The Daily 202 won’t publish on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.
Your weekly fix of nonpolitical political news
Poison in Hawaiian water, a “rare earths” trove in Sweden, a Catholic diocese going bankrupt and an Oklahoma Republican trying to pass a law forbidding the use of corporal punishment on special needs students in school: These are your weekly nonpolitical politics stories.
If you’re new here: The Daily 202 generally focuses on national politics and foreign policy. But as passionate believers in local news, and in redefining “politics” as something that hits closer to home than Beltway “Senator X Hates Senator Y” stories, we try to bring you a weekly mix of pieces with significant local, national, or international import.
Please keep sending your links to news coverage of political stories that are getting overlooked. They don’t have to be from this week! The submission link is right under this column. Make sure to say whether I can use your first name, last initial and location.
Water pollution in Hawaii
Reader Carol A. in Honolulu kindly reminded me to tune in to the latest in the Red Hill saga, which turns on a catastrophic late-2021 leak of 20,000 gallons of fuel at a Navy storage facility that poisoned a lot of drinking water on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.
A Navy investigation made public in July 2022 “revealed that shoddy management and human error caused fuel to leak into Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year, poisoning thousands of people and forcing military families to evacuate their homes for hotels,” the Associated Press reported.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s Sophie Cocke reported on Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency will hold two meetings next week at which the public can weigh in on a proposed settlement agreement with the Navy and Defense Logistics Agency.
Cocke notes the Hawaii Sierra Club and Honolulu’s Board of Waters Supply don’t like the deal, with BWS warning recently it “lacks details, clear timelines, strict penalties, and public transparency.”
The politics: Governmental accountability is a cornerstone of a functioning republic.
A ‘rare earths’ discovery in Sweden
A reader who wished to remain anonymous flagged this BBC piece with a pithy and punchy intro: “Europe’s largest deposit of rare earths — which are used from mobile phones to missiles — has been found in Sweden.”
Here’s how the Associated Press put it: “Sweden’s iron-ore miner LKAB said Thursday it has identified ‘significant deposits’ in Lapland of rare earth elements that are essential for the manufacture of smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines.
- “More than 1 million tons.”
- “According to LKAB, it’s the largest known deposit of its kind in Europe. But the company warned that it could take at least a decade before mining starts.”
The politics: the AP heralds the find as perhaps “[t]he beginning of the end of Europe’s dependency on China,” which provides about 98 percent of the European Union’s rare earths.
A Catholic diocese plans bankruptcy amid new abuse charges
Reader L.H. in Santa Rosa, Calif., brought my attention to the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Santa Rosa’s plans to declare bankruptcy as it faces a flood of new lawsuits over alleged sexual abuse.
Reporter Tori Gaines of the Bay Area’s KRON4 reported back in December:
“After Assembly Bill 218 lifted the statute of limitations for a three-year period, allowing victims to bring civil claims against the Diocese for sexual assault cases that occurred as early as 1962, more claims have come to light. The Diocese is now facing more than 130 sexual assault claims dating back to its establishment in 1962 until the present day.”
Gaines provided this additional context: “Thirty-one dioceses across the U.S. had filed bankruptcy by May of this year, according to the Penn State Law Library.”
The politics: Not just government, all powerful institutions (yes, even the news media) have to be held accountable in a healthy republic.
Corporal punishment and special needs kids
From reader Jackson S. in Arlington, Va., comes this from reporter Payton May of KOKH-TV in Oklahoma about a Republican state legislator, Rep. John Talley, who’s trying to outlaw corporal punishment of special needs kids in school. (There’s a rule against it but not a law.)
“In the most recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education from 2017-2018, students with disabilities served under the ‘Individuals with Disabilities Act’ were around 13% of enrollment nationwide, but 16.5% of the students who received corporal punishment,” May reported.
And he quoted Talley as saying: “Just over the last two years we’ve had 63 school districts, 455 times there has been a special needs student that has had corporal punishment used against them in the state of Oklahoma.” (Also, Oklahoma is one of 19 states that allow corporal punishment in schools.)
The politics: Whom we punish (and how and why and when and for what) is a very political question. Whom we educate, too.
See an important political story that doesn’t quite fit traditional politics coverage? Flag it for us here.
Biden hosting Japanese leader amid controversy over classified documents
“Today, President Biden is welcoming Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the White House for meetings in which Japan’s major military buildup and nuclear threats posed by China and North Korea are expected to be on the agenda. As Kishida visits Washington, he is dealing with the fallout back home from challenges including the recent resignations of four cabinet ministers,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
Trump Organization sentenced to pay $1.6 million penalty in tax fraud case
“The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office argued for the top possible financial punishment for the former president’s private company, describing egregious and deliberate long-term conduct that both benefited former president Donald Trump’s namesake company and the executives involved in the cheating,” Shayna Jacobs reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
House rebels pushed to change Congress. Will they make it harder to get things done?
“Republican and Democratic critics alike say the concessions — most of them part of an informal agreement between the 20 dissenters and McCarthy — will allow a small group of lawmakers to grind the legislative process to a halt. And the stakes are high in a year with not only a budget battle coming in the fall but also a looming deadline to raise the nation’s debt limit and avoid a catastrophic default,” Amy Gardner and Marianna Sotomayor report.
“After witnessing the difficulty of getting a majority of their colleagues to elect McCarthy as speaker, some Republicans privately worry that their razor-thin four-vote margin will make it difficult to reach consensus on several urgent fiscal matters that loom.”
Western tanks appear headed to Ukraine, breaking another taboo
“Western officials increasingly fear that Ukraine has only a narrow window to prepare to repel an anticipated Russian springtime offensive, and are moving fast to give the Ukrainians sophisticated weapons they had earlier refused to send for fear of provoking Moscow,” the New York Times’s Lara Jakes and Steven Erlanger report.
“Over the last few weeks, one barrier after another has fallen, starting with an agreement by the United States in late December to send a Patriot air-defense system. That was followed by a German commitment last week to provide a Patriot missile battery, and in the span of hours, France, Germany and the United States each promised to send armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine’s battlefields for the first time.”
FTC ban may be test of bipartisan opposition to noncompete clauses
“A proposal from the Federal Trade Commission to ban noncompete agreements aims to correct what some say is a harmful power imbalance between companies and employees, an issue prominent enough to have won over some members of the typically pro-business Republican Party,” Roll Call’s Ellen Meyers reports.
“The move, however, sets the stage for a fight — likely in the courts and potentially in Congress, if the pushback is strong — over whether the agency can legally intervene in what are essentially contracts between workers and their employers.”
The doctor won’t see you now: Covid winters are making long hospital waits the new normal
“As the United States enters its third full covid winter, a top administration official is warning that the permanence of the coronavirus in the disease landscape could mean brutal and long-lasting seasonal surges of cold-weather illnesses for years to come, resulting in hospitals struggling to care for non-covid emergencies and unable to give patients timely, lifesaving treatments,” Lena H. Sun and Joel Achenbach report.
Furor over documents creates unexpected political peril for Biden
“President Biden, facing a special counsel investigation amid new revelations of classified documents in his possession after the vice presidency, suddenly confronts a ballooning political problem that threatens to hamstring his agenda and blunt the momentum he hoped to seize at the halfway mark of his term,” Matt Viser, Marianna Sotomayor and Yasmeen Abutaleb report.
More, from CNN: Biden’s whirlwind final days as vice president had aides scrambling to close his White House office
Robert Hur, a ‘no nonsense’ former prosecutor, will examine Biden documents
“As a top attorney at the Justice Department during the Trump administration, Robert K. Hur was a key official overseeing and helping to manage the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference. He met regularly with Robert S. Mueller III’s team and reported back to department leaders,” Ann E. Marimow and Perry Stein report.
Why Japan is the latest ally moving Biden’s way
“[Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida] comes to the White House fresh off of outlining a plan for his country to shed its postwar constraints, both political and psychological, and increase its defense spending and boost military capabilities to not just deter attacks but to strike enemies if necessary. It’s a profound shift for Japan, long averse to militarization and wary of getting dragged into global conflicts,” Politico’s Eli Stokols, Phelim Kine and Jonathan Lemire report.
Are book bans discrimination? Biden administration to test new legal theory.
“If the government finds in the ACLU’s favor, the determination could have implications for schools nationwide, experts said, forcing libraries to stock more books about LGBTQ individuals and requiring administrators, amid a rising tide of book challenges and bans, to develop procedures ensuring student access to books that some Americans, especially right-leaning parents, deem unacceptable.” Hannah Natanson reports.
How inflation slowed in December, visualized
“Inflation eased again in December, giving relief to households and businesses nationwide and offering more assurance to economic policymakers that steep price increases are pulling back without triggering massive consequences for the broader economy — so far,” Rachel Siegel reports.
Ro Khanna says he’s looking at the Senate. His allies are talking about the White House.
“Khanna has retained consultants who are veterans of New Hampshire’s primary and Nevada’s. He paid one Iowa firm as well, before the Democratic National Committee made plans to revoke the state’s first-in-the-nation status. He’s also begun to more forcefully draw contrasts with potential political rivals, chief among them transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg,” Politico’s Holly Otterbein and Adam Wren report.
“Those close to Khanna say he’s keeping his options open ahead of a potential presidential run in 2028 or beyond. But others in his orbit are talking about an even more compressed timeline: running in 2024 if President Joe Biden decided not to.”
Santos says ‘I’ve lived an honest life’ amid calls for him to resign
“Santos appeared on Stephen K. Bannon’s far-right podcast and responded to a sympathetic questioner — Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). The freshman congressman struck a defiant tone and cast himself as an underdog locked in a battle with establishment forces that do not serve the public. He dismissed criticisms he’s received, saying that it would be up to the voters to decide his fate ‘in two years,’” Azi Paybarah reports.
“Look, I’ve worked my entire life,” Santos said. “I’ve lived an honest life. I’ve never been accused of, of any bad doings so, you know, it’s my, it’s the equity of my hard working self, and I’ve invested inside of me.”
At 11:15 a.m., Biden welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the White House for a working lunch and bilateral meeting.
1:45 p.m.: Biden will depart the White House at 1:45 p.m. for New Castle, Del. He will arrive at 2:40 p.m.
Speakers of the House, they’re just like us
Thanks for reading, and happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’ll see you Tuesday.
