What Happened Today: May 17, 2023

American children are dying; Congress takes on AI; Senator Feinstein's Whereabouts; Sean Cooper on Philadelphia's mayor's race

---

The Big Story

A new analysis of federal death statistics showed that in 2020 and 2021, decades of progress in death rates among American children took a sharp U-turn. The overall mortality rate among those 19 and younger increased 11% in 2020 and 8% in 2021, the largest consecutive increases in 50 years. The increases are largely driven by homicides, drug overdoses, car accidents, and suicides. Some of those increases began over the previous decade before being exacerbated by pandemic-era lockdowns that accelerated the decline in mental health among children. Lois Lee, a pediatric emergency physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, told The Wall Street Journal that the hospital is seeing patients as young as 8 years old with “suicidal ideation.” 

The decline in mental health has led some organizations, such as the American Psychological Association, to begin advocating for stricter social media use among American youth. Last week, the APA said social media platforms should restrict or remove content that encourages self-harm, eating-disorder behavior, or other health-risk behaviors.

But some fear that the cat is already out of the bag. A piece in the New York Post on Tuesday details multiple tragedies involving social media and teenagers. As we’ve covered previously, one Chicago teen, Nate Bronstein, killed himself last year after being bullied on social media for being unvaccinated (he was vaccinated). His mother, Rosellene, believes she could have saved him if she’d been able to monitor his Snapchat account and believes parents need to view social media as they view cigarettes or alcohol. Lucy Sayah, now 20, believes her anorexia was exacerbated by social media use when she was 17. “Social media does not allow children and young teens to live in the present and instead forces them to view false realities of other individuals’ lives, which has the potential to be harmful,” she told the New York Post.

Read More: https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-rate-children-teens-guns-drugs-54c604f4

In The Back Pages: Urban Progressivism’s National Tour Crashes in Philadelphia

---

The Rest

→ Jacksonville, Florida, was the largest Republican-led city in the United States—until Tuesday night, when Democrat Donna Deegan won the mayoral race by four points over Daniel Davis, despite the Republican’s backing from Gov. Ron DeSantis and a bigger war chest. It was just last year when Jacksonville went all in for DeSantis, boosting his gubernatorial re-election with a healthy 12% margin. State Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried celebrated Deegan’s win, saying, with another volley in the local culture war, “For too long, Jacksonville has been led by Republicans who are hell-bent on taking away our rights, and it’s past time that the city is led by leaders with new, fresh ideas.”

→ At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invited lawmakers to regulate his company’s Frankenstein chatbot. Altman’s primary concern seemed to be the possibility that the personalized bots might influence the outcome of next year’s presidential race with “interactive disinformation,” but there is also a significant risk that new regulation will be used to turn Silicon Valley companies already aligned with the Democratic Party into political instruments. Altman also spoke about the very real likelihood that the technology would eliminate many jobs across the economy, though perhaps the effect on the job market should be the least of our worries. In a recent interview on podcast “Bankless,” OpenAI team member Paul Christiano warned of “a 10 to 20% chance of AI takeover [with] many, most humans dead.” Nodding to the interview in his Senate panel testimony, Altman said, “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. And we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.” No word yet from Altman on the “quite wrong” possibility that his AI tools could be used by the government in campaigns of mass opinion formation like the ones that have been used to stigmatize inquiry into vaccines and the war in Ukraine.

→ Also yesterday, Scroll editor Jacob Siegel testified in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs at a hearing on “Artificial Intelligence in Government.” The invitation to testify came from Sen. Rand Paul, who, in his opening remarks, twice quoted from Siegel’s Tablet essay “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century: Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation.” In his own statement, Siegel highlighted the dangers of AI. “We seem to be caught in a trap: There is a vital national interest to promote the advancement of AI. Yet, at present, the government’s primary use of AI has been as a political weapon to censor information that it or its third party partners deem harmful.”

Watch his full testimony here starting at 44:22: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/artificial-intelligence-in-government/

→ Quote of the Day:

No, I haven’t been gone.

Raising new questions about California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s fitness to serve in office, the 89-year-old, who just returned to the Senate after a three-month absence battling a bout of shingles, insisted to Slate’s Jim Newell that she hadn’t been absent but rather had “been working.” “When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty,” Newell wrote, adding that Feinstein said, “No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting. … Please. You either know or don’t know.” The interaction has fueled the calls among her colleagues on the Hill for her to step down, with California Rep. Ro Khanna saying on Wednesday that while he wishes the senator well, he stands by his call for her to resign. Others, like Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and John Kennedy, have come to her defense, with Kennedy saying, “The people that are trying to shove her out the door after her years of service ought to hide their heads in a bag.”

→ Apparently, a drunk man walked into National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Washington, D.C., home at 3 a.m. in late April, right past his Secret Service detail. After the man left, at Sullivan’s urging, Sullivan went outside to let his detail know about the incident. We shouldn’t really be that surprised considering the Secret Service has been caught with its pants down several times in recent years: agents drunkenly fighting with a South Korean cab driver, hiring prostitutes in Colombia, and assaulting a woman in Israel.

→ Do you believe in magic, in a young particle’s heart? According to a group of Japanese astrophysicists, the fabric of the universe might be constructed by “magic.” While trying to describe the nature and material of “spacetime”—the infinite warp and weft of the cosmos—the scientists applied the rules of quantum mechanics (the smallest bits of existence) to the larger surfaces upon which stars, planets, quasars, etc., rest. The laws of the small were doing a good job explaining the laws of the large, until the astrophysicists got into black holes. Then it all broke down. The internal action of a black hole is simply too chaotic to be explained by quantum laws, so: magic! Magic is basically a term for when a computer reaches its limit of quantum calculation—or, in other words, when we run out of words to describe the beautiful mystery of the universe, where science gives way to awe.

→ Since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott starting sending busloads of asylum-seeking immigrants to Chicago, more than 8,000 have arrived, and residents of Chicago’s mostly Black South Shore neighborhood are concerned that an abandoned high school in the community is being slated for use as a temporary shelter for arriving migrants. Some residents are together suing the city over it, with their lawyer Frank Avila saying at a town hall, “We want the refugees and the asylum-seekers and migrants to come in, but we have areas across the city where they can go. Not centralized in one community.” Another resident, J. Darnell Jones, commented that there are other neighborhoods with a “supportive cultural infrastructure”—i.e., Latino. While the locals aren’t pleased with the city’s move, spending money on newcomers that might otherwise be used for local problems, the new mayor, Brandon Johnson, says, “We have to make sure that we take care of residents and family members who are here while also making sure that families that wish to call the city of Chicago their home, that they are serviced as well.”

→ After it was recently revealed that Noam Chomsky and Bard President Leon Botstein had contact with Jeffrey Epstein even after his first criminal sex conviction, both downplayed their connection to the notorious owner of the Lolita Express. Now new reporting by The Wall Street Journal reveals that Epstein gave both men financial assistance. Epstein helped Chomsky transfer $270,000 of his own money from one account to another after his first wife’s death and gave Botstein $150,000, which Botstein says he donated in full to Bard. “The important thing to recognize is that I did not personally benefit,” said Botstein.

→ You’re invited to tune in to a Tablet-sponsored discussion on Thursday about the future of the State of Israel, “Israel at a Crossroads: A State for Jews or a Jewish State?”

The massive protests that have paralyzed Israel for months are no longer just about judicial reform, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, or Israeli politics. What they represent, as most Israelis now realize, is the continuation of an argument that has rocked Zionism since the moment of its inception, of a debate about Israel’s very essence: Should it be a Jewish state or simply a state for Jews? This Zoom panel will be moderated by Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz and will feature Aaron David Miller, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Michael Doran, director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East; historian and author Gadi Taub; and Anat Naschitz, founder and CEO of 9xchange and a venture partner at OrbiMed. 

You can register here.

---

TODAY IN TABLET: 

Nan Goldin Is Our Watteau by Joe Fyfe

Cookie Mueller’s stories and a new documentary from Laura Poitras recreate the fashionable degeneracy of 1980s New York

A Cannes Diary by Vladislav Davidzon

With the pandemic receding, war dragging on in the East, and accusations of misogyny flying, Tablet’s European cultural correspondent files daily dispatches from the world’s most famous film festival

---

SCROLL TIP LINE: Have a lead on a story or something going on in your workplace, school, congregation, or social scene that you want to tell us about? Send your tips, comments, questions, and suggestions to scroll@tabletmag.com.

---

---

Urban Progressivism’s National Tour Crashes in Philadelphia

With crime spiraling in big cities, Philly voters chose a law and order candidate in Tuesday’s democratic primary

By Sean Cooper

No matter who won Tuesday night’s Democratic primary in the Philadelphia mayor’s race—with the victor all but assured to ascend to City Hall, as Democrats have won every general election in the city going back to the 1950s—the single most important issue for voters was the intertwined gun and drug epidemic. Street shootings and overdoses, not to mention a recent surge in car jackings, have trickled into even Philadelphia’s toniest neighborhoods, engendering a collective fear about public safety that harkened back to the rampant violence of the early 1990s that many had assumed the city had left behind.

Well before the sun had risen on Wednesday morning, the race was called for longtime political powerhouse and former Council Member Cherelle Parker, who secured the win with a campaign built upon her promise to add 300 new hires to a police department that, under her tenure, would deploy the legal application of stop-and-frisk in an effort to crackdown on gun violence. Notching the democratic nomination with about a third of the vote total, Parker was the establishment candidate, backed by a roster of local elected officials and propelled by a base of Black voters and those living in some of the neighborhoods that have suffered the most from gun violence and the drug epidemic. With Parker now set to square off in the general election against David Oh, the Republican who took the nomination uncontested, she’s poised to become the city’s first ever female leader.

By Election Day, the field of nine democratic candidates seeking to replace the term-limited Mayor Jim Kenny had seen their public safety plans extensively prodded on the campaign trail. Hardly a debate went by without questions from voters about how the candidates would tame the gun violence that had claimed 1,500 lives in Philadelphia since 2020. Among the city's voters 89% reported that crime was their top priority in the election, according to PEW. Among Black voters, 93% reported crime as their top priority.

Yet, with the race remaining relatively close until its final hours, as five Democratic front runners vied for the nomination, there was a sharp political line drawn between Parker, the only Black woman candidate and a native of northwest Philadelphia, and Helen Gym, an Asian-American former school teacher originally from Columbus, Ohio.

While Parker positioned herself as a moderate whose policy proposals reflected her community’s demands to restore order in the city, Gym, the candidate of urban progressivism, was sharply critical of the idea that policing is the best tool to reduce violence, instead pushing for social justice policies to address what she said were the root causes of crime.

It was that approach that earned Gym, a former at-large Council Member in Philadelphia, the endorsements of blockbuster national progressive figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, the powerful union who’s donation to Gym’s campaign helped it lead the pack with the largest share of donors from outside the Philadelphia region.

With $31 million spent, this was by far the most expensive race in Philadelphia’s history. Part of that was due to the big bucks poured in by the candidates themselves, including $10 million alone from real estate mogul Allan Domb, who ran on a pro-business and tough-on-crime ticket. But significant money and political capital came from outside interests who saw major stakes in the race for City Hall. On Sunday, Helen Gym hosted both Bernie and AOC at a rally. This marked the most recent push by leading national progressives to build a revamped coalition anchored by major U.S. cities, where crime and drugs have become overwhelming concerns for voters.

In the mayor’s race last month in Chicago, relative political newcomer Brandon Johnson leveraged his Bernie endorsement to shock the city’s establishment and beat Paul Vallas, who’d run a campaign promising to bulk up a police force that, while already one of the nation’s largest, has failed to tame the city’s rampant gun violence. That contest came on the heels of two progressive victories: City Councilor Michelle Wu’s win in the Boston mayoral contest with the support of Senator Elizabeth Warren and a cast of leading Massachusetts progressives, and Rep. Karen Bass’ win in the Los Angeles mayoral race. Though some progressives bristled at Bass’ campaign promise to hire 200 more LAPD officers rather than “reform an irredeemable department,” as one grassroots coalition put it, her win in L.A. was what AOC touted on Sunday, in front of some 1,000 Helen Gym supporters.

“We’re taking this fight from the West Coast to the East Coast. …We started in Los Angeles with Karen Bass winning [as] mayor, who also went up against a billionaire trying to win an election,” AOC said, a reference to Philadelphia-area conservative billionaire Jeffrey Yass who’d funded a slew of attack ads on Gym in recent weeks. “Then, we went to Chicago, same thing. The money and institutions blanketed the air waves, but you know what the people of Chicago did? The teachers got together, schools got together, hospitals got together, and they said nope, Brandon Johnson for mayor.” Dozens of phones around the floor of the dark, cavernous venue shot video of AOC’s speech, just as those up around the bar area on the second level snapped pics of her in her sharp, all-white outfit.

Organizers had billed the event as dual-purpose, with big screen TV’s broadcasting the 76ers attempt to overtake the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the NBA Eastern Semi-Finals. Even with the formidable shooting power of James Harden and regular season MVP Joel Embiid, the 76ers were collapsing under the weight of so much expectation of what their marquee players could do. By the time AOC started to extoll Gym’s plan to reverse Philadelphia’s historic levels of violence, one of the few mentions by a host of speakers who largely glossed over the issue, the Sixers season was over, routed in a 112-88 blow out. So much for star power.

“She knows what keeps us safe,” AOC said. “Her public safety plan is focused on investing in wrap-around programming so people are supported through the hardest times in their lives. And by the way, Helen is also running on a Green New Deal for schools. But once again, they’ve got money, but we’ve got the people.”

No one there would have expected an extensive policy proposal in a setting like this, but it was telling that AOC’s mention of public safety had little to say about law enforcement, or the human toll of street violence, or the rampant straw gun purchases driving so much of the city’s violence. Rather, the progressive standard bearer touted the city’s anti-violence initiatives—apparently unaware that the programs resulted in “millions of dollars left unspent and thousands of dollars unaccounted for,” as an investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer concluded.

With Bernie set as the evening’s closer, Gym took to the podium with rows of supporters waving campaign posters behind her. “The eyes of the nation are on us today,” she said. “And we are going to make history.”

Promising voters a “community safety agenda that ensures everyone in Philadelphia is safe and feels safe … and swiftly responds to violence and works to stop it from occurring in the first place,” Gym said that “a mayor has to prevent crime, not just respond to it.” But before she could expand any further on how she would do that, she was onto the environmental plank of her agenda. “And we are going to deliver, as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, a Green New Deal for this city that takes on the climate crisis and environmental racism that has held too many communities back.”

Bernie, who seemed to be the draw for so many in attendance, ran through what sounded like a stump speech that might have been used at rallies in Los Angeles or Chicago. “I’m here to tell you what you already know,” he said. “Helen is bringing us together, Black and white, and Latino, Asian-American, Native American, gay and straight, young and old. All of us coming together in the fight for justice. That’s the kind of leadership America needs. It’s the kind of leadership Philadelphia needs. And I’m here tonight because I see in Helen a kindred spirit.”

In the end, the voters in the neighborhoods least affected by the gun violence and the drug epidemic formed Gym’s largest support block, despite her campaign being widely touted for a “cult-like following” of canvassers driving support on the ground. For those voting in precincts that had suffered at least 175 shootings in their area since 2015, half cast their ballot for Parker. Only 17% of that same group supported Gym. And with the gun violence so densely concentrated in the city’s least affluent communities, it perhaps wasn’t a surprise to see 53% of voters who make less than $50,000 coming out for Parker’s definitive, tough on crime platform. Amongst that same income bracket, only 12% stood with Gym.

In a tragic nod to the reality of Philadelphia’s gun violence, two weeks before the election a canvasser for one pro-Gym group shot and killed another campaign worker in a dispute while knocking on doors.