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Trump en un acto de campaña en noviembre.

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La juramentación de Donald Trump como presidente de EE.UU. se realizará este 20 de enero y aunque para él y su equipo es un día especial, puede que más de la mitad del país esté más interesada en otro tema: las protestas en su contra.

Según un reporte de Mashable más de la mitad del país está realizando búsquedas relacionadas con la frase “inauguration protests” (protestas en la inauguración o la juramentación), mientras que las búsquedas relacionadas con “attend inauguration” (asistir a la inauguración), resultaron minoritarias según los datos de Google Trends.

Aunque estas búsquedas pueden significar muchas cosas, lo cierto es que este es un nuevo indicador de la fuerte oposición con la que Trump asumirá el poder.

Los datos muestran que al menos en 31 estados se está googleando más sobre las protestas que sobre cómo asistir a la inauguración, que es una tendencia ligeramente más popular en 17 estados. El mapa deja claro además que algunos estados en donde ganó Trump también están interesados por las protestas.

Google Trends revela el interés por las protestas en contra de Trump.

Foto de Google

Según Mashable existen varias preguntas que se están haciendo a Google y que están relacionadas con la inauguración, entre ellas “¿Quién está boicoteando la inauguración?”, que está en el primer lugar. Es de resaltar que en el quinto lugar se encuentra una pregunta más preocupante: “¿Qué es una inauguración?

¿Qué es una inauguración? la quinta pregunta más importante relacionada con la juramentación de Trump.

Foto de Google

Google también muestra cuáles son los temas que hoy preocupan a los estadounidenses. Mientras que en 2008 durante la campaña electoral, que finalmente ganó Barack Obama, la mayor preocupación era la recesión económica, el buscador muestra que en la actualidad lo es Rusia, seguido por la inmigración, Obamacare, el empleo e ISIS.

Trump, que ha estado promocionando las entradas de la inauguración a través de anuncios de Facebook, ya ha dicho que no dejará su cuenta de Twitter para decir lo que quiera cuando quiera, aunque también utilizará la oficial.

Si quieres ver la toma de posesión del presidente número 45 de EE.UU., aquí te decimos cómo hacerlo.

Source Article from https://www.cnet.com/es/noticias/google-juramentacion-trump/

Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-predicts-shorter-race-rivals-dig-long-fight-n1004481

El que fuera ministro de Economía y Hacienda durante el primer Gobierno de Felipe González, entre 1982 y 1985, ha fallecido este lunes poco después del mediodía en la clínica Ruber Internacional de Madrid tras ser hospitalizado a primera hora de esta mañana en estado crítico como consecuencia de una embolia pulmonar. “D. Miguel Boyer Salvador ha ingresado por urgencias en el día de hoy en estado crítico, causado por un tromboembolismo pulmonar. El fallecimiento se ha producido una hora después de su ingreso”, reza el comunicado realizado por la clínica a petición de la familia.

El cuerpo del marido de Isabel Preysler será trasladado en las próximas horas al tanatorio de San Isidro de Madrid, donde durante la tarde se acercarán familiares y amigos del matrimonio para despedirse y dar sus condolencias al clan Boyer-Preysler.

En los últimos tiempos, la salud de Miguel Boyer se convirtió en el eje central de la vida de Isabel Preyler. El 27 febrero de 2012 el exministro fue ingresado durante dos meses en la Ruber de la calle Juan Bravo de Madrid como consecuencia de un derrame cerebral del que se recuperó, sin embargo, las consecuencias de aquel duro golpe le obligaron a apartarse de las responsabilidades que aún mantenía como consejero de Reyal Urbis y de Red Eléctrica de España debido a sus problemas de movilidad y lenguaje.

Boyer, junto a Iñaki Gabilondo y Eduardo Zaplana al fondo en enero de 2013 (Efe)

No fue hasta once meses después de sufrir el ictus cuando Miguel Boyer reapareció públicamente. Fue a finales de enero de 2013 en el coloquio “Un balance de 35 años de democracia. ¿Continuidad o Reforma?” que organizó el Club Siglo XXI y que fue presentado por Iñaki Gabilondo. Allí se encontró con varios compañeros socialistas como Carme Chacón y Pepe Blanco, además de con el popular Eduardo Zaplana. En este acto no le acompañó su mujer, lo que demostró que el exministro iba ganando en autonomía después de una lenta recuperación en la que la socialité ha estado a su lado en todo momento. 

Ana Boyer en los 90 (Gtres)

Nacido en San Juan de Luz (Francia) en 1939, Miguel Boyer tiene una hija con Isabel Preyler, Ana, que nació sólo tres meses después de casarse por lo civil en los juzgados de la calle Pradillo de Madrid. 

Además, y fruto de su primer matrimonio con la ginecóloga Elena Arnedo, con quien se casó en 1964 y de quien se divorció en 1985 cuando ya sonaban con fuerza los rumores de una relación afectiva con Preysler, el exministro tiene otros dos hijos, Miguel y Laura.

Divorciada en dos ocasiones y con dos hijos, Laura Boyer es la primogénita y la más rebelde de la familia, no sólo por las idas y venidas en su estado civil, sino por el contenido de su blog Literatura y Vida, donde habla de sexo, política y fe sin tapujos. La última ocasión en la que se dejó ver fue en febrero de 2012, cuando acudió a la clínica Ruber Internacional de Madrid a visitar a su padre tras el ictus. 

Source Article from http://www.vanitatis.elconfidencial.com/noticias/2014-09-29/muere-miguel-boyer-exministro-de-economia-y-marido-de-isabel-preysler_218216/

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Shares of aircraft-manufacturing company Boeing took a hit early this week, losing $26.6 billion in market value Monday and Tuesday, following a deadly crash of one of its 737 Max 8 airplanes in Ethiopia.

That model has since been grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration, as well as by aviation regulators around the world.

Still, if you invested in Boeing 10 years ago, that decision would have paid off: According to CNBC calculations, a $1,000 investment in 2009 would be worth more than $14,000 as of March 15, 2019, a total return over 1,000 percent. In the same time frame, the S&P 500 was up 270 percent. So, your $1,000 would be worth just over $3,700, by comparison.

Any individual stock can over- or under-perform, however, and past returns do not predict future results. Boeing paused delivery of 737 Max planes after the Ethiopia crash, which came less than five months after another deadly crash in Indonesia involving the same model.

This left several major airlines, including United, American and Southwest scrambling to rebook passengers and reassign planes. Those companies said they would waive ticket-change fees and fare differences for those affected by the FAA’s grounding order.

Flight-booking site Kayak even introduced a new search feature that allows users to exclude specific plane models, according to co-founder and chief executive officer Steve Hafner.

CNBC: Boeing stock as of Mar. 15, 2019

Fortunately for Boeing, while shares plunged more than 10 percent early this week, they ticked back up by as much as 3 percent Friday. And the company announced plans to roll out a software fix in the next few weeks.

Though, Bank of America analyst Ronald Epstein said Thursday that the fix could take a lot longer: “Once Boeing identifies the issue … the most likely scenario is the company will take about 3-6 months to come up with and certify the fix,” he said in a note.

Hafner says he expects the 737 models to be grounded only a few months and that travelers will likely be booking flights on them again soon: “They’re out of service on a temporary basis,” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Alley.” “In reality, airlines are still planning on flying those planes in the summer. People want security and comfort when they fly.”

In the meantime, Boeing said in a statement it will “continue to build 737 Max airplanes, while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system.”

If you’re looking to get into investing, expert investors like Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban suggest you start with index funds, which hold every stock in an index, offer low turnover rates, attendant fees and tax bills. They also fluctuate with the market to eliminate the risk of picking individual stocks.

Here’s a snapshot of how the markets look now.

Like this story? Subscribe to CNBC Make It on YouTube!

Don’t miss:

If you invested $1,000 in IBM 10 years ago, here’s how much you’d have now

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/if-you-put-1000-in-boeing-10-years-ago-heres-what-youd-have-now.html

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El nuevo muro de Facebook se ha puesto en marcha en seis países de forma experimental.

Facebook está buscando la manera de corregir la forma en la que las noticias aparecen en tu muro. Un experimento realizado en 6 países separa las publicaciones de tus amigos de la que realizan anunciantes y medios de comunicación y ha desatado la alarma entre estos.

El test, llamado Explore, se puso en marcha el pasado 19 de octubre en Sri Lanka, Camboya, Eslovaquia, Serbia, Guatemala y Bolivia y de momento no se conoce cuánto durará.

En estos países, los usuarios tienen que ir un paso más allá para ver los llamados “post públicos”, esto es, los que vienen de las páginas de Facebook de medios de comunicación o de empresas que no forman parte de tus preferencias.

Para acceder a un muro con noticias y anuncios los residentes en los citados países tendrán que apretar un nuevo botón y así acceder al denominado Explore Feed, el muro de anuncios y noticias.

Facebook sólo publicará anuncios y post de medios de comunicación en el mismo muro que ves la publicaciones de tus amigos mediante pago.

“Consecuencias catastróficas”

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Facebook

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Explorar es un test que está realizando Facebook para separar contenidos en tu muro.

Y esto es lo que ha causado alarma no sólo entre anunciantes, que hasta ahora tenían en estos países una plataforma de publicidad gratuita, sino entre algunos medios y periodistas de los países latinoamericanos en los que el experimento está en marcha.

Es el caso de Dina Fernández, editora guatemalteca del portal Soy502 que ha calificado de “catastróficas” las consecuencias.

Para la periodista, el nuevo experimento de Facebook beneficiará a las organizaciones más poderosas que pueden pagar para difundir su mensaje, en detrimento de las más pequeñas y con menos recursos.

“El peligro de que se difunda propaganda e instrumentalización política a través de las redes sociales es especialmente grave en países con democracias frágiles como el nuestro”, señaló Fernández en declaraciones recogidas por The Guardian.

Para Fernández, tanto periodistas como ciudadanos guatemaltecos se enfrentan a una “gran batalla para lograr ser escuchados” y renegarles la difusión por Facebook supondría limitar la amplitud de su mensaje.

En Bolivia, donde Facebook es junto con WhatsApp la red social más usada de acuerdo a la Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Tecnologías de Información y Comunicación, también se dejaron sentir los efectos de test de la compañía de Zuckerberg.

El especialista en redes sociales Marcelo Durán señaló al periódico boliviano La Prensa que el número de likes y visitas se redujo en un 90% en las páginas que fueron colocadas en un segundo muro y Sergio Guachalla, especialista en Marketing, dijo a este mismo diario que la publicidad de las empresas se redujo hasta un 75%.

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El tráfico y la interacción entre usuarios descendió en al menos tres de los países sometidos al experimento.

Estos expertos coinciden en que los grandes perjudicados son los medios de comunicación, empresas pequeñas e instituciones que utilizan la plataforma, pero que el usuario tiene más control sobre lo que ve (a no ser que las empresas paguen).

En otros países como Eslovaquia, la participación y las visitas cayeron un 60% en las empresas y medios afectados, según el portal CrowdTangle que documenta los movimientos en redes sociales.

Un experimento (de momento)

Desde que Facebook comunicó sus intenciones de modificar la forma en la que los usuarios acceden a las noticias siempre ha dicho que su intención es conocer mejor los gustos de los usuarios y enriquecer su experiencia.

Pero ante lapreocupaciónque esto ha desatado entre anunciantes y organizaciones en los países en los que se lleva a cabo el experimento, el responsable en Facebook de esta nueva herramienta, Adam Mosseri, ha tenido que publicar un post aclaratorio.

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Adam Mosseri es el responsable de producto de Facebook.

“El objetivo del test es entender si la gente prefiere tener el contenido público y personal en sitios distintos”, escribió.

Mosseri también añadió que: “Escucharemos lo que la gente dice sobre esta experiencia y si es algo que merece la pena llevar más adelante, pero por el momento no hay planes de extender esto más allá de los países en los que se está realizando el test o de hacer pagar por la distribución de noticias“.

Dado el papel que jugó Facebook en las pasadas elecciones de Estados Unidos el pasado año, algunos pueden pensar que la nueva herramienta de la red social es algo bueno. Uno ve sólo aquello que realmente quiere ver y los anuncios y noticias son identificados como tal y consultados a voluntad.

Pero para muchos Facebook ha mostrado las garras del lobo y ha dibujado un futuro aterrador: pagar por publicar contenido.

Source Article from http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-41762074



Ilustración: Jim Cooke

La sección Tendencias de Facebook incluye noticias que no son tendencia en Facebook, según un comunicado que la compañía ha publicado hoy.

La confesión se produjo después de que The Guardian publicara una serie de documentos internos, entre ellos una copia del manual “Directrices para la revisión de tendencias” con el que Facebook da formación a los empleados —conocidos internamente como news curators— que trabajan en la sección de tendencias. Como ya informó Gizmodo, la sección Tendencias de Facebook funciona en gran medida como una sala de redacción en la que los “curadores” pueden “inyectar” temas o ponerlos en una “lista negra”.

El vicepresidente de operaciones globales de Facebook Justin Osofsky ha dicho hoy que los temas que pueden incluirse en el módulo de tendencias son seleccionados en primer lugar por un algoritmo que “identifica los temas que recientemente se han disparado en popularidad en Facebook”.

Pero el algoritmo “también utiliza un rastreador web RSS externo para identificar noticias de última hora”, continúa Osofsky en su declaración.

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El comunicado de Osofsky parece contradecir las declaraciones que ofreció el vicepresidente de búsqueda de Facebook Tom Stocky el martes pasado en respuesta al artículo de Gizmodo. En aquel comunicado, Stocky dijo que el módulo de tendencias había sido “diseñado para mostrar lo que se comenta a cada momento en Facebook”. Stocky también dijo que “no insertamos historias artificialmente en los trending topics”. El comunicado de Stocky no reconoce el uso de un feed RSS para incluir temas que no estén generando ruido orgánico en Facebook.

Las directrices para la revisión de tendencias dadas a conocer hoy hacen referencia tanto a los temas “orgánicos” como “externos” que emergen del algoritmo para su inclusión en el módulo de tendencias. Los temas orgánicos indican que una noticia “genera un ruido significativamente mayor de lo normal en Facebook”, mientras que los temas externos “se detectan mediante el rastreo de los canales RSS de los principales sitios de noticias”.

“Utilizaron temas externos durante todo el tiempo que estuve trabajando allí”, dice un antiguo news curator que salió de Facebook a mediados de 2015 y que describe la declaración de Stocky de principios de esta semana como “una mentira”.

“La idea detrás de los temas externos era impulsar más noticias duras en los muros de la gente”, comenta este mismo individuo. “Fue una forma de inyectar noticias en el back-end del algoritmo de la lista de tendencias”.

Hasta hace poco, el funcionamiento del módulo de tendencias de Facebook ha sido mayormente opaco. En un artículo de 2015 de Recode se retrató como un módulo gobernado casi en su totalidad por un algoritmo. La propia página web de la compañía todavía describe el módulo de la siguiente manera:

Tendencias muestra una lista de temas y hashtags cuya popularidad ha aumentado recientemente en Facebook. Esta lista se personaliza en función de una serie de factores, que incluyen las páginas que has indicado que te gustan, tu lugar y los temas de actualidad de Facebook.

Facebook también dio a conocer una lista de las 1.000 publicaciones que constituyen las fuentes RSS a día de hoy.

Osofsky dijo que la compañía “continuará investigando las acusaciones” de la fuente de Gizmodo que dijo que las noticias conservadoras eran borradas de forma rutinaria antes de llegar a la sección de tendencias.

“Hasta la fecha no hemos encontrado pruebas de que Trending Topics haya sido manipulada con éxito, pero continuaremos revisando todas nuestras prácticas”.

Tendencias (o “Populares”) sólo está disponible en inglés para una selección de países


Síguenos también en Twitter, Facebook y Flipboard.

Source Article from http://es.gizmodo.com/facebook-admite-que-su-seccion-de-trending-topics-pub-1776375747

FALMOUTH, England – At what President Joe Biden calls a “defining” time for democracy, he makes his first international trip for the G-7 summit with a packed agenda.

Among the highlights: getting the global economy back on track in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that is still firmly entrenched in most parts of the world; climate change; defense and security; and easier – though no less important – talking about the solidarity, multilateralism and shared democratic values that many close European allies felt had all but vanished under former President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Biden will participate in the in the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, NATO in Brussels,  followed by a highly anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader he actively dislikes, in Geneva.

Biden will announce that the U.S. will purchase and donate 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low and lower middle-income countries and the African Union. The shots will be distributed through the global vaccine alliance known as COVAX, with 200 million to be shared this year and the remaining 300 million to be donated through the first half of 2022. 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/06/10/biden-meet-g-7-nato-allies-defining-moment-democracy/5288083001/

via press release:

NOTICIAS  TELEMUNDO  PRESENTS:

“MURIENDO POR CRUZAR,” AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE INCREASING NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT DEATHS ALONG THE BORDER, THIS SUNDAY, AUGUST 3 AT 6 P.M./5 C

Carmen Dominicci and Neida Sandoval present the Telemundo and The Weather Channel co-production

Miami – July 31, 2014 – Telemundo presents “Muriendo por Cruzar”, a documentary that investigates why increasing numbers of immigrants are dying while trying to cross the US-Mexican border near the city of Falfurrias, Texas, this Sunday, August 3 at 6PM/5 C.  The Telemundo and The Weather Channel co-production, presented by Noticias Telemundo journalists Carmen Dominicci and Neida Sandoval, reveals the obstacles immigrants face once they cross into US territory, including extreme weather conditions, as they try to evade the border patrol.  “Muriendo por Cruzar” is part of Noticias Telemundo’s special coverage of the crisis on the border and immigration reform.

 

“‘Muriendo por Cruzar’” dares to ask questions that reveal the actual conditions undocumented immigrants face as they try to start a new life in the United States,” said Alina Falcón, Telemundo’s Executive Vice President for News and Alternative Programming.  “Our collaboration with The Weather Channel was very productive. They have a unique expertise in covering the impact of weather on people’s lives, as we do in covering immigration reform and the border crisis. The result is a compelling documentary that exposes a harrowing reality.”

“Muriendo por Cruzar” is the first co-production by Telemundo and The Weather Channel.  Both networks are part of NBCUniversal.

Source Article from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2014/07/31/noticias-telemundo-presents-muriendo-por-cruzar-this-sunday-august-3-at-6pm/289119/

Retired two-star U.S. General Paul Eaton co-authored a recent op-ed about the fear that a coup could succeed after the 2024 elections.

Brent Stirton/Getty Images


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Retired two-star U.S. General Paul Eaton co-authored a recent op-ed about the fear that a coup could succeed after the 2024 elections.

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As the anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol approaches, three retired U.S. generals have warned that another insurrection could occur after the 2024 presidential election and the military could instigate it.

The generals – Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson – made their case in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed. “In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” they wrote.

Paul Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general and a senior adviser to VoteVets, spoke with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly earlier this week.

Below are the highlights of the conversation.

Edited for brevity and clarity.

How could a coup play out in 2024?

The real question is, does everybody understand who the duly elected president is? If that is not a clear cut understanding, that can infect the rank and file or at any level in the US military.

Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., read the final certification of Electoral College votes cast in November’s presidential election, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol.

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Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., read the final certification of Electoral College votes cast in November’s presidential election, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol.

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And we saw it when 124 retired generals and admirals signed a letter contesting the 2020 election. We’re concerned about that. And we’re interested in seeing mitigating measures applied to make sure that our military is better prepared for a contested election, should that happen in 2024.

How worried is he on a scale of 1 to 10?

I see it as low probability, high impact. I hesitate to put a number on it, but it’s an eventuality that we need to prepare for. In the military, we do a lot of war-gaming to ferret out what might happen. You may have heard of the Transition Integrity Project that occurred about six months before the last election. We played four scenarios. And what we did not play is a U.S. military compromised – not to the degree that the United States is compromised today, as far as 39% of the Republican Party refusing to accept President Biden as president – but a compromise nonetheless. So, we advocate that that particular scenario needs to be addressed in a future war game held well in advance of 2024.

A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 as Congress held a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.

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A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 as Congress held a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.

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Can the current Pentagon leadership handle it?

I’m a huge fan of Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin, a huge fan of the team that he has put together and the uniformed military under General Milley. They’re just superb. And I am confident that the best men and women in the U.S. and in our military will be outstanding. I just don’t want the doubt that has compromised or infected the greater population of the United States to infect our military.

What should the military do?

I had a conversation with somebody about my age and we were talking about civics lessons, liberal arts education, and the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And I believe that bears a re-teach to make sure that each and every 18-year-old American truly understands the Constitution of the United States, how we got there, how we developed it and what our forefathers wanted us to understand years down the road. That’s an important bit of education that I think that we need to re-address.

I believe that we need to wargame the possibility of a problem and what we are going to do. The fact that we were caught completely unprepared – militarily, and from a policing function – on January 6, is incomprehensible to me. Civilian control of the military is sacrosanct in the U.S. and that is a position that we need to reinforce.

A protester screams “Freedom” inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob on January 06, 2021. Retired U.S. General Paul Eaton suggests better civics lessons could help prevent another insurrection.

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A protester screams “Freedom” inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob on January 06, 2021. Retired U.S. General Paul Eaton suggests better civics lessons could help prevent another insurrection.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Are civics lessons ‘weak tea’ to stave off an insurrection?

A component of that – unsaid – is that we all know each other very well. And if there is any doubt in the loyalty and the willingness to follow the Oath of the United States, the support and defend part of the U.S. Constitution, then those folks need to be identified and addressed in some capacity. When you talk to a squad leader, a staff sergeant, a nine man Rifle Squad, he knows his men and women very, very well.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/12/31/1068930675/us-election-coup-january-6-military-constitution

You can find the latest on the investigation involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie hereDownload the WFLA app for breaking news push alerts and sign up for breaking news email alerts.

NORTH PORT, Fla. (WFLA) — The attorney for the Laundrie family, Steven Bertolino told 8 On Your Side a phone was purchased on Sept. 4 and Brian opened an account with AT&T for that phone

Bertolino says Brian left that phone at home the day he went for a hike in the Carlton Reserve 10 days later. The FBI now has the phone.

When asked if Laundrie had a phone while traveling out west with Petito, Bertolino told 8 On Your Side he didn’t know.

According to public records obtained by 8 On Your Side, Brian Laundrie’s mother checked into a campground at Fort De Soto Park on Sept. 6. The record of registered campers shows Roberta Laundrie checked into “Site 001-Waterfront” between Sept. 6 and Sept. 8.

A spokeswoman with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office says they gave surveillance video from the campground to the FBI Tuesday.

The FBI is still searching the Carlton Reserve with search teams are focusing on areas of water.

Not far from that area, a memorial for Gabby Petito is growing. People from all over the state and country and coming by to pay their respects.

“We have to keep the momentum going because eventually, he’s going to be found,” Ashley Sindaco said. “It just shows what impact somebody that nobody has met has left on this society and as America as a whole.”

A small memorial is also growing at the Laundrie’s home for Petito. A couple of protestors also returned Wednesday.

“It’s a nice reminder to the family that they should come forward and say something,” Sindaco said.

The FBI has not released that surveillance video from Fort De Soto. A spokeswoman says they’re not addressing specific questions about the investigation.

A spokeswoman with FBI Denver Division sent 8 On Your Side this statement:

Since this is an ongoing federal investigation, we cannot address specific questions about the investigation, nor can we offer any comment other than what is posted in our official statements on our Twitter feed (@FBIDenver).

Source Article from https://www.wfla.com/news/pinellas-county/fbi-looking-at-new-phone-purchased-by-brian-laundrie-reviewing-surveillance-video-from-fort-de-soto-campground/

OCEAN CITY, Md. (WJZ) — The National Weather Service issued a Tropical Storm Warning for multiple counties along Maryland’s Eastern Shore as Tropical Storm Elsa moves up the Atlantic Coast.

A tornado watch is in effect through 11 p.m. for Calvert, St. Mary’s, Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset and Worcester counties.

READ MORE: Ocean City, Eastern Shore Prepare For Tropical Storm Elsa, Officials Offer Tips To Residents

A tropical storm warning is also in effect for the Eastern Shore.

St. Mary’s County declared a state of emergency Thursday morning ahead of the storm. The state of emergency is a week long and will end at noon on July 13. The emergency order authorizes the Commissioner President “to take such measures as necessary to maximize the preservation of life and property, including the authority to require the evacuation of areas,” the county said.

The NWS anticipates peak winds to hit the region beginning on Thursday night.

A flash flood watch was issued by the NWS for Baltimore City and Cecil, Baltimore, Prince Georges, Anne Arundel, Charles, St. Mary’s and Calvert counties until 8 a.m. Friday. Dorchester, Wicomico, Somerset and Worcester counties are under a flash flood watch until 5 a.m. Friday.

While rain is expected in Baltimore city, heavier rain and wind is expected on the coast to the south and east.

Elsa’s center will make its closest pass to Maryland Thursday night into Friday morning. The latest from the National Hurricane Center is that Elsa has strengthened a bit. Maximums sustained winds are up from 45 mph to 50 mph.

Some uncertainty remains regarding how far north some of Elsa’s rain bands and tropical-storm-force winds will reach, but for now officials feel confident that areas south and east of Baltimore will catch the brunt of this storm. Portions of the lower Eastern Shore and far southern Maryland should prepare for tropical-storm-force winds, heavy rain and rough surf.

Wind was already picking up in Ocean City Thursday afternoon.

There is a chance for thunderstorms and showers beginning Thursday after 3 p.m. in Ocean City. The NWS said there is an 80% chance of heavy rain and wind in the area Thursday night into Friday, and on Friday there will also be a chance for Thunderstorms.

Wind gusts could reach as high as 36 mph Thursday. There is a slight chance for thunderstorms Friday night.

Stay up-to-date with the latest forecast by downloading the WJZ weather app.

Source Article from https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2021/07/08/elsa-tracker-tropical-storm-tornado-watch-eastern-shore-chesapeake-bay-maryland/

El Banco de España determina en un informe pericial remitido al juez de la Audiencia Nacional Fernando Andreu que las cuentas anuales que Bankia aprobó en marzo de 2012, bajo la presidencia de Rodrigo Rato, y las que reformuló en mayo de ese año, ya con José Ignacio Goirigolzarri al frente de la entidad, “no expresaban la imagen fiel” del banco.

El informe, que ha sido entregado por dos peritos del regulador y puesto a disposición de las partes del ‘caso Bankia’, señala que tanto en las cuentas de Rato, que presentaban unos beneficios de 309 millones de euros como en las de Goirigolzarri, que apuntaban a unas pérdidas de 2.979 millones, existían “ajustes de importancia material no contabilizados”.

En relación con la fusión de las siete entidades que formaron Bankia, los peritos señalan que el Sistema Integran de Protección (SIP) “se transformó en poco tiempo en una fusión de pleno derecho, pero los planes de negocio que justificaban la operación fallaron desde el principio, debido al deterioro del marco económico, los cambios normativos y la debilidad de las entidades integradas”.

Source Article from http://www.ondacero.es/noticias/banco-espana-dice-que-cuentas-rato-goirigolzarri-reflejaban-realidad-bankia_2014120400154.html

NEW YORK — Jared Kushner on Tuesday said he believes the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election have been “way more harmful to our democracy” than the interference itself.

“If you look what Russia did, you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent, it’s a terrible thing,” Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior adviser, said during the inaugural Time 100 summit here. “But I think the investigations and the speculation that’s happened for the last two years has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple Facebook ads.”

Russia did more than buy a “couple Facebook ads,” U.S. investigators have determined. Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice charged 13 Russians and three Russian entities for allegedly carrying out an elaborate plot to interfere in the 2016 election. The Russian operatives allegedly used fake social media accounts, created false advertisements and even traveled to the United States in an effort to support Trump’s White House bid — and to disparage his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Kremlin-linked troll farm Internet Research Agency also organized “dozens” of political rallies in the U.S. with the purpose of sowing political discord, according to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian election interference, which he called “sweeping and systematic.”

Facebook recently acknowledged that at least two networks linked to Russia spent about $160,000 on ads to promote its disinformation campaign. Kushner, who was an adviser to the Trump campaign and considered the architect of its social media operation, scoffed at the figure.

“I spent $160,000 every three hours during the campaign,” he said.

Sounding like his father-in-law, Kushner said the investigations into Russian interference in the election were an excuse by Trump’s opponents to try to explain his improbable victory.




“All these people thought Trump was gonna lose. They all predicted Trump was gonna lose. They were wrong,” Kushner said. “The American electorate in this great democratic system chose the opposite. And I think that instead of saying, ‘Oh wait, we got it wrong,’ they said, ‘Well, maybe it was Russia.’ And I think we’ve spent two years going through that nonsense.”

Kushner, who appears multiple times in Mueller’s report, downplayed a now infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting he attended with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have dirt on Clinton.

“We ran a very untraditional campaign,” Kushner said. “We had a lot of outsiders coming in.”

He also cited a text he sent during the meeting as proof the campaign did not get any dirt on Clinton.

“Lindsey Graham told me I had the best text message in the history of text messages when I was in that crazy Trump Tower meeting and I said ‘get me the hell out of here’ basically,” Kushner said. “It’s a meeting that if it hadn’t come up, I would’ve never thought about it again.”

He added: “The media spent so much time focusing on it, and frankly it’s just a big distraction for the country.”

President Trump, who is in Washington, apparently approved of Kushner’s performance.

“Great interview by Jared,” he tweeted. “Nice to have extraordinarily smart people serving our Country!”

On Monday, Trump tried to undermine the findings in the Mueller report by falsely suggesting no one close to him cooperated with the special counsel.

“Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller,” the president tweeted.

Kushner said he spent 9 hours being interviewed by Mueller’s team.

“When the whole notion of the Russia collusion narrative came up, I was the first person to say, ‘happy to participate in any investigations,'” Kushner said. “I thought the whole thing was nonsense.”

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Source Article from https://www.aol.com/article/news/2019/04/23/jared-kushner-russia-investigations-more-harmful-than-a-couple-of-facebook-ads/23716031/

They arrived a day or two after the Easter Sunday bombings and moved into a low-slung house behind a high wall and black metal gate, unloading boxes from a pale gray minivan.

But the neighbors in the seaside town of Sainthamaruthu soon began to suspect that something wasn’t right. Finally, a group of local residents asked the new arrivals — men, women and children — to leave town.

Within hours, the quiet lane was turned into a war zone.

On Friday, at least 15 people, including six children, were killed in bomb blasts and gunfire as Sri Lankan security forces closed in on the house.

Police believe the fiery explosions were triggered deliberately — the final violent acts of a group whose hideout had bombmaking items and black backpacks. Their preparations pointed to just one thing: possible plans for the next steps in a campaign of terror that began April 21 with bombings at churches that claimed more than 250 lives.

The identities of those killed in Sainthamaruthu were not immediately known or released. On Saturday, after the chaos, crime scene personnel in fluorescent vests roamed the area around the home collecting metal pellets, torn pieces of clothing and fragments of flesh.

The confrontation on Sri Lanka’s eastern shore — on the other side of the island from the capital, Colombo — came amid a nationwide security crackdown and searches for suspects across the country. Police have deployed new emergency powers to stop and question individuals and to conduct raids.

But the events that flushed out the suspects in Friday’s raids involved something simpler: neighborhood intuition.

It began when Imam Lateef, 54, the vice-chairman of the nearby Hijra Mosque, received a call from the landlord who had rented the home to the group. The landlord was worried about the people in the house. Their behavior was suspicious, Lateef said, and the landlord wanted them to leave.

Lateef and several other members of the mosque walked over to the house, along a canal crowded with lotus plants.

The man who answered the door said that the family was from Kattankudy, the hometown of Zahran Hashim, the mastermind of the attacks, and the base of National Thowheed Jamaath, the Islamist extremist group Hashim founded. The mosque delegation politely asked them to leave by the following day.

Meanwhile, after Friday prayers, Mohammed Rizwan, a local shopkeeper, was chatting with a group of friends about the new arrivals. They had heard they were from Kattankudy and resolved to check them out.

When Rizwan went by in the early evening Friday, he said that a man at the house told him to get out and pointed a gun at his chest. Rizwan took off running, grabbing the nearest police officer he could find — a local traffic cop.

Minutes later, the first blast shook the house.

A second blast followed. Then a third. But this time, special police units and soldiers were on the scene.

The blasts blew a hole in the roof and wall of the house, sending tiles flying. The security forces exchanged gunfire with a man carrying an AK-47 rifle. He was shot dead.

Amid the confusion, security forces also shot at three people in an auto-rickshaw that failed to heed warnings to stop, injuring two and killing one. It turned out the trio had no connection to the house or the attacks.

Earlier on Friday, police had raided a house about three miles from the rented home. There they found a cache of explosives, police said, plus the clothing and flag used by the Easter Sunday bombers to record a video professing allegiance to the Islamic State.

When the authorities entered the home in Sainthamaruthu at dawn on Saturday, they found the charred bodies of children in a corner of the room. They also discovered two survivors. An injured woman and toddler were taken to the hospital.

The evidence left behind was chilling. The home contained bombmaking equipment, including detonators, wires, plastic tubes for explosives and three identical, brand-new black backpacks.

Outside, the body of the man shot by the security forces — identified only as “Niyaz” by a local police official — still lay face down on the cobbled pavement as flies buzzed around the corpse. Ripped pieces of clothing were scattered on the ground together with bullet casings. Torn sheaves of paper with the hadith — the sayings of the prophet Muhammad — were strewn in two places.

In the still, humid air, crime scene personnel climbed ladders and began to scour the house’s roof for evidence. Meanwhile, police officers took two white plastic sheets and created a makeshift body bag, hoisting a corpse into the back of a navy blue police truck.

Nearby, hundreds of local residents had spent the morning sheltering at a school while they waited to be able to return to their homes. The entire town of Sainthamuruthu was under a curfew, with all roads closed and all shops shuttered.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena said Friday that strict new measures were being taken to identify and track people, similar to hard-line methods used during the civil war between separatist ethnic Tamils and the government that ended in 2009.

He said that about 70 individuals suspected of ties to the Islamic State had been arrested, and that another 70 suspects were still at large. On Saturday, the National Thowheed Jamaath, the Islamist extremist group linked to the Easter attacks, was banned.

“We had to declare an emergency situation to suppress terrorists and ensure a peaceful environment in the country,” the president said. “Every household in the country will be checked” and lists of all residents made to “ensure that no unknown person can live anywhere.”

Rizwan, the shopkeeper, expressed a sense of pride at his actions a day earlier.

“I feel like I did a brave thing when I went to see what was happening,” he said. Perhaps, he added, this would mark the end of the terror that has stalked Sri Lanka in recent days.

“We hope it’s over,” he said. “But we don’t know.”

Benislos Thushan and Pamela Constable in Colombo contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/sri-lanka-authorities-say-15-die-in-police-raid-at-home-of-suspected-terrorists/2019/04/27/de46eb64-686e-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html

(CNN)A children’s hospital in Louisiana is experiencing a wave of Covid-19 hospitalizations as the Delta variant pervades the region.

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/us/baton-rouge-childrens-hospital-surge/index.html

São Paulo – Using the creativity of citizens, promoting their integration and circulation are some of the solutions to the problems of large, medium and small cities. In a lecture delivered last Tuesday evening (14th) at the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in São Paulo, the coordinator of the Cultural Economics course at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), Ana Carla Fonseca Reis, outlined the key elements for cities to grow and solve their problems with popular involvement. Approximately 50 people watched the presentation, including the Arab Chamber president Marcelo Sallum and former director Mário Rizkallah.

Some examples of creative cities presented by the public administrator and economist include London, in the United Kingdom, Barcelona, in Spain, and Ankara, in Turkey. In Brazil, she mentioned Paraty, in Rio de Janeiro, and Guaramiranga, in Ceará. “These are cities that have set out to innovate their reality and popular culture from the inside out, i.e. from within the city to other localities,” she said.

Sérgio Tomisaki/Arab Chamber

Reis and Sallum: event showcased the potential cities have

According to Reis, Guaramiranga, in Ceará, is a city that used to live off of coffee farming. As traditional families left the small town and growing competition from state capital Fortaleza as a tour destination, the city became threatened by mounting problems. 

“However, they capitalized on their local culture of Northeastern musical rhythms; they have projects for developing young musicians; they host a jazz festival every year, during Carnival, of all times; and they have watched as their population soared from 5,000 to 15,000. Besides, they work in tandem with other nearby small towns,” she said.

“Cities can be creative regardless of their size, but those that wish to be or are creative often have clear-cut features: they innovate, for instance, by implementing a solid waste reuse system. They also value the connections between people. Whenever the people connect, they exchange ideas and experiences of their emotional ties with their cities or neighbourhoods; thereby, civil society participation increases. The third feature of these cities is that they value local culture and potential,” she asserted.

As case in points, she cited Peru, a country that has gone beyond its well-known tourist destinations such as Machu Picchu to tap into other aspects of its culture, such as cuisine. Ankara, in Turkey, has developed a project for local artisans to sell their items to tourists, and the government takes charge of shipping the product and insuring the purchase. Reis also mentioned object sharing in large cities, such as electric car rental in Lyon and Paris. “The culture of sharing, of having citizens use, but not own objects.”

In Brazil, Reis listed Paraty and Guaramiranga as the best examples of creative cities, but remarked that the concept is still met with challenges in the country. “They [the cities] don’t foster connections between their residents; they are still too divided into ‘ghettos.’ This remains a hurdle,” she claimed.

In terms of Arab cities, Reis cited Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, which has a plan of integrating leisure, culture and work activities by 2030. Abu Dhabi’s population should double by then, and therefore, said Reis, the city is investing in transformation by integrating activities and inhabitants. As an example, she discussed museums designed by award-winning architects that are currently under construction in a designated area within the city.

Reis’ presentation is part of the Arab Chamber Lecture Cycle, held on a regular basis and covering myriad topics. The next guest will be the historian Demétrio Magnoli, who will tackle progress and challenges for Brazil and the Mercosur. The meeting with Magnoli is set to take place on November 18th.

*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum

Source Article from http://www2.anba.com.br/noticia/21865535/sustainable-development/creativity-can-help-cities-solve-problems/

Updated 6:06 AM ET, Wed September 8, 2021

(CNN)Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — the only person in California history to win a gubernatorial race in a recall election — is aggressively neutral on the one coming up on September 14.

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Former CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: “It’s very dangerous” for Newsom

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Former Gov. Gray Davis: “No one goes through life without losing an election”

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Bustamante: “I was hoping to be sort of an insurance policy”

    Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/08/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-gavin-newsom-california-recall-podcast/index.html

    The White House’s counteroffer—to $1.7 trillion from $2.25 trillion—was meant to demonstrate that the administration remains eager to craft a deal with Republicans, even as liberal Democrats press Biden to forge ahead alone out of fear that he may be willing to give up too much during the negotiations.

    “This is the art of seeking common ground,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Friday’s press briefing. But she made clear the administration was unwilling to back down from its redlines to fund the bill, a point officials reiterated coming out of the meeting.

    Senate Republicans, however, did not leave Friday’s call optimistic about the fate of the bipartisan discussions. A spokesperson for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the lead negotiator, panned the White House’s counteroffer, calling it “well above the range of what can pass Congress with bipartisan support” and noting “vast differences” remain on many issues, including the definition of infrastructure, the price tag and pay-fors.

    “Based on today’s meeting, the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with President Biden,” Capito’s office said.

    The GOP’s problems with the counteroffer were found in its fine print. Instead of just slashing the overall overall cost, Biden proposed “shifting” spending on research and development, small business, supply chains and manufacturing into other proposals, including the Endless Frontier Act and the CHIPS Act. The president’s allies note that Republicans themselves are relying on accounting maneuvers to boost the overall number in their last proposal to far higher than it is in reality, making the large gap even larger.

    The new Biden infrastructure proposal also would cut broadband spending to match the Republicans’ latest offer, and cut investment in “roads, bridges and major projects” to get closer to the Republicans’ bottom line — a point an administration official involved in the talks characterized as ironic given the GOP’s insistence all along that the package focus heavily on improving “core” infrastructure — but a concession nonetheless.

    Administration officials stressed that Biden’s original proposal was justified to meet the country’s growing needs, after years in which prior presidents promised to tackle infrastructure (including President Donald Trump and his infamous infrastructure weeks) only to fail to get bills passed.

    The Biden White House said their adjustments were made in good faith and in the interest in finding common ground. Officials said it was now up to Republicans to come back with proposals of their own to bring the two sides closer.

    The current stalemate is only likely to increase calls from liberal Democrats to ditch Republicans and instead pursue reconciliation, which would allow Senate Democrats to muscle the package through without GOP support. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the Senate’s most conservative Democrat, has been pushing for bipartisan negotiations, but it’s not clear yet if failed talks with Republicans will be enough to convince him to move forward along party lines.

    “I’ve used this phrase before on the infrastructure, on the bipartisan effort: the fish or cut bait moment,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) this week. “I don’t know when that is precisely but I think for us there’s a real danger in pushing off the fish or cut bait date.”

    The White House and Senate Republicans met earlier in the week. But their Tuesday gathering yielded little progress, with the parties still struggling to reach consensus on a definition of infrastructure. Biden had set a target for “progress” on a sweeping infrastructure package by Memorial Day—a date that is rapidly approaching.

    Inside the White House, there’s an appetite to keep pushing on a deal past that date if they still believe that Capito is operating in good faith. But as of now, the two sides remain hundreds of billions of dollars apart and nowhere near agreeing on how to fund the investments. Biden is pushing to raise the corporate tax rate to pay for the package, a non-starter for Senate Republicans, who have instead suggested user fees, which the White House says would violate Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000.

    In a memo outlining their counteroffer, White House officials noted “concern” that the Republican proposal left out investments in areas like environmental remediation, veterans hospitals and construction, and workforce development and training. Psaki said the Republican offer had room for improvement.

    “The counteroffer also reflects our view that the Republican offer excludes entirely some proposals that are key to our competitiveness, key to investments in clean energy and in industries of the future, and rebuilding our workforce, including critical investments in our power sector, building and construction, workforce training, veterans hospital construction and the care economy,” Psaki said.

    The Biden administration’s counteroffer pushed for more funding for so-called “critical transportation” infrastructure like rail, pointing to China’s investment in “such projects.” It also proposed eliminating lead pipes and fund resilience projects in light of threats from climate change. But Psaki and others added that specifics will still be up for negotiation.

    “I’m not a mathematician, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. But obviously we proposed a package that was $500 billion less expensive, so it needs less pay-fors. But what that looks like will have to be a part of the negotiation,” she said.

    Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/21/white-house-cuts-infrastructure-17-trillion-490185



    DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

    This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross.

    When U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, there wasn’t a women’s bathroom near the House floor, and it would be several years before women were allowed to wear pants in the chamber. Things have changed since then. Pelosi has now led the Democratic Party’s House caucus for 18 years, and our guest at Time, national political correspondent Molly Ball, says she’s used her negotiating talents to outmaneuver President Trump repeatedly in policy battles.

    Paul’s new book traces Pelosi’s political skills back to her roots in her father’s Democratic machine in Baltimore. She describes how Pelosi outworked and outthought male rivals to ascend the leadership ladder in Congress, why she became the preferred target of Republicans in congressional elections and, somewhat surprisingly, why she found working with President Obama so difficult. Besides her work at Time, Molly Ball is a political analyst for CNN. Previously, she’s reported for The Atlantic, Politico and other media organizations. Her new book is called “Pelosi.” I spoke with Molly Ball from my home in Philadelphia. She was at her home in Arlington, Va.

    Well, Molly Ball, welcome to FRESH AIR. You’re working at home – right? – like everybody else, with three kids and your husband. And I’m interested in how reporting in Washington has changed with the pandemic. You know, this is a city that’s just full of, you know, tips and rumors and gossip and stories and all kinds of communication. A lot of it’s digital, but now people can’t really get together. How does it feel different?

    MOLLY BALL: Really, I think a lot of what you refer to in Washington occurs when people circulate – right? – when we are around each other, the reporters and our sources and the politicians and so on. And a lot of people find this kind of incestuous, but it is, for better or worse, a big way that that sort of gossip network that you describe is fueled. So that is all a little bit harder, to keep in touch with people and to sort of know what the scuttlebutt is. But also the kind of reporting I do – I’m not mainly a Capitol Hill correspondent. I do a lot of traveling around the country, meeting people, trying to, you know, witness the situation on the ground with my own eyes, and that’s completely stopped.

    DAVIES: So let’s talk about Nancy Pelosi. You know, many people’s image of Nancy Pelosi is that of a wealthy San Francisco liberal, which she is, but her political roots are really very different. Tell us about her background, her family.

    BALL: One of her mentors earlier in her career, Jack Murtha, used to say about her, don’t think she’s from San Francisco. She’s from Baltimore. And that’s both literally true and true in a deeper sense, right? Her father was a congressman from Baltimore and then became the mayor of Baltimore. He came out of the machine politics of Baltimore, a Democratic city. She was born in 1940, when her father was already in Congress. So literally from the day she was born, she was part of this very Catholic, very Democratic, very Italian family that was involved in the political life of the city and the nation.

    And that machine politics, as you know from Philadelphia, was very much about the sort of tribes and factions of the city. The different ethnicities all had their own little neighborhoods, and they all had a sort of boss who could deliver their votes, often in exchange for something. So when you see the kind of deal-maker that Nancy Pelosi is, when you see the kind of negotiating that she does on Capitol Hill, I think a lot of it does trace back to her roots in Baltimore.

    DAVIES: What about Nancy Pelosi’s mother? Tell us about her.

    BALL: Her mother’s very important to her, I think at least as important as her father. And one of the things I tried to do in the book was sort of restore the significance of her mother to her life. You know, I think inevitably because her father was a politician, her mother sort of gets erased from this narrative, but she was very much shaped by her mother. And she talks very frankly, which I think is interesting, about how stifled her mother was. Her mother had a lot of ambitions that she wasn’t able to fulfill simply because she was a woman. She wanted to be an auctioneer. She wanted to go to law school. She wanted to have her own business. And all of those dreams were thwarted because she had to stay home and raise the children and keep the house and because, quite frankly, her husband wouldn’t let her.

    There was a point where she had a business. She’d invented and patented a beauty product, and she wanted to market it nationally. But she needed her husband’s signature in order to do that, and he wouldn’t give it to her. So I think it shaped her that her mother was stifled in that way. But it also shaped her that her mother was a very strong and aggressive woman, a sort of – I don’t want to be stereotypical, but, you know, the sort of fiery Italian American mother who – there are family stories about how she once punched a poll worker in the face. She was known to – she once put LBJ in his place and told off Ronald Reagan. So this was not someone who was afraid to get in people’s faces, and I think that’s certainly a characteristic you also see in her daughter.

    DAVIES: You know, and the kind of urban machine politics that her family was involved in functions – you know, it’s about loyalty and favors, but it’s also just about an awful lot of hard work – street lists and knowing where your votes are and turning them out. And there’s a lot of hard work involved. Nancy Pelosi, then Nancy D’Alesandro, grew up when the machine was quite active. Did she play a role herself?

    BALL: She did. Her mother was responsible for a couple of things in the household as sort of the brains of the political operation. One was the Women’s Democratic Club that operated out of the basement, and they did a lot of that hard work you’re talking about – pounding the pavement, doing the precincts and making sure everything was in the right place. And then also the favor file, which is the other side of what you’re talking about, the sort of constituent services operation, where there was a list that was maintained in the family’s living room of all of the things – all the favors people needed from – whether it was their mayor or their congressman.

    And so from the time she was about 11, Nancy D’Alesandro was in charge of being in that living room and maintaining that favor file, telling people – answering the phone and telling them where they could go if they needed to get into city hospital or needed help getting housing or any of the sort of government services. So she was a very active part of that operation from a pretty early age.

    And I think the point you make about how hard that work is is important because it’s also very individual, right? This is politics at a very individual level where you know every single voter, and you know what they care about, and you know where they live, and you’re turning them out precinct by precinct, block by block. So I think that that’s really important to her sense of politics as well.

    DAVIES: So Nancy grows up, goes to Catholic school, goes to college and actually, after college, gets a job in a senator’s office, where, ironically, Steny Hoyer, who would later be her No. 2 in Congress for so many years, was also employed. This was sort of the dawn of the feminist wave of the ’60s. Did Nancy see her – Nancy D’Alesandro see herself as a career woman?

    BALL: I think she did. She, like her mother, wanted to go to law school and never ended up doing so. And she did take this job in the senator’s office. But she also met the man who would become her husband while they were both in college. And so she ended up, kind of like her mother, giving up all of those dreams in order to become a housewife.

    Now, she never stopped doing her political activities, being active in the Democratic Party, being a volunteer and pushing the stroller while distributing leaflets, but she didn’t immediately have a career – in fact, didn’t have a career until many, many years later, and it’s a sort of interesting irony of her life that even though she saw the sort of trap that her mother had fallen into, she ended up doing almost the same thing after she graduated from college.

    DAVIES: So she raised five children but stayed active in the party, held fundraisers at her house. How did she get into formal politics, into the Democratic Party in California?

    BALL: Well, her first ever real office – office with some sort of power, with some sort of vote – was the San Francisco Library Board in 1975. And I tell this story in the book of how the mayor at the time, Joe Alioto, called her up and asked her to take this spot on the San Francisco Library Commission. And she turned him down. She said, well, you know, I’m perfectly happy being a volunteer. I’m happy to help. I don’t need that kind of official position. And even though she considered him something of a chauvinist, a sort of old-fashioned man, he reprimanded her.

    He said, no. You’re doing the work. You should have something to show for it. You should have the power that comes with it. You should be able to make decisions. And this was really a revelation for her. And when she and I talked about it, she described it as a sort of feminist moment where she realized that, yes, she should be able to have that kind of power if she was going to be doing all the work. And everything sort of changed for her once she had that official position. She realized that, particularly as a woman, if you were just sort of talking, no one might listen to you. But if you had a vote, they had to respect you. They had to listen to your voice.

    DAVIES: She gets into Congress in 1987. And not many politicians make their first run at elected office for Congress and win. She, in a way, was kind of in the right place at the right time. A congressman died. His wife took the seat. She got colon cancer and said that Nancy should run for the seat. But she still had to win it. It was a field of 14 people, including one that was quite formidable. How’d she pull it off?

    BALL: Well, I think there are actually quite a few people in the Congress today who that’s their first office. But that’s sort of (laughter) another discussion. But yeah, she did have to fight for it despite having the deathbed endorsement of her friend, Sala Burton, who’d held the seat before her untimely death of colon cancer. And she really did model her operation on the politics that she learned in Baltimore, on counting every vote, on knowing the neighborhoods block by block and precinct by precinct.

    She knew the value of showing up. She was a tireless campaigner. She’d be up at 5 in the morning waving signs for the commuters. And she’d be out late at night, you know, speaking at a bingo parlor or a lady’s bridge club. And so her principal opponent was a man named Harry Britt, who was sort of the successor of the famous Harvey Milk, the tragically assassinated member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And this was at a time when the AIDS crisis was really coming on the national radar.

    And if elected, Harry Britt, her opponent, would have been the first openly gay man elected to Congress. So a lot of the campaign was about who could better represent the gay community. And Nancy Pelosi talked about all the connections she had, her ability to be effective in Washington. But her principal opponent’s argument was, we need to be represented by one of our own in Congress. And she won pretty narrowly. She won – there was – it was sort of two rounds of voting. And she won that first round by just a few thousand votes.

    DAVIES: The other big part of it was money, right? She raised a lot of money. And she, at this point, had family wealth to contribute, too.

    BALL: That’s right. Her husband was a banker and financier. They lived in New York for a few years before moving to his hometown in San Francisco. And he became quite successful. So even at that time in 1987, they were quite well-off. And yes, she put quite a lot of her own money into the race in addition to being able to raise funds. Because she had this background as a fundraiser, because she’d spent so much time raising money for other politicians, she was then able to call in a lot of those favors. And she outspent the entire rest of the field combined to win that race.

    DAVIES: You write that when she got to Congress, she already knew 200 representatives and senators personally and that many owed her a favor. That’s pretty remarkable for a freshman. Why was that?

    BALL: It’s very unusual for a freshman member of Congress. But she had helped so many people get to Congress. She had held all of these fundraisers in her home. Her house in San Francisco had become a sort of well-known stop on the fundraising circuit. So not just San Francisco politicians, but politicians from all over the country who were coming through California to raise money would stop at their home.

    She also spent a term as the finance chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, basically raising money for all of the Senate candidates in tough races in 1986. So that meant that she got to know a lot of senators and helped a lot of them. And a lot of them grew to respect her through that and also, perhaps, owed her a favor. So – and this was exactly what she ran on.

    Her slogan when she ran for office that first time was, a voice that will be heard. And it was all about her connections and her ability to be effective in Washington, which, if you think about it, is pretty odd for someone who’s never actually been in office before. In fact, one of her campaign consultants looked at this proposed slogan and said, wait a minute. We’re going to run a first-time candidate on this idea that they’re effective and accomplished? And the answer was, yes. That’s what we’re going to do. And it ended up working.

    DAVIES: Molly Ball is the national political correspondent for Time. Her new book is “Pelosi.” We’ll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN’S “WHEN WAR WAS KING”)

    DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. And we’re speaking with Molly Ball. She is the national political correspondent for Time and a political analyst on CNN. Her new book is called “Pelosi.”

    You know, a lot of people serve in Congress for decades but never become leaders. They are active on their committees. Nancy Pelosi decided, first, in 1988, she would run for one of these leadership posts, a whip. She stayed at it, eventually was elected the whip. She became the leader of the caucus in 2002. They were in the minority. So she told the post of minority leader and then eventually became speaker in 2007 after the Democrats won the majority in Congress in 2006. But running for these leadership posts is a little different from just serving in Congress. Tell us how you do it. How did she manage to win these internal battles for leadership?

    BALL: It requires building a lot of support among your colleagues. So that means raising money for your colleagues, campaigning for your colleagues, helping them get elected and stay elected. It means proving that you have the sort of chops to do the job, proving that you know the ins and outs of the policy, you know the way the House works and functions. But it’s a lot of just building those relationships.

    And interestingly, although she came from the liberal wing of the caucus, from a pretty early point in her career, she was building relationships with the more moderate and conservative Democrats in the House. And she became friends with a sort of crusty, old chauvinist from Pennsylvania, Jack Murtha, who was known for his work on defense spending. And because he saw something in her that made him take her seriously, he became a sort of crucial validator for her.

    You have to remember, when she got to the House in 1987, out of 435 members of the House, there were only 23 women. So she wasn’t really going to get anywhere by getting all the women in the House to vote for her. There just weren’t that many. She needed to get all the men to take her seriously. She needed to get them to see her as someone who could do this job and wasn’t just a sort of dilettante, as she was often caricatured. So getting those older and more conservative and male members to take her seriously and to see her as a force to be reckoned with was really crucial to her being able to win that position.

    DAVIES: Right. And, you know, you mentioned that in the 2000 congressional election cycle, she donated 3.9 million to other Democratic candidates. That’s certainly a way to win a lot of friends. The other thing was just the sheer level of work and the stamina she showed. What were her days like?

    BALL: She has always had a really remarkable amount of energy. She doesn’t need a lot of sleep. I’ve never seen her eat an entire meal (laughter). She seems to – she doesn’t drink coffee. She doesn’t drink alcohol. She seems to live mostly on dark chocolate and chocolate ice cream, which she eats every day. But she has this incredible level of energy. And she traces a lot of it to being a mother. And as a mother myself, I identify with this a little bit. I think you find, when you become a mother for the first time – much less when you have five children – that the amount of capacity that you thought you had just increases exponentially when you – just because it’s so much work to take care of small children.

    And so a lot of her energy derived from having been – having had five children in the space of six years, and having to raise this large family. That sort of makes you the leader of a caucus, in a way. And I think some of it is just natural. I think some of it has just got to be the way that she is naturally. I’ve actually asked her this question. I’m certainly not the first to ask, well, where do you get all this energy? How do you do it? And she’ll just give you this sort of blank look and say, well, I’m Italian. We have great stamina. And I think she really believes that she’s just genetically superior for being Italian.

    DAVIES: You know, the other interesting thing is about having – raising a large family and, like, being a leader in a congressional caucus is, you know, you end up having to be very, very efficient with your time and get things done and yet have enormous patience to deal with people who think they’re important and can throw tantrums and need to be taken care of.

    BALL: That’s right. When you think about it, politicians and toddlers have a lot in common, right?

    DAVIES: (Laughter).

    BALL: They’re egomaniacs. They’re self-centered. They’re unreasonable. They want everything and they want it now. And they’re not really interested in hearing why you need to get – you need them to do something else. So I do think that managing a caucus is a lot like managing a large family. And I think she did learn a lot from that. And, you know, a friend of Nancy Pelosi’s, when she was still a youngish mother, said she knew she was destined for success in politics when she saw all five children folding their own laundry.

    And the way she ran the house was disciplined. It was efficient. It was, you know, her – she hardly ever – I have a hard time believing this. But her children say she hardly ever had to scold them because she would just give them that cold glare of disappointment. And the shame that they would feel for disappointing her was enough to make them behave. And so I think you see that in the way she manages the House Democratic Caucus as well, that she doesn’t often have to bring the hammer down and really punish people because they’re just so afraid of disappointing her.

    DAVIES: Molly Ball is political correspondent for Time and an analyst for CNN. Her new book is “Pelosi.” She’ll be back to talk more about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s career after a break. And Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album by saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ trio. I’m Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF CARLA BLEY’S “BASEBALL”)

    DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. We’re speaking with Time national political correspondent Molly Ball, who’s written a book about U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Ball says Pelosi has used her political skill and negotiating talents to outmaneuver President Trump in several policy battles. Ball’s book is called “Pelosi.”

    You know, for the first several years that Nancy Pelosi was the leader of the Democratic caucus, she was there when the Democrats were in a minority, and so it was a matter of getting the most she could with Republicans who were in charge. And you tell a number of stories. One that comes to mind is when Tom DeLay, the congressman from Texas, called her to say that they had to reduce the number of Democrats on one of the committees after this had all been agreed to. And she really showed some spine. How did she respond to him?

    BALL: I love this answer. I love what she said to him when he told her that he was going to go back on this agreement she’d made with the Republican speaker at the time. She said, life on this planet as you know it will not be the same if you persist in this notion. So she was very much laying down a marker that said – and they tried to argue with her. They said, oh, we’ll go out and badmouth you in the media if you do this. She said, I don’t care. They said, well, actually, no, this is better for you. You get a larger percentage of the seats if the committee is smaller. She said, I don’t care. We had an agreement. We’re sticking to the agreement. And life as you know it will not be the same if you persist in this notion.

    So from the very beginning, she was a very tough leader. She was a very strong leader. I think she viewed the leaders who’d come before her as being a little bit weak-willed and letting people get away with too much. And so at various points as minority leader before becoming speaker, a lot of what she was doing was trying to instill a sense of party discipline and wake up the Democratic caucus to the idea that they needed to work as a unit if they were going to have any kind of leverage in negotiations with the majority. And it is still, I think, the No. 1 thing that she says to and about her caucus today. She says, our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.

    DAVIES: And we got to work as a team. It really is interesting because when you’re in the minority, you have to know how far you can push, right? I mean, and part of that involves knowing the circumstances in which the Republican leaders will need some Democratic votes because their own caucus was restive and some of them wouldn’t go along with leadership. And so it’s one thing to be tough and show steel, but to do it well, you really have to have done the homework and know exactly where you stand, where the votes are, right?

    BALL: That’s right. And I think the other sort of favorite word in Nancy Pelosi’s vocabulary is leverage. She always knows where those pressure points are, knows exactly what her leverage is. Sometimes it’s that, as you say, the opposition is divided, and that means that if the Democrats are unified, they have a lot of leverage because the majority needs their votes. Another thing is just knowing what the priorities are. So in many of the negotiations with the Republican majority in the last few years, she knew that they wanted to increase military spending. So in order to get that, she was going to require them to increase some domestic spending or to protect some domestic spending that the Democrats cared about. So knowing those pressure points, knowing what it is your opponent values in the negotiation, enables her to to maximize that leverage.

    And then just the fact that she is so effective – it becomes a sort of virtuous cycle, I guess you would say, that because she’s so successful at keeping the Democratic caucus united, it gives her a lot of credibility in that negotiation to say, I can bring along all of my votes. Can you do that? Because I haven’t seen you do that, but you’ve seen me do that a lot.

    DAVIES: In 2006, the Democrats get the majority in Congress. She then becomes speaker the following January. And then in 2008, Barack Obama wins the White House. And Pelosi is speaker at a time when the Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. And you have a president with an ambitious policy agenda. And there were things they took on like the Affordable Care Act. But it’s interesting that you write that one of the toughest things for her was dealing with President Obama. What was hard about that?

    BALL: I don’t think she would say that he was hard to deal with. I think she – they – the two of them became very close. And she cherished that relationship very much. And I think he came to respect her as well. But this was a common refrain during the Obama administration from Democrats in the House and Senate. They just never felt that Obama was fully engaged with the Congress and knew his way around the Congress. Having only been a senator for a few years, never having been in the House and, you know, not being the sort of schmoozer who is always having people over to the White House and wining and dining representatives and so on, many of the House Democrats were often frustrated with President Obama’s negotiating abilities, felt that he was giving away too much on the front end and wasn’t maximizing leverage. So if you can imagine, if you’re someone like Nancy Pelosi who values leverage, that’s going to be extremely frustrating.

    DAVIES: Right. Well, and she was frustrated, as many in Congress were, that the Obama administration would want Congress to actually draft some of these really critical pieces of legislation, almost as if – I think you write – the Democrats in Congress felt that the Obama team wanted to get credit for these policy initiatives but not get their hands dirty in actually doing the work of making things happen. And then I guess the other thing was that Obama tended to think he was going to get Republican support. And she would tell him, no, they will string you along and then vote against you and then blame Democrats for everything that goes wrong.

    BALL: That’s right. She had had a lot of experience watching how the Republicans did business and had become, I think, pretty appropriately cynical about their willingness to work in a bipartisan fashion. So pretty much from the beginning, you know, you mentioned that Obama came in with this ambitious policy agenda. He also, of course, came in with a crashing economy. And so the first order of business was to try to do something about that. And Obama really did think that because the situation was so dire and because he had run on this message of sort of uniting the country and because he came in with this very strong popularity, he thought that he could get some Republican support.

    But the Republicans pretty much decided at the outset that that was something they were not going to do. And Nancy Pelosi became a useful foil for them, in part because Obama was so popular, right? And they could always say, well, you know, we like Obama fine, but Nancy Pelosi and the Washington Democrats, they are the problem here. They’re the ones getting in the way. They’re the ones who won’t work with us. And it wasn’t true. She would’ve been willing to work across the aisle if she believed that they were really going to deal with her. But she also wasn’t naive enough to think that they were totally sincere in all of their protestations.

    DAVIES: What was Nancy Pelosi’s role in getting the Affordable Care Act passed?

    BALL: She was really instrumental to its passage, and I don’t think that her role has been fully appreciated. A lot of the histories of the Affordable Care Act have centered on President Obama or have centered on the challenge of getting it through the Senate. But she was key to getting it through the House. And not only that – when the Democrats lost their 60-vote majority in the Senate and had to essentially start from scratch, there were a lot of people in the White House in the Obama administration who wanted to give up, who thought that this just wasn’t going to be possible. It was too large a hill to climb, and it was looking politically toxic as well, and maybe they should toggle back their ambitions and try for something a little bit smaller, something that wouldn’t be truly universal but would maybe just increase the number of children with health insurance. And Nancy Pelosi was the one who in that meeting turned to President Obama and said, Mr. President, I know there are people urging you to take what she called the namby-pamby approach, and she was the one who stiffened his spine. Now, the president and his people will tell you that he never went wobbly, although there’s some evidence that perhaps he did, but she was the one who said, I will help you make this happen. Let’s not back down. We’ve come too far. Trying to get some form of universal access to health care was something that the Democrats had been trying to do for the better part of a century, and they were so close, and she was not going to let him give up at that moment.

    DAVIES: Molly Ball is national political correspondent for Time. Her new book is called “Pelosi.” We’ll continue our conversation after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

    (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

    DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. We’re speaking with Molly Ball. She’s national political correspondent for Time and a political analyst for CNN. Her new biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is called “Pelosi.”

    So the Democrats lost control of Congress in 2010. That made Nancy Pelosi now minority leader. And then in 2016, Donald Trump surprises everyone by winning the presidential election. She’s got a new president she’ll have to deal with. So how did she manage dealing with him? What approach did she take?

    BALL: Well, you have to remember that, first of all, nobody, including Donald Trump, expected him to win that election in 2016. So it was quite a jolt to everybody in politics, Nancy Pelosi included. And, also, nobody knew what to expect from him as president because he had said so many conflicting things in order to get elected, had had so many different personas from sort of conservative Republican to liberal New York Democrat. And he’d sold himself simultaneously as this fighter for the right and also as this deal-maker. And, in fact, people – a lot of people who voted for him saw him as more moderate than Hillary Clinton, someone who would be able to work across the aisle.

    So being the results-oriented, operational person that she is, Nancy Pelosi did not spend a lot of time recovering from the shock of Donald Trump’s election. She immediately started to think about, how can I deal with him? And they got on the phone, and he said some very nice things to her. And her very first thought, though, was, I have to protect the Affordable Care Act, because she knew that with Republicans, the only thing that had stopped Republicans from repealing the Affordable Care Act before was that President Obama would’ve vetoed it. But now that they had the majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency, it was a very real possibility. So she immediately kicked into high gear trying to ensure that the Affordable Care Act would not be repealed. And that was her very first priority.

    DAVIES: In 2018, the Democrats retook Congress with a new wave of enthusiasm and a new wave of women running for office and being elected to Congress. This presented a challenge for Nancy Pelosi. I mean, there were a lot of new people in Congress who didn’t know her as well, and she and the other two top leaders in Congress were all in their 70s and there was a rebellion of sorts. What convinced her she should stay on? How did she deal with this?

    BALL: She said after the 2016 election that if Hillary Clinton had won, she might have stepped down, she might have retired because there would be a woman at the table. Being the only woman leader – top leader of either party in Congress or the White House, she has spent most of her career being the only woman at the table when the president meets with the top leaders of Congress, and she believes that that’s really important. So some people don’t believe she actually would’ve stepped down. She certainly has a long record of refusing to step down, even after a loss. But she did say that she would’ve considered that and that she stayed in large part because she believed there needed to be a woman at that negotiating table.

    And then also, just her capabilities as a negotiator, seeing what the Democrats were going to be up against with the Republicans in power in both houses of Congress and the White House, believing that they needed the most capable person in those negotiations and believing that that was her.

    DAVIES: After the Democrats took control of the House in 2018 and then Pelosi would soon be speaker again, she had real leverage in dealing with Donald Trump, which didn’t happen in the first two years of his term. How did things change? There was an early meeting at which she made quite a statement.

    BALL: That’s right. Shortly after that 2018 election, you remember there was this high-stakes budget negotiation going on between the two parties that ended in a government shutdown. And before that, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer went to the White House to meet with the president. And Trump, as he’s done in a few of these settings, decided to invite the press to stay and film this negotiation that they thought was going to be private. And at one point, they’re going back and forth about things like the border wall and whether the government’s going to shut down.

    And Trump, sort of almost as an aside, says, well, you know, Nancy’s got a hard time right now because she doesn’t have a lot of support in her own party. He’s referring to the leadership battle that she was in to regain the speakership. And she immediately cuts him off, doesn’t let him finish and says, Mr. President, please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats.

    So she was interrupting him. She was putting him in his place. She was refusing to be sort of insulted in that way. And I think that made a big impression. But what made an even bigger impression was when she and Senator Schumer walked out of that meeting, walked out the doors of the White House. And she put on that reddish-orange coat and those round tortoiseshell sunglasses and just grinned a big grin.

    And there’s an – that image of that moment sort of instantly became iconic as the epitome of the woman who could put Trump in his place. And because there was this wave of women’s political activism that started with Trump’s election and has continued ever since, because there’s so much anger on the left toward Trump and the Trump administration, I think that image immediately caught fire as sort of the fighter that Democrats needed, the figure who they felt could finally really stand up for them and stand up to Trump. And that’s been her position ever since.

    DAVIES: You know, it’s interesting. You make the point a lot in the book of how results-oriented she is, you know? It isn’t – doesn’t matter whether you don’t like me or whether you make fun of me in public if we get important things done for the American people – and just tries not to get involved in all the emotional stuff that can get in the way. That said, did you ever see her lose her temper?

    BALL: There’s a little-known incident that’s a perfect illustration of this from 2014. So she’s minority leader at this time. The Republicans are in control of the House. And there’s some speeches going on, as they often are, on the floor of the House. And a Republican member of Congress, Tom Marino, starts sort of taunting her. He’s saying, you know, you could’ve fixed immigration when you were in control, Madam Speaker. But you didn’t do it. And he’s insulting her intelligence. He’s insulting her capacity.

    So he gets done speaking. And you can actually see, in a partial way, on, like, the C-SPAN recording of this, you can see her marching across the floor, chasing him down and wagging her finger at him. And what she’s saying is, you are an insignificant person. You’re an insignificant person. And he recounted this later sort of shocked that she – and her colleagues almost had to pull her away from him because she was so incensed by what he’d accused her of.

    DAVIES: I’m wondering if you can tell us a bit about how she’s going to deal with the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic. I mean, there are practical challenges. How does the House function? How can you exercise oversight over the executive branch without public hearings and staff being on sight? How do you vote? What do you see?

    BALL: Yeah. Obviously, it’s a massive public policy challenge. And it’s also a massive logistical challenge. And I don’t think the Congress has figured out either part of that yet. She’s been involved in the negotiations toward these four massive bills that have already been passed, spending nearly $3 trillion to try to keep, you know, workers and businesses and the health care system afloat. And the work there is not finished. I think she regards that as a partial success. She still thinks that more needs to be done.

    And in terms of the logistics, you know, the House is a very old-fashioned place. And there were some efforts to try to figure out a way for them to meet remotely or do something else. And that kind of got poleaxed bipartisanship, you could say, where the Republicans wouldn’t agree to it. And it’s become this whole highly charged political battle, as absolutely everything is these days.

    So we’ll see. We have, you know, the Senate coming back this week. The House is supposed to come back in some fashion next week. And it will be a real challenge to see whether they can manage these two simultaneous problems, both the policy problem – this is a Congress that wasn’t functioning particularly well before they had to stay home and wear masks – and also the unique logistical problems of the virus.

    DAVIES: Molly Ball, thank you so much for spending some time with us.

    BALL: Thank you so much for having me.

    DAVIES: Molly Ball is national political correspondent for Time and an analyst for CNN. Her new book is “Pelosi.” Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews a new album by saxophonist Dayna Stephens’ trio. He says their improvised grace seems oddly relevant now. This is FRESH AIR.

    (ROBBEN FORD AND BILL EVANS’ “PIXIES”)

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