September 26, 2023

Tuesday, September 26,2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Annette’s News Roundup • Buttondown

Think of this newsletter, sent daily in the am, as a collage of political, gender-related and occasionally theatre-related or food-related stories from across the web, put together with an overlay of my own comments. I hope you will find it useful and informative. The Roundup’s link is https://buttondown.email/AnnettesNewsRoundup. If you include this in your settings, the Roundup will not go into your spam. Please feel free to share and invite others to subscribe.  I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone. Oh by the way, I wouldn't mind if you gave the Roundup some love through Twitter or Facebook :-) and yes, thank you again for joining.

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Joe is always busy.

In case you were worrying…

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The GOP over the weekend and yesterday.

Trump.

Trump campaigned in a gun store and was presented with a Glock semi-automatic handgun with his image on it. Since Trump is under federal criminal indictment, it is illegal for him to obtain, receive, or purchase a gun.

Trump threatened the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation's highest-ranking military officer, with DEATH.

Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Chanukah is the holiday with the menorah. Rosh Hashanah has the shofar. Poor uninformed Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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White House Steps Up Warnings of Shutdown Impact as Deadline Nears.

“House Republicans need to come to their senses and keep the government running,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Sunday.

With a potential government shutdown now less than a week away, President Biden and other administration officials this weekend intensified their warnings of the consequences of closing government agencies as they pressed congressional Republicans to find a way out of their spending stalemate.

Both the president and the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, made public calls for Republicans to resolve their differences before next Sunday, when federal funding is set to lapse. They noted that a shutdown would mean that members of the military would go without paychecks, air travelers could experience disruptions and a variety of programs safeguarding the public would be shuttered. Yet even after a weekend of private haggling at the Capitol, there was no sign that the G.O.P. was moving toward a resolution.

“A government shutdown could impact everything from food safety to cancer research to Head Start programs for children,” Mr. Biden said at a Saturday dinner for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, blaming the situation “on a small group of extreme Republicans” opposed to a spending deal he cut earlier this year with Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “Now everyone in America could be forced to pay the price.”

“Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress,” he said. “It’s time for Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do.”

On Sunday, Mr. Buttigieg warned that training for new air traffic controllers would cease during a staffing crunch that has already contributed to travel delays while the working controllers would not be paid.

“They are under enough stress as it is doing that job without having to come into work with the added stress of not receiving a paycheck,” Mr. Buttigieg said on CNN’s “State of the Union” as he made the rounds of Sunday news shows to sound the alarm. “House Republicans need to come to their senses and keep the government running.”

House Republicans gathered on Capitol Hill on Saturday in an effort to chart a path forward this week, but made little progress in coming up with a strategy for overcoming opposition within their own ranks to approving a stopgap spending measure and sending it to the president’s desk in time to keep the government open past next Saturday, the end of the fiscal year.

Instead, after two humiliating procedural defeats on the House floor, Mr. McCarthy relented to demands from the far right to bring to the floor a series of full-year spending bills with steep cuts, though it would be impossible to negotiate final versions with the Senate in the next week. Republicans effectively conceded that the exercise was mostly for show, saying they hoped that advancing the measures would show “good faith” that could ultimately persuade Republican hard-liners to back a measure to keep the government open temporarily.

Mr. McCarthy is now exploring a 45-day extension of federal spending into November, though he is certain to encounter opposition to that timeline even from Republicans who support a stopgap funding measure — and appears to have made little, if any, headway in winning over right-wing lawmakers who have said they have no intention of backing such a bill.

With the House tied in knots, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has set in motion a procedure for the Senate to pass its own temporary funding measure this week and send it over to the House with both Democratic and Republican votes. A test vote in the Senate is set for Tuesday. A bipartisan group in the House is also exploring procedural options to bring an interim spending plan to the floor.

But if Mr. McCarthy relies on Democrats to pass what is known as a continuing resolution, he is certain to face a challenge to his position from the far right. Appearing on CNN, Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said that if Mr. McCarthy went in that direction, he would consider voting to oust the speaker.

“That would be something I would look strongly at if we do away with our duty,” said Mr. Burchett, who backs deep spending cuts and has said he would not support stopgap legislation under any circumstances.

At a news conference in the Capitol on Saturday, Representative Garret Graves of Louisiana, a confidant of Mr. McCarthy, argued that Republicans were “ensuring we’re doing everything we can to avoid a government shutdown.”

“We shouldn’t be in a situation where we’re asking our troops to go out there and put their lives on the line and not be paid,” he said. “It would be a failure on our part if we actually reached that point.”

But he acknowledged that passing a stopgap funding measure was not currently the priority of House Republicans, since holdouts have so far made that impossible. Instead, they are pursuing the strategy put forward by Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida and a McCarthy critic, to first pass appropriations bills on their own.

Still, Mr. Graves insisted that a stopgap funding bill was within the realm of possibility and that members would agree on one in time to stave off a government shutdown.

Even as he told reporters so in the Capitol on Saturday, Representative Matt Rosendale, Republican of Montana and one of the right-wing holdouts, told reporters that he remained a hard “no” on any continuing resolution.

“I won’t support a C.R.,” Mr. Rosendale said as he walked by Mr. Graves issuing his assessment. “I have been consistent on that. I have not changed one bit from that.”

Representative Erin Houchin, Republican of Indiana, responded that “continuing resolution” — a concept that some hard-right lawmakers have made clear they consider unacceptable — was a misnomer for what the party was trying to pass.

“With all due respect to my colleague who said they’re not there yet, what we would be doing is not a continuation. It’s really not a continuing resolution,” Ms. Houchin said. “This is a Republican perspective to stopgap and fund the government while we continue our work.” (New York Times)

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Arriving Monday, October 2nd.

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A great man of the theatre is leaving.

André Bishop to Step Down After Three Decades Running Lincoln Center Theater.

André Bishop, right, will leave his post as Lincoln Center Theater’s producing artistic director in 2025. Kewsong Lee, left, chairman of the theater’s board of directors, will lead the search for Bishop’s successor.

André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, will step down in the spring of 2025, ending a 33-year run leading one of the nation’s most prestigious nonprofit theaters.

The organization has under Bishop’s stewardship been a leading producer of grand Broadway revivals of Golden Age musicals, and has simultaneously committed itself to nurturing emerging artists by constructing a black box theater for that purpose on its rooftop.

“I’m exhilarated and sad at the same time,” Bishop said in an interview. “I will have been here many, many years — almost half my life — and it’s time for someone new and fresh to come in and pick up where I left off and go into other directions and do other things if they want to.”

Bishop, 74, said he is choosing to leave at the end of the 2024-25 season because that is when his current contract ends, and because that will allow him to join in that season’s celebrations of Lincoln Center Theater’s 40th anniversary.

His decision means that there are job openings for the top positions at three of the four nonprofits with Broadway houses, portending potentially significant change, and uncertainty, in a key sector of the theater industry that has had almost no leadership turnover for decades. Nonprofit theaters, which pay lower artist wages than commercial productions and are funded by philanthropy as well as box office sales, have become an important part of the Broadway ecosystem; Lincoln Center Theater has been able to stage musicals on a larger scale than many commercial producers can afford.

On Wednesday, Carole Rothman, the president and artistic director of Second Stage Theater, said that after 45 years she would be leaving that institution, which she co-founded; Second Stage operates the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway. And Roundabout Theater Company currently has an interim artistic director following the death in April of Todd Haimes, who led that organization for four decades; Roundabout operates three Broadway houses, including the American Airlines, the Stephen Sondheim and Studio 54.

Lincoln Center Theater, which is a resident organization at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, has three stages of varying sizes, and has produced a wide variety of work. The company currently has an annual budget of $34.5 million and 55 full-time employees; Bishop received $783,191 in total compensation during fiscal 2022, according to an I.R.S. filing.

The Vivian Beaumont Theater, where Lincoln Center Theater has staged Broadway revivals of “Camelot,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “My Fair Lady,” is the third-largest stage in New York, after Radio City Music Hall and the Metropolitan Opera; it also features a thrust configuration that is quite rare on Broadway.

When asked about the productions he was proudest of he named “The Coast of Utopia,” Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about 19th-century Russian intellectuals, which began running in 2006 and won the 2007 Tony Award for best play. Lincoln Center Theater’s other Tony-winning productions during Bishop’s tenure include “Carousel,” “The Heiress,” “A Delicate Balance,” “Contact,” “Henry IV,” “Awake and Sing,” “South Pacific,” “War Horse,” “The King and I” and “Oslo.”

This season Lincoln Center Theater is planning to stage a Broadway revival of “Uncle Vanya,” with a new translation by Heidi Schreck; an Off Broadway production of “The Gardens of Anuncia,” a new musical by Michael John LaChiusa; and an Off Off Broadway production of “Daphne,” a new play by Renae Simone Jarrett. Bishop also plans, before he leaves, to produce new plays by J.T. Rogers and Ayad Akhtar, and a world premiere musical.

“I’m proud of the variety of plays and musicals that we’ve done, from young experimental shows to well-known revivals,” Bishop said. He added that the theater is financially healthy and rebounding from the pandemic; although it has had fewer productions since the pandemic shutdown, he said he expected full-strength seasons ahead. “I think the future is glorious — we have an incredible staff and a very strong board and I see nothing but good things ahead.”

Bishop arrived at Lincoln Center Theater in 1992 as artistic director, and he became producing artistic director in 2013. He had previously spent 16 years at a smaller Off Broadway nonprofit theater, Playwrights Horizons, where he served as artistic director for a decade.

The Lincoln Center Theater board will conduct a search for Bishop’s successor. (New York Times).

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Remembering.

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