernible political philosophy or strong policy views to betray. His leadership consists mainly of instincts, reflexes and prejudices, which often have nothing to do with self-interest. He has a genius for fame, which usually involves attention-attracting unpredictability and transgressiveness. Trump reads events moment by moment, making him a cork on the waves of cable coverage. Any choice he makes is correct by definition, because he has made it. And any person — on his staff or on Capitol Hill — who does not precisely mimic his political gyrations is disloyal and should be punished.

During legislative debates on issues such as health care, Trump has been erratic, unfocused, impatient and frighteningly ignorant. His White House policy staff — some of whom are responsible and talented — try to work with Capitol Hill, but always under the threat that their efforts will be destroyed by a tweet. Congressional Republicans see the White House as a basket case, don’t think that any administration official speaks authoritatively for the president and increasingly fear entering the midterm elections entirely naked of accomplishment.

The president takes it as an accomplishment to secure the support of about 35 percent of the public. This leaves Republicans in the worst of political worlds, where the intensity of Trump’s base is increased by words and policies that alienate the majority — making Trump a powerful force within the party and a scary, galvanizing figure beyond it. The damage is broad, profound and generational. A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll recorded 26 percent approval for the president among those aged 18 to 34.

News accounts following Trump’s betrayal of Republican leaders on the debt limit reported them to be “livid.” What does it tell us about Republican politicians that they were livid about a three-month debt-limit extension but not so much about misogyny, nativism and flirtation with racism? Or maybe they were, but they still thought the wager might work. Such lack of wisdom and proportion is an indictment as well.

Irma weakened to a tropical storm on Monday, as it continued to pummel northern Florida. The storm is expected to move into Georgia later today, where Atlanta has been put on a tropical storm warning for the first time ever. About 5.8 million people are without power in the state and it could take up to a week for it to be restored. Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys early Monday morning then pushed up the Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center said water levels in Naples rose 7ft in just 90 minutes with substantial flooding. Five deaths reported in Florida so far but officials admit they do not have a definitive number of fatalities yet. The storm has toppled cranes, swallowed streets and ripped the roofs off homes. Nearly seven million people had been told to leave their homes in mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders. More than 200,000 people waited in shelters statewide as Irma headed up the coast. The storm has already claimed at least 25 lives across the Caribbean since it took hold earlier in the week. Pictured center: Flooding in Bonita Springs, Florida on Monday. Pictured top right and top left: Devastation in Fort Meade, Florida on Monday. Pictured bottom left: A partially-submerged boat in Miami on Monday. Pictured bottom right: The storm as it was located Monday morning in a satellite image. 

Areas of Naples (above) are now suffering substantial flooding and swathes of the west coast are under 15ft storm surge warnings. The National Hurricane Center said water levels in Naples rose 7ft in just 90 minutes

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4869944/Hurricane-Irma-hits-Florida-s-Key-West-130mph-winds.html#ixzz4sLuwHO1M
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Irma Roars In, and an Entire State Shakes and Shudders.

Storm Thrashes Keys and Moves North to Batter Tampa Area.

Traffic lights were left swinging in Tampa on Sunday night as 100mph winds brought on by Irma tore through

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4869944/Hurricane-Irma-hits-Florida-s-Key-West-130mph-winds.html#ixzz4sLviQwxT
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The lower half of the nation’s third-most-populous state went into lockdown as residents rode out a storm that was nearly as big as the state of Florida and wondered when it would end.

Downgraded to Category One hurricane after day of destruction and flooding across Florida: Nearly FOUR MILLION are without power and five are killed as 85mph storm nears Tampa

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• Hurricane Irma had earlier punished Fort Myers and Naples after making landfall for the second time in Marco Island on Sunday at 3.30pm
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• The National Hurricane Center said water levels in Naples rose 7ft in just 90 minutes with substantial flooding
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• Irma arrived as a category 4 storm but had fallen to a category 2 by late Sunday afternoon 

The rough waters where the Miami River meets Biscayne Bay in Miami shows the full effects of Hurricane Irma. Downtown Miami was completely flooded, with waves rolling down the roads

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4869944/Hurricane-Irma-hits-Florida-s-Key-West-130mph-winds.html#ixzz4sLx3P9kf 
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Hurricane Irma, also triggered tornadoes and flooding in Miami on the state’s opposite coast.

• More than 170,000 people waited in shelters statewide as Irma headed up the coast 
• The storm has already claimed at least 25 lives across the Caribbean since it took hold earlier in the week

‘People are roaming like zombies’: Caribbean islands stagger after storm

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4869944/Hurricane-Irma-hits-Florida-s-Key-West-130mph-winds.html#ixzz4sLs0bgtc 
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Irma made its first landfall Sunday morning in the Florida Keys. But despite being hit with prolonged periods of hurricane conditions, Key West was largely spared the onslaught many feared.


Once it’s over, forecasters feared that this storm will go down as one of the worst in the state’s history.

DACA FACES DEMISE

• The Trump administration announced today it is ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an Obama-era program that was shielding about 800,000 young unauthorized immigrants from being deported. [CNN / Tal Kopan] 
• DACA specifically protected many immigrants known as DREAMers, who were brought to the US as young children. The program was meant to keep young people from being deported so they could go to school, get jobs, and become productive members of US society. [Vox / Dara Lind :  

  9 facts that explain DACA: 

  How DACA works, who it protects, and what will happen to immigrants if Trump shuts it down

   ] 
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• As part of its strict immigration agenda, the Trump administration said it would end the program, but allow for six months for people who are already DACA recipients to apply for another two-year renewal. [Washington Post / David Makamura] 
• People not already in the program who wanted to apply are out of luck; today was the last day for the government to accept applications. [Vox / Dara Lind]
• That means young immigrants may potentially be able to buy some time until Congress is able to pass comprehensive immigration reform....But Congress has tried and failed many times to pass comprehensive immigration reform over the years, so it’s still a big if, especially given the fact they also have pressing things like the national debt ceiling and hurricane relief to pass first. [Vox / Jeff Stein]

WHITE WORKING CLASS: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

A yard sign near Pine Grove, W.Va., touts the belief that President Trump is supportive of the coal industry. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

WHITE WORKING CLASS: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America

By Joan C. Williams

Harvard Business Review Press. 180 pp. $22.99

“White Working Class” by law professor Joan C. Williams is more an effort to puncture the foibles and misperceptions of upper-class liberals than an attempt to get to know the people her book title comprises.....Why don’t they push their kids harder to succeed and go to college? Shouldn’t they move for better jobs? Why do they resent government benefits? Aren’t they just racist? Sexist? And why do they dislike us so much, even while admiring gauche plutocrats such as President Trump?

Those questions are of recent vintage, Williams notes, because for a long time left-leaning elites were concerned with just about everyone except the white working class. “During an era when wealthy white Americans have learned to sympathetically imagine the lives of the poor, people of color, and LGBTQ people,” she writes, “the white working class has been insulted or ignored.” She accuses her tribe of “class cluelessness — and in some cases, even class callousness.”

One of the strengths of Williams’s book is the author’s willingness to call out such callousness and hypocrisy among her fellow travelers. One of its weaknesses is her reluctance to call out Trump voters for much of anything.

Williams’s working-class America excludes the poor. In fact, the white working class often begrudges government efforts to help the poor. Williams writes, "when such programs are limited to those below a certain income level [and] . . .  exclude those just a notch above, [we have] a recipe for class conflict...because the white working class resents programs for the poor, to the extent that benefit cuts target the poor, that’s attractive. To the extent that tax cuts for the rich hold the promise of jobs, that’s attractive, too.”

The working class’s simultaneous fascination with the ultra-wealthy and disdain for the professional class is not only about trickle-down fantasies — it’s about proximity. “Most working-class people have little contact with the truly rich,” Williams explains, “but they suffer class affronts from professionals every day: the doctor who unthinkingly patronizes the medical technician, the harried office worker who treats the security guard as invisible, the overbooked business traveler who snaps at the TSA agent.”

Williams chastises the professional-managerial elite, or PME, for the sort of thoughtless and condescending behavior that breeds animosity among the white working class, or WWC, as she dubbed it in the post-election Harvard Business Review essay that inspired this book . The president, for one, knows better. “Brashly wealthy celebrities epitomize the fantasy of being wildly rich while losing none of your working-class cred,” Williams writes. “Trump epitomizes this.”

Williams argues. Working-class families may not choose to relocate for a job because they care more about their community ties. They may worry about tuition debt and see college as a risky investment. They may prioritize stability and dependability over “disruption” because in working-class jobs, disruption “just gets you fired,” Williams writes. And they may cling to religion because “for many in the working class, churches provide the kind of mental exercise, stability, hopefulness, future orientation, impulse control, and social safety net many in the professional elite get from their families, their career potential, their therapists, and their bank accounts.”

“Gender does not necessarily bind women together across social class,” Williams writes, noting that for many working-class women, there is little to be gained by “giving privileged women access to the high-level jobs now held almost exclusively by privileged men.” Constantly invoking that highest and hardest glass ceiling was, Williams concludes, a “class-clueless metaphor.”

When discussing racial attitudes, Williams is quick to stress that those lofty liberals are as bad as anyone else. “Among the professional elite, where the coin of the realm is merit, people of color are constructed as lacking in merit,” she writes. “Among the white working class, where the coin of the realm is morality, people of color are constructed as lacking in that quality.” 

Williams chastises white elites for always seeking out “structural factors” to explain the conditions of the poor while denying the working class similar generosity. “When it comes to working-class whites,” she complains, “social structure evaporates.” This is a compelling point.

Williams’s book is a quick read and a good-faith effort at cultural and class introspection. I wish it ranged more widely beyond the themes the author raised.... In particular, I’d want to know how zealously we need to focus on that first “W” in the WWC.  At times, the author cites the experiences of working-class Latino families to buttress her points, and she notes that working-class black Americans hold many attitudes in common with blue-collar white Americans regarding work, personal responsibility and integrity. Class, more than race, is Williams’s crucial divide.

North Korea has confirmed its test of a hydrogen bomb meant for an intercontinental ballistic missile was a 'perfect success'. The country's sixth nuclear test - 10 times more powerful than its fifth - sparked a powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake which was detected in the northeast of the country where North Korea's test site Punggye-ri is located (bottom left). The hydrogen bomb test ordered by leader Kim Jong-Un was a 'meaningful' step in completing the country's nuclear weapons programme, state television said. The announcement was delivered by news anchor, Ri Chun-hee (bottom right) - who has been making announcements on Korean Central Television for more than 40 years. South Korea and Japan confirmed that the North Koreans conducted a nuclear test, with a blast powerful enough to be felt in northeastern China, but it was unclear whether the North’s claim of a hydrogen bomb was true. [Nonetheless,] it was the first test by North Korea to clearly surpass the destructive power of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Japan in World War II.North Korea television also released photographs appearing to show Kim signing the order to carry out the country's sixth nuclear test (top right). Just hours earlier Sunday, the country claimed it has developed a more advanced nuclear weapon that has 'great destructive power'. Photos released on Sunday show the country's leader (main) inspecting a hydrogen bomb that will be loaded on a new intercontinental ballistic missile. Overhead pictures of Punggye-ri nuclear test site from August 17 (top left), published by 38 North, revealed Kim Jong-un could order a test blast 'at any time with minimal advance warning', experts said. The blast  instantly erased lingering skepticism about Pyongyang’s technical capabilities and brought the prospect of nuclear-tipped North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of devastating a major city one step closer to reality, 

Hours after the test, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned of a “massive military response” if the United States or its allies were threatened. No issue confounds analysts more than what Kim Jong-un really wants.