Political Consensus part 3

Contents part 3

(in key-word terms -- search page for key-word interest)

14th Amendment

Brexit 

BRICS

civility

contempt

democracy 

G-20

impeachment

inequality

SCOTUS

spending

2024jan08.  democracy.    Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working.    28% are satisfied, down from the prior low of 35% after Jan. 6 Capitol riot.    28% are satisfied, down from the prior low of 35% after Jan. 6 Capitol riot.    28% are satisfied, down from the prior low of 35% after Jan. 6 Capitol riot.    38% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans are satisfied.    Americans with less formal education are less satisfied.  https://news.gallup.com/poll/548120/record-low-satisfied-democracy-working.aspx

2024jan08.  spending.    Congressional leaders reached an agreement yesterday that would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year and avoid a government shutdown . The text must now be finalized, and Congress must pass the bills before the Jan. 19 deadline. The top-line figure includes $886 billion for defense and $704 billion for non-defense spending.  https://view.nl.npr.org/?qs=d9f7e47deb43005f8da7466ad30ff8b00a15883f5e29c33a0872f954185f21f936b4d4764b5f8d554ea5f7738d5f7a2f23f55f29070c3d24c033a3e1e06300295558e2a4b4cce61e15f59c4d4a179f517e236e8d0cf4b5f4

The tentative $1.66 trillion deal adheres to spending amounts agreed to by President Biden and then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy last spring in a deal to suspend the nation’s debt limit.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=659bdf7fe97f5a756f87a147&linknum=2&linktot=50&linknum=2&linktot=50

The $1.66 trillion package would preserve funding for key domestic and social safety net programs, but hard-line GOP lawmakers who sought spending cuts are likely to staunchly oppose the deal.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=659b1f047342cb297aa2312f&linknum=4&linktot=40&linknum=4&linktot=40

2023sep08.  G-20.   ... the African Union was invited to join as a permanent member of the G20.  https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-66724117

2023sep08.  contempt.   Fourteen months before his fate is decided, Biden’s unpopularity may be brewing the only possible conditions in which a disgraced and anti-democratic ex-president, who might be a convicted felon by Election Day, would be able to squeeze back into power.    It begs the question of how GOP front-runner Donald Trump, whose administration was a four-year cacophony of chaos, scandal and fury, and who tried to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, could be locked in a statistical tie (47% to 46% among registered voters) with Biden after facing 91 criminal charges across four cases.    The chief rationale behind Biden’s bid for a second term is that he is the best positioned Democrat to beat Trump again. But unless political conditions change significantly in the coming months, that narrative may be in doubt.  https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/07/politics/joe-biden-2024-reelection-donald-trump

2023sep08.  civility.   ... request comes after members of the grand jury that indicted Trump and his allies in August for a sweeping racketeering conspiracy had their personal information published on a far-right website.        Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum wrote that the grand jurors were subject to harassment and threats after their home addresses, phone numbers and vehicle information were posted on a website operated by a Russian company.    At that point, Schierbaum wrote that local law enforcement enacted an operational plan to protect grand jurors, which he says is now straining agency resources. He did not detail what that security entails.  https://www.npr.org/2023/09/07/1198288859/trump-georgia-trial-jurors-protection

2023sep08.  G-20.   BRICS.   Fourteen years ago, the understandings forged between the powers of the West and the developing world at the G-20 helped lift the global economy out of the morass of an epic financial crisis. At the time, the bloc was hailed by then-British prime minister Gordon Brown as the vehicle of a “new world order,” one leading the way to a “new progressive era of international co-operation.”    That “progressive” era has not come about. The Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine has deepened the chasm between the Kremlin and a galvanized geopolitical West. The toll of the pandemic and climate change keep exposing, in ways big and small, the grim inequities between the world’s haves and have-nots. The United States and other Western countries have soured on the free-trading enthusiasm of an earlier era of globalization and are increasingly beholden to once-fringe reactionary nationalist movements at home. Outside the West, liberal democracies in myriad countries, including India, are ailing in the face of entrenched, illiberal, majoritarian ruling parties.        The G-20 meetings come in the wake of the recent BRICS summit in South Africa, where Xi did make an appearance. It seems Beijing may view that bloc, which does not include the United States and many top Western allies, as a more useful platform for its international agenda. BRICS appears set to expand its ranks next year, raising new questions about the relevance of an institution like the G-20, which may no longer be the principal forum for the major powers of the developing world.  https://draft.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/4584164544454246975

2023sep08.  civility.   inequality.   Senate confirms Biden’s FCC nominee, Anna Gomez, breaking a years-long deadlock. His first pick withdrew amid relentless attacks.        The move returns the Federal Communications Commission to full strength for the first time under President Biden, whose initial pick for the role, Gigi Sohn, withdrew after a contentious 16-month confirmation battle.        Senators voted 55-43 to confirm Gomez, an FCC veteran who is a communications policy adviser for the State Department. Gomez will take the third Democratic seat on the five-member commission, which oversees broadband and communications regulation.    The move returns the agency to full strength for the first time under Biden, whose initial pick for the FCC role, Gigi Sohn, withdrew after a contentious 16-month confirmation battle. The impasse had left the agency without a Democratic majority for the entirety of Biden’s term until now.    Consumer advocates said the 2½-year delay hampered the FCC’s ability to carry out critical tasks aimed at protecting Americans from potential abuse by the telecom giants, including reinstating the Obama-era net neutrality regulations, which bar internet service providers from blocking or throttling content.    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/07/fcc-anna-gomez-confirmed-biden-nominee/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere&location=alert

2023sep07.  contempt.   The verdict, coming after nearly four hours of deliberation in Federal District Court in Washington, made Mr. Navarro the second top adviser of Mr. Trump’s to be found guilty of contempt for defying the committee’s inquiry. Stephen K. Bannon, a former strategist for Mr. Trump who was convicted of the same offense last summer, faces four months in prison and is appealing his conviction, as Mr. Navarro has also vowed to do.    Mr. Navarro stood to the side of his lawyers’ table, as he has for the duration of the trial, stroking his chin as the verdict was read aloud. Each count carries a maximum of one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000. A hearing to determine his sentence was scheduled for January.    Mr. Navarro and Mr. Bannon openly disregarded the Jan. 6 committee’s requests, but others in Mr. Trump’s inner circle cooperated with the panel in a more limited fashion and avoided criminal charges.    Two of Mr. Trump’s advisers, Roger J. Stone Jr. and Michael T. Flynn, appeared before the committee but declined to answer most of its questions by citing their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Mr. Trump’s final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and his deputy, Dan Scavino, each negotiated terms with the committee to provide documents but not testimony.  https://draft.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/4584164544454246975

2023sep07.  civility.   A coalition representing nearly every former president from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama issued a collective call on Thursday to protect the foundations of American democracy and maintain civility in the nation’s politics.    The alliance of presidential centers and foundations for U.S. leaders dating back nearly a century, both Democrats and Republicans, is a historic first. Never before has such a broad coalition of legacy institutions from former administrations joined together on a single issue.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/07/us/politics/presidential-centers-democracy-bush.html

2023sep06.  inequality.   Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both ran for president promising to reinvigorate the economy for ordinary Americans. And both enacted laws that helped millions of people. Clinton expanded children’s health care and tax credits for low-income families. Obama accomplished even more, making it possible for almost anybody to afford health insurance.    Yet neither Obama nor Clinton managed to alter the basic trajectory of the American economy. Income and wealth inequality, which had begun rising in the early 1980s, continued to do so. So did inequality in other measures, like health and life expectancy. Polls continue to show that most Americans are frustrated with the country’s direction.    

... Democrats had not gone far enough to undo the revolution that Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s — a revolution that sparked the huge rise in inequality.    These Democratic experts have grown skeptical of the benefits of free trade and Washington’s hands-off approach to corporate consolidation. They want the government to spend more money on highways, technological development and other policies that could create good-paying jobs. The experts, in short, believe that they had been too accepting of the more laissez-faire economic agenda often known as neoliberalism.    This turnabout is the central explanation for President Biden’s economic agenda, which White House aides call Bidenomics and will be core to his re-election campaign. He has signed laws (sometimes with bipartisan support) spending billions of dollars on semiconductor factories, roads, bridges and clean energy. He has tried to crack down on monopolies. He has encouraged workers to join unions.    The best description of this shift I’ve yet read appears in “The Last Politician,” a new book about Biden’s first two years in office by Franklin Foer of The Atlantic. Foer tells the story partly through Jake Sullivan, who helped design Biden’s domestic agenda during the campaign and then became national security adviser.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230906&instance_id=102032&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=143852&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F51db6b10-ca90-52a5-b648-bee63327a639&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023sep03.   Nikkei Asia has reported, citing sources, that SMIC would be using what’s known as the “7-nanometer process” to make the chips for Huawei, the most advanced level in China. This would be on par with the process used for the chips inside Apple’s iPhones launched in 2018. Apple’s latest iPhone chips were made by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, using what is known as the four-nanometer process. A nanometer is a measure of chip size, with the fewer nanometers in the process, the better. A piece of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/02/huawei-raimondo-phone-chip-sanctions/

2023sep03.   What I found groundbreaking, and frankly refreshing, about Richardson’s approach was his singular focus on the core problem — freeing American hostages. That allowed him to put aside counterproductive moral judgments. Of course, the regimes in Tehran, Moscow, Beijing and Caracas were to blame. Why waste time discussing that when the priority is the life of a fellow citizen?     As the number of Americans being taken hostage continues to increase, so much of the debate about what to do is focused on whether we should negotiate for their release. Those opposed to making concessions say that offering anything in return for an innocent person’s freedom only incentivizes further hostage taking.    Richardson understood the problem with that stance sooner than anyone else: While a no-concessions policy for hostage taking may be fine as a political position, it further victimizes innocent hostages and risks leaving them to die or languish in foreign prisons for years.    That was simply unacceptable to Bill Richardson — full stop. The void he leaves behind will be hard to fill.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/02/bill-richardson-death-legacy-hostage-diplomacy/

2023sep01.   The Trump reckoning, long in coming, has arrived — and not just in the array of criminal cases against the former president himself. A pair of powerful rulings in civil cases against two top Trump advisers offers another illustration of how the court system can stand up against the sheer lawlessness of such behavior.    For years, the Trump way — ignore lawful subpoenas, assert unfounded exemptions from compliance and generally run out the clock on legal claims — has been distressingly successful. Stonewalling has proved a particularly successful strategy in the face of congressional investigations.    But that approach has its limits, on welcome display this week in D.C. federal court, where two judges rendered powerful rulings against Trump advisers Rudy Giuliani and Peter Navarro that amounted to: Stop this nonsense. It’s not nice to fool with federal judges. They possess the power to rule against you, especially when you push the limits.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/31/trump-legal-reckoning-giuliani-navarro/

2023sep01.   For more than a decade, the United States mostly ignored BRICS. The grouping, formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, rarely registered on Washington’s radar. When it did, the impulse — as shown by Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently stressing that the coalition is not “some kind of geopolitical rival” — was to downplay the group’s significance. Western commentators, for their part, largely painted BRICS as either a sign of Chinese attempts to dominate the global south or little more than a talking shop. Some even called for its dissolution.    Such complacency looks less tenable now. At a summit in Johannesburg last week, the group invited six global south states — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join its ranks. In the aftermath of the announcement, indifference gave way to surprise, even anxiety. Yet there’s no need for alarm. BRICS will never run the world or replace the U.S.-led international system.    It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss its importance. After all, any club with such a long waiting list — in thFor more than a decade, the United States mostly ignored BRICS. The grouping, formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, rarely registered on Washington’s radar. When it did, the impulse — as shown by Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently stressing that the coalition is not “some kind of geopolitical rival” — was to downplay the group’s significance. Western commentators, for their part, largely painted BRICS as either a sign of Chinese attempts to dominate the global south or little more than a talking shop. Some even called for its dissolution.    Such complacency looks less tenable now. At a summit in Johannesburg last week, the group invited six global south states — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to join its ranks. In the aftermath of the announcement, indifference gave way to surprise, even anxiety. Yet there’s no need for alarm. BRICS will never run the world or replace the U.S.-led international system.    It would be a mistake, though, to dismiss its importance. After all, any club with such a long waiting list — in this case, nearly 20 nations — is probably doing something right. BRICS’s expansion is an unmistakable marker of many countries’ dissatisfaction with the global order and of their ambition to improve their place within it. For America, whose grip on global dominance is weakening, it amounts to a subtly significant challenge — and an opportunity.    The critics have a point: BRICS remains a work in progress. Its two major initiatives — the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement — are quite small when compared with the scale of global development lending and finance. Other initiatives such as cooperation on health research and space exploration are in their embryonic stages. Expansion could make institution-building harder, with more players in the mix. There are, for example, some differences between the way China and Russia and the global south states view the grouping.    America’s global dominance, to be sure, is underwritten by vast military spending, a network of alliances and hundreds of far-flung military bases. But even if an expanded BRICS only muddles along in terms of material success — and there’s a good chance it will do better than that — it will challenge Washington in three key areas: global norms, geopolitical rivalries and cross-regional collaboration.    Since the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 and despite the disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, America has been able to portray itself as speaking for the values of freedom and democracy everywhere. In fact, the disproportionate sway Washington holds over the articulation of global norms is a major source of its power. It’s not for nothing that the Biden administration repeatedly claims that the world is divided between rules-following democracies and rules-flouting autocracies, with the United States at the head of the former.    This “democracy vs. autocracy” framework has already been partly discredited by Washington’s own embrace of authoritarian governments. A bigger BRICS would deal it another blow from a different angle. Of the 11 states that will make up the expanded group, four can be said to be democracies, four are autocracies, two are monarchies and another a theocracy. It is further evidence that a country’s political system is a poor indicator of how it frames its interests and with whom it decides to build a coalition.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/01/opinion/brics-expansion-america.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Opinion

2023aug30.   Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church.        In unusually sharp remarks published this week, Pope Francis said some conservative American Catholics wrongly ignore much of the Church’s mission and reject the possibility of change.        Pope Francis has expressed in unusually sharp terms his dismay at “a very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” opposing him within the U.S. Roman Catholic Church, one that fixates on social issues like abortion and sexuality to the exclusion of caring for the poor and the environment.    The pope lamented the “backwardness” of some American conservatives who he said insist on a narrow, outdated and unchanging vision. They refuse, he said, to accept the full breadth of the Church’s mission and the need for changes in doctrine over time.    “I would like to remind these people that backwardness is useless,” Francis, 86, told a group of fellow Jesuits early this month in a meeting at World Youth Day celebrations in Lisbon. “Doing this, you lose the true tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In other words, ideologies replace faith.”    His words became public this week, when a transcript of the conversation was published by the Vatican-vetted Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/world/europe/pope-francis-american-conservatives.html

2023aug29.   Riyadh is trying to secure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s support for open ties with Israel. Palestinians accused Gulf leaders of stabbing them in the back when they established diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. The PA is sending a senior delegation to Saudi Arabia next week to discuss what the kingdom can do in talks with Israel to help create a Palestinian state. Riyadh wants the PA to crack down on militants and curb violence as part of the renewed aid deal.  https://whatsnews.cmail19.com/t/d-e-vtrjuht-iudygtktd-r/

2023aug28.   John Eastman, the lawyer allegedly at the center of the unprecedented and outrageous scheme to overthrow the 2020 election, faces criminal prosecution in Georgia and has been identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal case. And Eastman must defend a bar complaint in California that threatens to revoke his law license.         In his report, Seligman addressed whether “the legal positions advanced by Dr. John Eastman in relation to the counting of electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election” were reasonable. Specifically, he assessed whether — as Eastman, Chesebro and others posited — Mike Pence, as vice president, had “unilateral authority to resolve disputes about electoral votes or to take other unilateral actions with respect to the electoral count” or could “delay the electoral count for a state legislature to take action with respect to a state’s electoral votes and whether a state legislature may lawfully appoint electors after the electoral count commences.”    Seligman reviewed the 12th Amendment, the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and “centuries-long practice by Congress” to find that the Eastman positions were so devoid of support that “no reasonable attorney exercising appropriate diligence in the circumstances would adopt them.” In essence, Seligman strips away the pretense that Eastman (and, by extension, Chesebro) engaged in routine legal work.    Seligman’s report echoes the finding of U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, who, in a matter concerning Eastman’s claim of attorney-client privilege to protect documents from the Jan. 6 House select committee, found that it “more likely than not” that Eastman and Trump had engaged in criminal activity.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/28/eastman-state-bar-defense/

2023aug26.   SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Russia’s Soyuz are currently the only vehicles capable of carrying astronauts to and from the space station, though NASA hopes to introduce another provider in the coming months. Boeing’s Starliner, which, like SpaceX, is under NASA’s commercial crew contracting program, is expected to enter operation within the next year after years of delays.  https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/26/world/spacex-nasa-crew-7-launch-space-station-scn/index.html

2023aug25.   China’s ascent over the past half-century has been remarkable, producing an arguably unprecedented decline in poverty. Even so, the country’s economic model has been familiar: investing in physical capital and education to become more productive and lure residents of rural areas to cities where they work in factories.    In previous eras, England, Germany, the U.S., Japan and South Korea all followed the same model. So did the Soviet Union, after World War II. The economist Gregory Clark called it the only story of economic development.    After countries achieve rapid growth for several decades, they can come to resemble unstoppable forces, destined to dominate the globe. People made such predictions about the Soviet Union in the 1960s, Japan in the 1980s and China in recent years. But you’ll notice a pattern of disappointment in those examples, as Paul Krugman, the Times columnist and Nobel laureate economist, has pointed out.    Thirteen years ago, I visited China to report a story for The Times Magazine and wrote the following:    To continue growing rapidly, China needs to make the next transition, from sweatshop economy to innovation economy. This transition is the one that has often proved difficult elsewhere. Once a country has turned itself into an export factory, it cannot keep growing by repeating the exercise. It can’t move a worker from an inefficient farm to a modern factory more than once. It cannot even retain its industrial might forever. As a country industrializes, workers will demand their share of the bounty, as has started happening in China, and some factories will start moving to poorer countries. Eventually, a rising economy needs to take two crucial steps: manufacture goods that aren’t just cheaper than the competition, but better; and create a thriving domestic market, so that its own consumers can pick up the slack when exports inevitably slow. These steps go hand in hand. Big consumer markets become laboratories where companies know that innovations will be tested and the successful ones richly rewarded.    I did not predict China’s current problems, to be clear. I was agnostic about whether its leaders would take the steps to build a more advanced economy. But I did describe the consensus, both inside and outside China, about what those steps were.    China’s current problems stem from not having taken them. Its leaders have instead doubled down on the same strategies that worked in past decades, like the construction of more apartment buildings and factories. It’s not working.    China still does not have a thriving consumer economy to replace its smokestack economy. It has neglected to build a safety net strong enough to give ordinary workers the confidence to spend more. Health insurance is spotty. “Government payments to seniors are tiny,” Keith Bradsher, The Times’s Beijing bureau chief, wrote this week. “Education is increasingly costly.”    Why hasn’t China taken the necessary steps? Change is hard. The bureaucrats who run legacy industries like construction have more political influence than those who run nascent industries. President Xi Jinping also seems concerned that a robust consumer economy might undermine the ruling party’s authority.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230825&instance_id=100844&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=142870&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F32d30909-2315-573e-83b5-9c0be149aa5d&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4.

2023aug24.   Ms. Hochul insisted on Thursday that the way out was to accelerate migrants’ ability to work legally while they awaited the outcome of their asylum cases, in order to get them out of shelters and on their feet financially. She said she sent a letter to Mr. Biden on Thursday pressing for four executive actions Mr. Biden could take to alleviate the situation.    Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, also announced the launch of a new state program that will help connect employers across the state with asylum seekers once they are granted permission to work. She framed the initiative as a potential lifeline for restaurants, farmers and hotels struggling with labor shortages.    “We have countless unfilled jobs that are begging for someone to just take them,” she said. “We are ready to act as soon as these migrants receive work authorization.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/nyregion/hochul-biden-migrants.html

2023aug24.   The BRICS Group Announces New Members, Expanding Its Reach.       Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia have been invited to join the club of emerging nations, strengthening its role as a geopolitical alternative to Western-led forums.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/world/europe/brics-expansion-xi-lula.html

2023aug24.   When it was founded in 1975, ECOWAS was designed to foster economic and monetary ties within the region. But its scope has significantly expanded in recent decades, beginning with armed interventions in the 1990s in civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia, to include security operations and military coordination.    Within ECOWAS, there are divisions about the wisdom of an intervention, said Fahiraman Rodrigue Koné, Sahel Project Manager for the Institute for Security Studies. On one side, the leaders of Nigeria, Benin, Senegal and Ivory Coast are supportive, Koné said, explaining that Niger’s coup “represents a threat, a contagion that they want to stop.”    He added, “Even though the coup in Niger was atypical, we cannot forget that it took place in a particular socioeconomic context shared by many of these West African nations, which have large populations living in poverty and a lack of good governance. The risk of a coup d’état always exists, and these leaders fear it happening in their own countries.”    By contrast, the island nation of Cape Verde is opposed to intervention, and Togo’s president has focused on promoting dialogue.    The bloc has suspended the three countries that recently had military coups — Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea — and they have indicated they would rally their forces to defend Niger if it were invaded by foreigners, including ECOWAS.    Rahmane Idrissa, a Nigerien political scientist based in the Netherlands, said that what is at stake for ECOWAS is the norm that “governments should exist through democratic legitimacy, rather some sort of military populist agenda.”    “It’s a theoretical stake, because of course in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea, ECOWAS has not lived up to that reality,” he said. “But if you want to have a future, you at least need to be looking toward the horizon … and Tinubu is trying to create the momentum for ECOWAS to move forward.”  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64e6d7b9bf771a5feda01123&linknum=5&linktot=59&linknum=5&linktot=59

2023aug24.   Harv sees the cause as public feeble education.

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2023aug22.   In the first weeks of 2020, a radiologist at Xinhua Hospital in Wuhan, China, saw looming signs of trouble. He was a native of Wuhan and had 29 years of radiology experience. His job was to take computed tomography (CT) scans, looking at patients’ lungs for signs of infection.    And infections were everywhere. “I have never seen a virus that spreads so quickly,” he told a reporter for the investigative magazine Caixin. “This growth rate is too fast, and it is too scary.”    “The CT machines in the hospital were overloaded every day,” he added. “The machines are exhausted and often crash.”    But this tableau of chaos was hidden from the Chinese people — and the world — in early 2020. Chinese authorities had acknowledged on Dec. 31, 2019, that there were 27 cases of “pneumonia of unknown origin,” and 44 confirmed cases on Jan. 3, 2020. The Wuhan health commission reported 59 cases on Jan. 5, then abruptly reduced the number to 41 on Jan. 11, and claimed there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission or any signs of doctors getting sick.    That claim was a lie. The coronavirus was running rampant. Doctors at the radiologist’s hospital, and other hospitals, were getting sick. But China’s Communist Party leaders prize social stability above all else. They fear any sign of public panic or admission that the ruling party-state is not in control. The authorities in both Wuhan and Beijing kept the situation secret, especially because annual party political meetings were being held in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, from Jan. 6 to Jan. 17.    Secrecy has long been a major tool of the governing Communist Party. It suppresses independent journalism, censors digital news and communications, and withholds vital information from its people. Doctors in Wuhan who knew the truth were afraid to speak out. China did not reveal human transmission of the virus until Jan. 22, and by then, the global pandemic had been ignited. In 3½ years, covid-19 has taken nearly 7 million lives by official counts. The true death toll is probably twice or three times that number.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/22/wuhan-doctors-pandemic-china-coverup/

2023aug20.   I get why Mr. Trump isn’t eager to climb into this sandbox. Debating is hard, and he is out of practice. He participated in only two debates during the 2020 cycle, the first of which was the stuff of campaign legend — but in a bad way. (Proud boys, stand back and stand by!) At some point during Wednesday’s two-hour event he would need to talk about something other than his grievances. He hates doing that, and has always been kind of lousy at it. Much of the primary field he is now facing is younger, sharper, hungrier and actually cares about policy and governance. And while few people have Mr. Trump’s razzle-dazzle, at least a couple of his opponents have solid media chops.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/opinion/editorials/trump-not-doing-debate.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Editorials

2023aug20.   Trump's lies tested limits of the bully pulpit. His right to say them is at core of criminal defense.        Barack Obama, mindful of the urgent power of a president's words, liked to say he was guarded with his language because anything he said could send troops marching or markets tumbling.    His successor, Donald Trump, showed no such restraint.  https://news.yahoo.com/trumps-lies-tested-limits-bully-130408901.html

2023aug18.   In a country where the search for common ground is increasingly elusive, many Americans can agree on this: They believe the political system is broken and that it fails to represent them.        Faced with big and challenging problems — climate, immigration, inequality, guns, debt and deficits — government and politicians seem incapable of achieving consensus. On each of those issues, the public is split, often bitterly. But on each, there are also areas of agreement. What’s broken is the will of those in power to see past the divisions enough to reach compromise.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/18/american-democracy-political-system-failures/?utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_trending_now&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&location=alert

2023aug17.   Trump follows tested ‘counterpuncher’ playbook in face of indictments.        Even before his latest indictment landed, the former president was punching back, dishing insults, personal attacks and threats. That's what he's done for six decades, with considerable success.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64ddf4ecd3c5b8347bd4c51d&linknum=5&linktot=57&linknum=5&linktot=57

2023aug15.   Georgia offers uniquely compelling evidence of election interference — and a set of state criminal statutes tailor-made for the sprawling, loosely organized wrongdoing that Mr. Trump and his co-conspirators are accused of engaging in. It is a reminder of the genius of American federalism: When our democracy is threatened, states have an indispensable part to play in protecting it.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/15/opinion/trump-indictment-georgia-fani-willis.html

2023aug14.   14th Amendment.   The new article examined the historical evidence illuminating the meaning of the provision at great length, using the methods of originalism. It drew on, among other things, contemporaneous dictionary definitions, other provisions of the Constitution using similar language, “the especially strong evidence from 1860s Civil War era political and legal usage of nearly the precise same terms” and the early enforcement of the provision.    The article concluded that essentially all of that evidence pointed in the same direction: “toward a broad understanding of what constitutes insurrection and rebellion and a remarkably, almost extraordinarily, broad understanding of what types of conduct constitute engaging in, assisting, or giving aid or comfort to such movements.”    It added, “The bottom line is that Donald Trump both ‘engaged in’ ‘insurrection or rebellion’ and gave ‘aid or comfort’ to others engaging in such conduct, within the original meaning of those terms as employed in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”    Though the provision was devised to address the aftermath of the Civil War, it was written in general terms and continues to have force, the article said.    Congress granted broad amnesties in 1872 and 1898. But those acts were retrospective, the article said, and did not limit Section 3’s prospective force. (A federal appeals court agreed last year in the case involving Mr. Cawthorn.)    The provision’s language is automatic, the article said, establishing a qualification for holding office no different in principle from the Constitution’s requirement that only people who are at least 35 years old are eligible to be president.    “Section 3’s disqualification rule may and must be followed — applied, honored, obeyed, enforced, carried out — by anyone whose job it is to figure out whether someone is legally qualified to office,” the authors wrote. That includes election administrators, the article said.    Professor Calabresi said those administrators must act. “Trump is ineligible to be on the ballot, and each of the 50 state secretaries of state has an obligation to print ballots without his name on them,” he said, adding that they may be sued for refusing to do so.    (Professor Calabresi has occasionally strayed from conservative orthodoxy, leading to an unusual request from the group he helped found. “I have been asked not to talk to any journalist who identifies me as a co-founder of the Federalist Society, even though it is a historical fact,” he said. I noted the request and ignored it.)  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/trump-jan-6-insurrection-conservatives.html

2023aug12.   While concerns about American behavior remain, “there’s been a big shift in America’s global image in a positive direction.”    Pew surveys of 3,576 adults in 23 countries indicate 59 percent have a favorable opinion of the United States, while 30 percent don’t. Similarly, 54 percent have confidence in Biden, while 39 percent don’t. While Pew does not have directly comparable data for a global sweep of countries for the Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush presidencies, it does have confidence and popularity information by individual nations that show Biden’s ratings far above Trump’s.    Poland, “where positive views of the U.S. have increased substantially since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” gave the United States the highest rating, with 93 percent favorable. Hungary was the only nation where fewer than half, 44 percent, viewed America positively.    The 23 countries surveyed skew toward wealthy, predominantly White nations. Ten are in Europe, plus Canada and Australia are on the list. Meanwhile, Africa and Latin America are represented by three nations each. Asia has four.    “Next year, we plan to do somewhere between 35 and 40 countries,” Wike said, “with a much larger representation from Africa, from Latin America, Southeast Asia and different parts of the world.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/11/pew-survey-us-image-abroad-biden-trump/?utm_campaign=wp_the_5_minute_fix&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_fix        Pew, also Gallup, measures Harv's 'performance' in voting Democratic v Republican for the 'good' of the world.

2023aug11.   For anybody who wants to dig deeper into the Hunter Biden saga, I recommend https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/politics/hunter-biden-investigations.html?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230811  by my colleagues Adam Entous, Michael Schmidt and Katie Benner. Here’s the key sentence: “The real Hunter Biden story is complex and very different in important ways from the narrative promoted by Republicans — but troubling in its own way.” As Michael said to me: “Should the vice president’s son be selling the perception of access to his father even if that son isn’t delivering anything for that money?”    Jonathan Chait of New York magazine has compared  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/07/hunter-biden-supreme-court-democrats-american-politics-sleaze-problem.html?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230811  Hunter Biden to the Supreme Court justices who have accepted large gifts from private citizens. “In American politics, the worst abuses by powerful people usually involve clever ways to exploit the law without committing crimes,” Chait wrote.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230811&instance_id=99813&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=141718&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F31663678-d3b4-5015-849e-185a48aa9f5b&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023aug09.   Abortion wins.   Antiabortion advocates are tired of losing. On Tuesday in Ohio they lost a proxy vote tied to abortion, and now it’s a real possibility that in November, voters in this Midwestern state will enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.    Six times the issue has been put to voters since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and national abortion protections last summer, and six times antiabortion advocates have lost, even in conservative states.   https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64d401ad038085584e6b268a&linknum=4&linktot=51&linknum=4&linktot=51

2023aug08.   Abortion wins.   Millions of dollars were spent on Tuesday’s election and early turnout was high for an election held during a normally sleepy political season. More than 600,000 people voted early, more than twice as many as voted early in the May 2022 primary for U.S. Senate.    The special election drew national attention. Mike Pence, the former vice president seeking the GOP nomination for president, released a video Tuesday urging Ohioans to vote “yes” so they could block the November abortion rights amendment, “stop the radical left” and “save Ohio.” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, in a Twitter post called on voters to cast “no” ballots because “voting rights and   reproductive freedoms are on the line.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/08/ohio-election-issue-1-abortion/

2023aug08.  China unemployment.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/business/china-youth-unemployment.html

2023aug07.  Domestic terrorism.  https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?e=6bda99e89e&u=ff1bc9abb222ec965ded81e5e&id=8bb2168b4f  

2023aug07.   Modern civil war.   The latest federal case against Donald Trump is putting a spotlight on the role of false and baseless claims in his presidency. The indictment alleges that the former president and his co-conspirators used lies for the criminal purpose of overturning the 2020 election. For some scholars of history, its forensic look at how speech underpinned an alleged conspiracy to illegally retain power helps to situate Trump into larger historical patterns.    "All authoritarian leaders have cults of personality," said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history at New York University and author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. "Meaning, they propose themselves as all-powerful, as the only solution possible to the nation's ills. 'I alone can fix it.' "    At times, the drumbeat of false assertions during Trump's candidacy and presidency perplexed the American press and public. So did Trump's invocation of baseless conspiracy theories, which invariably situated him as a persecuted victim of a "deep state." But Ben-Ghiat said in her studies of authoritarian leaders such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Silvio Berlusconi and Jair Bolsonaro, there was precedent for this.    "The use of lies takes place in a larger effort to turn the public against alternate sources of authority," she said. Those sources might include independent courts, legislative bodies and law enforcement agencies. Or — it may be the fourth estate.    "If you're looking to see if somebody's going to be a strongman, what you find is even when they start campaigning, they immediately start trying to turn the public against the press, saying [the press is] biased and that they are the truth teller against the establishment," said Ben-Ghiat. As that leader's supporters increasingly come to believe that he is the only source of truth, she said, they will be primed to believe his claims of a stolen election.    "What Trump is doing is, he's asking for personal loyalty to him to outweigh the rule of law," said Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. "We see this in any authoritarian takeover of a system. We see the authoritarian say, 'Devotion to me is more important than the rule of law.' "    The case will likely focus on statements that Trump and co-conspirators allegedly made in the weeks between the 2020 election and the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Nonetheless, Stanley said it may illuminate some of the mechanics that have contributed to a profound shift in American culture and society.    "What jumped out to me is that we finally have a structural understanding of the way lies can undermine democracy, of the way trust is central for our democracy," he said. "Democracy relies on faith in its institutions and laws. Otherwise, there's no stability."  https://www.npr.org/2023/08/07/1191813216/new-charges-against-trump-focus-on-lies-scholars-see-an-authoritarian-playbook

2023aug05.   Modern civil war.   Trump appeared to characterize the indictments filed against him by Smith as a good thing that will further infuriate and inspire his supporters.  https://themessenger.com/politics/trump-one-more-indictment-and-this-election-is-closed-out

Trump has dealt with criminal lawyers since 1973, when he retained the infamous Roy Cohn to defend him and his father in a federal housing-discrimination case. Cohn taught Trump how to use litigation as a blood sport, counterattacking those who brought the case and blackening them on a second track in the court of public opinion. In the civil housing case, brought by the Nixon Justice Department, Cohn immediately counterclaimed against the government, seeking $100 million; he accused Justice Department lawyers of a “witch hunt” and Gestapo-like tactics, and leaked gallons of misinformation to the tabloid press, floating his side of the story. Thus, Trump learned that it was possible to play the legal system to delay proceedings and deflect a fair resolution.         Yet Smith confronts this argument head-on. His indictment acknowledges that Trump was within his rights to question the election results but points out that he had to do it by lawful means, such as demanding recounts, starting litigation in the seven states named in the indictment where the vote was close, and talking to state officials to make sure they stood by their certifications but not threaten them to “find” the necessary votes. This all would be protected speech. The line is crossed when words are used to commit crimes — and in Trump’s case, according to Smith, the words were followed by deeds. Thus, a First Amendment defense is a loser: Conspiracy, threats, extortion, fraud, all involve speech, but all cross the legal line.        Trump will likely move to dismiss the indictment on First Amendment grounds. On such a motion, however, the court will assume the allegations of the indictment to be true. And the indictment is replete with descriptions of alleged criminal acts by which the plan was carried out — fake electors, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to overrule certification and throw the election into the House of Representatives, leveraging the violence to delay certification, and so on. Whether there is a First Amendment defense will be determined after the case is tried to the jury.    A conspiracy is proved by evidence of acts, declarations and conduct. Often it is established by circumstantial evidence, and the jury must infer what was intended from what happened.        Where did the advice come from? Trump’s attorney general, his White House counsel, his director of national intelligence all advised that he had lost the election. Instead of relying on this advice and conceding, Trump turned to five lawyers — Pence has called them “crackpot lawyers” — who, wisely, are not named as co-defendants in this indictment. (I say “wisely,” because more defendants would mean more motions and more delays.) Purported reliance on a lawyer’s advice is not a defense when the advice is accepted in furtherance of a fraudulent scheme or the lawyers themselves are part of a criminal conspiracy.       Trump would have to take the stand to testify he so relied, and upon whom, and he could expect withering cross-examination. It is unlikely such testimony would be given much weight by an impartial jury, knowing that the Washington Post has calculated that he uttered 30,573 lies and misstatements during his four years as president, averaging a whopping 21 lies a day.        ...multiple Jan. 6 defendants already have tried and failed to have their cases moved out of D.C.         [The indictment] resonates as the prosecution of alleged criminal acts by a former president who is being held to account. Not a political vendetta, but an instrument of justice. ://themessenger.com/opinion/the-trump-prosecution-two-tiered-justice-or-vindicating-the-rule-of-law

2023aug04.  Virtually none of the Republican defense argues that Trump was actually right and that his actions were warranted. This lack might be considered rather patronizing, because it implies that he wasn’t, and they weren’t. Why not just argue that what he said and did was substantiated?    Because they can’t. It’s in some ways an extension of what happened after the 2020 election. Republicans by and large didn’t echo Trump’s obviously false claims of mass voter fraud, because they seemingly knew they were ridiculous.   https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/08/04/trump-indictment-election-lessons/?utm_campaign=wp_the_5_minute_fix&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_fix

2023aug04.  Hunter Biden. There’s a lot going on in his life that is worth getting the facts straight on, because he is such a hot topic among Republicans.   https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64cd6154aead572546440468&linknum=4&linktot=57&linknum=4&linktot=57

2023aug04.  The Founders Anticipated the Threat of Trump.    This week's indictment of the former president outlines the sort of demagogic challenge to the rule of law that the Constitution's architects most feared.  

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-founders-anticipated-the-threat-of-trump-becda1b?mod=djemwhatsnews

2023aug03.  Trump coup arraignment.   Close legal observers couldn’t help but take note of something...: A row of federal judges assembled in the room to witness the former president of the United States inside their building was a sight rarely seen in the federal judiciary.     This scene played out Thursday when U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya presided over Trump’s arraignment, and where she had plenty of company from her peers in the gallery.    Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a George W. Bush-appointee who oversaw some of the grand jury proceedings that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team used to bring the Trump charges, was there. Alongside him were other veteran members of the District of Columbia’s bench, including Randolph Moss, Thomas Hogan, and Amy Berman Jackson.        Sitting in the back row of the gallery, they were appointed by presidents on both sides of the political aisle. Moss and Jackson are also Obama appointees, while Hogan was appointed by Ronald Reagan.    Magistrate judges aren’t political appointees, and so Upadhyaya had no such affiliation. Her fellow magistrate Michael Harvey appeared in court, as did multiple members of Upadhyaya’s family.  https://themessenger.com/politics/federal-judges-witness-history-trump-arraignment?utm_source=onsite&utm_medium=latest_news

2023aug03.   Modern civil war.  ...as the April leadership summit shows, Clark has won admiration within the pro-Trump wing of the GOP, rather than being shunned for plotting to use Justice Department authority to strong-arm states into disregarding the will of voters.    In a conference room near the Capitol, young conservatives gathered in April to learn how to run for office — how to win and wield government power.    Among the keynote speakers at the summit, hosted by a group devoted to “training America’s future statesmen today,” was Jeffrey Clark, the former senior Justice Department official who in 2020 sought to use federal law enforcement power to undo then-President Donald Trump’s defeat.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/03/jeffrey-clark-trump-coconspirator-doj-indictment/?utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_trending_now&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&location=alert

Harv notes the emphasis on wielding government power rather than emphasis on government for the common good, that is, for the voters.

2023aug02.   This is the indictment that those who were horrified by the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have been waiting for. The catalog of misdeeds that Donald Trump is accused of is extensive, some reflected in other prosecutions over classified documents and hush-money payments or in civil lawsuits.    But this case — a sitting U.S. president’s assault on democracy — is by far the most consequential. And from the looks of this indictment, the prosecution’s case is going to be thorough and relentless.    The charging decisions in the indictment reflect smart lawyering by the special counsel Jack Smith and his team. The beauty of this indictment is that it provides three legal frameworks that prosecutors can use to tell the same fulsome story.    It will allow prosecutors to put on a compelling case that will hold Mr. Trump fully accountable for the multipronged effort to overturn the election. At the same time, it avoids legal and political pitfalls that could have delayed or derailed the prosecution.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/opinion/jack-smith-trump-indictment.html

2023aug02.   The 2024 Election Is Now All About Jan. 6.  https://themessenger.com/

2023aug02.   Donald Trump, the first and only former president to face criminal charges, has now been indicted for the third time this year — this time in connection with his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.  https://mailchi.mp/themessenger.com/what-trumps-third-indictment-means?e=a1ac8990c7

2023aug02.   Much of the indictment builds on the work of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. But the indictment also presents some new information. Examples include:    Trump tried repeatedly to persuade Mike Pence that the vice president had the power to overturn the election results in Congress. When Pence said that he did not believe he had that authority, Trump allegedly responded, “You’re too honest.”    The indictment said that Trump had six co-conspirators, but it did not name them. The Times reported several likely candidates, including the former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Prosecutors could charge co-conspirators in the coming weeks.    A deputy White House counsel warned one alleged co-conspirator, believed to be Clark, that if Trump tried to stay in office, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” That co-conspirator’s response seemed to suggest that Trump could use his power as commander in chief to crush the protests: “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”    The top charges are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.        This guide helps you track all the Trump investigations.( https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/us/trump-investigations-charges-indictments.html?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230802 )  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230802&instance_id=99021&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=140885&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F762cddcf-ec9e-5461-b82f-c45d10d931b7&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023july24.   ...if Republicans did not wake from their slumber after the first impeachment or the second, after a jury decided he had lied about sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll, after an indictment accusing him of obstruction and violating the Espionage Act (set out in shocking detail), and after replete evidence of his alleged role in an attempted coup, it is hard to imagine what would bring them to their senses. There is scant evidence that Trump would flee the race to focus on his legal defense; to the contrary, the worse his legal position, the more desperate [Trump] becomes to regain power.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/25/trump-nomination-gop-doomed/

2023july24.   Biden wrestles with Israel’s defiant turn to the right.       The passage of the legislation on Monday abolishes the court’s ability to nullify actions it deems “unreasonable.” But that is only the first step for this coalition, which also would like to gain control of the committee that selects judges and, with the judicial system no longer a counterweight to the executive, open the way to even more far-reaching goals such as annexation of the West Bank, which Palestinians envision as a future state.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/24/biden-israel-netanyahu-judicial-change/

2023july20.  SCOTUS.   Influential activist Leonard Leo helped fund media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas.    Leo is well-known for shepherding conservative judicial nominees, but the public relations campaign shows how he has continued to exert influence in support of right-leaning justices after helping them secure lifetime appointments.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64b90e16b7fafe08976e7d1c&linknum=5&linktot=72&linknum=5&linktot=72        Influential activist Leonard Leo helped fund media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/07/20/leonard-leo-clarence-thomas-paoletta/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics

2023july20.   The American legal system is on the cusp of a remarkable historical achievement. In real time and under immense pressure, it has responded to an American insurrection in a manner that is both meting out justice to the participants and establishing a series of legal precedents that will stand as enduring deterrents to a future rebellion. In an era when so many American institutions have failed, the success of our legal institutions in responding to a grave crisis should be a source of genuine hope.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/opinion/jan-6-legal.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Opinion

2023july20.   Yes, [Trump] should at least be charged. Because based on what we know, he tried to overturn the results of an election, the central tenet of democracy, said Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor who has worked under multiple administrations.        Possibly, he should be charged: The government has to be careful in such a divided country and charge Trump only with crimes it has clear evidence for, said Evan Gotlob, a former federal prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration (as well as Democratic administrations).        The Washington Post reports that law enforcement officials at the top of government were initially very wary of investigating the former president and appearing too partisan. And they worried whether there was enough evidence to charge him. So it took more than a year for them to be convinced this investigation needed to happen, but eventually they agreed this was necessary.    As for all the other investigations of Trump and his allies and “fake” electors, which all seem to be landing right now: These investigations are complicated and take time, Parker, the former federal prosecutor told me.        But experts on aging don’t share the public’s concerns. The Post’s Michael Scherer and Lenny Bernstein talked to four experts, who all said that Biden and Trump are likely to live through the next term as president, for a few reasons:  *They have already outlived so many American men born around the same time.  *They don’t drink or smoke.  *They didn’t grow up in poverty and now have access to the nation’s best doctors.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64b9a092c470fe28faa7eadd&linknum=4&linktot=53&linknum=4&linktot=53

2023july20.   KCRG-TV.    U.S. Halts Funds to Wuhan Institute.  Due to safety regulation violations, the Biden administration has cut funding to Wuhan Institute of Virology, which hasn't received NIH funds since July 2020, amidst ongoing COVID-19 origin investigations.  https://www.smerconish.com/headlines/

2023july19. The Michigan fake electors.   https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64b85d4e9f1e4436723a5336&linknum=4&linktot=45&linknum=4&linktot=45

2023july17. Trump 'dictatorship'. Personal power has always been a driving force for Mr. Trump. He often gestures toward it in a more simplistic manner, such as in 2019, when he declared to a cheering crowd, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”       Iin contrast with his disorganized transition after his surprise 2016 victory, he now benefits from a well-funded policymaking infrastructure, led by former officials who did not break with him after his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.        Mr. Trump ...  promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.     “We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/17/us/politics/trump-plans-2025.html?action=click&campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230717&instance_id=97711&module=Well&nl=the-morning&pgtype=Homepage&regi_id=91739846&section=US+News&segment_id=139507&te=1&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023july13. Trump 'crimes'. The authors at Just Security consolidated the seven-part conspiracy the House select committee set out into three essential prongs. They explained the first prong: “Trump knew he lost the election but did not want to give up power, so he worked with his lawyers on a wide variety of schemes to change the outcome. Those schemes included creating fraudulent electoral certificates that were submitted to Congress, implicating statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 371, which prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States” and 18 U.S.C. §1001, which prohibits false statements to the government. Second, after the phony elector scheme failed, Trump tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to obstruct the joint session in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512. And third, when that too failed, “Trump went to his last resort: triggering an insurrection in the hope that it would throw Congress off course, delaying the transfer of power for the first time in American history. This implicated statutes such as 18 U.S.C. § 2383, which prohibits inciting an insurrection and giving aid or comfort to insurrectionists.”   https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/13/jan-6-indictment-trump-prosecution-memo/

2023july12.  Presidential age.  A Washington Post-ABC News poll published in May found that 32% of voters think Biden has the mental sharpness it takes to be president, compared to 54% for Trump.    Yet available medical information suggests the two men are more similar, health-wise, than different. A recent report published in 2020 by the International Council on Active Aging found that while both Biden and Trump have a “higher than average probability” of surviving another term in office, Biden’s probability is 95% versus Trump at 90%. The report attributes this to his “nearly perfect health profile for a man his age.”     It also found that while both Biden and Trump are likely to be in a subgroup of people known as “super-agers” or those who maintain their mental and physical functioning and tend to live longer than the average person their age, Biden is actually expected to outlive Trump.  https://themessenger.com/politics/which-president-is-healthier-data-show-biden-will-likely-outlive-trump?utm_source=onsite&utm_medium=horizontal_popular

2023july12.  SCOTUS.   Lawyers With Cases Before The Supreme Court Paid Clarence Thomas Via Aide’s Venmo: Report.    The payments were made to Rajan Vasisht in late 2019.    Published 07/12/23.    Senior lawyers with cases heard before the Supreme Court sent money to a top aide to Clarence Thomas on Venmo in 2019, according to The Guardian.    Rajan Vasisht was Thomas' aide between 2019 and 2021. The payments all happened between November and December of 2019, and while specific amounts are't listed, they all have names related to the justice's Christmas party.    The payments had been publicly visible in Vasisht's account, but were made private once The Guardian asked for comment.    Patrick Strawbridge, for example, listed his payment to Vasisht as "Christmas Party." Strawbridge was one of the lawyers who just successfully fought against affirmative action in college admissions in the recent case taken by the Supreme Court.  https://themessenger.com/politics/lawyers-with-business-before-court-paid-clarence-thomas-via-aides-venmo-report?utm_source=onsite&utm_medium=horizontal_popular

2023july12.  Immigration.  The recent drop in illegal crossings does not mean fewer than half as many migrants are coming to the United States. President Biden is allowing roughly 43,000 migrants and asylum seekers per month to enter through CBP One appointments and accepting an additional 30,000 through a process called parole. The new legal channels appear to be absorbing many of the border-crossers who for years have entered unlawfully to surrender in large groups, overwhelming U.S. border agents.    U.S. agents made about 100,000 arrests along the Mexico border in June, the first full month that Biden’s new measures were in effect, down from 204,561 in May, according to the latest CBP data. It was the largest one-month decline since Biden took office.        Biden administration officials have begun transforming the way asylum seekers and migrants are processed along the southern border since May 11, when the White House lifted the pandemic policy known as Title 42. The policy had allowed quick expulsions of migrants who entered the United States illegally but no penalty for those who tried to get in again and again.    Now the administration is allowing tens of thousands of migrants to enter the United States legally each month through the mobile app CBP One, while those who don’t follow the rules face ramped-up deportations and tougher penalties.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/12/us-mexico-border-migrant-crossings/?utm_campaign=wp_evening_edition&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_evening&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3a8e128%2F64af147090221778562cfdcd%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F25%2F51%2F64af147090221778562cfdcd

2023july11.  Trump 'crimes'.  Charges could be coming soon in a Georgia investigation about the 2020 election.        Trump actually has a lot of trials coming up.    Here’s a running list of what we know.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64add12ce2d1c2648bfd46c0&linknum=4&linktot=44&linknum=4&linktot=44

2023july11.  Carroll went public with her allegation against Trump in 2019, saying he forced himself on her in a dressing room at Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman store in the 1990s. When he responded by telling reporters she was “totally lying” and “not my type,” she sued for defamation in federal court. After New York changed the statute of limitations for civil sexual abuse suits, she sued in state court as well, where in May she was awarded $5 million in damages. The federal trial is set to begin in January.

“We are grateful that the Department of Justice has reconsidered its position,” Carroll’s attorney,     Roberta Kaplan, said in a statement. “We have always believed that Donald Trump made his defamatory statements about our client in June 2019 out of personal animus, ill will, and spite, and not as President of the United States. Now that one of the last obstacles has been removed, we look forward to trial.”  https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/07/11/carroll-trump-defamation-justice-department-liability/

2023july11.  Here again, given the fuzzy word “status,” a professor might pause before agreeing with a book holding that race still helps determine one’s place in the social and economic order. Even if you disagree with that proposition, why would you want a professor to treat this as off-limits in a university, where students sharpen their thinking skills by articulating conflicting views on challenging, disputed topics?    DeSantis and his acolytes piously insist that the only goal is to protect students from destructive “woke indoctrination.” Students must not be told their country and its history are irredeemably marred by racism and white supremacy, or instructed to feel guilt for the horrors of the past.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/11/desantis-stop-woke-act-affirmative-action-supreme-court/

2023july11.   

another Europe canal

2023july10.  Beneath this evolving context is a singular constant: Israel’s ability to sustain its settlement of Palestinian territory without accountability, while equating Palestinian resistance to terrorism. That this framing has long been accepted among the major Western powers is particularly galling for Palestinians in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where resistance to illegal occupation is hailed as heroic and supported by Western weapons and military training.    The international community has left Palestinians in a permanent condition of statelessness, denied the right to self-determination and self-defense. While Israeli officials use openly racist statements, like saying Israel should “wipe out” an entire Palestinian town, the Biden administration is pushing for Israel’s integration into the region through bilateral peace deals, building on the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, with barely a nod to Palestinian rights.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/opinion/jenin-israel-west-bank.html

 

2023july08.  He restarted a stopped watch. He duplicated a drawing that had been sealed in an envelope. Then he appeared to bend a fork simply by staring at it.        Mr. Geller became not just a global celebrity — a media darling who toured the world and filled auditoriums for dramatic demonstrations of cutlery abuse, with the humble spoon becoming his victim of choice — but also the living embodiment of the hope that there was something more, something science couldn’t explain. Because at the core of his performance was a claim of boggling audacity: that these were not tricks.        And the point is that Mr. Geller is an entertainer, one who’d figured out that challenging our relationship to the truth, and daring us to doubt our eyes, can inspire a kind of wonder, if performed convincingly enough. Mr. Geller’s bent spoons are, in a sense, the analogue precursors of digital deep fakes — images, videos and sounds, reconfigured through software, so that anyone can be made to say or do anything.  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/business/uri-geller-magic-deep-fakes.html

2023july08.  The Dutch government has collapsed because of a disagreement between coalition parties over asylum policies, Prime Minster Mark Rutte has said.        Asylum applications in the Netherlands jumped by over a third last year to over 47,000, and government figures said earlier this year that they expect roughly 70,000 applications in 2023.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66139789

2023july08.  SCOTUS.   How long will Americans put up with the court’s originalism?  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/07/originalism-supreme-court-second-amendment-reeves/ 

2023july07.  Sadly, the Trump administration shut down the Peace Corps China program in 2020, one of many valuable people-to-people programs between the US and China that have ended in the past decade as mutual distrust has grown like a cancer. [Schmitz] believed that if the U.S.-China relationship were left to the American and Chinese people, instead of our governments, our relationship would be improved. Our peoples share so much in common: our love of family, education, freedom, our work ethic, and our willingness to learn from others. [Schmitz] hoping Yellen and her Chinese counterpart will learn from – and listen to – each other this week in Beijing.

2023july05.  Prigozhin was meant to be exiled to Belarus after abandoning his short-lived uprising that caused a crisis in Russia last month. In a move to step up an apparent propaganda campaign against the Wagner mercenary boss, Russian state media showed video of authorities raiding Prigozhin’s office and residence in St. Petersburg, seizing cash, weapons and wigs. https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/06/us/5-things-to-know-for-july-6-threads-ukraine-philadelphia-record-heat-passports/index.html

2023july05.  The insurrection saw Wagner fighters, led by Prigozhin, seize control of military facilities in two Russian cities and march toward Moscow before a secretive deal with the Kremlin abruptly ended the rebellion. Prigozhin pulled back his forces, and has since been exiled to Belarus.    The incident has been widely framed by Western analysts as a threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin's veneer of total control, with speculation about what this could mean for the war as Ukraine continues its slow counteroffensive.    "Half of Russia supported Prigozhin. Half of Russia supported Putin," Zelensky told CNN. "Some of the Russian regions were balancing in the meantime without knowing for sure who to support."    "We all see this process that shows half of the Russian population is in serious doubt," he added.    Though Russian public support for the war remains high, this crack was illustrated at the end of the insurrection, when Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters prepared to depart the city of Rostov-on-Don. https://www.blogger.com/blog/page/edit/5061034831056916264/4584164544454246975

2023july05.  Russia’s biggest problem isn’t the war. It’s losing the 21st century. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/30/putin-russia-war-modernization/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld

 2023july04.   Bidenomics.   Biden set his economic policies in contrast to “40 years of trickle-down.” Trickle-down economics usually describes the theory that tax cuts at the top will lead to prosperity at the bottom. Biden is using it to describe a more expansive economic order — what sometimes gets called “neoliberalism.” Trickle-down, in his telling, was the philosophy that “it didn’t matter where you made things.” It “meant slashing public investment” and looking the other way as “three-quarters of U.S. industries grew more concentrated.” Forty years, as alert readers will note, encompasses not just the administrations of Donald Trump and George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton and, yes, Barack Obama.        Back in May, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser (and a key aide, before that, to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), made this explicit during a speech to the Brookings Institution. Sullivan slammed the belief that “the type of growth did not matter.” That had led, he said, to administrations that let Wall Street thrive while “essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied.” He dismissed the “assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently.”     And he tendered a modest mea culpa for his own party. “Frankly, our domestic economic policies also failed to fully account for the consequences of our international economic policies,” he said. In letting globalization and automation hollow out domestic manufacturing, Democrats had been part of a Washington consensus that “had frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests.”    Biden’s speech in Chicago tried to show he was a Democrat who had learned these lessons. First, there was his emphasis on place. “I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up and stay where they grew up,” Biden said. “That’s Bidenomics.” Later, he said it again. “I believe that every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job no matter where they are — in the heartland, in small towns, in every part of this country — to raise their kids on a good paycheck and keep their roots where they grew up.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/opinion/biden-trump-economics-2024.html?te=1&nl=paul-krugman&emc=edit_pk_20230704

 2023jun28.  Stewart continues: The belief that Donald Trump was denied the White House in 2020 because of Democratic Party fraud is arguably the greatest challenge to the legitimacy of the federal government since the Civil War, if not in American history. It is hard to think of a time when nearly two-fifths of Americans seemed honestly to believe that the man in the White House is there because of theft.    It remains unknown whether Trump will be charged in connection with his refusal to abide by all of the legal requirements of democratic electoral competition. Even so, no indictment could capture the enormity of the damage Trump has inflicted on the American body politic with his bad faith, grifting and fundamentally amoral character. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opinion/donald-trump-presidency-lies.html

2023jun26.  Prigoshin involvement in Africa.  https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=649a60029912225d7ca23e49&linknum=5&linktot=70&linknum=5&linktot=70

 

 Prigoshin Africa map.

2023jun26.  Russian news outlet Verstka reported that a Wagner base for 8,000 soldiers was being constructed in Belarus, in the Mogilev region southeast of Minsk. The report could not be confirmed.    Putin was seen during his emergency address to the nation on Saturday amid the crisis, but there was speculation that he might have left Moscow for one of his residences northwest of the capital, after two planes from Russia’s special fleet used by Putin departed the city that day.        

Lavrov said the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne Tracy, had spoken with Russian government representatives Sunday and conveyed Washington’s view that the events were Russia’s internal affair and its hope that Russian nuclear weapons remained secure.       Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said Ukraine had regained roughly 50 square miles in the country’s south.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/26/putin-prigozhin-russia-rebellion-wagner/

25,000-strong force of armed mercenaries seize Russia’s operational command center for the Ukraine war and advance toward Moscow was the biggest existential threat Putin has faced in his more than 20-year rule.

 2023jun26.  Analysts speculated that Putin allowed Prigozhin a long leash as part of his own politicking among circles of Kremlin elites. That Prigozhin then decided to fully turn against Putin’s establishment, to the applause of locals in Rostov and the acquiescence of confused Russian authorities on the road to Moscow, is the latest blow to the Russian president’s prestige and legitimacy since the launch of his disastrous “special military operation” in Ukraine.    “For Putin, it was a failure that the special military operation collapsed,” Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political consultant known for his hawkish views, told my colleagues. “It was a failure that the West totally and firmly joined this war, and now it is a total failure that the most battle-ready part of the Russian armed forces turned against him, and the Russian authorities.”    “Putin has unwittingly launched a stress test of his own regime,” Stephen Kotkin, a preeminent historian of Russia and biographer of Stalin, told Foreign Affairs. “He had already lost his mystique with the bungling of the aggression against Ukraine. Mystique, once lost, is near impossible to regain.”    Intrigue swirls around what’s to come. 

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64990e7bdb96b1695fd47374&linknum=5&linktot=71

 

2023jun25.  Vladimir Putin has apparently survived the boldest challenge to his 23-year autocratic rule in Russia.   The Russian mercenaries who appeared to be mounting a coup attempt stopped their advance on Moscow, and Putin’s government announced that their leader — Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Wagner, a private military company — would flee to Belarus in exchange for amnesty. The Wagner troops who participated in the uprising would also receive amnesty, and other Wagner troops would be given the option of joining the Russian military or demobilizing, a Kremlin spokesman said.    The deal defused a crisis that seemed to verge on civil war over the past two days, and it appeared to be a major short-term victory for Putin. Notably, many Russian political leaders both in Moscow and in regional governments had proclaimed their loyalty to him since Prigozhin intensified his criticism of the Ukraine invasion this weekend and went so far as to take over a Russian military headquarters in the city of Rostov-on-Don. His troops advanced hundreds of miles toward Moscow before turning around...       Prigozhin’s actions were a shocking rebellion — and the absence of punishment for him seemed to be a potential sign of weakness for Putin. He evidently lacks the military strength or political consensus to arrest somebody who started an armed mutiny against him.    The Wall Street Journal described this weekend’s events as the gravest threat to Putin’s rule since he took over in 2000. Prigozhin “openly says what a lot of other people are thinking,” Fiona Hill, a Russia expert who has served in the U.S. government, told The Journal.    The Economist magazine wrote: “Putin has shown he can no longer maintain order among his warlords. He has been greatly weakened by the challenge — and in his world weakness tends to lead to further instability.”    And my colleague Peter Baker wrote that the uprising “suggested that Mr. Putin’s hold on power is more tenuous than at any time since he took office more than two decades ago.” https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230625&instance_id=95984&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=137598&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F34df0e09-3159-5ebd-bcab-d59a1e27f0df&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023jun24.  Prigozhin has been highly critical of Russia’s military leadership and their handling of the war in Ukraine, but he had always stopped short of criticizing Putin directly. That seems to have changed on Saturday.    Staring down a shock escalation of tensions that have simmered for months, the somber-looking Russian president addressed the nation, calling Wagner’s actions “a stab in the back of our country and our people.” 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/russia-putin-wagner-uprising-saturday-intl/index.html

2023jun24.  Moscow turnaround.
 

2023jun24.  In a statement to his Telegram social media account, Yevgeny Prigozhin said his fighters had led a “march for justice” over the past 24 hours that saw them travel from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don to the outskirts of the Russian capital.    “The whole time, not one drop of blood of our fighters was spilled,” Prigozhin said. “But now the moment has arrived when blood could be spilt.”    To avoid such a scenario, Prigozhin had ordered his forces to “turn our columns around and go in the opposite direction back to a field camp as planned.” 

https://www.npr.org/live-updates/live-updates-putin-accuses-wagner-group-of-a-treasonous-military-uprising-in-russia#wagner-group-ending-march-on-moscow-its-leader-says

 2023jun24.  “This is not a military coup, but a march of justice,” Prigozhin declared, calling on Russian military units to join him.    Dmitri Alperovitch, of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, said that Prigozhin’s move “seems like this is very well-planned and so-far comfortably executed operation.”    Putin, in a speech Saturday morning, did not mention Prigozhin by name, but referred to the insurrection as “treason.”    “Those who organized this military uprising, who raised arms against their fellow military comrades, will answer for it,” he said.    The visibly agitated Putin acknowledged that Rostov had “essentially been blocked” and that the situation there was “difficult.”       Alperovitch said. "Russian defenses are very disorganized. They don't appear to have many forces near the capital. And Wagner is extremely well armed with, ironically, the Russian military’s own weapons. So, this is a situation that's really hard to predict right now.”       Russian journalist Andrei Soldatov called the situation “huge,” but “not a coup d'état.”        Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, agrees that the Wagner uprising is “a mutiny with an ambition to be a coup d’etat.”    “I think the next 48 hours will be really unpredictable and really important for what comes next,” he told NPR.       To “minimize risks,” he added, Monday will be a non-working day for Moscow’s estimated 12 million residents. He urged civilians to refrain from traveling around the city. Certain roads and neighborhoods might be blocked, he said.        The Wagner forces remain several hours from the city limits.       https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-66006142

2023jun24.  Ukrainian forces recaptured territory in the country’s east that had been held by Russia since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/24/world/russia-ukraine-news?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230624

 2023jun24.  The confrontation marked the most dramatic threat to the Russian president’s power since he took over leadership in 1999, and came at a pivotal moment in Russia’s war in Ukraine, where Kyiv’s forces have begun a counteroffensive to take back territory. Moscow declared a “counterterrorist operation regime,” giving the authorities expanded legal powers, even as pro-war Russian activists expressed alarm that the uprising could threaten Moscow’s front lines in Ukraine.       In Moscow, at the Manege exhibition hall right near the Kremlin walls, it was the last day for an exhibition of works by a nationalistic, patriotic painter named Vasily Nesterenko, built around the theme that God had long protected Russia.    There was a long line to get in, said Ms. Khrushcheva, who listened to the chatter among waiting patrons. “They were discussing how we are great and patriotic and God is with us,” she said, “and that the Kremlin is not going to let us suffer and nothing bad will happen.” https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/24/world/russia-ukraine-news?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230624

2023jun24.  The British military described the crisis as the “most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times” and said: “Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out.” 
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230624&instance_id=95929&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=137419&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F73d8e43e-cb46-55ed-99b4-456de7a9b123&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4 

2023jun23.  In 2020, while many communities were under Covid lockdowns, protesters were flooding the streets and economic uncertainty and social isolation were deepening, Americans went on a shopping spree. For firearms.    Some 22 million guns were sold that year, 64 percent more than in 2019. More than eight million of them went to novices who had never owned a firearm, according to the firearm industry’s trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation.    Firearm homicides increased that year as well, to 19,350 from 14,392 in 2019. The death count from guns, including suicides, rose to 45,222 in 2020 from 39,702 in 2019. The number of lives lost to guns rose again in 2021, to 48,830.    After quashing research into gun violence for 25 years, Congress began funneling millions of dollars to federal agencies in 2021 to gather data.    Here is what social psychologists are finding about who purchased firearms, what motivated them and how owning, or even holding, a firearm can alter behavior.       Self-defense is the top reason Americans purchase handguns. Gun ownership is not just a constitutional right but a necessary form of protection, according to organizations like the National Rifle Association and National Shooting Sports Foundation.        Buyers were also more fearful of uncertainty. They tended to strongly agree with statements such as “Unforeseen events upset me greatly” and “I don’t like not knowing what comes next.”    They were particularly frightened by Covid, according to the study, which was conducted in June and July 2020.         More than half of all gun deaths in the United States are suicides. In 2021, for example, there were 48,830 gun deaths; 26,328 were suicides.    “Firearm owners are no more likely to have suicidal thoughts than non-owners,” Dr. Anestis said. “But if you look at who purchased a firearm during the surge, and if it was their first firearm, they were much more likely than others to have had suicidal thoughts in the last month, year or lifetime overall.”       “If you came from a gun-owning household, just having a gun present makes you feel more at ease,” said Dr. Buttrick, whose study has not yet been published.       Many studies have found that easy access to firearms does not make the home safer. Instead, ownership raises the likelihood of both suicide and homicide, said Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that works to end gun violence.    One of the earliest studies to bring attention to the danger was a 1993 paper in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that keeping a gun in the home brought a 2.7-fold increase in the risk of homicide, with almost all of the shootings carried out by family members or intimate acquaintances. The findings have since been replicated in numerous studies.    “You are much more likely to be a victim of that gun than to successfully protect yourself,” Ms. Burd-Sharps said, adding that gun owners “are tragically not understanding the risks.”

       “The idea behind embodiment is that your ability to act in the environment changes how you literally see the environment,” said Nathan Tenhundfeld, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a co-author of one recent study. “Gun embodiment gets at the idea of the old colloquialism ‘When you’re holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail.’”       "...that holding that gun is distorting how you’re seeing the world.” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/health/gun-violence-psychology.html

 2023jun22.  The move may further complicate the digital cold war between the two countries, as American officials send mixed signals about how they want to deal with Beijing.    The White House is studying potential limits on Chinese cloud providers when they operate in the United States, and have discussed ways to restrict their growth abroad. As part of that effort, officials have spoken with American tech giants like Microsoft and Alphabet about how their Chinese peers like Alibaba and Huawei operate.    Behind the move is concern that Beijing could use data centers in the U.S. and abroad to get access to sensitive data. Similar worries underlie American efforts to contain Chinese telecom companies and TikTok, the video app. Chinese companies account for a tiny fraction of cloud services in the U.S., but have been making inroads in Asia and Latin America.    Among the steps the White House is weighing are tightening Commerce Department rules for Chinese cloud companies and talking to foreign governments about the issue. The Biden administration is also studying ways to help American cloud providers compete with Chinese rivals that, backed by government subsidies, could undercut them on pricing.    The potential cloud fight may only complicate U.S.-China ties, which have zigzagged in recent days. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing was meant to stabilize relations and produced positive noises from both sides, but the Chinese government bristled at remarks by President Biden on Tuesday likening President Xi Jinping to a dictator. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20230622&instance_id=95734&nl=dealbook&productCode=DK&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=136527&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F29d49b78-c3e5-5e3e-8a8e-8e272656a356&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023jun21.  The Republican presidential primary is shaping up to be both crowded and expensive. Early projections predict candidates will spend close to or more than $1 billion — a first for Republicans.     💰 The price to become president has skyrocketed: Candidates spent roughly four times as much money on the 2020 presidential race as they did two decades ago.    💰 The candidates this year have deep pockets, and the maximum amount of money people can donate to the campaign has increased.    💰 The money goes to the most expensive part of campaigning: ads. 

https://view.nl.npr.org/?qs=6b8dfd7c88b3b8ad842b9a422ddf086f6a04489beb82f8a2dd720b9ec8a13a5d699c2dfcceff5a9953a1ee344b7eed520041873917a427caa3f4f544b8087098b7d79f61d7ac02fd75628c311f5e08af80508d385908d183

 2023jun20.  On the one hand, Hunter Biden’s agreement on Tuesday to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes capped a five-year investigation without allegations of wrongdoing by the president or, presumably, prison time for his youngest son. But on the other hand, it put Hunter once again in the cross-hairs of Mr. Biden’s adversaries who instantly complained that the wayward son got off too easy.    The saga of the 53-year-old presidential progeny who has struggled with a crack cocaine addiction has become a fixation of the political right, which sees him, or at least has cast him, as a walking, talking exemplar of the pay-to-play culture of the Washington swamp who profited off proximity to power. The phrase “Hunter Biden’s laptop” has taken on totemic meaning for opponents of the president, even if they cannot describe what was actually found on the computer that turned up at a repair shop in 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/politics/joe-biden-hunter-plea-deal.html

2023jun19.  The order sets a host of limitations on Sinochem’s involvement in Pirelli, including a bar on it devising the company’s strategy and financial plans, or appointing a CEO.     The government said these curbs would protect the “autonomy” of Pirelli and its management, as well as “information of strategic importance.”    Europe is heavily reliant on China for trade and investment, but relations have come under strain from ideological differences, including over Russia’s war in Ukraine, and recent moves by European Union regulators and governments to limit China’s access to sensitive technology.    The order takes a page out of this playbook. It requires that Pirelli refuse any requests from Sinochem’s owner — China’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council — for information sharing, including any information connected to the “know-how” of proprietary technologies.    The government said “some” strategic decisions would require approval from at least 80% of board directors, a further limitation on Sinochem’s influence. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/19/tech/pirelli-china-sinochem-curbs/index.html

2023jun19.  China needs to right its economy after closing itself off to the world for almost three years to battle Covid, a decision that prompted many companies to begin shifting their supply chains elsewhere. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, met on Monday with the secretary of state of the United States, Antony J. Blinken, in an attempt by the two nations to lower diplomatic tensions and clear the way for high-level economic talks in the weeks ahead. Such discussions could slow the recent proliferation of sanctions and counter measures.    China’s halting economic recovery has seen only a few categories of spending grow robustly, like travel and restaurant meals. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/19/business/economy/china-economy-stimulus.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Business

2023jun19.  US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday said that the United States and China had made “progress” toward steering relations back on track as both sides agreed on the need to “stabilize” the bilateral relationship between the two superpowers.    The top US diplomat, speaking after two days of meetings in Beijing with top officials including President Xi Jinping, said that there are key issues between the nations that remain unresolved, but noted that his “hope and expectation is we will have better communications, better engagement going forward.”    Blinken is the first US secretary of state to visit Beijing in five years, and his talks with senior Chinese officials were seen as a key litmus test for whether the two governments could stop relations from continuing to plummet at a time of lingering distrust.    “It was clear coming in that the relationship was at a point of instability,” Blinken said at a news conference in the Chinese capital Monday. “And both sides recognized the need to work to stabilize it.”    “I came to Beijing to strengthen high-level channels of communication, to make clear our positions and intentions in areas of disagreement, and to explore areas where we might work together on our interests, align on shared transnational challenges, and we did all of that,” Blinken said.    

“We’re not going to have success on every issue between us on any given day, but in a whole variety of areas, on the terms that we set for this trip, we have made progress and we are moving forward,” he said.

 https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/18/china/blinken-china-visit-wang-yi-meeting-intl-hnk/index.html

 2023jun19.  While the United States has seen no sign that the Chinese government has decided to send lethal aid to Russia, US is worried that private Chinese companies will provide matériel and technology that Moscow’s military could use in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday.

2023jun19.  Positivity.       When asked whether China is replacing the United States as a global conflict mediator, particularly in the Middle East, Blinken said that the U.S. "remains far and away the preferred partner" for gulf countries.    "At the same time," he added, "if China takes initiatives that actually help solve problems... that's a good thing, and we support it."    Blinken said some of China's priorities in Ukraine are "very consistent with our own." The U.S. would welcome the country taking a mediator role between Ukraine and Russia as long as their efforts helped establish a "just and durable peace in Ukraine," Blinken added. 

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/19/1183053024/profound-differences-remain-us-and-china--beijing-blinken

2023jun18. Saudi Arabia has spent billions to take big stakes in professional sports: The purchase of a Premier League soccer team. Championship boxing matches. A stop on the Formula 1 auto racing schedule. And, most recently, a brazen incursion into professional golf.    The kingdom has offered hundreds of millions of dollars more to lure Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and dozens of other soccer stars to play in the country’s domestic league. Messi recently declined a similar offer, choosing instead to join Inter Miami of Major League Soccer in the United States. But there’s no sign so far that the decision has affected his relationship with the Saudis.         Until now, the details of Messi’s contract with the tourism authority have been a closely held secret. It is not clear if the contract reviewed by The Times is the current version of the deal. It was shared by someone with direct knowledge of the arrangement between Messi and the Saudis on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to divulge details of the deal. The document, dated Jan. 1, 2021, was signed by Messi and his brother Rodrigo, who serves as his business manager, but it is not signed by Saudi officials.     The terms outlined in the document are consistent with the way Messi has used his social media accounts to promote the kingdom, and also with the promotional visits he has made to the country.           In 2021, amid news reports linking Messi and Saudi Arabia, family members of Saudi dissidents urged the player to reject the endorsement offer that he eventually accepted. In an open letter, they pleaded with him by writing, “The Saudi regime wants to use you to launder its reputation.”    Saudi officials have rejected that charge. Messi, meanwhile, has made no mention of it. Instead, he has expressed wonder at the natural beauty to be found in Saudi Arabia.    One of Messi’s recent posts is a picture of the kingdom’s date palm groves and other natural attraction. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/18/sports/soccer/lionel-messi-saudi-arabia.html

2023jun16.  White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre violated it before the 2022 midterms when she described Republicans as “mega MAGA” while speaking for the administration.        not likely you’ll get fired. And the agency appeared to acknowledge this was a relatively small violation compared with the actions of White House officials in the Trump administration who systematically attacked Democrats from their official perches. 

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=648cbf8535ec2f6adf3529bf&linknum=4&linktot=55

 2023jun15.  Remember those guys in high school — it was almost always boys — who got a buzz from smashing windows, or sending firecrackers down flushing toilets, or throwing rocks at dogs and cats, and shoplifting for the pure rush of it? They didn’t have a reason for their vandalism or malice, they just lacked the “impulse control,” as the school shrinks liked to say, to inhibit whatever imagined mayhem or destructive mischief popped into their brain.    Former President Donald Trump is that guy, six decades older, but still that guy. He thrill-seeks. He breaks the law for entertainment. He thinks the rules apply to other people, not him. Brawling with societal norms, he must believe, raises his status in the pecking order. Normally, teenagers grow out of this behavior and stop joy-riding in stolen cars, bullying the weak and generally acting like a juvenile delinquent. But the latest indictment shows, as if we needed convincing, that Grandpa Trump has only grown into the behavior. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/13/trump-classified-documents-indictment-00101586

2023jun15.  With inflation still a potent political issue, President Biden is stepping up his war on so-called junk fees.    At the White House today, he will host a panel of executives from several companies, including Airbnb and Live Nation, which drew outrage from consumers over its botched ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s tour last year.    The companies are expected to announce new efforts to “end surprise fees,” the White House said, including through price-transparency commitments and other ways of fully disclosing upfront costs to consumers. 

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20230615&instance_id=95105&nl=dealbook&productCode=DK&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=135632&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F18f3744a-6d28-58ab-8b65-3651d9369f79&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023jun14.  One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.    The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.    But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later.     That quiet entreaty last fall was one of many occasions when lawyers and advisers sought to get Trump to take a more cooperative stance in a bid to avoid what happened Friday. The Justice Department unsealed an indictment including more than three dozen criminal counts against Trump for allegedly keeping and hiding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/14/trump-indictment-classified-documents-settlement/

2023jun14. Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign said on Wednesday that it had raised $6.6 million in the days after his second indictment — a substantial haul, albeit a lower amount than the numbers it reported after his previous indictment in March.    The figure includes $2.1 million raised at a prescheduled fund-raiser at Mr. Trump’s club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday evening, hours after his arraignment in federal court in Miami. There, he faced charges of retaining classified documents from his presidency and obstructing efforts to return them.   Details of these self-reported numbers cannot be confirmed until the campaign files federal disclosures next month. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/14/us/politics/trump-donations-indictment.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News

2023jun14. Trump’s go-to defense has been to equate his case with the investigation of President Biden’s being in possession of documents after his vice presidency. As we’ve explained before, these cases are vastly different in both the amount of documents and, crucially, whether they were given back when the government asked for them. (Trump’s were not.) https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=648a3304dfcf5549dd82f461&linknum=4&linktot=47

2023jun14. There is ample reason to believe that the document case against Trump falls into the second category: Had any other American done what he is accused of doing, that person would almost certainly be prosecuted. “The real injustice,” the editors of The Economist magazine wrote yesterday, “would have been not to indict him.”        Two weeks ago, a federal judge sentenced Robert Birchum, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel, to three years in jail for removing hundreds of secret documents from their authorized locations and storing them in his home and officer’s quarters.    In April, a judge sentenced Jeremy Brown, a former member of U.S. Special Forces, to more than seven years in prison partly for taking a classified report home with him after he retired. The report contained sensitive intelligence, including about an informant in another country.    In 2018, Nghia Hoang Pho received a five-and-a-half year sentence for storing National Security Agency documents at his home. Prosecutors emphasized that Pho was aware he was not supposed to have taken the documents.    These three recent cases are among dozens in which the Justice Department has charged people with removing classified information from its proper place and trying to conceal their actions. That list includes several former high-ranking officials, like David Petraeus and John Deutch, who each ran the C.I.A. 

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230614&instance_id=94996&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=135508&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F23b23378-811a-5ac3-8868-7c9f3ffe488a&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023jun13. It’s the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump.        Trump is due in court in Miami on Tuesday to answer a 37-count indictment that alleges he willfully retained classified documents after he left office and refused to return them.    His appearance will be an earthshaking, and even tragic, moment in the history of a republic that has endured for more than two centuries after being founded on the principle that no leader has absolute power or should be above laws that apply to other citizens.    Tuesday will be a grave day that could rip even deeper divides in an already estranged country, especially given that Trump supporters have already once resorted to violence in a bid to overturn the will of the people after the ex-president refused to accept his loss in a democratic election.

2023jun13. Trump has been under investigation for pretty much his whole career. The legal scrutiny escalated when he was president. After he left office, he was no longer protected by the presidency, and it’s possible he could finish the summer facing dozens of charges in three different places. (And there’s still a federal investigation into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack.)    

His supporters say he’s being unfairly targeted, but the indictment in the classified document case in particular paints a picture of someone openly flouting the law. The indictment “came about because of reckless conduct of the president,” said Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, over the weekend. 

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=648793c776dc442b58164981&linknum=4&linktot=59 

2023jun09. It’s not that Trump has some uncanny ability to outwit anyone trying to bring him to justice — it’s that the GOP has fostered the forces that allowed him to thrive, with little interest in accountability. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/09/opinions/indictment-trump-gop-law-and-order-zelizer/index.html

2023jun09. Just six days after his triumph, a small band of right-wing zealots who opposed the debt deal used parliamentary tactics to bring proceedings on the House floor to a halt, in the first protest of its kind in more than two decades. They shut down the House for a couple of hours, then for the entire day, then for the next day. After 6 p.m. on Wednesday, House GOP leaders surrendered to the saboteurs with a whip notice: “Members are advised that votes are no longer expected in the House this week. … Thank you all for your patience.”    The mutineers were in command of the ship. They blamed McCarthy for betraying them. McCarthy blamed Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Scalise blamed McCarthy. Negotiations went nowhere. And the People’s House ceased to function.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/09/imaginary-war-gas-stoves-house-gop/

2023jun09. The Atlantic -- Ukraine's Counteroffensive Has Begun.        Groups calling themselves the Free Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps have launched raids inside Russia. Drones have flown over Moscow, damaging what may be the homes of Russian intelligence officers.

https://www.smerconish.com/

2023jun08. By the time Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrapped up a visit to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, he and Saudi officials had discussed cooperation on a smorgasbord of issues: Iran, Sudan, the Islamic State, regional infrastructure, clean energy and the potential normalization of Saudi-Israel relations.    Mr. Blinken gave effusive remarks on the work being done at a news conference in Riyadh: “It is critical for expanding opportunity and driving progress for our people and for people around the world.”    It was the type of bonhomie that American officials usually reserve for close allies. Mr. Blinken’s three-day visit to Saudi Arabia, which included a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, is the most obvious effort yet by the Biden administration to move past the hostility that President Biden expressed at the prince and his government last fall.    The blowup took place after Saudi officials cut oil production despite a perception by U.S. officials that they had agreed to increase it. Mr. Biden vowed to impose “consequences.” But in the months since, the president and his top aides have come to accept what they see as a hard reality of the new geopolitical landscape, say analysts and people familiar with U.S. officials’ discussions: that Washington cannot afford to alienate powerful partners if it intends to compete with China and Russia across the globe.    Prince Mohammed, commonly known as MBS, at the same time appears to be cannily leveraging his country’s position at the nexus of superpower competition, the world’s energy markets and Middle East security. He and his aides have made clear that they will not be forced to choose sides in international power struggles, and that they are open to being courted by all parties and see benefits in maintaining strong ties with each of them.    Indeed, officials in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations say they reject the binary choice that they feel has been posed to them by American and European officials since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and in the context of the growing U.S.-China competition. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/politics/blinken-saudi-arabia-crown-prince-biden.html

2023jun08. The legal rationale for such a move is that the bulk of the conduct at issue in the investigation occurred in the southern district of Florida, in and around Trump’s Palm Beach residence and private club, even if much of the investigation — led by special counsel Jack Smith — has been handled by a grand jury in D.C., these people said.    That approach by prosecutors does not rule out the possibility of some charges, such as perjury or false statements, being filed in Washington in connection with grand jury appearances or law enforcement interviews that took place there, according to these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal discussions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/miami-grand-jury-trump-classified-documents/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f003

2023jun08. His status as the world’s best player made him an extremely valuable prospect as his contract with his current employer, Paris St.-Germain, ran down. Miami was far from his only option: Messi, 35, eschewed both a putative return to Barcelona and a monumental offer, said to be worth as much as $500 million, to move to Saudi Arabia, which has set out to lure a dozen of the finest players on the planet to the Gulf this summer. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/sports/soccer/lionel-messi-inter-miami-mls.html

2023jun08. Known as the Public Investment Fund, or P.I.F., it is an investment pool that manages more than $700 billion in Saudi government money.    It invests those funds in companies, real estate and other ventures domestically and globally to generate profits, ostensibly for the benefit of the Saudi economy.    The fund, established in 1971 by royal decree, has its headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and offices in Hong Kong, London and New York. P.I.F. has grown rapidly in recent years, funding ambitious tourism and commercial undertakings it calls “giga projects.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-sovereign-wealth-fund.html

2023jun08. Ron DeSantis’s decision to send migrants from near the Mexico border to the capital city of California is at first glance the latest in a series of escalating clashes between the Florida governor and his Democratic counterpart, Gavin Newsom.    But the performative gambit in the early days of Mr. DeSantis’s 2024 presidential run is better understood as an opening bid to prove to Republican primary voters that he can be just as much a provocateur, and every bit as incendiary, as former President Donald J. Trump.    For Mr. DeSantis, the flights illustrate the broader bet he has made that the animating energy in the Republican Party today has shifted from conservatism to confrontationalism. And that in this new era, nothing is more fundamental than picking fights and making the right enemies, whether it’s the migrants who have slogged sometimes thousands of miles to slip through the border, the news media or the chief executive of the biggest blue state on the map. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/us/politics/desantis-migrant-flights-outrage.html

2023jun07. If it happens, it would mark the first federal prosecution of a former president in U.S. history. It would also be a teaching moment, here and abroad, for the importance of the rule of law.

We believe that the rule of law requires that Trump be charged, based on the wealth of publicly available facts and the history of the Justice Department charging people who did far less. Just last week, a former Army lieutenant colonel was sentenced to three years in prison for illegal retention of classified documents. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/07/justice-department-trump-indictment-possible-details/

2023jun07. Profit is what matters most. Above all. That is the message.    It reigns over the morals, values and traditions that the PGA Tour, now swaddled in rank hypocrisy, trumpeted during a seemingly fierce but apparently phony conflict that pitted the biggest names in golf against each other. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/07/sports/golf/liv-pga-tour-saudi-arabia.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Sports

2023jun07. Today, the Washington conversation is all about U.S.-China relations. It does move Southeast Asia into a very different context of that relationship. Yes, the administration still does things with Southeast Asia: They had a very successful summit of [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] leaders last May. But ASEAN and Southeast Asia is almost in a sort of confluence in between U.S.-China relations. That change, that geopolitical shift into a great power competition in 2023, was not really there in 2012 {Obama pivot to Asia}. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64800242e49da13a6d4c6554&linknum=5&linktot=60&linknum=5&linktot=60

2023jun05. ERIC. The database allows member states to share voter roll data, so election officials can track when voters move, die or vote illegally. But eight GOP-led states have pulled their membership.    NPR's Miles Parks says opposition to ERIC began with misinformation published on a far-right website alleging ERIC is part of a far-left plot to steal elections. Election officials tell him voter records in states that pulled out will become less accurate over time. On Up First today, he says this will lead to longer lines and mail-in ballots being sent to the wrong place. 
https://view.nl.npr.org/?qs=a5152ffa3f888e3514697ce301a40ea22129cd62ab505c53c5dfdeae314e5efe58996f253b09f1b494e81aa2d2f1f9203e45559619c54832e20a06d31069d4e9d9c624acddcdd92cf60e3d78933fc5d7d77dd492643a9808

2023jun04. Contrary to much criticism, Bidenworld believes that refusing to negotiate at the outset was key: It forced Republicans to offer their own budget, which created an opening to attack the savage spending cuts in it.    Notably, Biden and other Democrats relentlessly characterized those cuts as destructive and dangerous in the MAGA vein. Bidenworld did believe that some MAGA Republicans were willing to default and force global economic cataclysm to harm the president’s reelection, a senior Biden adviser tells me, but also that many non-MAGA Republicans ultimately could be induced not to go that far.    That seems to be what happened. As political scientist Jonathan Bernstein points out, the outcome falsified the prediction that the GOP as a party would use that leverage to inflict maximum chaos. Meanwhile, the cuts themselves won’t be nearly as damaging to the economy as the ones in the 2011 standoff, as the New York Times’s Paul Krugman explains.    This illuminates Bidenworld’s broader theory of the MAGA GOP: The way to defeat the MAGA threat to the country is to marginalize it within the GOP coalition — that is, to contain it.    “He has never hesitated to call out the extreme MAGA wing of the Republican Party,” Kate Bedingfield, a senior adviser to the 2020 Biden campaign and to the White House through February, told me. “But he gives Republican voters and legislators who reject that wing of the party a place to go.”    Something similar happened in the 2022 elections. Biden and Democrats in tough races tried to strike a balance between reaching out to Republican voters and GOP-leaning independents while casting MAGA extremism as a clear and present danger to the country. It worked: Many prominent MAGA senatorial and gubernatorial candidates lost, partly because many Republican voters decided to vote Democratic.    The debt limit outcome was far from a uniform victory: Most of the GOP did engage in hostage-taking and debt limit extortion throughout much of the process, legitimizing extreme tactics before balking at going all the way.    Despite all this, the fact that so many non-MAGA Republicans voted for the deal — and that Democrats and Republicans alike are celebrating this as a bipartisan success — could mean the party as a whole isn’t broadly perceived as extreme and hostage to MAGA heading into 2024.    “The downside of the deal is that it gives vulnerable House Republicans separation from their MAGA counterparts,” Dan Sena, a senior Democratic operative during the 2018 Democratic House takeover, told me. “That could be a challenge.”    There is a tension in Biden’s approach to the GOP. His initial rationale for running was that the GOP is largely hostage to an extremism that foundationally threatens the American experiment. His reelection case is that he has begun to defuse that threat and another term will complete that task.    Yet Biden also plainly believes that conducting the nation’s business on a bipartisan basis is inherently stabilizing. That sometimes requires treating the opposition — or a large swath of it — as a mostly conventional political party, which risks mitigating perceptions of the threat it poses.    In the debt limit outcome, that tension proved far more navigable than many, including me, expected. How this tension will play out in 2024 is hard to predict, but for now, the Biden theory of MAGA has mostly been vindicated. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/04/biden-debt-limit-maga-republicans-2024/?itid=hp_opinions_p001_f010

2023jun01. Though home to fewer people than Texas, Taiwan is a critical node in the global economy. Its semiconductor industry produces 92 percent of the world’s leading-edge computer chips, according to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

In recent years, U.S. imports from Taiwan have been growing faster than exports. U.S. customers purchased $92 billion worth of Taiwanese products in 2022, up more than 69 percent from 2019 levels. U.S. companies sold almost $44 billion in products to Taiwan, representing a 40 percent gain from the pre-pandemic mark. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/06/01/trade-deal-taiwan-us/

2023jun01. Given the radicalism of today’s Republican Party and its tolerance for political chaos, there was a real risk that these debt ceiling talks would cause an economic crisis. Instead, they led to a classic political deal that left untouched the major accomplishes of Biden’s first term. It is a reminder that he is the most successful bipartisan negotiator to occupy the White House in decades.

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?abVariantId=0&campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230601&instance_id=93946&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=134399&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F369b7505-e6fa-50ab-ba26-f93f6e2ab8dd&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023may30.  Biden’s capacity to overperform after an onslaught of negative press and Democratic hand-wringing is second to none. He did it with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, NATO solidification and expansion, and now with the debt ceiling deal. It’s hard to conceive of an outcome more favorable to Biden.

Recall where this began: the Republican House Freedom Caucus making promises such as repealing much of the Inflation Reduction Act (including eliminating $80 billion in new funds for the Internal Revenue Service), capping nondefense spending at fiscal 2022 levels for a decade and blocking Biden’s $400 billion proposed student debt relief. None of that happened.    When factoring in agreed-upon appropriations adjustments, the deal holds nondefense spending essentially flat in fiscal 2024 and increases it by 1 percent in fiscal 2025. According to White House aides, that’s a better outcome than a straight continuing resolution.    As for blocking $80 billion in new IRS funding — an expenditure Republicans had basically characterized as helping enlist an army of jackbooted thugs to knock down your door — the deal would repurpose $10 billion from fiscal 2024 and another $10 billion from fiscal 2025 appropriations, to be used in nondefense areas (further lessening the blow to nondefense discretionary programs).    But the IRS reportedly will have discretion to shift spending in the funding’s 10-year window so that the deal has little near-term impact. A decade from now, the country will have a new president, a new Congress and almost certainly a new budget framework.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/30/biden-debt-limit-deal-making-skill/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3a284cc%2F64761e9149fef7411dfab0b3%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F17%2F70%2F64761e9149fef7411dfab0b3

 

2023may30. Americans vote for candidates directly, and since we don’t always do our electoral homework diligently, we often end up simply settling on whichever candidates we know most about.    Whom do we know the most about? Celebrities and people already doing the job.    In this telling, we didn’t vote for two old White dudes; we voted for the most famous candidate in each primary, the former vice president and the reality television star. That’s not great, obviously; it would be nice if well-informed voters made thoughtful choices. But it’s arguably quite democratic. And, as a side effect, it becomes somewhat more likely that our candidates will be old because the longer people live, the more time they have to acquire fame.    The reason to be skeptical of this story is that the longer someone lives, the longer that person also has to lose fame, at least among young voters. Which leads us neatly to the second possible factor: The electorate is getting older, and people like voting for folks who remind them of themselves. To be sure, I can’t prove that older voters identify with Biden and Trump.         (Age increases the risk of cognitive decline and other ailments, but many people Biden’s age remain knife-sharp and vigorous.) 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/30/trump-biden-2024-election-options/

2023may30. Both sides agreed to modest efforts meant to accelerate the permitting of some energy projects — and, in a surprise move, a fast track to construction for a new natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia that has been championed by Republican lawmakers and a key centrist Democrat. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/29/business/debt-ceiling-agreement.html

2023may25. Congress could eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, or declare that necessary borrowing is automatically authorized whenever federal spending is approved.    This second option was, in fact, the practice followed for a decade and a half, under the so-called Gephardt Rule, named for former Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., who got tired of cajoling lawmakers to raise the debt limit to pay for spending they'd already voted for.    Some Democrats called for repealing the debt limit last year, before Republicans took control of the House, but President Biden dismissed the idea as "irresponsible." That set the stage for the current showdown.    Congress has raised the debt limit dozens of times, and it rarely comes close to reaching a crisis.    Recent exceptions have come during periods of divided government — in particular when the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans and a Democrat is in the White House, with the GOP using the debt ceiling as leverage to extract policy concessions.    By contrast, Congressional Democrats repeatedly agreed to raise the debt limit with little drama during periods of divided government, including twice during the Trump administration and three times during the George W. Bush administration.https://www.npr.org/2023/05/25/1177675684/debt-ceiling-limit-explained

2023may24. Democrats seem to have been caught off guard by how little the Republicans are willing to negotiate [Harv remembers the glassy-eyed Obama smackdown meeting]. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is beholden to a right-wing flank that wants drastic spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and averting a default. The momentum appears to be with Republicans right now, with Democrats forced to consider massive cuts on education, programs for the poor, air traffic control and cancer research — and slashing some federal agencies’ budgets by as much as half.       ...the government is not at threat of shutting down right now. A shutdown is when the government runs out of money for new spending and federal workers have to forgo paychecks until Congress reaches a deal.     Right now, Republicans are resisting raising the debt ceiling so the government can pay for bills it already racked up. It might have to choose between paying investors in China or funding the military.     If the United States can’t pay those investors, that’s called a default, and it would shake the global financial system. It could plunge the country into a recession, wipe out millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of household wealth. Some have likened it to a homeowner suddenly refusing to pay their mortgage and losing the house. 

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=646e7f3749fef7411decd03b&linknum=4&linktot=55&linknum=4&linktot=55

2023may23.  SCOTUS.   The shadow, or emergency, docket, is the way many cases today, sometimes hugely consequential cases, are decided, without full briefing or oral argument, and without any written opinion.     These cases are brought to the court by a state, or a company, or a person who has lost in the lower courts, often at an early stage, and that loser is now asking the Supreme Court to block the lower court order while the case proceeds through the lower court appeals process, which typically takes many months. Most recently, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order blocking lower court decrees that would have made it far more difficult to obtain mifepristone, the pill used in the majority of abortions in the United States today. As is typical in these shadow docket cases, the court issued no written opinion in the case, though Justice Alito, one of the two dissenters, issued an angry explanation for his disagreement with the majority.     Up until relatively recently, these shadow docket actions were quite rare. The statistics tell the story, statistics compiled by Vladeck. During the 16 years of the Bush and Obama administrations, the federal government, the most frequent litigant in the Supreme Court, only asked the justices for emergency relief eight times--or on average once every two years. The two administrations together got what they wanted in only four of the eight cases, and in all but one of them the court spoke with one voice, and no dissent.     But in the Trump administration, and with a newly energized conservative majority on the court, the picture changed dramatically. In just four years, the Trump Justice Department asked the court for emergency relief an astounding 41 times, and the court actually granted all or part of those requests in 28 of the cases.     In short, not only did the Trump administration aggressively seek to use the emergency docket, often leapfrogging over appeals courts entirely, but it succeeded with the tactic.     Vladeck cites, for example, the challenge to President Trump's controversial diversion of military construction funds to build his border wall. A federal district court judge, after hearing the case, ruled that the diversion was unconstitutional, and barred the administration from using the money for a different use than Congress authorized. Within weeks the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court with an emergency appeal to block the lower court order, and the justices restored the money diversion by a 5-to-4 vote, with no written opinion for either the majority or dissent. As professor Vladeck explains, these emergency rulings are supposed to be temporary, to allow the cases to play out through the appeals process in the lower courts, and then possibly to return for full consideration by the Supreme Court later.     But "the dirty secret is that later never comes," he says. "By the time the border wall case," or "all kinds of other challenges to Trump policies make their way back to the Supreme Court, at the far end of the normal litigation process, President Biden is in office and those policies have been discontinued, and the cases are thrown out."     

That pattern, he says, was repeated over and over again, thus allowing Trump "to carry out policies that lower courts had held to be unlawful because the Supreme Court, through unsigned and unexplained orders" said, in effect, 'Go ahead President Trump, we'll deal with this later.'"

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/22/1177228505/supreme-court-shadow-docket

2023may23. As the impasse drags on, the Treasury Department is reportedly looking at ways in which federal agencies can make upcoming payments at a later date in a bid to conserve cash. “Without additional borrowing, a fresh burst of tax revenue or new ways to slow spending, the federal government expects to miss a payment for the first time in modern history in early June,” my colleagues reported.       The United States is one of a tiny number of nations to impose a hard cap on public borrowing, which in its current aggregate form was first put in place in 1939. Though this is hardly the first time a political party has sought to weaponize the threat of default, Democrats accuse their Republican counterparts of cynically using the mechanism to derail Biden’s agenda and slash public spending through legislation they would otherwise struggle to pass. When in power not long ago, Republicans had far fewer qualms raising the ceiling and blowing past earlier borrowing caps. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=646d8d7349fef7411deaef05&linknum=5&linktot=68&linknum=5&linktot=68

2023may22. How will the Florida governor’s war against Disney, his state’s largest employer, play in those swing states? Last week, a fifth-grade teacher in Florida revealed that she’s under investigation by the state’s Department of Education for showing students the Disney animated film, “Strange World.”     “She says she selected the film because it reinforced lessons on earth science and ecosystems,” wrote Jodi Eichler-Levine, a religion professor. “But then she said a parent (who is a local school board member), upset by the film’s depiction of a gay teenager flirting with his crush, reported her to the state.”     “Why would DeSantis, as a Republican who claims to be pro-business,” Eichler-Levine asked, “antagonize the largest single-site employer in his state, a company that attracts tens of millions of tourists a year? And why, as a social conservative, would he take aim at the nation’s leading purveyor of wholesome family-friendly American films?”     “Because the Cinderella Castle holds an entire century’s worth of cultural capital. Disney remains an enduring symbol of youth — and childhood is the symbolic crucible in which we forge our notions of the future and the values it will contain. Disney is a potent cultural force that now promotes a vision of diversity and inclusion that regressive groups are right to fear.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/21/opinions/trump-desantis-abortion-disney-opinion-column-galant/index.html

2023may15. There have been four major investigations into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election and the FBI’s handling of the subject — a 2019 report released by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a 2019 Justice Department inspector general report, a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee issued in 2020 by a GOP-controlled Senate, and now a 2023 report released by special counsel John Durham. All told, the reports add up to about 2,500 pages of dense prose and sometimes contradictory conclusions.    But broad themes can be deduced from a close reading of the evidence gathered in the lengthy documents, as well as indictments and testimony on related criminal cases.        Russia tried to swing the 2016 election to Trump.        The FBI had reason to investigate a tip suggesting Trump campaign involvement.       The Trump campaign welcomed help from Russia.       The ‘Steele dossier’ proved to be a red herring.       

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/17/truth-about-russia-trump-2016-election/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics

2023may15. Special counsel John Durham released his final report on Monday in which he casts doubt about the FBI’s decision to launch a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.     The 300-plus page report sharply criticizes the FBI and Justice Department throughout but does not recommend any new charges against individuals or any “wholesale changes” to the way politically sensitive investigations are handled.     The report does not ultimately fulfill the expectations set by former President Trump and his allies who have long claimed that it would prove the FBI’s investigation was nothing more than a political witch hunt.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-russia-probe-durham-report/index.html

2023may11. ...what [Collins] said in the midst of Wednesday night’s CNN town-hall event with Trump. “The election was not rigged, Mr. President,” she said after yet another Trump lie about his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. “You can’t keep saying that all night long.”    Sure he can [lie]. He can lie about presidential documents; he can lie about his impeachments; he can lie about his record in office; and there is nothing an impeccably prepared interviewer can do to prevent any of it. She can rebut him, correct him, interrupt him and otherwise battle with him over every point, but that’s no match for ceaseless mendacity. As CNN host Jake Tapper said after the affair, “We don’t have time to fact-check every lie he told.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/10/cnn-trump-town-hall-lies/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F39fb979%2F645d132da61bab12f760bd5b%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F17%2F72%2F645d132da61bab12f760bd5b

...Lukasiewicz, part of a chorus of media critics and political observers who bemoaned the on-air spectacle. “Live lying works. A friendly MAGA crowd consistently laughs, claps at Trump’s punchlines … and the moderator cannot begin to keep up with the AR-15 pace of lies.”       At a time when CNN has been struggling to turn around viewership decline, the telecast proved to be a ratings disappointment, with Nielsen reporting just 3.1 million viewers overall.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/05/11/trump-cnn-town-hall-chris-licht-kaitlan-collins/

2023may11. Abortion. Almost a year after the Supreme Court ended national abortion protections by overturning Roe v. Wade, there appears to be little political upside for Republicans. As they’ve raced to outlaw abortions in states across the South and the Midwest, voters and even some GOP legislators in those conservative states have resisted strict antiabortion laws.    Donald Trump is no stranger to catering to the conservative base. Yet in a town hall on CNN on Wednesday, even he refused to say where he stands on abortion restrictions.     Americans want abortion access. 

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=645d66345dfb5222c4b267cd&linknum=4&linktot=49&linknum=4&linktot=49

2023apr27.  Many of the biggest increases came in Europe as countries responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/24/global-military-spending-2022-us-china-russia-list?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

updated2023apr27R9pm. Xi tells Zelenskyy: China won’t add ‘fuel to the fire’ in Ukraine. In first phone call between the leaders since Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion, China’s president says ‘now’ is the time to resolve the crisis. 

https://www.politico.eu/article/china-xi-jinping-volodymyr-zelenskyy-ukraine-finally-called-zelenskyy-first-since-russia-waged-war/

updated2023apr26W1pm. The chart >

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65396613

updated2023apr24M1pm. China has distanced itself from the remarks of one of its envoys who questioned the sovereignty of Ukraine and other former Soviet countries.    Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said, quoted by AFP, that the diplomats would be asked to explain if the Chinese position had changed on independence and reminded that "we're not post-Soviet countries but we're the countries that were illegally occupied by Soviet Union".       The three countries were seized by the USSR in 1940 and only achieved independence in 1991 as it was collapsing.      Other European Union foreign ministers condemned the remarks, and were set to discuss them at a meeting of the 27-member bloc on Monday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65373191

updated2023apr20R3pm.  In a statement Tuesday, Fox acknowledged that the court found some of its on-air statements about Dominion to be false. But it did not apologize, and its hosts will not have to apologize on-air for supporting the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen in part through the use of rigged voting machines.      The Fox statement went on to say, “This settlement reflects FOX’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.” After enduring months of humbling revelations brought out through legal discovery, it appears that the in-your-face swagger built into Fox’s DNA by its CEO and master propagandist Roger Ailes never left.      As Angelo Carusone, president and chairman of Media Matters for America, said of the settlement on CBC News Tuesday: “But will this change their behavior? No. In fact, my warning to everybody is Fox News is about to burn brighter and hotter as a result of this.” (Media Matters is a non-profit, progressive media watchdog that has been one of Fox’s harshest critics.)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/opinions/dominion-fox-settlement-zurawik/index.html

updated2023apr19W10am.  China today is vastly richer than India, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon.     In the late 1970s, India was more affluent (based on the most telling measure, economic output per person). Since then, the two countries have followed very different paths:

What happened after the late 1970s? Under Deng Xiaoping, its ruler at the time, China began to open its economy to market forces and foreign investment. It moved away from the inefficiencies of state-run communism.      But the government did so in a measured way, rather than fully embracing laissez-faire capitalism. China maintained trade protections that helped its companies grow: In exchange for allowing foreign companies to build factories, China restricted those companies’ ability to sell goods in China and required them to share technology with local companies. This mix of market capitalism and government regulation was the same one that other countries — including the United States, long ago — have used to industrialize.      The strategy worked phenomenally well. Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens moved from poor, rural areas to take factory jobs in cities. The resulting decline in poverty may be the largest in human history.      India was never a communist country, but it did have a weak socialist-style economy in the 1970s suffering the aftereffects of British colonialism.  

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updated2023apr10M7pm. So this case is about access to abortion — but it’s not just about that. It’s also about the FDA’s institutional authority and whether judges could override its decisions on other medications that are politically controversial.      In both the Texas and the Washington lawsuits, individual judges have given orders to an agency that is supposed to be able to independently evaluate and approve drugs based on science, without outside or political interference. These lawsuits, particularly the challenge to mifepristone, are raising a lot of red flags for those concerned about preserving the autonomy of an institution that ensures the drugs Americans take are safe and effective.

https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=64347a0553816d1ce0993c4b&linknum=4&linktot=43

2023apr10. A federal judge in Texas has taken a shocking and irresponsible action: invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a medication used safely by hundreds of thousands of women each year to help terminate pregnancies as part of a two-pill regimen. For what appears to be the first time, a court has invalidated an agency drug approval — an approval that was based on extensive review of scientific evidence, earned the unanimous support of outside experts and retains, after two decades, the full backing of major professional medical organizations.    The decision is so stunning that it is reasonable to ask whether courts should have any role in reviewing the F.D.A.’s scientific decision-making at all. In fact, judges do have an important job: protecting the ability of the agency to use science and expert judgment to support the health of the American people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/opinion/fda-mifepristone.html 

updated2023apr10M7am. In what was framed as a joint call with France, Xi urged for peace talks to resume soon and called “for the protection of civilians,” while also reiterating that “nuclear weapons must not be used, and nuclear war must not be fought” over Ukraine. That latter point marked perhaps the biggest distance between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has periodically rattled the nuclear saber as the war he unleashed in Ukraine lurches on. Despite European entreaties, Xi made no definitive commitment to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Macron was joined in China by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The two leaders sent somewhat divergent messages; von der Leyen bemoaned China’s “unfair practices,” particularly in trade, and arrived in the country after delivering a tough speech on the authoritarian challenge posed by Beijing. Macron, on the other hand, warned against the West plunging itself into an “inescapable spiral” of tensions with China.     Chinese commentators suggested that’s because the tables of history have turned and Macron recognizes the sheer weight and importance of China’s economy, not least at a moment when he’s trying to carve out a vision of a more robust, capable and independent Europe. “Although there are still concerns in France about our country’s increasing [global] role, China’s support is essential if France wants to exercise its soft power in global governance,” Shanghai-based scholars Zhang Ji and Xue Sheng wrote in a recent essay.

https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2023/04/10/china-diplomacy-new-world-order-macron/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_worldview&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_todayworld&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F39aba18%2F64338c1c53816d1ce097d639%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F11%2F76%2F64338c1c53816d1ce097d639&wp_cu=639b84fe3ddb27af65b99f6cacbf7a23%7CC0DBC114CDAE2BA7E0430100007FAD1A

updated2023apr08A4am 

The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough.     Interviews with Finns reveal a complex reality that includes satisfaction from sustainable living, strong social safety nets, and embracing nature, alongside feelings of guilt, anxiety, and loneliness.

https://dnyuz.com/2023/04/01/the-finnish-secret-to-happiness-knowing-when-you-have-enough/

“FDA stands behind its determination that mifepristone is safe and effective under its approved conditions of use for medical termination of early pregnancy, and believes patients should have access to FDA-approved medications that FDA has determined to be safe and effective for their intended uses,” the agency said. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/04/07/texas-abortion-pill-decision-fda/ 

always a bogey man

https://news.gallup.com/poll/471494/americans-continue-view-china-greatest-enemy.aspx

In the long term, the decline of unions tends to hurt workers: A large recent study, consistent with other research, found that union members made about 20 percent more on average than nonunionized workers who were otherwise similar wages. The additional wages often came out of corporate profits, which explains why the decline of unions has contributed to rising economic inequality. The shrinking of unions effectively redistributes income from low- and middle-income workers to affluent investors.    (In a new Times Magazine essay about American poverty, the sociologist Matthew Desmond writes: “With unions largely out of the picture, corporations have chipped away at the conventional midcentury work arrangement, which involved steady employment, opportunities for advancement and raises and decent pay with some benefits.”)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/briefing/labor-unions-democratic-party-right-to-work.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=US%20News

Rosatom has proved uniquely successful as both a business enterprise and a vehicle for Russian political influence. Much of its ascendancy is due to what experts have labeled a “one-stop nuclear shop” that can provide countries with an all-inclusive package: materials, training, support, maintenance, disposal of nuclear waste, decommissioning and, perhaps most important, financing on favorable terms.    And with a life span of 20 to 40 years, deals to build nuclear reactors compel a long-term marriage.    Russia’s tightest grip is on the market for nuclear fuel. It controls 38 percent of the world’s uranium conversion and 46 percent of the uranium enrichment capacity — essential steps in producing usable fuel.    “That’s equal to all of OPEC put together in terms of market share and power,” said Paul Dabbar, a visiting fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, referring to the oil dominance of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/business/economy/russia-nuclear-energy-ukraine.html

Finally, somebody has taken a try at writing a Supreme Court ethics code, though not the court itself. The justices reportedly have discussed the subject but apparently have not reached any agreement on what, if anything, to do about it.    Now, however, two groups have written what they call a model code of conduct for the Supreme Court. And it's getting generally favorable reviews. The groups are the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan, independent government watchdog, and the Lawyers Defending American Democracy. 

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/09/1162324746/outside-groups-take-a-first-stab-at-a-supreme-court-ethics-code

After the international team stumbled upon the new data, they reached out to the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files with an offer to collaborate, hewing to rules of the online repository, scientists involved with the new analysis said. After that, the sequences disappeared from GISAID.    It is not clear who removed them or why they were taken down.    Dr. Débarre said the research team was seeking more data, including some from market samples that were never made public. “What’s important is there’s still more data,” she said.Scientists involved with the analysis said that some of the samples had also contained genetic material from other animals and from humans. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, who worked on the analysis, said that the human genetic material was to be expected given that people were shopping and working there and that human Covid cases had been linked to the market.    Dr. Goldstein, too, cautioned that “we don’t have an infected animal, and we can’t prove definitively there was an infected animal at that stall.” Genetic material from the virus is stable enough, he said, that it is not clear when exactly it was deposited at the market. He said that the team was still analyzing the data and that it had not intended for its analysis to become public before it had released a report.   “But,” he said, “given that the animals that were present in the market were not sampled at the time, this is as good as we can hope to get.” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/science/covid-wuhan-market-raccoon-dogs-lab-leak.html?campaign_id=190&emc=edit_ufn_20230317&instance_id=87913&nl=from-the-times&regi_id=139813910&segment_id=127982&te=1&user_id=b65d257ff73ec8fa3ce6ab1a2c07530e

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia was not the aggressor in the Ukraine war, but that his country was simply trying to defend itself, to which the crowd laughed and groaned.    This week, India's Observer Research Foundation gathered academics, business executives and diplomats from the G-20, or Group of 20 economies, for a conference in Delhi known as the Raisina Dialogue.    he mixed reaction from Lavrov's claim that Russia was not the aggressor in the conflict, but rather trying to defend it self, spoke to the complicated allegiances that have formed from the Ukraine war.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/04/1161128415/russia-foreign-minister-lavrov-laughed-at 

Neither of the Science papers provide the smoking gun — that is, an animal infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus at a market.    But they come close. They provide photographic evidence of wild animals such as raccoon dogs and a red fox, which can be infected with and shed SARS-CoV-2, sitting in cages in the market in late 2019. What's more, the caged animals are shown in or near a stall where scientists found SARS-CoV-2 virus on a number of surfaces, including on cages, carts and machines that process animals after they are slaughtered at the market.    The data in the 2022 studies paints an incredibly detailed picture of the early days of the pandemic. Photographic and genetic data pinpoint a specific stall at the market where the coronavirus likely was transmitted from an animal into people. And a genetic analysis estimates the time, within weeks, when not just one but two spillovers occurred. It calculates that the coronavirus jumped into people once in late November or early December and then again few weeks later.    At this exact same time, a huge COVID outbreak occurred at the market. Hundreds of people, working and shopping at the market, were likely infected. That outbreak is the first documented one of the pandemic, and it then spilled over into the community, as one of the Science papers shows.    At the same time, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention found two variants of the coronavirus inside the market. And an independent study, led by virologists at the University of California, San Diego, suggests these two variants didn't evolve in people, because throughout the entire pandemic, scientists have never detected a variant linking the two together. Altogether, the new studies suggest that, most likely, the two variants evolved inside animals. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/28/1160162845/what-does-the-science-say-about-the-origin-of-the-sars-cov-2-pandemic

Russia and China refused to condemn the invasion at the G20 talks.    Moscow accused Western countries of destabilizing the meeting and being "anti-Russian".    A year after Russia's invasion, the conflict continues to have knock-on effects on the global economy.    Previous meetings of G20 members have also failed to produce a joint statement since Russia, a member of the grouping, invaded Ukraine last February, a move that has been met with widespread condemnation.    India, which hosted the talks in the southern city of Bengaluru, issued a "chair's summary" from the meeting, noting there were "different assessments of the situation and sanctions" at the two-day meeting.    A footnote said two paragraphs summarising the war - which it said were adapted from the G20 Bali Leaders' Declaration in November - were "agreed to by all member countries except Russia and China".    Russia's foreign ministry said it regretted the fact that "the activities of the G20 continue to be destabilised by the Western collective and used in an anti-Russian... way".    It accused the United States, European Union and G7 nations of "clear blackmail", urging them to "acknowledge the objective realities of a multipolar world".    Ajay Seth, a senior Indian official, said in a press conference that Russian and Chinese representatives did not agree to the wording on Ukraine because "their mandate is to deal with economic and financial issues".    "On the other hand, all the other 18 countries felt that the war has got implications for the global economy" and needed to be mentioned, he added.    German Finance Minister Christian Lindner, said: "This is a war. And this war has a cause, has one cause, and that is Russia and Vladimir Putin. That must be expressed clearly at this G20 finance meeting." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-64773618

Those old enough to remember the Carter administration are as likely to recall stagflation, gasoline price hikes, and the Iran hostage crisis as the Middle East peace accord Carter brokered at Camp David or his forward-thinking environmental policies. Yet with the perspective of time, it is now clear that President Carter was a gifted leader.    As his wife Rosalynn once told me, it is easy to lead the American people where they want to go, but it takes vision to lead them where they don’t. In international affairs, Carter faced down Republican threats that his party would pay at the polls for “giving away” the Panama Canal. Amid skeptical prognostications that the Panamanians would be unable to run the canal without US help, he signed the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties that ended decades of pseudo-colonial domination of a neighboring country. Relations with Latin America improved, security threats to the canal ended, and Panama re-engineered the locks and widened the canal to return it to profitability. https://www.smerconish.com/exclusive-content/jimmy-who-a-legacy-of-leadership/

Trump’s administration withdrew an Obama-era proposal to require faster brakes on trains carrying highly flammable materials, ended regular rail safety audits of railroads, and mothballed a pending rule requiring freight trains to have at least two crew members. He also placed a veteran of the chemical industry in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical safety office, where she made industry-friendly changes to how the agency studied health risks. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/22/donald-trump-ohio-visit-questions-safety-legacy-00083885

The White House is firing back at Republicans following the toxic East Palestine, Ohio train derailment, blaming the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress for undoing Obama-era rail safety measures designed to avert such disasters. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/02/22/white-house-blame-trump-gop-east-palestine-spill/11322623002/    The safety rule, issued in 2015, required electronically controlled brakes – which apply braking simultaneously across a train rather than railcar by railcar over a span of seconds – to be installed by 2023. However, the rule was narrowly crafted and only applied to certain “high-hazard flammable trains” carrying at least 20 consecutive loaded cars filled with liquids such as crude oil.     The Trump administration repealed the brakes requirement three years later, stating that its cost exceeded its benefits. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2023/02/14/norfolk-southerns-ohio-train-derailment-emblematic-rail-trends/11248956002/

Mexico Hobbles Election Agency That Helped End One-Party Rule. The changes come ahead of a presidential election next year and are part of a pattern of challenges to democratic institutions across the Western Hemisphere. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/world/americas/mexico-election-law.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20230222&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=126035&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

A tough new immigration measure could disqualify the vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/us/biden-asylum-rules.html?

It’s not at all hard to imagine that improving the incentives to focus on medically effective care could limit cost growth to well below what the C.B.O. is projecting, even now.    And if we can do that, the rise in entitlement spending over the next three decades might be more like 3 percent of G.D.P. That’s not an inconceivable burden. America has the lowest taxes of any advanced nation; given the political will, of course we could come up with 3 percent more of G.D.P. in revenue.    So no, Social Security and Medicare aren’t inherently unsustainable, doomed by demography. We can keep these programs, which are so deeply embedded in American society, if we want to. Killing them would be a choice. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=116&emc=edit_pk_20230221&instance_id=85942&nl=paul-krugman&productCode=PK&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=125917&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F809abdb0-bb70-51af-b349-8d98d06de2c5&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

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Conservatives denounced left-wing bias among the news media and elite thinkers for decades before acting to alter the landscape. By founding Fox News and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, they expanded the reach of conservative voices in America — and counterbalanced what was once a liberal tilt.    Now, some conservatives are following a similar playbook to change higher education. https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230217&instance_id=85599&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=125560&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F3d8b398c-4443-5214-aa85-2a9bf9157ee3&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

It might be comforting to think that American democracy has made it past the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. 

But our research shows that a wide range of the American people, of all political stripes, seek leaders who are fundamentally anti-democratic.     As scholars interested in how committed citizens are to democracy, we wanted to measure whether regular Americans want someone who will abide by democratic traditions and practices or dispense with them. https://www.nextgov.com/ideas/2023/02/large-numbers-americans-want-strong-rough-anti-democratic-leader/382656/

When President Joe Biden took to the House Chamber on Tuesday for his annual State of the Union address, his message was one of unadulterated optimism – even in the face of open hostility.    The spectacle of Biden smiling and offering a pointed riposte through multiple rounds of heckling from some House Republicans was, in many ways, an apt illustration of his presidency and a useful preview of his likely 2024 candidacy. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/takeaways-biden-state-of-the-union-address/index.html

Joe Biden goes full populist as he searches for common ground.    Biden sounded more like a consumer advocate than a head of state. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/politics/biden-populist-sotu-what-matters/index.html

Of [US operating budget dollar] about 62 cents is spent on benefit programs that Americans are entitled to receive at certain ages or income thresholds.Of that, Social Security gets 22 cents, Medicare gets 17 cents and Medicaid gets 10 cents. About 14 cents go to national defense.Almost 8 cents pays interest to holders of Treasury bonds and that can’t be touched.That leaves about 16 cents spent on the rest of the federal government and its programs – things like border protection, air traffic control and farm subsidies.    Everything funded by that 16 cents could be eliminated and the government still would run a deficit, our colleague Glenn Kessler notes. That’s because under this rubric, the federal government is spending 17 cents more than it receives in revenue. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=63d2f9c91b79c61f876766d6&linknum=4&linktot=44

Democrats have decided on a different tactic for the three GOP-led select committees: They want in, even if they don’t think all of the committees (such as the “government weaponization” one) have a legitimate purpose.    “It is our intent to seat members on … every select committee, every subcommittee that the leadership on the majority side advances,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) told reporters in January. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=63dc32b51b79c61f8776b737&linknum=4&linktot=44

Throughout his long political career, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invoked a popular turn of phrase. Israel, he has often said, is an “oasis of democracy” in a region defined by its absence. Israel’s freedoms, its elections and its rule of law, the argument went, stood in contrast to the status quo in the Middle East, where absolute monarchs and flailing autocrats largely hold sway.    Of course, the formulation always overlooked the millions of Palestinians who live as second-class citizens in their own homeland, shorn of the same rights and freedoms afforded to Israeli neighbors. That reality has long been accepted by the West and swept under the rug by successive Israeli governments. Under Netanyahu’s watch, Jewish settlements expanded in the West Bank, further undermining the possibility of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state ever emerging. No matter — in the eyes of successive administrations in Washington and a bipartisan critical mass in Congress, Israel was a land of “shared values” and could do little wrong.    Recent developments, though, are making the “oasis of democracy” look a little more like a mirage. https://s2.washingtonpost.com/camp-rw/?trackId=598b051fae7e8a68162a1429&s=63d0bc5d1b79c61f8763a2f8&linknum=5&linktot=73

...recriminations continue in the Republican-led House after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday that he will unilaterally block Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell from serving on the Intelligence Committee, days after Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) formally recommended the reappointment of the two California Democrats. Another fight is brewing over whether McCarthy will ask the full House to deny Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) a spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The maneuvering comes amid a continuing standoff over raising the nation’s debt limit that has already heightened tensions in the early days of GOP control. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/25/house-republicans-mccarthy-committees-debt-limit/?utm_campaign=wp_politics_am&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_politics&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F38f13db%2F63d11aea1b79c61f8763e1b5%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F12%2F55%2F63d11aea1b79c61f8763e1b5&wp_cu=639b84fe3ddb27af65b99f6cacbf7a23%7CC0DBC114CDAE2BA7E0430100007FAD1A

Pope Francis criticized laws that criminalize homosexuality as “unjust,” saying God loves all his children just as they are and called on Catholic bishops who support the laws to welcome LGBTQ people into the church. “Being homosexual isn’t a crime,” Francis said during an exclusive interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.    Francis acknowledged that Catholic bishops in some parts of the world support laws that criminalize homosexuality or discriminate against the LGBTQ community, and he himself referred to the issue in terms of “sin.” But he attributed such attitudes to cultural backgrounds, and said bishops in particular need to undergo a process of change to recognize the dignity of everyone. https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-gay-rights-ap-interview-1359756ae22f27f87c1d4d6b9c8ce212?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01&utm_content=eyebrows 

House Republicans’ attempt to bring a border security bill to the floor as early as this week was thwarted after backlash from more moderate Republicans, delaying not only a pledge Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made to a handful of lawmakers but also the fulfillment of a key campaign promise to a Republican base eager for tougher immigration laws.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/23/house-republicans-immigration-legislation/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F38ed06d%2F63cec208ef9bf67b236e3aac%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F14%2F73%2F63cec208ef9bf67b236e3aac&wp_cu=639b84fe3ddb27af65b99f6cacbf7a23%7CC0DBC114CDAE2BA7E0430100007FAD1A            

The giant spending bill passed by Congress last month kept the government open. But it also quietly rewrote huge areas of health policy: Hundreds of pages of legislation were devoted to new health care programs.    The legislation included major policy areas that committees had been hammering away at all year behind the scenes — like a big package designed to improve the nation’s readiness for the next big pandemic. It also included items that Republicans had been championing during the election season — like an extension of telemedicine coverage in Medicare. And it included small policy measures that some legislators have wanted to pass for years, like requiring Medicare to cover compression garments for patients with lymphedema.    Though the bill was primarily designed to fund existing government programs, a lot of health policy hitched a ride.    Big, “must-pass” bills like the $1.7 trillion omnibus often attract unrelated policy measures that would be hard to pass alone. But the scope of the health care legislation in last month’s bill is unusual. At the end of 2022, congressional leaders decided to do something that staffers call “clearing the decks,” adding all the potentially bipartisan health policy legislation that was ready and written. There turned out to be a lot to clear. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/upshot/new-health-policies-budget.html       

Trump 2024. Trump’s 2016 campaign was an insurgency. He found his base by blasting his message through cable TV. He shunned the establishment and flouted conservative doctrine. And he seemed to love being hated by much of his party. Trump’s 2024 campaign is, at least by comparison, traditional.     He hasn’t held a big arena rally yet and he’s not dominating the cable airwaves like he did at the peak of the 2016 primary.    Instead, he’s hosting small events in early primary states and courting the state and local establishments — just like a more typical front-runner would.    And he’s no longer a highly divisive figure within the GOP. He registers just under 50 percent in the national primary polls, but his favorability rating is above 70 percent. His plurality coalition could easily grow into a majority.    He’s a former president — the ultimate party insider — with a path to an outright majority.    Trump is no longer ideologically unique within the GOP. Potential competitors, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former vice president Mike Pence, match Trump’s hard-line position on immigration and share his enthusiasm for the culture wars. Trump will have to defend himself as other conservative populists try to eat into his base.    Normal Republican candidates might, again, splinter the vote and allow Trump to win the nomination with a plurality of the primary votes. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/02/trump-polls-republican-opponents/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F390435f%2F63dbefbb1b79c61f87761280%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F17%2F72%2F63dbefbb1b79c61f87761280&wp_cu=639b84fe3ddb27af65b99f6cacbf7a23%7CC0DBC114CDAE2BA7E0430100007FAD1A

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has formally recommended that Reps. Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell be reappointed to the House Intelligence Committee, escalating a clash with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who has vowed to deny spots on the panel to both California Democrats.    In a letter dated Saturday, Jeffries argued that McCarthy has no justifiable reason not to accept his appointments of Schiff, who served as chairman of the Intelligence panel until Republicans took control of the chamber, and Swalwell.    Harv says vengeance for Jan.6 committee work. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/23/intelligence-committee-schiff-mccarthy-greene-gosar/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F38ed163%2F63cec208ef9bf67b236e3aac%2F598b051fae7e8a68162a1429%2F29%2F73%2F63cec208ef9bf67b236e3aac&wp_cu=639b84fe3ddb27af65b99f6cacbf7a23%7CC0DBC114CDAE2BA7E0430100007FAD1A    

2023jan22.  President Pedro Castillo borrowed from history when he attempted a coup in Peru.

Thirty years ago, another president asserted authoritarian control. But this time, there was a critical difference: As populist president, Castillo had no support for his coup. The military and the judiciary quickly rejected his attempt last month.    Castillo’s dramatic fall from power shook Peru, a country of 33 million people that is the fifth-most populous in Latin America. His supporters have protested across the country and at least 55 people have been killed, often in clashes with security forces.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20230122&instance_id=83377&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=91739846&segment_id=123211&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F68d7db5c-c025-5dd6-adfd-dee6a02d5ecc&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4

2023jan05.  As Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor on Monday, “If House Republicans are serious about taking the debt limit hostage in exchange for spending cuts, the new rules that they adopted require them to bring a proposal to the floor of the House and show the American people precisely what kind of cuts they want to make. It’s not enough to hide behind the old GOP talking point about ‘wasteful spending’; when you’re in the majority, substance counts.”    He added for good measure: “Americans are going to be left with some pretty big questions. Republicans say they want spending cuts. Well, does that mean cuts to Social Security? Or Medicare? Or child care? Or Pell grants? Or our military? Or pay raises for our troops? Or funding police and law enforcement?”    Republicans have never taken much interest in fiscal sobriety when their party controlled the White House. This was especially true during the Trump administration, which as conservative economist Charles Blahous showed in a 2021 study, deserves a sizable share of the blame for deficits in recent years.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/25/democrats-plan-debt-ceiling-republicans-blunder/ 

2019dec13.    impeachment.     For an event this big, members of Congress believe that every one of them should have a chance to make their points several times over. They’re allowed to speak at length because the leadership doesn’t want people to feel like they weren’t given adequate opportunity. People think this is crazy, and want it over in a second, with our demand for instant gratification. But there is a process that has to be followed to make an impeachment legitimate.    There are a lot of musty, dusty rules up there. There’s even a committee in the House specifically devoted to designating and drawing up the rules. There’s a long history of how these things are done. If this was a markup about a bill, it would seem interminable, too. This isn’t out of the ordinary in any way. This is how business is done. They really do go line by line. But it just so happens that this is for impeachment.  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/8ae066fc-119c-401f-b742-93c06374a1ea&te=1&nl=impeachment-briefing&emc=edit_ib_20191213?campaign_id=140&instance_id=14502&segment_id=19563&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4&regi_id=91739846_ib_20191213 2019dec13.    Brexit.    Brexit’s Advance Is Latest Blow to Postwar Trade Order: The decisive Conservative {Tories} victory in Britain leaves no doubt that economic integration has ceased to be a global organizing principle.    Caused by immigration, the trade-induced wealth gap…  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/business/economy/uk-election-brexit-trade.html?te=1&nl=dealbook&emc=edit_dk_20191213?campaign_id=4&instance_id=14509&segment_id=19572&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4&regi_id=9173984620191213 Harv also experiences “integration has ceased” on his family idea. His self-respect quit dog sitting which disappeared anyway, encouraging him to turn to the glean of his as-set including Disney walking. Harv must respect the Susan perspective as well as he can understand it, “get a FL life” directive, also, “take your time.” 2019dec09.   UK general election 2019:  Does UK hold clues to Trump’s fortunes? In one case it was a man who served as the hammer that forged an electoral realignment. In the other it was a single-issue vote. But at the heart of both was a conservative populism centered around trade and immigration. This week's UK general election is a key test to see whether 2016 was a sign of a durable political shift in the UK. And, like the 2016 Brexit vote, there will be many in the US watching carefully to see if British politics once again foreshadows events to come in the US.    "Brexit has really divided people," says Lyndsey Lynch, a Labour activist from Holyhead who attended a Corbyn rally in Bangor on Sunday. "Discussion has descended into name-calling, which is really disappointing."   She says the parts of the UK that voted leave did so to disrupt the status quo - a entiment she understands.    Across the Atlantic, even some Democrats will acknowledge that a similar sentiment - to send a message to the nation's governing class - was a significant reason for Trump's 2016 success. And there have been calls among Democrats to "move on" from Trump, and instead talk about issues - like healthcare, education and the environment - rather than simply campaign against the current White House resident.    Brexit is still unresolved three years later, with whether and how to leave the EU continuing to be a source of anxiety and anger.    Next year in the US, Democrats seek to win back the disaffected voters who switched to Republican in 2016. As many as nine million people who backed Barack Obama also voted for Trump.    Mr Johnson's Conservative Party could be on the verge of creating a new electoral constituency {but effective voters?} unlike any that came before it. In November 2020, Mr Trump will try to prove that his conservative populism was more than just a one-time blip - but likewise a sign of a governing coalition that can endure.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50717536        Is Harv the oldest not dead male in the family? If probably so, he is living on borrowed time, against the odds. To be this independent, Harv must balance his ability decline that only he knows with his expectations. Wipe away CA life — been there, tried that. Harv cannot help Susan’s mental mire that can easily mire Harv. Dog sitter is not Harv’s nature — to service animals. His MacBook Air is an element of common ground — probably too rare to be attained. However, single Susan once offered a scene that could work as the dream model for description to shape his future scene. 2019dec04.   In his farewell address, President George Washington warned of a moment when “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”    The Framers of the Constitution well understood that an individual could one day occupy the Office of the President who would place his personal or political interests above those of the nation. Having just won hard-fought independence from a King with unbridled authority, they were attuned to the dangers of an executive who lacked fealty to the law and the Constitution. In response, the Framers adopted a tool used by the British Parliament for several hundred years to constrain the Crown—the power of impeachment.    Although the Framers viewed parties as necessary, they also endeavored to structure the new government in such a way as to minimize the “violence of faction.” As George Washington warned in his farewell address, “the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”    Trump's claim he can do whatever he wants strikes horror in legal minds.    Prediction: Trump is not going to be pleased that Republicans couldn't find a law professor who supports him. They could have found someone who said "not guilty" instead of "insufficient evidence."   https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/12/politics/trump-ukraine-impeachment-inquiry-report-annotated/?utm_source=CNN’s+Impeachment+Tracker&utm_campaign=606ad93cef-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_12_04_04_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_84015bed88-606ad93cef-108588169 2019dec03.    It seemed one area Ms. Harris struggled with was a consistent message. Yep. There were many versions of Harris’s message. “For the People,” “3 a.m. agenda,” “Dude Gotta Go,” “Justice Is On the Ballot” — all these came from one campaign. Our reporting showed two factors here: She did not have a guiding political ideology herself, and the organizational problems meant that, as one staff member told me, the message was up to “whoever won the next argument.”  https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?uri=nyt://newsletter/53eed827-02ee-4de1-bcdc-534637cbe0b4&te=1&nl=on-politics%20with%20lisa%20lerer&emc=edit_cn_20191203?campaign_id=56&instance_id=14253&segment_id=19263&user_id=c169c5df23b5bd14a95e704d648953e4&regi_id=91739846_cn_20191203            SELF GUIDING IDEOLOGY {ideologist} : 1 a system of ideas and ideals … the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of … an individual … 2 archaic the science of ideas; the study of their origin and nature. OAD          2019dec.  Brexit.   It's as if the 2016 US presidential election, where both major candidates were deemed flawed and untrustworthy, is playing itself out again three years later, on the other side of the Atlantic.   "People are cynical and saying that they're fed up on the doorstep," Mary Roberts, a Labour candidate in the North Wales constituency of Ynys Mon, told supporters at a rally on Sunday. "That makes it difficult sometimes."   Canvassers and activists in the crowd echoed that sentiment. Voters want all of this - Brexit, the election, the nonstop drumbeat of political chaos — to be over and done with.    Complete Brexit and rest may be impolitic media/analysis spin.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50734102 2019nov29.  Some of the most damning testimony against Mr. Trump has come from impressive women like Ambassador Yovanovitch {to applause upon completion) and Fiona Hill. Their 19th-century counterparts were abolitionists like the stalwart Lydia Maria Child, who wrote words as true today as then: “Every true lover of the country must want to creep into a knot hole and hide himself, wherever the name of our president is mentioned.” Johnson and Mr. Trump are both authoritarian demagogues who threatened the world’s longest lasting experiment in democratic republicanism. Democrats must convince the American people not only of Mr. Trump’s specific crimes, but of the very real danger that his continuing presence in office presents to the Republic.    In drawing up 11 articles of impeachment against Johnson, House Republicans focused narrowly on violation of the Tenure of Office Act in the first nine. But the last two articles accused Johnson of opposing Reconstruction and bringing “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach,” onto “the Congress of the United States” and for his “intemperate, inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces, as well against Congress as the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the cries, jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled in hearing,” language that could be used verbatim against Mr. Trump. As Representative George Julian pithily put it, Johnson ought to be impeached for “his career of maladministration and crime.” (Especially the lies!)  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/opinion/sunday/andrew-johnson-donald-trump.html?searchResultPosition=71        Harv saw this in Trump and the “Goof.” How then does he chose associations and especially those associations that chase the impossible — Joy, Love, Freeing. Smarter, not harder (easier) in year 82 framed detail. Examples: pre Thanksgiving CA bad weather map, did not give up third Disney Annual Pass (?2017, 2018). Other rebukes? “No.” Rather cooperate with family leads that are in my interests, like sweet dreams, wifi eats, Disney quality, …        Happy Harv is packing it in with his 82nd year (a- to give up; abandon one's efforts; b- to cease being a nuisance. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/pack--it--in). For example: his dance dress boots are now at Goodwill.    See birthday text conversation, mostly no-talk except Chris. 2019apr15.    Trump.    There's even a publishing sub-genre devoted to putting the 45th president on the shrink's couch. Such titles include The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, Rocket Man: Nuclear Madness and the Mind of Donald Trump, A Clear and Present Danger: Narcissism in the Era of Donald Trump, and Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump. But Mr Trump - who maintains he is "a very stable genius" - is by no means the first US leader to find himself depicted as a lunatic. Jude Sheerin (15 April 2019) The mental rigors of being US president. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47671986 2014mar-apr.

Political consensus comment ends here