Why Are Lefty Quarterbacks Like Michael Penix Jr. Still So Rare?

Throughout the New Year’s game, Michel Penix Jr., quarterback for the University of Washington Huskies, sliced wounds wide open, deep in the hearts of Texas. Penix cut up the Texas Longhorns defense in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff, to the tune of 430 passing yards, two touchdown throws, and zero interceptions, while leading the Huskies to a 37-31 win in the Sugar Bowl. He launched darts off his back foot, deep in the pocket or on the move, with an arm motion that can look a bit unusual to the untrained eye. That’s because Penix Jr. accumulated such impressive big-game statistics while doing something that’s become a rare feat: throwing a football with his left hand.  

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While left-handed arms populate the pitching mounds of Major League Baseball—and earn players, even one-inning relief specialists, millions upon millions—they can feel almost extinct on the football field. Some 10% of the population is left-handed (full disclosure, this writer among them), but of the 75 NFL quarterbacks who’ve thrown at least one pass this 2023 season, Tua Tagovailoa, of the Miami Dolphins, is the lone lefty. That’s a southpaw population of a mere 1.3%. 

“By definition, by obvious scientific truth,” says Hall of Fame left-handed quarterback Steve Young, “football is biased against lefties.”

Read More: Aaron Rodgers Needs to Stop Talking

There have been some fantastic left-handed quarterbacks over the years: Young, Ken Stabler, and Michael Vick among them. A couple—Tagovailoa, at Alabama, and Tim Tebow of Florida—have even won national titles in college this century. But of the 34 quarterbacks inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, just two—Young and Stabler—are lefties. Of the 38 quarterbacks to win the Heisman trophy, just three—Oregon State’s Terry Baker in 1962, Matt Leinart of USC in 2004, and Tebow in 2007—are southpaws. The last NFL left-hander to start a game before Tagovailoa’s NFL debut in 2020 was Kellen Moore, in 2015, for the Dallas Cowboys. 

If he puts in another stellar performance—this time against Michigan in the national championship game in Houston Monday night—Penix Jr. will up his odds of joining Tagovailoa in the NFL’s lonely lefty signal-callers club, and maybe break down any barriers keeping southpaws from calling cadence. In his two years at Washington, Penix Jr.—who came in second, to LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels, in his year’s Heisman race—has finished 25-2 as the starter. “He’s got huge hands and incredible accuracy that you very rarely see,” says Boomer Esiason, who won an NFL MVP award in 1988 as lefty QB for the Cincinnati Bengals. “It just comes so natural to him.”

Read More: Lionel Messi Is TIME’s 2023 Athlete of the Year

Before arriving in Seattle, Penix Jr., who grew up in the Tampa area, spent four injury-plagued seasons at Indiana. In 2018 and 2020 he sustained season-ending ACL-injuries. A sternoclavicular-joint injury and a dislocated shoulder joint cut short his 2019 and 2021 campaigns. He transferred to Washington to play for coach Kalen DeBoer, who was his offensive coordinator for the Hoosiers.

Penix Jr. says he’s “blessed” to be a lefty. In a podcast interview this season, he noted that his grandmother is the only other lefty in his family, and he’s a big fan of hers. “At a young age, it wasn’t like I chose what hand I wanted to throw with,” Penix Jr. says. His offensive coordinator at Washington, Ryan Grubb, sometimes calls plays for Penix Jr. to roll to the left, his natural side. “I’m like, Coach, I can throw it anywhere,” says Penix Jr. “It don’t matter. Just call anything.” 

It’s difficult to pinpoint why more lefties haven’t thrived at football. Maybe they see pitching as an easier road to riches. There are more big-league mound gigs available than quarterbacking jobs, and you don’t have to worry about 320-pound linemen crushing your anatomy. 

Some receivers have trouble getting used to the different spin a lefty puts on the football. But it’s their job to adjust on the fly. “I used to tell my wide receivers, dude, God gave you hands to catch a football,” says Esiason. “He didn’t say it had to be from a right-hander.” 

It might be an eye-test thing. Since we’re not used to seeing left-handers doing certain tasks, like throwing a football, we subconsciously assume they’re ill-fitted for them. Even Scott Mitchell, the former NFL quarterback who threw for more than 4,300 yards, left-handed, for the Detroit Lions back in 1995, admits his brethren look weird. “When I first watched Michael Penix throw the football, it was just cringey to me,” says Mitchell, now a color commentator for University of Utah radio broadcasts. “He just looks so unnatural, he looks so weird. I feel that way about all left-handed quarterbacks. Boomer Esiason, Steve Young, they looked so weird. I’m prejudiced against my own kind.”

Mitchell, however, has come around on Penix Jr. “The dude grew on me,” says Mitchell. “Now I’m like, ‘This guy can throw the freaking football.’ That semifinal game, some of those throws he made, there are a lot of pros who can’t make some of those throws.” 

But on the youth and high school levels, there could be coaches who share Mitchell’s prejudices, and funnel potential young lefty quarterbacks into other positions or even sports. Or force them to change their ways. “Growing up, they tried everything in the world to change me from being left-handed to right-handed,” says Mitchell. “I was just so natural at being left-handed. I’m just brutally left-handed.” 

During Mitchell’s first meeting at his first mini-camp with the Miami Dolphins—the team that drafted him in the fourth round out of Utah in 1990—he said the team’s offensive coordinator “freaked out” because Mitchell is lefty. “It was almost like he didn’t know how to coach me,” Mitchell says. Mitchell says it took about 10 minutes for the coach to realize that left-handed football is still, well, football. “Instead of putting your right hand under the center’s butt, you put your left hand,” says Mitchell. “It comes out the same way.”

“I have tremendous emotion about this,” says Young. He’s just read a media report painting Penix Jr.’s left-handedness as a potential hindrance to his draft position. His voice is rising. “I’m like, what the freakin’ hell is that?” 

For Young, the issue is indeed personal. In the middle of his freshman season at BYU, Young says, his offensive coordinator told him “by the way, I don’t coach lefties.” So he was moved to defense in practice. Lucky for Young, that offensive coordinator left, and a new one came in the following season and gave him a shot to throw. The rest is Hall of Fame history. “Barring a lucky stroke of a coaching switch, being lefty would have cost me my career,” says Young. 

And while he’s joked about a conspiracy to keep lefties out of the NFL, Young can’t believe the lack of southpaws in the league is mere coincidence. Some bias, even unconscious, must be at play, he says, which feels counterproductive. 

“Since football is so right-handed, being lefty is an advantage,” says Young. That split second of a defensive thinking “oh, that’s different” can make all the difference. “Everything’s run right-handed,” says Young. “Every practice is run right-handed. Eighty percent of every formation is right-handed. People install offense right-handed. It’s just how they do it. Michael Penix coming out as a lefty, that should heighten his draft status.” 

So it should come as no surprise that Young is pulling for Penix Jr. in Monday’s championship game. On behalf of southpaws everywhere. “Lefties unite, bro!” he says. “Lefties unite. I’m all for him.”

source https://time.com/6552756/michael-penix-jr-lefty-national-championship-washington/

Congressional Leaders Reach Deal on 2024 Spending to Avoid Government Shutdown

WASHINGTON — Congressional leaders have reached an agreement on overall spending levels for the current fiscal year that could help avoid a partial government shutdown later this month.

The agreement largely hews to spending caps for defense and domestic programs that Congress set as part of a bill to suspend the debt limit until 2025. But it does provide some concessions to House Republicans who viewed the spending restrictions in that agreement as insufficient.

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In a letter to colleagues, House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday the agreement would secure $16 billion in additional spending cuts from the previous agreement brokered by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden and is about $30 billion less than what the Senate was considering.

“This represents the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” Johnson writes.

Read More: Here’s How a Government Shutdown Could Affect You

Biden said the agreement “moves us one step closer to preventing a needless government shutdown and protecting important national priorities.”

“It reflects the funding levels that I negotiated with both parties and signed into law last spring,” Biden said in a statement. “It rejects deep cuts to programs hardworking families count on, and provides a path to passing full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and are free of any extreme policies.”

The agreement speeds up the roughly $20 billion in cuts already agreed to for the Internal Revenue Service and rescinds about $6 billion in COVID relief money that had been approved but not yet spent, according to Johnson’s letter.

“It’s a good deal for Democrats and the country,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues in a briefing call.

Read More: Bidenomics Is Real Economics

Essentially, Democrats see the trade-offs they made as mild. In a description provided to reporters, they said the COVID savings would have “no significant impact on any current projects or activities in motion.” And they said that moving all of the $20.2 billion in IRS cuts to this year instead of over two years would still leave the agency able to maintain “critical investments” that Congress provided in 2022. At the time, Congress provided the IRS with an additional $80 billion that could be spent over 10 years.

Overall, the agreement calls for $886 billion in defense funding. It would provide $772 billion in domestic, non-defense spending, when including $69 billion called for in a side deal to the debt ceiling bill that McCarthy had reached with the White House, Democrats said.

The most conservative House Republicans opposed the earlier debt ceiling agreement and even brought House proceedings to a halt for a few days to show their displeasure. Many were surely wanting additional concessions, but Democrats have been insistent on abiding by the debt ceiling agreement’s spending caps, leaving Johnson in a difficult spot.

“It’s even worse than we thought,” the House Freedom Caucus said of the agreement in a tweet posted on X. “This is total failure.”

Lawmakers needed an agreement on overall spending levels so that appropriators could write the bills that set line-by-line funding for agencies. Money is set to lapse Jan. 19 for some agencies and Feb. 2 for others.

The agreement is separate from the negotiations that are taking place to secure additional funding for Israel and Ukraine while also curbing restrictions on asylum claims at the U.S. border.

In a joint statement, Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced their support for the agreement.

“It will also allow us to keep the investments for hardworking American families secured by the legislative achievements of President Biden and Congressional Democrats,” Schumer and Jeffries said.

Read More: Government Shutdowns Were Never Necessary Anyway

But they also warned House Republicans about trying to add conservative policy riders to the bills in the coming days, saying Democrats would not support “poison pill policy changes in any of the twelve appropriations bills put before the Congress.“

Rep. Patrick McHenry, who helped lead the debt ceiling negotiations when McCarthy was speaker, noted that two-thirds of both parties in the House supported that agreement.

“This deal, which adheres to that framework, deserves equally as robust support,” McHenry said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., tweeted that he was encouraged that leaders identified a “path toward completing” the spending bills. It was a cautious recognition that some obstacles could lie ahead.

“America faces serious national security challenges, and Congress must act quickly to deliver the full-year resources this moment requires,” McConnell said.

source https://time.com/6552891/congress-johnson-democrats-agreement-spending-government-shutdown/

Wrexham Owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney Revel in Team’s Big Win in FA Cup

SHREWSBURY, England — Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney appear to have FA Cup fever — just like their soccer club Wrexham.

The Hollywood stars were watching from their homes in the United States as Wrexham won 1-0 at local rival Shrewsbury, a team from one division higher in English soccer’s pyramid, in the third round of the famous competition on Sunday.

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The Welsh club will find out on Monday its opponent in the fourth round — or the last 32 — and there’s a good chance it will be a team from the Premier League.

That would excite Reynolds and McElhenney, who bought Wrexham for $2.5 million in 2021 and made the club the subject of popular fly-on-the-wall TV documentary “Welcome to Wrexham.”

They have become keen soccer fans as a result, with “Deadpool” star Reynolds posting a picture of himself on X, formerly Twitter, sitting next to fellow actor Hugh Jackman while watching the Shrewsbury-Wrexham match.

The FA Cup’s official account on X posted a video of Wrexham’s goal against Shrewsbury, which was scored by defender Tom O’Connor in the 72nd minute, and said the team’s fans enjoyed it. McElhenney responded to it by posting: “You should’ve seen my living room.”

Wrexham has a strong tradition in the FA Cup, memorably defeating then-English champion Arsenal 2-1 in the third round in 1992 for one of the competition’s biggest-ever shocks. Wrexham reached the quarterfinals in 1997, beating top-flight West Ham along the way.

The buzz around Wrexham and its celebrity owners reached new levels during a cup run around this time last year when the team beat one second-tier Championship team in Coventry and then took another, Premier League-bound Sheffield United, to a replay.

This season, Wrexham has already beaten Mansfield, Yeovil and now Shrewsbury to reach the fourth round.

The team is also doing well in league play. It is in third place in the fourth-tier League Two in a bid to secure back-to-back promotions.

source https://time.com/6552879/wrexham-ryan-reynolds-rob-mcelhenney-fa-cup-win/

Everything You Need to Know About the 2024 Golden Globes

The 81st Golden Globes Awards will take to the stage and screens worldwide Sunday to celebrate a year that saw the massive success of Barbie and Oppenheimer at the box office. 

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Hollywood’s biggest stars will walk the red carpet at The Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. before the event highlighting the best of movies and TV from 2023. 

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s ceremony. 

What time does it start and how can I watch it?

The show starts at 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. It will be broadcast live on CBS and can be streamed around the world on Paramount+. The show lasts around three hours. 

Which films, shows and actors have been nominated?

Director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie leads the pack with nine nominations, including for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Cinematic and Box Office Achievement. The film’s lead Margot Robbie nabbed a nomination for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and her co-star Ryan Gosling received a nod for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a thriller about the “father of the atomic bomb,” bagged eight nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, best male actor for Cillian Murphy, best supporting male actor for Robert Downey Jr. and best supporting female actor for Emily Blunt. 

Killers of the Flower Moon, a true story of the 1920s murders of Native Americans for oil, and gothic fairytale Poor Things followed with seven nominations each. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon garnered attention for Best Motion Picture – Drama and best acting nods for its leads Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone. While Poor Things was recognized in the Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy category and its lead star Emma Stone is nominated in the Best Performance by a Female Actor group. 

Other films with multiple nominations include Korean romantic drama Past Lives, dark comedy May December, inspired by the story of a woman who was jailed for having sex with her underage student before later marrying him, European drama thriller Anatomy of a Fall, and Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro. 

TV shows Succession and The Crown, that have previously won Golden Globe awards, racked up nominations for both Best Television Series – Drama and the performances of their lead actors.

Meanwhile, Ted Lasso, Only Murders in the Building, Abbott Elementary, The Bear, Jury Duty and Barry are in the running to win Best TV series – Musical or Comedy.

See a full list of nominees on the Golden Globe Awards’ website.

Who is hosting?

Stand-up comedian and actor Jo Koy will host the show for the first time. Koy has gained attention as a live comedian, guest on late-night shows, host of his own comedy specials, including Jo Koy: In His Elements on Netflix in 2020, and star of the comedy film Easter Sunday in 2022. 

Koy was reportedly only asked to host the show two weeks ago, Variety reported. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Koy said he’s been binge watching the nominated films and shows to prepare.

The Filipino-American, born Joseph Glenn Herbert Sr., told the Associated Press he grew up watching the Golden Globes and hopes to inspire those from the Asian community and leave a positive mark through his hosting. 

Koy will be joined by a star-studded slew of presenters including Barbie stars America Ferrera and Issa Rae, Oppenheimer actor Florence Pugh and The Color Purple producer Oprah Winfrey.

source https://time.com/6552849/golden-globes-2024-host-nominations-ceremony/

How Experts Believe Starvation Is Being Utilized in Gaza

Last month, Reham Shaheen’s four-year-old daughter cried all day from hunger, finally falling asleep while waiting for her only meal of the day to finish cooking.

Shaheen has been stuck in Jordan since the Israel-Hamas war began, separated from her home, husband and three children who are in Gaza. “I spent two days not able to eat at all, thinking of my daughter, that she couldn’t find food,” Shaheen told TIME in a voice note Friday. 

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Shaheen says her family receives flour from the U.N., but it isn’t enough to feed 24 people sharing one tent in Rafah, southern Gaza. They struggle to find canned food or get goods in the market, where prices have skyrocketed ten times and they must wait in long lines to receive small amounts, she says. 

Children and adults are coming to hospitals with serious malnutrition, and at the first hint of any infection, they lose weight rapidly, Professor Nick Maynard, a senior surgeon from Oxford University Hospital and the clinical lead of an emergency medical team said in a statement.

“The reality on the ground here is much, much worse” than what Maynard realized from afar, he told TIME in a voice message from Gaza on Friday as drones whined in the background.

Read More: Gaza Is Being Made Unlivable

International agencies have repeatedly sounded the alarm that Gaza is starving. The U.N. has said that one in four people are starving and nine out of ten families in some areas spend a day and night without food. A December report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification predicted that by February, all 2 million people in Gaza would face crisis levels of acute food insecurity, with at least one in four households facing famine-like conditions.

After Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Oct. 9 ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza Strip,” saying “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed.” Then-Energy Minister Israel Katz said on Oct. 16 he opposed the opening of the blockade, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Oct. 17 that no aid should enter Gaza as long as Hamas held hostages.  

Israel began allowing aid in on Oct. 21 for the first time since the war started, but some human rights groups and legal experts have pointed to these statements and Israel’s actions that led to a hunger crisis as evidence that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Gaza. International law that governs armed conflicts states that “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including willfully impeding relief supplies” is a violation. 

Catriona Murdoch, a partner at Global Rights Compliance and legal expert who’s studied starvation in wars in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine tells TIME that when it comes to Israeli rhetoric, “it is really flagrant the way in which they are very clearly publicizing their intent.”

In response to TIME’s question about these accusations, Col. Elad Goren, the head of the civil department of COGAT, the Israeli agency that facilitates aid in Gaza, said in a virtual press briefing Friday that the “narrative of blockade—that is completely false.”

Goren says Israel is supplying 28 million liters (7.4 million gallons) of water daily to Gaza, has let in 126,000 tons of aid since the war started and increased the number of trucks carrying food from around 70 a day before the war to 109 daily this week. 

“According to our assessment, which is based on our conversations with the U.N. and other humanitarian agencies, there is a sufficient amount of food in Gaza and we continue to push the humanitarian agencies to collect more trucks at the borders and to distribute them. However, we hear voices calling for additional aid to be brought into Gaza,” Goren said in his opening remarks. “Israel has not and will not stand in the way of providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza that are not a part of terror. They are not our enemy.”

Read More: Gazans Have Nowhere Left to Flee

But Juliette Touma, Director of Communications at the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), tells TIME that the number of trucks, including commercial goods, going into Gaza has dropped from around 500 every working day since the war began, and there is not enough aid. The U.N. said that in the last week of December, food assistance only reached 8% of targeted people in need.

Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, tells TIME in an email Friday that “owing to Israeli restrictions, the level of life-saving humanitarian assistance entering the Gaza strip is minimal and is far below the survival needs of the civilian population.”

Goren said Israel was willing to increase aid as much as the U.N. can receive it, and the U.N. and others need to increase capacity with more trucks, workers and longer working hours as well as improving packing and implementing a QR system to track deliveries. 

UNRWA has pushed back on Israel’s statements that its agency is responsible for gaps in aid, and Secretary-General António Guterres said in December the real problem was “the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles.” The U.N. said it hasn’t been able to deliver food to north Gaza this week because of “delays and denials,” along with active combat.

The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs tells TIME in an email Friday that aid continues to be hindered by security risks and mobility constraints, including multiple inspections, long lines at checkpoints and damaged roads. 

“Inside Gaza, aid operations face constant bombardments, with aid workers themselves killed and some convoys having been shot at,” the office says. 

Touma tells TIME that IDF soldiers shot at an aid convoy traveling south between Gaza City and Nuseirat area on Dec. 28. In response to the report, Goren says Friday: “This is a war zone and we are facilitating access and movement by a lot of humanitarian organizations. If there is some claim, we will take all the information, investigate and we’ll give the answer to this agency.”

U.N. officials say a humanitarian ceasefire and the safe and unrestricted flow of supplies into Gaza, including commercial goods, are vital to avert famine. Israel should facilitate the entry and delivery of commensurate aid, Laurence says, adding that “failure to act in line with these obligations may have serious consequences under international law.” 

Some legal experts and advocates argue laws are already being violated. Human Rights Watch drew from Israeli officials’ statements, interviews with people in the territory about the lack of food and evidence of bombardment that has destroyed infrastructure and resources to accuse Israel in a December report of starvation as a war crime.

Starvation and sieges as a means or result of war are not uncommon. Other examples include in Biafra, Nigeria, Sarajevo, Bosnia, Syria and in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. 

However, Alex De Waal, Executive Director at the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, said in a recent article that the pace and scale of the destruction of objects indispensable to survival in Gaza “surpasses any other case of man-made famine in the last 75 years.”  

De Waal tells TIME that since there are warnings leading up to starvation, “if you don’t adjust your behavior according to that feedback, then you become responsible, because you are acting in the knowledge that this is the outcome.”

Read More: What Palestinian Children Face in Israeli Prisons

About Israel’s actions in Gaza, he says “the fact that they are continuing to mount this offensive … even when they know the outcome, that is recklessness, a second-degree crime, which qualifies as a crime against humanity in the legal arguments of most of the scholars.” 

Murdoch also says circumstantial evidence is sufficient to prove starvation as a war crime—if information exists that if a course of conduct is continued, it will lead to civilians starving, then those in charge can be held responsible. 

Starvation as a war crime has never been prosecuted, she says, but her organization has produced a report arguing it is happening in South Sudan and she wants her group to be allowed to conduct an independent investigation in Gaza. 

The issue could also be addressed on the global stage as the International Court of Justice reviews South’s Africa petition accusing Israel of genocidal intent, which mentions starvation. Israel has rejected the genocide claim and will fight the complaint, starting with a public hearing next week. 

But the case, which will likely drag on for years, does nothing for Shaheen’s family right now. They are miserable, she says, and her own emotions frozen as she watches their suffering from afar.

All she can do, she says, is call upon the warring parties for a “ceasefire now, and save the lives of the innocent civilians.”

source https://time.com/6552740/gaza-israel-starvation-hunger/

Blinken Opens Latest Mideast Tour in Turkey Amid Fears Gaza Conflict May Engulf Region

ISTANBUL — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken kicked off his latest urgent Middle East diplomatic mission in Turkey on Saturday, as fears mount that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza may explode into a broader conflict.

Blinken’s fourth visit in three months comes amid worrying developments outside of Gaza, including in Lebanon, northern Israel, the Red Sea and Iraq, that have put intense strains on what had been a modestly successful U.S. push to prevent a regional conflagration in the weeks after the war began, and growing international criticism of Israel’s military operation.

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Blinken met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to discuss what Turkey and others can do to exert influence, particularly on Iran and its proxies, to ease soaring tensions, speed up humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza and begin in earnest to plan for reconstruction and governance of postwar Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble by three months of intense Israeli bombardments.

The immediate difficulty of Blinken’s task was underscored just hours before his talks with Erdogan as Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia fired dozens of rockets at northern Israel, warning that the barrage was just an initial response to the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top leader from the allied Hamas group in Lebanon’s capital earlier this week.

Meanwhile, stepped-up attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have disrupted international trade and led to increased efforts on the part of the U.S. and its allies to patrol the area and respond to threats, including possibly taking direct action against the group at its bases in Yemen. The Houthis have carried out at least two dozen attacks in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza just since Dec. 19, which have further heightened tensions and raised risks for the global economy.

In Istanbul, U.S. officials said Blinken would be seeking Turkish buy-in, or at least consideration, of potential monetary or in-kind contributions to reconstruction efforts and some form of participation in a proposed multi-national force that could operate in or adjacent to the territory. Turkey, and Erdogan in particular, have been harshly critical of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the prosecution of the war and the impact it has had on Palestinian civilians.

In addition, officials said, Blinken will stress the importance the U.S. places on Turkey ratifying Sweden’s membership in NATO, a long-delayed process that the Turks have said they will complete soon. Sweden’s accession to the alliance is seen as one critical response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to a Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issues, Fidan told Blinken that Israel’s “increasing aggression” in Gaza was a threat to the region and called for an immediate cease-fire and the delivery of “uninterrupted” humanitarian aid. The Turkish minister said negotiations for a two-state solution should begin “as soon as possible.”

Fidan also said Turkey was awaiting the outcome of Ankara’s request to upgrade its fleet of F-16 fighter jets and stressed that the ratification of Sweden’s NATO membership lay in the hands of the Turkish parliament.

From Turkey, Blinken will travel to Turkish rival and fellow NATO ally Greece to meet Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at his residence on the Mediterranean island of Crete. Mitsotakis and his government have been supportive of U.S. efforts to prevent the Gaza war from spreading and have signaled their willingness to assist should the situation deteriorate further. Greece has also shown patience in waiting for the delivery of advanced U.S. fighter jets as the issue of Sweden’s accession to NATO is worked out with Turkey.

Blinken will end his Saturday in Jordan, which apart from Israel has been the secretary’s most frequent stop on his recent Middle East tours. Jordan will be the first Arab nation on Blinken’s current tour, and will be followed by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Sunday and Monday. Blinken will then visit Israel and the West Bank on Tuesday and Wednesday before wrapping up the trip in Egypt.

“We don’t expect every conversation on this trip to be easy,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said shortly before Blinken departed Washington late Thursday. “There are obviously tough issues facing the region and difficult choices ahead. But the secretary believes it is the responsibility of the United States of America to lead diplomatic efforts to tackle those challenges head-on, and he’s prepared to do that in the days to come.”

As well as pressing Israel for dramatic increases in humanitarian aid to Gaza, a shift toward less intense military operations and a concerted effort to rein in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank by Jewish settlers, Blinken will be urging reluctant Gulf Arab nations to work with the U.S. on the future of Gaza.

source https://time.com/6552732/blinken-mideast-tour-turkey-gaza-war-fears/

It’s Hard for a Nation to Come Back From Deprioritizing Democracy

On Jan. 6, 2021, the United States was at crossroads. For the first time in our history, the defeated candidate in a U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump, had refused to concede the election, summoning a violent mob to the Capitol to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. In the end, democracy and the rule of law prevailed as Vice President Mike Pence presided over the congressional certification of Biden’s election.

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In the days and weeks that followed, the future looked bright. A majority of Americans welcomed the return of a conventional president, breathing a sigh of relief that four years of a dangerously lawless administration capped by the failed coup attempt were at last in the rear-view mirror.

But optimism has since faded and the threat to democracy remains. Complacent Americans seem to believe that our institutional guardrails held last time and will again, whatever the outcome of the next election, even as Trump and his allies prepare to consolidate power aggressively in a second term. Even more alarming, too many voters have embraced Trump’s authoritarian turn, and are happy to sacrifice civil liberties for a leader they believe will make the country strong. While Trump has never commanded the support of more than a minority of voters, GOP efforts to downplay his autocratic tendencies and to normalize his strident nationalism may lull enough voters to push him over the finish line in the electoral college.

Read More: Holding World Leaders Like Trump Accountable Is Democratic

This siren song has worked in the past. Consider the case of Germany. Since the early 19th century, the German people, divided among 39 separate political entities in Central Europe, had longed for unification under a representative government. However, they were thwarted by their conservative rulers as well as the heavy hand of the multi-ethnic Austria Empire, whose rulers feared both revolutionary nationalism and democracy in neighboring states. The Austria army regularly helped German princes crush fledgling democratic movements.

However, in early 1848, revolutions broke out across Europe, beginning in France and spreading across the continent. People took to the streets and rioted in cities across Europe, demanding change. Opposition politicians in the German states took advantage of the chaos to demand that their princes form new, more liberal governments. In 1908, Carl Schurz, looking back at the fast-moving events he experienced as a student at Prussia’s University of Bonn in the spring of 1848, wrote that “the word democracy was soon on all tongues,” and that the “princes” and other conservative forces would not dare “try to withhold from the people the rights and liberties demanded.”

Indeed, rulers of the various German states and principalities, fearing that their rebellious subjects would start trying to take their rights by force, began to summon the liberal politicians they had previously ignored and promised governmental reforms. But this was no longer sufficient. In April, newly empowered German citizens elected delegates to a constitutional assembly to write a pan-German constitution. Its purpose was to establish more democratic governments in the individual German states, guarantee basic civil rights to all citizens, and most importantly, create a unified German nation-state—a “United States of Germany.”

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On May 18, 1848, the first national parliament in German history met at Frankfurt. The delegates were primarily the members of the German professional and business classes who took their responsibility to form a new national government seriously. In the heady days of May 1848, it appeared that the principles of liberalism and nationalism—that is the union of all German-speaking people under a government representing their interests—would triumph. Indeed, the first document the Frankfurt Parliament issued was a Declaration of the Fundamental Rights of the German People, which established the principles of freedom of speech and religion, equality before the law, and property rights.

But it wasn’t long before the conservative counterattack undercut the nascent representative governments throughout Europe. Reactionary rulers took advantage of class and ethnic conflict in their own countries to break down revolutionary solidarity and to bring a violent end to the newly established governments in France, Austria, Hungary, and Italy. In the German states, the Frankfurt Assembly worked diligently to resist the conservative backlash. In April 1849, the delegates asked King Frederick William of Prussia to lead the liberal empire their new constitution envisioned. However, he contemptuously refused to accept the imperial crown, leaving them without a head of state for their proposed nation. The moment for democratic reforms had passed. With no means of forcing the other German princes to accept their constitution and national unity, the delegates to the Frankfurt Assembly gave up and went home.

In short, the opportunity to fashion a liberal and constitutional German state failed. When Germany eventually unified in 1871, it would not be under a liberal constitution: it would be in the wake of Prussian-led war with Austria and France, under the aegis of Kaiser Wilhelm I and his conservative and autocratic minister-president, Otto von Bismarck. At this point, most Germans were willing to settle for unification, even if it meant that their political future would be authoritarian. The German people made the fateful decision to privilege nationalistic aspirations over democratic institutions, which set them on a dangerous path. While in 1848, German nationalists were hopeful that giving voice to democratic aspirations would lead organically to a unified Germany, that hope had faded by 1871. Too many Germans were willing to be convinced that “democracy” would weaken their nation, and that their rights, as Germans, were better protected under the wing of Prussia’s strong and militaristic state.

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The next opportunity to create a democratic German government wouldn’t come again for over half a century, in the wake of World War I. But at this point, German citizens had no tradition of democracy and would associate their new Weimar Republic with the dishonor of defeat rather than with their earlier efforts to establish a constitutional government. The Weimar Republic would also fail; resentment over the Versailles Treaty, the rigors of the Great Depression, and political extremists on the left and right led to its collapse—and to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. While it is too simplistic to trace a direct path from 1848 to Hitler’s assumption of power, in no country was the failure to institute democratic structures as consequential as it would be for Germany.

Those lessons matter for the United States today. At the close of that fateful day of Jan. 6, it appeared that Trump’s attempted coup had failed. But now the former president is far and away the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, promising to be a “dictator for one day” while at the same time asserting that he will employ the levers of power to exact revenge on his enemies and to protect himself from legal consequences for his former actions. Political scholars continue to warn Americans of the dire consequences of second Trump presidency, and no longer eschew the word fascism to describe his playbook. Defending democracy is a choice that will have to be made again in 2024—and then again in 2026, 2028, and into the future. Once a nation chooses or enables autocracy, that choice is difficult—if not impossible—to undo. The United States is approaching another crossroads soon, and it is not at all clear in which direction history will turn.

Christine Adams, a former American Council for Learned Societies and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow at the Newberry Library, is professor of history at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and author of The Creation of the French Royal Mistress with Tracy Adams. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here.

source https://time.com/6551522/january-6-democracy/