“Vance is an outspoken protectionist, nationalist, and anti-corporate hawk who’s bound to shift any future Trump administration in an anti-trade, anti-immigration, and anti-market direction. That can only mean bad things for the cost and availability of housing.”
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“The federal government hasn’t regulated rents at private buildings since World War II. There’s a good reason for that. A mountain of economic evidence suggests rent control is a terribly counterproductive policy.
The research couldn’t be clearer that where rent control policies suppress rents, they also suppress the supply of rental housing (by reducing construction or encouraging conversion of rental units to for-sale units) and reduce the quality of rental housing (by limiting investment).
The people who get a rent-controlled unit pay lower prices and stay in their units longer. The people who don’t get a rent-controlled unit end up paying higher prices. Cities as a whole suffer from declining investment and economic growth.
A rent control policy adopted in St. Paul, Minnesota, saw an exodus of developers from the city. New York City’s long-standing “rent stabilization” policy is producing vacant, dilapidated buildings that no one has the money to fix or redevelop.”
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“Vance is an arch-protectionist who’s endorsed Trump’s call for 10 percent tariffs across the board. Slapping taxes on imported materials needed for housing construction would make the costs of construction higher, lower housing production, and ultimately raise costs for consumers.
The Republican Party’s 2024 platform calls for deporting immigrants as a means of making housing more affordable.
Vance has been an outspoken proponent of this idea, saying on X last month that “not having 20 million illegal aliens who need to be housed (often at public expense) will absolutely make housing more affordable for American citizens.”
There’s a certain chilling logic to this idea: Lowering housing demand through mass deportations will lower housing prices as well.
New research however suggests the negative supply effects of kicking immigrants out of their homes outweigh any price declines caused by falling demand for housing. While immigrants consume housing, they also build housing. A recent study found that increased immigration enforcement creates a shortage of construction labor that lowers housing production and increases housing costs.”
“”A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran—but not these weak little bombing runs,” Vance said in a Fox News interview at the Republican National Convention on Monday. “If you’re going to punch the Iranians, you punch them hard, and that’s what [Trump] did when he took out [Iranian Gen. Qassem] Soleimani.”
Vance praised Trump for trying to “enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states” to fight back against Iran. In a speech to the Quincy Institute in May, Vance tried to sell a U.S.-Israeli-Arab alliance as a way for the United States to “spend less time and less resources in the Middle East.”
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Instead, Trump ended up overseeing a massive U.S. military buildup in the region during his term and nearly went to war with Iran.
Vance even wants to add another counterinsurgency to America’s “forever war” roster. In July 2023, he told NBC News that he would “empower the president of the United States, whether that’s a Democrat or Republican, to use the power of the U.S. military to go after these drug cartels” in Latin America.
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Trump and Vance also share the establishment view that the United States needs to get ready for a conflict with China over Taiwan. At the convention, Vance told Fox News that China is the “biggest threat” to America, and he has voiced support for building up the Taiwanese military with American weapons in the past.”
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“The stance that puts Trump and Vance most at odds with the foreign policy establishment is their opposition to U.S. military aid for Ukraine. In a February speech to the Senate, Vance complained that the “experts have a new thing that American taxpayers must fund and must fund indefinitely, and it is called the conflict in Ukraine.” He has also written about the munitions shortages that the war is causing, a rare moment of honesty by a politician about the limits of U.S. power.
Vance told Fox News at the convention that Trump will “go in there, negotiate with the Russians and the Ukrainians, [and] bring this thing to a rapid close.” He also said that the war simply wouldn’t have started if Trump were in office. Yet in practice, Trump’s policies toward Russia and Ukraine were just as hawkish as those of his successor. In fact, Trump was the first U.S. president to send weapons to Ukraine—a fact that he bragged about at the time.
And tellingly, at the presidential debate in June, Trump blamed President Joe Biden’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan for causing the Ukrainian conflict. “He was so bad with Afghanistan, it was such a horrible embarrassment,” Trump said. “When [Russian President Vladimir] Putin saw that, he said, ‘You know what? I think we’re going to go in.'”
It’s not really an argument against war—just a promise to be better at it than the last guy.
Many Democrats and Republicans want to have their cake and eat it too. They know that Americans are fed up with endless military conflict, but they want to make their opponents look weak. Liberal criticisms of Trump’s foreign policy were just as incoherent as conservative criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy.
But wanting to win harder is not a strategy. And America’s problems are not simply a lack of gumption. Vance may be more willing to acknowledge the limits of U.S. power than his competition. When it comes to actually applying those insights, he falls far short.”
“”A disproportionate number of undocumented immigrants are convicted of driving without a license” or “using a false Social Security Number,” notes the Law Enforcement Immigration Task Force. But immigrants “are less prone” to committing crimes that are unrelated to their immigration status, it continues. “Existing evidence shows that immigrants do not represent a threat to public safety any more than every other segment of the population.””
“Hasina’s exit on an India-bound military helicopter came after crowds broke a curfew and stormed the prime minister’s residence in the capital Dhaka, following weeks of bloody protest.
The movement that ultimately toppled her started with students frustrated at their lack of job prospects and snowballed to include ordinary Bangladeshis facing increasingly tough economic conditions. But the jubilant scenes in the capital Dhaka come at great cost; around 300 people have been killed since the protests started in June, and the country’s future remains uncertain as a military-backed caretaker government steps in.
After a decade and a half in power, Hasina’s legacy is complicated. On the one hand, her government built modern infrastructure and improved development opportunities, especially for the poor. But she also increasingly cracked down on the press, as well as the opposition, and as time went on, many forms of dissent.
Army General Waker-uz-Zaman announced Monday that the military had taken control of the government; parliament is being dissolved, and the government is formulating a plan for fresh elections.
“The country is going through a revolutionary period,” Zaman said in a national television address. “We request you to have faith in the army of the country. Please don’t go back to the path of violence and please return to nonviolent and peaceful ways.”
Though a people-power movement has won a victory in driving Hasina out, the young democracy is entering a period of major uncertainty; indeed, what happens next for Bangladesh is anyone’s guess.”
“Spanish police believe they have smashed a gang that was planning to make up to 1,000 Kamikaze drones and sell them to the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.
It comes following raids in Barcelona and Badalona, to the north of the city, in which a total of three people were arrested. Another suspect was also detained in Germany.”