16,000 Americans Stuck in Sudanese Civil War--US Troops Won't Help Them Evacuate, Fox News Loses More $ Firing Tucker Carlson Than Lawsuit, NY School STILL Under COVID Lockdown (The Five 04/25/23)
Hey, welcome to The Five.
Before we dive in…one quick note.
I’m continuing to document my exodus from Corporate America.
One of the things they don’t tell you about going out on your own is how K-12 education (and college, mostly) prepares you to work for someone else, not blaze a trail.
In this video, I cover:
Why I’m using “corporate tools” (like making myself use a time card, even though no one is looking over my shoulder)
Which productivity tools I recommend, and why
Even if you’re not looking to bounce from your job, this may be helpful in helping you think about how to maximize your time to make some side cash.
BUT, I don’t want to keep semi-private details out there too long, so I’m locking the video down to private after 3pm tomorrow (04-26).
After that can email me for access, sethtowerhurd[at]gmail[dot]com.
With that being said, let’s dive into the news.
[one]
Sudan is on the verge of civil war, with more than 400 already dead in the conflict.
Over the the weekend, the U.S. Embassy was evacuated of staff by Special Forces, but Americans abroad in Sudan apparently are on their own to escape, survive, or die, in the coming conflict.
An estimated 16,000 private U.S. citizens are registered with the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum as being in Sudan. The State Department has cautioned that that figure probably is inaccurate because there is no requirement for Americans to register nor is there a requirement to notify the embassy when they leave.
“It’s absolutely imperative that U.S. citizens in Sudan make their own arrangements to stay safe in these difficult circumstances,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in Washington.
He added that “Americans should have no expectation of a U.S. government coordinated evacuation at this time. And we expect that that’s going to remain the case.”
Speaking of Americans being held against their will in other countries, US Special Forces have also not been used to evacuate the 175+ American citizens stranded in Afghanistan, some who are being held prisoner by the Taliban.
The current Administration’s foreign policy regarding bringing Americans home from abroad is pretty hard to understand here, as we gave up a Russian drug runner and warlord nicknamed “The Merchant of Death” for WNBA player Brittany Greiner, but failed to secure the release of U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who told CNN he’s “confused” by the lack of effort to extract him from Russian prison.
[two]
The biggest news host on TV…isn’t, as of Friday.
In an austere, four-sentence statement, Fox News announced Monday that primetime star Tucker Carlson is leaving the network, effective immediately.
"FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways," the network said, in a statement released by a spokesperson. "We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."
Fox said Carlson's last day hosting his show was Friday. Carlson did not respond immediately to a request for comment from NPR.
The Five doesn’t typically cover cable news commentators, but Carlson is one of the biggest names in TV, and this news comes on the heels of Fox News agreeing to the biggest lawsuit settlement of all time.
However, it doesn’t appear that Carlson was fired over any comments on the air that resulted in Fox News coughing up $787 million to the company that makes Dominion Voting Machines, but due to the events around that case.
According to the Daily Mail, Carlson's texts were seized by the Courts, including one in which he called Fox News execs “incompetent liberals' and 'f******,” which makes this look like a battle of egos, rather than Tucker departing to run for President…a rumor early yesterday, as Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing threw out there…
…or to join Trump as a VP candidate.
There’s been so much focus on rumors, the cataclysmic event that happened in the wake of Tucker’s exit is being overlooked…Fox News lost $1 Billion in value yesterday due to parting ways with their biggest host.
That is more money than they lost in the lawsuit.
Elsehwere, CNN host Don Lemon was fired after 17 years with the network. Although Lemon doesn’t have the same cultural footprint as Tucker, he’s still a big name to be instantly gone.
Lemon had been suffering from declining ratings and was allegedly difficult to work with His disasterous interview with Republican Presidential Primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy allegedly played a factor in his termination.
Lemon claimed he was fired from claimed he was fired via his agent, and no one from the company even reached out. CNN, however, rebutted that statement, and said Lemon refused to meet with management.
In related news, the network finally fact-checked Lemon, a move that comes nearly two decades too late.
Finally, I suppose rapper Rick Ross offering Lemon a job at one of his Wingstop locations, saying “for some reason I think you know what you’re doing with the Lemon Pepper wings” (get it…a pun on his last name?) isn’t news…but it’s pure comedic gold.
[three]
One school in America—a private institution in Upstate New York, is still under full COVID mandates, years after the rest of the country has returned to normal.
The Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca, set amid a pastoral idyll of rolling fields, a pond, and dandelion-stippled meadows, is just a few minutes’ ride from Ithaca College and Cornell University. Serving more than 220 students from preschool through eighth grade, the school features classrooms bathed in natural light, populated with the offspring of professors, doctors, and lawyers. And since the fall of 2020 through today, those children must be masked during class and on the playground, and have been barred from speaking during lunch.
Like every other school in the country, this private school—which charges between $11,000 to $18,000 a year, depending on the student’s age—closed to in-person classes in the spring of 2020. That fall, around the time the local public schools brought kids back, so did EACMSI, but with a list of mitigations. Some were typical and required by the state, such as distancing and indoor masking. But others, at least after a while, were less common or not recommended by health authorities—specifically, outdoor masking and a ban on speaking during lunch.
Parents like Dr. Beth Stein, a physician and mother of two students, accepted the rules. She was grateful for her kids to be at school in person, knowing that plenty of children elsewhere in the country were stuck at home learning remotely. But by the fall of 2021, the continuation of the harsh restrictions worried her.
“I could tolerate most of the stuff—the teachers in N95s and face shields while standing behind plexiglass barriers, the 12 feet of distance for band members, the ban on singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in class. But I just wanted them to end the outdoor masking,” Stein, who is board-certified in public health and preventive medicine, said. Because of her complaints, she said her kids almost got kicked out. After she begged, Stein said, the school let them stay. But at the beginning of this school year, with no end to the interventions in sight, Stein finally pulled her kids from EACMSI. They now attend public school.
As of today, children at EACMSI are still required to mask indoors and outdoors. They are still prohibited from speaking during lunch. Second-graders who began school there as kindergarteners in fall 2020 have never experienced a normal day of school in their lives.
On one hand, the parents are choosing to pay for this learning environment, and no one is forcing a decision on these families.
On the other, The National Institute for Health has warned that masking impairs learning language skills, and while COVID deaths aren’t at zero, the numbers continue to drop despite 99.999999999% of the country not living under restrictions.
[four]
President Biden announced his bid for re-election this morning with a YouTube video that opens with January 6th riot footage.
Research shows that the candidate with the most clear, compelling message most often wins.
I’m not in the business of predicting election results, and I’m sure the video will resonate differently with different audiences…but I’m just not seeing much here other than “Republicans BAD!” as a launch message.
Biden, who has governed during the worst period of inflation in my lifetime, shouldn’t be worried about the Republican nominee just yet, but his own party’s primary.
The Hill reports:
If RFK Jr. mounts an aggressively negative primary campaign against Biden, it could very well hobble him in the general election — like in 2016, when a tough Democratic primary race against an outsider weakened Hillary Clinton when she faced Donald Trump in the general.
[five]
Finally, the world’s largest food company just jacked up prices, citing inflation.
Consumer goods firm Nestle raised prices by 9.8% in the first quarter, attributing this to “significant cost inflation.”
The Switzerland-based company on Tuesday reported sales revenue up 5.6% in the three-month period, coming in at 23.5 billion Swiss francs ($26.49 billion), slightly ahead of an analysts’ consensus estimate.
But sales volumes, listed as “real internal growth,” fell 0.5%.
The company raised prices by 8.2% last year, and saw sales volumes up by 0.1%.
If you’re keeping track at home, that means Nestle’s prices have increased nearly 20% since 2022.
Until the next one,
-sth