Correct me if I'm wrong but with the January Jobs report in positive territory is Biden the first president in history to see net job gains every month of his presidency?
Crazy how absolutely mind bogglingly hostile the messaging environment was for us when this is true and the biggest line of attack against us was on the economy.
"Biden is only president to have net job gains every month" has no hits in google But if you google "100% chance of recession" it's page after page of articles from 2021-2023.
I’ve said this before: there is a civil war going on amongst America’s über-wealthy. It may not be a popular notion here, but I would like to see some democracy-favoring billionaires step up and purchase some of the news media from their current right-wing/bothsiderist owners. Call it wishful thinking, but my list includes:
– The Washington Post (sold or gifted by Bezos to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott?)
– New York Times (Sulzberger bears a prime responsibility for helping elect Trump in 2016, and again now)
– TikTok (a sale to Frank McCourt and his Project Liberty)
– Sinclair Broadcast (yes, imagining non-MAGA owners is one of my pipe dreams)
Meanwhile...
– The Contrarian is amazing!
– Substack writers stepping up to the plate: Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles, Borowitz, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and so many others. And of course The Downballot itself!
Simon Rosenberg consistently underscored that this was a close election (which it was) – and that we had to work hard. He kept encouraging people to do so. In fairness, at no point in advance did Simon "peg the outcome" as a Kamala Harris win.
His overall tone was guardedly optimistic, true – and I must confess that I shared that optimism.
I really and truly expected the massive Harris-Waltz groundgame plus all of the independent GOTV efforts to carry her to victory. Because of Trump’s anti-abortion stance, I also expected far more women to vote Blue up and down the ballot, including for Kamala. Admittedly, I am still stunned that didn’t happen.
do you think the Harris-Walz campaign over-played the abortion card?...I have read in a few places where many voters felt it had become a single issue campaign and that they did not relate strongly to that issue
If you mean Biden, he tried to use the megaphone. He was somewhat hamstrung by a (usually) subpar speaking style, and much more so by the media which harped on every stutter or fumble while ignoring the content, while treating lies or partisan spin from Trump or other Republicans as equal or better.
Yeah I just can't anymore with people placing the blame on the Biden Admin here. Were they perfect re: messaging? No, no-one ever is, but they were out there for YEARS touting the positive and improving indicators of the economy, and the media simply opted to ignore it and go full-steam ahead with their "impending recession" stories and deep dives into families with 15 kids who need (apparently) an identical number of milk cartons every week complaining about the cost of groceries (this was an actual CNN newstory).
The next time we have a Democratic POTUS, I'd like to see the WHCA (controlled by legacy mainstream media outlets and Fox News) completely frozen out of issuing White House press passes, with progressive or progressive-coded media outlets like Jacobin, DailyKos, In These Times, The 19th, etc. given press passes instead of CNN, NYT, Fox News, etc..
If Pete Hegseth can install right-wing yes-men media in the Pentagon, the next Democratic administration should do a Democratic version of what Hegseth is doing.
Biden will probably go down as the worst POTUS (at least in post-WWII times) in regard to political messaging, since he basically abdicated that responsibility during his entire time in office (especially in regard to the Trump indictments; he pretty much never pushed back against Trump's blatant lies falsely claiming to be persecuted by the Biden Administration).
The worst modern (post-WWII) GOP president in regard to political messaging would probably be either Ford or GHWB.
That's very significant! Were there any months of job losses in the revised analysis? Also, I take it that BLS is not (yet) a Trump propaganda organization.
That was the number of jobs as of December, not the change over 2024. Job growth in 2024 was revised down about 100k, and the rest of the downward revision came from a change in the estimated employment total as of December 2023.
With respect to Germany, it depends on what counts as defeated. The AfD have been holding more or less steady at around 20%, recently re-absorbing many of the voters who had considered defecting to Sahra Wagenknecht's party. That's likely enough for a clear second place, but maybe not enough to tempt the CDU to break the anti-far-right firewall.
The most plausible governing coalition seems like a CDU-SPD Grand coalition again, but this may depend on exactly how well the SPD holds up, which could in turn depend on whether several smaller parties (Die Linke, FDP, BSW) meet the threshold for seats. In theory a CDU-SPD-Green Kenya coalition could work, but I think Friedrich Merz is very opposed to working with the Greens.
While AfD at 20 percent is indeed worrying (as would MAGA be even at 20 percent), I would measure an "AfD defeat" by them being kept from power – and especially so if they failed to grow despite the very-public embrace of fellow Fascist Musk.
It’s worth remembering that Musk’s family returned to South Africa from Canada to fight for Apartheid. Also, not that Musk just announced (to JD Vance’s applause) that he’ll reinstate the DOGE colleague who recently resigned for very vile racist posts.
It was his maternal grandfather who moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because the National Party - which supported the Nazis during WWII, sadly not kidding - had come into government two years earlier and would stay in government until 1994.
I think it is extremely unlikely the AfD actually makes it into a governing coalition. There is more concern that Merz would formally enter into a coalition with the SPD, but then bring up votes where the CDU+AFD provide the majority to put a right-wing policy into law. He tried something like that recently with the German migration law, generating a huge backlash. It remains to be seen if that will translate to punishing his party in the polls, but I hope so. He's playing a dangerous game.
Sahra Wagenknecht is a curious political animal. I had to look her up.
PS. The Free Democrats used to be a power-broker in German politics. I’m old enough to remember the ever-present Hans-Dietrich Genscher. How times change!
Yes, she's quite a character. And it seems to me she might be doing the left a favor in the long run, by pulling votes from the AfD in some places now while also pulling the worst of the anti-Europe, DDR-nostalgics out of Die Linke.
I don't think anyone is likely to come out of this worse off than the FDP, who went from a member of the governing coalition to possibly crashing out of the Bundestag entirely. They've been atrophying in the state elections too, and don't seem to have much to offer beyond a particularly whiny form of CDU lite.
It's possible, though I haven't seen anything in polling yet. He's certainly in the news frequently here, and German news has less compunction about describing him as extreme. There's not a direct, national threat yet that might cause a rally-around-the-flag effect like in Canada, though.
She's still running (her party is the BSW), but after making a splash in last year's state elections and rising to ~10%, they've fallen back and are struggling to stay above the 5% threshold. I'm not totally sure why. I think to some degree, BSW-curious AfD voters just went home as both migration and the federal election gained salience. Also recently Die Linke has seen a bit of a resurgence after one of their leaders went viral for a Bundestag speech scorching Merz for toying with the AfD. So maybe BSW is leaking votes from both sides.
As always, I've been watching the judiciary, and there's been an interesting trend regarding the pace of judicial vacancies. Today, we got our eighth vacancy announcement made public since the election; those eight (all district court seats) break down as seven senior/retirement announcements from Bush appointees who weren't senior-eligible the last time Trump was in office and one Obama appointee who died at 61 in January. Comparing that to the other presidential elections of the 2000s (vacancies announced from the election through the beginning of March):
2024-5: 8 (so far); 8 district; 7 voluntary, 1 death
2020-1: 43; 9 circuit, 34 district; 41 voluntary, 1 death, 1 operation of law; 40 filled by Biden
2004-5: 9; 2 circuit, 7 district; 8 voluntary, 1 death; 9 filled by Bush
2000-1: 21; 5 circuit, 15 district, 1 trade; 21 voluntary (1 disability retirement); 21 filled by Bush
While the rush in the aftermath of 2020 was certainly an outlier, and the remainder of February could see more announcements (Trump saw three announcements in February 2017), we aren't seeing judges rushing for the exits and if Biden's outlier was part of a trend, it's a future one. While I'm sure Trump will get some horrid people on the bench, and it would be a massive relief if he doesn't get at least two more justices on SCOTUS, at this point in modern presidencies, a large portion of vacancies that end up getting filled are already known:
Trump part 2: 4 circuit and 39 district are known, with hope that one of each will be rescinded
Biden: 10 circuit (22%) and 37% (87) of all filled vacancies known
Trump part 1: 1 SCOTUS, 20 circuit (37%) and 50% (117) of all filled vacancies known
Obama: 17 circuit (31%) and 24% (78) of all filled vacancies known
Bush: 30 circuit (48%) and 31% (103) of all filled vacancies known
As a brutal midterm introduces at least a remote possibility of a Dem senate come 2027, the powers that be will be lobbying GOP judges to announce their retirements earlier than later, so this is not a good start for them. For reference, here's a breakdown of the judges who will qualify for senior status by the end of Trump's term:
GOP appointees:
Qualified before Biden: 3 SCOTUS, 20 circuit, 29 district
Qualified under Biden: 5 circuit, 15 district
Qualify this congress: 3 circuit, 10 district
Qualify next congress: 6 circuit, 23 district
Dem appointees:
Qualified before Biden: 1 SCOTUS, 9 circuit, 16 district
A question related to judges: After Trump won, there were some news stories about some judges who rescinded their previously announced retirements (and of course GOP politicians not happy about it.)
Do you know how many are there who actually did that? Thx.
Judges I know of who've rescinded their senior status announcements:
Joe Billy McDade, CD IL, announced 2/2004, withdrew 11/2004, perhaps at the urging of senator-elect Obama, replaced by Obama in 2010
Michael Kanne, 7th Cir., announced 2/2018, withdrew 5/2018 after Trump refused to nominate Tom Fisher, died 2022 and replaced by Biden
Robert Bruce King, 4th Cir., announced 8/2021, withdrew 11/2021 after Manchin and/or WH insisted on Jeaneen Legato over Carte Goodwin as his replacement, and at 85, is now one of just two Dem circuit appointees over 78
David Hurd, ND NY, announced 11/2021, withdrew 8/2022 when replacement nominee wasn't Utica based, announced again 4/2024 and was replaced by Anthony Brindisi
Max Cogburn, WD NC, announced 2/2022, withdrew 11/2024 after election
Karen Caldwell, ED KY, announced 7/2022, withdrew 3/2023 after deal to replace her with Chad Meredith fell through after outcry; Meredith would have been Biden's most conservative appointee by a country mile
Algenon Marbley, SD OH, announced 10/2023, withdrew 11/2024 after election
James Wynn, 4th Cir., announced 1/2024, withdrew 12/2024 after election
Valerie Caproni, SD NY, announced 11/08/2024, announcement never made official because confirmation of Tali Farhadian Weinstein wasn't included in the deal where Manchin and Sinema gifted Trump circuit seats
Officially, I would say one circuit and two district judges, though it remains to be seen how the cases of Jane Stranch (6th Cir.) and Dana Christensen (D MT) play out.
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
Most libraries have electronic editions of the NYT available online. It's effective for 3 days for news, one day for my crossword puzzle and cooking, but it takes about 30 seconds to get it.
Question: Do we know to what extent Musk’s DOGE team has passed sensitive government data on to Palantir? And, if so, what sort of data analytics Peter Thiel’s Palantir has been doing on the data of government employees, recipients, etc.?
I don't know although with Ben Shapiro, I wouldn't be completely dismissive of his intellect and intelligence. He's actually got quite good taste in film and even praised films like Dune 2 and Wicked.
Most do. My godmother does not. I visited her on Friday afternoon, and she is worried about the implications of 2 from her viewpoint equally crazy leaders discussing the unthinkable, and I think that's as indirect as this statement has to be here, except to say that it concerns a certain roughly rectangular territory.
Many Jews, including my father, grew up in an Orthodox family environment. It’s not uncommon for any of us to have relatives who are exposed to this environment.
However, there’s a good reason why many younger Jews like me and others I know are Reform or Secular - We generally like to think for ourselves. Also, the notion in Orthodox Judaism that a man’s wife cannot shake the hands of another man or woman is just stupid (another reason why I like many Reform Jews always question what’s in the Torah).
That said, on Shapiro: He like Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon tried to be successful in Hollywood but wasn’t really. Most Jews I know really don’t talk like Shapiro. It’s as if he’s one notch below Kramer in the Seinfeld episode where he sued the a coffee company and got all the lattes he wanted.
The remedial plan created two districts where Black Alabamians could have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In 2024, the second majority-Black district elected Rep. Shomari Figures (D), making it the first time Alabama sent two Black representatives to Congress.
Plaintiffs are now urging the court to permanently block the 2023 map and order the remedial plan to be used for all future elections through 2030.
Since the day without an immigrant demonstrations, the high school students have been walking out daily in SoCal for anti immigration sweep and anti Trump demonstrations.
Unfortunately, yesterday midday, a high school student was stabbed in a park across the street from LA City Hall. Really, really bad wall to wall coverage on local TV. Plays into Trump's hands.
But I was told that Donald Trump would immediately bring a paradise of great GDP and job growth with no inflation, especially with brilliant businessmen like Elon Musk at his side? (Or so many people may be thinking. Interestingly, sentiment dropped among Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents.)
Do any of you feel like you have good powers of prediction for the general sweep of history? If you do, do you agree with me that the decline of the U.S. as a world power is well underway, and if you agree with that, how do you think it will unfold, and how will it resemble and differ from the eclipses of the Spanish, French and British Empires or any other historic end of an empire? One difference I foresee is that the American empire has mostly consisted of occupying Native American land, settling it with white people and turning it into a mostly contiguous group of states, so in that respect, the current-day empire it's most similar to is Russia, which has caused a lot of havoc lately but has a very problematic economy and military and is likely to lose a lot of land in the Far East to China in due time and face internal conflict.
I don't do well at forecasting election results, only partly because I care too much about them, but for whatever it's worth, I'll make the following predictions, all of course contingent on today's world civilization not collapsing later in this century, which I will give 40% odds of not happening, or the human race becoming extinct, which I'll wildly stab at having a 15% possibility within 100 years:
The U.S. will divide into at least 3 countries by the end of this century, with one centered around California, another in the Northeast, a third consisting of the South and maybe other right-wing states away from the coasts, and it's possible there could be a 4th in the Upper Midwest or some kind of partnership of Colorado and New Mexico or that some Northern states (Minnesota particularly comes to my mind, for some reason) might become provinces of Canada.
Before any breakups occur, the dollar will have already been replaced by something else if there is still a recognized world currency as such that's tied to a single nation or limited group of nations. I think that will happen within 20 years, but maybe there's some reason investors around the world would lose too much money and therefore will keep it longer. One of you who understands macroeconomics better might be able to explain why I could be wrong.
All alliances and agreements that the U.S. has made that are not actively abrogated will atrophy and eventually die, since U.S. voters have been shown to be untrustworthy and elect scofflaws. This process may be largely complete within a decade.
As a result of a lack of confidence in U.S. trading practices and adherence to any agreements, the U.S. economy, though still large, will become a backwater within 30 years.
You totally missed the point. How would the backlash save the U.S. from being considered undependable by everyone? And besides, one term of Trump could be considered an aberration.
And I think that's impossible in the next 30 years, much too long for the U.S. to recover from. G.W. Bush was damaging, 1 term of Trump was much more damaging, and a 2nd term of Trump proves that it's totally pointless to have any long-term agreements with the U.S.
an open secret here in Florida is that First Lady Casey DeSantis may run for Governor of Florida; make no mistake, she could actually win; the current field is composed of clowns and unlike her husband, she's an attractive alternative in the Republican primary
Correct me if I'm wrong but with the January Jobs report in positive territory is Biden the first president in history to see net job gains every month of his presidency?
good question
Data from BLS confirms this unless there are some major revisions for the end of 2024/Jan 2025. https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=net_1mth
Crazy how absolutely mind bogglingly hostile the messaging environment was for us when this is true and the biggest line of attack against us was on the economy.
"Biden is only president to have net job gains every month" has no hits in google But if you google "100% chance of recession" it's page after page of articles from 2021-2023.
We can fix our messaging all we want - until we figure out how to correct for how hostile the gatekeepers are, I don’t know how it breaks through
I’ve said this before: there is a civil war going on amongst America’s über-wealthy. It may not be a popular notion here, but I would like to see some democracy-favoring billionaires step up and purchase some of the news media from their current right-wing/bothsiderist owners. Call it wishful thinking, but my list includes:
– The Washington Post (sold or gifted by Bezos to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott?)
– New York Times (Sulzberger bears a prime responsibility for helping elect Trump in 2016, and again now)
– TikTok (a sale to Frank McCourt and his Project Liberty)
– Sinclair Broadcast (yes, imagining non-MAGA owners is one of my pipe dreams)
Meanwhile...
– The Contrarian is amazing!
– Substack writers stepping up to the plate: Timothy Snyder, Heather Cox Richardson, Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles, Borowitz, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and so many others. And of course The Downballot itself!
Yeah for all the "Soros financing empire" stuff . . WTF have OUR billionaires been on media? Asleep at the fucking wheel that's what.
Rosenberg didn't exactly have the outcome of 2024 pegged.
Simon Rosenberg consistently underscored that this was a close election (which it was) – and that we had to work hard. He kept encouraging people to do so. In fairness, at no point in advance did Simon "peg the outcome" as a Kamala Harris win.
his "I'd rather be us than them" drum beat grew very tired and his overall tone was that KH would win.
His overall tone was guardedly optimistic, true – and I must confess that I shared that optimism.
I really and truly expected the massive Harris-Waltz groundgame plus all of the independent GOTV efforts to carry her to victory. Because of Trump’s anti-abortion stance, I also expected far more women to vote Blue up and down the ballot, including for Kamala. Admittedly, I am still stunned that didn’t happen.
do you think the Harris-Walz campaign over-played the abortion card?...I have read in a few places where many voters felt it had become a single issue campaign and that they did not relate strongly to that issue
yes, but to what degree are these Substack writers who are stepping up to the plate simply preaching to the choir?
The messaging environment is far more difficult when the person with the “bully pulpit” is not using the megaphone provided him.
If you mean Biden, he tried to use the megaphone. He was somewhat hamstrung by a (usually) subpar speaking style, and much more so by the media which harped on every stutter or fumble while ignoring the content, while treating lies or partisan spin from Trump or other Republicans as equal or better.
Yeah I just can't anymore with people placing the blame on the Biden Admin here. Were they perfect re: messaging? No, no-one ever is, but they were out there for YEARS touting the positive and improving indicators of the economy, and the media simply opted to ignore it and go full-steam ahead with their "impending recession" stories and deep dives into families with 15 kids who need (apparently) an identical number of milk cartons every week complaining about the cost of groceries (this was an actual CNN newstory).
Many on here remain in total denial of how Biden was the most invisible president since Calvin Coolidge.
Agreed.
Explain how doing more press conferences would have helped Biden, considering how they treated him.
How they treated him? They didn’t treat him worse than any other president. And fighting with the press generally benefits a president anyway.
You think they've ever treated Trump like they treated Biden?
Blame the “media” for his communicative and political incompetence? So much for a reality-based polity.
The next time we have a Democratic POTUS, I'd like to see the WHCA (controlled by legacy mainstream media outlets and Fox News) completely frozen out of issuing White House press passes, with progressive or progressive-coded media outlets like Jacobin, DailyKos, In These Times, The 19th, etc. given press passes instead of CNN, NYT, Fox News, etc..
If Pete Hegseth can install right-wing yes-men media in the Pentagon, the next Democratic administration should do a Democratic version of what Hegseth is doing.
I share this sentiment, but I definitely don't see it happening. And I also think many Democratic voters wouldn't approve of it.
Biden will probably go down as the worst POTUS (at least in post-WWII times) in regard to political messaging, since he basically abdicated that responsibility during his entire time in office (especially in regard to the Trump indictments; he pretty much never pushed back against Trump's blatant lies falsely claiming to be persecuted by the Biden Administration).
The worst modern (post-WWII) GOP president in regard to political messaging would probably be either Ford or GHWB.
BLS did have some significant 2024 revisions
Care to elaborate?
They revised total job growth in 2024 down by 610k jobs
That's very significant! Were there any months of job losses in the revised analysis? Also, I take it that BLS is not (yet) a Trump propaganda organization.
I’ve never understood downwards revisions. Perhaps I am not being informed well.
How can the BLS or even the ADP revise jobs added numbers downwards when they were originally reported as valid to begin with?
That was the number of jobs as of December, not the change over 2024. Job growth in 2024 was revised down about 100k, and the rest of the downward revision came from a change in the estimated employment total as of December 2023.
NY Mayor
I really miss the great write-ups on foreign elections that we saw in years past. Here are three upcoming elections that I’ll be watcing:
• Ecuador – 9 February. Will President Daniel Noboa be re-elected?
• Kosovo – 9 February. Parliamentary elections.
• Germany – 23 February. Bundestag Elections. Will Musk’s AfD be defeated?
With respect to Germany, it depends on what counts as defeated. The AfD have been holding more or less steady at around 20%, recently re-absorbing many of the voters who had considered defecting to Sahra Wagenknecht's party. That's likely enough for a clear second place, but maybe not enough to tempt the CDU to break the anti-far-right firewall.
The most plausible governing coalition seems like a CDU-SPD Grand coalition again, but this may depend on exactly how well the SPD holds up, which could in turn depend on whether several smaller parties (Die Linke, FDP, BSW) meet the threshold for seats. In theory a CDU-SPD-Green Kenya coalition could work, but I think Friedrich Merz is very opposed to working with the Greens.
Yes, thank you for adding your insights!
While AfD at 20 percent is indeed worrying (as would MAGA be even at 20 percent), I would measure an "AfD defeat" by them being kept from power – and especially so if they failed to grow despite the very-public embrace of fellow Fascist Musk.
It’s worth remembering that Musk’s family returned to South Africa from Canada to fight for Apartheid. Also, not that Musk just announced (to JD Vance’s applause) that he’ll reinstate the DOGE colleague who recently resigned for very vile racist posts.
Wasn’t Musk’s dad a member of the anti-apartheid party?
It was his maternal grandfather who moved from Canada to South Africa in 1950 because the National Party - which supported the Nazis during WWII, sadly not kidding - had come into government two years earlier and would stay in government until 1994.
Was he? If so, unlike father, unlike son.
I think it is extremely unlikely the AfD actually makes it into a governing coalition. There is more concern that Merz would formally enter into a coalition with the SPD, but then bring up votes where the CDU+AFD provide the majority to put a right-wing policy into law. He tried something like that recently with the German migration law, generating a huge backlash. It remains to be seen if that will translate to punishing his party in the polls, but I hope so. He's playing a dangerous game.
Relieved to hear that – well, partly relieved.
Sahra Wagenknecht is a curious political animal. I had to look her up.
PS. The Free Democrats used to be a power-broker in German politics. I’m old enough to remember the ever-present Hans-Dietrich Genscher. How times change!
Yes, she's quite a character. And it seems to me she might be doing the left a favor in the long run, by pulling votes from the AfD in some places now while also pulling the worst of the anti-Europe, DDR-nostalgics out of Die Linke.
I don't think anyone is likely to come out of this worse off than the FDP, who went from a member of the governing coalition to possibly crashing out of the Bundestag entirely. They've been atrophying in the state elections too, and don't seem to have much to offer beyond a particularly whiny form of CDU lite.
Would an anti-Trump sentiment in Europe hurt AfD at all? It seems to have boosted the sagging Liberals in Canada to an extent.
Difference I think is that the CDU can still absorb Trump-skeptic voters in Germany who also don’t want to reward Scholz’s SPD
It's possible, though I haven't seen anything in polling yet. He's certainly in the news frequently here, and German news has less compunction about describing him as extreme. There's not a direct, national threat yet that might cause a rally-around-the-flag effect like in Canada, though.
What happened to Wagenknecht? She's no longer running?
She's still running (her party is the BSW), but after making a splash in last year's state elections and rising to ~10%, they've fallen back and are struggling to stay above the 5% threshold. I'm not totally sure why. I think to some degree, BSW-curious AfD voters just went home as both migration and the federal election gained salience. Also recently Die Linke has seen a bit of a resurgence after one of their leaders went viral for a Bundestag speech scorching Merz for toying with the AfD. So maybe BSW is leaking votes from both sides.
As always, I've been watching the judiciary, and there's been an interesting trend regarding the pace of judicial vacancies. Today, we got our eighth vacancy announcement made public since the election; those eight (all district court seats) break down as seven senior/retirement announcements from Bush appointees who weren't senior-eligible the last time Trump was in office and one Obama appointee who died at 61 in January. Comparing that to the other presidential elections of the 2000s (vacancies announced from the election through the beginning of March):
2024-5: 8 (so far); 8 district; 7 voluntary, 1 death
2020-1: 43; 9 circuit, 34 district; 41 voluntary, 1 death, 1 operation of law; 40 filled by Biden
2016-7: 17; 4 circuit, 13 district; 17 voluntary (1 disability retirement); 16 filled by Trump
2012-3: 22; 3 circuit, 19 district; 22 voluntary; 20 filled by Obama
2008-9: 20; 1 circuit, 19 district; 20 voluntary (1 disability retirement); 20 filled by Obama
2004-5: 9; 2 circuit, 7 district; 8 voluntary, 1 death; 9 filled by Bush
2000-1: 21; 5 circuit, 15 district, 1 trade; 21 voluntary (1 disability retirement); 21 filled by Bush
While the rush in the aftermath of 2020 was certainly an outlier, and the remainder of February could see more announcements (Trump saw three announcements in February 2017), we aren't seeing judges rushing for the exits and if Biden's outlier was part of a trend, it's a future one. While I'm sure Trump will get some horrid people on the bench, and it would be a massive relief if he doesn't get at least two more justices on SCOTUS, at this point in modern presidencies, a large portion of vacancies that end up getting filled are already known:
Trump part 2: 4 circuit and 39 district are known, with hope that one of each will be rescinded
Biden: 10 circuit (22%) and 37% (87) of all filled vacancies known
Trump part 1: 1 SCOTUS, 20 circuit (37%) and 50% (117) of all filled vacancies known
Obama: 17 circuit (31%) and 24% (78) of all filled vacancies known
Bush: 30 circuit (48%) and 31% (103) of all filled vacancies known
As a brutal midterm introduces at least a remote possibility of a Dem senate come 2027, the powers that be will be lobbying GOP judges to announce their retirements earlier than later, so this is not a good start for them. For reference, here's a breakdown of the judges who will qualify for senior status by the end of Trump's term:
GOP appointees:
Qualified before Biden: 3 SCOTUS, 20 circuit, 29 district
Qualified under Biden: 5 circuit, 15 district
Qualify this congress: 3 circuit, 10 district
Qualify next congress: 6 circuit, 23 district
Dem appointees:
Qualified before Biden: 1 SCOTUS, 9 circuit, 16 district
Qualified under Biden: 4 circuit, 24 district
Qualify this congress: 1 SCOTUS, 8 circuit, 32 district, 1 trade
Qualify next congress: 8 circuit, 39 district, 1 trade
I think even conservative judges realize they are some of the last gatekeepers preventing us from descending into a full-blown autocracy.
A question related to judges: After Trump won, there were some news stories about some judges who rescinded their previously announced retirements (and of course GOP politicians not happy about it.)
Do you know how many are there who actually did that? Thx.
Judges I know of who've rescinded their senior status announcements:
Joe Billy McDade, CD IL, announced 2/2004, withdrew 11/2004, perhaps at the urging of senator-elect Obama, replaced by Obama in 2010
Michael Kanne, 7th Cir., announced 2/2018, withdrew 5/2018 after Trump refused to nominate Tom Fisher, died 2022 and replaced by Biden
Robert Bruce King, 4th Cir., announced 8/2021, withdrew 11/2021 after Manchin and/or WH insisted on Jeaneen Legato over Carte Goodwin as his replacement, and at 85, is now one of just two Dem circuit appointees over 78
David Hurd, ND NY, announced 11/2021, withdrew 8/2022 when replacement nominee wasn't Utica based, announced again 4/2024 and was replaced by Anthony Brindisi
Max Cogburn, WD NC, announced 2/2022, withdrew 11/2024 after election
Karen Caldwell, ED KY, announced 7/2022, withdrew 3/2023 after deal to replace her with Chad Meredith fell through after outcry; Meredith would have been Biden's most conservative appointee by a country mile
Algenon Marbley, SD OH, announced 10/2023, withdrew 11/2024 after election
James Wynn, 4th Cir., announced 1/2024, withdrew 12/2024 after election
Valerie Caproni, SD NY, announced 11/08/2024, announcement never made official because confirmation of Tali Farhadian Weinstein wasn't included in the deal where Manchin and Sinema gifted Trump circuit seats
Officially, I would say one circuit and two district judges, though it remains to be seen how the cases of Jane Stranch (6th Cir.) and Dana Christensen (D MT) play out.
A federal judge early Saturday temporarily restricted access by Elon Musk’s government efficiency program to the Treasury Department’s payment and data systems, saying there was a risk of “irreparable harm.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/nyregion/attorneys-general-trump-musk-suit.html?smtyp=cur&smid=bsky-nytimes
Paywalled. Although I read about this in The Guardian as well as on a Norwegian news site.
Most libraries have electronic editions of the NYT available online. It's effective for 3 days for news, one day for my crossword puzzle and cooking, but it takes about 30 seconds to get it.
Thanks for the tip! We do have an excellent public library in our town (hamlet, really. Population approx 400).
Here is a link to the actual order. https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/court-filings/state-of-new-york-et-al-v-trump-et-al-order-2025.pdf
Question: Do we know to what extent Musk’s DOGE team has passed sensitive government data on to Palantir? And, if so, what sort of data analytics Peter Thiel’s Palantir has been doing on the data of government employees, recipients, etc.?
Petty tyrant Donald Trump conducts an authoritarian power grab of the Kennedy Center by firing a lot of the board and installing himself as the chair. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/trump-kennedy-center-firing-board-members-1236130139/
Perhaps Trump wants yet another venue where he can sway/dance on stage while playing his playlist to a captive audience.
Kultural Kommissar.
He'll probably grant himself a lifetime achievement award.
Such achievement awards are often rewarded towards the end of someone’s public life. In Trump’s case, I would very much be OK with that.
What is it with jilted theater kids turning bitter and nasty? Ben Shapiro is another example.
Even non-jilted theater kids are an odd lot, often, speaking as someone who knows a few
The entertainment industry tends to attract people who are either VERY left wing or VERY right wing, with little in between.
As a musician, I know plenty of musicians who aren't very political, and their politics runs the gamut.
I don't know although with Ben Shapiro, I wouldn't be completely dismissive of his intellect and intelligence. He's actually got quite good taste in film and even praised films like Dune 2 and Wicked.
He’s not stupid. As an Orthodox Jew he just has some reactionary political views.
Most do. My godmother does not. I visited her on Friday afternoon, and she is worried about the implications of 2 from her viewpoint equally crazy leaders discussing the unthinkable, and I think that's as indirect as this statement has to be here, except to say that it concerns a certain roughly rectangular territory.
Many Jews, including my father, grew up in an Orthodox family environment. It’s not uncommon for any of us to have relatives who are exposed to this environment.
However, there’s a good reason why many younger Jews like me and others I know are Reform or Secular - We generally like to think for ourselves. Also, the notion in Orthodox Judaism that a man’s wife cannot shake the hands of another man or woman is just stupid (another reason why I like many Reform Jews always question what’s in the Torah).
That said, on Shapiro: He like Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon tried to be successful in Hollywood but wasn’t really. Most Jews I know really don’t talk like Shapiro. It’s as if he’s one notch below Kramer in the Seinfeld episode where he sued the a coffee company and got all the lattes he wanted.
I heard about that. Is that illegal and reversible through a lawsuit?
Probably not. But I’d like to see who shows up when they give lifetime achievement awards to Rob Schneider and Randy Quaid.
It's a real disaster for the music and theater world.
The remedial plan created two districts where Black Alabamians could have an opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice. In 2024, the second majority-Black district elected Rep. Shomari Figures (D), making it the first time Alabama sent two Black representatives to Congress.
Plaintiffs are now urging the court to permanently block the 2023 map and order the remedial plan to be used for all future elections through 2030.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/alabama-congressional-maps-go-on-trial/
Trial to begin Monday.
Since the day without an immigrant demonstrations, the high school students have been walking out daily in SoCal for anti immigration sweep and anti Trump demonstrations.
Unfortunately, yesterday midday, a high school student was stabbed in a park across the street from LA City Hall. Really, really bad wall to wall coverage on local TV. Plays into Trump's hands.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-07/immigration-protest-stabbing-los-angeles-trump
Shit happens, and it can always be used for demagoguery.
February consumer confidence drops for a second month, with concerns about tariff policy and increased inflation worries:
http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/
But I was told that Donald Trump would immediately bring a paradise of great GDP and job growth with no inflation, especially with brilliant businessmen like Elon Musk at his side? (Or so many people may be thinking. Interestingly, sentiment dropped among Republicans as well as Democrats and Independents.)
So many ignorant and stupid people in the American electorate are ruining the world economy and the U.S.
I think a new term is appropriate: the Illiterati.
I never saw the results of the 2024 prediction contest. Were the results posted?
Jeff Singer commented on this a few days ago.
The NC Supreme Court election is still unresolved. And that result apparently actually impacts who wins the contest and the babka.
So who knows, it could be months as the court hearings and appeals drag on...
Deb Haaland will make a major announcement on Feb 11th.
Most likely she is officially running for Governor of NM
She’s a terrific and formidable candidate if she gets in
Do any of you feel like you have good powers of prediction for the general sweep of history? If you do, do you agree with me that the decline of the U.S. as a world power is well underway, and if you agree with that, how do you think it will unfold, and how will it resemble and differ from the eclipses of the Spanish, French and British Empires or any other historic end of an empire? One difference I foresee is that the American empire has mostly consisted of occupying Native American land, settling it with white people and turning it into a mostly contiguous group of states, so in that respect, the current-day empire it's most similar to is Russia, which has caused a lot of havoc lately but has a very problematic economy and military and is likely to lose a lot of land in the Far East to China in due time and face internal conflict.
I don't do well at forecasting election results, only partly because I care too much about them, but for whatever it's worth, I'll make the following predictions, all of course contingent on today's world civilization not collapsing later in this century, which I will give 40% odds of not happening, or the human race becoming extinct, which I'll wildly stab at having a 15% possibility within 100 years:
The U.S. will divide into at least 3 countries by the end of this century, with one centered around California, another in the Northeast, a third consisting of the South and maybe other right-wing states away from the coasts, and it's possible there could be a 4th in the Upper Midwest or some kind of partnership of Colorado and New Mexico or that some Northern states (Minnesota particularly comes to my mind, for some reason) might become provinces of Canada.
Before any breakups occur, the dollar will have already been replaced by something else if there is still a recognized world currency as such that's tied to a single nation or limited group of nations. I think that will happen within 20 years, but maybe there's some reason investors around the world would lose too much money and therefore will keep it longer. One of you who understands macroeconomics better might be able to explain why I could be wrong.
All alliances and agreements that the U.S. has made that are not actively abrogated will atrophy and eventually die, since U.S. voters have been shown to be untrustworthy and elect scofflaws. This process may be largely complete within a decade.
As a result of a lack of confidence in U.S. trading practices and adherence to any agreements, the U.S. economy, though still large, will become a backwater within 30 years.
Meanwhile, the Eagles are crushing it in New Orleans. If only Philadelphia had also crushed it for Bob Casey and Kamala & Tim!
actually, Eagles
Yup, my bad. Fixed. In the live game blog coverage in The Guardian, someone referred to them as Phillies. I repeated their mistake.
I disagree, I think Trump will go down as so bad and dangerous, that the backlash will be huuuuuuuuuuuge
You totally missed the point. How would the backlash save the U.S. from being considered undependable by everyone? And besides, one term of Trump could be considered an aberration.
we'd have to rethink everything and regain trust
And I think that's impossible in the next 30 years, much too long for the U.S. to recover from. G.W. Bush was damaging, 1 term of Trump was much more damaging, and a 2nd term of Trump proves that it's totally pointless to have any long-term agreements with the U.S.
imo difficult, not impossible
There will be no threepeat, as the Eagles win 40-22.
Fly Eagles Fly
an open secret here in Florida is that First Lady Casey DeSantis may run for Governor of Florida; make no mistake, she could actually win; the current field is composed of clowns and unlike her husband, she's an attractive alternative in the Republican primary
She’d definitely beat Gaetz or Donalds in a primary
ECUADOR: election ends in a tie – will require a second round.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4mnznmwlvo
KOSOVO: PM Albin Kurti's party is leading the count. It will, however, fall short of a majority and be compelled to build a coalition government.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23ny33jlmjo