What Caught My Eye forSeptember 24 - 30 (#30)

The president appears out of options to change voting rules before November. That does not stop other machinations. Three worries predominate: that the president might send federal officers to the polls to intimidate voters, order police to seize ballot boxes, or pressure MAGA-friendly election administrators to refuse to certify results.

State officials, Democratic congressmen and litigation non-profits have been war-gaming those scenarios for months. Senate Democrats have been holding tabletop exercises with outside advisers, including Eric Holder, a former attorney-general. Justin Vail of Protect Democracy, one of the organisations involved, says the first imperative is to go to court immediately in any such incident. The work involves training county clerks, the first port of call for poll workers.

If anyone thinks Trump is going to lie down without a fight, they’re deluding themselves. VOTE. Help others vote.

I’d like to say talks will go somewhere, but I’m highly skeptical.

Even back then, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that this tax deduction for passthroughs amounted to almost $415 billion in lost revenue over a decade. So if you care about addressing the federal deficit or, like, growing inequality, if you care about things like health care prices or beer prices, maybe it’s worth paying more attention to this stealthy wealthy class of multimillionaires.

Justin Wolfers: I’m not sure what the message is, but it certainly seems interesting that 12 out of 12 voting members thought that this latest interest rate move was the right choice and that includes folks appointed by trump biden and obama and so when the president says it was a bad choice who are you going to believe the unanimous vote of 12 people from across the ideological spectrum who have deep expertise and substantial briefings or a bloke in a room that doesn’t have any corners?

There’s been a lot of concern about Fed independence after Kevin Warsh was nominated and confirmed. This at least gives a slight vote of confidence he’s not going to just kiss the ring.

There is little to no holistic evidence that Republicans’ Nazi problem is tethered to age. Yes, it’s more likely that a younger person who’s terminally online will post imagery to be provocative, but they’re simply reflecting the values modeled by the Republicans who came before them and for whom they’re now working. Project 2025 and its mirroring of Nazi Germany values, like drastically reducing immigration and persecuting people who aren’t white, wasn’t brewed in a frat house; no, it was dreamed up by grown-ass adults who were forged in the hellfires of the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Presidents Bush and now Donald Trump administrations, and whose embers landed at the Heritage Foundation.

The rot goes to the party’s core.