'$7 A Dozen'
What You Need To Know
Welcome to our weekend edition, a combination of the world, profiles, and good reads that you might not see during the week.
The World
China's 'great migration' kicks-off under shadow of COVID: China marked the first day of "chun yun", the 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel known pre-pandemic as the world's largest annual migration of people, bracing for a huge increase in travellers and the spread of COVID-19 infections. This Lunar New Year public holiday, which officially runs from Jan. 21, will be the first since 2020 without domestic travel restrictions. (Reuters)
Chinese doctors work through sickness and understaffing to battle Covid wave: According to one survey, 60% of doctors and nurses who test positive are forced to keep working as understaffed hospitals struggle to cope. (South China Morning Post)
China suspends social media accounts criticizing COVID policies. (Axios)
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is to relinquish control of Ant Group, the fintech company revealed, as its founder continues his withdrawal from his online businesses following Beijing’s tech crackdown. Ma also co-founded leading ecommerce company Alibaba and separated the Ant payments business from it in 2011. Ma’s status in the companies has been in jeopardy since he gave an ill-timed speech criticising Chinese regulators and the country’s state-owned banks on the eve of Ant’s IPO. (Financial Times)
The mayors of New York City and Chicago denounced Colorado for busing migrants to the two cities — calling it inhumane and a strain on resources — as President Joe Biden’s first presidential visit to the US-Mexico border highlights immigration issues. Colorado has sent hundreds of asylum seekers to the cities since December, with shelters reaching maximum capacity and services to support them now exhausted, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Chicago Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot said in a letter to Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a fellow Democrat. (Bloomberg)
A Wild Night in the House: Playbook has a great recap of the “remarkable and suitably dramatic ending to the wildest speaker race in modern congressional history.” Also recommended are pieces by CNN and the Washington Post. (Political Wire)
Shipping-Container Wall Comes Down in Arizona, Rises in Texas: The barriers mark the latest skirmishes between the U.S. government and border states. (Wall Street Journal)
Heavy rains and snow clobber California and more is on the way: Yet another "atmospheric river" of dense, moist tropical air will clobber California on Monday with rain and mountain snow - the fifth of the weather phenomenon since Christmas - even as the state was being pummeled by storms this weekend (Reuters)
Without dramatic cuts to water consumption, Utah’s Great Salt Lake is on track to disappear within five years, a dire new report warns, imperiling ecosystems and exposing millions of people to toxic dust from the drying lake bed. The report, led by researchers at Brigham Young University and published this week, found that unsustainable water use has shrunk the lake to just 37 percent of its former volume. The West’s ongoing megadrought — a crisis made worse by climate change — has accelerated its decline to rates far faster than scientists had predicted. (Washington Post)
$7 a dozen? Why California eggs are so expensive — and increasingly hard to find The average retail price for a dozen large eggs jumps to $7.37 as grocers struggle to stock cartons amid an outbreak of the bird flu. (Los Angeles Times)
Profiles & Reads
Zac Taylor shows nation humanity Bengals have long valued, admired: Cincinnati Bengals Head Coach Zac Taylor knew the moment no more football would be played Monday night. For all the emotion, emergency action plans, discrepancies over warming up and mortified reactions from players inside Paycor Stadium in the surreal aftermath of Damar Hamlin falling to the turf, one moment churned gut feeling into obvious decision. That’s why when the ambulance with Hamlin inside left the field and the teams were faced with the unfathomable question of what to do next, Taylor wanted to walk across the field to McDermott directly. To talk to the man. Connect with the person in that moment for one of the hardest conversations imaginable. The entire NFL saw it. Titans head coach Mike Vrabel opened his press conference praising the leadership of Taylor and McDermott. Rams head coach Sean McVay expressed so much respect for navigating a situation “without a manual.” Damar Hamlin’s family made sure to mention Taylor by name in their first statement about his condition. Taylor’s name was trending for days, inundated by praise for his reaction and offering thanks for his compassion. (The Athletic)
(CR note: Politico offers a terrific excerpt of the new book, In the Nation’s Service: The Life and Times of George P. Shultz. Judging from the excerpt, it appears worth a read.)
How Nancy Reagan Used a Snowstorm to Help Thaw the Cold War: Secretary of State George Shultz couldn’t steer the administration off its hawkish path — until the first lady hauled him through a snowstorm for dinner. Nancy Reagan phoned the Shultz residence in Bethesda on Saturday morning. “She said, ‘Can O’Bie and you come over to dinner?’” Shultz recalled. It would be just the two couples, dining in the family quarters on the second floor of the White House. Even though the dinner would be informal, Shultz donned a suit and tie in deference to the stature of their hosts. “I would not go to the White House in a sweater,” he said. As dinner was served, the president and first lady peppered Shultz with questions about his recent visit to China, where he had met with Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian and Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader. Shultz vividly recalled the White House scene decades later: “They started asking me about the Chinese leaders and what were they like and then started asking me about the Soviet leaders. And suddenly I’m sitting there saying to myself, ‘This guy has never had a real con-versation with a big-time Communist leader, and he’s dying to have one.’ And that totally was not his image. … So I said, ‘Well, [Soviet ambassador Anatoly] Dobrynin is coming over next Tuesday at five o’clock. Why don’t I bring him over here and you can talk to him?’ And the President says, ‘That’s a good idea. It won’t take long because all I want to tell him is if [Soviet leader Yuri] Andropov is interested in a constructive dialogue, I’m ready.’ That’s totally different from what Casey, Weinberger, everybody thought.” (Politico)
(CR note: The Eurasia Group’s annual risk report always provides an outstanding framework for considering existing and emerging issues to watch. It’s a long read, but you can choose the topics that interest you. And if you’d rather watch than read, here’s the video.)
Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2023: A small group of individuals has amassed an extraordinary amount of power, making decisions of profound geopolitical consequence with limited information in opaque environments. On a spectrum of geopolitics with integrated globalization at one extreme, these developments are at the other extreme, and they're driving a disproportionate amount of the uncertainty in the world today. Our top risks this year are skewed toward these actors and their impact: Rogue Russia, Maximum Xi, Weapons of mass disruption, and Iran in a corner all come from international actors facing severe structural challenges and strong opposition (internal and/or external) in achieving their desired goals, with neither oversight, adequate expert inputs, nor checks and balances constraining their actions. (GZERO Media)
Rogue Russia: A humiliated Russia will turn from global player into the world's most dangerous rogue state, posing a serious security threat to Europe, the United States, and beyond.
Maximum Xi: Xi Jinping emerged from China's 20th Party Congress in October 2022 with a grip on power unrivaled since Mao Zedong.
Weapons of Mass Disruption: New technologies will be a gift to autocrats bent on undermining democracy abroad and stifling dissent at home.
Inflation Shockwaves: Rising interest rates and global recession will raise the risk of emerging-market crises.
Iran in a Corner: The chance of regime collapse is low, but it's higher than at any point in the past four decades.
Energy Crunch: Higher oil prices will also increase frictions between OPEC+ and the United States.
Arrested Global Development: Women and girls will suffer the most, losing hard-earned rights, opportunities, and security.
Divided States of America: There is a continuing risk of political violence in the US, even as some who participated in the Capitol riots go to prison.
Tik Tok Boom: Gen Z has both the ability and the motivation to organize online to reshape corporate and public policy, making life harder for multinationals everywhere and disrupting politics with the click of a button.
Water Stress: This year, water stress will become a global and systemic challenge...while governments will still treat it as a temporary crisis.
Red Herrings: Cracks in support for Ukraine. EU political dysfunction. Taiwan crisis. Tech tit-for-tat. 2023 Red Herrings.
Trouble at Tesla: The end of a golden age of growth? While the drama at Twitter dominates the headlines, a profound change in Tesla’s outlook is also under way. A resoundingly successful period in which the company’s value peaked at nearly $1.3tn and after-tax profits were projected to hit almost $13bn in 2022 has rapidly given way to a darker economic picture. The main worry of Tesla’s investors has swung from how the company can produce enough cars to meet demand, to where it will find enough customers to justify its sharply rising production. Growth in new vehicle deliveries slowed to 40 per cent last year from 87 per cent the year before — still a breakneck pace for a large carmaker, but below the 50 per cent annual rate Musk himself has set as the benchmark for the foreseeable future. With Tesla ramping up production quickly at giant new plants in Texas and Germany, it now has the added problem of finding many more customers, says Philippe Houchois, a global automotive analyst at Jefferies in London. That has left it facing a “perfect storm”, he adds, with supply increasing, demand slipping and competition intensifying, all on the brink of what could be a severe downturn for the global auto industry. (Financial Times)
Listen, Watch, Read
I’m introducing this new periodic feature to the Weekender — a recommended podcast, video & book. Let me know what you think (and send me your own suggestions) by replying to this email.
Listen: Rolling Stone ranked the 200 Greatest Singers of all Time. (Rolling Stone)
Listen II: Today’s What Happens Next, podcast features Scott Turow, Author & Lawyer: How to Write a Bestselling Mystery Novel. Listen here.
Watch: The 16 TV shows we’re most excited for in 2023. (Los Angeles Times)
Bonus: Obama liked these movies the most in 2022. Here’s where to watch them. (Washington Post)
Read: In ‘Myth America,’ historians set out to battle misinformation: While setting the record straight about the past, these essays also point to the malleability of how we think about history. This recent attack on truth motivated Kruse and Zelizer to assemble 20 essays in a volume with the somewhat sensationalist title “Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.” That grandiose billing aside, the book brings together outstanding historians who draw on rich, often surprising recent research by themselves and others to present a much more complicated and less congratulatory picture of many of the most contentious issues in the nation’s history. Moreover, these essays treat readers to wonderfully accessible, jargon-free historical writing. (Washington Post)
Good News
(CR note: As a Chicago kid who shoveled every winter — Blizzard of ‘79! — this is not even a close call. A-Rod’s form is silly. How can someone who has perfect form with a bat in his hands look so awkward with a shovel instead? Put my vote in the column: It’s not snow that A-Rod is shoveling!)
Did A-Rod really shovel his driveway? Former baseball star and minority Timberwolves owner Alex Rodriguez is trying to be one of us, as evidenced by his Instagram post showing off his shoveled driveway after Wednesday's snowstorm. Yes, but: That's a very large driveway, A-Rod can definitely afford snow removal and the sticker is still on the shovel. Plus, are those tire tracks? The response: Many of his own followers were skeptical, including his former nemesis Johnny Damon, who wrote, “Video or I ain’t buying it.” A-Rod replied: “ha ok!! Video coming your way!! Miss you my guy!!!” What he did: Though A-Rod delivered with a 15-second follow-up video showing him shoveling, many still doubted his abilities. (Axios)
At age 5 he vowed to go to college with his mom. They just graduated together. ‘I told my mom, “If I’m going to do this, then you need to sign up, too,”’ Immanuel Patton recalled. (Washington Post)
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