Kevin Drum 🕸

Jeez, another reasonable decision: States can’t use the federal courts to try to force the federal government to arrest and deport more people who are in the country illegally, the Supreme Court ruled Friday. The 8-1 decision could cut down on a flood of lawsuits recent administrations have faced from state attorneys general and governors ...continue reading "Supreme Court tells Texas to pound sand over immigration"

The "smart Trump" speaks: Question: Are you in favor of eliminating any agencies? DeSantis: We would do education, commerce, energy, and the IRS. If Congress won’t go that far, I’m going to use those agencies to push back against woke ideology… pic.twitter.com/cAoZIXfESu — Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2023 Eliminating cabinet departments is the last refuge ...continue reading "Ron DeSantis wants to dismantle the US nuclear weapon program"

This is the ornate, Beaux-Arts style Alexander III Bridge crossing the Seine in Paris. I was strolling around early when I took this and caught it just as the morning sun was shining directly on the winged horses at the top of the pedestals. The Grand Palais is in the background.

When you look at some sort of domestic trend or other, it's often helpful to look also at the rest of the world. This was one of the things that tipped me off about the connection between lead and crime, for example. Everyone knew that crime in the US had dropped during the '90s, and ...continue reading "Inflation around the world"

I've long argued that it takes about a year for Fed interest rate hikes to slow down the economy and affect inflation. This means that Fed hikes have had little impact so far, but will start to have one over the coming year. Jason Furman reviews the evidence and he isn't buying it: In sum, ...continue reading "Have Fed hikes already brought down inflation all they can?"

I think I may have been wrong about something. Over the weekend I wrote a couple of posts about Mississippi's "reading miracle." I looked things over and decided the evidence pointed toward genuine improvement following a 2013 reform that emphasized phonics instruction. Before the reforms Mississippi's white kids scored nine points below the national average ...continue reading "UPDATE: Mississippi reading isn’t so miraculous after all"

Over at the American Prospect, David Dayen argues that Democrats need to deliver the goods if we want people to vote for us. That is, we need to adopt a deliberate and sustained policy of "deliverism." The problem is that we think too small. Take Obamacare, for example: First, the goal of Obamacare was to ...continue reading "Democrats need to deliver. But what?"

Old and new. The top photo is a picture of a Los Angeles metro tunnel on the Red Line—completely modern and bored smoothly into a circle barely larger than the trains themselves. The bottom photo is a Paris metro tunnel on Line 12. It's old and gigantic, and the stations are so close together you ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Here's a bunch of new housing information for you today. First up, supply of new single-family homes is down but demand is up: This should mean a bump in selling prices, but not really: The mean (average) price of a new home is down -1.8% from last month while the median price ticked up 3.3%. ...continue reading "Raw data: Home sales in the United States"

Once again this term, the Supreme Court has backed away from madness: The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the theory that state legislatures have almost unlimited power to decide the rules for federal elections and draw partisan congressional maps without interference from state courts. ....The “independent state legislature theory” holds that the U.S. Constitution gives ...continue reading "Supreme Court strikes down chaos in election rules"

A few days ago Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a resolution to impeach President Joe Biden. Because why not? But that's not all. For months Republicans have also been threatening to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, because they don't like his border policies. Now it's Attorney General Merrick Garland's turn inside the house-of-mirrors ...continue reading "Let’s impeach everyone!"

Looking west on Interstate 10 from Indio during late afternoon.

A group of scholars at American Compass has taken on the theme “We want to thrive, not just survive.” That is, they think American families should actively do well and live enjoyable lives, not just barely get along: The breakdown in American capitalism over the past half-century is most apparent in its failure to deliver ...continue reading "Living on a single income in modern America"

In the long annals of legislative resentment and bullshit, this story is a doozy: Sen. Joe Manchin has been at war with the administration for months over its implementation of last year’s landmark climate law. He is even accusing President Joe Biden of breaking a promise to him. “They’re going to try to screw me,” ...continue reading "Why is Joe Manchin so mad at Joe Biden?"

Are we at the start of a big ol' bull market? Maybe. But I'm skeptical of the hype: Since the beginning of the year the S&P 500 has been virtually flat—right until the beginning of June. Then it started to surge a bit, but even at that it's grown only 8.5% on a real basis ...continue reading "Are we heading into a bull market?"

The Wall Street Journal says we still have a big shortage of restaurant workers: Americans are becoming fed up with lousy service while eating out. Many restaurants face a continued drought of experienced workers and are still working to get new hires up to speed. At the same time, customers are giving restaurants less leeway ...continue reading "Restaurants are too stingy to get all the workers they want"

A  week ago the New York Times ran a piece about people fleeing big cities to become remote workers during the pandemic. It started off like this: In the two years leading up to the pandemic, for example, about 20,000 remote workers moved away from the San Francisco metro area. Then during 2020 and 2021, ...continue reading "Raw data: Emigration of remote workers from large cities"

Yesterday's tromp through Mississippi's reading scores for third-graders got me a little curious about taking a slightly deeper dive. I'm not sure why. Just bored, maybe. As you'll recall, in 2013 Mississippi established a set of reading reforms primarily focused on teaching phonics. These reforms included a mandate to hold back kids who don't pass ...continue reading "Here’s a little more about miraculous Mississippi"

I caught up with Bob Somerby today and it turns out he's been lamenting a spate of recent articles about the "Mississippi Miracle." I don't blame him. Reports of educational breakthroughs are often overblown and should be taken with several grains of salt. Still, let's take a look at this one. Mississippi passed a package ...continue reading "How miraculous is Mississippi?"

About five minutes after I wrote that Wagner mercenaries were advancing on Moscow at "light speed," they suddenly . . . stopped. Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that he had accepted a personal deal to exile himself to Belarus while his troops would be pardoned and put under the control of the Ministry of Defense. It's all ...continue reading "Wagner Group throws in the towel"