SRINAGAR: Kashmiris are once again facing exorbitant airfare prices ahead of the busy travel season, with some paying two to three times the usual fees to fly from Srinagar to Delhi. Typically, this flight would cost between Rs 3000 and Rs 5000, but the current prices range from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000.
Even Haj pilgrims are not immune to these high prices, with those departing from the Srinagar Embarkation Point (EP) having to pay Rs 50,000 more than those leaving from the Delhi EP. The price hike has prompted criticism from some quarters, who accuse the airlines of profiting unfairly at the expense of the public.
Senior CPI (M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami took to Twitter to denounce the increase in airfare prices. “Airlines are arbitrarily raising fares, leaving travellers in distress,” he tweeted. “Even Haj pilgrims are being forced to pay more. The tentative Haj amount payable by pilgrims at the Srinagar Embarkation Point (EP) is Rs 50,000 higher than that for pilgrims embarking from Delhi EP.”
During the 2023 Hajj conference, Smriti Zubin Irani, the Minister for Minority Affairs, announced that Indian citizens travelling to Saudi Arabia for Hajj would pay at least Rs 1 lakh less than the previous cost.
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While its far from certain how, exactly, the Treasury Department would handle a default — including whether it would prioritize certain payments or delay paying the government’s bills — the think tank noted that about $50 billion in Social Security benefits are set to go out in the first half of June, in addition to more than $20 billion in payments to Medicaid providers, $6 billion in federal salaries, $12 billion in veterans benefits and $1 billion in SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps.
And those hugely significant payments are just a few that could be affected, the Bipartisan Policy Center cautioned, and don’t represent an “exhaustive” list “of all cash flows on a particular day.”
The Biden administration has already dismissed the untested idea of paying some bills but not others, arguing that it would be unfair to average Americans, cause widespread economic disruption and prove logistically impossible. A more likely scenario, in the event of a default, is that Treasury would choose to delay all bills, waiting until there’s enough revenue to cover all payments for any given day, the Bipartisan Policy Center said.
The think tank’s new projection piles further urgency onto Tuesday’s debt limit meeting at the White House, despite slim prospects for a major breakthrough between Democrats insisting on a straightforward hike and Republicans pushing for major concessions in return for their debt votes. What remains unclear, though, is whether the Treasury Department can limp along paying the bills until June 15, when quarterly tax receipts would provide a cash infusion and likely stave off default through the end of next month.
If Treasury can hold off a default until the end of June, it would be able to tap into about $145 billion in new “extraordinary measures,” buying the government a little more borrowing power into the summer. The coming weeks will offer more clarity about whether Treasury can make it to mid-June and give Congress and the White House a longer ramp to negotiate a debt limit deal, said Shai Akabas, BPC’s director of economic policy.
“I still don’t think now is the time for panic, but it’s certainly time to start getting concerned,” Akabas said, noting that Treasury “is skating on very thin ice” next month due to low cash flows.
The Treasury cash crunch that could cripple the U.S. economy in the coming weeks stems in part from a disappointing tax season, mixed with delayed tax filing deadlines for residents of states like California that sit in designated disaster areas, Akabas said.
Other estimates that point to a potential debt catastrophe in early June also underscore that considerable variability in the X-date will remain — until perhaps just days before the U.S. would officially default — thanks to the often unpredictable nature of federal cash flows.
After Yellen issued her warning last week, the independent Congressional Budget Office also said it sees “a significantly greater risk that the Treasury will run out of funds in early June.”
Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, told senators during a Budget Committee hearing on Thursday that the X-date could fall on June 8. He added that Yellen’s early warning of June 1 is also very possible, as is a “best case scenario” of Aug. 8.
The distress signals from government and outside forecasters have done nothing to jumpstart talks between the White House, which is insisting on a “clean” debt limit increase, and Republicans, who are demanding spending cuts in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap. The Biden administration has refused to negotiate, vowing to keep government funding on a separate track.
A number of Republicans aren’t feeling the pressure either, viewing Yellen’s early June projection as nothing more than a political ploy aimed at squeezing the GOP to swallow a clean debt hike. Akabas said Yellen’s warning is consistent with how the Bipartisan Policy Center is analyzing the situation, however, noting that “no risk is too small a risk to flag.”
“Yeah, I don’t think she’s playing games,” Zandi concurred in an interview last week.
Experts say that financial markets are starting to signal trouble ahead amid the debt standoff, particularly among yields in short-term Treasury securities, and that those cracks will only start to worsen as the country lurches closer to the limit. The U.S. is also at risk of another credit rating downgrade, a painful consequence of the debt ceiling standoff that gripped Washington more than a decade ago.
Pressure from the markets is what may ultimately force action, Zandi said.
“I don’t think lawmakers will act until they’re pushed to act by the stock market and the bond market saying, ‘If you guys don’t, this is what’s going to happen’,” Zandi said. “There’s going to be a lot of red on the screen, a lot of 401Ks are going to be diminished and there’s going to be a lot of angry people.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: Parents in Kashmir have raised concerns about abrupt increases in annual fees for the current academic session at Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson higher secondary school. They claim that the school has increased fees by over Rs 2000 without the approval of the school fee fixation committee, and without consulting with parents.
“In this era when business in the Kashmir valley has shuddered, Tyndale Biscoe and Mallinson higher secondary school enhanced the annual fee,” parents claimed.
A group of parents has called the increase arbitrary and fears that the school will continue to raise fees annually if they don’t protest. The school has also charged additional Rs 3000 for summer camp, which was previously included in the annual fee.
Attempts to contact school authorities for comment have been unsuccessful.
Reports suggest that other private schools, even those with lower student enrolment and fewer facilities, have also increased their fees.
Director of Education in Kashmir, Mr. Tasaduq Hussain, has stated that schools must charge fees based on the facilities they offer, and parents should be able to pay in instalments. He has also warned that action will be taken against schools that charge extra fees. [KNT]
But with talks set to pick up steam, the New York Democrat could soon be playing a more pivotal role. Should a compromise bill be reached between the White House and congressional GOP leadership, it would almost assuredly require some — if not many — House Democratic votes to get through that chamber.
Two years ago, the solution for Biden would have been easy: Let then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the premier vote wrangler of her generation — do the work. Now it’s on Jeffries, someone the White House is still getting to know. The two only had their first known substantive meeting this past January, when Biden huddled with the top Democratic leaders at the start of the new Congress.
In short, the first pivotal test of his and Biden’s ability to work together could take place with the global economy on the line. And how that goes will provide an early glimpse of what Democrats hope will be the dominant partnership in Washington in 2024 if Biden wins a second term and Democrats win back the House. Not everyone in the party is sure of what to expect.
“All of this is going to need a level of coordination we haven’t yet seen,” said a senior Democratic House aide. “This will be the first time things are tested.”
Jeffries, the first Black lawmaker to ever lead a party in Congress, is nearly 30 years Biden’s junior — he was all of 2 years old when Biden arrived in Washington for his first Senate term.
Their lack of shared history is evident in how little the two have talked about each other in public. For a man who loves to riff on the political leaders he knows well, the only anecdote Biden has shared publicly about Jeffries is that, as vice president, he campaigned for him in 2012. Jeffries returned the favor during Biden’s presidential race in 2020.
Two days before the election as they campaigned together outside Philadelphia, the two men engaged in small talk that quickly turned serious, as reported in “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.” Biden warned that if they don’t win, “I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.”
Neither party would say how frequently Jeffries and Biden communicate directly. But they have held at least two calls — one of which has not been previously reported — in late April that included Schumer as the debt limit debate ramped up, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
In interviews with a dozen lawmakers, senior aides and administration officials, a picture is painted of a relationship that’s been largely positive (with some brief missteps) but still very much developing. Those close to Jeffries and Biden say that communication is frequent between both camps from principals to senior staff. They point to their similar messaging and strategy on debt limit — so far. Jeffries is also in regular contact with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients through meetings and calls. The two had a long working lunch two weeks ago to discuss the debt limit, according to a senior administration official granted anonymity to speak freely.
The president “has a strong relationship with Leader Jeffries and a great deal of respect for the masterful job he’s doing as head of the House Democrats and holding Republicans accountable for their extreme MAGA agenda, like forcing the most draconian cuts to veterans in American history in order to cut taxes for the rich,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
In a statement to POLITICO, Jeffries praised Biden.
“He’s a good man, visionary leader and transformational president who has been there for me since I arrived in Congress,” he said. “House Democrats look forward to our continued work together to make life better for everyday Americans.”
Overshadowing the Biden-Jeffries relationship is the absence of Pelosi. For years — decades even — Biden world and its Democratic predecessor were able to rely on Pelosi’s political acumen to help shepherd tough bills and must pass legislation through that chamber. The trust built over time was so profound that it altered White House whip operations. In Nancy we trust, the saying went.
Jeffries, in some ways, is just now building a working relationship with the Biden White House, though Louisa Terrell, director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, said Biden’s relationship with Pelosi helped lay the foundation for what’s being built now.
“We felt like we had built a scaffolding around how we work together and the ease in which the president could pick up the phone, the ease in which we all did our work together, and we went right into the 118th with that,” Terrell said in an interview. “We have a proof point” that it can be productive, she said, pointing to the legislative accomplishments of the last Congress, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan infrastructure law and semiconductor policy.
Still, there is evidence of growing pains. Back-to-back episodes of mixed messages on Biden’s position on high profile legislation earlier this year rankled House Democrats who felt the White House blindsided them — one on a GOP-backed bid to repeal changes to the D.C. criminal code and the other on efforts related to Covid restrictions.
Privately, rank-and-file House members and senior aides blamed the White House for misreading the potency of the issues. They call the incidents frustrating but have largely moved on. Since then, the White House has provided clear and early Statements of Administration Policy on hot-button Republican bills, including legislation to prohibit transgender girls from participating in women’s sports.
Jeffries refused to criticize the White House in either instance. When pressed by CNN shortly after the two bills moved, he described Democrats as “incredibly unified.”
Terrell also pointed to unified messaging on more recent policies, such as the Texas ruling on abortion medication, as proof of that positive relationship.
“What I really care about is: Are we all talking to each other? Are they getting the information they need? Are we hearing from them and what they’re hearing from their constituents? How do we fight in these really hard fights and frankly, how do we take back the House?” she said.
To that end, the White House legislative staff participates in at least seven regular “check-ins” with House leadership staff and seven weekly meetings with various groups, including House staff directors and caucuses.
Biden has told leadership and rank-and-file members to use an older means of technology to communicate with the White House.
“We’ve heard the president say: you literally have the bat phone, please call anytime,” Terrell said. “My door’s always open to you. My phone is always open to you. I know how meaningful it is to [have a] back and forth.”
Jeffries’ first true test as minority leader will be ensuring House Democrats stay aligned in backing Biden’s position against bargaining on raising the debt limit. The more significant obstacle will come much closer to the so-called X-date — when the government runs out of money and can’t pay its bills.
Before Tuesday’s meeting was arranged, a handful of moderate Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, broke ranks publicly and said Biden needs to get to the negotiating table. Ahead of the meeting, Democrats are largely aligned in arguing that Republicans should lift the debt ceiling without conditions and then hold a separate negotiation on the budget.
Only three weeks out from default, Jeffries refused to commit House Democrats to supporting any deal struck between Biden and McCarthy but he insisted they’re in line with the president.
“We’re in lockstep right now in terms of the path forward that President Biden laid out,” he said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” “Ultimately, everyone evaluates on the merits, on any particular piece of legislation, that is presented to us.”
If a deal is hatched, Biden will almost certainly need at least some votes from House Democrats, as House Republicans are likely to balk at a compromise that moves substantially off of the bill that they passed.
At that juncture, Jeffries brings some attributes to the table. He has a working relationship with McCarthy, including texting and coordinating on some joint statements, such as a recent statement calling on Russia to release political prisoners Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.
He also has strong support among his rank-and-file.
“Hakeem’s got a good relationship with everyone in the caucus,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.). Comparing the Senate minority party with the House minority, “McConnell’s sort of backed away, and Hakeem’s been engaged. … I think Hakeem’s the right guy.”
While allies acknowledge that Jeffries — and his relationship with Biden — has yet to be tested and he will likely face difficult comparisons to Pelosi as he moves forward, there is a willingness within the caucus to give him space and trust.
“Jeffries has done a great job so far,” said Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a fellow New York Democrat. “We’re going to have to find common ground and collaboration; he is clear eyed about that. He’s not going to bet and risk destroying our economy or cutting things to the most vulnerable people among us.”
Bowman said he’s confident Jeffries and Biden are on the same page. And he pushed back on the idea that the new leadership role or the high-stakes fiscal standoff have put any new amount of pressure on him.
“He’s been a Black man in America his entire life. He’s had to operate in white patriarchal spaces,” he said. “It’s not always easy for people of color and women to operate in those spaces and thrive — he has done so. I’m sure his approach is: I gotta always bring my A game.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
What’s lacking here is any assurance that those being surveyed are familiar enough to accurately rate the outlets they’ve been asked to judge. Almost nobody — not even press critics — keeps a close enough tab on 56 outlets, at least a dozen of which are paywalled or require a cable subscription, to render a fair appraisal of all of them. We all consume media in our own bubbles. And even though the survey, to its credit, has removed from its calculations responses who say an outlet is neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy, or answer that they don’t know, we have no way of knowing how many of the 1,500 respondents took wild, uninformed stabs at rating the outlets.
In times like these, there’s value in measuring trust, but this poll, which is destined to become the talk of cable news and op-ed pages, does a poor job of putting a yardstick to how outlets are perceived. Allowing respondents to judge the trustworthiness of outlets without determining how often they consume them is like asking a kid to rate the flavors from the Baskin-Robbins library he’s never tasted.
For instance, PBS and the BBC rank at the top of the trust chart, just under the Weather Channel. But the survey gives us no way of knowing whether the poll respondents ever watch PBS news or sip from the BBC faucet. Maybe they’ve expressed “trust” in the BBC because its prestige hangs like vapor in the cultural air we all breathe, and they reflexively say they trust the BBC even though they rarely read BBC News or tune their TVs to it.
Scrolling down the chart, another flaw emerges: Legacy outlets like Forbes, Time, the New York Times, the three broadcast networks and Reuters collected higher ratings than relative newcomers like the Hill, Axios, Slate, Yahoo News and the Washington Examiner. It’s fair to ask, as with the BBC example, what question respondents are answering.
Are low-sophistication news consumers merely expressing name recognition, not an assessment of trustworthiness? A perfect example of this would be Newsweek’s rating, which is higher than that of Bloomberg News. Newsweek was a storied news brand when owned by the Graham family, but its reputation has rightly suffered under its new owners. (See Daniel Tovrov’s piece in the Columbia Journalism Review and Alex Shepard’s in the New Republic.) No impartial, informed judge of news would ever rank today’s Newsweek over the data-rich pages of Bloomberg News. But there it is.
How much trust is locked up in how the outlets’ names sound? The Economist calls to mind a place where business experts working in an ivory tower measure supply-demand curves with a micrometer. POLITICO, which rates lower than the Economist, might have gotten docked a couple of points because it sounds to the naïve ear like a trade association magazine for invidious politicians (which it isn’t, trust me!). A different impression would surely result if a new reader were exposed to several months’ worth of each.
The survey does produce some results that seem self-evident. Democrats trust MSNBC more than Republicans, and Republicans trust Fox News more than Democrats. But does it make sense that Democrats trust Infowars more than Republicans do CNN? What exactly is being measured here? Please send an explanation to the email address below.
Another unsurprising result is that, in general, Democrats appear to trust news media more than do Republicans. This might reflect the fact that so many of the 56 outlets under examination are liberal or relatively centrist in their orientation.
But then there are weird outliers, such as Democrats giving the conservative Daily Caller a higher trust score than their Republican kin do. Likewise, what does it mean that Democrats give trust scores to conservative outlets like the Federalist, Infowars, the National Review and the New York Post that are within shouting distance of Republican scores? Maybe it’s a function of Fox News’ decades-long coaching of its audience not to “trust the media,” and therefore that outside of the established TV brands of Fox News, Newsmax and OAN, Republicans refuse to automatically bestow trust on any media, even outlets that appeal to their prejudices.
As this column has expressed before, the general decline of trust in media is somewhat paradoxical. News reporting has never been more precise, easier to check and criticize, or more timely. What has changed since the early 1960s, when trust peaked in the polls, is that the press covers many topics today that went left unassigned back then: stories about race, gender, sex, equity, foreign intervention and religion, just to give a few examples.
To be sure, recent decades are chockablock with media misfires that actively damaged trust, as scholar Michael Socolow recently wrote. “Measured skepticism can be healthy and media criticism comprises an essential component of media literacy — and a vibrant democracy,” is how he puts it. So some of this distrust is well-deserved. But in other cases, expressions of “distrust” in media polls are just another way for people to say the contemporary subject matter in the news makes them uncomfortable.
That the Weather Channel rarely broadcasts anything more controversial than flood, blizzard, hurricane, fire and tornado coverage and forecasts goes a long way in explaining its high trust quotient. But as the channel’s bosses deliver on their promise to produce more climate change coverage, expect the usual dark clouds of distrust to gather there, too.
******
Send your news weather reports to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed is a low-pressure zone. My Mastodon and Post accounts have gone all foggy. My Substack Notes account needs a rainmaker. My RSS feed is a fast-moving storm front.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The end of the emergency would also end Title 42, a law that permits the U.S. to deny asylum and migration claims for public health reasons.
The Biden administration is sending 1,500 troops to the border in preparation of the end of the policy — but Republicans in Congress argue that the policy isn’t actually tied to the public health emergency.
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are also working on legislation that would grant a temporary two-year authority to expel migrants from the United States similar to what is currently allowed under Title 42. A key distinction is that the extension being proposed by Tillis and Sinema, which was first reported by POLITICO, does not rely on a public health order, making it functionally different from the Trump-era program that President Joe Biden kept in place.
Covid food assistance
Work requirements for federal food assistance programs that were paused during the pandemic will return in more than two dozen mostly Republican-controlled states. Certain administrative rules that helped people receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits will also end.
CDC’s Covid trackers
The CDC will lose access to some of the surveillance data it used to assess Covid risk, requiring it to shelve its Covid-19 Community Levels metric, which classified Covid danger as low, medium or high, and recommended preventive actions accordingly.
CDC officials said they’ll offer risk assessments based on hospital admissions instead.
Some of the changes may improve the data’s reliability, such as the coming shift in how the agency counts Covid deaths, which will change from aggregate case surveillance to provisional death certificates.
The agency will no longer have comprehensive data on vaccination, however, because some jurisdictions have not reached data use agreements with the CDC.
Rules around nursing supervision
Certified registered nurse anesthetists will once again be required to be supervised by a physician, though states can apply to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to extend the waiver.
Medicare Covid rapid test reimbursement
Older adults on Medicare will no longer be able to obtain eight rapid over-the-counter Covid-19 tests at no cost once the public health emergency ends. Medicare generally does not cover or pay for over-the-counter products, however, laboratory-based testing ordered by doctors will still be covered with no out-of-pocket costs.
Private insurers will also no longer be required to reimburse eight OTC rapid tests per month or laboratory testing, but the Department of Health and Human Services is urging them to continue coverage.
People with coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program will continue to have coverage for no-cost OTC rapid tests through Sept. 30, 2024.
Hospital reporting requirements during Covid
CMS had waived several reporting requirements for hospitals in a bid to lessen the administrative burden while also combating Covid-19 surges.
The agency waived a requirement that a hospital report by the next day a patient death in the intensive care unit caused by their disease.
Another requirement that will return is for the authentication of any verbal orders within 48 hours. CMS waived this requirement to offer more effective treatment in a surge situation, according to a fact sheet on the waivers.
Prescriptions for medication such as Adderall and buprenorphine
The Drug Enforcement Administration has proposed curtailing pandemic rules that had allowed patients to be prescribed controlled substances like Adderall for ADHD and buprenorphine for opioid use disorder without having to go to a doctor first.
Under proposed rules, which are not finalized, patients who need buprenorphine for opioid addiction, testosterone for gender-affirming care, or ketamine for depression, could get an initial 30-day supply via telemedicine, but would need to visit a doctor’s office to continue taking those medications. Patients seeking Adderall to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or Oxycontin for pain relief, will need to go to a doctor’s office before they can start taking the drug.
Acknowledging criticism of the rules, which have come under fire from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and in public comment, the DEA moved to extend pandemic-era rules while it finalizes new ones.
Requirements for long-term care
Patients will again have to spend three consecutive days in a hospital before being eligible to go to a skilled nursing facility under CMS rules that were waived through the pandemic.
A similar rule, which required patients to be in the intensive care unit for three days before being eligible to move to a long-term, acute-care hospital will also no longer be waived. Several emergency room doctors told POLITICO they worry the return of the rules will mean longer waits for patients and worsen overcrowding that has plagued hospitals through the pandemic.
Free-standing emergency departments
The PHE granted a waiver to facilities, which offer emergency services outside of a hospital setting, to get reimbursement from Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare.
Industry groups and some lawmakers are worried about the loss of this reimbursement option. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) introduced bipartisan legislation in March to make the waiver permanent. He warned in a statement that month that removal of the waiver could cause some rural residents to travel farther for care.
What stays the same
Covid-19 vaccines and treatments
The U.S. government will transition Covid-19 vaccines and treatments to the commercial market in the coming months, however the end of the public health emergency is not directly tied to the shift, according to HHS.
The government still has supplies of Covid-19 vaccines and antiviral treatment Paxlovid. Until they run out, doctors administering federally acquired shots are required to give them at no out-of-pocket cost to people regardless of their insurance status.
Once federal supplies of treatments are exhausted, those not on Medicaid will likely face out-of-pocket expenses, similar to cost-sharing for other drugs. People with Medicaid will continue to have access to Covid-19 treatments without cost-sharing until Sept. 30, 2024.
Under the Affordable Care Act, private health plans must cover routine preventative services, such as vaccines recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, meaning that Covid-19 vaccines will be available without cost-sharing. Older adults will continue to have access to no-cost Covid-19 vaccines under Medicare Part B.
Emergency use authorizations
The end of the public health emergency does not impact the FDA’s ability to maintain or grant new emergency use authorizations to medical products. The agency is working with manufacturers to transition products to traditional approval, but has indicated it will maintain EUAs as long as necessary.
The agency’s ability to issue EUAs is tied to a separate law — the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.
Access to care in the home
Congress extended pandemic-era rules once tied to the emergency through 2024, allowing expanded telehealth access in the Medicare program. It did the same for hospital at-home waivers and provisions, allowing high-deductible health plans to offer telehealth before patients hit their deductible.
Robert King contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Ramaswamy is now, according to a CBS poll out last week, tied with Pence for a distant third place in the GOP field. And he has become a credible enough threat to higher-polling Republicans that apparent opposition research against him has started flowing: Notably, a top operative working to boost Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently shared on Twitter a story about Ramaswamy paying to alter his Wikipedia page. Even primary frontrunner and former President Donald Trump took notice, saying in a jab at DeSantis on Friday that he was “pleased to see” Ramaswamy “doing so well.”
Ramaswamy is still a longshot. But the attention he has quickly drawn is significant in a primary in which DeSantis has slid well behind Trump in primary polling while other Republican candidates scramble to make their mark.
“America First without the chaos,” is how Bob Meisterling, a 40-year-old in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, described Ramaswamy’s appeal.
An Obama-Trump voter and “right of center” Republican, Meisterling said if the Iowa caucuses were held today, he would back Ramaswamy. And Meisterling, who owns a golf simulation studio, is making a rare exception to his rule of not talking politics with his customers by inviting Ramaswamy to come by his business this weekend during an Iowa bus tour. The campaign is taking him up on the offer.
Prior to launching on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox in February, Ramaswamy was a regular on cable news programs and podcasts, despite being little-known by most Republican primary voters. But after high-profile tangles with mainstream television hosts Don Lemon and Chuck Todd in recent weeks, a barrage of media hits and an aggressive calendar of early state retail-politicking, Ramaswamy is now firmly on the radar.
It’s a campaign that blends the youthfulness and hustle of Pete Buttigieg’s run in 2020 with the extremely online nature of Andrew Yang’s millennial fan base — except that Ramaswamy is a conservative running on an “America First 2.0” promise to take Trump’s policy agenda “further than Trump.” His eclectic coalition of supporters includes self-described moderates, family values conservatives, crossover voters, Trump/DeSantis fans and even those who are curious about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., according to interviews with Ramaswamy supporters at a recent town hall in New Hampshire and in other early nominating states.
In New Hampshire on Wednesday, about 70 people packed into a small room of the local business center in Windham for a stop on Ramaswamy’s second bus tour of the state. For sale were “Bud Right” koozies emblazoned with Ramaswamy’s photo, a nod to a recent conservative boycott of Bud Light after the company hired a transgender woman as a paid influencer. The audience filled with both the Ramaswamy-curious and superfans. A man at the mic was on the brink of tears, and a 19-year-old college student in the front row had returned to see him after recently meeting Ramaswamy at an event in Ohio. One woman was so excited about seeing Ramaswamy a second time that she brought two friends along, while across the room, an older man who said he’d never been to a political event before pledged Ramaswamy his vote.
Britton Albiston, a 50-year-old Bedford Republican who describes herself as “not a Trump lover” and “not old enough to be Vivek’s mother — but probably could have been his babysitter,” said she wants to nominate someone with enough energy to lead the country for eight years. She said she likes that he isn’t a “professional deflector.”
“He’s not deflecting to his favorite three points. He’ll openly say, ‘You may not like my answer, but I’m going to tell you how I feel,’” Albiston said.
Like Buttigieg when he launched his presidential campaign, Ramaswamy is still years away from 40, making him “the first millennial to ever run for president as a Republican,” as he touts on the campaign trail. And while Ramaswamy has a long way to go before his online following comes close to reaching the organizational structure of the Yang Gang, there are already the makings of it: A handful of supporters on Twitter are trying to make #VekHeads happen.
It’s unclear if they’ll succeed. Even Ramaswamy’s early supporters don’t shy away from the question of whether he can overcome Trump, DeSantis and other bigger-name Republicans in the primary.
“All of what you say is great,” Thomas Petrarca, an independent voter in Windham, told Ramaswamy during his post-stump-speech Q&A on Wednesday. “But the first step is: How are you going to overcome the national recognition, the name recognition of your opponents?”
Ramaswamy responded that his campaign strategy is “an open book.” He said he plans to “slowly and steadily” work his way to third-place by the end of the year.
“And then we want to come here and we want to win New Hampshire, and then we want to change the momentum and actually win the rest of the race,” he said. “That’s the plan we’re taking.”
Indeed, most of Ramaswamy’s ad spending to date has been concentrated in the Boston media market, which reaches New Hampshire. And while money is one thing he isn’t short of, Ramaswamy is milking the free earned media: In the last week of April, he gave roughly 43 interviews with radio, print and television reporters, a blitz that ranged from local early-state outlets to Comedy Central’s “Tooning Out The News.”
The roughly $1 million that Ramaswamy has spent on ads so far in the Republican primary trails only the super PACs of DeSantis and Trump, which have each dropped $8 million to $10 million on television. But nearly half of Ramaswamy’s investment in advertising, and more than any other candidate, according to AdImpact, has gone to ads on streaming television platforms — a sign that Ramaswamy is targeting a younger demographic than traditional cable and broadcast viewers.
With DeSantis and other higher-profile Republicans expected to get into the race within weeks, Ramaswamy — if he becomes competitive — will be forced to defend some of his more strident policy positions. Meisterling, the Ramaswamy fan in Cedar Rapids, suggested the entrepreneur-turned-politician may need to make clearer proposals when it comes to overhauling the federal government. What happens, logistically, if you shut down the Department of Education, FBI, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies, as Ramaswamy has proposed?
“He has bold ideas,” Meisterling said. “From a practical standpoint, they can come across uncertain as to what the outcomes are.”
Asked about Ramswamy’s claim that he will exceed Trump’s “America First” initiative, and do so without “personal vengeance and grievance,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung pointed to Trump’s overwhelming lead in the Republican field. It is Trump, Cheung said, who is “the unquestioned leader of the America First Movement,” and has laid out a “bold agenda” for a second term.
Still, Ramaswamy appears to be pulling at least a small part of that movement. In New Hampshire, Fred Doucette, the state’s deputy House majority leader who served as a Trump campaign co-chair in New Hampshire in 2016 and 2020, is now a senior strategist and state campaign chair for Ramaswamy. He said he got a similar “gut feeling” from Ramaswamy that he got when he first met Trump — only Ramaswamy is more “inspirational.”
On the way into Ramaswamy’s Windham town hall, Anthony Henry, a young Republican activist interning with the state GOP, snagged a branded baseball cap and declared Ramaswamy “the smartest person running for president.”
Except he can’t actually vote for Ramaswamy. He’s only 15.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But a lot has happened since then. Trump sharpened his attacks against DeSantis, who has largely declined to respond before formally jumping into the race. Perhaps most important, the former president was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his hush money payment to a porn star. The response to the indictment from rank-and-file GOP voters, according to recent polls, was a substantial improvement in Trump’s standing, with many Republicans rallying around Trump after the indictment.
Would grassroots leaders active within the party move in the same way as other GOP voters, or were they more inured to the news cycle and take a different view of Trump’s legal challenges? The short answer: They moved, with DeSantis support softening and Trump a beneficiary.
My survey of GOP county chairs is part of an effort to track the “invisible primary” for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — the action that takes place before the first ballots are cast and which will do much to determine the eventual winner. County chairs are figures who will play a key role in shaping the race. They are highly attentive to the party’s internal dynamics and are influential in local GOP circles; they offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect.
As director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, I sent this survey to roughly 3,000 GOP chairs, for every county in the country. This survey was collected in the first few weeks of April, with 127 Republican chairs responding (a smaller number than the 187 who previously responded).
The first question I asked was simply whether the chairs had committed to supporting a candidate, and if so, whom that might be.
The proportion of undecided remained at about half of the sample. However, Trump’s position has improved considerably, going from 16 to 24 percent among chairs who chose a candidate, while DeSantis has dropped from 18 to 13 percent. Support for other candidates has also declined, from 14 to 10 percent.
One Trump backer surveyed underscored Trump’s lingering hold on the party. “He not only kept his promises, he exceeded them,” said Patrick Berry, chair of the Cleveland County Republican Party in Arkansas. “He obviously loves this country and was the best president in my lifetime, rivaling even Ronald Reagan.”
I then asked another question to gauge potential candidate support: Which candidates are county chairs considering for the presidency? Here, DeSantis still showed some considerable strengths, with 67 percent of chairs saying they’re open to a DeSantis nomination. However, that does signal a slight softening in support; DeSantis was at 73 percent in the last survey. Moreover, Trump is now at 51 percent, up from 43 percent.
DeSantis still has more county chairs interested in him than in Trump, but his advantage has narrowed considerably. Nikki Haley’s numbers have also dropped slightly, as have Mike Pompeo’s (who dropped out recently). Some candidates and potential contenders who were not included in the previous survey (entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem) have modest levels of support.
Finally, I asked the chairs whom they do not want to see as their presidential nominee. As in the last survey, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led the pack, with former Vice President Mike Pence close behind. Both of their negative numbers have grown slightly; interestingly, Christie in particular has begun to step up his criticism of Trump as he’s tested the waters.
Now in third place for this dubious honor is former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who recently announced his candidacy and positioned himself as the one candidate who wants Trump to drop out of the race due to his legal travails. Some of the newer candidacies, specifically Ramaswamy and Sununu, start off with around a third of party chairs hostile to them. Only Trump has seen the share of county chairs opposed to him drop significantly, going from 39 to 29.5 percent.
It must be noted that the sample of chairs who answered this survey are not precisely the same ones who answered the February one. In total, 63 chairs answered both surveys. That’s not a huge number, but their patterns of candidate support are telling. Some chairs maintained their commitments while others shifted to other presidential candidates.
DeSantis’ support, notably, has broken apart, as this figure makes clear. Only four of the eleven chairs who were backing him in February were still with him in April; three went to Trump and other candidates, and the rest became undecided. Trump, meanwhile, lost no backers and actually gained some from other candidates.
Overall, this survey suggests a group of party insiders that hasn’t made up its mind, but is growing more inclined to back Trump. We’ll learn more in the next wave of surveys whether this trend continues.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Thousands of youth, adults and children are consuming tons of animations and the consumption is only going up. Muskan Fatima reports the trend and the factors pushing the new fad
Two Kashmir animated characters – Meem Laaleh (L) and Kashir Shinchan (R). While the former has gone into oblivion, the latter is still in circulation.
In 2019 fall, when Meem Laaleh, a Kashmiri comic feminine character appeared on social media with impressive social messages, it was a huge sensation. Operating with a tagline – Balai Lagai, Yuth Ni Mushkil Gaczvev (Forgive me, do not take it otherwise), the caricature was a hit with its brief satire on social issues that its creator termed ‘sit down comedy’. Almost on a daily basis people would wait for Meem Laaleh to take potshots on the life Kashmir was living. By early 2021, Meem Laaleh went silent, perhaps forever.
This inspired many others to follow suit. A young boy launched Keashir Shinchan in June 2019. It is a young Kashmir lady telling interesting tales about the people around, making fun of things and using puns to send the message around.
Tragically, however, neither Meem Laaleh nor Keashir Shinchan is part of the estimated US $28.61 billion that the animation industry cloaked in 2022. Anime is primarily Japanese animation characterized by colourfully vibrant graphics and action-filled plots that more than 100 million people watch globally. Right now more than 6000 anime shows exist and the majority of them are made in Japan.
= While the new generation has skipped looking at the sector as content creators, they are huge consumers of animation. In most of the homes, kids require animation shows at breakfast, lunch and dinner and now even parents are addicted to these shows. Asks anybody in nursery or kindergarten, they are well aware of Pokemon, Naruto, Dragon Ball Z and Shin-chan. It is their butter if not the bread. Off late, even adults like the animation. In Kashmir, Doraeman was virtually in politics for years.
Hyder, an MBA from the University of Kashmir has been watching anime for a while. He fell in love with Naruto in 2017 when the comic character somehow popped up on his timeline.
“It was a blessing in disguise I would say,” Hyder admitted. “I was doing a lot of binge-watching as I lacked focus. Suddenly Naruto popped up so I thought I should give it a go and the way it kept me inclined towards itself was mind-blowing.”
It is not just the plot and the graphics that connect people to Anime. Some people say they feel a personal connection with the characters and they can relate to the emotions portrayed by them.
Hyder said that watching the animation has helped being become responsible because most of the shows convey a message “I suddenly used to care about everyone no matter how bad they seemed. This was a thing I gathered from Naruto,” Hyder said. “It taught me nobody is a villain. Another anime Haikyuu teaches you that if you are passionate about something it does not matter whether you have the skills or not. Hard work is the key. I would say anime made me a better person.”
A ‘Misconception’
Anime is linked to stereotypes. People see them as merely cartoons and caricatures, not essentially meant for grown-ups. That may not be necessarily true. anime and cartoons differ from each other in target audience and themes. Unlike cartoons, anime touches upon more serious themes with teenagers and adults as the target audiences.
“I made no difference between anime and cartoon till I watched Death Note,” Haroon Riyaz, a student with a keen interest in anime’s, said. “The plot twists, suspense and mystery factor of this anime were really appealing to me. Now I believe anime is a slice of life and portrays life issues and emotions that are mostly meant for the mature audiences, unlike cartoons.”
Animation watchers are so drawn towards the anime culture that many of them go out of their way to get anime merchandise, learn Japanese slang and dress up like anime characters. In recent years Japanese pop culture including anime and video games gained immense popularity worldwide due to global media exposure. Despite the language barrier people have resorted to subtitles to understand the storyline.
Mother Culture
This is something new in Kashmir. The elder generations did not grow up surrounded by this wave of anime culture and most of them are barely familiar with the term anime. Even after TV’s entry into Kashmir, Doordarshan, till recently was the only source of entertainment.
Then, people used to read books, comics, listen to radio and just play around with friends. Now, the newer generations avoid books and prefer watching things on the cell phone, TV or computer. “Youth watch movies based on novels and then claim they have read it not knowing that films are adaptations of the text, not the exact novel,” a parent said. “It is the fashion now that students prefer pdf of books rather than the book.”
Binge Watching
Globally, the use of motion pictures in educating the new generation is a preferred choice of educators. However, a huge section of the younger generation binge-watches anime shows. Some see it as addiction and many think it is an escape route.
The content creators are aware of this human weakness. So they push their characters to survive for a long time link India TV soap operas. One Piece is an anime based on the Manga by Eiichiro Oda and as of March 2023, it has more than 1000 episodes. Anybody wishing to watch it would require more than 400 hours. Data available in the public domain suggest that an average person spends 6.58 hours every day on screens connected to the internet. This is impacting the health of a generation.
Farhana Wani is pursuing her BSc (Nanoscience) in Srinagar. Her journey towards anime started when, one day, she came across a reel on social media about how Itachi, a character from Naruto sacrificed everything and how he killed his entire clan, his parents, and his love just to save the leaf village but was not able to kill his brother. That made her curious about the character and she wanted to know the whole story.
While Farhana loves anime she recognizes that it had a negative impact on her as well.
“As much as I hate to admit it, anime has become an escape route from reality for many people especially students,” Farhana said. “I sometimes also feel like I am addicted to it and that instead of studying I prefer to watch anime because it gives you that dopamine rush for a short period of time.”
German Psychologist Erich Fromm in his book, To Have or to Be? writes: “Pleasure and thrill are conducive to sadness after the so-called peak has been reached; for the thrill has been experienced, but the vessel has not grown. One’s inner powers have not increased. One has made the attempt to break through the boredom of unproductive activity and for a moment has unified one’s energies-except reason and love. One has attempted to become superhuman, without being human. One seems to have succeeded to the moment of triumph, but the triumph is followed by deep sadness; because nothing has changed within oneself.”
The Flip Side
This is the other side of anime binge-watching. People say they live in a world of joyless pleasures where it is hard to draw a line between the two.
Pleasure usually does not lead to an intrinsically adequate solution to the human condition and does not lead to greater human growth or bring an individual closer to their authentic self. Joy, on the other side, is what people experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming oneself. The lack of joy is what makes seeking pleasure necessary. People may say watching anime brings them joy but often it is pleasure they refer to.
A legitimate question remains: why Kashmiri youth are drawn towards anime? Japan, after all, has a different language and culture.
Wasim Kakroo, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Centre for Mental Health Services at Rambagh Srinagar has his views about the psychology behind it.
“It can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, anime offers an escape from the realities of everyday life, providing a unique and immersive world of fiction and fantasy that can be engaging and entertaining, especially for youth who lack guidance. Anime often contains themes and motifs that resonate with young people, identity struggles, and social commentary. This helps them connect with the characters and storylines. Its easy availability may be another contributor,” Kakroo said. “The psychological reasons behind this transition can be attributed to the fact that young people are seeking new forms of entertainment that offer a sense of escapism, social connection, and cultural identity. Anime provides a combination of these elements, making it an attractive option for many young people.” At the same time, anime addiction is part of the globalisation that permits individuals to make their choices.
