Kevin Drum 🕸

Two Democratic members of the Tennessee legislature, Justin Pearson of Memphis and Justin Jones of Nashville, have been expelled by Republicans who control a supermajority in the state House of Representatives. The given reason was "lack of decorum." So now Memphis and Nashville have two empty seats to fill. Who are they going to pick? ...continue reading "Republicans plotting further revenge on Tennessee reps they expelled"

We have recently run an excellent natural experiment about the rule of law: On Tuesday, Donald Trump was indicted on 34 counts of business fraud. Response was partisan, of course. Republicans unanimously blasted the legal basis for the case as both trivial and wrongheaded. Democrats . . . were split. Some defended the legal reasoning ...continue reading "Who takes the law more seriously? A natural experiment can tell us."

Well, the idiot judge in Texas did it: A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, an unprecedented order that — if it stands through court challenges — could make it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion ...continue reading "Abortion pill banned, then unbanned hours later"

What are they staring at? A bird? A dog? An Amazon delivery driver? My recollection is that I looked out the window and, as usual, saw nothing. But then, I don't have five-dimensional cat eyes, do I?

New York City mayor Eric Adams announced a new contract with the police union yesterday. There hasn't been one for many years, so it was retroactive to 2017. Here's how they did: I estimated inflation of 4% in 2023 and 3% in 2024. Bottom line: in real terms, the NYPD will be making less by ...continue reading "Raw data: NYPD pay under their new contract"

Since today is jobs day, it's worth pointing out that we've reached a milestone. The prime-age labor force participation rate for both men and women has now caught up to its pre-pandemic peak: This is unusual. In the past two recessions (2000 and 2008), the LFPR declined and never caught back up to its past ...continue reading "Prime age labor participation is back to its pre-pandemic peak"

The American economy gained 236,000 jobs last month. We need 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth, which means that net job growth clocked in at 146,000 jobs. The headline unemployment rate ticked down slightly to 3.5%. Overall this is a decent but not great report: labor participation is up, the number ...continue reading "Chart of the day: Net new jobs in March"

You already know about Clarence Thomas and his lavish vacations. But check out this addition to the story from LA Times reporter David Savage, who wrote about all this stuff 20 years ago: Thomas refused to comment on the article, but it had an impact: Thomas appears to have continued accepting free trips from his ...continue reading "Clarence Thomas has been covering up his vacations for 20 years"

Today I read this story in the Guardian: In 2018, almost 30 cities across New York state received federal money to carry out a specific, urgent task: removing lead service lines that poison drinking water. The city of Troy — which sits across the Hudson River and just north of Albany — was among them, ...continue reading "What’s going on with the water in Troy?"

In 1968 Lyndon Johnson nominated Abe Fortas to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, but the nomination failed because Republicans, along with some Southern Democrats, filibustered it. The Southerners didn't like the fact that Fortas was Jewish. Republicans, however, pointed to Fortas's receipt of $15,000 in private funds to give nine speeches at a ...continue reading "Republicans don’t care about Clarence Thomas’s lavish vacations"

This week Republicans have: Loudly defended Donald Trump against charges of lawbreaking that he's obviously guilty of.¹ One of them even boasted that he would prevent extradition of Trump to New York, something that's clearly unconstitutional. Expelled a Democrat from the Tennessee legislature for bad behavior, with two more to come. Arrested the teenage son ...continue reading "The Republican week in review"

This is the Basilica of Sacré Coeur, overlooking Paris from 400 feet above the city on the hill of Montmarte. It amuses me that it was built as something of a middle finger from rich Catholics as payback for the imprisonment of the pope following the Franco-Prussian war. As it happens, the pope wasn't really ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Lindsey Graham, who once proposed a national 20-week limit on abortions, has now proposed a 15-week limit. However, this would only be a ceiling. The law would still allow states to pass more restrictive abortion laws, and this makes it obviously of no interest to liberals. But what if it were just a straight nationwide ...continue reading "How popular would a nationwide 15-week rule for abortion be?"

This is sort of an odd picture. It's the Washington Monument, of course, but it doesn't really look very tall. Is it because of the trees, which distort our sense of scale? Or about shooting it from slightly above its base? Or about the cropping of the photo? I'm not sure.

Via Alex Tabarrok, here's the racial and ethnic breakdown of inventors in the United States. The figures are from a new demographic study done by Ufuk Akcigit and Nathan Goldschlag: Every nonwhite group is massively underrepresented except for Asians, who are massively overrepresented. Women are also enormously underrepresented: In this study, "inventor" is anyone with ...continue reading "Raw data: Race, gender, and ethnicity among US inventors"

The Chinese team that collected samples from the Huanan Seafood Market three years ago has finally published its report, and an advanced draft has been posted on the Nature website. Let the games begin: A peer-reviewed paper that concludes there is no evidence for zoonotic spillover at the Huanan Seafood Market in #Wuhan has just ...continue reading "New study of COVID origins adds nothing to the raccoon dog hypothesis"

National Review's Jeffrey Blehar is unhappy about the victory of liberal Janet Protasiewicz in Wisconsin's supreme court race: The rollback of the significant Tea Party-era gains made by the GOP in the state now seems, if not foreordained, then on the horizon. Democrats have seized control of the state Supreme Court — once held by ...continue reading "Wisconsin votes to remain in the 21st century"

I think I may have a trip to Los Angeles in my near future: A battle is being waged at the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station near downtown Los Angeles. The weapon of choice? Loud classical music....L.A. Metro’s goal with the music and lights is to reduce crime and drive away unhoused people. ....The transit authority ...continue reading "Classical music cuts crime 20% on the LA metro"

Over at New York, John Herrman describes the TikTokification of everything—except worse: You’re stuck in line at the grocery store, so you check your phone. Your brain shuts off, and your thumb takes over. Soon, a tall video plays. A man is tricking a baboon with some sleight of hand. He makes a lighter disappear ...continue reading "How the Chinese are really using TikTok to destroy us"

This is a guy walking his dog on the road up to Idyllwild. The man's politics may be suspect, but his dog was very sociable. I had my car door open and he almost jumped onto my lap.