Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 315

The End of On-Call Scheduling?

Retailers have been under intense pressure from labor groups, regulators, and their own employees to end on-call scheduling—the practice in which shift workers are called to work on short notice, and are often uncompensated if it turns out to be a slow day. On Friday, New York attorney-general Eric Schneiderman’s office announced that J.Crew will end on-call scheduling nationwide this month. The retailer joins Urban Outfitters, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bath & Body Works, Gap, and Victoria’s Secret, which all have announced changes since Schneiderman’s office launched an inquiry into the practice at over a dozen companies.

“After discussion with my office, J. Crew has agreed to end on-call shifts nationwide and to provide one week of advance notice about schedules to employees at all New York store locations,” said Schneiderman in a statement. “Workers deserve protections that allow them to have a reliable schedule in order to arrange for transportation to work, to accommodate child-care needs, and to budget their family finances.”

This is the sixth agreement Schneiderman has reached with a major retailer. In April, the New York attorney-general’s office sent letters to 13 retailers asking for information regarding their scheduling policies: “We have been informed that a number of companies in New York State utilize on-call shifts and require employees to report in some manner, whether by phone, text message, or email, before the designated shift in order to learn whether their services are ultimately needed on-site that day,” said the letter.

The letter expresses concern that the practice might be in violation of a state regulation that employees who report for work must be paid for at least four hours (or the number of hours in a regular shift) of work. It cites the financial and personal strains for workers without predictable schedules—from being unable to work another job or attend school, to the strains of finding childcare last minute. Further, a report by the Economic Policy Institute found that the lowest income workers face the most irregular work schedules.

A spokesperson for Gap Inc. confirmed that all five brands—The Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Intermix, and Athleta—has phased out on-call scheduling globally by the end of September.* L Brand—the parent company for Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works—also confirmed that they have ended the practice nationwide.

Gap is also working on a pilot project with Joan Williams, a professor and director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of Law, and Susan Lambert, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies scheduling issues, on new ways to stabilize worker schedules. Lambert’s research found that 64 percent of food-service workers and half of retail workers receive less than a week’s notice for shifts.

For now, the shift away from on-call scheduling seems to be only gaining momentum: Earlier this week, Forever 21 was hit with a lawsuit from a former employee over unpaid on-call scheduling. And, for the seven remaining companies that Schneiderman’s office contacted (the identities of which are unknown), such momentum may soon be overpowering.

'More of This Sort of Thing' in Iraq

Defense Secretary Ash Carter says he expects more missions of the kind that saw an American service member killed on Thursday in an operation to rescue dozens of prisoners held by the Islamic State in Iraq. But he insisted the operations did not contribute to an expansion of the U.S. military role in the country.

“I expect we’ll do more of this sort of thing,” he said, before adding: “It doesn’t represent us entering the combat role.”

U.S. troops left Iraq in 2011, and remain there in an advisory role.

Carter said the operations simply enhanced the effort to train, advise, and assist Iraqi forces. But he added: “They will be in harm’s way. I don’t want anybody to be under any illusions about that.”  

As we reported Thursday, the soldier was killed in a raid by U.S. and Kurdish commandos on an Islamic State base in Hawijah, Kirkuk province, following a request from the Kurdistan Regional Government. About 70 hostages, including dozens of civilians, were freed. The Pentagon said they faced imminent execution.

The Pentagon identified the slain soldier as Master Sergeant Joshua L. Wheeler, 39, of Roland, Oklahoma. Wheeler, who was assigned to U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is the first American soldier to die in Iraq after the U.S. withdrawal in 2011.   

On Friday, Carter added he made the decision to aid the Kurdish troops after receiving actionable intelligence the hostages faced imminent execution. He said the hostages, who have since been debriefed, had told them that their graves had been dug.

“We had seen them [graves] beforehand,” Carter said.

Here’s how the Pentagon described the U.S. role on Thursday:  “The U.S. provided helicopter lift and accompanied Iraqi Peshmerga forces to the compound.” The Peshmerga came under fire, Wheeler was injured, and died later, the Defense Department said.

On Friday, Carter provided more details about Wheeler’s actions: “He ran toward the gunfire,” he said.

He said he was proud of Wheeler’s actions and called them courageous.

“It wasn’t part of the plan, but it’s something that he did,” he said.

Carter also added that U.S. operations against the Islamic State will focus on the group’s oil infrastructure, which is a major source of revenue for the group.

How Will Trump Respond to Ben Carson's Iowa Surge?

Ben Carson’s rise in Iowa might force Donald Trump to finally put up or shut up. And given historical precedent about the latter, maybe that means the former is in the cards.

This week, two separate polls showed Carson pulling out ahead of Trump in Iowa. The Quinnipiac poll (whose accuracy some pollsters question) had them at 28 and 20 percent respectively, while a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg News poll had the gap at 28-19. It was the Quinnipiac poll that led to a disparaging tweet about Iowans being retweeted from Trump’s account, and then deleted, with Trump blaming an intern.

But Trump’s troubles in Iowa run deeper than undisciplined tweeting. Look at their polling trend in Iowa, via RealClearPolitics:

Republican Presidential Candidates in Iowa

RealClearPolitics

That’s Trump in blue and Carson in red. While the two have moved mostly in concert over the last three months, they’ve suddenly diverged recently. And while Trump’s favorable/unfavorable rating sits at 59-37 among Iowa Republicans overall, Carson’s is an incredible 84-12.

What would reverse the trend? Trump’s brand is built on outlandish comments, but Carson is no stranger to controversy either. (Here’s a roundup.) The poll asks respondents about how they rate certain facets of Carson’s personality, and it’s amazing. All of the things that might typically be considered weaknesses rate highly:

He said Obamacare was as bad as slavery? Attractive to 88 percent. Suggested an unconstitutional religious test for office? 73 percent. Made historically suspect claims about Hitler? 77 percent. There’s almost no way for Trump to outflank Carson on these things.

Even worse for Trump, Carson is about to buy TV ads in Iowa for the first time, which could widen the gap. Trump’s campaign has been telling the press since at least August that he’s mulling ad buys (see The Washington Post on October 7, for example), but no one’s seen any in New Hampshire, and in Iowa the only TV presence is anti-Trump spots.

As usual, predicting trouble for Trump is a fool’s errand. But Carson’s surge and ad buy might make Trump finally get off the TV sidelines and spend.

72 Hours With Facebook Instant Articles

On Tuesday, Facebook debuted its long-awaited Instant Articles feature to all users of its iPhone app. Now, when someone taps a story in their News Feed from a select group of publications—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed, and The Atlantic—they access a version stored directly on Facebook’s servers, not on the publication’s own. The company has started to test the feature on Android phones as well.

With the formal release of the feature, Facebook formally ends one era in the platform wars and begins another.

Since August 2013, when it adjusted the algorithm of its News Feed to favor “quality content,” Facebook has been the major referrer to news sites—either the fastest-growing or the just-plain biggest. Over the summer, the analytics company Parsely said that its proprietary data confirmed that Facebook now directs more traffic to news sites than Google. “The list is a lot longer than is publicly known of those that have Facebook delivering half to two-thirds of their traffic right now,” said Justin Smith, the CEO of Bloomberg Media, in February of this year.

And for almost as long as Facebook has been funneling free attention to news sites, there’s been a rumor that it wanted to go and straight-up host the content, too. There have been whispers of this intent since the summer of 2014; the late, great Times reporter David Carr was the first to actually report them almost exactly a year ago. The 12 months since have been stop-and-start: Buzzfeed and the Times itself would participate in the feature, we learned in March. Then we heard nothing for a while. Then Facebook began testing the feature, named “Instant Articles,” in May. Then we heard nothing for a longer while. And then, about three weeks ago, it began to trickle out to iPhone users. Now it’s fully deployed.

David Carr’s original précis—that hosting stories on the social network’s servers would make publications “serfs in a kingdom that Facebook owns”—has stuck to Instant Articles since the beginning. And ever-wary publishers have been especially skeptical of Facebook’s insistence that the feature is necessary because news sites are, as a category, too slow. (Facebook says it takes an average of eight seconds to load each page.)

I think to many publishers, this just didn’t make sense, because even if they think of website speed as a responsibility, it’s not a core concern. Telling publishers their site is too slow feels like telling a classical cellist that they take too long to start playing after walking on stage. The cellist could imagine the long pause affecting the listener, sure, but if the music’s good enough, why care? As the audience walks out of the concert hall that night, will they remember the brilliant conclusion or the eight seconds of initial silence?

Sure, Alex is pretty smug (and weirdly obsessed with Facebook features), but this promotional image is a good view of what that lightning-bolt “Instant Articles” icon looks like. (Facebook)

Maybe now that there has been an industry-wide revolt against page loading speeds (it took the form of ad-blockers), publishers know better. But what has struck me about the first three days of using Instant Articles is that my behavior has already significantly changed to account for the speed boost. Posts of an Instant Article have a little lightning-bolt icon in the corner; I already find myself looking for that icon to decide whether to open a story. If it’s there, I figure there’s no opportunity cost, so I tap recklessly (“how bad could it be?”), the page loads more or less immediately, and I read it. If it’s not there, I go through a little mental routine of making sure that I really, really do want to read the story—and then, even though I know I’m going to pay the loading tax, I groan after I tap and that blank page appears.

Facebook has made an “open standard” that makes it easier for other publishers to adopt Instant Articles. According to Facebook, the list of news sites about to join the feature includes:

Billboard, Billy Penn, The Blaze, Bleacher Report, Breitbart, Brit + Co, Business Insider, Bustle, CBS News, CBS Sports, CNET, Complex, Country Living, Cracked, Daily Dot, E! News, Elite Daily, Entertainment Weekly, Gannett, Good Housekeeping, Fox Sports, Harper’s Bazaar, Hollywood Life, Hollywood Reporter, IJ Review, Little Things, Mashable, Mental Floss, mindbodygreen, MLB, MoviePilot, NBA, NY Post, The Onion, Opposing Views, People, Pop Sugar, Rare, Refinery 29, Rolling Stone, Seventeen, TIME, Uproxx, US Magazine, USA Today, Variety, The Verge, The Weather Channel.

That this list includes Billy Penn, a local Philadelphia news site, and the IJ Review, a conservative aggregator, and two professional American sports leagues, tells you a great deal about the feature’s imminent ubiquity. Very soon, every digital publisher, journalistic or non, that wants to be a serious online player will host a large portion of their content on Facebook’s servers. The Instant Articles is just too good to resist, and I think the penalty for resisting will be too high. And then we all, Facebook and the media sector alike, will have to deal with the consequences—whether the comparisons to feudalism are correct or not.

What Conservative Media Say About the Benghazi Hearing

How did Hillary Clinton do in Thursday’s hearings of the House Select Committee on Benghazi? Liberals and Clinton supporters are jubilant. Mainstream outlets also confidently declared Clinton the winner.

“As a matter of pure political theater, yesterday’s Benghazi committee hearing was a victory for Hillary Clinton and an overwhelming defeat for House Republicans,” write NBC’s Chuck Todd and Mark Murray. “The hearing was, in a word, boring. And that’s exactly what Clinton wanted,” Chris Cillizza declared.

But what about conservative media? In such a politicized setting, with many liberals having already absolved Clinton of any wrongdoing in the September 11, 2012, attacks that killed four Americans in Libya, and many conservatives having already deemed her guilty of something, does that divide translate into the media response? Put another way, are declarations of Clinton victory another evidence of press bias?

Maybe not.

A trip around conservative media shows many commentators interpreted the hearings the same way mainstream and liberal reporters did: As a victory for a poised and polished Clinton, and a defeat for Republicans on the panel. One place to start is Fox News, where Ed Henry spoke with Greta van Susteren even as the hearings crawled along to their finish, 11 hours after they began.

“In terms of the narrative on Benghazi, there was no major new development that rocked her side of the story, that changes this in some way,” he said. “What you have here is another big test for Hillary Clinton, and another big test that she appears to have passed.”

Henry cited a source inside a top GOP presidential campaign who said Clinton “looked presidential and was in command” and called the hearings a “total wipeout” for GOP members. Van Susteren agreed, saying Clinton’s performance was closer to the politician she had watched over the years than the tentative, stumbling Clinton of this campaign so far.

Of course, Henry and van Susteren are parts of Fox’s news crew. Bill O’Reilly, one of the network’s talking heads, focused not on how the hearings had gone but on whether Clinton was trustworthy.

At the Washington Examiner, columnist Byron York was similarly damning about the proceedings, though he blamed Clinton and committee Democrats for throwing things off track:

A hearing billed as an epic, High Noon-style confrontation—granted, the hype came from the media, not Republican committee members themselves—instead turned out to be a somewhat interesting look at a few limited aspects of the Benghazi affair. In other words, no big deal. And that is very, very good news for Hillary Clinton.

Newseum

Ashe Schow concurred: “She appeared competent, but she didn’t ‘wow’ anyone. The fact of the matter is that Ms. Clinton simply has to show up and not fail, and she will be declared a winner.” The Boston Herald, a right-leaning tabloid, blared that “HILLARY SKATES THROUGH MARATHON BENGHAZI HEARING,” with a picture of a bored-looking Clinton resting her chin on her hand.

Erick Erickson argues that Benghazi remains worthy of investigation, but dismissed Thursday’s hearing as a manner of achieving that.

The hearings are a waste of time because everything about it is politicized and nothing is going to happen. There will be no scalp collection. In fact, it is clear from today’s hearing that Rep. Trey Gowdy and Rep. Peter Roskam seem to be the only two people on the committee of either party who are capable of asking exacting, precise questions. Most of the rest of the committee just wants to grandstand for the folks back home as either prosecutors of or defenders of Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, he added, “Mrs. Clinton too is far too bright to be trapped in this or any questions.”

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes had a similar view—grudging respect for Clinton’s appearance as theater, resentment at the substance of what she said, and frustration with the way Republicans carried themselves during the hearing:

The coverage of the hearings—from the earliest tweets to the final page-one wraps—focused almost entirely on the style of Clinton’s performance rather than the substance of her testimony. And it must be said: She was impressive. Clinton was unflappable even as some Republicans on the panel took gratuitous shots at her, spun personal theories about her motives, and even questioned whether she cared about the fate of the survivors of those attacks. But she was “impressive” only if the words that passed her lips were immaterial to evaluating her overall presentation.

Some conservative reporters zeroed in on a discussion over the cause of the events—were they a planned terrorist attack, or a spontaneous demonstration by people upset about a video about Islam? “It took two and a half hours, but Republicans members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi just dropped a bombshell on former secretary of state Hillary Clinton,” wrote National Review’s Brendan Bordelon. Sharyl Attkisson made a similar case. (Clinton said that the U.S understanding of what had happened was fluid, and that she continues to believe the video played a role in the attack.)

In general, however, the scorecard in conservative media looks a lot like what everyone else is saying. It’s also generally in agreement with the way other Republican members of Congress judged the proceedings, Robert Costa notes, while Gowdy himself said, “I don't know that she testified that much differently today than she has the previous time she testified."

But maybe that was predetermined all along. Ed Driscoll at Instapundit dolefully noted how an article by Rick Wilson Thursday morning had predicted the reaction to a T. “Now if only the GOP could match up their presidential candidates with strategists who can hack the MSM’S OODA loop with that degree of forensic surgery, they might no longer be the Stupid Party,” Driscoll wrote.

Harry Potter: The Sequel

J.K. Rowling wasn’t lying when she said her new play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, isn’t a prequel. Because it’s actually a sequel, set 19 years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The official synopsis of the play, which opens in London next year, was finally shared on Pottermore late on Thursday night:

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: Sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

There are a few (not mutually exclusive) ways to interpret this news. One: Joy! Fans are getting another Harry Potter story. Two: Relief that the Deathly Hallows epilogue, which featured Harry and his friends all grown up with kids, won’t remain a nice but incomplete bit of fan service for mourning readers. Three: Uncertainty at the thought of seeing Harry Potter—The Boy Who Lived, who once slept in a cupboard under the stairs, the tormented and heroic teenager—as a weary, frumpy civil servant.

Imagine the possibilities. For once, a Harry Potter story with no Voldemort (or a chunk of Voldemort’s soul trapped in a person/book). And a new hero in Harry’s middle child, Albus Severus (admittedly a real albatross of a name, however well-intentioned). It’s one thing to be named after two noble but flawed men, and another for one of those men to have killed the other, and yet another for your father to have witnessed both of those men die. And then, there’s Harry himself: What’s worse, having the most evil wizard of all time trying to murder you and everyone you love, or not being able to make it home in time for dinner?

But for fans who are ready to move on from Harry Potter stories solely about the young wizard himself, Cursed Child could explore some interesting territory. Harry’s only sense of his father came through other people’s memories or fragments of magic, but now he gets to be a father to his three children, which poses its own challenges. And Rowling so thoroughly captured the thoughts and feelings of young Harry earlier in the series, it’ll be exciting to see her revisit the complexities of childhood again, after the books became less and less innocent.

Are Harry and his friends still deeply haunted by those they lost? Will Harry ever be drawn to Dark Magic? Will Albus Severus? Will Harry learn more about his past, or are there secrets he’s been keeping from his family? Is Albus Severus actually the titular “cursed” child in some way? As fans ponder those questions, they can try and interpret clues from the play’s new artwork (which features Albus Severus sitting inside a nest in the shape of a Golden Snitch), or guess which of their favorite characters might be played by one of the show’s 30 actors.

Unfortunately, only a lucky few will manage to snag tickets to both parts of the play (the decision to split it into two parts caused consternation among fans worried about the expense). Still others might manage to find scalped tickets. But the nature of the theater experience means the vast majority of fans won’t get to experience the communal joy of seeing what Rowling’s dreamed up for them. They’ll be trying not to feel too sad that the first new Harry Potter story in almost 10 years won’t be one they can binge-read the day it comes out.

Bracing for Patricia

On Friday, Mexico braced for Hurricane Patricia, a massive Category-5 storm, which is expected to make landfall in the coming hours.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Patricia is already said to be the strongest-ever storm on record in the Western hemisphere.

For posterity-- 200 mph for a #hurricane- never seen that in modern satellite era! #Patricia #climate #ElNino pic.twitter.com/o25GoIiAuF

— Eric Blake (@EricBlake12) October 23, 2015

The projections are grim. The NHC predicts that while the storm’s strength could fluctuate, “Patricia is expected to remain an extremely dangerous Category 5 hurricane through landfall.”

As other experts are warning of the possibility the storm might produce 40-foot waves of water along Mexico’s western coast, NASA points out that the storm has already broken two storm-related records.

In addition to being “the strongest hurricane on record in the National Hurricane Center’s area of responsibility (AOR) which includes the Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific basins,” Patricia has also logged the lowest-ever “minimum central pressure,” which helps gauge a storm’s current strength and predict its strength in the near future.

Low central pressure is a bad sign. “Wind is a result of forces attempting to balance,” Steve LaNore explained in 2010. “As the pressure lowers in the center, the air spiraling around the eye must spin faster to offset the greater ‘slope’ (gradient) of the pressure surface.”

Patricia’s minimum central pressure has been marked at 880 millibars. For perspective, Hurricane Katrina, which was the third-most powerful hurricane to reach the United States, was logged at 920 millibars when it made its second landfall. (Katrina’s top wind speed was also 125 miles-per-hour.)

Ahead of the storm, dozens of Mexican municipalities have declared states of emergencies while others have been put on high alert. Measures such as closing schools and canceling flights have been taken in three Mexican states in particular—Jalisco, Colima, and Manzanillo, near where the storm is projected to hit. As the Los Angeles Times notes, more than 8 million people live in those three states.

Bridge of Spies Is Spielberg in Minor Key

Tom Hanks is Steven Spielberg’s great stoic hero. In Saving Private Ryan, he’s the schoolteacher soldier, trying to maintain a semblance of sense in the chaos of World War II; in Catch Me If You Can, he’s the befuddled Fed, blustering through every airy caper to drag the conman hero back down to earth. And in Bridge of Spies, Hanks plays James B. Donovan, a lawyer who defended the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel after his arrest in 1957, performing the vital duty of representing American fairness, and giving Abel his day in court. More importantly, to Spielberg, Donovan actually put in effort as Abel’s lawyer rather than serve as a simple prop, a distinction that recurs in the film time and time again.

Related Story

Historians Need to Give Steven Spielberg a Break

Scripted by the playwright Matt Charman (and later revised by the Coen Brothers), Bridge of Spies follows Donovan as he defends Abel (Mark Rylance) up to the Supreme Court, and later negotiates a prisoner swap in East Berlin after an American Air Force pilot, Francis Gary Powers  (Austin Stowell), is shot down behind Soviet lines. The writing is as stoic as Donovan, who Hanks plays as a regular neighborhood guy just trying to ensure everyone gets a fair shake—but behind the façade is real shrewdness. Donovan’s work as a negotiator was fascinating, but Spielberg and Charman frame him as a thin bulwark against the American government’s attempts to work around its own supposed ideals at the height of the Cold War.

In another director’s hands, Bridge of Spies might have a more paranoiac edge, but this is Spielberg, though certainly in minor key, with a jarring Thomas Newman score taking the place of the expected swelling strings of John Williams (it’s the first Spielberg film Williams hasn’t scored since The Color Purple). Rylance plays Abel not as a figure of menace (he was, in fact, a fairly low-level operative) but of reserved calm; every time Donovan asks him if he’s worried about the possibility of being executed, Abel flatly asks, “Would that help?” As he defends his client and cites his constitutional privileges, Donovan is openly disdained by a judge and prosecutor intent on rapidly convicting Abel; Spielberg draws a sly parallel with the much grander but effectively similar Soviet show trial given to the captured pilot, Powers.

The film is at its slowest when it’s dealing with the backlash Donovan suffered at work and at home—Alan Alda and Amy Ryan fill out thankless roles as his boss and his wife, tutting over his dogged pursuit of justice. Far better is Scott Shepherd as Hoffman, the CIA agent tasked with ordering Donovan to East Berlin, where he presented himself as a private citizen seeking to organize a prisoner swap with the Soviets. Donovan spoke for the U.S. where the country could not, secretly acknowledging East Germany and the USSR as diplomatic partners at a crucial point in the Cold War, and Spielberg has as much fun as he can with that strange irony. Hoffman could be a terrifying man in black keeping Donovan on a tight leash, but Bridge of Spies is free of those dramatics, and Shepherd instead plays him as another frustrated bureaucrat trying to accomplish a limited task (the retrieval of Powers) as quickly as possible.

With each walk-on part, Spielberg underlines the slow creep of tyranny in a system that supposedly eschews it. Hoffman needs Powers back, so he ignores the plight of another imprisoned American, a graduate student arrested in East Berlin. Judge Byers (Dakin Matthews) needs Abel in jail as quickly as possible, so he waves off Donovan’s complaints of warrant-less searches. Powers gets in his U-2 spy plane because he’s ordered to (his capture is the film’s one bravura action sequence) even as it’s made clear to him that the U.S. military will disavow his actions if he’s caught. When Donovan sits down with his Soviet counterpart, their aims are exactly the same—the only difference, as he keeps trying to remind everyone, is that America is supposed to abide by the rights it grants in its Constitution.

It’s on the hokey side, for sure, but Spielberg mostly reins in his tendency toward thuddingly obvious symbolism, although he does go a bit overboard in the film’s final, triumphant scenes. Hanks helps by playing Donovan with gentle charm and humor, rather than as a crusading patriot; his subtlety is matched at every turn by Rylance, whose supporting work would likely be noticed by Oscar voters if it wasn’t so admirably low-key. Donovan’s victory is small but palpable; still, we know the ideals he fights for haven’t always recurred in our country’s history as a foreign power. Bridge of Spies is a tale of American exceptionalism, but a quietly cynical one—and those are always the wisest kind.

It's Hillary Clinton Day at the Benghazi Committee

Updated on October 22 at 5:17 p.m. ET

It’s a good bet that Thursday will be the climax for the House select committee on Benghazi. After almost 18 months and dozens of hearings, the committee interviews Hillary Clinton on Thursday, in a marathon public hearing expected to last eight to 10 hours.

Whether you regard the hearings as an essential inquiry or a political farce, Clinton’s testimony was always going to be the main event. Several separate investigations have already considered the September 11, 2012, attacks in Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Most of the big questions have largely been answered. Yes, the State Department that Clinton led should have done more to protect personnel in Libya; but, no, there’s no evidence thus far of any criminal negligence.

More on Benghazi From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton Scandal Primer Has the Benghazi Committee Reached a Turning Point? Will the Benghazi Hearing Help Hillary?

Thursday’s hearing has taken on a new political charge in the past few weeks, however. While Democrats have long derided the hearing as pure politics intended to hurt Clinton, they have recently gotten assistance in making their case from an unexpected quarter: Republicans, from Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to a fired staffer, who have suggested the committee’s purpose was essentially political, to harm the Democratic presidential frontrunner. Committee chair Trey Gowdy has come under intense scrutiny and referred to the recent pressure as “among the worst weeks of my life.” (Clinton can surely sympathize.)

That means Thursday’s hearings have high stakes for all involved. Clinton is coming off a good stretch on the presidential trail: She was named winner of the first Democratic debate, her poll numbers are bouncing up, and Vice President Joe Biden declined Wednesday to challenge her for the nomination. She will have to avoid missteps during Thursday’s hearing to maintain her momentum. An error could reawaken jitters about her legitimacy. Clinton’s appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the attacks in 2013 was generally positively reviewed, but also produced one ill-advised line about the genesis of the attacks—“What difference does it make?”—that has been used effectively against her.

Republicans also have a great deal on the line: There’s pressure for them to prove that the committee’s purpose is legitimate. The problem is that while the committee has proved extremely leaky, the only really damaging stuff has been the political damage done to Clinton by revelations about her use of a private email account while secretary of state. If Republicans can’t deliver the goods on Thursday, the pressure on the committee to wrap up its work will grow. Democratic members of the committee are reportedly considering resigning en masse after Thursday’s hearing to deprive the panel of its bipartisan bona fides.

As much as is on the line, an eight-hour House hearing is still an eight-hour House hearing, and much of it is likely to be dull. We’ll be tracking the interesting moments and covering them in this space throughout the hearing.

* * *

10:56 a.m. Opening statements have just wrapped up on Capitol Hill. Gowdy’s statement was a typically polished speech, but it suggested a certain amount of defensiveness—the South Carolina representative worked to defend the legitimacy of his committee.

“Madame Secretary, I understand some people—frankly in both parties—have suggested this investigation is about you. Let me assure you it is not,” he said. “Our committee has interviewed half a hundred witnesses, not a single one of them has been named Clinton until today. You were the Secretary of State for this country when our facility was attacked. So, of course this Committee is going to talk to you. You are an important witness, but you are just one important witness, among half a hundred important witnesses.”

Elijah Cummings, the Democratic ranking member, offered a mirror image of Gowdy’s statement, blasting the committee as pure politics. “Republicans are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this abusive effort to derail Secretary Clinton’s campaign,” he said. “It is time, and it is time now, for Republicans to end this taxpayer-funded fishing expeditions.”

Clinton focused more on the attacks themselves than either Gowdy or Cummings. While she took some sidelong shots at the committee, noting the several previous investigations, she largely focused on what happened in Benghazi. She spoke at length about Stevens, noting she’d appointed him as ambassador and taking responsibility for his death. Clinton said the lesson was that the U.S. must protect personnel while also recognizing that “America must lead in a dangerous world, and our diplomats must continue representing us in dangerous places.”

Gowdy’s statement is here. Cummings’s is here. Clinton’s is here. The Washington Post has a running transcript here.

1:50 p.m. So far the greatest fireworks from the hearing didn’t involve Hillary Clinton at all—they came from a contretemps between Gowdy and Cummings, who ended up in a shouting match over Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Clinton confidant. (More on whom here and here.) Blumenthal sent Clinton dozens of emails about Libya, which she says were unsolicited. Republicans have argued (dubitably) that he was her primary source of intelligence on the country. After Democrats attacked the focus on Blumenthal, Gowdy cut in and defended it. Cummings accused him of misleading, and demanded that the transcript of Blumenthal’s prior testimony to the committee be entered into the record. Representative Adam Schiff, another Democrat, also jumped in on the action.

And then ... well, see for yourself:

Clinton for her part sat and watched the fight unfold with a mixture of what appeared to be amusement, annoyance, and boredom.

Then the hearing adjourned for lunch.

What else have we learned so far today? Not a great deal. Curiously, Clinton says she did not have a computer in her office at the State Department. Her facility with a BlackBerry has been much remarked-upon, but she said that notwithstanding the focus on her emails, it was not her main method of gathering information at the department.

It doesn’t appear that Republicans have scored any direct hits on her, nor that she’s committed any serious stumbles. Representative Mike Pompeo seemed to land a hit when he asked why so many of Blumenthal’s emails had gotten to her while none of Stevens’ security requests had.

Overall, however, the hearing has focused on the committee’s own legitimacy and on Sidney Blumenthal—likely not the debate Republicans wanted, but one Clinton is content to have.

5:17 p.m. The hearing is just returning from a long break for votes in the House. So what’s happened this afternoon? Once again: Not a great deal. Perhaps the most riveting moment came as Clinton spoke about the work of the security forces in Benghazi, and narrated how Stevens and Sean Smith died and the heroic efforts to save them. The former secretary seemed on the verge of choking up.

Sidney Blumenthal has remained a central focus of the hearing. Following up from the pre-lunch flare-up, the committee voted on whether to release the transcript of Blumenthal’s closed testimony, but with Republicans outnumbering Democrats, the motion was defeated. Republicans focused for some time on whether Clinton followed the recommendations of a review following the 1998 embassy bombings, which suggested the secretary of state personally approve security. The disagreement focuses on whether that concerned general guidance, such as when to close or open embassies (as Clinton holds), or whether she should have been delivering more detailed guidance on issues like security staffing.

For most of the afternoon, however, Republicans have generally tried to pin Clinton against a wall without great effect, while Democrats have used their time to lob softballs at her or, just as often, simply answer the Republicans’ questions for her. While Clinton seems awkward in some settings, she has shown again that this is one in which she can thrive: She’s controlled, calm, and prepared, and she seems to feed off adversarial questioning.

Daniel Murphy, Mr. October

In baseball, October magic is very real. It has the power to suddenly turn historically lousy baseball franchises into championship contenders and average players into gods.

This October, with the World Series still left to play, one team under a supernatural sway is the New York Mets, who finished their sweep of the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday night to reach their first World Series in 15 years. Aided in part by some very strong pitching, the Mets didn’t trail once during the entire four-game series.

But the truest beneficiary of October’s enchantment was Daniel Murphy, the 30-year-old Mets second baseman, who was named the Most Valuable Player of the National League Championship Series on Wednesday. The last of Murphy’s four hits in Wednesday’s clinching game was a home run—his seventh home run of the post-season and his sixth consecutive game with a home run. That’s an all-time playoff record.

Hitting a home run in six straight games is one of baseball’s rarer feats. No member of the New York Mets has ever done it. Murphy, generally considered to be a middling, contact batter and only a slightly above-average player in general, did it in his first post-season, despite only hitting 14 home runs all year.

What gives? Murphy can’t even explain it. “I can’t explain why the balls keep going out of the ballpark, but they do,” he said on Wednesday night.

As Jayson Stark noted, Murphy also has more hits (16) than he does swings and misses during his postseason at-bats. He also has seven straight playoff games with a hit, a run, and an RBI. The only other person to ever do that was Lou Gehrig.

Murphy’s historic tear has both players and pundits likening him to Babe Ruth. His fans took to Wikipedia overnight to brazenly dub him “Mr. October,” an honorific held by Yankee great Reggie Jackson, as well as arbitrarily name him a member of the Supreme Court.

#DanielMurphy @Wikipedia page is locked following a spate of creative updates. #Mets https://t.co/Kn0sRMza5O pic.twitter.com/YNgH7ZJ2hL

— Staci D Kramer (@sdkstl) October 22, 2015

The only person to hit more home runs in one postseason was Barry Bonds, who hit eight in 2002. More notably, Bonds and the San Francisco Giants lost the World Series that year to the Anaheim Angels in seven games.

Regardless of how dominant Murphy has been, like Bonds before him, all of October’s magic and baseball’s playoff records are second-rate consolations without a championship. For now though and for the first time in years, Mets fans aren’t worrying themselves about Murphy’s law.