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Coalition Consensus part 4

   

FULL YEAR 2023 world-record temperature
TEMP DISTRIBUTION OVER THE WORLD
HELP ! !   Democracy is losing ! !
Through democratic politics, 
we promote the common world-good.
VOTE    see 2023jan02 below.
Break silence about 'saving' democracy.  Watch McCain/Biden speech. 2023sep28.

More Contents in part 2

https://www.harvotto.com/p/political-consensus.html

More Contents in part 3

https://www.harvotto.com/p/political-consensuspart-2.html

Contents for this part 4

(older Political Consensus part 2 at https://www.harvotto.com/p/political-consensuspart-2.html )

(in key-word terms -- search page for key-word interest)
14th Amendment 
Biden
Brexit 
BRICS
Cannon
child care
China
civility -- abortion  -- Murdoch  --  coalition  
climate
contempt   -- against the common good
Davos  --  World Economic Forum
demagogue(s) -- political leader who seeks support appealing to the desires/prejudices of ordinary people rather than by rational argument (OAD)
democracy  --  House operation
education 
Europe
G-20
home schooling
House of Representatives -- Jeffries 
humanity -- UN --  human rights -- AI threat
immigration
impeachment
India -- Modi -- Hindu influence
inequality
Israel  -- Palestinians -- Lebanon -- Middle East
judges SCOTUS
Medicaid  --  unwinding
military funding
misinformation
news curation
Pakistan
policies
polls  -- presidential race -- demographics
Romney
secularism
Trump  --  New York State    --  classified documents -- voter arguments 
water -- American Climate Corps 


2024jan26.  Trump.    Over the past week, Kaplan’s handling of the damages trial in Lower Manhattan shows how different a federal courtroom is from most other parts of public life — even state court, where Trump and his lawyers had more leeway to squabble with a judge overseeing a different civil trial in another New York courthouse over the past several months. Kaplan has not tolerated similar behavior, and Trump has railed on social media that the federal judge is “a totally biased and hostile person.”    The former president claimed that he only lost a previous lawsuit brought by Carroll over the sexual assault and a different set of defamatory comments because he didn’t appear in court personally.     Kaplan oversaw that lawsuit, too.    In recent weeks, Trump has been attending more court hearings than he needs to, seemingly deciding that the best way to fight his legal critics — and win the GOP nomination — is to try to shout them down. He has spoken out of turn in the courtroom and denounced the proceedings.    Legal experts warn that if he does so on the witness stand in Kaplan’s courtroom, he could end up humiliated and threatened with contempt of court.        Now Crowley responds. “Ladies and gentlemen his truth was a lie,” she says. “And he had no right to say it. That may be how Donald Trump lives his life telling a truth that is a lie, but that's not how it works under the law.”          “He’s still breaking the law literally to this day,” Crowley says of Trump, arguing that he continues to defame Carroll. Madaio, one of Trump's lawyers, objects, Judge Kaplan overrules him, and Crowley continues.        Kaplan just lost his temper with Habba as she tried to object, reminding the Trump team that only one lawyer can object during an argument. “One lawyer,” he scolds them, and Habba sits down.        And now the jury has been sent to deliberate.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/21/trump-carroll-judge-kaplan-witness/

Crowley is linking Trump’s behavior in the courtroom to his behavior toward Carroll. “He gets to lie,” she says. “He gets to threaten. He gets to ignore a jury verdict. He gets to defy the law and the rules of this courtroom. You saw how he has behaved through this trial. You heard him. You saw him stand up and walk out of this courtroom while Ms. Kaplan was speaking. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”        Michael Madaio, Trump’s lawyer, objects when Crowley accuses Trump of defaming her. Judge Kaplan asks why. “Defamatory,” Madaio says, objecting to the use of the word even though a jury in May found she had been defamed. Judge Kaplan overrules him.         One of the most compelling aspects of this case is that Trump continues to attack Carroll. Carroll's lawyers, Shawn Crowley and Roberta Kaplan, have latched on to those continuing attacks, advertising them to the jury whenever possible. If enough jurors buy the idea that Kaplan offered in her closing — that money is the only thing that could stop those attacks — Trump could be in real trouble here.        Trump remains hunched at the table, sitting quietly as his lawyers constantly interrupt Crowley’s closing with objections. They are consistently overruled by Judge Kaplan.  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/26/nyregion/trump-carroll-defamation-trial

2024jan26.  Biden.    Biden has passed a ton of critical legislation with the Democrats — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Bill, CHIPS and Science. The economy is doing pretty well. The labor market is really strong. Inflation is coming down.    So it’s kind of hard to run, saying, Joe Biden has done a bad job being president. There are important differences now increasingly on foreign policy. But if you think back eight months ago, that wasn’t as true.  They gained in the 2022 Senate. They gained in state legislatures. They gained in governorships. They did lose the House, but they held down losses.        There wasn’t a critique to be made of Biden’s Democratic Party. It wasn’t, obviously, losing elections. It wasn’t failing to govern.        ... if you look at elections rather than polls and look at governance rather than vibes, Democrats are not doing that badly.         Trump’s maybe ahead, maybe behind, but stronger than he was. And most Democrats I know are freaking out about those polls, so why aren’t you?   SIMON ROSENBERG: Because since Trump unveiled himself as MAGA in the 2017-2018 cycle, we just keep winning elections. We won the 2018 cycle. We won the 2020 cycle. We won in ways that people never thought we would in 2022.        Democrats keep overperforming in elections. Republicans keep underperforming and struggling.         And so when we actually go vote, we just keep winning, and they keep losing. And so I go into 2024 feeling really good about where we are.        ... if we run a good campaign and execute well, I think we’re going to win this election by high single digits and make this election a clear repudiation of MAGA, which will, hopefully, start to loosen this dark grip on the Republican Party.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-simon-rosenberg.html?searchResultPosition=1

2024jan26.  Trump.    Just as senators were closing in on a deal that Republican negotiators said would constitute the most conservative border security bill in decades, Donald Trump was closing in on the G.O.P. presidential nomination.    And his vocal opposition to the compromise, which would also send tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, now threatens the chances of the entire package in a divided Congress.    Trump’s twin primary victories have forced Republicans to once again fall in line. Now, he is wielding a heavier hand over his party’s agenda in Congress than at any other time since leaving office.    Republicans are “in a quandary,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, told his conference in a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, according to lawmakers who attended. What was supposed to be the sweetener for conservatives opposed to sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine had become as politically treacherous as the foreign aid itself, he said. Trump’s growing influence was dividing Republicans on an issue that once united the party.  Senators have been working on a border deal since just before Thanksgiving. But as the complicated talks have dragged on, Trump has begun collecting delegates and pressing for the party to coalesce around him and his agenda. His allies in Congress regard him as the party’s de facto leader and urge their colleagues to fall in line with his policies. Even Republicans who are not die-hard fans of Trump have said in recent days that they will do what they can to support him as the party’s nominee.    His policies include severe immigration measures that President Biden and Senate Democrats would never support. Trump and most House Republicans want to block migrants from living and working temporarily without visas in the United States while they await the outcome of their immigration claims. And conservatives seek a revival of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced immigrants to wait elsewhere to see if they would be permitted entry. Speaker Mike Johnson, who talks about immigration regularly with Trump, has said that a Senate deal without those policies would be dead on arrival in the House.    Yesterday, Republican supporters of a border deal were livid at the notion that Trump might tank their work. “We have to have people here who support Trump, who have endorsed President Trump, go to him and tell him what a compelling case this is,” Thom Tillis, a North Carolina senator, said.    Trump has always had [used] far more power to derail things than to help lawmakers find consensus.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20240126&instance_id=113530&nl=the-morning&paid_regi=1&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=156462&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F1f224d60-c65b-5336-8070-158582a21931&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2024jan25.  democracy.    The Manhattan district attorney’s office has begun to approach witnesses to prepare them for trial, including Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He and at least two others involved in buying a porn star’s silence about her story of a tryst with Mr. Trump are expected to meet with prosecutors in the coming weeks.    With the potential trial drawing near, the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, has also added one of his most experienced trial lawyers to the team assigned to prosecute Mr. Trump.    And in recent public appearances, Mr. Bragg has presented the loftiest possible conception of the case, casting it as a clear-cut instance of election interference, in which a candidate defrauded the American people to win the White House in 2016. Mr. Trump did so, the district attorney argues, by concealing an illegal payoff to the porn star, thus hiding damaging information from voters just days before they headed to the polls.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/nyregion/trump-hush-money-trial-stormy-daniels.html


2024jan25.  democracy.    David Leonhardt ... colleagues Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman and Charlie Savage ... [discussed Trump]        Jonathan: ... by the end of his first term, Trump had put the U.S. on a course to withdraw from Afghanistan. On immigration, he had all but destroyed the asylum system. On trade, he had implemented tariffs against China and even European allies, and he had withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership — President Obama’s signature trade deal.    Maggie: Trump would be picking up where he left off when the pandemic changed everything. At the beginning of 2020, Trump had installed a loyalist at the office of presidential personnel, John McEntee, to purge the government of anti-Trump officials and had plans to make it easier to fire civil servants. That was all put on pause, and would resume accordingly.    Charlie: ... the courts blocked his ban on travel to the U.S. by people from several Muslim countries, but that is only true of the first stabs at it. Eventually, his administration figured out how to rewrite it in a way that the Supreme Court let take effect. His aides would be starting from that level of sophistication in a second term.    Maggie: He has promised crackdowns at the border through use of the Insurrection Act, as well as mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants.    He and his allies have also been clear that a big agenda item is eroding the Justice Department’s independence.    Charlie: Yes, Trump has vowed to use his power over the Justice Department to turn it into an instrument of vengeance against his political adversaries. This would end the post-Watergate norm that the department carries out criminal investigations independently of White House political control, and it would be a big deal for American-style democracy.    Jonathan: ... his mind mostly turns to the Department of Justice and the “deep state” — which he understands as the intelligence community. People close to Trump are already drawing up lists of “disloyal” officials in the national security apparatus who will be targeted for retribution.    Charlie: The ability of other branches to serve as a check will be diminished. Most of the Republicans in Congress who occasionally stood up to Trump have left government or, by 2025, will have. Think of John McCain, Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney.    The Supreme Court will be more tilted in Trump’s favor in any second term, thanks to his own appointments in his first four years. As a result, some disputes that he lost last time — such as the immigration case involving so-called Dreamers — would probably come out the other way.    David: ... when Trump tells voters what he plans to do in a second term, we should default to believing him.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20240125&instance_id=113416&nl=the-morning&paid_regi=1&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=156264&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fa488b8c0-94bc-596f-9a38-47079be3bdf0&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2024jan23.   Trump.    In fairness, the Trump of four and eight years ago was also plenty erratic. But a closer look at his public performances — his courtroom outbursts and on the stump — suggests the very stable genius is off his game. He’s propped up by a very professional campaign, which he didn’t have before, and more insulated from questions and spontaneous exchanges. Yet he’s still saying and doing the sort of things that, had Biden done them, Republicans would cry: dementia!  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/23/new-hampshire-primary-2024-scene-trump-phillips-haley/

2024jan23.   immigration.    Martin Sellner, a far-right extremist and leader of the Austrian “Identitarian Movement,” attended the gathering and floated a “master plan” that could even see these deportees sent to an imagined “model state” in North Africa. Whatever the unviability of the proposals, it echoed Nazi deliberations in 1940 to forcibly relocate millions of Jews to Madagascar. Sellner once maintained correspondence with Brenton Tarrant, the white nationalist gunmen who carried out the hideous 2019 killing spree at a set of mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.    Top AfD leaders have sought to distance themselves from the meetings, arguing that they were not officially sanctioned by the party and do not reflect its stated agenda. Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, said in a recent interview with the Financial Times that the AfD’s views were unfairly stigmatized and criticized the methods Correctiv used to infiltrate the gathering.    “It was just an attempt to criminalize the very idea of repatriating people lawfully who don’t have leave to remain here, or are subject to a deportation order,” said Weidel, whose close aide Roland Hartwig reportedly attended the November event. “The AfD is the party that stands for enforcing this country’s laws.”    That’s a claim bound to raise eyebrows. In three German states, party officials are known to be under surveillance by the German domestic spy agency for their “certified right-wing extremist” positions. Some of the party’s opponents want Germany’s judicial authorities to intervene and ban the party under provisions in the German constitution that allow for the banning of factions the “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order.”  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=65af491522c7b80f14d64241&linknum=2&linktot=56&linknum=2&linktot=56

2024jan22.   Israel.     https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20240122&instance_id=113142&nl=the-morning&paid_regi=1&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=155973&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2Fefeca069-55db-5c7f-bf4d-c19be837994b&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4  

Palestinian State

2024jan20.   Davos.     It’s not always logistically easy being in the Trump tribe, but people stuck it out — and when instructed to turn around and express their sentiments directly to the news media, they dutifully booed and raised middle fingers.    The antagonism that Trump supporters feel toward the media is a small piece of a broader political and cultural phenomenon. This country, though politically fractious since its founding, is more polarized than ever, the rhetoric more inflammatory, the rage more likely to curdle into hate. It’s ugly out there.    As the 2024 primary season revs up, and with the political stakes this year extraordinarily high, voters are both polarized and hardly budging. Pundits expect another close election that’s a repeat of 2020.        Social scientists have taken note of these hardening political divisions, pumping out academic articles and books that add data to what appears to be a steady rise in tribalism.    One theme emerges in much of the research: Our politics tend be more emotional now. Policy preferences are increasingly likely to be entangled with a visceral dislike of the opposition DISRESPECT. The newly embraced academic term for this is “affective polarization.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/01/20/polarization-science-evolution-psychology/?utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_trending_now&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&location=alert        Harv respects less emotion and more cooperative factual debate toward coalition consensus to include recognition of voting results.

2024jan20.   Davos.     ... the first Davos (panel discussions, private meetings) gathering since 2020 without any Covid-related restrictions, as fears about the pandemic almost completely receded. But there was plenty on attendees’ minds. Here are some of the big takeaways from the five-day conference, which ended Friday.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20240120&first_send=0&instance_id=113019&nl=dealbook&paid_regi=1&productCode=DK&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=155859&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F9acd1650-9a23-53c6-8230-098d5a71c3fc&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

The Davos program changes from year to year, but the agita that animates this gathering is always the same: The issues at the top of the agenda are a) the ones that powerful people are most afraid of, and b) the ones they think they can make money from.    Last year it was cryptocurrency and the war in Ukraine. This year it is A.I. and the possibility of another Trump presidency. Climate change has largely been relegated to the back burner.  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/climate/davos-puts-climate-on-the-back-burner.html?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20240120&instance_id=113019&nl=dealbook&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=155859&te=1&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2024jan18.   Trump.     It’s more important for him to convey contempt for his enemies than to drag himself into court to try to sway a jury. Satisfying his own emotional needs and playing to his cult appear to supersede legal considerations.    Trump eagerly creates chaos, looks for opportunities to disrupt and continues to threaten judges, court personnel and witnesses. Indeed, in advance of the current trial, Carroll’s lawyer implored the judge to consider his outburst in the New York civil case and take steps to prevent another attempt to “sow chaos.” Trump is prohibited from rearguing the facts of the sexual assault — although he might try anyway. Expect outbursts in his criminal trials, ludicrous arguments (even those the judge already ruled on) and other stunts that a normal defendant might fear would be off-putting to a jury. That has always been his style: delegitimize entities and defy the rules because he seems to consider himself above the law.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/18/trump-civil-trials-strategy/

2024jan16.   polls.     Iowa and New Hampshire, the first to states to hold their nominating contests, tend to produce different winners. There are a couple of factors that help explain that pattern.    For one, the people who vote in each of these early nominating states are very different.    A majority of Iowa voters have historically been religious conservatives, more rural and more likely to consider themselves “very conservative.” Historically, about 6 in 10 Iowa Republican caucus-goers self-identify as white evangelicals or born-again Christians.    New Hampshire GOP primary voters, on the other hand, are more moderate and more likely to live in the suburbs.  https://www.npr.org/live-updates/iowa-caucus-results#the-next-state-to-cast-votes-has-a-very-different-process-and-electorate

2024jan16.   Biden.     President Joe Biden raised more than $97 million for his presidential campaign and the Democratic Party in the fourth fundraising quarter last year as he readies a sizable campaign war chest to face off against a Republican opponent in November.        The Biden campaign’s announcement marks the biggest fundraising haul of the president’s reelection bid and comes as Republicans are set to kick off their primary contests with the Iowa caucuses Monday evening. Biden has spent the start of 2024 ramping up his attacks on former President Donald Trump, who Biden’s advisers view as his likely opponent.    A CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday found there is no clear leader in a hypothetical general election matchup between Biden and Trump, with 50% of likely voters backing the former president and 48% supporting the current one.  https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/15/politics/biden-democrats-fundraising-haul/index.html

2024jan16.   Trump.     Asked for comment, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, did not directly address Mr. Tacopina’s departure, saying only that Mr. Trump “has the most experienced, qualified, disciplined, and overall strongest legal team ever assembled” as he fights his various cases, which he has slammed as partisan efforts to prevent him from being re-elected president.  https://draft.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/5819812783765852051

Donald Trump notched a historic win in Iowa’s presidential caucuses Monday, beating the other candidates by double-digit margins and more than doubling his share of the vote from 2016.    He pulled it off in large part by gaining votes in areas that backed one of his chief rivals eight years ago, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, according to a statistical model created by The Washington Post.    Trump also held on to the vast majority of precincts he prevailed in during his first presidential bid, The Post’s model shows, highlighting how he remains the GOP’s center of gravity even as he faces four criminal cases and scrutiny over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/01/16/trump-iowa-results/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics

Preliminary Iowa Republican caucus entrance polls on Monday highlighted the grip former president Donald Trump maintains on Republican voters and the extent to which his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged have dominated the GOP electorate.    Nearly two-thirds of Iowa caucus-goers said President Biden did not legitimately win the election in 2020, according to results from network entrance polls conducted by Edison Research.    Those numbers come as Trump has made false claims surrounding the 2020 election a key part of his stump speech and his bid for a return to the White House. During a campaign event in Indianola, Iowa, this weekend ahead of his caucus victory Monday night, Trump declared that “radical-left Democrats rigged the presidential election of 2020, and we are not going to allow them to rig the presidential election of 2024.”    There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and challenges to myriad election-related issues have been repudiated more than 60 times in court.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/15/poll-majority-iowa-gop-caucus-goers-dont-believe-biden-legitimately-won-2020/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics

Fear and loathing at Davos – Mega-rich, well-fed, fur-sporting elites descend on Davos, Switzerland, this week for the annual rite of skiing, schmoozing and big talking that is the World Economic Forum.    One big topic will be how much average Americans continue to hate and mistrust the uber-wealthy and gag over stories like Mark Zuckerberg feeding his pampered Hawaiian cows a diet of macadamia nuts and beer.    CEOs, top politicians and assorted celebrities will also chew over the latest from Oxfam International showing the world could have its first trillionaire within a decade. Since 2020, the fortunes of the world’s five richest men (Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Warren Buffett) have soared 114%.    During those three years, most of the world suffered through the psychological and economic devastation of the pandemic. Average workers emerged –  quite remarkably – in almost the same shape as before the Covid-19 virus hit.    But that shape wasn’t all that great. Economic inequality remains quite terrible. Wage increases are only recently (and barely) outstripping inflation. And people are as angry at corporate elites, politicians and institutions of all kinds as they’ve ever been. Labor union support is soaring.    All this helps explain why former President Donald Trump romped to victory in the frigid Iowa GOP caucuses yesterday despite barely running a campaign in the state and skipping all the debates.    The Davos-preferred candidate, former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, fell short of a hoped-for, second-place finish, that might've pushed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis toward the exit. Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy did head for the door after a poor performance last night (and endorsed Trump on his way out).    The pro-Haley playbook requires a strong showing in Iowa and a win or close-to-win in New Hampshire to create a one-on-one showdown with Trump. That's a giant long shot and probably needs Trump to be convicted of something and sentenced. Even then it’s no lock that Trump doesn’t get the nomination.     That’s just how much Trump’s (highly skilled) version of populist, fear-and-resentment-fueled politics dominates on the GOP side. It also poses a long-term threat to the uber-rich and an immediate 2024 threat to President Joe Biden if he is seen as too old and incapable of bringing real measurable change.  https://mailchi.mp/themessenger.com/how-davos-explains-trump?e=a1ac8990c7

2024jan11.   climate.     Past blog headline gets absorbed.

warmest human-world October in 125,000 years

2024jan02.   democracy.     One thing that we can probably count on are major issues motivating voters to the polls. Like:

  • The potential demise of democracy
  • Concerns over high migration at the U.S.-Mexico border
  • A backlash among moderate voters to abortion restrictions
  • Gun control
  • A sense that it’s harder to get ahead economically than it was a generation ago
“Usually the presidential election is about three-to-five issues,” said one top Republican strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because his work touches on the presidential campaign. “And this one is like, every pot on the stove is boiling for every single issue group and voter. So we will see massive turnout.”  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=65948c067477d010dcadecf3&linknum=2&linktot=33&linknum=2&linktot=33

2024jan02.   China.     The Numbers.    <10 million.    The number of babies born in China in 2022, compared with around 16 million in 2012. China’s population, now around 1.4 billion, is likely to drop to just around 500 million by 2100, according to some projections. Women are taking the blame. Beijing’s one-child policy, abolished in 2015 after 35 years, has led to fewer young people and millions fewer women of childbearing age every year, and some of them are reluctant to marry and have kids, despite the government’s demands.  https://whatsnews.cmail20.com/t/d-e-vurlro-iudygtktd-r/  and  https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-population-births-decline-womens-rights-5af9937b?mod=djemwhatsnews

2023dec31.   immigration.     The world is on the move.    Migration from the world’s poorer countries to more affluent ones is at the highest level in decades. Millions of people are on the move, taking routes both legal and illegal to secure work or refuge. The surge in arrivals is stoking social tensions, helping to topple governments and fostering the rise of right-wing nationalist groups from France to the Netherlands. In the U.S., border security is expected to be a focal point in Washington this year. But an agreement in the Senate has proven elusive so far, and mayors of New York, Chicago and Denver say the flow of migrants arriving from the southern border has already pushed their cities to the breaking point.  https://whatsnews.cmail19.com/t/d-e-vulklul-iudygtktd-r/

2023dec29.   Biden.     If Biden is to be reelected next year, something needs to change before voters go to the polls. Right now, he’s losing in most polls to Donald Trump, which is puzzling most Democratic strategists and frustrating Biden — especially since Biden feels that he’s helped address what Americans say are their biggest concerns. Looking at his major problems, it’s not immediately clear what he could change to get ahead of Trump in the polls. Like:    The economy: This one probably irks Biden. The Biden team feels “vindicated” that they simultaneously helped bring down inflation after the pandemic and averted a recession, The Washington Post’s Rachel Siegel and Jeff Stein report. Even though inflation is coming down this year much faster than expected, consistently higher prices are something few Americans have dealt with before, Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, told me recently. They affect everyone, regardless of paycheck. And plenty of people are blaming the president for it. There’s a prevalent mind-set, especially among younger voters and some Black voters, that it’s harder to get ahead today than it was a generation ago, a recent CBS News-YouGov poll found. Democrats hope that public opinion will soon catch up to the good economic news.        Only 23 percent of voters say Biden’s policies have helped them personally, a recent Wall Street Journal poll found. (Compare that to about half who say in that poll that Trump’s policies helped them personally when he was president.)     Except, Biden feels like he has done a lot: Investments in infrastructure and computer-chip manufacturing jobs. Historic action on the climate. But voters don’t feel any of that has helped them afford groceries and rent. “In the minds of many Democrats, we campaigned on a set of ideas in 2020, and we went into office and executed on them,” former congressman Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) told The Post’s Tyler Pager recently. “We feel like we have a good story to tell, but that doesn’t seem to be registering yet.”  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=658f40deb7e5c90e0071d7c1&linknum=2&linktot=35&linknum=2&linktot=35

2023dec28.   Europe.     Romania and Bulgaria to join Schengen border-free zone by air and sea.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67834837


2023dec20.   Trump.     Trump is leading the race for the Republican nomination by proverbial miles, with public opinion polls showing him dozens of percentage points ahead of his closest rivals. More worryingly for Democrats, surveys also suggest President Joe Biden is trailing him in a potential match-up in the general elections.    And that comes in spite of Trump’s legal troubles. This year, Trump became the first former United States president to be charged with a crime. But four indictments later, his campaign is still going strong.    The bottom line: Last year’s reports of Trump’s political demise may have been greatly exaggerated. “Teflon Don” is back.         The former president’s personality and agenda remain popular with many Americans. While voters rejected many Trump-like candidates in the midterms, it was not necessarily a rebuke of the man himself. The criminal charges he faces also boosted the conservative perception that Trump is a victim of a “corrupt” system. It is too early to tell whether Trump will maintain his momentum, but the lack of a strong Republican alternative and Biden’s dwindling popularity are playing into his hands.  https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/27/donald-trump-stumbled-in-2022-how-is-he-leading-the-2024-race

2023dec20.   Biden.     The 2024 election will not be fought along the conventional axis of left and right or even change and more of the same. Voters very much want change; they have made that clear with the absolutely abominable ratings they give our leadership in poll after poll. But instead of clamoring for someone to blow everything up, they are crying out for someone to put things back in order. Voters wanted this from Mr. Biden and clearly feel he didn’t deliver, which is why Mr. Trump currently leads by notable margins across most of the key swing states.    If this election is between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump and is fought on chaos versus stability, even with all of the drama constantly swirling around the former president, don’t assume most voters will consider a second Trump term to be the riskier bet.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/26/opinion/trump-biden-election.html

2023dec20.   Biden.     https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/12/23/trump-biden-us-economy-compared/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most












2023dec20.   House of Representatives.     House Dysfunction by the Numbers: 724 Votes, Only 27 Laws Enacted.        The tally reflects the extraordinary chaos and paralysis that gripped the House in 2023, when lawmakers did more voting but less lawmaking than at any time in the past decade.   https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/19/us/politics/house-republicans-laws-year.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20231220&instance_id=110596&nl=the-morning&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=153049&te=1&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023dec18.   immigration.     The Senate has remained in session this week, rather than starting its holiday recess, so that its members can continue to negotiate over border security measures. Republicans have said that they will not pass a package of aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan unless it includes policies to tighten the southern border.        Pull factors have also been important. During Biden’s presidential campaign, he spoke in much more welcoming tones than not only Donald Trump but also Barack Obama. “We’re a nation that says, ‘If you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come,’” Biden said during a 2020 campaign debate co-hosted by Univision, which has a large audience in Latin America.    Federal policy, even before Biden’s presidency, has played a role, too. A 2015 ruling by a federal judge, for example, made it easier for children to enter the country. (Some of them go on to work dangerous jobs — such as roofing — in the U.S., as The Times has documented.)    Together, these changes have caused many potential migrants to believe that their chances of being able to enter the U.S., and stay, are better than they used to be. “The pull factors are so much of what is happening now,” said Doris Meissner, who was the commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton and now works at the Migration Policy Institute.        Today, migrants who manage to set foot on U.S. soil can often claim asylum. Some genuinely qualify because they have a credible fear of repression in their home countries. Many others do not qualify, but they have learned that claiming asylum allows them to remain in the U.S. for months, if not years, while their case is heard.        “The deeper issue here is our immigration laws have not been updated in 30 years,” Meissner said. The ideal solution, she and many other experts believe, would combine stronger border enforcement, more resources to decide cases quickly and clear new ways for people to apply for legal immigration.    Of course, experts have been making the same arguments for years, without Congress acting. The two political parties remain too far apart on the issue to pass any comprehensive bill. But Biden’s push for Ukraine aid — combined with the Republicans’ focus on reducing illegal immigration — could lead to a narrower bill in coming weeks that tightens the border.  https://draft.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/5819812783765852051

2023dec18.   Biden.     Elected three years ago as the self-described most experienced foreign policy president in history, Biden promised to reclaim the mantle of global leadership as “a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress and security.” Following the isolationist Trump years, he proclaimed, “America is back.”    There have been ups and downs since then, from the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco to the return to primacy at NATO, a successful mobilization of aid for Ukraine and a jittery coexistence with China.    Now, there is acknowledgment within Biden’s administration that his unwavering support for Israel’s right to destroy Hamas — even as he acknowledges Israeli excesses and presses the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be more protective of innocent Palestinian lives — could impose a price on the president’s standing at home and abroad.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=657fd321af444a439a995891&linknum=4&linktot=63&linknum=4&linktot=63

2023dec16.   judges SCOTUS.     The Dobbs decision that erased the constitutional right to abortion 18 months ago was not “a careful byproduct of an emerging social consensus.” It was reckless, leading directly to this week’s grotesque drama in Texas, in which a desperate woman had to flee the state in order to follow her doctor’s advice and terminate a doomed pregnancy that threatened her fertility.    Far from reflecting an “emerging social consensus,” Dobbs flew in the face of a longstanding majority view in favor of retaining the right to abortion. The decision by five justices, all raised in the Catholic church, was indeed “reactive.” What it was reacting to was a religion-fueled political effort that spanned five decades and that in 2016 led a presidential candidate, Donald Trump, to promise that a court filled with his appointees would overturn Roe v. Wade “automatically.” There is no law in Dobbs, only the performance of something dressed up to look like law.    Dobbs is the most obvious but hardly the only current example of judicial activism that flies in the face of majority will. The court’s gun-rights jurisprudence has become so extreme, threatening so many long-accepted firearms regulations, that even some of the justices who voted in the majority in last year’s Bruen decision appeared to be taking cover last month when the question being argued was whether the Second Amendment actually requires leaving guns in the hands of domestic abusers.    The court’s invention a few years ago of something it calls the “major questions doctrine” would bleed authority out of the federal agencies that Congress created in the quaint belief that expertise deployed in the business of government is a good thing. The calls for dismantling the “administrative state” to which the court is responding come not from the public as a whole, but from a libertarian-conservative minority with a lot of money and the right friends in high places. Separately, a series of decisions has shown a Supreme Court majority determined to give religion a veto over laws and regulations designed to prevent discrimination and protect public health.    We know these things. We don’t need social scientists to tell us what we can see with our own eyes. Yet a study published last year in PNAS, a journal of the National Academy of Sciences, is illuminating nonetheless. Compiling a decade’s worth of surveys, the authors found that while the Supreme Court tended to reflect the views of “the average American” until 2020, “the court is now near the typical Republican and to the ideological right of roughly three-quarters of all Americans.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/opinion/supreme-court-guns-abortion.html

2023dec14.   military funding.     House passes defense policy bill, a rebuke of GOP’s far-right fringe.        Democrats joined Republicans to approve the $886 billion legislation after it was stripped of hard-liners’ demands targeting abortion, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/12/14/house-defense-bill-ndaa/?utm_campaign=wp_evening_edition&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_evening

2023dec11.   home schooling.     Taken as a whole, the academic literature shows mixed academic outcomes for home schooling: Some studies find benefits; others show deficiencies.        Ray comes from a conservative Christian movement that sees home schooling as a biblically mandated counterweight to secular modernity.        “You home educate if you believe it’s biblically normative and/or commanded,” Ray added. “You don’t home educate to get high test scores.”    He made a similar argument in an August podcast interview. “Does God give you the choice to just delegate [your children’s education] to anybody you want?” he said. “Absolutely not.”    A community of home-school alumni has arisen in recent years to forcefully reject this form of education. They say their parents ignored entire subjects, focused on faith over academics and were physically abusive. Among these critics is someone Ray knows well: his oldest daughter...         Arthur Ellis, who was on the faculty at the time, said Ray was asked to leave. “His whole philosophy was really at odds with what we were trying to do, which was teach people in the public schools,” he said. “His view was that home schooling was superior.”    Ellis said he and his colleagues were unimpressed with Ray’s approach to research. “It’s an odd thing to do research when you already know what the outcome is because you believe it — you’re a true believer,” he said. Ray, he argued, “is more of a salesman or a cheerleader than anything.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/11/brian-ray-homeschool-student-outcomes/

2023dec10.   Biden.         The heart of Biden’s challenge: No matter how good the economic data is, voters remain disgruntled. A poll conducted last month by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is representative: It found that only 26 percent of voters thought Biden’s policies had helped the economy.    Thus, the key components of their emerging plan: Acknowledge that prices are a problem and highlight what Biden is doing to bring them down. Focus less on the number of jobs created since he took office (even if this remains a source of pride) and more on the good wages those jobs are paying, an increase that’s especially large for those in lower-paid positions. Yes, the “wage premium” for college grads is falling. That means a Democrat can argue that his policies are lifting the living standards of working-class voters who were key to Trump’s rise.    Relatedly, Biden will draw a class line between the parties, much as Barack Obama did in his 2012 reelection campaign against Mitt Romney. Biden will juxtapose his “bottom-up and middle-out” approach to economic growth with the GOP’s eagerness to cut taxes on the rich. He’ll contrast the GOP’s desire to maintain low tax rates for the wealthy with his own commitment to continue pushing for expanded child care, elder care and enhanced family leave.

2023dec09.   secularism.         Speaker Mike Johnson's faith-based policies starkly contrast with America's secular democratic foundations, highlighting critical questions about maintaining the separation of church and state.         Newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has made it clear his actions are driven by his faith and looks to the Gospels to form policy positions.  Echoing evangelical and Christian Nationalists ideologies, he openly advocates a radical conservative agenda, suggesting he would be more comfortable were the United States to be transformed from a democratic Republic into a Christian-centric theocracy.    Ignoring science and dismissing the views of people who hold different social or religious belief systems, Speaker Johsons vacillates where parental choice is concerned, championing it when it aligns with his values while willing to override it when it conflicts with his conservative personal principles.    

  • The 2020 election – He actively recruited House Republicans to sign a legal brief supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 results despite no evidence of voter fraud, which would have changed the results.
  • Same-sex marriage – He has called same-sex marriages “counterfeit legal arrangements” and suggested they are a” dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest Republic.”
  • Women’s reproductive freedom – Johnson said reproductive freedom in America was “truly an American holocaust” and is “grateful to be from Louisiana,” making it “an abortion-free state, pro-life,” banning abortions, with no exceptions and criminalizing abortion providers.
  • Contraception – He voted against the Right to Contraception Act, protecting access to birth control.
  • No-Fault divorce – The Speaker wants to end no-fault divorces despite overwhelming evidence it has resulted in dramatic decreases in domestic violence, suicide, and femicide as women were no longer trapped in violent, coercive, or loveless marriages, rejecting married partners from determining their own futures absent governmental interference.
  • Transgenders – He cosponsored legislation criminalizing transgender health care to minors even if it is deemed in the best interest of children by their doctor and the informed desires of the child’s parents.
  • Teaching evolution – He has suggested teaching evolution leads to mass shootings.

  1. Our nation’s Founding Fathers, not the Apostles, wrote the Constitution;
  2. They added a Bill of Rights, not the Ten Commandments;
  3. Despite most being Christians or deists, the Founders’ clear intent was freedom of religion, not the establishment of or control by any specific religion;
  4. The Founders created a pluralistic democracy, not a theocracy, which many came to this country to escape;
  5. Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, or the Constitution is “Christianity” mentioned, and
  6. Where claims of America being a “Christian nation” are concerned, he might check Section 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, approved by the United States Senate and signed by then President and one of the nation’s Founders, John Adams, which states, “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion …”  https://www.smerconish.com/exclusive-content/a-theocrat-at-the-helm/

2023dec08.   impeachment.     The charges include failure to file and pay taxes, false tax return and evasion of assessment.    Prosecutors say that, instead of paying his taxes, Mr Biden spent his money on "drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature".    They added that he "individually received more than $7 million in total gross income" between 2016 and mid-October 2020, but "wilfully failed to pay his 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 taxes on time, despite having access to funds to pay some or all of these taxes".    Mr Biden eventually paid all his taxes and fines back in 2020 - with the help of a loan from his personal attorney.    The impeachment inquiry.    Questions have been raised over the past two decades about Hunter Biden's business practices, and whether he had leveraged his name and access to his powerful father to make money and land clients.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66516294

2023dec07.   inequality.     Thirty years ago, America’s celebrated middle class commanded twice as much wealth as the upper 1%.    Over the years, the rich have grown steadily richer. The top 1% caught and passed the middle class in collective wealth in late 2020, Fed data shows.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/top-1-american-earners-more-wealth-middle-class/71769832007/  

2023dec02.   climate.    https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/12/us/countries-climate-change-emissions-cop28/

2023nov23.   Trump.    Thanksgiving arguments.        Abortion.       Presidential age.        Trump's criminal/civil judgements.        Republican put-offs.        Immigration.        Economy.     China.          https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/11/21/facts-thanksgiving-dinner-topics-argument/    

2023nov18.   democracy.    For Biden, this is about his identity. It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office.        If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.    It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time that it helped get him to No. 1, and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/opinion/biden-trump-axelrod-anger.html

2023nov20.   demagogue(s).    The bottom line: "Both parties' primary voters are perpetually angry," Wasserman said.  https://www.axios.com/2023/11/19/america-is-big-mad?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top     Violence gets media attention.

2023nov17.   polls.    Why Americans hate the Biden economy – It’s worth beating this one into the ground. A declining high inflation rate is STILL a high inflation rate. And people hate it.  https://mailchi.mp/themessenger.com/how-musk-killed-twitters-value?e=a1ac8990c7

2023nov16.   policies.    A then-obscure think tank named the Roosevelt Institute released a report in 2015 that called for a new approach to economic policy. It was unabashedly progressive, befitting the history of the institute, which was created by trusts honoring Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.    The report called for higher taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, more regulation of Wall Street, more support for labor unions, more aggressive antitrust enforcement and more government investment in economic growth. National news outlets covered the report while also noting how much of a break it represented with decades of economic policy by both the Democratic and Republican Parties. There was ample reason to be skeptical that much would change.    But much has changed in the past eight years.    President Biden has enacted the biggest government investment programs in decades, two of which — in infrastructure and semiconductor development — received bipartisan support.   https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/dynamic/render?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20231116&instance_id=107853&nl=the-morning&paid_regi=1&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=150182&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F2e491355-085f-5f9e-b7f3-b57e5b25656f&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023nov16.   judges.    President Biden announced Wednesday he will nominate Adeel A. Mangi, a Harvard- and Oxford-trained lawyer, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, based in Philadelphia. If confirmed by the Senate, Mangi would become the first Muslim American to serve on a federal appellate court in U.S. history.    The move comes more than two years after Biden nominated the first Muslim to a federal district court, Zahid N. Quraishi, who was confirmed by the Senate for a judgeship in New Jersey.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/15/biden-first-muslim-appellate-judge/

2023nov15.   news curation.    Recommended newsletter from WSJ. https://whatsnews.cmail20.com/t/d-e-vhydudk-iudygtktd-r/

2023nov15.   House of Representatives.    House Passes Johnson’s Plan to Avert Shutdown in Bipartisan Vote.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/government-shutdown-vote-mike-johnson.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20231114&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=150068&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023nov14.   House of Representatives.    House speaker moves past hard-right concerns in effort to avoid government shutdown.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/14/government-shutdown-house-vote/

The Speaker's finances: Still weird – House Speaker Mike Johnson has to cut a deal to fund the government. Yet nobody has any idea how he funds himself.   https://mailchi.mp/themessenger.com/inflations-self-fulfilling-prophecy?e=a1ac8990c7

2023nov12.   14th Amendment.    This strategy worked to kick off a local New Mexico official who was at the Jan. 6 attack, but it’s failed for members of Congress, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=654e97d91b86734c9b8f68bc&linknum=4&linktot=61&linknum=4&linktot=61

2023nov10.   House of Representatives.    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Democrats will not pay a “ransom” to Republican demands to keep the government open. Congress was working to meet a November 17, 2023, government funding deadline. Other topics the Democratic leader discussed during his weekly news conference with reporters included President Biden’s emergency spending request, the election results from Rhode Island and other states, and the Israel-Hamas War.   https://www.c-span.org/video/?531767-1/house-minority-leader-weekly-briefing  He had explicit debt comparison.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/therecord/

  • lower family spending
  • more US jobs than ever before
  • a calmer post-pandemic
  • more infrastructure building
  • Veterans treated for toxic exposure
  • gun violence legislation
  • non male-female marriage rights
  • diverse judicial branch confirmations
  • response to Putin's aggression
  • strengthened partnerships -- NATO, Middle East, Indo=Pacific, ...
  • defensive wars against terror 
  • women's reproductive rights
  • student debt relief
  • opening maijuana rights
  • criminal justice reform
  • aggressive climate agenda
  • more people on health insurance than ever before 

2023nov07.   polls.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/06/nyt-poll-biden-trump-2024/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics  

Van Jones appearing on the CNN Morning Show commenting on 'the Trump court show' something like "Trump [wrestling] fans prefer strong-and-violent v weak-and-diplomatic."

2023nov06.   polls.  The survey finds that Mr. Biden enters his campaign as a badly weakened candidate, one running without the strengths on personal likability, temperament and character that were essential to his narrow victories in all six of these states in 2020. Long-festering vulnerabilities on his age, economic stewardship, and appeal to young, Black and Hispanic voters have grown severe enough to imperil his re-election chances.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/upshot/polls-biden-trump-2024.html

2023nov06.   Pakistan.  Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees are being forced to leave Pakistan as the country implements an order from its interim government to remove undocumented people from within its borders. Of the roughly 4 million Afghans living in Pakistan, about 1.7 million people are thought to be in the crosshairs of this “repatriation” plan.    The Pakistani government set a Nov. 1 deadline for when people without legal documents — primarily Afghans, but also potentially asylum seekers from persecuted groups such as China’s Uyghurs and Myanmar’s Rohingya — to remain in the country must leave, or otherwise face arrest and deportation. A network of “holding centers” for detained migrants has been set up in Pakistan’s provinces, and locals report a surge in police harassment and abuse of Afghans living in the country. Close to 200,000 Afghan refugees have already returned to a homeland some do not even know, with the numbers rising.    Sarfraz Bugti, Pakistan’s caretaker interior minister, has framed the decision as one shaped by security imperatives, claiming that 14 out of 24 major terrorist attacks carried out this year within Pakistan have been by Afghan nationals. Pakistan is struggling to rein in the Pakistani Taliban outfits operating within the country; these factions have loose connections to the Taliban government next door in Afghanistan, which has denounced Pakistan’s planned expulsion of its nationals.    Many of the Afghans who have joined this exodus were born in Pakistan or fled to the country decades ago as children. “  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=6548741ada4a1842ac2c8992&linknum=5&linktot=72&linknum=5&linktot=72

2023nov05.   Israel.  In his comments on Friday, delivered at a gathering of his former staff in Chicago, Mr. Obama acknowledged the strong emotions the war had raised, saying that “this is century-old stuff that’s coming to the fore.” He blamed social media for amplifying the divisions and reducing a thorny international dispute to what he viewed as sloganeering.    Yet he urged his former aides to “take in the whole truth,” seemingly attempting to strike a balance between the killings on both sides.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/04/us/politics/obama-israel-palestine.html

2023nov01.   immigration.  Republican and Democratic voters can’t seem to get much further away from each other on how to handle the U.S.-Mexico border, and that’s reflected by the decades-long stalemate in Congress about what to do.    ... Republican voters tend to focus on increasing border security and ramping up deportations of people who are in the United States illegally, while Democrats place more emphasis on creating ways for those people to stay here legally, taking in people fleeing violence and allowing those who came to the United States illegally as children to stay here.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=654166702c1b515786dbf538&linknum=4&linktot=47&linknum=4&linktot=47

2023oct26.   Israel.  At home, Hezbollah is increasingly unpopular outside of its religious Shiite Muslim base. Many Lebanese see Hezbollah as part of the corrupt political class that has led the country into economic ruin. And they have stopped believing the group’s rhetoric that its arms serve to defend Lebanon, instead seeing the group as pursuing its own agenda and endangering the nation.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/31/world/middleeast/hezbollah-lebanon-israel-gaza.html

2023oct26.   policies.  If Biden can do his job, then he can take the stage in Chicago with his own simple pitch for re-election: In the face of disease, war, inflation and division, the economy thrives — and democracy is alive.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/opinion/biden-israel-gaza-2024.html

2023oct26.   civility.   ... with the United States’s closest ally now waging a war in the Middle East while critical positions remain on hold, Democrats are getting behind a plan to circumvent Tuberville’s hold. It will only work, however, if some Republicans back it — a test of whether Republicans’ private frustrations with the Republican Alabama senator’s tactics run deep enough to spur public action.    The new plan would require nine or more Republicans to join with Democrats in order to approve a large block of military nominees at once, without infringing on senators’ power to stall nominations.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/26/tuberville-democrats-military/

2023oct25.   Israel.   https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-map-of-israeli-settlements-that-shocked-barack-obama

2023oct25.   House of Representatives.   The selection of Mr. Johnson, 51, was the latest abrupt turn in a chaotic leadership battle among House Republicans in which they have lurched from one speaker nominee to another — first a mainstream conservative [Scalise], then a far-right rabble rouser [Jordan], than another mainstream candidate [Emmer] and now another conservative hard-liner [Johnson] — putting their rifts on vivid display.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/us/politics/house-speaker-election.html

2023oct18.   China.   The event, the Belt and Road Forum, is centered on China’s signature foreign policy initiative, which aims to expand Beijing’s influence abroad with infrastructure projects. Mr. Putin was treated as the guest of honor and often pictured by Mr. Xi’s side. The two leaders also met for three hours in Beijing on Wednesday.     The conference was virtually absent of European Union countries, largely because of the divisiveness of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, an authoritarian-leaning friend of Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, was the only European Union leader to attend.    Represented instead were nearly 150 developing nations. China has disbursed close to $1 trillion through the Belt and Road initiative, largely in loans, to build power plants, seaports, and other infrastructure across Asia, Africa and Latin America, but some countries are finding their debt obligations onerous.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/world/asia/putin-xi-china-russia.html

2023oct16.   Israel.   The top U.S. diplomat is hopscotching the Middle East with the goal of convincing Arab partners to condemn Hamas’s horrific assault in Israel and refrain from stoking domestic unrest in response to Israel’s devastating bombing campaign in Gaza. The violence has resulted in the death of more than 1,300 Israelis and more than 2,600 Palestinians.    In Riyadh, the Saudi ruler kept Blinken waiting several hours for a meeting presumed to happen in the evening but which the crown prince only showed up for the next morning.        The crown prince also called for a halt in the “current escalation” in the conflict, a direct contradiction of U.S. policy, which has backed Israel to pursue its maximalist goal of eradicating Hamas.        Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and home to its two holiest sites, is an influential voice in shaping Arab perceptions of the conflict. While Riyadh prizes its role as a defender of Palestinians, it views Hamas as a spoiler to greater regional integration, including the crown prince’s flirtations with normalizing relations with Israel.    But efforts to convince Riyadh to condemn Hamas have failed thus far, and the Saudi foreign ministry has denounced Israel’s extensive bombing campaign in Gaza, calling it an assault on “defenseless civilians.”        On Saturday, U.S. officials announced that they had reached an agreement with Cairo for a temporary opening at the Rafah border between Gaza and Egypt for U.S. citizens seeking to flee the violence and Israeli bombardment. The announcement resulted in scores of the estimated 500- to 600 Palestinian Americans in Gaza rushing to the border, but none have been able to cross into Egypt amid contradictory remarks between U.S. and Egyptian officials about why the border won’t reopen.        “Egypt has put in place a lot of material support for people in Gaza, and Rafah will be opened,” Blinken said about his discussions with Sisi on the border. “We’re putting in place with the United Nations, with Egypt, with Israel, with others, the mechanism by which to get the assistance in, and to get it to people who need it.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/15/blinken-saudi-egypt-israel-gaza/?utm_campaign=wp_evening_edition&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_evening

2023oct14.   House of Representatives.   All these minority-rule moments turn the tables on a GOP conference that used to assert the “Hastert rule,” an unofficial standard often imposed by J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), the House speaker from 1999 into 2007. It said legislation that did not have the support of “the majority of the majority” would not get a vote on the House floor.    Now, the majority of the majority no longer rules, given that both McCarthy and Scalise had such [non] support, as Jordan now does.    Instead, a small bloc — sometimes five, sometimes eight, sometimes 20, perhaps 99 — has turned the math upside down.    With the new “Jordan rule,” it’s the minority of the majority that matters most.  https://draft.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/4170907353809023149        For Harv, the R solution is coalition governing WITH the D.

2023oct07.   Israel.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/09/gaza-strip-israel-hamas-explained/  


2023oct07.   demagogue.   That’s an ungenerous summary; Graves was obviously trying to suggest that a founding member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus has charted a more pragmatic political course within the GOP conference over the last few years. And thus, Jordan could seemingly win over McCarthy’s more institutionalist allies as he seeks the speakership, where his top competition for now is House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).    But make no mistake: Whatever institutionalization and maturation Jordan has undergone, the Jim Jordan of 2010 and 2020 looms. Plenty about his conduct today indicates that the Freedom Caucus bomb-thrower still resides within him and could drive the GOP even further to the right.    The fact that Jordan is a viable option appears to be less about his own evolution than the Republican Party’s.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/08/jim-jordan-gop-house-speaker/

2023oct07.   Israel.   The past seven decades of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have featured multiple rounds of wars, uprisings and halting diplomatic breakthroughs. Here is a timeline:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/07/israel-gaza-timeline-videos-maps/  


2023oct06.   Trump.   A New York state appellate judge Friday temporarily blocked the revocation of the Trump Organization’s state business certificates ordered last week when a trial judge found Donald Trump and his company liable for fraud.    Associate Justice Peter H. Moulton’s ruling calls for at least a temporary pause in the start of a receivership process and the dissolution of the Trump Organization and related entities ordered in a Sept. 26 summary judgment decision by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. Moulton denied Trump’s emergency request to halt his ongoing civil trial on other fraud claims.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/10/06/trump-fraud-trial-appeal/

2023oct06.   democracy.   Just hours before a vote to oust Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as the House speaker Tuesday, a group of Democrats and Republicans met in a conference room on the third floor of the Cannon House Office Building to make a last-ditch attempt to avoid the history that was soon to be made.        The group was drawn from the 64-member bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, representatives who consider themselves more moderate and more pragmatic than their parties’ firebrands. Some hailed from swing districts where voters might applaud bipartisan action.    For over an hour, people familiar with the session said, Republicans in the group begged Democrats to support the stability of the institution by agreeing to save McCarthy — the speaker who had spent nine months catering to the most extreme elements in his party and who helped resurrect Donald Trump’s image after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/05/mccarthy-speaker-coalition-government/

2023sep28.    democracy.