Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 157

The Inflatable Space House That Won't Inflate

When you’re trying to deploy new technology in outer space that resembles—in the least scientific terms—a bounce house, there’s no room for error.

That’s why NASA on Thursday temporarily abandoned its plans to deploy an inflatable module attached to the International Space Station. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is a 3,000-pound, window-less expandable habitat made of metal, aluminum, and layers of soft fabric. It arrived at the orbital station last month to help scientists study living and working conditions in microgravity, which will eventually come in handy during long-term missions, like one to Mars. BEAM was scheduled to be inflated with air Thursday, but the compartment barely expanded after more than two hours, so NASA stopped the process.

Here’s how BEAM should look when it is fully expanded:

NASA

And how it looks now:

NASA

“Thanks for all your patience today, and we’ll hope for better luck tomorrow," Mission Control radioed, the AP reported.

“That's space business,” said NASA astronaut Jeffrey Williams, who Thursday morning opened a valve to allow air to enter BEAM.

NASA said it is working to figure out what went wrong. The operation could resume as early as Friday.

In 2013, NASA paid Nevada-based Bigelow Aerospace $17.8 million to test BEAM on the space station. When expanded, BEAM measures 7 feet long and nearly 8 feet in diameter. The compartment will remain attached to the ISS for two years, its hatch closed to the rest of the station. Crew members will enter BEAM three to four times each year for a few hours at a time. They will take measurements aimed at understanding how the habitat reacts to temperature changes, solar and cosmic radiation, orbital debris, and other factors—research necessary for the development of similar compartments NASA wants to send to Mars.

The Civilian Toll in Fallujah

Several days after Iraqi military forces launched an offensive against Islamic State militants in Fallujah, thousands of civilians in the city are at “extreme risk,” the United Nations said Thursday.

“We are receiving distressing reports of civilians trapped inside Fallujah who are desperate to escape to safety, but can’t,” said Lise Grande, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, in a statement. “Parties to the conflict are obliged to uphold international humanitarian law and do everything possible to protect civilians and ensure they receive lifesaving assistance.”

The Iraqi city, located east of Baghdad, has been under ISIS control since January 2014. Iraqi troops, police, and Shia militias approached the city late Sunday into early Monday, under the cover of airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition that has been fighting the terrorist group for nearly two years.

At least 50,000 people are believed to be in the city, according to the UN. About 800 have fled and reached safety since the operation began, and “some families report having to walk for hours under harrowing conditions to reach safety,” the UN said. Some have died as they tried to escape, according to observers on the ground.

“Food supplies are limited and tightly controlled,” Grande said, citing people who have left the city. “Medicines are exhausted and many families have no choice but to rely on dirty and unsafe water sources.”

Iraqi authorities have opened a camp in Ameriyat al-Fallujah, located about 30 kilometers, or 19 miles, from Fallujah. Becky Bakr Abdulla, a media coordinator at the Norwegian Refugee Council, arrived at the shelter Tuesday and spoke with families who fled Fallujah only days before. She described on Thursday their harrowing experiences to The Guardian’s Holly Young Thursday:

The families I met were in a state of shock and spoke about the ordeal of their escape. They were among the 21 families in Al Iraq camp, out of approximately 114 who we believe have escaped the city so far. One woman, whose family was told by armed opposition groups that they would be shot if they tried to flee, waited until night-time to make a move. They removed their shoes and sandals so they were not heard as they started running.

Nine-year-old Mohammed told me how, once outside his house, he ran for hours until his feet were in pain. He escaped alongside 16 or 17 other families, with one person in front checking that the coast was clear of fighters and planted explosives. Once these families reached the checkpoint leading out of the town they waved white flags made of cloth to prevent them from being shot. After that they kept moving, 30km on to the Al Iraq camp.

Many others have not been so lucky. I’ve just heard the news of one father trying to escape while carrying his two sons in his arms. He stepped on an IED planted on the outskirts of the city. All three were killed immediately.

The residents of Fallujah have been effectively trapped for more than two years, prohibited by ISIS from leaving. According to the Human Rights Watch, humanitarian workers have been unable to reach the city since Iraqi troops and U.S. coalition forces in December regained control of the nearby city of Ramadi after six months of ISIS control. Iraqi forces in February blocked supply routes between the two cities in an attempt to hinder ISIS operations.

“Iraqi activists who are in touch with Fallujah families said that people were reduced to eating flat bread made with flour from ground date seeds and soups made from grass,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement in April. “What little food remains is being sold at exorbitant prices.”

Fallujah was the first of several cities in Iraq ISIS captured in 2014 as it grew in strength and territory. U.S. and Iraqi officials hope next to attempt to retake Mosul, a city north of Fallujah that was overrun by militants in June 2014.

A Trump-Sanders Debate?

It could be yuge.

Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump said Wednesday night he would be willing to debate Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders for charity before the June 7 California primary. Shortly thereafter, Sanders accepted the offer.

The exchange took place during Trump’s appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live. CBS has more:

Kimmel asked Trump if he'd be willing to debate Sanders, given that Hillary Clinton had turned her primary opponent down for a California debate. Trump declared he would—as long as the proceeds go to charity.

As he accepted the hypothetical debate, Trump asked, perhaps jokingly, how much Sanders would be willing to pay him—for charity—then conceded that it would be fine if a network were willing to put up the money. Trump also said he has never met Sanders.

Sanders leapt at the opportunity, tweeting he would accept the real-estate mogul’s offer.

Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016

Nothing is guaranteed, of course. Saying you’ll debate someone for charity on a late-night talk show is far from a contractual agreement, especially if you have Trump’s habit for verbal escapology. The presumptive GOP nominee previously pulled out of a Fox News debate at the last minute in January, so his appearance is far from certain.

Even if both candidates are serious, logistical hurdles could prove fatal. Trump and Sanders would have to agree on a date, venue, moderator, and set of ground rules at minimum for a debate. That arduous process is usually shepherded by the two major parties during the primaries and the nonprofit Commission on Presidential Debates, which the parties control, during the general election. Trump and Sanders, by contrast, would lack a neutral arbiter to hammer out an agreement.

But if the two candidates succeeded, it could be a crucial boost for Sanders, who has staked his fading hopes for the Democratic nomination on the premise that he, not Hillary Clinton, is the party’s best bet to defeat Trump in the fall.

For Trump, who frequently trails both Clinton and Sanders in national and swing-state polls, a strong debate performance could help him convince a skeptical Republican establishment and donor base he can actually win in November.

Can Trump Whitewater-Raft His Way to the White House?

Suddenly it looks like the presidential campaign could turn into a referendum on the 1990s. No, that doesn’t mean you get to vote your opinion on Third Eye Blind. Instead, Donald Trump seems to be determined to dredge up the detritus of the decade to attack Hillary Clinton.

Democrats knew what they were getting with the Clintons—an incredible political powerhouse, and a perpetual whiff of scandal. What they didn’t know, and still don’t, is how bad it will be this time, and how much it will matter.

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From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer

Now comes one of the first tests. On Monday, Trump released a short video highlighting accusations of rape lodged against Bill Clinton by Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick. Attacks on Bill Clinton’s scandals are certainly fair game—the former president will find plenty of defenders, but his behavior will not. Whether they will work is a different matter. Hillary Clinton is trying to strike a delicate balance, reminding people why they liked the Clinton years without running as a nostalgia candidate, but she is ultimately the candidate—not her husband. The attacks could also simply remind people of Trump’s own checkered past as both a friend of the Clintons and a subject of sexual-harassment allegations. (I write in more depth about the risks, rewards, and lessons of this strategy here.)

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign inadvertently tipped off reporters that they’re planning to go in on the Whitewater scandal next. While emailing the Republican National Committee to “work up information on HRC/Whitewater as soon as possible. This is for immediate use and for the afternoon talking points process,” a Trump spokeswoman accidentally copied in Politico reporter Marc Caputo rather than Trump aide Michael Caputo. While it’s somewhat surprising that the Trump campaign (especially veteran aides like Paul Manafort) don’t have oppo research on Whitewater at hand, it makes sense that this would be where Trump hits next.

At this point, people under 30 are asking, “What is Whitewater?” (And those older than 30 may well be asking, “What was Whitewater, again?”) The name refers to a failed development in which Bill and Hillary Clinton invested in 1978. In the end, they lost $40,000 on the deal. (Money management has never been a strength for the Clintons, which might be why they’ve been so eager to make lots of dough since 2001.) Whitewater’s developers were James and Susan McDougal; James had worked with Bill Clinton in Arkansas government. The McDougals were later convicted of fraud, and the man who gave them a $300,000 loan claimed Bill Clinton had pressured him into making it. Three separate investigations concluded there was no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the Clintons.

This might seem like an open-and-shut case, except that the Ken Starr’s independent-counsel investigation into Whitewater was later expanded to included several other tangentially related scandals in the Clinton years, including “Travelgate” and “Filegate,” both adopting the post-Watergate naming convention for controversies. Most importantly, Linda Tripp gave Starr tapes of conversations with Monica Lewinsky that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Confused yet? (Here’s an old Washington Post explainer that is as clear as anything on this could be, which is to say moderately so.)

Needless to say, there’s hypocrisy in Donald Trump—who has four times had to declare corporate bankruptcy after unwise business decisions—criticizing someone over a failed real-estate deal. In theory, that could be damaging to Trump, though he seems immune to the normal rules.

Moreover, and more disturbingly, Trump is showing a willingness to engage with much darker and crazier elements. Trump decided in an iterview to resurface the thoroughly debunked (and truly disturbing) claim that the Clintons had their friend Vince Foster, an old law colleague of Hillary’s and then White House deputy counsel murdered. Foster’s death was a suicide. Trump of course brought Foster up in his classic I’m-not-saying-I’m-just-saying way: “I don’t bring [Foster’s death] up because I don’t know enough to really discuss it. I will say there are people who continue to bring it up because they think it was absolutely a murder. I don’t do that because I don’t think it’s fair.”

It might seem easy for the Clinton campaign to dismiss all of this as either old news or lunacy but for some uncomfortable coincidences. Like, for example, the news on Monday that Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend and confidant of the couple and now the governor of Virginia, is under investigation by the FBI and Department of Justice over questions of whether he accepted illegal campaign donations during his campaign for governor. He’s another ’90s connection—“the Macker” was a top Clinton fundraiser back then, and those links helped him become chair of the Democratic National Convention in 2001. There are more recent links, too: McAuliffe’s time at the Clinton Global Initiative apparently plays a role in the investigation (though there’s no implication of impropriety at CGI or its parent, the Clinton Foundation—at least on this matter). When the story broke, McAuliffe said he’d cooperate but had not been contacted, a statement he made through his campaign lawyer Marc Elias. Elias just happens to have another full-time job at the moment—as general counsel of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. All of this makes it hard for Clinton’s team to dismiss it all as crazy raving or expired gossip.

Trump may remember the Clinton campaign’s 1992 theme song, courtesy of Fleetwood Mac. But so far, he’s taking the different tack. To paraphrase: Don’t stop talking about yesterday.

South Carolina's New Abortion Law

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill on Wednesday that bans abortions 20 weeks after conception. The law does not have exceptions for rape or incest.

The new law will allow doctors to perform abortions after 20 weeks if the mother’s life is threatened or if the fetus has “an anomaly” and will die. The bill was passed by the state’s General Assembly last week. Current state law requires women to receive state-directed counseling aimed at discouraging abortions. Women seeking abortions must then wait an additional 24 hours to have the procedure.

The bill’s passage has met some resistance from doctors across the state. As The Post and Courier reports:

Dr. Scott Sullivan, the director of maternal-fetal medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, sent Haley a letter last week asking her to veto the bill. He said Wednesday he was disappointed in the outcome.

“But I’ll just keep doing what we always do, trying to help families in need,” he said. “This just makes it harder.”

According to the new law, doctors who perform abortions after 20 weeks could face jail time.

Casual Friday and the ‘End of the Office Dress Code’

The New York Times ran a story Wednesday announcing “The End of the Office Dress Code.” The suit and its varied strains, the article argues—corporate uniforms that celebrate, well, corporate uniformity—are giving way to more individualized interpretations of “office attire.” As the writer Vanessa Friedman puts it, “We live in a moment in which the notion of a uniform is increasingly out of fashion, at least when it comes to the implicit codes of professional and public life.”

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Arch Enemies

It’s true. We live in a time in which our moguls dress in hoodies and t-shirts, and in which more and more workers are telecommuting—working not just from home, but from PJs. It’s a time, too, when the lines between “work” and “everything else” are increasingly—and sometimes frustratingly—fluid. And so: It’s also a time when many of us are trying to figure out, together, what “work clothes” actually means, and the extent to which the term might vary across professions. As Emma McClendon, who curated a new exhibit on uniforms for the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, summed it up: “We are in a very murky period.”

You can blame at least a little of the current confusion on a concept we denizens of the 21st century inherited from the 20th: Casual Friday. The day—which is a bland office perk, and also a State of Mind—arose in the 1960s, the outcome of Hawaiian shirts and Dockers khakis and guerrilla marketing and the fact that suits can be really, really boring. (More on that in a moment.) And it ultimately laid the groundwork for today’s “end of the office dress code” by proving what today’s impulse toward casual work clothes takes for granted: that professionalism need not be contingent on attire.

In that sense, Casual Friday was something of a gateway drug, its jeans and flats and relaxed cuts asking an obvious, but also revolutionary, question: Why not be casual on other days, too?

It started in 1962, in Hawaii, when the state’s Fashion Guild began a campaign to make the Hawaiian shirt—also known as the Aloha shirt—a standard component of the state’s business attire. Hawaii being really hot, and suits there being even more impractical there than they are elsewhere, the campaign was successful. As a result of the effort the guild dubbed “Operation Liberation,” the Hawaiian government soon issued an edict recommending that “the male populace return to ‘aloha attire’ during the summer months for the sake of comfort and in support of the 50th state’s garment industry.”

But why stop at the summer months? Hawaii, after all, is always hot. In 1965, the guild began lobbying the government to allow its employees to wear Hawaiian shirts each Friday, throughout the year. The effort was met with more success: “Aloha Friday” became a weekly mini-event in Hawaii.

Casual Friday was something of a gateway drug, its jeans and flats and relaxed cuts asking an obvious, but also revolutionary, question: Why not be casual on other days, too?

On the mainland, the idea for a “casual Friday” had been pioneered at Hewlett-Packard, in the 1950s. But it gained force as a cultural phenomenon in the early 1990s—a response not to a warm climate, but to a cooling economy. During the recession, businesses were looking for ways to raise employee morale—without increasing salaries or otherwise spending any money. Some of them began experimenting with a broader interpretation of Aloha Friday, one that, like its Hawaiian counterpart, allowed work to become a little more playful than it might be the rest of the week. The idea quickly spread—so quickly that it led to confusion in some offices. What does “casual” mean, in the office? How casual is too casual?

“People were showing up in Hawaiian print shirts or sandals and shorts,” Rick Miller, a clothing PR agent, recalled to Marketplace. “Frankly, there were concerns on the part of management that work might become too much fun.”

And that’s where the guerrilla marketing stepped in. As companies were adopting “casual Friday,” Levi’s was looking for a way to expand its newly acquired Dockers brand beyond its traditional weekend wear. The company decided to target its signature khakis to office workers who might be searching for a less-than-a-suit-but-more-than-jeans look. In 1992, it sent out an 8-page brochure, helpfully titled “A Guide to Casual Businesswear,” to 25,000 human resource managers across the country. The brochure showcased a series of “business casual” looks—most of them, of course, involving Dockers or Levi’s. (“Use pieces from your existing business wardrobe to mix and match with casual clothing,” the caption for one instructed. “For example, jeans can be paired with a blazer or a sweater.”)

It was the right idea, at the right time. The 1990s saw “business casual” become quickly normalized—so much so that, today, it is pretty much the new office-work uniform. (Richard Branson, a tycoon who has perfected the business-casual look, recently declared that suits and ties “no longer serve any useful purpose.”) But with uniformity can come, ironically, confusion—precisely the kind of confusion that Vanessa Friedman wrote about today. What is “casual,” actually? we still wonder. Office shorts—yea or nay? Flip-flops? Yoga pants? When Mark Zuckerberg gives his keynote presentations in a t-shirt and jeans, what does that mean for the rest of us?

It is, for the moment, unclear. Which doesn’t mean that companies won’t try to impose some semblance of sartorial order on, and for, their workers. Yesterday, the publisher Condé Nast announced a new perk for its employees: a discounted membership to the designer-dud rental service Rent the Runway. It’s yet another nudge in the guise of a perk, and a reminder that, while the office dress code may be ending, unspoken expectations for office dress are still alive and well.

The States Strike Back on Transgender Rights

Officials from 11 states filed a lawsuit Wednesday to reverse the Obama administration’s legal stance on transgender discrimination in public schools, setting up a second major legal battle over transgender rights in the federal courts.

The complaint, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of a local school district, asks the federal district court in northern Texas to block the administration from implementing its May 13 guidance letter on protecting transgender rights in public schools.

State attorneys-general from Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and Utah joined the lawsuit, as well as Arizona’s Department of Education and Maine Governor Paul LePage.

In the guidance letter, the U.S. Education and Justice Departments notified every public-school district in the country that Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to gender identity. Under that interpretation, public schools that discriminate against transgender students could risk losing access to federal funds.

The letter covered a broad spectrum of school functions, ranging from housing and single-sex classrooms to graduation ceremonies and school records. But its explicit protections for transgender students who use the bathroom or locker room that corresponds to their gender identity received the fiercest opposition.

The complaint alleges the Obama administration “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.”

Paxton filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Harrold Independent School District. According to the complaint, the district’s school board implemented a policy that restricts the use of multiple-occupancy bathrooms and locker rooms to members of the designated biological sex on Monday, then asked Paxton’s office to intervene on its behalf.

The lawsuit opens a second front in the battle over transgender rights between federal and state officials. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice and North Carolina filed lawsuits against each another over the state’s controversial “bathroom bill,” which requires citizens to use bathrooms that correspond to their assigned gender at birth. Attorney General Loretta Lynch referred to the bill as “state-sponsored discrimination” and said it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Lights Out in Seattle

Updated on May 25 at 3:37 p.m. ET

Equipment failure caused widespread power outages in downtown Seattle on Wednesday. The power was restored after one hour.

Power has been restored to downtown Seattle. Crews are still investigating the cause.

— Seattle City Light (@SEACityLight) May 25, 2016

The Seattle Times reports the power outage happened around 11:30 a.m. local time, shutting down around 60 percent of traffic lights and leaving several buildings without power. The Seattle Times adds:

Ironically, the Seattle City Light offices in the Seattle Municipal Tower were also without power.

“We have no power here, so we’re tweeting off our telephones,” [Connie McDougall, of Seattle City Light] said.

Mandatory Handshakes in Swiss Classrooms

Shaking a teacher’s hand before and after lessons is a Swiss tradition—one, however, that some Muslim students rejected because it meant touching someone of the opposite sex. On Wednesday, a regional authority said all students, regardless of religion, must follow the tradition or face a fine of up to $5,000.

Two Syrian students, whose family is seeking asylum and who followed a strict interpretation of the Quran, were previously exempted by their school from shaking their teacher’s hands. The exemption made national news, however, prompting Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga to say, “The handshake is part of our culture.” The pushback continued, as the BBC reports:

The school, in the small northern town of Therwil, had tried to find a compromise in the matter by deciding the boys should not shake hands with male or female teachers.

Later, after considerable media attention, the school turned to regional authorities to settle the matter.

The authorities said in a statement on Wednesday that “the public interest concerning gender equality as well as integration of foreigners far outweighs that concerning the freedom of belief of students.”

Around 350,000 Muslims live in Switzerland, making up 5 percent of the country’s population. Switzerland’s efforts to integrate Muslims into society have made international headlines in recent years. Swiss voters in 2009 banned the construction of minarets at mosques, while one region banned burqas. Women who wore them could face a $10,000 fine. During this debate over handshakes, the family’s asylum application has been on hold.

Who’s Missing From Brazil’s Cabinet?

Last December, Michel Temer wrote a letter to his boss. Temer, the vice president of Brazil, complained that Dilma Rousseff had excluded him from government decisions and treated him like nothing more than a “decorative vice president.” The note was leaked and published online by several newspapers, and the denizens of the Internet quickly worked their magic, producing memes depicting Temer as a Christmas decoration.

Fast-forward six months and Temer is the interim president of Brazil, put in office as the country’s legislature decides whether to impeach Rousseff, the leader of the center-left Workers Party (PT), over allegations she manipulated economic data ahead of her re-election. Temer is a constitutional lawyer and a member the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the country’s largest political party. (He’s also embroiled in his own political scandals.) In his first days in the presidency, Temer has vowed to fight corruption and introduced measures to reduce the fiscal deficit as Brazil faces its worst recession in decades. He has also named a new cabinet of ministers that has attracted a lot of attention for what it’s missing: women.

All the ministers in the cabinet are men who identify as white, making Temer the first president since Ernesto Geisel, who served from 1974 to 1979, not to include women.

The reshuffling has cut the number of cabinet posts from 31 to 22, and unseated four female cabinet ministers, one of whom was the only Afro-Brazilian minister in the government, according to the AP. Temer aides told Reuters that the cabinet was selected quickly from parties that would support Temer. The acting president had asked Ellen Gracie Northfleet, a judge who in 2000 became the first woman to be appointed to the country’s Supreme Court, to take the office of the comptroller general, but she declined, according to Brazilian media.

“We tried to look for women, but it wasn’t possible,” said Eliseu Padilha, Temer’s new chief of staff, when the cabinet was named.

Last week, Josi Nunes, a female PMDB lawmaker, told reporters that Temer said he would hire women in his government “a little further ahead.” But for supporters of PT, whose policies have for years promoted social justice and racial equality, Temer’s decision is troubling. The cabinet’s composition has raised concerns the new president seeks to make Brazil more conservative. His decision to eliminate the ministry of women, racial equality, and human rights and consolidate it into the justice ministry, as well as to merge the culture ministry into the education ministry, has only compounded their fears.

Temer’s critics point out his new cabinet is not representative of Brazil’s population, which is 51 percent female. But it is does mirror the makeup of the country’s congress, which has been about 90 percent male since 2003, and more than that in the years before. For advocates of women’s rights around the world, the new cabinet is a step backward, especially as it comes after Rousseff, before her precipitous decline, became Brazil’s first female president in 2010.

Worldwide, 22 percent of all national legislators were female as of August 2015, up from 11 percent in 1995, according to the United Nations. The current U.S. Congress has 108 female lawmakers, 20 percent of the legislature but a record in American history. Canada’s legislature is 26 percent female, though last fall Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the country’s first 50 percent female cabinet. Brazil is behind its fellow South American countries Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Paraguay in female representation in parliament, according to the World Bank. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organization of parliaments, ranks Brazil 155th in female representation among 191 countries.

Women first joined the Brazilian cabinet in 1979 during the military dictatorship under General Joao Figueiredo. All successive presidents named women to their cabinets. A year into Rousseff’s first term, the Palacio do Planalto, where Brazil’s president works, looked different than in previous administrations. Der Spiegel’s Jens Glüsing described the president’s office in 2012:

Planning Minister Miriam Belchior rushes past on her way to visit Chief of Staff Gleisi Hoffmann, with whom she will discuss a multi-billion-real investment program to combat poverty. On the way she is greeted by Ideli Salvatti, the woman who manages the government's relations with Congress. Two floors down, Press Secretary Helena Chagas is talking on the phone. In the front office, several women are reviewing the day's newspapers.

Wherever you look in this white marble palace, there are female ministers, female advisers, female experts and female undersecretaries. Only the waiters and the security guards in the entrance hall are men. Thanks to President Dilma Rousseff, everything else at government headquarters is firmly in female hands.

Ten of them sit in the cabinet. All but one of her inner circle of advisers are women. This isn't because of quotas. “Given a choice between a man and a woman with the same qualifications, she prefers to hire the woman,” says Gilberto Carvalho, who runs the presidential office.

When she began her second term in 2014, Rousseff appointed six women to cabinet positions. Earlier this month, after she was suspended, she criticized Temer’s cabinet picks.

“Blacks and women are fundamental if you truly want to construct an inclusive country,” Rousseff told Bloomberg. “From its formation, I think the government clearly reflects that it is going to be liberal in the economy and extremely conservative on the social and cultural side.”

This week, Temer, who is two weeks into the job, announced several proposals aimed at salvaging the country’s deteriorating economy. He bashed his critics, saying his new government was the victim of “psychological aggression,” The New York Times reported Tuesday. For a moment, the Temer who wrote that letter to Rousseff last year appeared. From the Times: “Slapping his hand on his desk before television cameras, a perturbed Mr. Temer proclaimed: “I’ve heard, ‘Temer is very fragile, poor little thing, he doesn’t know how to govern.’ Gibberish!’”