This is The Morning Press, a Brain Iron dot com production. Here’s eleven minutes or so of news for today, Wednesday, March 13, 2024.
President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump both secured enough delegates in primary contests on Tuesday to become the presumptive nominees of their respective parties, all but guaranteeing a rematch of the 2020 contest—the first US presidential election rematch since Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Both men cruised to easy victories in the four states that held primaries on Tuesday, including expected battleground state Georgia, where a newly-released CBS News / YouGov poll shows Trump with a slight 51 to 48 edge over Biden, with Republican respondents to the poll reporting more enthusiasm and motivation about the November election. Also in Georgia on Wednesday, the judge overseeing the 2020 election interference case against Trump dismissed, for insufficient detail of the charged crimes, six of the 41 counts brought by the Fulton County district attorney against Trump and his co-defendants, a setback for the prosecution but one that does not change the basic thrust of their efforts. That same judge has said he will rule by the end of this week as to whether or not Fulton County DA Fani Willis will be disqualified from the case for failing to disclose a romantic relationship she had with an attorney she hired to work on the prosecution.
Elsewhere in political news, for now independent candidate for president Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has reportedly decided on a running mate, and will disclose who he has chosen at some point in the next two weeks. 26 states and DC require that independent candidates for president seeking ballot access declare who they will be running with ahead of time, which forces the decision earlier than is required of major party candidates. NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota governor and professional wrestler Jesse Ventura reportedly top Kennedy’s list of potential vice presidents. He and his campaign have also spoken with former presidential candidate hopefuls Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Senator Rand Paul about the position, all of whom reportedly rejected the offer.
Colorado Republican congressman Ken Buck, who had already announced that he would not be seeking reelection, surprised many on Tuesday by announcing that he would resign his position next week. Buck, who had run afoul of his Republican colleagues for criticism of Donald Trump, was not permitted to ask questions at Tuesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, and later told CNN that such a personal slight was representative of the way Congress had “devolved into bickering and nonsense” in his nine years on Capitol Hill. Buck’s departure may also be seen as an attempt to make it less likely that fellow Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert will succeed him in his district—the sudden opening means that a committee of Colorado Republicans will choose a nominee for a special election that will take place the same day as the primary nomination contest for Buck’s seat. This means that on June 25, Colorado voters in the conservative 4th district will first choose between whichever Republican the committee selects and a Democrat, and then move down the ballot to vote in the primary, where the same Republican will be listed along with Boebert and others. This is expected to redound to the great benefit of whoever the committee selects, which is not expected to be Boebert, because if Boebert were selected she would have to resign her current seat immediately, creating yet another Republican vacancy and requiring yet another special election. Buck’s departure will temporarily reduce the number of Republicans in the House to just 218, meaning that any absences make it all but impossible for Speaker Mike Johnson to govern without the help of Democrats.
Two competing discharge petitions, one each from Democrats and Republicans, went live on the House floor on Tuesday, both with the intention of circumventing House Speaker Mike Johnson into forcing a vote on foreign aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan. The Democrats’ petition, if successful, would bring the $95 billion aid package that the Senate passed with 70 votes to the House floor, while the Republican effort, from Pennsylvania representative Brian Fitzpatrick, is an attempt to get Fitzpatrick’s own $66 billion aid package before the House. Democrats will be reluctant to sign on to Fitzpatrick’s petition given their hopes that the larger $95 billion package will gain the necessary 218 signatures, but will need significant Republican support for their own, as some of their more progressive members have signaled that the package’s aid to Israel makes it a non-starter.
Also in foreign aid news, the Pentagon will send Ukraine about $300 million worth of weapons and ammunition from its existing munitions stockpiles, a one-time shot of support for the Ukrainians, and the first announced since December, that Defense Department officials say represents the last of their ability to send support without Congressional action. The Pentagon says that it is already $10 billion overdrawn in its capacity to buy replacement weapons for what it has sent to Ukraine, but has twice now in nine months found money to use for supplemental aid despite Congressional inaction.
In briefer news, and updating a story from Monday, the House passed a bill to force TikTok parent company ByteDance to divest itself of the social media app or face a ban from US app stores. The bill passed with wide bipartisan support, 352 to 65, and President Biden has said he would sign it if it made its way to his desk, though it faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer has not committed to bringing it to the floor, and other senators have vowed to fight it.
A new Gallup report has found that American adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer has reached an all-time high of 7.6%, including nearly 30% of women between the ages of 18 and 26—so-called Gen-Z—who claim an LGBTQ identity.
And a German man who has received a documented 217 COVID vaccines of eight different varieties has experienced no side effects, and, according to researchers, even the 217th dose boosted his immune response, and has left him with a considerably larger amount of antibodies and immune cells than the average vaccinated person.
On this day in history, March 13, 1781, Sir William Herschel first observed what would come to be discovered as the planet Uranus, though he believed he was seeing a previously unidentified comet with his homemade telescope. Also on this day, in 1911, the founder of scientology and science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard was born, and in 2013, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Roman Catholic Pope, and took the name Pope Francis I.
Now, here’s a look at the weather.
From CBS News, the following headline: “Climate change will make bananas more expensive. Here's why some experts say they should be already.” The article goes on to say that consumers should be paying more for bananas so that banana-producing countries can pay their workers higher wages and prepare for climate change, and quotes an expert who says that consumers have been paying an unfairly cheap price for bananas for decades.
This is the sort of imaginary expertise, from “a British professor who's one of the leading academics on sustainable agriculture and crop pathogens” that makes me want to stop reading the news forever. Tell me, professor, how much per pound would be “fair” for me to pay for my bananas, and who is going to figure out what percentage of the excess is due the laborers, and how much should be set aside for Guatemala or El Salvador or wherever to “fight climate change,” and who is going to determine what shape that fight takes, in those countries, which are not exactly corruption-free bastions of great progressive concern for the environment? If you raise the price of bananas, will I somehow be compelled to buy the same number of bananas, because I can assure you, certainly across whole populations, if you raise the price of the bananas, fewer bananas are going to be sold—but to be fair to the professor, he’s an expert in sustainable agriculture and crop pathogens, not basic economics or the political realities of Latin American countries.
There’s a long magazine piece in The New Atlantis called “Did Exxon Make It Rain Today,” that I highly recommend everyone read. There’s a link in the transcript at brainiron dot substack dot com. In it, the author explains that most of human-caused climate change’s impact on the weather and natural disasters happens on the margins, rather than as a primary cause, and that the catastrophism found in media headlines and stories that blame climate change for everything from airplane turbulence to hurricanes to the price of bananas only leads to polarization and fatalism, rather than real solutions. I find the point of view expressed in the piece quite persuasive, probably—full disclosure—because it is in keeping with what I already believe about the world.
But even if you think the author is meaningfully wrong in his premises, is the correct response more headlines like CBS’s, calling for consumers to willingly pay more for an abundant good because of the fear that that good will become more scarce in the future? Is that the best way to address these problems? I think obviously not. This is the sort of call from the expert class that most people will respond to with a colorful expletive, and make them less likely to listen to anything else they have to say. This is how the credibility of the mainstream press is wasted away—with headlines imploring you to spend more on bananas to fight climate change. It’s absurd and nonsensical and brings no one to your side in this supposed fight—but it does, of course, generate culture war clicks, which is obviously far more important than addressing the very real issue of building a more sustainable future—for the bananas, and for all of us.
That’s the weather from here—how’s it look out your window?
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The Morning Press is eleven minutes or so of the news of the day, and is a production of the BrainIron dot com multinational media empire. Please direct comments and complaints to brainironpodcast@gmail.com, or visit the website at www.brainiron.com. For a transcript of today’s episode and links to the stories referenced, find The Morning Press at brainiron.substack.com. To support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the good website Brain Iron dot com, please consider becoming a paid subscriber at brainiron.substack.com. Have a wonderful day.
The Morning Press for Wednesday, March 13, 2024