“In a newly-released research paper, Evan Cunningham, a Ph.D candidate in Economics at the University of Minnesota, studied the effects of Amazon’s continued spread across the country—growing from just a handful of warehouses, or “fulfillment centers,” in 2010, to more than 1,300 today in the U.S. alone. On balance, it turns out that Amazon warehouses provide a net positive to local economies.
“I find Amazon’s entry in a metro [area] increases the total employment rate by 1.0 percentage points and average wages by 0.7 percent,” Cunningham writes. “The composition of employment shifts from retail and wholesale trade to warehousing and tradeable services, primarily driven by younger workers. Employment gains are concentrated among non-college workers.”
There are also some drawbacks, though it largely depends on your perspective. “Amazon’s entry increases rents by 1.1 percent and the cost of utilities by 6.0 percent,” while “average home values increase by 5.6 percent.” Higher rents and utility rates may not sound particularly appealing, but Cunningham notes that this is a result of higher housing demand: “The average worker is willing to pay $329 per year to live in a large U.S. city after Amazon’s entry, relative to a counterfactual U.S. economy where Amazon did not expand. This increase was primarily driven by rising home values, implying the benefits accrued to home owners.””
“The attacker, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Texas, rammed a truck into Bourbon Street before he was killed in a shootout with police. Jabbar was flying an ISIS flag from his vehicle and posted videos on Facebook shortly before the attack, pledging support to the group.
In a briefing on Thursday, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia described Jabbar as “100 percent inspired by ISIS.” Raia said that Jabbar, who had also planted two explosive devices on Bourbon Street that never went off, claimed he had joined ISIS before last summer. In his videos, Jabbar said he had originally planned to attack his relatives and friends — he had recently gone through a divorce — but worried that media coverage would not focus on what he called the “war between the believers and disbelievers.” Authorities are also investigating whether there is any link between the attack and a truck bombing that took place outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas on the same day, though for now there does not appear to be.
Using trucks and vans to ram into crowds has been a staple of deadly ISIS-linked attacks for years, from Nice, France, to Barcelona, to Berlin, to Stockholm. New Orleans is likely the biggest ISIS-inspired attack on US soil since 2016, when gunman Omar Mateen killed 49 people at Pulse, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The last significant ISIS-inspired attack in the US was in 2017, when Sayfullo Saipov drove a truck onto Manhattan’s West Side Highway, killing eight people.
ISIS-linked violence is still common around the world — there was a major suicide attack on a military base in Somalia just this week. The group’s Afghanistan-based affiliate, ISIS-K, has been particularly ambitious and global in its activities. It carried out an attack on Moscow’s Crocus theater that killed more than 130 people last March, as well as the suicide bombings that killed nearly 100 people in Tehran in January 2024. In August, authorities foiled a “quite advanced” ISIS-K plot to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Austria.
The fact that there hadn’t been any recent ISIS-inspired attacks in the US in recent years may not be from lack of trying. Aaron Y. Zelin, who researches and tracks jihadist groups at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, notes that there were five arrests for ISIS-related plots in the US in 2024, including attempts to “target churches in Idaho, LGBTQ ‘establishments’ in Philadelphia, Jewish centers/synagogues in New York City, election day voting locations in Oklahoma City, and a Pride parade in Phoenix.” That’s up from zero arrests of this type in 2023.
The fact that one of the group’s self-acknowledged acolytes has now succeeded to deadly and tragic effect raises some tough questions about whether ISIS is primed for a resurgence, and what it actually means to be “ISIS-affiliated” today.”
“in the face of increasingly tough competition both domestic and foreign, US Steel started to look for a buyer. Late last year it found one in Nippon Steel, the largest steel manufacturer in Japan, which offered $14.9 billion for the company.
In many ways, it seemed like a natural fit. The world’s current leading steel producer, by a wide margin, is China, and just as a US-Japan alliance is the linchpin of efforts to contain China militarily, a US-Japan corporate merger could be a linchpin of efforts to contain China’s efforts to dominate the steel market. Letting a military rival control the production of such a crucial material (and such an important one for defense applications like warships and warplanes) comes with clear risks.
Except the deal now will not go through. President Joe Biden, who came out in opposition to the deal in March, announced on Friday he would block the sale on the grounds that the deal represented a threat to national security.
“It is my solemn responsibility as president to ensure that, now and long into the future, America has a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry that can continue to power our national sources of strength at home and abroad,” Biden said in a statement. “And it is a fulfillment of that responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company.”
The decision comes after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS, an interagency council controlled by Biden’s Cabinet and other appointees) decided not to formally recommend whether the takeover should go forward, though it did express reservations about the deal in letters to Nippon Steel and US Steel. CFIUS has the power to vote mergers and acquisitions it deems dangerous to national security.
National security, though, is not necessarily the reason why Biden made the highly unusual decision to block the deal, even though US Steel is threatening to shut down multiple mills should the deal not go through, which could put thousands out of work. His administration’s diplomats had reportedly told Japanese officials they need to kill the merger so Democrats would win Pennsylvania last November. (Even though Kamala Harris also came out against the deal on the campaign trail, she still lost Pennsylvania by over 100,000 votes.) Donald Trump also signaled opposition to the acquisition.
Why did this deal become so unpopular? Some of it surely is the symbolism of “US Steel” being sold to “Nippon Steel,” which if included as a plot point in a late ’80s/early ’90s movie about the unstoppable economic rise of Japan, would come across as a little too on the nose. Unsurprisingly, Trump, whose form of nationalism has a distinct 1980s vintage, explained his opposition as motivated by a desire not to sell out to “Japan.”
But the bigger reason politicians lined up against the deal is that the leadership of the United Steelworkers union (USW), which includes most of US Steel’s workforce among its 60,000 steelmaking members, strongly opposed it, though many members dissented. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) candidly stated he’ll oppose the deal as long as the union does.”
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“One can hardly blame the United Steelworkers union for being skeptical of minimills, given how the spread of the business model has decimated its membership. The problem is not just that minimills require fewer workers, but that they tend to be located in southern, anti-union states, with non-union labor.
There are a total of eight operational integrated steel mills in the US, all owned by US Steel or Cleveland-Cliffs; three are in Indiana, two in Ohio, one in Michigan, and one in Pennsylvania. The eighth, in Granite City, Illinois, idled its blast furnaces indefinitely late last year, though it continues to roll and finish steel slabs produced elsewhere. All eight of these facilities are unionized, six by the United Steelworkers.
By comparison, there are 88 electric arc furnace facilities in the US. While it’s hard to know what share are unionized, most are not; only about 23 percent of iron and steelworkers in the US overall are covered by a union contract, down from over half in 1983. Given that almost all workers in integrated mills are covered, it’s reasonable to surmise that the large majority of minimill workers aren’t in a union, making steel a majority non-union industry overall.
There are always exceptions, like a US Steel electric arc furnace facility in Alabama where workers are USW members, but for the most part, big integrated mills mean union power, and minimills with electric arc furnaces mean union decline. Nucor, the largest steel company in the US with over 25 million tons sold last year to US Steel’s 15.5 million, both pioneered minimills and is famously non-union. Even US Steel, long a center of union strength, acquired an Arkansas non-union electric arc furnace mill in 2021.”
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“How did this tie into the Nippon Steel bid? Essentially, the steelworkers saw Nippon as threatening to move US Steel toward minimill-type production and away from the conventional blast furnace/basic oxygen furnace integrated mills where the union is strongest.”
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““The reality is that there are certain crucial products that simply cannot be made without blast furnaces, including those used in automotive, energy, and national security applications,” the union insisted. They have a point. We can’t run the world economy on recycled scrap metal alone, and advanced high-strength steel (AHSS), needed for car manufacturing among other uses, tends to be made with blast furnaces, not electric arc furnaces, in part because scrap of high enough quality to make AHSS is rare. EAFs running on iron produced through direct reduction, not blast furnaces, may be able to make inroads here, but right now we need blast furnaces for cars.
There are other union concerns as well. The acquisition was announced without giving the union prior notice, which it claims violates the collective bargaining agreement reached between the union and US Steel.
Moreover, the union had another buyer in mind: Cleveland Cliffs, the No. 2 steel company in the US and the only other operator of traditional integrated mills. The company committed to the union that no union member would lose their job upon acquisition, and would continue to operate blast furnaces. Once again, the USW position emphasizes keeping traditional mills, with large union workforces, going.
However, Cleveland Cliffs only offered $7.3 billion, about half of Nippon’s $14.9 billion, for US Steel. It reportedly offered much more than that privately in response to the Nippon bid, but even then it didn’t match the Nippon offer. A Cleveland Cliffs purchase would have also raised major antitrust issues that would presumably bother the unusually antitrust-focused Biden administration. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the US auto manufacturers’ lobby, wrote to policymakers to express concern over one firm controlling 100 percent of US blast furnaces, and 65 to 90 percent of the steel used in vehicle manufacturing.
Industry press coverage of Cliffs notes quite candidly their strategy of trying to dominate blast furnace production so they can charge a higher price. In other contexts, that’s a kind of monopoly-oriented strategy that Biden appointees like Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan or Department of Justice antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter would normally object to.”
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“Some environmental groups criticized the deal on the grounds that Nippon is committed to keeping high-emissions blast furnaces running — precisely the opposite conclusion of the steelworkers’ union. If the steelworkers were right, that probably would have been good news for Nippon and US Steel’s carbon footprint.
As it stands, electric arc furnaces are far cleaner than blast furnace/basic oxygen steel production.”
“In an ideal world, everyone who qualifies for an aid program ought to receive its benefits. But the reality is that this is often not the case. Before the pandemic, for example, nearly one-fifth of Americans who qualified for food stamps didn’t receive them. In fact, millions of Americans who are eligible for existing social welfare programs don’t receive all of the benefits they are entitled to.”
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“Means testing a given social program can have good intentions: Target spending toward the people who need it most. After all, if middle- or high-income people who can afford their groceries or rent get federal assistance in paying for those things, then wouldn’t there be less money to go around for the people who actually need it?
The answer isn’t so straightforward.”
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“Implementing strict eligibility requirements can be extremely tedious and have unintended consequences.
For starters, let’s look at one of the main reasons lawmakers advocate for means testing: saving taxpayers’ money. But that’s not always what happens. “Though they’re usually framed as ways of curbing government spending, means-tested benefits are often more expensive to provide, on average, than universal benefits, simply because of the administrative support needed to vet and process applicants,” my colleague Li Zhou wrote in 2021.
More than that, means testing reduces how effective antipoverty programs can be because a lot of people miss out on benefits. As Zhou points out, figuring out who qualifies for welfare takes a lot of work, both from the government and potential recipients who have to fill out onerous applications. The paperwork can be daunting and can discourage people from applying. It can also result in errors or delays that would easily be avoided if a program is universal.
There’s also the fact that creating an income threshold creates incentives for people to avoid advancing in their careers or take a higher-paying job. One woman I interviewed a few years ago, for example, told me that after she started a job as a medical assistant and lost access to benefits like food stamps, it became harder to make ends meet for her and her daughter. When lawmakers aggressively means test programs, people like her are often left behind, making it harder to transition out of poverty.
As a result, means testing can seriously limit a welfare program’s potential. According to a report by the Urban Institute, for example, the United States can reduce poverty by more than 30 percent just by ensuring that everyone who is eligible for an existing program receives its benefits. One way to do that is for lawmakers to make more welfare programs universal instead of means-tested.”
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“There sometimes is an aversion to universal programs because they’re viewed as unnecessarily expensive. But universal programs are often the better choice because of one very simple fact: They are generally much easier and less expensive to administer. Two examples of this are some of the most popular social programs in the country: Social Security and Medicare.
Universal programs might also create less division among taxpayers as to how their money ought to be spent. A lot of opposition to welfare programs comes from the fact that some people simply don’t want to pay for programs they don’t directly benefit from, so eliminating that as a factor can create more support for a given program.
In 2023, following a handful of other states, Minnesota implemented a universal school meal program where all students get free meals. This was in response to the problems that arise when means testing goes too far. Across the country, students in public school pay for their meals depending on their family’s income. But this system has stigmatized students who get a free meal. According to one study, 42 percent of eligible families reported that their kids are less likely to eat their school meal because of the stigma around it.
Minnesota’s program has proven popular so far: In September 2023, shortly after the program took off, the amount of school breakfasts and lunches served increased by 30 percent and 11 percent compared to the previous year, respectively.
While it might not be politically feasible — or, in some cases, necessary — to get rid of means testing for all public subsidies, free school meals also offer an example of what a compromise might look like at the national level. Though Congress hasn’t made school meals free to all, it passed a provision in 2010 that allows schools to provide free meals to all students in districts where at least 25 percent (originally 40 percent) are eligible. The program showed that providing free meals to all lowered food insecurity, even among poor students who already qualified for free meals, by removing stigma. (The community eligibility provision now serves nearly 20 million students.)
As for how universal programs can be paid for, the answer is, yes, imposing higher taxes. It might seem inefficient to give people a benefit if you’re going to essentially take it back from them in taxes, but what you actually end up with is a much more efficient program that is more easily administered and doesn’t leave anyone out.”
“There are roughly 1,500 arrested, charged, or imprisoned January 6 insurrectionists, and among their number are all sorts of people.
The January 6 defendants aren’t just hard-boiled leaders of militant groups; the insurrectionists included an actor, small-business owners, and even a self-proclaimed shaman, many of whom voiced a belief in conspiracy theories. However, some of the January 6 insurrectionists were affiliated with a variety of radical anti-government movements, most notably the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, right-wing paramilitary groups recognized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Those convicted have been found guilty of a range of crimes, from low-level offenses like trespassing or property damage to grave offenses like seditious conspiracy.”
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“The push for freeing insurrectionists has its roots in the false assertion, popularized by Trump, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. That false claim, based on a variety of conspiracy theories, asserts that the 2020 election was improper; thus the insurrectionists were justified in taking action. Furthermore, the insurrectionists’ supporters claim, Justice Department investigations into Trump show that it is weaponized against those on the right, and that makes the prosecution against insurrectionists improper and invalid.
Trump has encouraged this line of thinking, repeatedly claiming that the DOJ is being weaponized against him and his supporters, often saying, as he did following an indictment, “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”
As the trials of insurrectionists unfolded, several groups began to work to draw attention to the trials and recast them as persecution. One leader of these efforts is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a woman shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the insurrection. (The officer was investigated by the DOJ; he was cleared of any wrongdoing.) Witthoeft moved to Washington, DC, from San Diego to support January 6 defendants and hold vigils in support of the cause.
Trump has supported the narrative that January 6 defendants are the victims, with Babbitt cast as a martyr and the convicted as “political prisoners.” To be clear, they’re in prison not for expressing political beliefs but for interfering with the political process, committing serious violence, and other crimes.
Now, there is a constellation of pro-insurrectionist groups, like Justice for January 6 (J4J6), American Patriot Relief, J6 Pardon Project, and stophate.com, all of which have called for pardons. Proud Boys leadership has requested clemency, and a slew of other groups and individuals associated with the January 6 insurrectionists have asked for pardons, too.”
“The rationale behind capping the SALT deduction was that it would disproportionally benefit high-income earners in high-tax states—and it did. In effect, the federal government was subsidizing the tax-and-spend policies of these states by shielding residents from the full impact of local tax increases. If California raised its taxes, the SALT deduction softened the blow for taxpayers.”
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“raising the cap on SALT deductions would ease pressure on blue states to simplify or lower their tax rates. Consider that California’s top marginal rate is a whopping 13.3 percent. When combined with a top federal rate of 37 percent, Golden State residents are approaching a Sweden-level tax rate. Meanwhile, seven states impose no state income tax at all. This dynamic highlights the beauty of the American political system—the states compete for talent and resources. Over time, high-tax states will lose capital, and low-tax states will benefit.
It’s difficult to oppose any proposal that lowers taxes, but an exception applies here. Raising the SALT cap would only reward high-tax states for their fiscal irresponsibility while undermining the competitive pressures that drive reform. Cities like Nashville, Austin, and Miami are thriving as new hubs of innovation precisely because they’ve embraced freedom and pro-growth policies. They’ve earned their success—and that’s the lesson high-tax states need to learn.”
“Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said today that he’d step down as head of the country’s Liberal Party, after weeks of speculation that his time in leadership was coming to an end.
In Canada, the head of the party with the highest number of seats in Parliament leads the country. Though Trudeau will no longer be the Liberal Party leader, he’ll remain prime minister until his party chooses a new leader, likely in the next two months. Canada must also hold a general election by October to choose a new government.”
“The New Orleans attacker who killed 14 people by ramming a pickup truck into a crowd built two bombs with a “very rare explosive compound”, senior law enforcement officials have said.
The compound had never before been used in a US or European terror attack, with investigators now exploring how attacker Shamsud-Din Jabbar learnt how to produce the explosive.
Jabbar used the compound in two homemade bombs, which were found in coolers on Bourbon Street, where he carried out his deadly attack on New Year’s Day. The bombs did not detonate and it remains unclear whether this was due to a malfunction or lack of activation.”
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“Jabbar, a US citizen born in Texas and a former army soldier, had posted several social media messages saying he was inspired by the Islamic State militant group.
He had been living in a trailer on the outskirts of Houston before driving to Louisiana to carry out the attack, and was shot dead in a firefight with police at the scene.
The FBI has concluded that no one helped Jabbar to carry out his attack.”