—The U.K. government has invoked Article 50 of the EU charter, triggering the mechanism by which it can begin formal talks on its separation from the European Union. More here
—Iraqi troops, backed by U.S. and allied forces, are trying to wrest Mosul back from ISIS.
—The Nobel Academy says Bob Dylan, who skipped the award ceremony in December, will pick up his prize this weekend. More here
—We’re tracking the news stories of the day below. All updates are in Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -4).
Bridget Anne Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, arrives Wednesday for her sentencing at the Federal Courthouse in Newark, New Jersey. (Lucas Jackson / Reuters)
U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton sentenced Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, two former top associates of Governor Chris Christie, to prison time for their role in the “Bridgegate” scandal. Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, received 24 months, along with a year of probation, 500 hours of community service, fines and restitution. Kelly, Christie’s deputy chief of staff, was sentenced to 18 months in prison. A jury in Newark, New Jersey, found them guilty last November of all charges. As I wrote at the time:
Baroni … and Kelly were indicted [in 2015] on nine counts of conspiracy and fraud in connection with the scheme in 2013 to close lanes on a section of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, over the refusal of its Democratic mayor to endorse Christie, a Republican, for re-election. …
Federal prosecutors’ main witness in the six-week trial was David Wildstein, a Christie appointee to the Port Authority who admitted to masterminding the plan. The jury also heard testimony from more than 30 other witnesses, including Baroni and Kelly. Federal prosecutors alleged Christie was aware of the actions of his aides.
Christie, a close associate of President Trump, consistently denied any knowledge or involvement in the lane closures, and hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing.
Kelly and Baroni will remain free while they appeal their convictions.
Iraqi Forces Battle ISIS in Mosul as Concerns Over Civilian Casualties Persist
(Khalid Al Mousily / Reuters)
Iraqi forces are battling ISIS militants in western Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city that was captured by the Islamic State in 2014. Here’s more from Reuters today on the state of the fighting: “The close-quarters fighting is focused on the Old City surrounding the [ al-Nuri] mosque where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a caliphate nearly three years ago across territory controlled by the group in both Iraq and Syria.” Thousands of civilians are trapped in the city, and as the fighting rages, their position is fraught. Indeed, as we reported yesterday, the Pentagon is investigating the March 17 coalition airstrike in Mosul that may have led to the collapse of buildings with at least 160 people inside. “It is very possible that Daesh blew up that building to blame it on the coalition in order to cause a delay in the offensive into Mosul and cause a delay in the use of coalition airstrikes,” General Mark A. Milley, the U.S. army chief of staff, told reporters Monday in Baghdad. “And it is possible the coalition airstrike did it.” But Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the senior coalition commander in Iraq, said: “My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties.”
Bob Dylan to Accept Nobel Prize This Weekend, Swedish Academy Says
(Robert Galbraith / Reuters)
Bob Dylan will accept his Nobel Prize for Literature this weekend, a member of the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the prize, has said in a blog entry. The academy announced last October that Dylan had won the prize “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” But the famously reclusive singer did not acknowledge the award or indicate whether he would accept it until two weeks after the announcement, telling a British newspaper he would attend the ceremony “if it’s all possible.” Ultimately, he did not—but he did send a speech in which he said the prize “is something I never could have imagined or seen coming.” Which brings us to today’s blog post by Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. She said:
The good news is that the Swedish Academy and Bob Dylan have decided to meet this weekend. The Academy will then hand over Dylan’s Nobel diploma and the Nobel medal, and congratulate him on the Nobel Prize in Literature. The setting will be small and intimate, and no media will be present; only Bob Dylan and members of the Academy will attend, all according to Dylan’s wishes.
Tim Barrow, the U.K.'s permanent representative to the European Union, arrives Wednesday at EU Council headquarters in Brussels to formally trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. (Yves Herman / Reuters)
The U.K.’s envoy to the European Union has hand-delivered a letter from Prime Minister Theresa May to the office of European Council president in Brussels, invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and formally beginning the process of talks over the U.K.’s separation from the European Union. The move comes nine months after Britons voted 52 percent to 48 percent to leave the EU, a decision that shocked the political establishment, and sparked a rancorous debate in the U.K. on what a future U.K.-EU relationship should look like. It’s the nature of that relationship that talks between the U.K. and the EU will focus on. The process will take two years, during which time the U.K. remains a full member of the bloc. Those who campaigned to keep the U.K. in the EU want a future relationship to be similar to the one the country enjoyed with full EU membership, but the main sticking point, access to the EU single market, depends on the free movement of the EU’s citizens across the bloc—an aspect of membership deeply unpopular in the U.K. Linda Kintsler wrote yesterday about what happens next. Read it here.
The pandemic has exposed a fundamental weakness in the system.
America has too many managers.
In a 2016 Harvard Business Review analysis, two writers calculated the annual cost of excess corporate bureaucracy as about $3 trillion, with an average of one manager per every 4.7 workers. Their story mentioned several case studies—a successful GE plant with 300 technicians and a single supervisor, a Swedish bank with 12,000 workers and three levels of hierarchy—that showed that reducing the number of managers usually led to more productivity and profit. And yet, at the time of the story, 17.6 percent of the U.S. workforce (and 30 percent of the workforce’s compensation) was made up of managers and administrators—an alarming statistic that shows how bloated America’s management ranks had become.
There are no simple rules for timing on a third jab—but maybe don’t rush it.
After a long and tense meeting today, an FDA committee unanimously recommended that the agency authorize third shots of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for Americans who are over 65 or at high risk of severe COVID. The vote came after the panel voted overwhelmingly against the original question up for its consideration: authorizing boosters for everyone over 16. If the FDA follows the committee’s recommendation (as is expected), a CDC committee will help refine those guidelines next week, clarifying which groups qualify as “high risk.”
Even as we await these final decisions, the nation’s summer wave of COVID infections seems like it’s beginning to pass. Cases and hospitalizations are trending slightly downward. Now that we have more clarity about whether (and which) Americans need booster shots—and given that so many people are already getting boosters, eligibility be damned—more questions loom: When, exactly, should those people get those shots? Is it better to load up on extra antibodies as soon as possible, or should people wait until COVID rates start to rise again?
It's surprisingly easy to get unauthorized COVID-19 vaccines for 10- and 11-year-olds who can “pass” for 12.
These days, the distance between ages 11 and 12 is more than a year. It is a chasm between danger and safety. Vaccines promise people 12 and older protection from COVID-19, but aren’t yet approved in the U.S. for younger children, and it isn’t clear exactly when they will be. Frustrated by the wait and desperate to protect their children, some parents are sneaking their 10- and 11-year-old kids across this chasm, and hoping not to get caught.
Meghan’s 10-year-old son has just started in-person school in Los Angeles County, and he’s fully vaccinated against COVID-19. (Meghan asked to be identified by her first name only, because she’s afraid of consequences if her lies are found out.) This summer, the rapidly spreading Delta variant of the coronavirus had Meghan worried for her kids’ safety. Her older children, ages 12 and 15, are also fully vaccinated, but the vaccines are still not approved for children younger than 12. So Meghan lied about her 10-year-old’s age. And this wasn’t her first time.
The dining room of the French ambassador’s residence is one of the most beautiful places in Washington, D.C., a confection of frothed plaster overlooking a garden in the poodle-clipped style the French so love. Before COVID-19, the room was known for the discussion sessions held there, hosted by a gracious series of ambassadors. It’s been a long time since anyone was able to enjoy an in-person event at the residence. So when invitations arrived to celebrate Constitution Day, September 17, at the residence in a lunchtime discussion with a former justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and an equally distinguished French judge, well, the RSVPs returned quickly.
The timing, however, was unfortunate, as it coincided with an angry upset in Franco-American relations. The United States had snatched a $90 billion submarine contract with Australia from French shipyards. To add (security policy) insult to the (lost jobs and revenues) injury, the redirected submarine contract would consolidate a new U.S.-U.K.-Australia naval defense agreement in the Indo-Pacific, an agreement into which France had not been invited.
What I learned about transcendence from a very boring 100-mile trek
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
Last month, a survey by the travel industry found that a majority of Americans changed their vacation plans this summer because of the continuing coronavirus pandemic. But not everyone canceled their vacations entirely; travel spending has been almost as high this summer as it was in the summer of 2019. Some would-be adventurers simply found ways to do the exotic things they’d planned to do overseas in less exotic places. One of my friends, for instance, went bungee jumping in North Carolina instead of Costa Rica.
For my vacation, I did the opposite: I went with my family to a fairly exotic place to do a distinctly unexotic thing. I went to Spain and took a very quiet 100-mile walk.
Some advocates on the left want America to talk about pregnancy and birth in gender-neutral terms. But this language change might not be so easy for the country to embrace.
Last year, a brand-new labor-and-delivery hospital opened on the well-to-do Upper East Side of New York City. Its name, the Alexandra Cohen Hospital for Women and Newborns, might strike most people as innocuous or straightforward. But to some people, the suggestion that a hospital where babies are born is for women is offensive, because transgender and nonbinary people who do not identify as women can also get pregnant and deliver babies.
Only niche groups tend to care about how Americans discuss gender and pregnancy—including whether it’s better to use the term pregnant people instead of pregnant women. But those groups care a lot. Representative Cori Bush of Missouri used the termbirthing people in a hearing, causing a mini-uproar on social media. “When we talk about ‘birthing people,’ we’re being inclusive. It’s that simple,” the pro-abortion-rights group NARAL tweeted in her defense. Others, however, see this kind of language as exclusionary because it erases women and mothers as worthy categories of identity. Ann Romney, the wife of Senator Mitt Romney, tweeted angrily in June, “The Biden administration diminishing motherhood to ‘birthing person’ is simply insulting to all moms.” It was the first time she had tweeted all year.
The general stayed inside the lines—barely. The real problem is that he was in that situation at all.
Did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, violate the Constitution? The answer, at least on the current available evidence, is no.
In a new book, Bob Woodward and Robert Costa write that Milley contacted his opposite number in China just before and just after the 2020 election. Milley, according to Woodward and Costa, was reaching out to General Li Zuocheng to calm jangled nerves in Beijing about the stability of the United States. Milley also reportedly called together a group of senior U.S. officers and made them affirm, one by one, that they understood that the procedure for the release of nuclear weapons had to include him.
A fusillade of hot takes greeted these revelations, almost all of them focusing on Milley’s contacts with Li. Many Republicans immediately interpreted Milley’s reassurances as betrayal and demanded that he resign or be fired. But it’s not just Republicans who are concerned: Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, whom no one would mistake for a Trump supporter, tweeted that Milley violated the core American precept of civilian control of the military and therefore must go.
Anyone who’d rather have COVID-19 than get vaccinated is taking two gambles: that immunity will stick around, and that symptoms won’t.
Immune cells can learn the vagaries of a particular infectious disease in two main ways. The first is bona fide infection, and it’s a lot like being schooled in a war zone, where any lesson in protection might come at a terrible cost. Vaccines, by contrast, safely introduce immune cells to only the harmless mimic of a microbe, the immunological equivalent of training guards to recognize invaders before they ever show their face. The first option might be more instructive and immersive—it is, after all, the real thing. But the second has a major advantage: It provides crucial intel in the absence of risk.
Some pathogens aren’t memorable to the body, no matter the form in which they’re introduced. But with SARS-CoV-2, we’ve been lucky: Both inoculationand infection can marshal stellar protection. Past tussles with the virus, in fact, seem so immunologically instructive that in many places, including several nations in the European Union, Israel, and the United Kingdom, they can grant access to restaurants, bars, and travel hubs galore, just as full vaccination does.
Conventional wisdom says that venting is cathartic and that we should never go to bed angry. But couples who save disagreements for scheduled meetings show the benefits of a more patient approach to conflict.
For decades, when Liz Cutler’s husband, Tom Kreutz, did something that bothered her, Cutler would sometimes pull out a scrap of paper from the back of her desk drawer. On it she would scribble down her grievances: maybe Kreutz had stayed late at work without giving her a heads-up, or maybe he’d allowed their kids to do something she considered risky. The list was Cutler’s way of honoring a promise she and her husband had made. They would talk about their frustrations only in scheduled meetings—which they held once a year for a time, and later, every three months. It’s a system they’ve adhered to for more than 40 years.
Any psychologist will tell you that conflict is both an inevitable and a vital part of a close relationship. The challenge—which can make the difference between a lasting, satisfying partnership and one that combusts—is figuring out how to manage conflict constructively.
About four episodes into the new season of Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, I stopped expecting it to have the qualities of a prestige television series—narrative complexity, emotional resonance, logic—and began simply appreciating it for what it is: one of the most batshit-expensive soap operas ever made. And that’s perfect. Ink-dark dramas in which Oscar winners suck wearily on vape pens or try to survive nuclear fallout in order to Say Something about modernity are a dime a dozen, the glut of the peak-TV harvest. What’s less common is the show Apple has inadvertently gifted us: a feast of high camp and late capitalism.
If you can meet The Morning Show on those terms, its second season is quite a ride. The first, which arrived after several years of extended hype and snarky commentary about its reported (and disputed) $15-million-an-episode price tag, was largely a critical disappointment, even if viewers loved it. Reimagined post-#MeToo to incorporate story lines about sexual harassment and abuses of power in network television, the show couldn’t quite balance its commitment to serious plot points with its extravagant impulses toward musical numbers and Machiavellian speechifying. Its writing was consistently laughable, if not surreal. I recently found a list I had made of some of the strangest lines from Season 1: “America loves me, and therefore I own America.” “It’s fun to smile. It feels good.” “So what can you do when you see all these little anchovies belly up in the water? You just keep on moving, and you brace yourself for the shitstorm.”
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