As Batteries Keep Catching Fire, U.S. Safety Agency Prepares For Change
Picture this: You’re at a park, on a walk, with a baby. A friendly middle-aged man approaches you and tells you your stroller could be really dangerous.
You might think, this man is crazy. But maybe not if you knew he’s the nation’s product safety chief.
Elliot Kaye expects to step down as chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission during the Trump administration, becoming one of the commissioners. Raquel Zaldivar/NPR hide caption
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Raquel Zaldivar/NPR
“I couldn’t live with myself if I walked away and it turned out that that child was harmed when I could’ve just said something,” Elliot Kaye says. His voice is soft-spoken and his worldview seems to fluctuate between pride in saving lives and the unease of someone who’s seen many things go wrong in unexpected ways. “You can’t help it; you just automatically see the hazards.”
Kaye is the chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It’s an agency that indeed typically gets the spotlight when things do go wrong — when furniture topples over toddlers, when window blinds strangle children, or, more recently, when smartphones explode.
And to many, the CPSC is the recall agency. But considering how tiny it is, its mission is vast. With the exception of cars, food, medications and a few other things, for thousands of products we buy and assume someone’s made sure are safe — cribs, lawn mowers, toasters, power tools, washing machines, office chairs — that someone is the CPSC.
A major category under CPSC’s scrutiny is electronics. And increasingly in recent years, there’s been the matter of batteries. They’ve overheated or caught fire in laptops, baby monitors, flashlights, and of course, those electric “hoverboard” scooters and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 phones.
Lithium-ion batteries are a known troublemaker — and a subject of numerous standards and international regulations. But the incidents keep cropping up.
“This is the way standards normally work,” Kaye says. “They identify a problem that is probably not a problem that needs to be solved in the future, and they’re really good at making sure that thing never happens again, but then new problems have developed.”
In October, Kaye introduced a new initiative to help the agency get a broader understanding of the battery industry and how to prevent rather than resolve hazards.
But then came the election and its unexpected result. Under President Donald Trump in 2017, Kaye is expected to step down as chairman to become a commissioner. “My hope is now with the election and potential leadership change here, that that work is not scuttled,” Kaye says.
When lithium-ion batteries overheat, the fluid inside the cells can catch fire. These are the remnants of a battery pack from a “hoverboard” scooter. Raquel Zaldivar/NPR hide caption
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Raquel Zaldivar/NPR
Competitive pressures
Leaning into an open plastic container, you can smell that unmistakable metallic odor of old batteries. The counters of the lab space are lined with large and medium-sized bins like rows of evidence boxes. Inside are electric hoverboard scooters and their battery packs, in varied stages of burn damage.
Doug Lee is holding out one exhibit. This battery pack burned up — scattering into scorched empty cylinders, like rusted shell casings. “Typically, they just all go one by one,” he says. “One goes into thermal runaway and that sets off the others.”
Doug Lee, electrical engineer at the National Product Testing and Evaluation Center, shows a CT scan of a damaged battery pack from a “hoverboard” scooter. Raquel Zaldivar/NPR hide caption
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Raquel Zaldivar/NPR
Lee is an electrical engineer and the battery guru at the CPSC testing lab, called the National Product Testing and Evaluation Center.
This is where police, fire, customs and other officials often send in troublesome products — sometimes hand-delivered in a cross-country relay. After a massive recall, hoverboards and their packaging are everywhere in the workshop.
This lab is also where government engineers are still testing some Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones. Lee and other CPSC officials declined to share any details of that investigation because it’s ongoing.
CPSC officials say they have concluded the review of the original batch of Note 7s, accepting Samsung’s explanation that the rounded-corner design of the battery triggered problems. Faults in connections between positively and negatively charged electrodes can result in short-circuits.
But government engineers are still investigating what caused fires in the Note 7s that were issued later as replacements, after Samsung said it switched battery suppliers. Samsung says its own investigation is ongoing. The company hasn’t disclosed what went wrong beyond originally citing a small manufacturing problem.
“We all want batteries that are smaller, that are more powerful, that discharge more slowly and charge more quickly,” Kaye says. “And I think that that might be pushing up against design limitations and certainly tightness of manufacturing restrictions of trying to get it right.
“You could have a great standard and you can have a great system in place,” he adds, “but if there are competitive pressures that push manufacturers … to their limits — which I think we may or may not have seen in the most recent instance — then those things go out the window.”
“Only trying to protect people“
Researchers at the National Product Testing and Evaluation Center investigate a wide array of products, including lithium-ion batteries (top left) from defective “hoverboard” scooters (bottom). They use a giant CT scanner to make high-resolution 3-D images and analyze products, such as cell-phone charging cords (top right). Raquel Zaldivar/NPR hide caption
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Raquel Zaldivar/NPR
The CPSC oversees the safety of some 15,000 product categories. It has a staff of 567. Fewer than 10 people work on its Internet surveillance team, tasked with ensuring that recalled products aren’t sold online. The agency’s budget is $125 million.
For comparison, the Food and Drug Administration has a budget of almost $5 billion, and its 2016 increase alone exceeded the entire CPSC budget for the year.
The CPSC is different: It does not approve products before they go to market, like the FDA. Its strongest power is the law that requires all companies to report known hazards in their products to the CPSC immediately.
Except for children’s products, which do go through regular testing required by the CPSC, the agency relies heavily on companies to comply with voluntary standards. To set new rules, the CPSC has to prove that the voluntary standards aren’t working.
Electrical engineer Doug Lee adds weights to the set-up the lab built to test hoverboards. Raquel Zaldivar/NPR hide caption
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Raquel Zaldivar/NPR
“Most people think it’s a good system,” says Hal Stratton, who chaired the CPSC under President George W. Bush from 2002 to 2006. He’s a free-market kind of guy. “When you think about the whole big picture, the market is pretty safe,” Stratton says.
To an extent, Kaye seems to agree: “What I’ve found is that most of the people want to do the right thing most of the time,” he says. “They just haven’t been asked.”
Or sometimes, they’re clueless. “I’ve talked to entrepreneurs,” Kaye says, “who say to me, ‘I never would have thought of that. We’re so busy raising money, trying to get it to work, filing our patents, getting to market, finding a manufacturer, finding a supplier — we never thought about consumer safety.’ “
All five members of the bipartisan commission voted to approve Kaye’s new battery initiative, including the Republicans who might succeed Kaye in the chairman’s seat. The directive to staff is very broad: to work closely with other agencies and companies, to figure out what may be missing — gaps in standards, international cooperation, enforcement, something else.
“Is it that the right companies just are making mistakes, or is it all black-market counterfeits that are causing most of these problems? We just don’t know,” Kaye says.
For consumer advocates, the main criticism and worry is that like many government bureaucracies, the CPSC moves slowly. For Kaye, the concern is that the new leadership will come with a much more hands-off philosophy or that the new Congress will tighten the agency’s budget.
“If we were building defense systems, I’m sure that we’d be funded at a factor of 10,” he says, then adds, without change of tone: “We’re only trying to protect people and save their lives. That doesn’t get you big budgets.”
Stratton counters that when he was chairman, “nobody told me what to do, nobody tried to restrict my budget.” He says, “We had all the money we could spend,” and adds: “It depends on what you want to do.”
When Stratton left the CPSC in 2006, the agency’s budget was $67 million.
Inside The Climate Change Dispute Between Exxon Mobil And Rockefeller Family
Exxon Mobil is accusing the Rockefeller family of masterminding a conspiracy against the company on climate change. New York Times reporter John Schwartz tells the story.
LAKSHMI SINGH, HOST:
Oil and gas giant ExxonMobil is accusing one of America’s best known philanthropic families, the Rockefellers, of using their wealth and influence to mastermind a conspiracy against ExxonMobil. To find out more, we reached John Schwartz, a science writer for The New York Times. He joined us from New York, and I asked him to walk us through Exxon’s allegations.
JOHN SCHWARTZ: They’re saying that the Rockefeller family through funding lots of private organizations and encouraging attorneys general has been at the center of a network of activism that has gone after ExxonMobil both for its past research and its present statements and past statements about climate change. And they used the word conspiracy in saying it, and the attacks have gotten pretty fierce.
SINGH: It’s not unusual for them to use the word conspiracy or is it?
SCHWARTZ: It’s not the kind of language that you normally hear from corporations, but Exxon when challenged can be pretty tough. Now, the point of contention is over how much Exxon actually knew. There’s a whole hashtag and activist movement built around the idea that Exxon knew uniquely that climate change had catastrophic consequences for the planet and used this knowledge both to improve its processes and to plan its – for instance, floating platforms and stuff like that, but that it also fought climate change regulation and fought action in Washington by funding activist groups, by funding groups that would spread doubt about whether climate change is real or not to emphasize the controversy.
SINGH: How is the Rockefeller family responding to ExxonMobil’s accusations?
SCHWARTZ: You know, they’re very private people. I mean, Rockefellers have run for office, but they don’t generally go out and make big public statements about things. And, in this case, as they’ve increasingly come under fire, they’ve decided to fight back.
And so David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman who runs the Rockefeller Family Fund, they together wrote a piece for The New York Review of Books that lays out the Rockefeller family positions over time, how they’ve tried to work with Exxon quietly as large shareholders to get the company to change its ways and then talked about their funding and who they funded and why, what they’re doing is civic engagement and not a conspiracy. And so they are going out and, you know – and standing their ground.
SINGH: You know, John, your article points to irony in these claims because much of the family’s wealth actually comes from John D. Rockefeller’s founding of Standard Oil which later became ExxonMobil. So how does this generally – taking a step back – how does this generally square with the family?
SCHWARTZ: Well, first of all, they are fully conscious of the fact that Rockefellers going against Exxon is news in and of itself. And they hoped that the weirdness of that would propel the story, and it has. Look, they got in the New York Times, OK? You know, it’s – it is an attention-getting stand for them to take, but it is not a stand inconsistent with the way the family has been over the last few generations that they have been very big in conservation, environmental protection and very, very focused on climate change both in their personal work and their philanthropies since the ’80s.
You know, when they talk about their – like David Kaiser’s great-great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller and other members of the family I’ve spoken with, what they say is, look, he was a very smart person. If he were alive today, he wouldn’t be betting everything on fossil fuels, and he would be looking toward moving into renewable and alternative energy because those things are going to be the profit centers of the future. And he was always looking toward the future.
SINGH: That’s New York Times science writer John Schwartz. John, thank you so much for joining us.
SCHWARTZ: It’s a pleasure.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Holiday Shoppers Expected To Spend Most Money Online
Early indications are that Black Friday will be healthy for retailers, But analysts say the Black Friday fever has broken. Almost all the growth in holiday retail sales are in online and mobile shopping. One in six holiday dollars will be spent online giving consumers more bargaining power.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
As I probably don’t have to remind you, today is Black Friday, when retailers traditionally begin turning a profit. NPR’s Sonari Glinton has been out with shoppers since he got up from the Thanksgiving table last night. He is now at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall in South Los Angeles where he’s been talking to people about their plans. We’re going to listen to a little bit of what they have to say first.
CLAUDETTE JOHNSON: I’ve been to Black Fridays many times.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: She’s a veteran.
JOHNSON: I’m a veteran.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: That’s right.
JOHNSON: I am, and I hated them. They’re crazy. They’re nuts.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: She got up at 3 o’clock in the morning and got TVs.
JOHNSON: (Laughter).
GAIL OTERO: Yeah, I’m being a little bit more conservative.
SONARI GLINTON, BYLINE: Why is that?
OTERO: Just not knowing what to expect in this new administration.
KAREN KEARNS: You avoid the crowds, you avoid the parking, the hassle, and you get – sometimes you get better specials online.
SHAPIRO: That was Claudette Johnson, Gail Otero and Karen Kearns. And Sonari Glinton is on the line with us now. Hey, there.
GLINTON: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Besides all the shoppers you’ve been talking to, you have been checking in with some economists and analysts. What are they saying about this Black Friday?
GLINTON: Well, we expect more foot traffic. The presidential election distracted shoppers, and so they’re coming back after that. The stock market is good, so that means that people at the top end of the scale will have more money to spend. And also you might think that this isn’t that important, but there isn’t a big blockbuster in movie theaters like last year when there were “Star Wars” that hit right in the middle of shopping season. So we expect malls to be packed and people to be standing in lines, but it’s not as big as it used to be.
SHAPIRO: Not as big as it used to be – why not? Especially when unemployment is low, wages are up, gas is cheap, seems like it would be a big deal.
GLINTON: Well, the election is one thing. A recent study by ShopTalk showed that people who are making less than $50,000 say that they’re going to spend less because they’re concerned about the election. Also, retailers are offering discounts literally that began at Halloween, so it’s become more like Black November. And also, this has been an unseasonably warm year, so folks haven’t had to invest in, you know, that heavy winter coat yet. And then finally there’s the online sales where shoppers are getting smarter about finding deals.
SHAPIRO: It seems like we hear every year that online sales, mobile sales are growing. Are they threatening to overtake in-store sales?
GLINTON: Well, 1 in 6 dollars spent this holiday season will be spent online, and that’s double what it was just a few years ago. Overall, retail is looking like it’ll grow between – about 3.7 percent. But online sales – they’re going to increase by 15 percent. So, Ari, people will still go out and stand in line and have fun, but Black Friday has kind of jumped the shark. It’s like “The Godfather” – the third “Godfather.” You know, it still has Al Pacino and Diane Keaton, but it’s a little different. And that’s the way Black Friday is going to be.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) NPR’s Sonari Glinton speaking with us from the Black Friday crowds in South Los Angeles. Thanks, Sonari.
GLINTON: Always a pleasure, my friend.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
After Disorder Threatens Honey Bees, Wild Bees Get More Pollinating Jobs
Beekeepers are still losing honey bees to colony collapse disorder, though the crisis isn’t as bad as a few years ago. Scientists are looking at other kinds of bees to pollinate crops: wild ones.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
OK. Now let’s look at the business of bees. Much of the food on the Thanksgiving table depends on bees for pollination, like the apples in your apple pie, for example. Well, turns out, professional beekeepers have had a rough go recently because of something called colony collapse disorder. Some farmers have been using wild bees as Molly Samuel from member station WABE reports.
MOLLY SAMUEL, BYLINE: Joe Dickey picks apples in his orchard in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Georgia on the Tennessee border.
JOE DICKEY: Right now I’m just kind of lightening the load of these small trees so they won’t break.
SAMUEL: He bought the property more than 50 years ago, when he was 17, with money he saved from shining shoes.
DICKEY: We’ve got a couple of thousand trees now. We’ve got 16 varieties of apples – planted every tree with a shovel.
SAMUEL: One thing Dickey doesn’t need to do is rent honeybees.
DICKEY: I didn’t know I didn’t need to because everybody else was using them.
SAMUEL: The reason he didn’t is because wild bees already swarm his orchard. Honeybees aren’t native to North America. But there are more than 4,000 species of wild bees that are.
NICK STEWART: The first time I came here during bloom was eye-opening for me.
SAMUEL: Nick Stewart studies bees at Georgia Gwinnett College.
STEWART: It looked almost like the entire orchard was kind of on fire a little bit. It was smoking a little bit, like a faint black mist. Get up in there and you actually realize it’s not smoke. It’s just thousands and thousands and thousands of bees. And they’re all native.
SAMUEL: He’s working with his colleague Mark Schlueter to study how more farms can use those wild bees.
MARK SCHLUETER: What we have right here is this wildflower patch.
SAMUEL: Everything is in bloom and vibrating with bees. Schlueter says this is where the science is happening. The idea is to attract wild bees with these flowers when the apple trees aren’t blooming, so that when the trees do Bloom, the insects will already be here, ready to get to work.
SCHLUETER: You can see that they’re – just in a small area, you’ve already seen over a dozen species.
SAMUEL: Bumblebees, carpenter bees, a bright emerald green one with black and yellow stripes that’s a kind of sweat bee. There are similar research projects in other parts of the country, including at big farms out in California. But relying on wild bees isn’t necessarily simple. Different kinds live in different regions and pollinate different things. So it’s not a one-size-fits-all science. Diana Cox-Foster is with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
DIANA COX-FOSTER: It’s not like you can just plug in a wild bee and expect them to be healthy.
SAMUEL: Still, relying on the wild bees is working for apple farmer Joe Dickey. This is his first year he hasn’t used honeybees.
DICKEY: It’s as good a crop as I’ve ever had. And I think maybe that’s due to not as much frost, plus the pollination, you know. But I’m real pleased with my crop this year.
SAMUEL: The scientists say this research isn’t about replacing honeybees. It’s about helping the insects out, having a backup plan and supporting the wildlife that’s been here all along. For NPR News, I’m Molly Samuel in McCaysville, Ga.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
Voters Backed Transit Funds. Will Congress OK Trump Infrastructure Plan?
San Francisco Bay area voters recently approved a sales tax increase to upgrade the aging BART system. Ben Margot/AP hide caption
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Ben Margot/AP
On a night that the national election results had her discouraged, Seattle resident Anne Johnson had at least one ballot measure to celebrate: ST3, which will raise the local sales tax in the Seattle-Tacoma area to help pump $54 billion into expanding the region’s rail and bus systems. It passed by a wide margin.
“That is awesome, and we’ve put a lot of work into that, and I’m excited for the direction that that will take Seattle,” says Johnson, who adds that the transit improvements will help people get to their jobs, to school and will have environmental benefits, too.
And Seattle voters aren’t alone in approving new transit funding. San Francisco Bay area voters OK’d a tax increase to upgrade the aging BART system. Los Angeles County voters backed a tax increase to expand light rail, commuter rail and bus rapid transit service. And Atlanta voters approved expanding that city’s transit lines.
One of the unheralded national stories from Election Day is just how well trains and buses did at the ballot box, as voters in dozens of cities approved local tax increases to expand and improve public transit.
“Election Day 2016 was historic for ballot measures that supported investment in public transportation,” says Jason Jordan, director of the Center for Transportation Excellence, which tracks such ballot initiatives.
“We saw a record number of measures on ballots,” Jordan says. “There were 77 measures nationwide; 71 percent of those passed. That accounts for almost $170 billion in new transit funding.”
That’s funding that would come directly out of local residents’ pockets, not from Washington.
Transit didn’t just win in big cities and blue states, Jordan adds. Voters approved referendums to boost spend more money on transit in more traditionally car-centric cities, too, including measures for new rail and bus rapid transit in Raleigh, N.C., public transportation projects in Charleston, S.C., and transit expansions in Columbus and Toledo, Ohio, and Indianapolis, among other cities.
“There’s an infrastructure deficit out there, and that’s existing everywhere, red state or blue state,” says Art Guzzetti of the American Public Transportation Association.
Seattle: Sound Transit 3, or ST3, is the third phase of a massive Puget Sound regional transit plan. It increases the sales tax primarily — but includes property and other taxes, too — to raise $27.7 billion over 25 years. All funding goes toward a $54 billion transit expansion plan that would add 62 miles of new light rail to areas that don’t have transit access. It also would add new bus rapid transit to the I-405 corridor, and it would fund other transit services.
San Francisco Bay Region: Bay Area Rapid Transit’s Measure RR is a property tax increase to raise $3.5 billion to update, repair and replace aging infrastructure, to allow for more frequent and reliable service across the BART system.
Los Angeles County: Measure M raises the sales tax a half cent and will generate $120 billion over 40 years to fund the county’s long-term transportation plan, including new light rail extensions, new bus rapid transit, some commuter rail and some will go to expanding roads and highways. About two-thirds of the funding overall goes to transit.
Atlanta: Voters approved a sales tax increase of 0.5 percent to raise $2.5 billion to fund expansion of the MARTA system, including several light rail extensions.
Indianapolis/Marion County: Voters approved a quarter-percent income tax increase to raise $1.68 billion over 30 years to fund the IndyGo Transit plan. Projects include three new bus rapid transit routes include the 35-mile electric BRT Red Line.
Raleigh/Wake County, N.C.: Voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase to raise $1 billion over 10 years to fund the Wake County Transit plan, including commuter rail between Durham and Raleigh and new bus rapid transit in four directions from downtown Raleigh.
Now transit advocates hope to capitalize on President-elect Donald Trump’s call to spend up to $1 trillion on infrastructure, a plan which Guzzetti says should now gain bipartisan support in Washington.
“Both sides have an inclination of getting this issue on the agenda early. Both sides believe in infrastructure, and it’s definitely going to be one of the first issues taken up by the next Congress,” Guzzetti says.
Trump’s call to spend big on infrastructure might be the only plan of his that congressional Democrats agree with, and many Republicans, who rejected most of the same kinds of infrastructure funding plans proposed by the Obama administration, now seem to be on board, too.
So what could go wrong?
“It very quickly gets to be much more difficult and complicated when we talk about how we’re gonna pay for this,” says Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski of Chicago, who sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
He’s not so sure his Republican colleagues will go along with funding public transit in big Democratic-voting cities such as his, and even if they do, he’s skeptical about one of the possible funding sources.
Trump wants to create an infrastructure bank, using tax credits to leverage private investment in infrastructure projects. But Lipinski says those are essentially loans that would have to be paid back with revenue from something like tolls.
“We do not, first of all, want to make every road a toll road,” says Lipinski. “And there are things such as public transportation which would not ever get funded in this manner.”
Transportation consultant Steve Schlickman says infrastructure banks are good for toll roads, airports, port facilities and other projects that generate revenue from their users.
Schlickman, who is also former executive director of Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority and the former director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois-Chicago, says any project funded through an infrastructure bank must have the ability to generate enough revenue to pay back the loan.
“The vast majority of our public infrastructure can’t do that,” he says. “What about free roads, mass transit, pedestrian ways, bike ways. They don’t pay for themselves.”
Trump also suggests another funding source for infrastructure projects: repatriation of profits corporations hold overseas. But there are big disagreements over how much to tax those profits and how much money it would really bring in.
Plus, Schlickman says that’s just a one-time source of funds.
“That’s not the type of revenue stream that you would want to rely on,” he says. “But at this point, if that’s all that’s politically doable, then fine, let’s do it.”
Schlickman and other transportation experts say while a long-term funding source, like an increase in the gas tax, is still needed, now is not the time for transit advocates to quibble over such matters.
“I’m very, very happy that we have a president-elect that wants to do something big in infrastructure,” Schlickman says. “Now let’s try and take advantage of that enthusiasm and that leadership and let’s work with him and try to get the best deal we can for everyone.”
Can Trump's International Business Dealings Violate The Constitution?
President-elect Donald Trump points to a reporter at Trump International Hotel in Washington. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption
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Alex Brandon/AP
Donald Trump’s extensive business dealings around the globe have focused attention on an obscure provision of the Constitution most law professors barely look at – the Emoluments Clause. Now, one of the hottest legal debates around is whether the President-Elect is going to be violating the Constitution if he continues doing business with companies controlled by foreign governments.
Who even used the word “emolument” in an actual sentence before November 2016?
“Emolument” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the returns arising from office or employment usually in the form of compensation or perquisites.”
The Foreign Emoluments Clause can be found in Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution. It provides that “no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States] shall, without Consent of Congress, accept … any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
The clause has been interpreted as an anti-bribery provision by constitutional scholars.
“The underlying concern of the clause is divided loyalties,” said Erik Jensen, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University. “The Founders wanted U.S. officials not to have any arrangements under which there could be questions about whether they were acting in the best interests of the United States, or in the interests of a foreign state.”
Trump’s companies do deal with businesses that are controlled or influenced by foreign government officials. And legal experts say the potential for constitutional violations is high.
Take the Bank of China, for example. It’s a lender for one of Trump’s buildings in Midtown Manhattan. If the Bank of China were to offer Trump a lower interest rate on that loan after he takes office, it might raise an Emoluments Clause issue. Some legal scholars say it could be perceived as an attempt to curry favor with the President or influence policy.
So what is a violation of the Emoluments Clause?
Problem is, what constitutes a violation of the Emoluments Clause is a tangled conversation that very quickly involves lots of hypotheticals – because there is virtually no case law on the subject.
Not only have prior Presidents been careful to steer clear of any perceived violations of the clause, there’s never been a President like Trump whose companies have such vast global reach. And Trump hasn’t fully disclosed the full extent of his global business dealings.
So all legal experts can do now is pose possible scenarios.
Objects Versus Services
Richard Painter, who was chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007, likes to use this example: Imagine the President sells a car to the Queen of England. If the Queen pays the President fair market value for the car, it’s not a violation of the Emoluments Clause. If the payment the President receives exceeds the fair market value of the car, there could be a violation. The amount of over-payment could be seen as a gift, or “present,” under the clause.
But let’s say we’re not talking about an object, like a car. What if the President renders services for a foreign government and receives compensation for those services? That would fall under the definition of “emolument.” And in that case, Painter says, it doesn’t matter if the compensation amounts to fair market value. It’s straight-up compensation for services rendered, so it’s banned as an emolument under the clause.
Here’s how a President Trump might one day render services for foreign government officials. Say a bunch of diplomats from a foreign country stay at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Painter says you could interpret that as services rendered by Trump – and under the Emoluments Clause, he can’t enrich himself from those rendered services.
“The services theory would be along the lines of, ‘Well, if Donald Trump himself as President could not perform services for the foreign government, he can’t have his hired help – people who work for him in that hotel – provide those services and then he receives the payment.’ That would be an end-run around the prohibition on any type of emolument,” said Painter.
The issue of whether a U.S. government official is violating the Emoluments Clause for services rendered actually does comes up in real life now, says Ken Gross, a government ethics lawyer in Washington, D.C. Sometimes government officials go on a foreign detail or sabbatical and want to earn compensation for teaching at a government-funded university in that foreign country. In those cases, Gross said, U.S. government officials have had to forego pay to avoid violations of the clause.
The role of Congress
Under the clause, Congress has the power to consent to any business dealings that raise questions. But if even legal experts are scratching their heads about what constitutes a violation of the Emoluments Clause, imagine how lawmakers would feel entering this legal morass.
“What this does is put Congress in an almost impossible situation of judging the fair market value of financial transactions between state-run entities and the Trump Organization,” said Zephyr Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University. She was a Democratic candidate for Congress in New York this year.
And if Congress dodges its duty under this clause – and refrains from ever voting to approve or reject possible Emolument Clause violations — Teachout says Congress will be acting unconstitutionally.
“This is an active obligation on the part of Congress,” said Teachout. “So if Trump goes forward with his plan to maintain a Trump Organization with relationships to state-controlled companies, it’s not just Trump, but it’s Congress that is in violation.”
Who can bring a legal claim against Trump for a violation?
Because there’s been no real litigation of the Emoluments Clause, legal experts say it’s hard to define who has legal standing to bring a claim for any possible violation.
Legal standing depends on how you articulate the injury. Here’s one theory of injury: Trump is enriching himself at the expense of companies that can’t compete for business the way the President of the United States can. So maybe a company that’s lost business because of some financial transaction between Trump Organization and a foreign government could articulate a legal claim.
Or, the perceived harm could be more nebulous. Here’s another theory of injury: Trump is opening himself up to attempts by foreign governments that want to influence U.S. policy. But who would have standing to bring a legal claim in that case? Legal experts say it’s not clear.
So how does Trump avoid any violations of the Emoluments Clause?
Painter says the best option for Trump is to simply liquidate his stake in his company – that is, take the company public, sell off all his shares and put the cash proceeds in a blind trust. That way, if there are any entanglements between the Trump Organization and foreign countries – he’ll be cleared of any conflicts.
But nobody’s holding their breath for that to happen anytime soon.
Jensen says he can already hear Trump’s counterargument. “He’s going to make at least two points. One, ‘You force somebody like me to do that, and you’re providing a tremendous disincentive for people who have been successful in business to enter the public sphere,'” said Jensen. “He also might say, ‘If I have to sell everything very quickly, in effect a fire sale, … I will end up getting a lot less than the real value.'”
Trump Airs Grievances, Fields Questions In Meeting With Top TV News Figures
Media executives and anchors met from the top five TV networks met with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Monday. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption
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Mark Lennihan/AP
Earlier Monday at Trump Tower in New York City, President-elect Donald Trump, top aides and advisers including Kellyanne Conway, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer met with executives and anchors from five major television networks. Trump used the opportunity to admonish the network’s journalists and executives for what he said was the networks’ unfair coverage of him. But he also said he wanted to re-frame his relationship with the press and took extensive questions about policy and his intentions in office.
This account is largely based on an interview with an attendee who took detailed notes.
Among the participants from the news side were ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and David Muir, NBC’s Lester Holt and NBC news president Deborah Turness, CBS’s John Dickerson, Gayle King, and Norah O’Donnell, Fox News’ Bill Shine and Jay Wallace, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Zucker. The meeting’s content was to be off-the-record but many participants were photographed as they entered through the Trump Tower lobby. The New York Post’s Page Six gossip site had a detailed version that appeared to put the event in the most contentious light possible.
Trump started the meeting by saying how great it was for so many network news anchors to be there, calling it unprecedented and citing it as a reflection of the importance of his election. Ultimately, Blitzer noted that such meetings were a fairly common annual ritual between presidents and anchors ahead of State of the Union addresses. Trump then said the presence of the executives made the meeting unprecedented.
Trump lit out after Zucker, criticizing his former business partner (Zucker was head of NBC during Trump’s Apprentice franchise on the network) for CNN. He turned then to NBC, saying it was the worst, criticizing its reporters, and saying it could not even come up with a flattering picture to broadcast. His complaint: the network’s photographs showed him with multiple chins. NBC President Deborah Turness replied that wasn’t true – NBC right now is using a photograph that shows Trump in very flattering way, she said. Trump also criticized a reporter who he said was in the room who had moderated a debate but who he had been told was very upset when Clinton lost. Presumably that was a reference to ABC’s Martha Raddatz or NBC’s Lester Holt.
Conway interceded to say that the new Trump administration appreciated the press corps’s hard work during the campaign and wanted a reset on its relationship to the press. Trump concurred and repeated the point, though he said he disliked the phrase “reset” because it reminded him of Hillary Clinton’s initial outreach to the Russians when she was starting as Secretary of State.
Trump said he wanted a relationship with the press that was “cordial and productive.” CBS’s Gayle King asked what would constitute such a relationship but it wasn’t clear what that meant beyond off the record meetings such as that one.
After that first 10 to 15 minutes, according to this attendee, Trump invited questions about his policies, appointments, and intentions, showing an interest in detail and implications.
The participant who spoke to NPR said Trump appeared as though he was irritated but working the refs, as when then President George W. Bush complained the press was acting as the filter of his remarks and policies. However a second source – a network official debriefed by colleagues who attended – said it did not feel like a reset of the relationship to them.
The off-the-record meeting lasted about an hour. And Trump posted a video on social media – bypassing the conventional press – to explain to the public, on the record, how the presidential transition was proceeding.
Questions About Trump Trailed Obama On His Final Foreign Trip As President
U.S. President Barack Obama answers questions during his news conference at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Lima, Peru on Sunday. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP hide caption
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Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
President Barack Obama said Sunday he’d avoided ethical scandals throughout his administration by trying to follow the spirit, not just the letter of the law, and suggested President-elect Donald Trump would be wise to follow his example.
Closing out his final foreign trip, Obama was asked about the complex conflict-of-interest questions Trump faces as he transitions from real estate mogul to Oval Office occupant. Though Obama declined to explicitly offer Trump advice, the president said he’d been served well by selling his assets and investing them in Treasury bills.
“It simplified my life,” Obama said. “I did not have to worry about the complexities of whether a decision that I made might even inadvertently benefit me.”
Good government advocates have criticized Trump’s decision not to liquidate his sprawling business interests, but put them in a blind trust entrusted to his children, who are playing major roles in helping him form his administration and are expected to remain involved in one capacity or another.
Obama said he was proud his administration hadn’t faced the scandals he said have “plagued” other administrations. He said after eight years, he felt he could tell Americans he’d lived up to his promise to run an accountable and ethical government.
He summed up the rule of thumb his first White House counsel used to come up with policies for his administration: “If it sounds like it would be fun, then you can’t do it.”
Obama’s remarks came as he concluded his final world tour as president. For Obama, it was the last time he’d take questions on foreign soil, a staple of his overseas trips that his administration has seen as an important symbol of America’s commitment to a rigorous free press.
Obama chatted briefly earlier Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the summit got under way. The conversation, which was likely to be the leaders’ last face-to-face interaction, lasted just four minutes.
Obama later told reporters he encouraged Putin to uphold his country’s commitments under the Minsk deal aimed at ending the Ukraine conflict. Both the White House and the Kremlin said the leaders had agreed that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov should keep working throughout Obama’s final months on initiatives to lower violence in Syria and alleviate suffering.
Putin, speaking later in Lima, said he and Obama had noted that while their working relationship had been difficult, they’d “always respected each other’s positions — and each other.”
“I thanked him for the years of joint work, and said that at any time, if he considers it possible and will have the need and desire, we will be happy to see him in Russia,” Putin said.
The short interaction came amid intense speculation and concern about whether Trump’s election might herald a more conciliatory U.S. approach to Russia. Under Obama, the U.S. has enacted severe sanctions on Russia over its aggressive behavior in Ukraine and has sought unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to stop intervening in Syria’s civil war to help prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Questions about Trump trailed Obama throughout his final overseas trip, as anxious world leaders quizzed him on Trump’s stances on key issues like trade, foreign policy and the NATO alliance. On his final day in Peru, Obama sought to reassure world leaders gathered here that their longstanding ties with the U.S. wouldn’t falter under Trump.
Sitting down with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia, Obama said he assured Turnbull that the alliance between their countries would remain as strong as ever. Turnbull said he and Obama were of the mind on trade — an issue Trump sees quite differently. Still, he added that Australia wanted the U.S. to succeed under Trump.
Both the U.S. and Australia helped negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade agreement involving 10 other Pacific Rim countries. But Congress is unlikely to ratify the deal, dealing a blow to Obama’s once high hopes of having the agreement become part of his presidential legacy. Trump says trade deals can hurt U.S. workers, and he opposes TPP.
Obama, who met with TPP country leaders the day before, said they’d told him they want to move ahead with the deal.
“Preferably, they’d like to move forward with the United States,” Obama said.
He alluded to a competing deal China is trying to broker that he said would be worse for workers and environmental concerns.
Meeting with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Obama said he had no doubt the close and important U.S.-Canada relationship will persist after he leaves office, saying that’s been constant with Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Trudeau said he’s invited President-elect Donald Trump to visit Canada soon after Inauguration Day and hopes to welcome him to Canada.
President Barack Obama said Sunday he doesn’t intend to become his successor’s constant critic — but reserved the right to speak out if President-elect Donald Trump or his policies breach certain “values or ideals.”
Offering a rare glimpse into his thoughts on his post-presidency, Obama suggested once he was out of office he would uphold the tradition of ex-presidents stepping aside quietly to allow their successors space to govern. He heaped praise on former President George W. Bush, saying he “could not have been more gracious to me when I came in” and said he wanted to give Trump the same chance to pursue his agenda “without somebody popping off” at every turn.
But Obama suggested there may be limits to his silence.
“As an American citizen who cares deeply about our country, if there are issues that have less to do with the specifics of some legislative proposal or battle or go to core questions about our values and ideals, and if I think that it’s necessary or helpful for me to defend those ideals, I’ll examine it when it comes,” Obama told reporters.
Obama, who has consistently praised Bush for the way he’s handled his ex-presidency, faces a conundrum about how to handle his own. Though he’s vowed to ensure a smooth handover of power, Obama is keenly aware he’s being replaced by a new president whose views on many issues are antithetical to his own.
The president spoke out vigorously throughout the campaign against Trump’s calls for banning Muslim immigrants, deporting millions of people living in the U.S. illegally, reinstituting waterboarding, repealing “Obamacare” and canceling the Paris climate deal, to name a few. Those policy proposals and others like them have stoked fear for many Americans who oppose Trump and are hoping that vehement opposition from Obama and other Democrats might prevent Trump from implementing them.
Yet Obama suggested that while he might not always hold his tongue, his goal wasn’t to spend his time publicly disparaging the next president.
“My intention is to, certainly for the next 2 months, just finish my job,” Obama said. “And then after that, to take Michelle on vacation, get some rest, spend time with my girls, and do some writing, do some thinking.”
Obama’s remarks at a news conference in Lima offered some of his most specific indications to date of how he feels Democrats and Trump opponents should handle the next four years. Asked whether Democrats in the Senate should follow Republicans’ example of refusing to even consider a Supreme Court nominee, Obama said they should not.
“You give them a hearing,” said Obama, whose own Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, has lingered for more than half a year due to the GOP’s insistence that no Obama nominee be considered. Obama said he certainly didn’t want Democrats to adopt that tactic spearheaded this year by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
“That’s not why the American people send us to Washington, to play those games,” Obama said.
He declined to weigh in explicitly on whether House Democrats should stick with Rep. Nancy Pelosi as minority leader, arguing it was improper to meddle in the vote. But he said of the California Democrat, who faces a challenge for the leadership post: “I cannot speak highly enough of Nancy Pelosi.”
Obama’s remarks came as he concluded his final world tour as president. For Obama, it was the last time he’d take questions on foreign soil, a staple of his overseas trips that his administration has seen as an important symbol of America’s commitment to a rigorous free press.
Obama said he’d avoided ethical scandals by trying to follow the spirit, not just the letter, of the law, and suggested Trump would be wise to follow his example about conflicts of interest. Though he declined to explicitly offer Trump advice, Obama said he’d been served well by selling his assets and investing them in Treasury bills.
“It simplified my life,” Obama said. “I did not have to worry about the complexities of whether a decision that I made might even inadvertently benefit me.”
Good government advocates have criticized Trump’s decision not to liquidate his sprawling business interests, but put them in a blind trust entrusted to his children, who are playing major roles in helping him form his administration and are expected to remain involved in one capacity or another.
On his final day in Peru, Obama chatted briefly with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine and the Syria crisis. The four-minute conversation, likely the leaders’ last face-to-face interaction, came amid intense speculation and concern about whether Trump’s election might herald a more conciliatory U.S. approach to Russia
Putin, speaking later in Lima, said he and Obama had noted that while their working relationship had been difficult, they’d “always respected each other’s positions — and each other.”
“I thanked him for the years of joint work, and said that at any time, if he considers it possible and will have the need and desire, we will be happy to see him in Russia,” Putin said later.
Questions about Trump trailed Obama throughout his final overseas trip, as anxious world leaders quizzed him on Trump’s stances on key issues like trade, foreign policy and the NATO alliance. Obama sought to reassure Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other leaders gathered in Peru that their longstanding ties with the U.S. wouldn’t falter under Trump.
'Misinformation' On Facebook: Zuckerberg Lists Ways Of Fighting Fake News
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company is responding to sharp criticisms over fake stories appearing in its news feeds. He’s seen here speaking Saturday at the APEC CEO Summit, part of the broader Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Lima. Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
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Rodrigo Buendia/AFP/Getty Images
Facebook could start labeling stories that might be false, company founder Mark Zuckerberg says, laying out options for how the site handles what he calls “misinformation.” Other ideas include automatic detection of potentially false stories and easier flagging by users.
“While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have much more work ahead on our roadmap,” Zuckerberg wrote in a posting to his Facebook profile last night.
Zuckerberg outlined seven projects his company is working on that could undermine fake news stories. The approaches range from consulting with journalists and fact-checking organizations to disrupting the flow of money in the often-lucrative online fake news business.
“We are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed,” Zuckerberg wrote of one initiative. Of another, he said, “A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam. We’re looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection.”
The idea of using software to classify misinformation is sure to generate discussion. Zuckerberg says it would bring “better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.” He didn’t specify what the effects of that determination might be — whether it would mean the removal of the content from certain news feeds or from the site altogether.
Several of the highest-rated comments on Zuckerberg’s post were positive, with this idea from George Papa ranking near the top: “If people had a bit of brain and did some research on their own when they read something that does not sound right…we would not have this problem.”
Together, the projects signal another step in Facebook’s evolution from its start as a tech-oriented company to its current status as a complex media platform. The company has come under criticism that its news feeds and ad payment systems are too welcoming of fake news, particularly after a contentious presidential campaign season that culminated in last week’s upset win by Donald Trump.
Trump’s Nov. 8 election left many pollsters and pundits mystified. It also prompted social media users to complain that Facebook and other sites had kept people in bubbles of like-minded opinion; some also said that fake news had influenced the vote.
Days after the election, Zuckerberg sought to allay those complaints, saying that fake news makes up a “very small volume” of the content on Facebook, as NPR’s Aarti Shahani reported. And he said hoaxes existed long before his site went online.
“There’s a profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way that they did is because they saw some fake news,” Zuckerberg said last week.
As Aarti reported Thursday, Facebook has long relied on users to flag suspicious or offensive stories — and it relies on subcontractors in the Philippines, Poland, and elsewhere to make quick yes-no rulings on those cases, often within 10 seconds.
With last night’s announcement, Zuckerberg gave a glimpse of how Facebook is wading into an area that’s often fraught with controversy: verifying or censoring content.
“The bottom line is: we take misinformation seriously,” he wrote. “Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information.”
Here’s the list of steps Zuckerberg laid out (here we’re quoting his post):
“- Stronger detection. The most important thing we can do is improve our ability to classify misinformation. This means better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.
“- Easy reporting. Making it much easier for people to report stories as fake will help us catch more misinformation faster.
“- Third party verification. There are many respected fact checking organizations and, while we have reached out to some, we plan to learn from many more.
“- Warnings. We are exploring labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them.
“- Related articles quality. We are raising the bar for stories that appear in related articles under links in News Feed.
“- Disrupting fake news economics. A lot of misinformation is driven by financially motivated spam. We’re looking into disrupting the economics with ads policies like the one we announced earlier this week, and better ad farm detection.
“- Listening. We will continue to work with journalists and others in the news industry to get their input, in particular, to better understand their fact checking systems and learn from them.”
Several items on the list hint at how daunting the task of silencing fake news may be.
Exclusive breaking news stories, for instance, could have trouble getting the green light from either an algorithm or an independent fact-checker; and both the reporting and warning features could become new tools in advocates’ fights to push their own views — and reinforce the bubbles that have prompted Facebook users’ complaints.
Zuckerberg has spoken about the difficulty of bursting those bubbles in the past. As Aarti reported last week, “The problem, he says, is that people don’t click on things that don’t conform to their worldview. And, he says, ‘I don’t know what to do about that.’ “
This Week In Race: Sisterhood, Immigration, And The 'Official Shoe Of White People'
A Neo Nazi group has declared New Balance the “Official Shoes of White People.” (Really. They’re serious.) Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images hide caption
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Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images
Yep. President-elect Donald J. Trump. That’s still a thing. So while you continue to process that, we wanted to catch you up on some of some things you ought to read, hear and watch around the world of race and culture. And — good news — not all of it is election-related. (Okay a lot, but not all.) So.
The Post-Election Hangover Continues (pass the Alka-Seltzer)
Never mind trying to understand the mindset of victors in last week’s election, says Baratunde Thurston in a (long-but-worth-it) Vox column. Thurston says there’s gotta be multilateral, not unilateral, outreach if that much-talked-about healing is going to begin. But he wants to stay mad for a few more minutes. Thurston, Vox.
Amidst all the hand-wringing and angst about how the Trump campaign revealed all the ill will toward those who are different by race, ethnicity gender or sexual orientation, Hus Hsu at The New Yorker says, nah! That bigotry? It was there all the time. Hsu, The New Yorker.
Writer Amy Alexander isn’t feeling the sisterhood from the 53% of white women in the 43-54-year-old demographic who voted for Donald Trump. She has words in The Root. Alexander, The Root.
Lots of immigration news, some good, some bad:
From NPR’s the Two Way, the latest about a Korean-American who turns out to be Korean, period. He’s about to be deported back to the country of his birth; a country he doesn’t remember. And he’s not the only person in this situation. Domonoske, NPR.
Well, looks like people who want to build That Wall are going to have to find other property to build it on: The Tohono O’Odham Nation tribal leaders say “not in our back yard…” Carrie Jung, from NPR Member Station KJZZ in Phoenix, Ariz. reports. Jung, KJZZ.
Far, far away, in an alternate universe somewhere:
Someone is seriously suggesting that there be a registry for Muslims, just in case, you know, the government needs to find them at the last minute. Code Switch’s Kat Chow reports on who’s trying to revive the plan, and why. Chow, Code Switch.
A Neo Nazi group has declared New Balance the “Official Shoes of White People.” (Really. They’re serious.) Apparently New Balance shoes are the only athletic shoes still made in the US, and receive stiff competition from shoes manufactured abroad. The company was against the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), fearing it would leave them at a competitive disadvantage. For the Neo Nazis, the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Or something. New Balance fans who aren’t Neo Nazis responded by torching or tossing their shoes. New Balance responds. Mettler, Washington Post.
And don’t miss:
NYT Magazine writer Nikole Hannah-Jones’ excellent piece on her visit to her home state, Iowa. She wanted to find out how people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 were moved to vote for Donald Trump last week. She writes about it in The End of the Post-Racial Myth. Jones, New York Times.
Finally, a little advice:
Thanksgiving is next week, and it could end up being a tough one, people. Besides the obligatory drunk uncle asking—again—why you aren’t married yet, and the Nana who wants to tell you it’s not too late to spend more time at church, and your mom insisting everyone turn off his/her cellphone (wait…what?), there will be discussions about politics that will be more heated than the yam casserole. Trust. But we have help: a mini-roundup of how to get through the day and still stay close to your people. You’re welcome.
Gail Rosenblum at the Minneapolis Star Tribune says go anyway, just make your visit shorter. (Maybe leave before Drunk Uncle starts to rant?).
Our play cousins, Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham over at the New York Times, talked with Times food writer Sam Sifton about the various ways to deal with the conflict. Sifton urges us to “practice radical acceptance of where you are and who you’re with.” After all, it’s a couple of hours, right? Jenna has another solution: forgoing the gravy and mashed potatoes for a trip abroad. Listen and be warned: It will make you hungry.
And a heads up: the Code Switch podcast will deal with post-election tension at Thanksgiving, too. Check it out next Wed.
Finally, a little help from Leathershirts. His 2015 Vine on reactions to out stuff people might say at Thanksgiving will give you a roadmap on how you might look when Drunk Uncle goes off.
