This Week’s News
Biden's Memory and Handling of Classified Documents – The DOJ reported on it’s investigation into President Biden’s “mishandling of classified documents” yesterday. While it stopped short of recommending charges against him, it did refer to him as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and reported that during interviews:
Forgot on the first day of the interview when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?")
Forgot on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I still Vice President?")
Could not recall “within several years” when his son Beau died.
Worse than you can imagine – While the majority of us have come to the realization that we’re in for Biden v. Trump II later this year, Nikki Haley has refused to accept this sad reality and continues to Republican Primary against Donald Trump. If she’s not rethinking this after Tuesday’s primary in Nevada, she should be as she finished second to “None of these candidates.” Trump did not participate as no delegates were rewarded.
China’s economic crisis – In response to Chinese users posting negative comments about the Chinese economy on a US Embassy website about giraffe conservation (yes you read that correctly), the Chinese government has begun purging the internet of commentaries by prominent economists and journalists “raising concerns that Beijing is stepping up its censorship efforts as it tries to put a positive spin on a struggling economy.”
The Hidden Myocarditis Memo – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allegedly drafted an alert in May 2021 warning about the potential link between the COVID vaccines and myocarditis but ultimately held it back. In 2022 a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) “a small but significant increased risk in myocarditis among young men who get mRNA COVID-19 vaccines” and while the report found that “the benefits of vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 in reducing the severity of COVID-19, hospital admission, and deaths far outweigh the risk of developing myocarditis," proof that the CDC was aware of the risk and chose not to share it lends credence to the belief that the agency was “selective” about the data it shared with the public during the Pandemic.
What I’m reading
A Legal Outsider, an Offbeat Theory and the Fate of the 2024 Election – A scholar of the Constitution of the United States, working at a university in Ireland has put forth an argument that the President of the United States is not an “officer of the United States.” If this outsider’s theory is accepted, and it is currently being considered by the Supreme Court, it could prevent Colorado from barring President Trump from the primary ballot. As of today, SCOTUS appears skeptical that Trump should be removed from the state’s ballot.
Democrats Lose Ground With Black and Hispanic Adults – Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones and Lydia Saad provide a lot of fun charts and graphs (yes, I’m a math nerd) to show, among other things that:
The preference of Black Americans for the Democratic Party is at a new low.
Democrats' once significant leads among Hispanic adults and adults aged 18 to 29 is now only “modest.”
Democrats have gone from parity with Republicans with respect to men and non-college-educated adults, they now trail with both groups.
The Two-Parent Privilege is Real – Over at the Liberal Patriot, Justin Vassallo reviews Melissa Kearney’s book, and its attempt to address the neglect that “the corresponding rise in low-income, single-parent households” has received. Among the statistics that Kearney highlights include that children living with married parents has fallen from 77% in 1980 to 63% in 2019 and that “29 percent of children whose mothers don’t have a college degree and 30 percent of children whose mothers lack a high school degree were without a second parent in their home.” Vassallo concludes that “we should no longer deny what feels intuitive and true: healthy, productive, and hopeful lives are, for the most part, linked to stable two-parent homes, typically bound by marriage.”
My Podcast Recommendation(s) of the Week
EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious – What Palestinians Are Thinking (with Dahlia Scheindlin)
Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford's Hoover Institution speaks with Pollster and political scientist Dahlia Scheindlin about “the mood of Arab-Israelis and what optimism, if any, she has for a peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians in the aftermath of October 7th.”