Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is using treasure from his past to fund the futures of children through his Skyhook Foundation, which helps children receive access to science, technology, engineering and mathematical programs.
The 71-year-old Hall of Fame center won six NBA championships in his 20-year NBA career, and he has decided to auction off four of those rings.
The championship rings up for bid, via Goldin Auctions, are from the Los Angeles Lakers’ 1988, ’87, ’85 and ’80 runs. The 19-time All-Star is also auctioning game-used All-Star Game jerseys and rings along with a game-used signed and inscribed basketball from his final game in 1989.
On his official website, Abdul-Jabbar clarifies that his decision to auction of his memorabilia is not derived from his financial setback “many years ago.” He wrote the real reasoning behind his decision:
“I’ve been a collector most of my life. … Each item in the collection comes with a story, and that story is more valuable to the collector than the item itself. … So, when it comes to choosing between storing a championship ring or trophy in a room, or providing kids with an opportunity to change their lives, the choice is pretty simple. Sell it all.
“Looking back on what I have done with my life, instead of gazing at the sparkle of jewels or gold plating celebrating something I did a long time ago, I’d rather look into the delighted face of a child holding their first caterpillar and think about what I might be doing for their future.”
The US House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to revoke Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build a wall on the United States border with Mexico, handing the president a stinging rebuke on his signature issue.
In a 245-182 vote, the Democratic-majority House rejected Trump’s assertion that he could use money for the wall that Congress had appropriated for other purposes. The bill now moves to the Republican-run Senate, where it also could pass, given some Republicans’ concerns about the president’s actions.
If approved in the Senate, Trump has already vowed the veto the measure.
Democratic leaders say the bill is not about the merits of Trump’s wall, but how the president is trampling on the Constitution by grabbing money that he can’t obtain through normal means.
Trump declared a national emergency on the southern border earlier this month after Democrats refused to give him more than $5bn in funds for the wall. Instead, Congress passed a spending measure that included nearly $1.4bn to build 55 miles (89km) of border barriers in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, ending a dispute that had led to a record 35-day partial shutdown of the government. The spending measure does not include money for a concrete wall, however.
‘Steals billions’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Trump’s emergency “steals billions of dollars” from the military construction projects – including possibly family housing and child care centres – to build the wall with Mexico.
Republicans counter that problems with drug runners and human trafficking give merit to Trump’s maneuver.
The president took to Twitter on Monday to urge Senate Republicans to stick with him.
“I hope our great Republican Senators don’t get led down the path of weak and ineffective Border Security,” Trump wrote. “Without strong Borders, we don’t have a Country – and the voters are on board with us. Be strong and smart, don’t fall into the Democrats ‘trap’ of Open Borders and Crime!”
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Trump is trying to “bend the law” with his declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. He called on politicians to “speak up with one bipartisan voice” to put a check on the executive branch as the founding founders envisioned.
“What would stop a future president from claiming an emergency every week?” he asked.
But Republican Senator John Kennedy, parrying those claims, said that he would “expect the next president, whether Democrat or not, would have a staff smart enough to know about the National Emergencies Act, and if the president wants to use it, he or she is going to use it no matter what past presidents have done.”
Republican defections
On Monday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, said he would vote to block the order, joining Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski as Republicans supporting the resolution. Congress must defend its power of the purse and warned that a future Democratic president might abuse the power to advance “radical policies”, Tillis said.
Another Republican, Senator Lamar Alexander, called Trump’s order “unnecessary, unwise, and inconsistent with the United States Constitution and I’ll decide how to vote when I’m presented with something to vote on”.
Republican Senator Roy Blunt said there is “no disagreement there is a problem at the border that we are not dealing with adequately”.
He added, “There is a vigorous discussion about whether the emergency actions really fall into a category where you would define something that had been out there for a long time and Congress had already voted on.”
Senate voting on Trump’s emergency order could drag under a rarely used procedure, which an aide said is possibly a first for the chamber. The law allows for up to 15 days of committee review – in this case, at the Armed Services panel – with a full Senate vote three days later. Senators, though, said the process could be expedited.
To override a presidential veto, Democrats would need 16 more Republican senators to join them, an unlikely event, giving Trump upper hand.
“I don’t think it will get here. It won’t be overridden in the House,” Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told reporters.
The wall was one of Trump’s top campaign promises. He has long since dropped any pretense that money for the wall would come from Mexico, which he once claimed would be the source of funding.
Trump’s declaration of a national emergency gives him access to about $3.6bn in funding for military construction projects to divert to border fencing. The Defense Department has not identified which projects may get cut.
But the administration is more likely to tap $600m from a federal asset forfeiture fund first. In addition, it is considering shifting more than $2bn from Defense Department accounts into a Pentagon counter-drug fund to be tapped for wall construction.
Trump’s edict is also being challenged in the federal courts, where a host of Democratic-led states such as California have sued to overturn the order. Rights groups and landowners have also sued over the order.
With additional reporting by William Roberts in Washington, DC.
Often President Donald Trump blames the lack of progress on immigration reform on uncooperative Democrats, recalcitrant Republicans and activist judges. | Alex Wong/Getty Images
The failure could cost Trump critical standing among conservatives demanding results on border security as he heads into a reelection fight.
President Donald Trump sees his border wall crusade as a base-pleasing 2020 campaign asset, proof that he is the ultimate immigration hardliner.
But his wall may not be built for years, if ever. In the meantime, Trump has yet to deliver on several other campaign promises that immigration hawks call far more important — a failure that could cost him among conservatives demanding results on border security going into Trump’s reelection bid.
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Over two years in the White House, Trump has struggled to execute numerous agenda items long on immigration hardliners’ wish list — like finalizing stricter regulations, overhauling the immigration court system, adding additional surveillance technology to the border, doing away with sanctuary cities and making sure employers electronically check the immigration status of all workers.
Instead, Trump has picked high-profile battles over a southern border wall and banning travelers from certain Muslim-majority countries that generated controversy and whipped up parts of his base, but did not do much to stem the flow of illegal immigrants. In fact, the number of illegal crossings at the southern border rose this past fall to levels not seen since 2014 under President Barack Obama, although they still remain low relative to historic numbers.
“The focus on the wall is a bit myopic,” said RJ Hauman, director of government relations at FAIR, a group that seeks to reduce immigration overall. “They are right to pursue fencing in some areas, but we need to remember: It is just one little cog in a much broader approach. Sometimes the wall can suck all of the air out of the room.”
Often Trump blames this lack of progress on uncooperative Democrats, recalcitrant Republicans and activist judges. But ultimately, the president might bear the blame as the campaign heats up.
“Immigration restrictionists understand that things like catch and release, the visa lottery, and legal immigration numbers all matter more than building the wall,” said one former Trump administration official.
“In general, inside the White House, I don’t think there is a recognition of how important those issues are to Trump supporters on the outside,” the official added. “I think there is a belief you can give away the house on amnesty as long as you get the wall in return. That is a foolhardy idea.”
The border wall still remains a potent symbol and rhetorical device for the president — orange banners reading “Finish the Wall” hung from the walls during a recent campaign-style rally in El Paso, Texas. And top adviser Stephen Miller recently vowed on Fox News that “hundreds of miles” of a barrier would be built along the U.S.-Mexico border by September 2020, just before the next presidential election — despite the myriad of court challenges that could stymie Trump’s attempt to tap funds for a border barrier that Congress didn’t authorize.
But to many conservatives, the real work of permanently deterring illegal immigrants comes from far less sexy moves on the regulatory side, in the overloaded and overlooked immigration court system and within sanctuary cities, communities that have intentionally limited their cooperation with federal immigration officials.
On these fronts, conservatives say the Trump administration has, in many cases, fallen short.
Trump promised and then failed to strip sanctuary jurisdictions of taxpayer dollars after being blocked in federal court, and any mentions of employment authorization have all but disappeared from his immigration speeches. The Trump administration has continued to request money to mandate the nationwide use of E-Verify, a web-based system that employers can use to check the work status of any hires, asking for $23 million in its 2019 budget.
On the regulatory front, the administration’s unified agenda lists roughly 40 regulations across agencies — though only a few have been finalized. Regulations in the pipeline include one that would make it harder for immigrants to obtain permanent residency if they used government benefits, or another that would seek to undo a court ruling limiting the amount of time the federal government can detain families.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for reducing immigration, released a midterm assessment of Trump’s work on the subject, showing the administration did not take action on roughly one-third of its suggestions for executive action — moves Trump could have made even with an uncooperative Congress.
Many immigration hawks remain dismayed that Trump did not take more action on immigration when Republicans controlled the White House, Senate and House and instead focused legislatively on health care and tax reform.
“Trump’s biggest failure — and it is really a failure of House Republicans — was to not get anything done when they had both chambers,” said Christopher Hajec, director of litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
The White House’s recent move to put senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of funding negotiations during the 35-day government shutdown has also caused angst in restricting immigration circles.
These advocates view Kushner as overly sympathetic to the concerns of the pro-immigrant business community — and too eager to strike a broader compromise on issues like legal protections for children, known as dreamers, brought to the country illegal as children. Trump has tried to end the program — known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — that currently offers them sanctuary from deportation, only to have the courts block those efforts.
“Kushner looks at it more from the business-owner or corporate perspective: ‘The economy is improving, wages are growing, we need to get more workers in here,’” said Chris Chmielinski, deputy director of NumbersUSA, another group advocating for lower levels of immigration.
Liberals, centrists and pro-business groups are surprised at the disappointment among hawkish immigration activists.
“I am not sure what the immigration hawks are complaining about. This is their pipedream realized,” Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an organization that works with faith, law enforcement and business leaders to promote the value of immigration. “When it comes to the treatment of the undocumented immigrant community, he has exceeded his campaign promises.”
A White House spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
The Trump campaign did not shy away from the nuances of immigration policy during the 2016 campaign. During a major address in September 2016 in Phoenix, then-candidate Trump went into great detail as to how he intended to fight illegal immigration.
He promised that Mexico would pay to build the border wall — a vow he still stands by, even as he declares a national emergency to try and unlock funds that Congress refuses to appropriate. But he also promised greater technological surveillance at the border; the deportation of all illegal immigrants who commit crimes; an end to sanctuary cities; greater enforcement of immigrants overstaying visas or those relying on public government programs; and a biometric visa tracking system, among other items.
Once elected, immigration policy began been a hallmark of the Trump administration. In the early days following the inauguration, Miller and a team of like-minded loyalists from the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Labor and State met once a week to map out an agenda to fight illegal immigration and keep track of their progress.
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon maintained a whiteboard in his office plastered with campaign promises, including Trump’s many immigration-related pledges.
These plans came to a head in the spring of 2018 when the government started separating migrant children from parents to deter people from illegally crossing the southern border — only to drop the policy weeks later following harsh media coverage and an outcry from both Republican lawmakers and religious leaders.
It’s just one example of an Trump policy meant to curb entries that grabbed the public’s attention, but made little impact in deterring people from crossing the border, say immigration hawks.
Lower-profile court decisions have also blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to advance immigration hawks’ agenda, particularly on punishing sanctuary cities.
Federal judges in Northern and Southern California, Chicago, Philadelphia, and three federal appeals courts have rejected the administration’s argument that it can add new criteria for awarding taxpayer-funded grants — such as compliance with federal law enforcement authorities — without congressional approval. And because of a nationwide injunction barring the administration’s attempt to rewrite the rules for these funds, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen relented and awarded $1.7 billion in grants last May to numerous sanctuary localities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit limited the scope of the injunction to the city of Chicago a month later.
Congressional Republicans have since asked the White House to work with them to change the appropriations process to discourage sanctuary jurisdictions in lieu of pursuing additional executive actions.
Still, some sanctuary cities have reversed course in the Trump era out of fear of reprisal. The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Fla., for example, ordered local law enforcement authorities to resume detentions of suspected immigration offenders and to inform federal immigration officials about the detentions. But numerous other cities and states, like California, have vocally rebuked the Trump administration’s admonishments.
The primary area where Trump’s illegal immigration policies have had an indisputable impact is interior enforcement.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement division that apprehends people in the U.S. unlawfully made 143,470 arrests in 2017, a 30 percent rise from 2016. The Obama administration reported twice as many arrests in 2009, but that number steadily dropped in subsequent years. Workplace ICE investigations have also become more commonplace.
Immigration hawks also commend the administration for its moves to drastically reduce the number of legal immigrants coming into this country through tweaks to the visa programs, and caps on refugee programs through the State Department. Trump proposed a ceiling of 45,000 refugee admissions for fiscal year 2018, further reducing the cap to 30,000 for fiscal year 2019.
By contrast, Obama set a refugee cap of 110,000 for fiscal year 2017, a number Trump attempted to reduce almost immediately after taking office.
“We’ll have to see how the next few years play out — especially with Jared Kushner now becoming a key player. Does that move the Trump immigration stance more toward the corporate and liberal position?” said Hauman, of FAIR. “But one thing is for sure — Trump beats every single Democratic candidate on immigration enforcement.”
The United States Military conducted a cyberattack on a Kremlin-backed troll farm, effectively knocking them offline the day of the 2018 Midterm election.
Russian trolls were awfully quiet during the 2018 Midterms. Now we know that’s thanks in part to a preemptive cyber attack by the United States Military.
According to a report by The Washington Post, U.S. Cyber Command launched its “first offensive cyber campaign against Russia” on the day of the 2018 midterm elections. The cyber attack, backed by intelligence from the National Security Agency, reportedly took the Kremlin-linked Russian troll farm, Internet Research Agency, offline for the day.
Officials say the purpose of the election day operation was to block any possible disinformation campaigns from Russia regarding the Midterm results.
“They basically took the IRA offline,” said a source familiar with the matter. “They shut ‘em down.”
The cyber attack was so debilitating to the Russian troll farms’ operation that employees apparently complained about the disruption to their superiors.
“Part of our objective is to throw a little curve ball, inject a little friction, sow confusion,” explained one official. “We showed what’s in the realm of the possible. It’s not the old way of doing business anymore.”
As part of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, signed by President Trump last year, U.S. Cyber Command has greater authority to carry out such operations, as long as the action doesn’t result in death, significant damage, or destruction.
A large, multi-agency effort was put into protecting the 2018 Midterm elections from foreign influence. U.S. Senators and pentagon officials declared the IRA election day takedown operation a success.
Another notable strategic move highlighted by the Post and first reported by the New York Times, involved a messaging campaign directed at the IRA as well as officials at the GRU, Russia’s intelligence agency. In the month before the 2018 election, the United States rolled out a campaign that involved emailing, DMing, and texting Russian trolls and hackers informing them of the U.S. government’s knowledge of their real names and online handles. The messages came with an explicit warning not to interfere with elections or other countries’ affairs.
Last year, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted dozens of Russian nationals with both the IRA and GRU for actions that interfered with the U.S. electoral process in 2016.
Russian trolls were suspiciously absent from social media services in the months leading up to last November’s election. Online platforms like Twitter had significantly stepped up its efforts to curb foreign disinformation campaigns and the dissemination of fake news.
The U.S. government as well as the tech companies now have a proven course of action to curtail disinformation online. However, the threat of foreign influence campaigns lingers on. While the preemptive strikes had an obvious effect on interference around the Midterms, the 2018 election lacked a high-profile presidential race, which galvanized malicious state actors in 2016.
Did the U.S. really stop a full-fledged disinformation campaign or were the measures just effective against an operation that was just testing the waters for the next big election?
With the 2020 presidential race already underway, It seems like we’ll soon find out.
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BARCELONA—The 5G era may be the end of the storage race in phones. As Samsung deploys its 1TB Galaxy S10+ and SanDisk shows off a 1TB microSD card, OnePlus CEO Pete Lau said on a panel here at MWC19 that super-fast cloud access may make these giant levels of local storage obsolete.
“People are now concerned with the size of storage on their device for the sake of storing more photos, but [5G] will allow for more immediate cloud storage,” Lau said. “That will allow people to no longer focus on whether the phone has 128GB of 512GB of storage, and it will enable a total change in our photography experience on the device.”
Swapping 5G for storage could help balance out phone prices, as well. Samsung charges a $600 premium to go from 128GB of storage to 1TB, and SanDisk is currently charging $450 for its massive tiny storage card.
Now, before you fill the comments section with complaints about 5G coverage, Lau isn’t talking about next year. He identified three phases in what he sees as 5G’s evolution. We’re in the starter phase now. Starting in 2021, “5G plus AI plus cloud functionality” will take over and greatly enhance smart assistants, he said. Then, in 2025, we’ll enter the “age of the unleashing of the Internet of Things.”
Qualcomm President Cristiano Amon, speaking on the same panel, said 5G game streaming could kill game consoles. Or at least make it so you never need to upgrade their hardware.
“We’re going to see a scenario where eventually there will be no need for new consoles,” he said. “There will be unlimited processing capability at the edge.”
On the new networks, 95 percent of video content will be streamed in 4K, breaking down operators’ current video-throttling walls, and social networking will become “live broadcasting of virtual presence,” Amon said.
Now, before you say that sounds crazy, I saw a demo of that sort of virtual presence from Spatial using the HoloLens 2. Enhanced with 5G, full-size AR avatars become very possible. Microsoft’s Greg Sullivan told me consumers may be able to have that experience in years, not decades, putting it potentially in line with a 2025 time frame.
To help accelerate disruptive 5G app development, OnePlus is running an app development ideas contest between now and March 26, where five winners will get devices, test environments, and “financial support for one year.” You can sign up at OnePlus.com/5G.
“There’s no special, secret sauce there. It’s about having real conversations with real people and when you do that you stay tethered to the things that matter. And that’s what people want,” said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. | Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
The governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin urged 2020 Democrats to seek consensus — and to visit their states.
The class of Democratic governors that swept to victory in three key Midwestern states have some advice for Democratic presidential candidates: Keep it simple. Don’t overpromise.
And most importantly, don’t ignore their states.
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Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, and Tony Evers of Wisconsin aren’t known for fiery rhetoric. But in interviews with POLITICO on the sidelines of the National Governors Association’s winter meetings, the three Democrats — all from states President Donald Trump pried out of the Democratic presidential coalition in 2016 — stressed in uncharacteristically pointed language the importance of drilling down on issues that affect people every day, like health care, education and infrastructure, to reassemble a winning Democratic electoral map in 2020.
The governors’ incremental recommendations put them at odds with the ascendant left in the Democratic Party, which is pushing expansive environmental and health care policies like the “Green New Deal” and Medicare for all. But most of all, Whitmer, whose direct “fix the damn roads” campaign slogan helped her to an easy victory in 2018, said 2020 Democrats need to start just by showing their faces in the states that sent Trump to the White House.
“What any candidate should do in any race, frankly, is to show up,” Whitmer said. “There’s no special, secret sauce there. It’s about having real conversations with real people and when you do that you stay tethered to the things that matter. And that’s what people want.”
Wolf, who coasted to a second term in Pennsylvania, said Democrats need to make that face-to-face pitch to rebuild trust in their party.
“I think before anybody starts talking about issues we’ve got a trust problem,” Wolf said, adding: “If I’m 100 percent of where you want me to be on policy but you don’t trust me you won’t support me.”
“People voted in ’16 to blow it up,” Wolf continued. “And it’s up to either party to come back in 2020 with candidates who can convince voters that they can put it back together.”
Evers, the former education superintendent in Wisconsin who beat Republican incumbent Scott Walker by fewer than 30,000 votes last year, urged fellow Democrats to home in on health care, education, and infrastructure — and not to promise the moon.
“I think the important thing for me is someone that is willing to address those issues in a proactive way but also make people feel comfortable that they can actually accomplish something,” Evers said.
“Treat[ing] people with dignity and respect and not being hard-edged about everything — I think it’s important,” Evers added. “People like their leaders to be reasonable and find common ground.”
Winning back these three Midwestern states, which went Democratic in six straight presidential elections from 1992 to 2012 but flipped to Trump by less than 1 percentage point apiece in 2016, is the clearest path back to the White House for Democrats, though the party will also target some fast-changing states in the South and Southwest.
Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar has made her electoral success in Minnesota a key piece of her campaign, while appealing to white working-class Midwesterners is central to the rationales of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and former Vice President Joe Biden as they consider presidential campaigns.
They would face intense competition from more strident ideologues in the Democratic presidential field, as did the governors now offering their advice to the candidates. Evers was never regarded as the most exciting candidate among eight in his Democratic primary in Wisconsin last year. Whitmer, meanwhile, fielded criticism for being too conservative on health care compared to her opponents for the Democratic nomination in Michigan, and Wolf has forged a relatively low national profile in his fifth year as governor of Pennsylvania, where he has largely stayed out of intra-party policy fights.
But even as their party gears up for an ideological and potentially divisive presidential primary, the governors preached unity among Democrats.
“I don’t think there’s a big fundamental disagreement of what we ought to do,” Wolf said.
Evers noted that health care was a winning issue for Democrats of all stripes in the midterms. “I’d continue that,” Evers said.
Their states have not gotten a huge amount of personal attention from Democratic presidential candidates so far this year, though Klobuchar recently made a stop in Wisconsin. But Whitmer said she will offer as much help as she can to candidates who want to come to her state.
“I’m going to invite every Democratic candidate who wants to come into Michigan, we’ll make sure they’ve got all the same access to all the same tools and they should show up and talk to people,” Whitmer said. “And that way the people of Michigan can make a decision based on who they think is really going to show up for them in the White House.”
Fact: Yearbooks aren’t the only places to stealthily reference quotes from your favorite television shows. Cards provide great opportunities, too.
Twitter user @jjedi_j recently shared a photo of some roses she says she was sent, which were very nice. But the card that accompanied the flowers was the true gift.
Rather than a typical “I love you” or “Thinking of you” message, the card pictured in the tweet simply read: “The Office Season 3 Episode 11,” along with the timestamp “19:45.”
Turns out, when you reach 19:45 in the episode, which is titled “Back From Vacation,” Michael Scott is seen saying “You complete me” to Jan. Just to be sure, we double checked. And yep. A perfect moment.
Image: screengrab/netflix
Isn’t that much better than a boring, generic card? The official Twitter account for The Office certainly thinks so. (Though the super fan who runs it is likely extremely biased.)
Judging from the replies, though, many other fans of the show were equally impressed by the creative card, and even brainstormed some ideas for future deliveries.
A regular flower delivery is a Michael Scott-level move, but a flower delivery with a timestamp card like this is so extra it could very well be straight from the Date Mike playbook.
Forget everything you thought you knew about college life.
This generation of college students is more diverse and global than ever before. This global mindset has brought about new expectations and demands that are transforming college campuses. From food to technology to academics, colleges are embracing personalization and adopting innovative services to keep up with these new disruptors.
“We’ve always known that college students need support to achieve,” said Satya Menard, who oversees about 700 university partnerships at Sodexo. “But today, they are more informed, empowered, and have their own opinions. It’s a very interesting time to work on college campuses.”
Dining halls are moving far beyond standard fare.
Universities are working with students and local partners to devise healthy and diverse options.
Food for thought
One of the most obvious changes is in food. Dining halls are moving far beyond standard fare, working with students and local partners to devise healthy and diverse options. Some are incorporating the lessons of Silicon Valley by introducing on-demand and delivery services – with at least one using robots for those deliveries.
Binghamton University has partnered with a local Indian restaurateur to offer authentic dishes, with a website that offers students directions to local halal and Asian grocers. The University of Coventry in the UK has brought in a truck that offers vegan food. The University of Pittsburgh opened a grocery store where students can shop using their meal plans, and also the Panther Grill, a food truck that drives to different spots around campus. Students came up with the idea for the Panther Grill.
Soon, at some college stadiums, students will be able to order from their phones and have their meals delivered to them in their seats. Imagine no more touchdown-missing line waits and soda-spilling aisle shuffles.
But it might be George Mason University that will get the most double-takes with its Starship Technologies robots zipping around the campus with orders.
Food delivery gets a makeover with robots zipping around campus to hungry students and faculty members.
A fleet of robots at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA
A warmer welcome
Another change is in how colleges are helping students transition to campus life. With so many students coming from different countries and a surge in first generation students, educators are spreading out longer, broader welcome mats.
Academically, this can mean more introductory courses and teacher trainings to recognize struggling students.
Service-wise, some colleges, such as New Mexico State University, are going so far as to offer concierge services and a 24-hour call center staffed with employees who can offer guidance and answer all sorts of student questions.
Eva Killings enjoys time with students at a Florida State University dining hall.
As the number of first-generation university students grows, universities are working to recognize, engage and provide support for them.
Other schools, such as Florida State University, are creating positions for employees whose sole job will be to comfort students. Eva Killings worked at FSU for 43 years and was known for her upbeat attitude and friendly hugs. So, as new students arrived on campus this year, administrators appointed her the ambassador of Seminole Dining.
“I make sure everyone is happy and having a good day and enjoying their lunch or breakfast when they come in,” Killings told Forbes.
As the student population continues to grow and change, experts predict that personal, flexible support will become the new norm. And campus officials seem to be on board with this shift.
Abdou Cole, the district manager for Pitt Dining by Sodexo, best expressed this shift in an article on the university’s Pitt News: “When students speak, we listen and act.”
The lead sponsor of the “Medicare for All” bill, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said she will release a separate list of suggested funding mechanisms. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Government-run single-payer system would eliminate most private health insurance and cover abortion.
Progressive House Democrats will unveil their much-hyped “Medicare for All” legislation Wednesday, providing the most detailed blueprint yet for how they would upend the health care system to guarantee coverage for every American — a long-sought progressive dream that is already shaping the Democratic race to challenge President Donald Trump.
The bill, co-sponsored by just over 100 House Democrats, doesn’t include a price tag or specific proposals for financing the new system, which analysts estimate would cost tens of trillions of dollars over a decade. The lead sponsor, Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal, said she will release a separate list of suggested funding mechanisms, including a new tax on high earners or mandated employer contributions.
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The proposal calls fora two-year transformation of Medicare into a universal single-payer system, eliminating nearly all private health plans. It would also expand Medicare coverage to include prescription drugs, dental and vision services, and long-term care, without charging co-pays, premiums or deductibles — and would provide federal funding for abortions.
The legislation comes amid a furious debate within the Democratic Party over the scale of its health care ambitions, pitting a vocal progressive base eager to make Medicare for All a defining 2020 issue against its more wary moderate establishment. It’s an open question how far Democratic leaders will allow the bill to advance in the House, as Republicans clamor for hearings on what they deride as a “socialist” nightmare.
Medicare for All supporters say their 100-plus page bill is a meticulous road map to single-payer health care and hope its unveiling will silence critics who have dismissed the idea as a little more than a catchy slogan.
Republicans, eager for a showdown over Medicare for All, maintain that the systemthat would cost taxpayers tens of trillions of dollars and force hundreds of millions of patients from their private plans into government-run coverage. Powerful health care industry groups that joined with Democratsto help pass Obamacare almost a decade ago have also banded together to fight a concept that would rewire the health system and threaten their business models.
Still, several Democratic presidential contenders have embraced Medicare for All as a political rallying cry over the past year, as polls showed growing public support for universal health coverage and a broader leftward shift among Democratic voters. But aside from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who brought the idea from the liberal fringes into the mainstream during his 2016 presidential campaign, most candidates haveavoided offering specifics that could invite criticism.
Recent polling has found the public views the concept of a single-payer system favorably. But that support significantly erodes when voters learn it would eliminate most private health insurance and could raise taxes. Republican lawmakers are confident the policy willdamageDemocrats in the 2020 election, particularly among suburban moderate voters who helped the party retake the House in November.
But progressive lawmakers, led by Jayapal and Sanders, are equally confident the public will embrace a single-payer plan if Democrats make a strong enough case. They plan to pressure Democratic colleagues and 2020 contenders to fully embrace a revamp of a health care system they argue has failed the American people.
Two Housecommittees will hold the first-ever hearings on Medicare for All next month, but leaders haven’t made any further commitments for advancing the legislation.
The House bill largely mirrors Sanders’ Medicare for All bill in the Senate. Both bills make an extensive argument for the feasibility of a costly transition that would overhaul the Medicare program and turn it into a universal insurer.
But unlike the Sanders plan, the government under Jayapal’s bill would fund long-term care, a particularly expensive part of the health system. The bill also calls for a two-year transition to single payer, faster than the four years in Sanders’ bill.
Additionally, the inclusion of abortion coverage would eliminate the long-standing ban on federal dollars for the procedure in almost all cases. States would also be barred from excluding abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, which some red states have sought to push out of Medicaid.
Under the House bill, new government-funded coverage would become available at the end of the first transition year for a large segment of the population: current Medicare enrollees, people over age 55 and those under 19. Everyone else would be allowed to buy into the program that first year, and then the system would take effect for everyone in at the end of the second year. Some exceptions would exist for people covered through the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Indian Health Service.
Though the bill doesn’t include a cost estimate or funding specifics, House progressives are attempting to reckon with the financing of such a sweeping overhaul.
The bill orders the creation of a national health budget requiring federal officials to negotiate annual payments to providers in advance. And, for the first five years, at least 1 percent of that massive budget would go toward programs helping millions of health care workers displaced by the creation of a single government-run system, including “wage replacement” and retirement benefits in addition to job training.
The government would also be empowered to negotiate drug prices directly with pharmaceutical companies — a longtime policy priority for Democrats — and create a single list of covered drugs that encourages providers to use cheaper generics.
Medicare for All backers have long argued that Americans would ultimately pay less under a single-payer system even with tax hikes, because they would no longer need to shell out for premiums and co-pays or face the prospect of thousands of dollars in unplanned medical expenses. Currently, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, Americans pay nearly twice as much per capita for health care than citizens of other industrialized countries, and have worse health outcomes.
But skeptics have dismissed the idea that Medicare for All would save Americans money, in large part because single payer proposals have yet to detail with the scale of tax increases and economic changes required — much of which they argue would hit the middle class and risk tanking support for Medicare for All.
It’s unclear when — or whether — the Congressional Budget Office will evaluate the bill and assign a price tag. On a call with reporters, a Jayapal staffer preemptively dismissed the congressional scorekeeper’s ability to evaluate this bill, echoing complaints House Republicans made about the office’s projections their Obamacare repeal legislation would cost millions of people health coverage.
The bill’s initial co-sponsors include a range of progressive Democrats, from high-profile freshmen like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to prominent liberal stalwarts like Reps. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee. MassachusettsRep. Katherine Clark, the No. 6 House Democrat and second-highest-ranking woman in the caucus, also signed on.
Despite the base’s surging enthusiasm for the concept, the legislation initially boasts fewer co-sponsors than the 124 Democrats who signed onto a previous version of Medicare for All bill last year, when the legislation was just a broad outline that former Rep. John Conyers(D-Mich.) had repeatedly reintroduced for years before his resignation in late 2017. Jayapal took over the legislation last year and had been rewriting and expanding it for months.
While the House Rules and Budget committees are scheduled to hold Medicare for All hearings starting in March, the bill has gotten no firm commitments from the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means panels, whose endorsements are required to get the bill on the House floor.
The Democratic establishment, wary of holding a vote on a potentially divisive policy that has no chance of becoming law under President Donald Trump, is instead pushing the caucus to focus on strengthening Obamacare and protecting the law’s protections for pre-existing conditions, a message that helped Democrats win back the House in November. Some are also embracing ideas to expand government coverage to smaller groups, like near-retirees, without overhauling the entire health care system.
Microsoft agreed to take hundreds of millions of dollars to help soldiers kill — but don’t worry, the company’s CEO says it’s for the sake of democracy.
On Monday at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Nadella told CNN Business that Microsoft would continue developing HoloLens augmented reality (AR) technology for the U.S. military, despite employee protests. He couched the decision in terms of his corporation’s duty to support the government.
“We made a principled decision that we’re not going to withhold technology from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy,” Nadella told CNN Business.
Nadella was at MWC unveiling the next generation of its AR headset, the HoloLens 2. The device allows wearers to view the outside world layered with AR objects and applications.
But just one day prior, a group of Microsoft employees published an open letter to Nadella and Microsoft President Brad Smith demanding that this technology not be used in military applications.
On behalf of workers at Microsoft, we’re releasing an open letter to Brad Smith and Satya Nadella, demanding for the cancelation of the IVAS contract with a call for stricter ethical guidelines. If you’re a Microsoft employee you can sign at: https://t.co/958AhvIHO5pic.twitter.com/uUZ5P4FJ7X
In November 2018, the U.S. military awarded Microsoft a $479 million contract to develop an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). That means Microsoft was tasked with creating ways the military could use the HoloLens on the battlefield.
The stated objective of the contract, per government documents, is to “rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform” that would provide “increased lethality, mobility, and situational awareness.” Or, as the Microsoft employees put it, “to help soldiers kill.”
For letter writers and signees, this contract “crossed the line.” They do not want to be in the business of weapons development. They also believe that the contract unfairly impacts the employees who developed the HoloLens in the first place, who might not want to see their work used in war.
“As employees and shareholders, we do not want to become war profiteers,” the letter concludes. “To that end, we believe that Microsoft must stop in its activities to empower the US Army’s ability to cause harm and violence.”
According to a Twitter update from the group that issued the letter, Microsoft Workers for Good, over 250 employees have signed.
Another 50 signatures since this morning has put us over 250+ employees speaking out against creating technology with the intent to harm. Thank you all for your support! https://t.co/Jk4ALXShKq
Nadella responded to these moral objections with a big, fat “nope.” Microsoft will forge ahead with the IVAS contract.
Somewhat surprisingly, Nadella is also claiming the moral high ground in his decision.
“It’s not about taking arbitrary action by a single company, it’s not about 50 people or 100 people or even 100,000 people in a company,” Nadella said. “It’s really about being a responsible corporate citizen in a democracy.”
According to Nadella, a corporation’s responsibility is to support government institutions; in this case, the military, which “protects the freedoms we enjoy.”
In fact, it is a corporation’s duty to pay taxes and follow the law. Any duty beyond that is one of philosophy, not fact.
Of course, Microsoft has another reason to develop technology for the military.
Tech workers are increasingly facing the reality that the companies they’re working for aren’t necessarily “doing good” (as many have previously claimed). Subsequently, they’ve raised objections both internally and in public. Google employees have protested Google’s work on a Chinese search engine that could aid the Chinese government’s surveillance efforts, and impede freedom of information for its citizens. Amazon workers objected to the sale of facial recognition technology to law enforcement. In the cases of these leading tech giants — Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — employee principles are standing in the way of cash from morally murky government contracts.
And where the CEOs stand is usually clear. Nadella and Smith at Microsoft, and CEO Sundar Pichai at Google, say they value employee feedback. But both parties then go on to cite their own moral duties (in the case of Pichai, it was enabling freedom of information in China). And then, they end up right back where they started: accepting lucrative government contracts with no guarantee they won’t be used to curtail freedoms or even kill people.
Is it a corporation’s duty (or “responsibility”) to support government institutions in a democracy?
The concept isn’t necessarily abhorrent, especially if you’re working on technology that — when deployed by government institutions such as health departments —can actually help people. But the U.S. military specifically wanted to increase “lethality.” Nadella could have walked away; instead, he took the money and portrayed it as an obligation. The end result could be Microsoft profiting from the violence of war.
Daily Trends Hunter 