Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.
We begin today with Marcela Garcia of The Boston Globe questioning the revision of the question on U.S. Census forms regarding race and ethnicity.
The main shift is that the US Census form will now ask about race and ethnicity in a single question. “What is your race and/or ethnicity?”
If only it were that simple.
The form then presents people with different checkboxes, as reported by NPR’s journalist Hansi Lo Wang. For instance, under “Black or African American,” there are more checkboxes offered — such as “Nigerian” or “Jamaican” — and a blank space to enter other options not presented, such as “Brazilian” or “Puerto Rican” if the person identifies as such.
Here’s where the confusion comes. Under the “Hispanic or Latino” box, there are subcategories like “Mexican” and “Puerto Rican.” Presumably a Black Puerto Rican person is expected to select the “Black of African American” box and the “Hispanic or Latino” box, plus the “Puerto Rican” checkbox under the latter. Easy enough, I suppose.
The big conundrum is, how are the data going to be interpreted or recoded by census officials? Is that person’s race going to be counted under the Black population totals or under multiracial? What about the count of Afro Latinos? Experts are afraid that the changes will lead to reductions in that population’s numbers, thus threatening the integrity of the race and ethnicity data.
Some “lighter fare” is on the APR menu for today.
Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press reports that racially biased medical tests resulted in thousands of Black patients being sent to the back of the line for receiving kidney transplants.
Jazmin Evans had been waiting for a new kidney for four years when her hospital revealed shocking news: She should have been put on the transplant list in 2015 instead of 2019 — and a racially biased organ test was to blame. […]
At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one. […]
Between January 2023 and mid-March, more than 14,300 Black kidney transplant candidates have had their wait times modified, by an average of two years, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the transplant system. So far more than 2,800 of them, including Evans, have received a transplant.
But it’s just one example of a larger problem permeating health care. Numerous formulas or “algorithms” used in medical decisions — treatment guidelines, diagnostic tests, risk calculators — adjust the answers according to race or ethnicity in a way that puts people of color at disadvantage.
Adrian Carrasquillo of Vanity Fair reports an exclusive that Univision’s Enrique Acevedo will interview President Joe Biden this coming Thursday.
Enrique Acevedo, Vanity Fair has learned, was in Phoenix to prepare for an interview this week with Biden, a major get for the Spanish-language giant as it works to reestablish its footing as a fair arbiter during the 2024 cycle. The interview, set to be pretaped on Thursday at the White House, according to two Bidenworld sources familiar with the details, will be part of a coverage package from Acevedo that will also feature an interview with campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, as well as two questions he already asked Biden in Phoenix, where he was given a total of four minutes with the president. […]
Acevedo came under fire after largely giving Trump free reign and failing to adequately push back on false claims and incendiary comments, such as one in which Trump compared migrants coming into the US to Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer from The Silence of the Lambs. Some Democrats close to the campaign now say it would only be fair for Univision and Acevedo to similarly give Biden a friendly interview, but Navarro-Cárdenas said she doesn’t believe that’s necessary. “Look, Enrique Acevedo’s interview of Trump was not good,” she added. “But I don’t want or expect a softball interview with Biden. I think all interviews should be the same and people should be asked the important questions.”
One major question in light of the planned Biden interview is how Democrats went from demanding Univision make amends with them in November to being comfortable moving forward and working with the network. That smoothing-over occurred in January during a previously unreported, high-stakes meeting between White House senior adviser Anita Dunn, one of Biden’s most trusted aides, and TelevisaUnivision Mexico co-CEO Bernardo Gómez Martinez, according to the two Bidenworld sources.
Lara Jakes of The New York Times reports that Ukraine is rebuilding their defense industry but is the build up too late to affect the war with Russia?
It is widely agreed that Ukraine needs to rebuild its domestic defense industry so that its military will not have to rely for years to come on the West, which has at times hesitated to send sophisticated weapons systems — including air defenses, tanks and long-range missiles. Whether that can be done in time to alter the trajectory of a war that would be all the more tenuous without more U.S. military aid remains to be seen.
But Ukraine’s military engineers have already shown surprising skill in jury-rigging older weapons systems with more modern firepower. And over the last year alone, Ukraine’s defense companies have built three times as many armored vehicles as they were making before the war and have quadrupled production of anti-tank missiles, according to Ukrainian government documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Funding for research and development is forecast to increase by eight times this year — to $1.3 billion from $162 million — according to an analysis of Ukraine’s military budget through 2030 by Janes, a defense intelligence firm. Military procurement jumped to a projected 20-year high of nearly $10 billion in 2023, compared with a prewar figure of about $1 billion a year.
Zia Wiese of POLITICO Europe reports that the latest election polling for the UK Tories looks bad. Really bad.
A seat-by-seat analysis based on a survey of 15,000 voters sees Sunak’s governing party winning in just 98 constituencies compared to Labour’s 468, the Sunday Times reports.
The poll, conducted by agency Survation on behalf of the Best for Britain campaign group, puts Keir Starmer’s Labour Party at 45 percent of the overall vote, a 19-point lead over the Tories.
Reform U.K., the right-wing populist party set up by Nigel Farage, would score 8.5 percent and win seven seats, with the Liberal Democrats getting 22 seats, according to the survey.
In Wales and Scotland, the Conservatives would see a complete wipeout, winning no seats, according to the report. The analysis gives the Scottish National Party 41 seats and Plaid Cymru two seats.
Finally today, Adrian Cho of Science magazine does an exit interview with the departing head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe.
Q: A number of your colleagues said they thought your appointment showed DOE’s interest in a more holistic approach to the science behind climate change. But President Joe Biden’s administration seems focused on big tech solutions such as fusion and advanced nuclear reactors. How much were you able to elevate the basic climate science?
A: I wouldn’t 100% agree with the premise. There’s been a significant effort to think big to address the climate crisis. But obviously, we’re faced with a very complex challenge. We’re trying to think about the scientific foundations in a fundamentally different way than we have historically, to bring in important pieces that have been missing in terms of people and urban environments, and to bring in resiliency as an important component of how we address the climate crisis. I would say that there’s been significant successes and victories across both the fundamental science and the large-scale technology deployment.
Have the best possible day everyone!