Health – Happiness – Page 49

C.E.O.s Are Frustrated. That Doesn’t Mean They Embrace Trump.

The New York Times

C.E.O.s Are Frustrated. That Doesn’t Mean They Embrace Trump.

Corporate executives complain about some of President Biden’s policies, along with his rhetoric. But so far they have not abandoned him en masse.

By Ben Casselman, Jim Tankersley, Sydney Ember and Theodore Schleifer – June 24, 2024

President Biden, in a checkered shirt, preparing to descend the stairs leading from the door of Air Force One. — Many corporate leaders view the relative stability of President Biden’s administration as preferable to the chaos that often characterized the Trump presidency. Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times

When the White House chief of staff, Jeffrey Zients, met with dozens of top executives in Washington this month, he encountered a familiar list of corporate complaints about President Biden.

The executives at the Business Roundtable, a group representing some of the country’s biggest corporations, objected to Mr. Biden’s proposals to raise taxes. They questioned the lack of business representation in the Cabinet. They bristled at what they called overregulation by federal agencies.

While the meeting was not antagonistic, it was indicative of three and a half years of executive grousing about Mr. Biden. Business leaders have criticized his remarks on “corporate greed” and his appearance on a union picket line. They chafe at the actions of officials he has appointed — particularly the head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, who has moved to block a series of corporate mergers.

A number of prominent figures in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street — including the venture capitalists David Sacks and Marc Andreessen, and the hedge fund magnate Kenneth Griffin — have grown increasingly vocal in their criticism of Mr. Biden, their praise of former President Donald J. Trump, or both.

Still, that shift mostly reflects movement among executives who already supported Republican politicians but had not previously embraced Mr. Trump. There is little evidence of a major shift in allegiance among executives away from Mr. Biden and toward Mr. Trump.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale School of Management professor who is in frequent contact with corporate leaders, said most chief executives he had spoken to preferred Mr. Biden to Mr. Trump, “some of them enthusiastically and some of them biting their lip and holding their nose.”

Executives who have donated to Democrats in the past generally continue to do so: Filings released by the Federal Election Commission last week showed donations to Mr. Biden’s campaign committees from business leaders including Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo chief, and Brad Smith, the Microsoft president — both of whom recently hosted Biden fund-raisers — and from Mark Cuban, the tech investor.

And despite subtle signs of waning enthusiasm for Mr. Biden among business elites, neither the White House nor the Biden campaign seem particularly concerned. They see their policies on taxation and regulation as effective and broadly popular. And they cite record corporate profits under Mr. Biden’s presidency.

Still, the administration has taken steps to improve its relationship with business leaders. In February, a team including Mr. Zients and Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen divided up a list of more than 100 chief executives to contact, White House officials said. In May, the president met with corporate leaders including executives of Marriott, United Airlines and Xerox.

Kenneth Griffin speaks while sitting on a stage with blue lighting and logos behind him. — Kenneth Griffin, the hedge fund magnate, is among the prominent business figures who have recently criticized Mr. Biden.Credit…David Swanson/Reuters

Administration officials say feedback from executives has led to policy shifts, as when the Environmental Protection Agency softened new requirements to reduce car and truck emissions after hearing from automakers.

“We’re not going to agree with businesses on everything, but what we’re going to do is, we’re talking to them,” Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, who frequently meets with business leaders, said in an interview.

The business world’s frustrations with Mr. Biden partly come down to style and rhetoric. Mr. Biden has harangued companies for “ripping people off” by raising prices and shrinking product portions, and he has chastised chief executives for lavish pay packages. He has aligned himself with organized labor more often and more explicitly than past Democratic presidents.

Mr. Biden’s rhetoric has offended even some otherwise sympathetic business leaders. Mr. Sonnenfeld of Yale called it “needlessly off-putting” and “self-destructive.” But it may resonate with the public. In polls, Americans routinely blame large corporations for inflation, and majorities in both parties say they view big business negatively overall.

Beyond atmospherics, a number of Biden administration policies have grated on business leaders. Mr. Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, from 21 percent (though still below the 35 percent that prevailed until the tax cuts signed by Mr. Trump), and to eliminate various industry-specific tax breaks. He has also proposed raising taxes on wealthy individuals — a group that includes many executives and their biggest investors. And his administration has issued or proposed stricter rules on environmental protection, worker safety and consumer rights.

Many of those policies are unsurprising for a Democratic president — as are the complaints they draw from business leaders. Research published in 2022 found that about 70 percent of top executives at S&P 500 companies identified themselves as Republicans.

But in some areas, the Biden White House and its regulatory appointees have been more aggressive than other recent Democratic administrations.

“I think the regulatory agenda that we’ve seen in some areas in the current administration has been troubling,” said Brad Close, the president of the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy organization, echoing concerns expressed privately by many businesses, both large and small.

Individual industries have their own complaints. Airlines are upset by Mr. Biden’s efforts to crack down on “junk fees” and to require refunds for delayed flights. Pharmaceutical companies have sued to block the administration’s efforts to negotiate lower prices for drugs for older adults. Nonunionized construction companies are furious about rules requiring agreements between contractors and unions on large federal projects.

“That’s a spear in our heart,” said Milton Graugnard, executive vice president at Cajun Industries, an industrial construction firm in Baton Rouge, La. “It’s damning and damaging to our industry,” added Mr. Graugnard, a Trump donor in the past, “and I know it’s going to drive costs up.”

Still, other industries have praised the administration, particularly for the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in infrastructure, green energy and domestic manufacturing resulting from legislation it helped enact.

“Our relationship with the Biden administration is a very productive one, especially as it relates to shared policy priorities,” said Kip Eideberg, senior vice president of government relations for the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, which represents companies that build construction and agricultural equipment.

Mr. Eideberg criticized the administration on other issues, like trade policy, where Mr. Biden has maintained tariffs, first imposed under Mr. Trump, that make imported parts and materials costlier. But he said the Biden administration had been far more open to consultation than the Obama administration, which he said seemed to have “very little interest in proactively engaging with the business community.”

The Biden administration argues that whatever different industries might say about their policies, businesses appear to be backing Mr. Biden in a far more important way: with investments.

The quarterly increase in investment under Mr. Biden has been comparable to the trend under Mr. Trump before the pandemic — even though the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by five percentage points during Mr. Biden’s presidency, a move that typically depresses investment.

Some of Mr. Biden’s business-world backers cite a more fundamental reason for their support: Mr. Trump’s presidency was characterized by frequent policy reversals and near-constant uncertainty, they say. Many are also concerned about his approach to immigration and trade, and about the possibility that Mr. Trump could seek to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.

At the session with the Business Roundtable executives, who met with Mr. Trump the same day, Mr. Zients stressed Mr. Biden’s commitment to stability and the rule of law.

“A lot of them — and I do this for a living every day, work with C.E.O.s in big companies — a lot of them view this as a choice between predictability and clarity on the one hand and unpredictability and chaos on the other,” said Roger Altman, senior chairman of the investment bank Evercore, who held Treasury positions under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Steven Cheung, the Trump campaign’s communications director, responded: “President Trump continues to be warmly received by the business community and commended for his policy proposals on deregulation and tax cuts. The clear contrast is a pro-growth economy that benefited all Americans under President Trump versus Joe Biden’s failed record of skyrocketing inflation and business-killing mandates.”

Vinod Khosla, seated in an armchair, listens to a man next to him who is gesturing with both hands. A row of American flags is behind them. — Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist, hosted Mr. Biden during a fund-raising swing to Silicon Valley last month.Credit…Jason Andrew for The New York Times

The most potent anger from the business community toward the current administration is often directed at regulators, particularly Gary Gensler, the Securities and Exchange Commission chair, and Ms. Khan of the Federal Trade Commission.

Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist who played host to Mr. Biden on a fund-raising swing to Silicon Valley last month, excoriated Ms. Khan at a conference this month as “not a rational human being.”

But Mr. Khosla is not abandoning his support for Mr. Biden.

“Lina is not the most important part of the Biden presidency,” he said in an email. “And Trump is far worse than Lina in 10 dimensions.”

Keith Rabois, Mr. Khosla’s colleague at the firm Khosla Ventures, sees things differently. Mr. Rabois, a longtime entrepreneur and investor, is a conservative, but he did not support Mr. Trump in 2016 or 2020. Now he is doing so, in part because of Ms. Khan’s approach, but primarily because of what he saw as Mr. Biden’s lackluster support for Israel and Jewish students on college campuses.

Mr. Khosla’s and Mr. Rabois’s divergent conclusions — despite their shared criticisms — reflect a larger pattern. Business leaders who have supported Mr. Biden in the past mostly still do, though some more quietly or with more reservations than before. And some Republican executives who were once skeptical of Mr. Trump or backed him quietly have become more public in their support.

Charles Elson, the founding director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, said many of those who still preferred Mr. Biden had become more quiet in their support — not necessarily because of his policies but because of a sense that Mr. Trump could win.

“They’ve just stopped talking,” Mr. Elson said. “That’s all. They realized it’s too close to call, it’s better to say nothing. You never can be attacked for what you didn’t say.”

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.

Ben Casselman writes about economics with a particular focus on stories involving data. He has covered the economy for nearly 20 years, and his recent work has focused on how trends in labor, politics, technology and demographics have shaped the way we live and work.

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class.

Sydney Ember is a Times business reporter, covering the U.S. economy and the labor market.

Theodore Schleifer writes about campaign finance and the influence of billionaires in American politics.

Clarence Thomas and John Roberts Are at a Fork in the Road

The New York Times – Opinion

Clarence Thomas and John Roberts Are at a Fork in the Road

David French – June 23, 2024

Credit…Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, it created a jurisprudential mess that scrambled American gun laws. On Friday not only did the cleanup begin, but the Supreme Court also cleared the way for one of the most promising legal innovations for preventing gun violence: red flag laws.

The Bruen ruling did two things. First, it rendered a sensible and, in my view, correct decision that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” as articulated in the Second Amendment, includes a right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense. But the right isn’t unlimited. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his concurrence in Bruen, the court did not “prohibit states from imposing licensing requirements for carrying a handgun for self-defense” and that “properly interpreted, the Second Amendment allows a ‘variety’ of gun regulations.”

At the same time, the court articulated a “text, history and tradition” test for evaluating gun restrictions in future federal cases. Under this test, gun control measures were constitutional only if the government could demonstrate those restrictions were “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” That was the most significant element of the Bruen case. Before Bruen, lower courts had struggled to establish a uniform legal test for evaluating gun restrictions, and the Supreme Court hadn’t provided any clarity.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion in a 6-to-3 decision split along ideological lines. He applied the text, history and tradition test by walking through the very complex, often contradictory, history of American gun laws to determine whether New York’s restrictions had analogies with the colonial period or the periods after ratification of the Second Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment, which applied the Second Amendment to the states. Under a fair reading of Thomas’s opinion, lower courts would be hard pressed to uphold any gun restriction unless they could point to an obvious historical match.

Not only was the history messy, but judicial reliance on founding-era legislation suffers from an additional conceptual flaw: State legislatures are hardly stuffed with constitutional scholars. Then and now, our state legislatures are prone to enact wildly unconstitutional legislation.

Our courts exist in part to check legislatures when they go astray. The courts do not rely on legislatures to establish constitutional doctrine. In our divided system of government, legislators are not tasked with interpreting constitutional law. Yes, they should take the Constitution into account when they draft laws, but the laws they draft aren’t precedent. They do not and should not bind the courts.

United States v. Rahimi, the case the Supreme Court decided on Friday, is a product of Bruen’s confusion. And the outcome is fascinating. Five of the six justices who voted in the majority in Bruen backed away from the clear implications of the decision. Thomas, by contrast, doubled down.

The case involves a man from Texas named Zackey Rahimi who was convicted of violating a federal law that prohibits individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. He had threatened his girlfriend and another woman with a gun, and he was a suspect in a spate of additional shootings. After he threatened his girlfriend, he entered into an agreed domestic violence restraining order prohibiting him from threatening his girlfriend or from contacting her unless they were discussing their child. He promptly violated that order by approaching her home and contacting her on social media.

As Chief Justice John Roberts recounts in his majority opinion, when the police obtained a search warrant of Rahimi’s home to investigate the additional shootings, “they discovered a pistol, a rifle, ammunition — and a copy of the restraining order.”

Rahimi was indicted on one count of possessing a firearm while subject to a domestic violence restraining order. He challenged the indictment, arguing that Section 922(g)(8), the law he was charged under, violated the Second Amendment. The trial court and the court of appeals initially rejected the argument, but while the Fifth Circuit was considering his petition for a rehearing with the entire court, the Supreme Court decided Bruen.

The appeals court then took a fresh look at his case, applying the Thomas test. It searched for clear historical matches and — unable to find any — held that the government failed “to demonstrate that § 922(g)(8)’s restriction of the Second Amendment right fits within our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” If this ruling held, every person subject to a domestic violence restraining order could have immediate access to firearms, assuming no other legal restrictions applied.

Even worse, if the Fifth Circuit’s ruling had stood, lawmakers seeking to justify virtually any gun regulation would have to be prepared to find colonial or early-American analogies for their proposed restriction or watch it fail in court. This would have meant that lawmakers facing modern gun violence problems involving modern weapons would have been constrained into essentially colonial and founding-era legal solutions.

In essence, that is the exact reverse of an argument that some gun control proponents make, that the Second Amendment protects only possession of colonial-era weapons. Under the Thomas test, the Second Amendment would permit only colonial-era restrictions.

On Friday, eight justices of the Supreme Court not only ruled against Rahimi. They clarified their approach to text, history and tradition in a way that freed lower courts from the straitjacket of finding precise historical analogies. Roberts declared that “some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases.” The court’s precedents “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” Or, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in her concurrence, “Historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold.”

As a practical matter, this means, as Roberts wrote, that “when a challenged regulation does not precisely match its historical precursors, ‘it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.’” Applying this more flexible framework, the court reached a holding that will echo beyond Rahimi’s case: “An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”

That holding is relevant not just to domestic violence restraining orders; it’s also relevant to so-called red-flag laws or extreme risk protective orders. Those laws, adopted in 21 states, empower specific individuals (like law enforcement or, in some cases, family members) to petition a court to order a person to surrender his guns if he exhibits dangerous or threatening behavior.

The reason for red-flag laws is clear: Research has demonstrated that mass shooters tend to broadcast violent intentions before they act. A National Institute of Justice-funded study of more than 50 years of mass killings, for example, found that “in most cases” mass shooters “engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire.” In 2018 the Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, commissioned a “Safe Arizona Schools” report, which found that in every one of the most recent and severe school shootings, a red-flag law could have prevented tragedy.

Thomas was the lone dissenter in Rahimi. Five justices wrote their own concurrences, many of them arguing that the Fifth Circuit misunderstood and misapplied Bruen. But Thomas argued that the Fifth Circuit got the analysis right because the founding generation “addressed the same societal problem as §922(g)(8) through the ‘materially different means’ of surety laws.”

Surety laws required a person who was suspected of threatening “future misbehavior” to post a bond, a sum of money that he’d forfeit if he broke the law. If he didn’t post a bond, he’d be jailed. But such reliance on a specific, narrow past legislative approach isn’t required by originalism. It is, itself, a policy choice.

Barrett put her objections well. “Imposing a test that demands overly specific analogues has serious problems,” she wrote. “It forces 21st-century regulations to follow late-18th-century policy choices, giving us ‘a law trapped in amber.’ And it assumes that founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate, thereby adopting a ‘use it or lose it’ view of legislative authority.”

“Such assumptions are flawed,” Barrett said, “and originalism does not require them.”

But that doesn’t mean history is useless. As Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, surety laws help confirm “what common sense suggests: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed.”

The difference between Roberts and Thomas is clear. Roberts looks to past practice to establish a principle. Thomas looks to past practice as essentially establishing precedent.

Roberts gets it right. When we consider new policies in the present, the acts of the past are instructive but not binding. Modern American lawmakers are not limited by the colonial imagination.

After Escaping China by Sea, a Dissident Faces His Next Act

Kwon Pyong recounted for the first time the series of gambles that got him out of China by jet ski, and almost a year later, out of South Korea.

John Yoon, Reporting from Incheon, South Korea – June 23, 2024

A man in white T-shirt, dark shorts and sneakers holds a bag in his hand and looks toward the sea. — Kwon Pyong gazes out at the mud flat in Incheon, South Korea, where he arrived last year.Credit…Woohae Cho for The New York Times

The dissident’s lone regret after his 200-mile escape across the Yellow Sea was not taking night vision goggles.

Nearing the end of his jet ski journey out of China last summer, Kwon Pyong peered through the darkness off the South Korean coast. As he approached the shore, sea gulls appeared to bob as if floating. He steered forward, then ran aground: The birds were sitting on mud.

“I had everything — sunscreen, backup batteries, a knife to cut buoy lines,” he recalled in an interview. He was prepared to signal his location with a laser pen if he became stranded and to burn his notes with a lighter if he were captured. He also had a visa to enter South Korea, and had intended to arrive at a port of entry, he said, not strand himself on a mud flat.

It wasn’t enough.

Mr. Kwon, 36 and an ethnic Korean, had mocked China’s powerful leader and criticized how the ruling Communist Party was persecuting hundreds of pro-democracy activists at home and abroad. In response, he said, he faced an exit ban and years of detention, prison and surveillance.

But fleeing to South Korea did not offer the relief he expected. He was still hounded by the Chinese state, he said, and spent time in detention. Even after he was released, he was in legal limbo: neither wanted nor allowed to leave.

Map shows the distance over the ocean traveled by a Chinese dissident on a jet ski, from the Chinese Shandong Peninnsula to the town of Incheon in South Korea.

It would take 10 more months for Mr. Kwon to be permitted to leave South Korea. Days before he flew out on Sunday, he returned to the mud flat where he haplessly came ashore off Incheon last summer and recounted for the first time publicly the details of his meticulously planned journey.

Court documents from his criminal case in South Korea, past interviews with his friends and family and a statement from the Incheon Coast Guard last year corroborated many of the details in his account.

On a Yamaha WaveRunner purchased with the equivalent of $25,000 in cash, withdrawn from several banks to avoid tipping off the police, Mr. Kwon set off on the morning of Aug. 16 from the foggy coast of the Shandong Peninsula.

A person leans over an red and white personal watercraft that is sitting on land. — A photo released by South Korea’s Coast Guard showing Mr. Kwon’s WaveRunner in Incheon in August 2023.Credit…Korea Coast Guard, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

He said he wore a black life jacket and motorcycle helmet for the journey, where he crashed into 10-foot waves and dodged floating rice wine bottles. As his skin burned from the summer sun, he fell into the sea twice, losing his sunglasses.

More on China

Driverless Cars: Across China, more assisted driving systems and robot taxis are being tested than in any other country, with censors limiting discussions about safety.
A Disappearing Internet: The number of Chinese websites is shrinking and posts are being removed and censored, stoking fears about what happens when history is erased.
A Landmark Political Trial: As part of China’s crackdown on dissent, 14 democracy activists in Hong Kong were convicted on national security charges. They now face prison time along with dozens of others.
A Recipe for Total Control: Reviving a Mao-era surveillance campaign, Chinese authorities are tracking residents, schoolchildren and businesses to forestall any potential unrest.

He refueled using the five barrels of gas that he had tied to the WaveRunner. For himself, he had five bottles of water and five ham and tuna sandwiches. He navigated using a marine compass and a smartphone he had acquired from someone else.

His first glimpse of land came as the setting sun gave the islands off South Korea a warm glow. What was supposed to take eight hours turned to 14. By the time Mr. Kwon arrived in Incheon, the pink sky he had stopped to admire had faded to black.

He did not see any boats or ships on guard, he said, even as he entered a heavily militarized area that the navy monitors for activity, including defectors from North Korea.

Mr. Kwon — who speaks Chinese, English and some Korean — called the local police for help. For an hour, he waited while trying to fend off mosquitoes by walking around his watercraft in beige Crocs.

That night, he said, the Incheon Coast Guard and the South Korean Marine Corps rescued him, detained him and began investigating him along with the South Korean National Intelligence Service.

Moonlight is reflected on the sea. — A view of the Yellow Sea from Shandong Province in China, from where Mr. Kwon began his journey.Credit…Costfoto/NurPhoto, via Getty Images

South Korea rarely accepts refugees, and the authorities served him a deportation order. But over the next months, he was also banned from leaving the country as he fought a criminal charge of unlawful entry, which can be punished with up to five years in prison.

He said that he wondered how things might have unfolded had his arrival gone as planned.

South Korean prosecutors did not lift the exit ban they imposed on Mr. Kwon until his criminal case was finished this month. He said he planned to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada. His flight on Sunday was bound for Newark.

“I want to live my own life,” he said. “I want to live in peace for a while.”

Mr. Kwon, whose Chinese name is Quan Ping, is from a city in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, near the border with North Korea. He has visited South Korea, his grandfather’s birthplace, regularly since childhood. He spent his college years in the United States, where he went by Johnny, participated in Iowa State University’s Army R.O.T.C. program and took flying lessons, he said.

He studied aerospace engineering at the university for a few years and returned in 2012 to China, where he ran an online clothing brand and traded cryptocurrencies. He continued traveling widely, touring Lebanon and Syria as an aspiring photojournalist, he said.

He first drew the ire of the Chinese authorities when he began criticizing the Communist Party online. In 2016, he posted on social media about antigovernment protests he had attended in Hong Kong, a Chinese territory. He wore a T-shirt calling China’s leader, Xi Jinping, “Xitler.”

A compass attached to a neon yellow string sits next to a person’s hand on wooden slats. — A compass that Mr. Kwon carried on his 200-mile trip.Credit…Woohae Cho for The New York Times

Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Kwon that year and sentenced him in 2017 to 18 months in prison for “inciting subversion of state power,” a charge frequently leveled against dissidents and human rights lawyers.

After his release in 2018, the police tapped his communications, tracked his movements and periodically interrogated him, he said. State agents, he added, were alarmed by his contact with the leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, including Wang Dan, once one of China’s most wanted men.

“I couldn’t live a normal life,” he said.

China’s Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Kwon grew desperate to leave as the police investigated his family and friends. He said his plans to leave China by sea were inspired in part by the 1994 movie “The Shawshank Redemption” and by Lindsay Warner, an explorer who circumnavigated Australia on a Jet Ski. He decided South Korea was his only viable option.

He left behind his e-commerce and crypto operations, as well as his friends, family members and a girlfriend.

After the rescue from the mud flat, Mr. Kwon said, investigators seemed baffled by his story and interrogated him, threatened to torture him and denied his request for a lawyer. The Incheon Coast Guard, which led the investigation, said in a statement that “there were no human rights violations” during the investigation.

A man in shorts and a T-shirt, carrying a backpack, walks past a sign that says “Terminal.” — Mr. Kwon at Incheon Airport, South Korea, on Sunday. He said he planned to apply for asylum in the United States or Canada.Credit…Woohae Cho for The New York Times

In court, Mr. Kwon argued that he was a political refugee and had intended to arrive legally at the Incheon Port, less than a mile from the mud flat, with a tourist visa. A judge found him guilty of unlawful entry in November, handing down a suspended one-year prison sentence with a two-year probationary period.

The verdict released Mr. Kwon from custody but not from legal limbo. Immigration officials imposed an exit ban as prosecutors appealed the judge’s decision.

While living in his parents’ house in Ansan, south of Seoul, Mr. Kwon went to the gym, read books about crypto trading and volunteered at an English language school for adults. He said he also befriended a group of Nigerian refugees by joining their soccer club.

But he didn’t let his guard down. He stuck to the routines he had developed in China: constantly checking for security cameras, and using encrypted texting apps and signal-blocking Faraday bags.

Lee Dae-seon, a South Korean activist who has helped Mr. Kwon, said that he has warned Mr. Kwon of the dangers of China’s overseas police effort, known as Operation Fox Hunt, in which Chinese dissidents living abroad have been forcibly repatriated.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed with Mr. Lee that he and Mr. Kwon were targets of the operation, Mr. Lee said. The N.I.S. did not respond to a request for comment.

“It is not safe for him to continue living in South Korea,” Mr. Lee said.

Two hands hold up a document against a backdrop of water. — Mr. Kwon, near where he arrived in South Korea, showing the South Korean tourist visa he had obtained. The legal port of entry he was aiming for is seen at the top right.Credit…Woohae Cho for The New York Times

In May, an appeals court dismissed prosecutors’ appeal, as well as Mr. Kwon’s lawyers’ efforts to have his sentence reduced. Mr. Kwon decided not to pursue the case further so that he could leave the country quickly, and prosecutors lifted the travel ban, said Sejin Kim, his lawyer.

At the mud flat, Mr. Kwon said he was looking forward to leaving and starting a new business venture. He said some of his friends and relatives live in the United States and Canada. He is traveling to the United States on a visa for visitors.

“I want to start my second life,” he said.

An immigration law specialist said that while a case for seeking asylum in the United States appeared to be strong, a decision could take years. Mr. Kwon would also have to demonstrate a “well-founded fear” of additional persecution should he be deported to China, said the specialist, Yael Schacher, of Refugees International, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C.

At Incheon Airport on Sunday, he said goodbye to his parents and friends in South Korea, where he would be barred from returning for five years because of his criminal record.

He disappeared into the security line, a ticket for seat 17A in hand, and with his Chinese passport and his South Korean deportation order in the black tactical backpack he had brought on his escape from China. He confirmed that he had boarded his plane by telephone.

“I’m happy, sad,” he said minutes before his flight was set to take off. “And angry,” he added, “that it took me so long to leave South Korea.”

At shortly before 10 p.m., the flight status display showed that his plane had departed.

John Liu contributed reporting. Desperate Escapes:

‘We’ll Never Get Out of Hell’: One American Family’s Escape From Gaza – Nov. 17, 2023

A Small Boat, a Vast Sea and a Desperate Escape From Russia – Jan. 29, 2023

Hong Kong Protesters Who Fled by Boat Are Sentenced to Prison in China – Dec. 29, 2020

John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.

I Know What America’s Leading C.E.O.s Really Think of Donald Trump

The New York Times – Guest Opinion

I Know What America’s Leading C.E.O.s Really Think of Donald Trump

By Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld – June 23, 2024

Dr. Sonnenfeld is the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.

Recent headlines suggest that our nation’s business leaders are embracing the presidential candidate Donald Trump. His campaign would have you believe that our nation’s top chief executives are returning to support Mr. Trump for president, touting declarations of support from some prominent financiers like Steve Schwarzman and David Sacks.

That is far from the truth. They didn’t flock to him before, and they certainly aren’t flocking to him now. Mr. Trump continues to suffer from the lowest level of corporate support in the history of the Republican Party.

I know this because I work with roughly 1,000 chief executives a year, running a school for them, which I started 35 years ago, and I speak with business leaders almost every day. Our surveys show that 60 to 70 percent of them are registered Republicans.

The reality is that the top corporate leaders working today, like many Americans, aren’t entirely comfortable with either Mr. Trump or President Biden. But they largely like — or at least can tolerate — one of them. They truly fear the other.

If you want the most telling data point on corporate America’s lack of enthusiasm for Mr. Trump, look where they are investing their money. Not a single Fortune 100 chief executive has donated to the candidate so far this year, which indicates a major break from overwhelming business and executive support for Republican presidential candidates dating back over a century, to the days of Taft and stretching through Coolidge and the Bushes, all of whom had dozens of major company heads donating to their campaigns.

Mr. Trump secured the White House partly by tapping into the anticorporate, populist messaging of Bernie Sanders, who was then a candidate, a move that Mr. Trump discussed with me when I met him in 2015. The strategy might have won voters but did little to enhance Mr. Trump’s image with the business community. And while a number of chief executives tried to work with Mr. Trump as they would with any incumbent president and many celebrated his move to cut the corporate tax rate, wariness persisted.

Several chief executives resented Mr. Trump’s personal attacks on businesses through divide-and-conquer tactics, meddling and pitting competitors against each other publicly. Scores of them rushed to distance themselves from Mr. Trump’s more provocative stances, resigning en masse from his business advisory councils in 2017 after he equated antiracism activists with white supremacists. Dozens of them openly called for Mr. Trump’s impeachment in 2021 after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Big business’s relationship and likelihood of future support for Mr. Biden is complicated. The president has also adopted populist stances toward business, though he has chafed at pressure from progressives to be even more combative. Nevertheless, chief executives commonly rail at what they view as excessively restrictive antitrust enforcement and misguided attacks on corporate greed.

But there are pluses in the Biden column as well: investments in infrastructure to rebuild highways and bridges, which will help reduce supply chain disruptions; government support for domestic chip making and electric vehicle production; record corporate profits and exuberant financial markets burying fears of a widely anticipated recession; the successful transformation of the United States into the world’s largest oil and natural gas producer.

And their legitimate misgivings about Mr. Biden are overwhelmed by worries about Mr. Trump, version 2024. Mr. Trump’s primary conduits to the business community in his first term — more-reasonable voices like those of Jared Kushner, Dina Powell and Steven Mnuchin — are gone, replaced by MAGA extremists and junior varsity opportunists.

The MAGA die-hard voices that have Mr. Trump’s ear often have more in common with the far left than with the traditional Republican Party. Mr. Trump and his team are doubling down on some of his most anti-business instincts, including proposing draconian 10 percent tariffs on all imports; unorthodox monetary and fiscal policies, including stripping the Federal Reserve Board of its independence; possibly putting in place yield curve control to force interest rates lower; and devaluing the dollar — all of which would drive inflation much higher. These Trump positions have more in common with Karl Marx than Adam Smith.

With two or three prominent exceptions, most business voices now hanging around the hoop would normally be in the minor leagues of Republican business supporters. The party must long for the days of President Dwight Eisenhower, when there were so many business leaders in support and fully 60 percent of his cabinet were chief executives.

As such, it was hardly surprising that just as when Mr. Trump faced a chilly reaction from hundreds of top executives when he spoke at my Yale Chief Executive summit in 2005, he appeared to face a similarly frigid reception when he spoke to the Business Roundtable this month, with no noticeable applause at any point during his “remarkably meandering” remarks, according to CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, and with Mr. Trump assuming a subdued, if not hostile, posture. Chief executives are not protectionist, isolationist or xenophobic, and they believe in investing where there is the rule of law, not the law of rulers.

That there are more Fortune 100 chief executives based in the smallest state in the nation, Rhode Island — and there’s exactly one Fortune 100 chief executive who is based there — than currently support Mr. Trump tells you how truly isolated the Republican presidential candidate is from the halls of big business.

Workers Shouldn’t Have to Risk Their Lives in Heat Waves

The New York Times – Guest Opinion

Workers Shouldn’t Have to Risk Their Lives in Heat Waves

By Terri Gerstein – June 21, 2024

A worker bent over a pile of dirt at a street corner holding a long-handled tool, wearing a hard hat circled by a wide yellow brim. — Credit…Cassidy Araiza for The New York Times

Ms. Gerstein is the director of the Labor Initiative at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. She spent more than 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, working in the state attorney general’s office and as a deputy labor commissioner.

A record-breaking heat wave is cresting across the United States, with about 100 million people under extreme heat alerts. Local TV news stations, governors and health officials advise to plan accordingly, drink water, go to cooling centers if needed and above all, refrain from excess outdoor exertion.

But if you pick fruit in a field, walk door to door delivering packages, stack boxes in an oppressively hot warehouse or do any number of other jobs without air-conditioning, you don’t have much legal protection against working under sweltering conditions. In 2022 alone, 43 people died from exposure to extreme heat while working, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year, there were others, including a postal worker who died of heat stroke in Dallas, and at least one farmworker who died after falling ill while working in extreme heat in Florida. From fields to warehouses to restaurants, laborers are in danger of illness, injuries and even death in this heat wave.

Climate scientists warn that we are reaching a tipping point where the mounting harms of global warming, including more frequent, more severe heat waves, will become irreversible. The federal government is trying to address the fact that climate change is making working conditions more dangerous each year. But its efforts aren’t likely to bear fruit quickly enough.

The key elements for protecting workers from heat above 80 degrees Fahrenheit are simple: ensure adequate rest, shade and water and allow people to adjust gradually to higher temperatures. Additional precautions are needed above 90 or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. But this is not the law in most of the country.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act has a “general duty clause” requiring employers to provide safe workplaces, but it lacks specificity on what to do in extreme heat. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration may issue a proposed rule on workplace heat relatively soon that would be likely to require, among other things, rest breaks, drinking water and cooling measures, as well as medical treatment and emergency response procedures. But once issued, there will be a comment and review period, followed by inevitable challenges from business groups arguing that the rule is too burdensome.

The Supreme Court majority’s tendency to rule against workers and overturn workplace regulation is likely to embolden these groups to appeal any decisions not in their favor, causing even more delays and perhaps thwarting the rule altogether. So it’s unlikely that any federal heat standard would take effect for the next few summers, and perhaps even longer.

There are still ways to protect workers from the heat. States could pass and enforce laws requiring employers to take simple measures to keep workers safe during deadly heat waves. Five states — Washington, Minnesota, California, Oregon and Colorado — have already passed such measures, establishing important legal and ethical norms for employers. Additional states — New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts — are considering heat protection legislation. More states should follow suit; if Minnesota thinks it’s necessary to protect its workers from heat, steamier states like Georgia and Arizona should, too.

Most states’ legislative sessions are over, limiting the possibilities for this summer, but lawmakers can prepare now and address this issue as a first order of business next year. A quicker option involves passing emergency temporary regulations through state agencies like safety and health boards. Some state and local laws may become obsolete when and if an OSHA heat rule eventually takes effect, but in the meantime they will save lives.

Cities and other local governments can act, too, passing their own workplace heat protections. Phoenix recently enacted a local heat ordinance for city contractors’ outdoor employees. Unfortunately, this option is not available in certain states, most notably Texas and Florida. After Austin, Dallas and San Antonio passed modest heat ordinances in 2023 requiring employers to give outdoor construction workers regular water breaks, Gov. Greg Abbott supported and signed a barbaric law prohibiting local action on a wide range of matters, including workplace heat. Gov. Ron DeSantis followed suit this year in Florida. (A state court ruled the Texas pre-emption law unconstitutional last year, but it’s in effect while an appeal is pending.)

Government at all levels can educate the public about these issues, and model good practices by adopting heat safety policies for their own employees. Such actions can have a big impact: Well-intentioned employers may not know what preventive steps they should take; workers may not know what to ask for; and few members of the general public know the signs of heat exhaustion or stroke. The cities of Los Angeles and Phoenix and Miami-Dade County have appointed chief heat officers who can take on some of the work of educating residents about workplace heat.

Employers, for their part, should take the initiative to learn what’s needed in their workplaces and implement those measures. And advocates, consumers and activist shareholders can also pressure corporations or industries to act.

Unions and worker advocates are now regularly pressing for heat protections as part of their focus on occupational safety and health. The Teamsters won air-conditioning in trucks as well as other heat protections in their most recent collective bargaining agreement. The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is training workers to fight for protections. The Fair Food Program, a partnership among farmers, farmworkers and retail food companies that ensures better wages and working conditions, has among the strictest heat standards in the country for farmworkers.

In the face of the heat this week, and what’s sure to come this summer and beyond, a varied approach across different levels of government and society is the only realistic path for the immediate future. Every worker should come home safe at the end of the day, even on the hottest day of the year.

A changing climate, a changing world

Climate change around the world: In “Postcards From a World on Fire,” 193 stories from individual countries show how climate change is reshaping reality everywhere, from dying coral reefs in Fiji to disappearing oases in Morocco and far, far beyond.

The role of our leaders: Writing at the end of 2020, Al Gore, the 45th vice president of the United States, found reasons for optimism in the Biden presidency, a feeling perhaps borne out by the passing of major climate legislation. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been criticisms. For example, Charles Harvey and Kurt House argue that subsidies for climate capture technology will ultimately be a waste.

The worst climate risks, mapped: In this feature, select a country, and we’ll break down the climate hazards it faces. In the case of America, our maps, developed with experts, show where extreme heat is causing the most deaths.

What people can do: Justin Gillis and Hal Harvey describe the types of local activism that might be needed, while Saul Griffith points to how Australia shows the way on rooftop solar. Meanwhile, small changes at the office might be one good way to cut significant emissions, writes Carlos Gamarra.

The Lazy Authoritarianism of Donald Trump

The New York Times – Opinion

The Lazy Authoritarianism of Donald Trump

Jamelle Bouie – June 21, 2024

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill last week to visit with House Republicans. According to most reports of the meeting, he rambled.

People present told the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS that the former president “treated his meeting as an opportunity to deliver a behind-closed-doors, stream-of-consciousness rant” in which he “tried to settle scores in the House G.O.P., trashed the city of Milwaukee and took a shot at Nancy Pelosi’s ‘wacko’ daughter.” It was “like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.”

That same week, Trump met with a group of chief executives at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable. Attendees, CNBC reports, were disappointed. “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one executive. Others said that Trump was “remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.”

There is a good chance that by the end of the year, Trump will be president-elect of the United States. And yet with less than five months left before the election, he is no more prepared for a second term than he was for a first. He may even be less prepared: less capable of organizing his thoughts, less able to speak with any coherence and less willing to do or learn anything that might help him overcome his deficiencies.

Everything that made Trump a bad president the first time around promises to make him an even worse one in a second term.

When I say “bad” here, I don’t mean the content of Trump’s agenda, as objectionable as it is, as much as I do his ability to handle the job of chief executive of the United States. In a political culture as obsessed with drama and celebrity as our own, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the presidency is an actual job — one of the most difficult in the world.

“Just a partial list of all that must go right in a presidency starts to stretch the limits of human endeavor,” John Dickerson, a reporter and anchor for CBS News, writes in “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency.”

“A president,” he goes on to say, “needs to pick the right team in a hurry, including a chief of staff who gets the balance of information flow, delegation and gatekeeping just right. The cabinet needs to be filled with leaders who have autonomy but not so much ego that they create political disasters. A president must have exquisite fingertip feel for prioritization, communication and political nuance.”

Trump, in his first term, was not equipped to do the work required of him.

As Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist, notes in a post for his Substack newsletter, Trump “utterly failed” at the “most important thing for presidents to do in order to succeed: collecting information. Trump didn’t read. He didn’t pay attention during briefings. He didn’t care about policy. He didn’t even bother, as far as anyone can tell, to learn the basic rules of the constitutional system.”

It’s not as if we can expect things to be better in a second term. “Everyone makes mistakes and ideally learns from them,” Matthew Yglesias observes in a recent analysis of Trump’s record as president. “As best I can tell, what Trump learned from his term is that he needs to double down on surrounding himself with craven loyalists who won’t contradict him.”

There is an obvious rejoinder here: How is it possible that Trump is both incompetent and a dangerous authoritarian? How can he undermine American democracy when he struggles to manage his administration?

The answer is that this only seems like a contradiction. In truth, these two sides of the former president are easy to reconcile.

Trump’s authoritarian instincts — his refusal to accept or even learn the rules of the constitutional system — are a huge part of the reason he struggled in the job of president. They helped produce the chaos of his administration. That, in turn, has led him to want to corrode and strip away those rules and strictures that stand in the way of his desire to impose his will directly, both on the government and the country at large.

As Dickerson writes, “Trump is in rebellion against the presidency. Its traditions get in the way of the quick results he wants. He either sidesteps or flattens obstacles or opponents that irritate him or slow him down.”

By no means is Trump the first president or even the first Republican president to abuse the power of the office in an effort to overcome the constitutional limits of the office. We can see something similar with Richard Nixon and Watergate as well as Ronald Reagan and Iran-contra, when the White House circumvented a congressional prohibition on foreign aid to rebel groups in Nicaragua.

But Trump makes no distinction between himself and the office of the presidency. He is the kind of man who might say, “L’état, c’est moi” if he knew of anything other than his own desires. He has the heart of an absolutist.

For Trump to bend to the presidency, he would have to embark on the impossible task of denying himself the satisfaction of imposing his will on others. And so he has tried to break the presidency instead, to transform a constitutional office defined by its limits into an instrument of his personal authority.

A second term would mean even more of the chaos, corruption, disorder and incompetence that defined his first four years in office. Trump and his more ideologically driven allies and advisers would smash through the constitutional system in a reckless drive to satisfy their dreams, desires and delusions.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington.

Some people just love criminals: Timothy Mellon, Secretive Donor, Gives $50 Million to Pro-Trump Group

Timothy Mellon, Secretive Donor, Gives $50 Million to Pro-Trump Group

The cash from Mr. Mellon, a reclusive billionaire who has also been a major donor to a super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is among the largest single disclosed gifts ever.

By Shane Goldmacher and Theodore Schleifer – June 20, 2024

Former President Donald J. Trump, speaking on a stage behind a lectern and in a blue suit and yellow tie, facing left. — Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies have been working to close the financial gap with President Biden. Credit…Ash Ponders for The New York Times

Timothy Mellon, a reclusive heir to a Gilded Age fortune, donated $50 million to a super PAC supporting Donald J. Trump the day after the former president was convicted of 34 felonies, according to new federal filings, an enormous gift that is among the largest single disclosed contributions ever.

The donation’s impact on the 2024 race is expected to be felt almost immediately. Within days of the contribution, the pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., said in a memo that it would begin reserving $100 million in advertising through Labor Day.

The group had only $34.5 million on hand at the end of April, and Mr. Mellon’s contribution accounted for much of the nearly $70 million that the super PAC raised in May. On Wednesday and Thursday, the super PAC began reserving $30 million in ads to air in Georgia and Pennsylvania around the Fourth of July holiday.

Mr. Mellon is now the first donor to give $100 million in disclosed federal contributions in this year’s election. He was already the single largest contributor to super PACs supporting both Mr. Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent. Mr. Mellon has previously given $25 million to both.

Democrats have sought to portray Mr. Kennedy as a spoiler supported by Republicans, in part by emphasizing Mr. Mellon’s dual contributions and seemingly split loyalties. The pro-Kennedy super PAC has distributed quotations from the hard-to-reach Mr. Mellon, and for a blurb that appears on the cover of Mr. Mellon’s upcoming book, Mr. Kennedy called the billionaire a “maverick entrepreneur.”

It is not clear what Mr. Mellon’s mega-donation means for his support of Mr. Kennedy going forward. He has so far toggled between giving to support both candidates. His most recent donation to Mr. Kennedy’s super PAC was a $5 million contribution in April.

But Mr. Mellon’s $50 million gift will significantly help pro-Trump forces narrow the financial advantage that President Biden and his allies have enjoyed so far. Miriam Adelson, the casino billionaire and widow of Sheldon G. Adelson, who died in 2021, has also made plans to fund a pro-Trump super PAC with at least as much money as the $90 million that her family gave in the 2020 campaign, although much of the cash has yet to arrive.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the Illinois couple who are among the G.O.P.’s largest donors, each gave $5 million to the Trump super PAC in May. The billionaire energy executive Kelcy Warren also gave $5 million.

But outside groups supporting Mr. Biden have already announced more than $1 billion in planned spending, anchored by a reserved $250 million in advertising from the leading pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward.

Individual donations as large as $50 million are rare in American campaigns. Other gifts of a similar size have come from candidates who self-funded their campaigns, from couples who technically split their mammoth contributions or from donors who have paid in installments over time.

Until now, Make America Great Again Inc., which serves as the leading pro-Trump super PAC, has had only modest fund-raising success, relying largely on Republican donors who have personal connections to the former president.

In the first few months of 2024, the group raised between $7.4 million and $14.4 million a month. MAGA Inc. was originally seeded with $60 million by Mr. Trump’s political action committee — which is prohibited from spending to support his candidacy — before he declared his run for president. But in a highly unusual transaction, Mr. Trump later asked for a refund of the $60 million he had given months earlier, so MAGA Inc. has now returned that amount to the PAC, Save America, which is helping pay his legal bills.

Mr. Mellon, who had previously put $25 million into the group over the last 12 months, now accounts for nearly half of what the group has raised in total.

Mr. Mellon has long avoided the publicity that typically surrounds a donor this significant. After bursting onto the Republican fund-raising scene at the dawn of the Trump administration, he quickly developed a reputation as an unusual, quirky figure.

Despite his famous last name — he is the grandson of former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and a member of the wealthy Mellon family — Republican fund-raisers had largely not heard of him before he made a $10 million donation to a G.O.P. super PAC in mid-2018. That gift was the first of nine eight-figure checks that he would cut to major Republican groups.

He would go on to hire political counsel to guide him in Washington, although he lives primarily in Wyoming these days. Few recipients of his money have even met him.

The $50 million check to support Mr. Trump is matched only by a different donation Mr. Mellon made on behalf of another tough-on-immigration political project: the private construction of a border wall in Texas. In August 2021, Mr. Mellon donated $53 million worth of stock to help pay for the wall, a priority of Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.

Mr. Mellon, who did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday, appears to be growing more comfortable with the scrutiny of his influence. Next month, he is slated to publish a book, “panam.captain,” about his work turning around Pan Am Systems, a collection of companies that includes rail, aviation and marketing firms.

Mr. Mellon originally self-published an autobiography, but it was taken off-line in 2016 after some incendiary passages became public, including a line that Black people were “even more belligerent” after social programs were expanded in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mr. Mellon also wrote that social safety net programs amounted to “slavery redux.”

“For delivering their votes in the Federal Elections, they are awarded with yet more and more freebies: food stamps, cellphones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on, and on,” Mr. Mellon wrote, according to The Washington Post.

The new book, “panam.captain,” will be released by Skyhorse Publishing. Its president is Tony Lyons, who co-founded the pro-Kennedy super PAC, American Values 2024.

In a rare interview with Bloomberg in 2020, Mr. Mellon praised what he saw as Mr. Trump’s follow-through: “He’s done the things he promised to, or tried to do the things he’s promised to,” he said.

Extreme heat kills hundreds, millions more sweltering worldwide as summer begins

Reuters

Extreme heat kills hundreds, millions more sweltering worldwide as summer begins

Gloria Dickie – June 20, 2024

LONDON (Reuters) -Deadly heatwaves are scorching cities on four continents as the Northern Hemisphere marks the first day of summer, a sign that climate change may again help to fuel record-breaking heat that could surpass last summer as the warmest in 2,000 years.

Record temperatures in recent days are suspected to have caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths across Asia and Europe.

In Saudi Arabia, nearly two million Muslim pilgrims are finishing the haj at the Grand Mosque in Mecca this week. But hundreds have died during the journey amid temperatures above 51 degrees Celsius (124 degrees Fahrenheit), according to reports from foreign authorities.

Egyptian medical and security sources told Reuters on Thursday that at least 530 Egyptians had died while participating – up from 307 reported as of yesterday. Another 40 remain missing.

Countries around the Mediterranean have also endured another week of blistering high temperatures that have contributed to forest fires from Portugal to Greece and along the northern coast of Africa in Algeria, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth Observatory.

In Serbia, meteorologists forecast temperatures of around 40 C (104 F) this week as winds from North Africa propelled a hot front across the Balkans. Health authorities declared a red weather alert and advised people not to venture outdoors.

Belgrade’s emergency service said its doctors intervened 109 times overnight to treat people with heart and chronic health conditions.

In neighbouring Montenegro, where health authorities also warned people to stay in the shade until late afternoon, tens of thousands of tourists sought refreshment on the beaches along its Adriatic coast.

Europe this year has been contending with a spate of dead and missing tourists amid dangerous heat. A 55-year-old American was found dead on the Greek island of Mathraki, police said on Monday – the third such tourist death in a week.

A broad swath of the eastern U.S. was also wilting for a fourth consecutive day under a heat dome, a phenomenon that occurs when a strong, high-pressure system traps hot air over a region, preventing cool air from getting in and causing ground temperatures to remain high.

New York City opened emergency cooling centres in libraries, senior centers and other facilities. While the city’s schools were operating normally, a number of districts in the surrounding suburbs sent students home early to avoid the heat.

Meteorological authorities also issued an excessive heat warning for parts of the U.S. state of Arizona, including Phoenix, on Thursday, with temperatures expected to reach 45.5 C (114 F).

In the nearby state of New Mexico, a pair of fast-moving wildfires abetted by the blistering heat have killed two people, burned more than 23,000 acres and destroyed 500 homes, according to authorities. Heavy rains could help temper the blazes, but thunderstorms on Thursday were also causing flash flooding and complicating firefighting efforts.

All told, nearly 100 million Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings on Thursday, according to the federal government’s National Integrated Heat Health Information System.

The brutal temperatures should begin easing in New England on Friday, the weather service said, but New York and the mid-Atlantic states will continue to endure near-record heat into the weekend.

COUNTING THE DEAD

India’s summer period lasts from March to May, when monsoons begin slowly sweeping across the country and breaking the heat.

But New Delhi on Wednesday registered its warmest night in at least 55 years, with India’s Safdarjung Observatory reporting a temperature of 35.2 C (95.4 F) at 1 a.m.

Temperatures normally drop at night, but scientists say climate change is causing nighttime temperatures to rise. In many parts of the world, nights are warming faster than days, according to a 2020 study by the University of Exeter.

New Delhi has clocked 38 consecutive days with maximum temperatures at or above 40 C (104 F) since May 14, according to weather department data.

An official at the Indian health ministry said on Wednesday there were more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18, when northwest and eastern India recorded twice the usual number of heatwave days in one of the country’s longest such spells.

Gaining accurate death tolls from heatwaves, however, is difficult. Most health authorities do not attribute deaths to heat, but rather the illnesses exacerbated by high temperatures, such as cardiovascular issues. Authorities therefore undercount heat-related deaths by a significant margin – typically overlooking thousands if not tens of thousands of deaths.

RECORD WARM TEMPERATURES

The heatwaves are occurring against a backdrop of 12 consecutive months that have ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service.

The World Meteorological Organization says there is an 86% percent chance that one of the next five years will eclipse 2023 to become the warmest on record.

While overall global temperatures have risen by nearly 1.3 C (2.3 F) above pre-industrial levels, climate change is fuelling more extreme temperature peaks – making heatwaves more common, more intense and longer-lasting.

On average globally, a heatwave that would have occurred once in 10 years in the pre-industrial climate will now occur 2.8 times over 10 years, and it will be 1.2 C warmer, according to an international team of scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.

Scientists say heatwaves will continue to intensify if the world continues to unleash climate-warming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

If the world hits 2 C (3.6 F) of global warming, heatwaves would on average occur 5.6 times in 10 years and be 2.6 C (4.7 F) hotter, according to the WWA.

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London; additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade, Pesha Magid in Riyadh, Shivam Patel in Delhi, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo, Ali Withers in Copenhagen and Joseph Ax in New York; editing by Mark Heinrich and Josie Kao)

Trump’s Second Term: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver discusses Donald Trump’s plans for a second term, why it could be much worse than his first term, and what Trump has in common with a hamster.

June 20, 2024

What is a heat dome? Is SC in a heat dome? What to know about ‘ring of fire’ thunderstorms.

Greenville News

What is a heat dome? Is SC in a heat dome? What to know about ‘ring of fire’ thunderstorms.

Nina Tran, Greenville News – June 20, 2024

A heat wave is a period of unusually high temperatures over a region. As temperatures cook on the Midwest and Northeastern coast, the term “heat dome” has been used to describe the hot weather, leaving many questions to be answered.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued a hazardous weather outlook from Friday, June 21 through Wednesday, June 26 for Northeast Georgia, the North Carolina foothills and Piedmont, and Upstate South Carolina.

High temperatures are forecast to reach the mid 90s Saturday through Monday, with heat indices expected to reach 100 to 104 degrees. Those who are sensitive to the heat will want to decrease their time spent outdoors to prevent heat-related illnesses.

Here’s what to know about the heat dome and how you and your family can stay safe in it.

What is a heat dome?

Per AccuWeather, the term “heat dome” is used to describe a sprawling area of high pressure promoting hot and dry conditions for days or weeks at a time. It is similar to a balloon in the way it expands and contracts as the day goes on. When a certain area is inside it, it can feel very warm. A heat dome can interfere with the production of clouds, leading to an increase in sunlight and high temperatures. In turn, the cooling demand will increase, which may boost the strain on a region’s power grid. Drought conditions may also develop due to extended dry and hot spells.

More: It’s getting hot out: Here are the best settings for your air conditioner in South Carolina

What are ‘ring of fire’ thunderstorms?

Since heat domes act as large, immovable bubbles, moisture is forced up and over the heat bubble, according to AccuWeather. This causes “ring of fire” thunderstorms to form along the fringes of heat, which may bring severe weather into the area.

“Let’s say, for example, you had a big high pressure over the Southern Plains, Texas, or Oklahoma. What will happen is, on the northern fringes of higher pressure, you’ll get these periods of thunderstorms that develop, maybe over the Central Plains. It will move around the periphery of that high pressure, which tends to be in kind of a circular shape, hence the ring terminology to it.” said Thomas Winesett with the NWS at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport.

Ring of fire features are currently favorable for the Midwest and parts of the Ohio Valley due to centered high pressure activity in both areas. As the heat dome ensues, will South Carolina also get a chance for severe weather?

“That’s not to say we can’t get some thunderstorms, but it won’t be the true ring of fire type storms maybe until later, later next week if that high pressure shifts back off to the west or Texas, New Mexico.” Winesett said. “So when that happens, that might allow us to get into a more active pattern where we see those ring of fire type storms maybe coming more out of the Mississippi Valley and Tennessee Valley and towards the Appalachia.”

People leave the beach beach at Phipps Ocean Park as a thunderstorm approaches July 7, 2023 in Palm Beach. The national weather service issued a heat advisory for Palm Beach County with a high near 94 degrees and heat index from 108 to 112.

When will the heat dome end?

Doug Outlaw with the NWS at GSP said he hopes current weather conditions do not stick around for too much longer, especially with the reestablishment of high temperatures next weekend. Next Friday’s heat will bump down a few degrees before temperatures continue to soar. The timing of a cool down period remains uncertain.

“It is typical to have heat waves on and off during the summer, but we hope that the weather doesn’t get stuck and we end up way up in the 90s every day for weeks,” he said. “But we’ve got to be prepared for the possibility of something like that.”

Outlaw forecast the following high temperatures for Greenville heading into next week:

∎ Friday, June 21: 91 degrees

∎ Saturday, June 22: 93 degrees

∎ Sunday, June 23: 94 degrees

∎ Monday, June 24: 95 degrees

∎ Tuesday, June 25: 95 degrees

∎ Wednesday, June 26: 96 degrees

∎ Thursday, June 27: 95 degrees

A child stands at a fountain in Georgetown Waterfront Park amid a heat wave in Washington, June 19, 2024.

Types of heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service

The NWS issues several types of heat advisories depending on severity. The different types are as follows:

∎ Excessive heat warning: This warning is issued 12 hours of the onset of extremely dangerous heat conditions. When the maximum heat index temperature is expected to reach 105 or higher for at least two days and the nighttime temperature will not drop below 75, the warning is issued. This rule may vary across the country, especially for areas not used to extreme heat conditions. Precautions should be taken immediately during extreme conditions to prevent serious illness and even death.

∎ Excessive heat watch: A watch is issued when an excessive heat event is favorable within the next 24 to 72 hours. When the risk of a heat wave has increased but the occurrence and timing is uncertain, a watch is issued.

∎ Heat advisory: An advisory is issued within 12 hours of the onset of extremely dangerous heat conditions. When the maximum heat index temperature is anticipated to be 100 degrees or higher for at least two days and the nighttime temperature will not drop below 75 degrees, an advisory is issued. This rule may vary across the country, especially for areas not used to extreme heat conditions. Precautions should be taken immediately during extreme conditions to prevent serious illness and even death.

∎ Excessive heat outlook: An outlook is issued when there is a potential risk for an excessive heat event within the next 3-7 days, providing information for those who need considerable lead-time to prepare for the event.

People cool off at the lakefront as temperatures climbed above 90 degrees Fahrenheit on June 19, 2024 in Chicago. A heat wave has brought record warm temperatures to much of the Midwest and Northeast areas of the country this week.

High temperatures forecast across US Midwest, Northeast

These are the high temperatures forecast for several Midwest and Northeast cities from Juneteenth and June 20. Temperatures will dip between this week and early next week, according to a USA TODAY story:

∎ Manchester, New Hampshire: 97, 99. Dropping to 86 by June 24.

∎ Albany, New York: 96, 97. Dropping to 86 by June 24.

∎ Detroit, Michigan: 95, 93. Dropping to 83 by June 24.

∎ Toledo, Ohio: 94, 96. Dropping to 84 by June 24.

∎ Indianapolis, Indiana: 92, 95. Jumping to 96 by Saturday, June 22 before dropping to 97 on June 24.

∎ Caribou, Maine: 96, 95. Dropping to 76 by June 24.

∎ Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 94, 95. Jumping to 100 by Friday, June 21 before dropping to 90 on June 24.

∎ Boston, Massachusetts: 95, 97. Dropping to 85 by June 24.

∎ Washington, D.C.: 90, 92. Jumping to 98 by Saturday June 22 before dropping slightly to 93 on June 24.

Mayflower Beach in Dennis fills up on a hot weekday morning, June 20, 2024, as beachgoers seek relief from the heat. The Town of Dennis has announced a new plan to deal with beach crowding there on July 4.
Steve Heaslip/Cape Cod Times — Mayflower Beach in Dennis fills up on a hot weekday morning, June 20, 2024, as beachgoers seek relief from the heat. The Town of Dennis has announced a new plan to deal with beach crowding there on July 4. Steve Heaslip/Cape Cod Times

How to prepare for the heat

Tips from NOAA:

∎ Make sure the air conditioner is functioning properly. If your home does not have air conditioning or loses power, visit a designated cooling shelter or other air-conditioned location such as the mall or public library.

∎ Check on friends, families, neighbors, and pets to ensure they are safe in the heat. It is important to check on those who live alone or do not have air conditioning.

∎ Never leave children, dependents, or pets unattended in vehicles. The sun can heat the inside of the car to deadly temperatures in minutes.

∎ Wear loose clothing that is light-colored and covers the skin.

∎ Hydrate with water throughout the day, avoiding caffeine and sugary beverages.

∎ Set aside one gallon of drinking water per person a day in case of a power outage.

∎ Keep out of the sun and stay indoors on the lowest level. Curtains and shades should be closed.

∎ Immerse yourself in a cool bath or shower. Cooling your feet off in water can also help.

∎ If temperatures are cool at night, let the cool air in by opening windows.

∎ If you are outside, stay in the shade. Apply sunblock and wear a wide-brimmed hat before going outside.

∎ To avoid heat exhaustion, do not engage in strenuous activities. Use a buddy system and take breaks in the shade when working in extreme heat.

∎ For critical updates from the National Weather Service (NWS), tune into NOAA Weather Radio.

For more heat safety information, visit weather.gov/heat or heat.gov.

Nina Tran covers trending topics for The Greenville News. Reach her via email at ntran@gannett.com