Month: February 2018

About a year ago, healer and artist Bunny Michael started practicing a new meditation exercise. To replicate it is easy. You just need to close your eyes and envision yourself physically placing your arms around another version of you. Yes, that’s two of you, embracing each other. 

“It’s so healing,” Michael recalled on a brisk January morning in a plant-filled studio/apartment in Brooklyn. “To envision yourself coming to you, holding you, and saying ‘You’re OK. You’re doing an OK job.’” 

Michael, who uses the gender-neutral pronoun they, is somewhat of a budding Instagram phenomenon, so to experience their brand of spiritual wellness in the flesh is a treat. For a little over a year, Michael ― also an experimental rapper and occasional actor ― has been rising in online popularity due to their daily #Higher-scope, a regular affirmation meant to help others awaken their Higher Self. In other words, the imagined double Michael conjures during meditation. 

“My ambition is to remember that true success is to accept myself for who I am right in this moment,” Michael’s Higher Self proclaims in posts liked thousands of times over. “I am constantly surrounding you in a personal bubble of love and protection,” they write, the text often affixed to dual photographs of themselves, an homage to the Evil Kermit meme. 

Needless to say, Instagram isn’t always great for a person’s mental health. Scrolling through photos of people performing their best lives can stir up feelings of FOMO, envy, anxiety and obsession. But Michael, 35, uses their digital platform, anchored by over 47,000 followers, to encourage people to overcome fearful thinking and judgment ― online and IRL ― and replace those feelings with inner wisdom and love.

Michael wants to make social media feel less like a twisted addiction designed to make you hate yourself, and more like a community that sees you and genuinely cares.

In a vast world of social media influencers, this is how Michael attempts to set themselves apart. Their Higher-scope packages Eckhart Tolle-style spirituality inside the digestible and hypercontemporary form of a cute meme. The unique aesthetic appeals to a swath of Instagram’s most devoted users: artists, wellness obsessives, distracted millennials ― millennials who experienced the rise of Oprah, The Secret and vague dreams of actualization and now gravitate toward radical self-care, astrology and the occult. 

Of course, Michael’s ideas aren’t neoteric ― the concept of a higher self is present in Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and New Age systems. But Michael’s strategy for disseminating their teaching is. What Glossier did for skincare and Rupi Kaur did for poetry, Michael does for New Age spirituality, and with similarly successful results. They’re the sagest social media influencer since KimKierkegaardashian‏.

When I visited Michael, they answered the door in a gray sweatshirt, jeans and winged liquid liner. Their hair was dyed neon pink at the roots and faded into a wash of pale violet turned white. “It makes me feel expressive of my spirit or something,” they said.

Inside their home, I spied a mostly complete puzzle, showing snowy mountains bathed in a golden glow. “I would never be able to make myself finish that,” I said almost reflexively. “Yes, you could,” they replied, living up to their online persona almost immediately. 

Michael (née Melisa Rincon) isn’t from Brooklyn. They grew up around Dallas as the middle child of three. Their parents ― a second-generation Mexican-American father and Samoan mother ― opted to live in an affluent suburb so their children could receive the best possible education. Michael attended Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and was always acutely aware of the ways they were different from other students; Michael lived in an apartment instead of a big house and had brown skin instead of white.

At home, Michael was known as the “sensitive child,” prone to crying when their sisters got in trouble, even if those siblings were being admonished for being mean to Michael in the first place. Sensitivity still plays a large role in Michael’s healing work. “Compassion gives u the vision to see through someone’s behavior to the truth behind it,” they wrote in a recent Higher-scope. “They have an unconscious fear they themselves are unworthy of love and care.”

Like most people their age, Michael’s life on the internet began in the early aughts. Not yet the meme-happy healer they are today, the then-20-something theater graduate of Marymount Manhattan College was a musician peddling their work on Myspace.

At the time, Michael was performing under the name Bunny Rabbit in an eponymous experimental rap collaboration described on Spotify as “2 Live Crew-meets-Goldfrapp.” Together with producer Black Cracker, Michael created spoken-word songs at once dirty, fanciful and weird. Michael was the vocalist, adopting a deranged baby-talk tenor while rapping lyrics like “Mama sat under the tree and made me wash my dirty knees / With pocket posies marijuana, you can slap me if u wanna.”

The band toured with folk electro girl group CocoRosie and received some unexpected praise from former New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones. “I am fond of the deeply odd, occasionally obscene art rap of Bunny Rabbit,” he wrote in 2007.

Critical praise is great, but Michael was struck harder by the outpouring of goodwill they experienced from fans online. There were people out there who believed in the work Michael was making, strangers who expressed their support from computers hundreds of miles away. “We booked our own U.S. tour just by reaching out to Myspace people,” they said. “We posted that we wanted to come to a certain city and fans would make it happen.”

It was two years into Michael’s music career when they first read Eckhart Tolle’s bestselling 2005 self-help book A New Earth, which Oprah declared “one of the most important books of our times” in 2008. The follow-up to The Power of Now, the book stresses the importance of living in the present moment and creating your own happiness without dependence on material things. According to Tolle, the book is not intended to “add new information or beliefs to your mind or to try to convince you of anything, but to bring about a shift in consciousness,” using wisdom lifted from Buddha, Jesus, Bhagavad Gita, William Shakespeare, Ramana Maharshi and the Rolling Stones, among others. 

Critics have accused Tolle of simply compiling spiritual thought’s greatest hits into a handy paperback; he doesn’t add to the body of existing work, he merely aggregates it, they say. For Michael, Tolle’s book prompted a spiritual transformation anyway. “It’s like when you’re a teenager and take acid for the first time,” they said. “You see the world from a new perspective.”

Michael and Black Cracker, who were also romantically involved, eventually broke up in 2010. The breakup precipitated the duo’s breakdown, and Bunny Rabbit was no more. Since they’d uprooted their life to tour, Michael was homeless for a brief period after. As a result, Michael threw themselves deeper into Tolle’s teachings, practicing Bikram yoga and meditation, too.

“I have to actively stay in the spiritual path or else I can go really off,” they said. “I think that’s true for most people.”

Michael also considers themselves a student of Helen Schucman’s 1976 A Course in Miracles, a 1,333-page self-help curriculum about shifting your perspective to replace fear and judgment with love. “Basically, it’s like ― this isn’t real type stuff,” Michael said, gesturing at, I assume, the physical world around us. “[Schucman’s philosophy] uses a lot of traditional Christian language, but a mystical understanding rather than literal.” 

Schucman too has her critics. Christian New Age writer Moira Noonan described Course in Miracles as “Satan’s mockbible,” and many are skeptical of Schucman’s claim that the book was dictated to her by Jesus in a series of waking dreams. But the course remains hugely popular, with followers including Michael attending weekly meetings to fully absorb its teachings. 

With Tolle and Schucman’s help, Michael said they’ve been able to work through pain buried deep in their past. For example, at age 15, Michael realized they were queer. Coming out to their family was difficult, causing Michael to temporarily move in with their first girlfriend’s parents. Michael and their family have since reconciled, but the trauma of that period still stings.

Inevitably, that pain ― and the spiritual work Michael was doing to combat it ― bled into their creative practice. In 2016, they replaced a list of goals hanging in their studio with a sign reading: “What do people need? 1. To heal from past trauma. 2. To feel safe to be their authentic self. 3. Inspired to contribute to humanity. 4. To feel loved, respected and appreciated. How can I help?” In search of acolytes, Michael turned back to the internet.

The first ever Higher Self meme appeared 17 months ago. It’s not a photo but a video, featuring two versions of Michael in a bedroom. In it, Michael One, in a T-shirt and underwear, throws a temper tantrum on their bed, pounding their fists into their pillows while jumping up and down. The other Michael watches on, unperturbed. “When your higher self tells you to face your shit,” the caption reads.

The video was viewed over 2,000 times. “OMG literally” and “Same same same,” people commented beneath it. Beloved queer astrologer Chani Nicholas “liked” it. It seemed like a sign, so Michael decided to keep posting. 

These days, most of Michael’s Higher-scopes receive between 50 and 150 comments from followers. Some summarize their reactions with a simple heart emoji, others more thoroughly describe the impact of Michael’s words. One comment from earlier this month reads: “i’m having a bad day where people are trying use institutional ableism to get me down and scare me. I needed this ❤️”

In late 2017, Michael quit their waitressing job and started doing Higher-scope work full time. Much of their income comes from their Patreon account, which subscribers can donate to on a monthly basis. For $10 a month, Michael offers a customized pen pal service, to which around 70 people subscribe; half of the subscribers actually end up writing in. Overall, Michael has 238 patrons, most of whom pay $1 or $2 a month. 

In January, Michael implored their followers to pledge to their Patreon account with a #Higher-scope meme. “I wish some rich person would discover my art and give me tons of money so I can survive off it,” the self said.

“Do you realize that if 10% of your followers donated $1 a month you could work on art full time? It’s not about rich people owning your art it’s about being supported by the community you serve,” the Higher Self replied. 

Michael’s social media success has translated to other platforms, too. They guest-starred on a recent episode of “High Maintenance” Season 2, the web series turned HBO show about a weed dealer’s encounters in Brooklyn. Michael plays a “stoned AF” Brooklyn denizen who connects a friend’s parents with the dealer. Michael’s character is bubbly and phone-obsessed, their cotton candy hair matching their sheer, pink jersey top. The character feels familiar, like your typical millennial creative type. Which, in a way, is Michael at their core.

New Age sage, social media star, artist, entrepreneur, Michael is an unprecedented hybrid force that could only blossom in 2018. Every day, Michael inserts themselves into disparate timelines, sending their Higher Self out into a digital universe populated by other mega-meme creators like @gothshakira or @scariest_bug_ever. As their follower counts grow and their memes replicate, the banal experience of scrolling through Instagram comes to resemble something like a modern form of meditation. In doing so, they stretch the possibilities of the digital space itself. Instagram isn’t just a black hole of self-loathing, it’s breeding ground for empathy and peace. Followers aren’t just fawning fans, they’re gracious disciples. Likes feel more like love. 

Of course, Higher-scopes are only one facet of Michael’s practice. They still make music, now under the moniker Bunny Michael. Their rap songs punctuate Higher Self ideas with florid imagery and a proudly slutty spirit. They occasionally perform at Brooklyn clubs and institutions like MoMA PS1, and their next album “Afterlyfe” comes out next month. 

But Michael doesn’t define success in terms of bullet points on their resume. Michael says they feel successful when they are able to accept themselves as they are right now. Michael said all their creative pursuits converge on this single goal, and to help others realize it, too. “When you stop aiming for those small things and aim for a higher thing, to be uplifted, that’s when the world reflects abundance to you,” they said. “Because you feel abundant within.” 

Not everyone will swallow Michael’s feel-good brand of spirituality, but for those who are open to their pastel-tinged version of self-acceptance and their utopian version of communicating with people online: Bunny Michael is the selfie-help guru you’ve been waiting for.

Bunny Michael’s upcoming album “Afterlyfe” will be released Feb. 18, 2018. There will be a release party at Rough Trade in Brooklyn, New York, at 2 p.m. 

It’s remarkable in 2018 that a state with 12.8 million people and 20 members of Congress could have zero women representing it.

Welcome to Pennsylvania, the state with the largest all-male delegation in the country.

That depressing statistic may change after this year’s midterm elections. A couple of male congressmen have resigned in the Keystone State after being caught up in sexual misconduct scandals, and four more are retiring at the end of this year. As elsewhere around the nation, a slew of impressive women have stepped up to compete for those open seats, motivated by the #MeToo movement and Donald Trump’s presidency.

Democrats are especially excited about Chrissy Houlahan. In late January 2017, just after the first Women’s March, EMILY’s List sent a generic fundraising email to its 3 million members asking for a few dollars to help elect female Democratic candidates.

Most people just clicked the button in the email prompting them to donate. But Houlahan, a 49-year-old mother of two from Devon, Pennsylvania, hit “reply” and attached her resumé, hoping someone in D.C. might notice her and help her figure out how to run for Congress.

Houlahan, an Air Force veteran, inner-city teacher and successful businesswoman, had spent the days after Trump’s election comforting two distraught family members: her 25-year-old daughter, who identifies as queer, and her father, a 75-year-old Holocaust survivor who fled Poland as a child. Both were terrified of what the election meant for people like them.

“My dad, this Holocaust survivor and naval officer ― a pretty tough guy ― was crying, worrying that people like him who came to this country with nothing to offer would still have the opportunities he was allowed,” Houlahan told HuffPost. “That was the beginning of thinking I needed to do something.”

Houlahan’s email did catch the attention of a staffer at EMILY’s List, who passed it up the ranks of the Democratic women’s PAC. The powerful fundraising group immediately picked her as a viable challenger to the incumbent congressman from Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, Rep. Ryan Costello (R).

“She’s got this incredible resumé,” said Julie McClain Downey, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List. “We were like, ‘Is this some sort of joke? Yes, of course we’ll help you run for Congress.’”

Houlahan is a political strategist’s dream candidate. She studied engineering at Stanford, aspiring to become an astronaut, before becoming a captain in the Air Force. She taught chemistry at an inner-city public high school in North Philadelphia through Teach for America, and served as chief operating officer of a successful basketball shoe company and Springboard Collaborative, a nonprofit that supports childhood literacy. Her policy priority is health care, “making sure people have what I believe is access to a human right.” 

If Houlahan defeats Costello in the 2018 midterms, she’ll bring some much-needed diversity of perspective and experience to Pennsylvania’s delegation.

“It’s not just that it’s all men― it’s all men who are lawyers, for the most part,” Houlahan said. “We have people with one skill set representing us.” (Actually, seven of them are lawyers, but a majority are career politicians.)

Six Pennsylvania congressmen are not seeking re-election this year, which has created a real opportunity for women to penetrate the old boys club in a heavily gerrymandered state. (The outgoing lawmakers include Rep. Pat Meehan, a Republican, who is resigning after having sexually harassed one of his staffers, and Rep. Tim Murphy, an anti-abortion Republican who allegedly urged the woman with whom he was having an affair to terminate her pregnancy.)

“In the last year, it has become abundantly clear that it is no longer acceptable to have women shut out of leadership positions,” said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY’s List, who has endorsed two women so far in Pennsylvania.

EMILY’s List is already fundraising for Houlahan and Christina Hartman, an international nonprofit leader who is challenging incumbent Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R). The group is likely to endorse more women candidates in the coming months, which may include former Philadelphia Deputy Mayor Nina Ahmad, who is running for Rep. Bob Brady’s (D) open seat, and Navy veteran Rachel Reddick, who is challenging Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R). Jess King, another Democrat running for Smucker’s seat, has been generating grassroots excitement with her progressive populist campaign.

These are only a handful of the women running. Laura Quick, a single mom and UPS package car driver from Lebanon County, is running for the seat being vacated by Rep. Charlie Dent (R). Most of these Republican-leaning districts, of course, will be difficult for a relatively unknown Democratic woman to flip. Houlahan, however, has a very strong shot of winning.

Pennsylvania’s 6th District, despite having obviously been drawn to give GOP candidates an advantage (Houlahan likens it to a spiked dragon), broke for Hillary Clinton in 2016. EMILY’s List and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are funneling resources this year into districts that favored Clinton but are currently represented by Republicans, and Houlahan’s early fundraising numbers have been very strong thanks to the support of those groups. The resistance movement has also given Democrats like Houlahan new momentum this year, as evidenced by the massive, unprecedented wave of women running for office and getting involved in politics who have never done so before.

Republicans are nervous about Houlahan. National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Steve Stivers called her race against Costello a “bellwether” that could predict how the party fares nationally in the 2018 midterms.

“If [Democrats] win in Pennsylvania against Ryan Costello, they’ve got a shot to take the majority,” Stivers told Politico last summer.  

Houlahan hopes not only to win, but to bring other women with her to represent Pennsylvania in Congress.

“I feel bullish,” she said. “It’s important that there’s not just a token woman or two representing Pennsylvania, but that we really get that critical mass to change the course of history.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story mistakenly indicated Pennsylvania Rep. Bob Brady is a Republican. He is a Democrat. 

WASHINGTON ― If you listen to Republican leaders these days, you’d think workers all over America were rolling around in big fat bonuses thanks to the GOP tax plan. But in a lot of cases, these one-time payouts aren’t nearly as generous as employers, politicians and even the news media are making them out to be.

Take Lowe’s. On Thursday, the home improvement chain announced that more than 260,000 hourly employees in the United States would be eligible for “a one-time bonus of up to $1,000,” a move the company attributed directly to tax reform. If you’re a Lowe’s employee, that’s thrilling news ― until you read a little closer and notice the operative phrase: “up to.”

Lowe’s is following in the footsteps of America’s largest employer, Walmart, and its most direct competitor, Home Depot, in rolling out a $1,000 bonus program that grabs headlines. But the bonuses are actually structured according to tenure. At all three chains, you only get the full $1,000 if you’ve been employed with the company for 20 years.

In the sky-high-turnover world of retail, two decades with the same company is a remarkable feat. If you’ve hung on that long, there’s a decent chance you’re the one running your store.

Instead, you’re much more likely to be a worker on the opposite end of the spectrum: an employee with two years or less time on the job. In that case, you would get a $200 bonus at Walmart or Home Depot, and $150 at Lowe’s, well below the $1,000 figure being cited by politicians and cable news guests.

Lowe’s, Home Depot and Walmart are using roughly the same progressive bonus structure, which Walmart first announced earlier this month:

• Less than two years: $200 ($150 for Lowe’s workers)
• Two to four years: $250 ($200 for Lowe’s workers)
• Five to nine years: $300
• 10 to 14 years: $400 ($500 for Lowe’s workers)
• 15 to 19 years: $750
• 20+ years: $1,000

Despite that more complex picture, it’s the $1,000 figure that’s become a political talking point. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the bonuses “crumbs,” since they typically represent a small fraction of corporate profits and expected tax savings. Republicans pounced on the remark. Vice President Mike Pence was one of many who argued Pelosi was out of touch.  

“If you’re going to say that $1,000 is crumbs, you live in a different world than I’m living in,” Pence said Wednesday while at a luxury resort. “If I had another $1,000 in my pocket at the end of the year, I have a term for that: Christmas.”

HuffPost asked Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s what percentages of its workers would get the full $1,000. All three declined to share their figures.

HuffPost readers: Did you get a bonus tied to the tax overhaul? Tell us about it!

Structuring the bonuses according to tenure makes plenty of sense, as Walmart spokesman Blake Jackson explained. Along with doling out the one-time bonus, Walmart is also raising its minimum wage ― a much more costly labor expense over the long term. Employees who’ve been around a long time tend to be making more money than newer employees, so they are far less likely to get a pay bump from the wage floor coming up. The bonus helps make up for that.

“We built the bonus structure keeping in mind that the longer you’ve been with Walmart, the less likely you are to see a benefit from the wage increase,” Jackson said.

If the retailers follow industry trends, their workforces skew heavily toward short tenures, and therefore smaller bonuses. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail has more job separations than the average across all occupations. Retail workers quit, got fired or were laid off at a 4.3 percent rate in November, for instance, compared to 3.5 percent for all workers. The average job tenure for all U.S. workers is 4.2 years, according to the most recent data.

That would put your average American worker in the second-lowest bonus bracket.

To be clear, any bonus is a good thing for a worker. Having $200 is better than having nothing, especially if you stock shelves for $11 an hour and live paycheck to paycheck. And if you’re getting that $200 unexpectedly, you probably don’t care whether your company attributes it to Republican tax cuts, a tightening labor market, growing corporate profits or the Eagles making it to the Super Bowl.

But the details of the bonus plans are a reminder of the political spin and public relations blitz surrounding the entire GOP tax plan. With the corporate tax rate dropping from 35 to 21 percent, employers want to look like they’re passing a large share of that savings onto workers, and Republicans in Congress and the White House want to help them do it.

Lowe’s is one of more than 250 firms that have announced more money for workers as a result of the new tax law. We know that because House Republicans have been continuously updating a running list.

The law contained few tax provisions that directly benefit low-wage workers, who already are unlikely to have much federal tax liability. Republicans said workers would get higher wages as a result of the lower corporate rates. The argument was that the corporate tax cut would encourage companies to make massive capital investments that would increase worker productivity and make labor more valuable over time. That could happen, but most economists think Republicans’ rosy projections are overly optimistic.  

The GOP’s actual argument for how tax reform would benefit workers never involved a smattering of bonuses. Nevertheless, every time a company has announced a bonus, Republicans have said it proves their point and added to the list.

But a bonus isn’t the same as a raise; if all you get is a one-time bonus, your base salary remains the same. Among the nearly 50 Fortune 500 firms on the GOP list, fewer than half have actually raised wages for workers, according to a HuffPost analysis earlier this week. (Among those that did, the falling unemployment rate may have had more to do with it than a tax windfall.) And some of the firms on the list haven’t even announced bonuses. UPS, for instance, simply said that it would “expand and accelerate investments in our people, technology, [and] transportation fleet” thanks to tax reform.

In some cases, the talk of $1,000 bonuses has overshadowed more significant changes by employers. A dollar-an-hour raise means a lot more to a Walmart worker over the long term than a one-time $200 bonus. If someone works full-time hours, that translates into an extra $2,000 pre-tax each year. And in the case of Lowe’s, the company said it would expand its paid parental leave program to include 10 weeks paid maternity and two weeks of paid paternity.

Unlike a one-time bonus, at least those benefits will still be around next year.

Hear Dave Jamieson and Arthur Delaney talk tax reform bonuses on the HuffPost Politics podcast: 

After months of pleading with residents in Cape Town, South Africa, to slash their water use, the city this week cut the daily usage limit from 23 to 13 gallons, but extended the day when most people’s taps are expected to run dry.

City officials on Tuesday pushed back “Day Zero,” when tap water to businesses and residences will be completely turned off, from April 12 to April 16. The move offered some sense of hope even as the drought-stricken metropolis of nearly 4 million people scrambles to ration its dwindling water supply. 

“Hearing the message that says we can defeat Day Zero, more people have come onboard, and I’m glad to announce that we’ve started to move Day Zero,” said Mmusi Maimane, leader of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance party, at a press conference on Tuesday. “We anticipate that with the plan working, we can move it further along.”

Maimane said in the last few days, water use has dropped from 153 million gallons per day to 143 million gallons and that the city has secured a temporary supply of 18 million gallons of water per day, for 60 days, from a dam southeast of Cape Town, according to local Eyewitness News.

Maimane’s “Defeat Day Zero” campaign tweeted credit to a local farming community for providing the water.

Although the four-day extension shows some progress has been made, it appears that Cape Town residents are still struggling to conserve enough water.

As of Thursday ― when daily water allowances were slashed by nearly 50 percent ― roughly half of the city’s residents were not taking measures to conserve water, according to a tweet from Defeat Day Zero.

That estimate is similar to figures released by the city last week, stating that only 55 percent of city residents were curbing their daily water usage to less than 23 gallons, which was then the daily limit.

Last month, Cape Town reprimanded wasteful residents while warning that the crisis had “reached a point of no return.” 

“We can no longer ask people to stop wasting water. We must force them,” the city said while announcing a possible punitive tax on households that use more than 1,585 gallons per month.

On Thursday, the city’s dams were reported to be 25.9 percent full and dropping at a rate of 1 percent each week. Once the dams reach a collective level of 13.5 percent, the city said that taps will be shut off and residents will be allocated just 6.6 gallons of water a day, which they have to line up to collect.

Those living in old-age homes and care facilities will have water delivered to them in water tankers. There is public concern for vulnerable people who don’t live at such facilities or with family.

A video posted to Facebook early Thursday, just after the new water limits went into effect, showed people filling up containers at a public spring and then struggling to carry them back to their cars as law enforcement officers stood by.

Amanda Stergianos, a local blogger who filmed the morning bustle, asked one woman collecting water if she thought the elderly would be able to manage.

“Even these young people can’t manage,” the woman replied, before sharing that she was personally collecting for two elderly individuals who couldn’t make it to the spring themselves.

“One, she can hardly walk and the other is in a wheelchair. I’ve offered and now I can’t pull out,” she said.

Stergianos, speaking to CNN, stressed that carrying all that water is “nearly impossible.”

“I am strong and healthy, but also a single parent. Carrying 25 liters [about 6.6 gallons] of water is nearly impossible for me for more than five meters without setting it down ― let alone for long walks from the springs to the cars,” she said.

Residents are reportedly not finding much relief at the stores either. Shops have been running out of bottled water as the crisis heightens, according to local reports. There has been some price gouging on the precious resource, although not at major retail chains, South Africa’s BusinessTech reported.

“Under normal circumstances, demand pressure would have increased the price of the larger sizes, but instead stores have been offering specials which have cleared their shelves, even if only for a short time,” Viccy Baker of consumer watchdog Retail Price Watch told the news site.

While organizations in neighboring cities have reached out to help, a potential water crisis in surrounding areas is also looming.

South Africa’s Department of Water Affairs has reported that dam levels in Lesotho, a country that lies surrounded by South Africa, are similarly dropping. The dams supply the Gauteng province that includes Johannesburg, Pretoria and much of South Africa’s industry,

Lesotho’s levels have been described as “very low,” which is the department’s worst ranking, Reuters wrote.

Fears of similar water emergencies reportedly triggered at least one official in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city, to warn residents to stop sending its bottled water to Cape Town. The local official reasoned that his city has its own water shortage to worry about.

“It might end up with worse situation if we carry on with this practice,” Sputnik Ratau told Eyewitness News.

The University of Pennsylvania said Thursday it was cutting ties with billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn, a former university trustee, after allegations of sexual misconduct that spanned decades.

In an email to students, faculty and alumni, David L. Cohen, the trustees chair, and Amy Gutmann, the university president, condemned Wynn’s “abusive behavior” as described in the reports.

“The nature, severity, and extent of these allegations, and the patterns of abusive behavior they describe, involve acts and conduct that are inimical to the core values of our University,” the email said.

Cohen and Gutmann also said Penn had decided to revoke an honorary degree previously awarded to comedian Bill Cosby, who for years has faced a mountain of sexual misconduct allegations. Cosby has admitted to drugging women, but denies sexually assaulting them.

The university leaders outlined steps Penn would take to distance itself from Wynn, who graduated in 1963 and has donated millions to the school in Philadelphia: 

First, we will remove the name Wynn Commons, named for Mr. Wynn, from the centrally located outdoor plaza bounded by Houston Hall, Claudia Cohen Hall, College Hall, and Irvine Auditorium.

Second, Mr. Wynn’s name will be removed from a scholarship fund established by a donation from him. The scholarships will continue to be awarded.

Third, we will revoke Mr. Wynn’s honorary degree.

The announcement comes five days after Wynn resigned as finance chair of the Republican National Committee following an explosive report in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, which included accusations that Wynn sexually harassed several of his casino employees over several decades.

The board of directors of Wynn Resorts formed a special committee to investigate the allegations, and casino regulators in Nevada and Massachusetts said this week they would begin investigations.

Wynn, 76, has vehemently denied the accusations, saying “the idea” he ever assaulted any woman was “preposterous.”

It has been 100 years since Penn last revoked an honorary degree, Cohen and Gutmann noted in their email.

“Our nation is currently undergoing a profound reckoning regarding the role and extent of sexual misconduct in all areas of our society,” the school leaders wrote.

“As a University, we have always been, and will always continue to be, looked to by our alumni and neighbors, our faculty, and most of all by our students, for moral leadership. We must not ― we cannot ― fail to provide it.”