Kevin Drum 🕸

In our Twitter spat a couple of days ago Chris Geidner mentioned a new law that prevented trans kids from getting gender affirming care up through age 18. I corrected that to 17, thinking of the Tennessee law that was recently upheld in federal court. But no. It turns out Alabama has a law that ...continue reading "Alabama bans gender-affirming care up to age 19"

My blog is now an adult: 21 years old and legally able to drink and enter into binding contracts. Still too young to run for president, though. So what should my blog do to celebrate?

We all know that NAEP test scores dropped substantially between 2019 and 2022, largely due to virtual teaching replacing in-person teaching. At least, that's what we think happened. I got curious about this the other day: Did states that kept schools open during the 2020-2021 school year do better than states that closed schools? First, ...continue reading "Raw data: Test scores were about the same in states that kept schools open and closed during COVID"

This is Hilbert, rolling around in the dirt in the front yard. You would hardly believe how filthy he gets when he does this. Luckily, if I pick him up and place him on the grass he's happy to roll around there too, and that cleans off all the dirt.

This is going to sound weird, but hear me out. There are upwards of 4,300 religions in the world, and even faithful churchgoers don't believe in 4,299 of them. My only difference with them is that I don't believe in 4,300. Is that really such a big deal?

Why are so many people writing that Donald Trump was the winner of Wednesday's debate? Are they just on autopilot? I've seen no evidence, either anecdotal or in poll numbers, that he benefited in any way from his absence. He might not have been harmed by his absence either, but that hardly means he "won."

Fed chair Jerome Powell is still hawkish on inflation: In a highly anticipated speech at the Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Powell vowed that the central bank has not lost its resolve to cool inflation to 2 percent, even as annual measures of price increases have steadily dropped to roughly 3 percent. That progress ...continue reading "Note to Jerome Powell: Inflation has been dropping for 12 months"

Here is a Twitter conversation I had yesterday: Chris Geidner's tweet sort of proves my point. He makes a loathsome accusation that I must be anti-trans simply because I have some issues with the most extreme factions of trans activism. I feel like I should hardly need to say this, but I'm entirely pro-trans and ...continue reading "How far should activists go?"

Ha ha ha: A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a Republican National Committee lawsuit alleging that Google’s email spam filters illegally suppressed their missives, dealing the campaign group a crushing blow in a lengthy battle that has riled conservative lawmakers in Washington. U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Calabretta wrote that while it was a “close ...continue reading "Judge tosses Republican whining about Google spam filters"

Last night at the Republican debate Martha MacCallum asked: "Do you believe human behavior is causing climate change? Raise your hand if you do." No one raised their hand. Luckily for all of them, Ron DeSantis immediately interrupted to pretend he was offended by the whole "raise your hand" trope, which got everyone off the ...continue reading "Picture of the day: Do you believe in climate change?"

Here's a popular tweet making the rounds: How populist "entrepreneur" Vivek Ramaswamy got rich: 1. Found biotech firm with hedge fund/venture capital $ 2. Buy patent for Alzheimer's drug that had failed 4 trials, raise more $ to take to market 3. Take company public, cash out 4. Drug fails 5th trial, investors wiped out. ...continue reading "How did Vivek Ramaswamy become a billionaire at age 38?"

Sunset over Indio.

There was a lot of blather at the Republican debate last night about the need to supercharge our energy production, all of it centered on fossil fuels. (For some reason Republicans have no apparent interest in supercharging any other type of energy production.) This makes me think that a lot of people don't realize just ...continue reading "US fossil fuel production has skyrocketed over the past 20 years"

Here are the counties that saw the biggest average pay increases in 2023: Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta, is some kind of weird outlier with 18% real wage growth since last year. I have no idea why. After that, everything looks fairly normal with no special geographic focus.

Yes, I watched the Republican debate. Not all that closely, but I did watch it. It was a shitshow. With the exception of Chris Christie, every candidate on the stage seemed to think the key to victory was to talk really fast and stuff as much as possible into every answer. Add to that an ...continue reading "Republican debate roundup: It was a shitshow"

A new paper estimates the number of gender surgeries performed over the period 2016-2020. Here's the breakdown by age: The total number of gender surgeries in the 12-18 age group was 3,678, nearly all of them breast/chest surgeries. The annual number of surgeries started at 200 in 2016 and rose steadily through 2019 before dropping ...continue reading "Raw data: Gender surgeries in the US"

This is the 405-105 interchange near LAX. I've posted this photo before, and the only real difference is that I kept this one in color instead of desaturating it to black-and-white.¹ You wouldn't think that would matter much since it's not a colorful picture in the first place, but it does change the feel and ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"

Politico reports today on the strange partnership between progressives and hard right-wingers who don't want to reauthorize FISA Section 702, which has been routinely and massively abused in the past to spy on Americans. Until recently, the two sides mainly wanted to reform Section 702 so that the FBI requires a warrant before it's allowed ...continue reading "FISA reform now a hostage of right-wing conspiracy theories"

A while back I watched a TV show with a plot point that featured a government agency bringing down an airplane just to kill a single person on board. Has fiction turned into real life today? Reuters has reported that the Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was listed as a passenger on a private jet ...continue reading "Head of Russian private military force killed in plane crash"

The federal fiscal year begins on October 1st and goes through September 30th. We are currently in FY23, which began in October 2022 and will end in a few weeks. But why? What's the deal with starting our fiscal year in October? I'm glad you asked. Here's the answer. For our first 50 years, we ...continue reading "Why does the government’s fiscal year begin on October 1st?"