What Happened Today: April 7, 2022
Macron’s shaky hold; spying on 60 million Android users; students aren’t showing up to school
The Big Story
Squandering his strong lead in the polls, Emmanuel Macron is now facing a tough showdown against challengers in the first round of voting this Sunday for the French presidency. With Macron polling about 25% of the vote, his nearest challenger, the far-right Marine Le Pen, polling 20%, and several other candidates from both the right and the left nipping at Le Pen’s heels, it’s clear that voters are struggling to coalesce around one candidate or party. The lack of cohesive sentiment will likely dampen voter turnout, but it also reflects the numerous grievances roiling the French electorate, whose ultimate decision for the presidency, an office endowed with decidedly more control than the U.S. presidency over domestic and foreign affairs, will have significant implications for the European Union’s strategic formation around energy and economic security in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s likely but not guaranteed that Macron and Le Pen will squeak through to the decisive runoff round, where recent polls show Macron’s slim 5% margin could turn the final vote into a coin toss.
A former investment banker who’s embraced an American neoliberal style of governance, Macron’s recent surge in popularity rose on a temporary invocation of national pride as he attended to the war in Ukraine, but his previous stumbles over upper-class tax cuts and policy moves ill-received by workers (which spawned months of violent street protests by the gilets jaunes in 2018) seem to have snapped back into focus for French voters. Their recollections were no doubt instigated by recent press reports of his administration’s lavish spending on expensive consultants and his election manifesto mapping France’s future, which pushes up the retirement age and includes slashes to the welfare system. Le Pen has favored a tempered, maternal campaign that contrasts with her previous runs for the presidency and casts a soft hue over her protectionist, anti-immigrant ideas that resonate with city workers and rural voters alike. Le Pen’s sentimental if not confected concern about “fraud protection” and major law enforcement enhancements at the border, which amounts to government efforts to separate the good from the bad, fits hand in glove with an increasingly entrenched nationalist antagonism to the European Union that Macron will have to square up to if he wins, as it’s unlikely he’ll both win the presidency and have a majority to support him in the parliament. Indeed, Macron’s radical economic program is being championed by the progressive French elite but will face healthy resistance as his political opponents, now and after the election, leverage contentious debates about French social identity to grow in power.
Read it here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/macron-leads-polls-but-turnout-a-big-question-in-french-vote/ar-AAVUidN
In The Back Pages: A review of ‘The Unraveling of Pup The Band’
The Rest
→ Measurement Systems, a Panamanian company with corporate ties to a defense contractor that provides surveillance and other intelligence-gathering services to U.S. security agencies, was found to have paid developers of Android apps around the world to integrate code that surveilled and secretly harvested data from upwards of 60 million phone users. Alerted to the spyware by two university computer scientists at UC Berkeley and the University of Calgary, Google has since removed dozens of apps from its Google Play platform after being made aware of the software spying. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Measurement Systems paid app developers and sometimes required them to sign NDAs in their effort to install the spyware on prayer apps popular with Muslims and on apps used to scan QR codes and a weather app used widely in Iran. In a statement to the Journal, Measurement Systems denied any ties to the defense industry. Increasingly, government intelligence agencies have turned to a growing market of third-party vendors that collect and synthesize geo-tag locations, purchase history, and other phone data that track people’s movements and help investigators and intelligence officers determine human networks.
→ Students across the nation have struggled to show up to school this year, a chronic absenteeism inflamed by the pandemic that has made it even harder for children to catch up after falling behind over the past two years. For students in New York City, the rate of chronic absenteeism—which is when a student has missed more than 10% of classes—rose from 26% in 2018 to 40% this year, a stunningly large cohort of students that’s been surpassed in Los Angeles, where 46% of students at the Los Angeles Unified School District have missed at least 9% of their academic calendar. The problem isn’t isolated to major metro areas: All across California, the state’s department of education found that almost 30% of students were chronically absent during the current academic year, a surge from the 13% rate before the pandemic. Driven by struggles to find caregivers, disruptions to transpiration, and a growing disconnect between families and school systems that embraced an impersonal virtual learning regiment for two years during the pandemic, the dwindling attendance rate is hitting the middle of the country as well, as the statewide absenteeism rate in Ohio more than doubled during the 2020-2021 academic calendar.
→ Students aren’t the only ones staying home. A new analysis by the research firm JLL estimates that local and state governments are on pace to shrink their presence in leased offices by as much as 30% over the next few years, as government agencies compete with private sector employers and continue to embrace remote or hybrid work arrangements preferred by many workers. In California, the state will unload 20% of its leased office space for a savings of $85 million, an incentive that’s becoming increasingly attractive to comptrollers. The trend to shift to long-term remote work continues to be attractive for the private sector, particularly in expensive cities like San Francisco, where in the last quarter of 2021, 26% of all leased office space remained vacant, a devastating blow to the commercial real estate market, trumped in Texas by the 31% vacancy rate in Houston and 28% in Dallas-Fort Worth. Across the nation, the total number of workers reporting to office buildings is down 60% compared to 2020.
→ A new Israeli study of the effectiveness of Pfizer’s second booster found that for those ages 60 and over, the protection against infection begins to drop after only four weeks and is almost entirely gone by the two-month mark. Paritcipants in the study did receive protection against severe illness for at least six weeks, but the duration of the trial was too short to determine if that protection held beyond that period.
→ Though the National Education Association and similar activist-captured institutions continue to push forward the idea that standardized tests are examples of white supremacy, MIT has announced that it is reinstating the SAT and ACT requirement for admission. Using its own research, MIT found that, in fact, test-optional admissions isn’t equitable for students: “Standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness … and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities.” Though MIT “can’t explain why these tests are so predictive of academic preparedness,” perhaps the answer is as simple as those who sacrifice to work hard on a test will thrive in the classroom.
→ A Department of Homeland Security internal report found that more than 10,000 employees experienced sexual misconduct or sexual harassment at work—that is, until the DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari had the finding scrubbed. Also airbrushed out were the cash payouts the DHS made to settle those sexual harassment complaints. Cuffari, who was appointed the DHS inspector general by President Trump, shares the former president’s zeal for hygiene, at least when it comes to sanitizing internal investigations. The DHS official declined to pursue an investigation into the Secret Service’s actions after it forcefully cleared protestors from Lafayette Square outside the White House, and he delayed an investigation into whether a DHS official who criticized the Trump administration had been demoted.
Read More: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/us/politics/homeland-security-inspector-general.html
→ Russia has begun hiring mercenaries and recruiting soldiers from Syria to bolster its flagging forces. Roughly 150,000 Russian soldiers—75% of the country’s ground forces—went into Ukraine, but that initial number has been considerably diminished, with one NATO official estimating that more than 40,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, injured, or captured in the war. The units that recently pulled back from Kyiv are now in Russia and Belarus to recuperate and pick up supplies before their redeployment to eastern Ukraine, U.S. intelligence officials say. There they will be joined by the newly recruited mercenaries, soldiers from Syria, and fresh conscripts from Russia to begin a campaign to seize the Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army for the past eight years.
→ A Princeton University exhibit of 19th-century American Jewish art that was slated to open this spring was canceled because of disagreements over whether the university should display the work of two artists who fought in the Confederate Army. Moses Jacob Ezekiel, whose 64-inch sculpture was going to be the centerpiece of the show, and Theodore Moise, a major in the Confederate army and “a master of making expressive likenesses of horses,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library, were both set to be included in the exhibit until the university’s vice provost for institutional equity and diversity requested they be dropped. Leonard Milberg, an alum who donated the pieces, and Samantha Baskind, an art historian from Cleveland State University who was curating the exhibit, refused to omit these artists, explaining that they were important Jewish figures of the period and their decision to fight for the Confederacy could be an opportunity for gallerygoers to consider the complex history of American Jewish involvement in the Civil War. Princeton was unswayed by their common-sense appeal. “History doesn’t come with neat, sanitized figures,” Baskind said. “Princeton canceled exactly the type of a show that a university should tackle.”
→ All eyes are on Tiger Woods at Augusta, Georgia, today as he competes for his sixth Masters championship. Something like a cat with nine lives, Woods returns to golf after his latest brush with death and calamity: A severe car accident a little over a year prior had doctors considering amputation of his right leg, and no one believed he’d return to play professionally. Considered one of the sport’s greatest athletes, Woods has continued to be one of its most popular even during lengthy periods away from the game because of injuries, substance abuse, and problems with the law. All along, Woods has maintained a profitable relationship with Nike, earning him roughly a half-billion dollars in endorsements. Sticking by Woods has been likewise good for Nike: In 2019, the apparel brand earned $22 million in a single afternoon when Woods wore the Swoosh gear at Augusta.
A review of ‘The Unraveling of Pup The Band’
Few activities define the American conception of youth as much as music. The music industry, by and large, is set up to appeal to people ages 30 and under. Fair or unfair, that’s just how it goes. Music can be central to a person’s identity through high school, a social lubricant in college, a fun way to live through a few glory years after graduation. But what purpose does new music serve after that?
As Ted Gioia noted the other day in a chilling Substack post, “The 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams.” As we age, we turn to the sounds that have brought us comfort in the past. That’s all well and good but can create a self-fulfilling prophecy about who, exactly, is listening.
It’s a fact that Stefan Babcock, the lead singer of PUP, knows well. His band’s fantastic new album, THE UNRAVELING OF PUPTHEBAND, faces this issue with eyes wide open. On the opening track, “Four Chords,” the singer speaks directly to the listener about “your friends” over a simple piano. “They haven’t listened to any new music since college / It all makes them sick to their stomachs / And I never liked them, so they can all shove it.” Ending with a defiant profanity, the band is off to the races.
If you haven’t heard of PUP before now, the Toronto-based band comprises loud punks who first made headway south of the border with 2016’s The Dream Is Over, an album named after a quote from a doctor breaking the news to Babcock about problems with his vocal chords. That album is a punk rock album about absolutely hating being in a punk rock band. Filled with tracks like “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will,” it’s an album about being disillusioned by something you passionately love.
Well, things haven’t gotten much better by 2022. After getting the direct pain out of its system, PUP has now taken a tongue-in-cheek corporate sheen, referring to itself as PUPTHEBAND Inc. In between the soaring sing-alongs, Babock offers updates from the “Board of Directors” who are “growing impatient” while the band struggles with the democratic process.
The core of PUP albums is trying to figure out what makes all the bullshit worth it. A song like “Matilda” makes this clear. “Matilda” is told from the perspective of Babcock’s favorite guitar, if not his best-sounding one. “Now you don’t even write the chords down / You don’t even play me anyhow, anymore / Now you just keep cranking them out / Like you’re trying to numb yourself / With all this work but it’s just not working out” goes the chorus. It sounds depressing, but the genius of PUP is that you can’t help but sing along.
PUP’s work is defined by huge choruses, loud clashes, and the idea that if you’re going down, you might as well do so with friends. THE UNRAVELING may not be the most optimistic album of 2022, but it just might be the most cathartic.
David Grossman is a freelance writer based out of Brooklyn and is on Twitter at @davidgross_man.