Author: openjargon

• Japan says first modification work on its newly converted light aircraft carrier has been completed.
• JS Kaga was helicopter carrier identified as a destroyer refitted with to carry F-35 jets.
• The Kaga will now undergo sea trials, and its results will help with the upgrades on another ship.

Japan is showing off the first changes made to one of its helicopter-carrying destroyers to turn it into a light aircraft carrier capable of operating F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters.

JS Kaga's successful modification will pave the way for another of its helicopter carriers, JS Izumo, to also be converted into an aircraft carrier.

The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force announced the completion of the first special modification work on the Kaga earlier this month. In a post on X, it showed off the carrier, which now features a flight deck designed to operate and launch F-35 jets.

The JMSDF noted in the post that it was still upgrading another vessel, the Izumo lead-in-class helicopter carrier, to be able to launch and recover F-35s. Once both ships are able to operate the jets, Japan will have a capability it hasn't seen since World War II.

And it'll need it, too. As of October 2023, Japan is still planning to acquire more than 147 F-35s — 105 F-35As and 42 F-35Bs.

Japan began to dramatically overhaul its Self-Defense Force in October 2021, creating its first amphibious military unit since WWII and launching a new class of modern frigates. It also announced the conversion of the two Izumo-class helicopter carriers into light aircraft carriers.

The upgraded Japanese warship resembles a US Navy big-deck amphibious assault ship, which the sea service and the Marines have previously explored using as light so-called "lightning carriers" in reference to F-35.

Although Japan has a long history with flattops and its navy was one of the first to use aircraft carriers effectively, the ongoing upgrades mark a milestone for it in the modern maritime era.

The project is also an opportunity in US-Japanese relations amid concerns about aggression from China, as Japan builds carriers that could eventually host American jets as well as its own, as it demonstrated back in October 2021 when two US Marine Corps F-35Bs landed on and took off from the deck of the Izumo.

In 2018, Japan said China was engaging in "unilateral, coercive attempts to alter the status quo based on its own assertions that are incompatible with existing international order." It's issued other complaints since.

China's growing military power has prompted worries from US military leaders and lawmakers, while the continued buildup of its navy, the largest in the world, has raised alarms about the US' faltering shipbuilding and what's needed for the future.

Earlier this month, China expressed concerns about Japan's partnerships and growing capabilities, particularly the potential that it could work with Australia, the UK, and the US on nuclear-powered submarines in the AUKUS security agreement.

"Given Japan's not-too-distant history of militarist aggression, Japan's military and security moves are closely watched by its Asian neighbors and the international community," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said.

"Japan needs to seriously reflect on its history of aggression, stop its involvement in small military and security groupings, and truly embark on a path to peaceful development," she said.

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• Russian hackers caused a Texas town's water tank to overflow in a suspected hack earlier this year.
• Cybersecurity experts say the likely culprit is Sandworm, a Russian hacking group.
• The US earlier accused Sandworm of attacks on hospitals in Pennsylvania in 2017.

In January, Russian hackers caused a small Texas town's water tank to overflow in what was a rare but worrying attack on US infrastructure.

The Russian hacking group Sandworm is likely responsible for the attack on the water system in Muleshoe, Texas, the cyber-security firm Mandiant said on Wednesday.

Mandiant called the group a "dynamic and operationally mature threat actor that is actively engaged in the full spectrum of espionage, attack, and influence operations."

Security experts said they believe the group is likely connected to the Russian spy agency, GRU. While most state-backed "threat groups" specialize in specific areas, like collecting intelligence or network sabotage, Sandworm stands alone in trying to unify each capability into one full package, Mandiant reported.

Hackers posted a video to Telegram of themselves manipulating Muleshoe's water system, showing how they overpowered it and reset the controls, according to The Washington Post.

In the videos, the hackers refer to themselves as the Cyber Army of Russia Reborn. This marks the first attack on a public American infrastructure system by this group, according to the Post. US officials blamed a separate attack on water systems in Pennsylvania last November on Iran, according to CNN.

Ramon Sanchez, Muleshoe's city manager, told CNN that the city's water tank overflowed for about 30 to 35 minutes.

Authorities have previously blamed Sandworm, which has gone by different names over the years, for various attacks around the world, including on Ukraine's power grid and on the 2018 Olympic Games in South Korea.

In 2020, The US Department of Justice charged six members of the group with crimes related to its attacks, one of which it said was also involved in disrupting the 2016 US presidential elections.

The Justice Department also accused the men of creating a virus called NotPetya, which caused $10 billion in damage to computers worldwide, shutting down the power grid in Ukraine, and taking down the computer systems belonging to a chain of Western Pennsylvania hospitals.

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• Trump said last week a near-total, Civil War-era abortion ban in Arizona had gone too far.
• But Republicans Wednesday shut down an attempt to repeal it.
• The law makes providing or helping with an abortion punishable by up to five years in prison. 

Arizona Republicans shut down an attempt by Democrats to repeal a contentious abortion ban from 1864 that was reinstated by the state's Supreme Court earlier this month.

Democrats attempted to introduce a bill Wednesday that would repeal the ban during a state House legislative session, NBC reported. But two votes moving to discuss the bill failed.

"I would ask everyone in this chamber to respect the fact that some of us believe that abortion is, in fact, the murder of children," Republican House Speaker Ben Toma said, according to NBC.

The ban has gotten pushback from many in the GOP, including former President Donald Trump and Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake — both of whom are seeking reelection later this year. (That said, Lake praised the ban while campaigning for governor two years ago.)

Trump, for his part, said last week that the ban had gone too far. "That'll be straightened out," he said. "And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason."

The law effectively bans abortion — including in cases of rape and incest — except if a pregnant person's life is in danger. It makes providing or helping someone get an abortion a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Prior to the ban, abortions in Arizona were allowed through 15 weeks of pregnancy.

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• A bill to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok is making its way through Congress.
• Legislators are concerned about ByteDance's ties to China given how much user data Tiktok collects.
• The Chinese Embassy reportedly lobbied against the bill.

China proved the point of the TikTok ban bill through Congress after officials from the Chinese Embassy reportedly lobbied against it recently.

News of the adversarial nation's pressure against the bill was reported Wednesday by Politico after more than a year of congressional deliberation on the matter. The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill in mid-March that, if enacted, would require TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the app within 180 days or risk getting banned in the US.

The heart of the concerns against the massive social media app stems from ByteDance's reported ties to the Chinese government. Critics of ByteDance — including former TikTok employees — have accused the company of funneling sensitive US user information to China even after TikTok assured lawmakers its bevy of data from American users was safe.

On top of that, surveys have shown that TikTok's more than 100 million monthly American users turn to the platform for news. Given recent reports of China using social media to influence elections in Taiwan, congressional officials like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have voiced their concerns that China could use TikTok to meddle in the upcoming 2024 elections.

TikTok itself has waged an all-out war against the proposed legislation in recent months, prompting its US-based users to reach out to their local legislators to vote against it — even CEO Shou Zi Chew traveled to Washington, DC, to join the lobbying effort.

Members of Congress were already reportedly frustrated by TikTok's digital plea to users before the House voted on the ban. The Chinese Embassy's private pressure against the bill will likely only solidify the legislative body's disdain for TikTok.

President Joe Biden has said he'll sign the bill if it makes it to his desk, even though it could hurt his reelection bid.

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• The story of GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy's gunshot wound has seemingly taken on a new turn.
• Sheehy told WaPo that he lied about a shooting that he initially said occurred at a national park.
• But in newly-released documents, a park visitor "called park dispatch" to report a gunshot.

Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy apologized for the discharge of a firearm at the state's Glacier National Park in October 2015, a revelation uncovered by The Washington Post after Sheehy's recent admission that he lied about being shot in the park.

Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL and the leading Republican to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in November, recently told The Washington Post that he received a gunshot wound in his right arm while serving in Afghanistan, not during a shooting at Glacier National Park.

The GOP candidate told The Washington Post that he lied about his Colt .45 revolver falling to the ground and discharging in order to shield his former platoon members from being questioned about what he said was a 2012 shooting that occurred overseas.

Sheehy previously told the newspaper he was unsure if his bullet wound came from friendly fire or an enemy.

But after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, The Washington Post obtained National Park Service documents from 2015 where Sheehy said that a shooting had occurred at Glacier National Park.

"As a highly trained and combat experienced wounded veteran, I can assure you this was an unfortunate accident and we are grateful no other persons or property were damaged," he said at the time. "Due to my ongoing security clearance and involvement with national defense related contracts, I request leniency with any charges related to this unfortunate accident."

The newly-released National Park Service report said that "a park visitor called park dispatch" and stated that a firearm had discharged at Glacier National Park, which seemingly contradicts Sheehy's current statement that he was shot in Afghanistan.

The National Park Service summary didn't reveal the name of the individual who reported that a firearm had discharged at the park, according to The Post.

Sheehy in his 2015 National Park Service statement said that he retained a weapon in his car in case a bear posed a threat, adding that his firearm fell to the ground as he reloaded the vehicle.

"My deepest apologies for any inconvenience this incident caused," he said in the statement at the time.

Daniel Watkins, an attorney for Sheehy, said in a letter to The Post that the ranger didn't reveal that he had spoken to an aforementioned park visitor as part of his probe. And Watkins suggested that hospital staff in Kalispell, Mont., told park dispatchers about the incident at Glacier National Park after Sheehy's initial lie about the shooting.

"The released reports corroborate the information we have provided, and they confirm Mr. Sheehy's recollection of what took place," Watkins said in the letter.

The Montana Senate race is poised to be one of the closest contests in the country this fall.

Tester, now in his third term, is running for reelection in a state with a decidedly conservative tilt. Still, the lawmaker has successfully fought back his GOP opponents over the years, beginning with his first Senate election in 2006.

Republicans have touted Sheehy, the founder of Bridger Aerospace, as one of their most promising Senate recruits.

Business Insider has reached out to the Sheehy campaign for any further comment.

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• Columbia University's president took a much stronger stance against antisemitism than her peers did. 
• She told Congress Wednesday that calling for a Jewish genocide would violate Columbia policies.  
• The presidents of MIT, Harvard, and UPenn wavered when asked the same question.

In her testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Columbia University's president avoided making the same viral mistakes her fellow college presidents did during their hearings last year.

Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, Columbia's president, appeared before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Wednesday. Republican members of the Committee, including New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, have harshly criticized elite US colleges, accusing their leaders of failing to protect students against antisemitic hate speech.

Shafik was called to Congress to discuss her school's response to antisemitism on campus following Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza. The presidents of UPenn, Harvard, and MIT had testified before Congress back in December for the same reason.

But there was a big difference between what those presidents said at their hearing and what Shafik said at hers. During her four-hour testimony, which was largely devoid of headline-grabbing moments, Shafik took a much stronger stance against antisemitism than her peers did.

When asked if students calling for the genocide of Jewish people would violate Columbia's rules, Shafik and three other Columbia leaders testifying with her all said yes, it would. Shafik added that any student who called for a Jewish genocide would be punished.

The presidents of MIT, Harvard, and UPenn, in contrast, waffled when asked the same question during a five-hour-long session in December — and two of them suffered the consequences.

Harvard President Claudine Gay answered with, "It can be, depending on the context," while MIT President Sally Kornbluth said, "I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus." In a similarly soft response, UPenn's president Elizabeth Magill responded, "If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment."

All three presidents faced harsh criticism for their answers, which many argued did not adequately condemn hate speech. The backlash led to the resignations of both Gay and Magill, while Kornbluth has so far managed to hold onto her position.

Shafik was invited to the December hearing, but was unable to attend because she was speaking in Dubai at the time, The Wall Street Journal reported.

And that granted her more than just extra time to prepare — she also had the advantage of witnessing the fallout her peers faced, and making sure she avoided their mistakes.

She made herself especially clear. On Tuesday, the eve of her hearing, Shafik wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which she explained the complexity of protecting free speech and political expression while also ensuring students' safety and condemning discrimination.

"Calling for the genocide of a people — whether they are Israelis or Palestinians, Jews, Muslims or anyone else — has no place in a university community," Shafik wrote in the Journal. "Such words are outside the bounds of legitimate debate and unimaginably harmful."

In Wednesday's hearing, Shafik also commented on a few controversial professors. She said that Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor at Columbia's Middle East Institute, would "never work at Columbia again" after he voiced support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.

Shafik was also questioned about a tenured professor in Columbia's Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department, Joseph Massad, who had previously called Hamas' attack on Israel "awesome." Shafik said Massah had been "spoken to" about his comments. But when Stefanik pressed her on the issue, Shafik said she would get back to the committee on whether Massad would be removed from his position as chair of the academic review committee.

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• Cloud seeding involves spraying salts into incoming storm clouds to increase rainfall.
• Photos show how the UAE, United States, and other countries have been seeding clouds for decades.
• Historic floods in Dubai didn't come from cloud seeding, but humans' climate impacts are playing a role.

As the desert city of Dubai flooded on Monday, onlookers pointed the finger at the government's "cloud seeding" efforts.

The program sends planes into oncoming storm clouds to inject them with substances that can help make more rain. Could it be the culprit for two years' worth of rain falling on the United Arab Emirates city in just a day?

It's a tantalizing explanation. Trying to control the weather can sound tantamount to playing god. And if thousands of years of media and oral tradition tell us anything — from Prometheus to Frankenstein — playing god has bad consequences.

But the United Arab Emirates has been seeding clouds to encourage rainfall and battle drought for 20 years. Some US states have been doing it for even longer. These programs have found that the practice has a small effect on precipitation, increasing it by about 5 to 15%, though a UAE official told Reuters that it can be as high as 30% for them.

Many other countries, including China and Australia, have experimented with the technique.

According to several scientists, cloud seeding isn't the driving force behind Dubai's historic floods.

How cloud seeding works

To "seed" a cloud, you have to spray it with microscopic particles of a salt such as silver iodide, calcium chloride, or potassium chloride.

In the UAE and many US states, planes do the job. In some places, like Utah, machines on the ground shoot the substance into air currents that can carry it into the clouds.

All these particles have a crystalline structure, similar to ice, which gives water droplets something to stick to. As the water converges, it forms an ice crystal and eventually falls as snow or rain.

This mimics the natural rain-making process that happens inside the cloud.

"Cloud seeding can't create clouds from nothing. It encourages water that is already in the sky to condense faster and drop water in certain places. So first, you need moisture. Without it, there'd be no clouds," Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in climate science at the Imperial College London, and co-founder of the groundbreaking science collaboration World Weather Attribution, said in a statement to the Science Media Centre (SMC).

The real threat behind Dubai's floods

Many atmospheric scientists have dismissed the idea that cloud seeding was behind Dubai's floods. Experts told the SMC that the rains came from a rare thundercloud system, which was already forecast to bring heavy rainfall, and the effect of any cloud seeding would have been tiny.

"This is a distraction from the real story here — that due to our collective failure to phase out fossil fuels, we must prepare for unprecedented extremes, which will worsen until we reach 'net zero,'" John Marsham, an atmospheric scientist and Met Office Joint Chair at the University of Leeds, told the SMC.

Rising global temperatures are leading to heavier bouts of rainfall across the planet, even in places that are typically dry or even in the middle of a drought. This type of weather whiplash happens because of a fundamental fact of physics: Warmer air holds more water.

"Any possible effect of any cloud seeding in these circumstances would be tiny," Marsham added.

Indeed, the UAE isn't the only desert or drought-stricken region that's been devastated by heavy rainfall in recent years. Death Valley catastrophically and historically flooded in 2022, 2023, and this February.

A series of moisture-laden atmospheric rivers interrupted California's years-long drought last winter, killing at least 22 people, by the Los Angeles Times' count.

"If humans continue to burn oil, gas, and coal, the climate will continue to warm, rainfall will continue to get heavier, and people will continue to lose their lives in floods," Otto said.

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• Iran and Israel have fought a deadly shadow war for decades.
• The two enemies have relied on proxy forces, assassinations, and strikes abroad to hit each other.
• Iran's unprecedented attack last weekend introduced a new dynamic into the simmering conflict.

A decades-long shadow war between Iran and Israel has been thrust into broad daylight.

For years, the two bitter foes have relied on strikes in other countries, covert assassinations, and proxy forces to trade blows as part of a simmering — but deadly — conflict. Iran's unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend has notably changed the dynamics of this conflict, and it's now more dangerous.

A senior US defense official told reporters on Sunday that "it was the first-ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian soil," calling the barrage "reckless" and warning that it "risks dragging the region into broader conflict."

The fierce animosity between Iran and Israel can be traced back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ushered in a theocratic regime in Tehran that has long opposed Israel's existence and has vowed to ultimately destroy the state.

Iran over the years has supported, funded, and armed proxy forces across the Middle East, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and has relied on them to attack Israeli interests. This has essentially allowed Tehran to strike at Israel indirectly.

Israel, on the other hand, has carried out airstrikes against Iranian assets abroad, including in Iraq and Syria, in an attempt to limit Tehran's ability to funnel lethal weaponry across the Middle East to its proxy forces, especially those close to Israel's borders.

Jonathan Lord, formerly a political military analyst at the Pentagon, told Business Insider Israel has found limited tactical success in this space, "so over time, those strikes have become more public and less covert, and certainly, we've sort of seen that grow and grow."

Israel has also tried to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, believing it to be an existential threat. It has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and launched cyberattacks on Tehran's facilities. The shadowy conflict has seen tit-for-tat exchanges at sea, too, including the recent Iranian seizure of an Israel-linked cargo ship in the Straight of Hormuz.

Amid persistent tensions, the two enemies managed to avoid a direct military confrontation with each other, but that is no longer the case.

An 'escalation' in the shadow war

On April 1, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, killed several military officials, including two generals in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for supporting Iran's proxy network, the so-called "Axis of Resistance."

The brazen strike marked a significant moment in the shadow war between Israel and Iran, distinguishing itself from past Israeli actions in Syria because it targeted an Iranian government-affiliated site and high-ranking individuals. Tehran vowed to retaliate, and nearly two weeks later, it did.

Iran and its proxies launched more than 300 one-way attack drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at Israel — in a large and unprecedented attack. Nearly all of the Iranian munitions were shot down by Israel and partner forces in the region, including the US.

"Clearly, firing these missiles and drones from Iranian territory directly at Israel is an escalation" in the conflict, retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversaw US military operations in the Middle East as the commander of US Central Command, told BI.

One country attacking the other's homeland, he added, had generally been off the radar.

"That has been shattered, and that has been changed here," Votel said, noting that what normally tends to play out behind the scenes has now been brought "much more into the open."

Israel has promised its own retaliation for the Iranian attack and appears to be calculating its next move, despite some of its Western partners calling for the country to show restraint. Any Israeli military response to the attack risks an all-out confrontation with Iran and could plunge the region into even more violence.

"We're on the edge of the cliff and we have to move away from it," the European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, told Spanish radio station Onda Cero this week, stressing that "we have to step on the brakes and reverse gear."

Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the IRGC commander, suggested that regardless of whether Israel attacks Iran or its assets abroad, Tehran will retaliate directly like it did last weekend, rather than rely on its proxies, as it has historically done. But it remains to be seen whether such remarks would actually translate into action.

Going forward, the long-standing shadow war has very much been exposed. Neither party is concerned anymore about hiding attribution for its actions, Lord said, but rather, everything is now aimed more at establishing deterrence and limiting the activities of the other party.

"There was nothing shadow about what we saw over the weekend," Lord said. What used to be kept in the shadows, he said, was no longer the case after it became so overt "and the list of usual suspects that could be involved were reduced down to two: Iran and Israel."

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• Trump is cracking down on GOP campaigns that use his name and face to raise money.
• He wants them to send him a 5% cut of any money raised that way.
• His team is also reminding other campaigns not to impersonate the former president.

Republicans have long used former President Donald Trump's name and face to raise money from GOP voters.

Now, Trump's cracking down, asking campaigns to give him a 5% cut of any money that they raise that way.

"Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump's name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC," the Trump campaign wrote in a letter to GOP vendors this week, according to POLITICO.

The campaign is also asking fundraising Republicans not to impersonate Trump, suggest that donors aren't loyal to Trump if they don't donate, or mention the Trump family without his campaign's consent.

"Any vendor whose clients ignore the guidelines mentioned above will be held responsible for their clients' actions," reads the letter. "Repeated violations will result in the suspension of business relationships between the vendor and Trump National Committee JFC."

Trump has long trailed President Joe Biden in fundraising, and the apparent crackdown may be an attempt to make up lost ground.

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• The Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA over a betting scandal.
• If you think that's a crisis for the NBA, think again: The NBA is happy to make an example of Porter.
• The NBA — and lots of other institutions — really wants sports betting to thrive. This move is supposed to give bettors confidence to keep betting.

How dumb do you have to be to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?

Or, if you don't like that framing, try this: How much trouble do you have to be in — financial or otherwise — to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?

I have no idea. I can't fathom what led the Toronto Raptors' Jontay Porter to allegedly 1) conspire with bettors about a game he was playing in and 2) bet on NBA games, including betting against his own team.

But it's easy to understand why Porter's case resulted in a lifetime ban from the NBA, where he had reportedly earned at least $2.3 million in three years.

In fact, you can argue that Porter's case is good for the NBA: It allows the league to set a clear-as-day bright line for any other players dumb or desperate enough to do this stuff. And, crucially, it allows everyone else to believe that Porter's case is an anomaly and that they should get right back to betting on NBA games.

And the NBA, like every other pro sports league, really wants people betting on games. It believes sports betting — mostly illegal in the US until 2018 and now a booming business — is important for its future growth.

You can debate the accuracy of that theory — yes, people are betting tons of money on sports now ($120 billion in the US last year alone). But is that a narrow-but-deep niche of bettors or a wide swath of people who occasionally drop a couple dollars on a game? And you can also debate the morality of the theory — even if gambling is something people like to do, should we encourage it?

But the NBA and the rest of big-time sports — along with a sports media ecosystem that expects sports betting to generate huge payouts for TV networks, publishers, podcasts, and many other outlets — is all-in on betting now. It seems unlikely it will ever go back.

You may see some tweaks in the future to make it even less likely to see future Porters — even though sports betting scandals keep cropping up in all kinds of sports. NBA boss Adam Silver, in a statement about Porter's ban, referenced "important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players."

Silver is presumably talking about "prop bets," which move beyond basic who's going to win/by how much bets even non-betters may have heard of, and to much more narrowly focused bets, like how many points an individual player might score — or even how long the national anthem might last at a Super Bowl.

Sportsbooks often push props because they can entice betters with big payouts. (The entire plot of "Uncut Gems" hinges on the preposterous, low-odds, high-return prop bets Adam Sandler's character makes.) But you can see the obvious downside there, especially with prop bets focused on individual players — it gives players the ability to directly affect the results.

And that's reportedly happened with Porter: The NBA says a bettor placed an $80,000 prop bet that could have won $1.1 million wagering that Porter would have a bad game — and then Porter took himself out of that game after a few minutes, saying he was sick.

But these are details: What the NBA can't — or at least thinks it can't — allow is to give lawmakers a chance to rethink their stance on sports betting and make it illegal again. There's simply too much money at stake.

Which made Porter's fate an easy call.

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