May 4, 2024

Saturday, May 4, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Joe is always busy.

New York Times on Friday-

President Biden is out with a statement celebrating the report, in fairly generic terms.

“With today’s report of 175,000 new jobs, the great American comeback continues,” he said.

“That marks the 27th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was below 4 percent. This was previously recorded during a low-unemployment period between 1967 to 1970 and the longest period on record between 1951 to 1953.” (Hopium Chronicles).

“Biden's 15.4m jobs are 8 times as many jobs as were created in the 16 years of the last 3 Republican Presidencies, combined. Since 1989 and the end of the Cold War, the US has seen 51 million new jobs created. 49 million of those 51 million jobs - 96% - have been created under Democratic Presidents. Just 2 million jobs - 4% - have been created under Republicans. There has been one and only one American political party good at this capitalism thing and it sure isn’t the party of Trump.”(Hopium Chronicles).

“On Truth Social, Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, declared the report showed “HORRIBLE JOB NUMBERS.” Under Mr. Trump’s presidency, before the pandemic’s impact took hold in March 2020, monthly job gains averaged about 175,000 — the same as April’s gain.”

The Fed gets evidence that the job market is cooling, including slower wage gains.

Will the Fed begin cutting interest rates? Stay tuned.

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This happened yesterday. 👇

Congressman James Clyburn to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, President Joe Biden announced U.S. Congressman James E. Clyburn (SC-06) will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The award will be presented at the White House on Friday, May 3, 2024.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public, or private endeavors.

“Words cannot express the profound honor and gratitude I feel upon receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This recognition is not only a testament to my work, but also to the countless individuals who have supported my journey; the giants who fought alongside me for justice, equity, and the pursuit of progress; and the support of my loving family,” said Congressman Clyburn.

“I am immensely grateful to President Biden for this incredible honor and take seriously the responsibility it carries. While it serves as a recognition of one’s accomplishments, it is also an astute reminder of the challenges that lie ahead. It speaks to the duty each and every one of us has to further the founding fathers’ dream of a ‘more perfect union.’ I accept this award with deep humility and the promise to uphold this vision,” he continued.

"I reflect upon the moment I was elected president of my NAACP Youth Council in Sumter, South Carolina, at the age of 12. From leading student protests in Orangeburg, South Carolina, to marshaling majorities to pass consequential legislation in Congress, I have learned that we all have roles to play in making the greatness of this democracy accessible for everyone,” he explained. “I look forward to continuing my efforts to bend the arc of history towards justice and proving myself worthy of this incredible honor.”

The following individuals will also be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday:

Michael R. Bloomberg

Gregory J. Boyle

Elizabeth Dole

Phil Donahue

Civil rights leader, Medgar Evers, who was murdered in 1963, received this honor yesterday.

Medgar Wiley Evers (posthumous)

Al Gore

Clarence B. Jones

John Forbes Kerry

Frank R. Lautenberg (posthumous)

Kathleen Genevieve Ledeck

Activist and Presidential honoree Opal Lee, 97, walked from Ft. Worth, Texas to DC when she was 89 to make Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery, a national holiday. She was with President Biden in 1921 when he did just that.

Opal Lee

Ellen Ochoa

Speaker emerita was one of 19 people who received the Presidential Medal Of Freedom.

Speaker Emerita Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi

Jane Rigby

Teresa Romero

Presidential Honoree Judy Shepard, champion of LGBTQ+ rights, co-founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, named after her son, a gay University of Wyoming student who died after he was beaten and tied to a fence.

Judy Shepard

James Francis Thorpe (posthumous)

Michelle Yeoh

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Columbia President Minouche Shafik at Hamilton Hall on Thursday morning.

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For the weekend of May 3rd.

Worry Less. Do More.

Looking for a Senate candidate to support?

Volunteer for. Talk and write about. Donate. How about Elissa Slotkin in the battle ground state of Michigan?

A very winnable race. Slotkin will replace an outgoing Democratic Senator ( Debbie Stabenow). Michigan has a blue Governor (Gretchen Whitmer) and a blue House and Senate.

Her election will help secure our control of the Senate.

Worry Less. Do More. https://elissaslotkin.org/

Who is Elissa Slotkin?

Before Slotkin was elected to Congress, she was a Middle East analyst in the CIA and went to Iraq with the U.S. military for three tours as a militia expert. She also worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and was an acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. 

Slotkin was first elected to Michigan's 7th Congressional District in 2018 and won reelection twice, including a tough campaign last year against Republican state Sen. Tom Barrett, who denied the results of the 2020 election. (CBS News)

Elissa’s last Congressional race - Republican Rep. Liz Cheney waded into, by endorsing Her First Democrat - Michigan Rep Elissa Slotkin (Source. People Mag).

Why is Elissa Slotkin running?

Watch her brief campaign video.

The unexpected, under-the-radar Senate race in Michigan that could determine control of the chamber.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Elissa Slotkin had less than half an hour to reckon with a retirement announcement that would reshape Michigan’s political landscape. The state’s senior senator and the third-ranking Democrat in the chamber, Debbie Stabenow, was about to reveal that she would retire in 2024.

Rep. Slotkin, a Democratic congresswoman from Holly, soon met with her team to mobilize for a run at a U.S. Senate seat that Democrats had not expected would be hard to defend in the narrowly divided chamber. A powerhouse fundraiser who had won in one of the nation’s most contested House districts, Slotkin quickly emerged as the Democratic Party establishment’s top choice and began to set a torrid fundraising pace.

It took Michigan Republicans longer to find their frontrunner. Buffeted by turmoilbetween pro-Trump Republicans and the old guard of the state GOP, they eventually lured former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers out of retirement to contend for the unexpected opening. The endorsement of former President Donald Trump gave Rogers a clear shot at winning his party’s primary without drowning in the intra-party conflict that has plagued the Michigan GOP in recent years.

Both Slotkin and Rogers have opponents in the Aug. 6 primary, but they also have advantages that make a second November showdown likely in a key swing state. With Trump and President Joe Biden poised to slug it out for the state’s indispensable 15 electoral votes at the top of the ticket, the unexpected fight for Michigan’s open Senate seat could say a lot about what the winner will be dealing with once he’s sworn in for a second term.

“This race is going to go down to the wire,” said former Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton. “This is going to be two heavyweights, in a positive way. They really know the issues and will go toe to toe on them.”

Hill Harper, an actor known for his roles on “CSI: NY” and “The Good Doctor,” and businessman Nasser Beydoun will challenge Slotkin for the Democratic nomination. Slotkin has maintained an advantage of more than $8 million in cash reserves at the end of March over both, along with support from several prominent Democrats.

National Republicans had hoped Rogers would have a similarly easy path to his party’s nomination. But the campaigns of former U.S. Reps. Justin Amash and Peter Meijer, who ended his bid last week, as well as businessman Sandy Pensler, made his task a little more complicated.

Rogers’ primary advantage is Trump’s endorsement, which came in February and has been met with pushback from some hardline Republicans due to Rogers’ criticisms of Trump in the past. Rogers took the stage with Trump at a campaign event in Michigan on Wednesday, further aligning himself with a former president he had criticized after the Trump administration tried to challenge the results of the 2020 election, when he compared their actions to “Third World dictatorships.”

Trump on Wednesday said Rogers “is going to be a warrior in the United States Senate, and more importantly he’s just going to be a winner.”

Trump’s endorsement has proven decisive in Republican nominations in Michigan recently, but questions linger over whether it will hurt or help in the general election.

It’s a red line for voters like Tom Patton, a longtime Lansing area resident who has been represented by both Rogers and Slotkin in Congress and even volunteered for Rogers’ first state Senate campaign.

“I liked Mike Rogers very much back then and in some ways I still do. He’s a serious person and has wonderful credentials. But his support of Trump has completely turned me off,” said Patton, who voted for Nikki Haley in the state’s February primary. “You cannot be for somebody like Trump who doesn’t accept the outcome of a fairly held election.”

The endorsement has not helped Rogers’ fundraising, either. In the first quarter of 2024, he raised slightly more than $1 million — just a quarter of Slotkin’s haul in the same period.

“We’re going to run a better campaign. We don’t have to match dollar for dollar,” said Rogers. “All we’ve got to do is have enough money to make sure people understand the differences.”

The race is expected to take on similar dimensions to the presidential campaign, with Slotkin pressing the case for reproductive rights and Rogers slamming Biden on border security and inflation. It may also include a strong element from both sides about the war in the Middle East, with Rogers invoking his foreign policy credentials and looking for ways to criticize Slotkin and Biden on an issue that divides Democrats.

Wayne County, which includes Detroit and has the largest Democratic voting base in the state, has become the epicenter for opposition to Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas, and some have said they would sit the election out.

Slotkin, who is Jewish and has extensive foreign policy experience as a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official, has at times faced criticism for not being harder on Israel.

“There have been few issues that keep me up at night more than this issue. There are few issues that are more contentious in my own district, in my own state,” said Slotkin. “But the job of a leader is to take themselves out of just how they’re personally feeling and do what’s best for the people they represent.”

Support from Arab Americans could prove crucial to Slotkin’s chances in November, but her relationship with at least one of that community’s leaders has remained troubled. Shortly before announcing her Senate campaign in early 2023, Slotkin met with Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the top elected official in one of the nation’s only majority-Muslim cities. The conversation soured when Hammoud took offense at the implication that the community wouldn’t support Slotkin because of her Jewish heritage, which has not been a deterrent in the past with other Jewish candidates.

Slotkin’s campaign declined to comment on the exchange, but the two have not spoken since.

Slotkin earlier this month voted for a package that sent more aid to Israel but said in an interview that Israel must allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and explain what their military strategy is going forward.

“If they don’t, then I am willing to have a conversation about putting conditions on offensive aid, not defensive,” she said.

Opposition to Slotkin in the community seems unlikely to translate into support for Rogers. He has remained staunchly pro-Israel and said the country is justified for its actions in Gaza because “they have a right to defend themselves and they have a right to go get those hostages.”

Despite turmoil within the Democratic base, the party hasn’t lost a Senate race since 1994 and has exceeded expectations in recent Michigan elections.

In 2022, Democrats gained complete control of Michigan state government for the first time in decades, in part due to a ballot initiative that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. Slotkin says abortion rights are still a winning issue in what may be the nation’s ultimate swing state.

“What we need now in 2024 is at least a 10-year plan to get back to the federal right to an abortion,” she said during an April 24 campaign event. “I’m so done waiting for the next shoe to drop. And part of the reason I want to be your next senator is because we need a new generation that thinks about our plans, our strategy.”

Rogers dismisses the idea that abortion rights are still on the ballot in Michigan. He said he would not vote in favor of a national abortion ban if it came up during his time in the Senate, although he did vote in favor of a 20-week abortion ban while serving in the House.

“I’m a states’ rights guy. I’m not going back to Washington, D.C., to undo what the people of Michigan decided to do,” said Rogers.

Republicans welcome Rogers as a moderate, sensible voice who has a legitimate chance to seize the unexpected opportunity that arose with Stabenow’s retirement, in a state where they haven’t been winning much lately. Democrats, meanwhile, think Slotkin could emerge as a leading voice of the next generation of party leaders.

That makes for an intriguing matchup that no one saw coming.

“The Senate’s on the line,” said Jason Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan. “And Rogers and Slotkin could be a clash of the titans.” (Associated Press).

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The criminal case against Trump ended for the week.

Once again, Trump had no family and friends in the courtroom, and none on the witness stand.

Trump Campaign and White House Press Secretary and Communications Director spokeswoman Hope Hicks was the last witness to testify.

Hicks recounts a conversation with Trump where the then-president said "that Michael had paid (sigh) this woman to protect him from a false allegation."

Trump told her Cohen did so "from the kindness of his own heart and that he didn't tell anyone that it happened," she says.

She didn't buy it.

Hicks says that'd be "out of character for Michael."

"I didn't know Michael to be an especially charitable person or selfless person. [He's the] kind of person that seeks credit." (@KlasfeldReports)

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Perhaps we are winning the war against cancer at last?

The Breakthrough Skin Cancer Vaccine That’s Changing the Game.

A “cure for cancer” might be too ambitious, but recent results in skin cancer vaccine trials are injecting hope into the battle against it. Known as mRNA-4157 (V940), the vaccine was recently given to a man named Steve Young — a melanoma survivor and one of the first patients to receive the new treatment.

But what is this vaccine, how did it come about and what should people worried about cancers like melanoma expect for the future?

How Does the Vaccine Work?

The recent study is a phase III trial and follows a successful phase II trial — in which “vaccines dramatically reduced the risk of the cancer returning in melanoma patients,” reports The Guardian. It’s not often you see the word “cure” being thrown around, but when melanoma patients have had surgery to remove the initial skin cancer, it’s hoped the vaccine will be a potential life-saver through preventing its spread.

“This is one of the most exciting things we’ve seen in a really long time,” said Dr. Heather Shaw, the trial’s national coordinating investigator. She pointed out its ability to work as a personalized tool for each patient and respond to each patient’s specific genetics “This is a really finely honed tool…the patients are really excited about them.”

The vaccine itself is individualized, functioning by triggering a patient’s immune system to fight back against the patient’s specific cancer and tumor. The implications extend beyond the return of melanoma and could have promising benefits to patients with other cancers as well.

By targeting “tumor neoantigens,” or the specific markers of each patient’s particular tumor, the vaccine can essentially alert the immune system to the presence of the tumor and help it fight it off naturally with an anti-tumor immune response.

What Hopes Do Doctors Have for this New Treatment?

Given the success of the second stage of the trials, researchers and doctors alike seem optimistic that the new treatment can have a powerful impact on cancer treatment. This optimism comes from the raw numbers. The phase II trial data, published last December, found that those who received the treatments (in addition to the immunotherapy Keytruda) were almost half (49 percent) as likely to die or have their cancers return after three years as those who were only given the drug.

According to Dr. Shaw, that means this treatment could be a “gamechanger.” Especially worth noting is the fact that it has tolerable side effects. Simply put, at this stage, the vaccine appears to have minimal side effects while helping the body’s natural immune response fight off cancer more efficiently. Solutions like that can mean incredible new hope for people struggling with the disease.

Experts told Sky News, for example, that these trials are “one of the most exciting developments in modern cancer therapy.” Historically, a major challenge in the fight against cancer has been the fact that everyone’s immune response is different. But that’s why this new bespoke approach to cancer is so effective — the vaccine helps the body create its own custom immune response to fight off tumors.

There are two reasons this approach is so powerful:

• A targeted immune response: Some cancer therapies can be effective, but in a less targeted way. For example, radiation therapy can shrink tumors. But this vaccine which creates a targeted response by the body’s own immune system is generally far more effective.

• Lack of side effects: With the immune system approach, the body is working as designed: detecting and destroying foreign cells that pose a threat to the body. This also means that there aren’t the more advanced side effects of other methods that use a less-targeted approach and therefore damage the body’s healthy cells as well as the cancer itself.

The Challenge of the Immune Response in Cancer Therapies

The immune system has a critical role in recognizing and eliminating abnormal cancer cells, with the problem being that cancer cells don’t always stimulate the immune response a patient requires. Rather than fighting off the cancer, our immune system can sometimes be tricked into ignoring its growth.

But there’s been success in recent years in developing cancer therapies that boost the immune system’s power to 1) recognize cancer cells and 2) destroy them. Known as “cancer immunotherapies,” this approach is showing a lot of promise. The immune system can target cancer cells like no other intervention, helping eliminate the cancer without damaging other healthy cells in the patients’ bodies.

Immunotherapy has had to overcome its own set of challenges. For instance, there’s the obstacle of downregulation of antigen presentation. Because cancer cells can decrease the expression of molecules presenting antigens (foreign or abnormal proteins in the body), immune cells may not be able to recognize when there’s a problem. This is why cancer can sometimes thrive despite the immune system’s best effort to keep the person healthy. The immune system essentially doesn’t recognize that cancer is there.

That’s one reason this new vaccine is so promising. Targeting tumor neoantigens means the vaccine gives the immune system something of an alert, warning that there’s something in the body that doesn’t belong there. The immune system can then begin targeting the cancer, working to destroy it while preserving the health of the body.

A Look to the Future

What does the future hold for treating this disease? Now that the trials have moved to the third stage, there is a lot of promise here. The treatment already demonstrated its effectiveness in the second phase but In the third round of the trial, it should get more direct, real-world practicality and reveal just how well this therapy can help fight off cancer — giving new hope to cancer sufferers who need a stronger immune response to eliminate the cancer and prevent it from returning. (Cheddar).

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More evidence, if needed, on the popularity of Women’s Sports.

Ticket uptick. A season preview report from Stubhub shows that ticket sales for WNBA games are up 93% from this time last year. Ticket sales for Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever are 13 times higher this year; sales for the champion Las Vegas Aces are up 190%. Forbes

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See. Good things keep happening.

Touch to watch.👇

Their names are Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson, and their achievement was creating a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using trigonometry, something once thought to be impossible.

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See you on Tuesday.

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