Category: US

Editor’s Note: Lynda Lin Grigsby is a journalist and editor who has written for a number of national news outlets. She is a former editor of the Pacific Citizen, a national Asian American newspaper. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN
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February 19, 1942 changed everything for Japanese Americans.

The curves and flourishes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signature that day on Executive Order 9066 precipitated the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, sealing the fate of over 125,000 people. Their mass incarceration, often referred to as one of our nation’s most shameful chapters, is remembered every February 19th as the “Day of Remembrance.”

In the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, Americans of Japanese ancestry were singled out in bold, all-cap font, and ordered to leave their homes and businesses on the West Coast under the pretext of national security. Entire families were incarcerated in horse stalls at racetracks and austere government-run barracks behind barbed wire fences, held as human collateral of wartime hysteria.

This year, on the 81st anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, Japanese American community groups will mark the Day of Remembrance with somber events, and politicians will issue statements filled with aphorisms about how learning about the painful parts of our history can prevent us from repeating it.

That’s all great, but perhaps not nearly enough.

Remembrance is an important foundation to understanding, but its limitation is outlined in its name. The act of remembering keeps us rooted in the past and could foster a belief that events like these could only happen in the black-and-white photographs.

But the same legal framework used to justify the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans still exists today, so it can happen again to any group of people. The Non-Detention Act of 1971 prohibits the military detention of US citizens, except by an act of Congress. Presumably, this was a step forward from 1942 when the decision was made solely by the president, but the power of our federal government to order the military to detain American citizens en masse remains authorized by an existing law.

So, on a day set aside to remember the plight of Japanese Americans during WWII, how do we meaningfully acknowledge what happened and ensure that something like this does not happen again? The answer may lie in a bill that has failed to pass since 2017.

The Korematsu-Takai Civil Liberties Protection Act, would establish clear legal prohibition against incarcerating Americans based not only on race, religion, and nationality but also sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or disability. The bill seems like a slam dunk – a way to speak truth to power when we say, “Never again.”

The bill is named after Fred Korematsu, a civil rights icon who challenged the constitutionality of the mass incarceration all the way to the Supreme Court, and Rep. Mark Takai of Hawaii. Both men have died since the measure was first introduced.

It takes the lessons of this historic event and extends it to protect additional marginalized groups. Isn’t that what it means to prevent history from repeating itself? To repair our country’s wounds, we must go beyond remembrance and take meaningful action with the lessons of the past.

“It’s a more forward-looking commitment,” Eric Muller, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, told me when we discussed the legislation recently. “It’s an opportunity to take this tragic historical example and have it be something more than just a tragic historical example. We could have it be something that actually leads to a more just world for current and future generations.”

This is a sentiment that I hear often from survivors and descendants of the WWII camps. For years, I bore witness to their stories as an editor of a national Asian American newspaper. The internalized message of the government’s action against the Issei and Nisei (first- and second-generation Japanese Americans) sublimated trauma.

Often, the effects of the mass incarceration quietly span over generations, bubbling to the surface in fits of tears, anger, or resolve in the grown children and grandchildren of the camps.

In 1942, Yetsuko Saguchi and her twin sister Kaz Tanaka were 3 years old when their family was forced by government order to abandon their farm and home in Artesia, California. When Japanese Americans were instructed to bring only what they could carry, their mother, Shizuko Hamamoto, only carried belongings for her daughters. First, they lived in the horse stalls at the Santa Anita racetrack, and then in the skeletal barracks in Rohwer, Arkansas.

“I’m not bitter,” Saguchi, 83, told me recently during an interview. “This happened, but my concern is that it never happens to another group.”

She has good reason to worry: In the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, US government officials rounded up South Asian and Arab men for questionable detention. In this news, Saguchi heard echoes of her past, so she started talking about her family history to anyone who would listen. “It’s unjust, and it’s just wrong,” said Saguchi. “You can’t treat your fellow humans that way.”

For this reason, the Korematsu-Takai bill should be a no-brainer, because it is based on a historic event that many agree was unjust. After the passage of the Civil Liberties Act in 1988, the US government officially apologized and paid reparations for its wartime actions against Japanese Americans.

The need for our leaders to prevent future mass detentions based on race and other marginalized identities is one of the imperative lessons of our past. The bill’s passage seems far more meaningful than symbolic gestures or commemorative events. Instead of just saying we should learn from our history, we can turn words into action. But we must ask ourselves first if we are ready to look forward.

New York
CNN
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Twitter Blue subscribers will be the platform’s only users able to use text messages as a two-factor authentication method, Twitter announced Friday.

The change will take place on March 20. Twitter users will have two other ways to authenticate their Twitter log-ins at no cost: an authentication mobile app and a security key.

Two factor authentication, or 2FA, requires users to type in their password and then enter a code or security key to access their accounts. It is one of the primary methods for users to keep their Twitter account secure.

“While historically a popular form of 2FA, unfortunately we have seen phone-number based 2FA be used – and abused – by bad actors,” the company said in a blog post Friday. “So starting today, we will no longer allow accounts to enroll in the text message/SMS method of 2FA unless they are Twitter Blue subscribers.”

Twitter Blue, which costs $11 a month for iOS and Android subscribers, adds a blue checkmark to the account of anyone willing to pay for one.

As of 2021, only 2.6% of Twitter users had a 2FA method enabled – and of those, 74.4% used SMS authentication, a Twitter account security report said.

Twitter said non-subscribers will have 30 days to disable the text method and enroll in another way to sign in using 2FA. Disabling text message 2FA won’t automatically disassociate the user’s phone number from their account, Twitter said.

Musk responded “Yup” to a tweet claiming a telecommunications company used bot accounts “to Pump 2FA SMS” and that Twitter was losing $60 million a year “on scam SMS.”

CNN
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The nascent 2024 presidential campaign seemed to hit a different gear this week with Nikki Haley entering the Republican primary. The former South Carolina governor and onetime United Nations ambassador joins former President Donald Trump as the only major competitors to declare bids for the presidency.

Haley’s announcement, and the lack of one so far from President Joe Biden and a slew of Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, got me thinking: Do primary winners tend to be early or late entrants to the presidential race?

The answer depends on who else is running. If you’re in a primary without an incumbent, then it’s better to be early, while it matters far less with an incumbent running.

The modern primary era began in 1972 on the Democratic side and in 1976 on the Republican side. Since then, hundreds of major candidates have decided to run for president or at least formed exploratory committees with the Federal Election Commission. For each of them, I jotted down whichever date was first, to see if there was a pattern.

It turns out that the median date for candidates to enter a presidential primary without an incumbent has been March 16 the year before the general election. There has been a wide variation on that from year to year. Some years, the median candidate gets in really early (January 2007 for the 2008 cycle on both the Democratic and Republican side), while other years it’s much later (August 1991 for the 1992 cycle on the Democratic side).

There is no real correlation between how late or how early a field forms and the eventual nominee’s success in the general election. Democrats, for example, won the presidency in both 1992 and 2008, even with a much later start in 1992.

What does seem to matter for winning a primary is when candidates get into the race compared with their competitors. In the 17 primaries since 1972 that did not feature an incumbent, 10 of the winning candidates entered earlier than that year’s median candidate. Two of the winners were the median candidates. Five got into the race later than the median candidate.

There were six who started running about one and a half months or more before that cycle’s median candidate. Democrat George McGovern, in the 1972 cycle, started nearly a full year before the median hopeful that cycle.

McGovern remains the only major-party nominee who had less than 5% of the vote in early national surveys while the polling leader had more than 20% support. McGovern’s success is part of the reason why primary campaigns seem to start so early compared with when the actual voting takes place.

Getting in the public eye early, raising money and building an organization are key to winning a presidential campaign. If you fall too far behind, it can be a disaster.

Even candidates you might “think” entered the race late, often got in far earlier. Trump’s June 2015 official announcement became well known for his ride down the escalator. Less remembered was the fact that he started an exploratory committee in March 2015, and he was already campaigning at the time.

Of course, joining a presidential race early is no guarantee of success. Former Florida Gov. Reubin Askew in the 1984 cycle and ex-Maryland Rep. John Delaney in the 2020 cycle filed with the FEC for the Democratic primary less than a year after the previous presidential election. Neither got very far.

Still, on the whole, joining early is better than getting in late. After all, the winners who have gotten in late didn’t get that late. The latest, for example, was Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 campaign. He entered less than three months after the median candidate.

Biden, in the 2020 cycle, was the other winning candidate to enter more than 15 days after the median candidate.

Both Biden and Reagan shared some qualities that few others had. They had previously run for president and were well known nationally, so they didn’t need time to build name recognition or a campaign and fundraising apparatus.

What we’ve seen more often is the late-entering “savior” candidate who enters on a white horse – and fails. Think about former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson in the 2008 cycle and then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry in the 2012 cycle. Both Republicans entered with a splash and proceeded to win zero primaries combined. The same was true for Democrat Mike Bloomberg in the 2020 cycle, though he won American Samoa.

For incumbents, meanwhile, there’s a much greater ability to wait before indicating publicly that they’re going for another term.

The median date, since 1976, for presidents to either form an exploratory committee or announce their campaign is April 30 of the year before the general election. That’s about a month and a half later than when the median nonincumbent’s campaign gets started.

Some presidents do go early. Trump’s failed 2020 reelection campaign started the moment he entered the White House. (He formed an exploratory committee on Inauguration Day.)

Later is the general rule, however, for incumbents. Reagan’s highly successful 1984 reelection campaign, for instance, didn’t get underway until October 1983. George H.W. Bush, likewise, got going on his 1992 reelection bid in October 1991.

It shouldn’t be too surprising that incumbents can afford to go later. They rarely have any major competitors for their party nomination. They have universal name recognition, and incumbents don’t need the same amount of time to ramp up their campaign infrastructure to raise money.

All of that seems to match up with what Biden is going through at this point. In fact, some reports suggest he’ll likely announce a reelection bid in April.

But for Republicans wondering whether it’s too soon to start campaigning, history is pretty clear. It’s better to start sooner or you might fall too far behind to recover.

Seoul, South Korea
CNN
 — 

North Korea said Sunday it conducted a test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) a day earlier, its third known test of the long-range weapon in less than a year.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency said a Hwasong-15 ICBM was fired in a “surprise ICBM launching drill” under the written orders of leader Kim Jong Un.

The missile flew 989 kilometers (614 miles) for almost 67 minutes to an altitude of 5,768.5 kilometers (3,584 miles), according to the KCNA report.

It said the test was proof of Pyongyang’s ability to launch a “fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces” and “clear proof of the sure reliability of our powerful physical nuclear deterrent.”

Saturday’s test came after North Korea warned Friday of “unprecedented strong responses” if the United States and South Korea go ahead with planned military exercises.

And on Sunday, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un and the top official in her brother’s regime, issued another warning.

“We will watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction against its every move hostile to us,” she said in a statement released by KCNA.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the missile fired Saturday landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone west of the northern main island of Hokkaido, sparking condemnation from the US.

The ICBM test was North Korea’s third in a year.

North Korea launched a missile last March with a slightly longer flight distance and time. That was its first test of such a missile since 2017.

In November, after another similar launch, Pyongyang announced the “test firing of a new kind” ICBM, which it called the Hwasong-17.

Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said at the time it had the potential to reach the US mainland. “The ICBM-class ballistic missile launched this time could have a range of over 15,000 km when calculated based on the flight distance of this ICBM,” Hamada said in a statement. “It depends on the weight of the warhead, but in that case, the US mainland would be included in the range.”

North Korea tests its missiles at a highly lofted trajectory. If they were fired at a flatter trajectory, they would in theory have the ability to reach the US mainland.

The US government described Saturday’s missile launch as “a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” according to a statement from White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

“While [the US Indo-Pacific Command] has assessed it did not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies, this launch needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region,” Watson said. “It only demonstrates that the DPRK continues to prioritize its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the well-being of its people.”

Watson said the US is urging other countries “to condemn these violations and call on the DPRK to cease its destabilizing actions and engage in serious dialogue.”

Earlier this month, the Kim Jong Un regime showcased almost at least 11 advanced ICBMs at a nighttime military parade in Pyongyang in the biggest display yet of what its state-run media described as North Korea’s “nuclear attack capability.”

Analysts said those missiles appeared to be Hwasong-17s.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on social media that if each missile in the parade were equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, they could represent enough volume to overwhelm US ballistic missile defenses.

Saturday’s test came after the North Korean Foreign Ministry lashed out at the United States and South Korea on Friday over their plans for upcoming military exercises.

Washington and Seoul are expected to hold nuclear tabletop drills next week at the Pentagon, the South Korean Defense Ministry said Friday. The allies are also expected to hold military drills next month in the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea, in the same statement, also said it would consider additional military action if the UN Security Council continues to pressure Pyongyang “as the United States wants.”

In January, Kim Jong Un called for “an exponential increase of the country’s nuclear arsenal” and highlighted the “necessity of mass-producing tactical nuclear weapons,” according to the country’s state media KCNA.

Kim had called for the development of a new “Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system,” capable of a rapid nuclear counterstrike, according to the KCNA report.

New York
CNN Business
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For decades, bright, playful and oddly-shaped fast-food restaurants dotted the roadside along America’s highways.

You’d drive by Howard Johnson’s with its orange roofs and then pass Pizza Hut’s red-topped huts. A few more miles and there was the roadside White Castle with its turrets. Arby’s roof was shaped like a wagon and Denny’s resembled a boomerang. And then McDonald’s, with its neon golden arches towering above its restaurants.

These quirky designs were an early form of brand advertising, gimmicks meant to grab drivers’ attention and get them to stop in.

As fast-food chains spread across the US after World War II, new roadside restaurant brands needed to stand out. Television was new media not yet beamed into every single home, newspapers were still ascendant and social media unimaginable.

So restaurant chains turned to architecture as a key tool to promote their brand and help create their corporate identity.

But the fast-food architecture of today has lost its quirky charm and distinctive features. Shifts in the restaurant industry, advertising and technology have made fast-food exteriors bland and spiritless, critics say.

Goodbye bright colors and unusual shapes. Today, the design is minimal and sleek. Most fast-food restaurants are built to maximize efficiency, not catch motorists’ attention. Many are shaped like boxes, decorated with fake wooden paneling, imitation stone or brick exteriors, and flat roofs. One critic has called this trend “faux five-star restaurants” intended to make customers forget they are eating greasy fries and burgers.

The chains now sport nearly identical looks. Call it the gentrification of fast-food design.

“They’re soulless little boxes,” said Glen Coben, an architect who has designed boutique hotels, restaurants and stores. “They’re like Monopoly homes.”

Fast-food restaurants developed and expanded in the mid-twentieth century with the explosion of car culture and the development of interstate highways.

Large companies came to dominate highway restaurants through a strategy known as “place-product-packaging” – the coordination of building design, decor, menu, service and pricing, according to John Jakle, the author of “Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.”

Fast-food chains’ buildings were designed to catch the eye of potential customers driving by at high speeds and get them to slow down.

“The buildings had to be visually strong and bold,” said Alan Hess, an architecture critic and historian. “That included neon signs and the shape of the building.”

A leading example: McDonald’s design, with its two golden arches sloping over the roof of its restaurant, a style known as Googie.

Introduced in California in 1953, McDonald’s design was influenced by ultra-modern coffee shops and roadside stands of Southern California, then the heart of budding fast-food chains.

The two 25-foot bright yellow sheet-metal arches that rose through the McDonald’s buildings were tall enough to attract drivers amid the clutter of other roadside buildings, their neon trim gleaming day and night. McDonald’s design set off a wave of similar Googie-style architecture at fast-food chains nationwide.

Well into the 1970s, the designs were a prominent fixture of the American roadside, “imprinting the image of fast-food drive-in architecture in the popular consciousness,” Hess wrote in a journal article.

But there was a backlash to this aesthetic. As the environmental movement developed in the 1960s, opposition to the conspicuous Googie style grew. Critics called it “visual pollution.”

“Critics hated this populist, roadside commercial California architecture,” Hess said. Googie style fell out of fashion in the 1970s as fast-food style favored dark colors, brick and mansard roofs.

McDonald’s new prototype became a low-profile mansard roof and brick design with shingle texture. Its arches moved from atop the building to signposts and became McDonald’s corporate logo.

“McDonald’s and Jack in the Box unfurled their neon and Day Glo banners and architectural containers against the endless sky,” the New York Times said in 1978. They have been “toned down with the changing taste of the 60’s and 70’s.” And with the growth of mass communications advertising campaigns, brands no longer relied on architectural features to stand out –they could simply flood the television airwaves.

In the 1980s and 1990s, companies began introducing children’s play areas and party rooms to draw families – additions to existing “brown” structures, Hess said.

The rise of mobile ordering and cost concerns since then altered modern fast-food design.

With fewer people sitting down for full meals at fast-food restaurants, companies didn’t need elaborate dining areas. So today they’re expanding drive-thru lanes, increasing the number of pickup windows and adding digital kiosks in stores.

“We have a lot of red-roof restaurants” that “clearly need to go away,” a Pizza Hut executive said in 2018 of its classic design. The company’s new prototype, “Hut Lanes,” helps to speed up wait times at drive-thru locations.

The new fast-food box designs with their flat roofs are more efficient to heat and cool than older structures, said John Gordon, a restaurant consultant. Kitchens have been reconfigured to speed up food preparation. They’re also cheaper to build, maintain and staff a smaller store.

But in the effort to modernize, some say fast-food design has became homogenized and lost its creative purpose.

“I don’t know if you’d be able to identify what they were if they had a different name on the front,” said Addison Del Mastro, an urbanist writer who documents the history of commercial landscapes. “There’s nothing to engage the wandering imagination.”