I cannot get enough of the Democratic National Convention vasectomy van: Imagine, in an election where, thus far, one party has positioned itself as pro-family—to the point where "childless cat ladies" have become a focal point, brought to the fore by vice-presidential contender J.D. Vance's catty, mean-spirited cable news comments—the other party is parking vasectomy and abortion vans outside of the convention.

Technically, it's Planned Parenthood Great Rivers doing it, making reproductive rights—and the Republican Party's attack on them—a focal point of this convention. But Democrats are, more broadly, all over the place this first night of the DNC, as if they can't quite figure out what they're all about or where they want to go, whether they're the party of joy or a party that just dealt with a succession crisis, or a party that's riven by the Israel-Hamas conflict or a party that stands in defiance of purported Republican attacks on essential freedoms.

Consider the new ad, unveiled by Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign:

DNC airs new "Freedom" ad to kick off the Democratic Convention pic.twitter.com/lXLqKi2rAN

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 20, 2024

But such an ad assumes Americans have short memories. Ones that forget all the regulations Democrats have imposed that have driven up housing costs. Ones that forget how people were not enjoying freedom when they were shut inside their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, or forced to stay home from school and church, by blue-staters. Ones that forget the last decade of (Democrat-enforced) culture war language policing and hypersensitivity to all manner of grievance. Democrats aren't really the party of freedom, they're the party of dictating, in ways big and small, how you live, either for your own good or the greater good, as they define it.

What exactly are they for? The first night of the DNC was a good reminder of the party's schizophrenia. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D–N.Y.) speech was excellent, proving that they have at least one promising young talent waiting in the wings. Formerly an outsider given a paltry 90-second speaking slot, Ocasio-Cortez has earned her spot as a Democratic Party mainstay, a primetime speaker whose name is chanted by an adoring arena. (This undeniable charisma is bad for the rest of us, mind you, as Ocasio-Cortez is economically illiterate and embraces Bernie Sanders-style socialism.)

At times, they veered away from light-touch diversity—a raft of speakers from all different backgrounds—and toward more explicit identity politics. Hillary Clinton's speech was all about shattering the glass ceiling. Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison emphasized that a "black convention chair and a black D.N.C. chair lead us in nominating a black and [Asian American and Pacific Islander] woman to be the next president," saying that "this election is about every little boy inspired by a party chair who looks like them, and every little girl who will finally see a president who looks like her." (I highly doubt young children are paying attention to the party chair.)

This emphasis—on being a candidate of firsts, on the "I'm with her" mentality—is especially interesting because it's one Harris has steered away from, ostensibly learning from the mistakes of Clinton's failed 2016 run. Ocasio-Cortez directly inverted this emphasis in her speech, shifting from voters being with the candidate to the candidate being with the voters. "If you are a working parent trying to afford rent and childcare, Kamala is for you," said Ocasio-Cortez. "If you are a senior who has to go back to work because your retirement didn't stretch far enough, Kamala is for you. If you're an immigrant family just starting your American story, Kamala is for you."

Everyone who covered 2016 will overthink that race forever, but AOC's "Kamala is for you" sounds like the inversion of "I'm with her."

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) August 20, 2024

Oh, and President Joe Biden also spoke. He didn't really say much of note. It was fine. But the fanfare was…aggressive, thanking Biden constantly for his service, for his leadership, for everything. Also, implicitly, for stepping aside and putting the presidency back in play.

The shenanigans also turned destructive: Outside of the security perimeter, protesters—a smaller turnout than was expected—succeeded at tearing down gates and fencing.

Tearing down the fence. Others trying to keep the peace pic.twitter.com/jgVU4WklS2

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) August 19, 2024

Things turned chaotic:

Last vid of the day. Two funny things: the protesters saying to the cops, "Don't hurt her!" and, once I wriggled out of the fencing (with the help of two dudes pulling me), who is standing there cool as a cucumber saying, "Hello Nancy" but @mcmoynihan. Hello from Chicago! pic.twitter.com/vjhFdnREj9

— Nancy Rommelmann (@NancyRomm) August 20, 2024

There were also some protesters inside:

Group of protesters with their backs turned to Biden and hands over their mouths. They're quiet. So far unmolested by officials or security. pic.twitter.com/VuKcwc1Kzc

— Alex Seitz-Wald (@aseitzwald) August 20, 2024

It remains to be seen how much trouble the protesters will cause, and how the situation in Gaza will be discussed on the main stage, but the protests outside were a decidedly inauspicious start.

Scenes from New York: Why does 3.5 grams of weed, purchased legally, cost $60 in New York, while unlicensed bodegas are selling for $40? Some of it also has to do with the federal, state, and local taxes (including 13 percent sales tax upon purchase) that must be forked over by dispensaries, as well as the security systems they must put in place to keep their wares safe. They're also trying to recoup the costs of legal fees and securing expensive licenses to operate legally.

Basically, everywhere a legit entrepreneur turns, the state has made it quite expensive for them to simply open up a cannabis business. And a big chunk of that cost gets passed down to the consumer.

QUICK HITS

• "Democrats begin their four-day national convention Monday in the city that perhaps best exemplifies the chasm between their party's dreamy policy rhetoric and grim real-world results," writes Reason's Matt Welch. "As a direct result of one-party misrule (there are zero Republicans on the 50-seat City Council), Chicago's tax base is decreasing, not increasing. The population has declined for nine consecutive years, is shrinking by an annual rate of 1 percent, and is at its lowest point in more than a century."
• Anarcho-brat summer (if you're confused, read this):

Anarcho-brat flag flown at March on the DNC. pic.twitter.com/BFptgEUGa0

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) August 19, 2024

• "US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated, which risks fueling concerns that the Federal Reserve is falling further behind the curve to lower interest rates," reports Bloomberg.
• Protests are still happening in Venezuela, where Nicolas Maduro has wrongly declared himself victorious in the latest presidential election (and refused to release results corroborating the outcome).
• On Friday, The San Francisco Standard published a piece titled "How ex-liberal billionaires Ben and Felicia Horowitz made a MAGA U-turn," which essentially spends a lot of words grappling with the idea that Felicia, a black woman, could not possibly authentically support former President Donald Trump, and that there must be some kind of mental derangement at play:

Wow, @micsolana nails it exactly. Amazing. @PirateWires for the win. pic.twitter.com/ikUrZrTJeZ

— benahorowitz.eth (@bhorowitz) August 19, 2024

The post All Aboard the Vasectomy Van appeared first on Reason.com.

Gird your loins, it's DNC time: The Democratic National Convention starts today in Chicago, and the Israel/Palestine-related tensions that have been coursing through the left since October 7 may very well come to a head this week.

Tens of thousands of protesters are expected to set up right outside of security to protest the party's support of Israel; presumptive nominee Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, is expected to speak about Judaism on stage; and, just like during the Republican National Convention, some families of hostages taken by Hamas will plead onstage for the return of their loved ones.

Some delegates who eschewed voting for Kamala Harris, calling themselves the Uncommitteds, have broken from the party pick precisely because they do not support U.S. support for Israel in the Gaza war. The Uncommitted factor is especially relevant to Michigan, a swing state with a large Middle Eastern population, and Democratic officials have been attempting to make inroads with the vocal disgruntled in recent weeks; they want a DNC that signals unity, and the likelihood that massive protests will be taking place just outside the gates undermines this.

"The key question for Democrats this week is whether the demonstrators represent a meaningful group of voters who could swing the election in November, or if they are outliers on the left who should be resisted in an appeal to the center," sums up The New York Times. 

Hamas rejects latest ceasefire proposal: On Sunday, following days of tense negotiating and Secretary of State Antony Blinken shlepping to Israel believing an agreement was imminent, Hamas rejected a proposed ceasefire deal with Israel.

"After being briefed by the mediators about what happened in the last round of talks in Doha, we once again came to the conclusion that Netanyahu is still putting obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement, and is setting new conditions and demands with the aim of undermining the mediators' efforts and prolonging the war," declared Hamas in a statement, adding that the U.S.-brokered ceasefire "aligns with" Israel's demands.

At issue is the fact that the ceasefire did not force full a Israeli withdrawal from the entirety of the Gaza Strip. Israel had proposed maintaining a large security presence on the border between Egypt and Gaza, as well as maintaining control over the Netzarim Corridor, which divides the Gaza Strip's north from its south.

Blinken has called this round of negotiations a "decisive moment" for Israel and Hamas. In the last few weeks, Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah, have vowed to strike Israel in retaliation for its July assassinations of Hezbollah official Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Thus far, wider war has been staved off, but it's unclear for how much longer that will last; the fact that negotiations were in progress may have played a contributing role. Now that may not be so.

Scenes from New York: One of the New York City hospital systems, Northwell Health, is starting a studio to make its own movie and TV shows following the success of the Netflix show Lenox Hill, which followed doctors and patients within the system. But just a few years ago, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center had to pay out a more than $2 million settlement to federal regulators for failing to protect patient privacy when a television crew was filming inside the hospital. Expect more issues, both ethical and legal, to arise.

QUICK HITS

• "The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which account for roughly a third of all US container imports, had their third-strongest month ever in July, just shy of an all-time high reached in May 2021. Back then, a wave of inbound consumer goods caused supply bottlenecks on land and a queue of cargo ships waiting for a berth offshore was getting longer by the day," reports Bloomberg. "Demand now is driven by retailers and other importers that are stocking up ahead of US tariffs on Chinese goods and a possible strike by a large group of American dockworkers—adding to the usual frenzy of pre-holiday ordering that occurs this time of year."
• Planned Parenthood Great Rivers is offering free vasectomies and abortions for DNC attendees at a van near the convention center, which seems a little self-defeating if the idea is to grow your political party.
• Also in DNC abortion news: Some protesters have dressed up as abortion pills.
• Officials in Georgia "like the prosperity that could come with making [electric vehicles], but not the California-style mandates that prop them up. They like the jobs but agree with many of their voters who think electric vehicles are a sheet metal-clad tenet of the Democrats' woke ideology," reports Politico. 
• Donald Trump's running mate, J.D. Vance, responded this weekend to news of a Kamala Harris poll bump by saying the "media uses fake polls."

The post DNC Readies for Protesters appeared first on Reason.com.

The first domino: A bad U.S. economic outlook, reflected in Friday's jobs report, helped prompt major stock sell-offs globally over the weekend.

"Japanese stocks collapsed on Monday in their biggest single day rout since the 1987 Black Monday sell-offs," reports Reuters, with the Nikkei 225 index falling 12.4 percent and the Topix index falling 12.2 percent. The Kospi index in South Korea fell more than 10 percent. Equity markets felt the pain in Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and China, though to a lesser degree. "At one point, the plunge in Japanese and Korean stocks tripped a 'circuit breaker' mechanism that halts trading to allow markets to digest large fluctuations," reports The New York Times. "But even after those mandatory breathers, the sell-off in stocks seemed to accelerate. Jitters spread to the debt market, prompting a halt in trading in Japanese government bonds as well."

Wall Street's "fear gauge"—the VIX—jumped to its highest level since 2020, when the pandemic prompted a wild market fluctuation. "The market response is a reflection of the deteriorating U.S. economic outlook," Jesper Koll, a director at financial services firm Monex Group, told the Times. "It was a New York sneeze that forced Japanese pneumonia."

The U.S. jobs report, released Friday, found that hiring slowed significantly in July. Unemployment continued its slow creep upward—4.3 percent, the highest since October 2021—and wage growth eased a bit. The jobs report also revised the May and June numbers downward, by a combined 29,000 jobs, indicating that the July downshift did not come out of nowhere. It also "stoked fear of a coming recession" due to something known as the "Sahm Rule," named for economic Claudia Sahm, who identified in 2019 a useful recession indicator that our July jobs report has unfortunately met (more on that from Reason's Eric Boehm).

Inflation has showed plenty of signs of cooling a bit, responding to Federal Reserve rate hikes, but the jobs report means a rate cut "could be on the table" as soon as September, according to Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

In other words, the aspirational "soft landing"—a cooling down of inflation without triggering a recession—may not in fact be materializing. And these American warning signs are leading to global ripple effects.

Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal has, I think, the smartest and most concise take on what's going on, for those who indulge:

10 THOUGHTS ON TODAY'S BIG MARKET SELOFF

In today's 5 Things newsletter, I jotted down a bunch of random stuff about this moment in stocks, crypto, FX, and macro.

Here they are

1) It was clear instantly on Wednesday that Powell was going to be offsides this market: pic.twitter.com/iJ6ipo7Grc

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) August 5, 2024

Scenes from New York: Will Rudy Giuliani's real estate save him?

QUICK HITS

• The U.S. government believes Iran and Hezbollah will retaliate against Israel for the recent assassinations of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut.
• Per tabloid reporting, which was partially confirmed by the campaign, Kamala Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, had an affair during his first marriage (not to Harris). The woman he had an affair with allegedly became pregnant and did not keep the baby, though the campaign has not acknowledged or confirmed that part.
• "Belgium's Olympic committee announced Sunday that it would withdraw its team from the mixed relay triathlon at the Paris Olympics after one of its competitors who swam in the Seine River fell ill," reports the Associated Press. "After a spring with an abnormal amount of rainfall, tests of the river's water found that the levels of E. coli bacteria were more than 20 times higher than what World Triathlon considers acceptable," wrote Reason's Natalie Dowzicky last week. "But the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, still jumped into the Seine earlier this month in an effort to instill confidence that the waterway was just fine. But a small dip is very different from submerging yourself for hours of racing."

This is the most French possible thing that could have happened when Paris hosted the Olympics:

Running with a really stupid idea because it sounds cool, then somehow ending up fucking over the Belgians. https://t.co/K6Id4CUVV5

— Tom (@Lawmadillo) August 5, 2024

• Fun fact:

Nirvana's Nevermind was released 12,000 days ago. Its release date is closer chronologically to Fidel Castro taking control of Cuba than to today.

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) August 1, 2024

The post Markets in Panic appeared first on Reason.com.

Israeli victories: Yesterday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its airstrikes in mid-July killed Mohammed Deif, a key Hamas operative and one of the masterminds behind the October 7 attacks.

On Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, another senior Hamas official, was killed by a bomb smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, Iran. Israel has claimed responsibility for the attack. "The bomb had been hidden approximately two months ago in the guesthouse, according to five of the Middle Eastern officials," reports The New York Times, also noting that it was detonated remotely. "The guesthouse is run and protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and is part of a large compound, known as Neshat, in an upscale neighborhood of northern Tehran."

A third victory for Israel was notched this week, with the killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah operative, who was killed in a strike on Beirut.

Back in April, an Israeli hit on Iranian officials in Syria led to direct strikes being exchanged, though they were showy in nature, designed more to make a statement than to actually do intense damage. Now, it remains to be seen how these groups—proxies of Iran—will respond to Israel's success in taking out these targets, as well as the fact that Haniyeh was taken out in Tehran.

"Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, in retaliation for the killing of Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the order," reports the Times. "It is unclear how forcefully Iran will respond, and whether it will calibrate its attack to steer clear of escalation, as it did in April with a barrage of missiles and drones that was telegraphed well in advance."

"We are on the verge of a large, large-scale escalation," Danny Citrinowicz, who used to helm the Iran branch for Israeli military intelligence, told The Wall Street Journal. "Iran is leading the axis, and they cannot protect one of the leaders of the axis coming for [incoming President Masoud] Pezeshkian's inauguration."

Now, President Joe Biden's administration claims it is hard at work deescalating tensions in the Middle East to stave off war. But, for those who've been following domestic politics, questions remain about the degree to which Biden—the 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday president—is even capable of handling a pressing foreign policy issue such as this one.

Scenes from New York: "Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Lyle Frank ruled on Thursday that the Council lacked the authority to expand access to the CityFHEPS voucher program for people facing eviction or homelessness to New Yorkers who earn above what current rules allow," reports Gothamist. "Tenants who receive CityFHEPS assistance typically pay 30% of their income toward rent, and city-funded vouchers cover the rest."

QUICK HITS

• "Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has found himself at the forefront of Venezuela's crisis after [Nicolas] Maduro declared himself the victor of an election his opponents say was fraudulent," reports Bloomberg. "The dispute and Maduro's subsequent crackdown on dissent have thrust the leader of Latin America's largest nation into an increasingly uncomfortable position. The Venezuelan president is an old ally who still has the support of many within Lula's leftist Workers' Party, which endorsed Maduro's victory this week. The opposition and the growing list of global leaders who back it, meanwhile, have appealed to Lula's efforts to paint himself as a defender of democracy, especially after he rallied international support for fair elections in his own race just two years ago."
• For this week's Just Asking Questions release, we interviewed Vivek Ramaswamy (beware, there were technical issues so the quality is suboptimal at times):

• Blake Masters defeated in Arizona:

BREAKING: Abraham Hamadeh wins Republican nomination for U.S. House in Arizona's 8th Congressional District. #APRaceCall at 5:27 p.m. MST. https://t.co/FjgpZFcJ4E

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) August 1, 2024

• Several journalists, including The Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich, were just released from Russian prison in a swap. In total, 16 people were returned to America and European allies while eight were returned to Russia.

The @WSJ's piece about the secret negotiations to free Evan Gershkovich ends with an incredible anecdote: pic.twitter.com/wM7aWu44tu

— David Gura (@davidgura) August 1, 2024

The post The IDF's Big Week appeared first on Reason.com.

First, the Republican meltdown over…people being biracial? Politicians code-switching? "I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?" asked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, referring to his presumptive opponent Kamala Harris, at the annual convention for the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ).

"I've known her a long time, indirectly," Trump had said right before. "And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I did not know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now she wants to be known as black."

"I respect either one, but she obviously doesn't, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went—she became a black person," he added.

Harris is biracial, born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, which seems to really be blowing Trump's mind. He appeared to be trying to make the case that Harris code-switching, to appeal to black voters in speeches, is disingenuous. (Welcome to politics!) But it came off more as rude to biracial people, as if they need to pick an identity group.

"This room of mostly Black journalists is not the same friendly territory that the former president is used to on the campaign trail," reports The New York Times' Maya King. "As he cracks jokes and repeats falsehoods about his court cases and record, the audience is gasping and scoffing. Few are applauding or laughing."

At one point, Trump claimed immigrants are "taking black jobs." When pushed by a moderator to define what, exactly, a "black job" is, Trump claimed it was "any job." (If the claim is that Harris is disingenuous, pandering to black voters, it looks like Trump is cut from the same cloth.)

"Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact," said Trump in response to a question about whether J.D. Vance would be ready for the job on day one. "I mean, virtually no impact…Virtually never has it mattered." It was a real shit show of an appearance, with Trump careening all over the place and very much failing to win over the room.

Trump later doubled down on his race comments, projecting headlines touting Harris' Indian ancestry on screen at his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, rally:

The Trump campaign is projecting this on the screen above the stage at his rally in Harrisburg PA: pic.twitter.com/ZsGHAZaruk

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) July 31, 2024

Second, the Democratic meltdown over…journalists interviewing Trump: As if Trump's sort of strange race commentary weren't off-putting enough, many members of the media seem thoroughly unable to do their jobs when Trump is involved, in a sad redux of the last eight years.

"Trump's acceptance of NABJ's invitation prompted at least one high-profile member of the organization to step down as the co-chair of the convention," reported Voice of America. "Others expressed concerns that Trump would be given a platform to make false claims or give the impression he had the group's endorsement."

Journalists took to X to express their dismay at Trump even being invited to speak onstage at the NABJ conference, never mind the fact that the conference customarily invites candidates running for president to speak, so it would be out of step with tradition if Trump were randomly excluded.

On a personal note, NABJ has meant a lot to so many of us, so this has been hard to see play out on multiple levels. But I will never forget that Donald Trump insulted and was hostile to a Black female journalist in our own communal space and was unchecked. And the feeling of…

— Natasha S. Alford (@NatashaSAlford) July 31, 2024

Several journalists were seemingly unable to grasp the fact that Trump making strange comments, revealing of his character and his campaign strategy, which may in fact affect how some black voters view him, and those comments becoming a top domestic politics story is in fact a job well done. Journalists should know better than to equate interviewing someone with endorsing their beliefs. Also, didn't we already do this whole idiotic rigamarole years ago, the first time Trump ran for office? And the second? Can't we just cover the man, quoting what he says, without losing our minds?

The galaxy-brain take: "The question Republicans ought to confront before leveling any attack is: 'Will this energize my supporters more or hers?'" asks Abigail Shrier at The Free Press. "For nearly every ad hominem salvo currently flung at Harris, the answer is: hers." This most recent kerfuffle is no different. From a pure political strategy standpoint, it's not clear why Trump made the comments he did at the NABJ conference or how those comments will help him.

Scenes from New York: How to grow weed in your house or apartment (from Curbed).

QUICK HITS

• The Federal Reserve looks like it might cut interest rates in September, drawing widespread opprobrium from strategists in both parties: Democrats fear that it's too little too late to be a useful signal that inflation has been tamed (and President Joe Biden ought to be credited, in their telling), while Republicans fear it could be a messaging win for their opponents.
• "You almost have to feel sorry for Kevin Roberts, the ambitious president of the Heritage Foundation. He steered the venerable think tank away from some of its longtime conservative principles to court Donald Trump, only to be spurned by the temperamental former President he and his institution courted," writes the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. 
• So true:

semiotics is the study of signification, unpopular due to being too abstract

heres why it matters: you make a tech device, called 'friend'. it provides companionship. but to wear this wouldnt signal "i have companionship". it signals the opposite: it communicates your alone-ness https://t.co/7iuRIXjgiL pic.twitter.com/KIuAvX1pW3

— owen cyclops (@owenbroadcast) July 31, 2024

• "Kari Lake won the Republican Senate primary in Arizona…setting up a high-stakes contest in the fall for the seat of Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who is retiring," reports The New York Times. "And Republican voters ousted a top elections official in Arizona's most populous county who angered conservatives by defending the state's voting system against false claims that the 2020 election was stolen."

The post Dueling Meltdowns appeared first on Reason.com.

New slur just dropped: Perhaps it started with the online meme, which was semi-believable but untrue, that Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) wrote of humping a couch in his coming-of-age memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Or perhaps it started with the most normal, almost boring politician in the world, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who has been using this talk track for months but is only just now going viral.

But the Democrats' new strategy is to call their Republican opponents—particularly J.D. Vance, former President Donald Trump's vice-presidential pick—"weird." ("Elegant in its simplicity," said one Democratic party strategist of Walz's invention.)

"People kept talking about, look Donald Trump is going to put women's lives at risk. That's 100 percent true. Donald Trump is potentially going to end constitutional liberties that we have and voting. I do believe all those things are a real possibility, but it gives him way too much power," Walz said on CNN. "Listen to the guy. He's talking about Hannibal Lecter and shocking sharks and just whatever crazy thing pops into his mind. And I thought we just think we give him way too much credit."

Walz, a former public school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota, is aggressively earnest and plainspoken, and "actually knows how to fish" and hunt, according to an approving former senator from nearby North Dakota. He looks like he shops at Costco and doesn't know what boba tea is.

Meanwhile, Vance—the frequent target of Walz's line—has had some damning comments resurface (naturally) from a Fox News interview in 2021 in which he said the nation was run by "childless cat ladies" who are "miserable."

"How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?" he asked.

Out of this soundbite and Walz's frustration, a slur was born. Here's a supercut of Democrats calling Republicans "weird" from the last week, in case you don't believe me. More here and—enjoy this Fox News chyron—here.

Does the "weird" line make any sense? Admittedly, it is a little weird for Vance and some of his fellow Republicans to express such blatant contempt for other people's life choices—particularly childless and single women, not their male counterparts who are surely also to blame (unless they're busy with the couches, in which case: ride on). But I wonder whether Democrats are taking a premature victory lap, claiming the schoolyard insult is effective, when they're not exactly the party of normal, well-adjusted people like Walz.

It's the Democrats who can claim Sam Brinton, the crossdressing, gender-fluid, lipstick-wearing Biden administration Energy Department official who kept stealing suitcases (containing clothes and makeup) from luggage conveyor belts at airports. It's the Democrats who currently have gentle-parenting Instagram lady experts using kindergarten-teacher talk to condescend to people worried about big-government regulatory policy. It's the Democrats who have spent a LOT of the last decade holding drag queen story hours at public libraries and expecting everyone to stay really calm about it, and who have promoted an awful lot of gender-doesn't-exist/gender-isn't-binary talk. It's the Democrats, in the form of teachers unions, who held protests with coffins to combat school-reopening plans during COVID-19, implying that they would die if expected to go to work (while schools stayed open in much of Scandinavia, to great effect). Don't even get me started on the fixation with white-lady tears, or the literal Hamas headbands detected on some college campuses this spring.

For right now, though, people seem fired up enough about Vance's rude comments to accept and promulgate the "weird" insult.

Sometimes it backfires, though. The X account for the Nevada Democratic Party posted this, quote-tweeting an image of the two politicians: "You can't make this up: Sam Brown and JD Vance are claiming to be champions for hardworking Nevadans—from a private jet. They're not only hypocrites…they're just plain weird."

Unfortunately for them (and for him), Sam Brown, who is running for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, sustained heavy facial scarring from burns that came from an improvised explosive devise explosion while he was serving in Afghanistan in 2008. It took him three years of rehab and 30 surgeries to get to where he is today, but his face doesn't look, well, normal. (Brown gracefully pivoted away from the insult.)

But therein lies the problem with this schoolyard taunt approach: It looks not only low and mean, but it denies the reality most voters (especially the double-haters) know to be true.

American politics is full of terribly weird, thoughtless, and impulsive people, reflecting exactly who we are as a nation. The Tim Walzes and the Sam Browns are actually the exceptions, not the rule. Former President Bill Clinton had sex with his intern, featuring a cigar as a sex toy. Former President George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" when it just…wasn't. He flew over Katrina-devastated New Orleans on his way back from vacation instead of actually visiting. The Kennedys, that political dynasty that just won't go away, seem to have a hereditary philandering problem. Trump was just convicted of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair. It's not just politicians, but the political periphery as well: January 6 saw the introduction of another wild character, the QAnon shaman, who after being sentenced for his role in the Capitol riot was granted a special organic food prison diet. Of course.

It's no wonder people want to tune out.

One last reason why the "weird" taunt might backfire: Though Vance is wrong to speak about childless people in such terms, his family…looks like a lot of American families nowadays. Three (biracial) young kids, two working parents, one of whom is a striver who came from a hardscrabble background. Just as thrice-married Trump, who pays lip service to the idea of the church but barely attends, is representative of the social values of a portion of the country, Vance appears to be representative of another chunk: Those who are upwardly mobile, who care about providing for their young families.

Scenes from New York: Inside the Shujun Wang trial. Wang stands accused of being a spy for the Chinese Communist Party. If he is convicted, he will face up to 25 years in prison.

QUICK HITS

• MSNBC contributor Molly Jong-Fast claimed on the air that Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance wants only "white children" in America, which is an odd thing to say about a man who has three biracial children with his wife, Usha.
• Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, as he was visiting Tehran.
• Interesting developments with Project 2025:

NEWS: Project 2025 director Paul Dans has stepped down at Heritage Foundation after pressure from Trump campaign leadership, ongoing power rift over staffing control for potential second Trump admin, per internal email. This suggests Project 2025 will likely shut down. Story TK.

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) July 30, 2024

• "My cover story in the new Aug/Sept issue of Reason Magazine explores the paradox that the faster the federal debt accelerates towards a debt crisis, the less voters seem to care," writes Brian Riedl on X.
• Stunning:

The Democratic Socialists of America @dsa_intl_comm congratulated Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro for stealing the election, then deleted their post pic.twitter.com/rHdA2otLUA

— Jonas Du (@jonasydu) July 30, 2024

• An artificial intelligence "friend" you wear around your neck? No thanks.
• It's time to stop the white-lady parenting influencers who are trying to get out the vote for Democrats:

There's a reason why we call it the nanny state, folks https://t.co/0fRWrr7OZF

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) July 30, 2024

The post The Schoolyard Taunt Election appeared first on Reason.com.

Climate unintended consequences: The Olympic Games, which start at the end of this week in Paris, were supposed to be some of the most environmentally friendly in the organization's history. The organizers had opted out of supplying air conditioning for athletes' rooms in the Olympic Village as a means of reducing the event's environmental footprint. Just one issue: Nobody wanted that, and many of the teams will in fact be bringing their own A.C. units.

The event organizers had constructed an Olympic Village equipped with geothermal in-floor cooling systems. But highs in Paris at the end of July/beginning of August average about 79 degrees Fahrenheit during the day; most major competitors have decided the in-floor tech won't cut it and that their athletes need real A.C.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post compiled a list of the top 20 largest competing nations; of the eight that replied to this inquiry, all of them planned on bringing their own portable A.C. units for their athletes. One of the nations that has not responded yet—China—is likely to follow suit, as roughly half of the world's total A.C. units are used in China.

"According to the International Energy Agency, fewer than 1 in 10 households in Europe has air conditioning, and the numbers in Paris are lower than that," reports NBC News. "The study said that of the 1.6 billion AC units in use across the globe in 2016, more than half were in China (570 million) and the United States (375 million). The entire European Union had around 100 million." So it's a bit of a cultural difference. But it's still incredibly rich that the organizers' environmental efforts will be sabotaged to such a degree, and you have to wonder what the total environmental toll of shlepping massive A.C. units halfway across the globe to use temporarily in the Olympic Village will be (though some teams do intend to procure the units in France).

"It's a pity," said Georgina Grenon, the Paris 2024 director of environmental excellence, in response to The Washington Post's question about other countries making less environmentally conscious choices. Still, organizers touted their plan to transform the Olympic Village into apartments for some 6,000 Parisians following the games and say the geothermal cooling tech will be used for years to come.

Locked out of the debates: The first presidential debate will be this Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite high polling, will be excluded from the stage.

Normally, the Commission on Presidential Debates hosts the presidential showdowns (and chooses which candidates qualify for inclusion). This time, however, CNN is hosting, moderated by anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. As is tradition in American politics, which seems so frequently filled with antipathy toward non–major party candidates, the highly polling third candidate—RFK Jr.—will be excluded from the stage, per CNN's rules.

The network set a requirement that a candidate's name must appear on enough ballots nationwide to plausibly be able to win 270 electoral votes. The candidates must also reach 15 percent in four national polls selected by CNN in order to qualify.

RFK Jr. does not qualify for the first (having secured ballot access in just California, Delaware, Hawaii, Michigan, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Utah so far, though another dozen states could also end up putting his name on the ballot) yet comes quite close to the second: He's been hovering at around 9 or 10 percent, even cracking 15 in some polls (including one of CNN's very own).

By keeping Kennedy off the debate stage, CNN is depriving viewers of the opportunity to see both Donald Trump and Joe Biden taken to task for the COVID-19 policies they supported—lockdowns that deprived kids of their educations, mask mandates that ended up being almost entirely pointless, funerals and weddings conducted via Zoom, padlocked playgrounds and skate parks filled in with sand, not to mention stunning levels of government spending that sank our economy into deep inflation from which we still haven't fully recovered. We need more people challenging the political duopoly, not fewer. But leave it to the major parties and major networks to fear competition; all incumbents fear competition when they can sense they're in decline.

Scenes from New York: The weed crackdown is underway. Unauthorized dispensaries and bodegas have, for the last year or so, outnumbered licensed shops 20 to one, but New York's law enforcement and regulators have now decided to take action. Signs like these are commonplace, and represent a stunning admission on the part of the pot regulators: They totally botched the legal weed rollout by doling out a paltry number of licenses to applicants on the basis of "diversity" and "equity" but disallowing the vast majority of shops to obtain legal licenses. (More from Reason's Jacob Sullum.)

QUICK HITS

• "New polling from Fox News shows a seven-point swing in President Joe Biden's favorability among independents: They prefer Biden by 9 points, a reversal from May, when they favored Trump by 2 points," reports Politico.
• "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said intense fighting with Hamas will soon be paused and some forces redeployed to the north of the country, where violence is escalating with Lebanon-based Hezbollah," reports Bloomberg.
• "Did anyone ever hear of Dana White?" Trump asked, referring to the UFC president, during a speech at a conference in Washington on Saturday. "I said, 'Dana, I have an idea. Why don't you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters, and then you have the champion of your league—these are the greatest fighters in the world—fight the champion of the migrants.' I think the migrant guy might win; that's how tough they are. He didn't like that idea too much." He also talked up how he would "begin the largest deportation operation in American history" if elected to a second term.
• Over 1,300 people died this month while attempting to complete their hajj to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia.

The post BYO A.C. appeared first on Reason.com.

National polls show slight shift toward Joe Biden: In the roughly week and a half since former president (and presumptive Republican presidential nominee) Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies related to falsifying records to hide hush-money payments to a porn star, numerous national polls have indicated that voters have moved slightly toward incumbent president (and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee) Joe Biden.

A HarrisX/Forbes poll found Biden and Trump each getting a one-point bump after the verdict. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump losing a point. A Morning Consult poll found a one-point bump for Biden, with Trump neither gaining nor losing any ground. And an Echelon Insights poll found a two-point Biden bump, with Trump support staying flat. (All poll results can be found in a chart here.)

The New York Times recontacted some 2,000 respondents they had polled this spring and found that "the group favored Mr. Trump by three points when originally interviewed in April and May, but this week they backed him by only one point."

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 25 percent of independents and 10 percent of Republicans are less likely to vote for Trump following his conviction. The poll "also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal," Reuters reports. "The potential loss of a tenth of his party's voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction."

"The verdict has not overhauled the 2024 race nearly as much as Democrats hoped it would," writes The Washington Post's Aaron Blake. "But the totality of the evidence suggests it has dinged Trump a little."

Some of this perceived shift, ABC adds, could be the result of "differential partisan nonresponse bias"—basically, Republicans may be less keen to respond to polls right now given the bad news they've just been dealt in the form of a Trump conviction, while Democrats might be more excited to respond. And none of these shifts are massive; these changes are within the margin of error. Time will tell.

Scenes from D.C.: I present to you the most D.C. thing that I have ever seen, in honor of the fact that I spent a chunk of last week there. (Out of respect for my D.C.-based colleagues, I will not say anything unkind about this, uh, "city.")

Possibly the most DC parade float ever pic.twitter.com/RIlcXEoOCI

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) June 9, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "If the footage of [Noa] Argamani being kidnapped on the back of a motorcycle on October 7 became a darkly iconic representation of that day's horror," writes Oliver Wiseman, "the footage of her reunion with her father represented will be remembered as an all too rare showing of hope."
• "What if the U.S. cuts off aid to Israel?" asks Reason's Matt Welch.
• Today, Donald Trump—now a convicted felon—will sit for his probation interview.
• Colorado's weed market comedown.
• Really good Odd Lots episode on the widely reviled practice of "personalized pricing."
• Legitimately into this theory: Arranged marriage isn't dead, it's just in essence mediated by social media apps.

lots of normal people in middle america get into dating app marriages that look a lot like arranged marriages. meet someone with aligned values and comparable social status, full send to marriage within a couple months pic.twitter.com/ChhmKvHVJt

— cold ???? (@coldhealing) June 9, 2024

The post The Conviction Effect appeared first on Reason.com.

Released this morning: The jobs report, released at 8:30 this morning, shows that in May employers added 272,000 jobs, up from the monthly average of 242,000 that's persisted for the first half of the year and far more than most economists predicted.

In April, the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent—a bit higher than the 3.4 percent unemployment the year prior. In May, it slid up to 4 percent.

"The headline number is a source for celebration for President [Joe] Biden, who frequently points to the strong job market when making the case to voters that he has handled the economy well," summarizes The New York Times. But really, the picture is more complicated.

The economy is finally recovering from its recent high-inflation period, but the recovery has been slower than predicted and the Federal Reserve will probably not be inclined to lower rates anytime soon (which affects people's willingness to transact houses, for example). This new data probably won't change the Federal Reserve's behavior, so interest rates will remain high—a tough pill for Biden to swallow, as that may be one of the major factors leading to people's perception that the economy just isn't working for them.

Maybe Trump isn't so bad? Per The Washington Post, Donald Trump plans "to repeal parts of the 1974 law that restricts the president's authority to spend federal dollars without congressional approval" if he's elected to office a second time. He's claimed his Day 1 in office would include him telling every agency to find a "large chunk" of their budgets that can be cut, taking aim at international aid programs and environmental agencies in particular.

"What the Trump team is saying is alarming, unusual and really beyond the pale of anything we've seen," Eloise Pasachoff, a budget law expert at Georgetown, tells The Washington Post. But the national debt—which currently exceeds $34 trillion—is also alarming, unusual, and really beyond the pale of anything we've ever seen, so it's not clear what types of drastic measures ought to be taken to return spending to appropriate levels. For more on the national debt, check out this Just Asking Questions interview with Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who wears a debt clock lapel pin.

But the specific mechanism Trump plans to use may throw the balance between the legislative and executive branches out of whack. "I will use the president's long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings," writes Trump on his campaign website. Impounding funds, which was banned by lawmakers when President Richard Nixon abused the process, is when a president refuses to dispense funds even after Congress has already appropriated them.

Many quoted by The Washington Post seem to believe this would be a massive constitutional crisis, and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical that Trump would actually cut the amount of spending he says. But it's interesting that Trump gets dinged for proposals like this one, while plenty of Joe Biden's spendiest programs (like student loan forgiveness, which has repeatedly been thwarted by the courts) are deemed totally acceptable.

Scenes from New York: "An investigation from the City's Department of Investigation found that around 1,200 NYPD officers cheated while taking their promotional exam, yet the cheating was apparently for naught, because it didn't meaningfully improve their test scores," reports Hell Gate. 

QUICK HITS

• "SpaceX received the go-ahead from US air safety regulators to launch its massive Starship rocket on a fourth major test flight, as the Elon Musk-led company works to make the vehicle operational and ready for regular trips to space," reports Bloomberg. "The Federal Aviation Administration granted SpaceX a launch license to move forward with the next test flight, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday." (UPDATE: The launch happened yesterday and was successful.)
• Canada's new Online Harms Act would "curtail people's liberty in order to stop future crimes they haven't yet committed," writes The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf. Take it from the man himself: "We need the ability to stop an anticipated hate crime from occurring," says Canada's attorney general.
• Hunter Biden's gun trial—where he's charged with lying about drug use to obtain a gun—is ongoing but looking especially messy as his sister-in-law/ex-girlfriend Hallie Biden testifies against him, talking about how she disposed of his gun in a grocery store garbage can.
• "Congestion pricing, a good idea, died because our government doesn't deserve the money," writes Josh Barro at Very Serious.
• "A widely held belief is that the Nordic countries are great bastions of rehabilitation: by focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment, they have managed to achieve remarkably low recidivism rates. Or so the story goes. This notion, however, is largely a myth," argues Patterns in Humanity.
• Briahna Joy Gray, who hosted Rising with Reason's own Robby Soave (and sometimes yours truly, when I would fill in for Soave), rolled her eyes at a source's account of her sister's October 7 rape and was promptly fired from the show.
• Joe Biden's executive order restricting asylum seekers is already having terrible consequences:

"They aren't all asylum seekers" totally misses the point. We don't want to send one person back to persecution or torture. If that requires letting in 10 or 100 who want to work, so what? My tax dollars shouldn't go to help any persecutors or torturers. https://t.co/hoh2MOyyz4

— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) June 6, 2024

• New Just Asking Questions with Mike Solana (an absolute must-follow):

The post The Economy Biden Wants appeared first on Reason.com.

Guilty on all counts: Last night, a jury found former President Donald Trump guilty on all 34 counts. He was convicted of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he had a tryst, in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

Sentencing, which may include prison time but does not necessarily, has been set for July 11. Trump still has appeals to exhaust, and Judge Juan M. Merchan could also choose to seek probation instead of throwing the presidential candidate in the slammer. In other words: There are a lot of different ways this could play out which would still allow Trump to campaign for president (and be elected).

Since this happened last night, we do not yet have polling data on how this verdict will affect the presidential race. But a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 6 percent of Trump voters would be less likely to vote for their favored candidate if convicted, while "24 percent say they would be more likely to vote for him" and an impressive "68 percent say it would not make a difference." That 6 percent could be consequential in a tight race.

Critics on the left, many of whom are hungry for Trump to receive jail time, and those on the right who are willing to excuse his criminal and norms-shattering behavior time and time again are both frequently wrong, but in this particular case, the legal argument was mighty dubious, writes Reason's Jacob Sullum, and the verdict was perhaps reached too swiftly, providing fodder for the argument that this was politically motivated.

"In legal terms, the quick verdict is hard to fathom," writes Sullum. "That's not because there were so many counts to consider, each related to a specific invoice, check, or ledger entry allegedly aimed at disguising a hush-money reimbursement as payment for legal services. Once jurors accepted the prosecution's theory of the case, it was pretty much inevitable that they would find Trump guilty on all 34 counts. But that theory was complicated, confusing, and in some versions highly implausible, if not nonsensical."

The basics: One of the prosecution's basic arguments was that Trump falsified business records with "an intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission thereof." That other crime would be a violation of Section 17-152, a New York state election law that considers it a misdemeanor for "two or more persons" to "conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means."

But Judge Merchan told jurors they did not have to agree on what "unlawful means" were used, or what that even means, to reach a unanimous verdict. And prosecutors needed to convince jurors that Trump "knowingly and willfully" engaged in such criminal conspiracy with his fixer, Michael Cohen, which strains credulity: One argument, put forth by prosecutors, was that Cohen "made an excessive campaign contribution, thereby violating the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), when he fronted the money to pay Daniels" (per Sullum)—an offense Cohen pleaded guilty to several years ago and a piece of evidence jurors heard but were instructed to use "to assess Cohen's credibility" but not his guilt—but it is in fact quite plausible that Trump did not know that instructing Cohen to pay Daniels was illegal.

"The prosecutors zapped a dead misdemeanor back into life by claiming a violation under New York's election law 17-152," writes Jonathan Turley at The Hill. "The argument is that the crime was committed to further another crime as an unlawful means to influence the election. However, that other crime can be the falsification of business records. So the jury (or some jurors, at least) could find that some documents were falsified as an unlawful means of falsifying other documents."

HOODWINKED: It's all legally shaky, but that didn't stop prosecutors from making wild arguments (as they do), like one that the hush-money payment (also called "[an] effort to hoodwink the American voter") "could very well be what got President Trump elected" in 2016, and that the cover-up of the Daniels affair amounted to "a subversion of democracy" meant to "manipulate and defraud the voters."

The payment to Daniels "turned out to be one of the most valuable contributions anyone ever made to Trump," Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass argued at one point. But, ultimately, jurors were convinced by these arguments—even if much of the conservative legal movement and punditry (even those who aren't Trump fans) were not.

As far as appeals, Trump has plenty of "material to work with" writes Ankush Khardori at Politico. "What he's got has almost nothing to do with the salacious and supposedly extraneous details offered by Daniels about her sexual encounter with Trump—after all, Trump and his legal team foolishly invited that testimony themselves by denying its existence—but with the underlying legal architecture of the case, which imported complex principles of federal election law into a state law case about false business records."

Scenes from New York: That's enough New York for today.

QUICK HITS

• It's pretty fun to play with this tool—called "Build a Trump Voter"/"Build a Biden Voter"—from The Economist.
• Bill Ackman preps for Pershing Square IPO.
• I'm here for all shots fired at baby boomers but am not sure whether stinginess—also termed frugality or fiscal prudence—is the concern. Why are we trying to audit an entire generation's consumer spending habits? Who cares?
• Inside the world of TikTok influencers who instruct their lady followers on how to snag a rich guy.
• Ukraine is now allowed to hit targets within Russia using American-made weapons in order to defend itself from its aggressors.
• Not sold on the term "climate refugees" (or apocalypticism about what the future will hold) but Brazilian flooding is displacing hundreds of thousands of people, leaving the government scrambling.
• Are you a libertarian left wondering who Chase Oliver is? Ask no more. Watch Just Asking Questions (and send us hate mail/love letters, vows of loyalty, notes of criticism, anything you desire). Some have said my views, espoused within, are "based" but I still do not know what this word means nor will I investigate.

The post First Felon appeared first on Reason.com.

Nikki Haley shows her true colors: The former presidential contender, United Nations ambassador, and South Carolina governor visited Israel this week. A photo was taken of her writing "finish them" on artillery shells that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) will use in either Lebanon or Gaza, along with "America [heart emoji] Israel always." (She was visiting the north, so using the artillery shells against Hezbollah seems more likely.)

Finish them!

זה מה שכתבה היום חברתי, השגרירה לשעבר, ניקי היילי על פגז במהלך ביקור במוצב של תותחנים בגבול הצפון.

הגיע הזמן לשינוי משוואה - תושבי צור וצידון יתפנו, תושבי הצפון יחזרו.

צה"ל יכול לנצח! pic.twitter.com/qvLNCXPl7o

— Danny Danon ???????? דני דנון (@dannydanon) May 28, 2024

Interpreted charitably, Haley could have meant "them" as Hamas, the terrorists responsible for perpetrating the October 7 attack which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages, or Hezbollah, a terrorist group and key Hamas ally based in Lebanon that's been assaulting the north. But given how much criticism Israel has received from international onlookers—including the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—for purported war crimes and conducting what has been described as a "genocide" in Gaza, "finish them" seems liable to misinterpretation. Her follow-up comments didn't exactly exonerate her.

"Israel, they're the good guys," Haley said in an interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom (more coverage here). "And you know what I want Israelis to know? You're doing the right thing. Don't let anybody make you feel wrong."

Haley then criticized the Biden administration's decision earlier this month to pause heavy bombs shipments to Israel over the military's Rafah invasion: "You can't hold back weapons from an ally. So if we want to be a friend to Israel, the best thing America can do is let Israel do its job and just support we shouldn't be preaching to Israel, we shouldn't be telling them how to win the war, we shouldn't tell them what they can or can't do."

"We should just be saying, what else do you need?" Haley continued.

Biden's side of the story: "Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those [2,000-pound] bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers," President Joe Biden said on CNN. "I've made it clear to Bibi [Netanyahu] and the war cabinet: They're not going to get our support, if in fact they go on these population centers."

It's easy to look at Haley as nothing more than a war hawk and, indeed, her comments suggest that she wants the U.S. to provide fully unconditional support for Israel—contra how the Biden administration has been handling the situation. The "finish them" comment was probably referring to terrorists, not civilians—making it a bit less horrifying than some of the loudest voices would have you believe—but Haley's inability to describe the situation with sufficient nuance is disturbing nonetheless, and more evidence of why her 2024 presidential campaign so sorely missed the mark.

Military assistance: The U.S. provides Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid each year. This year, legislators here have already passed a supplemental $26 billion in funds for Israeli defense and humanitarian aid in Gaza. At least 25,000 Gazans have been killed so far, though there are disputes over the death toll (controversy explained here), with some 10,000 believed to be buried in the rubble that covers the Strip. U.S. taxpayer dollars are going toward Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas, which includes a lot of horror and destruction, in the form of both civilian lives and an almost completely wiped-out Gaza Strip that will be hard for residents to inhabit if they're ever able to return. Roads, hospitals, schools, mosques, and all the buildings needed to support the functions of daily life have been obliterated over the last six months; it's not clear when the bombing will cease or what will be left when it does.

Hamas, of course, is partially responsible for foisting this amount of destruction on the people they tyrannize (some of whom voted them into power years ago): They hide among civilians, whether it's putting entrances to their tunnel network on sacrosanct hospital grounds or storing weapons next to MRI machines. Some of the destruction is also a function of the dense geography of the Gaza Strip. But some of it is also surely due to Israeli military failures and a poorly calibrated sense of what is just: A recent strike near a displaced persons camp which took out two valuable Hamas members also killed 45 innocents via a fire that the airstrike accidentally started. (The bombs responsible were GBU-39s, designed and manufactured in the U.S.)

When the act of finishing Hamas involves so much collateral damage—in the form of civilian life especially—it's fair to expect politicians not to treat the war in Gaza like a sporting match, or to decorate bombs with hearts.

Scenes from New York: Policing discourse following the death, at the hands of cops, of 26-year-old Brooklyn resident Andre Mayfield, who was wielding two knives and appeared to be having a mental episode.

Dispatch whomever you want. Cops would love to not be part of this. The problem here is 1) the armed man approached the cops. And 2) there are no workers who can or should approach a man holding a knife in each hand to "make clinical decisions and deliver care." https://t.co/KF3iOYIIyt

— Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) May 30, 2024

QUICK HITS

• Update on FlagGate: "My wife is fond of flying flags," Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a letter to legislators who asked that he recuse himself from cases related to the January 6 insurrection. "I am not. She was solely responsible for having flagpoles put up at our residence and our vacation home and has flown a wide variety of flags over the years." At issue is the fact that detractors claim that the flags were linked to stolen-election theories.
• Who is actually behind Elon Musk's business empire?
• A court in Hong Kong just convicted 14 pro-democracy activists using the Beijing-imposed national security law.
• Incredible immigration policy:

https://t.co/sOZGoy0klC pic.twitter.com/PDI2SyFVhs

— ????burga????burganonics????burgaology????burgamatics???? (@C_hoffmanni) May 28, 2024

The post War Hawk Autographs Bombs appeared first on Reason.com.

Donald Trump criminal trial comes to a close: During Tuesday's closing arguments in the New York criminal case against Donald Trump, the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, argued that the former president "had engaged in a fraud against the American people on the eve of the 2016 election by silencing a porn star's account of a sexual encounter with him," per The New York Times' write-up. Steinglass said that the cover-up, via purportedly falsified business records, of the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels "could very well be what got President Trump elected."

"We'll never know if this effort to hoodwink the American voter" was what resulted in Trump's win, Steinglass mused at one point.

This strains credulity, to say the least. This was not the only scandal Trump endured related to sexual impropriety and questions of character. The Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump made his infamous "grab 'em by the pussy" comments, had come to light prior to the 2016 election; I fail to buy that there's a significant contingent of voters out there who would have been concerned by the Stormy Daniels affair, yet fine with the Access Hollywood comments. This is a man whose ex-wife had accused him of rape back in 1990, after all, and who's had quite a few settlements with work underlings related to sexual misconduct claims.

But it will be up to the jurors to decide whether they believe Steinglass and whether Trump should be convicted of any of the 34 counts he's been brought up on. The hammed-up framing of it all, though unsurprising, lends a bit of credence to people's claims that this trial is politically motivated.

We have no idea how long the jurors will deliberate; a decision could come quickly or it could take many weeks. "Jurors will have the option of convicting Trump of all counts, acquitting him of all counts, or delivering a mixed verdict in which he is found guilty of some charges and not others," notes the Associated Press. "If they deadlock after several days of deliberations and are unable to reach a unanimous verdict, Judge Juan M. Merchan may declare a mistrial."

Related: A primer on the basics of the case.

Also: If convicted, how likely is it that Donald Trump would actually go to prison vs. being sentenced to probation, conditional discharge, or community service? Politico has some answers as to how this might play out.

Scenes from New York: On June 6, New York's legislative session will end. Lawmakers are currently considering, before they break for summer, voting on a "bill [that] would require companies that use single-use plastic packaging to find sustainable alternatives or pay a yet-to-be-determined fee, which would go toward covering the costs of municipalities' recycling and waste disposal. New York City, officials said, could reap as much as $150 million in costs," per The New York Times.

QUICK HITS

• Follow-up on the Gaza pier:

NEW - the U.S. has stopped all humanitarian aid efforts using the DOD-constructed maritime pier, which is now heavily damaged & floating adrift after bad weather.

Who'd have thought — maybe it would have been better to simply deliver aid via #Gaza's 7x land crossings? pic.twitter.com/9I9UQzEstH

— Charles Lister (@Charles_Lister) May 28, 2024

• In downtown Seoul, participants are competing to see who can space out the longest.
• North Korea is dumping literal garbage on South Korea.
• Pope Francis issued an apology after using an anti-gay slur in a private meeting with 250 Italian bishops.
• "If a recession doesn't materialize soon, it could do lasting damage to the yield curve's status as a warning system," reports The Wall Street Journal, "providing one of the most significant examples of how the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic has upended longstanding assumptions on Wall Street about how markets and the economy function."
• An investigation by The Guardian and Israeli magazines +972 and Local Call has revealed how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government "deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior [International Criminal Court (ICC)] staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries." This is on the heels of the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, announcing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, and follows years of complaints by Israelis that the government is wrongly singled out by international organs that were intended to police human rights abuses.
• Noah Smith writes about the new Cold War, how China might blockade Taiwan vs. invading it, and about how the U.S. should "prioritize Asia over either Europe or the Middle East."

The post In the Hands of the Jury appeared first on Reason.com.

The New York Times apoplectic over basically nothing: "At Justice Alito's House, a 'Stop the Steal' Symbol on Display," reads a New York Times headline from yesterday.

According to the Times, an upside-down American flag was flown at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's house for a few days in January 2021—between the January 6 Capitol riot and President Joe Biden's inauguration. The nation's esteemed paper of record suggests this action indicates that Alito thinks the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

There is very little evidence available to make this case. People fly upside-down flags for all kinds of reasons; it typically signals "SOS" or a sense that the country is horribly off course. People have historically flown flags in this manner out of protest for the Vietnam War, out of protest for the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, to contest election results (believing the election was stolen or that voter fraud was rampant), or—and don't get the two confused—to signal displeasure with the election results.

Alito reports that his wife was the one who flew the flag in this manner and that it concerned a dispute with a neighbor who posted an anti-Trump sign in their yard, following the election, that used expletives. Mrs. Alito was reportedly angered by this, and flew her flag upside-down in response. It is very hard to tell what intentions were behind one single gesture, reportedly not even done by the justice himself, and no account from neighbors or friends of the Alito family has bolstered the idea that Mrs. Alito is a "Stop the Steal" type.

This reminds me of when media outlets and the Anti-Defamation League claimed the "OK" symbol was actually a white supremacist gesture. If you look hard enough, you can find disturbing symbols anywhere you look, but you must sometimes suspend logic and reason in order to do so. This does not seem like a situation where a sitting Supreme Court justice is supporting overthrowing election results; it looks like a situation where The New York Times is straining to make that the narrative.

How Taiwan handles TikTok: Taiwan, which has long labeled TikTok a national security threat, eschews a national ban on the Chinese-owned app.

Five years ago, the government banned it on the devices of employees. For the last eight years, the ruling party (which will be in power for another four, at least, as the new president is being inaugurated on Monday) has refused to use the app. Legislators in Taiwan say "they do not have the luxury of thinking of TikTok as the only threat," reports The New York Times. "Disinformation reaches Taiwanese internet users on every type of social media, from chat rooms to short videos."

With China—which contests Taiwanese independence and wants reunification (and seems likely to attempt it by military force at some point)—always looming as a threat, TikTok is the least of Taiwanese politicians' worries.

Note that Taiwan is no libertarian tech paradise. Lawmakers there are weighing "measures that tackle internet threats—fraud, scams and cybercrime—broadly enough to apply to all these existing social media platforms," which may end up encroaching on free speech rights. Still, Taiwan has a robust online fact-checking ecosystem and lots of alternative media sites where users might be able to get better information.

All of this is instructive as legislators in the U.S. have passed a ban on the app and more broadly contemplate how much of a threat to national security the Chinese-owned app poses.

Scenes from New York: The Food and Drug Administration hates this photo since they have decided that Elf Bars—which come in a multitude of flavors—are harming America's youth. They're hard to find these days and Customs keeps seizing shipments at the border. AS FOR ME, I will keep enjoying my NICOTINE FREEDOM, and you can pry my little Miami Mint vape from my cold, dead hands!

QUICK HITS

• "When you're paralyzed from the neck down, the last vestige of normalcy that you have left comes from your brain," writes Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance. "Arbaugh was allowing Neuralink direct, physical access to his, in a procedure that came with all the standard risks of serious surgery as well as the unknown risks of something so new. Doctors would be removing part of his skull and sticking Neuralink's coin-size device with its electrode-laced threads—a foreign object that had never before been tested on humans—into his brain."
• A Change.org petition is calling for the Kansas City Chiefs—yes, a football team in the Midwest—to dismiss one of their players for having given a commencement speech at a Catholic college that says…standard Catholic things. I know it is very upsetting to some people that a football player in the Midwest does not enjoy bell hooks, but we should probably tolerate this nonetheless.
• Interesting thread from Haviv Rettig Gur about the difference in mindset of American Jews and their Israeli counterparts.
• There has been a wave of resignations recently at OpenAI, which some are using to substantiate AI doomerism. Others have commented that you don't resign and post cryptic tweets if you're legitimately worried about the product's safety, which could ostensibly be better influenced from the inside. More on this.

The post Mrs. Alito and the Bad Flag appeared first on Reason.com.

Just and democratic! "We are working in solidarity on the formulation of a more just and democratic multipolar world order," said Russian President Vladimir Putin of his partnership with Chinese President Xi Jinping, lying through his teeth as he arrived in Beijing for diplomatic talks.

This month, Putin was inaugurated for yet another term as president. That he chose China as his first state visit of this term, and traveled with such a massive delegation, is of some significance—as well as the fact that the visit came on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's China visit last month, in which he raised concerns over Xi's enabling of Putin's war in Ukraine.

During the meetings, Putin hyped how China is Russia's top trade partner, as well as their future collaborations "in energy and nuclear power research," per The New York Times, though he neglected "mention of a proposed natural gas pipeline to China that Moscow would like to see built."

A joint statement that emerged from the visit "spoke of concerns about what were described as U.S. efforts to violate the strategic nuclear balance, about global U.S. missile defence that threatened Russia and China, and about U.S. plans for high precision non-nuclear weapons," reported Reuters.

Putin, whose military is currently assaulting the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv from above, needs to curry even more favor with Xi to win the war he started in Ukraine and ensure he can rely on Chinese help. (Ukraine, meanwhile, is awaiting more weapons shipments from the U.S., which have been substantially delayed.)

China "claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed Moscow's contentions that Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine by the West, and continues to supply Russia with key components that Moscow needs for its productions of weapons," reported the Associated Press.

Last year, China proposed a deal for peace, which left massive parts of Ukraine to Putin and was understandably rejected by Ukraine and pretty much all of the West. It's in China's best interest for the war to end—Russia's invasion "jolted the Chinese economy by pushing up oil, wheat and other commodity prices," and Xi has not been thrilled by the heightened threat of nuclear war—but it has played a quite unserious role in actually bringing that about.

During this visit, Putin traveled with a huge delegation that was supposed to signal all the areas of overlap and cooperation between Russia and China. In the delegation, reported the Times, was "Alexander Novak, an official overseeing oil and gas, including the development of the Power of Siberia 2 natural gas pipeline." The project would "redirect Russian gas supplies that had gone to Europe toward China instead," but Xi and Putin have not yet publicly reached a deal to make it so.

Scenes from New York: "An NYPD officer who was guarding Mayor Eric Adams' home in Brooklyn in 2022 unjustifiably shot a man who was entering his own apartment building, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday," reported Gothamist.

Apparently cops who were guarding Adams' house also arrested Tiffanie Narinesammy, a pregnant woman who lived inside the house where this all transpired. Narinesammy alleges in the suit that her rights were violated, as she was held in custody for 24 hours; she delivered a stillborn baby six weeks later, which the suit connects to the stress of the encounter.

QUICK HITS

• The Dublin–New York portal—a real-time video feed between the two cities, placed in two heavily trafficked tourist sites—had to be switched off, according to authorities, because women were getting topless and projecting their boobs across the pond. (Kind of shocked someone complained about this, actually.)
• "A onetime Citibank employee who earned a $130,000 salary working in New York stands to collect a $10 million severance award, thanks to Argentina's pro-labor laws," reported Bloomberg. "The case, which has been wending its way through the courts for more than a decade, crystallizes why Argentine President Javier Milei is vying to revamp the rules around hiring and firing, even as his country battles inflation of almost 290% a year and a deepening recession."
• First Michelin-starred taco stand: El Califa de León, in Mexico City.
• Even though it's two years away, nobody has really emerged as a decent Gavin Newsom replacement in California's gubernatorial race.
• On June 27, we'll get our first faceoff between the two major-party presidential candidates, provided neither candidate's dementia gets the best of them before then.
• Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, was shot yesterday and is in critical condition.
• Anti-fearmongering:

Gays: Going to Pride
FBI: What if a terrorist k*lls you?
Gays: Is someone planning to do that?
FBI: Not that we know of but hypothetically it could happen.
???? pic.twitter.com/JGY3tor92m

— River Page (@river_is_nice) May 15, 2024

The post Tyrant Besties appeared first on Reason.com.

Delay tactics: Former President Donald Trump is currently dealing with the hush-money/falsifying business records case before him, in which he may be convicted and serve some time in prison. It is also not impossible that he will serve some amount of time in jail beforehand if he violates the judge's gag order again.

But the other three criminal cases before him look increasingly like they will be delayed until after the presidential election in November, in part due to the fact that Trump's legal team has been successfully pushing them off until later.

"If Trump wins, he could appoint Justice Department officials to make the two federal cases against him go away," notes Axios, referring to the cases involving conspiracy to overturn election results and mishandling of classified documents. There would still be the Georgia case—concerning the overturning of election results—to contend with, but that case has been roiled by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' conflict of interest scandal. And, in terms of the first two federal cases, legal experts are torn on whether Trump would be able to pardon himself.

"The answer is open in part because no president except Trump has ever been charged with a crime," reports Axios. "But it's also the result of a failure on Congress's part to prohibit the potential practice through a constitutional amendment, though some members of Congress have tried to do so."

Hunter's guns: "A federal judge in Delaware denied Hunter Biden's bid to throw out his felony gun charges on Thursday, rejecting arguments from the president's son that the federal prohibition on owning guns while using illegal drugs is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment," reports Politico.

Biden the younger was charged in 2023 with buying a gun while using illegal drugs—he notoriously had a crack cocaine problem at the time of the purchase, in 2018—as well as lying about the drug use on a government form while buying the weapon.

"Separately, a federal appeals court panel ruled against Biden earlier Thursday in another bid to have the charges against him tossed," reports Politico. "The two decisions appear to clear the way for his case to head to trial on June 3, though his defense team can still pursue further appeals."

"Hunter Biden's multiplying gun charges threaten the right to arms and the right to trial," wrote Reason's Jacob Sullum last year. "Survey data suggest that millions of gun owners are guilty of violating 18 USC 922(g)(3) because they consume arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants (mainly marijuana). Yet fewer than 150 Americans are prosecuted for that crime each year. Even when gun buyers (including people who are disqualified for other reasons, such as felony records) are caught lying on Form 4473, they are rarely prosecuted." It's almost like an example is being made of Hunter Biden, whose legal argument is in stark opposition to the Biden administration's position on the matter.

Scenes from New York: Inside the city's effort to remove severely mentally ill people from subway cars. We discussed this with Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Baltimore cop, on Just Asking Questions #15, ("What does good policing look like?").

QUICK HITS

• My friend Mike Solana, head honcho of Pirate Wires, interviewed Jack Dorsey. "In a rare, far-reaching interview, what follows is a missing chapter of internet history that sheds light not only on Bluesky, but Twitter, X, and the past five years of censorship and backlash," writes Solana. "Because of vulnerabilities designed into the technology, social media, in its current, centralized form, can't survive the global war on speech. The future will be decentralized, or it won't be free."
• "Retiring early is becoming the norm as the share of US workers planning to work beyond age 62 continues to retreat, extending a downshift that started with the pandemic," reports Bloomberg, based on Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.
• In the future, your AI concierge will date other AI concierges and get back to you with a filtered list of who to actually meet. (I'm not reflexively anti-AI, but this strikes me as a bit dark, undervaluing both chemistry and dissimilarity.)

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd says the future of dating is having your AI date other people's AI and recommend the best matches for you to meet pic.twitter.com/9GEEvpuiKZ

— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) May 10, 2024

• "There is broad agreement that the US housing market needs more homes," writes Conor Sen at Bloomberg. "There is also broad agreement that affordability needs to improve. But it doesn't necessarily follow that we should build more affordable homes."
• Innovation in textiles!
• Thailand's about-face on legal pot throws entrepreneurs for a loop.
• You can keep your "modest prosperity"; I'll take a dynamic, growing, highly prosperous society, the likes of which the world has never known before:

ah, yes, "modest prosperity" (being put on a waitlist for 10-13 years to receive a shitty car) is what I aim for https://t.co/yRZzGd6YDY

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) May 9, 2024

• I believe in him:

I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 8, 2024

The post The Untested Self-Pardon appeared first on Reason.com.

No more! Earlier this week, some 3,500 bombs that were meant to be delivered to Israel did not actually make it there. President Joe Biden, long a major arms supplier to Israel, decided that the best way to make his opposition to the Rafah invasion known would be to temporarily stem the flow of weapons.

Biden also "said on Wednesday that he would also block the delivery of artillery shells that could be fired into the urban neighborhoods of Rafah," per The New York Times. Note that the Biden administration is not pausing all arms shipments, but rather trying to exert specific pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to rethink the Rafah offensive.

"Israel…took control of the Gaza side of a key border crossing to Egypt on Tuesday, securing a strategic corridor as negotiators met in Cairo for talks on a truce and hostage releases," reported The Wall Street Journal. "The seizure of the crossing closed a critical gateway for humanitarian assistance for Palestinians, prompting the U.S. to renew calls to reopen the gate."

Bear in mind, also, that the Rafah invasion was not merely to attempt to starve the remaining Gazans in the region through blocking humanitarian aid; an estimated 5,000–8,000 Hamas fighters are believed to be hiding in that city in southern Gaza. The Israeli offensive, which has been smaller in scope than originally thought, aims to stamp them out. It remains to be seen whether the Biden administration exerting pressure in this way will affect Israeli military actions—or how the Rafah offensive is perceived on a national stage.

Many Republicans in Congress reacted unfavorably to this unilateral action by the Biden administration. "It wasn't the Israelis that started this conflict. And I'm just very concerned that we do not try to micromanage Israel's right to defend itself against the terrorist group backed by Iran," said Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) at an Appropriations subcommittee hearing yesterday.

Of course, the Biden administration is really just interested in using leverage. Once a humanitarian plan for getting refugees safely out of Rafah is communicated by Israel, the White House says the weapons shipments will likely resume.

Climate Guy Gavin: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who continues to very convincingly swear that he's not running for president, seems to be eyeing the climate-concerned demographic of voters.

All the way back in 2020, when the grid faced blackouts and the state was roiled by wildfires, Newsom pinned blame on climate change, and majorly misrepresented his prioritization of wildfire management strategies like controlled burns.

During a visit to China last year, Newsom made headlines over a glitzy new partnership between California and Shanghai, which Newsom's press office said are "teaming up to fight the climate crisis by cleaning up ports and reducing emissions from the transportation sector." (Whether this has any real effect on emissions coming out of Shanghai seems beside the point.) During an audience with Pope Francis scheduled for next week, Newsom is expected to emphasize how "global temperatures [are] hurtling towards alarming new heights." This is his talk track, possibly responding to the fact that a far greater percentage of California's likely voters tell pollsters that "stricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost" compared with a decade ago.

"A key part of his strategy has been to ascribe high gas prices and utility bills to corporate greed and gouging while beating back proposals that he believes go too far like Proposition 30, which would have raised taxes on the rich in 2022 to funnel money to electric vehicles," reported Politico. Phrased differently: Newsom does not want to alienate his French Laundry dining companions, and other rich donors who may be considering fleeing the high-tax state, but is very much trying to position himself as someone who takes climate change seriously.

Something to watch in the event that Newsom gets elevated out of his Biden-surrogate position and into the presidential campaign spotlight at any point, whether by the cruel tricks of nature or simple patience.

Scenes from New York: 

Over the weekend, a cruise ship appears to have accidentally killed and dragged a 44-foot endangered Sei whale through the East River. Upon being discovered, the whale was towed to New Jersey for a necropsy.

More whales have been living in the waters surrounding New York City for the last few years—I saw whales from Queens' Rockaway Beach two days ago, which is not totally uncommon here—and meeting all kinds of disturbing fates as a result.

"The increase in beached whales could be an indication that the whale population as a whole is growing. Or, less optimistically, rising water temperatures could be changing the hunting and migration patterns of whales, pushing them into areas where they're more likely to become injured by human activity," reported Curbed last year.

QUICK HITS

• "Saudi authorities have permitted the use of lethal force to clear land for a futuristic desert city being built by dozens of Western companies," an ex–intelligence officer told the BBC.
• Do you feel the Burgumentum?
• It looks like Congress might take another stab at a border deal, sure to please no one.
• Sweetgreen is introducing beef to its menu. Some people are worried it won't hit its climate goals as a result.
• Lots of people are criticizing Ann Coulter's blatant bigotry toward Vivek Ramaswamy during a recent podcast appearance in which Coulter went on Ramaswamy's show. What they're missing, though, is that Coulter's entire argument is that "the core around which the nation's values are formed is the WASP" (wrong!) and that she thinks we need more selective criteria as to which immigrants we let in—ignoring the contradiction present where Ramaswamy himself fits the criteria she describes, yet is still discriminated against by Coulter.

.@AnnCoulter told me flat-out to my face that she couldn't vote for me "because you're an Indian," even though she agreed with me more than most other candidates. I disagree with her but respect she had the guts to speak her mind. It was a riveting hour. The TRUTH podcast is back https://t.co/neVjKSs6e9

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) May 8, 2024

• Pro-Palestine protesters at Princeton don't seem to grasp that their victimhood mentality is getting in the way of their message being taken seriously:

NEW: Pro-Palestine protester at Princeton says she is "literally shaking" because she is starving and "immunocompromised."

The woman accused the school of purposely "physically weakening" her and her peers.

"This is absolutely unfair. My peers and I, we are starving. We are… pic.twitter.com/54TL9lIKOV

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 8, 2024

The post Biden, the Arms Supplier appeared first on Reason.com.

Who has better crazies? Last night, California law enforcement moved in to start clearing the pro-Palestine encampment of protesters at UCLA.

Not to be outdone by the New Yorkers over at Columbia, which had its own night of arrests just a day prior, the college students at UCLA sprayed cops with fire extinguishers and barricaded themselves with plywood. (They literally built a wall and instituted checkpoints, the irony of which does not seem to register.)

Counter-protesters tried to pull the plywood down. They shot fireworks into the encampment. They reportedly sprayed mace. Violence on both sides ensued:

Dueling groups of pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters clashed Wednesday at UCLA, breaking out in fistfights, tearing down encampment barricades and using objects to beat one another. https://t.co/eLTOkdLARP pic.twitter.com/rlM40wLHDx

— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 2, 2024

So last night, the school sent law enforcement in to attempt to stop the violence and clear the tent city. Video emerged of police using stun grenades. A little before publication time, at least one California Highway Patrol (CHP) officer shot something toward the protesters in the encampment, which was met with shouts of "Don't shoot!" and "We're just students!" (The CHP said officers are loaded with nonlethal tools like flash-bang devices. The officers also held off for roughly six hours after issuing orders for protesters to disband; they have only just recently begun moving in and attempting arrests.)

"More than 1,300 protesters have been taken into custody on U.S. campuses over the past two weeks," reported The New York Times. "Arrests were made on Wednesday at the University of Texas at Dallas, Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Tulane University in New Orleans, among other places."

The questions of what type of speech ought to be permitted are fairly thorny here. Restrictions on speech should, of course, be content-neutral. Public and private universities have different obligations. Protests surely run afoul of university policies when they disrupt university operations:

Campus operations will be limited tomorrow and Friday. Please continue to avoid campus and the Royce Quad area. Per Academic Senate guidance on instruction, all in-person classes are authorized and required to pivot to remote tomorrow and Friday. https://t.co/MNiqJ7bu67

— UCLA (@UCLA) May 2, 2024

And protests that devolve into vandalism and violence—as many have—ought to be treated differently than mere speech. One could make the case that encampments, housing peaceful protesters, are civil disobedience, but part of what makes civil disobedience work is being willing to stoically incur harsh consequences for your actions. Universities are well within their rights to clear tent cities from their campuses, but perhaps protesters who believe in their cause would be better served by simply taking the arrest and proving to the interested public that they are willing to sacrifice for this cause.

Absent that, the UCLA protesters—who have likened the waving of bananas near their encampment (since someone has an allergy) to Israeli settlers waving machine guns, and prevented students from attending class—deserve little respect.

Relevance allergies: Yesterday, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) announced a huge convention get: Former President Donald Trump will be speaking, and you can even buy merch in preparation for the big event (never mind the fact that the man already had four years during which he could have pardoned Julian Assange or Ross Ulbricht, yet chose not to). It says it also invited President Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak, but to my mind it's not exactly shocking that Biden ignored the invite.

The Libertarian Party is selling Trump-themed merch ahead of a speech by Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, at the Libertarian National Convention. https://t.co/S0zelJMszJ https://t.co/msMmma51o2 pic.twitter.com/vN9T0napjF

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) May 1, 2024

"I know there are some libertarians who have a severe allergy to relevance, but it is an undeniably great thing that Trump is speaking at the Libertarian Party National Convention," wrote comedian Dave Smith on X. "It will generate more attention on our party and the issues that we care about, than we've ever had."

Perhaps you're sitting there wondering why the L.P.—which, at this convention, will be nominating its own presidential candidate (contenders include Chase Oliver, Mike ter Maat, and Michael Rectenwald)—would want to host the former president and presumptive nominee for another party. To answer these questions, I called up L.P. Communications Director Brian McWilliams.

All publicity = good publicity? The media attention "is going to be more than we have ever experienced," says McWilliams. "Do you think libertarians will be happy about it?" I asked, to a firm yes from him: "This gives us an opportunity to get Donald Trump up there, to make him answer questions from our philosophical base." When I asked who would be moderating—who will be doing the pushing back, and making sure Trump doesn't turn this into a bloviating stump speech—he said he did not yet know, but possibly the L.P. chair, Angela McArdle.

"RFK [Jr.] was flirting with [the L.P.] because we are a growing bloc. Trump's seeing that," says McWilliams. "Growing bloc via what metric?" I asked. "I think we now are getting to a point where we're representing more Americans," he continued, to which I pressed: "Do we have data that reflects that?"

"We don't have data that reflects that as far as party registration or affiliation," responded McWilliams. "I'm basically speaking from the point of what we're seeing from a cultural perspective." Following the Reno Reset in 2022, at which point the Mises Caucus—essentially, mostly anarcho-capitalist edgelords who spend a lot of time online—took over the party, libertarians have widely criticized the nouveau L.P. for its dropping membership and struggles with fundraising.

As for the merch, McWilliams says "it was basically an internal miscommunication as far as timing…some version of merch might be made available, I can't say if it's going to be that exact variety." And, there's still "a question of whether or not we want to be selling merch for Donald Trump that's affiliated with the Libertarian Party or not."

"This was something that somebody clearly spent time and resources on," I noted, to which he admitted that "without a doubt there was internal thought given to creating the merchandise, you know, that there's no denying that….[But] this was not something that I wanted to go out the same exact day the same exact time." All of this struck me as wishy-washy, like they were caught in something that looked bad, and want to save face.

Awfully close? McArdle released a meandering 17-minute video chalking up a lot of the rollout awkwardness to internal incompetence.

"The founders of this party were hardcore radicals. They were anarchists. They hated the government. Many of our members are anarchists; we want total abolition of the federal government. And when we see someone else [Donald Trump] get potentially kicked off the ballot for, you know, not agreeing with the election results, complaining about the federal government, and so on and so forth, that looks awfully close to some of the views we have about the legitimacy of the federal government."

Well then! So maybe this isn't an L.P. endorsement of Trump, but boy could you be forgiven for thinking they fancy him and are willing to excuse some of his more election-subverting actions.

Scenes from New York: It's now confirmed, both by Columbia's president and by Mayor Eric Adams, that "individuals not affiliated with the university" were the ones leading the Hamilton Hall break-in and barricade that got shut down by NYPD yesterday. "Approximately 300 people were arrested," and they do not know the breakdown yet of outside agitators vs. students.

QUICK HITS

• Bill Ackman, a major Harvard donor who was one of the top voices calling for former President Claudine Gay to step down following her insufficient handling of antisemitism on campus, has seemingly decided to take his dollars elsewhere:

William. pic.twitter.com/tdkHbzSIfK

— Katie Herzog (@kittypurrzog) May 1, 2024

• "NO bagels" needed at the UCLA pro-Palestine encampment. (Too Jewish-coded? Are they coming for lox next? SMH, I knew I didn't like these kids.)
• "Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell kept hopes alive for an interest-rate cut this year while acknowledging that a burst of inflation has reduced policymakers' confidence that price pressures are ebbing," reported Bloomberg. Jerome, you big tease!
• Everything you ever wanted to know about regional skating cultures and the Atlanta scene.
• "Lack of ammunition is forcing the outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers to pull back, one village after another, including three surrendered Sunday, as intense fighting roils the countryside surrounding Avdiivka nearly three months after the strategic city fell to Russia," reported the Associated Press. "Facing an outcry after Avdiivka's fall, Ukraine is rushing to build concrete-fortified trenches, foxholes, firing positions and other barricades on the front lines. But relentless Russian shelling, lack of equipment and crippling bureaucracy plague construction across the vast 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, even as a new Russian offensive looms."
• How to stay fit on the moon.

The post L.A. Beats NYC? appeared first on Reason.com.

Which side were you on in the allergy wars? Over at UCLA, the pro-Palestine protesters have reached peak Angeleno zoomer by figuring out how to be victimized by bananas.

According to Twitter user Linda Mamoun (with video footage to back it up): "There was a protestor in the liberated zone…with a potentially fatal banana allergy. Counterprotestors invaded the encampment and saw all the no bananas warnings. The next day they came back waving bananas like settlers waving machine guns & smeared bananas everywhere."

Yes, just like settlers!

Meanwhile, over on the East Coast, the Columbia protesters have decided that actually they are the ones who need "humanitarian aid."

"They're obligated to provide food to students who pay for a meal plan here," said one spokesperson-protester. "Do you want students to die of dehydration and starvation or get severely ill, even if they disagree with you? If the answer is no, then you should allow basic—I mean, it's crazy to say it because we're on an Ivy League campus, but this is like basic humanitarian aid we're asking for."

The protester appears to be referring to the fact that the university has limited meal-hall access and that the protesters were occupying and barricading Hamilton Hall, wanting assurances that the college would not stop deliveries of food from entering.

Crackdown: Now, it's effectively a non-issue: Dozens of protesters were arrested last night as New York Police Department officers entered the building at around 9:30 p.m., called in by President Minouche Shafik. "We regret that protesters have chosen to escalate the situation through their actions," wrote Shafik in a statement. "After the university learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized and blockaded, we were left with no choice."

Shafik also noted, interestingly, that "the group that broke into and occupied the building is led by individuals who are not affiliated with the university."

Meanwhile, police cracked down on other protests across the country—like one at Washington University in St. Louis—sometimes using what looks like excessive force. In St. Louis, reports emerged of police beating up a professor from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, named Steve Tamari; Tamari reportedly suffered injuries including a broken hand and ribs.

It's very difficult to sort out all the different threads of this loose campus movement, along with the very different responses from university administrators and local law enforcement. For anyone inclined to forget: speech should be given a wide berth (even that which is ugly and offensive). Campus speech restrictions—to the extent that they ought to be permitted at all—should be content-neutral, a quite legitimate case can be made that tent cities are not permitted by university policies, but nobody should cheer agents of the state exerting more force than is absolutely necessary to break it all up.

Updates from the actual war zone: Hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas keep breaking down.

The U.S. is trying to hastily broker yet another deal as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made sounds indicating that the military will invade Rafah, an area in southern Gaza where some 1 million Palestinians—plus an unknown quantity of Hamas terrorists, in the thousands—are sheltering.

But mediators—Americans, Egyptians, and Qataris—"worry that Hamas appears willing to sacrifice even more Palestinian civilians," according to The New York Times. "[Hamas] officials believe that the deaths in Gaza erode support for Israel around the world." As a result, they're not willing to do very much to prevent an invasion of Rafah and are also resistant to more hostage-for-prisoners deals, including one offered by Israel that would have been imbalanced in Hamas' favor.

Hamas has rejected previous offers, claiming that they cannot meet Israel's demand for 40 living hostages who are female, sick, or elderly, leading many to speculate that Hamas has killed more of the hostages than previously thought. "Throughout the months of negotiations since the last ceasefire Israel has repeatedly asked for a list of the hostages and their conditions," reports CNN. "Hamas has argued that it needs a break in the fighting to be able to track and gather down the hostages, the same argument it made in November before a week-long pause that broke down after Hamas failed to deliver more hostages."

Of the roughly 250 hostages taken on October 7, some 129 are still being held by Hamas, with 33 of those believed to be dead.

One of the Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, appears to be at least responsible in part for the sinking of deals. He has reportedly been negotiating while surrounded by 15 hostages, whom he uses as human shields to prevent Israel from taking him out. (I wonder if he's banana-vulnerable; have we tried that yet?)

Demands for a ceasefire from pro-Palestine activists in the U.S. are fine and good, but they look hollow when it's Hamas that's refusing to agree to a ceasefire or a plan to return the hostages.

Scenes from New York: A meta take that's pretty much spot-on (though that one guy's crop top is beautiful, at least in his own imagination).

More than anything, these people are boring, and artless, and ignorant. They are a total repudiation of everything beautiful about humanity, which I think is what's most irritating of all. The specific cause - which changes seemingly by the month - is in actuality irrelevant https://t.co/EkJtaRW739

— pjeffa (????,????) (@jeff82874662) May 1, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "Since 2019, prices for many types of consumer purchases in the U.S. have shot up," reports The Atlantic's Amanda Mull. "On average, goods cost nearly 20 percent more than they did before the pandemic."
• A good point, raised by Just Asking Questions guest Peter Moskos:

Crime. People, it's about crime. There's tons of cheap housing in American cities. Virtually free to buy. But you won't live here because of crime. Not race. Crime. (Well crime and schools.) Reduce crime in cities and double affordable housing. Quadruple in some. https://t.co/IWJPdrttqE pic.twitter.com/A2zmxNF2nl

— Peter Moskos (@PeterMoskos) May 1, 2024

• Elon Musk went to China to try to convince regulators to approve his self-driving cars.
• "Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the giant cryptocurrency exchange Binance, was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison, a much lighter penalty than other crypto executives have faced since the industry imploded in 2022," reports The New York Times.
• Good observation:

Europe is falling behind the USA in effectively every area of technology

SpaceX completely killed the EU launch ecosystem etc

The one area EU is keeping up?

Biotech…

Because even though they try to regulate innovation to death… at least in biotech the US does the same ????

— delian (@zebulgar) April 30, 2024

The post Weaponized Bananas appeared first on Reason.com.

Banning TikTok for real this time: On Saturday, the House passed bills that will send large sums of aid to Israel ($26 billion), Ukraine ($60 billion), and Taiwan ($8 billion), as well as a long-gestating measure to force the divestiture of the video app TikTok.

Now the legislation will need to be approved by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

The TikTok ban will probably be challenged. "This is an unprecedented deal worked out between the Republican Speaker and President Biden," declared Michael Beckerman, TikTok's head of public policy, in a memo to the company's American staff. "At the stage that the bill is signed, we will move to the courts for a legal challenge."

China's internet regulator/censor, the Cyberspace Administration, has taken note of the movement on the TikTok bill, which would either ban the Chinese-owned company from operating in the U.S. or force sale of the app to an American owner within a tight timeframe. Forcing divestiture presents a few problems, namely that the proprietary algorithm and source code would likely fail to convey with the purchase, making the app…practically useless.

Not to be outdone by American lawmakers, China's government on Friday ordered that the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads be pulled from Apple's app store over "national security concerns" (of course). "A person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China's president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country's cybersecurity laws," reports The New York Times. WhatsApp is used minimally compared to WeChat (owned by Chinese company Tencent). But for Apple—which anticipated this to some degree, and already started shifting its supply chain overseas after having been quite conciliatory to the Chinese Communist Party for many years—to be caught in the crosshairs is a harbinger of more to come.

This type of justification can always be found if one looks hard enough—and China's censors certainly do. But beware the coming internet wars, and the use of the American TikTok ban as justification for all manner of crackdowns.

Free and open internet? "A Russian opposition blogger, Aleksandr Gorbunov, posted on social media last month that Russia could use the move to shut down services like YouTube," argues The New York Times' David McCabe. "I don't think the obvious thing needs to be stated out loud, which is that when Russia blocks YouTube, they'll justify it with precisely this decision of the United States," said Gorbunov.

Xi's regime in China and Vladimir Putin's regime in Russia, of course, feel quite comfortable taking whatever cheap shots they can at U.S. lawmakers; if they want to crack down on internet freedoms, they can and will, no excuse necessary. But the TikTok bill is certainly escalatory, and it undermines America's longstanding rhetorical commitment to a free and open internet—or the internet as a "global free-trade zone," in the words of former President Bill Clinton.

Scenes from New York: Today is my birthday! And on Saturday, I went out with friends (including a grand total of three babies, who were shockingly well-behaved) to eat crab in Chinatown. After that we went to an event in a basement on East Broadway where the books attempted to teach my toddler that rules are for breaking! Marginally better than Ibram X. Kendi's children's books, but not by much.

QUICK HITS

• New York just passed the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which sets aside $30 million annually to incentivize hiring new local journalists. "The late addition to the $237 billion budget allows eligible outlets to receive a 50 percent refundable credit for the first $50,000 of a journalist's salary, up to a total of $300,000 per outlet," reports Politico. I think it would be fun to troll the legislators by being one of the beneficiaries of this program and then choosing to be the most aggressive muckraker that ever was, scavenging through their records, making them rue the day they were born, etc.
• Tubal ligation and vasectomy trends since Dobbs. Will that Supreme Court decision, which led to abortion being returned to the states (and many states choosing to institute crackdowns), end up actually leading to a lower fertility rate?
• Children in elementary schools all over Poland have been freed from the shackles of homework.
• Protests at Columbia have prompted an Orthodox rabbi on campus sent this message to students:

In response to "horrific" scenes of antisemitic harassment at and around campus, the Orthodox Rabbi at Columbia/Barnard sent a WhatsApp message to more than 290+ Jewish students this morning recommending that they go home until it's safe again for them on campus: pic.twitter.com/uqAntEICLv

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 21, 2024

• The Cass review—a four-year review of the evidence on child gender transitions that has led the U.K.'s National Health Service to substantially alter its guidance—isn't important enough for Scientific American to cover, apparently:

Scientific American doesn't cover the Cass Review -- "cass report" and "cass review" net zero Google hits -- but instead, the week after its release, it publishes an interview with an activist who believes kids should have full medical automony and that interpreting scientific… https://t.co/C7C19zxYKT

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) April 21, 2024

The post China's Retribution appeared first on Reason.com.

Israel attacks Iran: Overnight, Israeli forces attacked near Isfahan, Iran, in retribution for Iran's barrage of drones and missiles that hit Israel roughly a week ago.

This round of fighting was started by an April 1 Israeli strike in Syria that struck an Iranian consulate complex and killed three senior commanders and four officers reportedly responsible for dictating Iran's military strategy. But Iran and Israel have been engaged in a shadow war for a long time; recent strikes just bring tensions out into the open.

Iranian air defense systems reportedly intercepted most of the drones. Some flights over Iran's airspace were diverted, while others were canceled. Damage was minimal.

Isfahan is where several of Iran's nuclear sites are located, as well as its uranium enrichment program that's necessary for developing nuclear capabilities. Some of the strikes seemed designed to hit a major military base in the area; but just as Iran's attack barely harmed Israel, the same seems to be true here.

Within Israel, opinion was split. Some engaged in saber-rattling, while others said the attack looked "weak."

"Iran must understand that when it acts against us, we have the ability to strike at any time, and we can do serious damage," said Eyal Hulata, a former national security adviser, on Galei Tzahal (Army Radio). "We have a highly capable air force, and the United States is on our side."

Iranian officials, too, have signaled mixed views. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had warned that "the tiniest act of aggression" on his nation's soil would provoke a massive response, and that "nothing would remain from the Zionist regime." But many noted that Iran's attack on Israel—as well as the ample warning given—seemed like it wasn't designed to do much damage. In other words: Both nations have escalated, yes, but also shown some restraint and warranted trepidation, despite posturing to the contrary.

Biden's sticky situation: "Democratic donors covered more than $1 million in legal fees racked up by attorneys representing President Joe Biden in a yearlong special counsel probe into his handling of classified documents," reports the Associated Press. "The use of party funds to cover Biden's legal bills is not without precedent and falls within the bounds of campaign finance law, but it could cloud Biden's ability to continue to hammer former President Donald Trump over his far more extensive use of donor funds to cover his legal bills."

Of course, it's unlikely that will actually happen because that would require an adversarial mainstream media that's interested in actually holding Biden accountable for his duplicitousness.

"Every single time you give to the campaign, we're going straight to talk to voters…we are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers," said Rufus Gifford, Biden's campaign finance chair, on MSNBC earlier this month, in a soundbite he was surely proud of. It turns out that this is simply untrue!

Scenes from New York: "At New Jersey's Teterboro and Long Island's Islip airports, dozens of private jets destined for Florida take off at times such as 11:42 p.m. or 11:54 p.m. Over at JFK, a regular flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico, arrives at a seemingly purposeful time: about 15 minutes after midnight. Meanwhile, tax attorneys tell stories of clients idling in their luxury SUVs near the New Jersey entrance to the George Washington Bridge shortly before 12 a.m., waiting for the clock to turn before crossing the state line to New York."

Inside the wonderful world of rich people making sure their residence stories line up in case they're audited, courtesy of Bloomberg. Each and every one of these people? Heroes, in my book.

QUICK HITS

• The Appeal published a database of prison commissary prices. Some items available for purchase by prisoners are marked up by as much as 600 percent.
• Yesterday, 108 Columbia students were arrested after the school called in cops to attempt to empty a 50-tent encampment that had been set up, called the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment." Video footage here.
• Non-iPhone users are apparently being excluded from group chats. Don't worry, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) is coming to the rescue. Her plan? Break up Apple.
• Challenges with collecting data on religious service attendance over time, from Marginal Revolution.
• Interesting case study on the use of AI in documentaries:

If true, and looks like it is, this is a major ethical breach.

I say this as someone in favor of using effects, including AI, in documentaries.

Many documentary elements, like in all film, operate at a subconscious level for the viewer. These elements should generate an… https://t.co/DdsNlu6u19

— Zach Weissmueller (@TheAbridgedZach) April 19, 2024

The post Israel's Retaliation appeared first on Reason.com.

No sit-ins on company dime: Yesterday, Google fired 28 of its workers after employees held sit-ins to protest the company's contracts with the Israeli government. The employees were part of a group called "No Tech for Apartheid," which protests the provision of cloud computing—called Project Nimbus—to the Israeli government.

"Physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior," said a company spokesman in a statement.

It's interesting watching tech companies decide they have no tolerance for this type of employee heckler's veto. Anti-Israel activism—which has for years involved protesting Project Nimbus, to the point that Israel even wrote a provision about employee activism into the contract it has with Google—has long been an undercurrent at the tech company. But just a few years ago, when companies wanted to be at the vanguard of wokeness, they treated such activism differently than they're treating it today.

Back in 2018, thousands of Google employees protested Project Maven, a contract with the Pentagon that would have used the company's AI technology to assess drone surveillance footage. Google higher-ups acquiesced to the activists' demands, saying they would not renew the contract and developing a set of AI guiding principles that landed squarely in the middle of the road. "While we are not developing AI for use in weapons," CEO Sundar Pichai wrote at the time, "we will continue our work with governments and the military in many other areas." After all, "these collaborations are important and we'll actively look for more ways to augment the critical work of these organizations and keep service members and civilians safe."

Give an inch, take a mile: Now, employees are understandably emboldened. "I refuse to build technology that empowers genocide," one Googler shouted last month during a tech conference keynote speech given by Barak Regev, head of Google Israel. The employee was promptly fired for "interfering with an official company-sponsored event."

Employees who apply to work for Google should probably be aware that the company has a long history of military contracts, both American and foreign. "The Federal Procurement Data System shows the Coast Guard bought licenses to Google Earth in 2005; the Army did the same in 2007," reported Wired. Not to mention: "The Pentagon had a sympathetic ear at the top. In 2016, Eric Schmidt, formerly Google's CEO and then Alphabet's executive chair, became chair of the department's Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which promoted tech industry collaboration with the agency."

"This is a huge escalation and a change in how Google has responded to worker criticisms," said one employee who protested yesterday. But the actual types of contracts Google goes after has not changed; it's merely that the company pivoted from soft on activism to much tougher, as it seemingly realized inmates cannot—and should not—run the asylum. Or, in this case, occupy the offices of Google Cloud's CEO during the workday.

Seating the jury: In Manhattan, former President Donald Trump's trial is proceeding more quickly and smoothly than expected, with seven out of 12 total jurors already picked.

The case against Trump concerns the falsifying of business records related to hush money payments he doled out following a sexual tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels. He's being brought up on 34 felony counts and could face a total of four years in prison if convicted. Given what a polarizing figure Trump is, there were concerns about how jury selection would go, but it appears to be proceeding rather smoothly.

The jurors so far include "a man originally from Ireland who will serve as foreman, an oncology nurse, a grandfather originally from Puerto Rico, a middle-school teacher from Harlem, two lawyers and a software engineer for Disney," reported The New York Times. Picking a truly fair and impartial jury, that's representative of New York as a whole, is a near-impossible task; it remains to be seen whether anyone will pull the wool over the eyes of those selecting them or become improperly enchanted by the media spotlight. (More detail on those who were not picked, and more on the questions jurors have been asked.)

Scenes from New York: New excuse just dropped for why state legislators can't put together a budget on time.

QUICK HITS

• NPR's new CEO appears to hate tech and the people who make it, arguing in support of the idea that "the rise of tech empires threatens society," wrote Pirate Wires' Sanjana Friedman. (Not to mention, she was apparently very triggered by Hereticon, the best social event of the year.)
• What comes next for Israel?
• Everything you ever wanted to know about the forgotten moral panic over beepers.
• As the International Space Station gets retired, are we entering the era of the private space station?
• Europoor discourse is raging on Twitter:

There's a European upper middle-class cope which basically says "yes, America might look richer, but there's no work-life balance, culture, or accessible healthcare." What I've learnt moving here is that, no, for genuinely comparable professionals, America is just much richer.

— Ryan Bourne (@MrRBourne) April 17, 2024

• "When the government of President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his country's opposition signed an agreement in October to work toward free and fair elections this year, it was seen as a glimmer of hope after years of authoritarian rule and economic free fall," reported The New York Times. The U.S. lifted oil sanctions, hoping for the best. Now, merely six months later, "the Maduro government has made several moves that have dimmed the chances of legitimate elections, and a frustrated Biden administration on Wednesday announced that it was letting the sanctions relief expire."
• A better debate format is possible:

I would enjoy a debate between him and Trump where the moderators just teed them up, shame-free, to tell the most fanciful bullshit stories about themselves and their families. https://t.co/9QO20RsKBk

— Matt Welch (@MattWelch) April 17, 2024

• The libertarian take on Cruel Intentions we didn't know we needed.

The post Google Fires 28 appeared first on Reason.com.

Feisty Joe: I am glad Joe Biden seemingly took a lot of Adderall before delivering his State of the Union address, since it made him look alive. The only downside was that the actual policies he talked up were all terrible.

Overall, the speech seemed like a campaign event in more ways than one. Biden repeatedly called out "my predecessor" without criticizing Trump by name, and brought up issues like January 6, as well as Republicans' inability to pass legislation. Biden said Trump's "bowing down" to Vladimir Putin is "outrageous," as well as "dangerous" and "unacceptable" (paired with a call for more Ukraine funding, natch). There was a fair amount of heckling in the chamber throughout, and Biden himself was feisty and confrontational. The decorum of previous addresses was conspicuously absent last night. (And Biden's opponent resorted to, uh, predictably juvenile artistic rebuttals.)

As for actual substance, Biden spent a fair chunk of time "proposing temporary tax credits of $400 a month to compensate for high mortgage rates and the end of title insurance fees for federally backed mortgages," per Reason's Christian Britschgi. The White House circulated more info about this plan, which would "increas[e] the number of tax credits available for low-income housing developers" and create "a $20 billion competitive grant program that would directly fund affordable apartments." All of these are odd, expensive fixes for the actual problem, which is low housing supply that could be fixed by zoning reform and reducing the political power of NIMBY activists.

Biden also devoted a few lines to making the wealthy pay their "fair share," specifically claiming that "working people who built this country pay more into Social Security than millionaires and billionaires do."

"Under current law, the payroll tax that funds Social Security is capped so that, for this year, only the first $168,600 in earnings are subject to it," writes Reason's Eric Boehm. "Raising that cap—or eliminating it—is frequently discussed as one possible solution to Social Security's approaching insolvency. That seems to be the idea that Biden was gesturing towards in his speech." But this solution, clothed in eat-the-rich rhetoric, would not come anywhere close to fixing the actual Social Security funding issues and would involve a massive tax increase on the many people who make more than $168,600 in earnings.

"Too many corporations raise prices to pad their profits charging more for less," said Biden at one point, referring to what he calls "shrinkflation" and calling out candy bars and bags of chips as an example of this. "The snack companies think you won't notice if … same size bag, put fewer chips in it," he added. Not only is this comically unserious, but it's also insulting to Americans struggling with inflation and high grocery costs—no amount of blameshifting should distract from the fact that COVID-era stimulus spending (from both presidents) led to inflation, which has led to interest rate hikes to tame that inflation, which has thankfully not created a severe recession but has certainly led to a lot of budgetary pain for normal Americans. 

Proportionate response: "If you ban TikTok, I will kill myself," one constituent caller told a House GOP office, according to Politico. Right now, members of the House are weighing moving forward on legislation that could possibly result in a TikTok ban for U.S. users within the next six months.

TikTok is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. The legislation, which advanced out of committee with an impressively unanimous vote, "creates a narrow process to let the executive branch prohibit access to an app owned by a foreign adversary if it poses a threat to national security," per the Associated Press, in addition to forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok so it can continue to be accessible to American users.

"If you actually read the bill, it's not a ban. It's a divestiture," Rep. Mike Gallagher (R–Wis.), cosponsor of the TikTok bill, told Politico. In fact, the decision is "squarely in the hands of TikTok to sever their relationship with the Chinese Communist Party." If the U.S. version is sold to a non-Chinese company, "TikTok will continue to survive."

Scenes from New York: "They're gonna hang out in Whole Foods," complains one New Yorker about a migrant shelter proposal that would place recent border-crossers in Gowanus, Brooklyn. (From now on, I will point to this stupid quote when people ask why I abandoned Brooklyn in favor of Queens.)

QUICK HITS

• All about Opill, the first over-the-counter birth control pill that the Food and Drug Administration has approved.
• "A congressional probe of Chinese-built cargo cranes deployed at ports throughout the U.S. has found communications equipment that doesn't appear to support normal operations, fueling concerns that the foreign machines may pose a covert national-security risk," reports The Wall Street Journal. "The installed components in some cases include cellular modems, according to congressional aides and documents, that could be remotely accessed."
• Preliminary data out of Los Angeles suggests that AI is 3.5 times better than social workers at predicting who will become homeless.
• God bless Hawaii: land of poke bowls, hula girls, and the appropriate amount of political disillusionment.

Wow. 29% for uncommitted in the final Hawai'i tally. pic.twitter.com/VMMsu1hX3S

— Read Let This Radicalize You (@JoshuaPHilll) March 7, 2024

• British author J.K. Rowling has been reported to the police for misgendering a trans person. Her thread about free speech is incredible, and ends with this delightful nugget:

Aware as I am that it's an offence to lie to law enforcement, I'll simply have to explain to the police that, in my view, India is a classic example of the male narcissist who lives in a state of perpetual rage that he can't compel women to take him at his own valuation. 5/5

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 6, 2024

The post State of the Union (on Stimulants) appeared first on Reason.com.

Welcome to the police state: Yesterday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that 750 National Guardsmen and 250 state police officers will be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system, Hochul's attempt at combating recent high-profile crimes, like the incident in which an A train conductor's neck was slashed last week.

Law enforcement will also start doing bag checks for straphangers, and will bar people who have been convicted of violent crimes against subway passengers from using public transit for three years. It's clear how the bag checks will be enforced (in a way that costs the city money and commuters time) but it's not clear how the ban on past offenders will be enforced.

This all comes in addition to the roughly 1,000 New York City Police Department officers who were deployed throughout the subway system last month, and the cameras that have been installed in roughly one-sixth of the subway cars. That was in response to a January spike in major crime—driven mostly by grand larcenies, which are thefts without force—compared with January 2023. But crime stats are notoriously hard to untangle, and just because police are deployed doesn't mean they're effective: Subway crime, which is tracked as its own category, was up 30 percent year over year in 2022 when compared with 2021, despite Adams choosing to deploy police patrols throughout the system.

Hochul's new initiative appears to have already started; when I was going through the Broadway Junction stop last night, which connects the A train to the L, I counted a greater density of law enforcement than I'd seen before.

Bag checks are already happening at Grand Central: 

If you're going to introduce a bunch of new police officers and National Guard soldiers into the subway system, what is the point of having them all stand in the same place instead of riding trains and walking laps of stations? pic.twitter.com/dhpdgB3b2X

— Anthony LaMesa (@ajlamesa) March 7, 2024

But political stunts are different than good policing, and this looks more like the first.

Patrol politics: Interpreted as part of the power struggle between Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, this looks like an attempt by the governor's office to either undermine Adams or set the stage to be able to take credit for a decline in crime—if that is in fact what results, which is a big if.

Interpreted as a tactic by major Democrats in major cities to be responsive to people's crime fears, it looks a lot like pandering. Neither Adams nor Hochul is up for reelection this year, but the political tides feel like they're turning in a direction of even soft-on-crime liberals being dissatisfied with the status quo.

There is a vast middle ground between the two loudest types of New Yorkers: the "I ride the subway all the time and it's totally safe, what are you talking about?" and the "this city is a hellscape, I fear for my life every time I leave my house." The truth is somewhere in between: It is common to get on a subway car and have a crazy person yelling. Sometimes they're threatening, but infrequently. I see smoking inside the subway car or urinating inside the station every month or so. I've seen bum fights. I've noticed people passed out in front of the turnstile, blocking access, a few times before; it's hard to know if the person is dead or passed out, and what to do. (Nor is it lost on me that the above sentence is a crazy thing to have to write.)

These situations force hard questions: What do we owe to our fellow New Yorkers, especially those in severe need, who sometimes refuse to help themselves? Should we expect public spaces to be free of threat and despair and, if so, what policing or surveillance should be used to get there? Are these tradeoffs worth it?

But Hochul's plan probably doesn't address the actual issue, which has less to do with a criminal free-for-all and more to do with erratic mentally ill people who essentially use the subway system as free shelter, and sometimes act out with violence. "The [subway disorder] problem got worse in 2017, when Transit Police stopped enforcing loitering and related subway rules to keep homeless and mentally ill people and drug addicts from living and sleeping in the subway system. This was a simply a political choice," wrote Peter Moskos on X. "Before then, people using the system for shelter and not transit would be told to leave. Not arrested. But you can't stay here. After, they were told of shelter options. If they chose not to [accept], they were left alone. 95% chose to remain."

"The right to prohibit behavior on the subway that is permitted on the street (EG begging) was affirmed by Young v. New York City Transit Authority (1990). This was a hard fought battle by the MTA back in the days. It made a huge difference in crime & riders' Quality of Life," added Moskos (in a useful thread), who argued that "turning the subway into a defacto shelter isn't good for homeless people. Nor is it not fair to the rest of us who need to ride the subway."

Exiling mentally ill people from select public spaces doesn't sound like a solution that solves underlying needs. But it is a solution that possibly returns subways to the people who pay for them, and to their original use. Perhaps New Yorkers would instead prefer to have cops going through their handbags during rush hour so they can feel like the city has finally started to do something. The problem is that the something actually matters, and that random searches, which violate people's privacy, should not be taken lightly or instituted for political gain.

Scenes from New York: That's enough New York up above, I think. But here's a subway ad I saw yesterday. End microaggression discourse and return to real issues!

QUICK HITS

• "Corporations will have to share key details about their role in driving climate change and the threat that warming poses to their operations under a contentious proposal the Securities and Exchange Commission approved 3-2 on Wednesday over intense business opposition," reported The Washington Post. 
• The U.S. is negotiating a six-week ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that Hamas is allegedly refusing to sign onto. Both Qatar and Egypt are also helping to broker it, and all parties view the holy month, Ramadan, as an urgent and looming deadline.
• Armed gangs in Haiti are putting pressure on the country's prime minister, Ariel Henry, to resign, and it looks like the country may be heading toward a civil war. So far, gangs have set a bunch of prisoners free, seized the airport, and attacked a police academy.
• "Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey swiftly signed legislation on Wednesday passed by the state's GOP-controlled legislature giving physicians who provide in vitro fertilization civil and criminal immunity for any death or damage to embryos," reported Politico.
• Inside the Satoshi Nakamoto trial in the U.K., which aims to figure out who actually created bitcoin.
• Linwei Ding, a Google employee in the U.S. who is originally from China, was just charged with stealing AI trade secrets that he was allegedly feeding to two Chinese companies.
• In the Elizabeth Warren formulation of the world, high prices are attributable to greed. So maybe landlords actually just magically became less greedy?

Austin built a shit ton of new housing and now rent is falling 7% year-over-year pic.twitter.com/BI0tWoSkU8

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) March 6, 2024

The post Empire State Police State appeared first on Reason.com.

Why can't we apprehend both of them at the border? Yesterday, both President Joe Biden and his presumed opponent in November, former President Donald Trump, arrived at the southern border for a whole lot of politicking and very little actual problem solving.

Media outlet after media outlet described it as a "split-screen" showdown. The New York Times described it as a visit "pitting the president's belief in legislating against his rival's pledge to be a 'Day 1' dictator." All right.

"A very dangerous border—we're going to take care of it," said Trump upon arrival. Biden has "the blood of countless innocent victims" on his hands, Trump added, citing the recent murder of Laken Riley—an Augusta University nursing student believed to have been killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, an illegal immigrant from Venezuela, while running on trails at the University of Georgia.

"The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It's a new form of vicious violation to our country," Trump said, leaning hard into fear-based messaging.

Biden, on the other hand, blamed Republicans in Congress for sinking deals that would attempt to handle the crisis at the border and kept meekly calling for bipartisan compromises. "Join me," Biden said to Trump—in what the Times described as an "olive branch"—"or I'll join you" in passing the bipartisan border deal that Trump recently lambasted, leading Senate Republicans to turn on the legislation.

If at first you don't succeed, try…an executive order? He's no border dove, though: Biden is reportedly mulling an executive order to majorly crack down on asylum seekers, forcing more rigorous entry standards and deportations for those who do not meet the updated criteria. Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act extends latitude to presidents to block certain categories of entrants if deemed "detrimental to the interests of the United States." This would allow him to bypass Congress entirely.

Ironically, Section 212(f) was how Trump instituted the Muslim ban back in 2017. It's dark horseshoe theory that Biden is now considering sidestepping Congress and using the same provision. It's almost as if actual checks and balances would be helpful here, and setting cogent policy in the first place, as opposed to sweeping executive orders to attempt to bandage long-festering problems.

The number of border crossings has reached record levels. December saw almost 250,000 arrests by Border Patrol, a number which fell by more than half in early January due to Mexican immigration authorities stepping up to the plate. The top five nationalities being apprehended are currently Mexicans, Venezuelans, Guatemalans, Honduras, and Colombians, but people from all over the world are now attempting to cross the border as well—including Chinese migrants (the fastest-growing group of border-crossers).

Whether it's Biden's pointless "join me!" pleas, designed to make the media fawn all over him, or Trump calling illegal border-crossers "fighting-age men"—as if they're creating some sort of militia as opposed to seeking work as, like, dishwashers and roofers—nothing good happened at the border yesterday, and the situation got no closer to being resolved.

Scenes from New York: A little before 4 a.m. Thursday morning, an A train conductor was attacked—his neck slashed, as he stuck it out the window to make sure the train was cleared to leave—at the Rockaway Avenue station in Brooklyn (a few stops before mine).

By rush hour Thursday morning, train crews were boycotting the safety conditions they must work under and calling straphangers' attention to attacks on transit workers. For those of us trying to take the A to work (like me, to film a documentary for Reason), it was a massive inconvenience, as trains operated with severe delays. But safety on the subways has gotten intolerably bad: Year over year, NYPD reports a 13 percent increase in crime within the subway system, and an 11 percent increase in assaults specifically. Last week, a man was shot and killed on the D train. In January, a man was shot and killed on the No. 3. Merely 1,000 of the city's 6,500 subway cars are equipped with surveillance cameras; meanwhile, the Metropolitan Transit Authority has installed bright yellow barriers at the Washington Heights stop to deter criminals from pushing people onto the tracks as part of a new pilot program—which would be terribly expensive to actually scale and wouldn't solve many categories of subway-system crime (like yesterday's neck slashing).

As for the conductor in question, he received 34 stitches and nine sutures and thankfully survived.

QUICK HITS

• It's time:

Make them a buddy cop duo and call it a day https://t.co/p8fo42hSWk

— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 1, 2024

• Congress has approved a continuing resolution that will prevent a partial government shutdown.
• Congratulations to The New Republic for finally acknowledging the fact that, generally, plastic isn't actually getting recycled (where Reason has been for a decade-plus): "Between 1990 and 2015, some 90 percent of plastics either ended up in a landfill, were burned, or leaked into the environment," reports The New Republic. Yes, we know.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin engaged in some saber-rattling toward the West yesterday, saying that the prospect of nuclear conflict ought to loom large if any countries intervene on Ukraine's behalf. "We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory," Putin said. "Do they not understand this?"
• "Several youth advocacy groups are concerned over the Secure DC bill and its potential impact on juveniles," reports ABC7. NeeNee Taylor, the founder of Harriet's Wildest Dreams, a nonprofit in the area, expressed concern at an event Wednesday night about a provision that would make stealing $500 worth of merchandise rise to the level of a felony. "A couple of my young ladies may have committed retail theft—they were actually stealing clothes for themselves to wear to school," Taylor told the news channel. "So what can we do to avoid them to have to steal the clothes?" Actually, they did not have to steal the clothes. Nor do they need to steal $500 worth of clothes in order to be able to cover their bodies to attend school.
• Bloomberg—normally good—seems to think that the Google Gemini scandal—in which its AI-powered image generator simply could not return historically accurate images of white people, but had to turn, like, the Founding Fathers into black men—was actually a "Republicans pounce" situation. (It was not.)
• Watch the dudes of The Fifth Column grace the wonderful Megyn Kelly Show with their presence (and tear Keith Olbermann apart):

"He wants to now replace the court with something else…"@mcmoynihan, @MattWelch, and @kmele on Keith Olbermann's meltdown over Supreme Court hearing Trump immunity case.

Watch & subscribe: https://t.co/Y12z2uKGMbhttps://t.co/8SsT7CZI2P

— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) February 29, 2024

The post Border Pageantry appeared first on Reason.com.

Get ready. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear former President Donald Trump's presidential immunity claim that he is protected from prosecution for his role in plotting to overturn the 2020 election results, and has set oral arguments for April. The Court's term ends in June, so hearing arguments in April means it is very likely a decision will be released before the justices leave.

"The justices scheduled arguments for the week of April 22 and said proceedings in the trial court would remain frozen, handing at least an interim victory to Mr. Trump," reported The New York Times. "His litigation strategy in all of the criminal prosecutions against him has consisted, in large part, of trying to slow things down."

If he does not have immunity, a criminal trial will follow, probably over the summer—during the height of election season.

Earlier this month, the Court also heard a case on whether states such as Colorado are within their rights to remove Trump from ballots—the 14th Amendment argument. It is expected to issue a ruling soon.

Surely this time will be different: If Congress can't pass appropriations bills to fund the government by midnight Friday, the federal government will enter a partial shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) is going for yet another stopgap bill to attempt to keep the government open, which "would extend funding for some government agencies for a week, through March 8, and the rest for another two weeks, until March 22," per The New York Times.

The caveat is that Congress would be expected to approve six of the 12 spending bills to fund the government for the next year, while buying a little more time for legislators to negotiate and pass the rest of the spending bills. Somewhat surprisingly, news broke last night that Johnson has managed to get a fair number of colleagues on board with the plan.

Still, it's a piecemeal solution that pleases practically nobody. The far-right flank of Republicans in the House continues to pursue deep spending cuts that neither Johnson nor Kevin McCarthy before him has managed to prioritize, as well as weaning Ukraine off U.S. government aid. Continuing resolutions—a.k.a. patchwork solutions that temporarily stave off government shutdowns but do not set any sort of long-term budget—were passed in September, November, and January. And Republicans have only a two-seat majority in the House, with quite a few of them riled up about the crisis at the southern border—which they keep saying must be secured, in order for other issues to be tackled—so there are few signs that Congress will get its act together anytime soon.

Are South Koreans having enough sex? Statistics Korea recently released data showing that the fertility rate declined by 8 percent in 2023 when compared with 2022. Normally, such a drop would not be greeted as catastrophic, except that this comes at a time when many developed countries have fertility rates in free-fall and South Korea already had the lowest fertility rate in the world. If current rates hold, the country's population (51 million at present) is predicted to halve by 2100.

"The average number of babies a South Korean woman is expected to give birth to during her life fell to 0.72 from 0.78 in 2022, and previous projections estimate that this will fall even further, to 0.68 in 2024," reported Al Jazeera. The replacement rate is 2.1 children. For comparison, the U.S. fertility rate has been hovering around 1.7, with a little dip in 2020 that has since recovered.

These new data, coupled with a BBC article that featured women across South Korea and their frustrations with their predicaments, has led to a robust debate among the punditry as to whether South Korea's aggressive pro-natalist policies were all for naught. ("Pro-natalist policies have a weak track record in every country where they've been tried," wrote Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown back in June 2023. "South Korea spent more than $200 billion subsidizing child care and parental leave over the past 16 years, President Yoon Suk Yeol said last fall. Yet the fertility rate fell from 1.1 in 2006 to 0.81 in 2021.")

Demographer Lyman Stone, meanwhile, called the BBC article "a demography reporting crime" and said that "South Korea spends less in government money per child than the OECD average" and that "much of the spending Korea claims it does never gets to families, but is actually a morass of local government subsidies, grants, and other intermediated forms of spending." When it does actually get to families, the fertility rate is positively affected, Stone argued.

But there are other factors, too: South Korea's graying population, for one—and how coughing up funds for retirees affects younger taxpayers' ability to save—as well as cultural influences, like the fact that one of Korea's biggest exports, K-pop stars, are generally forced by their agencies to abstain from dating (wouldn't want to destroy the fantasy, I guess). There are massive cultural expectation issues, too, like the fact that most South Koreans—nearly 80 percent!—send their kids to expensive private schools, so the cost of having a child is perceived to be extra high.

For more on this, watch Just Asking Questions with the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney (who has a new book out soon on precisely this subject): "Why aren't people having more kids?"

Scenes from New York:

This woman used OMNY to pay for the bus. Once you hit 12 fares paid within a 7-day period, you get free rides. Cops boarded bus & forced riders to prove they'd paid didn't know how to handle this, threw her off, & hit her w a $100 ticket. Is this city a joke or what? pic.twitter.com/tD1fAvSnwL

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 28, 2024

Full article here, courtesy of Hell Gate.

QUICK HITS

• "Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the company's Gemini controversy Tuesday evening, calling the AI app's problematic responses around race unacceptable and vowing to make structural changes to fix the problem," reported Semafor. The image generator Gemini seemed to have a recurring issue giving unrealistic and ahistorical interpretations of events—black Vikings, a lady pope, and nonwhite Founding Fathers, to name a few.
• California is so screwed:

California politics in a nutshell ???? pic.twitter.com/XE1XRzj7eh

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) February 28, 2024

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in Tirana, Albania, appealing to the Balkan nations for defense support.
• "Bitcoin rallied above $60,000 on Wednesday, riding its bullish momentum to its highest levels since November 2021, as more signs emerge that cryptocurrency's 'winter' has ended," reported Axios. For more on crypto winter, check out this joint from me and Zach Weissmueller:

• "Americans' satisfaction with personal life near record low," reported Gallup.
• The family of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is having a hard time finding funeral homes and gravediggers to give Navalny a decent burial. Since his death two weeks ago, more than 400 people have reportedly been arrested for laying flowers in his memory, reported the BBC.
• On one hand, yes, this is an interesting and possibly good take. On the other, I don't think we should engage in any more elder abuse—working in government strikes me as the worst form of torture—and this man is 82. Let him spend the rest of his days eating ice cream cones!

Huge loss. If Democrats hated Mitch McConnell as GOP leader, wait til they see the ones who come next.

As for Republicans, well, this is good news only if you like how the GOP House functions & want more of that. McConnell has been GOPs most effective Congress leader in decades. https://t.co/JpqPy8brjN

— Brian Riedl ???? ???????? (@Brian_Riedl) February 28, 2024

• RIP Richard Lewis, my favorite Curb Your Enthusiasm character:

richard lewis & larry david back in the day pic.twitter.com/lxKoB0Lzzc

— Marlow Stern (@MarlowNYC) February 28, 2024

The post SCOTUS Takes on Trump appeared first on Reason.com.

Taking crazy pills: Former President Donald Trump said last evening that the civil fraud verdict that will force him to pony up $355 million for inflating his net worth to banks is actually "a form of Navalny" and "a form of communism or fascism."

When asked about the Russian state's imprisonment and killing of dissident Alexei Navalny, Trump responded: "It's happening here." The indictments are "all because of the fact that I'm in politics," in his telling.

He made these comments last night during a Fox News town hall. On Truth Social, his own alternative social media platform, Trump said, "the sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country."

Alexei Navalny, who was reported dead on Friday, served as an opposition leader in a state that disallows opposition and legitimate voting. Navalny garnered a massive following—more than 6 million YouTube followers, for starters, with at least one video viewed 130 million times—by doing legitimately good journalism digging into the kleptocratic, repressive Putin regime. Navalny offered normal Russians legitimate, well-sourced explanations for why they are so poor: their leaders consistently abdicate responsibility, choosing to enrich themselves. Their leaders are content with everyday people living in squalor and dysfunction, as long as they stay comfortable.

Running for office, and cutting through the state's propaganda, made him so disfavored by the regime that he went into exile. Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 with full awareness that he would be locked up but a devout belief that he ought to continue his work domestically, displaying courage in the face of certain persecution. And sure enough, he was locked up, then sent to an even more remote prison camp called IK-3, in Kharp, which is in the Arctic Circle. His death there was reported last week, but the opposition movement will not die with him. "In killing Aleksei, Putin killed half of me, half of my heart and half of my soul," said his widow, Yulia, "but I have another half left—and it is telling me I have no right to give up."

Trump, on the other hand, misrepresented his net worth to banks, defrauding lenders (who…still had a responsibility to do due diligence, a fact ignored in much mainstream media reporting of the case). "Trump claimed his apartment in Manhattan's Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size," writes Reason's Jacob Sullum. "He valued Mar-a-Lago, his golf resort in Palm Beach, based on the assumption that it could be sold for residential purposes, which the deed precluded." But "[New York Attorney General Letitia] James was not able to identify any damages to lenders or insurers," writes Sullum, and "the striking absence of any injury commensurate with the punishment lends credibility to Trump's reflexive complaint that he is the victim of a partisan vendetta."

Both things can be true, that Trump attracts politically motivated ire—which attorneys general and judges are wrong to indulge—and that he also did something wrong by inflating his net worth. But he's a far cry from Navalny—Trump enjoys self-dealing more than fact-finding and truth-telling—and the way this went down, via the court system, where Trump had the right to defend himself, is a far cry from how "justice" gets dispensed in Russia—by Putin, in penal colonies, via murders of anyone whose beliefs threaten the man in charge.

Scenes from New York: Nobody asked for this.

What are we doing as a city?? pic.twitter.com/iaEBWGPMmh

— Cynical (@CynicalNYK) February 18, 2024

QUICK HITS

• "Clinical psychologists with the Department of Veterans Affairs faced retaliation and ostracization at work after they publicly opposed a gender-inclusion policy that allows men to access women's medical spaces within the VA," reports National Review.
• RFK Jr.'s "origin story makes this like Odysseus returning to the manor, stringing the bow, this is that iconic moment," said Bret Weinstein on Joe Rogan's podcast. If you say so, Bret.
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton just announced a lawsuit against El Paso's Annunciation House, an NGO in charge of a shelter network for migrants, for "facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house." But going after charities that help migrants—whatever you think of the behavior they engaged in to get here—seems like a wrongheaded stunt.
• I do not think this is true or that there's much evidence for it:

do you want a black pill?

like… a really really black pill?

George Carlin would be pro-censorship if he were alive today b/c he didn't actually love free speech, he just fucking hated Christians

— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) February 20, 2024

• "The enormous contrast between [Alexei] Navalny's civic courage and the corruption of [Vladimir] Putin's regime will remain," writes The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum. "Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history."
• Related: People were arrested for laying flowers in memory of Navalny.

People being arrested in Moscow for laying flowers for Navalny. pic.twitter.com/8YnLpHcB0s

— Eleanor Beardsley (@ElBeardsley) February 17, 2024

• Wow:

NEW: California's Legislative Analyst's Office says the state's budget problem has grown by $15 Billion.

LAO says because of weak revenue collections so far, the state's deficit could reach $73 Billion. https://t.co/oz83vntalh

— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) February 20, 2024

• We live in the stupidest simulation:

I dunno if he qualifies as a "hero" lol this ain't exactly Normandy https://t.co/C3fXsLcnkZ

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) February 21, 2024

The post A Form of Navalny appeared first on Reason.com.

U.S. works to negotiate ceasefire: The United States, via a U.N. Security Council resolution, is urging a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas "as soon as practicable"—using ceasefire language for the first time—as well as rebuking Israel for plans to possibly invade Rafah.

"Until now, the United States alone has publicly and consistently rejected demands for an outright cease-fire in U.N. resolutions on the war in Gaza, siding with Israel in its war against Hamas," reports The New York Times.

The changed language "reflect[s] President [Joe] Biden's shift toward criticism of Israel's prosecution of the war and of its planned offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah," per the Times.

About half of Gaza's civilians are sheltering in Rafah, and an offensive there "would have serious implications for regional peace and security," per the language of the draft resolution.

Julian Assange returns to court: The WikiLeaks founder who has been held in London's Belmarsh prison since 2019, and whose lawyers have been fighting possible extradition to the U.S., will have his case return to court this week.

The two-day hearing will determine whether Assange has reached the end of his ability to appeal his case in the U.K. and whether he will be extradited to the U.S., where he faces a possible 175 years in prison if convicted of espionage charges.

Back in 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks published thousands of documents leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who was at the time an Army intelligence analyst serving in Iraq. The documents brought information to light about civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan for which the U.S. military had been responsible.

In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Assange with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act—a case with huge implications for press freedom, if Assange does in fact stand trial and receive a conviction.

For more on Assange's case, check out this conversation Zach Weissmueller and I had with Julian's wife, Stella:

Scenes from New York: The Roman Catholic Diocese of New York was duped into allowing a funeral mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral for a vocally atheist transgender activist.

"The cathedral only knew that family and friends were requesting a funeral Mass for a Catholic and had no idea our welcome and prayer would be degraded in such a sacrilegious and deceptive way," wrote Fr. Enrique Salvo—who is one of my priests (he splits his time between St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, where I am a parishioner)—in a statement.

"The pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, who wore daring high-fashion outfits and cheered as eulogists led them in praying for transgender rights and access to gender-affirming health care," reported The New York Times. A video circulated of mourners approvingly calling the deceased "mother of all whores" inside the cathedral.

"Several mainstream media outlets had framed the event as a breakthrough occasion and a sign of the Catholic Church shifting its teaching—or at least its tone—on sexuality and human anthropology," reported Catholic News Agency. But many Catholics, contra mainstream reporting, feel as though the funeral made a mockery of our faith.

Both St. Patrick's in Midtown and Old St. Patrick's in Nolita are frequent targets for activist stunts due to the Catholic Church's positions on trans issues and abortion.

QUICK HITS

• "As of late September, I thought that (i) it had become too late for a full-fledged primary challenge to Biden, and (ii) Biden voluntarily announcing that he wouldn't run for a second term was a close call but probably failed a cost-benefit test for Democrats," writes Nate Silver. "Since then, Biden's situation has become considerably worse…to borrow the poker term, Biden no longer has as many 'outs'—meaning, contingencies that could improve his situation."
• Germany will decriminalize recreational weed this week, allowing adults to grow up to three plants and possess up to 25 grams of cannabis.
• "Flying got safer last year almost everywhere except Russia," reports Bloomberg. Someone tell Tucker Carlson, who is possibly still wandering around a Russian grocery store, eyes wide with delight.
• "What is the 'migrant crisis' in New York and Chicago?" asks Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic. "It includes visible signs of disorder like migrants sleeping outside as hotel rooms fill up, anger among native-born Americans that limited resources are being spent on migrants, and an expensive bureaucratic scramble to arrange health screenings, translation services, housing programs, legal services, school placements, school buses, and other needs for newcomers." But some of the problem, Demsas says, stems from the red-state governors busing migrants to these big cities in particular: "When immigrants make their way to a city in an organic fashion, they usually are drawn to a place where they have family ties, job leads, or other connections and resources available. When they're resettled through an official government program, as the displaced Ukrainians were, the federal government coordinates with local governments to ensure a smooth transition."
• A look inside the deep tech scene in El Segundo:

Along with YCs call for more deep tech applications, this is just the beginning of a broader transition of venture capital towards businesses with defensible moats in atoms-first industries, where AI and ML are in the stack but not the main show. pic.twitter.com/BnGQxfIJnz

— Andrew Côté (@Andercot) February 19, 2024

• A look at all Donald Trump's incredible props over the years.
• lol:

Obama's daughter trying to sneak past Nepo baby discourse by not using her last name. Bro you are Obama's Duaghter pic.twitter.com/Z8PtkAYsSh

— McRib (@McR1B69) February 19, 2024

The post U.S. Begins To Talk Ceasefire appeared first on Reason.com.