Michigan’s Top Court Won’t Revive Flint Water Charges Against Seven Key Figures

DETROIT — The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a last-chance effort to revive criminal charges against seven people in the Flint water scandal, waving away an appeal by prosecutors who have desperately tried to get around a 2022 decision that gutted the cases.

The attorney general’s office used an uncommon tool — a one-judge grand jury — to hear evidence and return indictments against nine people, including former Gov. Rick Snyder. But the Supreme Court last year said the process was unconstitutional, and it struck down the charges as invalid.

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State prosecutors, however, were undeterred. They returned to Flint courts and argued the charges could be easily revived with a simple refiling of documents. That position was repeatedly rejectedall the way to the state’s highest court.

“We are not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this court,” the Supreme Court said in a series of one-sentence orders Wednesday.

There was no immediate response to an email seeking comment from the attorney general’s office.

Orders were filed in cases against former state health director Nick Lyon, former state medical executive Eden Wells and five other people.

Snyder was charged with willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor. The indictment against him has been dismissed, too, though the Supreme Court did not address an appeal by prosecutors Wednesday only because it was on a different timetable.

Managers appointed by Snyder turned the Flint River into a source for Flint city water in 2014, but the water wasn’t treated to reduce its corrosive impact on old pipes. As a result, lead contaminated the system for 18 months.

Lyon and Wells were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Some experts have attributed a fatal Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in 2014-15 to the water switch. They were accused of not timely warning the public.

Indictments were also thrown out against Snyder’s former chief of staff, Jarrod Agen; another key aide, Rich Baird; former Flint Managers Gerald Ambrose and Darnell Earley; former city Public Works Director Howard Croft; and former health official Nancy Peeler.

Snyder acknowledged that state government botched the water switch, especially regulators who didn’t require certain treatments. But his lawyers deny his conduct rose to the level of any crime.

Prosecutors could try to start from scratch. But any effort to file charges in a more traditional way against some of the targets now could get tripped up by Michigan’s six-year statute of limitations.

Since 2016, the attorney general’s office, under a Republican and now a Democrat, has tried to hold people criminally responsible for Flint’s water disaster, but there have been no felony convictions or jail sentences. Seven people pleaded no contest to misdemeanors that were later scrubbed from their records.

source https://time.com/6315983/michigan-supreme-court-flint-water-charges/

With a Prisoner Swap and $6 Billion, Iran’s President Has Changed the Subject

Without the diplomatic immunity conferred on visiting heads of state, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi might be in a real pickle. His resume is littered with corpses—thousands of men and women whose summary executions in 1988 constitute “grave war crimes,” according to the Swedish court that last year sentenced a former guard to life in prison for assisting in the deaths Raisi had, along with two other Iranian officials, ordered.

Instead, Tuesday found Raisi at the plenum of the U.N. General Assembly, claiming the moral high ground during what he would likely count as a successful visit to the Great Satan. By the time he left New York City, the news was no longer the one-year anniversary of the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, whose killing in September of 2022 ignited months of spontaneous protests across the Islamic Republic. The subject had changed to the release Monday of five U.S. citizens, in exchange for access to $6 billion, informal assurances on the status of Iran’s nuclear program, and the reciprocal release of five Iranians. The Council of Foreign Relations invited Raisi to a stop by, and he also passsed an hour with a group of U.S. journalists.

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“There’s that theater. There was an opportunity to change the subject from talking about the anniversary of the protests,” says Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who advised the Obama Administration on Iran. “The American media would be focusing on this instead.”

Read more: Mahsa Amini’s Death Still Haunts the Iranian Regime

The regime’s security forces needed four months to reclaim the streets from protesters, killing more than 500 and arresting tens of thousands in the process. For several weeks, the uprising, led by young women, was so widespread and intense that a prominent dissident said it might actually topple the theocracy that has ruled the nation of 88 million since 1979.

“I think this particular year, for Raisi, it’s very important to show that Iran is still standing after the protests last year, and that it’s not isolated,” says Nasr. “That’s an important message that they want to send to constituents at home, to the protesters, to the reporters, to Iranians abroad, and to other governments.”

The White House helped. Though the Biden Administration voiced strong support for the protests, it also has made a priority of freeing Americans imprisoned abroad. Eventually it not only re-engaged with the mullahs, it also arranged a windfall, ordering the release from South Korean accounts of $6 billion in oil revenue frozen by U.S. sanctions. Transferred to the safekeeping of Qatar, the middleman in the hostage deal, the money may be used only to buy food or medicine. But that frees up $6 billion in Iran’s $53 billion annual budget—effectively boosting it by 11%.

“Raisi is normalizing evil with some success,” says Roya Boroumand, an Iranian exile whose father was assassinated, and who has invested years in tallying the number of people the Islamic Republic has killed. (“We’re around 26,000,” she says. “But it’s certainly much more.”) Boroumand says the trappings of legitimacy around the annual U.N. gathering are “directly harming the people who get killed in the streets, because it makes them more vulnerable. It makes the state more arrogant: ‘I’ve killed more than 1,000 people, and I’m getting money back for returning people I have wrongly detained, and they sit and talk to me.’”

One of those detained was Siamak Namazi, a dual American and Iranian citizen who ran a consulting business in Tehran. Named a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, in Tehran he also received reporters endeavoring to untangle Iranian politics, which for a couple of decades appeared to be a genuine contest. Though ultimate power in the country is held by unelected, hardline clerics, reformers regularly won elected offices, including that of President, thereby keeping alive the hopes of a population chafing at the hardliners’ domination of almost every element of life.

That hope officially ended with Raisi’s 2021 election—in a contest that, because unelected hardliners decide what names will appear on the ballot, did not even include a reform candidate. His ascension sealed the retrograde and brittle rule that protesters rose up against a year ago, and that Raisi spent the week assuring everyone will remain. Most of the protesters, he said, were naive youths misled by outside influences, including Western media.

“Not only are they not backing down, but they’re toughening the laws,” Boroumand notes. The confrontation “is going to become more bloody because these girls are not backing down either.”

And yet the impression, for now, is of a return to the status quo ante. Nasr says the prisoner exchange and the $6 billion will buy peace through the uncertainty of the U.S. presidential election, which may return to office Donald Trump, who pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran’s tacit understanding with the Biden Administration, Nasr says, is that in the meantime Iran will neither advance its nuclear program nor direct the militias it controls to attack U.S. forces in the Middle East. “The larger argument is this at least establishes some sort of baseline so the U.S. and Iran can hold on to a ceasefire for the next year and a half, which gets us through the U.S. elections,” he says. “If they can ever dream of addressing other issues, they had to do this much.”

Read more: Iranian Women Are Still Fighting

Raisi’s visit gave Israel an opportunity to post “Butcher of Tehran” cutouts around Manhattan. On the nearest corner to the hotel where he met invited journalists on Monday, dozens of protestors chanted the names of the prisons where as many as 5,000 people were hanged without trial in the space of three months in 1988. The massacre was a pivotal event in the history of the Islamic Republic, so outraging the deputy of then Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini that a new successor had to be found. Raisi, who held the title of deputy prosecutor for Tehran, was one of the three officials who briefly questioned the prisoners, deciding who would live or die, before sending them to the gallows.

A colleague with whom I often worked, years later when I was covering the country, had been an inmate in Evin Prison at the time. He said he had been ordered to cut down the bodies. When he freed the first, the head hit the pavement with a sound he says he cannot forget.

In the meeting with journalists, each was allowed one question. I asked Raisi his views on universal jurisdiction, the legal concept under which countries may prosecute war crimes that were committed elsewhere. It’s how Sweden tried and convicted Hamid Noury, the former guard. I was asked to repeat the question. He had been implicated in war crimes; would he have come to New York without diplomatic immunity?

His answer came through a translator, and sounded a bit like a threat.

“The ones who should be concerned—not even traveling throughout the globe but even staying in their own homes—are not the ones who have not trampled upon any laws nor disrupted the balance of society, the peace of society,” Raisi said, his voice rising. “The ones who on the other hand should be concerned are the ones who are promoting and propagating the disruption of balances in societies.”

source https://time.com/6315728/iran-president-mahsa-amini-prisoner-swap/

These Are the Key GOP Players in the Government Shutdown Fight

As the government shutdown deadline approaches, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy finds himself once again navigating treacherous political waters within his own party.

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Tensions within the House Republican conference have erupted into a public spectacle, as the party grapples with internal divisions over spending. McCarthy, a lead negotiator in the high-stakes drama, faces the daunting task of rallying his caucus while dealing with aggressive opposition from within.

Spending discussions continued on Tuesday after three members of the House Freedom Caucus and three members of the more moderate House Main Street Caucus brokered a GOP plan over the weekend to extend current funding through Oct. 31. In exchange for the 31-day extension, the deal would include border security measures sought by conservatives and 8.1% spending cuts from all nondefense accounts except for the Department of Veterans Affairs and disaster relief. Such a deal—known as a continuing resolution (CR)—would give lawmakers an extra month to try to complete fiscal 2024 appropriations, though the proposal faced immediate backlash from more than a dozen GOP hardliners who felt Republicans are still spending too much and wanted to see more conservative policies attached.

During a closed-door GOP conference on Tuesday morning, several conservative lawmakers expressed a desire to revise the CR spending levels to more closely mimic numbers outlined by House Republicans earlier this year during debt ceiling negotiations, a House GOP aide familiar with the discussions tells TIME. Facing pressure to revise the top-line spending levels, McCarthy on Tuesday afternoon pulled a procedural vote on the interim government funding bill as GOP lawmakers, including Oklahoma Republican Rep. Kevin Hern, huddled inside Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office to discuss a plan to slash spending to $1.471 trillion.

Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, told reporters that “at least a dozen” holdouts were inside the meeting in the whip’s office after the procedural rules vote was pulled from the schedule. Freedom Caucus chair Scott Perry, a Florida Republican who helped craft the CR proposal, said he’s open to making changes to it. “If you don’t do something, you aren’t going to get anything,” he told reporters.

Should House Republicans adopt the more fiscally conservative spending plan, it would likely be dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, triggering a political clash with less than two weeks to go before the Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown. 

House Republicans faced another setback Tuesday afternoon when five conservatives and all Democrats sank a procedural vote on a Pentagon funding bill. Those in opposition to the Pentagon appropriations bill—one of 12 that Congress has to pass—have demanded steeper spending cuts as part of the appropriations process.

Here is a look at the key negotiators in the spending fight that could lead to a government shutdown.

More From TIME

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy

The spending talks are perhaps the most consequential for McCarthy, who faces calls from members of his own party threatening to oust him from his speakership if he doesn’t acquiesce to their demands. 

The California Republican says he is committed to avoiding a government shutdown: “We should show the American public our ideas and be able to pass them,” he told reporters on Monday. “We’re going to be rational, responsible, and reasonable.”

McCarthy can only afford to lose four Republican votes, but at least a dozen conservatives have signaled they would vote no on the proposed CR measure. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McCarthy denied that he’s avoiding working with Democrats to avert a government shutdown if the House GOP plan to temporarily fund the government fails on the floor—a “plan B” option that some Republicans have floated this week.

McCarthy, who has held the speakership for just eight months, has come under fire from some of his own party members during nearly every major vote or legislative process this year.

“I won’t give up. I need two more members to come over,” McCarthy said as he exited the House floor following Tuesday’s vote. “I like a challenge. I don’t like this big of a challenge, but we’re just going to keep going until we fix it.”

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz

One of McCarthy’s most vocal critics, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has been launching attacks against the Speaker for months and has threatened to oust McCarthy from his speakership through a motion to vacate. Their public feud highlights the deep divisions within the GOP as it grapples with the spending fight.

Gaetz’s critique of the GOP spending plan is centered around the use of a stopgap bill to give them more time. “I’m not voting for a continuing resolution,” Gaetz vowed on the House floor on Monday, urging Republicans to pursue single-subject spending bills instead. “We are approaching the days where we are facing two-trillion dollar annual deficits on top of a $33 trillion debt. This is unsustainable, and just to continue things with some facial 8% cut over 30 days will lead to no programmatic reform is an insult to the principles we fought for in January,” he said.

Gaetz’s stance on the spending bill has been controversial among Republicans, with McCarthy and his allies countering that refusing to pass a CR could result in a government shutdown and harm national security.

Asked on Tuesday whether any progress has been made inside the whip’s office, Gaetz responded: “No.”

Texas Rep. Chip Roy

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a conservative stalwart and member of the Freedom Caucus, played a pivotal role in crafting the CR spending plan. He lashed out against the “so-called conservatives” opposing the deal—like Gaetz—during Tuesday’s GOP press conference. 

“Go explain that you’re voting against a 30-day, 8% cut to the federal bureaucracy while having a piece of legislation attached to it that is the strongest border legislation ever passed,” he said. “Explain how you oppose border security… that is a dream bill dealing with the crisis at the border.”

“I didn’t come to preen and posture on Twitter, I came here to figure out how to save this country,” Roy added.

Florida Rep. Byron Donalds

Rep. Byron Donalds, a member of the Freedom Caucus who was part of the GOP group that struck a deal on the CR bill, now finds himself in the crossfire of the GOP’s internal strife. 

In a social media exchange, Donalds urged Gaetz to be transparent about his plan, saying, “Matt, tell the people the truth… What’s your plan to get the votes to defund Jack Smith? You’ll need more than tweets and hot takes!!”

Donalds’ involvement underscores the complexity of the debate within the Republican caucus and the different approaches lawmakers are advocating to address the looming government shutdown.

“Politics, it can get brutal sometimes,” Donalds said on Monday as he left McCarthy’s office. “That’s just part of it.”

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Georgia Republican, said that she wants to make sure none of the funds made available by the CR will be used to provide financial or military assistance to Ukraine, a new Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters, or COVID-19 vaccine mandates. 

Walking out of the whip’s office on Tuesday, Greene said negotiators are “making progress” on removing Ukraine funding but added, “We aren’t anywhere close to getting anything accomplished.”

New York Rep. Mike Lawler

A Republican freshman, Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, has emerged as a vocal critic of the hardline conservative demands on spending, expressing frustration with his colleagues and referring to their approach as “stupidity.” 

Lawler has contemplated working with Democrats to avoid a government shutdown, highlighting the growing divide within the Republican Party as it grapples with how best to address the matter.

source https://time.com/6315821/key-republicans-spending-fight-congress-shutdown/

Paul Hollywood Answers All of Your Questions About The Great British Baking Show

During the pandemic, The Great British Baking Show became in millions of homes, including mine, literal and figurative comfort food. Its contestants—gathered under a (literal and figurative) big tent—are eliminated one by one, week by week, in as genial and good-natured a format as exists anywhere on television. As my colleague TIME TV critic Judy Berman has written, binging old seasons of the show “practically qualified as therapy” during lockdown.

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This year, the show enters its 14th season, maturing but somewhat miraculously maintaining itself as an alternative to cattier, more intense, eat-or-be-eaten reality shows. Certain aspects of the show have morphed over the years—most notably roving co-hosts (British morning TV presenter Alison Hammond this season replaces comedian Matt Lucas.) But there has been one constant from the start: celebrity baker-turned-judge Paul Hollywood, whose blunt feedback, searing blue eyes, and eponymous handshake for outstanding bakes (you can track them at hollywoodhandshakes.com) have become the show’s trademark.

I spoke with Hollywood ahead of the new season; episodes air weekly on Channel 4 in the UK starting Sept. 26 and on Netflix Sept. 29. (Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

My 15-year-old daughter and I recently went back to the beginning of The Great British Baking Show, and the technical abilities of the contestants seems like it’s just increased so much. I think it’s reflected in the handshakes [bakers get for stellar work], to be honest. The handshakes are more [frequent] because the standard of the baking has gone much higher. It attracted the better bakers.

The show is a rare bastion of friendly competition. How have you maintained that over the years? There’s an honesty to Bake Off [as it’s known in the U.K.]. Sometimes my choice of words to describe what I’m looking at or tasting might be a little bit harsh. But I’m straight to the point. Other programs are quite destructive in their criticism, because all they want to do is shoot them down in flames and use that as the part of the program. Making and baking things for people nurtures more of a soft approach than it does an aggressive one.

Read More: The 50 Most Influential Reality TV Seasons of All Time

You have a new co-host this season, Alison Hammond. Part of the appeal of the show is the predictability—it’s comfort TV. How do you balance that against shake-ups and change? The bakers are the stars of the show, and they tend to lead how things progress. The format is pretty rigid. I suppose I’m the guardian of Bake Off. I don’t like change generally. So I like to keep things the way they should be. Everybody knows about the feeling of Bake Off. And as soon as they step into the tent, they just adapt immediately. Bake Off is set in stone. So whichever host comes in just brings their little twist. And this year Alison and Noel [Fielding] were fantastic, and it was a really good laugh.

What is Alison’s twist? Her laugh is contagious. And once she starts laughing, she’ll set everybody off. It’s tense for the bakers obviously, but I think the rule is, we try to give the bakers a little bit of calmness and a little smile while they’re doing the work.

Last season brought some criticism on a variety of fronts, including for Mexican week, with its maracas, serapes, and sombreros. Is that something you’ve reflected on? I spoke to a couple of friends of mine. The ones I spoke to, none of them were offended. I think most of the people who were offended weren’t even Mexican, which I found quite strange. Because there’s not a bad bone in Bake Off’s body. I was in Mexico filming a month before I started the series that year. And I spent a month traveling around working with amazing Mexican chefs. And that’s where some of the challenges came from. They came from a good place, never a bad place.

Read More: The Great British Bake Off Backlash Has Reached a Boiling Point. Can the Show Be Saved?

You’ve written so many books about bread. How do you keep coming up with new recipes? The key thing is experiment. When I first started making bread years ago, I was working at some of the best hotels in Europe. I was doing Stilton and walnut bread and cherry and chocolate bread—all these mad things. This history I’ve got in my head; I will remember something and go, “Oh, I haven’t done that for a while.” And then I’ll write it down and it will go in the next book. Sometimes to go forward you have to go back.

Have you ever used an automatic bread machine? When I was just starting Bake Off, I was approached by The Gadget Show in the U.K. And basically they said, “There’s been another line of bread-making machines. Would you like to have a look at them?” I said, “Not really, no.” And they said, “Well, would you like to go head-to-head with them? We make the bread in the bread machine, you make a bread, and then we do a blind tasting with the public.” So I went head-to-head with seven bread machines and I got 96% of the vote. You can’t beat homemade breads made by hand.

What’s the best advice you ever got, or have given, about baking bread? Weigh up really carefully. Having a good set of scales is critical. Because you get that right, and you’re 90% on the way to creating something that’s going to taste amazing. A good-­quality flour always makes a difference. Good ingredients in, and it’s a good bake at the end.

source https://time.com/6315317/paul-hollywood-interview-great-british-bake-off/

How Canada-India Relations Crumbled

Signs that fraught relations between Canada and India were heading further south became clear during the G-20 summit in New Delhi earlier this month, when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, unlike other Western leaders, did not hold formal bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Instead, the two leaders raised serious concerns with each other on the sidelines of the summit, where Modi brought up “continuing anti-India activities of extremist elements in Canada,” according to his office.

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Experts say India-Canada ties—historically driven by trade and the presence of a large Indian diaspora in Canada—have slowly deteriorated in recent years over claims from India that Canada has fostered sympathy toward a Sikh separatist movement, and counter-claims from Canada accusing Indian officials of interfering in its domestic politics. 

That relationship hit rock bottom on Monday when Trudeau made an explosive statement before the Canadian Parliament that Ottawa was pursuing “credible allegations” from Canadian intelligence against New Delhi for playing a role in the assassination of a prominent Sikh Canadian leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on Canadian soil in June. The Canadian government expelled a senior Indian diplomat shortly after Trudeau’s comments; India swiftly retaliated by issuing a statement Tuesday that denied any involvement in Nijjar’s death and expelled an unnamed senior Canadian diplomat.

Read More: What to Know About Canada and India’s Dispute Over the Killing of a Sikh Leader

“Today’s allegation has dealt a major blow to the relationship; the damage to the relationship will not be easily repaired,” says Brahma Chellaney, a former adviser to India’s National Security Council, based in New Delhi.

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center think-tank, says the combination of increasing Sikh activism in Canada, growing Indian pressure on Ottawa, and Ottawa’s unwillingness to address Indian concerns has “plunged bilateral relations into a deep crisis today.” He adds, “The knives are out.”

How did India’s relationship with Canada fare historically?

Canada is home to the world’s largest Sikh population outside India, who number nearly 770,000 people, or 2.1% of the country’s population. 

Tensions among Indian and Canadian officials first simmered in 2015, when Trudeau came into power and appointed four Sikh ministers to his then 30-member cabinet. In the past, Indian diplomats have also raised issues over Sikh Canadians who express support for the Khalistan movement, which calls for a separatist Sikh homeland in India. One Hindu temple in Canada was vandalized last year with graffiti that read “death to India” in Urdu and “Khalistan,” and Sikh Canadians have organized local referendums over Sikh independence from India.

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In 2018, Trudeau’s trip to India was criticized when his delegation, which included a Sikh contingent, met Jaspal Atwal, a Sikh man convicted of the attempted murder of a visiting Indian cabinet minister. (Canada later rescinded Atwal’s invitation to a dinner reception in New Delhi.)

But these issues appeared to have taken a backseat when the two countries began to boost ties to counter Beijing. Until recent months, India-Canada relations were in a relatively good place, says Kugelman. “Commercial ties were robust and strategic convergences, especially shared concerns about China, were strengthening cooperation,” he says.

Seeking to diversify the Canadian economy, Trudeau saw India as a critical partner under its Indo-Pacific strategy, given the country’s growing economic and demographic importance in the region. As recently as May, both sides appeared optimistic that an early-progress trade agreement on automobiles, agriculture, and information technology would be signed. 

Last week, however, Canada canceled a trade mission to India planned for early October. “Trade appears to have become a casualty of deepening tensions,” Kugelman says.

How have India-Canada relations deteriorated in recent months?

In early June, India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, warned during a press conference that Canada giving space to Sikh separatists “was not good for the relationship” between the two countries. The comments came in response to a question over a social media clip of a parade held by Khalistani separatists in Brampton, Ontario, on June 4. “For us, how Canada has dealt with the Khalistani issue has been a long-standing concern because, very frankly, they seem to be driven by vote-bank politics,” Jaishankar said, a reference to Sikh Canadians, who form a plurality of Indian Canadian voters.

Ten days after Jaishankar’s warnings, Nijjar was shot dead at a Sikh temple in Vancouver. 

In a surprise move on Sept. 1, Canada paused trade negotiations with India. Kugelman says that rising tensions have coincided with growing Sikh activism, not only in Canada but also in the U.K., U.S., and Australia, including widespread protests held in March over the manhunt for another Sikh separatist leader, Amritpal Singh. “The stepped-up activism has sharpened New Delhi’s concerns while Canada, citing freedom of speech, has held back,” he adds.

What do Trudeau’s accusations mean for wider diplomatic ties?

The spat will have ramifications for Canada’s position globally. In the past, Canada, a middling Western power, has seen strained relations with other rising nations like China when, in 2019, Trudeau accused Beijing of “pressure tactics” to secure the release of a senior Huawei executive being held in Canada on charges of fraud linked to alleged violations of U.S. sanctions against Iran. In 2018, it had another spat with Saudi Arabia when Canada’s foreign minister expressed support for several human rights activists detained by Saudi officials.

The latest turn of events in India came after Canada reportedly held weeks of behind-the-scenes discussions leading up to the G-20 summit with its closest allies—including Five Eyes intelligence-sharing countries—to publicly condemn Nijjar’s murder. But they avoided raising Trudeau’s concerns with Modi publicly at the G-20 to continue, according to a Western official who spoke to the Washington Post.

On Tuesday, U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the White House was “deeply concerned” about the Canadian allegations. “It is critical that Canada’s investigation proceed and the perpetrators be brought to justice,” Watson said in a statement.

Derek J. Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, says it will be interesting to see how the Biden Administration handles the situation. “Taking a stand either way—for India or for Canada—would anger the other,” he says. “Regardless, I think the Biden Administration wants to keep India at its side at all costs to help counter China through the Indo-Pacific strategy. This is the top goal.”

On India’s part, Kugelman says the country may go further in its response “by demanding the allegations be retracted, by downgrading relations, by reducing security at the Canadian embassy, and so on,” he says. “Neither capital wants that, but let’s be clear, this may be the lowest level to which this relationship has sunk. It won’t be easy to return to the old normal anytime soon,” he adds.

source https://time.com/6315731/canada-india-relationship-trudeau-modi/

The Winning Time Finale Was Wrong on So Many Levels

As a fan of Winning Time, the HBO drama starring John C. Reilly, Adrien Brody, Gaby Hoffman and a slew of promising up-and-coming actors that chronicles the fast-breaking, fast-living 1980s “Showtime” Los Angeles Lakers, I was aware that the ratings for the show weren’t great. Jeff Pearlman, the author whose book about the Lakers dynasty the show was based on, had taken to social media over the past few weeks, and warned that Winning Time needed more eyeballs to survive. An eventual cancellation would not have come as a shock.

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But watching a cancellation in real time sure did. 

I’m no TV historian. But I struggle to remember ever seeing a show that basically announced “this thing is dead” as it aired. Usually, word trickles out before a season finale that the plug has been pulled. Or an announcement follows days or weeks after. So when I saw what I figured was the last scene of Winning Time’s second season on the evening of Sept. 17—Magic Johnson sitting forlorn in a disgusting old Boston Garden shower, after losing Game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals to his blood rival, Larry Bird—I held out hope that the show would live on. No way HBO could end Winning Time with a Lakers loss, right? 

Wrong. Seconds later, the show cut to a tacked-on scene featuring Reilly as chest-hair-sporting Lakers owner Jerry Buss and Hadley Robinson as his daughter, current Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, sitting at halfcourt of an empty Great Western Forum. They toasted their good fortune to still own a juggernaut that was the Lakers. “We f-cking own this!” they shout. Okaaay. Then, the gut punch: title cards explaining the future accomplishments and tribulations of main characters like Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Pat Riley, Jeanie Buss, and others. Information that, for one thing, is very well known to even casual sports fans, which had to make up the great majority of Winning Time’s viewing audience. And what’s worse, it was information that, sure as Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook, signaled a series ending. For if Winning Time were to continue, why would the producers write the ending for each character on the screen?

Feeling a mix of confusion, betrayal, and apprehension—not ideal emotions after watching your favorite Sunday night show, before the work week—I joined thousands of other fans in Googling something along the lines of “Winning Time canceled.” Did I miss something during the week? Turns out, no. Because there they were, embargoed articles released around 10 PM eastern time, right as Winning Time was ending, officially confirming the cancellation. 

Now I was just angry. Hey, HBO: I didn’t watch a scripted show about my favorite sport, basketball, to get angry. 

Others shared such frustration. “Wtf HBO?” wrote one social media user. “HBO Cancelled ‘Winning Time’ in the Hackiest Way Possible,” read one headline. Someone started a change.org petition to save the show. 

It was a crushing ending for a show that deserved better. While the creative team behind Winning Time has expressed sincere gratitude to HBO for their support for the series, they couldn’t mask their disappointment. Over the last week or so, word spread to the Winning Time producers that the show was indeed ending. Despite a passionate fan base and critical kudos, the ratings could not support the expensive budget needed to recreate 1980s basketball arenas, locker rooms, and front offices (not to mention the Busses’ former sprawling home, the Pickfair estate). HBO suggested to the Winning Time creative team, while the show was still in production back in January, to consider shooting an alternative ending that sort of wrapped up the show, in case cancellation was inevitable. That’s why the scene with the Busses, and the title cards, were added. The version shared with critics earlier this summer ended Season 2 at the conclusion of the ‘84 Finals, with Johnson in the shower. 

Winning Time co-creator Max Borenstein has called Season 2 the show’s “Empire Strikes Back” season. While the first season ended with a Lakers championship victory in 1980, this time, the Dark Side—the Boston Celtics—prevailed. “I understand why there was a desire, given the sort of Sophie’s choice of where we were at, to put a bit of a button on it,” says Borenstein. “Personally, my preference would have been to end this show in the way we conceived the season. I love Magic in the shower. Ending on a pure emotion is a good ending. Even if it’s a sh-tty emotion.”

The show’s other creator, Jim Hecht, had to console his wife, who broke down in tears after the finale aired. He explained to his stepchildren, who are 12 and 11, what cancellation means. 

“I’m writing a Tupac book right now,” says Pearlman. “If my last chapter ended with a celebration of Biggie, that would be a very weird way to end the Tupac book. That’s how I kind of thought of it. You’re ending the series with the Celtics winning the title? That’s insane. But it’s way above my pay grade.” 

An HBO spokesperson did not respond to TIME’s request to speak to CEO Casey Bloys. 

The decision reflects the sad realities of modern media. Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, lost 1.8 million streaming subscribers from April 1 to June 30, the period in which the streamer Max, which combined the offerings of HBO Max and Discovery+, launched. Warner Bros. Discovery stock is down 24% since Feb. 1. From the get-go, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has shown a proclivity for cutting programming, angering fans and subscribers by even shelving highly anticipated projects like a Batgirl movie that would have been the first major superhero film starring a Latina actor.

The ongoing Hollywood actors and writers strikes also helped torpedo Winning Time. Marquee names like John C. Reilly and breakout performers like Quincy Isaiah, who portrayed Magic Johnson with expert charisma, could not raise awareness of the show most of this summer due to SAG rules against promoting struck work. “I probably was the biggest mouthpiece for the show,” says Pearlman. “And that’s horrible.” 

Winning Time had so many more stories to mine: the Lakers’ victories over the Celtics in 1985 and 1987, the rise of Michael Jordan in Chicago, Abdul-Jabbar’s retirement in 1989, Riley’s exit in 1990, and Johnson’s shocking HIV diagnosis in 1991. And it featured a young, diverse cast with which to mine them.  “We have a slew of young Black actors and actresses,” says Pearlman. “We actually had a show with an enormously diverse cast playing enormously diverse roles. That was really important and really cool.” 

The show traced the modern era of player empowerment to Johnson. He and Buss formed more of a partnership than the typical employee-employer relationship. Johnson was pilloried for demanding a trade in 1981, as he chafed under Lakers coach Paul Westhead. But Johnson prevailed: Buss fired Westhead, Riley took over, and Los Angeles kept winning titles. In today’s NBA, players increasingly call the shots on where they work and who they work with. “Even though this show is about the past, it still touches on the zeitgeist of today,” says Winning Time executive producer and writer Rodney Barnes. “As a writer of color, it’s rare you get the opportunity to talk about history and the present at the same time.” 

That opportunity is now gone, unless another streamer or network revives Winning Time. “Netflix Needs To Pick Up Winning Time,” wrote NBA agent Nate Jones on X. The show’s creators won’t dismiss that possibility. “In a world where Frasier is about to premiere a new season, the long-term view is the best view to take,” says Borenstein. 

Perhaps some of the outrage over Winning Time’s cancellation will compel more viewers to check it out on Max: strong binge numbers could make the case for a resurrection. “Things have a tendency on Winning Time to work out better than I’ve planned them,” says Hecht. “We’ve had to go back to square one a bazillion times. Somehow, some way, HBO not continuing with the series at this time will end up being better for the show. I just have a feeling things always work out for Winning Time.” 

Here’s hoping that’s more than wishful thinking. Lakers fans especially can do their part. Watch Winning Time for the first time, if you haven’t done so. Even give it a rewatch on Max. 

“I would say this to Lakers fans directly,” says Hecht. “If you don’t watch, the Celtics win.”     

source https://time.com/6315697/winning-time-finale-hbo/

Approval of Congress Hits Near-Record Low As Country Stumbles Toward Shutdown

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Back in 2013, as congressional leaders and President Barack Obama searched for an end to a 16-day government shutdown, a survey by the Pew Research Center found 73% of Americans disapproved of Congress, a record high.

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A decade later, Americans are no longer even bothering to wait for the shutdown most of Washington seems to assume is inevitable to register their disgust. Pew’s latest polling, released on Tuesday, shows just 26% of Americans holding a favorable view of Congress and 72% with the inverse, within a rounding error of the record from 2013. To get to a similar number today, Congress didn’t have to let the lights go out; Americans sensed this set of lawmakers by and large seemed more interested in self-aggrandizement than governing.

And even as the public holds them in such little regard, it’s like lawmakers are collectively saying hold my beer to the country. Funding is about to dry up come Oct. 1, the 12 must-pass bills are nowhere near finished in a way that can pass both chambers, and a handful of unyielding ideologues stand in the way of anything even approaching civility. Even a stopgap is far from an easy lift, and the usual gimme’ on the defense package keeps getting tripped up.

For the folks who love this type of stunt, such dysfunctionality is evidence of the efficacy of disruption—and that translates to dollars for the next campaign and for allies who will owe them chits. For mainstream D.C. types, it’s a horrifying reminder of just how unprepared this GOP Leadership team in the House was when they came in, why it took 15 ballots to put them in place, and why they surrendered any sustainability just to get the job for a hot minute.

As Congress stumbles into the potential seventh government shutdown since 1990, it’s no wonder Americans have lost faith in the ability of the parties to self-correct, to self-regulate. And that’s as much of a problem for the party on deck as the one in the hot seat.

It’s not just a hunch, either. In new questions to the Pew battery, 97% of Americans say at least some politicians run for office to get famous and 99% say they do so to get rich. Meanwhile, a record share of Americans—22%!—now say they never trust the government to do what’s right. When Pew first asked that question back in October of 1997, only 2% agreed with that sentiment. The current numbers make clear that Americans view Washington as irresponsible, craven, and lacking almost any essence of credibility.

This isn’t an environment for success—for Freedom Caucus members, for Main Street Republicans, for New Deal Democrats, for progressives, or even the socialists. It sure as heck isn’t one for responsibility. No one wins when chaos is the order of the day.

So, getting back to this dismal data: the GOP-led House is enjoying a measly 33% approval rating, with Republicans and those leaning that way eight points more likely than Democrats and Democratic learners to give the House a positive nod; both blocs remain underwater. Democrats’ narrow majority in the Senate hangs with a 32% approval rating, although the partisan difference is more pronounced; 39% of Democrats endorse what they’re seeing in the Senate while 26% of Republicans say the same.

Pew is essentially unmatched in its scope and depth of these surveys. For this batch, more than 8,400 respondents recorded their detailed answers to questions for this, the 130th wave of such questioning put into the field since 2014. Because it has asked the same questions repeatedly of many of the same Americans—of the almost 31,000 people who have participated in these projects, almost 13,000 remained active—the Pew modeling remains a gold standard for tracking Americans’ attitudes toward everything from politics, religion, the culture wars, and individuals. And, in that, there are warning signs aplenty for institutions of American life that seem ever more frail with each data discharge.

So, as The Hold My Beer Congress is on its seemingly inevitable slog toward a shutdown orchestrated by House Republicans’ far-right flank, the rest of Washington is left to watch irrational choices that are bemusing as memes but maddening when billions of dollars lost could be the fallout. (No joke, Standard & Poor’s put the price tag of the 2013 shutdown at $24 billion for 16 days of stunt.) Most of Washington is scowling from the sidelines, but a handful of activist-cable news producers are roaring from the stands. This is good drama, fantastic for fundraising, and toxic for governing. 

It’s why a whole lot of Washington—even those who are at best agnostic—find themselves of late chanting a simplified version of the Christian Serenity Prayer: Jesus, Take The Wheel.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

source https://time.com/6315711/federal-government-shutdown-congress-approval-poll/