Biden hangs tough.

May 2, 2023

[No audio for this newsletter.]         

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the US would run out of cash on June 1, 2023, unless Congress increases the ability of the Treasury to borrow. If that happens, the US will default on some obligations, though not all. No matter. Any default by the US will send shock waves through the global financial system by undermining the creditworthiness of US treasury securities. See Business Insider, Janet Yellen: Government Could Run Out of Money, Hit Debt Ceiling, by June 1.

          We are less than 30 days away from a global financial crisis because Kevin McCarthy is using the full faith and credit of the US as leverage to repeal legislative achievements of the Biden administration. Biden is not blinking. Biden has called four congressional leaders to the White House to discuss increasing the debt limit, but an administration official made clear Biden would not negotiate over budget cuts in exchange for increasing the debt limit. Per Politico, the administration official said,

“If [Republicans] need to hear again that it’s [their] responsibility to address the debt ceiling without conditions and a ransom then [Biden] can say that again.”

          Media outlets continue to discuss the impending crisis as though the opposing sides occupy equivalent moral and political vantages. They do not. Using the debt limit as a tool to extract partisan concessions is irresponsible and reckless. So, too, is giving in to the GOP ransom demands. If Republicans are rewarded for holding the debt ceiling hostage, the US will see repeated crises in March 2024 and annually thereafter. The way to avoid annual crises is to call the GOP’s bluff now. If they insist on forcing a global financial crisis, that result will be on them.

          But let’s keep in mind that if the US runs out of cash to pay current obligations, Biden will be forced to decide which US debts to pay. Because the President has no constitutional or statutory ability to “pick and choose” which debts to pay, he can make an argument that he should pay all of them by ordering the Treasury to issue new debt despite the debt limit. That solution was suggested more than a year ago by Garrett Epps and was viewed as a fringe idea. It has gained legitimacy since that time and may be a remedy of last resort. See Washington Monthly, Biden Can Raise the Debt Ceiling Without Congress.

          While unilateral action by Biden is not a preferred outcome, it is preferable to a global financial crisis caused by the first-ever US default on its debt. Biden is right to refuse to negotiate over the debt limit. Let’s hope he stays the course.

And so it begins . . . CNN treats Trump like an ordinary presidential candidate.

          CNN will sponsor a “town hall” in New Hampshire next week at which Republican voters will have the opportunity to ask questions of Donald Trump. See HuffPost, CNN rolls out the red carpet for Trump. Per HuffPo,

The event, scheduled for May 10 at St. Anselm’s College in Goffstown, New Hampshire, will be televised at 9 p.m. Eastern. Kaitlan Collins will moderate. Trump will take questions from Republicans and undeclared voters who are planning to participate in the 2024 GOP primary.

          CNN will thus provide a ‘Trump-friendly’ audience and a moderator who began her career at The Daily Caller—a media website founded and owned by Tucker Carlson (until 2020).

          Media companies should, of course, cover the news relating to Trump's candidacy for the 2024 nomination. And it is within the accepted traditions of networks and cable companies to host town-hall-style interviews with presidential candidates. But Trump is not merely a presidential candidate. He is a former president who attempted a coup and incited an insurrection. He attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He stands credibly accused of rape in an ongoing trial in federal court. He has admitted to removing and retaining classified documents relating to the national defense. He routinely issues misogynistic, racist, and anti-LGBTQ slurs for which he is given a pass by the media.

          No responsible media organization should act as a neutral observer of Trump's political career, much less as a public relations surrogate for Trump--as is CNN by hosting a friendly “town hall.” It is particularly inappropriate for CNN to do so as special counsel Jack Smith and District Attorney Fani Willis present evidence to sitting grand juries regarding Trump's interference in the 2020 election. And let’s not forget that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has indicted Trump for concealing hush-money payments designed to change the outcome of the 2020 election.

          Of course, it is possible that CNN’s Kaitlan Collins will ask Trump if he raped E. Jean Collins, if he stole defense secrets, if he attempted a coup, and if he tried to interfere in Georgia’s 2020 election. Possible but not likely. Trump would not have agreed to an appearance on a network he routinely attacked as “fake news” unless he received assurances that he would not be asked hard questions by Kaitlan Collins.

          CNN has decided to treat Trump as if he is like any other presidential candidate. That is a dangerous mistake—as explained by Dan Rather’s Substack publication, Steady, The Danger of "Horse Race" Politics. As Dan Rather and Eliot Kirschner explain, it is irresponsible of the media to reduce the 2024 presidential campaign to a “horserace” in which the only relevant factor is “Who is ahead in the polls?” Per Rather and Kirchner,

When you cover politics like a horse race, it becomes logical for Donald Trump to be the frontrunner for a third Republican presidential nomination.

A horse race confers an equivalence upon all candidates. The only detail that matters is who is going to win — not all that might be lost. To view America through that lens today is an exercise in the absurd, a practice stuck in the insular logic of the past.

          CNN has left the building. It is in the business of treating the 2024 presidential race as entertainment. CNN should no longer be counted among legitimate news organizations. Any journalist who remains at CNN is lending their good name to Trump. CNN is a weak competitor in the news ecosystem and is desperate for viewers—which is why it is hosting a PR event for Trump. Don’t add legitimacy (or viewership) to CNN as it attempts to convert itself into a Trump mouthpiece.

US Supreme Court takes up another reactionary cause.

          It has long been the dream of reactionary conservatives to “dismantle the administrative state.” In the current iteration of what passes for conservative philosophy, the federal government is the problem—never mind that it creates the physical, economic, and regulatory infrastructure that allows American businesses to flourish in the most stable, least corrupt markets in the world. The reactionary majority on the Supreme Court appears poised to supercharge the “dismantling of the administrative state” by overturning a long-established rule that defers federal agencies when they interpret their own regulations (the so-called “Chevron deference” standard).

          On Monday, the US Supreme Court granted review in a case that directly challenges the Chevron deference standard. As Mark Joseph Stern tweeted,

Killing Chevron will be a major victory in the conservative legal movement's war against the administrative state. It'll shift a huge amount of power from the executive branch to the judiciary, allowing totally unaccountable, unelected judges to resolve statutory ambiguities.

          Justice Gorsuch has made overturning the Chevron deference standard a centerpiece of his judicial career. Among the people filing “friend of the court” briefs urging the Court to overturn the Chevron deference standard is John Eastman—who was last seen trying to convince Mike Pence that he could single-handedly reverse the results of the 2020 election. That tells you all you need to know about the alignment of interests in overturning the Chevron defense standard.

The next battle in education: “The American Birthright” curriculum.

          A reader sent a link to an important article in Salon, Right's new social studies plan vows to fight CRT, wokeness and the "overthrow of America". As explained in the article, Christian nationalists have developed and are marketing a thinly disguised Christian nationalist curriculum for adoption in public and private schools. The American Birthright curriculum is Critical Race Theory from a white nationalist viewpoint.

          As explained in Salon,

[T]eachers who attended the first training, in Broward County, emerged with deep concerns. Some said the new civics standards appeared to promote "a very strong Christian fundamentalist way" of analyzing U.S. history. Others recounted that trainers had claimed that America's founding fathers opposed strict separation of church and state, had compared the end of school-sponsored prayer to segregation and had downplayed the history of American slavery in misleading ways. (Slides from the training presentation noted that enslaved people in the U.S. only accounted for 4% of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which both minimizes the number of people ultimately enslaved in America and suggests that other countries' slavery practices were worse.)

          If states are the laboratories of democracy, then public schools are incubators of citizens. We cannot cede the public school system to a curriculum based on Christian nationalism. Tell a friend about the danger posed by the “American Birthright” curriculum.

Correction of error in yesterday’s newsletter.

          Yesterday’s newsletter set off a firestorm of controversy. I published a picture of a flooded pistachio orchard and noted that “two ducks” were swimming in the orchard. Oh, boy! Did I ever hear it from the birder community! Those were not ducks; they were “grebes”—as dozens of readers informed me. Apologies to the birder community for the error. Going forward, whenever I refer to something with feathers and wings, I will identify it as “a bird.”

          While I had hoped that an apology would put an end to this controversy, readers are now arguing over whether the birds in the photo are Clark’s Grebes or Western Grebes. See The Spruce, How to Tell Clark's Grebes and Western Grebes Apart. Which side do I support in the Clark vs. Western Grebes debate? I am 100% certain the creatures swimming in the flooded orchard are “birds.” I have learned my lesson!

Concluding Thoughts.

          It is exhausting to maintain the appropriate level of horror, outrage, and disgust demanded by daily developments in MAGA world. But just as we cannot become numb to mass shootings, we cannot normalize sexual assault, judicial corruption, insurrection, racism, bullying, intentional illiteracy, and white supremacy. If we do not take the time to reflect on the existential threat posed by daily instances of hate and ignorance, we will wake up when it is too late to prevent those viruses from grafting themselves permanently into the DNA of American democracy.

          The good news is that if you are reading this newsletter, you have already made the commitment to sustain the appropriate emotional and intellectual response to MAGA extremism. You have found a home among like-minded Americans who are committed to reclaiming the rule of law and redeeming democracy for our generation. Everyone feels the same weariness and occasional disappointment. But we are on an eight-year winning streak. We didn’t win every battle in those eight years—we didn’t need to.

In 2016, we faced a GOP-controlled Congress and reckless, hateful president who had to be pried out of office. Eight years later, we hold the White House and the Senate. We have increased Democratic control of statehouses and legislatures. We are making progress in state supreme courts. There is much work to be done, but we have accomplished much. So, as we stare down the next set of challenges, take hope and confidence from how far we have come. We should be rightly proud.

Talk to you tomorrow!