Sorry, I was hoping to write this week about the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but it’s been a busy birthday week in the Stonerook household and, while I did come close to finishing that article, in the end I just thought it wasn’t up to snuff. If you are looking for a deeper read on that subject, check out this interview of Robert Hamilton, a research professor at the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, by Vox’s Michael Bluhm. I’d also recommend this Marc Santora article (“Moscow’s Military Capabilities Are in Question After Failed Battle for Ukrainian City”) from the New York Times. Meanwhile, enjoy your weekly Signals and Noise below. See you next week!
Signals and Noise
Josh Marshall of TPM notes about 75% of House Republicans endorsed the cuts to Social Security that Joe Biden accused them of wanting to make during the SOTU.
By Paul Krugman of the New York Times: “The G.O.P.’s Long War Against Medicare and Social Security” (“Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.”)
And now Don Trump’s vice president wants to upend Social Security. (Remember, Mike Pence was the guy Trump brought onto the ticket to placate establishment Republicans, which makes it harder and harder to believe Republican anger at Biden during the SOTU over Biden’s accusation that they’ll take Social Security hostage was sincere.)
Not clear to me: How you can leave senior’s Social Security payments alone while allowing young people (whose Social Security taxes fund current senior’s Social Security payments) to invest a portion of their taxes in the stock market. I’m sure Wall Street would love that idea, though.
Now Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) says the plan that started this whole kerfuffle to begin with—a proposal to sunset all federal legislation every five years—doesn’t apply to Social Security, Medicare, national security, veterans benefits, and other essential services. This is so stupid. What in the world is an “essential service” to Rick Scott? This plan is the Republican amygdala speaking.
Sure, it’s small bore politics, but Biden’s plan to go after “junk fees” (think Ticketmaster service charges or fees to terminate your cable service) does get at something that annoys the heck out of people across the political spectrum.
Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are promoting Mitch McConnell’s old plan to end debt ceiling showdowns: Give the president the authority to raise the debt ceiling on his own while empowering the legislative branch to stop that move if 2/3 of both houses of Congresses votes to do so.
House Republicans are even finding it hard to pass messaging bills.
Someone needs to alert the committee investigating Hunter Biden to this report, from Michael Kranish of the Washington Post: “The day after leaving the White House, [Jared] Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman….A year after his presidency, Trump’s golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president’s family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman. The substantial investments by the Saudis in enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office — helping the crown prince’s standing by scheduling Trump’s first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia, backing him amid numerous international crises and meeting with him repeatedly in D.C. and the kingdom, including on a final trip Kushner took to Saudi Arabia on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack….Now, with Trump running for president again, some national security experts and two former White House officials say they have concerns that Trump and Kushner used their offices to set themselves up to profit from their relationship with the Saudis after the administration ended.”
Ron Brownstein looks at the Republican voting bloc that holds Trump’s fate in its hands: Blue-collar evangelical voters.
As Adam Serwer once wrote about Don Trump, the cruelty is the point: According to Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis of Rolling Stone, if re-elected president, Don Trump wants to ramp up federal executions, and is interested in using firing squads and possibly even guillotines, conducting group executions, and televising the events.
Oh, now it all makes perfect sense.
Trump lawyer says Trump was using a classified folder to block the light on a phone near his bed that keeps him up at night?Look, I personally cover the blue light on the landline next to my bed with a Big Mac wrapper, but that doesn’t mean I’m in possession of a Big Mac or that I ate a Big Mac in my bedroom. It’s just something handy I use to help me get a good night’s sleep, that’s all.
Court documents indicate FOX News stars like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham mocked the lies Don Trump spread after the 2020 election claiming the results had been rigged. Still, the network spread the lies. At one point, in a text to Hannity, Carlson even wanted a FOX News reporter fired for fact-checking a Trump tweet (“Please get her fired. Seriously… What the fuck? I’m actually shocked… It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.”)
A point worth thinking about: If Carlson is more worried about the “stock price” than truth when he knows the truth, is he really a journalist? And if he isn’t a journalist, does that lessen his First Amendment protections? He’s definitely not selling journalism here. He’s selling a particular kind of product aimed at a conservative marketplace. Economic speech is less protected than journalistic speech.
Jonathan Last of The Bulwark writes that Nikki Haley’s “Not Trump” candidacy is doomed to fail because there is no sizeable “Not Trump” lane: “The DeSantis challenge to Trump isn’t that Meatball Ron is ‘Not Trump’—it’s that he’s ‘Trump Plus.’ The DeSantis electoral proposition is that he will give you everything Trump does—all of the fighting, the illiberalism, the culture war, the lib owning, the news cycle domination, the mean tweets. The only difference is that DeSantis is more electorally viable. In other words, Trump and DeSantis are fighting over the same 85 percent of the Republican electorate. Nikki Haley and anyone else who jumps in trying to be Not Trump is fighting over the remaining 15 percent.” ALSO: “Nikki Haley is the Perfect Republican Presidential Candidate (For 2015)” by Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark
There’s also this tough reality check on Nikki Haley by Stuart Stevens for the New York Times highlighting her tendency to backtrack on her core values: “Nikki Haley Threw It All Away”
Jonathan Martin of Politico reports there’s much more concern about Biden’s age in Washington backrooms than Democrats let on in public.
I have mixed feelings about AP courses, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may scrap them all together despite Florida having one of the highest AP participation rates in the country. Cue Taylor:
According to Gallup, Americans are more dissatisfied with abortion laws than they ever have been in the 23 years Gallup has tracked this question. Driving the rise: Those who think abortion laws are too strict.
The Kansas GOP has picked an election conspiracist to lead its state party. Within 30 minutes of winning the post, Mike Brown had the party’s state committee demanding the impeachment of Joe Biden for decrying misinformation Republicans spread in 2021 about the efficacy of COVID vaccines.
BREAKING: The Michigan GOP has spurned Don Trump’s pick to lead the state party by picking someone even more extreme than Trump.
The Wyoming Republican Party is urging a no-vote in the state legislature on a law that would raise the legal age to marry in the state to 16 wait what that’s still a thing and in eight states nonetheless and Tennessee nearly rolled back the age limit on the law recently what the hell?
When small-dollar online political donations emerged as a way to fund a campaign 15-20 years ago, many political observers hailed it as a way to democratize campaign fundraising by cutting big-dollar corporate/PAC money out of the system. But too much democracy can be just as big a problem as too much elitism. For instance: Reuters reports many of the Republican members of Congress willing to breach the debt ceiling are primarily funded by small-dollar donors, leaving them less reliant financially on the business interests that definitely do not want a government default.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post reminds readers of an important political science fact: While Democrats in safe districts have gotten more liberal, Republicans in both safe and competitive districts have gotten more conservative. In other words, polarization in the United States tends to be asymmetrical, with moderate voices much more likely to be found in the Democratic Party.
The CDC released a report this week finding teenage girls are “engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,” with three in five girls reporting feeling so sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in a row that they stopped regular activities. Additionally, 1 in 3 girls reported seriously considering suicide (and increase of 60% over a decade ago) and 15% reporting they had been forced to have sex (an increase of 27% over two years.) Derek Thompson of The Atlantic looks at why this is happening and the likelihood that social media and its use of “therapy-speak” is behind this.
Umair Irfan of Vox looks at the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment involving train cars carrying hazardous chemicals. The town’s 4,700 residents had to evacuate, but despite government assurances, they’re not sure the air is safe to breathe or the water safe to drink now that they’re allowed to return. The technology exists to lessen the impact of such disasters, but the rail industry says they’re too expensive to implement.
Natural disasters displaced 3.4 million Americans in 2022. While 40% were able to return within a week, 28% were either unable to return or displaced for more than six months.
The bird flu outbreak is devastating North America’s wildlife.
Yasmeen Abutaleb and John Hudson of the Washington Post report U.S. officials are telling Ukraine to seize the moment and go on the offensive against Russia before political support for the war effort begins to wane in NATO nations.
Putin’s ambition to squeeze Europe on energy has failed: Winter is almost over, and Europe still has over half its gas reserves in stock. That sets Europe up well for next year as well.
Andrew E. Kramer, drawing from first-person accounts, writes in the New York Times about how the Russian Army uses conscripts as cannon fodder during assaults, resulting in high casualty rates.
The UK’s defense ministry estimates as many Russians may have been killed in combat in Ukraine over the past year as the United States lost during its years-long intervention in Vietnam.
An estimated 500,000-1,000,000 Russians have left Russia since the start of the war.
President Maia Sandu of Moldova, a former Soviet republic sandwiched between Ukraine and Romania, described a plot by Russian saboteurs to overthrow her nation’s government and put the nation “at the disposal of Russia.”
Twenty years ago, the Turkish government’s incompetent response to an earthquake helped usher to power one Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Now, his government’s incompetent response to another earthquake threatens to end his reign.