Brooks and Marcus on political reaction to Trump officials using app to discuss Yemen plan
Brooks and Marcus on political reaction to Trump officials using app to discuss Yemen plan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGZXP3k8Q_k
Author: Lone Candle
Middle East Dialogues: Tarek Masoud in conversation with Einat Wilf
Middle East Dialogues: Tarek Masoud in conversation with Einat Wilf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdmDEXatXts
Five Questions for Stephen Kotkin: Advice for the New Administration (and the Rest of Us)
NATO was a defensive alliance of pacifists with small military budgets. It was not a threat to Russia and not Putin’s reason for invading Ukraine.
If Nixon really did make the comment about the madman theory referring to a part of his strategy in Vietnam…it didn’t work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8wTBy_tgKo
Democrats hammered by ugly unpopularity numbers
“57% of registered voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, the highest percentage since Quinnipiac started asking the question in 2008.”
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/30/democrats-popularity-trump-poll-2024
About that 2022 “technical recession”
“Remember two years ago, when GDP was reported as having shrunk for two consecutive quarters, and there was an entire exhausting discourse about whether it qualified as a recession? Turns out it was a statistical illusion.”
…
“The Commerce Department published on Thursday morning revised GDP data for the past several years based on more complete information. One of the adjustments: GDP is now estimated to have grown in the second quarter of 2022 at a 0.3% annual rate.”
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“The revisions also point to more robust GDP growth throughout the post-pandemic expansion, with 2021 GDP growth revised up by 0.3 percentage points, 2022 up 0.6 points, and 2023 up 0.4 points.”
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“GDP growth numbers for the second half of 2023 were revised down, pointing to some deceleration of activity heading into 2024.”
https://www.axios.com/2024/09/26/2022-recession-gdp-revision
Vance & wife get UNWELCOME SURPRISE in Greenland
Trump is ruining our relationships with Canada and Greenland. Countries don’t like it when you say you’re gonna annex them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78LIqJG4wxE
RFK Jr.’s massive cuts stun staff, leave senior employees scrambling
RFK Jr.’s massive cuts stun staff, leave senior employees scrambling
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/27/very-few-people-know-whats-happening-rfk-jr-cuts-surprise-and-alarm-00254822
‘Modest stagflation’ risk climbs for Trump as inflation jumps
“Inflation climbed in February as consumers braced for the potential onslaught of higher prices from President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.
The Commerce Department reported Friday that prices rose at a higher-than-expected annual rate of 2.8 percent last month, excluding food and energy items, a signal that prices could spike even further in the coming months.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/28/stagflation-risk-inflation-trump-economy-tariffs-00256500
Senior Republican joins Dems in raising alarm over White House’s flouting of funding bill
“The senators made clear that spending bills approved by Congress and signed into law by the president must be regarded as law, not an optional recommendation to the executive branch: “Just as the President does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate.”
They said they are “concerned” about “sudden changes to OMB’s interpretation of long-standing statutory provisions,” adding it could be “disruptive to the appropriations process and make it more difficult for the Appropriations Committee to work in a collaborative fashion with the Administration.”
They also scolded Vought for not bringing this issue to them directly: “Collaboration will become even more challenging when the Committee is first informed of such developments through the press, rather than notified through official channels, as was the case here.””
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/27/congress/senate-appropriators-raise-alarm-over-trump-administration-not-adhering-to-stopgap-spending-bill-00254259
If Trump Defies the Courts, It Will Backfire Badly
“there is extraordinarily little support for the idea that the president could simply disregard orders from the courts. That is true across the public, according to recent polls, with more than 80 percent of Americans rejecting the idea.
I also found similar responses from an informal survey of conservative legal thinkers, including from those generally sympathetic or otherwise open to the administration’s legal positions.
“The Constitution implicitly requires the executive branch to … comply with judicial judgments when the executive is part of the case,” Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia and onetime clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told me.
“It’s never permissible for a president to defy a court order,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and legal analyst at the Manhattan Institute.”
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“There are other practical reasons for the Trump administration to stay on the right side of the courts.
“What’s laying in the background is that they probably perceive, rightly or wrongly, that they’re going to win 70, 60 percent of the time in the Supreme Court,” Prakash told me, referring to the array of ongoing disputes that may wind up before the justices. “So why would you want to trash the judiciary if you think you’re ultimately going to win most of the time?”
Just as important, if not more so, is that a confrontation between Trump and the courts would imperil the successful, decades-long project by Republicans and conservatives to shift the Supreme Court to the right. In just the last few years, the six GOP appointees have revamped constitutional law in a host of areas — from abortion to affirmative action to the administrative state — but there are plenty of issues that are still on conservatives’ wish list and facing action at the Supreme Court.”
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“None of this works particularly well if Trump ends up antagonizing potential swing-vote justices like Roberts or Amy Coney Barrett. As former Gov. Chris Christie recently noted to ABC News, “He’s going to tick off the Supreme Court so much that they may not give him everything he wants.””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/28/trump-defy-courts-risk-00254813