Trump to arrive amidst political tensions with CA, study reveals black college athletes have lowest graduation rate, The Scientology Network launches today.
Beyond road closures: The intense security behind Trump's California trip
If you liked Obama Jam '15, then you'll love Trump Jam '18. The commander-in-chief will touchdown in California Tuesday.
His first visit to the Golden State since the election, Trump is visiting as the long-fraught relationship between California and the administration begins a litigious new chapter. Just last week, the administration sued the state over its immigration policies.
KQED's Scott Shafer says the visit could send a political ripple across California.
"There's no question that just having the President go to the border and look at these prototypes for the wall that he wants to build is a reminder — as if anybody really needed one — but certainly in the immigrant community, Latinos, Asian Americans, and others, that this President is pretty hostile to immigration," Shafer says.
But he adds that Democrats and Republicans could both look at the visit and claim victory.
"I think this is the kind of thing that will gin-up the base, but you know it works on both sides," he says.
While political watchers will be keeping a close eye on the Trump trip, others will be watching for something else Tuesday: Road closures.
Visits from the presidential motorcade have been known to stop traffic and gum-up commutes. Inconvenient though it may be, it's all part of a coordinated effort to get the president safely from point A to point B, says former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow.
"It's actually much more difficult than I think people realize," Wackrow explains.
Typically, a security plan is built around a building or a set location. A motorcade route is very dynamic: it changes every foot. The Secret Service, through their advance process, has to identify vulnerabilities along the entire route, understanding where there are potential risks: Is it a threat of an organized attack? Is it a risk of just the driving environment: sharp curves, hills downgrades? Is it intersections, is it areas where groups of people can amass for different types of protest?
Wackrow adds that presidential popularity, as well as potential natural disasters, factor into the security decisions that the Secret Service will make. In California, he says, earthquakes and wildfires are a major concern.
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Black male athlete graduation rates remain substandard at major sports universities
As March Madness approaches, college basketball fans are filling out their brackets and scheming ways to watch games that start before the work week ends. But at the University of Southern California, some researchers are focused on the other element of college sports: the college part.
A recent University of Southern California study found that, at most schools at issue in the assessment, black male student-athlete graduation rates remain lower than those of black male non-athletes, student athletes overall, and undergraduates overall. "There was a 14 percentage point gap between black male athletes and their teammates in graduation rate," according to Professor Shaun Harper, Executive Director of the USC Race and Equity Center.
This inequality has slightly improved over the past two years, according to the report. On average, black male student athlete graduation has actually risen by 2.5 percentage points in that time, but remains at the back of the pack. Meanwhile, graduation matters for the vast majority of student athletes, because they are not as likely to have a future in professional sports as many assume.
There is this myth that so many black men leave college to go to the NFL or the NBA. But the truth is that less than two percent of college student-athletes are actually drafted into the NBA or the NFL.
Harper focused his study on 65 schools that comprise the following "Power Five" conferences:
- Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
- Big Ten Conference
- Big 12 Conference
- Pac 12 Conference, and
- Southeastern Conference (SEC)
These schools produce the most successful programs, not only in terms of wins and championships, but also economically. Harper focused on them to remove some noise from the discussion, notably from the NCAA:
They say ... in a really celebratory way in television commercials that black male athletes graduate at higher rates in Division I than do their black male peers who are not athletes. That is a half truth. Sure, if we look across the entire Division I, and we look across all sports in Division I, absolutely, but if we look at the Power Five, the conferences that have the 65 universities that win just about everything ... that is far from true.
Harper believes that the solution to this problem requires action from "cross-institutional actors" at the NCAA, conference and university levels, along with a new rule that limits participation in college playoffs based on graduation percentages.
But Harper doesn't view his research as mutually exclusive from enjoying college sports as a fan.
I am a huge lover of college football, but I am also a huge lover of racial equity.
'A Wrinkle in Time' took second place at the box office to 'Black Panther'
Black Panther topped the box office again over the weekend, both domestically and abroad. Meanwhile, another big Disney movie opening did not fare quite as well. A Wrinkle in Time came in second in ticket sales, generating a disappointing $33 million.
A Wrinkle in Time is directed by Ava DuVernay and stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling. The film is based on the classic children's book by Madeleine L'Engle.
John Horn of KPCC's The Frame said that this film shouldn't be considered a failure, but given the large production budget for the movie, it did under perform.
Both Black Panther and A Wrinkle in Time are made by black directors and have diverse casts, but Horn said it's hard to compare films that are so different based only on the diversity of their casts. He said it is interesting, however, to look at the demographics of movie-goers who showed up to the two films.
The opening weekend for Black Panther, 37% of the ticket-buyers were African American. For A Wrinkle in Time only 17 % were African American, so less than half of the audience that showed up among black movie-goers for Black Panther turned up for A Wrinkle in Time.
Unfortunately, male directors are often given more leeway in Hollywood if their films do not succeed, Horn said, but the takeaway here should not be related to the talents of Ava DuVernay or other women directors or directors of color.
For this to be a referendum on a black woman directing a film would be tragic. It is a referendum on whether or not the film was marketed well, whether or not there was an audience for the way this story was told.
The marketing of the film has been questioned, Horn said. Some are wondering if it was marketed more as an action film rather than a children's film, and if that was a mistake.
The consolation for Disney is that A Wrinkle in Time lost out to another Disney film in Black Panther, Horn said. If you look at Disney's recent track record, there are a lot of films that have done well, which shows Disney is a company looking for big successes.
They're in the home run business. They are not going up to the plate trying to hit singles and doubles. So for a movie like A Wrinkle in Time to be a single or maybe a double is not in their business plan.
Horn said a huge part of the Disney franchise isn't movies like A Wrinkle in Time, it's live action remakes of animated classics like Beauty and the Beast or the upcoming Mulan and The Lion King.
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Crazy cows cause chaos in SoCal
If you hop on Interstate 10 and head east for a couple hours, you'll find yourself at the Sand to Snow National Monument. It's a longtime destination for nature lovers that's also become home to herds of gigantic, wild cattle that are now wreaking havoc on the environment.
Jack Thompson's been spotting these feral cattle for a number of years now. He's the Desert Regional Director of the Wildlands Conservancy. He joined Take Two to explain the problem.
The origin of SoCal's feral cattle
There's been ranching in this area historically for many decades and the terrain is very steep and rugged, so it's not unfeasible that these cattle went astray and have been difficult to round up. And with that happening, they multiply.
Roaming free is a problem
Cattle are such big animals, and they have such a big appetite, so they'll be drawn to areas where there's water. And where there's water, there's sensitive habitat, so they'll cause damage. That's a problem for land managers to care take the land. Areas you can see these cattle moving in have been deeply impacted. Clear streams are now polluted from the cattle's droppings.
Impact on other wildlife
One of the big concerns is that these cattle will be interacting in the same space as the big horn sheep in this area and will pass their diseases on to them.
What's being done to manage feral cattle
Land managing agencies that have the cows on their land are doing an investigation to find out where the animals are, how many there are and are talking to adjacent land owners to find out if their ongoing cattle operations may be related to these cows.
A humane solution
It's hard to say without all that information. Certain cowboys have looked at it and expressed dismay at the difficulty of rounding them up safely. They've been wild so long they can out-maneuver a person on a horse very easily.
Hikers beware
Hikers have had some interaction with the cattle. They're so common on the popular hiking tails, one volunteer with the Pacific Coast Trail Assn. was nearly run down and gored by one of these feral cattle recently. You definitely want to keep your distance and give them a wide berth. Do not approach these animals at all.