Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Bitcoin ETF security concerns mount after FBI warns of North Korean hackers
Doors Open at Prometheum as Much-Disputed Firm Tests Crypto Tokens as Securities
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
‘The sooner, the better’: Here’s the lowdown on this year’s COVID-19 shot and why it’s important
Politics:
Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.
Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.
Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.
What began as a reluctant, transactional alliance—advising on judicial picks, working with Trump on criminal-justice reform—soon became personal. Lee grew to relish dining at the White House and flying on Air Force One. He told friends that Trump was funny, charming, kindhearted. Before anyone could make sense of it, Lee emerged as one of Trump’s staunchest defenders. He steered the Senate Republicans’ strategy to acquit the president following his first impeachment. Then, after Trump lost his reelection bid, Lee conspired with right-wing extremists inside and outside the White House to keep the president in office.
Listening to Lee as he addressed the 2024 convention in Milwaukee, I was baffled by the impossible symmetry of it all. Here was the senator speaking about freedom and tyranny—not as a rebuke of the man who he’d feared was an authoritarian, but as an endorsement of him.
To hear Lee’s friends, allies, and former staffers tell it—and they did, by the dozens, though many requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from the senator—Lee is all but unrecognizable. Once a good-natured Latter-day Saint whose idea of edgy was doing corny impersonations of his fellow senators, he now regularly engages in crude conspiracy theories. Once a politician who seemed to be fashioning himself as a modern Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the right, Lee is now a very online MAGA influencer. It’s as if Ned Flanders became a 4chan troll.
Mike Johnson Plows Ahead on Funding Plan
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is plowing ahead with his plan to avert a government shutdown despite GOP opposition that is large enough to tank the effort, setting the stage for a potentially embarrassing vote on the House floor that will foil the Speaker’s funding strategy.
Or not:
Tariffs Are Trump’s Solution to Almost Any Problem
Mr. Trump has long maintained that imposing tariffs on foreign products can protect American factories, narrow the gap between what the United States exports and what it imports, and bring uncooperative foreign governments to heel. While in office, Mr. Trump used the threat of tariffs to try to convince Mexico to stop the flow of undocumented immigrants across the U.S. border, and to sway China to enter into a trade deal with the United States.
But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has made even more expansive claims about the power of tariffs, including that they will help pay for child care, combat inflation, finance a U.S. sovereign wealth fund and help preserve the dollar’s pre-eminent role in the global economy.
Economists have been skeptical of many of these assertions. While tariffs generate some level of revenue, in many cases they could create only a small amount of the funding needed to pursue some of the goals that Mr. Trump has outlined.
Kamala Harris Broke Donald Trump
I’ve been watching presidential debates since 1976, and I’ve even been peripherally involved in a few. And I’ve never seen a candidate execute a debate strategy as well as Harris did.
The night, for Harris supporters, went better than even the most optimistic among them could have hoped. For Trump supporters, it was not just a defeat but a public humiliation, the crushing comeuppance they probably secretly feared might one day arrive but, until now, never quite had.
What Harris appeared to understand, better than anyone else who has debated Trump, is that the key to defeating him is to trigger him psychologically.
New York City Officials Are Focus of Bribery Probe
Federal agents are investigating a possible bribery scheme involving New York City contracts and a consulting firm run by the brother of two top officials in the administration of Mayor Eric Adams.
Prosecutors last week seized the phones of the two officials — the schools chancellor and the deputy mayor for public safety — and the consultant because they believed the devices might contain evidence of bribery and other crimes.
Trump’s Call for Free In Vitro Fertilization Baffles GOP
Donald Trump’s call for mandating free access to in-vitro fertilization has puzzled congressional Republicans, drawing a mix of skepticism and outright opposition across the party spectrum, from center-right to far-right lawmakers.
Some worried about the high cost of such a policy. Others confessed they don’t understand what he’s proposing to do. Yet others wondered aloud if Trump was serious. And numerous Trump allies said his announcement came as a surprise to them.
Father Begs Politicians to Stop Using Son to Hate Haitians
The father of the 11-year-old boy killed last year when a minivan driver struck his school bus spoke at Tuesday’s Springfield City Commission meeting, again pleading with the community to stop using his son’s name as part of hateful statements toward Haitian immigrants.
Said Nathan Clark: “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt, but if that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.”
Right-Wing News Site Recruits Election Deniers
The right-wing news site, the Federalist, has taken a curious step in its coverage of the 2024 election, actively recruiting election denial activists to write for the publication under the guise of journalism.
Trump Threatens to Pull ABC’s Broadcast License After He Loses Debate
In a whiny Fox & Friends interview, Trump lashes out at ABC for correcting his debate lies, continuing his war on media “enemies.”
