source https://phys.org/news/2024-11-sea-anemone-animals-major-injury-1.html
Sea anemone study shows how animals restore 'shape' following major injury
source https://phys.org/news/2024-11-sea-anemone-animals-major-injury-1.html
The Kansas City Chiefs have been having a moment for a while, boasting three Super Bowl titles in the last five years.
But the team’s name recognition has leapt to a whole new level since tight end Travis Kelce began dating Taylor Swift. Sales of Kelce jerseys have spiked and Swift boosted viewership for some games. And as the holidays approach, there are two Christmas movies that tackle the Kansas City Chiefs’ stardom, and it’s all because of the new level of popularity that the pop star has brought to the team.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Lifetime’s Christmas in the Spotlight, which premiered Nov. 23, most literally fantasizes about what Swift’s and Kelce’s relationship is like by starring a blonde pop star named Bowyn (Jessica Lord) and a football player named Drew (Laith Wallschleger) who have very public personas and are trying to navigate dating with as much privacy as possible.
Hallmark’s Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, out Nov. 30, exists because of Swift dating a Kansas City Chiefs player, but it’s not about her and Kelce, exactly. Rather, the movie follows Derrick (Tyler Hynes), the team’s director of fan engagement who recently moved to Kansas City, as he falls in love with blonde Kansas City native Alana (Hunter King), who works at a Chiefs memorabilia shop and whose family has a special hat that they say brings good luck to the Chiefs. Kelce’s mom, Donna Kelce, even has a cameo, as a waitress who introduces Derrick to Kansas City BBQ.
Here’s a look at how Swift and Kelce inspired both films and why their relationship, and football games in general, make great material for the Christmas movie genre.
This film will sound familiar to anyone who followed along as Swift and Kelce began their relationship shortly after Kelce sung her praises on a July 2023 episode of podcast. That month, Kelce went to one of Swift’s Eras Tour shows, hoping to give her a friendship bracelet with his number on it, he explained in an episode of New Heights, the podcast he hosts with his brother Jason Kelce. Similarly, Drew in Christmas in the Spotlight, who plays for a Chiefs-like team called the Bombers, gets to have a brief conversation with the pop star Bowyn when he introduces her to his niece—a fellow Bowyn superfan—backstage. But they are interrupted. Drew, unsure whether he will see Bowyn again, makes a viral video inviting her to a game. Her manager, Mira Vu (Jeannie Mai), a huge fan of Drew’s team, makes sure the conversation continues. Bowyn calls Drew and admits “growing up I was never really the cheerleader, more a bleacher girl,” a play on a line in Swift’s “You Belong to Me” about a girl pining for a guy who has a girlfriend: “She’s cheer Captain, and I’m on the bleachers.”
Later, Drew is surprised and delighted to see Bowyn on the jumbotron at his game, waving pom-poms in the air, just as all cameras are on Swift when she’s cheering Chiefs games. Like Kelce, Drew has a brother who is also a star football player (though Christmas in the Spotlight, the brothers play on the same team, unlike Travis’s brother Jason, who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles).
In order to avoid the paparazzi, they have dates on Bowyn’s private plane parked in a garage, the only place where they can find privacy as they snuggle up against each other watching movies on her laptop. Bowyn even messengers Drew a Santa suit to wear when he enters the garage One night, he cooks dinner and they do “sexy puzzling,” doing a jigsaw puzzle while stroking each other with the pieces. Each has found their missing piece, so to speak. Then Drew spills wine on his shirt, so, naturally, his shirt has to come off.
Bowyn’s jealous ex tries to throw a wrench in the new relationship by ambushing her with a camera person at a gala and asking her whether she’s dating Drew for publicity—a nod to the claims that the Swift-Kelce relationship is a PR stunt. Bowyn replies yes, sarcastically, but that gets edited out of context and published online, alienating Drew. To win him back, she composes a song and dedicates it to him. “Drew, if you’re watching the livestream, you were right. I know I promised not to fall in love with you, but I couldn’t help it…As long as I’m holding onto you, I promise I won’t fumble again.”
Eirene Donohue, the screenwriter and a passionate Swiftie, says she does not think that the Swift-Kelce relationship is a PR stunt and that she wrote the film to celebrate the pop star. “People put celebrities on these pedestals, and I understand that, but the reality is they are just human people who are going through their lives,” she says, arguing that the goal of the movie is to inspire more empathy for “what it must be like to try to have a new relationship, to fall in love, when the whole world is watching.” In perhaps the biggest clapback to the people who think the relationship is a PR stunt, Drew tells a team member in the locker room that Bowyn is “the biggest pop star in the world, she’s got like a billion dollars, she doesn’t need football fans.” He adds that he thinks it’s great that “she’s bringing all of these new fans to the game.”
Christmas in the Spotlight is available to stream on mylifetime.com and the Lifetime app and will air on TV on 11/29 at 8p, 12/14 at 6p, and 12/25 at 8p.
In Holiday Touchdown, Derrick is a new guy in town, who recently joined the Kansas City Chiefs as its director of fan engagement. The department is looking to name a “fan of the year,” and as part of his research, he goes to a local Chief memorabilia shop. There, he meets Alana, whose family runs the store and boasts a Chiefs knit beanie hat that they say brings good luck to the Chiefs. He hits it off with them and tags along with them as they do all of their Christmas traditions, like putting decorations up all around the city
Alana’s family members are desperate for Alana and Derrick to start dating, so much so they even talk about smearing flour on Alana’s face while she’s making gingerbread art so that Derrick will have to lightly brush it off her cheek. That’s when Donna Kelce comes out with a platter of cookies and says, “Don’t force it ladies. Just let it happen, trust me on this one.” That line can be read as a nod to her son’s relationship, but it’s the only allusion to Kelce and Swift in the film.
“Other than that, there’s really no hidden message in there about Travis and Taylor,” says Julie Sherman Wolfe, the screenwriter of Holiday Touchdown.
As Alana and Derrick fall for one another, he takes her to the Chiefs arena and they share a tender moment alone in the stands. When Alana’s family’s lucky hat goes missing at a holiday toy drive, he joins in the search efforts. But the family is not heartbroken. As her Chiefs megafan grandfather played by Ed Begley Jr., decked out in a team jersey, reassures Alana, “Even if the Chiefs lose, I still win—’cause I have everything: family, friends, love.” Alana then tells her grandfather that the lucky hat brought her and Derrick together—what if the lost hat means they aren’t meant to be together? “The magic is not in the hat, it’s in what the hat represents,” says the grandfather, “the belief that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, knowing that we have each other’s back no matter what.”
Wolfe is actually a San Francisco 49ers fan, who ironically got the assignment to write a Hallmark Christmas movie about the Kansas City Chiefs right after the team defeated her beloved 49ers in the Super Bowl. (Hallmark is also headquartered in Kansas City.) Yet she channeled the grief into a heartwarming script, realizing that no matter the team, football brings friends and families together. Just as Alana’s family’s hat is thought to bring the Chiefs to victory in Holiday Touchdown, Wolfe shared a look at a 49ers jacket that’s thought to bring good luck to that team. A lifelong football fan who knows the rules of the game, Wolfe’s goal was to write a Hallmark Christmas movie that football fans could enjoy, so they will appreciate the references to specific plays.
Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story airs Nov. 30 at 8p on Hallmark’s TV channel and will re-air throughout December. An extended cut of Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story premieres on Hallmark+ on December 12.
While Holiday Touchdown may not be literally about a pop star dating a football player, Wolfe says the Swift-Kelce relationship inevitably led to the Chiefs Hallmark movie. “Obviously their love story was sort of the thing that got people thinking about romance and football together.” Given the news coverage of their romance—and the on-field Swift-Kelce smooches—she argues that the Chief’s 2023-2024 season “felt like a Hallmark Christmas movie.”
So what about the Swift-Kelce relationship makes it prime Christmas movie material?
Christmas time is a season of hope, especially of hope that the impossible could be possible. So the fairy tale of the Chiefs’ rise to dominance after 50 years without winning a Super Bowl, combined with a pop star and football star finding love in their mid-30s is ripe for the Christmas movie genre. Wolfe adds that Christmas is also the season for making family memories, and watching football is such a family affair for many Americans. Having faith in your team even when times are tough is an evergreen lesson that even people who aren’t football fans can appreciate.
Donohue says the Christmas season is a perfect time to put out a movie like Christmas in the Spotlight because of the “faith in magic” that characterizes the season. “I think that’s why people love Christmas movies. They’re a comfort food. You know there’s going to be a happy ending. You want to feel joyful. I am a big believer in the power of joy to uplift, to inspire, to give purpose, and so I just tried to make a movie that has a lot of joyful moments.”
Holiday Touchdown’s Wolfe explains, “I love movies that have actual Christmas magic in them—have a little wink, a bit of the supernatural… Christmas is the best time to show all of that because that’s where there’s extra magic, extra faith, extra fate, extra everything.”
Holiday season means food—and a lot of it, from work events to social gatherings with friends and family.
“When I talk to my patients, instead of calling it the most beautiful time of year, I call it the most challenging time of the year,” says Dr. Andres Acosta, a physician in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Mayo Clinic.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]For the 12% of adults in the U.S. now taking a weight-loss medication that targets the GLP-1 and/or GIP hormones to restrict appetite or treat diabetes—think Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound—the season is even more complicated.
“We’ve heard of people not skipping their injections but pushing them back,” says Michelle Cardel, chief nutrition officer at WeightWatchers. “So if they normally inject on Wednesday, and Thanksgiving is on Thursday, they might give themselves their injection on Friday instead, so they can have a little more room to enjoy the holiday foods and are less likely to experience unwanted side effects if they overeat.” Others stop the medications for longer periods during the holiday months, doctors say.
In general, doctors don’t recommend changing anything about your injection schedule. Unlike most previous anti-obesity medications, drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound work in part on the brain to dampen hunger signals and reduce appetite so you don’t feel like eating. In order to achieve that effect with the fewest side effects, the dose of the injections that people give themselves once a week have to be ramped up gradually over 16 weeks before people reach the maximum dose that they then maintain. Generally each injection can successfully control hunger signals for about a week, and just as its effect starts to wane, you give yourself another injection.
Skipping or shifting injections has a domino effect. For those moving from a Wednesday dose to a Friday dose, for example, their future doses will now occur on Friday. And people skipping doses should be prepared to experience the same side effects that they felt when they first start their doses—such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and other gastrointestinal symptoms—when they restart their doses.
“I advise my patients against stopping their medication because we are managing chronic obesity,” Acosta says, and changing an established dosing schedule can have additional consequences. If patients stop their injections for more than one week, they have to return to lower doses and work their way back up to the dose they achieved before they stopped, which further pushes back any weight-loss goals they might have set.
Read More: How to Add More Protein to Your Thanksgiving Recipes
Dr. Andre Teixeira, medical director of the Orlando Health Weight Loss and Bariatric Surgery Institute, has seen some serious examples of these spillover effects among his patients. “Some people can’t work back up to the dose where they were before,” he says. Because these are hormone-based medications, he likens the effect to what some women experience on different types of birth control; certain brands are associated with more extreme side effects that make the pills intolerable for some.
And of course, any time patients stop taking Wegovy or Zepbound, their weight eventually goes back up. “I tell my patients that we don’t want to burn all the effort they have put in to lose weight over the whole year over the six weeks of the holidays,” says Acosta.
Instead of messing with their medication, Acosta advises people to plan ahead with dietary and fitness adjustments. On Thanksgiving or Christmas Day, for example, don’t eat large meals earlier in the day. “You don’t need to have a big breakfast or a massive lunch,” Acosta says. “Go exercise that morning—everybody benefits from a long walk or a hike. We’re super good at planning meals and dinners with loved ones; we should also plan to go for a walk in the park with our loved ones. And if the weather isn’t nice, then go the mall. Do something that requires physical activity so you burn some calories.”
He also reminds patients about the consequences of overeating while on the medications, and advises them not to overdo it, even if they might feel pressure to at a family gathering. You might consider letting loved ones know about your situation. Since these drugs are discussed openly on social media and gaining popularity, “it’s become a little more acceptable to share that you are trying to lose weight and using anti-obesity medications.”
And it’s not just navigating food—but alcohol as well—that might be a challenge for people taking the medications. Many experience nausea, vomiting, and other GI issues if they drink while on the medications. WeightWatchers conducted a study to chronicle how anti-obesity medications affected alcohol consumption and found that 45% to 51% of people taking GLP-1 and GIP drugs decreased the amount of alcohol they drank. It wasn’t clear from the study whether people made this change because they wanted to avoid side effects or if they just decided to drink less as part of their overall desire to be healthier. But, says Cardel, “my guess is that it’s a combination of both.”
What’s most important for navigating the holidays is to plan ahead so that if you are taking one of these medications, you can find ways to maximize your enjoyment of long-standing family traditions while still staying on track with your dosing schedule.
Popular online dictionary platform Dictionary.com has officially announced its annual word of the year, and they’ve made a very mindful choice.
Their 2024 Word of the Year is the viral sensation “demure,” which took off on TikTok in August of this year. It was popularized by TikToker Jools Lebron, whose phrase “very demure, very mindful” was featured in a series of viral videos and replicated by other creators. Lebron would also often pair the word with “cutesy” and “considerate,” providing advice to her followers for situations like “how to be demure and modest and respectful at the workplace.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Between January and September of this year, Dictionary.com says that Demure saw a 1200% increase in usage in digital web media and had 200 times more searches on Dictionary.com.
Dictionary.com defines the word demure as “characterized by shyness and modesty; reserved,” but the word took on new life through its internet fame—and soon anything from driving to work to eating a donut could be demure. Further, the word grew to represent how a term often associated with submissiveness and reservation can be empowering, and help people express a “quiet confidence,” Dictionary.com said in its announcement.
Read More: See How We’re Explaining This Trend? Very Demure, Very Mindful
As a transgender woman, Lebron also utilized the fame from these “demure” videos to finance the rest of her transition and gender affirming care, she told her followers in a video. Beyond Lebron, many of the creators who participated in the trend were other trans women, reminding their followers exactly how to act “mindful” and “demure.”
Along with its top choice, Dictionary.com also announced their Word of the Year shortlist, which included Brainrot, Brat, Extreme Weather, Midwest Nice, and Weird.
Dictionary.com also noted how their choice of “demure” represents a shift in public life, as our collective vocabulary moves away from emphasizing the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and toward a greater concern with “personal presentation and appearance as in-person experiences become the norm again.”
Last year, the platform chose “hallucinate” as its word of the year, specifically in the context of artificial intelligence. This year, though, their top choices lean more toward words of high internet popularity.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Planet Earth is parting company with an asteroid that’s been tagging along as a “mini moon” for the past two months.
The harmless space rock will peel away on Monday, overcome by the stronger tug of the sun’s gravity. But it will zip closer for a quick visit in January.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]NASA will use a radar antenna to observe the 33-foot (10-meter) asteroid then. That should deepen scientists’ understanding of the object known as 2024 PT5, quite possibly a boulder that was blasted off the moon by an impacting, crater-forming asteroid.
While not technically a moon—NASA stresses it was never captured by Earth’s gravity and fully in orbit—it’s “an interesting object” worthy of study.
The astrophysicist brothers who identified the asteroid’s “mini moon behavior,” Raul and Carlos de la Fuente Marcos of Complutense University of Madrid, have collaborated with telescopes in the Canary Islands for hundreds of observations so far.
Currently more than 2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) away, the object is too small and faint to see without a powerful telescope. It will pass as close as 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) of Earth in January, maintaining a safe distance before it zooms farther into the solar system while orbiting the sun, not to return until 2055. That’s almost five times farther than the moon.
First spotted in August, the asteroid began its semi jog around Earth in late September, after coming under the grips of Earth’s gravity and following a horseshoe-shaped path. By the time it returns next year, it will be moving too fast—more than double its speed from September—to hang around, said Raul de la Fuente Marcos.
NASA will track the asteroid for more than a week in January using the Goldstone solar system radar antenna in California’s Mojave Desert, part of the Deep Space Network.
Current data suggest that during its 2055 visit, the sun-circling asteroid will once again make a temporary and partial lap around Earth.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Israeli airstrikes Saturday killed at least 11 people and injured dozens in central Beirut, officials said, as diplomats scrambled to broker a cease-fire.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency responders dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, it said, adding that 63 people were wounded. The strikes were the fourth in the Lebanese capital in less than a week.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The escalation comes after U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein traveled to the region this week in an attempt to broker a cease-fire deal to end the more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, which has erupted into full-on war in the past two months.
Israeli bombardment has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population. On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by rockets, drones and missiles in northern Israel and in fighting in Lebanon.
Israel’s war with Hamas also shows no signs of abating. Gaza’s health ministry said at least 80 people were killed between Thursday and Friday in multiple strikes in the enclave’s north, including the Kamal Adwan and Al-Ahli hospitals. Dozens of people are still trapped under the rubble, it said.
The strikes at 4 a.m. destroyed an eight-story building in central Beirut and left a crater in the ground. Also on Saturday, a drone strike killed two people and injured three in the southern port city of Tyre, according to the state-run National News Agency.
Hezbollah legislator Amin Shiri said Saturday that the building targeted was a residential one and no Hezbollah officials were inside.
Mohammed Bikai, spokesperson for the Fatah Palestinian faction in the Tyre area, said those killed were Palestinian refugees who were fisherman living in the nearby al-Rashidieh camp. He said the father of one of the men was also wounded.
Despite a warning last month by Israel’s army telling people not to fish along Lebanon’s southern coast, Bikai said the Palestinians continued to go out to sea. “You can’t tell someone who needs to eat that you can’t fish,” he said.
Israel’s military did not issue a warning for residents prior to the strikes in central Beirut and did not comment on the casualties. It warned residents Saturday in parts of Beirut’s southern suburbs that they were residing near Hezbollah facilities, which the army would target in the near future. The warning, posted on X, told people to evacuate at least 500 meters (yards) away.
The army said that over the past day it had conducted intelligence-based strikes on Hezbollah targets in Dahiyeh, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence. It said it hit several command centers and weapons storage facilities.
Strikes also continued in Gaza on Saturday. At least six people, half of them children and including two women, were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to AP reporters and staff at Nasser Hospital.
The death toll from the 13-month-long war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas surpassed 44,000 this week, according to local health officials. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count, but it has said that more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead. Most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused heavy destruction across wide areas of the coastal territory, leading many to wonder when or how it will ever be rebuilt. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands are living in squalid tent camps with little food, water or basic services.
In Deir al-Balah, local bakeries shut down for five days this week and the price of a bag of bread climbed above $13, as bread and flour vanished from shelves before more supplies arrived.
At least two women were fatally shot on Saturday while waiting in a line for bread in the city, relatives and witnesses told the AP.
Heba Ajam, who was waiting at the bakery and saw the shooting, said one was shot in the head and another in the neck. It was unclear who shot them and why. The lack of food and security have forced some bakeries to close in central and southern Gaza.
The strikes in Gaza come days after a decision by the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, based on “reasonable grounds” that they bear responsibility for a war crime and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The court also issued a warrant for top Hamas official Mohammed Deif, who Israel claims it killed.
Netanyahu condemned the warrant, saying Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.”
Global reactions have been mixed.
The U.K. reiterated its support for the court but stopped short of saying whether it would arrest Netanyahu if he visited. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office has indicated that Britain would comply with its legal obligations under domestic and international law, but refused to get into hypothetical issues about individuals.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Friday refused to comment, saying that the court’s rulings are “insignificant” for Russia, which doesn’t recognizes its jurisdiction.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the United States fundamentally rejects the court’s decision. She said the Biden administration was “deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision.”
The U.S. is one of dozens of countries that did not sign and do not accept the court’s jurisdiction. Others include Israel, Russia and China.
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an associate fellow in the International Security Program at London’s Chatham House think tank, said that even if Netanyahu won’t be able to travel to many European countries, he’ll go to the United States. That will push him closer to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I don’t think Netanyahu will be arrested because he’s not going to take the risk of traveling to any country that will be able to issue an arrest warrant. So in that sense, it limits his freedom of movement, but that will only strengthen his ties to Donald Trump,” she said.
——
Associated Press writers Fadi Tawil in Tyre, Lebanon, Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Mohammad Jahjouh in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.
The announcement that President-elect Donald Trump’s long-anticipated pick for Treasury Secretary will be hedge fund manager Scott Bessent is being received well by business leaders and markets, who are reassured that Bessent finally emerged on top after a selection process and jockeying by top candidates.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Indeed, I heard from several CEOs who had been on edge over the last couple of weeks as Trump’s search for Treasury Secretary remained unfinished, raising different sets of concerns about other contenders. By far, Bessent, a global macro investor, was the only contender who CEOs viewed as qualified and competent and able to work constructively with Trump. As I told The Washington Post, “Bessent has the backing of everybody on Wall Street.”
Bessent has spent much of his career avoiding the spotlight. Still, he has a reputation as an experienced investor and savvy businessman and entrepreneur with decades of expertise navigating macro markets. The list of Bessent’s supporters, mentors and business partners reads as a who’s who of Wall Street across institutions and political parties.
After getting his start on Wall Street as an intern to a legendary investor, Jim Rogers, Bessent worked at Brown Brothers Harriman before joining up with Jim Chanos, the short seller who correctly predicted the downfall of Enron, Wirecard, and other corporate disasters. Bessent then became a partner to George Soros at Soros Fund Management, where alongside Stanley Druckenmiller, he was a driving force behind perhaps Soros’ most famous trade, his 1992 shorting of the British pound which won Soros, Bessent and their team over $1 billion in profits.
Roughly half of $ 4 billion capital behind Bessent’s own firm, Key Square, came from Soros investment. If confirmed by the Senate, Bessent would be the first openly-gay Treasury Secretary in U.S. history. He is a graduate of Yale and a generous supporter of the university.
The business community expects Bessent to reach out and work closely with business leaders, as well as policymakers from both sides of the aisle, to create economic growth and usher in the “golden age” of American economic opportunity Trump touts. Unlike some of Trump’s other cabinet selections, Bessent is regarded as a problem solver whose support bridges ideological and sector divides. Bessent is a longtime Republican and a loyal supporter of Trump, but he has also given generously to Democratic presidential candidates, including Al Gore and Barack Obama. He was supported in his bid for Treasury Secretary by individuals as different as former Trump National Economic Council and Fox Business channel anchor Larry Kudlow, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Evercore Senior Chairman Roger Altman, and Hayman Capital Founder Kyle Bass.
Bessent’s approach should help when it comes to key issues, such as tariffs, where business leaders are most apprehensive about Trump’s economic policy. While Bessent has expressed strong support for tariffs, so too have many CEOs—as long as tariffs are targeted, selective and carefully executed. Bessent discounts the inflationary effect that worries most economists about tariffs and the likelihood of punishing retaliatory moves from trading partners creating barriers for US exports many CEOs fear as he believes Trump’s plan is just to threaten these measures as negotiation tools.
Sure, Bessent will have his work cut out for him in striking a balance between driving American economic growth and satisfying Trump’s tariff whims, but the business community is eager to engage as partners in charting a constructive path forward. Trump’s Trump’s selection of Bessent increases the chances of that happening.
Bessent’s nomination shows he was able to hold his ground against powerful opponents in the Trump camp. Economists and business leaders will have differences his decisions but will respect his decision-making style. Bessent’s track record of engagement provides a genuine reason for optimism for the American economy’s growth.
NEW YORK — Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, was chosen by Donald Trump to serve as U.S. attorney general hours after his first choice, Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration after a federal sex trafficking investigation and ethics probe made his ability to be confirmed dubious.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The 59-year-old has long been in Trump’s orbit and her name had been floated during his first term as a potential candidate for the nation’s highest law enforcement role. Trump announced his plans to nominate Bondi Thursday in a social media post.
If confirmed by the Republican-led Senate, Bondi would instantly become one of the most closely watched members of Trump’s Cabinet given the Republican’s threat to pursue retribution against perceived adversaries and concern among Democrats that he will look to bend the Justice Department to his will.
Here’s a few things to know about Bondi:
Bondi has been a longtime and early ally. In March 2016, on the eve of the Republican primary in Florida, Bondi endorsed Trump at a rally, picking him over the candidate from her own state, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
She gained national attention with appearances on Fox News as a defender of Trump and had a notable speaking spot at 2016 Republican National Convention as Trump became the party’s surprising nominee. During the remarks, some in the crowd began chanting “Lock her up” about Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Bondi responded by saying, “‘Lock her up,’ I love that.”
As Trump prepared to move into the White House, she served on his first transition team.
When Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was ousted in 2018, Bondi’s name was floated as a possible candidate for the job. Trump at the time said he would “love” Bondi to join the administration. He ultimately selected William Barr instead.
She kept a toehold in Trump’s orbit thereafter, including after he left office. She served as a chairwoman of America First Policy Institute, a think tank set up by former Trump administration staffers to lay the groundwork if he won a second term.
Bondi made history in 2010 when she was elected as Florida’s first female attorney general. Though the Tampa native spent more than 18 years as a prosecutor in the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office, she was a political unknown when she held the state’s top law enforcement job.
Bondi was elevated in the primary after she was endorsed by former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
She campaigned on a message to use the state’s top legal office in a robust way, challenging then-President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. She also called for her state to adopt Arizona’s “show me your papers” immigration law that sparked national debate.
As Florida’s top prosecutor, Bondi stressed human trafficking issues and urged tightening state laws against traffickers. She held the job from 2011 to 2019.
Bondi worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, the powerful Florida-based firm where Trump’s campaign chief and incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was a partner. Her U.S. clients have included General Motors, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group.
She also lobbied for a Kuwaiti firm, according to Justice Department foreign agent filings and congressional lobbying documents. She registered as a foreign agent for the government of Qatar; her work was related to anti-human-trafficking efforts leading up to the World Cup, held in 2022.
Bondi also represented the KGL Investment Company KSCC, a Kuwaiti firm also known as KGLI, lobbying the White House, National Security Council, State Department and Congress on immigration policy, human rights and economic sanctions issues.
Bondi stepped away from lobbying to serve on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020.
He was accused — but not convicted — of abuse of power for allegedly pressuring the president of Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals while crucial U.S. security aid was being withheld. He was also charged with obstruction of Congress for stonewalling investigative efforts.
Trump wanted Ukraine’s president to publicly commit to investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. He pushed for the investigation while holding up nearly $400 million in military aid.
Bondi was brought on to bolster the White House’s messaging and communications. Trump and his allies sought to delegitimize the impeachment from the start, aiming to brush off the whole thing as a farce.
Bondi has been a vocal critic of the criminal cases against Trump as well as Jack Smith, the special counsel who charged Trump in two federal cases. In one radio appearance, she blasted Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”
It’s unlikely that Bondi would be confirmed in time to overlap with Smith, who brought two federal indictments against Trump that are both expected to wind down before the incoming president takes office. Special counsels are expected to produce reports on their work that historically are made public, but it remains unclear when such a document might be released.
Bondi was also among a group of Republicans who showed up to support Trump at his hush money criminal trial in New York that ended in May with a conviction on 34 felony counts.
As president, Trump demanded investigations into political opponents like Hillary Clinton and sought to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to advance his own interests, including in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Bondi appears likely to oblige him.
She would inherit a Justice Department expected to pivot sharply on civil rights, corporate enforcement and the prosecutions of hundreds of Trump supporters charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol — defendants whom Trump has pledged to pardon.
Bondi issued a public apology in 2013 while serving as attorney general after she sought to delay the execution of a convicted killer because it conflicted with a fundraiser for her reelection campaign.
The attorney general, representing the state in death row appeals, typically remains available on the date of execution cases in case of any last-minute legal issues.
Bondi later said she was wrong and sorry for requesting then-Gov. Rick Scott push back the execution of Marshall Lee Gore by three weeks.
Bondi personally solicited a 2013 political contribution from Trump as her office was weighing whether to join New York in suing over fraud allegations involving Trump University.
Trump cut a $25,000 check to a political committee supporting Bondi from his family’s charitable foundation, in violation of legal prohibitions against charities supporting partisan political activities. After the check came in, Bondi’s office nixed suing Trump’s company for fraud, citing insufficient grounds to proceed. Both Trump and Bondi denied wrongdoing.
Two days before being sworn in as president in January 2017, Trump paid $25 million to settle three lawsuits alleging Trump University defrauded its students.
Trump also paid a $2,500 fine to the IRS over the illegal political donation to support Bondi from the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which he was forced to dissolve amid an investigation by the state of New York.
A Florida prosecutor assigned by then-GOP Gov. Rick Scott later determined there was insufficient evidence to support bribery charges against Trump and Bondi over the $25,000 donation.
___
Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker contributed to this report.
Over Thanksgiving of 2002, an NBC Dateline producer named Dan Slepian paid a visit to Greenhaven Correctional Facility, a couple hours north of New York City, to see David Lemus. That year, while planning a series in which he followed New York detectives solving murders, Slepian had learned of Lemus’ wrongful conviction. “I knew nothing about false imprisonment, wrongful convictions, innocence. I was a middle class kid growing up in Westchester who thought the criminal legal system worked just the way it should,” he says. “That was my baptism into this world.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But although he was there to see Lemus—who would be exonerated five years later thanks to Slepian’s work—another man’s story entered Slepian’s field of vision that day and never left it. Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez, who happened to share a cell wall with Lemus, was receiving visitors that day, too—his mother Maria and two sons, John Junior and Jacob, then 8 and 5, respectively. Velazquez knew Lemus’ case had gained traction by way of Slepian’s efforts—this was Slepian’s tenth or so visit—so his mother approached the producer to support her son’s “mission to be heard.” Walking up to Slepian, she shared that her son was innocent. “I just felt like this panging in my chest,” Slepian says of their encounter. “This father could be the Son of Sam and I didn’t care, because these little boys should not be in prison on Thanksgiving morning.”
And so it was that, days later, Velazquez found himself allotting one of his five free weekly letters to Slepian, rather than to one of the many legal firms to which he normally addressed them. “I was pouring my soul out to anybody who would listen at the time,” he says. His missives typically included a synopsis of his case with a cover letter detailing that in 1998, he had been sentenced to 25 years to life for a crime he didn’t commit.
This correspondence with Slepian set a precedent for how investigative journalism and media would eventually play a crucial role in Velazquez’s exoneration. Over the next two decades, Velazquez, with the help of Slepian, tapped into as many channels as possible to share his story and ultimately, this past September, realize his freedom. The result is a roster of thoughtful, revealing stories that question the efficacy of the United States’ criminal legal system, from A24’s Sing Sing to a Pulitzer Prize-nominated podcast, Letters from Sing Sing, to director Dawn Porter’s four-part documentary series The Sing Sing Chronicles, which premiered at DOC NYC on Nov. 16 and airs on MSNBC on Nov. 23 and 24.
Read more: The Critical Need to Teach the History of Mass Incarceration
After 22 years, nearly 250 visits from Slepian, and tens of thousands of case documents, Velazquez’s innocence has finally been recognized by the Manhattan courts. On the last Monday of September in New York, the Bronx native wore a black, New Era-branded cap that read “END OF AN ERROR” while addressing a crowd of legal colleagues, fellow advocates, formerly incarcerated peers, and loved ones, including Slepian (whom he now considers “like blood”). “Right now is an emotional moment, and I don’t want to mince words,” he started, “because the judge didn’t allow us to speak in the courtroom.”
Velazquez, 48, later explained that even on a day that was “supposed to be the happiest moment of my life,” the system found a way to impose control. According to Velazquez, at the last minute, the judge changed his hearing from 9:30 to 9:15 AM, preventing more people from attending on time. That morning, the judge had also let attorneys know he expected no one to share sentiments after he addressed the room asking if anyone had objections or something to add. “The way the hearing was conducted was really disturbing,” Velazquez says. “We’re talking about 27 years of damage starting with me, then trickling down to my family and the community [who] has been waiting for this day of justice. To close [the hearing] in four minutes—how do you do that? And without an apology?” When Velazquez left the courtroom to breakouts of applause, he recalls that the judge eventually said, “All right with the celebrations.” “But this is not a celebration,” Velazquez reflected in an interview three days after the hearing. “This is an indictment of the system, because even in its closing, it was not dealt with appropriately.”
As soon as Velazquez surrounded himself with those there to embrace him, he says, “it was like I could breathe again.” He adds: “It was a monumental moment not just for me, but for the hundreds of thousands of people just like me that are watching the TV, finding hope when they see the next exoneree.” He and an estimated 100 guests wrapped the day on the entire second floor of the Pier 17 Jean-Georges restaurant, The Fulton, which overlooks the Brooklyn Bridge. Three days after the hearing and this gathering, Velazquez still had 231 missed calls, 482 unread text messages, and upwards of 30,000 unopened emails combined from community members expressing their support.
In the two-plus decades Velazquez endured the violent reality of incarceration, he has worn many hats. He is a jailhouse lawyer who taught himself the ins and outs of the criminal legal system in order to effectively collaborate with Slepian through the many unlawful discoveries of his case—from erroneous lineup methods like “suspect shopping” that increase the likelihood of misidentification and wrongful convictions to a detective who changed Velazquez’s race in the database from “Hispanic” to “Black Hispanic” to match eyewitness descriptions. He is a freedom fighter, what Slepian refers to as a “one-man innocence project,” who also introduced Slepian to three more men who were eventually exonerated. And, perhaps the deepest thread in all of his work as a community organizer, he is a leader who seeks to shift society’s narrative around those impacted by incarceration.
Read more: The U.S. Prison System Doesn’t Value True Justice
The most recent demonstration of this work is Velazquez’s role in A24’s Sing Sing, the film starring Colman Domingo that follows a group of actors in a theater troupe as they put on an original production inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility. The film, released in July and proving to have significant staying power, is based on an existing program, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA). Thirteen of its alumni are prominent cast members who play versions of themselves, including Velazquez. In fact, it was only 10 months after his release from the actual Sing Sing, to which he was eventually transferred from Greenhaven, that he stepped onto set at a decommissioned prison in Fishkill, NY, to film. At that point, Velazquez had been granted executive clemency by Governor Andrew Cuomo but more roadwork remained before him to be exonerated. “As hard as I fought to get out, I had to wrestle with myself to throw myself right back into that mindset,” Velazquez says. “But [Sing Sing] gave us the opportunity to take this negative stereotype and try to humanize it in a way that people can accept. So nothing could stop me from putting those greens on.”
Sing Sing’s director Greg Kwedar immediately recognized Velazquez as a “natural, values-driven leader that has presence” when he sets foot in a room. “It was one of the [auditions] where, as soon as the Zoom was off, we were like, OK, he’s going on the board,’” Kwedar says. In fact, it was that “quiet confidence” that encouraged Kwedar and the rest of the production team to cast Velazquez as part of the theater troupe’s steering committee, the group of men inside who selected new members, chose RTA’s plays, and even finalized the cast. Throughout their time filming, Kwedar says he got to know a man who was “a student in the literal sense, but also a student of people and of systems, engaging with the world with both eyes fully open. He has very clear principles and stands behind them, and that’s quite comforting to be around.”
It’s these principles that feel almost contagious when you meet Velazquez. When discussing Sing Sing and his time in prison, he somehow remains hopeful—despite years of being forced to spend hours in a 6 ft. by 9 ft. cell, every moment prescribed by people who referred to him as a number. Velazquez is focused on “promoting [Sing Sing] as a tool for humanity,” intent on continuing the conversation around the harms of mass incarceration and the power of healing. “I want the world to realize that this film is speaking a universal truth of human dignity,” he says. “A lot of the cast members on the film lost a huge portion of their lives, and it takes a huge loss to recognize what the real gifts in humanity are—love, redemption, relationships. If those of us doing decades in prison can come to a place where we live our lives with appreciation and gratitude, then everybody can learn to be grateful for each moment and each breath.”
His current priority is building out an impact campaign for the film alongside fellow RTA alumni and Sing Sing actors Dario Peña and John “Divine G” Whitfield; the latter is the real-life inspiration for the film’s protagonist, played by Colman Domingo. With A24 behind them, Velazquez and team hope to bring the film to more prisons across the country while simultaneously building out similar programming to what RTA provides. “We’re saying, OK, we’re ready to give you guys the blueprint on how to create this, how to structure it, and how to continuously follow up [with us] so that [your programming] becomes a sufficient process of healing.” Because, while garnering Oscar buzz and receiving praise from the likes of Regina King and Sebastian Stan are affirming responses to the film, Velazquez is focused on reaching more people who can see themselves reflected in Sing Sing’s cast. “It’s hard for guys who have been through [incarceration] to express themselves to society,” he shares. “This movie depicts sincerity and softens the opportunity for somebody else who may not be in the film to have that conversation.” For Velazquez, while it’s great if the movie can reach as many viewers as possible in general, the film was ultimately “made for people that are incarcerated.”
Over the course of his work, Velazquez has also become a bridge between those most proximate to the criminal legal system and those for whom incarceration is merely a plot point in entertainment, or a sensational headline in the news. His friendship with Slepian has resulted in a myriad of media stories, including but not limited to a 2012 NBC special proving his innocence, Porter’s The Sing Sing Chronicles, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated podcast, and Slepian’s new book The Sing Sing Files. Velazquez has thoughtfully leveraged these various media channels as tools for his freedom in collaboration with trusted partners who have invested in his story—rather than commodified it. With each of these storytelling opportunities, Velazquez seeks to “create pathways for communities to see the humanity in others who may not necessarily even be innocent, but who are just as deserving of opportunities.” Slepian shares that it is Velazquez who “opened the door for me to the irrationality, pathology, and perversity of mass incarceration as a whole.”
Velazquez’s work, most of which he laid the foundation for while incarcerated in Sing Sing Correctional Facility, is an uphill battle in a sociopolitical landscape that still uses dehumanizing labels like “inmate” “felon” or “convict.” That has only exonerated 3,591 people since 1989 in the United States, even when experts have confirmed a 5% error rate in convictions and estimate the number is in fact much higher. That, in September alone, saw five people executed by their states. With 2 million people incarcerated in this country, the growing network of advocates committed to decarceration have a lot of work ahead. That explains why Velazquez juggles many projects, including serving as Program Director at The Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, Board member of A Second U Foundation, and Founding member of Voices from Within. He founded the latter with fellow incarcerated peers inside Sing Sing (and Slepian) based on the belief that “guys inside are the ambassadors that can help change the world.”
Read more: The Death Penalty Fails America
When asked about what he envisions when it comes to alternatives to our current systems, Velazquez underscores collective efficacy: the idea that mitigating harm and reducing crime comes from community members taking care of each other and their environment. This model is in direct opposition to the 1980s Broken Windows Theory, which posits that visible disorder (e.g. broken windows, graffiti, abandoned buildings) in a neighborhood is an indicator of more violent crime to come. (Not only did this theory lead to over-policing of Black, brown, and low-income neighborhoods, but it has since been debunked). “When we drive through neighborhoods and see these broken windows and vandalism and litter, it’s because the community is speaking and saying, ‘We don’t feel like we belong here, so we don’t care to tend to this place,’” Velazquez shares. “Our response is to make community members feel like this is their neighborhood, bringing them together and building respect through, say, painting the community center—not shunning them and putting Scarlet letters on them.”
Velazquez has long lived out collective efficacy alongside his incarcerated peers in an effort to “redefine what it means to pay a debt to society”; and this type of imagination for a different future is particularly evident in Sing Sing, where archaic tropes about incarcerated people à la handcuffs and belly chains are replaced with moments of tenderness, humor, passion, and love. In Kwedar’s words, “If you can imagine a theater program in prison, you can imagine many other things being different too, right? Maybe that prison not even existing anymore.”
Velazquez’s story is defined by the impact he has had on his community, but also by unfathomable loss. For one: those young boys Slepian met in the prison lobby all those years ago? They’re now 27 and 30, having missed an entire childhood with their father. And while Velazquez’s exoneration on Sept. 30 is a major milestone, it took a diverse media platform and resources beyond the capabilities of one person inside a prison to get here.
“It’s a problem when people inside are trying to reach the television producer,” says Slepian as he reflects on how many individuals have reached out to him to support their innocence. “And if it takes a guy like JJ, whose IQ is about 590, whose emotional intelligence is off the charts, who is a kind, smart, loving soul, who had never been convicted before, who is clearly innocent, who has an hour-long television documentary proving his innocence, nominated for three awards, who has celebrities like Martin Sheen and Alfre Woodard visiting him, a Pulitzer finalist podcast about his case, and a meeting with President Biden in which he apologized to JJ— if it takes all that and more to to be exonerated? God help everybody else.”
It won’t be easy, but this is why Velazquez will keep working toward the freedom and healing of his community. “I have the ability to utilize my platform to help other innocent people and guilty people who deserve to be free. I’m going to leverage it in every way I can—in the media, in front of the Senate, whoever and however,” he says. “The biggest message I want to get out to the world is how easy it is to imprison the poor and how hard it is to free the innocent.”
It’s a drag to feel you’re being held hostage by someone else’s nostalgia. The stage show Wicked is beloved by many; it’s been playing on Broadway for 20 years and counting, which means a lot of little girls, and others, have happily fallen under the poppy-induced spell of Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz’s musical about the complex origins of the not-really-so-bad Wicked Witch of the West. Legions of kids and grownups have hummed and toe-tapped along with numbers like “Popular” and “Defying Gravity,” one a twinkly sendup of what it takes to be the most-liked girl at school, the other a peppy empowerment ballad about charting your own course in life. The film adaptation of Wicked—directed by John M. Chu and starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande—will increase the material’s reach, giving many more people the chance to fall in love with it. Or not.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It’s the “or nots” who are likely to be the minority. But if you fail to feel the transformative magic of Chu’s Wicked, there are some good reasons: The movie is so aggressively colorful, so manic in its insistence that it’s OK to be different, that it practically mows you down. And this is only part one of the saga—the second installment arrives in November 2025. Wicked pulls off a distinctive but dismal magic trick: it turns other people’s cherished Broadway memories into a protracted form of punishment for the rest of us.
Read more: Breaking Down Wicked’s Iconic Songs With Composer Stephen Schwartz
Wicked the movie is cobbled together from many complex moving parts, and some of them work better than others. Grande plays Glinda, the good witch of Oz—but is she really all that good? The backstory that will consume all two hours and 41 minutes of this movie—roughly the same amount of time as the stage musical, though again, this is only the first half—proves the almost-opposite. This is really the story of Elphaba, played by Erivo, who is, at the movie’s onset, a reticent young woman with dazzling supernatural powers. The problem is that she has green skin, which makes her a target for mockery and derision, an outcast. Elphaba is a reimagining of the character first brought to life by L. Frank Baum in his extraordinary and wonderfully weird turn-of-the-century Oz books, and later portrayed in the revered 1939 Wizard of Oz by Margaret Hamilton. Wicked—whose source material, roughly speaking, is Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West—is built around the idea that Elphaba wasn’t born bad, but was merely forced into making decisions that set her on a path different from that of the insufferable goody-two-shoes Glinda, her enemy turned frenemy turned friend. The story’s subtext—or, rather, its glaring bold type—is that we’re all shaped by our choices, which are at least partly determined by our response to how others treat us.
But you’ve probably come to Wicked not for its leaden life lessons, but for the songs, for the lavish, showy sets, for the chance to watch two formidable performers parry and spar. Grande brings a not-unpleasant powder-room perkiness to the role of Glinda: as the movie opens, she’s entering Oz’s Shiz University, an institution whose radically uncool name will forever tarnish, sadly, the classic and vaguely scatological phrase “It’s the shizz.” Shiz is the place where kids come to learn magic spells and stuff; Glinda arrives with a million pink suitcases, thinking she’s going to be the star pupil.
Not so fast: Elphaba has also arrived at the school, but not as a student. She’s just there to drop off her younger sister, Nessa Rose (Marissa Bode). Their father, Governor Thropp (Andy Nyman), has hated Elphaba since the day she was born— remember, she’s green and thus different—while doting on Nessa Rose who is, admittedly, so kind and lovely that it’s impossible not to love her. Elphaba, in fact, adores her. And the fact that she uses a wheelchair makes their father all the more overprotective of her. But as Elphaba goes about the business of getting her younger sister settled at Shiz, her fantastical powers—they flow from her like electricity, especially when she’s angry or frustrated—catch the attention of the school’s superstar professor, the chilly, elegant Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh). Morrible enrolls Elphaba in Shiz University immediately, making her the unwelcome roommate of Glinda (who is at this point named Galinda, for reasons the movie will explain if you’re curious, or even if you’re not).
Glinda has no use for Elphaba, and goes overboard in making her Shiz experience unbearable. She relegates her roommate to a small, dark corner of their shared quarters and literally crowds her out with mountains of frippery and furbelows, mostly in vibrant shades of pink. In a pivotal scene, she tries to humiliate Elphaba at a school dance and then inexplicably softens; the two become almost-friends. But there’s always an undercurrent of competitiveness there—Glinda isn’t half as gifted as Elphaba is, and she’s the opposite of down-to-earth. Grande has some fun with Glinda’s sugary, over-the-top manipulations: she has the fluttery eyelids of a blinking doll and the twirly elegance of a music-box ballerina. But her shtick becomes wearisome. There’s so much winking, twinkling, and nudging in Wicked that I emerged from it feeling grateful—if only momentarily—for the stark ugliness of reality.
There are so many characters, so many plot points, so many metaphors in Wicked—they’re like a traffic pileup of flying monkeys. Jonathan Bailey plays a rich, handsome prince who, upon his heralded arrival at the school, instinctively likes Elphaba but ends up going steady with Glinda, who practically hypnotizes him into compliance. Jeff Goldblum plays the Wizard of Oz, a lanky charmer who might be a jerk at best and a puppet of fascists at worst. Peter Dinklage provides the voice of a beleaguered professor-goat at the school, Dr. Dillamond. Oz is a community where animals can talk; they’re as intelligent as humans, or more so, and they mingle freely in society. But someone in Oz is seeking to stop all that, launching a campaign to silence all animals, and Dr. Dillamond becomes their unfortunate victim.
Meanwhile, the big message of Wicked—No one is all good or all bad—blinks so assaultively that you’re not sure what any of it means. Metaphorical truisms ping around willy-nilly: It’s OK, even good, to be different! Those who know best will always be the first to be silenced! The popular girl doesn’t always win! It’s tempting to interpret Wicked as a wise civics lesson, a fable for our times, but its ideas are so slippery, so readily adaptable to even the most blinkered political views, that they have no real value. Meanwhile, there are as many song and dance numbers as you could wish for, and possibly more. Chu—also the director of Crazy Rich Asians and In the Heights, both movies more entertaining than this one—stages them lavishly, to the point where your ears and eyeballs wish he would stop.
And yet—there’s Erivo. She’s the one force in Wicked that didn’t make me feel ground down to a nub. As Elphaba, she channels something like real pain rather than just showtune self-pity. You feel for her in her greenness, in her persistent state of being an outsider, in her frustration at being underestimated and unloved. Erivo nearly rises above the material, and not just on a broomstick. But not even she is strong enough to counteract the cyclone of Entertainment with a capital E swirling around her. For a movie whose chief anthem is an advertisement for the joys of defying gravity, Wicked is surprisingly leaden, with a promise of more of the same to come. The shizz it’s not.
The annual United Nations climate change summits are always a little crazy: tens of thousands of delegates from every corner of the globe descending on a far-flung city for two weeks of heated discussions on the future of global climate policy.
This time around the conference—known this year as COP29—is nothing short of surreal. In the area where countries set up pavilions, you can take a five-minute walk from the luxurious Russian pavilion where delegates sip tea on sofas amid human-size Russian dolls to the Ukrainian pavilion decorated with a solar panel destroyed by Russian armaments. At most COPs, attendees keep their eyes peeled for notable heads of state or even celebrities; in Baku, delegates are on the lookout for members of the Taliban. Midway through the first week of the conference, the Argentinian delegation returned home at the direction of the country’s right-wing president; the French environment minister decided to skip the whole thing because of a dispute with the host country. And the entire event began with a description of fossil fuels as “a gift from God” from Azerbaijan’s president.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But nothing has made the conference more surreal than its timing. Opening just days after the U.S. election, the topic of President-elect Donald Trump serves as context for every conversation. The U.S. has for decades played a pivotal role in shaping the talks, brokering key agreements and, most recently, helping convince everyone that the world’s largest economy is decarbonizing. In the opening hours of the conference, John Podesta, President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, offered a blunt assessment that felt almost like an apology. “It’s clear that the next administration will try to take a U-turn and erase much of this progress,” he said. “Of course, I’m keenly aware of the disappointment that the United States has at times caused.” (He went on to make the case that the U.S. would continue climate efforts at the city and state level).
As the talks, which this year are focused on how to finance the climate transition, continue in their second week, it’s impossible to know where they will land. The organizers could eke out a brokered agreement, as often happens, or they could collapse under the strain of geopolitical pressure. Longtime COP attendees have said that these talks have at times felt closer to a breakdown than any in recent memory.
In a way, this climate moment is very dangerous. We already feel the effects of climate-linked extreme weather today, which is costing lives in communities across the globe. Clearly, a stagnation in multilateral efforts to address that issue doesn’t help. But there are also reasons for reassurance here in Baku. Decarbonization has moved from a theoretical question, delineated in bold but toothless commitments, to a phenomenon occurring in the economy—from the small enterprises adapting to sustainability requirements to multi-billion investments from some of the world’s most influential firms.
Indeed, the questions here in Baku are less about whether the international climate push will go on but about how.
One of the first things that struck me upon stepping out of the airport in Baku is how much the vehicles on the street have changed since I was last here seven years ago. At the time, white Soviet-era Ladas seemed to dominate the roads. This time around, the old-school cars were few and far between. Instead, I noticed the prevalence of Chinese electric vehicles. Nearly every time I called a car, an EV showed up.
Baku’s EVs offered a small reminder, from the outset, that the energy transition is already rapidly changing the world—and not just in major economies. In 2016, when Trump was first elected, delegates gathered at that year’s U.N. climate conference wondered if the Paris Agreement—and the decarbonization push it was meant to catalyze—could survive. That’s not a question in 2024.
To some degree, the confidence comes in part from evidence from Trump’s first term. Many businesses actually accelerated their commitment to climate action in spite of Trump. And cities and states said they would step up their decarbonization policymaking. In Baku, some of those same groups have offered similar commitments. Washington Governor Jay Inslee, citing state actions, put it to me bluntly: “Donald Trump is going to be a speed bump on the march to a clean energy economy.”
But perhaps more important is the massive investment that has begun over the course of the last eight years. Baku’s EVs are just one example. Across the globe, many of the world’s largest companies have spent billions to facilitate the buildout of clean technology infrastructure. Those investments are simply too costly to undo and the momentum too strong to stop. “No one country can stop progress,” says Catherine McKenna, a former Canadian environment minister. “I said that last time [Trump was elected], but it’s even more true because now it’s in the real economy.”
But the bigger question for delegates is how the ongoing transition—not to mention the effects of extreme weather—will play out around the world. Which countries will win and lose? How will the most vulnerable fare? And will the transition happen fast enough—especially in developing countries—to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change?
Indeed, these issues have led to brawls at COP29 over everything from how climate rules play out in trade relationships to how much different countries should pay to help their counterparts to the role of oil and gas in the transition. With tensions high, in the middle of the first week of this year some of the most prominent voices in the international climate world—including former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres and climate scientist Johan Rockström—dropped an open letter calling for a wholesale reform of the process. Host countries should face tougher selection criteria to ensure that they’re committed to phasing out fossil fuels, and the process should be streamlined to allow faster decision making.
The post-election timing was unstated in the letter, but it wasn’t coincidental. Regardless of whether Trump follows through on his promise for the U.S. to leave the Paris Agreement for a second time, the climate world will be left with a giant vacuum. Many negotiators are quick to say that the U.S. international climate posture never amounted to real climate leadership. Even under supportive presidents like Biden and former President Barack Obama, the U.S. shaped agreements with American politics in mind, even if it weakened the deals, and struggled to deliver the climate aid that others demanded. Even so, for many, the U.S. will be missed when it’s gone.