Kevin Drum 🕸

Last year, a jury found that Donald Trump had libeled E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay $5 million in damages. That made Trump mad, so he kept on libeling her. Today a jury ordered him to pay another $83 million—most of it just for being a malicious asshole. The Washington Post passes along ...continue reading "Trump hit with $83 million in libel damages"

It is January 26 and the Border Patrol finally released its official apprehension figures for December. This is the latest it's ever been. Is it a traditional Friday night news dump for bad news? Maybe! Because it was definitely bad news. As expected, CBP reported a whopping total of 302,000 encounters on the southern border: ...continue reading "Illegal immigration skyrockets in December"

Here's Charlie, cone free and hanging out in his favorite place now that we've let him outside. Whenever we call his name, he hops out of hiding in the bushes and races in.

I'm not sure if this is unexpected or not, but the International Court of Justice has basically ruled in Israel's favor in South Africa's genocide case against it: In a series of near-unanimous votes, the world court on Friday ordered Israel to ensure that its military not violate the Genocide Convention, and that it punish ...continue reading "Court rules Israel isn’t committing genocide. Yet."

Spending figures are released along with inflation figures, so today we got the December numbers for consumer expenditures. They were up 6.7% from November and 3.2% from a year ago. However, since I said this morning that I like quarterly figures these days, here's the quarterly growth rate: Very respectable. The holiday season was strong ...continue reading "Spending was up 2.8% in the final quarter of 2023"

Both the headline and core PCE inflation rates remained subdued in December: On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE inflation came in at 2.6% and core inflation was 2.9%. I've lately become attracted to quarterly rates for everything: it's a good compromise between the volatility of monthly figures and the staleness of year-over-year figures. The ...continue reading "PCE inflation stays cool at 2.0%"

I don't generally like to go back and forth on a single argument too much. After both sides have had a couple of chances to have their say, I usually feel like that's enough. Further bickering just ends up going down a rabbit hole. But today is an exception because it gives me a chance ...continue reading "Just how bad are things, really?"

Alabama, having exhausted its other alternatives, executed Kenneth Eugene Smith tonight by fitting him with a mask and then pumping it full of nitrogen: Witnesses saw Smith struggle as the gas began flowing into the mask that covered his entire face. He began writhing and thrashing for approximately two to four minutes, followed by around ...continue reading "Alabama finally figures out how to kill someone"

Donald Trump went medieval on Nikki Haley after he beat her in New Hampshire. Rich Lowry says this was dumb: She is appealing to the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents that Trump needs to substantially bring home in November to beat Biden. Killing her with kindness would make much more sense for Trump than, in irate ...continue reading "The method to Donald Trump’s madness"

Three days ago I called Rep. James Comer a big fat liar. Since then, we've been on the edge of our seats wondering if I was right. Did he, in fact, lie about the testimony of Kevin Morris in the Hunter Biden affair? Of course he did. A transcript of Morris's testimony was released on ...continue reading "Yep, James Comer is a big fat liar"

Hanging out in Laguna Beach as the sun dips into the Pacific.

Barbie got nominated for Best Picture but Greta Gerwig was snubbed in the Best Director category. Snubbed! It's an outrage! Oh, calm down. This whole "snubbed" meme has always been idiotic, and it's maybe even more idiotic this year than before. Greta Gerwig likely missed out for a couple of banal reasons: There are ten ...continue reading "Barbie!"

Tyler Cowen links today to a (long) post about AI written by Alex Irpin, an AI researcher at Google. I recommend it for possibly vain reasons: As I read it, I was genuinely startled by how close it was to my own thinking. I swear, I almost felt like this guy could be my twin ...continue reading "Here’s an update on AI that’s worth reading"

Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman have a new book coming out next week, but bits and pieces are being leaked already. First up is Sen. Lindsey Graham's grand jury testimony in late 2022: A new book reveals that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) “threw Trump under the bus” during Graham’s secret grand jury testimony in the ...continue reading "And now for more dirt on the prosecution of Donald Trump"

From Elon Musk, after Tesla announced weak results yesterday: Tesla is currently between two major growth waves. You betcha. But not everyone bought it: Dan Ives, a tech analyst with Wedbush Securities, said executives failed to address short-term concerns, even though he remains sold on the company’s long-term value. “We were dead wrong expecting Musk ...continue reading "Quote of the day: Tesla suffers a flesh wound"

As everyone predicted, economic growth in the final quarter of 2023 was excellent: Over the last year and a half, GDP growth has averaged about 3%. This is a nice, healthy growth rate, but without being so high that it threatens to overheat the economy and reignite a surge of inflation. This trend continued in ...continue reading "GDP rises a healthy 3.3% in Q4"

Over at National Review, Michael New insists that abortions have declined since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. In particular, he objects to contrary findings based on the WeCount project, which is fairly new and doesn't have very much pre-Dobbs data. He's right about that, but the Guttmacher Institute does have many years of data and their ...continue reading "Dobbs has (probably) had little impact on the abortion rate"

Donald Trump says he wants to run on the border. Is this a sound strategy? Here's the share of Republicans who say the border is their #1 issue: The border ranks second in importance among Republicans (the economy is first), generally getting about a 15% share over the past few years. But it's spiked recently, ...continue reading "Even Republicans aren’t super concerned about the border"

Here's the daily death toll of Palestinians in Gaza through January 24: The blank space in the middle is the late-November ceasefire. Also, there have been several periods during which the death toll wasn't updated. I've interpolated those figures with a slight adjustment for randomness. The good news, such as it is, is the trendline. ...continue reading "Raw data: The death toll in Gaza"

It is, as Tom Edsall points out today, both remarkable and dispiriting that so many Americans continue to support Donald Trump. But then he asks: Has Trump created a broad and enduring Republican coalition out of MAGA supporters, added backing from Republicans hostile to Democrats, a scattering of minority voters as well as white independents ...continue reading "There is no Trump coalition"