Mediaboss Marketing

President BidenJoe BidenCensus results show White House doubling down on failure Poll: Americans back new spending, tax hikes on wealthy, but remain wary of economic impact True immigration reform requires compromise from both sides of the aisle MOREsannouncementthis week that he will increase the annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for the fiscal year has triggered predictable howls of opposition. Sen. Tom CottonTom Bryant CottonOpposition to refugees echoes one of America's most shameful moments White House defends CDC outreach to teachers union Allowing a racist slur against Tim Scott to trend confirms social media's activist bias MORE (R-Ark.) falselyclaimed that Increasing the refugee admissions cap will put American jobs and safety at risk.House Minority Whip Steve ScaliseStephen (Steve) Joseph ScaliseCNN's Jake Tapper questions giving some GOP leaders airtime Pelosi mocks House GOP looking for 'non-threatening female' to replace Liz Cheney The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Emergent BioSolutions - Can Cheney defy the odds and survive again? MORE (R-La.)tweeted,Democrats are now considering sneaking mass amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants through Congress under the cover of the budget process.

These statementsecho a shameful moment 82 years ago when Congress considered a similar proposal for Jewish children seeking refuge from Nazi Germany. In fact, on May 5, 1939,a joint subcommittee of Congress approved bipartisan legislation to help those children. What happened to the bill is a little-known but repugnant stain on American values.

In November 1938, the Reichs official antisemitism took a new turn when violent riots against Jews spread across Germany and Austria. Businesses were destroyed, synagogues burned-down, Jews beaten and murdered.But America had no room for any additional refugees. Immigration law dating back to the 1920s capped visas from Germany at 27,370 a number that was reached almost instantly at the beginning of each year.

Two members of Congress formed an unlikely political alliance to respond. Sen. Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) was a liberal firebrand, Tammany Hall Democrat and FDR loyalist who pushed elements of the New Deal through the Senate. Rep. Edith Rogers(R-Mass.) was a conservative Republican who graduated from a Paris finishing school and become a vociferous opponent of New Deal business regulations. In February 1939, they introduced a bill to lift caps on visas from Germany.

Wagner and Rogers crafted the bill to minimize opposition. The quota would be increased by 20,000, but over a two-year period.To address fears about immigrants taking jobs, new visas would be issued only to children under the age of 14.To ensure that no federal funds were used to support the child refugees, all applicants would have to prove that they would not become charges of the state. And to minimize antisemitic backlash, the word Jewish was excluded from the bill.

With those conditions, whocould oppose increasing the cap on refugees from children imperiled by Hitlers Reich? Initially, no one publicly, at least. The bill was supported by the American Federation of Labor, the Federal Council of Churches, former Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon, former Republican Governor Robert La Follete, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and even former Republican First Lady Grace Coolidge, who announced that she and her neighbors in Northampton, Mass., would personally care for 25 of the refugee children.

On April 20, in room 412 of the Russell Senate Office Building, a joint subcommittee opened hearings on the Wagner-Rogers proposal.That day, 14 witnesses testified in support, and only one against. But as debate continued over the next few weeks, opposition was mobilized. Francis Kinnicutt, president of theAllied Patriot Society, testified that immigrants may be suffering from some disease or insanity and that we dont want to be swamped with immigrants. J.E. Nieman of the Regular Veterans Association argued:The bringing of foreigners into the United States is a direct attack against our national defense program. America doesnt need foreigners.

Despite the attacks, the joint subcommittee voted on May 5 to report Wagner-Rodgers to their full respective committees.The opposition became louder and uglier.The very next day, Sen. Robert Reynolds (D-N.C.) strode to a stage at the Hotel Astor in New York and proclaimed opposition to the bill.Save America for Americans. The danger is from within. At a Washington cocktail party, Mrs. James H. Houghteling, wife of the commissioner of immigration, remarked that the problem with the bill was that 20,000 children would all too soon grow up into 20,000 ugly adults.

The bill was effectively killed in a feat that only the United States Congress could have pulled off having it both ways. On June 20 the full Senate Immigration Committee passed Wagner-Rogers but with a not-so-slight catch: 20,000 children would begranted visas, but only as part of the existing quota of 27,370. America would open its doors to them but shut it to most of the Jews still trying to flee Europe.Wagner was so enraged with the amendment that he ended up opposing his own bill.

We know how tragically this story ends for the vast majority of Jewish children facing persecution, oppression and tyranny in Nazi Germany: 1.5 million perished.

So, when I hear opponents of a modest plan to add 62,500 refugee visas forpeople facing life-threatening persecution, I think about what happened in May 1939 and the weeks that followed, when Congress failed so catastrophically.

Steve IsraelSteven (Steve) J. IsraelOpposition to refugees echoes one of America's most shameful moments White House races clock to beat GOP attacks Overnight Defense: Biden's stalled Pentagon nominee gets major support | Blinken presses China on North Korea ahead of meeting | Army will not return medals to soldier Trump pardoned MORE represented New York in the House over eight terms and was chairman with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now the director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. You can follow his updates@RepSteveIsrael.

See more here:
Opposition to refugees echoes one of America's most shameful moments | TheHill - The Hill

By Michelle Funes

The Biden administration called to end the use of the terms illegal alien and assimilation by U.S. immigration agencies.

Under the U.S. Citizenship Act, Biden imposed many new policies in the American immigration system. One of these included abandoning the term that was often used by the Trump administration. In doing so, Biden hopes to modernize the immigration system to reflect more positive ideals.

Biden is set to remove this term effective immediately. According to a memo sent to the department heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, there will be an immediate transition to start using more appropriate words that reflect Bidens new bill.

Troy Miller, a Customs and Border Protection official, expressed, We set a tone and example for our country and partners across the world. This statement also indicated, We enforce our nations laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.

This change in policy will begin to reverse many of the negative attitudes that were carried in from past administrations. Prior to these changes by the U.S. Citizenship Act, terms like illegal alien and assimilation were common in reports made on social media, statements made by former President Trump and official documents made by ICE.

In changing these terms, Biden hopes to recognize, America as a nation of immigrants and create a more humane approach to Americas complex immigration issues. Despite his good intentions, many Republican officials have responded to his actions negatively.

Senator Tom Cotton tweeted, We use the term illegal alien because theyre here illegally. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also expressed his disappointment as he tweeted, President Biden is more concerned about Border Patrols vocabulary than he is about solving the border crisis. These backward priorities are only making the situation worse.

However, there are those that agree with Bidens new initiative such as Representative Nanette Barragn who stated, These changes are a much-needed shift away from the negative rhetoric weaponized by the previous administration, and a small change that reveals how humanity can be reflected in our immigration policies.

There is a lot of division when it comes to Bidens approaches to the border crisis. Though he hopes to find bipartisan support when it comes to these measures, which would allow him to pass more immigration bills.

Further, in March the House voted two very important immigration bills into action. One bill created a path to citizenship for about two million dreamers and those seeking refuge from their home countries under a Temporary Protected Status. Another bill on the same day would eventually grant almost a million farmworkers citizenship along with their families. Both of these bills passed with bipartisan support.

It is also important to note that a special budget procedure, reconciliation, can be used to get the bill passed immediately without full support. This measure was taken to pass the COVID-19 relief package that was not supported by many Republican lawmakers.

Ultimately, Biden has many different routes that he can take to pass immigration policies. The approval of these policies from his fellow lawmakers will depend on the issues that are being addressed and if there are any other ways that he can tackle them.

Michelle Funes is a second year at UC Davis. She is currently an English major and hopes to double major with Communications. She is from Southern California, more specifically Covina.

Go here to see the original:
Immigration Agencies Called on by Biden Administration to Abandon Use of Term 'Illegal Alien' - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

Then-president Donald Trump addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) annual meeting at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md., February 29, 2020. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

On the menu today: contemplating the uncomfortable question of whether the most lasting legacy of the Trump presidency will be a culturally dominant progressive left; a closer look at the early outlook for the 2022 House elections; the CIA offers a duh report; and an absolutely bonkers attempt to demonize Pfizer.

Were Woke Progressives the Real Winners from the Trump Presidency?

If youre a Republican officeholder, it is a fact of life that most of the media will be against you, and look for opportunities to make you look stupid, reckless, ill-informed, malevolent, and hopelessly out of date. You will have your own media that will be friendlier Fox News Channel, talk radio, etc. but by and large, youre going to have the wind in your face every day youre running for office and in office. While this could change someday, it does not appear likely to change anytime soon, and is arguably getting worse, as more and more media prioritize dramatic and partisan narratives over the facts in pursuit of clicks and television ratings.

Its also worth keeping in mind that the bias of the media is a hurdle that can be overcome; otherwise, no Republican would ever win anywhere. The Republican Party has 50 Senate seats, 212 House seats (with one more to be settled in a runoff soon), 27 governors mansions, 61 state legislative chambers, and a grand total of 4,008 state legislative seats. I would contend that many subpar GOP candidates use the media was biased against me as an excuse to cover their own bad decisions and flaws.

No doubt, communication skills matter a great deal for Republican officeholders, particularly the closer they get to the national stage. Theyre not going to get the airbrushed, protective coverage that insists Nancy Pelosi is a master strategist.

But even the most brilliant communication skills in the world arent much help if they arent connected to good judgment. Maybe one of the most underrated and under-discussed duties of a GOP elected official is to not make the job of the opposition easier. Dont hand them effective and accurate lines of criticism. Everybodys going to make mistakes, but a good elected official avoids the dumb ones. Dont practice cronyism or get caught in other scandals. Dont tell lies, and if you must spin, try to make the spin plausible. Dont overpromise, and whatever you promise, dont under-deliver. Work hard, and make sure people see you working hard. Hold your own people accountable. Know what youre talking about, and when you dont know, dont try to wing it. Have a set list of priorities that will product tangible results for your constituents, and dont get distracted by every media controversy that comes down the pike. And for Gods sake, dont waste any time or energy worrying about what Mika Brzezinski or Don Lemon is saying about you.

Our last Republican president broke just about all of those rules, and a recent Ross Douthat column spotlights the argument that the progressive Left was the true big winner from the Trump presidency:

[Richard Hanania, who runs the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology] argues that its not simply that the millennials and Gen Z are more liberal, or that the Democrats are the professional-class party and so liberalism dominates the professional spheres. These tilts are real, but there are still enough conservative-leaning consumers, enough young and wealthy and well-educated Republicans, to create incentives for institutions to be apolitical or politically neutral.

The key difference, he argues, isnt sheer numbers but engagement, intensity and zeal. Liberals lately seem to just care a lot more about politics: They donate more, they protest more, they agitate more, in ways that change the incentives for public-facing institutions. Some of these gaps are longstanding, but others have opened only recently, with 2016 as the crucial turning point. That was the year when the mobilization gap exploded, creating irresistible pressure from both within and outside corporations for them to take a stand on almost all hot button issues.

Why 2016? Well, probably because of Donald Trump: In Hananias data, his nomination and election looks like the great accelerant, with anti-Trump backlash driving liberal hyper-investment in politics to new heights, enabling progressives to achieve true mass mobilization in a way conservatives never have in the modern era. That mobilization has consolidated progressive norms in almost every institution susceptible to pressure from activists (or activist-employees), and its pulled the entire American establishment leftward, so that conservatives are suddenly at war with Major League Baseball and Coca-Cola instead of just Harvard and the Ford Foundation, and the custodians of the national security state are eager to prove their enlightenment by speaking in the argot of the academic left.

For a long time, progressives and Democrats argued that Republicans were villains and Trump cheerfully and gleefully embraced that role. Quite a few Republican grassroots voters signed on for that characterization as well; having seen Mitt Romney demonized, Republicans figured they might as well gain the advantages of nominating a devil. That paid off in 2016, although we will probably be arguing until the end of time whether only Trump could have beaten Hillary Clinton, or whether she was such a quietly weak and overrated candidate that multiple Republicans could have beaten her.

But the progressive Left is a much stronger cultural force in 2021 than it was on Election Day 2016, and it is hard to believe that Trumps presidency had nothing to do with that. Nor is there much reason to think that any future version of Trump will be any less of a cultural accelerant; in a March interview with Laura Ingraham, Trump said of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot,It was zero threat, right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in, they shouldnt have done it. Some of them went in, and they are hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in and they walked out.

This is something to think about as House Republicans contemplate kicking Liz Cheney out of leadership while taking a wait and see attitude toward Matt Gaetz.

Full House

One day after this newsletter told you that the odds of Democrats keeping the House keep getting worse. Post-census redistricting will help Republicans here and there, and the retirements of Democratic incumbents from swing-y districts keep piling up, the New York Times informs its readers that with 18 months left before the midterms, a spate of Democratic departures from the House is threatening to erode the partys slim majority in the House and imperil President Bidens far-reaching policy agenda.

The Times notes that we probably havent seen the last Democratic House retirement from a swing district this cycle:

[In addition to Charlie Crist], two other Democratic representatives, Stephanie Murphy of Winter Park and Val Demings of Orlando, are weighing runs for statewide office.

All three now hold seats in districts President Biden carried handily last November, but with Republicans in control of Floridas redistricting process, the states congressional map is likely to soon be much better for Republicans than it is now.

Representative Filemon Vela of Texas, whose Rio Grande Valley district became eight percentage points more Republican from 2016 to 2020, chose retirement rather than compete in what was likely to be his first competitive re-election bid.

Heres a dirty little secret about the House of Representative elections: Very few Washington political reporters pay close attention to them until the very end of the cycle, because theyre way more complicated and harder to get a handle on than statewide Senate elections. If I say Pennsylvania, you probably picture the Liberty Bell, Valley Forge, and steel mills. If I tell you that The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, chaired by Obama-era attorney general Eric Holder, released a statement calling for Pennsylvanias 15th congressional district to be eliminated, you probably have no idea where that district is. (Its a big chunk of the northwest corner of the state, but does not include Erie or much of the Pittsburgh suburbs.)

Theres still plenty of road ahead between now and the midterm elections. But these trends tend to pick up momentum as the cycle progresses. When a president wins, he brings out a lot of grassroots supporters to the polls who wont be as motivated in off-year special elections, gubernatorial elections, and midterm congressional elections. For the two-year span after a president wins, the opposition grassroots get fired up and the presidents grassroots get complacent. It doesnt happen every year, but it happened in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018. (Yes, the GOP picked up two Senate seats in 2018, mitigating the effect somewhat. Republicans still got clobbered in the House and gubernatorial races.) White Houses and their affiliated party committees know about this pattern and exert enormous effort to counter it but most cycles, their efforts dont do much good.

All over the map, there are House Democrats who won in 2020 in part because turnout in a presidential year was just high enough to put them over the top. In New Jerseys seventh district, Tom Malinowski won by 1.2 percentage points while Biden was carrying the district, 54 percent to 44 percent. In Illinoiss 14th congressional district, Lauren Underwood won by 1.4 percentage points while Biden won by two points. In Iowas 3rd congressional district, Cindy Axne won by 1.4 percentage points, while Trump won that district by a tenth of a percentage point. In Virginias seventh district, Abigail Spanberger won by 1.8 percentage points, while Biden won by one point.

It works the other way, too; Republicans Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, Claudia Tenney of New York, Mike Garcia and David Valadao of California, and Burgess Owens of Utah all won by the skin of their teeth in 2020 and should expect serious challenges and have little room for error in 2022.

Control of the House will probably come down to the mood of the country and the issue environment in the fall of 2022 and Bidens approval rating will probably be one useful measurement tool. By October 2010, Obamas approval rating in the Gallup poll had dropped from the post-inauguration 66 percent to 45 percent. In the FiveThirtyEight poll aggregator, Bidens approval rating started at 53 percent . . . and remains at 53 percent.

Thanks a Lot, Guys

I dont usually like to pick on the U.S. intelligence community, but sometimes you see a report that almost seems tailor-made to elicit a duh response: U.S. intelligence agencies are warning that any gains in womens rights in Afghanistan made in the last two decades will be at risk after U.S. troops withdraw later this year.

Thats great, guys. Now could we get an update to the National Intelligence Estimate that water is wet?

ADDENDUM: Former secretary of labor Robert Reich complains that Pfizer made $3.5 billion on its COVID-19 vaccine in the past three months.

How much should that company make for creating and mass producing 430 million doses of the most effective coronavirus vaccine out there, the first mRNA vaccine ever produced, that is helping to stop a global pandemic that has killed 3.2 million people around the world?

By my math, $3.5 billion divided by 430 million doses comes out to $8 a dose. Hey, Reich, let me find a Hamilton, a Lincoln, and a Washington and Ill cover Pfizers profit on your doses.

The New York Times reports that Pfizers profit margins on the vaccine would be in the high 20 percent range. When you save the world, I think youre entitled to bring home the bacon!

More here:
After Trump, the Woke Left Roars - National Review

Join Transform 2021 this July 12-16. Register for the AI event of the year.

PsiQuantum and Globalfoundries have teamed up to manufacture the chips that will become part of the Q1 quantum computer.

Palo Alto, California-based PsiQuantum has plans to create a million-qubit quantum computer. Globalfoundries is a major chipmaker that will manufacture the silicon photonic and electronic chips that are part of the Q1.

The system theyre working on now is the first milestone in PsiQuantums roadmap to deliver a commercially viable quantum computer with 1 million qubits (the basic unit of quantum information) and beyond. PsiQuantum believes silicon photonics, or combining optics with silicon chips, is the only way to scale beyond 1 million qubits and deliver an error-corrected, fault-tolerant, general-purpose quantum computer. PsiQuantum wants to deliver quantum capabilities that drive advances with customers and partners across climate, health care, finance, energy, agriculture, transportation, and communications.

PsiQuantum and GF have now demonstrated a world-first ability to manufacture core quantum components, such as single-photon sources and single-photon detectors, with precision and in volume, using the standard manufacturing processes of GFs world-leading semiconductor fab. The companies have also installed proprietary production and manufacturing equipment in two of Globalfoundries 300-millimeter factories to produce thousands of Q1 silicon photonic chips at its facility in upstate New York and state-of-the-art electronic control chips at its Fab 1 facility in Dresden, Germany.

Above: A Globalfoundries cleanroom.

Image Credit: Globalfoundries

PsiQuantums Q1 system represents breakthroughs in silicon photonics, which the company believes is the only way to scale to a million or more qubits to deliver an error-corrected, fault-tolerant, general-purpose quantum computer.

The Q1 system is the result of five years of development at PsiQuantum by the worlds foremost experts in photonic quantum computing. The team made it their mission to bring the world-changing benefits of quantum computing to reality, based on two fundamental understandings. Globalfoundries is fast becoming a leader in silicon photonics, Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Patrick Moorhead said in an email to VentureBeat. Its announcement with PsiQuantum now adds quantum computing to its SiPho repertoire of datacenter and chip-level connectivity.

First, it focused on a quantum computer capable of performing otherwise impossible calculations requiring a million physical qubits. Second, it leveraged more than 50 years and trillions of dollars invested in the semiconductor industry as the path to creating a commercially viable quantum computer.

Globalfoundries Amir Faintuch said in a statement that we have experienced a decade of technological change in the past year and that the digital transformation and explosion of data now requires quantum computing to accelerate a compute renaissance.

Globalfoundries silicon photonics manufacturing platform enables PsiQuantum to develop quantum chips that can be measured and tested for long-term performance reliability. This is critical to the ability to execute quantum algorithms, which require millions or billions of gate operations. PsiQuantum is collaborating with researchers, scientists, and developers at leading companies to explore and test quantum use cases across a range of industries, including energy, health care, finance, agriculture, transportation, and communications.

Pete Shadbolt, chief strategy officer at PsiQuantum, said in a statement that this is a major achievement for both the quantum and semiconductor industries, demonstrating that its possible to build the critical components of a quantum computer on a silicon chip, using standard manufacturing processes. He said PsiQuantum knew that scaling the system was key. By the middle of the decade, PsiQuantum and Globalfoundries hope to create all the manufacturing lines and processes needed to begin assembling a final machine.

PsiQuantum and Globalfoundries want to play a critical role in ensuring the United States becomes a global leader in quantum computing, supported by a secure, domestic supply chain.

Originally posted here:
GlobalFoundries and PsiQuantum partner on full-scale quantum computer - VentureBeat

May 4, 2021

Quantum science has the potential to revolutionize modern technology with more efficient computers, communication, and sensing devices. But challenges remain in achieving these technological goals, especially when it comes to effectively transferring information in quantum systems.

A regular computer consists of billions of transistors, called bits. Quantum computers, on the other hand, are based on quantum bits, also known as qubits, which can be made from a single electron.

Unlike ordinary transistors, which can be either 0 (off) or 1 (on), qubits can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. The ability of individual qubits to occupy these so-called superposition states, where they are in multiple states simultaneously, underlies the great potential of quantum computers. Just like ordinary computers, however, quantum computers need a way to transfer quantum information between distant qubitsand that presents a major experimental challenge.

In a series of papers published in Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Rochester, including John Nichol, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and graduate students Yadav Kandel and Haifeng Qiao, the lead authors of the papers, report major strides in enhancing quantum computing by improving the transfer of information between electrons in quantum systems.

In one paper, the researchers demonstrated a route of transferring information between qubits, called adiabatic quantum state transfer (AQT), for the first time with electron-spin qubits. Unlike most methods of transferring information between qubits, which rely on carefully tuned electric or magnetic-field pulses, AQT isnt as affected by pulse errors and noise.

To envision how AQT works, imagine you are driving your car and want to park it. If you dont hit your brakes at the proper time, the car wont be where you want it, with potential negative consequences. In this sense, the control pulsesthe gas and brake pedalsto the car must be tuned carefully. AQT is different in that it doesnt really matter how long you press the pedals or how hard you press them: the car will always end up in the right spot. As a result, AQT has the potential to improve the transfer of information between qubits, which is essential for quantum networking and error correction.

The researchers demonstrated AQTs effectiveness by exploiting entanglementone of the basic concepts of quantum physics in which the properties of one particle affect the properties of another, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The researchers were able to use AQT to transfer one electrons quantum spin state across a chain of four electrons in semiconductor quantum dotstiny, nanoscale semiconductors with remarkable properties. This is the longest chain over which a spin state has ever been transferred, tying the record set by the researchers in a previous Nature paper.

Because AQT is robust against pulse errors and noise, and because of its major potential applications in quantum computing, this demonstration is a key milestone for quantum computing with spin qubits, Nichol says.

In a second paper, the researchers demonstrated another technique of transferring information between qubits, using an exotic state of matter called time crystals. A time crystal is a strange state of matter in which interactions between the particles that make up the crystal can stabilize oscillations of the system in time indefinitely. Imagine a clock that keeps ticking forever; the pendulum of the clock oscillates in time, much like the oscillating time crystal.

By implementing a series of electric-field pulses on electrons, the researchers were able to create a state similar to a time crystal. They found that they could then exploit this state to improve the transfer of an electrons spin state in a chain of semiconductor quantum dots.

Our work takes the first steps toward showing how strange and exotic states of matter, like time crystals, can potentially by used for quantum information processing applications, such as transferring information between qubits, Nichol says. We also theoretically show how this scenario can implement other single- and multi-qubit operations that could be used to improve the performance of quantum computers.

Both AQT and time crystals, while different, could be used simultaneously with quantum computing systems to improve performance.

These two results illustrate the strange and interesting ways that quantum physics allows for information to be sent from one place to another, which is one of the main challenges in constructing viable quantum computers and networks, Nichol says.

Tags: Arts and Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, John Nichol, quantum computing, quantum physics

Category: Science & Technology

More:
Researchers confront major hurdle in quantum computing - University of Rochester