Matt Pottinger: Searching for an Endgame With China | Foreign Affairs Interview
Matt Pottinger: Searching for an Endgame With China | Foreign Affairs Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Res-P1ErFvw
Month: July 2024
Why does Kamala Harris want to be president?
“What Harris’s career has made clear is that she’s more likely to pursue incremental progress than big, ambitious ideas. That’s why if elected, it’s likely that her administration would simply be an extension of the current one rather than a disruption.
On the campaign trail this week, several priorities have come into focus, with the economy and affordability still at the top of the list. Harris continues to talk about prioritizing the middle class, just as Biden did: “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency,” Harris said at her first major campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on Tuesday. “When our middle class is strong, America is strong.”
To support that swath of Americans, improving the care economy — those services that focus on children and the elderly — could be one of the major policy areas she may come to prioritize.
She would zero in on a straightforward policy agenda, said Carmel Martin, who served as the vice president’s domestic policy adviser from 2022 to 2023: a focus on “economic progress while bringing down inflation, expanding access to services that people need — health care being at the front of the line — and protecting reproductive rights.”
Harris has already shown signs of this focus, saying in a campaign address on Monday that she believes “in a future where no child has to grow up in poverty; where every person can buy a home, start a family, and build wealth; and where every person has access to paid family leave and affordable child care.” All of these stances are essentially what Biden has pitched before.
The fact that Harris has shown she’s not a hardened ideologue means that she can be swayed by political headwinds, giving social movements an opportunity to push various agendas.
Some of the country’s most transformational legislation, for example, didn’t come directly from presidents who were ideological hardliners, but rather from presidents who were willing to listen to social movements and public sentiment — as was the case during the Civil Rights Era.”
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/362619/kamala-harris-president-vision-political-ideology-2024-election
Biden is out of the 2024 race. What happens to his campaign donations?
“The Biden campaign said it had $240 million in cash on hand earlier this month, compared to former President Donald Trump’s $331 million. Campaign finance rules put some limits on what Biden can do with that money now that he’s no longer running for president.
The money isn’t just in limbo, however. Though it’s not yet completely certain whether Harris will become the nominee — she’d need Biden’s delegates at the Democratic National Convention to assume the candidacy, though his endorsement certainly puts her ahead of any possible competition — she could access Biden’s funds more easily than another Democrat. And the campaign pot only seems to be growing: Major Democratic donors, some of whom had paused their contributions after Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month due to concerns about his candidacy, reportedly reopened their wallets after Biden’s announcement Sunday.
Biden and Harris already share funds in a campaign committee under campaign finance laws that allow the president and vice president to run together as one ticket, said Saurav Ghosh, the Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform. If she were to remain on the ticket as the presidential nominee, “the new ticket would maintain access to all the funds in the campaign committee,” Ghosh added.
That would make Harris’s transition to the top of the ticket seamless — at least when it comes to the money.”
https://www.vox.com/joe-biden/361991/361991biden-campaign-funds-after-drops-out
Russian Escalation Strategy in Ukraine – The North Korean Deal, Kharkiv & Putin’s “Ceasefire” demand
Russian Escalation Strategy in Ukraine – The North Korean Deal, Kharkiv & Putin’s “Ceasefire” demand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTXwmcIfY0Y
Panel—Debating the United States’ China Strategy
Panel—Debating the United States’ China Strategy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv5CTYVM_7A
RUSSIAN Economy Starts to Break as Inflation Soars & Shortage of Workers Damages Future Growth
RUSSIAN Economy Starts to Break as Inflation Soars & Shortage of Workers Damages Future Growth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKKoA8rqGUc
How Taiwan Conquered U.S. Politics — and Showed Europe How It’s Done
How Taiwan Conquered U.S. Politics — and Showed Europe How It’s Done
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/05/taiwan-diplomacy-u-s-politics-nato-00166608
Trump considering cutting back intel sharing with Europe, officials warn
“there is certain information the U.S. relies on receiving from its European partners — and if Trump were to hold back intelligence, they, too, would likely retaliate, one recently retired senior U.S. official said.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/10/trump-considering-cutting-intel-sharing-europe-00167503
Project 2025 Is Everywhere. Here’s What It Means.
Project 2025 Is Everywhere. Here’s What It Means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vl73pL0t4M
Pregnancy in America is starting to feel like a crime
“Imagine you’re eight months pregnant, and you wake up in the middle of the night to a bolt of pain across your belly.
Terrified you might be losing your pregnancy, you rush to the emergency room — only to be told that no one there will care for you, because they’re worried they could be accused of participating in an abortion. The staff tells you to drive to another hospital, but that will take hours, by which time, it might be too late.
Such frightening experiences are growing more common in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, as doctors and other medical staff, fearful of the far-reaching effects of state abortion bans, are simply refusing to treat pregnant people at all.
It’s part of what some reproductive health activists see as a disturbing progression from bans on abortion to a climate of suspicion around all pregnant patients. “People are increasingly scared even to be pregnant,” said Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at the reproductive justice legal group If/When/How.
The fall of Roe has led to an ever-widening net of criminalization that can ensnare doctors, nurses, and pregnant people alike, leading to devastating consequences for patients’ health, experts say.
Complaints of pregnant women turned away from emergency rooms doubled in the months after Dobbs, the Associated Press reported earlier this year.”
…
“The Dobbs decision has created an environment in which people experiencing miscarriage are treated as criminals or crimes waiting to happen, advocates say — or sometimes both.
In October 2023, an Ohio woman named Brittany Watts visited a hospital, 21 weeks pregnant and bleeding. Doctors determined that her water had broken early and her fetus would not survive, but since her pregnancy was approaching the point at which Ohio bans abortions, a hospital ethics panel kept her waiting for eight hours while they debated what to do. She eventually returned home, miscarried, tried to dispose of the fetal remains herself, and was charged with felony abuse of a corpse.
The charges were ultimately dropped, but experts say her case is part of a larger pattern.”
https://www.vox.com/health/356512/pregnancy-america-crime-dobbs-justice