Favorites: Intelligence Gaps, Inflation Fears, and International Flashpoints
Small-dollar donations push Dems left, Social Security checks at risk—this is how 2025 is shaping up
Trump shut down intelligence sharing with Ukraine, this is getting Ukrainian civilians killed (cached), absolutely shameful (cached). The move doesn't save us money Yglesias quips (cached) that it's simply because Trump is on Russia's side. Europe is stepping up their weapons production, South Korea also has a defense industry. From Thorsten Benner (cached), When the US tries to convince other countries not to rely on China for critical infrastructure, there's clear precedent: "we‘ve done it to Ukraine. Do you really think China would treat you any better?" Noah Smith points out (cached) that now France's 80 year strategy of not relying too much on the US is paying dividends.
Wow, just... the party of Trump. No room for anything else.
One commenter notes that policy uncertainty is worse than during the recession. Completely self inflicted! I don't know if you've noticed, but the Dow is now down not just below when Trump was inaugurated, but as Aaron Rupar points out, it's below when he was elected.
Longer Reads
• A study of Auckland upzoning suggests that the benefits of preserving old buildings do not compensate for the negative impacts of limiting housing supply, ultimately indicating that zoning restrictions cause significant harm. The thread has a summary, which is good because the study is paywalled. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Seems like COVID-19 probably wasn’t the result of gain of function research, but that doesn’t mean gain of function research is super safe. This new gain of function research out of Wuhan looks very unsafe! (src)(cached)
– What went wrong with Britain’s housing market. Here’s a whole article. But the linked graph is a good starting point (src)(cached)
– Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimates have a good track record, and in the last few days they’ve absolutely dropped off a cliff. But it's not a lock, not all evidence (cached) points towards a GDP drop in Q1. (src)(cached)
– USAID situation looks real dire, (src)(cached)
– Former Social Security administrator says that due to Trump administration’s decisions, checks are likely to fail to go out in the next 30 to 90 days. (src)(cached)
– Musk is now characterizing the entire USAID halt as a temporary pause. But any pause to these programs is bad. Stopping Ebola is too important. Plus, stopping people’s pay means losing people. (src)(cached)
– Is Trump planning to dissolve the USPS leadership? Seems like that would give him a lot of power over mail and ballots.. (src)(cached)
– The text messages you get warning about how dire things are work for bringing in small dollar donations, but at the same time, that sort of messaging actually turns off moderate voters. That's a trade-off I had not previously considered. Here's an interesting addition from David Shor (cached), because ActBlue rolled out gradually, it's possible to study the effect it has on Democratic politicians public positions, and indeed, you can see a correlation between the rollout of easy small-dollar donations and more left-leaning policy positions. Here's the paper. (src)(cached)
– Trump’s crypto reserve idea is basically white collar crime (src)(cached)
– Even French isolationist / notoriously pro-Russia Marine Le Pen condemns Trump’s turn against Ukraine. (src)(cached)
– FiveThirtyEight has been dissolved by ABC. Someone else needs to get a poll aggregator replacement online ASAP. Nate Silver is making progress, and now has an approval rating tracker online. (src)(cached)
– Jason Furman makes a great point: “Every time you hear someone belittle cheap goods substitute lower wages and ask how it sounds.” If you want to be really worried, Eric Levitz shared a Vox article: Trump doesn't seem to realize he's started a trade war. (src)(cached)
– China now appears to be sending troops to help Russia in Ukraine. Here’s an argument that this is evidence that they’re preparing for an invasion of Taiwan. (src)(cached)
– Andor continues to actually be about something, rather than just smashing action figures against each other. (src)(cached)
– Joey Politano points out that a joking suggestion he made about a strategy for responding to Trump's tariffs was implemented precisely by Sheinbaum. "You gotta propose the same thing you’re already doing AND say that it’s already worked. Print out a chart with a big red line labeled 'fentanyl' going downward". She did it, the line was even red. Here are more details from tariff negotiations (cached) (src)(cached)
– Uhh, maybe Newsom will win the nomination (src)(cached)
– An concept called "conservation easements" is used by wealthy landowners to avoid taxes, here's an article from Brookings about it. (src)(cached)