We begin today with G. Elliott Morris of the “Strength in Numbers” Substack looking at polling data showing that a plurality of American voters are not ideological at all. In this excerpt from his analysis of the polling we look at the largest group of voters: “the affordability party.”
Americans in this bucket are not looking for a grand ideological project, they simply want a party that makes day-to-day life less stressful. When these voters imagine an “ideal” party, they describe something that keeps basic necessities affordable, protects people’s rights in a broad sense, and looks out for the middle and working classes.
Unsurprisingly, the core of this vision is economic. Respondents talk a lot about the economy, prices, wages, jobs, taxes, rent and housing costs. They use words like “affordable” and “cost of living” and mention rising prices as their number one issue. Healthcare sits right alongside those pocketbook concerns: people repeatedly mention health care and Medicare, and they tend to frame access to affordable care as something close to a basic right.
There is also a lot of language on fairness. Words like “equality,” “rights,” “freedom,” and “treating everyone the same” are common, but they are generally not tied to “liberal,” “conservative,” “Democrat,” or “Republican” labels.
The vast majority of respondents in this group also don’t use clearly political language at all. Responses like “Help the people” and “Represent the people” are frequent. In that sense, this group is best described as focused on material wellbeing, and not intensely interested in politics — or potentially even aware of the ideological lines of American politics.
Jason Linkins of The New Republic sees that all of the various Trump “crises” are one in same.
For my part, I’m less worried about whether some Democratic Party luminary catches an Epstein stray and more concerned about whether Democrats bungle the opportunity to attack these corrupt arrangements and the presidential administration that has made them its North Star. This iron is, at the moment, particularly hot. A fresh Reuters/Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that Trump’s approval ratings had hit startling new lows, with respondents particularly “unhappy about his handling of the high cost of living and the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.”
Epstein and the economy—these are the twin albatrosses around Trump’s neck. The question, however, is whether Democrats will have the stomach and the sense to exploit both avenues to Trump’s ruin. It may not seem like a problem, but Democrats seem pathologically averse to multitasking, which explains why they’re making the salience of grocery prices their priority to the exclusion of all other matters. So monomaniacal is this approach that at various times over the past year, Democratic lawmakers have called other concerns “distractions”—up to and including Trump’s rampaging paramilitary forces.
Let’s give Democrats their due: Their affordability arguments passed electoral tests earlier this month. And the administration is spooked: Trump and his allies are attempting wan affordability arguments of their own. It’s been a while, but Democrats are suddenly calling the tune in Washington.
That the Epstein matter has wounded Trump at the same time is a fortunate coincidence for Democrats seeking a skeleton key to unlock a larger argument about the harm Trump’s done to our republic: The ICE goons on our street, Trump’s White House teardown, the high cost of living, the administration’s various decisions to hurt people during the shutdown, all the weird ghouls occupying executive branch positions that once went to qualified civil servants, and the forever stench of oligarchic swampwater suffusing public life—all of these issues roiling the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people lie at the nexus of elite impunity.
Mattathias Schwartz of The New York Times reports about the meeting of the Federalist Society earlier this month amid tensions between the power legal group and the Trump regime.
Dozens of federal judges from across the country attended the event at the Washington Hilton. Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett of the Supreme Court spoke at the gala dinner and a third justice, Samuel A. Alito Jr., sat among the crowd of 2,300.
What was less clear was if the organization was ready to fully embrace the hyperaggressive legal views of the president who had empowered it like never before.
From the stage, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, and Chad Mizelle, who recently stepped down from another top Justice Department position, delivered stem-winding remarks slamming judges who had stood in Mr. Trump’s way.
But the convention’s panels also offered a platform to speakers who questioned key administration policies, including attempts to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion programs and deploy the National Guard in U.S. cities.
Schwartz also writes a sentence that I must comment on and that I am still not ready for:
He praised the murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk and threw shade at the Biden-era pandemic czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.
As someone who thought that “throwing shade” would remain confined to the Christopher Street Pier and LGBTQ ballroom culture, I am still not ready to see the phrase used when describing the talk of a conservative legal activist in The New York Times. And it has been nearly a decade since I saw use of the phrase on a college football message board and I wasn’t ready for that either.
Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic compares the new Trump/Russia agreement about Ukraine with some of the worse agreements made during World War II.
Why is the Trump White House pushing Ukraine to accept a Russian plan that paves the way for another war? The document offers some hints, declaring that the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100 billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this money in Ukraine and receive “50% of the profits from this venture.” Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia would “enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” according to the plan. This is no surprise: Putin has spoken of “several companies” positioning themselves to resume business ties between his country and the United States. [...]
For a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan, if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries, leading to terrible suffering. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit right into that tradition.
Finally today, Sergio Murgía of El País in English writes that even though Cuba (unlike Jamaica and Haiti) suffered no loss of life because of Hurricane Melissa, affected communities are being “overwhelmed” by the devastation on portions of the island.
According to the United Nations mission in Cuba, Hurricane Melissa affected more than 3.5 million people, damaged or destroyed 90,000 homes, and damaged around 100,000 hectares of crops. Unlike other Caribbean islands, such as Haiti and Jamaica, where the hurricane claimed dozens of lives, no casualties were reported as Cuban authorities — who are accustomed to dealing with these types of storms every hurricane season — had evacuated nearly a million residents from the east of the island. But just when things were already chaotic in the lives of Cubans, between rampant inflation, the high cost of living, the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, unsanitary conditions, and constant power outages, the cyclone arrived to stir things up even more.
More than two weeks after the storm, families who have lost everything now face the challenge of rebuilding under the burden of the pre-existing food, fuel, and medicine shortages on the island, disoriented by how to restart their lives under these circumstances. The UN has stated that Cuban authorities are “overwhelmed” by the devastation caused by Melissa. [...]
The situation is critical in communities like Cauto el Paso, where pre-existing poverty has been exacerbated by a lack of basic resources. External aid has begun to arrive, and various countries, multilateral organizations, and United Nations agencies have channeled material resources, funds, and technical assistance to the areas hardest hit by the hurricane. Fernando Hiraldo del Castillo, resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Cuba, told EL PAÍS that his team is working in the affected areas, delivering supplies such as tarpaulins, metal roofing sheets, tool kits, chainsaws, and generators “so that people can repair the basic conditions of their homes after the storm, as well as mobilizing funds for subsequent recovery efforts.”
Everyone have the best day that you possibly can!
