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.
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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)
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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.
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