Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

Leading Off

“Fuck the Americans.”

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson has never been known for his subtlety. 

So I’m not surprised that he would be overheard reacting with that epithet to a plea to support current UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s efforts to strike a deal with the European Union over the status of Northern Ireland and finally get Brexit done. 

Johnson has been openly trying to figure out how to regain the job he lost last year after a series of scandals forced his resignation after parliamentary Conservative and Unionist Party members and government ministers finally lost confidence in him. 

As the 2019 General Election winner—and a notable narcissist—Johnson believes he is the only Conservative and Unionist Party politician who can win the next election, which must be held no later than December 12, 2024. Current polls show the Labour Party leading by over 20 points. 

Johnson gained power in the aftermath of Brexit, the 2016 referendum that asked UK voters if they wanted the country to leave the EU. The result surprised many people by narrowly passing (with 51.89 percent voting yes). 

Johnson and Brexit supporters told many lies during that campaign. There would be no £350 million per week dividend for the National Health Service. Turkey—now known as Türkiye—was not close to earning EU membership. Leaving the EU did not lead to an economic boom—instead, much of the UK’s current economic crisis results from the ramifications of the nation leaving the EU’s common market. 

But one issue—the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland—has proven to be the most difficult to solve in Brexit implementation negotiations. 

The 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended most of the political violence in Northern Ireland was possible, in part, because Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland had an open border as members of the European Union. There were no customs checkpoints or need to show papers when traveling between the two nations. There was no real need to resolve the precise border between the two nations. Negotiators didn’t need to solve this problem because the European Union effectively did. 

But Brexit implies that there must be a border at the places where the United Kingdom and European Union meet on land. There would no longer be a free movement of people, goods, and services between the UK and the EU. Passports need to be checked. Differences between the UK and EU’s laws and tariffs need to be addressed.

No one really cares about the border between Gibraltar and Spain. 

But many people care a bunch about the status of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And one of those people is the President of the United States, the noted Irish-American Joe Biden. 

Biden has made clear to a series of UK Prime Ministers that he would only support a trade agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom once there was a joint UK-EU resolution of the situation in Northern Ireland. Johnson wanted to go it alone and impose a solution on the EU because he promised to “Get Brexit Done.”

As I was finishing writing this post, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held a press conference to announce they had reached a deal on post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland. This was the rumored deal that prompted the profane reaction from Johnson with which I started this newsletter.

Sunak is taking a huge—but necessary—risk in reaching this agreement. There is no guarantee that he can pass a deal through the House of Commons or get Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party to end its boycott of the Good Friday Agreement’s political processes.

So Johnson’s reaction is significant. He still has a following among base Conservative and Unionist voters. The United States’ reaction kept him from using that profanity with the European Union and implementing a resolution he and the most extreme Brexiteers wanted for Northern Ireland. 

Former Prime Minister David Cameron hoped the Brexit referendum would end the controversy about the United Kingdom’s relationship with Europe. He suspected the referendum would lose, and the right wing of his party would have to stand down. That proved to be a massive miscalculation. The turmoil continues. 

Sunak is trying to resolve it in time for this year’s 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and a likely state visit from President Biden. 

Will Johnson use his influence to undermine this agreement and create more turmoil, if only because that would be his route back into 10 Downing Street? I hope I’m wrong, but the safe bet the last decade has been on Johnson and chaos. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The Essential Television Journalist Medhi Hasan

MSNBC’s Medhi Hasan gets the profile treatment ahead of the release tomorrow of his new book, Win Every Argument.

I’ve followed Hasan for a long time, and his MSNBC and Peacock shows are a must-watch (or listen). The Guardian’s David Smith explains why Hasan is an outlier among television presenters. 

“For those who criticise the American news media as too white, too Christian, too complacent, too inward looking, too pompous (“democracy dies in darkness”), too prone to herd mentality and too deferential to authority, Hasan has come along in the nick of time.

He is a British-born Muslim of Indian descent, anti-establishment muckraker and unabashed lefty with a bias towards democracy. As a former columnist and podcaster at the Intercept, and ex-presenter on Al Jazeera English, he used to worry that MSNBC would find him too edgy, too iconoclastic. But he says the network has been entirely supportive: he hosts weekly shows on MSNBC and NBC’s streaming channel Peacock.

One explanation is that, unlike shock jocks, bomb throwers and social media stars on the right, his show undeniably does substance. During the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, it featured the Afghan perspective at length. When the war in Ukraine erupted, Hasan offered a 10-minute monologue about the fascist philosopher who informs Vladimir Putin’s worldview. After the police killing of Tyre Nichols, an African American man in Memphis, he discussed critical race theory and policing with two leading academics.”

For me, Hasan’s willingness to ask tough questions and keep following up on them sets him apart from virtually everyone in the United States. 

“He has advice for political interviewers, too. Don’t ask seven different questions about seven topics, which allow a politician to dodge; follow up instead. Prepare, research and “show your receipts”. Hasan’s Twitter homepage has a pinned tweet, a video clip from his Al Jazeera days in which he eviscerates Donald Trump’s campaign adviser Steven Rogers, and the words: “Hey US media folks, here, I would argue immodestly, is how you interview a Trump supporter on Trump’s lies.”

So what if he got to interview Trump himself? Hasan says: “Donald Trump has this art called ‘Gish Galloping’, this idea that you overwhelm your opponent with bullshit, nonsense, lies over and over again at such a rapid pace that your opponent doesn’t have the ability to stop and factcheck them in real time and gets overwhelmed. Whether Trump does this wittingly or unwittingly, who knows? But he does it. He’s a master of it.

“There are tactics that you can use. You break it down, you don’t budge. When someone is hitting you with non-stop nonsense, don’t be distracted. Don’t go with the way they want to go. Stay put. Make clear what’s going on. Call out the tactic. Say: ‘We know what you’re doing.’ Make everyone aware of what’s going on. I always talk about breaking the fourth wall. Make very clear this is a bullshit strategy: you’re trying to overwhelm me with bullshit.”

Oh, how I wish this kind of questioning strategy could be the norm in the United States. 

And not just for Trump. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg needs a similar treatment to discuss how he handled the aftermath of the East Palestine, Ohio, rail disaster. For example, did Buttigieg’s experience as a consultant with McKinsey & Company lead him to trust company executives more than a regulator should? Is this worldview why Buttigieg hasn’t prioritized restoring Obama-era rail safety regulations during his first two years in office?

I doubt Buttigieg would sit down with Hasan for an interview. But we’d know more about the situation if he did. Plus, I suspect Buttigieg would end up doing a better job as Transportation Secretary if he had to address these issues publicly. 

Hasan expresses the clearest understanding of any television host about the impact of Fox News on the MAGAization of the Republican Party. He also clearly gets how democracy is at stake with the 2024 election. 

“You might say, oh, that’s paranoia, but if Donald Trump is re-elected as president and in January 2025 is sworn in, all bets are off what will happen to minorities, and in particular to my community, because whatever guardrails and adults in the room and limits on Trump’s behaviour you thought there were in the first term, they’re all gone. Absolutely nonexistent – anyone who thinks they exist is dreaming.”

Trump remains an existential threat to democracy and fabric of American society, Hasan argues. “We have kids in high schools shouting abuse at Latino and Black players from the crowd because they’ve got permission from the former president of the United States.”

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Quick Pitches

California

California Governor Gavin Newsom joined the leaders of 20 other states in announcing the creation of a Governor-led “Reproductive Freedom Alliance” committed to protecting and expanding reproductive freedom in their states. (Bill Barrow and Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press)

Politics

Will Bunch explains why Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s decision to turn over 44,000 hours of security footage to Tucker Carlson represents “extending and advancing a criminal cover-up of what really happened on Jan. 6, the date of an attempted coup against the U.S. government.” Bunch is also right that we owe whistleblower Reality Winner an apology. (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer)

The Supreme Court just did something rare: it enforced a precedent conservatives hate. Given what the six-Justice conservative supermajority did last year, we can’t take such a result for granted. “That’s particularly warranted for the court’s decision in Cruz v. Arizona, which held that states are actually required to adhere to Supreme Court precedent, at least some of the time, or at least in cases that have nothing to do with abortion. But it’s also important to recognize how close—one vote—the Supreme Court came to plunging us further into nihilism and lawless shell games.” (Leah Litman, Slate)

I wish the leaders of the New York Times would engage with its readers regarding its atrocious coverage of trans issues. “Here’s the thing: there is no clear-cut line between advocacy and journalism. All media organizations have a perspective about the world and filter their output (which will, of course, strive to be fairly reported) through that perspective. To pretend otherwise is dishonest. Like it or not, the Times is involved in advocacy. It just needs to step back for a moment and think about who it’s advocating for.” (Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian)

A pilot program implementing a four-day workweek in the United Kingdom was so successful—including increased revenues and employee well-being—that 56 of the 61 companies that participated plan to continue with the new schedule in some fashion. (Annabelle Timsit, The Washington Post)

Tom Nichols marked the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by sharing “a more personal grief about the passing of the hopes so many of us had for a better world at the end of the 20th century.” (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)

Science

Given how annoying they can be, hiccups have not gotten the scientific attention they deserve. But a few people have been working on how hiccups work and how to stop them. Would you prefer a breathing exercise or a straw designed to generate the required 100 centimeters of water pressure in the diaphragm to stop them? (Uri Bram, The Atlantic)

A new scientific paper suggests that black holes are responsible for generating the dark matter that astronomers believe is forcing the universe’s accelerating expansion. “Coming up with a nifty explanation for dark energy is one thing — and astronomers have been generating such theories for about a century — but this paper provides the first ever observational evidence. That is, evidence that can be measured and (importantly) tested, rather than just existing as an abstract theoretical “maybe.” (Troy Farah, Salon)

The physics behind those airplanes towing advertising signs are more complicated than I thought. (Dan Lewis, Now I Know)

Technology

The Science Fiction magazine Clarkesworld has temporarily stopped accepting short stories after noticing a surge in people using artificial intelligence to plagiarize their submissions. (Michael Kan, PC Magazine)

Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications in another sign that the company is accelerating the spread of political misinformation after Elon Musk’s takeover last year. (Joseph Menn, The Washington Post)

Society

A Beer and a Shot. This is a New York Times Cooking recipe I know I can pull off! But you aren’t making it happen for real unless you do a Chicago Handshake version with a Jeppson’s Malört and an Old Style beer at least once. Many people, alas, only do that once. (Rosie Schapp, New York Times Cooking)

A surge in European demand for tequila has led to a shortage of the agave plant used in its creation. Analysts expect a couple of years of high prices and shortages before enough new agave plants are available to balance supply and demand. (Richa Naidu and Valentine Hilaire, Reuters)

The story about the actual Cocaine Bear has more twists and turns than the new movie. (Ashley Wong, Wall Street Journal)

Here’s a great strategy to win at Monopoly if you follow all of the game’s rules to the letter and are okay with losing all of your friends. Turn frustrations about housing scarcity to your advantage! (Eipher, Imgur)

Pancakes have been an important part of the human diet for a very long time. “In 2022, researchers excavating the Shanidar Cave complex in Iraq unearthed the charred remains of some of the world’s oldest cooked leftovers. As Ceren Kabukcu, an archaeobotanical scientist at the University of Liverpool and the lead author of a paper on the discovery, says in an email, “It looked like the seeds were soaked before they were cooked. You can tell if it’s soaked or cracked before it’s mashed into a patty. From this, we suggested [the food underwent] something like a flat preparation.” The 70,000-year-old culinary treat was, in other words, a proto pancake.” (Grace Linden, Smithsonian Magazine)

Sports

Sally Jenkins is a master at eviscerating people and institutions who deserve such comeuppance. I’m glad she had some things to share about the Saudi Arabian-based LIV Golf tour. “From the outset, LIV was a home for buttercup-bellied moral cowards clutching at cash from a murderous regime, but it quickly has evolved into a refuge for guys who have lost their taste for competition.” (Sally Jenkins, The Washington Post)

Claire Watkins explains how the United States Women’s National Team’s 2023 She Believes Cup victory was an important start to the team’s preparations for this year’s Women’s World Cup. She also celebrates Mallory Swanson’s MVP performance and Alex Morgan breaking the record for most goals scored by a USWNT player after having a child (14). (Claire Watkins, Just Women’s Sports)

The impending bankruptcy of Diamond Sports, the Sinclair Broadcast Group-affiliated company that holds the local media rights for 42 teams across the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, and National Hockey League could have enormous ramifications for the financial structures of those sports. (Joseph Pompliano, Huddle Up)

Speaking of problems with the regional sports networks, Warner Bros. Discovery inherited four—in Pittsburgh, Houston, Colorado, and Utah—when it acquired the Warner Media assets from AT&T. Warner Bros. Discovery just told the professional teams airing on those networks that it wishes to shut down the channels. (Joe Flint, Wall Street Journal)

Matthew Belloni also notes that the government forced Disney CEO Bob Iger to unload the regional sports networks to Sinclair as part of its acquisition of 21st Century Fox during his first tenure as Disney’s leader. That decision to sell them for $10.6 billion makes the overall deal look better now that those regional sports networks have a value rapidly approaching zero. (Matthew Belloni, Puck News)

The Closer

The Manchester United Men’s Team won its first major trophy in six years, beating Newcastle United 2-0 on Sunday to win the Carabao Cup. Victories at Wembley Stadium are always so sweet.

Manchester United finally have their hands on a trophy 𝐀𝐆𝐀𝐈𝐍! 🏆🤩

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) 6:46 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2023

It is remarkable how much progress new manager Erik ten Hag has already made this season. 

🗣 “We are still in the start to restore Manchester United to where they belong.” 🔴🏆

Erik ten Hag says moments like this are exactly where Manchester United need to be

— Football Daily (@footballdaily) 7:06 PM ∙ Feb 26, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

Leading Off

Over the past few years, I have spent considerable time thinking about how large a role luck has in politics and life. 

Fortunes and political achievements are often made—and lost—because of factors outside our control. Yet we often proclaim people as geniuses or failures because of results that had little to do with their innate skill or brilliance. 

Warren Buffett has noted that if he had been born in Bangladesh, his particular set of talents would not have allowed him to become one of the wealthiest people in the world. How many self-proclaimed self-made people started with a few million dollars from their parents or happened to have the right roommate at university? How many talented people did not receive the nurturing needed to foster their abilities because of the zip code in which they were born?

I’m sitting in Silicon Valley as I type this, and while this place has provided more than a few examples of this dynamic over the past few years, you can see it all around the country and the world. 

I am thinking again about luck and fortune this morning because of a thoughtful piece written by James Fallows about his former boss, President Jimmy Carter. Fallows was a speechwriter for Carter before going on to become a successful writer and editor. Fallows explores Carter’s legacy in a piece appropriately headlined “Unlucky President, Lucky Man.” He writes: 

Life is unfair, as a Democratic president once put it. That was John F. Kennedy, at a press conference early in his term.

Jimmy Carter did not go through as extreme a range of the blessings and cruelties of fate as did Kennedy and his family. But I think Carter’s long years in the public eye highlighted a theme of most lives, public and private: the tension between what we plan and what happens. Between the luck that people can make for themselves and the blind chance they cannot foresee or control.

In the decades of weekly Bible classes he led in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter must have covered Proverbs 19:21. One contemporary translation of that verse renders it as: “Man proposes, God disposes.”

Not everything in his life happened the way Jimmy Carter proposed or preferred. But he made the very most of the years that God and the fates granted him.

Fallows discusses Carter’s successful life pre-and-post presidency. Many people today think that his presidency was a failure. But, in my experience, a great deal of what people believe to be his failures should more accurately be assigned to bad fortune. As Fallows recaps: 

Despite it all, Carter had broader support during his first year in office than almost any of his successors, except briefly the two Bushes in wartime emergencies. Despite it all, most reckonings have suggested that Carter might well have beaten Ronald Reagan, and held on for a second term, if one more helicopter had been sent on the “Desert One” rescue mission in Iran, or if fewer of the helicopters that were sent had failed. Or if, before that, Teddy Kennedy had not challenged Carter in the Democratic primary. Or if John Anderson had not run as an independent in the general election. What if the ayatollah’s Iranian government had not stonewalled on negotiations to free its U.S. hostages until after Carter had been defeated? What if, what if.

Carter is also unlucky because so many people do not accurately remember what happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rick Pearlstein’s Reaganland, the fourth and final book in his essential history of the rise of conservatism, goes into great detail about the political and cultural history of the time. 

Noah Smith offers a shorter version about a few of the differences between memory and reality in this post: “Much of what you’ve heard about Carter and Reagan is wrong.”

For example, Carter was the one who beat inflation. Carter also did more deregulating than Reagan, for better or worse. (Certainly better if one enjoys a great craft beer.) As Smith writes:

So what do we learn from the misunderstandings surrounding these two Presidents? One lesson, obviously, is that the narratives we tell about history are largely constructed after the fact, by actors who have a stake in painting a certain picture of the recent past. But another is that successful policy takes a long time to work. Carter deregulated, appointed a tough inflation-fighter to the Fed, and funded the USSR’s military opponents. But it wasn’t until the 80s that the economy boomed, inflation came down, and the USSR weakened and fell. In 1980, when Reagan beat Carter for the presidency, it still looked as if nothing was working and everything was still going wrong — even though the crucial policy steps that would turn things around had already been largely taken. (emphasis in original)

Fortune also plays a factor in our lifespans. And, as Fallows explains, the fact that Carter had such a vibrant post-presidency—by far the longest of any president—provided time for him to rewrite some of the narratives about his role in our society. He writes: 

This extended span mattered for reasons within Carter’s control, and beyond it. Good fortune, medical science, and a lifetime history as a trim, fit athlete (he was a good tennis player, a runner, and a skillful softball pitcher), helped Carter survive several bouts of cancer and other tolls of aging. But his faith, will, idealism, and purpose allowed him to invent and exemplify a new role for former presidents, and to see his own years in office reconsidered.

Suppose that, like Lyndon B. Johnson, he had died of a literal and figurative broken heart at age 64. His record and achievements would have concluded with Ronald Reagan still in office, and his story would have been summarized as ending on a loss. Carter could never have received the Nobel Peace Prize, which he won while nearing age 80, in 2002. (Nobel Prizes cannot be given posthumously.)

With health like Lyndon Johnson’s, Jimmy Carter would not have had a chance to establish his new identity—and to see prevailing assessments of his role as president change as profoundly as those of Harry Truman did. As with Truman, the passing years have made it easier to see what Carter achieved, and to recognize what he was trying to do even when unsuccessful. But Truman was no longer alive to see that happen. For Carter I think the process of reassessment will go on.

I hope Fallows is correct about this reassessment. Based on all the accounts I’ve read, Carter was a hard and diligent worker. But his life demonstrates how the events outside our control matter so much to how we remember a person. 

We would do well to keep this more in mind as we celebrate successes today. The best ideas and hardest work ethics can’t always overcome how capricious fate and fortune can be. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A Doctor Explains How Abortion Bans Actually Work 

The Guardian’s Poppy Noor shares a diary written by Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung about what she experienced trying to help patients deal with the real-life ramifications of Tennessee’s total ban on abortion procedures. 

The stories Dr. Zahedi-Spung shares are heartbreaking and terrifying. Here’s one example:

This patient came in around 16 weeks pregnant, having felt a gush of fluid from what’s called a preterm premature rupture of membranes. Her water had broken early. She was with her partner and her mom, having had a totally normal pregnancy up until that point. She was in an incredible amount of pain, contracting every five minutes and crying. The amount of pain indicated she may go into labor soon, too early for the pregnancy to be viable. A heartbeat was still detectable on the ultrasound.

“I figured she’d deliver at some point. But I didn’t know when – and she was certainly not able to be discharged home given the amount of pain she was in. She was not infected; she certainly wasn’t bleeding enough for me to justify doing anything. So we just had to wait, and I made her as comfortable as I could – we gave her an epidural,” says Zahedi-Spung.

If there wasn’t a total ban in place, Zahedi-Spung would have induced labor, or taken the patient to the operating room to perform a surgical abortion. But the rules said she couldn’t.

The patient delivered around 12 hours later, after Zahedi-Spung had gone home.

“Technically we didn’t break any standards of care, but the evidence-based guidelines are that if someone’s water breaks prior to 22 weeks, you end the pregnancy. So I wasn’t doing all that I could have done to protect the patient. Thankfully, she didn’t get sick and she didn’t bleed to death. But why do I have to wait for [that] to take care of people?” asks Zahedi-Spung.

Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti often emphasizes that we can’t legislate pregnancy. There are just too many complications. This is one of the reasons exceptions laws don’t work—there can’t be enough clarity about what a doctor can or can’t do. As Valenti explains:

That’s why I’ve written about exceptions so many times over. The vast majority of Americans do not realize that abortion ‘exceptions’ are a Republican PR stunt—not something people can actually use. The fact that Democrats aren’t talking about this every single day is unbelievable to me.

I feel the same way. 

Speaking of Valenti’s essential newsletter, she includes in this edition stories about how Walgreens has caved to an intimidation campaign and now won’t distribute abortion medication in Kansas, new legislation in Alabama that would classify abortion as homicide, and how all these abortion bans mean that many medical students and residents are now unable to receive the training they need about essential health care procedures. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Quick Pitches

Politics

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has created the first-ever post-conviction justice unit within the California Department of Justice. “The new unit, once fully staffed, will work with broad discretion — in partnership with local district attorneys — to conduct investigations and reviews aimed at resolving wrongful or improper criminal convictions, including matters where there may be evidence of significant integrity issues, and to identify cases that may be suitable for potential resentencing.” We need to do more to help people access the courts in these situations. (California Office of the Attorney General Press Release)

The three leading candidates in the campaign to succeed U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein—Rep. Katie Porter, Rep. Barbara Lee, and Rep. Adam Schiff—agree on most of the issues. Here’s a look at how that dynamic will impact the race. (Seema Mehta, The Los Angeles Times)

Parker Malloy explains how the New York Times seems determined to repeat the mistakes the paper made with the Holocaust with its ongoing anti-trans activism. Yes, I know that we often overuse that comparison. So we should be careful when we do. But I agree with Malloy that it hits the mark in this case. (Parker Malloy, The Present Age)

The election for a state Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin on April 4 could be the most important one of the year. (Dan Moynihan, Can We Still Govern?)

We should be clear that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for a ”national divorce” is just another white supremacist way to disenfranchise Black people. As Noah Berlatsky explains, “Greene’s rant isn’t really intended as a considered case for a second Civil War. Rather, people like her who evoke secession do so as a form of propaganda. Specifically, they are framing partisan division as regional. That allows them to frame themselves as victims under assault by a supposedly more powerful Northern aggressor. And it also allows them to pretend that their ideology and political aspirations are about local control, rather than white supremacy.” (Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice)

Following up on a story I’ve previously shared in this newsletter, a Florida school board has banned three books at the request of a teacher whom numerous students allege of being openly racist and homophobic in class. (Judd Legum, Popular Information)

Because of qualified immunity, the Supreme Court ruled that police did not violate an Ohio man’s constitutional rights when they arrested and prosecuted him for creating a satirical website. (Lawrence Hurley, NBC News) 

And, as Craig Calcaterra writes about this Ohio case, “Stuff like this is probably worth remembering the next time big fans of our current Supreme Court go on and on about their free speech rights. I imagine those types can explain in detail why it’s a violation of their previous freedoms for a private company to ask them not to say hateful things on their platform but that it’s perfectly OK for the state to arrest and imprison you for saying bad things about the cops. It may not make any coherent sense, but I’m sure they can say it.” (Craig Calcaterra, Cup of Coffee)

In many countries, the tax service does most of the job of filling out tax returns. Turbotax hires many lobbyists to keep the United States from following suit. (Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic)

Science

Jupiter and Venus are coming closer and closer together each night until they will be just a half-degree apart on March 4. It is fun to see the noticeable difference each night. (Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy)

An increase in the speed at which the Earth is rotating may require us to experience a negative leap second soon. (Rahul Rao, Popular Science)

Here’s the story about the creation of the Rapatronic, a camera engineer created in order to photograph the first microseconds of a nuclear explosion in the 1950s. (Maverick Baker, InterestingEngineering.com)

Technology

Iphone users are about to get 31 new emoji, including a shaking face that I suspect I will use pretty often. (Sarah Perez, TechCrunch)

My former employers at Common Sense Media are starting a new initiative to help people navigate cybersecurity. They are asking people to complete this online survey as part of this effort. (Common Sense Media)

Society

Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is about to release his first major work since 1995. I share the excitement of so many about what we will see in The Mysteries, a “fable for grown-ups.” (Matthew Cantor, The Guardian)

A first-generation iPhone that was still in its unopened box because its owner didn’t want to switch to AT&T from Verizon just sold at auction for $63,356. (John-Anthony Disotto, iMore)

Sports

The New York Mets closed one of their recent spring training sessions to reporters in order to work on secret plays related to the new baserunning rules. Just what is manager Buck Showalter up to that requires these NFL-like practices? (Noah Woodward, The Advance Scout)

The Closer

The CEO of Ukranian Railways shares a Twitter thread about how they helped manage the visit of President Biden to Kyiv and the creation of Rail Force One (while also keeping a 90 percent on-time performance in a war zone). 

So, here is the story of @POTUS‘s visit to #Kyiv and how #RailForceOne was born.

Grab some 🍿, @Amtrak.

Danger: long 🧵 ahead.

— Alexander Kamyshin (@AKamyshin) 9:03 AM ∙ Feb 21, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:

President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at St. Michaels Golden-Domed Cathedral on a surprise visit to Kyiv.

— Evan Vucci (@evanvucci) 10:47 AM ∙ Feb 20, 2023

Leading Off

Biden’s Presidents’ Day Surprise

President Biden’s surprise trip to Ukraine was an inspiring example of the power of presidential leadership in the fight to preserve democracy. 

With the first anniversary of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine coming up on Friday, it was Biden in Kyiv making a case for democracy rather than Putin there celebrating the rebirth of empire. 

This trip was also remarkable because it was the first time a U.S. president had traveled to a war zone not controlled by our nation’s military since the Civil War. 

The New York Times’ Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear provide the historical context: 

“Since Abraham Lincoln rode to the front lines outside Washington to watch battles in Northern Virginia during the Civil War, no sitting president has gotten that close to combat. Franklin D. Roosevelt visited North Africa; Lyndon B. Johnson went to Vietnam; Bill Clinton toured the Balkans; George W. Bush and Barack Obama traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan; and Donald J. Trump went to Afghanistan.

But in all those cases, they went to countries or areas under control of American forces or after hostilities had eased. In this case, the United States military would not be present in Ukraine, nor would it control the airspace. American military planes were spotted hovering in eastern Poland near the border during the trip, but officials said they never entered Ukrainian airspace out of concern that it would be taken as the sort of direct American intervention that Mr. Biden has avoided.”

I wonder if FDR deserves more credit here for his World War II trans-Atlantic voyages by ship before his first airplane trip to North Africa in 1943, but still, what Biden accomplished yesterday is something quite rare in history. There was a significant risk to him involved, even if our government rightly warned Moscow ahead of time.

As The Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf writes, Biden joined a group of U.S. presidents who traveled to Europe to make a point about freedom to a Russian or Soviet leader. 

Kennedy and then Reagan in Berlin. Now Biden in Kyiv.

Periodically during the past sixty years, American presidents have stood up at the Eastern edge of Europe and looked to Russia to say, “We stand with our allies. Our resolve is unshakeable.”

Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall.” Biden, on his surprise President’s Day visit to Kyiv said, “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine strands. Democracy stands.”

We should not take this fact for granted. Now or in the future. 

The war is not likely to end quickly. As The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum explains, Biden’s visit not only demonstrates solidarity with Ukraine, it sends an important message to Russia, China, and the rest of Europe. 

These messages matter because Ukraine is now engaged in a war of attrition on several fronts. In the eastern part of the country, Ukraine and Russia are fighting an old-fashioned artillery battle. Russia sends waves of conscripts and convicts at the Ukrainian defenses, suffering huge losses and appearing not to care. The Ukrainians use up huge quantities of equipment and ammunition—one Ukrainian politician in Munich reminded me that they need a bullet for every Russian soldier—and, of course, take losses themselves.

But alongside that ground combat, a psychological war of attrition is unfolding as well. Putin thinks that he will win not through technological superiority, and not through better tactics or better-trained soldiers, but simply by outlasting a Western alliance that he still believes to be weak, divided, and easily undermined. He reckons that he has more people, more ammunition, and above all more time: that Russians can endure an infinite number of casualties, that Russians can survive an infinite amount of economic pain. Just in case they cannot, he will personally demonstrate his capacity for cruelty by locking down his society in extraordinary ways.

As several analysts pointed out yesterday, had former President Trump won a close 2020 election, we may have seen him in Kyiv with Putin celebrating the annexation of Ukraine into Russia. After all, Trump’s first impeachment involved withholding Congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine. I also agree with those who believe that the damage Trump did to the NATO alliance may have led Putin to think he would not face this kind of response. 

Symbolism matters in politics, and I am glad Biden was willing to take the calculated risks of such a trip to Kyiv before his planned trip to Poland. We will need more of this kind of resolve to fight back against MAGA Republican efforts to stop supporting Ukraine as our attention drifts to other issues, including the 2024 election campaign. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Newsom’s Plan to Narrow Achievement Gaps

California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed adding a new “equity multiplier” to combat persistent achievement gaps. EdSource’s John Fensterwald explains this would be the most significant change to the state’s education funding system since the state created the Local Control Funding Formula a decade ago.

His proposal, announced last month, grew out of a push by Black legislators to direct new money specifically toward helping Black students raise achievement. Since the 1996 voter initiative Proposition 209 bans affirmative action in public schools, Newsom is proposing a different approach. 

A small proportion of Black students would benefit from attending the state’s poorest schools that would receive $300 million in new ongoing funding — a strategy Newsom is calling an “equity multiplier.”  

But the legislation would do something else that officials say would benefit nearly all Black students: It would direct school districts to use the yearly state funding to help all student groups improve academic achievement.

You can find the details of the equity multiplier proposal starting at the bottom of page 33 of the proposed K-12 Omnibus Trailer Bill (pdf).

This proposal is the latest step in negotiations between Newsom and members of the California State Legislature. In addition to providing additional funding, the bill language attempts to clarify how school districts can spend supplemental funding to support low-performing students. As Fensterwald explains:

The governor’s plan would focus extra funding on all low-performing student groups in about 800 out of about 10,000 schools. This bill explicitly calls for addressing disparities among racial groups, with the expectation that districts would use extra funding intended for underperforming students. 

There had been some confusion about that issue, Allen acknowledged, because supplemental funding under LCFF is distributed based on the number of English learners, low-income, foster and homeless students attending a district. Some districts assumed that funding therefore could not be focused on the specific needs of low-performing Black students and other racial and ethnic groups — even if identified by dashboard measures — unless they fit into one of those groups. 

This new law would tell districts their funding is to benefit all student racial and ethnic groups including Black students. “It’s the difference between should, under the existing law, and must,” Allen said.

It would be great to clear up this confusion. I am not sure that $300 million is enough to do the job, but I suspect that will be a part of the budget negotiations that will continue through June.

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Quick Pitches

Politics

Pocket released a collection including one great story about each president of the United States. I’ll be working my way through this over the coming weeks. (Pocket Collections, Hail to the Chief: One Great Article About Every U.S. President)

The Carter Center announced on Saturday that former President Jimmy Carter had entered hospice care. Residents of his hometown of Plains, Georgia, shared reflections about the most famous resident of their town. “After losing re-election, Mr. Carter and his wife traveled the world to build homes for the poor, help combat diseases, help organize fair elections and promote books on a wide range of subjects. But they settled in this tiny town where they both grew up and were the leading citizens for decades.” (Cameron McWhirter, Wall Street Journal)

California legislators will take a more targeted approach to regulate social media this year, focusing on how they harm children. (Laurel Rosenhall, The Los Angeles Times)

Michigan Republicans chose an extreme election denier over the weekend as their new state party chair. They did this even after losing a series of elections that now give Democrats control over all of the statewide offices and both chambers of the state legislature. The fact that Michigan Republicans are doubling down on the extremism that contributed to these poor results is yet another sign that the base is still with Trump. (Michael Tomasky, The New Republic)

Brian Stelter, the former CNN media reporter and author of a book about Fox News’ close relationship with the Trump Administration, reacts to the revelations included in the Dominion Voting Systems filing in its defamation lawsuit against the network. “What a curious word—respect. Journalists are taught that to respect the audience means to report the truth clearly and carefully. But inside Fox, which is first and foremost a provider of entertainment, respect meant something else. Reading the texts and emails, I was reminded of another thing the Fox & Friends producer had said. “We were deathly afraid” of the audience, he admitted, “but we also laughed at them. We disrespected them. We weren’t practicing what we preached.” (Brian Stelter, The Atlantic)

Science

The Atlantic’s Jennifer Senior offers a brief guide about how to talk about Long COVID with people like her who are dealing with it. “The fact is, no one—including doctors (especially doctors, dear God, these doctors)—knows the right things to say to those of us who have long COVID, because no one seems to be thinking about this wretched condition in the right way. Nor does anyone seem to understand the unique psychological suffering associated with this condition. It’s hideous—arguably worse than some of the very worst of our physical symptoms. Which, let’s face it, are already pretty grim.” (Jennifer Senior, The Atlantic)

Thanks to the swift adoption of green energy measures, Europe avoided a winter of energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and the subsequent energy import sanctions. This result shows how swiftly we can change how much carbon we use. (David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times)

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has led to significant restrictions on arctic research. “Suddenly, nearly every international collaborative effort with Russia in the Arctic—from polar bear and whale studies to research on commercial fishing, permafrost thaw, sea-ice retreat, peatland ecology, and wildfires—was on hold.” (Ed Struzik, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)

Society

A group of investors has been hoping to prove that the Renaissance painter Raphael was the artist who created a painting found in an antique shop in 1995. Will artificial intelligence help convince leading experts that the piece is legitimate? “Art historians have disagreed about whether Mr. Ayers’s find is a real Raphael. A new report commissioned by the owners from Art Recognition, a Zurich firm that uses machine learning to analyze artists’ brushstrokes, has found a 97% probability that the faces of Jesus and Mary in the work were painted by Raphael. “(Kelly Crow, The Wall Street Journal)

Companies that used to use artificial intelligence algorithms to help hire workers are now using them to determine who to lay off. I suspect lawsuits are coming. (Pranshu Verma, The Washington Post)

The Codex Sassoon, the oldest nearly complete Hebrew bible, is headed for auction in May. “The Codex Sassoon tells multiple stories — not just those recounted in its pages, but also the story of the Hebrew Bible itself, and how its text was fixed and then handed down in the form we know today.” Sotheby’s expects it will sell for between $30-50 million. (Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times)

The fantasy card game Magic: The Gathering has become Hasbro’s first $1 billion brand for annual sales. “Since it was introduced in the mid-1990s, more than 50 million people — including the rapper Post Malone and the actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt — have played Magic in hobby shops and around kitchen tables around the world. The game casts players as wizards who derive their powers by picking cards from the decks they have built, drawing from an ever-expanding universe of cards that are bought, sold and traded in a thriving secondary market. Magic’s popularity has spawned a cottage industry of video games, comic books, a Caribbean cruise and an animated series in development for Netflix.” (Gregory Schmidt, The New York Times)

Sports

A new independent report confirms that UEFA (the European soccer federation) and French police lied when they tried to blame Liverpool supporters for the dangerous crowd situation created by their mismanagement of last year’s Champions League Final. “The report of the independent panel commisioned by Uefa to investigate the chaos intimates what, again, we already knew: fans’ efforts in staying relatively calm, looking after others, and documenting the issues outside the stadium, probably saved lives.” It is especially unforgivable that authorities would seek to blame Liverpool supporters for what happened, given how that team’s supporters were also wrongfully accused of creating a situation leading to 97 deaths at Hillsborough in 1989. I agree that UEFA’s leaders, including President Aleksander Čeferin, should resign in disgrace. (Daniel Storey, inews.co.uk)

Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced the creation of a new “economic reform committee” due to the likely bankruptcy of the Bally regional sports networks and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s willingness to ignore luxury tax penalties. Trying to keep players from getting their share of the sport’s revenues has been a priority of professional baseball owners since the National League implemented the reserve clause in 1879. (Evan Drellich, The Athletic)

The Closer

But why is Calvin Coolidge so angry?

My Saturday fun project: using AI, every US president as a Pixar character.

— Dan Szymborski (@DSzymborski) 8:14 PM ∙ Feb 18, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com.

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription.

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Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

Celebrating the Most Effective Member of His Majesty’s Government

12 years ago today I was appointed Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office and moved into Downing Street. I’ve already outlasted four Prime Ministers and have been in charge here longer than Thatcher, Blair, Churchill and Disraeli.

— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) 8:28 AM ∙ Feb 15, 2023

Why the Media Adopts Right-Wing Narratives

Press Watch’s Dan Froomkin explains why so many reporters and editors reflexively adopt right-wing narratives in their political coverage. 

“You might think that after so many years of being lied to, yelled at, and denigrated by Republican leaders – after a violent attempted insurrection that many Republicans still defend – editors in our major newsrooms would tell their staffs to treat Republican narratives with considerable skepticism.

But nothing matters to these very accomplished journalists more than “not taking sides.” They are particularly terrified of being seen as liberal. And they desperately want an exciting horse race to cover in 2024. So they refuse to publicly acknowledge what has become of the modern Republican Party.

Since writing and speaking the truth would (they think) make them look partisan, they adopt Republican narratives instead.”

Froomkin highlights recent stories about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R), the national debt limit, the mishandling of classified documents, and the Chinese balloon to demonstrate how right-wing framing dominates so much of the mainstream media’s coverage. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

FBI Uses Informants To Trap Protesters

The FBI is back to using tactics that entrap people into committing crimes they otherwise would not have initiated. 

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkinton reports, “The FBI’s use of an informant to infiltrate Black Lives Matter in Denver during the wave of protests over the 2020 police killing of George Floyd has prompted concern in Congress that the federal agency is once again abusing its powers to harass and intimidate minority groups.

Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, is calling for the FBI to explain how it came to recruit a violent felon as an informant who then went on to gain prominence among Denver racial justice activists. The informant is alleged to have encouraged protesters to engage in increasingly violent demonstrations while trying to entrap them in criminal misdeeds.”

“If the allegations are true, the FBI’s use of an informant to spy on first amendment-protected activity and stoke violence at peaceful protests is an outrageous abuse of law-enforcement resources and authority,” Wyden told the Guardian.”

Pilkington describes a few examples of how the FBI’s paid informant tried to get Black Lives Matter protesters to break the law, a series of events chronicled in the new podcast series Alphabet Boys. 

He writes: “As 2020’s long hot summer of protests deepened, Windecker became more prominent in the Denver scene. He also became more proactive in his advice, encouraging activists to consider taking the protests to the next level.

He told one Black Lives Matter leader: “I can teach you how to shoot a gun, to hand-to-hand combat, all the way up to like blowing up fucking buildings and guerrilla warfare tactics and sabotage.”

Audio clippings from the undercover recordings obtained by Aaronson reveal what Windecker then went on to ask the activist: “How extreme do you want it to go? Do you want to learn to shoot a gun and throw someone around, or do you want to go all the way uptown? If that’s what you want to do, I can make it happen.”

The podcast reports that Windecker went on to give an activist $1,500 to buy a gun for him, which led to the individual being arrested on weapons charges. Aaronson also alleges that the informant helped to organize a series of demonstrations in August 2020 that led to violent assaults on police stations.”

That’s outrageous. And I hope the Senate will do something because I doubt this example of the actual weaponization of the federal government will interest Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as he chairs the new Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Taking On Junk Fees

President Joe Biden is right to focus on battling junk fees in the third year of his administration. It is politically popular, a rare area of potential bipartisan agreement, and a misleading practice that the government should tackle.

Semafor’s Jordan Weissman explains the dynamics behind the president’s decision to highlight the issue: 

“The White House estimates that Americans pay about $64 billion annually in fees, which include penalties for late credit card payments and bank overdrafts, as well as sneaky cable, airline, and hotel charges. Economists argue that these sorts of fees end up warping markets by allowing companies to hide the true cost of their services from shoppers.

They’ve paid special attention to the ways consumers end up fooled by “drip pricing,” the maddening practice perfected by airlines, hotels, and ticket vendors where companies advertise one price tag to customers, then jack it up by tacking on a bunch of unavoidable fees (see that massive AirBnb “cleaning fee” you may have paid recently).

But other opaque fees can be problematic as well. Early service cancellation charges may lock customers into bad deals that hinder competition. Ticky-tack overdraft fees let banks quietly harvest billions in revenue from poorer customers.

Neale Mahoney, a Stanford economist who joined the administration as a special policy advisor in June, argues that these practices have created a vicious cycle, where businesses must use tactics like drip pricing or risk losing out to competitors who do. “This practice is becoming more and more pervasive,” Mahoney told Semafor. “We need to root it out across industries.”

Quick Pitches

Esquire’s Jack Holmes has compiled a list of all of the bans Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has enacted. “Freedom means the government bans something new every day. Just ask the newest rising star in the Party of Small Government—at least according to very savvy politico types—Florida Governor Ronald DeSantis. He cut his teeth as a national figure by styling his state as the last bastion of human freedom in the United States during the pandemic, a place where the government wouldn’t make you do anything ever. But DeSantis is almost inevitably going to run for president, and now that the pandemic is finished as a public policy issue, he needs some grand public gestures to get him into the news cycle and onto the Fox News airwaves on a regular basis. It’s certainly more fun than talking about his record on Medicare and Social Security. Enter the bans.” (Jack Holmes, Esquire)

The epidemic of Russian officials falling out of windows claimed another victim. “Marina Yankina, head of the department of financial provisions for the Western Military District, was found dead on a sidewalk on Wednesday morning, according to multiple local reports. She is just the latest in a growing list of Russian military officials, defense industry figures, war critics, and gas and oil execs to die suddenly and mysteriously since the start of the full-scale invasion last year.” (Allison Quinn, The Daily Beast)

Here’s another consequence for Russian President Vladimir Putin after he decided to invade Ukraine: “Over the past year, as Western governments have ramped up weapons deliveries to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Moscow, U.S. and European security services have been waging a parallel if less visible campaign to cripple Russian spy networks. The German case, which also involved the arrest of a senior official in the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, followed roll-ups of suspected Russian operatives in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Slovenia. The moves amount to precision strikes against Russian agents still in Europe after the mass expulsion of more than 400 suspected Russian intelligence officers from Moscow’s embassies across the continent last year.” (Greg Miller, Souad Mekhennet, Emily Rauhala, and Shane Harris of The Washington Post)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares a Black History Month-focused edition of his weekly analysis of news, sports, and culture. (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Substack)

Greg Olear has some questions about Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who operates with impunity despite being under indictment since 2015—and who just had seven(!) top aides accuse him of bribery and abuse of office: “We think of “strongman regimes” running entire nations, like Italy under Mussolini, Chile under Pinochet, or, more recently, Putin’s Russia. But the same principles applied by strongmen in the notorious dictatorships Ben-Ghiat writes about in her book are now being employed by politicians in individual U.S. states. A good example can be found in Texas. The state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, is ultimately responsible for the execution of all laws within the Lone Star State. The buck stops with him. And yet, if the allegations against him are true, he is egregiously, breathtakingly corrupt.” (Greg Olear, Prevail)

Morton Salt created the “when it rains, it pours” slogan to advertise how its discovery that adding magnesium carbonate would keep its salt, unlike its competitors at the time, from clumping in damp weather. (Dan Lewis, Now I Know)

If you liked—or missed—Y2K, you may have another chance to experience it to a lesser extent in about 15 years. “The year 2038 problem is a problem caused by how some software systems store dates. When these dates reach 1 second after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 they will incorrectly show the date 20:45:52 on Friday, 13 December 1901.” (https://theyear2038problem.com/)

“When a gang of gambling cheats sussed out how to beat the house, they inadvertently highlighted a loophole from a shuffled deck. It took a magician-turned-mathematician to reveal how.” (Shane Keating, BBC Future)

Major League Baseball demonstrated this year’s new rules for reporters. You can see some of the slides and videos shared at the event. (Al Yellon, Bleed Cubbie Blue)

Major League Baseball announced that it is directing umpires to call the balk rule strictly this season. This change is related to new pitch clock rules, which make it vital for everyone to be clear about when a pitcher starts his pitching motion. The results were chaotic, though, the last time MLB tried to do this. (Jeff Passan, ESPN)

Molly Knight previews the upcoming World Baseball Classic, the first in six years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. She writes, “Maybe it’s because it’s been six years since the last WBC, or maybe it’s because this year’s rosters are absolutely loaded with superstars, but I am extremely excited for these games to start, more so than ever before. It’s simply no longer possible for me to get my baseball fix from interminable spring training games. Plus, the guys I most want to see in March won’t be toiling around Scottsdale or Fort Myers, anyway.” And, yeah, the Dominican Republic’s lineup will be pretty amazing to watch. (Molly Knight, The Long Game)

The Dominican Republic lineup for the WBC is 🔥🔥🔥

— Baseball Is Dead (@baseballisdead_) 11:51 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

GOP Wants To Cut Social Security and Medicare (Again)

In the late 1950s, the American Medical Association created Operation Coffee Cup to oppose Democratic plans to expand Social Security with a medical insurance program known today as Medicare. 

The AMA asked doctors’ wives to organize coffee meetings with their friends to get them to write letters to Congress opposing the Medicare program. In 1961, the AMA hired actor Ronald Reagan to record a speech outlining what could happen if those letters didn’t get in the mail. 

Reagan said, “If you don’t, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow; and behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day, as Norman Thomas said, we will awake to find that we have socialism.

And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Republican attacks against Social Security and Medicare are not new. The rhetoric they use in those attacks isn’t new. And the ongoing reaction to President Biden telling the nation that there are Republicans who want to cut these programs leads me to believe, as Queen Gertrude said to Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

So I am glad to see writers compiling what Republican leaders have said and proposed about Social Security and Medicare. We don’t have to look too far into the past, as Popular Information’s Judd Legum outlines:

“The largest caucus of House Republicans is the Republican Study Committee (RSC). There are 156 members of the RSC, which is more than 70% of the entire Republican delegation. The 2023 budget proposed by the RSC, called “The Blueprint to Save America,” calls for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall is also compiling quotes and policy proposals to demonstrate where Republicans stand on these issues. 

“Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Johnson denies President Biden’s claim that Republicans want to cut Social Security. But after saying this he then called Social Security a “legalized Ponzi scheme” and says that Congress should no longer automatically pay Social Security benefits each year but rather decide each year whether to pay them and how much the benefit should be. “That doesn’t mean putting on the chopping block,” Johnson told local radio. “That doesn’t mean cutting Social Security. But it does mean prioritizing lower priority spending.” 

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT): Mike Lee also denies President Biden’s claim that Republicans want to cut Social Security. But running for Senate in 2010 he told supporters: “It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.”

Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA): Steve Scalise also denies President Biden’s claims that Republicans want to cut Social Security: But just late last year Scalise support the proposed budget of the Republican Study Committee which, according to Politico, “rais[es] the eligibility ages for each program, along with withholding payments for individuals who retire early or had a certain income, and privatized funding for Social Security to lower income taxes.” After the State of the Union, Scalise said Biden’s claims have been “inaccurate for a long time,” by which he presumably means ten weeks. But even while insisting the President was lying he endorsed yet more cuts. “We want to strengthen Social Security by ending a lot of those government checks to people staying at home rather than going to work.”

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL): In his official agenda for 2022 Republican Senate candidate Scott proposed sunsetting (i.e., ending) every federal program, including Social Security and Medicare, after five years.“

As The New York Times’ Paul Krugman explains, we have seen this dynamic play out since Reagan became president in 1981. 

“And then there’s that historical record. Two things have been true ever since 1980. First, Republicans have tried to make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare every time they thought there might be a political window of opportunity. Second, on each occasion they’ve done exactly what they’re doing now: claiming that Democrats are engaged in smear tactics when they describe G.O.P. plans using exactly the same words Republicans themselves used.

So, about that history. It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a “Leninist” strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived.”

We also should be warned that Republicans are no longer relying solely on the legislative branch to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. Given their success in overturning Roe v. Wade, they are now turning to the courts. 

That is why Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern asks us—again—to look at what is happening in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He warns this time about the ramifications of an ongoing legal battle over the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism: 

“You might wonder: What does this skirmish over a small financial agency have to do with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual entitlement spending? The answer: everything. In her concurrence, Jones took pains to clarify that her reasoning was not limited to the CFPB. Jones announced that all “appropriations to the executive must be temporally bound.” If Congress does not put a “time limit” on funding, it gives the executive branch too much discretion over spending. Under the Constitution, she claimed, the executive must “come ‘cap in hand’ to the legislature at regular intervals” to ensure that it remains “dependent” and “accountable.” Judge Wilson approvingly cited this idea in his own opinion formally invalidating the CFPB, highlighting the “egregious” nature of the agency’s “perpetual funding feature.”

All told, seven judges on the 5th Circuit have now endorsed the notion that courts must strike down appropriations that allow “perpetual funding” of government agencies or programs. If their view becomes the law of the land, it will empower courts to abolish trillions of dollars in entitlement spending. Why? Because today two-thirds of annual federal spending is “mandatory”—including some of our nation’s most beloved social safety net programs. All of this spending amounted to $5.2 trillion in fiscal year 2021 that would suddenly be at risk of elimination by judicial fiat.

Does this principle derive from the Constitution? Of course not. The appropriations clause at question simply states that all money drawn from the treasury must be “in consequence of appropriations made by law.” There is no textual requirement that Congress reauthorize appropriations periodically. In fact, Article 1 of the Constitution suggests the exact opposite: It bars Congress from appropriating money to the Army “for a longer term than two years,” implying that other kinds of long-term appropriations are permissible. If they weren’t, then why would Army appropriations need an explicit time limit?“

Because, as we’ve learned, original intent doesn’t actually mean what the Framers intended. Conservative judges and justices have demonstrated that originalism is a philosophical scam used only when it can justify the result conservatives want today.

Republicans are hoping the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court conservative supermajority can accomplish harming Social Security and Medicare in ways that voters repeatedly have rejected. Their chances of success are much higher than I wish they were. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Teddy Roosevelt’s Valentine’s Day Tragedies

Historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us how the tragedies suffered by Theodore Roosevelt on February 14, 1884, would have a significant impact not just on him but our nation. Roosevelt would change his life’s trajectory and political philosophy in reaction to the deaths of his wife, Alice, and mother “Mittie” on that day.

“On February 14, 1884, Roosevelt slashed a heavy black X in his diary and wrote “The light has gone out of my life.” He refused ever to mention Alice again.

Roosevelt’s profound personal tragedy turned out to have national significance. The diseases that killed his wife and mother were diseases of filth and crowding—the hallmarks of the growing Gilded Age American cities. Mittie contracted typhoid from either food or water that had been contaminated by sewage, since New York City did not yet treat or manage either sewage or drinking water. Alice’s disease was probably caused by a strep infection, which incubated in the teeming city’s tenements, where immigrants, whose wages barely kept food on the table, crowded together.”

Seriously, it is hard to think of a more heartbreaking journal entry than this one.

 Fox News Hosts Don’t Believe Fox News

Dominion Filing Systems submitted a filing in its defamation case against Fox News that exposes what the channel’s hosts and executives actually think despite the lies they transmit during their shows.

As The Guardian’s Richard Luscombe explains, “Hosts at Fox News privately ridiculed Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen while simultaneously peddling the same lies on air, according to court filings in a defamation lawsuit against the network.

Rightwing personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are among those named in the $1.6bn action brought by Dominion Voting Systems, the seller of electronic voting hardware and software that is suing Fox News and parent company Fox Corporation for maligning its reputation.”

The filing makes for interesting reading. So I thought I’d share some of my favorite parts of the filing, where the Fox News people speak for themselves. 

Here we learn about the time Tucker Carlson wanted a producer fired for telling the truth.

I want to emphasize this section, which provides evidence of what Sidney Powell told Maria Bartiromo about the sketchy proof backing up a crucial part of the Trumpian lies about the 2020 election.

I will need to remember to try using that time-travel line the next time I want to contribute to a coup against the government of the United States. A serious news channel would not allow that kind of sourcing to be the basis of so much coverage. But we’ve known what Fox News is for some time. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The New York Times’ Horrific Bias Against Trans People

A group of over 1,000 people who have contributed to the New York Times have signed an open letter to the paper’s managing editor for standards to question the paper’s bias in its coverage of issues related to trans people. 

The Present Age’s Parker Malloy highlights a recent example of this bias in an article explaining why she signed the letter. 

“After the paper published a very rare pro-trans column from Jamelle Bouie titled, “The Relentless Attack on Trans People Is an Attack on All of Us,” the paper swapped out the headline with a much more generic, “There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America.” God forbid that the paper makes it clear in its headlines that trans people are being targeted by unjust and unprovoked attacks.

There’s no dignity in the kind of newspaper that can’t even say the word “trans” in a headline without immediately backtracking and changing it to something so vague that it tells you next to nothing about the subject being discussed.

After trying to work with the Times privately to improve its coverage of trans issues (the fact that medical associations have to keep telling the Times that they’re misrepresenting this topic should say a lot), GLAAD has also weighed in, working with more than 100 organizations to call out the Times and its skewed coverage.”

Malloy was the first person to note this headline change. She has deactivated her Twitter account in the wake of the awful abuse she’s received after pointing it out.  

The open letter contains many examples of the Times’ biased coverage and explains how people pushing anti-trans laws are weaponizing those misleading articles.

“The natural destination of poor editorial judgment is the court of law. Last year, Arkansas’ attorney general filed an amicus brief in defense of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which would make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment, for any medical provider to administer certain gender⁠-⁠affirming medical care to a minor (including puberty blockers) that diverges from their sex assigned at birth. The brief cited three different New York Times articles to justify its support of the law: Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones,” and Ross Douthat’s “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War.” As recently as February 8th, 2023, attorney David Begley’s invited testimony to the Nebraska state legislature in support of a similar bill approvingly cited the Times’ reporting and relied on its reputation as the “paper of record” to justify criminalizing gender⁠-⁠affirming care.”

I signed the letter as a New York Times reader, and I encourage everyone to sign on as a supporter. 

Quick Pitches

Margaret Atwood responds to the Madison County, Virginia, school board’s decision to ban her book, The Handmaid’s Tale. “The truth is that the inspiration for The Handmaid’s Tale is in part biblical: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). The novel sets an inward faith and core Christian values—which I take to be embodied in the love of neighbor and the forgiveness of sins—against totalitarian control and power-hoarding cloaked in a supposed religiousness that is mostly based on the earlier scriptures in the Bible. The stealing of women for reproductive purposes and the appropriation of their babies appears in Genesis 30, when Rachel and Leah turn their “handmaids” over to Jacob and then claim the children as their own. My novel is also an exploration of the theoretical question “What kind of a totalitarianism might the United States become?” I suggest we’re beginning to see the real-life answer to that query.” (Margaret Atwood, The Atlantic)

The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion ten years ago demonstrated why we need to improve our planetary defense abilities with better methods of detecting and tracking near-Earth asteroids. (Brett Tingley, Space.com)

“Under the shadow of the Cold War, many in the world feared the impending prospect of a nuclear winter. According to a new report, our focus has since drifted from its horrors, leaving us with a general lack of awareness that could be dangerous for the future of humankind.” (David Nield, Science Alert)

All I can do is sigh at this one.

three suited men in my coffeeshop. one of them just said, “my personal idea of progress is moving things forward,” which is actually just the definition. everyone’s nodding. guys like this are in charge of every industry and it’s clearly why trains explode

— stillorangecrushed (@stilloranged) 2:37 PM ∙ Feb 15, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

Preply created a world map and explainer about how people around the country express their love—including on dates other than February 14. 

“At Preply, we’ve explored how to say “I love you” in over 60 languages from around the world. So whether you’re planning a trip abroad or just want to surprise a loved one with a special message, you’ll never struggle to express your feelings again.

Valentine’s Day is a popular time of year for expressing love. However, it’s not just the language that can vary from country to country. Valentine’s day customs, traditions and even the date can vary around the world.”

IRS Says You Can File

In the February 9, 2023, edition of this newsletter, I noted that the IRS was advising people in California and 21 other states to wait to file their taxes. The delay was necessary because the agency still needed to decide whether to consider as taxable income the stimulus checks and rebates these states sent out last year. 

The IRS has now given us its final answer. The payments are not taxable income. You may proceed with your filing.

The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage reports, “Friday’s announcement means taxpayers in more than 20 states can now file their taxes. Residents of Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island will not have any taxes collected against state payments or tax refunds and do not need to report them on their returns, the agency said.

The IRS said the payments made by those states were “for the promotion of the general welfare or as a disaster relief payment,” and therefore are not federally taxable.”

To be clear, I am not offering tax filing advice in this newsletter. Please read the IRS guidance if you want to learn more. 

As part of this announcement, the IRS also shared that thanks to the infusion of resources it received after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the agency is actually able to help the vast majority of taxpayers who contact it seeking advice. 

Bobage writes: “According to a Treasury Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal data, the agency has answered 88.6 percent of its phone calls from the start of tax filing season through Feb. 4, up from the 13 percent of calls answered during the 2022 tax season and 11 percent the year before.

Factoring in callers who reached automated phone and chat support, 93.3 percent of taxpayers were able to reach IRS resources since the start of tax filing season through Feb. 4. Those automated tools are a major advancement for the outdated taxpayer services systems, allowing filers to obtain basic data without phoning IRS call centers.

The Inflation Reduction Act backed by President Biden and other prominent Democrats provided the IRS $80 billion in additional funding over 10 years to improve services and strengthen tax enforcement for high-income earners and corporations.

The tax agency invested in new technology and hired 5,000 workers to staff phones based on funding from that law, the official said.”

Providing a government agency with appropriate resources helps people get the services and support they need. I hope we can repeat this lesson. 

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Learning About White Christian Nationalism

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Brookings Institution released the results of a survey that explains a bunch about our nation’s political dynamics. Here are some of the survey’s key findings from the PPRI/Brookings press release:

“A major new national survey conducted jointly by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Brookings Institution finds nearly two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants qualify as either Christian nationalism adherents (29%) or sympathizers (35%), and more than half of Republicans are classified as adherents (21%) or sympathizers (33%). This is a marked contrast from the 1 in 10 Americans as a whole who adhere to the tenets of Christian nationalism and the 19% who are sympathetic.

The report sheds light on the threat Christian nationalism poses to American democracy, reveals the drivers of support for this worldview, and explores how these beliefs intersect with other ideologies such as anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant views, antisemitism, anti-Muslim attitudes, and patriarchal gender roles.

“Christian nationalism is a new term for a worldview that has been with us since the founding of our country — the idea that America is destined to be a promised land for European Christians,” says Robert P. Jones, Ph.D., president and founder of PRRI. “While most Americans today embrace pluralism and reject this anti-democratic claim, majorities of white evangelical Protestants and Republicans remain animated by this vision of a white Christian America.”

The report’s findings about the connections between Christian nationalism and other political ideologies show a strong correlation with the culture war battles stoked by former President Donald Trump and other Republicans who would like to take his spot as the leader of the GOP. 

“Anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant views, antisemitic views, anti-Muslim views, and patriarchal views of gender roles are each positively associated with Christian nationalism.

• A majority of Christian nationalism adherents (57%) disagree that white supremacy is a major problem in the United States today, and 7 out of 10 reject the idea that past discrimination contributes to present-day hurdles for Black Americans.
• Seven in 10 (71%) Christian nationalism adherents embrace so-called “replacement theory,” the idea that immigrants are “invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”
• Nearly a quarter of Christian nationalism adherents (23%) believe the stereotype that Jewish people in America hold too many positions of power, compared to just 9% of Christian nationalism rejecters. Christian nationalism adherents are more than three times as likely as rejecters to believe Jewish people are more loyal to Israel than America (44% vs. 13% respectively).
• Two-thirds (67%) of Christian nationalism adherents say we should prevent people from some majority Muslim countries from entering the United States, compared to only 29% of all Americans.
• Nearly 7 in 10 Christian nationalism adherents (69%) agree that the husband is the head of the household in “a truly Christian family,” and his wife submits to his leadership, compared to only 33% of all Americans.”

White protestant evangelicals were crucial for Trump’s successes in winning the 2016 Republican primary and the White House. Trump won nearly 80 percent of the white evangelical vote in the 2020 election. This PPRI survey shows that support holding strong. “Support for Donald Trump is also highly correlated with support for Christian nationalism. Less than a third of Americans hold a favorable view of the former president, yet more than 7 in 10 (71%) Christian nationalism adherents view him favorably.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are among those trying to make inroads with this key group of voters. But I don’t see any indication yet that white evangelicals are willing to leave Trump as we enter the 2024 primary campaign. That’s one of the reasons I see Trump as the favorite to win the Republican nomination in 2024—if he is eligible to run. 

At least some Democrats are paying attention. The Democratic National Committee last week adopted a resolution condemning white religious nationalism. I’m concerned, though, about the amount of digging I had to do to find the text of the resolution. White Christian nationalism and its determination to make our nation a theocracy is a serious problem. Hiding from it won’t make it go away. 

Abortion, Every Day

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. 

Today she highlights the position Tennessee Right to Life has taken about a legislative effort to carve out a medical exception to that state’s forced-birth law. Valenti writes: “The state’s most powerful anti-abortion group doesn’t want hemorrhaging women to be able to get life-saving abortions. They don’t think a woman bleeding out constitutes an ‘objective’ need for care. I wonder, how much blood does a woman need to lose for Tennessee Right to Life to believe her doctor can help her? Are they going to put a number on it?”

Valenti also featured this great column by the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri: “In another thrilling development in this best of all possible worlds, a ruling from a single Trump-appointed judge in Texas might undo the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of one of the two key drugs used in medication-based abortions and render it inaccessible nationwide. I hear you asking a question: Can a judge just do that? Just un-approve a drug? One that’s been tested and found extraordinarily safe over two whole decades?

Yes! This is a real possibility, because our legal system is working just the way it ought to work! In an ideal society, your rights and ability to access medicine and direct the course of your own life are guaranteed and unalterable — unless a Trump-appointed judge named Matt decides to say, “Nah.”

Popular Information’s Judd Legum provides a great explainer about what that judge named Matt seems likely to do in the abortion medication case on his docket. Legum also discusses how corporations are funding the efforts seeking a nationwide mifepristone ban while claiming to support their female employees.  

“The brief filed by Fitch was signed by 21 other state attorneys general. All 21 are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a key group devoted to electing Republican Attorneys General and keeping them in office. 

RAGA, in turn, collects millions to support its efforts from major corporations. Among the major corporate supporters are several who have positioned themselves as champions of reproductive rights, pledging to pay for their employees’ abortion-related travel after Roe was overturned. That group includes Comcast (316K), AT&T (125K), T-Mobile (100K), Uber (50K), Mastercard (25K), and Bank of America (25K).”

Woman Convicted Based on Junk Science Has Appeal Rejected

Tasha Shelby has spent more than 20 years in prison after being convicted of murdering her stepson in a “shaken baby syndrome” case. 

Scientists and lawyers have exposed shaken baby syndrome as junk science in recent years. But Shelby’s case reveals how difficult it is for potentially innocent people to see justice even as the evidence used to convict them is discredited.  

Atlanta News First’s Andy Pierrotti reports:” Last year, [Shelby’s attorney Valena] Beety filed a petition for Tasha’s release after discovering the medical examiner – who first ruled the child’s death a homicide – changed the death certified to an accident 18 years later.

“I made a mistake on my conclusions and that given the information I have now, that the child died from hypoxic encephalopathy with herniation due to a seizure disorder,” said Dr. Leroy Riddick, the former Mississippi state medical examiner who testified at Shelby’s trial.

Robert Myers, a U.S. magistrate judge for the Southern District of Mississippi, denied Shelby’s request for release because it was not appealed in the year after her conviction, as typically required. “

That’s an unreasonable requirement. The death certificate no longer indicates a homicide, but a person is in prison for murder? There should be no time limit for addressing these situations. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Quick Pitches

Media outlets may not cover the issue much these days, but the formula shortage continues with no end in sight. (Chabeli Carrazana, The 19th News)

Maggie Smith shares a glimpse into how she creates her poems in a post that examines the word choices she made while writing Poem Beginning with a Retweet. “The key is reading your work aloud as you write and revise. You can’t see the rhythm in a line or sentence, you have to hear it. You can’t always see where the music is happening—assonance, consonance, alliteration, rhyme—but your ear will know. Trust your ear.” (My Dear Life with Maggie Smith)

Joe Posnanski completed his countdown of the top 100 players in National Football League history. He puts Jerry Rice at the top of his list because the gap between him and the second-best wide receiver is much broader than such gaps at any other position. I was startled by the distance between Rice and second place in every career statistic: 5,403 more career yards than Larry Fitzgerald, 43 more career receiving touchdowns than Randy Moss, and 228 more first downs generated than Tony Gonzalez. “In addition, Rice had 117 more catches than anyone else, made first-team All-Pro more than anyone else, caught more playoff passes (151) for more playoff yards (2,245) than anyone else, and caught more Super Bowl passes (33) for more Super Bowl yards (589) than anyone else.” I’ve changed my mind. (Joe Posnanski, Joe Blogs Football 101)

Derek Thompson explores how we can use Super Bowl ads as an indicator of the state of our economy. “Advertising might be the art of fibbing responsibly, but marketing budgets can’t help but be honest: You either spend $7 million on a 30-second spot or you don’t. That’s why the biggest day in American sports, which is also the biggest day in American ads, is a useful measure of which firms and sectors believe themselves to be the future of the economy—and why it’s an excellent barometer for bubbles.” After all, as Next Draft’s Dave Pell observed, “The most telling cultural shift was that last year, Matt Damon was pushing crypto and this year, Ben Affleck was pushing donuts.“ (Derek Thompson, The Atlantic)

Texas State Board of Education members are pushing back against an effort to refer to slavery as “involuntary relocation” in the second-grade curriculum. (Brian Lopez, Texas Tribune)

Major League Baseball will see fewer instances of position players pitching after the adoption of new rules. I occasionally enjoy seeing a position player on the mound, but the practice has gotten out of hand. (Evan Altman, Cubs Insider)

Marc Maron’s new HBO comedy special, From Bleak to Dark, is outstanding. I had high hopes for this performance after listening to Maron talk on his WTF podcast about how he was putting this hour of comedy together while turning the country over the past year. As Esquire’s Abigail Covington writes, “Filmed two-ish years after the sudden death of Maron’s girlfriend, the writer and director Lynn Shelton, From Bleak to Dark shows just how transforming tragedy can be. This isn’t the same world-weary Marc Maron audiences know and love. Don’t get me wrong: he’s still a cynical curmudgeon. After all, the first thing he says after strutting onstage and thanking the audience for coming is, “I don’t want to be negative, but I don’t think anything is ever going to get better ever again.” But he’s more than that, too. He’s both lighter and darker, kinder and yet more caustic, and his jokes are more heartfelt and daring. This is a special about mortality delivered by a man forced to confront it.”

People underestimate just how fantastic Ichiro Suzuki was after coming to the United States from Japan.

MLB hits by a member of the 3000 hit club thru age 26. Scroll all the way down to number 30. No words for how good Ichiro was

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) 1:42 AM ∙ Feb 14, 2023

Now it’s just 11 days.

Beautiful views from Sloan Park today!

12 days until Spring Training baseball returns. 🌵 ⚾️ sloanpark.com

— Sloan Park Mesa (@SloanParkMesa) 12:53 AM ∙ Feb 14, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:

Yes, Republicans Want to Cut Social Security and Medicare

Republicans acted out during the State of the Union address when President Biden correctly pointed out that leading GOP elected officials have recently called for cutting Social Security and Medicare. 

In the February 8, 2023, edition of this newsletter, I discussed how President Biden masterfully used the opportunity presented by the angry Republican reaction to extract a public promise not to touch these programs during upcoming national debt limit negotiations. 

I suspect Republicans will backtrack on this promise as that deadline nears. So I think we must be aware of what Republicans have said—and what they haven’t retracted—even after people point out how unpopular these ideas are.  

Slate’s Jim Newell explains just what Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), the leader of the GOP Senate’s campaign last year, proposed in his 11 Point Plan to Save America (click here to see the pdf): 

“The prepared line in Biden’s speech, before he was interrupted, was this: “Some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.” The “some Republicans,” in this case, is one Rick Scott.

In his 11-point plan, sub-point 7 of point 6 reads: “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” The plan doesn’t single out Medicare and Social Security specifically, but these are programs that were established by federal legislation and would thus disappear under Scott’s proposal unless renewed every five years. This is an … impracticable idea. Congress can’t rewrite all federal law every five years—nor should anyone want them to.”

Scott has had more than a year to clarify what he means, and Newell notes that Scott has done that with another proposal that would have raised taxes on the poorest half of Americans. So why won’t Scott stipulate that he’s not talking about Social Security and Medicare?

But it isn’t just Scott. Other Republicans continue to call for cutting or privatizing these programs. Heather Cox Richardson outlines some examples:

“The history of Republican calls for cuts to Social Security runs long and deep, but just reaching back to 2020: Trump vowed to make cuts in his second term; former vice president Mike Pence last week called for “modest reforms in entitlements,” including privatization; Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson has called for moving the programs to annual funding so they would have to be renewed every year; and the Republican Study Committee, which includes more than 150 Republican House members, has called this year for raising the age of eligibility from 66 or 67 to 70 for Social Security and from 65 to 67 for Medicare.”

Many Republicans want to dismantle these programs. They also know the idea is unpopular, and Democrats win elections by pointing out what they want to do. 

The GOP could stop trying to do something the American people have repeatedly rejected. And people like me get to point out what they are proposing until they stop.

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

When Did Snitching Become Pro-Family?

Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti points out how forced-birth politicians want to turn family members against each other to enforce their bans against reproductive health care. 

“Whenever I write about the latest anti-choice bill and how it targets women—whether it’s legislation that classifies helping a teenager get an out-of-state abortion as ‘human trafficking’, or an abortion ban that would prosecute women who ‘cause’ their miscarriages—one question comes up again and again: How would law enforcement possibly know?

How could the cops find out that you drove your niece out-of-state for abortion care? It’s not like they’ll be checking at the border. How would prosecutors come to the conclusion that you’re at fault for your pregnancy ending? Or that you illegally used abortion medication? There’s only so much surveillance they can do! 

The answer is snitch culture. Conservative lawmakers, zealous prosecutors and cops don’t plan on looking for people who break abortion laws—because they’re counting on Americans turning each other in.”

Valenti provides several examples showing how this dynamic is already working, as family members and friends contact the police seeking punishment. 

The Stasi would be impressed. But is that what we want for our society? 

As Valenti writes: “That’s what makes this all so cruel: The people who claim to stand for ‘family values’ are depending entirely on our willingness to turn on each other. They’re incentivizing the breakdown of family and community trust, and codifying betrayal. It’s a way to make us feel disconnected from each other, and to make women feel as if they aren’t safe anywhere or with anyone. It’s downright terroristic.”

Why Putin Hasn’t Gone Nuclear

Joe Cirincione, the former president of the Ploughshares Fund, outlines why he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin has not gone nuclear in Ukraine despite making some explicit threats. 

Cirincione writes about several dynamics that are preventing this potential catastrophe. Russia is losing the war slowly, so there has yet to be a clear excuse to use them. President Biden has been skillful in sending Ukraine military supplies without providing an excuse for Putin to escalate. Putin’s allies in China and India also have drawn red lines about nuclear weapons. 

And we also have to consider Putin’s instinct for self-preservation. As Cirincione explains: 

“There are dozens of scenarios for using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but none of them end in a Russian victory. All would trigger a massive Western and global response. Whatever nuclear fantasies hardline Russian pundits unspool on Russia’s state television, it has become clearer that the consequences of nuclear use far outweigh any potential benefits.

“Russia is a country that you can expect a lot from but not outright idiocy,” says Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, “Carrying out a nuclear strike will result in not just a military defeat for Russia but the collapse of Russia. And they know this very well.”

This is why Putin has more to lose than he has to gain. He can suffer a conventional military defeat in Ukraine and still maintain his power in Russia. As Michael McFaul—a former ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration—has detailed, after retreating from Ukraine, Putin would be weaker but “the most likely scenario is Putin will remain in control… albeit discredited and diminished.” If he used nuclear weapons, he would almost certainly lose not just Ukraine, but Russia and quite likely, his life.”

The Restoration of Child Labor

There has been a marked increase in child labor law violations in the United States recently. I agree we need to address this problem. But I find it odd Republican legislators across the nation are instead seeking to weaken child labor laws and shield businesses from liability. 

The Guardian’s Michael Sainato explains: “Several high-profile investigations involving child labor have been exposed over the past year, including the use of child labor in Hyundai and Kia supply chains in Alabama, at JBS meatpacking plants in Nebraska and Minnesota, and at fast-food chains including McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts and Chipotle.

Amid these increases in child labor violations, legislative efforts have been introduced in several states to roll back child labor protections.

In Iowa, Republican legislators introduced a bill in January to expand the types of work 14- and 15-year-olds would be permitted to do as part of approved training programs, extend allowable work hours, and exempt employers from liability if these young workers are sickened, injured or killed on the job.

“It’s just crazy to me that we are re-litigating a lot of things that seem to have been settled 100, 120 or 140 years ago,” said Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO, which is opposing the bill.”

I don’t think it is surprising that we see so many efforts to overturn laws enacted over the past 100 years. We see this not just with child labor. Many people would love to return to the political and family power dynamics that the United States featured before 1920 (the 19th Amendment granting the franchise to women) or 1954 (the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision ending segregation). 

They keep telling us this is what they want. We should stop being surprised by it. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Quick Pitches

Charlie Pierce has questions about the indictment of former FBI agent Charles McGonigal that I also would like to see answered. “It is possible that McGonigal just might be the Rosetta Stone that could unlock a lot of recent history, including, hypothetically, how Donald Trump managed to become president of the United States. After all, it was the New York field office that may have blackjacked then-FBI Director James Comey into reviving the investigation into Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, which came to light on October 28, 2016. McGonigal was also involved in the bureau’s investigation into links between the Russian kleptocracy and the Trump campaign. (As the New York Times notes, “the earliest crimes of which Mr. McGonigal is accused date to August 2017,” and he has pleaded not guilty.)” (Charles P. Pierce, Esquire)

Since the Philadelphia Eagles lost to Kansas City in yesterday’s Super Bowl, the Athletics baseball franchise remains the team with the most championships in Philadelphia’s history. The A’s won five World Series before leaving Philadelphia for Kansas City in 1955 (and they’ve won four titles since moving to Oakland in 1968). (Tyler Kepner, The New York Times)

That people may see this as a negative provides another example demonstrating why we should emphasize regular season achievements and not the results of postseason tournaments. 

November 5: Union lose in MLS Cup
November 5: Phillies lose in World Series
Tonight: Eagles lose in Super Bowl

Philadelphia is the first metro area to lose 3 championships in MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL or NHL in a span of 100 days or less.

— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) 4:13 AM ∙ Feb 13, 2023

Here’s why entertainers are willing to perform during the Super Bowl halftime show even though they don’t get paid by the NFL. (Joseph Pompliano, Huddle Up)

How a shipping error a century ago launched the factory-farm chicken industry. (Kenny Torrella, Vox)

The Planetary Society highlights eight moons in the solar system that “stand out for their scientific interest and exploratory promise.” (Kate Howells, The Planetary Society)

Like many of us, Sam Enright spends a lot of time browsing Wikipedia. (I know how easy it is to go down a spiral of links about esoteric subjects.) Enright shares a list of his favorite articles and facts in this post. (The Cabinet of Wikipedian Curiosities, Sam Enright)

“Unlike insomnia, bedtime procrastination happens when you choose to stay awake even though you know you may suffer the next day.” At least now I know what to call it. (Alex Janin, The Wall Street Journal)

In 2022, supplier revenues for spirits (42.1 percent) exceeded beer (41.9 percent) in the U.S. alcoholic beverage market for the first time. (Bruce Schreiner and Jim Salter, The Associated Press) 

One of these things is not like the others.

Elevation (above sea level) of the 30 MLB fields, mostly to scale

— Jay Cuda (@JayCuda) 3:57 AM ∙ Jan 19, 2023

That was not my first thought, but yes, I can see it. 

The inside of a cello looks like a place where something whimsically unspeakable happened in a Guillermo del Toro movie

— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) 3:09 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

IRS Advises People in 22 States to Wait to File their Taxes

If you live in California or 21 other states that provided a stimulus payment or refund last year, you now have an excuse to delay working on your taxes. The Washington Post’s Jacob Bogage explains why:

“The Internal Revenue Service is telling taxpayers — including more than 16 million in California — to hold off filing their taxes until the agency can issue guidance on state-issued inflation payments.

Dozens of states distributed stimulus-like payments or tax rebates in 2022 to counter inflation, which reached a 40-year high in 2022. The IRS on Tuesday said it needed more time to determine which of those payments are federally taxable and told taxpayers not to submit returns until it finalizes those rules.”

It looks like it will come down to how the state laws enacting the stimulus payments categorized them. 

“The tax status of those payments will vary by state, and depends on the program’s stated purpose, tax professionals say.

If the payments were for pandemic relief, for example, they should be exempt from federal tax because they fall under disaster relief. If they were for inflation or other economic relief, they’re probably taxable.”

The word “probably” appears to be doing a lot of work in that sentence. It wasn’t a secret that these payments were going out, so I hope we can have a serious conversation about why there was a delay. 

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Climate Emergency Disappointments

The New York Times’ David Wallace-Wells interviews climate activist Greta Thunberg about her work. They discuss why we should not be satisfied only with better rhetoric about the issue from our elected officials when action is required. She also explains why it may have been a mistake to frame the need for action around our shared global fate rather than how the impact of the climate emergency will disproportionately impact some groups. 

Wallace-Wells introduces their conversation: “There is genuinely no precedent in the modern history of geopolitics for the climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Four and a half years ago, she began “striking” outside of Swedish parliament — a single teenager with a single sign. She was 15. In just a few months, she had made her mark at the United Nations climate conference in Poland: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is,” she told the assembled diplomats and negotiators, “even that burden you leave to us children.”

By the time she spoke at Davos that January, excoriating the world — “I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is” — she had become the face of the global climate movement, giving it an entirely new generational life and scale. She led weekly marches across the globe that drew millions of people through 2019 and helped force the world’s most powerful people to at least pay lip service to what they now called a climate crisis.

I first met Thunberg in the middle of that maelstrom, when she came to New York in 2019 by boat to help stage two large climate strikes as bookends to the U.N.’s climate week. A lot has changed since then, and then again, a whole lot hasn’t. Thunberg is 20 now. Countries accounting for almost 90 percent of the world’s emissions and G.D.P. have made net-zero pledges. Renewable energy is skyrocketing, though fossil fuel use has only plateaued — perhaps even peaked — but it is a long way down from 40 gigatons (50 if you include methane) to zero. Current policies still point to a global average temperature rise above three degrees Celsius this century, more than double the more ambitious goals enshrined by the Paris agreement in 2015. And now Thunberg has published her third book, called “The Climate Book,” a curated tour of the state of the emergency and how to think about it from more than 100 contributors. (I wrote an essay for it drawing lessons from the experience of the pandemic.)”

The fact that the five largest oil companies could publicize more than $200 billion in profits last year while facing some harsh words but no real consequences—like a windfall profits tax—indicates how much work we still have to do. 

Abortion, Every Day

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. 

She highlights how a new bill in Idaho represents one of the ways Republican legislators will try to restrict the travel of women and people who can become pregnant without instituting a travel ban. The situation will just get more and more difficult. 

“And in Idaho, Republicans are pushing new legislation that would classify anyone who takes a minor across state lines for an abortion as a ‘human trafficker’. That means that if a beloved aunt or grandmother took a teenager for care, they could be punished with five years in prison. There is no language in the bill about teenagers who are being abused at home, perhaps by their legal guardian; nor is there language specifying if only one parent’s consent is necessary to bring a minor out-of-state for an abortion, or if both parents must be notified and give permission. I’ve said this before, but this is exactly how we’re going to see women start to be limited from leaving the state for care—it will be a slow chipping away process. First they’ll make rules about minors and parental consent, next they’ll pass a rule saying that minors can’t leave even with parental consent. Mark my words—it’s coming.”

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An Analysis of the California Budget Situation

The California Budget and Policy Center has released a Q&A explaining the state budget situation. The report explains why there is a projected deficit and what it means for activists and policymakers as legislators consider eliminating the projected deficit through cuts in spending, increases in revenues, and using the state’s reserve funds. 

“This Q&A explains why California faces a budget problem, highlights the challenges with estimating revenues this year, outlines state leaders’ options for addressing the budget gap — including using reserves — and describes how advocates can advance their policy priorities and lay the groundwork for building a more equitable California even in a tough budget year.”

The Q&A makes some suggestions to advocates about how they can be most influential in the budget process. 

 “Advocating for policies and the funding to support them is clearly more challenging when the state faces a budget shortfall, like it does this year. In particular, proposals that call for new spending will face greater scrutiny — and higher hurdles — compared to years when state revenues are stronger.

One option for advocates in a tough budget year is to focus on protecting recent policy gains and funding commitments. These include investments in child care, housing, health care, assistance for older adults and people with disabilities, and many other critical services — any of which could be at risk if the budget gap grows. State leaders also have prioritized several policies for implementation in 2024-25 — if revenues are sufficient to support them. These policies include boosting CalWORKs grants and cutting red tape in the Medi-Cal program so that young kids can be continuously enrolled in health coverage. These pending policies could be threatened if revenues further weaken over the coming months.

Furthermore, advocates can continue to make the case for new state investments to help Californians be healthy and thrive. Advocates should educate state leaders about Californians’ ongoing needs, highlight policy solutions, and seek allies to help advance their proposals — using both the policy bill process and the budget process. These actions can lay the groundwork for policy wins and expanded funding when revenues rebound. 

Faster progress also is possible. For example, state leaders may be open to adopting an ambitious policy change, but may also delay implementation until funding is provided in a future budget. This approach keeps the issue on the state’s “front burner” and puts advocates in a good position to argue for the needed resources in a future state budget cycle.”

176 Books Banned in Duval County, Florida

PEN America shares a list of the 176 books removed from Duval County, Florida classrooms. 

“The removed titles were part of the Essential Voices Classroom Libraries Collection, purchased by the district in 2021. This collection “features characters representing a variety of ethnicities, religious affiliations, and gender identities,” and includes children’s picture books such asSulwe by Lupita Nyong’o, Dim Sum for Everyone! by Grace Lin, and Berenstain Bears and the Big Question by Stan and Jan Berenstain.”

Cup of Coffee’s Craig Calcaterra noted that Duval County schools also removed books about baseball legends Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente. He is correct to be unhappy with this result.

“So it makes total sense that Duval County, Florida has banned two children’s books about Aaron and Clemente: Henry Aaron’s Dream by Matt Tavares and Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter. Why? The author of the Aaron book could only speculate that it was because the book acknowledges that racism exists. Here’s the same author, speculating about the Clemente book: 

“There’s a tiny bit about racism, but it’s mostly about how much everyone in Pittsburgh adored Clemente. So maybe they just don’t like inspiring stories about people who aren’t white? The whole thing is moronic.” 

The “tiny bit about racism” is all that matters, I suspect, because what’s going on in Florida is pure, Orwellian reality-creation. It’s part of a Republican campaign to stoke delusions of persecution among white people and to erase America’s history of white supremacy from the public record. They clearly believe that the best way to do that is to ban Black history of any kind. I mean, they even banned a children book about Rosa Parks.

Does a book about Henry Aaron harm anyone? Of course not. But you can’t lie about American history or justify the ratcheting-back or repeal of measures aimed at combatting racism if you acknowledge that racism is an actual thing, so his story, Clemente’s story, Rosa Parks’ story, and the story of the Black experience in general must be scrubbed from the record. It’s evil. It’s odious. It’s racist. It’s fascist. It’s par for the course for Florida and, increasingly, anyplace else where Republicans are in charge.”

Calcaterra also notes that Major League Baseball has two franchises in Florida, nearly half of its teams are about to start spring training there, and the state is hosting key games in the World Baseball Classic. Shouldn’t MLB use its platform to protect the legacy of such key players? 

Nah, Commissioner Rob Manfred rarely misses an opportunity to avoid taking a stand on a fundamental issue if it might cost him and the owners a few dollars. He has his priorities.

Will International Soccer Sell Out (Again)

Before he gets to the preview of this weekend’s English Premiere League fixtures, Men in Blazers Roger Bennett describes how we have reached a significant pivot point for the history of soccer in England, Europe, and internationally.

“We will break it all down below, but on a more serious note, I feel like I need to begin by saying this, after a week of stunning news across the sport we love: This feels like a true Rubicon moment for football. A crossroads. The major off-the-field storylines are a moral crescendo. Manchester City is being investigated for over 100 violations of its economic regulations – an unprecedented charge by a league against its most successful club. At the very same time, just across town, the Qatari head of State, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, is descending upon Manchester United. Simultaneously, news has broken that Saudi Arabia is offering to underwrite Egypt and Greece’s World Cup hosting costs so it can buy its way into hosting the 2030 World Cup, all the while FIFA are floating the idea of Saudi Arabia’s tourist board sponsoring the Women’s World Cup. The throughline of all of these stories is the same: The attempt by nation states to buy global football and repurpose it as a deafening megaphone through which to airbrush out human rights abuses that pockmark their global images.”

It is a dire picture. The fact that I am rooting for a petrochemical company billionaire—even though I think every billionaire signals a policy failure by the government—to purchase Manchester United just because he happens to be a lifelong fan of the team indicates how fraught the situation has become.

Putin Connected to Shootdown of Flight MH17

Even before Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine last year, there were many indications that his activities there had deadly consequences. 

The Associated Press’ Mike Corder explains how an international group of investigators has connected Putin to the 2014 missile shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed all 298 people on the plane. 

“An international team of investigators said Wednesday it found “strong indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of heavy anti-aircraft weapons to Ukrainian separatists who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 with a Russian missile.

However, members of the Joint Investigation Team said they had insufficient evidence to prosecute Putin or any other suspects and they suspended their 8½-year inquiry into the shooting down that killed all 298 people on board the Boeing 777 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Russia has always denied any involvement in the downing of the flight over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and refused to cooperate with the investigation.

Dutch prosecutors said that “there are strong indications that the Russian president decided on supplying” a Buk missile system — the weapon that downed MH17 — to Ukrainian separatists.”

Quick Pitches

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares a thoughtful essay describing his feelings after seeing LeBron James break his NBA career scoring record. “I begin everything I write with a lot of apprehension because I know how hard it is to translate complex thoughts and intense emotions into the exact words that accurately express those thoughts and emotions. But this article I approach with even more trepidation because I really want to get this right. It’s important to me, to basketball fans, and to the legacy of a great player (not me).” (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Substack)

“On the 436th anniversary of her execution, a team of international codebreakers has uncovered some of the secret, coded letters written by Mary Stuart (aka Mary, Queen of Scots) while she was imprisoned in England.” (Laura Baias, Popular Science)

“The two broadcasters, purportedly anchors for a news outlet called Wolf News, are not real people. They are computer-generated avatars created by artificial intelligence software. And late last year, videos of them were distributed by pro-China bot accounts on Facebook and Twitter, in the first known instance of “deepfake” video technology being used to create fictitious people as part of a state-aligned information campaign.” (Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, The New York Times)

Here are lists of the movies featuring the most profanities and the actors who have sworn the most. The Wolf of Wall Street and Jonah Hill are our current leaders in the clubhouse. (Buzz Bingo)

Why one of this century’s most critical job skills may prove to be the ability to write prompts to engage artificial intelligence programs. (Charlie Warzel, The Atlantic)

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Thank you for reading Things I Find Interesting. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

The State of the Union Is Self-Owned

Optics matter in politics. And I don’t think Republicans will like how people outside of their hardcore base react to what happened last night during President Biden’s State of the Union address. 

As someone who watches the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister’s Questions, I love it when speakers can take a heckling crowd and turn it into an opportunity to gain an advantage. So the moment of the night for me happened when Biden drew the Republicans into a trap about what Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has proposed (click here to see the pdf) around five-year sunsets of all federal legislation, which would include Social Security and Medicare. 

Heather Cox Richardson describes what happened: “Biden asked Congress to “commit here tonight that the full faith and credit of the United States of America will never, ever be questioned.” This, of course, is an issue that has bitterly divided Republicans, many of whom want to hold the country hostage until they get what they want. But they can’t agree on what they want, so they are now trying to insist that Biden is refusing to negotiate the budget when, in fact, he has simply said he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling. Budget negotiations are a normal part of legislating, and he has said he welcomes such talks. Tonight, once again, he asked the Republicans to tell the American people what, exactly, they propose.

And then Biden did something astonishing. He tricked the Republicans into a public declaration of support for protecting Social Security and Medicare. He noted that a number of Republicans have called for cutting, or even getting rid of, Social Security and Medicare. This is simply a fact—it is in Senator Rick Scott’s (R-FL) pre-election plan; the Republican Study Committee’s budget; statements by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Ron Johnson (R-WI); and so on—but Republicans booed Biden and called him a liar for suggesting they would make those cuts, and they did so in public. 

Seeming to enjoy himself, Biden jumped on their assertion, forcing them to agree that there would be no cuts to Social Security or Medicare. It was budget negotiation in real time, and it left Biden holding all the cards.”

I also want to note the mental acuity and courage it took for Biden to engage with the hecklers here. Anyone who has been interrupted during a speech or presentation should understand just how challenging those moments are. Biden may decide not to run for another term, but this demonstrates his current ability to do the job. 

I will be watching for voters’ reactions to all of the times Republicans—and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—failed to applaud popular policies. Aaron Rupar at Public Notice does an outstanding job of clipping political events, so you can see all of the examples he describes below: 

“Here’s just a partial list of Biden accomplishments and priorities that McCarthy conspicuously refused to applaud (if you want to see the receipts, scroll through my thread): Two years of historic job creation, economic fairness, low unemployment, affordable insulin, investments in climate sustainability, billionaires not paying a lower tax rate than teachers or firefighters, a tax hike on stock buybacks, the wealthy paying their fair share in taxes, family leave, the child tax credit, expanding access to preschool, teacher raises, immigration reform, protecting reproductive rights, and shooting down the Chinese spy balloon.”

The Editorial Board’s John Stoehr also encourages us to note how Biden is working to reframe the contours of the political debate in this country: 

“Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last night reflected, in terms of policy and politics, a reversal of the last 40 years, a period beginning with Ronald Reagan and ending with Donald Trump. With a single speech, he swapped hot-rocks fascism for stone-cold liberalism.

That reversal will take time to finish, as the last reversal took time. America’s transition from demand-side economics to supply-side economics dragged on over several presidencies, only coming to completion with Bill Clinton. But make no mistake: that reversal, rooted in chaos and crisis, is well underway.”

Even if Biden can’t accomplish all of the policy goals I would like, his would be a historic presidency if he can achieve what Stoehr describes. 

Clearing My Tabs by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Biden Misses on Reproductive Rights

That said, I agree with Jessica Valenti that President Biden inexcusably failed to make more of an emphasis about how more than half the population lost a fundamental right last year when the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. This issue isn’t a box to check—so it demanded more than 30 seconds of focus. 

“For over six months, Americans have been suffering under abortion bans that they didn’t vote for and don’t want. Women left bleeding for days. Cancer patients and raped children denied care. Burst ectopic pregnancies. All of that suffering—and we got thirty seconds?

First Lady Jill Biden brought Amanda Zurawski as her guest tonight—a Texas woman who ended up in the ICU with sepsis after being denied an abortion for a doomed pregnancy. Didn’t she deserve more than four sentences?

There was no mention of the conservative efforts to ban abortion medication, or the fact that a court decision could come down this week that would strip even pro-choice states of the right to offer those pills to patients. There was nothing about the twenty Attorneys General who threatened retail pharmacies to keep the medication out of their states, even though they’re standard treatment for miscarriages. 

No words spoken about the doctors forced to choose between giving their patients adequate care or prison time. No time spent on the pregnant women kept in an Alabama jail in order to ‘protect’ their fetuses.”

Biden comes from a generation of Democratic leaders who supported reproductive rights but tried to do it as quietly as possible. We needed more from him last night during this emergency. 

Austin Near-Miss Another Warning

James Fallows examines what we know about the near-collision of two airplanes at the Bergstrom Airport in Austin, Texas, last Saturday. 

“—A Boeing 767 flown by FedEx was cleared to land, on a “Cat III” approach that allows an airliner to touch down safely even if the pilots cannot see the runway. Meanwhile a Boeing 737 flown by Southwest was cleared to take off from that same runway, directly in the descending airplane’s path. 

—It appears that quick action and situational awareness by the FedEx crew prevented a mass-casualty disaster.

I’m writing today to highlight two online assessments of the incident. The first one greatly clarifies what happened and how things went wrong. The second argues that this should be seen not as an isolated mishap but as a warning sign.”

Fallows details what we know about the series of events that nearly led to a calamity. But the real question is what needs to be fixed with the safety protocols because these near misses are happening with increasing frequency. He introduces and then quotes a former air traffic controller’s assessment:

“On his site “WWVB: What Would Vannevar Blog?”, a retired air traffic controller argues that these recent runway incursions are signs of deeper and more dangerous problems.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. But the gist is below. 

The “Tenerife” he refers to is the deadliest disaster in aviation history, when one 747 ran into another on a foggy runway.

This Austin situation is awful. As bad as it gets without body bags….

This was a total system failure. These airplanes were not separated by any good fortune of serendipitous timing. The only thing preventing another Tenerife was the FedEx crew’s situational awareness and the breath of god.”

The Captain Speaks Out on Behalf of Trans Athletes

United States Women’s National Soccer Team Captain Becky Sauerbrunn wrote an op-ed speaking out against proposed legislation targeting trans athletes in her home state of Missouri. 

“The bills don’t consider any of the actual challenges to women and girls in sport. The proposed “Save Women’s Sports Act” does nothing to protect or support girls and women in sports. If those putting forth this legislation actually listened to the needs and concerns of women in sports, they would outline clear steps to protect women and girls from the rampant sexual assault and harassment plaguing sports — issues we’ve been fighting in the NWSL. They would clarify what’s being done to ensure all institutions in Missouri are Title IX compliant. They would outline a plan to promote equal pay for women athletes. They would ensure young women and girls have equitable resources in sport, especially young women and girls of color. Instead, they’re pushing kids away from the life-changing power of sports, forever depriving them of the invaluable lessons sport teaches, and the best friends they would find on their teams.

I have been championing gender equity in sport for a long time, and I am done seeing transgender youth being cruelly targeted to score political points. Transgender people are exactly that, people — not tools to be wielded in a climb up the political ladder. I’m not alone ― hundreds of other elite women athletes from Billie Jean King to Candace Parker have consistently expressed loud opposition to bills almost identical to the ones being heard in the Missouri Senate. Thousands of college athletes have signed letters supporting transgender athletes and against discriminatory bills like these.”

What is happening around the country to trans people is an outrage. There are life-and-death consequences involved here. I appreciate when people use the platforms they may have to fight back against it. 

Thank you for reading Clearing My Tabs by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.

The Internet Server Targeting Trans People for Death

Trigger warning: this section contains mentions self-harm and suicide.

Mother Jones’ Ali Breland writes—at significant personal risk—about Kiwi Farms, a website known for attacking trans people and other people at risk. 

“Most websites aren’t known for having a “kill count.” Kiwi Farms is. Its victims reportedly include Julie Terryberry, who in 2016 took her life after being targeted by users of the site. Two years later, after years of harassment from Kiwi Farms trolls, Chloe Sagal lit herself on fire in a public park. In June 2021, an American video game developer based in Japan, named David Ginder, took their life amid a campaign of Kiwi Farms abuse.

Kiwi Farms is a forum similar in design to 4chan or 8chan, where anonymous posters gather. But instead of just spreading noxious discourse, Kiwi Farms users turn to the site to plan and coordinate. They work to make the lives of their targets a living hell. Their tactics include doxxing, SWATing, defaming, encouraging self-harm, and stalking, online and sometimes off.

Kiwi Farms harvests anguish. It thrives on pain and revels in death. Users of the innocuously named forum prey on the vulnerable and marginalized—people who are transgender, neurodivergent, disabled, financially struggling—with persistent and twisted harassment campaigns. Despite its penchant for destroying lives, Kiwi Farms has been mostly overlooked by the media for much of the site’s existence. That is partly because of who it attacks, but also because reporters are wary of becoming targets themselves.”

Exposing this kind of abuse is necessary as part of a process to protect people. 

Quick Pitches

After winning a Grammy Award for the audiobook of her memoir, Viola Davis became the 18th person to achieve the EGOT—winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards. (Jazz Tangcay, Variety)

LeBron James became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer last night, breaking a record Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had held for nearly four decades. But as The Nation’s Dave Zirin explains, James had to achieve everything while facing rare pressures off the court: “We’ve also witnessed someone who has accomplished this under a “double burden.” LeBron has had to live the last 15 years not only as a player expected to bring his team to the finals every single season but also as someone under the added pressure of being expected to have an opinion on the issues dividing this country, most prominently racist police violence and the presidency of Donald Trump.” (Dave Zirin, The Nation)

Kareem 🤝 LeBron

What a moment

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) 5:04 AM ∙ Feb 8, 2023

Here’s what it would look like if the Jedi Academy followed the lead of Republican governors like Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) in seeking to hide the negative aspects of our history from students. “I sense a great disturbance in the Force. Cynical academics are attempting to corrupt our society with their inaccurate revisionist history. In order to protect our Padawans from being indoctrinated in the Dark Side’s ideology, the Council has decided to excise certain ugly chapters from the ancient Jedi texts. The revised curriculum will not cover Order 66, the minor instance in which the Jedi Council misinterpreted a prophecy, chose the wrong chosen one, and allowed the Sith to infiltrate our ranks, which all culminated in Anakin Skywalker murdering the younglings in cold blood and then proceeding to enslave the entire galaxy. This isolated incident does not reflect who we are as a modern society and does not need to be taught to our youth.” (Max Davison, McSweeney’s)

“A class of molecules produced by bacteria of the genus Pseudomonas has proven to be so effective at killing bacteria that researchers have dubbed them “keanumycins” after Keanu Reeves.” (Hadi Khan, Mashable)

Harry Whittington, the man former Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot in 2006, has passed away. “Whittington’s reluctance to talk about his one moment of planetary fame was a mark of graciousness and gentlemanly propriety. Whittington, who died Saturday at 95, never blamed Cheney for nearly killing him, nor the White House for distorting the events of that late afternoon in 2006. After emerging from a Texas hospital, Whittington even seemed to blame himself.” (Paul Farhi, The Washington Post)

“But it turns out that, mathematically, the answer to these questions — or any question where you want to match up the day of the week with the day/month combination in a year — are extremely predictable, straightforward, and simple to figure out. If, that is, you don’t restrict yourself to using a conventional 12-month calendar, but rather use this one-page calendar that not only lasts the whole year, but that’s extremely easy to adjust for any/all years into the future.” (Ethan Siegel, Big Think)

I am so shocked that the people behind the proposed deal to build a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays are being deceptive about how much it will cost taxpayers. So. Shocked. (Neil deMause, Field of Schemes)

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

Please help me spread the word about this newsletter by sharing this post via email or on the social media network of your choice. And if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for a free or paid subscription. 

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet:

Faulty Assumptions About the Balloon

I broke one of my rules yesterday.

In yesterday’s edition of this newsletter, I discussed the Chinese balloon that flew over the United States last week, noting that it was probably wise to wait until it was over water before shooting it down because gravity still exists. 

But you may notice that I just called it a Chinese balloon. My headline yesterday was The Journey of a Chinese Spy Balloon. 

Why did I call it a spy balloon? After all, as Adam Johnson points out, we still do not have any solid evidence that it was one. 

“Whether or not the balloon was a routine weather balloon or part of a sinister spying operation matters a lot: to lawmakers tasked with responding to this “crisis,” to a frightened public, to right-wing media looking to ding the president. But few in the media seemed concerned with establishing this basic fact first—they just took the U.S. government at its word and ran with the narrative that it was a balloon used for “spying.” All because our government said so. 

But there’s reason to be skeptical. One analysis by James Andrew Lewis, director of Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a hawkish think tank that basically doubles as a lobbying front for the weapons industry and routinely inflates threats, threw water on the the case for it being a spy balloon, writing “China has not used balloons for spying before…the most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray.” Lewis is no peacenick—indeed, his primary worry is the balloon story will distract from other, real-world threats of Chinese spying. 

It’s also possible the balloon had a kind of hybrid function—genuinely used to collect weather data that could, incidentally, be used to detect national security information. The U.S. spends millions developing similar balloon systems (but these don’t, at all, look like weather balloons.) It’s anyone’s guess, but very few people seemed concerned with establishing the true nature of the balloon—it was decided it was a “spy balloon,” and it was time to move on to the “national security implications” of this fact.”

I am disappointed I added to the voices making an assumption appear to be a fact, given that I take the WNYC On the Media Breaking News Consumers Handbook seriously and often write about how reporters should not act as stenographers for law enforcement agencies. 

It may prove to be a spy balloon after naval divers recover the debris. But we do not know that now, and that assumption drives too much about how the media and our political leaders discuss what happened. 

A Long Drive to Left by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Democrats Still Aren’t Taking the Threat to Reproductive Rights Seriously

After years of hearing Republican judicial candidates lie under oath during their confirmation hearings about how they believed Roe v. Wade was settled law or “an important” precedent, watching state legislators ignore votes to protect these reproductive rights, or seeing the continuing efforts to create a right to fetal personhood, one might believe that Democratic elected officials understood that they needed to take ongoing threats to reproductive rights seriously. 

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explain the latest threat: 

“When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, it promised to “return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” In virtually every instance in which it’s been returned to the people, which has mostly happened by ballot initiative and referendum, the people have acted to protect reproductive rights. Perhaps that explains why less than a year after the fall of Roe, conservative activists are trying to put the issue of abortion access into the hands of a single man for whom no one ever voted: a federal judge in Texas named Matthew Kacsmaryk. In the coming weeks, there is a very real possibility that Kacsmaryk will single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in all 50 states, massively disrupting access to reproductive health care across the entire country. Worse, there is a substantial likelihood that higher courts—including the Supreme Court—will let him get away with it.”

I first discussed this situation in the January 28, 2023, edition of this newsletter. The fact that the forced-birth activists have successfully forum-shopped a case to Kacsmaryk’s courtroom should be ringing all the alarm bells. 

But, as Abortion, Every Day’s Jessica Valenti explains, Democratic electeds and staff appear not to be aware of the extent of the peril: “The other thing that’s worrying experts, like Liz Wagner, a lawyer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, is that Democrats don’t seem to understand the urgency around the case. Wagner says that in a recent briefing with congressional staff, those at the meeting couldn’t grasp how the case would threaten abortion access in pro-choice states: “We were getting comments like, ‘But these states protect the right to have an abortion.’” Wagner and her colleague had to “repeatedly explain that the right to abortion was not a right to a specific method of abortion.”

I’d say unbelievable, but a bunch of Senators also thought they could trust the pablum nominees sold to them in Supreme Court Justice confirmation hearings. 

Stern and Lithwick, in their Slate article, summarize the precarious state of reproductive rights—even in blue states:

“Overturning Roe was not the terminal point in the decades-long journey to limit reproductive rights; it’s barely even the start. Maybe this is the moment in which we ask ourselves why so many of us are still surprised; why we are still caught off guard when a court arms alleged domestic abusers, or limits access to birth control, or—stay tuned—criminalizes medication abortion everywhere. The crisis here is not just that a federal judge could imminently ban an abortion drug that’s been used safely for 23 years. It’s that the chaos wrought by Dobbs means anything is possible, and no one—not even in the deepest blue states—can go to bed with any certainty that they will wake up with their rights intact. That is the legacy of today’s Supreme Court: No one can ever really know what new nightmares tomorrow will bring.”

Abortion, Every Day

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. 

In addition to the story I mentioned above, Valenti has updates from across the country about other related issues, including how “Florida high schoolers are not thrilled over the state’s new decision to require female student athletes to hand over their menstrual history—private health information that will be given to school administrators instead of kept with their doctors, as is standard in other states.”

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Koch Against Trump

Billionaire Charles Koch doesn’t like losing. Now the network of conservative groups he and his late brother financed will try to keep former President Donald Trump from winning the 2024 Republican nomination.

Please get me some popcorn. 

“The best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter,” Emily Seidel, chief executive of the network’s flagship group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), wrote in a memo released publicly on Sunday. The three-page missive repeatedly suggests that AFP is taking on the responsibility of stopping Trump, with Seidel writing: “Lots of people are frustrated. But very few people are in a position to do something about it. AFP is. Now is the time to rise to the occasion.”

The move marks the most notable example to date of an overt and coordinated effort from within conservative circles to stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination for a third straight presidential election. Some Republicans have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump after disappointing midterm elections in which he drew blame for elevating flawed candidates and polarizing ideas. But absent a consolidated effort to stop Trump, many critics fear he will be able to exploit GOP divisions and chart a course to the nomination as he did in 2016.”

The best time for conservative groups to work to try to stop him would have been in 2015. The next best time is now. 

But I share Craig Calceterra’s skepticism about whether this effort will actually work.

“I don’t think it’ll matter, though. As I’ve noted many times in this space, a huge percentage of Trump’s supporters, and thus a huge percentage of the modern Republican electorate, are not part of a traditional political constituency in which they weigh policy preferences and throw-in with the candidate who is most persuasive in arguing that he or she will advance them. It’s a cult of personality. Trump could advocate for imprisoning his supporters’ grandmas and a majority of them would likely nod along and talk about how, when you think about it, grandma has had it coming. 

In light of that, I cannot fathom a situation in which a billion dollar political machine props up some median Republican politician with the express purpose of beating Trump and manages to attract anything close to sufficient support among Republican primary voters to make it happen. I will always allow for the possibility that I’m wrong — I’m wrong a lot! — but I predict that if Trump is not the 2024 GOP nominee it’s because he either does not want to be or because he is physically or legally prevented from becoming the 2024 GOP nominee. I don’t think some Koch-backed blue suit with business brain is gonna straight-up beat him.”

Florida Judge Retires to Fight for Innocent Person

Judge Scott Cupp found it hard to believe claims of innocence when he was a defense attorney. But then he heard about Leo Schofield, who is serving a life sentence after being convicted of murdering his wife. 

As the New York Times’ David Segal reports: “But today it is not enough to say Judge Cupp merely believes Leo Schofield is innocent; he considers Mr. Schofield’s imprisonment a grotesque mistake. Anyone wondering how Judge Cupp made the journey from total doubter to ardent crusader should seek out “Bone Valley,” a nine-part podcast released last year, which recounts Mr. Schofield’s story in harrowing, infuriating detail. The show is part of the true-crime podcast bonanza, fueled by the very human urge for stories in which sanity and justice ultimately prevail.

Here comes a spoiler: “Bone Valley” is not that kind of story. Mr. Schofield is still in prison. Which so irritates Judge Cupp that freeing him will soon become his full-time and unpaid job. In a move that is certain to confound more than a few colleagues, Judge Cupp will resign his seat on the 20th Judicial Circuit Court in Charlotte County, Fla. — he has been a judge since 2014 — and dedicate all of his working days to springing Mr. Schofield from behind bars.”

Segal details why Cupp believes Schofield is innocent. The story also demonstrates how difficult it is for a potentially wrongfully convicted person to access the courts to have new evidence reviewed—even when there is a confession from another person linked to the crime. 

Quick Pitches

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein raised $558.91 into her campaign account in the fourth quarter of 2022. That’s not a typo. That’s it. I think this result clarifies whether she currently plans to run again in 2024. (Federal Election Commission, FEC Form 3)

Which Major League Baseball players will be impacted the most by the new stolen base rules? I didn’t expect the list to start with Miami Marlins pitcher Sandy Alcantara—but I see why that makes sense. (Zachary D. Rymer, Bleacher Report)

My mother in Northern Maine warned me about the extreme cold weather they were predicting for the weekend, but I was still surprised by what I saw from Mt. Washington, N.H., on Saturday. The mountain’s summit was in the stratosphere for a while Saturday night because the atmosphere compresses as it cools. “In northern Maine, the wind chill brought temperatures as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with other areas in the state ranging from minus 25 to minus 50 degrees, said Stephen Baron, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine. The weather observatory on top of Mount Washington, in New Hampshire, the tallest peak in New England, recorded a wind chill of minus 108 degrees, Mr. Baron said.” (Ginger Adams Otis, Wall Street Journal)

INSANE conditions on Mt Washington, NH. 120mph+ winds and -95°F wind chill. It is above the tropopause, meaning that these are stratospheric winds.

Footage from the summit live stream 2:30-2:40pm. #nhwx

— Peter Forister ❄️💨❄️ (@forecaster25) 7:57 PM ∙ Feb 3, 2023

“Fresno County’s district attorney says Gov. Gavin Newsom is to blame for the early release from jail of a man now accused of fatally shooting a police officer. But the facts and the law don’t appear to support her accusation — and instead indicate that the district attorney’s office made a decision that helped to free the suspected killer.” (Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle)

Hunter Biden is going on the offensive against the people who stole his personal data and have shopped it around to various media outlets and certain House Republicans. (Charles P. Pierce, Esquire)

“This crazy, beautiful chart illustrates the incredible complexity of managing one of our nation’s most crucial – and invisible – national assets: the radio spectrum.” (Jon Keegan, Beautiful Public Data)

The New Scientist Weekly podcast has a fun bonus episode examining whether the fungus outbreak in the Last of Us could happen in real life. (New Scientist Weekly Podcast)

Jupiter has retaken the lead for most moons of any planet in our Solar System. But Saturn is still in the contest as new scientific instruments come online. (Robert Lea, Space.com)

Thank you for reading my newsletter. Let me know what you think about what you’ve read. You can email me at craigcheslog@substack.com. 

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Thank you for reading A Long Drive to Left by Craig Cheslog. This post is public so feel free to share it.