CNN
 — 

It wasn’t too long ago that Coco Gauff exploded onto the scene as a 15-year-old, defeating Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2019.

But time marches on and it was Gauff who was the experienced player on court on Saturday as she defeated 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva in a hard-fought battle between two of tennis’ most talented teenagers.

The American lost the first set in a tiebreak but rallied to dismantle Andreeva in the next two sets and take a 6-7 (5-7) 6-1 6-1 win to advance to the fourth round of the French Open.

“We practiced together this week, actually,” Gauff, still just 19, said afterwards, according to the Guardian. “I don’t know if it made a difference in the match – it’s all about adjustment, that’s tennis.

“Today wasn’t going to be an easy match, she deserves to be where she is and go even further.”

Andreeva celebrated her 16th birthday in April and became the youngest player to reach the third round at Roland Garros since 2005, according to the WTA.

And for the first 65 minutes of the match, it seemed as if Andreeva might continue her meteoric rise with a shock victory as she pummeled Gauff’s weaker forehand side with first serves and won the set’s tiebreak.

Despite her age, Gauff has already played in numerous French Open tournaments and reached the final last year. Armed with that experience, she reset, shored up her second serve, and harnessed her powerful backhand to ultimately outmaneuver Andreeva.

Gauff will now face the unseeded Anna Karolina Schmiedlova for a place in the tournament’s quarterfinals.

Elsewhere in the women’s draw, defending champion and world No.1 Iga Swiatek also reached the fourth round with an emphatic 6-0 6-0 win against China’s Wang Xinyu, while world No. 4 Elena Rybakina withdrew from the French Open citing an upper respiratory illness.

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CNN
 — 

Astronauts who will helm the first crewed moon mission in five decades were revealed on Monday, queuing up the quartet to begin training for the historic Artemis II lunar flyby that is set to take off in November 2024.

The astronauts are NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency.

Wiseman is a 47-year-old decorated naval aviator and test pilot who was first selected to be a NASA astronaut in 2009. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, he’s completed one prior spaceflight, a 165-day trip to the International Space Station that had launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2014. Most recently, Wiseman served as chief of the astronaut office before stepping down in November 2022, making him eligible for a flight assignment.

Wiseman will serve as commander of the Artemis II mission.

Hansen, 47, is a fighter pilot who was selected by the Canadian Space Agency for astronaut training in 2009. From London, Ontario, Hansen is one of only four active Canadian astronauts, and he recently became the first Canadian to be put in charge of training for a new class of NASA astronauts.

He will be the first Canadian ever to travel to deep space.

Glover is a 46-year-old naval aviator who returned to Earth from his first spaceflight in 2021 after piloting the second crewed flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and spending nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.

“It’s so much more than the four names that have been announced,” Glover said during the Monday announcement at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We need to celebrate this moment in human history. … It is the next step in the journey that will get humanity to Mars.”

Glover, born in Pomona, California, served in several military squadrons in the United States and Japan in the 2000s, and he completed test pilot training with the US Air Force. When he was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2013, he was working in the US Senate as a legislative fellow. All told, Glover logged 3,000 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft, over 400 carrier arrested landings and 24 combat missions.

Glover’s first mission to space was as part of the SpaceX Crew-1 team, which launched to the International Space Station in November 2020 for a six-month stay on the orbiting laboratory.

Koch, 44, is a veteran of six spacewalks — including the first all-female spacewalk in 2019. She holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, with a total of 328 days in space. Koch is also an an electrical engineer who helped develop scientific instruments for multiple NASA mission. Koch, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, also spent a year at the South Pole, an arduous stay that could well prepare her for the intensity of a moon mission.

The Artemis II mission will build on Artemis I, an uncrewed test mission that sent NASA’s Orion capsule on a 1.4 million-mile voyage to lap the moon that concluded in December. The space agency deemed that mission a success and is still working to review all the data collected.

If all goes to plan, Artemis II will take off around November 2024. The crew members, strapped inside the Orion spacecraft, will launch atop a NASA-developed Space Launch System rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The journey is expected to last about 10 days and will send the crew out beyond the moon, potentially further than any human has traveled in history, though the exact distance is yet to be determined.

The “exact distance beyond the Moon will depend on the day of liftoff and the relative distance of the Moon from the Earth at the time of the mission,” NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton said via email.

After circling the moon, the spacecraft will return to Earth for a splashdown landing in the Pacific Ocean.

Artemis II is expected to pave the way for the Artemis III mission later this decade, which NASA has vowed will put the first woman and person of color on the lunar surface. It will also mark the first time humans have touched down on the moon since the Apollo program ended in 1972.

The Artemis III mission is expected to take off later this decade. But much of the technology the mission will require, including spacesuits for walking on the moon and a lunar lander to ferry the astronauts to the moon’s surface, is still in development.

NASA is targeting a 2025 launch date for Artemis III, though the space agency’s inspector general has already said delays will likely push the mission to 2026 or later.

The space agency has been seeking to return people to the moon for more than a decade. The Artemis program was designed to pave the way to establishing a permanent lunar outpost, allowing astronauts to live and work deeper into space long term as NASA and its partners map a path to sending the first humans to Mars.

Vanessa Wyche, the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center, declined to provide details to CNN about the selection process. But she emphasized the diversity of the Artemis II crew, which includes men and women rather than only a staff of White male test pilots as has been the case for historic missions of the past.

“I can tell you, they still all have the right stuff,” Wyche said. “We have requirements different than we did (when we) just had test pilots” on inaugural missions.

Koch said in an interview with CNN’s Ed Lavandera that the group found out they were selected a few weeks ago.

“We were all sent to a meeting that was on our calendars under a different pretext that didn’t sound as lofty as the one it was going to be,” Koch said. “And accidentally two of us were very late to that meeting.”

She said the offer rendered her “speechless.”

“It truly is an honor,” she added. “It’s an honor — not to get myself in the space — but because it’s amazing to be a part of this team that’s going back to the moon and on to Mars.”

An interview with the four astronauts will air on “CNN This Morning” on Tuesday, which starts at 6 am ET.

Tel Aviv
CNN
 — 

In a sea of Israeli flags, Yiftach Golov holds one that looks a little different.

Among the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets for the 13th week in a row on Saturday, Golov hoists a brown flag that represents a group called “Brother and Sisters in Arms.”

They are veterans – many, like Golov, from elite forces – who now feel they are fighting on a new battlefield: To save Israeli democracy.

“We believe this is our responsibility to go once again called to the flag of the nation to stop this madness to defend Israel,” Golov said, as he weaved his way through the protesters on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan street, between the high-rises that house many of Israel’s high tech companies.

During the second intifada, in the early 2000s, Golov served in a special forces reconnaissance unit. He was never before particularly political, focusing more on getting his PhD in biophysics from Tel Aviv University.

But when the protest movement against the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul plan began in January, Golov attended one a demonstration and soon became one of thousands of veterans, and now military reservists, who have taken up the cause as their new mission.

Some, including elite Air Force reservists, have taken it a step further, threatening not to heed the call to train or even serve in protest of the government’s plans planned judicial changes, which would give the governing parties more control over Israel’s judiciary.

Others have taken to becoming some of the most active organizers and demonstrators. Last week, a group from Brothers and Sisters in Arms protested by carrying a figure wrapped in the Israeli flag on a stretcher, the way they would carry a wounded comrade off the field.

While Golov says he has not taken the drastic step to refuse service, he understands the motivation.

“We’re fighting for justice and liberty, just like the American story, that’s the values that that are being represented symbolized back when we look at our flag, that’s something that was lacking lacking for the last few decades. So basically, we reclaim the flag,” he said.

Fellow members of the group, all wearing brown shirts with the organization’s logo, come up and say hello. They’re sprinkled all throughout the protests. One is even leading the “Pink Front,” a group of coordinated drummers who look like they are dressed for a rave, and often lead the chants at the protests.

They’re using skills they learned in the military – how to organize, how to mobilize – now for the protests. But more importantly, they say they have the same type of motivation.

“The very deep feeling that you are part of something bigger than yourself, that (you’re) allowed to sacrifice anything that is needed, whether it’s your career, health, seriously mental health,” Golov said. “We all have a mission, you’re willing to do it at any cost. You’re very determined, you know that you are on the right side, you’re carrying the torch of light. That keeps us being highly motivated despite the fact that we’re not sleeping for days.”

Israel’s protest movement is made up of many disparate groups, but the pressure from Israel’s much vaunted veterans has been seen as a key to moving the needle.

Last Monday, after weeks of sustained protests and the largest general strike in Israeli history, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a pause to the legislation, to allow time for negotiations with the opposition.

But despite the announcements, protesters are still out in the streets in large numbers. CNN affiliate Channel 12 in Israel estimated the size of Saturday’s demonstration in Tel Aviv at about 150,000 people. Organizers claimed it was 230,000.

Last week’s mass protests and widespread strike action came after Netanyahu said he had decided to fire Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for advocating a delay in passing the legislation – a move that Netanyahu has since delayed, sources told CNN, due to “the present security situation.”

In his televised speech calling for a delay, Gallant had said the pause in the legislation was needed “for the security of Israel,” citing the refusal of some Israel Defense Forces reservists to train in protest of the government plans. He said pressing ahead with the proposals could threaten Israel’s security.

Under pressure at home and from allies abroad, Netanyahu said he would delay votes on the remaining legislation until after the Knesset’s Passover recess in April “to give time for a real chance for a real debate.”

“Out of the responsibility to the nation, I decided to delay … the vote, in order to give time for discussion,” he added.

But Netanyahu indicated that the delay was only temporary. He insisted that the overhaul was necessary, and reiterated criticism of refusal to train or serve in the military in protest at the planned changes. “Refusing is the end of our country,” he said.

Many protesters don’t believe that the pause is real, or say it’s simply a stalling tactic to give Netanyahu some breathing room and get the protesters to go home before he plows on with the reforms.

“We will start doing deactivation only when we will know 100% that Israel state will stay a functional democratic country. Whatever needs to be done for that,” Golov said.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.

Abu Dhabi, UAE
CNN
 — 

Turkey’s persecuted pro-Kurdish party has emerged as a kingmaker in the country’s upcoming election, playing a decisive role that may just tip the balance enough to unseat two-decade ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a key setback to the Turkish president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) last month announced that it would not put forward its own presidential candidate, a move analysts say allows its supporters to vote for Erdogan’s main rival.

“We are facing a turning point that will shape the future of Turkey and (its) society,” said the HDP in a statement on March 23. “To fulfill our historical responsibility against the one-man rule, we will not field a presidential candidate in (the) May 14 elections.”

It is a twist of irony for the Turkish strongman, who spent the better half of the past decade cracking down on the party after it began chipping away at his voter base. Its former leader Selahattin Demirtas has been in prison for nearly seven years and the party faces possible closure by a court for suspected collusion with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and affiliated groups. But its influence may nonetheless determine the course of Turkey’s politics.

The HDP’s decision not to field a candidate came just three days after head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan’s main rival, visited the party’s co-chairs. He told reporters that the solution to Turkey’s problems, “including the Kurdish problem” lies in parliament,” according to Turkish media.

Kilicdaroglu, who represents the six-party Nation Alliance opposition bloc, is the strongest contender to run against Erdogan in years. And while the HDP hasn’t yet announced whether it will put its weight behind him, analysts say it is the kingmaker in the elections.

“It was a carefully crafted political discourse,” Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy co-chair of the HDP and a member of parliament from the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, told CNN. “We are not going to have our own candidate, and we will leave it to the international community to interpret it the way they wish.”

Experts say the crackdown on the HDP is rooted in the threat it poses to Erdogan politically, as well as its position as one of the main parties representing Turkey’s Kurds, an ethnic minority from which a separatist militant movement has emerged.

The party and the Kurdish people have had a complicated relationship with Erdogan. The leader courted the Kurds in earlier years by granting them more rights and reversing restrictions on the use of their language. Relations with the HDP were also cordial once, as Erdogan worked with the party on a brief peace process with the PKK.

But ties between Erdogan and the HDP later turned sour, and the HDP fell under a sweeping crackdown aimed at the PKK and their affiliates.

Kurds are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

It is unclear if the HDP will endorse Kilicdaroglu, but analysts say that the deliberate distance may be beneficial for the opposition candidate.

The accusations against the HDP place it in a precarious position during the elections. It currently faces a case in Turkey’s Constitutional Court over suspected ties to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Knowing it may be banned at any moment, its candidates are running under the Green Left Party in parliament.

If the opposition is seen as allying with the HDP, Erdogan’s AK Party may use its influence in the media to discredit it as being pro-PKK, said Murat Somer, a political science professor at Koc University in Istanbul and author of Return to Point Zero, a book on the Turkish-Kurdish question in Turkey.

The HDP’s threat to Erdogan’s hold on power became apparent after the June 2015 election, the first general election it participated in. It won 13% of the seats, denying the ruling AK Party its majority for the first time since 2002. Erdogan, however, called a snap election five months later, which led to a drop in the HDP’s support to 10.7%, as well as the restoration of the AK Party’s overall majority.

“They are a kingmaker in these elections because the HDP gets about half of the votes of the Kurdish population in Turkey,” said Somer, adding that the other, more conservative Kurdish voters have traditionally voted for Erdogan’s AK Party. And last month, the Free Cause Party (HUDA-PAR), a tiny Kurdish-Islamist party announced support for Erdogan in the elections. The party has never won seats in parliament.

The HDP knows that its position is key to the outcome of next month’s vote, but that it’s also in a delicate situation.

“We want to play the game wisely, and we need to be very careful,” said Ozsoy, adding that the party wants to avoid a “contaminated political climate” where the elections are polarized “between a very ugly ultra-nationalist discourse against Kilicdaroglu and others.”

The party was founded in 2012 with a number of aims, said Ozsoy, one of which was “peaceful and democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict.”

Somer said that the party was seen to be “an initiative” of the PKK, which later led to a heavy government crackdown on it in the name of counterterrorism.

Its former leader Demirtas remains an influential figure.

The Turkish government has been trying to link the HDP to the PKK but has so far failed to prove “a real connection,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

A post-Erdogan Turkey may give some breathing space to the Kurds and Kurdish-dominated parties in Turkey, Aydintasbas told CNN, noting that many Kurdish voters have recently left Erdogan’s camp. “For HDP, this is more than just an ideological choice,” she said. “It’s a matter of survival.”

Ozsoy says his party understands what’s at stake, not only for Turkey’s Kurds but for all its minorities.

“We are aware of our responsibility here. We are aware of our role. We know we are in a kingmaker position,” the HDP lawmaker said.

Two women arrested for not wearing hijab following ‘yogurt attack’

Two women were arrested in Iran for failing to wear the hijab in public, after a man threw a tub of yogurt at them at a store in the city of Shandiz on Thursday, according to Mizan News Agency, the state-run outlet for Iran’s judiciary.

Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts

Oil prices spiked Monday after OPEC+ producers unexpectedly announced that they would cut output. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 5.31% to $84.13 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 5.48% to $79.83. Both were the sharpest price rises in almost a year. The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day.

Iran blames Israel for the killing of second IRGC officer, vows to respond

A second Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer died following an attack in Syria on Friday, according to Iranian state media on Sunday. Iranian state media said the Iranian military adviser died after an Israeli attack near the Syrian capital Damascus left him wounded. The attack also killed another IRGC officer. In a tweet on Sunday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the alleged Israeli attack wouldn’t go unanswered. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Sunday that Iran has the right to respond to “state terrorism.”

Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani, who has been touring the Middle East, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about his support for the protests in his homeland, saying that he used his standup comedy platform to highlight the “brutality against the Iranian people.”

“It was an opportunity for me to say, ‘let’s keep fighting,’” he said.

Watch the interview here.

An Iranian state news outlet is gloating at what it sees as the demise of the US dollar.

IRNA recreated a popular meme to mark China and Brazil’s decision to reportedly ditch the US dollar as an intermediary in trade, citing the Chinese state news outlet, China Daily. It shows two men representing China and Brazil posing in front of a grave labelled “USD.”

The meme was pinned to the top of IRNA’s Twitter page, and was met with laughter and ridicule. “Dream on,” said another user, pointing to the dollar’s use as the main reserve currency around the world.

China Daily said that the agreement was part of “the rising global use of the Chinese renminbi.” It would reportedly enable China and Brazil to conduct trade and financial transactions using local currencies instead of the dollar.

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
 — 

Last year, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a white nationalist event organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes that caused Republican leaders to denounce her.

Last week, Greene’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended by the Elon Musk-headed platform over a tweet with a graphic referring to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” as she denounced a planned transgender rights rally.

And come Tuesday, Greene has announced plans to protest in New York City when former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on an indictment of more than 30 counts, calling the proceedings against him an “unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

But on Sunday, Greene was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview the long-running show promoted on Twitter with the tease: “Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.” The images attached to this tweet by “60 Minutes” include Greene and Stahl walking through the US Capitol, taking a stroll outside and Greene showing Stahl something on her phone.

In the segment that aired Sunday night, Stahl noted the congresswoman had moved from the fringe to the GOP’s front row in two years despite a “sharp tongue” and “some pretty radical views” as well as “over the top” comments such as “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.” Stahl also referred to video of Greene chasing a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor, still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen and failing to criticize Trump over spending. (The interview was conducted before news of his indictment.)

But Stahl didn’t mention Greene spoke at a white nationalist event a year ago while a member of Congress or her extreme anti-Muslim views and her defense of January 6 rioters.

Criticism of CBS for amplifying Greene has been swift and well-deserved even before the program aired. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted beforehand: “Wow. Insane that 60 min would do this.” (Kinzinger is a CNN senior political commentator.)

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast also slammed “60 Minutes” with the tweet: “Attention is currency and 60 minutes is spending its currency on the Jewish space lasers woman.” (Jong-Fast was apparently referring to Greene’s past claim that a massive California wildfire was started by “a laser” beamed from space controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.)

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and has since become an activist against gun violence, responded, “I look forward to your questions about why she thinks school shootings are fake and why she’s supported QAnon.”

Greene amplified the conspiracy theory — two years before being elected to Congress — that the Parkland shooting that took 17 lives was staged. And in 2019, Greene appeared on video confronting Hogg outside the Capitol when he was championing laws to save lives from gun violence, screaming that the then-teenager was a “coward.” She also called Hogg “#littleHitler” on social media.

Greene’s own tweet promoting Sunday’s segment was not filled with her typical smears of “fake news” when she doesn’t like the coverage. Rather, Greene urged people to tune in as she praised “60 Minutes” host Stahl (and misspelled her first name): “It was an honor to spend a few days with the legendary icon Leslie Stahl and talented crew @60Minutes.” Greene added, “Leslie is a trailblazer for women in journalism. And while we may disagree on some issues, I respect her greatly.”

Now, it is true that “60 Minutes” over its 50-plus-year history has featured what the show has dubbed “controversial” guests. These include a 2000 interview with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, whose 1995 terrorist attack left 168 dead, including 19 children. And the show did a 1979 interview with Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Perhaps “60 Minutes” views Greene — who has repeatedly downplayed and even defended the January 6, 2021, attack plus called for the GOP to become the party of “Christian nationalism” — in the vein of its long list of controversial guests. (CBS had not responded to a request from CNN for comment at time of publishing.)

However, the choice of Greene as a guest instantly recalls the comments of then-CBS CEO Les Moonves during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign when he admitted that Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Moonves added, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun. … (T)his is going to be a very good year for us,” concluding, “Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Moonves may be gone from CBS, but it appears his mindset continues at “60 Minutes.” And that may be good for “60 Minutes,” but it’s definitely not good for America.

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.

New York
CNN
 — 

Americans have grown used to corporate executives treading the well-worn paths of the Northeast corridor to convene alongside elected officials in Washington, DC, and discuss geopolitics, policy and all that’s in-between.

In 2017, major CEOs from across the country came together to oppose North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law. In 2019, they called abortion bans “bad for business.”

After the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, many of corporate America’s biggest names denounced the rioters and pledged to halt their political giving.

Recently, more than 1,000 companies promised to voluntarily curtail their operations in Russia in protest of Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling semi-automatic, assault-style rifles at stores and Citigroup put new restrictions on gun sales by business customers after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.

A year later, after mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a nightclub in Dayton, Ohio, Walmart ended handgun ammunition sales.

Corporate leadership has long been vocal on the issue of gun control – in 2019 and again this past summer nearly 150 major companies – including Lululemon, Lyft, Bain Capital, Bloomberg LP, Permanente Medical Group and Unilever – called gun violence a “public health crisis” and demanded that the US Senate pass legislation to address it.

That’s why corporate America’s silence in the wake of the latest mass shooting at a school in Nashville is so jarring. The United States has come to rely on the increasing power of large corporations as political advocates.

But Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a vocal advocate of corporate social responsibility who has a direct line to major CEOs around the globe, said that top executives are forlorn. Their previous efforts haven’t done much to push the needle on gun control legislation and without more backing, they don’t know what else they can do at the moment, he said.

Before the Bell spoke with Sonnenfeld, who runs Yale School of Management’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit educational and research institute focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Before the Bell: CEOs have been quiet about gun reform since the latest mass school shooting in Nashville, have you heard anything about plans to speak out?

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld: Where is everybody else? Where is all of civil society? CEOs are just one group of people and it’s like we’re turning to them to be our saviors on every topic. They’ve joined causes with valor and nobility but they can’t just be taking cause after cause as if there’s nobody else in society. The social change that happened in the 1960s wasn’t being led primarily by CEOs. Social changes really happened when we saw the interfaith activity of clergy locking arms and canvassing legislators. We saw campuses alive and aroused. Where’s all the student activism?

The CEOs are still the most active even if they’re less active than they were six months ago. They’re not there as hired hands of shareholders to fill the role of politicians and civic leaders. They’re there to join that chorus, but they don’t want to be the only one singing.

So is this what you’re hearing from top CEOs? Have they gotten tired of advocating?

I just got off of a CEO call on voting rights and this morning we had a forum on sustainability – CEOs are still the most active on these fronts. It’s the same thing on immigration reform. If a CEO was working an 18 hour day on a 12 day week, they still couldn’t address all of the issues that need addressing.

The nation’s CEOs are waiting for everybody else to join them. They don’t need to restate something they’ve already stated. They’ve jumped in the pool, where’s everybody else?

So what do you think has led to this complacency amongst Americans and the growing reliance on CEOs to advocate on our behalf?

They’ve taken a very strong stance and they’ve gone out further than the general public. They are where the general public is on surveys, but they’re not where the general public is on action in the streets. So we’re ready for others to now do something. Enough already on saying ‘what are the CEOs doing?’ Social capital is as valuable as financial capital. CEOs understand that in their soul, they want there to be social capital. They want there to be public trust, but they need the rest of civil society to join them. And that’s their frustration.

It sounds like CEOs are frustrated?

Yeah, they’re frustrated.

But don’t these CEOs hold the purse strings in terms of donating to powerful politicians?

You would think that, but since the 2020 elections much less of campaign contributions have come from big business. Since the 2021 run on the Capitol, a lot of businesses either had an official moratorium or they’ve given mere pennies to politicians. The common impression on the street that CEOs are controlling campaign purses strings is 100% wrong.

By CNN’s Chris Isidore

Tesla reported. a modest 4% rise in sales in the first quarter compared to the final three months of last year, despite a series of price cuts on its lower priced vehicles and talk by CEO Elon Musk about strong demand at those lower prices.

The first quarter also marked the fourth straight quarter that Tesla has produced more vehicles than it has delivered to customers. Some of that may be due to the ramp up in production at two new factories, one in Texas, the other in Germany, which opened last spring, and a lag between that increased production and sales.

Tesla said there was an increase in the number of its more expensive models, the Model S and Model X, in transit to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, as well as to the Asia Pacific region.

But it does mean that over the last 12 months Tesla has produced 78,000 more cars than it has sold, suggesting that talk of strong demand by Tesla executives may not be backed up by the numbers.

“Early this year, we had a price adjustment. After that, we actually generated a huge demand, more than we can produce, really,” said Tom Zhu, Tesla’s executive in charge of global production and sales. “And as Elon said, as long as you offer a product with value at affordable price, you don’t have to worry about demand.”