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These Sleep Habits Are Putting Your Heart Health At Risk

HuffPost

These Sleep Habits Are Putting Your Heart Health At Risk

Jillian Wilson – March 21, 2023

In addition to eating nutritious foods and exercising, sleeping is important for your heart health.

While it’s well known that exercise, healthy eating and managing things such as high blood pressure and cholesterol are crucial for your heart health, it turns out your sleep habits play a big role, too.

A recent study of 2,032 people published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that poor sleep or not enough sleep led to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, including atherosclerosis ― an issue where plaque causes the arteries to harden or thicken.

The study looked at people with obstructed sleep apnea, people with fragmented sleep and people with short sleep duration. Participants wore a wrist tracker for seven days to measure their sleep and completed a sleep journal; the study also measured their heart rate, breathing and sleep stages.

People who had irregular sleep ― which means sleep that varied by 90 minutes to 2 hours each week ― were 1.4 times more likely to have high coronary artery calcium scores, which is the amount of plaque in your arteries.

The study underscored data found by other recent sleep-and-heart research, according to Dr. Manesh R. Patel, the chief of the division of cardiology and the division of clinical pharmacology at Duke University School of Medicine.

Patel said that other studies have explored this topic and also found that low-quality sleep (like waking up frequently in the night) or not getting enough sleep can put folks at risk for other cardiovascular conditions beyond atherosclerosis. This includes high blood pressure and irregular heart rhythms, Patel noted.

What do these findings about sleep mean for you?

Unfortunately, even just short durations of poor sleep can impact your heart health.

Dr. Virend Somers, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, recently led a randomized controlled study that focused on sleep deprivation and its impact on high blood pressure. The study was made up of healthy young people.

“We looked at their blood pressure and their sympathetic nervous system … over 24 hours,” he explained. When study participants were sleep-deprived (in this case, researchers reported they got four hours of sleep a night for nine days), their blood pressure went up both during the daytime and when they were asleep. These results were more common in women than men, Somers said, which surprised researchers.

“When they’re sleep deprived … the endothelial function — the ability for their blood vessels to dilate — was also impaired,” Somers explained. The inability of blood vessels to dilate is a predictor of future cardiovascular disease, he noted.

This shows that if you take people who are otherwise young and healthy and deprive them of sleep, you create risk factors for the development of heart disease, Somers said.

Additionally, in a small, 21-day study that also followed young, healthy people, Somers found that participants who did not get enough sleep ate an extra 308 calories of food per day. For 14 days, participants got just four hours of sleep per night, which led to this finding. Researchers conducted scans to find that the extra calories went right to the belly and were converted into visceral fat, the dangerous type of fat deep in the abdomen that produces toxins that can make our cardiovascular systems sick, Somers said.

Normally, in healthy, young people, fat goes to a safe storage spot under the skin, which is known as the subcutaneous level, he said. But this was not the case when those young people were sleep-deprived.

“Something about not sleeping enough, that did two things. One, it made them eat more calories, and two, those calories were sent to the worst place — the visceral fat,” Somers said.

Even after a few nights of recovery sleep, the visceral fat continued to accumulate, which shows that recovery sleep doesn’t make up for even a short period of not enough sleep, he added.

If getting more sleep is not a realistic option for you, prioritize other heart-healthy habits like exercise or eating healthy foods.

What You Can Do If You Have Poor Sleep

“It’s hard to tell people to sleep better,” Patel explained. Someone who works an overnight shift or has young kids and a busy schedule may just not be able to commit to the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep per night. And if you have trouble staying asleep, you can’t just decide to start sleeping through the night.

Patel said one dangerous potential reason behind not sleeping through the night is obstructive sleep apnea, which is when “you have an obstruction and you’re actually at times startling, or your oxygen can get low at night and you’re just not getting restful sleep and you have periods of apnea where you’re just not breathing because you’re obstructing your airway.”

Snoring, waking up with a headache or waking up tired are all signs of this condition; if you notice these issues, let your doctor know so they can run tests to determine if this is the cause of your bad sleep, Patel added. There are treatment solutions available for those with this condition.

But if you are not suffering from sleep apnea and are able to go to bed earlier, do so. “The more you can get regimented about getting yourself and everyone to bed, the better your health will be,” Patel said.

There are many ways to create a more restful and peaceful sleep environment. “Keep the bedroom cool and very, very dark … even light from a clock can be disruptive to your sleep,” Somers said.

He added that the bedroom should be for sex and sleep, not for watching TV or working. Additionally, if you get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, for example, avoid looking at your cell phone.

“The light from the cell phone can shut down melatonin, and melatonin helps us get to sleep at night,” Somers said. And even if you have a blue light filter on your phone (which is supposed to be better for sleep), just the arousal from reading emails or texts can wake you up, he added.

While sleep is clearly an important factor in heart health, it also is not the only factor. Somers said you can create other good habits to help cut your risk of issues like atherosclerosis and high blood pressure.

“If you want to maintain your heart health, just follow the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 guidelines,” Somers said. These guidelines include eating better, exercising, quitting smoking, managing your weight, and controlling your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar — in addition to getting good sleep. (It’s worth noting that good sleep was just added to the guidelines in June 2022, which underscores its newfound importance for heart health.)

So, if you do have to cut your sleep short for the time being, whether due to your work schedule or other commitments, focus on other behaviors like exercise or making sure your plate is loaded with fruit and veggies. Or make an appointment to get bloodwork to determine if you need to manage your cholesterol.

“If we can’t fix the sleep component, let’s try and emphasize some of the others until we have the opportunity to get more sleep,” Somers said.

Man diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 29 shares symptoms: ‘It hit me pretty hard’

Today

Man diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 29 shares symptoms: ‘It hit me pretty hard’

Meghan Holohan – March 21, 2023

When Brendan Menapace ate, he felt “terrible” and wanted to nap. He noticed blood in his stool and visited his doctor.

Having the support of his partner, family and friends made it easier for Brendan Menapace grapple with his stage 4 colorectal cancer diagnosis at age 29. (Courtesy Brendan Menapace)

“I just turned 29, so I didn’t really think colon cancer,” the now 30-year-old tells TODAY.com. “All the symptoms really got worse, so I knew something was wrong, and (I needed) to find an answer.” After testing, Menapace learned he had stage 4 colorectal cancer.

“It was definitely surprising,” he says. “It hit me pretty hard.”

“Textbook” symptoms

In the summer of 2021, Menapace experienced pelvic pain, constipation, bloating and fatigue.

“I would eat and then pretty much immediately would want to lay down,” he says. “I felt terrible.”

He also noticed blood in his stool and couldn’t sit for more than an hour and a half, which he noticed while driving to vacation. After eating, he would feel so awful that he felt drowsy.

“In retrospect, it was pretty much the textbook things they say to look out for,” he says.

He visited a doctor who sent him for a colonoscopy in early October 2021. As soon as Menapace woke, he knew it was bad.

“They told me as I was waking up,” he says. “There was a plan pretty much immediately.”

Two weeks after his test, he started chemotherapy from the end of October until January. Then he underwent 20 radiation sessions to his pelvis until March.

“From there, basically things had shrunk enough that surgery was viable,” he says. “But chemo and radiation take a toll on your body, so I was in pretty rough shape.”

In May, doctors surgically removed his rectum, part of his colon and lymph nodes, and he received a temporary ileostomy bag as his colon recovered. In July, doctors reversed his ileostomy, and by October, a PET scan showed no evidence of disease.

“Until you hit that five-year mark, you’re not considered cured or cancer-free,” Menapace says. “Because of the way it spread, it wasn’t as simple as just cutting out the tumor or declaring me cancer-free.”

Brendan Menapace underwent chemotherapy, radiation and extensive surgery to treat his stage 4 colorectal cancer. (Courtesy Brendan Menapace)

Colon cancer in young people

A recently published report from the American Cancer Society shows that the rates of colon cancer in young people are increasing. The reason for the increase remains a mystery.

“Rates were globally going down in older patients with screening, and we also thought this was one of those cancers that are cancers of aging, which is why you didn’t screen somebody until they were 50,” Dr. Ursina Teitelbaum, a medical oncologist at Penn Medicine, tells TODAY.com. “Now we’re seeing this trend towards younger and also more left-sided — the descending colon, sigmoid colon and rectum particularly — and we don’t really know why.”

Teitelbaum says older patients tend to have more cancer on the right side, which is the ascending colon. It’s unclear why younger patients see more left-sided problems. But it leads to certain symptoms.

“If it’s on the left side or in the rectum, you may have pain with bowel movements or abdominal pain in general. You might have a change in what we see in the caliber of your stool. Instead of a normal-formed stool, you might have a skinny stool,” she says. “This is a funny point of conversation because people get uncomfortable talking about their bowel movements. But it’s actually really important to pay attention.”

Other symptoms include:

Weight loss
Fatigue
Blood in stool
Shortness of breath
Pelvic pain

“I have one younger patient who was a very competitive biker who noticed instead of 100 miles a week, he could only bike 50 miles a week,” she says. “It turned out he had rectal cancer and (was) slowly losing blood, and that was the reason.”

Brendan Menapace's last chemotherapy treatment lasted for 46 hours and he carried it around in a fanny pack. (Courtesy Brendan Menapace) — Brendan Menapace’s last chemotherapy treatment lasted for 46 hours and he carried it around in a fanny pack. (Courtesy Brendan Menapace)

Some people feel embarrassed to talk about their bowel movements, even with their doctors, meaning they don’t get help as quickly as possible. Other barriers can make it tough for younger people to get a colonoscopy, too, further delaying treatment.

“A lot of younger patients, people in their 30s, 40s, might not even have a primary care physician. They don’t have any medical problems. They are perfectly healthy,” Teitelbaum explains. “There are other things that are difficult with (colonoscopies). You have to find someone to give you a ride. … You have to take a day off work. You have to have insurance. You have to be able to afford a prep. So, there are a lot of barriers.”

Current screening recommendations for colon cancer are, starting at 45, people need to undergo a colonoscopy every 10 years, which recently changed from 50. Teitelbaum believes that both patients and primary care physicians need to be aware that colorectal cancer can occur to younger people.

“The key for now is education and that’s not just educating people that are younger, but educating their health care providers that if someone comes in with blood in their stool or some of the symptoms, they might need to move screening for colorectal cancer higher on the differential,” she says. “Part of the problems is that hemorrhoids (are) really a common condition.”

Finding colon cancer earlier often means surgery alone can remove it. As it metastisizes, it becomes harder to treated.

“Once it spreads beyond to the liver, the chance of it being curable is much lower,” she says. “That said, I am happy to say most of the time, even when it’s not curable, it’s treatable.”

With colonoscopies, doctors can detect precancerous polyps and remove them before they become cancer.

“You can intervene and remove a polyp before it becomes cancerous,” she says. “That said, not every polyp will become cancerous. So, it’s a balancing act.”

Brendan Menapace experienced neuropathy when he underwent chemotherapy but is lucky that it stopped after treatment ended. (Courtesy Brendan Menapace)

‘Huge learning curve’

While Menapace received chemotherapy, he experienced neuropathy, numbness and tingling from nerve damage. As soon as treatment stopped, these symptoms went away. He has had to adjust to not having a rectum.

“It has been a huge learning curve and just the trauma to my colon and lower digestive system — things are never going to be the same,” he says. “There’s a new normal that I’m working toward and that takes a lot of work in its own right. I have to be careful eating.”

He returned to work and exercise, resuming as much of a “normal life” as he can.

“When I leave the house, I have to know where a bathroom is. … It’s something in the back of my head, and I have to think about something that I never had to before,” he says. “It’s hard to fathom the idea of something being different forever.”

With the help of his partner, friends, family and therapy, Menapace is trying to grapple with the changes he faces due to cancer. He encourages others to talk about their symptoms with their doctors, no matter how strange it might feel.

“You’re trained not to talk about your poop. You’re trained not to talk about your butt. This is not (what you talk about) in polite society. At first, I would rely on euphemisms and be kind of fake and make jokes,” he says. “If you’re not detailed on what you’re going through, you’re not going to paint the right picture for your care team. You’re not going to get the right care.”

Idaho hospital will stop delivering babies as doctors flee state due to abortion ban

The Guardian

Idaho hospital will stop delivering babies as doctors flee state due to abortion ban

Gloria Oladipo – March 20, 2023

<span>Photograph: Emily Elconin/Reuters</span> — Photograph: Emily Elconin/Reuters

An Idaho hospital has planned to stop delivering babies, with the medical center’s managers citing increasing criminalization of physicians and the inability to retain pediatricians as major reasons.

Bonner General Health, the only hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, announced on Friday that it would no longer provide labor, delivery and a host of other obstetrical services.

The more than 9,000 residents of Sandpoint are now forced to drive 46 miles for the nearest labor and delivery care, the Idaho Statesman reported.

In a statement, the hospital’s leadership said that the decision to eliminate the obstetrics unit stemmed from the “political climate” in Idaho.

“Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult,” hospital officials said in a press release.

“We have made every effort to avoid eliminating these services,” the hospital’s board president, Ford Elsaesser, added in the statement.

“We hoped to be the exception, but our challenges are impossible to overcome now.”

The hospital’s statement also said that the closure comes as the number of deliveries at Bonner continues to decline, with only 265 babies delivered in 2022 and fewer than 10 pediatric patients admitted.

The hospital also lacks enough pediatricians to manage its neonatal resuscitations and perinatal care, finding no permanent solution after reaching out to active and retired physicians to fill vacancies.

Hospital officials are hoping to keep obstetrics services available until 19 May but noted that it largely depends on staffing.

New patients are no longer being seen at the hospital, effective immediately, while current clients are being offered alternative referrals.

Since the supreme court in June eliminated the nationwide abortion rights that Roe v wade established, states with total abortion bans have passed laws that threaten possible prison time for doctors who perform abortions in violation of state law.

The supreme court decision legalized an Idaho state ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The state is the first to pass a copy of Texas’s controversial bill. It is also one of six that prosecutes doctors for providing the procedure, CBS News reported.

In August, the justice department filed a lawsuit against Idaho for its near-total ban on abortions, with doctors in the state writing in a court brief that physicians were often forced to choose between violating the state ban or federal healthcare law, the Associated Press reported.

The implication of the ban is driving doctors out of the state, the Bonner hospital’s press release noted.

“The Idaho legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care,” the hospital’s statement added.

“Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines.”

Dr Amelia Huntsberger, a Bonner General Health obstetrician-gynecologist, wrote in an email to the Statesman that she would be leaving the hospital and the state because of its restrictive abortion laws and because the Idaho legislature was terminating its maternal mortality review committee.

“What a sad, sad state of affairs for our community,” Huntsberger wrote, according to the Statesman.

It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Akron Beacon Journal

It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Caitlin Looby, Akron Beacon Journal – March 19, 2023

Trumpeter swans find some open water along the Lake Erie shore last month. The ice in Ottawa County has melted since then as temperatures have been unseasonably warm.

It’s the middle of March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free.

Ice has been far below average this year, with only 7% of the lakes covered as of last Monday — and no ice at all on Lake Erie. Lake Erie’s average ice coverage for this time of year is 40%, based on measurements over the past half-century. The lake typically freezes over the quickest and has the most ice cover because it’s the shallowest of the five Great Lakes.

But communities along Ohio’s north coast, including Cleveland, Sandusky and Port Clinton, have seen considerably less ice forming on Lake Erie in recent years.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Lake Erie’s ice coverage peaked in early February at 40%, a nearly 20% decrease from the historical average.

No ice isn’t a good thing for the lakes’ ecosystem. It can even stir up dangerous waves and lake-effect snowstorms.

So, what happens when the lakes are ice-free? What does it mean for the lakes’ food web? Is climate change to blame?

Little ice cover can be disastrous

This winter has already proved how dangerous lake-effect snow can be.

At the end of November, more than 6 feet of snow fell on Buffalo, New York, which sits on the shores of Lake Erie. A few weeks later on Dec. 23, more than 4 feet of snow covered the city and surrounding areas once again. The storm resulted in 44 deaths in Erie and Niagara counties, which sit on Lakes Erie and Ontario, respectively.

December 2022 storm:Winter storm leads to more than 1,300 crashes, multiple fatalities on Ohio roads

Cleveland and Sandusky reside on the shores of Lake Erie as well. The 2022 storm that swept the region on Dec. 23 dropped relatively little snow, only about 2-4 inches, but created dangerous conditions nonetheless.

In some places in Northeast Ohio, temperatures dropped from nearly 40 degrees to zero and below. Wind chills fueled by hurricane-force winds dragged the temperature even lower to minus 30 or even 35 below zero. This storm was the first time in almost a decade that the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office issued a blizzard warning.

A 46-vehicle pileup on the Ohio Turnpike near Sandusky claimed four lives.

A 46-vehicle pileup killed four people injured many others on the Ohio Turnpike during a winter storm with whiteout conditions Dec. 23.

During stormy winter months, ice cover tempers waves. When there is low ice cover, waves can be much larger, leading to lakeshore flooding and erosion. That happened in January 2020 along Lake Michigan’s southwestern shoreline. Record high lake levels mixed with winds whipped up 15-foot waves that flooded shorelines, leading Gov. Tony Evers to declare a state of emergency for Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.

And while less ice may seem like a good thing for the lakes’ shipping industry, those waves can create dangerous conditions.

The Great Lakes are losing ice with climate change

The Great Lakes have been losing ice for the past five decades, a trend that scientists say will likely continue.

Of the last 25 years, 64% had below-average ice, said Michael Notaro, the director of the Center on Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The steepest declines have been in the north, including Lake Superior, northern Lake Michigan and Huron, and in nearshore areas.

Record high temperatures:Another weather record broken in Greater Akron; third record high set this month

More: What’s the state of the Great Lakes? Successful cleanups tempered by new threats from climate change

But this also comes with a lot of ups and downs, largely because warming is causing the jet stream to “meander,” said Ayumi Fujisaki Manome, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan who models ice cover and hazardous weather across the lakes.

There is a lot of year-to-year variability with ice cover spiking in years like 2014, 2015 and 2019 where the lakes were almost completely iced over.

Ice fishermen stay close to shore off of Bay Shore Park in New Franken, Wisconsin, in January, which saw relatively little ice cover on the Great Lakes.

No ice makes waves in the lakes’ ecosystems

A downturn in ice coverage due to climate change will likely have cascading effects on the lakes’ ecosystems.

Lake whitefish, a mainstay in the lakes’ fishing industry and an important food source for other fish like walleye, are one of the many Great Lakes fish that will be affected, said Ed Rutherford, a fishery biologist who also works at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Lake whitefish spawn in the fall in nearshore areas, leaving the eggs to incubate over the winter months. When ice isn’t there, strong winds and waves can stir up the sediment, reducing the number of fish that are hatched in the spring, Rutherford said.

Walleye and yellow perch also need extended winters, he said. If they don’t get enough time to overwinter in cold water, their eggs will be a lot smaller, making it harder for them to survive.

Even so, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife released a report stating that Lake Erie’s 2022 walleye and yellow perch populations in the central and western basins are above average. Yellow perch hatches in the central basin are below average, however.

Declining ice cover on the lakes is also delaying the southward migration of dabbling ducks, a group of ducks that include mallards, out of the Great Lakes in the fall and winter, Notaro said. And if the ducks spend more time in the region it will increase the foraging pressure on inland wetlands.

Warming lakes and a loss of ice cover over time also will be coupled with more extreme rainfall, likely inciting more harmful algae blooms, said Notaro. These blooms largely form from agricultural runoff, creating thick, green mats on the lake surface that can be toxic to humans and pets.

In this 2017 photo, a catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters of Lake Erie in Toledo.

Lakes Erie and Michigan are plagued with these blooms every summer. And now, blooms cropping up in Lake Superior for the first time are raising alarm.

“Even deep, cold Lake Superior has been experiencing significant algae blooms since 2018, which is quite atypical,” Notaro said.

More: Blue-green algae blooms, once unheard of in Lake Superior, are a sign that ‘things are changing’ experts say

There is still a big question mark on the extent of the changes that will happen to the lakes’ ecosystem and food web as ice cover continues to decline. That’s because scientists can’t get out and sample the lakes in the harsh winter months.

“Unless we can keep climate change in check … it will have changes that we anticipate and others that we don’t know about yet,” Rutherford said.

Caitlin Looby is a Report for America corps member who writes about the environment and the Great Lakes. Beacon Journal reporter Derek Kreider contributed to this article.

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

The New York Times

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

Eli Saslow – March 19, 2023

Joel Coplin unlocks a gate on the fence surrounding the building where he lives and operates an art gallery, four blocks from the location where Joe Faillace operates The Olde Station Subway Shop, in Phoenix, Ariz. on Feb. 11, 2023. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

PHOENIX — He had been coming into work at the same sandwich shop every weekday morning for the past four decades, but now Joe Faillace, 69, pulled up to Old Station Subs with no idea what to expect. He parked on a street lined with three dozen tents, grabbed his Mace and unlocked the door to his restaurant. He picked up the phone and dialed his wife and business partner, Debbie Faillace, 60.

“All clear,” he said. “Everything looks good.”

“You’re sure? No issues?” she asked. “What’s going on with the neighbors?”

He looked out the window toward Madison Street, which had become the center of one of the largest homeless encampments in the country, with as many as 1,100 people sleeping outdoors. On this February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the street. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of Joe’s restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate.

“It’s the usual chaos and suffering,” he told Debbie. “But the restaurant’s still standing.”

That had seemed to them like an open question each morning for the past three years, as an epidemic of unsheltered homelessness began to overwhelm Phoenix and many other major American downtowns. Cities across the West had been transformed by a housing crisis, a mental health crisis and an opioid epidemic, all of which landed at the doorsteps of small businesses already reaching a breaking point because of the pandemic. In Phoenix, where the number of people living on the streets had more than tripled since 2016, businesses had begun hiring private security firms to guard their property and lawyers to file a lawsuit against the city for failing to manage “a great humanitarian crisis.”

The Faillaces had signed onto the lawsuit as plaintiffs along with about a dozen other nearby property owners. They also bought an extra mop to clean up the daily flow of human waste, replaced eight shattered windows with plexiglass, installed a wrought-iron fence around their property and continued opening their doors at exactly 8 each morning to greet the first customer of the day.

Debbie arrived to help with the lunch rush, and she greeted customers at the register while Joe prepared tomato sauce and weighed out turkey for chef’s salads. Their margins had always been tight, but they saved on labor costs by both going into work every day. They remodeled the kitchen to make room for a nursery when their children were born and then expanded into catering to help those children pay for college. They kept making sandwiches for a loyal group of regulars even as the city transformed around them — its population growing by about 25,000 each year, housing costs soaring at a record pace, until it seemed that there was nowhere left for people to go except onto sidewalks, into tents, into broken-down cars, and increasingly into the air-conditioned relief of Old Station Subs.

Their restaurant was located in an industrial neighborhood that had always attracted a small number of transients. Over the years, Joe and Debbie came to know many by name and listened to their stories of eviction, medical debt, mental illness and addiction, and together they agreed that it was their job to offer not only compassion but help.

They had given out water, opened their bathroom to the public and cashed unemployment and disability checks at no extra cost. They hired a sandwich maker who was homeless and had lost his teeth after years of addiction; a dishwasher who lived in the women’s shelter and first came to the restaurant for lunch with her parole officer; a cleaner who slept a few blocks away on a wooden pallet and washed up in the bathroom before her shift.

But the homeless population in Phoenix continued to grow. Soon there were hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station, most of them with mental illness or substance abuse issues. They slept on Joe and Debbie’s outdoor tables, defecated behind their back porch, smoked methamphetamine in their parking lot, washed clothes in their bathroom sink, pilfered bread from their delivery trucks, had sex on their patio, masturbated within view of their employees and lit fires that burned down trees and scared away customers. Finally, Joe and Debbie could think of nothing else to do but to start calling police.

Within a half-mile of their restaurant, police had been called to an average of eight incidents a day in 2022. There were at least 1,097 calls for emergency medical help, 573 fights or assaults, 236 incidents of trespassing, 185 fires, 140 thefts, 125 armed robberies, 13 sexual assaults and four homicides. The remains of a 20- to 24-week-old fetus were burned and left next to a dumpster in November. Two people were stabbed to death in their tents. Sixteen others were found dead from overdoses, suicides, hypothermia or excessive heat. The city had tried to begin more extensive cleaning of the encampment, but advocates for people without housing protested that it was inhumane and in December the American Civil Liberties Union successfully filed a federal lawsuit to keep people on the street from being “terrorized” and “displaced.”

Shina Sepulveda had been living in the encampment for a few weeks or maybe for a few months. It was hard to know for sure, she said, because she had been experiencing delusions. What she remembered was escaping from a cult in Mesa, Arizona, building the first internet search engine, losing billions of dollars to a government conspiracy, cutting wiretaps out of her brain, retaking her dynastic name of Espy Rockefeller and then moving onto a sidewalk across the street from Old Station Subs.

For as long as she had been homeless, she tried to nap during the relative safety of the day and stay up late at night to help look over her small corner of the encampment. She put on makeup and sat down at a plywood desk, where a handwritten nameplate introduced her as “Doctor, Poet, Psychologist, Partner at Law,” and where in reality she was now the 47-year-old caretaker of a half-dozen people — because, even if many of her stories were fantastical, she had earned a reputation for being generous and kind and for knowing a bit about everything.

“Hey, Espy, can you help me?” Brandon Mack said as he walked over from his nearby tent. He lifted his shirt to reveal two stab wounds from a few days earlier. He had fought with a neighbor over a coveted corner spot on the sidewalk, walked to the emergency room, gotten 18 stitches and then returned to recover on a molding mattress in a partly burned tent.

Espy took out a pair of scissors, scrubbed them with hand sanitizer and started to cut away a few of his stitches. She wiped away the pus and blood with napkins, tossing them into the street. Then she turned her attention to the next person in need of help. Cecilia wanted soap, so Espy handed her a bar she had scavenged from the nearby shelter. C.J. was drunk and needed help getting into the street to go to the bathroom. A man known as K.D. was moving his tent down the sidewalk because he’d gotten into an argument with a neighbor who insulted his pit bull. “Nobody talks down to Dots,” K.D. said. “I’m ready to go off. I’m armed and dangerous.”

“I was a police officer,” Espy told him. “If you really have to shoot, don’t aim to kill. Just fire a warning shot.”

Joe came into work the next morning and saw a bag of drugs in the road, human waste on the sidewalk, a pit bull wandering the street and blood-soaked napkins blowing toward his restaurant patio, where he and Debbie were scheduled to meet with a real estate agent about the future of Old Station. Debbie still insisted that she was ready to be done with the restaurant. Joe didn’t want to run it without her, but he also didn’t want to walk away with nothing. They had spent the past several months exploring a compromise, seeing if they could sell the business and retire together.

“Are we getting any bites?” Joe asked the agent, Mike Gaida.

“Oh, yeah. I get calls every week,” Mike said, and he explained that at least 25 potential buyers had looked over the financials and recognized a strong family business for the reasonable price of $165,000. Several bailed once Mike mentioned the encampment, but at least a dozen potential buyers secretly came to check out the property. “Most of the time, they don’t call back,” Mike said. “If I track them down, it’s like, ‘God bless those people for staying in business, because I couldn’t do it.’”

“It’s taken years off my life,” Debbie said.

“For her it’s, ‘Get me out. We’ve got to sell, sell, sell,’” Joe said. “But we refused an offer for $250,000 eight years ago, and it keeps dropping. I don’t want to give this place away.”

“I get it,” Mike said. “If you were a half-mile in another direction, you’d be sitting on a million bucks. Instead, it’s, How can you dispose of it?”

A few days later, Joe arrived for work to the sound of a gunshot coming from across the street and a bullet pinging off a nearby fence. He hurried inside and called police. “Yeah, it’s Joe again, over at Old Station,” he said, and a few minutes later two police officers were walking the perimeter of his restaurant, searching for the bullet. Soon Debbie would be waking up and getting ready for work.

“What the heck am I going to tell her to keep her from losing it?” Joe wondered, and he began to rehearse the possibilities in his head. It was only one bullet. Nobody had gotten hurt. Police had come right away. The shooter wasn’t targeting the restaurant. The gunshot was random. It could have happened anywhere.

Joe went outside to get some air. K.D. was ranting on the sidewalk, banging his hand against a fence, contorting his fingers into the shape of a gun and then firing it off at the sky.

“This could be the last straw for her,” Joe said, and then he saw Debbie driving toward the parking lot, steering around K.D. and hurrying through the gate.

“Wow. Tough morning?” she asked.

He took her inside the restaurant while he tried to come up with the right words. It was only one shot. The restaurant was still standing. They’d run Old Station together for 37 years, and maybe they could hang on for a while longer. But instead Joe told her the only thing that felt true.

“The whole thing’s a disaster,” he said. “I get it. It’s OK. I understand why you’re done.”

Donald Trump claims he will be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan probe, calls for protests

USA Today

Donald Trump claims he will be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan probe, calls for protests

Ella Lee, Josh Meyer, David Jackson and Kevin Johnson – March 18, 2023

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves the stage after speaking during an event at his Mar-a-Lago home

Former President Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested Tuesday in connection with a Manhattan district attorney investigation and called on his supporters to protest, even as uncertainty remained about whether any legal action was actually imminent.

Trump’s advisers Tuesday made clear they had no specific knowledge of the timing of any possible indictment, even as the former president made the comments on Truth Social, the social media network he founded.

Trump is under investigation for a $130,000 payment he made just before the 2016 election to silence adult film star Stormy Daniels about an earlier affair. The former president has denied wrongdoing, and federal investigators ended their own inquiry into the payments in 2019.

An indictment of Trump would send the U.S. political world into unprecedented territory – not just the first indictment of a former president, but one who is in the midst of again running for the White House. And his calls for protest also echoed similar statements by the former president ahead of Jan. 6.

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina confirmed that Trump’s reference to the timing of any possible charge is not based on any contact from Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“No one tells us anything, which is very frustrating,” Tacopina said in an email to USA Today. “President Trump is basing his response on press reports, and the fact that this is a political prosecution and the DA leaks things to the press instead of communicating to the lawyers as they should.”

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Manhattan’s District Attorney’s office, declined to comment on the former president’s statement.

Testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged for the payment and already has been convicted and served prison time, could help bring the first charges in history against a former president.

On Truth Social Saturday, Trump urged his supporters to “Protest, take our nation back!”

“The far & away leading Republican candidate & former president of the United States of America, will be arrested on Tuesday of next week,” he wrote in all caps.

A Trump spokesperson speaking on background told USA TODAY that there has been “no notification” of a possible Trump indictment other than news media reports and “leaks from the Justice Dept. and the DA’s office.”

Manhattan prosecutors on Wednesday met with Daniels. She thanked her attorney in a tweet for “helping me in our continuing fight for truth and justice.”

Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said Trump’s looming indictment in New York is uncharted waters.

“There really is no precedent for indicting a former president,” Tribe said. “It’s anyone’s guess exactly what would happen.”

Experts say Trump arrest unlikely

Trump says he’ll still run for president again if he’s indicted in any of the current investigations into his conduct. His first rally of the 2024 presidential race is scheduled for March 25 in Waco, Texas.

An indictment is not the same as an arrest; it’s a formal charge of a crime, while an arrest is when a person is taken into custody. An arrest of Trump is not likely, said former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti.

“Typically defendants are not arrested in cases like this one when they’re represented by counsel,” he said.

Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and University of Michigan law professor, said a self-surrender is more likely in cases like Trump’s.

“Unless he is a risk of flight or danger to the community, self surrender seems typical in this kind of case,” she said. “He would be booked and have his fingerprints and mugshot taken, and then likely released on bond.”

Tribe said it’s likely that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg will offer Trump a more anonymous way to turn himself in, though it’s unlikely the former president would accept such routes.

“I’m sure he wishes there were an escalator he could descend in order to self-surrender,” he said. “It’s his standard technique to turn everything into publicity, and they will undoubtedly raise a lot of money surrounding his self-surrender.”

Trump’s call for protests raise concerns

While Trump’s spokesperson acknowledged there has been “no notification” related to the timing of possible criminal charges, the former president’s call for protests drew the concern of law enforcement involved in preparing for such an event.

The appeal for demonstrations, said one official familiar with the arrangements, may immediately require a larger security footprint in New York and more agents assigned to shadow the movements of the former president.

The official, who is not authorized to comment publicly on the matter, also was not aware of a definitive time for any possible prosecution announcement.

Cohen, the former Trump lawyer who testified against him, said Trump’s call to action for his supporters echoes those ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack.

“Donald’s post is eerily similar to his battle cry prior to the January 6th insurrection; including calling for protest,” Cohen told USA TODAY. “By doing so, Donald is hoping to rile his base, witness another violent clash on his behalf and profit from it by soliciting contributions.”

With Trump facing possible criminal charges, W. Ralph Basham, a former Secret Service director, said the prospect raises unprecedented questions for the Secret Service and the boundaries of the agency’s obligation to provide lifetime protection for the former president. Basham, who served during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he was unaware of any provision that would allow the agency to drop its protection obligation, even if a protectee was sentenced to a prison term. “We are in uncharted territory here,” Basham said. “I’m sure the attorneys are scrambling to find answers to those questions.”

“I’m not aware of anything… that would preclude them (Secret Service agents) from escorting a former president to a detention center in the event of a conviction and prison sentence,” Basham said, adding that the agency would then have to consider “establishing a presence” at a detention center for the duration of any sentence. “I just don’t know,” he said. “The lawyers are going to have to figure this out.”

Meet Michael Cohen: Who is the liar and felon who might help convict his former boss, Donald Trump?

Trump being treated ‘like an ordinary citizen’

While a future Trump indictment would be historic, perhaps even greater in significance is that the justice system is working as it should, Tribe said.

“He’s being treated the way he should be treated, like an ordinary citizen,” he said. “Having a mugshot being fingerprinted, having to stand in front of a judge and answer, ‘Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

“The same thing happens to other ordinary citizens,” he continued.

I moved to Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

HuffPost

I Moved To Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

Ellen Gomory – March 18, 2023

The author at The Nick, a local bar, in Birmingham, Alabama.

In July of 2018, I arrived in Huntsville, Alabama, sight unseen.

My 2009 Honda Accord was packed to the brim with the contents of my Bushwick, New York, apartment, which had started to feel like a distant memory somewhere in the rolling, monotonous beauty of the Smokies. The trunk held garbage bags stuffed with clothing and liquor boxes filled with books. In the backseat was bedding, framed art and a coffee table my uncle made in the 1980s. My plan was to stay for five months ― through the end of the midterm elections ― and then return to the life I had been living in Brooklyn for the better part of a decade.

I had only been down to Alabama once before, several months prior, to volunteer at the Equal Justice Initiative’s opening of its museum dedicated to victims of lynching. It was there that I met Alabama’s Democratic House minority leader, who offered me a job working on the midterms. It was also there, in the Red Roof Inn on Zelda Road, that I picked up a mean case of bedbugs, which left itchy welts across my face and arms that took weeks to disappear.

Now I was headed to meet Alice, a volunteer on the campaign who had offered to put me up for a few nights and rent me an apartment at one of the properties she owned in downtown Huntsville. The rent was $400 per month for a large one bedroom ― less than half of what I had paid for my portion of the dilapidated two-bedroom I’d been renting in Brooklyn.

Alice and her wife lived about 20 minutes outside of Huntsville in Harvest, an unincorporated rural community. Driving around Huntsville, which I had been told would soon be the largest city in Alabama, I wondered Where’s the city part? The sight of cotton fields sent chills down my spine, and by the time I arrived at Alice’s, I was fundamentally questioning my decision to move.

I was not a professional campaign worker. In fact, this was my first job in politics. Until Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I had been working in book publishing, teaching yoga and generally enjoying the many privileges that my whiteness allowed me. Like so many New York City liberals, that election had been a wakeup call, and I’d committed myself to doing more, to educating myself, to fighting for the rights I’d naively thought were guaranteed.

I’d read myriad think pieces about how we needed to spend more time in those parts of the country that had voted for Trump. But if Hillary Clinton couldn’t even be bothered to go to Wisconsin, did I really need to uproot my life and move to Alabama?

The scene in Harvest, Alabama, outside of Huntsville.

Growing up in New Jersey, I knew about as much about the South as I did about Timbuktu. When I applied to Tulane University, my grandmother, a die-hard New Yorker, said without a hint of sarcasm, “But you know you can’t get a decent education below the Mason-Dixon line.” The bedbugs were surprising to no one ― my decision to move was a shock.

With some trepidation, I let myself into Alice’s house using her keypad and waited for her to come home. The campaign was in full swing, so I occupied the afternoon with calls, fundraising emails and drafting the paperwork for a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

When Alice arrived, we greeted each other cautiously. We’d spoken many times on the phone, mostly about campaign-related business, and her low voice, thick accent and easy demeanor immediately put me at ease. She was understandably more skeptical of me. What was a girl from New Jersey with no prior work experience in politics doing down here in Alabama?

Over dinner and bourbon, we got to know each other. I told her about my family, the guy I was dating and my desire to find more meaningful work. Alice shared her struggle to lift herself out of rural poverty and become the vice president of a major tech company, and the difficulties she’d faced in coming out. We began to develop a friendship.

As part of my Alabama education, Alice pulled out a white board to explain the state’s deepest political divide. On one side she wrote “Alabama.” On the other side she wrote “Auburn,” with a line dividing the two. Under Alabama, she wrote “Roll Tide”; under Auburn, “War Eagle.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why is one team called ‘Alabama’ if both teams are in Alabama? And why is Auburn’s chant ‘War Eagle’ if their mascot is the tigers?”

Alice looked at me like I had two heads.

“What’s not to get?” She asked. “I think you’ve had too much bourbon.”

Football as religion was just one of many cultural discoveries I made over those first months in Alabama, the majority of which could be easily packaged into an early-aughts rom-com. Meat and three’s, Jason Isbell and chatting with people in line at the grocery store were all foreign concepts, and I reveled in their discovery. Well, everything except football.

Alice was my first friend, but I quickly made more, and before long Alabama began to feel like home.

The author on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where voting rights protesters marched on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

The campaign was busy, but the work felt meaningful. We hoped to capitalize on Doug Jones’ historic Senate win and break the Republican supermajority in the state house ahead of the census and redistricting. Since state lawmakers are responsible for drawing up voting districts, it was crucial that we win in districts across the state where Democrats had not only lost but in many cases had not even run a candidate for many years. Given the state’s history of civil rights organizing and voter suppression, the task felt especially vital.

During the campaign, I visited New York frequently, on both personal and fundraising trips. Each time I came up, I was surprised by how little I missed the city and how eager I was to return to Alabama. The energy and schlep of the city that had energized me throughout my 20s felt draining, and the disdain with which so many Northeasterners treated my new home felt frustrating.

At a fundraising event in lower Manhattan, I told the host about my recent move. He simply responded, “I’m sorry.”

Almost no one I knew had ever visited Alabama, and most seemed to think that the state was populated by illiterate Trump supporters who didn’t wear shoes. The grace that well-meaning liberals offered the Midwest did not extend to a state whose reputation had been solidified during the civil rights movement. Most people I spoke with still associated Alabama with Gov. George Wallace’s proclamation of “segregation forever” and Bull Connor’s assault on peaceful protesters with dogs and fire hoses.

Though Alabama’s brutal, racist history is very much alive and undeniably woven into the fabric of the state, it is far from unique to Alabama. I was consistently surprised by the smugness with which Northeasterners talked about Alabama without any apparent awareness of our own region’s history of racism or, more strikingly, the state’s equally potent history of activism. In sneering at the state as a whole, people seemed not to realize that they were also sneering at activists, organizers and everyday people working to make the best with what little resources they might have.

The joke that Alabamians are shoeless and illiterate is much less funny when you consider the state’s history of racism and lack of job opportunities or public school funding.

Yard signs at one of Sen. Doug Jones’ COVID-19 drive-in rallies.

Following a brutal midterm loss, I decided to stay in Alabama and work for the state House Democratic Caucus. When the session ended, I went to work for Terri Sewell, our sole Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and then on Doug Jones’ second Senate race. I moved to Birmingham, fell in love and bought a house. I got engaged, started teaching yoga again and completed a master’s program in journalism at the University of Alabama. Before long, 4½ years had passed and I had built a life for myself.

To my friends and family up North, my decision to stay was even more confusing than my initial decision to leave. Then, I had been on a mission with a clear goal and end date. Now, I was just… living?

Gradually, more friends and family came down to visit and started to understand the appeal. The pace down here is slower, the food is excellent and history is everywhere. Politically and culturally, the state is still deeply conservative, but I found a group of friends (largely through political work) whose progressive ideals align with my own. We joke that the only time Alabama makes positive national news is for football, but within challenge and struggle, there is also beauty and culture. Social justice and equity work become more potent in the face of clear and vocal enemies.

As a country, we are still mired in the work of consensus building. We are still deeply and fundamentally divided. Partially, I believe the issue is one of exposure. The echo chambers of social media and online news are further isolating and entrenching people in their beliefs and, despite the commitments many of us made to understanding those with opposing viewpoints, it’s easier to hand-wring with likeminded friends.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently made headlines for proposing a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Though pundits were quick to ridicule her, it’s a sentiment I’ve often heard in casual conversation with Northern friends on the left. “If the South is going to hold us back from meaningful climate and social progress, why not just let them secede?”

The answer, in simple terms, is that separation hurts those with the least. If creating a fairer, more equitable society is truly what we as progressives care about, then we have a responsibility not to pull away but to lean in.

We’ve seen what leaning in has done in Georgia, but it took Stacey Abrams and many other organizers and activists well over a decade to implement the internal structures that have turned Georgia purple. And still the fight continues. There is still so much important work to be done and so many people fighting to hold on to the ugliness of the past. Dismissing Alabama or the South as a whole does nothing to advance that work; it only confirms to people down here that they have been left behind.

A photo the author took of Rep. John Lewis in Selma, Alabama, a few weeks before he died.

Ellen Gomory is a New Jersey native living in Birmingham, Alabama. She is passionate about storytelling, progressive politics, the Real Housewives and her pug, Eloise.

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

The Guardian

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

David Smith in Washington – March 18, 2023

<span>Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images</span> — Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.

Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression.

Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump’s career, displayed a shameless double standard.

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later sent shockwaves through the global banking industry and revived bitter memories of the financial crisis that plunged the US into recession about 15 years ago.

Fearing contagion in the banking sector, the government moved to protect all the banks’ deposits, even those that exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 limit for each individual account. The cost ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Trump with crates of Trump water in East Palestine after a train derailed in Ohio. Photograph: Alan Freed/Reuters

The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump’s criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank’s socially aware “woke” agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank’s risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector.

The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama’s presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans’ money was safe, in part by setting up annual “stress tests” that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns.

But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: “We can’t go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.”

But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny.

Sabato commented: “The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.”

The minority of Democrats who supported the 2018 law have denied that it can be directly tied to this month’s bank failures, although Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, was adamant: “Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed.”

You do need government to regulate finance … but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality
Larry Jacobs

Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator for Ohio who introduced bipartisan legislation to improve rail safety protocols, drew a parallel between the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that contributed to the East Palestine train disaster. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.

Trump repealed several Barack Obama-era US Department of Transportation rules meant to improve rail safety, including one that required high-hazard cargo trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic brake technology by 2023. This rule would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine – where roughly 5,000 residents had to evacuate for days – as it was not classified as a high-hazard cargo train.

But the debate around the railway accident and bank failures points to a perennial divide between Democrats, who insist that some regulation is vital to a functioning capitalism, and Republicans, who have long claimed to believe in small government. Steve Bannon, an influential far-right podcaster and former White House chief strategist, framed the Trump agenda as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”.

Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Republican party has gotten by for many years on this idea that less is better. However, we’re now learning in this country that, as America continues to mature, in some cases more is better, and more has to be how we get to better. Otherwise the mistakes can spin out of control and cause generations of people long-term damage.”

A Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on fire on 4 February 2023. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/AP

Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks while Warren and other Democrats introduced legislation to undo the 2018 law and restore the Dodd-Frank regulations. It is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and even some moderate Democrats.

Biden has also insisted that no taxpayer money will be used to resolve the current crisis, keen to avoid any perception that average Americans are “bailing out” the two banks in a way similar to the unpopular bailouts of the biggest financial firms in 2008.

But Republicans running for the 2024 presidential nomination are already contending that customers will ultimately bear the costs of the government’s actions even if taxpayer funds were not directly used. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said: “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout. It is.”

Another potential 2024 contender, Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, also criticised what he called a “culture of government intervention”, arguing that it incentivises banks to continue risky behavior if they know federal agencies will ultimately rescue them.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is familiar ideological territory. The battle lines between liberalism and a fake conservatism appear to be playing out here. But the tragedy of the situation is that the liberals are right.

It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses … look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years
Wendy Schiller

“You do need government to regulate finance and, when you don’t, you get mischief making and bank failures but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality. He’s demonstrated that facts and position taking don’t matter. It’s an extraordinary political strategy but it’s even more devastating to our whole political system and our media that this could be allowed.”

This poses a huge messaging challenge for Democrats, who after the 2008 financial crisis came up against the Tea Party, a populist movement feeding off economic and racial resentments. Long and winding explanations about the negative impacts of Trump era deregulation are a hard sell compared to the former president’s sloganeering in East Palestine.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Once again we see that Trump is taking advantage of the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic party by telling voters that the Democrats like big government because it bails out industries and it never provides a bailout for the little guy.”

Democrats’ efforts to point out that Trump was responsible for deregulation are unlikely to cut through, Schiller added.

“Any time it takes more than 10 seconds to explain something, you’re done in politics. This is why Trump has catchy phrases, sound bytes. He understands that all voters see is that rich people made a bad investment and then more rich people are making sure that their money’s available to them within three days, coming off the heels of all the closures during Covid, lost business, lost income, people struggling, inflation.

“Democrats don’t want to call it a bailout but it is a bailout. The high visibility of this bailout smothers anything else the Democrats are doing for the average voter. It’s a perfect issue for the Republicans. It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses and the Democrats have to save it. Look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years: this is exactly what happens.”

First Republic, SVB, Credit Suisse: The latest banks in trouble and why

The Washington Post

First Republic, SVB, Credit Suisse: The latest banks in trouble and why

Ellen Francis – March 17, 2023

Signage is displayed on an ATM outside of a First Republic Bank branch in Manhattan Beach, California, on March 13, 2023. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images) (PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images)

First Republic Bank is the fourth bank to face a crisis in the past week, as banking and government officials try to dispel fears of a wider financial meltdown.

Here’s a recap of some of the latest troubled banks, and what this could mean.

– – –

What is First Republic Bank and why did it need rescuing?

It’s a San Francisco lender founded in 1985 that specializes in private banking and wealth management. Its shares plunged earlier this week, raising the specter of a third major U.S. bank implosion in days.

This is why 11 of the largest banks in the United States stepped in with an announcement on Thursday that they would deposit a total of $30 billion into their smaller peer. The bid to stabilize First Republic Bank was coordinated partly by federal officials, The Washington Post reported, and it came on the same day that Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers that the U.S. “banking system is sound.”

The intervention, seen as one of the most sweeping in modern U.S. banking history, highlighted concerns in Washington and on Wall Street after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last week.

– – –

How did Silicon Valley Bank’s failure spark fears of a global financial crisis?

Financial regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which catered to venture capitalists and start-ups, about a week ago, making it the second-biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

Depositors had rushed to withdraw their money after the firm filed a notice that it was selling billions in assets to shore up its finances. The bank was tightly linked to the tech industry, which is beset by layoffs.

Such a rapid collapse – the first major U.S. banking scare since the crisis that sparked the Great Recession – sent shock waves through the financial system, and it prompted fears that money needed to pay tech workers could be lost or frozen.

That’s because bank deposits in the United States are only insured by the federal government for up to $250,000. At SVB, more than 90 percent of depositors had accounts over that limit – many of them exceeding it by millions of dollars. Businesses couldn’t pay workers if their accounts were frozen or, worse, if SVB hadn’t actually had enough money to cover withdrawals from uninsured accounts.

So last weekend, U.S. officials announced plans to guarantee deposits and to create a new central bank lending program, maintaining assurances that the situation is different from the financial crisis of 2008. The Biden administration also said taxpayers will bear no cost for the backstop, although critics note that the deposit insurance is funded by fees levied on banks, which could, in turn, raise costs for customers.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission have launched investigations into the SVB collapse and the actions of its senior executives, as questions also emerged about regulators missing warning signs.

– – –

Is this connected to the Signature Bank collapse?

Regulators closed Signature Bank, a New York-based financial institution crucial to the cryptocurrency industry, last weekend after a deposit run.

The demise of an institution also enmeshed in the tech industry was prompted in part by the fallout after SVB, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) told a news conference.

Signature Bank served many clients deeply involved in cryptocurrency, which had a sharp drop in value last year, while other depositors included law and real estate firms. Officials extended the same deposit protections to its customers.

– – –

What happened with Credit Suisse this week?

A giant European bank with assets spanning the globe, Credit Suisse had disclosed “material weaknesses” in its financial reporting, before announcing this week it would borrow up to $53.7 billion from Switzerland’s central bank to reinforce its finances.

Credit Suisse’s troubles predated SVB’s collapse, and they’re not caused by the same factors that brought down the U.S. banks. But the failure of SVB spooked markets, and the Swiss bank’s announcements made investors fearful of a broader contagion.

The liquidity lifeline to Credit Suisse from the Swiss central bank – which Reuters described as the first one taken by a major global bank since 2008 – appeared to calm European markets in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein, Pranshu Verma and Adela Suliman contributed to this report.

U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later

Reuters

U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later

Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay – March 16, 2023

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – From an empowered Iran and eroded U.S. influence to the cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria to combat Islamic State fighters, the United States still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago, current and former officials say.

Then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to oust Saddam Hussein by force, the way limited U.S. troop numbers enabled ethnic strife and the eventual 2011 U.S. pullout have all greatly complicated U.S. policy in the Middle East, they said.

The end of Saddam’s minority Sunni rule and replacement with a Shi’ite majority government in Iraq freed Iran to deepen its influence across the Levant, especially in Syria, where Iranian forces and Shi’ite militias helped Bashar al-Assad crush a Sunni uprising and stay in power.

The 2011 withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq left a vacuum that Islamic State (ISIS) militants filled, seizing roughly a third of Iraq and Syria and fanning fears among Gulf Arab states that they could not rely on the United States.

Having withdrawn, former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 sent troops back to Iraq, where about 2,500 remain, and in 2015 he deployed to Syria, where about 900 troops are on the ground. U.S. forces in both countries combat Islamic State militants, who are also active from North Africa to Afghanistan.

“Our inability, unwillingness, to put the hammer down in terms of security in the country allowed chaos to ensue, which gave rise to ISIS,” said former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, faulting the U.S. failure to secure Iraq.

Armitage, who served under Republican Bush when the United States invaded Iraq, said the U.S. invasion “might be as big a strategic error” as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which helped bring about Germany’s World War Two defeat.

MASSIVE COSTS

The costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria are massive.

According to estimates published this week by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University, the U.S. price tag to date for the wars in Iraq and Syria comes to $1.79 trillion, including Pentagon and State Department spending, veterans’ care and the interest on debt financing the conflicts. Including projected veterans’ care through 2050, this rises to $2.89 trillion.

The project puts U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years at 4,599 and estimates total deaths, including Iraqi and Syrian civilians, military, police, opposition fighters, media and others at 550,000 to 584,000. This includes only those killed as a direct result of war but not estimated indirect deaths from disease, displacement or starvation.

U.S. credibility also suffered from Bush’s decision to invade based on bogus, exaggerated and ultimately erroneous intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

John Bolton, a war advocate who served under Bush, said even though Washington made mistakes – by failing to deploy enough troops and administering Iraq instead of quickly handing over to Iraqis – he believed removing Saddam justified the costs.

“It was worth it because the decision was not simply: ‘Does Saddam pose a WMD threat in 2003?'” he said. “Another question was: ‘Would he pose a WMD threat five years later?’ To which I think the answer clearly was ‘yes.'”

“The worst mistake made after the overthrow of Saddam … was withdrawing in 2011,” he added, saying he believed Obama wanted to pull out and used the inability to get guarantees of immunity for U.S. forces from Iraq’s parliament “as an excuse.”

‘ALARM BELLS RINGING … IN THE GULF’

Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador in Iraq, said the 2003 invasion did not immediately undermine U.S. influence in the Gulf but the 2011 withdrawal helped push Arab states to start hedging their bets.

In the latest example of waning U.S. influence, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to re-establish relations after years of hostility in a deal brokered by China.

“We just decided we didn’t want to do this stuff anymore,” Crocker said, referring to the U.S. unwillingness to keep spending blood and treasure securing Iraq. “That began … with President Obama declaring … he was going to pull all forces out.”

“These were U.S. decisions not forced by a collapsing economy, not forced by demonstrators in the street,” he said. “Our leadership just decided we didn’t want to do it any more. And that started the alarm bells ringing … in the Gulf.”

Jim Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, said the war raised deep questions about Washington’s willingness to act unilaterally and its steadfastness as a partner.

“The net result … has been bad for U.S. leverage, bad for U.S. influence, bad for our ability to partner with countries in the region,” he said.

A debate still rages among former officials over Obama’s decision to withdraw, tracking a timeline laid out by the Bush administration and reflecting a U.S. inability to secure immunities for U.S. troops backed by the Iraqi parliament.

Bolton’s belief that removing Saddam was worth the eventual cost is not held by many current and former officials.

Asked the first word that came to mind about the invasion and its aftermath, Armitage replied “FUBAR,” a military acronym which, politely, stands for “Fouled up beyond all recognition.”

“Disaster,” said Larry Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff.

“Unnecessary,” said Steinberg.

(This story has been refiled to fix the spelling of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s name in paragraph 5)

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by William Maclean)