We begin today with Paul Krugman of The New York Times taking a look at what the shoe salesman’s “quack” economic policies may be like should he win the 2024 presidential election.
I wish people would stop calling Donald Trump a populist. He has, after all, never demonstrated any inclination to help working Americans, and his economic policies really didn’t help — his 2017 tax cut, in particular, was a giveaway to the wealthy. But his behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that he’s as addicted to magical thinking and denial of reality as any petty strongman or dictator, which makes it all too likely that he might preside over the type of problems that result when policies are based on quack economics.
Now, destructive economic policy isn’t the thing that alarms me the most about Trump’s potential return to power. Prospects for retaliation against his political opponents, huge detention camps for undocumented immigrants and more loom much larger in my mind. Still, it does seem worth noting that even as Republicans denounce President Biden for the inflation that occurred on his watch, Trump’s advisers have been floating policy ideas that could be far more inflationary than anything that has happened so far.
It’s true that inflation surged in 2021 and 2022 before subsiding, and there’s a vigorous debate about how much of a role Biden’s economic policies played. I’m skeptical, among other things because inflation in the United States since the beginning of the Covid pandemic has closely tracked with that of other advanced economies. What’s notable, however, is what the Biden administration didn’t do when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. There was a clear risk that rate hikes would cause a politically disastrous recession, although this hasn’t happened so far. But Biden and company didn’t pressure the Fed to hold off; they respected the Fed’s independence, letting it do what it thought was necessary to bring inflation under control.
Does anyone imagine that Trump — who in 2019 insisted that the Fed should cut interest rates to zero or below — would have exercised comparable restraint?
By the way, that smoke you see is not from a papal conclave but from Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s response to MSNBC’s Katy Tur about Trump’s jobs record.
Jon Allsop of Columbia Journalism Review writes about the court of public opinion in the cases of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein.
Fast-forward six years, and the Weinstein and Trump stories are adjacent again. Last week, New York’s highest court overturned a rape conviction that prosecutors in the state obtained against Weinstein in 2020. (He has also been convicted in California, and is likely to remain behind bars for now.) The decision came down as Trump himself was in court in New York, over “hush money” payments that Michael Cohen, his fixer, paid to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 election to silence her claims of an affair. “I can’t describe how surreal it is to learn this news while waiting for Donald Trump to walk into the courtroom and sit down in the exact spot Harvey Weinstein was when he was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison,” Molly Crane-Newman, a courts reporter at the New York Daily News, wrote on X.
More than just being adjacent, the latest Weinstein and Trump stories are connected—or at least, they might be. Weinstein’s conviction was thrown out on essentially procedural grounds after the court ruled that the judge in his trial erred in allowing testimony that established a pattern of alleged abuse on Weinstein’s part but went beyond the comparatively narrow legal case at issue. As The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow, who was among the reporters to break open the Weinstein scandal back in 2017, wrote last week, the judge in Trump’s hush money case has also allowed testimony that establishes a pattern of conduct beyond the precise charges. That case, Farrow writes, could now be drawn “into the thicket of legal questions” that felled the Weinstein verdict.
As Farrow and others have noted, the two situations are not identical: the judge in the Trump case has been relatively cautious, not least in limiting jurors’ exposure to claims of sexual misconduct against Trump. Still, there are other links between the two stories that transcend their legal similarities and renewed adjacency in the news cycle. Both centrally involve the news media, albeit in very different ways; if textbook accountability reporting set the stage for Weinstein’s convictions, in the Trump trial, journalism of a much grubbier nature has been central to establishing the very pattern of conduct that is essential context for the Daniels payoff. And if, as I wrote following Weinstein’s conviction in 2020, that story illuminated the messy relationship between the court of public opinion and actual court—a conclusion that, if anything, has only been reinforced by last week’s reversal—it would perhaps be an understatement to draw a similar conclusion about Trump’s legal cases, not only in New York, but across the map.
Here’s the latest update from the journalists at the Columbia Specator about the Columbia University student protests as dozens of students now occupy Hamilton Hall.
Dozens of protesters occupied Hamilton Hall in the early hours of Tuesday morning, moving metal gates to barricade the doors, blocking entrances with wooden tables and chairs, and zip-tying doors shut.As the window of the rightmost door of Hamilton broke, dozens more protesters formed a human barricade directly outside the Hamilton doors. Protesters sealed Hamilton while hundreds more flooded over to the front of the building. Some began a smaller picket on the walkway near the Hamilton statue in front of the human barricade, chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Palestine will live forever.”By 12:49 a.m., the crowd outside Hamilton had increased to hundreds of individuals. [...]The occupation came nearly two weeks after University President Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on April 18, leading to the largest mass arrest on campus since 1968, when the NYPD arrested over 80 people inside of occupied Hamilton Hall and over 700 students total.
Justin Jouvenal of The Washington Post gives us a sneak peek at some of the cases the U.S. Supreme Court will take up next term.
The Supreme Court on Monday added cases to its calendar for the term beginning in October that deal with veterans’ benefits, civil liability, immigration visas and pet food consumed by a dog named Clinton and a cat named Sassie.
In a case that could have significant implications for those who serve in the military, the Supreme Court will weigh a matter involving two veterans who argue they were improperly denied medical benefits for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder related to their service. [...]
In a second case, the high court will parse the scope of a federal law that allows plaintiffs to recover civil damages when they suffer economic harm.
Commercial truck driver Douglas J. Horn sued the manufacturer of a hemp-derived CBD product, which he took for pain, after he was fired from his job for testing positive for THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Horn claims the company marketed its product as THC-free.
In the process of describing my home state’s and hometown’s apparent renaissance, Susan J. Demas of Michigan Advance also slips in a tidbit that I did not know about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
You could see the energy pulsing through the Motor City as the Detroit Lions stole everyone’s hearts in this year’s playoffs (and then broke them, but we don’t talk about that). And since Thursday, there’s been a sea of Honolulu Blue in the streets for the NFL draft, with the city shattering the all-time attendance record.
[...]
It goes without saying that things aren’t perfect today. The Renaissance Center faces an uncertain future with GM set to move out, residents want more attention focused on rebuilding neighborhoods and little progress has been made to link transit in Southeast Michigan. Detroit is still losing population and Michigan is treading water (hence Whitmer appointing a commission last year to tackle the issue).
But the bottom line is that a lot more people want to be in Detroit now. The city has always had world-class museums, like the Detroit Institute of Arts and the best bookstore in America, John K. King Books, where you can easily spend an entire day wandering about (and you definitely should). But there’s a new crop of local businesses, restaurants and venues that draw in people even when the NFL draft isn’t in town.
Monica Anderson of Pew Research Center looks at a survey of American attitudes about social media.
Since 2020, more Americans – particularly Democrats – believe social media companies wield too much political power. Roughly eight-in-ten Americans (78%) say these companies have too much power and influence in politics today, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of 10,133 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 7-11, 2024. This is up from 72%in 2020.
Another 16% say these sites have the right amount of political influence, while only 4% think they don’t have enough power.
[...]
Americans are far more likely to say social media has a negative rather than positive impact on the country. Roughly two-thirds (64%) think social media has a mostly negative effect on the way things are going in the country today.
Only 10% describe social media as having a mostly positive impact on the country. And about a quarter say these sites have neither a positive nor a negative effect.
Lisa O’Carroll of the Guardian writes that the European Commission will investigate whether Meta is doing all that it can to combat Russian election disinformation in advance of the European elections.
It is understood the European Commission is concerned that Meta’s moderation system is not robust enough to counterbalance the potential proliferation of fake news and attempts to suppress voting.
The Financial Times reported that officials were particularly worried about the way Meta’s platforms were handling Russia’s efforts to undermine upcoming European elections, although it was expected to stop short of citing the Kremlin in proceedings.
Reports suggest that the commission is particularly concerned over Meta’s plan to discontinue CrowdTangle, a public insights tool that allows real-time disinformation researchers, journalists and others across the EU to monitor the spread of fake news and attempts to suppress voting.
Nick Waters of Bellingcat presents an impressive multimedia presentation of the IDF’s destruction of homes and infrastructure in Gaza.
Systematic and widespread attacks on civilian housing and infrastructure in Gaza has been described as “domicide” by Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. He told us “Even with attacks against individual buildings, every building which is bombed or destroyed has got to be evaluated legally. Whether a building on this or that corner of a road needed to be destroyed or not...the burden is on the IDF to show that they have evidence, that they have proof and that the attack is proportionate and necessary”. It’s estimated that more than 50% of Gaza’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged and approximately 1.7 million people have been displaced since the offensive began. Bellingcat worked with partners Scripps News to investigate the alleged domicide in Gaza and the ongoing conflicts over land in the West Bank, you can watch the full documentary here.
The constant repetition of images of destruction inside Gaza, where entire neighbourhoods have been turned into rubble, can result in desensitisation about the impact of the offensive.
Yet behind each ruined building, each demolished minaret, each pile of rubble, there is a decision and an action which has been carried out by a specific unit or person.
We used social media to track a single IDF combat engineering battalion, 8219 Commando, as they moved across Gaza, demolishing tunnels, houses, and mosques.
Finally today, Jonathan Lis of Haaretz, citing a diplomatic source, writes that Saudi Arabia and Israel will normalize relations...at some point.
Saudi Arabia has decided to normalize relations with Israel, but is debating whether to implement the move in the coming weeks or after the presidential election in the United States in November, a foreign diplomat familiar with the details said.
Saudi Arabia is expected to demand guarantees that will ensure clear progress on the issue of a Palestinian state in return.According to the diplomat, "Saudi has decided to go for an agreement with Israel. It's a principled strategic move, as part of the rapprochement with the U.S., and [Saudi Arabia] is interested in realizing it.
"The question is when, and the decision on the timing should be made within days. The debate in the Saudi government is whether to hand this 'candy' to President [Joe] Biden, who may not be reelected, or wait for the next president, assuming Biden will lose," the diplomat said. "The Saudis are considering whether an agreement with Israel, assuming its demands are met, will not be seen as aiding Biden's political campaign, which could damage relations with the next president."
Have the best possible day everyone!
Chitown Kev April 30, 2024 at 12:00PM From Daily Kos
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