News of the Week for July 22nd, 2024
- Election 2024
- Abortion
- Gun Rights
- Hide the Decline
- Obamacare
- War & Terror
- National News
- Economy & Taxes
- International News
- Opinion
Election 2024
Trump Taps Ohio Senator J. D. Vance as Running Mate
Former president Donald Trump announced Senator J. D. Vance (R., Ohio) as his 2024 running mate on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Judge tosses Trump documents case, ruling prosecutor unlawfully appointed
A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed the criminal case accusing Donald Trump of illegally holding onto classified documents, dealing the former president another major legal victory as the Republican seeks a return to the White House.
Bash the banks, maybe raise taxes: Inside Vance’s policy agenda
The Ohio senator’s place on Donald Trump’s ticket solidifies the GOP’s turn away from old orthodoxies.
JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick, once called him a ‘moral disaster,’ and possibly ‘America’s Hitler’
Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick Ohio Sen. JD Vance was once a fervent critic of the former president. In private messages, he wondered ahead of Trump’s election whether he was “America’s Hitler” and in 2017 said the then-president was a “moral disaster.” In public, he agreed Trump was a “total fraud” who didn’t care about regular people and called him “reprehensible.”
Wall Street donors left with few palatable options after J.D. Vance pick
Donald Trump’s VP pick is a China hawk. And there ends his ideological overlap with the traditional low-tax, anti-regulation, centrist Republicans that run big American companies and investment firms.
Donald Trump Does Not Get Post-Shooting Poll Boost
Donald Trump has not received a poll boost in the first presidential election survey conducted since the failed assassination attempt on Saturday.
President of the Teamsters Union Addresses Republican National Convention in Historic First
“The speech is the clearest sign of a potential realignment in political loyalties that has Democrats nervous.”
Sen. Bob Menendez Verdict: GUILTY
Menendez faced 18 federal charges, including bribery, extortion, fraud, acting as a foreign agent, and obstruction.
GOP VP Nominee J. D. Vance is an Enemy of Free Markets
The Ohio Senator is one of the Party’s leading advocates of protectionism, economic planning, and immigration restrictions.
Deployments and Frigates: In Wisconsin, Roger Roth Vies for Mike Gallagher’s Seat
The race for Mike Gallagher’s vacated eighth congressional district seat may well alter the complexion of Congress as the special election’s primary nears in early August. While the Democrats have their candidate in Kristin Lyerly, an OB/GYN, the GOP must decide between Roger Roth and André Jacque, both state legislators. There the similarities largely end: Roth is a Scott Walker–endorsed Air National Guardsman with four deployments and a background in construction, while Jacque has made his living in and around government in comms, transit, and the Wisconsin assembly and senate. With the RNC in full swing, I met with Roth in the basement of the UW-Milwaukee Panther arena (and plan to interview Jacque and Lyerly by week’s end).
Trump Doubles Down on MAGA with Vance Pick
On the menu today: Donald Trump made one of the biggest decisions of the 2024 presidential election Monday, selecting first-term Ohio senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. You can find Vance fans, and the man is not without his strengths, but Trump passed up an opportunity to broaden the appeal of the GOP ticket and expand the Electoral College map. Meanwhile, President Biden stumbled through another interview, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. finally gets Secret Service protection.
A Night for Progressive Republicanism
So far, Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House has been relatively light on policy. If the Republican Party’s governing platform, which consisted of a variety of statements of principle, is any indication, that ambiguity is deliberate. But the GOP got a taste of the fully MAGA-fied Republican ticket’s policy instincts on night one of the GOP’s nominating convention. To conservatives of a certain age, a lot of it sounded like the boilerplate rhetoric they’ve spent their adult lives voting against.
What a Biden Collapse Could Mean for Senate Races
A study of battleground Senate races in presidential years suggests that Democrats will struggle to separate themselves from Joe Biden.
Amber Rose’s ‘MAGA Era’
After doing her research, meeting President Donald Trump’s supporters, and speaking to her veteran father, “I realized Donald Trump and his supporters don’t care if you’re black, white, gay, or straight; it’s all love. And that’s when it hit me: These are my people. This is where I belong,” model, rapper, OnlyFans star, and author of How to be a Bad B**** Amber Rose said during her speech at the Republican National Convention last night.
Trump Doubles Down With Pick of J.D. Vance as Running Mate
The Ohio senator has clear authoritarian tendencies.
Trump vs. His Own Nominating Convention
“There’s a lot of false information,” Donald Trump told Bloomberg’s reporters in a wide-ranging interview published Tuesday. The remarks were occasioned by Trump’s reported irritation with the “unauthorized freelancing” by those who claim to speak for the former president. He’s “eager to set the record straight.” But Trump’s interpreters could be forgiven for their confusion. It seems much of the misinformation surrounding his policy preferences is coming straight from the Republican National Convention.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Trump’s Bloomberg Interview
Donald Trump gave a long interview to Bloomberg, published on Tuesday. It covered a wide range of topics, some of which Trump is strong on and some of which could use some work. For the purposes of this post, I’m interested in his economic views, which made up a good chunk of the interview. Other issues he talked about won’t be mentioned.
About Last Night
I watched most of night three of the Republican Convention last night; in general, I thought it was terrific. The most powerful moments, as Scott wrote earlier, were provided by the Gold Star families of the service members who were killed in the terrorist attack in Afghanistan. These are among those Joe Biden pretended to forget when he said, to his everlasting shame, that no military personnel lost their lives on his watch.
J. D. Vance’s Obama-esque Convention Speech
On the menu today: J. D. Vance knocked it out of the park in his convention address last night; too bad he was knocking it out of the park in the name of protectionism, populism, nationalism, industrial policy, and quasi-isolationism. But let’s pause to recognize Vance’s amazingly wide range of life experience, and note that if Vance were a Democrat, his life story is all we would be hearing about him.
Ron DeSantis and the Costs of a Losing Bet
The DeSantis primary challenge could cast a long shadow over the fate of conservatism in the Republican Party.
Donald Trump once donated to Kamala Harris campaign in California
As Kamala Harris appears poised to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, a past connection between herself and Donald Trump has garnered interest: the GOP nominee once donated to her re-election campaign while Harris was serving as California attorney general.
Kamala Harris’ Monster Fundraising Day Bigger Than Trump’s Felony Charge Windfall
Kamala Harris’ dramatic entry into the presidential race triggered a record day of donations for Democrats, who raised nearly $64 million in the 12 hours after Joe Biden handed over the baton.
This Is Exactly What the Trump Team Feared
A campaign that had been optimized to beat Joe Biden must now be reinvented.
Joe Biden Quits the Presidential Race
The letter from Joe Biden’s Twitter/X account is real and accurate. Joe Biden is pulling a Lyndon Johnson and not seeking another term as president.
Republicans Shouldn’t Write Off Kamala Harris’s Chances
One of the big reasons why there wasn’t more of a concerted effort among Democrats to keep President Biden from running for reelection a year ago, when it would have been a lot easier, was the widespread perception that Vice President Kamala Harris was unelectable. Now, many Republicans are licking their chops about the prospect of running against her.
Republicans Should Have Called Out the Democracy Deficit
The Republican convention was, for the most part, well-staged and effective at conveying what it aimed to convey, even if much of that involved selling out what the party stands for in hopes of being rewarded for moderation (ask the British Tories how well that goes). Donald Trump’s 92-minute speech last night was the exception once Trump started rambling, but even that speech will likely be remembered mostly for the first ten to 15 minutes, when he gave a riveting account of the assassination attempt and concluded by kissing the fireman’s uniform of Corey Comperatore.
Biden Endorses Kamala to Ride the Bomb Down Instead of Him
It was half of the right thing to do.
Donald Trump and The Music Man’s Last Act
I was going to quip that while everybody wants American politics to be Hamilton or 1776, what’s really going on in mid-2024 is that one party is staging a production of The Music Man while the other one is staging King Lear. But mulling it over, I came back to a point I observed on the liveblog during Thursday night’s interminable Trump acceptance speech, particularly Donald Trump’s affecting tribute to fallen supporter Corey Comperatore and his insistence on doing a full Trump rally speech instead of a more focused speech pitched to a general election audience. Maybe the Music Man analogy is more apt than I realized.
Abortion
Dobbs Decision
Trump/Vance must undo the harm caused by the RNC platform
Pro-lifers should not have been so shocked by the setbacks that the right to life has suffered since the Dobbs ruling. A backlash for repealing Roe v. Wade was inevitable, regardless of whomever it was who overturned it.
Gun Rights
US appeals court to reconsider ban on felons possessing guns
A U.S. appeals court has vacated a ruling that struck down a federal ban on felons owning firearms, prompting a conservative judge to claim his “Left Coast” colleagues want to “subvert” the U.S. Supreme Court’s holdings expanding gun rights.
Hide the Decline
Environment &“Green Energy”
Climate Warriors are Colonising Medicine
This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) published a ‘Green Physician Toolkit’. The toolkit from perhaps the world’s oldest professional organisation, founded by royal charter in the early 16th century, has caused an eruption of incredulous comment. Controversy has been created by the fact that, as well as the planet-saving advice such as “Generate less waste” and “Limit the environmental impact of travel”, the toolkit suggested doctors “Reduce unnecessary prescribing” and “Limit diagnostic activities”. Journalists have been asking whether the RCP is asking doctors to put green ideology before care. But worse, the toolkit is evidence of a deadly virus spreading throughout professional institutions. This vicious pathogen erodes professional standards and ethics and dissolves institutions’ founding principles.
Obamacare
Government in Healthcare
Switzerland’s Ghoulish ‘Suicide Pod’ Prepares to Debut
An assisted-suicide advocacy group in Switzerland has announced that a first-of-its-kind portable “suicide pod” will soon be available for widespread use by people wishing to end their lives without medical supervision.
War & Terror
Russia Classifies Mortality Data after Ukraine War Losses Revealed
Russia has classified parts of its mortality data, days after an investigation revealed the scale of the nation’s war dead—according to a Russian demographer.
‘Why Are We Doing This?’
Some people, asked about Taiwan, speak of democracy, sovereignty, independence — self-determination. The urgency of not being absorbed into a one-party dictatorship with a gulag. Also, people may speak of superpower competition, and the need to check China’s appetite, in the Pacific and elsewhere. Donald Trump is different, however. Habitually, he speaks of chips — microchips, silicon chips, semiconductor chips.
The Generous Gift from the Houthi
you can’t buy training like this
China’s military forces are rapidly building up space warfare capabilities
China’s military forces are rapidly building up space warfare capabilities for use in a future conflict, two top American generals said on Wednesday.
Israeli jets strike Houthi targets in Yemen after Tel Aviv attack
Israeli fighter jets struck Houthi military targets near Yemen’s Hodeidah port on Saturday, killing at least three people and wounding 87, a day after a drone launched by the Iranian-backed group hit Israeli economic hub Tel Aviv.
National
Harvard to host ‘Queer Interventions in Latinx Studies’ to examine ‘coloniality of gender’
The course will examine, among other topics, ‘racial capitalism’ and the ‘coloniality of gender.’
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Transgender Challenge To Tennessee’s Birth Certificate Policy
Court: There is no fundamental right to a birth certificate recording gender identity instead of biological sex.
New California Law Prohibits Schools from Telling Parents Their Child Is Trans
Political progressives apparently think that school administrators and teachers should have a greater say than parents in the raising and treatment of children experiencing gender dysphoria. How else to explain Governor Gavin Newsom’s signing A.B. 1955, an authoritarian law that forces schools to leave parents in the dark if their child identifies as the opposite sex or presents other issues around sexual identity and orientation.
Las Vegas: Ex-councilwoman Fiore charged with swindling police charity funds for personal life
A federal grand jury returned an indictment on Tuesday charging a former Las Vegas city councilwoman and current Nye County, Nevada, justice of the peace for her alleged scheme to defraud donors to a charity to memorialize police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.
Grand jury indicts ex-Las Vegas Councilwoman Michele Fiore on wire fraud charges
The indictment alleged Fiore, now a judge in Nye County, defrauded donors to a charity memorializing police officers.
Michele Fiore faces federal wire fraud charges
A Nye County judge and former Las Vegas councilwoman is facing federal charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly raising more than $70,000 for a fallen officers memorial and spending it on herself.
California Sued Over Ban on Parental Trans Notifications
In response to the spreading social contagion of transgenderism, particularly in public schools, several California school districts passed rules mandating parental notification when their children asked to change their names, clothing, or pronouns or exhibited other symptoms of gender dysphoria. In response, they were sued by the California Attorney General who sought an order to cancel those rules. The state responded by passing the hilariously named SAFETY Act which was signed into law by Gavin Newsom. The law forbids parental notification. Now the next round of the tug-of-war is unfolding. Several districts are suing to put the state law on hold and protect the right to parental notification, including the Chino Valley School District.
The Seven Thinkers and Groups That Have Shaped JD Vance’s Unusual Worldview
Post-liberals, “crunchy cons”[,] and monarchists.
Whistleblowers: Most of Trump’s Security Detail Weren’t Secret Service Agents
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).”
Nineteen Scholarships Discriminating Against Whites At Indiana University Challenged By Equal Protection Project
“The number of discriminatory scholarships we are challenging and the number of IU institutions at which they are offered reflects a pervasive and systemic failure to comply with constitutional and statutory requirements at IU, warranting expedited investigation by OCR.”
Kangaroo Courts At Princeton With 98 Percent Conviction Rate In Sexual Assault Cases
Princeton sued after botched assault case, male student claims false accusations.
New survey claims to show lack of knowledge of American history, civics among college students
‘[S]ignificant numbers of college students graduate without even a rudimentary grasp of America’s history and political system,’ according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
Sheila Jackson Lee, long-serving Democratic congresswoman and advocate for Black Americans, dies at 74
Sheila Jackson Lee, a longtime Democratic congresswoman from Texas who was an outspoken advocate for Black Americans for decades, has died. She was 74.
Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions
Pepper spray, carry permits, and adult cabaret.
Economy & Taxes
J.D. Vance’s Incoherent Argument for Higher Minimum Wages
Vance thinks that jobs lost because of incompetent central planning don’t matter—but that jobs lost to immigrants do.
Government Is Responsible for High Housing Costs
Phil is correct to note that J. D. Vance’s explanation for housing costs makes no sense. Politicians have taken more notice of high housing costs in recent years, but understanding the federal government’s role in the housing market is vital to correcting policy errors.
J. D. Vance’s Explanation for Rising Housing Costs Is Nonsense
J. D. Vance, in accepting the Republican vice-presidential nomination, offered an explanation for the rise in housing prices that made no sense. It’s unclear how much thought even went into it, as it seemed to be more about reverse-engineering an explanation that fit into his worldview than seriously engaging with the problem.
Why Free Trade Is Good for National Security
Opponents of free trade reliably invoke national security to justify their views. Of course, there are situations where free trade should not be allowed. Sanctions and embargoes can be part of an effective national-defense policy. We don’t want free trade in nuclear weapons technology. But arguments for national-security exceptions to free trade are often flimsy.
Bud Light loses more ground, slipping to No. 3 in America
Bud Light, formerly the top-selling beer in the United States, has had a tough year since a boycott upended the industry. It’s only getting worse: The brand has now fallen into third place.
Argentina: A Glimpse of Growth?
When Argentines voted for Javier Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist (although, in practice, the truth is more nuanced than that) as their president, this didn’t (sadly) reflect a sudden mass conversion to libertarian-type economics. Rather it was a recognition of how totally their corporatist, heavily interventionist, tariff-protected system had failed, and for how long it had failed (there’s a lesson there, but I’ll let it pass for now). The last Argentine president to try something different was the center-right’s Mauricio Macri. He was elected in 2014, but, daunted, I suspect, by the extent of the challenge he faced, opted for a gradualist approach. It failed.
J.D. Tuccille: The Republican party’s anti-capitalist slide looks very European
J.D. Vance in particular supports big government and is highly skeptical of free markets
International
Starmer in Brexit betrayal as he uses summit to call for closer ties with Brussels
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had promised to “fire the starting gun” on a new era of relations between the UK and Europe.
Opinion
‘Patriots’ and Putin
Zoltán Kovács called it a “!! Historic moment !!” Kovács is the spokesman for Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary. What was, or is, the “historic moment”? The formation of “Patriots for Europe,” which Kovács says “has been officially accredited as the new defining right-wing political group of the European Parliament.”
Our New Right
For decades, conservatives urged the reform of entitlements, saying it was necessary to preserve the basic system and to avoid financial collapse. And Democrats said — just what J. D. Vance says: that we wanted to “throw our grandparents into poverty.”
How Would a Vice President J. D. Vance Influence a Potential Trump Supreme Court Pick?
In the coming days and weeks, much will be written about the political and electoral implications of Ohio senator J. D. Vance’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Should Donald Trump be elected president, one area in which a Vice President Vance seems very likely to have an outsized impact is in the administration’s selection of a nominee to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy (of which, under a second Trump term, there would almost certainly be at least one).
On J.D. Vance
In early 2016, I was on a train from New York to Washington for work. Typing furiously on my keyboard, I wrote a piece on RedState.com that said I would never vote for Donald Trump. My deputy editor at the time, Aaron Gardner, texted me that I should just use “Never Trump” and give it the hashtag #NeverTrump when I tweeted.
The Concern With Trump’s Choice of JD Vance Isn’t Really About JD Vance
It isn’t his politics, really.
For Once, Everything’s Coming Up Roses for Republicans
When you hear people in this convention city saying things like, “I haven’t seen Republicans this enthusiastic, optimistic, and fired up at a convention in decades,” it might be spin. But consider the circumstances.
The Tea Party Movement Is Dead
Yesterday’s announcement of the abrupt closure and dissolution of FreedomWorks by its board of directors is the closest thing we will get to a formal date of death for the Tea Party movement, which in truth has been dead since Donald Trump descended the escalator at Trump Tower in June 2015. Trump did for the Republican establishment what it couldn’t do on its own in killing the Tea Party and its demands for small, constitutional government.
A Disappointing Choice
As expected, Donald Trump announced today that J.D. Vance will he his running mate. I think that is a bad decision for a number of reasons.
The Neo-Tribes of Anthropology
Identity-based interest groups are destroying a rich academic discipline.
A United Front? Really?
Last night, both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis spoke at the RNC conference in Milwaukee. DeSantis had a good line about the Biden presidency being “Weekend at Bernie’s,” which Trump evidently enjoyed. Haley gave her own “strong endorsement,” bobbing her head for emphasis. There was much cheering and excitement all around.
J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Hokum
Vance’s address to the GOP convention was a declaration of unconditional surrender cloaked in pugilism and superficial self-confidence.
The GOP still doesn’t know what it would do with power
Neither Project 2025 nor J.D. Vance is a sign Trump would accomplish more than he did last time.
The New GOP (and the Old)
With regularity, Republicans blame the United States for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. They blame President Biden in particular. Speaking to the Republican convention this week, David Sacks said that Biden “provoked, yes, provoked, the Russians to invade Ukraine.”
Is National Conservatism All That National?
Momentary social media buzz is deceiving.
Government Isn’t Your Mamaw
J.D. Vance’s misplaced blame for the woes of the working class.
We Have No Idea What Will Come Next
One thing we’ve learned in the past month is that even beginning to imagine what might happen a week from now is a fool’s errand. We might have expected Joe Biden would display infirmities in the presidential debate, but we certainly didn’t know how bad it would be. We couldn’t have foreseen an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. We couldn’t have predicted that the Republican Convention would be overshadowed by what is rapidly turning into the weirdest political story of our time, the improvisatory effort to kinda sorta defenestrate/make retire/bully/coup out Joe Biden from the presidential race. Oh, and Biden got COVID and went back to his basement in Delaware.
Trump v. United States: What Are ‘Official Acts’?
Reading the Supreme Court opinions in Trump v. United States, I was shocked. Not by the majority’s holding that presidents are immune from prosecution for their official acts, nor yet by the dissenting justices’ warning that the Court had placed the president above the law. I was shocked by how totally the majority and the minority seemed to be talking past each other. This mutual misconnection turns on the meaning of a single term: “official acts.”
Are We Less Polarized Than We Think?
A new study suggests we are looking at political division the wrong way.
The Trump Campaign Has Peaked Too Soon
With the end of their convention, the Republican Party and Donald Trump have reached what in military theory is called the “culminating point.” “The culminating point of victory,” according to the Modern War Institute at West Point, “is the threshold when military advantages peak and then rapidly turn into disadvantages.”
