June 11, 2024

Tuesday, June 11, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

UN Security Council adopts U.S.-led resolution calling on Hamas to accept hostage deal

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday calling on Hamas to accept a hostage and ceasefire deal.

Why it matters: The U.S. presented the resolution as part of a diplomatic effort to increase international pressure on Hamas to accept the U.S.-backed proposal.

• 14 member states voted yes on the resolution while Russia abstained.

• U.S. officials hoped that with Russia and China not vetoing the resolution it would influence Hamas' decision-making.

• The latest: Hamas said in a statement it welcomes the Security Council's call for a sustainable ceasefire in Gaza and stressed it is ready to work with the mediators on implementing the principles of the resolution.

• President Biden said in a statement: "Hamas says it wants a ceasefire. This deal is an opportunity to prove they mean it."

Driving the news: The resolution welcomed the ceasefire proposal — which President Biden outlined in a televised address — and encouraged both Israel and Hamas to "fully implement its terms without delay and without condition."

• The resolution detailed the three phases of the hostage deal proposal and stressed that the ceasefire would continue as long as negotiations on phase two of the deal are ongoing.

Worth noting: The resolution rejects "any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of Gaza." (Axios).

A Biden Ad.

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Polling the polls.

With thanks to Simon Rosenberg.

New York Times - Biden gains 2 points since April/May

Yahoo/YouGov - Biden is up 46-44, a gain of 2 points. “After Trump felony conviction, Biden leads for 1st time in months"

CBS News/YouGov -A new CBS poll released on Sunday conducted by YouGov showed Biden leading Trump in battleground states with 50 percent versus Trump's 49 percent in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The poll, with a sample of 2,063 adults in the U.S. and 1,615 registered voters, was conducted from June 5 to 7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent among registered voters.

Joe Biden cuts Trump’s lead on handling of US economy.

Washington | New York | Donald Trump has lost some of his edge over Joe Biden on the economy in a monthly poll of American voters, one of the first signs that months of strong economic data may finally be boosting the president’s re-election prospects.

Mr Trump’s lead among registered voters who were asked which of the two candidates they trusted more to handle the economy was just four points in June, down from 11 in February, according to the latest survey conducted for the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. (AFR).

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Women on Boards in decline.

Board of it. The share of board appointments going to women has declined steadily since 2021 and hit a seven-year low in the first quarter of this year, according to a new report from the 50/50 Women on Boards Project. In the first three months of 2024, 30.7% of board appointments across the Russell 3000 index belonged to women—the lowest share since 2017.

In 2021, women made up 45% of new directors; in 2022, the stat was 39% and in 2023 it was 38%. This early 2024 measure of 30.7% (of a total of 587 seats) represents an even steeper drop-off.

The seven-year low arrives as women still hold only 29.7% of board seats across the Russell 3000, a 0.3% increase from last year. Women of color hold only 7.8%. While there has been progress over the past decade to diversify boards, that progress hasn’t achieved anything near parity.

Heather Spilsbury, Women on Boards’ CEO, identifies a few reasons for the decline. Economic uncertainty leads companies to revert to their existing networks rather than broaden board searches for a wider pool of candidates, she says. Election years, too, bring more risk aversion, she argues. Some boards lack clear succession plans, slowing down the process of bringing on new directors, she says. Meanwhile, companies are watching a wave of conservative legal efforts against corporate diversity and inclusion efforts. And California’s SB826, which required boards in that state to have at least three female directors, was struck down in 2022, eliminating a strong motivator for businesses to maintain board diversity.

Across the Russell 3000, 41% of companies still have boards with two or fewer women. And some of those businesses are clearly focused on other pressures; companies with less diverse boards were more likely to exit the Russell 3000 because of sales, mergers, or bankruptcies, the report found. The financial services sector was the least diverse at the board level.

Expanding boards has led to the most successful diversification efforts; 87% of newly filled seats belonging to women were additions, not replacements.

“Addressing this decline requires a concerted effort from companies to actively seek out and support women, especially women of color,” Spilsbury says. “Broader societal and systemic changes are necessary to ensure women have equal opportunities to advance into leadership roles.” (Broadsheet. Forbes newsletter).

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Worry less. Do more. Act of the Day.

Trump told a dangerous lie, that shocks even me.

Join Jim Clyburn in fighting back.

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As we fight to save Democracy in America, the Rise of the Right in Europe continues in France and Germany.

In E.U. Elections, the Center Holds, but the Far Right Still Wreaks Havoc.

Voters in the European Union delivered strong gains to anti-immigrant, nationalist parties, challenging leaders in Germany and France, and unsettling the political establishment.

Casting ballots in 27 countries, voters largely backed centrists in European Parliament elections, but far-right parties made serious inroads in France and Germany.

Partial results made public late Sunday showed that centrist political groups were poised to lose some seats, but still maintain a clear majority of more than 400 seats in the 720-seat assembly.

Even so, the outcome seemed likely to steel the far right as a disruptive force and unsettled the bloc’s mainstream establishment. (New York Times).

The Right gets closer to power in France.

Macron fights back.

‘We’re everywhere now’: National Rally members toast EU elections success.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right party see unprecedented result as stepping stone to presidential elections in 2027.

At a smart party venue overlooking the woodland of the Bois de Vincennes, east of Paris, members of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN) clinked glasses to the sound of jazz piano. Savouring their historic result in the European elections, they were also looking forward with excitement to the sudden, shock parliamentary election in France.

“We’re ready for power if French people put their trust in us,” said Le Pen to cheers and applause from senior party officials in suits and cocktail dresses, after the president, Emmanuel Macron, made the dramatic and unexpected announcement that he was dissolving the French parliament in the wake of the results. The election, called for three weeks’ time, saw Le Pen’s anti-immigration party, with around 31% of the vote, come first – and more than double the score of the president’s pro-European centrists.

Smiling, Le Pen said her party best represented France and had succeeded in capturing French people’s daily concerns, which her party officials say are immigration, the cost of living and a feeling of insecurity and fear of crime. “When the people vote, the people win,” she said.

The RN’s European score of over 30% is an unprecedented high for the party, a clear defeat for Macron and, in the words of one senior party member, a “stepping stone” to the presidential election in three years’ time.

But few among the elected officials and canvassers who had gathered at the celebration party overlooking one of Paris’s most picturesque parks had expected Macron to drop the bombshell of dissolving the French parliament on Sunday night.

As the president made the announcement on television, a roar of cheers went up across the room. It was exactly what Le Pen had wanted Macron to do – the RN has 88 members of parliament and is currently the biggest single opposition party in parliament. Le Pen said this score could now be vastly increased to “consecrate our movement as the great alternative political force” in France. Macron’s party, which for the past two years has struggled with no absolute majority in parliament, could not have limped on, a party adviser said.

At a smart party venue overlooking the woodland of the Bois de Vincennes, east of Paris, members of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN) clinked glasses to the sound of jazz piano. Savouring their historic result in the European elections, they were also looking forward with excitement to the sudden, shock parliamentary election in France.

“We’re ready for power if French people put their trust in us,” said Le Pen to cheers and applause from senior party officials in suits and cocktail dresses, after the president, Emmanuel Macron, made the dramatic and unexpected announcement that he was dissolving the French parliament in the wake of the results. The election, called for three weeks’ time, saw Le Pen’s anti-immigration party, with around 31% of the vote, come first – and more than double the score of the president’s pro-European centrists.

Smiling, Le Pen said her party best represented France and had succeeded in capturing French people’s daily concerns, which her party officials say are immigration, the cost of living and a feeling of insecurity and fear of crime. “When the people vote, the people win,” she said.

The RN’s European score of over 30% is an unprecedented high for the party, a clear defeat for Macron and, in the words of one senior party member, a “stepping stone” to the presidential election in three years’ time.

But few among the elected officials and canvassers who had gathered at the celebration party overlooking one of Paris’s most picturesque parks had expected Macron to drop the bombshell of dissolving the French parliament on Sunday night.

As the president made the announcement on television, a roar of cheers went up across the room. It was exactly what Le Pen had wanted Macron to do – the RN has 88 members of parliament and is currently the biggest single opposition party in parliament. Le Pen said this score could now be vastly increased to “consecrate our movement as the great alternative political force” in France. Macron’s party, which for the past two years has struggled with no absolute majority in parliament, could not have limped on, a party adviser said.

“It’s going to be very hard to stop us now,” said Aymeric Durox, an RN senator. The 38-year-old former history teacher in the well-heeled town of Fontainebleau had seen first-hand how this European election had won over new higher-earning, highly educated voters and public-sector workers.

“We’re everywhere now,” he said. “There is no more fortress that is impossible for us to take. We have voters in every sector of life, every profession.”

Durox said the significant rise in teachers who voted for the party in the last French presidential election in 2022 had already shown that the party could reach beyond its traditional heartlands. “It’s something that a few years ago would have been unthinkable,” he said.

When Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old party president who led the European election campaign, strode into the room to give a triumphant victory speech, he was accompanied by some of the RN’s parliamentarians to send a message about the party’s position not just in Europe, but in France. Behind him, a screen read: “France is back.”

Bardella is credited with appealing to voters who would have been put off by Jean-Marie Le Pen. He does not seek to dilute the party’s hardline anti-immigration message, which has not changed since the 1970s; instead he wants to make it respectable and fully mainstream.

“French citizens have shown tonight that they want change,” Bardella said. “Tonight a wind of hope has risen over France and it is only just beginning.” He said the European vote was a “repudiation and clear rejection” of Macron’s politics.

“Tonight, Emmanuel Macron is a weakened president. He already lacked an absolute majority in parliament, and now his margin for action has shrunk at the heart of the European parliament,” Bardella said.

For months, Le Pen has been suggesting that Bardella – who was elected to the European parliament five years ago when he was 23 and has very high popularity ratings – could be a potential prime minister. Now, senior party figures were putting Bardella forward as the figurehead for the new parliamentary campaign.

Near the cheese platter, the carefully laid-out designer finger-food and chardonnay wine in ice buckets, a young advertising executive from Normandy said his feeling from his months canvassing on the European campaign trail was that the party had been swelled by rural and farming communities expressing anger at Macron, but also by new professionals who had never before voted for the RN.

“Before, we had an electorate that was more working class. Now we’re attracting managers, senior staff in big companies,” he said. He had seen local membership in his branch of the party in Calvados rise from six people to 51 in less than a year. “I joined the party six years ago and I’ve seen a change. It’s interesting how renaming the party and getting rid of the old name, Front National, has made a difference. The driving force of our ideas has remained the same: security and the fight against mass immigration.”

Gilles Penelle, an RN regional councillor in Brittany and senior party official, said the RN’s growing support in places such as Brittany, once a pro-European stronghold for Macron’s centrists, showed that “there is a message being sent that there is a countryside in France that feels abandoned, and forgotten, even in Brittany. When you take away the city of Rennes and the tourist coast, there is another Brittany that no one’s talking about – that Brittany is not on the postcards, it’s suffering, it feels forgotten, abandoned.”

Penelle said Macron was now facing an “national political crisis” unprecedented in modern France. He said the president had had no choice but to call a parliamentary election in France because the governing centrists’ poor performance was directly attributable Macron himself, and his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who had been actively campaigning.

“This party is at the gates of power in France,” said Hervé Moreau, a former senior gendarme from Burgundy who recently joined the RN. He said its result in the European elections meant that “in people’s minds, this party is the political alternative.” (The Guardian).

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French President Macron strikes back with a surprise action.

Needed - “A Prayer for the French Republic.”

What to Know About France’s Snap Parliamentary Elections.

President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise call for new elections in France’s lower house of Parliament is seen as a gamble.

President Emmanuel Macron threw French politics into disarray on Sunday when he unexpectedly called for snap elections.

The surprise move came after his party was battered by the far right in European Parliament elections. Mr. Macron dissolved the lower house of France’s Parliament and said the first round of legislative elections would be held on June 30.

France now finds itself in unpredictable territory, with the future of Mr. Macron’s second term potentially at stake. With less than a month to go before the poll, parties are now scrambling to field candidates, hone their messaging and, in some cases, forge alliances.

Here is what you need to know about the snap election.

What happened?

France’s far-right, anti-immigrant National Rally party, led by Marine Le Pen and her wildly popular protégé, Jordan Bardella, surged to first place in elections for the European Parliament on Sunday with about 31.4 percent of the vote. Mr. Macron’s centrist Renaissance party came in a distant second, with about 14.6 percent.

Mr. Macron acknowledged the crushing defeat in a televised broadcast to the nation that night.

“France needs a clear majority to move forward with serenity and harmony,” Mr. Macron said, explaining why he had decided to call for legislative elections.

That involved taking the extremely rare move of dissolving the 577-seat National Assembly, a presidential prerogative in France. Mr. Macron is the first president to do so since 1997.

Why did he do it?

When Mr. Macron was elected to a second term in 2022, his party failed to win an outright majority. The centrist coalition he formed has since governed with a slim majority — but struggled to pass certain bills without support from the opposition.

Mr. Macron was under no obligation to dissolve Parliament, even if the European vote left him a reduced figure with three years left in his presidential term. Analysts are still parsing through his motivations, although many suspect that he believed a dissolution had become inevitable — conservative lawmakers were threatening to topple his government in the autumn. Jolting the country with a sudden election could also be a way for Mr. Macron to prevent his opposition from organizing — and to present voters with a stark choice between him or the far right.

The move is seen as a gamble: If the National Rally repeats its performance in national elections, France could become nearly ungovernable, with Mr. Macron confronting a Parliament hostile to everything he believes in.

Ms. Le Pen welcomed the announcement of elections and expressed confidence that her party could muster a majority. “We are ready to turn the country around,” she told cheering supporters in Paris on Sunday evening.

What’s at stake?

The presidency is France’s most powerful political office, with broad abilities to govern by decree. But the approval of Parliament, and especially the National Assembly, is required on most big domestic policy changes and key pieces of legislation, like spending bills or amendments to the Constitution.

Unlike the Senate, France’s other house of Parliament, the National Assembly is elected directly by the people and can topple a French cabinet with a no-confidence vote. It also has more leeway to legislate and challenge the executive, and typically gets the final word if the two houses disagree on a bill.

Mr. Macron’s party and its centrist allies currently hold 250 seats in the National Assembly, short of the 289 required for an absolute majority. The National Rally party holds 88 seats, while the mainstream conservative Republicans have 61. A tenuous alliance of far-left, Socialist and Green lawmakers holds 149 seats. The remainder are held by smaller groups or lawmakers not affiliated with any party.

How will the vote work?

The elections for the 577 seats in the National Assembly will be held in two rounds — the first on June 30 and the second on July 7.

France’s 577 electoral districts — one for each seat — cover the mainland, overseas departments and territories, as well as French citizens living abroad. Unlike many of its European neighbors, France awards seats to candidates who get the most ballots in each district, not based on a proportion of the total vote across the country.

That means there will be 577 separate races, with local dynamics and quirks — unlike the European parliamentary elections where each party fielded a single, nationwide list of candidates.

That means there will be 577 separate races, with local dynamics and quirks — unlike the European parliamentary elections where each party fielded a single, nationwide list of candidates.

“It’s hard to project the results of the European elections onto the legislative ones,” said Luc Rouban, a senior research fellow at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris. “It’s not sure that the National Rally will have the same success.”

With little time to campaign, parties on the left are scrambling to unite like they did in 2022 by avoiding competing candidacies in each district. But unity on the French left can be elusive, and it is unclear whether the parties will be able to strike such a deal.

If Mr. Macron is unable to muster a strong parliamentary majority, he could find himself in a rare “cohabitation” scenario — where the presidency and the National Assembly are on opposing political sides.

In that scenario, Mr. Macron would be compelled to choose a prime minister of a different political party — which could potentially block much of his domestic agenda. Foreign policy, which is a presidential prerogative, would theoretically remain mostly untouched. (New York Times).

One more thing.

The Right gained ground in France and Germany but here is some good news.

Hungary’s Viktor Orbán stumbles in EU election.

In a new rival Peter Magyar, the prime minister’s Fidesz party ‘has a real challenger.’

Orban (left), Magyar (right), though their politics are reversed.

Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party is on track to receive its worst ever result in a European Parliament election, after early results showed a new challenger took nearly 30 percent of the vote Sunday.

Péter Magyar  — a former ruling party insider-turned-rival — and his Tisza party scored 29.7 percent, with 99 percent of ballots counted. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and its smaller allies scored 44.6 percent, significantly lower than polls had predicted.

Fidesz has only won less than 50 percent of the vote once in the past two decades, scoring 47.4 percent in 2004. The preliminary results would give Orbán 11 MEPs and Magyar seven seats. (Politico).

By the way, J.D. Vance, MAGA Senator from Ohio, is a fan of Orban -

CBS News: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán seized control of universities rewrote the Constitution and neutered the courts.

Is that what you're advocating for in the US?

JD Vance: I think Orbán made smart decisions that we could learn from in the US.

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In our competitive world, even words jockey for position.

Oxford names ‘rizz’ word of the year. Here’s what it means | AP News.

LONDON (AP) — Oxford University Press has named “rizz″ as its word of the year, highlighting the popularity of a term used by Generation Z to describe someone’s ability to attract or seduce another person.

It topped “Swiftie” (an enthusiastic fan of Taylor Swift), “situationship” (an informal romantic or sexual relationship) and “prompt” (an instruction given to an artificial intelligence program) in the annual decision by experts at the publisher of the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary.

The four finalists were selected by a public vote and the winner was announced on Monday.

Rizz is believed to come from the middle of the word charisma, and can be used as a verb, as in to “rizz up,” or chat someone up, the publisher said.

“It speaks to how younger generations create spaces — online or in person — where they own and define the language they use,” the publisher said. “From activism to dating and wider culture, as Gen Z comes to have more impact on society, differences in perspectives and lifestyle play out in language, too.”

American publisher Merriam-Webster included “rizz” on its list of the year’s top words but gave first place to “authentic.”

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On Sunday at the Tribeca Film Festival, Eve and I saw a wonderful, moving, funny movie, based on a novel by a friend, Lily Brett.

THE FILM Treasure. In Theatres June 14.

A father-daughter road trip set in 1990s Poland, Treasure follows Ruth (Lena Dunham), an American music journalist, and her father, Edek (Stephen Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a journey to his homeland. While Ruth is eager to make sense of her family’s past, Edek embarks on the trip with his own agenda. This emotional, funny culture clash of two New Yorkers exploring post-socialist Poland is a powerful example of how reconnecting with family and the past can be an unexpected treasure. (description from the Treasure distributor’s website)

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Your daily reminder.

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

On Monday, he met with his probation officer.

Here was the advanced description of that in the Associated Press.

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be interviewed by New York probation officials Monday, a required step before his July sentencing in his criminal hush money case, according to three people familiar with the plan.

Trump will do the interview via a computer video conference from his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, the people told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the plans publicly.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, will be present for the interview. People convicted of crimes in New York usually meet with probation officials without their lawyers, but the judge in Trump’s case, Juan Merchan, said in a letter Friday that he would allow Blanche’s presence.

The usual purpose of a pre-sentencing probation interview is to prepare a report that will tell the judge more about the defendant, and potentially help determine the proper punishment for the crime.

Such reports are typically prepared by a probation officer, a social worker or a psychologist working for the probation department who interviews the defendant and possibly that person’s family and friends, as well as people affected by the crime.

Presentence reports include a defendant’s personal history, criminal record and recommendations for sentencing. It will also include information about employment and any obligations to help care for a family member. It is also a chance for a defendant to say why they think they deserve a lighter punishment.

A jury convicted Trump of falsifying business records at his own company as part of a broader scheme to buy the silence of people who might have told embarrassing stories about him during the 2016 presidential campaign. One $130,000 payment went to a porn actor, Stormy Daniels, who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump, which he denied.

Trump does seem to be given special treatment with regard to this first meeting with his probation officer:

1) Why is the interview being done virtually, instead of in person? Why is Trump allowed to be in Mar-a-Largo rather than in NYC?
2) Why is Trump allowed to have his attorney with him during the interview?
3) Why isn’t Trump being drug tested?

Andrew Weissman added- “He’ll be asked about whether he is associating with criminals. And it is sort of remarkable… he’s going to have to discuss whether he still coordinates with Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon.”

He will be sentenced on July 11th.

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