We begin today with Irina Ivanova of CBS News explaining which state would feel the effects of a default on the national debt most severely.
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian reports that Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran kept notes that show Number 45 was told that he could not retain classified documents.
Daniel Rothberg of the Nevada Independent looks at the components of a tentative proposal by Arizona, California, and Nevada to conserve water from the Colorado River.
Zack Beauchamp of Vox points out that MAGA activists are coming for Fox News because of Fox News handling of gender identity issues in the workplace.
So Fox News should defy the laws of a state where they are headquartered … got it!
Paul Krugman of The New York Times examines the changing macroeconomics of working from home and reduced commuting.
Now that the third-place finisher in Turkey’s elections, Sinan Ogan, has endorsed incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the second round of elections this coming Sunday, Kemal Kirişci and Berk Esen of Just Security look at what the future holds for Turkey.
Finally today, Russian independent media organization Meduza examines the idea and history behind the characterization of the Russian people as a “subservient nation.”
Have the best possible day everyone!
Washington, D.C., where 1 in 4 jobs are tied to the federal government, would be hardest hit, becoming the "poster child" for a financial disaster, they said. States with large federal facilities, such as national laboratories or military bases, would be next in line. That includes Hawaii, which is home to the United States Pacific Command and to 11 military bases; Alaska, with vast federal land holdings; and New Mexico, home to Los Alamos National Laboratory.
"While the public sector typically serves as a stabilizing force, in the case of a breach it supercharges its economic fallout," wrote Moody's Analytics economists Mark Zandi, Adam Kamins and Bernard Yaros.
Also vulnerable are regions that rely heavily on federal spending, including those with defense contractors. "Professional services firms suffer, hurting white-collar support firms in and around the Beltway, particularly Northern Virginia," Moody's said. "Aerospace is also hurt, impacting states including Connecticut, Kansas and Washington."
Even a short debt ceiling breach, in which the government defaults for less than a week before lawmakers raise the government's borrowing limit, would likely push the economy into a recession, according to Moody's. In this scenario, 1.5 million people would lose their jobs, pushing unemployment from its current rate of 3.4% to 5%, while nation's gross domestic product would shrink by 0.7%.
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian reports that Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran kept notes that show Number 45 was told that he could not retain classified documents.
Federal prosecutors have evidence Donald Trump was put on notice that he could not retain any classified documents after he was subpoenaed for their return last year, as they examine whether the subsequent failure to fully comply with the subpoena was a deliberate act of obstruction by the former president.
The previously unreported warning conveyed to Trump by his lawyer Evan Corcoran could be significant in the criminal investigation surrounding Trump’s handling of classified materials given it shows he knew about his subpoena obligations.
[...]
The warning was one of several key moments that Corcoran preserved in roughly 50 pages of dictated notes described to the Guardian over several weeks by three people with knowledge of their contents, which prosecutors have viewed in recent months as central to the criminal investigation.
Daniel Rothberg of the Nevada Independent looks at the components of a tentative proposal by Arizona, California, and Nevada to conserve water from the Colorado River.
The seven U.S. states that use water from the Colorado River — overallocated and shrinking in supply with a warming climate — reached a short-term deal Monday that officials say will avert a near-term shortage across a watershed that supports about 40 million people in the Southwest.
In a letter Monday, negotiators for the states, including Nevada, outlined a consensus proposal for federal officials to consider as they look to stabilize Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the river’s main reservoirs, which reached record lows during the worst prolonged drought in 1,200 years.
The plan commits the three states that draw on Lake Mead — Arizona, California and Nevada — to conserve 3 million acre-feet of water over the next three years as the negotiators turn their attention to long-term planning for the river. The guidelines that dictate how the river’s complex system of reservoirs are managed, including during times of shortage, are set to expire in 2026.
While the 3 million acre-foot deal represents a significant cut over three years, it is far less than the 2 million to 4 million acre-feet of annual cuts the U.S. government said was necessary last year (an acre-foot is the volume of water that can fill roughly one football field to a depth of 1 foot).
Zack Beauchamp of Vox points out that MAGA activists are coming for Fox News because of Fox News handling of gender identity issues in the workplace.
The inciting incident is a Monday morning story in the Daily Signal, the media arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. In the story, reporter Mary Margaret Olohan writes that Fox’s employee handbook allows employees to use “bathrooms that align with their gender identity, rather than their biological sex,” permits them to “dress in alignment with their preferred gender,” and requires that their coworkers use “their preferred name and pronouns in the workplace.”
Many of Fox’s rules in this area appear to be in line with state law: The company’s headquarters are in New York, where state law explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity (something Olohan notes in passing but doesn’t dwell on). Fox told me in a written statement, “FOX News Media is compliant with all Human Rights laws mandated by the cities and states in which we operate, including New York and California.”
[...]
Matt Walsh, an influential anti-trans podcaster at the Daily Wire, led the charge. According to Walsh, Fox is “actively working to suppress conservative voices” — an apparent reference to the network’s ouster of Tucker Carlson — “while promoting leftism in its most radical form” and thus “needs to get the full Bud Light treatment.” (Bud Light has been targeted by a boycott campaign on the right after partnering with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney.)
So Fox News should defy the laws of a state where they are headquartered … got it!
Paul Krugman of The New York Times examines the changing macroeconomics of working from home and reduced commuting.
First things first: The reduction in commuting time is a seriously big deal. Before the pandemic, the average American adult spent about 0.28 hours per day, or more than 100 hours a year, on work-related travel. (Since not all adults are employed, the number for workers was considerably higher.) By 2021, that number had fallen by about a quarter.
Putting a dollar value on the benefits from reduced commuting is tricky. You can’t simply multiply the time saved by average wages, because people probably don’t view time spent on the road (yes, most people drive to work) as fully lost. On the other hand, there are many other expenses, from fuel to wear and tear to psychological strain, associated with commuting. On the third hand, the option of remote or hybrid work tends to be available mainly to highly educated workers with above-average wages and hence a high value associated with their time.
But it’s not hard to make the case that the overall benefits from not commuting every day are equivalent to a gain in national income of at least one and maybe several percentage points. That’s a lot: There are very few policy proposals likely to produce gains on that scale. And yes, these are real benefits. C.E.O.s may rant about lazy or (per Musk) “immoral” workers who don’t want to go back into their cubicles, but the purpose of an economy is not to make bosses happy.
Now that the third-place finisher in Turkey’s elections, Sinan Ogan, has endorsed incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the second round of elections this coming Sunday, Kemal Kirişci and Berk Esen of Just Security look at what the future holds for Turkey.
However, the real lesson to be learned from this recent electoral success is to recognize that, in an era of authoritarian consolidation around the world, it is exceedingly difficult to defeat populist autocrats who capture the key checks-and-balances of the democratic system. It is not evident that the opposition’s agenda for a pluralist democracy at ease with Turkey’s ethnic, social, and religious diversity was adopted wholeheartedly by the voters. Yet, the election results also suggest that Turkey is a deeply divided society holding or adhering to two different conceptions of democracy, and that Erdoğan no longer enjoys the support of an electoral majority.
Should Erdoğan prevail in the runoff, as appears likely, it will be interesting to see how he will address the wreckage his last term has left behind — economic, institutional, infrastructural (especially in the earthquake-hit region), and in foreign policy. Time will tell whether he will be able to stabilize the Turkish economy and restore relations with the West, if he is even interested in doing so. There are already alarming signs that the economic crisis will worsen after the election. Daron Acemoğlu, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), notes that it is not evident that Erdoğan will be able to address such a crisis, having to choose between two politically difficult options: returning to orthodox policies or imposing capital controls.
Either way, Erdoğan will soon need to prepare for the March 2024 local elections, when the country’s largest municipalities, currently controlled by the opposition, will be up for grabs. This electoral defeat in the presidential and parliamentary elections will weaken the opposition parties, but not knock them out entirely. The CHP still controls some of the major metropolitan governments, such as İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir, and has popular leaders with national appeal such as İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş.
Finally today, Russian independent media organization Meduza examines the idea and history behind the characterization of the Russian people as a “subservient nation.”
In trying to explain why Russians have not “simply overthrown Putin,” some recent critics have reverted to an old trope, calling Russia a “subservient nation.” When Georgia’s legislature considered adopting a law on “foreign agents” that resembled legislation Russia has used over the last decade to suppress dissent, protestors in Georgia shouted “Russians! Are Slaves!” And in October 2022, Ukraine’s former foreign affairs minister Volodymyr Ohryzko said, “The Russian nation is a subservient nation that doesn’t understand what free will or self-governance are.”
And it’s not just an idea imposed on Russia from the outside. The scholar Olgerta Kharitonova argues in her book Voina i Feminizm (War and Feminism) that “the Russian nation has never had the historical opportunity to develop a social consciousness other than subservience.” And the Russian journalist Ilya Varlamov has said that Russian schools instill “a subservient consciousness.” The Communist Party of the Russian Federation has used the same phrasing to explain their electoral losses and voter passivity in the 2016 elections. In March of last year, Putin himself explained Russians’ desire to live in the West as “subservient consciousness.”
“A subservient nation” is a very old trope, conceived by foreign visitors to Russia and then picked up by parts of the Russian intelligentsia.
Have the best possible day everyone!