April 12, 2024

Friday, April 12, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

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Kamala is always busy.

Watch: the Vice President. 👇

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The Rosies are honored.

A Gold Medal for America’s Rosies, the Women on the Home Front.

Rosie the Riveters, American women who filled a crucial labor shortage during World War II and reshaped the work force, were honored at the Capitol.

A group of women who joined the U.S. defense work force during World War II to ease a labor shortage received a Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.

Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Marian Sousa moved to California to care for the children of her sister Phyllis Gould, who had gone to work as a welder in a Bay Area shipyard.

Marian Sousa, wearing a red shirt with white polka dots in a nod to the classic recruitment poster depicting Rosie, at the ceremony on Wednesday.

Just a year later, Ms. Sousa, at 17 years old, joined the wartime work force herself, drafting blueprints and revising outdated designs for troop transports. Wearing a hard hat and with a clipboard in hand, she would accompany maritime inspectors on board ships she’d helped design and examine the product of her labors.

She and her sister were just two of the roughly 6 million women who went to work during World War II, memorialized by the now iconic recruitment posterdepicting Rosie the Riveter, her hair tied back in a kerchief, rolling up the sleeve of her denim shirt and flexing a muscle beneath the slogan, “We can do it!”

More than eight decades later, Ms. Sousa, now 98, gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday with around two dozen other so-called Rosies — many of them white-haired and most wearing the red with white polka dots made famous by the poster — to receive the Congressional Gold Medal in honor of their efforts.

“We never thought we’d be recognized,” Ms. Sousa said in an interview. “Just never thought — we were just doing the job for the country and earning money on the side.”

Congress passed legislation authorizing the medal in 2020, after years of urging by Ms. Gould, who died in 2021, and another Rosie, Mae Krier, who accepted the award on Wednesday on behalf of all Rosies in front of a crowd of roughly 600, including congressional leaders.

“Up until 1941, it was a man’s world. They didn’t know how capable us women were, did they?” Ms. Krier said on Wednesday, to cheers. “We’re so proud of the women and young girls who are following in our lead. I think that’s one of the greatest things we’ve left behind, is what we’ve done for women.”

The Rosies went to work out of necessity. During the war, women were desperately needed to fill jobs vacated by men who had left to serve in the armed forces. Shortly after graduating high school, Ms. Sousa took a six-week course in engineering drawing at the University of California, Berkeley, and answered the call.

“It was a time when everybody went to work,” she said. “This was a time when the United States was truly united, in one effort. We wanted to get the war over with and bring the guys back.”

Many women were forced out of their jobs when the men returned after the war. Still, the experience shaped the rest of their lives and demonstrated that women could do work that had been traditionally reserved for men.

“These enterprising and patriotic women answered the call to serve on the home front during World War II, and forever changed the role of women in the work force,” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and a lead sponsor of the legislation, said during Wednesday’s ceremony.

Ms. Krier, who spent years pressing for a National Rosie the Riveter Day, built B-17 and B-29 bomber aircraft at a Boeing factory in Seattle during the war. She turned 98 on March 21 — the date Congress has designated National Rosie the Riveter Day.

“I think they got sick and tired of hearing from me — it’s been going on for years,” Ms. Krier said in an interview about her efforts to win broader recognition for the Rosies. “It’s just wonderful to finally get the award.”

Gloria McCormack, 99, attended the ceremony with her daughter, granddaughter and two grandsons. A week after graduating high school in 1942, Ms. McCormack got an engineering job at an Ohio defense plant manufacturing machine guns and shipping them overseas to Allied forces.

She recalled going to the plant every day with her father, who worked at a nearby steel factory, and conducting time studies on machine guns alongside other teenage girls and military wives. At lunch time, Ms. McCormack recalled in an interview, she and “the girls” went across the street to a restaurant that had a jukebox.

“We put nickels in it and did the jitterbug,” she said. “We danced all through our lunch hour.”

Velma Long, 106, earned a Bachelor of Science degree and worked as a clerk typist for the Navy in Washington during the war. She remembers being the only Black woman in her office at the time, and receiving letters from her older brother, who was deployed overseas, with sentences blotted out.

“I feel honored — and I feel I deserve to be,” said Ms. Long, who went on to take more courses and become a social worker after the war, about receiving the Congressional Gold Medal.

Senator Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, credited Ms. Krier’s activism with ensuring that the history of the Rosies would not be forgotten.

“We all know the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter, but for too long, the remarkable women she represents did not get the recognition they deserve,” Mr. Casey, who sponsored legislation to honor the Rosies, said during Wednesday’s ceremony. “World War II would not have been won if it weren’t for the Rosies at home.”

“Remember these four little words: We can do it!”

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The Prime Minister of Japan was busy yesterday.

Bearing gifts.

Addressing a Joint Session of Congress, presided over by Vice President Harris.

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Trump is not the only Evil Republican.

The message from GOP senators: Suffer, little children.

You probably know that about the GOP, but yesterday’s action by their Senators sure highlighted it.

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) asks a question during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on March 21.

The modern GOP is supposed to be pro-family, pro-tax-cuts and anti-“waste, fraud and abuse.” So why are Republican senators trying to tank a bill that is all three?

In January, lawmakers hammered out a kids-and-companies tax deal: Congress would extend a few business tax breaks that had recently expired in exchange for expanding the child tax credit. The bipartisan compromise turned out to be a very good bill, painstakingly negotiated by serious lawmakers from both chambers of Congress.

Among other virtues, the legislation would improve the living standards of 16 million low-income kids and lift 400,000 children out of poverty in its first year. It would increase incentives for research and development. And the icing on the cake: The whole thing would be paid for by curbing a pandemic-era tax break that has produced an avalanche of fraudulent claims.

The politics of the bill are also good: It has been endorsed by virtually every relevant stakeholder of nearly every political persuasion imaginable — business groups, pro-life organizations, parents’ alliances, anti-poverty advocates, conservative coalitions and progressive ones. It also offers Republicans a chance to prove their pro-family bona fides after Dobbs.

So when the bill sailed through the House with broad bipartisan support, it renewed hope that our dysfunctional legislature might be able to govern sometimes after all.

Alas, that hope was premature. Today, Republican senators are trying to kill the legislation, with some of its GOP supporters saying it’s on “life support.”

Their colleagues’ objections are all over the place, and none of them particularly compelling. Some worry about handing President Biden a win so close to the election. (I’d argue the 400,000 kids lifted out of poverty would be the real winners, but to each their own.) Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said this explicitly in January: “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be reelected.”

A related explanation is that Republicans hope to win control of Congress and the White House this November, after which they could abandon their silly, kid-conscious compromise with Democrats and just push for bigger tax breaks for businesses.

If that’s the strategy, it’s a strange one for many reasons. Among them: The bill includes tax breaks that had lapsed in the past couple of years, and the business community has been adamant about retroactively restoring them now. Not next year, when Republicans might or might not have more power.

“Many employers, especially small businesses, have struggled with the unexpected tax bill created by the lapse in these provisions,” Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told me. “Asking employers to wait until the next Congress is effectively asking them to make a loan to the federal government in the hopes that they might get paid back in 2025 or 2026.”

Some senators allege more substantive concerns. For instance, Mike Crapo (Idaho), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, complained that the child tax credit measures might discourage parents from working, even though the bill has an explicit earnings requirement (i.e., it is available only if families work). When Crapo identified the specific provision that bothered him, his Democratic counterpart, Committee Chair Ron Wyden (Ore.) offered to take it out of the bill.

Yet Crapo has not been mollified. He and his Senate colleague Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have also complained about the bill’s cost.

Specifically — it’s hard to believe I’m actually writing this — they’re mad that it doesn’t cost anything.

Seriously. They have both said they don’t want to set a precedent of paying for tax cuts, since congressional Republicans have a multi-decade-long record of not doing so. As Tillis said in a committee hearing, “We have to have a discussion about whether or not we’re setting a precedent on future tax provisions having a pay-for. We have not normally done that, but we’ve done that in this bill.” He then explained that when it came time to extend the expiring provisions of the Trump tax cuts next year, he was worried Democrats might demand they be paid for (heaven forbid).

As a reminder, the pay-for in this bill is the elimination of a fraud-riddled pandemic program, whose continuation would waste tens of billions of dollars. Usually, ending a program like this is something Republicans would cheer. But not, apparently, if it threatens their ability to add to the debt in the future. (And let’s be honest, this “precedent” of paying for a tax break does not exactly seem binding.)

No matter. If Republicans do retake the Senate majority, Crapo is likely to be the next chair of the Senate Finance Committee; even Republican lawmakers who support this bill are now loath to cross him, Hill staffers have told me.

One thing in common among all these obstacles to the bill’s passage: They have nothing to do with the well-being of poor kids, the original reason so many people of all ideological stripes were excited about this bill.

Perhaps some politicians misheard “Suffer the little children” as simply “Suffer, little children.” (Catherine Rampell, Washington Post).

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College athletes can now be paid. Why not Olympians? Hmm.

College athletes can be paid by sponsors for NIL -name, image and likeness. NIL is how college athletes can make money in 2024 (and since July 2021).

Olympians also receive endorsements, sponsorships, but now some Olympians will be paid straight out prize money too.

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Sponsors turn to the WNBA.

Game-changer.

Record viewership numbers for women’s sports are still in the process of translating to more dollars for leagues, teams, and players; take last weekend’s NCAA basketball finals in which the women brought in 4.1 million more viewers but were valued$866 million lower than the men in TV rights. But while media rights deals are renegotiated and investors steadily pour resources into new and existing teams alike, the WNBA has executed a partnership strategy that capitalizes on the league’s growing popularity.

Mielle Organics, a WNBA Partner.

The 28-year-old women’s basketball league has teamed up with buzzy brands that drive cultural conversations, much like its own players do. Haircare brand Mielle Organics was named the league’s “official textured hair care partner” last July. Glossier became the league’s official beauty partner in mid-2023. Kim Kardashian’s Skims became the official underwear partner for both the WNBA and the NBA later that year.

The WNBA’s latest brand partner is Opill, the first over-the-counter oral contraceptive.

The latest brand to join the mix is Opill, the new over-the-counter birth control pill produced by pharmaceutical company Perrigo. It’s an interesting partnership for the WNBA, whose players have openly discussed the difficulties of managing childcare and pregnancy alongside careers as professional athletes. And it’s a compelling platform for Opill, which is trying to build brand awareness as it introduces itself to customers who are used to accessing oral contraceptives only through medical providers.

The two parties announced their “game-changing” partnership, which is Opill’s first major campaign, at an event in New York this week. “We’re looking for partners whose core values align with ours that also help amplify the work we’re doing at the league,” WNBA chief growth officer Colie Edison told me.

Opill and the league plan to make a splash at the WNBA draft on April 15. As this year’s best-known college players like Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark start their professional careers, Opill is looking to reach college students, a major market for over-the-counter contraceptives.

Since Opill started shipping a month ago, the product has been sent to 50 retailers, Perrigo women’s health lead Leila Bahbah told me. 

When Perrigo acquired the rights to Opill (first approved on a prescription basis in 1973) from Pfizer and started the process of seeking over-the-counter approval a decade ago, the WNBA likely wouldn’t have been the company’s first choice for exposure. But women’s basketball has grown so much in recent years that a partnership with the league is now a way to put a stake in the ground as a socially-conscious, culturally-relevant brand. “When you partner with the WNBA, it needs to be an authentic integration into who we are,” Edison says. (Emma Hinchliffe, The Broadsheet, Forbes).

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The National Champions, The South Carolina Gamecocks, were at the Congress yesterday.

Representative James Clyburn greeted them.👇

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